“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 sits down with the North Central President of the National Association of Credit Managers (NACM) Tanya Guy and Michelle Ochetti, the Board Chair of NACM North Central after their annual meeting back in May. The conversation addressed many pain points for today’s credit managers like being a team of one, mentorship and community, attracting young people to the credit profession, and more. They also discussed the power of a community like NACM and its affiliates in providing resources for credit managers around the country.
Learn more about NACM: https://nacm.org and NACM North Central: https://www.nacmnc.
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Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below for Episode 4: The Column Continued: Answering Your Questions
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
“Okay, welcome back to our podcast today. You are with LBM Journal Talks: Credit. I’m Thea Dudley, the Credit Overlord, and with me today, I am very excited to have Tanya Guy who is president of NACM North Central, as well as NACM North Central’s board chair, Michelle Ochetti. Ladies, thanks for being here today. Thanks for having us. So we’re going to jump in and start talking about the amazing conference we just had with you guys. And I get to go to a lot of these conferences across the country, and this one blew me away. It.
What I love is you guys dial it in. You’re concise, you get to it, you provide great content, and you get everybody back to their jobs, so it makes it convenient for everybody. I’d love to dive in and talk about a few things that we talked about at the session today. If you guys are willing, I’d love to do it. I’ll just jump in and talk a little bit more about our events. So we had a great half day session, and one of the things that we’re really trying to do is engage a different learner, right? I mean, we’ve been really good about educating the people that are talking about retirement, and now we have to switch gears and figure out what is it going to take to get the next generation, Gen Z, I think, is who we’re talking about, and getting them interested in a career that isn’t being talked about in college, interested in building a profession for something that they know nothing about. So discussing how to use certification, how to use online learning, how to change the typical format of our event to make sure that those people, or that audience is interested in what we have to say. No, I love that.
That’s one of the things I really loved about this session, is that you guys dial it in. How people learn now are more in sound bites. We want to get the information, we want to grab it, and then we want to get going. We don’t have three days to spend, you know, going off sometimes on situations. So having this distilled version of things has been really cool. I love that you got all of that in together. I think the panel that we built with both seasoned professionals and those of a younger demographic, it really gave us an opportunity to somebody mentioned reverse mentoring. And I just love that term, or the idea of that, because there are things that each generation can learn from each other. And instead of closing those doors, really opening them up and say, how do we work together to get this to advance the profession, to ensure that the professional of whatever demographic has the tools that they need to advance in their career. Well, I loved that, and I love the idea that came out of that, from what was it, the swipe mentoring, where, if someone would build an app where we could just kind of like that dating app, where you swipe, left? Nope, that’s not the mentor for me. I don’t know, do you swipe left or right? I mean, I don’t have the opportunity to dating app because I’m I caught my limit. I got married. I they kind of frown on it when you keep, you know, fishing. So when you when you swipe we could have that for mentors. We got to build that out. We got to thank Joanne for that, that brilliant idea, but that was one of the things, the things that was really cool.
The other thing that, you know, Michelle and I got connected through going to a different conference, and we had a blast there, and then we connected, and she said, hey, I want you to come up here and get with our group. And it was that cross, you know, kind of cross sectional learning, that you have more than one mentor, more than one place to draw information from. And we talked about how, you know, credit really, there’s no avenue through, whether high school or college. It’s just you fall into this job and then you hope that somebody hooks you up. And you know, so far, you know, the NACM route is a lot of where that information comes from. I mean, we are looking for ways to build that out and engage that again, that younger demographic.
