Warring against cancer and sin
Jordan Raynor sits down with Ronnie Andrews, CEO of Oncocyte (NYSE American: OCX), to talk about why it matters that Jesus met people first physically, then emotionally, and lastly spiritually, the impact phone vacations have had on his life, and why the next 10 years of cancer research will be more fruitful than the last 100.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, for the glory of our great God and the good of others. Every week, host a conversation with a Christian who is pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits: and how their faith influences their work.
Today’s guest was terrific. His name is Ronnie Andrews. He’s the CEO of a publicly traded company called Oncocyte which focuses on the development of novel, noninvasive blood and urine diagnostic tests for the early detection of cancer. Before that, Ronnie was the CEO of another publicly traded company called Clarient that eventually sold to GE. Over Ronnie’s 30 years career as a leader in cancer research, he has raised over a hundred million dollars in venture capital, he’s an exceptional leader and entrepreneur.
So, Ronnie and I recently sat down, we talked about a bunch of stuff, we talked about why it matters that Jesus met people first physically, then emotionally and lastly, spiritually. We talked about how Ronnie, remember, a CEO of a public company, can go Friday through Sunday with his cellphone turned off and what the value of those, what he calls phone vacations are to him in his life. And we talked about why the next 10 years of cancer research will be more fruitful than the last 100 combined. I think you guys are going to really enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Ronnie Andrews.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:52.6] JR: Hey, Ronnie. Thank you so much for being with us today.
[0:01:55.3] RA: Yeah, Jordan. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure so –
[0:01:58.6] JR: I was reading my team’s research, you’ve been passionate about curing cancer from pretty early on in your life, can you talk to us about what’s the story that led to your focus on this field?
[0:02:11.2] RA: Yeah, listen, I grew up in a small town in Georgia. I’m the oldest of a litter of grandkids as we like to say. I’m way older than most of the rest and I grew up under the stewardship if an amazing woman, my grandmother who was an incredible woman of God but more importantly, not more importantly but also equally important, she was also had a calling as servant leader and kind of didn’t even know it. And she had cancer when I was about 11 and I watched her suffer horribly with her first round of cancer and she survived it and I remember sitting on a swing, a glider, I don’t know if your audience will know what that is but she and I were on a glider outside our porch one night after all the other grandkids had gone to bed.
She kept us all during the day, all our families mostly worked one or two jobs to make ends meet and I began asking her all about what happened and what did they do. And of course, back in those days, Jordan, you didn’t mention the cancer word, it was the C word and you certainly didn’t mention breast cancer.
She just said, “Hey, you got an aptitude, you’re smart young man and you need to be the first kid to get out of this town and go to college and you go cure this thing.” And so, she and I, kind of laughed about it but she began to pray over me and things happened and I’m five foot five and I was really fast because I had to catch chickens occasionally.
But I ended up playing for my college football scholarship and you know, most people laugh when I tell them that but it was a total God thing and I knew then, she used to tell me, you’re anointed and I’d hear the story of David and Goliath every day of my life. And the idea that I was going to go do something in the cancer world was something that was kind of put on my brain by my grandmother but certainly by the prayers and the Holy Spirit at a young age. And of course, here I am, I’ve been chasing it for a long time. It’s been a very rewarding adventure but one as you know, doesn’t come without challenges.
[0:04:02.8] JR: Sure.
[0:04:03.4] RA: That’s how I got started and I tell her she lived 30 something years with two more rounds of cancer and every time she get it, I’d go and see her, I’d go take her to the doctor, she’d always say, “They tell me I’m going to die but you know I can’t die till your granddaddy leaves me and go to heaven because he can’t live without me,” and she turned out to be right, she was diagnosed, her final time and she told me she wasn’t going to die until he left her and so sure enough, he died and not long after that, even four years into her final cancer and was told she had six months, she actually finally went home to be with Jesus. And so, she was incredibly instrumental in our life and not just my life but a lot of people’s lives and so that’ show I ended up here and it was truly a passion for me.
[0:04:44.5] JR: Yeah, I’m hearing this a lot in stories lately, the role of grandparents. We always hear about parents encouraging specific vocations but more and more, I feel like I’m hearing stories of grandparents having that role which I think is really special. I love what you said, under the stewardship of her, I love that term, right? She saw you kids as blessings to be stewarded by the lord; I love that.
Ronnie, you’ve spent let’s call it 30 years, right in executive leadership positions and what’s called the molecular diagnostics space. Before we talk about Oncocyte specifically, you’re going to have to explain molecular diagnostics to me like I’m five years old, right? There’s a lot of things I want to do in my life, medicine was never one so my intelligence is basically that of a five-year-old. What is molecular diagnostics?
