Tej Lalvani: How to Scale Your Business Globally

Hello, I'm Syracan and welcome to Backing Brilliant Business, a series by Radio Centre. They're the people helping businesses of all sizes grow with great radio advertising. In this series, I will talk to guests who want to share their own unique expertise and experience to help you with your business. From marketing experts who have reshaped how we see a brand in the marketplace, to entrepreneurs who've started at the bottom and are now at the top of their field. Each episode will look through our guest CV to discover the most rewarding and most challenging aspects of their career so far. And we discover their three key lessons in business, the learnings, advice and practices that they want to share to help you be better or whatever it is you do. In this episode, we're joined by Tej Lalvani. Tej Lalvani is a businessman and the CEO of the UK's largest vitamin company, Vyta Biotics. From 2017 to 2021, he was a dragon on the BBC television series, Dragon's Den. Vyta Biotics is renowned for producing many of the UK's number one selling vitamins, including well woman, perfectil and pregnant care. The company's also won various awards, including the Queen's Award for Innovation. Today, he joins us to talk about his chosen theme, how to scale your business globally and shares three lessons that will help you with your business. Tej, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. Just imagine me as a good-looking version of Lord Sugar. And what we're going to do is we're just going to go through your CV and just to get an understanding of what business means to you, how you came into this and just what it was like for you as a young person understanding the world of business. So let's just start off with your background. Just tell us a little bit about your family background, where do you come from, you know, what were the sort of key influences in your life? Well, I grew up between India and UK. By the time I was 16, I went to about 10 different schools. So it was a little bit unsettling, different types of cultures. And I guess from a young age, I was exposed to business from various different angles. So my father of course, him trying to set up his business and then my uncles and aunts. So for me, it was something that I assumed that something that people did normally. They set up their businesses. And so I like the idea of selling things. And so in school itself, I used to buy insult computer games. And so I started to and had the bug for it at the young age. Brilliant. So let's just talk about your first job then. I understand in 1996, your first job was working in your father's vital biotics factory. And you had a junior role driving fork lift trucks in the warehouse. Is that correct? I did work in McDonald's for a while just to get experience and different departments. That taught me a lot in terms of discipline and processes how the systems worked. When I graduated in 1996, I joined the business full time. The previous of that was also working in the business. It was very small at the time, more office. That's where it was. And so I said, I helped out in the warehouse where I could in all different types of roles. And so I went into that, then I sort of grew into it and went into different departments, you know, pretty much when you're, you know, two, three people in the business. It's literally you're helping in different areas. So I did sort of grow into different roles and then oversee different areas and got sort of a wide or an experience for the business. There will be lots of our listeners thinking, OK, it's your father's business must have been quite easy really for you to move around. Doesn't sound like we probably had to prove yourself. Is that correct? The opposite actually, you know, with my father, he's a very strong minded person. He, you know, from a young age, you have to prove yourself. It was never easy. In fact, he was the hardest on me compared to everyone else because he expected the best and expected most. So it was never easy. There was no silver spoon type thing. I started right at the bottom. And it's something that I wanted to do as well. And so, you know, you had to prove he should have a time. It was nothing was given at all. Brilliant. You then succeeded your father, a CEO, my goodness. What was that moment like your father started the business. You've worked in all the different departments. You've watched this amazing figurehead. Take a small company from an office into a gigantic multinational company. And now you've got to step up. What is that moment like? It was a little bit of an anticlimax, to be honest, because, you know, up onto that point, I was doing pretty much the same as I was doing as a title change as a CEO. It was nice in the sense of the title, but it's not really in terms of the roles. It was pretty much what I was doing anywhere and growing the business, which I've been doing for, you know, five to eight years before that. But yeah, I mean, it is in a responsibility. You want to make sure you take it to the next level and how you grow it and how you add value to the business. Of course, my father is a genius in terms of a scientist and he's invented everything. And then to really back then the idea of vitamins, you know, people didn't really understand what they were for back in the seventies. So it was pioneering stuff and to convince people was a very hard, hard thing to do. And I think that was probably a lot harder to, you know, go to individual pharmacy, put the pack on, they commit someone and really try and convince people the benefits, the therapeutic benefits of vitamins. So really wanting to take that and then expand the portfolio of products to different healthcare areas, which is what I wanted to build in and hit a different markets