Is a Cashless Society on the Horizon? with Kirk von Seelen

So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week, 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 this week's show. Delighted to be joined by Kirk Von Seelen, the VP and treasurer at the Brinks company. Now, a lot of people might know the group. They're actually founded in 1859 and do all things cash management related and moving cash around the world. They're the world's largest cash management company. Unmatched footprint customers in over 100 countries. So they pretty much where cash is. They are. So that's ATMs and everything else. Again, we'll get Kirk to explain that. Kirk and I have known each other a few years and we were just talking before the show that like many treasurers, he discovered treasury very much by accident. But again, I want him to talk about himself. It's his show. So, Kirk, perhaps you could take us back to the very dim, distant part, the beginning of your career and how you discovered finance and treasury and how you sort of grew and up to now this role with Brink. So take us back to the very beginning and university, I think so over to you.

Okay, Mike, thanks. So I guess to start at the beginning, or as close to the beginning as we can get to, I went to school at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. I was fortunate enough to meet my wife there. After school we went back to her hometown, which is Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I got involved in financial services. I was a rookie stockbroker for Merrill lynch and then later EF Hutton. And in that short period of time, I discovered that I really couldn't sell anything to anybody. So we decided it was time for a change. And I went back up to New York, where I was from, and I got a job on Wall street as a municipal bond brokers broker. So we traded between the dealers. That was great. A lot of fun is the heyday of throwing phones and staying out later than you should have. And then a little thing called the crash of 87 came along. And in the aftermath, me and 50,000 of my closest friends decided that new careers were in order to. And knowing our history in Richmond and liking that, we started looking up and down the Eastern seaboard and anywhere but New York at this point. And we ended up back in Richmond, Virginia. And I went to work for a small company called Old Dominion Electric Cooperative as their cash manager, a job I was barely qualified for. But I Had been an economics major in college, so I could talk about interest rates and some cognition of what was expected. And it was really, truly a bootstrapping, bootstrapping exercise. Because it's a small company, there was not a lot of structure I had not heard of until the day I walked in this thing called Lotus 1, 2, 3, take us back to the dark ages there. But worked at it diligently and kind of taught myself what I needed to learn with, with some very helpful bankers and friends that I made to explain things to me. And I worked at Old Dominion for about seven and a half years and I was networking with some friends of mine. It was an okay job, but I couldn't see myself staying there until it was time to collect the gold watch. And I mentioned to again a couple of close friends that I desire to do more. One day I was sitting in my office and a good friend of mine called me and said, hey, I just got a call from a recruiter. They're looking for a manager of treasury operations in Northern Virginia. I'm not interested because I'm well rooted here, but I thought of you. Yeah, well, long story short, I pursued the opportunity. Turned out to be with General Dynamics, a global air and space defense contractor. Fantastic company. I was fortunate enough to be tapped for that role and we moved to Northern Virginia. That's where I really kind of started getting into really sophisticated and more interesting treasury stuff.

And Kirk on that you say. So what was the sort of treasury set up in Old Dominion? Probably, I would imagine quite traditional treasury cash management and everything else. And how did that then contrast when you're suddenly General Dynamics Global, Corporate, international, everything else? How did you cope with that transition, as it were?

Yeah, it was a change of magnitude, predominantly. So Old Dominion had revenues of about 350 million at the time. And General Dynamics when I joined was about 3 billion. So at Old Dominion it was very basic cash management, short term investments, making sure that prepayments were recorded, interest statements were generated. It was sort of the amino acids. It's the thing that you need to learn in order to function. But it was never going to be, in my opinion. Which is why I was anxious to think about other opportunities as rigorous and challenging as I, as I wanted my career to be right, you know, this is not a charitable pursuit. You know, until I find the documents that show that I am in fact a trust fund baby, I've got to work. And if I have to work, I want to. I want it to be interesting and challenging and something that keeps me Engrossed, and this was not really doing it for me. So General Dynamics at the time was not the international behemoth that it is now. It was a lot smaller and just really beginning to start its big acquisition run. And in the time that I was there, the company went from 3 billion in annual revenues to about 32, 33 billion. I'd like to tell you I was responsible for all of that, and that would be a gross exaggeration. I was not. But really one of my primary roles when I first started there was investing the cash on the balance sheet. They had been through a period of selling off businesses that were not either one or two in their space. They built up an enormous war chest. There was a changing of the guard in the CEO's office. The gentleman who came in was very smart, very strategic and fantastic in leading the company to where he saw the industry going. So I was investing a lot of cash. I was learning, really, the kind of the rudiments of cash management on a more sophisticated level. We at the time had a Treasury workstation. In the span of a couple of years, we replaced that with a more robust platform, which was helpful as we grew and then again acquired something on the order of. And I'm sure I'm not going to get the number right, but it was 65 or 67 companies for about 12 and a half or $13 billion in the span of a number of years. So there was a lot of due diligence, there was a lot of M and A integration, there was a lot of financing that was going on, and it was really heady times. The company was growing, and it was just really cool, honestly, to be a part of that.

