Good afternoon

It’s International Trade Week – an annual government initiative that helps to highlight support and advice to access new markets. This week, we’re bringing together some rather useful tips including market knowledge, expert advice and webinars to help you overcome some of the key barriers to global growth.  

As part of that, we chatted to Samir Dwesar, senior public affairs and public policy manager for Santander. He’s focused on supporting UK SME global growth and told us about the bank’s new Navigator Global platform – or “Netflix for international trade” as he describes it. 

The bank is serious about boosting global trade and plans to introduce its platform, which was built by Japanese transformation firm Dentsu, to 45 global markets over the next five years.  

We’ve also taken a deep dive into the UK’s export status since the year 2000. Not much has changed...apart from the fact that we’ve moved decisively towards a service-based economy, modestly diversified exports away from the EU and experienced a lot of economic shocks along the way. Like tariffs. Our policy guru Daniel Woolf has written a discussion paper on all this, and I encourage you to read it.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Nation members and export outliers Matt and Hayley Hunt continue to grow exports of their high-quality healthy protein balls to 14 countries - and are now going back to trading with the EU, partly because of US tariffs. Read their story.

Are there tax rises on the way? This week Rachel Reeves took the unusual step of suggesting there might be.

We had our say at a meeting at No 10 last week with Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones. Our COO Polly Dhaliwal joined the CBI, British Chambers of Commerce and the Startup Coalition to represent your views.

While we’re busy exporting this week, we must not neglect home turf. Here are five ways you can make more money at home.

How much have UK export trends changed since the year 2000? Daniel Woolf takes a look.

Five ways to upsell and make more revenue from existing customers, Chris Goodfellow reports.

How small businesses can find more overseas buyers, by Marc Gardner.

Policy Pulse: Santander's Samir Dwesar talks about new Netflix for SMEs platform, by Liz Slee.

Ballsy by nature: The bold brand taking clean protein worldwide, by Liz Slee.

Expanding into foreign markets: Key barriers and how to break through, by Marc Gardner.

Deepak Ravindran, founder of Oddbox, joins the Founder Fails podcast.

Theo Paphitis opens up about life behind Dragons' Den, his experience with dyslexia, what’s really happening to the British high street, and the mindset that underpins lasting business success.

Tune into the latest episode of The Small Business Sessions, powered by business.connected.

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