 All right, everyone, we're gonna get started. We wanna be mindful of everyone's time. Thank you for joining us with the Office of Business Opportunities for our international trade. Increase your revenue by tapping foreign markets. My name is Ayesha Driggers. I'm Deputy Director in the Office of Business Opportunity. I wanna take a brief moment to introduce our staff. It's on the call. We have Latanya Germany. She's in our compliance department. We also have Kalina Gignard. She also helps with compliance and supplier diversity. We have Tanya Porter DeBerry. She helps everything move in our office. We could not do it without her. And Karla Eichelberger is on here as well. She assists with all the different functions of our office. We have Sandria Robinson on here as well. And she makes sure that everything flows in the office. And then Brett Whiting is here. He's our loan officer. And I'll go over the different program areas in our office very briefly. Unfortunately, our director, Melissa Lindler, is not here today, but she's very excited that we're offering this international trade webinar. We haven't done a workshop with this topic. So we are very excited that Smith agreed to put this on with us. And we also have our partners on the call that I will introduce shortly. So does everyone see my screen in our different program areas? Yes, good deal. Thank you so much. So the first areas are commercial lending. We offer financial assistance to startup and existing businesses for growth expansion, retention, and the creation of new jobs. We also offer assistance and redevelopment of commercial borders. So if you are a business that is located within the city of Columbia, city limits, please contact our office and we can see if there's some opportunities for you to receive financial assistance. That's the only program area that requires that you are located within the city. All the other functions in our office are available to any business that is interested in doing business with the city of Columbia. We also have our contractor and supplier diversity. We offer training and support for city initiatives. It's designed to increase the local contractor's capacity to compete for government contracts and other procurement opportunities. And what this means is we really want our procurement to reflect the diversity of our great city. So we do that through different program areas, including our self-contractor outreach, mentor protégé, local business enterprise, and the Columbia Disadvantaged Business Enterprise as well. And Kalina and Latanya or myself will be happy to discuss our contractor and supplier diversity if anyone has any questions about that. And if there's one of my co-hosts could let anyone in the waiting room in, please. That'd be helpful. And then for our Technical Assistance Education Advocacy, we offer business development assistance and courses for startups and existing businesses that are looking to grow and expand. So those topics include marketing, the use of social media, business plan development, finances, legal issues and more. I saw Courtney Young is on here. So I wanna give a shout out. She helps us with our social media and does a fantastic job of making sure that everyone stays in the loop of what we have going on with the city of Columbia and our surrounding areas. I wanna briefly tell you our upcoming webinars. Next Monday, we have an introduction to business resources and it is targeted for our Latino small business community. It will be available in English and Spanish. So if anyone is interested in learning more about the different business resources that we have in the city of Columbia, I encourage you to attend that. We are offering at 6 p.m. to kind of meet the needs of our local businesses that are not able to participate in webinars that occur during the business day. So we're very excited about that. And we can put the link in the chat if anyone is interested in registering for that. Also in November, we will have, we are partnering with SBA to offer an economic injury disaster loan workshop. There's still funding available for that until the end of the year. So we wanna make sure we provide information related to that program. We also have our tax preparedness and financial documents. So as small businesses get ready for the new year and tax preparation, we wanna offer a workshop with Sheila Tuttweiler-Docken. So that will be on November 11th. Then on the 12th, we are having our entrepreneurship for creatives with Casey Weitner, our artist community, our entrepreneurs as well. So we wanna make sure that they have the resources they need to understand how to structure their business correctly. And then November 16th, currently we have scheduled with SBA to go over financial documents. And we have our loan officer, Brent Whiting, to offer his expertise on what type of financial documents lenders look for. Here's our contact information at the Office of Business Opportunities. Currently, our offices are still closed for in-person meetings, but you can definitely contact us at our email address on your OBO at columbiasc.gov or give us a call at 803-545-3950. And we'll be happy to schedule an appointment with you. We do a lot of zoom calls just to talk about what needs you may have with your business and make some connections. Even if we can't help you, we may have a partner that may be able to help you. So this is a good segue for me to introduce one of our lovely partners. Move too quick. Cheryl Sally with the Benedict College Women's Business Center. Take it away. Good morning, good morning. Thank you so much, Aisha, and thanks to the City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities for hosting this great, great event. I am looking forward to the information. I have my pen and paper ready as always. And I won't need to talk about the speaker, but I know it's I am looking forward to this. I serve as the director for the Benedict College Women's Business Center here in Columbia. We're a statewide center. You can go to the next slide, Aisha. We're a statewide center and a little over a year old funded by the Small Business Administration. And we're one of three WBCs in the state of South Carolina. There's one in the upstate and one in a Charleston, but we're a statewide center economic development organization and part of a network of nationwide community business and economic development programs. We have a staff of experts and they're wonderful, wonderful. We're here to help you go to the next slide. Here to help businesses do what they need to do to start and or grow their business. So I'm gonna summarize this. It's a lot of words, but just to summarize our purpose, our mission and our vision, we want to position ourselves and create a gateway out of poverty for our socially and economically disadvantaged women entrepreneurs around the state of South Carolina. And we wanna do that by helping them to start and or grow and expand their businesses, providing the tools, providing the information, providing the education that they need to grow their businesses or start their businesses. And just to know that you have a skill, you have a passion, get the education, get the knowledge, what you need to have to understand business systems, to understand business development. And it is a viable option. Even in Benedict College, we're making sure have a meeting in a few minutes want students to know that only your own business is an option. It's a very, very good option. So that's our, you know, part of our purpose here. And at the end of the day, those women entrepreneurs, and I'll talk a little bit about, little bit more, our focus is on women entrepreneurs, particularly women of color, but we serve everybody regardless of race or gender. And we want to help them at the end of the day, leave a legacy, you know, for their families and in this community. Next slide, I need you. Who do we serve? I just said start, you know, startups, you have an idea. We want to help, you know, want you to know everything you need to know to turn that, take, transform that idea into a viable business. Startups, for-profit organizations, women, all business industry segments, and all small businesses throughout South Carolina. Some of our core services, in the back up a little bit, I'm not going to steal Ms. Smith-Thunder, but, you know, our core services, you'll find in the Business Development Center, Women's Business Center, Small Business Development Center, SCORE, Veteran Opportunity Center, you're always going to find everything you need about business planning. And then it kind of goes from there. But what we do is help the business planning, business development, resiliency, disaster recovery in the midst of COVID, everybody had to pivot. So how do you pivot? What does that mean? You know, how do you be creative and innovative and still continue to do business or, you know, re-merge and so on and so forth. Financial planning, financial management, access to capital, helping individuals learn how to do their financial projections for their business, strategically plan from a business development aspect, marketing and financial, developing financial strategies, government contracting and certification, networking, collaboration, so on and so forth. And everything we do is at no cost. Thus far, no cost to the entrepreneurs and the knowledge that