Empowering Newcomers to the World of Treasury with Thomas Balish

Foreign.

To this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show.

Be on the other side of that today.

So you can, you can now give them a lesson or two and say, yep, this is my world. Welcome to my world. So you did that and then another interesting move, you know, natural move from that to writing and, and then teaching. So give us a carry on the.

Next two to three years after banking and I decided that banking wasn't ultimately for me and wanted to do some other things in life and the next two to three years weren't necessarily, you know, the straight path on a Treasury finance career. I really got off that path. I'd always wanted to write. I tried to write a novel. The problem was I just wasn't very good at it and, and so ultimately scrapped that. But I, but in the meantime I did meet my wife who was also a writer. So that actually turned out to be pretty good. But then I ended up teaching high school for a couple years out in la. Had a great experience, was teaching with my wife and so forth. But then I said, you know, look, we, I've got to kind of get my career back on track, get back to what I really enjoyed in finance without being a banker and ended up back at my, where I went to graduate school at Harvard University and ultimately ended up in the treasury function at Harvard University.

Tell us about that treasury role because that was sort of, you started within sort of more finance and then got into treasury or re going into treasury if you like or talk us through the progression there.

So at Harvard, everybody knows the academic excellence at Harvard. It's a big place. It's a big complex place. I think last I looked, you know, their, their revenues from the college are somewhere north of 4 billion and that's a dated number. It's probably much larger than that. And there's a massive endowment investment fund at Harvard in the Treasury Group. I initially started on the capital market side. At that time we had debt of about $6 billion and it was mix of taxable tax exempt debt, which is the special nonprofit tax exempt debt in the US Swaps commercial paper. So a whole range of funding vehicles and it was quite a complex debt portfolio. But with my background in banking and so forth, I really enjoy that part of it and it gave me the exposure for the first time Being in a Treasury team, seeing cash management, seeing the strategic parts of it, but again, it's in a nonprofit. So not in your standard corporate treasury world, but quite a fascinating institution to be part of.

And what was treasury like there? And what I mean by that is not necessarily the setup, if you like, but I've spoken to a number of people and as you say, we've had different people on the show that have been in different higher education type roles and different universities. And you've got that diversity as well of international versus very domestic. You know, what was the balance like there? Because obviously, you know, everyone thinks we know, you know, what Harvard's about, but you can tell us something different.

Maybe there are some international programs, but those are fairly minor compared to the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is, I think, a, a fairly standard higher ed setup, except for the fact that there are many, many different schools. It's a, you know, somewhat of a decentralized operating model, but, but treasury was centralized. And so I think other than that, pretty standard treasury functions, cash management. A lot of complex debt in the sense of when you, not to get too technical, when you enter the tax exempt debt market, you have a lot of obligations to demonstrate that what you're financing qualifies for tax exempt debt. There's some things that do, some things that don't. And so it's quite a, it's quite a technical area. And so that was important for what we were doing there. I was there. One interesting story. I mean, I was. One of my memories of Harvard is I was there during the 2008 crisis when we remember over the weekend Lehman went out of business and all the capital markets went crazy. Do you remember? I mean, in sitting in the. And this was. I was essentially the assistant treasurer at that time. And I remember sitting in the president of Harvard's office late on a Friday night with the treasurer, with the head of the Endowment, some of the senior management at the Endowment, just talking about, like, what does this mean for Harvard? What does this mean for the Endowment? What does this mean for Treasury? And, you know, obviously we got through it and got through it well, but that was, I'm sure everybody that was working in treasury at that time has some very distinct memories of those, of those days and weeks following that, you know, that crisis.

