“LBM Talks” hosts top professionals from different sectors of the lumber and building material industry to share their expertise, with a heavy emphasis on practical, tactical strategies to help you serve your markets and grow your business.
Join LBM Talks host, Thea Dudley, as she brings her razor-sharp expertise to dissect trends, regulatory changes, and offers real-world advice for credit professionals.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a cycle of burnout, this podcast is for you.
Nicole Hicks was a credit manager in the LBM industry for approximately 20 years. Last November, she made a change and is now a Career Ownership Coach at The Entrepreneur’s Source.
In this episode, Thea and Nicole discuss how stressful the credit manager profession can be, Nicole’s journey out of the industry, how to manage and relieve stress, what a positive work environment looks like, and balancing work and personal life.
If you want to get in touch with Nicole, you can call her at 801-719-0746, email nhicks@esourcecoach.com, or connect on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-hicks-81b83530/.
For any podcast related inquiries, email Thea at thea@creditoverlord.com.
Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below.
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
Thea
Hey there. I’m Thea Dudley, also known as the Credit Overlord. And welcome to LBM Talks Credit. We are the only podcast that talks trade credit in the lumber and building material space. Never miss an episode. Stay tuned, and we’re glad you’re here. You Hey, stress and burnout are on the menu today. Hello and thanks for joining us at LBM talks credit. Thea Dudley here and joining us is the incredible Nicole Hicks. Nicole, thanks for joining us.
Nicole
Yes, thanks for having me. Thea, I appreciate it well.
Thea
For those of you who don’t know Nicole, she has been in LBM credit for, oh gosh, over two decades, and she’s led credit teams, done the whole credit manager role, and her company is, you know, the companies that she’s worked for have gone through, you know, just like the rest of us, lots of Mergers Acquisitions, you start working for A company one day, then it’s another company, and then after a while, after a couple of decades, you’re like, I don’t know that. I want to do this anymore. And so what I love about you, Nicole, is what you’re doing now. This is, I mean, you were great before, but I love what you’ve transitioned into, and career coach, career ownership coach, and that’s a phrase that I hadn’t heard before, and why don’t you tell everyone a little bit more about it?
Nicole
Okay, yeah, definitely. It’s It’s definitely different. It’s not, not necessarily mainstream. So what I do is help people who are in a transitional place in their career, maybe looking at a pivot, and just help them navigate that experience. Because in this day and age, we have so much information available to us that it’s almost overwhelming. So when we’re looking at a change, we don’t really know which information to tap into. So I help with that. I help kind of narrow that down, start with some goal setting, really figure out what direction it is that makes sense for my client and and then provide those resources that that make the most sense for them to tap into. So just kind of take something that’s overwhelming. Sometimes we get to a place where we we just shut down and just continue down the same path, even though it doesn’t make sense, because we don’t have that support and an advocate that are helping guide us and helping helping us understand that we should be confident in our soft skills, not just necessarily rely on those hard skill sets that we have, and we can do a lot of things with that well.
Thea
And that’s a good point. I mean, credit managers have, and not that everybody doesn’t have stress and burnout, but when you’re in a role that is it, it constantly feels like people are coming at you and you’re you’re always someone’s always upset with you, and if you’re somebody who kind of wears their heart on their sleeve or takes it personally. First of all, you’re not going to survive in this role for any length of time. It’s a constant pressure cooker of I’ve got to get, you know, I’ve got sales people coming at me, I’ve got the CFO coming at me. I’ve got customers coming at me. If I’m leading the team, I’ve got them coming at me. And you’re solving, you spend all your days solving problems, and you’re trying to do it in a in a coaching, patient manner, because yelling at people is frowned upon by HR. So when, when you look at all that it’s it’s no wonder that a lot of people look at credit managers, and we have the reputation of God, she’s so crunchy. I just don’t want to go in there again, she’s just burnt out, you know, she’s just, she’s just burnt out. She’s no fun. It’s like, well, of course, I’m no fun. I’ve got all this bad debt I’m looking at, we’re selling, you know, a bunch of Ding Dongs that, you know, I What can you tell a credit manager? How do you, how do you coach them through something like that? Like, if I came to you and said, Nicole, I some of these people. I just can’t I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m I’m unhappy with my work. I don’t want to necessarily leave my company. But how can I recenter? What can I do to make this role better?
