We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tâmara Samara Paiva a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tâmara Samara, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

This is an exiting question! I am a first generation immigrant and I would not have achieved half of what I did without all the things my parents got right.

They decided that the US was a place for better opportunities for us and did the ultimate sacrifice of leaving everything they knew to give us a chance.

My parents always cheered me on and they never tried to mold what their idea of success was. I didn’t pick a traditional path with my career and usually with immigrant parents that doesn’t sit well. They dream of their kids being doctors or lawyers and i dreamed of working with art.

At 17 i got my first job at a beauty salon and I remember my dad dropping me off on my first day and I clearly remember him telling me “get in there and work as hard as you are able to. Make your goal to be a trustworthy employee that you can be handed a key to the place someday”

I now see what he meant, no matter what I choose just to be my best and success will follow.

Today our business is ready to expand to our first independent store front location and of course my parents have been there through out all of it. My father works construction so he oversaw, and was extremely hands on in every part of the renovation project of the store, sacrificing his weekends and days off to be here and help me get the store ready to go.

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 got into the industry very early on, when I was 17 years old. I started in the front desk and quickly fell in love with it, so I would bother all the workers so that they could teach me the craft of waxing. After working for six years at the salon I started, I decided it was time to move on and I opened my own spot at a salon suite. I was always trying to learn and improve my craft and I would take different classes to help improve my skills, and this is when I took a class in eyebrow permanent makeup and really fell in love with the art of eyebrow design. I decided that permanent make up was not for me, because I love the relationships I build with my clients where I see them at least once a month, and with permanent make up, I would only see them only once a year where with my natural brow waxing clients i see them monthly. From that moment on I got obsessed with creating crisp eyebrow shapes for my customers. I would always be drawing eyebrows, every free moment I had would be dedicated to studying this art, to the point where I would even study bone and muscle structure of the eyebrow and face, and that helped me create my own technique that is a guide to help me achieve the eyebrow design that is unique to my client and not the same copy and paste eyebrow on every bodies face. I don’t believe that there is one shape of eyebrow that everybody should have, and its more to what a person want, may it be huge and bold, or slim and faint, as long as its to their liking and compliments them well.

I also love the business side of the industry, it allows me to play multiple roles, and develop different skills like marketing, leadership, and decision making, with marketing being one that I really enjoy as it gives me a creative outlet where I can speak with clients and other professionals via social media. I think if I had not invested a good amount of time and energy in marketing and other parts of the businesses, and If I had only focused on eyebrows, I am not sure that I would have reached this point in my career. Business ownership really goes beyond skill building on the product or service you offer. And i have really enjoyed getting to build these skills through time.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Trial and error is extremely important. You are going to have ideas, either for technique, or for the business, and if it is a good thought out idea, you have to trie it! You will get it wrong many times, and you will have to tweak it, but trial and error is very helpful to succeed.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I first opened up my business, my main goal was to focus on permanent make up, but I soon realized that at the time it was actually illegal to tattoo above the neck in the state of Georgia, so I pivoted and started focusing on natural eyebrow design, while at the same time supporting a lobby group to make it legal to do the procedure in the state. We were eventually successful and the laws changed, but by that time I had already fallen in love with natural eyebrow design that I decided to keep the path.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.tamarasamara.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamarasamara/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tamarasamarastudio/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/tâmara-samara-sandy-springs
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@tamarasamarabrows