Catching up with Curtis Walker
The time we spend at our desks can take up a lot of our time. And while what we do to make a living is important to our lives, it isn’t the full picture of who we are.
So we've set out to discover how our team spends their time during the work day and once they clock out.
Curtis Walker is TurnkeyZRG’s Vice President leading the Marketing Partnerships vertical. He is broadly networked and wired with property sales executives, as well as agency & brand marketing executives. Since joining TurnkeyZRG, he has successfully placed executives at Ilitch Sports & Entertainment, IMG, TelevisaUnivision, Orlando City Soccer & the Orlando Pride, CSM, the Atlanta Dream and more.
Read on to learn more about Curtis.
The first thing I do in the morning is get my daughter ready for school. She just started school in January. So, instituting that process into my day-to-day is still something I am still adjusting to.
Before, I would wake up, make breakfast, be on my computer before eight o'clock and then just work throughout the course of the day. But being present, available, and a part of the process to getting my daughter ready for her day is very important to me.
That's how I start my workday. After I drop her off, I have an opportunity to drive home and think about what's ahead for the day. Once I get back home, I’ll make something to eat, go to my office, look at my calendar and write out what my tasks are for the day.
I try to itemize the big priorities based on all the searches I'm working on and where I need to spend a lot of my time. I’ll look for pockets throughout the course of the day to get things done because if I'm working several searches at once, my days end up with back-to-back calls booked all day.
I have limited opportunity to do anything from an administrative standpoint, so writing those tasks allows me to prioritize, while also, knocking out the administrative tasks within my current workday so I’m not behind on anything going into the next day.
Once I get into the day, it's a lot of calls, a lot of research to identify potential candidates and new business opportunities.
The most important thing is just to make sure that at various moments throughout the day, I'm taking a step back and taking care of myself.
Everything I do is influenced by having my family in mind. What forced me to reconsider how I was taking care of myself was the thought of being around for my family more and doing what I can to be available as long as I can. They are my motivation.
It’s easy for me to close the door and be stuck in the grind all day. This job makes time go by fast and before I realize it, I would miss lunch. Getting up at various points to go get something to eat and drink, stepping away to go outside to get a breath of fresh air is a requirement for me now. Keeping this in mind helps me perform my work better.
With any opportunity or task, you have to think about your why.
What's that key motivator that's going to enable you to push forward?
When I transitioned to TurnkeyZRG, I believed this position could not only help me professionally by expanding my network, but I felt this role gave me an opportunity to impact this industry in more ways than I would be able to on the deal making side in partnership sales. I feel the partnership space is the least diverse vertical in sports, both from a gender and an ethnic perspective, and I looked at this as an opportunity to potentially impact that. I would never put a candidate in a slate just because they're diverse, but I can be very intentional about where and how I identify and vet candidates and processes. To-date, more than half of my placements have been women and/or ethnic minorities.
When things get stressful and busy for me, I think about why I took this job.
This job provides me with the opportunity to have an impact in this industry by giving me a platform to be intentional about having important conversations. When things get busy, stopping doesn't even come to mind. I just go back to that list and figure out what priorities I need to tackle in order to keep doing what I'm doing.
Remaining mindful about what motivated my move over to this business has been my north star for getting through tough phases of the process of executing a search.
Making that switch to the recruiting side has taught me that I belong, that I'm not an imposter.
I used to be on that other side in a revenue generating role. I started off in ticket sales and then I crossed over into partnerships later in my career.
In many meetings with external constituents and even internal meetings with stakeholders across the organization, I was the only one that looked like me in the room.
I would think, “Do I even belong here?”
Then when you go to conferences and seminars, you can count on one hand how many people look like you in that room. From a mental standpoint, it gets taxing and self-doubt kicks in. You start to think “Am I only here to check a box?”
During my career before Turnkey, I started to get over that a little bit because the results started to speak for themselves. But in the back of my mind, the thoughts were still kind of creeping.
Being in the position that I am now, I have the opportunity to evaluate the landscape.
I oversee all the partnership searches, so I speak to anybody from Chief Revenue Officers, VPs and Directors, all the way to coordinators within partnerships. And what I've realized is that I'm on par with the majority of this industry based off of where I am in the spectrum of my career.
I know that I belong because I know how to do the job.
I know the landscape, I know the players, but more importantly, I know myself better and I have the confidence, the acumen, the perspective, all the key attributes and competencies to be a more well-rounded professional and leader.
Curtis and his family
Family time
After work, unfortunately or fortunately, my email is still on my phone. I'm still checking emails until I go to sleep. I might not respond, but it's a habit. I just wonder what's coming through.
I think I'm good with that for now because whenever you're growing a business, it's always good to remain accessible or just aware of what's going on. So, I might not respond to emails when I see them come through, but when I open my email the next morning, there's really nothing that comes in as a surprise.
But if I'm going on vacation, I’m shutting down and disconnecting.
Outside of that, when I have downtime, I'm holding my seven-month-old son. I'm asking my daughter how her day at school was. I'm seeing if I can help my wife with dinner.
Maybe I’ll go outside for 20 minutes in the backyard and shoot some jump shots. I got a hoop about a month and a half ago that I put it in the backyard in an attempt to get my jumper back.
But I’m really a homebody, I'm a family man and being a present husband and father are the two most important jobs that I have.
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ABOUT TURNKEYZRG
Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment, music and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model.