POR María González Amarillo
Juan Carlos Hernandez Lopez is Mexican and has been leaving at the U.S. since he was ten. He feels the need to serve the community since he was very young. Nowadays he belongs to the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (SDCHCC)’s board of directors and he is the Director of Loans and Operations in the ACCION San Diego organization.
“I came to the United States in July 1977. I lived in Chicago until I moved to San Diego in July 2012”, he tells La Prensa San Diego. “I love the mountains, that’s why I fell in love with this place. I like climbing”, he adds with a smile regarding his feelings for San Diego.
He has a double function at the Hispanic chamber. On one hand, he works as a funds adviser. He helps chamber members to access bank loans or loans from ACCION San Diego. On the other hand, he offers technical assistance to cover the business plans-related needs of business people.
“I make sure that they have the relevant information about today’s market moneylenders to make decisions and avoid been legally stolen. And my other assistance task is helping them with their business plans, marketing plans, finances plans”, Hernandez says.
Apart from his position at the chamber, he works in ACCION San Diego to provide small companies with commercial loans. This non-profit organization was founded in Chicago in 1994 and has four offices in Chicago, Nueva York, Nuevo Mexico and San Diego.
“Each office has its own rules and its own board of directors and is independent from the others ones but all of them share the same mission and we are all part of a national organization”, Hernandez says. “I am one of the employees that started it when it was created in Chicago.”
He developed similar functions at two chambers of commerce in Chicago and decided to work as a volunteer for the San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce after attending Iluminada in 2012. This annual event celebrates the success of San Diego County Hispanic businesses. One year later, he was offered to be part of the board of directors.
“I loved the idea of having a more involved and active position”, he smiles. “I love the way they deal with people, they are very welcoming. I was new in the city and they motivated me to keep working for the Hispanic community. Other organizations didn’t make it that easy for me. I wasn’t even interested in getting clients, I just wanted to help as a business consultant as I did in Chicago for around twenty years.”
Hernández and his chamber team currently serve around 250 people a month. Their clients often have small businesses.
“They are like abandoned business people”, he explains. “In ACCION San Diego we have given a total of approximately 2.4 millions of dollars in loans to small businesses. Banks don’t pay attention to them.”
The finance advisor got to manage his own business in Chicago where he followed the same career focus: he identified residential and commercial loans for business people so that they were able to buy commercial buildings. He basically educated people to know how the loans work and how to get them, an activity that he kept doing afterwards. However his company wasn’t successful.
“The market changed a lot. I am looking forward to having my own business again but that will be in a few years, around even ten more years. Now there is a lot going on at the chamber and we need to achieve many things”, Hernandez says.
The loans expert claims that getting involved with the chamber allowed him to settle down in San Diego. He recommends becoming a member to every single business person. “Apart from the possibility of doing business, business people often have similar problems and it really helps to know other personal experiences and how they got through obstacles”, he says.
“But more important in this country, is that the more members we are the more rights and services for our business people we can ask for and the more open doors we will have to do business in other places, no matter if it’s in Mexico, Canada or China”, Hernandez says.
As a personal advice, the director encourages business people to not wait until the last minute to get a loan because it becomes more difficult by that time. He also inspires to stay creative since today’s market and technology change very fast and those who don’t anticipate them and adapt take a high risk to fall behind.