individuals obtain from the staff at the WDC or any one of our partners, we don't just talk the talk. We have had businesses. Some of us still have businesses. So we've been doing it for a very, very, very long time, not just book knowledge, but we've owned businesses, sold businesses, so on and so forth, franchise manufacturing and bankers and so on and so forth. So that's the wealth of knowledge that you'll find at the development centers at no cost. Next slide, Aisha. No, I won't be teaching. But reach out to us, you know, we're here to help. Like I said, we're located central in Philadelphia. Send us an email, go to our website, get signed up. We are here to help you start or grow your business. Thank you so much. Thank you again to the city. I am so glad to be here. Thank you, Cheryl. And now I will turn it over to Susan Chavez. Good morning, my name's Susan Chavez. I'm an economic development specialist in this administration out of the South Carolina district office. We're located in Columbia and we handle the whole state. We have two alternative work sites, Charleston and Spartanburg. And some of our core focus areas, it probably sounds like a repeat from Cheryl, but since she's our resource partners, it's same goals. Access to capital through our SBA Guarantee Loan Program, our Federal Contracting Program, our counseling to small businesses through our resource partners, the Women's Business Centers. Again, we have three of them. Columbia, Benedict, Greenville Community Works, and in Charleston, we have IHOPE. We have SCORE chapters throughout the state along with our small business development centers. I believe there's 21 offices statewide. It's free and confidential. Great programs, please take advantage of them. And again, they are free and confidential. Our other core areas are disaster for home and business. And one of our big programs right now is our COVID-19 EIDL, Economic Injury Disaster Loan, which does in December 31st, 2021. So if you have not taken advantage of that program, you need to try to get that started as soon as possible. There're gonna be a lot of informational resources out coming up soon. Again, with the Office of Business Opportunity, every Wednesday for the next month, we're gonna have Ask SBA. You can ask any questions on it. And also we're having regional training, November the 2nd on EIDL. And if you go to our website on our COVID programs, headquarters is also putting training on our EIDL, which is a big kick right now. Thank you. Thank you so much, Susan. I just wanted to remind everyone, if they have any questions, please put those in the chat and we'll take opportunities throughout the presentation to answer those questions. This is being recorded. It also is being live streamed by our wonderful public relations team. Justin Stevens is on the call. We appreciate everything they do to help us get this information out. So I will be sending a recording of the webinar after the event, as well as a survey. So you can go back and refer to this recording if you have any questions afterwards. Next, I want to introduce our wonderful speaker, Miss Smith. She is considered a strategic advisor consulting with corporations and business owners on strategy, structure, markets, talent management and operations. She has 35 plus years of business experience and growing markets and revenue in North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America. She's a former director of marketing, director of business development and senior vice president of organizational development. She's a NASBIT certified global business professional and certified business advisor. Her areas of specialization include strategies for business growth, business process, workflow analysis and organizational design. Also export international trade finance, talent assessment, recruitment and development system. So Beth has a wealth of knowledge and we are so thrilled and honored to have her join us today to talk about international trade and how our small businesses can tap into that as an opportunity to expand and grow. So I will send it over to you, Beth. I think it works better if I unmute myself, right? Does that work better? Good morning everybody. I was thinking is Aisha was running through that description of my life, my career. That picture that you saw is a lot younger than the one you're seeing here today in the video. And that's only a picture from like three years ago. So obviously, age I guess accelerates the older you get. I'm just a little joke guys. So anyway, this is crazy, Beth. I can't think of anybody ever threw at me that I didn't agree to do. So all of that background is absolutely true. And I have said most recently, there's very little of the earth that I either didn't live in or didn't have to market in because my job at corporate was running the Global Center for Market Development. And I did that for both Motorola out of corporate globally and then also for digital equipment globally. And they were headquartered out of Maynard, Massachusetts. So I had to travel in my life, relocate in my life. My children are still mad about my life because I was never home. So here's the galloping gourmet here. That's who's with you this morning. So good morning everybody. Welcome to this part of the presentation. I was delighted to see that Cheryl and Susan were with us this morning because they are folks I've worked with for a long time. I have a high regard for both of these ladies. And so if you need their help, please don't hesitate to call them. And then as we go through some slides that I put together today, if you have some questions, you're welcome to put them in the chat box and Aisha will help me a little bit later, manage trying to answer your questions. But let's try going through these slides and see if I can sort of help explain what we're doing in export these days. So international business is absolutely my love, my life. As I said, I've worked and lived most everywhere. So import and export is just part of the way I think. And working with nationalities and people from all over the world is just part of who I have always been. Why is export such a great opportunity for anyone who's in small business? It's because the first point is the biggie. 95% of the world's consumers live outside of the US. And so that is a great reason to think a little further than just our borders or even our two neighbors. Exporters tend to grow their companies faster than non-exporters by about a quarter. Exporting can increase your sales and it can extend product shelf life. In my former life, that's exactly what I did. As certain products became nearly obsolete in the United States, part of what I was required to do was to figure out where those products could be introduced, where we could get a boost out of the sales of that, maybe you'd call it the legacy product. The third one, exporting offers business stabilization through diversification. And boy, I cannot tell you how important that was during COVID. Because when I had hiccups with clients here in the United States and they suddenly had inventory that they couldn't sell, I found other markets and ways to get that material exported to other markets. So it can truly be a lifesaver for you. 75.4% of the firms exporting to Canada and 72.7 of them exporting to Mexico, look at this, they're small and medium-sized companies. Thank you, SBA, for helping us with those statistics because a lot of people think it's just the large corporations like where Beth used to be. But in fact, it's our small to medium-sized companies who've got great relationships with our neighbors on both ends of the border. The US exports to Canada and Mexico have quadrupled in the past 25 years and that would be thank you to NAFTA and thank you to the new US MCA agreement. Those two countries buy more than one third of US exports, products that are exported from the US. And then last but not least, no matter where I've lived or worked, I have always found either citizens or companies in other countries to think of the US goods as very well-made, high quality and they like doing business with Americans because usually we're pretty straightforward, you know? So they like working with us. A lot of times the media gives the US a bum rap, seriously. But in countries when you're working with regular people, they think a lot of the US, they really do. Next slide, Aisha, if you can. And so what do we do at the SBDCs to help small and medium-sized businesses who would like to export? So listen, so we work with folks that are new to export and I'll tell you, that takes me some time to work with them, to figure out exactly which of the products would be viable in other markets, how to price them, how to distribute them, right? How to introduce them into markets. So new to export is a group that I work with and I'm not the only one, there are four of us at the SBDC who focus on international business. The second thing we do is work with early-stage exporters and this you'll find interesting because I've had a lot of folks tell me they just put a website together, put the product on Amazon and the product's gonna sell itself. Well, no, products do not just simply sell themselves because they're listed on Amazon. I mean, there's a lot of competition there. And in fact, Amazon has different sites in different countries. So you could put it on a US Amazon