Jackie Carroll: Startup Career Coach Who Turned Failure into Fuel
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 visionary virtual reality startup where users could step inside a VR headset, be guided by a virtual genie and build a life vision board to help them take inspired steps toward their biggest goals.
It wasn’t just a business. It was a mission: a way to help people dream bigger.
And for a while, it looked like she was on the cusp of something game-changing.
The timing seemed perfect… The Covid-19 pandemic had thrust digital solutions into the spotlight, and investors were curious. Technology was booming. So, sure enough, Jackie poured herself into preparing pitch decks and prototype demos for potential investors. Each conversation felt like a step closer to the future she’d imagined.
She bet her future on it.
But just as momentum was building, the tides turned.
Almost overnight, artificial intelligence exploded into the mainstream, sweeping investor attention - and funding - away from virtual reality.
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 disappointment was immense.
As a mother of three living in Ireland, Jackie wasn’t just carrying the dream - she was carrying the pressure to make it work. For her family. For her future. For 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 so 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 her next steps. A conversation with a career coach planted a seed 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,” she says.
She began to realise that her true genius wasn’t in the technology - it was in the visioning itself.
Jackie had always been the person friends turned to when they felt stuck. The one who could hear the truth beneath the doubt and reflect it back with clarity.
Slowly, she retrained as a coach, immersing herself in the world of 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, her growing YouTube channel dedicated to career, life transformation, and wellbeing.
Her work blends practical strategy with deep inner work. It’s grounded in the very lessons her failed startup taught her:
That your worth isn’t tied to what works or what doesn’t.
That sometimes failure isn’t failure - it’s redirection.
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 women at a crossroads is simple but powerful:
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."
