Today, I’m going to share with you the five biggest and hardest, most important lessons that I learned from 2025.
I’m so excited about this video because I love being raw and real and transparent. 2025 has been an incredible year for the business.
We significantly increased our revenue from 2024, as we have done every single year in the last six years that I’ve been in business, which is incredible as not everyone can actually say that. And what I’m most proud of outside of the revenue increasing is that I have done so with less work and less effort because I’m better, more systemized than ever before. So it gets easier and easier to make money.
We also reached some really massive financial goals in 2025. I had my first $100,000 cash month and then we went on to do that several times after that, which was also really, really special. I grew my team slightly, which was incredible and celebrated, you know, also having worked with some of my team for many, many years now.
I ran an in-person retreat at my home and I got to fly my virtual assistant from the Philippines here to Australia to spend a week with me, got to spend time with my ads manager, hired a support coach and got to spend time with her and all the things. So I’m feeling really grateful for some really big and important milestones that the business hit and the way that the business grew as well with so much spaciousness and integrity. On top of that, client results have come in faster than ever before as well.
And, you know, everyone just being so grateful for the programme. I had so many people resign, refer and upgrade to different tiers of my programme due to them loving it so much. And at the end of the day, this is what it’s for. I wouldn’t have these incredible business results if I didn’t have my clients backing and supporting me. And so to have them love the programme and the support so much just says everything.
I simplified my business model so much in 2025 as well, just have a rinse and repeat system more than ever before and just working so much harder, not smarter. I moved to a new house, Jordi and I moved from Brisbane over to the Sunshine Coast and really upgraded our lifestyle. You know, our house is much bigger than our tiny little unit we were in before. It’s way more spacious and it’s very reflective of where my business is at, you know, and my business supports this being possible.
So just a lot to be grateful for this year, but today I want to share with you the lessons that came into actually allowing this to happen. So let’s dive in because 2025 was really the year for expansion, for responsibility, for leadership and for depth, if I was to summarise it in a few different words. And it shaped me in so many ways.
And I always say, I feel I’ve been on this really amazing streak in my life, I suppose in the last six or so years, but every year just gets better and better. You know, I travelled internationally—gosh, how many times would I have travelled internationally this year? I’m not sure. I went to Thailand, I went to Vietnam, I’m sure I went to Japan, yep, would have gone a couple of other places too, but yeah, travelled so much and yeah, again, the business created all of that.
So every year just gets better and better, you know, I just, I feel so grateful and it’s not to say there’s not hard things, there also is that, but that’s duality of life and I’m going to share some of the lessons today with you. So these are going to support you so much and if any of them do in particular, please message me on Instagram. I am at Sophia Rose Bernardi. Let me know your biggest takeaway because I always love hearing from you and if you’re not already subscribed either on the YouTube channel, if that’s where you’re watching or on Spotify or Apple where you’re listening, please make sure you follow or subscribe so that you never miss an episode as I drop episodes valuable like this every single week.
So here’s the lessons that changed me.
Number one: Growth requires decisions and risks before you feel ready.
I had to do a number of things in 2025 that were really scary, like we spent a lot more on Facebook ads than ever before and that there’s a level of risk associated with that because you don’t know if it’s going to work and it can be a lot of money. It’s also not a lot of money though, if it works, then you make a lot more. It’s kind of the whole point, right? But regardless, you still have to be comfortable taking risks and making big decisions.
Also just hiring, like me hiring a support coach was a very scary decision because, you know, it was very easy for me to have thoughts like, do I even need that? I can actually hold all this space for my clients, I’m doing just fine. But sometimes you have to do things slightly before you’re ready so that you can actually step into that next evolution of yourself both personally and professionally.
So yeah, you’ve got to make decisions, you’ve got to take risks, you’ve got to be willing to fail, you’ve got to be willing to lean in, let go, build, test and iterate basically. So yeah, just simplifying my offers, changing from one course platform to another, all of these upgrades, you know, you’ve just got to be a fast decision maker when something’s not working 100% or when you want to get to the next level, your decisions have to reflect that.
So yeah, it’s scary to invest in yourself. I also invested a lot of money in mentorship and I don’t know why, it doesn’t matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I’ve invested, those thoughts and feelings still come up for me and it’s still scary but you’ve got to trust yourself and go all in. So that’s that.
Growth does not wait for you to feel ready, you really just have to decide that you want a next level and go for it. There will never be a right time for that other than the time right now that you just decide to do it.
So yeah, a question for you to maybe reflect on is what decisions have you maybe been avoiding that could potentially change everything for you because sometimes they’re the decisions that you actually need to make is what I’ve realised. So yeah, hiring, delegating, automating, changing, upgrading, investing, all of these things I’ve had to do this year but I’ve seen amazing ROIs internally, financially, energetically from doing those things. So that would be lesson number one.
Lesson number two: Identity work matters more than strategy.
Now I’m a big strategy girl, I love systems, I love structure, I love strategy. I don’t love maths and numbers or anything like that too much but, you know, I focus on what I need to focus on. But anyways, I love strategy and I also have always loved mindset and energetics but at the end of the day, I’ve realised that—for example—my business has made a lot more in 2025 than it did in 2024 and 2023 but it wasn’t that I did more strategy.
Sure, I’m better at it and that contributes but a lot of it is very, very similar and the difference is me. I’m a better leader, I’m a better person, I’m more regulated, I’m more experienced, I’m more confident, I trust myself more and these are really the things that actually matter. What I’ve really learned is that we will never outgrow our current identity. So if you want bigger and better results, you have to have an identity that actually matches and reflects that and so that is something that I absolutely realised. Your income will always meet you at the level of your identity.
