Lessons learned 10Xing growth during COVID
Jordan Raynor sits down with Sam Verghese, the COO of Florida Virtual School, to talk about the leadership lessons he learned scaling-up to serve 10X number of students in just a few months, why Sam has chosen to dissent from the Kingdom of Noise of news and social media, and the significance of the fact that Jesus focused his ministry in a single geographic setting.
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[00:00:00] JR: Have you ever listened to an episode of the Call to Mastery and wondered how your specific vocation connects to God’s work in the world. Maybe you hear our guest, “That’s nice for them. I get how that writer, or doctor, or CEO, I understand how their work connects to the world. But how does my work connect to God’s work in the world?” If that’s you, then we’ve got an incredibly valuable free resource to share with you. My team and I have been working on this mammoth project, which is really aimed to helping anybody in any vocation learn exactly how their specific work matters for eternity and what precisely they can do right now today to do more exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. If you want to learn the answers to those questions for you, you can take the free assessment we built at jordanraynor.com/learn. Now, here is today’s 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. Each week, I bring you a conversation with a Christ follower who is pursuing world-class mastery of their vocation. We talked about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work.
Today’s guest is Sam Verghese, he’s the chief operating officer for Florida Virtual Schools. With everybody thinking about e-learning due to COVID, I thought it would be fascinating to talk to a Christ follower who’s making it all work in one of the largest states in the US. Sam certainly did not disappoint. He’s a masterful leader running a nearly 1500-person organization. He’s been recognized by the Orlando Business Journal as under 40 young professional. Sam and I actually share a past, we talked about that a little bit at the top end of the podcast so you get to hear that.
You also get to hear Sam and I talk about the leadership lessons that he learned. Scaling up to serve 10 times the number of students that they were serving pre-COVID in just a few months. We talked about why Sam has chosen to dissent from the kingdom of noise, of news and social media and the significance of the fact that Jesus focused his ministry in a single geographic setting. Please enjoy this episode with my friend, Sam Verghese.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:50] JR: San Verghese, thanks for joining me, buddy.
[00:02:52] SV: Hey, it’s so great to be here, Jordan. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:54] JR: Yeah. I was trying to think in preparation for this, I think the last time you and I spoke was like 2008. I was in my last semester at Florida State, I was doing an internship at the Republican Party of Florida and you were — if I remember correctly, Republican Party was upstairs, you’re working downstairs but you weren’t working for the party, were you? What were you doing at that time?
[00:03:18] SV: 2008, I was actually doing some work with House Campaigns at the time. I was in ’08, I kind of went back and forth a little bit from RPOF to the private sector and back again. You might have caught me in between; I’m trying to remember.
[00:03:32] JR: I think I did.
[00:03:33] SV: I think I was still at House Campaigns at the time.
[00:03:36] JR: I think I caught you in between and obviously, I took a very different route with my career. You stayed in public service. But we’re talking right before we hopped, you’re a religion major at Liberty, right? What was the play there? Were you planning on becoming a pastor? What’s the story behind this?
[00:03:51] SV: I appreciate you asking that, yeah. Hey, just a quick disclaimer. When we get started, just so you know, the opinions and views I’m expressing today on the podcast, they are my own, solely my own. They don’t express the views or opinions of the organization that I presently work for.
[00:04:06] JR: You’re a good public servant.
[00:04:09] SV: I got to say it, Jordan.
[00:04:10] JR: Well said. You have to.
[00:04:12] SV: Got to say it. Yeah, talking about being a religion major. It really takes it back to when I came to Christ, when Jesus became my all in all. When I was in high school, I was beginning this whole process of wrestling with a full-time call to ministry. I went to Liberty University with the express purpose of studying to be a pastor. My actual specialty was in biblical studies. I really wanted to get into what the Bible was about and what does that mean and applying to my life, and hermeneutics, and the biblical languages and all of it because I want to be ready if that’s what God wanted for my life. That was a big part of how things got started on that end when it came to the religion track.
[00:04:55] JR: How did you eventually decide on public service? How did you get from wanting to be a religious professional, a pastor to being in public service and working in politics and government?
[00:05:07] SV: Yeah. It’s interesting, Jordan. I mean, I really had a lot of great opportunities in my life that the Lord has provided. After graduating from Liberty and I was wrestling with this full call time to ministry, I was trying to figure out what that looks like, so ended up becoming a teacher at one point, ended up working in the House of Representatives from the Governor’s Office and the Capital. Then eventually, in public service, leading government agencies and healthcare in the business sector. As we’ve intersected, I’ve owned businesses, sold them and then now helping pave the way for education going forward.
Jordan, really. I think in it all, it was this common denominator for me, which has been service. I think for me really where the heart of it is, it’s important for me each day to start and have a clear conscience that I’m doing some real public good by serving others. Since I didn’t go into full-time vocational ministry, I try to stay as close as I could to the local church through the whole journey and I didn’t map it out this way. Okay? I really can’t say, “Hey, this is all Sam doing this.” The Lord has been working in this process and God has taken care of me. It’s just been an interesting time.
Probably to sum up all, about how this call to ministry/transfer to public service, I have a wonderful supportive wife and I have three active kiddos. One of my sons was giving a speech about his family in a school, and when it came to talking about what his dad does, he summed it up best. He just said, “My dad, he helps people.”
