67: Susannah Davda: How a Shoe Consultant Launched an Online Course + Membership

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Foreign guest today is Susanna Davda. Susannah developed her love of shoes from a very young age thanks to her father who used to make them as a hobby. After leaving school, she studied for a degree in footwear design and has spent more than two decades working with footwear brands and retailers. Susannah used her unique experience to launch her business, the shoe consultant in 2015. Since then, she has focused on helping new and established shoe brands to delight their customers and inspiring women to make more positive decisions about the shoes they bought. She regularly speaks about shoes at events and writes shoe stories for online and print publications. Susanna, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to dive into your story today and to learn more about your entrepreneur journey.

Thank you. I'm really excited to be here talking to you today and you have a.

Very unique background, which I find fascinating. So I will turn it over to you and give you a few minutes just to tell the audience about how you started just in your niche and in your entrepreneur journey.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It is an interesting story. So. So, in a way, shoes have kind of always been in my life. Okay. You might think, well, yeah, everyone wears shoes. Shoes are in everyone's life, but perhaps in mine, a little more. So. So I grew up and I am the youngest of four children, and my father was a vicar, so he didn't earn that much money. And. But he was a very practical man, very crafty. At one point in his life, he had been a car mechanic, and he was always kind of making things, fixing things. And one thing that he thought he could do to save us a bit of money as a family was to learn to make shoes. So he went on a course and I think he bought a book and some materials, and he made actually the whole family himself and my mother included shoes. So they were made to measure. He'd draw around our feet and make them. And, you know, they were not the most fashionable shoes for sure, but they must have been very good for our feet. And I guess that was my early introduction. And then I got really interested in fashion. I was obsessed with fashion magazines, spending my pocket money on them, and started customizing my own clothes. And I sort of, yeah, forgot about shoes. I kind of fell out of love with my dad's creations a little bit as I wanted to look a little bit more conventional, I suppose, a little bit less bohemian, perhaps. And. But then When I was 16, I was working in a shop, a shop selling luggage and handbags. And I really didn't like it. I was really unhappy. I didn't like the bosses. And a friend of mine was working in a shoe shop, so I managed to get an interview there. And that really is how I view. That was the start of my shoe business career because once you start working with shoes, it kind of gets you. It catches you. And that. That love, that passion does not leave. So I realized I could study a degree in footwear design, and that was it. You know, there was no other path for me. There was no backup plan. That was the degree that I was going to do. And so I worked in some more shoe shops while I was studying. And, yeah, I did nothing that wasn't related to shoes after that point. And then when I graduated, I worked in design and buying and so worked for a retailer, a shoe retailer for a few years. And then I worked in product management for a global shoe brand and ended up being their global women's product manager and stayed there for quite a while and was making plans for quite some time. As to my, my driving forces were I want to start my own business. I really, really wanted to be my own boss. And I also wanted to feel as though I was directly helping people because working for a shoe company head office or, yeah, corporate office, I was so far removed from, you know, the impact that shoes actually make on people's lives that, yeah, it just didn't feel that fulfilling. It was great to work with shoes every day, but I wasn't working with people, people in the way that I wanted to. So, yeah, it, it reached a point where I, I needed a change. I needed a change. I was having some health issues. We were trying to conceive, my husband and I, and I, I was pretty stressed in my day job and I thought, now or never, now or never. And it was definitely the best move that I, I left my business and set up. Sorry, I left that company and set up the shoe, which is my business. So that's how it started.

So let me ask you this. When you were at the shoe stop, when you shoe shop, and when you moved from the other retailer that you didn't like and started there, what year was that?

That was 1998.

Okay, so I didn't. And then from there you did that for a few years and then decided to get your degree in footwear design. I didn't even know they offered degrees in footwear design.

And neither did I. But as luck was have it, I was looking through what was the printed book of university courses at the time, and I was looking at all the fashion design courses and there were loads and loads. And then I got to the end of that and alphabetically, after fashion comes footwear. And so I, I actually just chanced upon them and. Oh, it makes, it gives me the tingles just thinking about that because, yeah, if I hadn't have done that, I would have never have known that that was a possibility in my life.

