Accelerating Your Treasury Career with David Viney

Foreign to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I 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. And a special thanks to Flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Levin, their Senior VP of Sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Just follow the link to the interview in today's show Notes. And now let's get on with the show. In this week's show I'm joined by David Vineyard, the Vice President Treasurer at Harley Davidson Motor Company. In 1903, out of a small shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, four young men lit a cultural wildfire that would grow and spread across geographies and generations. Their innovation and imagination for what was possible on two wheels sparked a transportation revolution and lifestyle that would make Harley Davidson the most desirable motorcycle and lifestyle brand in the world today. They continue to define motorcycle culture and lifestyle, evoking soul stirring emotions reflected in every product and experience they deliver. And it's brilliant to have David on the show today. Known David for a number of years and finally managed to get him on the air, which is fantastic and looking forward to today's show. So David, if you would for the listeners, obviously I know this story, but take us back to the beginning, how you first discovered the world of finance, then treasury and your career path to now. Over to you sir.

Well, thank you Mike and first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. It's a pleasure to talk to you always and a pleasure to be here on the podcast this morning. My background, I suppose you could probably call it a little bit unconventional from a Treasury perspective in that I started in corporate banking at Barclays. Shortly after that I moved from corporate banking into securitization and structured finance where I spent really most of my career. And treasury was probably a late thing for me. I joined five years ago, but after an extensive career in banking and I'm sort of thinking back to my early days as a bank credit analyst. I think the sort of intellectual curiosity that I had way back then, it was all about trying to understand. I was analyzing companies and looking at numbers side by side and thinking why is it that one company performs very differently from another company and yet they're both in the same industry. And that was really my sort of love of strategy and my interest in strategies sparked from that. Because strategy is really what drives the differences in the numbers between different companies and different industries. And that sort of curiosity led to ultimately doing my mba, doing some programs at Harvard and Cambridge, Judge Business School and insead. And so it's a very unconventional treasury strategy. I think career that I've had 20 years in banking. I think that broad based banking experience that I had in corporate banking really set me up for Treasury. I think if I'd spent 20 years as I did in ABS and then tried to move to treasury, it would have been a lot harder for me. But I think that broad based experience that I had in corporate banking, you know, covering all the different products that corporate banking covers, dealing with both treasurers and CFOs from the other side of the table, all of that experience was so relevant for me. And I don't think I could have made it into treasury or been as successful in treasury if I hadn't had that broad based background before my securitization career. So I spent 20 plus years in banking, then went to a company called Terex Corporation and I was actually running the global capital markets for their captive finance company there. And the treasurer retired, the president of the finance company retired, the CFO decided to merge the treasury and the captive finance business together. And I had the opportunity to become both treasurer and head of the capital markets and all the sort of underwriting that we did for the captive finance company. So that was my.

Just for the people out there again you and I know it who are Terex, just, you know, so then. And how did that then impact on the treasury stuff you were doing?

Yeah, so Terex Corporation is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. So they're a global manufacturer of aerial work platforms and materials processing equipment. So probably about a $5 billion company, very similar size to Harley Davidson. And so I was responsible there for both the treasury functions, so the conventional capital markets and the cash management functions within Treasury. But I also had responsibility for all the capital markets and the underwriting, the credit underwriting that we were doing in the captive as well. So it was a pretty broad based treasury responsibility actually. Very similar on a smaller scale, but very similar to. So what I'm doing here at Harley.

Davidson and talk us through that move to Harley. How did it come about from Terex and you know, obviously incredible brand name and everything else and everybody knows it but you know, why the move or talk us through?

