Category Archives: Articles

SBA Changes Intensify Business Lending Surge

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John Woosley

By John Woosley, District Director, SBA New Mexico District

2013 article describes opportunities enabled by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.

Jerome Garcia completed 23 years of military service, multiple overseas tours and one combat deployment before retiring in Las Cruces just before the economy collapsed in late 2008. Garcia and his wife, Michele, proceeded with plans to start their own business and launched Southwest General Construction in February 2009.

SGC is a service disabled veteran-owned small contracting business that builds and maintains airfields, railroads, roads and buildings in New Mexico and the Southwest. It also builds fences, drills wells, maintains grounds and conducts environmental remediation. Continue reading →

Simple Ratios Offer Symptoms of Financial Health or Malaise

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Gary Lenzo

Gary Lenzo, Las Cruces Market President, 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.

Lenders and investors use business health assessments like these to determine if a company qualifies for a loan or is a good candidate for venture capital. Business owners should use them to regularly evaluate their business’s financial standing.

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Mentors Help Small-Business Owners Develop Leadership Skills

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Paul Choman

By Paul Choman, Regional Manager, WESST Enterprise Center in Farmington

Deciding what direction to take a business is isolating for the owner of a small business — especially a sole proprietor. Relatives and friends can offer advice and opinions, but they often lack the expertise to provide the informed, objective counsel the entrepreneur needs.

That’s when a mentor is handy. A mentor is both coach and sage — someone who’s versed in the challenges of running a company and ready to share knowledge with others who need help with business strategies, resources and goals. The best mentors empathize with the people they’re helping and aim to empower them to anticipate and overcome obstacles.

The junior partner in this arrangement isn’t a passive disciple, and the mentor’s word isn’t gospel. Continue reading →

Obsession With Sales Can Blind a Business

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Lou Wolter PhD

By Lou Wolter PhD, Integrated Thinking

An observer can always tell a sales-driven business by what its owner thinks and talks about the most. If his chief concerns are cost, price and profit, his is a sales-driven business, not a market-driven one.

Not that cost, price and profit aren’t important to a market-driven business, but they’re not the sole basis for the business decisions of a market-driven venture.

It boils down to the term “driven.” To the degree that an entrepreneur is too focused on how much she makes and what it costs her, her thinking will be too limited to consider all the important things that really determine costs and profits — and the more limited her choice of alternatives and actions when the inevitable challenges arise. Continue reading →

Crooks Target Businesses with Creative Scams

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Fidel Gutierrez

By Fidel Gutierrez, Sr. VP, Los Alamos National Bank

In an age when many products sell in cyberspace and the buyer and seller never meet, creative crooks are finding new ways to defraud businesses — especially web-based businesses and individuals selling items through online platforms.

One scheme involves counterfeit versions of a time-honored currency – the cashier’s check.

Scammers commit cashier’s check fraud using an authentic-looking cashier’s check to buy a product. The seller deposits the check and her account is charged for the amount when the check bounces back to the bank as a fake. Continue reading →

The Loan Fund Helps Launch In-Home Care Service

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Joe Justice

Joe Justice, Community Development Officer, The Loan Fund

Leslie Van Pelt knew she wanted to do some type of work that improved people’s lives when she visited the Albuquerque offices of Comfort Keepers, a national for-profit company that provides in-home nonmedical care to the elderly and other adults recovering from illness and injuries. What she saw persuaded Van Pelt, co-owner of Cutlery of Santa Fe, to begin searching for funding to open a Santa Fe franchise.

Van Pelt already had a home equity line of credit, but she needed more money to launch the franchise. Her inquiries led her to The Loan Fund, an alternative lender that provides capital to businesses and nonprofits in New Mexico.

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Fabricator Has Long-Term Commitment to Lean Manufacturing

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Jennifer Sinsabaugh

Jennifer Sinsabaugh, Operations Director, NM MEP

When David Smith, owner of Taycar Enterprises in Albuquerque, phased out the use of paper in his sheet metal fabrication and assembly plant, it pushed some office workers beyond their hard-copy comfort zones.

Going paper-free was just one part of Smith’s efforts to bring the principles of lean manufacturing to the business his father started in 1983, but it was harder than the changes he instituted to make his job shop operate more efficiently. Now the business stores all its records electronically and conducts all its correspondence by email.

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WESST Offers Global Program to Home-Grown Businesses

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By Julianna Silva, Albuquerque Regional Manager, WESST

By Julianna Silva, Albuquerque Regional Manager, WESST

WESST brings a global business initiative to New Mexico in a five-part series of workshops designed to empower small-business owners to make sound financial decisions.

HP Learning Initiative for Entrepreneurs — or HP Life — is a global program sponsored by Hewlett Packard that trains the owners of microenterprises to apply information technology and business skills to establish and expand a job-creating venture.

WESST sponsors the workshops at its Albuquerque Enterprise Center.

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B&I Loans Help Rural Communities

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Mike Hoyl

Mike Hoyl, Senior VP, Western Commerce Bank in Lovington

You don’t have to live off the map to qualify for a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development loan in New Mexico.

Most of the state is considered rural for the purposes of this economic development program, which can back loans as high as $25 million to qualifying ventures in towns with 50,000 or fewer people. That excludes only Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, while towns close to these metro areas easily qualify.

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Identity Theft Victim Gets Accion Loan to Start Educational Nonprofit

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Edwin Rios

Edwin Rios, Loan Assistant, Accion New Mexico – Arizona – Colorado

Mark Medley was working with a business consultant to recover from identity theft when he heard about Accion New Mexico–Arizona–Colorado. What Medley learned while trying to repair his credit prompted him to start a nonprofit — ID Theft Resolutions — to help others protect themselves from identity thieves and to rebound as quickly and completely as possible if their efforts fail.

Medley got a loan from Accion to help him get the nonprofit going after obtaining his designation as a 501c(3) nonprofit. Accion offers loans as small as $200 and as large as $300,000 to people who might otherwise be turned down by lenders because they are a startup or have credit problems.

Medley qualified in both cases: His credit score was destroyed by identity theft and his nonprofit was the equivalent of a startup.

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