Becoming A Great Leader Within Treasury with Joel Campbell

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So just before we go into today's episode, this is a bit of a weird one actually. We're going back into the archives, bringing back the amazing Joel Campbell. When I last spoke to Joel, he was with H R Block as the treasurer, Chief Risk Officer, as you're about to hear on the podcast, Amazing podcast. We're going to go through it and then actually at the end of the episode, I'm thrilled to say we're going to have a catch up with Joel as we talk through. What I want you to do is particularly listen to some of the top tips that Joel gives you. He talks about, you know, maybe being taking some steps and risks outside of your comfort zone. New industry, new company. It'll all make sense at the end of the episode, so enjoy it. This was way back in March 2019. I don't know what was going to come along then. It was a bit quiet, you know, nothing really happened. But between then and now, have a listen and then we'll catch up with Joel at the end. And also we'll be doing some videos with this as well, so look out on YouTube and various other bits. Anyway, let's get on with the show. This week's show, delighted to be joined by Joel Campbell, Vice President treasury and Chief Risk Officer at H and R Block. Now, for those listeners that perhaps in UK Europe, you perhaps might not have heard of H and R Block, and until we've done some recruitment for H and R last year, we really didn't know them, or I didn't certainly. But H and R Block are a global consumer tax services provider, so they provide tax returns through retail locations, online and things like that for over 720 million tax returns are prepared. But I'll get Joel to explain that a little bit more. But Joel started his career many, many years ago studying at MBA in Finance in Minnesota and then progressed to Western Union and Travellers companies and a really great variety. As I said before the show to Joel, I'm not sure I've spoken to someone who's made so many really good progressions within treasury career, a variety of different industries as well. So, as always, enough from me, let's get into the show. Joel, give us a start, if you would, how you got into first finance audit and then you discovered Treasury.

Sure. Well, thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me on today. And yeah, just a little bit about my career. I knew from a very early age, before I entered university, that I wanted to be an accountant. My brother had been an accountant. I decided early on that's the direction I wanted to go with my career. So I got a pursuit, a bachelor's degree in accounting. And as most accounting students do in the US I tried to get into one of the large firms at that time. I worked for Arthur Anderson for three years, completed my CPA exam and got my CPA designation. And then from there kind of went down the path to do my apprenticeship and be licensed. So I knew I wanted to be an accountant. I think for me, after five or six years of being an accountant and doing auditing and taxes and so on, I really decided I wanted to move more into corporate finance. And so at that point I pursued my master's degree, my MBA with an emphasis in finance at the University of Minnesota. And at that point in time I kind of segued into a corporate treasury function as cash manager for the Travelers companies and Insurance Property Casualty Insurance Company. And I've never looked back since. I fell in love with Treasury 22 years ago and I progressively moved around to different companies and different roles within treasury, but I fell in love with treasury and haven't left it. And I've had fortunately a very rewarding and kind of challenging and fulfilling career since that time.

So Travelers explain to us, you know, some of those, the listeners are more junior candidates. How did you discover treasury at that stage? What was treasury like when you first started in it?

Yeah, I discovered treasury actually kind of by happenstance. I had migrated from internal audit into mergers and acquisitions. I spent a couple years in M and A and from that one of my internal clients just happened to be the new assistant treasurer of the company. And he and I got on quite well. And when an opportunity opened up to move into a cash manager position, I was his first internal candidate. And quite frankly, I had no idea what cash management was about, didn't understand it, didn't even really know what treasury was. But I knew I could do the job for my kind of core finance skills and financial analysis skills. So he hired me and he taught me everything I needed to know about treasury in about a year and a half on the cash management side. And again, I fell in love with it to a point where I knew once I migrated into that role, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. And at that point in time, treasury really was Excel spreadsheets and it was dial up terminal emulation into our banking partners to release wire transfers and to check our balances and so on. It was really at that point in the late 1990s, still relatively rudimentary. It was before the Advent of Treasury workstations, before banks had the websites where you could log into and do your wire transfers and see your balances and so on. So it was really, again, rudimentary. But I've really seen it from that point in time to now 2019. I really see treasury morph and change and grow. And it's just been a really exciting and rewarding career.

But you made some with Travelers Group. You did an international move and then came back to the US before you then moved on. What was that like that early on in your career and learning about treasury, maybe more internationally as well?

Yeah, yeah. I had been in treasury for about a year at Travelers, and again, Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Company, they have an international headquarters in London. And I had never had the idea in my head that I would get a chance to move to London. But a new treasurer came along, saw my skill set and what I could do, and was looking for someone to move to London to take over and make the London treasury center look and feel like the treasury center we had built in the US So he gave me an opportunity to move over there. And quite frankly, it was one of the most rewarding career decisions that I had ever made in my life, personally and professionally. It stretched me. My family gave us a chance to see, at least from a professional perspective, gave me a chance to see markets from a completely different perspective. You know, I say this a little bit, you know, tongue in cheek, but in the United States, we become so United States centric in the way we think about things that it's so freeing to move to a different market than the London financial market and be in a different part of the world where the US Isn't the center of everything. And to really learn more about foreign exchange, learn understand about how financial markets work on the international scale, understand debt instruments, equity instruments across other jurisdictions. And for me, that role also is very fulfilling because I was able to spend a lot of time traveling and visiting Travelers International business operations in South America, in Asia, Australia and various other parts of Europe. And it really gave me a better sense for the international side of business that I had never had much exposure to.

