Ruth King: Author, Consultant, Entrepreneur
BUSIER THAN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC?
REALLY?
Yes, absolutely. As a business consultant, she writes books, makes videos, teaches classes, and speaks to groups and organizations about how to manage their finances. When the pandemic, hit she lost all her speaking engagements (20% of her revenue) and lost all the consulting work generated by those speaking engagements (10% of her revenue); all her in-person training classes were cancelled as well. She did not, however, sit back and bake bread. She taught her classes on Zoom and then turned the recordings of those classes into videos that she sold for use in training. To her surprise, she discovered that demand for these classes has increased during the crisis. With so many employees on reduced work schedules, their bosses say those employees now have time to watch the training sessions. By the end of the year, Ruth expects she will more than make up for the revenue lost during the shutdown.
NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPED DURING THIS COVID CRISIS
Another benefit of the lock down came from something she noticed while her adult daughter Kate was visiting at her home during the quarantine. While Ruth lives and breathes financial statements,she says Kate (who has her own small business) has always avoided crunching numbers because they are not fun. “Well, when someone tells me I can’t do something, like make financials fun, that makes me determined to find a way to do just that.” And that’s what she did. Ruth developed a whole series of humorous lessons about tracking financials. She turned these into a book and a video series and she’s about to start marketing them to her large customer base.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE FACED BY HER CLIENTS— CASH FLOW / REVENUE.
HERE’S WHAT TO DO!
Cash Flow and Revenue. Right now, many businesses are dead in the water because they have no cash-flow and no revenue. But a few of her clients are prepared to tough it out. Since she started consulting work, Ruth has always admonished her clients to put away 1% of every dollar that comes in. One penny for every dollar, just in case there’s an emergency. Those clients who took this advice when she first started suggesting it 12 years ago, now have nest eggs ranging from $50K to 1.7 million. They are using this money now to fall back on and to stay afloat.
WHAT WILL BE THE BIGGEST IMPACT OF THIS COVID CRISIS?
Ruth predicts that from now on, more work will be done remotely, since people are used to it. Even Ruth will be doing more by remote. She expects to log fewer days of travel, having become used to the pleasures of working from home.