“Spend 10 minutes a week on yourself. Nobody else is going to take charge of your career except for you. If you sit back, you are going to lose.”
Mike Richards, CEO & Founder of The Treasury Recruitment Company, has helped professionals in the US, UK and Europe find dream treasury roles at companies such as Chanel, IKEA and Porsche for two decades.
Mike also hosts the popular podcast, The Treasury Career Corner Podcast which has seen 250 treasury guests and more than 120,000 downloads
In this episode:
- Modern treasury defined
- The best paths to collaboration between Treasury and FP&A (aka grab a coffee ☕)
- Association of Finance Professionals’ certifications for treasury and FP&A
- The guide to nderstanding treasury operations for aspiring CFOs.
- Financial risk management, capital structure, cash management, banking, relationships, and decision-making for treasury
- How to get a job in a job market that sucks
- Horrible finance job descriptions
Links
Upcoming speeches and conferences featuring Mike Richards – https://treasuryrecruitment.com/treasury-roadshow/ Including New York Cash Exchange, then EuroFinance – Barcelona & then AFP, San Diego
Listeners can connect with Mike here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrtreasury/
Head to Treasury Corner podcast here – https://treasuryrecruitment.com/podcast/
Follow Mike Richards on LinkedIn
YouTube video of the episode
Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn
FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.
Datarails (www.datarails.com) is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.
Full transcript
Paul Barnhurst:
Hello everyone. Welcome to fp a today. I am your host, Paul Barnhurst, aka The FP&A Guy. And you are listening to FP&A Today, brought to you by Data Rails Financial Planning and analysis platform for Excel users. Every week we welcome a leader from the world of financial planning and analysis and discuss some of the biggest stories and challenges in the world of FP&A. We’ll provide you with actionable advice about financial planning and analysis. This is going to be your go-to resource for everything fp and a I am thrilled to welcome today’s guest on the show, Mike Richards. Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike Richards:
Hello, Paul. I’m honored and a bit scared being the other side of the microphone. Usually I’m the one in charge and asking the questions, I ask the questions. And now you, yeah, you’re getting your own back.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well, I’ll see if I can come up with some difficult ones for you to make it hard. So we’re really excited to have you here. Just a little bit about Mike. Mike comes to us from London. He graduated from the University of London, runs his own business called Treasury Recruitment Company. And as you probably guess, he also hosts a podcast. It’s a popular podcast called Treasury Career Corner. So this week we’re going to talk about how treasury and FP&A work together and just some things in that space and how they’re similar, how they’re different. And so super excited to have Mike to talk with us a little bit about that. But how about we start with you telling us a little bit about your background, how you ended up where you’re at.
Mike Richards:
Well, thank you Paul, as you say, I am the CEO of the Treasury Recruitment Company. That’s exactly what we do. Started in treasury recruitment over 25 years ago now. Started the treasury recruitment division of a global financial recruiter in 1998. God, it seems a few years ago. I then joined an executive search firm. We then got bought very quickly by Heidrick & Struggles. I was like, ah, wanted my own practice. And then suddenly, right, you’re part of us again. And then in 2002 I thought, why am I doing it for everyone else? So I set up, we were then called MR Recruitment after me, but we rebranded number of years ago to the treasury recruitment company cause that’s all we do. We recruit at all levels from treasury analyst to global Treasurer. And obviously talking to you Paul, it’s amazing talking to the US. We started in the uk, expanded across the Middle East, far east and did everything. And then in the US we actually launched our business actually in 2008. A subprime came along, bit scary time went, oh, let’s run away. But we came back and actually launched the business in the US in 2010. Studied at Northwestern, the Kellogg School and loved it. And the US is where I’ve been going, speaking at lots of conferences for the past 10, 12 years and loving it.
Paul Barnhurst:
Well thank you. Appreciate your introduction. Speaking of conferences, put a plug out there for those who want to meet Mike this year. Both Mike and I will be at a AFP in San Diego in October. Were both speaking. So what are you speaking on Mike?
Mike Richards:
I’m going to talk about hybrid working. Cause obviously being in treasurer, recruitment, hybrid, working from home, return to the office, all completely brand new topics. Five years ago it was like flexible working, get out my office. Now, It’s like if you don’t, don’t flex with us. I’m not walking into your office. So I’ve got the amazing Leanne Perkins from Specialized Bikes and Joel Campbell sharing a stage with those guys and talking about their views on it. Leanne works a hundred percent remotely. Joel, he is back in the office as a CFO was a treasurer and I’ll be just chucking in some questions at them as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Sounds like it’ll be a really good event. So I’m speaking on, have two others. I’m speaking with Andrew Childress and Ron Monteiro. And we’re going to be talking about kind of team development and making sure you build a high performing team, things to think about and making sure you’re developing your team,
Mike Richards:
Looking forward to it, and finally meeting you face to face. And this podcast is lovely, but actually there’s nothing better and that’s one of the things that I’ve said about as people return to the office, the greater than the sum of the parts, getting people back together in the office. There’s just an energy that comes from it rather than just doing it all remote.
