In this Episode
Continuing his new ‘Emerging Leaders Series’, Nick welcomes entrepreneur and true emerging leader Torrey Sims back to the podcast to offer an update on her experiences as a business president and owner. Having spent nearly two years leading WMH Media after purchasing the 30-year-old company, Torrey shares what she has learned about self-trust, resilience, and leading with purpose and class. Her reflections offer a clear look at the realities of modern leadership.
Torrey explains why she starts with trust but has learned to meet people where they are, and talks about not letting the reality of others change who you are at your core. The discussion goes on to cover the loneliness that can come with entrepreneurship, the need to be your own biggest cheerleader, and Torrey’s belief that what is wrong will eventually expose itself, saving you from needing to be the ‘justice police’. She also opens up about how personal loss has reshaped her view of time, health, and what it means to leave a proud legacy.
Key Takeaways
Torrey Sims became President of WMH Media by purchasing the 30-year-old firm where her career began, demonstrating that emerging leaders often grow through pressure rather than after it—they build confidence by taking visible, sometimes uncomfortable action.
Her journey reveals five core lessons: lead with values even when others don’t, meet people where they are through emotional intelligence, build resilience by treating setbacks as data, grow confidence through action rather than waiting to feel ready, and anchor everything in self-awareness.
Nick Warner Consulting uses these practical lessons in executive coaching and emerging leaders program offerings for clients nationwide, especially in California, helping both private sector professionals and public sector leaders develop the skills to advance in their careers.
The path from employee to owner mirrors what many rising stars experience: inheriting a legacy while being expected to innovate and perform immediately, requiring a deliberate focus on professional growth and continuous learning.
Introduction: Emerging Leaders in the Real World
Emerging leaders share one defining trait: they are willing to grow in public while taking on real responsibility. They step into leadership roles before feeling fully ready, learn through pressure rather than theory, and build credibility one decision at a time. This is not about age or years of experience—it is about mindset, ownership, and the commitment to develop as both a professional and a person.
In a recent episode of the Together at the Top podcast, Nick Warner sat down with Torrey Sims, President of WMH Media, to discuss what leadership actually looks like in the early years of running a company. Torrey made a bold decision to acquire the media firm where her career began as a young editor, stepping from employee to business owner and inheriting a multi-decade legacy while simultaneously being responsible for guiding its future.
Her transition mirrors what many future leaders experience across industries: entering an existing system with established relationships, processes, and expectations, only to be asked to innovate immediately. Whether you are stepping into a family business, a public agency, or a legacy department, the challenge is the same—honor the past while building something new.
This article translates her story into practical lessons that Nick Warner Consulting uses when coaching emerging leaders, executives, and public-sector clients. The insights are grounded in real experience, not abstract theory, and they apply whether you are preparing for your first management role or navigating your first year as an owner.
From Employee to Owner: Torrey Sims’ Transition at WMH Media
Torrey Sims spent years building expertise in journalism, trade media, and marketing before making the leap to ownership. Her career path included roles as a production assistant in an investigative unit at CBS Corporation, editorial positions at Emlen Media covering the architecture and construction markets, and business development leadership at firms such as Vanir Construction Management and HDR. That experience gave her deep exposure to the built-environment ecosystem and the skills to connect storytelling with business outcomes.
When she purchased WMH Media, she inherited a 30-year-old company with established brands serving corrections, healthcare, construction, and green building sectors. The prior owner left behind infrastructure, client relationships, and brand recognition—but Torrey quickly concluded that it was time for a shakeup. She had to honor the founder’s reputation while modernizing services for current media realities: digital campaigns, social platforms, integrated content strategies, and evolving client expectations.
This dual pressure is common among leaders who are promoted or acquire their way into existing systems rather than building from scratch. In the early months of ownership, Torrey had to recalibrate expectations, staffing, and revenue under her leadership. She recognized that her decision to buy the company affected her team, clients, and the industry as a whole—so she chose not to do things the way they had always been done. Instead, she focused on empowering and investing in others while surrounding herself with capable advisors who asked tough questions like “Why are you in this position?”
Nick Warner Consulting often coaches clients through similar succession and transition moments. Whether it is a California-based growth-stage company preparing a new layer of managers for expansion or a city department grooming mid-level supervisors for director roles, the process requires stakeholder mapping, 90-day transition plans, values clarification, and strategic planning to modernize operations without disrupting core trust.