Sometimes the stars align. You know, it's. I was, two years ago, it was a sheer coincidence that I met the, the previous treasurer at a Treasury conference in New York literally two years ago, March of 22. I sat next to him for the whole day. He was retiring two weeks after that. We never once talked about who his successor was because he told me very clearly that he was retiring. And that was the end of the story at that point. And then literally two months later, I decided that we'd done so much at Terex. You know, we had completely transformed the balance sheet. We'd outsourced the captive finance business. There was so much that we'd achieved. We sort of transformed the banking group and I just felt that there was not much more that I could do there. We had to rebank some of the cash management globally, but there really wasn't much more that I felt that I could deliver. And I think I sent my resume out literally at 7 o' clock one Tuesday morning in May of 22. And at 2 o' clock that afternoon, the job description for this job landed in my inbox. And I looked at it and thought, wow, this is treasury, it's capital markets, it's captive finance, it's abs. It's all these things that I'm familiar with. But where is it? Because I'm not in a position to move to Milwaukee right now and the company's gone completely remote. And as soon as I saw that, and as you mentioned, you know, the, this iconic 120-year-old brand, I was in straight away. And even my elder daughter, when she learned that I was interviewing for Harley, she said, daddy, you know, don't get me wrong, she said, jeannie, sizzle if has a place in the world, but Harley Davidson, that's really cool.

And, and what's it been like? So you've come in and is everything you think it might be and you know, what have been the fun bits? What have been the challenges, if you like?

Yeah, I mean, it's been nothing but fun since I've been here. I. Well, first of all, this is a very active capital markets platform because We've got an $8 billion captive finance company here. So very different scale from the one that we had at Terex. You know, if I look back to, you know, some of the things we did at Terex, first of all, you know, we definitely, we transformed that balance sheet. You know, we had about 400 million of capital that was tied up in the, the balance Sheet and we were able to redeploy that by ultimately selling the assets, selling the origination platform and then outsourcing the servicing platform for that business. And so that was, you know, the early stages of my experience with actually running and being responsible for some of the captive operations. And so that set me up very well for coming here because this is a very different scale business. This is about 8 billion of receivables, both wholesale and retail receivables. And as a result we have a very active capital markets activity through ABS, through MTNs, commercial paper brokered CDs and conduit facilities as well. So we have a lot of diversification of funding sources here. And so for me, this was my ability to take everything that I'd learned both in corporate banking and structured finance and then my subsequent experience at Terex, and take it to a different level. So, you know, last year we were incredibly active at the beginning of the year, if you remember, there was a regional banking crisis around this time last year. Yeah, we were very active in the capital markets in the build up to that and actually during that, you know, we ended up financing during that period as well, which is pretty stressful. And then I had three months as interim cfo. The CFO left in April last year, had three months as interim cfo. And so, you know, the whole experience has been, you know, nothing but fun. Really enjoyed using all the skills that I've sort of developed over the years in the role that I'm here, I have here at Harley Davidson.

And is it when you walk in the door, you know, some people swear, as you say, with a Terex or something, you walk in to meet your banks, you walk in to meet people. Exactly. As your daughter said, it's got this iconic brand. Do you find that makes the role as treasurer easier in that what I mean is. Eases the path a little bit or.

Oh yes. I mean, everybody wants to be your friend, you know, it's. And often, you know, I've other companies that I've worked for. You mentioned the brand names and people say, what do they do? Help me understand what that business is. You, you never need to do that with Harley Davidson. Everybody loves the brand. It's a, as you said, it's a truly iconic brand. And so everybody knows exactly who you are, who you work for, what you represent. They may not necessarily know that we're both a manufacturer and a finance company, but beyond that, everybody's very keen to talk to you and they really want this as part of their portfolio. So the relationship bankers will fight to keep this in their portfolio as much as they possibly can.

And when you look treasury wise, and you and I, you recently came to our treasury career corner live and we were then asking the two treasurers there, We've, you know, that podcast is going live. We've got Dana and Chris, and we were talking about some of the challenges they face and anyone wants to. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. You can listen to that great podcast. But David was there in the audience and, you know, like a lot of treasures there. When they were talking about some of the challenges they face, sort of, you were one of the people nodding there. Oh, yeah, yeah. What are, what are the challenges you find and stuff? And again, I'm not talking about Harley Davidson with. Because a public company. We're not talking about that. We're talking more about from a treasurer's point of view.

