Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is CEO of Diversity in Luxury, Luxury Weekly News Podcast and Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium, Elizabeth Solaru. Elizabeth is a luxury business consultant, author, and a world-renowned cake artist. Her clientele is high-end and royal now but she didn’t start in luxury, she started as a microbiologist and headhunter. Sara Sheehan learns all about how Elizabeth started her companies, found such wealthy clients, and the advice she offers in her new book, The LUXPreneur.
While working as a headhunter, Elizabeth relieved stress by reconnecting with her early love of baking and indulging in cake-making as a side hustle. When business in London collapsed in 2008, she decided to launch her luxury cake business instead of going back to headhunting. It was through cold-calling that she connected with a planner who worked for the late Queen Elizabeth, and the Queen became Elizabeth’s first high-end order. How Elizabeth built from that first order and scaled out into celebrities, other royals, and high-end brands, is her story of hard work, determination, and taking the lessons learned along the way to heart.
Sara Sheehan and Elizabeth Solaru discuss creative ways to scale businesses and why every entrepreneur needs a financial planner they trust deeply. Elizabeth shares the five pillars of building a business brand that she writes extensively about in her book: storytelling, perception, customer experience, having an incredible product, and vision. She speaks on the importance of diversity, specifically diversity in luxury, and how writing her book has prompted her to dream about something big to do with books in the future. Sara Sheehan’s talk with Elizabeth Solaru is a fascinating glimpse into how luxury brands work, how to reach them, and practical advice that business owners need to know.
About Elizabeth Solaru:
Elizabeth started her first multi-award winning business with a secondhand mixer and £40 in the bank. Over the years, through creativity and sheer hard work, she built it up into a world-renowned business brand called ELIZABETH’S CAKE EMPORIUM.
She serves Ultra High Networth Individuals (UHNWI) and royal families in a world of discretion, confidentiality, press embargos, and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).
Elizabeth has also collaborated with many luxury brands including Harrods, Oscar de la Renta, and Fendi. She has been called a pioneer in the industry, and her work has appeared in Vogue, Tatler, HELLO!, Martha Stewart, Wedluxe, and The Telegraph.
There have also been personal appearances on the BBC, Sky Living’s “Who’d be a Billionaire” and she has consulted on films such as Sony Columbia’s “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Contact Elizabeth Solaru:
- Website: ElizabethSolaru.com
- Website: LuxuryBusinessEmporium.com
- Elizabeth Solaru on LinkedIn
- “The LUXPreneur: How to start and build a successful luxury brand” by Elizabeth Solaru
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Transcript
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I’m joined by Elizabeth Solaru, CEO of Diversity in Luxury. Luxury Weekly News Podcast and Elizabeth’s Cake Emporium. Everything about Elizabeth’s expertise focuses on scaling businesses for the luxury market. She is an award-winning luxury business consultant, author, and world-renowned cake artist. As an expert microbiologist and headhunter, she began her luxury business journey as a celebrated cake artist, earning international acclaim for innovative designs and practical craftsmanship. Her clientele includes ultra-high-net-worth individuals and royalty. Her creative talent and business acumen led to a successful transition into luxury consulting, where she now advises brands on how to navigate the complexities of the luxury market. Her latest book, ‘The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand’ has been described as a blueprint for a luxury business and a must-read for those interested in working in the luxury industry. Elizabeth, I am so glad to welcome you to my podcast today.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:01:32] Thank you Sara. I’m really excited to be here.
