S3 E19 - Build Your Favorite Business (Part 1)

In this week’s episode, Sophia kicks off a brand-new series that speaks directly to the entrepreneurs, dreamers, and business owners in her community—whether you’re just getting started, rebuilding from scratch, or already successful but craving something that feels more aligned.

After months of talking about living your 10/10 life, Sophia realized a huge portion of her audience is hungry for guidance on creating a business that actually supports the life they want—not the other way around. Today, she lays the foundation for what she calls your favorite business: a business that fits your strengths, your personality, your season of life, and your deepest values.

Sophia breaks down the three essential pillars every entrepreneur must build before their business can truly thrive:

1. Value: Are you solving a real problem?

Business only works when people are willing to pay for the solution you offer. Sophia shares tangible examples—from glasses and purses to real-world photography and handmade products—of how value is defined by the customer, not the creator. She unpacks why so many new entrepreneurs struggle to communicate the problem they solve and why clarity is everything.

2. Alignment: Does the business model actually fit you?

This is the piece Sophia sees entrepreneurs overlook the most. She shares stories from multiple industries—coaching, photography, Etsy shops, financial services, even plumbing—to show how small pivots can transform burnout into joy. She also opens up about her and Brandon’s journey in the video production world and why stepping away was the best decision for their mental health and marriage. The message: success means nothing if it’s not aligned with who you are.

3. Visibility: Are you in the right rooms with the right people?

Most businesses don’t fail because the offer is bad—they fail because the owner isn’t meeting enough of the right people. Whether online or in person, Sophia explains why showing up strategically matters more than posting endlessly on social media. She introduces her powerful “7–2–1 Rule” from her book and explores how the culture of the room changes everything about who you attract and who you’re meant to serve.

This episode is a grounded, honest, and encouraging invitation to rethink how you run your business heading into 2026. With more coming next week, Sophia sets the stage for a podcast mini-series that will help you build a business that feels deeply aligned, deeply valuable, and deeply yours.

Purchase your copy of Unleash Your Favorite Self book and the corresponding journal.

Interested in one-on-one coaching? Click here to schedule a Roadmap session with Sophia.

Download the Favorite Self app in the Apple Store or Google Play.

Connect with Sophia on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube

Have a topic you would love to hear Sophia address on the podcast? Send your ideas to hello@sophiahyde.com

Transcript

Sophia Hyde (00:01.112)
Hello, I'm so excited to be here with you guys today. I wanna give a shout out to a handful of you who have either, if you have my number texted to me, I've got some text messages, I've gotten some DMs and Instagram telling me that you listened to the episode and what stood out to you, what was helpful. I have to tell you guys, those are so encouraging. So please, if you ever like it, I am a very accessible person.

please feel free to email me, DM me, whatever form of contact, because sometimes just talking into a microphone can feel like, is anybody even listening to this? And then you get this either email or DM where you're just like, my gosh, this was a huge aha, thank you so much. This was what it meant and like how it applied to my life and.

Those are like the fuel. They're the gas in my tank. Hearing from you guys, it seriously is what fuels me to keep recording these episodes because when I record them, it's just me looking at my computer screen, talking into a microphone. It's a little bit weird. And I heard from a few people this week and it meant the world to me and it made my heart explode. And so if...

something in any of these episodes ever brings you value. Please let me know so it can keep giving me the fuel and the energy to come back with more. All right, this week, we're going to pivot a little bit from the, I guess stream of consciousness I've kind of been in for a while. I've been really focused on this 10 out of 10 for a few months. Like this has been my, why aren't people stepping in? They're 10 out of 10. Why are they shrinking back?

What does it mean to live all your 10s, right? And I had four or five different conversations in the last probably two weeks that have really jumped out at me and sent me on my new soapbox. It's not really a soapbox actually. I'm not here to rant, I'm here to help. But really what it did was it opened my eyes up to how many people are in my network or listening to this.

