How to be Uncopyable Profitably

In this engaging conversation, Steve Miller, aka Kelly's Dad and Marketing Gunslinger, sits down with Ruth King, a renowned profit and wealth guru. Ruth, who has an MBA in finance from Georgia State University, is passionate about helping businesses become profitable. The duo delves into the importance of understanding a business's financials, emphasizing not just making money but also retaining it. They discuss the significance of pricing, marketing expenses, and the competitive advantage in the market. The conversation touches upon the concept of "uncopyable financials" and the value of long-term customer relationships. Ruth shares insights from her experiences, including a notable business partnership where she assisted a company in boosting their sales, eventually leading to a $9 million sale. Steve and Ruth also explore the importance of productivity in business and the need to keep costs low to compete effectively.

Contact Ruth:
www.ruthking.info
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthking1

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidloomis/

Get Dave's book: Marketing Is Everything We Do

Interested in learning how Voice of the Customer can grow your business? Contact Dave: dave@loomismarketing.com

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Follow Steve:
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Get Steve's bestselling book: Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition

Want to learn how to generate more business without spending a ton of moolah, and separate yourself from the competition? Steve's online presentations and consulting will make you UNCOPYABLE! Contact him: stevem@beuncopyable.com

Transcript

HOW TO BE UNCOPYABLY PROFITABLE

Steve: Hey everybody, it's Steve Miller, better known as Kelly's Dad, Marketing Gunslinger. I usually just start laughing when I say that because, because I just think it's so funny that, what, I have my conversation with my guests ahead of time, or with my compadre, David Loomis, David Mayo Loomis, ahead of time, and we're always laughing before we start, and then it's supposed to, I'm supposed to just stop and be very serious, and so it's very hard for me to do, but anyway, here we are.

and, yes, this is one of the, this is one of the episodes where, either, Dave is not with me today, I'm interviewing some, a really smart person, I'm not saying that she's smarter than Dave, why am I getting, oh, I'm getting a spam call, and, I'm not saying she's smarter than Dave, but she's definitely smarter than me.

So that's all that really matters. I would like to introduce you to, somebody that I've actually known for so many years. Okay. Ruth King, who, and Ruth, do you have any idea how long ago we met? It 

Ruth: was because I ran across Uncopyable right after it was published. So it was right after that.

And I bought a copy for all of my clients. And that's how we met. That's 

Steve: right. Yeah. 2017 was when the book originally came out. it was my, second best selling book. my first one was back in 1990, if you can believe that. and,and actually It was my next book. yes, I do remember that and we, we were just so blown away by anybody who wanted to buy my book.

it's I don't know how, people who are watching this right now, being an author is a very odd I think. and,Ruth, you have multiple books. I'm going to, I'm going to do the proper intro here in a second, but you have multiple books. Oh, you want an improper intro. All right.

I'll do that first then. All right. Okay. So Ruth and I and,she bought a bunch of my books for her clients because Ruth, is the financial, oh my gosh, she is the financial guru for the B2B world, really is what I would say. and, she's, she is, she's amazing with money because she, back, one of the benefits of, I, I came from the corporate world, right?

So when I went into speaking and consulting, and A high percentage of people going to speaking consulting don't have that background. Okay, so they always talk about how much money they're making, right? But what they're talking about is how much money they're grossing. Oh, man, I grossed, 300, 000 last year.

I'm going, wait, there's the, wait, there's another question behind that. How much of it did you keep? Yeah, 

Ruth: exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you exactly why I read the book and it was like, it was the first time that somebody had really taken marketing and made it make sense so that you make yourself different.

And so what I don't know whether you know the whole story. So I bought the book for all of my clients and then I made them read it. And then I made them go and talk to. People who were their customers, people who were their prospects, and find out what they were doing different than everybody else. We had this really cool conversation at my annual meeting.

So you were the, instigator 

Steve: of that. I love hearing that. Thank you. That is so cool to hear. There's nothing better than hearing that, my book impacted people. and helps people to get better, run their businesses better, make more money, all that sort of stuff.

