Category Archives: Articles

Term Loans, Lines of Credit Can Finance Business Expenses

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By Chris Rowberry, Senior Lending Officer, Los Alamos National Bank

By Chris Rowberry, Senior Lending Officer, Los Alamos National Bank

When a business needs to buy expensive equipment and doesn’t have the operating cash to buy it outright — or doesn’t want to commit liquid assets to such a big-ticket item — the owner will often approach a bank for financing. The same is true when a business has cash flow shortfalls because its inflows and outflows are out of sync.

Most banks have commercial lending departments that can offer the business a loan to finance equipment purchases or cover short-term obligations. Two of the most common loan types are term loans and revolving lines of credit. An experienced commercial banker can help the business decide which loan is most appropriate for its situation. Continue reading →

Be a Visionary Business Leader

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By Finance New Mexico

Planning in business isn’t just a matter of deciding how to assign capital and resources to create a profitable venture. Equally essential is developing a distance vision.

The most effective business leaders are planners and visionaries with creative, dynamic and specific ideas about where they want their company to be three years or five years from now. Their focus is “macro” and “micro”: Continue reading →

Rules of Engagement: Start With Plan for Social Media Outreach

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By Kristelle Siarza, Online Account Executive, The Garrity Group Public Relations

By Kristelle Siarza, Online Account Executive, The Garrity Group Public Relations

It’s not enough to have a physical presence in a world where business is conducted around the planet and around the clock. The most competitive businesses operate in cyberspace as well, because that’s where their customers are — shopping, researching, discussing and buying.

New Mexico residents turn increasingly to digital resources when seeking out all types of information. According to the most recent (2013) annual Garrity Perception Survey, New Mexicans use television as a news and information source 58 percent of the time, newspaper 39 percent of the time and internet news sites 29 percent of the time. Those sources are followed by radio (28 percent), internet blogs (17 percent) and social networking sites (17 percent). When internet news sources, blogs and social media are combined, New Mexico residents turn to digital sources 63 percent of the time, Continue reading →

Agreement Reduces Separation Anxiety When a Worker Leaves

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By Jocelyn Barrett, Attorney at Law, Montgomery & Andrews, P.A.

By Jocelyn Barrett, Attorney at Law, Montgomery & Andrews, P.A.

There are many circumstances under which an employee and employer part ways. An employee can choose to leave a job, or the company may make a unilateral decision to end the employment relationship. Whatever the case, the separation should be documented in writing to protect both parties.

For the employee’s benefit, a separation agreement should detail in writing what the employer intends to provide at the parting. These might include the final paycheck, severance pay, pay-out of unused vacation or sick time and/or any continuation of coverage under the company’s health-care plan.

For the employer, an agreement can help protect against some potential lawsuits and clarify what the employee agreed to provide the company when hired. Continue reading →

Winter No Match for Frozen Dessert Business

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By Cathy Sorenson, Community Development Officer, The Loan Fund

By Cathy Sorenson, Community Development Officer, The Loan Fund

Opening a business that sells authentic, made-from-scratch Italian gelato requires substantial startup capital, which is why Daniel Romero and Lori Griego worked hard to get the right ingredients to finance their Frost Gelato Shoppe franchise.

While approval was quick from The Loan Fund, a private nonprofit micro-lender in New Mexico, the amount of money the pair needed to launch the business required contributions from two other parties: micro-lender ACCION and Los Alamos National Bank.

It was worth the effort, Romero said. Business is better than he anticipated at the franchise’s ABQ Uptown mall site — especially considering that his frozen-dessert shop opened in late November, on the cusp of a bone-chilling winter. Continue reading →

ExporTech Class Helps Aztec Manufacturer Prepare for Global Market

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By Karen Converse, New Mexico MEP

By Karen Converse, New Mexico MEP

After 32 years as president of Jack’s Plastic Welding, Jack Kloepher wanted to see if his company was ready to begin exporting three of its most promising products: stand-up inflatable paddle boards and pontoon boats for recreationists, and rapid deployable spill containment units for the oil and gas industry.

So Kloepher and partner Errol Baade enrolled in the ExporTech class offered by New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership in collaboration with the New Mexico Economic Development Department and other partners.

Continue reading →

Simplifying the Funding Search for Seed-Stage Startups

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By Bill Hartman, President and CEO, Ion Linac Systems, and President, The W. Hartman Group

By Bill Hartman, President and CEO, Ion Linac Systems, and President, The W. Hartman Group

I’m not a venture capitalist, but I’ve headed up several successful technology startups and recently ran an early stage software company that raised almost $2 million in “seed stage” funding. I’m now leading a pre-revenue New Mexico startup raising our first equity-based funding.

As anyone who has done this knows, raising startup funding in New Mexico is challenging — partially because our state is relatively isolated from the national playing field, but also because of the challenges the New Mexico and broader US venture capital communities have faced meeting the returns expected by their investors and the VCs’ ability to raise new investment capital. The amount of venture capital available has decreased as the initial funding of 8-10 years ago has been fully deployed in startup companies, but exits and positive returns from those investments have so far been relatively few.

Continue reading →

Los Alamos National Lab Program Shares Cutting Edge Technologies

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Marianne Johnston

By Mariann Johnston, Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation

Los Alamos National Laboratory has a stockpile of patents covering technologies with untapped commercial potential, and it wants to simplify the process of sharing these innovations — as well as its portfolio of copyright-protected software — with businesses that can translate this wealth into private-sector jobs.

The lab’s Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation (FCI) in August launched the Express Licensing program to fast-track the licensing of technologies and software with a simple online application. The application template standardizes licensing terms and makes it possible for LANL to share inventions on a broader scale without making potential partners and customers undergo exhaustive individualized negotiations. Continue reading →

Business Success Begins With a Value Proposition

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By Finance New Mexico

By Finance New Mexico

To stand out in a market saturated with consumer products and get the attention of consumers deluged with advertising appeals, an entrepreneur needs to offer a product or service with obvious benefits and unquestionable superiority over the competition.

That isn’t as easy as it sounds. The history of U.S. commerce is littered with countless products whose inventors misjudged the market’s appetite or need.

Continue reading →