Catch Lucie on Do Radio:
Tomorrow's World with Jon Kaye, 15-21 September 2025

Lucie Macleod, 24, is the Founder & Director of Hair Syrup, a pioneering brand offering pre-wash hair oil treatments. Born out of personal hair struggles, Hair Syrup began as a university side-project in a student kitchen. With just £300 and a smartphone, Lucie propelled the brand to TikTok stardom, leveraging her creativity and vision. Despite limited business experience, she transformed Hair Syrup into a multi-million pound enterprise. Now stocked by major retailers like Superdrug, Boots, and ASOS, and featured in Business Insider, Cosmopolitan, and The Sunday Times, Hair Syrup stands as a titan in the hair care industry.

Show Notes:

Lucie Macleod didn’t set out to build a business. But thanks to a bit of curiosity and a whole lot of TikTok, that’s exactly what happened.

In our conversation, she shared how Hair Syrup went from a side project to a full-blown brand, largely fueled by the platform’s reach. No marketing degree, no team of strategists, just a genuine story, a product that worked, and the nerve to put it out there. But with rapid growth came complexity.

We got into the upsides and downsides of building in public. There’s real power in sharing your journey openly: it builds trust, traction, and a loyal community. But it also invites criticism, demands constant creativity, and takes a mental toll that most startup advice doesn’t warn you about.

Lucie was refreshingly honest about all of it: navigating negativity, staying authentic, and how she’s learning to manage the psychological whiplash of social media. We also touched on the bigger picture: the shifting media landscape, the role of creativity in modern entrepreneurship, and where AI might fit into all this as content creation evolves.

Lucie’s story is a reminder that experience is overrated, vulnerability is underrated, and sometimes the best strategy is just... starting.