Why Corporate Treasury Needs to Be a Career Choice, Not Just a Happy Accident

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: They’ve given us the post lunchtime session, so you guys have to wake up. That’s to all of you. Now, I know you’re busy treasurers, so I would encourage you to switch off your phones, maybe put your laptops closed for a little while, ’cause this is an hour for you. This is for you and your treasury careers.

Mike Richards: I’ve got three amazing guests and we’re gonna talk about their treasury careers with you guys, but be present in the room. Don’t be looking at your phone. You can do that later. Just switch it off for an hour. So who am I? My Richards. I run the treasury recruitment company. A couple of people have said, do you cover Texas?

Mike Richards: I said Yes. ’cause I’m here and actually I’ve been doing it 25 years. Started obviously in the uk, supported by my team, amazing team there. Much better looking team. And I also do a podcast each and every week. Started thinking I’d do 10 now I’ve done 375 speaking to amazing treasures. Like the panel here.

Mike Richards: Had Martin on the panel before on my podcast, rather. Jeremy’s gonna be coming on and we get Dania and we’ll also have a podcast coming from this. Now the unique thing about it as well, I know you’re gonna get credits for coming here. You can now actually get CTP credits by listening to my podcast. Yeah, now you’ve got the attention walking the dog commuting.

Mike Richards: You can get CTP credits. So without further ado, I’m gonna get, this is gonna be the uh, order. I guess they’re gonna introduce themselves, then they’re gonna talk about how they built their treasury careers. Now, that’s the key thing for you guys, as Tony Robbins success says, or has, he said, success leaves clues.

Mike Richards: Listen to these guys, do what they’ve done. You’ll get their job one day, but Denise is not leading a job yet, but maybe one day, right? And then we’ll do some q and a. So you’re gonna get to ask some really good questions because again, when did you last get a chance to do this? Then we’ll do some takeaways, some great tips from these guys.

Mike Richards: Without further ado, Jeremy over to you.

Jeremy Reedus, VP, Global Treasurer – Varel Energy Solutions: Thank you. First of all, I gotta say I actually have made it and when you know in your career when you’ve made it, I am sitting with Mike Richards, so I made exactly, Hey, look here. There are certain people used to say, oh, I make it to Johnny Carson. But then again. I looking around the room, I don’t know if too many people are gonna catch that, that analogy.

Jeremy Reedus: Anyway, these great hairs are functional. But anyway, I wanna say that I’m excited to be here and sharing with you about my interesting career. It has been a heck of a ride in treasury for me, quite frankly. No one grows up saying, I wanna be a treasurer. No one really says that. But I will say that as we were just talking about it, I started my career thinking about treasury when I was a kid.

Jeremy Reedus: What was your first job? What was your first job in fast food? Any. Any hand. Yeah. There you go. So on. Yeah. First clothing stores, whatever. Back in the day, my dad wanted me to work at a grocery store. And so the funny part about the grocery store is that back then boys pushed the carts. Girls were the cashiers, and I wanted to be the cashier ’cause I didn’t wanna sweat and I wanted to be in charge of money.

Jeremy Reedus: And then I told my dad, I want a job where I can work. And then go hang out with my friends without being sweaty and have to take a shower. And you fast forward all these years later, I have that type of job and I’m in charge of money. So it’s worked its way full circle. But I will say that just like the majority of you who’ve been in treasury, I fell into it quite frankly.

Jeremy Reedus: I did. My first grownup job was in accounts payable, and then I did some accounts receivable collections and then I did credit management and risk. And then I did another student accounts payable. But this time I’m actually transferring money via wire to other bank accounts. And then someone said, you know what you can do?

Jeremy Reedus: You should be in treasury. What’s that? Is it accounting? No. And to this day, I still answer that question. Is it accounting? No, it’s not. It’s much more fun. But I started once upon time and Hmm, about two decades ago. Yeah, I was gonna say a long time ago, but about two decades ago, it was my first job at naco.

Jeremy Reedus: And. Now I’m from Houston, Texas, so therefore that means oil and gas till you die, basically. And I’ve grown up in the industry. Each one of my companies was bigger and bigger, so NACO was swallowed up by Cameron. Cameron. I realized that I needed something in my career and I left there and went to Direct Energy and Energy retail.

Jeremy Reedus: And then after that I took this chance and listened to one of my mentors and he said, if you ever get an opportunity to become an expatriate, do so and so. I worked for Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. So DHA and Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I had to Google that. I didn’t know, did not know where it was at, but it was an interesting experience.

Jeremy Reedus: Was there for five years from 2015 until COVID changed things, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later, but afterwards worked for, after working for the largest technical revenue generating company in the world, then moved over to Air LA Key as director of. Corporate finance and treasury for the Western Hemisphere.

Jeremy Reedus: And then eventually I now hold the position of Vice President Global Treasurer at Al Energy Solutions. And so I’ve got an opportunity to live from hand to mouth in terms of revenue generating companies all the way down to living off the fat of the land. And if we sneeze, someone else catches a cold.

Jeremy Reedus: But, uh, it’s been a heck of a ride and I certainly would never change it for anything else. And I’m just excited to share with you this journey, which started with just a kid not wanting to push a cartia. Thank you.

Danecia Stewart, Director of Treasury – NextDecade LNG: Yes. Hi, Dania Stewart. I too am in Houston. So I am a product of oil and gas, similar to Jeremy.

Danecia Stewart: Treasury for me started when I was a child. Grew up in Michigan, moved to Houston. We didn’t have family in Houston. My mom worked at a bank, so spring break, summers, anytime I wasn’t in school, I would be at the bank in the vault watching Oprah or something, whatever was on TV back then. But at that point, back then, they used to allow kids to sit in the vault.

