This week's guest is Anastasia Atamanova, who joins us from Milan, Italy. Anastasia, also known as Nastia, is an incredibly creative entrepreneur and public speaker, who is the founder and creative director of the platform, Nysan Nasti, a bar without a bar and an entertainment platform that connects mind, body, and spirits. Anastasia's main focus is that of human connections, the power of vulnerability, deeper conversations with others and yourself, growth and self-care and overall happiness and well-being. Nastia is providing a terrific service to the industry and definitely check out her online platforms.
You can find Nastia online at Nastia LaVista and at Nysanasti Bar and you can find the links in the show notes as always. Enjoy the show. Okay, we are back with another episode of the industry podcast. I'm Kip, this is Dan.
How's it going? Going really well actually, probably because we were recording this on a weekend as opposed to Monday nights. I don't have to deal with the fun times. That's a fun Monday job time.
Yeah, I've been beating into the sun. I'm not sure. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's in front of a firing squad every Monday morning. I think sometimes it's good times.
True, and I haven't had to check out the deposit number, all the cars all week. Everything's good. Everything's good. I think it's going pretty this weekend.
You have too much. Not too much. No. This time of year, there's not much going on at the bars in Canada.
Yeah, it's been pretty cold this past week. High of minus 15, minus 16 Celsius. That's good. Yes.
Good way to stay in. Yeah. Nice. So nothing too exciting on my end.
So we should just get quickly to our guest. Joining us in a minute, before we get to her, we should mention that subscribing or following us on your wherever you listen to podcast helps a great deal. And if you want to rate us on a poster review, if you got time for that, even better. As long as it's good.
And if you'd like to be a guest on the industry podcast, it's info at the industrypodcast.club by email or you can DMS at the industry podcast on Instagram. Also on Instagram, follow at shoulderunbar at Babylon Sisters Bar to check to see what my bars are up to if you're in the kitchen waterloo area. Come check us out. Always something good going on.
Shoulderun downtown Kitchener or Babylon Sisters in uptown waterloo. Finally, we should mention that the artwork on our Instagram page gets done by Zach Hannah at Zach Hannah dot C O Z A K H A N A H A H A double N H dot C O. And as thanks to that show notes as there will be to everything else we talk about. Yeah, so check out all that good stuff.
I think that's all we got to say, right? Wonderful. Okay, joining us now from Milan, where it's much nicer than where we are unsure. Anna Stave Artanova, Artan Manova, pardon me, I already messed up.
I was going to start messing up your name immediately, but it's Anna Stave's Artanova. How are you? I'm good. Thank you guys.
No worries. I'm used to it. I don't thank you very much for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for doing this.
Thank you for inviting me. It might be a pleasure to be here. Okay, so let's just, I will just dive right into it. So you, how long have you been in Milan?
Well, it's 11 years already. Okay. And what, what, you grew up in Russia, correct? Yeah, I've been born and raised in Russia and I was 11.
How old I was? 18? 18 or not? I moved to Milan.
Oh, for a study. What prompted that? The study? Okay.
So what were you studying? I've done design the local nuclear concern. So it's based on education design. That's probably technically not.
Right. And so then at some point you're, you obviously graduated with that. those certifications then how did you start getting into the service industry? Well, it's funny because I never was a cocktail girl or one who rejoices from general to work into the bars.
I was like really into art and we just and brain and like I dedicated my life to communication with many years of my life to communication. And I was like, usually before staying at home now you see me. Well, our listeners doesn't see me but don't see me drinking tea and staying in tonight, even at weekend. So I basically, I prefer my own time but it happened the same way to have a piece of Italy when I got this illumination that's calling in San Diego.
I got a booth to Italy. I had the same illumination about Baroque Street was like book a cocktail class, like find something, a course or around bartending or whatever. And I was like, okay, but I'm not putting in twinking like what's the point but I followed my intuition and happened to do a bartending course through some bartending school here in Milano. And yeah, I ended up right in the middle of the industry at the sweetest moment, well, at least in my history in Milano and Baroque Street in Milano.
It was a sweet spot for the Milanoese bar industry. It was 2018, six years ago. And from that moment that day, I remember till now and from that day my life basically changed. Right, so do you ever physically working in a baro restaurant though or did you go sort of go right into what you're doing now?
