Ep 1321 | TSA Line Insanity: What You Need to Know | Ron Simmons

in a different set today, actually on the road travel a little bit, but looking forward

to this episode that you're going to be listening to comes out on Saturday and whether you're listening to it 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, 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 percent and so we're continuing to make the progress we want to make, listen 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 and there were yesterday 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 cashier 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 removes 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 strait 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 deal from Trump that said maybe he's dead but we don't know and then tells the gathered says that their leadership is in tact but again tattered just hard to tell how much their community we did were able to kill 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 their 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 our making to have a more secure country and not have a regime that has been you know yelling death to America for the last 47 years. So the 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 sacrifice on our part but it's not going it's not for ever war it's not going to last the gas 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 a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel or hundred and ten dollars a barrel whatever it is as it closes today. One more one more thought on the old price because this question came

up from one of the listeners and that is why our gasoline prices are. The challenge that we have here is that oil and gas is in a world market okay in other words it's not just a US market the prices set by the supply and demand all over the world also we do not refine enough gasoline to supply US needs we have to buy refined product we just there hasn't been refined hasn't been enough for factories open in the last couple decades mainly because of some pretty crazy environmental rules

under democratic administrations and so sometimes we have to ship our oil out it gets refined

sure pay in the world 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”

next but the second the second news item I want 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 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 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 the bait and take a vote so on the actual bill which would only require 51 votes to in order to pass the bill the interesting thing is is that the Senate

majority of the senator thumb 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 even had 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's 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 sometime 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 shift the humor as about 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 I mean 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 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 by from their birth certificate or their drivers license or their passport or some type of government approved identification and you think well golly we maybe wear 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 or Canada is nice their voter ID 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 but they have to have voter I 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 vote identification in order of 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 listen to a speech by Senator Kennedy from Louisiana on the floor today and he's a

funny guy you know he always says nice quips and quotes and whatever 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 safe 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 leaders soon I would encourage you to let's let's try that let's see if we can make it work the parliamentary and will decide if it actually fits the parliamentary 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

Texas house we had a parliamentary and they had won over in the Senate so that's pretty common to do

“I encourage them to be able to at least try to try to make that happen but if we don't get 60 votes”

then I don't know where to say that it'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 people that get elected they get elected by simple majority they we run the house by simple majority the president selected by simple majority

why in the world we require a super majority 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 we if Republicans can't have 51 votes in the Democrats you know have that many senators during those times I don't like I won't like some of the stuff we do but shame on us let's win the

“seats it's win the seats majority should rule in every situation in a in a republic or 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 dollars of funding already set aside for them this essentially the biggest thing

it hurts is TSA 50,000 TSA employees have gone without a paycheck at least one and coming up on going to that two paychecks this is totally ridiculous now I do think they're going to end up cutting the deal on this from 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 saved 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 kind of the news items that are going on right now will 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 every thing rises and falls on leadership as most of you know because I've talked about it before I am a follower of a 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 him 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 no Jim Collins is 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 end in your job so to speak and what are the five levels of leadership in where not 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 RonSimmons.com so anyway I got some I got some outline notes here just to remind you my business career I was in the wealth management business and I helped

we had a niche that when they retired they got their money primarily in the 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 manage 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 three billion dollars under management

and we had clients in all 50 states in 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 employee for an oil company but my primary career was with we call it the name of the company it 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 a

first level of leadership and again if you're happy to be watching this at home it might be a good idea to get out of pencil and 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 you know CEO or I'm a head of sales or I'm a bank teller 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 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 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 is a 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 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 be 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 have position and then production production is when we have skins on the wall and what I mean by that that everybody knows and

your organization that you've done something you know maybe if you're in sales you were the top sales month or maybe if 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 your pedestals all right but you know being head of sales and actually knowing how to sail or it's the same thing have you really done it okay yep I've got the title now I've got the production all right and then so people will pay attention to that the last thing is is I mean the

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 listen 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 time 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 so therefore I want to grow beyond me 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 who wants to go 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 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 because they could look at me just like they can probably

“look at you and say well you know what yeah you may be pretty smart maybe I don't think he's 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 happened the fourth level in business level 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 all shows should help

“you where you want to go if not you need to work on getting those incentives realigned if you”

help 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 all it does it help you and doesn't really help them very much that's not going to last very long either so you 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 encourages they're the cheerleaders in your life and 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

in fact we even had a ranch we named it after balcony it was the balcony ranch it's the balcony LLC because we want to remind ourselves that we want to be encouraged as of each other and other people so when you develop people on 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 got 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-on-one's named Bart and he was the CEO and then the other was John who was the CEO of Chief Operating Officer and Bart unfortunately his wife had a stroke at a pretty young age early 50s and it was

