the bossbabe podcast - 113. The One Thing You Need To Know Before Building A Product-Based Business with Founder of Crown Affair, Dianna Cohen

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

What comes to mind when you think of self-care or a better question yet, do you even have a self-care routine? We’re joined by Dianna Cohen, Founder of Crown Affair, a high-quality haircare line rooted in ritual. Dianna’s mission is to help women transform their self-care routine by instilling rituals, starting with one of the most neglected areas - your hair.  Dianna is a queen in all things DTC e-commerce and has worked with amazing brands such as Away, Harry’s, and Outdoor Voices. Her passion for building brands and crafting narratives that connect with the consumer on a deeper level inspired Dianna to create her own brand, Crown Affair.  If you want to build a product-based business in 2020, then listen up. We’re diving deep into what it means to create a brand with intention and how to craft a narrative that resonates with the consumer because it’s simply not enough to just have pretty packaging. You have to disrupt the larger industries by creating a unique line where each product is designed with meaning and Dianna is a pro at doing just that.  Tune in as Dianna shares her journey of building beloved brands for other businesses to taking the leap and starting her own, one that helps people create long-lasting self-care rituals through high-quality and intentional products.  Links: Sign up for our free 10-day Instagram Challenge: bossbabe.com/instachallenge This episode is sponsored by SOUL CBD. Get 20% off on SOUL CBD products using code: BOSSBABE. https://mysoulcbd.com/ Follow: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty, @daniellecanty Dianne Cohen, @diannacohen Crown Affair, @crownaffair

It's always really interesting raising money. I think it's an uncomfortable conversation, but as a founder with an idea, you have to go in knowing that you are giving people an opportunity to be a part of something so much bigger. And not all money is created equal. You really have to find the right partner who is aligned in the vision and roadmap for the years. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to bounce it all. I'm Danielle Canty, president and co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for this episode. Now, today I am interviewing Diana Cohen, founder of Crown

Affair. Now if you're not familiar with Crown Affair, it's actually a high quality hair care line aimed to help people easily incorporate essentials into their everyday hair care routine. Now when we think of self-care, we tend to think of our skincare routine, right? At least I know I certainly did. But what Diana realized was that most women neglect their hair when it comes to their beauty routines. So she set out to help women reconnect with their hair by creating a brand that offers good quality hair care that's simple and easily accessible to everyone. She really wanted to disrupt larger industries by creating unique line where each product is designed with intention and

meaning. And in this interview, Diana will break down her journey of actually identifying a gap in the market to formulating a product to finally launching her own product line. She'll also give us some insight into her approach on raising money because we all know, let's face it, it can actually be one of the harder parts of building a business. And money can certainly be uncomfortable to talk about. But what I loved in this interview is that Diana really explained so well that money is not created equally. And you'll find out what I mean by that during the interview, because we talk about how to find the right investor who understands your brand and your values and who wants to be a part of that bigger vision. And what I really love about Diana is that she saw an opportunity in the market and tried

something new, knowing that there was potential to fail, but she took a risk, trusted her gut and has built and is still doing so a successful product-based business. So this episode is truly amazing. And I know you're going to leave so, so inspired, feeling like you can achieve any goals you have, big or small. And I'll add, also learn about a great haircare routine, which is something I also took away from this episode. So with that, let's jump right into the episode with Diana. And as always, please take a screenshot and share your biggest takeaways on Insta stories, tagging me at Danielle Canty and at bossbay.inc. Okay, just quickly, I need to drop

in and share something so, so exciting with you. In fact, I have never ever done this in my whole career, but you guys asked, so I decided it's time. I am hosting a completely free video challenge. It's 10 days to monetizing your small audience and it's kicking off on August 31st. Listen, I don't know if you know this, but you don't need hundreds of thousands of followers to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I say it all the time, but now I really want to prove it to you by handholding you to help you get your own massive results, even if you have a tiny audience. So this is for you if you have less than 10,000 followers, are struggling to attract your ideal clients, and are really unsure how to sell to or monetize your current audience. My guess is that you're constantly on

the follower roller coaster, are pushing so hard yet making no sales, or in fact you might just be completely neglecting social media because it's so frustrating you might be putting something out there and having no one engage with it so just feeling like you're totally wasting your time or you have no idea what to really post you hear you should be doing hashtags but they're not really making sales for you so you're just sitting there feeling very confused you hear people talking about all the time, monetizing their audience and making thousands of thousands of dollars, even if they've got less than a thousand followers, yet you're like, eh, show me the receipts because I'm not seeing those results for my business.

