Dianna Cohen

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0:31Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Bumble, the sponsor of today's episode is the go-to dating app for finding intentional love.

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2:33When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive, on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders, and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers here to start conversations because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world.

3:29Here we go. Welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. And today I'm sitting down with someone who's quietly transforming the beauty industry, proving that clean doesn't have to come at the expense of experience. We talk about building with intention, leading with care, and the impact of taking your time, creating rituals that keep us grounded as we grow. Intentional, creative, and deeply self-aware, the lovely Diana Cohen.

4:03I'm so thrilled to have you on the Goop pod. You're one of my favorite founders. I absolutely love your product. Crown Affair has been in all my showers and on the Goop website, I think since pretty early on. First of all, thank you so much for having me today. I've been a longtime listener. I remember your first podcast and I was like, finally, she's giving us the juice and the good stuff so thank you you know for making the time and space to have these conversations I feel like I've learned so much from these conversations and you have this ability to like really get into it with people so thank you for having me here today and yeah you were you were one of our first partners so I launched the brand in 2020 and it was pretty much you guys I've been a goop shopper forever and that was how we were first introduced.

4:52I think before we actually met for the first time, it was through the curation and your buying team who found Crown Affair. Yeah, absolutely. I'm really interested in your evolution as a founder because you were building all of these very cool brands for other people before you launched your own. So will you tell me a little bit about your background? I know you were it into the gloss and away and a number of female bounded businesses. Will you tell me a little bit about your journey? Yeah. So I grew up in a really small town in South Florida and it was my dream to go to NYU. And I feel like so many people of that era, it was like you went to New York and you wanted to work for Anna Wintour.

5:41But the time that I actually graduated, I wanted to work for Emily Weiss, which I feel like is such a testament to the time that I was in New York in the early, you're like, yeah, the early 2010s, the late 2000s. And the internet was just really happening, as you know, you started to write your newsletter, and it was the most incredible way to start connecting with people. And I really fell in love. I always joke that I was born in the comments section, because I used to like moderate the comments of Into the Gloss. And like that was where no one was saying tea then, but like, that's where the tea was, you know, it was like the real recommendations and what people were loving.

6:18And I worked for Emily and Nick Axelrod then who were, I learned so much from in the early days. And so you started on the content side. Yeah. Content editorial production. I mean, it was a one room studio above the, no longer there crate and barrel. So it was just like a different era on Houston. Yeah. That's amazing. and did you what did you learn from your time in the comments like it like that you brought with you when you came to start doing formulations or like did you did you come with a kind of like with learnings like or were you more solving a problem for yourself well it's so funny I feel like this is so much of how you started too which is like it all starts with recommendations and especially in beauty you're like okay I like this thing about this product but I kind of like this thing about that product and I feel like the magic of early into the gloss days and what Emily first did with Glossier was like how do I take the best parts of these different things and like make them one product so there were just so so many learnings from that time and I don't know also like I remember setting up affiliate links back then which is like such a no-brainer now but it It was like really, you know, a little bit, whatever.

7:36It was a really crazy time. And I was like, oh, this is so wild. Like someone can buy a moisturizer. And like, of course we were making like 72 cents at the time. It wasn't like that was floating the business. But I kind of remember just falling in love with consumer behavior. And it was when I was at Into the Gloss that I met someone who I think is a mutual friend of ours, Erika Katz, who started Seed. Oh, yeah. She's amazing. she she was my boss after Emily at a mobile shopping app called spring she's still one of my best friends she's my mentor she you know at my wedding I love her very very much she's a special creature so I worked for her for two and a half years at an e-commerce tech startup and that was where I really learned about like building brands and consumer funnels and and all of that and you know, going from Emily to era was an incredible experience that I'm so grateful for during that time.

