Community Highlights: Meet Soon Hagerty of The Good Bowl

Today we’d like to introduce you to Soon Hagerty

Hi Soon , please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My love for business and constant curiosity for why some ideas succeed while others don’t feels like it has always been a part of who I am since I can remember.

When I was almost five years old, my family came to the United States as Vietnamese refugees after my Dad fought alongside the Americans in the Vietnam War. I never realized how instrumental that experience was in shaping my life both personally and as an entrepreneur until I became an adult.

My first foray in entrepreneurialism was in my early 30s when I started Luxe Communications. a boutique PR firm in Los Angeles. After launching the agency as a female founder I received occasional requests to mentor up and coming leaders and entrepreneurs.

I quickly realized that my childhood experience of coming to the U.S. as immigrants with $300 in our pocket taught me so much about how luck, problem solving, resilience, grit, and having a good work ethic are keys to achieving success.

I started my second business Centigrade, a PR, marketing and events firm with several co-founders after I married my husband McKeel and moved to Northern Michigan. This experience taught me invaluable lessons on how to collaborate with multiple leaders from various backgrounds, cultures and personalities.

While consulting for my husband’s company Hagerty Inc. through my previous agency work, I realized what an amazing company Hagerty is and decided to divest my shares in Centigrade and work full time at Hagerty to help grow the business. After several years as head of public relations, I eventually worked my way up to Senior Vice President of Brand. In that capacity I was responsible for all of our creative, events, communications and corporate giving. I was also so thrilled to be a part of the leadership team to help take Hagerty public in late 2021.

After spending several years in Traverse City, I was missing a bit of the cultural diversity I had growing up in California and living in Los Angeles. I decided to launch The Good Bowl, a mission based Vietnamese restaurant that donates $1 per bowl to charity with my business partner Tony Vu. His family were also Vietnamese refugees so we donate $1 per bowl to charity as a way to thank the U.S. for taking us in as immigrants. Alongside our community we’re so proud to have given away more than $175,000 to local, national and global nonprofits since we started the restaurant six years ago.

Now coming full circle McKeel and I recently launched a private nonprofit Boundless Futures Foundation that helps female founders by providing financial and leadership resources. We provide grants to women who have an impact element in their business by either having a product that solves a social issue or imbeds a giving strategy in their business model. We also provide grants to mission aligned nonprofits that help female entrepreneurs as well.

I am so grateful to be able blend my passion for supporting female founders and leveraging business for growth and good into one core concept through our foundation. I’m excited about this journey!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As a female professional and an entrepreneur, I’ve had many challenges along the way including how to respond to chauvinism as a young professional and female founder, how to navigate working for my husband’s company to ensure my work stands for itself as well as how to lead many diverse teams in different businesses in an effective and compelling way.

I’ve made my fair share of bad decisions, cringe worthy mistakes and have not always handled myself in the best way but all of those experiences are things I draw upon to recognize what type of human being, friend, leader, wife and Mom I want to be. I reflect on some of those mistakes and use them to guide my thinking for better decision making and often tell those personal and professional stories to others so they can learn from them.

I think the biggest area of growth for me recently is learning how to embrace the philosophy of Stoicism which teaches you to create distance between what happens to you and how you react to it. When I can take a breath and give myself some time to think things through before I react I generally make better decisions and show up in a better way.

Everyone makes mistakes but I think what leads to growth is to recognizing which mistakes are made for you to learn from and which ones you have to let go.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
One of the toughest businesses out there is the restaurant business and I wholeheartedly agree it is NOT for the faint of heart as they say.

It is truly a passion business and the hours, stress and constant need to be flexible yet organized can be draining.That being said, I use it as catalyst to bring a sense of culture and diversity, fun and community to our area as well as a platform for contributing to society through our $1 per bowl to charity program.

We are all so blessed to be able to have this life so I am so grateful to use The Good Bowl to nourish our community not just through food but through our contributions to society,

How do you define success?
I define success by creating something that makes an impact on others whether that is a creating a beautiful family, piece of art that moves others, leveraging a business or nonprofit to solve problems.

I think success comes from doing something great for someone other than yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.boundlessfutures.org
• Other: https://www.goodbowleatery.com

Image Credits
Scarlet Piedmonte
Kayla Keenan