Nicole
Yeah, so there’s a lot of things and a lot of things that I didn’t learn and understand until I hit that 10 to 15 year mark. You just kind of go through the grind day after day and do whatever you have to do. Everybody’s different, but you just do whatever you have to do to get through and and so I did that for so long, until i i figured out there’s got to be a better way to handle a job like this. You hear people say, we’re not performing brain surgery. Here, you hear that all the time, and and so it kind of it, it takes the role, it kind of dumbs it down, almost, you know, brings it down to a level. It’s like, less meaningful, even though we know the value that we add to an organization, which is also challenging. Because we know what we do, and when somebody says it’s not that big of a deal, that’s just another layer that we have to try to unpack. So I have learned over the second half of my career that everybody’s different in how they handle the role and what they need to do for themselves, but the bottom line is, you need to advocate for yourself and your mental health. We all hear mental health being very important and a high priority in today’s day and age. So if you don’t have a have leadership or a company that supports that, you need to advocate for that for yourself, hopefully you have a department head that understands the importance of that and forces people. What I did for my team was I forced them to step away if it’s too much and you’ve had too many customer interactions or sales rep interactions that week to the point where the next guy that that you call is going to have, you’re going to have a come apart on them. It’s time for you to go for a walk or, you know, and it’s okay to do that. I think we sometimes there’s a stigma around saying that we’ve had enough, or, you know, we’re just done for the week. Take Friday off. Send your send your person, your credit manager, your guy, your gal, to do something for that Friday afternoon, go golfing, um, whatever it takes. You know. Like I said, everybody has a different way, a different outlet, place to re recharge, but it it just comes down to taking care of yourself and recognizing those warning signs of of meltdown. We, we, I don’t think any of us can just take this job, day in and day out, and pretend like it’s not having an effect. If we’re not externalizing it, we’re internalizing it, and that will have an effect down the road.
Thea
I think that’s a good call out. When you when you look at this role and like you said, people say, Oh, you’re not performing brain surgery. It’s like, okay, I’m not performing brain surgery, but I just told somebody, I’m going to lean your project. The owner of this project now is like, what do you mean? I paid them. So you’ve got all of these people in very it’s very high stress, very personal to them situations. And so now you’re having to combat that. You’re having to have those conversations, and then you have them internally as well. So after a while, conversation after conversation like that does wear on you, and if you don’t step away, but I know a lot of credit managers, and I know you do too, where I can’t possibly step away. I’m the only person in my company that does this. I, you know, I just, I can’t I’m old school. It’s like, okay, you’re going to be dead in there. You’re going to have a heart attack and die behind that desk because you won’t take care of yourself and mentally, you’re not going to be performing well, or worse, you just don’t give a rip up anymore. You’re like, you know, I don’t really care. This place could burn to the ground, and I’m just going to let it because nobody else cares. I’m constantly getting overridden. You know, I’m just not going to continue to do this. So you talked about advocating. What if you are at a company where someone isn’t listening to you advocating, or you don’t have someone who’s going to help advocate or or champion for you, is, is that time to go? You know what? I I need to leave and stop making excuses for being here.
Nicole
I think so. It’s hard. It’s easier said than done, right? It’s really scary. Yeah, it is so and I’m not what you know. I was in that same situation a couple of different times where the thought of transitioning to another company, another industry was so scary and intimidating that I just stayed and put up with, you know, whatever it was at the time just overwhelm and in, you know, I am a pretty healthy person. I thought, I can just, I can just buckle down and, you know, roll up my shirt sleeves and get through this. Well, the reality is, and this, this kind of slapped me in the face, is that you can probably do that for a pretty extended period of time, but it will cause you some problems at some point, health wise, we all hear the statistics around stress being a silent killer. And I thought, man, except for me, right? It won’t affect me. I I’m above that, you know? I’ve got thick skin we have to have. I’ve got this.