[00:06:38] JR: I love it.
[00:06:39] SV: I said, “Okay.” I said, “That’s a good way to describing it, son. Good job.”
[00:06:43] JR: I love it. Listen, right, this is what this podcast is all about. Your work whether you’re a “full-time missionary,” my most hated term, or pastor, or working for Florida Virtual Schools is ministry. I mean, the word ministry in terms just means service, right? It is serving others and that’s what you’re doing. Okay. Let’s talk about your current role. I think after — we’re recording this towards the end of 2020. I think we all by now know what an organization like Florida Virtual School does. But give us an idea of what you do specifically in your role as COO of this organization.
[00:07:20] SV: Sure. Yeah. When it comes to what I do, so much of it is helping drive the agenda of what our CEO, Dr. Algaze is looking to do. Specifically of that, I deal with the technology side with the innovative end of how we’re continually taking our product and what we’re providing for the students to a level that’s going to give them excellence and being able to reach their educational goals. Whether that’s on the tech front or the human resources side and getting the right people placed in the right situation. Take the Jim Collins idea, the right people, in the right bus, in the right seat. That is a big part of what I do. Day in and day out, how do I take this vision and bring it to an implementable reality so that it really does touch the hearts and lives of people that we’re intersecting with day in and day out.
[00:08:08] JR: The risk of inflicting PTSD, take us back to March 2020. COVID hits, forces all schools to find some virtual solution. Please tell us in as much detail what those first few weeks look like for you.
[00:08:27] SV: Yeah, I think it started with a lot of prayer.
[00:08:30] JR: Yeah
[00:08:33] SV: The great thing is we have a great team. Starting out, it was saying, “How do we take this crazy crisis situation and say — how do we channel this fear that was prevalent everywhere it seemed?” I just turned off the news. That was one of the situations. I just had to turn off the news and we all said as a team, “How do we channel all this fear and start turning it into positive energy? How do we continue to think about what is the good that we can do right in front of us with what we can control to be ready for what potentially was coming?” Which by the way, nobody really knew what was going to come, we had to make a lot of assumptions, a lot of best guesses and we had to get all the stakeholders involved from the highest levels to where we were at say, “Okay. What’s going to happen with the schools?” Interfacing with everybody, Governor’s Office down of, let’s make sure we’re ready so we can play our part.
As we were doing that, it became pretty apparent that, hey, if this thing gets so bad and kids cannot go to school at all, we got to be ready to serve the population of Florida when it comes to student population. And that’s just shy of three million students. Not to mention, we also have a national and global footprint as well, so we have students from other states. That’s a really neat part of the story too in helping other states build up their virtual programs. We had to say, “We got to start Florida, so let’s figure out how to get to a capacity technologically to serve 2.7 million students and then let’s ramp it up to four million students in case everything becomes the apocalypse in this situation.”
It’s a very daunting task to say, “Okay. Here’s where you’re at, here’s where you need to go and then let’s get the right people in place to figure it.” By the way, there still wasn’t CARES funding that existed yet, that wasn’t even on the table. But as a team, we said, “We got to do the right thing.” I’ll give a credit where it’s due to the governor, and the commissioner of education and to my CEO because they said, “Let’s do the right thing. Let’s be ready for a virtual safety net and let’s make this happen.” Then it was of course the day in, day out, let’s make this a reality to get ready for students if it became that route to give them our courses, to give them our curriculum to be ready for whatever was coming.
[00:10:50] JR: So you’re planning on ramping up to three million, four million students. How many students were attending Florida Virtual School pre-COVID?
[00:10:57] SV: It was close to, let’s say ballpark, 200,000 about the time. So you can imagine to go from that, we’re increasing everything tenfold plus right out of the gate to say, “We need to be ready for this” and it was going to require a lot of creativity in the process. Because we knew the answer wasn’t going to be, “Let’s just hire thousands and thousands of teachers.” Well, there’s not enough certified teachers to do that.
[00:11:28] JR: Right. How did you do it?
[00:11:29] SV: Well, big part of it was, we said, “Let’s in every way possible be able to get our curriculum to the districts that needed it, to students that needed it in every form and fashion.” We ended up actually offering our courses at one point for free, hundred of our courses. If someone had an LMS at a district level or a charter school level, private school level to get them connected to they can have a link to our courses. So at least their teachers locally be able to have their ability to connect to their students locally. Keep it close to the students as possible. We believe that was going to be best for them in this crazy time of chaos, where there was so much uncertainty. We said, “How can we provide some constancy to students, to parents, to people involved in that so they had an opportunity to not worry about teaching and creating curriculum but be able to deliver it and get that time with those students.” Because there was going to be a lot more that was going to arise out of the situation than just learning. There was going to be mental health considerations and other things as well out of that.
[00:12:35] JR: You mentioned uncertainty, I think that is the word of 2020. You guys are making all these plans back in March, back in April, you’ve no idea what’s going to happen with schools in the fall. I think a lot of leaders are asking like, “How do you do that?” Did you have dedicated teams working on plan A, plan B, plan C and how far along did those plans get in the process? How did you guys think about planning for those different potential scenarios?
