How to Build a Dynamic Treasury Career with Jay Steller

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, I'm joined by Jay Stella. Jay is an independent consultant and he provides advisory services and treasury advice to a variety of different companies in a number of areas such corporate treasury, enterprise risk management, the integration of acquisitions, all from a Treasury standpoint, he's got this amazing career. Well, we'll go through it, all of the details but some of the highlights. We've got Hershey in there, we've got IBM, but we'll go through right the way back to the beginning of his career many, many years ago. But he's an experienced treasury professional and it's really great to be talking to him today. Jay, let's take you back to the dim distant past. How did you first discover the world of finance Treasury? Was it a career choice from early on that was it you thought that's world for me or what was the situation? Over to you, sir.

Well, thanks Mike and appreciate you having me on the show.

Pleasure.

You know, it's funny, I started out in college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Ended up having an internship with a US District court judge in New York and then a local law firm in the area where I grew up and you know, spent the summer reading case law and figured out that that wasn't going to be the right career path for me. But also had an interest in finance, had an opportunity to work at Chase bank at the time, smaller organ is now through a series of mergers, a global organization we know as JPMorgan Chase and was lucky enough was sent down to New York city to their 10 month corporate credit training program. So much more intense than their typical analyst program, which I think is six weeks. And really got indoctrinated in both the concepts of finance and accounting. We had professors come in from NYU and Fordham University and it was also supplemented with learning the basics of credit analysis and doing financial forecast. And really that kind of was my first experience in finance, but really got me excited about the business world. Worked after the training program as a middle market lender in the Chase system. But like I said, during that time in the credit training program they brought in the finance professors and it really got me thinking of, hey, I'd like to do more in my career and really thought that getting an MBA was the right next step in my career. And did that. So ended up going to Columbia, got my mba, was balancing the thoughts of do I go and continue a career in banking or do a little bit different. And as you said maybe earlier in our discussions, go to the dark side and go into the investment banking world or look at the corporate world. Right. And you certainly heard enough stories of people who leave banking and go into the corporate world. But having come from the banking side, you know, you look at some of these organizations that we're recruiting on campus and they're pretty large and significant companies. And you know, how do I fit in to the finance organizations? And there's many different areas. And one of the things that was really appealing to me is I got a job offer from Merck and then Bristol Myers Squibb. And the thing that was really appealing to me about Bristol Myers is they had a formal rotational program, so a long standing program. The intent was that you were going to do four to six rotations, three to five months per rotation. And at the time Bristol Myers was a much bigger organization than what they are now in terms of they own Clairol, they owned Me Johnson, they owned Zimmer, they owned Combatak, in addition to the pharmaceutical business that they have now in what they've decided to focus in on. And so the intent of the rotations was we're going to have you do a rotation in the pharmaceutical group, we're going to have you do a rotation in a corporate area and then we're going to have you do a couple different other rotations that are in businesses. And as part of that I was lucky enough to get a rotation in the Treasury Group. And at the end of my rotational period, the senior analyst that worked in the Treasury Group left to be an equity analyst on Wall. And so that enabled me to go in and assume a full time role within the Treasury Group. And really that's kind of my basis and my start of having a Treasury career.

And you did that and obviously at bms, a great place to start. What was the complexity of treasury because it's a large corporate and things like that. I know it's a few years ago now, but what was that like?

It was what I would say is my first step into the Treasury Group. Relatively basics at the time. So manage the company's short term investment portfolio, around $2.5 billion, a lot of it with offshore entities, was responsible for executing all of the foreign exchange hedging transactions. And then as we moved in my career, in terms of my tenure there, they had what I would say Many multinational companies run into where due to tax situations you have cash that's trapped overseas. But yet in the US you've got your largest funding or cash needs, right? So you pay your dividend out of the us you do your share buyback out of the us out of the case of Bristol Myers, you fund all of your research and development costs out of the us so you have cash, but it's offshore. Started up the commercial paper program to fund their US operations. So great experience. My manager came from the banking world, was a foreign exchange trader and salesman. So really got a good learning experience. Foreign exchange versus management. At the time Bristol Myers had two treasury centers, right? So the U.S. treasury center really focused in on the big corporate treasury activities and then the European treasury center managed the liquidity and intercompany funding of the foreign subsidiary. So had some discussions with the European treasury center, but didn't really have that hands on exposure of a lot of the details of what was going on in Dublin.

