Female entrepreneurs represent a budding niche for Tustin-based HMWC CPAs & Business Advisors, which counts 80 clients in its women-owned businesses division.
“It’s still quite new,” said Susan Levinstein, a HMWC partner appointed to lead the division when it started about a year ago and now accounts for about 10% of its client roster.
HMWC was ranked as the 14th-largest accounting firm in OC on last year’s Business Journal list of accounting firms and sees about $7.5 million in annual revenue.
The firm has created a networking group of professional women—such as attorneys, insurance brokers and others—in conjunction with its women-owned businesses practice.
“You’re seeing wo-men at far greater rates owning companies, starting up companies,” Levinstein said. “It’s a growing percentage of our client base as a whole.”
The firm has provided accounting, tax and financial advisory services to privately held companies for more than 40 years. It does business in a number of industries, with a concentration in healthcare, real estate and manufacturing. Clients range from small, family-owned businesses to multinational firms with revenue in the hundreds of millions. Orange County-based clients include George Argyros’ real estate investment firm Arnel & Affiliates in Costa Mesa, Seal Beach-based homebuilder Olson Co., and the South Orange County Surgical Medical Group Inc. in Laguna Hills.
The idea to build a division based on women-owned businesses drew its inspiration from the Orange County Business Journal’s annual Women in Business Awards, which honors top female executives and business owners.
“That opened our eyes to create something that was more geared toward more specific needs,” said Steve Williams, HMWC managing partner and head of its healthcare services division.
The firm already had many women-owned businesses as clients, he noted.
“We were already working with them,” Williams said. “We now wanted to focus on the specific needs of the sector.”
Those needs are many and include such areas as flexibility in time-management and special approaches to retirement planning, Levinstein said.
“Women often have to juggle so much,” she said. “It’s the whole aspect of seeing them through not just the business aspect but seeing what other things in life they are dealing with.”
Levinstein wasn’t yet a mom when she first came to HMWC more than 18 years ago. Her oldest child now is 16 years old.
“I was ‘work, work, work,’” she said. “But afterward, my whole outlook changed. I had to cut back in one area and focus on another.”
Levinstein began her career at the Sherman Oaks and Fort Lauderdale offices of Coopers & Lybrand LLP, which merged with Price Waterhouse & Co. in 1998 to create PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York.
She earned a degree in accounting and minored in theater during her time at California State University, Northridge.
“So I’m not just a ‘numbers’ person,” she said. “The other side of my brain likes acting.”
Community Theater
Levinstein finds time to perform in local community theater productions in OC, as well as serve in the finance committee of the Jewish Federation of Orange County and volunteer at Family Promise of Orange County.
“A lot of women want to do things other than business,” she said. “They take care of their families, and they also want to volunteer, get involved in communities. And as women advisers, we’ve got that understanding. We have that sensibility.”
There is a need for accountants to ask the right questions of female business owners, including queries on retirement options and “exit strategies,” Williams said.
“Women are generally less prepared to retire than men,” he said. “The more you get into the area, the more needs you come to see. And it wasn’t that we said, ‘Let’s funnel all our women clients to Susan.’ In some cases, men want to work with men, women with women, or vice versa.”
HMWC recently developed another division dubbed Complete Financial Office Solutions.
“It’s more of a hand-holding process for companies that aren’t big enough to have all the resources,” said Levinstein, who as head of the unit supervises services such as business planning, bookkeeping and human resources for small- and medium-sized businesses.
“People are entrepreneurial, but when it comes to the financial side of things, it could be difficult when left to their own devices,” she said. “If we can support them in the financial side, we can work together in a good partnership.”
HMWC caters to the needs of its own women employees, offering flexible schedules, among other benefits.
About 60% of the firm’s 60 employees and two of its six partners are women. The women-owned business practice is the most recent example of the firm’s “entrepreneurial character,” which gives room for its employees to take the initiative in developing potential business areas, according to Williams.
“There’s a lot of getting out of the way [on the firm’s part] and seeing what our people can do,” he said. “Letting go of the reins and letting our people take off—that can benefit the firm and benefit them. You need somebody that has a drive to do it. If not, something could be a great idea, but it’s not going to grow legs.”
Healthcare Roster
That was Williams’ approach a couple decades ago, when he began building a roster of healthcare clients for HMWC.
“The firm allowed me to take that side, and I’ve grown it reasonably well,” he said.
Williams joined HMWC in 1979, after working through college at Disneyland where he counted money.
“He went from a counter to an accountant,” Levinstein quipped.
Williams became a partner at HMWC in 1985 and since then has developed the firm’s physicians-driven practice, which now makes up about a quarter of the firm’s overall business.
“We’ve become increasingly involved with physicians, and we’re pretty recognized in that arena,” Williams said. “Over the course of time, the same will happen with the women-owned business practice.”
The real estate market is another key part of HMWC’s business.
“Real estate has been our backbone,” Williams said. “It’s cyclical. But we’ve got a number of clients substantial enough … They’ve been able to weather the storm.”
HMWC also has a number of affiliates, including a separate investment advisor firm Yosemite Capital Management LLC and a medical practice advisory company Medical Direct Executives Inc., both in Tustin.
