Season 5: Episode 103

In the first episode of the new year, Sarah Beth Herman of 'No Silver Spoons' shares a deeply personal and challenging start to 2026. After returning from a festive New Year's Eve celebration, Sarah and her husband discovered their home had been broken into, turning what began as a beautiful night into a traumatic experience. She discusses the leadership lessons learned from this event, focusing on resilience, facing disruptions, and the importance of robust systems in both personal life and business. Sarah emphasizes the importance of moving forward with clarity despite experiencing pain and trauma. The episode concludes with a promise of exploring themes of fear, healing, and restoration in the upcoming episodes.

Chapters

• 2:36 Reflecting on New Year's Eve
• 3:47 A Night to Remember
• 9:42 The Shocking Discovery
• 12:12 Coping with Trauma and Leadership Lessons
• 15:55 Moving Forward with Resilience
• 17:30 Final Thoughts and Reminders

Transcript

   📍 I am genuinely so glad that you're here with me today. Welcome back. This is No Silver Spoons, and I am Sarah Beth Herman. This is my first episode recording of the New Year, and I was really excited about stepping into 2026 with you, a new season, new conversations, new leadership moments, and let's be honest for just a second.

By the time you're listening to this very episode. We have probably already received several circling back emails because the holidays are officially over and everyone has suddenly remembered how calendars work. Again, the emails that come through that say, I hope you had a great holiday. Just circling back that first week of January always comes in strong.

I was excited about this year about what it could hold about growth. Leadership, teaching and everything that we would get to build together. But life had a very different way of starting this year. And today I wanna talk about that. I don't wanna sit in the pain, I don't wanna overshare, but I do want to show you what leadership looks like when your world gets shaken and when you still choose to move forward, when you still choose that today is a brand new day.

And I'm moving forward, even though I'm still keeping the going. At the end of last year, I completed a series with you called the Keep Going Series, where I talked about a lot of moments of my life where I chose to keep going, moments I was seeking to encourage you to keep going.

As I closed out last year, I had New Year's Eve plans and I wanna take you through that. Leading up to New Year's Eve, my husband and I, we actually didn't have plans to start out with, which honestly, it kind of felt nice. I saw several of my friends online who were sharing things like my plans for New Year's Eve, and.

They were blacked out, or it said sitting at home on the couch the year before. We had been invited to a very exclusive New Year's Eve dinner. One of those nights that just kind of sticks with you forever. It was elegant, intentional, super special and amazing multi-course meal.

And actually that New Year's Eve party we went to, we ended up leaving with a gift, and it was actually a gift from Tiffany's at this very event. We were just shocked at all that we received anything like that. So we thought, Hey, why not?

See if they're doing it again. We reached out to our contact and we were told that the event for New Year's Eve was completely full, but they said they would let us know if anything opened up last minute. And sure enough, last minute we got a text message, tickets were available and they would be at will call for us.

So our day went on as normal, no rush, no chaos, just a regular day That slowly turned into something really special. My husband and I had a few appointments and errands to run, but we didn't really feel rushed. We packed an overnight bag because with the invitation to this New Year's Eve event, also came with a hotel stay.

It really felt like such a gift, such a fun little night out. No pressure to drive home late. No stress, just ease, and, and bringing in the new year in a really beautiful and fantastic way. The dinner ran from about 6:00 PM until 8:00 PM and it was absolutely exquisite. It was a multi-course meal again.

Live music. Butler's walking around with trays of appetizers, a massive charcuterie board that felt endless and it was absolutely divine.  Everything was decorated in gold, and in fact, that was the theme. They called it New Year's Eve and Company. It was literally stunning. The room was decorated in gold and black and there were dancers and so many people in this room.

Everyone was dressed to the nines. There was even an ice sculpture when you walked in where drinks were poured directly from the ice. They were mixing them there, and you could take a little video and believe you me, I was taking all the videos and all the photos. When Devon and I, my husband, uh, first arrived, we were seated at the very front table.

Then we put our bags down and we sat down everything we had with us, and we went over to a photo booth that they had. We took a couple of fun photos and grabbed some appetizers. We walked around and we happened to see our neighbors there, which I thought was so fun. We invited them to sit with us at our table.

There were giveaways all night, laughter, conversation, comradery with other people sitting at our table that we hadn't ever met before. You know, that feeling where you are fully present and you're not thinking about anything else. It was one of those moments where you look at your person and you think, this is a great night. Several times throughout the night, my neighbors took pictures of us. My husband and I were taking pictures of our food. We were taking selfies. We were talking with people at our table. the band had songs that we all sang along to, and it was just incredible.

