Building a Defensive Treasury Strategy with Dimitris Damdimopoulos

Foreign. So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers each and every week talk to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next in this week's show. Delighted to be joined by Demetrius Dandinopoulos. That's how I say it properly. You'll correct me in a minute. Demetrius is the currently the senior treasury analyst at Imperial Brand down in Bristol. They're a FTSE 100 company. They're actually the parent company of a business that originally specialized in tobacco and some non tobacco brands. But again, Demetrius, we talked about this before the show and explain a bit more about how the core business was built around that, but now they're diversifying away from that as a base product and things like that. Now, one of the things I will say before we kick off the show, Demetrius, is actually the, the first time interview with someone who was suggested by actually another listener to the show and they said about who was an inspiration for them. And that was, and again my pronunciation, Gurav Chadid, who's the treasurer at Mouvel Group over in Berlin, he'd said that Dimitrios was someone that really inspired him and you know, I should get him on the show. So I was absolutely thrilled to do so. In other news as well, he's the only person I've ever interviewed that has a taco truck. There you go. We can get into that as well. It's amazing. We had a pre brief call and it just lasted for about an hour and a half. It was amazing. So Demetrius, tell us about your career because as we said before the show, you started at Greenwich at uni and then you came up through that and then went into the army and then went into banking finance, a very normal career route, as it were. So maybe talk us through if you would and kick it off from there.

Well, Mike, it's, it's a pleasure to be with you today. Yeah, no, definitely. I might not be thanking Galrab after this, but ultimately be touching base with him. Yeah, I guess it's not one of the traditional routes into treasury, corporate treasury or corporate finance, that's for sure. After University of Greenwich, I think like many of us, we were sort of struggling to really find our niche in our careers and what we wanted to do as a profession. One of the real character traits about myself is I really love to challenge myself, put myself into difficult situations and really try and work out where the limits are in what I can do where I can be pushed to go and, you know, how well I can perform under those pressures. And I think, you know, the British army has a great reputation, you know, to be accepted onto the leadership training program at Sandhurst. It was a great honor. It's not actually what I. What I wanted to go into the army for. I was thinking much more on the engineering Corps side. So it was something that tied back to my earlier days at sixth form Technical College. And I thought, yeah, okay, well, I can at least leverage on those skills and develop a career for myself now. The army saw things differently. They thought that I displayed some characteristics of leadership that they would like to bring on board, and so I embarked on that career. Now, obviously, at that time, I was a little bit reluctant to take on any international work with the British army and so really focused on joining the Home Service Battalions in Northern Ireland. We had wrapped up the Good Friday agreement. Things on the ground in Northern Ireland had really improved. And so there wasn't so much space for me at the end of all that. Now that, you know, sort of laid bare a couple of problems, what to do next. I'd had this great training. I had an opportunity of moving forward within the army, but I was also given the opportunity to leave and explore alternative careers. Now, at that time, I, you know, I thought to myself, well, look, Dmitry, you've been through what is, in essence, I think what people term is one of the most difficult training courses in the world. And that's. That is the Santos Academy. I think you guys have probably seen that on a few BBC documentaries. And so I just knew that I was passionate about a profession that would really continue to challenge me, something that I could display the qualities of leadership that I'd learned within Sandhurst and give me a role that I could really think that I could add value so I could make the working life. And, you know, those who support you, the professionals you work with, make their lives better, different in a better way. So I'm a very. I'm a big advocate of change. I think we can never find ourselves sitting still. If you see yourself sitting still for longer than is comfortable, then you're just not doing the best of your abilities. And I don't know where that comes from. I probably, you know, put lay a lot of the blame on my mother. She's a very focused individual, but that's what kept driving me forward. So when my career in the British army came to an end at that time, a friend gave me a call and he said, look, mate, what are you doing? Come to London. The finance industry, banking and corporates are crying out for people like you. And, you know, to my, to my credit or discredit, I took him up on that offer, packed my clothes with a bag full, just enough for the weekend, thought to myself, well, if I get lucky, I'll stay. If I don't, well, I can move back to Northern Ireland. And it was at that point that, you know, I met with hsbc, the treasury people there, and they decided to put a punt on me, which I think, just to be clear, they don't usually make punts, but I think in this case it was a bit of a hedge. So they brought me on board and from there, that's really how I got involved into the finance industry.