Paul Barnhurst:
I agree. Remote. I’ve done a lot of remote work. Most of my last 10 years of my career has been primarily remote and it is great to see people in person. There’s definitely a difference. Can you do it all remote? Can you have a good team? Yes, no doubt. Yeah. But there is benefit to being in person without a question. .
Mike Richards:
So
Paul Barnhurst:
I’m curious, so you’ve now been running your business for over 20 years. What has that experience been like? What do you love about running your own business?
Mike Richards:
Yeah, it’s amazing actually running your own business. I was working for a number of other people and it was quite strange. I would want to launch things. I remember years ago I did a brochure and they were like, oh no, we’re not sure about it. It’s one of the most successful things we ever launched. Then if I’d gone to them and said, oh I want to launch a podcast, they were not so sure. By setting up my own firm 25 years ago, yes, been some tough times along the way, getting through three recessions. It’s not always been easy, but we’re still here. Worked with some great team members over the years, seen them develop and grow and they’ve gone. It’s a fun environment. Don’t go in there and have rigid KPIs or anything else. We have a direction and everything else, but every day is about that success and we can do these different things. Two weeks ago I was in Chicago, then I get to do other things. I get to talk to treasurers on the podcast each and every week. It’s amazing fun. And actually keeping the fun element of recruitment. Recruitment can be tough, but it can also be great fun as well. So that’s one of the things for me.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. I could totally see that having now run my own business, there is some real benefits. Alright, if you want to do something, you can do it. You can try it. So I definitely think there are benefits to that. So next, can you talk a little bit about your podcast Treasury Career Corner? Y Who is that for? What’s the
Mike Richards:
So focus? A few. Quite a few years ago, early days of podcasting, I thought about doing a podcast about recruitment. I thought, well that would be three or four episodes, it’s not going to be that much and everything else. And then about five years ago I started and I was studying, actually working on being mentored by a guy called Chris Ducker who runs Youpreneur. Great entrepreneur, really nice guy. And we talked about them doing a podcast and he’d very successfully done one. And I thought actually I could interview my clients. Oh that used to be great cause I love talking Treasury all the time. And I thought, hang on. Treasury Career Corner was born. I thought maybe we’ll do 10 episodes, see how it goes. We’re now four and a half years later, 270 plus episodes, 117,000 downloads, remembering all the numbers there, getting numbers in my head. I just love it. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about their careers, how they started their careers, where they are, where they’ve seen it develop and where they see it going in the future. So it’s a really 45 minute show, keep it nice and short and sweet. Talk about their careers and where do they see treasury going to next. And it’s about giving guidance and advice and it’s just been, yeah, rollercoaster. I just loved it really.
Paul Barnhurst:
I can relate. I mean I’m in, see 60 episodes in now and I love doing it. It’s a lot of fun. Just like you mentioned, I get to talk to all kinds of finance professionals in particular FP&A all over the globe. This is fun to do something a little different and get to talk treasury here and how treasury and fp and a overlap. So I’m just excited to have you and I totally agree with you. There’s nothing like it. It’s just amazing to get to talk to people all over the world and learn their perspective and learn about them for 45 minutes and get to share that with an audience. So it is a lot of fun for sure.
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So my next question here, let’s get into a little bit of what Treasury does. So what’s the primarily focus on treasury? What responsibilities do they have within the office of the CFO?
Mike Richards:
Okay, if I go back to basics, and apologies to anyone listening today that knows about treasury, but treasury. When people ask me, Mike, you’re a treasury recruiter, what do you do? And I say, I place treasury folks. What’s treasury? Well usually I say into a CFO, there’ll be three major reports. You’ll have your financial controller looking at today’s money and backwards you’ll have your tax guy moving left and right, making sure they minimize the tax bill. Then you’ll have your treasurer. And the treasurer is about everything from today and the future. So if you want to go and buy a company, if you want to raise capital, want to do all this and looking at the financial risks, then that’s who you go to. Go to Treasurer. Treasurer and the treasurer team. And then they split out their responsibilities. I’ve got some notes here just looking at a few of them.