[0:05:34.6] RA: Yeah, you know, most diseases have a genetic and then a protein component, your genes code for certain things in your cells and so knowing the genetic blueprint for instance of a disease and then looking at how that plays out across the various communication pathways within the human cell and then how that actually codes for proteins that create disease, right?
The whole idea of mapping those cellular processes is called molecular diagnostics. Really, to keep it simple, what we do is, we try to work within oncology specifically, we take a cancer and our job is to provide a Google Map of the cell to a position so they know not just its cancer and it came from the breast, it must be breast cancer and burn it down with chemo which those days are behind us thank God.
But now, it’s like, all right, I have all these new therapeutics at my disposal that will shut down communication pathways of bad genetic code so I now need to know, A, what’s the genetic fingerprint of that tumor and how is it coding through these highways that allow the cell to get out of control and become a cancer and it’s been fascinating work, I’ll tell you the last 10 years has been amazing and the next 10 years will dwarf the last 100 years in cancer.
Withstanding cancer and treatment of cancer and it’s why at 61, I just can’t get enough of it. We’re starting to see so many and praise God, we’re seeing so many late-stage cancers even resolve and give hope to those patients and those families.
[0:07:13.3] JR: I was talking to this climate scientist on this show a few months ago named Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, she’s one of the world’s leading scientist on this topic and she was just talking about how from a very early age, she just saw science and religion as these things that absolutely coexist, right? The word of God is God’s spoken word but nature is kind of his revealed express words, it sounds like you’ve had a pretty similar experience, is that right?
[0:07:39.2] RA: Yeah, I have, you know, I was blessed in the human genome, coming out a genome project to be in the world of both HIV in the early day and in oncology when my grandmother finally had her last round of cancer and passed away, I left the infectious disease world and went full-fledged into oncology. I was really amazed, you know, if you look at not to get too geeky here but if you look at Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, there is a component of that theory called reducible complexity and what he basically says is, any biological system can be reduced to a single evolutionary point.
The reality is, we now know, based on our discovery of the Genome Project and how the cell machinery works in oncology, that you have two fail safes. You have a cell repair mechanism in the DNA which is the blueprint that’s unfortunately now coding for cancer and you have a cell repair mechanism that every day, finds those mismatched pairs and fixes them, that you can imagine that if that happens, millions of times a day and your body and my body, we all have cancerous DNA but it never becomes cancer because of this fail safe and then if that fail safe breaks down and there is bad code, when it gets out to produce the protein, there is another fail safe, a QA system built in that says, “That protein isn’t supposed to be built in the cell.”
It pulls its handle and we have a natural cell death mechanism called apotheosis and it comes in and it kills the cell and takes it out before it causes cancer. What we know from the genome project, in the work since, you can’t reduce those to a single evolutionary point, it acts as a system to protect you every day from having cancer. So, you can imagine if Darwin’s theory of reducible complexity was accurate, the first generation of homo sapien would have never made it.
The reality is, you know, there’s someone that I’d love, I don’t know if we could get them to do this but Francis Collins who is the head of Genome Project but also now the head of NIH, he became a very emboldened Christian during the genome process. And he was the head of that project and he wrote a book called The Language of God and it is a fascinating book about how god allows science to reveal the wonder of himself, it’s a really fascinating book but he even during that process, we all used to sort of look to him and we’d see his boldness, despite the attacks from the agnostic and atheist science world and obviously, we look up to him for that but we learn so much that has just allowed us all to be strengthened in our faith.
Listen, I applaud people that can just have that “blind faith”, but as a scientist, I’m just naturally inquisitive and certainly, getting these data under us have been very helpful for all of us to just be even more bold in our Christian faith.
[0:10:28.6] JR: When I had Timothy Keller on the podcast a few months ago, we ask everybody on the show who is the number one person you’d most like to hear on the podcast. His answer was Francis Collins. And good news, this is the first time we’ve said this publicly, we emailed Dr. Collins right after that and immediately, he responds, he’s like, “I’d love to do it.” He’s like, “Hey. but, we’re trying to find a vaccine for the coronavirus.”
[0:10:55.6] RA: Bound to finish that drill, right?
[0:10:57.0] JR: He needs to stay focused at the NIH. But yeah, Dr. Collins has told us he’d love to come on the show so I cannot wait for that. Hey Ronnie, we were introduced by one of my best friends and a member of your team, one of your employees Lee Stewart and Lee, who does not give empty praise, right? Lee is a very thoughtful guy. I was talking to him before our conversation today, he said, you are the best leader of people, he’s ever known.
At the risk of making you blush, why –
[0:11:29.2] RA: Boom, yes.