Well, I started in the industry as a guest and then right after I understood, okay, if I want to stay here because I love the industry, I quickly found myself as a photographer for a cocktail bar and bar shows and bar events, bar guests. I was every time there was a guest shift in town, even if I'm not working there, I'm with my camera and everyone who's having pictures the next day off of the guest shift, it was nice. But well, I forgot the comment question. Well, like, did you ever physically work in a bar restaurant or you were just doing the photography?
I actually really could have had a had a decision or kind of dream of opening something myself. So I decided to dive in for two weeks as a bar back in one of the coolest places in Milano and I did two weeks of back to back to back to the bar and just to see how the freezers are working, how what's the point like when I would be buying things for my bar, what should I do as a newbie? I would like very, very new for the industry. Like I put one here.
How did you like that experience then? Because that's obviously a big change when you're on your feet and having to work like hustle around the bar a lot. Well, from the first night, I'm stunned it's not for me. So, well, it was all of this was the journey of self exploration actually.
Yeah. Because from having a vision or dream of having a bar of me being the bar owner and stuff like that, it's like with time I just took more thinking about myself than before. I was like the dream become realization or it's not being myself actually at what I want and what I'm up to. And being on the floor and doing like 20 kilo liters right inside the venue is what my thing.
Yeah. It's not really for anybody. Nobody wants to do that. We just got to learn.
Well, that's just bringing things about the industry. That's so many people after it but you're still doing it and we, not we, them. So what is the, well, it's good that you actually dove into trying it out to try and learn some of this stuff because so many people I feel like they just hang out in bars and then they're like, oh, I like hang on bars. I could probably open my own bar or restaurant and your clueless as to how it actually works.
Right. So at least you took the effort to realize that you needed, at least even if it was only a couple of weeks, you need a little bit of behind the scenes training and like how things operate. Absolutely. Even if you are into the industry and not only as a guest but like professional, you can see the actual working you can see.
The thing you work there, you don't understand how the things are really up. Even if you're doing opening in clothes and wheel the team, you're not doing it. But I believe as a professional as a bar or business owner, you have to know everything your team is doing at least a percent or having the general view of the situation. You can understand all the processes inside your bar.
Otherwise, it's tricky. I agree. How would you describe the bar scene in Milan in general? I would imagine it's pretty classy because at least if you don't live in Milan, the outsider's perspective of Milan is a very high fashion and high elegant.
Well, Milano is absolutely gorgeous and elegant and yeah, it's a capital of fashion and many fashion houses. There are many places like this, many venues and bars like this. For example, Camparino in front of Doma, it's a historical historical example of this, of Hoot Service as well and classy elegance now of drinking. But Milano is so much more.
We have absolutely everything to want. You can find it in a lot of but accept some things. Well, if you can picture an idea of a bar, every style, you can find a tiki bar here, you can find an dive bar or a paba or night clubbing with a techno. This scene is really, really, really unexpected.
Okay, interesting. So let's talk about nice and nasty what the concept is and exactly, you describe it as a bar without a bar. So explain what that means to our list, F. Well, nice and nasty was born as a dream of opening a bar, as I mentioned before.
So it's already been romantic from beginning and me as a marketing. So I started right away before the opening and before doing an actual business one or having an actual location for the bar, I started promoting it. So the biggest shifts we did a big promo opening party without opening anything. It was inside one of the bars.
It was huge. Like the the the way for the launching the brand was so big that I wasn't expected that much. And I like this, this idea of traveling and talking about the the idea of the brand, the nasty, me, easily, me, I know everything, everything around. And when I was doing one of my trips for a nasty, I started from I started telling that it's by without a bar and people go, wow, it's amazing what it says direction was really extreme.
And I was like, okay, it seems to work. And actually, I'm really enjoying traveling. This was one of the things I understood about myself that maybe having an actual physical location, it's not exactly what I want to be doing. Being like doing the operations, like working with the suppliers, sales, Google Shids and stuff like that.
