May 6, 2025 • 36 mins
What if lasting success isn’t about what you achieve—but who you become?
In this powerful episode, host Nicole Jansen sits down with Rusty Rueff—renowned tech executive, startup advisor, philanthropist, and co-author of Faith Code—to explore how inner purpose and spiritual identity provide the only truly unshakable foundation for life and leadership.
Drawing from two decades of reflection, Rusty shares a compelling metaphor: Are you building your life on a solid platform (faith, values, purpose), or just stacking up flashy but fragile apps (titles, possessions, roles)? In this conversation, Nicole and Rusty unpack why true freedom, resilience, and fulfillment only come when you lead from your source code—a deep connection to something greater than yourself.
From navigating profound personal loss and professional upheaval, to cultivating spiritual habits and daily disciplines, this episode offers practical insights and soul-level encouragement for leaders ready to build from the inside out.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why Faith Code was written and why these principles are more relevant than ever
- The “Platform vs. App” metaphor—and how it redefines success
- How to respond when your “apps” crash: job loss, health struggles, identity shifts
- How loss and disruption can become gateways to inner freedom
- Why love—God’s love, self-love, and love for others—is the cornerstone of resilience
- The difference between loving as a feeling vs. loving as a verb
- How to realign your life through energy, time, and priority audits
- The daily disciplines that strengthen your platform
- What grows stronger as everything else fades—and why that’s your true legacy
Podcast Highlights
0:00 – Anchoring in a World of Change: Meet Rusty Rueff
2:01 – The Birth of Faith Code: Why Platform vs. App Matters
6:47 – Building on the Wrong Things: The Hidden Limits of “Apps”
8:19 – Your Source Code: Identity Anchored in Faith
11:18 – When the Apps Crash: Finding Freedom Through Loss
13:46 – God’s Love: The Ultimate Platform
16:34 – Love as a Verb: Daily Choices That Build Resilience
19:38 – Rebuilding Priorities: Applying the Faith Code
23:34 – The Art of Time: Energy, Rhythm, and Alignment
27:28 – The Spirit That Grows Stronger with Time
Memorable Quotes
“Are you building your life as a platform or just stacking up apps? Your apps can crash. Your platform must endure.”
“What’s the one thing God gives that can’t be taken away? His love. More reliable than the sunrise.”
“Love isn’t love unless it’s acted on. It’s not a noun—it’s a verb.”
“Everything fades… except your spirit. It can become the strongest part of your life—especially in the end.”
Episode Show Notes and Resources: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/business/534-anchored-leadership-in-a-shifting-world-with-rusty-rueff/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the leaders of transformation podcast. The number one
show for business leaders and entrepreneurs passionate about uplifting
others and making a greater impact in the world. Now, here's
your host, transformational coach, speaker, and business
advisor, Nicole Jansen.
(00:21):
In a world that is driven by technology, ambition, and
constant change, How do we anchor ourselves to something that
is unshakable while pursuing success and making a
meaningful impact? Our guest today is Rusty Roof. He is
a well known technology executive, a startup
advisor, a thought leader, and he has served in leadership
(00:43):
and advisory roles at Glassdoor, Grammy Foundation
Board. There's the list goes on. American Conservatory
Theater Board. He is a benefactor of the Purdue University's
Patty and Rusty Roof School of Design, Arts and
Performance, and he is, co author
of the book Faith Code, which I have here, which is
(01:05):
an excellent book. Highly recommend it. He wrote it with pastor
Terry Brisbane, and it's a fantastic read. And he's also
the cofounder and cohost of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
So if you're listening, you probably like podcasts. Go check out their podcast.
Awesome material. And so, Rusty, welcome to the leaders transformation. We're glad
you're here. Yeah. So am I. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. It is a
(01:27):
pleasure. And before we go any further, I wanna do a shout out to
CJ at Tasswood PR because
CJ is the one who connected us. And I always love to acknowledge those who
are supporting this show. That's our guests, of course, our listeners, but
it's also our booking agents that send amazing guests our way.
Otherwise, Rusty and I wouldn't be having this conversation. So thank you That's right. To
(01:49):
CJ. I appreciate you. So, Rusty, let's talk about the book Faith
Code and what inspired you to write it. You have so many things going
on. You're making an impact in so many different ways. Why this
book and why now? First of all, I find that nothing
really happens without a purpose. And if you reverse
engineer anything that we do, you can sort of look back over time and
(02:11):
go, oh, I know where that started. I see that now.
And this book actually started over twenty years ago
plus when I gave a talk at Purdue, which
you mentioned, which is my alma mater. And I spoke to the business school there,
and this thing had just come out called the iPhone,
and the phone was there, but Apple decided to release this thing
(02:34):
called the App Store. And in the zeitgeist
was that sort of iconic now commercial
and tagline, there's an app for that. And so I was asked to
speak sort of about, you know, where does one take their career? How does one
think about their life? All that good stuff. And I just made this presentation. I
said, are you building your life as a platform or an app?
(02:56):
And a platform being something that, you know, in the vernacular of where we are,
it was very familiar, and still is, whether the platform is the IOS
platform that Apple uses, or the Android platform
that Google uses, or any other platform like Salesforce or
Facebook or anything. These technology marvels, if you will,
were built so that lots of other things could be
(03:18):
built on top of them. Communications, finances,
ability to run videos, to turn around and
communicate in ways that we never communicated before. And the characteristics
of a great platform (03:29):
very predictable,
very stable, have to be updated every now and then,
but not all the time, can be counted on. That
dependability, and, you know, to give you just a quick reference to that,
is we get up in the morning and we grab our phone or we go
to our laptop, and we turn it on, it boots up the same
(03:51):
way every single time, and if it didn't, we'd go crazy.
Like when all of a sudden, if our email popped up, you know,
before something else and every day was random, we'd go crazy, And that wouldn't be
a good platform. And so, my thought was, we should
have a platform that we build our life on, and that
platform could be things like relationships and our
(04:12):
values and principles, our our deep knowledge that
we try to bring into ourselves to learn and to grow, you
know, our being, if you will. Yeah. Or you could build your
life as an app. And your life as an app can be, wow, that's
really cool, That's really flashy. It's the greatest thing. But as we
know about apps then and as we know about today, they come, they
(04:35):
go. They're on the front page of our phone sometimes, and then they end
up on another page because they're not as important. They crash
easily. The updates don't always make sense. It's random. And I
said, well, if the apps of our lives are out there,
what are they? And they are things like our jobs, our careers,
where we live, who our sort of tertiary,
(04:57):
superficial friends are, where we go to school, what we're studying, what
we wear, the sports teams that we like, the cars that we drive, the homes
that we have, all very much important,
but not what you want to build your life upon. So true.
Yeah. Because it's not a platform. And they crash easily, and we don't have to
look very far, including in ourselves, to say, wow,
(05:19):
I've had one of those apps crash. I thought my job was going great.
Everything was good, and the next thing I know, there's a massive layoff, and I'm
caught up in it, and I don't know what to do yet now. And guess
what? I've built everything on this job, including my identity,
and now what do I do? Now, the parts of our platform are not always
100% predictable either. Like, you can say mind, body, and
(05:40):
spirit could be your platform, and body, guess
what? You know, it's going along great. It's fantastic until that
test comes back, or that thing starts hurting, and whatever, and all of a sudden
there's an issue. So it's not a pure metaphor, but it was the metaphor that
I gave. And what happened was, every time that I would run into anybody who
I gave that talk in front of for years and years and years, they'd say,
(06:00):
I remember that I'm still working on my platform versus my app and
my apps. And so from that came lots of different things,
series at our church where we sort of did the same thing, life apps and
I did videos and my pastor did platform work, and
then from that came other talks and then while while we were sitting on a
Wednesday morning, which we do every Wednesday morning, myself, him, and
(06:22):
one other friend get together whenever we're in town, and we get together
on Wednesday morning, and just a small group to talk about life and you
know, how things are unfolding and get advice from each other and some accountability,
and my pastor said, you know, we should write a book on that platform
app thing, and I'm like, yeah, you should write a book on that. I mean,
I've written a book before. It's really hard. I'm not sure we should do that.
