Not Alone

We live in a world that has made being a founder a whole personality: move fast, be visible, build in public, become the brand, and make sure everyone sees how hard you're working. Dianna Cohen built Crown Affair by doing almost the exact opposite.

Crown Affair is at Sephora and Goop, with Gwyneth Paltrow as one of its earliest investors. But this conversation isn't really about beauty. Dianna built her company around three words: "take your time". And a few years into building it, she made a decision most founders would struggle to make: she stepped down as CEO after realizing her nervous system wasn't built for the way she'd been leading.

We talk about why slowness can be a strategy, what it means to lead from feminine energy, the difference between being an operator and a creator, and why creativity and intuition deserve a place in leadership conversations. Dianna also shares what burnout taught her, why our bodies often know things before our brains do, and the line I haven't stopped thinking about: when everything in you says push harder, sometimes the answer is to do the opposite.

This episode is for anyone tired of moving at everyone else's pace, and wondering whether success really has to cost you your sanity.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Dianna:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diannacohen
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@diannacohen
Crown Affair: https://crownaffair.com/
Take Your Time Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/take-your-time/id1896516883
Substack: https://dianna.substack.com/

Follow Valeria:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod
Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/

Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
2:02 Meeting in Miami four years ago
3:31 Building a world around taking your time
5:13 Time is the ultimate luxury
6:25 It started from a Google Doc
9:02 Getting into beauty and why ignorance is bliss
10:39 Two years of nights and weekends before going all in
12:45 The bathroom as a sacred space
14:11 Is slowness actually a strategy?
16:48 What she gained by going slow
17:43 Stepping down as CEO
19:27 Couples therapy for a founder and operator
20:04 The nervous system that wasn't built for the way she was leading
20:32 Do the opposite of what your brain is telling you
20:52 “Happy people don't start companies”
22:36 Gary and Valeria's own sabotage
26:33 Operator vs. creator
27:44 The fear of being seen
30:35 Why the CMO should be the last hire
32:46 Creativity and feminine energy in a masculine industry
35:23 What feminine energy looks like in practice
36:04 Intuition is a hard skill
39:30 Playing in the sandbox again
42:28 Why isn't creativity in leadership books?
45:15 The Artist's Way
48:53 Trust vs. faith
52:04 Why we don't talk enough about the nervous system
52:55 Our bodies speak a different language than our brains
55:36 Growing up in a household that didn't allow crying
58:14 Scarcity and learning to receive abundance
1:00:22 Success with emptiness inside
1:03:03 Lessons from iconic women she worked for
1:05:40 Founder culture and cosplaying CEO
1:07:18 Expert, creator, celebrity and product brands
1:08:57 The triangle of delusion
1:11:37 How many people you move—not how many you reach
1:12:00 Why she'll never build in public
1:16:33 The two-phone trick for Instagram addiction
1:19:37 What women should understand about creativity
1:21:30 Rapid fire
1:25:30 What women aren't saying out loud

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A while back I posted something about my kids, and a woman sent me a DM that has been quietly sitting in the back of my mind ever since. She said, it feels like you resisted motherhood for a while and now you've fully embraced it. What changed? And here's the honest thing. If that message had landed in my inbox two years ago, it would have sent me straight down a dark hole. It would have fed the mom guilt so well I'd have needed months to climb back out.

So this one is me finally answering her, out loud. I had a very specific image of what motherhood would look like, and when it actually arrived, it looked nothing like the picture. I was exhausted. I was, if I'm being honest, bored. And I felt so much guilt for even thinking that, because everyone around me seemed to be glowing in exactly the season that was making me feel lost. I thought I was failing at the one thing I was supposed to be built for.

What I've come to understand is the thing I most needed someone to tell me back then. Loving your children and feeling fully lit up by every single stage of raising them are two different things. You can adore your kids and still not feel like yourself in the baby years. That doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you a human one. And some of us, it turns out, come alive in the chapters that come later.

This is for the woman quietly wondering why she doesn't feel the way she was told she would. The one comparing her insides to everyone else's highlight reel. The one grieving the version of herself she was before, not knowing the best is still ahead of her. Nobody warns you that some seasons of motherhood just won't feel like yours. I'm telling you now, so you don't spend two years thinking something is wrong with you. There isn't. You're not alone.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Valeria:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod
Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/

Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/7358472
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
0:00 The DM that made me stop
0:52 Two years ago this would have wrecked me
1:37 The very specific image of motherhood I had
2:22 When it arrived, it looked nothing like the picture
2:43 I was so bored, and so guilty for feeling it
3:07 The woman I was before the kids
4:19 Trying, and failing, to find one clear memory
5:03 Feeling like I was failing at what I was built for
5:30 Everyone else looked like they were in their flow
6:20 What the curated feed does to mothers
6:44 The borrowed guilt from a script
7:09 But what about the rest of us?
7:32 Loving your kids and being lit up by every stage are two different things
7:55 What shifted with an eleven and a seven-year-old
8:19 The conversations are my favorite part now
9:08 The expectations I grew up carrying
10:38 Not every woman is built for the baby chapter
11:08 To the woman who doesn't feel it yet
11:31 It doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're human
12:14 The comparison loosened its grip
12:36 Sometimes your best motherhood years come later
13:00 You are not alone

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There are people you meet once and think about for years. Codie Sanchez is one of mine. She is the founder of Contrarian Thinking, a Forbes 2026 Top Creator, and one of the most powerful voices in business on the internet, the rare person in her world who says the quiet part out loud instead of selling you the highlight reel. A New York Times bestseller with a nine-figure portfolio of businesses most people will never see the inside of, and a way of talking that makes you sit up straight.