Thea
I’m totally cool, right? And Wonder Woman, I can handle it all because you did reference to people. People sometimes have a hard time stepping away and saying, You know what, I need a beat, because I don’t want you to think I look weak. I don’t want you to go, Well, I told you she couldn’t handle the pressure. It’s like, Dude, it’s not that I can’t handle the pressure. I know when I need to take care of myself. I know when I need to. Get back, but it’s, it’s hard when you it’s hard to do, and it takes you a long time to get there. You have to become and some people never get there, but you have to get really seasoned to the point where you fight for it.
Nicole
Absolutely. You have to have confidence that you do bring value to the organization and that this isn’t the last job on Earth. So if, if you’re not feeling valued where you’re at now, there, there, there are credit roles out there, you know, it’s not exactly an industry or career path that everybody’s driving. You know, they’re not promoting that in high school, you know, next level, advanced educational programs. There’s not a college degree for us, so there are positions out there, and you just need confidence. Again, easier said than done, but that you will bring that value somewhere else, where they do recognize you know that what you do, what you do for the the importance of a credit manager, a good credit manager, driving sales, building relationships with your sales team, building relationships with your customer base. It’s so much more involved than just collecting. I think a lot there’s also that stigma you’re just a collector, and a good credit manager is a lot more than that. So yeah, when you get to that place, it is time for you to evaluate your options and and maybe start looking elsewhere.
Thea
So you when you get to that point, you know, and, and we’ve all had those days where it’s like, I am so out of this dump I, you know what? I don’t care you, you know, I’d like to see what happens when I’m not here and this place falls apart. And you have those days, because you’re so just over everything that’s happened, and you’re stressed, and you know, you’re eating your 18th piece of chocolate and thinking, why does these pants not fit, right? So, and you’re going through that. And then you come in, you know, you go home, you go to sleep, it kind of dies down. And then next week, see, it gets off your radar. And then the next week, it happens again, and it becomes a lifestyle pattern that you just start rolling with. You know, how do you how do you coach somebody out of that?
Nicole
So I think that we all become so attached to our job, our career, our that becomes our identity, and I think the first step is understanding that you, as a human being, are more than your job. You bring more value to your family, to your friends. You know that you’re not just a credit manager and it’s and so if you can separate yourself from that and understand that you’re more than that. I think that’s, that is a starting point, because for me, for years, you know, I thought when I introduced myself to a group or to somebody else, it’s always the first question, what do you do? What you know, what do you do for a living? Well, I’m a credit manager. You feel pretty important because you’re in charge of millions and millions of dollars every year. I mean, if you screw up and lose several million of it, it’s, you know, it’s pretty catastrophic. So you do start in your head, head feeling pretty important, and it is, and you should. But also, you know, just being able to step away from that on Friday night and understanding that, you know, you’re dealing with human beings and all of the issues that come along with that you’re a human being, you have your own sets of issues to work with. And so I, you know, I just think sometimes we get so attached our identity just gets so attached to, this is what I do and, you know, and that’s not healthy. And so I that is, that is, for me, I didn’t come to that understanding for a long time, but it helped just take that pressure off, you know, instead of measuring myself, you’re measuring even throughout the weekend, I was measuring, you know, my metrics. Where am I going to be on Monday, you know? Or is there checks coming in over the weekend? And, you know, what is that going to look like in comparison to my peers, my counterparts? Am I going to be better than them? It’s, it’s this, it’s this scarcity loop, almost, that you get consumed with. And it’s almost, I look at credit management as almost like a gambling problem. It’s you get so sucked into that cycle where there’s a lot of bad days, but then there’s those wins, and those sometimes overpower those bad days, and you you’re an unhealthy relationship. You know, it’s like, Oh, this sucks, you know, this is, I’ve had all these bad encounters, but then you get that check that you’ve been waiting for. And so you repeat, you know, recycle, repeat, and you feel like it’s okay again. So just recognizing those patterns, you know, and acknowledging that that you know you might be stuck in, that is important.