[00:13:02] SV: Yeah. The short of it is, we tried as much as we could do come with an open mind and try to deal with the known before the unknown. I think we had certain constants that we knew were going to be there. Like potentially, we knew with the state funding was going to be the start, at least what we had to work with. And we knew how much that we potentially had that we could take a financial hit, right? Option A would be, out of our existing resources, what can we do? Out of what doesn’t exist, option B. What if CARES funding comes, option C. We did many, many wargame scenarios through the process of like a quarterback would. Just having those check downs in their routes with their wide receivers. It was that same kind of idea if this happens, let’s consider this option. If this happens, let’s consider this option.
All the while keeping communication lines open with of course, everybody not just inside but we had to keep it open outside I think that was the key because there was interface that was going on with the federal government during all of this. We were not making these decisions in isolation, which I think is always crucial in any crisis, right? Typically, there’s always other entities involved and I think it’s a matter of, “How can we cancel out the noise from those who didn’t really matter in that decision-making process and keep them open with those that we needed during the crisis? So that we could get the best intel from them quickly to make those decisions to your point of being able to have those teams ready to act on a dime when it happens.” As you know, Jordan from your time in politics and state government, the media is an essential part of all this. Yet, sometimes it can also be an interesting variable thrown into it.
[00:14:42] JR: That’s one way to put it, yeah.
[00:14:44] SV: Yeah, and I want to respect their job and their role. I think the reality is in a crisis, it’s just understanding what noise is the one that needs to be listened to at that moment, right? I think it’s what our team was so good at of saying, “How do we cancel out the noise that might not be the urgent right now, but we need to keep that important volume level up of where are the red flags that we need to be worried about.”
[00:15:09] JR: It’s so funny. I just wrote a chapter in my next book, kind of sort of around this topic about turning down noise in order for us to redeem our time to be productive. I think it’s a big problem. You wouldn’t recognize Jordan Raynor today saying, when you knew me, I was connected to the news nonstop day in, day out. Today, I consume basically zero news, zero news websites, no TV news, nothing. I found part of the rationale there is, I just realized, pretty much everything is unimportant. Almost everything in the news is unimportant to my work. But I’ll tell you what, COVID was the exception, right? Obviously, once I started hearing from my friends what’s going on, I’m going to tampabay.com, going to the New York Times, checking numbers, and facemask orders or whatever. I found that I was unsurprisingly more distracted than ever, and also just more anxious than ever, and it made it so hard to make decisions that previously were so easy for me to make.
I’m curious if you have a similar relationship with news and noise and all? It sounds like you do. It sounds like you thought really deeply about this.
[00:16:17] SV: Yeah. I really appreciate you asking. I’ll give you some moments of vulnerability in this. What I’m going to say is definitely testimonial and it’s not prescriptive for anyone, I would say that. I do have battles with anxiety, I do. I had to wrestle with this for years of my life. There’s a lot that ties into why I have these types of issues. There was a time where a couple of years ago where I made a hard decision of actually going beyond just news, but I don’t have any social media accounts anymore.
[00:16:48] JR: I noticed that, my team couldn’t find you when we were researching this. Like, “Is this guy a ghost? Is he real?”
[00:16:54] SV: Jordan, as you and I know from time, I had a decent following on social media.
[00:17:00] JR: Oh, yeah. You were the guy. Yeah.
[00:17:02] SV: This was a very difficult decision, but I got to a point where my life started to become not sustainable for me, when it came to trying to keep up social media wise and being able to still focus day in and day out on what was most important and dear to me in my wife and what I valued most. What I didn’t value most was how many likes I was getting in Facebook or how many people are retweeting what I was writing. Now, as I said, this is testimonial, it’s not prescriptive. I understand when it comes to personal brand, there is a very important argument to make for having those channels.
Like I said, take your leave of what works for you, what doesn’t. I just know this works for me, because, Jordan, in a crisis moment or just as I love to talk about, just in the day in, day out, the balance of life, I have to stay centered on the moment with the task at hand. I have to say that I’m bringing my full faculties to this situation if you’re going to get the best of me. I think for me, that meant taking what would be considered I think a radical step but it’s one I had to do for me to be able to do that. I used to have someone handling my social media, but since I’m back in public service, I don’t on that end. It’s just where I am on that front.
[00:18:22] JR: I am a strong advocate for what you’re proposing. I think a lot of this is, I’m not going to argue the fact that social media adds value to our lives. I think that’s a hard argument to win. But the question is, with anything in life, isn’t whether or not this thing is valuable, it’s how valuable is it relative to the cost. And the cost of social media is exorbitant, in terms of our focus, in terms of anxiety, right? We got to ask what Paul asked, right, about different a topic. Is it profitable, right? Is social media a new services and all the noise in our life profitable as we seek to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others? Some people decide, yes, it is and good for them. For me, I believe I’m somewhere in the middle. As a public personality, I’ve decided that social media is a really good megaphone, but I personally basically never engage with that. I’m fortunate that I have a team to engage with it. I personally check, time hop for basically 10 minutes at nighttime. That it. That’s the extent of my social media engagement.
