“Â鶹´«Ã½ 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.
This episode of Â鶹´«Ã½ Talks Credit features Amy Wallace and Alex Petrin from Wallace Building Center. After outsourcing their Credit Management for several years, Alex and Amy took this department in-house two years ago.
In this episode, they share why they made the change; how they did it; and how it’s going two years later. Tune in and hear their story.
Watch this conversation and more great content from Â鶹´«Ã½ journal via our YouTube channel
And be sure to subscribe from your favorite podcast platform below:
Please send all podcast inquiries to thea@creditoverlord.com.
Reach out to Amy at amy@wallacebuildingcenter.com
678-386-3608
Reach out to Alex at alex@wallacebuildingcenter.com
770-598-6894
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.)Â
Thea Dudley Â
Well, my friends, welcome back to Â鶹´«Ã½ talks credit. I’m Thea Dudley, also known as the credit Overlord, and here’s where we tackle the wide world of credit management and why it matters way more than people think. Now. Today I’ve got an amazing couple of guests I’m so excited about I could not wait to get them on here and talking about their experience. These are people who traded their outsourced credit management for in house credit department. So Amy Wallace of Wallace building fearless lbmr, who decided to take control of their credit lending, along with Alexis Petron, who she drug along for the ride and agreed to go with it. Ladies, welcome. Thank you so much for having us. Oh gosh, I’ve been so excited about this one, and before we get rolling, congrats. Amy, 40 under 40. Go girl.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Thank you. I’m so excited. It’s such an honor.
Thea Dudley Â
Let’s talk about your experience, because when you guys first looked at the credit department. I kind of want you to take us back a little bit. Start at the beginning. You know? Why? Why did you decide to stop outsourcing your credit department, yet that credit function? And then, I guess, tell everyone a little bit about Wallace building, so they kind of get what you are dealing with, all right?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
So a little bit about Wallace building. Wallace building. It is. It started out as my husband and his dad, they actually branched off from another family company that had been going since the 1930s it’s still there. But my husband, Cody, who’s also Â鶹´«Ã½ 40, under 40, him and his dad, they wanted to branch off and do their own thing, so they started this store, and it’s been going now since 2013 I believe, and so it’s going really good. But, you know, we had always just kind of went with the somebody comes in wants credit, and you know, we will ask, you know somebody that knows them, are they good for it?
Thea Dudley Â
Friend of a friend?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, yeah. And we’re like, Okay, well, we’ll extend you some credit then. And it just it wasn’t working because we had gotten beat by somebody that we didn’t think that we would ever get beat from, and so that kind of prompted us to do the outsourcing.
Thea Dudley Â
So before you, before we jump into that, that’s always the way, and I know that’s our mantra. And credit is everybody pays you till they don’t. And, you know, it surprises you sometimes who’s not, who didn’t pay you, and it’s not because they’re not, you know, they could be great people, but they find themselves in positions they never expected.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, with them, yeah, this guy was somebody that, you know, we had considered a friend, and he had just way over extended himself, and we were the ones that got stuck holding it. So it just, it scared us, because it was a good, good amount of money. It was about $80,000 yeah, so it, we ended up being able to recover about half of it, but it was, it hurt, so that it scared us. So that’s when we started looking for the outsourcing. But the reason we decided to stop the outsourcing was, how long did you outsource for? We outsourced for about four years. Okay? We had signed a year contract with them initially, and then went on to sign a three year contract with them, okay, so we did it for about four years, and for a while it worked. Um,
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
They were bought out. Yeah, they were bought out. That’s the that was kind of the biggest it. One of the bigger issues was the first company we liked when they were bought out by a bigger company. That’s when it kind of went downhill,
Thea Dudley Â
Yeah, kind of kind of changed any specifics that you want to, you know, without getting into the nitty gritty, it’s like, hey, these were the changes that you know. This is what was a major factor for us?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Probably the main the biggest factor was that we all know that in the construction world, you get, you haven’t a signature on the credit account, but as far as the signature on each individual invoice, it just does not happen. It the contractor calls in and the order gets dropped, they’re not there when it’s dropped. And the company, before you know, understood that, and was okay, but the company that bought it out was not. And so we got charged back for a lot of money, um, because they wouldn’t it. It was in their fine print that they wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t a signature on the invoice itself, not just on the credit application, but on the invoice itself.