So I feel you. I have been there and so many of my clients have been there. In fact, I've trained over 65,000 people in Instagram. So this training is going to completely change the game for your life and business. I have seen enough people go through these trainings that I've seen every kind of situation and I know what is possible for you. So this challenge is going to work best for you if you're an online service-based entrepreneur, consultant, or coach, or you're wanting to be one. So you can either come armed with a ready-made business or an idea and I will get you started on the path to profitability. Making money on social media doesn't need to be hard and if you're willing to put in the work and dedication, I'm going to bring the strategy and everything else. So head to bossbabe.com forward slash instachallenge to sign up and save your space.

I will see you on the 31st of August. That bossbabe.com forward slash insta challenge it's all one word and the link is also below in the show notes so go save your space right now and I will see you on the 31st of August a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas it's just just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, Diana. I am literally so excited about this interview today because I feel like you have crammed an awful lot into your life so far and I'm really, really excited to talk about it all. I'm so grateful to be here. I'm such a fan of the pod and I love talking about things like

this. So thank you for having me. I love it. Well, in this interview, I really want to talk about your current business, Crown Affair, and how you came up with the idea for it and how you raised. But first of all, I really just want to take you back to the beginning of your career, because you've actually worked at some pretty impressive startups. And I'm really curious as to whether you have always wanted to start your own business or whether this was something that kind of was inspired because of the companies that you've previously worked at. Yeah. So to take it back from the way, way beginning, I grew up in a really small town in South Florida, and I always had a craving to move to New York. I think a lot of people have that feeling in their gut.

So I was pretty headstrong on going to school and university here and came to New York and moved here to go to NYU. When I moved here, I was just passionate about art and design and fashion. And I was in high school in the late 2000s. The beginning of the internet was happening. And I think the way that we know it now, and I was really loved Tumblr, would spend so much time on Tumblr. A lot of digital publications were starting to launch, like Who, What, Where. And it was a really exciting time, I think. But it wasn't totally

fleshed out yet. And when I came to New York, the dream job, you do internships. I interned at Valentino at smaller CFDA-like companies like Takun. And I just thought that I wanted to work at Vogue and be at Condé Nast. But after going through all those experiences over four years during school, I had a moment. It was actually, I was interning at Takun in the wholesale department. And I remember it was the year that Moda Operante launched and they were Lawrence Santadomingo. Everyone came in, we were doing a photo shoot. And I just remember being this entire wholesale team be gone soon. The way that retail is operating is totally changing. So when I actually came into college, I thought there'd be certain

jobs and certain roles that I might go into post-graduation, but the world was really changing. And I was so grateful to kind of have that hands-on experience, the responsibility level of an intern, but see that happening in real time. And my last internship in college, I just reached out to this girl who had a site that I had. It was basically a blog and I loved the profiles and interviews on them. And there were like maybe 10 articles on it. And it was Emily Weiss when she first started into the gloss. And it was her and Nick Axelrod, who was a really remarkable boss eight years ago

and now has his own line. And it was a really small team and you do everything there. I was doing editorial production. So transcribing interviews, setting up our social channels. To put this in perspective, Pinterest was almost more important than Instagram then, and Instagram was such a baby in what it was. It was a really incredible experience, and to me, that opened up my eyes to storytelling

in a way, to really understand education and how people could talk about a product or thing or reference and then on the other side of the world or wherever in their bedroom could see and discover that product and make a purchase and then use it and talk about it. And it was really direct ecosystem of audience members and customers and women and men who were really, really passionate about beauty. So I'm so grateful to have kind of seen the early days of that. And when I was interning and then working there, I met a woman at a party for actually one of my former bosses. So it's always good, as you know, to keep in touch and keep relationships.