[0:11:30.6] JR: There you go, why do you think a member of your team would say that, what do you think makes you such an effective leader?
[0:11:36.5] RA: You know, it sounds tight but it really is the model that I watched live out its life in my mother, my grandmother, my dad, I mean, they were all very humble people. They served people their whole life. They always put others before themselves. And at 35, I’ve been very blessed and you know was on the fast track at a large diagnostics corporation and I really just was frustrated with the lack of cultural progress in this big corporation and I told my pastor one day, I said, “I really think I might need to go in to the ministry, I really feel the call.” And he said, “Don’t ever say that again.” He said, “You are in the ministry.”
“God’s uniquely given you the aptitude for some extremely complex science and he’s given you the EQ to really influence people. You need to realize you're on the front lines of God’s daily war in the market place,” and I’m like, “Wow,” when I began to study that and really begin to study the Jesus model, you know, it’s just simple, right?
Jesus met people where they were physically first, emotionally second and then spiritually third. and you know, I had that backwards when I first decided, “All right, I’m going to work on Monday,” after he encouraged me and I put my big king James bible on my desk and come in and of course, nobody came to see me. In fact, nobody wanted to be around me. I was hitting them in the head with scripture. People just have to see your heart first and you have to realize that you know, in God’s economy, we as leaders have a stewardship responsibility that’s much broader than just delivery business results.
Those were important but they’re not the most important thing and God’s economy, it’s about touching people’s hearts and moving them towards the mission that you’ve all been called to do and I have to be honest, I can’t take credit for – I appreciate Lee’s comments but I have to –
[0:13:25.8] JR: I think he’s looking for a raise, Ronnie?
[0:13:28.2] RA: I’m happy to give him one now. But you know, I think for me, it’s just – I’m never the smartest the guy in the room and I know that so I usually go into trouble to be try to be the most humble guy in the room. And I know from experience that organizations that get rid of fear and focus on failing forward, if you like to call it that as obviously a book I’ve read not long ago, but it’s about organizations in our world that have to move fast, this new discovery, you have to take risk and you have to move out because patients die in our world if you don’t move quickly and I don’t any of my employees to be in fear of losing their job because they make a mistake and so, you know, a lot of it is just a servant leader mentality I was raised on and then hopefully refining that with just the model Jesus gave us.
[0:14:12.5] JR: I love that. You mentioned failure, you know, when you’re dealing with something that’s as unpredictable as cancer, I got to imagine you guys fail a lot, right? The failure rate in your industry has got to be extremely high. I’m curious, what do you do, how do you even make sure that your team stays focused on winning the war without getting discouraged by the defeats of those individual battles?
[0:14:38.4] RA: Wow, that’s a really powerful question. For me personally, it’s my ability to recede into a quiet place and close my eyes and either quote scriptures or get on my iPad and pull up my Bible and read something that I know I need. We do lose patients and we lose friends in our space.
But I think the main thing is to make sure that we all understand the complexity of the world we live in every day and that we have in the last 10 years made incredible success and that the next 10 will dwarf the last hundred and I think it’s the promise of just where the industry is. I mean, to be honest Jordan, about 15 years ago, people are arguing and fighting over who was going to get the IP and who was going to get this publication and that publication. Who is going to win the Nobel Prize.
I don’t see that as much anymore. You have to hang out with some really smart people in the world of cancer, I’m blessed to be on the board of governors for ASCO the American Society of Clinical Oncology, they have a program called CancerLinQ and I get to hang around with some of the best oncology minds in the world and one thing I would tell you at that level that I see is there’s not much arrogance anymore, there is a desire to say, “Hey, we don’t know everything we need to know, if you seen one cancer, you’ve seen one cancer and therefore, any input that we can get from orthogonal data sets that allow us to treat that patient’s disease in the biology of the disease, where we take it.”
And that’s been helpful for me to see and gives me the ability to come back and encourage my team that, “Look, we got to keep going and we’re on a mission and that mission, we’ll mourn and grieve the losses that we see and certainly we’ll pray for t hose family and use that as a common ministry. But the reality is, there’s something bigger out there we’re called to and we have to stay focused on.”
[0:16:29.5] JR: You got to take time to celebrate those wins too, right? Just remind your team, hey, look at how far we’ve come, those of you who have been in this space for 30 years, right? That’s a big piece of this. I don’t think we’re good, I know I’m not very good at celebrating at work, celebrating wins, I’m always on to what’s next and I think that’s healthy but I think about the old testament, the Israelites were always remembering, taking time to remember what god had already done for them. I think it’s really important in business.
