Mildred Talabi

Brand Piano, an innovative mentoring scheme helping women entrepreneurs develop their businesses, was launched for Global Entrepreneurship Week by Lambeth Council in partnership with JP Creative, Alchemy Events and In House PR. Read the full story on the Brand Piano event

We spoke to the winner of Brand Piano, 26 year old Mildred Talabi. Her business, Raw Love UK, is a Streatham based company that promotes the health benefits of eating raw living foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds) through health talks, demonstrations and running raw food preparation classes.

Did you always have aspirations to be an entrepreneur?

I never set out to be an ‘entrepreneur’ as such but I’ve always had the desire to do my own thing! My first taste of entrepreneurship was as a teenager when I set up a ‘typing’ business with my siblings, word processing people’s essays and manuscripts for a small fee (computers were still a bit of a novelty back then). Evolving from that, I’ve been partially self-employed as a freelance editor, writer and CV Consultant for about two years now, and at the pace Raw Love UK is growing, I’m looking to be fully self-employed this year, juggling both aspects of what I do.

Where did the idea for Raw Love UK come from?

It was after a life-changing experience my husband had while playing semi-pro football about four years ago. I really got involved at the beginning of January 2009 when we decided to go on a 10 day raw-food experiment to see what effects it would have on us. The results were amazing! From then on we wanted to live this healthy lifestyle as much as possible but we didn’t have the funds to buy some of the equipment needed. We applied for a grant from Southwark Council and received £1,500 to start-up the business from BBI [Black Business Initiative] which runs the Southwark Youth Enterprise Project (SYEP). We registered the company in June 2009 and it’s taken off from there really.

How did you hear about Brand Piano?

I’ve been to quite a few business events and I’m signed up to a lot of business-related mailing lists. The Brand Piano project caught my eye one day in the Lambeth Council newsletter and I applied for it. I thought it was just a great opportunity for young women entrepreneurs to develop their marketing and branding skills over a four-week period; I had no idea at the time that it was a competition and that there were prizes involved!

How did Brand Piano help you get your business off the ground?

Being able to listen to the great business women that mentored us during this time was fantastic. It gave me lots of ideas and allowed me to develop even more awareness in the areas of PR, branding and marketing. I was able to immediately apply some of the knowledge I gleaned to Raw Love UK to gain publicity, grow the business and increase our sales. It was also a great opportunity to meet with other enterprising ladies. It was interesting to see what other people are doing and I’m still in touch with them now. I think it is an absolutely fantastic initiative!

What did you win?

I won £1,000 investment in the business, along with ongoing mentoring support from Jeanette at JP Creative, Claire at Alchemy Events and Katie at In House PR, and the opportunity to get MBA students at Roehampton University to work with us to develop our brand.

What have you been doing since Brand Piano?

We’ve launched a raw food recipes ebook which is selling really well, we’ve been featured in several media outlets which is great publicity for us, and most of all my husband and I have both been shortlisted in the Lambeth Awards in the Young Entrepreneurs category, and I have also been shortlisted for the Best Woman in Business category. We’ll find out the results at the end of Feb so it’s all very exciting times indeed!

For more information about Raw Love UK, visit www.rawloveuk.com

Read the full story on the Brand Piano event