Yeah, I think, I mean, if I look back at my career, I mean, I've been very fortunate to have lived and worked in four different countries, so had a lot of international experience, I think developed some cultural sensitivity as a result of that and the emotional intelligence that goes with it. But, you know, with that career has come a lot of challenges in terms of moving. So the family disruption, the schooling, the logistical challenges of moving a family multiple times over several years. I mean, part of the reason why we came here in the first place, I was working in London. My daughters were literally, they were two and a half and six months old when we moved here to the US in 2005. And I was reflecting on it yesterday, and I thought, you know, there were times when we would put the girls to bed on a Sunday night and I often wouldn't see them awake until the following Saturday morning because I was commuting into London, working crazy hours in the structured finance world. And when the opportunity came to move to Greenwich Capital, live and work in Greenwich with a five minute commute, inevitably we jumped at that opportunity. But with that came a lot of disruption. So, you know, we had to move the family, we had to find schools. And I actually remember the contract that I had with Greenwich Capital. They said, you have to pass the Series 7 exam, the FINRA exam, to be effectively a registered representative of the finance company. You have to pass that exam by the end of March. So within three months of your arrival, or we reserve the right to send you home. And so, you know, certainly, you know, from my perspective, that focused my mind. I spent a lot of time in the local library making sure that I was studying profusely for that exam and making sure that I passed it because, you know, inevitably I didn't want to go home. And, you know, ironically, we came here for a two to three year stint and here we are 19 years later. We've spent 15 of the last 19 years here, but spent time in other countries as well. So I think the challenges have been, for us, more logistical and making sure that everybody's settled. But boy, we've all benefited from it. And I think we're all much more rounded individually and I can see the benefit that my daughters have. One's graduating this year, one's graduating next year. Those skills that they've learned, that cultural sensitivity, the ability to make yourself heard in a new environment, those are really important skills that they've learned and we've all benefited from that.

Yeah. And I, you know, I'll share with the listeners actually that David gave me some incredible mind map of some of the parts of your career and treasury and everything else. So he gave me this. It's like, if anyone, other future guests want to do this, please do. It just makes my life as a host that much easier because whilst I'm always listening, this is like, oh, and what do you think, you know, makes a good, strong treasurer? Oh, it's as if it's written in front of me because this is great and you and I've had a great chat about it. But again, what do you think, you know, treasury wise, you know, other treasurers should be thinking about or, you know, again, some of our listeners, what should they be focusing on to develop themselves as treasury professionals?

Well, certainly from the way I think about people I'm recruiting into my team, whether it's here or anywhere else, I think there are certain skills that I'm looking for. Inevitably, I'm looking for strong technical skills or at least the aspiration to develop those strong technical skills and getting to the point where they're very strong technically. I like to think that people can be strategic thinkers. I think it's really important from a Treasury perspective, especially to understand the implications of everything that we're doing and the implications that what we do will have on other teams and other parts of the organization. So being able to think strategically is really important in terms of the way I think about recruitment. I want somebody who can be a problem solver. I mean, if I think back to the early stages of my career, going back to my stint in structured finance in Europe, the European market is very different from the US ABS market. So in Europe, you're almost reinventing the wheel every day. And so there aren't the large pools of assets in Europe that you have in the US and so very often in the structured finance world you're reinventing the wheel daily. And I think some of the transactions that we did back then, we did an insurance deal for one of the largest UK insurance companies, literally changed the regulatory landscape for the UK industry because they came to us, they had a problem with the financing of new business strain because it was causing them some capital constraints. We ended up securitizing the new business strain for the UK life insurance products that they were writing. And I always described it as the most and least successful transaction I ever did because one, it created a new industry because nobody had ever done this before. There was no blueprint for this. But it was so successful that the company lobbied the regulator to change the regulatory capital rules. And we'd won a second mandate and then the regulator changed the rules and that industry was gone. So we created and killed an industry all in one go. You know, we did off balance sheet financing for large scale government contracts where the working capital responsibilities were enormous and you know, these companies didn't want the working capital on the balance sheet. We found ways to structure around that. We found ways to arbitra changes in the UK budget over the years which were very beneficial for the companies and for the banks. So these were really sort of complex transactions that we had to structure around. There was no blueprint, there was no template for any of what we did. But when I came to the US the market was very different. The US ABS market is a lot more cookie cutter. There are much larger asset pools around the us so really the focus here is all about distribution and using your balance sheet efficiently. If you're lending to these large scale ABS issuers, using your balance sheet efficiently to get the best return on capital that you can. So problem solving. If I go back again my career, I'd said that the corporate banking experience was important because of the broad based exposure it gave me. The European structured finance exposure I had was really important because it gave me those problem solving skills and that strategic thinking that was so important to being successful as a treasurer or as a cfo. I would also say that telling a good corporate story is important. I'm always amazed at how difficult people find it to succinctly explain a problem in a very short period of time. And it takes a real skill. I mean, it's not easy, it's very easy to get sort of buried in the weeds of the detail of something. But to be able to tell a good corporate story off the back of a very complex set of circumstances is a real skill. And that's something that I always find is important from a recruitment perspective. And then also I also think about when I'm recruiting, I try to picture that individual in front of the CFO or the CEO. And really, it is that sort of corporate storytelling skill. Can they sit there and eloquently explain to the CEO or the CFO this is the issue, and they very often don't have a lot of time to explain it. Those are the kind of skills that I think I look for from a recruitment perspective. But they're very important, I think, in terms of developing your treasury career.

