Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1321 ｜ My Reading List for Outsize Influence in Ministry, Politics & Business

00:00:00.000 well good afternoon everybody it's good to see you as you can tell i'm actually even in a

00:00:14.180 different set today actually on the road traveling a little bit but looking forward to this episode

00:00:20.120 that you're going to be listening to comes out on saturday and whether you listen to it saturday

00:00:25.300 sunday or next week it's fine it's a pretty evergreen episode i think you're going to enjoy

00:00:29.980 it we're going to spend just a few minutes right at first on a couple of news items and then i'm

00:00:34.760 going to kind of get into talk to something that's a little bit more uh i guess a little bit more life

00:00:40.440 and a little bit more to do with your career your family whatever it is that you're going through in

00:00:45.640 life right now to talk a little bit about that uh but let's first of all let's talk about the iran

00:00:50.500 war we're in week three now the iran war and the missile and drone attacks by iran have been reduced

00:00:57.560 by 90 percent. And so we're continuing to make the progress we want to make. I listened to a

00:01:04.080 news conference by Secretary of War this morning and one of his chief generals that were that

00:01:11.720 were participating in the press conference. And they just said, like, today there's going to be

00:01:16.400 more strikes than there were yesterday. It just keeps going like that. And the reason we're having

00:01:21.220 to do that is because Iran has spent all the money that we've sent them and the money they've

00:01:27.320 made off of oil wells, instead of putting it back in their economy, they've done nothing but

00:01:31.360 try to build up their number of missiles, their missile cache. And so it takes a lot to get that

00:01:38.600 done. And we have also essentially crippled their Navy. That will help us in the Strait of Hormuz

00:01:43.880 eventually. And the reason that we need NATO to join us in that is because NATO gets a lot of

00:01:50.700 their shipping going through that strait. So they need to be participating. Those European countries

00:01:55.720 need to be participating and help us keep that straight secure so that it doesn't slow down the

00:02:02.260 flow of oil and liquefied natural gas and other cargo that goes through there. Also, there's

00:02:09.800 really no good information on their new leader. You know, some people, I even saw a deal from

00:02:15.220 Trump that said maybe he's dead, but we don't know. And then Kelsey Gabbard says that their

00:02:21.200 Their leadership is intact, but again, tattered, just hard to tell how much they're communicating.

00:02:28.080 We did, were able to kill their, or Israel was able to kill their chief intelligence officer.

00:02:34.000 And so that's a good thing.

00:02:35.760 But again, when you're going into a conflict like this, their sacrifices are going to be made.

00:02:42.960 We've already known that some of our fine men and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the military.

00:02:48.580 However, there's sacrifices for us as well.

00:02:51.200 And it really honestly frustrates me that here people are complaining so much about gasoline prices.

00:02:59.000 First of all, it's going to be temporary.

00:03:01.380 And secondly, that's the sacrifice you and I are making to have a more secure country and not have a regime that has been, you know, yelling death to America for the last 47 years.

00:03:13.920 So the security doesn't come without sacrifice and protecting our freedoms don't come without sacrifice.

00:03:21.200 And we have to make some small sacrifices at home.

00:03:23.840 And I don't like it.

00:03:24.560 I don't like paying more for gasoline than you do or more for any other products.

00:03:28.040 But that is what we are called on to do right now.

00:03:30.980 If we could all look back, even though we weren't alive, but think back and maybe read and some of the other stuff that you've seen over your life on what happened during World War II and the sacrifices that were made by the people that weren't actually fighting in the war but the people back home.

00:03:46.640 What we're doing right now is a very, very small piece of that.

00:03:51.060 So I think we just need to stay with it, and we need to realize there's going to be a temporary sacrifice on our part,

00:03:58.260 but it's not a forever war.

00:04:00.680 It's not going to last.

00:04:02.160 The oil and gas prices will go back down, and I believe that will happen probably in the next month or two

00:04:07.720 when things get back to normal.

00:04:09.180 It's not going to stay at $120 a barrel or $110 a barrel, whatever it is, as it closes today.

00:04:14.960 One more thought on the oil price, because this question came up from one of the listeners, and that is, why are our gasoline prices higher?

00:04:24.700 The challenge that we have here is that oil and gas is in a world market.

00:04:30.440 In other words, it's not just a U.S. market.

00:04:32.780 The price is set by the supply and demand all over the world.

00:04:38.800 Also, we do not refine enough gasoline to supply U.S. needs.

00:04:45.660 We have to buy refined product.

00:04:49.520 There hasn't been enough refineries open in the last couple of decades,

00:04:54.980 mainly because of some pretty crazy environmental rules under Democrat administrations.

00:05:01.060 And so sometimes we have to ship our oil out.

00:05:03.740 It gets refined somewhere else, and then we bring it back in.

00:05:07.600 And, of course, when you're doing that, you're for sure paying the world price at that.

00:05:12.020 So, anyway, that's what's going on in Iran.

00:05:14.020 If you have any questions on that, please feel free to email me.

00:05:16.720 I'll do the best I can to answer them.

00:05:19.220 Next thing, the second news item I want to talk about is the SAVE Act.

00:05:22.820 And this has been something that's been in the news.

00:05:24.980 We've talked about it before.

00:05:26.340 It's basically the Voter ID Act.

00:05:28.640 The current debate that's going on in the Senate right now and has been going on since March the 17th

00:05:33.960 will probably last a total of 10 to 14 days.

00:05:38.120 There's no real time limit on how long they can debate.

00:05:41.480 A senator can talk for as long as they want to.

00:05:44.580 Eventually, though, everybody will have said what they want to say.

00:05:48.740 And unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to get the 60 votes

00:05:54.900 to be able to shut down debate and take a vote.

00:05:59.140 So on the actual bill, which would only require 51 votes in order to pass the bill.

00:06:05.280 The interesting thing is, is that the Senate majority leader, Senator Thune, just does not believe we have the 60 votes.

00:06:12.680 And that's probably true. We've only got 53 Republican senators.

00:06:17.360 So we have to have seven defections. And we even had we've even had one defection off of the Republican side.

00:06:25.080 And that was the senator from Alaska. And I have no idea how that lady can keep getting elected.

00:06:32.400 I mean, Alaska is a very conservative state. And yet she's probably one of our most liberal Republican senators.

00:06:38.620 I hope somebody up there will run against her and beat her at some time in the future, in the near future.

00:06:44.220 I don't know when she's up for election again.

00:06:46.620 Also, another thing that I wanted you to be aware of when we talk about voter ID and you hear what, you know,

00:06:52.600 Shifty Schumer says about it's going to disenfranchise voters and all that.