But this is, but making more money is actually where you come in. in, in large part, right? so I'm going to properly, introduce you,to everybody. Just know that, hey, if she's my guest, she's. Pretty darn smart, so you better be listening. All right. Okay. Profit and wealth guru, Ruth King, I don't even call myself a guru, but profit and wealth guru, Ruth King has a passion for helping businesses get and stay profitable utilizing the latest systems, processes, and technology.

And this is where,I, this is one of my weak points, so I, I love having conversations like this. Okay. Ruth is ape. This is really cool. And I, and. Okay, I'm going to read this first and then I'm going to ask you a question. Ruth is especially proud of a business partnership where she started consulting with a company that had, at that time, 750, 000 in annual revenues.

With her guidance, 16 years later, the company reached 10 million in sales and was sold for 9 million in cash. Do you have a case study on that? No, but I should. Yes, you should. Okay, just want to make sure that you know what's next, right? What you need to do, right? she, and this is where she absolutely flies right by me, okay?

Ruth has an MBA in finance from Georgia State University. see, that's not the Bulldogs. That's the, 

Ruth: no, it's Georgia State. It's the Georgia Bulldogs. And then there's Georgia Tech, which is the Yellow Jackets. And then there's Yellow 

Steve: Jackets. That's right. That's right. Yeah. and she has a bachelor's and master's degree in chemical engineering.

From Tufts University and University of Pennsylvania, respectively. I majored in electives. so you see that show that shows you where we are. She,she has a whole bunch of books. She has a whole bunch of books, 101 dumb financial mistakes. Business owners make, how to avoid them will be released later this year.

September 5th. and,this book is preceded by. The number one book. Was that so bestseller, Profit and Wealth? Profit or wealth, ugly truth about cash, courage to be profitable, you've been on a bunch of must read lists. I saw one list where you were number two behind Gary Vee, and I was, and, since Gary Vee and I do not personally get along.

Oh, boy, that's another story. 

Ruth: Sure, you and I will have to talk about that one offline 

Steve: sometime. Yes, we will, because... He don't like me. but, and also you have a new product coming out very soon. I want you to just brief, briefly introduce it because we'll then come back to it later on.

What is, what's coming out very soon? 

Ruth: It's called Financially Fit Business. FinanciallyFit. business is the website, and you'll be able to enter your financial statements, click a button, and get your results in the good, the bad, and the ugly in less than five minutes. So there's no excuses about not looking at your financials anymore.

You can do it in five minutes a 

Steve: month. So this is going to be on a website? Yeah, it's software. So it's, okay, so it's an online app. that people are going to be able to, to use to know how they're standing financially. So let's talk about how people are standing, how businesses are standing financially and what your perspective is about it.

Okay. you do, focus on the B2B world. Yes. Okay, tell me about the clients that you work with. All of them 

Ruth: are business owners, or they're generally somewhere between, the smallest ones are 700 to a million, in that range. I'll do work with smaller ones, but it's generally online or something along those lines, not personally, up to about 30 or 40 billion are the biggest.

I like the sweet spot for me is somewhere between 

Steve: one and five. Okay, thank you. Okay, that's a lot like us in, in, in large part. I don't do, I don't do face to face with anybody who's less than maybe 20 million or something like that, but, actually, right now, Kay might not even let you see me face to face,she cut me off from travel, from speaking live a couple years ago,because, I f I like working with the smaller companies.

Yeah. because,I have,if you look at my client list, I got the big guns on there. Okay. I got the Coca-Colas right. In Georg, Georgia,Georgia Tech background. I could back. isn't Georgia Tech in Atlanta, or is that Georgia State?

Georgia 

Ruth: Tech is Georgia State is Georgia University of Georgia is in Athens, which is about from where I am about 45 

Steve: minutes northeast. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. so yeah, so I've spent a lot of time there at the Coca Cola headquarters. It's down the street from Georgia Tech. Yes, exactly. Yeah. That's why I remember that.

and,and other big, and other really big players, but you know what? I can only nudge the sales of Sugarwater just so much. But I can nudge the sales of a small business a lot. Now, what is it that I can, I, or I should say my smoking hot wife, Kay and I, we come in and we work primarily from the sales and marketing branding perspective.