site but you may not be found in, I'm gonna use Canada, Mexico, but my goodness, think about the other 200 countries around the world. The third group I work with are existing SBDC clients that I have known that I have helped in the past with a variety of things. Sometimes it's logistics, sometimes we have snafus at the ports, sometimes we've sold the product, we had a buyer, the buyer is a slow payer and we need funding from the SBA to help tide them over until they actually do get paid for the product that they shipped. And then most recently, although it's probably not my real job, I can't help but get pulled into the importing nightmare that we are currently facing because we've got a logistical screw up happening globally and why would that happen? Well, everybody was working, everybody was performing, making their products, packaging, shipping and then COVID hit, right? And it didn't hit everybody at the same time, it hit everybody at different times. So you have a ripple effect and a lot of what we're seeing today on the shelves, the markets, the forecast for Christmas goods is a result of that ripple effect of the disease working its way around the world, shutting down country after country and then you have certain countries opening after opening of other countries. And so all I'm saying is it's a ripple effect, right? It's like waves coming into the ocean and we got to manage our businesses through all of those waves. So I am finding myself helping people on importing as well. The way you get hold of the four of us, which will come up is you can go straight onto our website and in the top right corner, it's a blue button and it says request counseling assistance. Just click on it, it asks you for some information and then that system internally directs you to one of us. And the one of us is determined by your geography. So I'm the Columbia girl, which is why I'm so happy to be on with Aisha and the team today. Next slide. This is what we do. So once you click on that blue button and you request assistance, one of the four of us at the SBDC will call you. And we will try to determine where you are in your journey, in export. So the first thing is whether it's formal, which we do have a formal assessment or whether it's informal through questions and responses. The first thing we wanna do is help a business owner figure out whether export is a good strategy for them. They may have a lot of channels in play here in the US and some of those channels may not be all that mature yet. And so there may still be some growth right here domestically. So we try to take a look at that and figure out if that's true or if additional markets outside of the US would make sense. Then the second thing and I do a good bit of this personally is I need to work, walk, new to export business owners through what it's like to manage a business internationally, what it's like to market your product internationally with all the branding, the packaging and the marks that may be required by either unions or by individual countries so that you can even get the product off the ship and onto the shelves. The third thing is trade finance and I cannot tell you how fabulous the programs are through the SBA. We have three funding programs and I won't go into detail here on them necessarily but it can be quickly processed called Export Express. We have a second one which is the international trade loan which by the way can be used to help you acquire some extra facilities or inventory here in order to be able to ship it there. And so a lot of people don't think about that. And our third one which is the export working capital loan or line of credit is what I help clients utilize in order to make sure that they're not hung out to dry on receivables that are taking a while to get back here. Supply chain, I just mentioned how important that is to know who your freight forwarder is, who your customs broker is and who all the people are that touch your pallet, your product, your box, your bag as it's being shipped. They have to be your best friends and you need to know them so that when something is stuck you know who to call to get it unstuck. So that's the second piece. That leads, that conversation typically leads to an export business plan. And in working with other colleagues in the state of South Carolina who are federal or state funded, we have found that if we can get the story of what the business client is trying to do down into a short document that can be shared, it speeds up the way that each of us can help that business client because we don't have to ask you 100 questions and you don't have to repeat them 100 times. You can just safely put it in a document that is confidentially only gonna be shared with the people that you agree to share it with. We do not put that out on the internet and let everybody copy it, okay? So we work through that so that it makes the digestion of what you're trying to do easier for lots of resources and that just speeds us up in getting good advice to you quickly and connecting you with great resources. The fourth item on here is the loan preparation, the documents that you need to be able to obtain an SBA or in some cases, it's XM Bank credit, whatever we're trying to do, we will list the documents that you need to put together and we will help you either complete them or get them in digital format so you can upload them to your lender. And in addition to the specific export loans, all SBDC consultants have always had to know how to help anybody get a normal commercial loan backed by the SBA or not. And so all of the SBDC consultants are deep in being able to help you pull those documents together so that they speak well on your behalf. And then last, as I help get that business plan maybe complete or help you get financing, there are a lot of other partners here in the state of South Carolina who are typically funded to provide the assistance that you need. And I'm gonna talk about those very shortly. These are the four consultants, I talked about them, that would be Jim in Rock Hill, Tom is in Charleston, Ben is in the upstate at Clemson and I'm here in Columbia and I have our contact information at the end of the slide deck, we'll get to that later. So these are reasons why I think business owners consider export. And these are real life cases and these are things that again, I have done in my own life having to be the driver in the chair. Often the business is seasonal and a way to lengthen your sale cycle is to look for other markets, other countries who will purchase your goods not during your high season that you think you currently have but when it's their high season. And so geographically, Christmas takes on another whole look when you're south of the equator. I'm just letting you all, not the date changes but the look is different. Living in Singapore, trust me for almost seven years, I had nothing but palm trees and the wafting of wonderful oriental food all around me. It doesn't look like Christmas in the US. So products that you would think wouldn't have a place to play do in other climates and in other times of the year. The second one is you can offset domestic risk like I put slow down like we had with COVID by selling your product to foreign buyers and we know how to help you do that. Sometimes the business has products that saturated their domestic market and it's time for the shelf life of that product to be extended by selling it to other places. I've mentioned that. Fourth, maybe the inventory isn't selling but other markets have a need for it. Without going into detail, I work with several clients who sell, I should not even tell you how many containers in a week or a month of goods that the US has already decided that they're not purchasing. Those goods are picked up, they are palletized, they are put in containers and they go to markets where people are so happy to be able to have those goods. They flood the markets where those goods go and they're gone and quickly they need yet another container full. So don't think our products and services are anything less than superlative. Sometimes the business has family members have run into this a lot and or contacts in a foreign country who've offered to distribute the merchandise locally. And so the work over here in the US becomes collecting the merchandise, palletizing it, wrapping it, getting it ready for container shipments. And then there are family members who make sure that it's distributed in their local areas. And last, sometimes an owner is looking to exit the business that they have had and a way to make the business look even stronger is by expanding the sale of its products to international buyers. And so I have helped some folks that are not as old as me, I was a joke, not quite as old as me get their business ready to be able to sell it by expanding it through international purchases. So there are opportunities. And then I thought, yep, and then there are risks and what are some of the risks that we've run into? As I mentioned earlier, I've worked with a number of clients who thought that by having their product online and didn't we learn that during COVID, put the product online and have your own website and or maybe also be a supplier through Amazon. And then they think the same thinking that happens and works in the US will just be able to be duplicated in other