00:06:56.940 We talked about that last time, that 95 percent of the people in the U.S. have some type of voter, some type of voter.

00:07:03.280 I mean, some type of identification. And so it's not going to be a huge burden.

00:07:09.160 And it's up to the states to provide people the ability to get some type of identification in a as easy a way as possible.

00:07:17.120 But let me tell you this. Even if it was hard to do, it's still something that's important.

00:07:22.600 because under the Constitution, only eligible citizens can vote in our federal elections.

00:07:31.620 So this is a constitutional issue.

00:07:34.360 And the only way you'll know if somebody is an eligible citizen is if they prove their citizenship,

00:07:39.240 either from their birth certificate or their driver's license or their passport

00:07:45.240 or some type of other government-approved identification.

00:07:48.600 and you think well golly we maybe we're the ones that are so draconian in the united states that

00:07:54.260 are requiring that but virtually every other country in the world requires some type of proof

00:08:01.240 of voter eligibility and most of them are voter id picture voter id countries like canada okay all

00:08:09.080 of you that think we're the mean people in canada or canada is nice their voter id their voter

00:08:15.220 requirements are stronger than ours the united kingdom england all right uh australia which a

00:08:23.600 lot of you you know love australia and and i get that but but they have to have voter they already

00:08:29.320 have to have voters have to have identification and proof of eligibility to vote same way in

00:08:33.720 france same way in brazil and south america same way even caribbean countries like haiti and jamaica

00:08:39.420 in Honduras. Also, where democracy was born, the idea of democracy in Greece, you have to have

00:08:47.700 identification in order to vote to prove you're eligible to vote. And so I don't know why this is

00:08:53.700 such a big issue. I'm hoping that this can come back. I listened to a speech by Senator Kennedy

00:09:01.280 from Louisiana on the floor today, and he's a funny guy. You know, he always has nice quips

00:09:06.940 and quotes and what have you. But what he talked about is he said, look, I know we have a bunch

00:09:11.920 of smart lawyers out there in the Senate and in the country. If you can help us figure out how to

00:09:18.760 get a SAVE Act constructed so it would qualify under the budget reconciliation process, you don't

00:09:26.940 have to have the 60 votes to cut off debate. You can go straight to vote and you could pass it with

00:09:32.340 51 votes. Now, there are some manipulations that you may have to do with the bill in order for it

00:09:38.260 to fit under what's called budget reconciliation. But we haven't even tried that yet. So Majority

00:09:45.080 Leader Thune, I would encourage you to let's let's try that. Let's see if we can make it work. The

00:09:49.480 parliamentarian will decide if it actually fits. The parliamentarian is kind of the lawyer for the

00:09:54.900 Senate. They have one of those in the House as well. And they actually look at all the rules

00:09:59.140 and say, okay, under the rules of the Senate and under the rules of how a budget reconciliation

00:10:04.980 bill is going to work, does this fit those parameters? We had the same thing when I was

00:10:10.400 in the Texas House. We had a parliamentarian, and they had one over in the Senate. So that's

00:10:14.640 pretty common to do. I encourage them to be able to at least try to make that happen. But if we

00:10:20.380 don't get 60 votes, then I don't know where the SAVE Act is going to go. Yeah, we can bring it

00:10:25.460 back up, but we still are going to eventually have to have that. Now, personally, I've changed

00:10:29.780 my mind on the filibuster. I think we ought to get rid of the filibuster. And I realize that

00:10:34.860 it's helped us when we've been in the minority as conservatives. But you know what? All the people

00:10:41.080 that get elected, they get elected by a simple majority. We run the House by a simple majority.

00:10:47.320 The president's elected by a simple majority. Why in the world would we require a super majority

00:10:53.400 to get things done in the Senate.

00:10:55.160 I do not agree with that anymore.

00:10:57.040 I used to understand it, and I do understand it intellectually.

00:11:00.500 But you know what?

00:11:01.720 If Republicans can't have 51 votes and the Democrats have that many senators

00:11:07.520 during those times, I won't like some of the stuff we do.

00:11:11.040 But shame on us.

00:11:12.320 Let's win the seats.

00:11:13.880 Let's win the seats.

00:11:14.680 The majority should rule in every situation in a republic or a democracy.

00:11:20.320 The last thing I want to talk about related to news items is the funding of the Department of Homeland Security.

00:11:27.640 And again, this is something that the Democrats are holding up.

00:11:30.860 Any of you that are on spring break or coming off spring break while you're listening to this and you had these terrible long lines at some of your airports, then blame the Democrats.

00:11:41.360 And if you live in a blue state, call your Democrat senator's office.

00:11:45.560 This is so crazy.

00:11:46.780 They think they're doing something to ICE, but what most people don't know, this doesn't even affect ICE or border security.

00:11:54.140 Those were funded through the big, beautiful bill for the next three years.

00:11:57.620 There's $170 billion of funding already set aside for them.

00:12:01.820 This essentially, the biggest thing that hurts is TSA.

00:12:04.980 50,000 TSA employees have gone without a paycheck, at least one, and coming up on going without two paychecks.

00:12:12.380 This is totally ridiculous.

00:12:13.760 Now, I do think they're going to end up cutting the deal on this one pretty quickly because I'm sure the pain that some of these senators are feeling from their constituents is getting more than they want to bear.

00:12:24.480 And I think they'll end up trying to cut a deal on this pretty quickly.

00:12:27.760 And I don't know if they'll say maybe the Democrats will say, look, if we'll end this safe debate, we'll go ahead and get this funded.

00:12:33.340 Who knows? I'm not sure of what it will be, but I think they'll get that that that done pretty, pretty quickly.

00:12:39.720 All right. So those kind of the news items that are going on right now.

00:12:43.760 Uh, we'll get to some listener questions here in a few minutes, but I also wanted to spend

00:12:48.060 some time talking today on leadership.

00:12:52.040 Uh, I've been someone that has, uh, read a lot of books on leadership.

00:12:56.980 I've, uh, gone to a lot of conferences on leadership.

00:13:00.440 I just believe everything rises and falls with leadership, whether that's in your family

00:13:04.940 or in your business or in your church or in your relationships with other people.

00:13:09.600 I think everything rises and falls on leadership.

00:13:12.340 As most of you know, because I've talked about it before, I am a follower of an author by the name of John Maxwell.

00:13:21.000 And if you haven't read any of John Maxwell's books, I would encourage you to look them up.

00:13:25.600 He's probably sold 30 million copies over his lifetime, if not more than that now.

00:13:30.320 He's written, I don't know, maybe 20 books.

00:13:33.260 And every one of them, I don't know if I've read every one of them, but I've read probably 80% of them.

00:13:37.640 And they're all very, very good, easy to read, very practical information.