You’ve got cash management, so making sure you’ve got cash in the bank and access to facilities if need be. Again, with the treasury career corner, someone asked me at EuroFinance conference company, how come you can do this so many times have so many different stories. And I said, well look, each of these different treasurers has a totally different ethos around treasury. And they’re like, well what do you mean? I said, well that company over there and that treasurer, they’re debt laden, they’re cash rich. One is centralized, one is decentralized, one runs it this way, runs different way. And this is also reflects into the finance tasks that they cover. So it’s not one a size fits all in broad brushstroke, but you know tend to think treasurers will do cash management, they’ll do risk management and whether that’s foreign exchange, interest rate risk, just trying to think of the others. Liquidity risk, operational risk, all those things as well. Then you’ve got funding capital structuring, working with your banks. So there’s got relationship management, there’s FP&A funnily enough. And that interfacing with the models and that’s becoming more prevalent I would say. And then there’s your day-to-day policies, compliance, pensions, there’s the whole remit. But the key one I would say is cash management, risk, funding, those are the, and debt capital management and those sort of areas really.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, that all makes sense and totally understand what you’re saying. And I like how you mentioned it could be so different in each company because of the debt structure, the size, the amount of cash. If you’re in a startup you might be dealing with millions of dollars where you’re running Walmart, you could be dealing with a hundred billion dollars over a couple years. Just the magnitude between the two, there’s no comparison. So I agree it can be very different. And the amount of debt some companies can have or the cash. Yeah, so you look at an Apple and look at how much cash they have on the books or Microsoft, the amount of cash they have is bigger than the value of most companies out there by an order of magnitude. And so what their treasury department needs to do and manage is so different. You think 1% on 70 billion versus 1% on a million dollars or 4% or whatever the number is, but just right. It’s just so different.
Mike Richards:
And then you’ve got also startups as you say, are typically smaller, they’re less complex, they’ve not got the cash balances yet to manage. Operations are maybe more concentrated one or a group of countries. Remember talking to a global treasurer at one time she was lovely lady and she said she’d gone to this art exhibition and she’s not big into socializing and outside of work with other treasurers, it wasn’t on social, it was just she didn’t have the time and she was moving into this group of treasury folks and one of them was like, oh, we’ve got so many issues. And they was like, oh wow, okay, this sounds like an interesting chat. And they said, yeah, in these four out of our 12 countries. And she sort of just sashayed back backed out the group. And I said, well why? What’s that? And she said, Mike, I’ve got issues in 95 countries. I was like, oh okay. And it said it’s just the scaling thing as well. Cause the currency risk can be massive or if it’s only in two or three domestic sort of currencies, it’s not going to be a domestic field. It’s not going to be so complex is it?
Paul Barnhurst:
And I totally have seen that in FP&A when you talk about all the different currencies. I managed Latin America and Asia and one of the countries I had was Argentina. And so we had to forecast a portion in U S D a portion in the local currency and had to understand all the contracts and to make sure how we thought about that potential risk around currency. And so I can only imagine you magnify that with treasury to the extent of FP&A. But so I can totally get that. So we talk kind of small companies. Curious, do you typically see companies wanting FP&A to also do treasury or how do you see treasury in kind of startups? Cause I know a lot of times finance is one of the last functions you build out, get your accountant first, might get some tax, you might get a C F O. And then often they start adding somebody that wears multiple hats. They might be doing a little bit of treasury, a little bit of FP&A. So what do you typically see and how do you see that typically working?
Mike Richards:
Well, some of the time that you find that obviously cash is king and it’s a prime interest to the company and also to FP&A professionals, that’s exactly what they do. The will become involved in projecting cash flows, expenditure in and out investments of surplus cash. So you’ve got all the in and out cash coming in and out. Now cash management tends to be managed by treasury, but in a smaller group there isn’t a treasury. And we often get involved when someone says, oh, we need a cash manager because our FP&A person is doing it at the moment they’re handling it and they’re got too much other stuff to do. So can you get a treasury manager treasurer? And we recruit at all levels. That’s one of the things I would say that again, typically in startups you won’t have, it’ll be a more day-to-day corporate operation.
So it’ll be more day-to-day cash and then that comes through in the other areas. So I’m thinking risk management. So it’s usually a specialized function in a mega major, but in a FP&A professionals or smaller firms might be asked to do that. Can you model this business partner we’re going to work with? What’s their currency risk if we want to, what’s their credit risk with that company as well? So you’ve, that’s where FP&A comes to the fore and that interface is very much with treasury, which we’ll talk about more later as well. But then you’ve got other things. So you’ve got the financing. So I’m just, again thinking about some of my notes there was financing that FP&A might be involved in with the debt and equity capital structuring for the company. If you haven’t got a treasury per se, you might say, look, you need to be the point person for bank relationships.
So can you talk to our banks about our credit, our loans? Can you model this banking services and then also investments. So where you’ve got this surplus cash, are we just going to leave it to be dormant and do nothing? This is where you’d have an FP&A in person, we need to make this lazy cash, let’s really use that. Again, when someone brings in their first treasury person, so a treasury manager, you’re passing off right here you go, here’s cash, here’s risk, here’s the bank relationships, his investments. And that’s usually coming from FP&A who’ve gone, I’m so overworked and we’ve grown and grown, it’s across. It’s your back now. Off you go.