And then you made the move across to IBM, obviously locally in New York and things, you know, what was that like or how did that come about?

It was actually kind of pretty interesting at the time. You know, Bristol Myers was based in New York City. The majority of their operations were in Princeton, N.J. had been in the treasury group for a couple years now. Kind of wanted to do more within treasury, but didn't really see that at Bristol Myers. And then was kind of considering okay, if I move up within the organization, does that mean a move to Princeton, which, you know, Princeton is a pretty good place to live. Had done a couple rotations out there, so was familiar with the area. So you know, that really wasn't a big concern but really wanted to do more. It's funny how things work sometimes. So I had a banker reach out to me, let me know of an opportunity at IBM and went up to the team, much bigger organization. So around that time when I was at Bristol Myers, they were about 20 billion in sales. And then when I interviewed at IBM they were around 90 billion in sales and sales. So a much larger organization. Bristol's treasury team was probably about five or six different individuals. IBM's team, we had two groups within the treasury team. We had treasury operations and I think it was about 20 or 30 different individuals. And then they had treasury strategy which was about 10 or 15 additional individuals. And my job was specifically on the foreign exchange deck. And great experience. They were very focused in on what's the foreign exchange impact that's going to be going through the company's. Income statement. And they would periodically work with accounting. What are the foreign exchange risks? What are we seeing flow through the income statement? And they had foreign exchange hedging programs that kind of matched up where their risks were. So we had six guys on our team and we had six or eight different hedging programs that people were responsible for. And whereas that, Bristol Myers was a good learning, initial learning stage for foreign exchange risk management, really got an in depth focus on fx because the size of the organization and the guys that are sitting around you, you're on the phones with banks pretty much every day. You're looking at the foreign exchange market, you're talking about hedging strategies and really executing trades. So we got an initial learning of personal. Myers really felt that I got an in depth learning of foreign exchange risk management at IBM and a great work environment as well. We had the youngest guy of the senior people on the desk, the youngest guy that we used to joke about. He was there with 25 years of experience. And if you talk to the various banks out there, people knew who Alex and they knew who Bruce and they knew who George were, right? So these guys have been around a long time, very well respected. Some of the hedging that they had done. The guys at IBM kind of developed to match up with managing their FX rest. So great experience.

So in some ways, like the sort of treasury university. So you come up through the college system and then you got to university and it really, you know, you were really developing your treasury experience and you know, how did that lead, lead on? Because obviously you're in a big shop like IBM, bms, you know, did you just think, I want to do something in a different kind of group or, you know, what drove the next move?

Yeah, well, the assistant treasurer at IBM really had the philosophy of rotating the right individuals around his team. So two years on the FX desk, then I rotated over to the capital markets desk. They're responsible for public bond issuances, interest rate, risk management. Then I led the company's liquidity management by running their short term investment program as well as their $2.5 billion commercial paper program. So again, whereas FX was in depth learning experience, really developed an expertise, was able to transfer that over to the capital markets desk. Again, great experience. Take a step back and you look across all of the treasury activities, cash flow forecasting. I'm dealing with capital structure, dividend policy, buyback, bank relationships, managing the relationships with the credit rating agencies. You think, well, if I'm going to do these rotations, you Know, quote unquote rotations that are two years in nature. It's going to take me a long time to really build up that experience at a place like IBM and so wanted to do more, wanted to have a broader based experience and also, you know, kind of felt that at that point in my career wanted to expand and have some managerial experience. And similar to how things worked with Bristol IBM, a banker called me and said, hey, we've got heard of this opportunity at Hershey. Would you be interested in. And you know, I've always kind of had that philosophy of it's always good to take those calls and have a conversation, right? At least to be aware of what is out there from an opportunity standpoint. And it was really appealing to me because the position was very broad in nature. Hershey was a much smaller organization, so around 6 billion in sales at that time. Because at IBM being such a large organization, people had specialized tasks like if you were doing the foreign exchange risk management, that's what you did. When you were on the capital markets, that's what you did. The people in accounting had very specific tasks and there wasn't a lot of visibility, I think, or a lot of a person in treasury doing stuff and in having influence and interaction with other groups. Hershey was a much smaller organization. I felt that that would allow me to broaden my scope within treasury and it did have managerial responsibilities with it. So ended up moving from IBM over.

