By Steve Smith

With an endless amount of details and countless ways to fail, starting your own business is an enormous task. Now imagine that you do not speak the language of the country in which you are starting your business or that your family has generations of tradition forbidding you from entering the business world. Or imagine that as a woman you are expected to raise a family before you start your business.

Any one of these often is enough to dissuade the average person from fulfilling the dream of entrepreneurship. But these hurdles were not high enough for our select group of women who overcame the obstacles to become their own bosses. These minority women and many thousands of other like-minded souls, are a testament to hard work, perseverance and intelligence.

Women in Business, 2001, was a national study conducted by the Small Business Administration (SBA) that revealed that women business owners have developed into a powerful economic resource. According to the report:

• Women-owned businesses generated $819 billion in revenue.
• Women-owned businesses employed more than 7 million workers.
• Women-owned businesses had nearly $150 billion in payroll.
• Women-owned businesses represented about one-quarter of all non-farm businesses and almost one-third of all sole-proprietorships.
• Women's share of total self-employment increased from 22 percent in 1976 to 38 percent in 2000.
• In 1999, only 12 percent of self-employed women were minorities.

Locally, the numbers mirror the national statistics. In a report sponsored by the Merrill Lynch Foundation, minority women-owned businesses are the fastest-growing segment of the small business community in Southern California. The report showed that the minority woman business owner is generally younger and more educated but with less business experience than the broader minority small business community in the region. These women also share "gender-specific challenges related to balancing work and family and gender discrimination, especially in male dominated industries."

Before reading our profiles of four women and their businesses, it is important to understand the myriad tasks involved in starting and running a small business.

First, there is the business idea itself and the task of convincing family, friends and a financial resource that you have an idea that will work.

A new business takes money, even a business that is run out of the home. Most of the people who start small businesses leave a job to do so and must contend with that loss of income.

Most of the time, the business needs a physical location. Rent must be negotiated, equipment and supplies must be purchased. Deals have to be struck with suppliers. Utilities and phones must be set up. A staff may need to be hired and that alone is enough to discourage even the hardiest person.

Along with these details and thousands more, the new business needs customers. That means creating innovative ways to attract business among the existing competition. And when the business is up and running, it takes all of your time and energy to make it work.

Sandy Sutton, district director the Orange County office of the SBA has seen all types of businesses pass through her office. "There's a debate as to whether women business owners require special services," says Sutton. "In talking to women a lot of it is because they are encountering a glass ceiling. Women are starting businesses at about twice the rate of men."

"I feel that it is good to provide special resources for women. A lot of women who enter the business environment are a little less sophisticated than their male counterparts and so it's good for them to feel as though there's a place for them to go where they can talk to people, to get information about resources and provide them with help."

The SBA has many counseling and financial services available to the minority women business owner and most are not hesitant to avail themselves of the opportunities. "I don't have statistics that prove this but I do think that women tend to be more successful in business than men in the sense that they have a lower failure rate. They don't take as many risks and they are not afraid to ask for help. We have a lot of women coming into our SCORE [Service Corps of Retired Executives] chapter, attending their pre-business seminar and coming in for counseling and assistance in getting their business started."

Over the years, the climate appears to have made a sea change in business opportunities. "We recently had a meeting with several of the women who belong to our SCORE chapter about providing additional mentoring for women here in Orange County," says Sutton. "They are perfectly willing to help do that but part of our discussion was about whether women have special needs. The interesting thing was that some of the older SCORE women said 'yes' and some of the newer, recently retired women business owners said, 'No, we're on a level playing field and we can duke it out with the guys on our own turf and we don't need any special help.' So it was interesting that the perspective may be changing."



America the Beautiful

Quynh Lam
Interior Surroundings
2952 El Camino Real
Tustin, CA 92782 o 714.832.8116

In 1975, Quynh Lam was in a refugee center in Camp Pendleton, having fled from Vietnam at the end of the war. "I was there for about a week and I thought that with all these refugees here, all the jobs would be gone. So I got out as fast as I could."

Her departure from the camp is the start of an incredible story of hard work and determination and a will to succeed.

