Inside the Mind of ‘The Treasury Whisperer’ with Seth Marlowe

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, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show, I'm delighted to be joined by Seth Marlow, SVP strategist at the or as part of the Treasury Insights Consulting Group at Wells Fargo, or as he has actually been nicknamed, the Treasury Whisperer. Well, Seth can explain exactly what that means. Seth, we've spoken a number of times. He's also a regular on the treasury speaking circuit, presenting at Wells Fargo Insights, AFP Conferences, New York Cash Exchange recently. We'll get into those as well. Texpo, Windy City. So you can explain a bit more about your background. But for those that don't know, and again, you can explain Wells Fargo are a Financial Services Group, 1.9 trillion in assets under management. Wells Fargo's mission, as it said, they were founded back in 1852, so you know they're right on the way around the world. Nearly 259,000 team members, massive organization, 26 on the Fortune rankings. Seth, that's enough about Wells Fargo. Let's take it back for your history and we'll perhaps get to the treasury whisper a bit a little bit later. Tell us about how you started in treasury and how you first started in finance. Treasury.

Well, it's kind of an interesting story, Mike. I never expected frankly to be in a Treasury role or a finance role. I started my career as an IT systems consultant with what was Arthur Young at the time, today that would be ey. I was in their systems consulting practice. Spent about three years working on building large, integrated, mostly accounting systems for companies and did that despite the mba. Certainly wasn't a cpa, so did a lot of, a lot of quick learning on ledgers and sub ledgers and things of that nature. But after three years of that, I had a great opportunity to go work internally at a corporation and it was PepsiCo. And that was a fabulous opportunity, probably to this date the greatest collection of talent I've seen in any organization that I've been with. And so I continued in an IT role there and I was supporting accounting, audit, few other functions within the corporate headquarters. And there were about two years into my time there, there was an opening for someone to support the treasury function. I thought, well, that's nice, but okay, not all that interested. I was approached by my manager and by his manager who sat me down and said, how Come you're the only one that hasn't applied or posted for this role. And I said, well, I didn't really think I was ready for it and you know, really not all that big on finance. And they said to me, well, we don't want the other people that have posted, we want you to. So I was incredibly humbled and flattered.

And you say they wanted you. Why? What was it about you that was different, do you think?

To those other guys, I think it was just the degree of professionalism, combination of business analysts, systems analyst skill sets, and they thought that I would be a good fit with what was a very high caliber treasury organization that really needed somebody on the IT side.

And then you progressed through Pepsi, what was that like? As you say, a great group of people. And I've known some Pepsi guys used to be based in the uk, but they're mainly obviously headquartered over in New York. You were based there, were you? Right at the headquarters?

Yes, I was in New York, in Purchase, New York. What a wonderful campus to go to every day. I always love telling the stories of how during the holiday season, literally from the day after Thanksgiving through the holidays, there would be Christmas music played on speakers out in the parking lots. And in order to get from the buildings to the parking lots, there was, you know, you literally going through the sculpture gardens and all kinds of exotic bushes and trees and things like that. And you know, there were, there were lights on. It was literally a winter wonderland. And I still have goosebumps recanting that because it was so amazing. But that symbolizes what Pepsi was like for me at that time. So back to kind of what happened there. So, you know, I spent a couple of years working on treasury systems and kind of learned the treasury business through the eyes of an IT professional. Got to have my first experiences with a Treasury workstation. I recently heard that the workstation that we use, which was the old ADS and then Sun Guard resource system, I understand that the remnants of IT are being sunset at this point. I have pangs of anxiety over that. But that was my, that was my entree into a lot of the treasury work and treasury systems work while I was there for, for that time in systems, I was taking in all the things that were going on in Treasury. The balance reporting, the investments, the debt, the derivatives often scratch my head saying, do we really need to do different derivatives for every funding that we're doing and every medium term note? And there was a cachet with doing something different every time I learned that. But what was an Interesting opportunity. I was amongst a lot of TAL systems analysts that were all kind of scraping to get to that next level of manager in it and it wasn't, wasn't happening for me. Some of it was that I ended up working for eight people in three years in IT and two of them twice. So it was kind of hard to get the internal sponsorship. But there was an opportunity for one of my clients in treasury who ran treasury operations was moving over to another role in capital markets and I'll throw a name out there just because he and I have maintained a long term friendship. Bob Lin kind of created that opportunity for me and I said maybe, maybe that's the way it's sort of, if not up within it, let's go out and around. And Pepsi, like a number of really world class organizations, was very big on moving people around, either divisions, different departments and so on. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to go into treasury, really learn that business in depth, run it, then to get that round trip ticket to come back to it at a managerial level having having already managed in treasury, interestingly, I think there was surprise by the folks in treasury that I wanted that role. You know, competed against folks like a head of payroll and one of the senior managers on the AP side, the Director of Cash management took a chance on me and said, you know, this might really work because, you know, you know our systems, you've got the mba, we can teach you the rest. It was great. I worked for a wonderful teacher, mentor and director, Diane Sutter, who is still with PepsiCo and learned a lot and we were a very powerful one, two punch with her running treasury overall, treasury operations overall I had the actual day to day operational activity. She also had all of our cash consulting pieces as well. So it was, it was great.

And then you did a couple of moves after Pepsi. You know what was prompting those moves? Because you're in Pepsi, you know, surely you could be Pepsi for the rest of your life but you chose to explore a bit more or what was happening.

