PROFILE
on myself . I ’ ve never kept any ground . I am a highly qualified professional sports field manager . My advice to others that experience this discrimination is to drop any notion of victimhood , and pick up the pace . Set your standards higher than your organizational standards . Build your education , body of work and skills to where you are seen as a professional . Refer to yourself as a professional , and behave like one . An old friend once told me , “ Act like a doormat , and people will treat you like one .” Act like a professional , and people will treat you like one as well .
SFM : 2020 presented a unique set of challenges for everyone . What has the past year been like for you , and what can be learned from dealing with unprecedented times such as these ?
Kurcab : Travel is part of my work , and the COVID pandemic pretty much eliminated that for 2020 . But we ’ ve now learned that a lot of business travel is just unnecessary and wasteful . I can conduct a high-quality remote site visit on many projects and even conduct field inspections and testing remotely in some situations . Face-toface is great — it ’ s what I prefer , and so do others — but I ’ m not there to hold your hand . My clients hire me for solutions , information , understanding and credibility — not my physical presence . Many more business meetings can , and should , be done via platforms like Zoom . It saves my clients a lot of money . I saved a client $ 10K in a 1-hour zoom call , and they were more than happy to send me a check . Speaking at conferences and seminars has also become much more efficient . To come speak at your conference used to cost me three days of work with no income . Now I can do it in an hour and the conference doesn ’ t pay travel , hotel and meals . To the extent people can get their arms around this change , it has really opened up new opportunities .
Many budgets were frozen , some through 2021 . It ’ s been so inspiring to see the creative ways that sports field managers around the world adapted to this major disruption . Many took a financial haircut , but marched on . Amateur sports , where I love to work , basically fell off the table , but is now coming back online quickly .
22 SportsField Management | July 2021 sportsfieldmanagementonline . com