S3 E20 - How to Own Any Room (Part 2 of Your Favorite Business Series)

In this episode, Sophia digs into a topic everyone encounters—how to walk into a room with confidence and actually enjoy yourself once you’re there. Whether it’s a Chamber of Commerce event, a work conference, a family gathering, or a kid’s birthday party, we all end up in spaces where we feel unsure, awkward, or out of place. Sophia shares her top five strategies for “owning a room,” drawn from nearly two decades of in-person networking experience, countless trainings, and plenty of trial and error.

She explains why your mindset matters more than anything you say, how your thoughts shape your energy, and why people pick up on that energy instantly. Sophia also talks about the trap of trying to act how you think you “should” in a room and why being your true self is always more effective.

You’ll learn her powerful 7-2-1 Rule for understanding connection dynamics, the one simple goal she sets for every event she attends, and how to redirect conversations so they feel natural instead of draining. She also shares Brandon’s brilliant advice for introverts: how to navigate a room without forcing yourself into uncomfortable social gymnastics.

This episode is a blend of practical tools, personal stories, and the mindset shifts that make networking—and being in any room—feel easier, lighter, and more human.

Sophia also announces her upcoming free webinar, No More Cringe: A Simple, Human Way to Network and Grow Your Business, happening December 18 at 1 p.m., where she’ll teach her full, actionable system for building real relationships that support your business in 2026 and beyond. Click here to register for the webinar.

Tune in for a warm, insightful conversation that will help you feel more grounded, authentic, and confident no matter what room you walk into.

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 (00:00.974)
Hello Welcome back. I'm so excited for today's topic because last week I told you guys that I start sharing some of the good and bad I'd say to networking and Then it just opened up this giant can of worms and my brain has been overflowing with ideas And so here's what we're gonna do Let me start this episode off with a little a little bit of some housekeeping This episode is going to drop on Tuesday, December the 9th

Wednesday, December the 10th is the end of early bird registration for the Aligned Retreat. If you haven't seen the emails or the social media posts, we are doing a retreat from April 30th to May 3rd. And the deadline for the lowest price it's going to be ends on the 10th. If you are listening to this after the 10th, don't worry about it.

there's a second early bird, okay? And so you can grab the next registration. If there are still spots open, two of the five cabins are filled, but if there are still more spots open, there is another early bird level available through January, and then the retreat will only be available after that at its full price. And so...

I'm looking forward to gathering in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We're going to be at Lake Logan outside of Asheville. cannot wait to welcome you guys to my turf. You know how much I fall in love with this place. OK, so that's the first piece housekeeping. Second piece of housekeeping housekeeping. I will do I will tell you more about at the end of this episode, but it's just a plug because when I started to make the notes, I told you guys in last week's episode that I wanted to.

share like the good and the bad I'd seen with networking and it turned into pages of notes. We are not talking like handwritten notebook stuff. We're talking a Google doc that just kept growing and growing. And I realized that I started in-person networking in 2007 when my boss moved me to sales and I was 20 years old and he

Sophia Hyde (02:15.443)
sent me and told me to start going to events at the local Chamber of Commerce. And I just threw myself into these rooms and figured it out and did it well and have done it poorly and have taken many, many, many trainings. I've invested thousands, literally thousands of dollars in over the years on how to do in-person networking well. And I realized, my gosh, I have been sleeping on all this knowledge and not sharing it with people. And it's way too much to put into a podcast. we're going to do some of it today.

some more of it next week, but I decided that it needed to be organized in a more efficient way that people could find later. And so we're gonna do a webinar. And we do a free webinar December 18th at 1 p.m. If you can't be on live, of course you can snag the recording. In the show notes, you can go ahead and register for it. So just know market calendars for that. All right, now that housekeeping is over, let's dive in to this week's episode.

Here's where we're gonna start because I know that not everybody who listens to this podcast necessarily owns a business but all of you have to show up in rooms that you don't always want to be in. Maybe you do want to be in them, maybe you don't. Everything from like, you know, a Thanksgiving gathering with a

relative you haven't seen in 15 years to a kid's birthday party or a baby shower to a business networking event or a work conference that you have to go to. Most of us or all of us at some point are going to end up in a room where we feel uncomfortable or we don't know how to communicate. And so I'm going to teach you how to put an end to that because

I don't know the last time I felt uncomfortable in a room. have felt uncomfortable in many, many, many rooms, but I've worked through all of that. And now I think you could, the only thing I think that I would probably like totally drown in is if nobody spoke English, because I am not bilingual, trilingual or anything. And so if I couldn't communicate, if you throw me in an event in a foreign country, I will probably fail there. But as long as everybody in the room is speaking English.