But I love hearing you talk about that and I got to imagine, that was helpful when the crisis of COVID hits. Speaking of, I’m curious pre-COVID. It sounds like you’ve been doing this pre-COVID, this kind of no news, no social thing. What were some of the things organizationally, the Florida Virtual Schools was doing long before COVID that you think put you guys in a position to navigate this crisis well?
[00:19:50] SV: Thinking about how things happen, right? As an organization, probably a good way to describe it, I like Peter Drucker and his book, The Effective Executive. It’s an old book.
[00:20:01] JR: I was reading a chapter this morning, literally this morning.
[00:20:05] SV: How about that? I love it. I shouldn’t be surprised if anyone quoting you. You probably read, you probably had it somewhere on quote board somewhere. You may know this analogy that he brings up in the book. He talks about the difference between a good factory and a bad factory when it comes to manufacturing. Something that we do organizationally that was going on pre-COVID is, we’re constantly challenging ourselves to think that way. What I mean by that is, ever have a chance, if you do, I encourage you. If you ever want to take a look at a manufacturing facility, what he says is that you can know the difference between a good factory and a bad factory by looking at what is going on in the factory environment, and just observing, and just hearing and seeing what is going on.
What he says, a bad factory is that it looks very dramatic. There’s a lot of movement, it sounds very loud, there’s a lot of noise, there’s a lot of shouting, there’s a lot going on. It looks exciting, but he’s saying that’s a bad factory because he compares it to a good factory. He says, if you go to a good factory, he said, it’s actually quite the opposite. He says it’s quiet. He says, it actually looks kind of boring. He said, it doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot going on, but things are run well. He said, the reason is, is because the people who are running the good factory unlike the bad factory, they have taken the time, effort and energy when things were not in crisis mode to work out and take out the variables. They’ve been willing to do the hard work to ask those tough questions while things were quiet and say, “What do I need essentially?” or “What do I have an opportunity to let go and grow?”
I can say, for us, back to the profitability discussion, I think that’s just a daily task that we were trying to think and say, “We don’t know what’s good to happen. But you know, we had this public trust in the school, which has tremendous value and opportunity. Let’s make sure that we are making the most and let’s make sure we’re getting the best out of what we’re doing before things hit.” I can tell you, Jordan, the reason why we were able to shift so quickly to get those millions of students potentially served, was because we were already working on a technology plan to get us the infrastructure and vetting all of that before it hit. If we had not, Jordan, I think things would have been a much different story for us. Because to turn all that on a dime, I don’t think would have been wise nor would we have been able to be physically in the process, because we wouldn’t have done our due diligence. I think when I think about what Peter Drucker said, in that, we were trying to be the good factory, we’re trying to work through that before things got kind of crazy.
[00:22:45] JR: Yeah. Let’s pretend for a second, you’ve got to give a speech tomorrow to other leaders across, I don’t know, bunch of different industries, right? The title if the speech is Top Three Leadership Lessons I Learned During the COVID-19 Crisis and Scaling Up to Three Million Students. What would those lessons be?
[00:23:04] SV: Top three, man. I am on the spot here today.
[00:23:08] JR: You are.
[00:23:11] SV: I would say and you might get to this point. I’ll give you four.
[00:23:15] JR: Okay, great.
[00:23:16] SV: Here’s why. I’ll sum it this way. These aren’t my words, but this kind of fits into what I think has been the foundation for me in this, which is of course founded on Christ. But I would say, let’s look at John Wooden, the famous coach of UCLA, most winningest coach of all time with championships. He talks about what he calls a 4 Ps. He talks about planning, preparation, practice and performance. He’s saying and I prescribe to this and I’m willing to talk about him more, but he says that success is found in running the race. Really, it’s how you run a race. It’s that planning, preparation, practice and performance that really does count for everything. Winning or losing is a byproduct, an aftereffect of that effort. Really it’s about the quality of the effort that counts most and offers the greatest and most long-lasting satisfaction.
I would say that, that I think to me to sum it up in one sentence would be to enjoy the journey. One is that, success is in enjoying the journey. If you don’t know what that is and you haven’t found it yet, keep working hard to understand that. Keep searching, keep having an open mind. As the Bible talks about, don’t grow wearing while doing good. A return is going to come someway, somehow. God’s economy is different from ours. As my pastor always says, “Good is ahead.” I’m willing to dive in a little bit more, but I would say that.
[00:24:44] JR: That’s good. I like it a lot. Any Wooden quote is great. Since COVID, I’m curious what your “typical day” has looked like from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. What your routine looks like?
[00:24:58] SV: Yeah, that kind of gets to what I was talking about, really what drives me when I think about kind of my mission with it all and I’ll tell you that. Because that really sets the tone for my day. I believe that success for me, I had to define it in a way that made sense for me, and for me it is an inward and outward contentment which is going to result from a performing a balance process to become the best I’m capable of becoming today. That is rooted in Philippians 4:11-13. I know you know the passage well. I think the idea of what Paul says that he has learned the secret of contentment, having much, having little. That process is important. When I look at the Greek words there, talking about learning and that process that’s there. I’m still learning that process. I want to learn that secret. For me, it’s not necessarily a feeling, but a mindset and a disposition of spirit. It starts off with that for me, where I’m reminded, this is going to drive what I’m doing.
