https://www.listennotes.com/e/0b3a83ebc36f47438fbd00b14f2129f1

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast, where each and every week I usually interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. But this is a week with a slight difference. Because we were asked by one of our associations to run a virtual session for them, they were actually saying that a lot of their members, if you like, were struggling to get their heads around why they needed a personal brand in treasury and whether they really needed one. I said, yes, you guys need one. Whether you like it or not. This is what you need to do. So gave them a load of advice. What we actually did was we kept the audio. There's also a video available where Joe and I, we give some illustrations and talk a bit more about exactly what you should be doing with your personal brand in treasury and why it's so key nowadays. So have a listen if you want to go and check it out on YouTube. Enjoy the episode and let's get on with the show. Hello, everyone. I'm Mike Richards. I run the treasury recruitment company. Literally, it says down over there, somewhere on that side, you know that side. That's it. My screen. I've been a Treasury recruiter for 25 years. Joe, let's. Do you want to talk about personal brand, Joe? Do you want to explain who you think that's maybe, Joe?

Yeah, I'll keep it to what's relevant. I've been in recruiting for 20 years, I've been in the treasury space for about five and I oversee the US operations for Mike.

Lovely. And when we first started, I don't know about you, Joe, you didn't need a personal brand. It was like your personal brand was you go to the pub, you meet some treasury folks, you talk about your treasury careers, and if you wanted to go get business, you get a new directory. Afp, Directory Act. You go through, you talk to people, that's how you built it. Then along came social Media, then came LinkedIn, the beast that is LinkedIn. And then this all started as well. So that's how it's grown. And that's why now both Joe and I, we go across, we spoke afp. I shared a stage with Summer Simmons about networking, but also your personal brand at AFP last year in Nashville. And now you have to do it, because the fact is, if you don't do it, someone else will control your personal brand. The worst thing is if you're not doing things on LinkedIn, we'll come back to that in a minute, then someone else will do it for you and they will steal your limelight, if you like, and they will control what people are saying about you. So I'm going to go through this, try and give you some advice, do ask questions again, as I say, with a lot of our live sessions, if you don't, you're missing out. It's your fault. You've got a chance to ask just Joe and I some straight questions. We'll answer them as best we can. We can do some of them offline as well. So, yeah, Mike Richards run the treasury recruitment company. I also run a podcast and a number of people have been guests throughout time. We've got Tim Hussnett, got some great podcast guests there. I've been talking to treasurers for 20 plus years. I thought six, seven years ago, why don't I record these conversations to talk about people's treasure? Because it helped them, which it has done. And it's grown and grown. 200, 000 downloads. It's free. You can get it on all your apps. So go on Apple, go on Spotify and everything else. We talk about how you develop your treasury careers and as part of that we talk about how molding your own professional brand is a key part of this. And actually having a professional brand and the crossover personal brand and I'll get Joe to talk about that as well in a minute. Is actually quite tough now trying to keep those two things separate. So this is why it matters. It's bigger than you guys. It's what is said about you. We go. Here you go. This is Jeff Bezos. He said this little known guy knows a few things or two. Apparently only one of the most successful people in the world. It's about what you're not in the room. But actually I've taken this a little bit further. Say there you go. It's not about what they say, it's about what they also think believe about you. Joe, what are you going to say.

As far as personal branding goes? I know you. You mentioned LinkedIn and social media and had the advent there. I've been using LinkedIn since 2008. More of a cautionary tale. I didn't take my personal brand seriously up until, oh, I had a pretty good brand and then I deleted my profile. Believe it or not, when I joined a competitor in the treasury industry, I guess is what we'll say that was back in 2019, but I lost 15,000 connections, a ton of referrals and just a lot of connections that would still benefit me today. Built off of that previous brands now I guess I've done it twice and I would much rather not do it a third time. So if you're. No matter where you're at on your journey, keep going.

But Joe, we're recruiters. These guys are treasury professionals. Doesn't matter to treasury professionals. They're not in sales. They don't need this.

Surely treasury professionals, present company included, possibly excluded. They are a very, how do we say, may not interact with everything, but certainly are paying attention to what's going on. So I guess, for lack of a better term, creepers is what you could call them. But yes. So that's why in order to be known about what you do or what you're actually doing, like where you want to take your career, the only way to do that is to put it out there and to continue to celebrate your own accomplishments in some way. And it's counterintuitive because nobody wants to. Everybody has that humility or that humbleness about them. But if you're not putting it out there, how are people going to know?

