AWARD WINNING KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Michael Olson – award winning speaker, author

and syndicated host of Food Chain Radio

Michael Olson has presented 100’s of speeches, keynotes, seminars, and workshops to audiences around the United Sates, has appeared on and hosted more than 1,250 TV and radio shows, written award-winning books, and has been published and quoted in hundreds of magazines, newspapers and websites. His subjects include media, business, farm & food, marketing, and World War II in the Pacific.

“Michael Olson’s seminars and workshops deliver.  Go looking for help and leave with information and motivation!”

“Michael Olson’s presentations are dynamic, motivating, practical, and interactive.  He brings his award-winning broadcast personality to the microphone and delivers!”

Contact Michael Olson

Speaking Topics and Small Business Break-outs and Seminars

Each topic will be tailored to your organization for a presentation that is inspirational, personal, and relevant.

Up Against Goliath

No matter what you farm, you will have to compete with others who have more land and more money with which to compete. You can go up against these goliaths of agriculture, and win the consumer dollars, if you have a well-conceived and coordinated strategy.  Includes the grand strategy plus ten business strategies illustrated with real-life stories.

Surveying the Market

Good decisions require good information, and the market is only reliable source of good information.  Includes eight kinds of information the market can provide and seven sources for that information.

Evaluating and Controlling Land

There is incentive to grow in the frontier of unused or underused parcels of land in or near the city.  Includes the environmental, geographical, political and economic factors that affect the value of land as a farm resource, and the ways in which that land can be controlled.

Selecting the Right Crop

There are thousands of crop opportunities available to the metropolitan farmer, selecting the right opportunity is key to success. Includes selecting the right category of crops, the right crop, the right variety, and the right seeds or starts.

Organizing a Business

A well-organized business, like a good tractor, has many uses.  It can haul in start-up financing, process information, plow through government red tape, cultivate returns and stow equity.  Includes the various ways to own a business and the tools used to manage that business.

Establishing Production

To survive the competition and prosper, metrofarmers must adopt a production system that can produce the maximum amount of crops in the minimum amount of space, and yield the maximum return for the minimum cost.  Fortunately there is precedent for such a system and it has many centuries of proven success.

Adding Value

Planning can preserve and even add value to crops after they have been harvested.  Includes elements of quality and the forces that affect that quality; also harvesting, sorting, storing, processing and packaging.

Be a Price Maker Instead of a Price Taker

To become a price maker, instead of a price taker, MetroFarmers must distinguish their products from the commodities produced at industrial farms by implementing a successful marketing campaign.  Includes the development of strategic and tactical campaigns, evaluation of media, advertising and publicity.

Closing the Sale

Closing is the term used by sales people to describe the completion of the business cycle.  There are two ways metrofarmers close their sales: with a contract and/or a handshake and smile. Includes the requirements for legal contracts and the personal characteristics of good closers.

Up Against Goliath

You can generate a substantial income with a small business, but you need a well-conceived and coordinated strategy to succeed.  Includes one grand strategy and 10 business strategies for competing against the giants of the marketplace and winning the consumer dollars.

Surveying the Market

Good business decisions require good information, and the market is only reliable source of good information.  Includes eight kinds of information the market can provide and seven sources for that information.

Selecting the Right Business Opportunity

There are thousands of small business opportunities available, selecting the right opportunity is key to success. Includes selecting the right category of opportunities, the right opportunity, the right brand, and the right people.

Organizing a Business

A well-organized business, like a good farm tractor, has many uses.  It can haul in start-up financing, process information, plow through government red tape, cultivate returns and stow equity.  Includes the various ways to own a business and the business tools used to manage that business.

Becoming a Price Maker Instead of a Price Taker

To become a price maker, instead of a price taker, small business persons must distinguish their products and services from those of the giants of the marketplace by implementing a successful marketing campaign.  Includes the development of strategic and tactical campaigns, evaluation of media, advertising and publicity.

Closing the Sale

Closing is the term used by sales people to describe the completion of the business cycle.  There are two ways small business persons close their sales: with a contract and/or a handshake and smile.  Includes the requirements for legal contracts and the personal characteristics of a good closer.

Contact Michael Olson

Keynote Speaking Topics

Each topic will be tailored to your organization for a presentation that is inspirational, personal, and relevant.

Small Business Keynotes

• Up Against Goliath (competing with the giants and winning the dollars) No matter what business you are in, you will have to compete with others who are bigger and have more money with which to compete. You can go up against these Goliaths of business, and win the consumer dollars, if you have a well-conceived and coordinated strategy.  Includes a discussion of competitive strengths and weaknesses illustrated with real-life stories.

