How to Build Treasury from the Ground Up in a High-Growth Global Company

Nolan Soltvedt, Treasurer at Lime: It’s the chance to build new things, build new treasury capabilities, build a team, and I was contacted about the treasury role at Line. My very first question was, what’s the state of the treasury organization and what do you need next? It lined up with my experience. Ecolab and API in the treasury organization of building a treasury team and building treasury capabilities that we don’t yet have.

Nolan Soltvedt: And that was really intriguing to me. I think another thing that was really interesting to me about Lime, it’s just a cool company. It’s we’re growing fast, we’re going into new cities, we’re expanding into cities that we’re at, I think probably when Line first started and. Certainly the entire micro mobility space, it was more of a fun thing that maybe you’d do on a Saturday afternoon.

Nolan Soltvedt: Whereas now in cities like London, it really is a way of how people move about and how they get to work and how they get to the grocery store and things like that. So I think I saw a huge opportunity to be part of an a really interesting organization.

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast, where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I’ll talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next, let’s get on with the show.

Mike Richards: In this week’s show, I’m joined by Nolan Soltvedt. The Treasurer at Lime. Lime is the world’s largest shared electric vehicle company. They’re on a mission to build a future where transportation is shared, affordable, and carbon free. They provide convenient and reliable short-term rentals of electric bikes and scooters at an affordable price in more than 280 cities, nearly 30 countries on.

Mike Richards: On five continents named a time, one tons, 100 influential company, a fast company brand that matters. They achieved a fully profitable year in 2000 or 2022, becoming the first in their industry to reach this milestone. And as I said to Nolan before, recently had a million riders in a day. And as a proud lime rider myself, I love it.

Mike Richards: Nolan loves it. We’ll get back into that later in the show, but we’ll start off the show. Nolan, if you would take us back to the beginning for you, how did it first ever start within finance and then treasury? Over to you, sir.

Nolan Soltvedt: Hey, well I appreciate you having me on the podcast. So my dad, growing up, my dad was an accountant, and I think for a long time I thought I didn’t wanna do anything with accounting or finance, but as I got.

Nolan Soltvedt: Later into my schooling years, I really enjoyed economics. I took that class in high school and just fell in love with the idea of how economies worked and financial markets and things like that. So decided to major in finance in college, and I did a summer internship at a company called Ecolab. That sort of started my whole journey into corporate finance, and I’ve spent my entire career in corporate finance and treasury since then.

Nolan Soltvedt: The very first role that I had at Ecolab was in the international finance department, and that is where I really learned a lot about. Different countries, different economies, and how the financial markets work in different areas. A few years into my career, I had an opportunity to join the Treasury Department after doing a few other corporate finance roles at Ecolab.

Nolan Soltvedt: I joined the treasury department at Ecolab partly because of that first role that I had at Ecolab where I learned our international business. And as a lot of people who work in treasury now, especially if it’s a global company. As a treasury organization, you’re focused on a lot of things globally, bank accounts and foreign currency exposures and things like that.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so I had a chance in that role to really learn things that impact the company from a treasury standpoint. So things like in-house banking and intercompany lending and foreign currency, hedging how maybe banking regulations work in different countries. And so that for me really kind of started my treasury journey, which led me to where I’m at today.

Mike Richards: No, you said about Ecolab and we’ve actually had, we had Dave from Ecolab back on the show. I actually put that in the show notes. Can you explain to, to, to the listeners who Ecolab are, just so that it gives us sort of framing for the treasury issues you faced at that early stage in your career.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah.

Nolan Soltvedt: Ecolab is a global safety and cleaning company. It’s based in Minnesota, which is where I live, operates in I think about 160 different countries. So a very global company. So if you think about restaurants, hotels, resorts, food and beverage manufacturers, water filtration, anything that would really clean, sanitize, make those operations safer.

