What Other Industries Can Teach Us About Running a Salon | Lorenzo Colangelo

Lorenzo Colangelo has run the gallery in Kent for 30 years – a salon that was recently crowned Professional Independent Salon of the Year 2025 (sponsored by Wella Professionals) at the Pro Hair Awards. In this series, he tells us all about the surprising lessons he’s learnt about salon ownership through looking outside the hair industry.

The Book That Became Our Family Bible

One of the most life-changing books I’ve ever read came from a client who gave it to me years ago: The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz. It’s based on the wisdom of the Toltec people in Mexico, and although it’s rooted in spiritual tradition, its simplicity is what makes it so powerful.

The central point of the book is that our lives are shaped by the ‘agreements’ we make – with ourselves, with others, with society and even with God. Those agreements determine how we see ourselves, what’s possible for us and how we behave.

For me, it wasn’t just a book; it became a guide. I’ve gifted it to countless people over the years, including all of my daughters. In our family, it’s now become a kind of ‘little Bible’. What I love is that it’s not heavy or preachy. It’s gentle, but it gives you prompts – little nudges – that act as a guide for how to behave and how to live. And from a business perspective, that’s invaluable. I’ve shared it with my team too, not as something plastered on the walls of the staffroom, but through ongoing conversations and the way I deliver feedback.

We talk a lot in our salon about ‘gnat bites’ – those tiny niggles that crop up day to day. The things you can cope with individually, but when they cluster together, they become unbearable. If you don’t have guiding values in place, these little things can easily spiral out of control. The beauty of The Four Agreements is that it acts as a framework for these values in a way that’s almost self-policing, because it makes people reflect on themselves just as much as on others.

Here are the book’s four principles, and why they’re so relevant to us as hairdressers:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
   In hairdressing, gossip, bad-mouthing and. moaning can destroy a culture faster than anything else. Words are powerful – families have broken apart and wars have been started, all because of what’s been spoken. So, I tell my team: Think before you speak. Whether you’re a leader or an apprentice, that one principle can completely shift the atmosphere.
2. Do Not Take Anything Personally
   The classic hairdressing scenario: A client comes back unhappy with a cut or colour. Your instinct may be to take this as a personal attack (“she didn’t know what she wanted!”), but nine times out of ten, it’s not you the client has an issue with; it’s the service not quite matching their expectation. If you can separate yourself from the personal sting and just deal with the situation, you will move forward much faster.
3. Do Not Make Assumptions
   This one’s huge. We all make assumptions – that a client never buys retail, that someone wants the same colour they’ve had for 20 years, that it’ll be ‘the usual trim’ – but these are business suicide. Every appointment should be treated like the very first. Yes, you’ve now got the history and the trust, but you still need to ask, “What’s new? What are we aiming for?”
4. Always Do Your Best
   For me, this ties the other three together. If you fall short on any of the other principles, it comes back to you, but if you’re striving to be impeccable with your word, not take things personally and avoid assumptions, then you are already doing your best. And if you mix that with talent, creativity, passion and good communication, you can’t fail – at work and as a human!

What struck me about The Four Agreements is how something so simple could be so transformative – at home, at work and in every interaction. It’s not about unreachable targets or corporate jargon; it’s about everyday behaviour, the choices we make in the moment and how they ripple out to create an amazing team culture.

For me, this little book has been a compass, guiding my family, my team and myself. That’s the real lesson here: Sometimes, the most powerful business tools don’t look like business tools at all…