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

Episode Date: March 21, 2026

Former Texas legislator and businessman Ron Simmons joins "Relatable" to give an update on the Iran war, rising gas and oil prices, and the political fight over the SAVE America Act and DHS funding in Washington. Then he turns to something more personal and timeless: how real leadership works in business, public service, ministry, and the home. Drawing from his own career, Simmons walks through the five levels of leadership, explains the difference between workhorses and show horses in politics, and shares practical wisdom for young patriots, parents of special‑needs children, and believers navigating today’s culture. He concludes the show by answering some listener questions that cover church security, lawsuits, and cultivating a strong spiritual life. Learn more about Ron Simmons and contact him here: ⁠⁠⁠https://ronsimmons.com⁠⁠⁠ Share the Arrows 2026 is on October 10 in Dallas, Texas! Tickets are on sale now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sharethearrows.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Allie's book “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion”: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — Timecodes: (00:00) Intro (00:50) Iran War Update (05:20) SAVE America Act (11:20) Department of Homeland Security (12:40) Leadership Advice (16:15) Leadership in Business (27:00) Leadership in Public Service & Ministry (47:45) Q&A — Related Episodes: Ep 1314 | 3 Reasons Trump’s Strikes Were Justified | Ron Simmons ⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000753771982⁠⁠ Ep 1307 | This Is What AOC Means When She Says ‘Worker Focused Trade’ | Ron Simmons ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000750786201⁠⁠⁠ Ep 1300 | Was the Government Shutdown a Win or Loss for Trump? | Ron Simmons ⁠⁠⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000748662175⁠⁠⁠ — Buy Allie's book "You're Not Enough (and That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.alliebethstuckey.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Relatable merchandise: Use promo code ALLIE10 for a discount: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's good to see you. As you can tell, I'm actually even in a different set today, actually on the road traveling a little bit. But looking forward to this episode that you're going to be listening to. It comes out on Saturday. And whether you listen to it's Saturday, Sunday, or next week, it's fine. It's a pretty evergreen episode.

I think you're going to enjoy it. We're going to spend just a few minutes right at first on a couple of news items. And then I'm going to kind of get into talk to something that's a little bit more I guess a little bit more life and a little bit more to do with your career, your family, whatever it is that you're going through in life right now to talk a little bit about that. But first of all, let's talk about the Iran War. We're in week three now, the Iran War, and the missile and drone attacks by Iran have been reduced by 90%. And so we're continuing to make the progress we want to make.

I listened to a news conference by Secretary of War this morning and one of his chief generals that were participating in the press conference. And they just said like today there's going to be more strikes than there were yesterday. It just keeps going like that. And the reason we're having to do that is because Iran has spent all the money that we've sent them and the money they've made off of oil wells. instead of putting it back in their economy, they've done nothing but try to build up their number of missiles, their missile cache. And so it takes a lot to get that done. And we have also essentially crippled their Navy that will help us in the Strait of Hormuz eventually. And the reason that we need NATO to join us in that is because NATO gets a lot of their shipping going through that strait.

So they need to be participating. Those European countries need to be participating and help us keep that. straight secure so that it doesn't slow down the flow of oil and liquefied natural gas and other cargo that goes through there. Also, there's really no good information on their new leader. Some people, I even saw a deal from Trump that said maybe he's dead, but we don't know. And then Tulsi Gabbard says that their leadership is intact, but again, tattered. Just hard to tell how much they're communicate. We did, were able to kill their, or Israel was able to kill their chief intelligence officer. And so that's a good thing. But again, when you're going into a

conflict like this, their sacrifices are going to be made. We've already known that some of our fine men and women have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the military. However, there's sacrifices for us as well. And it really honestly frustrates me that here people are complaining so much about gasoline prices. First of all, it's going to be temporary. 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 yelling death to America for the last 47 years. So the security doesn't come without sacrifice and protecting our freedoms don't come without sacrifice. And we have to make some small sacrifices at home. And I don't like it. I don't like paying more for gasoline than you do or more

for any other products. But that is what we are called on to do right now. 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, what we're doing right now is a very, very small piece of that. So I think we just need to stay with it.

And we need to realize there's going to be a temporary situation. sacrifice on our part, but it's not going, it's not a forever war. It's not going to last. The oil and gas prices will go back down, and I believe that'll happen, you know, probably the next month or two when things get back to normal. It's not going to stay at $120 a barrel or $110 a barrel, whatever it is as it closes today. 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? The challenge that we have here is that oil and gas is in a world market. In other words, it's not just a U.S. market.

