More than half of small businesses are born from someone's desire to find freedom. Nina Pinidi’s business was born out of necessity.
Her comrades needed products they couldn’t find on base or on deployment, but her morale needed it too after serving 17 years.
She rose in rank to chief petty officer with deployments to Japan, Guantánamo Bay, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Chile and Djibouti before getting sick and having to medically retire.
“I was really in a dark time when I was out because it's like all of a sudden you're not needed anymore,” she said. “You don't have to wear a uniform. No one calls you for advice. No one needs your mentorship, and that literally stops overnight.”
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Another blow came eight months later, when she found out she had breast cancer.
“When I was seeing the social workers at the hospital, I was like, ‘I have to provide for myself. I'm not in the Navy anymore,'" she said. “And they said, ‘That's not the time to find a job.’”
Relentless brainstorming led her to the San Diego Small Business Development Center (SBDC) to launch Solime Royal Hair and the University of San Diego's business school to learn how to run it. When she needed a mentor, SBDC’s Diana Barbiani delivered.
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“I like to say she's my fairy godmother in the business,” Pinidi said.
The pair relates to each other as immigrants with resilient roots from their parents.
“Since I was 12 years old, my mom opened a little fruit or vegetable stand in our hometown of less than 2.000 people when I was growing up, and she made me work,” Croatia native Barbiani said. “So I learned a lot.”
Barbiani helping Pinidi gave her the chance to share untapped grants, permitting and planning resources. Entrepreneurship is more accessible than it seems.
“A lot of times people think, ‘Oh, I don't have money to start a business,’” Pinidi said. “I didn’t have any money starting a business, either. Remember, I just got medically retired. I didn't have a military pension, just the VA compensation.”
All the brands scattered across Pinidi’s pop-up table at the San Diego naval base are different. She works with almost 20 brands, and that's because the driving force that fuels small businesses the most in San Diego is collaboration.
“I find value in working together, also because in the military, that's the lifestyle,” she said. “We are always working in a group. There's never anything that's done alone.”
Pinidi is now in remission from breast cancer and will have her next pop up on the San Diego naval base Feb.14-16 before moving to Macy’s in Santee on March 8.