markets. Well, that's not necessarily true. And one of the things we are learning is that having a website in that local market seems to work better than thinking that everybody's gonna come to a us.com in order to purchase. So that's one, that's just about how you advertise, but then so goes the way you market, goes the way you have to fulfill the order. And so we need to talk through the logistics of that. Secondly, some folks think that if it's online, it will simply sell. And I really do like to back people up and talk through their market entry strategy because maybe it's sold online here in the US, but it's not a product that would sell as well online. And let me talk to you about countries that have market day on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday in their local communities, their villages, and they don't necessarily buy the goods online. They go down the street to the market and the fun part of living there is walking through the market and sampling everything that's there and choosing what it is you wanna purchase. So just because it sells one way here doesn't mean it will sell exactly the same somewhere else. We need to know a lot more about that market in that country. The third one, lots of legalities when we work outside of the US, just as you know, we have lots of rules that we have to follow and so do others in other countries. So sometimes it's the infrastructure. It wouldn't surprise any of you to know that in some of our emerging markets transportation may be difficult. So here we think, oh, you just take it down the street to UPS or USPS or FedEx and bam, off it goes. It doesn't always work that way in some of our other countries, our other markets. It's a more difficult transportation decision. Trading obstacles need to know which countries we have agreements with, whether we have tariffs, whether we don't have tariffs and we need to understand taxes. We need to understand carrying product in a suitcase and then trying to cross borders with it. There are a lot of folks at borders, not just our border patrol. Lots of other border patrols don't necessarily want you just hauling stuff in. They wanna know where it's going, why it's there, et cetera. And so there are ways to talk with that, ATA Carnet. Workforce requirements. Can I give you a short, fun story? I was asked to go to Germany and to make sure that I worked with the German Work Union on hiring some new employees that were going to help us launch a product, right? That doesn't sound unusual, right? So I get there and I'm in the room and I'm having this wonderful meeting and the individual across the table from me said to me, Ms. Smith, I have to ask you why you are trying to hire new people in our country. What was wrong with the old ones? And I went, what? He said, well, your company three years ago gave us notice that they were letting all of the workers who worked for your company, they were letting them go. And so now here you are back in our office asking to hire new. We don't work like you do in the US. We don't terminate employees and hire new ones. Our employees are here in Germany. They work for life. They are excellent employees. You should have thought about who you let go before you decided to send somebody over here asking for new workers. That was a great phone call on my cell phone back to headquarters. We got a problem. Work union doesn't like us. So I'm just saying sometimes there are workforce requirements. The way we think here doesn't transfer to the way other countries honor their employees. And then fourth, we can have economic shifts. We can have social changes going on. Just thinking about Hong Kong, another place I partially lived in and worked in for a long time. I think about the Hong Kong that I worked in and the one that we have this year they could not be more different. And so how would I feel if I was on the hook for sending my product to Hong Kong? Man, I've got to have great relationships and people I know and think I can trust just to make sure I can get the deal done, right? Financing, insurances. We need all of this in any business but especially when we're working with people outside of our own legal system. And then last but not least, there's a lot of people that do not understand currency exchange because we don't need to know that in the U.S. We just use a U.S. dollar. But when the U.S. dollar trades for whatever against a euro, a Swiss franc, whatever you want to use there is a value assigned and you can make money or lose money any time of any day if you don't understand the fluctuation of currencies and how that exchange rate can make you money or burn your money. So I, again, another area that we talk through a good bit. Aisha, I hope you're finding this interesting. So those are the risks. And then if you look down the left side of this slide it is like the one you just saw. But if you look on the right side you will see the services that the export consultants provide. And I wanted you to know why they are the ones they are. If you don't understand how to market outside of the U.S. you need an export business plan, right? If you want to understand the legalities we've got to get on the horn and talk with folks that are inside those countries to make sure that we don't bubble the football, right? If we're not sure about market entry there are many programs available and I started to list them here and that's just a few of them. But doing good homework on international trade who's importing which products, the STEP program which we'll talk about in a minute that SC Commerce oversees our U.S. Commercial Service Team which helps people with in-country personnel and contacts. And then I also work as, Cheryl you'll remember this, the USC international students often work with the clients to help them develop part of that export plan. Financing, SBA, EXIM and our lenders right here in our backyard. And then on currency exchange just for everybody's benefit on the phone a very good friend of mine from Chicago who used to work for Bank of America managed what we call the FX desk there for 35 years. Well, that very good friend of mine now happens to be in Charlotte. So he's still my very good friend. But what I'm able to do is leverage his experience and his current work in currency exchange and in mitigating the risk of that with forwards futures and so on. He is a great resource that I can refer to individuals who need that kind of help. This is a team of resources inside the state of South Carolina and we call it SCITC for short. And what it's comprised of is everyone either federally funded or maybe state funded or both like the SBDC is. It's all the folks in the state who try to assist clients with different aspects of getting that international trade completed. So we have the column use EXT export assistance centers. We have DEC which is a district export council. The US commercial service which is out of the international trade agency in Washington agency, but out of DC. You see what they're doing. I'm not reading the slides at you. They can help you with profiles, buyers, trade shows, local promotion in country. And then on the right, please let me introduce all of these folks. They're all my good friends. The South Carolina Department of Commerce who helped you through the STEP program and I'm not gonna spoil Norris's coverage of that. Trade missions. We obviously have contacts at the Port's Authority. The Upstate Alliance in Greenville has worked with foreign direct investment that helps companies come in. And they've also worked on export plans for all the manufacturers so the product can go out. South Carolina MEP manufacturing extension partnership. That's a fabulous team of highly capable individuals who understand manufacturing, all of the processes that are required, the quality that needs to be in there and the guarantee that each component or part or product is gonna be the same as the one that was made before it. They are wonderful. Us, the SBDC team. There's also the South Carolina Department of Forestry. Everyone who grows timber in this state knows that group well. We export a lot of timber and wood. Similarly, we have contacts at the Department of Agriculture. So for those folks doing peanuts, peaches or blackberries, strawberries, whatever it is, they know how to work with the SEDA, which is the Department of Agriculture, and get those products in a timely manner to the port and shipped, right? Because it is produce, right? We don't want stuff to go bad. The College of Charleston, I missed putting on here Citadel, excellent resources, helping also like USC with the students to put documents together that help the clients conform to either lending requirements or any of the others. Those are, it's a, look at the group that's been put together in this state to help you export. I mean, it's fabulous. Next slide, Ms. Dyesha. This may be where to get to. Yeah, so I was gonna ask you, Beth, do we wanna take some questions before we get into the STEP program? STEP program may answer them, but sure. Okay, okay, let's get, let's go straight to that one then. And then we'll get the questions afterwards. Ayesha, we do have two questions in the chat. Yeah. Okay, the first question. Hold on, Kalina, I think you said, Beth, you think the questions, that may answer these questions. Yeah, because I'm pretty close to being