Category Archives: Articles

Technical Assistance Advisors Offer More Than a Loan

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Joaquin Amador, Technical Assistance Advisor at The Loan Fund

Matilda Scheurer purchased Teresa’s Tamales in January of 2021, and she did it with help from The Loan Fund, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). In addition to obtaining a loan to purchase the long-time Cleveland, New Mexico restaurant, Scheurer got access to a technical advisor she can call when she needs business advice, feedback, or an answer to a question.

Joaquin Amador is The Loan Fund’s Technical Assistance Advisor in the northern part of the state*. Based in Santa Fe, Amador helps provide loans and lines of credit to small businesses and nonprofits and then offers technical support to ensure those businesses thrive.

Amador is well-positioned to offer assistance. With more than 20 years of management and marketing experience ranging from tech startup to multibillion-dollar global businesses, he is equipped to offer advice on strategic issues like business improvements, as well tactical challenges such as online marketing and search engine optimization. Two advanced degrees – an MBA from the University of New Mexico and a Master of Science from the University of Chicago – give Amador a wide range of business knowledge he can share with The Loan Fund’s clients.

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Gas Service Company Grows with Help from LiftFund

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After years of working for a large corporation in the gas & propane industry, Randy Peralta decided to pursue his own entrepreneurial project that would allow him to draw on his experience and be his own boss. In 2021, Peralta launched Gas Register Specialty Services, known as GRS Services, a mobile gas meter calibration company. Peralta’s specialty business serves commercial clients from Lea to San Juan counties.

While 28 years of technical experience in the propane industry were imperative for the nature of work that GRS Services set out to offer, operating a sole proprietorship did not come without its challenges.

“Having experience in the propane industry did not necessarily prepare me to handle all of the business and operational aspects,” said Peralta, adding that while he learned a lot in the field during his years in the industry, financial reporting and project management were new to him. He also needed to attend what he calls ‘meter school’ to be able to legally calibrate both electronic and mechanical meters.

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Homewise Partners with The Life Link

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One of the toughest challenges that cities face is navigating how to best help people who are struggling with homelessness and mental health challenges.

The Life Link is a remarkable organization that provides Santa Fe with the services needed to help people at critical transition points – whether it be recovery from addiction or adjusting to life outside of incarceration.

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DreamSpring Helps Restaurant Launch – and Recover from Setbacks

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Twenty-two years after moving to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico on a basketball scholarship, Frank Willis and his sister Tiffany moved their home-based catering operation, Frank’s Famous Chicken and Waffles, to a building on San Mateo Boulevard. The siblings did so with a $1,500 starter loan from the microlender DreamSpring and business advice from their mother Lola Beavers.

The Willises moved to New Mexico from California, where Frank grew up eating his signature dish and other traditional soul food at the Los Angeles eatery Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Finding no such cuisine in New Mexico, Frank and Tiffany started cooking dishes in their shared apartment and selling them via Facebook orders.

In 2019, their first restaurant moved to a larger facility at 400 Washington St. SE. “It’s a much bigger, nicer restaurant,” said Beavers, who moved to Albuquerque in 2016 after retiring from her state government job in California. “The décor is similar, in that it has a music theme with photos of musicians on the walls, but it’s a little more classy.”

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Expansion Has Pet Accessory Company Ready for Holiday Sales

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For nearly 15 years, Amanda and Dan Jackson-Miller created custom-made designer dog collars, leashes, and other pet accessories from a 5,000-square-foot building in downtown Albuquerque. With demand outpacing their building’s storage capacity, the couple moved in early 2022 into a 9,000-square-foot building near the Albuquerque Sunport.

They did so with the help of experts from New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP), a nonprofit that helps manufacturers streamline workflow and improve competitiveness.

The Jackson-Millers met New Mexico MEP adviser Scott Bryant several years ago, when Bryant stopped by Mimi Green, which was named for a pug Amanda adopted in 2007 just as the business was launching. Bryant introduced himself and asked if the couple could use MEP’s assistance.

The entrepreneurs did some training with Bryant about five years ago, and that relationship continued through the move.

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FCI Offers Technology – And Help to Develop It

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Los Alamos National Laboratory has a stockpile of patents covering technologies with untapped commercial potential, as well as a portfolio of copyright-protected software it wants to share with businesses that can translate these assets into private-sector jobs.

LANL’s Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation is tasked with moving Los Alamos technology to the marketplace to stimulate private sector growth. Although the Laboratory’s primary mission is national security, its technologies often have multiple applications in industrial and consumer markets. Los Alamos issues licenses to various entities ranging from start-ups to multinational companies.

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The Loan Fund Fuels Adobe Tradition

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Albuquerque Joinery is a small design-build company that specializes in new home construction using traditional adobe building techniques and fine carpentry.

Kenny DeLapp and Esther Fredrickson launched the business in February 2020 after building their own adobe home in Albuquerque’s South Valley. Built under an owner-builder permit, their 1,600 square foot home is a showcase of modern construction and traditional materials with brick floors, exposed vigas, adobe mud plaster walls, and site-built solid wood doors.

DeLapp, who is skilled in masonry and fine carpentry, learned traditional building techniques while working with his uncle Win, a long-time adobe builder known for custom furniture, cabinets, and museum exhibits.

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New Mexico Startup Gets Help with Pitch to Potential Clients

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Working with New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP) shaved at least a year off the time RingIR president Dr. Charles Harb expected to spend getting his company’s portable gas-detecting product ready for market.

And given the disruption and delay caused by the state’s protracted coronavirus-related shutdown, the value of that time is hard to calculate.

“We were working with (New Mexico MEP) on a business plan just before COVID hit, and everything got shut down,” said Harb, who runs the company with his wife and co-founder, Anna.

The couple launched the business in California in 2013 to commercialize the wideband optical spectrometer Harb had developed at the University of New South Wales in Australia to detect airborne chemicals.

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WESST Helps Hobbyists Become Business Owners

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Photo by @courtneymcook

According to Brad Crowson, a former regional program coordinator at WESST, more than 70 percent of business registrations in Rio Rancho are for home-based businesses. Crowson, who worked one-on-one with new and aspiring small-business owners as a consultant for the nonprofit business development organization, believes the home-based business trend is supported by the widespread availability of high-speed internet, among other factors.

“It’s also, in most cases, fairly low-risk financially and offers significant upside potential for both personal fulfillment and income generation — not to mention terrific tax benefits if structured properly,” Crowson said in a recent WESST blog post.

Many people engage in home-based hobby activities that turn into a source of income; however, to claim tax benefits referred to by Crowson, individuals must demonstrate to the Internal Revenue Service that their activities are intended to make a profit.

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Tech Startup Gets Help From New Mexico MEP

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Microscopic examination of metals can help airplane manufacturers know that the planes they build can withstand the forces involved in flight and could assure airlines that jet engine maintenance would detect problems before takeoff.

A small woman-owned business based in Albuquerque is commercializing a laser optical technology that has the potential to revolutionize this “failure analysis” procedure — not just for airplane parts but also for prosthetics, wind turbine blades and any product or component made of non-cubic metals such as titanium, magnesium, and zirconium. The technology is also effective on fiber composites and plastics.

Advanced Optical Technologies’ CrystalView crystallographic polarization-classification imaging (CPCI) technology can characterize the strength of metals in a fraction of the time that’s currently required—and can do it in a nondestructive way, without cutting small samples and inserting them in a stationary scanning electron microscope.

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