And with that, you've got sort of a team as well. What you're managing them, coaching them in this huge corporate, as it were. What was the sort of management style? What was the culture like there? You know, obviously it changed in terms of scale. But what were you like as a boss?

Certainly at that time, I was a badass. No, I wasn't. In fact. In fact, honestly, is very flattering because it was myself and my cash manager, a lady named Neff Butler, who was found fantastic and still a very close friend to this day. But we were really the cash management team we, a number of years later, we were able to hire. We did add a little bit here and there, and of course, now the staff has gotten a lot bigger and I've been gone from there for about four and a half years now. But it is a very disciplined organization. They really were lean and streamlined. There was not a belief in a lot of extraneous bodies, not surprisingly, and I think, remarkably, there was no empire building. It was really a fantastic place to work. It was, it was challenging, it was rewarding. The company moved fast. I mean, not like a Silicon Valley, you know, move fast and break things kind of thing, but there was an expectation that, you know, you came to work every day and you strapped on your helmet and you got into it and not a lot of hand holding. You just were expected to go, you know, so.

So someone listening to the show today, your challenges as a blue chip of that scale, that size, you pick up the phone to the bank and they go, oh, it's General Dynamics. Oh, yes, Kirk. Yeah, yeah, what do you want? No problem at all. That contrasts a lot with some of our listeners that will be like, they're in an old dominion. You're like, well, yeah, we don't really want your business. I'm not saying it's not a good company. That's it. Not criticism, but more if you're in a. Less of a Bluetooth or, you know, in the UK, for instance, you have FTSE 1/ hundreds and the top companies. Yeah, GSK. Yeah, we want to deal with you versus, hi, we're XYZ PLC. You've probably never heard of us. We do widgets or whatever. Was it like that sort of culture or, you know, you've existed in both and, you know, been through a number of different roles. How did you handle that? Or was it just like, hey, yeah, we're General Dynamics coming to us? What was that?

Yeah, I think I have a feeling you were listening in on some phone calls. But yes, we, we were hot stuff and we knew it and we expected that we were going to get the appropriate audience that we needed when we picked up the phone. And when you're sitting there with lots and lots of cash on the balance sheet, you don't have a lot of need for bank facilities. We always had one as backup revolver, mainly to support the commercial paper program, of course, but we kind of felt like we dictated the terms. And I certainly understand the question because the company I work for now is a more highly leveraged company. And while it's a well known name and brand, as you've indicated, the conversations are in fact different. But we kind of felt like it back then, even with the growth and even with the credit that we were consuming once we consumed most of the cash on the balance sheet. And again, the company's got such an amazing ability to Generate free cash flow, that even that was a temporary situation. We just kind of felt like we could name what we wanted and we got it.

Generally speaking, in terms of complexity of Treasury, I know a lot of your background and some of the numbers involved 7 billion in bonds and 2 and a quarter in debt recap and all that. So the big ticket stuff, what was that like being in that sort of world? Was it all that you wanted in Treasury? Was that just like stretching your brain all the time?

It definitely was stretching the brain because again, if you think about the progression as I do, I sit back sometimes and I marvel at where I've been and where I am and wonder where tomorrow takes me. But I had the benefit of working for an absolutely fantastic treasurer who was a brilliant number one, two, he knew exactly what he wanted and there was no ambiguity about it. So he set very high standards, expected them to be met in a timeframe that was fair but compressed and we just got after it. And if I think about how that compared to Old Dominion, which was in fairness, a smaller and not as agile and nimble entity, and again, a little bit more of an old fashioned utility versus a growing industrial, the contrast couldn't be more clear. But we were averaging four or five acquisitions per year. And so you literally get done with one and you move on to another. And they ranged in size from very small, relatively speaking, to very large. And so it was an exciting place to work. I mean, I came home as energized in the afternoon as I often felt going in in the morning. So the energy level just was high and remained high. So yeah, it was a fantastic environment to work in.