• Becoming the Producer (in a land of consumers) The secret to success is simple:  Become the producer in a land of consumers. You will then always have work and always be in demand.  Includes guidelines for becoming the producer with story illustrations from real life.

• The Time is Ripe (opportunities abound) Though times are tough, opportunities abound, if you know where they are hiding.  Includes how to recognize business opportunities and how to validate the efficacy of those opportunities.  Illustrated with real-life stories.

Farm Keynotes

• Up Against Goliath (competing with the giants and winning the dollars) No matter what you farm, you will have to compete with others who have more land and more money with which to compete. You can go up against these Goliaths of agriculture, and win the consumer dollars, if you have a well-conceived and coordinated strategy.  Includes a discussion of competitive strengths and weaknesses illustrated with real-life stories.

• Becoming the Producer (in a land of consumers) The secret to success is simple:  Grow food in a land of hungry consumers. You will then always have work and always be in demand.  Includes guidelines for becoming a metropolitan farmer with story illustrations from real life.

• The Time is Ripe (opportunities abound) Though times are tough, opportunities abound, if you know where they are hiding.  Includes how to recognize farm opportunities and how to validate the efficacy of those opportunities.  Illustrated with real-life stories.

• The 2X2 Pledge (Yes we can!) We can eat our way to economic security and personal freedom, and we can do so without spending an extra dime on food or an extra dollar on taxes.  It will be so easy it will make the audience blush!  Includes why this opportunity exists, the two steps that must be taken to obtain security and freedom, and a real-time audience pledge.

Food Keynotes

• The 2X2 Pledge (Yes, we can!) We can eat our way to economic security and personal freedom, and we can do so without spending an extra dime on food or an extra dollar on taxes.  It will be so easy it will make the audience blush!  Illustrated with real-life stories and includes a real-time audience pledge.

• We Are What We Eat (So what are we becoming?) If its in the soil, its in the food; and if its in the food, its in us!  We are, in fact, what we eat, which leads us to ask:  “What are we becoming?”  Includes a look at the different things we eat up and down the food chain and provides an audience-interactive demonstration of the qualitative difference between industrial and local foods.

• 3 Laws of the Food Chain (as derived from hosting over 700 live Food Chain Radio shows). While hosting over 700 live Food Chain Radio shows, Michael Olson realized that all of the agriculture and food stories could be filed under one of three headings, so he turned those headings into his “3 Laws of the Food Chain.”  Includes a discussion of the impact each “Law” has on our daily lives and is illustrated with stories from the Food Chain Radio show.

• Codex Alimentarius and You (What you don’t know may hurt you.) To protect us from evil, the United Nations has established a Codex Alimentarius (“food code”) that homogenizes the world’s food chain by establishing standards and procedures everyone everywhere must follow.   Though we might not know it, there is danger in allowing one organization to control what we may or may not eat, and that just might hurt us!

• Animal Rights (Who is right about animal rights?) The good book says we are to “take dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing.”  But some think otherwise, and consequently we now are engaged in a civil war over which should come first:  people or every other living thing.  This conflict is having a profound impact on the nation’s food chain, with water being turned off to farms and farmers being turned away from the land.

• Industrial, Local, Organic & Sustainable (What’s in the names?) In the never-ending competition for the consumer dollar, one must distinguish one’s product from that of the competition by establishing and maintaining a position in the mind of the consumer.  One weapon in the struggle for position is the appellation one gives one’s self and the competition.  This presentation looks at how words like industrial, local, organic and sustainable shape the competition for our food dollars.

• Food Safety Crisis (Which food is in crisis: industrial or local?) Never let a serious crisis go to waste! says the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.  And so the FDA has set about establishing food safety protocols so onerous only the biggest and richest of industrial processors can comply.  But wait!  Which foods are in crisis:  industrial or local?

Food Keynotes (continued)

• Turbo Charging Darwin (by genetically modifying organisms) Through his observations of life on the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin determined that survival was governed by a natural selection in which those species that possessed characteristics most suitable for adaptation survived while those that did not passed away.   Mankind has learned how to turbocharge this process by taking favorable genes from one species and inserting them into the favorable genes from another species to create an entirely new species. What kind of life will man create, and who will own that life?

• Ag Subsidies (Following the money!) When the intrepid reporters asked Deep Throat to tell them who did what, they were told to, Follow the money! When we follow the $600,000,000,000 of government agriculture subsidies into farm country, we truly can see who did what to whom, and why they will continue to do it.