Sophia Hyde (02:22.647)
who I really have a mix, right? There are people who listen, who are just wanting to make their lives better. They wanna live their favorite life. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to this. People who are, have a really well established business. And a lot of those are the people who have joined a line that I've been promoting. But then there's people who are just getting their business off of the ground, or if they have a dream of a business, they're thinking of starting. Or they just had to start all over from scratch.

or they've been doing this for a long time but they feel like they're banging their head against the wall and like, why isn't this successful? Why haven't I broken through? And I realized that this is a significant chunk of my audience that I haven't had the right product for. And when I say product, I don't mean I'm just trying to sell you something. I mean that my goal as a coach is to offer you the help that you're looking for to find the resources.

And so for those people who are like, well, Sophia, I'd love to coach with you one on one, but that's, you know, not, I just don't have, can't, that's not in my budget. I can't make it work. I realized there was like this, there was this pattern of people who were hungry and wanted the help and wanted to put in the work, but they couldn't quite do one on one. And so I'm not ready to announce it yet, but.

I've been listening to you guys. I am putting together a new offer that will be starting soon. I'm not sure if I'll be able to start it in December, definitely by January, that will be able to help you in have the resources that you're looking for to grow your business, whether that's to the first 100K to starting it from scratch, rebuilding it.

all of just everything that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. I wanna give you guys those building blocks because damn, I have been there. I started working for myself at 20 years old and there is no reason for you to have to reinvent the wheel when so I have already been through so much of the information that is out there and what doesn't work and what does work and I'd love to save you some hassle. So I'm working on that in the background, okay? In the meantime, this episode,

Sophia Hyde (04:42.003)
is for those of you in business. We're gonna be talking about what it looks like. I'm gonna do a series. I don't know how many episodes long it will be, but I know that I won't be able to cover it all today. So it's at least two. And if there is still more for me to say after next week, we'll keep going. Okay? But I wanna talk about what it means to run your favorite business. And this applies to any level of business. This...

This conversation that we're about to have of what it means to have your favorite business is the conversation I have had with somebody who is just getting started and trying to brainstorm what the business is even going to look like to somebody who's been in business for 15 years and is already very successful, but needs, but it's not their favorite business, right? Like they somehow built a business that they have to fit their life around instead of.

building their life and making their business fit around it, right? So they might have a successful business that's doing well, but something about it's not working. So it doesn't matter where you're at, whether you are just getting started and your business is only an idea, or you've been around the block for more than a decade, you will be able to find value in this conversation. So I also think this is a great conversation for somebody who's, you know, as you're going into 2026, you're just thinking,

maybe there's a better way to do it. This was a good year. Again, let's go back to that five, seven out of 10. My business was a seven out of 10. It was fine. Everything's fine, but you know it can be better. This conversation might help you fill that gap. What is that gap that's gonna take you from that seven to the 10 to truly have your favorite business? All right, that's the conversation I wanna have. And spoiler alert, that's probably what the, it's either gonna be like group coaching.

course membership, something in there that I'm gonna offer to be able to help people build this. I'm still brainstorming it, so it's not quite ready to offer to you yet, but that's probably what it'd be called, building your favorite business, right? And the first three things that I wanna talk about, the first three things that I think you have to, they're just, they are the foundation. You cannot build.

Sophia Hyde (07:02.899)
your favorite business if you have not laid these three very important foundational pieces. After you build this foundation with these three parts, then from there we can start accessorizing, right? We can start getting into the weeds and the minutia of like how to make it yours and streamlining things and tweaking here and there. But if you have, it's like a stool, you know, they say that a strong stool is

It's three legs, it's a very stable foundation. If you have one of these three pieces off, I have a hard time imagining that your business can be very stable, like a stool where you cut off one of the legs. It's not gonna balance on two. In my opinion, these are the three fundamentals to building your favorite business. And after that, now we're getting into...

Not, the weeds are so important. They still matter. They're the details, they're the accessories, okay? But this is your foundation. Number one is we have to talk about whether you are in a business, own a business that offers a product or offers a service. It is so fundamental to understand that everything about business comes down to value. Are you providing value? It doesn't matter

what you want to go out into the world and sell, it's irrelevant if people don't want to pay for it, right? I mean, this is just business one-on-one. What is something worth? Well, people will tell you a product is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it, right? Real estate, you can pick the same house up. I mean, I know this. I paid $425,000 for my house and I have a friend who paid almost double for my house than I did for my house.

