Public Speaking

Sample Programs

Below are a few of Stephen’s available programs. In addition, he welcomes the opportunity to create custom presentations designed specifically for your business goals.

Six Steps To Move Your Dream Ahead (Keynote)

Everybody has a dream, whether it be in their business or personal lives. Yet so many will never take the steps necessary to actually move their dream forward, to make it reality, simply because they don’t know where to begin. In this presentation, Stephen teaches your audience six essential steps that anybody can follow, which will create manageable tasks, achievable milestones and measurable results. Using heartwarming and hilarious stories from his adventures in winemaking, creative agencies, digital media companies, and professional audio, his techniques are viable for all ages and professions.

Facing Your Fears (Keynote)

Fear of failure, embarrassment, being proven wrong, or losing your investment can prevent you from starting or growing your business. Understanding the difference between real fear and anxiety, worry or concern can help you take control of your situation, assess real versus imagined risk, and move your initiatives forward. By exploring the decision making process, Stephen will help your audience understand how their own mental barriers are preventing them from making sound business decisions. Using stories from the founding of his two businesses, he illustrates how he continually overcomes fear and self-doubt to find clarity and establish new directions in both his business and personal life.

Overcoming Adversity (Keynote)

After simultaneously launching two small businesses and starting a family at the outset of the great recession, Stephen and his wife Shannon have endured and overcome tremendous adversity in both their business and personal lives. Yet no matter how great the odds, nor how improbable success may have seemed, they pushed forward with an unyielding commitment to their entrepreneurial vision. This life-altering presentation will help your audience understand how facing adversity and overcoming failure build confidence, inspire growth, and create new opportunities. Illustrating the value of persistence and tenacity, the role of perspective, and the need for passion, Stephen takes your audience on a journey from the brink of disaster to the height of success.

The Journey (Keynote)

Learn about the leaps of faith taken and the challenges faced in leaving a small town in Virginia for the bright lights of the professional audio and entertainment industries, and how those risks ultimately culminated in the purchase of an abandoned cattle farm on a romantic whim to found a Virginia farm winery. Learn how entrepreneurial vision, focused dedication, and unstoppable belief in one’s self can alter the course of your life and your business.

Technological Innovations for Rural Enterprises (Educational)

By leveraging social media and emerging technologies, rural and small business owners can level the playing field and compete at a whole new level. As both the CEO of Notaviva Vineyards and the Creative Director for Mesh Omnimedia, Stephen’s ability to assimilate new technologies enables him to help small businesses improve marketing presence and operational efficiencies.

Wine Paired With Music (Entertainment)

A unique experience invented by Stephen in 2009, your audience will conduct blind wine tastings while listening to various music playlists in an effort to decide as a group which music track is best suited for the wine being tasted. Complete with an overview of the underlying neurological processes that create these sensory perceptions as well as a few hilarious “roadie stories” this exercise will leave your audience with a new respect for the impact of music on human emotion as well as its impact on enological sensory perception.

Design a Winery Brand (Teambuilding)

A teambuilding exercise conducted around a brand-building challenge, this interactive contest has proven to be both a highly entertaining as well as educational business experience. As host and judge of the contest, Stephen’s ability to challenge your team – as well as create a little friendly competitive tension – will provide a wonderful bonding opportunity for your group.