Small business dreams come true for these North Bay Latino entrepreneurs
Ivan Jimenez will never forget the time he knocked on a door to ask the homeowners if they wanted their car detailed and a woman told him, “Go back to Mexico. You don’t belong here. What gives you the right to knock on my door?”
Instead of firing back a reply, he took it as inspiration.
“I told myself, ‘OK, this is not going to stop me.’ And I used it as motivation.”
Two years later, Jimenez is no longer blindly knocking on doors. He and his wife, Alison, have expanded their Sonoma Auto Spa business with mobile detail units and by adding customers in Marin County, too, washing every make and model from Hondas to Ferraris.
Beyond the unintended motivation, what really solidified the small business was a $25,000 microloan last year from La Luz Center, the Sonoma Valley-based nonprofit that offers family services, economic advancement and other community resources. That microloan allowed the couple to buy the equipment they needed to offer more services and hire two employees. Since 2014, La Luz has issued 32 microloans totaling $807,500, boosting Sonoma Valley auto shops, restaurants, contractors, builders, landscapers and house cleaners while creating more than 150 jobs.
“It is the rawest, truest form of entrepreneurship,” said Brian Nicholson, a La Luz board member who has served two years on the microloan committee. As a former New York private equity investor who now works as managing director for Sonoma Brands, overseeing lines such as KRAVE jerky, Guayaki Yerba Mate and Smashmallow, he’s accustomed to working with entrepreneurs looking to launch a business.
“But at La Luz, we aren’t a venture capital fund or a fund that is focused on inspiring people to become entrepreneurs. Instead, we are helping to accelerate people who already have a business,” he said.
“You have people who have already taken a lot of risk — they’ve already jumped off the diving board, so to speak, and they’re out there swimming. And we’re not giving them so much a life jacket as we’re giving them paddles, to keep going and to get there faster. That is a really powerful thing. They already believe in themselves, but now they can see that others believe in them.”
‘Shark Tank’ moment
To streamline the process, a La Luz microloan coordinator walks applicants through each step, gathering bank statements and credit reports while helping them create a business plan, chart projections and describe exactly how they intend to use the loan proceeds. If they pass the first hurdle, they get a chance to pitch their business — it’s their “Shark Tank” moment, although not usually as dramatic.
In every pitch, Nicholson and the La Luz microloan committee look for the passion and commitment at the heart of the business, plus the stories of the people who are driving the narrative.
One of the most memorable pitches, Nicholson remembered, was when Anibar Perez described how he started out selling his wife’s tamales door to door in his El Verano neighborhood in the Sonoma Valley. They began with a batch of 100. Now they sell around 3,000 tamales a month, filling fiesta platters from Santa Rosa and Petaluma to Vallejo.
But Perez’s dream was to own a food truck. He had saved $10,000 to buy a truck from a retired owner, but it needed a lot of work before he could get it running again, along with permits needed to hit the road.
“There are things in the body language that you can see and trust that it’s not someone trying to fake something or act,” Nicholson said. “It was so authentic. You could feel it in the pitch that this was his burning desire. He believed in himself. He saw something working. And he could see where this could continue to go, and he was betting on himself.”
For Perez, it was another step toward his lifelong dream. Raised in Frontera Comalapa in the state of Chiapas in Mexico, he worked with his family, growing corn, beans and coffee. At the age of 20, he immigrated to the United States after “I saw my father work a lot and not make any money,” he said. “So I told my father, ‘Give me a chance to go to the U.S. and I’ll help you more.’”
After a stint harvesting grapes, oranges and chiles in Irvine, he found a kitchen table to sleep under at a friend’s house in Sonoma. Over the years, he’s work at Zino’s, LaSalette and La Plaza restaurants. In addition to selling tamales, he now cooks at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn.
“But my dream has always been to own a taco truck,” he said. Unfortunately, the truck he bought has had severe mechanical problems and is being worked on at a Stockton auto shop right now. He hopes to get it up and running this summer with the $20,000 microloan from La Luz.
