From Tacos to credit management consultant--price learned the ropes.(MEMBER PROFILE)(Kym Price)

Kym Price, CBA has spent over half of her life--20 years--in the field of credit management. Starting out in the business world, she didn't aspire to this profession but, after being given credit management tasks in her first job, she learned everything she could about it. "I've been working in credit since I was 19," she said. She now runs or helps to operate the credit departments of smaller, growing businesses. "I say I'm a consultant, but I'm actually outsourcing myself in accounts receivables management. They don't need a full-time credit person. I really like what I'm doing, working with small, growing companies."

Kym's first work experience was helping in her family's franchises of Taco Bell in California. However, she said, "At 19, I thought I didn't want to do that anymore." She struck out on her own and Landed a job with a company that sold industrial safety gear. Kym said that the owner of the company gave her credit department tasks to do, which launched her on a career that she didn't even know existed. "He kind of built the credit department around me. I didn't know that people did that as a Living. I was doing something extra for him." But that something extra turned into her life-long career. "My first job was collecting. I fell into credit and I can't get out."

Going the college route was not Kym's style, but she has been adept at learning through experience. However, she still is a big advocate of constantly enrolling in specific job-related courses, seminars and other learning opportunities to broaden and refine her knowledge and skills-base. "I don't have a college education. It just wasn't for me. I'm a very hands-on, visual learner. In college you have to sit there. Put me in an office environment, where I have to learn."

Kym is a member of NACM Great Lakes and a CFDD Area Director in the L.A.-San Diego region. She pointed out that the individual memberships offered by NACM Great Lakes have accommodated her situation as a one-person operation, saying "They were making it more affordable for me: I'm just a small company."

Kym said she has fully taken advantage of the educational opportunities afforded by CFDD. "I go to monthly education classes, regularly. If I didn't have CFDD I couldn't have my own company, because I wouldn't have the confidence that I know that I can do it. In a short amount of time you can get a bunch of education on a lot of topics." She earned her CBA and said, "I'm working on a CCE."

In 1992, she obtained a job with a distributor, where she worked in collections for eight years. It was there she worked with a manager whose philosophy toward training his employees helped to expand her knowledge and understanding of credit and collections. "That controller, Bob Wise, was the most influential manager of my career. He sent me through all of those seminars and he paid for my CBA. He didn't always agree with the way I got the job done ... but he let me do it." Kym pointed out that her former boss had the proper appreciation of how important it was to train his employees. "He knew that when I came back, I would train everybody else in ...