I think the three letter acronym for what was happening was Y2K. I got designated as the Treasury Czar for Y2K. It was a fun task, but much bigger and broader than something that could really be done as a sideline to my day to day job. So we went through a lot of gyrations of trying to figure out do I do I do both, can I do both? This need to become more of a full time role. In the course of all of that I got a little restless and I said, you know, I've been here, I've been in treasury operations for three years. Let's see what else is out there. Maybe now's the time to get that round trip ticket back to it. But a lot had changed in it in three years, so the opportunities, rather than being internally, unfortunately, were more, more external and actually made a move to leave Pepsi to go work for Praxair, an industrial gas organization also in the Connecticut area. So go work for a former Pepsi person. So I thought that was the ticket. Let's go back to it and kind of get that going again.

A couple of roles there. Obviously, as you guys would hear throughout this podcast, that that's a big theme for yourself. And a lot of the time everyone's talking treasury technology now and the future and everything else, but you've had that as a backbone, a foundation of your experience. But talk us through, then you move through practice. But then Danone quite quickly into there and then ge, where you were for a number of years.

Yeah. So Danone experience and for your listeners and certainly in Europe, Danone, very familiar name, Paris based water and yogurt group. I, you know, here in, here in the States, everybody thinks Dannon for the Dan and yogurt business. So the Dannon water business was combination of the Evian import business as well as what was referred to as the Dannon project, which was to try to take the branding of Dannon yogurt and extend it to spring water and distribute it in the US and they were really looking to add to their finance leadership by bringing on a treasurer who had a very strong technical background. And part of the role included the receivable side of the business, which was a pain point for them. A lot of it was perceived to be people, but also process and systems. And it just seemed like one of those opportunities that was presented to me that I couldn't say no. It carried the treasurer title. And I said, you know what that would be, that would be a wonderful way to go back. And I also realized that in my time at Praxair, I got to redo a lot of the things I had done at Pepsi. And long term, what I've realized is that was probably not the best career move. And one of the things I tell people today is when you're making a move, don't go do something that, you know, you can do somewhat blindfolded. It's gotta be a challenge in it. I think in that case I may have jumped too quickly through that experience. I realized I really loved the Treasury Activity wanted to get back to it. So I made that move and for three years ran accounts Receivable and literally only had one person really on the treasury side that was managing our day to day cash. It was a fascinating time at the Dan and water business because at the time Dannon and Danone and Nestle were really in this fight for world domination in the water space. So we were being highly acquisitive. So we bought a water bottler in Pennsylvania that had three sites around the U.S. we bought the assets from NIA up in Canada, which had gone bankrupt. And then the coup de grace on this was acquiring the bottled water business of McKesson, which at the time I didn't even realize McKesson was in bottled water. It was a very complimentary acquisition because while we were retail bought packaged water, McKesson was in the home and office delivery business. So similarly sized business. So over the course of the three years I was there, we saw enormous growth for both organic and acquisition growth where literally we went from a $200 million revenue company in the US and Canada to over $800 million in the span of three years. So it was a fascinating time to do all of that work on all of the integration work that needed to be done, unfortunately. So here's the rub with this. At the end of the time of integrating, Danone headquarters made the decision that they were going to move the business out to California. And that was where McKesson's headquarters was right. You know, I had a work life decision to make. Do I want to move my family? And I opted at that point to say thank you, but no thank you. I would have been the ongoing treasurer of the combined entity. And I said, you know what? I think for where my kids are in school, age wise, it didn't make sense for me to make that move. I am kind of a New York kind of guy and I don't know how well we would have fared out there. Or at least I think the kids and the wife are far more resilient than I am, you know. So I opted to stay, turn out the lights in Connecticut and opted to literally take a package and see what future would hold. Unfortunately, timing is everything.

Yeah.

So while this all wrapped up for me in May of 2001, didn't anticipate that 911 was on the horizon. So that that made for a very interesting and uncomfortable period of time of being on the sidelines through all of the turmoil that was going on in the post 911 world.

And also just to chip in there as well. I started the business, the treasury recruitment was. Mr. Recruitment became the treasury recruitment business, treasury recruitment company back in 2002. And people said to me, why are you starting the business now? It's the bottom of a recession. If we were coming out that unsettled period. And I went, well, everyone will talk to me. They said, what do you mean everyone will talk to you? They talk to you. I said, no, no, there's no jobs around, but I can talk to lots of people. Establish myself over. And I thought it was going to last another year, you know, I said, well, we'll give it a year to establish ourselves and everything else. Just for anyone else who's listening, entrepreneurs and things like that, think about a year and triple it. Because it was three years, you know, it was not until 2005 it started really to motor back and I mean. But then you managed to find a home at ge, you know, how did that come about?

