The Strategic Resourcefulness of Soon Hagerty: Building a Business by Seeing What Others Miss

Entrepreneurship is often framed as the risky choice. Corporate life appears safer because it comes with a title, a paycheck, a reporting structure, and at least the illusion that someone else has already figured out the path. For many women, that illusion can be powerful. It can make staying feel responsible and leaving feel reckless, even when the job no longer fits, the opportunity has disappeared, or the future is being shaped by someone else’s decision.

Soon Hagerty sees risk differently. In her view, very few decisions are as permanent as we make them out to be. A business can be adjusted. A career can be redirected. A plan can be changed. A path that does not work can often be unwound and rebuilt into something else. That belief became one of the clearest themes in her conversation on the Badass Women in Business Podcast, where she described entrepreneurship not as a leap into chaos, but as a choice to take ownership of the future.

“There’s not much in life you can’t unravel,” she said. If you start a business and discover it is not the right fit, you can unravel it. If you take a corporate job and realize it is not for you, you can unravel that too. For Soon, the greater risk is not trying something and having to adjust. The greater risk is never moving toward something you believe in.

That mindset did not come from a classroom or a leadership book. It came from a life shaped by disruption, resourcefulness, and reinvention.

A Life Built on Resourcefulness

Soon was four years old when her family fled Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. After a dangerous journey by boat and time in a refugee camp, her family eventually resettled in Fresno, California. They arrived with little money, seven children, and no clear roadmap for what came next. Like many immigrant families, survival required more than hard work. It required paying attention to what was missing and finding a way to create value from it.

Her father worked at night delivering newspaper bundles while learning English during the day. Her mother noticed that Asian fruits and vegetables were hard to find in their community, so she began growing them in the backyard. What started as a practical solution for their own family eventually became something larger. They sold produce door to door, then expanded into farming and distribution, eventually supplying grocery stores with products the market needed but did not yet have.

That early experience shaped the way Soon thinks about business. She does not describe success as the result of effort alone. Plenty of people work hard. What separates strong founders is the ability to connect needs, opportunities, strengths, and timing. Soon calls it “knitting things together,” and that phrase says a lot about how she sees entrepreneurship.

It is not enough to grind. It is not enough to have passion. It is not even enough to be talented. The founder’s job is to observe what others are missing, understand where value can be created, and then build something that meets that need in a way people can actually use.

“It’s not just hard work. It’s how do you knit the things together that make things meaningful?”

That idea runs through every chapter of Soon’s career. It also challenges one of the most common stories entrepreneurs tell themselves: that success comes from sheer force. More hours. More output. More sacrifice. More hustle. Soon’s life suggests something more strategic. Success comes from being resourceful enough to see possibility where others only see limitation.

Seeing Obstacles as Openings

When Soon started her first business, it was not because everything had gone according to plan. It was because it had not.

After years at an agency, she believed she was on a path toward succession. She had invested time, energy, and vision into the idea that she might eventually take over the business. Then the opportunity disappeared. The person she had trusted to move the process forward got cold feet, and the future she had been building toward was suddenly gone.

That moment could have easily sent her looking for another job. And there would have been nothing wrong with that. But Soon looked at the situation differently. She could treat it as an obstacle, or she could treat it as an opening. She could see the rug being pulled out from under her as the end of a plan, or she could see it as permission to build something on her own terms.

She chose the latter.

Her first agency was built around the kind of business she wanted to see in the market. It was more personal, more luxury focused, and more aligned with how she believed clients should be served. Instead of recreating what she had left, she used the experience to design something different.

That distinction matters for founders. A setback does not automatically become a turning point. It only becomes one when the founder is willing to ask, “What can this become?”

Soon would apply that same thinking again when she moved from Los Angeles to Traverse City, Michigan. At the time, geography mattered differently than it does now. This was before Zoom normalized remote work. Leaving Los Angeles meant leaving a professional environment where her business, network, and industry relationships were concentrated. It could have looked like a limitation. Instead, she used it as a reason to build differently.

Her second company, Centigrade, became a global communications, marketing, and events firm. Once again, the path was not about avoiding disruption. It was about responding to disruption with strategy.

Knitting Together What the Market Is Missing

Soon’s idea of “knitting” becomes especially clear in the story of The Good Bowl, the Vietnamese restaurant she launched in Traverse City.

On paper, a restaurant was not the obvious next move. Restaurants are notoriously difficult businesses. Margins are tight, staffing is hard, operations are relentless, and even great concepts can fail under the weight of execution. Soon knew all of that. But she also knew how to look at a market and see what was missing.