And this is the thing, when I did this for New York, people were, why did they avoid it? These are the reasons and these were the top reasons. And we did this brainstorm as well. This is the key one, I think the biggest one is, hang on. Oh, they must be looking for a job. No, they're not looking for a job necessarily. They're wanting. And you guys, as treasury professionals, you do a great job, but no one knows. It's like a leaf in the forest that drops. No one hears it if no one can see it. And this is the thing, you can go on to LinkedIn and you can put up there your achievements. What have you done? What have you achieved this week? Maybe what have you achieved this month? And it doesn't have to be showing off. People were worried about it. And we'll come back some other bits about being boastful. What about negative feedback or controversy? Don't put anything up there that can be controversial. You don't need to put a political opinion. You might have one, but you don't necessarily want to do that. One of the. Give a practical example. So I had Emma Haywood, treasurer, Dalace Group, amazing lady. We talked about her achievements and what she needs to do or what the way that she records them said Mike, I'm a really busy treasurer, but what I do on a Friday morning, 10 minute cup of coffee and I send myself an email, okay. And it goes into a little email folder and she keeps a little black book of her achievements and of her team. So whenever her CFO CEO walks up, how are you getting on? What have you done this what week? What have you achieved? What have done this quarter? What have you done this half year? She's able to give me a sec. It's a great tip. And so you can literally just see that and it comes out to you as well. And Joe, what other thoughts do you think with people updating on LinkedIn?

It's. There's just a lot of. A lot of hesitancy. The imposter syndrome is probably what I hear most commonly is like, who cares what I do? Or am I even good at what I do? And the reality is we all think that our problems are individual to ourselves, but chances are if you face something or you've overcome something, that someone else in your network that you're connected to is either going through the same thing or at least has been through something similar. So put it out there and see what happens. You never know how your community is going to grow or what post is going to resonate with your network. I guess you can say.

And the other bit is your LinkedIn profile is your business calling card. It's working for you 24 7. Now, again, you might put on here, where are you looking for a job? What if you're not looking for a job, but what if a job comes looking for you? We also do a salary survey as well, so feel free to take part. It's free. We have 1500 treasury professionals take part in it. And it's continuous, continually goes on and stuff like that. We've just changed one of the questions. The question before was, are you seeking are you open to new career opportunities? About 70 of people were saying, yes, I'm open to it, and 30 were saying, no, that's fine. But actually, I've changed the question now. The question now is, if we came to you with the right role that was the right fit for you and everything else, would you be interested in a conversation? It's jumped to 95%. So 95%, I would say, of treasury professionals are open to role. You're not looking, you don't have to be. It's like when I talk at various conferences, like Chicago for instance, as well, did this last year's conference. Who in this room is looking for a role? And they went about 10%, put the hands up. Great. Said, okay, who here, if I came to you with a role that was of interest to you, would answer the phone, would be open to it? 90% of hands went up. And then of the 10% that didn't, I said, I know you Guys are sitting next to your boss. Don't worry, I've already got their resumes. So. Yeah. And they're all like, all right. I was like, yeah, I know you're looking, so it's fine. Oh, here we go. Poll question. Go on, Joe.

Oh, no, I was just going to say it's. It's interesting and I think most of the individuals in this room are probably more senior level, but as you get higher up in that hierarchy, it really becomes an issue of timing because the right job might pop up for you when you're not ready to make a move, but it's not necessarily going to be on your terms. It's up to you to seize the opportunity. And that's the most common conversation I think I have with more senior level treasury professionals is my job search is taking a lot longer than I ever thought it would. And it ultimately just comes down to timing. So whether you're looking for a job or not, build your brand and more opportunities will pop up, start to knock.