Leading with Values When Others Don’t
One of the central themes Torrey shared was the importance of staying grounded in your values even when circumstances become difficult. Her key lesson: “Not everyone will always do the right thing, but that reality should not change the way you show up.” This mindset helped her navigate the frustrations that inevitably come with entrepreneurship while maintaining integrity in her work with others.
Emerging leaders frequently encounter broken promises, misaligned expectations, or office politics in the first 12–24 months of stepping into authority. They are often tested on budget commitments, role expectations, credit for work, and fairness of opportunity. Here is how values-based leadership works in practice:
Set clear standards and follow through. Torrey deliberately chooses to bring positivity to every interaction, even when the feeling is not reciprocated. Consistent behavior builds trust over time.
Refuse to compromise integrity for short-term wins. In the money matters discussion, she acknowledged financial realities but also valued non-monetary opportunities and intentional growth over transactional shortcuts.
Lead with empathy while holding people accountable. She emphasizes that you do not know what others are going through, which grounds her treatment of staff and clients, even when others act unprofessionally.
Define your non-negotiables before you need them. Having 3–5 core principles ready makes tough decisions clearer when pressure hits.
Nick Warner Consulting incorporates values clarification exercises in executive and emerging-leader coaching. These typically include guided reflection to identify non-negotiable principles, exploring stories in which those values were tested, and creating decision filters to guide behavior under pressure.
Meeting People Where They Are: Emotional Intelligence for Emerging Leaders
Torrey’s insight that people operate from different experiences, motivations, and pressures is central to her leadership approach. Leaders must avoid assuming shared perspectives. She chooses to bring herself fully to the table and invite others to meet her there, recognizing that you cannot know what others are going through.
In specific workplace situations, this meant navigating inherited staff embedded in the prior culture—some wary, exhausted from change, or skeptical of new directions. Long-standing clients in corrections, construction, and healthcare sectors had relationships with the prior publisher and may have resisted new offerings. In one notable meeting, someone expected “Torrey” to be a large man and did not recognize her as the executive until she identified herself. She handled the gender bias with poise rather than resentment, turning the moment into an opportunity to build a connection.
Emotional intelligence skills that emerging leaders need include:
Active listening and curiosity before assuming
Empathy that prevents quick judgments
Managing power dynamics by keeping dialogue open
Separating intent from impact in difficult conversations
Practical conversational shifts can redirect blame to understanding. Instead of “Why didn’t you do X?” try “Can you walk me through what pressures you were dealing with when you made that call?” This surfaces context and allows for joint problem-solving. Instead of “This client is being unreasonable,” ask, “What is at stake for them that we might not be seeing?”
Nick Warner Consulting builds these leadership skills into team-building and public-sector leadership coaching, explicitly training in feedback techniques, difficult conversations, and emotional intelligence frameworks that enhance collaboration across the organization.
Resilience in the First 12 Months of Leadership
The first year after a promotion, acquisition, or high-stakes appointment is widely recognized as a stress test. Expectations are high, systems are in flux, and leaders face a constant stream of firsts: first budget cycle, first crisis, first key hire or fire, first strategic pivot. Torrey’s experience fits this pattern perfectly.
She described how the early months of owning WMH Media forced her to rethink expectations and pivot quickly. Setbacks became a trigger for learning and course correction rather than evidence that she was unqualified. This reframing—treating adversity as data rather than a verdict—is a hallmark of resilience. Specific pivots likely included adjusting the business model toward integrated digital offerings, reevaluating roles and talent, and recalibrating growth expectations to match realistic cash flow and capacity.
Key resilience practices for emerging leaders include:
Seeking mentors and advisory circles. Torrey explicitly credits surrounding herself with capable advisors who asked tough questions and helped her build a strong foundation.
Using reflection intentionally. Journaling, debriefing major decisions, and structured coaching sessions transform stressful experiences into learning assets.
Focusing on controllables. Distinguishing between what can be influenced (strategy, communication, hiring) and what cannot (market cycles, regulatory shifts) protects energy and clarity.
Nick Warner Consulting helps emerging leaders build resilience through structured coaching engagements, accountability partnerships, and strategic planning support that turns the first-year stress test into accelerated growth.
Confidence Through Action: Saying Yes Before You Feel Ready
Torrey emphasizes that confidence is built less by internal affirmation and more by repeatedly showing up for challenging, visible opportunities. Instead of waiting for inner certainty or feeling fully ready, she said yes to experiences that stretched her capabilities. Each successful navigation of discomfort incrementally shifted her sense of what was possible.