And this woman's name was Ara Katz. And she lives in LA. She's still dead. She's been in LA for, I think, almost 15 years. And she had a website called StyleMint. It was a bigger umbrella beach mint, but StyleMint with Ashley and Mary Kate Olson and JewelMint with Kate Brosworth. And I met her and it was kind of the beginning of vertical D2C e-commerce and they paired it with celebrities. And I was just so fascinated. And we met at a party. She's like, I'm going to hire you one day. I never thought I'd hear from her. I'm like, you're so cool and live in California. I'm never going to see you again. And she called me and she really gave me the role at this company called Spring,

which transformed my life and really got me into the consumer behavior funnels, understanding e-commerce and mobile commerce in a different way. That was really the birth of kind of a lot of the direct consumer brands that we know it like Warby Parker and Harry's and Everlane and Reformation. And I think I had always, to answer your question, my dad's an entrepreneur and I've been so fortunate to grow up around people who are excited to take risks. I only have a lot of friends and people in my life who are excited to try something new and aren't afraid to fail. And I think the experience that I had in college was really eye-opening to see that this would have been a really amazing inflection point to take a chance and maybe not go to a traditional bigger business or brand or publication, but go work at somewhere like Into the Gloss or go work

somewhere like Spring. And those two experiences in particular are such a huge part of my DNA today. And we're proof that how important it is about who you work with, not necessarily what you're doing that moment, because that's how you learn and grow. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler.

One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe.

I really, really believe that too because I think that when you're in school, you have this emphasis on like, oh, what do you want to be when you grow up, right? And you're picking an occupation. And actually, when you get out into the world and you're kind of like, well, hang on a minute, this job might say this, but I actually do all these other things. And particularly this happens in startups, right? You kind of alluded to it earlier. You kind of go into one role.

But when you're in startups, you're getting experience in so many different sectors and you're able to be against some amazing minds because the teams are so small that there is so much power in that and I can really see how that influences you and influences the way you think that's certainly what happened to me right because I went in like oh yeah I'm going to be a chiropractor and then completely got to that point and grew my businesses there and I was like actually there's so many other things that when you're on the ground, you learn and actually growing or your career does not have to be linear. And it can really take in so many different directions. But I'm a big believer in you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so I think understanding those choices on really picking people. And we actually do this in our

business, right? We hire people a lot of the time on their attitude, because we can teach them a lot of things. And we're always moving really quickly. And I think that's what really happens when you're looking for a job as well. Like you should be looking to go like, what is the attitude and the culture of the company? Like, who do I want to be surrounded by? Because that really does what shapes the rest of your career. This is something that a lot of people do get, but also a lot of people miss that. A hundred percent. And it's funny, people will reach out and ask, what about this job? What about this opportunity? It could be a bigger company, a L'Oreal or wherever, all the way to a small startup that is just getting its foundations on the ground. I think it's all about what you personally want to. For me, it was very apparent in those first experiences,

how truthfully addicted I am to having like a direct impact. And I think if you're someone who's more suited for structure, you really want that separation and balance, then a bigger company could be great. For me, it was, I love being on the ground and seeing everything and you're doing all of the little things and there's no job description. And that's why it's so important for both sides. How you reach out to someone is so important. What that relationship and connection is, even before you might be hired or hiring someone, that gut attitude and energy is what is going to take you through something so much greater together over time. Yeah, 100%. So you've obviously launched Crown Affair and you launched

that in January of this year, right? Yeah. The last week of January. Timing. And we'll come to that in a second, but tell me like what it was, how did you get that idea? What role were you in and how did you make that leap to go? Do you know what? Now is the time I'm going to build my own business. Yeah. Okay. So just to take you through the journey was working at Into the Gloss and then was working at this mobile shopping app called Spring. And we had over 500 brands on the platform. And it was so cool to be able to connect and meet with all these different founders who had different products and ideas and brainstorm with them on how to understand their consumer funnel and bring their product to life to people. And on the other end, it was mostly an engineer-led team. So it was 80 engineers and a couple marketers. And that's when I just fell in love with working on products and understanding how people might

go through this journey. And since working at Spring, I've worked with a range of different businesses from all on the consumer side, which was one of the first employees at the luggage company away. And it's crazy. At the time when we launched that, there were a number of other competitors in the space. And how you really craft that narrative and bring a bigger purpose and mission to your self-identity and what travel means to you is so much bigger than just a suitcase. And I was able to do that with a few other brands. I was connected with Tamara Mellon,

