Escape if you can, and I didn't have that in that time.
And I escaped because I want to. I escaped because I needed to. You don't know if you're
traffic in. You don't know. They never tell you that the promises are so huge and so beautiful.
Big. Sol Kazinski is a beauty entrepreneur, educator, and the founder of Planet Sol Salon. Through her work, she advances the beauty industry with innovative hair extension techniques, while mentoring the next generation of stylist to achieve excellence in long-term success.
“I think to get to what I am today, you have to walk apart and the path that you walk.”
Make you or break you. When I walk that path, I was determined that it was going to make me and not break me. I did. I changed my name in that time because everybody was looking for me and I didn't
want nobody to find me. So when my husband made me, I was geeky. When he find out then I was sold,
then he said, okay, so tell me just story. Hold, internet Elvis, today Apple is going to reinvent. It's not over. I'll tell how we're. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back to another episode of the living your legacy podcast. Joining me today is Song, which is translates to Song. But I know that because her nice speaks Spanish.
So we began your interview a couple of hours ago. One of our longest interviews. And I have to, and I have to only give you a little bit of shit. It's because we're Latino. We're designed to suffer. So the beginning segment one is a lot. Very long. And then you get to your success. So welcome to your success. Thank you. Such a pleasure to have you here, my love. Thank you. How do you feel? Oh gosh, um,
you know when you dream in a cloud that you're in a cloud? Well, I feel like I'm dreaming that I'm in a cloud.
This is quite the cloud. It's a cloud too. Yeah, um, I always dream that I'm flying.
And this time I really dream in that I'm flying. But I'm flying to the right place.
“Right. And I know that's what that's what makes it. So unique and so special.”
Getting to be here and to do this is it's a dream. It's a dream that it wasn't in my plans. I know. But I mean, who doesn't dream about having a podcast? And it's here. Here you are. Yeah. You're journey begun. It begins at your first entrepreneur journey. It was four years old. Your first job, some insane age. It only Latinos would understand that it's quite normal. Yeah, um, when you when you start working at age of six or seven years old and you're really making
hot cocoa at four o'clock in the morning when you should be sleeping. Yeah. It's a it's at the beginning of being an entrepreneur. It's actually the beginning of of, um, of a life full of good stories. Because not everything is about story. It's the best part of it. When I heard your story, especially your personal background, which will touch upon it. Remember, a lot of my, my story of my mom growing up in Manau and I got out. Where was this like you wake up already, Hustlin. There's already an
“urge of service because you have to thrive. You have to survive. Every day is not easy. Every day is a blessing.”
Do you talk about that culture in your country? Gosh. Yeah. I was not the only child that that has going through all this. I mean, I still go back to Colombia and I see little kids, early, early, early hours of the day walking with the runners with the Colombian runners, which is like a jacket because it's so cold. And you can see the the fog all over the mountains. And you see them walking around trying to get to the coffee plantations to become coffee. I did that
when I was 6, 7 years old. I went and pick up the grass from the ground. So my mother can make the brooms to sweep the house, you know, it's crazy. Literally the straws to the broom. Oh, yes, no, yeah. And of course, the house was with dirt. So you need those, and you pick it up with knife. Imagine you are saving years old. Six years old. We've been having your hand and you just wipe in pieces of grass from the ground. So you can take it home and your mom can make the broom.
And they make the broom with a string and put it in a piece of wood and a stick and I'll tell you just sweep the house. But but we somehow turned that into a positive because people hear you speak
Like, I sounds like a Disney movie.