Danecia Stewart: So I was around money and things very early on. Worked my way through college. My first real job, uh, I worked for a bank. The bank that I was working at, I had a mentor that she realized that I didn’t wanna just do retail banking, and so she put me in a rotational program. The department that I finally rotated into was bought out by another bank.

Danecia Stewart: It was in the trust and security department. And so I, I liked what I did, but I wanted to see it from the other side, like from the other seat. So that landed me in a corporate practitioner role. So I started off as a treasury analyst like most of us did, and just worked my way up. Then I hit a wall, like I was in that weird gray middle space where I wasn’t ready to take the next step, but I was too advanced for the previous step, so I just didn’t know what to do.

Danecia Stewart: So I moved over to consulting. I actually worked for a vendor and got into technology, learned ai, learned all of the treasury technology, and it was something that was very transferrable for me because I went to consulting after that and worked again with technology and worked with different companies, helping them implement technology and best practices.

Danecia Stewart: And what I realized is I’m a doer. I don’t want to just tell you what to do. I want to actually do it. Like I would be at home thinking, I wonder if their project ended well. Like I wonder. If what I told them works. So I am now back on the corporate practitioner side. I landed a role at a company called Next Decade, LNG, again, based in Houston, a greenfield company in the construction phase.

Danecia Stewart: So my role actually encompasses pretty much all of my jobs because I’m creating a department from the ground up. I’m implementing best practices, I’m implementing technology. I’m leading a department. That’s where I am currently. Over to you, Martin.

Martijn van Steenpaal, Senior Vice-President & Treasurer – Darling Ingredients: Thank you. Yeah, I, when I turned four years old and my dad asked me what I wanted to be, I didn’t tell him that I was gonna be the treasurer, but no, actually it went way different.

Martijn van Steenpaal: When I, when I went to college and actually did my fourth year internship, I ended up at a very small local auditing firm, and it was a good thing for me that to get a little bit of feel of. What real working life was like because I had a pretty intense social life and it was time for me to grow up. So I worked there for a number of months and, and basically my mentor, he, he was the managing partner of the firm, asked if I wanted to stay.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I said, yeah, I want to stay. I like to work to have some routine in my life here, so I’ll stay. He said, yeah, we have a little consulting arm within the firm that does treasury. I said, yeah, that’s sounds like fun. I didn’t have a clue of what he was talking about, but mm-hmm. They needed a probably a cheap person to do some work for them.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So I became, my first job was a junior treasury consultant, and they were actually charging customers for me. While I still didn’t have a clue of what I was gonna to do, but anyway. I did that for three years and, and did learn and understand more about treasury and which was actually coincidental. I think a very good way to get to know the, the, the, the, the treasury role a little bit because I saw different types of organizations.

Martijn van Steenpaal: You continuously work on projects and even though you’re not, in my view that useful at that age, you definitely get to learn a lot different companies, nonprofit institutions, systems, implementations, processes, and by understanding processes, I think you understand also you get to learn the, the reason be behind it better.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I did it for three years, but then I think similar to, to what they said is Danisha said, I, I was more interested in, hey, how would it be if I could operate myself? And instead of I come in, I have to do something and then I leave again. I was fascinated by the money flows and the numbers and got excited about, about the treasury function.

Martijn van Steenpaal: And a friend of mine was in recruitment. It was not Mike at the time, but it was a local friend. He said, Hey, I have this job. You’re in treasury, right? Said, yeah, I have this job at a corporate, it’s a privately owned company, and they produce the Mentos Gandhi, and would you be interested? I said, yeah, I would be interested.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I was young and I wanted to explore some other stuff, and it was not too far from where I lived. And so I got there and with totally different world, it was not from visiting different companies, but one company get to know the company better. They had FX risk management, which fascinated me and I, I had that.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I have not worked on that before, so it was a complete different experience. I learned a lot. It was a relatively small company. I was basically the right hand of the treasurer, so it was him and me, and so I got to see a lot. So it was not like, Hey, you do only cash management. Now I could see the broader spectrum of, of treasury, so to speak.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So did that for a number of years and yep, same friend asked me, Hey, there’s another job there. And it’s a company called Amgen, a US based company. They had their kind of international treasury hub in the Netherlands where I, where I’m from. And yeah, new element to me was, okay, it’s, this is a public company.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I’ve worked as a consultant, I’ve privately owned company, now a public company, and I got the opportunity to manage people, which I didn’t have experience with. So I thought that’s, that fits. That’s a nice next step. That was actually the one job where I basically, after a very well after a year, was a great company.

Martijn van Steenpaal: They did the things really well, but what I figured out there is I wanna be more impactful, I want to be more valuable, and I feel that I’m too far away from where the decisions are taken. So came into contact with another company also in the Netherlands, at headquarters, and they had acquired a lot of different businesses and what I found interesting there is that the treasury function needed to be built.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I accepted a role there and if I look back my career, that’s where probably the role that had, has had the most impact because I started, we had to grow the treasury team. We did that. I was not the treasurer at that time. I was the assistant treasurer and then the company, after all those acquisitions came into financial distress, I got to.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Uh, be part of that kind of financial restructuring process. Work with workout bankers instead of commercial bankers, which is a different type I can tell you. Mm-hmm. And then ultimately I landed at the company I work for today, darling Ingredients, who acquired, let’s say, the good performing part of that business and got a next chapter in my kind of treasury journey, building up a new treasury function for this company because it was a US based company with domestic business and they didn’t have any international experience and they just doubled in size by acquiring the company that I was working for.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Now I had to, I have to say, and uh, don’t wanna offend any, anyone here, but it’s a US based company, so here we go again, I didn’t like to be that have far away and being told what I need to do, and that top down. Approach, but everything turned out differently. Ultimately after four years there, I was asked basically to step into the group treasurer role as my boss.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Yeah. Became the CFO of the company. So that’s a little bit the path that I walked.

