The trophy cabinet of Diana Richardson tells a story of excellence, innovation, and relentless pursuit of growth. From being recognized for Excellence in Business Strategy 2024 by Dubai’s Impact Media, being honored as the Global Best Business Mentor 2024, to being inducted into the prestigious IAOTP Hall of Fame as the Top Beauty and Wellbeing Entrepreneur of the Year 2024, has proven that Diana has it all and can do it all. She remains a role model to young and developing business people especially those in the beauty niche.
Today, it is our pleasure to interview Diana Richardson to get familiar with the story of her successful career path, and the many awards she has earned throughout her work.
1. Your trophy cabinet is quite impressive. To what extent have these different honors influenced your business strategies and your career development in the past years?
Thank you so much, it really is an honor to be recognized by over 100 different awarding bodies and publications. It hasn’t happened overnight though, there have been decades of lessons, learning opportunities, obstacles, and hurdles that have had to be overcome along the way.
It’s the difficulties that have shaped the strategies and developments more than the successful moments throughout my career. I’ve had to start from zero on several occasions and with each new chapter there are new lessons, strategies, and opportunities and as the course changes the business roadmap continues to evolve.
2. Can you share the key moments or decisions that led to your induction into the IAOTP Hall of Fame?
I’m not sure about one aspect that has opened this opportunity for recognition. I believe it’s an accumulation of many moments that create the journey enabling me to share my story with others.
Philanthropy giving back to the community and charitable contributions have played a big role in my career. I have run 13 international marathons, helped organize community fairs, fetes, and charity balls along with supporting hundreds of raffles and auctions over the years helping to raise hundreds of thousands for local, national, and international charities.
Teaching, and sharing my business acumen, lessons, and learning opportunities has enabled me to help hundreds of students, entrepreneurs, and individuals empower themselves with education and elevate their businesses and skill sets in the beauty and wellbeing industry.
Having started, scaled, and sold several businesses of various sizes has taught me many lessons along the way, along with formulating my own products, producing a podcast, and business and beauty blogs that have helped inspire many women over the years.
3. It is amazing to see your entrepreneurial journey and how successfully you have been running these multiple businesses. Being an eight-time Founder and CEO, what is the most important thing that you’ve learned about entrepreneurship in the beauty industry?
TIME and HEALTH are the two things that are priceless and we can’t get back.
I’ve realized the importance of how we invest our time in ourselves, our families, our education, and our businesses. Health is a luxury, a lesson I’ve learned over the years, and the importance of ensuring that we promote positive practice for ourselves and our clients.
We all have CHOICES:
- Choose to do more
- Hard work
- Outshine with attitude
- Integral discipline
- Choose the extra mile
- Excellence
The Harvard Business Review states that every day ‘we have 33,000 – 35,000 decisions’ to make including what to eat, wear, say, do, and how we choose to do it. We can design our own destiny.
4. The use of multiple social accounts is one of the best online strategies because it covers all major social platforms. In what ways do you employ your website and social media as well as your podcast to empower and encourage fellow business-minded individuals?
Omni-channel marketing is amazing! We are so lucky to have the opportunity to create content at our finger tips. It also enables us to connect globally with other executives and entrepreneurs, with this reach the opportunities are abundant!
Online platforms are a great tool to stay on top of mind with our clients, and to engage with them daily and weekly between their monthly visits for professional treatments. The use of websites and online booking systems helps business owners reduce no-shows, saves them money and time along with helping to provide a better client service through email marketing, following up messaging and aftercare reminders. Our social media, podcast, and business blogs are all focused on adding value to our community through supporting them in designing their destiny.
Discover their USP – unique selling point
Establish their brand
Strong marketing strategy
Time management
Inspiration and innovation
Next level – elevating entrepreneurs
You got this – success mindset shifts
5. The beauty industry is very dynamic with constant changes and shifts. In such a dynamic industry, do you have any secrets for sustaining innovation?
Success secrets are to keep the strategy simple. Simplicity enables your team to stay focused on their goals and the company’s goals. One of the things I love about our industry is that it is so innovative with new concepts, ideas, treatments, and tools being launched regularly. This keeps our topics and tasks fresh, the secret to sustaining innovation is establishing a strong business foundation with an Action Plan (accountability, cadence, and time) with this set the changes and shifts are much easier to navigate.