8:33And so like, did you, well, we can circle back on this later, but I'm so, I'm just curious on your point of view, because a couple of the places you worked, like some of those women founders became subject to, you know, that kind of like public dragging during, during the summer of, you know, like let's cancel female CEO summer. They made t-shirts. We were all, I'm just kidding. It's crazy. Which was so striking. And, and as a female founder, I felt like, I don't know, I thought it was an affront to all founders because all female founders, because, you know, I think there are certainly decades and centuries of men in business behaving badly, far worse.

9:29And I would say, and it still sort of sticks in my craw how that happened and why do you have what, from your vantage point, like, what do you think was going on that summer? Yeah, it was so crazy. Cause after Emily and Ara, I had worked it away for John and staff who had like a very public takedown that summer. Granted, that happened like a couple years after I'd already left because I was the eighth employee at Away, which was, I learned so much from that experience as well. And I worked for Ty Haney at Outdoor Voices and I consulted with Audrey at the wing. So, you know, so literally every single one.

10:06Yeah. Like the running joke is like, I, yes, correct. I think like five of my former bosses had very public takedowns. Was there a common denominator in there? I think being a woman, I mean, I don't need to tell you this, like being a woman makes it really tricky. I think that they were the first to do this. And I think, you know, the reality is, is often we're told, like we're reinforced that we, which it's good that we don't know everything. Right. But sometimes we hand over a lot to other people or we don't authentically trust the people that we bring into the business. And I think what happened is like, there were a lot of senior leaders, right?

10:45It's never just one person. It's not just this one founder. I think a lot of the senior leadership or investors around these people were giving them advice of how to grow and how to build. That was coming from a very place of masculine energy. And so much of my vision with Crown Affair, granted it like launched the brand during COVID. So it was just truly a different time is like, how do you build from a place that's more feminine energy? And I don't really think it was their fault. I just think it was like the time of move fast and break things. And for men, like move fast and break things is like sexy and they make movies about this.

11:18And like, it's a whole thing. But with women, it's like the truth is when you move fast and break things, those things are not things, they're people. And for some reason, it's like, you know, the women get really, really pinned. And they were it's not that they were leading in a great way. I think there's a lot of learnings of what not to do from that time as well. but I do think that traditionally men get away like it's labeled in a really different way but the truth is is like these were never tech companies like I was working for consumer brands that were treated like tech companies so when everybody woke up one day and candidly like once the internet started really happening right with TikTok and cost of acquisition the for customer acquisition was so much higher and like everyone was kind of on these treadmills and And I think that they were looking for someone to blame of like, why aren't these businesses working?

12:08But yeah, it was a really crazy time. And unfortunately, a lot of women went down with the ship that went down. But a lot of them have risen again and have figured out how to navigate this new world. Yeah. And they have and more power to them because I found it, you know, we all make mistakes as founders. We all like every, anybody who is trying to grow a business makes mistakes. And I don't know, I just, I felt that it was really unfairly weighted towards, you know, like I just, I felt it was sexist at its heart. Right. Like not that everyone's perfect, but. Totally. And I think the reality is sadly in this lifetime, I don't know if that will ever go away.

12:52And as a leader, it's just like being, you know, as a woman, it's like, right. You play the cards you're dealt. if we were both men, we'd be doing things differently. And those are the cards you're dealt. But as a woman, you need to be extraordinarily mindful. And I think as a leader, it's like, yeah, everyone, everyone is looking out to get you. And I think it's funny with crown affair, right? I have a different way into this industry where it's like, I don't want to say I'm an underdog, but I've kind of just been like a person in the trenches building these businesses for a decade prior to launching.

13:23So when I launched my business, I didn't have that many targets on my back, right? Like I'm not launching massive distribution day one. Like it has been this really responsible growth. And at times that's challenging because you don't have a silver bullet to just like post something and it flies off the shelves. But the benefit of it is like as a company, we've been able to move with so much intention. And I don't know, it's kind of like that striving for excellence while going under the radar is like the way to build today, I think. I have unfortunately have not been able to do it under the radar, but but I do not know, not my cards.

