From a Blank Sheet: How to Set Up a Treasury Function from Scratch and Lead with Confidence

Mike Richards, CEO & Founder, 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. Delighted to be joined by Emma Haywood. Group Treasurer of Dow Lace Group Lace are a specialist engineering group. Hope I got that right when I said it. Focused on the automotive sector, they generate value and capital growth through a portfolio of market leading high tech engineering businesses that advance the world’s transition to sustainable vehicles.

Mike Richards: They do the two business, GKN Automotive and GKN powder metallurgy. There you go. I got it. Right. But. Enough of that we’re going to talk about Emma’s career, how she started in finance, then transitioned into treasury, and she’s quite nervous, but there’s no need to be, ’cause we’re going to literally just have a nice conversation about your treasury career.

Mike Richards: So let’s go back, Emma. Take me back to the beginning. You first started finance and then banking, and then treasury over to you.

Emma Hayward, Group Treasurer of Dowlais Group plc: Thanks, Mike. Really pleased that you’ve asked me to be part of this, and yes, I am very nervous, so apologies. No need to be, have a wobbly voice during any of this, the human part of it, hopefully.

Emma Hayward: Yeah. I started out working with numbers, if you like, as simple as that. When I was at university, I worked for Lloyd’s Bank while I was there. My role was actually a debt collecting, which is quite ironic for a student, but fortunate for me with the location of where I was at university. And then with Lloyd’s, I moved into sort of a branch related role, account management, the normal kind of salesy type side of things.

Emma Hayward: Turns out not really a very good sales person when it comes to it in branch, and then looked really at doing something else. So I’d done an accounting and finance degree. Liked working in finance as an industry but didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And if you like, fell. Typically valid treasury, classic.

Emma Hayward: A student out of university applied for hundreds of jobs, didn’t really know what I wanted, so just applied really for everything. I was looking for something that would give me the opportunity to have study support so that I could at least buy myself some time, if you like to work out what, where I felt I fitted in the working world.

Emma Hayward: And that’s when I got the opportunity to take the treasury analyst role at Merck. So I was essentially the treasury dealer there for a couple of years working on really basic treasury activity, FX deals into company loans, cash movement, but those basics really. Set the right foundation gave me something different to do every day.

Emma Hayward: And then from there, did a bit of accounting, did some project work within Merck before, before moving on to Tesco.

Mike Richards: I was going to say before we get to Tesco with Merck, who were Merck at the time sort of thing. ’cause I know them as well. But yeah, so it’s just good for people that you are fresh out of uni.

Mike Richards: Here’s a treasury role. Yeah. At a company who are Merck.

Emma Hayward: So Merck and Co Inc. Is a global pharmaceutical company headquartered outta the us. I worked for their treasury entity, so they had a London based treasury entity that looked after. All treasury activity for the group, with the exception of the senior financing agreement.

Emma Hayward: So that was done out of their US head office. Global pharmaceutical, they produce different vaccines. They actually have one for cervical cancer, so if any one has any young females in their family, 11, 12 year olds now, they might be having that, that at school. And C, asthma, drugs, things like that. Lots and lots of things that big, large global pharmaceutical.

Mike Richards: From you move, making that move you’ve gone to, you’ve been in banking, as you say, debt collecting, give us the cash and everything else. Yeah. Treasury. What was that shift like for you at early stage?

Emma Hayward: I had absolutely no idea what I was really going into. If I’m honest. I had done a number of different modules at university.

Emma Hayward: I quite liked the quantitative side of mathematics that we did, rather than just the p and l and things like that. From the accounting we had done economics, so I had an idea, but I think the truth is until you get into a job, you don’t really know what it’s like and I. 21 years old. I’ve really got no idea what treasury is, but I felt I could do it.

Emma Hayward: And everything I ever go into, I go into it fully. So I am very dedicated. I really like the challenge of something new. I’m inquisitive and actively encouraged that in any of my team as well, but that’s probably why it felt interesting to me. Had a few little snippets of things I’d done at university, but.