The price is set by the supply and demand all over the world. Also, we do not refine enough gasoline to supply U.S. needs. We have to buy refined product. There hasn't been enough refineries open in the last couple of days. decades, mainly because of some pretty crazy environmental rules under Democrat administrations. And so sometimes we have to ship our oil out. It gets refined somewhere else, and then we bring it back in. And, of course, when you're doing that, you're for sure paying the world price at that. 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. Nextly, the second news item I'm going to talk about is the Save Act, and this has been something that's been in the news. We've talked about it before. It's basically the Voter ID Act. The current debate that's going on in the Senate right now and has been going on since March of 17th will probably last a total of 10 to 14 days. There's no real time limit on how long they can debate. A senator can talk for as long as they want to. Eventually, though, everybody will have said what they want to say. 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. So on the actual bill, which would only require 51 votes in order to pass the bill.

The interesting thing is that the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Thume, just does not believe we have the 60 votes. And that's probably true. We've only got 53 Republican senators, so we have to have seven defections. And we've even had one defection off of the Republican side, and that was the senator from Alaska. And I have no idea how that lady can keep getting elected. I mean, Alaska is a very conservative state, and yet she's probably one of our most liberal Republican senators. I hope somebody up there will run against her and beat her at some time in the future, in the near future. I don't know when she's up for election again.

Also, another thing that I wanted you to be aware of when we talk about voter ID and you hear what, you know, Shifty Schumer says about it, it's going to disenfranchise voters and all that. We talked about that last time that 95% of the people in the U.S. have some type of voter, some type of identification. And so it's not going to be a huge burden. 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. 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.

So this is a constitutional issue. 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. And you think, well, golly, maybe we're the ones that are so draconian in the United States that are requiring that. But virtually every other country in the world requires some type of proof of voter eligibility.

And most of them are voter ID, picture voter ID. Countries like Canada, okay, all of you that think we're the mean people in Canada is nice, their voter requirements are stronger than ours. The United Kingdom, England, all right? Australia, which a lot of you, you know, love Australia, and I get that, but they have to have voter, they already have to have, voters have to have identification and proof of eligibility to vote. Same way in France, same way in Brazil and South America, same way even Caribbean countries,

like Haiti and Jamaica and Honduras, also where democracy was, born, the idea of democracy. In Greece, you have to have identification in order to vote to prove your eligible to vote. And so I don't know why this is such a big issue. I'm hoping that this can come back. I listened to a speech by Senator Kennedy from Louisiana on the floor today. And he's a funny guy. You know, he always has nice quips and quotes and what have you. 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.

If you can help us figure out how to get a Save Act constructed so it would qualify under the budget reconciliation process, you don't have to have the 60 votes to cut off debate. You can go straight to vote and you could pass it with 51 votes. Now, there are some manipulations that you may have to do with the bill in order for it to fit under what's called budget reconciliation. but we haven't even tried that yet. So majority leader Thune, I would encourage you to let's try that. Let's see if we can make it work. The parliamentarian will decide if it actually fits.

The parliamentarian is kind of the lawyer for the Senate. They have one of those in the House as well. 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? We had the same thing when I was in the table. Texas House. We had a parliamentarian, and they had one over in the Senate. So that's pretty common to do. I encourage them to be able to at least try to make that happen. But if we don't get 60 votes, then I don't know where the Save Act's going to go. Yeah, we can bring it back up,

but we still are going to eventually have to have that. Now, personally, I've changed my mind on the filibuster. I think we ought to get rid of the filibuster. And I realize that it's helped us when we've been in the minority as conservatives. But, you know what? All the the people that get elected, they get elected by a simple majority. We run the House by a simple majority. The president's elected by a simple majority. Why in the world would we require a supermajority to get things done in the Senate? I do not agree with that anymore. I used to understand it, and I do understand it intellectually. But you know what? If Republicans can't have 51 votes and the Democrats, you know, have that many senators during those times, I don't, I won't

like some of the stuff we do, but shame on us. Let's win the seats. The majority should rule in every situation in a republic or a democracy. The last thing I want to talk about related to news items is of the funding of the Department of Homeland Security. And again, this is something that the Democrats are holding up. 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. And if you live in a blue state, call your Democrat senator's office. This is so crazy. They think they're doing something to ICE, but what most people don't know, this doesn't even affect ICE or border security. Those were funded through the big, beautiful

bill for the next three years. There's $170 billion of funding already set aside for them. This essentially, the biggest thing is hurts is TSA. 50,000 TSA employees have gone without a paycheck, at least one and coming up on going without two paychecks. This is totally ridiculous. 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. And I think they'll end up trying to cut a deal on this pretty quickly.

