Cultivating efficiency: keeping an eye on the bottom line helps agribusiness firm grow.

• Author: Hughes, Leah
• Position: H&H FARM MACHINE CO.

Brian Nance has an office with a view. It doesn't overlook the ocean or a city skyline. From his office chair, he watches employees inside the shop at H&H Farm Machine Co. He notices if someone's slacking or someone's giving extra effort. But more important, he oversees the entire operation.

Nance and his wife, Gail, purchased the Monroe company in 2004 from its original owners, B.B. and Jan Haigler. The Haiglers started H&H in 1978. The company builds custom sprayers used on row crops and in poultry houses as well as those used by highway divisions, landscape businesses, and golf courses. Much of its business comes from custom orders that bigger farm-equipment companies can't or don't choose to accommodate. H&H's 4,000-member customer base contains people with two to three acres of vegetables as well as farmers with 10,000 acres under cultivation. It also sells parts and services equipment.

Nance brings years of agribusiness experience to H&H. Before Nance bought the company, he worked as a manager of a farm that happened to be a customer of H&H. When Nance heard the owners were looking to sell, he researched the sprayer business. After reviewing three years' worth of financial records, he saw that the company paid its bills and had no outstanding debt. He then went to work for the Haiglers for a year.

"By the end, I was running it like it was my own," Nance says.

After the ownership transition, B.B. Haigler stayed on with Nance for about six months.

The Haiglers also helped with financing, providing a loan that the Nances paid off in about seven years. Today, Gail still works full-time as a bookkeeper for S.J. Black & Son, a John Deere dealership in Monroe, and manages the payroll for H&H in the evenings.

With 10 years of business ownership to his credit, Brian Nance has learned a thing or two about finance. For one thing, he recommends that any small business hire a good accountant. Although many CPAs advise business owners according to tax regulations and projections, a bigger-picture view is important. For example, during the first few years of running the business, the Nances spent money on business-related items toward the end of the year to reduce the amount of taxes they would have to pay. But they later learned that it might have been better to pay the additional 30% in taxes and save any leftover money for the coming year.

Another lesson Nance learned early on was to avoid costs related to unemployment by resisting the urge to...