Sophia Hyde (04:30.079)
I think you can throw me in any environment and I'll be just fine. And so I'm gonna teach you guys how I've learned to own a room. And this applies to everyone. Okay, first of all, I wrote down my five top tips. Okay, these are my five top tips. Number one, nothing is more important than this. This is why I'm bleeding with it. The number one most important thing for you to know, no matter what kind of you're at, is you have to manage your mind.

your thoughts matter a thousand times more than whatever words come out of your mouth because what we know is that what you're thinking like your thoughts they become your feelings your feelings become your behaviors your behaviors become your results so whatever thoughts are happening in your brain they're going to cause you to feel a certain way and whatever emotion you are feeling

the people around you can pick up on that. You 100 % know the difference between sitting across from somebody who is really excited or really miserable to be there. You've been, like, you don't need them to speak a word. You can just feel it. Like, we give off vibes. People feel our vibes, guys, okay? And those vibes you're thinking, they come from what is crossing your mind. Now, I know some of you have resting bitch face, and so you're thinking, Sophia, does it matter what I'm thinking?

to say I look unfriendly. Okay, I am telling you it really does still matter. It does. It does. It matters what you're thinking because I have friends with RBF and they still can show up in a room and make connections with people. Okay? They may not get as perched as much as the like the more jovial among us, but you can still thrive.

and you can still feel good in your own body. Regardless of what people think about your face, you can feel good in your body there, okay? So how to feel good in these rooms. Okay, so you're like, what are you thinking? If you walk into that room thinking, I don't wanna be here, or I feel silly, or any sort of insecurities about yourself or what you're wearing or whatever.

Sophia Hyde (06:49.207)
Those thoughts are all gonna translate and people are going to pick up on them. So the most important thing before you go to any sort of event is to decide what you want to think about yourself and what you want to think about that event.

Literally nothing is more important than the thoughts in your head. So you have to decide do I want to be here? Why am I excited to be here? What's gonna be good about being here? And then you also want to think thoughts about yourself that you how you feel being in the room that you what do you need to tell yourself to help yourself feel a little more confident a little more secure if you walk in there thinking People are gonna think I'm dumb. Nobody wants to talk to me This is the thing we know about the We

it's gonna look for information to confirm what it already believes. So if you think the event is stupid or you are stupid, you will end up finding that. You will end up proving to yourself that the event had some silly aspect to it. You will end up in some sort of a conversation where you say something silly and you're like, I knew it, I'm stupid. I promise you, you're going to prove it to yourself. So you might as well go in there and think, this event's gonna be a good event. I'm gonna meet an interesting person.

And if you walk into the room and you decide that you will meet an interesting person, you're gonna go find them because your brain is gonna look for the information to prove it to yourself. Okay? So you've got to manage your head. That is like, nothing is more important than that. That's tip number one. Tip number two, and this is where I think so many people go wrong. And remember, we are listening to the Your Favorite Self podcast. So of course, I want you to be your favorite self and not be shitting all over yourself. And I think this is where people...

really make the biggest mistakes is they go to some sort of an event and rather than just being whoever they are and moving to the world however they move to the world they tell themselves some sort of a story of how you should behave in that kind of room right so you're like this is let's give a

Sophia Hyde (09:02.781)
A basic example, this is a chamber of commerce event. So I need to wear business clothes and feel stuffy. If you feel stuffy in business clothes, put them back on the shelf. Don't even buy them. You shouldn't even own clothes you feel stupid in. There are so many ways to let your personality shine through in your clothing without wearing something stuffy that looks like it belongs, you know,

in a courtroom or something. You know, you don't, that is, it's 2025 guy, it's, just a few days away from 2026, okay? You can find clothes that feel like yourself. You, what matters more than anything in the world is when you look in the mirror, you're like, this is me. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, go binge like,

some seasons of Queer Eye, okay? Let Tan France teach you what I'm talking about, okay? If you are like, I don't know how to dress to be myself, go binge Queer Eye and watch how Tan France takes person after person after person with completely different personalities and backgrounds and interests and body types and shows them how to buy clothes from stores that they should shop at for their personalities and helps them just be a more elevated version of themselves. He takes the cowboys,

to stores that sell jeans and plaid shirts, right? No matter who you are, there is a way to dress that feels authentic to you, okay? And then the same thing applies to how you show up. So when you're having conversations with people, where a lot of people get tripped up, is they try to mold themselves to the culture of whatever room. Well, this event has these kind of people, or it's at this kind of a place.

And so how do I, what do I need to talk about or how do I to behave or how do need to act? my gosh, that overthinking is going to drown you. It'll drown you and overwhelm you. Instead, I want you to think of yourself as a lighthouse and you are just there to be yourself and talk about the things you enjoy talking about.

