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 Trailblazing Small
Business Growth
Mothers, daughters,
sisters, wives, PTA presidents,
chambers of commerce leaders, Latina
Entrepreneurs embody them all. Their
dynamism, motivation and hard work
have earned them the respect and
admiration of the business community.
It is clear that as the Latino
population increases throughout the
United States, Latinas will continue
to be the fastest growing segment of
the small business community. Today,
Latinas are redefining small
business strategies and creating new
set of values that impact local and
national economic development. Their
emerging role in regional economies
addresses a wide range of policy
arenas: from economic regional
planning, to business lending,
commercial real estate, and the
education of future business leaders.
Between 1997 and 2004,
the number of firms owned by women
of color increased by roughly 54.6
percent to 1.4 million—and it is
Latinas holding the lead over
African Americans and Asians.
According to the National Women’s
Business Council, as of 2004 there
are roughly 554,000 majority-owned
privately held firms owned by
Latinas in the U.S. They employ
nearly 320,000 people while
generating $44.4 billion in sales.
Almost half of those firms operate
in the service sector in California,
Texas, and Florida serving as the
top three states with the greatest
number of Latina owned firms.
In the largest survey of its kind,
LATINA Style Magazine has
collected data from Latina business
owners—a total of 1,032 to date—and
asked them to share their
experiences. Several key trends
remain consistent since 1988 when
the Latina Style Business Series
began collecting the data: Latinas
typically do not inherit their
business although some indications
suggest this is beginning to happen.
Nor do they purchase existing
businesses. They are overwhelming
the first in the family to own a
business and while there is a
decline in self-funded enterprises,
38 percent of Latinas surveyed
received financial help from their
families. Slightly less than 60
percent use credit cards for
financing their business. More than
a third of Latina entrepreneurs are
employed at a separate job outside
of their own business meaning they
can devote only part of their time
to their business.
Close to 80 percent make special
efforts to hire other Latina
employees in their business
suggesting Latina businesses sustain
close ties within their community
and culture. Close to 60 percent are
members of both their local Chamber
of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber
of Commerce and among those with
memberships, there is a steady rise
in those who believe such membership
is helpful.
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Barbara Kasoff, co-founder
of Women Impacting
Public Policy (WIPP) |
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There are
three troubling characteristics of
Latina business owners. First, there
is a tendency to do it alone. Less
than 30 percent have business
advisors, less than 20 percent
indicated they have a mentor, and
less than half take advantage of the
Small Business Administration
Business Development Program. Second,
Latinas are not planning for their
business with legal advice. In 2004,
only 20 percent had a regular
business lawyer suggesting there may
be entrepreneurs who take on
considerable risk in their
contracting and business
transactions. Third, is the use of
technology in their business. In
1998, 80 percent of survey
respondents reported access to
e-mail and 40 percent reported using
a Web site for their business. By
2004, 100 percent reported having
access to e-mail but only 60 percent
used a Web site for their business.
This suggests Latinas may have yet
to maximize the e-commerce potential
of the current economy.
The major
challenges for business
entrepreneurship remain centered on
access to capital, access to
business know-how, and meeting
conflicting personal goals (including
family life and the pursuit of an
education). Despite these financial
obstacles Latinas place a strong
emphasis on providing health care
benefits for their employees and
hiring other Latinas to help grow
their business. In a smaller survey
conducted by the National Foundation
for Women Business Owners in 2000,
Latinas identified the top three
areas of frustration as: working
long hours (14 percent), managing
cash flow and payroll (9 percent)
and overwhelming amounts of
responsibility (9 percent).
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What does all
this mean politically for regional
economic development? Plenty.
Barbara Kasoff, president and co-founder
of Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP),
suggests that if Latinas continue to
be the engine behind small business
growth among women-owned enterprises,
then workforce issues such as
affordable health care, minimum wage
levels and federal procurement
programs for small businesses must
be a major part of the Latino
political agenda. “We know if women
get out to vote we will elect more
women into office and people who
care about women’s issues. This will
change the political climate and
economic opportunity,” says Kasoff.
Fifty two percent of voters are
woman and a recent WIPP survey shows
that women vote in 9 out of 10
elections. Women voters are also
evenly divided among democrats,
republicans and independents. Kasoff
is quick to alert politicians that
this means “woman voters can sway
any election.”
Regardless of
these challenges, the Latinas
featured here and in future issues
provide insights of their passionate
commitment to succeed and how they
create a better life for their
families.
