Embracing Technology in Treasury with Jeff Diorio

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they've built their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, delighted to be joined by Jeff Diorio, the director at Treasury Strategies. Now, Treasury Strategies, for those of you who don't know, are a division of Novantis. They're a leading consulting firm working with corporations, financial institutions across all areas of treasury payments liquidity. So Jeff's got experience and thought leadership in a number of these areas. I know he's got. We'll get onto it later on in the show that we've talked before. And Jeff's got a real passion for things, all things cyber and a lot of things like that. He's led the practice there for a number of years, but he's got 20 years experience in both technology, global treasury operations, really successful career, and then brings that to bear within the technology consulting practice at Treasury Strategies. As always, that's enough from me. I want to get Jeff on the show because we're going to have a blast with this. He's great fun. Jeff, maybe if you would take us back with your career back into the dim distant past and how you first got started in finance and then discovered the wonderful world of Treasury. So over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. It's been a little longer than 20 years, I realize, and I'm shocked at how fast it's gone. I actually started on Wall street and I'd gotten a job. People these days, my kids in particular, joke about how difficult it is to get a job on Wall Street. I walked in and they said, do you know what a mortgage backed security is? And I'd done a little research, so I did. And then they said, do you know how to program in Fortran? And I said, I'm sure I can figure that out. And I got a job. And people say, well, wow, that's amazing, you got a job. And I guess that point in time it was important to point out that you only survived if you could do the job. So they make corrections very quickly on Wall street. But I did wind up in fixed income, particularly in mortgage backed securities and corporate debt and that sort of thing. And after a couple of years I had this passion to become an entrepreneur and left and joined a technology firm which eventually got acquired by sungard. And I was brought in because I knew fixed income and I was quite a bit of a technologist. I mean, I was able to program back in the day, but quickly realized that it's coming up with the program, not doing the program. That's where the value is joined. Multinational computer models, because they were building out the debt module of their program and they needed somebody who really knew this stuff. So one of the interesting dichotomies as you go along, but I did, we grew that business, we became part of SunGard, did a lot of really fun things while I was there. In the meantime, I'd been consulting to an awful lot of treasury, some really, really great organizations. And because this was one of the big global systems that we had, we were really interacting with the creme de la creme of global treasury departments, the Fortune 50, and made a lot of friends. Interestingly, people I knew as managers in the 1990s are now treasurers and scarily enough, some of them are retiring these days, which is really troubling to me because I don't know when that's going to happen for me.

Not quite yet. We've got a bit longer, but you've got that, as you say, that real. If you can program at that level, it gives you the insight. But as you say, sungard, massive treasury systems, big companies love sungard and that's what, you know, you need to be of that size. But what was it like in those early days? Because you sort of went from sort of managing and programming, but you then moved into the sort of client services and sales because you've got that as a natural ability. What was that transition like?

Yeah, very interesting. So client services is my passion. Helping people is, is something that appeals to me. And then of course, after a period of time of figuring out better ways to implement systems and helping people get through that, because that is such the most painful part of automating. It's easy to analyze, I think, for Treasury Departments to analyze what you need. It's easy to decide which system or technologies to select. The pain comes in implementing. And so we found ways to partner with people to really help get these well thought out decisions into action, right, to actually make them functional. And then of course that evolved into, well, we need somebody with a tremendous amount of domain expertise to help sell these things. And so I built a team at Sunguard that, that were the domain experts. They were a bunch of former treasury people or former bankers or former software people, but all understood both treasury and what the technology could do. And so our team was brought in at that point to be the expert, to be the subject matter expert, the SME that was a lot of fun. It's interesting, I say to people, you could work for a great company but be in a terrible department and your life will be miserable. Or you could work for a terrible company but work with just a fantastic group of people and have an absolute blast. And Sungard is one of those firms where people look at it from the outside and they say, oh, my goodness, it must be brutal to work there. But I can tell you that a lot of the people I worked with and the teams that I was part of or I built were just some of the best people that I've known and we did have a great time and I had just a fantastic career there. I stayed there, you know, they. They combined my time at Multinational Computers Models and then Sunguard, because we. We sold the sungard 17 years. And so I had a large number of jobs there. And as a recruiter, you're probably saying, big mistake staying in the same place for 17 years.

