Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.E.W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by Ron Simmons. The honorable Ron Simmons served three terms in the Texas House of Representatives and Business. Before he entered politics, Ron was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Retirement Advisors of America. RAA is a wealth management company, and at the time of its sale to another investment firm in 2019, managed over $3 billion for approximately 2,000 retired commercial airline pilots from all the major airlines who resided in all 50 states and multiple foreign countries. And then in 2019, Governor Greg Abbott appointed Ron as chairman of the board of Texas Mutual Insurance Company, an exclusive worker compensation insurance provider located in Texas with over $1 billion in annual revenue serving over 70,000 companies located in Texas. And he's also an advisor to the CEOs of the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He's also the new author of the new book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon: 15 Ways to Take Charge and Create a Path to Success. Ron, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_00Well, Darren, thank you for having me. I'm excited about being here and having this conversation.
SPEAKER_01Yes, sir. So you obviously had a very successful business career before you entered politics. But when before you came into business or or or at some point along your journey in business, um, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_00Well, I hope that it was all along the way, but I think there's points of what I would call points of demarcation, you know, where you can really look back and tell. And and um I had left a very comfortable uh role at Anadarco Petroleum down in Houston to join some people to start a new venture, uh, a private trust company, which was the pre-predecessor to Retirement Advisors of America. And our whole idea was we would want to manage money for small company pension plans because that we thought they were being overlooked by the bigger investment world. And uh in our process of getting that started, we were gonna partner with a subsidiary of American Airlines that had an investment, a group of mutual funds. They had their own investment company. And we were gonna partner with them. We would use their investment services to manage our clients and what have you. And we were meeting with them one day, and uh the the head of that organization, a guy named by the name of Bill Quinn, said, Ron, we've got three or four retired pilots that want to use these investment funds as well, but we're not set up to handle individuals. Would you all work with them as a favor to us? And of course, that wasn't on our radar. We were thinking about small company pension plans like mom and pop, you know, uh plumbing company or something. But I said, sure, I was head of sales at the time. I said, sure, you know, I'd be happy to do it as a favor to you. So I called these four people. The first guy I went to meet with was southwest of Fort Worth, guy named Bob Wilson. He comes to the door, opens the door after I'd set up the appointment. He looked like Santa Claus. I mean, literally had solid white beard. And because at that time, when they were actively when they were active police, they couldn't have any facial hair because they thought it was a fire hazard of sparks and stuff. So a lot of times when they retired, these guys said, okay, I want to do this all my life. So I did it. And so anyway, we're going, we're talking. He's saying, hey, these guys really took care of my money well. And when when these when the pilots retired at the time, they got a lump sum of their entire pension. Okay. So it may have been close to a million dollars. And uh there is some truth to never invest with a pilot or fly with a doctor, right? You got to be careful about both of those things. And so um, and so we said, I just want the same people that made my money to help me with, you know, help me with this. We can help you do that. We'll take care of that for you, we'll invest it with them, and we'll help you with your estate planning and all those things. And so I'm getting ready to leave. At the time I was commuting back and forth from Dallas to Houston, getting ready to leave to go home to see my family, and because it was a Friday afternoon, and he he said, wait just one minute, Ron, I've got something I want to show you. He goes to the back of his house, comes back a couple minutes later, and he gives me a list of 1,500 other people just like him that had already retired, that had their money managed somewhere, but probably had a favorable opinion of the AMR investments. And so it was literally one of those moments when I got in the car, I called my wife, and I told her I know what business we're gonna be in. And and it just was like that. And and that's what we did for the next 30 years. Really, we just worked on people like that. So that was the point for me anyway.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so that was a point when you realized, okay, God is really up to something uh and wants to use me in the marketplace to help these people. Um, because that's exactly right. I mean, prior to that, was God sort of like on the back burner or just somewhat maybe um sort of just somebody that you interact with when you go to church or not not in the business world?