When you mentioned the mentoring, though, and even bringing up NACM North Central, there isn’t a lot of other networking opportunities for people in this space. So NACM and nacf North Central as the affiliate in this area. You know, we’re really trying to make that available to more people. And I think the app would be, it’s super funny for one, you know, but honestly, that’s one of the things that we are affiliate, that we’re trying to do is figure out what do, what do people want in a mentoring relationship? Because I think that’s changed over the years. What are they looking for? I mean, maybe they want to connect online, but maybe they want to grab coffee, maybe they want to get together in person. And I think one of our panelists said too, it might not just be about credit. You might realize I need somebody to help me with public speaking, or I need somebody to help me with speaking to my boss, it might not just be about credit, but using NACM in the connections and the content we have to help build those, I think it’s really critical for anybody in our in our arena, in credit, or considering credit, to use that as a resource. Well, just talking about credit, it’s Oh, not credit. Talking about mentorship,
It’s that’s also become kind of an over, watered downward, and everybody says, Oh, I’m going to go get a mentor. And it’s like, I don’t know that anybody I’ve never just called and go, you know, Tonya, I’m going to use you as my mentor. It just kind of a lot of cases evolves. I’m calling and asking for input and advice. I want to know that you’re open. I want to know that, you know, if I call you, you’re willing. And because we have that connection through NACM, I can call up and say, Hey, Michelle, you know, I have this issue with leadership, or I’ve got, you know, I’ve got to have this hard discussion. I just need to bounce it off of somebody. And I think the really neat thing about professionals in the credit industry is the fact that we network, and you can call anyone, no matter where they’re working, and they’re willing to help. They’re willing to bounce ideas off you or bounce ideas with you. So it’s not like your competition, your all, one team, a lot of companies, credit administrators or credit managers are a team of one, so you don’t have people to go and talk to. So it might not even be a mentorship. Is more of a business connection. I think that’s a really good point. That party of one credit department is real in a lot of companies. I know we see that in the LBM space, you know, you’ve got someone that may be doing double duty, they’re doing their part time, you know, accounts payable, part time, credit, part time, office manager, and they’re juggling everything, and they don’t have somebody in their office that they that understands their pain and they can bounce stuff off of so you’ve got to have that network. And so we’ve been working on building that this is awesome. What you guys are doing. I was just going to say too, I think, you know, we jumped into the conversation, and we didn’t address the importance of that role. And I think, you know, credit managers are often responsible for the largest asset that their company holds, and it’s a position that sometimes gets overlooked. And I think raising awareness of the profession and being proud of what it is, I think is just so important.
And again, something NACM strives to do, but also just looking to our members to say, hey, let’s get out there and elevate what people think about this position. It’s more than just collecting money, and I think it sometimes gets wrapped into that, but it really is. It’s a great profession, and it can definitely be a career. I think that everybody thinks, you know, oh, you’re just going to be dialing for dollars, and that’s not it. There’s a lot of relationship building. There’s your part time therapist. You’re coming up with solutions for people. You’re helping to find a way to, yes, to build the business. And that gets downplayed. So I think the more that we work to raise visibility with the, you know, just the profession itself. It also helps within that company, where you realize, hey, you’re not going to have any cash flow without this. You know, if that money’s not coming and you can sell all day long, but we’re not going to move the needle. And I love that. This format that you guys had today was so dialed in, and just the way that you approached it was really refreshing. I really enjoyed it. Membership is always a big thing. We’re always trying to get more members into NACM. And I think because NACM has been around so long, people sometimes forget, and it almost becomes like background noise instead of look. It doesn’t matter who comes or goes. This organization has been around for, what, 100 and well over 100 years, yeah. And, I mean, just a plug for all the NACM affiliates and NACM National, when you join NACM, you’re not only a member of your local affiliate, but you get all the benefits and all the resources of our national organization as well. So it really is, you know, and we do, we want to change. We want to evolve. We’re trying new things. So if it’s it’s not your father’s Oldsmobile. Is that? What they used to say? I really like that. Probably dates me even saying that. But you know, we are evolving in trying new things and finding ways to bring education and bite sized pieces, you know, to the audience. One thing I’ll say also is there are a lot of members that aren’t as engaged, and you really get so much out of it, the more that you put into it. And so I encourage all of our members to get more engaged with the community that we have here. It’s really a fantastic community. Well, you know what I don’t get is that people join stuff, and maybe it’s because it goes against my personality type, but you join something for a reason, and then you don’t do anything with it, and then you complain that, well, that we didn’t get a lot out of that. We spent all that money doing that, and it’s really not that much money. We spend all that money doing it, and then I didn’t get anything out of it. And it’s What did you put into it? Did you volunteer for anything? Because this is probably one of the most welcoming groups ever you walk in. I think six people hugged me before I even made it to my table. I didn’t even have coffee yet, which was really bad for them, but that’s where you know, getting that involvement and having it a two way street.