And because of the location of where she bought it, it's a fraction, I think probably some similar square footage, but like I have 0.75 acres sprawling land, this big garage, you know, and she's like in one of those neighborhoods where every house, like you can reach your arms out and touch your neighbor, right? And her house is worth twice as much as mine. Why? Value, value. I live in the rural area.

Sophia Hyde (09:26.689)
far away from any metropolitan area in this neighborhood is in the heart of convenience. Location, location, location. It is an area that has not had any properties, like any new properties go up for sale for a long time, because it was built decades ago. And so people paid a lot of money to be like, my gosh, that's a part of town I really want to live in. Location, location, location, right? We know this about real estate. Something is worth what someone's willing to pay for it.

And I think it's important to acknowledge that that applies to every area of business. And I have seen so many people start a business and forget that their job is to provide value. And the value is set by somebody else having a problem that you can solve. It doesn't matter if you want to go out into the world and do the

Whatever the thing is that you're so excited about if you can't communicate How it helps somebody how it will benefit their life make it better make it more convenient elevate it I mean I just impulse I made a few impulse purchase not a few I made a lot of impulse purchase in the last week because I For me Christmas is about all that mental load like I don't like the mental load of all the gifts

So I do my entire lit, I always, I've done this for the past like 10 years. I do my entire list in the days following Thanksgiving, whether it's my kids, family members, Secret Santa's, whatever. Because if there's a Black Friday discount or a Cyber Monday discount, like I don't want the mental load to carry with me in December. So I already have those days off at Thanksgiving. I go into Thanksgiving day knowing my list and the day after Thanksgiving I knock the whole thing out.

Anyways, I digress. but a couple impulse purchases I made for myself were some new glasses in a new purse that I wasn't planning on buying, but I had problems that needed to be solved. I had just gotten new glasses a month ago, but I'm new to this glasses world. I'd only had the one pair I got two years ago. And so I bought these new ones and I didn't know how much I was going to hate having, I think they're called nose rests. Well, it turns out I despise them.

Sophia Hyde (11:51.168)
And so I was miserable for like a month. Like they left red marks. It felt like nails on a chalkboard. And finally, I couldn't handle it. I missed my return window. I should have not kept them. But anyways, I impulse bought new glasses. Why? Because they had an offer to solve my problem, which was that I was annoyed and angry and frustrated. Right. So I was not planning on buying new glasses, but I gave them my money because they were going to solve my problem. So if you're in business,

It's you have to not only offer something of value, but also be able to know the value and communicate it. So what are you doing to help people? Whose problem are you solving? What problem do they have? I can't tell you how many people that I'm trying to help them get their business off the ground or get it going. And they think whatever they have is pretty or fancy or exciting in their minds.

but they have no idea how to talk about it. They can't communicate to somebody like they're excited about the thing, but they don't know how, what language to use to be able to communicate to other people. If you have this problem, I have a solution. had a girlfriend, was like, I had left my full-time job like a month, maybe a month. It was a few weeks into me leaving my full-time job and I had a girlfriend who had already gone full-time coaching like two years before me.

She's like, girl, let's hop on a Zoom call. I want to hear all about this. Let's talk. And I was saying to her, I'm trying to find my niche and thinking about this niche or that niche. And she was like, that, no niches. She said, it's so much easier than that. Stop worrying about that. Just focus on the problem that you solve. What problem can you help people solve? What's the solution you're offering? And then just go tell people that's the problem you solve. That's it. That's all you gotta do,

Don't make it more complicated than that. And that was so helpful to me to realize that that was my job because people will exchange money, right? If you're offering them value. The other side of this, and this is a tangent, actually this wasn't on today's list, but we're gonna go here. It's also important that you move to the world understanding that your job is to offer value, not just to the thing that you're selling, but just being a person of value. If you move through the world with this like taking energy,

Sophia Hyde (14:17.877)
And I do, need to say this, this is gonna be for different conversation. I wanted to get into how, we're gonna do that next week, okay? We're gonna get into networking and the way people show up in a room and the way they meet people, take versus give energy. We're gonna dive into that next week, okay? All right, so that's number one. Do you even have a product that people want to pay for? And do you know how to explain that? You might have something that's really, really amazing, but if people don't understand it, a confused mind says no.