00:13:41.480 but he is considered the number one guru on leadership in the country right now there's

00:13:48.080 another gentleman by the name of jim collins and those of you that have been around for a while

00:13:54.160 probably know jim collins's book called good to great it's one of the most popular books business

00:14:01.260 books out there and i don't know how many copies he sold but millions and millions in multiple

00:14:05.520 of different languages. Well, Jim and John know each other and they collaborate on some things

00:14:11.620 and they got together, oh, I don't know, a few years ago and they both agreed that there are

00:14:17.960 five levels of leadership, five levels of leadership that we all go through. And I want

00:14:24.040 to talk about those today in two different contexts. What are the five levels of leadership

00:14:30.440 in your business, okay, if you have a business or you're in your job, so to speak, and what are

00:14:37.280 the five levels of leadership when I served in the legislature, like in public service

00:14:44.140 or in ministry. They're very similar to each other. And you can also apply some of these levels

00:14:49.780 in your own family relationships as well. So let's take a look. Let's kind of dive into that

00:14:55.200 and we'll go through those. And again, if you have questions, you follow up on this,

00:14:59.500 please email me ron at ronsimmons.com so anyway i got some i got some outline notes here just to

00:15:05.820 remind you my business career i was i was in the wealth management business and i helped start a

00:15:12.820 company 30 something years ago and we managed money for retired commercial airline pilots we

00:15:19.060 had a niche that when they retired they got their money primarily in a lump sum and so they needed

00:15:24.540 to roll that over to an individual retirement account to avoid immediate taxes on it, and

00:15:30.440 we helped manage that.

00:15:31.820 We helped do their estate planning, kind of manage their financial life after they retired.

00:15:37.360 And I was a co-founder of that, and then we built it up.

00:15:41.920 I ended up being CEO and chairman, and we sold the company at the end of 2019.

00:15:47.340 At the time, we had $3 billion under management, and we had clients in all 50 states and a

00:15:53.480 few foreign countries.

00:15:54.540 So that's my entire, really pretty much my entire business career was involved in that company.

00:16:00.380 I had a little bit of time before that working as an employee for an oil company.

00:16:05.880 But my primary career was with, we call it, the name of the company was called Retirement Advisors of America.

00:16:12.160 So anyway, when I talk about business, I'm going to use my own examples, all right, as to how I experience these levels of leadership.

00:16:19.760 The first level of leadership, and again, if you happen to be watching this at home,

00:16:24.180 it might be a good idea to get out a pencil and a piece of paper or even get your phone out,

00:16:28.260 and you can take some notes on this, and I think you'll enjoy that.

00:16:32.300 The first level of leadership is called position.

00:16:36.520 Like, in other words, what's your title?

00:16:39.040 I'm a CEO, or I'm a head of sales, or I'm a bank teller, or whatever it happens to be, it's your title.

00:16:47.200 Now, that is the weakest level, all right, because people don't follow titles.

00:16:53.860 They follow people.

00:16:55.760 And if you're going to be a leader, in order to be a leader, you have to have followers

00:16:59.540 because if you think you're leading and you look behind you and no one's following,

00:17:05.240 then you're just out on a walk by yourself.

00:17:08.680 But what it does is it provides you a platform.

00:17:12.720 The title provides a certain platform that people will at least initially pay attention to.

00:17:20.880 Now, when you lead by position, you can get people to obey you.

00:17:26.880 Like if you're somebody's boss, if you're a supervisor or wherever you are in the hierarchy of your organization,

00:17:34.620 people that work for you or are lower than you in that hierarchy they will probably obey you

00:17:43.460 but they don't necessarily follow you see because following someone is is uh voluntary right if

00:17:55.860 you're my boss i have to do what you tell me but i don't have to believe in you right now obeying

00:18:03.100 someone really in order all you're doing when you're somebody obeying you is you're leading

00:18:09.780 them by instruction right you do this you do that you do this you do that and they go from

00:18:15.600 one instruction to the other if people if you're leading people by people following you then you

00:18:21.840 do that by example but they won't do that for very long because of your position they'll do it

00:18:28.160 because of who you are. So don't focus too much on getting a title. Yes, it does give you a platform,

00:18:34.460 but it's not going to be something that makes you automatically a leader, right? Just because you

00:18:40.220 have a title doesn't mean we're a leader. Secondly, it's production. So we had position and then

00:18:46.140 production. Production is when we have skins on the wall. And what I mean by that, that everybody

00:18:52.600 knows in your organization that you've done something. You know, maybe if you're in sales,

00:18:56.920 you were the top salesman, or maybe if you're in client service, you had the least amount of

00:19:01.360 complaints, or whatever it is, however your job is measured individually, what have you done?

00:19:08.640 When I joined, when we started the investment company, I was head of sales. Now, I say head

00:19:13.980 of sales, I was the only salesman, so I was head of myself when we first started out. But I brought

00:19:19.520 in clients, the clients I brought in, I brought in the first $400 million worth of assets.

00:19:26.920 from a variety of clients. So I had skins on the wall. People knew that when I talked about what it

00:19:34.620 took to convince a retired airline pilot and their family to let us invest their money and help them

00:19:43.180 with their financial needs, they knew that I had credibility because I had done it. And people

00:19:49.840 watch that very closely. You've proven yourself, right? You have to prove yourself in this next

00:19:56.860 level because you can't if you go from position okay ron you're head of sales all right but you

00:20:03.100 know being head of sales and actually knowing how to sell aren't the same thing have you really done

00:20:07.900 it okay yep i've got the title now i've got the production all right and so people will pay

00:20:13.980 attention to that the last thing is is i mean the next thing the third thing is permission

00:20:21.000 Permission.

00:20:21.840 It goes beyond just your own production, which people respect, of course.

00:20:26.260 But now, if you're ever going to grow an organization and not it all be about you,

00:20:31.820 one of the things that I decided early on when we started the company is I didn't want the company to have my name on it.

00:20:38.400 I didn't want it to be Simmons Wealth Management because if you do that,

00:20:42.800 and I know some people listening here probably has the name on their businesses,

00:20:46.120 and that's fine if that's what you chose to do.

00:20:47.860 But for me, I didn't want that to tie me down to that business forever.

00:20:53.420 I was looking down the road at 10 or 15 or 20 years down the road when I wanted to maybe do something else.

00:21:00.220 Yet I wanted the business to still succeed.

00:21:02.740 I didn't want it to be have my name attached to it in the title of the thing.

00:21:08.060 So therefore, I want to grow beyond me.

00:21:10.540 And when you get into permission, what you're doing now is you're asking other people in the organization or new people you might hire is who wants to go with me?

