HispanicTrending

June 29, 2016
By Dan Hesse

“It is extremely difficult to acquire financing when you are a single mom with no money and no job, so I bootstrapped my business,” says Adriana Chavela, who launched Hola Carolina, a bimonthly Spanish-language magazine, in 2015 with more determination than capital. “With my last $200, I printed an eight-page media kit and started knocking on doors.”

Today, the Asheville-based publication has a steady readership and stable advertising revenue. The key was being extremely smart with the little money she had.

“It requires strict discipline on cash flow, managing costs very closely, and trying to get the company up and running as cheaply as possible,” she explains. “Without any debt repayments or obligations to shareholders, I can afford to be more flexible with my ideas. I now have about two years of solid financials, proof of concept and evidence of demand. I’m in a better position to seek traditional bank or SBA loans at more favorable rates.”

Chavela is part of the Asheville area’s expanding community of Hispanic and Latino entrepreneurs. According to census data, Hispanics account for 6.5 percent of Buncombe County’s population and own more than 2 percent of its businesses (605 out of 28,498 registered businesses in 2012). In comparison, African-Americans (6.5 percent of the county’s population) own 858 businesses (3 percent), and Asians (1.2 percent of the population) own 459 local businesses (1.6 percent).

‘Con dinero baila el perro’
(With money, the dog dances.)

Although the overall numbers are still relatively small, there’s a growing desire in the local Hispanic community to own a business. Accordingly, Mountain BizWorks is now offering classes conducted in Spanish and designed to help potential business owners navigate the American entrepreneurial landscape. The local nonprofit also makes loans to promising startups and existing enterprises.

“Many Latinos know how to run a business, but we often have to teach them things like how you build a cash projection, profit-and-loss statements, those kinds of financial things,” notes Executive Director Patrick Fitzsimmons.

Rosanna Mulcahy, the local nonprofit’s Latino program coordinator, says the community has great potential that just needs to be developed. To that end, she holds workshops on marketing and the various legal issues business owners need to be aware of. “Not only do we teach them the skills to run their business, but since I’m also a lender, we’ll be getting them loan-ready in case they were to need a loan from us,” she explains.

The city of Asheville spends millions of dollars annually on contractors and specifically tries to find minority-owned businesses to work with. In the past, the focus was more on enterprises owned by women and African-Americans, but Brenda Mills, an economic development specialist with the city, says she’s seeing more Hispanic-owned businesses getting involved. “For example, there was a Hispanic prime contractor, and out of that grew another Hispanic business. The other gentleman learned from him, started small and grew another business. Now he’s bidding on contracts,” she says.

In the 2009-10 fiscal year, Asheville reported spending a mere $380 on general service contracts with Hispanic-, Asian- and Native American-owned businesses (the city groups these three minorities together in its reports). In FY 2013-14, the same group received a total of $203,787 in general service and construction work contracts, and the following year, the total for the group was $298,893.

Later this year, notes Mills, the city will be conducting “a disparity study that looks at contracting practices: where we buy from, what businesses tend to get these contracts, what type of contracts we put out, what kind of marketing do we do. And it will tell us what we can do to target minority businesses.”

‘Agua blanda en piedra dura, tanto cavadura continua gotera cava la piedra’
(Soft water can wear away hard stone.)

Even without city contracts, however, many Hispanic-owned businesses are thriving.

Maria Soto has been helping grow Tienda Los Nenes for the past six years. Her husband, Luis Manuel Prieto, grew up working in his family’s bakery, and she helped manage her own family’s business, so when the opportunity to buy a bakery presented itself, it was a chance to combine their respective skill sets. Renaming an existing West Asheville business, they’ve expanded it into a grocery store with a staffed meat counter and added a Hendersonville location.

It wasn’t easy, however. “Because we were so young, people did not see us as having experience,” Soto explains. “The hard part was to get a loan and convince people we were ready.” The first year, they used family money; later, a loan from Mountain BizWorks enabled Los Nenes to grow.

Support can also come in unexpected ways. Soto says the tienda has a lot of Eastern European customers who appreciate the quality and good value of their bread, noting that being in the same shopping plaza as the Euromarket has fostered cross-pollination.

“Often with minority communities,” notes Fitzsimmons, “they start a businesses and build an economic fortification by catering to each other. As the business gets stronger, they start branching out beyond the community. It might be they open a taqueria originally serving their neighbors and families, but pretty soon the rest of us discover we like tacos, and then we’re all going to the taqueria.” It’s analogous to what happened with Chinatowns in big cities, he points out, which “were basically there to serve each other, but now they’re big tourist destinations.”