I had tried for a while to get into ge, and there is an interesting thing that's happened in this region because Pepsi is in Westchester. GE Capital was based in Stamford, Connecticut. Talking about 20 minutes by car between the two. There has been over many years a lot of people that made their way from Pepsi to Georgia. So one of the people who taught me so much about treasury when I was in Pepsi's IT group was Charlotte Powell. She had been. She was a ge, and Dennis Sweeney had made the move. I didn't actually know Dennis when he was at Pepsi. Probably missed each other there by a year, but Dennis was an assistant treasurer at ge. In the course of my search, I did some outreach. Didn't necessarily get a warm, fuzzy response. Not uncommon in those days anyway, with all that was going on. But then there was a posting I saw for an international treasury manager to work there. And I thought to myself, this has got to be reporting to Charlotte. So I picked up the phone and I reached out to her. I said, I'm assuming this job post is working for you. I said, it's probably not the perfect fit for me, but I'm not working right now. And so we had some discussions and she brought me in to talk to her people. And I had a most interesting first interview when I came there because I got introduced to one of her colleagues, Paul Burstein, who went on to tell me about this other role that had just opened up. One of his people was moving over to huge project in treasury with intercompany loans. He needed somebody. His group was called Strategic Initiatives. They were really the heartbeat of all of the systems from a Treasury operations perspective, they kind of owned the treasury workstation that they had deployed not just to treasury but to all the GE business units. And it had the connectivity to all of the banks. And at the time, this was 2002, they were the poster children or the beginnings of the poster children for Swift for corporates. It was something that Dennis Sweeney was pushing for, Paul was pushing for. So I saw this opportunity to once again leverage that technology background back in a global world class treasury organization. And the more that Paul and I talked, I think it was obvious to us that we were the right people to team up with one another. And I ended up taking, being offered that position and I just, I jumped at it.

And what was GE like in those days? Because you know, I recruited for GE at that time and it was a fascinating group. But then George changed vastly, you know, with GE Capital becoming this behemoth and then them saying, actually GE going, do you know what? We're an industrial services business. Getting out of all of that. Where were you in the evolution of the GE group, as it were?

So at that time, most of treasury for the organization, for the enterprise sat in GE Capital, which kind of made a lot of sense. And it was very clear that at that time things were very much being driven financially from the financial services side of the business. So it was focus on systems and processes that very much resembled, as I've come to find out after the fact, very much resembled being a bank. It was no longer this. We can batch up payments at the end of the day and transmit a file. This was the need for real time payment initiation, real time information. So there was just a tremendous amount of innovation that was going on within the Treasury Group. And I mean, frankly, it was an amazing place to be able to practice treasury and to learn. Because the thing is, because it's so large, it was so large, you got so deep in any area that you touched that you could never get that level of expertise in really in any other treasury organization around the globe. It was fun and exciting, a little nerve wracking. I remember this distinctly the first time I was told, Seth, you're in charge of our disaster recovery drill for our global treasury workstation. And guess what? We're going to be backing everything up onto our backup systems and then running live for a day. And I kind of looked at them and said, you're going to run live on backup systems? And they're like, yeah, this is in our DNA. This is the way we do things here. And I was beyond blown away because I had never seen an organization that not only forget about just having disaster recovery or business continuity plans, they actually executed it. They executed it three to four times a year. So it was, you know, nerve wracking because you knew you had to be up and ready within a couple of hours in order to get this ready. And then you're, you're hoping that your backup systems have the resilience to be able to keep running and running the business forward. So it was an amazing place to be.

And then you were there for what, eight years?

Yes.

And then along came Wells Fargo. Now, some people know at the head of the show, I sort of described a little bit about, you know, Wells Fargo, but perhaps you can explain it to people for particularly a lot of, we've got a lot of European listeners and UK listeners and things like that. So they perhaps don't know the group so much. Perhaps describe for them what it is and then how you came in and the evolution of you sure.

So Wells Fargo is one of the four major banks in the United States sitting at well over actually close to $2 trillion in assets. And Wells been like several of the major banks, a compilation of many mergers over the years that have created this behemoth. Norwest, which was a bank based in Minneapolis, First Interstate down in Texas many years ago, Wachovia, which itself was a roll up of First Union and Core states. So during the financial crisis, Wells Fargo stepped in, had a very strong balance sheet and was able to in essence acquire and merge with Wachovia. So that created this national footprint of branch banking and huge middle market capabilities, as well as to a lesser extent than the likes of Citi or JP Morgan, a corporate and investment banking capability as well. So where I was kind of standing at ge, I was always questioning what's next. You have to be. And I'm very much a believer that you meet people for a reason. You don't always know why. But I had the occasion to be asked to step in and be a presenter at a conference. In fact, it was Euro Finance in Miami. Dennis Sweeney was supposed to speak with Jeff Horowitz from Bank of New York. And Jeff's become a great friend over the years. And I didn't really know Jeff at the time. Dennis couldn't make this presentation, personal matters that came up. And so I stepped in and I got a lot of time with Jeff and then the more we talked, he said to me, you would be an amazing treasury salesperson. Love to have you in my organization. We talked a Lot more about that. And it planted some seed after that. I think as I was looking forward as to what's next, I realized I wasn't necessarily going to be or want to be the next system treasurer, deputy treasurer, ge. It wasn't necessarily the realm. I love payments, I love the technology, and I think in order to keep that focus, it would be impossible to have to become so much more broadly a generalist to, you know, manage such a large organization. So I started thinking about, okay, for the next step, how do I get to a bank? And the right bank didn't know exactly what the role would be, whether it was going to be something in sales or product or strategy. But that, that became the thinking. It also became a question of who can I go to? Because I knew darn well if, if one of our close banking partners won't name names, but if any of the top tier banks that we had relationships with had taken me out of ge, it would have, or attempted to, it would have been a huge relationship issue. I knew that I wasn't going to go down that path. So I knew it would have to be with someone outside my normal realm. Lo and behold, a former Pepsi colleague of mine, actually we were never really colleagues. Sandy Horowitz and I kind of passed in the night. He probably got to Pepsi a few months after I left. He was looking for some new opportunities and I was trying to get him into GE to do a Treasury consulting role. That didn't come to fruition, but Sandy landed at Wells Fargo and he landed in this role working as an internal consultant focused on helping the biggest customers of Wachovia get converted over to Wells. They literally needed people with treasury banking and technology experience to do this. So Sandy called me one day and he said, hey, I want to let you know, I landed. This is what I'm doing. And my immediate reaction was, hey, they looking for any more? People said, as a matter of fact, yes.

