Ronnie Andrews (CEO of Oncocyte)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. 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 God and the good of others. Every week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their 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, non invasive 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 the GE. Over Ronnie's 30 year career as a leader in cancer research, he's raised over $100 million 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 cell phone turned off and what the value of those, what he calls phone vacations are to him and 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. Hey, Ronnie, thank for being with us today.

Yeah, Jordan, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. So.

So 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?

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. And I'm way older than most of the rest. And I grew up under the stewardship of 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 a 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 on a porch one night after all the other grandkids had gone to bed. And 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. You meant it was the C word. And you certainly didn't mention breast cancer. So she just said, hey, you got an aptitude. You're a 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 on a 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. You know, I've been chasing it for a long, long time, and it's been a very rewarding adventure, but one that, as you know, doesn't come without challenges. So.

Sure.

But that's how I got started. And I tell Everybody she lived 30 something years with two more rounds of cancer. And every time she get it, I'd go and see her or 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, goes to heaven, because he can't live without me. And she turned out to be right. I mean, 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. But she was incredibly instrumental in our life, and not just my life, but a lot of people's lives. And so that's how I ended up here. And it is truly a passion for her.

Yeah, I'm here. Been 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. And 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. So, Ronnie, you've spent, let's call it 30 years, right, in executive leadership positions in what's called the molecular diagnostics space.

Right.

So 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?

Yeah, you know, most diseases have a genetic and then a protein component. Your genes code for certain things in your cells. And 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. And so the whole idea of mapping those cellular processes is called molecular diagnostics. And so 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 physician. So they know not just it's 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 very 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, understanding 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 to those families.

I was talking to this climate scientist on the show a few months ago named Dr. Catherine Hayhoe. She's one of the world's leading scientists on this topic. And yeah, 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 expressed word. It sounds like you've had a pretty similar experience, is that right?

Yeah, I have. You know, I was blessed in the human genome, you know, coming out of the genome project, to be in the world of both HIV in the early days and then oncology. When, you know, my grandmother finally had her last round of cancer and passed away, I left the infectious disease world and went full fledged into oncology. And 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's a component of that theory called reducible complexity. And what he basically says is any biological system can be reduced to its single evolutionary point. And 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 unfortunately now coding for cancer. And you have a cell repair mechanism that every day finds those mismatched pairs and fixes them. You can imagine that if that happens millions of times a day in 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's another fail safe, a QA system built in that says that protein isn't supposed to be built in this cell and it pulls its handle. And we have a natural cell death mechanism called apoptosis, and it comes in and kills the cell and takes it out before it causes cancer. And what we know from the genome project and 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 sapiens would have never made it. So the reality is, and you know, there's someone that I'd love, I don't know if we could get him to do this. But Francis Collins, who was the head of the genome project, but also now the head of the 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 learned so much that has just allowed us all to be strengthened in our faith. Listen, I applaud people that can just have that, quote, unquote, 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.

So when I had Timothy Keller on the podcast a few months ago, we asked everybody on the show, who's 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 responded. He's like, I'd love to do it.

Yeah.

He's like, hey, but we're trying to find a vaccine for the coronavirus.

To finish that drill, right?

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. So. 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's a very thoughtful guy. I was talking to him before our conversation today. He said, quote, you are the best leader of people he has ever known. So at the risk of making you blush, 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?

You know, it sounds trite, but it really is the model that I watched live out its life. And 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, you know, I've been very blessed and, you know, was on the fast track at a large diagnostics corporation, and I really, one 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 into the ministry. I really feel the call. And he said, don't ever say that again. He said, you are in the ministry. He said, God's uniquely given you the aptitude for some extremely complex science, and he's given you the EQ to really influence people, and you need to realize you're on the front lines in God's daily war in the marketplace. And I'm like, whoa. And so when I began to study that and really began 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 go 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. But 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 delivering business results. And those are 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.

I think he's looking for a raise. Ronnie.

Yeah, he may be, and I'm happy to give him one now. But, you know, I think for me, it's just I'm never the smartest guy in the room, and I know that. So I usually go in to try 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. It's obviously a book I've read not long ago, but it's about organizations in our world that have to move fast. It's 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 want any of my employees to be in fear of losing their job because they make a mistake. And so a lot of it is just the servant leader mentality I was raised on, and then hopefully refining that with just the model Jesus gave us.

No, I love that. So you mentioned failure. You know, when you're dealing with something as unpredictable as cancer.

Yeah.

I gotta imagine you guys fail a lot. Right. The failure rate in your industry has got to be extremely high. So I'm curious, what do you do? How do you ensure that your team stays focused on winning the war without getting discouraged by the defeats of those individual battles?

