Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1321 ｜ TSA Line Insanity： What You Need to Know ｜ Ron Simmons

00:00:00.000 If you are looking to refinance or maybe you are looking to get into the home that you need or your

00:00:06.060 family wants right now, then you need to call my friends at Fellowship Home Loans. Mike and Brian

00:00:11.680 are the real deal. They are going to bring you excellent service and help you get in the financial

00:00:17.540 position that you need to maybe get some extra margin in your finances if you need to refinance

00:00:24.740 or to make sure that you get the mortgage that you need for the home that you are looking to

00:00:29.420 purchase. They do their business by the book, not just by the book, but by the book, by biblical

00:00:34.660 principles. Those are the kind of people that you want to trust with such a big decision like this.

00:00:40.220 If you go to fellowshiphomeloans.com, you'll get $500 of credit at closing. That's

00:00:46.880 fellowshiphomeloans.com slash Allie. Terms apply. See site for details. Fellowship Home Loans,

00:00:52.580 Mortgage Lending by the book. Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans,

00:00:56.740 equal housing lender NMLS number 819382. Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's good to see you.

00:01:12.660 As you can tell, I'm actually even in a different set today, actually on the road traveling a little

00:01:17.060 bit, but looking forward to this episode that you're going to be listening to comes out on

00:01:22.520 saturday and uh whether you listen to it saturday sunday or next week it's fine it's a pretty

00:01:27.960 evergreen episode i think you're going to enjoy it we're going to spend just a few minutes right

00:01:32.380 at first on a couple of news items and then i'm going to kind of get into talk to something that's

00:01:37.080 a little bit more uh i guess a little bit more life and a little bit more to do with your career

00:01:42.920 your family whatever it is that you're going through in life right now to talk a little bit

00:01:46.940 about that uh but let's first of all let's talk about the iran war we're in week three now the

00:01:52.800 iran war and the missile and drone attacks by iran have been reduced by 90 percent and so we're

00:02:00.340 continuing to make the progress we want to make i listened to a news conference by secretary of war

00:02:06.420 this morning and one of his uh chief uh generals that were that were participating in the press

00:02:13.160 conference and they just said like today there's going to be more strikes than there were yesterday

00:02:18.120 it just keeps going like that and the reason we're having to do that is because Iran has spent all 0.71

00:02:24.940 the money that we've sent them and the money they've made off of oil wells instead of putting

00:02:29.220 it back in their economy they've done nothing but try to build up their number of missiles their

00:02:34.940 missile cachet and so it takes a lot to get that done and we have also essentially crippled their

00:02:41.680 Navy. That will help us in the Strait of Hormuz eventually. And the reason that we need NATO to

00:02:47.440 join us in that is because NATO gets a lot of their shipping going through that strait. So they

00:02:53.500 need to be participating. Those European countries need to be participating and help us keep that

00:02:58.780 strait secure so that it doesn't slow down the flow of oil and liquefied natural gas and other

00:03:06.200 cargo that goes through there um also there's really no good information on their new leader

00:03:12.840 you know some people i even saw a deal from trump that said maybe he's dead but we don't know and

00:03:18.180 then and and then telsey gabbert says that that their leadership is intact but again tattered

00:03:24.900 just hard to tell how much they're communicating we we did were able to kill their or israel was 0.81

00:03:30.880 able to kill their chief intelligence officer. And so that's a good thing. But again, when you're

00:03:37.320 going into a conflict like this, their sacrifices are going to be made. We've already known that

00:03:43.960 some of our fine men and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the military. However,

00:03:49.060 there's sacrifices for us as well. And it really honestly frustrates me that here people are

00:03:56.500 complaining so much about gasoline prices first of all it's going to be temporary and secondly

00:04:02.060 that's the sacrifice you and i are making to have a more secure country and not have a a regime that

00:04:09.260 has been you know yelling death to america for the last 47 years so the the security doesn't

00:04:16.440 come without sacrifice and protecting our freedoms don't come without sacrifice and we have to make

00:04:22.200 some small sacrifices at home and i don't like it i don't like paying more for gasoline than you do

00:04:26.740 or more for any other products but that is what we are called on to do right now if you if uh if

00:04:32.620 we could all look back even though we weren't alive but think back and maybe read and some of

00:04:37.980 the other stuff that you've seen over your life on what happened during world war ii and the

00:04:41.380 sacrifices that were made by the people that weren't actually fighting in the war but the 0.99

00:04:45.540 people back home what we're doing right now is a very very small piece of that so i think we just

00:04:53.040 need to stay with it and we need to realize there's going to be a temporary sacrifice on our

00:04:57.940 part but it's not going it's not a forever war it's not going to last the gas the oil and gas

00:05:03.280 prices will go back down and i believe that'll happen you know probably the next month or two

00:05:07.860 when things get back to normal it's not going to stay at 120 a barrel or 110 a barrel whatever it

00:05:13.500 as it closes today. One more thought on the oil price, because this question came up from one of

00:05:20.440 the listeners, and that is, why are our gasoline prices higher? The challenge that we have here

00:05:26.360 is that oil and gas is in a world market. In other words, it's not just a U.S. market. The

00:05:33.040 price is set by the supply and demand all over the world. Also, we do not refine enough gasoline

00:05:43.020 to supply U.S. needs.

00:05:46.180 We have to buy refined product.

00:05:49.680 There hasn't been enough refineries open in the last couple of decades,

00:05:55.100 mainly because of some pretty crazy environmental rules under Democrat administrations.

00:06:01.160 And so sometimes we have to ship our oil out.

00:06:03.880 It gets refined somewhere else, and then we bring it back in.

00:06:07.720 And, of course, when you're doing that, you're for sure paying the world price at that.

00:06:11.980 So anyway, that's what's going on in Iran. If you have any questions on that, please feel free to email me. I'll do the best I can to answer them.

00:06:19.320 Next thing, the second the second news item I want to talk about is the Save Act.

00:06:22.940 And this has been something that's been in the news. We've talked about it before.

00:06:26.460 It's the basically the Voter ID Act. The current debate that's going on in the Senate right now and has been going on since March the 17th will probably last a total of 10 to 14 days.

00:06:37.920 There's no real time limit on how long they can debate.

00:06:41.600 A senator can talk for as long as they want to.

00:06:44.740 Eventually, though, everybody will have said what they want to say.

00:06:48.860 And unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to get the 60 votes to be able to shut down debate and take a vote.

00:06:59.520 So on the actual bill, which would only require 51 votes in order to pass the bill.

00:07:05.180 Well, the interesting thing is, is that the Senate majority leader, Senator Thune, just does not believe we have the 60 votes.