14:03But I do agree that, you know, I mean, we're sort of similar in that way. Like, I think we've built slowly and with a lot of integrity. And, you know, with going down a few circuitous routes that took us off course and back on and, but I think there's really something too slow and intentional build. And so will you tell me a little bit about, were you really building this for a decade before you launched it? No, no, no, no. I was building other people's brands for a decade. Yeah. By the way though, I think regardless of what route you go down, if something is authentic to you, right. And like why you started and that essence is still there, there's always a way back to that, right.

14:48We've seen that with so many other founders as well, like that have gone through these journeys and sold and people have bought their companies back. And it's like, if that thing that is that spark and your why is still there, like you can always kind of get back to that. I think when people don't build from that place and it didn't start from a newsletter or authentic recommendations or whatever it is, it's hard to find it because it never really existed. And I think like, you know, for me, I was really working on crown affair nights and weekends. I was consulting mostly for Harry's at the time I had launched their women's line flamingo for them doing the DTC launch and then the target launch.

15:25And that was actually the first time I ever worked with like bigger retailers. And I kind of like looked under the hood and I'm like, Oh, this is kind of real business. Like they had Walmart and target and Costco white label. And it just kind of opened my world. But that being said, the landscape was changing a lot too. This was like 2017, 2018. and the writing was very much on the wall with like influencers and just everything happening. And I've always been obsessed with hair. Like I remember buying hair products on Goop. Like that was one of the main things I was buying because not to like really celebrate this, but I feel like there are so few places to buy clean products that actually work.

16:03And outside of you guys, I'm like, I look gray. Like those are really the only places that I was shopping for anything like this, you know? And, and it's funny, like a lot of my friends who were super accomplished women had no idea what to do with their hair. And they would come to me being like, Diana, how do I take care of my hair? What's going on? And hair's just always been my thing, like more than makeup, even more than skin. I don't know why, but I put together a Google doc, you know, this was before like TikTok or I didn't have a newsletter, but I put together a doc and I sent it out to like six people and within a week hundreds of people were requesting to be in it and it was like my mason pearson hairbrush and you know if you don't know why to spend 250 on a hairbrush it's like why do you need this product you just don't know or a towel like all the hair towels I had which you know like they kind of the ones that I was using before were like they always looked like car wash towels but like the fifth wash or like they kind of fell off my head or like I don't know I there were just like so many things wrong with the products and candidly, and you know, this pain point too, across all of beauty, it's like clean does not need to be at the expense of like a beautiful experience.

17:12And I felt like a lot of the products I was recommending were from these amazing, luxurious salon brands. But once I kind of looked under the hood of what was in them, I'm like, oh, this probably isn't great long-term. And it's actually not like letting me understand my hair's potential. Like it requires a lot of styling and I think that's what the industry was and has been and I have so much admiration for professional stylists they are incredible artists but the truth is is like most of my days I'm home like on zoom calls running like I need to learn how to do my own hair and have products that work for me so you know I got really lucky my husband's best friend from elementary school is a bioengineer and chemist and he had a lab he had a lab on FDR on the east side of Manhattan and we would literally go and bring like my christophe robin prickly pear mask and like my or all of my stuff and just reverse engineer it and be like how do we make this sulfate free how do we make this so it was super nights and weekends and it wasn't until that i had like samples product prototypes that i was like and people were like wait this product's actually amazing like the mask which i know you love like our first samples of the mask my friends but we're tech that's when you know you have something like for anyone out there listening that's like it's scary i don't know when to launch a business, I'm working for someone else.

18:31If you can figure out how to get an MVP, get it in people's hands, and they're like, wait, it's actually good. And they come to you like that's when you know that it's time to kind of take that chance on yourself. Yeah, that's absolutely.

