Tag Archives: business help

Truck Puts Chef on Road to Prosperity

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F. Leroy Pacheco

F. Leroy Pacheco, CEO, The Loan Fund

Kimberley Calvo relishes creativity. The former executive chef at Intel and UNM introduced healthy cuisine to employees and students before starting The Seasonal Palate, a catering company. While looking for a restaurant location to expand her business, Calvo realized that her business model could be just as creative as her cooking.

“It was going to be a small fortune,” she said about the cost of renting and equipping the building she was considering in the small town ofPlacitas. She also wondered if there were enough residents to support a full-time restaurant. “So instead of trying to bring them to me,” she said, “I would bring me to them.”

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Get Insight from a Debt Schedule

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Leslie Hoffman

Leslie Hoffman, V.P. of Lending and Client Service, ACCIÓN New Mexico ∙ Arizona ∙ Colorado

The last few years have been a bumpy ride for many small businesses. Sales may have slumped. Costs could have gone up. Small business owners have weathered this economic storm with a courageous combination of resilience, creativity, clarity and passion. Those who have been able to keep their doors open understand that important fundamentals about how to manage money in a small business are as true today as they’ve ever been.

Financial institutions do not want saddle people with loan payments they cannot afford. Community-based lending organizations, such as ACCION New Mexico •Arizona •Colorado, are in the business of helping people understand their financial health and providing access to healthy business credit.

That credit is a tool, and like all tools, performance must support its cost. Lenders do not want credit to become overwhelming and prevent a small business from reaching its goals. Continue reading →

Budgets Matter to Business

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Bobbi Hayes

R.A. Bobbi Hayes, CPA, CITP, CFE, CFF, CCIFP, Partner, Accounting & Consulting Group LLP

Business owners striving to make it through the tough economy need to know how cash flows in and out of their business. A good place to start is with a budget – a basic tool used to forecast when cash will be collected and when expenses must be paid.

Many owners of small and midsize businesses don’t take the time to create a budget, or they neglect to update the one they have. In this slow economic recovery, every dollar is precious and it’s more important than ever to know where money is going. Financial institutions also want to know; banks are beginning to require that borrowers include a budget with their loan requests.

Since a business budget is such a valuable tool, understanding how to create a good one is vital to obtaining successful results and improving a business’s chance of survival.

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Veterans Get Help in Business

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Lloyd Calderon, Director, New Mexico Veterans’ Business Resource Center, and Director, VBOC

When Freedom Construction of Edgewood was hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade the electrical system at Conchas Dam, the job was the first federal contract the company had been awarded. One of the reasons Freedom’s owners, Mark Beasley and Steven Tenorio, got the $1.1 million job is because they know what many veteran-owners of businesses do not: Federal laws set aside 3 percent of federal contracts for businesses owned by veterans who were disabled during the course of their military service.

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Investments Nurture Businesses to Create Jobs

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Paul Goblet

Paul F. Goblet, Financial Advisor, NM SBIC

As financial markets gyrate, legislators argue about the national debt ceiling, and people lose homes to foreclosure, it’s hard to believe the economy is improving. Few words can convince those unlucky enough to remain jobless; but numbers are beginning to tell a slightly better story, at least in New Mexico. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that New Mexico made strides in improving its July jobless rate over the same month last year – second only to Nevada, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.  New Mexico’s July, 2011, unemployment rate was about two and a half points lower than the national average, as it has been throughout the recession.
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Associations Take Members Beyond Networking

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Carol Wight

Carol Wight, CEO, NM Restaurant Assn.

Professionals sometimes make a critical mistake in their careers: they neglect to join their industry associations. After investing time and money in a university education or training program, they disregard the value of continued education, advocacy and other assistance that associations provide. With so much at stake in these difficult times, why would anyone want to go it alone?

Associations were created by people who saw the need for banding together to fight for common values and interests affecting their industry. While this is still the primary reason most people join, modern associations provide much more than they did in their early days.

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Entrepreneurs Beware the Valley of Death

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Richard T. Meyer

Richard T. Meyer, SCORE

Business owners know it takes money to make money; production expenses must be paid before products are sold and revenue is received. Entrepreneurs with a business idea have an even greater need for up-front cash. They must have enough capital to cover negative cash flow in the early months or years of new business creation and growth. Without adequate initial investment, they risk falling into the so-called valley of death – the deep and wide gulf that separates a company’s need for capital and investors’ willingness to supply it.

Also known as the grand canyon of capital need vs. availability, the valley can be shallow or deep depending on the amount of money needed to develop the idea or product. Continue reading →

Don’t Risk Business Success With a Poor Presentation

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Bay Stevens

Bay Stevens, DTM, District Governor, Toastmasters Int'l District 23

Entrepreneurs looking for startup capital, expansion funding or customers are often the best spokespeople for their business or idea. Knowledge of their business plan or product is deep, and they are passionate about their business.

But not all entrepreneurs are good communicators. And when it comes to speaking in front of a crowd, few are born with the skills needed to keep an audience engaged. Fortunately, effective public speaking can be learned.

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Be Ready When Banks Step Up Lending

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Paul Goblet

Paul F. Goblet, Financial Advisor, NM SBIC

Tight credit markets of the past few years have made it difficult for business owners to obtain loans to expand their business. Getting a loan is still as hard as ever, even though most financial institutions have plenty of capital to lend. With the interest rate charged banks by the Federal Reserve Bank at almost zero, it’s surprising so little capital is moving around.  Loans, as a percentage of deposits, are very low.

Credit will loosen eventually because banks can’t survive long-term without making loans. Stung by losses when loans defaulted, banks are understandably more conservative; but they need interest revenue from loans to grow.

Recent financial activity suggests money might be starting to flow again. Continue reading →

Grant Expands New Mexico Education Success

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Monica Abeita

Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corp. for NNM Connect

When Taos-based Imagine Education received a Next Generation Learning Challenge Grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates and William and Flora Hewlett Foundations this summer, the award was not just a triumph for middle-school students struggling to learn math. It also marked an achievement for theNew Mexico programs that grow the state’s economy by helping small New Mexico businesses.

Imagine Education’s founders credit economic development initiatives with helping them win the grant, one of nineteen awarded nationwide for innovations in teaching literacy and mathematics. The grant will allow Imagine Education to pilot its educational math game, Ko’s Journey, in ten middle schools nationwide.

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