Sara Sheehan: [00:01:36] Excellent, excellent. And so, Elizabeth, you have a really interesting focus, and I love the cake part as well. I want to make sure I comment on that because that is such a fine art in today’s world. First of all, Elizabeth, I would like to hear a little bit about your backstory and what led you to where you are today.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:02:05] Thank you, Sara. A little bit about me, I’m an ex-microbiologist, and I then went on to become a headhunter in the city, I remember working as a headhunter and then 18-hour days, very stressful. So to relieve stress, I started baking again. I’d always baked as a child, but I kind of dropped it over the years. So I started baking again, and my colleagues would make amazing comments about my cakes. And it was just something I did as a side hustle, but the one thing I did do though is, I remember I’d save up my money and come on holiday to America. One of the best chocolate schools is actually in Florida and run by Ewald Notter, and he used to do so many classes, and I’ll come and I’ll just take classes, take classes. So that went on for a while. And then 2008, the City of London kind of collapsed. We know what happened around the world. And then I lost my job and I got to a milestone birthday, and I said to myself, if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. So I decided to set up my cake company, and in order to get clients, I reverted back to what I usually did when I was a headhunter, which was make 100 cold calls a week. So I took the Yellow Pages, in those days Google wasn’t much of a thing. So I took the yellow pages, and then I called every planner in the yellow pages and one particular planner, the one that changed my life and moved me into the luxury business, happened to be the Queen’s cousin. So that’s the late Queen Elizabeth. It was her cousin.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:03:55] Her name was also Elizabeth, and I’m an Elizabeth. So I just said to her, I’m going to be in your area in the next few days, I’m happy to drop some samples. I dropped the samples and before I even got home, I got a call back to say, Lady Elizabeth would like to speak with you. And that’s how I got my first high-end order. So again, I did cakes for many years. I was able to do cakes for ultra-high net worth celebrities, flown out around the world. And then the pandemic hit. And when the pandemic hit, over the years, I’ve been asked to speak at several conferences and I just talk about the luxury world because those were my clients, and I assumed that everyone knew what I knew. And then during the pandemic, I gave so many talks online, and that kind of started the journey into becoming a luxury business consultant because many companies, especially small businesses, they wanted to know what to do. And I started giving advice and that began the other stage of my journey.
Sara Sheehan: [00:05:09] That is so very exciting. I love, love, love that your experience started with a royal client. That is just fabulous. Isn’t that exciting? I can only imagine how exciting that day was.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:05:29] Oh, absolutely. And thankfully I didn’t realize the implications right away. Thankfully, that came gradually because it wasn’t just the fact that she was a royal connection, it was the kind of person she was. She was extremely kind. She was one of the most hard-working women because she was the very first official party planner in the UK. She started her business in the 60s organizing debutante balls, and she was a person of integrity. And she gave me this amazing testimonial, which she didn’t have to, but it was a written testimonial. And she said to me, Elizabeth, you can use this in all your marketing. And that generosity, even nowadays is very rare. So I owe her a lot.
Sara Sheehan: [00:06:23] Yes. You cannot overestimate or underestimate the value of a wonderful testimonial and quote for sure. Having that kind of social proof absolutely propels business and is wonderful to have in marketing. And so, Elizabeth, share with me what lessons have you learned from building and scaling your business?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:06:49] I’ve learned so many lessons, in particular from failure. The first lesson that I learned was not going into things blind. So you need to get all your information together. You need to have what I call scenario planning. And also, another lesson I learned is that things take twice as long as you want them to take. You project 6 months, but the 6 months could be 18 months because there’s always going to be bumps in the road, unforeseen problems. Another lesson I learned is to get the right mentors in place. So people who’ve done it before, or people who are great at observing the pitfalls so they warn you ahead of time, you’re likely to run into x, y, z. And because you’re likely to run into x, y, z, I will suggest you do this. Such people are very rare. Also, another lesson I learned is you will run out of money at some point. So you need to start on the premise of having no money. So you get creative in ways in which you can scale and also make your financial person, your financial planner, they need to be your best friend. Because they are the ones who are going to, when you’re scenario planning, they’re the ones who would bring in that dose of reality. So those are some, I mean, I’ve learned so many lessons, but those are a few of the lessons.