Like, when you guys saw somebody that you didn’t recognize, you immediately made them feel welcome.
So I thought that that’s a big part. I think when you know, getting that out of your membership. But I completely agree with you on that. I do think sometimes we need help building those connections, right? We might not be the most outgoing group always. So if there is somebody that we can introduce to make a connection, you know, build a relationship. We’re certainly, I mean, the NACM staff, whether again, here or at another affiliate, it’s what we do, right? It’s kind of the heart of our organization, is ensuring that we’re not only delivering content, but also building connections for people. Well, I think that’s really well said. Thank you. Yeah. So we talked today a little bit about building culture, right, and about attracting younger talent and keeping talent that we had too. We touched on technology and ensuring that we’re open minded to bringing the technology in that’s going to help that next generation do a better job than we’re doing well. And I think not being afraid of that tech there’s that was one of the big topics of today was,
don’t let fear hold you back. If you’re using old school as a way to just keep tech at bay because you’re afraid you’re going to lose your job. You probably are anyway, because you’re the company speed bump, right? So, I mean, when the word digitally native is being talked about for the people that we’re hiring, you really have to look at what your practices are and what kind of policies and procedures you have in place if you’re going to attract people that have been raised and are digitally native. That’s true. I think also bringing tech in helps reduce the monotonous things that we may have to do, leaving more room for the important things that the business really needs us to do. That’s true. I don’t think anybody wants to sit around going, I’m going to check, you know, trade references. I want to be able to get in there, pull reports or do whatever to where that transactional, you know, cash application is not anybody’s, you know, whoo, I’m going to be Cash App person. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but, you know, you want to be able to free up as much time for that. So if you have processes and you have tech that can auto apply that money, and it just kicks out the stuff that needs a brain, that’s a win. Yeah, even portals, where your customers can go self-serve, they can download their invoices, they can make payments. It saves a lot of time. It reduces DSO, I mean, that’s what we’re all about, bringing the money in well, and you have, you can’t talk about that without talking about the whole virtual credit filing cabinet type of thing.
I remember when I was out in the field and I’d have to call somebody and go, Hey, can you go over to the filing cabinet, pull this file, tell me what this says so that I could, you know, go deal with the customer before I ended up going there because it was a surprise visit or whatever, or you’re out somewhere, and a problem came up. If I can just log into my system and look all that stuff up myself, I’m not wasting someone else’s time. I’m not interrupting someone else’s day. And I can do this when it’s convenient for me. So, I mean, I think the whole experience has to just continue to evolve. I completely agree. I mean, I love the things that we’ve talked about, decisioning, there’s just so many pieces of credit that, over the years we’ve seen evolve. And I think being again open minded to spending the money, investing the time, that’s the key right there. We’ve got to get people to open up their wallets, because you can’t. There’s only so many times I can go to my CFO and go, Hey, I need and he’s like, Nope, there’s no budget for that. I’m like, I You guys just took, like, a whole bunch of people golfing. How do we not have actual money for this? When this is this investment, it’s not I’m just not spending money because I have nothing else to do today. This is an investment for us to be able to move this forward, and to be able to, you know, I can produce that ROI, but now I can get customer self-serving. I can compete with, you know, the the larger companies, or our Super Regionals, or, you know, whatever my competition is doing, they’re kicking our butt, right? And, you know, how am I going to keep people when I’m like, Hey, you’re going to be, you know, you’re one step away from an abacus, right? And I mean, just another plug for the association, whether it’s NACM or if your industry has another one, but learning from each other and figuring out, what do you do, how do you handle this, and bouncing ideas off. And, you know, maybe it’s a vendor name, or maybe it’s a vendor process, but to be able to take that knowledge back to your organization and say, Hey, we can really improve if you know, fill in the blank. And I think those are the conversations that take place within our association and the ones that are most valuable to people like we did with our panel today, just sharing and learning from each other on how we can improve things both, I mean, people culture, but practices as well. Well you did. There was a round table on succession planning, and you had two senior credit people that are looking in the next couple years to retire and how they’re setting things up and what that looks like, and how they’re doing it. And I thought it was really brave of them to come out, because people, it’s like doing your will. You don’t want to talk about it, because it makes you face your mortality and your you.