and different categories and then international markets and then growing the business in the UK. So that's really where I wanted to and add value to the business, you know, being an entrepreneur is also about five fighting. So you really want to, you want to grow your business, but be able to deal with so much stuff that happens, whether it's production issues, customer issues, financial issues. So these things are always on your mind and I think an entrepreneur needs to have a survivor mindset really that you really need to push on whatever comes to you. You can't let it affect you. It is what it is. You're focusing on the bigger picture always. And, you know, if you can delegate, try and delegate as much as you can, but ultimately we will have a lot of pressure to deal with and it's something you just got to manage because you really want to step up and grow things. So, you know, that's the only way. Let's quickly talk about dragons, Dan. You were approached for that. Why did you go for it? Well, it's interesting story and I tell people I was sitting in and those are the friend of mine who owns a radio station, him is a wife and my wife Tara. And then he said, look, I've been approached by BBC. They're looking for some new dragons. You know, I thought of you be a great person for it. I was going to put your name for what do you think? I thought, well, I love this show. It's a fantastic program and you know, I watched it many times, but I don't know if being on TV or that public profile is something for me. And besides what I have the time to do something like this. So he said, OK. And then interestingly, my wife called him the next day and said, I think you should put him forward. And my friends like, I don't think it was that keen. I know what he wants. So she was right because I've always wanted to work with entrepreneurs and help other businesses. So this was a great opportunity. And she said, look, don't worry about it. You know, the public profile, the TV, the fear of it, whatever will be fine. And so I did that. And obviously there were about, you know, five to another candidates for the role. I went through interviews, screen tests, smoke interviews, and finally got the position as dragon, which was, which was great, you know, for five years. Yeah, did you enjoy it? It was, it was fantastic. You really was. I mean, you're, you're there on set. And, you know, you've got these seven eight cameras rolling. And you pretty much get straight into it because it's about business and what's interesting. There's no retakes. There's no cuts. It's all live in the sense, but recorded and then edited down. So what you see is what you get. There's no rehearsals and you have no idea what's going to walk through that door. And I guess over the years, what's progressed, well, I was in the show was initially you feel more comfortable with businesses that are similar to yours in terms of consumer product businesses because that's really thing you can add value. And I think over the time you realize that it's just business and, you know, all businesses are some similar aspects and then you start going in the completely different areas, which is great because then you just learn more skills and how to help different businesses. I want to make sure I provide value and help to these businesses and pick the businesses where you really can believe the entrepreneur is resourceful. They're transparent. They've got good integrity and when you think the potential of product is unique, it's got good upside and scalable. So one is choosing the right business, one is trying to guide them in the right direction. It's not my business. Some of minority shareholders want to make sure that I encourage them and open doors for them. That's the key. So they've done very well. Brilliant. So Ted, I always ask my guests now at this point to talk about the themes that they've chosen to really kind of hone in on your theme is how to scale your business globally. Why do you want to talk about that? Well, I think today you launch a product in your market. You have a certain size in there, but you want to go international and, you know, customers from all of the world you can cater to either direct a consumer online, but that's the next step really for businesses. You know, once you credit your market, how do you grow it in the US, in the Middle East, in Asia, and in a world of steps, essentially, to do and to get right and to take it at the next level. It's quite daunting, isn't it, though, taking that next level because it's not easy. It's very, very complex. How do you do it? I mean, just quickly, do you have to bring outside help in outside experts? How do you go from the UK to then taking a consumable products or as even the service to international waters? Well, I think what you have to first do is prove that you've got a working business model and that it works in the country that you launch. Because sometimes people make the mistake of trying to launch everywhere at the same time when you haven't figured out your business model, but works. There's no point expanding, because you'll just end up losing money or the business failing. So I always say, make sure your business works properly. You've figured that how to do it, how your supply chain, your production, your customer service, your marketing, getting all that right first is important, improving the model. Then the next step is to figure out how do you want to expand the new one to the easiest way. So we find the distributor internationally in that particular market, whether it's Germany or whatever and give the product to them, they'll buy it off you, pay you the money for it. Then it's their problem as to how to sell it or take it on from there and build the brand. So that's simple in terms of you just find someone and that's what