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[Crowd talking] [unintelligible] [Rob]Okay! How's everybody doing today? [crowd talking] Good. Well thank you all for coming. We're really excited to welcome here Patricia Cook. She's with the Iowa Export... [unintelligible] I'm going to let her kind of do her own introduction and explain what she does and how she's affiliated with all of these different departments. Before we jump right into the presentation, I want to let all of you know that this is a live recorded broadcast that we are simultaneously broadcasting over the online community called MyEntreNet. Give me... Raise your hand if you're familiar with MyEntreNet or if you're registered on there for free. Great. Be sure to check out that resource. Also, I have to do a quick plug for a conference that we're hosting for small business owners here at the end of February called EntreFEST. All the details can be found at the EntreFEST website. And there's also some brochures up here. For our online audience, the web address is www.entrefest.com. And also I want to thank everyone online for joining us today as well. Feel free to ask questions. And this is coming here to the online audience. Bear with me guys. If you guys want to ask questions, that's fine. I'll kind of be keeping track of those, and we'll try to get to the questions at the end. If we don't get to the questions, we'll kind of play that by ear and see how things go. Patricia has agreed to kind of stick around for a little longer than just the hour that we normally will allocate. So we'll leave the webinar open for that discussion to kind of continue happening. Again, thank you all for coming. I'm going to go ahead and just kind of turn it over to them. [Patricia]Thank you very much for having me. I am based in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm an employee of the Federal Government. The US Department of Commerce has USEACs around the United States. A USEAC is US Export Assistant Center, and we have USEACs that help any business, large or small, to access services and get free counseling to develop their business. My USEAC is an actual organization with about 300 members. So we have a USEAC in almost every state in the United States. Come to us by phone, by email, or in person to learn how to export. We are part of the International Trade Administration, which is under the US Department of Commerce. I have the handouts that are available for the people here in the room. If you on the web cast can email me after the program. You'll see my email address shortly. And I have an exporter's guide. I have our formal export assistance center brochure. And this is my emailable flier, which I would send any participant if you raise your hand and let me know your email address at the end. And this gives a full outline of all of our services. We'll go over that in the webinar portion. I'll actually sit down shortly and give you a powerpoint presentation that you'll be able to view over and over again until you get all these details clear in your mind. Before I start, though, I have a couple visitors here today from a bank and from the Small Business Administration. If you could each come up and briefly let us know what your organization is and how you would help an international business. - I'm Eric Olson from Wells Fargo here in the Cedar Valley. I'm a business banker and specializing in commercial lending from operating to foreign exchange to foreign letters of credit or any of those different capacities. Wells Fargo is a bigger bank in the Midwest, and we can offer and provide pretty much any service that you may need to handle any of your foreign business needs that you have. To provide a local feel, that's why I'm here. Everybody knows that a bank our size has these things, but they may not know who to talk to. So that's why I'm here, just to put a name with a face and provide that local feel a little bit, local flavor. I do have some contact information here as well and information about foreign exchange products that we have and the things that also explain a little bit of our foreign letters of credit and things that you may need or may find that you might need to expand your business. [Patricia]Okay. And now the US Small Business Administration has an office in Iowa specifically for international. Please introduce yourself and how that might help. - My name's Dee Ann Glover. [unintelligible] in the SDA office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. SBA has two offices in the state. One is in Des Moines, our district office. We are a branch office in Cedar Rapids. I am the international trade representative for the entire state. We have great resources with regard to training, assisting, educating as far as [unintelligible]. We've gotten some additional funding for the small business development centers. They are going to be promoting and growing their international trade assistance to small businesses in Iowa. We have four counselors. They're volunteer small business people that volunteer their time to counsel small businesses. And in the Cedar Rapids chapter particularly, we have several retired business executives that have had a lot of international business experience that can be very helpful to you. Jack Neville or John Neville in Chicago is our expert. He's also located in the USEAC of Chicago, and he has quite a large territory of state, but he does come to Iowa once or twice a year, and we can get him on the phone and get him out to visit a business and provide assistance if you need it. We have a lot of just general business information for you. We have financing programs that can help Your local lender provide the assistance that you may need for that export of [unintelligible]. I have some resource guides available, and if there's any questions at any time, please feel free. Thank you. [Patricia]Now you know we have US export assistants there. And I want you to know that you should use both our services, the services of SBA, but very seriously you want to consider using the services of bankers, lawyers, expediters, and other professionals. It's not a little thing. And one of the mistakes I hear in my everyday conversations very recently are that entrepreneurs such as yourselves are feeling like oh we're not really exporting. We just fill an order every now and then. We're just a little bit of an exporter. So we'll just do it our way. We can communicate with these people by email and we don't want to pay all that money to a banker or to a lawyer. We'll just make the deal happen. They've offered so generously to take a few samples, see if the product's popular in their country. And you know they've had several orders, so now we're going to give them a larger order. And it's amazing, actually, how easy they're making it for us to get into this country. And now they just called and asked for a slightly larger order, and they'll pay us back real soon. Well that's where we get into avoiding fraud. Just as you're familiar with the really silly emails that you get sometimes with people scamming to give them help to move their two million dollars from Nigeria, we have on the ground many many fraud situations in Iowa, so unbelievably reputable, well-known, big [unintelligible] Iowa companies have been taken in. The sales manager gets this call, they send a few samples, they escalate, they want a container load to see how it will go, and they very foolishly accept it. Give them a credit card transaction? Guess what. If you're not happy with the delivery of your goods on a credit card purchase, you can cancel and never pay a dime. So you might have sent them some parts thinking that they've been working well with you, they seem