And then you made the move to Ameri Prize, is that right? How do you describe that business?

Yeah. So after spending almost 12 years at Travelers, I was recruited to work for Ameriprise Financial. At that time, they were spinning off of American Express, their financial planning business. And I was recruited to come over and develop and create a public company treasury function, particularly treasury operations. Their treasury operations function had been five or Six people as a subsidiary of the larger American Express Corporation in New York. So I was recruited to come over, find staff, build staff, go across and out into the company to understand what functions other people were doing that were treasury or treasury related and to centralize them and bring them into a Treasury function in Minneapolis. Again, a very rewarding experience. A chance to learn a new business, somewhat insurance related, it's financial services, but to learn a new business and to take my treasury skills that had kind of grown and built in one place, migrate them to another place and prove that treasury skills can really cross over industries, can cross over different companies. The disciplines you put in place, the things that you do do, and the methodologies you put in place are very similar across different industries. And so it gave me a chance to do that, to build a staff. I started with myself and six or seven people and by the time I left almost five years later, we had two assistant treasurer level people and about 30 staff. So we had really gone out into the organization and built a proper function and it still stands today. And I'm really proud of those five years that I spent there.

And before that you were the assistant treasurer at Travellers. So that role, when you went into Ameriprise, you were the sort of. That was your first leadership role per se. You know, you've been a leader, assistant treasurer, but that was your shop, as it were. So what was your ethos and what's your ethos around being a leader? And certainly in those early days.

Yeah, I think in the early days, you know, when you first become a leader, I think there's a lot of talk about what leadership is and you have in your head, you know, what you think a good leader is. But when you're put in the place where you're leading a team and a broad team with many functionalities, the thing that you learn quickly is that you don't have all the answers and you have to hire good people. You have to push them to excel and grow and develop, but you can't hold onto them too tightly. You need to let them be professionals and do their jobs. I think that's the thing I learned. I hired some really good people. A couple of them are actually still there, but I was able to turn them loose, give them direction and let them go out and figure out what needed to be done and let them shine. And stepping back from being down in the weeds, managing or micromanaging, if you will, the day to day, to stepping back and becoming more of the person who directs broadly what is the Strategy for what we're trying to accomplish kind of handed down to me from senior management, but then down to my team. What are we trying to accomplish? What's the big picture? Here's what I need you to go out and do and let you and your team go out and figure out how to do that. That was probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned that's carried over even into my current role today is to not get in people's way, but to hire good people and let them do what they do best.

And then you carried that on with the move to Western Union. Assistant treasurer there. What. Describe what you know. I think some people have got ideas about Western Union. It's a money transfer business and everything else, but it's more than that. But also, you know, how was. What was your role like there?

Yeah, for me, the, the move to Western Union was, was an interesting one. I really spent about 14 years running treasury operations functions. And I think the thing that I knew that I needed in terms of discipline and skill set or adding to my own balance sheet was the ability to understand and manage and run capital structure, capital structure strategy, if you will. So the opportunity for me to migrate from Ameriprise to Western Union was just that, to work under a very strong treasurer who had done capital structure strategy at many different companies before he got to Western Union. And he really took me under his wing and mentored me, coached me, helped me learn how to think about capital structure, how to, you know, I spent probably 70% of my time with my team doing financial analysis. Really we were working on thinking about a levered recap, trying to understand the capitalization of the company that would survive and support the company for the longer term in that business. But it really gave me a chance to migrate out of day to day treasury operations, move into capital structure strategy. And then I was able to, while I was there, I picked up responsibility for insurance and risk management, which is something with an insurance background that was a very natural fit for me. But I was able to kind of bolt on some additional things. We had a pension, so I was able to get involved in pension investments. I became part of the investment committee. Some of those things that I was able to bolt on and add to what I already had done in treasury to really expand my horizons further. And really it was fertile training ground for me to be a natural step into a treasurer role at some point in my career.

So on the show I've interviewed the treasurer of Schroders globally, Nick Taylor, Greg Coaser, Vanquish bank and things like that. One of the key things they both highlighted to me was the regulatory environment, how it's shifted over the past 10 to 15 years. And they've seen that from the front end. Did you find that quite a burden to you or was it a natural thing or what were you like, how did you handle regulation as a treasurer?

Yeah. Well, particularly I'll step into my Western Union role as a money service transfer company, heavily regulated. When I started with the company, our compliance arm, our compliance team was relatively small with a relatively small budget. Today, there are probably six to 700 people globally that support their compliance function and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on compliance. So I got indoctrinated very quickly into what it's like to work for a money transfer company. And not only the regulations in the United States, but with over 70% of their revenues being generated outside of the United States, all the different jurisdictions in Europe and Asia and so on that govern money transfer. So for a Treasury person with not a lot of experience in regulation other than insurance regulation, it really gave me insight into how to position a Treasury function in that environment. And particularly for Western Union, so much of their business is reliant on the banking networks around the world. We partnered with 240 banks around the world. So going out and visiting those banks in person, in country, spending time with them to understand their issues, how Western Union could position itself against that and making sure we had good compliance and complying with all the local laws and regulations is extremely important. So another, I'm not an expert in regulation, but I understand it far better now in a treasurer role than I probably ever did before I joined Western Union.

