YouSaid · the spoken record

Levi Roots

lines on the record: 34
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Somebody put some music in food for me give me some ricky sauce I sauce It's so nice I had to name it twice I call it freaky figure”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is absolute key because the investment is not in the product, especially if you're given an investor to invest in. He will always want to make sure that whoever is selling the business would protect his investment. And that's not the product. It is about who is in charge. So that's where the investment is going to go to the person.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would be about planning ahead, you know, you can never get investment without a business plan because it starts there. You're going to write, have everything down on paper. I mean, even if now, if you're not quite sure of what you want to do, how you want to take your business, right, everything down and even for mistakes, you know, I've always said that there's no such thing as mistakes. Write it down. Mistakes becomes feedback. So you can always go back to it and learn from that. So do all you can, but keep a lot, keep your business plan intact because, and the good thing about a business plan also, because it has to have an opinion and an end, if you feel you never bad about yourself for about the business, just forward today and then have a look at the end of the business plan, which you've got the money and it looks so fantastic in your business growth. It's bound to give you some motivation to carry you through those early days.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's just to reflect back on life. I think COVID has made that so important as how it's important that we take care of the important things. Again, just going back to my answers just before about that, we don't have long and we don't know where we are. I mean, I've lost my mom and what, three months later, I lost my brother, you know, in between that. You never know. And when it comes as a Because that's such a big and strange thing, you know, and nobody has really evaluated that yet because they're still in it and it's getting worse as we go along. So as soon as we get the time, I think that's what all of us should do is have that time to reflect on our lives and maybe to plan going forward for similar effects like this.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm trying to explain to Christopher my son as well that you don't languish your time because for a child like myself coming from my background, there's always that scenario that said that you have to work twice as hard as everyone else. Because as I said, it took me until I was 48 before I was discovered in Dragonstain and became a massive success with a multi-million pound business just weeks and months after that. That doesn't sound like somebody who's been plucked out of somewhere that has no sense of what business. you have it there but as i said no one comes around to where you were just if you look i spot you when you were young and i can help you to to get to where you are that's what's needed for for younger minds now that it doesn't take them as long as as as myself to be able to um to reach to the best of itself”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Based upon my own realization, it is about timing, how short time is. I wish somebody had explained to me when I was growing up how I'm trying to explain it to my son, you know, that you don't really have long on this earth. And the younger you are is the less irrelevant you think of time. And nobody really grabs you and explains time to you. You get explained everything else, but you expect to work that out yourself as you go along. You get a beard, as you go along as you get older. But I wish someone had explained to me about how important it is to see that you don't have long to achieve things, things that you want to achieve. So that's what I would kind of tell my own self, which is”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While it felt like, oh, this is the breath of fresh air, even when you look around you, and the things that represents the world that comes through your screens, it feels evened up in some kind of way. That's what we're hoping for, that some kind of balance comes back into it. That's a big wish. But it did what it's supposed to do is open up other.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rushed so quickly because of events and what it is is bound to drag along with it as well to unexplain it. People don't really understand what it meant and the bit about the from the police, all that kind of stuff wasn't good for the movement. But I think that was all due to the success of it. And it is expected in some kind of way that it wasn't all going to be right. So to answer your question, it affected me, yes, as a black person, obviously, you know, for me was the effectiveness is like a chew. God, something is happening. People can see. Because then afterwards, you see, even though it was for a moment, but all of our TVs and all of our films and advertisement and everything, everyone was black all of a sudden. It was evened up for a little while, you know, first short window of time as though it was.