And yeah, I mean, that's just fascinating. And I've worked at a University for 50 years. I've never heard of a degree like that. So you did that, you got your degree and then you started working in the industry. You worked for a shoe retailer. You said you were a product in working in product management. Were you designing shoes at that point in time or what were your role and responsibility there?

So when I graduated, I got this job that was a bit Unusual really. It was created as a combination between. I had this connection with that company, with that retailer already because I'd been working in one of their shoe shops and I'd also managed to get some work experience while I was studying with them. And so they knew that I wanted to go into buying because I always been more interested in really I realized when I was studying my degree that I was more interested in the business side of the shoe industry and as relates to customers and the experience that they have with the shoes rather than pure design. But that company did want someone who could, who could draw and do some designing, some designing and some maybe getting inspired by other designers as a lot goes on, particularly in, in the high street. So that was, it was a combination between buying and design, that particular role. But do you know what, and like that was really difficult then to move on from because I wasn't a specialist in either. And I really kicked myself about that. But at the time, but, but now all I think is that that just added to my knowledge and experience because I've worked as a designer, a buyer, a product manager, someone selling shoes in a shoe shop, you know, and now consultant for six years. So it's just added to that kind of all round experience that I can offer to my clients.

So how long was it before you kind of got that feeling right that you wanted to start your own thing, you wanted to start my own business, be my own boss, you wanted to help people. So you were at your current firm working for, you know, in the industry. How long did it take you to make that transition into entrepreneurship?

Okay, well, I started a blog under the name the Shoe consultant in probably 2010 or 2011. And so that was a public facing blog. So the idea was write all of my knowledge and experience, but in shoe recommendations and shoe tips for women. And that was the blog and it was popular, but I wasn't able to monetize it. I guess I didn't really know enough about how to do that or maybe just the traffic wasn't high enough. But that was my, I guess that was my hobby. But I also knew that eventually somehow that was going to be my way out. But I didn't actually leave the day job and launch the business properly until 2015. So sometimes, you know, these things can brew for a while.

Yeah, definitely. So 2010 you started your blog and you know, you were working to, you're working towards your, what you wanted to do, your exit strategy. In 2015 you officially launched your business. What did you start out doing at that point in time.

Okay, so this is not the conventional way to start a business, but I knew I had all these skills and all of this experience and what I did was I set up a website and I put several different services on there. Things that I knew I could do really, really well. And I wanted to just see what worked, you know, what people were looking for. Really looking back, it's like, well, you know, maybe you should have focused. But I guess I just didn't know what the market wanted. So. Okay, so what did I offer? I offered VIP shoe shopping. So like personal shopping, but just for shoes. I offered training for people working in head office who maybe didn't have a shoe background but needed some training on that speaking. And I still speak have speaking engagements about shoes and also consultancy for shoe brands. And yeah, I guess I, I didn't focus on what I currently do, which is helping people to start shoe brands and helping people to grow their established shoe brands until a couple of years into the journey. So 2017. And I probably would have focused sooner, but I wasn't actually able to give the business my all at that time because I got pregnant at the same time as leaving my company a few weeks after. I obviously felt a bit de stressed and it worked. And then of course, I had a newborn. So the first couple of years were very sort of baby and business baby at the same time. And just kind of, I'd given myself the time to explore that because of the money that I had saved in my day job.

And I think that a lot of listeners who are listening here today, especially women, can probably relate to your story. You know, things happen in life. You have, you know, you go on maternity leave or you can't give your business 100% at that point in time for whatever reason. I mean, different things come up. So I think a lot of people can relate to what you're saying here. So in 2017, you've been doing this for a little while and it sounds like you kind of focused a little bit more on your niche that you were going to focus on today and kind of learned a lot. You probably learned a lot during that process. So tell me about your transition into online courses. What made you go that route? I know you have a course, you have a membership, and you also do one on one. So tell me a little bit about how your product and service portfolio transitioned and how you kind of got into.

