We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicoletta Gauci a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nicoletta, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
At Kismet community was our biggest inspiration and our biggest reason for starting our own business. From our community within the beauty industry to our community in Souther California and beyond, we wanted to bring heart into business and not lose the lessons we learned throughour our lives but especially in 2020. Prior to the pandemic salons started to become a bit cold and while the pandemic brought us togeather in some ways it also kept us apart in others. Its easy to have a lazer focus on personal growth, wants, and success and forget about the big picture. Kismet Salon was always meant to be a place where artists could run their own businesses while still having the support of a management team. A place that would support its community through outreach and events. We wanted to bring community back into the salon and have a place where your whole family comes, even if its just for a quick hello while on a walk in the neighborhood.
We were presented withour first opportunity to express this value when the writers strike began shortly after our soft opening. We opened our doors to the strikers for as long as it took for them to reach a deal, and we soon welcomed SAG as well. When our time with the WGA/SAG strike came to an end we then sponsored a few families for the holidays through an organization called Upward Bound House, something our team members have been doing for 4 years now. In spring 2024 we worked with a fundrasier for the Animal Rescue Mission and we also have always made it a point to support local schools through their raffles and silent auctions.
Within the Kismet walls we support our own artist and beauty community by maintaining a cooperative model. We keep our rents competetively low for the space and ammeneties we offer with the understanding that all team members will participate in the over all success and growth of the salon. We have rotating vendors and artists and love to give opportunities to other small business owners, we do this by selling their items for below standard commision rates and promoting them on our social media accounts. In fact we have our first Creative Kids pop up marketing that supports local young entrepenuers coming up in August!
Kismet is a labor of love, its the process of building a community in a big city that can be hard to navigate even for those born and raised here. We want everyone to have the life, balance, career and success that they want.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I have been in the beauty industry for 18 years as of this September. It has been an amazing career that I will forever be greatful for but it wasnt always my first choice. I began my adult years studying fine art in college but I quickly discovered that with my beginings I needed something that I would be able to support myself with and so I left school to work with an intent of coming back. During that period I worked as a receptionist at a salon and I recalled watching my family in Italy working in their salons and the nice life they had made for themselves. I decided to enroll into beauty school and combined my passion for art and fashion with a career plan that would ensure my ability to support myself.
The first opportunity I was given was as an assitant to the editorial director of a major brand. That translated into travellingto hair shows and photoshoots while developing priceless skills. I was then recruited to work for the same brand in Italy for their artistic team and to launch their first pilot salon. I spent two years learning even more lessons the hard way, through trial and many, many errors. During this period I began to work in the fashion industry as well as an independant artist and found what I thought was my niche, but had little to no work/life balance. I didnt know it yet but this was right before a huge turning point in my career. I took a job opportunity back in the USA to be an editorial director of a smaller company while still working freelance. I began to seek work life balance and eventually decided to have my daughter. I launched a successful bridal business in order to diminish my long days on set but I knew there was no way I could maintain a full time salary position, working for my agency and running a bridal business while being a mother.
This would be the begining of a new set of lessons that would place me between wanting a consistent family life and a successful career. I learned that the goals of a 19 year old hairstylist didnt have to be the goals of a 26 year old hairstylist, but in order to learn that I had to mourn what I thought I would achieve and redefine success. Success became about how I would use everything I had learned to provide a nice life for myself and my daughter. I relocated back to California and went 100% independant. I launched a new bridal company, began to build my clientele behind the chair and maintained my commercial clients. There were as many ups as there were downs, but I found my footing and began to create a good life for us…and then covid hit.
Covid was an unforgettably difficult period in history but it was a catalyst for self reflection. I was so busy grasping at elements of what my career could have been that I wasnt focusing on what actually made sense for myself and my daughter. I was about to leave the beauty industry and was actually working towards my bachelors in psychology (which I ended up completing in May 2023). During that time I focused on my clientele within the salon, I worked on my skills, I found my niche. The pandemic was how I found my love for salon work and focusing my energy in one place and space. Between 2020 and 2022 I grew to being fully booked 8-10 weeks in advance, I was able to pay off debt from surviving for the first 6 years of my daughters life, move into a larger apartment and even save money. If I had kept working on set and pursing a goal that was no longer mine I would have never accomplished opening Kismet in 2023.
These experiences, these lessons, are why I feel so passionate about supporting other artists in their careers. So many creatives give up their dreams because they lack support, direction, life planning. They either end up working for others who force them to overwork, and develop a dislike for their passion or they keep chasing a goal that they landed on so early in their career and they haven’t reassesed what that goal actually entails. Thats what Kismet is for me, an opportunity to support the growth of other creatives while having a place to continue to grow my career, and I cant wait to see where it goes.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities I feel were most impactful on my journey and Kismets were/are:
Being Stubborn
-I don’t enjoy being told ‘no’, and at the very least I always want a reason why. I think so often people just say no because something hasn’t been done that way, or it shouldn’t be…but not because it actually ‘can’t’ be. People tend to carry many limiting beliefs ingrained in them by family, society and maybe even experience but I am very much of the camp of….well let me see and learn for myself if it isnt possible. This was the approach behind Kismet. I reality Kismet shouldnt exist. We shouldnt have been approved for that lease, we shouldnt have such a cute salon, we shouldnt have all these bespoke elements and a full team under a year of being open, but we do because we didn’t accept the ‘no’s’.
Being Kind
-While I may be stubborn I try to never be rude or entitled. Every ounce of help I have had in my life and in the growth of Kismet I have tried my best to express sincere gratitude for. When I do recieve a ‘NO’ with a solid explanation, I don’t force, I pivot. I am very big on expressing thanks whether through words of affirmation, acts or service or, when appropriate, gifts.
Having Support
-While I may not have started my adult life with a financial leg up I always had the emotional support of my mother. I now have the support of my mother and stepfather as well as my daughter and partner not to mention countless friends who believed in me. Truly, all of the owners of Kismet had exponential support from family, friends, churches etc which demonstrates how crucial community is.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
We would absolutely love to continue to collabroate with artist of all fields. We are always growing our team both on the salon and spa side as well as our vendor side. We are always open to fun ideas for events, we have done book launches and wine nights and cant wait to see what else Kismet can be a part of!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kismetcollectivesalon.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/_kismetcollective_
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/kismetcollectivesalon
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kismet-collective-salon-and-spa-burbank
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