To Hershey, joining that group, people know IBM, you know, know the computers, knew the technical stuff, obviously is a change of industry to Hershey and people know Hershey is a chocolate group and sweets and everything else and candies and everything. How close were you to that kind of business? I was really pleased. I did a course a number of years ago, sort of mini MBA type course and I got to meet Angus Thirlwell who's the founder of Hotel Chocolat in the UK and Europe and things like that. Amazing about how he. Amazing stories from him about how he decided to secure their supply chain by going and reinvigorating a cocoa plantation. And it was a great thing. Did their social responsibility thing as well. It was a really win, win, win for all things. People have a certain impression of joining someone like Hershey. What's it like from a Treasury perspective, would you say in finance?

Well, I think a little bit differently as a company. It was founded by Milton Hershey in the early 1900s. The town didn't exist before. Milton K me's a local kid, grew up in the Lancaster area. Picked Hershey due to its farm because he was different, right. He decided to make chocolate using milk and wanted farm countries and to have that availability of milk. So the town of Hershey exists because of the Hershey company and that whole philosophy kind of permeates the company. Small organization, you're involved a lot more and you understand what the business is, right? Like everyone knows what Hershey kiss is, what the Hershey bar is, what Twizzlers are, regardless of whether you work at the company or not. And so now that you're in the company, very marketing driven organization. So it's kind of feel good. It's a great. It's products that people are familiar with and most people like. And so there's an affinity to the product. Like you don't know what a server is. Right. You may be familiar with, with the computers and desktop and a laptop, which you know, now I can doesn't even make anymore, but you're familiar with a Reese peanut butter cup, for example. And the senior leadership team I joined really took pride of having town hall meetings. So you knew what was going on on the sales and marketing team. When there were new product introductions, you were aware of what was going on. I think for me, what you realize of going from Crystal Myers to IBM to Hershey, even some of the work that I've done on a consulting basis, right. Whatever the industry is, the basics and the fundamentals of treasury are transferable and they don't necessarily, they're not dictated by what industry you're in. For me going into Hershey, definitely you feel a little bit more aligned with the brand in the company. But a lot of the things that I learned at IBM I was able to bring over to Hershey. And as I got there there was a bigger push on growing the business and expanding the business. And I was really able to I think, kind of take what I had learned at places like IBM and Bristol Myers and elevate what Hershey was doing in the treasury team.

And how connected was treasury to the business. What I mean by that is did you find that the work that you were doing within Treasury, I know that you were doing lots with working capital during the period and things because then you made the sort of the cfo. And I know we talked about this and I was looking back at some of my notes before the program about the enterprise risk management and things like that and the business risks and things. This speaks, speaks to some of the people listening today about how treasury through the pandemic has been more spotlighted in treasury terms. Now this wasn't that at those times. I know it was 2008, so global financial crisis and stuff.