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Okay, so yeah, honestly I kind of did everything the hard way. So when I started out, I was charging my clients an hourly rate. I was traveling into central London, you know, having to pay for travel for quite an expensive train journey to meet them. And I was, yeah, I was not making very much profit really on each meeting that I was having. So that is not how I would recommend to start out as a consultant. But then of course eventually I got some really good advice. I worked with business coaches and I started building packages for people and I worked online instead. And that made a massive impact because it meant that I could work globally. I was already working remotely with a couple of us based clients, but it wasn't really the bulk of my business but bringing everything online. So with video calls and emailing, that was how I began to scale my business. And so yeah, so I had this package which was mainly for people who were starting shoe brands, which I still have a version of today. And I was building up all this knowledge. So after several years of helping people to start shoe brands, I got the idea. So in 2019 I started thinking. I wanted to build an online course that would mean it was a more affordable way to work with me or to get access to my knowledge. And it was a way that I could reach even more people. You know, I was getting full, I was getting at capacity with working one to one with people because when I work one to one with people who are starting or growing their shoe brands, I really give them my all. So I don't take on too many clients because, you know, I know my limits. But also I just want to make sure that everybody has the very best support that they can possibly have that they need at that point. So the how to start a shoe brand online course was really quite a long Time in the making. It was one of those things that I just kept getting more and more ideas and building out the framework, doing a little bit on it here and there around my other work. And then eventually I was like, okay. It was at the start of the pandemic, I was anyway getting fairly close to having finished creating the course, but there was still quite a lot of work still to be done on it. And I set myself the deadline of June 2020 to launch it. I thought, you know, I don't know how long people are going to be not really able to go out and about much, maybe have a little bit more time on their hands. And I thought, you know, what better way to feel as though you've had a really worthwhile experience instead of seeing the pandemic as. Of course, you know, it's been a terrible, terrible thing in so many people's lives. But what can I do to make people feel hopeful and a bit more maybe productive? And I know that a lot of people have a dream of starting a shoe brand. I know, because, you know, they come to me, I, I speak to them and, and it has definitely happened that a lot of people have taken a step back from their lives. A lot of people did, you know, at the start of the pandemic, and, and they thought, okay, I've got to do something about this now. And so luckily that the course was well timed.

So tell us a little bit about your launch strategy. Did you do. How did you find people for your course? Did you do a webinar or a challenge or what did you do to let the world know that it was available?

So I had a mailing list already, not huge, but then my business is very niche and so nothing I do is sort of massive scale. It's tends to be in the hundreds rather than in the thousands. I also had an Instagram account that I was doing quite a lot on and, and LinkedIn as well. And so it was a, yeah, it was a kind of strategy that ran across those platforms and of course the SEO of my website as well. I got a professional sort of marketing writer to write the web content for my, the sales page of my course. And, and it was more about the kind of the lead up to it, giving some free content, some free tips along the way, and enticing people into it. But I also knew, you know, one of the reasons why I created that course was that people were asking for it. You know, I knew I had sort of just a few people, but who were definitely going to hit purchase when when I published it, so I knew it was worth doing anyway. And then it was a case of. Of kind of build that hype as much as possible. Always. Yeah, always within, kind of within that niche of people who want to start shoe brands, which is not. Not everyone you meet.

So let me ask you this. I know that in January this year, because we chatted earlier, before we started recording, you also launch a membership. Tell us about your strategy for the membership versus the course. Why did you decide to offer both? And how. How do. Do people come into the membership first and then go into the course, or vice versa? Tell us a little bit about that.

