Celebrity hairstylist turned entrepreneur Florian Hurel reflects on the mistake he'd never repeat and admitted that moving from a creative role to leadership meant learning to let go of doing everything himself.
Asked about a mistake he made early on that he'd never make again, he points to a very specific instinct that took time to unlearn.
"Trying to do too much myself. You naturally want to be involved in everything because you care about the details. There comes a point where involvement becomes interference," he said.
Letting go of that control, he says, was essential to building an organisation. "You cannot build a strong organisation if every decision has to come back to you. You have to hire good people," he said. "Give them responsibility and allow them to make decisions," he said.
Even when those decisions aren't exactly what he would have made himself. "They won't always make them exactly the way you would. Sometimes they will make a mistake. The important thing is whether they learn from it," he said.
Asked whether success feels different now that he's judged by his team and business rather than his own individual work, Florian doesn't hesitate.
"Completely," he said.
As a hairstylist, the result was immediate. "Success is very tangible. You look at the finished hair and immediately know whether you have done a good job," he said.
Running a business offers no such immediate marker. "As an entrepreneur, success is much less about one finished result. And more about what you are building over time. There is something incredibly rewarding about watching people grow within the organisation," he said.
"Seeing a team take ownership and knowing that the standards you established continue even when you are not there is incredibly rewarding," he added.
Even his sense of self, he admits, has had to evolve alongside the business. "Your ego has to evolve too. At some point, it is no longer about being the person everyone is looking at. It is about creating something that makes everyone around you better," he said.
On balancing the attention-driven world of celebrity culture with the execution-focused demands of entrepreneurship, Florian sees the two as complementary rather than opposed.
"I think attention can open doors. But execution determines whether those doors stay open," he said.
His years with celebrities taught him the value of image, though he's since learned its limits. "My years working with celebrities taught me how important image, presentation and visibility are," he said.
Entrepreneurship, however, taught him where that ends. "None of that matters if the actual product or experience doesn't deliver. I see visibility as a tool rather than the end goal. It can create awareness. But then the business has to do the hard work of delivering on the promise," he said.
He also draws a sharp line between appearance and substance. He said, "In beauty, you can create a beautiful Instagram page in five minutes. Creating a consistently excellent experience across multiple teams, locations and hundreds of clients is considerably harder!"
Finally, asked what he would do differently if he were starting his entrepreneurial journey again today, Florian says he'd prioritise structure much earlier than he did. "I would probably build the infrastructure earlier. The brand, the people, the products, the clients," he said.
The less glamorous work often gets pushed aside. "Processes, systems, financial discipline and organisational structure. Those things are not separate from creativity. They are what allow creativity to scale," he said.
He'd also invest more time upfront in finding the right people. "I would also spend more time identifying the right people early on. You can teach skills. But attitude, integrity and the willingness to grow are much harder to teach," he said.
"Most importantly, I would worry less about doing everything perfectly in the beginning. Entrepreneurship is not about having every answer before you start. It is about being willing to learn, adapt and keep moving," Florian ended.
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