Yeah, when do you start?

Yeah, pretty much. And it was the first time in my career, only time in my career that I interviewed remotely, strictly by phone calls, and landed the role. I looked at it as a stepping stone. This was the bridge to get me over to banking. Figured, okay, this is probably the next two years of my life, I'm going to learn everything I can about Wachovia's legacy systems and Wells Fargo's go forward systems and everything in between. And it brought me in to start seeing customers. I was given a portfolio of 20 some odds, big names likes of major telecoms, major state government and Some interesting things started to happen because when I spoke to these folk and explained my background having come from GE and Pepsi and Dan and with the IT background, they looked at me very differently than the way they did at my peers, my treasury sales officers, the relationship managers. They're like, wait a second, you've walked a few steps. Or it sounds like a lot of steps in my shoes.

So you were the same as them, you understood their pain.

Yes, exactly. And I lived through so many mergers of banks over the years and knew the pains of bank of American nations bank and Chase and Bank One. And I could rattle up dozens of them because it didn't matter where I was, because my groups were always impacted by these changes. And what attracted me to the philosophy that Wells had on this was that they were very clear this was Wells merger, it wasn't the customer's merger. So they were trying to do everything in the bank's power to ensure that this would go as smoothly as possible and be the least bit disruptive it could possibly be. Part of this was bringing on a team to really work with the customers who were. The team was described as the highly integrated relationship team. So imagine the customers who had integrated systems on the payables and receivables and payroll, a lot of file formats going back and forth and they're going to have to rejigger all of that. So the focus was big, impactful from a revenue standpoint to the bank, impactful to the work effort involved of going from legacy Wachovia to the new Wells Fargo.

But you were in there in a sales role as such, although you were consulting with these guys. But how did you balance that with selling to these guys versus consulting to them and helping them? Surely that that's going to influence the advice you gave. How did you balance that independent streak, as it were?

I actually didn't have to because in that capacity I was really there for integration purposes. So I worked alongside the salespeople and the relationship people. So my goals were based on smooth integration and transition for the customers exclusively. So I wasn't involved in the sales cycle. Sure, I got pulled in on things that perhaps customer was looking at buying and integrating in the course of the transition, but I wasn't really in that kind of a role. But what this did was it gave me two years of being aligned with sales and relationships to watch and learn how it's done. And so that was a beautiful thing because let's face it, these integration projects, I mean, I was a full time employee, but there was no guarantee that there would continue to be work afterwards. So when things were done and we wrapped up In February of 2012, we all knew that we had a certain period of time to try to find another role. I got a very interesting phone call one day from one of our divisional sales managers who ran our technology media telecom group at the time. And, you know, I had worked with several of her customers and she had come on some of our integration calls and she had been impressed and she said, you know, there's this role in solution sales which I think you'd be dynamite for. Have you thought about sales? And I said, of course I have. And she connected me with the gentleman who to this day is the group head for me, Gene Sellers. You know, it gave me the opportunity to actually take that practitioner background now and use it in a sales role. But it wasn't as a primary sales office. It was really on the integrated solutions. That's what our solution sales group was. It was a lot of it was the integration with payables, receivables, invoice, automation, and it was also, it was a unique group within the bank. Probably one of the best jobs in the bank. And treasury sale. It allowed me to also be very consultative with my customers.

And then you evolved and then that's probably, yeah, the best way I could, I could describe it. You, you then, well, evolved into the treasury whisperer. So you can explain that maybe to the audience. And then you say on here. So you're. Let's give you a quick. Let me give everyone a bit of a heads up on Seth. So Seth is the treasury whisperer, AKA influencer, thought leader, evangelist, content curator. And you're at that intersection, as you say, of treasury payments, emerging techs. We. Okay, that's lots of nice, interesting, great buzzwords. What does that mean? What's special about you?

What's special about me is that I've seen Treasury evolve over time. I've seen it from the eyes of an IT professional, I've seen it through the eyes of a Treasury operations or treasurer professional. And now I've seen it through the eyes of a banker. So I've seen it from all the angles. I kind of get it. I love technology, I love the strategy, I truly love working with customers. And all the experiences I've had have been so consultative to our customers. And so as I was sitting in that role doing the solutioning work, there were just so many conversations that would come up where customers wanted to talk about things that weren't necessarily in our bailiwick of product to sell per se. It was thinking about doing a payment factory. I'm thinking about in house banking. I'm thinking about we're acquiring a company and now we're going to have three divisions. And I'm not sure whether the organization should be completely centralized, treasury or decentralized. How do I operate in that environment? I saw opportunities to be able to help consult and to continue to foster that Wells Fargo relationship. So I, with permission from my management team, I started taking on some of these small one off conversations. As a Treasury executive advisor was the original words I used for it, or a senior advisor. So I would go in specifically to talk about, you know, specific pain points that customers were having in areas where there wasn't necessarily a product to sell. It was all about the relationship. And again, because of the background and the places I've been, it was a very natural conversation. I was always amazed at how locked in on me our customers were. And I realized it was an opportunity to do more and more of this.

And then you've taken that sort of aspect of things and you've grown it because you're now key to the New York Cash Exchange. So perhaps explain that if you would. And you're doing a lot more speaking. Is it not just you're speaking just to hey guys, come to Wells Fargo and things like that? I know it's not, but maybe for the audience they might be sitting here thinking, yeah, but is he just, you know, extolling the Wells Fargo? But it's more than that, isn't it?

Yeah, so it truly is. The group that I'm in today is kind of an outlet from the consulting I was doing. And the idea was to be able to share the insights that we have at Wells that are about payments technology, the things that are changing in the industry. I was drawn to all of this. I was integrating it into the presentations I had been doing to customers and at conferences that were product specific. But I had a nice manner of being able to explain what's changing, what's the impact and bringing those insights out. So the idea, we actually went through a transition. The solution sales team was dispersed. People went into a couple of different directions on the payable side, some on the receivable side. And we created an insights team. Few of us have been tasked with the job of really evangelizing all that's changing in treasury with emerging technology. And again, it goes back to my love of the technology. I'm a Treasury geek at heart. It was very easy for me to start having conversations about Blockchain and distributed ledger and artificial intelligence and robotic process automation and big data and how to use it. And that became sort of the mantra of the group was to bring these insights to market at both industry events, Wells Fargo events. Nothing to sell here. I don't have a big data platform to sell you. I don't have an artificial intelligence engine that I'm going to sell you. Yeah. Is the bank using it? Yeah. And I would love to share the things that we're doing and how we're moving forward, but that's not the sell. The sell is the insight. It's the knowledge and the transfer of it. So I talk about, especially as I'm so much on the conference circuit in this role, I talk about. I have an objective of what I call the three E's. My objective is to enlighten, educate. And I think the reality is, I found out when you present at conferences, you've got to do a bit of entertaining. So it's educate, enlighten and entertain. So mixing in all these concepts with the anecdotes of customer stories that I, you know, customers I've worked with, companies that I've been at and things that I've lived and breathed makes for, I think, a more dynamic kind of presentation. And I've come to really love being, you know, being on the stage or in the middle of a conference room and really sharing and getting people to interact, because those are the best presentations or ones where you're not literally my manager these days. Steve Mara says, you know, we don't like to show up and throw up. Those are the worst. You want to interact, and trying to pull people in and bring that interactivity into a session really makes it fun for everybody attending and for me as well.

Yeah. And it's interesting, actually. I recently we were in New York and we're going to catch up, but I did a new speech at the Windy City Summit recently, and one of the comments came back and it was very much, oh, it wasn't as interactive as usual and everything else. Do you know what? They were totally right and it wasn't. And I love, as you say, that engagement with an audience, getting their new ideas and things. But we've done so much on personal branding, on LinkedIn and everything else, and actually we decided to throw that in the trash. So we started out by an assessment of all of these podcasts that we've done, very much like yours, and actually then assessing treasurers and, you know, what were they saying was key to success? Which we'll Go into with yourself in a moment, someone said, oh, you know, there wasn't that much interest. There wasn't because it was brand new and it was new for me. And I'm like, okay, and we'll get, you know, we'll get used to it. But with when you're speaking, you know what, when you. Again, there'll be people looking at giving a Treasury speech. What would you say is the key to those guys? What do they need to bring out? I mean, I rehearsed a lot, but I think it's only once. You delivered the same speech or similar speech two or three times. You can then riff on it and go a bit different directions, but you've given so many. I was looking through your profile, beyond the buzz, the new essentials winning, you know, what would you. What advice would you give to people if they're speaking as well?

There are a couple of things. Number one is remember that the audience is not sitting there with transcript of what you're supposed to say. They don't know what you're supposed to say, they don't know how you're supposed to say it. A way of relieving a lot of the nerves is to realize, hey, I'm here to talk and if I go off script, it's okay because there's nobody reading the script. That's one really big piece. Because I know a lot of people have issues and concerns with speaking in large groups. The second thing, and this is something that I learned from a colleague at Wells Fargo, Eric Vandenbrink, a number of years ago. He was doing internal training and he talked about making it your own. That was a game changer for me because I realized this was early on in my time at Wells on the solutions team. We were doing a lot of presenting at the time, and it wasn't my presentation. Somebody else's material that I was using. Very easy to get caught up in. What are all the things I have to say and what are all the bullets and key points? And, you know, how do I have the right things with the right slide and that make it your own. So resonated with me because sort of in line with the nobody's reading the script. It allowed me to take my presentations to the next level, interject the stories, the anecdotes, to go off script. And so that's something that I always advise people is make it your own, because it will come off that much more genuine and you will be that much more comfortable delivering it.

Yeah. And I think it was an interesting one for me, because, you know, that was my seventh time at the Windy City and it was fantastic to be there. But, you know, all we were talking about were the podcasts that I've done with you guys and that's been, that's been my own and it's done very well and everything else. But one of the things, you know, I didn't feel that comfortable because it was brand new and I did own it, you know, by the end of it. And then when we're dropping in some of the stories, but I think we had to push out up the envelope a little bit and be, you know, exist in that uncomfortable area because otherwise it was going to be another speech about, oh, let's do this about your resume, let's do this about, you know, on LinkedIn, have a photo because 21 times more likely to make a connection. I thought, do you know what? They've heard that before, what I wanted to do. And we got across and we put together actually a thing called the Treasury Skills Wheel that we'll put a link to in the show notes. And it actually comes back to a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today where you're looking at it and technology and project management skills are some of the harder areas and then its propensity to learn. But there were 12 areas to cover in a 45. It was meant to be an hour long speech but we were going to try and condense it and we didn't hit all the marks because there was so much to get across. It was great, we gave lots of value. But if I were to redo it and I hope to continue and refresh it and things like that, because there are some really powerful points. I think what we'll do is just bring out, sort of distill it a little bit if you like. And it sounds like that's a lot of the time that when you own it, you do it. And then when we spoke before and before we come on to your nickname and you can explain that, you know, we spoke a few weeks ago and stuff and you've got much more exchange involved with things like the New York Cash Exchange. How did that come about or what's the driver for you?

Well, a couple of things. Number one, I mean, I'm a huge advocate for continued treasury education and you know, for years I've been going to these conferences, whether it was a national afp, getting to, you know, things like the New York Cash Exchange finally got to Sibos a few years ago when it was in Toronto What I'm seeing changes. I'm seeing a lot of these conferences not having the degree of success that let's say a money 2020 is having, where it's all the buzz and the rage of fintech. And how do we get these groups to also bring in the younger folks. You look around the crowds at a lot of these conferences and it's an older crowd. You're not seeing much in the way of millennials. How do we get them interested in Treasury? And so a number of those things. And I become friends with Rich Serpa, who works for Kariba, and he's the president of the Treasury Management association of New York. And I said to him, you know, is there a way I can get involved? I know I don't go to monthly meetings in New York because I'm up in Connecticut. You their way to get involved and help out with the conference and membership. And it turned out that they actually were in need. There was a turnover of person on the board. And he said to me, let me get back to him and talk to the board and see if we can bring you on. So I'll cut to the chase. It brought me on and brought me on in a very specialized capacity. They asked me to come on and to really specialize on social media because I've been doing so much on LinkedIn already. And they said, give us the, you know, help us to develop a broader strategy, put more out there, get, get our membership and attendees more engaged on platforms. Let's help create a buzz. So that's what I did. I got started in December. New York Cash Exchange was the last week of May and it was a fabulous conference this year. I know there were a lot of worries as a lot of the conferences are seeing declining attendance. We were just about at par with last year, which we thought was huge. And particularly amongst the practitioners. It was great. And we also changed venues, so we moved from hotel to another. So there was a buzz about, you know, it being feeling a little bit different and that and the social media and I, we did some videos to kind of get people excited about what was going on this year. And so it's really been, it's been a lot of fun working with them. It's a terrific group. And I've always believed that enthusiasm is contagious. The sense I've gotten from the rest of the board members is, hey, they've been re energized and, you know, we're already starting to talk about the New York Cash Exchange 2020 to look like I'M really excited about that. And that's, you know, another 12 months off.

I think it's also, well, we did a number of years at the European International Show. We used to exhibit lots. That's certainly changed for us. And, you know, this isn't going to be a trade against stuff like that because it was very successful. I think the interactivity has gone, has needed to go up and much more, rather than just imparting knowledge, if you like. People are actually much more specific about what they want to learn. I think that's one thing for me, and I think you're right. You know, there are some declining attendances because I think people have just got stuck in what they did. And I think that that's, you know, people are then saying, well, actually, I've already seen this before. And the other point I was going to make, and I don't know if you'd agree, I've seen this myself. Treasury Departments have got smaller. You're doing more activity with less staff, but the staff tend to be at a higher level. People said, oh, you know, AI is replacing people and things, and we're getting onto that people piece. What I've noticed is that it's not replacing people, but it's making their job. So you might bring in a system and Instead of having two 40k treasury analysts doing the role, you might have one 60k treasury manager supervising the input and output and getting greater value. You've got a cost saving, you've got a Treasury management system that runs 24, seven, seven days a week. Everything else, instead of having two people, you have one person. Now, the problem is, if you now have a Treasury team that was eight people, now it's only four, it's a greater challenge, if you like, for that one person to go out the office.

That's absolutely true and that's a challenge. I think the other part of it is that the budgets for education, training, perhaps not what they could or should be. There are lots of other avenues for getting training through webinars, and people still managing to be able to get the credit hours, whether they're a CTP or a CPA or any other credentials that they have. So there are a lot of different options, unfortunately, and this is sort of tied into my comments about not seeing more millennials at conferences, is that, you know, when budget's limited, who are you sending? You're probably sending the more senior people, which in my opinion is a bit of a mistake, because we really need to use this as the opportunity to further engage the More junior members of the team make sure that they see a career path, understand what's changing in the industry. So it's a large part of really building out the organization, looking at that.

People thing and those guys at all different levels and everything else. What do you see as the future? Where are you seeing the people things? What say, for instance, if you were recruiting or helping in a hiring process, what is it you're looking for from those new recruits or people coming on board?

I'm looking for two primary things. One is technical skills. Doesn't mean you need to be a developer or coder, but you have to be someone that's willing to get your hands dirty in dealing with data, analyzing data, having a comfort level with the tools and the apps that are out there today. We can teach rather successfully the treasury and banking aspect. That's. I don't want to underplay or undermine the value of the finance background, but a lot of that is teachable. I would really encourage people and treasurers towards hiring people with the raw technical skills and find a way to get them excited about Treasury. That's one thing. The other piece is just the interpersonals. You know, you want people that can stand up in a room and make a pitch or a presentation that are comfortable with, with collaboration. Because to be successful today you've got to be able to collaborate. You need to be able to play nicely in the sandbox. I think those are differentiators between really good corporate cultures and not good corporate cultures. Everybody is a top performer and everyone's trying to compete with everyone else. That's okay. But I think you get much better results when you've got the collaboration and kind of a warmer and fuzzier environment. So those are the things I'm looking.