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 a 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 want to be there to encourage you 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 go into 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 change places but

“it is a different way you have to look at 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 non-profit 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 positioned 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 metropolitanplex 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 give me a pretty good 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 we vote against candidates all the time right you 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 in your family at certain stages of how your family grows and as they mature it's permission so this is this 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 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 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

it usually in their office at the capital 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 they 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 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 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 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 and the legislature legislature we had two types of people and this is the same way in ministry as

well you have work curses and show horses when I mean about 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 work horses when I got elected off the first thing that I did after

election when I went to Austin before the legislative session even started I sat down and met with the speaker of the house who was actually one of the 149 he just happened to be had 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 showhorse one of the things that I did when you joined the legislature your assigned to certain committees so that lot of the work that in the committee the detailed work and I wanted to be on the appropriations committee which is the budget decides where how all the money spent and I asked to be on that I was not on that 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 730 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 dias 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

it allows you to have an outsized influence if 80% of people don't care and 20% of 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 it's 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 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 it's your 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 there be in 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 run off 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 you're that they are more interested in learning like I tell my grandkids how many years do you have to pop up how many miles one pop up 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 the in a volunteer scenario like the legislature or like ministry or non-profit or even in your family you sometimes we have to lead our peers through very difficult processes and that's where you can kind of separate the wheat from the chef 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 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 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 you're local county official or your local state rip 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 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 okay you don't want to really ever go to the house floor for a vote unless you already know what the votes are going to be and that's a whole other lesson but I went around and we passed that with about 90 votes

okay come up and tell me since then several of them that hey I've changed my mind on that I think you think you were the right thing to do so that really that was a big deal it 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 and every level of government like that depending on what's district that you're in but a couple other things I did I tried to do that did not meet with ultimate success but we're 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 boys in girls private spaces right it's the whole transgender scenario in gender dysphoria scenario is I followed a bill in 2017 to 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 girl 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

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 risks 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 got has you in the beginning not always at the end of an assignment

and the next thing was school choice I followed the first school choice bill that was a serious bill in 2017 because of you know experiences I saw special with people with kids with special needs Lisa and I could afford to get dangling to the best places 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 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 but it didn't it didn't get passed either even though again did have I had the majority of the Republicans on at 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 we 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 is because they were getting beat up by their super you know 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 all right 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 that Texas allocated five hundred

million dollars 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's not the point the point is 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 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 is you're moving up that 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

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 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 hard 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 looking at your

organizations and where you are and where you want to be long terms 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 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 but I encourage it to get any of the

John Maxwell books that he has out there you can't go wrong on any of them the first one that I would

recommend to everybody is the 360 degree leader which is a book that tells you how to leave

“down which everybody that's what most I was wanting to do leave sideways or lead up and so I think”

that will be something that you'll enjoy 360 degree leader now if you 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 alone what could I do and 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 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 brow beat them I think that and 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 want you explain to me how you came to this decision what what happened and at least you'll understand more hopefully and this happens time and timing in 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 there's 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 alright 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 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 that Tim Keller and his wife did and again 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 the Proverbs are for the day and then we're going to at least in our going through a couple's Bible study with a group of

other people through the 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've usually am 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 Elderidge called Fathered by God and it's a really good book if any of you that have boy should dance in mom's boat should

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 used to read in a book like that I read a book that Nancy Demos has been 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 the sun with special needs how do you

“handle becoming a them becoming adults well the first thing I think you do is any of you that have”

special 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 given her you know 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 everything you can to see if they can reach any level of independence

Lisa and sometimes that's heartbreak we've had some heartbreak with that we've had some really good kind of good things and 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 kind of crazy but 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 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 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 shouldn't 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 see here advice for young patriarch America's 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 work force so that you understand what the average daily American goes through and you can really

relate to that but we do we do need better people to run for office because of 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 under secretary for something of terrorism maybe I forget what it was he resigned because he didn't believe that we weren't 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 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 plan to break blame president Bush when we went into our rack because that there was some vaulty information intelligence that was given him I wouldn't blame president Trump if we end up finding out that Iran was ten 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 the doctor for medical male practice well I think you should do everything you can not to Sue all right another and especially if the other person's a Christian you need to visit with them talk to them see if 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 is

called a significant harm to your family financial harm not just grief but financial harm

it's totally fine but that's my pinch that's my opinion 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 dot com also if you want to buy my book you can 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 Ali has you can get off

“Amazon any of those also don't forget Ali's book back here talks to Timothy if you don't have that yet”

make sure that you get 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 best seller because you're right bad stuff this is a really really good book all right you guys take care and I'll see you in a couple weeks