Paul Barnhurst:
That makes sense. And that’s kind how I would expect as you’re bring in that person to do budgeting and forecasting. Say, hey, here, handle cash as well, or here take care of the accounting people and they’re working 60, 70 hours a week and it’s like, all right guys, you need to do something if I’m going to stay. It’s like, all right, well why don’t we bring somebody to help take the cash side off or you add someone on the accounting side or whatever. Because in small companies you wear multiple hats. And so that makes sense. And that’s typically what I’ve seen. My interesting experience, this is large company, but with treasury, where I most interacted with them surprisingly was American Express. And I had a role where I managed traveler’s checks of all things. You had to deal with bonds and the cash and work so closely with treasury, what’s the investment rate risk?
And we’d have these monthly meetings around the committee, do we have any risk and different bonds? Like this was, I don’t know, 2016, 2017, and you were worried is Puerto Rico going to default and things that you would usually see in treasury. But because that was our revenue source for the entire business, that was a huge part of the forecasting. So it gave me a real appreciation for that risk management and some of the things treasury does that I’d never really dealt with before. And so that was kind of my first real experience with treasury was supporting that $2 billion fund and the engagements around it and all the bonds that went with it. Next question I have for you. How do you think treasury and FP&A can work better together? What’s you think the key for, especially in large companies for them making sure they’re on the same page?
Mike Richards:
Have a coffee talk together, have that communication. I think treasury in the past became two specialist 20 odd years ago and went into his ivory tower, they got a big pay rise and then they realized, oh, hang on, we don’t want to be in this ivory tower, don’t want to be, don’t put baby in the corner. I want to come out of it. And then they then spent 15 years trying to get back out. And now it’s much more mainstream with treasury. FP&A has always been there, I think is right at the center of things. And I think the more that treasury can then integrate and communicate with FP&A the better. So that’s what I mean by have a coffee, make sure that you are working with those guys and everything else because then and the actual day to day, if you look at the actual work you’re doing, you’ve got this one source of truth if you like.
And I’m again looking back at some the notes I gave out a previous speech and was asked a little bit about this. And it’s quite interesting now that FP&A and treasury have got that much closer together because they both work from the same source, if you like. So by accurate financial data then means that then go slightly different directions. Maybe that treasury is looking at cashflow forecasting to manage liquidity. FP&A is using the forecasting for budgeting, strategic planning in a different way, but they work alongside each other. And that’s one of the key things that the accuracy, the UpToDateness, the sort of assumptions and information that come from that. Because also then that comes from it, this risk management, if we’re going to do this strategic plan to go into, you mentioned there Paul, about Argentina and wow and the volatile Latin American countries when I’ve had some of those guests on the podcast and they’re amazing.
And then they say about hyperinflation, it doubles overnight and then this. And they’re like, wow. And the treasurers are handling it, but then they’ve got to go to their F P&A guy, we were going to take over that company. Okay, well now it’s going to cost us this and then trap cash in different localities, whatever it might be as well. So you’ve got that, the forecasting, risk management decision making that comes into it, cross training. I think that’s one of the other things that I do a lot of speaking about branding and LinkedIn and things like that. And I think the more that there can be an awareness, so you could get a great FP&A person who wants their next move. And if you’ve communicated well with your FP&A team, oh, could that person from FP&A come into treasury please or treasury?
I was again, I said at the Windy City summit recently, there were a couple of people there that the interns and they were facilitating sessions, big shouts out to them, they’re amazing. But a couple of them said, oh, I don’t want to go into treasury now. I’ve seen treasury, it’s interesting, but I want to go into an FP&A, what do you think? And I was like, well yeah, great place to go. They said, but don’t leave treasury behind. Keep on talking to us and stuff. And it was great that they could sort of move between the two and actually see them working hand in hand rather than totally separate. So aligned goals, aligned ways of working.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah, I think it’s great they are working together more. And I love how you said, hey, going back and forth, someone could be in treasury or someone could be in FP&A, I had a guest on Jeff Marks who talked about the finance passport and how you have two people, you have the specialist and then you have kind of the utility athlete. You think of certain sports, utility player and baseball that kind of can play all the different positions type of thing and saying you need both. And so I think there’s a great route to get a lot of experiences to try that. Hey, let’s see what treasury’s like. Let’s see what’s FP&A. And having each of those different experiences makes you more round and gives you an appreciation for the other functions because it’s easy sometimes to not appreciate the work others do. I’ve spent most of my career in fp and a, I started in procurement and I’ve done a little bit in the kind of sales ops realm, but there’s definitely areas where I don’t always understand because I haven’t worked in that area. So I can appreciate that need. And so talking about working better together, what would you say to an FP&A professional, so we talked a little bit about treasury, how they can work better get the coffee, but any advice for an FP&A professional to better work with treasury or to understand or partner with them? What are the things FP and A should be thinking about to make sure they’re working with treasury?