For today, what we might do. Actually, after this session, after this podcast, I'll speak to Seth Alfair about this. Seth has literally just described the speech I gave in many ways in Chicago because we created what we call our treasury skills wheel. So anyone listening, if you go to treasuryskills wheel.com it's not just a pitch for this because this is a free piece of research we did. It's amazing. Laura Myops director did it, but exactly as you said there. It was just amazing. That was like looks a bit like a dartboard. And we talked about the four hard core bits in the center and they're the hardest goals are the qualifications, diverse experience, project management, technical expertise. Exactly as you say. But around those and probably the bigger ones were just as you said there. Seth Relationship building, communication. One segment. Propensity to learn. Strategic thinking. Yeah, bringing that in. Risk tolerance, change, resilience. And then the final bit, enthusiasm and personal drive. And that's what. Exactly as you just described. And that was like.

And I promise you I haven't, I promise you I didn't look at it. And I actually missed, I missed Windy City this year as well.

So. No, and it just improves. So I'll say here on the audio. Thank you, Laura, you did a great job. It's amazing because this is exactly it, you know, so. But there was so much there, you know, you could have probably done a two hour session on it and gone through it, but we had to rock it through it. But yeah, I say, well, maybe I'll discuss it a bit further with Seth and share that and we have another session sometime because it just sounds like that's exactly, exactly what's in your head and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm amazed. That's really cool. So, right as we come towards the end of today's session, this isn't going to be the only time I talk to Seth. I've enjoyed it far too much, I've got to say, even though I'm recording this on a Friday when I should be in the pub. But that's a totally different. It Seth's morning time, so he's not got to the pub yet. So it's all right. But joking aside, as we do on all our shows, we will publish the link to Seth's LinkedIn profile so you can connect with him, look at some of his speeches, connect, you know, connect to New York, some of the other speaking you're doing and everything else, but somebody listening in today, they'll look back at your profile and they'll say, actually, I want to be. Well, actually, before we do that, the treasury whisperer. You can explain, if you like, for the audience why you get that. But the final bit we'll wrap up with and we'll lead into that is someone wants to be like Seth. You know, they want a similar background. Maybe they're in consulting, corporate, they've gone into a banking thing and they say, actually now I'm really enjoying that aspect. So you can give, if you would, maybe the tips. They do that. But let's get into the Treasury Whisper. Why did you get that moniker, as it were?

So it's kind of interesting. It was something that really started when I was starting to venture into doing some of this treasury executive advisory work. I was trying to describe that to people and trying to figure out. How do I phrase that? How do I even put it on my LinkedIn profile? This was probably about two years ago. I said, you know, there were all these whisperers out there being said of being an advisor. I said, all right, let's put a twist on this because I'm constantly playing with my profile and let me put it out there as Treasury Whisperer. Kind of has the same connotation, but on a different level. And it was literally at the back end of my profile. I didn't really think a lot about it, but I put it out there as I'm very actively networking. And I learned the art of networking when I was between Danon and GE and and had lots of time. And I learned kind of the art form, which I continue to do today as the network continued to build and as I'm presenting more people are seeing it more. So I had a revelation, and this was earlier this year doing a webinar for the Philadelphia AFP Group, another Treasury group. And I was introduced by hired banker who runs a lot of the education sessions for them, Chuck Steinbach. And Chuck introduced me as the treasury with. And it was the first time I heard anybody else use those words. And I just, I'm sitting in my home office getting ready to do the webcast and I just like, it just hit me is like, talk about personal branding. I've now got a name for my personal brand and it wasn't planned, it just sort of happened. And I basically took that and afterwards and I said, all right, I'm putting the that on the front of my profile now and I've got a brand and I, you know, I'm going to use that and leverage that. I'm not trying to make a big push about it. If people talk about it, great. I think it's great to have a brand name. I am going to kind of look at getting it trademarked, but it's nice. But I mean, I frankly, I worry about, you know, I'm a fairly humble guy. Really, you know, I don't want, oh, well, he's the treasury whisperer. You know, it's not about that. Kind of have stumbled across it. It's just a couple of words and I'm just a guy. But that's kind of the story of the treasury whisperer.

And actually it resonates, you say about the humbleness, you know, as a recruiter, you know, would you say you're humble? I don't know. I'm out there and love the relationship. I found it very weird. I was at the after party at the Trump Tower. So it was free drinks. So, yeah, that's. That's why I was there. I was loving it. And this chap came up to me and he said, said, hi, you're Mike Richardson. Yeah, that's me. Hi. And went, I'm one of your followers. Okay, this is a bit weird. And he said, no, I've been following your social stuff. I love it. The honest voice. You do this, and da, da, da. And I said, oh, thanks for missing. Could I have a selfie with you? And I'm like, yeah. And it felt, to this day is one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever done because I'm not that selfie guy. You know, I'll do. I see you do some of the. And stuff like that, you know, and I'll do it with my clients and accountants. We've had a few. When I'm going out celebrating drinks, I still find it really unnatural because I'm just like, I'm just doing my job. And he was like, no, you've really helped me, you know, in my career. And you. The stuff you posted, treasury salary survey, you've really helped me in my career. And I'm like, look, that's just my job. You know, we don't get paid to do that bit of the job. But it was just very touching as well. I was sort of. Yeah, as you say, very humbled. And I was just like, oh, okay, there's.

I so agree with you, Mike. And what I find is that, you know, a lot of what I do is not necessarily for me, it's my sharing of knowledge, sharing the things that I'm passionate about. And I know that there are people that genuinely take something away from that. It's making them better. They're learning. And so I've had similar situations. In fact, it was kind of shocking to me. I think it was three years ago, or maybe even three or four years ago. I had started blogging internally at the bank. It was all by email. And I kind of gotten a bit of a following there. And I showed up at our national sales conference, and people were chasing after me saying, I want to get. I want to meet you. I haven't met you before. I want to talk to you about this. And I was just like, what is going on here? It was bizarre. And then, of course, I recanted this to my wife, who always manages to, you know, tamp me down and. Yeah, bringing back to us, you know. Yeah. She's like, listen, please make sure when you Come back from this conference that I don't have to, you know, get the front door widened so we can get your head through. So, you know, I kind of get that balance when I get back to the. Back to the house family. She and the family, very good at, you know, making sure that I stay humble.

So you now have double gatehouse doors. As you walk in, you're like, just.

That's correct.

I'm back. Yeah, exactly. Look at me. I'll go around the back, you know, and as you say, it's. It what I think also people should appreciate as well that you go to these conferences. Right, Seth? Do you get paid for them?

Yeah. No, no.

So you do. So what you're saying is, so you get to go there, you travel around. You know, I sometimes talk to these. The delegates that are there, you know, and this guy said, so, do you get paid for this? I was like, no, I just do it because I'd like to share the knowledge. And I know at a later stage you'll call me when you want some advice when you're looking to recruit, and it's building that network and helping you guys. And if you give it out, then it's always going to pay back. So, you know, doesn't want to sound too altruistic.

But, yeah, I'm a very big believer in trying to pay things forward. There have been people in my career that have been mentors. There have been people who have helped me when others wouldn't. I feel a responsibility to be able to pay it forward. And there is no greater feeling than seeing people that have worked with you or for you, that you've guided and you've seen their successes or you've helped people land opportunities because of connections you've made for them. I mean, it's just so incredibly rewarding.

So as we wrap up today's show, as we say every week, someone looks at it and goes, you know, they say, you know, he's got a big head because he's, you know, his wife says he's got a big head. Now that. I'm just saying what she's saying, Mrs. Marlowe. I'm just. I'm just paying tribute. Yeah, but someone say, do you know, I want to be like Seth, I want to have a similar career. It might be someone's, you know, listening to this. Yeah, that'd be really interesting to do similar, you know, get involved in the associations they should do as well. We'll publish some of those links in the show notes. But if someone's looking at that, I said, do you know what I'd like to, you know, be or following that sort of career path or whatever my way. What's the one piece of advice or maybe a few tips you give to people?

Yeah, I think there are three pieces of advice that I would give, and I'll try to keep them succinct because I know I have a way of not being that. The first thing is you've got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, because if you're comfortable, it's just not a good place. And the world is changing so fast. You need to get used to the fact that everything is changing around us and don't cower away from it. You know, kind of lean into it so that that's number one. The second piece of advice is I call it disrupt yourself. Go and do things that I guess push you again into that, you know, uncomfortable position. Do something different. Do something, you know, join, you know, an organization that gets you outside of your comfort zone, or just do something different. If you've never. Perfect example. People say to me, well, you know, you're dealing, talking about all this technology. I don't understand it. And I look at them, I say, well, have you ever coded? They're like, no, I don't want to code. I have no way of doing that. Like, well, take a course. Take a simple course. Learn how to code. You don't understand APIs. Okay, well, here's a way that you can, through Excel, connect to an API and Get the top 10 headlines from the New York Times. Things are out there. Go in and do that and be willing to take the risk to do something different than you've always done. So that's number one. Two, and the last part is really treat people the way you want people to treat you. Give them respect. Be a really solid listener. I think the combination of these things is just kind of roadmap. There's nothing real special to making this stuff all happen, but I think you need to approach it with an open mind. And these are 3, 10 inside things to live by.

Amazing, amazing advice. So I'm scribbling here because I'm going to put these in the show notes. So get comfortable being uncomfortable or be uncomfortable and get comfortable with it, as it were. Be open to learning, and that can form, as you say, your roadmap to the future. Great advice, I'd say, Seth, as I said earlier, this isn't gonna be the last time I talk to Seth. There's gonna be some more shows that we're gonna do some special edition shows and feature shows. So I'll perhaps get you involved in those. In one we've got coming up, it's gonna be treasury technology. Why bother? That's just a working time.

That would be great. Yeah.

So we're gonna get some contributions from people about where we see it going. One in particular, I was with a lady international treasurer. I'm hoping she's going to be on the show. She's had to learn so much with the Treasure technology that she's done a hundred hours of study about rpa and for those guys, that that's robotic process automation and AI, and she's actually learned this so she can actually use it firsthand. She's not going to do it all the time, but she literally knows how to program and do it and things. And this is an international treasurer, so we're gonna have some of those shows. So we'll get Seth involved in those. That's it for me. I. I think you've had enough hearing from me. It's been amazing to talk to Seth. Thank you for your time today, sir, and look forward to talking to you, sir. Well, look forward to talking to you in the future. Be great.

Sounds wonderful. Thank you.

All right, cheers.