(06:43):
He goes, oh, no, no, no. You just go off, think about it, pray about
it, you know, maybe we should do that. And after some time, I came back
and said, yeah, we probably should. So, that turned into the faith code that you
mentioned, and that's what it is. It's basically the platform and app
metaphor. The platform, in this case, being our
faith. Not everyone shares the same faith, but I would
encourage everyone to try to find something
(07:07):
that they would call their spirit and find a
reason for that, And in that, they probably will find something
that will feel foundational for them, and think about building your life off of that.
In this case, our faith is Christianity, and we think about
the source code of our platform being God's Word, which the source
code never changes. We change, which makes it really cool because, you
(07:29):
know, each time we pick up a scripture and you read scripture, you go, oh,
I probably read that a thousand times, but it never really said that to me.
It's not because it's any different. It's because our lens, our
filter, our experience has changed, and so it becomes new. But you need source
code, and source code has to be stable, and source code
has to be something that can be built upon and built upon with a framework
and a platform, and that's the faith code. Now, the other part of the book
(07:52):
is a lot of applications of how you can take that out because you could
just spend the rest of your life doing nothing but, you know, saying, Oh, well,
this is good. You also have to live a life, right? We all should have
a full and abundant life, and we've been given talents and treasures
and things that we're supposed to take and put into the world. The
catch there is don't let those become the foundational
(08:15):
things. Yeah. Always let those be apps that are built on top of the platform.
So that's the faith code. That's how we got there. Wow. I love the analogy
that you made with the platform and the apps and the fact
that the source code for us, the faith
code is the word of God because I believe like that being,
doing, having I mean, all my coaching is based on that. It's based
(08:36):
on a results model that has to do with, you know, results come from behaviors
and actions. Behaviors and actions are influenced by our mindset. What
influences our mindset, our beliefs, our strengths, how we're you talk
about in the book, like the natural inborn things that got us kind of
installed preloaded in us. And then it's ultimately
though at the core of it, it's identity. And a lot of times, you know,
(08:57):
I was kinda smiling earlier when you were talking about if some of your apps
break down or whatever, or all of them at the same time, which I've had.
And it's like you realize that your, you know, identity,
my identity is not in all of those things. And That's right. God was showing
that to me as well. It's like your identity is not in the
accomplishments. It's not in, you know, even the
(09:19):
associations and the environments that you're in. It's not about anything external.
It's about what's inside, and it's ultimately about who he says
that we are. I always say that if you wanna know the purpose of a
thing, you ask the one who created the thing. And so in this case,
you know, I believe we were created by God, you know, not me.
Right? And I didn't create myself. And so what did you create me for?
(09:40):
Right? What's my purpose? And what is my design? And
so I get my identity from him. And then what's
interesting is when the pandemic hit and
everybody was like, oh my gosh, jobs, this, that, all the things
were happening. I had already gone through this process and so I
could observe and watch and with
(10:01):
fascination, but also even like curiosity, it's just like this is really
interesting to notice how many people are actually
have been deriving their identity but from external things. That's right. And when
those external things are taken away, we freak out. Right? So
it's like but when you realize that none of that stuff, it's all temporary. It's
like it's gonna come and go and you can't take it with you. Right? Like
(10:24):
all those material things like LA. Right? Which that, you know, the fires in
LA. It's like you might have a hundred and $20,000,000 mansion,
but it's gone. And you realize none of that stuff
really matters, and you weren't gonna take it with you anyway, you know, bottom
line. Then you really get to it's only actually when and I don't
pray that over anyone or wish that for anyone that they lose everything. But it's
(10:46):
actually when you get that none of that stuff matters that you actually
get to experience true freedom and fulfillment life because you realize that
it's none of that stuff can't control you. It can't influence you. So talk a
little bit about that. Like, when you're applying this and helping
people through with your book to be able to live a life of freedom to
live that, like, talk about that life that is unshakable on this
(11:08):
foundation that they can live free, that they can live
the abundant life that Jesus actually paid for. He
paid with so dearly for. So the way we talk about it in the
book and in the way that I personally look at it, and you rightfully
said, you have to go back to the inner being and the purpose of what
God has created in us. But what is the thing that he has
(11:29):
given us that can't be taken away? And that's his love.
Yes. That's absolutely his love, and it is the most
reliable thing. It's more reliable than the sun coming up every day. Right?
Because in whatever circumstance we're in,
God is saying, I love you and I want to give you this
love, But, I also want you to do something with it. Right? So, I want
(11:51):
you to love yourself with it, and I want you to do that in a
healthy way so that you can really experience it
as this human being that I've created you to be. And, I want you to
love others. So, my personal journey
and when I think about updating my platform,
updating my faith code, first of all, I go back to
(12:12):
God's word, wherever it is, and then I step back and I say,
okay, what am I doing with God's love? Am I in a
place of healthiness, openness, responsiveness
to accept it and do what I need to do for
myself so that I can live out to say, yes God I appreciate
what you've given me and I can love myself here. And, what am I doing
(12:34):
to love others? Then you look at it and go, okay, well that's the signal.
Now, what's all the noise that's getting in between those things that
are causing me issues? And, what I'll find is,
oh, I think I've fallen in love with some things
or I'm acting like I've fallen in love with some things that don't really
matter. Mhmm. They just don't matter. And I try to do an inventory
(12:56):
of those things because I say, okay, if that was taken away from me,
like if my ability to travel, which is one of those things by the way
in COVID that really shook people's identity because there are people who
live on social media to tell us where they've gone and what they've eaten and
where they are, you know, and all of a sudden that got taken away and
they were like, well, who am I? But let's say that got taken away from
me and it's something that I love or I say I love, I really like,
(13:19):
you know, but I love and it gets taken away from me. Who am I?
What am I going to do with that? Then flip the model and say, well,
what if it really was taken away from me? What would I do with all
that extra time? What would I do with all those extra
resources? The money that I spend on travel. How would I
love others with that resources and that time? And it's a
(13:40):
fascinating exercise because you can go through all kinds of things and even things that
are really, really, really good for you. You know, I'm a Yeah. I'm a runner.
I love to stay in great shape, and and I would say
from a definition, it would look like I love running because I work really hard
at it, and I do it all the time, and I cherish the time, and
I press and all those kinds of things, but if it was taken from me,
if my knees go and I can't do that anymore, how would I reallocate
(14:03):
that to make sure that I'm using that time and that energy to go
back to the foundation and say, am I loving God, loving myself, and loving
others? What would I do? So it's a very good exercise. It's a hard one
for most people to do because you can't imagine things being
taken from you. But, you know, things get taken from us.
Yeah. Actually, I can relate to that because I love to run and then
(14:25):
I injured my knees and I couldn't run for a walk,
let alone run for, months. And
it changes your perspective on that. And I love
when you talk about love because I believe we all have the same
purpose in in life. It's to Jesus told us. Right? The greatest commandment, you know,
to love God and to love one another as ourselves. How we do
(14:49):
that is our assignment. And that question where it's like, what would
I do without this? I had a question that I mean, one of my
devotional times, God was, like, asking me this question because we
can love our skills. We can love our strengths.
And, you know, I talk a lot about helping people to play their strengths. Right?
So he said, who are you without your gifting? Who are you without your
(15:11):
strengths? Who are you without your family? Who is I mean, my
parents both passed away shortly after that. My husband and I were divorced.
So it felt like I lost everything. And it was interesting because
I had somebody once who said and she was actually a pastor. And she said,
so much loss. You've lost so much. And she just her
heart was grieving for me. And my heart was grieving for all the things
(15:34):
that I had lost. And yet when I looked at it, yes,
it seemed like I had lost those things. But what
I had also done is I'd also gained something else. That's what
you're talking about. And I realized I was like, alright, well, I'm a free
agent. I can live wherever I want. I can do whatever I
want. I mean, it's like, God, you and me, like, what are we doing?
(15:56):
Yeah. And it was just like, wow. And that's why I talk about that freedom.
There's that freedom in that of just one wow. So I think we think a
lot about what we lose and we're holding on to things. It's that
scarcity mindset of trying to feel secure. It's the
self preservation of our life. And then when we release
that and we realize that the real value of our life
(16:17):
and our existence is actually so much more than that.
