We recently connected with Courtney Jay Higgins and have shared our conversation below.

Courtney Jay, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

The concept for Coincide began with my love for sustainable, eco-conscious fashion and my passion for yoga. I wanted to find a way to merge the two. What I noticed in the yoga-wear industry was a lack of earth-friendly, stylish yoga wear and instead; tight, spandex created without the earth or people in-mind. I also noticed many of my favorite sustainable brands were creating silhouettes that could be worn for yoga. Such as organic cotton jumpsuits, linen gaucho pants, and hemp bralettes. This got me thinking about the ancient roots of yoga and how the yogis of India wore loose linen to help them move freely. I found myself feeling angry that our Western corporate yoga culture had strayed so far from yoga’s roots promoting tight-fitting spandex that only feeds the ego. I wanted Coincide to be a place that honored the roots of yoga while also highlighting a different wardrobe for practicing it. Encouraging those with a love for yoga to support small, conscious clothing brands instead.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Courtney Jay, I’m a yoga instructor, new mama, health enthusiast, and lover of sustainable fashion.

For years, I felt like my identity was split—style in one corner, yoga in another, conscious living in another. I had dreams of merging elements of dance and fashion with yoga, of making sustainable living easy and fun, and of establishing a forum to explore spirituality. So I created Coincide as a hub to pool my passions, to integrate these individual parts of myself into a whole.

At the start of the pandemic, I launched the Coincide Yoga Portal. I saw a deep need for accessible at-home yoga as a way to keep the spirit alive amidst so much fear and uncertainty. It was a beautiful time of finding my Coincide Yoga Community and creating classes to support our innate need for peace.

Today, the Coincide Yoga Portal houses 40+ yoga classes and courses. Each class and course is dedicated to celebrating true wholeness that starts from within. We explore movement as a spiritual practice connecting to the ancient philosophies of yoga. With the goal of expanding our awareness, warming our empathy, and creating a space to Coincide.

Outside of the Coincide Yoga Portal we highlight and work with brands thinking outside the box. The small innovators creating non-toxic, zero waste products that keep you healthy and make the earth happy. We also explore everything from spirituality, eastern philosophies, and astrology.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Coincide was a blog for about two years before it turned into my full-time job. When I decided to launch the Coincide Yoga Portal during the pandemic, I had also started working full time from home. This allotted more time and energy to put towards growing Coincide. My husband and business partner helped me to budget funds and hire a branding agency—Drop Cap Design (I cannot recommend them enough). We worked with them to completely rebrand Coincide and make it a functioning membership-based platform. During this process, I knew I wanted to make Coincide my full-time job. When I re-launched the site and brand, it suddenly became the vision I had always wanted it to be. This was a huge milestone moment for me in my life and in starting my journey of working for myself full-time.

However it wasn’t until we moved from Los Angeles to Colorado towards the end of 2020 that my work became freelance and time opened up even more to be fully focused on growing Coincide. The journey of working for myself has not been an easy one. I’m still learning to manage time and be disciplined with deadlines. I’m always learning and always expanding.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

At the beginning of 2021 my little brother passed away suddenly from a fentanyl laced oxycontin pill. Grief stricken for months my life was put on-hold. Then about 2-months after his passing, I found out I was pregnant. Becoming pregnant was a joy in the midst of deep sorrow. I also found myself wanting to crawl out of grief for the health of my baby. So I decided to become certified as a prenatal yoga instructor and signed up for an online training about a week after finding out I was pregnant. Alongside the training, I decided to also hire a brand strategist to help me reconnect to marketing Coincide and realigning with growing the brand.

I look back at this time and am amazed by my strength and resilience. I could have crawled into bed and let all my dreams and goals fall to the waste side but instead and turned my grief into a catalyst for staying on my path. I’m also proud to say that I launched my Coincide Prenatal Course just a week before giving birth to my baby girl. This was my first step of connecting to the mothers in my community and using the wisdom I gained from pregnancy to share with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://coincidelife.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coincide.life/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-jay-higgins-ab48722a/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq485ZApV3RJKnZAeoGudMA

Image Credits
Please tag @photobymemry