Nolan Soltvedt: Hospitals as a market as well for the company. So yeah, really anything that cleans and disinfects and treats water makes operations safer as, as what Ecolab does. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And that’s obviously very international. ’cause you know, you, yeah, you leave Ecolab, we’ll talk about it later in the show, but you then come back again.

Mike Richards: But you know, obviously as you say, early, early experiences sort of thing. How did that give you foundations for your next role, if you like and things.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. I think one of the things I really learned in the very first role I had there was the importance of building relationships and building relationships globally.

Nolan Soltvedt: So Ecolab off operating in so many different countries. We had different finance teams in every country that we operated in. And so working in finance, I was able to build relationships and a rapport with our different finance teams in different countries and get to know their business and get to know how they operated and what issues they were facing.

Nolan Soltvedt: You know, further on in my career at Ecolab, even in different roles, I still maintain those same relationships I might have later on in my career at Ecolab when I moved into treasury. I was working with the same people, but now I’m focused on banking and cash management and foreign currency hedging, but I still have the same relationship.

Nolan Soltvedt: So it was really a valuable lesson there. Just, yeah, the importance of building relationships with people

Mike Richards: and being a good communicator as well, which obviously, mm-hmm. I know some, again, we’ve talked about in a couple of recent shows, Sherry, Nicole speaks from from JBT on, and in a similar way, she said, I got relationships as a treasury.

Mike Richards: Associate sort of thing, analyst that all the way through her career. And she said, you can’t underestimate those. ’cause that’s something. So if anyone’s listening, work on your relationships, get to know people, have a coffee with different people in different areas. But, but with yourself, you then you’d done a while at Ecolab, what came next?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, so I’d been at Ecolab for a few years. I’d been in the treasury organization and I had an opportunity to join. Another company called Capella Education Company. It’s now part of a publicly traded company called Strategic Education based in Minnesota and sort of looking to take the next step in my career.

Nolan Soltvedt: I was really intrigued by the company because they were very different from Ecolab in that they were. A much younger company, tech company, much smaller. And I was intrigued by that idea because in large organizations like Ecolab, you tend to specialize in your areas of what you’re working on can be very focused, right?

Nolan Soltvedt: ’cause the company’s so big. But what I’ve found is in a smaller company. You are able to see a wider range of projects and work on different things. And so I was intrigued by that opportunity. So I joined Capella. My first role was in treasury, and that’s really where I really learned the cash management and banking side of the business or of treasury.

Nolan Soltvedt: Capella. I was really learned more about fixed income investing, just daily cash management and operations. And so I did that for a year and then ended up moving into the. Financial planning and analysis team at Capella and that’s, I really had a wonderful manager when I stepped into that role because she really taught me how to analyze a p and l how to.

Nolan Soltvedt: Produce reporting for, you know, the C-suite and how they would look at things or think about things or the questions that are on their mind. How to, and this is a really important skill, I think, especially as an analyst early in your career, how to make your reports. Look presentable, right? For leadership.

Nolan Soltvedt: You’re not just giving them something that tell all different kinds of fonts and colors, but make something that really looks professional and readable and easy to understand. So yeah, that was my next role was was at Capella, is in the financial planning analysis team, and I did that for a few years

Mike Richards: and then it’s quite unusual you did that and those finance roles and then you rejoined Ecolab.

Mike Richards: What happened? Yep.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, so I actually at the tail end of my time at Capella, I actually ended up taking two years off. My wife and I, we had our first child and I actually took two years off and stayed home with our first son and then when our second son was born too, which is a fantastic time. So I to a few years as a full-time dad and when I was looking to reenter the workforce and go back to work.

Nolan Soltvedt: Naturally. The two places I contacted were Capella and eLab. The two places I’d worked, I had good relationships with people at both and had enjoyed my careers at both and had offers from both, which was a great thing. At the time, Capella was in the process of merging with the company. They’re now part of strategic education, and they said to me, Hey, we’d love to have you back, but you know, we’re going through this merger process.