00:21:20.860 Who wants to go?

00:21:22.200 Well, you have to have their permission to do that because it's not, again, if I'm hiring a group of salespeople or whatever and all they're doing is obeying and kind of going through the motions, they're not going to be very successful at it.

00:21:35.460 So what I did is I used my own production, the respect that I got from that, and then I looked for other people that wanted to go down that same road.

00:21:46.240 Because, see, they can look at me just like they can probably look at you and say, well, you know what?

00:21:49.780 Yeah, he may be pretty smart, maybe.

00:21:52.720 I don't think he's any smarter than me.

00:21:54.400 I don't think he's any better looking than me, of course.

00:21:56.860 And so, therefore, if he can do it, if Ron can do it, I can do it.

00:22:00.600 And that's kind of what I talk about in my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.

00:22:03.900 I had three people in the sales area in our investment company that did just that, Ken, Scott, and Jeff.

00:22:12.120 All of those guys saw what I had done and thought, well, if he can do it, I can do it, so I want to go.

00:22:19.000 So they gave me permission to help them get to where they wanted to go.

00:22:25.660 And in this next phase, the reason that people give you permission is because, first of all, they've seen what you've done.

00:22:32.320 And second of all, they believe you can help them get what they want to have happen.

00:22:37.600 The fourth level in business, five levels of leadership, is people development.

00:22:44.180 So now you've gotten permission from them.

00:22:47.120 You had the position.

00:22:48.800 You've been productive.

00:22:50.300 You've gotten permission from people that want what you have.

00:22:53.780 The next thing is people development.

00:22:55.900 And the people development, what that really means, it now all becomes about others and not about you.

00:23:00.820 You move from you to them, you to them.

00:23:05.000 Now, in order for this to work properly, you want to align your incentives.

00:23:09.280 In business especially, you want to align your financial incentives.

00:23:13.340 If you can help them get where they want to go and you focus on them, it also should help you where you want to go.

00:23:22.220 If not, you need to work on getting those incentives realigned.

00:23:25.620 If you're helping them get everything they want and it doesn't do anything for you, in the business world, that's not a good deal.

00:23:31.420 It needs to be a win-win scenario.

00:23:33.640 Or if they do everything they want and all it does is help you and it doesn't really help them very much, that's not going to last very long either.

00:23:40.400 So you've got to move from you to them in people development.

00:23:44.600 And then the last thing is called pinnacle.

00:23:46.680 So we've got position, production, permission, people, and pinnacle.

00:23:51.500 And pinnacle is where others lead.

00:23:54.480 It's not just helping them get where they want.

00:23:56.500 It's really you and me stepping back.

00:23:59.580 In fact, in our family, we call it going to the balcony.

00:24:02.700 There's a great little book out there called Balcony People.

00:24:06.200 And it's a book about people in your life that are encouragers.

00:24:11.020 They're the cheerleaders in your life.

00:24:12.820 In our family, we've decided a long time ago that we wanted to be balcony people.

00:24:18.660 So a lot of things that we have, some of our family companies,

00:24:23.300 In fact, we even had a ranch. We named it after Balcony. It was the Balcony Ranch. It's the Balcony

00:24:28.420 LLC because we wanted to remind ourselves that we want to be encouragers of each other and other

00:24:34.620 people. So when you develop people along the way and now you're developing them as leaders so that

00:24:42.040 they can turn around and develop other leaders, your role is to be their encourager and to also

00:24:48.580 be available. And I had a good example of that in my business. When I became chairman of the board

00:24:55.960 and not long after that, I went into politics and we'll talk about that in a minute. And so I had

00:25:02.500 two other senior partners that were running the company on a day-to-day basis. One of them was

00:25:08.680 named Bart and he was the CEO. And then the other was John, who was the COO, chief operating officer.

00:25:15.740 And Bart, unfortunately, his wife had a stroke at a pretty young age, early 50s, and it was pretty severe.

00:25:25.420 And Bart came to the board and to John and said, I need to get out of this because I got to take care of my wife.

00:25:34.400 I need to get out of the business, take care of my wife.

00:25:36.900 So we found some we found a angel investor to help buy him out.

00:25:43.240 We didn't have enough money, our personal selves, to buy him out of his ownership.

00:25:47.500 So we were able to buy him out so he could take the money based on his investment in the company and his ownership

00:25:53.540 and be secure in that and focus entirely on taking care of his wife.

00:25:58.340 Well, John, who had not been with the company as long, although we had known him a long time,

00:26:03.620 he was going to step up from COO to CEO.

00:26:08.040 And he had not done that before.

00:26:09.880 And so I became available.

00:26:11.880 available. I made myself available to help him in that transition. Now, one of the things I did is

00:26:17.760 I said to make sure, don't absolutely do not require him to run the company like you would

00:26:27.400 run it. I didn't want to require John to run the company like I would run it. I told John, I said,

00:26:31.580 John, you have to run the company in your style. Your style is your style. My style is different,

00:26:37.860 but I wanted to be there to encourage him to be available when he had any questions.

00:26:41.880 And that's the way it worked out.

00:26:43.520 So when you get into the fifth level, you have really backed away and go into the balcony.

00:26:50.320 But you're there as an encourager.

00:26:53.080 You're helping them understand how to develop other leaders.

00:26:56.160 And you're available when they need you.

00:26:58.800 So that's really important.

00:27:00.680 The second list of five levels of leadership that I want to give you has to deal with public service or ministry.

00:27:08.920 And it's really the same five levels.

00:27:10.860 They're just in slightly different order.

00:27:12.880 A couple of them change places, but it is a different way you have to look at.

00:27:17.180 I remember when I got into the legislature, I thought of everything like a business, right?

00:27:22.100 And I found out pretty quickly that in an organization like the legislature and a lot of ways like any nonprofit or church or government entity, it doesn't work exactly like business.

00:27:35.280 And so when we say, hey, we want somebody to come in and run our government like a business, I get that.

00:27:39.160 And there are a lot of good points to that.

00:27:40.860 But it doesn't work exactly that way.

00:27:42.900 And the reason it doesn't work that way is because you're essentially dealing primarily with volunteers or you're dealing with people that are your peers, more so than you are in a vertical hierarchy.

00:27:56.220 All right.

00:27:56.520 But the first level is still position.

00:27:58.200 OK, so I'm an elected official.

00:27:59.540 I got elected as an official in 2012, and I was a state representative for about 200,000 people in the Dallas Metroplex.

