‘Focus On What You Can Control’: Innovation Lead For Wells Fargo’s Small Business Growth Program Posted on October 27, 2025October 24, 2025 By Kekeletso Nkele, small. Assistant (small.news) — On Oct. 22, 2025, our small.talk series continued with Christopher Johnson, the Small Business Growth Philanthropist at Wells Fargo. Silver Lining Founder and CEO Carissa Reiniger spoke with Christopher about the current state of small businesses. Q: You’ve got this interesting and unique role in the world of small business philanthropy where your title is focused on product innovation… A: We look at ways in which we can use technology to improve efficiencies for the organizations that are serving small businesses. So if you take a successful concept, apply technology like a platform, and be able to scale it from a successful local or regional program up to national or even international. Top Stories Waving the Magic Silver Wand: How Collaboration, Capital, and Community Can Transform Small Business On April 22, 2026, Silver Lining’s Juan Pablo Rivadeneira, Claudia Uribe, and Omar Farahat joined small.talk to share what they’d change about the global small business landscape if they had a magic silver wand. The Classroom Was My First Boardroom: What Small Business Owners Can Learn From Teachers Who Build Companies When people picture a small business owner, they rarely think of someone managing 25 restless seven-year-olds in the morning. Some take vendor calls on lunch break. But they should. The other piece of my job, or at least how it was described to me when I was hired, was really trying to find the intersection between our impact philanthropy work as a whole across the Wells Fargo Foundation, and then, longer term, I don’t want to say business development, but maybe new business product development opportunities. Q: What are you seeing? Like, are you seeing that we’ve made progress as an industry? Do you think that we’re stuck in sort of old ways of supporting small businesses? A: I think we’ve definitely made progress. There’s been a lot of positive impact. The issue has been that the challenges keep shifting, so it’s constantly a moving target. We check something off and have a nice accomplishment or generate some sort of nice outcomes for small businesses. Then the challenge shifts, and we have to look and do something else. So it’s not so much like identifying the challenge, but working toward it, completing it, and then we’re done. It’s all along that process. A new challenge pops up. We start working toward that. Q: What are you most worried about for small businesses? A: It’s the uncertainty. Unless someone says, I have no idea what’s going to happen next, they’re probably not telling you the truth. Just across the board, what the economy is doing, what inflation is doing, what trade policy is doing, what technology and AI are doing, this is really hard to keep track of. I think you have to ignore it a little bit, because you have to concentrate on what you can control. That’s what I like about the American Small Business Growth Program… it’s really focused on building your own organic revenue and increasing sales, and managing everything that you have control of to the best of your ability. What’s really tough these days is just the magnitude and the violence of the swings back and forth. So it’s like one extreme over to the other and then back to the other. And in that environment, it’s really hard to keep track of what’s going on and where you should be and what the risks are and what the opportunities are. Q: What do you think the biggest opportunity for small businesses is right now? A: I think from a broad perspective, the technology side actually will be a pretty big boon to small businesses. We’re still waiting to see exactly how things keep out with generative AI… but I actually see that as a pretty big value add for most small businesses. In some ways, I’ve often talked about it as a great equalizing force. I mean, you think about it, small businesses have access to the exact same tools that big corporations do. And being able to do more with less and be more efficient, I think, can potentially be a big game changer. Q: If you had a magic silver wand and you could implement one change instantly that you think would have the most positive effect on small businesses, what would you use the silver wand for? A: I would just make it so that more people do business with small businesses. I think we’ve talked to small businesses, and that often comes across as one of the top asks is just do business with us. Going with big corporations like Amazon or something like that, it’s easy because it’s convenient. In a lot of cases, you’ll get better service and better prices through a small business. That would make a big difference long-term. You’ve heard their story—now write your own. silv=r™ is where it begins. Start here! Latest Stories
Waving the Magic Silver Wand: How Collaboration, Capital, and Community Can Transform Small Business On April 22, 2026, Silver Lining’s Juan Pablo Rivadeneira, Claudia Uribe, and Omar Farahat joined small.talk to share what they’d change about the global small business landscape if they had a magic silver wand.
The Classroom Was My First Boardroom: What Small Business Owners Can Learn From Teachers Who Build Companies When people picture a small business owner, they rarely think of someone managing 25 restless seven-year-olds in the morning. Some take vendor calls on lunch break. But they should.