We’ve gotten very fond of saying that business conditions are more challenging now than they’ve ever been. The Internet, you know, and globalization, and technology, and political unrest, and on and on and on until it seems like everything is always on the verge of total collapse. Built into all of this is the implication…
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Jeff Havens is a keynote speaker offering serious solutions while being seriously funny. Occassionally comments come in that don’t get highlighted, but these were too funny not to share!
There’s a good chance that you aren’t in love with your job. Most of us aren’t. In the United States, approximately 70% of us are disengaged at work, and that number is actually pretty good compared to other countries. According to a recent Gallup poll, 94% of Chinese and Japanese workers dislike what they do.…
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Last weekend my wife and I took our 20-month-old son to a pumpkin farm. We did this because the weather was perfect and because we live in the Midwest. Finding a pumpkin farm or apple orchard in the fall is about as Midwestern as eating an elephant ear at the county fair. This particular farm…
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Recently a friend of mine – and by that I mean ‘way too many people I know, but this article will flow better if I pretend I’m talking about a single person’ – told me that he’s miserable in his job. He’s working far too many hours with no relief in sight, sees no opportunity…
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Time for some levity! If you’re looking for a serious, career-building article, we’ve got one of those for you. But if you’d like a little goofiness, then you’ve come to the right place! So my wife’s birthday was a couple weeks ago. She turned 33, which you’re probably thinking is pronounced ‘thirty-three’ but in our…
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Recently my wife and I got into an argument about something. It’s the same something we have occasionally argued about for just about as long as we have been together, and it ended the same way it always does – both of us frustrated, no progress made. It’s as though we periodically say, “Things are…
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My brother takes forever to make a decision. Not always, of course; it’s not like he stays naked until 3pm because he can’t decide what to wear. But he did once take two years to buy a couch. That’s not an exaggeration. From the time he decided he needed a new couch to the time…
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Recently a friend of mine treated himself and his wife to a new mattress, which is the most boring way to begin an article that I can think of. Dinner? No. A romantic vacation? No. How about shopping for a way to more comfortably be unconscious? Woo-hoo! Oh, and by the way, I’m not saying…
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This morning I made the mistake that almost all of us make in our first hour of consciousness – I checked my Facebook account and scanned the headlines. Consequently I learned the following: a friend of mine is leaving today for a two-month vacation to Singapore; the United States has a list of 59 terror…
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My wife and I got into an argument this weekend about how we should be spending time with our son. Sounds like fun, right? That sentence might have conjured up images of wild shouting, doors slamming, and the hours of frosty silence that often follow heated arguments. And with good reason, since all of that…
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For the past eight years, I have delivered a leadership presentation called Unleash Your Inner Tyrant! at conferences across 48 states, 7 Canadian provinces, and six Latin American countries. In that presentation, I pretend to encourage my audience to engage in all kinds of terrible leadership practices – outsourcing blame, avoiding contact with employees, making…
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In the last 24 hours, I’ve received something like 462 emails. Mercifully, Gmail dumps most of those into a ‘promotions’ folder, which may as well be a trash folder for all the attention I pay to it. It’s filled with coupons for things I don’t want, solicitations from companies that have apparently purchased my contact…
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Hey everybody! I don’t mean to toot my own horn or anything, but you are looking at the newest board member for the Affordable Housing Authority in my county. And yes I’m aware that you’re not actually looking at me right now, and yes it’s true that didn’t exactly have to beat out 55 other…
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We are bombarded with choices. Right now I’m sitting at a hotel bar in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I’ve got somewhere between 60 and 70 beers I can choose from. That’s just the taps, by the way – I’m not even bothering to look at what they have in bottles. Most of my choices are some…
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My wife can’t handle the grocery store. She’s an incredibly intelligent and accomplished person – got her Ph.D in organic chemistry, so you know that I married up – but she goes to pieces whenever I make the mistake of letting her come grocery shopping with me. She looks at everything, goes down every aisle…
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I’ve done some preliminary market research, and I’ve learned that the Internet is really popular these days. Have you tried it? Of course you have, unless you live in a re-purposed beaver dam and make all your own clothing out of walrus pelts and alpaca hair. In fact, you couldn’t even be reading this without…
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Ah, the Internet. It’s one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity. We can do things today that our ancestors never even thought to dream of. If they could come back and see what we’ve built, they’d think we were gods. Which is why tons of people love using the Internet to complain…
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We’re releasing 2 new video series this month! Both focus on Interviewing. One focuses on how to properly conduct interviews and the other is for those people looking to improve their interviewing skills (looking to advance their career). And as usual we had a lot of fun filming these and wanted to let you see…
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Raising prices. It’s a hard thing to say to someone, isn’t it? Although I’ll admit it’s a much nicer thing to say than, “I’ve decided I’d like to make more money while doing the same amount of work.” Still, it’s very difficult to know when you can ‘get away’ with raising your prices. Most of…
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OK, so you’ve decided to steal a little more money from your customers. They’ve been taking advantage of your natural kindness and timidity for far too long, and it’s time for them to pay!!! Great. I’m proud of you. You’re finally becoming the kind of ruthless, heartless capitalist I always knew you could be. That’s…
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