Pelin’s story
Pelin Kazak Bagatur is a highly experienced product design leader, strategist, and certified yoga instructor. Her work has taken her from Istanbul to Berlin, New York, and now London. Design is where her heart beats and as you’ll discover, wellbeing is not optional.
Pelin joined Vision 20/20 because she had lots of ideas but lacked a clear direction. She craved community, mentorship and a structure to follow, so she could turn her ideas into action. This is her story.
I was looking for a mentor
I wanted to take a sabbatical and then decide what I wanted to do with my business: do I want to turn it into an agency, do I want to turn it into something else? What does the second mountain look like for me?
I saw Ayse Birsel’s inspiring talk at Summercamp – she's a designer that I admire and see as a role model. I couldn't attend the event itself, but watched the video and then heard about Vision 20/20.
I thought, “Oh, actually, I need that.” Both reflecting on my freelance journey, and how can I bring my passion for wellbeing, yoga and design together, as I couldn't formulate this on my own.
Being a freelancer can feel lonely
I'm used to working in teams with a lot of people, exploring ideas together. So the concept of a buddy group of likeminded peers was really appealing.
I had many ideas about what I could do, and all the frameworks provided on the program were very helpful to put things together and make sense.
“But I think the main value for me was the whole community and support of the buddy group.”
It's about going on this journey and then having people to support that.
And my mind works like that, you know; I can ideate and get clarity better when I'm talking with people.
Even picking a domain name for my project! I thought, “This or the other would be fine, more or less”. But just getting the feedback from the others, I felt more comfortable about it.
It was grounding me
I wanted some mentorship specifically to help with my business. So when I checked the program and the website, I set aside the money for it. It all just clicked and was fine, as the timing was right. I was ready.
I was travelling a bit in the beginning, and then my whole life started changing. I got married and moved countries.
But the program provided a lovely constant throughout this time as I was committed to it. Because you’ve got a vision that’s emerging and some ideas are up in the air, it's easy to drop them or lose them when change happens or you get busy.
However the program was helping me to create space to feed it and explore it.
I'm enjoying experimenting with how to be more visible
This was my biggest challenge; I felt very uncomfortable working out loud. You know, this whole thing is also big stuff, big growth, and I enjoy that I have got a lot of learnings personally in it.
And now, it's more about getting clarity on how I position myself and my passions than if I'm a freelancer, full-time, or run an agency.
Professionally I’m a designer, and wellbeing is core to who I am and my approach - it’s the how. So with that, I can just take any role that fits.
Like the retreats I’ve launched. My first one recently was a safe experiment, and I'm super excited about the retreat I'm going to do in May called Creative Break.
The first challenge was, “Can I even do a retreat and would people even show up?”.
Now, it's more like, “Can I make companies pay for their employees to join this?”.
This is a bigger challenge, and I enjoy it. And it feels like, if I if I can do it, then it could actually be a business that I can make money from.
I'm just not getting too crazy attached that it has to work.
“I’m constantly learning, doing and experimenting. And if it flows, that’s amazing! If not, that’s also fine. I’ll move on to the next experiment eventually. I’ve found more peace with it.”
Connect with Pelin on LinkedIn.
Her design practice www.pelinkazak.com
Her new project Design Being retreats www.designbeing.life