And I don't know if they'll say, maybe the Democrats will say, look, well, in this save debate, we'll go ahead and get this funded. Who knows? I'm not sure of what it will be, but I think they'll get that done pretty quickly. All right. So those are kind of the news items that are going on right now. We'll get to some listener questions here in a few minutes. But I also wanted to spend some time talking today on leadership. I've been someone that has read a lot of books on leadership. I've gone to a lot of conferences on leadership. I just believe everything rises and falls with leadership, whether that's in your

family or in your business or in your church or in your relationships with other people. I think everything rises and falls on leadership. 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. And if you haven't read any of John Maxwell's books, I would encourage you to look them up. He's probably sold 30 million copies over his lifetime, if not more than that now.

He's written, I don't know, maybe 20 books. And every one of them, I don't have read every one of them, but I've read probably 80% of them. And they're all very, very good. easy to read, very practical information, but he has considered the number one guru on leadership in the country right now. There's another gentleman by the name of Jim Collins. And those of you that have been around for a while probably know Jim Collins' book called

Good to Great. It's one of the most popular books, business books out there. And I don't know how many copies he sold, but millions and millions and multiple different languages. Well, Jim and John know each other. And they collaborate on some things. And they got together, oh, I don't know, a few years ago. And they both agreed that there are five levels of leadership, five levels of leadership that we all go through. And I want to talk about those today in two different contexts.

What are the five levels of leadership in your business, okay, if you have a business or you in your job, so to speak. And what are the five levels of leadership? in where I, like when I served in the legislature, like in public service or in ministry. They're very similar to each other. And you can also apply some of these levels in your own family relationships as well. So let's take a look. Let's kind of dive into that. And we'll go through those.

And again, if you have questions, you follow up on this, please email me, Ron at Ron Simmons.com. So anyway, I got some outline notes here. Just to remind you, my business career, I was, I was in the a wealth management business. And I helped start a company 30-something years ago, and we managed money for retired commercial airline pilots. We had a niche that when they retired, they got their money primarily in a lump sum. And so they needed to roll that over to an individual retirement account to avoid immediate taxes on it. And we helped manage that. We helped do their estate planning, kind of managed their financial life after they retired.

And I was a co-founder of that, and then we built it up. I ended up being CEO and chairman, and we sold the company at the end of 2019. At the time, we had $3 billion under management, and we had clients in all 50 states and a few foreign countries. So that's my entire, really pretty much my entire business career was involved in that company. I had a little bit of time before that working as an important. employee for an oil company. But my primary career was with, we call it, the name of the company was called Retirement Advisors of America. 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. With the first level of leadership, and again, if you happen to be watching this at home, it might be a good idea to get out a pencil and a piece of paper or even get your phone out and you can take some notes on this. And I think you'll enjoy that. The first level, of leadership is called position like in other words what's your title i'm a you know CEO or i'm a head of sales or i'm a bank teller or whatever it happens to be it's your title now that is the weakest level all right because people don't follow titles they follow people and if you're going to be a leader in order to be a leader you have to have followers because if you're if you think you're leading and you look behind

you and no one's following, then you're just out on a walk by yourself. But what it does is, is it provides you a platform. The title provides a certain platform that people will at least initially pay attention to. Now, when you lead by position, you can get people to obey you. Like if you're somebody's boss, if you're a supervisor, or wherever you are in the hierarchy, hierarchy of your organization, people that work for you or are lower than you in that hierarchy, they will probably obey you, but they don't necessarily follow you. See, because following someone is voluntary, right? If you're my boss, I have to do what you tell me, but I don't have to

believe in you, right? Now, obey. obeying someone, really in order, all you're doing when you're somebody obeying you is you're leading them by instruction, right? You do this, you do that, you do this, you do that. And they go from one instruction to the other. If people, if you're leading people by people following you, then you do that by example. But they won't do that for very long because of your position. They'll do it because of who you are. So don't focus too much on getting a title.

