EP436: Ruth King - The Value Of Getting Your Business Financially Fit

Michael Palmer: So one day he walks in the door, there are more than $1 million in receivables. Over $1 million right now. Wow, that's incredible. And he doesn't have enough cash in the bank to pay the fuel bill for his truck so that they can get on the road. Wow. Solve that problem. I can— my thing is sometimes you got to hit— get hit between the eyes with the 2x4 before you pay attention. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper. Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fun one. Our guest is a Georgia-based business advisor and serial entrepreneur, Ruth King. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Michael. I'm thrilled to be here. Well, it's great to have you, and I, I love serial and I love entrepreneurs, so this is going to be great. Uh, so with that, let's hear your career journey leading up to this point and what you're doing with your life today.

Ruth King (Sept 17): Well, I actually started business when I was a kid. You know, I don't count that as part of the serial piece of it, but I've always had businesses. I had babysitting businesses and we sold flowers out of our garden. We did crazy things when we were kids to make money. And I've always known that I'm gonna have, was gonna have a business. So it went from there in terms of going to school. I ended up being a chemical engineer by training and found out that there was not a single business class in the college I was at. And so I went out, got in the real world, went back to school, got my MBA, and found out that I was really, really good at numbers and really, really good at explaining numbers. And that's where all of the things have actually stemmed from, from there. Wow. Wow. And so how— so you went to numbers, you discovered numbers. Where did the numbers lead you?

They led me into working with small businesses since probably 1987 and helping them with the financial side of their business and understanding what a P&L was, what the balance sheet was, doing their budgets, looking at the analysis. And, you know, all of it was done by hand. You know, in the beginning, we didn't