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that I think that because again, I was I was 27 years old, had two kids and a wife, and I was so focused on what do I need to do to get ahead? Because my background, there wasn't anything in my background that gave me an advantage in that. But I wanted, I was really wanted to, you know, I wanted to be successful, I wanted to take care of my family, I wanted to not have to think about money all the time, right? Because that's what I saw my parents doing, even though they were good people, school teachers, they thought about money all the time because they didn't have enough of it, right? Yeah, or maybe they didn't manage it well. And so I I do believe God was guiding me through all of that as I look back, but at the time I would say it was all about just me, okay, what's the what's the next thing I can do? And this would kind of stop me in my tracks, right? This was kind of like, wow, because I didn't, it wasn't on my plan. I didn't expect it, but it just hit me. And it was almost like somebody tapping you on the shoulder and saying, hey, you know what? Sometimes if you'll just pause for a minute, I might have something even bigger than you're thinking about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow. And what's one of your favorite scriptures related to business and entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_00Well, what I've always tried to follow in my business is try to remember that what it says in Mark 10, 45, that Jesus did not come to be served but to serve. I mean, that's a little bit of a paraphrase. And that's that's really what we're called upon as leaders, right? If you're going to be a business owner or a leader of any organization, your your first mantra has how do I serve? How do I serve my clients? How do I serve the people around me? Even the leader of the family, how do I serve my family? And I needed to be reminded that somebody with a personality like mine that's kind of a what we call a type A that's you know always pushing. Some I need to be reminded that, hey, um, two things. One, I learned early on that there is a God and I'm not it, right? And then secondly, I have to be reminded that it's not about me. Many, many times it's not about me. Occasionally it is, but most of the times it's about how God can use us in some vehicle to further his purpose, not our purpose.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Can you think of a time in business when that was hard to do? Um, you know, because it's it's somewhat easy to serve people when we're getting paid really well, when we're getting treated really well by the client. You know, it's a it's a pleasant experience. I think there's, you know, certainly service in that. And you know, you serve well, you're gonna, in a lot of cases, not all the time, you're gonna get paid well. Um, but can you think of a time when it was when it was really hard uh to live out that character of Christ in it in some interaction with clients?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that for me, the times that it was hard, okay, where I had a couple of those, I had a couple of those times. One, when when we started the company, the the couple of us that started it as the people doing the day-to-day work, we didn't have any money to put up for the company. So we had to have outside investors. And we got some outside investors, some guys that had been in the investment world in New York that were referred to us by somebody else. And we uh we, you know, they put up money, which was incredible uh for them to do that. But as the company got started, and it started pretty quickly and being, you know, kind of successful, we're sitting around one day, me and my other partner, we're thinking, you know what? All we're doing is just making these guys rich. And we need to put a stop to that, right? Because we felt like we were not, that we were doing exactly what you said. We it was, it was just, you know, it was just hard as we felt like we were doing that. And so we decided one day we were going to tell them when they came down for the next meeting that, you know, we need to, we're we're tired of making you guys rich. We need to get to get more ourselves. And uh again, this is one of those things where God reminds you, even through other people. I'm not even, I'm I I don't know that they were necessarily believers, but sometimes God works through that as well. So you better be listening. And so we we had this whole game plan. We told them, hey, we're tired of making you rich. You know, we need in and the the I'll never forget Jim Lewis. He looked at us and he was, he was, he's a he's a dear friend, but he said, We're already rich. Next question. And so we didn't have anything to respond. So it was uh, I think what it was, it was one of those things where again, God was saying, Hey, you know what, just slow down a little bit, okay? Slow down a little bit. And then I think the other time for me was was um when I realized that if I allowed everything in this company to be about me, that it was really gonna own me. And I didn't want it to own me. So one of the things I had to do that was, you know, it was hard because it probably cost me, you know, financially, is to find other partners that I could depend on. But in order to do that, I had to allow them to have ownership as well. And that took ownership from me a lot of times. But but, and and while I that, you know, that was hard to do in my mind of wanting to get further and further ahead, it was the right thing to do because ultimately it allowed me to step away and spend more time on things that turned out to be very important to me as well. And one of those was uh when I was 38 years old, I was able to step away from the business for an entire uh almost two years and spend time just with my family. My oldest was getting ready to go off to college. I could I saw him, you know, grow up in a flash. And I said, you know what? I got to do something different. And uh the Lord really, really blessed us for doing that. Although I'll tell you, I was very nervous about doing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. One of the things I wanted to ask you about as well, you've been uh a three-term uh uh member of the Texas House of Representatives, uh very successful business career. Now, a lot of us business people, we uh we feel kind of content to just I'm just gonna focus on business and I'm gonna, and this is really kind of uh a problem in the broader body of Christ as well, just sort of being disengaged from politics and well, you know, I'm just gonna focus on the Bible and not really engage politics. I'm gonna try to be a good Christian and I don't want to get into the meanness of politics and and all of that, but you've you've walked down that path. Um, what is your your counsel to uh those of us specifically working in in business? And what is our calling as it relates to engaging in uh the political sphere?