too, actually. And then I'll, for sure, take all those questions. But I would like to introduce Norris Thigpen, who's on the call with me, one of our partners here in the state of South Carolina. Norris is the International Trade Manager at South Carolina Department of Commerce. He and Anita cover the state. They sort of split up the state into two chunks, but the program that they oversee is funded by the SBA. And I'd like to let Norris just explain to you what's available in this program. Norris? Thanks, Beth. Beth. Thanks for the introduction. Again, I'm Norris Thigpen. I'm an International Trade Manager and the Step Project Director of the South Carolina Department of Commerce. I cover the Midlands area, as well as the Low Country and the PD. And as Beth mentioned, my colleague, Anita Patel, covers the upstate. The step program is a slightly unique program that is available for companies in the state of South Carolina to export goods and services overseas. It was developed about 10 years ago to help new to export companies, enter foreign markets for the first time, and as well as for currently exporting companies to enter into markets that they hadn't been in the few, hadn't been in trying to get into. As a set of, the state of South Carolina has operated a step program for 10 years. And over the last 10 years, exporters who've participated in the program have exported over $120 million worth of goods. We, you can see on the screen that it has some of the requirements for our step program. I'd also like to add one of the great services from the SBDC that Beth mentioned is the export planning service that the SBDC could help potential exporters develop. And the companies that complete an export plan with the SBDC automatically get moved up to the front of the line for our program, assuming that they meet the current, the other statutory requirements. But one of the questions a lot of companies ask, well, what can I use this step plans for? What are the kind of the values on the program and how does it work? So I just kind of wanted to, I'll go over those really quickly. Most companies use our step programs to fit into a couple of buckets. The first of which is to exhibit international trade shows. So we have funding available for companies to go to a foreign market, go to a show overseas, set up an exhibition booth and exhibit your wares and kind of meet as many potential customers and distributors, representatives as possible. We've sent companies to Europe, to South America, to Asia, on to the Middle East to exhibit at various types of shows. Anything from marine components to aircraft parts to haircare products to lasers to kazoos. We've helped companies go to shows to exhibit. The step program provides companies with reimbursable funds to cover the cost of the exhibition space, as well as some travel funds as well. The second kind of big category that companies use the step funds for are to join the state and international trade missions or to do business to business development. Usually, the past year has been a challenge in a lot of regards, but typically the state sponsors four to five trade missions a year. And this is when four to five companies in the state go together with somebody from the Department of Commerce to spend usually five to seven days in a foreign market, meeting potential customers and partners. So it's a good way with a limited amount of time to meet people that have been vetted and screened that are interested in doing business with you. And so that could be meeting with potential and use customers, meeting with people or companies that are interested in being a distributor for your company or looking for sales representatives. Most companies meet with anywhere between three and 10 potential partners per trade mission. And it's a good way to get to actually meet the person, kind of establish your reputation. Have more, it's more than a handshake. It's usually about an hour with each meeting that kind of realize, is this the person or company I want to do business with? Trade information, it's a good way to make some really strong contacts. We do missions to various countries, but typically we do one to Canada every year, especially for new to export companies. This is usually one of the first markets. We usually do one to Asia and one to Europe. And then we'll kind of pick one that is maybe an emerging market, such as South America or Africa. The third kind of big bucket that companies use step programs for is for digital services. And this has been a big increase over the past year, year and a half. The step funds are available for companies to internationalize and localize their websites. So this could be for doing translation or adding currency exchange, shopping carts, it could be for search engine optimization, which is kind of AdWords or analytics. I mean, it can also be used for direct pay-per-click advertising. We're seeing a big increase in those types of programs and with a good bit of a good result. And finally, we have a couple other tools that are available for companies to use with the step program. I'm not gonna go through them all, but those are the three big bucks, the three big, three bags. One of the things that we also do as well is export training programs. Some of them we do in conjunction with the SBDC and some other partners, especially in the trade coalition. And the step program for the last year and a half has been providing complimentary export training programs for companies in the state of South Carolina. And our next one is on electronic export information using ACE. So this is where if you were to file your paperwork and do it digitally, and that will be on November 16th. And it's, as I mentioned, it's a complimentary for South Carolina companies. And I will put a link to the training in the chat so that if you're interested in going, learning through this or at least getting, coming a little bit more knowledgeable on how it works, you can join as well. So with that, I'm happy in conjunction with Beth, answer any questions about the step program. I look forward to, if you're interested in participating in it, feel free to let me know. We can have a more in-depth discussion on how to move forward with it. So with that, thank you. There, that brings you back to me for a minute. Norris, what a great overview. And I wanted to mention that I recently did a survey of all the international clients that I have through the South Carolina SBDC. We surveyed the whole state and asked them if they could get training that they needed, what did, where were their needs? What did they need to know more about? And so for folks that are on the phone that are my partners, you'll be happy to know that the simple answer was money. And so the first answer was, where can we get free money? And the second one was who can help us get the money we have to pay for? So I'm just, I'm laughing, but Norris, that's all about utilizing that step program in order to help you launch your company somewhere else and you get great consulting as a part of that. And the SBA is the one that helps us with all the loans. So I don't mean to be redundant, but I'm just saying the biggest need takes us back to the best partners that we have. Aisha, next slide. Cause I'm almost finished everybody. And then you get to, then we get to talk away. You heard me mention that USC, the Citadel and also the College of Charleston all help SBDC consultants and probably everybody else with clients who are in need, typically of deep market research that's gonna take a little while. And that's why we use the students over the course of the semester to help create a market plan. And in it is the research, is the target customer, maybe their persona profile where we can find more of them, how they like to buy the best way to target them, advertise to them and what the projections financially might be for the sale of a particular product. It takes a while for the professors to, for the faculty to work with the students, teach them the methodologies. Then they use those methods and tools in order to create a report. And by the end of a semester, they usually have, and I'll tell you it's about a 40 page report. And I have been working with the students, at least at the Moore School on this in the past because I try to get that report implementable the minute that the students hand it to us. So often when we finish, like let's say I have several clients going through it right now, when we finish getting the report in November, come January two, we will start implementing the recommendations that are in that report. So it's not academic or theoretical, it's real world. And it's because the consultants work with the client who works with the faculty who work with the students. So I can't say enough about these types of programs. And if you're not in the Midlands and you're coming into the program today from the upstate or Charleston, we have resources in all the geographies to help you. All of the schools will do something like this in order to help the local business community. It's a great service, Aisha. And then just real quick, I was just, I listed just from my own work, different types of businesses that I have worked with that have chosen to export. And you'll see recycling, it's metals or bicycle components. I'm just, you're just sitting here thinking it has to be something