Mike Richards:
Yeah, it’s an interesting one because as a recruiter I’m sort of not standing on the sidelines. I’m very much involved in it and everything else. One of the key things, so say forecasting, cashflow, who’s in charge of that and everything else. And I think it’s about collaborating. And this is from my observations and it is about trying to assess people that who plays nicest, who play, who works well. When I’m interviewing people, I’m saying, look, what’s your relationship with other teams? How do you facilitate that? What do you do? And everything else. Obviously treasury is responsible generally for company liquidity, financial risk, but that’s equally that FP&A is looking after planning, budgeting, strategic analysis. So one has to be with the other. You can’t have them in, they are interdependent all the way through. So they need to both have an understanding of business drivers.
So again, it goes back to have a coffee and everything else. And it said slightly jokey, tongue and cheek, but not meant that. The treasurers that I see and I do a lot more senior treasury recruitment myself. The ones that are really successful, the ones that understand those dynamics and then me as what I’m trying to do is identify those candidates that can do that that are able to spin those plates and the ones that they just get obsessed with one area and to the exclusion of other areas. One of the situations we’ve got at the moment, one of my contacts, they’ve talked about their treasurer who’s really gone down this rabbit hole of AI and they’re really into that. They’re doing it to the exclusion, even if of treasury, let alone FP&Aa. They’re like, oh really? This is going to be the way, this is the going to and process. And it’s actually taking them away from their day job when they should be treasury. And they’re an amazing treasury professional themselves and that she spends a lot of her time reaching out to the other teams. She sits and has regular catch-ups with them. And the more you do that, that’s why she’s going to be a superstar. And she is a superstar now, but she will be a global treasurer at some stage because she’s able to facilitate that as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
The well-rounded versus going down the rabbit hole. That makes a lot of sense to me. And the question I have for you there, you talked about how you interview a lot of treasury people. How often do you see people looking to be global treasurers that have a diverse background? So maybe some FP&A or they came from accounting or what do you typically see when you’re looking for those senior treasury people?
Mike Richards:
The one thing you guarantee is it’s, it’s all different. There are some commonalities they might have studied. We’ll be some study AFP of them will study the CTP qualification. That’s a great rubber stamp to have. And there are the treasury qualifications out there. So they’ll have their foundation qualifications if you like. And then it’s about the different routes and talking on the podcast, it’s very different. A lot of the people in the UK for instance, get into treasury by accident. A lot of treasury folks in Europe tend to get in. They might do a foundation in the banks and then work on the corporate. Oh well actually I like treasury. It’s like in the US it it’s more prevalent I would say in study. A lot of people are getting it more through their degrees now, which is fantastic. There’s a lot more being done by the associations themselves, both regionals and national, like a f P.
So I’m then seeing with those treasury folks, they’re getting this well-rounded experience of finance. The treasury is a part of it. It’s part of that jigsaw puzzle if you like. They work nicely with tax, they work with FP&A, they work with this. So the treasurers that I’m talking to understand all of those cogs and that they all know that if one doesn’t work well and they’re different sizes in different companies, as we said earlier, I know I’m just seeing this big. And I remember one of my ex-colleagues many, many years ago, we did the team building exercise and they drew this diagram with all these cogs and it was about how we all work together. But then it also came down to the business as well and some of our clients about how treasury interface with tax interface with FP&A interface with sales. And it was amazing the sort of all the different cogs whirring around. Great example, great description, Pictor, great pictorial view as it were.
Paul Barnhurst:
And that resonates with something I’ve seen. Your career you used to think was just a ladder and you kind of climbed it and now it’s much more of this type of thing. And you want that broad perspective of finance. Many FP&A professionals have worked in different organizations very similar to treasury. And I loved how you said being able to work together and that experience being well-rounded. So that resonates with me just from talking to people and what I’ve seen in FP&A, I think it’s very similar in treasury and throughout finance. There’s no longer, there is in some companies, but rarely is there that just straight ladder. You just go from promotion to promotion. There’s a lot of times sideways and moving around and getting a diverse set of experiences to make you well-rounded. Particularly in finance, I think that is huge. But stepping back for one minute, just for our audience, so if anyone’s wondering, he mentioned CTP and that’s the certified treasury Professional. Yeah, that’s offered by AFP. So Association of Finance Professionals. And they’re the same organization that offers the finance planning and analysis certification. So they have an FP&A certification as well. That’s actually one I’m studying for right now or I’m taking in a few months. I should be studying is probably the better way to say it.
Mike Richards:
Keep reading those books. Get it. Come on. I want some study out of you. Boy, come on.
Paul Barnhurst:
I’ll think about it as Mike said. So anyone who’s curious about that, that’s a great organization, great certifications. They have ’em for both treasury and Yeah, and FP&A. So that’s what I’ll say there. But kind of next question, I’m curious your perspective on this. I mean obviously I’m sure you see some of the treasurer people you work with go on to be CFOs and obviously that’s one route, FP&A. We’re seeing a lot more FP&A a people start to become CFOs. So do you think just in general to be A C F O have a lot of fp and a audience? Yeah. Do you think they need to work in treasury to reach that CFO level? Your thought
Mike Richards:
Selfishly? Yes, you definitely do. Go to treasuryrecruitment.com. Send me your resume. And joking said, I think it’s, if you don’t work in treasury then it’s fine, you know, don’t need it. But you definitely need an understanding. Either you at a later stage as a CFO, you’re, you’re likely to run your treasury team and they’re going to report into you. So you need to know what they’re doing. No, I’m not saying that you need to know everything about tax to run the tax team, but you need to understand what they’re doing and understand how they operate, what kind of the levers and what their cogs are within the tax team. You need to do the same with treasury. So if you want to be an F B A professional and you want to be that CFO, you might not want to say, right, actually treasury, I don’t want to work there.