Thea Dudley Â
Okay, so that was, like a major change of how, yes, going to market. It’s like, look, this wasn’t our original agreement, yeah, I you know, I’m sorry you don’t understand our industry better, but that’s that’s rarely going to happen when you get a signature, when you’re dropping in a job site, yes, yeah. And
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
That was, I think, the only time that we had tried to get money back from a customer. Customer hadn’t paid us, and we said, hey, this customer is not paying. We need to, you know, take steps. And they’re like, Well, too bad we’re not going to.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, and charge back the full amount to us.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
That’s your responsibility. Yeah.
Thea Dudley Â
So we okay. So now we know that you used to like it, and now you’re frustrated with it, and you’re like, I think we’re going to make some changes. So how did it come about, where you’re like, why I, you know what? I think we got this.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
It was, it was a process.
Thea Dudley Â
What was that process like for the two of you?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
It was a lot of searching to begin with. It. It was really even, are we going to do this? Are we going to be able to do this? Because, to begin with, taking control of the credit seemed like this big monster, and we were, we were scared of that. I mean, we didn’t know that we could do that.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Well, the whole point of the third party was, it was protection for us. Yeah, it was safety. It was they had lawyers. They had the the they could do it all. They could handle the bad debt, and if we’re paying all that money for that one reason, and then they say, Oh, too bad. Every time you file a claim, what’s the purpose of paying all that money? So wait
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
and it was expensive, by the way. There it was very great
Thea Dudley Â
insurance always is outsourcing comes with some risks, and, you know, there’s, there’s pros and cons to both. I mean, like you said, it’s scary when it’s your name going, Yes, I am approving this account and for this amount of money. And you’re like, this dude, better look as good on paper, or, you know, in person, as he does on paper, he better be paying these bills. That is a tough one. It’s, it’s your butt on the line, and those are really hard decisions. So it’s nice to have a backstop where, hey, we’ve got this, this big machine behind us that’s helping execute all of this.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Oh yeah, that was something definitely that we loved. I mean, it was, you know, when a customer would come in complaining about the credit limit that they got or complaining that they couldn’t get more credit, you know, it, we could blame it on the outsourcing companies, because they were the ones that were handling it, you know, they they were the ones that decided whether or not they got credit and how much credit they got. So we could be like, Oh, I’m sorry. You know, they just, they won’t let us give you any more credit. I’m so sorry about that. You know, we could be the good guys. They could be the bad guys.
Thea Dudley Â
To have someone to blame. It’s like, Yeah, our bank restrictions won’t let us do me. You know, you’re, you’re good as gold here. But those guys, oh, they don’t know that. So, I mean, yeah, it is nice. So you decided, all right, I’m we’re we’re, we gotta move on from this, because it’s a lot of money and they’re not performing like they used to. We’re not this relationship. I think we’ve outgrown each other. Yeah, so now, so now you started looking around, and then what happened?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Um, so the first thing we thought we did was, I stalked you.
Thea Dudley Â
Yeah, okay.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
And then we just kind of started looking into what we would need to do. A big driving factor actually was something that our customers liked, was the online payment system that the outsourcing company had, and we knew that if we, you know, went away from that, we didn’t have an option for an online payment system. So around the same time, as taking on our own credit, we also completely changed systems.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
yeah, it was a big undertaking.
Thea Dudley Â
You guys really did go. When you decided to go, you went all out.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, yes, I kind of, she just handles on my my hair brain ideas.
Thea Dudley Â
What’s so cool is that you guys have each other to bounce stuff off of, because, you know, you got Cody, who’s running the overall business. And you, know, you’ve got to have someone to backstop with and be able to have those conversations and say, Yeah, this is what we’ve done so that you can continue to move forward as a company, because you can’t have a bottleneck where you’re waiting for just one person to be able to do everything. Oh yeah.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
definitely helped having someone to bounce stuff off of. I mean, we talked about it constantly figured out all of the. Uh, the options that we had. So we looked at our, you know, getting a new system, we started figuring out, you know, what, we’re going to need a credit application. Because the credit application that we had been using was for the outsourcing company. We had to figure out different types of credit. Are we just extending commercial credit, or we can extending consumer credit? You know, are we doing credit card on files? What? What all types of things are we doing?