Wow, that's a really powerful question. You know, for me personally, it's my ability to recede into a quiet place and close my eyes and either quote a scripture or get on my iPad and pull up my Bible and read something that I know I need. We do lose patience 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 were arguing and fighting over who was going to get the IP and who's going to get this publication, that publication, who's going to win the Nobel Prize. I don't see that as much anymore. I get to hang out with some really, 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 CancerLink, and I get to hang around 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's a desire to say, hey, we don't know everything we need to know. If you've 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 and 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 will mourn and grieve the losses that we see. And certainly we'll pray for those family and use that as a time of ministry. But the reality is there's something bigger out there. We're called to and we have to stay focused on.

You got to take time to celebrate those wins, too, right? Like, just remind your team, hey, look at how far we've come. Those are in this space for 30 years. Right. That's a big piece of this. And 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.

Funny you say that, Jordan, because I just finished my first year. I came out of retirement to take over a very exciting company. And a lot of great things have happened in a 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 head of marketing sitting 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. 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 I just try to keep moving ahead. But you're right, we need to learn because God wants us to take time and celebrate the blessings that He's. This company's had like manna 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.

Yeah, so we have a weekly all hands meeting at Jordan Rayner and company. And a few weeks ago, I don't know, I was just having a 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 in the past 12 months. She's like, just shut up. Like, 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. If I Don't. 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, the moment you go to bed. What's the TikTok of Ronnie's day look like?

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. So, yeah, you know, I'm up early in the morning, I get up, first thing I do is I'm blessed to go to Rick Warren's church. And Rick Rick talks about every morning he gets up and says, you know, today's the day Lord hath made. Let's rejoice and be glad in it. So I get up, I say that, and then I go down and give me a cup of coffee, and I go sit in front of my Bible and my Bible study, and I usually spend about 4, 45 minutes. I have three amazing adult children. And so since they were babies, my dad used to say, hey, the difference between success in parenting and failure in parenting is really the little extra, right? You have to be extraordinary in your prayer time. And so I, you know, since they were born, I every day pray 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, you know, I was younger, I would run and. But now I'm a peloton addict, and so I do that. And then I'm usually in the office by about 7:30, 7:45, and I have a full slate. And usually I try to block an hour to walk around and just stop in on people. I mean, recently we had one of our guys at Biz Dev, his grandmother was very close to him. Certainly I can relate to that. She just passed away. So things like just drop in and shut the door and how you doing? Let's go get coffee kind of thing. It's been harder in the pandemic, right, because we have to socially distance, and I'm a naturally huggy guy. And then, you know, I usually try to finish up by 5:30 or 6. That's a habit I got into when my kids were 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 to an empty nest, and my wife and I usually Discuss the day. And we usually cook something together. And then she's an early, she goes to bed early. And I usually go to bed about 10 o' clock and I'm not much on TV, so I am a sports addict. So if there's anything on sports wise, I'll watch it. But recently it's been more reading and then, yeah, so that's my day. And unfortunately I'm pretty boring when it comes to that.

You know what though? 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. As you get to a quiet space, close your eyes quite space. 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 quote unquote, 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?

You know what, I'll tell you this. I used to not. And I heard a sermon by Ravi Zachariah. As you might imagine, given the science geekiness, I'm an apologetic 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. So I have this thing that I took out of his sermon that he talked about a card that he had written that said, be still and know that I am God. Then it says be still and know. 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, 15 minutes, at least two or three times a week in my quiet time just being, just sitting and listening and trying to get my head clear. To be honest, Jordan, I have to listen to a little praise music to kind of get myself into that moment. My mind, when I wake up in the morning, I got a thousand things I'm thinking about. Yeah, you know, 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. There'd 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.

Yeah, I think it's the difference between hearing God's voice and listening to God's voice.

Right?

We all say this to our kids. Hey, there's a difference between hearing me and listening to me.

Right.

And to be clear. And I always get weary when people talk about listening to God's voice. Like, listen, God has spoken us in the person of Jesus Christ and through his Word, that's how he's spoken to us. And we hear that word when we read that word, but we listen to his words and how it's connecting to our daily lives when we are still, when we are silent. It's what Jesus did in the wilderness for 40 days.

Right.

He started his ministry in silence.

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.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not a big social media guy anyway, but I take phone vacations. I'll put it down on Friday night at 6 and I just tell my wife I'm not going to pick it up until Monday.

Wow.

And liberating. And, you know, it takes me. Boy, the fear of missing out happen all Friday night and Saturday morning. And then my kids know how to get ahold of us, of course, if something happened. But boy, by Sunday morning, I'm actually feeling like, wow, okay, I can do this. You know, and anyway, it's helpful. You can't do it every week. I get it. But. And I don't want to sound like I'm. I'm not good at that, but that has helped me get focused and quiet at times.

