Interview with Levi Roots

Q)) What’s the biggest factor that has helped you to be successful?

Levi Roots : The ability to change my mindset and to adapt has helped me. We are all born with this entrepre-neurial ability even if one can further it with studies. You have to be able to adapt to situations as they come. Be-cause of the situation that you are brought up in even myself when I was growing up in South London in the seventies when it was difficult for an-ybody to be black much more when you were a Jamaican boy without any education. The key thing was being able to adapt to the situation that faced you and being able to make the best out of it.
What were the major challenges that you had to overcome?

There were many challenges that I had to come against especially get-ting a job as a black young man and the post code I lived in. Those were massive obstacles and I had to work much harder than somebody else coming from a better background than me. It was difficult, knowing you were just as good as the person rid-ing high or driving past you in a fancy car or even somebody in the same line of work that you are doing in a higher position and you know within yourself that you could be there with him or even better but bearing in mind the situation you are in, you are not able to compete.

Those things are frustrating but this is the point of adapting. You still want change and have to fight for that but at the same time there is way to do that and that is not kicking down the doors. The situation was about the doors that I faced before Dragon’s Den. Sometimes people from my background would want to kick those doors down because they know they are unjust. You know you deserve to be beyond those doors. So, you get angry and want to kick down the doors. But for me it wasn’t about kicking down those doors. I wanted to strategically work my way to con-vince whoever was behind the doors to open them up for me. I had to educate myself about the person be-hind those closed doors, so that when the doors opened, I was ready to have a fruitful conversation with them.

Q)) What advice would you give to unemployed black youth?

Levi Roots : Always work out what you want to do. When you are younger that is a bit difficult because it may change several times. After you have finished your education, hopefully you know what you want to do.
Secondly, have a business plan. If you don’t have a business plan it’s called hustling and I did that for many years. Hustling is for short term. Business takes care of you for a long time and that needs planning.

Thirdly, educate yourself. Stand out. Make sure you are ready to carry out the business plan. Sometimes the idea falls through, not because it was a bad idea but because of the person behind the idea. They are not quite ready to take the business forward. Evaluate your own skills and if there is a gap, upskill yourself.

Fourthly, work out who your mentor is. No matter how much you think you know some-thing, there is always somebody who knows more than you. Even, I had to do that. My first mentor was Nadia Jones, a fantastic lady that I found in Brixton. She helped me on how to sell the sauce and how to sell Levi Roots. You need a mentor to tweak the business plan, to tweak your presen-tations with what it would be like in those rooms, beyond the closed doors.

Lastly, it’s getting the funding or in-vestors. The investors, above all, in-vest in the person no matter how good the product. People invest in people. I had a great story, a great product and an excellent niche with regards to Caribbean food.

The Levi Roots brand continues to grow and Levi is venturing into the film industry. Levi remains a humble, accessible mentor who hasn’t forgot-ten his roots.