And as you talk about that, you said about the corporate story, but you also talked to me about gravitas and about putting someone in. You know, can you see that person? You know, maybe they're your treasury manager, right? You've got to represent me and do the. The treasury meeting. Can you sit there and why do you think that is so important, sort of?

Well, ultimately, I'm one of these people. I want to win, but I don't want to win just for myself. I want the people who work for me to win. I want the company that I work for to win. And so it really is all about developing skills in other people because we're all dispensable. At some point, we ultimately have to move on. And you want to make sure that there's a bench strength behind you and a skill set that everybody's succeeding and growing. And it, you know, nobody should look at their career and think about what's in it for me. We all have to advocate for ourselves. Of course we do. But anyone who thinks about their career solely from their own perspective, I think that they're making a mistake and taking.

That on a natural segue into career advice you give to, you know, some of the listeners today. What are you thinking they should be doing?

Lots of things. I mean, I would say, first of all, maintaining and building a network is really important. But again, as I was saying, there has to be some give and take in this and that people shouldn't be looking about just building a network for the sake of the benefits that they can get from it. I've told the story before about somebody I worked with at rbs. I'd left RBS and he was about to leave himself, and he called me one day and said, would you mind meeting me for lunch? Because he was a Regulatory specialist. And he said, I'm trying to figure out where to go next, what should I do next in my career? And I said to him, of course, you know, I met him for lunch and I said, well, you know, if you think about the regulatory landscape for banks, that's been changing ever since the financial crisis, I said, your skill set is hugely in demand right now. I think you've got many opportunities to, to really develop your career from, from what you've done. And so I gave him some guidance. There was nothing in it for me from my perspective. And off he went and now he's got a very successful role working for a hedge fund in Singapore. And it was sheer coincidence that I think it was maybe a month or six weeks later he called me and he said, I've just taken a call from a headhunter. They're looking for somebody to run the capital markets for Terex Financial Services. And I've sent them your way because I think you'd be a great fit.

Yeah.

And sure enough, that's where I landed. But I didn't go to that lunch thinking, how is this guy going to help me get a job? I went to that lunch because I genuinely asked, you know, he asked me to help him and I genuinely wanted to help him. And so I think, you know, maintaining a network is really important, but make sure that there's give and take in that network. Be a lifelong learner. I mean, as you know, I'm a. I'm an avid reader and I think absent the period when I was really busy in my structured finance career, never had time to read anything. I do spend a lot of time reading and trying to understand the world. Get outside your comfort zone. Don't be afraid to challenge yourself. I spent time, way back in my banking career in corporate banking. I was trying to get into the securitization group and I was told I was going to get an interview for a job with the securitization group. And it kept changing, kept moving. They were always traveling. And my boss said to me, you know what? You should spend some time in the training team, the training department at Barclays. And I said, you're crazy. I said, I literally would shake with fear when I was standing in front of an audience because I just didn't have those presentation skills or the gravitas to go with it. And he said, and that's the reason why you should do it. He said, if you go and spend a couple of years in training, writing and delivering training material for corporate bankers, I guarantee you that it will benefit you in the long run. And sure enough, he was right. I really pushed myself outside of my comfort zone. I was really bad at it, really bad. But I developed the skills. Enough skills to, you know, to carry me through my career. But if I hadn't pushed myself out of my comfort zone, that would never have happened. And then ironically, after all of that, two years later, I called up the guy from abs, the ABS Team, and said, I don't know if you remember me, but two years ago you were supposed to interview me for this job. And he said, it's your lucky day. He said, two people in my team just quit, come and see me. And that's how I ended up with a 20 plus year finance career. A couple of other things I would say, learn to tell a good story. We've talked about that. How important it is to be able to boil down important aspects of anything that you're doing into a very succinct presentation. Be intellectually curious. I love to read. As you know, I've studied a lot. I've spent a lot of time doing these online programs at Harvard, at Cambridge, Judge business school at insead. I mean, even a certified red team thinker, you know, trying to challenge the status quo, think about things differently. And I would say finally, advocate for yourself. Don't be afraid to add, nobody else is going to do it for you. Advocate for yourself. Now again, it's about give and take. You can't push yourself and be calling your boss every Monday and say, hey, I want a promotion that's going to drive people crazy. But advocating for yourself is a really important skill set. And don't be afraid, you know, just push yourself to the edge because you'll be surprised what you can achieve.