Nolan Soltvedt: If your job might not be around in another 12 months, but we’d still love to have you. And then up to the opportunity Ecolab, and I thought, well, that seems like more of a sure thing. And went back to work in the treasury organization at Ecolab. And the interesting thing was, in the time that I had was away from Ecolab, which is about an eight year period, they had doubled in size.

Nolan Soltvedt: They had done a couple very large acquisitions. The company had doubled in size. And now the second time that I was at Ecolab, the treasury team was a lot bigger, right? ’cause they had grown in size and so the. Foreign currency. The hedging team had gone from being, you know, one role the first time I was there to now three and three or four full-time people.

Nolan Soltvedt: So I ended up joining that team

Mike Richards: company had Dublin in size, you then gone, you know, and you graduated if you like, into a more, slightly more people leadership role. Would that be right? And what was that like for you? When I

Nolan Soltvedt: joined Ecolab, that’s where I moved into, uh, started getting into more leadership roles and.

Nolan Soltvedt: Know, learning how to develop people and grow people and teach ’em finance things. Yeah,

Mike Richards: I think a lot of people get into these accidental leadership roles. In treasury in particular, they don’t have that much training or things like that. How did you sort of deal with it, if you like?

Nolan Soltvedt: I think for me it was, I looked back at the leaders and the managers that I’d had in my career and I just really tried to emulate the good ones and.

Nolan Soltvedt: Earlier in my career, I’d had a really fantastic manager who spent time developing me. And again, I talked about showing me, you know, how to make re reports presentable and how to analyze financials and things like that. And so for me it was what do I want out of a, out of my leader? And so that’s the type of leader that I wanted to be to people that I was leading.

Mike Richards: Do you want to, you looked to someone and said, yeah, that’s how I want to be led, sort of thing as well. Yep, exactly. Yeah. Then well then talk me through, so let’s move on a bit. You then joined the API, who are API and what did they do?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. API primarily operates in the fire safety and security space, but a global company operating in about 20 different countries, primarily in the US Canada.

Nolan Soltvedt: Europe and Asia, but the fire safety and security space, and then also in the US kinda more of a specialty contracting and construction space. If you think about commercial buildings, a lot of the fire sprinkler systems, the security systems that go into those buildings, even just a process of building something, so hospitals and warehouses and corporate offices and things like that.

Nolan Soltvedt: API has companies that will support a lot of that. So general contractors and HVAC companies and yeah, really kinda anything in that space.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And what was it? You went in there as you, you originally went in as a consultant basis or then talk us through your roles there.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. I initially joined API as a consultant.

Nolan Soltvedt: They had just done a large acquisition of a business that you’re probably very familiar with, Chubb Fire and Security, which is headquartered in the uk but does business all throughout Europe and Asia. They had just acquired that company and that really. Took API from being in a handful of countries to now being in 15 to 20 countries around the world.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so I joined API to help them build out a foreign currency hedging program that had been an area of expertise for me within treasury. And a lot of my experience from that came at Ecolab. And so I helped him build out a foreign currency hedging program, and I. Help them obviously identify where do we have foreign currency risk around the world, how do we manage it, hedge it, what pol, you know, treasury policies in place.

Nolan Soltvedt: Once I’d done that, I solely just started taking on more and more projects and, you know, helped the company build out capabilities just around international treasury capabilities. Then eventually moved into a treasury director role. Also an assistant treasurer role where I oversaw global cash management, foreign currency hedging, and then a lot of our intercompany lending and funding to subsidiaries.

Mike Richards: And what were the challenges when you’d come into that? ’cause I know that you had a period of high turnover and you were then asked to sort of step into a leadership role. Talk us through that.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. Well, I mean, API went public in 2020. Yeah, so that was a big change for the company. Prior to that, it had been a family owned company for decades, and so the company went public in 2020, and then in 20, early 2022 when they bought the Chubb business.

