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Corporate Exodus:
Hispanic Entrepreneurs Find Happiness and Freedom
by Striking Out on Their Own
By
Christine Granados
[This
article first appeared in
Hispanic Magazine
July-August 1999 Issue]
Many Hispanics in corporate America no longer worry about cracking
the glass walls and ceilings they encounter daily on the job.
It isn’t because these obstacles no longer exist, mind you.
As a matter of fact, the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission found that
minorities and women make up two-thirds of the U.S. population and
57 percent of the workforce, while they account for only 3 percent
of senior management positions at Fortune 1000 industrial and
service corporations.
Glass ceilings do exist. Latinos, however, are no longer standing
idly while opportunities to advance pass them by. They are creating
fortunes and happiness by starting their own businesses like
millions of other Americans.
Take Ada Díaz Kirby. A corporate manager five years away from
retirement, she was no longer able to stand a stifling corporate
environment that pigeonholed her, so she started an interactive
multimedia business in Denver, Colorado. For Ruth Vela, it was a
family crisis that rushed her toward an epiphany. She was bored and
didn’t like the monotony of the corporate world. She wanted a
challenge. So she struck out on her own and became a real estate
agent.
Many
workplaces are a study in dysfunction and in a large corporation the
negatives are magnified: from infighting and office politics to
bosses pitting employees against one another to colleagues who do
not pull their weight. Most Latinos do want work; they just don’t
want to put up with these annoying distractions. Filiberto “Fil”
Pacheco, CEO of PB, Inc., in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says he left
corporate America because “what I was doing for the company I could
easily be doing for myself and even better.”
Apparently
many Latinos feel the same way. The rise in Hispanic-owned business
since the late ’80s has been phenomenal. There were 422,373
Hispanic-owned businesses in 1987 compared to 771,706 in 1992,
according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. Firms owned by Hispanic
women are the fastest-growing segment in business ownership in the
country.
The number of
businesses owned by Latinas grew by 114 percent over the 1987–1992
period with sales receipts growing from $4.3 billion in 1987 to
$17.2 billion in 1992. Kirby, 48, an executive director for US
West, Inc., with a six-figure salary after 24 years on the job,
says, “I definitely felt a glass ceiling. I’ve got this glass hammer
on my desk—a glass ceiling breaking award (from US West). It’s
ironic because I didn’t see a future for myself in the company
anymore. It seemed like I had to fight like crazy to maintain my
position. The company was undergoing a lot of change and I saw that
they were moving people in to top-level jobs from the outside. I
felt underutilized and not appreciated by the corporate environment.
I started to feel kind of embarrassed by my tenure because if you
have a lot of years of service, they start looking at you
differently.”
It
wasn’t until Kirby spoke to her mentor, Chuck Lillis, about her
entrepreneurial spirit that she decided to leave and start her own
business. “That’s when I thought maybe I am valuable outside this
monopolistic society,” Kirby says. “Just thinking about it sparked
the energy in me and I hit the point of no return. I should have
found another job first, but I was tired of the politics and so much
bureaucracy. The thought of staying five more years gave me chills.
I just quit and walked away.”
Kirby, like many new entrepreneurs, had absolutely no notion of how
to start a business but had an excellent business idea and was a
quick study. In 1994, she created CommTech International, Inc., in
Denver, a full-service training company specializing in multimedia
technology and telecommunications. Revenues for the first year
surpassed the $1 million mark, and the company now has 13 employees.
Starting up was tough, however. On many nights Kirby catnapped under
the desk in her office to fulfill her contracts.
She went to FastTrac, a training program given by Small Business
Development Center to help women and minorities start their own
businesses, and began taking the classes the day she opened the
doors of CommTech. “I knew the day I stepped into the first class I
had made the right decision. I would go to class, then back to my
business and implement what I had learned from FastTrac that day,”
she says.
“When I look back now I think, ‘What an idiot.’ If I had stayed [at
US West] I would have been able to retire with a fairly good chunk
of money. I would have been able to do what I did and live
comfortably. But I never felt so much alive [after starting my own
business].”
Live is
what Vela wanted to do. The 37-year-old Pharr, Texas, native says
all her skills were not being used at Tandem Computers, Inc., in
Austin. Being a cost analyst—or “bean counter,” as she puts it—bored
her. What cemented her decision to leave the security of corporate
America and enter the fickle world of real estate was her father,
Orlando Rodríguez. He was diagnosed with cancer and his near-death
experience startled her. Her father’s advice, “Mi’ja, don’t wait if
you’re not happy,” was all the incentive she needed to leave her
comfortable job.
“You can live and die doing that work [financial analysis]. It’s a
steady, honest living. Some people can live like that, but I wanted
more. Being boxed in a room made me feel claustrophobic and after
fourteen years I reached my limit,” Vela says. “I felt stifled—like
I was only using the left side of my brain and there were no
rewards.”
She took the plunge last June, and after working to pay off all her
bills, selling some stock, and getting licensed, she began working
with Coldwell Banker Richard Smith Realtors in July. “Last week I
closed on a house with a couple.
They were so happy I helped them buy a house here [in Austin] they
gave me a big hug. Compare that to doing books. I never got a hug
from one of the engineers,” Vela says with a laugh.
“It’s been seven months now and I’ve closed on my seventh house. I
have no income and I haven’t broken even yet. It’s a lot of work.
Everyone says to give it a year or a year and a half before I start
making a profit. [But] I have so much more freedom.”PB owner
Pacheco, 62, knows firsthand about the excitement and madness that
comes with starting your own business. It took his engineering
services company five years before its first contract. “I started
out in my own bedroom,” Pacheco says. “I went five years without a
paycheck. The only check I was receiving was from my retirement.”
(Pacheco served in the U.S. Army for 3 years.)
“It was crazy. I drove my wife bananas. I lost my house. I used my
IRA and maxed my credit cards. I was $150,000 in the hole.” However,
Pacheco believed in his abilities, and now his business is a
multimillion dollar corporation with a 16,000- square-feet
headquarters in Albuquerque and additional offices in Española, New
Mexico; Oakridge, Tennessee; and Washington, D.C. The company has
more than 35 employees, and revenues of $18 million.
Using their corporate experiences as a guide, Latino entrepreneurs
are careful about how they structure their own companies. As Kirby’s
company continues to grow, she is adamant about not allowing
corporate America’s strict rules and regulations to seep into her
work atmosphere. “Everything I despised at the corporation we don’t
do here. We don’t have a lot of restrictions and rules. We have
flexible hours. I smoke cigars in my office. At meetings we break
out beer and cigars,” she says. “That doesn’t mean we don’t get
results. That’s one place where I don’t waiver. If we don’t get
results we can’t operate. We want people to feel good about coming
to work, and that’s one reason we’re able to retain such skilled
technical people, because it sure isn’t the money.”
Latino entrepreneurs, especially women, are showing the way for
those workers who are frustrated by the corporate environment and
are no longer content to be cogs in a machine.
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