So can you communicate very simply and clearly the problem you solve? All right, second.

Is this even aligned for you specifically? And this is, I think, the most important thing. there's one thing I talk about the most with my clients in business, it's we will spend months answering this question in 100 different ways. And that is, is the business that you're doing and the way that you're doing it aligned for you specifically? I have seen people who have been in business for over a decade already successful.

completely pivot on a dime to tweak all the knowledge and the skill and the expertise they already have, but tweak it to offer it in a slightly different way that actually makes so much more sense for them. And so I sat down and I thought of a bunch of different people that I've watched pivot their businesses in a way that allowed it to be more of their favorite business because what they were doing, they did have a product or a service.

and they were selling it, but it was either making them miserable, making them tired, making them exhausted, felt off, and whatever they were doing, it's not that it was bad or not right, it just wasn't right for them, either their personality or their strengths or their availability, right? But anyways, I thought about this, who all have I seen pivot and what does that look like? Because I could talk about it from a coaching perspective as I've experimented one-on-one versus group coaching versus.

Sophia Hyde (16:17.877)
solving this problem or marketing myself as somebody who solves that problem or marketing myself with the speaking engagements, right? Like that's been another income stream and then do I wanna move more heavily to that, right? That's what it looks like for me. But I wanted to talk across industries and so I thought, who have I watched pivot? Okay, I thought of somebody I know and this would apply to like anybody of an Etsy store who you could so easily go from offering this product that you make.

to teaching people how to make it. I personally know somebody who went from making candles that smelled amazing to now most of her money comes from putting together candle making classes. And I've seen people do this with those cute decorated pinecones. It's like, okay, I can decorate a pinecone for you and you can buy it from my Etsy store. Or we can have this social thing where we gather people together and everybody walks away with their own pinecone that they made. And that's fun too.

One's not better than the other, but that's an example of how you can take a skill and then make it a new product tomorrow. I've watched, you know, I came from the photography industry, so I've watched friends build up photography businesses and then totally change them. They were doing weddings, now they're doing newborns. They were doing newborns, now they're doing like senior portraits.

I have one friend who used to shoot everything outdoor because she didn't have a studio and now she has a studio. shout out to Lexia Frank. I had her on here. Fantastic. If you have not listened to the Lexia Frank episode where she talks about the Joy Vortex, you are missing out. But she is somebody who, you know, mostly shot outdoor and weddings and then she opened up her studio and it is her favorite life. Like she is crushing it with having a studio. But then I have another girlfriend who had a studio and it was so much.

labor and work and so many of her clients wanting to be outside like her favorite life was finally having the courage to close her studio and say I actually can run a business without one right and that was the gift she gave herself two different solutions for two different people I have one friend who was a financial advisor and then realized she'd be much happier as a financial coach they're not the same thing but now her business model is focused on helping people achieve their financial goals but through coaching them versus

Sophia Hyde (18:33.953)
most of income coming from, you know, commissions off of like investing in that kind of thing. I knew this guy growing up. We knew each other in high school and I watched him work for a plumber in town. So he got his plumbing license. He worked for a plumber in town. Then he started his own plumbing company. And then when he decided to stop doing, he started getting some commercial jobs and then realized that he really, really liked the commercial jobs and then

Totally just shut the door on residential and went 100 % commercial his business exploded. He's wildly successful. I'm so proud of the work that he's Very very successful business, but it's because he was like no we're gonna close the door on that and sometimes it's you know part of growing in business is Deciding what to say yes to and also deciding what to say no to And I look at my husband, you know when we were coming up with we were really

at an incredible time, 2009, 10, 11, 12, we were a cinematography studio. This was peak, people were just starting to share videos on social media. We really didn't have to do much marketing because people would share our videos, it was so exciting. And we started going commercial in 2012. And our friends who also started video production companies around that time are