00:28:08.700 and you know that's who I was but you know what I didn't I wasn't the boss of anybody I had the

00:28:15.920 position and it did give me a platform gave me a pretty good platform people might listen to what

00:28:22.080 I had to say but they're not going to follow me for very long just because I had that position

00:28:27.760 listen we we vote against candidates all the time right you you've got political candidates right

00:28:33.200 now or people in public office that you're not going to vote for. So not everybody's going to

00:28:39.260 follow you just because you have that position. It only gives you a platform because you're really

00:28:44.300 not much the boss of anybody. And the position is there, gives you a good platform. But it's again,

00:28:50.940 it's the weakest level of the five levels of leadership. The second level in this arena is

00:28:57.340 permission. Now, you notice that the second level in business was production, but the second level

00:29:05.140 under this scenario in public service or in ministry, and it really, too, is in your family

00:29:10.820 at certain stages of how your family grows and as they mature, it's permission.

00:29:18.280 So this is because in public service, like when I was in the legislature,

00:29:24.100 we had 150 state representatives. And so I was only one of 150. The rest of them got elected

00:29:32.220 just exactly the way I got elected. They ran for office. They got the most votes and they were

00:29:37.840 elected. Nobody was at a greater status than anybody else. We were 150 equals as far as that

00:29:45.780 was concerned. So what I did, I knew then that in order for me to be able to be successful,

00:29:53.040 I was going to need at least a majority of those people to be on board with me when I had a

00:30:00.540 particular bill up for vote or debate. I need to have at least 76 of the 150 to pass that bill.

00:30:08.220 And therefore, I had to get their permission, right? Because I couldn't make them vote yes or

00:30:13.520 no. I had to essentially build relationships with them and get their permission to at least give me

00:30:20.040 a fair shake on what I was proposing as a policy. The way I did this is when I got elected,

00:30:26.880 I took the first 70 days that I was in elected office. It took me this long. And I met with all

00:30:33.040 149 other members individually, one-on-one. It's usually in their office at the Capitol.

00:30:41.140 And I don't know this, but what I've been told, nobody else has ever done that.

00:30:46.220 And the meetings weren't about policy.

00:30:48.800 The meetings were about getting to know the person, even the persons that were people that were Democrats.

00:30:54.460 I wanted to get to know those men and women as well because I knew they got elected just like I did.

00:31:00.000 And I knew that most of them were in that office for things that they believed in and they believed to be right.

00:31:07.100 I knew most of them had families, they had a wife, they had kids, grandkids, whatever.

00:31:11.720 I knew we were a lot more alike than we were different.

00:31:15.100 Now, there were some issues that we were never going to agree on, especially as it came to social issues.

00:31:19.440 And I knew that.

00:31:20.040 But I wanted to be able to, when we were debating on the house floor and tensions get high,

00:31:26.220 I wanted in my mind to remember what I knew about them as a person.

00:31:32.000 And I wanted them to remember what they knew about me as a person, not necessarily just about that particular debate.

00:31:38.640 And so when you're in, it's the same way if you're working in the ministry.

00:31:43.120 all right is that you're most of the people that you're going to be working with aren't people that

00:31:47.940 you can order around you're going to need an army of volunteers or of colleagues to be able to get

00:31:54.180 to get something done right and that's what happens in the legislature as well it's very

00:32:00.060 important that you get permission from them and the only way you get permission from people is

00:32:05.780 to build a relationship with them now the third part is production so again it switched from the

00:32:11.860 business where production was second. It's third here. So once you've kind of got to, you built

00:32:17.040 the relationship, once I'd built some relationships with them, I knew that people would at least look

00:32:21.740 at what I was doing and hopefully give me a fair chance. But they weren't going to really get on

00:32:29.400 board with anything unless they saw that I was willing to do the work and I had a good idea.

00:32:34.360 In the legislature, we had two types of people. And this is the same way in ministry as well.

00:32:39.620 you have workhorses and show horses. What I mean by that is you have some people that all they want

00:32:45.140 to do is get the headlines, right? Or they want to be in the camera shot or they want to, you know,

00:32:49.960 look good on Sunday morning or whatever the thing is. And then you have another group of people that

00:32:56.460 want to be workhorses. When I got elected, the first thing that I did after election, when I

00:33:03.700 went to Austin before the session, the legislative session even started, I sat down and met with the

00:33:08.240 Speaker of the House, who was actually one of the 149. He just happened to have been chosen by us

00:33:14.120 to oversee the administration of the House. And I told him, I said, look, I don't know you very

00:33:19.280 well, Mr. Speaker, and you don't know me very well, but I will tell you, I'm here to work.

00:33:23.780 All right. That is what I'm here to do. I don't have any other reason to be here. I've already

00:33:28.400 had a pretty successful career. I've got a good family. I'm here to do the work. And so pretty

00:33:34.300 quickly, I was given the opportunity to work on some pretty important pieces of legislation,

00:33:42.320 even as a young freshman. And so I wanted people to see that I was a workhorse, not a show horse.

00:33:50.180 One of the things that I did, when you join the legislature, you're assigned to certain committees

00:33:56.320 so that a lot of the work's done in the committee, the detailed work. And I wanted to be on the

00:34:01.180 Appropriations Committee, which is the budget, decides how all the money is spent. And I asked

00:34:07.020 to be on that. I was not on that my first semester. I was later at my first session. I was later

00:34:12.520 in my other two sessions. But I wanted to learn how the process worked because I knew that every

00:34:19.480 bill that anybody passed that you spent money in would have to go through the Appropriations

00:34:24.660 Committee at some point in time. So the Appropriations Committee met at 7.30 every

00:34:29.960 morning for about the first two months of legislative session. And even though I wasn't

00:34:35.340 on the committee, I went to every hearing, every hearing. And the chairman of the committee was

00:34:39.980 super nice. He let me sit up on the dais with all the other members. He allowed me to ask questions

00:34:45.720 just like I was a member of the committee. But I learned so much about how Texas state government

00:34:51.880 worked by being there. And I'll tell you, people noticed me there too. I've had more and more

00:34:56.760 people, colleagues of mine, that when, if I'm in an audience and they're talking to another group

00:35:01.880 of people, they'll bring up the fact that I sat in on every appropriations committee hearing. Now

00:35:06.700 that didn't require that much on my part, right? I was going to be in Austin anyway, working, so I

00:35:11.800 might as well get up and get down and learn something. If I was going to be away from my

00:35:15.820 family, I wanted to be productive. But what it did is, is it gained respect so that when I did want

00:35:21.840 to talk about policy, people knew that I was a serious policy person. And it works that way in

00:35:27.380 other organizations as well. It's the old 20-80 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

00:35:33.840 Now, you may not like that because you say that's an extra burden on you if you're one of the

00:35:37.640 workhorses. But actually, it allows you to have an outsized influence. If 80% of the people don't

00:35:44.260 care and 20% of the people are going to do most of the work, then you're going to get more done

00:35:49.620 that you want to have done as opposed to what the other 80 people, because they don't really even

00:35:54.900 care. So just think about it that way. Now, the fourth level is people, just like it was in

00:35:59.840 business. You don't really have a lot of people that you're responsible for from a direct hierarchy

00:36:07.820 standpoint, but you are responsible for your staff. And everybody that's in the legislature

00:36:13.120 has some staff, just like in ministry, you may have a small staff. And what I found that you do,

00:36:19.520 And this is a little bit scary, but I'll let you guys in on a secret that you probably may or may not know.

