Author Archives: Admin

Mfg Day Engages Next Generation Workers

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Technology Leadership High School students tour MediNatura in Albuquerque

Young people don’t have to leave New Mexico or assume significant college loan debt to find good-paying, skilled jobs in cutting-edge industries.

New Mexico’s manufacturers want students and those new to the workforce to consider fulfilling and challenging careers in their critical industry, which contributes $4.62 billion to the state’s economy and employs 26,000 people.

To that end, dozens of businesses are inviting students and young people to tour manufacturing facilities and attend presentations as part of Manufacturing Day (aka Mfg Day) — a nationwide celebration that begins Oct. 7 and stretches through October in New Mexico.

Mfg Day NM events organized by New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP) include facility tours that demonstrate how modern manufacturing jobs are nothing like the monotonous, dead-end factory jobs of the last century. On these tours, students and the public can see how products are made or repurposed using advanced technology, artificial intelligence, and 3-D imaging.

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The Loan Fund Fuels Adobe Tradition

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Albuquerque Joinery is a small design-build company that specializes in new home construction using traditional adobe building techniques and fine carpentry.

Kenny DeLapp and Esther Fredrickson launched the business in February 2020 after building their own adobe home in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Built under an owner-builder permit, their 1,600 square foot home is a showcase of modern construction and traditional materials with brick floors, exposed vigas, adobe mud plaster walls, and site-built solid wood doors.

DeLapp, who is skilled in masonry and fine carpentry, learned traditional building techniques while working with his uncle Win, a long-time adobe builder known for custom furniture, cabinets, and museum exhibits.

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UNM Rainforest Innovations Offers Business Mentoring

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The University of New Mexico offers training and technical assistance to entrepreneurs and small-business owners at all of its UNM locations, including downtown Albuquerque (Rainforest Innovations building), Taos, Los Lunas, Gallup, and Los Alamos. Business mentoring is one facet of its services.

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Branded Grants Help the Lucky Few

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Large corporations have jumped on the business-resource bandwagon to offer grants that aim to help entrepreneurs launch new businesses. Grants of $20,000, $10,000, and even $5,000 can jumpstart a small business and push it into profitability if the money can be used for equipment purchases or marketing expenses. If the money comes with business mentoring, the prize is even more valuable.

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Business Incubator Opens in Valencia County

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Valencia County small businesses and startups have another resource to help them grow their businesses. The Valencia County Business Incubator (VCBI), located at 360 Rio Communities Blvd. in the City of Rio Communities, opened in August 2022 to provide consulting, mentoring, and seminars, in addition to office space and workstations.

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New Mexico Startup Gets Help with Pitch to Potential Clients

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Working with New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP) shaved at least a year off the time RingIR president Dr. Charles Harb expected to spend getting his company’s portable gas-detecting product ready for market.

And given the disruption and delay caused by the state’s protracted coronavirus-related shutdown, the value of that time is hard to calculate.

“We were working with (New Mexico MEP) on a business plan just before COVID hit, and everything got shut down,” said Harb, who runs the company with his wife and co-founder, Anna.

The couple launched the business in California in 2013 to commercialize the wideband optical spectrometer Harb had developed at the University of New South Wales in Australia to detect airborne chemicals.

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Protect Your IP

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According to legalzoom.com, “Intellectual property rights are the ownership rights you have over things that you create as a result of your original ideas.”

As entrepreneurship has grown in New Mexico, so have the number of resources available to help innovators protect the economic value of their intellectual property.

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NMSBA Leveraged Project: Apply by Sept. 14

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The New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories is soliciting proposals for leveraged projects.  The deadline for submission is September 14, 2022. The program does not provide capital or financial investment, however, awarded businesses receive monetary value of up to $120,000 in the form of technical assistance from laboratory engineers, scientists, or their community partners.

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WESST Helps Hobbyists Become Business Owners

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Photo by @courtneymcook

According to Brad Crowson, a former regional program coordinator at WESST, more than 70 percent of business registrations in Rio Rancho are for home-based businesses. Crowson, who worked one-on-one with new and aspiring small-business owners as a consultant for the nonprofit business development organization, believes the home-based business trend is supported by the widespread availability of high-speed internet, among other factors.

“It’s also, in most cases, fairly low-risk financially and offers significant upside potential for both personal fulfillment and income generation — not to mention terrific tax benefits if structured properly,” Crowson said in a recent WESST blog post.

Many people engage in home-based hobby activities that turn into a source of income; however, to claim tax benefits referred to by Crowson, individuals must demonstrate to the Internal Revenue Service that their activities are intended to make a profit.

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