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'm going to miss something urgent. The world needs me to always be on listen. I struggle with this. Right. I'm 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?

Totally honest.

Yeah. Never, Never, Never. I believe it 100%. I hope our listeners believe it. Because what I tell people all the time, it never happens. Never.

You know what? I will tell you this. I had someone on our board tell me one time, and this was in my Clarion years. One time we were building my first company out here and they said Something to me, I was really just 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 the whole company and 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 just loyal, and she's moved 14 times in 35 years. And she's truly, truly an amazing lady with lupus and fights it with grace every day. And so I'm blessed in that way. But you go through times where you take that for granted.

Oh, yeah.

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 said, and by the way, we think we're paying you enough. He was aborted. So the point was, it was my fault because I didn't balance my time. And I think that's 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 adrenaline 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.

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'm curious if there's 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?

Oh, my gosh, you know everything, right? I mean, to be honest, I can't compartmentalize Jesus in my life. And so he is wherever I am in these businesses. He's 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 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 gray zone of integrity as A company. I mean, we just recently had a challenge. We had a product that was the legacy product that I inherited. We've 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. Doesn't mean the product failed. It just means we didn't meet our endpoint. And. 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 didn't have to go be that honest and that transparent. And I thought, when I'm listening to them, how can they say that? I mean, it's all about integrity and honesty. And I hope that as we build 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.

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's 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?

Yeah, look, I think it accelerates our desire to be a part of that and to be on the cutting edge and to get 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 hearts 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, God will have more work for me and it'll be something different, and I hope something equally as exciting. But that's why I think the foundation of servant leadership is so 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 marketplace. 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're telling your story and you're not being judgmental about someone else's situation. That's been the nuance for me as a marketplace minister is. I mean, no one can take away my testimony. It's my testimony, right? What they can do is be offended when I convict them of things they're doing because I'm becoming judgmental. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges Christian leaders have is when do you just lead with the example versus you actually step over and begin 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 and servant leadership becomes more and more pervasive, which I'm sure you've seen articles now in Harvard Business Review and Sloan 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're in, in the workplace is really the largest, I think, ministry opportunity, at least in the industrialized world that we have today. The 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.

Yeah. Amen. You've mentioned servant leadership a few times. I think you're right. It's 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?

A couple things. One, as I said, you know, Jesus, model was pretty simple. He met 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 connect emotionally and he wasn't preachy and he was a 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 as we lead is to not be fear based but to allow people to be fearless in how they execute their job every day. There's no public hangings in my companies and any of the companies that I've built or any of the divisions I've led of large companies. We just don't do public sacrifice, right? If somebody's not doing the job, that's 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 they used to call it in the clariant world when we built clariant that was the clariant way. And certainly here in oncocide already, you know, there's a way to help people find God's calling in their life and you don't have to call it a termination. You're not feeling firing them, right? You're not walking them out the door. You know, those kind of things are little things. But I think, you know, one of the greatest books that I have read on this topic and I've been blessed to sit on some panels, servant leadership panels with Ken Blanchard is Leave Like Jesus. It's really a great book of what it means to be a servant leader. And Jordan, you mentioned, I mean listen, when I use the word servant leader, you know, I've got people that their hair goes up on their neck. I live in California and it's very edgy and terminology and oh, that sounds very preachy. And I'm like well maybe, but let me walk you through the attributes and I always usually start with this. In fact I am blessed to get asked to speak at MBA programs and I'll never forget there. I'll let the university remain 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, you know, who's the greatest leader. And you know, you'll hear all the names, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, you'll hear all 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 managed them, he mentored them and then he set them off on the greatest, greatest business adventure in the world. We had one drop out. He had to replace that person. But in 2000 plus years, it's the only enterprise that has grown every year. Would you agree that sustained sustainable leadership. And even in those agnostic environments, no one denies that. And they all want to. Who is that? Well, it's Jesus. And I always tell them, today we're not going to debate the deity. I'm happy to stay afterwards and do that. Today we're going to focus on the leadership principles that Jesus gave his 12 followers that changed the world. And that usually defuses sort of this, oh, he's going to preach to us. And we really get into those leadership qualities of Christ. And once you dig into them, you know, it's pretty important. And the fact that most people want to lead like that is helpful as well.

I love that. So you retired a few years ago, right? You started a winery in one of my favorite parts of the world, in Healdsburg. How do you think about retirement now? I mean, you're back in the game, right? Like, how are you thinking about this? You know, popular topic.

You know, there's 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 tried to do all the right things with the rewards of the stewardship through the years, but I got selfish and went off and said, hey, I'm gonna go do this little wine thing. And I quickly realized 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 arrogant enough to defy reality that that is not a business that you can make money unless you have a really, really lot of money.