After moving from Los Angeles to northern Michigan, she missed Vietnamese food. At the same time, she recognized that Traverse City had a strong philanthropic culture. The community cared about giving back, but there was an opportunity to make that giving more accessible and connected to everyday life.

The Good Bowl brought those pieces together. It served Vietnamese food in a community where that cuisine was limited, and it donated one dollar from every bowl sold to charity. Customers could support local, national, and global causes through a simple purchase.

The brilliance of the model was not that it was complicated. It was that it was clear.

The Good Bowl gives a dollar per bowl to charity.

That is a sentence a customer can remember. It is a sentence an employee can repeat. It is a sentence that tells the market what the business does and why it matters.

This is where many founders get stuck. They assume a meaningful business has to have a complicated mission. They add layers of explanation, multiple causes, too many initiatives, and a story that takes too long to tell. Soon’s model did the opposite. It made the impact easy to understand and easy to share.

The lesson is not that every founder should donate one dollar per sale. The lesson is that a strong business model should be simple enough for others to carry the story forward. If your customers cannot explain what you do and why it matters, your marketing has a problem.

Growth for Good Has to Be Built In

One of Soon’s strongest points is that purpose cannot be treated like decoration. Too many businesses start with a product or service, then later try to attach meaning to it through a charity campaign, a donation drive, or a vague mission statement. Soon argues that if impact matters, it should be embedded into the business model from the beginning.

That does not mean every company needs to give away large amounts of money or launch an elaborate social impact program. In fact, Soon warns against overcomplicating the giving model. Founders often want to support many causes at once, create multiple initiatives, and prove the depth of their generosity through activity. The problem is that complexity can make giving hard to sustain and hard for customers to understand.

The Good Bowl did one thing. It donated one dollar per bowl. That was the promise, and the business stayed consistent with it for years. Soon sees that kind of clarity as both a mission decision and a marketing decision. Giving was not separate from the brand. It helped define the brand. It gave customers a reason to remember the restaurant, talk about it, and feel connected to it.

“You don’t create a business and then make it meaningful. You create a meaningful business from the beginning.”

That distinction matters for women founders who want to build businesses that do good but are also under real pressure to generate revenue, pay teams, manage cash flow, and keep the company alive. Soon is clear that a business for good still has to be a business. It needs profitability. It needs operational discipline. It needs a model that can continue after the founder’s initial excitement wears off.

This is where Soon’s advice becomes especially practical. Giving does not always have to be financial. A service business might commit to quarterly volunteer time. A small team might choose one community partner and support that organization consistently. A product based business might give a percentage of sales from a specific line. The point is not size. The point is alignment.

When giving is built into the model, it becomes part of how the company operates. When it is added later, it becomes one more thing the founder has to remember, explain, fund, and maintain.

The Founder Matters More Than the Idea

Through Boundless Futures Foundation (BFF), which Soon co founded with her husband, McKeel Hagerty, she now supports women entrepreneurs with funding, mentorship, and community. The foundation grew out of a family conversation about how to use resources in a way that could create lasting impact. Soon’s family history and McKeel’s family history both included women who helped build businesses, and that connection made female entrepreneurship feel like a natural focus.

Soon believes financial independence for women creates a ripple effect. When women build companies, they hire people, support families, strengthen communities, and create new models of leadership. But after reviewing thousands of pitches and working closely with founders, she has also seen that the idea itself is rarely the whole story.

The founder is often the deciding factor.

Some strong ideas never gain traction because the founder is not adaptable, curious, or willing to learn. Other ideas that may not seem obvious at first can succeed because the founder knows how to listen, adjust, and keep moving. For Soon, the strongest founders are learners. They ask for input. They seek out counsel. They pay attention to what is changing in the market. They do not assume they already know everything.

That growth mindset shows up in how Soon manages herself as well. She described a morning routine that includes meditation, journaling, and listening to ideas that stretch her thinking. It is not about productivity theater. It is about staying clear enough to lead. As she put it, the most important person a founder manages is herself.

That line deserves attention because it is easy for founders to focus only on managing the business. They manage the team, the clients, the calendar, the cash flow, the delivery, the marketing, and the problems that show up before noon. But if the founder is reactive, unclear, exhausted, or unwilling to learn, the business eventually reflects that.

A business can only grow as far as the founder is willing to grow with it.

Curiosity Is Not Enough

Soon’s view of growth mindset goes beyond the usual advice to “stay curious.” Curiosity matters, but she takes it one step further. Strong founders do not just ask more questions. They ask better questions.

That is a meaningful distinction.

A founder can be curious and still avoid the questions that matter most. Is this actually solving a problem? Would someone pay for this? Am I the right person to lead this business? What am I not seeing? Where am I making this too complicated? What feedback have I dismissed because it was uncomfortable?