who casually founded Jimmy Choo and is a legend when it comes to branding. And for her, she sold Jimmy Choo, I think back in 2013 and had wanted to work on a project that was her own. And I was connected actually through my mentor era and former boss and just sitting with her and figuring out how to bring her visual literacy and identity to life in a digital way as a direct to consumer luxury shoe company was one of the coolest challenges of my life. She's such a legend, I think, having built a shoe empire in the 90s and 2000s. But then how do you take what's there and really translate that to our present-day customer? And since then, I've worked with Outdoor Voices, which is an activewear company in Austin, which grew exponentially during my time there. It was really incredible to see that shift active,

whereas a category has been so focused on harder, better, faster, stronger. And I think Ty and her mission are just really resonate with their community. When working with Harry's, we launched Flamingo, which is their women's line. And that was really cool because we got to touch a lot of retailers too at a much more national scale. So working with the targets of the world, which was really eyeopening just to understand. It was amazing to see that. And I was traveling a lot, namely to Austin. And a couple of things kind of hit me while I was the last two years of consulting. One, my hair was starting to kind of like take a little bit of a beating. I was traveling and I would show up at a hotel. And if you really care about your skincare, for example, you're never just going to like show up at a hotel and be like, I hope they have my serums here or whatever it is.

This is so true. I know where you're going with this. Okay. Yeah. Well, and I'm like, how am I not bringing my shampoo and conditioner and my hair mask, my special hair towel? One time I was traveling to Iceland and I left a brush somewhere and I like, it was my Mason Pearson brush. No one around me was understanding why I was so upset that I lost my like $250 hairbrush. I've always really put time and care into my hair for years. And this traveling so much made me realize how important having that ritual and routine was for the health of my hair. And I started having conversations with friends. People would always ask me, what's your routine? What are you using? I have no idea what to do. Truthfully, the most incredible accomplished women in my life had no idea

where to begin with their hair or felt super disempowered by their relationship to it. And for me, it was really a nights and weekends project of can I take all these products that I love that are prohibitively expensive? For example, a $250 hairbrush is not always in the reach for everyone or even an $80 hair mask or $100 hair oil. I think this specific category where there's been so much democratization around skincare and color cosmetics, it hasn't really happened with hair care. It's always really been rooted in professional and styling and cut and color. And I just knew that there was a woman out there like me who wanted really beautiful luxury products and tools

and clean formulas that would be simple to integrate into her routine and elevate that experience and reconnect her with her hair so I had my first samples and gifted them to friends and friends of friends to get feedback so that's where crown affair started it was a year and a half ago and I was still full-time consulting what I think there as well and I was doing a little bit of research as I always do and people are coming on the show and to discuss this in more detail what really stood out to me and I was reading where you actually started like talking to your say your friends about it and didn't you create a document that people were adding things to because what I felt is I'm noticing with yourself is you know you've worked with these huge brands have really started to understand how like brands

tell a narrative to connect to a consumer and you've just done that perfectly just now talking about crown affair because I'm literally like oh my goodness I really do need to think about my hair routine I don't really have this hair ritual but why don't I I look after my face so why don't I look after my hair as much but I want to and actually even now like moving to LA I've really started to feel my hair changing which is really interesting but I think that is actually like that's a real talent and something that a lot of people miss connecting the dots so how did you go from going hang on a minute I'm doing these things on my hair like how did like what are those conversations with your friends look like to realize that there was a gap in the market for this yeah connecting the dots is where the magic

happens I think so it originally started as a doc. I had friends asking about what products I was using. So I put together a document with the 12 things that I do really focused on the post-wash ritual that I have to take care of my hair. And two things became very apparent. First, the price point thing, but most importantly, there was no guidance around this. A lot of the content around hair care and a 45 minute YouTube video or how to get Chrissy Teigen's ponytail at Coachella. And I'm, dude, I'm just trying to go to a meeting and look good on a Tuesday. Yeah.

And it was totally organic conversations. In my first investor deck, I had 10 text messages from truly impressive, amazing women that were like, Dee, what are you using? What is this thing? You mentioned that towel. I need to not use this towel. I can't believe I'm using 100% cotton towel on my hair. I'm noticing so much more frizz and breakage.