In that, my day, it starts small but it compounds. The successes will start compounding. What I mean by that is, in my day, to have a balanced process, I’ve got to have three components that are hitting different aspects of my day at different points. That is humility, that’s conditioning and that’s generosity. What I mean by that, it will really play out as I talk about it. I start off first thing in the morning, I don’t care what day it is or how bad I feel, I have to get time with God, and that is of course through prayer and the word. But something I also do is I journal a lot. I journal a lot because I’m not great at engaging my feelings, so I sometimes have to write them down, and I know talk about being the new school guy in a new school situation, I love the old-school idea of journaling, and processing and getting my thoughts out on paper.
I always have to have a strong black cup of coffee while I’m in the process, that’s the other thing, every morning. I got to have that. That is the most important part of my day, where I’m reminded of my purpose. So I have one success no matter what’s going on with my day, starting there, I make the bed, to tell you that. I make the bed. That’s actually something that my wife and I found very important for our lives. It always impressed me, when I think of humility, I think of Nelson Mandela and now he had part of his daily routine, where he’s president of South Africa, Nobel Peace Prize winner, the biggest name of the time and what he was doing there. He was still making his bed every morning himself. He would actually get into arguments with his maid about it. Do you want to make it? He just said, “No, I got to do this. This is what I do. This is who I am. This sets my day.”
Then just a couple of months ago and you probably heard the speech too, but I heard a graduation speech by Admiral William McRaven, he’s a retired, four-star general in the Navy. He talked about what he learned in the Navy SEALs was so crucial when it came to making his bed. I thought, man, that’s just another reason why — I’m just going to pull and say, “Hey, this great people are doing it, so I’m going to do it.”
The third thing that I’m starting off with after that, and this is still the morning, this is before my kids are getting up. This is early. This is really early because I need this time before I’m having the joyous, blessed onslaught of my kids. The third part is I exercise, and that’s part of the conditioning and the generosity side. I’m making an investment in myself. Warren Buffet says that the greatest investment you can make is an investment in yourself. For me, investing in my health is crucial, it really does set the tone. I’ve had some health issues at times physically and it is not fun. It is difficult to perform at a high level if I’m not taking care of myself day in and day out. Jordan, from there and then I’ll let you stop me, but the —
[00:28:58] JR: No, this is great. I love it. By the way, what time are you waking up?
[00:29:01] SV: I try not to wake up later than 6:00. I wake up in a range of between 4:00 and 6:00, depending on what’s going on and how I feel in the morning, energy level wise. But I try to listen to my body in that and I also try to listen to how hard I’m going to push myself. That’s key I think in just working through those things. As that’s going on, I think it’s crucial to know that I now have this foundation of success that’s already started before my kids are up. My wife is actually in the middle of nursing school right now, which is also been incredibly busy for us on that front too. So there’s a lot of variables that are going to hit once everyone’s up.
I think knowing this, that the outflow of what I’m going to bring to bear for the rest of the day is set in the morning. That foundation is set and it does dictate that tone. Even if my day goes really bad, things go awry, I can always point back to three accomplishments I’ve had in the morning and three successes I’ve had in the morning as a way I define it. Then I can point to my time with God, I can point to the fact my bed is made and my morning workout no matter what happens the rest of the day and say, “You know what, I still did things that were important to me. I still have a foundation to stand on.” That’s before I’ve gotten to work.
[00:30:17] JR: I love that. What time do you get to the office? 9:00? 9:30?
[00:30:20] SV: It’s interesting now as the office [inaudible 00:30:23] as I move to my guest bedroom. When I was driving in and right now, we’re trying to be mindful of course of COVID and sensitive. The fact is, the joke about what we’re doing is we’ve been social distancing before it was cool. Since 1997, right? Since we are founded. It’s just that idea of, when I do go in, I mean I try to be ready and engaged by 8:30. I can get on the phone before that, but I also find — I’ve got to have boundaries set, because — see, I’m also taking my kids to school. That’s important to me. That’s a moment of — I’ll talk about later at dinner where I’m engaging, I’m teaching with my kids, I’m praying with them for that time. Even though it is just a few minutes on the ride to school, but it’s important to me. It’s important for them to know they have me in their life and I care with that. For there, I try not to do things before 8:30 where I can help it. As much as possible, I just try not to. That’s where I’m at. So then, usually I’m there ready to go, work wise with things.
[00:31:30] JR: Yeah, I love it. What time do you shutdown and come back down, come out of the guest bedroom and reintegrate into family life?
[00:31:37] SV: I try as much as I can and as you know this, that’s probably the harder part. The easier part is starting, the ending part is the difficult one. I try as much as I can to be done by 5:30. That’s not always the case, but as we’ll talk about, one of those other key successes of my life is that I have dinner with my family. I got to make family dinner a priority. So even if I’m going to work late and it’s going to be a late night, I try to at least tell my team, “Hey, can I at least get a half hour? We need to take a few minutes, get some time with our family. We’ll come back. We’ll come back to this if we need to.” I try around that time, like I say, 5:30 to 6:00, it’s usually in that range. I try not to extend it longer than that, where I can help it. Most of the stuff, Jordan, I found through the years, it usually can wait. It almost —
[00:32:29] JR: Nothing is urgent. Nothing, pretty much nothing. I do the same thing. I don’t check email. I’m done at 5:00, I go downstairs and nothing’s urgent. If it’s truly urgent, someone will find a way to get my attention, they’ll figure it out.