Soon admitted that earlier in her career, she thought being a strong manager meant having the answers. Over time, she learned that better leadership often comes from asking the questions that help other people think, own, and execute.

That shift is not always easy, especially for founders who built their business by being the person who could figure everything out. In the early stages, being the answer person can feel necessary. But as the business grows, that same habit can become a bottleneck. If every decision has to move through the founder, the business cannot scale.

Soon’s approach is rooted in clarity. Be clear on the outcome. Be clear on expectations. Be clear on what success looks like. But do not confuse clarity with control. The leader’s job is not to dictate every route. It is to make sure the team understands the destination and has the right check ins along the way.

Seasons Are More Useful Than Balance

One of the most refreshing parts of the conversation came when Soon challenged one of the most overused ideas in business ownership: balance.

She does not believe in it, at least not in the neat, evenly divided way people often describe it. For founders, balance can become another impossible standard, especially for women who are already managing expectations at work, at home, and in their communities.

Instead, Soon thinks in seasons.

When she started the restaurant, she told family and friends that the next few months would require intense focus. When she was preparing for time away with her family, she communicated with her team well in advance, worked backward from key deadlines, and made sure expectations were clear before she left. The point was not to give every area of life equal attention every day. The point was to be honest about what each season required.

“Balance is like a unicorn.”

This approach is practical, but it is also emotionally freeing. Founder guilt often comes from trying to be fully available everywhere at once. Soon’s approach replaces guilt with communication. A season of building may require deeper work focus. A season of rest may require true disconnection. A season of family may require saying no to things that would normally get attention.

The work is not to balance everything perfectly. The work is to communicate priorities clearly enough that people know where they stand.

That idea is especially powerful for women founders because so much guilt comes from unclear expectations. We assume people need us available all the time. We assume the team will fall apart if we step away. We assume family will feel neglected if we name a work priority. We assume the business will punish us if we rest. Soon’s answer is not to ignore those tensions. It is to communicate before they become resentment.

A season has a beginning and an end. That is what makes it sustainable. It gives the founder permission to focus without pretending everything else has equal weight in that moment.

You Do Not Need the Whole Plan

When asked what she would tell her younger self, Soon did not offer the usual advice about having everything figured out. She offered something more useful: know the next three steps.

That advice is deceptively simple. Many founders get stuck because they are trying to build a five year plan before they have tested the first assumption. They want certainty before movement. They want the full map before they leave the driveway. But business rarely works that way. Markets change. Customers respond differently than expected. Products evolve. Founders evolve.

Soon’s point is not that planning is useless. It is that plans must be flexible enough to survive contact with reality. A founder needs direction, but she also needs the humility to let new information change the path. That is another form of strategic resourcefulness. It is not wandering. It is moving with enough awareness to adjust.

“You don’t have to figure it all out. Just know the next three steps.”

For women who are waiting to feel fully ready before starting, that advice may be the opening they need. Readiness is often built through motion. Confidence comes from evidence. And evidence comes from taking the next step, not thinking endlessly about the perfect one.

The Founder’s Checklist

Soon’s story offers a powerful reminder that business ownership does not require having the entire path figured out before taking the first step. In fact, she argues the opposite. Founders need enough clarity to move, enough humility to learn, and enough flexibility to adjust when the market gives them new information.

For women thinking about starting a business, her advice begins with the problem. Passion matters, but passion alone is not a business. A founder needs to understand who she is serving, what problem that person has, and why the solution matters enough for someone to pay for it. The clearer the problem, the stronger the foundation.

From there, persona mapping becomes essential. Soon encourages founders to walk through the customer’s experience in detail. Who is this person? What are they struggling with? What happens when they use the product or service? What changes for them afterward? Those questions force a founder to move beyond enthusiasm and into strategy.

A founder also has to ask whether the business model is simple enough to explain. If the customer cannot repeat what the business does, the message is not clear enough yet. The same is true for giving. If the impact model requires a long explanation, it may be too complicated to sustain.

Soon’s story also reminds founders to look for what is missing. The best opportunities are not always found by inventing something completely new. Sometimes they come from combining things the market has not connected yet. Vietnamese food and philanthropy. Brand strategy and personal service. Funding and mentorship. Business growth and community impact.

Finally, Soon’s philosophy asks founders to stop treating every decision as permanent. A path can change. A model can shift. A plan can evolve. That does not make the original decision wrong. It means the founder is paying attention.

The real danger is not that you will make a choice and have to unravel it.

The real danger is that you will talk yourself out of beginning.

Listen to the full conversation with Soon Hagerty on the Badass Women in Business Podcast for more on building meaningful companies, supporting women founders, and creating growth without losing yourself in the process.