Yes, it does give you a platform, but it's not going to be something that makes you automatically a leader. Right. Just because you have a title doesn't mean we're a leader. Secondly, it's production. So we had position and then production. Production is when we have skins on the wall. And what I mean by that, that everybody knows in your organization that you've done something. You know, maybe if you're in sales, you're with a top salesman, or maybe if you're,

you're in client service, you had the least amount of complaints or whatever it is, however your job is measured individually. What have you done? When I joined, when we started the investment company, I was head of sales. Now, I say head of sales. I was the only salesman, so I was head of myself when we first started out. But I brought in clients, the clients I brought in, I brought in the first $400 million worth of assets from a variety of clients. So, I had skins on the wall. People knew that when I talked about what it took to convince a retired airline pilot and their family to let us invest their money and help them with their financial needs, they knew that I had credibility because I had done it.

And people watch that very closely. You've proven yourself, right? You have to prove yourself in this next level because you can't, if you go from, position okay Ron you're head of sales all right but you know being head of sales and actually knowing how to sell aren't the same thing have you really done it okay yep I've got the title now I've got the production all right and so people will pay attention to that the last thing is is I mean the next thing the third thing is permission permission it goes beyond just your own production which people respect of course but now if you're ever going to grow an organization

and not it all be about you. 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. 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. But for me, I didn't want that to tie me down to that business forever. 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 I didn't want it to be have my name attached to it in the title of the thing and so therefore I want to grow beyond me and when you 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 who wants to go well you have to have their permission to do that because it's not again there if you 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. So what I did is I used my own production, the respect that I got from that, and then I look for other people that wanted to go down that same road.

Because, see, they could look at me, just like they can probably look at you and say, well, you know what? Yeah, he may be pretty smart. Maybe. I don't think he's any smarter than me. I don't think he's any better looking than me, of course. And so, therefore, if he can do it, if Ron can do it, I can do it.

And that's kind of what I talk about in my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. I had three people in the sales area in our investment company that did just that. Ken, Scott, and Jeff. 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. So they gave me permission to help them get to where they wanted to go. And in this next phase, the reason that people give you permission, is because, first of all, they've seen what you've done, and second of all, they believe you can

help them get what they want to have happen. The fourth level in business, five levels of leadership is people development. So now you've gotten permission from them. You had the position, you've been productive, you've gotten permission from people that want what you have. The next thing is people development. And the people development, what that really means, it now all becomes about others and not about you. You move from you to them. You to them. Now, in order for this to work properly, you want to align your incentives. In business especially, you want to align your financial incentives. 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. If not, you need to work on getting those

incentives realigned. If you're helping them get everything they want, it doesn't do anything for you, in the business world, that's not a good deal. It needs to be a win-win scenario. Or if they do everything they want and all it does is help you and doesn't really help them very much, that's not going to last very long either. So you've got to move from you to them in people development. And then the last thing is called Pinnacle. So we've got position, production, permission, people, and Pinnacle.

And Pinnacle is where others lead. It's not just helping them get where they want. It's really you and me stepping back. In fact, in our family, we call it going to the balcony. There's a great little book out there called Balcony People. And it's a book about people in your life that are encouragers. They're the cheerleaders in your life. In our family, we've decided a long time ago that we wanted to be balcony people.

So a lot of things that we have, some of our family companies, in fact, we even had a ranch. We named it after a balcony. It was the balcony ranch. It's the balcony LLC because we wanted to remind ourselves that we want to be encouragers of each other and other people. 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. And I had a good example of that in my business. 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.

And so I had two other senior partners that were running the company on a day-to-day basis. One of them was named Bart, and he was the CEO. And then the other one was John, who was the C-O, chief operating officer. And Bart, unfortunately, his wife had a stroke at a pretty young age, early 50, And it was pretty severe. 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. I need to get out of the business, take care of my wife. So we found some, we found an angel investor to help buy him out.

We didn't have enough money, our personal sales, to buy him out of his ownership. So we were able to buy him out so he could take the money based on his investment in the company and his ownership and be secure in that and focus entirely on taking care of his wife. Well, John, who had not been with the company as long, although we had known him a long time, he was going to step up from COO to CEO. And he had not done that before. And so I became available. I made myself available to help him in that transition.