Sophia Hyde (11:22.317)
be interested in the other people. If the conversation takes a road down something that is just like miserable to you, which happens to me a lot because I don't actually love small talk. I like to know like about real things about people's lives. And so if you're just like, this is insufferable for me. You can ask the questions. Whoever is asking the questions is owning the conversation. That's whoever's in charge. Whoever's asking the questions.

is completely controlling the conversation. And so at any point, you can become curious about something you actually want to know the answer to. So for example, I love travel. So at some point, could, if this conversation, then you want to bang my head against the wall, I could ask something about, does anybody have any fun trips coming up for the holidays or the summer or whatever, right? I will almost always be interested if somebody starts talking.

me about travel where they've been or where they're going like 10 out of 10 I can go there with them right but for me the conversations that have made me want to bang my head against the wall you can throw me in a business event I'm fine you can throw me in lots of different rooms you know the rooms that actually are insufferable for me after I just said that you need to mind your mind it's mom events like

when I dabbled in being a sad mom with Ella, events where all people want to talk about as their kids. I remember this one particular playdate with these moms and. I tried to read the conversation, but all they wanted to talk about was like. This was in Florida, so people have there's like a million theme parks, entertainment things like where to have what kind of passes to have and what websites to buy the clothes from and blah. And it was just like the kids, the kids, the kids, the kids, the kids.

And that's not my jam. And so I would try to redirect it back to the women. And I wanted to know about their lives. I was like really interested in them as people. And one was a teacher. One had like some administrative job at a hospital. I was trying to like learn more about their backgrounds and where they grew up. And like, just trying to get to know them and everything happening about the kids. So I just spent that whole it was like a brunch thing. I just got redirected the conversation back to the women.

Sophia Hyde (13:44.91)
And no, those women that was like 10 years ago now and those women are not my friends. We were not we were not aligned. But anyways, if the conversation is not interesting to you, you can redirect it. Now, we talk about the 721 rule a lot. I talk about the 721 rule a lot. I bring it up on the podcast. If you talk to me enough, you're going to hear it. But it is important to remind you about the 721 rule, especially if this is the first time you've ever listened to a podcast or you haven't read my book yet. OK.

out of every 10 people you meet, seven of them are just going to think you're a warm buddy. So seven out of 10 conversations aren't going to go anywhere. OK. And one of the people out of every 10 isn't really going to like you. It's like not, you know, it's not it's not the right vibes. But two out of every 10 will love you. So this is really important to remember, because when you're going into any sort of an event, whether it's for business or personal life,

You can just go ahead and know that there's a really good chance 80 % of the people in the room don't think you're interesting. The things you want to talk about, they don't want to talk about. The things that make you excited, they do not make them excited. And so if you can just go ahead and own the fact that you don't have to be BFFs with 80 % of this room, that takes off a massive amount of the pressure.

Because I think a lot of people go to events, whether it's a family reunion or a conference, thinking like, man, I got to talk to all these strangers. How do I make conversation with all these people? No, you don't, actually. When I go into a room, I just have the assumption that there's only 20 percent of these people are even going to like me and I like them.

So when I'm talking to people and asking them questions and getting to know them in my brain, I'm like Does this feel natural is this flowing is their chemistry here? And if not, I'm polite, but I just like, you know start up new conversations and here's One of my hacks sidebar if I am at like a networking event that is business related and the point is to like Create new relationships with people My

Sophia Hyde (16:14.437)
Goal. Like a lot of people walk into an event and their goal is to sell to people that doesn't go well. OK, my goal in every room I'm in is to find one person who could be like in my two and 10 and make a genuine connection. Like we really vibed and whether and whether that means that we're going to get together for coffee or lunch or maybe we just follow each other on social media and maybe or maybe we have.

whatever we set up, like just something that feels like, wow, this was a genuine, just made a new acquaintance. This is a person I want to add into my network. So when I go at an event, there could be a hundred people there. I am not trying to add a hundred people to my network. I'm going to an event with a hundred people hoping to add one person to my network. That's it. Okay. That'll take so much of the pressure off. All right. Tip number four. I got ahead of myself. That was tip number four. Okay.

that my goal is to have a genuine connection with one person in the room, no matter where I'm at. And this even applies. I just went to a Thanksgiving thing with my in-laws who also had their in-laws there. there was people there I had never met or had not seen since 2009. And it was 2025, so 16 years. I did not feel obligated to have to. I said hello to everybody in the room. I did not feel obligated that I had to have very long, in-depth conversations.

with all 30 people. I did not. I did, however, meet two of the women, one I'd never met before, one I had met 15 years ago, and I had some really genuine conversations with them that were very memorable, and I've stayed in touch with them since. Like, we've texted a couple times. I, like, really liked them.