And love is talk a little bit about what love is because there's the
love of God. Right? Perfect love. And then there's love that we share with
others. And love is not a feeling. It's
a choice. It is. One of the few things that It's like the energy. It's
just so much to it. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about that. And it's not only
(16:39):
a noun. It's a verb. It's both. And and in fact, it can't.
Love can't be love unless it is manifested.
Yes. Right? I can't say I love my wife if
I'm not attentive, spending time with her, doing the
things that I can do to make her life better,
enjoy spending time with her. I mean, you can't do that. You can't say I
(17:00):
love running if you're not running. Right? You can't. And so, we walk around
all the time and say, I love this, I love that, I love that, and
I hear people say it. I say it sometimes myself. Like, I play golf, and
I'll say, Man, I love to play golf. I don't love to play golf because
if I'd love to play golf, I'd be out there practicing. I'd be,
you know, playing a lot more than I play. What I think I do love
(17:20):
is I love just being outside and having to do some kind of
physical activity that comes with it. I like it, right? I don't love
it. And so, love is being and doing at the same
time. And I think it's why God says to love Him with all your heart,
love others as you love yourself. And that's why I come back
to there are three loves, and that loving yourself is so important
(17:43):
because you have to do it in a way that you don't become
the ultimate love of yourself and become a narcissist or become
a person who spends more time on themselves than they do others. But you
can't love others if you don't love yourself, and we've seen this happen over and
over, that people who are living in shame or they're self esteem, they are
always blown up, and they're not accessing, you know, God's source code and his love,
(18:05):
and they can't feel it, then they can't turn around and love others, and it's
a really, really bad cycle. It's a really bad cycle. So we have to pay
attention to ourselves too, and I think God wants that. He wants us to be
the best, you know, version of us that we can be. Why would
he want anything different? Why would he create something and go, oh,
I'm really happy that that person barely gets by. You know, that they
(18:25):
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make any sense at all. Everyone said in
a message that I gave her, I said, you know, if I was really, really,
really honest, and I was really, really, really at
it and I truly loved God with all my heart
and I loved others as I loved myself, I wouldn't have any time to do
anything else because that is plenty in life. I think if some people
(18:48):
get to a point where it's like, I'm not sure what I should do next,
go love on somebody. Right? Take that love that God's given us and,
you know, and our ability to spread it and go do something good. Love on
somebody. You you'd be surprised the the amazing things that'll happen.
So this book, you wrote it with pastor Terry Brisbane,
and he starts off each chapter from a spiritual aspect,
(19:10):
and then you kind of come in with that whole app
platform concept. How do we take all of this? I think about
those that are listening and they're like, okay, this is great. How
do I get started? How do I apply this in my day to day life?
Because I'm a busy executive, I'm running a business, I'm doing all the things. How
do I apply this concept? What are my steps
(19:32):
to creating a life that is based on this faith
code so that I can live life more fully? Sure. Well, I'll try to encapsulate
the book down into a couple of little quick thoughts here. Get the book.
That'd be one thing, right? Yeah. Get the book. Get a get a copy of
the book. Get the book, basically. But, yeah. But, you know, I keep mine with
me all the time. Let's first not gloss past to make sure that we are
(19:53):
building our life on the right platform. Okay. So let's get the inner being in
a good place and that might take some time. That's not an
overnight exercise for any of us to make sure that we're
at a place where we're like, oh, okay. I get it. I know
where I am. I can say that I'm as firm as I can
be right now on the platform. And then, I can begin to
(20:15):
go, well, these different apps in my life, where
do they sit? Where do they sit in my priorities? Where do they sit
in what matters in importance in
life to myself and to those others that are close to me? And begin
to do some prioritization, begin to do some filtering, begin to look at
those, and what you'll come out with, more than likely, is you're going to come
(20:37):
out with four or five different categories. One of them will be work,
because we're built to work, so anybody who's not working,
any of us that bemoan work, go talk to somebody who's unable
to work. Yeah. Either out of a job, or they're physically
incapable of working, they're mentally incapable of
working, and go tell them that you hate working, because they're going to
(21:00):
look at you and go, If I give anything, I give anything to be able
to work. So, work will be a bucket. It'll be a category. The
closest relationships in your life will be a category. It'll be
your family, your children, your partner, your spouse. That will be
a category. Your mind will be a category. Like how am I doing to strengthen
my strength? Your body, how am I taking care of my health, will be a
(21:22):
category. Probably how you recreate will become a category. Like, what do
you consider play? What do you consider those things that fill
you that way? And then you'll have your own, but most of us share those
kinds of things, and then we go through and we look at that and we
each one of those applications of life, and we say, are we
applying the platform principles into that to make
(21:44):
them the best it can be? So in our work, are we taking our
faith? Are we taking our values, our principles? Again, not
everybody is, are people of faith, but people are of our values and
principles. Everyone has values and principles. Not all of them are great.
Are they taking the ones that they should be taking, and are they applying them
into this work where it is coming through?
(22:06):
It is showing that on the other side, you're doing the best
you can at work, but someplace recognizes There's fruit. That there
is fruit there. That's absolutely right, and you do that in each one of these
areas, and then what you're going to find is that some are really strong,
and boy, I feel good. This app is running great, and as long as I
continue not to lose perspective and don't make it too important, but
(22:28):
don't make it less important, I'll be okay. But boy, I've got two or three
areas that are really suffering here. And now we start to talk about
the allocation of time, right? And so I'm super disciplined about time.
I was very fortunate. I've had some freedom in my life because of
some success in work that has allowed me to play a
have a portfolio of my activities. But my calendar is color
(22:50):
coded against many, many different categories that I look at
that my calendar a week ahead of time, a month of time, and if
it's overweighted in one area, I say, Oh, wow. I don't want to be
overweighted there because I know it's a risk of being underweighted someplace else. And so,
like, a financial advisor looks at your portfolio and says, Woah, woah, woah. You've got
too much over there. We've got to reallocate because the times are changing, or things
(23:12):
are changing. And I can tell you, I know when I'm underallocating
my time to my wife and to my friends, I can feel it.
You know what? And that's risky. I know when I'm underallocating my
time, you know, and I'm letting what I would consider work or something else, you
know, steal away from my time of working out or my time of
my devotions and things like that. High risk moves. Can't get it back. So if
(23:35):
you're committed to working out three days a week and you start shortcutting
it down to two, you know what? You can't go, Well, you know what I'm
going to do next week. Next week, I'm going to work out four times, and
then the following week, I'm going to work out five. It doesn't work that way.
You'll try, but it doesn't work. So we have to stay disciplined about, you know,
how we allocate our time as it relates to keeping these
applications of our lives, you know, running the way they should be running and
(23:58):
making sure that we've got this time also to come all the way back
around, spend time in the source code, keep working on the platform. And the
platform has to be updated. IOS comes out and, you know, we don't always
like what comes out on the backside of our updates, right? We go, woah,
this is different than it was, and, you know, my music just shows up or
my the biggest, I guess, complaint in this last iOS, whatever it was,
(24:20):
18 or whatever it was, you know, all over the place. My pictures. No, I
can't get to my pictures the way I used to get to my pictures, and
I look at that, and I laugh a little bit about it because the platform
is just as stable as it was. It's got a few extra things now that's
making things work differently, and that's also what God does to us when we get
updated, when we're open and willing to get updated. He makes it a little
different, but to be able to do Just to make us uncomfortable. Yeah. But But
(24:42):
be able to do some other things. I don't know why Apple had to do
everything that they had to do, but you know what? There's a whole bunch of
new ways of saving pictures that are really cool, that I
couldn't have done before, that is a benefit that if I just get past
this uncomfortable period, it's better than it was. And that's what God does
with us too. And that's a lifelong journey. I mean, as much
(25:02):
as we can get to that point where we feel like, okay, I've got
my platform, my source code is grounded and I'm
rooted in God's word and all that. Pride comes before the fall
though because you think, oh, I've got this and then all of a
sudden you start to swerve off or maybe you're not as hungry for it
because you kind of feel like I'm filled up and then you can wander off.
