Playing to win

When Karren Brady took over as the first female boss of Birmingham City FC in 1993, she quickly built a reputation as a hardnosed businesswoman who could beat the men at their own game. But, as she prepares to embark on a new TV career, she tells Diana Milne her fearsome reputation is undeserved.

“I think one of the most important things in business is if someone in the business likes you and puts you under their wing and guides you to better things”
-Karren Brady

As the first woman to beat the men at their own game in the UK football industry, you'd expect Karren Brady to be a pretty tough character. So it comes as a surprise when she claims to be anything but: "As much as I'm portrayed as quite ruthless, I'm actually a big softie really," she says. "I like to think I'm firm but fair."  She may deny it but becoming the managing director of Birmingham City aged just 23 took guts and a very tough skin. Brady describes the challenges of taking on the job: "Well it was quite difficult when I took over in 1993. I remember going to an away game at Watford and asking the guy at the desk where the director's box was. He said 'yes dear, the wives go the ladies room'. And I said 'actually I'm not the wife of t director I am the managing director.' And he put on his glasses, looked at me and said: 'Oh yes, you're that woman. Stay here and I'll have to find out what to do with you' because that's what it was like those days. There were no women around." Brady goes on to describe the "blatant sexism" that existed in the football industry during that time and the way this was conveyed in media coverage of her appointment: "I remember I had t go to a Football League tribunal because Birmingham had been accused of poaching a manager. I was on the train to London and the person opposite me was reading Daily Mirror. When he opened it I saw a picture of myself on the back page wearing a short skirt with the headline: Sex Shooter; Brady will do a Sharon Stone in front of the Tribunal. People talk about sexism today but in those days it was absolutely blatant."

The winning streak

In the 16 years that she managed Birmingham FC Brady did everything she could to change that. By the time she left, following takeover of the club last October, 75 percent of its senior management team were women – a far cry when she was the only person wearing skirts in the boardroom. And Brady had successful proven the point that women can succeed in a male dominated world. Three years after she took over the club posted its first profit and in 19897 it launched on the stock market, valued at the time of the float at £25,000,000. During her time at the club she increased spectator numbers from 6000 to a sell out capacity of over 30,000 on average. and by 2002 it had finally won a place in the Premier League. In 2007 it was valued at over £60 million and last year it sold for  £82 million.

Football is not the only area in which Brady has honed her business talents. She sits on the board of several major corporations, including the baby clothes giant, Mothercare and the broadcaster Channel 4 and Sport England. Her achievements are all the more impressive given that she has successfully juggled her career with family commitments, bringing up two children with her husband, the Canadian footballer Paul Peschisolido, who played for Birmingham City for two seasons. She admits she sometimes struggled with her dual commitments: "It's is a constant struggle and I think anybody who says it's easy must be doing something different to me. I do have to sit there and say to myself 'board meeting or sports day, board meeting or nativity play?'. When you're at the board meeting you're wishing you were at the sports day and when you're at sports day you're wondering what's happening at the board meeting. I think the trick is that most working women have two personalities; they have their home personality and their work personality and the trick is not to let either of those personalities drain the life out of the other."

Not surprisingly then the challenges faced by working mothers in business is a subject that is very close to her heart. She believes strongly that the UK government doesn't not do enough to support women by providing affordable childcare options: "One of the issues is working women trying to get the government to allow affordable, quality childcare and allowing that to be tax deductible. If you're a working mother and you have to employ someone to look after your children why shouldn't you be allowed to deduct it from your income?" Women in business is not the only issue bugging Brady. She is critical too of the support provided by the government for small businesses, claiming that the red tape involved inhibits entrepreneurship in the country: "I think there's an awful lot of red tape for businesses and I think that small businesses should be able to have a lot of that taken away from them. There's an awful lot of difficulties with small businesses employing people as some of the rules and regulations make it very difficult for them to expand in the way that they would."