When you work with somebody, why does somebody hire you to work with them? Because they're not 

Ruth: as profitable as they want to be there, maybe having cash flow problems and issues with respect to paying their bills. Sometimes not as much, but most of them won't really want to grow and actually achieve something with their businesses and it's not making enough profit in order for them to be able to do that.

for example, if, the guys who I started with at 750, 000, We took them because they had an idea. They didn't want to be in business forever and they wanted to be out. So we grew to a point where somebody would pay attention to them and they could walk away with. that's a pretty good deal in 16 years.

Steve: Yeah, and that'll buy a nice boat down in Florida or wherever they 

Ruth: want. actually, no, they're not buying boats, but, Bob is, he splits his time between Vermont and Sarasota, Florida, and he's having a blast. He's thinking about starting his rock band again, which I think would be 

Steve: really cool.

That would be awesome. That would be really awesome. Yeah, I would call the band 9 million is what I would call it. but, now, but. so let me see, because when people like that, don't they typically look for somebody and I'm going to, I don't know if I'm right about this or not, but they typically look for somebody like me.

Or K, because they're thinking of themselves, we have to increase sales. we have to increase the number of customers that we're working with. So we need lead generation. We need brand. We need this type of stuff. Okay. To grow the business. But when they bring you in, it's more from the financial.

And the systems part, am I correct about that? Yeah, 

Ruth: it's very system oriented. I start at the bottom line, you start at the top line. Yeah. I start with what I call their net profit per unit. Now, what does that really mean? for example, in a restaurant, the net profit per unit, how the restaurant generates revenue, is by meals.

The more meals they serve, the more revenue they generate, and hopefully the more profit they generate. A, like my gym that I go to. Okay. Their unit of revenue is a member. The more members they have, the more revenue they get. And we know what the profit is per member. We need to know what the profit is per meal.

And, if you're in the HVAC or home services business or business services business, you're. unit of revenue is a billable hour. For every billable hour, how much drops to the bottom line. So I take it, most people say, how do you make money? And they say, we sell this, and this, but they really and truly don't think about how they make, how they generate revenue.

It's one step below the this, and this. If if you ask most people that question, they'll go, Oh, we do this, but they don't look at it for every one of these things that we sell, what actually comes to the bottom line. And a lot of times when you go down that path, I've worked with 4 or 5 million dollar companies where their net profit per hour was like a buck 87.

Why are you doing 

Steve: this? Yeah, exactly. 

Ruth: And then the light bulbs go on. yes, they use you to increase the revenue. They'd use me to increase the revenue profitably. So that they know that if they have X number of widgets, they're going to make Y dollars of profit over those X dollars of widgets. And so we look at it and we take the P& L and go backwards.

We start with the net profit they want to earn per unit of however they generate revenue. We add the overhead per unit of revenue and then we go upwards. So when they get to you and they go, Steve and Kay, we want to increase these units. Help us do that. And you can do it from an uncopyable standpoint, 

Steve: yeah, that's exactly right.

And in fact, really, when I go in and I'm working with people initially, I start with, okay, how much money are you making? And when I say making, it's not gross. it's, it is what starts to get below, below the line. And because if nothing's going below the line, they don't need you.

They don't need me at all because, this is not one of those situations where, oh, we'll make it up in volume. how many times we heard that comment? And, Cause I'll say to people, I'll say, look at how much, how much is a customer worth long term?

how much of that customer's, worth over a long period of time, does go to the bottom line. All right. how much, how much do you, how much are you willing to spend? To find a customer, okay, because sometimes, you have companies who have, they'll have somebody who spends a million bucks over, say, five years with them, but then they want to go find those people and they only want to spend 50 bucks to find them.

And I go, hey, if I. if I said to you, I will bring you one of those customers, but it's going to cost you 10, 000, how many customers would you ask me to give you? Yeah. How much would you spend? Yeah. But only if that, that million dollars. Has money, left over, right? Yeah, that's important.

so that, there are a lot of questions because when I say to them, I say, Hey, literally how many, if I guarantee you 20% return on your money, how much money are you going to give me? And they go, I don't know. I have to think about that. I go, no, the answer is all of it.

