Sneak Peek: Can a Vision Change?

I was found out in Gold's Gym.

Sharing a rough draft version of a story you will read in an upcoming chapter of my upcoming e-book titled Within Your Dreams: An Experience in Vision Design (launch date TBA, goal to be at end of month!). I am so excited to share this e-book with you to support your future, our future.

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I thought I would work at lululemon forever. Actually, in college, I had dreamed of working for NIKE but when push came to shove, I was introduced to the very small (at the time) athleisure brand by the hard to pronounce name of lululemon in the early 2000s and it was signed, sealed and I started at the ground level in my first ever retail job.

I worked my way into different roles in the brick & mortar stores and then made my way to a (highly sought out for) role on the Brand team at Head Office. This was THE dream job I had always had on my vision board. I had worked for the company in LA then Chicago then back to LA where I then flew every other month to Vancouver, Canada.

Feeling restless one afternoon, I made my way to the iconic Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, California to meet an older yoga teacher (hilarious to think she is probably my age now) that I loved and take her yoga class. I swiftly passed all the heavy lifters in the weights area - I looked for Arnold Schwarzenegger but alas, he was not there - and then I found the smaller room where yoga was taught. There was one other person in class and me. After class was done, I sat with the yoga teacher to catch up for a bit.

She spoke about some changes in her offerings and what she was seeing in the health and fitness world. I shared about my role changes from different teams in lululemon HQ and how I had started leading goal setting workshops for the brand and loving it.

As if she was distracted by a thought, my teacher friend closed her eyes and sat quietly. Living in LA, I was open to these kind of oddities in interactions often. LA is a world of its own and I am so happy I lived there for my 20s decade. Then, she opened her eyes and said, “I do see you speaking on stages, I just don’t see the lululemon logo behind you”.

I stumbled at the thought.

In shock that I had heard her say it aloud, really because I hadn’t come close to speaking it. I just had assumed that this was it. It was too good, you can’t ever leave.

In case she was a lululemon spy, which she wasn’t and those don’t exist (or do they?), I laughed it off and said something like, I will have to think about that vision you just saw.

And as you can imagine, it was ALL I thought about.

From that interaction on, I felt a crevice make its way from what was a tight knot of knowing to one that could start to unravel and tell a story of departure. I clung tight to my business cards with that red logo next to my name and yet I also started to write and express myself outside of my job.

I started to take on clients in the evening for coaching, as I had my certification and had only really let myself use it “at work”. I would take one client on a Tuesday evening and then another on a Thursday.

On a work trip to Australia, one evening, I sat in the bathtub of my hotel and pressed publish on a blog I had written. It was not for work, it was for my own website. My boss called me shortly after and said these words, ‘your Jacki Carr voice is getting much louder than your lululemon voice, is there something we need to discuss?’.

In a panic and on the company dollar in a hotel in Sydney, I quickly back-tracked and layered on all the spandex out of my bag and worked overtime the next day. And the next day. I did not post on my blog again for weeks.

Someone had seen me.

They saw me. With the lululemon logo fading in the background.

I was caught.

And the vision changed. I started to ask, ‘could I leave, truly go out on my own?’.

I freaked out.

First with fear. Like any human would.

And then with excitement.

I will tell you this, I always thought I had to do all the vision design by myself. What if Desi Bartlett had never gotten weird in the Gold’s Gym yoga studio and paused our conversation to see a future that I couldn’t? And then even, tell me.

It was 8 months after that trip that I finally made the leap and put in my 3 weeks notice. No idea why I stayed on for 3 weeks after quitting but that is what I did. And I remember papers on papers strewn across my small living room floor in a studio apartment in Venice Beach. The walls were bright blue and we had neon yellow arm chairs, it worked. And there it was, a vision colliding with reality as I registered my very own coaching and consulting business in the state of California.

And just like that, the vision had changed.

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