really nice, and you took their credit card number, so you know. But this isn't eBay. You're not safe. You're not save at all. They can walk away. You've got no legal basis to get your money for that. And also, they might consider that they've become your distributor now for the whole country of Brazil or the whole country of Turkey. And international law in many countries says that if you even sent a sample one time, you formed a distributor- partner relationship with a bona fide agent or partner, and four years from now, you have to buy that person out. Your emailed your business letter, your box of sample kits from products or software has established them as owning the whole Philippine territory. Now if you just give them $200,000, they might go away quietly. And what are you going to do about that? So when I say use services, go to the bank and get one free conversation about money. I'm pretty sure they'll talk to you once for free, and then they will convince you that what they're selling really is worth the $200 or $50 or maybe $1,000 for what you have to get done. But you know if you're going to be in business, do it the right way and budget that into your prices as you sell. Budget that into your business planning. If you don't want to go there, just don't export. Just don't go there. Because you can really be taken advantage of. That will be a disaster to your company. So avoid fraud. If you get a strange email but it doesn't seem completely off track, maybe it seems like a nice guy from Jordan that wants to buy some materials for his local store, can you sell to him? This is what the presentation is on, showing you. And then in any case, you can contact me absolutely for free. And my reach is worldwide. The counselors of the US Export Assistance Centers can call the US embassies anywhere in the world. I can call Jordan, the US embassy, to the trade office and say this man says he owns drug stores in the country of Jordan. Can you check him out for us? And either for free or for a small fee, for example, $200, we have a standard due diligence process where the US embassy staff will drive by his business office, walk in the door, and see if the guy sounds reasonable and also give you a 12 page single spaced financial report on the reputability of that person. So if you want to go forward, make them be your agent, work with a lawyer, use that document to do an internal discussion if that's worth it, but you're only out $200 due diligence. You might have a lawyer write up a partnership agreement, and then you can work with your bankers or the SBA lending arms to work out how you finance something like that. And you know instead of waiting nine years until you feel profitable in central Iowa, you might be moving that product today, and you can continue to work the Midwest region, but you can actually move product and do everything at once perhaps. Make more money. So pick up the fliers off the table. Give me your email address when you raise your hand in the webinar session and I'll have a contact with telephone and email for you, and I'll send you these. The next portion will actually be with the slide show. So it is the US commercial service that is based in every state of the US and also around the world. My office is in Des Moines, but I travel the state, give seminars, and most often just respond to email questions for me. [unintelligible] Our Iowa Export Assistance Center in Iowa is in the federal building in downtown Des Moines, but you don't have to drive there. If I'm traveling, I can stop by your business if you let me know to stop by sometime, or you can opt in to be invited to my training classes in different areas of the state. There are a lot of dynamic factors involved in international trade. And I want you to know that this doesn't have to be mastered in a day. It takes a long time, but at least familiarize yourself with the terms, the responsibilities, and set up for yourself a business plan. I've learned that the SBA now has the service available to help with business plans, especially for international. So make that commitment for yourself that you really write a business plan. Not only do lenders insist you have one if you ever need to borrow money, but for your own sake, you need to get organized enough so that when you go in for counseling you can see where you left off and where you continually move yourself down the path to being an informed business person working with exports. When we say immigration and boarder security, you can imagine since 9/11 there's a lot more searching at ports and documentation analysis going on. The entire US Government documentation system for imports and exports are now computerized. You have to have a code number on every product you're shipping, and that's called a harmonized number or a scheduled ID number. We can help you learn how to find that number. There's actually an online tool that you can use, but you might want to have somebody check it for you. Well immigration and border security isn't just checking for dangerous objects. It's also checking for fraud on these documents, and you can be fined, not the president of your company necessarily, but whoever signs the documents back at the office, at the loading dock, the CFO, the secretary of the president. If you signed some of these documents, you might be personally liable that what's in the document is true. And so you can get fined. And there is, perhaps, a not frequent but possible audit that could occur at [unintelligible] When we say US diplomacy goals on the diagram, they mean things like the State Department in order to try to find peace and build economic prosperity in countries so that maybe our military presence won't be the only thing that's steering policy in those countries. Diplomacy goals might be the great example of the country of Columbia where in order to bring an economic basis to that country, we helped the companies [unintelligible] to grow fresh flowers so that the very small micro- industries started, and now it's a fantastic fact that Columbian flowers are mostly what you see in your markets in rural Iowa today. They've actually almost crushed the California flower market. So when you say diplomacy goals, that's great because now there's a billion dollar industry in Columbia. There are few less people that are displaced and forced to work for terror organizations. The second shoe to drop is for us to say we've helped the Columbians grow the flowers. Now we need the free trade agreement with Columbia so that... Actually we're already letting them bring their flowers in for no tariffs. We're not sending anything into Columbia right now for the last 10 years tariff free. They've had all the benefit at the outset, and if we don't pass the free trade agreement, we don't get to move our cars and ours solar panels and are pharmaceuticals into Columbia without tariffs. So the diplomatic goals go hand in hand to the State Department, to the Commerce Department so that we win this game over the long term, we see democracy flourish, and poor people who are struggling find sustainable projects to work on. And theoretically once we pass the free trade agreement the California flower market will come back up, the Columbians will still grow flowers, and we'll see peace and stabilization continue in Columbia. It has, frankly, improved greatly over the last number of years. So technology is something that the United States Government, if you noticed that the president's state of the union address, he strongly recommended we boost technology. Ann from the SBA just spoke about there's new funding to help loans for certain things. If there's renewable energy technology, you might be amazed at the