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August 6, 2025 56 mins

Dianna Cohen, founder and ex-CEO of Crown Affair, joins Maggie Sellers to reflect on what it took to build the premium beauty brand redefining clean luxury in haircare and the future of founders as creators. 


What You'll Hear In This Episode:

  • From working with Emily Weiss to building her own brand—Dianna’s evolution from beauty insider to beauty founder of Crown Affair
  • The early days of Crown Affair and how her time at Away shaped her approach to brand strategy and storytelling
  • Why Dianna stepped down as CEO—what she's doing at the brand now and how it unlocked a new creative chapter
  • The clean luxury playbook: how she built Crown Affair into a category-defining brand
  • Raising $15M and scaling to $20M in revenue—without compromising brand integrity
  • Maggie’s take on the identity shifts every founder faces—and the freedom of letting go
  • Dianna’s blueprint for building brands that feel personal, purposeful, and powerful



This episode is sponsored by:

⁠⁠Pique⁠⁠ - Use this link for 20% off.

Frate Returns - Tell them HSR sent you and learn more here



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Follow Maggie:

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Follow Dianna:

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Substack: Take Your Time⁠


Crown Affair 

Website

Sephora



More from Hot Smart Rich:


The Hot Smart Rich Money Mindset 

Merch



This episode is produced by HSR Media, a division of Creative MES LLC, with support from Vandana Ravi.



Hot Smart Rich is your place to hear unfiltered conversations with the people shaping the future of culture, creators, startups and community. Hosted by Maggie Sellers, investor and media powerhouse, and guests breaking the mold, you’ll get the real deal as it relates to navigating the startup fast lane, leveling up your life or becoming your hottest, smartest, richest self. New episodes weekly on Wednesdays.

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Maggie Sellers

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