Mike Richards: And each of you has touched on the fact your accidental treasurers, you’ve not planned this, you’ve not thought you are a cashier. You’re like thinking actually treasury. What do you think treasurers or the treasury profession should do to maybe not be accidental treasurers to make it, to elevate the profile of treasury, if you like?

Jeremy Reedus: Uh, let’s see here. That, uh, one thing we don’t do. We as treasuries, we as treasury professionals in general, we don’t advertise very well. Our marketing budget is pretty low. For some strange reason. Accountants live and breathe. Yeah. You can get, they’re more than ramen noodles. You can get 10 for 8 cents.

Jeremy Reedus: But from a treasury perspective, it’s actually talking about what we do. I, I promise you, I have family who, who will ask me, oh, so you’re an accountant?

Mike Richards: No,

Jeremy Reedus: and I don’t care about your month end. I care about quarter end. But, uh, there’s a difference. So I think that’s the problem. We trying to raise the, the profile and being more visible, being opportunities to speak on podcasts and being more transparent on LinkedIn and, and talking about our successes and possibly even our failures.

Jeremy Reedus: But there’s so much more personality. I’ll say that in this particular aspect of finance in Generalia.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. What I did at my current company, the analysts that I had, they didn’t really choose to be treasury analysts. They’re, I think by title. They’re financial analysts, so they just thought, oh, I’m just gonna come in here and geek out on spreadsheets, and that’s it.

Danecia Stewart: Once they realized that they were gonna work with me in the Treasury Department, I realized that there was a knowledge gap. So I started conducting what I called Treasury Bootcamp. And every morning we had just basic treasury things like, what is cash management? What is liquidity? What’s a, a wire, what’s, so whenever I did pull them into meetings with banks or meetings with other departments, they could speak from a treasury perspective, not just from a VLOOKUP or something in Excel.

Danecia Stewart: So I made sure that I, because I’m so knowledgeable and so passionate about treasury, that I paid it forward with my analysts as well.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Cool.

Mike Richards: More

Martijn van Steenpaal: time?

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. If

Martijn van Steenpaal: I echo what you say, I, I think about it, and obviously I have a European background and treasury is an English word, but if you go back to, you know what, everybody knows what accounting is, and when you get to college, it’s a particular subject you can choose.

Martijn van Steenpaal: And with treasury, I feel that’s not the case. So it. It’s really before you start working life where it’s unknown. Yeah. So what can you do about it? Maybe promote it more as a treasury profession with colleges, as a regular subject during college. And obviously I agree with all of you, and I’m probably guilty of it myself.

Martijn van Steenpaal: We should promote it. The treasury group within the company more and more. I think it, it’s an important profession. It has gained, I think, more importance and, and what I definitely see here in the US, probably even more than in Europe, that treasury is, is it’s something that’s standalone, recognized and gaining importance.

Mike Richards: I’ll stay with you to ask this question. As you said, treasury teams are great at getting projects done. Yeah. And you are. But at the same time, I think treasury is guilty of not shouting about the The wins, the successes. Yeah. Jeremy, you talked on that, but how do you do it with your CFO or how would you suggest also for the audience?

Mike Richards: They should do it?

Martijn van Steenpaal: I’ll give you an example a about it, and this is where, when Darling acquired Vion, I moved with Vion and I had to build kind of a treasury group for the international organization outside of the us. And there was, with the local management team, there was a little bit, there was resistance or reluctance against corporate and we can convince the management team of the international organization about what Treasury was gonna do.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I had to educate them. I had to explain and make it quantitative and in Euro terms, not dollar terms, because they were thinking euro still what it would mean, what kind of centralizing cash management would mean without, and I have to say that it’s, it was a very decentralized. Organization from a business management perspective.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So how can you centralize things? Because that’s where we pick up the economies of scale as a treasurer and be valuable for the company. They, I literally got the question, lets, what are you gonna make for us? And that’s the first time it’s, it’s relatively easy to sell yourself because you’re, wow, I’m gonna consolidate all this cash and instead of having it at a hundred different bank accounts, now I have it in one bank account and I’m gonna save you so much interest and I’m gonna save so much points on the FX volume that we transact and so forth.

Martijn van Steenpaal: But that was, that forced me to really educate people, not only finance people at that point in time and make them part of the world. The CFO generally understands in, at least in my experience, what Treasury is doing and. Yeah. Like I said, I think keeping me a world, introduce ’em also not to yourself, don’t filter out all the information that you have yourself, but introduce ’em to your team and let your team members also talk to the CFO and give them exposure.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Typically, treasury professionals are pretty passionate about treasury and it makes them feel good.

Mike Richards: Denise?

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. One of the things that, that we did, or that I do, is I use the little notepad on, on, on my desktop, and so whenever I do something like daily, weekly, monthly, whatever, I make sure to put it in the notes so that we’re not looking at the end of the year trying to figure out like what did we do?

Danecia Stewart: How much money did we get an interest income, and one of the biggest wins that we had for 2024. Again, since everything was brand new when I came, the bank accounts, the ones that are not covered by any credit agreements, the operational bank accounts were opened by accounting people. So they had no interest.

Danecia Stewart: They didn’t, ZBA, like they were just there. They just existed. So we had, uh, one account that was just sitting with $125 million just every day earning zero interest. So I know it’s very painful. I’m glad you guys felt it. Everyone, no one else in the company knew what I was talking about, so, so I opened up a money market account and over for the 2024 year, I got 1.6 million in interest income.

Danecia Stewart: And I explained for to the CFOI started doing a, a monthly treasury report and I did the key takeaways, like these were our wins. Like we went from a cost center to a profit center. We saved this amount on bank fees, we made this amount on interest income. We diversified this and whatever it was that we did, I put it in a monthly report so that they could see what that we’re actually working and doing things.