specific. I wanna show you the breadth of things that can find markets in other places. Seismic controls, really? Yeah, there's a lot of places that have earthquakes. Candles, biofuel, jewelry or boutique fashion. You can hear that selling at a market, right? Gun, ammo, exports. Distributor, listen to this. Goods that come in from Africa which are then exported to different markets. Mills, that's wood, different types of lumber or specialty timber. Pork ribs, another individual I've helped not only import the actual raw pork, but then process it and then ship it to other countries and solar security systems which have been installed in a lot of the Middle East. So those are, I hope why I did that was just to show you, you see how different all of those are, there are things you probably are going, oh, I didn't know, maybe my product could fit. Aisha, so with that, I actually wanted to introduce you to a very, very wonderful client but great friend of mine who has utilized, I think most of the resources in the state that we had on a prior slide and utilized that assistance in a multitude of ways over time. And so without giving a thing away about this wonderful business nor one of the co-founders, I'd love to introduce you to Nicole Johnson who is a co-founder of Boyd Cycling. And I'd like to turn this over if I can to you, Nicole. Great, thank you, Beth. I'm super excited to be here today. Boyd Cycling has been an often participant with SBDC and SBA and the step grant. And so everyone is very familiar with me, mostly on this call. Just a little bit about Boyd Cycling. We're going on 13 years in business and we started working with Beth Smith and Norris and Anita pretty much when we first started. Beth was definitely our first, one of our first calls. She actually helped us put our business plan together and just really think through some of our strategic approaches. We started Boyd Cycling out of our home. My husband and I both race bicycles professionally. That's how we met. And in 2009, my husband said, you know what, I've been working on some partnerships and relationships and there's some things I think that I can do and contribute to the industry and maybe help improve some of the things that exist right now. And that's literally how we started. I do have some funny stories to share about how we ended up utilizing some of the services. But I'd like to just one, say thank you for all the support we've received over the years and two, just share with everyone. We've participated and utilized a lot of the resources that Beth mentioned. We worked with the USC School of Business. The students actually did an export plan for us to Canada. And so ironically, Canada is more difficult than people realize. You think, oh, it's so close to us. Why is it difficult? And as Beth mentioned, there's rules and there's different NAFTA type things that you have to consider. It's just not as easy as you would think. So we were really fortunate to be able to work with the students on that plan and have grown our product into Canada. And we actually work with a distributor in Canada now. So that was a successful program. We've utilized the STEP grant with Norris and Anita and Commerce multiple times. We've utilized the trade programs. We've actually gone to Europe a couple of times. There's a big trade show in Europe that we participated with the assistance of the grant program. And one of the funny stories I wanted to share with you is we utilized something called the Gold Key, which is through STEP. And that is when we work with an individual in countries, usually through the embassies. In this particular situation, we were looking to expand into Europe, into the Netherlands and Germany specifically. And so they did a direct mail campaign to all the businesses that they thought would be a good fit for us to sell our products to. And so they actually sent an official letter to these distributors. And we had 15 that agreed to meet us at the show. And one of the distributors came to our booth and he said, I'm here because I got an official letter from the government that I had to meet with you. I thought we were in trouble. So that person ended up being a distributor for us. But it's a really great program. They're thoughtful, they're strategic, they do their research. So it's not just a math approach where they send your information out and hope that someone bites. It's a very thought out and strategic program, as I mentioned. You've also, we've received the Idle loan and Beth helped us in facilitating that program. That's another process that's not easy, but with the expertise and the help from the SBDC and the SBA, that's a great program if you can access it for your businesses. One of the other things that we had to utilize multiple times, but when we first started, we export our product in from Asia. We designed everything here in the US, but it's produced for us in Asia and Taiwan and then we have to export it in. And we first started, we had a broker out of Charlotte that did not file all the paperwork properly. And so Beth, I don't know if you remember this, but I called you in a panic and I said, we have a boat coming in with a lot of product that we've pre-sold and I can't get it through the border patrol school. And so she connected me with a gentleman at the South Carolina ports, who's now retired, Dennis Schismadia. And he connected me with all the right people and we were able to bring the boat in correctly. And that opened up another door for us where they looked at all the different countries throughout the US or throughout the world that would be interested in our product. And so we currently export about 10% of our business is international and growing. We just brought on a Chile distributor a month ago and a German distributor. So we're growing internationally with the help and support of all the programs. So if there's any questions I can answer, I'd be happy to as well. I was just thinking that might be good because sometimes people don't believe the consultants, they like to talk to the actual business owner to find out what maybe worked the best for you in different situations. Any questions for Nicole? Aisha, can you see? Yeah, what was it? Yeah, I'm here to check for questions, but I love how Nicole tied in all of the different partners that have assisted her so far in her success. It's so great to have that network of people to be able to call one. You don't know where do I even start and to be able to have a resource like Beth and her network becomes your network. So that's amazing. And I think the thing Aisha, I'm gonna go back and say and Norris can chime in too. Once any of us, let's see, you can kind of come in and start with most anybody, but we all know each other. And so as the business owner asks a question, and Nicole, I think you'd agree with this. You might ask me, say, Beth, I'm stuck here. Is that something you do? And I would, I might say, no, I'm not the person that's the specialist in that, but let me introduce you to XYZ. And then they might work with XYZ for a little bit, but then maybe some time will go by and all of a sudden Nicole will call and she goes, okay, I got that one done, but here's the next place I'm stuck. And so I might be the person that helps or it might be any of the other resources in the state. And what's good about it is that we know each other and we understand that at the end of the day, any of us are only as good as that business owner who's been able to accomplish their goal. And if we don't get that done, I mean that as a team, then we're not doing the job we've been put in place to do. So Nicole, I think I've known you for eight or nine years of your 13, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, maybe closer to 10 at this point. Maybe 10. And so it's not like I talk to Nicole every day, but she and I now also know when it's time for the two of us to check in. So listen to what Nicole just said. What happened for Beth? I heard her say, well, we have these new distributors in these two new countries. And what did Beth say earlier goes on for every business owner, it's always money. Where is the money gonna come from? What is that now doing to her cash flow, her income statement, her balance sheet? Does she need any assistance from someone in the lending community with the help of the SBA in order to get the funding she needs in order to make those kinds of things happen? So I never know what Nicole's next need will be, but I, trust me, I am there for her. I'll be calling you. I am so there for her. And if I'm not the person who knows the answer, I'll get her to the one that knows how to do what she needs. Does that help? I think that's the best thing any of us can say is just please take advantage of the network. I think we might have some questions, Beth. That's great. I can take them or Nicole or Norris, any of us can. Well, we have a little bit of questions in the chat. So I'm gonna start from the one that just came in. The one that came in earlier, the first question is, how do you look at trade? Well, I'm sorry, let me go to the first one. Is the export bank still in operation and as strong as ever? Yeah, and so the short, Galanna, thank you. The answer is yes, it is in operation. In fact, I think it got short up and Norris may wanna, or Susan may wanna tag in here. There was some talk maybe four years