And then you made the move and location. I noticed that was one of the other things I was going to mention, that you're actually geographically mobile. You packed up your stuff and moved around a few different places. So you then got the role H and R Block. Wow. So how did that come about?

Yeah, HR Block was a very interesting one. I actually got a phone call from a recruiter while I was on a business trip in Asia with Western Union, suggesting that this might be a role I was interested in at that point. I had moved my family from 17 years of Minneapolis to Colorado, and I didn't really want to uproot them again, but it was an opportunity that was compelling over the course of time to come to H and R Block. But both for the folks I was working with, as well as the opportunity to get the treasurer title and be able to kind of really, truly run my own team, my own shop and take on that role, particularly reporting out to the board and having board interaction. So the basement block role came along. I joke that I spent about five months and did almost 26 interviews for this role. Multiple board members in multiple cities, as well as multiple times coming to Kansas City, where I currently reside with my family, to see whether or not this would be a good move for us. And I will say unequivocally, it's been a fantastic move. One of the things you point out, Mike, is that I've taken some risks, some calculations risks, I like to say, in my career, but I've taken some calculated risks knowing that a chance to move up either in title or move up in responsibility or bolt on other responsibilities into a treasurer role would be a good career enhancement for me. So I was able to convince my wife and my family that this would be a good move. It's been a fantastic move for us. This is a great company with a great reputation, particularly in this town in Kansas City, and it's been a really rewarding opportunity for us.

So Joel, as I said to you earlier, there is no real H and R Block equivalent that exists within the UK and Europe. So perhaps you can explain for some of our listeners what the group does and maybe how that then filters into finance and then down into treasury as well.

Sure. H and R Block is a global consumer tax services tax prep company. We provide tax preparation through professional tax preparers and about 12,000 company owned and franchise retail tax offices worldwide. And in fiscal 2018 we had revenue about 3.1 billion and prepared 23 million tax returns worldwide. We have two different models. We have an assisted tax prep model where you come in and sit down in one of our company owned or franchise owned offices across the desk from a tax preparer with all of your bits and pieces of information to get your taxes completed. We also have a DIY or a Do it Yourself model where we offer both mobile as well as desktop software where you can go in, take all of your information, sit down at your kitchen table on an evening or a weekend and put all of your information and complete your own taxes. We also have recently developed a virtual model, so a model kind of between assisted and DIY where you can provide all your information through a secure upload into our system and a tax preparer can prepare your return for you. Or you can go into the DIY mode and then have a tax preparer come in and look at your tax return once you've completed it and confirmed that what you've done is correct. So again, anywhere, any way, anytime you want to complete your taxes, we have a model that does that for you. We compete in this space with other DIY providers, with other branded and independent assisted providers. But again, we're the largest branded assisted preparer in the United States. We got a great business, a little over 3 billion in top line revenue and a very healthy level of margin and bottom line earnings. And it's a great company that's been around now for over 60 years in the United States.

When you came into the role, you'd said that was quite a long period of you considering it and stepping in. What was the sort of setup of Treasury? And I know it's five and a half years ago now, but you walked in. How did you then, you know, tackle some of the issues day one through to the sort of maybe day 100? You know, I spoke recently to Chris Emsley, he's the treasurer out at General Mills in Singapore and he was taking it virtually from startup, you know, General Mazano startup. But a lot of the stuff they were establishing was, was brand new. Now it sounds like you took over sort of quite a well established Treasury. How did you approach it?

Yeah, you know, I was, I was from the CFO at the time. I was really given an opportunity to take 90 days, which is unusual at a treasurer level, but 90 days to kind of step in and get a lay of the land. No pressure in terms of work output or projects I had to get done right away. So he really freed me up to get to know my staff, to get to know my peers and colleagues across the company, as well as understand Treasury's interaction with the business at a relatively granular level. So I spent three months just immersing myself in everything that we did in our treasury function. Took a lot of notes on what I liked and what I didn't like and things that might change in the future, and then spent a lot of time out in the business getting to know people and understanding how treasury impacted them. The one thing I will say that is I was very fortunate to step into a Treasury team that was already very experienced and relatively senior. I had an assistant treasurer who's now retired, but an assistant treasurer who had been with the company at that point 13 or 14 years, knew the company well. He had actually stepped into the treasurer role on an interim basis, stepped back for me when I was hired as treasurer and really supported me 100% for five years as I grew into the role. So I Was very fortunate to step into a seasoned team. The one thing I will say though is that there were many things that I wanted to change and I took my time. I think that's probably one of the things that I did the best is I stepped back, saw things I wanted to change and moves I wanted to make. But I didn't make a lot of those changes until probably 8 months to 12 months into the role because I wanted to make sure I did it methodically and that I was thoughtful and that it benefited the organization for the long term. We implemented a Treasury workstation and replaced an old outdated treasury workstation. We rationalized our bank group and shrunk our committed line of credit facility from 17 banks to 13 banks. So we took some of those natural steps that a treasurer would take. But again, I stepped back, took my time and was thoughtful through that process. But I think almost six years later, it's kind of stood the test of time and some of the things we did in those first early days and.