Yeah. The answer is all of it. But because if you are making a, if you're making net off of that. then who cares how much money you spend in marketing? If every time you spend a dollar in marketing, you get back a buck 20, that, that works. But at that point, then you see, I'm no longer part of that picture because now they, if they don't have the systems, and that you're talking about,then.

they're not going to end up being able to sell their business. So when somebody, when you do start to connect with somebody, all right, what is the very first step? Yeah, 

Ruth: the very first step is figuring out what their unit of revenue production is. Okay. And let's, I'll tell you a really funny story.

I started working with a new client in the services business. They were, HVAC, heating and air conditioning contractor. And so we're driving back to his office and I said, what net profit priority do you want? And he looks at me like deer in the headlights going, I don't know, what should I have?

And I never answer that question because it's not my business. It's their business. I said, I'm not answering that question. It's your business. You got to tell me, because that's how you build your pricing. That's how you build your marketing. That's how you build everything from there. And he goes, I don't know, 20 an hour too much.

I said, that's where you want to start. That's where we're going to start. So we built the pricing. We built everything on it. And I get this email about a month later and goes, 100 is 100 an hour to piggish. And I just started laughing. I said, what's going on? He goes, I had this job. And Murphy went to sleep.

And it came in under labor and came in under materials. And I actually, when I job costed this job, it came in at 100 net profit per hour. I said, that's great. And he goes, yeah, it really was great because I was able to give a piece of it to my favorite charity. And it made me feel really good.

And I said, you finally get it and he goes. The more you earn, the more you can give away and he has lived by that philosophy since every one of his employees at the end of every year gets a percentage of the net profit per hour or the net profit based on that profit per hour. And so to his charities, his employees are fanatical about knowing what the bottom line is.

Because they know that they're getting a piece of it every single year. The, the percentage goes up, their percentage goes up. if the percentage of net profit per hour goes up, their percentage of that net profit per hour goes up at the same time. And it's been really interesting because there's been good years.

Years . But in all of the years, they get it and they work towards making the bad years better, which is the cool part about it, more so than anything else. And,it's been fun to watch it over the years. and the thing that happened that we didn't think would happen is that, He doesn't have to fire bad apples anymore.

Guess who fires them? 

Steve: Each other. People. The people fire them. 

Ruth: Yeah, because they're affecting their pocketbook. 

Steve: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't belong here, right? Yeah. Goodbye. And 

Ruth: they make their life miserable and they leave.

Steve: That's very cool. Now you mentioned pricing because you say, okay, you start with what, let's start with, say, we'll say, okay, you want to make 100. Per hour off of this per unit or per box per unit or whatever, whether it's a product or service or something like that. All right. And that's where you start.

That's right. All right. And then you work backwards from there,to develop pricing. Is that right? 

Ruth: And part of pricing is 

Steve: marketing expense. Part of pricing is marketing expense. when you are in that kind of a conversation with somebody about the pricing and how you get, get to there, where does the,do you even think about, oh, let's, we can compete on pricing?

Ruth: No, because I don't want them to be the cheapest game in town. The thing that I loved about Uncopyable is we're here, we have the best value, we look it up for our moose, and then we don't worry about all the other crap. Excuse me for saying it that way, but that's the way I look at it, 

Steve: is that we never Okay,look.

You can't use language like that on here, you said crap, you say shit.

I've never said that word in my, in the podcast ever, but I think it's funny. You apologize for using the word crap. all right. Yeah. So go on with that. Okay, what you're saying about 

Ruth: price. All right, because I know if we price this way and they want 100 bucks per unit, whatever the unit is, we're going to have to add the overhead cost to it, then we're going to have to add the direct cost to it.

And their pricing is going to come out higher than most other people's pricing. And so we have to find the people who appreciate value, who appreciate the fact that they're going to take care of them right the first time, or whatever it is that makes them uncopyable. All right, they, we have to, you can help them identify their moose.

And if they haven't listened to your podcast before, they better listen to a previous one to know what a moose is. Know what a 

Steve: moose is. 

