“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. In this episode, Thea discusses what happens when veteran credit managers retire and companies don’t know what to do.
Join Thea and Jon Flora, CEO of the National Association of Credit Managers (NACM) Business Credit Services (BSC), as they discuss topics like recruiting, networking, and training—all necessary protocol to keeping your back office staffed.
Please send any inquiries to thea@creditoverlord.com.
Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below for Episode 12: Succession Planning for Your Credit Department with Jon Flora.
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
Thea
Hey everybody. This is Thea Dudley, also known as the Credit Overlord, and welcome to another edition of LBM Talks Credit. We are the only podcast that’s talking about trade credit and the LBM and construction space. I want to talk today about fear, specifically job fear. And I have a just an amazing colleague, friend, resource, John flora, who is CEO of NACM BCS, which is business credit services, and he’s out there in Seattle. So John, welcome Greetings. How are you?
John
Pretty good, you know, I I’ve had a couple of conversations with some credit people across the country, and fear seems to be the word of the day, which I thought after the election, maybe everybody would calm down. But apparently it’s too soon to hope. Yeah, I think that’s true.
Thea
So we’re talking about the like job concerns. And just like every other profession, credit managers are in short supply, you’re either looking for somebody, somebody’s leaving. You people are retiring. People that are in the retirement age don’t want to leave, but their companies are consolidating or being acquired. So there’s this kind of this fear. You don’t want to let people go, but you know that some people are going to be retiring, but you can’t get new people in, and it kind of just creates this whole snowball effect. And even companies that you would think would be easy to attract people to are coming back saying we’re asking people to come out of retirement to do credit.
John
I would agree, and it’s interesting that, I, how do I want to put this? I think people are fearful, and I think it’s it affects a lot of a lot more than just their professional life. There’s just a lot going on in the world. It’s a very complicated place these days. And I can’t say I like it, but it is what it is. And you sometimes have to tiptoe around conversations, because it’s amazing how quickly you can rattle somebody and get them all revved up in your general direction. But when it comes to the education piece, you know I come from, I don’t know when I think, 35 years ago, when I first got out of college, I had the benefit of working for a one person particular who was real focused on making sure that I, as a 20 something, got good got good training, mentoring. And to be honest, if he were to call me today, and I think he’s 85 or something like that. But if he called me to answer, would you come work for me? I’d probably drop what I’m doing and go. He was a hard, hard guy to work for, but I learned so much, and he he was committed to me and a number of other younger people to making sure we could be the best we could be. And that gets to be hard to find today. Oh, I think that’s, that’s really hard to find, John. I mean, when you look at it, that’s, first of all, people don’t stay in jobs like they used to. You know, you don’t, you don’t go in there and you’re there for 100 years. And it, you know, we were talking, before we jumped on the podcast, about somebody who was with a company for four years, and they hated to see that person go, but you’re like, hey, at least you got four good years out of them. But I think the other thing is, why are we not, not only are we not providing, I think enough support for new credit people coming in, because I hear that a lot as I need some beginner classes. I need some basics, and those of us that are in it, and I know NAC, I know you put on some great, great programs, but you’re even having a hard time getting people to just show up, sign up and take the classes, and you’re like, look, they’re here. But I think a lot of it goes back to if you’re running so thin, and a lot of companies are running thin, then you don’t have time to work with the new people that you’re bringing on and coach them and train them and mentor them. It’s more like, Hey, I’m going to drop you into the deep end of the ocean with an acre on you. And if you swim to shore, hey, you get to stay and that’s really true, if you look back at let’s see, I’ve been here almost 13 years, and when I arrived, we still had the veteran people at our member companies who would who would support the education of their younger staff.