Emma Hayward: The truth is, I didn’t really know what I was doing. And then when you turn up for work and you get your Bloomberg login screen and there’s all these fancy charts and you get to learn a load of new stuff, it was

Mike Richards: brilliant right

Emma Hayward: up my, right up my streets.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And then you, as you said, you touched on, you then moved to Tesco, and I know that you Yes.

Mike Richards: A number of years at Tesco. What was Tesco like when you joined? Or explain who Tesco are, but then who they were as well, because I know they’ve. You and I, yeah, I’ve had Andy Henley on the show. Good friend and Linda Haywood way back when. So I’ve known Tesco all my treasure recruitment career. But you joined at quite an interesting time, didn’t you?

Mike Richards: In oh eight.

Emma Hayward: Yeah, so I joined May, may oh eight, yeah, so before the financial crash, and there’s absolutely no connection with my move in that happening. But I joined at a time when the business was booming, so it is. A global had a global footprint. Obviously it’s a retail store for food generally, but also has a number of what’s called hard and soft lines, the non-food products.

Emma Hayward: And so whether that be clothing or washing machine, TVs, that kind of thing. So your, your store, they, they were in a period of good and strong financial. Stability. Yeah, they were looking to take over fully the Tesco bank, so that was a JV originally when I joined, that was coming on board, so there was a process there underway.

Emma Hayward: They were doing some interesting transactions around property leasing and were looking to grow, particularly their footprint in the us. So the US brand was called Fresh and Easy. Yeah. And they were putting a lot of money into trying to push out and grow that brand, which was West Coast based. So the Tesco at that time, it was a quite a small treasury front office team.

Emma Hayward: I. I lay claim to being the first female treasury dealer that they had. So it’s a very male dominated team. The overall treasury team was quite large. It was a big separate back office. There were people working specifically on systems. They were implementing SWIFT at the time. I remember working with the team there, having myself being part of the project team that put Swift in at Mark and they were really trying to move themselves forward.

Emma Hayward: But this was a time where when you made a deal, an FX deal, you picked the phone up. It was like a bath phone and it. Directly rang the bank and you spoke to ’em on the phone and you did a few deals on, on, on a portal, but you did things on the phone. It was probably a bit old school. I did that treasury dealing role for a number of years and then developed the level of deal I was, if you like, in, in that.

Emma Hayward: And then I actually took a short break. I had my first son took a break, then had about nine months off. Before coming back into a project role, so I was seconded to a commercial project, which was really interesting for me. It gave me an opportunity to essentially get a promotion, which I’d been working to, and I was really well supported by my line manager at the time so that I.

Emma Hayward: When I, when I went on maternity leave, it didn’t hinder that and gave me an opportunity to really get more involved in what the business were doing, what commercial looked like. Yeah. And understand more of the detail that sits behind. It’s a huge machine really that’s putting in thousands of different products into hundreds of different stores.

Emma Hayward: The turnover, the revenue is huge at that company, and obviously the global footprint adds that. Complexity. I worked on this commercial strategy role for around nine months or so, which was the given time for that project, and then I came back into the treasury team to head up the market execution. So that included everything in terms of cash management, everything in terms of f effort.

Emma Hayward: It also included any sort of in short term investments and things that we were doing. So we were placing CP, for example, so everything that was essentially execution. And while I was in that role, we also did the first commodity trade that Tesco executed. So they did a wheat trade, so it was. Proudly say that’s one of the first ones that was done and I worked in that role, had a team working with me, so got great opportunity to work with some fantastic people.

Emma Hayward: We had graduates coming through the team from the overall senior graduate program that Tesco runs. So we had a regular rotation of the graduates of really interesting to learn how those just fresh out to university. And now thinking about the working world and how do we make sure we continue to adapt as team in the business.

Emma Hayward: Um, and I just want,

Mike Richards: I wanted to dive in there briefly ’cause I know that, as you talked about there, Tesco throughout the time I knew it then. Evolved if you like. And certainly the culture within treasury evolved, as you say, it was quite middle, front, back office. You do your job and that was it. And then it evolved and it became more blended in a good way.

Mike Richards: And you were part of that as well. As you said you did a, then you were doing a business role and as getting treasury. ’cause before it was, in a way, back in the day when I first Tesco, treasury was in a corner. The money. Look after it. Thanks very much for trading. Now it’s actually real part of the business.