What was your, what was your driver behind that? You had that time to sort of settle into the role. Brilliant. But then was it gaining a handle on risk or what was the sort of development model for you guys? Where were you? You then as you talked about, you brought in a system, you brought that. Was it clarity or cash or was it risk? Was it all of the above or what were you able.

Yeah, at first it was true, just treasurer functionality. When I think about just blocking and tackling, you know, I'm a, I'm a former athlete and so I kind of step back and look at the basics. You got to get the fundamentals right first. So we got the fundamentals right of what we did, how we managed cash. This is an extremely seasonal business, the most seasonal business in the S&P 500. So we spent a lot of time for me, learning the seasonality of when we borrowed and when we had excess cash and how we invested it, who we borrowed from and so on. So I spent a lot of time on that again, I spent a lot of time analyzing and thinking about our banking partners, who we banked with, why we banked with them, rationalizing that bank group. And then the last step that really over the past couple of years we've spent a lot of time on is the treasury operations type functions out in the field. So 6,000 company owned stores and a business that still actually collects cash in its stores from our customers. There's a lot of processes around how we collect that cash, how we account for it, how we Reconcile it. How quickly can we get it into a bank to get it deposited so that we can use that cash? So over the past three years we put in a new deposit transit service where we go out and collect that cash, put it through a system, get it to one of our banking partners in their bank vault and get it deposited as quickly as possible. So we spent a lot of time over the past few years out in the business making sure that the treasury like functions out of the business are working the way they should in the most efficient way.

You also took on risk as well, coming on three years ago now. You know, explain how that came about.

You know, kind of one of those fortunate situations with the timing of some people retiring and some opportunities getting moved around. I was asked to take on our enterprise risk management function and at that point became chief Risk Officer and really had some exposure to enterprise risk management just from being part of the enterprise risk committee, having previous lives, also being part of enterprise risk committees and understanding how to think about it, but now owning it, taking a completely different perspective, we took some time. So I have a director who supports me in that role. We took our time and looked at what we were doing for ERM across the organization. We decided to completely kind of revise, restructure a very outdated program looking at risk analysis. Also we looked at and re engineered our risk scoring model and we really spent a lot of time in the organization trying to drive accountability with risk owners themselves. The previous chief risk officer kind of had the view that he did most of that for himself. He kind of did most of the accountability and pushed people to give him information that he reported out on. And we completely changed that paradigm to bring risk owners in front of the audit committee, risk owners in front of the board of directors to present their risks and be able to speak intelligently to board members about how they mitigate risk and how they think about it. While we're the organizers and we're the coordinators and we have the big overarching view across the organization, we brought risk owners along with us and made them accountable. And it's been a really rich, rewarding experience. I think we've driven the risk management responsibility and the understanding of risk mitigation much deeper into the organization over the past three years. Getting people to understand COSO guidance and understanding, business continuity and disaster recovery and how those all play in together with risks and the way we manage it. It's been really well received internally as well. It's been a really, a really interesting process.

And with yourself, where Are you guys going next? Where is it the development? You see it? You know, everyone talks about treasury in the future and everything else where, you know, obviously those are coming together within your role, but where are you seeing the development for you guys?

You know, I see in treasury and I've seen this for a while and I think there are a handful of organizations that have a chief treasury officer and I think at some point in the future you're going to see more of those come along. And it's really kind of this convergence of integrated risk management along with corporate treasury, traditional treasury functions, along with insurance and risk management type ideas. I think anywhere where there is risk and anywhere where there is opportunity for the treasury function that participates in part of that risk to come together, I think you're going to see that converge and more of a chief treasury officer type role. In addition, I think what we're seeing a lot in our business and what we're spending time on is looking at enhanced automation. How do we deploy robotics into traditional finance functions to automate routine tasks through bots that sit in your general ledger or in, you know, certain elements of your system? I think you're going to see more of that come along as the technology is proven. There's some of those things that are already out there. We've deployed a few in our business already. But I think you're going to continue to see more and more automation of routine tasks to free staff and management up to think about more strategic tasks beyond the tactical, but much more strategic. And where's the business heading? How should we position ourselves and how do we get ahead of that to support the business when it gets there, where we think it's going to go?

And you've obviously spoken to a number of different treasurers and you see that. Maybe I was just going to explore. We talked there at the head of the show there about Greg who's in Vanquis bank and you are Nick the Cash Rich and all that stuff. But how would you contrast the demands on you as a treasurer when you're in a financial services business versus someone who's perhaps more in a product based business where they've got commodities, they've got all the other things, you know, General Mills are all about foods and different Cheerios and all that stuff. How for you is it different, would you say?

The way I would think about it, Is there just different types of risks you have to manage in a manufacturing or food manufacturing or production environment? You have product risks, you have manufacturing issues, property, plant and equipment type things that you need to think about in financial services, it's, it's much different profile. We still think about risk, but our profile is much more focused on the structure of our products and what do they mean for consumers and how will that be received by governing bodies who want to make sure that consumers are not being fleeced and they're not being taken advantage of. So I think when we think about risks in our business, whether it's the regulatory environment, whether it's our systems and making sure we're keeping our data secure, whether it's our products and services, that they're supporting the right needs and that we're doing it in a compliant way, all of those things in financial services have counterparts in manufacturing or in food service or whatever it might be. They just look and feel a little bit different. And so I think the role of the treasurer ultimately is an expanding role. I think that's one of the things I've seen in my career is not only has I been able to progress across treasury, but I think the role of what I do in treasury and the treasurer role broadly over the past 20 years has dramatically changed from just being a tactical transaction based role to now being much more of a strategic partner. Maybe not in the broad strategy of the company, but strategic partner across the business and helping the business understand how we can support them both transactionally and strategically to set them up to be successful over the long term. Seen that change in my own personal career, but I continue to see that expanded role, the treasurer, over the course of the next 15 or 20 years as well.