And I think, you know, I just want to chip in there. And again, I was, when I was speaking at Windy City Summit Chicago a few years ago and I sort of paused my speech as we were going through because we were talking about some of the personal branding and trying to help these treasury folk. And just as you said, you know, you're very eloquent and you sort of push yourself up, but you weren't always, it's a developed skill. And I said to the audience, so by the way, you know, I hate public speaking, right? And they're all like laughing, no, I don't enjoy it. I, I do it because I took a look at our business number of years ago and said, right, the only way I'm going to expand this business globally. This was pre podcast. This Was all that is by getting on that stage, put my hand up, say, can I speak at your conference? Now it's led to Treasury Career Corner. This podcast is now our live event. And, and, and you only get that by pushing some. And some of the treasury folk out there. You listening? You might go, yeah, well, that's all very well for you and David to say he's the treasure of Harley Davidson, but he wasn't always. And I, you know, it's only by embracing that uncomfortableness, isn't it, Getting out.

Of your own way. So I think, I mean, if you'd said to me when I started off in corporate banking all those years ago, if you'd said to me, one day you'll be the treasurer of Harley Davidson, I would have said you were crazy. I would never have thought that would even be possible.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's amazing how your career can develop and will develop. Yeah. I certainly encourage people to take overseas assignments if those opportunities ever arise, because that was absolutely the making of me. But again, you know, pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone, you'd be amazed at where that could lead.

And that power of network as well on the show that we've. Will have come out by the time people listen to this one and go back and listen to with Dana and Chris and you and I talked about that evening where they talked about the power of their network. I did have a go at them. I did say, look, you're not allowed to network quite so well because they'd got all their jobs through their network, not through me. And I said, look, I was gonna. I was gonna de. Invite them from the room, but I couldn't, unfortunately, because they were already on page. But joking aside, they were saying that's how they got their steps. And, yeah, Chris and Deborah, Dana's at nasdaq, you know, through the power of their network. And you're greater as well.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. When. Do you remember when LinkedIn first came out? Whenever that was 20 years ago or so I remember I got my first LinkedIn invitation from somebody who was working at G Capital.

Yeah.

And I thought, I know him. I've got his contact details. I speak to him every day. Why do I need to connect with him on LinkedIn? And now, of course, it's, you know, now we understand how, you know, the network effects of the LinkedIn.

Yeah.

But again, it's. That is super. It's fantastic for me in terms of, you know, for example, if I need some help with something in a particular country or even recently. There was a guy who worked for me when I was at Terex and he left. He went off and did an FP and a job at another company. And he contacted me about six or eight weeks ago and said, There's a job in FP&A at Harley Davidson. Could you help me to get my resume in front of the right people? And I said, absolutely. So I did. I made sure that people saw his resume but stepped out because I didn't want to be influencing their decisions. It turns out that he joined about four weeks ago and I spoke to him at the end of his first week. He was so happy to be here. And he said, I can't thank you enough for. I said, look, all I did was make sure that your resume landed on the right desk. And then I stepped away because I didn't want to influence anyone's decision making. And he said to me, he said, you know, I think back and I spent, you know, time in treasury working for you, both from a Treasury perspective and, you know, doing the credit underwriting in the captive finance company. And he said, you know, now I've developed a career in FP&A, and I fear that all those skills that I learned in, you know, when I was working for you were wasted. And I said, you know what, just hold that thought. Because I said, just think about my banking career and how those corporate banking skills that I developed very early on in my career, never thought I'd need them again, and here they are helping me much later in my career in Treasury. And I said, you'd be surprised at the number of people who go through FP and A and ultimately often become CFOs who never spend any time in Treasury. I said, you did spend time in treasury and I guarantee it will help you in the long run. You just may not see it today.