Maybe I prefer communicating, maybe I prefer traveling, maybe I love talking with strangers and foreigners and learning from other cultures. So it really quickly turned into being a proper pop project. And that's the name bar without a bar is it keep it have everything, the menu, bartenders, the guys that was traveling with me at the time, then I switched and I started traveling home and it had everything except location. And I've been jumping like, you can't find us, but we come and find you everything.
So it's a super interesting concept and like pop up bars have become more and more prevalent across the world over the last few years. So the timing is certainly right for it. But let's talk a little bit about the logistics of it because I'm sort of curious, like you said, you're traveling around and you're having to bring your staffs with you. So now, like just as a business runner myself, I'm very always interested in like the sort of the inner workings of it and like the logistics of how it operates.
Like you're paying for their travel obviously to as well, like putting them up in hotels, you're the people who work with you or work for you and taking them to another city or like, how, what's your radius? How far away are you traveling? So that's a lot of questions, but you can take them as however you want. Well, actually it's fun to respond to it because it was a really short amount of time I did it because I will be talking more about it further but nice and nasty transformed once again from just a bar without a bar.
But when we started, it was right before the pandemic, it was like six or seven months right before we first went down in me now. And it was like it's seven months of French and Sterling. I traveled with one bartender for several months and then we did more collaborations with occasional bartenders in that place. And because it was the beginning, it was basically our investment of our time, resources and everything.
Obviously with a boom like these brands started approaching us as well and we started traveling to bar shows for example with some activity in collaboration with brands. But then the pandemic hit us and it was a good moment for me to take a step back and reflect on the brand and what I actually want to do with my new life and nice and nasty as a continuation of it. So okay, so I have a couple more questions about that. When you're talking about the original launch for the first party you had, like in it turned out to be such a massive success, what was your strategy for promoting this bar without a bar?
Like you had no location yet, you're just in real life maybe you're never going to have a location. How do you promote this event to make it so successful with your strategy? Well, the technical strategy was doing your shifts around the world, contacting friends and finding ways to travel. The responding to the operators patient, the first one I did was in Mexico City.
Actually collaboration with another project again. But I did mostly outside of Italy, and in Italy, I mean it only three guests or something like that and the rest was bar shows or one of the first was Kazakhstan as well, it was turned out to be good as well. And yeah, the strategy was like the more people know about us, the more people know can recognize me and the bar that is pretty linked. Even now talking with you, you see me wearing red and red was obviously and still is the one of the biggest brand pillars for nice and nasty.
So it's very pretty psychologically immediate if you, well, not only for me, it's like the red is Capari, red is Coca-Cola, red is Christmas. If you use it strategically in right and right amount with the other brand elements and mostly motions that goes around the brand, it's pretty easy to be recognized again or like being linked to when people, I remember messages, people sending me pictures of tomatoes and or something else red. Oh, thinking about you, it was like, it meant the brand is working. So yeah, the idea was the name, me, myself, and the color, like the more people know it, the more countries we can reach, the better.
Initially, the whole concept was for the future dream location was often cocktails and we've been doing not only guest shifts, but master classes around specialty coffee, mostly here in Italy. I tried to educate the Italian traditional culture of drinking Italian coffee. I tried to change it and to change it a little bit more in mind about good quality coffee. And well, after almost five years now, after we started, I got to say the situation has kind of changed and I believe there was some amount of my effort at the beginning of this change was made as well.
Oh, wow, that's crazy. So you mentioned a couple of times with collaborating with different brands and collaborating with different partnerships when you're in Mexico City or whatever, how much of a factor would you say that collaborating with other entities, whether it's a brand or another group that's trying to do something similar to you? How big a factor was that in the success of Nice and Natalie? How important was collaboration?
I think collaboration is everything because even now during this podcast, we have collaborating with 40, 60 minutes, we are doing in human interaction and brain collaborations, for me, it's the same. It's finally a Swiss board, a wind wind situation for both realities. Me, myself, I have a brand and my business, the brand is the same. We have a mission, they have a mission and if we want, if other missions could go in this direction or could cross in some point, I prefer to find this spot and work from that.
Not just seeing collaboration as a resource or just a tool to promote yourself or use someone else's money or other resources available. While it's obviously working, the things and money and business is made, but I believe it's a little old school way of doing things. I believe in 2024, we can do things more mindfully and more. Well, I believe the best collaborations are born from thoughtful collaboration.
