This dream started in my childhood so I have been doing hair since I was 12 years old.

I can be called a “hairstylist” but I am actually an “Artisan-Artist”, with the vision of an artist and with the technique of an artisan. I am also a hair doctor, consultant, a “Hairapist”.

Anybody can be a hairdresser but I am like a hair specialist. There is always someone that can do better. But do you have many people that can do better than you in every single aspect holistically speaking? The answer is no. I challenge everyone. I can specialize in every single area because of my time and my mindset. The way we approach things here is a little bit different than others. We can cover almost everything from the trichology to morphology and we try to see the psychology and the behavior of the customers in front of us as well as their facial features. Then we analyze everything and cover every single base.

I have two salons. We have about 15 stations. I would have a maximum of 25 stations.

Italians by default have big passions: cars, motorcycles, food, and women. My neighbor was a hairdresser and he was always coming home with beautiful women on dates; he had a nice life and a great car. This guy had it all! He was always well dressed. My mom’s best friend was a hairdresser too and she was coming to the house along with other women and this also encouraged me to become a hairdresser as well. I could be around women, make money. I am very ambitious, I don’t do mediocre things. I always do the best and so I liked the whole package. So this is how everything started.

I was a visionary. Italy unfortunately is not very good about dreams and visionaries. Yes it was good to learn the craft and the creativity but not for dreams.

I learned a lot in Italy. I convinced myself to follow my dreams. I went to do an internship after middle school and I did “the gavetta” without being paid. I was doing a lot of side jobs to support myself.

We are not anti vaccine, not political oriented, we just want what is the best. We had to adapt to the times, I went beyond the guidelines and I did everything and beyond what they were asking. We wanted to make sure that clients had a protocol when they came in. We stayed updated with the guidelines, we measured the temperature, and everyone had to wear a mask, and kept 6 feet distance between the stations. We stopped offering drinks, (we had a full bar, no more coffee as well), so people could learn how to manage the social distance and feel safe and comfortable when inside our salons. We washed our hands and sanitized everything and each station. Each customer stayed at a station and if they moved we sanitized the entire station and re-cleaned everything. We asked people not to stay in the salon if they didn’t have an appointment. We asked people to remove the mask they came in and put on a new mask; that was a little bit hard, but not negotiable. Nothing was negotiable in the guidelines. It was an extra precaution. The goal was to make sure that our staff members and family and customers were all safe.

We tried to cut down the hours or extend them according to the needs to make sure to be safe. We also eliminated magazines.

If people did not want to follow our guidelines, we had to ask them to leave. It only probably happened twice.

Through PPP we were able to keep the business afloat and I kept paying my staff.

We also started to ask our customers how Covid-19 has been impacting their lives and lifestyles, how often do you wash your hair now? How are you doing your hair now? Now they don’t go to the office but maybe they work on Zoom, so there are differences between seeing people in person or on a flat screen. I therefore asked people to bring a screenshot of how they look on Zoom so that we can work on their hair.

We currently maintain these standards and requirements.