And it was truly organic conversations and giving people feedback and hearing how their journeys were evolving too along the way. And then being able to provide them with our product, the first prototypes and see their hair transform was the most magic thing. And I do think talking to people and having real conversations and knowing that they might be your friend. So take it with a grain of salt. And I do think it's really important to do focus groups and things as you start to develop product. But at the end of the day, when you're launching something, you have to go with your gut

and a number of people, if more than 20 people are like I can't believe I even thought of this or start thinking about it I think that there's a pretty good indication that there's an opportunity in the market to build that story and tell something different. Oh completely and honestly when I was reading up and even just this conversation now the cotton towel thing oh my goodness I need to learn more about this I really do think my hair is pretty wild people who obviously our community will know my hair is definitely I have thick hair and it's just a little bit crazy it definitely needs taming so I'm okay note to self must be looking up some more of these rituals that's it so many women are going to be like this but

I just think it's really important that you say you're connecting those dots. You're listening to people. But okay, now I'm really going to investigate this a little bit more. Like I've got my Google Doc. People are saying they want this. What did you do next? How did you even go about going, okay, this is what I want in my products? Well, the first thing, and I think the moment I really knew that I wanted to do this and potentially launch it into the world and not just do it as a nights and weekends project was having worked on a range of consumer brands, there's always competitors in this space. And I'm very much of the mindset that we're all in this together, whether you're selling a mattress or a suitcase or a pair of glasses. At the end

of the day, the mission here with consumer products for new brands is to disrupt these larger industries. We're truly all in this together. But when I was working at those companies, I'd always look at what other people were doing. I'd wake up and be like, what's Nike doing? What's Adidas doing? Or what's this? And this was the first time in my life that I was looking at what other hair care brands were doing. And I'm like, no one's doing this right. I'm not connecting to any of these brands. They're either rooted in professional, rooted in salon, rooted in fashion, or so corny, all the bright color and the quality of ingredients wasn't there. So that to me, when I finally realized I was feeling that every morning, I was, I have to do

this. And then a couple of things, I think the things that were so simple and foundational to my ritual, like a hairbrush, like a really high quality towel, like a beautiful comb that you felt proud of is what people hadn't really thought about. They might've done a little bit of research or understood what shampoo and conditioner worked for them, but I truly want everyone to have access to a luxury quality hairbrush that isn't just from the drugstore. And I want people to understand what ingredients are in their hair oils and that those companies out there, the lead ingredient in hair oil is cyclopentasiloxane, which is a cyclic silicone. And I'm here for really mindful chemicals. And I think like a junk elephant has

done this really well. It's not all chemicals are bad. They're just not all created equal. So for me, I knew that I wanted to launch with a very tight, focused edit of the things that almost anyone could seamlessly integrate into their ritual. And also, I think coming from consumer, you realize how important the visual literacy of a product is in people's lives, right? If you're posting in a way suitcase, it's like, yes, it's the suitcase, but it's also the customer self-identifying that there's someone who travels and that means something to them. And I think hair care and as a category, it's really been in the shadows and in the bathroom, literally. Most bathrooms are physically dark places. Having worked on Flamingo with Harry's, it was just so eye-opening that it's really hard for people to kind of connect and tell that story. And also shampoo conditioner as a product, I just did not think there was

enough education out there for people to really understand why and how our product is different. And to change consumer behavior, you need to integrate physical things into your that are reminders of how you move through the world. So that's why I was really want these beautiful plant cellulose based combs from Switzerland. So the women in my life can have that in their bag or on their counter and they are using it in the shower to really comb through their product or reminding themselves before bed, brush your hair to move the natural oils. I think that if it's just stuck in your shower and you're not really proud of it, it's hard to change your behavior. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed this episode so far. Please stay tuned as we share

