Lois Weinblatt

It started with a world-class Reuben sandwich, took a sharp turn at a creek in Michigan, and found its footing after a weekend locked in a room with a whole lot of snacks.

I spent my early twenties at Zingerman's, a community of businesses that started with a corner deli and grew through one powerful idea: everything starts with a Vision. Whether they were launching a new product, starting a new training program or doing strategic planning, their first question was always "What's the Vision?", because from their perspective, how can you create a plan if you don't know what you're planning for? That philosophy got into my bones, and years later, it's still the foundation of everything I do, not just for my clients, but for myself, too.

But at 25, I realized I was thinking about my Vision for potential career paths, never for my whole life. And I was looking ahead to what I knew would be an incredibly formative half-decade of my life. If I couldn't articulate what I wanted for myself, there was no way I was going to get it.

Walking by a creek in my hometown one Fall afternoon, I remember thinking: if I don't answer these big questions now, next year I'll be fine, but nothing will have really changed. And I didn't just want to be “fine.” So I locked myself in for the weekend, brought a ton of snacks, and wrote my first 5-year personal Vision. It was one of the most challenging things I'd ever done. As I thought about all the facets of my life (personal, professional, financial, relational and spiritual), I kept asking myself "Is this what I think I'm supposed to want or what I really, really, really want that is so core to who I am that it can be my internal compass when I'm going to be navigating so much change over the next 5 years?

Today, that Vision is still my anchor, my buoy, and my life raft.

By the end of that weekend, I was relieved and excited. And I knew with absolute certainty that I never wanted anyone to have to go through that process alone. That Vision led me to work in a tiny town in Sicily, then to Spain, where I had my first Visioning client, then back to the US, where I officially started my business. It also led me to my first dog, my husband (I shared my Vision with him on our third date), our second dog, and eventually to the life I'm living now in Madrid, where I'm so freaking grateful to be bringing new parts of my Vision to life.

It worked. Not because it handed me some perfect dream life, but because it helped me navigate challenges and stay true to what I really wanted even when it would have been way easier not to.

And that's why I do this work. Helping people clarify their Vision is what I feel like I'm on this earth to do. I get to watch the pressure they put on themselves release. I get to see their options and possibilities open up. I get to feel their resilience and trust in themselves grow. When I think about the ripple effects of my clients gaining clarity, how they become better partners, better parents, better friends and better leaders, all because they're better to themselves, I get goosebumps.

I've since worked with clients across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia, and it still lights me up every single time.