Lay of The Land #156: Mary Cowan (NCS Credit) — 2nd Generation Entrepreneurship & Getting Paid for Work That You Do
Mary Cowan, the President of NCS Credit, based here in the greater Cleveland area.
The story of NCS Credit is one of family, growth, and success anchored in a belief of uncompromising excellence and ever-advancing technology. Founded in 1970 by Howard V. Cowan as a commercial collection agency, NCS Credit’s goal was to form trusted partnerships and provide exceptional debt recovery services for its clients. In the early 1980s NCS Credit earned a reputation as a leading authority in the corporate credit industry and expanded its services to meet the needs of its credit professionals by adding the Construction, UCC, and Publication Service Groups
Mary joined the company in 1990, shortly after the sudden and tragic death of her father Howard Cowan; The entire family rallied and resolutely continued to pursue Howard’s vision forward.
Today, under Mary’s leadership, NCS Credit serves clients across the US and Canada as a commercial debt recovery service — protecting many billions of dollars over their more than 50 years of service across many industries like manufacturing, construction, food distribution, and energy, in addition to educating thousands of credit professionals — guided by their belief that everyone should get paid for the work that they do
This was a fun and educational conversation for me. Mary talks about the hard things she experienced and navigated as part of her entrepreneurial journey, the trials and tribulations turning around suffering culture, morale, and performance to an organization now recognized seven times over as a Northeast Ohio top workplace, the challenges of being a 2nd generation leader, the power of business operating systems, and a whole lot more.
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John Carroll University Boler College of Business: https://business.jcu.edu/
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This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
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LINKS:
Connect with Mary Cowan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-cowan-94b4266/
NCS Credit: https://www.ncscredit.com/
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