Mike Richards (Treasury Career Corner) gives practical advice for treasury professionals on how to prepare for conferences: set clear goals (CPD/CTP, technology scouting, bank/vendor meetings, networking), plan your agenda backwards from must-attend sessions, craft a brief memorable personal story (one tangible achievement), and pace yourself during the event (hydrate, take breaks, limit alcohol). He also points listeners to a downloadable Treasury Conference Playbook, a treasury salary benchmarking tool, upcoming live events (London/Amsterdam), and podcast milestones (7 years, ~400 episodes, ~220,000 downloads).
Chapters
So it's conference season. You need to make it pay off because conferences aren't cheap in terms of both cost, but in terms of. Also in terms of your time. And your time as treasury professionals is precious. You've got to look after it. So the question I posed in this week's newsletter, how do you make it pay off? Well, over the next three weeks, this week's newsletter, how do you prepare for a conference next week? What do you do when you're there? And follow up on the third week? So there you go. So this week I'm talking about preparing for a conference before you go. I've just come on off a crazy run of them. Yeah. Chicago Treasure, Career Corner Live, 40 people straight across New York, 120New York Cash Exchange. Brilliant session with Catherine Grant Alston. And the. This same thing came up last year. How do you. I did a session with Nicole Meyer and Summer Simmons, amazing ladies, about preparing for a conference. And actually we said to the guys in the room there, who's been to a conference before, who's been coming to AFP conference for at least seven years, plus 50% of the hands went up. Okay, wow. Okay, that. And it was literally half of the room, who is this your first or second time? Boom, half of the hands went up. And okay, we had this official title for the, for the session. I can't even remember what it was, but I had a different one. The conference, AFP conference is a marathon, not a sprint. Don't pay with your souls. And people like, oh, okay, I said a lot of you tonight are going to go out there, particularly the 50 that haven't done it as much. And you'll be offered free drinks. You'll be free bar. You'll be like, oh, yeah, great, don't. Or you can but have one and then have a glass of water or pace yourself or have a time limit. Why? Because it's a marathon. You're there for three or four days, so you need to be careful. Other tips, I said to there as well, You need to define your goals. What are you there for? Are you there for your CPD credits or CTP credits? You can actually get a lot of those if you want by listening to the podcast that I do each and every week. But you need to ask yourself why else it might be there. You could be there because you want to get some new ideas for your team. Technology, the rise of technology. You want to go and see, can you implement that? Can you use it yourselves? You might want to use it a lot of People do to meet all their banking partners, different systems, they're all in one room. But you need to plan it because otherwise you're just going to be exhausted. So you need to do that. You could also, on a personal level, be looking to grow your network if you're going to do that. Like I say at my sessions, after people do this and go to networking, it's not just about having a drink, it's about making five meaningful connections. How do you do that? This is one of the tips in IT as well. Go to meet someone. I said, you're not allowed to just go, I'm Bob, I'm the Treasury manager, xyz. Particularly if you're not Bob. If you go there, you say, I work at this company, this is my role and this year, or I've managed to make this difference, or this is what we as a team have achieved. Whoa, it's a hook. Someone's interested, they're engaged and do you know what? They're going to remember you. That will come in a couple of weeks. They'll remember you. In the follow up, they'll go, oh, yeah, I met that guy Bob. Actually, we're going to do a similar thing. He's someone I want in my network. Amazing, isn't it? So, other things. Agenda. Look at the agenda and work backwards. What does that mean? Look at the agenda, look at the major sessions you want to be at, then plan everything else around it. Don't just walk in, think, I'll do this, do this. You won't achieve anything and you'll be kicking yourself a couple of days later. This can be at any of the conferences that we say about afp. Also coming up on Euro Finance. Come to that in a minute. Told you about your story. So don't say, hey, I'm just a Treasury manager or whatever your role is. Somewhere you've saved money. Improve visibility of your team. Talk about that a lot. You know this, something tangible they will remember. Give them something to take away that they remember. You pace yourself. Amazing summer. She talked about a lot of this. Conferences are intense. You're going to be talking a lot. Hydrate, take breaks at lunch. Now, I know this myself. I've done this, gone to the lunch break, sit there. Suddenly there's nine other treasury professionals sitting at a table and then, oh, who are you? Oh, you're trick, let's talk. And I'm like, oh, goodness, yeah. Before I do that, now I've got a tip. I go away for 10 minutes and I grab. Just sit down, don't look at my phone. Just get my head together because I know that it's going to be full on again. But sometimes I did it. Last year's Euro finance in Copenhagen was on water. My I said look, do you know what? I can't. What? I went I've got to have 10 minutes. I said okay. And as she was only five said I really, I really want to talk to myself. I do want to talk to you but I literally have spoken since 7:30 this morning. When I got to the exhibition hall I'd spoken for four hours and I was pretty broken. I was like look I need some time. Went away. But minutes later we had a great catch up and stuff like that. So you guys need to pace yourselves as well because there's going to be a lot of people right now. How do I get a reminder of this? Mike, it's great on this video if only you had a newsletter and then on the newsletter it said download treasury conference playbook. Yeah, we've got one for you. So I'll put a link in the show notes right down the bottom. It'll guide you the before, during and after. Good checklist in there. In link in the comments directly to that. Actually I won't just put it in the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter. You'll get this every week. It's really good as well. Other announcements this we launched last week whilst I was away in the U.S. our treasury salary survey scroller in it's an instant benchmarking tool for you. You can put in there your job title and it will give you and your location and it will give you your average salary and bonus and car allowance and average compensation. A couple of videos in there as well, check those out. But it's salary data from you guys. 1600 of you who do the salary survey. If you've got pay reviews or hiring needs coming up and your boss is saying what's the average salary for this treasury manager role or for that. Oh hang on, I'll check out Mike's tool. It's very treasurysalary.com head there. Okay, other things we Registration is open for Treasure Career Corner Live in London. We've already hit 70 people in a room that holds 120 I think it is. So 70. If you want to come and join us. 20th of November, Thursday 20th then the week after Thursday 27th of November in Amsterdam. Our first Amsterdam, Netherlands event. It's gonna be amazing. I've already got Engin as one of the speakers. I got Ika. She's coming along as well. I think I said that, but I'll make sure they did it right. And I'm speaking to Catching up with her and podcast news. Yes. Seven years ago, just coming on seven years ago on the 2nd of October, what was that? 2018, I started the podcast, seeing how we went. 400 episodes later in two weeks time, I'll be announcing the guest. Next week we have a global guest. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. So seven years old, 400 episodes. 200 was it now 220,000 downloads. You guys like it. So yeah, listen out for that. Treasury CareerCorner.com going back to the headline. Conferences are expensive. Make them pay. Not with your soul. So pace yourself on the margaritas, set your goals, work backwards, pace yourself. Use the checklist. It's there to help you turn that conference badge into real value. And I'll do this again next week. And I'll also be announcing who episode 400 is as well. Next week's actually podcast is great. Treasure Career Corner live in Dublin. Amazing guests as well. So listen to that@treasurycareercorner.com thanks very much. See you next week.