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People of color to have some understanding of what people felt because the George Floyd thing was in everyone's, he was in everyone's front room. We all shocked and mazed. And even, like I said, for non-blacks, it was for people that awaken what the hell is happening. So it was really an important time in life for black people just to be vindictive if I can use that word for finding a better word than it was out there. That me was on people's necks at all times that we've been trying to say and what the metaphor perhaps was never explained properly, but now here it was. But I think in the end, Black Lives Matter became a sort of victim of his own popularity because when you have something that”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Black Lives Matters what came about and opened all our eyes. I don't think in particularly for people of color because to the situation, people of color's eyes have always been opened. So I think, because there's an old saying that who feels it knows it, it's a very old Rasta man saying that if you've never felt it, then you don't really know. And there's got to be some kind of event or some kind of great awakening of yourself for you to realize these factors like racism. And if you've never faced it like a lot of people around the world, some type of event is going to come around so you really do get it. And I think the Joyce Floyd figuration and the Black Lives Matters that it's after that was that awakening for none.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I must admit it has taken over my life that I do love, but it demands it again because that's the part of what you open yourself for when you become a brand that people, as I said, are invested in because of your integrity. And a lot of the projects that I do get involved with are ones that's very close to my heart, that pulls my heart strings and I feel like I'm not doing it because I've been asked. I'm doing it because I make that position and I love to do it. So I get to engage in it. As I said, you put yourself up there and you've got to accept that. So for me, it's just absolutely enjoying the stories that you get out of it and the way that you feel. But at the end of the day, it is still about people that are invested in yourself. So it goes handy land. So even though I'm...”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For instance, I think one of the key things that's going to sort of block small businesses because of Brexit is red tape. Again, this is one thing that affects small businesses, is that time is your most important thing. Whereas bigger companies cannot throw time and be able to get you. But when you're small and especially for people that are just sort of stepping up their business, those red tapes are going to be crucial to you. People are going to face a lot of that.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And when you're lucky enough to attract big business like that, as a small business yourself, it helps you to cushion any blows that may happen. And Brexit is a massive thing, but with the size of AB World Foods, one of the reasons why you choose these partners is that you will land well when crash is going on. So we rely upon them to be able to absorb any sort of problems when it comes to the source because we are a European source we manufacture in Poland. That's where AV World Foods Manufacturer is from. So obviously it will affect myself as well as other businesses, small businesses as well. We are the ones that will be feeling any fallout that there is because the smaller we are in smaller down the line as we get, the bigger the impact is.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're lucky. I've always said we've married well when we've chosen partners. Our mother company is a company called AB World Fruits and they are one of the biggest companies here and around the world that has taken on the license for you. As I said, that first order for Sainsbury's weeks after Dragon Thing.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that is how we navigate our way through. And it's an easy one, but it is a lesson out there for people who are thinking of going into businesses. I say to make the brand or the business about you, again, that investment is about you and how you portray yourself. I think that's a safer bit for how you retain customers.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A huge amount of customers, fans, or whatever you may call the entity that brought into the product. And I know what they brought into. They've brought into the authenticity of that I'm able to bring them Caribbean food. As I said about the shires of finding my market where people didn't necessarily know Caribbean food. I think that's where the Levi-Ruse brand is lucky enough to be a mainstream brand, whereas, you know, people buy my books, not necessarily because they know Caribbean, but because they don't know and they would like to know. It's a bit different from some other Caribbean brands that are lesser down in the supermarket shelves, whereas it's more about their products and trying to get that across. But I think as long as everything made my own self, and I mean that still says put some music in the food.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us, I do think it's about authenticity, you know, from my brand in particular. It's got to be about remaining who you are and what the public perceive who you are. Because I do believe that people are not buying my product, you know, like lots of other brands out there. People invest. Even if they are paying £1.50 for a bottle of sauce, every time they do that because they go back time and time again, that is an investment. And when people are making that investment, they expect you to convey yourself and the product and the brand in a particular way that it accepts they will do them. And if you can continue to do that, you will get the support. And that's the formula that I think all great brands have used. And I think I'm lucky enough because of my appearance in Dragons Den to have accumulated.