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I think the my my daughter, who has a uh successful podcast called Relatable, says it the best. She says, politics matter because policy matters, and policy matters because people matter. And so if if we believe that people matter, okay, and people are in business, you know, and then we have to believe that the policies that govern our society matters. And therefore, if the policies that govern our society matters, and that governs not only individuals, but businesses as well, then politics matters because that's that's the way our system works, right? We make we make policy decisions in a political environment, which is messy, no question. And so when I was in business before I entered the political world, I was very similar to that. I mean, I was like a lot of business people. I may have donated to some uh people that I thought had similar beliefs that I did on important issues to me, whether that was abortion or or something business related. But I also pretty much stayed out of the fray, right? I focused on my business. I was doing that every day. I I don't think I'd been to Austin but one time uh before actually going down there uh to be sworn in. So that was, and I think a lot of guys are in that. The reason that it matters and the reason that we have to engage because there's never a vacuum. There's never in policy and politics, there's never a vacuum. So if good people don't fill it, bad people certainly will. And we've seen that over and over again. Those of us that you know uh believe in the in the morality of what the Bible teaches us and things like that, and we believe in um how a society should be run. If we don't have a good example of what's of that, of what's going on today, then we'll never have a better example of that. And so we cannot look away because that's what the other side depends on. And so what I decided was that I I had always been interested in uh events, okay. I mean, I would I I stayed in tune with events, and what I wanted to do when I was able to take a huge step back from my business and had other good partners run it, I wanted to see what public service really to not only my family, but other people that knew me. Because nobody that I knew at the time was heavily involved in politics, right? That we were all about the same and we hung around the same people. And I will tell you, me, just me doing that, I don't know how many people it changed. It certainly was a catalyst for my my daughter getting engaged in it through her stuff. My son is now an assistant U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice in San Antonio. So I think it does have an impact. And I just believe it's very important. And it's also it's probably more important on the local level, Darren, than is on the federal level, because that's the government that touches us the most, like school boards. We saw that happen in Virginia, and you know, where all of this woke stuff had infiltrated the schools and it's happening all over the country. And and finally, uh Christian parents uh have awakened. I won't say they're woke, they've awakened and said, uh, you know what, there's enough of that. We got to get engaged. And I'm really proud of what's happening in that movement.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so we can certainly vote um beyond voting or potentially even running for office as you have done uh successfully. Um, what are what are some of you maybe one or two of your favorite examples of a business person saying, you know what, I'm not just gonna keep doing business as usual, I'm also going to engage uh on a particular issue that's facing my community.
SPEAKER_00And and yeah, is there an example that comes to mind of somebody doing that from a well as this yeah, there's a there's there's a good example, and and uh there's a uh the uh there's a gentleman uh that used to be CEO of Valero Energy in San Antonio, huge energy company, and he was a native San Antonio, but for and he was very wealthy, but the homelessness in San Antonio really had touched his heart. And he didn't really, what do I do, right? Because it's something that for years we've thrown money at and hadn't gotten any better. Well, he decided he was going to do something about this. This guy's name is Bill Grehey, and he went to the city and said, Look, here's my plan. I want to set up basically a community that serves these people and that for the ones that really want to be able to move them from where they are into independent living and all of that type of stuff. And so he created an organization called Haven for Hope. And it's probably the best national model for how to treat people that are homeless and move them through the stages of getting back to self-sustaining. Some of that obviously is addiction that they've had challenges with, some of it's mental illness, some of it's domestic abuse. But that's somebody who wasn't never elected office, but he saw a problem in society, worked with public officials, had to do that, right? You have to work through the, he couldn't just do it on his own, he had to work through that and really has made a difference. And there's uh people that people that support organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation or Heritage or some of these others, these are people that have taken their resources and have said, hey, this is a problem that I've identified, okay, that I think needs help. I want to invest money in your organization to make sure that we get the right policies for that. And I think that's where people that maybe don't have the time or the inclination to be as engaged, maybe as I was, is a good place to look, something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. Wow, what a great example. Haven for Hope. Yeah. If your listeners thinking about doing something like that in your community or looking at a model that works, Haven for Hope in San Antonio. Check that out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, go visit them. It's