Meet Brooke Sanzari: Creator and CEO of browtopia® Bespoke beauty & enchantment for the esthetic & spirit.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brooke Sanzari and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brooke, is there something you believe many others might not?
“Being ready.” Being ready is a matter of perspective. Yes, you should absolutely carve out what it is you want to do and how you are going to do it. For instance, if you are working another job (like I did) when you first open, one does have to figure out the complimentary hours that you will be open to reduce interference between the two. How many ____ you need to sell to cover all of your expenses? Write it down. It can be just bullet points that you can (and will) refine later. Write it on anything you have handy at that exact moment. It’s not etched in stone, but it is your foundation. Mine was written on a cocktail napkin of all things! You don’t need to be fancy. Yes, have a plan. But remember, “Fortune Favours the Brave.” You can be lost in hesitation trying to make sure that “the time is right”, missing many an opportunity. Sometimes those opportunities are valuable learning experiences. You may question and lament over them at the time, but the longer you’re in business you find that you have essentially created an invaluable guide of wisdom. This will come in very handy when things that you could not have possibly planned for happen. Make sure you LOVE what you do. Being ready. Acting when the time is right. You will hear a lot of that. It’s been engrained in society. However. Ask yourself: Right for whom? What are you basing this on? Many times we go and ask others for guidance, funding, and advice that while it may be sound, it doesn’t fit. Go with your own inner knowing. First you need to quiet everything so you can hear and decipher what exactly that is. If you decide to delay for any reason at all, make sure it’s so you can be still enough to listen.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Browtopia® started with an exhausted client. An unsung hero of the everyday. A business woman who came in for a bikini waxing service, and laid herself down on my treatment table and uttered the words that would never forget. “This is the most relaxing part of my day.” To which I retorted, “If this is the most relaxing part of your day, (getting hot wax applied to hair and ripping it out by the root), then we gotta step it up a notch.” Three years later, Browtopia® was born. An ideally perfect place for those who have little time, tire of the “spalon” cattle call and refuse to settle for anything less than excellence. It is a haven that caters to you, the individual, with true one-on-one time. Browtopia® proudly uses the very best of pure, organic, high-dimensional, and sustainable ingredients to achieve the highest quality results. Organic and eco-friendly doesn’t need to be crunchy, bland, granola in my world. That did not exist for eyebrow products or services, so I created them! I gave birth to the world’s first organic brow product line. I even have limited edition brow gel that contains 24k gold and champagne!

Multitasking and express doesn’t need to be rushed or compromised either. It can be luxurious, glamorous, and fun. Magical. A TREAT. So that’s what I create. An experience that nurtures, heals, and celebrates in every service and product, that can fit into any person’s life.

I am a licensed full cosmetologist, aesthetician, and makeup artist with 20 years of experience. I am the founder of ‘wholistic” brow care. I specialize in holistic brow & skin care, am a certified Dien Chan Zone Operator and level 2 reiki practitioner with an additional attunement in magickal light work. With a propensity for enchantment, since I was a tot, I have finally grown to fully embrace my gifts and unique magic by channeling them into a uniquely creative and healing craft. This enables me to approach aesthetics from a deeper level with results that last, yielding understanding and wellness. From Lunar Brow Love reports to Ethereal Esthetics, I offer super-natural self care that is based in balance, creativity, and wonderment of YOU. This is all paired with the coordinating energetic enchantment for the aesthetic and spirit. Why? Because beauty and wellness is so much more than skin deep. Your physical, mental, emotional, and environmental health reflects in your skin and eyebrows. If you pay attention, they will give you clues to healing so much. A lot of this is mentioned in my e-book: “It’s All Magic Until You Know How To Do It: A guide to eyebrow enchantment, which is available on my website as well as iBooks.