Mike Richards: You’ve just talked about that. Did you see that you were part of that evolution?

Emma Hayward: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got senior commercial managers within the business running particular areas. So for example, Jason Terry was looking after all of the clothing range, all of the soft lines that we put it. All of that kind of came internationally.

Emma Hayward: So as a dealer R and then heading up the execution. I was directly linked with him to work and help manage the, essentially the best hedging that we could execute for his department so that they can then price that on the floor, they can put office in place. How can they deliver promotional activity because of the activity that treasury can do to assess.

Emma Hayward: So all of that hedging. Yeah, we would see that directly. And there was more and more collaboration across the group in the time that I was there to help build and foster those relationship, to have an appreciation of the pressures. Because ultimately commercial are under a number of targets. They’ve got their own pressures that are coming in, and their objectives will be different to those or you as an individual and as the Treasury Department.

Emma Hayward: So you really have to, I think. Able to have open and good relationships with those teams so that you can then work. How do you work together? Otherwise, you’re just butting up against each other and treasury then becomes a bad guy because you say, no, that’s not in policy. Rather than saying, actually, let’s have a think about this more

Mike Richards: conversation.

Mike Richards: What

Emma Hayward: are you trying to achieve? How does that fit? Does it make sense? So really there was a lot of work that we did during that time to build those relationships.

Mike Richards: And with that price sensitivity, it’s retail. You can make a difference by a couple of pennies, but that then has global impact. So yeah. And then that linked into, you said about you did a commodity trade.

Mike Richards: How did that come about? Yeah, in sofar, as were you then talked to them and guys, we’ve got these risks and we help, or what happened?

Emma Hayward: So part of a wider. Global sourcing strategy. So there was a big push to bring in a full commodity team to understand the overall inputs into price in a particular product.

Emma Hayward: There was a, I would say a company-wide review on actually how you look at the pricing for each product and understand each of those components. And a lot of components within food, there are commodity inputs. Yeah. So whether that’s the animal feed that goes to the cows that. Then turn into the meat or those that feed the chickens that produce the eggs.

Emma Hayward: You’ve got all of those kind of feed inputs, but then you’ve also got the wheat that goes into the flour, that goes into the cakes. That goes into the bread. There was this actual, let’s have a look at all of those input costs and let’s look and understand, and so I won’t claim credit that treasury said, hold.

Emma Hayward: You’ve got all these commodity risks. Absolutely. Working within the, that commercial strategy role that I had was a good insight to understanding actually how com, how commercial were thinking about things in a different way and then. As a treasury team, were able to, I was able to go back in and say, okay, actually let’s, this is really helpful.

Emma Hayward: We, I’ve now got the connection with the team because I’ve been sitting alongside them doing other things, and actually we can work with them on this. The same as understanding how do we think about FX across the whole repricing piece. Do we just price a product in Sterling and recognize that year after year?

Emma Hayward: And if we get a price improvement, we say, great, we’ve done a good job. Or do we say, actually there’s a freight cost as in dollars? There’s a, let’s talk about Tin Tomatoes as an example. There is a growing cost, which is in Euro Rose. We have to buy the actual tin itself to produce the can that’s probably in dollars.

Emma Hayward: And then we’ve got other input costs that come from marketing the legal, where we are labeling products in different jurisdictions that may happen, different regulatory requirements on what’s required and different oversight. And then so it all starts to add up and you’ve got a multitude of input currencies.

Emma Hayward: You can’t just look at, did I get save the penny? On the cost year over year. So actually, where do we then think about where that FX risk lies? Do we want to cut the Euro risk out with the grower or do we want to say, actually we’ll pay you in euros? We’ll in-house that risk. ’cause we can, we feel that we can do a better job, not because they’re incapable, but because actually we’ve got a scale and we’ve got expertise and we can manage time in variances rather than pushing it out to people.

Emma Hayward: Actually their expertise is growing the best tomatoes they can to come into the. Product that we want to sell. Yes. So it’s thinking about it at a different level and thinking about where we can make the difference.

Mike Richards: And then from there, you went into your running your own consulting and did lots of different projects.

Mike Richards: Talk us through that transition if you like.

