Public Speaking

Michael Stausholm is an experienced public speaker with a great deal of knowledge about sustainability and entrepreneurship. He always speaks from his own experiences, gathered over a long career as a consultant and a specialist within the field of sustainability for clients such as Nike and Walmart. Michael Stausholm is also an entrepreneur himself, having founded the company Sprout – a green enterprise which has created the first pencil in the world that can be planted and grown into flowers, vegetables and herbs, with more than 30 million Sprout pencils sold across more than 80 countries.

Michael Stausholm has held talks at a range of events, including the Danish Pavilion at the 2016 Olympics in Rio and the Sustainable Brands and Tania Ellis conferences. He has also spoken for the UN in Belarus and for educational institutions, business councils and networking groups.

Lecture titles:

Sustainability – buzzword or benefit?

Sustainability is a buzzword along the same lines as disruption, but what does it actually mean? Is sustainability about having a bad conscience? Is it simply the latest way to instil guilt into companies with surpluses? Michael Stausholm sets sustainability in focus and discusses how we can get to grips with it in a realistic way. What can we as companies and individuals do in our daily lives to make a real difference?

The lecture is based on Michael Stausholm's experiences with Sprout – the company behind the world's first plantable pencil, which can grow into herbs, vegetables and flowers and which has sold more than 30 million pencils across 80 countries. It is also based on his experiences as a consultant and specialist within the field of sustainability for companies such as Nike and Walmart over the course of 14 years spent in Asia.

Entrepreneurship – important mistakes and striking success stories
Michael Stausholm shares his experiences as an entrepreneur, with upturns and downturns, and talks about the exciting prospects for a company like Sprout in a growing market for sustainable products with a good story to tell.

He talks about what he has learned along the way and offers up his best advice on how to achieve success as an entrepreneur. He also speaks about how it was possible to start up a million dollar company without capital and to expand internationally at a rapid pace, and he talks about how to attract investors and put together a professional board.

Along the way he explains how it all began with a single pencil that was invented by a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA. Michael Stausholm saw the business potential of the product and today he owns all rights and patents together with a co-investor.

From a crazy idea to a million dollar business in more than 80 countries
Plantable pencils? Great idea, but it will never be a successful business. That was the reaction Michael Stausholm was faced with five years ago when he decided to dedicate himself full time to selling plantable Sprout pencils invented in the USA. Today, Sprout is going strong, with around 30 million pencils sold in more than 80 countries. Getting to this stage has not been an easy journey. Michael Stausholm tells the whole story in this lecture, talking, among other things, about:

How he started up a whole company based around a student project at MIT in Boston
How the overwhelming demand at the beginning kept him up at nights, thinking; okay, tomorrow it's all going to stop. There can't be anyone left still interested in plantable pencils
How he financed his company in the beginning without any capital
How Sprout has focused on telling its story ahead of advertising its product
What mistakes he has learned the most from along the way
How sustainable companies often go under before they really get going
What concrete advice he would give to new entrepreneurs that want to reach beyond Denmark's borders

Marketing – focus on telling a good story
Pull marketing vs. push marketing: how did Sprout manage to achieve a turnover of more than one million dollars and sales of more than 30 million pencils across more than 80 countries? And how is it possible to get exposure to more than 100 million potential customers via Facebook in a single quarter without having to pay for it? Is it possible to create a million dollar company on the global marketplace exclusively via PR and a product with a good story? Michael Stausholm speaks from his own experiences and explains how Sprout managed to achieve exactly these results. The lecture also tells the story of Sprout and the sustainable pencil, which was created by robot engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and developed into a million dollar company by Michael Stausholm, who currently owns all sales and production rights for the budding pencil.

The Danish Pavilion during the Olympic Games in Rio 2016: Danish Sustainability Day

At the Danish Sustainability Day in Rio during the 2016 Olympic Games, CEO and Founder Michael Stausholm gave an inspiring presentation about his green startup company Sprout. Sprout's pencil products are an innovative contribution to the sustainability agenda that offer consumers and businesses a fresh approach to recycling.

Peter Bøgh Hansen
Head of Partnerships & Innovation, Confederation of Danish Industry

Danske Andelskassers Bank

Michael gave a really great talk. He managed to capture the students' attention in a very short time with his story about how Sprout came into being and he offered a lot of good advice and tips for budding entrepreneurs, so the students got to take something really concrete and useable home with them. We have only had positive feedback about the talk, and we wouldn't hesitate to invite Michael back as a speaker and as a judge in the future.

Tine Martlev Pallesen
Communications Manager, Danske Andelskassers Bank A/S

Shamengo

Our visit to Sprout World was amazing! First of all, Michael Stausholm tells his own personal story very well. He is a businessman, but also and above all a wonderful storyteller. Second, the whole SNCF Réseau delegation loved the Sprout products. Last but not least, I discovered a new and sound advice for all budding innovators: "kill your darlings" when an idea is good but not enough to make it to the market.

Catherine Berthillier
Founder, Shamengo – The best of green, social and digital innovations to inspire a new art of living

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