[0:16:58.3] RA: Yeah, it’s funny you say that, Jordan because I just finished my first year and I came out of retirement to take over a very exciting company and a lot of great things have happened in the year but I put together a slide for our board but also for investors to show just what had been accomplished and I was on an airplane flying by, this was pre-COVID and I had our hit a marketing sit next to me and we were just walking through all the things that had happened and it was awesome. Because that slide, you couldn’t get everything on there, we just start taking things off because you couldn’t read it.
And then it hit me, when I landed and we had my next staff meeting, I hadn’t taken time to celebrate a lot of those things because I’m an action oriented guy and just trying to keep moving ahead and – but you're right, we need to learn because god wants us to take time and celebrate the blessings that he’s, this com headlight, mana from heaven on it since I stepped in the door that day and that’s because I know I’ve been anointed by Lee and other folks of faith that around me and pray for me every day and we do need to take time because especially in a world like I live in where you see people not make it but even though you do your best. Celebrating the victories becomes critical.
[0:18:03.3] JR: Yeah, we have a weekly all hands meeting at Jordan Raynor and company and a few weeks ago, I don’t know, just happen to very particularly discouraging Friday, we have our meetings on Friday afternoons and in between that moment of discouragement in our all hands meeting, I was talking to my wife and I was like, I’m just like super bummed out, I don’t feel like we’re moving quickly enough and she just started rattling off all of these things that my team had accomplished over the past 12 months.
She’s like, “Shut up. What are you talking about? This is absurd.” But I brought those to my team, I was like, “Hey guys, look at what we’ve done,” and it fired them up. That’s a routine that I really love within the organization celebrating those wins, speaking of routines, we talk a little bit on this podcast about daily habits and routines, I’m curious what your day looks like from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what’s the tick tock of Ronnie’s day looks like?
[0:18:51.6] RA: Well, you know, it’s crazy because in my younger years, I didn’t need hardly any sleep, the older I get, I needed six or seven for sure. You know, I’m up early in the morning, I get up, first thing I do is I’m blessed to Rick Warren’s church and Rick talks about every morning he gets up and says, you know, “Today’s the day the Lord hath made, let’s rejoice and be glad in it.”
I get up, I say that and then I go down and get me a cup of coffee and I go sit in front of my bible and my Bible study and I usually spend about 45 minutes. I have three amazing adult children and so, since they were babies, my dad used to say, “Hey, the difference between success and parenting and failure in parenting is really the little extra, right?” You have to be extraordinary in your prayer time and so I – since they were born, I’ve every day prayed for them so I do my Bible study and pray for my kids and now my grandkids.
And then I usually get on a spin bike, these days, used to when my knees – when I was younger, I would run and but now I’m a Peloton addict and so I do that and then I’m using the office by about 7:30, 7:45 and I have a full slate and usually, I try to block and an hour to walk around and just stop in on people, recently we had one of our guys in bizdev and you know, his grandmother was very close to him and so I could relate to that, she just passed away.
Things like just drop in and shut the door and how you do it, let’s go get coffee kind of thing, it’ seen harder in the pandemic, right? Because we have to be socially distanced and I’m a naturally huggy guy. And then you know, I usually try to finish up by 5:30 or six, that’s a habit I got into when my kids ere home so I could have dinner with them. I travel a lot in my space so when I am home, I like to have dinner. And then you know, today, I go home do an empty nest and my wife and I usually discuss the day and we usually cook something together and then she goes to bed early and I usually go to bed at about 10:00 and I’m not much on TV so I am a sports addict. If there’s anything on sports wise, I’ll watch it.
But recently, it’s been more reading and then yeah, that’s my day and unfortunately, I’m pretty boring when it comes to that.
[0:20:50.1] JR: You know what thought? That’s a pretty common theme of the most masterful people I know is really boring, really predictable routines, I’m the same way. You mentioned when we were talking about failure, the first thing you said in your response was really interesting to me is you get to a quiet space, close your eyes.
I’m curious, one of the things I find in myself, especially in recent years is just the need to be intentional about cultivating silence. To think and I’m not even talking about quiet times because our quiet times aren’t quiet, right? We’re reading, we’re consuming information, we’re thinking, we’re praying. I’m talking about just silence, just a walk, do you do that on a regular basis and if so, talk about the value of that?
[0:21:32.7] RA: You know what? I’ll tell you this, I used to not and I heard a sermon by Ravi Zacharias, as you might imagine, the science geekiness, I’m unapologetic and I listened to Ravi a lot and I heard him say one time that sometimes you just need to be silent and listen to god and you know, as someone who, I have ADD, it’s very difficult for me to sit still, much less just sit and be quiet.