or at least my, my grandparents and my, my, my, my ancestors are not that old. But but people that
raised me grew up in a, in a very much similar way, where it was almost like we thrive to live off the land and no one's, no one's going on a journey to go to CVS and cook for three hours. You know, when you went through, it's kind of like a right of passage. It's almost like, you're supposed to do that. Can you talk a little bit of that? Well, yeah, I was supposed to,
“I think to get to what I am today, you have to walk a pot and everybody work at different”
pot in their lives. And the path that you walk, make you or break you. So when I walk that path, I was, I was determined that it was going to make me and not break me. Because, you know,
when you go through so many things as a child, as a teenager, in a sense, I can never
end it because those years are so long for any came. I mean, you, you think that you seven years old and you think that you'd see at 25 year old and you say, oh my God, that person is so old. And, but in reality, those years are supposed to be the best years of your life, right? And then, you have to do all these things. You have to make sure that you survive every single minute of the day, somehow survive to live the next day. And then the next day, you don't know us coming, because
you're a child. You, you can't perceive what's coming next day. You just have to keep going every single day. And then you get to appoint it a little switch kind of turn on. And that happens when you about 12 to 14 year old. It's unbelievable how you brain works and you, that age, you say, oh, I have lived this life already. It seems like a hundred years. For you ever seen a movie that everything happens in one day, right? Everything happens in one day. And, and you think it's happened
over 20 years of period. But everything happens in one day. I feel like I leave that movie. There everything happens in my teen, in my, in my years of my childhood. And it was every day, something different, something stronger, something terrible, something. I don't remember good powers. Oh, I do remember one good power. I do remember my father gave us for Christmas. That's when he was healthy. He gave us for Christmas. These little shorts, my sister and I, this little
“beauty shorts. And it was, I think it was two colors. Mine was yellow and red. My sister was”
pink and blue, something like that. And you're that giving by booty shorts? Yeah, it was, it was little short. You know, for the girls got it. Yeah, little shorts to right here. And those were ways to be at home. Got it. The joke. So the same day, my brother, my sister, now, we, we hang out together like we went to up in the mountains and we ride horses. Well, bear. Yeah, short shorts. Yeah, bored. Yeah, that's better. We, we, we, we, yeah, we know, we know, we grab the, we grab the, the, the, the, the,
the trade, this huge trees. Remember, we end the Amazon. That's awesome. The Amazon is a beautiful place. So we grab these strings and we tie it to the horses. And then we get in the horse and we start riding and those feels huge feels. We go home and the shorts with completely gone right here. You know how much we get a spanket. Oh. I love it. I love it. I love it. You can determine the, the frequency, how you can determine how bad it was. The amount of spanking you would get. Oh,
gosh, which of course that never happens today, right? Yeah. All right. Because we'd
want to broaden your, I love it. Sure. So we just got for Christmas. The kick, let me ask you a question.
“Do you ever think why you're riding that horse and you're riding and you Christmas shorts?”
Did you ever think that there's a whole other world in New York? Miami, all these things are happening? Oh, no. I didn't care. No. I didn't even know they call on the exercise. Can we talk about that story? I know this is going to sound a little bizarre because when I heard this story, I'm Cuban, but there's, there's, there's Cuban, and then there's like darker Cuban. And it's very common in our culture. Very common in your culture as well. When you went into the city,
you went that out of the country. Yeah. And it gave us a little bit of that story. Okay. So I live on, uh, we live in the mountains of Colombia and by the Amazon. Yeah. And in the Amazon, it's so cold over there. Everybody's white. I mean, pale white. Yeah. That's cool. Uh, yeah. There's no sun. There's no sun. Yeah. And it rains every day. And it's, it's, it's beautiful. But it's, it's no sun. It's the Seattle, South America. Yeah. Exactly. And so the fog is all over
the mountains, early in the morning and later in the evening. And then my, my, my family took
Me to Barranquilla when I was only, what, 14 years old.
a person of color. And I was like, oh, like, what is this? They become my best friends over the years. But, um, I was like, what is this a different world? What is this? I mean, we never get out of that little town for anything. Yeah. Anything. So, um, I thought that was the world right there. Right. And then we move into Barranquilla. And we see, we see horses, a carry and, um, uh, Carreras. What is the name of those things? Everybody. Yeah. Carrriages. And with, with selling food,
selling stuff, everybody's screaming, uh, tomatoes on you with the birds. You know, and we, I'm all here like, what is this? That's amazing. This is Gary, though. It's scary. But in the same
token, it's like excited because I never seen anything. Get in a bus for the first time at the edge of
“14, was like, oh, my God. I remember that because the roads are so narrow, driving, driving to”
Medellin, from the little town to Medellin to get the bus to Barranquilla. Um, I remember those those trees go, and you end the window like this. You attach to that window because those trees just go by so fast. And you're thinking, oh my God, you don't think I'm in a die because you're too late. Oh, you know, you don't even know what dead means. Yeah. But you think this is unbelievable. I'm real. It look at you now. And look at me now. Can you drive my own car? I know it's not
crazy. I want to I want to land on the mindset shift because what we talked about in your
reviews as Latinos, we're kind of designed to people please be resilient. We always hustle. But we
never go, you know what? I'm going to run a company where I want to do this. It's very far between
“and when it does happen, it's quite magical. It's happened for you. Yes, I think it's kind of happened”
for me as well. But that's all you. Yeah. That happens for you too. Yeah. Then we feel, yes, very feel, but I feel like it's all about because we can be in our own environment and become something or somebody or we can move and to a completely different culture, a completely different war with different language, we different everything. And then and then when you start thinking, oh, Lord, how am I supposed to shine to all these things that is in here? But then you sit, your goals,
little by little day by day. And there's no one day in one day in the week that you're not thinking about what you're going to do tomorrow. There's no one day. And so when you become successful, this every single day, you'll have a plan, something. Even if you don't write it down, your mind, people tell me, do you ever sleep? Yeah. And I'm like, I do. I do. I take some medicine back. I do me. She's Colombian, wink. Bad joke. What am I doing? I don't sleep. I sleep. I sleep.
Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. I'm like, I have an idea. I walk into my salon and I tell my employees, oh my God, I have an idea and everybody can teach you that this appears high. No, same thing with Rudy. Don't be caught in Rudy's like, anything really can tell you that everybody disappeared. And then they come out from the doors. But is it? I tell you later. So that's checked this black channel. I need an ROI on this.
“It's all that I mean, I mean, I'm a boom. Yeah, it's awesome. So does it feel to have your tribe now?”
Like to have your team, to have people afraid of you building? Yeah, what do you mean? We haven't even talked about what you do for living right now. No one still people can guess. What does this woman do? Okay. So for years, I did hair behind the chair. So I work hard. I work hard. I sometimes work 14, 15 hours behind that chair. So I can pay the bills. I can pay everything. I did between 12, 14 customers per day. And I was in my high heels.
Just like this all day long. Just like this behind that chair. And we day. And I'll give me the quick preview of your story of as a child, what you were doing,
cleaning, never getting paid, being locked up with no papers. And this isn't the United States.
Then a couple of night even columns. I didn't tell you the story about how it happens. My husband has to, in order for me to get my papers in the United States. Before we got married, my husband didn't know my name. So I changed my name. Oh boy. I did. I changed my name in that time
Because everybody was looking for me and I didn't want nobody to find me.
So the people that brought me over. I changed my name. I changed my name to Viki. So when my husband
“met me, I was Viki. Oh, hello Viki. Yes, it's not Viki. I was Viki. And then when he met me,”
I was Viki. He actually wrote a little piece of paper. They say, hey, Viki, I would like to marry you, kind of deal. And I'm like, okay. So when he met me that I was Viki, I was trying to to protect myself of course. And how will they do you back then? Twain, you want anyone here? I imagine because I want to give some background the Venezuelan Islands and the Colombians are
always fighting for misduners. So imagine 21 years old fiery Colombian continue.
Yeah. I was 21 years old. And well, 21, 22. I was, I was, I changed my name. So when my husband found out that I wasn't sold. And I was Viki. And I was, I wasn't Viki. I was sold. Oh, when I was sold. When he found out that I was sold, then he said, okay. So tell me just story. So I told him this story. And he said, okay, let's get married so you can get your papers. And then he said, where's your passport? And I'm like, oh, I don't have any. I don't know where it is. And he goes,
“you need to know your passport so we can get you a lawyer so we can organize your paper. So”
literally we, he has to go to the people that brought me, he has to go to their office and pay them. They charge him $2,500 to give him my passport. Back then, yeah. Yeah, well, again, because they kept it. Of course. So he got my passport and that's how I end up over here.
I lawyer organized it within. He pays for everything. Thank God for my husband. He's been an amazing
man in life. We've been married 35 years. That's quite the blessing because before you met your husband, which he's been a good amount of energy that that moment when you all met at that peruvian restaurant. Yes. Yeah. So you ever remember, I would do remember something. But before all that, you went through almost human trafficking. Human trafficking. Oh, boy.
“And you say it's so like comically like, oh, I do these things. No, it's okay. So you'll go through”
a bit. I went through, I went through right. Oh, boy. I went through as a child. I went through child's labor. And I went through a human trafficking, escaping, surviving. It's so many. Human trafficking is not just for sex. Human is so much behind that. So much, so many things, so sad. So many stories that we don't see. But one thing for sure is getting out of it. That is the most difficult thing. I'd see now in the airport and every and every, uh, it's a human
trafficking. Human trafficking signs. And I have it in my, it's alone to escape if you can, you know, kind of deal. And I didn't have that in that time. Nobody told me to escape if you can. I escaped because I want to. I escaped because I needed to. First, why I escaped. For anyone that's happens to be at an airport, you know, listening to this, what are some, what are some red flags? Yes. Yes. When someone doesn't danger, they can't tell you. Yes.
