The New Mexico Economic Development Department is offering Science and Technology Business Start-Up Grants to eligible for-profit science and technology companies with fewer than 50 employees.
Continue readingTag Archives: business assistance
NMSBA Program Demystified
Northern New Mexico business owners can learn about the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program (NMSBA) on December 14 at Project Y in Los Alamos. The event is one of many that have taken place across the state this year and that will continue into 2022. NMSBA program managers provide details about the free business assistance that ranges from testing, research, and development of new products and technologies to manufacturing advice provided by scientists at New Mexico’s national laboratories and NMSBA partner organizations.
Continue readingGEW Events Aim to Spark Entrepreneurship
Tens of thousands of events take place worldwide during Global Entrepreneurship Week November 8 through 14. In New Mexico, GEW takes place until Nov. 19, with workshops, presentations, and other events that aim to support idea generation and new business activity.
Continue readingBuilding a Scalable Venture in New Mexico?
ActivateNM powered by CNM Ingenuity offers “office hours” for New Mexico startups and small businesses. Office Hours are a facilitated regular gathering of the growing ActivateNM community of entrepreneurs and mentors who get together to talk about pressing business questions their ventures are facing. The next monthly meeting will take place online on August 20.
Continue readingSecond Round of LEDA Grants Opens
The New Mexico Finance Authority, which manages the state’s LEDA pandemic grant program, is accepting applications under a second round of funding. The first-round application period was widely publicized to end on June 15, 2021. A second-round application period opened as soon as the first round closed. The deadline for application acceptance in the second round is slated for June 30 at 12:00 noon, and additional rounds may be added if funding is available.
Continue readingWESST a ‘Touchstone’ for Therapy Clinic Partners
Two months after COVID-related emergency orders shuttered the clinic that employed them, Melissa Esquibel and three colleagues launched Sandia Sunrise Therapy LLC to provide vital physical and occupational therapy services.
“Starting the business in the middle of a pandemic was definitely challenging,” clinic administrator Melissa Esquibel said. “We all worked very closely together (at the clinic that closed in March 2020). Keeping that connection was very important to us as we started the new business.”
Esquibel’s co-founders Teresa Ziomek and Oksana Tretiak practice occupational therapy, and Dr. Heather Armijo provides physical therapy. While all four women contributed to the business’s formation, Esquibel credits Ziomek with organizing the team and Tretiak with contacting business-development nonprofit WESST to help with the team’s strategic plan and other critical startup groundwork.
Before meeting with WESST, the four had written a business plan. “We drafted our goals, did our analysis on the market and the services we were going to provide,” Esquibel said. This laid the groundwork for their work with WESST, which has been offering its services at no cost during the pandemic.
Continue readingLibraries Poised to Become Post-Pandemic Entrepreneurial Hubs
When New Mexico libraries finally return to pre-pandemic hours and services, many will offer even more resources than they did in the past, especially to entrepreneurs.
Public libraries are ideal places to nurture people who want to start their own businesses: They are community hubs with deep roots, and local librarians are portals to knowledge, tools, and ideas that can create jobs, build the local work force, and drive development. Libraries are trusted, safe and welcoming spaces that offer culturally and economically diverse patrons free access to computers with internet access, meeting rooms, and other spaces where entrepreneurs can meet and brainstorm.
Libraries can be entrepreneurial centers in some of the same ways business incubators are, because they provide networking opportunities, vast resources and a platform for information sharing. And they can support the next generation of entrepreneurs without the expense of building, maintaining and managing a separate, limited-use facility.
Continue readingWESST: Trailblazers in the WBC Movement
Diane Barrett, longtime owner of Diane’s Restaurant in Silver City.
There are currently over 100 Women’s Business Centers across the United States, but in the late 1980s, there was a scarcity of female entrepreneurs and role models. Spurred by the growing interest among women to chart their own business and financial path and seeking to provide appropriate the resources, WESST was established in 1989 and became a leading pioneer in the movement across the country.
WESST is currently among a handful of economic development organizations across the country that hosts a network of Women’s Business Centers. Each of the six regional Enterprise Centers located throughout New Mexico offers special training and consulting programs geared to aspiring or established women business owners. Continue reading
Build a Business with Relationships
No one likes to feel hustled while shopping, whether it’s in a retail store or trade show booth.
To attract customers without brazen hawking or downright pushiness, businesses need to refine the art of the soft sell. That begins by making the store or trade show booth an intentional destination for people who are truly interested in what the business sells.
Create relationships
While any business would like to sell at least one product to every person who walks in the door, that’s the type of unrealistic goal that can turn sales reps into apex predators.
A long-term perspective toward potential customers focuses on developing a relationship that lasts longer than one transaction. It lays a foundation through attraction rather than persuasion. Continue reading
Manufacturing Make-Over Reaps Rewards for Albuquerque Business
C. Aaron Velasquez knew it was time to modernize the equipment and processes his family’s metal-plating business had used for four decades, but he wasn’t sure where to start.
An industry contact introduced him to New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NM MEP), a nonprofit that trains manufacturers in lean principles, value-stream mapping and other methodologies that help businesses increase profitability and competitiveness.
Theta Plate, a second-generation, family-owned Albuquerque-based business, specializes in electroplating of precious metals for industrial and commercial uses, such as friction reduction and conductivity enhancement in electrical and computer components and applications that improve the radiance of costume jewelry. Continue reading