Welcome to our new weekly podcast segment with Gene Marks. A lot of the business owners are looking everywhere to find supply, and they're also looking everywhere to find customers. The opportunity to sell and buy products overseas comes back into the forefront. Here are some tips.

Hey everybody and welcome to The Hartford, Small Biz Ahead podcast. This is Gene Marks, and I'm here to talk about the topic of the week. And today's topic I wanted to talk to you about, is buying and selling overseas. You know, as the pandemic recedes behind us, a lot of American businesses are getting back to business. Not only that, but we're also facing significant and serious supply chain issues. So a lot of my clients, a lot of the business owners that I talk to are looking everywhere to find supply, and they're also looking everywhere to find customers, to sell their products to as well. So once again, the potential, the opportunity to sell and buy products overseas comes back into the forefront. You know right before COVID the US Chamber of Commerce did a big study about small businesses and found that small businesses actually exported around $541 billion of products and services overseas that supported about 6 million jobs.

But according to the chambers report, most small businesses, that could be selling internationally aren't because they face significant barriers. It's tough to navigate the maze of foreign regulations and tariffs and customs procedures and the complexity of payment collection, all that kind of stuff pretty much stands in the way. So, you know the US chamber said in their study, I'm looking at it now that, if small businesses had better access to global markets they could increase the gross domestic product of this country by about $81 billion and add almost a million new jobs. Maybe that's your business as well. Maybe you're thinking, is there some place else that I could find supply cheaper or easier outside of the U S and by the way, by outside of the US, Canada is our world is our largest trading partner.

Mexico, I'm not saying you have to go halfway around the world to do this, but then again, there are plenty of opportunities in Europe, of course, in Asia and India and Africa as well. So where do you go? You know, how do you get started? If you want to go down the road of buying and selling your products overseas. So let me give you some advice, because I talked to some people about this, and I've been writing about it. The first thing that I want you to do is I want you to Google or visit the US commercial service agency. That US commercial service is part of the US Department of Commerce's international trade administration. Okay. If you go there, you will be blown away by the amount of resources that are provided to you, both of your current exporter or importer of products.

Or if you're looking to get into the business of exporting and importing the US commercial service, will do a partner search for you, by the way, all for free, they will do a partner search for you. They will provide a list of up to five partners or distributors that have expressed an interest in your company's goods or services. It's just like putting yourself out there. The U S commercial service agency will do the leg work for you. They have a team, a large team of trade specialists that can also help with the outreach to those potentially matching firms. They can do background research on those firms. They can provide reports that will include like profiling contact information of interested buyers and sellers as well. It's really a fantastic agency that's available for, again, no price, no cost whatsoever to you. It's, it's part of the U S government services for small businesses.

They'll do market research,