usually tradeshows happen where you your product is available for other distributors to come and see and you know take it on board or retailers. The next step is of course having your own office in that region and that's obviously more time consuming and takes more resources to be able to do that. Because you have to invest and you have to have high local people and get fulfillment center distribution and then build your brand marketing and you have to understand the nuances of that particular market, how do consumers, what appeals to those type of consumers. And then of course there's dark to consume where you just open your website to international orders, see how it goes and if you're getting certain amount of traction and one of particular country, then double down in terms of doing some marketing, whether it's digital marketing in that region, whether it's hosting a site locally there. And then you know fulfilling it locally because then customers can buy them and get the products next day versus having to you know ship it and international shipping costs a lot, it can take a week to get there that could cause issues with customer service. So these are the basic factors you need to consider brilliant, but the key thing is to have a big picture have that in your mind and then you know take the steps, but I like what you say, understand and make your business a success in your home country first. And that could first be in your town, then your city, then your county and then you know in other counties but make it a success in your own home country first. So the first lesson based on that theme is ace your digital strategy. I mean, I could not agree with more. How have you done that for your business? Well, I always say to people that there's no other better time in history to set up your business than today and that's because the friction of setting up a business has been taken away by the digital age in terms of well, first you don't have to go to a retail store and beg you know buy it to get your product on shop. You didn't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get a page add in the newspaper or magazine. You can do it directly, digitally, you can sell your product from your website, the couple of clicks, you can register your website, you can sell a bank account, you can accept payments, you can get a third party warehouse to fulfill the deliveries. So really it just comes down to having the right idea and taking action and you can pretty much get a business started. But the digital strategy is important because previously when you were advertising, even if you had the money to advertise, you didn't really know where your sales were coming from. It was very difficult and to measure how much and with a couple of hundred dollars, you can really see today what your ROI is, what the conversion rate is and then you can accordingly spend more money in those directions. If you're getting a return investment of every pound I spend, they get four pounds back or three pounds, you know you can keep putting in money or borrow money to be able to do that to push your products along as a margin of your product is good and it covers all your costs and you can make some profit. So I've been getting a digital strategy right, knowing what's working and always testing because you can do a test now which is quick, have one creative, another creative and whichever is getting more return investment then double done on that and focus on that. So it's real optimization aspect and it's getting similar in terms of the roles of digital, then there's the whole loyalty perspective of customers and retaining them with the database, sending them newsletters, you know, really targeting them. So really it's just something you need to really focus and get right. There's a really good lesson for people to take on board and it's a number one lesson really now if you're doing business in today's environment. Your second lesson that you say is understand your market, we hear a lot of entrepreneurs talking about that. I find it quite a complex term. How do you understand your market? How do you hone in and say that's my market? You say there's no blanket approach. Give us a bit more insight into that. Well, there's two things. One is to understand an international market, one is to actually understand your customer, who your customer is and that's important to figure out as soon as you can really. Who is buying your product, you know, is it someone who needs a lot of money, someone who doesn't need a lot of money, is it catering to a wide audience. And I always say that product should come up with should be niche, it should be unique. It doesn't have to cater to everyone. You're not worried about a massive size market. You want to be the best you can in your particular market because if you satisfy certain customers and they're really insanely happy about it, they're going to talk about it to other people. That's the best way to get people talking about your product. And so if you can figure out a niche area and then realize, you know, where those customers are, where they go shopping, what they, what content they watch, you know, how often are they in a particular place. We're really understanding all the aspects about this customer and then focusing in targeting those customers and then trying to find, look alike customers like that on digital platforms where you can mimic and target those people. But you want to get that validation from that small group who really love your product and then talk about it. I think that's key, that community you want to build and that will filter out into a much stronger brand later on. And don't compromise your brand sometimes. You have to have a strategy if you've got product that's premium, for instance, you want to keep it in premium