So on an interpersonal level, you mentioned earlier that you came from a sports background and you got some sort of good leadership from there. But if you were teaching those listening in particular, if they're doing maybe their first leadership role, what do you think they need to focus on? What's the framework? You know, maybe it's drawing for sports. I'm do sports lots myself. But what do you think they need to think about something?

I spent a fair amount of time over the past couple years thinking about leadership and the challenge of leadership. And I ran across an amazing quote probably about six months ago that I've kind of haven't shared with a lot of people, but I've just kind of been, you know, stewing on it myself. And it's by Jim Rohn, you know, one of the first motivational speakers or business philosophers in the United States from several years ago. But I'll quote it because I think it's, it's been really powerful for me as a professional. But as I think about challenging younger leaders to learn how to lead and to be better leaders, I would put it this way. He calls it the challenge of leadership. Challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude. To be kind but not weak, to be bold but not bully, to be thoughtful but not lazy, to be humble but not timid, to be proud but not arrogant, to have humor but not without folly. And I think that's really been challenging to me as I look back over 20 years of really 25 plus years now of managing people and being a leader. There's a lot of truth behind the statement. I think our job as leaders is to be strong and to stand up for our people, to stand up for what we believe in, but not to do it in a demeaning or condescending way. We should be kind, but we shouldn't be weak either. We shouldn't be timid souls who don't have the ability to stand up and support people. We should be thoughtful. I think we absolutely need to be thoughtful in the way we think about leading people, the way we think about leading a project, pushing the organization to maybe move in a different direction that it's not willing to or hasn't moved in the past. And I said many times as I've interviewed for roles and as I've talked to people, I think there's a great deal of humility that should come with leadership. Being a leader is a gift and it's an honor and it's a privilege to be able to stand in these roles and to lead people. And we shouldn't take that for granted. We shouldn't lord that over people. But at the same time, we should be proud to be given the gift of leadership, to be able to do it. But we should make sure that we're not arrogant about it and that we don't lord that over people in a bad way, that we have a sense of humor and we have some fun along the way. I'm a firm believer that if you can't go to work every day and have a fair amount of fun in what you do and make fun of yourself, make fun of other people, but make fun of yourself and make sure that your staff know that they're cared for and that they're loved and that you really want them to grow and develop along with you, I think that we've missed out on a great opportunity. Lead people in a really effective way.

And when you're. We talked about team leadership and everything else. When you're recruiting in particular, what are you looking out for? Is it, you know, I'm not sure about qualifications. We talked about different interpersonal characteristics and various bits. What's your ethos behind that? You know, maybe linking into that. Is it the personality you just brought out? You know, we're a long time at work every day. What do you think?

You know, I'm one of those people that's kind of, I say to people many times when I interview them, I'm kind of split 50, 50 between strong communication and interpersonal skills and people management skills 50%. And the other 50% is, you know, technical knowledge, experience, your balance sheet, what you bring to the table and the things you know how to do. I think sometimes people get outweighed towards the technical and you know, they're 90% technical and they're brilliant, you know, people and they're brilliant when it comes to book knowledge and how to do things, but they can't talk their way out of a paperback. And likewise on the other side, if all you can do is talk and communicate and lead and be a good people management, but you have no technical skills or experience that you bring to the table, then you're really not of much value to me. So when I recruit people and I hold myself to this kind of same standard, I think being weighted kind of 50, 50 between the two is a really important place to be. So that's kind of my first criteria and I think my second criteria when I look for people is are you willing to work hard? And that doesn't necessarily equate to more hours than everybody else, but are you willing to focus every day, be consistent when you come into work to work hard, to do whatever is asked of you and to do even more than what is asked of you consistently, not just once, not just for a project, but consistently over time. Are you willing to put in the work and the time and the hours to build your own balance sheet of things you can do, but also to help and build and support those around you? I think those are two of the most important things that I look for. The last one I look for in terms of a large corporate environment or coming into my treasury? Team is just fit with the organization. Do you fit with the personalities and the styles of the team? Do you fit with the culture of the company that we work for and the people that we support above us? Are you a good fit culturally? You can hire somebody who has, you know, good communication skills, good technical knowledge, just bounce between the two and is willing to work hard and but if there's not a good personality and style fit with the organization, they're going to struggle, we're going to struggle. It's not going to be a good result for all of us. So that's kind of the last key thing for me is just a really good fit. And sometimes that is just a judgment call that may not necessarily be objective. I spend time in my interviews when I talk to people, trying to get a sense for how they would fit in the organization because I just feel that's just such a strong thing for organizations to think about.

And when you're doing that, how are you assessing it? What are you comparing against is just the knowledge of the other people internally?