So I asked her the thing I actually wanted to know. What's the most dishonest part of the entrepreneurship dream we're all being sold? And she did not flinch. We get into why most business owners don't run their businesses, their businesses run them. Why the thing you build to give you freedom so often ends up with you by the throat. The vacation test that Gary and I failed miserably. And her whole argument, the one behind her new book Own or Be Owned, that being needed is not the same thing as being free, and most of us confuse the two until it's very expensive to learn the difference.

But this one got personal fast, because Codie is about to become a mother for the first time, at the exact moment she's releasing the biggest work of her career. So we talked about what happens to a woman who built the whole machine when she has to evolve into a different woman for the next chapter. Running a business with your husband. Softness and power, and how they actually meet in leadership. Whether we even want it all, or whether we've just never been asked what we actually want.

This is for the woman who is burned out, or tired, or quietly talked herself out of starting the thing. The one who suspects most of what she sees online is a little bit fake, and is right. Codie is proof you can build the business and still have the life, but only if you're honest with yourself about which life that is first. This is Codie Sanchez.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Codie:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct
BigDeal podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bigdeal/id1736593333
Preorder her book, Own or Be Owned: https://codiesanchez.com/book/

Follow Valeria:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod
Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/
Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/7214312
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
3:00 Round two, and a whole new chapter
5:00 Should you even become an owner?
6:00 Everybody can build a $10 business, but should they
9:19 The most dishonest part of the entrepreneurship dream
10:30 Selling a dream that's missing all the context
12:36 The questions nobody asks before they start
13:46 The price of the visibility
14:50 What do you actually want, though
16:00 The first million is the hardest
18:30 The martyr trap
21:03 Profit and revenue, not vanity metrics
24:11 Everybody's doing the most
25:19 Getting your team invested and leveraged
28:00 I'm not happy, and I'm the one who built this
30:27 Being needed is not the same as being free
33:10 What women in particular have to unlearn
35:30 Knowing what your person actually wants
36:38 The asset nobody wants to buy
39:00 What's my real hourly wage?
42:53 This is our era, ladies
44:00 The vacation test, which Gary and I failed
46:23 It won't work if you want different things
47:28 The moment she realized she had to evolve
48:51 Fresh flowers, and building a company you want to be in
50:55 Creating something from nothing
52:17 A world builder
55:00 What if you want something different now
58:07 Running a business, and a marriage, at the same time
1:00:44 The bargain you don't want to make
1:02:44 We're more capable than we're told
1:03:38 It's okay to say you want less, too
1:06:15 Softness and power in leadership
1:08:02 Buy or build?
1:09:28 Time is the real currency
1:11:00 Rapid fire

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At thirty-nine, Cat Pierce had no marriage, no career, no baby, and no plan. If you did the math on her life the way we're all quietly taught to, she was failing. The music money was gone. The marriage was over. She had never been the one left before, and suddenly she was. And then she said the thing that made me put my pen down. Underneath all of it, she felt a flicker of freedom. Because for the first time she could admit she wasn't fulfilled, and now she got to build the life she actually wanted.

I found Cat the way half the internet did, one of those videos where her whole inner monologue plays across her face without a word, and I've been a little mesmerized ever since. I wanted to know what she was drinking. Turns out the answer is a life she made twice. First act: signed at nineteen, fifteen years on the road with her sister, opening for Coldplay and Elton John, writing the song that became the sound of an entire generation. Second act, the one that got me: a beauty line she started while trying to conceive, a tarot deck she drew by hand and published, a New York Times feature, a memoir, and a daughter she had at forty-four with donor eggs and a husband she called in by writing him down on a list.

None of it happened on the timeline she thought she was failing. That's the whole thing. We get into the rockstar years and what fifteen years of needing to be seen quietly did to her. The collapse, and the strange grace that grew out of it. Whether she believes we're all a little bit witches. And the line I keep repeating to every woman I know: you can miss every timeline you ever set for yourself and still land somewhere better than the place you were aiming.

