1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

The most challenging aspect of being a leader of a small and ambitious company is inspiring the whole company stakeholders and teams.

In addition to team-building, development, and management. The critical leadership challenge from my perspective is how to instill pride and over-motivation.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

When I decided to found LumyMe 3 years ago, it was clear for me that I will never go alone in this adventure. Also, I started a process to built a team around the vision of LumyMe. That's how I started leading. After building a solid Core Team of co-founder, I started building a partners and client local echosystem in Paris. After proving the market fit and rising the first round we made the first recrutements to structure the teal, and now I'm leading an over-motivated team of 20 talented LumyMe colleagues and more than 1500 artists photographers in France.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I always structure my work day in 2 parts :

Deffensive activities : these are mainly the tasks I have to ensure the opérations are smooth. It includes all the executions aspects of the company I have to manage. Recrutement, OnBoarding and Coaching are key as a small structutre in order to scale.

Ovenssive activities : These tasks includes product, offer and Partnership developpement.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

The most recent but also relevant leadership lesson I've learned is that all is about inspiring the right people to join and contribute to your vision.

I'm actually convinced that when we onboard the right people that share our vision, they execute better than we do. In fact, I do not hire people to tell them what to do, I try to inspire people to join so they tell me what to do.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I recently red "How to Lead" a serie of interview of great leader interviewed by David M. Rubenstein. These interview includes Warren Buffett, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Oprah Winfrey, President George W. Bush, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Pelosi.

From their decades of experience as pioneers in their field, a recurrent key word appears in all leaders interview : Inspiring people. That's my Moto.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

As a leader I must candidly look in the mirror, get feedback about what I do well and where I'm lacking, and then work to close the gap.

In small Business, however, the velocity of the business requires those on the leadership team to engage in these activities in short, intense cycles.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

The most important thing I can do as a leader is empowering people. And my prefered story is related to the common journey we crossed with some pillar in LumyMe team who joined from the first day and has grown with LumyMe. Some of them worked with me in my previous experience before founding LumyMe. Empowering them to be creative, make decisions, and be impactful is my prefered story.