But what was that like being a smaller organization? I do feel that you had the ability to be more connected to the business from a Treasury perspective. We had responsibility for working with finance people in the various countries that Hershey had subsidiaries in and we're there to provide them the treasury support, understanding their foreign exchange risk, developing hedging strategies. But the basic things of do you have the right bank account structure? Do you have the appropriate lines of credit to fund your business? A smaller organization? You did have an ability to influence things. So to kind of go back to one of your comments, you do a lot of peer analysis in Treasury. I think there's always the, the CFO or senior leadership perspective of here's what our business is, what are other peer companies doing? And Hershey falls into what's called the CPG category. And so you've got peers like that are huge, right? Procter and Gamble, Coke, Pepsi, some that are more similarly sized like a Campbell Soup. But you have, you know, at that time Kraft as the pre split organization, Kellogg's, General Mills. And so I ended up doing a lot of peer analysis and one of the things that I had looked at was working capital. Hershey had gone through a process where they looked at their supply chain and their manufacturing footprint, found that there is excess capacity at plan. So they went through what they call the supply chain transformation which really shored up what they were doing on the manufacturing side. The accounts receivable side of the business was really pretty good if you think about Hershey's customers, Walmart, Target, Kroger's, Walgreens felt really good about where we were on accounts receivable. Paid within the agreed terms, 98% current on AR. But when I looked at our AP days on hand, we were the second worst company meaning from the CPG group, peer companies that Hershey tracked. We paid our suppliers the second quickest out of all the peers and the first, the quickest payer was Dean Foods which if you kind of take a step back, milk based business, they're paying their dairy farmers, you can understand why they have the quickest payment terms. So raised my hand and said we've got to be doing better there and was able to make the recommendation to the treasurer to the cfo. Got the buy in from the head of manufacturing who controls the commodity spending and procurement group and was really able to make a significant change. You know, made the recommendations initially in 2005. And between 2006 and 2009, Hershey reduced its working capital requirements by $375 million. Right. If you kind of take a step back and say if our working capital requirements were $375 million higher, I've got to fund that through my commercial paper program. Now 2009, post financial crisis, we're funding at 25 basis points, but at the start in 2006, you're funding at like 5%. So $375 million at 5% is about between 18.5 and $19 million of interest expense that you've just saved the company. Things that are meaningful. I think you can drive a little bit more with a smaller organization progression for you.

Because I don't want to run out of time today because I want to work our way through a couple more moves at Hershey to then you've been doing some independent stuff and learning and done a number of different things and I want to get into the learnings from that. But just go back maybe for the next couple of roles at Hershey before we move on.

So had worked as assistant treasurer for about four years in Hershey. Had career discussion with Bert Alfonso, who was a CFO at the time. I had a desire to learn a little bit more or get more involved in the business finance side of things. With the discussion with Bert, he's like, yeah, I think that you've got great experience. Can see you moving up within the treasury group, but also moving past that and doing something additional within the business. So it does make sense for you to get some business experience. But around that time in 2009, there was some couple individuals, the treasurer, the head of internal office, the head of Hershey's insurance program had all kind of put forth this idea and notion of starting enterprisers management program. And so it was proposed to the cfo, the CFO presented it to the board and we had some new board members come on board and they advise other companies and sat on other boards where the companies had enterprise risk management programs. And they're like, yes, it makes sense, go do it. And so the CFO asked me to lead the development of the Year M program, which was great experience for me outside of treasury, it was working with the senior executive team and their direct reports of identifying what are those key business risks that would hinder Hershey from achieving its strategic objectives. So it really wasn't finance risks. If I looked at the top 20 business risks that we had, really two of those were treasury finance related. But as I said earlier, Hershey's a marketing company and you're selling a consumable product so that our key business risks were more around brand reputation, product quality and integrity. You think about, you have a Hershey Kiss that goes out and there's a contamination with a product, and now you've got to go out and do a recall on that. And how did that influence the trust that consumers have in your product? Then we had things, you know, the company was talking about growing, growing through acquisition. So what did we do around M and A? Planning and integration. So very interesting, very different for me, but great experience, got aligned more with the business and the strategic planning part of the business. And one thing that was great is, you know, the head of the ERM program was the President of the North American Business and he gave me the opportunity to actually present the updates for the ERM to the Finance and Risk Management Committee of the Board of Directors. And to my knowledge at that time, there was no one below a VP level presenting to the board or one of its committees. So great exposure for me. And like I said, you know, got me outside of the treasury world, which I thought was great from a development standpoint. And then, you know, once I had developed a program, we had embedded it into the annual and strategic planning processes and rolled it out to the key geographies, I was kind of looking again for that next opportunity. And Hershey had the President of North American Business, the CEO had resigned, and the President of North American Business was promoted to the CEO role. And at the time, Hershey was around 6.5 billion of sales. And he put out a vision of growing the business to 10 billion, both through organic growth as well as M and A. And so Hershey acquired Brookside Foods December 2011. And so, you know, we told the board that we're going to grow through acquisition. So we said, hey, we told the board that we're going to grow, we better do this right. So the CFO and the leadership team decided to set up a project management office to manage the integration. And the CFO asked me to lead the finance team's integration efforts. So again, another great opportunity. Different than treasury, different than the ERM piece, really dual function role of overseeing the integration efforts as well as now being the business finance lead for the Brookside business. So on the integration side, basic things. How are we going to do the financial reporting? Hershey uses SAP, right. So how are the financials, how are we going to bring in the Brookside financial information into SAP? How do we price the product versus Hershey's product versus a competitive product like Dove and then on the finance side of it of developing the annual income statement, developing and working with the marketing lead of developing a five year strategic income statement, analyzing the actual results and then updating the forecast for the remainder of the year. So again, much different type of business but a great learning experience really aligned with an actual business and got exposure to the legal and HR people and sales and marketing for the Brookside business.