Thea
I love that you compared it to gambling, because. I’ve always said Vegas has no allure for me. I do. I gamble for a living, and it’s true. I mean, even something where it’s like I got this $100 check, which is nothing, not a drop in the bucket on the AR. But it’s that I’ve been fighting this guy for like, eight months, and I finally, I could have literally written this off and never looked back again, because it made no difference to the company, but it was just that that I wasn’t going to lose a dime. I wasn’t going to let anything go. I put more pressure on myself than what the company actually did. Because, you know, at one point, you know that particular CFO was like, I can’t believe that you spent that much time on 100 bucks. Do you that? Let me tell you how much that cost us. I’m like, Well, you just took the one moment of joy from my day and just sucked it right out. Because, yes, you are absolutely right, but you’re missing the point it was. I had to come to the realization of here, here are the wins, here are the losses. What makes sense? What’s the fiduciary duty? Where’s the best bang for the buck? And could I true this up if I had to stand in front of somebody and talk about it, where it’s like, it’s $100 are we going to worry about $100 or are we going to go after this $100,000 I know you did this job for a really long time. I love this role, I think credits the best department in the company, but it does come with some baggage that you have to figure out how you’re going to unpack.
Nicole
Absolutely. Yeah, and you know what I noticed too, working with so many other credit managers over the years is that most companies have a set of metrics in your you know goals that you’re supposed to attain, the KPIs, you know that you’re supposed to hit targets, and your paycheck is usually bound to that in some shape. But typically credit managers are data driven analytical types. We set the bar high. You know, if you’re good at what you do, you almost set your own set of metrics outside of what the company’s expectations are, which I think, I mean, that can be disastrous, you know, but we because, especially when you have years of experience, you you know what you’re capable of doing. And so we add extra pressure on ourselves, because while the company may be okay with a portfolio of 65% current and ten million a year in write offs. Internally, we’re not satisfied with those results, and it’s really hard to detach from that once you get you know, especially if you move from company to company, or your company changes its goals. You know, in year three, they want to just loosen credit up a little bit. And you’re used to it being tight and being in these guard rails.
Thea
That’s like your worst nightmare. You start, you start, like, twitching. It’s like, what do you define? Loosen up that right? Because what the sales guy heard was flood gates are open. And what I heard is one more, you know, we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna move the bar a little bit, because you guys don’t have good boundaries, right?
Nicole
Right. And I don’t think a lot of people understand that. You know, that personal commitment we have to this job, it’s we start to treat that as our own checkbook. And so it’s easy to look from an outsider’s perspective, look in to the credit manager role and go, I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up over that we budgeted for this, but it’s it’s hard to not take that So personally, that you you failed, you know. And so the years of that mindset, thinking that you failed, you let somebody down. Maybe you let the customer down because you over shipped and then put them out of business, you know. We we think through those situations all the time. We have customers tell us, you created this problem. You you pre leaned your you leaned the wrong property, and now I’m done because you did it, you know. So just all those thoughts, we may think we can just brush them off and just move on with our day, but those do bury themselves into our subconscious and over time, you know that just that does wear you down, and it does. It does make you, you know, crunchy over time, and irritable and all, you know, almost toxic. So you just start to get hard. You need to be paying attention.
