Featured speaker at the Sept. 8th meeting of the Rotary Club of Lawrenceville was Darrel Hulsey of the UGA Small Business Development Center, the SBDC. Available through the University of Georgia, this group provides aid to small businesses to develop a profitable expansion into global markets. The SBDC provides in depth one-on-one business consulting and international business training programs. After a brief history of the program, he focused on three major areas in which the consultants could help business owners develop expertise: market intelligence, sales and marketing, and global payment and logistics. He described the positive impact of the SBDC which has helped with the start of 1,427 new businesses with over 9,000 jobs and $299 million in raised capital. He shared statistics about Georgia’s export businesses, pointing out that Canada, China, and Mexico are the top importers of Georgia goods and that agriculture, particularly chickens and peanuts, and aeronautic supplies account for a large proportion of the $3.7 billion in Georgia exports.