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today's episode yeah 100% and I just love you kind of really telling that narrative and how you've thought about those products and the context in which you've thought about because it's all about like shifting it for a lot of people like you say before like my hairbrush like lives in my and i would just be completely honest and vulnerable hair i do not have a decent hairbrush right so it's like just lives in my cupboard whereas like you say if you have one that's really practicing hair care ritual and noticing that a difference that makes and that actually looks pretty too then it's going to start shifting that whole evening ritual not just the hair care ritual but your evening ritual how you move into that so I absolutely love that and I think so many women

listen to this going like oh yeah I definitely need to be thinking about this. So, okay, taking it back a little bit more business sense in the sense of like, okay, you've got the idea. You've like sourcing the products. You really understand what's going into them. Let's talk about money, all right? I feel like sometimes there's a bit of stigmatism talking around money with women. And I want to just really love what Boss Babe just lifting that and going, okay, how did you raise? What does that look like? how did you have those conversations was this the first time you create a pitch deck or you're a complete professional in that you know exactly what you're

doing or the people help you I would love for you to lift the lid on that because I think it's so important because I think it's a big thing a barrier for a lot of people getting their ideas out there because it's whoa that's so crazy's so intimidating. I couldn't possibly raise money, not me. And I wonder like, actually you can. Well, definitely not an expert. This is my first time raising money. It's my first time launching a business. Having been a part of launch teams before, this was the fourth launch. It's different when it's your baby and it's different just being an early employee versus you being the person who's going to these meetings and selling the vision. And I had put a little bit of my own money into it from a product development standpoint,

which is why I was doing this when I was consulting. Every single dollar that I made when I was consulting, it was pretty much funneled back into developing product. And there was an inflection point where I realized that this product works and people love it. Actually place orders. I genuinely thought I might be able to bootstrap it. And then the day comes where you're like, in order to hire the creative director, I want the head of operations. I want place these orders. You have to raise money. And

the day that that switch kind of went off, I went to my existing network very candidly, having come from consumer and worked with a range of VC backed startups. I had a lot of people to go back to. And there's one woman in particular, who's a very dear friend and a mentor to me who has a baby food company in LA. And she's a professional fundraiser. She's just amazing at doing this. And she's someone that I really look to as a resource, not only for connections for both investors and angel investors, but just by step of how to do this. And very tactically, I made my pitch deck and keynote. I had a couple photos. We did a little photo shoot out in LA with the sample product that we had. A friend shot it. It was very low key,

just so we had some visuals for the deck. And I put together a 10 page pitch deck about the vision of what isn't happening in the hair care space, the mission of shifting this ritual and consumer behavior to really take care of yourself and take your time and not out of frustration, but out of care. And I think that plus the combination and the visual literacy, I'm a big Pinterest person and I actually studied art history in college. And for me, the visual literacy of this universe is also what felt so different. It wasn't just another direct-to-consumer business branded by a lot of the same agencies. This was very much who I am as a person. And I think that that translated. And you can totally design a deck on your own in Keynote or PowerPoint.

And I think having key market stats, projections of where this can go and some visuals and showing your community. And as I mentioned earlier, the text messages from women and the Google doc, there's a proof of concept there. And I think having those cases of being, this is a real thing that could exist and it's not happening. That was everything. And we had one investor who decided to lead the round, who was actually one of the first Czechs in Harry's. And we had a couple of mutual people. And to this day, with three months after launch, I had a call with him this morning. He's one of our biggest supporters and advocates and was really helpful with getting our round together.

And then fortunately, we have a lot of amazing angels and female founders in this round as well, from Jackie Johnson of Create and Cultivate, Heidi Zak from Third Love, a lot of Shiza, who was the founder of Malala Project and the Malala Fund and is now the founder of Our Place and just some really amazing women. And it's incredible how supportive they've been. But I've been working for seven years. It's definitely not forever. But these are relationships that you build over time. And it's always really interesting raising money. I think it's an uncomfortable conversation, but as a founder with an idea, you have to go in knowing that you are giving people an opportunity to be a part of something so much

bigger. 100%. I think they say you can have it as one narrative, like, oh yeah, I'm asking for money because I need this money. Or like you said, you can turn it and be like, hey, I'm offering them an opportunity to be part of something which is actually going to positively impact other people's lives. And by raising, I'm actually going to be able to help more people and bring a quality product to so many people. And I think particularly with what you were saying around yours and really making sure that it doesn't contain nasty chemicals,

because that's definitely something that I felt over the last few years in the beauty industry has definitely shifted right I have the thin cap I don't know if you've ever used that which kind of tells you breaks down what some products that is shifting into hair and it has been for obviously some time but I think when you know and all the women listening to this podcast are all in very similar positions we all want to serve we all want to help and when you know that and really embody that and go actually not only myself but others a disservice if I don't find a way to launch this product or get this out there and I think there's something really incredible about how you shift from a need and a want to actually how can I help and how can I serve. Absolutely I couldn't agree more and specifically with, I think to launch a brand in 2020,