It works both ways, for sure. And it's, you know, people talk about kind of organic growth or things being quite natural for me in my business. It's all about, you know, putting my knowledge out there into the world through various platforms. You know, my blog, on my website, through Instagram, through LinkedIn, and through speaking engagements and, of course, podcasts like this. And so people are kind of, I guess, waiting for me to do the next thing. So the course was a way to make my knowledge more accessible, to sort of package up all of the things that I had learned, you know, since I started in the shoe industry and since I started helping people to launch their own shoe brands. But then I wanted something that was even more accessible. And I knew that the thing with the shoe industry or the footwear industry is that it can feel a little bit closed, and I really wanted to do something about that. And so the driving force behind the shoe community, which is my membership group for shoe brand founders, was to bring people together to open things up because, you know, people didn't need to be secretive or kind of protective because everyone's got such a different niche or market or product type, you know, type of shoe that they want to launch. So it was, you know, it. I didn't see it as a sort of huge revenue generator. I saw it as, you know, let's bring these people together and let's, you know, allow them and support them in helping each other in sort of learning from each other's experience and. Yeah, and so the master classes that I run about every month on there with a shoe brand founder, and I've had some really good guests. But then also the meetups. I do the live Q&As and things every time I do something new, something like a masterclass, it's something to talk about. It's something. So I have a fairly consistent marketing strategy for the masterclasses. So I write a Blog post. So of course from an SEO point of view, that's going to help. And I, I have then I promote the blog post on Instagram, LinkedIn, my mailing list. And people of course come to that because it's great, really valuable free content on the topic that the masterclass is going to be about. And the only way you can access the masterclass is to join the SHU community. So. So yeah, it means that it makes it very easy to market the shoe community because there's always something to talk about. So previously I did have masterclasses but I promoted them on Eventbrite and there was no community that was a sort of separate thing, but it was a lot of work for just a fairly small fee that wasn't going to be recurring revenue. So you know, I was doing lots of promotion around it, you know, creating a sales video to put on Eventbrite and all of these things. And I just thought, I think I need to package this up into the membership that I was thinking about creating anyway and just make it really valuable and really affordable. Because people who are starting shoe brands, you know, come in from all backgrounds. You know, some have, have got quite a lot of disposable income to play with and some are recent graduates who just need a little bit of advice, little bit of support. So, yeah, so I wanted to be able to introduce people to, into my brand. Now you asked, you know, do, do people kind of join the course after having joined the SHU community? And that's definitely happened, I can think of. So actually I only launched the shoe community a few months ago as we speak. And yeah, so, so several people have joined the course since being introduced to me and my, my company, really my expertise via the membership group. And then it has happened the other way as well. So people on the course, but they actually wanted then to have a bit of connection and to tap into the expertise of the shoe brand founders that I interview on my masterclasses as well. So yeah, it's happened both ways. And then the other thing is that people who are my one to one clients, sometimes when we stop working together for a little while, then they want to maintain the connection and so they often join the shoe community as well. So there's a, there's a kind of nice flow between the three services I offer, I would say, and I love.

That and I think it's brilliant. So I have a, I have a few more questions for you as you were going through and describing that. So in the community, in the shoe community, you do the masterclass with it, which is with a founder. So. And I love the fact that you. You talk about, you take that content and it gives you a chance to talk about it right on your social channels, which gives you a chance to market it. So hopefully people will join. But you also repurpose that and also write a blog post and kind of say, if you want to see the masterclass, you have to. You join the community. Is that what you do?

Exactly, because all of the recordings of the masterclasses are there for everyone within the shoe community to watch. So the membership gets more and more valuable as time goes on. So new joiners now get five masterclass recordings and. Yeah, whereas obviously previously there wouldn't have been as many. And they always get invited to the live recording of the. The next masterclass, and. And for as long as they are a member. So, yeah, so it makes it so valuable for them.

What other services or kind of perks do you offer in the membership?

Yeah, okay, so it's a. It's kind of hosted in, in Facebook, so it's a private Facebook group. So the chat is very lively on there. If I see an article that I think everyone will be interested in, I'll kind of post it on there. I'm always, you know, obsessed with people starting new shoe brands or marketing shoes in different ways or whatever is going to be interesting for my clients. And also I do meetups, which I call Meet the Shoe Community, which are lovely chats, and everyone just kind of shares, you know, where they're at, you know, the stage they're at, what their challenges are, and then kind of, kind of has a kind of live brainstorm feel about it, which is just a lovely session and it just helps people to not feel so alone. And. And then the other thing that I do is kind of live Q and A with me so that people can tap into my knowledge there as well. And everyone benefits from the answers that they hear from me. So there's a lot of value in, in the shoot community.

For the meetups and the live Q and A, are you using Zoom or are you doing it all in the Facebook group?

So for the master classes, I use Zoom Webinar. For the meetups, I use just Zoom meetings. And then I'll do the live Q and A in Facebook because that's just quite a nice platform and it's just so easy then to post it up from there and everyone can see what the comments and what the questions were. So, yeah, it's using whatever suits whichever type of content the best so thank.

