While many may be more familiar with doom-scrolling in the dark than leveraging YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram for multi-million-pound business growth, it’s entirely possible to build successful ventures—from business strategy advice to butter brands and even selling prime property—by making your social media content sweat.
The lesser-spotted multi-million-pound entrepreneurs are nestled in our social media feeds among the sea of content creators, cat videos, holiday spam, and angry relatives, and when they're posting, they're making impressive financial returns in the real world.
I’ve taken a deeper dive into the businesspeople who turn social media into their superpower, backing up their content creation with decades of hard work offline, merging niche content with savvy authenticity. How do they do it?
Thomas Straker
Content really is king for professional chef and entrepreneur Thomas Straker, whose famed 2020 ‘All Things Butter’ TikTok series catapulted his business growth. Before this, Straker honed his craft with professional training stints at Ballymaloe Cookery School and The Dorchester.
Since finding the sweet spot on social media with his butter-centric recipes, he has turbocharged his multi-million-pound business success. He opened his restaurant, Straker’s, in 2022 and launched the homegrown British butter brand All Things Butter in 2023 with his childhood friend Toby Hopkinson. The brand, and its flavored varieties, aims to disrupt the UK butter industry, support British farmers by donating 1% of all revenue to the charity RABI, and create more reasons for foodies to use butter when preparing meals throughout the day. The business sold more than 100,000 blocks in its first 20 weeks and can be found at major retailers such as Sainsbury's, Asda, Ocado, and Co-Op. Together, the two businesses have a combined value of £13 million.
This growth is undoubtedly bolstered by Straker's achieving over a billion views across his social media channels. Notable content includes the Berghaus x Straker collaboration on YouTube, which offers a ‘Taste of the Outdoors’ in Islay, Scotland. In this series, Straker visits a farmer to explore flock management before cooking up a storm with a mutton flatbread, celebrating the provenance of its ingredients in a stunning location.
Lisa Johnson
Lisa Johnson, 47, is a multi-seven-figure global business strategist and Sunday Times bestselling author with an incredible rags-to-riches story. After growing up on a council estate and being badly bullied at school, she turned her fortunes around.
In 2017, Lisa struggled to afford a £200,000 home and was £35,000 in debt, so she worked tirelessly to turn her life around. Since then, the mum-of-twins has achieved £20 million in sales—and once earned £1 million in just one hour. She’s the founder of That Strategy Co., which offers CPD-certified business training to help owners learn, grow, and scale their online businesses, including how to embrace social media as she has. Many of her clients come through her Facebook group, which has almost 20,000 members.
A money and wealth expert, Lisa has made 90% of her income through passive or semi-passive streams, and she teaches others how to do the same.
Siân-Louise Tangney
Siân-Louise Tangney is a content creator and Luxury Real Estate Advisor at prime real estate agency London House. She has amassed over 20,000 followers across her social media channels, including Instagram and TikTok, by offering behind-the-scenes sneak peeks of London’s most prestigious properties.
As a shrewd businesswoman and broker, she has brought £20 million worth of property to the market after being approached through social channels. She believes social media helps her “build trust and relatability” with buyers and vendors of multi-million-pound properties, as she understands how to bring properties to life through marketing.
Siân-Louise says, “There are so many estate agents stuck in the dark ages who don’t let the properties do the talking.”
“Content creation is a skill that requires an eye for architecture and design, as well as the ability to condense attributes into a format that allows people to feel they are getting to know a property’s intimate details. Tone is really important—yes, it’s a mass audience, but you should strike the right balance for those who prefer to observe a property’s lifestyle attributes from afar. It is important to pique their imagination, making their needs feel seen and heard authentically.”