Emma Hayward: Yeah, so just before I left Tesco, after that, I worked in the funding and banking side for a while as well. So the reason for just highlighting that is that Tesco went through a period of, if it’s okay to say a financial uncertainty where their accounts are being reviewed.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Emma Hayward: Just to confirm, there was no requirement for restatement or anything like that, but that does create uncertainty. And there was refinancing required, you know, they had a 2.8 billion RCF that needed to be refinanced and they wanted to extend their lines of credit anyway, given the size of the business.

Emma Hayward: So there was a lot to be done during that time, and that gave me a completely different angle on what it is to be. A treasurer if you like. You can do the execution and you need to do that really well. It’s a foundation. You also need to understand the banking relationships and those that are sticking up the credit, and how are they getting comfortable with that credit and making those commitments to you, whether you’re drawn or undrawn on those lines, you need to have that.

Emma Hayward: Those there, you need those backstops and essentially, that gave me a completely different angle and understanding around treasury. It was a very pressured time. You asked how did tes. Go change. I joined at a time where it was boom and was leaving at a time when actually it had been very difficult rating, had been downgraded, that they weren’t the A rated company anymore, that they were global markets that had gone through a number of years of pressure.

Emma Hayward: It was a very different place. The treasury function had gone through that journey, and that in itself just gives you an opportunity to learn a huge amount. I think particularly in the last couple of years that I was at Tesco, I’d say anyone who studies CMO will probably find a case study of that situation at some point in the future.

Emma Hayward: It isn’t something you read about in books and you learning on the job if you like, and that’s a little bit un. Settling, but also it is amazing to be given that opportunity to be thinking and working through those situations live. You learn an awful lot when you’re in those situations under that pressure.

Emma Hayward: So when I left Tesco in May, 2015 and I decided to work on a sort consulting basis. For a short period of time, I was actually pregnant with my second child. I don’t want to oversell the time here that I did this consulting for, but it was really, for me, it was a good stock gap. It gave me a bit of time to step away from the day-to-day pressures.

Emma Hayward: That were there at Tesco. And then I had, my second child had obviously a bit of time off during that and before going back into an employed position. But the consulting role was really around setting up the Treasury department. So I was working with and hum bee, so Dun hum bee. Were the owner or partner of the club card.

Emma Hayward: So Tesco club card. So the points card that Tesco. They were looking to be sold off at the time, so I worked with them around setting up their own treasury department. So what systems would they need? What could their team, or should their team look like, the structure, what governance and processes would they need to have in place?

Emma Hayward: A bit policy writing, so though preparing those foundations so that if they were sold, they were in a good position to, to know what they needed to go out and set up. So it was, again, different angle, looking at it differently, but utilizing the experience that I’d then gained, both, both at Merck and at Tesco.

Mike Richards: And then with that checklist, if you like, you’d gone into that organization and they said set it up from scratch. What was that like? Or how did you Was just fundamentals, just the usual stuff. Don’t do this.

Emma Hayward: It was more, for me, it was about what does, so I think any business, you have to look at what you looking to achieve because you can’t mirror one treasury team in company A with a treasury team in company B.

Emma Hayward: It’s never gonna work unless. Company be a complete mirror of one another. You have to be able to set kind of parameters and guidance without being too restrictive. And also, this was at a time when they were looking at how they might need to do this. Because they were not yet on their own. They weren’t separated.

Emma Hayward: So

Mike Richards: yeah,

Emma Hayward: you also, as an individual, you’re doing work that may become very redundant very quickly, but you still wanna do a really good job about it. And you wanna make sure that you thought about everything. But you, the truth is, you can’t think about everything because things change all the time. So you, what I was trying to do was really.

Emma Hayward: Put down some clear guidance as some key things that they absolutely must consider. They must be able to cover and do. What do you do on day one? What would you do? What do you need to have ready within the first sort of three months? And then what would you want to have set up in the first six months?

Emma Hayward: And set some guide around that. Some basic policies that give flexibility and can be tightened over time that aren’t too restrictive so that you then tie yourself in knots ’cause you’ve now got this policy that probably isn’t fit for purpose. But writing policy is boring and takes time and. Rather not do it if we don’t have to.