"I got a job right away as a seamstress. I worked there for a month then I got a job as a housecleaner for a week. After that, I was a babysitter and housekeeper for about three months. Then I became a teacher's aide in Garden Grove helping Vietnamese students."

Lam then took the advice of other refugees who said she should live on welfare while she went to school. "I did that for about three months," says Lam, "But then I felt it was not my place. I took a look around me at the welfare office and I saw people I didn't identify with. It was just not my place."

Off welfare, Lam found a job-training program and went to work as a typist trainee for $2.50 an hour. "I took an accounting course in the evening and eventually landed a job with a steamship line as an inbound clerk. It was a big corporation and I found that you have to play some politics there to get your way so I quit that job."

In 1979, Lam began to accumulate jobs all at once, finally totaling three before slowing down. "I went to work as a bookkeeper for a freight consolidator and stayed there for eight years. I saved some money and with a friend of mine we opened a small gift shop in Los Angeles and I worked the weekends. At that time, I also signed up with a mutilevel marketing company selling cosmetics. I began to make money selling cosmetics so I quit the job at the freight consolidator because I wanted to be an employer myself."

Lam now had some money saved and was eager to spread her entrepreneurial wings. "After I quit, I was looking for an opportunity. My brother-in-law saw a lot of people opening furniture stores and thought I could do that. I said, 'Who would want to buy furniture?' In my community we were so poor at that time that we bought a sofa with plastic on it and sat on the plastic. When the plastic wore out, we'd put a blanket over it. So who's going to buy furniture?"

But her brother-in-law saw that people were buying furniture because they were moving a lot. "So I put all of my savings into it and borrowed $50,000 from my former boss at the freight consolidator. I had to borrow the money because I did not have any credit. My first store was in San Diego. After a year we saw a big center in Tustin and signed up for that, too."

Lam learned how to overcome virtually any challenge. "In the beginning, I had problems because I came from another country and didn't know how things worked."

Lam has this advice: "Work hard, be honest and have dignity. I don't believe in sex and race discrimination. A lot of people use that to their benefit but I don't think that's right. I believe that America offers great opportunities. If you work hard, you will make your way.

"I would like to thank the United States of America for giving me the opportunity to be what I am today."



Mom Engineers Success

Rubina Chaudhary
MARRS Services
5300 Beach Boulevard, Suite 545
Buena Park, CA 90621
714.441.2029 o www.marrsservices.com

"I started in the dining room by buying a $40 L-shaped desk and using the children's Apple IIC computer," says Rubina Chaudhary, founder of MARRS Services. "It's amazing how people come out to help you when you need help."

For Chaudhary, help came from a mentor as well as the phone company. "I did not have a phone connection in my dining room so I called the phone company asking for help to get another jack installed. The person on the other end said, 'All you really need is a cordless phone. It worked.'"

Rubina Chaudhary's humble beginning resulted in MARRS Services, a firm that provides management, engineering, and training services in the public works and environmental fields.

Her dining room office is still operational, along with offices in Seattle, Escondido, Sacramento, Santa Fe Springs and Buena Park.

"About two years after my dining room office, I built an addition to the house for a work station/office. With that arrangement, I could be making dinner and I could determine whether the children were watching TV or doing their homework. Another benefit is that it has left a wonderful impression on our children. It's one thing to say 'study!' to your children but quite another to be sitting across the table from them when you say it."

Chaudhary had been on a parallel plane with husband, Riaz, who is an engineer. "Up to that point I had been able to combine family and business effectively. But as I was moving closer to my husband's business environment, he told me that if I was going to run a business, I should really have a shingle out on the street. I told him that I would only have an outside office when I can afford to have staff so that when I leave the doors stay open."

Chaudhary's dedication to her family is the result of an upbringing in which women were not always encouraged to enter the business community. Emigrating from India to Canada when she was 16, she completed high school on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, went to college at the University of British Columbia and got her degree in agricultural sciences.