00:07:12.820 And that's probably true.

00:07:13.980 We've only got 53 Republican senators, so we have to have seven defections.

00:07:19.220 And we even had we've even had one defection off of the Republican side, and that was the senator from Alaska.

00:07:28.040 And I have no idea how that lady can keep getting elected. 1.00

00:07:32.140 I mean, Alaska is a very conservative state, and yet she's probably one of our most liberal Republican senators. 0.51

00:07:38.740 I hope somebody up there will run against her and beat her at some time in the future, in the near future. 0.98

00:07:44.360 I don't know when she's up for election again. 0.97

00:07:46.800 Also, another thing that I wanted you to be aware of when we talk about voter ID and you hear what, you know,

00:07:52.840 Shifty Schumer says about it's going to disenfranchise voters and all that.

00:07:56.960 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, I mean, some type of identification.

00:08:05.900 And so it's not going to be a huge burden.

00:08:09.300 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.

00:08:17.260 But let me tell you this, even if it was hard to do, it's still something that's important because under the Constitution, only eligible citizens can vote in our federal elections.

00:08:31.520 So this is a constitutional issue.

00:08:34.040 And the only way you'll know if somebody is an eligible citizen is if they prove their citizenship, either from their birth certificate or their driver's license or their passport or some type of other government approved identification.

00:08:49.100 And you think, well, golly, we maybe we're the ones that are so draconian in the United States that are requiring that.

00:08:55.360 But virtually every other country in the world requires some type of proof of voter eligibility.

00:09:02.540 and most of them are voter ID, picture voter ID.

00:09:06.800 Countries like Canada, okay, all of you that think we're the mean people

00:09:10.920 and Canada's nice, their voter requirements are stronger than ours.

00:09:17.780 The United Kingdom, England, all right?

00:09:21.840 Australia, which a lot of you, you know, love Australia, and I get that,

00:09:26.880 but they already have to have, voters have to have identification

00:09:31.580 and proof of eligibility to vote.

00:09:33.120 Same way in France, same way in Brazil and South America,

00:09:36.320 same way even Caribbean countries like Haiti and Jamaica and Honduras.

00:09:41.020 Also, where democracy was born, the idea of democracy,

00:09:45.760 in Greece, you have to have identification in order to vote

00:09:49.940 to prove you're eligible to vote.

00:09:52.340 And so I don't know why this is such a big issue.

00:09:55.320 I'm hoping that this can come back.

00:09:58.080 I listened to a speech by Senator Kennedy from Louisiana on the floor today, and he's a funny guy.

00:10:05.700 You know, he always has nice quips and quotes and what have you.

00:10:08.180 But what he talked about is he said, look, I know we have a bunch of smart lawyers out there in the Senate and in the country.

00:10:16.320 If you can help us figure out how to get a SAVE Act constructed so it would qualify under the budget reconciliation process,

00:10:25.960 you don't have to have the 60 votes to cut off debate.

00:10:29.600 You can go straight to vote and you could pass it with 51 votes.

00:10:33.760 Now, there are some manipulations that you may have to do with the bill

00:10:37.740 in order for it to fit under what's called budget reconciliation.

00:10:41.640 But we haven't even tried that yet.

00:10:43.940 So, Majority Leader Thune, I would encourage you to let's try that.

00:10:48.120 Let's see if we can make it work.

00:10:49.400 The parliamentarian will decide if it actually fits.

00:10:52.280 The parliamentarian is kind of the lawyer for the Senate.

00:10:55.620 They have one of those in the House as well.

00:10:57.280 And they actually look at all the rules and say, okay, under the rules of the Senate and under the rules of how a budget reconciliation bill is going to work, does this fit those parameters?

00:11:08.760 We had the same thing when I was in the Texas House.

00:11:11.420 We had a parliamentarian, and they had one over in the Senate. 0.92

00:11:14.140 So that's pretty common to do.

00:11:15.840 I encourage them to be able to at least try to make that happen.

00:11:19.760 But if we don't get 60 votes, then I don't know where the SAVE Act is going to go.

00:11:24.740 yeah, we can bring it back up, but we still are going to eventually have to have that.

00:11:28.760 Now, personally, I've changed my mind on the filibuster.

00:11:31.600 I think we ought to get rid of the filibuster.

00:11:34.000 And I realize that it's helped us when we've been in the minority as conservatives.

00:11:38.460 But you know what?

00:11:40.340 All the people that get elected, they get elected by a simple majority.

00:11:44.740 We run the House by a simple majority.

00:11:47.440 The president's elected by a simple majority.

00:11:50.020 Why in the world would we require a supermajority to get things done in the Senate? 0.87

00:11:55.260 I do not agree with that anymore.

00:11:57.160 I used to understand it, and I do understand it intellectually.

00:12:00.620 But you know what?

00:12:01.800 If Republicans can't have 51 votes and the Democrats have that many senators during those times,

00:12:09.280 I won't like some of the stuff we do, but shame on us.

00:12:12.440 Let's win the seats.

00:12:14.000 Let's win the seats.

00:12:14.820 The majority should rule in every situation in a republic or a democracy.

00:12:20.460 The last thing I want to talk about related to news items is the funding of the Department of Homeland Security.

00:12:27.800 And again, this is something that the Democrats are holding up.

00:12:31.080 Any of you that are on spring break or coming off spring break while you're listening to this

00:12:35.640 and you had these terrible long lines at some of your airports, then blame the Democrats.

00:12:41.060 And if you live in a blue state, call your Democrat senator's office.

00:12:45.680 This is so crazy.

00:12:47.020 They think they're doing something to ICE, but what most people don't know, this doesn't even affect ICE or border security.

00:12:54.120 Those were funded through the big, beautiful bill for the next three years.

00:12:57.760 There's $170 billion of funding already set aside for them.

00:13:01.960 This essentially, the biggest thing it hurts is TSA.

00:13:04.720 Hey, 50,000 TSA employees have gone without a paycheck, at least one, and coming up on going without two paychecks. 0.80

00:13:12.500 This is totally ridiculous.

00:13:13.900 Now, I do think they're going to end up cutting a 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. 0.92

00:13:24.620 And I think they'll end up trying to cut a deal on this pretty quickly.

00:13:27.920 And I don't know if they'll say, maybe the Democrats will say, look, if we'll end this save debate, we'll go ahead and get this funded.

00:13:33.480 Who knows?

00:13:33.900 I'm not sure of what it will be, but I think they'll get that that that done pretty, pretty quickly.

00:13:40.020 All right. So those kind of the news items that are going on right now.