Nolan Soltvedt: Now the company went from being a. You know, three, $4 billion company to now a six $7 billion company. And so there was a lot of growth, a lot of change at the company. And so I think with that, there had been people that had been with the company for a while and the company they now worked at was very different from the company they joined.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so particularly within the finance organization, we had quite a bit of turnover in a short amount of time because of that change. And obviously with that change, there was new leadership. New people like myself that had joined. And so there were some people who just said, Hey, this is not the same company I joined and you know, I’m gonna explore career opportunities elsewhere.

Nolan Soltvedt: So when I stepped into the role of treasury director and overseeing our cash management and daily operations, we had a lot of turnover in the team.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so I essentially assumed responsibility for a team that needed to be rebuilt. And before I left API, that really had been my focus for the last 18 months was just rebuilding that team, looking at our processes, trying to make them more efficient, to thinking about how do we build a treasury organization that’s able to scale as the company grows and take us to that next level.

Nolan Soltvedt: And

Mike Richards: as you say, you’ve gone through those transformations. What was it like going outside of, in a way out, you’ve been with some very stable companies that weren’t going through change, you know, suddenly you are in that major transformation. What projects push you the most outside of your comfort zone, if you like?

Mike Richards: Or how did you do that?

Nolan Soltvedt: I’ll maybe jump back a little bit. When I was at Ecolab the first time and I was in the treasury organization, a huge learning experience for me and this. It’s sort of how I ended up specializing a little bit in the foreign currency hedging side is I was an analyst on the team and the person that I was reporting to left the company and the assistant treasurer at the time essentially looked at me and he said, you’re the only person here that knows how to manage our foreign currency exposure.

Nolan Soltvedt: So this is on you. And I was like two, three years outta college. I did not think of myself at all as being experienced or even necessarily capable of doing this. And so I worked really, really hard for a long time, a lot of hours to learn the things that I didn’t know because I felt that responsibility and accountability for right, managing our foreign currency exposure globally.

Nolan Soltvedt: And I think what I learned through that was. Even if you’re stepping into something where you kind of feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, if you’re able to put in the work and you really have a desire to learn, you can really handle anything. Yeah. And so that was a huge learning experience for me.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so when I was at API, I went through a similar. Experience where I assumed responsibility for our cash management and daily treasury operations. And at the same time, I did it with a very short staffed team. Yeah. And I knew I’d been through this type of experience before where you’re stepping into a role, you don’t really feel confident, but you know that if you’re able to put in the work and you learn and you dig into the details, eventually that’s gonna pay off and.

Nolan Soltvedt: I think that’s exactly what happened. By the time I left a PII was very comfortable with everything our team did and felt like I knew it very well.

Mike Richards: And you did, you know, incredible figures. You integrated 15 m and a deals totaling over a billion I. So many acquisitions. How did, what was the game plan again for someone in treasury listening today going, oh yeah, actually, we’ve got that incredible amount.

Nolan Soltvedt: API is a very highly acquisitive company. They’re always doing acquisitions, and that’s how the company really has been built. We were doing one to two acquisitions almost every single month, so. The first few, little bit more challenging because we weren’t exactly sure what the process should be. But I will tell you that over time what we developed is an m and a integration playbook for treasury.

Nolan Soltvedt: So we made a list of here’s all the things that we need to consider for every acquisition, and not all of them are gonna be relevant, but we need to look at what banking relationships does the company that we’re acquiring have? Are they with? A large global bank that we already bank with, or are they with a small regional bank that we don’t have a relationship with?

Nolan Soltvedt: What services do they have? What type of funding do they need? All these different things you think about. Being in a treasury organization sort of developed this list of here’s all the things we need to consider. Here are the things we need to transition. Here’s a project timeline for each one of those acquisitions.

Nolan Soltvedt: Like what’s critical, what’s absolutely critical. On day one, I remember one of the acquisitions we did, we bought it from a PE firm and like literally day one, the PE firm owners, they control the bank accounts and the day after the acquisition, they essentially said. You own this. Here you go. We weren’t even able to access the bank accounts from day one because as you can imagine, the bank hadn’t even been informed of the transition.