You then did a further period with Hershey but I wanted to get into this independent stuff as well because otherwise we're going to run out of time today. So some of the stuff you've done Sims because we're some really interesting companies and some good spinoffs and FX and liquidity. There will be some people thinking about the independent consulting route. What's that been like in a positive sense. What would be the good bits of that? But you know, just give us a quick run through from there.

Tell you it wasn't my initial thought to really have enjoyed my experience in treasury want to continue to do that. And one of the recruiters had spoken to me and said hey, you know, have you looked at doing the independent consulting thing as a way to bridge full time opportunities? Which I hadn't at that time but I'm glad that I did because it actually has been a very good experience for me. So have done I think what are two really interesting consulting projects and one was at HRSko which is a company based in here in the Harrisburg area, smaller organization, so about a billion and a half of sales but very global. So 60% of their business is international and they have a very what I think is a facility, sophisticated and complicated legal entity structure. So they have over 200 different legal entities in over 40 different countries. They have structured intercompany loan program that I hadn't really experienced before. And typically when global organizations have these types of structures they're managed out of a European treasury center. Harsco has decided to do that here in the US I didn't have experience with this at IBM or Bristol Myers so it allowed me to see how are these structures put in place and managed and what's the resulting foreign exchange risk. And also got some experience with managing the foreign subsidiary liquidity through cash pools. So the company ran four different cash pools and as a result of moving the money between the subsidiaries also had the foreign exchange risk management. Doing the FX hedging was old hat to me. But learning the intercompany loan program and managing the liquidity through the cash Pool was a new opportunity for me. So a great learning experience. Most recently worked at United Technologies. So large organization, about 75 billion in sales there were. They told the public that they're going to spin off their air conditioning business, which is Carrier, and then their elevator business, which is Otis, into separate public companies and large treasury team. They brought in a handful of consultants to help set their foreign help set up Carrier and Otis standalone public companies. And I was specifically hired within the foreign exchange team. So got to see and understand how they did their foreign exchange risk management, but was really given project management leadership position where they needed to set up ISDAs for the remaining United Technologies business. But because Carrier and Otis are now going to be standalone entities, ISDEs for those trading organizations. And it was something like we struggled at Hershey for setting up is because we really didn't have the expertise in house. You learn that United Technologies used a law firm that had expertise in negotiating the ISDAs with the banks. So it was great learning experience. We put in place over 85 different is does with over 20 different banks within a short period of time and then was asked to backfill and fill in the gaps that they had on their capital markets team. DARE was responsible for forecasting their cash debt and interest expense, which is a little over a billion dollars of an annual budget. And pretty interesting experience. Again, a large scale treasury operation with that independent experience.

You know, if you step back from that for a moment, what's been the key thing, your key learning points? You know, again, I sometimes get people saying, oh, I want to, I'm going to go off and be an independent. Things like that. What do people need to think about? Is it, you know, is it the period between assignments and. Or is it that you need to be able to, you know, get stuck in and do lots of different things you might not be prepared for. What are the learning points for you that you've taken from it?

There's a lot of interesting aspects to it. First is kind of understanding the role. I think the thing that was great about IBM and Hershey, the organizations and the treasury team specifically, both were of the mindset of what I would term as a continuous improvement mindset, which is looking at how are we doing a process now. Is there a better way to do it? Let's analyze it and figure out if it makes sense. Let's implement it, which is great. And it's something that I really embraced and was able to do at Hershey. Get into these independent consultant roles and they tend to be more fill in for a need. And so, you know, depending on the organization, they may or may not be open to making changes. Right. For example, at United Technologies, they were so focused in on doing the spinoffs, it was, you know, we're not looking at our process. Right. We're going to replicate what we're doing at United Technologies and we're going to put it in place at carrier notice. And, you know, to the extent of when I was looking at their commercial paper program, I said, hey, if you guys negotiated lower fees on your commercial paper program, you could save the company $2.5 million if you're kind of using their 2019 volume as a base. And they said, yeah, thanks, but there's so much going on and it's not something that we're going to pursue right now. Right. And then on top of that, that they were going to be merging after they did the spinoffs of carrier notice, they're going to be merging with Raytheon. Right. So you may not have that opportunity to really make recommendations to improve things. You go into a consulting assignment. It's a learning experience. And some things are different across organizations. Some things are the same. Right. So the things that are different, you have to learn companies, individual philosophies and policies and procedures. Right. So HRSCO was very global organization, but they said, hey, our investors invest in us knowing that 60% of our business is international, so we're not going to hedge our FX risk. However, what we've done from a planning standpoint in our intercompany loans, we've made that decision to do that. So that's the FX risk that we're going to hedge. IBM was the complete opposite, which is saying, hey, where's our FX risk? Where is that hitting our P and L? And we're going to go out and manage and isolate that risk and manage that. So that's not flowing through our income statement. Right. So, but it two different philosophies, but interesting to learn.

And Jay, you would be wrong to say which you prefer because you've had experience of both. But when you look at the advantages, disadvantages of either or when, again, when the listeners are listening today and they're faced with a similar thing, what's the sort of the checklist or the thought process you think those guys listening today should be going through? Is it, look at your active risk management policies or, you know, these are the things that can happen in your supply chain or what are the, what's the checklist? You would say that those guys, again, you're in an assignment, say, right, actually I've seen this. We did it the one way, IBM, we did it another way here. What would you recommend?

That's a good question, Mike. I think it comes down to sometimes it's a little bit on the CFO and his leadership perspective at Hershey. One of the CFOs was very much saying, hey, we're a candy company, right? It's the commodity purchase of cocoa, sugar, putting it together, making a product, the other things that influence our income statement and noise to it. If we can hedge it and minimize that, let's do that. Right? So that's one philosophy. The other, like I said, was Harsco's philosophy. So I think it comes down to what's the strategy. I think that a lot of the banks will come in and advise you of saying, is there transparency and is there consistency in your income statement? And if so, there is a financial theory and a belief that you can get a higher valuation. Right. So that's the side that I tend to fall more on. It's kind of like an investigation process too, of understanding what your risk is and then how do you go about managing that and what's the best way to do that. And you know, one of your prior podcasts, I think it was Michael Bradley had said with the foreign exchange risk management, foreign exchange risk doesn't go away. And whatever you do from a hedging perspective is a delaying process. So depending on what your hedge horizon is, whether it's one year, two years, three years, it delays what that ultimate impact of FX is on your business. And so you can, if you have a multi year hedging program, maybe that then influences and the business can realign itself and think about pricing or look at what its supply chain process is to defer what the FX impact is. But you know, you really can, regardless of what you're doing on a hedging perspective, you're not going to eliminate what that risk is. You may just delay how it impacts your income statement.

And as an independent consultant and you sort of got this, an independent standalone view, you don't have to follow necessarily company guidelines, there are going to be guiding principles through your treasury expertise and everything else. But you're looking at the future of treasury from your perspective. And we've been through some challenging times in the world and everything else, but what are you seeing coming down the line that people should be thinking about? Is it technology is a big thing that when you're going into some of these assignments, or is it what do you see as the future landscape.

I don't know if anything that I will tell you right now is new and insightful. It's been this transition where I think a lot of people can have careers in treasury and be quite successful without fully being aligned and understanding what goes on in the business. And I think that has changed. And I think that CFOs and treasurers and assistant treasurers are getting a better feel for what's going on in the business and being a business advisor and kind of helping influence the direction of where the company is going. And part of that stems from a risk management perspective. But you're seeing that evolution. Like you said, I think that technology is going to be a bigger part of how things go. Right. So the Treasury Department, even though a lot of the things that you can do, whether it's around interest rate, risk management, foreign exchange, risk management, negotiating lower bank fees or what have you, and those add value to the company, treasury is typically seen as a cost center. And so you tend to have the terminology of having a lean staff, which means that you've got more than enough work to do for the number of people in the department. So if you can utilize technology to your advantage and eliminate some of the non value add repetitive processes, replace it by technology. Right. So can some AI system generate a report that used to be manual and now the individual that was handling this can do some analysis or you know, dig in deeper to other processes or influence other groups and add more value than generating a paper report. Think that this has been going on for a while, but really I think that there's going to be more and more pressure and interest of treasury groups to be doing that and moving more towards utilizing technology to free up some resources to do more strategic things.