policies that support you, some advantageous introductions to business around the world, and some actual useful assistance for you, maybe [unintelligible] lending that you want to explore with SBA and with our USEAC staff. So all these national policies are important for you to be a little bit aware of, but more importantly, you might actually have to do something about these, because there are documents to fill out. So who needs a road map for exporting? You might be in a small business and you might have all these titles here. It's often the case when I call a company in rural Iowa, one of two people handle all of these roles. So you need to become self-aware. You can't say my forwarder just handles that for me. You'd be liable to errors on your shipping documents, and you might want to take our coaching and advice that would guide you to get copies of things that other people do for you. The role of the US Government, as I started to say, is regulation with trade, trade promotion, assistance, and advocacy, trade finance, negotiating and managing trade agreements, and the statistical recording, which can be very fun, and we can offer insights into statistics for you to pick what countries you'd like to sell your goods in so it's not a blind guess. So when I have a training class... This today is more of a high- level review, but in a training class or in a telephone call or email exchange between you and I, we might cover what you need to do for every one of these agencies to send your software to Saudi Arabia, to send some popcorn to France, to send a plastic bucket to Australia. You actually might have to do something for every one of these agencies just to get that transactionally going. The US Department of Commerce, which is ultimately the agency I'm funded by, has a Bureau of Industry and Security. They're the guards at the border, and they actually have badges and guns, and they are checking product at the docs in New Jersey or Long Beach, and they want to make sure that the documents are in order before the goods move. If you've forgotten some of the documents, you could be fined and or your goods could be held. We want you to learn about the denied persons list. There are people the US Government has designated undesirables, and there's a website you need to go to at bis.doc.gov. And by the letter of the law, you're supposed to check every truck, every shipment, every air freight parcel that takes off before sending to a foreign country to see if the person you've addressed that to has been checked on the denied persons list that day. The State Department has the Directorate of Defense Controls, ITAR, which means if you sell bullets, you've got to be restricted before you sell the bullets. Or if you sell ball bearing that can be made into a dirty bomb, you have to have extra levels of documents every time you ship them, and you'd definitely better be checking the denied persons list. It seems like an innocent thing to have a ball bearing. Those are actually components that are on a short list of items that cannot be shipped without an export license. So you have to work with us to learn how to fill out an export license. And it might be specific to which country those goods are bound for. There are also a couple sites of the State Department such as travel advisories. If you're going to the Middle East or even to Australia during the floods, you might want to look on this website just to see the conditions for US citizens in the country. And I can work with you also to get you personal addresses and telephone numbers if you are going to a foreign country on your own. You don't have to coordinate a fancy service, but you might want to know a contact at the US embassy if you're going to Costa Rica or France or Russia just to feel a little more comfortable. If something went wrong, you'd know how to go to the embassy and know how to ask for help or assistance. Another portion of the US Department of Commerce is the Census Bureau, which works with the worldwide organization that establishes these harmonized system code numbers. These aren't made in the USA. This is a worldwide body. I think it comes out of the United Nations. And it's standardized, therefore they use the word harmonized. It's a standardized list so that there's a 10 digit number for cotton balls, there's a 10 digit number for military software, there's a 10 digit number for children's toys that are plastic or wood or bendable or in a kit that you build yourself. Each product that you have needs to have a harmonized system number, and as I said earlier, don't trust another person to help you to determine that. That would be okay, but you need to review and make sure that they are not cheating the system to get a lower tariff rate. That actually occurs on a somewhat regular basis due to ignorance of the shipping expediter. Imagine there might be staff turnover and the person doesn't really know how to codify so they just put something on there and their boss was none the wiser or you're none the wiser. Actually if you have somebody handling your documents, you can request that on every shipment you be copied by email or with a hard copy of what they sent out so you can, at least after the fact, on that they're fulfilling what should be done for your business. And a very important bullet is bullet number two on this slide. It's a requirement of the United States Government that you file through the AES if you ship anything over $2,500. The Automated Export System requires that you either have your expediter or train yourselves how to go to an online portal and register movement of goods of $2,500 or more each time. And there's a help desk toll free number and an 800 number given here on this slide where you could call them, but if you think you have something problematic, you might want to call us at the USEAC first and sort of explain how just maybe in the past you weren't aware of this and maybe in the past you weren't quite sure how to proceed. And we could gently review with you until you get to the point where you might want to disclose that you were in error with sending your bullets to Central America without registration or something like that. It's actually okay to report your ignorance of the system and then move forward like a tax forgiveness with the IRS. You might have to manage that, or if it's just a minor thing that you didn't know you had to keep constant record keeping, just move forward with better guidance. And after you speak with us, you're also again certainly free to call the AES US Government Office in Washington, D. C. to perfect your methods and make sure that you're doing this correctly. The US Department of Treasury collects money. And when we manage the government's business, we have concerns about law breakers. So you may have heard in the past of certain companies based in the US that were really gathering money to support terrorist organizations [unintelligible] or elsewhere. Now if the US Government has determined that a bakery in Florida is really just a front for a charitable organization for Muslim Jihad of some kind, they have been blacklisted, and the Department of Treasury maintains a blacklist, meaning denied companies and denied persons, the people you can't do business with. And so if you thought you'd sell your frozen bread dough to this bakery in Florida, well guess what? You can't ever for any reason. So you need to go to this website, more work, more checking, more required steps that you cannot evade, and be sure that these Specially Designated Nationals or this business entity hasn't been listed as forbidden by the United States Department of the Treasury. Again, if you're caught, there are real fines. So