Emma Hayward: So actually just having had the few things done to start with is really helpful. It was around just giving them some shape and making sure really that they knew what needed to be ready for day one as say three months in, six months in.

Mike Richards: Yeah. So fit for that. Exactly. Yeah.

Emma Hayward: Yeah, exactly.

Mike Richards: And then what led to then Dow Lace things?

Mike Richards: Explain your current role or what’s happened.

Emma Hayward: Yeah, I went from maternity leave. I went to work for DS Smith, a paid packaging company. Spent a number of years there. I was really always looking for a group treasurer job. I felt that I had gained a plethora of experience. I wanted to push myself, and I think I also just.

Emma Hayward: Person who felt mentally ready. My, my kids were a little bit older now I, and I really wanted to be taking that group treasurer job. So moving from DS Smith, which in itself gave me a great opportunity to do a lot of work on m and a and lot of funding work, bond issuance, fin, all the debt. So really just building out all that core funding side disposal, big disposal of the full division, and I suppose a.

Emma Hayward: Filling in the last of the, the core areas in terms of that funding platform. But I wanted that challenge. I wanted to be working with the C-suite. I wanted to be talking regularly to the CFO, helping to be more strategic in what I was doing.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Emma Hayward: And that’s really why I wanted to move. And I, in, if I look at my career.

Emma Hayward: I think I was ready for that earlier, but I was looking probably for a perfect role all the time. And I think that you, I think I, let me say me not to anyone else, but I certainly, I. Have fallen foul of that in the past that just trying to look and wait for something to be too perfect and then really, I probably didn’t really know what perfect was, and therefore I don’t really know what I’m looking for.

Emma Hayward: So I’d waited probably too long, but the opportunity came up to work. For GKN Automotive as the group treasurer and be part of the team that was being built within GKN ready for the Demerger from Melrose. So just to explain, GKN Automotive large UK automotive conglomerate was acquired by Melrose. PLC in MO industry is PLC in 2018.

Emma Hayward: Melrose’s model is buy, improve, sell, and their intention was to separate the GKN businesses. So there was an automotive sector, which was a made up of GN automotive and powder ology. And then there was also an aerospace sector company within that conglomerate. I was expecting gee and automotive to be pushed out separately.

Emma Hayward: I didn’t quite know if it was going to be floated, sold, how it would be separated, but I went there to be part of that senior leadership team to help support that separation. As it turned out, Melrose decided to separate by way of a de a formal demerger, which essentially is where the shares of anyone who has a Melrose share.

Emma Hayward: Gets one ware share and one new share of new company, which was named Dow Lace.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Emma Hayward: And within Dow Lace, the businesses, it wasn’t just G Automotive, they actually pushed out G and powder ology, and at the time G can hydrogen. So with three businesses, hydrogen is, that has subsequently been sold, but was a startup, a startup business.

Emma Hayward: So the three businesses were pushed under that umbrella of Dow Lace. And that opportunity to be part of that listing process, to be part of the setup of a brand new business essentially, which has, I won’t get the right words, but has a really long standing history. ’cause GKN is not a new company that Dell Ace is and trying to marry each other.

Emma Hayward: They’re old and the new coming

Mike Richards: together. Yeah.

Emma Hayward: Yeah. And then you’re setting up a treasury team. So there was myself and one lady, a treasury manager who worked with me in automotive. That was it with the two of us.

Mike Richards: Yeah. But

Emma Hayward: we are setting everything up. So we are setting up how do we run our processes, how do we do our policies?

Emma Hayward: What system do we have? We, our cash management is now segregated, so it’s not all nicely consolidated. There’s no lovely cash sweeps. We’ve got lots of separate cash pools around the group, some individual accounts, because. As you leave one company, rightly, Melrose cuts everything off because obviously they need to separate.

Emma Hayward: So then you have to redo all this stitching back together, trying to look at how do you do things better. We’ve got, I don’t know, 1500 FX deals being no over the. On day one, they all need to rematching and book in and make sure you’ve got the right settlement instructions. You’ve got to work out how you pay everything.