Specific actions she took included:
Accepting visible speaking roles and becoming the face of WMH Media at industry events
Leading high-stakes meetings with senior decision-makers in male-dominated sectors
Expanding into adjacent verticals like healthcare and green building, where she had to build new credibility
This principle of micro-bravery—small, repeated, public decisions that slowly reset your baseline of what feels challenging—applies to all participants in leadership development. For readers, consider these concrete actions:
Volunteer to lead a cross-functional project in Q3 or Q4 of this year
Present at a 2025 or 2026 industry event, even a small one
Take ownership of a new budget line or initiative that stretches your current scope
Have a difficult feedback conversation you have been avoiding
Nick Warner Consulting emphasizes action plans between sessions so emerging leaders build confidence through execution, not theory. Coaching engagements include concrete commitments and accountability structures that turn insight into visible leadership behavior.
Purpose-Driven Leadership: Caring About the Work and the People
Torrey’s journalism background and passion for storytelling shaped her desire to help clients, employees, and partners succeed through WMH Media’s campaigns. Her work is not purely commercial—she sees the firm’s role as helping members of the industries they serve tell important stories and advance meaningful solutions.
Emerging leaders who are driven only by title, promotion, or status often experience burnout or plateau quickly. Those anchored in purpose can better navigate long hours, ambiguity, and setbacks because they know who they serve and why the work matters.
In practice, this meant:
Taking on projects that elevate underrepresented perspectives in corrections or green building, even when the short-term ROI was modest
Hiring and building teams around people who share her values and desire to serve clients well
Using a collaborative style that opens doors and creates crossover possibilities across different brands and industries
For readers seeking to identify their own leadership purpose, consider:
Who do you want to serve in your career?
What problems do you care most about solving?
What impact do you want to see by 2030?
Nick Warner Consulting facilitates purpose and mission work in both private-sector and nonprofit leadership development engagements, tying individual purpose to organizational culture and revenue growth.
Curiosity as a Strategic Advantage
Torrey credits her journalism training for making curiosity a core leadership tool. As a former editor and investigative production assistant, she is accustomed to asking probing questions, checking assumptions, and seeking multiple viewpoints. This translates directly to leadership.
With clients, she digs beyond the surface of “we need a marketing campaign” to understand underlying objectives. With staff, she explores employees’ strengths, motivations, and constraints. With partners, she uses curiosity to explore collaboration opportunities across industries.
Specific question types emerging leaders can use:
“What does success really look like for you by Q4 2026?”
“What pressure are you under that I might not be seeing?”
“What would need to be true for this to work?”
“What have we tried before that did not succeed, and why?”
Curiosity fuels better strategic planning, innovation, and organizational efficiency. Leaders who systematically ask questions uncover hidden risks, unarticulated needs, and alternative solutions. This supports Nick Warner Consulting’s core offerings in consulting and coaching, where better questions lead to better strategy and execution.
Personal Balance and Performance: The Hidden Discipline
Torrey spoke candidly about the toll leadership can take on physical and mental health, particularly in the first years of ownership when hours are long, and pressure is high. Her focus on sleep, exercise, and routines that sustain energy positions these not as nice-to-haves but as business-critical systems for leaders.
The reframing here is important: work-life balance is not a simple 50/50 time split but an ongoing responsibility to maintain clarity, emotional stability, and consistent leadership presence. Leadership performance is treated like an athletic discipline—recovery, routines, and energy management are essential for sustained success.
Concrete habits emerging leaders can experiment with:
Habit | Description |
|---|---|
Morning planning ritual | 15–20 minutes to prioritize key decisions and deep-work blocks |
No-meeting focus blocks | Protected time for strategic thinking, not just reactive tasks |
Exercise or movement routine | Daily or regular physical activity to manage stress |
Protected recovery windows | Weekends or time blocks where you disconnect enough to reset |
Nick Warner Consulting emphasizes sustainable leadership in executive coaching, encouraging leaders to design personal operating systems that match their roles and life stages. This ensures participants can perform effectively over the years, not just through a single crisis.
Self-Awareness: The Core of Emerging Leadership
Torrey’s central message is clear: before making big moves—like buying a company—you need to know who you are, what you stand for, and how you respond under stress. Self-awareness is the integrating thread that makes all other capabilities sustainable.
