A Little About Me
My entire life has been in the construction and building industry. My dad was a sub-contractor and I spent my summers "working" with him. Working is a stretch. Conversations on lumber, plumbing, drywall, insulation, roofing, OSHA, back-charges and deadlines, pricing and suppliers, were all a normal part of the day. The industry ups and downs or workload and cash-flow, dictated if it were feast or famine at our house. My first credit manager role was with West-Mar, Inc, a subsidiary of Nevamar. They supplied building materials with a focus on cabinet makers. That role led to Louis and Company running both credit and inside sales for a multi-state region. The region was briefly without a branch manager and a warehouse manager and I filled in for those roles as well. It was a great learning experience (and where I learned that coloring my hair was going to be necessary). Working with my husband’s family's lumber company, D&J Wood Resources, presented an entirely new educational experience, but that led on to an opportunity with Roofing Supply of Arizona, and then Cameron Ashely Building Products/Guardian Building products working my way up through the organization to become the Vice President of Financial Services and Customer care- overseeing five departments including: Credit and collections, AP, cash application, order processing, and marketing. After spending a decade and a half there, I joined SRS Distribution as the VP of Financial Services before deciding to take the leap to go out on my own. In three+ decades of work as a credit and collections officer, I have trekked across deserts to recover goods, taken FBI interrogation classes to learn negotiators “tells” and suffered through more lame reasons for extending credit then I can count. Showing you how to decide who’s worthy of credit and how to go after those who abuse the privilege has become a pastime. I wrote the Thea’s Mailbag credit advice column for ProSales magazine for five years and joined LBM Journal with my latest credit advice column Q&A with Thea Dudley. I have presented seminar sessions for many industry associations such as International Roofing Expo, International Building Show, JLC Live!, Remodelers show, Insulation Contractors Assoc of America, National Insulation Contractors Exchange, Furniture Manufacturers Credit Assoc, National Association of Credit Managers Association Business Services, LBM Journal conference and Guardian Building Products and many others. Additional experience comes from serving as Vice Chair of the National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Assoc. Manufacturers Sub Committee and am currently Treasurer on the board of the Mountain States Lumber and Building Material Dealers Assoc. I love being part of the National Women in Roofing as well as a member of the National Association of Credit Managers. All of these contribute to a better understanding of the payment/sales struggles within the industry. You can hear my views on credit, collections, sales and sales reps on Bradley Hartman's Behind Your Back podcast, episode 14, "Navigating the world of credit" and The Roofers Show, podcast 64, "Credit, Cashflow, and Collections", along with the NACMBCS newly launched podcast series. My background and cross section of working credit and collections with Manufacturers, dealers – both one and two step, general contractors and sub-contractors gives me a unique perspective on how to pull the entire food chain together and leverage to your company’s benefit. |
Working summers with my dad.D & J, the family business."I get asked often about the Credit Overlord title. It was bestowed on me by a customer who didn’t see eye to eye with me and the title has stuck ever since."
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