National Small Business Week is Latino Small Business Week

As we close out National Small Business Week and raise a toast Cinco de Mayo, I want to highlight the critical role that Latino small business owners – especially Latinas – have played by being the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the US despite challenges.?Entrepreneurship is crucial to economic development because small business owners impact the economy by creating new jobs and pathways, and innovation.

Over the past decade, the number of Latino business owners grew by 34 percent compared to one percent for all other entrepreneurs in America. ?According to a recent Stanford study, Latino-owned businesses contributed about $500 billion to the US economy in annual sales. As for Latinas, there are over two million Latina-owned businesses in the country, a growth of more than 87 percent since 2007, according to the National Women's Business Council.?And we create opportunities for others, which is what we do as Latinos.?In fact, Latino-owned businesses employ more than 3 million people.

Entrepreneurship is in our blood.?From selling flowers on a median strip in traffic to opening a food truck to establishing a yoga studio to a tech-startups to being a creator – we do it all with great vision, cultural pride, tenacity, and ganas.?Always ganas. ??Because as a community facing many challenges, it’s often how we can be most self-reliant and then radiate our success.

But despite that tremendous growth, we still need to continue to grow, right??(Especially coming out of COVID crisis and right into inflation crisis.)

“We looked through it all from the lens of making sure that we can serve the smallest of the small,” said SBA Administrator Isabella Guzman to Latina Style magazine. “That’s been my priority to serve businesses and meet them where they are ... to pivot and adapt ... during this time.”

Ah yes, pivot and adapt. Enter the role of social media platforms, which provide free, equitable advertising to all small businesses – as small as they get – by providing the opportunity for growth while fomenting creativity and cultural relevance.? A business can literally reach millions in an instant.?

One of the most effective ways to grow a business is through advertising but, traditionally, it has been an obstacle because of the costs, which continue to rise – global ad spend is at a record high of over 605 billion dollars.?

So, Latinx businesses have had to get creative and resourceful as they promote their brands, services, and stories with their heritage as a source of inspiration.

As we continue our work with small businesses at the Hispanic Heritage Foundation , we ask “what’s your Tik Tok strategy?” along with other aspects such as access to capital, research, and customer service. ?Building that personal brand, which can be steeped in your culture to further make your business authentic and unique, is not only helping to grow small businesses but actually saving some.

Take Jasmine Vegas of Maria's Mexican Restaurant, who’s family-owned business faced economic hardship recently and had to lay off staff and prepare to close their business. ?In desperation, she started posting videos about the restaurant on social media and it changed their fortunes, literally, overnight.

Jasmin said, “We had so many customers coming in that weekend asking if I was the girl from TikTok , coming from all over, driving 30, 40, 50 minutes, even hours, just to try us out." ?They ended up re-hiring employees and even had to hire new once to keep up with the foot traffic.

There are over 4.2 billion active social media users – twice as many as just five years ago – spending an average of 2 1/2 hours a day on social channels (imagine a billboard or magazine ad potentially reaching that many potential customers back in the day) and 71 percent of all small-to-mid-sized businesses promote themselves on socials with more than half posting once a day.?

Latino-owned businesses are more likely to advertise using a range of channels, including social media, websites and blogs, email, flyers, and search engine optimization and marketing. Also, Hispanics are also more likely to follow brands on social media according to a report by ThinkNow, almost 70 percent vs 52 percent of Whites.?Social media influences Hispanic purchasing decisions according to a study by NielsenIQ which found that 60 percent of Hispanic consumers said that social media influences their purchasing decisions, compared to 49 percent of Whites. Keep in mind that Latinos are most likely to use mobile devices for social media to promote and to find businesses.?

What Jasmine and her family found out is that the more views or followers you have, the more potential customers you have, and social media platforms can level the playing field for all business owners, including family-owned restaurants in Corinth, Texas.

We’re counting on Jasmine and her family and millions of other Latino small businesses to move us forward as a community and a country. ?Sin frenos!

Juana Pacheco Dario E. Collado Emanuel Pleitez Mark L. Madrid Jessica Reeves Nicolás Pe?a Ramiro Cavazos Raul Lomeli-Azoubel Frank Carbajal Estuardo V. Rodriguez Maya Shoucair Juan Sepúlveda Marla Bilonick Nancy Santiago #smallbusiness #cincodemayo #latinoleaders #hispanicbusiness