They’d pay to send them to conferences, they’d pay to have them take classes. And that was a real active part of what NACM was, and to a certain extent, remains to be, it was part of, really what made us work. And then COVID came along, and I think also just the demographics of life with people aging out. But there was just a lot of change in four years, and you don’t have the same kind of people at the top saying we need to train our folks. And that sort of exacerbates a problem that I don’t I don’t know how we’re going to change it. We have to, but I don’t know how we do it. Credit is not taught at any college or university. You don’t go to school to be a credit manager. You can go get your accounting instruction, you can get finance instruction, marketing, all that, but outside of maybe a chapter in a business law class, you’re not going to get any kind of training at the college level in credit and we have, you know, we’re trying, we’ve been trying hard for the last three or four years to make a scholarship available to current college students and get them an internship in a credit department, a paid internship, and put those together to get that background. Maybe it gets them their first job out of school. That is a huge I’m finding a huge pipe dream we’ve been working on for it is and it’s one that come right after the first of the year. I’m going to be focusing most of my time on how do we make this work? Because the colleges and universities that I’ve been in touch with largely on the west coast, but not just here in in my humble state of Washington. I’ve talked to a lot of schools, four year, two, year, you name it. And enrollments are tight. Their funding is tight. They immediately think that this guy from a credit organization is going to want to change the curriculum, which I don’t want to do. I want to get a kid placed in an internship, pay them for that, and give them an experience, and also give them a little scholarship to help pay their bill. That could be huge.
And I speak from experience, having had, I think, four internships when I was in college, and I got a job out of one of them, and I could have had a job from two of them, and that still works today, but trying to, they’ve got their own challenges. I can’t. I don’t know of a school right now that doesn’t have enrollment issues, which means they have budget issues. And so what we’re experiencing they also experience, but somehow we got to get them early and get them to learn about what we do. Doesn’t mean they’re going to be a credit person forever, but on the road to, no, I’ve been a credit person forever, and I, you know, I, but I think you have to find what you’re passionate about. And that’s, that’s the other side of it. Is everybody wants experience. You can’t get experience without a job. And yet, this is one of those jobs that it sounds like, oh, you know, see, all you guys do is call, you know, it’s just like robocalling or dialing for dollars. It’s absolutely not. Credit management is so much different than that. Not only are you, you know your portfolio is basically you’re running like a mini company. You’re creating relationships. You have to know different lien laws. You have to be aware of taxing issues. There are all these pieces and components that go to it, and a lot of times you it is a lot of learning on the job, but it goes back to if you’re not adequately staffed, how do you expect people? I can’t just peel off three hours a day if I’m running a department to train and work with the people the way that I need to and yet I can’t get funding for more people, or I can’t send them somewhere. So it kind of becomes this catch 22 and it’s like a chicken and egg. It’s like, okay, so what do you do now? It’s, we’re pulling people out of retirement, but are they just putting band aids on stuff? It’s like, I just need you for a couple of years, and then if you retire again, it’s like you. So what in those two or three years did you do to solve the problem? Because I don’t want to die. I’m not a die at my desk kind of woman. I’m not going to die here. You know, that’s just that might be somebody’s dream. It’s not mine. So how are we bringing those, those folks on? And it’s amazing. I don’t think people really think of credit management as an actual career. It’s like, almost, yeah, it showed up. It’s like, no, it’s, it’s a you can do quite well and make a great career there. I know a number of people who are have done very well in this, in this world at the same time, they’ve, they’ve all those people who are now vice presidents of credit or whatever the title may be in a large company.
John
They also have aspirations to maybe be a CFO someday, or whatever. They still have that that upward mobility thing in mind. But a lot of this comes back to what the guy at the top, guy or gal at the top saying we are going to be committed to training, and the idea that times are tough and we may not have the money for that, I think that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t invest in the future of your people, then you’re going to have a problem. Well, and I we, I can think of one of our members right now who has a one of our truly veteran credit managers. She’s been ready to go for a year at least, maybe longer, and they keep asking her to stay, and they sweeten the pot, and I think she may be hanging it up at the end of this month, but the last time I talked to her, there was some possibility it was going to extend. So they keep doing that, and she’s very good at what she does, one of the best, I think I could say. But they’re also not looking at what happens after her, and what’s the long term effect of doing that. And as you noted, part time, you’re either you’re either you’re going to walk out, get thrown out, or go out feet first, and most of us would like to walk out. And so in her case, she has stuff she wants to do however many years she has left, and working is not necessarily what it used to be. She likes to check but even that’s wearing thin, and so the company really needs to take a hard look at how they’re either locating the next person or training an in house person to be the next head honcho. And I see that happen far too often, and that strikes me as the question that comes to my mind is, does that is the value of the credit manager or credit department kind of low on the totem pole, until suddenly, somebody looks at the AR and goes, oh my god, we have a problem.
