Yet only about one in four SMEs

currently sell beyond their home provinces, even though it's been proven that businesses that do tend to experience stronger growth.

So before developing the model, we wanted to make sure we weren't sort of reinventing the wheel to address this problem of how do we support businesses with interprovincial trade? So we conducted two national surveys and we analyzed more than 50 Canadian and international trade programs.

we found was that there was really excellent support for businesses looking to export internationally, but very little structured programming for businesses who wanted to expand within Canada.

So that sort of reinforced what we were doing.

And that's where our model comes in.

So we bring together cohorts of 10 to 12 businesses, typically from the same sector with a common market, so they can learn alongside one another instead of trying to navigate expansion on their own.

I'm curious, you know, what has that recognition meant to you as a team? And also, how has that influenced the interest in the interprovincial export circles model so far? Have folks been reaching out? What does that look like?