Danecia Stewart: Not just sitting there being pretty,

Jeremy Reedus: no pressure, Jeremy, no pressure over the you, no pressure whatsoever. I echo the sentiments of my colleagues here. The reality is that, yeah, you do have to educate the entire enterprise about what you do, and sometimes it does feel like you are tooting your own horn and it’s uncomfortable feeling, but as I’ve gotten a little longer in the tooth, I recognize you do have to start speaking up and let them know about these particular successes.

Jeremy Reedus: And I think one thing that I’ll say that they did not say, ’cause I agree totally and I’ve done those things as well, but you have to be able to work with your colleagues and let them know, Hey, let me help save you in the business perspective. Do you know that when you ask for a letter of credit, this is basically if I charge it back to.

Jeremy Reedus: The cost of it that goes against your margin. So if we don’t, if you don’t ask me for lc or we’re able to work off a parent Care T or something that doesn’t cost money, I’m actually helping you. And so as you start to put your financial literacy inside the operations group, they start to value more. And it’s a trickle effect.

Jeremy Reedus: It starts trickling down. And I will say it’s always best is that in this profession to, to find a great CFO to partner with, because there is nothing worse than having a CFO that has absolutely no respect for what Treasury does. Mm-hmm. Now I, thankfully I’ve been fortunate to work some great ones, but I know friends who’ve had the alternative.

Jeremy Reedus: So that’s exactly it.

Mike Richards: Some of the audience here, they stepping into management positions, they’re starting to coach teams and manage, and you guys have managed and coached teams successfully and maybe had some challenges. And you talked there about the Treasury 1 0 1, Denise, before we were talking about what.

Mike Richards: Tips would you give to the audience about how to manage successfully or maybe from mistakes you’ve made and stuff, but if you can tell them, don’t worry. It’s on camera.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. I, I, what I do with my analysts at any company is I like to start with what drew them to the company or what drew them to the department.

Danecia Stewart: There are so many different areas of treasury, so many different wings of the opposite of the CFO. So do you really wanna be in treasury or did you just land into this role? Like it, once I know what you like, I can help you develop. And if it’s not within treasury, that’s fine too and you can be valuable somewhere else.

Danecia Stewart: But at least just beginning to understand maybe they’re very passionate about FX and we may not have FX at the company. We’re a domestic company, so this may not be the role for you, but just having that conversation with them and just keeping that line of communication open. I think that’s the biggest start and the biggest foundation.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Yes, Martin. Yeah, I, I fully agree with that and especially since we’re, we’re typically treasury groups are very small teams, so I think you have to stay close to your people and understand what’s driving them, what the motivation is, and just be open and transparent. And I’ll give you an example. I currently have a conversation with one of my team members who, you know, who’s interested in commodities and we’re a commodity sensitive company.

Martijn van Steenpaal: We do some hedging and she wants to know the business better and she speaks up and I think that’s great because she’s a great asset for my team. But if I don’t give her any opportunities or if I don’t listen to her, then she probably is going to work for Jeremy or for somebody else,

Mike Richards: but not by me

Martijn van Steenpaal: through Mike, obviously.

Martijn van Steenpaal: But you, you lose talent potentially while she can, in this case, she can still be valuable for the company and. The company can benefit from it. It is sometimes challenging, especially for the junior roles and kind of the demands that I think nowadays people have to keep some, somebody challenged. If you’re in a company, in a fast moving company that’s changing a lot.

Martijn van Steenpaal: You can throw projects at people and that, I think makes it interesting. If it’s a job that’s every day the same, which I obviously try to avoid. Yeah, it’s a little harder to manage, but I think to the niche’s point, I think you, you have to listen. You have to, it’s almost like a tailor made approach for each individual,

Mike Richards: Jeremy.

Jeremy Reedus: Yeah, you definitely, it is a tailor made approach. You definitely have to be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, what their passions are, and play up to them. Because quite frankly, treasury has evolved over the years. And I will say also one thing is that as I’ve gotten older now I’m one of the older guys in the room, which is just, doesn’t seem quite right, but, but with that said, I do remember myself being at the young stage and you cannot lose touch with the textures and tensions of the time.

Jeremy Reedus: Once when I went to Aramco, someone asked me, Hey, you were at this company for five years. You were at this company for three years. Why were you job hopping? I was like, why was I job hopping? That was pretty darn good. But that’s the context is that now it’s people if you, it’s instant society. So therefore what you wanna do is what Martin says.

Jeremy Reedus: You wanna actually pay attention to your staff because from a financial cost, it is. And also from a legacy knowledge aspect of it, it is painful to replace and there’s so many treasury analyst jobs out there because no one knows what it is. So you want to, so you wanna make sure you keep good talent and you’re able to recycle them, if nothing else, keep them in the building.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Jeremy Reedus: In other areas. And they will always, they’ll be your proponent and then they very well may come back. And the world of work has changed

Mike Richards: radically over the past five years. Pre COVID hybrid was just a car, then suddenly came along and shutters came down. That was it. Everyone closed, everyone working.

Mike Richards: Then we’ve come out of it and different companies are handling the return to work and it’s brought this, I know that Martin, you and I have been through this when I’ve recruited for him and the team. That was a challenge, actually, I’ll start with you on that as well. Talk us through COVID and the evolution of the company.

Mike Richards: Obviously I know it, but yeah, these guys.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Yeah, so our company, starting with COVID was deemed to be an essential service. We were collecting foot waste, so we had to continue to, to do that. And our company has always a, been a traditional industry that we’re in, but there’s always been this work from the office culture mentality and basically also expectation from top, from the top.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Obviously with COVID, that changed a little bit or that that changed a lot. But once kind of doors were open again, we, our company pretty quickly wanted to go back to be fully working from the office. That was, that was, I wouldn’t say that was challenging for the people who were working and were part of that, part of that culture, but for attracting new people, which I had to do, what was it, three years?