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to sell Caribbean sauce to Caribbean people and find a market that didn't really know Caribbean food that was willing to accept something new for them. And that's when I discovered the Shias, you know, my kids and my friends went into the Shires that we said, any part of the country that had Shire at the end of it, that had some nice country faiths and country festivals, that's where I would end up in a couple of weeks and break through the market. And that's exactly what we did. I think that was my greatest lesson is about finding your niche market and be comfortable within that once you've discovered that. And yeah, I discovered the Shires and that's where I met the producer for Jagged. One of the type festivals that I used to do. I met the producer of Dragonsten and the rest of history.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think marketing was a key one for me finding that crucial market. That was a massive learning because I'm a carrogate person and originally I thought that great I've got a caribbean so if I Brixton is the fantastic hub of Caribbean people should be easy to sell my sauce with in there and that was my first mistake it failed dramatically because everyone I didn't bank on the fact that everyone is Caribbean they make their own sauce they know what Caribbean sauce why should they buy from Ivar Russo who they know as a musician as a singer and so it absolutely fair and I couldn't work it out I merely gave up Sir John I absolutely think it to myself well your owners rejected you for some reason another which in some ways was trying to teach me a lesson that I should go out and find my own market and is the realization of that is that I had to get out”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give me six months for a year to do that, you've got to think first, and it's the mentorship that they've got because all we did was just a pow wow and a little sort of sit down with Peter and his friends and think, ah, let's do the licensing deal. Levi's name is big enough for us to call any source company within the country and say, can you produce this regular sauce for us? And that's what we did. And within a few weeks again, we knocked and just thinking Doran says, here you ask a quarter of a million buttons of regularity. So thank you very much. So mentorship is a mark because I could have never thought of that in my position back then. I would have thought of using the 50,000 pounds to start slowly and to build as you go along. These are the rooms that you're playing around in when you've got a good mentor around you.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It happened within Saints Reason, broke home records to do with condiments in there, just within a few weeks. So just going back to the mentorship situation, that's what mentor does, because for me, that's what Peter Broughton. It wasn't about the money, because £50,000 which I gone on dragons then was a drop in the ocean compared to what I needed to fill that order, that first order. So I had to have somebody a suit enough for me to be able to think, what do we do? You know, you're there, you know, you want something and then you, the holy gray is lying on your lap and said, you know, you can't go and I can't recognize Justin King and say, sorry, Justin, I can't deliver.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, we were out selling ice to Marco Ketchup, which is a ridiculous story because can you really do that with a sauce from someone's kitchen in Brixton out selling the biggest sauce in the world?”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Order for Riga Rigga sauce. Imagine you're praying for something all your life and all of a sudden, you know, I'm doing 67 bottles in my kitchen, 67 bottles. And within a week, Peter's called his friend Justin King, the chief of Sainsbury's, and said, did you see Levire Dragons then? Justin says, yes, I did. Bring Levi to see me within a few days. I was in front of Justin and he made a order of a quarter of a million buckles. And I'm still making 67 bottles at home with my kids. Careful what you pray for.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think mentorship is one of the most marvelous things when it comes to business and what you can pass on once you've learned something, what do you do with that knowledge. And it is about mentorship. Because for me personally, I've had monies in the past and a chance to get the business forward. Well, I don't think that's what I really needed because I've had it and I've lost it and it didn't really make it take me to where I wanted to get to. What I needed was learning to how to use that money. If I was lucky enough to get that. And I think that's what Mentou provides because that's what Peter provided for me. Like I said, I've had the chances before, you know, but I didn't know how to use it. Is it having someone like him around to be able to show you that the most important thing for me wasn't about the money? Because I tell you a little thing here.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And all the sort of stories, I never knew any of that. So appearing on the show was because I felt I wanted to be me. You know, I didn't want to go the route of listening to guitar behind and go the conventional way of trying to pitch the source. I wanted to pitch Levi and Levi Root. And I knew I was rubbish at the rest of this stuff because as you probably saw Dragon's dead when the numbers became asserted like a pig and I got everything wrong and I thought, you know, the old lot was going on the window. But I think that fresh bit coming out with the song and giving it a real me. You know, that was the investment part. I need to know the rest was rubbish. But the dragons got it back, especially Peter. He got the fact that this was above the man.