We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicole Curtis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

There have been so many different parts of my life thus far. So many things I have hoped to leave as a legacy in each. I hope people say that I was creative, that when faced with a challenge or set back I learned from it and tried to do and be better. I hope that people remember me as someone who followed her heart, who took chances and lived life to its fullest. I hope my students remember me as someone who taught them to be creative, to be brave, to be proud of who they are. I hope my son remembers me as his biggest fan and someone who made a difference in his life and the lives of her students and her community. I hope our customers remember me as someone who made them feel welcome and special. I also hope I am remembered for creating a culture of love and celebration of who we are as members of a small town in North Eastern Pennsylvania. I’m so proud of the work we have done on our 50th Anniversary Carbondalien Festival. Our goal and hopefully part of my legacy will be that we were able to build economic development and increase tourism based on our extraterrestrial past. www.carbondalienfestival.com

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a a mom, a wife, an artist, a teacher, a community organizer and cafe owner. This next chapter for us has us focusing on opening our new restaurant, Elements Cafe in Childs, PA. We are so excited to be in the process of creating a special place for our community to gather, enjoy craft coffee, exceptional baked goods and delicious homemade breakfasts and lunches focusing on real local ingredients. The Universe is funny. It has a wonderful way of presenting opportunities, when you are paying attention! My husband and I opened a general store 3 years ago with a small coffee shop inside the larger store. The cafe kept growing and while we tried to save the retail side by trying lots of different things, from selling local art to adding a vendor marketplace it just wasn’t making enough money to be sustainable. The opposite was happening for the cafe. We went from selling outside baked goods, and making breakfast sandwiches on a hotplate to installing a full commercial kitchen within a year. The marketplace side continued to struggle while the cafe flourished. We fought the change for some time and felt defeated most days. When we finally paid attention to what was meant for us we made the decision to close our 8,000 sqft space and move the cafe just down the street to a 2,600 sqft space where we could just focus on what was meant for us…a beautiful cafe. Pay attention! Your life can be more than you could ever imagine if you open you heart and mind.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My business partner is also my life partner. My husband Jack is my soulmate, my rock, my creativity reinforcer and the reason we are able to continue this journey. We laugh when people ask how we met….it was thanks to the phonebook. (For those of you too young to know what that is….it was an actual book that contained everyones phone number. It was also how business advertised. Pre-internet, this was a big deal.) Jack is a contractor and we needed someone to fix some problems we were having at our business, so we called him. The rest as they say is history. Here we are on this wonderful adventure together 20+ years later.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Who we are isn’t always who we were. When I retired from teaching art in a public school I thought that was what I should continue to do in the private sector. I thought I should give private art lesson, host art parties, and continue to teach in some capacity. I was good at it. I did it for the past 20 years, so why not. Because….It just never felt right. I needed to learn that when one chapter closes no matter how much you loved it, no matter how good you were at it, it’s okay to move on and do something new. Once I gave myself permission to be and do something new all kinds of little miracles started to happen.

Contact Info:

• Other: We are currently working to create our new social and website for Elements Cafe. I hope to have at least a landing page I can send to you within the next few days.