People ask me all the time how The Brow Fixx started, usually while they are lying back in the chair with wax setting on one brow. It is a fair question and I never give a very good answer in the moment, because the honest version takes longer than fifteen minutes. So here it is properly.
A magazine in Los Angeles called ShoutOut LA interviewed me this month about starting the business, and answering their questions made me realize I had never written any of this down for the people it actually belongs to, which is our clients. Some of you have been coming to us since the very beginning. You should know the story.
It started with two of us and a lot of guessing
My husband and I built the first studio together. That is the part people tend to skip over when they hear about a business with three locations now. In the beginning it was the two of us figuring out things we had no business figuring out, making decisions on instinct, and getting plenty of them wrong.
I had been doing brows for years and I loved the work itself. What I did not love was how the experience usually felt. You would go somewhere, get rushed, get a shape that belonged to somebody else’s face, and leave feeling like you had been processed rather than looked after. I wanted to build the opposite of that. Not fancier. Just a place where somebody actually pays attention to you for half an hour.
That is still the whole idea. Everything else we have added since is downstream of it.
Why we are careful about natural results
If you have sat in our chair you have probably heard one of us say some version of “let’s not take too much off today.” That is deliberate and it is the thing I care about most.
Brows grow slowly. When somebody takes too much, you live with that decision for months, and no amount of apologizing at the front desk gives you those hairs back. So we would rather leave you slightly fuller than you asked for and have you come back in three weeks than send you home with something you have to hide behind a pencil.
It also means we say no sometimes. If the shape you want needs hair that is not there, we will tell you that at the start of the appointment rather than at the end. That conversation is not always fun. It is much better than the alternative.
Three studios, two states, and the part nobody warns you about
We are in Santa Monica, Brentwood, and now Austin. My family and I live in Austin these days, which happened because we opened the newest studio here, and I still fly back to Los Angeles about once a month. LA was home for a long time. Some part of it always will be.
What nobody warns you about is that growing does not feel like the montage. It feels like a lot of ordinary days in a row where you show up, deal with whatever broke, and try to keep the standard identical in a room you are not standing in. I became a mom somewhere in the middle of all this, which rearranged my priorities in a way I would not undo for anything, and also made every hour count for more.
The thing that has actually held it together is the team. I can write down how we shape a brow. I cannot write down how to genuinely care whether somebody has a good day, and every artist we have hired has brought that with them already.
How we keep it the same in three rooms
This is the question I get from other salon owners more than any other, and the answer is less interesting than they want it to be. We do not train artists on a look. We train them on a method, and the look comes out of it.
The method starts before any hair comes off. We map first, which means measuring against your own features to find where the brow should start, where the arch should sit given your bone structure, and where the tail should end. Those points get marked. Then we only remove what falls outside them. It sounds fussy for a fifteen minute appointment and it adds a few minutes, but it is the reason your brows look the same when a different artist does them, and the reason they do not slowly creep thinner over a year of visits.
The second rule is that we take from underneath rather than off the top. Thinning from above drops your arch and makes the eye look heavier, and most people who ask for thinner brows actually want neater ones. Same size, cleaner line. Nine times out of ten that is the fix.
The third is the one that costs us money and we do it anyway. If somebody wants a shape that needs hair they do not currently have, we say so before we start, and we usually recommend leaving it alone for six to eight weeks to see what fills in. That is a customer walking out having spent less than they planned. It is also the reason they come back.
New artists shadow before they touch anybody, and they keep shadowing until the mapping is second nature. We have turned down people who were technically quick because they were not careful. Quick is easy to teach. Careful is not.
“We never want anyone to feel like just another appointment.”
Naomi Poshneh, speaking to ShoutOut LA, August 2026
The people I would thank first
My husband, because none of this exists without him and because he took the risk alongside me when it was only an idea. My mother, who taught me what it looks like to work hard without complaining about it, which turned out to be the single most useful thing anyone ever gave me.
Our artists, who make the standard real in three rooms at once. And our clients, especially the ones who found us when we were small and stayed. You have no idea how much that matters on the difficult weeks.
Where I take people when they visit LA
ShoutOut asked me where I would take a friend visiting Los Angeles for a week, and I enjoyed that question more than any of the business ones. Here is roughly what I would do, in case you are visiting one of our LA studios and have a free afternoon.
The coast dayDrive up the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, spend the afternoon at the beach and around the pier, then come back down for sunset in Santa Monica. This is the one I never get tired of.
The walking dayVenice and Abbot Kinney, then along the beach. Good coffee, good shops, and the version of LA people picture before they arrive.
The city dayBeverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, a long lunch, then a drive through the Hollywood Hills. Griffith Observatory around sunset if you time it right, and a Dodgers game if they are home.
The obligatory oneA twenty dollar smoothie, once, so you can say you did it. You do not have to understand the appeal to participate.
What I love about that city is that no two days have to resemble each other. You can spend one at the beach doing nothing and the next somewhere completely different, and both feel like the real place.
What is next
More of the same, mostly, which I mean as a good thing. Better artists, better training, and the same shape philosophy in every room. We are not trying to be the biggest brow studio in either state. We would rather be the one you tell your sister about.
If you have been thinking about coming in, or you moved away and have not found anyone since, we are still here and we still do it the same way.
Santa Monica, Brentwood and Austin. Same standard in all three.
Naomi Poshneh
Founder and Brow Artist, The Brow Fixx
The full interview is on ShoutOut LA.