A measured attitude to risk. Was it just a.

Absolutely. There's no punts in our business.

No. No balance. Well, you know, you thought, hang on, finance, you know, you'd have this. Different experiences. Why was it going into finance and then was a springboard into your first role within core treasury at Cadbury's? But how did he go, actually, finances, where is that?

For me, it didn't really happen like that, Mike. I think it was, you know, there's a lot of prestige around banking. I think, you know, I'd also reached out to a number of different industries at that time, but the one that really did impress me was, you know, you turn up to canary water, you're dwarfed by these enormous tars. You know, everybody's got a purpose, they're very driven, the place is a hive of activity. And it was. It just gave you that stimuli that you knew, okay, this is where I need to be. This is where all the action's happening. This is where decisions being made are being made. And it was, it was that attraction. So very superficial at the beginning. I got to be honest, when you get down to the details, they're always dirty. And I think it's within that detail that was also able to expand my passion for finance, my passion for open market operations, and really set a target for the future, which allowed me to sort of see myself and my career progress to a point that I knew I'd be happy. Well, maybe that's a little bit too overreaching, saying, I knew I'd be happy, but I knew that I would get a lot of satisfaction by filling the channel of that inexperience with experience and with motivation and with learning more and more about the job that I'm there to do, which is essentially caretaker. Well, not Maybe not so much at that point, but certainly now is the caretaker the group treasury function through the storms of the financial market, which I absolutely love to do.

And then the move from banking into corporate, how did that come about and that first step to Cadbury's?

Well, you know, working for a bank, it's very much a siloed operation. So there's lots of segregation, there's lots of control in almost every aspect. It's very much specialization within a certain area. So, you know, in order, there is no holistic view on the products and services that you're selling. You know, you sell an FX deal, you're not entirely sure why, because sometimes these can be many, many reasons. Is there a physical commodity under there? Are we just looking at, for instance, transactional hedging, translational hedging. There's all these different aspects that you just don't get a feel for as a banker. And I think at that point I knew I didn't just want to check out products, I didn't want to look for that margin. Yes, I was one of the high performers. I was able to come on the top five on sales pretty consist consistently every month after month. But it wasn't giving me the satisfaction. I needed to know more about what our customers were using those products for. And actually when it came down to it, when I started asking questions and actually this is primarily the reason I got into corporate finance, was I'd sit on the phone and ask them and say, look guys, how are you using this? Are you accounting for this? Is there anything else that I could deliver to you that might help you in your day job or help the company now? It's delving into those conversations with your clients is then you get a feel for the business. And when you get a feel for your business, you get a feel for the team. And at that point I was like, okay, well there's obviously a lot more going on here. I'm really interested and I would rather do something that might add a bit more value than just checking out financial products. Something that, you know, you could get behind a corporate or a group because you believe in the idea. And at that point an opportunity came up with Cadbury plc, which probably a lot of, you know, from your childhood is that chocolate manufacturer, dairy milk crunchies, whisper bars, just all the good stuff, sweets and chocolates and sugary drinks. And I thought, well, you know what? I could definitely get behind a company like that at that point. I know, well, the odd mink had come up. I completed a round of Interviews and was very lucky to get involved with what was a great UK PLC and one with hundred of years of history behind it. I was very privileged to move into that position. And to this day I still have those fond memories coming back of my first days walking into that office down in Green park and the sad memory of the last day I left. So that's, that's sort of what drove me to move to corporates.