• Percy Schmeiser vrs Monsanto (Who owns life?) Early one morning, some years ago, Michael Olson went to breakfast at a small town diner in Missouri.  There was only one other person in the diner at that hour, a farmer from Bruno, Saskatchewan, who had the most amazing story about how the Monsanto Corporation invaded his farm with genetically-engineered canola and turned him, and thousands of others just like him, into a serf on his own land.  But that breakfast was just the beginning of the story.

• Fertile or Sterile (Should farms be deprived of nature in the name of food safety?) Fix it or we’ll fix it for you, was the message government gave farmers of the nation’s greens when E. coli tainted spinach sickened and killed consumers across the land.  And so a Leafy Green Marketing Agreement was drawn up that prohibits nature from intruding onto farmland.   Will eliminating nature from agriculture make food safe?

• Mark on the Beast (Should all farms, farmers and farm animals be forced to register with the government?) Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you!  Who is behind the attempt to register every farm, farmer and farm animal with the federal government’s National Animal Identification System (NAIS).  Excuse me, but we have learned that you failed to register your chicken, and so…

• Let Thy Food be Thy Medicine (and thy medicine be thy food).

Poor Hippocrates occupied the stage long before the purveyors of patent medicine entered the scene, and so he did not learn how much more lucrative patented medicines could be than the fresh, whole foods he championed.  And had he been born into modern times, he most likely would have been amazed at how little faith modern medicine has in the foods he held up as his medicine.

• Swatting Farmers (Up against the wall for selling fresh, whole food.)

To protect us from harmful bacteria, government has instituted an all-out war against fresh, whole foods.  On the front line of this war are those who sell fresh whole milk.  Across the land government Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) teams are throwing these family farmers up against the wall for selling milk and cheese to their friends and neighbors.  But is the bacteria of family farmers the dangerous bacteria?

• Economies of Scale (the road to government largess).

In the 1950’s, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson told farmers to Get big or get out! Twenty years later, Secretary Earl Butz told farmers to Adapt or die!Benson and Butz were both telling farmers they had to get big enough to realize economies of scale or they would fail.  Today, economies of scale is the weapon of choice for the large, industrial-scaled producers who lobby government for protection from small, family-scale producers.

General Interest Keynotes

• Three from the Greatest Generation (Lessons for life from the deck of a Navy destroyer fighting its way from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay.)

Keep up the Steam, Turn to Others, and The End is the Beginning are three edge-of-your-seat stories from WWII that contain valuable lessons we can all use to survive hard times.  Your audience will ask for more Tales from a Tin Can from Michael Olson.

• Media Madness (Stories from 3 decades on the front lines of print and broadcast journalism.)

Thirty years on the cutting edge of print, broadcast, and internet media with Michael Olson.  Includes stories from the headwaters of the Amazon, the Giza plateau in Egypt, the birthplace of Aphrodite in Cyprus, as well as life working with regional newspapers, national television networks, newstalk radio stations, and the world-wide web.

 • 3 Laws of the Food Chain (as derived from hosting over 700 live Food Chain Radio shows).

While hosting over 700 live Food Chain Radio shows, Michael Olson realized that all food stories could be filed under one of three headings, and so he turned them into “Laws of the Food Chain.”  Includes a discussion of each Law and story illustrations of how each Law affects our lives from his Food Chain Radio show.

Contact Michael Olson

Sample Listing of Speaking Engagements

ACRES USA

Minneapolis, MN

St. Loius, MS

Apple Processors Association, Jackson Hole, WY

Billings Public Library, Billings, MT

Bioneers Conference

San Francisco, CA

Marin County, CA

Santa Barbara, CA

Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA

California Independent Grocers Association, Fairfield, CA

EcoFarm, Pacific Grove, CA

Fairview Gardens, Santa Barbara, CA

Farragut Reunion Association, San Bruno, CA

Freedom Forum, Live Oak, CA

Institute of Biological Agriculture, Drummondville, Quebec

Much Ado About Books, Jacksonville, FL

Natural Bridges School, Santa Cruz, CA

Naval Order of the United States, Monterey, CA

Philadelphia Flower Show, Philadelphia, PA

Soil Food Web, Goleta, CA

Tin Can Sailors Association, San Diego, CA

Transition Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

United Ag Conference, Ojai, CA

University of California Farm Conferences

Sacramento, CA

Visalia, CA

Davis, CA

Monterey, CA

University of Missiouri, Kansas City, MS

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI

Washington State University, Puyallup, WA

Contact Michael Olson

Michael Olson in and on Media