Dianna Cohen, founder of Crown Affair, and creator of the "Take Your Time" podcast and Substack, Photo Credit: Julia Kokernak

Photo Credit: Julia Kokernak

“Take Your Time” started as a tagline.

Today, it serves more as the emotional engine powering Crown Affair’s expanding universe, shaping everything from the haircare brand’s product development and packaging to editorial storytelling and now, podcasting.

At a moment when nearly every founder is chasing speed, scale and optimization, founder Dianna Cohen built one of beauty’s most resonant brands around the opposite idea: slowing down.

And ironically, that philosophy may be fueling the company’s biggest momentum yet.

Last week, Crown Affair announced the close of its Series C funding round led by Stride Consumer Partners while simultaneously announcing the launch of a new podcast aptly titled, Take Your Time.

That idea — that slower, more intentional brand-building can still scale — feels increasingly rare right now. Especially in beauty, where brands are often rewarded for constant launches and rapid trend cycles.

“I’ve often thought about getting ‘Take Your Time’ tattooed on me,” Cohen shares with me over Zoom. “As a reminder to slow down, work with intention and luxuriate in rituals, whatever that looks like for you,” Cohen says.

Long before Take Your Time became the name of Cohen’s podcast and Substack, the phrase was deeply embedded into Crown Affair’s DNA.

“When we were building out the brand universe, it was so clear that time is the core pillar of Crown Affair,” Cohen says. “Time is a way to care for yourself, giving yourself that permission slip to slow down."

“Yes, there are product promises around clean and sustainable, and there are formulation philosophies and things that are really essential for the products to be impactful and effective," she continues. "But it always came back to time.”

Eventually, however, the phrase evolved beyond self-care ritual into something more practical.

“We soon realized that the subtext was actually ‘take your time back,’” Cohen says. “Especially for our customer — busy women, moms, people who are like, ‘I actually do need one more day before wash day.’”

At this point, Take Your Time has evolved far beyond a marketing line. It now shapes not only the brand’s products, but also its editorial and content ecosystem.

The timing of the podcast also reflects a broader cultural shift.

After 2020, culture entered what felt like a podcast boom. Suddenly, everyone had a microphone, a studio setup and a show. But as the media landscape evolved, Cohen noticed audiences gravitating toward something deeper: long-form conversations, newsletters, slower media, and more intentional forms of connection.

I asked Cohen what cues made her realize audiences were craving something deeper.

“The first sign was honestly whenever I’m on someone else’s podcast,” Cohen says. “The amount of responses I’d get — DMs a year later saying, ‘I listened to you on so-and-so’s podcast and thought this was so profound,’ or ‘Can you expand more on that resource or coach you mentioned?’”

“There are plenty of places to hear how someone built a company, but very few places to hear how someone built a life,” she adds.

The trajectory is also a contrast from the typical founder-media playbook. In recent years, many founders first launched podcasts before eventually expanding into newsletters and community platforms.

Cohen took the opposite route.

Long before launching the podcast, she had already cultivated a deeply engaged audience through her Substack, also titled Take Your Time. It has become one of the clearest examples of a beauty founder successfully building an editorial world around a brand. (At the time of publishing, it had amassed more than 17,000 subscribers.)

This makes the podcast feel less like a growth tactic and more like a natural extension of a relationship that already existed.

As content ecosystems have become increasingly saturated, audiences appear to be gravitating toward more direct engagement formats that feel more intimate, intentional and community-driven.

That same philosophy also led Cohen to launch an Artist’s Way group on Substack inspired by the seminal book by Julia Cameron. While “community” has become one of branding’s most overused buzzwords, Cohen approached the experience less like a marketing initiative and more like an actual practice.

Rather than simply talking about creativity and mindfulness, she invited her Substack subscribers to move through the book together, week by week for 12 weeks, almost like a modern creative book club.

“The Artist’s Way changed my mornings,” Cohen says. “It taught me how to go inward and slow down.”

That realization became one of the driving forces behind the podcast, which moves beyond traditional founder storytelling into broader conversations around creativity, identity and becoming.

“Whether it’s stars from SNL, Cassandra Grey, or my mentor Ara Katz, I’ve heard them talk about business before,” Cohen says. “But I want people to sit and listen and actually get information that goes a couple layers deeper than the ‘how’ story or the ‘what’ story — but the ‘why’ beneath it.”

While many founders feel pressure to constantly “build in public” through short-form videos and rapid-fire content, Cohen gravitates toward writing, reflection, mood boards, and long-form storytelling.

That doesn’t mean Crown Affair ignores short-form content altogether. Some of the brand’s TikToks — particularly tutorials centered around air-drying hair — have performed exceptionally well. But even those more viral moments still tie back to the brand’s larger philosophy of ease, ritual and intentionality.

“I don’t know if the day will come where I’m a founder doing trending dances,” Cohen says, laughing. “That could absolutely be a way to build community, but for me, it’s about conversations.”

“I think community can very easily get lost with influence,” she says. “It’s not just how many people you reach, it’s how many people you move. That is my metric.”

Ironically, that slower and more intentional philosophy may be exactly what helped Crown Affair scale.

The company recently completed its all-door expansion into Sephora while simultaneously closing its latest funding round and continuing to grow its product assortment, with its newest product, The Radiance Hair Oil, launching this week.

But Crown Affair’s current chapter also reflects a less-discussed founder skill: knowing when to hand over operational leadership in order to fully step into your own zone of genius.

Cohen is quick to credit much of the company’s operational growth to CEO Elaine Choi, who has worked alongside her since day one. Choi stepping into the CEO role, Cohen says, “allowed me to focus on the things that are my superpowers.”

That tension — slowing down while simultaneously scaling up — is perhaps what makes Crown Affair’s current chapter so compelling.

“I’m able to sustain and run this marathon because of the ‘Take Your Time’ philosophy,” Cohen says. “You have to expect that there’s going to be moments that you’re sprinting. This is intense and there’s a lot going on. But then you have to really check yourself, because you cannot keep sprinting after that.”