18:50Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

19:20Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

19:54so how were you thinking about you know because clean means so many things and there's so many kind of clean washed and green washed brands and your brand is one of the very few brands that is extremely high performance and also clean to the goop standards which is we have a very very strict portal you know people have to pass through so i'm just curious like how do you how did you think about what ingredients were going to be left outside of the formulations? What was clean to you? Like, what does it mean to you? Yeah. And it's so funny. One of the reasons I've always looked to goop and I, I authentically mean this as a customer first is because I know that it's not at the expense of performance.

20:34Like you're not just going to use things if they're clean. I think especially with hair, like if you try something clean and it does not work, you're like, I'm going back to the thing that works. And believe me, like over the course of doing this at Goop and guinea pigging a million products, like I couldn't believe some of the shit I put in my hair. I was like, you know, clay, like not rinsing out. I was like, what is this? This is like not a conditioner. Totally. You get like a little more leeway with like a mascara, you know, it's like, if your hair is not looking good, you're like, I'm out.

21:07So no, it honestly, it was a trip to Japan that I took in 2019 that kind of changed my life. I went to a head spa there and they, I know it was, I dream about it all the time. They used Tsubaki seed oil. And it was the first time that I had an oil in my hair that didn't weigh my hair down. Cause I have a good amount of hair, but it's fine. And that kind of opened a rabbit hole of like, what are they using in Japan? What are the ingredients here? Even with something like our dry shampoo, we use ground Japanese persimmon powder. Like the story of the dry shampoo I can go on about, I used to use like the Laura Mercier translucent powder for my hair.

21:45And I was like, how come I'm still using aerosol? You know, it's like so many things like that. To me, it's never at the expense of performance, but it's really important that, you know, sulfates aren't great, right? Like they put sulfates in our shampoos in like the seventies and eighties to create that like, you know, 90s shampoo commercial lather but it's just like it really does strip at your hair over time you know and I think for me it's like it's actually more about what's in it than what is not in it but I'm so lucky to work with I mean you know the product development process like we work with chemists outside of our contract manufacturers so we're able to really formulate products where there's a level of innovation otherwise if you go to a contract manufacturer you might not always be getting like the thing that you're kind of getting stuff that's off the shelf with different marketing levels of stuff.

22:33But like, we really go deep and have a whole group of chemists that were like, let's reimagine dry shampoo, let's reimagine hair gel, like things that were loose, like mousse is terrible. It's like crunchy, like all of this stuff. So, you know, it's really hard, but I will never make something that isn't actually good because I know myself included would rather go to the thing that actually works. Yep, absolutely. I subscribe to the same framework 100%. So you've done something really interesting, which is you've been able to kind of imbue these products with a luxury feeling. Like these are products that feel special, They feel, I mean, I don't know if that's by design, but, you know, they smell so good and the packaging is so beautiful.

23:29And so it's like this very beautiful luxury experience, but it also, it feels like a little bit of a wellness ritual, kind of how you've done it all. So was that super intentional? How did you think about imbuing that feeling into a physical product? yeah thank you first of all like the highest compliment because that's actually the core mission the whole thing is like I obviously would love for people to use crown affair but I know people might use what's in the shower what they've known forever the truth is the goal is to change the way that people are even thinking about taking care of their hair and the way to do that is to make it something that you're excited about right I think so much of the industry has been about fixing, taming, managing, like this really aggressive language.

24:21And to me, it's like, I don't know if you have something new, even if you get like a new workout outfit, you're like, kind of excited to go to the workout. And it's like, when you see this thing in your shower, when you see the comb over there, when you see the clips, when you see the dry shampoo, you're like, Oh, this is actually something I'm excited to do. And it actually makes you take care of your hair in a daily way. And that's the goal is like the daily things that add up. and you know this, whether it's meditation or journaling or brushing your hair at night, it's like the rituals that you have are only like the habits that you have are only as good as the ones that you do.

