We recently connected with Rusty Diamond, C.H. and have shared our conversation below.

Rusty, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

This probably isn’t the best to tell. YouTube will teach you anything. If you want courses online for free, Harvard offers them. Google has free programs to get you certified in many fields. I did horrible in school, from the time I was a kid, up until I was in college. I have a college degree. I do not know why. I am not sure how I passed all my grades. I hated school. I have used so little in my professional life from what I have learned there. Knowledge is so important. School is not. I did go to hypnosis school. That I did enjoy, and I have benefitted from. Trade schools are a good idea, general education is ridiculous. Why pay for courses that do not matter to you. Why did I have to take Geology in college? I do not care about rocks. Yet, I needed it to fill my requirement. That is not money well spent.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I come from the world of professional wrestling, stand up comedy, hypnosis, music, podcasting, and I am pretty sure I am the only person who does all of these.

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

Loving pro wrestling, being told I am too small was a difficult pill to swallow. I remember having to talk with my guidance counselor in high school. I am not sure if he still is there, as it has been over twenty years since I have left there. I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Portland, Oregon. Now, everyone that graduated from this high school was expected to go to college. I told him I wanted to be a pro wrestler. He said it was a stupid idea, and that I was too small, and I should go to college. For some dumb reason, I listened to this guy. After I graduated, I decided I was going to go work at a marina in Northern Arizona. I decided to apply to 4 colleges as a backup. I got accepted into all four of them, but still was waiting to hear back if I got the job. Time went on, and I decided to turn down all four schools, and I had not heard from the marina job. I then enrolled in community college, and the day after I did, I found out I got the marina job, but no refunds on college tuition. I wasted time until I was 26, and finally started training to be a pro wrestler. I was not too small. I was small, and training was meant to weed out the weak back then, but I stuck with it.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I just sold a turnkey business. I had a shop in Salt Lake City for a year. I had a one-year lease, and as the year was wrapping up, I knew I was soon moving out of state, and I moved from Minnesota with almost a full store worth of merchandise, and the moving costs of that were really high. I wanted to sell my vintage shop/online shop. I had a 1,000 square foot shop. It consisted of a large room up front full of product, a couple rooms full of shipping supplies, a room full of high-end product (the baller room), a second room full of product, and a room that was an office where I could use my photo booth to take pictures, and store product that had not been posted. I also created a commercial for the shop soon after I opened it. I love making local commercials. I put signs up around town, and I had someone buy my shop, all ready to go. All they had to do was open it in their name. So easy for them. They took over my lease, and I was ready to see what is in store for me once I get settled in my new place.

Contact Info:

• Website: rustydiamond.net
• Instagram: @rustydiamond0
• Facebook: @rustydiamondportland
• Twitter: @rustydiamond0
• Other: All my links can be found on my linktree @ rustydiamond.net

Image Credits
Boom photo by: Steven Buchanan