Thea
Oh yeah, your cash flow goes to hell. Yeah, your cash flow goes to hell. And then it’s done. But you know, I it comes back to, you know, how are you? Everybody talks about succession planning. What about succession planning in your credit department? I mean, here’s this person who she’s been ready to go for a year, and I’ve known credit managers that they talked into will work part time. That never works if you’re trying to get the new person installed or grow people up, and you’ve still got the the I’m going to call them the old credit manager or the old leader, and they’re working part time. It’s the natural default that you’re going to go back to that person, and then it creates more of a bottleneck than what you would have liked. It creates its own set of problems. But I really think that succession planning is what does that look like. And I mean, I have one credit manager friend who she decided, here’s what I want to work to, and she told her company four years ago, I’m retiring at the end of 2026 let’s start bringing people on now. Let me start working training with them. Let me start handing stuff over. I don’t want to go to any conferences. I’ve seen enough in my lifetime. These people need this is where I’m going to put my money.
John
And she had such a plan that her company went, okay, you know, they just, they’re like, all right? And she’s like, Yeah, this is a hard stop. Here’s how old I’m going to be. I’m out. And I, I wonder if that’s part of the problem is that we do have a lot of people that they’re not sure they want to retire. They look at it and it’s, it’s something that, yeah, I’m going to retire. I’m going to retire, but they’ve said it so much that nobody takes them seriously. So you don’t, you don’t see people coming on board. You don’t see them bringing anybody and training up, because this person really isn’t serious. They haven’t, they haven’t put their line in the sand. Well, I can speak from my own experience. It’s no great secret that I’m on the glide path to retirement. And this began in January of 23 when I told my board that the time was coming, and my date, while it was never fixed, it’s, you know, it’s sort of in my plan. And I got a lot of, you know, please don’t go. We love you. Please don’t go. And I went, and I said, I’m going to go, but you’ve got plenty of time here that I’m not giving you a drop dead date. But let’s start working at it. So we have a plan. Nine months later, nothing had happened. So at that, at that board meeting, I said I wasn’t kidding. I’m going to go. And so here’s your plan. I’ve written it for you. This is how you do it. And suddenly I was training them how to how to find my successor. And I that’s what I realized that my board, which is credit managers, they don’t do this kind of stuff, and I’ve had to, I had to teach them how to do a contract to hire me. And so 12 years ago, and we’ve updated that, it’s been a learning experience for all of them, and it’s been fun to teach them. But when it came to this there, you know, it’s like, I don’t want to pick my successor. That’s not right. I don’t want to be the ghost of Christmas past and hang around forever either. And so let’s, let’s get this done. Here’s the plan. We hired a search firm, got it done, and have succeeded in finding my successor. The surprise for me was that the board came back to me with a with a. With an option to remain engaged. It wasn’t really an option. They weren’t they were grabbing onto the sweater and going, you’re not going. And so I’m still engaged with a couple of projects that they really want me to finish up. And so for the next year and a half or so, I’m still here, but it’s a unique situation. I’ve made it very clear to my successor that if I am the Ghost of Christmas Past and I’m in the way, just tell me and we’ll we’ll fix it. But it took a plan, and for me, it was easy to write that plan. Now the part of the plan that is harder, and this may be another podcast on another day, maybe an education class we end up teaching. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. But now the question is, what’s John’s plan? And that’s much harder to do. So if you were to say to me, what are you going to do? Flora, I don’t know, but I do know I’m not sitting on the front porch, on the lovely, comfortable chairs we have, because I don’t think my family will tolerate that, nor do I want to do that. But I think that does bring up a couple of things. John, not only are we, we’re looking for credit people. We we’re having, you know, we’re using, we’re all using the poach method. You’re just, who do you know, and can I steal them from somebody else? So we’ve got that going. There’s the group that is set to retire, but they they’re squishy retirement, or they get they retire and they get drug back out. But that brings up a whole other thing. Why a lot of people aren’t retiring is they have no idea what that looks like after retirement, and that that’s a whole other, that that whole fear thing of, Am I going to be relevant? What am I going to do?
