LEAD TO SUCCEED

Duryee (The Business Owner’s Guide to Achieving Financial Success, 1994) provides financial and leadership advice for owners of moving and storage companies.

The author opens with a list of traits he associates with effective leadership, including integrity, attitude, courage, vision, compassion and communication. Next, he addresses what business owners must do to attain what he calls “perpetual profitability.” To that end, he offers a sort of “Finance 101” for business owners, focusing particularly on those who own moving and storage companies. The first few chapters cover different aspects of financial analysis, to help owners uncover the true state of a company’s finances. He breaks down how to create and analyze basic documents, such as balance sheets and income statements, and also discusses cash flow, expenses and capital budgeting. Duryee follows this with a look at how to create various types of financial projections. Finally, he offers tips and suggestions on how to work effectively with financial advisers, such as bankers and certified public accountants. Appendices include sample forms, which may be a huge time-saver for business owners, as they make it easy to apply Duryee’s principles. Although he wrote the book specifically for moving and storage companies, nearly everything here also applies to other types of businesses; the industry-specific information is mostly limited to suggested financial benchmarks. Overall, Duryee’s instruction is crisp, clear and detailed, as he lays out basic information that all business owners should know (although sadly, many don’t). That said, his leadership advice in the first two chapters is less detailed and helpful, and seems oddly out of place in a finance-oriented guide.

A helpful guide to the financial basics for business owners.