"A light bulb went off in my head," said Bachik. "My cousin was like, 'Just change your canvas — instead of doing art on jet skis and motorcycles, shrink it down and do it on nails.'" Four days later, he enrolled in beauty school to become a manicurist.
Bachik planned on opening his own salon — that was what his cousins did after graduating cosmetology school and they were doing incredibly well for themselves — but that changed after he discovered there were trade shows happening all over the world with nail competitions. "I was like, 'Wait, I could compete doing nails?'" he said. "I figured, if I'm going to be a straight guy doing nails, I better go all in."