Thea
Yeah. And that’s where I think that, you know, negative connotations for credit people come up. And so to avoid that. And you know, if you want to stay in this role, and and you like the company that you work for overall, like, I’ve got to take some of this pressure off. You know, we talked about advocating, what other things can somebody do? Or it’s like, go get a sport, or, you know, take up, I don’t know, come up with some some activity, or, you know, do puzzles or word teasers, or something that gets you out of. Headset of what you were looking at. And then, you know, Nicole, I look at what you do as Okay, so if I need somebody to go, Hey, coach me through how I can be better at this job. How, how does that look? I mean, what? What kind of things can you, you know, share with us that would make a difference to somebody’s mindset? Yeah.
Nicole
So I actually this is and I wish I had this tool a long time ago. I don’t know if it was even existence then, but there is a course called Positive Intelligence that I’ve been working through. It’s a seven or eight week course, and it’s just on your own. You know, you do little activities and have these little interactions throughout the day, but it’s a mindset check, really. And so they start out, and they help you understand your Saboteurs, is what they call. So what brings you down? You Your mind is, you know, sometimes it’s telling you you suck at your job, you know? And so it’s that’s an unhealthy place to be. And so this, this course, helps you work through that and recognize, you know, where is that negativity? Where does that lay for you? Again, everybody’s different, you know, we’ve all we all have different backgrounds, we have different experiences. And so it’s very customized to you so that you can understand, you know, when you’re having a bad day, somebody just unloaded, you know, all of their problems on you. How is that affecting you? Just start, you know, just take, I mean, two or three minutes. We all can do that. We can take two or three minutes to pause and do something positive, versus scrolling social media, you know, just burying our head and, you know, scanning down through just to try to build ourselves back up, prepare for the next call, the next meeting, whatever. So that tool, I think, in and of itself, is so powerful for all of us, and it forces you we don’t learn by just reading a book and then moving on to the next book without putting these things, these tools, into practice. So this, this, it’s an app, I guess you can, you can put this to use every day, and it teaches you how to do that. So over seven weeks, you have to work at it and know that this is a lifelong practice. This isn’t something that’s one and done. You know, I’ve finished my seven weeks, and I’m good, I’m golden. I can, I can work through any experience. It’s life just isn’t that way. But I think that should be something that credit departments roll out and make mandatory. You know, it’s a healthy thing to do for your team. So that’s that’s one tool that I’ve come across, that I wish I had long ago.
Thea
Any of those things that help you process through I know I’ve been asked and you know, have you done a disc assessments? Have you done this? It’s like, Yeah, I’m at the age where I know my personality, I know my flaws, I know what type of leader I am, but I’ve also been doing that for a long time. I know myself, and I’ve learned how to, how to kind of navigate some of those feelings. You know, get up, get it took a lot of willpower to go, you know, the world’s not going to fall apart if I walk away and I’m gone for half an hour on a walk around the neighborhood, or I ran to, you know, wherever, you know, I’m just going to walk around Ulta and look at just stuff I don’t, you know, for the next greatest shade of nude lipstick that I don’t need. But you know, anything that gets me out of my head space, anything that helps, just sometimes changing where I where I am sometimes changing the location and then coming back with a fresh perspective. I had a boss that, you know, he, he always had a great attitude, but he forced himself. And this man took a lunch. It was a half an hour every day, and he it was never, I’m too busy. He made the time. And for him, that was how he maintained, you know, keeping the stress at bay, or putting things in perspective. And I was really jealous of that. I wanted to emulate that. And I, I tried really hard. I was not always successful. He was so good at it, and that’s, I think, finding things that work for you. But if you’re if you haven’t. You know, those are having somebody suggest some things. And, you know, I love taking those courses. I I think anything like that that can help you grow, is going to help alleviate some of that stress.
Nicole
Absolutely and just talking to talking to somebody, hopefully you have a peer, you know, a mentor that you can bounce things off of, maybe somebody who’s experienced this world longer than you have, you know, and has implemented some things that help them get through their day. You know, my hope is that there’s leadership out there now understanding these things and, you know, and working on improving the. Environment, you know, or the schedule, I mean, just some simple things, like a work schedule change, you know, maybe you rotate half days, you know, and just that extra time helps you and your team treating yourself, you know, go get a massage. Or, you know, do something like that. Reward yourself for if you do have a big win, you know, go reward yourself if, if your team or your leadership isn’t going to do that for you, you know, I think you need to take that upon yourself, do a little self care.