Sara Sheehan: [00:08:23] Those are tremendous lessons. And the financial side, that one is a really great point. Because cash flow is one of those things, working capital actually makes or breaks many businesses. And so getting a strategic plan so that you can have working capital and be able to manage your own personal life in the meantime, this is absolutely huge. So I thank you so much for bringing that up. Can you share with us a little bit, Elizabeth, what the insight is on the blueprint for developing a luxury business that you’ve outlined in your book, ‘The Luxpreneur’.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:09:13] Thank you so much for that question. Because people, they often think, okay, what’s the secret sauce to setting up a luxury brand? And what’s the difference between an ordinary brand and a luxury brand? So in my book, I talk about five pillars. There are many pillars, but I bring out the best five and, putting money aside, the five for me are storytelling, perception, customer experience, having an incredible product. Now, the product doesn’t have to be the best, but it’s got to be good. And then the fifth one is around vision and longevity. You want to build something to last. You are not building based on a trend or based on the latest social media fads that are out there. Because if we look at the brands that have lasted and come through in terms of test of time, they were started, again, I say this as a one man band for the most part, one man businesses, one woman businesses, but they have lasted through the ages because of the vision. And there was always something in the DNA around storytelling and around changing something. So there was a little bit of innovation. If we take somebody like Coco Chanel, she, again, a little, little black dress. Little black suit. She hated the frou frou fashions. So she took a very humble material, a Jersey tweed, very humble, very practical material and then she elevated. If we take somebody like Louis Vuitton who was so poor, he walked barefoot all the way from his village to Paris, he noticed, again, it could be something you notice in your business or in the industry, he noticed that trunks that were built in those times, you couldn’t stack them. So he made trunks stackable. So again, there’s always something in the DNA. And for me, I always say it starts with you as a person.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:11:29] Apart from those five pillars, I’ve spoken about the different archetypes of people that set up luxury brands. For example, if you are a visionary, what kind of people do you need around you to support you, to work with you? If you are an artisan, I’m a bit of an artisan, and if I was left to my devices, all I would do is create cakes and not keep an eye on cost and not care about marketing. But these are things I’ve had to learn to either do myself, or have people around me who can keep an eye on the money, who can keep an eye on the right marketing and the right image projection. So those are some of the things that I feel are the basis of building a luxury brand. The last thing for me is around the client. The one thing that people don’t talk about often in the luxury industry is that there are different types of luxury clients. To give you an example, I use this example a lot because it’s a famous meme. You have King Charles, our current king, and you have Ozzy Osbourne. Both born in the same year, a month apart. They’ve both been married twice and they both live in a castle, and they’re both rich white men. Would you sell to them the same? No, you wouldn’t. Probably not, because they are different luxury buyer archetypes. They’re completely different. And those are some of the things I break down really, really well in my book, ‘The Luxpreneur’.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:15] That is fascinating. I love your five pillars of storytelling perception, customer experience, having an incredible product and vision, and longevity. Those are all really critical things, and I love that you’re using things that make a difference in propelling any business in a special light for the luxury market. So I feel like anyone could learn something from your book and what you’re doing. Elizabeth, what are some of your big goals and aspirations that you’re working on now?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:13:56] That’s a great question. Right now my book is my baby. So once that’s released, I’m doing a book tour, et cetera, et cetera. But I’ve got a follow-up book. The follow-up book for me is to focus more on the luxury client. And with that, I’m hoping to involve a behavioral psychologist. I’m hoping to involve a couple of high end clients who can, again, there’s nothing quite convincing like first-hand testimony, etc. So I’m thinking of a follow up to my book. And then, I’m also thinking of a possible program around my book, because usually when people do programs on luxury clients, it’s always one-dimensional. It’s not rounded. And people don’t look at the different types of luxury clients, so they tend to look at celebrities. But I can tell you this, a lot of my clients could possibly own-there could be a farmer back in the sticks to someone who is an aspirational or to someone who is a member of the royal family, and they are completely different. So that rounded experience that, multi-dimensional personalities are often missing from the narrative. And another big thing that I’m working on is diversity in the luxury sector. And I don’t mean diversity the way people talk about diversity. I’m talking about cultural diversity.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:15:38] So, for example, there are differences in attitude between North America and South America. In the United States, you’ve got your small town values, you’ve got your big city values. So that for me is diversity. The way I see it, there is something for me around, because right now, the luxury industry, the last year has been a bit rocky for the industry. And we need new innovation, we need new ideas, and quite frankly, we need to treat our clients better. You hear of brands where, in order to preserve exclusivity, there are some practices that are not quite great for the look of the industry, for lack of a better word. You have people on a waiting list. Being on a waiting list is not bad, but then you hear these stories of, you’ve got to buy certain things before you’re allowed to buy that thing. I go to a lot of luxury business forums, and if you want to improve as a business, I would suggest you bite the bullet and you go to these forums and you see what people are saying about your brand. Also, for me, the Diversity in Luxury Awards that I hold every year, we celebrate people in the luxury industry who are making a difference. So to give you an example, Chanel, when the CEO of Chanel was appointed a couple of years ago, the first thing she did was increase the fund. They have a fund for the education of girls, and the fund is about €20 million. She increased that from €20 million a year to €100 million. And that was her first-I mean, imagine that. Your first action as a CEO. That’s huge. So to me, there’s quite a number of luxury brands doing similar things, but nobody talks about it. I don’t know what it is about luxury brands, but they’re doing so much good, but they’re keeping it under wraps. If you take Cartier for example, they do galas and dinners for women in particular, women in shelters. But again, nobody talks about that. So those are some of the positive things that I would love to highlight moving forward.