locations, premium branding, not too much discounting because once you start doing that, you change the image of your brand and you become like everybody else. He's not trying to be like everybody else and do something different, you know, you don't want to just be competing on price because that's just commoditizing your brand and ultimately. Completely, I completely agree. And I think, you know, if you sort of think about the values of your brand. So for example, in mine, it's about organic, it's about sustainability, certification, it's about being natural clean. If you put those words down on a piece of paper and you use those in your marketing to create the awareness to instill desire, then you get the right people coming to you. This podcast is brought to you by Radio Center, who are helping businesses across the UK grow with radio advertising. Head to radiocenter.org/business to discover how radio can boost your company's performance, find out how the radio process works. Here from businesses who found success with audio advertising, access retraining and even search for and be linked with stations in your area. You can find out all that and more at radiocenter.org/business. At lesson three, collaborate with global agents, partners and distributors. This is obviously for people who have a physical product to sell. To tell us a little bit more about that, why you want to discuss that? Well, if you want to expand quickly, then you want to find the right partners internationally who can take your product or brand and distribute it in locally. They will understand who the right retailers are or the right customers to sell your product. So it's about agreeing terms, the right terms with these distributors, making them exclusive agents and giving them an opportunity to say, can you hit this target in this amount of time? And if not, then your agency will have to give it to somebody else. But they'll understand really what's happening. You want to spend time and see if they need the support. You need to explain them your brand because you understand it the most. So working with these partners, and that's how we've built Vitaballics over the years by working with international agents closely and learning from their expertise in the market and adding value to that. Certain areas, you know, Vitaballics has its own offices where we see the market bigger like China, for instance, is a great example where it's a huge market and it's somewhere I really wanted to get into. So set up our own online store in Alibaba team wall in China and sell the seller products with the help of local e-commerce company. And that's how we began in a very small way, sending the product to a bonded warehouse and selling it across border. And they were fulfilling it for us. So then we built that up slowly started marketing agency in China. They focused on building our brand which is key and social means very different. There you've got platforms like WeChat, Weibo, you've got livestreamers, key opinion leaders, it works very differently to the Western world. So they understand that. Then eventually I took the next step, set up our own stores on team wall, build a strategic alliance with Alibaba, set up our own team on the ground, did our own marketing. And now we've really grown and expanded the business in China, but all digitally which is interesting. So we haven't physically entered one single store in China. It's all been digital and it's one of our largest export markets now. And so the next step obviously to register the product with the ministry and then get them sold in store and that takes a process once that's done. But by then I would have built a good brand so retailers would be paying attention to say, OK, white or black is popular, we're listed. I think that's a strategy a lot of people should follow. Go direct to consumer first build your brand tested on a senior customer. When you've got enough traction automatically retailers would be more receptive to getting your products in there. And you probably get better terms as well once they've seen it online and through the ads and seeing your product sales. They know it tests and it works. And then they will take you in and retailers are looking for great director consumer brands. You know, it provides a better experience for customers coming in to store something new. They want to show that they're also you know up to date in terms of having digital brands there too. So I think that's the best strategy forward. Go online direct to consumer first and then hit retail points to have a presence there to expand the business further. Good advice and my final question to you before we wrap this up is I look at you and I think my goodness. What, you know, what a accomplished young gentleman you are. But you must have made some blooming mistakes. You are human. So is there a one mistake that you made so far to date where you think my goodness. That was the one mistake that I needed to make now and I'm never going to make it again mistakes to make are important. I think everyone's afraid of failure to some aspect and make all the mistakes the younger you are as well. I say and try and experiment and do all that you can, you know, and take all the risks you can when you're when you're younger. Of course, you know, I've made mistakes. In fact, I wish I made more mistakes and taking more risks about something I sort of wish I had done when I was younger, but in terms of something fairly recent was launching in America. For instance, it's a market that I've always wanted to try and get hold of and it's you know known as the graveyard for British companies because it's very difficult to crack America. So, you know, I worked for years to try and get into Walgreens which is the largest pharmacy chains that they like the boots equivalent