ago, I think, should we keep it, should we not? It is funded with taxpayer dollars and so every time you have an administration change in DC, we're either looking at the way the money was spent or the way they wish it could now be spent. So everything is always subject to discussion and there was some discussion about that but the bank is there. Susan Kintanar is our liaison from, she's in Georgia but we work through her if in fact, credit insurance or any of their programs would make sense for you. And we work through our personnel inside the SBA to make sure that we're using the resources the best way that they can be used. So yes, it's still there, it's operational and if that's one of the solutions you need, we would connect you with the right people to help you. Next question, actually she's on right now, Divya. So Divya, I'm gonna mute yourself and go ahead and ask your question. Hi, I have been loving this session. It's my first time I'm attending the session and I'm attending it from Canada. I am new to North America and down the line I'm looking towards starting my export import business and that's the reason why I'm attending this session and where beginners have done as they say. So I have these two questions to you with. I want to know how you've seen things changing after the COVID hit, especially I have a decade almost a decade experience in like working in export business. So it's the first one that hits in the scenario of crisis whether we go back in 2008 or we see it now. So how do you see things changing and how should we look at somebody who wants to start up? How should we look at it from the perspective of how things have changed due to COVID? And secondly I want to know, especially I've always felt that quality has been a biggest issue, quality control. That's something that as exporters or importers we catch and we really think off because if you're sourcing from one country and exporting to the other, then again we lost some, we lose some in the channel, the quality control and should we look at agencies who help us check that, being there or how do you look at the quality control problem? Those are wonderful questions, they're right on, spot on. So the first one, and I would be curious to see what anybody else in the group would say. To me what I have watched and it's really been since this spring. It's amazing to me and we talk about pivoting but 30 years ago we took every process and spliced it up into its horizontal chunks and we began outsourcing. Instead of a company owning all of the resources to design, produce, package and ship, it's product to somewhere. We carved all that up into chunks and we outsourced it. What COVID did is it made us understand how vulnerable that horizontal process might be. And a lot of us were so comfortable working with all of the suppliers that we had vetted over time that when COVID hit and suddenly Asia's disrupted these three months, Italy and Spain and France and Germany are off those four months. I mean, the ripple effect of how that thing hit us was I don't think anything we had ever really experienced before. So what I've been watching since spring are really two things. Number one, the cost of shipping things from the other side of the planet to this side of the planet has gone up. What that does is it increases everything. It increases your cost for your goods sold and then also the price you're gonna have to charge for. So all of a sudden shipping container costs have become a bigger issue to manage than it was probably even in January. That's number one. But number two, what that is forcing is a re-examination of where suppliers are and can we find ones that are regionally geographically closer to us so that not only for shipping container cost but also just for speed in getting things to us when we need them in our manufacturing processes is a regional supplier maybe a better answer than a global supplier. So that's been pretty interesting to watch. BMW always amazes me the way they think through their supply chain. And you know, they used to have different models produced in different countries but they're so smart and so ahead of the game that a few years ago they started building redundancy into their manufacturing process. So even though the X's are built at Plant Spartanburg they are also built in Rosland, South Africa. So what they were able to do was switch which plant was on and which regional supply chain was on as the ripples, as the waves rolled around the earth. So Plant Spartanburg might be shut down for six weeks but Rosland was busy pumping out X3s, if I'm making sense. So it changed our management thinking about just a good strong quality high performing supply chain from anywhere to A, one that is maybe a little closer to us or B, redundancy in our own supply chain thinking so that we don't always only have one supplier. All your eggs in one basket never has been a good theory. And so the answer to your first question is I'm seeing those changes now take place in the way management is thinking about sourcing and also in shipping. So that's answer number one. Number two, the folks that we have in the state of South Carolina who are top drawer at quality are the consultants at SEMEP at the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. I can't think of any of them that can't just walk into any kind of a production center and isolate the tasks. I had that background, you process map those tasks out. You look at the components that are needed, the time that's needed, they break the whole thing down and then you can forecast at the various areas in the production process, exactly what the metrics will show in terms of your quality, that's six sigma. And I am a six sigma Motorola girl. So I always refer clients to SEMEP for that deep assessment of their production process and how to implement quality standards and checks and balances into their production process. They are superb and they know this inside out. They'd be great. Does that help? That's where I would go. Thank you. You're totally welcome. Okay, if you have more questions, let's stump Beth. Yeah, we have some more questions, Beth. The next question is, what about service firms like consulting and coaching? Are they, is it easier to offer their services abroad? And the answer is absolutely. And I actually have an international business consulting company and have had it since 2005. So I know, and I'm gonna say this openly, the way I got my service business started internationally was because I had a network. I hope that makes sense. A service is only as good as the customers you have. And in order to be able to provide that service, you have to know people who are willing to buy it. And in my case, I had just come out of managing all that crazy stuff globally. So everybody knew me, you know, that was Miss Motorola, you know, Bled Blue, even though I was at digital. So everybody already knew me, knew that I'd get on an airplane and go anywhere tomorrow morning if I thought we could get something sold or something unstuck. So because of that, I had a strong network. Unfortunately, 15, 16 years later, some of those people that were my age aren't in those roles anymore, you know, so about seven or eight years ago, I started asking them for their junior apprentice who was going to work under their tutelage because I knew they would probably go off to happy land at some point, which some of them have done. But it's the network that I had that helped me seed those initial projects that I did outside of the country. Number two, if you have a product and or a service and you need help finding a targeted buyer for that service, that's why we have the team in the state of South Carolina. US Commercial Service can help you with that. Through the step grant, we can do market research and we can find out where those services are needed. And you know, Norris, I should ask you, you may know, I thought I saw during COVID that many of the services were still able to be conducted because, you know, so many of us went over to Zoom, you know. So we worked on flights going to the country where somebody needed our service, but we could set up Zoom calls and they could send us what we needed digitally. And I believe the services managed pretty well during COVID. It was the products where we had hiccups. Norris, do you have any thoughts on that? I would agree to a limited extent. What we found is in general, some markets were more able to kind of pivot to the digital experience, whereas in other markets that they couldn't. But in general, you know, that period of time did up, did create some new opportunities for some new sectors. But it's, you know, it's a mixed bag coming out of it. No, that's helpful. Thank you, Norris. I hope that answers the question. Others? Okay, and this is the last question that we have in the chat. On average, how long does it take from export business plan to money in the bank if everything is approved? Wonder what Susan would say. Is Susan still on the call? She would have a good look at that. And if not, Nicole, what would you say? From time of planning to, I think that's a good question for you, execution and getting the, you know, loans, these export loans will take 60 days, you know? I'm just saying, so 60 days, 90 days, what do you think, Nicole? Yeah, I would say on average, I would plan on 90 days from