00:13:44.220 We'll get to some listener questions here in a few minutes.

00:13:46.800 But I also wanted to spend some time talking today on leadership.

00:13:52.560 I've been someone that has read a lot of books on leadership.

00:13:57.200 I've gone to a lot of conferences on leadership.

00:14:00.580 I just believe everything rises and falls with leadership.

00:14:03.380 whether that's in your family or in your business or in your church or in your relationships with

00:14:09.140 other people. I think everything rises and falls on leadership. As most of you know,

00:14:13.680 because I've talked about it before, I am a follower of a author by the name of John Maxwell.

00:14:21.140 And if you haven't read any of John Maxwell's books, I would encourage you to look them up.

00:14:25.740 He's probably sold 30 million copies over his lifetime, if not more than that now. He's written,

00:14:30.960 I don't know, maybe 20 books, and every one of them, I don't know if I've read every one of them,

00:14:35.400 but I've read probably 80% of them, and they're all very, very good, easy to read, very practical

00:14:40.900 information, but he is considered the number one guru on leadership in the country right now.

00:14:47.820 There's another gentleman by the name of Jim Collins, and those of you that have been around

00:14:53.700 for a while probably know Jim Collins' book called Good to Great. It's one of the most popular books

00:15:00.900 business books out there. And I don't know how many copies he sold, but millions and millions

00:15:05.100 in multiple different languages. Well, Jim and John know each other and they collaborate on some

00:15:11.360 things and they got together, oh, I don't know, a few years ago. And they both agreed that there

00:15:17.900 are five levels of leadership, five levels of leadership that we all go through. And I want

00:15:24.180 to talk about those today in two different contexts. What are the five levels of leadership

00:15:30.580 in your business, okay? If you have a business or you're in your job, so to speak. And what are

00:15:37.420 the five levels of leadership when I served in the legislature, like in public service

00:15:44.280 or in ministry? They're very similar to each other. And you can also apply some of these levels

00:15:49.920 in your own family relationships as well. So let's take a look. Let's kind of dive into that

00:15:55.320 and we'll go through those. And again, if you have questions, you follow up on this,

00:15:59.640 please email me ron at ronsimmons.com so anyway i got some i got some outline notes here just to

00:16:05.940 remind you my business career i was i was in the wealth management business and i helped start a

00:16:12.960 company 30 something years ago and we managed money for retired commercial airline pilots we

00:16:19.180 had a niche that when they retired they got their money primarily in a lump sum and so they needed

00:16:24.660 to roll that over to an individual retirement account to avoid immediate taxes on it. And we

00:16:30.740 helped manage that. We helped do their estate planning, kind of manage their financial life

00:16:35.600 after they retired. And I was a co-founder of that. And then we built it up. I ended up being

00:16:42.620 CEO and chairman. And we sold the company at the end of 2019. At the time, we had $3 billion

00:16:49.640 dollars under management and we had clients in all 50 states and a few foreign countries so

00:16:54.900 that's my entire really pretty much my entire business career was involved in that company

00:17:00.500 I had a little bit of time before that working as an employee for an oil company but my primary

00:17:07.280 career was with we call it the name of the company was called Retirement Advisors of America

00:17:11.680 so anyway when I talk about business I'm going to use my own examples all right as to how I

00:17:18.220 experience these levels of leadership. The first level of leadership, and again, if you happen to

00:17:23.240 be watching this at home, it might be a good idea to get out a pencil and a piece of paper or even

00:17:27.260 get your phone out and you can take some notes on this. I think you'll enjoy that. The first level

00:17:33.500 of leadership is called position. In other words, what's your title? I'm a CEO or I'm a head of

00:17:42.260 sales or I'm a bank teller or whatever it happens to be. It's your title. Now, that is the weakest

00:17:49.000 level. All right. Because people don't follow titles. They follow people. And if you're going

00:17:56.440 to be a leader in order to be a leader, you have to have followers. Because if you're if you think

00:18:01.480 you're leading and you look behind you and no one's following, then you're just out on a walk

00:18:06.520 by yourself. But what it does is, is it provides you a platform. The title provides a certain

00:18:14.800 platform that people will at least initially pay attention to. Now, when you, when you lead by

00:18:23.600 position, you can get people to obey you. Like if you're somebody's boss, if you're a supervisor

00:18:29.600 or wherever you are in the hierarchy of your organization,

00:18:35.760 people that work for you or are lower than you in that hierarchy,

00:18:41.000 they will probably obey you, but they don't necessarily follow you.

00:18:48.620 See, because following someone is voluntary, right?

00:18:55.800 If you're my boss, I have to do what you tell me,

00:18:58.300 but I don't have to believe in you, right? Now, obeying someone really in order, all you're doing

00:19:06.120 when you're somebody obeying you is you're leading them by instruction, right? You do this, you do

00:19:13.220 that, you do this, you do that. And they go from one instruction to the other. If people, if you're

00:19:19.480 leading people by people following you, then you do that by example, but they won't do that for

00:19:25.800 very long because of your position. They'll do it because of who you are. So don't focus too much

00:19:31.760 on getting a title. Yes, it does give you a platform, but it's not going to be something

00:19:36.760 that makes you automatically a leader, right? Just because you have a title doesn't mean we're

00:19:42.100 a leader. Secondly, it's production. So we had position and then production. Production is when

00:19:49.240 we have skins on the wall. And what I mean by that, that everybody knows in your organization

00:19:54.180 that you've done something, you know, maybe if you're in sales, you were the top salesman, or

00:19:58.500 maybe if you're in client service, you had the least amount of complaints or whatever it is,

00:20:03.840 however your job is measured individually, what have you done? When I joined, when we started

00:20:10.540 the investment company, I was head of sales. Now I say head of sales, I was the only salesman. So

00:20:15.500 I was head of myself when we first started out, but I brought in clients, the clients I brought

00:20:22.420 in, I brought in the first $400 million worth of assets from a variety of clients. So I had skins 0.97

00:20:30.480 on the wall. People knew that when I talked about what it took to convince a retired airline pilot

00:20:39.540 and their family to let us invest their money and help them with their financial needs,

00:20:44.820 they knew that i had credibility because i had done it and people watch that very closely you've

00:20:52.860 proven yourself right you have to prove yourself in this next level because you can't if you go

00:20:59.120 from position okay ron you're head of sales all right but you know being head of sales and actually

00:21:05.000 knowing how to sell or it's the same thing have you really done it okay yep i've got the title

00:21:09.920 Now I've got the production. All right. And so people will pay attention to that.