Okay, so you're top of your game. You are. You were the assistant treasurer. You know, look at Kirk, look at how he's doing. And we discussed this before the show, actually do each week with a, you know, with our guests, I sort of talk about some of the areas they, they like to talk about. Now, Kirk and I talked about this. So you sit back, you look at this, nothing's going to change. We've got this all. And you described how suddenly everything changed literally overnight. And this was four years ago. Talk to the listeners because they, some of them will have actually maybe experienced this firsthand, but bit of a change.

I think that may be slightly understated, but yes. In what was my 20th year at General Dynamics, I was quite surprisingly summoned from a meeting on a Thursday afternoon into my boss's office at 10 minutes till 3 o' clock in the afternoon. Not that it still stings a little bit, and told my position had been eliminated and the government contracting market was expected to contract a little bit, be a little bit tougher. And so, as a cost saving measure, myself and. And seven other colleagues from the corporate headquarters were dismissed that day. I had had this expectation in my mind that this would be the place that I would stay until I was ready to retire. And all of a sudden, that was completely dashed upon the stones. And it was shocking. It was. I had not an inkling that this was. Was out there, but the thing that I discovered. And you think, well, this shouldn't be a discovery, but, you know, when you're going along day to day and you think you're doing exactly what you should be doing, and you've been promoted and recognized, and then all of a sudden things change, is, okay, well, what can I do here? I've really got. I've got two choices. I can curl up in a fetal ball in the floor and moan and groan about it, or I can get up and dust myself off and keep going. And I determined that the second path was the only path that was viable for me. And I. And moreover, Mike, I decided that this was going to be a great life lesson for my children, that nobody gets to where they're going on a straight, unbroken line, and that I could show them resilience and I could show them resourcefulness that you just have to get up and keep going. So I plunged myself into networking and working the telephones and burnishing my image. I was very fortunate. I mean, I do. I use that word. I was very fortunate in that I was afforded outplacement. I took. I took full advantage of it. I got up every day, I put on a suit and tie, and I went to the outplacement office because I was going to work. And I'm using, you know, air quotes there, and I treated it like a job. And I was fortunate enough that in four and a half months, which I think is, you know, fairly almost unprecedented at my level, I landed a treasure job, my first treasure job with a company called pae, which is a smaller government contractor, but certainly within my skill set. And I viewed that as a just a triumphant finish to an unsettling situation.

Kirk, just again, we discussed this before, that you perhaps talked about the fact that with hindsight, which is a great benefit to have, you should have moved earlier, or you should have considered the fact that. But you were sort of not comfortable, but it perhaps wasn't in your warehouse, thinking, oh, well, maybe they might, you know, cut Me one Friday afternoon or whatever. Perhaps explain it, you know, to someone who's sitting there and they're 10 years into their role and they're sitting pretty. They're thinking they're right. What advice would you give to them now, thinking about it and reflecting on that time only four years ago?

Well, you're right. We did talk about it, and I really like the way you've phrased the question, because I think you've teed it up nicely. I was, quite honestly, too comfortable. About 10 years in, approximately 10 years into my run with General Dynamics, I got passed over for a promotion. It was a promotion that I should have gotten. I had people more senior to me coming up to me over the course of the day saying, you were treated poorly there. And so I resolved to get up and to kind of figure out what I wanted to do and burnish my image and become more public and try to get known. And it's a matter of sort of the opposite of being too comfortable, which I. Which I was until that point. And I needed to become uncomfortable, and I took the steps to move in that direction. But honestly, I failed myself in the end because I didn't allow myself to pursue opportunities that were brought to me. And that, I think is honestly, probably the greatest failure of my career is that I didn't jump sooner. I allowed myself to stay. And, you know, you hear. And you would be in a better position to know, because this is what you do all the time. That you see resumes of people that they have a very long tenure, and it almost introduces a creeping doubt. Why have you stayed so long? Why has nobody come along and poached you? What. What is it about this situation that I don't understand? I did that. That was me. I stayed. I stayed too long. I should have. On some of these things that came along after I reached out and I made myself more known to the community I passed on because they, in my estimation, they were not equal to the job that I was currently doing. And that may or may not have been true, but I don't know where they would have led. And that was a failure.

I think, just going back on that, I think for those people listening as well, they're thinking, sitting there in a similar situation. And I've done it before when I've looked at people's resumes and I said, look, did you do 10 years the same job? And they're like, no, no, I progressed in. I was working for that one company, but came in, and your case, you were sort of Manager, then became Director of Treasury Ops, then Senior VP of Treasury Ops and Assistant. So you made four different moves within one company. We had Connor Ma years ago. Ages ago. A year or so ago on the podcast. And I remember he'd been at Barclays, I think it was, yeah, Barclays before. And he'd been there 12 years. And he went, oh, I've been at Barclays 12 years. I said, okay. Have you done the same job? No, I've done four different jobs. Four, you know, very distinct roles, and they'd all built on his. But he's working for a global company and he worked for an international. You were doing the same. If you just sat and doing the same job day and day, that would be a concern. But you made that progression. But as you say, you've got to sort of plan for those other bits. And we again, we talked before and you said about kicked yourself a little bit for not pursuing other opportunities, but it's a difficult thing because you're in a good role, you're being looked after. But then, as we say, we sort of. You then were forced into this, but you got this new role, a pae. You know, maybe talk through that and. Or reflect on that as well. Thinking about that next opportunity, certainly.

Sure. And you're right, look, there was progression and there was growth, and it kept me fully engrossed, certainly. But it's a judgment call. I think other people would look at that and say, oh, no, you were. You were fine. You were doing exactly the right thing. But I had ambitions. And I, despite the fact that, you know, I said it earlier that I didn't know that this job existed, you know, when I was in college, I clearly learned differently and had set my sights on becoming treasurer. And I thought I had. I would have the opportunity to. To at least compete for the treasurer role at some point if and when my boss were to were to leave before me. And so I think that kind of lulled me into a false sense of security. But to the point the departure day and the aftermath, I at that point had decided, quite convinced in my own mind, that I was not going to settle for anything less than a treasurer job. And I mean, I had a number of conversations with people, including a recruiter here in the Washington metropolitan area. And I was told by this person that my expectations in terms of title and compensation were at odds with the marketplace and that I should probably take some time to rethink that. And I told this person that we were clearly having a failure to communicate and parted, you know, you always have that doubt. What if there's not one out there? You can be the best prepared candidate in the world, but if there's not a job that is interesting or is a match for your skills, you could be at odds. But I was fortunate. And in a very interesting twist, that very same recruiter that, you know, we'd had a little bit of a disagreement with called me later in the same day and say. And said, you will not believe this, but literally 15 minutes after you walked out the door, a situation dropped onto my desk that I think may be right for you. And that was pae. You couldn't write that as a Hollywood, Hollywood movie script and have it be believable. But I'm telling you, it happened, and it was shocking. And so I was afforded the opportunity to go and compete for this position. The gentleman who turned out to be my boss asked me when he first met me. He said, you were assistant treasurer at General Dynamics, and now you're sitting in front of me, and you're interviewing for a treasurer job of PAE it's a $2 billion private equity portfolio company. He said, why? I don't get it. And I said, well, what you don't know is that I haven't updated my resume, and I'm no longer at General Dynamics. And so then we had pay to meeting of the minds, and I was able to win him over, and he needed somebody that had my package of skills. And so there is, I fear, a little bit of a cultural bias. If anybody, you know, has seen my picture, they or they will see that I am not much of it, but I have gray hair. And I think we're quick to judge that, you know, somebody that looks like that is not going to be adaptable, and they're not going to be willing to roll up their sleeves and work, work in an environment like a pae, a private equity portfolio company, very thinly staffed. That's what they needed. They needed somebody to be pitcher, catcher, and first up. And I was willing to do it in order to get the title. And, you know, absolutely. It was. It was. It was a great fit. It was a good match for my skills. It gave me the opportunity to branch into risk management, which I was very clear with them. I had absolutely no experience in, but I wanted to learn, and I think they like that. And I think that's something that everybody who listens to this ought to embrace, that you don't be content. Continue to push yourself, continue to want to get better and smarter and more fully equipped to do your job or whatever your job will become. But. So that. That was. That was the happy ending to the story, and.

Well, but not the end of the story, because then you.

Certainly not. No.

So then you did that role for a couple of years, and did you outgrow the role or what sort of what happened there, or two years in it was enough, or what happened?

I don't think I outgrew it. I think it shrank from me. And the reason I say that is the company was sold by private equity sponsor A to private equity sponsor B. And when the new owners came in, they effectively lifted anything of any interest that had anything to do with corporate finance and took that back to their corporate headquarters. So my. My role shrank, quite honestly, and I was not imperiled. I could have stayed there, but it was not interesting. It just had become less interesting, less challenging. And I thought, you know, I've got probably eight to 10 years before I'm going to want to slow down, and if there were no other options in the world, I could do this. But this is not how I'm going to get myself excited and motivated to face each day. So I decided to start networking. I started reaching out on a sort of an informal basis to some of my banker friends and said, you know, I'm not really looking, but I am listening. And a very good friend of mine who works for JP Morgan called me one day and he said, we need to meet for coffee on Friday afternoon. And I said, I really can't. I'm so busy right now. And he said, no, no, I don't think you heard what I said. We need to meet for coffee. So I reluctantly agreed. And he introduced the opportunity with the Brinks company at that meeting. And it was interesting in that, again, we live in the Washington metropolitan area. Brinks is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, about 90 miles away. And having lived there as a little boy, gone to school there, and then returned later working for Old Dominion Co Op, I thought, this is interesting. There's serendipity here. And so I did some research. I found on LinkedIn a number of my bankers who were working with the company. So I was able to pick their brains a little bit. And one of my very good friends introduced me to the CFO via email and was fortunate enough to get an interview in very quick order and get hired on. And it's been about two and a half years now, and it's been an amazing ride because the company is growing, it's vibrant, it's energetic. We are very ably led by our CEO and cfo. And it's been an amazing, amazing place to be for two and a half years.

And you talk about there and you're all things cash and the movement of cash and everything else. Everyone's talking about a cashless world. So how are you guys preparing for that? And everyone says, oh, it's cashless, but it is in some developed economies where they're moving towards that, but there's still lots of cash to move around or maybe describe how that impacts you guys in treasury there.

Well, it's very easy to say that we're becoming cashless and certainly there are inroads that are being made. I mean, you've got certain restaurants that accept no cash. And, and that's the public perception. And I know that when our senior executives are talking to investors, this comes up, they meet it head on. They lead with statistics that show the cash in circulation. Cash transactions rise each year at about the level of GDP growth, even here in the United States. The United States is certainly a very big market for the company, but we are international, as you've said, and in places like South Africa, America, it is largely cash transactions. We have a huge presence in Brazil and Argentina and other places. So these are issues, as our CEO says in these meetings, the people who are asking these questions, you're the 1 percenters. Yes. You may not be using cash as much as everybody else is, but there are a lot of people out there that are still operating on a cash basis. The city of Philadelphia, for instance, has recently recently passed a law that says that restaurants, retailers have to take cash because they've found, like Sweden is backing off of their position that it was discriminatory against the old, the poor tourists, things of that nature. So this idea that we are becoming cashless is fanciful, but not really true and is not borne out by the facts.

Yeah, cash is here to stay for a little bit longer.

It is certainly for the foreseeable future.

Yeah. And then looking at yourself and the structure of treasury there, and you see a number of different challenges coming down at the Brinks Group and everything else. What are the key things that you guys are concerned with as your treasurer, as the treasurer there, or what are the things that you think people talk, technology talk to? How is it affecting you guys? What are you seeing as the future of treasury at the moment coming down the line at you?

The way I've always looked at treasury is really two ways, bifurcated, if you will. There are things that we have to do every day. Cash has to be collected, it has to be reconciled, reported, invested or lines reduced or drawn upon, as I like to think of that, that's the amino acids of Treasury. It's the, the most basic form of life. And it's really the right place for somebody when they're coming in to start their life to understand how a company effectively breathes. Every day money comes in, money comes out, but at the end of the day, you better have more money than what you started with. The other is what I'll describe broadly as project oriented. And into that falls all manner of things. M and A refinancing, strategic initiatives. And that to me is the most interesting part. And I've always had a mantra ever since I had the opportunity to lead people of better, faster, cheaper. I want to be clear about that. I don't think that consuming the lowest price is always the right idea. I want to be able to consume something that is the right price, the right value. But, but if there's a way for us to do something better, faster or cheaper for our customers, and our customers are senior management and the business, period, that's who we serve, that's our sole reason for existence. And I need to be in a position where, when my boss calls me and says, where are we on this? I need to be able to tell him. And that sounds so fundamental and so simple that you think, well, of course, of course you have to do that. And how hard can that be? Well, it can be harder than you think. It depends on what you're doing, what the complexity is. And as I look at the business units, I think there is, and I certainly have been guilty of it in my career, there is, for lack of a better term, mutual maybe distrust between corporate headquarters and the operating units. Corporate headquarters, we tend to think if only they knew what they were doing, they would be better operators. The business units, I think, are sometimes prone to thinking, well, if those guys actually had some experience doing what we're doing, they would be more sympathetic or supportive. I know that the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but I also know that treasury is not a profit center. It's never going to be a profit center. We're a cost to the organization and we have the opportunity to minimize those costs and to make things less expensive or less onerous. But our real role, I think, is to help the business units be better operators. If we can help them with a more efficient bank structure, cheaper credit support, more efficient ways of securing obligations, things of that nature, that's where we can prove our value. And I really do believe that there is a customer service focus that must be brought to this. I am a huge relationship person. I am still doing business with banks and bankers that I've known for 25 years. There's an enormous amount of goodwill and trust that has accumulated over that period of time. You're more willing to share more information with people that you know and you trust and you have experience with. And the more you tell them, the more valuable information and input they can give you. They have a better opportunity to tailor a solution. So I think there is. I think there's a lot of value to that and specifically getting to the right answer to help the business do better.

And I think, you know, the relationship aspect definitely has come across throughout the conversation, if you like, that you and I have had here. But the question, you know, sort of, you know, as we approach the end of today's interview, and again, as always, we'll put the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes if you can connect to you, if it's good to have them in your circle and their circle and everything else. But as you reflect back, we talked before, and you talked about resilience. You talked about, you know, maybe you should have moved earlier in your career. And, you know, we also talked, without stealing your words, about making yourself feel uncomfortable in different things by pursuing different opportunities. Perhaps, you know, for the listeners, in your own words, what would you say is, what advice would you give to them? You know, again, we get in UK and Europe, I've noticed a lot of the listeners, maybe sort of treasury analysts, managers, developing their careers. Our US Audience is a little bit more senior, actually, and some of those guys, you know, are probably sitting where you were in General Dynamics a few years ago. Oh, hang on. Maybe I need to be thinking, what advice would you give across the piece of thing Would you say to those guys to finish off today's show, sir?

Sure. You know, at the risk of being somewhat redundant is take chances if there's an opportunity that is appealing and even if you have some doubt, maybe I don't have the ability to do this. Maybe I don't have all the skills yet. Throw yourself into the mix. You have that conversation with your boss, have that conversation with your boss's boss, and try to be very clear, because I do recognize that when we're a little bit younger and in the earlier phases, we may not know exactly where we want to go. We may not know where we want to be when we're 25 years into our career. So the likelihood is the person that you should be talking to has perspective on that. They've been there, they've, they've done that. To use that tired old phrase, they can be helpful. You know, I see this as a, you know, I'm just, I'm thinking of a theoretical situation and a conversation that might develop around that. Yeah, that could be interesting for you, but it's maybe not exactly what you think you want to do. Well, if they, if we're to say something like that, they clearly know something about, you know, what the role is, but inquire, stretch, push, you know, there's a phrase and I, and I can't remember who it's attributed to, but if there's a job that's interesting to you and you're not sure you can do it, you know, go after it anyway and then learn how to do it once you get there. We're smart people, generally speaking, we are educated. I am a huge believer in getting more pedigree. Go and get your mba, Go and get to your cfa, if that's of interest. Become a certified treasury professional. Get the credentials that nobody can ever take away from you because they will stay with you for life. And they do confer authority and knowledge that people will look at and say, oh, okay, this person has invested in themselves. They've decided that this is important. And, you know, if they're willing to make the investment in themselves, I need to make the investment in them as well. So take those chances. If that means moving internationally, then by all means do that. I should have, as I said, at the risk of being redundant, I should have been more open minded to opportunities to move earlier on. I'm happy to say that I don't think it's hurt me in the long term because I've, you know, I sort of recovered from that, but I didn't help myself at a juncture in my career. So, you know, take chances. Don't be willing to fail. Don't be afraid to fail. I should say we all fail every day in some aspect of our lives. We're infallible, we're fallible creatures. So that should not be a concern. And I think, you know, it's better to get to the plate and swing and miss than to not get to the plate at all. So I don't know if I've answered the question or if I'm just rambling at this point, Mike, but I think it's important that people just try to figure out what they want to do and go after it.

I don't think you're rambling at all, Kirk. I actually, sometimes I sort of scribble notes and then just give the closing bit where someone says, pursue this resilience. You've done it for me. I thought it was fantastic. Well, too. As we say, we'll put Kirk's details in the show. Notes, Kirk. Great end to the show. Thank you, sir. Again, Connect with him if it's worthwhile. Be resilient. Get uncomfortable. Do all the other bits. There you go. I'm trying to summarize it. I'm not going to. I'm going to shut up now. Thank you very much today. It's been a great show.

Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Thanks, sir.