And then just to put it in perspective, everyone that when he did leave, it wasn't his fault they had been bought by Kraft. So it wasn't like, please exit stage left. So you were there because you were there sort of two and a half years as Cadbury was growing rapidly, developing really great place to be. We actually did a recent podcast with three of the other guys that worked with you. Jason Spanos, Matt Norris and Toppi Yoko Anta. And they were in. You know, I interviewed them live on stage and all of you guys came together at a time at Cadbury's, which was fascinating. Great team. And John Fulton was there at the time, so we had lots of really great people. And then. And with the takeover by Craft, it sort of, you all went to your different ways sort of thing. Describe what that was like. You know, you went through your time as treasury dealer, you learned, but then the sort of springboarded you off to other places. What happened?

Yeah, I think, you know, Jason, Matt and Toppy, they were kind of the key movers and shakers within Cadbury treasury at that time. And it was, you know, sincere pleasure to work with them. And you know, I can say pretty much the good grinding that drove me forward in my treasury career was a combination of all their inputs. And I think that's, that's really important to understand that within Cadbury at the time, we'd gone through enormous amount of change. We just sold off the Schweppes business, the Sahib Beer Company and we were now very much consolidated, very lean, mean, little, little company. Now when that happens, of course you have someone like Craft, Craft Foods that move in enormous conglomerate and they decided they wanted a little piece of Cadbury. And in a little piece of Cadbury that meant, well, let's take them. Which, okay, what to say about that? We knew we were under an aggressive takeover. We did everything in our power to try and prevent that to the degree. So I say to a degree, because obviously we ended up getting sold. But during that process we were able to build up a very reactive, fast moving and I guess defensive treasury strategy spearheaded by Tom Jack at the time, which was the new group treasurer, Matt Norris, who was head of front office. So together we, with the ideas coming from those two, we were able to build up a significant war chest. We expanded our short term debt portfolio and we defended Cadbury's to the best of our ability. Not. That was an amazing situation to be in. Not only that, the fact that I sort of came from a military background, so me, it was very much playing on those emotions that we were defending. You know, this is our place and Capris is more than a place to work. It was very much culture. You know, we worked together not only within treasury but within the greater finance function. We worked together as a very well oiled machine. So unfortunately, the day came, the acquisition did move forward and at that point it just felt, you know, that we'd lost. It wasn't so much that it was anything through what we could have done better. It just felt that, you know, there wasn't, it was no longer there. The team had moved into a place where we were now looking at a different model, a different business, a different attitude to moving our way forward. And, you know, for some of us, myself included, it was a story, I thought that had come to its natural conclusion. And at that point I sort of started reaching out within the market and, you know, moved on to my next career, which for me was a very sad day. I learned my trade in Cadbury and I met and still continue to hold relationships with some amazing people and they've really supported me in and out of my treasury curio and I think I can sort of tie on to the tackle truck as well because they've obviously had a big influence on all aspects of my work in life.

So explain them for the, again the listeners. So you then went, you joined tui, the travel company and you know, that sort of came a long time with them. We'll jump into the taco truck because people are just listening going, what? So you went to tui, got that role in treasury, you started that. So explain the TUI bit and then we'll tag into the sort of the TECO stuff.

