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Yes, it’s been many months since my last post.
There’s been a lot of evolution taking place, and to be honest, this transitional time has forced me to get comfortable with the uncomfortable in order to grow.
Leveling up in life can feel awkward and lonely, but I am happy to say that I feel like I am finally finding an equilibrium and newfound flow.
But SOLA WELL has now entered her ONE YEAR of life and I realized I have never opened up about the journey of starting my own business.
So after selling online for one year, with now 200 reviews, having sold over 2,000 belts, and owning the brand name and online store with three products –
I guess I feel ready to tell this story.
Before I go into how this venture started, I would be remiss if I didn’t take this story even further back to the Spring of 2017.
Six months before this blog even began.
I was going through a lot of inner turmoil and my intuition was screaming at me to change everything.
I was on tour and looking back at the life I was in the middle of creating in NYC, the relationship I was in, the apartment I was living in, the job I would be going back to, and I knew I needed to end it all if I wanted to continue living authentically.
Some would say I was growing older and out from where I was, or even entering my ‘Saturn Return’ – but it felt so much deeper than that.
It was as if my future self was demanding me to change lanes RIGHT NOW, and I knew if I didn’t jump immediately, I would be missing out on what was coming my way and ultimately abandoning myself.
So as soon as I could, I took a match to the life I was building, and moved to an empty room in Harlem with nothing but myself and my clothes.
I may have left everything behind, but I had a blank slate and me.
This was the start of my solo spiritual journey.
I have always had a strong connection to my intuition, but this feeling was different.
The overwhelming inner guidance I had during this time filled me up with so much trust and divine faith. I knew I would be supported no matter what.
This was a time of pure self-discovery.
I was ready to begin again, on my own, living in my fullest and truest form.
I was getting myself back.
This time of my life is still something I look back on OFTEN and feel an overwhelming amount of gratitude for how transformative and sacred it was.
I was able to dig deeper in my relationship to self, and started my healing and spiritual journey. I dove deeper into my yoga and meditation practice, read every spiritual book, journaled daily, wrote these blogs, and just became obsessed with the process.
I even started opening myself up to going on dates in order to meet new people.
It was all part of my self-discovery, as connecting to others allowed me to understand myself even more. And even though I was meeting many people, I was not looking for a partner – in fact, I was more or less running away from marriage during this time.
This is when I began to attract so many incredible travel opportunities, performing jobs and people in my life.
I even, ironically, attracted my now husband.
I remained on this 'gypsy-life' path of floating around from gig to gig, following the growth and feeding the light, and was prepared to die on it!
Fast forward to 2020.
I had just moved in with Shane right before the pandemic took over our world.
And once everything shut down, I was met with another ‘blank slate’ moment in my life.
Everything I had been building while on my new, enlightened, spiritual path came to a close.
And even though this was something out of all of our control, I felt grateful I already had three years under my belt developing the tools to walk through this time.
I once again turned deeper to my self-discovery, yoga practice, meditation, writing and creating from this blank space.
Only this time I was waking up to the fact that I had not been building my life on solid ground.
I started to witness how I had been living my life waiting between gigs, spreading myself too thin with side jobs, working out way too much, auditioning ad nauseum, and had no plan for my finances at the age of 30.
I could see very clearly how this life was no longer sustainable.
My gypsy-life had come to an end.
The world is in desperate need for people to give back, to be forward thinking, and to keep feeding their light and sharing their light.
So that’s how I chose to show up during this time.
In the beginning of the pandemic, the only thing I had to look forward to were my outdoor runs, bike rides, long walks, the occasional blog post / content creation, and my weekly journey to Trader Joes.
Then one day, in June of 2020, Shane (who was not yet my fiancé or husband at the time) looked at me and said, “I think you would be good at e-commerce” - -
*SIDE NOTE *
Shane doesn’t know it, but he is psychic.
I’m 100% sure of this.
He is an angel and guide in my life.
I still don’t know if he really exists.
This is probably why I married him.
In fact, if I woke up tomorrow and he was a figment of my imagination, just a dream I had, I would be equally clinically depressed as I would be NOT surprised.
Back to it:
My intuition knows how to make me listen, but when Shane said this very short statement, it was silent.