John
Can I afford to retire? Well, and there, okay, there’s the financial piece of it as well. But I think the one interesting thing I’ll add here, which gets us back to the whole education piece we recently had in October. We did a regional conference here in in the Seattle, Tacoma area, and one of the highest rated speakers was a head hunter, executive search person, and I was surprised how many people that attended his presentation actually already knew the guy, and they’d been involved with using them, or they’d, you know their company had used them. He’d help place them, and I had no idea. He didn’t, he didn’t share what his involvement with, with credit people, was prior to the conference. I knew him. He was a college friend, actually, and, and he went over very, very well. But his whole deal was about, how do you survive a merger acquisition or other change in your professional life and involved networking and using people like him, of course, and building all that. But I think that’s a, again, hiring a search person is something that’s a little alien to our world, probably because we deal with smaller companies, and they don’t want to spend that kind of money or can’t. But it’s a it’s a good investment. And I was really, it was really, really interesting to see how many people stayed afterwards to talk with him and sort of reeducate him on their particular situations. So that’s part of the mix as well. You know, building your network and knowing who your resources are and how to how to deal with them going forward. And so, you know, that fits into it as well, well. And that’s a whole other.
Thea
That’s a whole other rabbit hole we could go down where sometimes we don’t do ourselves the best service at trying to have that network credit people tend to, tend to get in their lane, and they’re doing their thing, and they might connect with some other credit people, and, you know, have that communication where we’re checking on customers, or we’re collecting money or doing something like that, but they don’t think about the big picture of growing that network where if something happens, where they that you get new ownership or private equity, or there’s a merger, or They just want to change, they have limited their options so much, instead of building that that bench. The other thing that I think is intriguing is that, as we see folks retire, instead of just hey, you have to totally sunset yourself. How about setting up a program where, hey, you might not want to credit manage anymore. You might be ready to retire, but are you willing to give 10 hours a week that we pay you to come in and coach and mentor the new people we’re bringing on so they have this resource, and you’re kind of like on tap or on retainer, or whoever you want to put it, and this way you’re getting the benefit of that, and you’re the person who’s currently leading the team. Doesn’t have to spend the time. Maybe they don’t have or maybe they don’t have somebody who’s at the point where they could be a leader. They’ve got somebody that can coach and mentor them. So there’s a lot of ways we could do it. We’re just not thinking outside of the box, because, it’s typically not something that it’s just like succession planning credit. People have never really had to deal with that, no, and that’s, you know, again, using myself as an example.
John
You know, I was hired by a board, and that board is, you know, they’re representative of our membership, but they’ve never had to hire a CEO before. They’ve never had to compensate the CEO before. And my job is decidedly different than theirs or any number. I mean, I don’t know anything about concrete, you know. And the guy who’s the credit manager at the concrete company, our jobs are different. He doesn’t know anything about doing Association work. And some of the stuff we have to do or get to do, and so there was an education opportunity there. And my view on that was, okay, guys, you don’t know what you’re doing, and they’d all laugh and say, Yeah, you’re right. And I said, so when you go through this process after you’ve learned all the things we’re going to talk about, you’re going to be better equipped to work in your own company, but if you’re on the board of a nonprofit or your church or whatever, you’re also going to be better equipped to help them. And so you’re going to be a bet you’re going to be a better commodity out there by having a good learning experience. And all of this, I think, has to be couched in that term. You start young, you learn a little bit, you learn a little bit more, you get more responsibility. And that’s kind of lifelong learning. And I don’t know, being a whole person, if you will. He was a little tired. That’s going to talk about but, but it is. It’s about building you and your skill set, and you have to have some ambition in there, though, just so does it go back to, instead of saying, Hey, we can’t find any credit people, it’s I need to just find a talented amateur and invest in some training.