You've mentioned a couple of times throughout the show and you just mentioned there about the value add. I just wanted to dive in for a moment there, just not too briefly because again we approach the end of today's show and things what's the value add of you and what I mean by that and I want to qualify this so it's not just a curveball question. Like Mike, I didn't, you didn't tell me about this. I sometimes get candidates coming to me said oh, I'm thinking about going to consultancy. And I say well. And they say oh, it'd be great, I'll do this, I'll do that. I mean, really, what do you mean? I said, well, you, you're. They might be a deputy treasurer where they are and they're Saying, you know, I can't get my boss's job for now, I'm going to go and do, you know, explore, expand my experience by going to do two or three different interim assignments. Right. When you recruit an interim yourself, what did you give them to do? Was it all the interesting stuff and then, well, no, I've got them do the policy writing or this policy or this. And I said, right, so. And you gave the interesting work to who? Well, the other members of the permanent team. I said, okay, so you think you're going to go and join three or four, two or three other companies and you're going to get all the sexy stuff to do, right? And they're like, no, not really. You know, they reflect on it. I said, well, but also there's no, there's a lack of certainty sometimes unless the mark, you know, it's good for treasurers because you know, you've got that specialist skill set, as you've said, and everything else. But when you look at that yourself, is it all roses out there? What have people got to think about? If you, like, you've been doing this for a few years now, what's the sort of the pros and cons of it, would you say, Jay?

So I think that a lot of the points that you've highlighted are really some of the key considerations. First and foremost, consulting roles are in treasury are not. You're not seeing 5, 10 and treasury consulting opportunities every week, let alone every month. You know, there's only a couple of them that pop up. When they do come up, I'm not the only one that's interested in the treasury opportunities. And like you said, you're a deputy treasurer. You're probably not filling in for a deputy treasurer. You're probably filling in for someone a little bit lower. At least in my experiences they're defined. We're going to have you come in and you're going to be doing this defined task and it's not the big value added driver that has visibility to the CFO or going up to the CEO of the organization that you may have had in a full time position. So I think that that's, that's a big consideration or those are two considerations to think about. The flip side is some of the things that are positive is I have found value in seeing how other organizations operate of being a small, non investment grade company like Carsco versus then going back to a very large investment grade rated company like United Technologies. Right. Kind of like adding the treasury experiences really has built up an understanding of different things that can go on within a Treasury team. Right. And I think that there's things to consider. You go back and you've asked a little bit about people that are listening to this maybe early on in their careers. How should they think about how they position themselves as they either develop in treasury or think about Treasury. I think there's the trade off depth of experience that you get at a place like IBM when you're on the FX desk and you're on the capital markets desk, that's all you're doing and you really build up a good understanding of what it is to do FX risk management or go to market and lead a bond transaction versus the breadth of experience to get maybe at a different organization like I had at Hershey. Right. And being able, I think that really will help you in your career is you can find opportunities that marry those two together, you know, because I think that there's a lot of value that you can add when you have that broader base perspective. But you can also say, hey, I've done that and I've seen this before when you go into maybe a different organization and they're doing things differently or don't fully understand what they can do with their programs or hedging programs, whether they're FX or on the interest rate side, saying hey, I've been there, done that. Here's what you can do to add.

Value for this question before we, and we are going to wrap up shortly as well because I want to ask you about your top tips and we'll put your LinkedIn details. Shannon's as not quite there. You've seen a number of different areas and we can both breathe perhaps as an independent consultant but also, you know, maybe through some of your other experiences over the years you've been in, you've seen lots of different people, some mid level guys, junior guys, some senior guys just picking out any aspects of those people. And you, you know, you've worked with perhaps some impressive people over the years. Some people that didn't impress you quite so much. They didn't stand out. They weren't, you know, you got some superstars and some, you know, people that just come in, get the job, go home and just do it and turn the handle that there's, there's a place for those guys as well. So I'm not, it's not to criticize it, but you've got this breadth of experience. What stands out for you about those, the stars versus the non stars, you know, and that could be either. So you Might say, right, the stars have done this, I've noticed this or the non stars, do you know what they, they didn't put in that extra time or you know, what are the, you know, any aspects that you might pick out people wise or things, the.

People that stand out ask why instead of just going in and doing a day to day task it's why are we doing this? What's and I think it's important within treasury, you know, there's under background understanding or there's a financial theory behind a lot of things that go on in treasury and understand what that theory is but then understanding how is that going to apply to the company. And I think that brings a little bit better understanding and appreciation for what you're doing than just doing the task. Right? If you're just going into SAP or your treasury system and you're just clicking buttons and kind of doing things, get your tasks done, the people that are going to add the greater value are those, they're going to take a step back and ask why. Where I've seen leaders that have really excelled it's been of they have a good solid understanding of what the underlying key issues are. But what I've, I guess what I've appreciated. So that's one of the things that stands out to me as a good leader. It provides you kind of with the background frame but allows you to go out and do it right here's your rope, I'll give you as much rope as you need but you go out and do it and let's come back and talk with this. There's questions or issues but those leaders that have been able to kind of when you explain things they get it and they understand if they don't they ask the right questions but kind of they've hired you based on whatever criteria they've defined and I think part of it within treasury is having a certain level of technical competency and expertise right of you go back to, you know, you go out and you, you lead the execution and you're asking all the questions with the banks or advisors or whatever.

So Jay, as we approach the end of today's show and it's been great, we deep dived in quite a lot of stuff there, which is really interesting. But just with yourself we'll put your link to you in the show notes with the LinkedIn so people can connect to you and expand your LinkedIn network, which is fantastic. Looking back over this or, and, or just looking at your career, what are your tips for career success or what are Your top tips within Treasury. So, you know, we've sometimes had about, you know, everyone should go and study. Other people said go and travel the world. Other people have said get on with your boss or do different things, lots of different things. You know, looking at you, what would you. And looking at, you know, what are the things that stand out to you, if you like. In summary, over to you, people have.

To take a step back and kind of think about what they want their career to be. Right. So if you want to be solely focused in on the treasury world, that's great. And a lot of people do that, right? A lot of people become experts in treasury, they find a career there and they spend their whole life there. But if that's not for you, think about how can I then leverage my treasury experience and get it involved with the business and aligned with the business and that's probably having the right career conversations. I think within treasury you have to think about what do I want to develop, I want to develop a depth of expertise and experience within certain roles or do I want breadth of experience across the treasury spectrum? Because there's a lot of different roles within Treasury. Right. And then what we had talked about a little bit earlier is being quizzitive, right. Ask the whys. I think that it makes a lot of sense to have, you know, what we've labeled as a continuous improvement mindset of evaluating what you're doing. Is there a better way to do it? And then I think about, think about the manager and or leaders that you want to align yourself with and have a career discussions with. Think about their leadership style. What do you feel makes them a good leader? Are they a good teacher? Can you learn from them? But also are they an advocate for you? So you know, when there's promotion opportunities, you're probably not sitting in the room with those discussions, but a leader that you've kind of had that mentoring ability or discussion with, they can be an advocate for you and raise your name, you know. And that I think is something that's pretty important to think about. Cool.

I just wanted to reflect on something we just said before and that I think the fact if you want to be a superstar, you've got to be curious. And again, that's come up on a few other podcasts, but questioning of your why sometimes you're not just being relaxed about it and just say, oh yeah, just going to do it, but actually why am I doing this? And then when you've done that, the identification of the key issues, because I think those are real good takeaways for people as well, as well as that. So, Jay, amazing. Thank you, sir. Again, we'll put Jay's details in the show notes and feel free to connect him. He's a great guy to speak to and, you know, potentially be speaking in the future. So no, really enjoyed our pretty brief conversation as well. So, you know, thank you, sir, and good luck with the rest of it as we go forward.

Very good, Mike. I appreciate the time and this opportunity to share with you.

Pleasure, sir. Thanks very much.