You're not not using each other, but trying to create something in the symbiosis of two relits. Yeah, and I actually think it's actually become more important for all of us post-pandemic because the service business, the hospitality business in general is still struggling so much, post-pandemic. People haven't come back in the same way that we thought they might or hope they would as previous to the pandemic. So it's almost more important for us now to be working together to lift all the boats up as opposed to just worrying about your own business.
Exactly. I believe the best cities and the best communities, I'm talking about local communities, those communities who support each other and could do something together or at least sharing resources or not only physical resources, but emotional or whatever resources can come to mind. Well, probably nobody from me now will be listening us, so I will say it. Okay.
Well, because Italians are, well, no judgments, I just will say it. Because I believe many of our tenders from me now know understand it as well. It's like kind of an issue of the industry, maybe not probably locally here in the now, but also in Italy in general. It's pretty competitive over being a community, it goes over collaboration.
There are some realities here in Italy that create a synergy or a little group of different bars. The friends and their support in each other, but even confronting it with other cities and other communities and speaking with some international colleagues, they usually say they find it the same from me now that it's different from other countries or other cities in Europe at least, that it feels less supportive at less- More competition versus- Yeah. Everyone is thinking mostly the first ways of their own business. And some places, some businesses, operate of other realities, stealing their ideas or their brand monies or their guests or their guest shifters, like start bartenders, cotrails, they don't want to share the cake.
So ironically, it's probably easier for you to do the pop-up where when you were doing that, where you were more focused on that, doing the pop-ups in other countries than it was in Italy. Oh, yeah, I believe it was the issue. Yeah. Well, at least it got you on the road.
Yeah. I think it's complete. So, how would you describe what Nice and Asi does now, as opposed to when you were doing the pop-ups and what's the future called? Well, it's not the reflection of me, I believe.
Well, it's natural. The business is usually like you're a child. It's something you're born from yourself and you are raising, you're investing in that and it's something that you create. So, it's really a part of you.
It was your idea that's born inside your head and that you brought it to life. Well, metaphors here. Yeah, yeah. So, it's a continuation and for the last three, four years, almost at the beginning of the pandemic it started for me, like a moment of deep self-reflection and let's call it transformation.
Transformation is a big word. But basically, the change. I can't do many realization during these years and to process all this information and new knowledge about myself and my life, you can call it existential crisis because it was. And I got into hermit mode.
I was like in solitude deep inside my psyche and my soul. And my like my inner world was way richer than the outside world. Like the outer world, I explored that before with nice and nasty but true. So much we did so much idea, so much.
It was so rich. You can use it for 10 lives, not only for one. So, pretty much I was overstimulated and almost born out. I believe I was.
And so it was like the opposite before it was nasty in a wise person. So I explored another part. And the project was the same reason it sucked because as an nasty self-help and existential crisis, it was like, what am I? What is it?
What is the bar without a bar? When am I in this world? Actually, the claim we were promoting nice and nasty, the beginning of the project, even before the opening party, I had a jacket with the question, it was, who the fuck is nasty? And then it became who the fuck is nice and nasty.
And it's funny because I created it, obviously, from the desire to intrigue people to discover who is nice and nasty, what's about this project. But it turned out to be an existential crisis question because who am I? Who am I? Who is nasty?
Who is nice and nasty? And for a long time now, me myself and my baby nice and nasty had this absolutely unanswered passion and the journey of exploration, who we are, who am I, who is nice and nasty. And it's fun because the result of this internal journey for both of us, for me and for nice and nasty, is the answer. I know who I am now and I know what nice and nasty is.
But for now, it's mostly up to me, like it's mostly me myself, I know it, but now it's moment to show it to the world. So at the moment, we're doing this podcast and at the moment, people are will be tuning in. It's right that sweet moment before the new chapter. It's like the you are behind the curtains and you're about to go on the stage.
Anything. And what do you think, but you do have an idea of what that next stage is or is it something you can reveal to us now or are you still working it out? So it's absolutely clear for me. So I can share it.