Thea
If you can find that person. Yeah, and, but I’ve, I’ve had the other side of the spectrum where somebody started, and I had a credit manager friend call and say, well, that dude made it 17 days, and he didn’t even the guy didn’t even quit. To my face. He waited till he got back from training and then sent me an email and said, Hey, I left all your equipment at the branch. I can’t this. This is not the job I thought it was going to be. And, you know, she said I hired someone who was from, you know, in their 30s, thinking, you know, maybe a younger generation, they’re bringing some different things to the table. And they got here and went, Oh, hell no. And she’s like, Yeah, you know, training sucks. Training is hard. Nobody you know learning new computer systems. You’re learning new customers. You’re learning a company. So you’re learning all of these different things. It does take a little bit of time to acclimate and get comfortable in this seat, but 17 days you barely know where the bathroom is. You didn’t even give it a shot. So if you had any advice for somebody looking for a credit person.
You know, if I come to you and I’m like, John, I need to find, you know, two credit managers. And it does, and I tell you, they need to have experience, and you’re like, well, good luck. How do you feel about taking, you know, an amateur that is intelligent, and there’s some, at least there, they are a passionate person. As far as they’ll get excited about something, you get them engaged, and they’re going to run with it. What advice would you give for somebody that’s looking for credit people? I think I would start by saying, Go get involved in your industry trade group. And anybody that’s involved with somebody like us knows what trade groups are all about. But essentially, whether it’s wiring or HVAC or wiring, HVAC, plumbing, hospitality, food, whatever the industry is, we have these. We have industry groups, and those are like minded individuals from your profession. And so go there and talk to them, see who they know again. Let’s use your network and their network and see what you can do with that. Oh, so I have no problem poaching. It’s like, Look, if you can’t make them happy, I will steal them if I can. Well, and I’m not necessarily saying poaching. I’m just, I mean, that was me. I don’t want to I don’t want to I don’t want to know, John, I’m not going to tag you with poaching. That was me. I problem poaching. It’s like, Look, if you’re not happy, where you might be happy, but you could be happier here, if I can figure out what gets you excited is it you want to do? You want to grow more. You want to learn you know more about different things. There’s a certain maybe you really into the mechanics lien part of it, or the legal part of it, or you really like doing the asset searching. What is it that that really floats your boat about this job? Is there one aspect over another? And if that’s what you’re into, I want to help get you there. Yeah.
John
Yeah, absolutely. And all I’m saying, I’m on the board of a nonprofit in my community, and we’re looking for some people right now, not credit people, they happen to be development officers or a development officer to go raise money. Those are very hard to find, very much like credit people are and so it’s really a question of, okay, who do we know that we could talk to? Where are we going to look and how are we going to go about it? Set the plan up, but it would be like going to your industry group. It would be like calling us, depending on how I’m not sure you’re going to call a search firm, necessarily for a beginning level, but you might, if you’re you know, if you have some unique characteristic, but I think it’s really it’s a matter of work in your network. And I think what I’ve seen in the last few years, and COVID certainly exacerbated it, but it was happening before then. Are the people in our profession, and it’s not unique to us, by any means, but I think we have, we read Facebook and we read LinkedIn, and we do all that stuff. Okay, use those tools. That’s fine, but develop the relationships. And back in the day, you know, I was a member of Seattle rotary that had 750 members, and we met every week and all that, you got to know a heck of a lot of people that way. And those organizations like Rotary, like Kiwanis, whatever, they’ve had the same membership issues that we’ve all had, and it’s declining. And we don’t, we don’t work the way we used to, and I think we’ve lost something with that. So to the extent you can go out and meet people, however, wherever you’re going to meet them, and you knowing full well, Someday you may call that, they may call you, but that’s that’s the business. I networks are huge, and I speak from as someone who probably used to know most of the movers and shakers in in the greater Seattle area, because they went to rotary and I was a kid. They were world war two people, and they were nice, and I was nice to them. And so I had a heck of a Rolodex for 20 years. I don’t have that anymore, and part of it is that I stopped doing that stuff, and for various reasons, and I think all legitimate. You know, life changes. You do other things. But I now I’m looking at it going, okay, my world’s going to change. I’m not going to be inactive. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to, I’m not going to be inactive. And there are people that are calling now saying, you know, do you want to do this and such? And I’m kind of pushing back a little bit, but I want to. I want a better network, and it’s more fun to get to know people and hang out with them, and rather than sit here and talk to myself.