Chaudhary met and married her husband while in college. The two moved back to Vancouver Island and Chaudhary landed a job at a hospital in food services administration. After three years and one child, the Chaudharys moved to Seattle. "What we've done is that each time I am fulfilling my family responsibilities, we've been able to give an extra push to my husband's career."

After a year in Seattle, Chaudhary and her family moved to Calgary, where they lived for 10 years. Calgary proved to be both busy and productive for Chaudhary. "I had two children while we lived there and also got my MBA at the University of Calgary. I got the MBA between my second child and third child. Friends my age have four children. I have three children and an MBA," says Chaudhary.

After Calgary, the Chaudharys moved again, this time to Los Angeles. "My husband had a one year assignment but we liked it so much we decided to stay," says Chaudhary.

When her last child was 2, her thoughts turned to business. "My husband thought it was time and we had just purchased a house. So I started looking around for something to do. I knew that whatever I chose was going to be my career for the rest of my life. I also knew that I had to be close to him because I didn't want our children to come home with no one there. My husband and I have made it a priority to balance our parenting and business responsibilities."

In 1988, Chaudhary started a part-time business to help send her children to better schools. "I went to a franchise expo and looked into a food service business because it was a natural match for my skill set."

At the expo, Chaudhary became intrigued by the presentation for the Success Motivation Institute. "I purchased a franchise for $20,000 and started marketing those materials. I held classes wherever I could, including a branch of Downey Savings because I could get it at a reasonable cost."

On one sales call, Chaudhary's life changed. "I was focusing my management development training on engineers and the engineering environment because that's what I was closest to. One day I went to see a man named Rick Opincar at Boyle Engineering in Newport Beach to pitch my management training program for his engineers. During our meeting, he said, 'Rubina what do you really want to do?' It was the kind of question I would ask the participants in my classes."

With guidance and inspiration from Opincar, Chaudhary started MARRS Services and has never looked back. Today she works primarily from her offices in Buena Park and Santa Fe Springs.



Translation: Self-determination

Virginia Earl
Translations Unlimited USA
P.O. Box 11351
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
949.650.5529 o www.spanishtranslators.net

Translations Unlimited provides technical translations to companies that export products to Europe and South America. Typical clients include manufacturers with a need to develop production manuals, catalogs or marketing materials translated into another language.

The company was founded by Virginia Earl in 1996 and currently translates documents into 20-25 different languages. "I was a journalism major at the University of Maryland," says Earl. "I was writing for different publications for the food processing and beverage industry, environmental industry, telecommunications industry, healthcare industry and pretty much any trade publication. When I was working for Cahners (a trade magazine publisher) I used to interview people for articles and many times the person would speak to me in either Spanish or Portuguese and I would translate the article."

As part of the workforce, Earl grew restless. "I decided to start my own business because I didn't have enough of a challenge at what I was doing. I didn't want to work in an office and have a regular nine-to-five schedule. So when one of the magazines that I was working for folded, that pushed me into working for myself."

One of the keys to the success of any small business is the length of the owner's experience in the field. "When I started my business I already had my foot in the door because my first clients were my former employers. Then the word spread, which is the best reference you can have. It was a little hard but not too bad at first. I do not have a lot of overhead. The translators and the interpreters I use are on a contract basis and I don't have a lot of expenses."

Looking back, Earl recalls some resistance because she is a woman. "There were some problems with banks and getting a loan. And recently I talked to four companies and was told that they have translation agencies and once they find the companies they like they are hesitant to switch to someone else. Within those companies, employees were determining who should bid on contracts."

The experience left Earl somewhat bitter. "I went out of my way to attend conferences and seminars and networking and it sort of defeats the purpose of being certified as being a minority by having someone predetermine who is going to bid. It's not very equitable."

"I am certified by the SBA and also by the Women and Minority Business Enterprise, the Public Utilities Commission and by the Southern California Regional Foods Purchasing Council."

Along the way, Earl has learned some lessons the hard way. "There are so many certifications out there that it can be overwhelming. It's very costly and time consuming to keep up with all these certifications and there is no guarantee that you're going to get anything."

