We Turned 8! Yinsa LLC Becomes Yinsa, Inc.

The day before our launch party on June 15th, 2018, my car was towed by the glorious NYC Department of Finance.   That car was full of supplies for the day's photoshoot with an A/V team, I had a house full of friends and family helping me with final details, and my Mom's credit card was the only thing keeping me from giving up.  I'll be reminded about that $8,000 on her Discover card for the rest of my life, but I think after 8 years, the ROI is clear.  

This week, Yinsa retired her LLC hat and transitioned to Yinsa, Inc.  We have onboarded two new partners, built the non-profit I have been working on behind the scenes for 2 years, and are welcoming our first group of 6 teachers for the Yinsa Foundation to the Dominican Republic next week.  How did we pull this off? We kept going when we were exhausted and when nothing felt like it was working.  We had a failed apparel brand, a pandemic, death and loss...how on earth did we survive?

The truth is, for most of my life, survival is all I've ever known.  There has never been any choice BUT to survive, so survival was actually the easy part of entrepreneurship.  It was familiar, at times exciting, and it made me feel like I was worth something.  If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.  If you can keep your business alive during a pandemic and reality TV, you can do anything.  The truth I learned as I healed? Surviving business OR life is not the goal.  It's the thriving in lieu of surviving that is evidence of success, and I can say with certainty that we are thriving on this side.

Yinsa LLC → Yinsa, Inc. - Why the change?

For most of our time together, I have been the product.  On every retreat, in all the workshops, leading the courses and the trainings.  I believe the golden age of the LiveYinsa Collective was when we had lots of different teachers managing experiences, rather than feeling like I was running a cult from a yoga mat.  After years of trying lots of different ways of staffing and onboarding and incentivizing, I decided that equity and collaboration was the only possible way forward.  As we evolved from a skin care company that offered some workshops, to a travel agency, tour company, and wellness brand that leads global experiences - I knew we needed more minds at the top, and more importantly, minds that thought differently from me.  I believed that good leaders surround themselves with people who have the skills they lack.  This team now has lots of education, experience, and institutional memory, much of which I would never have had on my own.  In the coming days, Diandra and Pavita, our new partners, will introduce themselves to you.  Here's a brief intro:

Diandra and Pavita - Our New Partners

If you've every sent an email to team@liveyinsa, you've chatted with Diandra before.  She's transitioned from chief of staff to equity partner and COO.  Here role is to take all of my pie-in-the-sky dreams and ground them in systems and ops that make them possible.  I hold the vision, she does the ground work to help create a path to get there.  She also manages the humans on the logistical side - making sure everyone has their flight info and hotel confirmation numbers and driver's phone numbers.  She is our glue.

Pavita is a walking encyclopedia of information.  Master's in Public Health from Yale, Doctorate from Columbia TC, a decade of experience working in the non-profit sector.  She pushes back, asks the right questions, and finds all the holes in everything I thought was rock solid.  Shes an educator in all the ways, and will be leading the Yinsa Foundation work this summer, as well as helping to develop curriculum for the LiveYinsa collective and future retreats.  You will meet her for the first time IRL this summer, where she joins me, Diandra, Felipe, and Irene on our retreat to Portugal this July 19-26.  I'll talk more about how that magic is evolving in a newsletter later this week.

What this means for you 

More consistency, faster response times, more experiences and ways to connect to everything Yinsa has to offer.  More comprehensive retreat experiences, regular content output on socials and emails, more collective meetups and book clubs, and yes, MERCH.  We will have a few things merchy available on our retreats this summer, but this will be the year of the gear for Yinsa come December.

Thank You

Some of you have been with me for all these 8 years.  You have watched me navigate every challenge, personal and professional, and your words of encouragement and love have always been the driving force for this company.  At our core, the goal is that for-profit work feeds our non-profit work.  Retreat scholarships have always been at the center of our mission, but now, we get to create entire experiences for adults and children healing from trauma and deserving of joy.  YOU did that, and for this - your trust, your patience, and your gratitude, I AM GRATEFUL.

Stay tuned for notes from Diandra and Pavita, as well as an introduction to the Yinsa foundation, in the coming days. If you didn't already, you're going to love it here.

See you on retreat this summer...

With Gratitude,

Daniele