These Latinas, who are at various
stages of their business, share what
has contributed to their success and
what lessons they have to offer for
a woman starting a business today.
Each represent a different stage of
entrepreneurial growth. None of
these women inherited their business
and none received venture capital to
launch their business. But once
their businesses did launch, failure
was not an option. They all had an
unquestionable determination to make
it work. Here’s a snapshot on their
journey to success and their advise
for new entrepreneurs.
 Anna
Garcia
Anko Metals
Your
customers can be your partners—if
you ask.
Anko Metals, founded in 1981,
provides high quality steel for
construction and manufacturing.
Based in Pueblo, Colorado, Anko
generates $5 million in revenue,
selling raw materials to a wide
range of companies throughout the
U.S. Anna Garcia, a Pueblo native is
a former employee of Reynolds
Aluminum and the daughter of a steel
mill crane operator.
When Reynolds
Aluminum closed its branch in Denver,
Colorado, Garcia understood that the
companies that relied upon Reynolds
Aluminum (Adolph Coors, Frito-Lay,
and the Public Service Company of
Colorado) still needed raw materials.
She launched Anko Metals and boldly
asked Reynolds Aluminum to support
her business plan with a promise
that she could keep them connected
to their customers. Although it was
a challenge to convince them she
eventually got their support. Garcia
found success by having her
customers finance her business by
simply asking them to be flexible
with their terms of sale. This
allowed her to buy larger quantities
on shorter cycles with very little
cash on hand. Anko Metals is a model
of how customers can do more than
simply buy goods and services—they
can partner to develop women owned
minority businesses. Garcia
recognized the value of key
relationships and taking care of her
network. “I took advantage of the
support of other minority and women
owned businesses and organizations
out there and also helped them,”
says Garcia. “I attended seminars
and learned as much as possible from
the groups in the community. I used
those venues to look at trends in
business. All this was a good way to
make contact with the corporations
who provide and support minority
businesses. I didn’t have a budget
to do marketing but I could make
several business contacts just
attending a single key event.”
Today, after
25 years of business, Garcia is
proud that she can take her
granddaughter to an airport, a
stadium, or Disneyland and point to
all the metal her company made. Her
advice to other entrepreneurs—“Be
wherever you are 100 percent of the
time. If you’re at work, focus on
work. If you’re at home, focus on
family and community.” Garcia’s
success has allowed her to give back
to her community and remain fully
engaged in the local chambers of
commerce, “I am committed to the
impact I can make on our youth and
young Latinas—to motivate them and
get them a clear message that they
are the backbone of our future.”
 Deborah
Quintana
World Wide Insurance and Business
Services, Inc
Denver
Airport
Deborah Quintana’s World Wide Money
Exchange provides international
travelers a convenient place to
exchange currency and send money
transfers at the Denver
International Airport. She has the
distinction of being the only 100
percent woman owned currency
exchange in a major airport in the
United States and has held that
privilege for over a decade. She not
only can help insure that you have
the right currency when you travel
to 100 different countries, she can
also transfer money to foreign
locations, sell travel insurance,
and provide internationally accepted
travelers’ checks. With $9 million
in sales revenue, Quintana points to
the importance of finding others to
work with who shared her vision and
recognizing quickly the need for
adopting technology that supports
secure, real-time currency
transactions that her customers
expect.
Quintana, a
native of Colorado and proud to be
one of its 50 founding Latino
families, started her business after
13 years of work in financial
services with a major insurance
company. She knew there was more to
be gained by working independently
and launched an insurance brokerage
with partners who wanted to sell
insurance and pension plans to
corporations through small business
procurement programs. The airport
contract came up for bid in 1990 and
Quintana took a leap of faith it
would create opportunities to expand
to several airports around the
country. What stopped her then was a
simple handwritten note from her 12-year-old
daughter asking her not to travel.
Quintana, a single mother at that
point realized that her child’s
needs were far more important than
anything and remained focused on
Denver. Now that all four of her
children are in college, or are well
on their way to finishing, Quintana
has resumed her desire to expand to
more locations.
One of the strongest factors in
Quintana’s motivation to succeed is
based on her childhood experiences.
She was the youngest in her mother’s
first family and experienced the
challenge of being a step-child. Not
surprisingly, she set out to create
a sense of empowerment. “I knew
women who were educated and classy.