Emma Hayward: You’ve got to work out what interest rate hedging do you want to do because you’ve just been given on day one, a debt position of you. 1.2 billion. Yeah, there you go. I’ve got 22 banks to manage, which most treasurers will probably. Agree is way too many. They’ve all been amazing to have and it’s been great to have so many supporting, but there’s a lot mouth to feed when it comes to managing the share of wallet.

Emma Hayward: And then you’re looking at how do I manage the capital structure going forward? How do I make sure that I’ve got the right working capital lines? Have I transitioned all the guarantee facilities over. Make sure that I’ve got the right guarantees in place. If there’s any parent guarantees that needed to be replaced, you’ve got all this stuff going on and then you have to bear in mind there’s everything’s new, so there’s no finance team.

Emma Hayward: There’s no permanent finance team here. Now, there’s no tax team here yet. There’s no, there’s no insurance. So I now cover insurance. So we don’t have an insurance ahead. There isn’t a big HR team. Payroll gets outsourced, but if, when it comes to releasing payroll, that goes through treasury. So there’s lots of things that, that you’re then trying to cover to support the rest of the new head office because it’s not there yet.

Emma Hayward: And that’s a huge challenge. Which again, I’m really fortunate you don’t get to do that every day and it’s great to, to be part of that.

Mike Richards: And when you talk there about how many spinning plates and you don’t want any of them to fall, but so without working 24 7, ’cause you’ve got a life and everything else.

Mike Richards: And how do you manage the pressures, again, for the listeners today? What advice, what tactics have you got? What you know maybe are the systems you use? Are there just ways of working? Just advice to the listeners.

Emma Hayward: One piece of a device I have is don’t be afraid to stop and take a break. I think it’s really easy when you are spinning lots of plates and you feel like there’s a lot of pressure on you to not take a break, but that time, that recovery that you get allows you to clear your head.

Emma Hayward: You come back fresher, and then you’re more switched on. I. I’ve definitely learned here, but also I think probably from my time at TECO in particular, that having that time to stop and just reflect, refresh is really important. If you step away and you then look at something from the outside, you’ll see something you didn’t spot when you’re in the detail and it’s very hard.

Emma Hayward: We’ve all worked on a spreadsheet and looked if hours and moved numbers around and it’s, we’ve thought it’s perfect, and then someone stands behind you. Spots an error that’s staring you in the face and you just can’t see it ’cause you’re too in the detail. And I think it’s just, that’s one thing I would say is just don’t be afraid to just take a break, take a stop and look back.

Emma Hayward: I think the other thing is. It’s just having the right people around you. So it was really important to me to have a team that I trusted whose experience didn’t need to cover every aspect of everything we were going to do, but gave them. A bit of a leg up. So they had a bit of a head start, certain areas, but they compliment one another.

Emma Hayward: The lady who worked with me in automotive knew everybody in automotive. She had great networks. If we needed information, we needed a little bit of support. We had a great network around her. Had somebody come in who speaks multiple languages, who has got multi global experience, someone else who came in, who’s got good cash management experience and good system understanding, so together.

Emma Hayward: We then we work. So it is having the right team around you. And the third thing I would say is ask questions of people, whether that’s inside the company or outside. Don’t feel you have to have all the answers. No one’s expecting you to have all the answers. What they’re expecting is that you can work through.

Emma Hayward: Situation that you’ve got in front of you. And I think that applies to a lot of, to a lot of situations that, that you can face where you don’t necessarily feel like you, it’s a treasury problem. You should have the answer. You don’t know if you should ask someone, but actually you aren’t expected to know everything about everything all the time, but you are expected to be able to manage it.

Emma Hayward: So don’t be afraid to ask. Find out those been and your network across. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And you touched on there about finding that perfect role. When you were looking for that you’ve taken on these leadership roles. What advice would you give to maybe other treasury professionals? They’re doing the same. They’re in the same position.

Mike Richards: They’re looking for their next role. They’re thinking about it going, so what do’s and don’ts would you give?

Emma Hayward: I think be clear on what your motives are. So what, why are you. Turning up to work, what keeps you motivated? And that also for me is who do I wanna work with? What are the sort of things I want to be doing?

Emma Hayward: So do I, if I’m happy just building on something I’ve learned and practicing the same thing somewhere else, that’s absolutely okay. Yeah. If I want to challenge myself and say I’ve done a bit of cash pooling, for example, and I’m comfortable with that. I’ve done a bit of fx, but I don’t know anything about working capital, I’m going to.

Emma Hayward: Not, I don’t need to do those anymore. I’m just going to go and do something different and you’re going to go sideways. That’s also okay. So I think it’s work out what your motivations are. I’m very focused around the companies that I work for, what their overall objectives are, and I think that. Don’t necessarily need to read the job description, but go and look at who the company are and what they’re doing, because then you can get a feel as to whether you as an individual, your personality, your style, your own objectives are going to fit with what that company strategy is, and always have that first conversation.

Emma Hayward: So it is too, it’s very easy to close the door on things, but actually just have the first conversation. You don’t have to. Take it any further and if you feel it’s not right for you, you can say, sorry, it’s not right for me. So I think I went for a, a position while I was at DS Smith and I turned up and I walked in.

Emma Hayward: I felt really uncomfortable. I, God, this is terrible. And I gave, I think, a good interview. I absolutely know I could do the job. I felt really uncomfortable in the place. I didn’t feel like I fitted. Everyone was very casual. I liked to wear smart things to work. I liked to come home and get out of it, change and leave it behind.

Emma Hayward: I don’t like it to all be the same. I just didn’t feel like I fitted and I definitely could do the job, but I didn’t mean I had to take it. Yeah, it didn’t, you didn’t

Mike Richards: fit the culture. It was a, not a clash, but it was just, but the good thing was you didn’t

Emma Hayward: just didn’t work me. No. So I’d gone through a couple of interviews and you could feel like, oh, I’ve wasted my time.

Emma Hayward: I should that I’ve got to take it now. I’ve got, but it wasn’t right. And I said no.

Mike Richards: Yeah,

Emma Hayward: and I have a couple of other examples there. I’ve really wanted something and I’ve probably been too desperate for it. And I give, I’ve given a terrible interview before as well. I remember going for one, after I’d had my, my, my son, my first son, and oh my God, you would think I.

Emma Hayward: Had no clue. I don’t think I could even say,

Mike Richards: what do you do? Again,

Emma Hayward: all I was thinking in my head was, oh my God, I don’t wanna go back to work yet. What am I doing? This is terrible. What? And I don’t even know what came outta my mouth, but anyway, I didn’t get that job. Thank goodness. So it is, don’t be afraid to go, and if it works out, great, but if you feel it doesn’t, you can always say no.

Emma Hayward: So I think that’s, they’re, they’re the sort of the three tips I’ve got.

Mike Richards: Love it. Okay. And what we’ll do, because I think we’re getting towards that stage now, you’d like, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so that people can connect with you. I know it’s going to explode on there, and I’ve got some questions here about advice you give your younger self and all the, I think you’ve actually covered a lot of that.

Mike Richards: I was going to say more if you’re a listener today and maybe any of the three stages of your career, so you can be early like you were when you first came outta Merck, maybe around that stage or mid-level. A treasurer, any pieces of advice tailored for those different parts of our audience listening today?

Mike Richards: That what takeaways? One of the things I’ve said the other day, I was saying to, we did our session in New York and I said to everyone, have your black book. They’re like, and I said, look, you guys in treasury, you get down in the weeds a lot of the time. At the end of each week, write down your wins of the week.

Mike Richards: And I’m made to do this by my business coach. And it’s been a game changer for us because now. I’ve had to look back at 14 weeks of wins because I’m thinking, oh, what have we done? And if I look back to three, four months ago, I’m like, wow, we’ve actually done quite a lot. I was just saying before the show that we are now doing stuff with a FP and we’re doing stuff for CPD, and I didn’t think we were going to do that, but it all came out.

Mike Richards: This is what’s happening at three months. But I think a lot of treasurers don’t. And that’s one piece of advice that I’ve given. But back to you, what sort of advice would you give to treasury professionals out there? So

Emma Hayward: I think that if you are at any stage of your treasury career, keep being inquisitive.

