Today we’d like to introduce you to Nikki Dominguez
Hi Nikki, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I started my career as a hairstylist in Denver, Colorado. I was the Denver Nuggets Dancers and Broncos Cheerleaders hair and make up artist for three years. I then moved to New York City and lived out there for six years and worked as a hairstylist and started a few businesses out there.
Throughout my career as a hairstylist, I built 3 hair academies in Denver and New York City. I was also the COO of a major salon chain helping them grow to over $10M a year. From my experience I began consulting for hair salons across the US, helping them build their own education programs and expanding their businesses.
That led me to starting a beauty tech company with my sister. Together we raised $2.1 million in funding and created a platform for beauty and barber pros. Similar to LinkedIn where these professionals could find career advice, education, and jobs.
After I left our startup, I started my current company which is Softness in Healing. I’ve become a master at helping people identify the roadblocks they have around money, love and success. These women have gone on to do amazing things!
I now work with women, many who are entrepreneurs, in their transformational journeys. I noticed throughout my time in the hair industry and the business world that many women have incredibly beautiful ideas yet are held back by their limiting beliefs, past traumas and experiences.
Women have a tremendous ability to lead from a place of collaboration, empathy, creativity, and strength, but are afraid to step into this softer style of leadership. And that’s where I come in. I help people identify their limitations, experience transformation in their mind and body and finally embody a new set of beliefs, behaviors and self identity.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
oh no! This journey has been anything but smooth! Ha ha ha!
But that’s why I’m so good at what I do. Because I’ve been through incredibly rough experiences and at times, quite frankly, I’m surprised I’ve survived!
I grew up in a very chaotic environment, and that chaos bled into the rest of my life because I had not yet addressed the underlying issues of how that made me feel about myself and what I was worthy of in life.
That led to me being homeless multiple times, working three jobs to get through beauty school, living in a shit basement in Brooklyn, making less than $25,000 a year for 3 years during my startup, and all of these struggles really forcing me to look inward at how and why I was limiting myself so consistently.
I’ve had to learn how to face some pretty dark moments in life and not know how I was going to make it. Being over 3 months behind on rent, of the fear of my company closing down, not being able to pay employees or feed my dog! But each time I had to learn how to hustle, trust and grow.
That’s why people that work with me see such dramatic results, because I know how to lead them through it.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an experiential and transformational coach. I work with people to help them overcome their limiting beliefs, traumas, and wounds that are creating self sabotage in love, career or finances.
I am incredibly proud of the way that I coach others because it’s completely unorthodox and expansive. I believe that we are creators of our own lives and experiences. So the way I coach others is to lead them back to their own power and help them understand themselves deeply.
When people operate this way they become incredibly intuitive and lead their lives from trust. This translates to others trusting them, following their guidance, making radical and powerful decisions, to being innovative and taking courageous risk.
And it’s all done from a heart centered place. Where my clients are able to really connect with others and inspire other people as well, so their leadership, their communication or their ideas don’t come across as domineering and forced, they come across as magnetic, inspiring and uplifting. It’s really about not just working with my clients, but who my clients work with, who my clients live with, who my clients are inspiring, who my clients are affecting with their own internal change.
For me, it’s a really beautiful chain reaction that when one person invest in themselves and takes time for themselves to clear out all the bullshit that keeps them stuck, angry and bitter…these people now become innovative, inspiring fun, exciting in every area of their lives.
What were you like growing up?
I think I was fun! I was definitely more of a solitary kid. I really loved being in my own little imagination. Dancing and twirling with fairies in the grass in Colorado or always had some type of book.
They should have had masterchef jr. when I was younger. I was super into cooking and classical music! Lol, sometimes I think I was a little old lady in a child’s body. There is this video of me standing on a stool at my parents kitchen counter, cutting potatoes when I was four, with a really sharp knife, and putting these potatoes into boiling water….and they just let me do it and watched!
I was always very intuitive and way more interested in listening to people and observing people than I was with normal little kid things.
But I was also very much into boys! I really loved all the handsome boys.
I definitely wasn’t sporty but really wanted to be on a team. I tried out for volleyball – got cut. Tried out for basketball – got cut. Tried track – got cut…can you even get cut in track?! So I was on the swim team in high school, as well as cheer and dance, and also played the violin, cello, saxophone and the drums. And yes, was in the marching band.
So my high school years were filled with nothing but activities. But even with all those activities, I still really enjoyed my own time and didn’t party or drink.
My favorite memory is when I was homeschooled in 4th grade. And I wanted a Barbie. So I had to save up for it, then plan the field trip for my class (my mom, 2 brothers and sister). I had to plan the city bus route (bc I couldn’t drive), pay for everyone, get us all to the stop, then take the right route to the mall, buy the barbie and then get us all back.
I’ll never forget it. It was one of the coolest moments in my life. And now to this day I solo travel all the time. And I am always so excited to get lost so I can see if I can find my way back.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.SIHacademy.com
- Instagram: @softness.in.healing