amazing. You'll never be, you'll never think the same about how to take care of the homeless once you go visit them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so one of the things I know you're working on right now that you're excited about is the release of this new book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon: 15 Ways to Take Charge and Create a Path to Success. Um, what is the significance of the Little Red Wagon for you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I the significance for me, first of all, was something that most of us had a wagon when we were younger. And uh in the first chapter of the book, uh, I talk about an experience that I had in my red wagon of uh headed down a hill and not realizing there were no brakes on a wagon and uh tumbling over and cutting my chin. And, you know, the little six-year-old guy wondered, oh my gosh, I'm gonna die, right? And I think I had one or two stitches. But but as I as I began, you know, as you get to different stages in your life, you begin reflecting, you know, when your kids, you know, head off to college or maybe get married, now we have grandkids and all that. And you just kind of look back because when you're going through life every day, you don't realize what's happening as much. But when you look back on it, you think, wow, it's it's really interesting. And as I look back on my life, and I think it's the same way for everybody, is that is that the when you think about the wagon and how it works or the different parts of the wagon, there's a handle of the wagon, okay? And the wagon, the rest of the wagon only goes where the handle goes, and the handle can turn it left or right or what have you. There's the front wheels. The front wheels follow the handle, but they also can maneuver, right? If you don't hold on to the handle, they'll maneuver on their own, and that could be good or bad. The rear wheels, they don't do anything other than follow the handle and follow the front wheels. Yet if they're not there, if you don't have pushers in your life, you're gonna be dragging and it's gonna be very difficult. And then, of course, the the the the cargo sits in the wagon. And my point about this is that as I look back on my life and I think on most people's lives, is that at different times of our life, we are we we serve different roles of that wagon. In fact, at any one point in time, I might be different parts of the wagon and different areas of my life. So, like maybe I'm struggling spiritually at a particular time. Well, at that point in time, maybe I'm just the cargo. I've I've got to depend on somebody else to carry me through this valley that I'm going through. Sometimes, though, let's say in our in our uh family, I need to I need to grab a hold of that handle. That's my job, right? That's my role. And then sometimes I simply need to be the pusher, right? I gotta follow the lead and just push. I'm gonna do whatever the lead. That I'm following says I'm just going to be pushing. So I think it's a great metaphor for all areas of our life. And we need to know, be honest with ourselves is where we where are we in each section of our life? Okay. Whether it's spiritual, financial, relationship, business, in that wagon. And be honest with yourself about that. Because if you think you're holding the handle in every part of your life, you're just kidding yourself. It just doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow. What a uh what a great example and metaphor. Um so for for somebody specifically in business, uh, what does that look like? Um, what's an ex an application for this teaching in business?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I think in business, what what you would have to say is if uh depending on where you are, all right, like like if you are if if if you are someone that is starting a new business, let's use that as an example, as an entrepreneur, they're starting a new business, all right. And obviously they've had the idea or they've seen the idea and they're duplicating it, whatever. What you have to realize is in that, if you are trying to play all parts of the wagon, it's gonna be a very difficult time. You've got to figure out what your best role is, and then you you take that role and find, but don't find another person that's also good at that very same role. You've got to find the perk people that are good at the other parts of the wagon as well, because it takes all parts of it to be able to be successful. And I think what happens is that sometimes either we try to do it all, which is impossible, or we find other people exactly like us, and we're both all trying to grab the handle, or we're all trying to push. One of, you know, and it doesn't work like that. So that's the biggest challenge I think that we have as uh entrepreneurs because we want people like like the the one of my best partners that I've ever had is a guy named Bart Robertson. And Bart and I in the big picture looked at the world the same way. Okay, we really did. And so therefore I trusted him, but the way that we went about it was very different. And so I knew that if I got off too far in a tangent, Bart would be the one that would bring me back in. And he knew the same for me. And so you if you if you just get people that are going to be just like you totally and you're gonna be agreeing all the time, that it that's you've you've got this extra. You need to have someone that challenges you in a respectful way, and you're able to challenge them, and you usually come up with the right answer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I saw a great example of this as I was uh doing a little bit of research on you. Uh evidently, you and when you were there in the Texas House of Representatives, you started this initiative where you you got everybody wearing purple ties and as a as a bipartisan symbol that you know we're not just blue or red, uh, but we're purple. Um and and so I'm sure that that had some mixed reviews, but uh, what was the outcome of of that?