So this year really taught me to focus on identity work again and again and I feel like every year, I will invest in something that’s just energetics based. One year, I’ve done a 10-day silent meditation retreat (Vipassana). Another year, I’ve done a breathwork journey for 12 weeks. Other years, I’ve done kinesiology.
I can’t really think about something in particular I did in terms of a modality in 2025. If I’m honest, it felt like a really grounded and regulated year but I think I’ve built up to be that. What I did change was my lifestyle which really just helped regulate in general and then just checking the thoughts that I have, the decisions I make and hanging around really ambitious and successful people and modelling the way that they think and feel and make decisions—and I think that was my identity work in and of itself.
Then realising when I would have a breakthrough on a story that wasn’t serving me—like I remember very clearly early in 2025, having this conversation with a friend who’s also a coach and we were helping each other and I made this comment to her that if I was to scale to 80K months, it would be hard work, it would be exhausting. I was just in a little season there where I was kind of feeling that where I was at at 30K months and she’s like, “Ah, that’s your problem. Is that actually true? Is it 100% true that it has to be more exhausting?”
And when I was like, well yeah, I guess not—I guess there is evidence out there that it doesn’t have to be that way—guess what? Very next month, 80K month. Next month after that, 100K month. I just started scaling and I realised I didn’t change my strategy, I changed my identity. I was telling myself a story that didn’t align with my values and that’s why I wasn’t growing. Then I changed that and I grew. So now I’m just like, gotta clock this stuff.
So the identity work this year for me has been sharing my thoughts with people that can clock them and help me shift that. That’s just been so powerful. And just overall healthy lifestyle—we go to bed early, we wake up early, I work out every day, I live in a spacious, quiet environment, we’ve got no plastic, we’ve got no toxins, we turn the power off every night so there’s no EMFs. Jordi’s gone down a full rabbit hole—don’t even get me started. But all of these things though I will say have changed my life.
So yeah, identity work is everything.
Number three: Delegation is the only way to scale sustainably.
I have delegated a lot in 2025. I’ve delegated ads, I’ve started to delegate certain parts of even coaching delivery, I don’t post my content myself—there’s a lot that I don’t do and that’s why there’s a lot that I have space to do and why my business is growing. So delegation is the only way to scale sustainably.
Number four: Your nervous system will really determine your capacity to lead.
Your nervous system is everything. If you’re feeling dysregulated, that’s going to come out with how you treat your team, your clients, other people. I used to be a very, very reactive person. I’m not saying that’s not within me at all anymore—it’s a journey. But my family is very reactive (or at least part of it) and so it’s very in me and I’ve had to do a lot of work to not operate that way.
That’s not always easy but the inner work I’ve done and learning time and time again the hard way—okay, that way of being will not get me the outcome that I want—has helped me get better and more regulated. Prioritising things and putting myself in an environment that has allowed me to have a regulated nervous system has changed everything for me. It’s been a long lesson and I’ve learned painfully many times like, “Okay, don’t say that, don’t do that.” There’s a better way to go about it.
That was a harder lesson I’ve learned, probably more so at the start of the year, just realising I could have handled that better. But the last six months of 2025 have been awesome where I’ve just started responding better—finally. It just doesn’t impact me or other people as much.
I’ve been tested with certain things—whether that’s in my family or client things or whatever—and just watching how I respond instead of react has been… yeah, I’m inspired by myself to be honest, because it’s not something that’s come naturally to me.
So maybe ask yourself: what does your body need to feel safe while scaling? What would you need to set up to enable that to actually happen? Is it a conversation you might need to have with your partner, set yourself up in a certain way, delegate something, or a decision you need to make? That’s really important because your nervous system is a big part of the foundation of your growth.
Number five: Seasons matter and not every season is about growth.
For the most part in my business, every single year and every single month has gotten bigger and better. It’s rare that I have a month where I go lower than the month before. But I realised that belief—that it has to be that way—maybe capped me at growing faster overall.
Now I’m a little bit more okay with the ups and downs. When I say ups and downs, let me just add some context here. My business has a very high monthly reoccurring revenue and strong foundations. When I talk about ups and downs, I’m not talking about zero one month and 50K the next. I’m talking about much smaller variations than that.
At a high level, maybe one month is 100K and the next month is 85K. I’m still getting to that place of consistent 100K and beyond and I think that takes time. But telling myself that fluctuations aren’t wrong or bad has helped. I’ve started to have healthier expectations—it’s normal for businesses to fluctuate. Many businesses fluctuate significantly more than that.
Sometimes there are certain seasons where you’re refining and tweaking things more than selling on the front end—but it allows you to have way bigger months later. I’m not saying you should go in and out of those seasons every second month, but I am saying it’s important to normalise different seasons where results look different—not bad, just different.
If you had something major come up in your personal life—health-wise, family-wise—give yourself some grace about why that month looked different. Or if you’re travelling. Of course, you can have systems and team in place to help prevent some fluctuation, but it’s not always about going bigger every single month. Sometimes it’s about taking a step back to propel forward and make sure you integrate things.
To summarise:
- Growth requires decisions and risk before you feel ready.
- Identity work matters more than strategy.
- Delegation is the only way to scale sustainably.
- Your nervous system determines your capacity to lead and grow.
- Seasons matter—and not every season is about growth.
They are my five lessons. I hope they helped you. Let me know what your biggest takeaway was from today. And if you’d like my support in 2026 to grow and scale your coaching business to consistent 30K months and beyond, then book a call with the link below. I’d be so happy to chat with you and see how I can support you.
Love you all. Thank you so much for all your support this year and I’ll see you on the next episode.