00:21:15.160 The last thing is, is, I mean, the next thing, the third thing is permission, permission.

00:21:21.740 It goes beyond just your own production, which people respect, of course.

00:21:26.240 But now if you're ever going to grow an organization and not it all be about you,

00:21:31.960 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.

00:21:38.460 I didn't want it to be Simmons Wealth Management because if you do that, and I know some people listening here probably has the name on their businesses, and that's fine if that's what you chose to do.

00:21:48.060 But for me, I didn't want that to tie me down to that business forever.

00:21:53.440 I was looking down the road at 10 or 15 or 20 years down the road when I wanted to maybe do something else, yet I wanted the business to still succeed.

00:22:02.600 I didn't want it to have my name attached to it in the title of the thing.

00:22:08.460 And so, therefore, I want to grow beyond me.

00:22:11.140 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?

00:22:21.000 Who wants to go?

00:22:22.340 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.

00:22:35.580 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.

00:22:46.380 Because, see, they can look at me just like they can probably look at you and say, well, you know what?

00:22:49.920 Yeah, he may be pretty smart, maybe.

00:22:52.860 I don't think he's any smarter than me.

00:22:54.560 I don't think he's any better looking than me, of course.

00:22:57.020 And so, therefore, if he can do it, if Ron can do it, I can do it.

00:23:00.780 And that's kind of what I talk about in my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.

00:23:04.040 I had three people in the sales area in our investment company that did just that, Ken, Scott, and Jeff.

00:23:12.260 All of those guys saw what I had done and thought, well, if he can do it, I can do it.

00:23:17.940 So I want to go.

00:23:19.140 So they gave me permission to help them get to where they wanted to go.

00:23:25.680 And in this next phase, the reason that people give you permission is because, first of all, they've seen what you've done.

00:23:32.460 And second of all, they believe you can help them get what they want to have happen.

00:23:37.740 The fourth level in business, level five levels of leadership is people development.

00:23:44.280 So now you've gotten permission from them.

00:23:47.240 You had the position.

00:23:48.820 You've been productive.

00:23:50.420 You've gotten permission from people that want what you have.

00:23:53.840 The next thing is people development.

00:23:56.000 And the people development, what that really means, it now all becomes about others and not about you.

00:24:00.960 You move from you to them, you to them.

00:24:05.120 Now, in order for this to work properly, you want to align your incentives.

00:24:09.420 In business especially, you want to align your financial incentives.

00:24:13.480 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.

00:24:22.340 If not, you need to work on getting those incentives realigned.

00:24:25.760 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.

00:24:31.560 It needs to be a win-win scenario.

00:24:33.780 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.

00:24:40.540 So you've got to move from you to them in people development.

00:24:44.740 And then the last thing is called pinnacle.

00:24:46.820 So we've got position, production, permission, people, and pinnacle.

00:24:51.640 And pinnacle is where others lead.

00:24:54.620 It's not just helping them get where they want.

00:24:56.640 It's really you and me stepping back.

00:24:59.720 In fact, in our family, we call it going to the balcony.

00:25:02.840 There's a great little book out there called Balcony People.

00:25:06.340 And it's a book about people in your life that are encouragers.

00:25:11.160 They're the cheerleaders in your life.

00:25:12.960 In our family, we've decided a long time ago that we wanted to be balcony people.

00:25:18.800 So a lot of things that we have, some of our family companies.

00:25:23.380 In fact, we even had a ranch.

00:25:25.140 We named it after Balcony.

00:25:26.540 It was the Balcony Ranch.

00:25:27.800 It's the Balcony LLC because we wanted to remind ourselves that we want to be encouragers of each other and other people.

00:25:35.680 So when you develop people along the way and now you're developing them as leaders so that they can turn around and develop other leaders, your role is to be their encourager and to also be available.

00:25:50.960 And I had a good example of that in my business.

00:25:53.220 When I became chairman of the board, and not long after that, I went into politics, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

00:26:01.920 And so I had two other senior partners that were running the company on a day-to-day basis.

00:26:08.180 One of them was named Bart, and he was the CEO.

00:26:11.280 And then the other was John, who was the COO, chief operating officer.

00:26:15.860 And Bart, unfortunately, his wife had a stroke at a pretty young age, early 50s, and it was pretty severe.

00:26:25.540 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.

00:26:34.520 I need to get out of the business, take care of my wife.

00:26:37.040 So we found some we found a angel investor to help buy him out.

00:26:43.380 We didn't have enough money, our personal selves, to buy him out of his ownership.

00:26:47.640 So we were able to buy him out so he could take the money based on his investment in the company and his ownership

00:26:53.680 and be secure in that and focus entirely on taking care of his wife.

00:26:58.480 Well, John, who had not been with the company as long, although we had known him a long time,

00:27:03.760 he was going to step up from COO to CEO.

00:27:08.180 And he had not done that before.

00:27:10.020 And so I became available.

00:27:12.020 available. I made myself available to help him in that transition. Now, one of the things I did is

00:27:17.900 I said to make sure, don't absolutely do not require him to run the company like you would

00:27:27.520 run it. I didn't want to require John to run the company like I would run it. I told John, I said,

00:27:31.700 John, you have to run the company in your style. Your style is your style. My style is different,

00:27:38.000 but I wanted to be there to encourage him to be available when he had any questions.

00:27:42.020 And that's the way it worked out.

00:27:43.660 So when you get into the fifth level, you have really backed away and go into the balcony.

00:27:50.440 But you're there as an encourager.

00:27:53.220 You're helping them understand how to develop other leaders.

00:27:56.300 And you're available when they need you.

00:27:58.940 So that's really important.

00:28:00.820 The second list of five levels of leadership that I want to give you has to deal with public service or ministry.

00:28:09.060 And it's really the same five levels.

00:28:11.000 They're just in slightly different order.

00:28:13.000 A couple of them change places.

00:28:14.460 But it is a different way you have to look at it.

00:28:17.340 I remember when I got into the legislature, I thought of everything like a business, right?

00:28:22.240 And I found out pretty quickly that in an organization like the legislature and in a lot of ways like any nonprofit or church or government entity, it doesn't work exactly like business.

00:28:35.420 And so when we say, hey, we want somebody to come in and run our government like a business, I get that.

00:28:39.300 And there are a lot of good points to that.

00:28:41.000 But it doesn't work exactly that way.

00:28:43.040 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.

00:28:56.360 All right.

00:28:56.660 But the first level is still position.

00:28:58.340 OK, so I'm an elected official.

00:28:59.660 I got elected as an official in 2012, and I was a state representative for about 200,000 people in the Dallas Metroplex.

