Author Archives: Admin

Young Entrepreneurs Win with Business Pitches

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Youth business plan competition award winners, left to right: Iliana Sanchez, Avery Causey, Ashley Lober, Dulce Avitia, Sophia Trujillo

Youth Business Plan Competition Award Winners, left to right: Iliana Sanchez, Avery Causey, Ashley Lober, Dulce Avitia, Sophia Trujillo

Two young people from Albuquerque, two from Española and one from Las Cruces won cash prizes to use in developing their businesses in this year’s statewide Youth Business Plan Competition, sponsored by the New Mexico Youth Entrepreneurship Network.

A first-place award of $800 went to Avery Causey of Albuquerque for Causey’s Aunion Clothing Company. Causey designs all the clothing sold by Aunion Clothing Company, which sells shoes, hats, shirts and hoodies for skateboarders from the company’s online store.

Iliana Sanchez of Las Cruces took second place of $600 for Cookie’s Doggie Cookies, and Ashley Lober of Albuquerque earned a third-place prize of $500 for her venture, Fliptastic Tumbling. Dulce Avitia of Espanola came in fourth, netting $300 for her Dulce’s Fashions company. And Sophia Trujillo of Española won $150 and came in fifth for her custom silk-screening company, Pro-Ink Printing.

Encouraging entrepreneurial spirit

The five winners were chosen from among nine finalists in the competition; those nine were selected from 32 plans submitted by middle school and high school students. The annual competition aims to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit among young people and to nurture feasible business ideas.

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ARC Loans Help Small Businesses Bridge Debt Gap

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David Valdez, Vice President Small Business Lending, Century Bank

David Valdez, Vice President Small Business Lending, Century Bank

Despite signs that the recession is easing in some quarters, many small businesses continue to struggle to pay off business-related debt. America’s Recovery Capital Loan Program — better known as the ARC loan program — can provide up to $35,000 in short-term relief to help qualified small businesses return to profitability.

The program was authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which became law in February. ARC loans are being offered by various Small Business Administration lenders until September 30, 2010, or as long as the money lasts.

How to qualify

To qualify for an ARC loan, the business must have been in operation for at least two years and have financial statements or tax returns showing profitability or a positive cash flow in at least one of the past two years. The business must be able to project sufficient cash flow to meet its business-related debts in the future.

ARC loans aim to help small-business people pay down or refinance existing business loans so they can redirect cash flow from making loan payments to investing in their businesses. The borrower must not be more than 60 days past due on any loan being paid with ARC funds. The business owner also must prove immediate financial hardship in the form of declining sales, frozen credit or difficulty meeting payroll or payments on rent or loans.

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A Perfect TEN

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Leslie Elgood, Chief Executive Officer, New Mexico Community Capital

Leslie Elgood, Chief Executive Officer, New Mexico Community Capital

Joseph Godfrey knew the recycling business before he moved to Taos from Vermont six years ago, but he had never run a business of his own before he bought Recycle Taos in late 2007. Essential to his success, Godfrey said, was connecting with Taos Entrepreneurial Network (TEN), an independent nonprofit organization of entrepreneurs and local community leaders that began as a 2004 project of the Sirolli Foundation spearheaded by the McCune Charitable Foundation.

TEN’s philosophy was adapted from the work of Ernesto Sirolli, an innovator in rural economic development. After seeing self-sufficient communities in Zambia pushed into unsustainable types of development by foreign-aid officials in the early 1970s, Sirolli tried a different approach: He tapped into the entrepreneurial spirit of rural residents by backing home-grown initiatives the locals needed and could support. His model has been duplicated in 250 communities around the globe, including Taos, New Mexico.

The core of Sirolli’s plan is “enterprise facilitation” — a support system designed to help entrepreneurs turn ideas into viable ventures by helping them find the resources and learn the skills they need to produce, market and finance a product or service. TEN tailored the idea in Taos to fit local conditions including the employment of a trained “network facilitator” to focus simply on networking and let entrepreneurs choose how to reach their goals.