Thea
That’s that’s something that I wish I’d have done more of when I was, when I was younger in my career, that I did more things to kind of guard that mental health, like you said, I know that’s one thing that people tend to overlook. You know, it’s indulgent. It’s like, go get you know, whatever makes you happy, even if it’s just taking a walk, getting away from that, that mindset.
Nicole
Absolutely and you know, based on your experience, don’t you feel like, over just the last 20 years, we’re moving in a better direction, because 20 years ago, this wasn’t even a conversation.
Thea
To say something you were afraid to admit you you needed a beat. You’re like, No, I’m here from dawn to dusk, and I’m awesome, and nothing gets me. And I’m, I’m the iron, yeah, you know, I’m just made of steel. And it’s like, no, I don’t want to be that person anymore, right?
Nicole
Yeah, it’s okay to be human. But 20 years ago, you were a robot. You showed up and you performed, and you didn’t miss a beat and and that was reality, and it was kind of looked you know, every job has stress. Every job has some form of that. So, you know, we could downplay it a little bit like, gosh, you know, being a sales guy isn’t all rainbows and unicorns either. So I should just suck it up and, you know, just get it done.
Thea
How many times did they get told, No? Like, yeah, you know, right? How many ways have you been told, No, just run through that with me, you know, so that I can feel better about life. I think that’s really, you know, kind of a fun…
Nicole
A fun game to have with your salespeople, right?
Thea
But I do think that with all the technology that’s come along and, you know, the the awareness that you don’t have to be everything to everybody, where it’s like, I don’t want anyone to think that I, you know, I I can’t handle it, or that I had a moment it’s like, I think I would have stabbed myself in the eye before I let anybody see me cry 100% yes, yeah. You just, you’re like, I just, that’s not the vision that I want people to take away, because the first thing they say is, well, she can’t handle the pressure. It’s like, you know, sometimes it gets, yeah, sometimes you’re gonna leak. Just, you’re, it’s just going to, there’s, there’s just days that it’s a lot coming at you, but I, I love that there’s more resources out there now, and just what you’re the fact that you transitioned from, hey, this, I did this, it was really cool, but I’m ready to start something different, and then I can, I can turn around and help the industry that I just came out of, because I understand the role that’s I, I think that’s such the the biggest thing is that I know you get where I’m coming from if I call you and say, I just, I really need us to connect and talk and, you know, can we put something together for my team and for me and, you know, kind of roll that out, because I need my team to be healthy and on the ball and making good decisions where you know that wasn’t available before.
Nicole
Absolutely, yeah, I think the turning point for me Thea, when I recognized I had a problem, an addiction, to this career problem, and that’s ultimately why it was time for me To pivot, because I was going to be that person that did this for 60 years, because it was I was in that cycle. But my husband approached me one day and he said, You know, I would like to train horses. I think that would be really fun. He’s retired military, so he’s got some options. And and I looked at him, and I said, my numbers brain, you know, I’m so metrics, KPI numbers driven. It’s sickening. I was at the time, I’m working on it. I said, Well, show me the numbers. How is this going to make sense financially? And he looked at me, and he gave me this look like, you’re sick. What is wrong with you? Numbers? He’s like, it’s just something I want to do. And I thought, yeah, I guess you can do that, that it doesn’t need to be measured.
Thea
But it’s been wired to think for the last couple decades.
Nicole
Exactly. So that’s when I looked at my life and I thought, You know what? It’s time for me to do something that has more intrinsic value I can’t measure. Measure. I really can’t measure my success now, which is terrifying and in some aspects, but I’m not attached to I’m not attached to an Excel spreadsheet anymore and and so I’m learning, you know, that there’s more to life than numbers and hitting these targets. And you know, so if you find yourself feeling like that’s what your life has become. You know, that’s definitely do some, do some self evaluation and introspection to see, you know, if it’s consuming you well.