When the dinner wrapped up around 8:00 PM we went back up to our hotel room. We had checked in earlier around five o'clock, and were able to put our overnight bags in the room. Originally, the plan was for us to stay the night, hang around, enjoy the rest of the evening at the hotel. But Devin looked at me and said, Hey, you know, we're only about 45 minutes from home.

Why don't we go check on our dogs and just have a chill evening tonight? We both kind of laughed a little bit because. Who goes home at 8:00 PM on New Year's Eve when you have an overnight events at this hotel, this beautiful evening, a ball drop that you get to see. I mean, it was just kind of funny.

You know, as you get older,, you find relaxation and the comforts of your own home to just be the fun part, right.

We actually talked about how nice it would be to watch New Year's Rocking Eve with Ryan Seacrest, be in pajamas and not be out with crazy drivers and just keep it simple. We agreed that if we got home and we felt froggy, we could always just drive back, but the hotel was like 45 minutes from the house, so who wants to do that, right?

 So we grabbed our overnight bags and we headed home.

 The drive was quieter than usual. I think probably because everybody was out for the New Years, and so we headed back home and it takes about 15 to 20 minutes before you get to civilization when we're headed back from this particular event. And as we got closer to our home, we started seeing more and more fireworks just out on the horizon, celebrating the new year, even though it was only eight o'clock.

It was so nice. It was just kind of nice to drive down a clear road and see all the fireworks. There were several points that we made comments on them and just how much New Year's has changed over the years. My husband and I are empty nesters and so. When your children move out, it changes a lot of things about how your evenings end and how they begin and who's involved in them anyways.

As the fireworks were lighting up the sky, my husband and I would jump a couple times because some of them literally were mortar type fireworks that were like coming from the backyards into the main road. And so we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  But anyways, it was really awesome. So we got home and pulled into our driveway, and if anyone knows my husband that's listening to this very episode, you know that he backed into our driveway, which he always does.

It's kind of like his non-negotiable. People always comment on it that he backs into every parking space and backs into our driveway. I got out of the car first and I realized that I had left a bag of skincare products that I had gotten from an appointment earlier in the day in the passenger seat of my car.

And that car is parked right next to my husband's.   so I got out of my side of the car and I checked the door handle to see if the car was locked. And lo and behold, I had left it unlocked. Of course I did. I didn't think much of it. I just grabbed my small little bag that was in the passenger seat, and I walked around the front of our car into the garage because I was gonna enter the house through the entrance that's inside the garage.

My husband was opening up the back doors of our car to grab our overnight bags so that he could bring them inside. I let him know that I was going to let the dogs out, and as soon as I let them outside, I was gonna come back to help him bring in all of our items from the car.

 I opened the garage door and I took just a couple of steps in,  and that's when I saw it. We have a massive sliding glass door on the back of our home that actually faces the end or the rear of our property.

It was shattered on one side, and even now my body remembers that moment. I get a little bit of tenseness in my neck and a gut punch in my stomach. I screamed my husband's name, and I remember the sound of my voice, almost like I just screamed his name right now. It was a different sound than I've ever had before.

 It wasn't a normal yell, it was panic. It was fear. It was instinct. You see, normally when we open the garage, my four dogs always hear me open the garage and they get so excited to see us.

My friend, she, he is normally right at the back door waiting for me because as soon as he hears that garage door, he jumps off the couch and he runs to that door.

He wasn't there. Actually, none of my dogs barked. I froze. I backed up right outside the door. I had just walked in.

My husband looked up and I said, Devin now, and I can't even say it the way I said it that night because there was so much fear in my voice. I told him I thought our house had been broken into.  And for a split second, my brain tried to rationalize it. Birds hit that glass sliding glass door so many times.

The slider is huge, and it's almost like it's a target for birds to fly into because it's reflective during most of the day.

But my gut knew. I asked my husband if I should call 9 1 1. As he ran past me. He told me to stay outside, call 9 1 1 and wait right there until he cleared the house. I immediately got on the phone with nine one one. I actually don't remember dialing. 9 1 1 at this time, I don't remember. They asked me many questions about where I live, confirmed my address, what did my husband look like, where was he, what was he doing?

They told me not to go inside, but they wanted me to figure out how to get him outside, and I said, well, there's no way I can go in there. He told me to stay here, and I know if he told me that he's not sure if the house is safe, halfway through that call, maybe 90 seconds later. My husband came back out and I asked him if someone had broken into our house while I'm on the phone with the nine one one operator.