And it wasn't, it was weird. I was running, you know, I was running the treasury recruitment. We were called Mr. Recruitment at the time, but I was running the company at the time. And this all started to crash. And remember sitting with my ex colleague at the time and just sitting and said, well, what do we do? And actually there was very little you could do looking out. You know, you couldn't have an input to it. You were not a victim of it, but you were just sort of on the sidelines and thought, right, we'll see where the, you know, the waves go from here and what, what's going to happen. But I remember thinking, okay, we're running a recruitment, a Treasury recruitment business in this and wow, we, you know, we would just then rode those waves and waves of stuff. But I remember just sitting there going, right, what do we do now? Well, I think eventually we just went, let's go to the pub. There's not much else we can do except for wait for all the repercussions. And it's sort of, it's like one of those massive crashing waves and then it's sort of. And then the next one, and then the next one they get, you know, you just, you just sat there, didn't you? And that's. We got through it.

There are some scary moments for sure. And we ultimately ended up coming into the, you know, Harvard was a triple A rated institution. So we had a lot of ability to access the market. And we were actually among the first to go back into the bond market across the spectrum because of our rating. We like to think it helped open the bond markets back up for others. But it was tense and it was, it was one of the most interesting times that I've had in my treasury career was that period, even though it was pretty stressful.

Well, you know, that was a stressful bit, you know, but you're an institution like that, all this rating and everything else. And then he thought, let's go into, let's go into the corporate side, you know, then talk us through the move to Staples and everything else.

So at Harvard was a, was a great experience, but I was also thinking longer term in my career and did I want to really want to stay in higher education or in one institution? And a role opened up at Staples, an assistant treasurer role, and, you know, I went for it. Staples, as many of your listeners know, is an office superstore. At the time that I was there, was operating, I think, in 26 countries around the world. So not just a US or North American company, but significant operations in Europe, China, South America, et cetera. It was a really interesting place to be. And so one of the things that attracted me was the international operations as well. And, and that was the first time I had worked in an international A company that was truly international. And that was an amazing change for me in that I remember the first time I was part of a meeting with our tax, international tax folks, accounting, legal. We used to get together every month and have a very detailed meeting about what was going on in our world in the international side. And there was so much terminology going on in that meeting. I had no idea what they were talking about. They were talking about all the different tax rules and guidelines and all the restructuring we were planning and et cetera. And I literally walked out of there saying I caught about 30% of that conversation. I had to go back and have people explain to me what they were talking about. And I really, I had to get an international tax 101 lesson. But you know, in, in retrospect, I mean, it's, that was incredibly important experience for me professionally. Learning the, the way an international business works, learning about tax and international tax planning, working with folks across different cultures. At Staples, I ran a team out of Belgium who ran an in house bank in internal to Staples. It was an in house bank. Got to manage an international team. All tremendous experiences. But, but certainly in the first few months it was a really steep learning curve. Luckily, the treasurer who hired me had the confidence that I would figure it out and ultimately I did.

Was it always PLC in a public company at that time? I know it's now a private group. Did you go through that or was.

Yeah, the whole time I was there was a public company. Shortly after I left, they were taken private.

Right, okay, so you left the building there. So that's it. Right, let's change things now. Now he's gone. That's it. That's right. And then you and I actually, you know, first got to know each other when you then weren't and worked for Bright Horizons. So can you then talk us through the move? And again, you've got some great experiences, but you describe it better than me at Staples.

I had a great career there. But one thing that happened was at a point along the way, probably back to when I was at Harvard, I decided, you know what? I want to be a treasurer. And I was essentially the assistant treasurer at Harvard. I came to Staples as assistant treasurer. And of course I think anybody who has that ambition is looking for the opportunity to move into a treasurer role. And I do think it's a significant jump because, you know, you do have overall responsibility for the function. And at Staples, the treasurer that I worked with moved to another role. But the, the, the tax and treasury functions were com. Under who was the person that was the head of tax at that time, who was a tremendous guy and I understand why that was done. But it also closed the door for me about being treasurer at Staples. And I certainly didn't make any quick moves. But when the right opportunity came along to be the treasurer at Bright Horizons, I took that. And so again, Bright Horizons is a child care company, primarily runs a whole bunch of childcare centers, nuSeries across the US, the UK and the Netherlands primarily. And again with really taking care of, I think over 100,000 children a day. So it's quite a, quite a large company. But I took on the treasurer role there and was a great opportunity to experience the responsibility and the, I guess, the challenges of being a treasurer at a public company.