On your door and stuff. So, guys, in, in the chat, if you can look at this, you can. Again, you're not sure whether it's worth it and we'll just give you some advice. So choose with it. Don't want to sound like I'm bragging. That was the top one, actually, because this is what we found with. When I did the New York session, I found that. We found that 90 of treasury professionals hadn't updated their LinkedIn profile in six months. Anything put on there, it's just that holding page just sits there, boom. But it's not doing any work for you. But you guys are working head down. Do you think you're companies are looking after your treasury careers like you are? You've got to be in charge of it, you've got to take responsibility. If you don't direct it, then you're letting them take charge of it and stuff. There you go. So, yeah, you've got caution about how it might be internally. Yeah, that's a key one as well. Now, the key thing here, it's, you don't have to be bragging about it. Chat GPT actually is really good for this. If you say, look, I want to put up something about this, I also get the pushback. Some sort of privacy. I wouldn't want to say about what we've achieved by implementing this treasury system. I didn't do it all. Don't say you did it all, just explain. We've recently implemented a new treasury management system. This is what it's done for us. And then what a surprise, people will start to approach you. Nicole and I, we were just talking. Who's helping me with this? I've just said to Nicole and actually I did the Women in Treasury event, the guys at New York Cash Exchange earlier this year. I just saw they were putting forward a session doing this. And I said, look, can I help? Just put my hand up? Yes, please. Actually, could you be part of it? Yeah. Great. That led to getting CTP credits for doing your live sessions. Mike, that led on to. Anyone doing this session may get CTB credits, but anyone if you listen. That was the other thing. Listen to our podcast now. You get CTB credits. You're a little quick quiz, but again, the way that this comes across, I'm not bragging about this, is if you want to come across and say, look, I said, I'm not sure how it's worth sharing. If you don't share, no one else is going to. It's just going to be in a vacuum. Joe, other thoughts or bits as we keep moving on?

No, I'm just. I think we all think that people are paying more attention to what we do than they actually are. It's a busy world, let alone whether or not people are even on LinkedIn or we're connected to the people that would matter. And part two to that is if someone came up to me and was like, hey, I've noticed what you've been posting on LinkedIn. I'd tell them to get a freaking hobby if I was working with them. Mike, if you came to me today and you were just like, hey, you're posting some weird stuff on LinkedIn and be like, go do something else. This is my brand. This is my profile. This is what I'm doing. So that's just got to throw caution to the wind in some ways. And to Mike's point, don't throw a whole bunch of internal confidential information or anything out there, but keep it within reason and continue to build who you are.

And it's a professional website. This is it. Some people have also said, oh, but it's actually about jobs. It's not about jobs. And in actual fact, with the video feed and all the other changes that LinkedIn are making, they are trying to push it more and more towards advertising, professional services. That does include careers, that does include jobs, but it's not. It's about you guys and actually having that professional brand. It can be about getting speaking gigs, it can be getting out there. And this is your. As I put here and I'm putting on my screen business card. It's there. And make it for business. Do professional stuff. Go over to Facebook. I don't even do Facebook because that's my private life and I don't even do Facebook. So that's it. So other things, if it's a business card, if you don't have a photo on there and it's a professional photo and we'll go that in a minute, then it just. Why bother? It's. I've done this before and actually I can do it now. It's like you have this. And I did this in Brussels a few years ago and I've done this before. If you've seen it sessions. And they said, oh, don't really like having a photo. And I said, great. You walk into a business meeting next time you meet a bank. And I want you to go, hi, I'm Mike. How are you guys? Yeah, great to see you. Yeah, lovely. Yeah. Like that's what you're doing. You're essentially turning your back on your audience and not making them feel welcome. They want to see you, they want to check you out. They want to see that Joe on photos. And we'll come back to that as well.

Was gonna ask if you could do the rest of the presentation facing that way. It's less distracting.

He's so rude. It's so rude. This is it. That's. You guys are recording. This is a verbal warning. This is it. We got this now. It got on tape. Thank God. No, but. Exactly right. And the key thing is, as well, this separate thing with photos is if you do change your photo, put it up there, get someone who's not connected to you to please check your photo. Why do I say this? Because LinkedIn changed their rules. You can actually. I'll send you some links after this as well. Doesn't always show your photo. It will come up as a gray blob. And I see some of my rival recruiters come up as a gray blob because their privacy settings are set wrong. How do you do this? We've got a little bit. You can go onto our website, be on my weekly newsletter, actually, this week, next Tuesday, coming out next Tuesday, which shows you how to make sure that your is visible headlines. Why shouldn't Joe. Why shouldn't someone just say, hey, I'm a Treasury manager?

Because that's boring. What do you actually do for a living? Are you a. An expert cash manager? Are you an expert FX hedging or an FX hedging expert? Are you an expert in capital markets like there are God knows how many treasury managers out there. You got to find a way to separate yourself from the noise.