(25:25):
And so it's this constant coming back to really
reevaluate and make sure like, I think of Jesus, whether people
believe in who he is or not as a son of God. Look, three
years, twelve disciples, and we're still talking about him two thousand
years ago. Absolutely. He kinda knew how to lead well. Right? That's right. And
to build a legacy. And he spent time, he never rushed.
(25:47):
He was never behind schedule. He was never pulled in a
million different directions even though people are like, we should go here. He's like, nope.
I'm here. Why? Because I'm about my father's business. And he would go up to
the mountain and he would have time to pray. He'd had time to be quiet
so that he could be filled up. He would he would tell his disciples, come,
let's go away, you know, and it's been a busy day or a busy week
(26:07):
or whatever. Come, let's go away into a quiet place and get recharged.
And so he was consistently doing that so that he could stay
focused in the midst of all the things that were pulling on him. And he
had such a short period of time to do what he needed to do. And
so I think there's a lot that we can learn from that. And you talked
about your calendar. I love that because I color code my calendar. I look at
(26:28):
the same thing. If it's weighted, I'm like, oh, too many of these. Like, you
gotta have that. It's not really balanced, but it is
harmony. It is the right, if you will, balance or integration
of that priorities, those priorities. If you wanna know what somebody
cares about or what they prioritize, you can look at their schedule, and it's there.
They're like, this is really important to me. It's like, well, it's clearly not
(26:51):
because it's not in your calendar. I've always said, you give me two items, and
I'll figure your life out for you. Give me your calendar and give me your
credit card statements, and I'll tell you. I'll tell you what's important because where you
spend your time and your resources, that's what's important to you. And if you can't
see it, go back and look at it. It's there, and don't say, Oh, these
things are really important to me, but there's no time and there's no resources put
against it. Guess what? You know? Not it's not really that important. But I want
(27:13):
to say one other thing just about this arc of life, you know, if you
will. All things ultimately will fall away from us, right, you know, as we
age, and and I'm going through this on my own introspection just trying to think
about, okay, ten years from now, not what I want to do, but what I
want to be. Doing so easy, and next thing you know, the years have gone
past, so I'm going through some of this myself too as an update, but we
(27:34):
all seem to charge to say our physical capability
peaks, right? We can't put on muscle anymore. We can't add anything else,
and we start to go down, right? And we also know that our mental
acuity goes and it peaks, and it might flatten out,
but at some point, it starts to go and, you know, as that my wife
and I watched that, A Man on the Inside. Did you watch that with Ted
(27:56):
Danson on Netflix? Oh, it's so cute. He goes into an assisted living
home to be a private detective, and he's sitting around a table with one guy,
and they're both talking about aging, and he goes, You know, the first thing they
go are nouns. You just can't find the nouns. And I'm like, Yeah, that will
happen to me too, you know, and it'll go down. So our
mind and our body will just, it will deteriorate
(28:16):
no matter how thick we work that. But, our spirit
Yeah. Our spirit can actually be the strongest
in our life on the last day. That's good. Yeah. Right? Never
thought about that. It's the old chart that continues to go can go
up and to the right in our human experience. It's the only
one, and it will go up and up and up to the right if we
(28:38):
allow it to, and our closest moment with God can be at
the last moment of our life because
we've worked it, and we have relied upon it,
and it's become the thing that keeps us going, and
if we just allow it to, if we just invest in it and spend the
time in it, and I find that very hopeful. I find that kind of exciting.
(28:59):
Well, and if you're going to make an investment in something, you know, it's like
making an investment in something that has an eternal impact, you know, that
you can take with you. That's the only thing you're going to take with you
anyway. So I did the riskiest thing I've done in a long time this last
year. What was that? I sent my Bible away to be
recovered. Okay. So my Bible is So you were missing it for a
(29:20):
while? Yeah. It's a holy mess. Right? It's just marked up, and the
whole thing had just fallen apart, and I found this company called Scriptura
that if you send it to them, and you pay for it, they'll take it,
and in thirty days they'll send it back, and as I put it in the
box to mail it, I said, this is scary. What
if it doesn't come back? What if it doesn't come back? And what God was
(29:41):
telling me during that time when I as I did that was, don't worry about
it, but more it was like, hey, servant, the fact that you're
gonna miss your bible, I appreciate that from you, Rusty. Right? It
pleases him. That important to you, And, you know, let that be so the rest
of my life, please. Amen. When my mother died, I have
a so mine is here. I've got several versions, but this
(30:03):
one is my favorite and my mother has the same version
of it. It's Joel Osteen's Hope for today Bible. And
I like it because it has these little hope notes and stuff like that in
there. So when my mother died, I went I flew back to Toronto. They
both my parents died instantly. So or my mother was a few hours, so
I didn't get there in time. So I arrive and she had passed. My brother
(30:26):
picks me up, brings me to her place and I wanted to see what she
was reading that last day. And her Bible was
actually open and it was Psalm 23. And she was
reading that. And I looked and she died after my dad. My dad died
in 2016. She died in 2018, less than two years
apart. So when I looked, I could see it spoke volumes.
(30:48):
There was during that time, they've been married for forty nine years. I saw
in like, so many things were highlighted. The Psalms in particular,
though, where the pages were like worn and
they were like they had a different texture to them because you could see that
she had gone over and over. She had highlighted it. She had underlined all this
stuff. And I was initially I was like, I wanna take home her bible. And
(31:10):
then my brother, he not necessarily believer believes
in God ish, but not dedicating his life to God or anything.
And so he was struggling and he was he was saying like, I feel like
I didn't get that last come. Like I didn't get to talk to her. I
didn't get to connect in the next morning. So I was thinking like, oh, I'm
gonna take her about. That's one of the things I really would like. And the
(31:31):
next morning I just felt like God said, no, you have
yours. So I said to him, I took the Bible and I handed it to
him and I said, do you wanna know what she wanted to tell you? I
said, it's all in here. It's all in here. Just look at what she highlighted.
Look at what she underlined because he was going through a difficult season of depression
and so forth. I'm like, it's all in there. Wow. It's a
(31:52):
precious gift. So for ourselves, but also talking about a
legacy of being able to pass that on to see the notes and the margin
and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of times we think of books
and we don't wanna make them we don't wanna mess them up, you know, and
we just wanna make them all keep them pristine on the on the shelf. And
I just think, you know, I think, like, use it. Right? Use it up. Same
thing. I'm gonna segue. Same thing to your book. Right?
(32:16):
People getting a copy of your book, highlight, underline, use it
as a resource. I love what you said there earlier. I have mine handy all
the time. Because even though you wrote it That's right. You're still
remembering you're still reminding yourself going back because we're all on this journey of learning
and growing together. So I think there's a great lesson in that for all of
us. So, Rusty, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this
(32:37):
conversation and just open to where it was gonna go in terms of the conversation
and what, you know, you wanted to pull out from the book. And I love
what we covered here, and I just encourage people to go to your website.
So we're gonna make sure that's rustyroof.com. It's gonna be in the notes.
And on the screen and the video and everything, get a copy of
this book, Rusty's book. And for those of you that are listening and or watching,
(32:59):
go get a copy of this book. It will change your life. It will change
your life when you apply it, when you take what you
learn and you actually apply it to your life and you challenge yourself
with honest questions. There's reflection questions at the end of every
chapter to really dig in. So this isn't just one of those things that you
read and go, Oh, that was a good story. No, you're actually going to it's
(33:21):
a resource more than it is a novel, if you will. And
so I just encourage you to use that. Lead us a transformation, take action.
Sometimes the action is pulling back and spending some quiet
time to step back and to reflect on your life
and to reflect on where you're at your being so that you're
doing and you're having can be aligned and that platform
(33:43):
that we've been talking about. So I encourage you to do that. Go get a
copy of his book, go to the website, learn more about what he's up to.
And then if anything we can do to support you along the way, go to
leadersatransformation.com and let us know that as well. So,
yeah. Any final words, Rusty, as we wrap up? No. I
appreciate you and I appreciate your listeners that are out there
(34:03):
striving to be the best that they can be. And we've all been given
we've all been given our own gifts and talents and things, and, you know, I
just would just encourage everyone to spend the time. God wants you
to reap it all, and it'll be there for you. So Yeah. So thank you,
Nicole. My pleasure. Would you mind praying for us? No. I'd love
to. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's go over there, we finish. Yeah. Lord, we just
(34:24):
thank you for this time, and you've promised us where two or more are
gathered, you're here also, and thank you for the technology that allows us
for many of us to be gathered here together in this moment.