Chavela, however, says every business needs to recognize Hispanics as potential customers. “The Latino consumer is a modern marketer’s dream,” she maintains. “As the influence of Latino culture grows, it is clear that marketers must make drastic shifts. Hola Carolina gives businesses an unmatched perspective about the Latino community, intimately connecting marketers to this highly coveted demographic. It’s about inclusion, not segmentation.”

At the national level, she points out, “Latinos already enjoy $1.5 trillion in annual purchasing power. That number has been growing much more quickly than the purchasing power of the general U.S. population — 70 percent more quickly over the last 25 years.”

‘A mal tiempo, buena cara’
(In bad times, keep a good face.)

Amid such successes, however, there are still struggles. Luciel Cano started Mountain View Stone Works in April. With Mulcahy interpreting, Cano says he wants “to learn better English to get more clients, because then I can hire at least three more people.” Most of his clients don’t speak Spanish, and he knows he’s got to make learning English a priority.

“It’s hard,” Cano says, in English. “I can understand, but there are times when I need to talk.”

Watching other Hispanic businesses achieve success is a strong motivator, as is the opportunity to grow into the role of business owner. “I know the work, but opening a business is taking me on a path I’ve never been down. I feel nervous but excited: It’s a new challenge,” Mulcahy translates.

Cano is not alone in grappling with the language barrier. The bakery’s previous owners, notes Soto, “did not speak English. Our employees are bilingual and some trilingual, so we can express what we have to offer and all the products we have.”

Cultural stereotypes also loom large. Soto says she sometimes hears complaints that Latino businesses don’t operate within the letter of the law. “We do. We always get information about new codes, everything we need to do so we can abide by the law of the community,” she explains.

Chavela, meanwhile, says, “Our unsettled politics lead the news today, fueling misconceptions about Latinos.” But at the end of the day, she’s just another business owner. “I face the same barriers as any entrepreneur: lack of financing, competition, rapid growth, adding talent. If you’re waiting until you know everything about running a business, you’ll never do anything.”

And for many budding entrepreneurs, the chance to prosper overshadows every hurdle. Asheville “is a good place to start a business,” says Cano with Mulcahy translating. “I’ve seen Latino businesses start small and get bigger. I know where I want to be three years from now.”

Ultimately, the foundation of these businesses’ success is the same as it is for any other. “We grow fast; we work for it. It seems like we have a bunch of small Latino businesses in Asheville that are growing,” says Soto.

A strong sense of community, notes Chavela, is helping fuel that growth. “Latino entrepreneurism is often intertwined with family as well as extended community. Not only do we often market effectively within our ethnic market segment, we often hire from within the community and patronize other Latino-owned businesses.” And while the kinds of businesses Latinos own and operate vary, the motivation is the same, Mulcahy maintains. “They’ve taken steps to come to this country because they want a better life. They’re not here to take advantage of any system — they’re here because they want to do better for their family and future generations.”

Mills agrees. Latinos, she says, “want to buy into that American dream that we all want to buy into.”

Source: Mountain Xpress

June 29, 2016
Raul A. Reyes

In a midtown Manhattan event space, the business cards were flying. They were proffered from tailored suit pockets, from designer handbags, from sleek wallets, and, in one instance, from a sterling silver case. Meanwhile, the conversations among the business people gathered at the Hudson Mercantile on Thursday literally echoed off the high ceilings.

These exchanges were a snapshot of Hispanic America rarely seen in the media — and exactly the type of connections that organizers of the Alumni Society's 2016 Leadership Summit had envisioned.

A professional development organization, The Alumni Society is open to mid- to senior-level Latino business executives who have graduated from a group of select colleges and universities, including the Ivy-League schools such as Harvard, Yale and MIT as well as Georgetown and Stanford. The Alumni Society offers networking opportunities for growth in the private sector, with the overall goal of advancing Latino leadership in corporate America.

"We wanted to shatter the myth that many businesses have that they can't achieve diversity because there are no qualified candidates," said co-founder Ricardo Anzaldua, who is MetLife's Executive Vice-President and General Counsel. "So we said, no qualified candidates? How about these 20,000 Latino graduates of elite academic institutions in the United States?"

The Alumni Society was born out of a sense of missed opportunity, explained Anzaldua. "The idea of the Alumni Society actually came from my experiences when I was a young undergraduate student at Brown University in the mid-1970s. The seminal moment was when we used to get together as Latino undergraduates from the various universities around the northeast," he said. "We would get together and have these amazing interactions where we would talk about issues that were of importance to the Latino community."

Anzaldua recalled these conversations as "dynamic" and "inspiring," but noted that he and his peers would inevitably go back to their studies, leaving unfulfilled promises to meet up again in their wake. He had a similar experience while attending Harvard Law School, where opportunities to connect with fellow Hispanics were "amazing" but infrequent.

