Author Archives: Taura Costidis

WESST Workshop Teaches Essentials of Marketing Success

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Your brandBy Taura Costidis, Finance New Mexico

Employing tactics without a strategy is like hiking into the wilderness without a map, provisions or a plan. Yet many novice and veteran business owners take this cart-before-the-horse approach when marketing their product or services, often with underwhelming results.

As a marketing consultant for the nonprofit economic development organization WESST, Mark Gilboard helps entrepreneurs reach and attract customers by first identifying why their business exists in the first place. Continue reading →

Quick Ratios Help Businesses Take Their Financial Pulse

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Liquidity ratioBy the commercial lending team (led by Alan Overton) at Century Bank

Operating a successful business requires attention to numbers — especially to basic financial ratios derived from the business’s financial statements.

The current and quick ratios calculate a company’s liquidity, while the debt ratio evaluates its long-term solvency. The gross profit margin shows if sales revenue covers the expenses incurred in making those sales. Continue reading →

Entrepreneurial Orbit: Businesses at Heart of Resource Expo

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Jack's Plastic Welding

Jack’s Plastic Welding, a NMSBA program participant, manufactures a wide range of products, from whitewater rafts, to simulated lung cavities for patient simulators, to collars for space capsules. Photos courtesy Jack’s Plastic Welding.

By Finance New Mexico

Once a business gets its foot inside the door with an economic development organization like the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), its opportunities for growth expand dramatically.

Jack Kloepfer discovered this while navigating his Aztec, New Mexico, business beyond the line of outdoor recreation products he built from thermoplastic-coated fabrics and into products for energy and aerospace industries.

The company’s relationship with New Mexico MEP has led to others, including the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program (NMSBA), the Small Business Development Center at San Juan College in Farmington and the New Mexico Economic Development Department, where Jack’s Plastic Welding CEO Errol Baade hopes to find capital to expand production space. Continue reading →

Summit Aims To Support, Catalyze Native Businesswomen

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Native Women's Business Summit

Courtesy @NativeWomenLead on Twitter

By Damon Scott, Finance New Mexico

New Mexico is home to a large Native American population, but business opportunities for Native women can be elusive. The Native Women’s Business Summit — scheduled for April 13-14 at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2401 12th Street NW in Albuquerque — aims to change that.

Summit co-founders Vanessa Roanhorse and Stephine Poston want to increase the number of businesses owned by Native women. Continue reading →

NMSBIC Sets Sights on Young Entrepreneurs

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By Russ Cummins, Executive Director and Investment Advisor, New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation

Once limited to hallway discussions at Ivy League colleges, entrepreneurship is now taught at New Mexico’s public and private universities. Discoveries made in classrooms and university labs are being commercialized through licensing agreements and “technology transfer” departments created to connect student and faculty entrepreneurs with management expertise and capital.

Board members of the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation (NMSBIC) support this trend among college-age adults who have the knowledge, moxie and support systems to turn their ideas into viable commercial businesses.

That’s why NMSBIC is hosting a networking session at the Inventors and Entrepreneurs Workshop sponsored by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) Center for Technology Commercialization (CTC) in Socorro. Continue reading →

Business Incubation: A Model That Works

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Santa Fe Business IncubatorBy Sandy Nelson, Finance New Mexico

The Santa Fe Business Incubator (SFBI) has plenty to show for its 20 years of existence: More than 145 companies have taken flight from the ever-expanding facility at 3900 Paseo del Sol in Santa Fe, and 1,000 new jobs have been created, 49 of them in the last fiscal year.

Paying attention to the business climate and adapting to opportunities explain SFBI’s longevity, according to president and CEO Marie Longserre. Continue reading →

Workshop Points Small Businesses Toward Government Contracts

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F-35A Lightning II aircraft receive fuel from a KC-10 Extender from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., July 13, 2015, during a flight from England to the U.S. Courtesy U.S. Air Force /Staff Sgt. Madelyn Brown

By Finance New Mexico

The federal government is the world’s biggest customer and a major driver in New Mexico’s economy.

While only a fraction of the $8.2 billion that Uncle Sam spent in New Mexico in fiscal year 2017 benefitted local companies, advisers at the state’s four Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTACs) work to increase the flow of federal dollars to small businesses that offer products or services the government wants. Continue reading →

Advisory Board Offers Objective View

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By Finance New Mexico in collaboration with the New Mexico Small Business Development Center Network

New Mexico SBDCA business doesn’t have to be big to benefit from the advice and expertise of other professionals. A savvy entrepreneur will assemble a board of trusted advisers to provide feedback and suggestions for leading the organization.

Unlike a board of directors, an advisory board comprises people with no legal authority, fiduciary responsibilities or other obligations to the business. Continue reading →

Tax Law Doesn’t Alter Definitions of Independent Contractor

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Employee vs contractorBy Finance New Mexico

The new tax law passed by Congress in December 2017 aims to lower taxes for everyone, but proponents cite its overwhelming benefits to businesses. Under the new law, companies — including sole proprietors and workers in the gig economy — can deduct 20 percent of their revenue from taxable income.

This provision alone could disrupt formal relationships between employers and workers, increasing the number of people who define themselves as independent contractors. Continue reading →

NM MEP Offers Crash Course in ISO Certification

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By Denise Williams, Innovation Director, Northwest Region, New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership

New Mexico companies seeking higher-margin work often seek ISO certification, and the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NM MEP) can help them prepare to get it.

Certification with the most recent iteration of the best-known ISO quality management standard, ISO 9001:2015, is increasingly required by top-tier companies and government agencies that hire private contractors for supplies or services. Continue reading →