00:36:25.360 But our state government and our federal governments are essentially run by people from ages 20 to age 30.

00:36:34.480 That's where most of your staff, that's the age of most of your staffers, mainly because they're not long out of college.

00:36:40.500 You don't make as much money, but you want to get the experience.

00:36:43.840 So it's a lot of young people that are helping run the day-to-day behind the scenes at our federal government level and the state government levels.

00:36:52.160 But what you have to look for when you're looking for any staff, whether you're in public service or whatever, is you want to look for sponges instead of rocks, especially in young people.

00:37:04.180 You want young people that are willing to take in everything that they're being taught and everything that's going on around them like a sponge.

00:37:12.760 as opposed to a rock where you put water on it, all it does is run off, right?

00:37:18.220 You want sponges instead of rocks.

00:37:20.320 So make sure that when you're, especially working with young people, all right,

00:37:24.640 and they're just getting started in their career and, you know,

00:37:27.460 they don't really have any experience to give any wisdom as to how things go,

00:37:31.760 that they are more interested in learning.

00:37:34.960 Like I tell my grandkids, how many ears do you have?

00:37:37.720 Two, Papa.

00:37:38.520 How many mouths?

00:37:39.380 One, Papa.

00:37:40.460 What does that mean?

00:37:41.480 I don't know.

00:37:42.020 it means that you need to listen twice as much as you talk.

00:37:45.020 And that's what you're looking for when you have young people.

00:37:48.220 And then you want to feed into them so that they continue to soak up the information that you have for them.

00:37:54.960 Now, the last level is pinnacle, just like it was under business.

00:37:59.840 And that's in a volunteer scenario like the legislature or like ministry or nonprofit or even in your family.

00:38:08.260 you sometimes we have to lead our peers through very difficult processes and that's where you

00:38:16.740 can kind of separate the wheat from the shaft is that it's easy to take people that are obligated

00:38:26.200 to you through the high the vertical hierarchy to go maybe a little bit further but it's very

00:38:32.380 difficult to get volunteers or your colleagues that are on the same level of you to be able to

00:38:38.580 take whatever risk they have to take to kind of put their wagon behind yours. And there's a couple

00:38:45.220 of examples of this that I had that I remember from the legislature. The first one was a very

00:38:52.660 successful one. In Texas, we used to have something called one-punch voting. So in the general election

00:38:59.800 And in November, if you wanted to vote all Republican, all you had to do was hit Republican and it would vote for every Republican in two seconds.

00:39:06.720 Same thing for Democrat. Now, I didn't think that that produced very good government.

00:39:12.820 I really didn't, because it did not allow people to spend or it didn't encourage people to spend any time looking at the races that were at the bottom of the ballot.

00:39:25.260 The way ballots are set up is that like if the governor's running for office, he's going to be at the top or if the president, he's going to be at the top of the ballot.

00:39:34.240 So that's who you see. Right. Well, when your local county official or your local state rep, they're going to be closer to the bottom of the ballot.

00:39:42.860 And therefore, people that are just hitting the one punch, they don't have any idea really what the person at the bottom of the ballot stands for.

00:39:49.800 Just because they have an R or D by their name doesn't mean they're going to be a good elected official.

00:39:54.300 So I thought it made sense if we got rid of one-punch voting and it required people to go down the ballot and make a selection in each race.

00:40:04.080 Now, if they didn't want to vote in a race, they could leave it blank.

00:40:06.540 That's up to them.

00:40:07.480 If they just wanted to vote for the president, they could just do that, and the rest of them are blank.

00:40:10.860 Totally fine.

00:40:12.140 I got a lot of pushback on that.

00:40:13.800 That had been tried before in Texas and had never even gotten, I think, 20 votes.

00:40:18.620 Well, I think because people knew I was serious, they would listen to me.

00:40:23.100 And so I went around and made my pitch individually before we ever went to the floor.

00:40:28.140 OK, you don't want to really ever go to the House floor for a vote unless you already know what the vote's going to be.

00:40:33.680 And that's a whole nother lesson. But I went around and we passed that with about 90 votes.

00:40:41.380 And it's been a very, very big success. I've had a lot of even the people that have voted against it.

00:40:46.880 Have come up and told me since then, several of them that, hey, I've changed my mind on that.

00:40:50.700 I think you think you're the right thing to do. So that really, that was a big deal. It was

00:40:54.620 difficult and people got some pushback on that because people usually want things easy. Voters

00:40:59.700 sometimes do. And this made it a little bit harder, but it's worked out very well, I think,

00:41:04.480 for Texas. And I think we get elected people that really more in line with our values at every level

00:41:11.320 of government like that, depending on which district that you're in. But a couple other

00:41:15.380 things I did or tried to do that did not meet with ultimate success, but were very difficult

00:41:20.460 to get your peers to go along with is i was the i had the very first what we would i guess you

00:41:26.540 would call it today no no uh boys in in girls private spaces right uh it's the whole uh

00:41:34.620 transgender scenario and gender dysphoria scenario is i uh filed a bill in 2017

00:41:41.620 we're at the early stages of the conversations about this uh to basically prevent that that

00:41:49.160 you know, biological boys went to boys' private spaces and biological girls were protected in

00:41:55.640 girls' private spaces. I got the majority of the Republicans in the Texas House to agree

00:42:01.220 with me on that and signed on as co-sponsors. But the Speaker of the House was catching a lot

00:42:08.260 of pushback from outside organizations, and he did not let that come to a vote. Now, that was

00:42:15.560 difficult, but I think because people had respected the work that I had done in a lot of areas,

00:42:21.860 they were willing to sign on to that and take some risks themselves. Now, eventually that passed,

00:42:27.480 right? I was ahead of my time, but now that's law in Texas, and it passed after I left the

00:42:32.320 legislature. Sometimes things you start, you don't get to finish, but sometimes that's where God has

00:42:38.320 you. God has you in the beginning, not always at the end of an assignment, and the next thing was

00:42:44.040 school choice i filed the first school choice bill uh that was a serious bill in 2017 because

