Читать книгу Strong Woman: The Truth About Getting to the Top - Karren Brady - Страница 9

Of course, no man – or woman – is an island and you don’t operate in isolation throughout your career. However much you have perfected your mind-set, you have to navigate and grow within your working world. For most of my life, that has been football.

People are amazed when I say this, but I’m no great fan of the game. When we – David Sullivan, David Gold and I – bought Birmingham City Football Club in 1993, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I love, love, love football, I have to get into it.’ But there were many things about the business that interested me. And that was why David Sullivan and I made a perfect combination. He loved the football, and I loved the business.

Because football is a unique business. We don’t manufacture anything at all. Instead, it’s about making the most of the brand and getting the best out of the people. And all your assets are people. Dealing with them correctly, getting the balance right between them, understanding who they are and their ambitions, setting a structure for success and making sure everybody is going in the same direction are the keys to running that sort of people business.

What I liked most was the connection with the customer, the ability to build a brand, which, in turn, builds value. There are very few businesses that have such a real, intimate relationship with their customers, and still fewer that come face to face with those hard-core customers every week. And football is unique in that the customer almost never changes his allegiance. It’s not as if an Aston Villa fan ever wakes up one morning and decides to support Birmingham, or an Arsenal supporter is strolling down the road and switches to Tottenham. When you’re in, you’re in, and I thought that was a really interesting concept. I wanted to explore just how far you could take the relationship.

And I do love brands. I love the idea of building loyalty and building the concept, and I could see the potential with a football club. When I got involved all those years ago, no one would have said a football club was a brand. At the start, there were lots of people who said they supported a club but who weren’t paying customers. They would sit at home, watch a match on TV and say, ‘I support Birmingham,’ but they wouldn’t express that support by buying a ticket, a programme, a shirt. I saw great potential in those people. I was convinced we could find a way to convert the passive supporter into a paying customer who would engage in the business of football.

I was right. Now it has all changed: everyone accepts that the crest means something special. In fact, by the time I left Birmingham you could have a Birmingham City credit card, a Birmingham City mobile phone and you could travel with the Birmingham City travel club. We even had a Birmingham City funeral service (which one or two of my managers were threatened with over the years!). My point is that over the years the brand had been recognised and extended. People believed in the company, and they believed in the directors, so we were able to extend that loyalty – and so, the brand – into other non-football-related businesses. I saw that opportunity in 1993 and I was part of that change, which was massively gratifying to see.

It’s not that you have to totally love every aspect of a business you are involved in, but you do have to have a passion for it. You have to understand the business: what it needs and how to run it. Of course, to some extent, all businesses are the same – simply put, you have money coming in and money going out, and you just have to make sure that the first sum is bigger than the second.

And I would say, in that respect, not being a big fan has been an advantage throughout my career in football. Where most people go wrong in football stems from their support for the club: it becomes the overwhelming consideration when making a decision. They overspend because they think that the team reflects personally on themselves. They say yes to everything because they’re so desperate for the club to be a success on the pitch. They forget that it’s important, too, to be a success off it. They are a supporter first and a businessperson second. That can be a dangerous trap.

When I first came into football, David Dein, a true gentleman and a friend, who was vice-chairman of Arsenal at the time, gave me a great piece of advice. He said, ‘Never let your heart rule your head in football – and never believe the manager when he says, “Just one more player.”’ That has been proved true to me over and over again. Although I admit that during Birmingham City’s Barry Fry days, when the squad swelled to 50 players, David might have wondered if I’d forgotten his advice!

Over the years I have found that most of my male counterparts are just frustrated managers. They don’t really want to be the chief exec mopping up all the day-to-day boring, complicated and less glamorous issues: they want to be on the training pitch, buying and selling the players, and in the changing room – and, secretly, they all think they’re good enough to do it.

I can’t think of anything I’d want less. Some of my managers say to me, ‘Will you come to the training ground?’ I say, ‘What for?’ At West Ham, I’ve been to the training ground once. In 16 years at Birmingham City I probably went 10 times. If I thought I could do a better job than the manager, then we’d all be in trouble. And if my managers realised why I’d turned up at the training ground, they might stop asking! If I’m there it’s always bad news for the manager – he’s probably about to lose his job.

