Nicole from the recently opened Harvard Square showroom gives us a sneak peek into how their team took an empty space and turned it into a lively showroom! Above: the team in action.

Prior to us getting our space, they built a wall to make it even smaller than it already was. You can see the metal braces and sheetrock going up below:

That left us with 570 square feet to work with, including that low ceiling in the middle of the space.

Challenge: Turn this cold white room into a cozy lululemon showroom.

Cindy came in to help me on Monday, and we shopped like maniacs Monday and Tuesday. The space was left painted white and we recruited a guy from Home Depot to help us paint it ourselves.

The painting begins! Already things are starting to look better...

We all stayed up past 1am Tuesday night to get everything repainted bright, fun colors.

The creativity did not stop at the walls. Check out Harvard Square's unique desk!

We built our desk out of cinder blocks and wood. Our inspiration? The garden displays at Home Depot. It's so easy, and once you spruce it up with some baskets, flowers, organization, it really looks great.

The team's hard work is starting to pay off. The showroom is looking great!

Wednesday morning, we used another empty retail space in the building to start building our Ikea cubbies and Home Depot plumbing-inspired racks. We started bringing things in after lunch on Wednesday, got all our racks installed into the concrete walls, and things started looking like a real store!

Hooray! Harvard Square's makeover is complete!

We finished up everything on Friday evening (in time for dinner and some well deserved drinks), and opened on Saturday morning! It was a blast.

A complimentary yoga class at Harvard Square in the new space!

Working in such a small space and in such a small time frame really allowed us to get creative. We obviously took inspiration from the stores (pant cubbies, etc.), but really had to challenge ourselves to keep from using the same old rolling racks all over the place.

Come visit us soon!

Love,
Nicole

For more info on the Harvard Square showroom visit http://www.lululemon.com/cambridge/harvardsquareshowroom.

Want to learn more about showrooms? Read the "meet our lake oswego showroom manager" blog post.

Above is Foujan sharing her current BHAG - to become proficient in HTML by December 2009. See her discovery and where she ended up!

If you have no destination, you'll likely end up someplace else.

It's been almost a year now, and when I look back on the person I was then, and the person I am now... I'm amazed. I came out of university with little direction, but I knew a few things: I wanted to take a year off and find myself, I wanted to discover whether or not I truly loved science (as that was what I studied through university) and if I'd miss it in my year off, and I knew that I wanted to do all of this steps from the Pacific Ocean. I enrolled in an art program, got my student visa, packed my belongings in two suitcases, and moved to Los Angeles. I had little money, no job prospects, just this huge idea that somehow, someway, I'd find myself - and I was absolutely convinced it would happen on the shore of the Pacific, perhaps in meditation or in a completely combustible "a-ha" moment.

It didn't.

And it wasn't until a few months of being back in the suburbs of Toronto that I realized why. I went to LA with no idea of what I actually wanted. I came back a bit disheartened, slightly disenchanted, and in complete denial. But how could I know where I was going, if I had no intended destination? If we have no destination, we're bound to end up someplace else, aren't we?

After months of failed job searching, I applied to lululemon and met Diana: the assistant manager who would change my views about the retail industry. Here's a girl with an awesome education, intelligence, creativity, and a whole lot of heart - and she works at lululemon athletica Vaughan Mills. I was intrigued. I soon had my first goal coaching session with Elise; a spunky, health-conscious manager who oozed amazing leadership qualities. I learned about the hedgehog concept, discussed what I was passionate about, and wrote everything down.

Here I am today; I never "found" myself on the shores of the Pacific, but setting goals and writing them down changed the way I see myself and the control I have over my future.

The recipe for success isn't a difficult one: add one part goal-setting (http://goals.lululemon.com), one part genuine willingness to achieve these goals, and eight parts passion for everything you're trying to achieve. It takes the simple belief in yourself to know that you are worthy of your goals, and your goals worthy of you. And though we may not always achieve every goal, working towards something is an achievement in and of itself.

Namaste.