Nolan Soltvedt: So there’s things like that that we learned how to think through and get ahead of, and build a playbook, so to speak. And project timelines became just a regular cadence of we’re doing, we have another acquisition to integrate, and here’s what a process in that playbook looks like.

Mike Richards: And when, as you say, you’ve talked about, you know, challenges, like issues where you weren’t able to access the bank ’cause they hadn’t given you the, you can’t have the login details.

Mike Richards: How did you get pushed through those? Or was it then get a playbook, pre-plan it out and things like that? Or what did you do?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, it was, we developing the playbook, you know, obviously communicating right with the companies that were acquiring their finance teams, making sure that. Teams internally within API or understand the importance of here’s what we need from a treasury standpoint and how does that impact accounting and IT and other parts of the organization, and how can they support us?

Nolan Soltvedt: And so really learning to work together. I would say, as a team internally, when you’re doing these integrations so that everyone understands what I would call. Interdependencies. Yeah. Right. That if there’s something that we need or something we’re gonna change from a treasury standpoint, how does that impact other areas of finance or other areas of the organization and making sure that people are aware of what’s happening?

Nolan Soltvedt: Good communication. I mean, again, it goes back to communication, building relationships, but ultimately, yeah, having a, a good plan. Having a good playbook,

Mike Richards: and. Then from there, bring us up to date a little bit more with, with Lyme and then things, you know, we see the, the bikes and things or what happened next.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, so I’ve been at API for a few years and one of the things I really enjoyed about being at API was the chance to build new things, build new treasury capabilities, build a team, and I was contacted about. The treasury role at line, and my very first question was, what’s the state of the treasury organization and what do you need next?

Nolan Soltvedt: It lined up with my experience at Ecolab and API in the treasury organization of building a treasury team and building treasury capabilities that we don’t yet have. Yeah, and that was really intriguing to me, I think. Another thing that was really interesting to me about Lime is it’s just a cool company.

Nolan Soltvedt: I mean, it’s, you know, we we’re growing fast, we’re going into new cities, we’re expanding into cities that we’re at. I think probably when Lime first started, and certainly the entire micro mobility space, it was kind of more of a fun thing that maybe you’d do on a Saturday afternoon. Whereas now in cities like London, it really is a way of.

Nolan Soltvedt: How people move about and how they get to work and how they get to the grocery store and, and things like that. So I think I saw a, a huge opportunity, you know, to be part of an, a really interesting organization. The people I met were really smart people, and when we talked about what’s needed next within treasury, it was.

Nolan Soltvedt: Here’s all these things that we know we’re gonna need as we grow and we don’t yet have. And that was really intriguing to me to join a company that, you know, like line just in terms of where it’s at and it’s growth cycle.

Mike Richards: But with other roles you’ve had a sort of legacy, whereas this is, there’s been no treasury there or nothing set up at all.

Mike Richards: So how have you gone in with your playbook there?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, so when I joined Lyme and I’ve, I’ve been there a short while, but the company’s very global, right? We’re operating in 30 plus countries. We have local operations in each of those countries. From a banking and cash management standpoint, a lot of things have been set up, but there’s a lot of other treasury capabilities that are still being developed, and we’re thinking through, I think.

Nolan Soltvedt: It’s easy in the sense that I’ve seen what good looks like at other organizations. So I’ve been able to take those learnings from other companies. But the thing that’s really important, you know, that’s keep reminding myself of is what worked somewhere else might not work at wine or how, or how we did things that another company might not be the same way we should do it at Lyme.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so from a treasury standpoint, there’s a lot of things that. You know can be done. But how you do it, I really need, I wanna make sure I’m sensitive to what’s gonna make sense at line instead of just saying, oh, this is exactly how we did it at Ecolab, so that’s how we should do it at line. That doesn’t always work.

Mike Richards: Is that size of company or where the company is in its lifecycle? What’s the main thing?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, I would say where the company’s at in its life cycle. I think another thing that’s important too, is. What are the things that the leadership is prioritizing and what are they focused on? I think at a company like Ecolab that has a long history and you have a 20 or a 25 person treasury team, and you have all these capabilities built out, you can focus on everything, right?

Nolan Soltvedt: Because if you’ve got people to focus on all the different areas of treasury, whereas when you step into a place like wine, that’s a lot smaller. A much younger company, you have to be very strategic about what you focus on or prioritize first. And so a lot of times that’s just, I had to come in and just listen and learn and hear what, what people were saying, that I, you know, where the pain points were, which, how can treasury help solve that problem?

Nolan Soltvedt: So there might be things that we did at Ecolab or did at API that I would think. We’ll need to do that at line at some point, but that’s not something that we’re gonna do tomorrow. Maybe we’ll do it next year because it’s not a key pain point for the company, or it’s not a priority right now.

Mike Richards: And your role itself, you’ve got wider than just treasury, which is not, you know, a lot of people do a bit Treasury plus, but you’ve got accounts payable, you’ve been given extra responsibilities.

Mike Richards: How, how do you deal with that if you know?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, we’re very global. A global organization, our accounts payable. So I oversee our accounts payable and payroll teams as well, and those teams are at the shared services center in Malaysia. Managing that team is a new experience for me.

Nolan Soltvedt: You know, I was trying to manage a very global team. I had history leading the accounts payable team at API, so I’m able to come in with some of that experience. Payroll is a newer area, but. What I’ve found that the commonality between the treasury and accounts payable and payroll teams, right? The one thing that they sort of all have in common is payments, right?

Nolan Soltvedt: Where funding accounts, you have processes that need to be followed and compliance and things like that. So there’s definitely some, yeah, commonalities between the three teams, but obviously all have very different functions. I talked before about stepping into. Something that’s new and having the confidence to understand it and learn it and lead it.

Nolan Soltvedt: My experience prior to my career has definitely prepared me for overseeing different teams just ’cause again, I’ve had that experience where I’ve stepped into roles, leading things that are new, but really taking the time to learn them so that you can start to identify how can we make this better?

Mike Richards: And as you say, you’ve had that breadth of experience, if you like, and someone stepped into their first treasury role.

Mike Richards: What advice are you gonna give them to sort of mid stage, you become the treasury director and treasurer and things like that. Someone’s listening today. Well, this is all very well, but no one. You are an experienced treasury guy. Now looking back over that, you took, we touched on earlier about communication being a key one and making those relationships other things now that, again, reflecting on that you’ve got this global experience, other aspects that people should think about.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah. I think one of the things that I’ve benefited from in my career is that I’ve done things within corporate finance, outside of treasury, particularly in the financial planning analysis space, right, which is PL analysis, financial statement, analysis, and learning how to explain those results to executive leaders, and I think it’s really important.

Nolan Soltvedt: As a treasury professional, and certainly when you’re starting out in your career, is to have an understanding of how the entire organization operates, what the financials look like and what leadership is looking at, and then trying to tie that back to how can treasury. Support what’s happening in the organization.

Nolan Soltvedt: I think of treasury as an area of finance where people that don’t really wanna go into accounting, ’cause maybe they find that boring. You’d rather go into treasury ’cause that seems a little bit more exciting

Mike Richards: listening, accounting. And you’re in that, give us a call and we’ll get you into a treasury role where it’s more interesting.

Mike Richards: There you go. I’ll say, yeah,

Nolan Soltvedt: appreciate that. You know, but I mean, there’s a financial markets aspect, right? To treasury and I think sometimes people coming outta university, they would probably look at a treasury role. That sounds really interesting. Yeah. You know, global banking and hedging and doing, you know, capital market, working on capital markets transactions.