I have this thing that I took out of his sermon that he talked about a car that he had ridden that said, “Be still and know that I am God” and it says, “Be still and know” and then it says, “Be still” and then at the bottom in big letters it says, “Be” and so I’ve tried to focus down on sometimes at least 10 to 15 minutes at least two or three times a week in my quiet time just be, just sitting and listening and trying to get my head clear.
To be honest Jordan, I have a list of praise music to kind of get myself into that moment. In my mind, when I wake up in the morning, I got a thousand things I am thinking about and I mean Satan uses the busyness to compete with the solidarity that God wants us to have and I think the whole world would be better off, it would be a lot less stress if we were able to tune out the world and tune into God and just sit and bask in His greatness at least for 10 to 15 minutes a day.
[0:22:49.2] JR: Yeah, I think it is the difference between hearing God’s voice and listening to God’s voice, right? We all say this to our kids, “Hey, there is a difference between hearing me and listening to me,” and to be clear and I always get weird when people talk about listening to God’s voice like listen, God has spoken to us in the person of Jesus Christ and through His word. That’s how he’s spoken to us and we hear that word, we read that word. But we listen to His words and how it’s connected to our daily lives when we are still. We are silent where Jesus did in the wilderness for 40 days right? He started His ministry in silence.
[0:23:24.3] RA: And you think about that and how hard our busy world – you know I don’t know about your listeners but I found it really helpful to take phone vacations. I am not a big social media guy anyway but I take phone vacations. I put it down on Friday night at six and I just tell my wife, “I am not going to pick it up until Monday,” and man, it is liberating and it takes me more. The fear of missing out happen all Friday night and Saturday morning.
And then my kids know how to get a hold of us of course if something happened but boy, by Sunday morning I am actually feeling like, “Wow, okay I can do this you know,” and anyway it’s helpful. You can do it every week, I get it but then I don’t want to sound like I am not good at that but that has helped me get focused and quiet at times.
[0:24:07.6] JR: All right let me ask you this, out of all the times you’ve done that because I think people’s number one fear with this is I am going to miss something urgent. The world needs me to always be on. Listen, I struggle with this, right? I am very familiar with this argument. How many times has there been something truly urgent that you really needed to respond to that you missed because of that phone vacation?
[0:24:29.8] RA: Totally honest? Never.
[0:24:31.9] JR: Never. I believe it a 100%. I hope our listeners believe it because this is what I tell people it’s like it never happens.
[0:24:38.5] RA: You know what? I will tell you this, I had someone on our board tell me one time and this was in my Clearant years when we were building my first company out here and they said something to me, I was really mentally and physically exhausted from just carrying a small startup company that ultimately turned out to be just a terrific win and GE healthcare acquired it and it was a great win for all company shareholders but I’ll tell you in the early days it was like you strap it on your back and carry it up the hill.
And they told me one time because I was 24/7 and my marriage, I have an amazing wife and she’s just loyal and she’s moved 14 times in 35 years and she’s truly an amazing lady with lupus and fights it with grace every day. And so, I am blessed in that way but you go through times where you take that for granted and he told me, he said, “Ronnie, if you don’t have time to be with your wife on your anniversary, they are not paying you enough” and I laughed.
And I said, “Oh” and he says, “By the way, we think that we are paying you enough.” He was a board member. So, the point was, it was my fault because I didn’t balance my time and I think that is the hardest thing when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re in the middle of the fight every day, you know you get high on the heroin of adrenalin and just the deals and getting things done and you need to unplug because that’s Satan’s way of creating relational challenges for you and you need to be aware of that.
[0:26:03.9] JR: Amen. So, we talked a few minutes ago about how your leadership is different because of your apprenticeship to Jesus Christ. Outside of that, I am curious if there is anything else that you can point to that you’d say, “You know what? I think this might be different about Oncocyte if I wasn’t following Jesus” what would be different about the company do you think?
[0:26:26.4] RA: Oh my gosh, everything, right? I mean to be honest, I can’t compartmentalize Jesus in my life and so He is wherever I am and these businesses, He is always there and sometimes because we’re public I can’t be as bold about it but I can always live it, right? And so, I would say this, I would say that our focus would be on financial returns only and not on the return of patients to health. Our focus would be on how do we get ahead individually versus how does the team win and get ahead.
I would say that the ultimate mission of the company would be to make our shareholders as much money as they can even if that meant crossing, that sort of grey zone of integrity as a company. I mean we just recently had a challenge. We had a product that was a legacy product that I inherited. We got two great products on the market today. This was still about two years out and it was in a clinical trial and the clinical trial, we didn’t meet our endpoint.