No, no, well, no, you see, I think people used to say, you know, life, sum of jobs and year to learn it, year to do it, year to exit and you're bored and the next job. But if you've got development. I had one guy back, you know, Connor Marr, one time, he was. He was 10, 12 years in Barclays and. And he said to me, he said, oh, sorry, I've been there for 12 years. I went, have you done the same job for 12 years? He went, no, of course I haven't, I'd be bored. I went, right, so tell me. And he'd had. Discreetly, as it were, in each of them, he sort of stepped between four roles and got promotion and got progression and different areas because, you know, Barclays is massive, you know, not just all, yeah, banking stuff, but similarly, you know, if it's challenging and it looks like, again, if people look through background, I see that you did things like e treasury.com and some really exciting different things. And was that the journey that kept you there 17 years? Wasn't the same job, was it?

Yeah, no, absolutely correct. Got to do a lot of really fun things. Multinational Computer Models had a consulting operation that went along with the software and that's where my interest in consulting came from. Then I ran client services, did some great things there. And interestingly, when I left Client services, I swore I'd never go back to it. But here I'm sort of in the same role again. I got to build a sales team, which was a lot of fun, fantastic group of people. And then at that point, in time, in the early 2000s, there was a lot of interest in remote hosted. And we called it ASP at the time. They call it SaaS Today Solutions. And I got to build E Treasury.com, which really was the first profitable SAS treasury solution. It's taken at the time. It was a nice smaller system and people really, really liked it because it did what they needed it to do. It showed them the liquidity, it helped with certain light foreign exchange and fixed income issues, debt management, that sort of thing. Interestingly, we recognized as we were building it that it was going to conflict with the core products and the core revenue streams. And that became a much bigger issue as we got it launched and started getting a lot of clients on it. We need to shut it down.

And you say 100%. Was that because you only had three clients and you were really nice to them, you took them out to lunch?

We literally had quite a few clients at that point. But one of the challenges was how do we get into the payments part of this? And at the time, we were somewhat uncomfortable with the liability about having a SaaS solution making payments. It's one of the things that got me into my interest in cyber and that sort of thing was building this and managing it and worrying about all the different ways it could be attacked. And we're talking 2004. So it was quite a while ago. We wound up and I was proud to say that I was the progenitor of this. I was the person who helped design the hosting of their offerings. So essentially the private cloud hostings of their offerings. And as a way to get around the issues of issuing, how do you make this thing send payments and not have massive liability by being in that space? It seems like most companies have gotten past that at this point in time, but Sungard went on quite a tear after that with private cloud hosting. Because one of the big issues with technology is IT companies and treasury struggle with it, with the spend, with managing things that are in house. And you've seen in the last 20 years, I would say since 2000, early 2000s, you've seen most organizations moving to either a cloud hosting so that they've outsourced it, or moving to SaaS so they don't even have to worry about upgrades anymore. And so that's one of the huge shifts in the last 15, 20 years that you've seen. And it was really fun to be at the front end of that.

And then, you know, with that, how did it then how did you move on? I mean, you're as you say, 17 years, great career, was it? Then they said, we're closing it down and that that was the end of that. Or how did then evolve, as you said, because you went through a few different things, but you've always had that sales slash consulting aspect. He said, you know, I'm not going back to consulting. And then, oh, here you go, heading up a consulting firm. But, you know, talk us through the, the sort of, the next few moves sort of thing, because there was quite a few moves over a period of time. You growing or what was happening.

Yeah, it very interesting and I think a lot of people listening in their careers and maybe even your advice to them is if you stay in the same place for a long time, you wind up economically disadvantaged. So for a number of reasons, I left. I'd been there a very long time and the income growth just wasn't in line with what I needed it to be. We have three kids, they all had to go to university. And unlike in England and Europe, university in the United States is a really expensive thing. So I needed to make more money. And what's interesting is it was both exciting and horrifying at the same time. Mike I had five jobs in seven years and it was almost a case of every one of them came with unique challenge. I was with a startup, I had a huge equity position with a startup, and it was a fantastic product and a fantastic opportunity. But like most startups, 90% of them, we just couldn't get it off the ground. So I left and went back to another financial technology provider. And I seemed to try all different roles. And then eventually in 2012, I was leaving Broadridge, which was. I really liked the people there. We were experiencing limited growth and so it didn't work out the way everybody wanted it to. But I left and I called up Tony Carfang, who you've had on your podcast.

