Courtesy / U.S. Small Business Administration
Mark Madrid
Updated: March 2, 2023
During Portland visit, senior SBA official touts coworking 'mojo' for small businesses
Courtesy / U.S. Small Business Administration Maine District Office
Mark Madrid, left, associate administrator for the Office of Entrepreneurial Development at the U.S. Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C., was in Portland on Wednesday. He started the day at Cloudport CoWorking Space in Portland, with CloudPort Managing Partner Josh Corbeau and Diane Sturgeon, district director of the SBA's Maine District Office.
A senior official with the U.S. Small Business Administration who visited several small businesses in Portland on Wednesday said he'd like to see more coworking spaces like Cloudport.
"The creation of coworking spaces and sharing economies of scale, that is definitely a trend," Mark Madrid, associate administrator for the Office of Entrepreneurial. Development at the SBA in Washington, D.C., told Mainebiz in a brief phone interview before heading to Cloudport.
The SBA's Office of Entrepreneurial Development is the agency's technical assistance arm with a national resource network that includes Small Business Development Centers, SCORE, Women's Business Centers and the Office of Entrepreneurship Education.
Cloudport, located at 63 Federal St., was Madrid's first stop on a one-day tour of clients of SCORE and other so-called SBA resource partners in Maine.
Madrid told Mainebiz this was his first time in Maine. He comes from small-business roots in Texas, where his late father owned a welding business for four decades. His father, who passed away from COVID-19 in 2020, had wanted to travel with his son to Maine and Vermont, both of which Madrid visited this week.
"I'm excited to see what's happening at Cloudport, and what I've seen from coworking spaces like this, is that there's a lot of mojo," Madrid said. "There's something magical that happens when small business owners are talking to each other. That's where the secret sauce is ... Those are going to be very important to the startup ecosystem here in Maine."
'Zip it and hear them out'
Madrid's all-day Portland visit, accompanied by Diane Sturgeon, district director of the SBA's Maine District Office and others, included stops at LB Kitchen on Munjoy Hill, Treehouse Toys, Nomad's Adventure and Active Wear, Chart Metalworks, Burundi Star Coffee and MotoResto, a garage for classic and vintage automobiles.
Noting that he was here to listen to business owners, Madrid said, "We have to really shop and ask some very important questions like, 'How are you doing?' and then zip it and hear them out. That's our job." He also planned to thank the owners of LB Kitchen, which switched to take-out during the pandemic and recently moved, "for their resilience in persisting."
After the visit, Sturgeon told Mainebiz that her team was "thrilled to have [Madrid] join us in Maine to highlight some of our tremendous small businesses and the work that our phenomenal SBA resource partners do every day. It was a great way to kick off Women’s History Month, and Mark was thoroughly impressed with all of the small business owners he met. He left planning a return visit to enjoy more of Maine and raving about how lucky we are to have the quality SBA partners we have supporting small businesses in Maine with such a wide variety of wonderful businesses."
Though Madrid only visited Portland, he told Mainebiz that small rural business owners have a "special place" in his heart and said that SBA's overall priorities are to help businesses be customer-first, technology-forward and to advance equity.
"We've got to make sure we're streamlining efforts and breaking silos," he said.
Small-business boom
Madrid's visit comes amid a small-business boom nationwide, according to SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman. Citing new U.S. Census Bureau data in January, she said applications to start businesses reached 10.5 million since Joe Biden became president, the most in any two years in U.S. history.
"When President Biden took office, hundreds of thousands of businesses were fighting to stay open," she said in January. "The historic investment in economic recovery enabled Americans to start new businesses and jobs at record-breaking levels, a trend that continues today."
Asked Wednesday if the trend also holds true in the Pine Tree State, Madrid said, "Certainly Maine fits into that picture." He also gave a shout-out to the Maine SBA District team, and Sturgeon in particular, for helping so many small businesses in rural areas during the pandemic.
"We've got a lot of work to do to meet them where they are, everywhere they are, and that includes rural parts of Maine," he added.
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