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, no one thought that was a great idea. They thought that, well, you know, Levi, if you will support you if you want to go and do a pitch, but do it conventionally, like everybody else has been on Jackets Ben. But the thing is, I've never seen the show. So I didn't really get how serious what I was going to attempt to do. And all my family was trying to, you know, tell me to look it up on YouTube and try to see what I was about to face. But I thought then if I did scare myself before I get there, I'm going to be offbeat before I get there. So I refuse completely to find out what dragons then was about. And I had about a couple of weeks window from Inspotted to being asked to go on the show. So it wasn't a long time to learn anything about how, you know, terrible Duncan Bannitine can be on the show or how, you know, Peter wears stripey socks.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I gotta say, you know, Charles, I was perhaps the only one that really believed that I could do it. And in protection of my family and anyone else, because they were thinking well of me because they knew that I'd carved out a nice little musical career. As you say with my mogo nomination and all that, I'd been doing well with the music. But here I was telling everyone.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Attraction and so putting those two together was how I managed to overcome the dragon and I managed to sell Levi Roots and not just the sauce.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a new me, but I'm not going to hide all that. I'm still not Rafterman from Brixton that had all the problems. But had in that new way of thinking to that and use those skills to sell the sauce, those natural flair from being on the street. But then the business side of it, to be able to be attracted to someone like a Peter Jones on Dragons then to have the trust of one of the most astute business persons in the country. You know, that's the business side of you. That's better.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then having to be rooted up from her without having a choice, you know, at the age of 11 to come to the UK to connect again with my brothers and sisters and my mom and dad who I didn't really know they left when I was quite young. So pretty much tumultuous life then having to wrap that all up together with my grandma's teaching, which became the center of what the source was about and what I was trying to sell that it wasn't just about me and my music. This is a story of a family story as well too of someone that inspired me greatly to be cooking like the way I did. And I wanted to wrap that all up together and put that in the bottle. And people at the carnival understood. And that gave me confidence now to take that in by roots on the road, not the Levi of the failures and everything else, but the one that could identify with that. What we're still saying.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Put that down and brought on board as well, and then the natural salesperson that I had to sell something, I put that together and that was the creation of it. But everything that's in there came from the original teaching of my grandma because I think those original sort of groundation that you get from someone like a grandma when you grew up like I did, you know, the youngest of six children back in Jamaica having to be one of the last ones to come over if my parents couldn't do with the young child child here when they were trying to work and trying to send for us. Every year I would see one of my brothers leave. I believe I'm not really understanding why until eventually it was my time to come to leave my grandma who was mom, dad and chief inspector and everything to me in month.”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That and I think my greatest part of my story is when I had it those days to my life and really be comfortable with who I was by the time I was 46 and I was launching at the Nottinghill Carnival just perhaps a year and a half before Dragon's Den when I launched when I gave the sauce the name and actually now we're saying that this is not about Levi the singer that in all the stuff that you mentioned or even Levi the sourceman and which I'd now have become known amongst local people this was now trying to put these two elements together and try to come up with something that was really different and it was when I launched at the carnival and I realized that I did have something special I still have my music I didn't have to sort of”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's only sort of one word I can describe my life through then I've sort of concising nearly 40 years or so within music and food before I got to Dragon's Bay is that it was a rum it really was that because it was a bit like going through good things and bad and failures and everything and then eventually to use all that including the failures that I went through now to wrap that in a bubble and try to make some good of it by the time I was 46 that's when I managed to be able to focus myself enough to be able to rack up all that the shame and everything you know of failures which normally before I discovered the truth me I would have thought that to get your failures forget who you are before don't use any of”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good, thank you very much, Charles. As you know, it's lockdown here, so we've all got to make do with what you've got, and I've got a little space here that I try to keep fit. That's why maybe I'm looking a little bit both in just the space in front of me that I utilize”
undated · Off The Agenda · Levi Roots: Reggae Reggae Sauce, Dragon's Den & Building a Brand from Culture | Off The Agenda · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source