Yeah, sure. So tui, TUI Travel plc, pretty much a recently funded plc. It, it was an incorporation of Thompson Airways, First Choice, I think, Britannia Airways as well. And so it came together also with the German operation and that used to be called Preussag, which used to be an engineering company but later formed into a travel group and together they merged and formed a plc. So I was based down in Gatwick. It was a fantastic opportunity where can you get a massive treasury function that takes care of commodities? So you've got your jet fuel, you've got your cruise ships that you've got to not only look at interest rate problems for commodity exposures, foreign exchange exposures. So you were getting very much a holistic treasury function. With TUI Travel, one of the few corporates, I think FTSE 100 footsie, 250 that you could do at that time. Now, TUI, of course, I think you a couple of people there. Stuart was eventually the group treasurer, Jaspal Kang, head of Risk. Now, these guys came with a lot of experience. Jer was from Adidas and Jaspal had clear financial director experience with other PLCs in the UK. So there was a lot of experience in that team and a lot of mentoring that went on in the background. For myself, I went in there as a senior dealer and took a bite. Crook managed to work my way up to eventually head of cash management, not only for the PLC, but also eventually, when the group was taken over by 2eag, the German parent shareholder, I also became head of cash management over in Germany. Now, I guess relating that to the taco truck, one might ask, where did I find the time? And I think my mic would all flat at the same price. Yeah, I think one of the things that carried forward with me or I took on board after Cadbury's was I'm very much an independent person and I didn't want to be caught out in either a job, a career, a profession that I wasn't too happy with, or on the other side that could be taken away from you at a moment's notice. So there was this, I guess there's this independent entrepreneurial spirit that I have in the. And I thought to myself, well, you know, I've learned so many things from this treasury career. I love cooking. Had managed to go out to my wife's American. So we've gone out there a few times and during one of those visits I was in New York and I saw this sort of food truck industry that's traveling now. You know, every, every street corner has one. They range from tacos to burgers to pizzas. And I thought, you know what? I haven't seen this in London. And this fits in with this kind of idea that I have. I want to be a little bit independent, a little bit of an entrepreneur. Yeah, let's take this idea back. So, yeah, brought the idea back with me to the UK and then that set about a four and a half year journey into the Catering business.

I'll tell you what, for the listeners who, you know and I researched before, we originally had our first, my first call with Dimitris when I found him on Facebook. And we'll put the link to this in the show notes because it's an amazing journey about bringing back this truck, getting it sandblasted, your wife going, what have you done to us? And you know, it's amazing when you read back through and then you sort of launching this and actually through the Facebook bits, which, you know, again, I'm not a big Facebook person, but it was amazing to see the journey over those that time and you driving that business alongside a full time treasury career as well. So certainly interesting. And then you got, you know, again, bring it more relevant or up to date as such. So you were doing the taco stuff, you're at 2e and then you got up to sort of a couple of years ago now. And again we talked about this before the show. That. As if that wasn't enough of a challenge. I know, let's go to Germany. Just how, you know, how did that come about? Or, you know, you then became your head up for Zalando over in Berlin, you know, and again, for the listeners, they might think, oh, can I make an international move? Well, you actually did it, so explain how that came about, really.

Look, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stand myself or single myself out and say I'm the only person that's done an international career within Treasury. You've had sort of on the show, fantastic guy, you know, a global explorer, explorer when it comes to Treasury. And it was, I put it on to people like that, to professional influences, to the fact that I am one of these restless characters. You've got to put me under pressure and, you know, anything that I can say would add value to my career. The gaps that are missing, where treasury is moving to in the future, how can I make sure that I'm more board? How can I move with that flow? You know, these are kind of some of the, some of the inspirations behind the decision. It was, you know, London, we've been there for, I think close to seven years. It wasn't become, you know, London's a massive animal and of course there are plenty of other businesses that you could have taken the opportunity with. But for me, moving out to a different culture, a different land with almost zero scale, language skills, it was, that was a bit scary, daunting. You were moving to a very much. You weren't moving to a city centre like Frankfurt or Munich, where you might have expected English to be, you know, the first language. So for me, I understood some of the challenges that I was going to face, especially when it came to the function itself. So I was, I was going to be placed leading a team, a multinational team that ranged from, you know, pretty much pan Europe, you know, we had Italians, Spanish people, Germans, English, all within that cash management and front office team. And for me, I just thought it is a great way of building up, reinforcing those skills of being able to communicate specifically around the industry that you work in to an international audience and also drive that team, those participants forward in a direction that you want to take in. And how can you do that if you don't have the experience? It's all well and good when people talk about, you know, you've got to be open to change, you've got to take those opportunities, but if you don't take them yourself, what sort of person are you? And I think it was kind of that spirit that I really wanted to reinforce and prove to myself that it was something I could do. I'd seen various friends and colleagues doing over, over my lifetime and my career. And I thought, you know, I want to be one of those people. I want to take this to a new level and there shouldn't be anything after this that puts me off, that frightens me. You know, once you've dealt with that challenge, I think others are much easier to face.

