We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jim Ristuccia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jim , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Getting out of the Navy and then jumping into 100% commission sales as a head hunter is one of the biggest risks that I’ve taken. In the Navy I was really comfortable. I had a lot of fun for a while–almost a decade–but then I got into a job that wasn’t so much fun, really hard work and very little appreciation. I looked at the future if I stayed in and decided I wanted to be doing something more positive. So I decided to get out, except I didn’t have a plan for the next step. I really like the idea of building a business within a business and networked into a position at an executive search firm during the craziness of the high-tech expansion in the late 90’s. The risk was going from having a complete ecosystem that takes care of you and a rock solid paycheck to having to earn every dollar you bring in. It was an adjustment and scary. However, I worked hard and slowly but surely built my book of business. Eventually, after four years I started my own executive search firm–my very first company. So it all worked out.

Jim , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a CEO coach and peer advisory chair with Vistage I help CEOs and business owners become regular people. I got recruited into the position. Vistage reached out to me to start a new group in the San Diego area. My group is the first in the county in five years. I always knew Vistage to be a great resource and I jumped at the chance. For me this is a dream job! Vistage is really a perfect vehicle that combines all my experiences and skills–leadership, entrepreneurship and mentorship–and allows me to make a huge impact.

The core of the Vistage experience is peer advisory. Which means that other CEOs and business owners provide mutual support in helping to solve challenges and take advantage of opportunities. We come together as a team in a non-judgmental and unbiased way to elevate and assist each other in making those difficult decisions that CEOs often have to make. When you have a dozen (or more) CEOs in a room looking at the same problem from their unique perspectives and decades of experiences, the result is we end up with much better results than if a single executive struggled on his or her own. From better decisions comes better results which translates to better running companies. On a personal level, if the companies are running better, then the executives have a better work/life balance and hence they can become regular people once again.

To make this happen, I recruit a group of executives to join the group–ultimately up to 16 leaders. On a monthly basis I organize and facilitate our meetings. which includes bringing in really interesting subject matter experts. As part of the model, I also coach each of the members in a shorter session outside of the meetings. Our main purpose is to help determine what’s the best issue to bring to the group.

I love the transformative impact that can occur with a group’s input. In our very first meeting, one CEO was struggling with hiring a couple of engineers. Once the group challenged some of the assumptions, we decided we were going after the wrong solution. The correct solution was how to best get HR support either full time or fractional to hire the engineers, because the CEO was too busy to run the hiring process correctly. The end result was a full time HR manager that was able to successfully hire four other hires. This freed up the CEO to do higher level tasks and get much needed HR support in other areas as well.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As part of the recruiting process in building my group, the initial focus is a Vistage Meeting Experience Event. Mine was schedule for the very end of June. with everyone going on vacation in the summer of 2022, this was a bad time and I had a lot number of people cancelling on me. So we had to make the difficult decision to postpone the meeting. which meant having to go back to everyone that I had been talking to for months to tell them of the change. It caused me to question what I was doing, but ultimately it was for the better as my rescheduled meeting was much better attended and got me my first members toward launching my group.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

A hybrid approach works best for me to source new members. I network like crazy. I let people know what I do and try to help them as much as I can to put positive energy out to the universe. I put my recruiting skills to good use and research companies and CEOs in the area. I reach out to them either by LinkedIn or cold-calling. It’s all about timing and finding that business owner that is ready to make a change, try something different to get a better result.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jimristuccia.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimristuccia/
• Other: http://vistage.com/chairs/jim.ristuccia