I think that's one of the leaders responsibilities. To know their people intimately and to know, you know, what makes them tick, you know, to go through kind of that situational leadership schematic, to know where they're at in their career, know how they make decisions, know what type of leadership that they need, how they need to be led, how they should be led. And understanding the right fit to lead against that or to join part of that team is just to know your people really well. I pride myself on that. You know, one of the things I try to do, and I'm not perfect at this, and I'm sure my staff will listen to this and laugh, but I really try and make an effort to talk to every one of my people at least once a week. I know that sounds maybe a little trite. Many of them I interact with, you know, multiple times a day. For those that I don't, I really try to interact with them once a week. So that when it comes time to think about adding somebody into that mix that I know my team well and I know how to make sure that we get the right personality to fit that will gel well with the team or that will maybe bring a new skill or a new thought into the team to help the team grow and develop from there as well.

And you're talking about development, you know, where are you seeing treasury developing from here and what are you seeing as the future for Treasury? You talked about there the sort of, of, you know, the, the new role of the treasurer going forward. But where do you see it, you know, reflecting on some of the developments and things?

Yeah, you know, I see you can see it even today. And if you go to some of the annual conferences, the treasury conferences, you can see more and more automation. And particularly in the payments space, I see more and more automation coming. I think that's A very good thing for Treasury. As I talked about earlier, deploying some of the bots and the automated artificial intelligence into a Treasury function, into a corporate finance function, broadly, I think you're going to see more and more of that happening. And I think really the role of the treasury team over time is going to become much less tactical and much more strategic. We spend a lot of time, even at Block, we spend a lot of time forecasting cash flows and systems can do some of that for us. Some of that takes knowledge of the business and understanding how it works. But much of that can be automated over time. And I think you're going to see again, more and more of that automation down in the tactical part of the treasury team to allow that team to focus on more strategic things.

We spoke before the show and I've got permission from Joel that if you want to connect with him or you want to find out about his background, have a look on LinkedIn, you'll find @ Joel Campbell, H and R Block. But as we come to the end of today's show and wrap up, they'll look through, they'll look, see your profile go, actually, that's a career I want to sort of replicate. I want to make those moves, maybe do some international do that. What advice would you even give maybe to your treasury team members? More junior guys say, oh, you know, I'd like to follow you in your footsteps. What would you say to those guys?

Yeah, sure, there's a few of them. You know, I think as you, if you've listened to my discussion today, a couple things probably stand out. I've taken what I call a number of hacks steps. I've taken intentional, calculated risks to get very specific types of experience to set myself up to move from manager to director, director to assistant treasurer, assistant treasurer to treasurer. So I think making intentional half steps across your career to push yourself, challenge yourself to learn more and to do more within it.

Thanks, Joe.

Treasury is not just cash management and banking, treasury is a lot more things outside of those you've heard me talk about today when it comes to risk management, insurance and risk understanding the business. So I think those half steps for me have been very intentional and helped me in my progress and development. And as I mentioned, taking risks. I think calculating and taking risks. I think unfortunately for many people who sit with the same company and sit in the same role and always wish they could do more, stepping outside of that comfort zone, taking your treasury skills that you have built over time and looking to apply those in a new industry In a new company, being willing, perhaps even like I have done, to relocate and move to a different city to get that experience and knowledge that you're looking for. And then lastly, it's just doing whatever it takes. I think having an attitude as you approach work every day, consistently over time to do whatever it takes to get the job done. And again, it doesn't always equate to more hours. Many people think that equates to more hours. Even when I talk about it with my staff, oh, you want me to work more hours? It's not more hours. It's working smarter, it's working efficiently. It's making sure that you're pushing yourself to do more than the person sitting next to you, to stand out and shine and then continue to push yourself to do that over the course of time. If you get consistent at doing that over time, you will be successful. You may not have all the career steps perhaps, that I've taken. Maybe you'll have even far more than I have. But I think if you consistently do that over time, you're going to be successful.

So I've been scribbling my math whilst we just did that because I thought there was some great takeaways for you guys. So just a few other bits just to summarize and finish off the show, as Joel says. These are Joel's words, not Jim Rohn.

These.

These can be yours to learn more, to do more, be open to the new areas and other parts of the business. Perhaps, as you say, be prepared to take that calculated risk, but. Calculated risk, your treasury guys, come on, you need your risk and you took that with a relocation. But as you say, do you do whatever it takes to get the job done in a smarter way by pushing? Consistently. Good summary of you and your career. I think it's fantastic.

Great. Well, thank you, Mike. Yeah, I think that is a great summary of my career and who knows where my career will take me from here, But I've had a modest degree of success to this point. I'm very thankful for where I'm at. I'm grateful for opportunities that people have given me, mentors and others who have coached me along this path and helped me develop some of the philosophies I have today. Much more to come, I think, for my career, but I'm very grateful to be where I'm at today.

Well, thank you, Joel. And I think, you know, if you're listening today, this is a great takeaways there to look back over Joel's career and I think you'd Be lucky to have a career as successful as Joel as well. So listen today and do what he's done.

Thanks, Joel.