And how did it, you know, again, digging back into that move, were you actively looking for a role overseas? I mean, you and I have discussed this, but again, for the listeners, how did it come about? You know, you just got a phone call out of the blue, hey, do you want a job in Berlin or, you know, what was the reasoning behind that? Particularly as you said, you didn't have, you know, I thought before I said, oh, did you speak German, was it? No, I didn't speak German. But yeah, I got a job as cash management, you know, leading all the team over there was like, what? And so again, the people listening would go, right, so what led to that sort of thing?

Well, look, I think looking at my career personally, I like to divide treasury into two specific areas. One is very much well known. It's the center of excellence. It's looking at the academics around financial policies and how to proceed with the company's risk appetite and to embark on open market operations based on that. The other side is very much technology. Now looking at companies like Chewy, like E commerce, businesses like Zaland are One that I would move into in the future. Their approach to treasury is very much different so they very much look at technology as being one of the key drivers to ensure a good, well versed treasury function. Now within the UK I've really been working in center of Excellences and I just needed that move into technology and it was something that I really delivered on through various projects over my career. Automating treasury management systems, looking at new instruments to plug in I guess into your book to either solve immediate transactional problems or look at certain issues that might come down to line such as as reporting consolidation, all that sort of good stuff. For me, Europe was moving into this E commerce section. You know, Germany is pretty much renowned, especially in Berlin for being very much a tech hub. Most unicorn startups, most E commerce businesses within Europe are really kicking off in Germany. Now When I did make that decision to move to Germany, the market in Germany was somewhere I was keeping a close eye on at the time. I did feel that it was a country I wanted to move to and I thought given where the country the EU was moving to in that direction or over the course of years the EU had changed dramatically, Germany had opened up and I was thinking that that might possibly be a good place to be to get involved into this new type of treasury world that a lot of German corporates seem to be moving into, albeit with a very old fashioned top down approach to management. So you know, I'd like to say, you know, it sounds great moving in there blindly, but to be honest I had done a fair bit of research, I knew the technology transformation projects. This is where I want to, wanted to be in for the next, you know, few years and, and Germany was, was really an inspiration to do that and it certainly worked mighty on a lot of the more interesting aspects of that. Part of, part of Treasury.

Amazing because you know, again to the listeners, he stepped out of his comfort zone, moved to Germany. You did that role. You also took the taco truck with you obviously. Thanks you for and as you said with that tackle truck, that was a sort of a side hustle, side gig as it were. But actually that was going rather well as well. Or maybe describe how those two sort of worked and then, and then your return back to the UK more recently. So just walk us through that little bit of the journey.

Yeah, sure, the taco truck. So the business, we named it Ambrienzo, spelled with an H, it means extremely hungry. Hungry for tacos was the motto. I mean the business did extremely well to the point where it Was. It was a very tough decision. We were at a crux whether to focus on Ambriento in London or to take the opportunity and move to Germany. Now, we felt at the beginning, the point of getting the tackle truck up and running was, yes, it's an independent business, but you're not bound by bricks and mortar. And that was kind of. I guess that's kind of reflective of my wife and my. My own personality. We're not very much free spirits. We would like to think we're free spirits, but we're very open to change and to new ideas, new opportunities. And I think when we looked at the business, we said, okay, well, we're doing extremely well in London. Actually, through the business, we were able to finance our own property. So we were able to get onto the harder, you know, ladder, which was very difficult at the time. I think property prices were going through the roof. So it was a way of not only compensating for that fact, but for also gaining a little bit of enjoyment through our own endeavors. Now, taking the truck over to Germany, it just felt like a natural option. I mean, that was kind of the reason for having the truck. It was going to give us this ability to move and work out. And that's exactly what we did. We said, okay, wife Ellie, you're going to be coming with me to Germany. It wasn't like that. I'm going to cut. Hopefully I'll get to repeat that. I spoke to my wife, and through mutual discussion and agreement, we decided that when we were moving to Germany, we'd take the truck with us, because this also gave her an outlet and allowed her to continue working in an environment that she knew and somewhere and something that she loved doing. So to us, it was kind of almost a natural marriage between my career at the tackle truck, which brought us together and also gave us that outward avenue to express ourselves and also make a little bit of extra money, but it could come with us. So it all seemed to fit quite well, even though it's probably one of the more difficulties, difficult logic to try and explain to people. But it did seem to marry up quite well.