And, Lord, we just pray over this time that each one of
us have spent. I pray over Nicole and her
continued leadership that she's putting out forward in this podcast and
(34:47):
the and the work that she does, that many would come to know you, but
also, lord, that many would come to understand just how wonderful
your love is, to feel that love radiating with inside of
them so that they can turn around and make this world better. And they make
this world better by loving others as you've loved us. So Lord, we just
ask you to help us love you in the way that you want us to.
(35:08):
Make us the beings that you've built us to be so that
we can please you in all that we do. We lift up these things in
the precious name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rusty.
Appreciate that. Appreciate you. God bless you.
And thank you for to everyone who is tuning in. And we pray that
this blesses you. And we look forward to seeing you next week on another
(35:30):
episode of the leaders of transformation.
Thank you for listening to the leaders of transformation podcast with
Nicole Jansen. If you're enjoying the show, please click the follow
or subscribe button and leave a rating and review wherever you listen
to your podcasts. And remember to join us on social and get
connected. Together, we can make this world a better
(35:52):
place for everyone. We'll see you next time.
Welcome to the leaders of transformation podcast. The number one
show for business leaders and entrepreneurs passionate about uplifting
others and making a greater impact in the world. Now, here's
your host, transformational coach, speaker, and business
advisor, Nicole Jansen.
(00:21):
In a world that is driven by technology, ambition, and
constant change, How do we anchor ourselves to something that
is unshakable while pursuing success and making a
meaningful impact? Our guest today is Rusty Roof. He is
a well known technology executive, a startup
advisor, a thought leader, and he has served in leadership
(00:43):
and advisory roles at Glassdoor, Grammy Foundation
Board. There's the list goes on. American Conservatory
Theater Board. He is a benefactor of the Purdue University's
Patty and Rusty Roof School of Design, Arts and
Performance, and he is, co author
of the book Faith Code, which I have here, which is
(01:05):
an excellent book. Highly recommend it. He wrote it with pastor
Terry Brisbane, and it's a fantastic read. And he's also
the cofounder and cohost of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
So if you're listening, you probably like podcasts. Go check out their podcast.
Awesome material. And so, Rusty, welcome to the leaders transformation. We're glad
you're here. Yeah. So am I. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. It is a
(01:27):
pleasure. And before we go any further, I wanna do a shout out to
CJ at Tasswood PR because
CJ is the one who connected us. And I always love to acknowledge those who
are supporting this show. That's our guests, of course, our listeners, but
it's also our booking agents that send amazing guests our way.
Otherwise, Rusty and I wouldn't be having this conversation. So thank you That's right. To
(01:49):
CJ. I appreciate you. So, Rusty, let's talk about the book Faith
Code and what inspired you to write it. You have so many things going
on. You're making an impact in so many different ways. Why this
book and why now? First of all, I find that nothing
really happens without a purpose. And if you reverse
engineer anything that we do, you can sort of look back over time and
(02:11):
go, oh, I know where that started. I see that now.
And this book actually started over twenty years ago
plus when I gave a talk at Purdue, which
you mentioned, which is my alma mater. And I spoke to the business school there,
and this thing had just come out called the iPhone,
and the phone was there, but Apple decided to release this thing
(02:34):
called the App Store. And in the zeitgeist
was that sort of iconic now commercial
and tagline, there's an app for that. And so I was asked to
speak sort of about, you know, where does one take their career? How does one
think about their life? All that good stuff. And I just made this presentation. I
said, are you building your life as a platform or an app?
(02:56):
And a platform being something that, you know, in the vernacular of where we are,
it was very familiar, and still is, whether the platform is the IOS
platform that Apple uses, or the Android platform
that Google uses, or any other platform like Salesforce or
Facebook or anything. These technology marvels, if you will,
were built so that lots of other things could be
(03:18):
built on top of them. Communications, finances,
ability to run videos, to turn around and
communicate in ways that we never communicated before. And the characteristics
of a great platform (03:29):
very predictable,
very stable, have to be updated every now and then,
but not all the time, can be counted on. That
dependability, and, you know, to give you just a quick reference to that,
is we get up in the morning and we grab our phone or we go
to our laptop, and we turn it on, it boots up the same
(03:51):
way every single time, and if it didn't, we'd go crazy.
Like when all of a sudden, if our email popped up, you know,
before something else and every day was random, we'd go crazy, And that wouldn't be
a good platform. And so, my thought was, we should
have a platform that we build our life on, and that
platform could be things like relationships and our
(04:12):
values and principles, our our deep knowledge that
we try to bring into ourselves to learn and to grow, you
know, our being, if you will. Yeah. Or you could build your
life as an app. And your life as an app can be, wow, that's
really cool, That's really flashy. It's the greatest thing. But as we
know about apps then and as we know about today, they come, they
(04:35):
go. They're on the front page of our phone sometimes, and then they end
up on another page because they're not as important. They crash
easily. The updates don't always make sense. It's random. And I
said, well, if the apps of our lives are out there,
what are they? And they are things like our jobs, our careers,
where we live, who our sort of tertiary,
(04:57):
superficial friends are, where we go to school, what we're studying, what
we wear, the sports teams that we like, the cars that we drive, the homes
that we have, all very much important,
but not what you want to build your life upon. So true.
Yeah. Because it's not a platform. And they crash easily, and we don't have to
look very far, including in ourselves, to say, wow,
(05:19):
I've had one of those apps crash. I thought my job was going great.
Everything was good, and the next thing I know, there's a massive layoff, and I'm
caught up in it, and I don't know what to do yet now. And guess
what? I've built everything on this job, including my identity,
and now what do I do? Now, the parts of our platform are not always
100% predictable either. Like, you can say mind, body, and
(05:40):
spirit could be your platform, and body, guess
what? You know, it's going along great. It's fantastic until that
test comes back, or that thing starts hurting, and whatever, and all of a sudden
there's an issue. So it's not a pure metaphor, but it was the metaphor that
I gave. And what happened was, every time that I would run into anybody who
I gave that talk in front of for years and years and years, they'd say,
(06:00):
I remember that I'm still working on my platform versus my app and
my apps. And so from that came lots of different things,
series at our church where we sort of did the same thing, life apps and
I did videos and my pastor did platform work, and
then from that came other talks and then while while we were sitting on a
Wednesday morning, which we do every Wednesday morning, myself, him, and
(06:22):
one other friend get together whenever we're in town, and we get together
on Wednesday morning, and just a small group to talk about life and you
know, how things are unfolding and get advice from each other and some accountability,
and my pastor said, you know, we should write a book on that platform
app thing, and I'm like, yeah, you should write a book on that. I mean,
I've written a book before. It's really hard. I'm not sure we should do that.
(06:43):
He goes, oh, no, no, no. You just go off, think about it, pray about
it, you know, maybe we should do that. And after some time, I came back
and said, yeah, we probably should. So, that turned into the faith code that you
mentioned, and that's what it is. It's basically the platform and app
metaphor. The platform, in this case, being our
faith. Not everyone shares the same faith, but I would
encourage everyone to try to find something
(07:07):
that they would call their spirit and find a
reason for that, And in that, they probably will find something
that will feel foundational for them, and think about building your life off of that.
In this case, our faith is Christianity, and we think about
the source code of our platform being God's Word, which the source
code never changes. We change, which makes it really cool because, you
(07:29):
know, each time we pick up a scripture and you read scripture, you go, oh,
I probably read that a thousand times, but it never really said that to me.
It's not because it's any different. It's because our lens, our
filter, our experience has changed, and so it becomes new. But you need source
code, and source code has to be stable, and source code
has to be something that can be built upon and built upon with a framework
and a platform, and that's the faith code. Now, the other part of the book
(07:52):
is a lot of applications of how you can take that out because you could
just spend the rest of your life doing nothing but, you know, saying, Oh, well,
this is good. You also have to live a life, right? We all should have
a full and abundant life, and we've been given talents and treasures
and things that we're supposed to take and put into the world. The
catch there is don't let those become the foundational
(08:15):
things. Yeah. Always let those be apps that are built on top of the platform.