00:42:50.500 of uh you know experiences i saw especially with people with kids with special needs lisa and i

00:42:55.180 could afford to get daniel into the best places possible but a lot of people can't most people

00:43:00.480 can't and the public school system as hard as they try just aren't really set up as well in most

00:43:06.000 cases in some cases they are very very good but a lot of cases they just are not equipped well

00:43:11.720 enough to be able to serve those special class of students but it didn't it didn't get passed

00:43:17.780 either even though again did have i had the majority of the republicans on it the speaker

00:43:22.220 of the house the teachers unions and other pro-public school people were scared to death

00:43:27.200 that it was going to hurt public schools if you had school choice and so he never let it get a

00:43:31.320 vote but i so much appreciate the guys and gals that stood with me on that and i think they did

00:43:37.780 that, not because they were getting beat up by their public school superintendents and stuff

00:43:42.280 back in their district, but they listened to my argument, agreed with my argument, and put their

00:43:48.960 name on the bill. Now, that's passed as well. That bill, in fact, a much broader bill passed

00:43:53.980 a couple years ago in Texas, the largest school choice program in the country. Texas allocated

00:44:00.120 500 million dollars every two years to fund that and it first of all if you hear anything about it

00:44:08.060 only helps the rich it doesn't it's set up to where special needs families get first shot at it

00:44:13.980 and based on their income and then low income families get the next shot at it and so it's not

00:44:20.840 about rich people just being able to pay for their kids expensive private school it's about

00:44:26.380 people that are in public school systems that don't work for them if they work for them they're

00:44:31.100 not going to leave it right because they like it and give them an opportunity to have real parental

00:44:36.720 choice for where their kids get educated but anyway that was not the point the point is is that

00:44:41.800 the leadership at that level was done through what i had done on all the other levels that's why they

00:44:49.020 were able to help me lead them through some pretty hard things and i think that i think that's i think

00:44:55.740 that's an important thing to do. Now, one last thing on this leadership, and then we'll answer

00:45:00.180 a few questions. And that is, believers versus non-believers. It's going to be very hard for you

00:45:13.000 to progress to the very top level of leadership if your top leader in the organization you're in

00:45:21.780 is not a believer and here's why i say that it's not that they can't be a good leader okay for that

00:45:27.600 particular job but along the way is you're moving up that that progression of going from position

00:45:35.340 to production to permission to people and then you're going to really need somebody above you

00:45:42.140 to help pull you up that when you get up in those last two levels you're going to be so close to

00:45:47.920 those level the top level leaders that if they're non-believers it's a good chance that they'll have

00:45:56.460 some flaws or some characteristics about them that you just don't agree with and in order for you

00:46:03.860 to help somebody else come up or you to be helped up you really got to have a pretty similar value

00:46:10.040 system now for non-believers i believe a believer at the top level can really help them get all

00:46:17.900 the way to the top because what I believe will happen in a lot of cases is that over time this

00:46:22.740 non-believer as they're looking up for help for people to help them up and if those people are

00:46:28.260 believers then they are going to say what do they have that I don't have and that may soften their

00:46:34.100 heart enough for the Lord to speak to them through you or through somebody else or that they'll

00:46:38.700 become a believer so just think about that as you're you're looking at your organizations and

00:46:44.860 where you are and where you want to be long term. Anyway, I hope that helps. I hope you enjoyed

00:46:49.400 that. I'm going to answer a few questions here and then we'll wrap it up. But I think that

00:46:54.940 understanding leadership, whether it's in your home or whether it's in your business or if you

00:47:01.840 end up in public service like I did for a while, or whether it's in a ministry, then it's just

00:47:07.720 really, really important. You really need to understand leadership. And I encourage you to

00:47:12.280 get any of the John Maxwell books that he has out there. You can't go wrong

00:47:16.400 on any of them. The first one that I would recommend to everybody

00:47:20.440 is the 360 Degree Leader, which is

00:47:24.320 a book that tells you how to lead down, which everybody, that's what

00:47:28.340 most of us want to do, lead sideways or lead up. And so

00:47:32.200 I think that'll be something that you'll enjoy, 360 Degree Leader.

00:47:36.060 Now, a few questions from our super intelligent

00:47:39.300 audience. Man, you guys are so intelligent.

00:47:42.280 All right. I just got news that my brother-in-law, who we aren't close to, has come out as trans.

00:47:51.020 Because we're not close, should we reach out or leave it alone? What could I do?

00:47:55.360 Man, that's a tough question there.

00:47:57.640 Well, first of all, I want you to know that I believe that the term gender dysphoria is something that's real in somebody's mind.

00:48:08.860 Now, I believe this is my personal belief that it's in my opinion that nobody else is necessarily is it's a mental it's a mental illness and it's something that Satan takes advantage of.

00:48:21.080 and so I think that what you do in that situation is I would never encourage you to call them by

00:48:30.040 you know a name that's different than their biological name from their biological sex or

00:48:35.400 or be supportive of what they're doing I don't think it's going to do you a lot of good to

00:48:42.980 browbeat them I think that and you also have to protect your family as to how much exposure if

00:48:50.860 you have kids you want them to have to that. But I do think it's okay for you to sit down with them

00:48:56.600 and just say, why don't you explain to me how you came to this decision? What happened? And at least

00:49:03.400 you'll understand more. Hopefully, and this happens time and time again, you see a lot of

00:49:08.580 detransitioners. Hopefully they won't go down the road of doing any type of physical damage to

00:49:13.680 themselves. It can't be undone. And I think you just have to pray for them. Pray for the Lord to

00:49:18.440 change their heart right i mean because it's a yes there's some mental issues going on but it's

00:49:23.660 also a heart issue and um i i feel for you i really do i feel for you all right what does

00:49:30.800 your quiet time look like and how do you study the bible during your devotions you know i've

00:49:35.700 changed over the years back and forth on different things um but my quiet time right now looks like

00:49:41.260 this so i get up in the morning and i read a devotion right now i'm reading a devotion that

00:49:46.760 that Tim Keller and his wife did. And again, it doesn't mean I agree with everything everybody

00:49:51.660 says, but it's a, Tim Keller is a pretty intellectual guy and I like some of that

00:49:56.220 stuff. So I'm reading a devotion that he, that he's put together a daily devotion. And then I,

00:50:02.700 then what I do is I read the Proverbs for the day, whatever the Proverbs are for the day.