Yeah, lovely Tony.

And I said to Tony, I've known him for. And we talked about me joining Treasury Strategies a number of times and different reasons it didn't work out. And I called him in 2012 and said, Tony, I think I'm done working for big companies. I really just want to hang out my own shingle and be a consultant. And I know a huge number of people tell me why this is a bad idea, because I know everybody goes into this sort of thing with rose colored glasses on and sees the glasses twice as full as it really is. And Tony said, you know, Jeff, it's a terrible idea. And I said, oh, Tony, this is exactly the advice I need. Why is it a terrible idea? And he said, oh, we just lost two principals and you have a job. So it was the shortest and easiest job interview I've ever had in my life. And I joined and we had a blast. I was just talking with one of our former employees who's at Disney now, and he's having a great time. And you know, we just, over the years, since 2012, we've had such a dynamic team of people. And in consulting you get. Some people come and go, but they tend to be passionate about what they know and what they can do to help other companies and really enjoy helping enact change at organizations. And then the better consultants that enjoy it and stay with it don't mind the fact that it's an ever shifting environment. You're always, it's always a new challenge, it's always some new problem to help somebody resolve. And then after you've resolved it, you actually don't mind moving on to the next one. So it's one of the unique things about consulting, but the other aspect of it is you have to recognize that for many people, it's a temporary way station for them and that they'll be here for a while and then they'll move on to another job. And you have to accept that. And not only that, you have to make sure that it's done in a very positive way, that they've learned something while they were with you, that they've benefited your organization and you've benefited them because as they move on to their next position, you know, have they learned a bunch of things that made them more valuable to that organization? And using the old GE model, would they be willing to hire us when a problem comes along and done properly? You have a lot of friends out there. And I'd like to say that at this point in time, I feel I do have a lot of friends out there. So Tony, who we both know has moved on firmly to retirement and down in Naples, Florida, having a great time, and I'm so grateful because I wouldn't be here right now if he hadn't said to me, that's a terrible idea.

Jeff, Jeff, sorry to interrupt, but just again, some people, particularly in the US will know the firm very well and maybe talk about treasury strategies and advantage and things. Can you just explain this in a nutshell without. This isn't a sales pitch, but it's going to sound like that. It's more explain what you do, the value you bring, and what sort of projects you guys do, because again, some people might know the bigger consulting firms. How are you guys different to that? What's the situation?

Treasury Strategies was a really interesting firm to join. We're not the Big four, but we're a very large boutique. And our focus is only treasury, which is kind of unique. I remember when I left Wall street and I joined a firm that supported Treasury Departments, a lot of people said to me, what's Treasury? I said, well, it's not buy side or sell side. It's actually the people who issue the debt. It does seem to be more of a niche area, but Treasury Strategies is focused on that. We try and bring a very holistic approach to things. So we have strategic treasury advisory Treasurers can really only hire consultants for certain things. I've asked treasurers, what can you hire a Treasury consulting firm for? And they say, I'd love to hire you for a whole bunch of stuff, but I'm only going to get permission and budget to hire you for certain things. And so you can naturally see that our practice focuses on automation because I think in the last 30 years that I've been involved in treasury, everyone is being asked to do more without adding bodies. The best way to do that is automation and controls the attacks, the attempts are so much worse than they've ever been. And so it's an efficiency and control play to add more automation. And the automation that's available is getting really, really interest. And then the other part is organizations just need strategic advice, things that they wouldn't necessarily know themselves. And so we have a practice that offers strategic advice and very practical advice on structuring your Treasury. What's your staffing? What should your staffing be like? Should you go with a distributed model or a centralized model recently? What's your bank account structure and your card and other aspects of payments? How is that all structured and how can it be optimized? And we're seeing a lot of activity around that these days. So we do a. A lot of the strategic consulting around best practices in Treasury. And then the other aspect of it is helping organizations enact that change. And that usually involves implementing some kind of technology. So you can see in our organization, there's myself and Paul o' Rock. Paul o' Rock grew up in treasury, and I grew up on the financial technology side of things.