Emma Hayward: Keep asking questions, challenging the norm, thinking outside the box, whether it, whether that idea goes anywhere or not, but just be inquisitive, understand what’s going on around you, look forward, that kind of thing. I think that’s helpful at all levels and how you’re inquisitive and what you ask obviously will vary, but I think that applies across any level that you’re at.

Emma Hayward: I think I’ve always tried to think about what I do, so. Write, I do write things down a lot. I feel it helps me to process, process. What I’ve done, how I’ve done it, did I get the right outcome? I don’t write down wins of the week every week, but I do write down every six months I will sit and write down what we’ve achieved as a team and look back at those and talk to my team about them.

Emma Hayward: ’cause I think it’s really great review process, important to just remind each other what you’ve done. So I do keep her an email. The other thing I do. Is I email myself, which is a little bit of geeky I suppose, but, um, no, it’s brilliant. It’s

Mike Richards: great. I’ve just said to people, put a reminder on the Friday diary, I’ve just said, have your five minute coffee with yourself.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And because a lot of people, they’re so busy that I said, look, and just with that five minutes, just what have you done this week? Well, what have you done this month or this quarter, as he said, because otherwise sometimes you go, hang on, what did we do six months ago? Uh, it is great. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a way of tracking it.

Emma Hayward: It’s not always just what you’ve achieved, but it’s just what you’re thinking about, right? Sometimes I just email myself ideas about things that I would like to. Do. Yeah, I’m sure my team would be horrified if they, they saw some of the ideas I come up with, but you horrified anyway some of the time. But I just send yourself stuff and then I have a folder, like I like to file my email so I, not too specifically, but I have a folder in my chuckle all in there so that I can always look back and prompt myself.

Emma Hayward: And I use that as a reference. I think it’s, yeah, it’s just a good way for me to help process things.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Amazing. Great wrap up. Thank you very much. It is just been brilliant. Thank you very much, Emma. It was. I knew it would be like this and it was and you start started. Oh, I’m nervous about, look at that.

Mike Richards: There’s no need for nerves. You’ve been brilliant. Thank you very much for your time. You’ve been a superstar.

Emma Hayward: Thanks, Mike.

Mike Richards: I hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s podcast just as much as I did recording it with another amazing guest. Now, don’t forget to subscribe on your usual platform, whether that’s Spotify, apple Podcast, wherever you listen, so you never miss a future episode.

Mike Richards: Whilst you’re there, if you listening on Apple Podcast, maybe give us a five star review. Why? Because it helps other treasury professionals find the show, join the conversation, and get even more value. Now also, we’re helping you guys in treasury. If you are thinking about studying for your CTP or FP and a qualification, then listen up.

Mike Richards: We partnered with the A FP to offer a discount on study, both for the studying and for the preparation platform as well. So you can get. Through us. $150 discount. Yes. $150 for each. My goodness. Yeah, we, we are here to help. So it’s a great step for your career and always good to save where you can. So all you need to do is go to treasury recruitment.com/partners.

Mike Richards: You’ve got the codes there. Then you head across to their website and you get the discount. You also as well, if that wasn’t enough, we’re going to be heading to a FP Boston. Uh, later on in the fall, as the Americas call it, in October. And we also offer $150 discount off your registration. So wherever you might be, it’s a great conference.

Mike Richards: Whether you’re in UK and Europe, you should go. I’m going. It’s going to be amazing. So incredible few days, great insights, proper networking, great conversations with lots and lots of treasures. Last time in Nashville. 80,000 plus one of their biggest ones ever. It was amazing. So just go to the show notes and you’ll find the link or treasure recruitment.com or slash partners and get it all from there.

Mike Richards: Remember, if you’re looking for a role, visit treasure recruitment.com if you need some advice. Reach out mike@treasuryrecruitment.com. Um, or come and meet us in person. We’ve got our sessions coming up. We’ve got sessions throughout this year in Texas. Then we’ve got London, then we’ve got Dublin. Then we’re back to the US for Chicago, then New York.

Mike Richards: Crumbs everywhere. EuroFinance the lot, and then a FP, and then back to London, and then we’re doing Netherlands as well. So it’ll be great to see you. We’re going to be everywhere, so looking forward to it. Thanks very much, and until next week, enjoy the show.