Finding Supportive Mentors in Treasury with Francisco De Barros

Foreign.

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 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.

In this week's show, delighted to be joined by Francisco de Barros, the assistant treasurer at Ingersoll Round. Ingersoll Round, a global market leader with a broad range of innovative mission critical air, fluid energy and medical technologies. Provides services solutions for industrial productivity and efficiency. Merged with Gardner Denver in early 2020. So means they've got more than 300 years of command experience and expertise. But that's my usual pitch at the beginning of the show. Francisco and I, we've known each other for many years. We're going to go back to the beginning of his career a few years ago now, but not too far. We're going to start out with how you first discover finance and then treasury and then we'll bring it up today and then we're going to touch on some interesting topics at the end of the show about technology and people and everything else. So Francisco, back to the beginning, if you would. How did you first ever get into finance post college or what happened? How did you discover it? Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, so I think for me coming out of grad school, Mike, I really, if I think about myself, I'm a person that always liked to put myself outside my comfort zone. So out of college, as most people really didn't know what I wanted to do and at that time an opportunity presented itself to join Tyco International. Some people may recall Tyco was in those companies that know coming out of the America corporate scandal was a lot of changes going on and I was asked to join the audit team. For me, it was a great opportunity right within audit. I was given a chance basically to learn a bunch of different things and meet a bunch of different people. And I thought it was a good opportunity then to make up my mind. I can learn different things and then I can decide what I want to do. So I jumped on that opportunity with the Tyco audit team, I think was probably one of the best decisions I made in my career. I was a company that was going to, as I said, to a lot of turbulence. We saw a bunch of things from financial audits, forensic audits, and we had a great team there. The team was, everybody was new, everybody was eager to learn and you really had to be on top of your game. And be flexible because things change from one day to the other from there on. I got into an engagement where it was a Treasury audit. I ended up leading that audit and that was audit that multi location was domestic in the US and international through part of the audit where in Luxembourg. Doing one leg of the audit and you know doing a diligence. We uncover some things like some weak control weaknesses where it had been missed by some of the external auditors. And I think the treasurer at the time was quite impressed by that and he approached me and asked me if I wanted to join the treasury team. I thought it was exciting because I always like the treasury piece, right. But I, I didn't know anything about treasury and he. His answer was no. If, if you, you know found those things and the weakness controls you're able to spot things that had been missed by expert people or the external auditors, right. As they're seen as have more expertise than internal folks. I'm sure I can teach you. And I when he said he could teach me, I, I jump on that opportunity and I, I let me.

Sorry to interrupt but when you said you really became interested in treasury at that early stage, I just want to grab that. Why, why was it at that stage you'd done an audit which is a great place to start exactly as you say. But you've seen control weaknesses. Oh, it's a bit broken here. Is it that you could go in and fix those things or was it the very nature of treasury or was it both or what was the situation?

I think for me what I realized when I kind of started doing the treasury audit was no treasure, no those no back office if I call function but really touches everything. Mike. Like when you look at the financial statements for a company, right the 10k 10q if people. Not sure how many people have done that but I have like you count how many things I stated there that relates to Treasury EWFX interest income interest expense cash is the notes and bolts of an organization, right. And it's a key component that's silent in the background but provides a lot of no assurance liquidity and support for senior management to move towards their goal. Right. We help to fund it so it was not more the weakness controls the control weakness was something interesting caused to external debt and I think something that people always like about the capital market. But really what treasure meant organization. For me that was the eye opener when I got into that engagement and.

This role you then had to move location as well. So can you talk us through what that was like because you were at the time. Tell us about if you would your background in terms of nationality and things. Just because then as you've got this international moves you really like. A lot of treasury folks have spoken, have gone around the world with treasury and it's taken you around the world. What's that like?