[00:32:44] SV: Totally.
[00:32:45] JR: I love it. So what does the rest of your evening look like? How do you wind down? What time do you go to bed? All that good stuff.
[00:32:50] SV: Yeah. Just to tell you, with dinner being a priority, it’s just something neat that my wife and I do. We try to ask at least one good thing and one bad thing for all of our kids.
[00:33:00] JR: Oh, I like that. Yeah.
[00:33:02] SV: We do that because life isn’t just always positivity and in rose-colored glasses.
[00:33:07] JR: Exactly.
[00:33:08] SV: When you are reading the Bible about the book of Job, life can be hard. I mean, it can be hard to understand and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Those are important teaching moments for my wife and I, where we really have that as kind of our time of teaching and then word with our kids at the dinner table. Because we used to set aside time at night with them, and I know a lot of families who can do that. I just have to do what works for us, and I find it’s been a difficult and struggle to find time outside of the benchmark that’s already set, which is our dinner time. Remember, this is the generosity side too, that’s an investment in my family when they get to hear not just their goods and bads, but I share mine too. I talk about what I’m frustrated with and reason of course, but I do. Every day I have good and bad things as well. My wife being a former teacher as well, she’s great at this also, just shaping, helping to shape our kid’s worldview, encouraging them to know Jesus more, to view God’s world in the light of how they relate to it. So that’s dinner.
[00:34:09] JR: Time of discipleship, right? It’s time of discipleship around the dinner table, I love it.
[00:34:13] SV: It really is. It really is. Then after that, the other priority we have is that I either take a walk or I run with my wife. We do that because we just need to reconnect too. There are days especially as I said, we’re both very busy. I may have barely talk to her in the morning. Sometimes if we’re both up super early at the same time, we’ll talk for a bit and connect then, but that’s not always given. So we try to do it in the evenings too, because I find it’s just very quick back and forth during the day, and I can’t say that for everyone, but at least that’s how it is for us, whether that’s a text message or a quick call, just to try to deal with situations that come up. But I know at least at night, we’re going to get into deeper issues if we need to, we need to adjust, so we do that. The great thing about as my kids are getting old enough, they can do their chores during —
[00:35:01] JR: That’s great. That’s amazing.
[00:35:03] SV: It’s like killing two birds with one stone at the same process. To wind my day down beyond that, of course, time with the family what I try to have for me at the end. These are the days where I’m sticking to discipline and I’m ending it well. I also end the day with a book end like I did when I started. I take time, I pray, I journal and I work through my day. I work through the Lord’s prayer. I express my joys, my triumphs, my trials, my mistakes. This is important to me on many, many levels. I mentioned my struggle with anxiety. If I miss a step at the end of my day and I decide to make the choice to binge watch Netflix or something else, I’ve actually found myself many, many times, whether that’s pre-COVID or especially in a crisis situation, I wake up at 3:00 AM. I wake up in the middle of the night, I find that I struggle with mentally and emotionally going through the process of dealing with what happened in the day and I have to deal with it in the middle of the night with intrusive thoughts and emotions.
I still do engage God, but man, that really does throw off my balance for the next day and my effectiveness for the next day because of choices often, often because of choices I made earlier that day and not dealing with those feelings and dealing with those issues and being proactive. But instead, stuffing it down and not being honest and truthful to myself and to God.
There’s a lot more I can expound on there, but that’s the gist of what my day looks on a good day. As I said, —
[00:36:39] JR: Not every day is perfect.
[00:36:39] SV: Not every day works like that, I wish it did, but we try, we try.
[00:36:44] JR: No, I love it. Yet, we hear journaling a lot from some of the world-class guests that we have. It’s something I don’t do consistently daily, but it’s something I’m trying to be more consistent at. Because I find that my head is clearer, I’m more fully engaged with my work and my family when I’ve had a chance to process stuff on my own, right, and think through stuff on my own. You and I, we’ve lost track of each other over the years. I have no idea you are at Florida Virtual Schools. I found out because I got this Google alert, I get Google alerts for any mention of my books, and there was a Google alert for Called to Create.
You said in this interview, “Every day I wake up knowing, I’m called to create an exceptional digital learning environment for students of all walks of life.” I just loved it so much, so I reached out and I was like, “Hey, we need to reconnect.” Talk about why you view your work as a calling. How do you see your work as the COO of Florida Virtual Schools connecting to the work that God is doing in the world?
[00:37:43] SV: I love that it popped up. There’s another reason where we talk about distractions and other things with social media. We haven’t talked in a while now, and just the fact that it popped up, I’m just thinking how providential, I put the title of your book in there. You know what I mean?
[00:37:59] JR: Look at that.