Fast-forward to 2013, when Anzaldua and Pedro Guerrero, CEO of Guerrero-Howe, decided to organize a network of Latinos that would meet regularly. They hammered out a proposal, brought on selective schools as partners, and the Alumni Society was born. The group was founded in 2014, active by 2015, and now has 800 members.

The demographics of The Alumni Society's membership are impressive. Twenty-two percent of its members are Harvard grads, 14 percent are Columbia alumni, and alumni of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford are tied at 10 percent each.

Despite Anzaldua's elite academic background, he has had his own brush with discrimination, something that others in the group have also experienced. Like many Latinos, Anzaldua's family has been in the U.S. for generations; going as far back as before the 1700s. Yet after growing up as part of the established "Hispanos" in New Mexico, a young Anzaldua moved with his family to South Texas.

"That's where I really learned what racism was – South Texas is a totally different world from New Mexico," said Anzaldua. He said that even though many Hispanos have been in South Texas for a long time as well, it was clearly a situation where non-Latinos were the power structure. "There was very limited access to any kind of power or control or economic opportunity or anything for Latinos," he said. The awareness of this reality set Anzaldua on a life's course of achievement, and inspired his co-founding of The Alumni Society.

"I was in from the beginning, because I think that our community is growing and it is important for us to know each other but also employers, like Goldman Sachs, to know that there is talent that they are desperate to get and that this organization can bring together," said Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri, a member of The Alumni Society's advisory board. "I think this is a great place for peer networking, and for people to learn about career transitions and also definitely for employers to tap into great talent."

Despite being the country's largest minority group – comprising about 17 percent of the country's population – Latinos are consistently underrepresented in the higher ranks of the business world. A 2010 report by the General Accounting Office found that Hispanics filled three percent of senior-level jobs in the financial services industry. Similarly, this year the New York Times reported that Latinos comprised three percent of workers at companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. American Bar Association statistics show that Hispanics are four percent of licensed attorneys.

This is a reality that The Alumni Society hopes to change, by making it easier for Latinos to seek out mentors and to create their own professional networks. While some Latinos have grown up amid wealth, many have not. As one member commented to NBC News, "We didn't grow up going to country clubs and the golf course. So we have to build our platforms."

The Alumni Society also has a strong commitment to giving back to the community; many members are the sons and daughters of immigrants.

The group has held events in New York and San Francisco, with more scheduled this fall in Los Angeles, Dallas, and San Francisco. The 2016 Leadership Summit — the largest member gathering — had over 350 registered guests. Facebook, Goldman Sachs, and MetLife partnered in sponsoring the Summit.

So far, the response from members seems to be enthusiastic.

"I think an organization getting high-qualified Latinos in the same room across industries and across schools has resonated in ways I didn't even expect," said attendee Miguel Sanchez, who holds two Harvard degrees. "You have commonalities with people who are in different industries and just because of the caliber of people in this room, you are able to connect on so many levels and you realize that you are all facing similar issues, as you want to affect society and want to effect change in the world."

This year's the organization's Leadership Summit featured panel discussions, small-group leadership sessions, and a keynote speech by CEO of the Girl Scouts of America Anna Marie Chavez.

"We have to take our turn at the leadership mantle," Chavez told her rapt audience. She encouraged the crowd to welcome the occasional failure. "If you're not failing, you're not innovating," she declared. "Take risks — with risks come action and impact."

Chavez urged attendees to get involved in the political process and to support Latino candidates that they believe in.

Speaking to NBC News, Chavez praised the Alumni Society.

"I think it is very important, as the Latino community, that we understand our strengths, our talents across many sectors," she said. "And this organization is perfectly positioned to create that very powerful network of Latino leaders all over the country. And it's up to us to really give back to our communities."

An afternoon panel at the Summit addressed the lack of Latinos on corporate boards (Latinos held three percent of the seats in the boardroom of the Fortune 500 in 2013). "We have to teach them (corporate boards) that we are not the great exception," said Tom Castro, CEO of El Dorado Capital. "There are many more people who are qualified and ready to serve on boards."

Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri of Goldman Sachs said that she saw a lot of opportunity at the Summit.

"The reality is that the different component parts of our community are important; the immigration experience is important, the undocumented experience is important, as well as that of people who've stumbled in their life," Vazquez-Ubarri said. "But it definitely is important for kids growing up to see that there are people who look like them, that have studied hard, sacrificed, that have had difficulties – because you know not all the stories here are success throughout, we have all had to overcome different things."

"Ultimately the drive of the Latino community is a very strong sense of community that we have," she said, "and that drive is evident in this room. The people in this room did not get to where they are just by laying back. They are definitely very driven."

Source: NBC News