Thea
And I think that’s a good call out. You’ve got generations that are staying in the workforce a lot longer. And I don’t know whether they’re not retiring because they don’t know what to do with themselves, or, you know, they’re in a spot where they need the they need the work, they need the money, or where they they just, they’re like, I’m just going to stay a little longer because I’m, you know, I really don’t know what I would do if I go home, but you’re miserable, and you’re making everybody else miserable, because you’ve been in this role long enough that maybe your your mindset, you haven’t taken care of it. And you see that in a you’ve been to the same credit conference as I have, and you’ll see a group that you’re like, Oh my God, please don’t let that be my fate. They just look so friggin’ miserable. Nothing makes them happy. In fact, I think they they like get joy out of their misery. I don’t want to be that person. I gotta get the hell out of here, right, right?
Nicole
I had a really good credit manager. I won’t name names, but she at at one of those conferences, she was switching to a different industry. So she had spent, you know, 20 something years in the same industry, and just that simple industry change for her was refreshing and rejuvenating. She was still in the same career field, but she needed to learn a different industry. And she said to me, because I thought it was crazy, she you know, once you spend that much time working with the same group of contractors, you can do it in your sleep. You know it’s easy. You know, you just show up and you know it’s, it’s not that big of a deal. But so for her to make that change back then, I thought, you’re nuts. I wouldn’t want to learn a new industry. I would. I love feeling comfortable. But her words were, I have become less effective at my role because I have been so attached to these same contractors, the same sales guys, for 20 years, and I realized that I owe the company the favor of stepping down. I am not helping at this stage. I am I am actually hurting the accounts receivable, because she, you know, you get, you start building relationships, maybe letting this slip a little bit, you know, you just, you do become less effective. Maybe you’re just not on top of your game, because you’re just so used to the day in the day. Yeah, auto piloting, absolutely. So if you have, if you force your brain to start thinking harder because you maybe don’t understand you know mechanics means you haven’t used that in your practice before. Now you do. You know that may be beneficial. So anyway, I’ll never forget that just a different outlook, something that you know, just a different perspective that I hadn’t looked at before.
Thea
When you’re in any type of role for any length of time, even if you love it, you love the company, you love what you’re doing, you need to keep finding ways to challenge yourself and to keep it fresh Absolutely. Yeah, you become that crunchy person.
Nicole
Yeah, yeah. I mean maybe continuing education, you know, or something like that, going to to a new seminar, learning the psychology of credit, you know, just stepping into a different, Uncharted piece of territory.
Thea
But, yeah, I take a FBI course. I mean, take something that’s related, but, you know, maybe really out of the scope, do something unique, absolutely. So I have loved getting to spend time with you and getting to share what you’re doing and how to get credit people to take better care of themselves, to just take a step back and look at Hey, we if you’re going to be healthy and do the best for your company, you need to take those breaks. You need to find those triggers, those outlets. So Nicole, I know people are going to want to get a hold of you. We’re going to go ahead and link your email into this episode so people can find you. I love what you’re doing. I love that you are there for the industry. You’re an amazing talent. I know that having you as a resource, knowing that you understand the job, because that’s always been a huge pet peeve of mine was, you know, some guy from, let’s say I don’t know one of the commercial credit reporting services, and they’re gonna come in and tell me, let me, let me tell you how to do your job, or let me tell you why this is important to your job. And I’m like, Have you ever done my job? Well, no, Skippy, sit down. You know, you have no idea what your. Coming from. If I come to you and I’m like, this is how I’m feeling, you get it, and that puts you in a great position to help me learn how to channel that improve and get better. And that’s really what this, this is all about. And I’m so grateful that you were able to carve out some time for us.
Nicole
Absolutely so happy to do it. Yeah.