And with yourself and thinking about that, where do you see? You touched on it there and all these attacks coming at the people. We've talked about a number of shows before, and one of the nice things I think that really has come out. Is that technology we've talked about, does it replace people? It doesn't replace people. It makes people's jobs more interesting and it makes them, it elevates them as well. So rather than two day to day processes that say 40, $50,000 paycheck and everything else, and that's great, but you can actually bring in the system, it's got resilience, everything else and have one intelligent treasury manager, all treasury manager intelligent, I'll just add that there, but have one person doing a higher level of activity at sort of 75, you know, and the fact is, you know, you're just using those, you know, so you get cost saving sometimes, but also you get resilience and everything else. Is that something you're seeing with organizations as well?

Very much so. Very much so. It's as I like to summarize it down and say it's an efficiency in a control play to put technology in. And that's the way treasury departments are cost centers. So they're always talking about how we're protecting the organization or saving the organization money. And I see tremendous resistance amongst people to enacting treasury, sorry technologies in Treasury. So at a high level, everybody understands why we need the technology. When you go to implement it, that's where we truly see the oars fall off the boat, the engine drops out the bottom and the system gets, the technology gets implemented poorly. And a lot of it is natural human resistance. What people need to recognize is there's no value add to their job in a Treasury Department to be gathering data and consolidating data. And an awful lot of people have that as their jobs and they feel threatened when the technology is going to take that away. And they need to, as you pointed out, they need to embrace the change because that job is going away. There is absolutely no reason to have people gathering data and putting it in spreadsheets and preparing cash positions. You need to embrace how the technology can help you do that. So you're the master of the technology and now you're able to add the value. Add. Most treasurers say, when I go to the CFO, the CFO says, why did we have to hire all these MBAs? Because they're very, very smart people, they're highly educated, we're paying them a lot of money. How are they adding value to the organization? You need to focus on that. You need to focus on how you can get yourself away from gathering information and presenting it so that you can then analyze it and make really effective decisions with it.

Jeff, you say that there is a role. I think that role is diminishing. You know, when I'm sitting here in the recruiter's chair and I agree, it used to be, you know, I am seeing people in those sort of roles being organized out of their jobs, you know, let's put it that way, because they're not. You've got to embrace this change. Otherwise probably treasury is not the area for you anymore. That's one of the things I think there is a, you know, I sometimes talk about CFOs, pushing treasurers out the front and being the sort of the scout, if you like, the front man, to look at technology, look at different initiatives, blockchain, all that stuff coming up. But I would actually say that when they bring it back and they've got those people to enact it, if the people haven't got the agility of mind and aren't able to be jump on, and it's not just, you know, trend setting and joining in with the trends and everything else, I think there's much more. I think that, you know, flexibility of thought, far more than 10, 15 years ago, is a key thing in treasury nowadays. You know, I get that when I talk to candidates, talk to clients and try and source candidates for them, they're saying, well, Mike, how agile is their thinking? And, you know, I would, I would never have been asked that 10 years ago. What that's not on a job spec, you know, it wasn't 10 years ago, it is now. And they, you know, and I then, you know, one of the things I push back to them said, well, they want this agility of thought. But sometimes I have to ask them, how are you going to measure that interview? I think that's where they sometimes struggle. They come up with some tests. I think you can get it from past achievements. Have you led a project? Well, tell us about how you dealt with these difficult situations, difficult people, which I wanted to come onto with you, but I think that's certainly changed. Have you not seen that yourself? Because you've got a number of guys that work alongside you and for you and with you, that's a key thing with you guys, isn't it? The sort of Agile thinkers, I think, oh, absolutely, absolutely.