This is for the woman who watches everyone else hit the milestones and keeps quietly moving her own goalposts back. The one grieving a version of her life that never showed up, not yet realizing a completely different one already did. You are not behind. You are not late. You're just early to a life you haven't met yet. This is Cat Pierce.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

FOLLOW CAT

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/iamcatdog

Omen Beauty on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/omenbycatpierce

Omen Beauty + The Omen Oracle Deck:
https://omenbycatpierce.com/

FOLLOW VALERIA

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

FOLLOW NOT ALONE

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod

Website:
https://www.notalonepod.com/

Shop Valeria’s look from this episode:
https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/7077651

Amazon Storefront:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

02:16 The timeline every woman is scared of
03:11 The video where her inner talk showed up on her face
05:23 Leno, Letterman, and the rockstar years
06:10 From nineteen to her mid-thirties
07:00 What the industry taught her about being seen
09:00 Learning to read a room and grab a crowd
11:18 Saying, “That’s actually not what I want”
13:07 Being asked to show up as herself now
15:44 We’re constantly healing
17:13 The breakup that broke her open
19:22 Thirty-nine, and everything gone at once
20:54 No one is coming to save you
22:00 The maternal instinct she didn’t expect
24:46 A real blow to the ego
25:53 Drawing the first tarot cards to survive it
27:36 Feeling like she had failed
28:47 Freezing eggs and the hot topic nobody says out loud
31:00 Writing it down and calling him in with a list
35:23 You can miss the timeline and still find a way
36:01 Starting Omen Beauty while trying to conceive
37:43 The new dream and the donor egg decision
40:00 What it actually costs, financially and otherwise
42:21 Growing into a different kind of mother
44:16 Happy with one and the sister comparison
45:17 The frequency, the knowing, and trusting herself
49:00 Tarot, oracle decks, and where the art came from
51:30 You need the dark soil to grow something good
53:58 Do you believe we’re all witches?
55:30 We have more power than we’re taught
58:19 Learning to be by yourself
59:22 The Disney story we were sold
01:00:17 Shockingly low maintenance
01:04:30 The memoir and connecting all the dots
01:08:46 To the woman who’s single, tired, and sure she’s behind
01:11:27 You might just be recharging
01:13:06 Rapid fire

DISCLAIMER

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a complicated relationship with parenting experts. I usually leave them feeling worse than when I walked in, one more list of things I'm apparently getting wrong. So I sat down with Dr. Becky Kennedy, the most trusted parenting expert in the country, half braced to feel like a failure again. Instead I said the quiet thing out loud. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And the woman who wrote the book looked at me and said, me too. We're the first generation of parents in a world that never turns off.

Then she told me the only thing she'll call herself an expert in is imperfect parenting, and something in me unclenched for the first time in about a year. Because here's what nobody hands you with the baby: the exhaustion isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Sometimes it's just proof of how much you're carrying. We get into all of it. Why our kids' feelings run the entire household now, and how that even happened. Whether we're performing motherhood for an invisible audience instead of just living it. And the line I genuinely cannot shake, that optimizing for our kids' happiness is the fastest way to optimize their anxiety.

She also asked me one question I was too embarrassed to answer honestly. How often are you just around your kid, quiet, not on your phone? Reader, I did not have a good answer. Somewhere in there I had to admit I don't fully know what I'm doing as a mother, and she let me off the hook in the best way: nobody does. The whole conversation kept landing on two words. Do less. So much less. I cannot tell you how good it felt to be told that by the one person allowed to say it.

This is for the mom who reads every book, holds every boundary, names every feeling before it becomes a tantrum, and still lies awake certain she's the one getting it wrong. You're not. You're just tired, and you've been sold a version of good mom that was never real. This is Dr. Becky Kennedy, and I left this one lighter than I've felt in a long time.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

FOLLOW DR. BECKY

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside

Good Inside Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/goodinside

Good Inside with Dr. Becky Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671

Good Inside:
https://www.goodinside.com/

FOLLOW VALERIA

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

FOLLOW NOT ALONE

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod

Podcast:
https://www.notalonepod.com/

SHOP

Shop my look from this episode:
https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/6585812

Amazon Storefront:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

2:00 My tricky relationship with parenting experts

3:30 I'm sick of it, and I don't think doing it all made me a better mom

6:10 When did being a good mom mean never stopping?

9:05 Why we hear a mother want less and think she loves them less

11:40 She's tired too, even as the one everyone runs to

13:30 Around your kids versus actually with them

16:20 The performance of motherhood

18:30 Optimizing for their comfort at every moment

21:15 Happy kids don't become happy adults the way we think

24:00 Optimizing for happiness optimizes for anxiety

26:30 The two words that change everything: I believe you

29:03 Why fixing their feelings backfires

33:10 The death of the tiger mom

36:40 The childhoods we came from

40:00 Raising them entitled without meaning to

42:23 Stop negotiating the same thing every day

45:30 A firm boundary and real empathy at the same time

49:15 What she actually does at seven in the morning

52:00 She doesn't parent like Dr. Becky either

55:30 Do less. So much less

58:42 You yell, I yell, and then we repair

1:02:41 Repair is the whole thing

1:05:30 This isn't really a parenting book

1:07:05 Perfect parenting was never the goal

DISCLAIMER

The links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices