Networking & Personal Branding: The Key to Unlocking Your Treasury Career Success

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast This week, slightly different one. I recently joined the amazing Catherine Grant Alston on stage at the New York Cash Exchange 2025, brought to you by Team Manny. Great two day conference in New York. I was then asked to speak, share a stage with Catherine, and we talked about networking and personal branding.

Mike Richards: How it is the key to unlocking your treasury career success now. Great session audience. Loved it. We got through it. We had some technical problems, but the two of us, we just wrote up, we just were giving value to the, we were serving our audience, as Catherine says. So big shout out to Catherine. She’s a great speaker.

Mike Richards: We had real fun time. This is for you guys. You’ve got lots of conferences, lots of things happening in 2025. You need to be out there. You need to get out of your own way and talk about yourself as a treasure professional. Sell your story. This podcast will help you have a listen to Catherine and I sharing the stage in New York and let’s get on with the show.

Mike Richards: Let me throw it over to Catherine and Mike for what you guys actually came here.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston, CEO, Co-Founder at ART Financial Solutions: Thank you. Welcome to Networking and personal branding. Have you all started to network

Mike Richards: our major network?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So we’re gonna go through, we’re gonna have a dialogue, we’re gonna make it work. So I’ll start off with my introduction.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So, hi, I am Catherine Grant, Austin. I am the CEO and co-founder of our financial solutions. I have been in the industry for over 25 years, global liquidity technology, financial strategy. That’s what we do and I love to network. I love to meet people. I love to ensure that I’m serving. So this is my bio. A little bit about me.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I will pass it over to Mike. Hi,

Mike Richards: I’m Mike. I run the treasury recruitment company. I’ve met quite a few of you in the past few days. I also do a podcast treasury career corner, got Tony Massone yesterday’s guest coming on in a couple of weeks time, so you need to listen to that one. You get CTP credits from listening to the podcast.

Mike Richards: It’s amazing why personal branding matters go.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So your personal brand is more than your company brand. And so a lot of times when. You are thinking about branding, you’re thinking about the company, you’re thinking about what you wanna project for the actual company, but you as an individual, when you leave that company, then who are you?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Are you just the individual that worked at the company or have you built a personal brand that. You have established a relationship across the board. You have established that you are this person with or without the company. And so that’s why personal brand matters. And I know it’s like a new concept, right?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Because a lot of times you’re working for the company, everything you do is a company’s logo. But like I said, at the end of the day when you leave, you wanna build a reputation that follows you. And that’s not just tied to the company. So that’s one. Important bit about why a personal brand matters

Mike Richards: and guys, I existed or exist in an age when I first started, a personal brand meant going to the pub.

Mike Richards: And it still sometimes does, but the fact is, it used to be your reputation. You get to know people and everything else, and if you go to the next slide, you go, we don’t have a clicker. See? Well, I’ve got a clicker, but don’t call her that. Uh,

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : a cute clicker at the end. There you go.

Mike Richards: This is why.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Yep.

Mike Richards: You guys before and I was jokingly going around and a few of you’re still checking your phones, put your phones away because, and we’ll ask Manny to put away his laptop ’cause he’s gotta give some time to himself.

Mike Richards: Who else is gonna give you this time? This is when I do the treasure career corner lives. You need to invest in yourselves ’cause no one else is going to. So this is why as we say, it’s you are the brand. But someone said to me this morning, we were doing our round table. They said, but my LinkedIn, you know, we’re talking about doing the banner and everything else.

Mike Richards: He said, yeah, you’re not looking for a job, but what if a job comes looking for you? They’re like, oh, hang on. What? I said, what if someone goes to your profile and they really like it? What if they go, actually, I should reach out to them for a job. You might not be looking What? And you say, hang on. No, I’m completely happy.

Mike Richards: That’s fine. But I’ve said to people yesterday, a couple days, I don’t enjoy public speaking. I don’t enjoy this. But what I did in Chicago a number of years ago, I thought, right, I’ve gotta get up on stage. Catherine and I, yeah, we’re extroverted most of the time, but also we work hard at it. You’ve got, you’ve got to do the same.

Mike Richards: I’m an introvert, guys. I’m an

N/A: introvert

Mike Richards: because this is what he says. This is, you know, it’s, and this is what people say about you, and you want people to know about what people say about you when you are not in the room, but it’s actually what they believe about you and the only way you can. Influence it is by your LinkedIn profile.

Mike Richards: Mm-hmm. By them putting your hand up and speaking at events like this. Speak to Taylor. Speak to Brian. Put your hand up for the panels Next year. Someone say, oh, I don’t wanna be on a full speaking session like this. You don’t have to be volunteer for Team Manie. They will. They would welcome you with Open Nails because that will give you then what people say believe, and they think about you as well.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : The other piece of that is just understanding that you are more than just a job. So I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I’m a wife, and I carry that all day, every day with me. So your personal brand allows not only people to know who you are from a job perspective, but also know the whole you, right? The things that you enjoy.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Your talents, some of the things that you do in your extra time, and that’s important. So why do, why do you think that’s important? Well, people know trust. That’s how people buy. That’s how people they think is, I can’t connect to you and you are offering a TMS solution, just like 50 million others out here, then I’m not going to purchase from you.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I’m gonna go to someone else that’s offering the same or similar capabilities where I connect to even want to establish a transactional relationship, but I wanna be able to work with you. I need to like you. And so when you’re talking about your personal brand, it’s more than just. Your skills. It’s about do I like you enough to work on a nine month, 12 month, 18 month project with you?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Do I trust you enough to feel like you’re gonna be able to deliver? So it, it is truly more than just a title. It’s truly more than the skills. But that’s where you start, that’s where you start, and then you build up. You think about what are the three things that describe you? What are the three things that people would describe if they go into a room about you?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And it’s all important because what people say about you, your reputation precedes you. And that’s why you want to be able to tell the narrative. You don’t want someone to tell the narrative about you. You wanna be able to tell the narrative so someone can say, ah, I didn’t necessarily get that per perception.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And if you have enough people saying that and being consistent, then that’s how you know you’re building a really good, reputable, personal brand.

Mike Richards: This is why a lot of you. Hate personal branding. Before this, a moment ago, I came around and I bullied you and I made you sit on tables with other people. Do you know what happened?

Mike Richards: You did this weird thing called networking.

N/A: Yep.

Mike Richards: You all started to talk. We went from zero chat to all conversation and you’ve got it here. You’ve got being boastful. Am I gonna boast about myself? You guys as treasury professionals are amazing. And you stink at telling people. You don’t tell people about how you’ve saved your companies millions of dollars.

Mike Richards: You don’t tell them about how you renegotiated your RCF and you’ve done this. Why? Because are they looking for a job, as I said about LinkedIn and things, imposter? Am I really that expert? Yes, you are. ’cause otherwise you get the sack and you’d be calling me. ’cause obviously I’m a treasure recruit to be seen that bit and.

Mike Richards: One of the things someone said about, uh, not knowing what to post or where to start, you guys can post about this conference. You can say what you know, just, and you don’t have to say, oh, it’s great seeing this da da, but what is your takeaway from this? How have you moved forward in the past two days? You know, what did you get from Tony’s conversation yesterday?

Mike Richards: Write your own book. Brilliant. Some takeaways there. Another session you’ve done. Just put that out there. Be visible. You’re not an imposter. You’ve got this.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And I mean, when we start talking about ways to build your personal brand, like we talked about LinkedIn this morning and connecting with people, and there was this individual who was like, I, I don’t wanna feel like I’m boasting.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I I don’t wanna feel like I’m, I’m bragging. So here’s the thing, being able to articulate your wins can be difficult. Understood. Right? You carry this thing where it’s just like, Hey, I don’t wanna come off cocky, but. If you are putting that on LinkedIn, you’re behind a computer, you’re typing it, and now you’re allowing someone to read, and then they can determine if they wanna connect with you, if they want more information, and so you can work it to your benefit.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I think sometimes we have a hard time talking about ourselves, but if the information is already there, then you’re allowing people the opportunity to choose if they wanna further the discussion. And a lot of times people will call like, Hey, I saw you did this thing. I want to wanna talk to you. How did you do it?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And so forth. Congratulations. But it’s okay to be visible. Like you don’t have to worry about feeling like you’re bragging. You are that person. You did that thing and it’s great. And ano another discussion was, I don’t want people to think I’m looking for a job. Remember that?

N/A: Yeah.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And it’s just like, but you may not be looking, but someone may be looking for you.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So do you wanna rob yourself of the opportunity for someone to find you and your greatness for an opportunity that you probably didn’t even realize existed, but because you were just putting information out there, they found you. So being visible is key. And it could be everyday thing. Yeah, LinkedIn is professional, but I always thought I just, I did a post.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : A, a few weeks ago with my family, we were on our last family outing before the kids went back to school, and my post was, we are more than just a job because everybody carries a different title outside of their job title. Right. So it could be personal. You probably don’t want that, that’s fine as well.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : But professional, let people know all about your greatness and allow them the opportunity if they wanna know more.

Mike Richards: Keep going because obviously we are a bit shorter of time. This is it. LinkedIn is out there.

N/A: Yeah.

Mike Richards: And we both existed in the time before LinkedIn. Now it’s there. And someone said to me yesterday, they said, oh, well I don’t really do LinkedIn.

Mike Richards: I said, what? So you don’t want people to know about you? Oh, no, no. I’d like to come to conferences. I like to do this. I said, but it’s there 24 7. What if someone sees you over a weekend? What if someone’s looking or doing some research and things?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Oh yeah. Bring ’em through this Mike.

Mike Richards: Yeah, so. If you don’t have a photo.

Mike Richards: Now, this is also a quick tip as well. Just get one of your colleagues or find someone that you know to look at your LinkedIn profile and make sure they’re a second tier connection. Why? Because some of your photos, you’ll be a gray blob and literally you won’t be able to see it. You’re a second tier connection.

Mike Richards: You need to go into LinkedIn, change the settings so that everyone can see your photo. Yeah. Why? ’cause it’s 20 times more likely that they will want to reach out and connect to you. So it’s 20 times more likely. Again, not looking for a job, but maybe they want you to speak at a conference, maybe they want to connect with you.

Mike Richards: And people said to me, well really do I do LinkedIn? And I said, well, okay, you’re looking, we mentioned there about treasury management system. You’re thinking, oh, actually I’ve got, we are looking at this project and you’ve got 50 people in your network, so you go to the 50. Anyone use this system? No. Great.

Mike Richards: You had 500 people. Anyone use this? Oh yeah, they’re great. It’s a professional network. It’s not just about jobs, other bits to you.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So, I mean, my thing and Will, we’re gonna go through, um, some of this, you leverage what’s there. You don’t have to recreate the will. We are in a digital age, and so if you still have the Rolodex, kudos to you.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : But nine times out of 10, the business card, the physical business card, is gonna go in a pile. And so you wanna be able to take advantage of the fact that you can connect with someone from a digital perspective. You can have a digital card on your phone. We did that this morning in our round table, and you can follow up, right?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Because you wanna ensure that you have, you have that mechanism. LinkedIn allows you to do that. So you have a QR code with your LinkedIn and, and we were talking about it really depends on. What you decide, like what your goal is. So here at the conference when we have hundreds of people, you probably don’t have the opportunity to meet all hundreds of people, right?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : As a speaker. Same with Mike. You will want your QR code up there to allow people to connect with you on LinkedIn, so you can do that. But when you’re in intimate settings. A setting where it is, uh, particular to maybe you learning something. Maybe you meeting colleagues or people in your field or people that you wanna know in different fields.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Then you may want something more intimate with, which is a digital business card where they can actually get your phone number, they can get your email and so forth. So they can, you can connect with them and follow up with that discussion. Regardless, it’s both digital right there. The access is at your palm.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : But you wanna take advantage of those things. How many of you have taken advantage of like the QR or the digital card or any, any digital means when it comes to networking and it comes to, you just raise your hand, right? So that’s less than half of the people in this room, and so you wanna make it easy for yourself.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : A lot of times we talk about. Being able to connect and we make it harder on ourselves. We talk about, are you gonna talk about the title? We’re gonna talk about how to stand out. Yeah. But you are unique. There’s only one you and that’s it. There’s only one you. So you wanna make sure that when you have those interactions that people know about you, or people have a way to be able to truly connect with you.

Mike Richards: So put your hand up if you work in treasury or you talk to treasurers, okay? Mm-hmm. Keep your hand up if on your LinkedIn profile. You have one of your achievements about how much you’ve saved your company in the past three to six months. Yeah, that’s, or that’s a lot less than 50% now. Or

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : maybe it’s not a metric like that, and we’ll talk about that.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Yeah. But you have something other than I’m a treasury manager.

N/A: Yeah.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Something other than your title. Something other than your skill sets. Yeah. They started to go down

Mike Richards: and someone asked me yesterday again, when we were having conversations, they were saying, well, how do I do this? I said this great tool chat, GPT, do a download of your, your profile.

Mike Richards: Take your resume, chuck it into there and say, right, and get it to ask you some questions and say, ask me three questions about the difference I’ve made in my company. And it doesn’t have to be confidential. Sometimes people say, well, yeah, that’s confidential information. That’s all right. Take out the confidential stuff.

Mike Richards: Say I’ve renegotiated this, this is the difference I’ve made to the bottom line. Make sure it’s not. You know, sensitive information. It’s not that hard.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : You

Mike Richards: guys can put it up.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I want you to talk about the, about section.

Mike Richards: Oh, go. You go for it.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So when you actually are looking at your LinkedIn, we want you to fill it in.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So exactly what Mike said, download it, make sure that you look at how you can enhance the profile and start to put it in. Maybe you. Are not quite comfortable with Metro. Right? But you still wanna put something unique. So I’m in the process of changing my profile, but I have a banner and we’ll talk about that ’cause everybody should have a, a banner in addition to your photo.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : But in my banner it says I’m award-winning corporate practitioner. So naturally someone’s gonna say, oh, well what awards did you win? And so forth. So it sparks interest. It doesn’t necessarily have to be metrics if you’re uncomfortable or if you feel like it’s sensitive, but there are unique things that you’ve done that are great, that you should let people know so that it can spark interest in, attract them to you to say, Hey, I would like to know more so about section.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Definitely. And engage. I know some people are like, I just don’t use it. I’ll share something or whatnot. Use it. It doesn’t have to be every day. I understand everyone’s busy, but at least once a week, at least once a week, update your life is going on every single day. And so there’s something interesting that you did during the week, whether it’s professionally or personally, that you can utilize to be able to engage or comment on someone else’s, even if it’s just congratulating a colleague.

Mike Richards: Don’t have photos of this before we show you the photos. You’re all sitting down. This is good. This is shocking, right? You’ll, you’ll recognize the person in them in a moment. They are all remade photos. ’cause at one stage we were gonna take them off LinkedIn. These were dreadful photos we saw. And I thought, actually if I put this up, I’m gonna be sued for libel.

Mike Richards: ’cause I was say, oh my God, what are you doing with my photo? And there were some terrible photos and there’s a good one I’ll tell you about in a minute. But basically we remade these photos now. I actually checked a couple of guys on round table. They had really good photos and I was really pleased. But obviously these are dreadful ones.

Mike Richards: So these are some of the photos that you don’t wanna have. There you go. Yeah. The one with a beer in the hand. Really? Do you need to see that? No. And these are remade photos. We’ve actually, I’ve actually got the Rolodex of all the, the photos and, and everything else. That creepy arty pose. I saw this guy, he was the head of marketing someone.

Mike Richards: It was like going, I was like, really? I mean, when I had to remake that photo, I was like, oh, that’s dreadful. The worst one actually, which we could never show. It’s a real pain. Was and now, yeah, I, yeah, dunno, I could be careful. He was the head of a very well-known tire company and he had a photo of him at a Christmas party and he, someone had got a little baby toy thing and he was kissing, kissed like this.

Mike Richards: That was his LinkedIn photo. We remade the photo. It was so funny. It was like, brilliant. And I went, hang on. He might be a client next year. I, we couldn’t ever use it unfortunately. Yeah.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So let’s go back. No, no, keep going. Oh, you wanna keep going? Yeah,

Mike Richards: keep going. There you go. So that’s it. Yeah. I know I’ve got a face radio, that’s why I do a podcast.

Mike Richards: But the fact is, this is what it’s about. It’s having someone, when you’re meeting them at a conference, you go, oh yeah, I wanna meet that person. I wanna connect with em. It’s a good thing to,

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : and if you don’t have a professional photo, you are here at the New York Cast Exchange. There is an AI headshot in the exhibited hall.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Go there, like literally you’re gonna do some poses and it will, the AI will create these headshot for you and don’t be afraid to use them until you feel like, okay, I can go and I can get some professional headshots. But the headshots are actually pretty good. I got them last year and I mean, it made me look younger.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : It. My daughter thought it was her. She’s like, when did I take these pictures? You didn’t, but it was really, it was done very well actually. So it changed my suit up. I had a blush suit on and it changed it to all of these different colors. Blue, black, you know, the blue black. Ah. But um, then I had a white turtleneck on that it put on me.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So like it did these pictures and I think you get to choose one. I don’t quote me. But I do think you do five poses and you get to choose one. Take advantage of it. Take advantage of it. Get your headshots, and at minimum it will allow you to create a profile picture.

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Mike Richards: Let’s get back to the episode. Katherine already mentioned this as well, speaking engagements. You guys will come and speak and you go, oh yeah, I’ve done it. Oh, thank goodness. Well then put it on your profile. Is that it makes you stand out. It makes you different to the next person. You know, I’ve done it in be the past.

Mike Richards: I spoke at Chicago and I said, right guys, how many people have that that are passionate, you know about their business and they’re all this and everything different? And you know, and then I said, how are you different to the person next to you? And actually we’ll get you to do this, maybe just briefly, is to tell people about how you’re different, how you stand out.

Mike Richards: That’s one of the key things for you guys.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And so for me. Um, when I won the award, so we won the Alexander Hamilton Award, the FIS impact award, as well as the TMI Treasury of the Year award all in one year. And it was me, a analyst, and then the con uh, one consultant that worked on some major projects. And as part of that, we started speaking at the conferences, just telling people how we did.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I realized I actually liked. Speaking is like my s of fierce of Beyonce, right? And so it started to open up doors for me that I didn’t even think about, right? I was just thinking, Hey, I’m a practitioner. I’ve been in this. I, I think from, um, an innovative mindset and I’m always challenging the bar, but I didn’t realize that it would actually turn into more than it was.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Put your hand up ’cause you’re doing the work and you’re telling people put your hand up. Or when they tap, you don’t say, oh, I don’t, I’m not quite sure. Uh, I’m not a speaker. I don’t like public speaking. I’m an introvert. I am an introvert. I know you probably all do not believe that, but every time I leave a conference, I need about two days to just recharge my social battery.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Right. And that’s a true introvert. It’s not that an introvert doesn’t like people, it’s just that. It drains you, right? So work within your means, but use it as an opportunity podcast. Um, such as Mike’s podcast and other podcasts, lunch and Learns. I did, I did a lot of lunch and learns, and it was just sitting with my peers and saying like, Hey, this is how we did it.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : This is what I would suggest. This is what I would never do again. Right? Just being able to give that information so it attracts people to you when you are visible as opposed to you needing to. Oh, I gotta go and try to find X, Y, and Z. People will come to you.

Mike Richards: Yeah. It’s not just the beers we had last night in the middle.

Mike Richards: As you go back, if you would, and you see that, that word networking. It’s work guys. Yeah, it’s, you have to put in the work. You have to not sit on a table by yourselves. Your natural inclination when you all came in was to sit by yourselves, and then I made you sit with each other. You started talking. It wasn’t just drinks.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Next slide. Here you go. It’s about, and it’s not just, it is great to have a beer together, but it’s also about connecting with people. Now when you meet, you know, you’ve had some conversations there. Follow up now that last one, your network is your net worth. That’s from Leanne Perkins. I hate her because it’s a great quote.

Mike Richards: Um, I want to steal it, but it is actually hers and she is a great networker. But like Catherine said, she’s actually an introvert. She actually says that to some of her audiences as well. But she works at it and she’s become very successful at it. It’s given her job opportunities. She’s now doing a lot of stuff with the A FP.

Mike Richards: It helps.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : The other thing is create genuine relationships. I, I understand that we are in the business of finance and treasury, and so it can be very transactional, but when you are creating. And you’re networking and, and you’re reaching out and creating these relationships, make sure they’re genuine.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : There’s, they’re, in my opinion, right, I understand that there can be an exchange as far as like, Hey, this is just, we’re gonna do A and B and we’re done. And I get that you are gonna have some relationships like that, but if you are truly reaching out. From a networking perspective, then be genuine. And for me, I always surf first, right?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So I never try to go into any type of relationship asking like, Hey, how can you help me? My, my soul thing is, how can I serve, right? How can I help you? Because I, and I said this yesterday, I wanna be a, a mirror, right? So how I treat people and what I do is what I, I would want done to me. And that goes with how I build my network.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So you’re gonna have transactional relationships and that’s fine. But if you are truly reaching out to network and to build, make sure it’s genuine.

Mike Richards: Right?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And time, just in time.

Mike Richards: Uh, no, just

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : in

Mike Richards: time. So we want some questions from you guys because how often do you get this opportunity? I did my Treasure Career Corner live the other day, and I was saying to everyone, you don’t get a chance to ask us.

Mike Richards: You know, this is what we do for a living. Yeah. So what questions do you have?

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And I need to stand up.

Mike Richards: Oh, there you go. Big question. So don’t, can you repeat it, Mike? ’cause we can’t hear it up here. Don’t, don’t tell the data you, there’s you saying that you could win an award and you have to tell everybody exactly how much money you save for your company.

Mike Richards: You’ve gone for Pinnacle Award, you’ve got an award or something like that. You don’t have to tell everything.

N/A: Mm-hmm. You

Mike Richards: can use, as I said earlier, chat, EPT awards.

N/A: We don’t have awards.

Mike Richards: Well awards or what you’ve done in your job and you just put it into chat GPT and said, right. How do I. Cloud this, you know, what can I say that I achieved?

Mike Richards: You know, you might implement a treasury management system. You don’t have to say everything about it. You don’t have to say, oh, we’ve implemented this, but actually what time have you saved? Oh, we implemented a treasury management system. We saved three people’s jobs, you know, all the time that it took, and we moved them into this area.

Mike Richards: So, yeah, it’s a good question, but. I think Catherine,

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : so can you repeat the question? We can’t hear a P. Yeah,

Mike Richards: sorry. So the question was highly sensitive data. How do we input that on LinkedIn? I’m worried about that. It was a great

N/A: question. Okay. And about like just being kind of referred to being boastful.

Mike Richards: Yeah, bragging

N/A: a lot of, I think a lot of professionals also probably notice, but BO school professionals are usually, I don’t know how. Oh, they have that.

Mike Richards: You don’t need to be boastful. So Emma confused too. Haywood, Emma Haywood from Dow Lace Group. She hates boasting. She’s, but she was on my podcast recently.

Mike Richards: She’s brilliant group treasurer for Dow Lace Automotive. What she does each week, I said this on our session the other night, is she emails herself once a week and said, I emailed myself and went, that’s not your job, Emma. You need to do some work. But basically what she does is she said what the team has achieved that week.

Mike Richards: And what she’s achieved that week. Know we had Tony on, he said, win the day. Brilliant quote, but win the week and basically look at your wins of the week. Now a lot of treasury professionals sometimes think, oh, hang on, but what difference have you made to yourselves? But then what happens is, as she said, it’s great, the, the CFO will swing by the desk, oh, Emma, how are you getting on?

Mike Richards: How was it? And he got, she went, oh, my team, we’ve saved 1 million this week and we did this last week, and then we did this. So she’s got a ready, reckoner, all the, the way to do it. It’s a great way to do it.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : And I, I also think, so we have to stop confusing, being confident with being cocky.

N/A: Yeah.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : They’re two different things, two different things.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I know we are taught humility and we practice that, but it’s different. So. Between anything that I said, anything that Mike said. Do you feel like we came off like cocky? Like, oh, we, you know, we’re doing all of these things. Like honestly, right? Mike talked about his podcast. He talked about how many treasurers he has interviewed.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I talked about the awards, right? I talked about the small team that we had. We just, all we did was talk about what we’ve done. We didn’t do it in a cocky way at all. Now, if I said that I was the best. All the time, every day.

Mike Richards: She does a lot.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : I’m just saying. Saying,

Mike Richards: and that’s why we have to, I’m not let her go into the bar with those moderat meters.

Mike Richards: Right.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So I don’t, I I think we need to stop confusing. Being confident. Yeah. In your skills with being cocky. ’cause they’re, like I said, they’re two different things and you shouldn’t shy away from what you’ve done. And so the people who feel like, oh, I don’t wanna be boastful, I don’t wanna be cop cocky.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : You probably are also struggling with your annual review to be able to tell your story of what you did throughout the year so that you can be up for the promotion. So it’s still something that you need to practice, even if it’s not externally. So just know that if, if, if that is what you are saying, like I don’t wanna, that means you’re also holding back on your review and you’re holding back on your promotion.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So it’s bigger than just LinkedIn. But LinkedIn will allow for maybe another opportunity or a promotion, right, in a different area versus just internal. So it’s the same thing. And it’s more internal that you’re feeling that way and you probably, it’s more work to be done. And that’s not just to you, this is across the board.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : We had a very similar discussion this morning.

Mike Richards: Yeah, and I’ll just, I’ll just add to that as well. Weirdly. I don’t like public speaking.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Can you imagine?

Mike Richards: I know.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Can you imagine that? But I

Mike Richards: told these guys in Chicago we’re halfway through a speech and I was saying how I realized I need to grow our US business, Chicago.

Mike Richards: I need to get on stage. I’m speaking on the first A of a FP this year. Now I’ve got three amazing treasurers to sit next to me. So they’re gonna do all the hard work and I’ll just sit and listen to these amazing ladies. But I realized if I was gonna progress my business, my career. I had to get out of my own way and I still imposter syndrome.

Mike Richards: I look at it and I go, yeah, that’s me. But the fact is I’m now standing in front of you guys and these go, oh, can you do more sessions? Could you, it helps you and your careers. We had a question here.

N/A: Oh, I have a comment and then I have a question. Oh.

Mike Richards: Oh God. So I’ll step back.

N/A: I was gonna say like, if you’re afraid to kind of take the step and post, um, because you don’t wanna be like boastful.

N/A: A good idea would be if you have like a colleague who’s at the same. Uh, event or who is sharing the accolade with you, you can have them post about it, like, I’m so proud of my friend. And then them tag you so that you both get the visibility. Yeah. And kind of like work your way up that way. Right on. Is a good way to do that.

N/A: And then I use LinkedIn a lot and so my question is around algorithms and getting more visibility. So what I have learned is the more people that like and comment and repost. We’ll get you the most visibility. Is there anything else that I’m missing from that? You go first.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Regularity.

N/A: I was about

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : to say the same thing consistently.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Yeah.

Mike Richards: No, no, I got it first. Don’t listen to that. That was my line. She was stealing from me. You know my, I should

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : have said ladies first. No. No. Mm-hmm. So

Mike Richards: I, I said this actually our session the other day, I have started, I do a weekly, so follow me on LinkedIn, connect to me and everything else. The algorithm has changed massively just recently.

Mike Richards: Uh, so people that used to put up just spammy posts and things like that, they’re being penalized and they’re being downgraded. But the genuine stuff, as you say about your colleagues is being upgraded, which is fantastic. And I was talking to a LinkedIn coach the other day and they were, oh, we can help you with the LinkedIn.

Mike Richards: I went, I’m all right actually. ’cause I do a weekly newsletter every single week, which I use. A business coach of mine made me do. And I just said, look. I’ll do comments and I’ve got, actually gotta do my video today, which I’m gonna do straight after this, and it’s gonna be a reflection on the conference.

Mike Richards: I do that every week. Every week. Just lean into it. Yep. And I thought, oh really? Is it making a difference? Yeah, pretty much. We’re on track now for a million impressions this year, and I’m like, holy crap. I’m like, I don’t, I just wanna talk treasury. I wanna talk to you guys. But actually it just shows that by being public with it, not boastful of it, it actually helps.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So we are we, we need to wrap, wrap up? Yeah. We got the, we got the finger. So just some takeaways. Make sure you update your LinkedIn, make sure that you update your photo. Take advantage of the AI lounge and a banner and I’ll, I’ll give you a template for a banner in a second. Keep a career log, and Mike talked about that, definitely so that you have it front and center.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : So when it’s time to talk about your accomplishments, you have it available. And last but not least, engage in your industry, right? You may see a post that someone says, I don’t know, real time payments are great. You may be like, ah, only if your vendor master is great, right? Because you already know that there may be some risk.

Catherine Latoya Grant-Alston : Anything else you wanna add to that?

Mike Richards: No, I love it. Just that. It’s networking. Make sure you follow up. You’ve met people today. You were just having the chat and the tables. Connect to them. They can help you in your treasury career. Thank you. That’s it. Thank you there. Today’s episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners ICD.

Mike Richards: 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. If you head over to treasury recruitment.com/partners, you can learn more.

Mike Richards: 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.