But you need to understand financial risk management, capital structure, cash management, banking, relationships, decision-making, all of those into that big well, where’s, who does all that stuff? Well the treasury team, and again, I’ve talked to some of my guests recently and one of the things that I’ve noticed is that they are, the more they collaborate, the more successful they are as treasurers, the more that they carve time out of their, one in particular. A few weeks ago he said he has a regular weekly coffee with someone from another department. And I said, oh, who’s that? And he said, I don’t know. I said, oh, what do you mean? He said, no, we go out. And they’d go out and it might be he’s talking to a junior person, junior FP&A person following week, the head of tax? Or the head of sales or one of the sales guys in it. And he gets to know the company and by doing that, treasury spreads the word sort of thing. So similar with FP&A, I think that’s what they need to do that focus on treasury as part of your toolkit if you like.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like how you said that part of the toolkit. I think the most important thing is to understand it, whether it’s through a special project. I think having a role in treasury is great if you really want a deep understanding, but like you said, it’s not necessary to be a cfo. You see CFOs that have had an accounting background or I saw one the other day that came from marketing of all places and then did a little bit of finance and ended up becoming a C F O. But you need that understanding. I think that’s the key. Not necessarily that you have to have the role, but you have to have the experience. And that can come through a project, it can come through spending the time to understand it. A little bit of education, a little bit of work. And so there’s multiple ways to get there. This next question, I didn’t have it on the list, but I’m going to ask it since you do a lot of recruitment, any advice, we have an FP&A audience and we have a number I’m sure that are looking for jobs. But any advice from what you’re seeing in this job market to help candidates be better prepared? Any advice you’d offer?
Mike Richards:
Be prepared. It comes back to that. It’s like it. And what I mean is plan for that. Not ust be relaxed about it. Oh, the next job’s going to come about. Oh this is it. To actually start to prepare. Not, yes. Oh, I’m really busy. One of the things I close a lot of my conference speeches is actually when I say to people, spend 10 minutes a week on yourself. And they’re like, oh yeah, yeah, but I’m busy. You always going to be busy. But 10 minutes on a Friday morning looking at your resume, looking at your LinkedIn profile, looking at developing yourself, signing up for a course on the, do some self-development, maybe make half an hour a week. And then we were doing some of the cumulative effect of this. Compound effects were incredible. So actually if you just sit there and don’t, nobody else is going to do it for you. If you just sit back in your armchair think, ah, this’ll do this, well that’s all right. Yeah, nobody else is going to take charge of your career except for you. If you sit back, you are going to lose.
Paul Barnhurst:
If you sit back, you’re going to lose. Well said. I love how you started off with be prepared. And the reason I probably laughed as hard as I did is I grew up in a scouting family Boy Scouts. And so I earned my Eagle Scout. I was a scout leader for 10 years. My parents spent 40 years in scouting and the scout motto was, be prepared. So when you said that, that’s immediately what it kind of came flooding back as that was beaten into my head. Yes. You almost literally over a good 30 , 40 years. And so I think it’s so applicable to so many things, but particularly a job interview. Some people think, well I’m a good interviewer and I’ve been guilty of it. I can go in and wing it and it just never ends well or rarely. Yes, you might get the job and on the blue moon, but it’s just not the way to do it.
Mike Richards:
It’s about one of the things I, we’ll talk about speaking in a little while, but one of the things I was asked by one of, again, I’ve spoken for past 10 years at the Chicago Treasurer’s Conference and I was asked about three, four years ago by one of the guys said, oh do you rehearse? What do you think? Do I rehearse? He was like, oh what? No, just I said, no, I rehearse great comedians. They rehearse 50 times. I said, I don’t probably rehearse. I can wing it and throw, I threw away one of the bits of the speech as I was going through. Cause I thought, no, that’s boring. Throw it away. Oh, was that prepared? No, it wasn’t prepared, it was because I’d rehearsed, I was prepared. And the more you can prepare then you can cope with all the tough times.
Paul Barnhurst:
A agree, right? It’s like when they talk about planning . Plans are useless to a certain extent, rarely are the right, but planning is everything. I think it was once said, kind of like preparation, you may not use 90% of what you put together in preparing, but doing all of that helps you be better prepared for when that surprise comes or the curve ball because you’ve put a lot of time in, you’ve studied the company and you’re well prepared. So I totally agree. It’s so critical and in every aspect, but particularly the job search, you need always be doing your part. So now we get to our last few questions and these are couple standard questions we have. So we ask all our guests this and the first one here on the show, we’re big believers that failures are learning experiences. And so we ask every guest to describe a time you experience the failure at work and what you learned from it.
