We moved this week. And somewhere between the boxes and the bubble wrap I found myself thinking about leadership resilience — and the storytelling that makes the hard work worth it.
Twenty minutes east. From a rental in Reno to a home in Sparks that Lori and I are calling ours — for now, and hopefully for a long time.
It doesn’t sound like much. Same valley. Same mountains. Same desert sky that turns pink and gold every evening like it has something to prove.
But there’s something about moving from a place you’ve been borrowing to a place that’s actually yours that changes how you stand in a room.
What Thirty Years Taught Me About Resilience
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week — between the boxes and the bubble wrap and the moment you realize you own more wine glasses than you thought.
Resilience isn’t dramatic. It rarely looks the way people expect it to.
It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive in a single defining moment of triumph after a period of obvious struggle. Most of the time it looks like this — quiet, incremental, one decision at a time. A rental that becomes a home. A career pivot that becomes a calling. A newsletter launched to 2,300 people on a Tuesday morning in May that turns out to have a 38% open rate and an audience that actually wants what you’re building.
I spent thirty years leading organizations through 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and crisis events across four continents.I wrote the book on what happens when high-performing leaders run out of runway — literally, it’s called Stop Leading on Empty and it’s sitting on the shelves of people I’ve never met in cities I’ve never visited. Available now on Amazon — and if you know a leader who is running on fumes, it might be the most useful thing you put in their hands this year
None of that happened because I was the smartest person in the room. It happened because I kept showing up. In the hard rooms and the quiet ones. When it was working and when it wasn’t. When the plan held and when it fell apart at 3am and someone had to hold the room together anyway.
That’s resilience. Not the absence of difficulty. The decision to keep going through it. That’s what leadership resilience storytelling looks like in practice — not a seminar, not a framework, but a life lived in the rooms that matter.
The new home has a wine room.
Leadership Resilience and the Stories Worth Telling
Not a cellar. Not a collection for the sake of collecting. A room where the stories live.
Every bottle from a place I’ve actually sat, listened, and paid attention. A Pinot Noir from a small producer on the Sonoma Coast. A Zinfandel from Amador County poured by a third-generation winemaker who talked about his grandfather’s hands the way you talk about someone you’re still trying to become. A bottle from a boutique hotel bar in the desert where the bartender knew the founding story of the property and told it like it was the best part of his job.
Because it was.
That’s what Vianarra is built around. Not just wineries — though wine is often where the best stories live. Boutique hotels with founding families whose names are on the building but not in the conversation. Restaurants where the chef’s grandmother’s recipe is on the menu but nobody on the floor knows why. Distilleries built by people who bet everything on a craft most of their neighbors thought was crazy.
Every place worth remembering has a story sitting just beneath the surface. In the founding, the family, the failure that became the breakthrough, the detail that makes this place irreplaceable rather than merely pleasant.
Most of them never tell it. Not because they don’t have it. Because nobody has helped them find the words.
That’s the work I’m building here in Sparks. Between the speaking engagements and the leadership workshops and the book — there’s this other lane that brings me more joy than I know what to do with. Sitting across from an operator who has been doing something remarkable for twenty years and hasn’t figured out how to say so yet. That’s the story I told in The Table That Wasn’t Set For Me — and it’s the story Vianarra is built to keep telling.
I get to help them say so.
Not in press releases. Not in marketing copy. In the real story — the good, the bad, the vintage that didn’t work and the one that changed everything.
That’s where leadership resilience storytelling and Vianarra converge — in the places worth remembering and the people who built them.”
Twenty Minutes East — The Work Continues
Twenty minutes east.
Same distance to the airport for when the calendar calls. New home. New chapter. The wine room waiting for the next bottle with a story worth keeping.
Resilience isn’t glamorous. It’s just the work — done consistently, over time, in rooms that don’t always applaud.
But every now and then you get to unpack boxes in a place that’s actually yours and realize the work was worth it.
If you’ve been following along — thank you. The best is still coming.
Leadership resilience storytelling isn’t a category. It’s a practice. It starts here.
If you haven’t subscribed to Vianarra yet — the story found along the way — you’ll find it at vianarra.kit.com. First issue is already live. Issue 2 lands Thursday.