Ruth: Yeah. And we have to find that moose and the moose have to find meese. 

Steve: Is that right? I'm okay with that. 

Ruth: Yeah. So that's where it comes in and say, okay, you can't compete on the bottom line here.

You have to educate. You have to explain to the customer the value of what you provide and what's in it for them. And your moose will pay attention. Who cares about everybody else? That's why I talk about on, when you ask me what I want to talk about, I want to talk about uncopyable financials, because we start at the bottom line, we, we go up and we find they're going to be higher priced than their competition a lot of times.

Go find the moose. And that's where you come in. 

Steve: Yeah, we go, we want to find moose who understand, where value is clear, the decision is easy. which is one of my sayings, and,in my, my, my friend Dan Kennedy, has another great line, and He said, if you can't be the lowest price, in the, in, in the market, there is no competitive advantage for being the second lowest price.

Yeah, I get it. he's a complete advocate of be the high price, but delivery value where people say. Oh, I gotta have it. I gotta have it. Yeah, of course, it makes one, complete sense to have to do that. so what you're looking for is you're looking for, a way to start from that beginning point.

All right. Net profit per unit line. Net profit per unit line. and then happily meet, the marketing strategy, the, the competitive strategy, the differentiation and stuff like, and those things so that. So that you are attracting the right moose. You're working with the right people.

you, obviously you were working with this company that, that sold for 9 million in cash. You worked with them for 16 years, right? that's. That we in the business call that a long-term relationship. 

Ruth: My longest client, who I started with in 1987, sold his business in December of 21, and I helped him sell it.

It was time to go. 

Steve: you know what? That, and we have clients, like that, that, we've, we, we have a client that has been with us for, Almost 30 years, I also have a client in this one. You're gonna you're gonna get a kick out of I also have my current largest client Has been a client of ours now for I think seven years But he knew me 25 years ago and he watched me work with a trade association that he was part of, that he was actually chairman of the board for a few years.

He watched me work with them and he didn't hire me for 18 years. And I still can't, just every, almost, every time we're together, I go, why, what did it, why did it take you 18 years? What was his answer? He said, I don't know, I don't know. He says, I was making money, then one day I woke up and I thought, Maybe Steve can help me make more money.

and we did good. But he's one of those guys that he is like, he understands the bottom line. he understands that whole all over the line stuff. And yeah, he's just a pleasure to work with. And as, as I'm sure your, a good percentage of people that you've worked with, are pleasure to work with too.

all So we're talking to people, right now and most of the people we're talking to are, are the moose that we're talking about. that's who we, that's who my. listeners are. My BFFs. you said that we would have several different types of,what do you call it?

Yeah,steps for a profitable business. All right. So number one, I think clearly We've driven home that where you start is with that unit cost. No, unit profit. I'm sorry, unit profit that you want to have. Okay. is there, is, is there a next step or is there something else that we need to do?

what, where do we go from here? 

Ruth: All right, that's step one. Step two is what's, what piece of overhead is associated with that unit. for example, every, We have all these fun types of things that we have to pay for, whether we sell one dime or, one drop or one service or one product, we have to pay the rent.

We have to pay the light bill. We have to pay, for somebody to do our books, maybe somebody to answer the phones, maybe for your marketing costs, all these things that we have to have in order to stay in business. That's the overhead piece of it. And so we need to know if overhead, let's say, is 100, 000 for the year.

How much of that 100, 000 does get, gets assigned to each unit of profit. So we start at the bottom with profits per unit. The next step is overhead per unit that gives us the gross profit per unit. All I'm doing is taking the P& L going backwards, and then we add the direct cost for creating it, which is step 4, which is either labor, materials, freight, commissions, or Whatever, and then that gives you your cell per unit, your unit revenue that you want to make per unit.

And so that's the P& L piece of it. The other thing that you have to make sure of is that the people who are producing your units are productive. There's no sense in paying somebody for 40 hours a week, and they're only producing units for 20. You're losing your butt. You really and truly are. So that's the other step.