 He said, yes. He told me everything we didn't take with us was gone and the house was destroyed. And I'm gonna stop right here at this point in the story. There is a very specific kind of trauma that comes from realizing someone has invaded your home, your safe place, the place you built when you had no money, when everything felt uncertain, when you had never built a home before, but you were able to build this one, my first home, the one that represented safety for me, peace, stability, the place I was gonna live in until the day I die.

I often laugh about our home because we chose to build a ranch style home and I said we have to do this so that when I'm older and I need to use a walker, I can move it easily across the floors

for four and a half hours. Police officers were at my home. Security footage was reviewed on all 16 cameras. Crime scene investigators were there, photos were taken. And during this time, all I can think about was my dogs. Were they alive? Were they taken, were they hurt? That kind of fear it, it stays in your body.

And even though this was six days ago, still shows up for me and this is where I want to talk to you as a leader. Because life and business are not separate. We carry it all. Resilience is not learned in books. It is learned when something you never planned for happens anyway. Psychology refers to this as post-traumatic growth, not because the event was good, but because of how we responded to it, and business losses happen.

Clients leave. Partnerships, break narratives, get written by people who were never in the room. And just like this very situation, people fill in gaps with their own assumptions. In the 24 hours after what happened to my home news agencies came to help spread awareness. And with visibility, came support.

And hate people confidently creating stories that they were not a part of. And if you're a business owner, you know this feeling. Your job is not to correct every narrative. Your job is to stay anchored in truth. And if I'm being honest, every time I saw the hate on comments of the press releases and the news footage and the sharing of the security videos, I just wanted to correct everyone.

Who made comments about me and my husband that were untrue, who instead of being supportive were so hateful, so unkind. I wanted to correct every one of these. This experience forced us to look at safety differently, not from a fear perspective, from an awareness perspective. And the same applies in business.

Where are you relying on assumption instead of structure? Where are you trusting without verification? Where are you avoiding tightening systems because it feels uncomfortable or it will take too much time. Strong leadership is not reactive. It's intentional.

Organizations with proactive risk management and system-based decision making recover faster and lead with more stability during disruption. This does not make you rigid. It makes you resilient.

Learning to lead after a loss brings a different kind of something sacred because something sacred was violated. And many of you listening right now know that feeling in business, maybe it was a betrayal. Maybe it was a public misrepresentation, maybe it was a loss you never saw coming. You see, I've learned over the years that leadership does not pause.

When life hurts, hit deepens. You cannot lead well if you are constantly looking backward. Your responsibility is not to be understood by everyone. It is to move forward with clarity. I learned many things over the last six days. One of them is that none of us will ever be able to, with 100% certainty, guarantee someone will not rob invade, burglarize our homes.

What we can do is make our homes less appealing to Rob, invade or burglarize. I people think twice about doing that because of how we have been prepared.

I want you to go into this new year with clear eyes. If you're stepping into this year still carrying something heavy, I want you to hear this. This year does not require perfection from you. It requires presence, boundaries, systems that support you and courage to keep going.

This year has just begun and it holds possibility. It holds growth, it holds prosperity, and not because nothing hard will happen, but because you are becoming stronger. In this next episode, I will be talking about what happened with my animals, the fear I carried. The healing that followed, but today was about disruption.

Next time it's going to be about restoration every episode, I promise you that I will have a that's good moment. And here's yours for today,  your safe place. Being shaken does not mean that you are unsafe moving forward.  Loss does not cancel leadership. People will create narratives and you do not owe them your energy.

Strong systems protect peace and a new year can still be powerful even when it begins painfully. Before we wrap up this episode, here are a few reminders. If you are listening and thinking that I am talking too fast or maybe too slow, remember, you can adjust the speed on almost any podcast player.

Slow me down, speed me up. Whatever helps you absorb this best. If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review. Reviews, help this podcast, reach leaders who need these conversations. You can find no silver spoons wherever you listen to your podcasts, I encourage you to check episodes out on Spotify, apple Podcasts, and even good pods if you wanna connect with me beyond the podcast.

There are several ways to do that. I offer personal mentorship and coaching. I do public speaking for leadership teams and organizations. I also offer virtual and onsite intensive trainings for organizations worldwide. This year is a brand new opportunity to invest in yourself and your leadership, and I would love the opportunity to work with you.

All of my links are in the show notes so you can find what fits you best. 📍 Thank you for being here. . I'll catch you on the next episode.