So there is reflected. There is no red flags. That's the problem. The problem is, when you,
when you are trafficked, when you are the person that is trafficked, you are convinced, then when you come to this country, you come in to do something great for yourself. Oh, boy. So when you and airport walking, and you're all excited about a new world in a new opportunities, you don't know if you are trafficked. You don't know. And you have no idea. They didn't ever tell you that the promises are so huge and so beautiful. If I'm in the airport walking
around with with the people that brought me over, I would not know that I was trafficked. I knew that I was coming to America. I knew that I was going to work. I knew that I was going to make money. I knew it was going to have a future for me and my family. I have no idea. So if I were to send that sign, I wouldn't I know. Who do you contact? Who do people commonly contact to get to the country? Is it someone that's going to human traffic them and be malicious? It's a, it sounds
like with your story that you went down the, it's a human traffic in, it's all over the places. And it's in the places that you less expect to out there, high up there, it's government, this wealthy people, government with marketing chips, sausages, and in our countries, government is the main source, the main source. That was for me. Yeah. It was the main source, because they have the ability to get those passports. Exactly. They have this kind of
Overview.
government. Yeah, and they just put the care in front of you going, oh, we're getting freedom
“of success. Yes. Which is that, which is a pandemic that's happening in all the central and”
South American countries. Yes. And it's been happening in four years in the past 35, 37 years ago, when I first came to the United States, that was not, that was like I taboo. Nobody talk about human traffic. No, nobody. My mom was 17, just to give you the clear. She went from Icarawa to La Frontina, 17. Yeah. I'm sure there was a little bit of human trafficking. Yeah, I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. But there's so much, and there's human trafficking for sex,
human trafficking for work, for I was for work. But there's so much, even inside the United States, you find the people that want to traffic you, they want to make money out of you. Oh, yeah. Especially when you young. So I have two things in my life. When I first come to the United
States, Colombia was in bad shape because the drug cartels was powerful. So when I got married,
and I went back to Colombia, I was a young girl. I was beautiful now, not there. I'm not right now. But I was very pretty. I was still as very pretty. And I was flying to Colombia and coming back.
“So I always got to stop in the airports and Houston, you know, meals with the best thing in that”
time that we're bringing meals back and forth. So I got an offer. I got an offer. You had to know where you need to be and where you need, what kind of decisions you make? When I was here alone, my aunt told me, you're suffering too much, and I let it in later, you're suffering too much. You need, we have a family member in New York. Her name is Beatrice. She, you can go to New York and stay in her house. So you have a place to stay. And I'm like, oh my God, that sounds so great.
So Beatrice called me. She got, she's going to touch with me. She called me. And Beatrice told me, hey, don't worry. I'm going to send you your, your, your, your ticket. Your gold ticket. Yeah, I'm going to send you your plane ticket. I'm going to, you come and live with me. So don't worry. You're, why you over there, or by yourself, that, that I sound so beautiful. I received my ticket in
“the mail. Wow. I received my ticket. And when I look at that ticket, I told my friend, my friend,”
there was, it's from Paraguay. I told, I said, Gracie, should I go and she goes, yeah, I go, why not? And I say, I'm scared. I'm scared to go to New York. That's a big city. And I already have five friends and corpus. I'm scared. I'm not going to go. Seven years later, after I got married, seven years later, that lady was in jail in New York for mealing. I'm believable. Look at that. What I saved myself out of it. Yeah, you'd definitely save yourself.
