Paola Isaac Baraya With Broward County, Office of Economic and Small Business

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor does trade law. Your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio. We have Paola Isaac and she is with the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business. Welcome.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:00:35] Thank you very much for having me. Very happy to be part of this special radio broadcast.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:40] Well, I’m excited to learn more what you’re up to. But before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business? How are you serving, folks?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:00:50] Yes, of course. So the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business, where the agency inside of Broward County government, which is the second largest county in the state of Florida, and we serve economic development in terms of business attraction, business retention, but also we have small business development services such as certification for small businesses that want to sell their products and services to our purchasing agency. And as well, we have an entrepreneurship program and I offer international trade program geared towards export education and promotion.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So how did you get into this line of work? It must be very rewarding work.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:01:29] Yes. I love I’m very passionate about what I do. And I think it’s important because there’s still a lot of businesses that want to learn how to export. And what I’ve known is from the US standpoint, less than 1% of businesses export. So we need to bring more visibility that there is 95% of the purchasing power outside of the United States. But how did I start getting into this? I’m originally from Canada and I studied marketing and international business, and I moved here to South Florida 15 years ago. I worked mainly in the private sector and logistics with the horticulture industry, but then little by little got involved into the public sector. And I was executive director of the Fort Lauderdale Sister Cities Program, which is a twinning program between cities around the world, bringing Internet international delegation from different countries, and then was involved with the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance. They are our arm, let’s say, for attracting investment to the county. And then I’ve been about now nine years promoting international trade and export for Broward County.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] So now let’s talk a little bit about international trade. You mentioned that most businesses tend to just kind of sell either just in their community or just in the United States. And there’s a real opportunity to export some of your goods. But a lot of folks are either afraid or they just don’t know what they don’t know. Can you kind of share maybe a little bit about some of the myths to dispel some of the myths about exporting?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:03:03] Yes, definitely so. Most small business, because our county is formed mainly of small businesses, they’re preoccupied with the day to day survival and making sales in a domestic market. And sometimes, especially when we have a downturn in the economy, or, for example, we had the situation with the pandemic, they don’t have the time where they feel intimidated to see that there’s opportunities in other markets where about their product would be very well received. So this is what we’re trying to do. And we created a program called the 11 Steps to Exporting a Roadmap to Your Exporting Success. We introduced this program in 2014, and since then we’ve been educating 3500 companies on becoming export ready, we call it. And we also won the President’s Award for export. It’s it’s a very prestigious award founded by President Kennedy. And we went to Washington, D.C. in 2019 to receive that award for step to step step by step program that kind of demystifies the exporting process.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:07] Now, it’s very important to you, obviously, teaching people how to export, but it’s so much so that you’re part of an expo that is kind of just focusing on exporting.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:04:22] Yeah. So in addition to our 11 steps to exporting, which we offer it as a, as a free seminar and webinar, especially during the pandemic, it was a webinar. We also have other series when it’s called Doing Business with the World, where we invite consulates and trade agencies from different countries to talk about the best business opportunities or export opportunities in their country. But we also introduced about seven years ago a big conference called the Florida International Trade and Cultural Expo, known in the community as FTS Fitzy, which are all the first letters of the name of the Congress. And this was created seven years ago by one of our commissioner, Del Vecchio, that was a proponent of international trade. And we believe that we need to invite all these country contacts we have from all over the world to bring them here in our own backyard and Fort Lauderdale, and also to promote culture because understanding and doing business with another country, it’s important to understand as well their culture. So this has been seven years and we’re happy to have this event again October 19 and 20th at our Broward County Convention Center. It’s a free event, so we welcome the entire community and your audience to participate. And we’re going to be receiving over 60 countries that will be represented by their governments coming in from their country or their local the local consulate or trade agency.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:53] So who should attend? Who are the folks out there that are listening that should be really considering attending this event?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:06:02] Well, traditionally this event is for businesses that want to look, explore opportunities in other countries. They want to learn how to export or import. And there’s also going to be a buyers panel. They want to meet potential buyers. So traditionally it’s for those types of businesses and could be small, medium or large. But what I really feel is this event is for everybody doesn’t you don’t have to own a business. You can just be curious in terms of, well, what can I export to the Bahamas or what about tourism to Italy? Because there will be a component where we cover tourism and culture. So I really feel this this event is for everybody and but definitely for small business or even medium large businesses that want to expand their sales to other countries. They can meet strategic contacts there. And probably, as you know, it’s all about building relationships when you do business not only here in the US but in other countries as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] Now, you mentioned some of the education there, like learning about the 11 steps exporting, but is there going to be like an opportunity for folks to maybe do some? I’ve seen it at some events, kind of like speed dating where you go and meet a lot of people to kind of really understand or at least briefly get a glimpse of what they have to offer and what you have to offer to see if it’s a fit.