Mike Richards’ review of 2023 and look ahead to 2024

Foreign welcome to the Treasury Career Corner podcast. Each and every week I talk to a treasurer about how they've started their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. But this is a show with a slight difference. This is the end of the year podcast for 2023, so we're going to reflect on some of the things that have happened this year, some of the milestones, achievements from 2023, and we're going to look forward to 2024. Now there's some interesting news coming up, so listen out for it. This will be released around Boxing Day. We're going to get back on with the normal schedule come early new Year. We've got some great guests coming up. We've got Brita, Mariana and Jim Cates from the afp. We've got more live shows coming up as well, but we'll talk more about that in a moment. First of all, let's go back to the past year. Oh goodness, what a year. It has been pretty busy. Let's do the podcast first of all, because those have driven the show and just been amazing. So we kicked off with a live recording that I'd taken with Leanne Perkins and Joel Campbell back at the AFP conference. It was great catching up with the those guys. And later on in the year I actually got to see them once again at San Diego at the AFP conference. We recorded that. We released that as a podcast as well. When we did it before Philadelphia, we talked about new importers who personal brand. So it was a great one to go Back to episode 246 beginning of January. But then actually the next one that we did with them was much more about hybrid working, remote working. So great episodes next year, AFP in Nashville. Interesting to see what we do. We got a couple of ideas more around Treasured Career Corner, really about interviewing treasurers about their treasure careers, which you guys love. But yeah, so that's what we're going to look at rest of the year. Wow, some great guests. Now I can't name more. It's going to because otherwise we be here for hours. Some of my highlights, gotta say, Eddie Treherne, one of the most popular episodes, episode 248 way back in January, 2023 caught up with Eddie. That was an update episode which we love doing, talking to treasurers about their careers originally and then catching up with them two, three, four years later. And it's an interesting evolution, if you like, of their treasury careers. Another highlight in February, Adam Richford caught up with Adam Renui, but I placed him at Renew a number of years ago and how his treasury career since then had developed. So it was great to have a recap show if you like, and then see where his journey had gone to. We also had quite a few company updates. We were trying to do these to give people because everyone was asking, what's the market doing? What's the market doing? So we interspersed those in there. I prefer getting on with doing the podcast where it's actually interview shows. So these were just extra if you like. So don't worry. Each and every week we've done this now will be 10 episodes. Now it's 300 plus and it's amazing. 132,000 downloads shows it's very popular. Each and every episode now gets a ridiculous number of downloads. We're over a hundred, two hundred. We get thousands a month. And I thought, wow, it just testament to my guests. People said, oh, it's your show. No, it's not. It's about my guests. I want it. It's quite unusual for me to talk for this long with Outbreak. Yeah, that's quite strange really. Some of the other ones, Adam Glasser back in the summer in May talking about treasury challenges on the Horizon. Episode 270. That was a good one. Really interesting. Good friend of mine, Dan Ferguson, had him in June 2023. Great Treasurer. Now an interesting one with Dan is an upcoming guest on Treasury Career Corner Live. That's the first announcement Treasure Career Corner Live in London. We're going to be doing that in April and Dan is the first confirmed guest on stage. So I'll be talking to Dan and two other guests live on stage. Come back to that in a moment. But Dan is the group Treasure resolution life episode 273. Worth going back for that one really great guy and that they all are all of these treasurers. Bit later on, let's look a bit further. Ah, a nice one. Power of personal connections in treasury with and I'll get this right, Ara Hammam gm. Yeah, I've done all right with that. That's great. Ara Treasurer at Biomarin but great track record. Incredible companies. Hewlett Packard, Levi Strauss, EA Electronic Arts, Fitbit and now buyer Marin. Great guy, really great episode. Really interesting. Few more catch ups. Had Gary McGuire back on the show. We did an update from Dow Chemicals. He was originally guest 100. Amazing to talk to him. Global treasure of Dow Chemicals. You couldn't wish for more. We've had even more bigger guests coming along as well as big as Rather. But I really love talking to Gary. It's nice bit later on, just before actually we headed off the AFP had Sassan Parenda, really nice conversation with him. Some really interesting insights about what he did at Child Fund and how they avoided things. Like, well, they had a problem with security and how did they have people. They had the people on their laptops, if you like, at the back of WI FI networks trying to get in and they were crumbs. This is a big problem for our business or for the charity, if you like. What do we do? They gave everyone phones and they gave them actually security and it was incredible because they just actually this is going to work. He talks about that and cyber resilience and everything else in the episode. Really interesting guy, good friend to the business because I saw him quite a lot in San Diego, which was lovely to do. And then some other great guests. We have Fred Shack back on the show. Dave Ash, Jonathan Leon, Paul Hussey. Just great. Just looking at these, just the roster is just amazing and it carries on. We had some lovely ladies. We had Linda Dixon on the show and we would love to have some more ladies on the show as well. Amanda Schreiber, just looking back here, just if you want, Tanya Kuznets over. Thank you, Tanya, for being on the show. Some of the other ones, I'm just looking back, basically, if you have someone, whether they man, woman, don't mind, as long as they're a great treasure, professional, we'll have them on the show. Please let me know if you're a listener and you'd like to be on. Let me know as long as you've got a good story to tell. We tend to focus on more experienced treasurers just because they got more to share. You know, we will do some feature episodes in the future with more junior guys, but at the moment that's where we're focusing. But other milestones and achievements, just looking back here. Let's go to the live schedule. So 2023, events wise, interesting start. Actually. We got approached by the AFP who said our in person session in Philadelphia in 2022 about personal brand is one of their most successful. Would we repeat it? I'm like, yeah, of course we will. No problem at all. But would we repeat it virtually? Like, okay, yeah, we can do that. So we repeated it as a virtual event. We also had our hybrid working webinar. So we're doing a couple of virtuals now and there's a blended way but we prefer being in person and so we had our live event Treasure Career Corner live in London. We then were heading off to Texas. We did Windy City. That was amazing. Being back in Chicago once again. Another year, another Windy City summit and we're aiming to go back to 2024, building up some of the air miles. But being around and actually seeing people in person, there's nothing better. And then it was the crazy run from the summer into Christmas, as it always is. So it started off with Euro Finance in Barcelona. That was great to catch up with people. Interesting story there. All planned Tuesday morning there at Heathrow. Loaded my conference stand onto the conveyor belt. Thought, this is great, getting the first flight out on the Tuesday for a Wednesday conference. Thank you. British Airways, got to say, amazing. Got there, had loaded my own staff on the belt and Barcelona got there and it didn't come out the other end. I thought, okay, so right, we'll get it to you, Mr. Richards. They fibbed. They didn't tell 100% the truth. It did arrive with me on the Thursday night after the conference was over. But fear not, like a phoenix from the flames. I did a social post, went a bit viral. 12, 15,000 views. Something crazy. People coming up to me on the Thursday going, oh, did you stand here yet? No, wasn't there. But we had our LinkedIn photographer, great guy came along and took lots of photos of all of the delegates. We got to meet lots of people. It actually made it a funny story. It was great and a great time in Barcelona and went for a midnight swim with. Yeah. One of my friends. Shall I name all this? Yeah, let's name Felix Meyer who said to me, we've got to go for a swim. I've come all the way to Barcelona, gotta go for a swim. I said, felix, you can't go for a swim. Why not? Why not? I said, you can't have a lone swimmer. It's dangerous. I'm an ex swimming teacher myself. I did a PE degree and things and I know you can't go out. Well, I'm going, I'm going. I've got to come with you. Then that was it. We went swimming on the last evening of the Barcelona conference in the moonlight. Sounds very fun. It was very weird. Very refreshing actually. We had a great time. And Felix, I know you're out there. And a past guest. So ever look for his episode Funny guy. Yeah. When the swim and then came back and I. Sorry, I also missed. I'd gone. Headed off to. That was straight after actually. New York cash exchange in. Yeah. T Manny. Great event. Which we're going to be looking at doing next September, followed by AFP San Diego. So it was like New York, boom, Barcelona and then straight off San Diego. That was incredible. Had 400 people in the room. The biggest audiences I've spoken to with again, the amazing Leanne and Joel Campbell talking about hybrid working. You see all the videos on our YouTube channel. YouTube, Treasury TV. Go and have a look over there. Yeah. Talking about career success in a new hybrid world. And people ask us, do you do remote working? We don't. We do as a company and we do working from home and everything, but we don't recruit those roles. People don't need us. We talk about this a lot. And there's an excerpt from the video where I talk about people don't need that. And people say, oh, do you prefer it? My colleague Craig's just written for the Treasurer's Magazine. I don't actually like being remote. I prefer to be with people more often. But it's a new way of working so we have to embrace it. Otherwise you're not gonna have teams. Now, the funny thing is about that and remote working, I've also said I don't think it works 100% in Treasury. I think 100% remote for treasury doesn't necessarily work. Treasury by its very nature is a very collaborative discipline, some more technical, so maybe tax or things, they might lend themselves a little bit more to remote working, whereas treasury lends itself more to collaboration. Now, it doesn't mean to say you have to be in five days a week, but hey, you, why not be in two to three days? Hybrid. Hybrid works. Got back from San Diego to our own event, Treasury Career Corner Live in London, which I had actually just done after zooming across to Paris for another client event. It was a bit of a whirlwind year, but incredible. We closed out the year with Depal, with Winnie and Matt Cornwall. Great. You can get that on the podcast stream. Treasure Career Corner live in London. Three incredible treasury professionals. Great night. 120 plus people in Central London on a wet, windy night in November. Thank you for all showing up. It was amazing and everyone's safe for drinks afterwards. It shows that people want to be back in person. That's one of the key things. Okay, Mike, enough of this self reflection. What about us as candidates? What should we be thinking? What was 2023 like? It was pretty rough, to be honest. Yeah, it was. It's been an up and down year. There's been some recruitment going on. I think a lot of people have still been getting used to this new way of working. How many P days a week are we in the office? How many of the team members are coming in? What's happening? You've got a number of treasurers and this is the key one, I would say. I met up with one of my clients, John, had a coffee in New York and he proceeded to tell me about how he'd got through Covid. He'd had it himself and recovered, bless him. Lovely guy. But he was saying to me how throughout Covid, the business that he was in had slowed down, so he'd been sitting tight post Covid, new cfo, they were recouping not their losses, but flat markets and now starting to, for the first time in two or three years, getting bonuses. And he was interested just to know what the market was like, you know, was, you know, were things going to happen? Should he look at a next move? What was going to happen in the market and how slow it had been? Well, what's the market been like? I said, john, can we rewind the conversation by two to three minutes? He was like, yeah, I said, and replay what you've just said to me. Oh. And he said, I'm the problem, aren't I? But, yeah, it's not the problem, but what it is. Treasury is by its very nature a bit of a domino effect. You're waiting for the senior person to leave, move on, be promoted, which then cascades down through the levels or company event happens. And yeah, there might be a retirement of things. That's what I think we're going to see in 2024. There is some market turbulence. You've got a few companies going bust, you've got some expanding, you've got different ones taking over each other and some of them actually divesting. So we've got more things happening in the market, more settled. So I think 2024 will be a return to normal. The new normal, I think that's the thing, is that everyone's asking about working patterns. I think that's one of the key things. So, looking forward to 2024, what should you do as a candidate, maybe as a client, even? Well, I think the first thing is let's focus on the candidate side. I'm actually being interviewed soon by Nicole Meyer with the Myer Partnership. Nicole, good friend to the show. She focuses more on the banking recruitment side. We do the corporate treasury side, so it's great to be able to talk to her. An experienced recruiter. She's got great value to add and I'll be on her podcast and she was saying, what areas should we focus on? I said, for candidates, I think it's about goal setting. I think a lot of treasurers at the moment, you've come from some quite difficult times, through Covid and everything else. Now we've got this new normal of inflation. Oh, where did that come from? Global turbulence, geopolitical events happening across Ukraine and a number of other things. You're having to focus on that as well as your day jobs, which you used to have to do, and previously there was 0% interest rates. Everything was quite flat on that side. You were dealing with other issues. Now those things are coming back. So I think that's one of the things. And so that's taken a lot of your time. So it's a time maybe for a bit of reflection. What are your goals for 2024 as a Treasury professional? You're just going to sit there or are you going to make a move? Are you going to. Look, don't have to move. I was talking to a treasurer the other day, good friend to the business, and they said, but I'm not in a rush, but I want to be open to opportunities now. Previously, there's been a few changes where they are. It's time for a change. I said, great, I'll help them update their resume. We will then talk about the future. I also talked, actually, when I was in Paris and people were saying, what is the biggest thing for treasurers? Is it AI, is it data? Is it everything else? And I gave a very definitive answer when I said, it depends. So. Oh, great, thanks. What does it depend on? I said, well, it depends on a lot of the time, the cfo, I've got one, one of my treasurers, and this was a story I related in Paris, but it bears repeating. I said his previous CFO saw his role as treasurer as the scout, the recce, if you like, going and looking at new technology, being the filter for him, saying, look, should we do blockchain? What other things that we should be looking on the cash management front, treasury management systems, what's happening there? What should we be doing, how cash forecasting, all these different things. And he was like, brilliant. This is great. He was really on board with it. New CFO, different ethos came aboard, said, okay, what's the new CFO's ethos? I'd like you to look after the cash. Really? Okay. Other stuff. No, that's it. That was my previous treasurer did. That's what I'd really like you to do. Funnily. Enough, we're helping them update their resume because it's time for a change. Yeah, that's not their role. They've done that. They've done that for the past 20 plus years. Now it's if you're looking for a move, and again, treasure, if you're listening or if you're a client and you're thinking, yeah, your CFO, your CFOs, please just listen. Your treasurers can do more than just cash. They can do a bit of FX and risk management as well and a few other thousand things. So, yeah, so if you are a client looking to recruit, call us. We're very happy to help, Craig. Covering the UK and focusing very much on that and helped by me, obviously, with my track record. Katie, I'm helping as well across Europe and myself and potentially a couple of researchers, we're just expanding our US business and I'm focusing on the us, doing a lot of stuff in New York, a lot of stuff in and around Chicago. Land actually retain on an assignment at the moment. So have a look at that on the website and focusing down into Texas and maybe I'll go to a couple of those places. We'll come back to that in a minute. So what else should you do if you're a candidate? So set some goals or two, just look at them every six months, stick them in your diary. We'll talk about more of that on Nicole Show. I don't take too much from that. Maybe look at your profile on your LinkedIn. You know, I'm not going to go for a job or whatever. It's not about that. What if someone wants to come and work in treasury and they look at your profile, doesn't even have a photo on it, doesn't tell them what you do in Treasury, Just give it a quick brush up, just make it look good. If you go on our website, you get loads of LinkedIn advice there. It takes two minutes and maybe then someone will want to come and work in treasury and work for you, work with you. Fantastic. And the third one and it segues nicely. Networking. I can't wait to see you guys. 2023 was good. Particularly busy at the end of the year with networking quieter at the beginning. 2024 is the year we're going large. What you are about to hear is the first announcement of our 2024 global tour. There will be more news coming up about some of the guests on the tour, but there is a lot I can tell you already and you are exclusively getting these insights through the podcast so let's cover the podcast. So we started the podcast way back before COVID 2018, five and a half years ago and it's grown and grown and thank you for being a listener. I appreciate your support for the business and I hope the stories that I tell you and I share get these incredible treasures on the podcast help. So we expanded and then the we started to do some live events. We went across. You did Luxembourg, we did London a couple of times and it's grown and grown. I said something about some of the figures earlier. We get now 75 downloads a day, 528 a week, 2,000 over 2,000amonth, past 90 days, nearly 7,000. That's mental. Just thank you for listening. Some great stories, some great treasures and it's going to continue to grow. Row Pro where globally we are in 2024 repeating the success of our London events. So we will be in the city in April, Thursday 18th of April and Thursday 21st of November in the city at the Herbert Smith offices. Thanks for their support and we'll have some other sponsors soon. We'll be announcing those shortly. First guest announced Dan Ferguson. I said earlier in the show and looking forward to seeing Dan and a couple of other great treasures. We're just in discussions now. We're just nailing down those guys. But before then, what are we doing? We're getting on the plane. I'm hosting Treasury Career Corner live on Wednesday 6 March and Thursday 7 March in Times Square, New York. Amazing. At the offices of Prior Cashman. I'm also going to be doing it 12th of September, so later on in the year as well. I would love many of our listeners to come and join us. The first evening it's going to be targeted more towards treasury, those earlier in their treasury careers. So maybe if you're a Treasury analyst, senior Analyst, Manager, that's what we're going to be doing. We've got Luke Herbert, Vice President, Assistant Treasurer, GXO Burak, Yields, RIM Vice President, Treasurer, LVMH and Brian Harrison, VP Treasurer, NBC Universal. Love these three guys, know them very well. We're going to be talking about their treasury career so far. Giving you in that session bit of a view of their careers but also some of the choices they made and giving you some advice. Going to be an amazing evening and then networking afterwards. But then the Thursday that's going to be more an evening for some of the more senior treasurers. Invitation only. By all means. You can put yourself on the list or let me know if you'd like to attend. Just drop me an email mike treasuryrecruitment.com but what we're going to have is same venue, the Officers Pride, Brian Cashman, 7 Times Square. Amazing. But I'm going to be hosting. Dana Leithold, past podcast guest, Amazing Lady Treasurer of Nasdaq Chris Kocan, Senior Vice President Treasurer, Endeavour Debbie May know ufc, wwe. We're going to talk about some of their treasury careers and share some of their treasury career stories and again, networking. So here we come, New York. Amazing. Looking forward to that. And as if that wasn't enough in the U.S. we're also doing Texpo, aiming to do another treasury career corner live. And I've already got nailed down. Fred Shackneys from Technip FMC and Tamara Saran Eisner from Eliquid. Then Chicago, Illinois. I've got two amazing ladies to join me. Already confirmed. We have Kerry Howard, Vice President Treasurer for osi. She's going to hopefully join me for Treasurer Career Corner live in Chicago. And then we're going to follow that with New York again and we're going to be at the AFP in Nashville. So a busy year, lots of travel across there, but we. What about you guys in Europe? Listening? Sorry, we don't want to leave you alone. We got three, maybe four events planned. I know. Could do some recruitment in between this. Don't worry, we're doing that as well. We've got an evening in association with Attel. We're just trying to work out the dates in Luxembourg. We're also working with the Hellenic association in Greece. We're potentially going to be in both Germany and Belgium. We're just trying to again nail down dates that are all going to work for everyone to do. More treasure criteria going allies. It has taken over. It doesn't mean say we're not recruiting. What it means is that you get to meet us face to face so you know what we're like. We're giving value back to our community. It's just incredible. That's why we're here now. This show is already twice as long as I thought it would be, so I'm going to let you guys get back to your plans for the rest of 2024. It's been amazing. Thank you for your support this year. As I said earlier, set some goals. We're going to do some more stuff. Keep listening to the podcast. We've got some great guests coming up. If you want to come to any of the events, whether it's London, New York, anywhere in the US actually or any of our European events. Let me or a member of the team, either Craig or Katie. And it's literally mike@treasure recruitment.com. craig@treasure Recruitment. Katie, very simple. Let us know. And until we next speak or I see you at one of these events, have a fantastic new year and off we go into 2024. Thanks very much.