Now, one of the things I did is I said to make sure, don't absolutely do not. require him to run the company like you would run it. I didn't want to require John to run the company like I would run it. I told John, I said, John, you have to run the company in your style. Your style is your style. My style is different. But I wanted to be there to encouraging, to be available when you had any questions, and that's the way it worked out.

So when you get into the fifth level, you have really backed away and going to the balcony, but you're there as an encourager, you're helping them understand how to develop other leaders, and you're available when they need you. So that's really important. The second list of five levels of leadership that I want to give you has to deal with public service or ministry. And it's really the same five levels. They're just in slightly different order. A couple of them changed places.

But it is a different way you have to look at. I remember when I got into the legislature, I thought, of everything like a business, right? 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. And so when we say, hey, we want somebody to come in and run our government like a business, I get that and there are a lot of good points to that, but it doesn't work exactly that way. 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. All right, but the first level is still position. Okay, so I'm an elected official. I got elected as an official in 2012, and I was a state representative for about 200,000 people in the Dallas Metroplex, 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 position, and it did give me a platform, gave me a pretty good place. platform. People might listen to what I had to say, but they're not going to follow me for very

long just because I had that position. Listen, we vote against candidates all the time, right? You've got political candidates right now or people in public office that you're not going to vote for. So not everybody's going to follow you just because you have that position. It only gives you a platform because you're really not much the boss of anybody. And the position is there, gives you a good platform, but it's, again, it's the weakest level of the five levels of leadership. The second level in this arena is permission. Now, you notice that the second level in business was production, but the second level under this scenario in public service or in ministry, and it really, too, is in your family at certain stages of how your family grows and as they mature.

It's permission. So this is because in public service, like when I was in the legislature, we had 150 state representatives. And so I was only one of 150. The rest of them got elected just exactly the way I got elected. They ran for office. They got the most votes. And they were elected. Not any, nobody was at a greater status than anybody else.

We were 150 equals as far as that was concerned. So what I did, I knew then that in order for me to be able to be successful, I was going to need at least a majority of those people to be on board with me when I had a particular bill up for a vote or debate. I need to have at least 76 of the 150 to pass that bill. And therefore, I had to get their permission, right? Because I couldn't make them vote yes or no. I had to essentially build relationships with them and get their permission to at least give me a fair shake on what I was proposing as a policy. The way I did this is when I got elected, I took the first 70 days that I was in elected office. It took me this long.

And I met with all 149 other members individually one-on-one. It's usually in their office at the Capitol. and I don't know this, but what I've been told, nobody else has ever done that. And the meeting was the meetings weren't about policy. The meetings were about getting to know the person, even the persons that were people that were Democrats. I wanted to get to know those men and women as well. Because I knew they got elected just like I did. And I knew that most of them were in that office for things that they believed in.

And they believed to be right. I knew most of them had families. They had a wife. they had kids, grandkids, whatever. I knew we were a lot more alike than we were different. Now, there were some issues that we were never going to agree on, especially as it came to social issues, and I knew that. But I wanted to be able to, when we were debating on the house floor and tensions get high,

I wanted in my mind to remember what I knew about them as a person. And I wanted them to remember what they knew about me as a person, not necessarily just about that particular debate. And so when you're, and it's the same way if you're working in the ministry, all right, is that you're, most of the people that you're going to be working with aren't people that you can order around. You're going to need an army of volunteers or of colleagues to be able to get something done, right? And that's what happens in the legislature as well. It's very important that you get permission from them. And the only way you get permission from people is to build a relationship with them. Now, the third, part is production. So again, it switched from the business where production was second. It's third here. So once you've kind of got to, you built the relationship, once I'd built some relationships with them, I knew that people would at least look at what I was doing and hopefully give me a fair chance. But they weren't going to really get on board with anything unless they

saw that I was willing to do the work and I had a good idea. In the legislature, we had two types of people. And this is the same way in ministry as well. You have workhorses and show horses. What I mean by that is you have some people that all they want to do is get the headlines, right? Or they want to be in the camera shot or they want to, you know, look good on Sunday morning or whatever the thing is. And then you have another group of people that want to be workhorses. When I got elected, the first thing that I did after election, when I went to Austin before the session, the legislative session even started as I sat down and met with the Speaker of the House, who was actually one of the 149. He just happened to be, have been a, he had chosen by us to

oversee the administration of the House. And I told him, I said, look, I don't know you very well, Mr. Speaker, and you don't know me very well, but I will tell you, I'm here to work, all right? That is what I'm here to do. I don't have any other reason to be here. I've already had a pretty successful career. I've got a good family. I'm here to do the work. And so pretty quickly, I was given the opportunity to work on some pretty important pieces of legislation, even as a young freshman. And so I wanted people to see that I was a workhorse, not a show horse. One of the things that I did, when you join the legislature, you're assigned to certain committees, so that a lot of the work's done in the committee, the detailed work.