there's things that are table stakes from how you approach packaging and your philosophy on sustainability and where you can go to the quality of product. Customers are really smart. And I think what was so interesting with fundraising, I think is really it's changed so much also since everything happening globally right now with the pandemic, but what it means to be a brand and build a business and grow. And I think so often we forget that product is first and foremost, and having a quality product is what continues to build a loyal customer over time. But also just realizing that you always have to put the customer first and the way that you could have launched a brand maybe seven years ago is really different from now. And we were very candid with our investors. We want to make amazing product that people love, especially

in a category where most of the brands are 12 shampoo SKUs and 12 conditioner SKUs. And it's the intention behind every product is so mindful and how we're building this is we're very much, we came from an era of unicorn valuations. It was the unicorn season the last 10 years. And now we're starting to enter the era of the camel. And it's how do you be like the camel and survive and build a real business and not just scale this off paid marketing and how you allocate your funds to product development. It's a whole ecosystem that when you're having these conversations with investors too, it's like dating and not all money is created equal you really have to find the right partner

who is aligned in the vision and roadmap for the years oh my goodness could not agree more like you said not all money is created equal that is such a good quote because it's so true and when you're racing I think that's really important to think about it's like the strategic partners and what each person is bringing it's just so powerful but also like what they stand for and how you get on with them. And I've been very honored to meet some amazing people who have raised and exited from here and their businesses end up being worth billions of dollars. And you hear different stories, those who have been so, so happy with those they've had taken investment from and worked alongside and then being real partners in it. And those who have found that their alignments were not the same and the ethos and what they stood for was not the same

as what they stood for and it's always really important to say hey now I'm not going to take the money for the sake of it but I'm actually going to choose people I want to be working with who have the same vision but also values as me is really really crucial to the longevity of you and your business. And that's that relationship. Absolutely. And I also think having a mix of people who can really support to your point, bringing in strategic partners, bringing in people who can provide feedback and guidance have been operators themselves before founders themselves before. It's so often, I think it can feel like we're not on the same team with investors or agency partners or whatnot but it's going into this with a very strong partnership mindset I mean if we win we

all win supporting each other and that really just comes down to the values I love that so what have you been obviously you launched in January and then we had quarantine that hit in March and obviously while so according this was still in quarantine what have been the biggest kind of learning curves for you over the last since launch or even just before launch what are the things that you're like wow there have been some real learnings that I'm going to take with me yeah like everything like everything literally everything first I'm so grateful who knew I had no one who could have planned this but I'm really glad that we did launch just pre all of this to be able to meet with editors and have face-to-face interactions and bring the product into the world. And when I launched this, it's always been about the 60 to 90 days beyond the

salon chair. I'm all about health in a very holistic way. I'm here for a really good blowout. I love going to my stylist, but there's kind of this time between those moments that you're quote doing your hair that you're quote, doing your hair that you just want to take care of it and nourish it. And none of us could have predicted that people wouldn't have access to going to their salon or their stylist or getting it colored right now. And for the first time, I have friends who are like, I didn't even really know that my hair was curly or that this ingredient't good for low porosity hair or that I should just be using a more gentle towel. It's even really simple things that I think now that we are for those who can be home, now that we're at home and really faced with the reality of

how to take better care of ourselves, it's really opened up a whole world for us and having that conversation with our community. On the business side as a leader, we made a pretty senior hire the week before the stay at home order went down. And she's amazing. She like launched Milk Makeup in the early days and was at Teen Vogue and W and she was most recently at Activewear Company Girlfriend. And we had two days together in the office physically of like sitting there before we could stay at home. So I'm so glad we ended up going with someone more seasoned for that role because I think the hiring process is really hard to do right now and understanding how to grow your team and how do you recreate those moments digitally that aren't just a scheduled meeting. There's a lot of tools that are wonderful to use, but those early day moments

