Category Archives: General Business Advice

The Taxman Cometh – For Gig Workers Too

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The gig economy makes it possible for thousands of Americans to join the ranks of self-employed people, whether they’re driving for hire or doing short-term assignments as accountants or writers or using a 3-D printer to manufacture products for others.

Such jobs offer flexibility and independence, but they come with the same obligations as any other sole proprietorship, including the responsibility to file a Schedule C form and pay self-employment taxes in addition to income taxes they might owe if the business is profitable. Continue reading →

Businesses Set Sights on Cybersecurity

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Jennifer Kurtz, cybersecurity expert at MEP. Article by Jason Gibbs.

Jennifer Kurtz quickly boils down the reasons small businesses should care about cybersecurity.

You want to keep your business, your reputation, your customers, your money and your people. You don’t like getting sued. And you want to sleep well.

Pretty hard to argue with that.

Kurtz, the Cyber Program Director at Manufacturer’s Edge, a Colorado-based nonprofit that works to boost the competitiveness of Colorado manufacturers through that state’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, shared her expertise with attendees of New Mexico MEP’s Manufacturing Day activities in Albuquerque last October. During the New Mexico MEP Manufacturing Summit, ‘Thinking Machines and Smart Workforce,’ Kurtz addressed the impact of cybersecurity, breaches and data theft.

Kurtz told the New Mexico MEP attendees she uses the phrase “Biz Burglary” when discussing what happens when phishing, ransomware or security breaches result in data being stolen or compromised. And, she says, it has led to financial loss and, in some cases, businesses having to close entirely. Continue reading →

State Offers Grants to Promote Tourism

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New Mexico attracts more visitors every year, but the state wants to further boost tourism and related revenue by expanding on successful programs like New Mexico True and the Cooperative Marketing Program (CoOp).

New Mexico True is a brand that businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations can use by partnering with the New Mexico Tourism Department. That involves demonstrating how the organization expresses or evokes the state’s distinctive landscapes, cultures, food, art or history.

The CoOp program gives local nonprofits, municipalities and tribal governments a financial incentive to market what’s uniquely New Mexican about their event or location and even participate in existing advertising campaigns. Through the CoOp program, state money is leveraged with money from other public entities to amplify media buying power for all involved parties. (Private businesses can contribute up to 50 percent of a public entity’s total CoOp investment.) Continue reading →

Workshops Help New Businesses Understand Tax Law

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New employers can find it confusing to navigate New Mexico’s system for computing, reporting and paying business taxes. But the state Tax and Revenue Department expects them to figure it out and comply.

To simplify the process, the TRD offers free workshops, including one in Albuquerque on January 28 that promises to give new employers an overview of state tax laws, walk them through basic legal requirements for workers’ compensation insurance and workplace safety and show them how to add up what they owe on the sales of products or services.

Taxing gross revenue

New Mexico doesn’t have the traditional sales tax most states do. Rather than assessing the buyer a percentage of his or her purchase price, New Mexico requires the seller of a product or service to collect that add-on fee—the gross receipts tax or GRT—and pay it directly to the state. Continue reading →

Predictive Analytics Isn’t Just for the Big Guys

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Image courtesy of Carlos Muza. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Predicting consumer behavior can be an obsession for businesses, no matter what their size. Big corporations dedicate entire departments to divining what people will want next so they can be first to offer it, and they invest massive amounts of money into predictive analytics—the mining of massive sets of data for patterns and trends in hopes of giving businesses a competitive edge by helping them predict the future.

Smaller businesses typically don’t have the means or need to invest in the sophisticated types of data crunching that their larger cousins do, but smaller-scale data analysis tools can help them track past and real-time trends and behaviors so they can make fact-based decisions about how to allocate resources. Continue reading →

Delegation Equals Liberation for Small Business Owners

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Product shipment preparation is one task that could be delegated. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Sooner or later, an entrepreneur has to know his limits and acknowledge that some tasks can and should be done by others to allow him to focus on the bigger picture. That requires delegation — trusting others, whether subordinates, partners or independent contractors, to complete an assignment as directed.

As obvious as that sounds, an entrepreneur can have a hard time trusting others with his “baby,” ultimately defeating many business objectives and stunting the company’s natural growth.

Many businesses in New Mexico start small, with the owner doing all the work that’s required to get off the ground. Success only increases the workload, and the owner who doesn’t delegate eventually will find her attention pulled away from mission-critical decisions into fussing with day-to-day minutia — answering phones or emails from clients or vendors, filing, blogging — or running in place trying to accomplish tasks outside her expertise. Continue reading →

Even a Small Management Team is Essential to Startup Success

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Article by Sandy Nelson

While it’s normal for the owner of a new business to go the do-it-yourself route, either for lack of money or sparse human resources, no one individual can perform every task associated with nurturing a startup and do all of them well.

The person who sets the idea in motion might not have a clue how to keep books and end up avoiding this essential skill in pursuit of more interesting or gratifying activities, such as networking and prototype creation. Continue reading →

Businesses Needed to Support New Mexico’s Growing Film Industry

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Lights, Camera, Profit: The film industry provides ample opportunities for NM businesses. Article by Jason Gibbs.

With New Mexico gaining a reputation among film production companies, local businesses are needed to help fill a growing demand for services as more television shows and movies shoot in the Land of Enchantment.

The New Mexico Film Office reports nearly $506 million in direct spending in the state during 2017, and productions including “Godless” and “Waco” are racking up Emmy nominations by the fistful. This has put the state in the spotlight and local businesses are increasingly needed to provide an array of goods and services in addition to locations and crews. Continue reading →

NMSBA Program Brings Small Businesses, National Laboratories Together

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Visit Honeymoon Brewery Dec. 8 for their grand opening in Santa Fe. Article by Jason Gibbs.

The crew from Santa Fe’s Honeymoon Brewery is raising a glass to the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program and offering a hearty “salud” to David Fox of Los Alamos National Laboratories.

The cause for celebration? The successful pairing of a small-scale kombucha brewing business and a scientist at one of the nation’s premier research laboratories that was made possible through the NMSBA, a free program that gives small business owners in New Mexico access to the resources available at both LANL and Sandia National Laboratory.

For Honeymoon founders Ayla Bystrom-Williams and James Hill, working with LANL’s Fox allowed them to refine their brewing process and scientifically cut through a trial-and-error development process to better understand how to achieve the particular flavors they sought. Continue reading →

Startup Resources Intrinsic to Business Success

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With help from Accion, ‘magic,’ passion, comfort with risk are other key ingredients.

Daven Lee, Owner of Love+Leche; Article by Sandy Nelson

Borrowing money to start or build a business entails taking risk — not just for the lender but also the borrower. But unless the entrepreneur has rich relatives or massive savings to draw on, securing capital usually requires multiple loans over many years to start and expand a business.

Daven Lee has tapped into New Mexico’s many small-business resources over nearly two decades to turn Love + Leche from a home-based maker of handmade soaps and lotion bars — made with milk from her own goat herd and other natural products — for retail sale into a viable year-round business that gets about half its revenue from wholesale markets throughout the U.S. and in Mexico, England and Australia. Continue reading →