Martijn van Steenpaal: 2, 3, 2, 3 years ago, it became. A, a challenge. And so I guess I have created a formal policy and an informal policy, and that’s accepted within the company. Now, from my personal beliefs, I do think that it, I don’t like the work from home all the time. The fully work from home concept. I think in order to build something as a team and in order to have culture, and I learned a little bit during lunch as well, you have to connect with your direct colleagues if you want, wanna get things done.

Martijn van Steenpaal: If you wanna build something together, I believe you have to do something together. But having said that, I also believe in flexibility. And I also believe in, if you give your, give your team flexibility, responsibility, you’ll get it back. And what that means is that if you work a day or maybe two from home, because.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Your husband also works and you have to, you bring your kid to school because, and then you avoid a a 45 minute commute once or twice per week. And that helps, and that makes you happy and that saves you time. Yeah, I, I believe in that, that can be a good thing. I personally have commuted for 10 years, a single commute, an hour and a half, and I never thought about it, that it took so much time or my personal time from me while my kids were growing up and now I don’t have that anymore.

Martijn van Steenpaal: And I realize, whew, this is saving me like two hours a day. Just travel time. And that’s just one reason I, so to speak. But yeah, it’s there and it’s probably not going away. It’s changed a little bit after COVID, everybody wanted to work from home, then some companies said, everybody be back. And I think there is a milligram that works.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Deha.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah, I mean I came from the old school treasury where you walk around sounding like a janitor ’cause you have so many like key fobs. So back then we had to be in the office at our desk with our desktop computers. That was the environment that I started with When COVID came around and we realized, and we realized all you need really is a RSA token on your phone.

Danecia Stewart: And then you had a lot more flexibility and then you come back into the office. The company that I am working for today, since it’s a new company, they’re trying to create culture. So we’re in the office five days a week, which when I was recruiting for my positions, it was the hard one. No one knew what a treasury analyst was, so we had to change it to financial analysts and then we’re five days in the office and had to have that conversation during the interviewing process.

Danecia Stewart: And I, I have flexibility because. I came in, Kay, I, I was five days fully remote before I started here. That’s just gonna be too much of a mind blown situation for me to be five days in the office. So I need some sort of flexibility from time to time, so I get it. But from our executive management standpoint, it’s very much we have to create culture.

Danecia Stewart: We have to be in the office, but then you’re in the office in a team’s call with someone that’s two doors down. So I just feel like we have, the approach may be there, but the flexibility needs to be there as well. I think you can create a culture in a hybrid environment successfully.

Jeremy Reedus: Tony, my COVID story is actually a little interesting.

Jeremy Reedus: As a matter of fact, I was home for spring break. I was still at the time working in Saudi Arabia, and so I came home for spring break on March 3rd, 2020, and two days before I got ready to fly out, the world stopped and such in essence. Uh, Saudi as you, I was part of the, uh, COVID casualty, if you will, but when I was in the market looking for jobs and I was talking to Mike, we started understanding about all these remote jobs, and so it took a little bit longer and there were a couple of, when things started to clear up, I was fortunate enough to land a air leak liquid where it was a three days in the office, and the commute wasn’t that bad anyway, it’s like a 15, 20 minute commute, so it didn’t bother me whatsoever.

Jeremy Reedus: But then as other jobs approached and they were like, we’re going back, we’re going back five days a week, it was like, Ew, you can keep that. Yeah, no, because I think studies showed that people value their freedom over their money, and so it’s, Hey, I’ll work from home, or I’ll work from that. I’ll work at a short abbreviated hybrid.

Jeremy Reedus: Currently, I do work a hybrid schedule. But there is some flexibility built into that because of life. Life does not stop. And so if, for example, I have early phone calls with, uh, Dubai and with India. So 4 30, 5 30 in the morning sometimes and not done until 11 and now my commute’s an hour. And so there’s like hour one way at that point it becomes, it doesn’t work.

Jeremy Reedus: So there’s planning on that. But yes, you do have to be around other people to actually harvest a team environment.

Mike Richards: And we do a salary survey. So go to treasury salary.com, benchmark your salary. It’s really good. But what, to Jeremy’s point, it’s not about the salary though. And this is one of the things we actually ask people, why are they happy or unhappy in their roles?

Mike Richards: And actually I was just, I’ve got the results and the fact is salary is six on the list. Six, yeah. Oh, versus work life balance. Good boss, varied work friendly team, enjoyable workplace, then salary. And I presented actually to the NACT, some of the senior treasurers one time, and they were like, what should we do to keep our staff?

Mike Richards: I’m like, guys, it’s easy. Go and sit down, have a coffee. And I ask your team, how’s your work life balance? Am I being a good boss? Very work. And I said, and 80% of the time, you won’t need to call me. And they’re like, oh yeah. I said, yeah, I shouldn’t be telling them this. I know that we can do some question and answer.

Mike Richards: That’s a good answer apparently from Jeremy’s promise me. But before we get there, I’m gonna ask the panel about technology. It’s on everyone’s lips, isn’t it? How do you guys see treasury changing, evolving? How are you bringing in technology, ai, all that’s probably going around the exhibition hall now from you, Jeremy, and then we’ll go across that way.

Jeremy Reedus: True. It is Once upon a time when I was young, young analyst, it was the, was the CCM is what it was called, the Corporate cash management certification. And now’s the CTP. So what happens is it used to be just strictly cash management and now it’s grown. And so I, as I said earlier, you cannot lose touch with the textures intentions of the time.

Jeremy Reedus: And so treasury has grown. It used to be as den Denise said, it used to sound like Bojangles with all this key fobs. There’s an analyst I work with who had literally a purse full of key fobs and they’ve been replaced by digital certificates and your mobile phone and so forth. And so you always have to keep your phone with you no matter what.