Yeah. So I think I'm originally from Brazil. I came to the US to do my undergrad and graduate studies and kind of end up staying. But from, from a career perspective, when I was doing audit I was in, in Boca Raton, Florida. Right. And the opportunity came up to move to Luxembourg to join the team there. And in my career I have always been very conscious about no learning the experiences that are the building block of the experiences that you need to take, you know, long term where you wanted to be. So the opportunity was no to join the treasury team, which kind of that point I really wanted to join location wise was, was in Luxem again. You know, most folks kind of would at the time they're kind of surprised that I was waiting to move from Florida into Luxembourg. But for me it's going outside of comfort zone. I feel that always when you push yourself more, you can learn something. So for me was twofold. One was I knew I was going to learn a whole new function which was kind of discomfort but exciting and also the cultural change. Right. Leaving the US which was a culture I was used to and was my first international assignment into Europe and I learned a great deal from how teams in Europe, at least in Luxembourg, how that know culturally how that works and also the function of treasury and my very first basic role. It's what I call, what I call refer to as know the foundation of treasury, which was treasury operations right there I was kind of setting up no cash pools, back office structure to no FX trading and settlement. So was really, really the, the, the notes and bolts of, of a foundation of a Treasury organization. So was. It was a great like say way of dipping my toes into the treasury space.

And then you sort of did a couple of years there. No, only a year or so and you're in a bit. But then you had to move back. Talk us through the promotion or how it, how it sort of developed, if you would.

Yeah. So I think I'll take back to what I said in the beginning. Right. So Tyke was a very fast paced organization. Right. A lot of changes going on because of everything else going on with the organization. So after we moved to Luxembourg, I think no, shortly. It's a funny story because when we moved to Europe. My wife, for whatever reason, she said no, she Luxembourg, she go to anywhere near, but she did not at the time want to move to Switzerland. We got to Luxembourg and with now a month into the assignment, I got a call from the treasurer and he said no, I had to move to Switzerland because they now are in a position that they're comfortable that they could consolidate both offices. Right. And drive synergies from it. So I had to convince my wife to move to Switzerland, which now at the beginning was not easy. After a while, once we moved, she loved it. She didn't want to leave Switzerland. But then we moved to Switzerland. No one really in the team wanted to move when Luxembourg wanted to move to Switzerland. So I was basically the only one that moved to Switzerland. So my, my role not was only learning the treasury piece of the front office in Luxembourg, but I had to learn everything that that team was doing because I was transferring that to Switzerland. So I moved to Switzerland where I spent another year or so kind of, you know, training the team and integrating both offices. And then an opportunity came up with my next treasury role which was the internal funding. Right. And that was more related to intercompany loans and deposits and intercompany dividends and a lot of the M and A activity that was going within Tyco. Right. So for me, despite having to move once again, that was an opportunity to add another building block to my learning experience. Right. And then we, we decided to, to move back into the US to the corporate headquarters which was in Princeton at the time, to take on that role for the Taekwonds. There's kind of spinning off, you know, what was then Covidian. Right. And then Tyco Electronics. So was a lot of asset divestitures and funding activity going on and they needed someone to, to help to, to build the team and to kind of improve the process around it. And for me it was another learning experience. It was a great experience.

And so as it develops, you know, tell us about the group as well because I don't think we really touched on that the actual industry because what, what challenges that threw to you treasury wise because you were going through a lot of development as well.

Yeah. I think though when you think about some of the more consolidated treasury functions like operations, fx, debt, capital markets, you have a bunch of individuals with expertise that can draw upon when talk about the internal funding. I have seen very few companies had a dedicated team to do internal funding. Internal funding involves not only the treasury piece which know how much dividend can you patriot does it generate effects now? Do we hedge the dividend, so on and so forth. But also from a business perspective, learning the P and L and what the projections are. If you talking about M and A, how much cash you're going to generate, if you're going to divest that business two, three, four months from now and how much you can pull out. So there's a little bit of an fpa, if you will, or business strategy acumen into that role. So finding the individuals that knew a little bit of treasure operations and had the P and L or FPA experience, right? So we had to build a team that was a little bit of a hybrid that we could complement each other and then kind of set the guardrails of the rules of the game. And that's exactly what happened will happen on that team. And for me it was good because I learned a little bit of that P and L and business acumen strategy which kind of took onto my next role, which was outside of Treasury.

When you made that move outside of treasury, was it something you were pushing for or was it just actually I need a wider brief or what was.

