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Within four months, the company grew 100 percent, and it hasn’t stopped growing. Today, HMC is the largest advertising agency for Latino businesses in San Diego and has since expanded its TV, radio, billboard and print expertise to the Asian market.

For Roberts, going out on her own was inevitable after years at a local TV affiliate and in Spanish-language radio. “I had learned and tried a little bit of everything,” she says. “I had met my limit, and now it was my time. ”

According to Alex Montoya, senior membership coordinator for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, in the last five years, there’s been a boom in Latina-owned businesses—“an explosion.”

Historically, Latinos have been cautious about investing their money and time, but that is changing. “They’re attacking the market more aggressively than their parents and grandparents,” says Montoya, who attributes the success of the 1999 U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce convention here to the largest representation of entrepreneurs ever among its 10,000 participants.

It could be better, however. “Our research shows that the Hispanic community still doesn’t have access to loans like we would hope,” says Montoya. “Some banks have great programs, but I’d say access to capital and access to loans is fairly dismal.”

Latinos aren’t the only entrepreneurs affected. According to a report last year by the Milken Institute and the U.S. Commerce Department, minority firms receive just 2 percent of all private-equity investment. “This, in turn, limits employment growth and new entrants into the labor force,” the report adds.

Of the 186,804 firms registered during the last census in San Diego County, only 34,088, or 18 percent, were minority-owned. And of the 1 million jobs registered with California’s Employment Development Department, a mere .03 percent, or 31,452, were produced by minority-owned firms, most of them sole proprietorships or single businesses such as shops, food stands and mom-and-pop stores.

“Lack of access to capital is a traditional problem and will continue to be a problem,” says Carolyn Smith, president of the Southeastern Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), which assists small emerging businesses relocating to Southeastern San Diego.

“Everyone has to be a little shrewder today,” Smith says. “You just can’t hang a shingle. You have to find a niche to be successful.”

For Roberts, the niche is her own culture. “I was born in Mexico,” she says. “You have to understand the culture to advertise to the people in a manner they will respond to.”

It also takes guts, according to Marc Randolph, SEDC’s director of corporate communication. He defines entrepreneurship by “the degree of commitment one is willing to make to overcome all obstacles in actualizing one’s vision.”

Fewer communities exemplify that better than San Diego County’s 15,000 Chaldeans and 60,000 Vietnamese, both uprooted from their homelands by politics and war.

Keith Michael Esshaki’s father, Ezzat, was working for the government when Saddam Hussein rose to power as a leader in Iraq’s ruling Al-Baath Party in 1968. The father’s motivation in moving his family here in 1978 was simple—“to provide his children a better and more stable life,” says Esshaki, whose family is Chaldean, a Christian minority in Iraq. Esshaki’s father followed other Chaldeans into the dominant business at the time—running a grocery store.

For Najib Konja, who came here in 1976, there was no other choice. His sister, Suad Major, already had a supermarket “ready for me,” says Konja, 56, who now owns four convenience stores, including one in Las Vegas. “[One’s own] business is always better than working for someone else,” he says. However, his children, both CPAs, prefer the security of working for large companies.

But after working for three firms, Esshaki, 38, retained the entrepreneurial spirit by starting his own company, GTC Systems, which manages networks for large companies. “I wasn’t satisfied with the way they were managed,” he explains. “So I decided to open my own company.”

Noori Barka, 46, who came here in 1986, says he asked himself: “How long are you going to work for somebody else, especially in this country?” His answer: “I have to build something for myself.” Four years ago, he did, founding his own company, Calbiotech, a Spring Valley manufacturer of medical products.

A Chinese proverb says: “If you want to be powerful, you want to be in government. If you want to be rich, you want to be in business.” That could account for some 25 to 30 percent of the area’s Vietnamese owning their own businesses in San Diego County, according to Man Phan, who came to Linda Vista after fleeing Communist-controlled Vietnam in 1982.

“The Vietnamese culture is pretty much influenced by the Chinese. Many Vietnamese do have a strong entrepreneurial spirit, in Vietnam and here,” says Phan, 26, an adviser for Access Inc., a job-training agency, and executive director of the annual Linda Vista Multicultural Fair. Four members of his immediate family own their own businesses, and he is partnering with a company in Vietnam to import bamboo, rattan and porcelain products.

“We came from a society where we were limited in opportunity and resources, so we seized every opportunity we could when we came here,” Phan says. “If you ask every single parent who fled or emigrated to the United States what is the primary reason they came here, the response will typically be: freedom—and to ensure a brighter future for our children.”

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