Why building a team matters more than growing locations

You can do great work, stay fully booked, and still end up with a business that feels like a job you cannot escape. Luca Boccia lived that reality for years until Aveda business education revealed a hard truth. Most salon owners were not running businesses. They were running busy schedules with thin margins. In this episode of Growth Diaries, host Sudheer Koneru sits down with Luca Boccia, Co-Founder of Pyure Salons, to unpack the shifts that took him from having no formal business background to building a multi-location salon group rooted in benefits-driven leadership, open-book transparency, and a culture strong enough to keep top talent from walking across the street. What You’ll Learn: • How to shift from “busy” to profitable, using simple business fundamentals • Why benefits and structure beat “family culture” for retention • How to use transparency to stop team assumptions and build trust • What “people support what they help create” looks like in real operations • How to drive retail through education (and track the behavior, not just the sale) • Why exclusivity makes retail simpler and stronger • How to adopt AI and online booking without killing hospitality Luca Boccia is the Co-Founder of Pyure Salons and a senior commercial and financial leader with nearly 50 years of experience spanning salon operations, business transformation, and executive finance. After owning and operating his own salon for 25 years, Luca built Pyure Salons on a benefits-driven, people-first model designed to deliver long-term profitability, retention, and exceptional guest experience. Alongside his work in the salon industry, Luca serves as a Fractional CFO for growth-stage and established businesses, including Gravity Industries, BookMyGarage, and Fractional Execs Ltd, supporting leadership teams across strategy, financial performance, governance, and scale. His background includes multinational and mid-sized businesses across technology, retail, consumer goods, and private equity-backed environments. A long-time partner and educator with Aveda Business College, Luca is known for his clarity with numbers, open-book leadership, and ability to coach both owners and teams through complexity. He leads with humility, discipline, and intellectual curiosity, challenging assumptions while bringing people along toward sustainable results. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Podcasts. Instructions on how to do so are here. Chapters: [00:00] Introduction [01:56] Starting a Salon with No Business Background [05:00] The Aveda Wake-Up Call and Learning the Numbers [07:09] Why Pyure Salons Was Built as a Benefits-Driven Company [09:52] Profit, Transparency, and Open-Book Leadership [16:12] Why People Stay and How Culture Is Actually Built [21:36] What’s Changed in Service, Responsibility, and Guest Expectations [26:55] Marketing Evolution from Word-of-Mouth to Social Media [29:31] Teaching Business to Teams, Not Just Owners [51:00] Technology, Online Booking, and Using AI Without Losing Hospitality