Nonetheless, football didn’t find me, I found football. It all began when I saw a small ad in the Financial Times, saying ‘Football Club For Sale’. By then, I had been working for David Sullivan at Sport Newspapers for three years. My main responsibility was as sales and marketing director – I orchestrated the marketing campaigns, ran the sales team and controlled costs – but no one at Sports Newspapers really had one job. I had soon grasped that when you work for a small business you have to be everything: the financial director, the marketing director, the sales manager. You do the selling, and you make the tea, too. It was hard work and great fun. When I was there, the Sunday Sport had a circulation of more than a million copies and was the equivalent of the US National Enquirer. ‘World War II Bomber Found On Moon’ and ‘Hitler Was A Woman’ were our typical sort of headlines. We spent a few years, under David’s shrewd and inspirational guidance, building a fun company into a £50 million empire.

Still, I didn’t have one single clear idea of where I was going or what I wanted to do next. There was no grand plan. I was enjoying my job, enjoying being hands on and taking on more responsibility, and I was loyal to my board. After all, they had made me a director at the age of 19 to keep me motivated, giving me kudos which probably didn’t exist outside my own head! I loved it, and if they had said, ‘Karren, you’re going to Australia to run a pig farm now,’ I would have said, ‘Fine, I’ll give it a go.’

Now, at the time, I knew David wanted to get into sport. He was thinking about horse racing and I was thinking about football. We had looked at a few clubs – some were too small, such as Barnet, and some were too big, such as Spurs – and then I saw the ad for Birmingham City, which was in administration and, as I’d discover, just right.

I went to visit the club on a Friday, came back and told David that the place was a mess but that we should buy it. Having seen it, I was hungry for the challenge, something new and exciting. It took the weekend to persuade him. I was on the phone to him every 10 minutes, saying, ‘You do want this, you do, you do. Whatever money you put in, I’ll get back.’ He was 60 per cent against it, more inclined to say no than yes. But I was 100 per cent for it.

He told me he just wasn’t sure, that he was worried football clubs were a black hole for money – which, in the main, they were and still are – but I told him I’d go up there and do everything that was necessary to make a success of it. And, in the end, he backed me. David took a really big chance on me, giving me Birmingham to run when I was still just 23, and I will always be grateful to him for that.

So, by the Monday, I was managing director of a football club. David had seen what was coming, and warned me, ‘Football is a very male-dominated business, and you are going to have to be twice as good as the men to be considered even half as good.’ I just replied, ‘Luckily, that’s not difficult!’ And that was how I felt. I had no idea that anyone would be interested in a female managing director – after all, I wasn’t going to manage the team.

I knew I’d come up against some outdated beliefs, so there were no real surprises there, but what was a shock, as I’ve said, was the level of press interest. I think it was due to the heady combination of my being young and a powerful, modern, independent woman who’d had the cheek and balls to come and run a football club. At the time I really couldn’t work out what all the fuss was about, but the media were fascinated by this young woman getting involved in football and I had to deal with that.

I remember Kelvin Mackenzie, then the Sun editor, calling me in my first week in charge and asking me to do an exclusive photo shoot with his paper. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’ I asked, and he explained how it worked. I did the photo shoot, got coverage for the football club, which helped to build its profile, and both parties were happy. Kelvin taught me the importance of being the promotion in true Richard Branson style. This was the start of my relationship with the Sun, where I have been a proud columnist for the past six years. It’s my paper, loyal to me from the start, and as I’ve said, loyalty is very important to me. I’ve been asked to join the Daily Mail, the News of the World, the Guardian, but I have never been able to break the real loyalty I felt for the Sun. I even went on to work with Kelvin as a consultant when he started TalkSport, helping him with its start-up, devising shows and coming up with ideas. An editor and a businessman – what a combination. Shame he’s a Charlton fan!

When I gave my first press conference at Birmingham, I was desperate to look older than I was so I put on my big earrings and my wide shoulder pads and did my hair up. My aim was to look 25 because that seemed so much older than 23, at that age. I went on to the stage to outline what we intended to do for the club, and at the end I asked for questions. Of course, that was when a journalist from the Sunday People put his hand up and said ‘What are your vital statistics, love?’ For a minute, I thought, This is going to be a mountain to climb, but I told him, ‘Listen, I know I am not a man, I know it’s difficult for you, this young woman coming into football, but I promise you, in 10 years’ time, you’ll find us playing in the best league in the world, and setting the standard other football clubs will follow.’ Then I flicked my big hair and walked off stage. As I passed him, he said, ‘You may not have a dick but you have got great big balls.’

He was right, I don’t have a dick! But I do have big balls and I needed them. If you’re a woman in a male world, you need to put a marker down early and say, ‘I’m tough. I’ll lead the company by having integrity and professionalism. I will stand up for what I want, I will make improvements and I will deliver solutions.’ In the end, I found that the business was easier than the players.