That's step five, basically. And so you have to make sure that everybody who's working on your units, per se, is productive at what they do. If you're paying them for 40 hours, they'd better be producing for 40 hours and that type of thing. and the fun part about it is really and truly. Once people see what the productivity issue is, it always gets better.

You post it and they go, Oh, that's not good. Or that's great. And we just keep going and going like that, So the thing that we have to do is, as we've talked to and alluded to, is, if your revenue per unit is higher than your competition, who cares? Go find your make sure that the people are productively producing whatever that is so that if you're paying them for 40 hours or, whatever, they're producing for 40 hours or very close to it.

They do get vacation, they do get holidays, they do get sick days,meeting time or whatever else it is. So it's never going to be 100%. 

Steve: No, but and you mentioned that, if it's higher than, if that unit profit costs or that unit profit, is Or the cost, is higher than the competition, who cares?

Yeah, who cares? why do you say that? I know you've already alluded to it, but go a little deeper into why. Why... Because some people are going to say, Oh, no, we got it. we have to make sure that we're keeping our costs as low as possible so that we're competing. So we are competing.

Ruth: you're keeping your costs as low as possible so that you can make the most net profit per hour or whatever net profit per unit you've got. However, if you decide that you want X number of dollars per unit on the bottom line and you work on backwards and you're, One and a half times your closest competitors, find a reason that you can justify the one and a half times and find the moose who will be, we will listen to you who understand the value and who will pay it.

I'll give you a another really cool example. One of my former clients, who is now nicely retired. He, his net profit per hour, and he was a contractor too, I'm talking contractor stories today, I'm sorry, I don't know why, but anyway, he, his net profit per unit was 1, 000 per hour, which is unheard of in most areas of the country.

That, that 

Steve: sounds pretty good to 

Ruth: me. yeah, he retired with a lot of money, but think about it this way. He knew exactly who his moose were, right? They were high net worth individuals who cared about one thing. actually two things, but one thing was they made one phone call. Everything was done.

Everything was done perfectly. And there was never a problem. And they were, they had the money. They were willing to pay for that convenience. And a lot of them were, celebrities and they were in a situation where they wanted to be treated like humans, taking pictures of, cell phones and selfies and all that sort of fun stuff.

So they did that. And guess what? He was able to do it. Everything was done by referral because once word got around, it was a perfect situation. It's the perfect example of the moose. That's who his 

Steve: moose was. Yeah, and in cases like that, success begets success. That's that, law of increasing returns that, the first time I ever heard that was back in the day when Microsoft first came out.

yeah, and then they started to own everything. And then that, and I heard about that law of increasing returns. I go, I like that law. I like that law because that's like self referencing, self, it's a self referencing situation. And, and anytime we can get to that, that, that is awesome.

all right. Is there anything, what's next? What's the next step? That was it. I gave you the five. Oh, you gave me the five. Oh, we didn't number them. You didn't number them for me. I'm sorry. All right. Number 

Ruth: one. Number one. Number two, overhead costs per unit. Number three, direct costs per unit, which gives you number four, your revenue per unit.

And number five is make sure they're productive. Boom. 

Steve: How's that? Drop the mic. Dropped the mic. My gosh. Yeah. No, that's, that is fantastic. Now. All right. So next, next step since, we're pushing the time here. So the next step is if somebody has a question for you, how to, now tell me how to reach, how they can reach you.

And then I will make sure it goes into the, into the video and into show notes and transcript. everything like that. So how do they reach you? The, 

Ruth: if you go to Ruth king.info, there's a contact form on there. You can, email is rKing@ontheribbon.com, which is another long story, . That's why I've never stopped using that email address 

Steve: on the ribbon.com.

Dot com. Okay. Is there a website? 

Ruth: Not anymore. It was, it was the aggregator of all of our websites that we were doing. It was the ribbon that tied all the 

Steve: websites. I see. Okay. So there's, that's why it was on the ribbon behind that. Yeah. All right. and, and of course you got, you have a plethora of books.

Ruth: They're all on Amazon. Just Google me on Amazon. All 

Steve: right. Now, tell us more about this new online 

Ruth: app. It's financiallyfit. business. And 

Steve: I Is it dot it's dot business, not dot biz. It's dot biz. That's right. Dot business. Financiallyfit. business. Again, I'll have that in the show notes and every, everywhere else too.