And when I look at a Treasury organization, and if there are junior people listening to this podcast and senior people, there is a. At a junior level, you need to understand how to make the machine run. You need to understand what treasury is about and how to use the technology that's presented as efficiently as possible. To make that happen in a both efficient and controlled way. In order to move up, you have got to be adept. When treasurers say to me, do you know people? And that's how we met, right, Mike, you were looking for some people, and I know a lot of people. So when treasurers say, what am I looking for? Well, at any level within the organization, when you're hiring, they're looking for people that both understand finance and have the ability to adopt the technology. And the organizations that don't have enough of those people are the ones that are just slogging along, and people are wondering why everybody's spending so much time every day doing something and they're not getting anywhere. The organizations I see that get the very best usage out of their technology are the ones where everyone on their staff understand this is what has to happen. And they're facile enough in their ability to use the technology that they can leverage it without letting it take over. And I'll give you an example. I was having drinks and dinner with an assistant treasurer the other night, and he was showing me how they had adopted Microsoft BI to prepare a dashboard that shows them absolutely everything the senior finance people need to see. He was the assistant treasurer, and he was up to his elbows in creating and building this thing. The fun thing about it is this is the second iteration. A year ago, he showed me the prior version that showed how their working capital was upside down. And everybody was arguing, oh, no, no, it's not upside down, and don't get involved in it because you're crossing three lines of business. And he said, no, this is very, very important to the organization. Working capital is a huge focus these days. He was able to put something out there that showed that they were paying early. Even though they didn't know they were paying early, they were paying early. They were able to adjust a few things and save millions and millions of dollars. And then this is the second iteration of it. And he was so excited because he pulled up his cell phone and he said, do you want to see our cash position? And he was just flipping through screens on his cell phone, and they're able to do that. They were able to walk into the CFO's office and say, you now have a dashboard. He was able to adapt technology, understand that technology, wasn't afraid of the technology, and was able to prepare something that was so valuable to his organization. And I can guarantee you this guy will be a treasurer in a few years somewhere else or maybe at his organization when the treasurer retires. But it's masters of technology. It's a prerequisite, I think, for a senior level position these days.

I agree. But just then reflecting more internally and let's just turn that sort of that spotlight around a moment. So the guys that you as a firm and advanced treasury strategies, when you're recruiting, when you're looking at those teams of people that you bring on board for yourselves, are you thinking, I want someone more quantity, more sort of technical, that can write vba, do macros and stuff, or are you still looking? Actually, it's more the consulting skills that they can bring to bear again, because obviously you lead this consulting practice. What makes then what are you looking for those consultants? That is what makes a good treasury consultant, would you say?

So what do we look for? Well, it's different. We recognize that we need different skill sets. Everyone that joins has to be a consultant, has to understand what consulting is, and that is difficult. A lot of people are in a career and they say, I know a lot of things and I could be really, really valuable at conveying these things. So we have a lot of assistant treasurers and treasurers that want to work with us, and some of them can't. But there's also a discipline to it. You have to stay on budget. You have to understand what needs to get done and how to get it done for the client within the budget that's allocated. And in some cases, that's a really difficult discipline for some people that have come in from the outside also. What do we look for? Well, we look for different people because we help organizations implement technology. We need project managers, we need people who understand the technology. So we do source people from the financial technology space for some of the jobs we have. But we also need people that really, really understand Treasury. And so we source people from treasury departments in the market. And, you know, the thing I'm most proud of is we take kids out of college, we give them their first job and we give them a lot of experiences. And as we're doing that, we're looking at where their skill set lies. Are they good writers? Right. You know, at the end of the day, we all have to produce something and we need good writers. Some people are fantastic with the technology, like Excel and some of the other tools that, you know, we have databases with information in it, and it's really key to be able to extract that information and use it in different ways. And that's something that a good consulting firm of our type has the data, so you need people that can do it. Some of Those people aren't particularly good at writing. So you need a group that can fulfill the whole requirement. And so there's no one size fits all when it comes to our consulting firm or quite frankly, any other organization.

Is diversity of different. Yeah. Sort of a blended skill set, if that's the right way.

Yes. And, you know, hopefully, if done properly, the talents of the group really enhance each other and are so much greater for the whole by embracing the fact that we're all different and we all have different skills.

Yeah. Okay. And, you know, just as we, you know, we're not quite. Quite at the end yet, I just wanted to come back in and sort of where you see the future of, well, two things, really. The future of treasury, obviously, we've. We've seen. We talked a lot about technology, but how you see it developing as well. I know that, for instance, again, we spoke before and you've got involved in a number of associations with Treasury Management Associates, New York. Where do you see those adding value as well to people? Because again, I'm speaking a number of times next year over this year, rather, in Chicago, got Texas and potentially New York and things. I love it because it's amazing to get involved with those treasury communities. But I also find it sort of a real springboard for some of my thoughts. And when I'm there, I meet guys and they said, oh, yeah, this is where I see something. It's great. I get more podcast guests, get more people who are, you know, fresh thinkers and saying, right, this is where treasury is going and things like that. Where do you see that sort of treasury going, as it were. And, you know, do you see that? Do you get that a lot when you go to these conferences? Is that why you do it as well?

Yeah, we're really big on thought leadership, and I truly enjoy that aspect of my job above many of the other parts. We do a lot of studies. That's how you and I started chatting about this.

Yeah.

Is, you know, we talk to a lot of people about what they're trying to do and what they think is about to happen. We have our state of the treasury profession we're getting ready for in a couple of weeks. I'm interviewing treasurers. It's just absolutely fantastic. I see the, like, the Treasury Management association in New York, which I'm a board member of and I'm a big adherent of, is a community, as you've pointed out, where people can share information. Organizations are competitive with each other, but the treasury departments tend to share information because treasury is More of a community. And so back in the day, I remember, all right, Coca Cola and Pepsi Treasuries probably didn't talk to each other, but you'd be surprised how many Treasuries do talk to each other. Aren't you guys competitors? And they say, no, no. Yes, as an organization, we're competitors. But when it comes to treasury and Finance, there are best practices and we all have to be united against the things that are bad that are going on out there. So when it comes to payment fraud and the various attacks, the bad players in the world have figured out that treasury and Accounts Payable are the groups within an organization that can send money. So you have to make sure that your organization has a lot of controls in place to stop that from happening. And on that theme, I would say, look, there's no such thing as perfection when it comes to this, and it's an ongoing thing.

Keep moving forward. So then, yeah.

What do I see changing in Treasury? Well, I think the automation will continue to be there. I also see the treasurer and the treasurer's department taking a larger role within the firm. I can't tell you over the last three years how many treasurers have said, our objective for this year is to become more of a strategic partner throughout the organization to help the organization. Because treasury understand things like payments. And if you're structuring a deal for this company, our company, and you are thinking, well, we can do it this way or that way. In a lot of cases, treasury can participate in that conversation and say, make sure that when you get to the payment, part of this or some other aspect that treasury has a lot of experience with, that you do this and not that. And I'll give you an example. In insurance, a lot of the organizations say it's life insurance. When somebody comes in to take that policy, they want to get the payment as fast as possible. Because if that person goes home and doesn't gets a chance to reflect on it, they may not act. So they want to take a credit card and they want to keep that credit card on file and they want to accept that card. Treasurers of those organizations have gone back to the organization and said, look, there's a cost to taking credit cards and there's a reduction in the income we get, and it actually messes up our actuarial function. The profitability of these deals is dramatically reduced because you've done that. And so there's an example of how treasury has gone out in the organization and helped, and it helps with working capital management and I'm seeing Treasury Departments get things that traditional treasurers didn't have. I mean they've got the risk and the insurance. In a lot of cases I'm seeing AP get bundled in with treasury because it is a relationship with the bank and it is a payment and the treasurer is better suited to make sure that that payment stream is protected versus maybe some other parts of the organization. And so we are seeing treasurers scope within the organization broadening and that will continue to happen.

So we're coming to the end of today's show. Jeff been brilliant and we will do. I've already spoken to Jeff in previous weeks that I want to do some more special edition shows and someone said the other day, they said, oh, you know, when are you going to do this? When I get another couple of, you know, extra hours in the day. But what we have managed to do and please say we've, we've batch recorded, got quite a few really good interviews like this with great treasure professional like Jeff in the bank. But I'm going to then get Jeff on just a bit more about deep diving on treasury technology and why bother, you know, and trying to bring that to life a little bit. But it's more of a separate show than going through Jeff's career as we have. So that'll be coming up. But as we reflect today back on your, you know, looking back at your LinkedIn profile, you've done it, you know, everything from programming and Fortran forming a translation. I do remember that from my computer science A level. That was it. That's the about, that's about the only thing I do remember there. But you know, through to now and you know, sort of board member, you know, T money and managing MD at Treasury Strategies Director. Looking back and someone looks across at your LinkedIn profile, do you know what? I'd love a career like that. And they may be further down and what are the pieces of advice you would sort of pull out from that or the nuggets you would offer to people listening today?

Okay, that's again a very broad question. You know, when I reflect, as I joked a little earlier, gee, if I hadn't changed, if I hadn't accepted that opportunity or if I hadn't accepted this opportunity, I'd be in a very different place today. I try not to dwell on that because it's not a productive way to go. A couple of things that I found that I give as advice that maybe I don't take as often as I should are one is to find mentors there Are mentors within your organization? There are mentors outside of your organization. You should have both, because you need to know how to navigate within the company and outside the company. I never developed them in the beginning as strongly as I could have. I remember many years ago a very senior person at the investment bank offering to guide me, and I didn't take him up on it. And I'm cringing at that thought. So as I've gone along, I have developed an excellent group of people that I ask their opinion on things, and I give this as advice to people. And you know what? They don't have to be mentors. They can be sources of information. I know most treasurers I talk to say, I'm struggling with this issue. Do you know somebody else who's. Who's struggling with it or has solved it? And I'm constantly putting treasurers in touch with each other. All right, are they mentors? No, but they're sources of information. They're relationships. So foster as many relationships as you possibly can and then going along with that. I remember being in a course, and I can't remember which course it was, but one of the takeaways from it was, avoid gossip and politics. And it's just so easy, especially if you're not happy with what's going on. To get sucked into this and causing people to resent you or be negative towards you will not benefit you later in your career. At the very least, if they say, you know what, that person was neutral and didn't jump on the bandwagon with the sticks and the pitchforks and the torches. They just were doing what was best for the organization. They were professional. They were focused on. On their career and what was best. I find that the people that are like that have succeeded far beyond many others. And then I always like to say, find a way to add value. You know, as an organization, if we did this, it will benefit the organization, because you might actually be giving away work to another group that isn't your group. But if you're constantly focused on finding value for the organization, the organization will find a better role for you. So don't be afraid of saying, I understand what our company is focused on. I understand what our role is within the company, and I've got some ideas for how to improve that. Even if it's not directly beneficial to you, somebody's going to recognize that you are acting in the best interest of the organization, and they're going to find a better place for you. And if they're not smart enough to do that at your organization. They may leave and go somewhere else and say, that person was the one I want to work with me going forward. And they'll pull you with them. And I'm sure, Mike, you see a lot of that going on when you play treasurer. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of other people join.

Yeah. And they bring with them their sort of. Well, and funnily enough, it links into your first point. You. So, you know, the points there. You know, if you get the opportunity to have a mentor and all those people, you know, they get a mentor, and then either they stay with their mentor, perhaps in a couple of roles, because, you know, they'll go with them as part of their journey, sort of journey hand in hand, and then it's never going to help you by gossiping about them or getting involved in any politics in general terms, because it's. It sort of always backs fires. But then, as you say, if you keep on focusing on that giving value, you know, you can't go wrong.

You can't. I know people that are retiring, which means I'm getting close to that age. I'm still looking for mentors. I'm still looking for people that are out there that will give me good advice. And I guess as I've gotten older, I realize how many things I've gotten wrong in my life, and I'm more accepting of the fact that listening to somebody else might. Might really be valuable. It's a very nice way to get through problems that you're going to have, whether personally or professionally, where you don't have to do it all on your own.

Well, I have my own business mentor, and he's Chris Ducker, who actually was my social media mentor, if you like, when I originally created the podcast. And that was a big thing, and. But then I graduated part with Chris, you know, sort of thing, in a way, and then went, you know, back to my Cranfield business mentor, and he really helped us with the company. I think that's. I mean, of all the takeaways today, I think that really, you know, resonates certainly with me. And I think a lot of people out there should, you know, if they're listening to this on their journey into work or on the way home or things like that, and thinking, just think of one person you might reach out to and say, do you know, can we meet for a coffee? Can you get a bit of advice? And these people, they like to be asked, you know, it's nice to be able to share. So I think that's the great thing. So, Jeff, amazing advice. Thank you very much for today. We'll put the link to Jeff's LinkedIn profile in the show notes and look forward to catching up with you in the future, sir.

Yeah, Mike, I look forward to some of those specialty conversations.

Yes. Having good fun as well. All right, Your stuff. Thanks very much, Jeff.

Cheers.