We are the champions: This week on Enterprise Nation

In our regular Sunday updates, head of content Dan Martin looks back at the past week on Enterprise Nation.

For 10 years we've been on a mission to help people turn their good ideas into great businesses, and boy have we now done that! 70,000 entrepreneurs are now part of the Enterprise Nation family.

But that isn't enough; we want at least another 70,000 to join in.

To do that we need to be in every corner of Britain, connecting business owners with the advice they need and organising events where they can network and learn from people who've hit the business big time. That's our new mission and we went one more step on the journey with the launch of our Regional Champions this week.

We've appointed 12 brilliant individuals to represent the Enterprise Nation brand in their region. All entrepreneurs in their own right, they are already doing great things to support local companies. Adding Enterprise Nation's tools to their armoury will help them support even more. They'll be organising meet-ups, reporting on local small business news and connecting entrepreneurs to top class advisers. They are your new local business support point of call and you can meet them all here.

If your region isn't represented, don't worry. We have plans to appoint lots more Champions. If you'd like to be one yourself, you can apply here.

Regional support was a big focus in other areas as well this week as we launched our Enterprising Regions report with our friends at ICAEW. Based on the responses to our recent survey we've analysed the characteristics of what makes a successful entrepreneurial area and profiled five brilliant ones; Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, Northampton and Sunderland.

The report acts as a useful blueprint for everyone trying to grow an entrepreneurial village, town or city.

Britain needs go-getting entrepreneurs but if all have to be based in London great economic imbalances will get worse pic.twitter.com/lRaBM6SkYw

"" Enterprise Nation (@e_nation) July 30, 2015

You can read some of the findings in this story from today's Mail on Sunday and you'll be able to download the full report this coming week.

Away from our regional focus, I went to a government event this week that was all about doing business internationally.

I've given administrations of all colours a lot of flack over the years for the way they communicate with small business owners. But this event, Export Jam, was a brilliant example of the way the government should engage with small businesses. Find out why and meet the Export Octopus (yes, octopus!) here.

On the blog this week

A very popular article gave some great advice on eight things you need to do after you've won press coverage for your business, and the second piece in our 'how to' series with Regus looked at how to get your product into major retailers.

We spotted new figures this week that showed home-based companies are now 59% of all SMEs and turn over a total £380bn, while our interview of the week was with Frank Meehan, a very experienced investor who has worked with the likes of Spotify and Siri. He discussed what he believes makes a great entrepreneur.

And finally, this week's member of the week revealed how he has done business with the X-Men! Intrigued? Find out more here.

As ever do share your own successes from the week in the comments below.

Read previous weekly updates:
Pasties, pitching and pianos
Opportunity knocks
Up Periscope
Here, there and everywhere
Business boosting and a Budget
Hitting new heights
Golden moments