Thea
Now, you and I spent a lot of time talking to each other. Well, you know, you brought up LinkedIn, and you know, what was funny is that’s really kind of replaced a lot of that networking. What, in one way, it’s a really cool tool. And the other hand, I’ve had people reach out and they’re like, Hey, I noticed that you’re connected to so and so in your network. Can you introduce me? And I’m like, I don’t really know that person. I’ve never met them. I Okay. I didn’t even know they were in my network, because after a while, you know you’re it’s like Facebook. If you aren’t like Facebook, at least you’re hopefully, you know you’ve got your private it’s you’ve you kind of are a little picky about who you let in. But on LinkedIn, it’s a it’s a colleague type network. It is a work network, and I might not know that person. Would I be afraid to call them? Well, I, you know, it depends. What am I calling them for? Is, you know, hey, I’d like to introduce you to somebody because they I don’t it makes it a slight bit awkward, because that, that personal relationship isn’t there, and that that really sucks. I hate that. Well, I can tell you, this morning, just this morning, I had five different emails from people wanting to meet with me to talk about the different lists of people they could sell me and
John
and I mean, I’m going, where are you getting well, they’re getting me getting it from LinkedIn. And so I, you know, as you know, I live on an island, I have to commute my ferry, and that gives me 15 minutes each way, and probably about once a month, I go through the LinkedIn list to see who I can dump and who they are, if I don’t know them, and I don’t even know How they got on the list, but I think I right now I have something like 650 personal friends. No, I don’t. I maybe have five. But the reality is, people get on this list, however, and periodically, it needs to be filtered. And, you know.
So don’t be offended if you got dumped. It’s just, I don’t, you know, I’ll try not to. I’m not going to get my Kleenexes. Yeah, right. But the LinkedIn thing for that connection, it’s a little awkward, but you’ll it’s like a whole other way you’ve had to learn how to connect and grow that relationship and grow your network, where before you went to a conference, and that’s how you did it, and but at least you could say you met someone face to face. Here. It’s like, jump on a zoom with me, so I can see what you look like and make sure that you’re actually a person.
John
Check the fox. I’m not a robot. That’s like, look, I don’t know what, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but if we take that back to where we started with this whole conversation, the world is a different place today. It’s changing constantly, not necessarily for the better, and I’m not sure all this electronic Hoola is the best thing to in the world. Some of it is very convenient, like this, but next I’m going to hear you, like, out on your lawn, going, get off of my lawn, like, you know, shaking your fist. It’s like, Yeah, I know you’re not that old, so, but I think the idea of getting to, well, this nonprofit, I’m on the board of, I’ve met a whole lot of new people, yeah, and I live on an island of 10,000 people. I mean, you’d think you’d know everybody, but you don’t. And there’s a lot of new people, whatever. And I’ve gotten to know a lot of new people in the last year, and they’re great folks. I mean, they’re different backgrounds and all that kind of thing, very passionate about what we do, and curious and ask good questions that we have a lot, that’s they’re fun meetings to participate in. Certainly, we have to solve the financial things and all the things that go with boards, but, but it’s a whole new network, and that’s the kind of thing. I think, from the day I walked in the door here, I always felt like a lot of the people we serve just have a hard time advocating for themselves and try and trying to push the put, you know, push things a little bit and grow. And so you can’t, if you’re that younger or newer person, I’m not sure you can always depend on the boss to lead you by the ring in your nose along the way, you have to show some gumption on your end, ask good questions and be involved and be engaged, and do it in a way that is ideally face to face, if that’s possible.
And again, build, build your net, your network of colleagues and friends, because you’re going to need them someday, and they’re going to need you and so, but that’s sort of an old school method. And we tend, we tend to, I mean, even getting people to pick up the telephone that’s, that weighs 800 pounds. And, you know, it’s, it’s, I find it, I find it to be a little frustrating. It’s like, pick up. I was excited to have a phone conversation that wasn’t a zoom. It’s like, every, every meeting is not a zoom. Every you know, some things are just a phone call. But I started stalking my friends and credit manager friends kids. It’s like, Hey, what’s your kid doing? Like, why? Like, dang it, job. I actually like their personality. I can teach them to do credit if they’re looking for a career or even just, just give me five years. That’s all I’m asking for, you know, just try to create. Like, it just, you know, Hey, I am not above poaching, stealing, pilfering. Like, how do I get you engaged? Because I really do think once you get people exposed to what this job really is, it is a really cool job. And I know when I say that to people, they kind of freak out, and they’re like, you’re not right. There’s something definitely wrong with you. It’s like, well, maybe there is. But I think you can say that about and I would, I don’t want to be a CFO. I’ve never wanted to be a CFO, and yet that’s some people’s ambition where they I know someone started in credit, they became the company CFO. That’s cool, if that’s your thing.