00:29:08.820 and, you know, that's who I was.

00:29:11.660 But you know what?

00:29:13.060 I didn't, I wasn't the boss of anybody.

00:29:15.360 I had the position and it did give me a platform,

00:29:19.400 gave me a pretty good platform.

00:29:20.900 People might listen to what I had to say,

00:29:23.140 but they're not going to follow me for very long

00:29:26.200 just because I had that position.

00:29:28.100 Listen, we vote against candidates all the time, right?

00:29:31.520 You've got political candidates right now

00:29:33.720 or people in public office that you're not going to vote for.

00:29:37.780 So not everybody's going to follow you just because you have that position.

00:29:41.540 It only gives you a platform because you're really not much the boss of anybody.

00:29:46.980 And the position is there, gives you a good platform.

00:29:50.460 But it's, again, it's the weakest level of the five levels of leadership.

00:29:54.560 The second level in this arena is permission.

00:29:58.920 Now, you notice that the second level in business was production.

00:30:03.360 But the second level under this scenario in public service or in ministry, and it really, too, is in your in your family at certain stages of how your family grows and as they mature, it's permission.

00:30:18.000 So this is this this is because in public service, like when I was in the legislature, we had one hundred and fifty state representatives.

00:30:27.700 And so I was only one of one hundred and fifty.

00:30:30.560 The rest of them got elected just exactly the way I got elected.

00:30:34.580 They ran for office, they got the most votes, and they were elected.

00:30:38.940 Nobody was at a greater status than anybody else.

00:30:42.640 We were 150 equals as far as that was concerned.

00:30:47.260 So what I did, I knew then that in order for me to be able to be successful,

00:30:53.180 I was going to need at least a majority of those people to be on board with me when I had a

00:31:00.680 particular bill up for vote or debate. I need to have at least 76 of the 150 to pass that bill.

00:31:08.360 And therefore, I had to get their permission, right? Because I couldn't make them vote yes or

00:31:13.660 no. I had to essentially build relationships with them and get their permission to at least give me

00:31:20.160 a fair shake on what I was proposing as a policy. The way I did this is when I got elected,

00:31:27.020 I took the first 70 days that I was in elected office. It took me this long. And I met with all

00:31:33.180 149 other members individually, one-on-one. It's usually in their office at the Capitol.

00:31:41.280 And I don't know this, but what I've been told, nobody else has ever done that.

00:31:46.360 And the meetings weren't about policy.

00:31:48.940 The meetings were about getting to know the person, even the persons that were people that were Democrats.

00:31:54.600 I wanted to get to know those men and women as well because I knew they got elected just like I did.

00:32:00.140 And I knew that most of them were in that office for things that they believed in and they believed to be right.

00:32:07.240 I knew most of them had families.

00:32:09.140 They had a wife.

00:32:09.820 They had kids, grandkids, whatever.

00:32:11.860 I knew we were a lot more alike than we were different.

00:32:15.240 Now, there were some issues that we were never going to agree on, especially as it came to social issues.

00:32:19.520 And I knew that.

00:32:20.160 But I wanted to be able to, when we were debating on the house floor and tensions get high,

00:32:26.120 I wanted in my mind to remember what I knew about them as a person.

00:32:32.220 And I wanted them to remember what they knew about me as a person, not necessarily just about that particular debate.

00:32:39.220 And so when you're in, it's the same way if you're working in the ministry.

00:32:43.240 all right is that you're most of the people that you're going to be working with aren't people that

00:32:48.060 you can order around you're going to need an army of volunteers or of colleagues to be able to get

00:32:54.300 to get something done right and that's what happens in the legislature as well it's very

00:33:00.200 important that you get permission from them and the only way you get permission from people is

00:33:05.920 to build a relationship with them now the third part is production so again it switched from the

00:33:12.000 business where production was second. It's third here. So once you've kind of got to, you built

00:33:17.180 the relationship, once I'd built some relationships with them, I knew that people would at least look

00:33:21.880 at what I was doing and hopefully give me a fair chance. But they weren't going to really get on

00:33:29.540 board with anything unless they saw that I was willing to do the work and I had a good idea.

00:33:34.480 In the legislature, we had two types of people. And this is the same way in ministry as well.

00:33:39.760 you have workhorses and show horses. What I mean by that is you have some people that all they want

00:33:45.280 to do is get the headlines, right? Or they want to be in the camera shot or they want to, you know,

00:33:50.100 look good on Sunday morning or whatever the thing is. And then you have another group of people that

00:33:56.600 want to be workhorses. When I got elected, the first thing that I did after election, when I

00:34:03.840 went to Austin before the session, the legislative session even started, I sat down and met with the

00:34:08.380 Speaker of the House, who was actually one of the 149. He just happened to have been chosen by us

00:34:14.260 to oversee the administration of the House. And I told him, I said, look, I don't know you very

00:34:19.420 well, Mr. Speaker, and you don't know me very well, but I will tell you, I'm here to work.

00:34:23.920 All right. That is what I'm here to do. I don't have any other reason to be here. I've already

00:34:28.540 had a pretty successful career. I've got a good family. I'm here to do the work. And so pretty

00:34:34.440 quickly, I was given the opportunity to work on some pretty important pieces of legislation,

00:34:42.440 even as a young freshman. And so I wanted people to see that I was a workhorse, not a show horse.

00:34:50.300 One of the things that I did, when you join the legislature, you're assigned to certain committees

00:34:56.500 so that a lot of the work's done in the committee, the detailed work. And I wanted to be on the

00:35:01.320 Appropriations Committee, which is the budget, decides how all the money is spent. And I asked

00:35:07.160 to be on that. I was not on that my first semester. I was later at my first session. I was later

00:35:12.660 in my other two sessions. But I wanted to learn how the process worked because I knew that every

00:35:19.620 bill that anybody passed that you spent money in would have to go through the Appropriations

00:35:24.780 Committee at some point in time. So the Appropriations Committee met at 7.30 every

00:35:30.100 morning for about the first two months of legislative session. And even though I wasn't

00:35:35.480 on the committee, I went to every hearing, every hearing. And the chairman of the committee was

00:35:40.120 super nice. He let me sit up on the dais with all the other members. He allowed me to ask questions

00:35:45.860 just like I was a member of the committee. But I learned so much about how Texas state government

00:35:52.020 worked by being there. And I'll tell you, people noticed me there too. I've had more and more

00:35:56.900 people, colleagues of mine, that when, if I'm in an audience and they're talking to another group

00:36:02.000 of people, they'll bring up the fact that I sat in on every appropriations committee hearing. Now

