Tag Archives: New Mexico business

The Taxman Cometh – For Gig Workers Too

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The gig economy makes it possible for thousands of Americans to join the ranks of self-employed people, whether they’re driving for hire or doing short-term assignments as accountants or writers or using a 3-D printer to manufacture products for others.

Such jobs offer flexibility and independence, but they come with the same obligations as any other sole proprietorship, including the responsibility to file a Schedule C form and pay self-employment taxes in addition to income taxes they might owe if the business is profitable. Continue reading →

State Offers Grants to Promote Tourism

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New Mexico attracts more visitors every year, but the state wants to further boost tourism and related revenue by expanding on successful programs like New Mexico True and the Cooperative Marketing Program (CoOp).

New Mexico True is a brand that businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations can use by partnering with the New Mexico Tourism Department. That involves demonstrating how the organization expresses or evokes the state’s distinctive landscapes, cultures, food, art or history.

The CoOp program gives local nonprofits, municipalities and tribal governments a financial incentive to market what’s uniquely New Mexican about their event or location and even participate in existing advertising campaigns. Through the CoOp program, state money is leveraged with money from other public entities to amplify media buying power for all involved parties. (Private businesses can contribute up to 50 percent of a public entity’s total CoOp investment.) Continue reading →

Startup Weekends Turbo-Charge Business Ideas

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Startup Weekend Albuquerque is Feb. 22 – 24, 2019 at WESST Enterprise Center.

Launching a business can take years — or it can take 54 hours of intense teamwork with experts and entrepreneurs who share a hunger to develop ideas into profitable enterprises.

Startup Weekends are just the place for such collaboration, and the next one planned for New Mexico happens Feb. 22-24 in Albuquerque.

Organized by small business development organization WESST, CNM Ingenuity, ABQid and with support from New Mexico Mutual Insurance, this Startup Weekend is a global project of Google for Entrepreneurs and Techstars. The goal is to create a supportive environment where budding entrepreneurs can pitch and fast-track a business idea through realistic feedback from peers and experts. Continue reading →

NM Program Matches Federal SBIR Investment in Startups

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Los Alamos quantum dots tech company UbiQD received a NM SBIR matching grant in 2018

The New Mexico Economic Development Department (EDD) will sweeten the pot for up to five small companies that receive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the federal government to help in the research and development of technologies with high potential for commercialization.

The EDD is accepting applications until February 18 from federal grant recipients who want an additional infusion from New Mexico’s SBIR Matching Program. Despite the program’s name, it’s not a dollar-for-dollar match: Federal SBIR awards can range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to several million, while the New Mexico match is limited to $50,000. Continue reading →

Block Grants Spur Economic Development Partnerships

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Pool at Hotel Don Fernando in Taos

In October 2016, the Town of Taos received $500,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to work with a local developer to renovate the Hotel Don Fernando, whose former owners had lost the business through foreclosure. The mid-town hotel had become a hub of illegal activity and vandalism: too expensive for the developer to singlehandedly bring up to code but too visible a blight on the town’s main thoroughfare for town officials to ignore and a waste of potential gross receipts revenue for the tourism-dependent town.

The Town of Taos became fiscal agent for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds, and the developer matched that money, reopening the 30-year-old, 126-room hotel two years later under the Hilton Tapestry banner. The federal funds helped the new owner address more than 100 code violations and purchase hotel furnishings. Continue reading →

Predictive Analytics Isn’t Just for the Big Guys

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Image courtesy of Carlos Muza. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Predicting consumer behavior can be an obsession for businesses, no matter what their size. Big corporations dedicate entire departments to divining what people will want next so they can be first to offer it, and they invest massive amounts of money into predictive analytics—the mining of massive sets of data for patterns and trends in hopes of giving businesses a competitive edge by helping them predict the future.

Smaller businesses typically don’t have the means or need to invest in the sophisticated types of data crunching that their larger cousins do, but smaller-scale data analysis tools can help them track past and real-time trends and behaviors so they can make fact-based decisions about how to allocate resources. Continue reading →

Funds aim to spur growth of six Native American ventures

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Bison Star Naturals owners Jacquelene and Angelo McHorse with daughter Judy. Article by Damon Scott.

(note from editor: The RDC now manages the Tribal Economic Diversity Fund, more information here )

Bison Star Naturals is one of six enterprises that shared $60,000 of investment in 2018 as part of the Native American Venture Acceleration Fund program administered by the Regional Development Corporation. NA VAF aims to create jobs by boosting revenue and advancing the business goals of Native American-owned Northern New Mexico companies.

Jacquelene and Angelo McHorse, owners of Bison Star Naturals, sought the funds to launch a line of liquid jojoba and yucca root soap to augment the bar soaps and lotions the business is known for.

“We also are expanding our line to include our unscented lotion,” Jacquelene said. “The funding allows us to release a new product line and expand our current offerings — which are great leaps for our small business.” Continue reading →

Accion Loan Keeps Bakery at Top of Critics’ Lists

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Pratt and Chris Morales in their Albuquerque bakery, Golden Crown Panaderia. Article by Sandy Nelson.

It’s one thing for a bakery to boast about its own tasty products, but it’s quite another for the publisher of a foodie blog to broadcast rave reviews from around the world and add a few superlatives of his own.

Gil Garduño, publisher of Gil’s Thrilling (and Filling) Blog, has eaten at more than 1,000 New Mexico restaurants over the past decade and calls Golden Crown Panaderia “the very best bakery in Albuquerque.” In a mouth-watering 2016 review, Garduño describes the artisan breads, pizzas and pastries that the family-owned, Old Town-area business has been making since 1972 and adds, “This humble Panaderia has been consistently ranked by TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community, as one of the top five out of 1,235 restaurants in the Duke City. Golden Crown receives similar praise from Yelp, while Lonely Planet, a French publication, calls Golden Crown ‘Albuquerque’s best place to eat.’ ” Continue reading →

Delegation Equals Liberation for Small Business Owners

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Product shipment preparation is one task that could be delegated. Article by Sandy Nelson.

Sooner or later, an entrepreneur has to know his limits and acknowledge that some tasks can and should be done by others to allow him to focus on the bigger picture. That requires delegation — trusting others, whether subordinates, partners or independent contractors, to complete an assignment as directed.

As obvious as that sounds, an entrepreneur can have a hard time trusting others with his “baby,” ultimately defeating many business objectives and stunting the company’s natural growth.

Many businesses in New Mexico start small, with the owner doing all the work that’s required to get off the ground. Success only increases the workload, and the owner who doesn’t delegate eventually will find her attention pulled away from mission-critical decisions into fussing with day-to-day minutia — answering phones or emails from clients or vendors, filing, blogging — or running in place trying to accomplish tasks outside her expertise. Continue reading →

Even a Small Management Team is Essential to Startup Success

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Article by Sandy Nelson

While it’s normal for the owner of a new business to go the do-it-yourself route, either for lack of money or sparse human resources, no one individual can perform every task associated with nurturing a startup and do all of them well.

The person who sets the idea in motion might not have a clue how to keep books and end up avoiding this essential skill in pursuit of more interesting or gratifying activities, such as networking and prototype creation. Continue reading →