and they have 7,000 stores nationally. So, you know, we thought this is how we built our business in the UK getting into retailers and getting it on the shelf and it will sell and then do the marketing and the advertising like we do. So, it took me two to three years to get this deal with Walgreens. I could have done it earlier if I gave away the terms, but I wanted some specific terms because if I didn't sell them and take the product back, I didn't want to go broke. So, I waited those two, three years and then they agreed to take the products which was phenomenal and they said it will give you two years to sell the product and make the success at that time. So, I sort of had a bit of hesitancy. I thought things are changing and they're a bit more digital right now, you know, America is a big market, but I said, look, 7,000 stores you can't say no to an opportunity like that. And of course, once it's on the shelf, it's just going to sell people are going to see, you know, pregnant care, perfect till, etc. So, we did that, we got on store and the products weren't selling. I mean, they were selling, but they were very, they weren't hitting the numbers because you really need to create demand. And to create demand, each state in America is like a country. I mean, you've got to spend millions, tens of millions to be able to get, you know, to make a dent in the market. So, what do you do? You spend $10, $20 million and, you know, all the money you have and hope it works. And where do you spend it? Do you spend it on outdoor? Do you spend it on print? Do you spend it on this? So, very quickly, it's not going to work and if I do, I'm just going to take a massive risk and bet the whole business. And if it doesn't sell through, I'm in big trouble. So, I took the decision then to, in the end, withdraw the products from the shelf, which was a huge cost to the business. And I thought, this is not the right strategy to be able to advertise. And I was doing localization. New York Manhattan is quite nice, but it's quite tight. You've got, you know, the underground, the metro, you've got the buses, you've got a concentration of people. So, you can make it successful by doing a campaign and there. But then you're talking about, okay, selling in New York, involving the Walgreens and 7,000 stores nationally. There's not selling there. They're not going to keep the products in. So, I said, okay, fine, let the product get delisted. Take all that stock back. But fortunately, the deal I did and Bangalore did hold out for these terms meant that I didn't lose money at the end, you know, in terms of taking the sport we sold through was sort of break even. And then the rest of the stock, I decided to go digital and work with Amazon and sell it online in the US. And now it's turned around and is doing very well and it's growing online in the US. But yeah, that was an amazing mistake. But, you know, you've got to turn it around and figure it out. So, I really appreciate you sharing that mistake. And I think it's just good that even somebody so experienced and successful as you, it doesn't matter where you are down the line, you're going to make mistakes about how you turn it around and lift yourself up, which is great. Ted, it's been amazing talking to you. We got you on here to talk about your theme, which was about how to scale your business globally. You shared with us three lessons first was ace your digital strategy. The second was understand your market. There's no blanket approach. And the final one was about collaboration with global partners and distributors really valuable lessons that I think, you know, there'll be a lot of take home for the people listening to this podcast. My final thing, which is just a bit of fun is you imagine I've got all these people talking on the podcast. Everybody's got a different message. And we are listening to this on the radio, you know, how would you remind somebody what your message is via a radio jingle? What would be that message? And could you sing that to us or wrap it? Well, okay, you've got to make opportunity and take opportunity. That's what I say. In life, you make the opportunity and then you've got to take it because they're various people going for the same job. And if you don't take it, you're going to lose out. So it's making it for yourself and then making sure you actually take that opportunity because a lot of people leave it on the table, they don't take it. So I think those two key lessons, I think, can apply in various things in life, not just business, but throughout, make it opportunity for yourself. Like you know, creating a vital election to the number one vitamin company, created a made an opportunity to open the door for dragons. And you know, when that came, it wasn't hand in a platter. I had to take it whether it was the interviews process, et cetera. And that's created so many more opportunities. And now I have the opportunity to create opportunities for other people by helping entrepreneurs. I really appreciate your time. It's been so gorgeous talking to you. Thank you so much. Now I've told you, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Well, that's been the backing brilliant business podcast with me, Syracal. And I really hope you've enjoyed the many words of wisdom that came from our chat. There'll be more amazing guests to come in the series with plenty of business lessons to be learned. So please subscribe and leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen to your podcast. And be sure to follow Radio Center across all of their socials on Instagram at Radio Center underscore UK and on Twitter at Radio Center. The backing brilliant business series was produced by audio always for Radio Center and co-created by Edrum. Visit RadioCenter.org/business for more information. [ Music ]