00:36:06.820 that didn't require that much on my part, right? I was going to be in Austin anyway, working, so I

00:36:11.940 might as well get up and get down and learn something. If I was going to be away from my

00:36:15.960 family, I wanted to be productive. But what it did is, is it gained respect so that when I did

00:36:21.780 want to talk about policy, people knew that I was a serious policy person. And it works that way in

00:36:27.520 other organizations as well. It's the old 20-80 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

00:36:34.000 Now, you may not like that because you say that's an extra burden on you if you're one of the

00:36:37.780 workhorses. But actually, it allows you to have an outsized influence. If 80% of the people don't

00:36:44.400 care and 20% of the people are going to do most of the work, then you're going to get more done

00:36:49.760 that you want to have done as opposed to what the other 80 people, because they don't really even

00:36:55.040 care. So just think about it that way. Now, the fourth level is people, just like it was in

00:36:59.980 business. You don't really have a lot of people that you're responsible for from a direct hierarchy

00:37:07.960 standpoint, but you are responsible for your staff. And everybody that's in the legislature

00:37:13.120 has some staff, just like in ministry, you may have a small staff. And what I found that you do,

00:37:19.660 it, and this is a little bit scary, but I'll let you guys in on a secret that you probably

00:37:23.000 may or may not know, but our state government and our federal governments are essentially run

00:37:30.240 by people from ages 20 to age 30. That's where most of your staff, that's the age of most of

00:37:36.920 your staffers, mainly because they're not long out of college. You don't make as much money,

00:37:42.060 but you want to get the experience. So it's a lot of young people that are helping run the day-to-day

00:37:46.980 behind the scenes at at our federal government level and the state government levels. But what

00:37:53.140 you have to look for when you're looking for any staff, whether you're in public service or

00:37:57.940 whatever, is you want to look for sponges instead of rocks, especially in young people. You want

00:38:04.860 young people that are willing to take in everything that they're being taught and everything that's

00:38:11.060 going on around them like a sponge as opposed to a rock where you put water on it all it does is

00:38:17.220 run off right you want sponges instead of rocks so make sure that when you're especially working

00:38:23.360 with young people all right and they're just getting started in their career and you know

00:38:27.560 they don't really have any experience to give any wisdom as to how things go that you're that they

00:38:33.380 are more interested in learning like i tell my grandkids how many ears do you have two papa how

00:38:38.900 many mouths one papa what does that mean i don't know it means that you need to listen twice as

00:38:44.020 much as you talk and that's what you're looking for when you have young people and then you want

00:38:49.180 to feed into them so that they continue to soak up the information that you have for them now the

00:38:55.640 last level is pinnacle just like it was under business and that's in the in a volunteer scenario

00:39:02.800 like the legislature or like ministry or some non-profit or even in your family you sometimes

00:39:10.420 we have to lead our peers through very difficult processes and that's where you can kind of

00:39:17.680 separate the wheat from the chaff is that it's easy to take people that are obligated to you

00:39:26.880 through the vertical hierarchy to go maybe a little bit further,

00:39:31.300 but it's very difficult to get volunteers or your colleagues

00:39:35.860 that are on the same level of you to be able to take

00:39:38.960 whatever risk they have to take to kind of put their wagon behind yours.

00:39:44.280 And there's a couple of examples of this that I had

00:39:47.400 that I remember from the legislature.

00:39:49.200 The first one was a very successful one.

00:39:54.620 In Texas, we used to have something called one-punch voting. 0.76

00:39:58.800 So in the general election 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.

00:40:06.960 Same thing for Democrat. 0.97

00:40:09.260 Now, I didn't think that produced very good government.

00:40:12.460 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.

00:40:25.720 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.

00:40:34.360 So that's who you see. Right.

00:40:36.080 Well, when your local county official or your local state rep, they're going to be closer to the bottom of the ballot.

00:40:42.960 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.

00:40:49.940 Just because they have an R or a D by their name doesn't mean they're going to be a good elected official.

00:40:54.200 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.

00:41:04.100 Now, if they didn't want to vote in a race, they could leave it blank.

00:41:06.680 That's up to them.

00:41:07.620 If they just wanted to vote for the president, they could just do that, and the rest of them are blank.

00:41:11.000 Totally fine.

00:41:12.500 I got a lot of pushback on that.

00:41:14.020 That had been tried before in Texas and had never even gotten, I think, 20 votes.

00:41:18.680 Well, I think because people knew I was serious, they would listen to me.

00:41:23.440 And so I went around and made my pitch individually before we ever went to the floor.

00:41:28.260 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.

00:41:34.100 And that's a whole other lesson.

00:41:35.640 But I went around, and we passed that with about 90 votes.

00:41:41.540 And it's been a very, very big success.

00:41:44.140 I've had a lot of even the people that have voted against it have come up and told me since then, several of them, that, hey, I've changed my mind on that.

00:41:50.880 I think you're the right thing to do.

00:41:52.720 So that really, that was a big deal.

00:41:54.120 It was difficult, and people got some pushback on that because people usually want things easy.

00:41:59.580 Voters sometimes do.

00:42:00.600 and this made it a little bit harder but it's worked out very well i think for texas and i

00:42:05.760 think we get elected people that really uh more in line with our values at every level of government

00:42:11.960 like that depending on which district that you're in but a couple other things i did i tried to do

00:42:16.860 that did not meet with ultimate success but were very difficult to get your peers to go along with

00:42:22.780 is I had the very first what I guess you would call it today

00:42:27.340 no boys in girls' private spaces, right? 0.92

00:42:33.360 It's the whole transgender scenario and gender dysphoria scenario. 0.98

00:42:38.680 I filed a bill in 2017.

00:42:42.280 We're at the early stages of the conversations about this

00:42:45.120 to basically prevent that,

00:42:48.920 That, you know, biological boys went to boys' private spaces and biological girls were protected in girls' private spaces. 0.69

00:42:57.040 I got the majority of the Republicans in the Texas House to agree with me on that and signed on as co-sponsors.

00:43:04.560 But the Speaker of the House was catching a lot of pushback from outside organizations, and he did not let that come to a vote.

00:43:14.800 Now, that was difficult, but I think because people had respected the work that I had done

00:43:20.620 in a lot of areas, they were willing to sign on to that and take some risks themselves.

00:43:25.700 Now, eventually that passed, right?

00:43:27.880 I was ahead of my time, but now that's law in Texas, and it passed after I left the legislature.

00:43:33.440 Sometimes things you start, you don't get to finish, but sometimes that's where God has you.