Well, yeah, and you say about LinkedIn, it's quite an interesting one. You know, I have my profile from back in. Well, in fact, I got an email and I'll name check it. Jerome Miara, who is assistant treasurer at Tenaco, he was my first ever connection. He got an email recently, said, you are my first ever connection. I was like, well, yeah, you're one of my first. And he was like, yeah, back in. I think he was 2005, that's when he got into it. I was on there before that as well. But as you say, it just helps the network. But you then have to lean into it and put the work in, which I know you do very well. As well.

Yeah, it's important, it's. And again, you can't spend all your time focusing on it, but it's, it really is important to make sure that you, when you meet people, that you capture their details, you include them in your network because you never know. You might help them, they might help you, but at some point there could be some sort of beneficial outcome for the both of you.

And I know you're a big reader and everything else. Well, what we'll do is I think you, you said you would share some of the link to some of the books because I know that you've given them out in the past and things. What? Yeah, mention that to the listeners and we'll give a link to it.

Yeah, so. So as I mentioned that we, our company is remote, so we work completely remote globally. So that the great thing is that people have a lot of flexibility in their day to day lives. We've been able to attract some great talent from across the country that perhaps we wouldn't have had access to if we'd just been in one location. But one of the downsides of that of course is that you've got a team that's all over the place and we have to sort of bring that team together on a regular basis. One way that I've tried to do that is through our town halls. And so every time we have a town hall I usually give out two or three books. Some people have said to me they're not necessarily the books that we would choose to read. But more recently what I've said to people is look, here are my book recommendations. If you want them, I'll send them to you. I'll just buy them and have them sent to you. If you don't like what I'm suggesting, then you tell me what you'd like to read and I'll buy the book for you. So we've sort of, we've adapted that more recently. But I'm an avid reader, as you know, and I really enthuse about reading. And I think, you know, I think it's. Most of my books sort of break down into two categories. One is strategy and then the second one is leadership strategy. Again, going back to what I was saying earlier about my interest in strategy came from when I was a bank credit analyst and trying to understand why the numbers were different from different companies in the same industry. And I read all sorts of books. Ron Adner is a great strategist. Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School was a, was an incredible strategist. And more recently, Sunil Gupta and Bharatanand, who are, you know, very focused on digital strategy. And of course, there's Michael Porter, who was the original strategic guru. There's some fantastic books on strategy, and I've tried to read anything that I can get my hands on, because, again, I. I really want to understand why is it that some companies succeed and others don't when they're operating in the same industries with the same conditions? And then I think the second category then is leadership. I mentioned red teaming. There was a really good book that I read a few years ago by Bryce Hoffman about red teaming is, for those who aren't aware, it has its origins in the Prussian army. And so when the Prussians were doing their Spielkrieger or their war games and practicing to fight Napoleon, of course they all wore Prussian blue. So they wore Prussian blue tunics, and they needed somebody to come in and challenge their strategy. And they brought in a team of riders on horses with red tunics, and they became the red team.

Yeah.

And so red teaming is all about taking an existing strategy or an existing plan and trying to make it better. Not challenge, not destroying it, but trying to make it better by bringing in an independent team, the red team, to critique it and try to find the holes in the strategy and see if there are ways in which it can be improved. So Bryce, he went to Fort Leavenworth, and he was the only civilian to go to Fort Leavenworth and do three months of red team training with the US Army. And then he wrote a book about his experiences and what red teaming is all about. It's fascinating. And I ended up doing programs with Bryce to understand and ultimately become a certified red team thinker. But I also like to read leadership books, and they can be really diverse books like Boys in the Boat. There Was the Boat, the book about the Washington State University, how they ultimately won the men's ET8 at the 1936 Olympics. It was a movie recently as well.

Yeah.

