Veronica Quintana grew up the daughter of a strawberry field owner who could have used expert financial advice — the kind she herself delivers today.
"I had firsthand experience, when my dad had a strawberry field when I was a teenager," recalled Quintana, who is now a director at Top 25 Firm CBIZ MHM and leader of the firm's Latino-owned business service team. "With a CPA guiding him, I know his business would be more successful. I know it's incredibly important. A lot of people can prepare a tax return, but not offer additional guidance."
Now Quintana provides just that, working with the Spanish-speaking community in Oxnard, California, and the surrounding area where she grew up, helping people who, like her father, are "used to working with tax preparers but not CPAs — they don't advise them any further so they miss out on tax opportunities, tax credits like the Employee Retention Credit, because the tax provider never mentioned it … . They might not even read the newspaper, or there's a language barrier to watching the news, and a lot are not informed."
Quintana's ability to breach that barrier was the origin of CBIZ MHM's Latino-owned business service team, as she, through referrals from other community professionals and existing clients, began to amass a local Spanish-speaking client base. Meanwhile, she was meeting more Spanish-speaking colleagues in her Oxnard office.
"For the longest time, there were no Spanish-speaking associates," she said. "They would come, then leave — I was the only one. The last few years, there have been at least five other associates and seniors."
This sparked Quintana to take a more formal audit. She worked with a firm marketing manager to identify all the Spanish-speaking associates in CBIZ MHM's several Southern California offices through a survey, which identified roughly 350 associates, across various ethnicities, countries of origin, and multiple service lines.
'The best compliment'
Quintana led the launch of the Southern California-based Latino-owned business service team in January, which she hopes to soon expand nationally from the current localized team of about 60 professionals. In May, the firm held a marketing event to more visibly launch the service line at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre in Hollywood.
This and other efforts are planned to boost awareness of CBIZ MHM's new team, though Quintana's current Oxnard-based clients — business owners and shareholders who span a range of industries, with many in construction, manufacturing, restaurants, agriculture and real estate — have already driven growth with their own referrals.
"A lot of clients themselves have other business owners they know," she explained. "It's the best compliment when a client refers you to someone else."
Quintana has been personally privy to some of these rave reviews.
"One particular client I'm thrilled about, their main business is in produce, distribution," she shared. "But on the side, he flips homes and is involved in a little bit of real estate. He completed a purchase of a commercial building but was not aware of cost-segregation studies. The CBIZ offices in Irvine and Los Angeles are focused on cost segregation, and you can have an additional expense in the early years to have a study performed. He had no idea and was thrilled. The client is opening an event center, and we have guided him through the entire process to maximize his investment and he's off to a great start. It's beautiful."
Envisioning the team
The Latino-owned business service team is also an asset to CBIZ's talent efforts, Quintana reports.
"A lot of time, it's very helpful for recruiting purposes for a student [to see] what firms have to offer," she said. "Aside from it being cool to work, as Spanish speakers, with Latino-owned businesses and be able to speak Spanish … there's more opportunity for growth, to be promoted sooner, to develop skill sets sooner, to be involved in the service team. It's a great challenge for new associates, the opportunity, firsthand, to speak to business owners in the beginning, [instead of in] several years. I don't want to wait to introduce [new associates] to the business owners right away, to develop that consulting mindset right away. As an associate, you can learn to help business owners and become their advisor much faster."
Quintana likened her team to CBIZ's New York City-based Korean services group, which was launched a few years back, as they both serve local communities but also promote overall firm diversity and inclusion.
"Especially now, I'm happy to hear diversity and inclusion is so important; people are talking about it and it really is incredible to represent the diverse population we have," she said. "Same for the employees — to say we see you, and understand how important it is to cater to clients and cultures. I'm so glad CBIZ has taken the initiative."
For firms looking to establish their own community-targeted service teams, Quintana recommends starting with a similar inventory to the one she conducted with CBIZ's marketing department.
"Look within the firm first, see who else shares the same language, whether Spanish, Chinese [and so on] — brainstorm how to service the clients you want to target," she advised. "I always think back to my dad and his strawberry-field team, if they had that support. Even with existing clients, [try] asking 'What do you need and haven't been receiving in the past?' Speaking with other professionals, attorneys, bankers, and once you've got that all together, who do you want to be part of the team, how do you envision that team?"
Next up for Quintana's team is appointing an executive-board-level professional to head the service line and an expansion into other CBIZ offices, extending her and her colleague's language skills and services beyond Southern California, and, in particular, CBIZ's Oxnard high-rise near the same fields that helped inspire the team's formation.
"When my dad had those strawberry fields when I was a teenager, I think back to the handling of payments, investing in some equipment and things of that nature — he never talked about meeting a CPA," Quintana explained. "Whoever was preparing his tax returns was not a CPA, and he never expanded past the acres he had. Others who had strawberry fields had more acres later on. That never happened with my dad. He didn't receive the proper attention of professional advice."
