Even after completing Europe’s 383-mile Camino de Santiago stretch in 2019, JuE Wong is hesitant to call herself a hiker.

“I’m more of an accidental walker that become a hiker,” said the Olaplex chief executive officer, who got here to the avocation(s) during her adolescence in Singapore.

“As you possibly can imagine, Singapore is as flat as a pancake; it has hills, not mountains,” said Wong. Her mother and father — from whom she jokes she inherited her “workaholic” tendencies — made it a degree despite their busy schedules to take the family to Mount Faber nearly every Saturday.

“We might drive to the highest of the hill, walk down, after which walk back as much as the automobile, all the time packing a lunch or going to a restaurant afterward, so it felt like there was a payoff with every hike,” said Wong.

It wasn’t long before Wong joined her middle school’s track team, finding that her early start in mountaineering allowed her to excel in each sprinting and long-distance running. “Doing all those walks, it enabled me to know tips on how to breathe properly even with no formal training,” she said.

Within the years since, though, mountaineering has been greater than a sport to Wong; it has allowed her to learn recent cities during her frequent travels, to ponder philosophical questions on life to the tune of songs like “A Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston and Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” and, above all, to strengthen her mental muscle.

“The mental can allow you to get through the physical,” said Wong, whose preparation for her most intense hike thus far, the Camino de Santiago, was largely mind over matter.

“I’d never walked 20-something miles a day before, so to organize I had to interrupt it down mentally like, ‘OK, I’ll get up early and walk three or 4 hours, stop for breakfast, do one other 4 or five miles, then break for lunch and walk one other 5 or 6 miles at the tip of the day.”

On the actual hike, Wong ended up spraining her ankle with 100 miles left to go, but due to her fine-tuned mental endurance, managed to see the journey through to fruition.

“By the point I reached my final destination on the St. James Cathedral, I saw a pharmacist they usually were like ‘How did you even walk like a mile with this?’ — that’s the facility of mental over physical,” said Wong, who will return to the Camino this yr to hike a part of the route, starting in France this time.

The mental preparation that goes into helming considered one of the most important hair care corporations on this planet, Wong has found, is slightly different.

“While you’re mountaineering, you begin at a certain time and you understand you’ll end at a certain time; you’re somewhat accountable for it. In terms of business, you possibly can’t force a finish — sometimes you possibly can’t even force a start,” she said.

In terms of the dynamic between work and play, though, each enriches the opposite for Wong. “After I’m walking, I take into consideration my life — what have I done? What could I be? Or, what if I deviate and go down this path,” said Wong, whose day-to-day walks around Central Park are only as gratifying as her more intense undertakings.

“Consistency is significantly better than a sudden surge of 200 to 300 miles,” said Wong, for whom a trek down Madison Ave has yet to get old.

“There’s all the time something recent to see, something recent to find — and that gets me excited.”