U.S. exporting, from breakbulk steel to self-publishing.
Betsy Olim, president of the export management company Olim International, talks with people whose work sends goods, services and ideas out of the United States. Her guests range from the head of the Port of New Orleans to a guest on international literary agency, and two episodes are built around Ohio State's international business programs.
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Export Stories Podcast treats exporting as something far wider than shipping boxes overseas. Betsy Olim hosts. She is president of Olim International, a U.S.-based export management company, and has built a long career developing global sales and distribution for U.S. companies. Episodes open with her greeting in a run of languages, from ciao and bonjour to konnichiwa, namaste and shalom, before the guest is introduced. The show's introduction says outright that a listener does not need to be an exporter to enjoy it, and the guest list supports that. Some conversations stay close to hard logistics. In the episode with Beth Branch, President & CEO of the Port of New Orleans, the talk moves through containerized cargo, breakbulk commodities such as rubber and steel, and the port's short-line railroad. That railroad, the New Orleans Public Belt, was once owned by the city and underperforming. The episode describes a turnaround that has made rail a major share of the port's revenue, with connections to all six Class I railroads. The episode with Blanca Ramirez about Lectro Dryer of Kentucky looks at the cost of meeting other countries' rules. Foreign engineers and inspection bodies review calculations, visit facilities and check the welding, and the estimate given is about 30 percent more time and cost each time. Europe's changing regulations come up, along with a wish that American and European standards could be brought closer together. Other episodes leave physical freight behind entirely. Emily Sweet's conversation about international literary agency covers self-publishing, the growth of Amazon publishing, independent publishers outside the big five, and print on demand. The host's questions there stay basic in a useful way, down to asking whether a self-published book can actually be printed. A joint episode recorded with The Trade Guys Podcast tries to settle what makes a movie American at all, when Vancouver and Toronto stand in for U.S. cities and a Mission Impossible film shoots all over the world. Actors, camera crews and editors of different nationalities make the answer harder, and reshoring comes up along the way. Two Ohio State episodes cover policy and research. One features Michael Knemeyer and Dominic DiCamillo of the university's CIBER, one of 16 centers for international business education and research that Congress created under the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. In the other, Doug Farren discusses the National Center for Middle Markets, whose research with Brookings found that most middle-market companies stayed domestic, while the ones selling internationally were growing much faster. Episodes close by inviting listeners to send in their own export stories through the show's website or LinkedIn, part of what the show describes as building a community of export storytellers. Across all of it, listeners get a grounded, varied picture of how American goods, services and creative work reach other markets, told by the people who do the work.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants to hear how U.S. ports, companies, agencies and universities actually handle selling abroad, with or without a background in trade. It also fits someone weighing what foreign certification and new markets ask of a smaller business.
What sets it apart: Its idea of exporting is unusually broad: next to a port chief and a company working through foreign inspections, it makes room for literary agency, film shooting locations and university trade research. The host runs an export management company herself.
Welcome to Export Stories, a podcast of one-on-one interviews featuring stories from the wide—and sometimes crazy—world of U.S. exporting.Your host for Export Stories is Betsy Olim, President of Olim International, a U.S.-based export management company.Betsy has a made a 37-year career of developing global sales and distribution for U.S. companies.Olim International, Inc. provides professional export management and international distribution services to small- and medium-sized U.S. companies.Whether helping to open new international markets or strengthening a company’s unique, competitive advantages in existing export markets, Olim brings strategic vision and added value to our clients’ int…
Six national railroads connect through a New Orleans port, and your inner logistics nerd wakes up.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Rail connectivity, cargo mix, and cruise momentum show how the Port of New Orleans builds its competitive edge.
Beth Branch frames the Port of New Orleans as a working system where containers, break-bulk cargo, short-line rail, and cruise traffic all matter to the same larger strategy.
A trade conversation finds national identity in movie credits and policy in Section 232.
Export Stories' joint episode with The Trade Guys uses a simple export question to open a more interesting cultural puzzle: what makes a movie American?
A clear, practical look at how self-publishing technology can shape an author's route to readers.
Self-publishing gives this episode its main technology thread, with Amazon publishing, print-on-demand, e-books, and audio treated as practical routes rather than buzzwords.
A grounded look at the engineering, certification, and bureaucratic pressure behind industrial exporting.
Export Stories turns a specialized export challenge into a clear, grounded account of how a Kentucky company serving industrial customers abroad handles engineering and certification demands.
A practical look at why middle-market exporters are rare and what international growth can demand.
Export Stories takes a focused business question - why middle-market companies export so rarely - and turns it into a practical look at what international growth can ask of a company.
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Beth Branch says the Port of New Orleans is building the first U.S.-registered Envision terminal on greenfield land in St.
["The episode opens on tariffs, with Scott Miller citing Goldman Sachs data that says 64% of the cost lands on American producers or retailers and 22% on consumers.", "Betsy Olam then steers the joint Export Stories and Trade Guys conversation into trade-policy shorthand, from TPP and TPA to 301, 201, and 232.", "Miller and Bill Reitsch use films, furniture, pharmaceuticals, and the Jones Act to show how supply chains, shipping rules, and Section 232 work in practice, including the claim that U.S.
["Export Stories Podcast's 60th episode pairs Betsy Olam with Emily Sweet to discuss international literary management at Park, Fine, and Brouwer.", "Emily Sweet says she moved from litigation at King and Spalding in Washington DC to Teresa Park's boutique agency in 2009, where contract work turned into author strategy.", "The interview gets into book-to-film rights, North American and world English deals, translation timing, and the role of co-agents in foreign territories.", "Betsy and Emily also talk through TikTok-driven backlist sales, sprayed-edge special editions, self-publishing, and AI concerns about using an author's body of work."]
["Betsy Olam interviews Blanca Ramirez, the green hydrogen solutions manager at ElectroDryer in Kentucky, a company she says has fewer than 80 employees and exports to 30-some countries each year.", "Blanca explains how ElectroDryer's desiccant machines dry gases and liquids, reuse silica-gel-style pellets, and serve power generation, refineries, chemical plants, furnaces, hydrogen cooling, and biogas applications.", "The discussion spends a long stretch on export friction, including ASME, PED, CRN, EPC customers, country-by-country certifications, and Blanca's estimate that compliance adds about 30 percent more time and cost.", "She also describes tariff uncertainty, Kentucky's trade ties with Canada, a South Korea-Saudi Arabia project that lost money on cultural mismatch, and the MexiManos earthquake-relief work she helped organize in Mexico."]
Betsy Olam interviews Doug Farron, managing director of Ohio State's National Center for the Middle Market, about how the center defines middle-market firms and why it studies them.
Ohio State CIBER's Ohio Export Internship Program began in 2012 and trains undergraduates in export fundamentals.
Paul Edelblut of Vantage Labs says AI should solve a defined business problem, not be adopted for its own sake.
John Butler leads AgriCenter International, a 1,000-acre Memphis nonprofit research and education center founded in 1979.
Betsy Olam interviews cybersecurity expert Danny Mizrahi about protecting export businesses from cyber threats.
Betsy Olam interviews Christine Kratz about the state of the trade show industry and its adaptation to changing conditions.
Betsy Olam interviews Bobby Lahire, founder of Spoken Here, about the importance of language and translation services for U.S.
Betsy Olam interviews Susan Gibbs, president of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the ship's designer, about the history and preservation of the SS United States.