, and causing her beauty products to sell out almost as soon as they are available. Being online, all the time, and sharing herself - vulnerably, with pathos and humour – is the Woodall way.
Five years after the launch of Trinny London, Woodall remains cautious about growth. “I hire slowly, even now. I spend money carefully.” One of her first investors was a fellow mother she met at the school gates who also happened to be head of research at market research firm Mintel. She gave her £150,000. Still, the money only went so far, so Woodall looked to her own assets, and sold her own clothing, to the tune of £60,000. She sold her house and rented. “If you have debt it’s all you think about. I didn’t want that over my head while I launched the business.
“Until very recently I thought I would organically grow into a CEO,” she says. “But now I know I have to be more strategic. It’s a balance of trusting your team but also having enough oversight.” She has employed a coach, who has encouraged her to think of her C-suite team the way she used to think about styling people on television.“I serve people with advice,” she says, “so I need to flip my thinking about leadership. It’s not always about steering people, it’s about offering what they need.
“Most brands wouldn’t touch that,” she says. “To me, that is the whole thing. I once talked to a CEO of an energy company who said, ‘My whole job is customer service’. And that’s what I think, too. People can get to a stage where they forget who they’re doing things for. This community is integral. It is scalable at the moment and I’d like to continue that. It’s such an important element of understanding your customer.”Retaining data has been crucial to product development, too, she says.