Category Archives: Articles

Air Force Veteran’s Business Growth Enabled by Accion

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Firefighters training on extracting crash victims from a car wreck

By Finance New Mexico

Gary Peterson’s Albuquerque auto shop is a profit-generator with philanthropy at its heart.

Peterson, a 22-year Air Force veteran, started One Community Auto in Albuquerque to refurbish rundown vehicles and donate the sales proceeds to a variety of charities, from Assistance Dogs of the West to veteran suicide-prevention and domestic violence prevention programs. He calls this aspect of his business “social entrepreneurship.”

The company’s newest endeavor involves providing abandoned or wrecked cars to organizations that demolish them in training exercises. Continue reading →

Veterans Get Break on Contract, Vendor Bids

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Boots to Business

By Finance New Mexico

Business-savvy veterans already know the benefits of becoming a federal government contractor.

Through initiatives like the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Boots to Business program, active-duty service members who are transitioning from military to civilian life and want to launch or build a business receive training in the basics of being an entrepreneur. And they learn about special low-interest loans, veterans’ preferences and other resources designed to help former military personnel succeed in the business world. Continue reading →

Federal Reserve Wants to Hear From New Mexico Businesses

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By Finance New Mexico

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City wants to hear from small businesses in New Mexico about the experiences they’re having in the credit market.

Every year, most banks in the Federal Reserve system’s 12-bank network participate in a national Small Business Credit Survey to get the data they need to provide policymakers, business representatives and service providers with up-to-date information about business financing and credit conditions. Northern New Mexico falls under the jurisdiction of the Kansas City district, while Southern New Mexico is under Dallas’ district umbrella. Continue reading →

Economic Development Mandates Drive State’s Nonprofit Lenders

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

Economic development is what motivates New Mexico’s nonprofit lenders: The Loan Fund, Accion and WESST. All three organizations promote grassroots economic development by lending money to businesses that need cash to get started or to expand.

Designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as certified community development organizations (CDFIs), they support economically disadvantaged communities and provide loans to small businesses that lack access to traditional funding. Funding for these loans is provided by the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation (NMSBIC). The Legislature created NMSBIC 15 years ago to generate new job opportunities and support new or expanding businesses in New Mexico.

The NMSBIC lending program also provides funding to the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority for construction loans and to Rio Vista Growth Capital for mezzanine growth funding to enable communities and businesses to grow. Continue reading →

Value Stream Mapping Boosts Productivity for Awning Maker

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Rader Awning shade sails

Rader Awning shade sails; courtesy Rader Awning

Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective — and expertise in lean manufacturing — to help a respected manufacturer streamline productivity and increase profitability.

The owners of Rader Awning & Upholstery Inc. requested that type of feedback when their 70-year-old company, New Mexico’s leading supplier of quality custom awnings and shades, faced challenges satisfying growing demand.

The company asked New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) to evaluate its operations and offer ideas for improvement. And the rewards of the collaboration were tangible: Productivity improved by 20 percent per salesperson, production defects decreased by 15 percent and installation corrections dropped by 25 percent. Continue reading →

New Mexico Employers Should Plan Now for New Overtime Rules

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By Randy S. Bartell and Randi N. Johnson, Montgomery & Andrews, PA, Employment Law Group

flsa-overtime-graphicbyfnmAbout 20,000 salaried “white-collar” employees in New Mexico might be eligible for overtime pay in 2017 when an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) takes effect the last day of this year.

The U.S. Department of Labor in May published its final rule revising the FLSA’s overtime exemption regulations. The most significant change was to the minimum salary levels that salaried employees must be paid to be considered exempt from federal overtime requirements. Continue reading →

Multigenerational Workforce Can Be Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

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By Finance New Mexico

Multigenerational workforceThe generation gap of the early 21st century is different than the one that led sociologists to coin that term in the 1960s, when young adult baby boomers were advised not to trust anyone over 30.

Today’s workplace might include people in their late teens up to their 70s. Managing that multigenerational mélange presents many of the same challenges as managing a multicultural one, but it also offers a rich resource for businesses that understand the strengths and benefits of diversity and appreciate that every employee, regardless of age, wants to work with others toward a common goal and feel productive and valued. Continue reading →

Relationship Figures Big in Six-Year Journey to Start Pet-Care Business

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Photo courtesy Pet Planet Hotel and Day Camp

Photo courtesy Pet Planet Hotel and Day Camp

By Finance New Mexico

By the time they had adopted seven dogs from friends and neighbors, David and Juliana Garcia concluded that Las Cruces sorely needed a business that served animals and the people who love them.

The couple bought a van with their savings to start a mobile grooming business for large pets. By the time they were ready to buy a second van to accommodate their growing client base, the Garcias were thinking about opening a hotel and day camp, with spa services on the side, for dogs and cats. Continue reading →

Entrepreneurs Work Together to Get Help From Lab-Affiliated Program

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By Finance New Mexico

Greg Scantlen, Chuck Bulow, and Paul Saxe

Left to right: Greg Scantlen, Chuck Bulow, and Paul Saxe

Entrepreneurs Greg Scantlen, Paul Saxe and Chuck Bulow depend on high-speed, sophisticated computers to run their individual businesses. And even though they’re developing different products, the trio decided to apply collectively for free technical assistance from scientists at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories through the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program.

Scantlen owns CreativeC, a Los Alamos and Albuquerque company that works with graphic processing units (GPUs) — chips composed of thousands of parallel processing threads that can process multiple calculations simultaneously at computing speeds about 100 times faster than the traditional central processing units (CPU) used by most home computers. Continue reading →

Businesses Find Advice at UNM Small Business Institute

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By Finance New Mexico

SBI client with UNM Anderson students and UNM professor Dr. Raj Mahto; courtesy UNM Anderson School of Management website

SBI client with UNM Anderson students and UNM professor Dr. Raj Mahto; courtesy UNM Anderson School of Management website

Albuquerque transplant Chris Mayo was 47 when he decided to ditch social work and build his chimney sweep/masonry/handyman sideline into a full-time business. Within a decade, Amrak Enterprises was growing by 30 percent each year and Mayo was paying a subcontractor to help with the workload and aiming to compete with the city’s top chimney-cleaning company.

“I’m 57 years old and need to position myself to either sell the business and be a silent partner or manage a fleet of chimney sweeps,” Mayo told Finance New Mexico. To help him prepare for the future, Mayo took the advice of his friend Dimitri Kapelianis, associate professor of marketing at the University of New Mexico School of Management. Continue reading →