Category Archives: Articles

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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Lab Scientist Assists Artist with High-Impact Technique

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Monica Abeita

Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corporation for Los Alamos Connect

The work of artist and Santa Fe native Nicola López explores how human-built constructions like cities, buildings and technologies grow organically and become increasingly complex over time.

“Like the biblical Tower of Babel, the complexity is an immense opportunity that becomes more and more difficult to manage,” López said. “There is an element of destruction here, which gave me the idea to use explosives in my works.”

To express this idea artistically, López wanted to explore a new printmaking technique that used explosives to etch metal. She appealed to the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program, through which the state’s small businesses can tap into the scientific expertise of the two national laboratories based here — Los Alamos and Sandia — to overcome a technical challenge at no cost to the business. Help includes testing, design consultation and access to special equipment or facilities.

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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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Main Street Program Makes Strides in Artesia

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Rich Williams

Rich Williams, NM MainStreet Director and Arts and Cultural District Coordinator, NM Economic Development Dept.

Artesia is a southeastern New Mexico town named for the artesian aquifer on which the area’s early agricultural industry was based. Today Artesia’s 10,700 residents are drawing on the city’s history as they work with the Artesia MainStreet program to remake the town’s downtown.

Artesia MainStreet is part of the New Mexico MainStreet Program, a grassroots economic development program of the New Mexico Economic Development Department. The state Legislature launched the program in 1985 to help communities remake older commercial neighborhoods as economically viable business environments while preserving local cultural and historical resources.

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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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Quest for Perfection Can Be Profitable

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Jennifer Sinsabaugh

Jennifer Sinsabaugh, Operations Director, NM MEP

New Mexico businesses that want help becoming more efficient frequently call on the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership — a nonprofit agency of the U.S. Commerce Department that helps small and mid-sized U.S. businesses create and preserve jobs, become more profitable and save time and money. In New Mexico, where most businesses are small, MEP services are used by doctors’ offices, machine shops, small farms and agricultural operations, and businesses that serve the oil and gas industry.

MEP uses multiple techniques to help businesses increase profits by standardizing production and administration to provide continuous improvement that eliminates waste and strives for perfection.

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