The situation Once I felt that the internal funding structure was buttoned down and I had had enough, no solid experience that I drop on from the future, right. Then I started discussions with now senior management and my mentors, right, about what should I do next. And at that point I was really interested in FX and capital markets. They didn't really have a role at the time on that team. The team was fairly new, but Taekwondo, as I said, was divesting a lot of the segments, right. So one of the proposals was they had the flow control division which was going to be divested sometime in the future was for me, hey, why don't you, why don't you go move outside of treasury into this FP and a role for a sub segment of flow control, which was called tycothermal, right? And then you learn a little bit of the FPA and the P and L, right. And that will help you as a backdoor into a kind of rating agency discussion as you kind of try to prepare the rating or the indicative rating for this company that's soon to be public and so on and so forth. So for me it was like, okay, I can learn a little bit the capital markets, how the interactions work and I can learn an entirely new function. Right. And that's why really I decided to take now it was not with a easy decision for me to step out of Treasure cause and they really like. But I Think no as going back to. I think the role and the experience you get at is more important location anything at least for me I decided to take that role and move once again because the role at the time was based in Houston. So we had to move from. From Princeton into Houston. And again I went to work with one of my. My prior mentors. He was my former boss at the audit team which was now the lead finance FP&A for that seg. Always about shows how about building relationships and network and having people trust that you. You can do it right. And an opportunity for you to deliver it and exactly. That's what I jump on when the opportunity presented.

And then you progressed back into treasury or treasury came knocking.

Exactly. So once once the the split or the spin off of Flow control was well right in in the works they appointed the treasurer. What would be treasurer for that division which was my former boss at the old treasury team at Taiko. And he asked me to join treasury back for the flow control division at this time as no. The treasury director for EMEA and apac. Right. And again I would have to move back to Europe which I did. But to help him to split the treasury function from the Tyco Systems and set up a new treasury function for the Flow control which was a business that had different needs than Tyco as a consolidated corporate. I did take on that role. But no, fortunately, unfortunately depends how you see it. Right. Once we moved it was announced that the company was no longer being public but was being acquired or merged with Pentair Inc. So the role that was really supposed to be the grandiose role lost a little bit of meat because Panther had a little bit of different mentality where they tended to outsource some of the treasure operations. I think going through the merger and trying to set up the team was very valuable. But no, I really didn't want to be on a role that was going to be somewhat empty. Going to be more, you know, managing a third party. And I did have a discussion with the Penta treasury at the time which I kind of devised against. Not. Not because of my role. I thought my role was going to be your party because it was not. But because I had seen by being treasured long enough that no, a lot of the people that did treasury service outsourcing, like the banks, right. They have gone out of providing. They stopped providing the service mainly because it's a low margin business. Right. And my concern was if we go down this route and the provider decides to cease no providing the service we are going to be in hot waters to set up an operation very quickly. But that's the decision they wanted to do from a short term cost perspective, I guess. And then for me, I was not being challenged anymore. And that's when I kind of decided to, to move on to my next role which was the spun off of AbbVie from Abbott, which then was different piece where I had to move companies, you know, relocate back to the US and it was very different. Very interesting project because there with Abby and Abbott, we had a two year TSA where basically we had the plan to design the strategy from the ground up. Company had a lot of resources, again, great team, a lot of support from senior management and I think we did great things at AbbVie. I think I'm very proud of the treasury foundation that was laid at AbbVie and he's a big contributor to what ABBVIE is today from a lean machine perspective.

And Francisco, can you just explain for the audience who don't know what ABBVIE is? A lot of people will, some people won't. So you know, and how that differed in treasury terms, you know, so you were previously with Tyco, so you had global exposures and everything else. And you know, the business itself was quite different to AbbVie. You know, explain what difference was if you would.

So Tyco was industrial conglomerate, right? Very, let's say pulverized presence on bank accounts and segments. AbbVie is a pharmaceutical. They are proprietary pharma company that was spun off from Abbott. Very, very top talent, no top technology on the development of their products. But no, from a Treasury perspective, it's simpler in a way that they have very few customers. Customers tends to be mainly governmental entities or a single distributor in a country per country. But no very, but very high exposures to any of those, those individual customers, you know, very cash flow, rich international presence similar to what no ICO had but the different types of need. Mainly because we generate a lot of cash and we didn't have the customer base diversification as compared to industrial conglomerate. Right. I think of as the most retail presence. If you think about that, it's like a wholesale where you have no few touch points from a customer perspective, but different set of challenges right there we got more engaged after sending the foundation. We had a lot of discussions for example, as a lot of new products have been launched. Right. Know a lot of the governments, especially in the developing world. Right. The budgets are somewhat constrained. Right. So how do we use our balance sheet to make the medication affordable? Right. To those people that need and how can you help those local governments to get access to the medication? How do we help them to finance it? Right, So a little bit more on the creative side in trying to partner with the business from a strategy perspective, right? Because the end of the day you want to make sure that people receive the medication, the top care that they need, right? But no, but we still need to make a profit, right? So how do you balance that out.

And how did you, I mean, how was that in treasury terms and what was that like?

So I think in treasury terms, first we set up a very lean operation, right, where I had like full visibility, full connective and access to cash worldwide. So with that piece, kind of with the technology in place, right, and everything working properly, as you may recall Mike, we won in 2005 v1 2015 of Treasury Management International award for the the best technology deployment, right? Then we had the time to do more value add tasks. And that's when you kind of spent a lot of time with the business and the financial controller, me especially like learning what the pharmaceutical market is, how the industry operates, right. And then showing to the country CFOs and financial leaders in the commercial side that we could add value. Right. So once start building that report, then they start coming to us to bounce ideas for the challenge that they may have. Right now I have this customer that how do I get them to, to pay? How do I get some security? Can we do some type of financing to help to facilitate? Not financing, but like payment terms, like extended payment terms. How much does it cost me? Can we do something to hedge that risk? And we're kind of working with our internal partners and the external partners in the banks. We kind of came up with creative solution, right. Sometimes you come with a solution and the business says no, does work or there's a challenge here, challenge there. And you become this back and forth of ideas into what arrive at a state that okay, this is something that we can live with. This helps the commercial team deliver what they need. And then once you have the first success stories, right, I think good news kind of spread out and then people here and then you kind of become a reference center or a strategic partner and that's what really what you want it to be.

And how do you do, how do you spread the word of treasury in that sense, you know that there'll be people listening today going, that's all very well. You know, we're a smaller, you know, maybe they're a smaller team or something like that. Did you you know, make sure to go push yourself out into the business or how did it work sort of thing for you at the time?

I think it's twofold. Right. One is no the finance team, the commercial finance team, they talk amongst each other to benchmark and then they say hey, you're facing a solution. I work with trash and do that and they kind of. Some people come to you because they had a reference. The other piece was me like trying to push myself and my team to develop themselves. Right. So I would challenge the team to say no, reach out to the controllership team, embed yourself into balance sheet reviews. Right. If you have a desire to learn controllership. Right. If you want to be more on the FPA side, know how can I get you connected with right people so you get exposure to it. So by, by, by challenging the team to get exposure to an area that may have interest or that they need development to complement a skill set that they may be lacking. Right. Then by having treasure on that table, then the conversation naturally arise and that's kind of treasure becomes more evident and more present.

Then talk us through if you would again the growth sort of and the development for you, what happened next?

So no, I think no, that was mainly on the treasury operation side and business strategy. Right. I think once you have to think of the cycles, right. And a little bit of a backpack, the more expensive you put in you can kind of take out. So I kind of closed that cycle there and for wanted to go next. No, I think you have to be vocal about what you want to do and I have always been. So now I went back to my leadership and said no, hey, I feel that we are state now that it is stable. I have had people on my team that know can step up to the plate to take the role and for me, I think now I'm ready for a new challenge. Luckily enough I had no a mentor and boss that no she was very supportive of development and different experiences. So we had discussion and the resolution or the outcome was based. No, they felt, the organization felt that I needed to learn more about the pharmaceutical industry itself. Right. Because it's a very specialty industry. It has its particularities if you will. So I, I said no. If that's what's going to take for me to go into my next role or the high role in Treasury, I'm willing to step outside of treasury once again. So then I move into a commercial role in the specialty pharma division, kind of the finance lead for a sub segment of the specialty pharma and that was great. Like I learned everything that was I considered to be pretty much lead to pharmaceuticals. Right. My portfolio had no medications or drugs that were going off patent. Right. So I saw the end cycle of a medication. We had drugs that were basically, you know, off patent but no didn't lose the revenue because they're unique and we have new assets. Right. And I, I not only learned that piece but no I had a lot insight because of my experiences. Right. When we're talking about we're launching a new asset so what they could bring to the table was modeling around, you know, profitability and financing and cost and FX impact. If you're going expand to foreign markets how do we structure the billing right for those distributions outside in outside markets potential calls. So it was, it was really great because I, I felt although it was a new role for me, I felt I was not coming to the table empty handed. And that's what no the diverse, no background or diverse experiences can bring it to you. I always encourage my team to although if they like trade. No, let's say no. Get more broad exposure. If you have to step outside of trade for a little bit it do it. I think it's going to be beneficial for you in the long term.

And then. So you did that and took us through the next steps. I think so. I don't want to run out of time today because we're on the roll but keep going.

When I went into that role like consciously I know that's going to be there. Not for, for a long period, right. I say for three years. I mean it's not short but not long. I think enough for you to get a good basis. And I, I wanted to come back into treasury, you know and sometimes things no don't work the way you plan. Right. So there was not a role within the treasury team at Avida could come back into. I did not want to rotate into another finance role because it's not really where my deep interest resided. And then that's when the opportunity to kind of join ingest rent came up. And that opportunity was mainly wasn't treasury but was going to give me a good chance to deepen my knowledge in the capital market side. Right. As assistant treasurer. And then for me I think that was the box that was missing. Right. Was to get an in depth knowledge of the debt capital markets piece. And that's what we have been working here with Ingerso Rand, you may have seen the news yesterday which finally got upgraded by S and P right Label as one of the rising stars. So I think we have been doing a great work here. We have a great team, a small team but very dedicated group of people that really are eager to learn. We're all learning together this journey as we continue to solidify the processes since the merger, developing the team and bringing everything in house. So for me it was the opportunity to develop a new or not develop but really to deepen and skill set that I felt was somewhat light in my career in treasury to know prepare myself for what may come next.

So with yourself, you, you touched on it throughout the conversation there about you've got this passion for, you know, lean operations, technology driving things and then it then reflecting the people things. Can you just let's dive into technology and then people before we run out of time today. So why is technology, you know we, we do our treasury salary survey. Anyone that's not done it, go to treasurysalary.com it's been a, not a bane of my life but it's been a struggle. But now we've got it straight through process. You click on there, boom, you put your information, five minutes later you've got a salary survey, global salary survey. Amazing. And I've, I look to you treasury guys. Where you guys lead, I follow. You know, I've seen how you've straight through processed everything with technology and different systems and things. I've had other people pushing back recently saying well not everything seem needs to be streamlined as you know the heck out of it. But most of the time it does with you. What's it like for you technology wise? What's your. Why does that drive you so much?

Yeah. So I think, no, as you think about treasury, right. Treasury really is a cost center. Right. I know some people like think of treasury, you know, we're this great organization, a great function. We are but at the end of the day we are a cost center. Right. And while we bring some direct value is talking about reduction the reduction bank fees and interest income, most of the value that treasury business organization is untangible. Right. So I never wanted the organization or the discussion to be around the cost, around my people and my team. Right. And I think no technology today can fill some of those gaps because I think the worst thing that you can have is a large team where everybody does a little bit but has a lot of free time because then everybody's bored. And every time everybody, nobody really learns a lot, right. And then you don't to have a board and disengaged team. So what, what we have done now we have trying to to have a team lean enough that no provides work life balance because I think it's important. But everybody is a little bit let's say stretched to the. To the point that they're not bored but they have no time to learn other areas. And we kind of lay technology on top of it, right? Because if you're going to have a lean team, you need to have technology otherwise becomes a unsustainable situation where just too much going on. Given all the areas that we need to manage at T ABVI and Ingestrend, we're always looking to add technology and that doesn't really mean one technology, right? It's a the latest and best. No treasury erp. Right. It is important, but no technology about what I refer to is also processes, right. If you look at the process, I always tell my team take a step back, right? How do you put a process? No, it's lean, it's clean, it's simple. I would say simple is better, right. And I think if you can take a process and transform it to something new that's more efficient. To me, this technology being added, right. Either be you know your know how or something but that's technology as a whole component, right. So you need to have a system to support it. You have to have process to support it and you need to have the people right. Engaged in order to to drive this forward. And we have achieved like abvi. When you think no ABVI and Abbott. I think Abbott had a very large treasure organization upon the spin off, right. I think there are. I think there are over like 50 headcount worldwide because they tend to have a lot of treasured people every single location at AbbVie, right. We cut our headcount by less than half than that. And it's not like people got fired because not the intent, right. You had to be conscious. But no, remember we had a two year TSA so as we kind of build the organization we lay down the tech knowledge framework. So we didn't need to staff up for that for that many people, right. Especially because Abby was when I joined, right. They had Homira which was the largest drug patent was about to expire. So we had that thing that no if we could extend the patent and or replace right. The revenue the organization would know progress. But something happened, right? I need to be able to react like support scalability or streamline everything if needed. Same thing within the Soren, right. We are growing, right. The desire of the company. We are going to grow aggressively. Management has laid out that part of the capture structure M and A is one of the key foundations of it, right? And then we don't want to staff too quickly, right? Because something happens. Then you see what happened in the tech sector, right? That people are just being laid off because they overstuffed, right? So we want to be more conscious about it to say no, let's. Let's have the technology to take us forward, right? So you can lie lesson people. And the people that come on board, we know they're here for the long term. Not just because they engaged and they are interested in their learning, but also because something happens. No cyclicality or to the company. I don't need to cut anybody because I don't have fat, right? So we try to be outside those discussion because we already delivered a solution to the organization.

And you talk there, you touching there on people. So people wise, what's your, what's your ethos around that?

Early in my career, right, I was lucky enough and to. To have no good mentors and good bosses that kind of helped me to push me forward, right. And to provide the feedback that I need to grow and to develop, right. And I think that what anyone can do, right. Is kind of pass that along, right? So as if you ask my team, I always try to kind of spend time with them to provide constructive feedback, right? A timely feedback. So I think it's important because the same way that I like to be developed and to receive feedback and to feel that my contributions are valued, other people like it too, right? So I try to do the same thing for others as I would like to receive. So I try to be conscious about that, right? I'll make sure that people work hard, but they also have fun and they enjoy it, right? I want to make sure that no people feel challenged. And I'll do that very simple ways, right? Sometimes people come to me, someone on my team and say, no, hey, I have this issue, right? I think normal management answer would be no, can you do this to fix it? Right? My, my first reaction was like what. What do you recommend that we do? I try to kind of throw the question back consciously so they can think about it and can I walk them through the rationale if I agree or don't disagree and sometimes there's some right or wrong, the preference, but at least we can have a conversation about it, right? And they see where I'm coming from and they can think about different aspects because I think we need to keep the big picture mind, given that treasury touches many different aspects of the organization So I want to avoid people going to a silo decision. So I know we try to do that now when the treasury functions, I try to do that by exposing them to other areas. And if no the development is in outside treasury. Right. I'll be the first sponsor, right. I think no. Whatever helps them grow overall is great for the organization. You don't want to have someone that no you, you don't develop or it's great, but you don't develop and then leaves organization because they feel there's no growth opportunities. I think there's growth opportunities everywhere. You just need to know where to look for them.

And that probably nicely segues into as we approach the end of the show. What are the. You know, you've touched on a lot of the areas you've had. You've had this international experience. You've got people, you've got technology. If you're bringing those all together, you know, each and every week on the podcast we get the top tips from people people. What are the takeaways you're going to give other people today that you know? We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. But what, what would you tell people either coming into treasury in the junior end or senior colleagues? What are the takeaways? You. You tell people to think about two takeaways, Mike.

So I think one is no whatever you do, always think about holistically. Right. So if you're doing a single task, don't think of just that task but try to have a broader view. How could this task task impact other things or could it impact. Right. Some people may outside their country may not realize it can help to bring that value. I think too is no be open to get a different exposures and be vocal. Talk to your leadership, talk to your management to express your desires. I think some people get afraid if they express different opinion then they're gonna lose growth opportunities because they'll do something else. I think the opposite, right. If we know what you want of people know what you want, right. They can help you to get there. So I think one is no. Make your wishes known and try to get different experiences and exposures right. And most important is no. I guess don't go for the salary or for the location. I think most important is the role. Think about it. Know where you want to be long term, how that next role or your current role can take you there. And we are going to be reporting to. I think your, your boss, your mentors are fundamental in your development. And let's be honest Sometimes there are people that block in your career, right. And you want to avoid that. So I think when you're considering move or next move, keep those three things in mind because those are key pieces if you want to, to be successful and really enjoy what you're doing. And last of all, have fun.

Yeah, man.

At the end of the day, it's, it's business, right? Nothing's personal, so just, just have fun. Don't take personal.

So I've got some great ones there. So take that wider view, holistic view if you like, and you know about your career and everything else and with the next moves and, and with any of the moves, you know. No, don't just think about the salary and location. Yes, they're a part of it, but actually choose your boss, you know, choose your role, choose your boss carefully. That's, that's the key. And have fun. What's he doing it so, wow, amazing. Thank you, sir. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. I know that lots of people want to connect. Another good episode with yourself. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Thank you very much for your time today, sir.

Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here.

Lovely. Thank you.

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