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Credit Score: Important in Good Times and Bad

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Leslie Hoffman, Vice President of Lending and Client Service, ACCION New Mexico

Leslie Hoffman, Vice President of Lending and Client Service, ACCION New Mexico

Those who spend their careers watching the economy contract and expand agree on at least one thing: a person’s credit score is important in any economic cycle.  Before extending credit to an individual or business, bankers want to review the borrower’s credit report and know their credit score.

Financial institutions verify credit through reports that reflects how an individual has handled his debts.  Three national companies – Equifax, Experian and Transunion – track credit and produce reports.  All include similar information.

Report elements include personal information such as Social Security number and employment record, borrowing history, a record of creditors who have reviewed the credit history, and other public information such as foreclosures or bankruptcies.

Credit scores generally range from 350 to 850 points, with most people scoring in the 600 to 700 range. A high score indicates good credit. Lenders review credit scores to determine loan amounts and interest rates that will be charged, and a higher score usually yields more favorable loan terms.

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Farmington’s Enterprising Spirit

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Jasper Welch, Director of the San Juan College Quality Center for Business

Jasper Welch, Director of the San Juan College Quality Center for Business

It might be the size of a “big-box” store, but the Quality Center for Business in Farmington deals in something more valuable than merchandise. Inside this 43,000 square-foot space reside the San Juan College Enterprise Center, San Juan Economic Development Service, Small Business Development Center and the Workforce Training Center — all sponsored or supported by San Juan College. The College facility is also home to the Enterprise Loan Fund, the SBDC grant-funded Procurement Assistance Office and more than a dozen small businesses now being incubated in these nurturing surroundings.

The multi-program facility is the only one of New Mexico’s seven business incubators to be organized as a one-stop resource center for entrepreneurs. (The state’s other incubators are the Santa Fe Business Incubator, NMSU Arrowhead Business Incubator, Los Alamos Small Business Center, Clovis Business Incubator and South Valley and WESST Corp business incubators in the Albuquerque area.)

Rather than creating a stand-alone business incubator, San Juan College 10 years ago partnered with public and private organizations to create a place where entrepreneurs could find all the resources an enterprising person might need under one roof. The college and the city had a common goal: to encourage business startups and expansions and diversify the region’s economy beyond the economic cycles of the oil and gas industry.

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Cleantech: Still Attractive and Attracting Investment

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Lee Rand, Partner at Sun Mountain Capital

Lee Rand, Partner at Sun Mountain Capital

Supporting low-impact forms of energy generation — cleantech, as it’s called — has been a hot topic politically and socially and has been a subject of mainstream debate and politics for the past 10 years.  As a result of consumer, regulatory and private interest in the cleantech sector, it has also been a hot topic for investing, and venture-capital investment in cleantech increased exponentially in the past decade. In 2001, venture capitalists invested roughly $507 million in clean-technology companies.  By 2008, annual investment in the sector was $8.4 billion.

Where did it go?

Much of the early investment in cleantech was done in the form of large deals with relatively small equity investments alongside massive debt-capital structures to help finance major infrastructure projects in solar power, wind power and smart-grid energy distribution. At first it appeared as though investors’ bets on cleantech would pay off: The price of oil skyrocketed to nearly $150 per barrel over a six-month period in 2008, and equity indexes that tracked the performance of public cleantech companies became extremely popular among hedge fund investors.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama and a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate was expected to lift the industry, as a climate-conscious Democratic administration would make significant investments alongside private investors and create incentives to invest more capital in cleantech, thereby increasing company valuations.

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Avoiding the Most Common Business-Plan Mistakes

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Betsy Gillette

Betsy Gillette, Director of Market Research & Planning, TVC

Entrepreneurs looking for funding and those just getting started should pay special attention to the marketing sections of the business plans they submit. This is where the most common mistakes — and the most outrageous assertions — are made. Typical errors include flawed appraisals of market need, market sizing, customer identification and branding.