Yeah. And again, I've done this at conferences. How many people just have cash manager on the profile? I said, okay, has anyone here saved any money this year? Yeah. Has anyone saved any man hours, personnel? Yes, done it, Bob. Hang on, tell us about that. It doesn't have to be confidential information because that leads into your about section on your LinkedIn and people say, hang on, I've got a full time job. I know you have, but if you were just to put in, think what you know. So on Friday morning, maybe after this, just pencil in, have a coffee with yourself. Said, what difference did I make to my company, to my job this week? Put that in your diary for Friday morning, five minutes over a coffee and then without being, keep it confidential, but then put it on your LinkedIn profile. What difference you made? Don't just put in, I implemented this, so what? But what difference did you make? Did you save the company money? Did you save them time? Did you reduce cost? Just put it in there. And by doing this, you'll actually keep on repeating it. I, I'm doing with a business coach and I've said this to other people that I have to record my wins each week. I hate doing it. I want to be bragging, I don't find it comfortable. I force myself to get out of that. And that has led to lots of other stuff. It's like doing our conferences, doing sponsorships, doing, coming across, speaking AFP without doing that. I'm not sure I would be speaking at AFP in Boston because I got a. Got out of my own way and that's what you treasury folk need to do. Joe, other comments?

Not only that, what you're talking about is essentially building your business case for review time.

Yes.

That's. I don't know about you guys, I barely remember what I did last week, let alone three months ago or anything like that. So that's just the running tally of success that you've had along the way or adversities you've overcome along the way.

Yeah. And then again, it's here. Treating LinkedIn like your online CV. So next bit, I think. Photos. Yeah, this is my favorite. So what you're about to see comes with a health warning. Okay, These photos, now you might recognize who they are in here, so strap in, sit down. Great. Yeah, look at that. Those, a lot of those are a face for radio. I know they're bad, but what These were is we created this as a LinkedIn post actually, and it went a bit viral, got thousands of views. But each of these photos is a remade photo. Because I thought actually if I included the real life photos, I would be in court. People would just say slander. That's it. We took all these photos and they were remakes and at one stage people saying, can you show me the real one? And I did. And there was this one guy with a phone looking really serious. I'm like, really? That's your LinkedIn photo. You've got me with the Cronenberg and the crazy shirt. You can borrow that for parties if you want a bar mitzvahs. I don't mind. All of these are real photos we managed to find from people and a lot of them were in treasury. Now the worst one, you can't actually see why because the one of the photos was a treasurer, global treasurer for a tire manufacturer in France. That's all I'm telling you. That's all I'm going to say because that she's moved on jobs, so it's okay now. And it was a photo at the Christmas party and there was a little character and on his shoulders, like doing a little kiss. They put it as his LinkedIn photo. I was like, OMG, man. Really, like, why are you doing this? You've also, when you update your photo as well, just check it on a different device. Look at on your phone, look at on someone else's phone. Make sure it's not squashed. Yes, it's great to have kids. That's a photo my son from years ago. We don't want to see that. That's not. That kid can't work very much. That's child labor laws. Joe, some of the worst photos you've seen.

How much time do we have to cover here? Yeah, it's. You've covered the basics. We'll leave it there.

Right, okay, keep going. There you go. Have an appropriate photo. Not a beery photo. People have said so one again, Emma Haywood, she said the other day she still had a photo on her LinkedIn of one of the cars that they do. Said Emma. Really? I can't do that on the LinkedIn stuff on the podcast, rather. So we. Her son took a quick photo. I did a couple of edits on it. Ten minutes later she's got a new professional photo. I was like, oh, wow, that's great. Thanks very much. It was on his iPhone. It doesn't take very long. Yeah, it's a good one. Right? Where we go next? Yeah, Friendly, professional, yet not having a beer. The thing is, I'm not saying you, as I said earlier, not saying a job, you're looking for a job, but a job might come looking for you. It might not just be a job, it might be an opportunity. It might be to speak at afp. To speak actually on one of these AFP panels, like one of the regional group panels, to contribute to help your colleagues, to help your peers as well. It's a really good thing. So none of that actually shocks me. Joe, any other tips?