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think in uh there was a good article about it in one of the national magazines that came out at the time. And and I think what it was is it we had the largest freshman class of new legislators that they had had in probably 30 years. So it was that we were probably representing a third of the 150. There was like 40 something of us. And we started it just as freshmen, is that is that, hey, because it was a mixture of Republicans and Democrats, more Republicans and Democrats, but still a good mixture. And you you tend to get along with people in your same class because you've socialized with them and all that. And so I said, hey, why don't we start something? You know, we're doing, you know, red Republican, blue, you know, Democrat. That was going on at the time. If you when you mix those two colors together, they make purple. And so why don't on one day a week we wear purple just as freshmen? We'll make a statement that we're gonna try to work together. We can't agree on everything, work together where we can. And it really just caught on. And so the entire Texas House started doing that. And it didn't mean that we had didn't have disagreements and sometimes heated disagreements, but I do think that every Thursday, when we all tried to wear purple, we it we looked at each other in a little bit different way. And so I just think it was symbolic. And yeah, from some of my friends on the far right, they probably thought it was, you know, whatever, sellout or whatever. But I I thought it was good. In fact, I still get reminded of that all the time. And the funny thing is, you know, lobbyists are funny people, they're they're very important uh for the process because they they have the information that sometimes you need. Lobbyists started wearing purple on Thursdays too during that time, right? So it's pretty it was pretty funny. In fact, I texted the speaker the other day, for the house, because it was a Thursday, and happened to look online and follow them a little bit, and he was wearing a purple tie. So I texted him and I said, You're still doing it, thank you for that. And he just laughed at it. I'm not sure that was the reason he did it, but it was it was funny.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, it's uh it's a great initiative, and I think a great application of what you're teaching about the little red wagon, is you have to find you can't just go through life just with what you know and the way you approach the world, but we need other people, and and certainly we need the standard of God's word. Um, but yeah, I mean, if you don't reach out and kind of invite people, even if they don't, maybe they have a different religion, maybe they have a different um, you know, political perspective, and find what is there, there is common ground in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think that you have to, you know, people you've heard this before, people can't hear what you say because what you do speaks so loudly. And it that's very true. When you're when you're engaged in an area, whether it's in a business where you're with the same people all the time, you know, every day, or whether you're in uh politics like I was for a while, where for 140 days every other year, really, really close environment, people are gonna pick up and your witness is gonna be affected by your actions. And we have to, we just have to remember that. And uh, you know, not I certainly was never uh 100% successful at that, I'll admit that. Uh, but I do think that we have to be reminded of that, that we have to, we have to show ourselves a little differently. I wanted to see in politics and in business, was there was there a place for a person who wanted to be a statesman and who wanted to live by the values that are that were taught to me as a young boy, as a Christian, and as a young man. Can you be successful in business and can you also make a difference outside of that? And I I think the answer is yes. And one of the reasons I wrote the book, Darren, was that I think there are lots of Ron Simmonses out there. If you look at my background special about it, I mean, you know, born in Louisiana, raised in Arkansas, moved to Texas as fast as I could spell it, which was about age 25, because you know, we uh things are slower in Arkansas and Louisiana. I've got a lot of good friends over there. But uh, and my mom and dad were public school teachers. They divorced when I was 17. I mean, there was really I I squeezed four years of college into 10 because I had a family. I was going to school at night. And so I uh there's a lot of people out there like that. And all I want them to know is that look, you can have a journey, it won't be exactly like mine, but it can be impactful. Don't let your past or your circumstances stop you from taking the next uncomfortable step. And it there is a lot of discomfort with that. You have to take the next uncomfortable step. And and that's what I want to encourage people to do.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. I think that's great parting advice. Uh, take the next uncomfortable step. Uh, well said. Well, Ron Simmons, uh, we've been talking with Ron and his bought his book, Life Lessons from The Little Red Wagon, among other things. Um, this has been a really great conversation, Ron. Um, anything else you want to say about where people can connect with you or or next steps to take?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they can connect with me on Facebook at Ron for Texas. Uh, same way on Twitter. And they also can email me at Ron at Ronsimmons.com, happy to visit with you. Uh, get my book anywhere. Your books are sold. It's distributed by Simon and Schuster. So it's in bookstores and on Amazon and and happy to visit with anyone. If you know, if you're a company and you want me to come and visit with your senior leaders and all that, happy to do that. Um, I, you know, it's uh there's lots of stories out there, lots of successful people. I'm happy to share mine and help any way I can.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, Ron, thanks for making us better today. I've really enjoyed this conversation. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.