It instilled in me a deep appreciation for hard physical labor.
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“It was nothing but cornfields, and we had a lot of work to do. The Rusts moved their home and growing horse operation from the edge of Bloomington to the countryside. Midwestern Values and a Farmer’s Work Ethic Later, it shifted to growing the State Farm organization.” Early on, it was building out a growing Quarter Horse operation and all the work that entails. “We were best friends and shared a deep passion for building things. “Dad and I had a unique relationship,” he says. He places his dad at the top of the list.
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Rust credits many mentors who shared their experiences and insights with him. He took a trainee position in its Dallas office. He had offers in hand from both law and accounting firms, but he decided to give State Farm a try. Rust didn’t seriously contemplate a career at the company until his final year in law school. As an undergraduate and business school student, “State Farm never really crossed my mind as a career,” he says. But Rust was never intentionally groomed for the job. When Rust was named CEO of the company in 1985, he took over a position held by his father and before that his grandfather. But to Ed Rust, company chairman and CEO, State Farm is simply carrying on a tradition, with its corporate headquarters just three blocks from where he spent his early childhood in Bloomington, Illinois.
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State Farm® Mutual ranks 43rd on the Fortune 500 list and has some 66,000 employees and 18,000 agents throughout the United States and Canada.