Jeremy Reedus: So this is nothing more than that. This is exactly the same thing. So AI is the biggest thing. And of course the AI rooms are packed, whatnot, but you have to embrace technology and I’ll go ahead and say it. I’ll be very transparent. Since treasury still doesn’t have that same ability to, or the marketplace, you have to work more with less.

Jeremy Reedus: You have to do more with less, and you probably get. Six or seven more people in finance in general before you get one treasury person. So for that, you have to become lean, you have to become knowledgeable. What’s out there looking at APIs and the technology you have to have on the IT hat, it used to be strictly for it.

Jeremy Reedus: Now you have to know both how to deal with effectively external components of cash and internally how things move around, and the electronic portions of it as well. So always stay abreast of that and keep coming to conferences, like to expo advocate and other things across the US

Mike Richards: and I, I’ll just jump in as well, and I keep being asked on podcasts, they’re saying, oh, well you seeing it as a big thing, ai?

Mike Richards: I said, not really. I said, what I am seeing is that treasurers who have already been great translators, and that’s what you have to do, you have to translate that to the tech guys and say, this is what we need. These are the outputs. These are the inputs and things with you, Denise? Yeah.

Danecia Stewart: Yes. Having worked in technology.

Danecia Stewart: This is my jam.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Danecia Stewart: So I think technology is here to stay. I think it’s not the future, it’s the present. The main thing with technology is you need to first understand your own treasury landscape to know what it is that you need. Don’t just go down to the exhibition floor and listen to all of the sales guys, because then you’re overwhelmed and don’t know what you need for your specific organization.

Danecia Stewart: So I think that the implementation of technology is something that we need in treasury. It will allow us to be able to do more strategic things and less of the mundane day-to-day type of things. I know a lot of people are scared of AI or scared of technology thinking it’ll take their job away, but it’ll actually enhance what it is that you’re doing and you can be more of a value add at in the office versus just a someone that’s just pushing paper or doing keystrokes.

Danecia Stewart: I think that. Technology and treasury has to be embraced because it’s here no matter what.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I, I fully agree and I, I think I was lucky when I, when we were acquired by Darling and basically we had to cut the treasury team into two pieces, so to speak, in my former company, that we had to build it from scratch and that allowed actually me to, to design and develop everything the way we wanted, generally speaking.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So that was about selecting our treasury management system that was about selecting different banks across the globe. And also one of the things that I wanted to do, and we actually did, was harmonizing kind of processes around treasury and payments across the globe. And again, I was lucky to be in the position to started from scratch because it takes a long time and.

Martijn van Steenpaal: We’ve been working on that for the last 10 years, and we’ve adopted automation, technology. We even have some robotics in some of our processes. And besides the fact that it’s, you have to do it as a treasury, treasury to be efficient and to not have a, a battery of people working for you with spreadsheets and with documents and so forth, it’s also fun for your people.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So your team is gonna like to work on projects and the right people wanna drive the change. They don’t want to do every day the same. They wanna make a difference. And I think that’s the fun part of doing these type of projects. Not only thinking about it more strategically, automate processes, use ai. We don’t do a lot of AI at this point in time, but also make your team members valuable in, in run those projects because AI can still not run those projects and make those changes by itself.

Mike Richards: I wanna give you as an audience, a chance to quiz these guys and do make the opportunity, ’cause you don’t normally get this chance. But just before we do, we’ll start with you Marta. If you were to give an earlier version of yourself as you were developing any advice, what would it be that helps the audience out here today?

Mike Richards: What advice would you give?

Martijn van Steenpaal: So I’ll say this in my experience, a couple of things actually. So one is be practical. We sometimes, as treasurers try to overly perfection a solution, so to speak, but be practical. That’s one thing. Second thing is be be a business partner. Because at the end of the day, as a treasury department, you’re the service center of the company.

Martijn van Steenpaal: You’re there to help people and to make things better for the company and not for yourself. I’ve made the mistake myself. Thinking that everything that I thought out was the best, but there’s people that you have to work with and that have concerns, and then are, and sometimes even valid concerns, work with people and you get things done.

Martijn van Steenpaal: If you don’t work with people or if you push things through, you don’t get things done. Um, I think the last thing I wanted to mention also, and this is about people, again, be very diligent in who you select to be in your team. Because yes, you can have ideas, but you cannot execute your ideas without having the right people.

Martijn van Steenpaal: So I’ll leave it with that.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. For me, like most of us in treasury, I am very risk adverse. So I would tell myself to be more risky, take more chances. Don’t just sit in a comfortable role, go after the job that I may not have. I, I only know 80% of the job description, the other 20%. Oh, what if I can’t do this?

Danecia Stewart: Just do it. Learn it, figure it out. Trust yourself. Believe in yourself and take chances and take risks. Bet, bet on yourself,

Jeremy Reedus: younger self. That kinda goes along with the key takeaways as well, which is, in essence, you should really be inquisitive. Quite keep asking questions. As kids, we ask questions, why is the sky blue?

Jeremy Reedus: Why is the grass green? And so forth. But somewhere along the line, as adults as we start growing up, it’s frowned upon when you ask questions. Mm-hmm. And so keep asking questions. Why? Because someone else didn’t know and now you know the real reason and they’re just probably as clueless as you are. And so don’t be afraid to stand up to do that.

Jeremy Reedus: The treasury is a, is a people portion of finance. So you have to know, you have to be alone with people and you have to be political. You have to be a little bit, you can’t get into more involved in the corporate politics, but you should be neutral. You should be Switzerland. And everyone loves Switzerland.

Jeremy Reedus: And so questions, ‘

Mike Richards: cause Ernie, we know that Ernie’s gonna ask a question.

Yeah. So one of the things though that I’ve all been found and I never got over it, was we seem to hit a plateau. Some of us in treasury where we get stuck. So part A and part B, part A is how are you able to incentivize the mentor, right, to engage you?