Nolan Soltvedt: That sounds pretty interesting as a treasury person to really focus on some of those things without thinking about. The broader organization from a finance standpoint. And so I think it’s really important to, what I would say is, especially early in your career or when you’re new to a company, really learn the company’s financials and start to think about how does treasury impact that?

Nolan Soltvedt: How can treasury support what the company’s doing? So from a, if I think about being at line, we’re growing quickly and so. If I’m thinking about what I need to prioritize, where my focus needs to be, I need to understand where we’re going as a company financially in order to really understand what my priority areas should be in treasury.

Mike Richards: Our podcast is sponsored by I-C-D-I-C-D, are an independent platform trusted by thousands of treasury professionals worldwide to manage short-term investments. One. Global Treasurer recently told me it was one of the smartest technology decisions they’ve made. No license fees, rapid setup and tangible returns.

Mike Richards: If you are looking for a smarter, simpler way to manage your liquidity, then head to find out more at our partners page, treasury recruitment.com/partners, and find out much more. Let’s get back to the episode. You, you talked about that you went into accounting, but it’s not quite a hundred percent true.

Mike Richards: We had Evan Bertand on the show a while ago. Evan’s a great God, he. Used to play in a band and actually was a professional musician and that was a part of his life. And then he moved into treasury and that helped him creatively. Not creative accounting. We’re not getting into that area, but creatively thinking around problems with yourself, you’ve got sort of the musical back roots as well.

Mike Richards: Have you found that ever reflecting on that as well?

Nolan Soltvedt: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a very musical household. Every, all of my siblings, my parents either sang in a choir or played an instrument, and so at a young age I picked up guitar and I’ve always been interested in music and so I’ve always enjoyed songwriting even ever since I was a kid.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so even to this day, I still next to my desk. Is my guitar and I still dabble a little bit every day thinking of, of different ideas. From a songwriting standpoint, I would say, I think a lot of people would think there’s really nothing in common between finance and songwriting. I would disagree with that in that in songwriting you’re telling stories and oftentimes in finance, a good finance person is able to tell a story through the numbers.

Nolan Soltvedt: Love it. That’s the one thing I’ve realized that two things have in common.

Mike Richards: A narrative sort of thing.

Nolan Soltvedt: Yep. Yeah, a narrative. I mean, finance at the end of the day, right? It’s all about explaining. I mean, treasury’s certainly more of a specialized area within corporate finance, and oftentimes when you’re talking to the business leaders, executive leaders, they don’t understand all the nuances of the things that we deal with in treasury on a daily basis.

Nolan Soltvedt: So how do you. Simplify it in a way or summarize it in a way that’s gonna make sense, you know, to, to leaders.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And make it, tell your story. If you like. One of the things that you and I had talked about before, and you know, you did the 1 million rides in a day, you are in a high growth company. You’ve gotta tell that story to people as well.

Mike Richards: So when you are telling it, you know, rolling it out with, Hey guys, we’ve got a million rides the other day. This is what we’ve done. What’s that been like?

Nolan Soltvedt: I think the one thing I really appreciate about Lyme is internally, everyone is very much aligned on how we’re growing and where we’re growing, and I think metrics like that, a million rides in a day just shows you, you know, that.

Nolan Soltvedt: This is a thing now, right? People are really on board with micro mobility and using it as a way to get around myself in Minneapolis when I can, if I’ve got meetings downtown, I’m taking a scooter or bike. But I think internally that’s a really, it’s a motivating metric for people, right? To see the impact.

Nolan Soltvedt: And so even in finance, even in treasury, right? We can use that to say. Hey, we’re growing. Yeah. And a year from now we’re gonna be, you know, larger than we are today. And so what are the things that we need to be doing today to help support the company a year from now, or three years from now, or five years from now?

Mike Richards: And you talk about the future, what are you seeing the challenges coming down the line? We’ve got, obviously there’s the rise of technology, a changing, evolving technology, but also just in general terms. What are you seeing for treasury that you think you need to keep an eye on or looking in the rear view, or what are you looking at?