There was something special about
them that I admired at an early age
and I saw their leadership and
wanted to be just like them. I knew
I could do it since I already came
from a family that worked very hard
for what it had and I accepted I
would work harder and longer than
most to get what I wanted. For me,
the risk of being a failure drove me
to work harder than most to succeed.”
Even though
Quintana did not finish her college
degree, she advises entrepreneurs to
get as much education as possible—“Not
even a bachelors degree is enough
anymore,” she notes. Even though
most small business owners point at
financial hurdles at the beginning,
Quintana says the biggest challenge
can be “fear of the unknown.” She
also admonishes: don’t do it alone.
“I started alone but I realized I
needed to trust other people’s
skills and expertise because I
couldn’t possibly know everything.
You must be willing to ask people to
mentor you and to mentor others and
give back to your community once you
succeed,” says Quintana. She also
admonishes that entrepreneurs cannot
work 24 hours a day and be a slave
to the business. “Find something
else that you can enjoy and be
passionate about to strike a
balance.” And to create that work-life
balance, that is so elusive,
Quintana is very practical: “I made
my business life seamless with my
personal life. Regardless of where I
worked I made it clear that there
would need to be a place for my kids
to join me. Otherwise, I would not
have seen my kids enough and that
just wasn’t going to work for me.”
 Maria
de Lourdes “Lulu” Sobrino
Lulu’s Desserts
Tap
Into Your Culture for Opportunities
Lulu’s Desserts was the first
business in the United States to
offer ready-to-eat gelatin desserts
and it was born out of one Latina’s
desire to bring a little bit of
Mexican tradition to the U.S.
“Everyone knows that the one dessert
you can find in most homes in Mexico
is gelatin in a variety of flavors,”
says Maria de Lourdes Sobrino. “I
knew that if I could make it
convenient for families to eat,
selling it would be easy.” At first
Sobrino, sold Lulu’s Desserts from
her car—traveling to small, ‘mom and
pop’ markets in Southern California.
Later she found a distributor to
bring her products to supermarkets.
Today, Lulu’s Desserts has $10
million in annual sales and serves
all of the U.S. and parts of
northern Mexico. Wal-mart is her
largest retailer carrying her
products.
Sobrino, a
Mexican immigrant, was destined to
be an attorney following her father
and grandfather’s footsteps. As the
oldest of five, it was her duty to
follow the family tradition. Instead
she established a travel agency in
Mexico with such success that she
had to open an office in Los Angeles
for her growing customer base in
Southern California. Though she
never intended to stay in the U.S.,
the sudden devaluation of the peso
in 1982 changed everything. Her
travel business began to collapse,
her marriage was ending, and she did
not want to return to Mexico. In
part she was growing comfortable
with life in the U.S. and she also
felt determined to prove to her
parents she could be successful—without
being a lawyer.
Today, Sobrino
enjoys not only the success of being
a successful business owner but also
the recognition of serving as a role
model. Harvard University included
Sobrino in a traveling exhibit of
Enterprising Women, “The Business
Women of America: 1750-2000, 250
years of History of American Women
Entrepreneurs.” Sobrino was included
with 40 outstanding women in
business—like Oprah Winfrey and Meg
Whitman. Soon she will publish a
book about her experiences and that
of other successful Latinas (Thriving
Latina Entrepreneurs in the United
States, expected in bookstores May
2007). “I am extremely honored that
I had the first company like this.
Basically, I started an industry
that didn’t exist and it wasn’t
until 11 years later that Kraft
entered the market of ready-to-eat
gelatin and puddings. I have felt so
special when women reach out to me
and so honored to meet the President
of the United States as part of his
economic forum on small business—I
am part of a significant
contribution that many Latinas are
giving to our economy.”
Her advice for
entrepreneurs: “Set your goals,
determine your position, where are
you in your career and in your life.
What ever you choose, you need to
know this is what you will do the
rest of your life. When you find
that special niche you need to let
go the past, emotional barriers and
think bigger one day at a time. Add
power to your purpose in your
business. God made us to be creative
and use our imagination. The passion
has to be there to carry you through
the challenges. At the end of the
day, the only thing that will make
you a success is YOU: believe in
yourself and your business.” As to
the future, Sobrino is looking for
ways to create new partnerships for
Lulu’s Desserts so that it can grow
in new ways. She would also like to
strike a healthy balance in her life
and make room for her personal life
and her community involvement.
“Success is defined by the
professional and personal life.”
Sobrino notes.
By Maria Hernandez, and Kathleen
Chavez-Rège
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