And what was that like in terms of, you know, you've gone in, you're at that public company ethos, you've got this, you've walked in, you're drawing from all your different experiences. And I want to make sure we get, you've got some other great things to share later on, but I want to get through this. But the question I have for you there is what was it like? And what I mean by that is, you know, again, we hear from a lot of the treasurers come onto the show and you were into that first treasurer job. What was your checklist, what was the thing? Right, where's the cash, where's this? What, you know, what are our risks? Or how did you do it, how did you get in there?

The way that I approach this, and I think some of your guests have said similar things to this, but I thought in terms of, you know, the first three months, the first hundred days, let's say, and that I want to spend the first hundred days really doing a deep diagnosis of where the company was, where the treasury team was, understanding the company, understanding the culture, understanding, yes, cash flow, banking structure, foreign exchange, risk, the debt, which is a very important piece, and understanding what the priorities of my CFO were. And then at that I set the target for myself that I'm going to have a, at least a high level plan, action plan that I would then go to my CFO with and talk through. This is my action plan, this is what I need, this is what I intend to accomplish over the next year to two years and then trying to execute that plan, selling it and executing it and looking for, you know, and this is again, has been said before, but looking for wins along the way to build credibility and to build momentum for the plan. So that's what I did. And there were a lot of, you know, I think anytime, no matter how good the treasury team is, when someone new comes in, they're going to have a fresh opinion and a fresh view of the way things are done, because they'll have seen different. Different companies and had different career experiences. And I certainly saw some easy wins. There were lots and lots of bank accounts that were somewhat unnecessary. Well, definitely were unnecessary. And so we streamlined those. We re looked at the whole debt portfolio. I also owned a number of other pieces to do with the equity plan and our share buybacks and a lot of those types of things. We really moved from, I would say, competence to excellence. And that's really where I wanted to take the team. And I did that for about two years. I felt got the team and the treasury function working quite well. And then from there I got the opportunity, Mike, to go over to the UK and be the finance director for our UK business, which was roughly 20% of the bright Horizons business. And so I was essentially the CFO of our international operations in the uk. And that was a very different turn to the treasury career. But, you know, it's one of the. I can hit this now because I think one of the things I wanted to emphasize for people looking for a career in treasury is really to take advantage of opportunities that come up and to make sure you're communicating that to the people around you, especially your boss, but other folks as well. What happened was, I mean, I had really, I think, accomplished many of the things that I thought we really needed to get done in treasury over a couple years. And I was talking to my boss, the cfo, and said, I'm looking for something more, like, what else can I do? How else can I contribute? How can I add value? And this role popped up in the uk, and initially I said, hey, if you need me to step in for a few months, I'm happy to do this for a few months, or if you need me to go over to the UK every couple weeks for a few months, I'm happy to do it. And that evolved into, well, you know, Tom, why don't you consider taking the job? Ended up, you know, a few months later, I'm selling my house and moving to the UK with my family.

And you only came here for the beer. I mean, you know, we're going to let you off, that's fine. And the weather, the beer and the.

Weather, the village pub was a main factor in my happiness in the uk.

It always is. You know, I'm not Judgin. I'M agreeing. I love it. So you, you loved the English weather so much, you stayed for a couple of years and then, you know, and again, I don't want to get to the end of the show. So you know, you went, then you transferred back to the US after a period of time. Well, talk us through.

Yeah, I think what happens often, and you probably know this is better than anybody, but I think often people take an international assignment, they move somewhere and then they come back to the main office and things have changed. Someone else was managing the treasury team and so I started working on a number of corporate projects that were very interesting. I thought we were creating a lot of value and moving things along and some different CEO priorities. But it was also wasn't really in my wheelhouse and I thought that I could really contribute more significantly in back in a Treasury role somewhere at another company. And so I started looking around for opportunities, saw that the Boston Consulting Group was looking for a treasurer. Very quickly got involved in that search process and ended up coming into Boston Consulting Group about three years ago.