Gosh, I’m coming to an end of one era of my life. But they were setting it up and looking at it, going, listen, here’s what I’m doing, here’s how I’m laying it out. And they gave specifics which it’s, it’s one thing to have that conversation of we’re succession planning, but when you start going, here’s what we did, we hired. We’re doing this, we’re doing this. I’m laying it out. And Joe laid it out step by step. And it was really cool, yes, because you always want to leave somewhere better than when you started. You want to leave them with better people processes. Well, definitely you do hope. You do hope. So. I think the older generation, or the folks that are getting ready to retire, need to realize that the younger folks aren’t out there to take their jobs, but we do need to train them, mentor them, keep them in the industry, so that they want to be there. I agree. I think that’s one of those things where
you don’t let somebody have, you know, the microphone. You don’t, you know, put them up there. We threw a couple of, you know, credit managers up there that have only been doing it for, like, under five years each, and they were rock stars. I mean, they came out there, they shared, they weren’t afraid to speak their mind, and you can tell they had been well coached and mentored so that they felt comfortable getting in front of a group of people. And that’s, I think you have to you’re going to keep moving the industry forward. You have to do that one. I think that brings us full circle to a slide that you shared with us this morning too, about the demographics of what we see in credit management, and we’re getting hit with a lot of retirements. So we have to answer this question about, where is the workforce? How do we attract them? And, you know, bring awareness to the industry? Well, I did see another statistic we didn’t talk about in the session today, but one of the statistics was that by 2030 the boomer generation is going to be primarily retired, and so when I looked at that slide on age of credit managers,
I don’t know who’s going to take these jobs. I mean, I think it’s a great job, but apparently nobody else does, because we’re really struggling to get them in there, right? But, you know, you see a room full of people here that today, they’re all saying the same thing, I made a great living here. This is wonderful. But just watching how that group ages out, everybody wants to be an influencer, and it’s like, okay, there’s like, three people really rocking a living through that. You are going to have to, you know, look at some other options, and we’re an amazing option well. And we hope that they pick credit management, right, and yeah. And then we hope they join NACM, whether it’s NACM North Central, or one of the other affiliates across the country, you know, we want to get them engaged. And I think, you know, we can be their safety net to figure out, how do I advance in this career, how do I ensure that I’m doing, you know, best of class and whatever it is that you know my industry is doing, but we’re here for them to ensure their success. Well, we do have certification, and that’s one of the things that came up Michelle. I know when I started my career, I never thought I would be in the credit department. I never thought I would be doing collections, but it was something I fell into and something that I really love.