Wow, amazing show show there, Mr. Campbell. Oh, if only you you'd chosen to listen to your own advice, eh? Taking risks, comfort zone, industry company willing to relocate, do whatever it takes. And, and since the, you know, pandemic and everything else. And throughout that time, you put your feet up, didn't you? You just, you just stuck there, H R Block. Nothing's happened. So bring us. I'll shut up now and I'll bring. You can bring us up today. Over to you. So what's gone on since that time?

Well, Mike, it's great to be with you again and I appreciated everything that you and your team have done with these podcasts and to bring you up to speed on me at the end of or right, right at the beginning of COVID an opportunity came along my way to make a move to step out of my comfort zone. Having been in corporate treasury for 25 years, to now step into a CFO role of a private equity owned payments company called Trevipay. It was a long kind of five or six month vetting process, but at the end of the day it was the right move for me personally and I joined the company in October of 2020. And for the first 18 months now, we've been on an absolute, I'll call it maybe a speed treadmill, trying to keep up with everything that's happening in a fast growing B2B payments company that has big ambitions and wants to grow quickly, wants to add more people and more services and more importantly, add more customers and help more businesses grow. So I've been on this journey for 18 months. As I said to many people, when you look and watch a CFO do a job, you think that you can do that job and you think that you're ready and you kind of assess yourself, can I handle it? And when you get into the chair, you realize that you have the skill set to do the job. But there's a lot of new learnings that you have to go through when you step into a CFO role. And this first 18 months, particularly the first 12 months, were really intense. But it's been a great journey to take a step from corporate treasury and treasurer like roles for many years to step into a CFO seat and really learn what it's about to be a cfo.

How did treasury set you up for this CFO role? And then I want to explore a bit more just for the listeners, they knew you and they've heard your story at H and R Block and they knew about that and being a tax firm and everything else. But how did treasury set you up? And then why trevipay? So maybe that double question.

From a Treasury perspective, it's a unique path for a treasurer to migrate from treasurer into cfo. There aren't many that have done it. There are a few, but there aren't many. It's not the natural path. So I think for me it was the right convergence of a company that was looking for somebody who had deep treasury capital markets funding and financing experience to support the business and business growth as well as just, you know, from my perspective, looking at somebody who fit in with the rest of the executive team that was already here and established, had a mandate from the private equity owners to grow the company and they were looking for somebody with kind of a fit with both. So I think, you know, my treasury, deep treasury background in particularly capital markets funding and financing, thinking about how to support the growth of a company really piqued their interest at first. And then as they got to know me and unpacked, you know, some of the other things that I've done in my career, all the way back to my, you know, internal audit and public accounting days, being a cpa, some of those things resonated with them as well as just my leadership skills that I believe I've honed over the past, you know, 25 or 30 years and leading people and projects and initiatives to help companies grow. So all of those things kind of packed together really supported me as a candidate for the role.

Just tell us about trevipay. It's probably you're going to come onto it a bit more. Some, you know, I've done the research, I'd heard the name, didn't know them. You've got the lovely corporate background there. But who are they? What do they do?

Yeah, Trevipay is a global B2B invoicing and payments network. We run networks for individual companies, large individual companies that have or want a significant B2B presence that maybe they didn't have original originally. So take an electronics retailer perhaps who is retailing electronics to and appliances and other things to consumers, but now wants the opportunity to, to sell those same products into the B2B space. And how do they do that? From all the way from a go to market strategy to the actual invoicing to the buyers who are buying the products, all the way through to the, to the payments and more importantly the terms that those buyers might be looking for in terms of working capital or other things we can provide to them, but that holistic closed loop system that we can offer bespoke or in a kind of in a standard Trevipay branded way, or we can build a bespoke model just for that individual, you know, that individual company, but in a way that takes that off of their plate, allows us to streamline the entire process, take ownership of the receivable that's generated, collect on it and offer terms to their customers that they wouldn't otherwise want to offer off of their own balance sheet.

And you and I just, we touched on before the show there about you've come and you came and joined a company at the beginning of a pandemic, a new role, new role as cfo. Obviously massive demands, not to focus too much on Covid and everything else, but how has that, you know, sort of affected you coming in as a cfo? I know you've got that in your back pocket. All those previous treasury skills we talked about and being ready and outside your comfort zone, you really embrace that and stuff and some. And now as we start to move out of that, where do you see it going? What are your again, you gave us some great tips on the show just a moment ago. What are your tips for the top going there? We're not quite the end yet. I'm still going to get some more value bombs out of you as well. And we'll talk later about afp. But what's it been like to the.

Point you were making? I. I think it's sometimes point in your life you have to kind of drink your own medicine.

Right.

And I've spoken for a long time about my career has been a series of half steps, half steps to take new roles, to get new opportunities, to add to my toolbox. A former boss used to say, add to your own balance sheet, build your own balance sheet of all the different things that you can do. And I've taken calculated risks and half steps to get to where I thought I wanted to go. And for me, that role, I thought the terminal role was treasurer. I thought that I would be perfectly content there. And as I, as I got to that role and had success there, I saw opportunities given my background and skill set, to maybe segue into a CFO role. And that is a broader role. And admittedly some of the things that CFOs do, I hadn't really done or didn't have specific two or three years of leadership experience running certain aspects of what a CFO is responsible, responsible for. But those calculated half steps, pushing yourself, challenging yourself to learn more and to take on more responsibility, raise your hand for new projects. All those kind of things I believe set me up well. And I've said to people, even though I had probably 80 or 85% of the knowledge I needed to do the job, it was enough to push me to be able to take on the entire job because I'm always open to learning and taking on new things. And I think those are the things that have set me up well to be successful in this role.