Earl's advice? "Stay focused, be disciplined. Always continue to educate yourself and network. I don't have any regrets. It was scary, I won't deny that, because I worked all my life for somebody else and I had pretty good jobs."



The Mighty Oak

Rita Kalwani
KAL Architects
4500 Campus Dr.
Newport Beach, CA 92665 o 949.975.1516

KAL Architects of Newport Beach has been in business since 1991. "Before I started KAL I worked for various architecture firms and the last firm I worked for was Nestle USA, the chocolate company," says founder Rita Kalwani.

"I wanted to be an architect since I was 6 and when I was 18 I wanted to have my own company. Eventually, it was my dream project. I tried to start my company two or three times but never had the nerve to quit my full-time job. But over the holidays of 1990, I decided it would be now or never."

Kalwani had a plan and the required determination but it was not enough. "It was very difficult and a big struggle. The hardest part was the loneliness. When you are used to an office environment, there are people all around you. On your own, you are trying to motivate yourself. You have to have dedication and believe in yourself. You have to have a very strong belief in what you are doing. Many times, I had to remind myself that this is just a transition or that it's just a phase. I promised myself that I would give five years of my life to this company and see what happens and that I would not think about letting go for those five years. I knew that if I was going to make it I was going to have to commit to those five years."

Kalwani prepared well. "I took a small business management course in the early '80s but that was more related to manufacturing. I went to school and in one class I told them what my vision was and they said, 'You are thinking like a big tree. You have to think like a seed. A seed has to grow and develop into a big tree.'"

Kalwani started KAL in her home and worked there for three years. "After that I rented an executive suite and then moved to a shared office situation. Then we grew and now have our own office." Her Orange County projects include a term as a subconsultant for the Orange County Transportation District and as a consultant for a resort concept in Balboa. Looking back, Kalwani has mixed opinions as to whether it was more difficult for her as a minority woman. "I think so. Fortunately, I don't think of myself as anything but an architect. But I think that society is more aware of me being a woman architect than I am aware of being a woman architect. I sometimes wonder if I had not been a woman if it had been different but I don't know."

Her early years provided good training for the male-dominated architecture field. "I've been surrounded since childhood by men. My siblings who are closest to me are two brothers who are always competing. But they are also professionals who work hard so I was also surrounded by that."

Kalwani's advice to the budding minority female entrepreneur is to "believe in yourself and be patient. I worked for five years to get where I thought I'd be in a year."

Kalwani has worked hard to achieve her success and it was not easy. "Now this is the only life I know but for five years I was questioning whether I did the right thing."

At Your Service
SBA help for women is extensive. "One of the things we try to do here is to hook women up with other business organizations that focus on women in the community and leave it up the woman to decide where she wants to go, whether she wants to belong to NOWBO [National Organization of Women Business Owners] or perhaps just a local chamber," says Sutton. "All of our programs are open and available to women. We do have a special loan program that will pre-qualify women business owners who are seeking a loan. This special program is available for women, for minority business owners and for veterans."

"One of the good things about this loan program is there have been accusations that banks won't make loans to women or that banks won't make loans to a particular minority group. This way they can take a pre-approved loan and show it to the bank. We try to tell people that if the bank declines them for a loan, they should ask for the reasons in writing.

"On the contracting side, we have contracting assistance that we provide across the board but we have a special emphasis on women because we have never met the president's goals on government contracting for women, which is now 5 percent. But we're getting close because we're trying to find women businessowners interested in doing business with government agencies or county and local agencies. Government agencies encourage them to get involved in the procurement process."

With all of Sutton's experience, her advice to a minority woman starting a business is still basic. "They need to do their homework. They need to have a business plan, they need to know their market and they need to be able to finance their business on their own for two to three years with the backing of family or angels. It's very difficult to start up a business and be immediately profitable. There are resources to go to for assistance, whether it's our local SCORE chapter or the Orange County Business Development Center and they'll help make sure they're ready before they take the plunge." OCM

Steve Smith is a frequent contributor to OC METRO Magazine. E-mail: smi161@aol.com. Letters to the editor go to: Feedback@ocmetro.com.