So one thing that I’ve had the opportunity to do is to continue to grow and learn, and I did that through NACM in the certification process. And so I highly recommend that to the young folks out there, even the seasoned people, you can get a lot of good knowledge and grow in your career just by taking time to take those courses well. And you get, I think no matter what stage you’re at, it’s kind of a nice, healthy thing, because it’s a reminder sometimes of what you forgot. I mean, there’s a million things that when I’m talking to somebody in credit, I’m like, Oh God, you know, I forgot about that. Someone will remind me, because sometimes you do something long enough, not everything, some of it falls away. And so it’s a good refresher. But that we talked about how different generations like the certification versus, hey, I’m going to go to a four year, you know, college, or I’m going to do this, and they like that more certification, NACM solves that problem for you, it does, and I don’t think everyone in the credit world needs to have a four year education. I personally don’t have a four year education, and I’m the director of credit at our company, so it’s hard work and perseverance, but also taking advantage of organizations like NACM that helped me even further my career with the certificate programs. No, I love that. That’s very it’s just a very strong organization. And I think on the panel this morning too, we heard somebody say, we need to be again to talk to the generation that’s following us a little bit more certificate driven, that it is a faster way to get ramped up with something. So again, another argument, it doesn’t necessarily have to be traditional school, traditional university or academia, but that we have tools to bring those people up to speed. So if there’s one thing you know to kind of close the loop on all of this, because I know you guys got to get going, and I appreciate your time so much. What would you.
Want listeners to get out of it. I know for the LBM community, we’re constantly looking for ways to connect and educate and with LBM, with lumber and building materials, it falls into every aspect of construction. So that’s how Michelle and I got connected. Was, you know, she works in heavy earth moving equipment, which is still a part of the community, because it’s still part of construction, but getting everybody connected, what would you want that community to hear and get out of it as like some final words,
I think for me, it’s evolving. And sort of been the message of the morning is we’re evolving our profession, our association, and we want people to take a look again. If you’re not a member of NACM, reach out, find your local affiliate, join them. And like you said, Get involved. Don’t just sit back and say, you know, what are they doing for me, get involved. And you will find the benefit. More specifically, we have a national convention coming up in Las Vegas. I mean, we’d love people to join us there. Where is it at? In Vegas? We are at Caesars Palace in June in Las Vegas. So it’s a great event. Close to 1000 people typically attend that tons of vendors, tons of credit managers, great education over the course of several days. So again, back to the format. It’s a different commitment, right to be able to do something like that, but it’s really the premier event for credit professionals, and they do a great job of bringing real life examples of how to do your job better. Okay, little tip for when you go there, when they give you, if you’re a first time attendee, rip that first time attendee ribbon off of your name tag, because fresh meat for vendors, and that is so not fun. The vendors do like first time attendees. That’s true. No, there. We like them too. Again, to help build connections. You know, it’s good to be able to shake a hand of somebody that’s there for the first time and recognize who they are. So we do. We’re thankful for those. I understand why you do it. I just know that when it happened to me, I did not appreciate it. But I mean again, back to the ask. I would say, you know, just if you haven’t looked at it, or if you don’t know anything about any cm, just give it a fresh look. Continue, consider joining, jumping in and get involved. Okay, Michelle is the as the board chair coming in this year. What’s your hope and expectation for moving the organization forward? You know, I really hope to help bring new membership aboard and also reaching out to inactive members, getting them more involved. It is a wonderful, wonderful network of people, and every one of us in this network is happy to help. So just bringing more awareness to the association and meeting new people well, and that’s something that maybe we can explore at a later date. You know, we can talk about maybe a little bit offline, but getting with the the LBM community is a lot like the NACM community, where you’ve got a lot of really great people, and we’ve got a lot of great building material and lumber yards up here, and maybe hosting a day or an afternoon or even a lunch and learn would be great because they’re all trying to educate their contractors and customers as well. And I do know that as part of our shared services group. There are a lot of lumber vendors in that group, so NACM does serve that industry as well. So not only can you meet with people in different industries, but there’s people within your own industry that come to those separate meetings. Ladies, I want to thank you for your time today. If there’s anything we can ever do to help support the organization, we certainly want to be there for you. I know the NACM community has been very good to me over my career. Thank you for taking time to be on LBM talks credit, and we’ll be looking forward to hearing what you guys are doing. We’d like to be able to check back with you. We’d love it. Thanks. Thea.”