And pandemic wise, as you say, we're moving out. We'd started the return to office and working from home and you were just talking there that you've got sort of an office move and various other. How are you seeing it going forward?

Yeah, you know, I think the pandemic for everyone has been kind of a revelation. In former treasurer roles, you know, we never thought that we could be out of the office and process cash payments. We always just thought we had to be together and on the network and be safe and protected. I think what we've proven to ourselves is we can do things from home in a very safe, safe and measured manner to provide the services we need to to our organizations. Secondly, I think for me personally, just watching what's happened in Covid, we've all gone through, you know, the kind of the, the different stages of grief I'll call it with COVID when you kind of mourn what happened and the loss of what we used to do and how we used to handle things. But we've all embraced a new world. Many of us are still working from home. We're still working from home at Trevipay. Part of that is that we're in the process of building out a new corporate headquarters and we'll be moving everyone in there early this fall. But I think for many of us, two, two and a half years of working from home has changed the dynamic of our day to day. I'm an extrovert. I really enjoy being around people. I get a lot of energy from that collaboration and those face to face interactions. I really missed that part of it. I've missed business trips, I've missed traveling to visit my bankers and brokers and other people who support us as a company. Those interactions are rich. Help you grow, you learn things. I think many of us extroverts sitting at home in our basements or in our home office, working for months and months and months on end without much of a break, we've kind of recreated how we think about work. So I personally am looking forward to getting back to a hybrid work schedule where we can be with people, we can interact, we can share stories. The times where we have taken to get together for lunches or off sites or whatever it is during the pandemic are really rich and everybody comes back energized. So for me, looking forward to getting back to that post Covid now in a new world, embracing new ways to manage and deal with people in hybrid places. I'm really looking forward to it and.

I'm thrilled to share the news with you guys live here that actually I'll be sharing a stage with this amazing CFO here, lovely Joel, at the AFP conference later this year in October. Be amazing. And I don't know about you, I'm. I'm actually, I've got to say, I'm about to have a vacation. We talked about this and I'm slightly nervous because going back to seeing lots of people, I've got to try and like, not be, yeah, stupid. Just like, you know, it's a free bar. No, I've got to be. Yeah, it's a bit scary really.

You know, I, I attended AF last year in person in Washington, dc. It was a very different event. They still were doing hybrid. We had some in person. The attendees at the conference were probably close to about half of what they normally were, and the energy was just different. I think we're all looking forward to this year being back together in person, having a much more robust conference, being able to share all of us, share stories of what we went through in Covid, how we came through in Covid, it, how we managed our teams. You know, I've. I've changed jobs. I've added a whole bunch of new people and new roles to my company. And just how did we all manage our way through that? I think that session is going to be a great opportunity to, to unpack some of that and lessons learned that we can share with each other.

And it'll be. We're going to be talking about power of networking and personal branding and I've got in front of me a guest that actually embodies that. You know, that's what you did effectively. We did the podcast. It not just the reason. I mean, it could have been a reason why you got that wrong. I want to take all the credit, Joel, but okay, it was us. Don't worry. Checks in the post. I know, but joking aside, we'll. We'll be sharing that stage, but takeaways for today. You gave some great ones on the podcast. And say a moment ago for people again listening, you've made that springboard, which is incredible. But any final bits of advice, either turn to younger treasury professionals as they go through or maybe a bit later on in their careers, you know, if they want to emulate yourself, which would be a great idea.

Yeah. You know, I gave this, some of this advice over the past week as my son graduated university to some of his friends who asked me about, you know, career and so on. And I think that the advice is pretty simple. You know, it's work hard, do whatever is asked of you, raise your hand for new opportunities. When there are new projects or things to get involved in, don't be afraid of hard work. You know, part of where you get to in your career is what you put into it. And if you're afraid of working some extra hours and maybe missing some other things in your life, don't be afraid of that. It will open doors of opportunity down the road for you that you can't see today, that you can't see around the corner that are coming. And I think the last thing I would say is just, you know, when, when those opportunities come along, evaluate them in an appropriate way, just like you would any other business situation, and make decision on what you think is best for you. Nobody else will manage your career for you. You manage your own career and you, you determine where you want to go and the things you want to experience. And I think if you take that perspective over the long term, good things will happen. Work hard, good things will happen. And I think that's probably the simplest advice I can give to people.

That's going to be our walk off stage advice. We're going to literally drop the mic. Literally drop me.

Boom.

Work hard, put your hand up when needed, take and give the opportunity. When the opportunity comes up, take it. Grab both hands and, and just crack on. So, Joel, can't wait to see you later this year. Slightly nervous that I'll be an idiot because there'll be a free bar there at some stage, but I'll try, you know, maybe just hold me back. That'd be fine. Be amazing.

So great.

Thank you, Mike. It's been great to be with you. I can't wait to. Can't wait to be other in person. Finally, after three years, you're a star.

Looking forward to it. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Cheers. Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen. Whether that's itunes, Spotify, or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally fine, free, and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce. Every week it'll be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds. Leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.