No, it's again, if, even if you're not looking for a job, where, how and where you come up in search results also depends on how often you're using the platform. Because this is social media. At the end of the day, it is business social media, but it is social media. So if again, I think the theme of the presentation seems to be find the time, make the time each week. And again, the theme there is just you're using this as a running business card for what you've done, what you've accomplished. That way, when you go to create a resume or if you ever do find yourself in the job market, you're not scrambling because you already have that running list and that dialogue or, I'm sorry, that diary.

Yeah. One thing I would add is I spoke a few years ago at Windy City Summit, which takes place this week, but I was talking to one of the student interns and he was, I said, look. He said, oh, I do LinkedIn, but it's all right. I said, Facebook and I don't do this. And I said, grant, can you just do me a favor? Can you grab me a beer, please? And someone said, okay. So went off and get a beer. And he came back five minutes. A couple of minutes later, I said, oh, thanks for that. How was Juana? He's like, what? I said, how was TJ over the border? And he's like, what are you talking about? And I just took his, showed him a photo that I'd managed to find. I said, look, I used a really little known search engine called Google and I googled your name and I put in party and I put in beer and it's you. He's oh my goodness. How did he at the time was implying for applying for internships. And I was like, yeah, you need to get off of Facebook. And he had to go in, he had to remove some photos, but he'd been tagged in his friend's photos. So it's visibility does create career opportunities. But also can be a danger. So be careful there. That's the health warning. Our podcast is sponsored by icd. ICD are an independent platform trusted by thousands of treasury professionals worldwide to manage short term investments. One global treasurer recently told me it was one of the smartest technology decisions they've made. No license fees, rapid setup and tangible returns. If you're looking for a smarter, simpler way to manage your liquidity, then head to find out more at our partners page treasuryrecruitment.com forward/partners and find out much more. Let's get back to the episode, right? There you go. These are some of the other things you can do. We'll keep it short. Sweet. There you go. It's about getting out there, networking, raising your hand and everything else. I do want some questions from you guys. In a minute. No difficult one summer. Thank you. And that networking more than just drinks. This is exactly it. Now, there was this amazing lady I shared a stage with. She might be on this panel, but not really on this panel we talked about at AFP in Nashville. The networking isn't just having a beer. When we did our session in Houston two weeks ago, the challenge I gave to the audience when again you guys can do it when you go to sessions as well, is after this, everyone's going to break for a beer. And I was like, oh great. And I said, and if you walk out of here and you have connected to no one else on LinkedIn and not just a random connection request, hey, connect to me, connect to me. You're at the event and just see their badge and you haven't exchanged more than three words to that person. You failed. Said, what you need to do is engage with someone. Doesn't take long. Have a conversation. I said, you're given my permission. And actually everyone was, oh, a bit quiet at the beginning, but even our sponsor said three minutes in because I'd given everyone a challenge to make three friends to make three connections in that within 10 minutes the room was on fire. It was like buzzing. I was like, wow. One of the guys came up to me after 50 minutes, I got seven. Mike. What? He said, I've got seven connections and they're all relevant to me and it's really good. And I'm meeting a couple of them for a coffee next week. I'm like, it's more than just about the beers, Joe. Networking tips.

Just be intentional with your networking. Just get to know people, get to know the person, but also get to know how you might be able to benefit one another in the future. Don't focus on what's in it for me. Focus on what can I do to help you or how can we connect. What do you just start asking questions and be curious. I think that's the most important thing in networking is just be curious, ask questions. Don't focus on talking about yourself.

And to steal a phrase from Summer Simmons, who is part of this group, networking is hard work. As it says in here, there's work in the middle of it. It's not easy, and particularly if you may be a bit more introverted and stuff like that, you do need to get out of your own way now. It doesn't mean to say you have to be out there. Hi. Hi. Hi. You can just go and meet someone, talk to them. When you go to your next conference, whether it's a regional or whatever, go there. And that's what your aim, to make three new connections and the next time make four. And it's iterative and it grows your network as well. So you go. So it's not socializing. Proactive follow up is key. Oh, here we go. Like this. Nice. Hang on, I'm going to come back to some of those questions in a minute. Your network is your net worth. That is from Leanne Perkins. She's brilliant. She just used that phrase and she said, look, the more that you can network, the more that you get inbound inquiries, the more that you can meet people. And it's made her a success and it gets you more opportunity. She said herself that she's not a natural, but that's what she's done. She's put in the work. And this is a key thing within Treasury. You guys do a great job and you don't tell anyone about it. Yeah, we got questions. We then went to question and answer with our audience, and I was then asked a very honest and vulnerable question by one of the panelists, one of the participants, if you like. And I think what she shared speaks something that to that a lot of us wrestle with. So their question was, I've always believed what other people think of me is none of my business, but I struggle to separate that mindset from the reality of office politics, career progression. And there's someone I work closely with. We just don't see eye to eye. I've tried to use data and logic to support my approach, but they don't seem open to it. I don't necessarily, on a personal level care about their opinion, but we're in such a specialized field. How do I manage the professional aspects from that someone's negative perception of me, especially when I feel that I'm in the right and I want to manage this going forward. Can you help me? You know what, what advice do you get? And this was the answers that both myself and Joe gave. The way that I would say about it is you accept that they're a rock, they're not going to move, then transited, they're staying there. So you either have to navigate around that rock or over it, or just try and work with it. They're not going to move, they're just going to stay where they are. They're not going to change. Your opinion is wrong. Okay. You can counter that by saying. And not go into conflict with them. Just actually try and work with them and just say, look, you've got your opinion, I've got mine. Let's try and wait, look at middle way, see if you can do that. Sometimes you're just not going to be able to work with those people and just try and have to work with other team members and stuff. Joe, have you got any thoughts? Yeah.

At the end of the day, you can't please everybody. What you can do, you can control how you're reacting and how you're communicating with that person. Right. You can't control how they're receiving it, how they're going to react or anything like that. So as long as you're staying professional within your real, then at the end of the day it's just going to be. It is what it is and you've got a job to do. He's got a job to do. I don't know if you'd ever cross paths if either one of you ever moved down again or like how his perception of you might be impacted. If you're handling things professionally and you're controlling what you can control in a positive way and he's still going out of his way to badmouth you or create some sort of perception around the company. I would like to think that people would see through that and it would speak more about him than it would about your. You or your ability to be perfectly honest with you. You're also interacting with other areas of the business. Right. And you have partnerships. People know who you are, people know what you're capable of. So at some point it's your word against his and you can control your word. Right. You can control your own perception or how you're being perceived by other people, by the actions that you're taking day to day.

Yeah. You can only control your actions. You can't control the actions of others necessarily. As people say about stress. There is no such thing as stress. People say, yes, there is. No, that's your reaction to pressure. That's where when you have pressure put on you, you can get stressed or you can choose to run away or you can. You choose your reaction. So this is what I'm saying is that you choose how you react to that. That's what's in your control. That's one of the key things as well.

And as for everybody else, that could be a potential stakeholder that you need to stay on good terms with. You just kill them with kindness and whatever the heck your revenue cycle manager is saying. Just whatever. Yeah, he's gonna go off and do.

His thing and feel free to chuck any further questions in there if we've got anything else. One of the other things I was going to say, if you go to treasuryrecruitment.com We've also got advice about LinkedIn profiles as well. So you can go there and it gives you more advice about some of the do's and don'ts. Here we go. So, Nicole, what advice would you give to someone who feels like they're being too much or not enough when trying to define their personal brand? Oh, good. One feels like they're being too much or not enough. I think there is a balance if I give. So I'll give a personal example. We do a Tuesday newsletter, which is my thought. We plan them out once for once a week across the course of a month. And then on a Friday, I do a conversation. I do a bit to camera and I'm going to do some conversations with Joe and do some conversations with Katie just about the. And these are pieces of advice that I give from conversations with guys like yourselves. For instance, one of the upcoming ones is with candidates who have been saying to me, I want to get into Treasury. Brilliant. Are you in treasury now? Have you got any experience? No, but I've read about it. I'm like, okay, then, all right, so you've got none of that, but you're a banker and you've just dealt with treasury people. Yes, I want to be in Treasury. Okay. And I try and give advice about how they might make that, bridge that gap and what they can do. So we try and do that. And when it goes about too much, and I sometimes worry that I'm flooding LinkedIn too much with too much content. However, what I have found is by just doing it twice a week, the feedback I'm getting from you guys is incredible. Because also a lot of the time we do the podcast, and that's not about me. I'm doing it because I love talking to treasurers, and actually we share that with you guys. That's just bigger and bigger. And now I've got more inbound inquiries where AFP want me to speak. AFP say, can we get CTP credits for that? And I'm doing that to help you guys as a Treasury professional, which I'm passionate about. I'm not doing it to big PR and stuff like that. Joe, what are your thoughts? What's the balance?

