Guest: Clair Whitmer, Deputy Director, California Office of the Small Business Advocate (CalOSBA)

In this episode, David sits down with Clair Whitmer, Deputy Director of the California Office of the Small Business Advocate, to unpack SCALE, the state's network connecting small business support providers funded through SSBCI federal dollars and state appropriations. Clair came to public service through a Fuse Corp executive fellowship, landing in the City of Fresno's economic development office just as the pandemic hit, and has spent the years since building what she calls one of the signature accomplishments of the Newsom administration.

Clair and David dig into how CalOSBA turned a fragmented, siloed network of over 160 providers into a true ecosystem: one where competitors for the same funding learned to make warm handoffs instead of guarding their turf. They talk candidly about the "carrot and stick" of using both funding and convening power, the shift to requiring client-level (not just aggregate) data, and why that shift was a bigger mind-shift than anyone anticipated. Clair also shares why she believes a product management mindset, not just program administration, is the missing skill set in most government ecosystem-building efforts.

The conversation ranges from the coming "silver tsunami" of retiring small business owners and the opportunity in succession planning and employee ownership, to Gen Z choosing entrepreneurship over homeownership, to the $3.1 billion in capital and $4 billion in equity unlocked through the program to date. Clair closes with a story from Humboldt County that still grounds her work today.

In this episode:

• What SCALE stands for and why CalOSBA built a consumer-facing brand instead of leading with program acronyms
• The unified data model: moving providers from aggregate self-reporting to client-level data
• How CalOSBA used both funding and convening power to get 160+ competing providers to cooperate
• The annual tension of spreading limited dollars across more providers vs. fewer, better-funded ones
• The coming wave of retiring small business owners and the case for succession planning and employee ownership
• Why Gen Z is choosing entrepreneurship over homeownership as a path to wealth
• The migration to Catalyzer and what's next for SCALE under a new governor
• Clair's advice for emerging ecosystem builders: hire for product management skills, not just program administration
• A story from Humboldt County that Clair calls her "North Star"

Links:

• SCALE / CalOSBA: https://calosba.ca.gov/
• Connect with Clair Whitmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairwhit/

In this episode of Breaking Down Barriers, McKenzie sits down with Becky McCray to unpack why the old lines between "business" and "community project" don't hold up anymore, especially in rural America. Becky has spent nearly two decades at the intersection of entrepreneurship and small-town community building, and she brings that experience to life through real examples: an engineer wrestling with whether a timber festival makes him a "greedy capitalist" or a "community do-gooder," a divided building in Colfax, WA that became home to microbusinesses, and a beautification project in Freedom, Oklahoma (population under 200) that's using duct tape and cardboard mockups to let residents co-design their own downtown before a single dollar is spent.

Becky and McKenzie talk about:

• Why the for-profit/nonprofit divide is a legal classification, not a reflection of how communities actually think about value
• How Freedom, Oklahoma is blending history, public space, and economic development into one active-living and beautification project
• The "idea-friendly method": gather your crowd, build connections, take small steps
• Why bigger towns tend toward silos and how smaller towns can model a better way
• Why standardized entrepreneurship curriculums fail, and what happens when programs start with intake instead of a lecture outline
• The new cohort model Becky and Deb Brown (SaveYour.Town) are building with Andrew Button of Mashup Lab, bringing entrepreneurial and community-minded participants into the same room

Becky's closing advice: Start looking around your own community. The blending of business and community thinking is already happening. You just have to go find it and start the conversation.

Connect with Becky:

• SaveYour.Town
• LinkedIn: Becky McCray
• BeckyMcCray.com
• Small Biz Survival newsletter
• 2026 Rural Challenges Survey

In this episode of Breaking Down Barriers, David sits down with Marci Goodwin, co-founder of SmartStart Business Development and creator of the SmartStart Navigator, to talk about the "hidden entrepreneurs" quietly reshaping small-town economies across the country.

Marci shares how a SaaS platform originally built for high-growth tech startups found its real audience in microbusinesses—the makers, side-hustlers, and mom-and-pop owners who make up the vast majority of U.S. businesses but rarely walk through the doors of an SBDC or chamber of commerce. She and David dig into why these owner-operated businesses (fewer than 10 employees, many with just one) are the true engine of local economic activity, especially as rural Main Streets lose their traditional employer businesses.

The conversation covers a lot of ground: how SmartStart's bootstrapped, community-embedded model works; the baby-steps approach to getting microbusinesses "bankable"; real stories of downtown revitalization sparked by a single entrepreneur pulling others up behind her; and why traditional KPIs like jobs created and tax revenue don't capture the real impact of this work. Marci introduces the concept of KIIs—Key Impact Indicators—as a better way to measure success before the traditional metrics ever show up.

In this episode:

• Why so many U.S. businesses are microbusinesses, and why that matters
• How SmartStart Navigator helps communities find entrepreneurs who don't yet see themselves that way
• The customer-development-first approach to getting a business "bank ready"
• Two Main Street revival stories—from a single-storefront herbalist to a six-vendor maker community
• Why traditional KPIs fail microbusinesses, and what Key Impact Indicators (KIIs) look like instead
• Advice for the next generation of economic development practitioners: get out from behind the desk

Connect with Marci Goodwin:

• LinkedIn: Marci Goodwin
• SmartStart Business Development
• SmartStartNavigator.com