Thanks to this self exploration journey I did in the last three years. I came to many realizations that, well, one of the biggest pieces of the battle I missed was the mission, like the proper mission of the thing. It's okay. It's beautiful to do Bob-Babs.
It's beautiful to travel and knowing new people, to share your experience, to listen to the experience of others. It's beautiful. That's what's the point of the body. But in Just for Body, it's not my thing and celebration is beautiful, but you have a reason to celebrate or at least, well, so many celebrations are made without a big reason that your life can be only celebrations.
And we work with the industry of entertainment and the industry of the body and industry of dopamine and nendorfins and all these good hormones. But we have the workers in the industry. Like it's not like it's hard work. It's a nice shape, less sleep than other people.
The routine, it's absence. Like it's actually difficult to create a healthy lifestyle for you. And the healthy, it's not even the right word for that, it might be. So I quickly realized that I'm going to help people and I still love this industry.
Even I questioned that as well for myself, if I'm still the part or I want to be the part of this industry. And I found that yes, I want to be here and probably help people that want to be helped because you can't save anyone without their desire to be not saved, but without the desire of improve, of improvement of your lives. So, yeah, nice and nasty is becoming a let's call it wellness platform, but it's not the right word to describe it. Because nancy was always a sassy project, it's a little bit provocative, attractive, little sexiness or a little bit of fun, a little bit like a twig.
It's not something bad, it's not about retweets and the mountains, it's not about doing yoga at 5am, it's not about chanting mantras, but it's not even only bad advice. So it's kind of my own way of exploring the world and your inner world as well. So it's basically a full of my imagination that from some days, like the next days or the next weeks, we will see that the new steps of any image of an as a nasty as well, because I believe it's not really easy to be a human, it's not really easy to be a human in the bar industry. And this human side, we always say we are the people industry, but there are not so many people or businesses or organizations or teams that are actually caring and cheering for the human side of the industry.
We often talk about business, about money, about success, about the victor, about all things 50 best or all things sales, but it's all beautiful, but it's only one slice of the cake, your life is way more. And if you as a human are not fulfilled, not happy, haven't slept much in years, what is the quality of your own life and the life around the people around you, like we all influence each other. And I believe your energy and your energy level very quickly translates to other, you can influence like only with your mood or your anxiety, you can easily ruin or cheer someone else's day. And they can care of it.
I think it's essential for the bar industry because it's always not an artificial intelligence industry. I mean, work with people, we are people, everything is based on the human being. And I really wanted it to be well being not that an opposite of it. And that's really well put.
I don't know if anyone's actually put it that well in this show before, because you're right, we're known as the people industry, but how much time do we actually spend making sure that the people are doing okay in the industry? Exactly. There are obviously ways to improve that now. There are many organizations who do this kind of work, and it's really important.
There are many professionals who are worrying about the same topics. But usually I see the issues with many of these projects being too serious and too, well, the mental health and health and everything in between is serious topic and absolutely should be taken seriously. But the life itself, it's not only limited to the mental health or health itself, the life is nice and nasty. There are, we are still drinking.
We can't just go into dried January and stop drinking for months or say that alcohol is poisoned and to be healthy, we got to stop drinking altogether. But well, we're still doing shots. We're still doing guest shifts. We will still be working with that.
Maybe in 20 years, it will change. And we all start drinking no alcohol drinks. I hope not. Who knows?
Like the world is changing. Well, there are many brands that are doing different kind of steam later, since I'm on the side of the bottle that I'm not alcoholic. Don't worry, Dan, your liver's going to give up before that happens. You'll be long gone.
Yeah, it's a good one. Good one. Well, I think that what you're doing is super important. Un pijarra, tatiam contri.
And I also would like our listeners to know where they can follow everything you're doing over there. Nice and nasty. So give us all your social media particulars. Well, yeah, on Instagram, you can find me myself in this nasty, at least a little joke, almost halfway with the baby.
And obviously the project, nice and nasty, you can find it as a nice and nasty bar, both on Facebook or Instagram, maybe for sure. Who knows? Well, thank you so much for joining us. It was honestly a pleasure.
We appreciate you. And yeah, good luck in the future. It's nice and nasty and everything you're doing. It's important work.
Thank you so much, guys, for having me for the pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.