Remco de Vries talks about building a career in treasury through networking and conferences. He joined Toastmasters to get better at public speaking and stresses the value of stepping outside your comfort zone to grow professionally.
Thing when you work in treasury is that we are all small teams working in big companies with big problems and big money usually as well. And in order to learn, you need to sort of cross pollinate with other people that are in similar roles and face similar problems. And that gives you a lot of perspective. Equally. You get that from conferences. I do. Like, you know, I make it a point to attend a conference a year if I can, because you take time out of your schedule to think about what's happening in the profession, what is going on, what do I need to do about this, what, you know, how. What does that mean for the priorities that I have with my team, for anyone, that. And that's relatively easy. You know, becoming a member of an association is usually not an awfully complicated job. You need to put a little bit of effort into attending events and once you start doing that, you bump into people and the networking sort of almost take care, takes care of itself. On the keynote address I had to make for the annual dinner of the iact, I chose to sort of have quite different topic for that keynote and someone sent me a message that saying it was one of, one of the bankers that attended one of the best keynote speeches I've heard. And I thought that was very moving for me to sort of see that because it goes, you know, you go out of. I took a risk with that and it links back, in fact, Mike, just to. You mentioned Toastmaster earlier. The reason I joined Toastmasters was because I had to do a speech for the Irish act dinner because I didn't feel confident about that at all. And for me, I thought I need just to do something about, expose myself, learn this. Because a lot of things doesn't come natural in the sense that you have to sort of practice these things. That's with a lot of things in life. And I figured I just need to, you know, do something about this. And therefore joined the Toastmasters Club and continued that journey afterwards. I didn't stop it when I have done the speech. Yeah. But the theme that I would perhaps give the listeners in that sense as well is try to get out of your comfort zone every now and then because it's important and it actually, it actually motivates you as well. When you discover that the thing you were afraid of or the thing that you thought you weren't very good at, that other people actually say, oh, I thought it was really good. Take the opportunities that come on your path and they are different for every one of us. And when you take those, do the things you do with heart and soul and give it your best shot and show people you're open to learning. Most importantly, I would probably say, measure your success by your own standard. Not just what your job title is, of what looks on your business card or how good it looks on LinkedIn, but what you want, what you want to achieve and how it fits into your life and your ambitions. And take gratitude from that as well. Because it's not only about, you know, becoming group treasurer in a FTSE company, because that is, you know, if, if that's the goal, then what, what is left for me? There is, there is much more to think about and much more to achieve.