let us help you export. Actually exporting can be fun, and it's profitable. And I imagine you want to be exporting. It's frankly quite approachable for entrepreneurs and very small businesses. You can have a start up. You can ship to Canada and practice how to get something over a fairly easy to understand border. You can gain a great deal of interest from foreign markets if you know that your product would be desirable. There was an Iowa company that was one of the first on the ground for hand sanitizers during the last giant flu outbreak. They were assisted by some of these agents we talked about the day with free help. They moved their hand sanitizer to the Asian countries faster than anybody else, and they made a lot of money. But how do you know where to sell your software? How do you know where to sell your toy or your buckets or whatever? We actually can find out fairly easy for you rather than you just guessing or waiting to get a fraud phone call from somebody you don't really want to waste your time with. There's so much more to it, and I am able to help you with business development as well. And on this slide, let us help you export, the buyusa.gov is one of our export trade websites. It has a lot of tabs used to open similar to the things we were just talking about, sort of self-help. There's actually some webinars to. You can learn more about how to fill out free trade agreement forms, how to view the AES filing requirement. And study up on that by yourselves. Export.gov is another Federal Government website. The TIC is our hotline for trade. It's kind of the easy first stop for quick information. It's called the TIC, and it's an 800 number. The thing that they're particularly good at is calculating tariffs for you. So if you knew you wanted to sell your way in or your bicycle to France or Australia, you know the tariffs in that country are the tariffs you pay. They're not our tariffs. They're country-specific. So you need to calculate what that country would charge you to bring those in, and the TIC Center does that for free all day long, every day, at any time you'd like. And I didn't give the number. I actually want you to go there and explore that website. So look it up and call them and just kind of check what you understand about how to fill out forms and calculate tariffs for shipping. We have this global network of trade professionals. When I say that I have counterparts in the US embassies abroad, they're members of the US Commercial Service, my agency of the Department of Commerce. Inside the embassy trade office we have people who are rotated around the world who come from the United States. And we also have people who are permanent hires who are employees of the United States Government. So for example, in Tokyo there's one person who's been there for 20 years who works on aerospace [unintelligible]. There's another person who works on fisheries. There's another person who works on cosmetic products and pharmaceuticals. And so the list goes on and on. And so if you wanted to put in a flavored soybeans for snacks, I would have you call Tokyo and find out about a trade show. And I actually was working in Japan last summer and was kind of impressed to find out they're dying for United States bar snacks. They want flavored sausage also. Any kind of meat breakfast sausage. They're just crazy about pork and sausage. And we've been sending pork to Japan for years, granted, but they'll pay a premium for fancy snack foods. They eat a lot of snack foods. So if you could have spicy tofu or cinnamon soybeans or something, whatever it might be, developing even food products we assist with. Or if you have a technical product, I'm aware of trade shows that you can attend for no cost in Osaka and Tokyo, and you get very special treatment because Japan, again for example, is desperate for innovation right now. They want partners, and they also are desperate for financial partners. They have some money problems. So you could find yourself with a partnership with Panasonic or Sanyo just through a free introduction if you'd fly to Tokyo with our assistants and attend a technology fair, for example. But pick any company. If we do the research and find out that Poland or Russia would like your equipment, because they have compatible regions as far as we might have things they'd like to buy, we can discover where you should [unintelligible]. So we work with you start to finish. We find out if you're export ready. I usually interview people pretty thoroughly, and I can tell your sophistication level. Most people tell me that they're already good, they already have it handled, they know how to take an order and ship. But I want to be very careful and be sure that you actually know how to do your documents and are fully aware of these government agency requirements. And then we do the fun stuff, which I just mentioned, is finding key markets. Find out what countries you could most easily enter and most easily move your product. And there are countries with very low restrictions and easy to manage paperwork. And there are the countries that are extremely difficult. Many people call and want to start right off moving their product to China, for example. That's a harder one to tackle. It's certainly possible, but you might want to just pick Panama first and try Canada and see how that goes for you and then expand once your staff is well aware of what to do. So we determine the sales potential in those markets. We get a free telephone call to the embassy in that country. Every time we want to develop a new market, I coordinate a free phone call. You have a 45 minute chat that tells you this is never going to work. This product isn't wanted in our country. We don't have the power supply for it. We don't like that kind of meat. We don't like that kind of clothing. And then you go away without having wasted any money or time. But then if they say wow we've been waiting for you to call, when are you coming, we help you work through that. And then we refer you to the SBA, the state of Iowa, the bankers, the lawyers, whoever it might be so that you don't maybe miss a moment where you don't realize that you have to do this before we begin, but you're all but guaranteed an audience at a trade show or an introductory visit in the [unintelligible] And then you implement your marketing export plan, which takes you back to step one. Did you write your business plan? Because it's hard to upgrade something you didn't write in the beginning. So I do urge you to take it seriously, to have some kind of business plan for your own sake and for the sake of the people who will counsel you. And many of the counselors are working for no fee, and it helps if they're able to view an organized plan with you with a budget and set goals for how long you have to wait to turn profitable or what demands you have on your business plan. So we have the proven expertise of about 30 years assisting US companies in this fashion. We do the counseling, we offer the market intelligence, we do the business matchmaking, and we also have commercial diplomacy. Recently the Iowa companies Titan Tire and Firestone Tire, I believe, were very disadvantaged by Chinese tires coming into the United States and undercutting the market. Our agency reported this to the US Trade Representative and the Secretary of State's Office of the US Government, started a battle with the country of China, and ultimately we won that fight so that now China isn't allowed to do this dumping of low price tires into Iowa. That's an example of commercial diplomacy. And you might have a product... Years ago the Russians wouldn't let our combines in because they said only their combines should be bought