And I wanted to be on the Appropriations Committee, which is the budget, decides how all the money spent. and I asked to be on that. I was not on that in my first semester. I was later at my first session. I was later in my other two sessions. But I wanted to learn how the process worked because I knew that every bill that anybody passed that you spent money in would have to go through

the Appropriations Committee at some point in time. So the Appropriations Committee met at 7.30 every morning for about the first two months of legislative session. And even though I wasn't on the committee, I went to every hearing, every hearing. And the chairman of the committee was super nice. He let me sit up on the dais with all the other members. He allowed me to ask questions just like I was a member of the committee. But I learned so much about how Texas state government worked by being there.

And I'll tell you, people noticed me there too. I've had more and more people, colleagues of mine, that when, if I'm in an audience and they're talking to another group of people, they'll bring up the fact that I set in on every appropriations committee hearing. Now, that didn't require that much on my part, right? I was going to be in Austin anyway working, so I might as well get up and get down and learn something. If I was going to be away from my family, I want it to be productive. But what it did is, is it gained respect so that when I did want to talk about policy, people knew that I was a serious policy person.

And it works that way in other organizations as well. It's the old 2080 rule, 20% of the people, do 80% of the work. Now, you may not like that because you say that's an extra burden on you if you're one of the workhorses, but actually it allows you to have an outsized influence. If 80% of the people don't care and 20% of the people are going to do most of the work, then you're going to get more done that you want to have done as opposed to what the other 80 people because they don't really even care. So just think about it that way. Now, the fourth level is people, just like it was in business. You don't really have,

a lot of people that you're responsible for from a direct hierarchy standpoint, but you are responsible for your staff. And everybody that's in the legislature has some staff, just like in ministry, you may have a small staff. And what I found that you do, and this is a little bit scary, but I'll let you guys in on a secret that you probably may not know.

But our state government and our federal governments are essentially run by people from ages 20 to age 30. 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. You don't make as much money, but you want to get the experience. 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. 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.

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, as opposed to a rock where you put water on it, all it does is runoff, right? You want sponges instead of rock. So make sure that when you're especially working with young people, all right, and they're just getting started in their career and, you know, they don't really have any experience to give any wisdom as to how things go. that they are more interested in learning, like I tell my grandkids, how many ears do you have?

Two, Papa. How many mouths? One, Papa. What does that mean? I don't know. It means that you need to listen twice as much as you talk. And that's what you're looking for when you have young people. And then you want to feed into them so that they continue to soak up the information that you have for them.

Now, the last level is Pinnacle, just like it was under business. And that's in a volunteer scenario like the legislature or like ministry or nonprofit or even in your family, sometimes we have to lead our peers through very difficult processes. And that's where you can kind of separate the wheat from the shaft is that it's easy to take people that are obligated to you through the vertical hierarchy. to go maybe a little bit further, but it's very difficult to get volunteers or your colleagues that are on the same level of you to be able to take whatever risk they have to take

to kind of put their wagon behind yours. And there's a couple of examples of this that I had that I remember from the legislature. The first one was a very successful one. In Texas, we used to have something called one-punch voting. 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. Same thing for Democrat. Now, I didn't think that produced very good government.

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

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. Now, if they didn't want to vote in a race, they could leave it blank. That's up to them. They just wanted to vote for the president. They could just do that, and the rest of them are blank. Totally fine. I got a lot of pushback on that. That had been tried before in Texas and had never even gotten, I think, 20 votes.

Well, I think because people knew I was serious, they would listen to me. And so I went around and made my pitch individually before we ever went to the floor. 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. And that's a whole other lesson. But I went around and we passed that with about 90 votes. And it's been a very, very big success. 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. I think you were the right thing to do.

So that really, that was a big deal. It was difficult, and people got some pushback on that because people usually want things easy. Voters sometimes do, and this made it a little bit harder, but it's worked out very well, I think, for Texas. And I think we get elected people that really more in line with our values at every level of government like that, depending on which district that you're in.