Pastures new

Brady hopes her latest incarnation – as the replacement for Margaret Mountford on the hit BBC television series The Apprentice – will give her a platform from which to address some of these issues but also to help to encourage budding entrepreneurs. As the sidekick to Alan Sugar on the show that airs this summer, she will be responsible for overseeing the candidates hoping to become Sugar's apprentice as they take part in various money-making challenges. And she says she is very much looking forward to passing on what she has learnt: "I'd like to be able to tell them where they are going wrong and how if they'd tweaked their ideas they would have been better or easier to communicate. I think one of the most amazing things I've learnt about doing this is how the show is actually like holding up a mirror against the contestants' own personalities and allowing them to develop and actually teaching them a bit of tough love as well. I think one of the most important things about The Apprentice is that the people that come through the process actually learn something from it."

Brady is also a big advocate of the concept of learning from a mentor as an apprentice. After all, it was through being taken under the wing of her former boss, David Sullivan the owner of Birmingham City FC, that her own career took off. She was first spotted by him when she was selling radio airtime for the early morning Asian Hour show on LCBC radio. At the time she told entrepreneur Sullivan that if bought advertising from and it didn't increase his sales she would give him his money back. He bought the slot and his sales increased. Later Brady went to work for him and it was her that persuaded him to buy Birmingham City. Describing the influence this early mentoring had on her career, she says: "I think one of the most important things in business is if someone in the business likes you and guides you, puts you under their wing and guides you to better things. I certainly had that in my Chairman David Sullivan who took a keen interest in my career and did a lot of mentoring for me and that was very important and key to my own success."

A life changing moment

Brady's meteoric career rise suffered a temporary blow however, when she was diagnosed with a potentially fatal aneurysm in her brain, which was discovered in February 2006. At the time she was given the choice of an operation that carried a high chance of a severe stroke or the insertion of a coil to break up the aneurysm that carried the risk of death on the operating table. She opted for the coil, a decision she describes as the toughest in her lifetime, and thankfully lived to tell the tale. The incident, she says, served to reaffirm her life goads. But also forced her to take time out to enjoy the perks of her lucrative career: "I understand, when people get very ill that they look at their life and say 'I hate my job, I hate my husband, etc, I want to change everything and go off around the world'. I think that what it made me reflect on was the fact that actually I really did like my life and I wanted to live it for as long as possible," she says, adding however, that she decided that she deserved a well-earned break: "My best friend was brought up in Hong Kong and for years I've been saying that next time I'd go back for a visit with her. But I could never fit it in. After my illness I did fit it in and it made me realise that you've got to do some of the things that you've planned to do otherwise what's the point of working so hard for them?" Today, having flown the Birmingham FC coop she is free also to pursue career ambitions that were put to one side while she concentrated on the beautiful game. She has made no secret of the fact that she doesn't see a future career for herself in football but won't reveal what business direction she plans to go in next. But whatever it is she will be playing to win.

Career woman – Karen Brady's biography

Karen Brady began her career aged 18-years-old at the global advertising agency Saatchi &Saatchi before becoming Junior Account Executive at London's LBC Radio. She took on the role of Birmingham City FC Managing Director in 1993 and increased its value to over £60 million during her time in charge. She is a popular media figure, having hosted her own TV show Brady Bunch and presented several TV shows including Loose Women and Live Talk on ITV. Brady has written four books, a factual account of her first season at Birmingham City, two novels and her latest book, about successful women in the business world. She is also a columnist for The Sun newspaper, The Evening Mail in Birmingham and The Guardian newspaper and in 2008 launched her own magazine, Today's Business Woman.

Brady sits on the board of the business board of the mental health charity Scope and is the Ambassador for Birmingham Women's Aid. She is currently chairman of the music magazine Kerrang! And is a Board Director of Mothercare PLC, Channel 4 Television ad Sport England. She was made a Fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing in 2008 and has won a string of business awards, including Natwest's Everywoman Award in December 2008.