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
It was, it was a lot of pieces of paper with notes scribbled and, yeah, and moved them around. And, do we want to do this? Do you want to do that? And, and
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
it was a long process. I mean this, I would say, from us first thinking about taking back our credit to it being full blown, us doing it was, you know, nine months to a year. I mean, it was, well,
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
that was a good process, but that didn’t include the creating of policies and all that. A lot of that came after that, yeah, after we had the credit. And we’re like, Okay, we got this. And then we’re like, No, we don’t come Monday. What? What do we do and try to say, Hey, pay me that money. You know, we had nothing. So I think that was another, another six, seven months at
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
least, I would say, of once we got in there, figuring out what we still needed to figure out what questions to even ask. Yeah,
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
like, what are we missing? I handle the day to day, the everybody coming in, and now Amy gets to be that little cloud in the sky. Amy just won’t let you have that credit. I’m sorry.
Thea Dudley Â
Amy’s working from home now.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
I’m just upstairs. Yeah, I have an upstairs office so, like, they don’t. Most of the customers don’t even see me anymore. They just talk to me on the phone or something, and they’re like, That darn Amy, like that,
Thea Dudley Â
that big floating head, oh, Amy. She’s Yeah, she’s the devil, yeah. She’s just really bad. She’s just Yeah,
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
yeah. She gets to blame it all on me. Now, I’m sorry. My boss just won’t let me do it
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Yeah, I just can’t, can’t do anything for you.
Thea Dudley Â
Okay, so it took, let’s say, about a year. Yeah, you know. So you’re, you’re going through and you’re starting to put pieces together, you’re starting to do your research, you’re, you’re pulling in different facts, and you’re coming up to the end of your time with, you know, with mom and dad, and you’re getting ready to move out, yeah, and when you took that over, that Monday, when it we’re gonna say it’s a Monday that rolled around, what was the first thing when you took control? Where did, what was the first piece that you’re like, Okay, this is what’s happening now we’re ready to roll completely, or you were just gonna Band Aid it and figure it out as we go.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
It was more Band Aid it okay.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
It was everything was leaking at one time, and we were just, we were just trying to just fix it and one piece at a time, like, okay, let’s figure out online payments. That was, that was a really big issue Monday morning, yeah, and
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
I think the thing is that we were trying to tackle a lot all at once. We were trying to tackle the credit side, and then we were also, you know, moving to our new system. So we did have the online so it was kind of all going on at once. And we also, I mean, we had, we had, you know, already established our credit application. We had figured out some of that, that stuff, but like she said, the policies, we didn’t figure that out until months later. I mean, we were, you know, doing our statements, and we were collecting the money, but if they weren’t paying or something there. There just wasn’t a whole lot of communication, I guess, to begin with, because we didn’t know to So figuring out our policies about, okay, you know, before that next statement comes out, we’ve already communicated with them this many times, and just having some of that stuff written out of this is what we need to do
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
when just having a collections agency, that was a big thing, yeah, setting that up and when do we want to send them to collections? When do we threaten to send them to collections? There’s always that threat email you’re bound to be sent to collections. Let’s try to figure this out.