Ruth: I got tired of doing financials by hand for the past 40 years. So it was time to actually create the software package to be able to do it. So version one is you enter your data from your financial statements, and it will give you all the trends of where your business is going, the good, the bad, the ugly.

And you'll be able in five minutes to figure out what's going on with your business. And everybody asks you, can't QuickBooks do this? And yeah, they probably can do piece of it. But not the graphs per se, because of the trailing data, and I also find that if you did it in QuickBooks, you don't look at your financial statements because you would miss negatives where they weren't.

If they were just looking at aggregates, you have to look at your financials. You can spend 5 minutes a month, no excuses. And so that's what's there. version two, which will be hopefully out next year. Let's get some, revenues and some subscribers and things with version one. We're going to be looking at, being able to scan in your financials and the data be popping out of it.

That would be cool. 

Steve: Next year. Wow. Sounds like somebody's,setting themselves up for what Kay and I call non airplane income. Yes, 

Ruth: that is non airplane income. This is the first thing that's not dependent upon me other than my books, which 

Steve: is really cool. Yeah, one of our one of our early goals when we were working on all this stuff was that our non airplane income would equal our cost of living.

And that was one of the first real, smart financial goals that we set. So when we reached that, it was like, holy cow, this is fun. I don't have to go on an airplane. My bills are paid, and all that sort of stuff. and then, and, the speaking turned into fun money.

And, and then COVID hit and K. Her,my, my smoking hot and,very smart wife, which is why the two of you get along so well, I think, is, she finally said, you know what? You hate travel. And I said, yes, I do. She said, you are now, she says, you can, you are now done with live speaking.

And that was. about six months after COVID, cause she said, you have been having, she said, you've been in such a good mood since you have not been on an airplane. This was selfish. I know. And,so yeah, so I've had a great time since I haven't been, I, and I've only been on a few planes since then.

but I keep getting all these, I have 6 million miles. six million miles. And, that is a sick person, if you ask me, who Flies 6 million, 6 million miles. But I know that you're on the road a lot. and,and yeah, and I know that,and I just know that Kay just thinks she thinks the world of you.

And,and I just say, I, I'm afraid to talk to her 'cause she's so smart and she's talking about money and,I just make money, So that's general. There's nothing wrong with that. So yeah, nothing's wrong with that. Yeah. So what. what last piece of advice do we have to share with the people that are watching or listening to us?

What I 

Ruth: would say to everybody is do not be afraid of being quote unquote higher price than everybody else in the industry. Go find the moose. Once you know what you want on the bottom line, who will support that bottom line for you? And that's where you and Kay come in. 

Steve: That's right. And our, cause our philosophy is, you know what?

every industry has a high price leader, every single industry. Why not 

Ruth: me? Yeah, I agree. 

Steve: I totally agree. Yeah. Ruth King, the, profit and wealth guru. I won't tell people what your other one was since you said that's not that supposed to be erased from the internet.

It 

Ruth: will be. 

Steve: Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today, Ruth. I really appreciate it. This has been awesome. I think you're going to be a lot of people sitting there going, Oh boy, I better call Ruth. thanks 

Ruth: for having me, Steve. I appreciate it. And I look forward to our further conversations next time I'm in 

Steve: Seattle.

That's right. Yeah. Next time you're yeah, over there on the. on the islands, on the peninsula or something like that, get together. So thank you again. This is Steve Miller, not the rock star, Kelly's dad, marketing gunslinger, husband of the smoking hot wife, Kay, who currently is on a mission in Guatemala, take helping people who are far less,what's the word I'm looking for?

not as, they don't have the benefits that we have. And she's helping people right now. And that's awesome. and I'm not, and I don't have my partner, David Mayo Loomis. who is the author of this book? Marketing is everything we do. I always show his book on, as often as I can, because I want people to buy that.

And we'll be back again next time with either me and David or, me and somebody else or David and somebody else or some other combination. Who knows what's going to be. Because, and as Dave always says, we always finish with buh bye.