I went to college full time for Creative Arts Psychology, while working full time and dropped out. I enrolled in cosmetology school the next day, keeping the same schedule. I had some excellent training outside of school, which really just gives you a starting point and a license. KEEP LEARNING. There’s a disconnect many times in formal education vs the real world. I taught myself a lot. I became a makeup artist so I could work in my industry while still being trained for hair by some of the best companies in the industry. Inevitably I pursued esthetics instead, feeling a deeper, more connected bond to people’s healing. More education followed and the practice of countless services. After years of working for other people, seeing what worked and what needed improvement, I found myself in an interesting position. They recognized what I could do and I created for them without ever receiving the recognition I deserved, because I was young. I believed them when they told me this was the way even though it felt awful. I FINALLY properly channeled the passion, that gave me the courage, that later led to the confidence to not just begin but endure and thrive. Make no mistake, your youth may tell you otherwise, but courage should always come first. Do what no one else wants you to do and light up the world. It was not easy. The ideas were, my passion was. The outside world, not so much. I could not find reasonable, traditional funding to open that didn’t start me in deep debt. So I worked through it. Literally. I even paid for my product line myself. This may seem admirable, but if there is 1 thing I want to convey, it is do not put your career before your wellbeing. There is always a price to pay. Be mindful. You will always figure it out. Don’t put yourself in a position where you gamble your health and need to.

In 2008, on Black Monday, on the 2nd floor of an out-of-the-way office building… Browtopia opened it’s doors, to provide #goodforyougrooming and express, organic brow & skin “treat”-ments. This was after the state lost my salon license application 3x, FINALLY after I called so much- the governer’s assistant got to the bottom of it. In Fl you had to be paying rent at your place of business FIRST in order to apply for the license. So that meant I had been paying for a place I could not open yet. (learning experience) Delay after delay, I opened. On the day the stock marked plunged and the housing market crashed. (So did my heart lol) That same week, if the above wasn’t enough, driving into work-I found that all of the streets downtown had been closed for something called “streetscape”. This entailed all of them being deeply dug up, with 7 foot, tarp covered fences everywhere for over a year. You couldn’t even see my sign much less find me. The city never mentioned it while applying for all of my licenses and permits. That very building was later foreclosed on and left me having to find a new business home in a hurry. I found a great spot 2 blocks away. Unfortunately there was an outdated law, resulting in a road impact fee for businesses not within planned zoning of the area that was upwards of 30k. The building was zoned for residential, hotel, and hospitality/restaurant. It was a good old boys network, and as a young woman in her 20’s, I wasn’t part of it. Know your history. Turns out that a local woman historian helped me research and find the records that the part of the building I wanted to rent in used to be a brothel. Working Women Unite! That profession was definitely classified under a hospitality service in those days. I avoided the fee and moved right in. It was my most successful and happiest location. I cooked up the first organic brow gel in the world in my kitchen. I found a very well known chemist to do the part where it would be safely and gently preserved while still being a pure, organic product. He took 10k of my money and then told me it couldn’t be done. It could. Was right, he was wrong. I found a person who helped me find another chemist. That 1 product took years from the packaging to sourcing the ingredients that were ethical. I learned SO much. The most important being to believe in myself when everything seems to be the contrary.

Years later I retook full cosmetology boards to receive my license in another state while traveling back and forth between 2 states, every 2 weeks for 4 years… so I could relocate and live in the same state as my husband. I opened my dream storefront, it was amazing. It was meant to be. The opportunity was actually given to me by an angel of a woman with a red bow on the key. Then a pandemic hit. I closed the storefront but I’m still here. I am finally putting myself first while running my business. I am now doing the SAME things, virtually. Empowering people through these sessions and methods all over the world. Going virtual has been incredible and has allowed me to reach people now not just across my own country, but internationally! It’s exciting, not always easy, but rarely boring. The above stories are just some of the more compelling samples of challenges and obstacles I encountered. I lost count of the amount of people in the beginning who told me I would never make it. Or just looked at me and laughed. Against all odds. Thousands of eyebrows later. The world’s first organic brow product line, going 100% virtual with my services, teaching how to do that to professionals, while being more true to my authentic self. Choosing this path has given me space to heal myself from burnout, make my health and rest a priority, and dive deeper into energetic and ethereal esthetics. Something I have always incorporated but didn’t showcase out of fear of being not accepted. Bespoke beauty and enchantment for the esthetic and spirit creates wellness that heals and radiates from the inside out… Now I am integrating the two more boldly, while being more confident in my unique magic. Creativity and cleverness will get you everywhere you want to go. I truly believe: “Fortune Favours The Brave…” And it will smile upon you too, if you decide you want it to.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
When we are not in a pandemic, I’d be taking them to All the places, to do all the things! I would definitely start out with some live jazz, a glass of wine and some bites at Lula Drake. Following cocktails and dinner at Black Rooster on their rooftop. Maybe a flick at our beautiful, and independently owned, historic theatre The Nick. If we want to treat ourselves to a girl’s night in, I definitely recommend Hotel Trundle for a unicorn hotel experience! I would book a guided meditation with a reiki session with Sheanah of Go to Heal for a guaranteed, healing, night’s sleep. Wandering through our many parks is a must, as is our museum of art, located right downtown. I would definitely take them to our observatory, for views that are “out of this world.” Our weekly Soda City farmer’s market is THE thing to do on a Saturday morning! Who doesn’t love a little shopping? From veggies, to candles, and handcrafted jewelry, this market is must. Pastry from Small Sugar, coffee delights at Piecewise Coffee. Brunch at Tazza. Lunch at Spotted Salamander with a stroll through the Robert Mills Historic district and gardens. A tour of our local artist murals through the city. The Riverbanks Zoo! Late night jukebox music, and snacks at our underground bar, The Whig.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Thank you to Noemi Martinez, for giving me this opportunity. She was the first holistic professional that I met in a new city that shined the brightest of lights. She is a wealth of humble awesomeness in her expertise. I am grateful to my father, Phil Sanzari who marveled at my business idea and laughed not because he thought it was a bad idea, but knew if anyone could do it it was me. He told me for years to open my own business, and I dismissed it. It was my dad who paid my security deposit for my first studio. All of the people who were supportive along the way. An old coworker who saw me on one of my most down days and told me he had the perfect space for my business. So I could be 100% independent after I was suddenly scorned with no where to go. The manager who bought me roses and a card when he was told to “let me go” knowing I had just opened a business. An ex-boyfriend who told me I “had to do it” when I told him the name of the company I came up with while working the 2nd of my 2 jobs and backed me up. My clients who became my friends. My friends who became my clients. They know who they are, especially in the early years. From helping me find the funds to begin, to making sure that I didn’t go hungry, to the people who lent me money when my account was over-drafted, to the person who helped me gifted my domaine for my first website, and the friend who helped get another one up after it was hacked. Every person who bought me a drink when I needed one. Every single person who has referred me or complimented me. Google: I don’t know how I would have found sourcing or research for 1/2 of what I have created, from ingredients, to laws. Those who never negated my passion for knowing I could do or make something BETTER. The women who KNEW I could and gave me the how when I was belittled and told I could not… Like Gay Timmons of Oh Oh Organics. Without her my first product wouldn’t have come to fruition. Yael Miller of Miller Creative for her incredible creativity and design that matched EXACTLY what I wanted for my logo, tag-lines, and Brow Ninja Kit design. My husband Carlos Antepara, who is my built-in tech support and more during my tap-dance of a pivot during this pandemic that gave me all these new opportunities.

Website: www.browtopia.com

Instagram: @browpixie @browtopia

Twitter: @browpixie

Facebook: Browtopia and Browtopia Inc.

Other: Clubhouse Brooke Sanzari @enchantpix

Image Credits
Self for head shot and storefront photo, client photos, and portrait and products by Heather Marie Photo