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:07:22] Yes. And I’m so glad you asked that, because we’re going to have an activity called speed matchmaking with the countries. And while there are 60 countries participating in that activity, I think we’re going to expect about 15 countries. That will have roundtables and every 10 minutes businesses can switch and meet different countries. They’re also going to be the the services offered by the local, state and federal government. So we’re going to have there the US Department of Commerce, Exim Bank Enterprise, Florida, which is the State Agency for Trade and Investment. They’re going to be also resources that the companies can do, let’s say speed matchmaking or speed dating with, as you say.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:04] Now, is this like if I had an idea in the back of my head, like, oh, you know what? I wonder if this would work in, say, Guatemala. Will there be, you know, possibly somebody from Guatemala there that I can just bounce the idea off of to get an idea of, hey, maybe this is worth pursuing?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:08:23] Well, actually from Guatemala, we’re going to have the highest level guest. We received verbal confirmation from the president himself. The president of Guatemala will be on our presidential panel. We’re also going to have a former president from Guatemala. And there’s going to be other presidents or former presidents on this special presidential panel. We’re going to have on October 19 as part of our grand opening ceremony at 8 a.m. on October 19. So it’s a not to be missed part of the show. And there will be also representative. There will be a delegation coming from Guatemala and every country we’re going to be listing soon on our website under participating countries, who’s coming from every country if is it a business delegation or the actual president or a minister from that country? So we’re going to be listing that very soon. We’re updating that part of the website. In the meanwhile, on the website, we do have the confirmed dignitaries that are on top of the page from different countries that are coming that have already confirmed.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:27] Now, is there a story you can share of maybe in your experience with folks exporting success story, maybe explain what the challenge was or what they maybe were afraid of and how maybe not necessarily with your help, but you encourage them to export. And then now their business grew to a new level. Do you have any kind of success stories like that? You don’t have to name the name of the company, but just maybe explain what the challenge was and how they were able to overcome it and really benefit from exporting.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:09:59] Yes, of course. I think it was more an opportunity than a challenge. But last year when we had the fight, we had a delegation from Dubai and we had His Excellency Dawood al-Qazzaz, who came and spoke about a conference that he organizes in the month of March in Dubai. And after he participated that day, we decided to bring a trade delegation with three of our mayors and some businesses from Broward County. So there was a business there that sells cosmetics. They manufacture cosmetics here in Hollywood, and they came with us on the trade mission, and they were able to expand their sales by 100,000. And I think that that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have that delegation come to visit, and we didn’t open that opportunity to then travel in the country because a company can come to say, and it might not be right away that there’s a sale, they’ll make the relationship and then they’ll be able to like, in this case, travel to that country and then finalize or sell or be able to develop it. That takes it. It’s not like you’re going to come to a conference and the next day you boom, you’re going to have 100,000. And it could happen. But, you know, it’s more to open doors here and to be realistic and to learn. And also another quick example on the how to import panel that actually Jennifer Diaz is organizing with the trade law. We’re going to have the agencies, US, Customs, FDA, US, DEA that are going to talk about these challenges with regulations, because those can be issues that sometimes companies have with FDA or the government agencies and they’ll be directly there representative, that can help them answer their questions.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now, for folks who want to attend, is this something that they have to get tickets ahead of time because it’ll sell out? What’s the best way to kind of lock in your spot?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:11:55] Yes. The best way to attend there is a free general admission and it’s to register on our website. The website address is fairly simple. I’m going to just repeat it a couple of times. As you as I mentioned before, the event is called Fitzy. Fitzy. And so our website is f I see the word expo dot com. So there’s only one E between pizza and ex post. So F I see the word expo and companies can register there for free to attend as a general admission if they want an exhibit table. We are already sold out for the exhibitor table. We’re going to leave registration open until tomorrow to tomorrow. But we are closing registration, so that’s already pretty full for a world expo. But definitely we encourage anybody that wants to attend on the free general admission. They can participate and we still have a few rooms available for sponsorships which are also listed on our website.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] So there are still sponsor opportunities available.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:13:03] Yes, there’s a few sponsor opportunity available. And but for the exhibitor registration, we’re going to be closing this tomorrow or latest Wednesday. So but if anybody is interested in sponsoring, they can reach out to us via the website. We have our contact information there. There’s also a tab with all the sponsorship levels and a portal to register directly there. And our phone number is there as well. But I can I can give the phone number over as well, if you like.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:34] Sure.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:13:36] So our phone number is I’m going to spell it slowly because I know some people might be writing down 9543576400. Again, that’s 954357 6400.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:54] Good stuff and thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:14:02] Thank you so much for having me. And and we’re very excited because we don’t have to. I mean, yes, you eventually have to travel to these countries, but we have these opportunities which where all these countries are traveling. Some countries are coming from Africa 20 hours last year, we had the mayor of Accra, Ghana, that travel even during the pandemic. 20 hours to come here to visit us. And it’s a tremendous opportunity for the local community to come and meet with these delegations and open doors to new markets.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] That’s right. And it’s all in our backyard. And you can meet you just think about your travel budget, your saving of just going to this one event and that that website again is Fitzy expo dot com. Paula, thank you again for sharing your story. Thank you.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:14:54] Thank you so much for having me. It’s a great pleasure.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio.