Guidance, Teamwork, and Making Treasury Meaningful with Amol Dhargalkar

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 build 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 Amal Dal Galkar. That's right, Mike Richards. Very simple name to say. Amol's much more interesting, much better. But after a couple of practice runs I've got hopefully got that right. Amol is the managing partner, board member and global head of corporates at Chatham Financial. Now some of you may know the group but Chatham Financial global leader in financial risk management. They specialize in debt and derivatives markets which with solutions that combine expert advisory with proprietary technology. Again, Armor would he will actually explain it a lot better than me. But we're going to go back to the beginning of his career as we do each and every episode we're going to go through this. He's been a number of years at Chatham so we'll do the first half of the show talking about Chatham and a lot of those and deep diving there and then we're going to come on to some of the wider issues that are facing treasury because he's got some great views in there. But let's go back to the beginning of your career. So take us back and you can correct me with my enunciation. I'll get in the slowly. So how did you first ever get started in finance and Treasury? Over to you.

Thanks Mike and thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to talk about all these issues. I got started because I like to call myself a reformed engineer. When I was at university I was pretty interested in science and math and when you are interested in science and math you go into engineering. So I was on the track to be a chemical engineer. I had an internship at Lucent Technologies one summer. Not not in an engineering role and more of a business role. I actually interned with a group that next to Carly Fiorina, if that name is familiar, it was just fascinating to me. I learned things I'd never really learned before and the head of my group, gentleman by the name of Dick Sadai, encouraged me to businessman, lawyer by training and just encouraged me to take some economics classes as a way of starting to understand the way of the world, so to speak. So I took a few economics classes and I decided to ultimately to get a double major in economics and chemical engineering. Not a common combination. I'll tell you, haven't run into that many people with that background and I started looking for jobs and I was fortunate enough to have friends that had started working at this small company outside of Philadelphia called Chatham Financial. We were only about 20 people at the time and our founder whose name was also Mike. Mike Good.

That's it. We're taking over the world.

Yeah, that's right. Mike decided to give me a shot even though I didn't really know a thing about derivatives or hedging or really much about capital markets at the time. But he gave me a shot and I am grateful to him and to my friends who thought I might be a good fit at the time. But I was able to join a company that was about 20 people as you said the CV looks a little bit boring on the face of it because I've been here ever since, since graduating from from university but gotten to do a lot of things throughout my time here but that's how I got started.

And when you say 20 people now and how many is the group now globally?

When I started we were 20. We are over 650 employees today. We are all employee owned as a firm so no outside capital. We've been able to grow from working with dozens of clients to working with over 3000 clients every year as a firm. We went from one small office outside of Philadelphia. We have offices outside of Philadelphia and Kenneth Square is our headquarters Denver office in Toronto. That's North America in Europe but we have London, Krakow, Poland. We also have offices in Singapore, Melbourne, Australia. So quite the global operation when I started just one office, one tiny little office to being all, all over the globe working with the largest, most sophisticated firms in the corporate side. Private equity firms, real estate investors, insurance companies, you name it. We work with all of them on.

Financial risk management and with that sort of growth. And you mentioned there about the 20 people, one small office there. What was. And again this may a more of a discussion rather than treasury per se. We'll come on to that. Were you guys then as the business grew were you reacting to your clients and they said oh we need you to help us in, you know, the west coast of the US or we need to help you in Europe or. Or was it actually our clients are saying this we need to establish an office. How has it grown from 20 to 650 and actually can you also explain for the listeners now your current role there? Because I say well what does he do there?

Yeah, so I'll answer just really briefly my current. As you said the Managing partner and actually chairman of the board of Chatham Financial with a focus on building and growing our coverage of our corporate clients. As a firm, we work with real estate, commercial real estate investors, with private equity and infrastructure sponsors and firms with financial institutions, financial services companies and with corporates. So covers everybody you can think about that way. And then to your earlier question of how did we grow? It absolutely was geographically a case of our clients pulling us initially into different geographies, you know, working with the largest private equity firms in the world. They weren't just based in the us they of course had very large operations in Europe, often based in London as well as in Asia. And they very simply said, hey, we just need you on our time zone. These are issues that we want to be able to call you to meet with you easily. And we followed them there. And even beyond the geographic expansion, our general approach to growing the business has always been let's do phenomenal work for our clients. And they will do phenomenal work. They will ask us to do more. When I started we were really very just focused on interest rate hedging, but over time in an advisory service. But over time we've grown, grown from interest rate to fx, commodities, debt, capital markets advisory. But beyond advisory, we have technology solutions that are used across all these different industries that support companies in managing their debt and derivatives portfolios. So we've really grown tremendously. And mainly it's been by saying let's do great work for our clients and the better the work we do, the more they'll ask us to help solve different types of problems in that same space. And we've been quite fortunate, candidly quite focused to follow that strategy to where.

We are today and a good explanation of what you guys are very good at and the sweet spots and everything else. But we have a variety of different listeners and one of those idiots guides, you know, you see and stuff with the great yellow covers and everything else. But if our. I'm a Treasury analyst and we have a variety of listeners, we have treasury assistance analysts through to global treasurers and we've had them as guests and everything else. I'm a Treasury assistant, you're going interest rate hedging, we've got this, we've got that. Can you simplify it for some of those guys if they're sitting in their treasury team now we've got a couple of new guys that have started with us, so certainly explain them what asset management is. And I'm sharing why it's so key. And it's a key Part of Treasury but then say right this is bag of cash and this is what they do with it and this is, but they could give it to the banks, this is why they manager and it's quite nice to go back to those teaching days. So if we take that for an example, can you explain maybe not dumb it down but maybe simplify it a little bit and nice way for those listeners about what the, you know, maybe a couple of the key business streams and what the service you help a corporate with and they go oh hang on, here's that Chatham consultant. What do they do? Don't really know. How would you describe it?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. We get that from our clients a lot. Mike. We've answered that question many, many times. So maybe to put it really simply, we when working with our corporate cl for any clients that has interest rate currency or commodity risk in their business and they're looking to either start a program, evaluate a program, try to improve their derivative capital markets efficiency or put in place technology to manage their hedging programs, that's when you can call Chatham. In each one of those areas we have depth of expertise and experiences that's just really difficult for any one person to replicate. One thing I like to tell our clients is that working with Chatham really gets them access to experiences and knowledge that can only be had by having worked at a hundred other firms in their industry. So if you are an Automaker or Tier 1 supplier, an OEM, one of the questions that always comes up from a CFO is hey, what's everyone else doing? What we know is not just what people are doing based on their results that they're showing in their financials. We know at the level of depth of what is the treasury analyst expected to do? How are they managing their program? How are they doing the accounting for all of their derivative transactions? What are the challenges that they faced in putting that program together? What are the three things that you can do today to take your program from call it A plus grade to an A grade or to state of the arts. These are the types of conversations and questions that we have every day with our clients. And so again to bring it back to simpler version of this, any company that is worried about inflation rates, rising, FX movements, commodity price volatility, those are the companies we work with and the value we bring to them is the knowledge that we have, the data that we have and the tools that we provide to really manage those types of programs.

And what's kept you there through this time and you said you were there 20 odd years ago and now you're your chairman and you lead it and everything else. What's kept you? This is not a sales pitch, but maybe is, I don't know, you're still there. They won't let you, they won't give you keys. You have to be there all the time and you shut and look at the door. Joking aside, how come it's kept you engaged for that long?

Well, let me start by admitting something that maybe I shouldn't admit on a recording. But I'll tell you that I did not expect to be here 21 years after I started. I don't think anyone starts a job expecting to be in that job for that long. Certainly not today, but not even 20 years ago. I know. You know what's kept me here is a few things. One, I really love the subject matter. This is a field I did not know existed when I was in university. And I love capital markets. I love the ability to work with our clients to help them solve some of their challenging derivative capital markets and financial risk management needs. It's really fascinating to be able to learn just in the last day. I've been on calls with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to automakers, pharmaceutical company startup out on the west coast, or maybe not startup, but a technology company out on the west coast. That's a normal day. It's really a phenomenal perch from which you get get to learn about different businesses. So of course the subject matter expertise and then the subject matter itself has been really fun. The ability to learn so much about different people and different businesses. And I suspect, Mike, you've had a similar experience in your role. And then the third piece which is really critical is I really love the people I work with. I mean it's a phenomenal team. These are people that we're friends with. I'll admit that I was probably one of the people most excited to come back to the office as Covid has started to recede because I really love being around the people I work with every day. So I think it's those three things. One, the subject matter itself, Two, the ability to work with so many different companies, learn from so many different types of people. And three, the people I work with every day are phenomenal. So I think those are the three things. I'll tell you though that if I had been, if I were doing the same thing today that I was doing 21 years ago, that would be very difficult sell to stay here. The job has definitely changed what I was doing when I first started versus the type of work I get to do today has definitely changed and I'm thankful for that. That has had a huge impact on my desire to not just be here for 21 years, but be here for, for many, many more years beyond today.

We spoke about it before the show, about sales versus other guests who have been corporate practitioners, got in consulting, started to be pushed up the ladder, you know, pushed into a sales type role and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I love being a subject matter expertise, you know, love my risk management, treasury and everything. So they've gone back out. Although, you know, I've seen some very good treasurers who have enjoyed that knowledge. Sell expertise, sell if you like, you know, helping their clients in that way. How do you balance that, pull the tension, if you like, between selling the work and presenting solutions, obviously, and that kind of thing, and actually growing the business and things like that. Because you're heading up, leading in a leadership role. How do you guys deal with that, if you like, without it becoming too muddy?

I think it's really interesting, particularly in the corporate treasury world. I think this will resonate with your listeners. My experience is that treasury practitioners can tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about pretty quickly. It's one of the reasons in our experience as a firm that we so highly value the expertise. And you're right that we are running and growing a business and we do want to work with more companies and solve more types of problems. But it comes back a little bit to what I said earlier. It starts with doing an excellent job job in the areas that somebody is looking to have their problem solved. So if you have a hedge accounting problem, you're trying to stand up an FX program and you're just struggling with this. We're not coming in and saying, hey, let us solve all these other problems for you. You know what, we're going to get the right people on the phone with you to solve that problem. And some things, Mike, I might be the right expert, some things, one of my colleagues might be the right expert. And ultimately what we do, and I think treasury probably feels this way, and you and I were talking about this right before we started the recording, was that this is all a team sport and it is really difficult to be a successful individual contributor. Whether you're in a Treasury team or you're in consultancy or technology provider, it really is a team sport. So we put a lot of emphasis on the expertise. It really matters that you know what you're Talking about we believe that one of the best ways to grow our business is actually to thrill our clients to such a degree that they become our biggest advocates and our reputation as a firm has certainly that's been the case and you could say proof is in the pudding. We've grown the firm 30x in 20 some odd years but even in the last decade or so we've grown the firm 4x5x in terms of companies we work with, people, everything, continue to add more services and that only happens because we keep doing an excellent job for our clients. So I think maybe the ultimate test is whether those companies keep calling Chatham and we're proud to say that they do that our clients do keep calling us solve some of the sometimes a slightly different variation of the same problem that they had before. Other times totally new problems that we've never worked on before.

Yeah. Never faced and Right. So we're going to go into. We spoke before the show and you very grateful. You know we had four great areas we were going to cover. The first one I wanted to dig into because sometimes with treasurers I talk through how they move through their careers and some of the things they've done but I think actually you and I, we talk to our treasury clients. You from one angle maybe the risks and the things but I then talk from a people angle things but we both, both cross over and share some of the things. One of the key things that you and I talked about this commodities and some of the current challenges that that's bringing with it but also other areas like inflation and other areas. What are the key current challenges you've identified and obviously there's a talent issue. We'll come back to that and people and stuff like that and this new way of working. But just for yourself, what are the key things you've seen from your position within the group and when you're talking to your teams and things like that what are the current different challenges you see that most Treasuries are coping with or struggling with. What are your thoughts?

I think there's a few big categories actually and talent is actually very high on the list just given the amount of people movement and shuffling that's happened over the course of the last year, two years but stepping back from that I think absolutely the current market environment as we were talking about earlier is one that just hasn't been seen by a lot of folks in corporate treasury. It's the highest inflation we've seen in 40 plus years. Relatively, relatively few of our clients I think have seen Anything like that have lived through anything like that. Unprecedented amount of global rate hikes. Not quite coordinated, but, but it feels pretty coordinated when every central bank is coming out and saying, hey, we're going to be raising rates, we're going to be raising rates, we're going to be raising rates. Impact on currency volatility that of course always ebbs and flows. But a new challenge I think for treasury is really on the commodity side. As you mentioned, that's just an area that in our studies of what companies do, less than half the companies that have commodity actually do anything about it. And so that is rapidly changing. It's not just for airlines and shippers anymore. It's metals, ags, you name it. It's going all, all over the place in terms of the conversations that we're having with treasury, with CFOs, with boards, because investors are asking, you get on earnings calls and you listen to among the most common questions is how are you dealing with inflation? And of course some of that can be passed through to customers, but not all of it can. And so companies are dealing with these types of market challenges. So that's one big, big category that we've seen is around market challenges. The other big category is beyond talent. It's actually how do you design a Treasury team that is going to be able to attract and retain talent. And one of the consistent areas of feedback we've received from our clients actually has been how do you make people's jobs meaningful, how do you have people moved out of, of button clicking and process, particularly for those rising stars for mid to senior level professionals, how do you put them in more of a strategic role rather than a role where they're just copying data from one tool to another and doing a bunch of processes in tms, another bunch of processes in the risk platform, another bunch of processes in the bank platform, another bunch of processes in Excel. It's one of the most common refrains that we've heard, not just from treasurers but also, and I'm sure you've heard this too from treasury managers and directors that they really looking to streamline their processes so that they can spend more time working with the businesses or the business units to be more of a partner when it comes to commodities, risk management or FX or how to redesign things. And then, and that's before all of the spinoff, carve out divestiture type of activity, which I know you know a lot about is happening globally. Those are quote unquote special projects that are expected to be added on to People's day jobs. So that's the other big challenge that we've seen, it's related to talent is just how do you implement and put in place processes and technology that really can add meaning and value to your team members lives on a day to day basis?

Well, it's an interesting one. And so we've got two new starters, or recent starters if you like. And one of the things we do, as you know, is our global treasury salary survey. Treasurysalary.com, people take part. It's great, it's amazing. But one of the nice things that we now do is we've tried to straight through process, process it. You know, we used to be filled in all these bits and clicked down and now a lot of the time, once you've taken part once, we then will reshare your answers from last time to make it a lot more interesting. Now these two new starters were saying to me, well, oh, okay. And it's doing this. And I said that, you know, the first part of any conversation with the candidate, they're like, oh yeah. I said it's pretty boring. And they're like what? I said, no, no, don't get me wrong, talking to candidates is brilliant, but why can't we systematize out the boring bit? That's like regather their basic information. It doesn't take that long. I said, so immediately you jump into a conversation, you already know how much salary they're on, what they're seeking now, where they're seeking a role, all those. Otherwise I said, you're spending 10, 15, 20 minutes going through what are closed ended things and stuff. I want to have conversations like I have on the podcast every week. Let's make your jobs more interesting. And actually that flowed across. And I had this conversation with a Treasury professional recently and they said, oh, oh yeah, actually if we did that with. And they were talking about one of their businesses, I said, can you straight through process that. Can you gather information, gather a bit, you know, a bit Kyc ish but not quite there. But he was like, do you know what that would make it? And I was like, it was like a light bulb going off in his head. Treasury recruiter and some guys talking about their jobs through to. Actually, you know, we do this thing with, you know, our AI robots straight through process. Are they getting rid of your jobs? They're not. They're making your jobs more interesting.

Absolutely, yeah. So we had a client who was spending roughly 30 hours a month creating management, reporting on their hedging program 30 hours a month. I mean that's almost a full week of somebody's time. And it was in Excel and so much of it was double checking and checking data and making sure it was formatted in a way. And then of course, every time a question was asked by senior management, they'd have to go back, analyze the data again and come up with the answer to it. One of the features we've been investing in heavily on our Chatham Direct, which is our technology platform, is business intelligence tools, which is in my experience has taken the treasury world to a whole new level of analysis and interactivity. It took 30 hours down to three hours a month and now three hours is actually going even lower because they've been adding all kinds of what if scenarios to their program that, you know, when the CFO in a review meeting says, oh, but you know, tell me which currencies though are really expensive to hedge right now. They don't have to go back and go into a deck. They actually just click a button that says actually these are the three currencies of our portfolio that are so expensive that we just shouldn't bother hedging for X, Y and Z reasons based on our policy. And now it's freed them up to your exact point. So much is automated, it's freed them up to actually be able to think much more strategically about how would we manage that risk. At what point would we say we should manage our risk to X, Y and Z currency or to this particular commodity or at what level of interest rates are we really worried with respect to our financial commitments? And so it takes it away from that which can be automated to that which will always remain some degree of art. Like you've been in the business for a long time and so, so have I. We, we know that there's an element of art to, to what everybody does. And the more people get to exercise that part of their brain, the more fulfilled. Many clients at least tell us that.

That they are and that neatly segues as if we planned it, but we didn't quite plan in this order into. You mentioned about the traits that really differentiate create the best senior treasury professionals, but actually I think it'd be best treasury professionals right the way across and then managing your personal development things. But I was just going to ask you, you've seen the variety of people. You see as many if not more senior treasury professionals who are at the top of the game. You see some of the guys maybe from the junior levels coming up through and you go, oh, that guy or that girl is going to be a superstar. Well, actually, let's do the other. That girl is going to be an amazing superstar or that person person, you know, who cares about their gender. What is it that you identify in those people that you think you've seen it And I, I, you know, I have certain things and I think there's, we hear it each and every week on the podcast about curiosity and be, you know, not being afraid of various things and, but I think that's big. Senior treasurer sometimes can help create that, that environment where you're happy to get mistakes, but as long as they don't cost the company. But what have you seen that the best professionals themselves in the, that you've identified would you say?

So I'll tell you Mike, it actually overlaps a lot with my own personal philosophy around this and I think it's because of what I've seen and the people I've gotten to work with over the years. But I think it's really three traits. The first one is do the work. Whatever it takes, do the work. There's no substitute for doing the work. When I say do the work, it means build the spreadsheet, do the analysis. Don't take someone else's word for it. Dig in and dig in deep to make sure you really understand what's being asked of you. Don't shortcut it. Do the work. Along with that. Especially anytime you have the opportunity to dig into something just to do it, never run away from the opportunity because it's deeply linked in my opinion to the second trait which is always be learning. Everything is an opportunity to learn. Every person you interact with is an opportunity to learn from someone. There is no replacement for somebody who is always seeking to learn. One thing that's really personally important to me, and I've seen it in treasury professionals, but just in general and in life is people who look to learn from areas outside of their own domain of expertise. So an example of that is certainly read my fair share of business books and everything along those lines. I'm sure you do, and everyone in the audience does too. But I actually find some of the best learning to come from books that have nothing to do with capital markets, it's finance, business. Maybe this is because my wife is a doctor, my best friend is a doctor. I've had a lot of doctors in my life. A book that I really enjoyed is by a surgeon by the name of Atul Gawande, Harvard trained surgeon. He wrote a book called the Checklist Manifesto. He actually spends a ton of time talking about the entire book is all about how valuable checklists are. And he applies it to every walk of life. How he applies it to the surgery field is. And the medical field is they instituted a simple checklist and they cut complications and deaths from surgery down by something insane like over 80 to 90% in certain African countries just by instituting a simple three step checklist. When I read a book like that, it makes me think, oh, how could we back to our example of process, you know, how could we apply that to Treasury? How could we apply that to our own lives and so always be learning from any situation. And the third area is communication skills. And I'm sure you've heard that a lot from your guests over the years. Learning to listen, learning to communicate, learning to be able to make your points to understanding your audience and tailoring how you communicate to the audience is absolutely critical. But those are the three things that I've seen. You know, people who are running into someone who's always willing to do the work, who's always looking to learn and who is phenomenal communicator. Those are the people you've had on your podcast, really, right, Mike? I mean they're the ones who rise in any field, but certainly in treasury because it is a really, really niche and nuanced and deeply technical area. It's difficult to engage people if you don't have the ability to communicate. But it's difficult to have credibility if you haven't done the work and you haven't really spent time to learn what needs to be learned in our world.

And you've got to lean into it exactly as you say. And I was just loving your words and I'm scribbling notes here and point one about doing the work. I certainly, as you say, you tend to get it through books. And we'll put a link to that book after the when you guys, if you listen in the show notes so you can maybe look that one up. And an actual fact is quite an interesting one because I've. There's a book that I read a while ago and they this is what they refer to and I didn't realize this was the name of the book but they were saying about how they cut these surgery things and it was just by just doing this checklist and it was just incredible. Just do this and do this and this and do it again. And it just brought it down. And this was also in these are in hospitals in the US as well. And I'll try, I'll try trying to get out the link to that one. So do the work and stuff. You always be learning. And it actually links the two. I get a lot my learning through podcasts like this and things now, one I absolutely adore and I've got to say, I give a name check and stuff is there's a guy that. It's called. I don't know if you've ever heard of this one. How to Take over the World.

Oh, I haven't heard of that one. I'm not. That's my list.

Well, you. This is going to transform your life and actually take up many hours of your life. And it's just. Just blooming brilliant. And I'll give a big shout out to their host, Ben Wilson. I. I discovered it last year through. I listened to my first million. It's great. And then they talked about this podcast. And despite its title, everyone, don't, don't get worried, but what this guy does is he reviews leaders in the world. Now, if you're thinking, oh, well, you know, and political leaders and stuff like that, we've got some of the best bit got Julius Caesar and I'm pretty good. He's done all right. The Rothschilds. You've got Catherine the Great, Thomas Edison. He's just redone one with Vladimir Putin. And he tells you stuff. Philip the Great. And one of the things you just talked about, those three areas, Amal, that do the work, always be learning and be a great communicator. Those keep coming up. You know, those are the tips. You know, one of the bits Napoleon. And it's not all so serious. Walt Disney was one of the recent ones. And what he'll do is he will read himself and his researchers, read two or three or four, four biographies of these people. And they. He then sort of extracts, if you like the best, the goodness out of them. Honestly, it's just I. Every time a new one comes out, I just. It's blooming brilliant. So, yeah, big shout out to Ben Wilson. You know, he's a little bit bigger as a podcaster than me, but, you know, we'll get there one day.

You're on your way.

Yeah, exactly. I'm catching him slowly. But I would definitely recommend that. So we'll put that in the show notes as well. But as always, we. We try and we used to have a thing called a commute. They don't do that so much anymore, but we usually keep the show to a half an hour, 40 minutes as we approach the end of today's show. And, you know, you could just repeat those three. They'd be worth it. But we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect to you. And I know, I know that we'll have more podcasts like this because we've got some great value to share and I think it'd be great to have you on the show maybe in the future. You've been very kind with all your time today, but if you're listening into it today, you're in on your way into the office or you're taking some notes and you always do the work, always be learning to community, great, those are good. But any other final takeaways, maybe about how you manage your own professional development or any top tips that you would give to the listeners today before we wrap up the show and maybe having your own future show. But what would you give to people listening today if you would?

I would say first, I want to thank you, Mike.

Oh, pleasure.

Great experience. And I'll tell you that commutes might be less, but maybe some of your listeners were like me and got a pandemic puppy that their kids promised they would completely take care of. And I'm not going to out them in the public sphere, but let's just say I've been getting a lot of time to go outside. I'll spin it positively, but yeah, I think maybe the last thing I'll say is that it's really important to have people in your life that can give you guidance and advice and remind you of what's important to you and who you are. It sometimes can be hard for each of us to do that for ourselves. And so whoever that is for you gotten a ton of value from having my wife, my best friend, a coach, mentor. It is so valuable to have someone that's willing to hold the mirror to you. And much as you had said before our podcast, sometimes be willing to have the tough conversation with you that you might be avoiding yourself, because that is really the only way we grow, being willing to confront those difficult conversations and those difficult challenges. And so that might be my final words for this. But again, I'll just say thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you, Mike, and hopefully as the world and we'll get to see one another in person.

Oh, we will. We'll definitely do that. And are there any particular professional coaches you want to name check or are you going to keep that to yourself? I mean, I'm happy either way. I'll jump in, actually. And I'm going to say my Professional coach Paul Barrow. We'll give a big thumbs up to Paul. He's amazing. And also my other business coach, Brian Charter. So we'll give, maybe Even put their LinkedIn details if people are looking for great people. Paul's about to retire and Brian's taking up the chalice of shouting at me. No, sorry, coaching me. I don't know. Anyway, move on. Those guys are amazing and really helped us in the business and thank you to them. But anyone? Or is that in your secret, secret file?

Not a secret. I've just started working with someone that, that's great. But I'm not sure if he would like his name.

Oh no, but it's fine.

No he's yet. But, but I will say my most consistent two folks have absolutely been my wife, who very much willing to tell me like it is, my best friend from growing up. We've known one another since we were six years old and he's in a totally different field. But whenever I run, he has an amazing way of asking me the questions that matter and reminding me of who I am and directing me in the right way. Without fail. They've been constants in my life. I've navigated things. But I recommend everyone, you know, find people like that in their life. And it sounds like you found some great ones for yourself, Mike.

I do and. But you know, would be remiss of me not to dedicate today's final words of the show to both of our very understanding, outstanding wives who put up with so much I feel for them. And my wife is a treasury recruitment widow. Poor her. Yeah, so you're probably in a very similar situation, I would say, sir. So thank you very much.

That's right. My wife ever listens to this, maybe now's the time to apologize to her for getting said pandemic puppy since I got it over her objections.

Well, there you go. Just, just, just give her the last five minutes of the show and just say, look, I even name check you here, my darling. So there you go. Very much so. That's at least you can apologize that way.

That's right.

But yeah, you're a star. Thank you, sir. As I say, we'll put the link to you in the show notes so everyone can connect to you. Look forward to, as you say, seeing in real life and then we'll go from there. Lovely to chat today, sir. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Mike.

Thanks. 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, 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 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.