by Russian farmers, so the Germans in the US teamed up together and did a World Trade Organization battle with the power of the United States Government and Secretary of State to negotiate that you will buy our farm equipment and your 1940s-era combines just aren't cutting it. You don't have a strong argument that you can't use a John Deere product or an International Harvester combine in Russia. There's a lot of fields there, and since that time we won the argument. Commercial diplomacy was a success, and I think that the Iowa and Midwest region companies have prospered due to that fact. So I'm trying to give you a little flavor for the fact that different agencies of the government are working together. They're also watching each other, and there is, much more than even five years ago, auditing and monitoring of your documents and your activities. So don't feel that you can just go under the radar with your eBay sale to a certain country or just go under the radar and have your brother in law drive a couple of trucks up to Canada and sell them. The fact is, he might be stopped at the border and not even be able to proceed if he doesn't have these documents or he might have to pay $1,000 fine that day because he didn't [unintelligible] the law. So why go there? Why not do some homework first now that you know we exist and continue to work toward stronger policies in your company. So we'll work on planning and strategy and the legal and regulatory issues. There are often certification requirements, electricity regulations, and things like that. You might have heard of a UL listing on your toaster and your hair drier. If you sell anything at all to a country in Europe, part of the European Union, you have to have a CE mark. You shouldn't even sell anything or send a sample to the European Union if you don't have a CE mark. That's something you can do in house, it's a self-registration process, but you're liable for damages or injury by electrical components if you have it registered, and you really aren't on the up and up to be doing business in those companies unless you have that handled. So that's another example of some quick counseling we can do. If I overhear you say Italy, UK, Ireland, stop right there and say here's some more homework. We've got to work out your CE mark. If you didn't know it existed, but here it is, and you can do this yourself, it just takes a couple of weeks. If you need certification requirements, that would be an example of a dairy feed additive or pet food or something that the country where it's destined has strong Ministry of Health or Ministry of Agriculture requirements, how will you know what the rules are and how will you know if they changed six months ago? We simply send an email to that country and say what is the newest regulation and give us a copy of the form that you want to have. We obtain that for you for no cost, we give you the certification documents that you need to attach to your type of product, and that goes with your packet when you ship it. And so you can see there are quite a lot of documentation requirements, but that will fit into your business plan and you'll build out your list as you go. We offer classes throughout the year. My next class is February 24th in Iowa City. It's our most popular class. It's the free trade agreement documentation class at the [unintelligible] Center. If you provide your email address to me, you'll be invited. It's a $50 class for three hours of instruction that will customize your harmonized system products into the right format for any worldwide free trade agreement, especially NAFTA, which is for Canada and Mexico, but you might not realize we have a free trade agreement with Israel, Morocco, Australia, and several other countries. I often find companies are shipping and they're not getting the zero tariff. So you could be saving thousands of dollars or a least off your new to export sales you could offer a very low price point if you only realized you have no tariffs on those goods, if you just learn how to complete this document. And it's not particularly easy to do, so you want to take the class once so you're comfortable with that. And again, if you fill the document out wrong for a free trade agreement, you get a fine for that. So it's taken very seriously by every country as these goods move, and the documents are being checked. The webinar now continues with some real life examples, but I'm not going to read them out loud to them. This is a set of real company, real life examples where the United States Commercial Service counseling helped a country enter a new market or get through an obstacle with an international trade issue. So you might want to review... Take this whole class over again because I know you're very excited about learning all of these details. So this one mentions that we have market intelligence. We can customize research and statistics for you on the target markets that you see coming up. Get background reports. We actually charge a fee for extensive reports, but we can steer you toward free resources as well. Here's an example of a New Hampshire software company. That's one thing I wanted to touch on. This is a city in an area that's fairly strong in new technology. You might feel that since you have software you don't have to register it or document it or pay any tariffs, but that actually isn't true. You have to proceed with some caution with software as well, even if there's no tangible good in a box. So that would be something to be sure to review. And the business matchmaking means that we find a trade mission or private meetings or a trade show that might even be in Las Vegas that you could attend and just pay $200 for specially reserved meetings. The highest level of US Government trade official from a European or Asian country might be in Vegas for a technology show, and we can get you pre-approved appointments for $200 at their formal reception. And those would be high-level US trade officials that have these sanctioned inbound trade missions, as we call them. There are always trade missions available to go outbound, but those typically are very high price point. I'd encourage you to go if you could manage it and if it's a fit, but I like to steer people toward the more basic, first line, approachable things they can do to actually make strong connections and move quickly into the business for exporting. So here it mentions the trade shows. We have a website also out on export.gov, which we've mentioned, export, gov, in this trade shows by date location. Here's the happy story of... It's pet food. Pet food's actually a big booming market. So you know there's a market for everything if you just know where to look. Commercial diplomacy we talked about the tires and difficulties. If you're a larger company and you've had year on year of difficulty entering markets or been given some mysterious fees to enter beyond your normal tariffs, we can explore that, and maybe even on an immediate basis, make those funny fees go away. Some countries have problems with fraud in their customs. And if you have a problem of goods being held at customs at the border in Mexico or a shipment that got moved to a Middle Eastern country and you think you have everything clear but they're holding the goods in customs with no explanation, you call me, and overnight I can have someone from the embassy actually go to the dock or the airport and say what is missing, we will fulfill it, and sometimes the problem just goes away when someone from the US embassy comes down to inquire, and sometimes FedEx messed up. Sometimes you messed up. But we can find out what the answer is because our officer speaks the native language of