Peaceful even.
There was nothing lighting up inside me, just a very tranquil, Zen-like space of allowing.
I felt clear.
So I agreed to watch a video tutorial all about having an e-commerce business, and within one hour into the video, the blank space that 2020 gave me suddenly had a small endeavor.
I decided to use that Summer to take a mentor program on how to sell online.
Why not?
This could fail, but I won’t tell anyone, so no one will know.
What else do I have to do?
I was just curious...
The mentor program walked me through how to find a product, build a business plan, find a supplier, and taught me the steps to sell online within six months.
Here’s how my brain works -
If I say YES to something, I’m all in.
And I know this about myself.
So I knew when I said YES to this endeavor, I was letting something come through.
I remained open and curious, and never wanted it to feel forced.
I kept moving forward with it, one step at a time.
Then one day I came across the idea of a Running Belt when I was researching products.
The ones I found online that held a water bottle were very chunky and not functional for everyday activities.
That’s when it clicked.
I would design and sell a more fashionable yet functional 'fanny pack' that holds everything you need AND a water bottle!
This product was not only very close to my passion of movement and career in fitness for so many years - but would also solve my current problem of not having a functional bag for my runs, bike rides and long walks to Trader Joes.
Now picking a name….
Just like the rest of the process, I knew I wanted the brand to name itself.
I wanted it to feel like I allowed the name to arrive when it was ready.
I'm not sure why, but I became attracted to the name SOL around this time, but also felt like something was missing.
Then one day in August, Shane and I walked by a cocktail bar in SOHO called SOLA.
Shane pointed at the name and looked at me with wide eyes (I told you he’s psychic) and I had yet another quiet, peaceful, Zen-like moment of clarity set in - identical to the one earlier I had when I started this journey.
This could be the name, but I wanted to sleep on it!
The next day I had a Face-Time happy hour call with my dear friend Cristina Dueño (one of the only people I talked about this endeavor with) and told her I think the brand wants to be called SOLA.
She immediately responded without flinching,
“That’s really beautiful, Jackie. SOLA is also the female conjugation of SOLO – meaning alone. Describing a female on her own.”
There it was.
I was instantly taken back to when I was that girl in high school escaping in her music at the gym, alone.
Then to that sacred time in 2017, when I ditched it all to be on my own so I could heal and grow.
To my life changing solo travel adventures.
Then to the present time of Summer 2020, a time when I was using my own relationship to self to rise up and have my own back.
Some of my most sacred, transformative, and favorite moments of my life have been when I was alone.
SOLA – a woman on her own.
I ended up choosing WELL, short for wellness, because SOLA WELL was available on all platforms and even had a domain name available (just being honest!)
I launched SOLA WELL on October 25, 2020 and sold over 1,000 belts by February 2021.
I'm still shocked.
I now have that Running Belt selling in two different colors and am in the middle of launching a brand new product, the Sacroiliac Joint Compression Belt!
To me, SOLA already existed, she just needed someone with a blank slate to say YES to facilitating her ride into this world.
What 2020 gave me was a clean slate, Shane gave me an idea, and I fed my curiosity and turned it into creativity, then stepped aside and allowed something to walk through.
And I am fully on her journey.
For me, SOLA WELL has been a playground of learning opportunities!
Each lesson being a chance to get to know myself even better as I continue to do things I never thought I would do.
She has also been a gateway drug to more creative ideas than I have ever had in my entire life!
Yes, I own the brand name, handle customer service, work with suppliers, create the content, handle finances, etc.
But one of my most important jobs is in the listening and witnessing of where SOLA wants to go next.
And I’m excited for what she wants to become.
I hope if this post makes you feel anything, it’s that a clean slate is an opportunity.
Creation happens when we make something out of nothing.
And this time has allowed me to believe that getting the chance to make it up as you go in your life, is the truest form of living authentically.
We are all creating our lives.
And it may not come around often, but when life gives us the gift of starting over, use it as an opportunity to dig deeper to your relationship with self, to choose yourself again, to do it differently, to surrender more, and create something that you get to share with others.
That’s what SOLA is for me.
CHEERS TO ONE YEAR!!!