But a couple other things I did, I tried to do, that did not meet with ultimate success, but were very difficult to get your peers to go along with. is I was the, I had the very first what we would, I guess you would call it today, no, no boys in girls' private spaces, right? It's the whole transgender scenario and gender dysphoria scenario. As I filed a bill in 2017, we're at the early stages of the conversations about this, to basically prevent that, that, you know, biological boys went to boys' private

spaces and biological girls were protected in girls' private spaces. I got the majority of the Republicans in the Texas House to agree with me on that and signed on as co-sponsors, 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. Now, that was difficult, but I think because people had respected the work that I had done in a lot of areas, they were willing to sign on to that and take some risk themselves. Same way with now. Eventually that passed, right?

I was ahead of my time, but now that's law in Texas and it passed after I left the legislature. Sometimes things you start, you don't get to finish. But sometimes that's where God has you. God has you in the beginning, not always at the end of an assignment. 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.

Lisa and I could afford to get dangling to the best place as possible, but a lot of people can't. 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. In some cases, they're 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. But it didn't get passed either, even though, again, did have, I had the majority of the Republicans on it, 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. And so he never let it get a vote. But I so much appreciate the guys and gals that stood with me on that. And I think they did that, not because they were getting beat up by their public school superintendents and stuff back in their district.

But they listened to my argument, agreed with my argument, and put their name on the bill. Now, that's passed as well. That bill, in fact, a much broader bill passed a couple years ago in Texas, the largest school choice program in the country. Texas allocated $500 million every two years to fund that. And it, first of all, if you hear anything about it, it only helps the rich. It doesn't. It's set up to where special needs families get first shot at it and based on their income,

and then low-income families get the next shot at it. And so it's not about rich people just being able to pay for their kids' expensive private school. It's about people that are in public school systems that don't work for them. If they work for them, they're not going to leave it, right, because they like it. And give them an opportunity to have real parental choice for where their kids get educated. But anyway, that was not the point. The point is that the leadership at that level was done through what I had done on all the other levels. That's why they were able to help me lead them through some pretty hard things.

And I think that I think that's an important thing to do. Now, one last thing on this leadership, and then we'll answer a few questions. And that is if believers versus non-believers, it's going to be very hard for you to progress to the very top level of leadership. if your top leader in the organization you're in 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 particular job. But along the way, as you're moving up that progression of going from position to production to permission to people, and then you're going to really need somebody above you to help pull you up,

that when you get up in those last two levels, you're going to be so, close to those level, the top level leaders that if they're non-believers, it's a good chance that they'll have some flaws or some characteristics about them that you just don't agree with. And in order for you to help somebody else come up or you to be helped up, you've really got to have a pretty similar value system. Now, for non-believers, I believe a believer at the top level can really help. them get all the way to the top 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 and if those people

are believers then they are going to say what do they have that I don't have 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 so just think about that as you're you're looking at your organizations and where you are and where you want to be long-term Anyway, I hope that helps. I hope you enjoyed that. I'm going to answer a few questions here and then we'll wrap it up. But I think that understanding leadership, whether it's in your home or whether it's in your business or in, you know, 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. You really need to understand leadership. And I encourage you to get any of the John Maxwell books that he has out there. You can't go wrong on any of them. them. 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. And so I think that'll be something that you'll enjoy, a 360 degree leader. Now, a few questions from our super intelligent audience. Man, you guys are so intelligent. All right. I just got news that my brother-in-law who we aren't close to has come out as trans. Because we're not close, should we reach out or leave it alone? What could I do? Man, that's a tough question there.

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. Now, I believe, this is my personal belief. that it's, in my opinion, nobody else is necessarily, it's a mental illness, and it's something that Satan takes advantage of. And so I think that what you do in that situation is I would never encourage you to call them by, you know, a name that's different than their biological name from their biological sex or be supportive of what they're doing. I don't think it's going to do you a lot of good to browbeat them.

I think that you also have to protect your family as to how much exposure. If you have kids, you want them to have to that. But I do think it's okay for you to sit down with them and just say, why don't you explain to me how you came to this decision? What happened? And at least you'll understand more. Hopefully, and this happens time and time again. you see a lot of detransitioners.

Hopefully they won't go down the road of doing any type of physical damage to themselves. It can't be undone. And I think you just have to pray for them. Pray for the Lord to change their heart, right? I mean, because it's a, yes, there's some mental issues going on, but it's also a heart issue. And I feel for you. I really do. I feel for you.