Sara Sheehan: [00:18:11] I think that’s a wonderful thing to do and to show where people are giving back in the community. That is so incredibly valuable. And I really do appreciate the specificity by which that you’re sharing, hey, this is not just DEI, as everyone explains it today. It’s really about cultural differences globally, and this is such a powerful conversation. Having been involved with many global outsourcing engagements, where you’re taking part of someone’s business and giving it to a service provider somewhere else in the world, we have to be able to work together to make it work long-term. So cultural diversity and being able to navigate those relationships, that is going to add tremendous value in the business world, for sure. So thank you so much for all that you’re doing there. What does being a transformational thinker mean to you, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:19:26] I think part of my last answer actually, it fits really well with this question. So for me it’s about, first of all, transforming my own thinking before I can then put that onto a whole industry. It’s about, for me anyway, it’s about looking at things differently and also looking for the links, because people say one thing about me, that I’m able to link random things together. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I think my background as a scientist and then, me being a bit of an artist, you can take what’s seemingly random patterns and then put them together. So it’s about looking at your industry differently, looking at your business differently. And I do something I call an audit. So I do an audit of my thinking, and for that I may go off and do something that looks completely random. So to give you an example, this was way before it was a thing, I remember going off and doing a course in coding. It was C, the language is C. I was the only girl in a room full of almost 50 boys. I didn’t really understand much, but I just wanted to challenge my own thinking. Because in those days, having a personal PC was the dream. And I was like, I wanted to know what was inside the PC.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:56] Right. How did it work?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:20:58] How does it work? So again, it’s about putting yourself in what may seem to be uncomfortable, unconventional situations to challenge your own thinking and the way you view the world. To some people it could be travel, for example. And you notice that, in a particular market, there’s a way they stack things, or there’s a way they do things. Just noticing that and thinking, okay, how can we bring this into our world? How can we learn from what they’re doing? So those are some of the things that I feel makes me a transformational thinker. Because I always assume that, okay, the way I look at things is normal, but to some people that’s not normal. And that gets me excited because I want to see the world how they see the world from their perspective. And you don’t necessarily have to agree. You spoke early on about, if you’re taking a business, you’re trying to outsource and you’re trying to work with different cultures. You don’t necessarily have to agree with certain things, but there is a way of working that can transform your mind and their mind. So that, to me, is what a transformational thinker is.