And then what do you look for on your team? Who is, who do you want to pull up with you? ’cause everybody had that person. So are there any tips you can share and what you look for and how are you able to do it?

Jeremy Reedus: Oh well, uh, I am a party of one, so I’ll pull up anybody. But no, I think, uh, from a perspective is you identify things in people and like I say, you really have to pay attention to people you can’t hide behind a spreadsheet or electronic platform or whatnot.

Jeremy Reedus: I think my biggest challenge I would say is. That’s a darn good question, Ernie, but the reality of, of actually getting involved with everyone in their personal lives and learning that, not their personal lives, but learning their personal ideas, what they wanna do for a profession, and help encourage that and foster that.

Jeremy Reedus: And so at the end of the day, like I said, you become more popular by just, ultimately people don’t care how much until they know how much you care. So I think I, I try to carry that throughout my entire, entire company, every company I’ve worked for and quite frankly, work with network.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah, Mike and I were talking about that earlier, about hitting a plateau, and I think that’s very big in the treasury space because the treasury is just so niche that when you have, when you get from like a middle manager to senior manager to executive manager role, there’s one every

Mike Richards: blue

Danecia Stewart: moon.

Danecia Stewart: So it’s very, and everyone is. After that same role. So I hit a plateau and fell into that gray space and I couldn’t crawl on, crawl out of the rock. And I went to consulting and I just did a big pivot, which ultimately helped my career to, for me to learn a whole new skillset. But it, I, I mean that, that’s really a real thing in treasury.

Danecia Stewart: So I don’t know if there’s a, a right thing to do in terms of getting out of it. You just have to be willing to pivot or get a mentor or career coach. Call Mike. I don’t know.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Cool. Me? Yeah. What time? No, I think most of it has been said. One of my previous bosses, he basically, he, he didn’t ask the question, but hinted to it, like, think what you want early in your career because you know you’re gonna get at a point where you’re.

Martijn van Steenpaal: When you’re there, plateau is how you guys call it here. And if something happens within the company, there’s a kind of a round of layoffs or whatsoever it’s hard to get back to the job. So do you really wanna go all the way in treasury or do you wanna at some point in time, and maybe not when you’ve reached your plateau, take a side step and take, do something else with, whether it’s in finance or outside of finance.

Mike Richards: Any other questions? Yes, please.

You’ve seen the talent requirements of treasury change over the years to the evolution. Um, that’s part one. I have the questions. And the second question is, what’s the one characteristic you can find in a treasure to be successful?

Jeremy Reedus: Yeah, it’s evolved. It is becoming more technology based.

Jeremy Reedus: And so I, I look for that person who can’t understand both sides of it because again, you have to wear so many different hats and you’re constantly evolving. So someone who’s a. It’s the intangibles of being able to adjust and you look for that in person because not every day. There’s no every day the same thing.

Jeremy Reedus: It’s not, and I definitely appreciate that part of it and hence why I’m still in

Mike Richards: treasury. And I’ll just add in there as well. I’ve got, I’m increasingly being asked, I want someone with data, I want this. I went, so does everyone. Good luck. I like, oh, I said, but again, as to Denise’s point, it’s not about the data, it’s about how you use it, how do you translate it, how do you talk to your tech guys?

Mike Richards: And, but I think you as treasurers have always done this anyway. Yeah. But it’s, when I’m then coaching clients, they’re like, this is what we need this. I said, that’s you, perfect. Mm-hmm. We’re an imperfect world. Mm-hmm. We’re not, you’re not getting that. Yeah. What are your nice to haves and what are your must haves?

Mike Richards: Mm-hmm. And that’s quite a different thing.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Danecia Stewart: Yeah. I think it’s the soft skills, right? I think, but to Jeremy’s point, treasury is a people type of a role in finance. So I, when I’m looking at who I’m gonna bring on my team, I wanna bring someone who’s trustworthy, someone who can multitask and wear the hats, like the actual work.

Danecia Stewart: Or I can teach that it is trainable if you’re, if you seem to be trainable and I can train you, that’s great. But it’s more of the soft skills that I think is the core foundation for a treasury person to be successful.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Yeah. I would add to that, thinking of solutions, not in problems. Mm-hmm. Have the right attitude.

Martijn van Steenpaal: It’s, that’s the soft part of it. And yes, of course you want to have somebody who is the Excel wizard or whatever the system is, and you know, that’s that. We all want that. To Mike’s point and, and what we actually have within our team in the Netherlands in this particular case, but is because we did so many projects where.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Treasury and it came together is that we actually have a person now that is semi it, semi treasury. So it that that role is really for the business to approach this person and not either IT or treasury, but the person that can cover both sides of of it.

Mike Richards: So we’ve got some good takeaways. So Jeremy, if we go to yours first of all.

Mike Richards: There you go.

Jeremy Reedus: Yeah, be inquisitive. Like I said, we touched on that earlier. Ask questions, ask even at the high levels, ask why do we do this? Why are we attached to this? So why do we hold to some of these things that may have been truths back in the day, but things have changed. So always be inquisitive.

Jeremy Reedus: Like I said, be popular. Be popular and political. You do have to, you have to play both sides of the aisle and quite frankly, it understand everyone’s constraints. I’ll put it that way. Uh, so it’s not political, but understand the constraints. The business can’t gimme this report till Tuesday. I really need it by Monday.

Jeremy Reedus: How do I fix their problem? And if you fix people’s problems, then you become an ally and people come to you easier because they know that you’re there to help and you’re not there to make their life difficult. I put down, I think, be the painter. And so what happens is, I’ve said this before, that numbers don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole truth.

Jeremy Reedus: And so you have to paint the picture for what you want treasury to look like at your company. And you have to paint the picture of what you’re doing because quite frankly, I think in a company people have a tendency to focus only on their little box. But if you’re able to put together the whole picture and paint the whole picture and see where they play that part, then it’s, aha.