All right. What does your quiet time look like and how do you study the Bible during your devotions? You know, I've changed over the years back and forth on different. different things. But my quiet time right now looks like this. So I get up in the morning and I read a devotion right now. I'm reading a devotion that Tim Keller and his wife did. And again, it doesn't mean I agree with everything everybody says, but it's a, Tim Keller is a pretty intellectual guy and I like some of that stuff. So I'm reading a devotion that he, that he's put together, daily devotion. And then I, then what I do is I read the Proverbs for the day, whatever that Proverbs.

are for the day. And then we're going, Lisa and I are going through a couples Bible study with a group of other people through Psalms right now. And so there's a daily assignment or a weekly assignment. And so I'll try to do those. And then I, the last thing that I do in the mornings is I'm usually, I'm reading a book that has some type of either direct biblical references or it's, something in that world. Like right now I'm reading a book by John Eldridge called Fathered by God.

And it's a really good book. If any of you that have boys, should dads and moms both should definitely read that book. It talks about the different stages of growth for boys. And also for those of us that had a challenge with their own relationship with their dad, it kind of helps you think about some things. So I usually am reading a book like that. I read, um, I read, um, a book that Nancy DeMoss's husband that he wrote on shepherding your wife here recently. So I'm 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. All right. And let's see here. As a father with a son with special needs, how do you handle them becoming adults?

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. So many of these scenarios end up in divorce. It just is sickening somewhere in the 75% range. You make sure you're loving on your wife and that you're providing her respite care, meaning that giving her a break, 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. As far as them coming into adulthood, you know, it's a challenge. You always want to do anything.

everything you can to see if they can reach any level of independence. Lisa and I, and sometimes that's heartbreak. We've had some heartbreak with that. 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. But you want to get them to the top level of independence they can come. Right now, Daniel lives with us primarily because of his epilepsy that he has, and it's physically dangerous for him to be on his own without somebody close by in case he falls and hurt something, which he's done lately. 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. But it just depends on what their situation is you may have to decide that they're going to live with you the rest of their life. Make sure you set up a supplemental needs trust so that you can put some assets aside from 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. Don't feel guilty about those. You've paid for those, I would imagine.

So I hope that helps. What should churches do about security? Should men conceal carry in church? Yes. I do believe men should conceal carry in church. I encourage you to do that. 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.

But, you know, you need to have security in church these days. No question about it. All right. Let's see here. Advice for Young Patriotic America is interested in running for office. I encourage you to do that. 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.

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. But we do need better people to run for office, because if good people won't, bad people will. There's never a vacuum when it comes to politics or serving in public office. Why did Joseph Kent resign? He was the deputy undersecretary for something of terrorism, maybe. I forget what it was. He resigned because he didn't believe that Iran was an imminent threat and that we shouldn't

have gone to war. And, you know, I respect that. That's his opinion. He can have that opinion. 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. And, you know, who knows how close we were? I don't know the answer.

Just like I don't blame President Bush when we went into Iraq because there was some faulty information, intelligence that was given him, I wouldn't blame President Trump if we end up finding out that Iran was 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon. I still want us to make sure that you're protecting and defending and securing America first. And that's what I think that we're doing. All right. Should Christian sue? Is it right to bring a lawsuit against a doctor for medical mail practice?

Well, I think you should do everything you can not to sue. All right. 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. But if you can't, then that's the system that we have. The system that we have to bring about justice is through our court system. And in a non-criminal scenario, it's our civil court system. 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. Again, you feel free, disagree on that. It's totally fine. my opinion. That's my opinion on that. All right. Well, I hope you've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed being with you again this Saturday. We're getting some really good reviews on that. Don't forget, email me, Ron at Ron Simmons.com. Also, if you want to buy my book, you can email me, and I'm happy to send you a autograph copy of it, and you can just send, I'll explain to you how to send me the check for $20. Or you can get it off the merch site that Allie has. You can get it off Amazon,

any of those. Also, don't forget Allie's book back here, Toxic Empathy. If you don't have that yet, make sure that you get this. This is a really good book on the times we're going through right now. It is outstanding. You don't become a New York Times bestseller because you write bad stuff. This is a really, really good book. All right, you guys take care, and I'll see you in a couple weeks.