Without self-awareness, emerging leaders may:
Overreact to feedback, perceiving every critique as a personal attack
Misjudge their impact on teams—believing they are inspiring when they are actually creating anxiety
Pursuing roles misaligned with their strengths or values leads to chronic dissatisfaction
Maintain unsustainable standards that burn them out and set unrealistic expectations for others
Simple self-awareness tools that support professional growth include:
360-degree feedback: Structured input from peers, direct reports, and supervisors
Assessments: Personality frameworks or strengths inventories that give language to patterns
Reflective debriefs: After major decisions, reviewing what worked, what did not, and how you felt
Regular coaching: Ongoing conversations that challenge assumptions and track behavioral change
Nick Warner Consulting integrates self-awareness work into leadership development across sectors—public officials, nonprofit leaders, and corporate managers—because it underpins all other capabilities. Self-awareness ties back to every prior theme: values, resilience, confidence, purpose, curiosity, and balance become coherent and durable when grounded in honest self-knowledge.
How Nick Warner Consulting Supports Emerging Leaders
Nick Warner Consulting translates insights from leaders like Torrey into structured programs for emerging leaders, executives, and teams. The firm serves business owners, executives, public-sector clients, and motivated professionals with tailored solutions tailored to their unique challenges.
Core service areas relevant to emerging leaders include:
Executive coaching for new presidents, division heads, and department leaders
Emerging leaders program design and delivery
Strategic planning and organizational efficiency improvement
Revenue growth consulting tied to leadership capacity
Team building and culture development
Client scenarios might include a California-based growth-stage company preparing a new layer of managers for 2026 expansion, or a government agency grooming mid-level supervisors for senior leadership roles. A statewide nonprofit seeking to strengthen leadership capacity among rising stars would benefit from the same practical, human-centered approach.
For readers considering their own emerging leaders or personal leadership path, Nick Warner Consulting offers free introductory consultations to discuss fit, structure, and timelines. Services are delivered nationwide with a strong presence in California, and engagements can be initiated by individuals or their organizations.
FAQs about Emerging Leaders and Leadership Development
These FAQs address common questions not fully covered in the main article and focus on practical next steps for those seeking to engage in leadership development.
When is the right time in my career to start calling myself an emerging leader?
The label “emerging leader” usually fits professionals who have begun to influence others—through projects, informal mentorship, or early management roles—even if their title is not yet director or VP. It is less about age or years of experience and more about mindset: taking ownership, seeking feedback, and being willing to grow in public. Nick Warner Consulting regularly works with individuals from early managers to senior individual contributors who are prepared for their first major leadership jump. Do not wait for a formal promotion before investing in your development.
How can organizations identify emerging leaders inside their teams?
Look for specific behaviors: people who volunteer for hard tasks, are trusted by peers, and stay solution-focused during setbacks. Emerging leaders often act as informal hubs in communication networks, even without titles, and are curious about how the broader business or campus community works. Organizations should pair observation with simple assessment tools and structured feedback to avoid choosing only the most outspoken personalities. Nick Warner Consulting can help design identification and development processes that create a strong internal leadership bench for the next generation.
What is the typical structure of an emerging leader development program?
A common structure involves a multi-month engagement combining workshops or group sessions with one-on-one coaching, real-world projects, and feedback loops. Programs often run over an academic or fiscal year cycle—such as a spring semester or fall-to-spring—so participants can apply skills to live initiatives and measure outcomes by year-end. Nick Warner Consulting customizes curriculum around core topics such as communication, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and execution discipline. The best programs deliver sustained experiences that build habits, not just one-time attendance at an event.
How can emerging leaders show impact without formal authority or big budgets?
Impact can be demonstrated through improved processes, better collaboration, reduced friction between teams, or small but visible wins on key projects. Encourage readers to document before-and-after metrics wherever possible, such as turnaround times, error rates, engagement scores, or revenue-related indicators. Storytelling matters: emerging leaders should learn to clearly narrate how their actions contributed to their success, an ability that coaching can help sharpen. Torrey’s example shows how curiosity, values, and resilience can inspire positive change, even when not every variable is under your control.
What is the first step if I want coaching as an emerging leader?
Start by clarifying your goals for the next 12–24 months—such as a specific promotion, role change, or organizational outcome—and any current obstacles to progress. You can schedule a free introductory consultation with Nick Warner Consulting to discuss fit, coaching structure, and timelines. Engagements can be arranged directly by individuals or through their organizations and delivered virtually to clients across the United States. Treat coaching as a strategic investment in both your current role and your long-term leadership trajectory.
