Live: Speeches & Music
There's something so special about live events.
Keynotes to educate and entertain
Bristall Company owner Steve Prentice has been a professional performer for decades, both as a speaker and as a musician. His keynotes deliver enormous value by condensing decades of knowledge into a short period of time. He combines a wealth of knowledge and experience with an engaging storytelling style, guaranteed to provide solid takeaways, new skills, a brighter outlook and up-to-date ideas for you and your team.
Steve is often hired as the kickoff or closer for a conference, retreat, or corporate event, to give all attendees a positive outlook along with really useful knowledge, and he delivers speeches in person and in virtual worlds like Virbela and Toucan. Most keynotes run between 60 and 90 minutes, but can be made shorter or longer as required.
Speech Topics for 2024
Our topics are designed to be current and practical, meaning you will learn something new from each of them, while enjoying Steve’s upbeat and dynamic presentation style.
Practical Techniques for Conquering Fear, Hopelessness and Overload. The last few years – prior to and following the Covid lockdowns of 2020-2021 – seem to have become top heavy with bad news, brutality and negativity. People’s overall sense of community, mutual support, and trust seems to have been replaced by instant anger, ruthless self-interest, and a profound lack of compassion. We are being forced to do more with less. This presentation offers practical solutions for dealing with fear, overload, and helplessness. This is not a “motivational” speech in the sense of selling a magic solution, nor is it based on any faith or mystical philosophy. It instead illustrates some real tools and techniques that you can use to conquer fear, place bad news in perspective and gain more control in your life and career. It comes from the worlds of project management, psychology and physiology and presents a practical approach to feeling better and making actual change.
Work Like a Wolf (Not Like a Dog). This presentation is about putting proactive career management back in your hands. It offers a better approach to finding work, staying employed and managing your career, by reviving the “hunting instincts” that too-often get pushed aside in the day-to-day busy-ness of the workplace. Steve’s message is that people must reinforce their ability to actively build and maintain a vibrant network of contacts, to stay alert to opportunities and threats, and most importantly to identify the types of careers they want, and then actively pursue them, rather than wait for a job listing to appear. Whether your goal is a multi-decade career, joining the gig economy, working from home or in a hybrid setup, changing careers completely, or surviving a termination, this session will discuss the power you have to remain in control and enjoy a satisfying, fulfilling career. Work Like a Wolf provides immediately useful tips and advice for people of all ages and at all stages in their careers, from busy working people through to people new to the workforce, those facing or dealing with unemployment, and those returning from an extended absence.
The Innovative Workplace looks at new best practices for working in the 2020s. It provides a clear and neutral assessment of hybrid, work-from-home, and traditional workspaces, as well as demonstrating the best in virtual environments such as Virbela. It also explores concepts such as asynchronous meetings and async learning, and working with generative AI. He challenges participants to create yes/no lists of what works and what doesn't work in their organization, and what kinds of innovations could be devised. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate to managers, leaders and team members that this new era is not just about individual technologies, but is also about maintaining a culture of innovation. He also discusses issues of trust, leadership, team dynamics, socialization, time management and work-life integration as well as issues dealing with cybersecurity, privacy, and management, leadership and trust.
Thinking, Feeling and Connecting at Work: McKinsey and others have identified soft skills such as critical thinking, empathy, and networking as essential to all levels of jobs in the new economy. And it’s not just theory. All the comments left on “Best Places to Work” sites show how important this is, and the statistics on Quiet Quitting and the Great Resignation show what happens when it is missing. Learn how to reintroduce human connection, emotional intelligence, credibility, and personal credit ratings back into work relationships. This was sorely needed in the years before hybrid work became a thing, and certainly is necessary now.
Managing Time and Balancing Life: Yes, this is a keynote on time management. It’s based on the third edition of Steve’s book, Cool-Time: A Hands-On Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time and includes the time-proven techniques from his first and second editions, namely project management, influence and physiology, and adds the realities of today’s workplace including chat technologies like Slack and Teams, work-life integration and hybrid work environments, and how to make your calendar a powerful tool of personal productivity rather than a shopping list of tasks. Even though it’s a keynote speech there will be dozens of immediately useful takeaways for every participant.
Understanding cybersecurity, online safety, and hacking: The future of any organization rests in large part on its employees knowing how to work safely amid a perpetual onslaught of often invisible hackers and thieves. Ransomware and malware are everywhere. Steve works extensively with IT security firms around the world is well-known in the cybersecurity business. His ability to explain complex technologies and use stories (case studies) to explain cybersecurity to non-IT audiences is always well-received. Learn what you need to know in terms of proactive cyberhygiene, the tools to use, the types of threats that exist, techniques and activities for staying vigilant and safe, and how to create and practice an emergency plan.
Twenty ways to make virtual chat and online presence a better place to “be”. Most people have become fatigued by Zoom and other video chat technologies, which is sad when you consider what these tools actually allow: face-to-face contact with other people from anywhere. Most of the reasons for Zoom Fatigue and Zoom Gloom come from the fact that Zoom was introduced to our lives as a lift-and-shift of the boring office meeting at the height of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. But much like other technologies (movies, TV, the internet), takes a while to grow into itself. This presentation demonstrates twenty ways to make Zoom more dynamic and productive. Notice the title of this keynote: it’s not just about “meetings” anymore.
The Future of Workplace Fear: When people talk about digital transformation, the "new normal," and the future of work, the focus is very much on the technologies that are coming in to change our world once again. But what about people and their instinctive fear of change? This presentation, based on Steve’s book of the same name, addresses the types of fears people experience in times of change, how they become the root cause of a wide range of workplace problems, and what can be done to improve the situation.
Let There Be Music!
The Bristall Company has a house band! Absolutely Jack has been in operation for over a decade. We play a specific genre known by some as California rock or soft rock, but we just call it "nice 70s music." If you are familiar with artists like Carole King, Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, and Jimmy Buffett, you'll get the idea. Not only did these artists produce memorable hits during the 1970s and beyond, we have found the music to have quite a universal appeal, even with younger listeners whose parents grew up with this music.
Absolutely Jack is a corporate events band. We can be the feature attraction at the opening or closing of an event, or we can be the ambient music behind a networking evening or cocktail hour.
The music is not loud or heavy, nor is it dance music. It consists of pleasant, toe-tapping hits with great male and female harmonies. Here’s the Spotify list of our set, as played by the original artists. You can also visit the band's website at AbsolutelyJack.ca.