Before Levi Roots strolled onto the Dragons’ Den set strumming his guitar and singing a song about his Caribbean-inspired condiment, Reggae Reggae sauce, his friends said he was crazy.
“Everyone told me, ‘don’t take your guitar on a business show, this is a big opportunity — be serious, do it properly,’ ” Roots admits. “But I wanted to be me — the only thing I’m good at is being me. I use music to tell my story, and that’s part of what’s become Reggae Reggae sauce’s brand.”
History proves he was right: Roots singing about his jerk BBQ sauce — “so nice I had to name it twice” — helped him become one of the UK’s most famous entrepreneurs and sent his sauces on a journey to a £30 million business.
Now Roots is sharing his advice with other founders who are scaling up their businesses at SME XPO, the Evening Standard’s networking and speakers’ event for ambitious business founders and decision-makers.
Branding, says Roots, is about “finding your special ability that you can shine with”. He adds: “Sometimes it takes someone like a mentor to come in and see what your skills are and what you’re good at, sometimes you know on your own. You’ve got to take that talent and just run with it — use social media to market yourself or your product, get the word out with your passion.”
Doing just that helped Trinny Woodall turn her idea of a skincare and make-up brand into a business with a £51 million turnover in two years. “I did it all by building a brand via social media,” the entrepreneur explains.
Although she had worked as a TV fashion guru, “I knew no one in the make-up industry at the start, I just sat at my kitchen table, covered the whole kitchen in Post-it note ideas, and sent out hundreds of emails, in case somebody I knew might know someone.”
The key to the success of Trinny London, she says, was finding a brand niche for her products and her online identity. “It’s about your tone of voice; finding a gap where your way of talking about a product or service feels fresh, and stops people in their tracks, and is relatable,” Woodall explains. “Everything I do at Trinny London is about giving people inspiration, making them think ‘you’ve identified me, and I trust you a bit’ — and then showing them how a product will be relevant to their life.”
Woodall, who has built up a 1.2 million following on Instagram, will also be speaking at SME XPO, addressing how to cut through the cacophony of firms screaming for attention at the same time.
“Never over-edit or over-perfect the content: the more real, the better. It’s hard when you’re a one-man band, but just fit it into your day — sometimes in the back of a cab I’ll do a film: what am I thinking in my head right now that other people might be interested in? Take people on your journey as a start-up, when you’re going to meet the bank and feel really nervous about your overdraft — people love the human story behind making a business.”
Roots agrees: “I’m not good at numbers, I was shaking like a pig when the numbers came up on Dragons’ Den, and got them all wrong. Do what you’re good at, and find someone else to do the other bits — impostor syndrome is the normal way to feel, I still do — but I’m still doing music and still making sauces. Don’t worry about what people say, just get out there and do it.”