beginning to end. You know, there's factors obviously that, you know, will possibly affect that. But, you know, I think that the programs are so structured and already so fluid that, you know, working with Beth or Susan or one of the folks on this call, they can help shorten the process because, you know, it's just like anything, there's a learning curve to some of this. So if you can align yourself with people who know how to, you know, go through. And then, you know, depending on the product and the markets, you know, it'll be important to look at the markets that make the most sense. There are some markets that take longer. So, you know, there's definitely some specifics with the product or, you know, with what's being exported. I think will impact the time. That's well said, Nicole. And my only ad would be, there are a couple of resources in the state for the SBA, one, his name is Frank Anderson and another one is Dan Holt. These are senior lenders who not, they don't just take a request for a loan and process it. They are savvy. They know a variety of ways of getting that done. They know the flow of money, which that of money afforded by Congress or whatever is most available for your use. And so I often will just simply pick up the phone and say, okay, here's the deal. Here's what this client is trying to do. Which loan program do you think this would be most suited for this need? And then how might we move this through? I've even gone to Dan and to Frank and I've asked them, I know to call you guys but which lender or groups of lenders, you can usually give me a list of five or 10 of them. How could I assist the client in helping them find a lender who knows how to work with you, process the paperwork and get this done pretty quickly? And Dan has always been, well, how soon do they need the money? Because I think he thinks backwards like that. If they need the money and this is how much, well, here's a way that we could do it. And so I would say the advice of the lending community is critical. I mean, your own lenders, as well as any of the folks from the SBA, they usually help us with that. They can also tell us about how long they think it will take to get the loan through and funded. And Susan just added Frank Anderson's contact information at SBA, he's the lender relations specialist and district national trade officer. So if anyone has any questions for him, his contact information is in the chat. He's wonderful to work with. I've worked with Frank forever. We've gone and visited Nicole. No, I mean, we have gotten in the, we just get in the car and we just go see whoever needs us and try to answer the questions if there's any problems. He's wonderful to work with. That's great. We only have a few more minutes. So you want to get your last couple of slides in. Sure, that'd be great, Aisha. Thank you. I'll do it. Thank you so much for Nicole. I appreciate you taking time to join us. That was a great gift that you shared your experience working in national trade. So we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Anytime. Thank you so much for all the support. So if you could use some help from the Small Business Development Center Export Consultants, we have four of them. Me, of course, being the mouthy one. No, the first one, the one in the Midlands. And then Tom is another just exceptional individual with a lot of manufacturing experience, bringing new products to market. And Tom can be contacted. He'll just kind of take the beach in the Charleston area. Ben, you have his contact information. Although he's in Clemson, we've asked him to answer questions coming in from the upstate. And then in Rock Hill, we have a gentleman by the name of Jim Funk working out of Winthrop. And he's trying to help us with like, I call it South Charlotte, North Eastern South Carolina. He will help the clients there. One more thing I wanted to mention, which is not on any of these slides, but maybe a issue you could go to the next slide. One more thing I would explain is, yes, on SCSBDC, we have an export page and all the contact information and everything that we do is listed there. But you can also find similar information at sba.gov. They have tutorials on how to export that are fabulous. They are incredible and you will learn so much if you just take the time to click on them, go through those tutorials, you'll be stunned at how much you learn. And trade.gov, and I'm just sitting here going, used to be export.gov, that's right. It's now trade.gov. That learn how to export is again, a suite of tutorials on, you can almost ask a question and there's an answer there. And the fourth one I really should have put on the slide, which I only thought of now, it's so obvious to me, I forgot about it. If you do not know the organization, the association, and it's called NASBITE, it's N-A-S-B-I-T-E, and it stands for North American Small Business International Trade Education. NASBITE offers a credential which is called the CGBP. It's a Certified Global Business Professional and that credential covers four areas of content. It is what you need to know when you're managing a business internationally, what you need to know when you're marketing a product or service internationally. Supply chain requirements, and the fourth part is all about trade finance, insurance, risk mitigation. By going through the study materials for the CGBP and or sitting for the exam, you will learn an awful lot about how world commerce works. And so if you think, well, I don't wanna just drown Beth and Norris and Nicole and Susan and Frank and Dan, if I don't wanna drown all those people, where are their resources that I can learn as I have time on an as needed basis? And I would tell you, go to nasbite.org and you'll see a page, it says CGBP and it will explain anything you wanna know about the four domains, the content, if you wanna sit for the exam and then, I don't know, and we have trade passport webinars. We now have student pathways, study materials. There's a lot available through NASBITE as well. Aisha, did you have another question for me? No, that's it, this has been amazing. Do you have any final words before we wrap it up? Absolutely, I love working with the city of Columbia. Thank you for making this possible, Aisha. The whole team is just, you're just, again, part of the larger state team. Everybody seems to just get along well and we know that at the end of the day, it is about the business owner. And we want the owner not to get caught with fines, but to make revenue, right? Make profit, that's our job at the end of the day, is to see them through wherever they're stuck and make sure we can get them unstuck and continuing to move. So I thank everybody for participating, thank you. Very quickly, Beth, I wanna be mindful of everyone's time but we did just get a question about the middleman export business and there are all the resources available to the middleman. I'm thinking. Okay. I think they're the same. I just had to think for a minute, I think they're the same. That might require maybe a session to kind of talk about details of what that looks like. The real answer is whether you take title to the goods and so from there stems everything else. If you were importing something, warehousing it and then exporting it, the question is are you drop shipping from a location to another location or are they actually physically coming here and you're taking title to them and then what does that mean? So that would be my short answer, but otherwise all the resources that are on this call today, they would help you through that. That's great. Another question we have is about the recording. So if you did not register, could you please put your email address in the chat so we can capture that? Otherwise everyone that registered will get a copy of the recording, the slides and Beth, I can add that NASBITE link to your slide before I send that out. That'd be great. Yeah. And I'll send the recording, the slides, a survey as well just so that we can get feedback. Justice, thank you for providing your email. I'm just going to write that down. Thank you for the opportunity today. I appreciate. I have a page full of notes Beth. So this has been amazing. Thank you so much. You provided a great deal of valuable information. I love your slide about risk, but solutions. I love when you can think about what the risks are, but you offered us some suggestions versus solutions. So that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Norris, for joining us. We really appreciate you on behalf of commerce to come in here to talk about the step program. Thank you all that joined our call today. We appreciate it. You can be doing anything right now, but you decided to join us on this beautiful day. So we appreciate it. If anyone has any questions for the Office of Business Opportunities, we'll put our email in the chat as well. And we can make any connections that you see. I don't know where to start. Can you connect me with that? Make sure that we make that connection for you. Again, thank you, Nicole, for joining us. That was wonderful to get your perspective. Is anything else, Beth, before we wrap up? No. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Stay safe and please contact us if there's anything else we can do for you. Have a great rest of your day. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.