HVAC Industry Trailblazer Ruth King Joins Contracting Business Hall of Fame

From Engineer to Educator

King’s path to the HVAC industry wasn’t a straight line. Trained as a chemical engineer, she quickly realized the field wasn’t her calling. She returned to school, earned her MBA, and began working with Service America, where she discovered her passion for helping contractors succeed.

“I worked with them for about 18 months — got my feet wet, learned a whole lot, and helped a lot of contractors who were their franchisees,” King recalls.

After being laid off, King launched her own consulting business. Mingledorff’s was her very first client. Word of mouth spread from there, and King’s consulting career in the trades was born, opening the door to a decades-long calling of guiding HVAC and other service businesses toward stronger business and financial foundations.

“The guys I work with are really, really good at the operation side, but not necessarily the financial side,” King says. “Numbers come really easy to me being an engineer — I found that out when I went to MBA school.”

King’s name has become synonymous with contractor education. She has dedicated her career to helping contractors not only survive — but thrive — in an increasingly competitive marketplace. She has trained, coached, and mentored over 1,000 contractors across the U.S. — in every state except North Dakota, which is still on her bucket list.

Championing Contractor Success

King is no stranger to entrepreneurship and hard work. Over the course of her career, she’s launched eight businesses — some shut down, one went bankrupt, and several have been highly successful. Her latest venture is Financially Fit Business, reflects her continued innovation and belief in accessible education.

The AI-driven platform, which King helped design and train over four years, automatically reads and analyzes small-business financial statements.

“That was interesting and fun,” she says. “I drove my programmers absolutely insane! But now, anyone can do it — AI knows what I know now. If you’re on QuickBooks online, you click a button and AI reads it, analyzes it, tells you exactly what things mean, and what you have to do if the numbers are not going the right way. Or you can upload a PDF of a P&L sheet, and it does the same thing. There are no excuses that you don’t understand your financials anymore.”

King emphasizes that accurate data remains key: “Our research shows that about 80% of businesses’ financial statements are not accurate. If your data’s wrong, your decisions will be wrong — garbage in, garbage out.”

Long before virtual learning became the norm, King pioneered online HVAC business training, creating platforms like HVACChannel.tv to make education accessible to contractors anywhere.

“As a need arose, we started businesses,” she says. “Most of the training and consulting I do now is online. Technology has allowed us to do many things we couldn’t do before.”

For King, the true reward is seeing the results. “The thing about what we do more so than anything else is we can prove profitability — the graphs show it, the monthly financials show it. It’s fun when they actually do really well. I get a lot of satisfaction out of it.”

She hopes she is remembered by the HVAC industry as someone who really cared.

“I want them to do very well,” she says about her clients.

King tends to be very direct, which doesn’t always appeal to everyone. “Some people don’t like that ,and we don’t work together for very long. I tell everybody that I have either very long or very short relationships with my clients,” she says with a smile.

A Pioneer for Women in HVACR

King has also been a trailblazer and champion for women in the trades. In 1990, she took the Georgia HVAC license exam — at a time when few women were in the field.

“The day I took my test, a guy walked up and said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’” King recalls. “I looked him in the eye and said, ‘I have every right to be here as you do.’”

Determined to prove herself, she earned her license and went on to break barriers for women across the industry. In 2002, King co-founded Women in HVACR, an organization created to support and advance the careers of women in a traditionally male-dominated field.

Her vision helped build a community where women could access mentorship, professional development, and leadership opportunities — laying the groundwork for greater diversity and inclusion across the industry. The founding of Women in HVACR stands as a pivotal milestone in HVAC history, inspiring a new generation of women to pursue technical and business excellence while strengthening the industry through broader perspectives and talent.

A Lasting Legacy of Education and Empowerment

Despite decades of service, King isn’t slowing down. “I’ve got a business plan until I’m 120,” she laughs. “As long as I’m mentally and physically able, I’ll keep consulting and building Financially Fit Business. And somebody needs to get me to North Dakota.”

Outside of work, King treasures time with her daughter, Kate — taking a special trip together each year. Their most recent destination: Portugal, marking their 11th adventure. She also enjoys starting each morning with puzzles — Wordle, Spelling Bee, and crosswords.

King’s induction into the Contracting Business HVAC Hall of Fame is more than a personal milestone — it’s a recognition of a career devoted to lifting an entire industry. Through her teaching, writing, and mentorship, she has redefined what it means to be a successful contractor: one who understands not only how to fix systems but how to build a sustainable, profitable business.

Welcome to the HVAC Hall of Fame, Ruth.