That was the devil going, which one is going to be part of my collection today? And you go, not me today. See, you see, my own off. Oh, my Lord, I saved myself out of one,
they, you would know, I would not be telling the story. You're right now. It's not amazing. If I were
out, because in that time in '81 and that was '88, '89, '89, '89, '80, '89. That was my, yeah, me. I was, it was, it was, and it was all young girls. Yeah, all young girls. And whatever, all their way, tape in out, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, they can transport, whatever. Oh, where they didn't on some of the things in all these parts. Oh, my god, tell me about it. I saved myself out of that one for you. So what are you doing today, honey, so we can wrap up before we
go to another saga, which I love. It's okay. This is a family show. We got to keep it 20 minutes. We're already past, we're just fine. Tell me what you're doing today. Your hair, your selling hair extensions, your selling, your energy, your story. Tell me more of you two day. Okay, so today, I'm so in my life, it's peaceful. I'm very peaceful. And I, I live in 20 acres in our unsuspassed Texas. And I'm a beautiful house as gorgeous. We have bees, we have beehives. And my husband and I,
we've been married 35 years. So we've been, we've been very successful together. He's been my rock, my teacher, my mentor, my friend, my everything over the years. He's 18 years older than me. Now I go home at 4 o'clock in the afternoon every day. This alone is open from nine o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night. I don't open. I don't close. I don't do hair. And just to help my family that I have my mother's 99 years old, she's going to be 100 next year. So my, I had just helped my
family. I helped my brothers navigate the United States live. And I just take my mom to doctors and help my mom. My mom has a caregiver at home that we brought in. It's helping her. Yeah, my life is a very comfortable, quiet life. I do, I do some things like I help people in my
Country and my, and my neighbor and my mother's neighborhood that is bored.
we build little houses for them. So we help them get some in my family. Don't know this because
“we don't want them to know this because. See, if you're part of the family, you're off. Yeah,”
I shut it off. Wait, what I do is I sometimes I send money. So I, so they can be all, I have my resources over there too. And so they can be all these little houses for, for olderly woman. They don't have nothing. So we do that for you. That's all, that's all I did. My time, I, I finally do that so they can have a place. And it's good energy to put out and
use, I'm sure you're getting a 10, 100 times full. They're basically always. And then on now,
I'm with my hair extensions. It was developed into any and doing the pandemic. What a nice thing to do. Because it was great. I have a month without nothing. My brain works. Yeah, yeah.
“My brain don't stop because it's a pandemic. Yeah, I wrote two albums in China,”
15, many music videos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, you get, you get, you get your, your little wheels running the roof. And then I, I develop these hair extensions, the nemacil clinking hair extensions. And it's the signest specifically for women with pine hair. So they can have beautiful hair. And it's designed to be technically is, you can use it, however you want to use it in little pieces and big pieces and however you can cut it. And it's the signs so people can, um,
can utilize it in different ways. And they can look beautiful. It's just, it's what it is. I mean, the hair extensions, link came is, um, it's a technique. The helps hairdressers make more money faster because instead of taking four hours, they take 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Wow, there it is. And then it's a technique that help customers not lose their hair with the heaviness of a hair extension. Wow, there it is. That was it. That was a selling point. I love how you said four hours in the
20. And the reserves, one thing that entrepreneurs and business owners would love to do and always
are always striving to learn is how to compress time. Time. How to compress time. How to compress time. How to compress the time, but still make this in a amount of money. Well, man. It's, it's, it's success. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and still, yeah, put up good service up there. And that's the tough part is the service and keep in the quality up when you've multiplied yourself
“into four studios. You got to keep the quality up. Yeah, you have to keep the quality up. But it's”
great because sitting here and I'm running three studios on my mind and things are things are going off because it's happening. And my brain's going, that, that, that, that, that, that, and I still thought you didn't engage. Yeah. Well, back to the power. Being Latinos and entrepreneurs, without my love,
what a powerful, amazing, uh, vibrant, son, soul that you've been. Vicky, that's your real name.
Well, my, my, my soul. I changed it to Vegas. I can, this case myself. Oh, this guy is yes. Well, I was nice and speak to soul to Vicky to get to know what, so more about you. With that concludes our journey today. How can people find you? What's a dot com? Oh, good. So, easiest way to do it. Uh, you can do it through a plan. It's also along that com or Facebook. I'm in Facebook. I sold Cassinsky. I sold Cassinsky on Facebook. Yeah,
so Cassinsky and Facebook and Instagram and I'm normally just have it for my business. But yeah, you can find me right there, a soul Cassinsky. And, um, uh, anything that needs to be helped over somebody needs help. I'm here because that's especially, especially if you're a female Latina entrepreneur, so Cassinsky on Facebook, uh, a plus said, uh, thank you so much. Much, uh, much, much, um, I'm off. Oh, shout out to Wattemaricado. We're inside the exam. We're inside the exam.
We're inside the exam. This is really good tears.