as a business and team that just you have organic side conversation and really good things happen. So we're a small team right now of five, but we're really learning into how to keep those moments alive and make sure we're supporting each other and continue to strategically grow the business and connect with people with how they're taking care of themselves at home. I love that. It's funny because Nassi and I actually just released a podcast the other day talking about the importance of connect communication because right now Nassi and I obviously business partners but also living with each other because I moved out to LA. Okay let's just live together while we're in quarantine which has been so much fun actually but we really stress that was the key thing and that we were doing on the podcast was like the importance of communication and I think always just being really open and honest with

people whether they're colleagues or whether they're close and business partners or investors and just the power of that and I think that during this quarantine it's really tested a lot of people's communication skills how you ensure that you know if you're not in the same office how do you communicate efficiently how do you communicate in an effective way and if there's something that's going to come out of this as well allowing businesses and colleagues to see actually how they can interact with each other better and maybe when they're not actually physically together but how that can translate over you know zoom calls or slack messages or whatever it is the research the company is utilizing but just how important that is

as a soft skill to helping the culture and therefore helping grow the business. Absolutely. And it's been so interesting. I'm reading a book right now called Friendship by Lydia Denworth is who it is. And it's about how it's essentially how relationships are one of the most important things for our health. And we are super mindful about maybe being active or what you're eating, but we don't treat or business and really focusing on your career goals and setting milestones. But we don't always think about friendship or communication in the same way. And I think that this time at home has really empowered us for those who are realizing that you should treat friendship the way that you treat and relationships the way that you treat everything else that you have goals for in your life. You

should be checking in on people and maybe a regular one-on-one with a team member is actually asking how they are. It's not just like running through a list. And I think this time has really challenged us in a good way to figure out new ways to communicate and check in on each other. And to your point, have more honest and vulnerable conversations and realize it's okay to not always be okay or always be performing and on, but have honest conversations about how to grow right now. Yeah, I love that. Brené Brown always says like vulnerability is a strength,

which I think is really important for everyone to be like, say, hey, actually, I could do a little bit more support over here right now, which I think is really important for everyone to be like say hey actually I could do a little bit more support over here right now which I think is super powerful but honestly Diana this interview has been absolutely amazing I feel like there's not only so many business takeaways but also hair care tips as well I feel everyone's going to be googling crown affair okay what does my ritual and routine need to look like I need this in my life ASAP yeah well it's so funny I mean for me hair is such a key part of identity. And so often it's really holistic. The way I think about my hair or skin or care for other, my career or my loved ones, it's

a part of the whole ecosystem, having rituals. And now more than ever, I'm sure you're seeing this, especially moving to a new city. The structures and rituals that you create in your life right now are, I think, what really changes the way you move through the world, especially when we can't go out or have moments or visual milestones to understand how we're growing these rituals and whether that's something as simple as seeing your hair transform over the next few months or a ritual like journaling or whatever it is we need these markers right now more than ever to see the evolution 100 well listen thank you so much now I would love for you to let our listeners know where they

can kind of find out more about you and your brand yeah so on the crown affair front you can check us out on instagram or crown affair and all of our handles are the same there and crownaffair.com we have a really cool actually we just launched this content series called top of mind and actually a mentorship program as well which we launched it last Mind and actually a mentorship program as well, which we launched it last week. It's a mentorship program pairing people just graduating from college and more seasoned entrepreneurs and businesswomen. And there's a lot more coming on the site. So definitely check it out there and on Instagram. And then I'm just Diana Cohen on Instagram. And there's a couple of pieces that profile this journey, but please DM me.

I love truly part of our DNA as a business is having conversations like this and supporting other women and people on their career journeys, especially in a time where on one hand, I think it can be really scary right now on the other. There's so much coming to light. And I think that this moment can be a catalyst for any ideas that you have. So please shoot me a DM either on Crown Affair or Diana. I love talking about hair. We could talk about hair for days, but also anything entrepreneurial

or a few questions as you build your business. We are all navigating new territory for the first time. So I'm here to chat. I love that. Thank you so much. Yeah. Please share your takeaways. Tag Diana Cohen.

And I'm also going to point, it's two N's in Diana. Tag myself at danielacanti and tag at bossbabe.inc. And we cannot wait to hear your favorite takeaways from this episode. So thank you so much again, Diana. Absolutely amazing. Thank you, Danielle. This was so fun. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and

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