Becoming A Great Leader Within Treasury with Joel Campbell

Foreign. Wow, amazing show there, Mr. Campbell. Oh, if only you. You've 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 and R Block. Nothing's happened. 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.

Yeah. 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 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 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 some of the other things that I've done in my career, all the way back to my 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 25 or 30 years in 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.

Sorry, just tell us about trevipay. It's probably you're going to come onto it a bit more. I've done the research, I've 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 originally. So take an electronics retailer perhaps who is retailing electronics 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 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 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, you know, not. 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 sit 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, yeah, what's it been like, you.

Know, to the point you were making? I think at some 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 skillset, 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 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, various other. How's that? You know, 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 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 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've 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, you know, 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 actually, I've got to say, a vacation we talked about. I said 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. I'm going to be. Yeah, it's a bit scary really.

Yeah. You know, I attended AFP 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 it, how we managed our teams. 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 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, you know, 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 jokingly aside, we'll be sharing that stage. But takeaways for today. You gave some great ones on the podcast as say a moment ago. The people again listening. You've made that springboard, which is incredible. But any final bits of advice either 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 your career and so on. And I think that the advice is pretty simple. You know, it's work hard. You know, 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 an opportunity comes up, take it. Grab both hands 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, you know, maybe just hold me back. That'd be fine. Be amazing, sir.

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.