So that's the faith code. That's how we got there. Wow. I love the analogy
that you made with the platform and the apps and the fact
that the source code for us, the faith
code is the word of God because I believe like that being,
doing, having I mean, all my coaching is based on that. It's based
(08:36):
on a results model that has to do with, you know, results come from behaviors
and actions. Behaviors and actions are influenced by our mindset. What
influences our mindset, our beliefs, our strengths, how we're you talk
about in the book, like the natural inborn things that got us kind of
installed preloaded in us. And then it's ultimately
though at the core of it, it's identity. And a lot of times, you know,
(08:57):
I was kinda smiling earlier when you were talking about if some of your apps
break down or whatever, or all of them at the same time, which I've had.
And it's like you realize that your, you know, identity,
my identity is not in all of those things. And That's right. God was showing
that to me as well. It's like your identity is not in the
accomplishments. It's not in, you know, even the
(09:19):
associations and the environments that you're in. It's not about anything external.
It's about what's inside, and it's ultimately about who he says
that we are. I always say that if you wanna know the purpose of a
thing, you ask the one who created the thing. And so in this case,
you know, I believe we were created by God, you know, not me.
Right? And I didn't create myself. And so what did you create me for?
(09:40):
Right? What's my purpose? And what is my design? And
so I get my identity from him. And then what's
interesting is when the pandemic hit and
everybody was like, oh my gosh, jobs, this, that, all the things
were happening. I had already gone through this process and so I
could observe and watch and with
(10:01):
fascination, but also even like curiosity, it's just like this is really
interesting to notice how many people are actually
have been deriving their identity but from external things. That's right. And when
those external things are taken away, we freak out. Right? So
it's like but when you realize that none of that stuff, it's all temporary. It's
like it's gonna come and go and you can't take it with you. Right? Like
(10:24):
all those material things like LA. Right? Which that, you know, the fires in
LA. It's like you might have a hundred and $20,000,000 mansion,
but it's gone. And you realize none of that stuff
really matters, and you weren't gonna take it with you anyway, you know, bottom
line. Then you really get to it's only actually when and I don't
pray that over anyone or wish that for anyone that they lose everything. But it's
(10:46):
actually when you get that none of that stuff matters that you actually
get to experience true freedom and fulfillment life because you realize that
it's none of that stuff can't control you. It can't influence you. So talk a
little bit about that. Like, when you're applying this and helping
people through with your book to be able to live a life of freedom to
live that, like, talk about that life that is unshakable on this
(11:08):
foundation that they can live free, that they can live
the abundant life that Jesus actually paid for. He
paid with so dearly for. So the way we talk about it in the
book and in the way that I personally look at it, and you rightfully
said, you have to go back to the inner being and the purpose of what
God has created in us. But what is the thing that he has
(11:29):
given us that can't be taken away? And that's his love.
Yes. That's absolutely his love, and it is the most
reliable thing. It's more reliable than the sun coming up every day. Right?
Because in whatever circumstance we're in,
God is saying, I love you and I want to give you this
love, But, I also want you to do something with it. Right? So, I want
(11:51):
you to love yourself with it, and I want you to do that in a
healthy way so that you can really experience it
as this human being that I've created you to be. And, I want you to
love others. So, my personal journey
and when I think about updating my platform,
updating my faith code, first of all, I go back to
(12:12):
God's word, wherever it is, and then I step back and I say,
okay, what am I doing with God's love? Am I in a
place of healthiness, openness, responsiveness
to accept it and do what I need to do for
myself so that I can live out to say, yes God I appreciate
what you've given me and I can love myself here. And, what am I doing
(12:34):
to love others? Then you look at it and go, okay, well that's the signal.
Now, what's all the noise that's getting in between those things that
are causing me issues? And, what I'll find is,
oh, I think I've fallen in love with some things
or I'm acting like I've fallen in love with some things that don't really
matter. Mhmm. They just don't matter. And I try to do an inventory
(12:56):
of those things because I say, okay, if that was taken away from me,
like if my ability to travel, which is one of those things by the way
in COVID that really shook people's identity because there are people who
live on social media to tell us where they've gone and what they've eaten and
where they are, you know, and all of a sudden that got taken away and
they were like, well, who am I? But let's say that got taken away from
me and it's something that I love or I say I love, I really like,
(13:19):
you know, but I love and it gets taken away from me. Who am I?
What am I going to do with that? Then flip the model and say, well,
what if it really was taken away from me? What would I do with all
that extra time? What would I do with all those extra
resources? The money that I spend on travel. How would I
love others with that resources and that time? And it's a
(13:40):
fascinating exercise because you can go through all kinds of things and even things that
are really, really, really good for you. You know, I'm a Yeah. I'm a runner.
I love to stay in great shape, and and I would say
from a definition, it would look like I love running because I work really hard
at it, and I do it all the time, and I cherish the time, and
I press and all those kinds of things, but if it was taken from me,
if my knees go and I can't do that anymore, how would I reallocate
(14:03):
that to make sure that I'm using that time and that energy to go
back to the foundation and say, am I loving God, loving myself, and loving
others? What would I do? So it's a very good exercise. It's a hard one
for most people to do because you can't imagine things being
taken from you. But, you know, things get taken from us.
Yeah. Actually, I can relate to that because I love to run and then
(14:25):
I injured my knees and I couldn't run for a walk,
let alone run for, months. And
it changes your perspective on that. And I love
when you talk about love because I believe we all have the same
purpose in in life. It's to Jesus told us. Right? The greatest commandment, you know,
to love God and to love one another as ourselves. How we do
(14:49):
that is our assignment. And that question where it's like, what would
I do without this? I had a question that I mean, one of my
devotional times, God was, like, asking me this question because we
can love our skills. We can love our strengths.
And, you know, I talk a lot about helping people to play their strengths. Right?
So he said, who are you without your gifting? Who are you without your
(15:11):
strengths? Who are you without your family? Who is I mean, my
parents both passed away shortly after that. My husband and I were divorced.
So it felt like I lost everything. And it was interesting because
I had somebody once who said and she was actually a pastor. And she said,
so much loss. You've lost so much. And she just her
heart was grieving for me. And my heart was grieving for all the things
(15:34):
that I had lost. And yet when I looked at it, yes,
it seemed like I had lost those things. But what
I had also done is I'd also gained something else. That's what
you're talking about. And I realized I was like, alright, well, I'm a free
agent. I can live wherever I want. I can do whatever I
want. I mean, it's like, God, you and me, like, what are we doing?
(15:56):
Yeah. And it was just like, wow. And that's why I talk about that freedom.
There's that freedom in that of just one wow. So I think we think a
lot about what we lose and we're holding on to things. It's that
scarcity mindset of trying to feel secure. It's the
self preservation of our life. And then when we release
that and we realize that the real value of our life
(16:17):
and our existence is actually so much more than that.
And love is talk a little bit about what love is because there's the
love of God. Right? Perfect love. And then there's love that we share with
others. And love is not a feeling. It's
a choice. It is. One of the few things that It's like the energy. It's
just so much to it. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about that. And it's not only
(16:39):
a noun. It's a verb. It's both. And and in fact, it can't.
Love can't be love unless it is manifested.