Sara Sheehan: [00:22:20] That is fabulous. I love how you combined addressing mindset and growth all at the same time. That is very powerful, Elizabeth. Very, very powerful. What a fascinating conversation we’ve had today. Elizabeth, is there anything else that you’re working on that you would like to share with us?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:22:47] I would love, again, this is a dream. I’m working on something around, and it all ties in, I promise you. I’m working on something around the business of books because I’m a big, big reader. I love books, and one of my heroes is Dolly Parton because of what she’s doing with libraries. She has given millions of books away, and she actually pays everyone who graduates high school from her hometown. I think that is tremendous. So I’m doing something around building a knowledge bank, building knowledge that can transform minds, building capacity. Because as human beings, sometimes we forget that a lot of what we do is learned. A lot of what we do is conditioning or to be conditioned right. To be conditioned the right way, you need the knowledge and you need the right kind of knowledge. So for me I want to do something, again, around knowledge bank, around books, around economic inclusion. Because right now the model of the book industry is, you either independently publish or you belong to a publishing house. But with the publishing houses, I know a lot of people say, the model is out there, but for me, look at it this way. I see the model, the publishing houses can only take on so many people. They can only take on so many new. So there’s a lot of really good books slipping through the drains. So there is something there around, how can we then reconcile the seemingly opposed industries around self-publishing versus traditional publishing? And both have their pros and cons. So there’s something around that in mind. Because next year, every year we have the London Book Fair, and I’m trying to engineer conversations around that.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:00] That is fascinating, and I will be very interested to see what develops for you in this space, because it’s really clear that you want to leave a legacy of giving back and create that circle, that positive circle of repeating in society where you’re helping someone else do something and achieve something good, and then they help in return. And that is so incredibly moving to me. When is the London Book Fair? Just so I know from a timescale reference.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:25:41] It’s March next year. It’s early March. I’ll check the dates again. I’m not sure if it’s before or after International Women’s Day, because International Women’s Day is around the 8th, and I know the London Book Fair tends to fall around that.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:55] Okay, excellent. You’ve got about six months. That’s interesting. That is really interesting. Just one point, one question. Do you have a formal publisher relationship for your book?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:26:11] No, I don’t. It’s something I’m doing independently. I’m working with a company who published my first book, which was quite a seller. It was a best seller because it was a book about cakes.but I but I did a limited run of that particular book because it was meant to celebrate ten years of me making cakes so I thought we’d do a book. So that was almost like a coffee book/baking book, as it were. But this one is a business book, and it’s completely different. And my experience writing it was also different.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:48] I’m sure it was very different. Very interesting and exciting. Six months is a really good amount of time to be able to do something innovative and transformational. So I’ll be very excited to see what comes forward for you in early spring of next year.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:08] Thank you.
Sara Sheehan: [00:27:09] Absolutely, absolutely. And so, Elizabeth, how would our listeners find you?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:16] The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. I’ve been on LinkedIn for, oh my gosh, a decade and a bit. And then obviously when Instagram was ‘oh yay’, we all went on to it. But now, back on LinkedIn enjoying my people on LinkedIn. So just type in ‘Elizabeth Solaru luxury’ and I will pop up. And that’s the best way to reach me. And then my book will also be on Amazon, ‘The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand’, that will be on Amazon as well. So yeah, that’s how to find me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:27:55] Excellent. And when do you expect the book to be on Amazon?
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:27:59] It’s going on Amazon next week.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:01] Excellent. Perfect. This is wonderful timing.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:28:06] It’s going on next week because, initially we would have done a preorder, but I just thought, you know what? I’m going to be like Dolly Parton. Just drop my project because she doesn’t announce, she doesn’t do this long lead. She just drops it. So I’m like, okay, what would Dolly do?
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:26] That is amazing. And so that means that I will probably be able to grab the link to your book and include it in the show notes.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:28:37] Yes, I will send it to you for sure.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:38] Excellent. Wonderful. Well, I can’t thank you enough for your time today. I think you are an amazing story of resilience and creativity and constantly sharpening the saw, which we all need to do so that we’re always growing. And it is very telling that, having a growth mindset, it definitely is a situation where growth and comfort do not coexist.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:11] That is incredibly, beautifully said.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:19] But if we are putting ourselves in the position to constantly sharpen the saw, really great and unexpected things might come our way.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:31] Absolutely.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:32] Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Elizabeth. And I look forward to hearing great things about your book and the wonderful new opportunities that you’re bringing to light in your business.
Elizabeth Solaru: [00:29:49] Thank you so much, Sara. I’ve really enjoyed this interview. You’ve been such a gracious host. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:57] Absolutely.
Sara Sheehan: [00:29:58] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. My conversation with Elizabeth Solaru is filled with wonderful lessons learned that I want to make sure that I’m highlighting in my takeaways. From Elizabeth’s book, ‘The Luxpreneur: How to Start and Build a Successful Luxury Brand’, there are five big pillars in building a luxury brand. Starting with storytelling, perception in the market, the customer experience, having an incredible product, and finally, vision and longevity. Elizabeth’s focus on helping people build their business and providing a blueprint for a successful luxury business really sets herself apart in the marketplace, and I’m really, really excited to share this episode with all of our listeners. As always, please subscribe and never miss an episode.