00:50:09.400 And then we're going, my Lisa and I are going through a couple's Bible study with a group of

00:50:14.440 other people, um, through the Psalms right now. And so there's a daily assignment or weekly

00:50:20.680 assignment. And so I'll try to do those. And then I, um, the last thing that I do in the mornings

00:50:26.620 is I'm usually, I'm reading a book, uh, that has some type of either direct biblical references,

00:50:36.540 or it's something in that world. Like right now I'm reading a book by John Eldridge called

00:50:42.300 Fathered by God. And it's a really good book. If any of you that have boys should, dads and moms

00:50:49.440 both should definitely read that book. It talks about the different stages of growth for boys.

00:50:54.880 And also for those of us that had a challenge with their own relationship with their dad,

00:51:01.020 it kind of helps you think about some things. So I usually am reading a book like that.

00:51:05.880 I read a book that Nancy DeMoss' husband, that he wrote on shepherding your wife here recently.

00:51:15.520 So I usually have a book that's also speaking to me in addition to what I'm doing in the Bible and into the devotional time.

00:51:23.840 All right, and let's see here.

00:51:26.180 As a father with a son with special needs, how do you handle them becoming adults?

00:51:31.660 Well, the first thing I think you do is any of you that have, especially you dads that have kids with special needs, you make sure that you're loving on your wife.

00:51:40.720 So many of these scenarios end up in divorce.

00:51:43.660 It just is sickening, somewhere in the 75% range.

00:51:47.820 You make sure you're loving on your wife and that you're providing her respite care, meaning that giving her a break.

00:51:54.520 She can go get her nails done or go out with the girls or whatever she likes to do that you're going in there.

00:51:59.800 As far as them coming into adulthood, you know, it's a challenge.

00:52:05.440 You always want to do everything you can to see if they can reach any level of independence.

00:52:12.140 Lisa and I, and sometimes that's heartbreak.

00:52:14.140 We've had some heartbreak with that.

00:52:15.980 We've had some really good kind of good things and heartwarming things, but we've also had heartbreak and you're going to risk that.

00:52:22.460 But you want to get them to the top level of independence they can come.

00:52:26.340 Right now, Daniel lives with us primarily because of his epilepsy that he has,

00:52:33.500 and it's physically dangerous for him to be on his own without somebody close by in case he falls and hurts something,

00:52:41.620 which he's done lately.

00:52:42.660 He's actually had like 20 stitches, and he fractured his wrist and fractured his neck all in the last three or four months,

00:52:49.720 which is kind of crazy.

00:52:51.340 But it just depends on what their situation is.

00:52:55.140 and you may have to decide that they're going to live with you the rest of their life.

00:52:59.120 Make sure you set up a supplemental needs trust so that you can put some assets aside from them

00:53:04.560 that don't have a negative effect on their Social Security disability,

00:53:08.840 if they become eligible for that, or any other benefits that are available that you've paid for, by the way.

00:53:14.300 Don't feel guilty about those. You've paid for those, I would imagine.

00:53:18.360 So I hope that helps.

00:53:19.740 What should churches do about security?

00:53:22.200 Should men conceal carry in church?

00:53:25.140 Yes, I do believe men should conceal carry in church.

00:53:28.340 I encourage you to do that.

00:53:30.580 It's okay to let the security people know that you're carrying so that they know who the good guys are and who's not.

00:53:36.960 But, you know, you need to have security in church these days.

00:53:39.800 No question about it.

00:53:41.900 All right.

00:53:43.740 Let's see here.

00:53:46.740 Advice for young patriotic Americans interested in running for office.

00:53:50.240 I encourage you to do that.

00:53:51.640 But the first thing I want you to do is make sure you've worked in somebody's campaign, okay, so that you really understand how it works.

00:53:58.520 And it's also a good idea if you have been out in the workforce so that you understand what the average daily American goes through and you can really relate to that.

00:54:08.220 But we do need better people to run for office because if good people won't, bad people will.

00:54:13.420 There's never a vacuum when it comes to politics or serving in public office.

00:54:19.260 Why did Joseph Kent resign?

00:54:21.040 He was the deputy undersecretary for something, terrorism maybe, I forget what it was.

00:54:27.200 He resigned because he didn't believe that Iran was an imminent threat and that we shouldn't have gone to war.

00:54:35.400 And, you know, I respect that.

00:54:36.900 That's his opinion.

00:54:37.700 He can have that opinion.

00:54:38.720 But I also respect him for resigning because if you don't agree with what's going on, maybe it is time to move on.

00:54:44.800 And, you know, who knows how close we were?

00:54:47.620 I don't know the answer.

00:54:48.400 Just like I don't blame President Bush when we went into Iraq because there was some faulty information, intelligence that was given him.

00:54:57.100 I wouldn't blame President Trump if we end up finding out that Iran was 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon.

00:55:04.040 I still want us to make sure that you're protecting and defending and securing America first.

00:55:12.380 And that's what I think that we're doing.

00:55:15.380 All right.

00:55:16.220 Should Christians sue, is it right to bring a lawsuit against a doctor for medical malpractice?

00:55:22.620 Well, I think you should do everything you can not to sue.

00:55:26.480 All right.

00:55:26.720 And especially if the other person's a Christian, you need to visit with them, talk to them, see if you can come to an agreement.

00:55:32.940 But if you can't, then that's the system that we have.

00:55:37.160 The system that we have to bring about justice is through our court system.

00:55:41.540 And in a non-criminal scenario, it's our civil court system.

00:55:45.140 And if somebody's negligence has caused significant harm to your family, financial harm, not just grief, but financial harm, then that person needs to be responsible for that, in my opinion.

00:55:58.960 Again, feel free to disagree on that.

00:56:01.380 It's totally fine, but that's my opinion on that.

00:56:05.020 All right.

00:56:06.160 Well, I hope you've enjoyed it.

00:56:07.380 I've enjoyed being with you again this Saturday.

00:56:09.800 We're getting some really good reviews on that.

00:56:11.600 Don't forget, email me, ron at ronsimmons.com.

00:56:14.980 Also, if you want to buy my book, you can email me,

00:56:18.440 and I'm happy to send you an autographed copy of it,

00:56:22.140 and I'll explain to you how to send me the check for $20.

00:56:27.020 Or you can get it off the merch site that Allie has.

00:56:30.500 You can get it off Amazon, any of those.

00:56:32.420 Also, don't forget Allie's book back here, Toxic Empathy.

00:56:35.280 If you don't have that yet, make sure that you get this.

00:56:37.400 This is a really good book on the times we're going through right now.

00:56:40.040 It is outstanding.

00:56:41.180 You don't become a New York Times bestseller because you write bad.

00:56:44.400 stuff. This is a really, really good book. All right, you guys take care, and I'll see you in a couple weeks.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 21, 2026

Ep 1321 ｜ My Reading List for Outsize Influence in Ministry, Politics & Business ｜ Ron Simmons

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript