The Importance of a Personal Brand with Lee-Ann Perkins & Joel Campbell – Feature Episode

Foreign welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where usually I talk to treasurers about their treasury careers, where they are, where they going to some of their top tips. In this extra special episode this week I'm joined by not one but, but two amazing previous podcast guests. Wonderful Leanne Perkins, the assistant treasurer at Specialized Bikes, a global leader in the high end bike components business. And Joel Campbell, the now CFO of Trevipay, the global B2B payments and invoicing network based in Kansas. On this episode we talked about the importance of having a strong personal brand, how to network effectively to ensure you're successful in your career. That's what both of those guys have done, particularly with Joel. He talked about in the about, not about being headhunted for a role when he wasn't actually looking for a role. And Leanne, she's great, she's out there marketing herself, an amazing lady. So whether you just started working in your treasury career of, you know, and your chosen career path, if you like you're climbing the ladder or even changing fields, you feel that you need a little bit of help. Well, this episode is going to help you. It's a perfect opportunity here from two treasury experts on networking, developing their personal branding and how important it's been to both of them. It's going to help with your career success, but also those along the way that partner with you, help you, guide you and lift you along the way. Hear how they benefited from being mentored and also being mentors themselves. Really great session. I really enjoyed it. Just, just so good to share, share the afternoon stage with them, talking to them about them, their careers and even get me chipping in every now and then. So as I say each, let's each and every week, let's get on with the show. Hope you enjoy it. So welcome to today's session. Move that way, so deafen you all. Here is the lovely Leanne Perkins, assistant treasurer at Specialized Bikes. The wonderful Joel Campbell, CFO at trevipay. Mike Richards, treasury recruiter to the stars. Now, please notice I did that deliberately, slowly, not just to keep you awake after lunch. Why? To help us build our personal brands. That's what we're talking about by effective networking and this session, that's what we're going to try and help you with because some treasury professionals are very good personal branding, Leanne, Joel in particular. But some of you need some help. Now, key to having a brand is what I've just done there purposely to build one. When I first started recruitment 28 +, years ago, there wasn't really a thing as a personal brand, it was reputation. You can build it up. 20 years of talking to people, getting to know everyone. Now you put up a LinkedIn profile. Five minutes later, with one little advice tweet, you're out. So you may know who Leanne and Joel are and you might be scrolling. I can see a couple of you through LinkedIn. Now put your phones down because our job here today is to help you understand their backgrounds, why they're great treasury practitioners, and at the same time explore this weird concept of personal brand. But before I do and talked to Leanne about this before as well, as we go through this session, as we talk, I want you to step back from yourselves, like in the movies, where you sort of break the third wall if you like. I want you to notice how each of these guys phrases themselves, frames themselves and everything else and talks about themselves. Because it may be next year be one of you guys up on this stage here because you've built your brand. People want to hear your story. I'll kick off and introduce myself. This isn't the sales pitch. We're not allowed those. But this is to explain who I am and why they've invited me. Apparently, I'm a guy with a funny accent. You'll hear Leanne in a minute, you'll find out what a funny accent is. So what gives me the right to stand up? Don't we are friends. She does throw things at me later. I'm a global treasury recruiter, have been for the past 25 years. I've recruited at all levels, from treasury assistant to Global Treasurer. And that's it, really, that's me. But in 2010, I realized I had a really great local brand, not a global brand. If I came here, most of you guys in the room would never know who I was. That's all right. But if you uk, Europe, everyone knew me. So what did I do? I reached out and I started to put my hand up. I said, I'll come speak. Doing this actually started to speak at the windy city summit. 10 times, AFP, three times. It's not been easy and I know that you guys are busy, but if you want to develop personal brand, you need to put your hand up like these lovely people here have done. Anyway, that's enough from me for now. I'm going to get you to hear from the slightly unusual sounding Leanne. But Leanne was a guest on my podcast, Slightly unusual Starting to Treasury. Leanne, over to you.

Thanks, Mike. And if you can't understand me. Mike translates for me. He speaks Leanne, so we're good. But I'm Leanne Perkins. I'm the assistant treasurer of Specialized Bicycle Components, and I've been in treasury for about 19 years. And like Mike realized at some point, you know, I needed to have a global and a bigger brand than I did. And I'm not as extroverted as Mike, as you can tell, I'm quieter. But I realized that I had to put myself out there. And when people ask me to do speaking events, although it's still tough and it's not my natural inclination, I do it because I feel like I have so much to offer. If I was to describe my personal brand, it's someone who is ethical. I'm energetic, I'm an enhancer of processes, and I'm an absolute advocate for the treasury profession. It is a passion that I have. It's not my first career, this is my second career. And I was just lucky to fall into treasury and really enjoy it and be able to move myself up my own personal success ladder in my personal life and also in my career. And I've had many successes at failure along the way, but I've also had areas where I've been successful and been able to prove myself at work and move up in my career and just use my education, my experience and predominantly my networks, with Mike being a huge advocate of me to be able to get things done. And I just really enjoy being part of the treasury profession. And thank you for being at this event today. I hope you find it fun and you learn from us three here today who love treasury as well.

Leanne, before we move on to Joel, you've been a Treasury Practitioner for 18 years. Can you just, maybe just give a quick whistle stop tour of your career? Because you obviously started in dance. She will do some interpretive dance later. Watch out for that.

I was going to do that, but Mike said he'd throw me out if I did. I started off my life and my career as a professional ballerina. So that was everything I wanted to do in life. And due to injury, I had to stop and get a real career at some point. And I think everything I learned from ballet helped me to be just self discipline, to be motivated and to work harder than the next person to get what I wanted out of my career. And then I was just really lucky that I went and got an undergrad in management accounting. And I thought, well, if I have a finance degree, I should probably get a job at any point in life. So Luckily, I did. And my very first job was actually in Treasury. I didn't know what it was. They recruited me into the treasury analyst position because I had a management accounting undergrad, so I didn't know what I was doing. But after a couple of months of being there, I just absolutely loved it. And it's because it's technology based, it's innovative. I don't have to do journal entries, but it's just. It's dealing with networks of the banks and the vendors, and it's just such an exciting field for me and it's ever growing and it's just innovative as well. So I've worked my way up from basically a Treasury analyst, and then over my career, I've made sure that my experience and my education have remained in lockstep with each other. So I started work. Then I realized I wanted to be a treasurer one day because I wanted to emulate a boss I had who had a ctp. I didn't know what that was. And I was like, oh, I want to be cool like him. What should I do? What does that mean? So I read through and I saw how to get the certification and I studied really, really hard and I passed it. And then I went on to do the Canadian certification, which was also really fun. And then I got more experience and changed jobs along the way so I could progress my career. And eventually, as I moved up in my career, I realized, well, my education was falling behind of my experience. So I went and got an mba, which was really good for the business side and just other things that I hadn't learned yet was good for managing teams. And then for some odd reason, I'm the only person in the world that enjoys compliance, so I know there's problems there. But I went and did a financial compliance certification at Chicago Law School because I just thought financial compliance was so important to my job, especially as I was doing. I was going through an IPO at the time, and it was just difficult and lots of things for me to know in a public company. So I did that and then I progressed. I have two career goals in life when I started out. One was to be a treasurer of a private company, and then one of a public company. And I met both of those goals and it was very exciting, but it was due to loss of hard work and also being in the right place at the right time. But then in Covid, I changed jobs because of the company went under. But I decided to use that time to go and educate myself one last time because I'm tired of studying now. So I studied for two years to get my Treasury Fellowship license in the uk. So I'm trying to sound like Mike, but I didn't come back with the accent. But I have a Treasury license for the UK and that was the best learning experience I've ever done. It was incredibly difficult, lots of time spent, but so well worth it. So I feel like I've just, just been able to keep up education experience wise and now I'm able to enjoy my profession and hopefully give back to those coming behind me who also want to be treasurers and also want to just enjoy and have a passion for what they do.

Cool. So we're gonna pass over to Joel. And Joel, you started Finance, then Treasury, and now you're a cfo. Can you give again for the audience your backstory and bring us up to date, if you would.

Sure. So, Joel Campbell. I'm currently chief financial officer of B2B payments company company called Trevipay. But I have a long history prior to that in corporate treasury roles. I started my career coming fresh out of university with an accounting degree and went to work for Arthur Anderson. Some of you might remember that name pre Enron. So this is a long time ago. Not my fault. Yeah, I was not involved in that. But I started in public accounting thinking that I wanted to be a partner and that everybody wanted to be in the partner track. That sounded great. You made a lot of money and that sounded perfect. And after three years I realized that accounting was really not for me. I finished my CPA and was kind of struggling with what do I do now? And I did what a lot of people do coming out of public accounting. I segued into internal audit. It's kind of a natural step to leave. I went to work for a company and eventually I got recruited out of that company to now a worldwide known company, Travelers Insurance. And I had never worked in insurance, so it was a crash course on how insurance worked. And I kind of fell in love with insurance and realized that there were opportunities beyond accounting and internal auditing for me. I went back to school and started my MBA in finance. And from there I got pulled into M and A and I did M and A for a couple of years. It was challenging. I liked M and A, but it was not really what I wanted to do. And I was still kind of struggling, struggling seven years out of school with what do I do next? And I got recruited internally within Travelers to a new organization that was starting called Global Treasury. And I had no idea what treasury did what it was. Where would I even start? And so I was hired in as a cash manager and learned kind of from a really good assistant treasurer at the time. What is Treasury? How does it work? We were building a function for now a much larger corporation. And so I started at the ground level, fairly successful I think. Two years later I was asked to move to London. And I ran our London treasury center for three years kind of as a tour of duty to learn more about the company, learn more about treasury, didn't know Mike at the time and then ultimately moved back to the US and stayed there for a couple years, got recruited out of there to another company called Ameriprise Financial, which was at the time rolling out of or going through its own kind of IPO out of American Express. Stayed there for about five years, got recruited to another company called Western Union, which many of you probably know. And I went there again. You can kind of hear I'd taken a lot of half steps in my career, but I went there to work under a really strong treasure to learn capital management and how to think about capital structure strategy, which is an area I had not spent much time in three years there. And all of a sudden I got recruited out of there to a company in Kansas City called H R Block to become treasurer. And it was just a wonderful ride of several half steps, kind of falling in love with treasury. As Leanne said, I really didn't know what it was. After three or four years I got hooked partly because it wasn't accounting. I didn't have to worry that much about the general ledger and about SEC reporting and all those things that were just not interesting to me. And I got to be in a dynamic world of treasury where it changed every day it was the same, same thing, but it changed and was dynamic. And particularly I really loved the financial markets. I didn't realize how much I loved them until I got into capital management. I spent a tremendous amount of time. I ran two levered recaps for two different companies and learned a lot about how the financial markets work and how you can take a Treasury function and a little bit of financial engineering and add some real value into your company. So that's my story. Ultimately I landed in the role I'm in now. I stayed at H and R Block for a about seven years. Now I'm at a company called trevipay, which was a small subsidiary of a much bigger public company that was purchased by Private Equity. And I was recruited kind of during COVID which we'll Touch on a little bit later, but I was recruited out of being a treasurer into now being a CFO of a payments company. Again, I didn't know much about payments, I still don't know much about payments, but I'm learning it's just as challenging as insurance was, if not more challenging as in some respects with all the disruption that's happening in the market. But I was recruited out to step in and build a finance function for now a carved out company from a larger public company, but owned by private equity. So I'm still kind of learning the process of how to work in a private equity environment rather than in a public company. And we did a session on that yesterday to talk a little bit about that, which was it's been a journey and it's been again, another learning opportunity. I consider, consider this still another half step in my career. I don't know where my career is going to take me, but it's been a half step. Every step along the way where I felt like I've learned more, I gained more knowledge. Treasury was an incredible foundation for what I do now. We'll see where it leads me from this point.

And so similarly to Joel, that when I discovered the world of Treasury 20 plus years ago, I was in general recruitment and then my boss said, well, look, would you like to work in Treasury? I said, what's Treasury? As a lot of you guys did? So I got into it by accident. And what I quickly discovered is that again, I was speaking just a couple of weeks ago at the International conference in Vienna for Euro Finance, and I was talking to a number of the people in the audience. I said, look around this room. Ten people here, all with the title treasurer, and they all do the same job in the same way with exactly the same tools, right? And I'm like, no. I said, no, exactly. I said, isn't it fascinating that all of you guys have very similar titles and similar backgrounds, but you do it all differently? And I found that fascinating. And that's how I met these wonderful people. I then started to do a podcast with them. I thought maybe we'll do 10 episodes, have a bit of a chat. That was four years ago. And it's grown and grown and grown. Don't worry, we will give this to you later. I see a few people going to the phones. It's a great podcast, 232 episodes, just talking treasury. And it's not stopping, just approaching 100,000 downloads. Not doing that as, oh yeah, big PR, 100,000. We're going to do the PR piece and the brand building in a minute. It's more the amazing stories you have to tell. That's what we do every week. When I sit down in a little shed at the bottom of my garden and I talk to a treasurer and they might be the global treasurer on the West coast, east coast, you know, wherever it is. It's been amazing to talk. I've been able to talk to you great guys. Let's jump ahead on a couple of slides. These are some of the things we're going to cover in the session. Obviously, we've talked a little bit about careers, touched on it there, mentoring. We're going to come on to that. Then you've got networking, the power of it. You guys are doing it very effectively, some of you, some less effectively. When I see you guys, as soon as you've done a session, a lot of you are then straight on the phone afterwards, you walk out here. I know you're busy, but try and talk to at least one person before you leave this session today, not just us three. So we're going to do that. And then personal branding about why it's so important and everything else. I'll start with mentoring. What benefit has it been to you? What have you found both as a mentor and a mentee, maybe?

I think mentoring has been such an important part of my growth in my career, both as someone who has helped others in their career, but predominantly because I've been able to lean on people who I trust. I have the same ethical standards and beliefs as them and they see things differently to the way I do. So that's the benefit of having a mentor is someone who has an objective viewpoint on something that you're going through. And oftentimes you reach out to mentors because you have a problem or something you're trying to deal with in the professional environment that you need an outsider's viewpoint on, or you just need some technical assistance. And I've had a number of mentors during my career and as I've moved up my career, I've been able to seek out people with different levels of experience. And my current mentor sits in England. She sounds like Mike, but she is so helpful to me because she sees things so differently. She doesn't work for my company. She's also a female, which is I reached out specifically to a female because it's just sometimes different advice. And she is so helpful to me because I can go to her with either technical questions on items I'm struggling with at work, and she doesn't always have the answer for me, but she has a way to guide me or she has a network or something, someone who can help me or she can help me deal with sometimes a more difficult interpersonal conflicts at work that I'm trying to resolve. And I just think it's really important to find someone who's different to you, who thinks differently to you, and who's been through some of the same experiences you have so that they can help guide you, they can teach you, and they can give you experiences. Sometimes what not to do is the better part part of coming to a decision. And I think when you are in a mentor relationship, you really need to spend the time learning from them. So don't just pitch up to a session and figure out, well, I don't know what to talk about today, I don't know what I'm asking of them. But mentors are people who have busy careers, they have busy lives. You need to really respect that relationship. So when you go into a mentoring session, know what you want to ask, know what you're expecting to get out of it and treat it as a conversation. Really listen to what the advice they're giving to you. And I think it's just been so beneficial in my life and I hope that I can be that same person to others who experience similar, either personal or professional experiences that they need assistance with. And I just have so much good things to say about mentoring and it's really helped me.

Joe, to you.

Yeah, mentoring has been a big part of my career and I just, in complete transparency, I didn't realize I was being mentored early in my career. I don't know if some of you have experienced that. I had some really strong people who built into my life as an early part of my career. A former partner of mine when I was at Arthur Andersen mentored me and I had no idea what he was doing until a few years later. Then when I was at Travelers, when I got pulled into CO Global Treasury. The assistant treasurer at the time kind of took me under his wing, not only to teach me treasury, but to help me with some of the soft skills and things that he knew I was going to need in that role. I was young and like many, it was kind of stupid, right? It just didn't quite click with me what he was doing until later. But I look back now at a couple of those individuals very specifically and the way they built into me that I didn't even know I probably needed at the time that now stand out to me as people I still Keep in touch with. I'll give one quick example. When I was in London working for Travelers, I had an American boss who had come over, and we were running the treasury center together. And I was really struggling one day with some work that I honestly didn't really want to do. And I was trying to find a way to get out of it. And I went into her office to complain about it a little bit, and the best advice she ever gave me, and she looked at me, she listened, she was calm and she was patient. And she said to me, that's why it's called work. I was like, okay, I guess I get this now. I'll go back to my office and do it. But it stuck with me for years, and there are a couple of people in the room who have worked for me. And that has stuck with me is the way I now think about not only the character and integrity that I want to bring to the work that I do, but the work ethic I want to demonstrate for my staff is you have to be willing over the years to do whatever is asked of you and to focus on what's in front of you, even if you don't want to do it, if you don't like it, if you don't think you should be doing this, that somebody else should be doing this. And that lesson has stuck with me, but that came from a mentor. And Sheila, if you're listening to this, Sheila is still a part of my life. She's somebody that, you know, we've separated and she, you know, we've gone different ways in our careers, but she's somebody I know that I could call tomorrow or today and call, count on to give me solid advice in my career. And likewise, I've done that now with a number of folks that have worked for me over the years, whether it's giving them advice on how to think through a situation, whether it's counseling them in terms of education or professional experience, whether it's honestly helping them with a family situation. And I know that many of us kind of shy away from that at work, but I've always tried to mix personal and professional as part of who I am as a leader. I think it makes you more relatable and more authentic with your team when you share some of your life with them. And for me, sharing some of my life and having people share that back with me and come to me and say, how do you think about personal investing? How are you saving for your kids, college? How are you thinking about this situation in your personal life. So a lot of those things together for me have come together as part of mentoring. And even though I've been mentored well, I'm trying to mentor well as I move forward in my career. I do like Leigh and I think I have some experience to share. 30 plus years in a career now, all in finance and accounting. I think there are things that I can share with people, of lessons I've learned. What I've learned is not specific to me. What I've learned is not necessarily rocket science, but some simple things that I've gone through and learned that I can share with other people now. And as a form of mentoring again, some of which some people take as mentoring, some people don't realize they're being mentored. But still, mentoring nonetheless is, I think, a really important part of your career.

I said earlier that I met both of these amazing individuals through the podcast and having some in depth conversations. So it's about. I'll go back to the beginning of their careers, talk them through where they are now, where they see the challenges for you guys in treasury going forwards. And they're about 40 minute long shows now. As we started to build them, I got to about episode 30 or 40. I started to become okay at podcasting and then 200 episodes. You're pretty good then. You know what you're doing and stuff. But I was still learning things. One of the amazing ladies she was at Avnet at the time, Karen Van Denischa, look back at some of the things she told me. She had in fact two mentors, one in particular. And I said, well, look, what do they give you thinking? You know, the usual platitudes. Oh yeah, lovely. She went, they're a safe place for my new and crazy ideas where you can rehearse them without judgment, you can voice your concerns whilst being human. And she felt safe. It was like a safe place. A bit, she said, sometimes a bit like therapy, but for work. People have said to me that it's really nice that they've got a business mentor and help them understand how to coach others in the team because she's quite a direct person. She's a lovely Belgian lady. But yeah, just get out of her way. She gets stuff done now for me again, Leanne and I were talking before. I've got a couple of business coaches and it's been interesting as a business owner that I didn't think I needed them. But actually in the past two to three years, God have we needed them in a pandemic. How do you run a recruitment Business, you know, so they were a conf for me. And I was just jotting down some of the notes. Past few days, Confidential forum, challenging some of the ideas. I can't understand it. They said some of them were crazy ideas. And I was like, no, they're wrong. But one of the things we did was some of the new ideas. So we do a salary survey, for instance, which has now hit 600 people as of today. Just heard it from the team treasurysalary.com and again, it's not PR. It is more what these guys have said, well, why don't you do the salary survey? People love it, gives really great content. I was like, oh, yeah, this works. Actually, that's for me. Mentoring, networking. We've got some good. We've still got some good time here. Go for it.

Yeah, go for it to what you said. That has stuck out to me. I think as you grow, whether it's a Treasury career or finance or accounting, whatever, as you grow and you get to a certain title or certain position within your organization, I think people have a tendency to say, I've arrived, right? I'm here. I don't really need mentoring anymore. I kind of know everything now. And Even for me, 30 years in a career, I kind of know everything. I don't look at it that way. And I still actively pursuing mentors, whether it's my current CEO at the company I'm at today who has taken me under his wing to some extent and helped me learn how to work in a private equity environment or whatever that next shift in my career might be. I think if you have a mindset of always being willing to be mentored to get better, I'm not perfect at what I do. There's still a lot of things that I can learn and that I need to learn how to handle differently, how to think about differently, and seeking those mentors over the course of your career and never getting satisfied to a point where you think you've arrived and that you know everything. Also, I think a really important part of thinking about mentoring and the best.

Piece of mentoring advice I've gotten, and this was a few years ago and it stuck with me, is you were hired for you, and don't forget that. So I definitely had times in my career where I've suffered from impression imposter syndrome. And especially as I've moved up my career, I felt I definitely haven't arrived far from that. And I just felt like I couldn't possibly be worth this position. And sometimes it was very difficult for me And I had a coach, and she told me, you know, that your boss has hired you because of you for your experience, your education and your personality and what you bring to the table. And I was very afraid because people. People were able to do things that I wasn't necessarily good at. They were good at accounting or other types of finance, and it wasn't my skill set. And I thought, well, if I'm not as good as everybody else, how can I possibly be part of this role and this team? It took me a while to really believe and trust in what she was saying, but it's really held true over the years that if you put yourself out there and you hired for who you are and you behave that way and you bring your best to the table at work each day, it shows maturity on your side as well. And you're able to give the best of what you're good at to your company, because it takes a village to run a company. So just be confident in what you can bring to the table.

So networking, going to move on to that. Obviously, this conference is about networking, as I said earlier. How many of you came out of a session? I'll get on my phone. It's just the easy way. What I would encourage you to do is network. One proponent of this is Joel. I'm not going to throw things at him. We're going to have a beer about it later. But, Joel, your network helped you move roles when you weren't actually looking for one, didn't it? And maybe go into that. Death by a thousand cuts is fine.

Sure. I've thought in my career, I think many of us do this. You think about, I'd like to get here by this time. I'd like to get here by this time. Like we kind of map out in our own mind. Or at least you should, right? You should have an idea where you think you. You want to go. And I had always thought that perhaps being a CFO someday would be really interesting, kind of taking my entire background and applying it in a different role in a different way and a bigger leadership role where I could get my hands around a lot more things. And I wasn't really seeking that. What Covid happened. Everybody pivoted to working from home. I was in the middle of doing a pretty significant refinancing and debt deal for H and R Block at the time, and I got a cold call from a recruiter in the middle of COVID and said, hey, I've got a real opportunity here. They're looking for somebody who has treasury background and experience in financing, who understands capital markets. They're less concerned about what you know about accounting. They know you can hire somebody to do some of those things. Would you be interested? And I said, well, you know, not really looking for something. I got this big debt deal I'm trying to accomplish. And he was a little bit persistent. Persistent. And so I kind of threw my head into the ring and went through the process. But the reason he found me is through LinkedIn. He just looked up and was looking for a certain profile. He was looking for corporate treasurers. He was looking for somebody, particularly in the Midwest, around where I was, for the size of company and the background I had, it was. I wouldn't say it was fortuitous, but he was looking for somebody with my exact qualifications. And when I went through the process, the entire situation started, started to fit like a glove. It was a perfect situation for what I thought I might be looking for at some point down the road, as well as a perfect situation for the background and the kind of person that they were looking for. But all that to say, a lot of that came about through networking. Mike talks a lot about personal brand and networking. I don't really think I have a personal brand, to be honest. I'm not a marketing person. I'm a finance guy deep down inside. Talk to me in spreadsheets and I'm perfectly happy, you know, that's who I am. So I have never thought about myself as a personal brand. But even talking with Mike, doing the podcast, thinking more broadly about, right, how do I appear, what other people learn from that I could put on my LinkedIn post. What other things could I start to share? Where you can be found, where people can seek you out, whether it's an opportunity to speak or share an insight. Now that I've migrated to Trevipay, I've been interviewed several times by several different parts publications that are interested in somebody in my space who has the background and experience that I do. And that would have never happened if I hadn't networked. Not just NETWORKING, you know, LinkedIn is kind of the thing, but not just networking and LinkedIn. But, you know, I've worked for four large companies. I've had, you know, a couple hundred people now that have worked for me that still stay in contact with me and reach out to me for this or that. I've had a handful of people here at the conference who said, I want to connect to with you and talk to you about what you did in your career, how you made each of these steps. So it's beyond just being networked in an environment where people can see it, but being networked with everyone that you've reached out to, that you've worked with, bankers that you've worked with over the years, and keeping those current, just even on LinkedIn, just going out and saying, hey, congratulations, I saw you did this. That's awesome. You know, let's catch up sometime. Those kinds of things, I think, have really helped me keep my network and continue to grow it over time.

Diane?

Yeah, no, that's great. I think networking is essential to your personal brand, to how you grow in your career, and to also just getting advice from people on how to do things at work. I came from starting at the bottom as a Treasury analyst, and I had so much to learn. And honestly, if I look back in my career and I just look at all the people who been there through all my successes, and I probably couldn't have done most of what I've done successfully without the help of other people. And that is all because of the network that I was able to build. And I am not a naturally extroverted person. So it is not easy for me to just come into a room and talk to tons of people and ask for their business cards. It takes effort on my behalf. And over the years, maybe because of age, I don't care as much, but I've gotten more confident. But it's still not my natural inclination. But I do find talking to people just helps you with your confidence. It helps you on the education side. There's been a lot of projects that I've done at work where I didn't know how to do something. And I was, you know, just looked up on LinkedIn for people who had that experience and could help me find someone, even 10 people removed to help me get information to. To complete a task. But I think networking is just. It's a great way to also meet new friends. I mean, a lot of my friends are treasury professionals as well. So you develop, like you were saying, you know, people that have worked for you over the years. You just build a friendship. And treasury, the profession is great. We're nice people, you know, everyone likes being together. Look at us, 5,000 of our favorite friends are here this week at the conference. And so it's important to do. But I also think you have to build habits, because for people like me, where it's not naturally easy for me, I try, like Mike said earlier at every conference, to just try to meet one person or put up my hand in A Q and A session and just try to put myself out there a little bit more, because it builds confidence. The more you do it, the more of a habit it becomes. So I think networking is really important online and just personally in conferences and sessions as well.

Maybe one last thing I would add to this. I think another part of being networked is when I started H and R Block and moved to Kansas City, Terry Crawford, who many of you might know, who is a past chairman of afp. Terry is a treasurer at AMC Theaters, which is also in Kansas City. I was there two weeks, and Terry reached out to me and said, hey, I see you're the new treasurer at H and R Block. Let's get together for lunch. We have a little Treasurer's Council in Kansas City. I'd love to get to know you, welcome you into the community. And from that, that has led to me getting more involved in afp. This year, I threw my head in the ring and joined the board of afp. So I'm now a board member. None of that would have happened if Terry, in his networking, hadn't reached out to me and said, hey, I see you're new. Let's get you connected and see if there's a way for you and I and some of the other treasures in town to get together and just talk about things that are happening. So kind of on the backside as well is when you network and put yourself out there. I think Leanne touched on this. Other people will start to reach out to you, and that's been really interesting. And I just add Mike is another one of those individuals. Mike reached out to me. I didn't know Mike. Mike reached out to me and said, hey, I see you do this, I see you do that. Would you be interested in being on a podcast? I'm like, who's Mike Richards and where is he from? And we've built a relationship over seven or eight years now, which has been fantastic. But that wouldn't have happened for me if we hadn't connected through our network. So.

And when I did that conversation originally with Joel and with the Anne and everything else, before I even spoke to them, I had my elevator pitch. And people were going to talk about this in a minute as well. And some people are nodding. A few people are like, elevator, yeah, you can go in a minute. You can get in the elevator. Don't worry. It's about maybe 20 to 30 seconds when you might be speaking to someone maybe here over a quick coffee or something like that. But that's what they say. Ride in an elevator. You can tell someone what you do. Now, could anyone put their hands up if they do cash management or touch cash in their jobs, please? Right, yeah. Great. How many of you would go, yeah, I do cash management for such and such company. Yeah, it doesn't fly. Everyone does this. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands because we did this before in Chicago. We did some of the most overused words on LinkedIn and one of them was passionate, which I got one of the guys to hold up and he was like, yeah, not that kind of conference, but we did it with him. And I was just saying, look, guys, you need to stand out. And they're like, look, well, we're not creative writing geniuses. I said, you don't need to be. What you need to do is have what I call your. So what? So when you go back to your LinkedIn profiles, maybe later this week or next week, just look at your LinkedIn profile and as you're doing it, and this will help you with your elevator pitch. Or maybe think about it. Today when I went to these guys said, look, hi, I'm Mike. I'm a crazy English recruiter that I. Yeah, whatever. But aside from that, I was like, this is why we do the podcast, to share the stories and this is why I want to get to know you. And this is why. And it was like I'd gone through and kept so what? Why would it be on your podcast? I don't want to be on. I'm not interested. And then it was like, well, actually, this will help you with your network. This will help you fun enough with your personal brand. And then opportunities came knocking for both these lovely people, and it could do the same for you. Now we'll get on to personal branding and I'll get into that. Now, Joel touched there about LinkedIn and they have great LinkedIn profiles. Again, Leanne and I were talking before this session and I put it here and I said, it's your Swiss army knife for personal branding. It does it all for you. If you only 10% complete it, then you're 90% at risk. So if you just put a few bits on there, you don't have a photo, you don't have, or worse than that, you have a stupid photo. Oh, don't get me started, guys. Yeah, I've got lovely kids. I don't want to see them on my profile. I did this jokey posting recently. You can all see it, Rogues Gallery. And there were all these remade photos and one in particular, there's me having a beer. It's a remade photo. We couldn't do it because I didn't want, you know, I wanted to get the business now, the worst one ever, and still I can't use it. Still there in the archive was this global treasurer, obviously, at a Christmas party, kissing this little figurine sort of thing, doing this. He was one of our clients. And I'm going, right, how do I take the mickey out of him? How do I. Oh, okay, so I didn't. It's your personal calling card now. I had this one time in Belgium, I was talking at their conference and Patrick, lovely guy, said, mike, look at me. I said, patrick, I've got a face of radio, mate. That's why I do a podcast. And the key thing was, I said, it's your virtual calling card. If you don't have a photo, say you're going into your banking meeting. He actually had some the next day. So do you walk into the banking meeting and actually, as you go in there, you say, hi, everyone, how you doing? Oh, great to meet you. I said, that's what you're doing. You're turning your back to them. What if you had a nice, friendly photo? He changed it that day and everybody was looking at him because it was actually helping him with his personal branding. As you go down through your LinkedIn profile, I'm not going to do a full session on that. I do that a lot of the time at the other places. Tell who you are, what you stand for and what makes you different to the person sitting next to you. I would do a group session. I've done this before, where you might be sitting next to another assistant treasurer. Say, hi, I'm an assistant treasurer. Yeah, whoopee do. So am I. Tell me what makes you different. I made some of the notes here. We talk there about, you know, being skilled in cash management, effective negotiator, communicator. Get rid of those, please. I want to know what makes you stand out. Now these guys have got it on their profiles. Maybe can you give some of the things that you focused on within your profile? I know we had a big profile there, but say, for LinkedIn and things like that.

Yeah. So I think for me, my personal brand is an acronym that I made a long time ago, and acronyms work for me because I sometimes forget words, but I use this acronym called MAP it. And so this is the way I want to be known by other people. I want to be known for my mindset. Is it something that People see as a growth mindset, as someone who wants to be a teacher to others. The A stands for attitude. Am I someone that comes across as having just a positive attitude and helpful attitude to others? And the P is passion. I know Mike doesn't like the word, but for me, it's something that I genuinely just love doing as a treasurer. And I don't want to be anything else in my career other than a treasurer. That's my goal, that's my focus. So my passion is Treasury. And the I stands for integrity. And I don't think that anything more important in my life, it doesn't matter my career, that I'm seen as someone who has integrity in every situation and that I'm not going to adjust my moral compass for anything that happens at work. And then the T stands for trustworthy. I want to make sure that when I'm in meetings, especially with my bosses or decision makers, that they find me credible. And that when I ask for a project or when I do something, that, that I'm believable and that I can stand on my experience and the things that I have done have been beneficial and useful for the company. So I want to be known for those particular things and also as truly an advocate and someone who wants to raise the profile of treasurers worldwide. Because that where I am in my career right now, that's what I want to do.

Just to qualify that a little bit, I don't mind you having passionate on your profile, but tell me about what, tell me about what you're passionate about. If you have got, you know, you're skilled in cash management, so what? How much have you saved your company by doing the initiatives you've done? Joel then talked to there about his current role and we'll go back to Joel in a second. Make it real, make it stand out. Just don't make it bland. Bland is really boring. And it just. And it's very easy. All you guys need to look at and say, right, yeah, well, I implemented this treasury management system. Why? Why did you go through that big implementation? Well, because it saved these jobs or saved this. It did this. It did. Oh, wow. Put it there without giving confidential information about the company. That's not what we're asking. What we're asking about is stand out. That's what Leanne does when she's passionate about things and she actually demonstrates it when you look at her profiles, you'll all be connected as well later. Joel, for you, how do you stand out?

So now I'm officially convicted that I need to update my LinkedIn profile. Thanks for the shaming, Mike. As a finance person, personal branding is just not something that's ever been top of mind for me. What I've always tried to do, and you can go out and look at my LinkedIn profile, is try to describe the experiences that I've had and particularly as Mike said up front, like what distinguishes me in terms of the different things that I've been able to do at different companies. Somewhat agnostic to the company itself, but more about what I've been able to accomplish at that company and why, therefore I think I stand out over somebody else that does something similar to me. I think the other thing I've tried to do and I think it's extremely important is that, you know, we're all involved at work and in our profession, but I've always tried to mix in several other things that I do outside the profession to give back. And so you'll see on my LinkedIn profile at my alma mater I sit on the Advisory council for the School of Business Administration. At my alma mater I'm involved in a couple charities in Kansas City. I've been heavily involved in AFP and the Executive Institute for almost 20 years now. So I've tried to add in some of those other things. It does two things. It shows that you're well rounded and that you're not just one dimensional focused on your company and work. But it also shows that you have an aptitude and an interest in doing something and either giving back from your experience or being able to use your skill set to help another organization be successful. And so I've tried to have a compliment of both, I think, in the way that I put mine together. And then the last thing I would say is, you know, I think it's really important, particularly through LinkedIn, is to have a network. I've looked at some of my friends profiles and they have 50 connections or 100 connections. I've got about 12 or 1300 connections. And part of that is because I've worked with a lot of people over 30 years and every banker I've worked with, every investment banker, every staff member, everybody I've run into at AFP I go out and get connected with because you never know when there's going to be an opportunity to be networked with, networked with that individual. So take some time, be habitual about doing it and focusing on it and I think that will help also build your profile. When you get over a thousand connections on LinkedIn, you start to see all sorts of stuff in your feed that you would never otherwise have access to. And that's been really rich for me, just professionally as well.

Can I add to that, you've heard me say this before, that I think your network is your net worth. And for me, coming from a different country 20 years ago to the US, I knew one person in treasury and that was my boss at the time. And so we didn't have LinkedIn 20 years ago, I don't think. But it. It was hard for me to go out and meet treasury people I didn't even know. There was associations at that point in time. But I got linked into the local AFP chapter in Houston, and for the first few times I went, it was very uncomfortable. I didn't know anybody. I wanted to just walk away. It was not a fun time. But people came up to me and invited me into their personal space and into their treasury network. And that's how I now have an extraordinarily large network for someone who's not from this country, is because I put myself out there, I tried, and I get connected to people who feel the same way as I do about treasury and are also interested in learning from each other. So you got to take that step and you've got to just realize, I think, the reason behind networking and the importance of it and just try to put that into your professional life as well.

Well, pick out two points there, actually, from both of you that I think are powerful and actually one I'd love to take credit for. I like net worth things. Great. I won't steal that for a later podcast, but actually, Chris Fulton, a lovely guy, recruiter, gave me this great tip. He said, you meet so many people at these conferences and you guys will be doing it today, yesterday, today. And what he said was that when he meets someone, he'll be having a great conversation and then immediately jump into another group. And he said, oh, actually, can you give me a second? So what do you do? He said, oh, I just take their business card and I write some notes about that person. You know, red tie, daughter going to Duke, and he follows up with everyone. Now, this guy is so well networked. He's better than me. He's got a bigger, better, more powerful network. And he, in a similar way, got headhunted for a CFO role. He wasn't looking, but they came looking because of his network. They heard about him through his network. It was his net worth. But the key thing was I said, oh, you just. He said, it's just something he's always done that. He'll go back from the conference and he'll follow up with his five or 10 people and just do a quick good luck. Oh, by the way, this is the location of this. And people go, wow, this guy really remembers. Networking is hard work. It's not easy. And you guys were just mentioning there about if you only say, and I'm not saying you have to have the biggest LinkedIn network in the world, but sometimes, again, I do it where I'll be talking to someone and they'll say, oh, I don't really do it. I'm not really looking for a new job. No. But a new job might be coming. Looking for. You heard someone actually just talking about it over lunch. I was earwigging a little bit, but didn't jump in there because it was too rude. But she said, yes, someone just approached me and this lady had made a move from one company to another and she wasn't looking, but the fact was they discovered her. The other one, I think that Joel touched on there as well. You're looking for some advice. You might be wanting to deal with a different bank or different country or implement a Treasury system or something like that. Now, if you've got 10 or 15 people in it where you can reach out to them. Does anyone use this tms? No. Right. Where do I go from here? Whereas if you've got 100 people in the network, it goes out to, oh, what if you've got a thousand people? You put it out. It's a free resource. I said, and if you only work on it 10%, you're only going to get 10% results. So just give it a spring clean, just as Joel will be after this session. But he's all right. He's not looking for a role, it might come looking for him.

Can I add something to you?

Please do so.

I also like to think of it as not just me being able to get help from somebody else, it's also, if I hear somebody else is looking for a job, I can help with my network to provide assistance to somebody else. Or if someone's doing a project and I perhaps have some information that I can help with that I can pay it forward that way. So it's a bit like the mentor mentee relationship, where it's mutually beneficial. So use your network wisely, you know, it's not just for you. Don't be selfish with it. Use it. Just spread good to others as well.

Yeah, we're going to do some Q and A shortly from you guys. In the audience. And then we'll do the final takeaways, which will retouch on some of the points. Today. Still got about 20 minutes to run. One of the first questions I was asked, actually totally linked into this by someone that was going to be here, but unfortunately they had to go to another session. But they said, mike, I'm not looking for a new job. Do I need to bother to have a personal brand? Do I need this? I'm a Treasury guy, I don't need this. Will it help me or my team? What should I do? Should I bother? And I was just going to get the input from. Yeah, go on.

I think, absolutely. I mean, your brand is not just about trying to get another job, it should be how people see you in your career. I mean, are you going to be seen as trustworthy and credible and ethical? And when you can portray that in your LinkedIn profile as well, Even if you're not just looking for a job, it's just people you want to associate yourself with. Because I think that's saying the Rising Tide. What the. Yeah, the Rising Tide lifts all boats. That's it. See? Takes a village. So it's, you know, what you can do for others as well, so. And also for the people on his team, even if that person is not particularly looking for a job. It says a lot about your team. If you're all branded that way, it's good for your company. And I would say, yes, you should all do it, because you also don't ever know when you're going to be looking for another job. It's easy to say now, I don't need a job, but Covid happened and things happen in companies. You may want to have another job at some point in time and then you've already established and out there. So I would say yes.

And Joe, Yeah, I would say, absolutely. I mean, I don't look at LinkedIn personally. I don't look at LinkedIn as a place where I'm trying to get recruited and find a job. I've never looked at it that way. I think it's a place for all of us to get connected and share stories and share interactions and people who know people that can help each other out. I've always looked at it that way. And when I think about my profile on LinkedIn, it's more about. I'm representing, at least in each step of my career, I'm representing the firm that I work for and the work that we're doing and the banking relationships we have and the things that I'm supposed to be doing as an executive, as a treasurer, assistant, Trevor, whatever it was, what I'm supposed to be doing at that point in my career to help my company move forward. And so I've always looked at it as I'm a representation of my company as well as myself. But I'm always trying to make sure that, that if a banker doesn't know who I am, they're going to meet with me tomorrow, they can go out and see my profile, see my background, who I am, get a sense for how I think about things and the projects that I've worked on. And I think that's vitally important for the professionalism that comes around building business relationships to help your company move forward.

And I think you touched on an important point too, is you have to remain professional on LinkedIn. And I know there's people who have different opinions about that, but it is not, not a dating site, it is not a political site because like Joel just mentioned, you know, you are representing your profession, your company and your own personal brand and people who work with you. So just think about those things too. When you add postings to your LinkedIn, just keep that in mind.

Has been quite a LinkedIn Fest. There are other social networks and actually it brings me back to quite a decent story. I was at the Windy City Summit and we had the interns helping us do the sessions. Lovely guys coming up. And I was saying to one of the guys, Craig, lovely guy, and said, craig, you've got to be careful. I personally don't do Facebook. No one needs to see me drinking beer all the time. You can do that later. It doesn't need to be out there now. He was, oh, no, it's fine. I've locked up my network, I've done all this. I said, yeah, no problem. Craig, any chance you just grab me a beer for a second? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't condescending. Went off and I came back and I went, craig, how was Tijuana? He's like, what? I went, yeah. And I showed him this photo and it was a photo of him having a really good time with some of his college buddies. And he said, oh, how'd you find that? I said, I used a little known search tool called Google. And what is out there is public exactly as Leanne touched on there. You can have a rant, you can have this, but. But you will be judged. It is an open forum, it's social to everyone, so do be aware. It can be dangerous. That's one of the key things, I would say as well. But again, to touch on Joel's point there, the other one reflecting, I went to another conference in Germany. This treasurer said, look, I don't really. I said, look, just put some information about it. And actually, what they did was then their HR team, when they were recruiting, said, look at Franz's LinkedIn profile. You could have a career like him. And actually they went and looked at the team and went, do you know what? They were really struggling to recruit. But then they said, actually, this guy has been with the company 15 years. This is what he's done. They got two people, not directly, not through me or anything, they just went, actually, these guys, oh, yeah, I'd like to be like that. Or I'd like to follow in their footsteps. It's a tool for you guys to use, not just internal, it could be external as well. So you've got to use it. But we're going to go quickly to our key takeaways. Leanne, to yours.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think knowing who you are, what you're really good at, and then importantly for me is just through my whole career is living sacrificially with your time, with your energy, with your talents, and just your ability to help others. Because really, I just want to, at the end of the day, once my career is done, I want to be able to. To look back at those people who are coming up behind me, whose careers are flourishing and who are doing great things, and I want to be part of their successes. Even if it's just a tiny little piece of something I've said or I've helped them with, I want others to be lifted up as much as people have been doing that in my career as well.

Cool, Joe.

Yeah. I mean, two quick things. For me, the first bullet point here is build your own balance sheet. Former boss of mine at Western Union, who was an incredible treasurer, said that to me on my first day, and I had no idea what he was saying, but I learned over three years what he was talking about. The tools, the talents, the things you know how to do. Build your own balance sheet and look at it as a balance sheet, right? Your pluses and minuses, right? There are things you need to work on, but there are things that you're really good at, and make sure you take stock of those. And then the very last one, right? There's nothing that replaces hard work. And I have coached and mentored folks over the years, particularly some of the younger folks on my team who want to get there Quickly, but don't want to have to put in the work. And I will just tell you, fundamentally for my career, I put in the work and to Leigh Ann's perspective, I've sacrificed. I'll stay at work an extra hour to coach and mentor people. I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever's asked of me. I'll ask for things that are outside of my responsibility. But you have to put in the work. If you. If you're not willing to put in the work, you're not going to get out of it what you want from a career perspective. So there's nothing that replaces hard work.

So mine. First of all, you are here today, so you are putting in the hard work, which is fantastic. You've actually shown up. You will be able to get these. Reach out if you want to. We've got the website as well, treasuryrecruitment.com you've got various other bits there. Constantly develop yourselves very quickly on that. I always see it as like a travelator, but you stand at the airport, but you're standing the wrong way because if you're standing still, there are people just walking past you and you're going backwards. But by doing what you're doing today and educating yourselves and putting in the hard work, just to borrow his phrase, that's what you're doing. Master your elevator pitch, as we say, 20, 30 seconds, you're going to meet someone very quickly for a beer, coffee later on. They want to know what you do very quickly. So get to the point, go through your so what moment, then finally write the notes on the business card. As I say, Chris did great thing. I've stolen that and used it quite a lot and network is net worth. I'll have that one later. That was great from her. Thank you very much. Round of applause to these other people. Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen to. Listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much, and I can't wait to see you soon.