[00:38:00] SV: I didn’t even think about it, and it’s just like, “Wow, this is kind of real God given moment in that.” So speaking of that, yes, it’s my present mission statement at Florida Virtual, really does flow out of a lot of it for my personal mission statement and how I define success as well. It’s that idea of knowing that I’m called, that in life, nothing has happening by chance. God, if he has me in a present situation, there’s a reason for that. Just like Jesus was called to a certain people, a certain time and a certain place. He was in Israel, he was in a local area, he was at a local time. I think sometimes for me, it’s easy to forget with the rise of social media, with news, we can have these feelings and heart tugs and emotion that ties all these other parts of the world. I’m not saying that’s bad to know that’s going on with the world, we need to know, absolutely.
But Jesus was focused locally, he was there, he was present in the moment with the people he was serving and he had an impact that changed the entire history of the world, and ushered in his kingdom and did that. Now I know, we’re not Jesus, we’re not going to be Jesus, but I think the idea was, was that I can’t have a greater impact in Jesus. That’s my point. So I’m saying, if he thought it was good enough to be present locally where he was called, man, shouldn’t I think about that? Should I think about how I’m called in this moment, right where I am to do this daily balance process of making my organization the best it can be? Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough to do what I’m called to do as a husband and father to love my family right where they are and start there? It’s that idea, Jordan, you mentioned earlier about missions work and all of that. I think sometimes we can forget, the greatest opportunity we might have in this moment is right in front of us and maybe we just don’t want to see it, maybe we don’t want to admit it’s my neighbor next door because I’m uncomfortable. That idea is the same calling.
God is calling me in this moment. He didn’t call me to Australia. He didn’t call me to Iran, or Iraq or somewhere else. He called me here in Wintergarden, which means he called me to my local church, which means he called me to Florida Virtual School and I got to do something with that and I want to make the most out of it today. And I want to do that day in and day out and trust the results to him, trust the outcomes to him, which is what Wooden was talking about.
[00:40:28] JR: That’s beautifully said, very, very well said. I think we can get caught up in these grandiose visions for our lives, for our careers and forget to be diligent and good stewards of what’s right in front of us. That’s what the Lord called us to do. I’ve never really thought deeply about this idea of Jesus being confined to a particular time, particular place. But no, that certainly has ramifications for how we think of our work. By the way, part of the quote that I read a few minutes ago from you that I loved was, you’re saying that you’re called to create in exceptional learning environment. Exceptional been one of my favorite words. We use it literally in every episode of this podcast, in the introduction. I’m curious, if you see your faith influencing your commitment to excellence in any way, in these exceptionally high standards you have for your work, are those things connected for you?
[00:41:17] SV: I’d say for me, Jordan, it is. It is. You know what, let me do this. I was just reading the other day, I thought about this. Let me tell you a story about Peyton Manning, because I think this will get to the heart of what you’re asking.
[00:41:30] JR: I love it. Please do.
[00:41:31] SV: I know you love sports quotes as I do. Peyton was retiring and he was giving his speech, his retirement speech. Basically, with Peyton and everybody knows who he is. Greatest quarterback when it comes to regular season, arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time for sure. As he’s giving a speech, what was interesting is that he talked about mastering. I thought of this. because I knew I was coming on your podcast. It just kind of triggered something for me and I was like, “I think Peyton talked about this at some point.”
He talks about when he looks at his career and when he thinks about it, he’s saying that people are going to speculate what drove him for all those years, for 18 years. A lot of people are going to say it was solely about mastering, and working to master every aspect of the game. What he was saying is, he said, “Don’t believe that, that wasn’t really what drove.” He said, “Every drop of sweat, and every bleary-eyed, night of preparation, all of that,” he said it was really about one thing. It was about the reverence for the game. I think what I want to point to that is to say that, he was saying that reverence for the game, it drove his pursuit of mastery.
Then he went on to say the end, very end of the speech, he said when he looks back at his career, he’s basically saying — I’m loosely quoting here, but basically just saying that he had without a doubt knowing that he gave everything that he could to help his team be the best that it could be, and he was saying he knew that there was going to be other players who are more talented that were out there. But he said, nobody could out prepare him and because no one could out prepare him, he had no regrets.
I think for me, what I’m saying is, there has to be something greater than the bottom line that’s driving me. There has to be something more than just winning for winning sake and I think that ties back to God’s calling, being called to create. I think there’s an aspect of that, that gets to that exceptionality, Jordan, as you’re talking. I still, I’m smiling ear to ear, because I haven’t read your book yet, so I just think it’s amazing. That was part of the mission statement —
[00:41:31] JR: It’s incredible. I love it.
[00:43:35] SV: You were touching on the heart of something there, brother. That’s all I could say.
[00:43:37] JR: I love that so much. What has God revealed to you during this crisis, about who he is. I’m just curious, I mean I’m sure you’ve been journaling a ton throughout this time. What is he teaching you about himself?
[00:43:49] SV: Man, it’s so much, so much. I think one of the things, I’ve hit on a lot. I’ve had to learn that success is in the journey, a new fresh way. I don’t think I really started to understand that until this happened. What I mean by that is, that a lot of times, it’s hard to measure progress. I’m somebody who likes to be on the move a lot. I’m somebody who wants to constantly be doing one thing to the next, to the next. Jordan, you knew before I came here to Florida Virtual. To have everything shut down to where I’m confined at home so much means that I’ve got a rethink what success looks like in the process. Because it’s not necessarily going to conferences anymore, it’s not necessarily getting in meeting rooms and shaking a bacon and all of the other things that people might define in the business world. It became something different. It became different for me.