the person native to the country. He'd go down and find out, and then ya well I guess you did make a mistake and they want you to pay a $300 penalty. That's better than throwing your things in storage for a month or just abandoning your goods because you feel this is just such a hopeless thing to try to export. There's always an answer, and through our worldwide network, we can always find an answer. Nothing ever goes completely unsolved. Here's a great story about Caterpillar. Caterpillar, John Deere, many of the biggest companies in the world use our services on a very regular basis, but you don't have to be a big company. You can be a very small company. To make an income, to make a difference in your bottom line doing exporting, you know you could go that big to consider it a big to consider it a big success for your terms. So that's who we are. This will be available for review any time. And you can find me at my local contact number in Des Moines. So let's see what we can do about questions. [Rob]Okay. Well first I would like to open it up to you guys if you have any questions for Patricia. [audience member]Hi Patricia. We're a very small company and some of our sales takes place on the web. So what kinds of problems can we avoid or how best to handle if someone from a foreign country wants to order something from us, is that $2,500 limit in effect and we could send it anywhere as long as we check that we're not sending it to a terrorist first? [Patricia]I believe so. But you'd need to know the denied persons, and you need to know the denied countries, and you need to be under the $2,500 limit. And also for a matter of paperwork, you should have some kind of document in your office that says what your policy is so that if you ever have a review of your practices you have an export management and compliance program. [audience member]Okay great. [Patricia]And that sounds like a pretty heavy thing, but it is actually a requirement to have an EMCP. And we'll talk more about that another time. We're having a class in Ankeny near Des Moines in the summer with a US Government official who's going to talk about how to maintain your export management and finance program required tracking. [audience member]So for a small business like ours, we have a unique product. And there may or may not be some regulations. So... [Patricia]You'd work directly with me. And I know we've talked before, so we'll check it out. You'll tell me your target countries or any countries where you suspect there might be an issue. And then the easy short answer is with the website. Find out what countries are barred and just take those countries off your drop down menu on your website. And anybody who answers the phone, this is the country list, we just don't do business with them. [audience member]Thank you. [Patricia]You're welcome. [Rob]This applies to online retailers as well right? [Patricia]Online retail. That would be one way to be protective enough for first steps. [Rob]Do we have any questions online? Feel free to enter those questions here [unintelligible]. [audience member]Ya I just had a question. Did I hear you say that you can help businesses determine if there is an international market for their product? Maybe they've never thought about that and they'd like to research that out then they could do that through your office? [Patricia]That's right. Through accessing data portals that we have access to, like paid subscriptions to online reference material, or maybe more quickly and immediately my preferred method is just to do a free conference call with a country. And I have had maybe one or two out of a hundred shot down where it sounds like a nice product, but really it's not a fit in this country. We have too many mountains and what you have doesn't fit the terrain or something like that. And that's great. And then we move on to another phone call, another country and we see what the synergy seems like there, at which point our staff in those countries usually goes way out of their way to help find leads and help some sales take place. [Rob]Bobbie had asked if this webinar's being recorded. Yes Bobbie, we do record all of our webinars here on MyEntreNet, and everyone here and everybody online can access those at any time through that MyEntreNet website. Laurie had asked what was that website again to see if a country had been on that do not send to list? [Patricia]You'll have to click through the previous pages. I believe that one might be the State Department. The buyusa.gov is for market development, so that's not regulatory. Here's [unintelligible]. Specially Designated Nationals. I think the Treasury one will lead to the list of barred countries and then also the list of barred companies in those countries. [Rob]Susie had said online... Or do we have any questions here? [Patricia]Yes go ahead. [audience member]For that question earlier about kind of [unintelligible] [unintelligible] that entire process [unintelligible] [Patricia]That's free. [audience member]Everything there that [unintelligible] [Patricia]But you do run into, though, to be honest... And it's on the handout that's in the manual we'll hand out, the one on the white page that's in the back of the room. We do have paid services, but they're very minimal payments so that if you talk to Mexico, your product is certainly desirable there, you're ready to move product, you know how to do it, we would encourage you to have a distributor designated, get you through customs, and to move the product nationwide rather than just waiting around for one small person to move a little product down to one shopping center in Mexico. So what the embassy staff has is a running list of the best distributors in the nation for farm machinery, pharmaceuticals, high-tech renewable energy. They invite you to come to Mexico to the embassy and have a gold key service. This is our premier service. It's $700 for any small business. According to the government, a small business is 500 employees or less. So I think most people on the call have the smaller business. You would have to pay for your flight to go to Monterrey or Mexico City, and the embassy would tell you a nice place to stay. You'd pay for your own hotel, but then you'd be in the embassy compound the next day for an interview with eight of the best distributors in the country of Mexico hoping to have your business. And maybe you'd walk away, like any interview process, a couple of the people's personalities might not be a match or it's revealed that you'd only have a tiny territory, or they've got huge connections with the university systems or ports or your sector. And then by the time you're home in Iowa, you know who your distributor is. You really need to work with a lawyer at that point that would craft your distributor contract. It's wise to say you've got 18 months or we might dissolve the contract. But then you've already had a fully vetted pool of distributors. And if the first one fails, you've got the option to call the next guy up for free and attach them or maybe divide the country in half with two distributors on the same thing. That's called the gold key service. It starts with the conference call. But if you ever use this conference call I can give you, I have no pressure, you have no pressure to proceed to any paid service of any kind. It's just there for your comfort level. If you're selling a simple product, go for it. Go ahead and sell that on your own. But I've seen the best breakthroughs in the fastest period of time with the gold key services. I did this session two years ago at the SBDC in Iowa City, and two of the attendees in a room this size moved product to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan within six months. They did back to back gold keys. These are companies with two employees, the owner and his partner, and they went to the gold key, the technology was needed in the medical sector, and they just started selling it. [Rob]A question had come through from one of the attendees, is our company required to have our own broker? When we ship and receive from Canada, we are required to go through our customer's broker. The only thing I see that our broker does for us is the email. [Patricia]I've been overhearing these discussions when companies have problems at customs. Sometimes we call the embassies and they say what you should do differently to stop those hiccups at the border, time and again, you have to have your own broker. You have to pay that broker. That broker picks up the shipment when it comes in. And it might seem like a fee you wish you didn't have to pay, but without the broker, I've been given to understand there's nothing exaggerated about it. You need that broker to handle your documents. So for Canada and Mexico and probably other markets you would want the broker, because misunderstandings happen. It's not as clear cut as you might think. It's not just going through a mail room. These documents need to be discussed in the local language and handled correctly, and the problems go away once a local broker is attached. So you might already have a broker and think it's bothersome, but you might not like life without one. The expenses mount up pretty fast if you can't get through the customs clearance process. Questions from our [unintelligible] [Patricia]Yes? [audience member]I heard mentioned that there were some products that may be on a list because they are maybe things that a terrorist could actually... [Patricia]That's right. [audience member]Is that a list that you provide? Is it a list on a website? [Patricia]It's on a website. And first you find your harmonized system code number and review that with us. [unintelligible] find that on the website. And on a different website is an ECCN number. And both of these are as easy as going to an online catalog or an online bookstore and just looking up a list of numbers that go with the adjoining product. Pretty easy to find. You just have to know where the website is. I don't know the ECCN number website off the top of my head, but if you contact me, [unintelligible]. Especially if you have a product like that, you'd want to document that you've had some counseling and training about that. And then at a future date if you went ahead and got a license and you did everything and you still had a problem, on the back end if you did ever get a fine or make a mistake, you could say well I had training, I had counseling. I have an email from Patricia Cook. She told me how to get started, I guess I still made a little mistake. The fines, in many cases, I've heard, are arbitrary. So if you've shown the effort, if you've kept some kind of paper trail where I started off saying you want to have an export compliance management program, it's not just that you have to do it. You're wise to at least make some effort toward that so if you were audited by a customs problem or a problem like that, you can say well see we've tried everything. There's just three of us. I guess we made a little mistake. Your fine might be $500 instead of $1,000. I can't speak for those agencies, but anecdotally I've heard things like that. But they get to evaluate your demeanor, your organization, and the people who I call sometimes say we're so big, we're so busy, we don't need to be [unintelligible] with things like that. We're just an online retail store. We don't need to call anybody about that. I don't need your help, thanks anyway. If that's your demeanor, you never talk to anybody and get caught, I don't think your fine's going to be quite so pleasant. Yes? [audience member]What type of labeling do you need when you export? [Patricia]That's a very good question, and labeling is pretty controlled by most countries. The only way to find out is for me to send an email to their trade staff at these embassies and say would you review what the current labeling requirements are for technology goods or pharmaceutical over the counter products or for textiles? They very quickly and easily get that for you from the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Manufacturing in your country. They'll send that back, and they'll give you an easy to read document that says labeling will look like this. And that's always free. Free communication. You could actually go to some of these websites and find United States Government embassy trade offices in those overseas countries. But I beg you, don't try to help us out by evading the process. They do not want you to contact them directly. They want you to go through these USEACs to filter the questions to... If I ask a question a certain way, it's so easy for them to just grab that off the shelf and send it to me. If you get on the phone and explain your great ideas and everything else, they'll give you a perfunctory answer, but they might not even realize what it is your asking. So the best thing is just to ask me. And I never get tired of these types of questions, so just keep the questions coming in. Do we have another one online? [Rob]No not yet, but we do have a comment. [Patricia]Yes go ahead. [audience member]I have a question. We work with a lot of small business owners, and one of the challenges that we often hear is that the regulations and the [unintelligible] just overwhelming. And listening to you today, you really cut through a lot of that, and I [unintelligible]. Is there some kind of a step by step guide that... [Patricia]There isn't one that exists because every one of this long list of departments has so carefully organized and [unintelligible] these processes. But at our own Iowa USEAC, we have put together a homemade version of something like that, so if you email me I would send you a copy of it. [audience member]It would be uploaded into my [unintelligible] [Patricia]Yes it will. [audience member]Then it will be readily available to the [unintelligible] [Patricia]Yes. Everything is possible. Even though the list seems very long, it really is possible. And many of those documents fall to the wayside. They don't apply to you. But you need to know that for a fact. So the list won't remain long after you become a little more practiced. [Rob]I want to share with everyone here a comment that came through from Susie Gayken. It says she can vouch for the Department of Commerce assisting companies, as Patricia and Allen were essential in helping me complete an audit on my NAFTA. We are a small company and were very unaware of the complications that could have arised by errors on the NAFTA. It has been four months and we are still not totally in the clear, but all word from NAFTA officials has been encouraging. Thank you for your help for small businesses. And so I guess with that comment, since we only have about a minute left, I also want to thank you, Patricia, for coming down [unintelligible] with us. [Patricia]Oh you're very welcome. [Rob]Thank you to everyone here who came to today's workshop. We're going to go ahead and kind of leave this open and keep this discussion going, but I do want to make sure that we formally thank you for your [unintelligible] [Patricia]Oh it's been my pleasure. [applause] Okay go ahead. You might still have more questions. Feel free. [audience member]Is the powerpoint available? A hard copy of it or... [Rob]Usually we'll upload the powerpoint as a PDF on the MyEntreNet website. I'm sure Patricia will [unintelligible] [Patricia]I'd actually prefer just to have it archived there. And then I think