Financial Expert Ruth King to Discuss Small Business Profitability
Ruth King, author, small business expert and serial entrepreneur
ATLANTA, GA. –Financial expert Ruth King will describe how to help make small businesses profitable at the July 29 meeting of the Georgia Association of Business Brokers, the state’s largest professional organization dedicated to buying and selling businesses and franchises.
King’s speech, titled “Do You Have the Courage to be Profitable?,” comes from her 2013 book in which she explains to business owners the easy steps to really understanding the financial part of their businesses. Real life stories drawn from her client experiences are sprinkled through the book to illustrate mistakes that small business owners make without realizing they are making them.
Ruth King describes herself as a serial entrepreneur having owned seven businesses in the past 30 years. One of her businesses, Business Ventures Corporation, began operations in 1981. Through Business Ventures Corporation she coaches, trains, and helps contractors and others achieve the business goals they want to achieve.
Ms. King speaks in plain English rather than accounting babble, bringing alive the concepts of profit and loss statements, balance sheets, proper pricing, and cash flow. Anyone who can use a calculator can follow this simple, three step process to avoid being another failure statistic. “”The Courage to be Profitable”” shows business owners how easy it is to get and stay profitable in less than 30 minutes per month. She is especially proud of one construction company owner she helped climb out of a big hole. He started with a negative $400,000 net worth 15 years ago and is still in business today…profitably and with a positive net worth.
Ms. King has been instrumental in helping business owners understand and profitably use the information generated from the financial segment of their businesses. She has a knack for helping business owners truly understand financials.
After twelve years on the road, doing 200 flights per year, she knew there had to be a better way to reach business people who wanted to build their businesses and train their employees. She began training on the Internet in 1998 and began the first television like broadcasting in 2002. Ribbon, the first online broadcasting network, began operations in January, 2007. Ribbon channels currently include www.hvacchannel.tv, www.TheCouragetobeProfitable.com, www.turnonmyfinanciallightbulb.com, and www.divaofthedollars.com.
She started the Decatur, Georgia, branch of the Small Business Development Center in 1982. She also started the Women’s Entrepreneurial Center and taught a year-long course for women who wanted to start their own businesses. This course was the foundation for one of the classes at the Women’s Economic Development Authority in Atlanta, Georgia.
More recently Ms. King was the instructor for ICE, the Inner City Entrepreneur program in conjunction with the Small Business Administration. This 16 week course taught business owners with at least $400,000 in revenues (and many had over $1,000,000 in revenues) how to grow to the next level. A large part of the curriculum was aimed at improving the financial knowledge of the business owners enrolled in the course.
Ruth King holds a Masters in Business Administration in Finance from Georgia State University. She also holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University and University of Pennsylvania, respectively. Ruth is passionate about helping adults learn to read as well as photography and marathon races.
GABB members represent owners of Georgia businesses and help them estimate the value of their businesses, create marketing plans and strategies for the sale of their businesses, and identify and qualify potential business buyers while keeping the sale confidential from employees and customers. Many of today’s business buyers are individuals who have decided not to re-enter corporate America , but are ready to control their own destiny by purchasing and operating a Georgia business. Many business buyers are also current business owners who saw 2013 as an opportunity to grow their revenues through purchases of competitors or strategic partners.
The GABB’s monthly meeting at 10:30 a.m. at the South Terraces Conference Center is preceded at 9:45 a.m. by a free light breakfast and networking session. The GABB is the state’s largest professional organization dedicated to buying and selling businesses and franchises. The South Terraces Conference Center is at 115 Perimeter Center Place, Atlanta. For more information about the GABB, contact GABB President C. David Chambless at dchambless@abraxas.biz or 404-627-4454.