It doesn’t mean the product failed, it just means we didn’t meet our endpoint and I went public with that and explained why and we took a bath in the public markets and I’ve had investors say, “Why did you do that? You don’t have to go be that honest and that transparent,” and I felt when I am listening to them, how can they say that? I mean it’s all about integrity and honesty and I hope that as we built this company on that foundation that investors will appreciate that about us.
But all of that would be different had we not built this on the foundation of Jesus and certainly servant leadership that He modeled for us.
[0:28:00.1] JR: That’s a terrific practical example. So, you spent your entire career working on this massive problem, right? I can’t think of a more massive problem to be working on professionally. You know as Christians, we know there is coming a day when cancer will be eradicated for good, right? When we dwell on the new earth with Jesus as King. What impact does that future hope, this unknown date, that future hope have on your work right now today?
[0:28:30.9] RA: Yeah, look I think it accelerates our desire to be a part of that and to be on the cutting edge and did get out a little bit out of our skis and to be a little bit more bold in some of the research we do and some of the actual globalization that we’re embarking on now to take what we do and take it globally but I also think too, to me personally and I think to the core, Lee included, we get up every day and think about God’s economy.
And solving the mystery of cancer is certainly part of God’s economy in many ways in terms of reducing the suffering. But God’s economy is about parts that discover him and want to know more about him and ultimately become part of his family. And for me, you know whether I have cancer to cure or not, let’s praise the day it happens where we no longer have cancer or we have it and it can be cured easily. Trust me, I got to have more work for me and it will be something different. And I hope something equally as exciting.
But that’s why I think the foundation of servant leadership is important to me because my job is to help the next generation and the next generation stand up in a market, in a world that really doesn’t appreciate the importance of faith necessarily and certainly doesn’t understand the importance of the faith-based values that underpin so many of us in the market place. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of closet Christians that really are afraid to speak out.
Because they don’t want to lose their job and you know I think as we move forward creating programs to embolden them and make them feel comfortable that’s okay to be courageous about your faith as long as you are telling your story and you’re not being judgmental about someone else’s situation that’s been the new ounce for me as a marketplace minister is I mean no one can take away my testimony. It is my testimony, right? What they can do is be offended when I convict them of things they’re doing because I am becoming judgmental.
And I think that is one of the biggest challenges Christian leaders have is when you just lead with the example of versus you actually step over and began to coach and be critical the way they’re living and that’s a challenge for us in the marketplace but something that I think as we move forward in servant leadership, it becomes more and more pervasive, which I am sure you have seen articles now and our business review and slow management review, where these leaders that lead with servant spirits their companies do way better.
And so I just have a lot of hope that the marketplace that we are in and the workplace is really the largest I think ministry opportunity at least in the industrialized world that we have today. You know harvest is plenty but the workers are few. So, I just pray that the people that hear this podcast will step up and find their own niche and how they do it in their own personality but we need to not step back and let the world devalue the importance of faith in the marketplace.
[0:31:22.1] JR: Yeah, amen. You’ve mentioned servant leadership a few times. I think you are right. It is becoming quite a popular phrase. And I think as terminology gets popularized like this term has been, it can lose a lot of its meaning. So, you talked about a few minutes ago, how do you define it and what does it look like to you to model servant leadership after Christ?
[0:31:43.8] RA: A couple of things. One, as I said, you know Jesus’s model is pretty simple and that people where they were physically first that include touching the leper, that included being touched by the woman in the crowd and feeling that touch. So, he was a man of incredible sensitivity to those around him. Then he would have connect emotionally and he was a preacher and he was the son of God. He could have easily been that and then spiritually. He led that in that methodology on purpose.
So, I think the essence of servant leadership is really being willing to serve people, being humble. I like to say around here, our job is when you lead is to not be fear based but to allow people to be fearless and how they execute their job every day. There is no public hangings in my companies and you know the companies that I have built or any of the divisions I’ve led of those companies. We just don’t do public sacrifice, right?
If somebody is not doing the job that is a one-on-one discussion typically and no one loses their job in a way that demeans them or takes away their self-esteem and we used to call it in the Clariant world when we built Clariant, it was the Clariant way and certainly here in Oncocyte already, you know there is a way to help people find God’s calling in your life and you don’t have to call it a termination. You are not firing them, right? You are not walking them out the door and those kind of things or little things.
But I think one of the greatest books that I have read on this topic and I’ve been blessed to sit on some panels, the servant leadership panels with Ken Blanchard is Lead like Jesus. It’s really a great book of what it means to be a servant leader and Jordan, you mentioned I mean this and when I use the word servant leader, you know I’ve got people that their hair goes up in their neck. I live in California and it’s very edgy and terminology out here and all of that sounds very preachy.