Wildly successful they are leading the industry in the Tampa Bay area. They have huge accounts there They're doing amazing incredible work. Some of them just blow your socks off like they're doing they're running seven figure businesses at this point Several of our friends are five are popping up right off top of my head They came up with we were right there with them and they are running seven and eight figure businesses I'm so proud of them and that could have been us. But here's the thing I hated

owning a video production company. Like I hated it. I hated doing the jobs. It's not my lane. I didn't belong there. It was it was not my favorite stuff at all. And then my husband just wanted to be behind the camera. He hates having to talk directly to the clients. He's not a people person. He's a DP. He's behind the scenes. And it's funny because we've watched our friends take off and have such successful companies. And I know that that could have been us.

Sophia Hyde (20:57.907)
And yet I have no regrets about us completely walking away from that because Brandon was so stressed. Like he's just not a people person. He's a DP. So now all those video production companies are the ones that would hire him to just show up for one day. He's a freelancer, right? And freelancing works so much better for them, for him. Show up, just shoot. I just want to focus on the camera and I just want to focus on the lights. I don't want to deal with clients. I don't want to keep people happy. I don't want to go through 10 rounds of edits. Like he...

was he was miserable and I honestly I think if we would have tried to run a video production company I don't either our marriage wouldn't have made it or our both of us like our mental health would have crashed I mean mine kind of did I hit burnout but wrote a whole book about that but he was not well and he I look back and the signs of like him slipping into depression were right there it was just so not aligned right and so him becoming me getting out of the industry and him

becoming a freelancer, that was our favorite lives. That was our favorite lives. And do our other friends make, do they all make more money than Brandon does? Yeah, they do. But you know what else? They have a lot more stress. And the strengths that they have, actually the two that are popping in my head immediately, whose our businesses would have looked pretty similar to, are both Enneagram threes. Which they're meant for like,

If you know that, that's the overachiever, but usually they're charismatic people and they're very competitive. And my husband's a nine, an introverted nine. And so he's like, just let me be behind the scenes. You go be out front. Let me just stay here. He's a behind the scenes guy, right? It was just a fish out of water. And so if you're trying to run a business, maybe you just need to change your approach.

Maybe you're doing it this way because this is the way you're supposed to or the people who are the best do it or this is the way to make the most money, but it's killing you, right? Maybe you need to take a step back and be like, what else could this look like? Because Brandon and I are both entrepreneurs at heart. Like we had to work for ourselves. And so he just found a way to work for himself that looked differently and it looked like a freelancer. He's so much happier that way.

Sophia Hyde (23:21.453)
And we could keep going industry after industry after industry. We could talk about the different ways that you can do it. I see coaches out there just look, looking at my industry who have like $7 memberships. know a coach who makes, she has a seven figure business and she started with $7 to join her membership. I was in it probably three or four years ago. It's now like $40, but she originally started her coaching business by doing a $7 monthly membership, right? To people who

There's a mastermind looking at joining that will cost $25,000 for six months of coaching, right? That's a big price difference and people pay a lot more than that. I know multiple CEOs who have it in their budget every year to spend a minimum of $100,000 a year on coaching, right? Because they wanna elevate. So you've got coaches out there charging $100,000 a year and $7 a month. Neither one is good or bad, right or wrong. It's...

It's different. They're offering a different value to solve a different problem that people are willing to pay a different amount for. And they love the offer they have because it's aligned for them and their personality and their strengths and the type of person they like to work with. Which leads us to our third point. In order to have your favorite business, you absolutely have to know who the people are you're trying to meet.

and know how to get out there and meet them. And I think this is one of the biggest mistakes people make in business is they mis-underestimate like how much work and energy it actually takes to find your people. Whether that's through in-person networking, online marketing, advertising, paying for Google ads or Instagram ads or Facebook ads, like whatever you're doing. The...

The amount of effort it takes to find your people in whatever industry you're in, most people misestimate or underestimate whatever the word is. The amount of work that is involved in growing their business and most of growing your business is finding your clients. In any business. And finding the...