Market need: This most basic element of a business plan is often woefully undeveloped. Unless a product or service provides tangible benefits to potential customers — at a cost that the customer considers a value — an entrepreneur has little chance of success. Continue reading →

Keeping an Eye on Cash Flow

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Steven Becerra, director, Albuquerque South Valley Small Business Development Center

Steven Becerra, Director, Albuquerque South Valley Small Business Development Center

Cash is the most liquid of a business’s assets. Although cash isn’t obvious in a high-tech world where money mostly moves by debit and credit cards, wire transfers and other electronic transactions, the monetary standard of all these types of transactions is cash. Quiet as it’s kept, cash still rules the economy. It’s the easiest form of money that can be used to buy things, pay off debts or distribute capital.

Given that, business owners should have a basic understanding of cash flow and know how to ensure their businesses have sufficient cash to sustain current operations and ultimately create wealth for the owners and investors. And yet this most basic of business cycles is probably the most misunderstood — and sometimes woefully ignored — by business owners, who are vigilant about checking their account balances at the bank but fail to predict how much cash they have available at any given time to meet the needs of the business.

ABCs of cash flow:

The injection of cash — or sources of cash — come from four areas: investment, debt, sale of assets, and operating profits.

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A Resource Center for New Mexico Businesses

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Paul F. Goblet, financial advisor to the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation

Paul F. Goblet, financial advisor to the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation

The New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation and its partners launched Finance New Mexico two years ago as a one-stop resource center for New Mexico entrepreneurs. An outgrowth of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish’s statewide small business tours, Finance New Mexico was intended to be a source of information and support to small business owners in need of information about how to start or build a business and where to find money to finance such a venture. Its overarching goal was to nurture the economy of New Mexico by promoting job creation and economic development, especially in the state’s rural areas.

The power of information:

Finance New Mexico was based on the belief that knowledge could empower the state’s would-be entrepreneurs. To that end, a Web site was created from which information could be disseminated through timely articles about the resources available to small-business owners.

The articles, written by experts from the financial services industry, are also distributed to the media for publication in community newspapers around the state, where most business people get their news. Past articles have covered such topics as how to start a business, surviving in a slow economy, obtaining a loan and how to attract equity investors.

As the initiative enters its third year, Finance New Mexico is coming up with ways that business people can interact online with authors of these articles through social networking and a comments board at the end of each article. Finance New Mexico is now on FaceBook and LinkedIn. Twitter tweets are sent when new articles are posted to the Web site and authors participate in discussions on LinkedIn.

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Artist Hits Homer With Help of Economic Development Network

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Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corporation for Northern New Mexico Connect

Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corporation for Northern New Mexico Connect

Jolene Jessie’s life philosophy, and the mantra that has made her successful in business, is “find a need and meet it.” In 1987, Jessie worked as a free-lance portrait artist in San Francisco and was asked to paint images of San Francisco Giants players on baseballs. “The Giants were my first clients,” she said. “They bought dozens of those baseballs.”

That’s where Jessie’s work in custom sports memorabilia began. Today, Jessie operates sportartist.com from her home in Chama, New Mexico. Her custom portraits are painted on jerseys, baseballs, bats, footballs and other collectibles. Jessie also has a successful business relationship with Upper Deck, the world’s largest baseball card company, for whom she produces high-end signed memorabilia.

As a member of the Chama Valley Chamber of Commerce, Jessie in 2008 met Christopher Madrid of LINK, which offers coaching and networking to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Rio Arriba County. It is one of five services offered to Northern New Mexico businesses provided by Northern New Mexico Connect, the principal economic-development and investment arm of Los Alamos National Security LLC and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

“Christopher and I began by brainstorming about my business, including potential growth, employees, legal structure, future partners, and other ideas,” Jessie said. “He then began networking me with resources based on my business needs.”

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