Mike Richards:
I’ve never failed. Never failed. Paul, I dunno what you’re talking about. I’ve always been perfect in this world. It’s like I’ve ridden this crest of this way for all these. No, yeah, it was a good question actually when I got this before I was like, wow, I think there’s a few well go internal, external. I think the first one is an external failure. It’s more about biggest challenge in business. I think in some ways is actually educating our clients in a nice way. I wrote an article a few years ago about it and the title was, it’s Not About You anymore. It’s about them. And getting a lot of treasury folks to think about their audience. It implies just the same for CFOs for FP&A, that when you are recruiting, it’s a war for talent. So in order to do that, you need to attract the right talent.
If you go, I’ve got this great role, come to us. So what if you just copy and paste the job description. So it is, you know, need to actually reach out and grab their attention and show people why. I talked to a really great guy with a very large automotive manufacturer. He was actually in Europe at the time. His career had taken him a number of places and I said, look, you are recruiting disruptions. Yeah, yeah. I said, your job is advert is terrible. He’s like, oh okay. I said, tell me about your career. And he went, well, I said, no, talk me through which country. So you then moved this country then did this. I said, you’ve got this amazing career path. Yeah. I said, where does it say any of this stuff here? And it didn’t. And he was like, oh wow, you’re right.
Yeah, that’s amazing. So I said, look, try and describe that. I said that’s one of the things that’s ways that they could win it. There are a couple of other bits. I think on a recruitment basis, I think a lot of clients, and again this is the sales pitch, it’s more they think they can just rely on things like LinkedIn, just stick an advert on LinkedIn, everyone comes running and stuff. You can get a number of people but you are getting access to the 10%, five, 10% of people who are actively looking for a job. And they’re not necessarily the 90%, the latent talent pool that wanted new role. That’s where we access that as well. So that was one of the things I was trying to think of. I dunno if apologies, it doesn’t relate to the question. The other biggest challenge I think for us on a is a very, very direct one is cashflow.
The lifeblood of the business. You’ve got to pay the bills. The one constant bar, the bills is tax bills, wages, marketing, everything else, all of these lot of time and money. If you run out of it, that’s it. You’re gone. So looking after the purse strings, I think that cashflow is king is so, and I got asked about being an entrepreneur a few years ago and they said, what advice would you give to someone? Number one, think about the cash. All right, okay. Yeah. And number two, refer to lesson number one. I said number three. And I said, well yeah, refer to the other two. And I was like, yeah, it’s not very original. It’s true though, because with more cash you can then do more excitingly, go to more conferences, expand the business without it you’re stuck in your office just hitting the phones. So yeah, that’s one of the things.
Paul Barnhurst:
And so speaking of the cash, because that kind of stuck out to me. We had a guest on, I want to say it was episode 4, 5, 6, somewhere in there very early on, Gemma Davie. And she had given a talk at a webinar about cashflow management and FP&A, right? And so you just mentioned cash. At the end of the day, cash is king as one person said it. You know, have a business until you don’t, you have cash until you run out of it kind of thing. And it, it’s so, it’s so critical. And if you want to experience a failure, run out of cash. Yeah, there’s a real learning experience. Moving on to our next kind of question here. This is one I really like to ask people cause we like to get a little personal on the show, learn a little bit about our guests. So we ask each guest, what is something unique about you they can share with our audience, ideally something they wouldn’t find online. So what’s, what makes Mike tick that nobody knows about?
Mike Richards:
Still playing rugby, but that’s a totally personal thing. We just talked about that before the show badly. I just love, it’s a passion of mine. I think the more work related one came from, and actually I was speaking again a gig a few years ago and we were doing giving the speech and I suddenly stopped and I was just a bit of a pattern interrupt and I said, look, just so you guys know, and I was giving advice to the audience about their personal brand. I said, I don’t like public speaking. And they’re like, right, you’re standing on the main stage doing this. And I said, I don’t enjoy it. And they said well hang on, but you are good at it. You are this. I said, yeah, it’s a practice skill. I didn’t get up this morning and go, oh, I want to stand in front of a hundred people.
I get nerves. I, I’m not built like that. I would say I’m balanced sometimes. I’m not imbalanced. I’m not an introvert, but I’m not a hundred percent extrovert. I know that I looked at myself and the business. If we were going to grow throughout Europe and then actually the US in more recent years, I had to get out of my comfort zone, had to get out of my way. So it was put my hand up and go, yeah, I’ll come to your conference. Yeah, I’ll come to Texas. Yeah, I’ll come to Chicago. Yeah, I’ll come to AFP. When we do it, I much more enjoy it when I’m having guests. I can have Leanne and Joel later this year. That’d be amazing because having conversation with that, that’s my comfort zone. Whereas when it’s just me in front, I can do it and I get some really great ratings, love that. But I really don’t enjoy it per se. It it’s, it’s hard work, but it’s so rewarding and it gives so much more back.