Tell us about the group. You know, I know a bit about it, we've already had a pre chat but tell us about what it's like there for you as you know, as a firm and then drill down into you and treasury there. What was it like?

The Boston Consulting Group is quite an amazing place. We have about, as you said in the intro, about 22,000 employees around the world. Truly a global company, not just a multinational. The way that we operate, the way that we manage the where our clients are all over the world and we want to add value to our, our clients, add massive value to our clients because you know, and that's our, that's our reason for, reason for existing. And so everything is very, very focused on our clients, on serving our clients. And we do that through having, you know, hiring extremely bright, competent people who are on the cutting edge of all types of corporate developments. And we're talking about helping companies do everything from big transformations to becoming more agile to digitize AI is a big theme. Meeting the challenges of climate and sustainability. And also we have quite a thriving CFO excellence practice where the teams here go in and help finance functions, CFOs and finance functions really meet the challenges of their, of their business, transform themselves to, you know, world class operations and help them through very big changes and also help them set their strategies and coordinate the CFO strategy with the rest of the business.

So Tom, based on that, sorry to jump in, I mean but you know, based on that you know, the treasury being the treasurer, there must be a breeze, you know, just feedback, you know, leading consulting firm. This is us. Yeah, we got this. Yeah. What was that like when you come into the treasury, you know, given that high bar and everything else? And again, I do this tongue in cheek because we've already spoken about it and things, but, wow, that's, you know, so that's a bar to sort of reach and excel at, isn't it? What's that like for you?

I would say that what we have our clients do and what we had been doing internally, you know, sometimes are not completely consistent and just in the fact that our resources are on serving our clients. And then when we, when we look internally, we may not be doing the best practices, we may not be a best practice operation in the finance area. And I think when I, when I got here, I would say that treasury was, was well run, but there were definitely areas for improvement and quite significant improvement. And I think that's true in the finance function, too. And to be honest, in the last two to three years, we have really focused on transforming our whole finance function. And we're in the midst of this transformation to get to not only best in class, but really being out front in the digitization space, the AI space, just organizationally and frankly, using some of our consultants on our internal processes and our internal finance function as well.

So you can utilize that. Yeah, and bring those guys in to make an impact internally as well.

We have used especially our CFO Excellence practice a couple times to come in and look at some of our treasury processes. And, you know, they've been incredibly helpful and they are able to benchmark against many, many other firms and what other. And let us know what other firms are doing, you know, not by name, of course, but what's the trends. The trends are in the industry. So that's, that's really helpful and it's quite a great resource. And I have a good relationship with our, with our CFO Excellence team.

We talked before and you've had got. So you've already alluded to some of the treasury career advice you've given, but you said to me before, said, oh, Mike, I've got half a page of notes where I've, you know, things that have come up since we had our chat. I mean, I'm like, that's golden for me. I'm like, yes, great. You know, sort of rather than sometimes when I'm talking to guests and they're trying to get their heads around it. So let's dive into that if that's the right thing to do now. So maybe what are your thoughts? You've listened to a few of the podcasts or what do you think people should be thinking about?

The way I've thought about this is for someone that's starting in a Treasury career or maybe mid level or upper senior level, that's really, I'm targeting folks that are not necessarily treasurers at this point. And what I have a few things that I jotted down that I think are important and you know, I've shared these with different people along the way, but it does make me think I want to have this discussion more specifically with my team as well. But I think one of the main things, if you want to progress to a role, a senior role, like a treasurer role or a high level treasury role, you really have to demonstrate mastery of all different aspects of Treasury. So if you have come up, as I did on the debt side, I had to learn cash management. If you come up on the cash management side, you need to learn about capital structure, you need to learn about debt, about FX equity, you know, share buybacks, all the different pieces of Treasury. And so I think it's really important that if you are in coming up in one of these areas that you take every opportunity you can to get outside of those silos and to learn more about the, you know, the people across the hall who are, who are doing a debt offering. Well, how can you be involved in.

That and how are you doing that or how are you enabling people to do that alongside their day jobs and you know, the greatest respect, but what if they're, you know, highly pressured at their own job and they're saying, yeah, I'd love to, you know, get more involved in the cash management and talk to our cash manager, but I've got all this other stuff. What, what sort ways you know, you've got to this level. This is brilliant. You've got all these bits in your toolkit, but they're going, well, I want to add that to my toolkit, but where do I find the time? Where do I, you know, you know, yes, you can study maybe in the educational bit, but you're talking about more practical experience from sounds. But, you know, how would you suggest that they people elicit that? Or what's a good way you would think about doing it?

There's not a great answer there, Mike. I wish there was, but you have to make it a priority. I think it's one of these. I think it's very valuable at certain points and it's probably every few months to step back and really assess where you are in your career and where you want to go. You have to have a goal. At one point I set the goal, I wanted to be a treasurer, and that as opposed to I wanted to go work for some other company or do some other role. When I set the goal that I wanted to be a treasurer, it meant I had to check these various boxes. And then once you, once you really clearly articulate that goal, those opportunities pop up and you can, you can jump on them. I think of one example, it's a little bit different, but when I was at Staples, there was a divestiture we were doing. It's a somewhat complex out of Europe. And there, there was kind of a lack of leadership on organizing the divestiture. And I experienced this from a Treasury side like I didn't know what was going on. Where were we in the process, what was happening, who was leading it? And nobody seemed to want to take charge of this divestiture and project manage it. And I eventually went to my boss and the CFO and said, I'll do this. If you need someone to do it, can I just step in and help do this divestiture? And it was not something I've ever done, but I just learned a tremendous amount from doing that and being part of that whole process that helped me learn about the business, meet work across functionally with a whole bunch of different folks. And I think those opportunities pop up. So you have to be, you know, people have to be aware of that, but you have, you have to know where you're going to know if it would make sense to do something like that.

Tom, we spoke before the show and you said, you know, we need to have a bit more mic chat. And I'm not going to dive in full both feet, but it's an interesting one and I was just reflecting what I'd asked the question. I was not an unfair question, but I think there is an element there to the listeners today. And I'll just relate a personal thing that I've just recently recommitted or committed to this business growth program. And hang on, we run an independent recruitment company and everything else, but that's for us to look at our processes, procedures, and people might say, well, yeah, well, I want to up our service levels. And it's actually looking at us and saying, right, where are we now? But where do we want to be in the future? We could just carry on as we are, but you know, a lot of the value add Stuff that we do, not dissimilarly to you guys, is, you know, about the salary survey, is about the advice about the career stuff. I want to do more of that because it makes it more interesting for me and for the guys that work with me and alongside me. And what's. It's better for you, my client, you know, that we can offer you the, the total market leading advice to, you know, look to a Boston consulting group and go, wow, wouldn't it be as, you know, good to even aspire to be that much better sort of thing? And, and I think, you know, going back to what you just said, there is, you know, that's where I think it is. You know, in my mind, it's like, right, you know, where do we want to go next? What do we want to do? Let's push ourselves on. We could, you know, we could just sit there. You know, you could rest on your laurels, but it's, you know, maybe reaching out to those cash guys and things like that. And you said there was a half a page of advice. Have we ticked off most of the boxes or what else are we looking at?

Well, look, I mean, there's a few other ones that I'll just mention. Analytical projects. Get involved in analytical projects. I think presentation skills, you can't underestimate how important those are. Being able to put together a good PowerPoint, good analysis and understanding how that fits together and, and the kind of language that the board speaks and that the CFO speaks and understanding and being able to plug into that. And then, you know, I think I come back to a term that I really like called extreme Ownership. I don't know if you've heard that term, but there's a book, there's a book By a former U.S. navy SEAL, guy named Jocko Willink. Funny name, but he wrote a book called Extreme Ownership where he talks about taking total responsibility for all aspects of your life and your career. And I really believe that you have to do that for yourself. You have to have your own objectives, your own goals, and you have to make yourself 100% responsible for that. And I think if you wait around for other folks to do that for you, I think that's a mistake. And, you know, sometimes it may mean leaving the company that you're where you are, where you're comfortable, to challenge yourself to get to that next level.

Tom, we're approaching the end of today's show. I wish we weren't, and I know that we'll definitely have an English beer when you're next over this side of the Atlantic. But before we do that, as we wrap up, what takeaways are you going to give to people? We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes as we do every week. This is the nice wrap up. Everybody hears it. But you've heard it many, many times, I hope, and like it. But it's, you know, you've given us already a host of takeaways, but any final ones we should, we should finish on today?

No, I think it's just a, it's a, it's a fun journey. I mean, I feel very kind of blessed and pleased with the career I've had, but, you know, along the way it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work too. And it's, if you, I think treasury, the one thing I love about treasury, it's really an interesting place with many facets to it and you're at the heart of the company in many ways. And so it's a great career. And I think if people are considering their careers in the future, moving into the treasury space, staying in the treasury space, I think it's a very fruitful career. But be very intentional about it.

Be intentional. And again, call us and if you want any advice. Tom, thank you for your very giving of his incredible advice. I think it does help when a lot of the guests have actually heard the shows before because you sort of, you know, they know the flow of the conversation and, and it's an advice show and that's exactly where it is. And you know, we will do more when, when I talk a bit more, but it's still about you as a guest and you've been very kind today. And thank you for going through your incredibly interesting story, sir. I thank you for your time again.

Thanks, Mike. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you, sir. So I hope you guys enjoyed that amazing podcast with Tom that was recorded well way back in 2021. Towards the end of 2021, as we're doing, we're bringing back on the show and Tom's, you know, gratefully rejoining me 18 months later. We're middle of 2023, been a bit of time. So I wanted to bring up today Tom's story. He's got some interesting things that are happening at the moment for you amazing listeners today. I hope you enjoy the first part, the amazing twists and turns of his career. Tom, I'm going to hand the microphone back to you. What's happened since then? So that was a year and a half ago. What's been going on with you, sir.

Hi Mike, I'm glad that we're able to connect again. It's good to talk to you and I did re listen to my podcast not too long ago and I still feel like it's held up. I don't think I've changed anything I said back then, so it's good to talk to you. What's been going on since then? Normal corporate treasury things, to be honest. Boston Consulting Group, as the listeners will know, we continue to press on with trying to get to a best in class treasury operation and we're looking at our treasury target operating model and moving towards a more centralized treasury function. It's been quite decentralized, so that's been a lot of work, but a lot of fun, benchmarking ourselves against others, putting a plan together, getting the right resources in place and working through all the internal permissions and politics and so forth to get that moving. So I'm happy we're moving on that. It makes me feel good that we were going to get our arms around the treasury process in the company in a much more robust way.

I was going to say you mentioned we were just speaking a moment ago, that you're expanding your role a little bit or you've been approached about other stuff and you said, yeah, bring it on. What's the current situation?

And in the podcast I talked a lot about really being proactive about looking for other opportunities and exposures and ways to learn and expand the role. Our excellent corporate head of corporate accounting and reporting going out on maternity leave. Very exciting, but she's going to be out for somewhere between six and eight months. My boss asked me to lean in and take over that role while she's gone. And I'm not an accountant, but I'm going to oversee that pretty sizable team and oversee that function for the next six or eight months. And I think it really does go back to what I've said in the podcast, which is I've let my boss know that I'm really interested in continuing to have new challenges and experience new functionality and so forth and learn. Continue to learn quite a bit. So that when I go back to just my treasurer role, I can do it with a better understanding of the way the company's working and and a bunch of new relationships that I'm really excited about.

And with that role, you're taking over from someone that is taking a period out, are you you're not looking to change things, obviously you're not looking to get in the way of different things. What are you keeping everything running? Are you looking at improvements? I know that we're going to talk about improvements in treasury in a minute. What do you think of doing, Mike?

It's a great question and honestly, if I were taking this over for a month or two, I would just say, you know, keep the trains running, let's not worry about making any changes. But this is a significant period of time and lots changes, or a lot of. A lot of things change in six to eight months. So I don't think I can be just approaching this, that we're going to just stay on a steady course. So I'm really engaging with the team, with the accounting team, and we'll see where things go. But no, I'm not afraid to make changes and I would certainly do that in some consultation with our Global Controller or anything to be significant. I'm not about. Just keep keeping things on track as they are today. I'm looking to keep improving, as she.

Would do, frankly, and going back to your. Your home turf, to treasury, as it were. What's it been like for you the past 18 months? Obviously, the world is changing. We just touched on AI briefly, you and I, but, you know, aside from AI, but we'll come into that. But treasury, what's been going on with you guys?

I think one of the major things that all treasurers will have experienced is just the massive change in interest rates over the last 18 months. Certainly there was the whole, you know, there was Russia and then the massive increase in interest rates all around the world, especially in US and Europe, uk, that's forced us all to refocus and really think about how much work is our cash doing. Really being sensitive to borrowing and reassessing that, because the implications of not pooling cash, the implications of poor investing and so forth, are really are magnified compared to what they've been in the last 15 years. Really, that's been an increased focus as well for us, is making sure our cash is really working for us and making sure we're not leaving any crumbs out there that aren't invested properly, at least the best that we can.

And you gave us some great takeaways from last the last show, but you've got some other ones that a new reflection, if you like, what have those been? And quiz you on those a little bit as well.

Mike, we were just talking about this. I think the whole AI revolution that I do believe is coming to some degree, I think that's going to affect treasury pretty dramatically, like it will. A lot of other functions. As treasury folks, I think we need to really start thinking about how this is going to impact us and be proactive with our leadership because I think there's a lot of opportunity here and I think it's an opportunity to get, I think about my team and getting my team working on higher value type of activities and automating a lot of the things that we don't need to be doing on a day to day basis that's highly process oriented. And then honestly, I mean the potential for this. I don't know if people have fooled around with ChatGPT. I think you should if you haven't. And there's a whole range of good podcasts out there, including many by BCG actually, that talk about the potential impact of AI. And I, I would fully admit that I have not delved into it as much as I probably should have, but that's definitely on my agenda over the next few months.

Well, we'll put a link to the BCG podcast actually in the show notes. I'm going to have a listen to that. We have used it and someone asked me the other day, they said, oh well, you're using it, you know, are you not worried? I said no, it adds value. I throw in lots of stuff in there and then it picks out, you know, and I tell it, pick out the salient points, pick out this, look back at some of the other writing I've done. And then I don't just copy paste. I think anyone that copy and paste is an idiot. What you do, you take it that and then go, right, this is going to speed up what I do. And Tom and I were just talking. That was a company, we want to streamline a lot of the processes about finding opportunities for treasury folks out there and everything else. And we've got a developer who's helping us do that. What he's helping us do is so that I can spend more time talking to treasury folk, talking to treasurers out there who are looking to recruit in their team. I can spend time talking to them not doing useless database research. I can actually have qualitative conversations, which is the key thing. And that's not a sales pitch, that's just more getting to do the interesting stuff. And Tom, you and I were just talking there about doing the other interesting stuff. You said there were a couple of other points you had as well to sort of take aways for people.

I think that's probably about it. I mean, you know, again, just back to a lot of the more or less routine treasury pieces. I mean, we're also inputting a new ERP system. It's an opportunity to rethink a lot of the ways that we deliver treasury for the company. We're getting appropriately pushed to consider different ways of operating. We'll come out better on the other end of this.

Fantastic. Well, I'm not going to take any more of Tom's time. I hope you guys enjoyed the first episode, the update. Great guy to have in your LinkedIn network. So reach out. Do connect with Tom again. As we said before the show, can't wait to see you in real life, sir. Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

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