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Kevin Lust
By Edward Russo

Kevin Lust, Director of Lincoln Land Community College’s Small Business Development Center, has an enthusiasm he can barely contain. It’s an enthusiasm for his family, work, people, learning, recreation, the future—you name it. At an imposing 6 feet, 8 inches tall, Lust easily overwhelms doubt and anxiety, in part just by his commanding presence. His enthusiasm and confidence come by nature and by training. The LaSalle/Peru, Illinois native ended up in Springfield through marriage to Cris Eck, his wife of nearly 15 years. Cris is a member of the active and community-involved Eck family. The couple was living in Milwaukee where Cris attended college, when they made a conscious decision to relocate to Springfield to be closer to family and enjoy smaller town amenities.

Lust worked first for the former Springfield Marine Bank, eventually heading their personnel department. A life long reader, he was constantly learning and reflecting on what he read. This is a man who, at age 7, set a goal to read all the biographies in the children’s section of the public library. He did it—four each week. He was fascinated by what makes people successful—not just financially or career-wise, but successful at life. He came on motivational books early in his professional life, especially those of Brian Tracy whose “Psychology of Achievement” really influenced his outlook. Tracy asks us to answer the question “What would you do if you won the lottery?” Our answers give us clues to what we really want to be doing in life. Lust’s answers were something like “spend time with my family, read, travel, meet people” and, importantly, to watch his beloved Chicago Cubs play. He was also influenced by the seminal work, “What Color is Your Parachute?” a guide to navigating a rewarding life.

With this new outlook he and his wife made a plan to re-create their life when they returned to Springfield. At the same time Lust grew more and more interested in working in the field of motivation, particularly motivational speaking. He was hired by the Fred Pryor Seminars group as a professional trainer, inspirational speaker, consultant and coach. Since that day he’s made more than sixteen hundred presentations in seventeen countries and every US state except Maine. He later joined CareerTrack where he had more freedom and greater control over his work. Eventually, inevitably really, he founded his own motivational firm, Lust Development Group Inc., and developed an audio program “Financial Fitness: How to Budget Your Time, Your Money, and Your Life,” which has national distribution.

Kevin Lust gives lots of credit to his mentors, and they’re the usual ones including parents, teachers, and business associates. But, typical of an avid reader, he also points for inspiration to writers he has never met. One writer he did come to meet was Brain Tracy. Not only meet him, but end up being included alongside Tracy in several anthologies on personal success published in the last few years. Motivational leader Roger Dawson, is another of Lust’s literary mentors. He met Dawson, and eventually became a Senior Instructor at Dawson’s California institute.

By imagining what he can do, not what he can’t, Lust has achieved much—personally and professionally. It’s obvious much of his character, persistence and strength derive from family—both the one he grew up in and the one he now lives in. The latter includes his wife and their son, eight-year-old Albert John, both of whom are clearly at the center of his life. Lust consciously mirrors lessons he learned growing up. The third of three boys, he recalls how his parents, Al and Ann, spoke more with actions than words. His dad, a career employee with a power company, left work at 4:00 pm every day and pulled into their driveway promptly at 4:20. Without ever saying a word, this example, among so many others, conveyed the importance of family to his son.

There are photographs of four ships framed in Lust’s office—each of which carried one of his four grandparents from Sweden and Slovenia to America in the early 20th century. He never got to know either grandfather but today has a talisman made by one of them who was a blacksmith--an iron tool used on coal furnaces. This utilitarian object was as crafted as carefully as any ornamental ironwork and conveyed to Lust the idea of always doing your best work, even where it won’t be seen. That remains a major motivation in the way he approaches life--not cutting corners where you think no one will notice. That tool’s handle design is now the logo for Lust Development Group Inc.

Lust’s whole life has prepared him for his current work, helping people who want to establish or grow a business. He has consistently directed his energies toward finding ways to make life easier by doing things more efficiently and sharing those methods with as many people as possible. In other words how to work (and live) smarter, not harder. In his own life he sets examples rather than preaching, just as his dad did. And Lust keeps a clear vision of where he sees his life in the coming months and years, a vision he adapts as circumstances change. He sums up the course of his own life which consists of work, service, recreation and as much family time as possible; “The series of plans my wife and I evolved, haven’t always taken the exact form I envisioned but, have frequently ended up with the results I was after.” It’s a good philosophy for any of us to follow.

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