Yes. Right? I can't say I love my wife if
I'm not attentive, spending time with her, doing the
things that I can do to make her life better,
enjoy spending time with her. I mean, you can't do that. You can't say I
(17:00):
love running if you're not running. Right? You can't. And so, we walk around
all the time and say, I love this, I love that, I love that, and
I hear people say it. I say it sometimes myself. Like, I play golf, and
I'll say, Man, I love to play golf. I don't love to play golf because
if I'd love to play golf, I'd be out there practicing. I'd be,
you know, playing a lot more than I play. What I think I do love
(17:20):
is I love just being outside and having to do some kind of
physical activity that comes with it. I like it, right? I don't love
it. And so, love is being and doing at the same
time. And I think it's why God says to love Him with all your heart,
love others as you love yourself. And that's why I come back
to there are three loves, and that loving yourself is so important
(17:43):
because you have to do it in a way that you don't become
the ultimate love of yourself and become a narcissist or become
a person who spends more time on themselves than they do others. But you
can't love others if you don't love yourself, and we've seen this happen over and
over, that people who are living in shame or they're self esteem, they are
always blown up, and they're not accessing, you know, God's source code and his love,
(18:05):
and they can't feel it, then they can't turn around and love others, and it's
a really, really bad cycle. It's a really bad cycle. So we have to pay
attention to ourselves too, and I think God wants that. He wants us to be
the best, you know, version of us that we can be. Why would
he want anything different? Why would he create something and go, oh,
I'm really happy that that person barely gets by. You know, that they
(18:25):
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make any sense at all. Everyone said in
a message that I gave her, I said, you know, if I was really, really,
really honest, and I was really, really, really at
it and I truly loved God with all my heart
and I loved others as I loved myself, I wouldn't have any time to do
anything else because that is plenty in life. I think if some people
(18:48):
get to a point where it's like, I'm not sure what I should do next,
go love on somebody. Right? Take that love that God's given us and,
you know, and our ability to spread it and go do something good. Love on
somebody. You you'd be surprised the the amazing things that'll happen.
So this book, you wrote it with pastor Terry Brisbane,
and he starts off each chapter from a spiritual aspect,
(19:10):
and then you kind of come in with that whole app
platform concept. How do we take all of this? I think about
those that are listening and they're like, okay, this is great. How
do I get started? How do I apply this in my day to day life?
Because I'm a busy executive, I'm running a business, I'm doing all the things. How
do I apply this concept? What are my steps
(19:32):
to creating a life that is based on this faith
code so that I can live life more fully? Sure. Well, I'll try to encapsulate
the book down into a couple of little quick thoughts here. Get the book.
That'd be one thing, right? Yeah. Get the book. Get a get a copy of
the book. Get the book, basically. But, yeah. But, you know, I keep mine with
me all the time. Let's first not gloss past to make sure that we are
(19:53):
building our life on the right platform. Okay. So let's get the inner being in
a good place and that might take some time. That's not an
overnight exercise for any of us to make sure that we're
at a place where we're like, oh, okay. I get it. I know
where I am. I can say that I'm as firm as I can
be right now on the platform. And then, I can begin to
(20:15):
go, well, these different apps in my life, where
do they sit? Where do they sit in my priorities? Where do they sit
in what matters in importance in
life to myself and to those others that are close to me? And begin
to do some prioritization, begin to do some filtering, begin to look at
those, and what you'll come out with, more than likely, is you're going to come
(20:37):
out with four or five different categories. One of them will be work,
because we're built to work, so anybody who's not working,
any of us that bemoan work, go talk to somebody who's unable
to work. Yeah. Either out of a job, or they're physically
incapable of working, they're mentally incapable of
working, and go tell them that you hate working, because they're going to
(21:00):
look at you and go, If I give anything, I give anything to be able
to work. So, work will be a bucket. It'll be a category. The
closest relationships in your life will be a category. It'll be
your family, your children, your partner, your spouse. That will be
a category. Your mind will be a category. Like how am I doing to strengthen
my strength? Your body, how am I taking care of my health, will be a
(21:22):
category. Probably how you recreate will become a category. Like, what do
you consider play? What do you consider those things that fill
you that way? And then you'll have your own, but most of us share those
kinds of things, and then we go through and we look at that and we
each one of those applications of life, and we say, are we
applying the platform principles into that to make
(21:44):
them the best it can be? So in our work, are we taking our
faith? Are we taking our values, our principles? Again, not
everybody is, are people of faith, but people are of our values and
principles. Everyone has values and principles. Not all of them are great.
Are they taking the ones that they should be taking, and are they applying them
into this work where it is coming through?
(22:06):
It is showing that on the other side, you're doing the best
you can at work, but someplace recognizes There's fruit. That there
is fruit there. That's absolutely right, and you do that in each one of these
areas, and then what you're going to find is that some are really strong,
and boy, I feel good. This app is running great, and as long as I
continue not to lose perspective and don't make it too important, but
(22:28):
don't make it less important, I'll be okay. But boy, I've got two or three
areas that are really suffering here. And now we start to talk about
the allocation of time, right? And so I'm super disciplined about time.
I was very fortunate. I've had some freedom in my life because of
some success in work that has allowed me to play a
have a portfolio of my activities. But my calendar is color
(22:50):
coded against many, many different categories that I look at
that my calendar a week ahead of time, a month of time, and if
it's overweighted in one area, I say, Oh, wow. I don't want to be
overweighted there because I know it's a risk of being underweighted someplace else. And so,
like, a financial advisor looks at your portfolio and says, Woah, woah, woah. You've got
too much over there. We've got to reallocate because the times are changing, or things
(23:12):
are changing. And I can tell you, I know when I'm underallocating
my time to my wife and to my friends, I can feel it.
You know what? And that's risky. I know when I'm underallocating my
time, you know, and I'm letting what I would consider work or something else, you
know, steal away from my time of working out or my time of
my devotions and things like that. High risk moves. Can't get it back. So if
(23:35):
you're committed to working out three days a week and you start shortcutting
it down to two, you know what? You can't go, Well, you know what I'm
going to do next week. Next week, I'm going to work out four times, and
then the following week, I'm going to work out five. It doesn't work that way.
You'll try, but it doesn't work. So we have to stay disciplined about, you know,
how we allocate our time as it relates to keeping these
applications of our lives, you know, running the way they should be running and
(23:58):
making sure that we've got this time also to come all the way back
around, spend time in the source code, keep working on the platform. And the
platform has to be updated. IOS comes out and, you know, we don't always
like what comes out on the backside of our updates, right? We go, woah,
this is different than it was, and, you know, my music just shows up or
my the biggest, I guess, complaint in this last iOS, whatever it was,
(24:20):
18 or whatever it was, you know, all over the place. My pictures. No, I
can't get to my pictures the way I used to get to my pictures, and
I look at that, and I laugh a little bit about it because the platform
is just as stable as it was. It's got a few extra things now that's
making things work differently, and that's also what God does to us when we get
updated, when we're open and willing to get updated. He makes it a little
different, but to be able to do Just to make us uncomfortable. Yeah. But But
(24:42):
be able to do some other things. I don't know why Apple had to do
everything that they had to do, but you know what? There's a whole bunch of
new ways of saving pictures that are really cool, that I
couldn't have done before, that is a benefit that if I just get past
this uncomfortable period, it's better than it was. And that's what God does
with us too. And that's a lifelong journey. I mean, as much
(25:02):
as we can get to that point where we feel like, okay, I've got
my platform, my source code is grounded and I'm
rooted in God's word and all that. Pride comes before the fall
though because you think, oh, I've got this and then all of a
sudden you start to swerve off or maybe you're not as hungry for it
because you kind of feel like I'm filled up and then you can wander off.
(25:25):
And so it's this constant coming back to really
reevaluate and make sure like, I think of Jesus, whether people
believe in who he is or not as a son of God. Look, three
years, twelve disciples, and we're still talking about him two thousand
years ago. Absolutely. He kinda knew how to lead well. Right? That's right. And
to build a legacy. And he spent time, he never rushed.
(25:47):
He was never behind schedule. He was never pulled in a
million different directions even though people are like, we should go here. He's like, nope.
I'm here. Why? Because I'm about my father's business. And he would go up to
the mountain and he would have time to pray. He'd had time to be quiet
so that he could be filled up. He would he would tell his disciples, come,
let's go away, you know, and it's been a busy day or a busy week
(26:07):
or whatever. Come, let's go away into a quiet place and get recharged.
And so he was consistently doing that so that he could stay
focused in the midst of all the things that were pulling on him. And he
had such a short period of time to do what he needed to do. And
so I think there's a lot that we can learn from that. And you talked
about your calendar. I love that because I color code my calendar. I look at
(26:28):
the same thing. If it's weighted, I'm like, oh, too many of these. Like, you
gotta have that. It's not really balanced, but it is
harmony. It is the right, if you will, balance or integration
of that priorities, those priorities. If you wanna know what somebody
cares about or what they prioritize, you can look at their schedule, and it's there.