Thea Dudley Â
This is going to go badly, yeah, but you brought up a really good point. But I and I do want to point out that most there, there are a lot of companies that, even though they they’ve had their own credit department for a while, they don’t have their policies written out. I think about half of the companies that I end up talking to, they’re like, Yeah, we don’t have a policy manual. We kind of just, you know, we we do stuff. I’m like, No, you absolutely have policies. You just haven’t formalized them. They’re just not written down. So you had somebody that you had, here’s our rules of the road. Now you have to decide, do I want to keep those rules? Do I want to just implement the same thing, or do I want to adjust them to see what’s going on with. Our economy and our customers and how we want to go to market a little bit more, yeah,
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
and I think that’s kind of what happened for us. We rolled out doing the credit ourselves. And, I mean, it wasn’t going badly. It was going okay, but we just started noticing that there was things that were, you know, falling off, that we just needed to take care of. And so I think that’s where it came in, that we really just sat down together and we’re like, okay, we need to figure out our policies on this. Because we need, we need a plan. We need a game plan that we can follow. And
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
it needs to be like, it needs to be exact, like, okay, statements are due, you know, on the 26th there the bills do the 10th. I make emails on the 14th. I start calling on the 17th. You know, we have, like, set this is what we’re going to do. And keeping that line of communication is super important and very, very difficult now. Now they get used to it. They’re like, Oh, it’s, it’s the 17th, yeah, I’m gonna, I’ll be up there tomorrow. You know,
Thea Dudley Â
if they don’t have any any money here. I’m still kind of but it is very cool that you guys figured it out in a relatively short period of time where your AR didn’t get out of control. So I do want to ask you, what was the biggest challenge looking back on what you did, because you’ve been doing it now for how long?
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Two years March of 23 Yes, when that was that last statement? So two years?
Thea Dudley Â
Just over two years? Yeah, looking back over those two years, what do you think the biggest challenge was in that, that process, your big, biggest challenge, biggest surprise, I mean, what things came out of that that you’re like, didn’t see that comment, or who that was better than I expected, or, Oh, okay, well, something
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
that I didn’t expect is some of the excuses that people will give that’s always interesting to hear their excuse.
Thea Dudley Â
its actually my favorite part of the job. Oh my gosh, how creative can you? No, we don’t take Bitcoin. What are they thinking?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, they come up with some crazy stuff. So that’s been some that’s been interesting. Because before you know what the outsourcing we really weren’t hearing that the outsource company was the one that was hearing all of the excuses. So that was that was fun.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
What surprised me is they know, they charge the money. You know they know, yeah, I charged 50,000 this month. But do I really have to pay that? Like, is that? Is that a thing I have to do right now? And it surprised me. It surprises me how often customers are just like, is that really important right now? You know, I’ve got, I’ve got houses to build. I’ve got things to do. Do I need to worry about this? And I’m like, Yeah, you kind of do I need you to worry about if you want to build the next house with us. Next house with us.
Thea Dudley Â
That is really funny, where it’s, well, you know, I’ve been really busy. I didn’t have time to look at your bill. It’s like, you know, can I try that with my mortgage company? It’s like, you know, listen, I’ve been super busy. I’m going to get to you because I don’t think it’s really important. You’re, you’re cool with that, right? They never are, by the way. You’re like, well, you can pay late, but let me tell you about the back charges we’re gonna let me tell the interest rates you’re gonna pay and and then let me tell you how that’s not going to go fly for very long there, you know, there’s no forgiveness or love there, so I agree with you.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Yeah, and the finance charges themselves. People think they’re the craziest thing. Oh, they’re totally optional. They feel like they’re totally option. You don’t have to pay that, like, it’s just, it’s just, there’s a suggestion, you know, if you just skip it, don’t worry about it.
Thea Dudley Â
They’re gonna throw down on it. It’s like, look, I’m paying this bill, but I’m not paying the finance charges. It’s like, Dude, you paid late, you know? I I’m okay for giving you for paying late, but there’s a penalty to that. You think I’m getting free money. I gotta borrow against our line of credit.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Yeah, a day late, I can waive that if you haven’t paid your bill for six months. There’s some, there’s some fines there.