And I am like, “Well, maybe but let me walk into the attributes,” and I will usually start with this. In fact, I am blessed to get asked to speak at MBA programs and I will never forget there. I will let the university remained unnamed but you might imagine, there weren’t very many men or women of faith in the MBA class I spoke to but I always talked about who is the greatest leader and you know you will hear all the names, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington.
You will hear all of those and I always say, “Would you agree with me though that a person that took 12 people with no skills and in three years, He gave them a vision. He mentored them not manage them, He mentored them and the He set them off on the greatest business of adventure the world. We had one dropout, He had to replace that person but in 2000 plus years it is the only enterprise that has grown every year. Would you agree that’s sustainable leadership?”
And even in those agnostic environments no one denies that and they all want to know, “Who is that?” “Well, it’s Jesus.” And I always tell them, “Today, we are not going to debate the deity. I am happy to stay afterwards and do that. Today, we are going to focus on the leadership principles that Jesus gave His 12 followers that change the world.” And that usually defuses sort of this, “Oh, he is going to preach to us” and we really get into those leadership qualities of Christ.
And once you dig into them, you know it is pretty important and the fact that most people want to lead like that is helpful as well.
[0:35:01.2] JR: I love that. So you retired a few years ago, right?
[0:35:04.9] RA: Yeah.
[0:35:05.4] JR: Started a winery and one of my favorite parts of the world in Healdsburg. How do you think about retiring now? I mean you are back in the game, right? How are you thinking about this popular topic?
[0:35:15.4] RA: Yeah, you know here is a life lesson there for the listeners. You know God had afforded me an amazing number of years of success and you know my wife and I try to do all the right things with the rewards of stewardship through the years but I got selfish and went off and said, “Hey, I am going to do this sort of wine thing,” and I quickly realize that those people that say the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a big one.
They were right and I don’t know why I thought I was never good enough to defy reality that that is not a business where you can make money unless you have a really, really lot of money.
[0:35:47.1] JR: It’s tough.
[0:35:47.6] RA: Yeah, it is tough but listen, long story short, I realize that God, it didn’t take me long about two years in and I was unsatisfied. I didn’t feel like I was still fulfilling God’s mission and I realized that I needed to get back in the game. And the team at ASCO had called and asked if I would come and be an adviser and help them figure out the world of genomics and cancer and how to basically democratize it, right? There is a disparity between academic care and community care.
Even today when we are trying to fix that. But once I got started up, I thought that would be enough and you know what, Jordan? It just wasn’t enough. When Jesus has called you to something, then it is lifelong compelling as for me is my desire to see patients not suffer anymore. I just had to get back in and one thing led to another. The next thing I know, you know God opened the door I wasn’t even expecting and here I sit. So, for me, it is a blessing.
I love being back at work. I often think of one of my – I love Charles Stanley, I grew up in Atlanta and I remember a sermon. At 80 years old he gave about the psalm or talks about the cedars of Lebanon and in the old days it would cast shadows and shade and be strong and full of wisdom and I realize you know what? I am not sure, my mother is 82 and still works. I am not sure it’s meant for me to retire. So you know what? For me it is not working because I get to get up and go do what God calls me to do every day and to be that my work that is doing God’s call.
So, I am crazy a little bit, I have unlimited energy thanks to God. I don’t have many gifts but energy is one of them and I just say this that my best days are still ahead of me. I believe in terms of my ability to witness and my ability to minister and my courage is stronger than ever because I have been blessed with incredible success. I mean I didn’t do a whole lot. God ordained that and my grandmother must be sitting right next to Jesus because things happened to me that I can’t believe.
Because I get called the Forrest Gump of diagnostics a lot because A, because of my accent and B, because you know what? I am usually the dumbest guy in the room and God allows good things to happen. So, for me, I am excited to be back and I would just challenge anyone that things about retirement. If you are a person of faith and you’re deeply rooted in God’s calling, you may retire from your vocation but you’ll never going to retire from your calling and you just have to figure out where you play that in.
[0:38:03.5] JR: Yeah, I think that’s right. I’ve been wanting to study this issue Biblically for a long time. I am not convinced retirement as we typically define it, hanging up the cleats and sitting back and vacation for the rest of our lives. I am not convinced this is Biblical. I am not convinced that it is or isn’t, right? It is something that I want to dive more deeply but I know for me, it ain’t in the card, right? It is just not in the cards and part of that is energy but part of that is just, I don’t know, I feel so long as the Lord is giving me breath in my lungs, I want to continue doing this work.
[0:38:35.9] RA: I agree man. I agree.
[0:38:37.6] JR: So hey Ronnie, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you in general, I know everybody has specific reading recommendations for specific people but in general, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently to others?