Paul Barnhurst:
I like that. So I think there’s two things on the personal front. Rugby still playing that, still loving that, still getting your body beat up a little bit. I’m guessing you’re not sore in the morning when you get up now playing rugby. Are you?
Mike Richards:
God, yeah. Yeah, I’m literally, my wife’s like, when are you giving up this stupid game? And I’m like, when my body just says no more and no, we’re we, we’re close to the end than the finish should I say. But yeah, still loving it and avid watcher of it as well.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great. Well you got to have those things you enjoy doing. I like running and I’ve started really picking it up the last year or two and my body definitely doesn’t respond how it used to. So I can relate to the getting old, getting old sometimes I’m like, wow, I never had a problem running at all. Now it’s like, oh I’m out for three weeks so I pulled this or I heard that. Or just life, not much we can do about it. Just enjoy the ride as they say. So this is another question we ask everybody. And so I know you do work at recruitment Treasury, so you may not spend a lot of time in this platform, but we’ll see. What’s your favorite thing about Microsoft Excel? It could be a formula, it can be a feature. I’m assuming you use it some or you’ve used it. What do you about it?
Mike Richards:
Actually it was quite a good one. As you got me thinking. It’s more of one of the functions and it’s got better and better I think with, which is the text split TXT split with Excel. We spend a lot of time on there, obviously reaching out to a number of clients to candidates. We get delegate lists, we’re reaching out to people that I’ve got better and better. I am no Excel whiz, but I love it where you’ve got a dynamic array, you can split it into multiple cells. It gives me an opportunity to develop our sales. So yeah, text split if that’s a function.
Paul Barnhurst:
Like, that is text split. So there were three new ones they added with that. So funny, I had a conversation the other day, so there’s text split text before and text after and they all help you split the data in different ways. And I was on a call, we’re getting ready to train someone and they were mentioning, yeah, I got to do left and mid and this and that. And I go, well let me show you this. And I showed it to ’em for two minutes and they were just like, yeah, you mean I can just do that now? And they were so excited. They’re like, I know what I’m doing the rest of the day and I just laugh.
Mike Richards:
And the worst it was, someone said to me, you’ve always been able to do that. I went, no you couldn’t. I said, previously you did. And I had researchers going copy paste, copy paste, copy. And with thousands of records now it’s just much better.
Paul Barnhurst:
Yeah. And there’s always a whiz that could figure out how to do it, but it’s so much easier when it’s a simple formula that you can explain versus writing something like this. Or as you mentioned, doing copy paste, right? There wasn’t an easy way to do it. So I, yeah, I love those new functions. So well, two questions, but last two questions here. First is, if someone was starting a career today in finance and you could give them one piece of advice, what would it be?
Mike Richards:
Goal,. Where do you want to be? Where what? And it doesn’t mean, some of the guests I had on my podcast the other day, one of them particularly said he didn’t plan all the steps in between. He was quite relaxed about the steps in between. That was fine. But he knew where he wanted to get to at least was CFO. Now it took him different, this wavering path sort of thing. And not everything was planned to the right now in a year’s time I need to be there. But he was open to opportunities. And for instance, he was in the US and then they said, we need you to go, or we’d like someone to go and run our Asia Pacific Center in Singapore. He didn’t know where Singapore was. It was like, he was like, I don’t know, but they said, yeah, we need someone to go run the center.
He said, I’ll do it. And they were like, right. And yeah, three weeks later he was in Singapore and they were like, right, okay. And he was like, okay, how do we do this then? And he was open to it and he’s a global CFO now and he made a series of different steps because he was open to that. And then they said, could you move there? Could you move to Europe? Could you do this? And he went right the way around the world. So it’s literally taking him there. So I think, but he set out with a goal in mind with him being goal focused
Paul Barnhurst:
Goal is always a good piece of advice to be goal focused and know where you want to go. Last question, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, what’s the best way to do that?
Mike Richards:
Well hang out a little bit on LinkedIn. You might have seen me all over the place. Yeah, so it’s feel free and please put it in the show notes. Mr. Treasury is the handle on there, Mr. Treasury if you like, but on there or treasury recruitment.com. Again, I dunno if you, Paul will hopefully add that to the show notes. Connect to me if you are looking for the next move into treasury, want some advice about treasury, you want to recruit a treasurer, definitely call. Yeah, and call, let’s go. All my contact info and there’s lots of advice, lots of personal branding, various other bits on there. Yeah, connect.
Paul Barnhurst:
Great, well, we’ll definitely put that in the show notes. We’ll put your LinkedIn and your website and really enjoyed having you on the show today. It was fun to talk a little bit about treasury, so I appreciate it. Thanks for your time, Mike.