Catching up with Katy Young Staudt
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.
Katy Young Staudt is TurnkeyZRG’s Vice President of College & Coaching and one of the very top search executives in sports. For 18 years, she has supported 200+ searches for Division I head coaches, athletic directors, and administrators at institutions such as Yale, Texas Tech, Ole Miss, Cal, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Fresno State, Bucknell, Fairfield, Cleveland State, Tulsa, TCU, and Johns Hopkins to name a few.
Read on to learn more about Katy.
I wake up around 5:30am every morning. My almost 2 year old son wakes up at six, so I have to get my act together before he wakes up which usually entails catching up on work emails, texts, and reading twitter. Living out in Phoenix makes it a bit challenging with #timezoneproblems and it’s almost lunch time on the east coast!
Once my son wakes up, it's breakfast, getting ready for the day, and then spending time with him before I take him to pre -school. Typically, I run through coffee bean for my second serving of caffeine for the day! It also gives me a few minutes in the car to return phone calls or check in with clients.
Everything about the search business is relationship based. The amount of calls really depends on what time of year it is. If it's the middle of basketball search season, I'll get on the phone or zoom as early as 5:30 in the morning. I’ve learned that being a working mom in sports is more about integration than balance!
Once I get back in my office, I map out what my day looks like. Every morning I write down all the clients I have at that time and what I have to accomplish for that client that day.
Who do I need to call back? What candidates do I need to talk to? So, I usually knock that out in the morning. And then, depending on the day and the time of year, we'll be on Zoom or interviews or, you know, I could be traveling. Every day is so different, and every season is so different depending on if we're working with clients on more coaching searches or AD searches.
If I have a few minutes between zoom meetings and phone calls for current searches, I typically work on some casual business development calls. This allows me to keep up with the trends, help problem solve and sometimes… even land a search!
After 18 years in this business, these calls have become check-ins with friends and colleagues. The real key to being joyful in your job is doing life with friends. People want to work with people they know and trust.
Whatever time zone I'm in, people are going to call me early and they're going to call me late. It's just the nature of the business, right? Everything is time sensitive! When you've got a coach search, you're trying to get it done quickly. Being accessible and available for clients, agents, coaches is part of the business. It goes back to integration. My son has been on or around more early morning or weekend Zooms with clients in the past year than any baby, I think, probably in America. Because if I have to interview volleyball coaches on Saturday morning at 9:00 AM, my husband, who is a scout in the NBA, is most likely on the road.
I don't think balance is really a word I would use. In our business, even if you don't have kids, there's not really balance. It’s a lifestyle. I love what I do. I love helping others. You have to truly LOVE it to be successful. Instead of meeting coaches out for coffee, we have started hosting them at our house for BBQs during recruiting weekends.
The secrets to success in this business are hard work, trust, helping others, and deep relationships. It’s about truly caring about clients and candidates as people first.
It's really about the relationships and the trust I've built out over time with clients and coaches. If I call a coach, I usually don't have to explain who I am anymore. I am always accessible to advise them or encourage them.
We've built up such a great client base in intercollegiate athletics space, that I now get to really focus exclusively on consulting with ADs and Presidents on searches for administrators and coaches. Over time, as collegiate athletics has changed, retaining a search consultant has become more of a standard best practice. In my early days as a consultant, that wasn’t always the case. ADs and Presidents are recognizing the value of starting on 2nd base.
The ability to move quickly behind the scenes and put together a great pool of candidates, recruit those candidates, sell the job, determine who is movable, who is not movable, sell the AD, sell the school, complete off-list references and background checks, and serve as a buffer between the AD and agents makes for a seamless and confidential process.
Coaches in general are also making a lot more money these days. It's not just, “Hey, that's 50 grand. If they don't work out, we'll just pay 'em 50 grand to go away.” These multi-year contracts, even for Olympic sports are highly lucrative. Everyone has an agent. Everyone is trying to get the best deal and many use new opportunities for leverage. It’s simple economics. Supply and demand.
The risk has gone up, because the investment's gone up.
My first boss used to tell me, “You can never rise above your own self-portrait.”
When first got into this business, I had a great mentor by the name of Bob Beaudine. He expected a lot out of a 22-year-old kid right out of college. He gave me a piece of advice that I will never forget. Bob told me “You can never rise above your own self-portrait.” Whatever you think you are, you are. He gave me a seat at every table right next to him for eight years. He also expected long hours and a great attitude. He instilled a culture of high expectations and held me to a very high standard. He prioritized WHO over WHAT and always made time to speak and inspire everyone, even if the person was out of a job and looking for their next opportunity.
You earn respect over time with people in the industry by spending time helping others, even when they might not be able to help you. You are only remembered for 2 things--problems you solve, or ones you create!
You must have thick skin in this business no matter what. Don’t let a tweet get to you, stand up for yourself, know your stuff inside and out, and work your tail off. It used to bother me when I’d be the lead consultant on a search, walk in a meeting and a committee member would think I was someone’s assistant and ask for Splenda for their coffee. (I just smiled and delivered the Splenda). Now? It motivates me. I’ve learned to block out the noise and keep on steppin’! Never be too big to serve others!
Back to the personal side of Katy—What do I do away from the office?
I like to go out to lunch almost every day. My husband, Jason is typically on the road scouting, so if he's home we try to spend that lunch hour together and go grab a sandwich or something. It's nothing crazy, but just try to get out of the house, run an errand, grab lunch, and then kind of decompress. We also like to take walks around the neighborhood together during work breaks.
Working remotely can be a little isolating, and you can feel like you’ve been in your office all day long.
We also have a golden retriever, Kula, so I’ll play fetch or take her swimming for 10 minutes in our pool. If I’m stressed, that just changes my mindset. And we like to do little family trips here and there. I take time for a spa day now and then too!
My favorite part of my job is really helping people achieve their goals and dreams and realize their potential.
With both candidates and obviously clients. I love helping clients find the right person for their institution, and then watching that person have success. It is just an unbelievable feeling!
Seeing someone take over a program that may have been losing or had culture issues turn the place around is so rewarding. When a client calls and says “WOW! So-and-so is crushing it—the student-athletes are having a great experience!” That is why I do what I do. The ability to impact the lives of young people through sport. That's why I love working as a search consultant in college athletics.
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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.