I. I naturally default to authenticity, whatever feels comfortable to you. But you do have to challenge yourself and take yourself out of your comfort zone, because that's where the growth comes from. For instance, if you're only comfortable posting once a month, I would challenge myself to do once a week, because again, that's. It's the practice and the repetitions that's going to get you more comfor comfortable there as long as you're staying authentic to who you are. And I would also define the purpose for why you want to post, too. A lot of it, like my content that I put out, there is conversations that I've had with treasury practitioners that I was like, oh, this person had this question. Somebody else in my 5000 plus connections probably has this too. And I get tons of messages and tons of responses, people saying, thank you so much, I was going through this, blah, blah, blah. You just never know what conversation it's going to start. But that's why, and I know it might be controversial, but that's why I hate using AI for content. And I just. Because it's not my authentic voice, you can tweak it, you can do that type of stuff, but you might use it for idea generation or something like that. But just stay authentic to the brand that you want to create, because it is tiring trying to maintain an image or a brand for the sake of your audience, and it doesn't align with who you are as a person.

And I'll just add something actually on AI, we were talking about, about some AI sessions coming up. Kevin Chlinlin, who's my podcast coach, and he's brilliant, Kevin did a post and I listened to his podcast as well. AI, for all you guys out there, is average, is 100% average. And what? No, hang on. I was really. No, it is average. What it's doing is it takes a load of content that we've been feeding into it for the past, what, five years or whatever. It's gone back however long it's gone back in the past. So taken all the this content and it's taken bad content, it's taken average content, and it's taken great content. And what it's done is averaged it all out. So if you put stuff into AI at the moment, it comes out as average unless you give it clear instructions. So if, for instance, you wanted some food or you wanted the best poach egg or something like that, it will give you a very average poached egg if you ask it to do it however you say, can you take these three chefs, look at all of the stuff they've told us, and do me an average of those three eggs, it's going to give you a great poached egg. So when you are using AI, it's a tool. And then the fact is a tool can be very useful or it's going to be very dangerous as well in the wrong hands. So, yeah, that was just one of the things that I heard the other day. Joe, we're gonna do key takeaways.

Yep.

Joe's, you first. Wow, look at that. Very professional. Yeah.

I think the theme has been, no matter where you're at, if you've been doing this, I know some is gone now, but she, she's very good at being constantly present on LinkedIn. She had to start somewhere. And what you can't do is get lost in the comparison game saying, oh, this person has so many followers and they have so many likes, so much engagement, blah, blah, blah, that'll never be me. That's. You're just giving yourself reasons not to start. So the whole idea, quit making excuses, just frickin do it. See what works, see what doesn't, continue to work with what works, drop what doesn't. And that kind of flows into the second point, which is done. Done's better than perfect. You could get into your head quite a bit and waste quite a bit of time, or maybe never even post or put something out there, because you could sit there and say, I don't like the way this sentence is formed, or I don't like the way I said this. Put it out there. Just put it out there. Wrong or indifferent. See how it resonates with your audience? It'll come across as human, it'll come across as authentic, it'll be all right. And of course, that follows into the third, be authentic. Don't try to be someone you're not. It's freaking exhausting. And the content won't come across, may not resonate with your audience. That way, if you're not being authentic and you're also, at the end of the day, you're cheapening your own brand if you're not being authentic with who you actually are.

Yeah.

So that's what I'd say.

We've got this other question. How do you differentiate your personal brand for companies, especially if the two are closely tied and probably give it in my example. So the treasury recruitment company is my company and the way that we are as a company is we are very corporate because we deal with corporates, we get inbound inquiries and everything else. The opinions I put out, I sometimes see it on LinkedIn. The opinions are entirely my own. My opinions, I. There are some things that really grind my gears and drive me crazy. I don't put them out there because the fact is, my personal brand and who I am. Yeah, you'll get that 100 from me when we've had a few beers and I've got to know you in a private setting. I'm not going to give you my full 100 every day on LinkedIn. It could damage my brand in that sense. That's one of the things I would say, is that you do need to be careful because both reflect on one another. It's a bit like that Facebook thing as well. Joe, what would you say about differentiating the two?

I kind of look at it like work life balance in some way, where it's not a balance, it's a blend. Right. So you can still be professional, but you can still be authentic and stay within your own brand that you want to build. It's again, you're managing, you're doing what you can to manage perception of yourself externally. So if you decide that you want to engage in religious or political conversation on LinkedIn, then by all means, but don't be surprised if it comes back and bites you in the butt at some point. I always was taught very early on that always, anytime you're going to put a post out there, anytime you're going to do anything like that, act as if the owner of the company is standing over your shoulder reading what you're saying. That's the devil and angel on the shoulder, where you can sit there and be like, I could go this way or I could go this way.

And it doesn't mean to say, as you say, that you don't have an opinion, but the fact is you need to back it up and realize that you are being judged. Social media is social. You know, at the end of the day, you're Putting yourself out there. If you don't want to be judged, don't put yourself out there. That is what it is you are giving. You're putting that opinion out but be ready for it to come back. And the more extreme it is, the more you're going to get it back and stuff like that. And if you've got other questions, you can drop either Joe or I. Joe at Treasure recruitment, mike@treasurerecruitment.com but my bits takeaways for me, I've talked a few about this. This is the first bit network with purpose. It comes back to what I did with New York Cash Exchange and some other things is build real connections. Don't just go there. Hi. Hi. Hi. Glad hand quick. That's why we do a lot of the stuff we do because then it will. If you go to these conferences, these relationships will open doors for you. Whether you're planned about it or not. It's the fact is if you're doing this stuff, if you get involved with coafp and if you do this stuff and put your hands up to help out the team there as well, you get involved. The more you do, it will open doors for you. You don't know what doors they will be as well. Sharing your wins. Please, guys, come on. It's not breaking in that you can do it confidentially. Just do an iterative process. I said to you, please, on this Friday, have a five minute coffee with yourself. What did you achieve? Send yourself a quick email, put it in a little folder, do it again, do again. After three weeks you're going to want to give up. Do week four, five and then suddenly you'll start to see it. I've done it now for 20 weeks with this blog. I hate doing the blog but the benefits after doing it for 20 weeks. Now I'm also changing it a little bit. We can do some more conversations with Joe because I'm just a bit of an echo chamber. I want to do it with Katie. Now we're getting this. People are saying, oh, we want your opinions. I'm like, really? Are you sure? An English guy like me. But anyway, they are. And this is again that comes into tracking your achievements. When you record your success, it means your career moves become easier. So if at a later stage someone said does approach you for a new role or internally as well, if someone says, oh, we're interested in. You may be doing this. What have you achieved in this role? Oh, actually I've done this, I've done this and it just makes your life A lot easier sort of thing. And oh, here we go. And then this other one, networking in the real world. So we're doing this virtually. But the other thing is, I did say this here. Well done for turning up today. You're educating yourselves. You could have just not bothered. You might be eating your sandwich. That's fine, I don't mind. But at least you're listening and actually engaging a little bit when you do meet people at the conferences. Chris Fulton, great networker and he grabs someone's business card or whatever, he goes and meets them and he's now the COO of Prior Cashman, the law firm. And he says he's not that good network. He's brilliant because he will go meet someone at an event, he'll talk to them and he will like, he'll talk to them say, and someone else, oh, hi, come on, give me a sec. And say, oh, that person's going to such and such, their daughter's going there. He follows up every time. All of the jobs he's got, I have told him about this. I'm not happy about it. They have come, come and found him. He's not going through me. They come and find him. So actually it creates those opportunities, opens those doors, as we said. And networking, no, it's hard work. Summer did this when we did our session in Nashville, she actually said to people, it's tiring. So take some time. If you go to a conference, if you go to a regional, if you do that, give some time for yourself. Just don't go crazy. Yes, it's great. Take some time out as well. That's it. Thank you very much. Today's episode of the Treasury Career Corner was brought to you with the support of our partners, icd. If you're looking for a smarter way to manage your short term investments, ICD's independent portal gives you access to a full range of investment products, integrated analytics and a simple centralized platform built specifically for Treasury. If you head over to TreasuryRecruitment.com partners, you can learn more and we'll be able to connect you with the right person. ICD for both you and your business. Many thanks for listening to the show and thanks for your continued support.