And you made the move to Germany. You successfully established yourself at Zalando. And then you said, right, I need to keep developing. And after a period of time and, you know, the natural step was then came up a role back in the uk. So again, someone. If someone's listening, they're going to hang on. So you went Sussex to Germany, back to the UK and Bristol. So, you know, maybe explain the reasoning if you would. Because again, if you're listening and looking, you go, oh, okay, how did that happen?

Yeah, sure. It is kind of, it's a difficult story to explain, I think with Salando, one of the key things that was just absolutely fantastic and I guess reinforces some of my own views about the split in a Treasury function within Zalando. They were very much, you know, technology. You were married to technology, not only within your, your treasury function, but the business as a whole. So we were doing some experimental stuff with blockchain, with machine learning. We were trying to build the treasury function inside pretty much an AI type environment. So leveraging off S4 HANA capabilities and really taking a view of what was traditional treasury operation, how can we bring that into this AI environment, this machine learning environment and automate as much as possible? Now you're having to deal with a lot of learning at that point. So you're being stretched to your capabilities on that. You're translating technical scripts, technical ideas into financial ideas and communicating that up the chains to your cfo. So that was an extremely unique position and it was somewhere that I really saw a future in. So I still believe predominantly a Treasury role will be really underpinned by technology in the coming years. Now the move back to Bristol, this role with imperial brands came up and it was something that, that intrigues me. I think anyone looking at a traditional tobacco firm, if they spend an extra five minutes maybe looking around those traditional firms, they'll notice that. And I think there's been some, you know, there's been some significant press more recently in regards to vaping and alternative tobacco products. Now if you were to look more into that and explore more deeply, you would say that these, the tobacco companies, so bat imperial, they may be fast moving consumer goods, but they're now looking to leverage on what has been really, to put it, to think about E commerce, to think about retail, direct marketing, direct sales to your consumer. Where in these sort of older tobacco companies this is kind of a new idea and they are really driving forward. How can we get closer to our consumers? How can we move away from tobacco? How can we really deliver more well, being a safer product and put in a lot more control and restrictions and regulation around the products that we deliver. Now that marries up a lot of the learnings I gained from working within B2C businesses with a traditional tobacco company that has been very much B2B and just collecting in through the distributors. So there I really saw an opportunity where this market is changing. I love change. I want to be at the forefront of that here is Imperial, a traditional, you know, hundreds of year old putsie 100 company putting away tobacco and moving into alternative products like Vape, like Panabo, technology, like heated tobacco, which for me was an exciting opportunity. It comes with a huge amount of risk. I mean, we know tobacco is on the way over time. It is, you know, it is a dying market. But here you had a company that had a huge amount of spirit to change what they were doing and really turn around the whole branding, the whole image and provide a much more safer opportunity for the customers. So to me it almost seemed like a natural fit. Okay, it resulted in another change in location. But for me, again, looking at my career, looking at what I needed to do to really achieve the goals, the experience that I need to be a group treasurer, I saw this as a perfect fit and hopefully they see me as a good fit for themselves as well.

And looking at the development you talked, it was great, actually. Naturally lead into the development of treasury. You've taken this role to expand your other areas of yourself. Is that a key thing for you? And you think that again, if you're a Treasury analyst, manager, listening today and you're thinking, right, where do I need to go next? You're trying to tell the other guys, this is what you need to be doing, this is how you need to push out of your comfort zone. We talked about this before in our pre brief call the other day that you actually said as you talked about that it's the future you've got to look. Where do you see yourself as an individual in the future of treasury, would you say?

