When a Startup Fails and Sets You Free: How Jackie Carroll Found Her True Calling
Jackie Carroll thought she'd cracked it.
After years of juggling work, motherhood and a burning desire to build something meaningful, she'd finally found her big idea. It was called Genie in a Headset: a virtual reality startup where users could put on a headset, be guided by a virtual genie, and build a life vision board to help them take inspired steps toward their goals. It wasn't just a business. It was a mission to help people dream bigger.
Photo: Jackie Carroll
For a while, it looked like she was on the cusp of something real. The timing seemed perfect… the pandemic had thrust digital solutions into the spotlight, investors were opening their minds and wallets to immersive technology, and Jackie poured herself into pitch decks and prototype demos. Each conversation felt like a step closer. She had bet her future on it.
But just as momentum was building, the tides turned. Artificial intelligence exploded into the mainstream almost overnight, sweeping investor attention and funding away from VR. Jackie watched as meetings dried up and replies went cold.
"It felt like I'd built a beautiful rocket," she recalls, "but the launch pad disappeared beneath me."
The weight of it was immense. As a mother of three living in Ireland, she wasn't just carrying the dream… she was carrying the pressure to make it work, for her family, her future, and the people she believed she could help. "I kept thinking, what do I do now? This was my ticket out. This was meant to be it."
What followed wasn't a quick bounce back. It was a quiet reckoning. She did what many high-achieving women struggle to allow themselves: she asked for help.
Jackie returned to corporate life (first as an executive assistant, then as a team leader) while quietly exploring what came next. A conversation with a career coach opened a door she hadn't considered. "We spoke about purpose, about core values, and about the common threads running through all the work I'd ever loved." That conversation planted a seed.
She began to see that her true genius wasn't in the technology… it was in the visioning itself. She'd always been the person friends and colleagues turned to when they felt lost or unsure. She could hear the truth beneath the doubt and reflect it back with clarity. Slowly, she began retraining as a coach, immersing herself in career and mindset transformation.
Today Jackie is a certified career and mindset coach with a thriving practice. She's the creator of The Career Mindset Playlist, a signature series of mindset shifts designed to help people reset their careers with confidence, and the founder of Coaching Corners with Jackie Carroll, a growing YouTube channel dedicated to career, life transformation and wellbeing. Her clients range from burned-out professionals to parents returning to work to startup founders navigating big pivots of their own. She doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but she has the questions that matter. "What do you value? What would you pursue if fear wasn't in the way? What version of success feels like freedom, not pressure?"
Her work blends practical strategy with deep inner work, grounded in the lessons her failed startup taught her: that your worth isn't tied to what works or doesn't, and that sometimes failure is simply a rerouting toward what you were actually meant to do.
Looking back, Jackie no longer sees Genie in a Headset as a loss. "It was the beginning," she says. "It was the thing that had to happen so I could come home to myself."
Her message to anyone at a crossroads is simple: don't rush to bounce back. Sit with the loss. Let yourself grieve. And then, when you're ready, get curious.
"Your next chapter doesn't have to look like anyone else's. But it will come. And it might just be better than you imagined."