00:43:38.680 God has you in the beginning, not always at the end of an assignment.

00:43:42.780 And the next thing was school choice. I filed the first school choice bill that was a serious bill in 2017 because of, you know, experiences I saw, especially with people with kids with special needs.

00:43:54.920 Lisa and I could afford to get Daniel into the best places possible, but a lot of people can't.

00:44:00.220 Most people can't. And the public school system, as hard as they try, just aren't really set up as well in most cases.

00:44:06.520 In some cases, they are very, very good. But a lot of cases, they just are not equipped well enough to be able to serve those special class of students.

00:44:15.920 But it didn't it didn't get passed either, even though, again, did have had the majority of the Republicans on it.

00:44:22.000 The Speaker of the House, the teachers unions and other pro public school people were scared to death that it was going to hurt public schools if you had school choice.

00:44:29.880 and so he never let it get a vote but i so much appreciate the guys and gals that stood with me

00:44:36.340 on that and i think they did that not as because they were getting beat up by their super you know

00:44:40.780 public school superintendents and stuff back in their district but uh they listened to my argument

00:44:46.240 agreed with my argument and and uh put their name on the bill now that's already that's passed as

00:44:51.780 well that bill in fact a much broader bill passed a couple years ago um in texas the largest school

00:44:57.200 choice program in the country at texas allocated 500 million dollars every two years to fund that

00:45:04.860 and it first of all if you hear anything about it only helps the rich it doesn't it's set up

00:45:10.800 to where special needs families get first shot at it and based on their income and then low

00:45:16.840 income families get the next shot at it and so it's not about rich people just being able to

00:45:22.980 pay for their kids expensive private school it's about people that are in public school systems

00:45:29.140 that don't work for them if they work for them they're not going to leave it right because they

00:45:32.500 like it and give them an opportunity to have real parental choice for where their kids get educated

00:45:39.200 but anyway that was not the point the point is is that the leadership at that level was done through

00:45:46.180 what i had done on all the other levels that's why they were able to help me lead them through

00:45:51.720 some pretty hard things. And I think that's an important thing to do. Now, one last thing on

00:45:59.160 this leadership, and then we'll answer a few questions. And that is, believers versus

00:46:06.800 non-believers. It's going to be very hard for you to progress to the very top level of leadership

00:46:17.400 if your top leader in the organization you're in is not a believer.

00:46:24.060 And here's why I say that.

00:46:25.060 It's not that they can't be a good leader, okay, for that particular job,

00:46:28.860 but along the way as you're moving up that progression of going from position

00:46:35.460 to production to permission to people,

00:46:39.420 and then you're going to really need somebody above you to help pull you up

00:46:43.760 that when you get up in those last two levels,

00:46:46.100 you're going to be so close to the top-level leaders that if they're non-believers,

00:46:53.940 it's a good chance that they'll have some flaws or some characteristics about them that you just don't agree with.

00:47:02.300 And in order for you to help somebody else come up or you to be helped up,

00:47:08.060 you've really got to have a pretty similar value system.

00:47:11.420 Now, for non-believers, I believe a believer at the top level can really help them get all the way to the top.

00:47:18.580 Because what I believe will happen in a lot of cases is that over time, this non-believer, as they're looking up for help, for people to help them up,

00:47:27.280 and if those people are believers, then they are going to say, what do they have that I don't have?

00:47:32.920 And that may soften their heart enough for the Lord to speak to them through you or through somebody else, or that they'll become a believer.

00:47:40.420 So just think about that as you're looking at your organizations and where you are and where you want to be long term.

00:47:47.640 Anyway, I hope that helps.

00:47:48.860 I hope you enjoyed that.

00:47:50.060 I'm going to answer a few questions here and then we'll wrap it up.

00:47:52.800 But I think that understanding leadership, whether it's in your home or whether it's in your business or in, you know,

00:48:01.780 if you end up in public service like I did for a while or whether it's in a ministry, then it's just really, really important.

00:48:08.900 You really need to understand leadership, and I encourage you to get any of the John Maxwell books that he has out there.

00:48:15.640 You can't go wrong on any of them.

00:48:17.540 The first one that I would recommend to everybody is the 360-degree leader, which is a book that tells you how to lead down, which everybody, that's what most of us want to do, lead sideways or lead up.

00:48:31.800 And so I think that'll be something that you'll enjoy, 360-degree leader.

00:48:36.200 Now, a few questions from our super intelligent audience.

00:48:40.580 Man, you guys are so intelligent.

00:48:44.020 All right.

00:48:46.160 I just got news that my brother-in-law, who we aren't close to, has come out as trans.

00:48:51.140 Because we're not close, should we reach out or leave it alone?

00:48:54.080 What could I do?

00:48:55.480 Man, that's a tough question there.

00:48:57.000 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.

00:49:09.100 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.

00:49:21.220 um and so i think that what you do in that situation is i would never encourage you to

00:49:29.160 call them by you know a name that's different than their biological name from their biological sex or

00:49:35.520 or uh be supportive of what they're doing i don't think it's going to do you a lot of good to brow

00:49:43.520 beat them um i think that and you also have to protect your family as to how much exposure if

00:49:51.000 you have kids you want them to have to that. But I do think it's okay for you to sit down with them

00:49:56.740 and just say, why don't you explain to me how you came to this decision? What happened? And at least

00:50:03.540 you'll understand more. Hopefully, and this happens time and time again, you see a lot of

00:50:08.720 detransitioners. Hopefully they won't go down the road of doing any type of physical damage to

00:50:13.820 themselves. It can't be undone. And I think you just have to pray for them. Pray for the Lord to

00:50:18.580 change their heart right i mean because it's a yes there's some mental issues going on but it's

00:50:23.800 also a heart issue and um i i feel for you i really do i feel for you all right what does

00:50:30.940 your quiet time look like and how do you study the bible during your devotions you know i've

00:50:35.820 changed over the years back and forth on different things um but my quiet time right now looks like

00:50:41.400 this so i get up in the morning and i read a devotion right now i'm reading a devotion that

00:50:46.900 that Tim Keller and his wife did. And again, it doesn't mean I agree with everything everybody

00:50:51.800 says, but it's a, Tim Keller is a pretty intellectual guy and I like some of that

00:50:56.340 stuff. So I'm reading a devotion that he, that he's put together a daily devotion. And then I,

00:51:02.820 then what I do is I read the Proverbs for the day, whatever the Proverbs are for the day.