Look, I think it's clear for me as a Treasury professional, the one thing I could, if I, if I was going to give a bit of advice, one piece of advice to any junior treasury analyst out there or someone just starting their career is be interested, learn something every day, keep that development going. It's the one thing that's going to keep you interested in your job just by being interested, you know, by opening yourself up to any new opportunity, to any new piece of information that is going to not only bring a lot of self satisfaction to your own life. So, you know, you can't just separate work and life. We talk about a balance. To me, you know, one is almost the other. When it comes to spending your time with, you know, a bunch of people for, you know, God knows how many hours a week, a day, a year, it's important that you have a truthful and honest discussion with yourself. Find out where your Weaknesses and strengths are. Build on those weaknesses to make them become strengths and to really say to yourself, look, I've got to be interested in this. This is part of my well being. And I need to see something today that I can see helps me become that person in the future. So it's, it's a lot about building this image of what type of professional you want to be. Now there's many aspects we can talk about, you know, what you need to do to improve leadership skills, management skills. Those can be time, personal, whatever. But I think you need to, it's almost like meditation. Put that image of who you would like to be. Don't be frightened if this for. You know, I think one thing that on board from working in Europe is, you know, people don't have an embarrassment about talking about who their mentor is. And I think maybe it's the English, maybe it's me, maybe it's the people I've worked with. We've been reluctant to sort of say, you know, in the pub you'd be like, ah, he's a standardized guy. But you wouldn't really, you wouldn't really say, look, he is my mentor. He is someone I have learned not only technical and professional skills from, but really the way he interacts with people is just something I admire and I want to learn from. And I think that was something that I really took on board when I worked in Germany. And now I look back through my own career and I see that it is mentors that build your experience, that build your skills. And so for me, it's kind of of marrying up that position. Project yourself forward. Who is it you want to be? What is, you know, what do you need to do to get there? And by hook or by crook, just do it, you know, And I guess that's kind of, kind of where I see my path and hopefully that's where I'm moving to as well.

And I've got to say, you know, sometimes we end the show with, you know, me trying to sort of summarize and we'll put do we Beatrice's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But that's a great, effective close. You know, I think that, yeah, just listen to those words, repeat them. We'll put some of them summarized in the show notes. Unless there's any final other, you know, killer advice you'd like. I think that was brilliant.

Like I said, it's been an absolute pleasure to be on the podcast. I hope I haven't bored your listeners too much.

Oh, no.

For me Yeah, I think, I think for me you can't just look at treasury as being an accounting profession. A very boring. I'm not going to disparage my fellow accountants, but for me it's something more than that. For me it's always been an inspiration and I hope it continues to be an inspiration. The day that it doesn't is the day I'll probably bugger off to Alaska or something like that.

Let's hope that day not too, too soon because you'll have to take the taco truck to the Alaskans. That'd be nice as well. But joking aside, I think, you know, anyone listening today is going to go actually this is someone we want to hear more from in the future. So we will have, you know, some feature shows coming up when we get the time. It's just been a bit crazy this year. We're just coming on for the one year anniversary of the podcast. So what we are going to do later on this year is actually get some of these feature shows where we sort of talk about treasury talent of the future and some of the other things other than just the career show. So I know that I'll have Demetrius back on. It's been amazing and we had a blast before. It was meant to be a 20 minute briefing call that we had the other day. We were chatting for an hour and a half. It was just so interesting. He's an engaging guy. Can't wait to meet him for a beer some stage down in Bristol or closer. But yeah, you know, all that remains for me to say is thank you for your time today. People can connect to you by a LinkedIn profile, which I'm sure you're going to flood of people after this. And thanks for your time, sir.

Well, thanks very much, Mike.

Pleasure. Thanks very much.