I think that when I could find success in the small moments of what I was doing, like I talked about with my day, that I think — that was a very — and I’m still learning the lesson. I’ll be lying if I said I wasn’t. But to be able to say each day, having satisfaction that doing the next right thing, that small thing did matter and that it was progress. It might not be something I can see or fathom, but somewhere, God was working in that midst. And somewhere, there’s going to be a return in some way. It might not be monetarily, it might not be the way the world defines it, but there is some good and some return that’s coming out of it.
I would tell you, that is the reason I lead with that is because that is like probably the biggest lesson for me. Because enjoying the moment, recognize it’s a journey. And John Piper talks about, don’t waste your life. These ideas have hit me, it went from like maybe a grandiose level. maybe because I was defining it differently. I mean, when you see some of the previous things I’ve done career wise, take all that away from being out there, being public, all that and kind of coming back to a more obscure situation where I’m not out there is much. I’ve had to redefine. That could be just as much success in that type of situation.
[00:46:02] JR: Yeah. The Lord isn’t calling us to be big names. There was a good book, it was an interesting idea. This pastor wrote an anonymous book years ago, still don’t know who it is. It’s called Embracing Obscurity. It’s this idea of just like as Christ followers embracing the everyday, embracing the mundane, embracing the job that nobody every sees. It was a really beautiful book. I love it. I’ve reread it a couple of times. Speaking of books, one of three questions we love to wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or giving away most frequently to others these days?
[00:46:37] SV: Well, because I think they’re huge that I’ve been dealing with, just in light of COVID, I think lately I’ve been recommending The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at lot by Stephen Covey. Another one is, you heard me talk a lot about it is, Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden.
[00:46:54] JV: I’ve actually never read that. It’s been on my list for a long time.
[00:46:58] SV: And I’d say, Jordan, if I could hold a placeholder for a third, because one of these days soon, I’m probably giving out one of your books, because you’re going to be like New York Times bestseller.
[00:47:08] JR: We’ll see. We’ll see, yeah. I love it. We’ll hold a spot for that. Who would you most like to hear on this podcast, talking about how their faith influences the work they do in the world?
[00:47:19] SV: It’s football season and I grew up in New Jersey, so right outside of Philly. Since it’s football season, I’m a huge Eagles fan. I would love to hear Nick Foles, who is of course our former Super Bowl MVP on here at some point. He’s been going through a pretty rough time from a sports critic’s perspective, but I’d love to hear about his walk with Christ because of the adversity, not just because things are going great, but because he’s going through some difficult times. Mainly where I can think that it hits a similar heartstring is because, I knew early on and he’s been public about this and I have some friends who know him where he is planning on becoming a pastor after football. I’d love to hear how his pastor’s heart perspective influences and relates the football organizations, and changes a locker room culture and how that’s kind of guided him through his highs and lows. There’s my piece there.
[00:48:11] JR: That’s a great answer. We’ll reach out to Nick and his time. That’s good. All right, last question. One piece of advice to leave this audience with. People who like you are going to work every day trying to do their best work for the glory of God and the good of others, what do you want to leave them with?
[00:48:26] SV: I’m going to say it again. I’ve said it multiple times. For a fear to sound like a broken record, I’m going to say, learn that success is in enjoying the journey. I think from a Christian perspective, there’s a truth to what the writer of Ecclesiastes said when he said, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth.” I think the idea is that that trajectory is set up early. Have that as a day in and day out process. Find a way to enjoy the process, trust the process. You hear that a lot in our culture these days, it seems to be more of a common theme. I think enjoying that moment is so crucial. I think there is an aspect of resting, there is an aspect of being enough and having enough in God, absolutely. Yet, there is a journey that we’re on and I think to find joy in the moments, which is important to me because I’ve wrestled with being at peace in the moment and working hard at the same time, it’s an interesting tension that we hold. I think it’s almost like in the Christian walk. We’re in the already but not yet, right? We’ve got a shadow of it, but we know the substance is Christ. Like it’s not here yet, but we’re in that process of being ready and being who God wants us to be for the ultimate perfect glorification of who he wants us to be. that finality in it all.
[00:49:46] JR: Amen. Well said. Hey, Sam. I want to commend you for the important, eternally significant work you do every day, pre, post-COVID and thank you for your commitment to exceptional work for God’s glory and the good of your neighbors. As he already mentioned before, you can’t find Sam anywhere, but you can find out more about Florida Virtual Schools at flvs.net. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to catch up, brother. It’s great reconnecting.
[00:50:10] SV: Jordan, it was my pleasure and I’m looking forward to great things that come from your, brother.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:50:15] JR: I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. Hey, if you’re enjoying the podcast, do me a favor. Take a second to go leave a review of the podcast on Apple Podcast. By the way, we read these things at our all-hands meetings every Friday. We pick a couple of podcast reviews and we read them to encourage the team that makes this show. So go on Apple Podcast, leave a couple comments that we can read out to our team to encourage them as we keep making the show for you guys, inspiring and hopefully encouraging you to do your best work the glory of God and the good of others. Hey, thank you guys so much for listening this week. I’ll see you next time.
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