Thea Dudley Â
Yeah, I love that. It’s like, Nope, we are not doing that. Oh, so those are, those are some, some big challenges that come up that, you know, most people, unless you’ve done this job for a little bit, you don’t get to hear some of those things. And you just think that people can’t possibly say things like that. And and they
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
do, yeah, and something too, that I felt like was, it was kind of a personal challenge for me was that I did become the big guy in the sky, you know, the one that, the one that had to say no and all of that. So that was something that I had to learn how to do, and I’m still learning. I mean, okay,
Thea Dudley Â
so I’d like to dive into that a little bit more. That’s a hard thing even, you know, and that’s one of the biggest challenges for people going into that, that credit and collections arena, it goes against your natural human nature. Human nature is, hey, I want people to like me. I’d like to get along with everybody, and confrontation is not something everybody’s okay with. And so when you. When you do confront, it’s like, Oh, my God, you’re so confrontational. Like, it’s not that I’m confrontational. I just know that if I don’t deal with it, one, there’s nobody else that’s going to do it, and I’m just going to kick this can down the road. I might as well just do it now and get it over with.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, it’s, it’s something that I had to learn. And, like I said, I’m still learning it. There’s still instances where I’m, like, having to psych myself up for it. You know that phone call that phone call that I know is going to be no fun. I definitely think it helps too that I’m upstairs and can kind of be a little bit removed.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
I live for the conference. Let me tell you, customer come in yelling at one of my guys. I will, I will go out there. Love it so much.
Thea Dudley Â
Alexis, I love that about you. It’s like, No, I just, I just, Hey, bring it down about two notches. We’re not going to have a screaming thing. I understand you’re upset. I’m upset too. I don’t have any money. I know you’re upset because you’re on hold. But there’s, it’s not just because I, I, you know, spin the big roulette wheel in the sky, and it’s like, this guy came up his number today. We’re going, that’s not how this works. I mean, you had full control over this relationship, so I love that. You’re like, yeah, I don’t got a problem with it. I’m going to deal with it, because somebody’s got to do it.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
We got into both of us actually got into a big battle with one customer, who he was so upset because his credit limit was not high enough. And after both of us got a hold of him, he did a catered lunch for the entire store. His apology. Because we were like, That’s not happening, yeah, like, because he pitched a fit with everybody, every employee on this, this campus, I guess, on a campus. But I
Thea Dudley Â
after all, could be a campus. You guys are learning every day.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, the after all of this, it was, I mean, he just got so ugly on the phone. And I was like, this is just, this is not happening. You don’t have a credit line with us anymore. I’m so sorry. And that was that, was that, because it too much, too much.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
It was probably our worst one, probably as far as confrontation wise, like he he was bad, yeah, well,
Thea Dudley Â
and I think that happens to everybody in business at one point or another, and one of the biggest challenges is, look, I can work with anyone, and I want to work with you. I want to keep your business, but you coming in here yelling and screaming. That’s not us finding a resolution, that’s just you being a bully. Yeah, but if you want to sit down and talk about your credit line, and hey, I need a larger credit line, let’s talk about how to make that happen. I will bend over backwards to help you, because I want your business to that’s why we’re in business. It’s not just because I needed somewhere to go all day. We’re here to sell materials. But let’s be adults about it. Yeah, absolutely. Once you get through that first one, you’re like, Okay, I’ve survived that
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, yeah, get into that first.
Thea Dudley Â
Make it you have that point of reference now. So, you know, we talk about hope is not a credit tool, and credit management, and using that analogy where it’s like, oh, we’re just gonna, you know, hope for the best. It’s like saying, Hey, I’m hoping termites, you know, we’ll just get bored and leave our lumber alone. You know, it’s just, you know, it’s not going to happen. Once you have something going downhill, it continues to go downhill. So if you could look at this entire process, do you have a biggest regret or a biggest Hey, I would have done this differently.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
I feel like probably one of our biggest regrets is that we did some stuff the hard way, instead of just asking more questions, I feel like maybe if we had asked more questions in the beginning, even though we did ask a lot of questions, I feel like I bugged you quite a lot.