You for sharing that. I know a lot of people would be interested in how you had set all those up and how they were working together. Susanna, can you tell us what do you have on your plate as next steps in your business?

Okay, so two big things because, you know, I never want to make my life too easy. So one is I'm planning a pop up shop. So local to where I live in London and somewhere where several of my clients who have launched, I can host them, I can introduce them to the women of the world and create a really different shoe shopping experience where, you know who gets to shop for shoes with, you know, the founder, the designer of the brand and with someone like me who's just lived and breathed shoes since, since 1998. It's so long. So, yeah, so that's one of the things that I'm doing and the other thing which I am hoping will have launched by the time this comes out is it's quite a different course. So an online course and it is how to be a fashion consultant. Because I've learned a lot about setting up, you know, I've made a ton of mistakes, but I've also figured out what works. And so I want to help people who've got the expertise, you know, maybe they've been working in the corporate fashion world for quite a while, built up a whole load of knowledge and they also want to help maybe some of the smaller brands then. And there are so many brilliant smaller brands that are emerging and then some that are needing a little bit more support. So I'm going to create a course that is going to help people to set up themselves as fashion consultants within whichever niche they're going to find. You know, mine is shoes, but someone else's could be something entirely different. So that's an exciting new thing for me.

That is exciting. Both of those are exciting. And I love the pop up idea or the pop up shop idea. I'd love for you to do one here in Atlanta.

Oh, that would be great.

So my closing question for you is you've been doing this for a while, you have a ton of experience, you've had some ups and downs and you know, may have taken, taken some turns there that you would do differently. What advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs there?

Okay, so from a technical point of view, in terms of which platform to put it on, I would say don't necessarily go with, you know, what's going to make you the most profit per course, if it could well be quite complex to set up and I speak from experience here. Okay. So my course is on my WordPress site and I use Learndash, which is the plugin. And, and it's good, it's good now and it all works really well and there's a brilliant user experience. But that was not easy to create with the way that learndash was set up at the time. It's, it is better now, but I'm considering using something like teachable or. Yeah, one of the other, one of the others, you know, thinkific Udemy for the next one. Just because I want it to be super simple and I want a really easy, lovely user experience without having to pay for a load of web development. So yeah, so that's something I would say, you know, don't just look at the numbers, the, you know, the profit per course that you're going to sell. Just also think, you know, how much time, how much work is it going to take me to do something a little bit of a different way. What else? I mean I would definitely say, I would definitely say go for it with the course. Try not to overcomplicate things for yourself. Don't make it. Which I guess I kind of did myself, really don't make it so in depth and comprehensive that you never launch it. I mean I did eventually, but I really, really put my heart and soul into it and which, you know, it's brilliant and people do love the course, but I think that you can do that. Use your time a little bit more wisely and just be really thoughtful about what's going into this course and perhaps there are ideas that could be parked and put into a subsequent course or some other format. So yeah, definitely kind of plan your timeline well. Don't make it open ended, give yourself a deadline. That's really what got my course launched was I just said enough, enough is enough, you know, no more planning. Let's just make this happen. So yeah, yeah, time, time it all out really well, including your launch, of course. You know, there's a lot that goes into a launch of a course. So much, you know, marketing, you want to make sure that your audience is established well before you're launching and then creating your marketing materials. You know, you're going to need to not just create videos for your course, but also to promote your course. And people love video content which has worked really well for me for my business. Promotional content via video works really well. Really well.

So I love what you said there about setting a date for launching your course and just going for it. So thank you for that advice. So Susanna, where can people find find you?

Okay they can find me@shoe consultant.com and Shoe Consultants on Instagram and I am susannadavda on LinkedIn. So that's S U S A double N A H D A V D.

A and I will make sure that all of those links are in the show notes so people can find you. Susanna, thank you so much for all of your advice today and sharing your inspirational story. I love the niche that you're in. I think it's fabulous and just interesting and I wish you the best in everything that you do.

Thank you. Destiny, it's been so lovely talking to you.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.