It's tough.

Yeah, it is tough. But listen, long story short, I realized that God, it didn't take me long. About two years in, I was unsatisfied. I didn't feel like I was still fulfilling God's mission. And I realized I needed to get back in the game. And the team at ASCO had called and asked if I would come and be an advisor and help them figure out the world of genomics and cancer and how to basically democratize it. Right? There's a disparity between academic care and community care even today. And we're trying to find fix that. But so once I got started, I thought that would be enough. And you know what, Jordan? It just wasn't enough. When Jesus has called you to something been as lifelong compelling for me as My desire to see patients not suffer anymore. I just had to get back in, and one thing led to another, and next thing I know, you know, God opened a door I wasn't even expecting, and here I sit. So for me, it's 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 where it talks about the cedars of Lebanon, and in their old age, he would cast shadows and shade and be strong and full of wisdom. And I realized, you know what? I'm not sure. My mother's 82 and still works. I'm not sure it's meant for me to retire. So you know what? For me, it's not working because I get to get up and go do what God calls me to every day. And to me, that's not work. That's doing God's call. So I'm 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 ability to minister, and my courage is stronger than ever because I've 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 happen to me that I can't believe because, you know, I get called the Forrest Gump of diagnostics a lot, A, because of my accent and B, because you know what? I'm usually the dumbest guy in the room. And God allows good things to happen. So for me, I'm excited to be back. And I would just challenge anyone that thinks about retirement. If you're a person of faith and you're deeply, deeply rooted in God's calling, you may retire from your vocation, but you're never going to retire from your calling. And you just have to figure out where you play that in.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. I've been wanting to study this issue biblically for a long time. I'm not convinced retirement, as we typically define it, hanging up the cleats and sitting back and vacation for the rest of our lives. I'm not convinced this is biblical. I'm not convinced that it is or isn't right. It's something that I want to say more deeper, but I know for me it ain't in the cards. Right? It's just not in the cards. And part of that's energy, but part of that's just. I don't know, I feel so long as the Lord has given me breath in my lungs, I want to continue doing this work.

I agree, man.

So, hey, Ronnie, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you. In general? I know, I know everybody has specific reading recommendations for specific people, but in general, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently to others?

Yeah, you know, the first one is one that people look at me and, and they say, really? It's a book called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. It's an old book. You sound like you've read it. And, you know, in my younger years, I used to think God had this big grand plan and 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 touches 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 books. You know, there's 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 tos.

You really are good, Atlanta boy. Come on. John Maxwell, the Blackabees. I love it. It's been years since I've read Experiencing God, but I remember loving that. I'm gonna go back and reread it.

And guys, you know it's real. You know it's happening today. Stuff's going on and we're sitting at a pandemic. But you can still see people that need Jesus and you can go and, well, where God's at work and go help them.

Amen. You guys can find those books right now@jordanraynor.com bookshelf hey, Ronnie, who would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work in this podcast? Talked about Keller's answer and Francis Collins.

Yeah, Francis, I just, I love it. Listen where the world is and where the science world is today. Of course, I'm a science geek, but I would love to hear Francis Collins. I think everyone would 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 a fantastic.

We'll get him on here. Last question. One piece of advice. You've given a lot already, but one piece of advice to leave this audience with who like you, just trying to do their best work 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?

Get an accountability group around you. It's not easy. The world pulls you in different ways, and it's 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 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, walk, call me. Hey, you're getting too big for your britches. Your head's not in this one. You need to wake up. You know, what are you doing this morning for? What are you doing that for? Even things like, Ronnie, we were at dinner and this came out of your mouth. And it's not that I want to be micromanaged, but when you say and profess to be a Christian leader and a servant leader, the world's 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 this, Ken Blanchard, he said, when you're a servant leader, you're an energy giver. The world will take all that energy. You got to have somewhere to go and plug in and recharge your battery. And sure, there's scripture and there's time with God, but there's 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're still anointed and you're still, you know, that's 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.

Do you know Greg Brennaman I don't. So Greg's wicked impressive. He was the turnaround CEO of Continental Airlines back when Continental made their big return, and then he did it 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 you. So I thank you for sharing that. Hey, Ronnie, I just want 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 signpost right to the day in which Jesus will finish our work and put everything in creation back in order. Hey, if you guys want to learn more about Ronnie's work, you can find out about oncocyta. O N C O c y t e.com Ronnie, thank you again so much for joining us.

Jordan, thank you and blessings to your listeners. And it's really been an to be on here, so thank you for the time.

Love that conversation. Yes, we're still working on Dr. Collins to get him on the podcast. I can't wait for that conversation. Hey, if you're enjoying the show, make sure you subscribe to the Call to Mastery so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're 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 time.

Weekend.