The head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, spoke in front of the United Nations last week urging small businesses to step onto the global stage.

Reports said McMahon is urging the nearly 29 million SMEs in the U.S. to export abroad, telling the UN that just 1 percent of them are currently doing so.

“Businesses that export are less likely to go out of business and more likely to grow faster,” said McMahon in a speech during the Small Business Knowledge Summit on Thursday. “That’s because 96 percent of all the world’s consumers and over three-quarters of the world’s purchasing power are outside the United States. Yet right now, only 1 percent of all of America’s small businesses are exporters.”