Owning Her Narrative: What Victoria Beckham Teaches Us About Building a Brand

I’ve just finished watching the three-part Netflix documentary about Victoria Beckham, which follows her journey as she prepares for her biggest ever event at Paris Fashion Week, the most prestigious of the four fashion locations - 20 years after she first started out. And the most remarkable thing?

She’s only just found her own way.

Whether you like her or not, that doesn’t matter. For any woman trying to carve a path in business - particularly in an industry as tough as fashion, where so many women work for free just to have it on their CV.

Her journey is worth paying attention to, and there are lessons we can all take, whether we run our own business or hold a leadership role in corporate life.

In twenty years, she’s gone from pop star to global fashion powerhouse, leaving behind lessons that any woman building a brand - in her own business or in a corporate role - can take away. Here’s what stood out to me, in no particular order.

Maybe it’s because we were both born in the ’70s, but the grit and determination that comes naturally to us - it’s what drives us.

So from the first episode to the last, I totally understood the hours of work, the unstoppable determination and the resilience you need to make things happen - and I do feel today, some get the hard graft you need to do, and some don’t. Those that don’t - won’t win. Success is a feeling, not a destination point - and that for me stood out strong - that feeling of achieving your vision is ultimately what drives us to do, what we do, each day.

Did I have to work for Anna Wintour’s approval? Absolutely. I had to work for a lot of people’s approval - Victoria in The Sunday Times Style

Victoria talks a lot about the challenges of being a celebrity and with that comes a lot of people who don’t want to say No to you. After accumulating millions of pounds of debt, something had to change. Her salvation, was her new business partner - and he did not mince his words, and he didn’t care about pleasing Victoria. He needed his investment to make him money.

In your business or career, you can never always be right. Find people that have walked your pathway before you, watch, listen and learn. Be curious about what went wrong for them, learn from that. Understand how they were motivated and did they have to pivot - build your network and be in learning mode, every single conversation.

Trust is hard when you are a control freak - and there’s nothing wrong with wishing to be in control, you are the leader and it’s your vision. However, whilst it is easy to find an agency that can support you with this, and then another agency to support you with that - will it all come together?

If you’re not making a profit, you don’t have a business - you have a hobby. I can’t remember who first told me that, but it’s always stuck. Victoria’s early story was much the same: she had an expensive hobby, and only time will tell if it truly becomes a profitable business. In that sense, she’s really only just getting started!

A small leadership team with strong skill sets that can have a commercially-viable lens on every element of the business; keeping control of costs, making the right decision for the brand and not the person, it what will turn her business around.

It’s exactly how it reads - and once she started to ask for help, it all started to change.

Strong woman often feel they have to wear all the hats; ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t get done’- is simply not true.

We’ve got to knock this attitude on the head. Victoria, even when she tries to say it in her interview, clearly struggles with this. I do myself, often.

I suppose only practice, makes perfect.

By part three, you are there with her, feeling the pressure. It’s all going wrong, and the control freak can’t control the weather. You can’t throw money at the situation, you can’t shout, scream or have a hissy-fit. You have so many people there needing decisions made, and in the moment.

You can see she wants to cry or to walk away - but she doesn’t.

I’ve learnt so much watching this part of the documentary - I will certainly be putting ‘keeping calm’ high on my agenda. Even if I do have a little cry (in the car, in the toilet or even on a walk with my dog)

Ladies, we are only human, after all.