Nolan Soltvedt: I mean, obviously ai right, is a huge. Area of opportunity and integrating that into treasury processes, right? Using it to analyze data. One of the things that we’re looking at at Lyme is how do we use AI to analyze in our daily cash and all the different transactions that go through all the different accounts, and instead of having to.

Nolan Soltvedt: Look at, you know, come up with all of our own ideas. It’s getting that data and feeding it into something that can help us analyze it. So I think AI is a huge opportunity. Obviously markets, you know, interest rates, currencies, those are continuously volatile. So if I think about from a borrowing standpoint, and this was something I.

Nolan Soltvedt: We dealt with a lot at API and was able to take that experience to line, um, when we look at our debt and how fast interest rates are changing or just the increase we’ve seen over the last couple years, thinking through that and how do we manage that going forward? I mean, the treasurer always has to be focused on funding.

Nolan Soltvedt: How are we gonna fund growth? Lyme growing as, as fasted as as it is. This is the, I think the first time I’ve been at a company that is growing at this sort of clip. Companies I’ve been at previously. Growth was using the single digits, whereas, you know, Lyme, it’s well into the double digits. I think the last four years we’ve grown at 30% or more.

Nolan Soltvedt: So what’s working today or what we have today isn’t necessarily going to serve us in the future. Or be enough. And so thinking through funding and how do we manage risk and how do we analyze our, you know, cash balances and things like that. Those are all capabilities that we’re continuously looking at.

Nolan Soltvedt: And how do we get better at,

Mike Richards: yeah. No, that’s great. Okay. And you know, I was gonna say to you, you know, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes, but what, you know, what are the takeaways you would give someone? You’ve heard a couple of the podcasts as well where, you know, if you’re earlier stage of your career, the summary, because you’ve, all the way through, we’ve given little, little nuggets, but you know, what are the takeaways if someone’s sitting there with their cup of coffee and thinking, right, just heard from the treasurer line, this is what I should be doing.

Nolan Soltvedt: I think some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my finance and treasury career are don’t be afraid to do hard things or take on things that you’re maybe not comfortable and don’t know a lot about. And when you do that, when you take on new challenges, put in the work. And don’t be afraid.

Nolan Soltvedt: Don’t be afraid to learn. I think sometimes new things or new challenges can be uncomfortable, but I would say step into that and the more that you step into that and the more that you learn and continuously push yourself and move into new roles, take on new responsibilities. I think the more. Enjoyable, the ride’s gonna be.

Nolan Soltvedt: And I think at some point, you know, you, you’ll be able to look back and go, man, I’ve learned a lot. I’m able to really contribute in my role because I’ve been in different roles and I’ve seen different things and I’ve learned a lot of different things. So that’s, I think, one key thing. And then obviously I, before I, the importance of relationships.

Nolan Soltvedt: And communicating, I think is really important. You know, no matter where you’re at in your career, it’s, I always find value, especially when I meet somebody new, you know, coworkers is really just to start with, tell me, you know, tell me about your background and your family and start there. You know, I don’t jump in with, Hey, here’s the thing, the meeting topic we have to talk about today.

Nolan Soltvedt: It’s, let’s just start with getting to know each other first and building relationship. Uh,

Mike Richards: love it. There you go. Communication, but also getting out of your comfort zone as well. Yeah. Love it. Thank you very much. So I really enjoyed it. And yeah, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes and I know that anyone that’s listening today you well, they’d be lucky to have you in their network if you like.

Mike Richards: So thank you very much. I.

Nolan Soltvedt: I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

Mike Richards: Today’s episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners ICD. If you are looking for a smarter way to manage your short term investments, ICDs independent portal gives you access to a full range of investment products, integrated analytics, and a simple centralized platform built specifically for treasury.

Mike Richards: If you head over to treasury recruitment.com/partners, you can learn more. And we’ll be able to connect you with the right person at ICD for both you and your business. Many thanks for listening to the show, and thanks for your continued support.