[0:38:51.7] RA: Yeah, you know the first one is one that people look at me and they say, “Really?” it is a book called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. It’s an old book, you sound like you read it and you know. In my younger years I used to think God had this big grand plan that I needed to wait on that and what I learned through my first time through Henry Blackaby’s book is God’s at work every day. Our job is to see where He’s at work and go there and be useful and that is part of His will.
Yeah, He has a big will for life and a big calling but every day there are little things where we can go and offer the touch of Jesus and we need to recognize that and be aware of that. So that’s one. You know I mentioned Lead like Jesus by Ken Blanchard but I also love John Maxwell and his leadership book. You know there is The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork and I give those out a lot because being a servant leader and establishing high performing teams honestly is the only way good commerce happens and too often people’s egos get in the way and so for me, those are kind of my go-to’s.
[0:39:58.4] JR: You really are a good Atlanta boy. Come on, John Maxwell, the Blackaby’s, I love it. It’s been years since I’ve read Experiencing God but I remember loving that. I am going to go back and re-read it and guys –
[0:40:09.1] RA: Back up, you know it’s real you know? It is happening today, stuff is going on and we’re sitting at a pandemic but you can still see people that need Jesus and you can go where God is working and go help Him.
[0:40:19.2] JR: Amen, you guys can find those books right now at jordanraynor.com/bookshelf. Hey Ronnie, who would you most like to hear talk about their faith influences the work in this podcast? Talk about Keller’s answer and Francis Collins. What’s your input?
[0:40:31.9] RA: Yeah, I just gotten in Francis. I’ve listened. Where the world is and where the science world is today and of course, I am a science geek but I would love to hear Francis Collins. I think everyone will be blessed by listening to a man that is the top scientist in the world and has been in the face of incredible fire through this pandemic stand up and talk to you about his faith and how he keeps going. It’s got to be fantastic.
[0:40:55.4] JR: We’ll get him on here. Last question, one piece of advice, you have given a lot already but one piece of advice to leave this audience with who like you is just trying to do their best for the glory of God and the good of others, they’re in a bunch of different vocations, what do you want to leave them with?
[0:41:09.0] RA: Get an accountability group around you. It is not easy. The world pulls you in different ways and it is easy to compromise the value system that we hold so dear as Christians. And so, what I was recommended a long time ago and I did it and boy, am I glad I’ve had four people that I’ve had around me now for 20 years that know me better than anybody outside of my wife who have the right to walk in my office. Will call me, “Hey, you’re getting too big for your bridges. Your head is not in this, you need to wake up. You know what are you doing this for? What are you that for?”
Even things like, “Ronnie, we’re at dinner at this came out of your mouth,” and it is not that I want to be micro managed but when you say and profess to be a Christian leader and a servant leader, the world is watching because they want to see you fail because they want to prove that you’re no different and that your faith is no different and so having an accountability group that can do that but more importantly and Ken says, it’s Ken Blanchard.
He says, “When you are a servant leader, you’re an energy giver. The world will take all of that energy, you got to have somewhere to go and plug in and recharge your battery” and sure there is the scripture and there’s time with God but there is also the community that you need to plug into and so having that accountability group that will hug you and tell you, “Hey, you may have messed up but God loves you and you are still annoying” and that is an important thing. So find three or four people that you’ll allow to tell you the truth about you and it’s been a real powerful thing for me.
[0:42:33.3] JR: Do you know Greg Brenneman?
[0:42:34.8] RA: I don’t.
[0:42:35.5] JR: So, Greg’s wicked impressive. He is the turnaround CEO of Continental Airlines back when Continental made their big return that he did at Burger King. Interestingly enough, I was just talking to Greg on the podcast. He had basically the exact same advice. I was really taken aback by how important that was to him and to you. So, I thank you for sharing that.
Hey, Ronnie, I just want you to commend you for the exceptional redemptive work you do every day in the world. Thank you for fighting to eradicate cancer. This great artifact of sin and thank you for doing work that just serves as a sign post right? To the day in which Jesus will finish our work and put everything in creation back into order. Hey, if you guys want to learn more about Ronnie’s work, you can find out about Oncocyte at oncocyte.com.
Ronnie, thank you again so much for joining us.
[0:43:27.8] RA: Jordan, thank you and blessings to your listeners and it’s really been an honor to be on here. So, thank you for the time.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:43:34.5] JR: Love that conversation, yes we are still working on Dr. Collins to get him on the podcast. I can’t wait for that conversation. Hey, if you are enjoying the show, make sure you subscribe to the Call to Mastery so you never miss an episode in the future. If you are already subscribed, take 30 seconds right now and go leave a review of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening. I’ll see you next week.
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