00:51:09.520 And then we're going, my Lisa and I are going through a couple's Bible study with a group of

00:51:14.580 other people, um, through the Psalms right now. And so there's a daily assignment or weekly

00:51:20.820 assignment. And so I'll try to do those. And then I, um, the last thing that I do in the mornings

00:51:26.740 is I'm usually, I'm reading a book, uh, that has some type of either direct biblical references,

00:51:36.680 or it's something in that world. Like right now I'm reading a book by John Eldridge called

00:51:42.440 Fathered by God. And it's a really good book. Any of you that have boys, dads and moms, both should

00:51:50.020 definitely read that book. It talks about the different stages of growth for boys. And also

00:51:55.940 for those of us that had a challenge with their own relationship with their dad, it kind of helps

00:52:01.920 you think about some things. So I usually am reading a book like that. I read a book that

00:52:08.940 Nancy DeMoss' husband, that he wrote on shepherding your wife here recently.

00:52:15.660 So I usually have a book that's also speaking to me in addition to what I'm doing in the Bible

00:52:20.680 and into the devotional time.

00:52:23.960 All right, and let's see here.

00:52:26.320 As a father with a son with special needs, how do you handle them becoming adults?

00:52:31.800 Well, the first thing I think you do is any of you that have,

00:52:35.720 especially you dads that have kids with special needs,

00:52:38.120 You make sure that you're loving on your wife.

00:52:40.840 So many of these scenarios end up in divorce.

00:52:43.800 It just is sickening, somewhere in the 75% range.

00:52:47.960 You make sure you're loving on your wife and that you're providing her respite care,

00:52:51.320 meaning that giving her a break, she can go get her nails done 1.00

00:52:56.120 or go out with the girls or whatever she likes to do, that you're going in there. 0.96

00:53:00.360 As far as them coming into adulthood, it's a challenge.

00:53:05.440 You always want to do everything you can to see if they can reach any level of independence.

00:53:12.260 Lisa and I, and sometimes that's heartbreak.

00:53:14.260 We've had some heartbreak with that.

00:53:16.100 We've had some really good kind of good things and heartwarming things,

00:53:19.900 but we've also had heartbreak, and you're going to risk that.

00:53:22.660 But you want to get them to the top level of independence they can come.

00:53:26.760 Right now, Daniel lives with us primarily because of his epilepsy that he has,

00:53:33.520 And it's physically dangerous for him to be on his own without somebody close by in case he falls and hurts something, which he's done lately.

00:53:42.660 He's actually had like 20 stitches and he fractured his wrist and fractured his neck all in the last three or four months, which is kind of crazy.

00:53:51.700 But it just depends on what their situation is.

00:53:55.320 And you may have to decide that they're going to live with you the rest of their life.

00:53:59.240 Make sure you set up a Supplemental Needs Trust so that you can put some assets aside from them that don't have a negative effect on their Social Security disability if they become eligible for that or any other benefits that are available that you've paid for, by the way.

00:54:14.440 Don't feel guilty about those.

00:54:15.640 You've paid for those, I would imagine.

00:54:18.440 So I hope that helps.

00:54:19.480 What should churches do about security?

00:54:22.420 Should men conceal carry in church?

00:54:25.320 Yes, I do believe men should conceal carry in church. 0.99

00:54:28.380 I encourage you to do that.

00:54:30.720 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.

00:54:37.100 But, you know, you need to have security in church these days.

00:54:39.920 No question about it.

00:54:42.040 All right.

00:54:43.860 Let's see here.

00:54:46.860 Advice for young patriotic Americans interested in running for office.

00:54:50.360 I encourage you to do that.

00:54:51.840 But the first thing I want you to do is make sure you've worked in somebody's campaign.

00:54:55.380 okay so that you really understand how it works and it's also a good idea if you have been out

00:55:02.440 in the workforce so that you understand what the average daily american goes through and you can

00:55:06.940 really relate to that but we knew we do we do need better people to run for office because if good

00:55:11.960 people won't bad people will there's never a vacuum when it comes to politics or serving in

00:55:17.620 public office why did joseph kent resign he was the deputy undersecretary for something

00:55:24.500 of terrorism, maybe I forget what it was. He resigned because he didn't believe that we were

00:55:30.300 that Iran was an imminent threat and that we shouldn't have gone to war. And, you know, 0.94

00:55:36.240 I respect that. That's his opinion. He can have that opinion, but also respect him for resigning,

00:55:40.340 because if you don't agree with what's going on, maybe it is time to move on. And, you know,

00:55:46.040 who knows how close we were? I don't know the answer. Just like I don't blame President Bush

00:55:51.400 when we went into Iraq because there was some faulty information, intelligence that was given him.

00:55:57.240 I wouldn't blame President Trump if we end up finding out that Iran was 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon.

00:56:04.180 I still want us to make sure that you're protecting and defending and securing America first.

00:56:12.500 And that's what I think that we're doing.

00:56:15.520 All right.

00:56:16.340 Should Christians sue? Is it right to bring a lawsuit against a doctor for medical malpractice?

00:56:22.740 Well, I think you should do everything you can not to sue.

00:56:26.640 All right. And especially if the other person is a Christian, you need to visit with them, talk to them, see if see if you can come to an agreement.

00:56:32.860 But if you can't, then that's the system that we have.

00:56:37.320 The system that we have to bring about justice is through our court system.

00:56:41.800 And in a non-criminal scenario, it's our civil court system.

00:56:46.020 And if somebody's negligence has caused significant harm to your family, financial harm, not just grief, but financial harm,

00:56:55.140 then that person needs to be responsible for that, in my opinion.

00:56:59.100 Again, feel free to disagree on that.

00:57:01.420 It's totally fine, but that's my opinion on that.

00:57:05.160 All right.

00:57:06.260 Well, I hope you've enjoyed it.

00:57:07.520 I've enjoyed being with you again this Saturday.

00:57:09.940 We're getting some really good reviews on that.

00:57:11.840 Don't forget, email me ron at ronsimmons.com.

00:57:15.120 Also, if you want to buy my book, you can email me,

00:57:18.580 and I'm happy to send you an autographed copy of it,

00:57:22.280 and I'll explain to you how to send me the check for $20.

00:57:27.160 Or you can get it off the merch site that Allie has.

00:57:30.620 You can get it off Amazon, any of those.

00:57:32.500 Also, don't forget Allie's book back here, Toxic Empathy.

00:57:35.340 If you don't have that yet, make sure that you get this.

00:57:37.540 This is a really good book on the times we're going through right now.

00:57:40.180 It is outstanding.

00:57:41.540 You don't become a New York Times bestseller because you write bad.

00:57:44.520 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 ｜ TSA Line Insanity： What You Need to Know ｜ Ron Simmons

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript