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Alyson Steiniger Howard-Hoag

@alysonhoag

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CEO @authenticbeautyllc and @genuistbeauty "Life is Either a Daring Adventure or Nothing" Surfista. Mom. Beauty Advocate. Perrenial.

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7 days ago

I met Joseph Golshani 30 years ago. After I had my daughter it was time to go back to work. And it was recommended to me to go meet Joseph and see how the beautiful salon close to my home — and he was an Aveda salon and I was a former educator for Aveda. And Joseph welcomed me into his salon.

I was a new mom. It was very difficult for me to go back to work. I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And Joseph welcomed me into his salon with open arms.

I spent the next seven years building our businesses, his and mine. I honed my skills. I built something beautiful. And also Olivia Gagne became my assistant — and she and I still work together to this day. For those of you who love Olivia, she came to work for Joseph when she was 17 years old.

I loved my Joseph and Friends family. And many, many service providers find that they need to spread their wings and have the opportunity to do their own thing. Which is what I did. And as I began to build Authentic Beauty, I became even more in love with Joseph. I became even more amazed by his ability to create team. To create a beautiful environment where people are served.

And not only that — this man has written two books sharing his experience about having to leave his home country of Iran and build a life for himself basically from nothing. And the generosity and the love that this man has. And he believes in being the light. He believes in being and bringing that energy and that love and the vitality into this world.

I appreciate you so much, Joseph. You have no idea the impact that you've had on my life.

I was lucky enough to reconnect with Joseph as he came to my 15-year anniversary celebration for Authentic Beauty. And from there, he has asked me now to build something, build another project with him. Which I am so excited about. Talk more about that later.

And on Monday we went to Rivermont Golf Club and spoke to a group of women about beauty — he and I — and how to live life beautifully is the best way to say it. Joseph and I make an incredible team.

And what a beautiful life, Joseph. What a beautiful life that you've created for yourself. Happy happy birthday. by @alysonhoag

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9 days ago

That hair you're about to pluck? It belongs on your face.

I've watched one single hair change a woman's whole face. That's how much every hair matters. Your brows are architecture — every hair is holding up the structure.

Before you remove anything, ask what it's doing there. Preserve first, pluck last.

Today's the last day — 20% off the brow collection ends tonight. Start Here: Brows is where you begin.

Comment BROWS and I'll send you the link — put the tweezers down first.

#NationalBrowDay #BrowCare #BrowJourney #BrowSpecialist #AtlantaBrows #GenuistBeauty by @alysonhoag

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12 days ago

Nobody ever told you your eyebrows are hair.

Hair grows, hair breaks, hair gets dry and wiry. Your brows are hair too — but we've been treating them like makeup, drawing and filling the skin instead of caring for the hair.

Start Here: Brows is live, and for National Brow Day the whole brow collection is 20% off through tomorrow.

Comment BROWS and I'll send you the link.

#NationalBrowDay #BrowCare #BrowJourney #BrowSpecialist #AtlantaBrows #GenuistBeauty by @alysonhoag

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13 days ago

Grab your phone, stand in daylight, and look at your brows up close. Now put the phone down, step back, and look in the mirror — the distance the world actually sees you.

Up close you see individual hairs. Farther away, you see light and dark. The women in my chair are always surprised when they truly look.

I built Start Here: Brows for the women who can't get into my chair — and it's live today. For National Brow Day, the whole brow collection is 20% off through Sunday.

Comment BROWS and I'll send you the link — then tell me where you landed. I want to hear.

#NationalBrowDay #BrowJourney #BrowCare #BrowSpecialist #AtlantaBrows #GenuistBeauty by @alysonhoag

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14 days ago

Today is National Brow Day.

If you had told me 30 years ago that I would end up being known as the Brow Guru, winning brow awards year after year and building a career around eyebrows, I would have thought you were out of your mind.

Because I was basically anti-brow. 😂

When the super-thin brow trends took over in the ’90s, I lost my mind.

Don’t touch your brows.

Then I worked with an extraordinary mentor who didn’t just tell me brows were important. He showed me.

He looked at my face, trimmed them, took maybe 15 hairs according to my shape and taught me the angles.

And when I went back to doing makeup, I could no longer do anybody’s makeup without doing their brows too.

That changed my career.

And I also have to thank Anastasia. She helped make brows part of the beauty conversation in a massive way. Before that, most women didn’t think much about their brows at all.

My philosophy has always been different.

I believe in the natural brow.
I believe in supporting the brow that belongs on your face.
I believe in preserving before removing.
I believe one hair can matter.
And I still believe brows are the most important feature on the face because of what they do to the eyes, expression and balance of everything around them.

For decades, women have sat in my chair and said:

“I have no idea what to do with my brows.”

So for National Brow Day, I built something for you.

START HERE: BROWS.

If you’ve tried everything, if you’re afraid to touch them, or if you truly have no freaking idea where to begin, go through it and tell me what you notice.

What surprised you?
What did you learn?
Where did you get stuck?

And if you want to support me, please follow @genuistbeauty, watch the National Brow Day videos, like them, comment, share them.

It sounds small. It really fucking helps.

It’s been a tough year, and I’m working my ass off rebuilding, creating and teaching.

Current Genuist brow products are 20% off automatically this weekend at genuistbeauty.com.

But mostly, I want you to learn something.

Go look at your brows.

You may have more brow than you think. by @alysonhoag

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14 days ago

In the 90s I was screaming from the rooftops — put the tweezers down — and nobody listened.

I sat in my chair and watched woman after woman pluck away brows they'd never get back. That's why I'm still here talking about brows 30 years later.

Tomorrow is National Brow Day, and this is the story I had to tell first. To celebrate, the whole brow collection is 20% off Friday through Sunday.

Comment BROWS and I'll send you the link to Start Here: Brows. And send me your 90s brows — I want to see them.

#NationalBrowDay #90sBrows #BrowJourney #BrowCare #BrowSpecialist #AtlantaBrows #GenuistBeauty by @alysonhoag

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15 days ago

Twenty years ago today, I married the man from the list I threw out the window.

Three years earlier, I was stuck in traffic heading to Tricia and Rob's wedding while I was going through a divorce.

My dad used to ask me:
"You're not getting what you want. What do you want to create?"

So I started ranting out loud about the man I wanted. He had to bike. Surf. Do yoga. Be childlike. Love adventure. Actually want to do life with me.

I wrote the whole damn list down, laughed because who the hell was I going to find who checked all of that, and threw it out the window.

A few hours later: the guy in the orange socks.

Over too many Grey Goose Cosmos, I learned he'd raced his bike that morning, worked for Surfer Magazine, did yoga. The list I'd thrown out the window was sitting next to me.

Three years of flights between New Jersey and Atlanta later, we married at Canoe.

Twenty years of marriage has not been twenty years of easy. That we're still married sometimes feels like a freaking miracle.

There were years we were wildly connected and years we lost each other.

But somehow, we keep looking for one another.

And Jesus, have we lived.

We picked up a car in Germany and drove all over Europe. We watched the Tour de France send-off in Bilbao, sailed Lisbon to Rome for my 50th, surfed Nicaragua, drank wine in the Douro, wandered Venice.

Traveling with you makes everything better.

This weekend in Charleston—wandering, eating, drinking wine, chasing history, laughing by the ocean—I kept thinking:

There you are.

The man in the orange socks.

You're literally out buying me snacks right now. I told you, "Here's the test of 20 years. What do you think I want?"

And you started naming them. 😂

That is us too.

Twenty years has taught me that loving someone is not the same thing as making them into who you think they should be.

I want to love you as you are.

I have never looked at another human the way I look at you.

20 years married. 23 years since the impossible list.

Happy anniversary, @charltonhoag

"With you I will walk my path from this day forward." by @alysonhoag

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16 days ago

We almost didn’t go.

Actually, I almost talked myself out of this trip about 47 times.

Too busy.
Too much going on.
Hotels were ridiculous.
I hadn’t packed.
I hadn’t planned.
At 9:00 the night before, I was still trying to figure out where the hell we were staying.

And tomorrow, Charlton and I will have been married 20 years.

Twenty. Freaking. Years.

We haven’t gotten away together in far too long, and somewhere in the middle of all the reasons this weekend was inconvenient, I realized something:

Go anyway.

So we drove to Charleston.

And Charleston absolutely delivered.

We drank champagne at S.N.O.B. because they found out we were celebrating.

We rode through the old city in a carriage at dusk.

We had a late anniversary dinner at FIG.

We walked through churches and graveyards and cobblestone streets, learning the stories of a city that has lived through revolution, occupation, slavery, war, earthquakes, hurricanes and reinvention.

We wandered instead of rushing.

We accidentally spent part of Sunday watching the UCI World Championships from Charleston — eventually sitting at Tradd and Church watching Brandon McNulty win. 🇺🇸

We found an outdoor seat on the water at Fleet Landing when there shouldn’t have been one.

We met people we weren’t supposed to meet.

We traded the city for a tiny oceanfront condo on Isle of Palms, bought entirely too much food and wine at Harris Teeter, and Charlton cooked steak while we looked out at the Atlantic.

We walked the beach.

We discovered Sullivan’s Island.

And on the way home, we stood at Fort Moultrie looking back across Charleston Harbor, finally understanding the geography of the Revolutionary War history we had spent the weekend learning.

And somewhere in all of it, I remembered something I know but apparently need to relearn:

Life does not always clear the calendar and hand you the perfect conditions for an adventure.

Sometimes you have to fucking go.

Tomorrow is about 20 years of us.

But this weekend was about remembering how much I still love adventuring with him.

Charleston, you were exactly what we needed.

And we are definitely coming back. ❤️ taken in Charleston, South Carolina by @alysonhoag

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17 days ago

Earlier this month, I had the honor of doing Pat Mitchell's makeup for a very special night.

Pat was being honored at the National Jewish Health Legends of Atlanta Gala at the Woodruff Arts Center — an evening called A Breath of Fresh Air: A Tribute to Pat Mitchell. Not a celebration of one job or one accomplishment, but of the extraordinary reach of a life.

I've known Pat from a particular vantage point: for years, I've been her makeup artist. I've gotten her ready for public events, book launches, big conversations, and personal moments — brushes in hand while she prepared to walk into rooms where consequential things were about to happen.

We met in 2008 in New Orleans, at V-Day's tenth anniversary. I was running the Beauty Lounge; Pat was on the board. Our worlds kept crossing — V-Day, women's advocacy, Atlanta — until Pat became my client.

In 2019, sitting in my chair, Pat told me about a women's trip to South Africa and said, "You should go." So I went. I listened to women protecting wildlife, leading organizations, changing policy — and when my turn came to introduce myself, I laughed and said, "Well… I make people pretty."

Pat corrected me on the spot: "You do more than that."

And once, when I told her how extraordinary I thought she was, she turned it right back around: "You are the spark."

I've never forgotten it.

Pat has spent her life thinking about who gets seen, whose stories get told, and what those of us with any influence choose to do with it. She led CNN Productions. She became the first woman to run PBS. She helped create TEDWomen. And she's still asking the questions that matter — like this one, which stopped me cold: "At what point does humility become invisibility?"

She almost said no to being honored that night. She said yes because the cause — clean air, environmental health — was worth it. Her conclusion: the intention justified the attention.

I keep coming back to that. The question isn't whether we have influence. It's what we're doing with it.

I wrote more about Pat and what she's taught me — link in bio. 📖

#PatMitchell #BecomingADangerousWoman #BehindTheChair #AuthenticBeauty by @alysonhoag

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21 days ago

So… I finally made it home from New York. 😂

Before I tell you everything that happened there—and there is A LOT—I want to go back a few weeks, because this is where the larger story starts.

In August, I was at Tony Robbins Business Mastery in West Palm Beach.

My relationship with Tony’s work goes back to when I was 19. Earlier this year, I became a Trainer with Team Tony. This was my first in-person Business Mastery in that role.

For six years, this community existed for me through a screen. Faces in little boxes. Friendships, training, leading and serving with people I loved and had never hugged.

And suddenly… there we all were.

I danced. I hugged people I’d known for years. I felt the energy in the room.

And something in me came home.

I belong here! I love being in person!

I got to serve, lead my own team and learn beside people I love and respect.

Right in the middle of it, I turned 58—and I mean I was CELEBRATED. ❤️

The videos show it. Look at my face.

The timing mattered. I’ve been incubating.

I closed 4674 Roswell Road.
I moved Authentic Beauty into a much smaller space.
Life Mastery. Leadership Academy. Alaska with my family. Then Business Mastery.

Underneath all of it, I’ve been asking big questions.

What does my new business model look like?
Who do I want to be?
What do I want the rest of my life to look like?

I’m heading into my third act.

Yes, I want to make money. I want freedom. I want to make my own rules.

But ultimately, I want to build businesses that serve people extraordinarily well, create opportunity, make an impact and give back.

That’s what I’m working so freaking hard for.

And since Business Mastery? Holy shit.

I got to do Pat Mitchell’s makeup on the night she was honored for her extraordinary life and influence. If you haven’t read the blog, do. More on Pat soon.

@authenticbeautyllc was voted Best Brow Studio 2026 by @bestselfatlanta

Then @makeupin_world in NYC—suppliers, product development, people and conversations that clarified what I’m building with Genuist.

And one unhinged Delta adventure. 😂

Now I’m home.

I’ve been incubating.
I’m coming back up for air.

And WOW, do I have a lot to share. 😁❤️ by @alysonhoag

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23 days ago

Getting ready in NYC to head to The Makeup In Show. 💄🗽

I’ve been a makeup artist for more than 30 years, and I still get excited walking into a room full of artists, products, ideas and people who are shaping what beauty becomes next.

But I’m going in with a different lens these days.
I’m building @genuistbeauty around a question I think our industry needs to keep asking:

What if beauty helped women recognize themselves instead of teaching them what they need to fix?

Today I’m going to look, learn, reconnect with some of my favorite people in this industry—and probably play with a ridiculous amount of makeup.

Come with me. 🔥

Hashtags:
#GenuistBeauty #TheMakeupShow #TheMakeupShowNYC #MakeupArtist #ProMakeupArtist BeautyIndustry BeautyOver50 WomenInBeauty BeautyFounder NYCBeauty by @alysonhoag

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a month ago