it's good to access it through my EntreNet. Once I went out and opened the other presentations, I think it's a really nice library of tips for businesses. [audience member]We have a product that we were told we had to have a dual [unintelligible] [unintelligible] our computer was so slow that we didn't have room to do that without throwing out too much more product than we wanted to show. We were looking at complications with dual stickers, something of a hidden job or anything like that. It increased our cost too much. If you're selling in the other country, dual labeling, dual language, having both languages on there, if we're selling in that country, can we just put it in that language? [Patricia]That would be something, again, I would forward that exact question to my counterpart, the toys and novelty sector in that country or several countries, and confirm. And if you're still not comfortable and clear, we'd ask them one more time. But what about this instance? What about this instance? And that's how it would still come to a point where you had an email with a date on it from the US embassy trade office that says this is what we learned from the ministry. And anecdotally, what I've heard from some companies is that they just use... Like if you're at a store and you buy a shirt and it's in plastic wrap and then there's a sleeve over it, that they label the sleeve. So a pouch within a pouch so that they could get the labels on there. So I don't know if that type of look and feel would be possible, and I don't know what happens once it's cleared customs. That pouch maybe [unintelligible]. [laughter] But it's all about getting it through customs so that they can collect tariffs in a fair manner and then keep their consumer education on that end. So you could explain what your idea was to label it, with a pouch or a fold out label or kind of microchip put into the stand. Saudi Arabia, by their letter of law, you have to have made in the USA on every part of every product that you send to their country. It is an infinity of smallness they haven't determined yet. Even every washer of a tractor or a combine needs to have made in the USA on it for [unintelligible] [Rob]Microchips. [Patricia]And that's why I was jokingly saying... Literally some companies I know of did factory engraving. So it gets to be pretty tough. Yes sir. [audience member]I'm importing some product, and I just had some questions. Maybe you could send me in the right direction of who I should speak with to make sure I have the right labeling when I bring my products into the US and can sell them in the US. Because they're private labeled. [Patricia]I have a list of import brokers that I could steer you to. And they might charge a small fee for their counseling [unintelligible] ask, and I also have... The only customs broker in Iowa is at the International [unintelligible] in Des Moines. He's a federal official. So you could maybe try asking him for free advice. I don't know how that would go. [unintelligible] use the brokers to then clarify. But if you put your questions together it might be a [unintelligible] have that described for you. [audience member]Alright perfect. [Rob]Is there not then an office of importing like there is exporting? [Patricia]There is not. I'm only export. Because the money comes in if I help you. And the jobs stay in Cedar Falls/ Waterloo if I help you and you're here and you're selling things. So we're not funded to help importing, but we do have US Government import officials, and I can certainly refer you to the Treasury or the import office or the SBA office. I mean it's not like I wouldn't tell you. But there isn't any beefed up customer service desk for that. [audience member]Thank you. That's what I found out so far. [laughter] [Patricia]You're not going to find one, but I can help you to the best of my knowledge, because I've kept my ears open because it's a question that comes up, so I do know a few places to send you. [audience member]Okay. [Rob]Do we have any more comments from our online attendees here or questions? Do you guys have anymore questions? [audience member]Just a comment. I've worked with Patricia for a little while now, and truly, in the different seminars that I've been at, exporting sometimes can [unintelligible], and especially from a small business person's point of view. But the great thing that is a secret that we have to keep trying to get people to understand is that there's resources to help you. And as [unintelligible], there are regulations that you have to follow to do it right, and you want to [unintelligible] and there's a lot of resources available. [unintelligible] [Patricia]Right. [audience member]Okay I have one more question. What if say I were to import my products and then someone wants to buy them from me in Canada. So it's kind of a double layer there where you're importing and exporting. [Patricia]Ya that's perfectly legal, and it's called a transnational [unintelligible]. But you don't dare claim it as a NAFTA [unintelligible], because it's imported and all you're doing is... You can't order a bunch of watches Taiwan and sell them to England, just mark the price up a little bit and... [unintelligible] There's all kinds of tests and regimens and lists to say is it made in the USA. And remarkably, you could make a software product in the United States with 100% foreign components, and it would be a United States product. So you do want to learn about that. And at the class we're having on February 24th, we go into that extensively what qualifies as a US product. And you might find that very interesting and helpful because it's not just about using your free trade agreement, in that upcoming class, it's about how the law looks at that so that if you refabricated it and add to it enough, it flips to become a made in USA. If you put a ton of marketing... Think of the product Proactiv. I think that's made in Iowa. And you've probably seen ads. Here's a free ad to Proactiv. But it's on... You know what do they really have in there? Some liquid in a bottle with a label on it. But the TV ads are fantastic. So if you can show your marketing costs you nine million dollars a year and some of your inputs are from who knows where in another country and all you're doing is squeezing it into a little bottle in a bottle plant, your inputs from marketing count as a US input. Or your software genius is redeveloping something into code or a service to track fleet vehicles. Even though your chips came from Hong Kong, if you innovated it into some kind of a GPS or tracking device or a box that does something with your little bit of tiny bit of extra software, that can be made in the USA. Perfectly valid. But you have to know what's good enough to count for that. And that's the beauty of that next class that we're having is that it explains that [unintelligible]. Yes go ahead. [audience member]Is there any chance that the people who were here today if [unintelligible] what they're doing [unintelligible]. Some of these entrepreneurs... [Patricia]I just have a quick question. Are we on camera still for the webinar's sake? [Rob]Yes. [Patricia]And maybe we could close that out and then just switch to the last minutes of chat. Because I think we've covered the core topics, and then we could go and visit. So just say our goodbyes. [Rob]Yep. Thank you everyone for coming to today's webinar. We're going to go ahead and close out the webinar. If you do have any questions for Patricia, her email address is here in the slide, and then also we'll be putting up the archived webinar here shortly with the powerpoint. So thank you all again for attending, and have a great afternoon and weekend. [Patricia]Bye everyone!