Jeremy Reedus: Since you helped me earlier with my problem, how can I help you? I know you have a cash forecast and you’re depending on my information. How can I help you? Ooh, can you gimme feedback on how I’m helping you? That’s how you become a great partner. Now, this very last one is near and dear to me, and that’s part of my personal thing, which is be your own person.

Jeremy Reedus: Because quite frankly, are there any identical twins in here? No. No. So you’re telling me that you’re the only one of you, right? So you are the beginning and the ending of the phenomenon called you be you, because the first part of our careers we’re true, too busy trying to emulate other people, and they don’t have it all together either.

Jeremy Reedus: And so you can do it, they’re principles, but still be able to operate in your own style, your own fashion, your own sense, be who you really are and still get the job done. Stand out while blending in at the same time, Alicia?

Danecia Stewart: Yeah, I know we’ve hit on some of these earlier, but one of the main things for me is having a good mentor.

Danecia Stewart: In every role that I’ve had, I’ve consulted with my mentor. I know my first treasury role at CGG Veritas. I had a mentor who I still talk to today for career advice and help, and she’s mentored me. I have new mentors just as I grow, my mentorship grows as well. So just making sure you have that solid person that could help you and mentor you into where you, what you inspire to be.

Danecia Stewart: The other one I have is to be brave and embrace the unknown, which we talked about just going out, leaping into the unknown and taking on roles. So you may think that you’re not qualified for, you just never know what they’re actually looking for in the position in terms of rejection, looking at positions that you don’t get, any doors that are closed.

Danecia Stewart: It’s not necessarily that it. That you weren’t good enough. It just wasn’t your job. That wasn’t for you. There’s something that’s a better aligned for you and you’re better aligned for them. And so you just have to look at that in a way of redirection instead of rejection, because that’s, with us, not having that many positions to come across it, it’s hard to constantly get rejected or get so close, and then you are the final two and then you didn’t get it.

Danecia Stewart: And that kind of plays on you, but you have to just look at it in a different way. And also just invest in yourself and continue your education and learning, whether it’s CTPC, F-A-M-B-A, whatever it is, but you have to find a way to make yourself more marketable than the person you know to your left and to your right, because we all have the same skills, essentially.

Danecia Stewart: So what makes you stand out versus the other candidates that are in the same, in the same position?

Jeremy Reedus: Long time?

Martijn van Steenpaal: Yeah. I think I probably half of. Your previous, one of your previous questions already have gave half of the answers, but I think you know what is good, especially in your early years of your career, I would say try something else.

Martijn van Steenpaal: Try different things. Find out what you like in terms of job content, in terms of organization. Find out what, what fits you where, where you’re happy to do your job, so to speak. I think as you come outta school, you, we all have our, all our own ide ideologic view of how it’s going to be, and sometimes it’s just not that way.

Martijn van Steenpaal: And so try something else and figure it out. I think in the beginning of your career you can afford yourself to do that. Don’t become a job hopper though, because I don’t think that I would like to see in your first five years, five different jobs, but I think that’s important and. Don’t try to be a hundred percent perfect, is what I wrote there.

Martijn van Steenpaal: I see. But I think what’s really important once you are within a company, work on relationships, work within your team, work outside of your team, that’s really the key for me to be successful. In the beginning, you may not see it that way, but it, it is about the example that Jeremy gave. I give you something or I solve your problem, now I get something back.

Martijn van Steenpaal: That’s just how it works. And the longer and the more you do that, the more reliable you become and you actually don’t have to give something anymore. You get it. So I’ll leave it with that, Mike,

Mike Richards: my ones. So build these connections. When you did this, I did our session in Houston the other day. Really good.

Mike Richards: Jeremy came along. We had, I know, gave a challenge to one of the guys in the room there. You’ve made an effort to come here. It’s easy for you to just go out there, get down on your phone. Why don’t you introduce yourself to one of the people that you walk out of here and meet, make one connection. The challenge I gave them that evening was to make three connections.

Mike Richards: He came up to me afterwards, he went, I’ve got six. I was like, I was like, what did he say? He said, yeah, no, I’ve got six. I was like, great, fantastic. And then he got seven and he actually, he, that was the benefit to him. He’d actually doubled his network it seemed in Houston that night. Own your value. We talked a little bit with this in the panel.

Mike Richards: We’ve got Emma Haywood coming up on the podcast in a couple of weeks time. She sends herself an email each week with what she achieved. She just keeps it. So when the C FFO just drops by desk, what have you guys done this week? Oh, hang on. Boom, boom, boom. This is what we’ve done this week, this quarter, this month.

Mike Richards: She’s got it there to hand track your achievements and pay it forward. Now paying it forward, it’s about you putting your hand up. I put my hand up, came all the way here from London to me, you guys, and that’s what you can do. So volunteer. These guys, HTMA and all the Tepo guys. Put your hand up, get on a panel for next year.

Mike Richards: Yep. Now put your hands together for this amazing panel. Cool round, Tom. There you go on. Cool. That’s it. And now you go to your next session. Thank you very much. Cool. Alright. I hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s podcast just as much as I did. Now, don’t forget to subscribe on your usual platform, whether that’s Spotify, apple Podcasts, wherever you listen, so you never miss a future episode.

Mike Richards: Whilst you’re there, if you’re 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 it wasn’t enough, we’re gonna 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 gonna be amazing. So. Incredible few days, great insights, proper networking, great conversations with lots and lots of treasurers. Last time in Nashville, 8,000 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 treasury 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 locked, and then a FP, and then back to London. And then we’re doing Netherlands as well. So it’d be great to see you. We’re gonna be everywhere, so looking forward to it. Thanks very much. And until next week, enjoy the show.