Sophia Hyde (25:40.738)
right clients, the clients you enjoy working with, the people who make you so excited to be like, can't believe I get to work with this kind of a person. And that takes experimenting and time to figure out like, what's the right vibe? What am I looking for? What is the right problem I'm trying to solve? Right.

And what I see in a lot of is it all comes down to they're not meeting either they're not meeting the right people so they're maybe putting themselves out there either in person networking or doing something online but the right people aren't the ones seeing it so they're just in the wrong rooms or in the wrong spaces or two they're just not meeting enough people. One of the biggest mistakes I see

is people get caught up in thinking that like social media is free, which by the way, it's not actually free because it costs you your time. And they think that if they're just putting out a bunch of content, then they'll attract clients. And if you talk to a lot of successful small business owners, most people will tell you that a majority of their clients come from in-person relationships. Don't get me wrong, there's obviously a giant market for social media. There are people who...

have been wildly successful. mean, the first person who pops in my mind is Sharon McMahon. Then she lives in Duluth, Minnesota. Her entire business was built online through strangers on Instagram. So of course people are out there doing it. But again, it's your favorite business. That may not be your way. And so some people just post content all day long when they need to be getting out there and touching grass and going and meeting real life people and finding the rooms where their people are.

And this is, this is the conversation that I'll get into into detail with when I'm working with a client is like, who are you trying to meet? Let's make this strategic. When you walk into a room, it's a networking event. there's 50 people or a hundred people, who do you even approach? Where do you start? How do you behave in that room? How do you show up in that room? I mean, there's so much to that to be said. But I think where people like the biggest mistakes are, they're not showing up in enough rooms. So they're just not meeting enough people or two.

Sophia Hyde (27:56.13)
They don't understand where they need to be showing up. So they're showing up in the wrong places. It makes me think of in chapter one of my book, I talk about the seven to one rule out of every 10 people you meet. Seven are just gonna think you're a warm body. They don't have any opinion about you. They don't care. They already forgot you. One out of every 10 isn't gonna like you. And two out of every 10 are gonna love you. And your job is to go find the two in 10.

That's my whole mantra, but to live in this way for like five years, it set me free of all my people pleasing. It was the best gift I ever got was to hear that statistic. And what can happen though is you guys know this, you show up in certain rooms and there's a vibe, there's a culture. So in a generic setting, we're using this, know, seven, two, one rule. But when I walk into a room full of business women that are like ambitious goal setters, come on now, those statistics flip. It is not two in 10.

At least half that room is at my people, at least. I don't know the numbers. I don't know if they're gonna like me, but I like all ambitious goal-setting women. Come on now, that's my people. I'm gonna love them. Will they love me back? We'll see. But I know it's gonna be more than two in 10. But I think of like a speaking engagement I had last year where 80 % of the room was retired white men and I was not their people. It was not two in 10. I think one person in the room really liked me. I mean, they were all nice to me. It was great.

but I was not their people and I'm not, so I'm not running around trying to get in front of retired white men. They're not, they're not trying to, you know, unleash their favorite self, right? This is, this is not the, there are some who might need to redefine themselves in retirement and could want to work with me, but that's, it's, it's going to be.

worse than two and 10. The statistics are gonna be like two and 100 or worse. So are you in the right rooms? Okay, those are the three fundamentals. We're gonna stop there. I have so much more to say. Did you guys hear? You could even hear how I was having to hold myself back, especially when I wanted to get to those networking conversations. We're gonna start with just those three foundations. Are you offering something of value? Are you the right person?

Sophia Hyde (30:19.085)
to be offering it, does it fit you? And are you meeting the right people who wanna buy it? That alone is like more than half the battle. So once we know that you're offering something of value that people want to buy and you're the right person to offer it, it fits with your life too. And you know who to meet, got to meet them, boom, we just solved so many of the problems. But that work, I mean, I will spend months with people.

answering those three questions. But those are the first three questions to answer. And then we can get into more nitty-gritty details. But I have more to say, and I'll save it for next week. See you then. Bye.