Becoming a CEO and successfully managing the responsibilities within a company and with your teams is a goal many of you share. After Flore des Robert, co-founder of La Bonne Brosse, and Ning Li, founder of Typology, we reached out to Sabrina Herlory Rouget (H.02), a gentle yet powerful woman who is highly respected in the cosmetics industry. After rising through the ranks at L’Occitane then heading M.A.C. Cosmetics, she has been the CEO of Aroma-Zone for two years.

1. Get in the Right Mindset

Believe in yourself. Acknowledge that you don’t know everything but can learn quickly, and that curiosity and excitement outweigh the fear of risk. Find the right project and the right people. But above all, you must be passionate and genuinely desire to be a leader, as it can be all-consuming.

2. Understand the Company

One valuable lesson in collective intelligence and humility came from confronting the thousands of verbatim comments from our community at Aroma-Zone every week. It allowed me to grasp the brand’s essence, keep operational priorities clear, and implement the best ideas. When you embark on a new project, you need to manage two challenging and sometimes exhausting timeframes: the short term – sometimes very short – and the long term. You must actively listen and avoid sticking to your reflexes or past experiences, making quick decisions and prioritizing.

3. Keep Your Appetite

When you start getting bored, know when it’s time to let go. Appetite is everything! It’s also a valuable management lesson: never let a willing talent become bored. There are encounters and projects you should not miss!

4. Stay True to Your Values

For me, it’s about caring for others. Helping my teams grow, listening, co-building, and passing on knowledge. But it’s also about developing something bigger than all of us individually. I’ve always believed that economic performance should not come without social progress. It’s a choice. This has always guided me in my professional projects.

5. Surround Yourself with the Right People

I may be very fortunate, but I’ve never felt lonely. I am solidly supported by a CoDir team of experts who are not yes-men and backed by demanding investors. It’s okay not to know, but you must quickly find the way. I enjoy this pace and the intellectual stimulation that comes with it!

6. Maintain Balance

In my view, the key lies in emotional and psychological balance. It’s an underrated concept, but if you’re not serene and aligned, it’s hard to instill the right energy and corporate culture. In short, you need to protect yourself from your own ego. I believe I was lucky enough to understand early on that what gives you access to certain roles is no longer sufficient afterward. Sometimes, I learned this the hard way.

7. Love Your Teams and Give Them Direction

First, you must love people and respect them. Love the collective. You must be generous, demanding, committed, and present! I believe that at a glance, you can tell if you “matter” to your interlocutor or not. And then you must serve a cause greater than yourself and articulate it successfully. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to be part of an ambitious project, even if it’s intense at times.

 

Bonus: Advice for Students

Ask yourselves the right questions. You begin to know yourself as you gat older. Do you really want this ? Is this where you will realize your full potential? Will you have enough energy to give? If the answer is YES, there’s no need to endlessly ponder. Dive in with passion because only what you do counts in the end! Also, think about surrounding yourselves well because no one succeeds alone!

And especially for you ladies, don’t wait to have a doctorate in every subject to start. You’ll never have it all. Take the plunge, ask the right questions, work hard, build strong relationships within your ecosystems, and you can overcome many obstacles.

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