Thea Dudley Â
I loved it. It was really, actually really fun, because it reminds you of stuff that like when you’ve been doing it for a really long time, you take things for granted, and so hearing someone go, Okay, let’s take it back down to, you know, ground level here, and start building up. You’re like, oh my gosh, yeah, I forgot about that. So it was just as educational for me.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Oh, well, good. I don’t know. I feel like we might have gotten through some stuff a little bit easier if we’d have asked more questions in the beginning.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
I think I also thought that we had to handle everything. Yeah, we it was, it was Us two against everybody out there. We, we didn’t want to, it’s almost like the collections agency. That was the one that I thought of the we did not want to have a collection agency. We didn’t want to do it. We don’t want to send nobody to collections. Because it was, it was like we failed, yeah, it was almost like a failure. Almost like a failure, that we failed ourselves, you know, we couldn’t get that money. We had to get somebody else to do it. And realizing that having a collections agency is not, it’s not a bad thing, it’s not a big deal. Sending out, doing the lien is not a bit you know, it’s not a bad thing, it’s not a big deal. It’s just you. Are things that have to be done because we can’t, we can’t get every customer to pay every bill, you know, it’s just not going to happen. Yeah,
Thea Dudley Â
we were very challenges that I know lots of credit people. I struggled with it early on where, by God, no one’s going to take that. I am going to go after every dime. You know, if I can’t collect it, it’s not collectible. And then at some point you realize you need to put your cape away. This is it’s not a judgment against you, and there’s only so much time in the day, so I can’t track everybody down. I can’t force somebody to pay me. Here are the the levers I have, I can small claims court it. And as much as I love a good small claims court rodeo, because those things are just amazing. If you haven’t had the opportunity totally do it the but it takes time, because you’re the de facto attorney you’re building, you know, you’re having to put everything together, you’re having to take the time to go to the court, you’re having to do all those things, and sometimes you’re like, okay, the money’s small enough, or, you know, it, it’s too big for small claims court, but not big enough for us to hire an outside attorney. This is what we’re going to do. You know, we’re going to we’re going to go ahead and send it to the collection agency, and then it’s a whole process of finding who you want to work with, because there’s so many out there, and everybody says, Oh, I’m the best. And it’s like, are ya, you know, it’s got to be somebody that you click with,
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, most definitely. I think finding that was, it was really good for us. And there’s been so many times where I haven’t even needed to send them to collections. It’s just having that collections there that I can threaten. I’m like, Look, if you don’t pay me by this date, we are sending you collections, and I’m not even gonna think twice about it. And like, I’m so sorry, here’s your money. I mean, it does
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
one you send an email seven minutes that payment was online.
Thea Dudley Â
Oh wow, that’s a record seven minute
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
she went online and paid the bill, and I was like, why couldn’t you have just done that before I had to get ugly and threaten collections?
Thea Dudley Â
That’s another one of those questions that just kind of hang out there where it’s like, Did we really have to take our relationship to this level? Because now I know who you are, I have to be ready to just like, smack you before you you do what you’re supposed to do.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, I will say, though I am pretty proud of that particular account, because we, when we came off of our outsourcing company shortly after they they were one that was building with us a lot. They had a really big credit limit and but it was shortly after we got out of the outsourcing company, they stopped paying. So they stopped paying on $100,000 I mean
Thea Dudley Â
you know, your heart is now down, like, where it’s just going, oh my gosh, did we screw up. I hate this.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Yeah, I mean, we had just started, and they just stopped paying, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, but we’ve been very persistent with them. We’ve stayed in contact with them, and we’ve got it down to now they only owe us $8,000 which I know is,
Thea Dudley Â
congratulations, don’t, don’t put it, I know behind that, because anybody who collects money for a living, understands what a win that is, and how hard that is to do, and to keep it in house and to work with the customer that that’s tough. I mean, that’s a that’s a very tough thing to do, especially when it’s a long term thing. It’s like, okay, we’re financing basically a car for these people.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
Yeah, yeah. And they’ve paid every finance charge.
Thea Dudley Â
So you didn’t do it for free, which is another thing where it’s like, sometimes you get a payment plan, like, I’m just happy to get the original output. I don’t even want to think about the other parts. Yeah? So I think that’s a huge win for you guys. That is, that’s definitely like, we’re putting this up on our wall. Yeah,
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
we were very happy about it. Very, very happy.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
If we just have eight I’m like, you have paid over 100,000 there’s $8,000 left. Just
Thea Dudley Â
party when that comes in. But we really are celebrating gig.