They're like, this is really important to me. It's like, well, it's clearly not
(26:51):
because it's not in your calendar. I've always said, you give me two items, and
I'll figure your life out for you. Give me your calendar and give me your
credit card statements, and I'll tell you. I'll tell you what's important because where you
spend your time and your resources, that's what's important to you. And if you can't
see it, go back and look at it. It's there, and don't say, Oh, these
things are really important to me, but there's no time and there's no resources put
against it. Guess what? You know? Not it's not really that important. But I want
(27:13):
to say one other thing just about this arc of life, you know, if you
will. All things ultimately will fall away from us, right, you know, as we
age, and and I'm going through this on my own introspection just trying to think
about, okay, ten years from now, not what I want to do, but what I
want to be. Doing so easy, and next thing you know, the years have gone
past, so I'm going through some of this myself too as an update, but we
(27:34):
all seem to charge to say our physical capability
peaks, right? We can't put on muscle anymore. We can't add anything else,
and we start to go down, right? And we also know that our mental
acuity goes and it peaks, and it might flatten out,
but at some point, it starts to go and, you know, as that my wife
and I watched that, A Man on the Inside. Did you watch that with Ted
(27:56):
Danson on Netflix? Oh, it's so cute. He goes into an assisted living
home to be a private detective, and he's sitting around a table with one guy,
and they're both talking about aging, and he goes, You know, the first thing they
go are nouns. You just can't find the nouns. And I'm like, Yeah, that will
happen to me too, you know, and it'll go down. So our
mind and our body will just, it will deteriorate
(28:16):
no matter how thick we work that. But, our spirit
Yeah. Our spirit can actually be the strongest
in our life on the last day. That's good. Yeah. Right? Never
thought about that. It's the old chart that continues to go can go
up and to the right in our human experience. It's the only
one, and it will go up and up and up to the right if we
(28:38):
allow it to, and our closest moment with God can be at
the last moment of our life because
we've worked it, and we have relied upon it,
and it's become the thing that keeps us going, and
if we just allow it to, if we just invest in it and spend the
time in it, and I find that very hopeful. I find that kind of exciting.
(28:59):
Well, and if you're going to make an investment in something, you know, it's like
making an investment in something that has an eternal impact, you know, that
you can take with you. That's the only thing you're going to take with you
anyway. So I did the riskiest thing I've done in a long time this last
year. What was that? I sent my Bible away to be
recovered. Okay. So my Bible is So you were missing it for a
(29:20):
while? Yeah. It's a holy mess. Right? It's just marked up, and the
whole thing had just fallen apart, and I found this company called Scriptura
that if you send it to them, and you pay for it, they'll take it,
and in thirty days they'll send it back, and as I put it in the
box to mail it, I said, this is scary. What
if it doesn't come back? What if it doesn't come back? And what God was
(29:41):
telling me during that time when I as I did that was, don't worry about
it, but more it was like, hey, servant, the fact that you're
gonna miss your bible, I appreciate that from you, Rusty. Right? It
pleases him. That important to you, And, you know, let that be so the rest
of my life, please. Amen. When my mother died, I have
a so mine is here. I've got several versions, but this
(30:03):
one is my favorite and my mother has the same version
of it. It's Joel Osteen's Hope for today Bible. And
I like it because it has these little hope notes and stuff like that in
there. So when my mother died, I went I flew back to Toronto. They
both my parents died instantly. So or my mother was a few hours, so
I didn't get there in time. So I arrive and she had passed. My brother
(30:26):
picks me up, brings me to her place and I wanted to see what she
was reading that last day. And her Bible was
actually open and it was Psalm 23. And she was
reading that. And I looked and she died after my dad. My dad died
in 2016. She died in 2018, less than two years
apart. So when I looked, I could see it spoke volumes.
(30:48):
There was during that time, they've been married for forty nine years. I saw
in like, so many things were highlighted. The Psalms in particular,
though, where the pages were like worn and
they were like they had a different texture to them because you could see that
she had gone over and over. She had highlighted it. She had underlined all this
stuff. And I was initially I was like, I wanna take home her bible. And
(31:10):
then my brother, he not necessarily believer believes
in God ish, but not dedicating his life to God or anything.
And so he was struggling and he was he was saying like, I feel like
I didn't get that last come. Like I didn't get to talk to her. I
didn't get to connect in the next morning. So I was thinking like, oh, I'm
gonna take her about. That's one of the things I really would like. And the
(31:31):
next morning I just felt like God said, no, you have
yours. So I said to him, I took the Bible and I handed it to
him and I said, do you wanna know what she wanted to tell you? I
said, it's all in here. It's all in here. Just look at what she highlighted.
Look at what she underlined because he was going through a difficult season of depression
and so forth. I'm like, it's all in there. Wow. It's a
(31:52):
precious gift. So for ourselves, but also talking about a
legacy of being able to pass that on to see the notes and the margin
and all that kind of stuff. So a lot of times we think of books
and we don't wanna make them we don't wanna mess them up, you know, and
we just wanna make them all keep them pristine on the on the shelf. And
I just think, you know, I think, like, use it. Right? Use it up. Same
thing. I'm gonna segue. Same thing to your book. Right?
(32:16):
People getting a copy of your book, highlight, underline, use it
as a resource. I love what you said there earlier. I have mine handy all
the time. Because even though you wrote it That's right. You're still
remembering you're still reminding yourself going back because we're all on this journey of learning
and growing together. So I think there's a great lesson in that for all of
us. So, Rusty, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this
(32:37):
conversation and just open to where it was gonna go in terms of the conversation
and what, you know, you wanted to pull out from the book. And I love
what we covered here, and I just encourage people to go to your website.
So we're gonna make sure that's rustyroof.com. It's gonna be in the notes.
And on the screen and the video and everything, get a copy of
this book, Rusty's book. And for those of you that are listening and or watching,
(32:59):
go get a copy of this book. It will change your life. It will change
your life when you apply it, when you take what you
learn and you actually apply it to your life and you challenge yourself
with honest questions. There's reflection questions at the end of every
chapter to really dig in. So this isn't just one of those things that you
read and go, Oh, that was a good story. No, you're actually going to it's
(33:21):
a resource more than it is a novel, if you will. And
so I just encourage you to use that. Lead us a transformation, take action.
Sometimes the action is pulling back and spending some quiet
time to step back and to reflect on your life
and to reflect on where you're at your being so that you're
doing and you're having can be aligned and that platform
(33:43):
that we've been talking about. So I encourage you to do that. Go get a
copy of his book, go to the website, learn more about what he's up to.
And then if anything we can do to support you along the way, go to
leadersatransformation.com and let us know that as well. So,
yeah. Any final words, Rusty, as we wrap up? No. I
appreciate you and I appreciate your listeners that are out there
(34:03):
striving to be the best that they can be. And we've all been given
we've all been given our own gifts and talents and things, and, you know, I
just would just encourage everyone to spend the time. God wants you
to reap it all, and it'll be there for you. So Yeah. So thank you,
Nicole. My pleasure. Would you mind praying for us? No. I'd love
to. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's go over there, we finish. Yeah. Lord, we just
(34:24):
thank you for this time, and you've promised us where two or more are
gathered, you're here also, and thank you for the technology that allows us
for many of us to be gathered here together in this moment.
And, Lord, we just pray over this time that each one of
us have spent. I pray over Nicole and her
continued leadership that she's putting out forward in this podcast and
(34:47):
the and the work that she does, that many would come to know you, but
also, lord, that many would come to understand just how wonderful
your love is, to feel that love radiating with inside of
them so that they can turn around and make this world better. And they make
this world better by loving others as you've loved us. So Lord, we just
ask you to help us love you in the way that you want us to.
(35:08):
Make us the beings that you've built us to be so that
we can please you in all that we do. We lift up these things in
the precious name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rusty.
Appreciate that. Appreciate you. God bless you.
And thank you for to everyone who is tuning in. And we pray that
this blesses you. And we look forward to seeing you next week on another
(35:30):
episode of the leaders of transformation.
Thank you for listening to the leaders of transformation podcast with
Nicole Jansen. If you're enjoying the show, please click the follow
or subscribe button and leave a rating and review wherever you listen
to your podcasts. And remember to join us on social and get
connected. Together, we can make this world a better
(35:52):
place for everyone. We'll see you next time.
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