Fascinating book again, all about leadership and pushing yourself outside of the comfort zone. And I also have a bit of a fascination for some of the explorers from sort of 100 years or so ago. I went to a. There was a reunion program at Harvard about three years ago, and somebody appeared on the agenda who was. I think Harvard is the only business school that has a corporate historian as part of their faculty. And I thought, what am I going to learn from an historian at a Harvard Business School event? And my jaw dropped as she started explaining this whole exploration that Ernest Shackleton had tried to achieve the South Pole and traversing Antarctica and how the whole exploration had run aground and the boat was crushed in the ice and sunk. And then they literally, this team of, I think it was 28 men spent two years trying to survive Antarctica and then ultimately going to Elephant island and then South Georgia. And there was a book that was written in 1959. It's incredibly old book, but it's rich with detail because it was used. They used all the interviews from many of the survivors of that exploration. And again, you sort of stand back from that. And as she described him, she said, you know, Ernest Shackleton may have been the best leader there has ever been because he somehow managed to keep those 28 people alive for two years in the most extreme circumstances and got them all home almost unscathed. And again, you might think, well, what has that got to do with Treasury? It has an awful lot to do with treasury because leadership skills are so important and understanding how leaders tick and work, those kind of things, they really. I find them fascinating and I can read all sorts of things, Donald Campbell and his Bluebird explorations and try to think about, well, what was he thinking? Why did he do this? And try to take some inspiration from some of the books that, that I've read, even if they're completely tangential to the corporate world and obviously, you know, a long way from Treasury. But I find them fascinating.

Amazing. And we'll put a link to some of these books as well in the show, notes and things. And I wanted to sort of wrap up today's. We'll put. We' talking about LinkedIn. We'll do that in a minute, that. But the other bit to add mentors. I know you talked about the sort of power of having a, a mentor and having those people like that in your network. Well, how would you describe it?

Yeah, I think I would say I have probably had two that I can. And they were never formal mentors, that they. They were two people in. I can look back in my career and think they really influenced me. The one was, the one who pushed me into the training role early in my career. He really encouraged me to do something that I would never have done had I chosen it myself. And boy, did I pay. You know, I got the benefits from that in the long run. So he was very influential. And then the other one was probably the CFO at Terex who's now retired. You know, by his own admission, he was a really tough guy to work for. He pushed everyone so hard, often asked for the impossible. But again, when I look back at the transformation that we achieved with the banking group, with the balance sheet, with the captive finance company, we achieved it, but I'm not sure that I could necessarily have achieved it without him pushing as hard as he did. And he's been a great mentor for me since he retired as well. So I would say mentors again, very important. In my case, they haven't been particularly formal, no sort of formal mentorships, but there are two people who've been very influential in my career over the years.

Amazing. This is great. We've been around the mind map and everything else. Just wow, amazing. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. I know you'll be in influx of, you know, people wanting to connect to you. You'll have to sort of beat them off with a stick. David, wrapping up today's, I mean we, there were so many, you know, sound bites, bits of advice, just blooming brilliant. What takeaways would you give to people if they're listening today? You know, encouragement for you, you know, guys. Well, junior, everything else.

I would repeat some of the things I said earlier. Be a lifelong learner. I mean, don't be afraid to learn, even if it's something that maybe appears a little tangential to your job. Try to think about aspects of what you're learning and how you can apply them to your role. Again, when I was at Terex and we were trying to transform the captive finance company, I was thinking about some of the things that we'd learned about inventory management and how just in time, inventory management can be applied to a captive finance company. And when you shrink the inventory you start to reveal the real problems that you have. And again, we were able to apply that thinking to a Treasury situation when you could look at it and say what on earth has just in time inventory management got to do with Treasury? So try to be a lifelong learner, but try to think about some of the ways in which you can build the skills that you're learning outside of treasury into treasury again, get out of your comfort zone. I think as we've talked about, it's really important to do that because ultimately it can pay dividends with your career and read study and advocate. I think those are the kind of things I would recommend to anyone who has aspirations for a long term career either in treasury or even beyond.

Amazing. Thank you. Well, just blooming brilliant it was and thank you sir, you've been very kind. And again, what a great mind map which just made my life Very easy. Thank you very much. So really great fun.

Mike, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

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