Thea
I think the other thing is, like, when I started in credit, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just needed to pay my bills. So it was a job. Just, I just need a job. And then I started doing the job. I’m like, well, this doesn’t suck every day. And then you get a little bit more success under you. You get a little bit more knowledge, and you keep growing it, and you decide what you want to do. And I think just getting somebody to see what the job is. And that’s the biggest part. That’s where I have no problem going, Hey, what is your kid doing? Give them to me. Let me drag them over here. I think when we’re looking at Hey, we can’t find credit people. We’re not as employers. We’re not being creative enough. We’re not. Working in, you know, some we’re not looking in, maybe some on obvious places, there are hirable people all around you. Now, granted, some people don’t want to work. That’s a whole other. That’s, that’s just a whole other rabbit hole I can’t even face right now. But looking at different if you have good customer service skills. I don’t care if you’re the bartender. You maybe, okay, of course, I pick a bartender.
Thea
But that’s something that you can’t you can’t teach people how to have a personality. And this job takes a lot of personality. You don’t need an accounting degree for this. I all I need to do is to be able to add and subtract. And it’s like, look, here, you owe me money. Give it to me. I can. That’s easy math. I can’t teach you how to have a personality. I can teach you everything else about this job.
John
And even if you don’t have much of a personality, there’s work for you. We’ve had a couple. We can put you somewhere. Yeah, but, but, yeah. Now there’s a there’s a place, and, you know, we have, I’m thinking about one of our collectors, who is, she’s, she’s, she’s slightly a little crazy, but she’s really fun, and she won’t take no for an answer. So picking up the phone is very easy for her, and she just takes no prisoners. Now, did she come that way? Part of that’s her personality. Part of it was her training with us. But she just thrives on going after somebody for money that’s owed to one of our members. And she won’t take no for an answer, and just she’ll keep going after him and after him and after him and after him and fine. Well, yeah, because that’s our money. You didn’t just lie to some nameless, faceless person. You lied to me, and we’re going to square this off. Yeah, I don’t know that we solved any problems here today. I think we’ve said, put some light on that. It’s the answer that you’re looking for is not always obvious. It’s not a clear cut path. I would love to be able to say, look, you know, John and I solved all the world’s problems, and now you know where to go find good credit people. And if you’re looking at retiring, here’s, here’s what you do for your next you know your encore Act, or whatever it is you’re doing. But I hope that we gave people some food for thought and maybe reframed the conversation for them. Well, I agree, and I hope I’m going to be curious to see what feedback you might get. There may be some people out there in podcast land that contact you with ideas of their own about how they found people suggestions. Oh, I would love that. There may be some interesting feedback. And I if you get that, I hope you’ll share it with me. I’m just curious because I share with you. John, yeah, well, we have you too long to not share.
Thea
We’ve again, this is a different time than we grew up in, and we have to adjust, and we’re constantly trying to come up with new things, throw ideas up against the wall, see what sticks. If it doesn’t stick, doesn’t mean it’s a failure. It does. It just means we didn’t it wasn’t as successful. Might not be, right? Yeah. So anyway, well, I think we’re going to wrap up this episode. And again, I don’t know that we solved everybody’s problems. Hopefully that that got you a little bit thinking of how to solve this, or how to at least definitely reframe that conversation to where maybe solutions that weren’t obvious before pop up or just some obscure things. But John Flora NACM, Business Credit Services out of Seattle, always, always a pleasure to have you and to pick your brain on stuff, and you’re just, I always have a lot of fun with you. Thank you very much. It’s been fun doing this. Hope we can do it again. Oh, definitely. We’ll come up with something else. In the meantime, everybody, this is another episode of LBM talks credit, and we hope you join us again. We are available every other Tuesday on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, you name it, we’re there. Talk to you next time.