24:55So like, how do you make it something beautiful to remind yourself like, oh, I'm going to do this tonight and set yourself up for success. So nice. So nice. So I want to go back to something you touched on before, which is you talked about building with feminine energy. And I think we're very, very alike in this way, like to sort of lead out of a more female archetypal role than male. And so can you tell me a little bit about your leading philosophy and the sort of care over competition? You know, when I think about myself and how I like, I, I definitely lead out of a very like archetypal feminine mold, right.

25:48It was like a lot of creativity and collaboration and communication, all the C's. And then, and sometimes in my past too much so, but that's, that's a podcast for another day. But we, I would love to hear about how you crafted this leadership. What did you learn about how you wanted to kind of carve this unique path for yourself as a leader? Yeah. First of all, as I said earlier, like so much of what I learned in the first decade of my career was a lot of what not to do. And I just don't think there was conversation around this before of like, you know, so much of growing quickly is unfortunately about creating an environment of fear and I know this from experience and having been a team member an employee that like it gets the work done but it doesn't actually create a sustainable environment of people who and you know when something is done out of like anything in your life when you do something out of fear like you have to do it versus like from a place of play and joy and creativity and so much of what I'm trying to prove out with crown affair beyond like the business itself is like can you create a successful business and also like take care of people and like put people first and put yourself first and honestly it's a gift but I have been doing I mean so much therapy so much coaching I have an amazing coach who I recently did brain spotting EMDR therapy with she she coaches me and my CEO Alain, we've been with her for two years.

27:27And it's really just, I mean, in a weird way to say this, I think the pandemic has been, there's been a lot of positive that has come out of this time in the sense of like, A, putting people first, B, as a leader, like when I show up with my team and I'm present with them in person, because we're a hybrid culture, like I'm so locked in and present and I'm really mindful of how I communicate. And I think especially early days when we were all home. I'm like, I remember like being in the office, right. With a founder and it's like positive, negative, you like feel their energy. And I'm now able to like compose myself and be at home and like show up in a way that's extraordinarily graceful.

28:07And candidly, like it took a really long time to authentically trust. I think it's really easy to be like, I trust you, but like you are what you do, not what you say you do. And I've been really fortunate to have the support that I've needed to not, I call it like no splashing. It's like, just let the thing live. And sometimes as we all know, like the silence is more powerful. And like, if you let things kind of just live for a minute and, but it's, oh my gosh, so much work. And I think we're in such a competitive industry too, especially with beauty. It's like really easy to look around and like, especially as a founder, like see what someone else is doing or what opportunity they got or whatever this is but it's like blinders up I call it the triangle it's me our chemist that I mentioned and then Elaine and like the three of us just have totally different superpowers and it's it's really hard it's not what I it's not the cultures I grew up in it's not the cultures any of us grew up in which is that masculine energy but yeah I don't know you gotta rest in order to keep going especially like if you're building something that's true to you and you want to do this for a long time, if you don't, like Mondays now, I don't even think Mondays are a real day.

29:20Like I used to be so intense on Mondays and be like, I have so much to do. And I'm like, Diana, whatever you managed to do today is enough. And that's like a whole new rewiring, you know? I don't know if you feel that way. How is that for you? I mean, you're doing so many things and running so many businesses. it's it's particularly challenging right now only because I have this film coming out at the end of the year and it's the first time I've done that in a really long time and there's it's like kind of a full-time job to release a film you know to support a film and its release so you know I'm doing the best I can.

30:00But I think I, you know, we've worked really hard this year at Goop to kind of clean up these sort of legacy broken processes and to sort of really set ourselves up for growth. And, you know, like we did a big Shopify migration and, you know, just kind of like getting that. Thank you. Yeah. It's a big deal for those out there listening. This is a major deal. I mean, it was a total fucking nightmare. Our tech stack before was like, it was nuts. And it had been just like one thing built on top of another, you know, for 10 years. And so we decided to just rip the bandaid off and go to Shopify, which has been incredible.