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
I’m going to cry. I think I’m just gonna and what do you do when you don’t see
Thea Dudley Â
that hanging out there anymore? Well, so if you guys had, if someone’s listening, and they’re they’re thinking of taking, you know, they’re in the same situation you guys were a few years ago, and they’re looking at it going, Hey, I think I would like to, you know, follow that same path. What is, what is your number one piece of advice?
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
We kind of have two. I’ll let I’ll let you say one mine is that trust your gut. There’s been so many times that I would second guess and be unsure, but if I had just trusted my gut to begin with, it would have been okay. I’m not saying I’m always right by any means, but I feel like you get those stirrings in the pit of your stomach, you know, for a reason.
Thea Dudley Â
That gut check factor is real. So, yeah, I can’t show it to you on paper, but I’m telling you, my spidey senses are all over this. Yeah,
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
there’s been times or something has just felt hinky to me. And I’m like, I don’t, I don’t. I don’t want to do this. I don’t know why I don’t want to do this, but I don’t want to do this.
Thea Dudley Â
I like the hinky factor. I’m sorry. We’re just calling it the hinky factor. We’re putting that on the credit, on the file. We’re out,
´¡±ô±ð³æÌýÌý
um, mine is still going to be not to take it personal. Um, I feel like we took a lot of things personal. Someone didn’t pay it was, like, a personal hit, yeah, um, or if we didn’t get something right, like we are, like, the only thing that’s holding this business up, you know, like, if we fail, the whole business fails. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, that if it wasn’t perfect, it like we’re gonna go bankrupt. We were gonna be homeless. Like it was just, it was, like, the spiral of everything is going to go wrong if we mess up. And you know what? We’ve messed up, and we went, Oh, that’s fine. We learn from it, we move on. We’ve lost money. We learn from it, we move on to me, that was the biggest thing.
Thea Dudley Â
Yeah, I think that’s those are both really good pieces of advice, whether you’re going to make changes to make changes to your credit department, or not just as a credit professional, that’s really tough. I mean, though that is those are some tough lessons. All right, ladies, anything else you want to share
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
if you have questions, call Thea.
Thea Dudley Â
Okay, that was the aiming method, which is actually really fun. It was a great relearning opportunity for me, because you know when you, when you when you do something for a really long time, you forget what you you just forget what you take for granted as knowledge. And so when someone asks you, you’re like, well, you’re looking at them like, well, this is kind of common sense. You’re like, no, it’s common sense to you, because this is the world you’ve been living in for a long time. So it gave me an opportunity to step back and kind of relearn and get reacquainted with some things that I hadn’t looked at in a long time. So it was just as fun for me Watching you guys grow, and watching you guys go through this and then some of the stuff you called with. I’m like, Well, that’s the challenge of the week.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
That was really fun.
Thea Dudley Â
Well, if you want any more of Amy’s wisdom, I don’t think Alexis is going but I could be wrong. If you’re looking for any more of Amy’s wisdom, you can find her at the Â鶹´«Ã½ strategies conference this year. Yes, and she’ll be up there doing her her Princess wave. Or they can certainly reach out to either one of you at Wallace building. Yes, we’ll connect your your information down in the episode description below. But definitely wanted to be able to make you guys available, because you guys are so amazing. I love everything you did and your approach and you just, you just got in there, and that was, I love that entrepreneurial spirit of we’re just going to we’re just going to make this happen.
´¡³¾²âÌýÌý
Well, thank you. Yeah, we’re pretty proud of it. We’re glad that we did it.
Thea Dudley Â
Well, you guys. I appreciate you coming on this week. I’ve been looking forward to this episode, and poor Sally’s had to hear about it over and over. Everyone out there, thank you for joining us this week at Â鶹´«Ã½ talks. Credit, you can find a new episode every other Tuesday if you want a little something in between. Sally, does the Â鶹´«Ã½ talk social media on the weeks we’re not on, if you’re missing us, there’s back episodes you can listen to. We’re on Apple Spotify and YouTube. Â鶹´«Ã½ talks credit. I’m Thea Dudley credit Overlord, and this is the place for practical strategies for trade credit in the Â鶹´«Ã½ industry.