I wasn't that wasn't even business related. That was just meeting some extended in-law family members. But I still this is just the lens through which I see the world. I see a room of 30 people. I say hello. I introduce myself. And then to occupy my time, I am like, can I find one person here that we can have some really interesting conversations? And that's my goal. I just start up small ones until something feels really natural and flowing.

Sophia Hyde (18:32.397)
and I happened out of that room of 30, I found two very genuine connections and there you go. And I wasn't even networking. That was just, this is just the way I moved through the world. Okay. All right. Tip number five is actually my husband's tip. This one's not from Sophia because you've probably picked up that I can talk a lot. am an extrovert. Well, I'm actually an ambivert because I...

I do look like an extrovert on the outside because I'm an extremely outgoing person. I can do totally fine at an event talking to people, but I do recover my energy by being alone. I do require a lot of alone time. So I am extroverted and an extroverted introvert, which is called ambivert. And so you can throw me into an event and I'll insert myself into conversations. However, there's this great, there was this great thing that happened to me. It was kind of sad for my daughter, but it was a great learning opportunity.

You know, we're new to this community. My daughter was having trouble at these different summer camps we were putting her in because I thought putting her in local summer camps was a great idea to help her meet some local kids before school started. Because we had 10 weeks of living here before the first day of school. And as an 11 year old girl, I was like, she's going to need some friends, right? So I thought I had this great idea of every give her a week at home and then like a week at a camp.

The sleepaway camp was fantastic. She had an incredible experience, right? But the local camps were not good. And not because the camps did anything wrong. It's that you have all these kids who've been going to school forever. And now they've been out of school, they've been going to school since kindergarten or for years or whatever. Now they've been out of school for a month and they show up and they're so excited to see their friends they haven't seen in a month. And so she was always the third wheel or the fifth wheel. And she doesn't have this, you know, really

assertive personality like me, like I do and like her brother does where we will just if I am in a conversation where I'm a third wheel or a fifth wheel and I'm stuck there, I will listen politely and then at the first pause that somebody is taking a breath and I can redirect the conversation, I will ask some sort of a question that sends us down a direction I can actually actually participate in. I will not sit there as a third or a fifth wheel for an hour of my life. Like that's just not

Sophia Hyde (20:50.251)
That's just not happening. Like, I don't even know how I would. I would be like itching and crying. would. There's no way. But I also have ADHD. It's whole thing. So anyways, I was trying to get my daughter advice. And after like day three, like my advice wasn't helping. And so my husband was hearing this conversation and how she was struggling. And so he comes up to her. I can still see this. We were sitting on our porch on the little bench thing that I love so much. And I'm trying to like help my daughter as she's really struggling. And my husband.

come and he overhears us and he says, honey, I'm so sorry. You inherited my personality and not your mom's and your brother's. going to events sucks. Going new places sucks. Going to rooms where you don't know anybody. They suck. I hate them. But I have to do them for work and business. Like the whole way I build my business is by meeting people and showing up places. And so it's just a part of life.

He says, but I cannot insert myself. So I'll tell you what I do as an introvert. He said, I go to a show up to invent and I will hang out somewhere like against a wall in the back somewhere and just kind of pay attention. I take a, I take a little bit of time to observe the room and get a feel of the different social dynamics. And I am always looking for.

who is the most extroverted person in the space. And then when I figure out who is the most extroverted person in the room, I just go stand next to them. That's all I do. I just stand next to the extroverted person in the room. And I promise you, it just always works itself out after that. And I started cackling because having the personality where I am the extrovert in the room.

If some random person I have never met just came and stood next to me, first of all, I would light up with excitement. I'd be like, oh my gosh, hello, it's so nice to meet you. What is your name? And I would just start asking them million questions. And then I would totally learn something about them where I'm like, oh my gosh, have you met so and so you need to meet them. And then I would be just like taking them around without even thinking about it. It was just so second nature to me. And he said, yeah, that's exactly what happens. That's how I have met every

Sophia Hyde (23:17.355)
all of my friends. All of my friends are either an extrovert that I just latched onto, or they are somebody that some extrovert somewhere told me I needed to know and they introduced me to them. And that's how I built my entire network and it's where all my friends have come from. And I was laughing so hard because that is so true. So if you're listening to this and you are an introvert, just

take Brandon's advice because it worked really well for him. And as the token extrovert in the room, I promise you, if you just came in stood next to somebody like me, I got you boo. I'll take it from there. All right. Love you guys. That's it for today. Those are my those are my top five tips on how to own a room. And next week, I'm to go a little more specifically into networking, so to have a little more of a business feel to it.

but mark your calendars, again, December 18th at 1 p.m. or you can grab the recording. But here's the title for the webinar. I'm actually really excited about this. It's called No More Cringe, A Simple Human Way to Network and Grow Your Business. Go ahead and register, save your spot, and I will see you on the 18th. Bye.