What my dad taught me about failure

How My Father Taught Me To Conquer the Fear of Failure

Somewhere pretty close to 35 years ago this month, I learned how to ride a bicycle. I’d like to pretend that I remember such a pivotal moment in life like it was yesterday, but obviously that’s not true since I don’t even remember exactly when it happened. (Nor do I remember what I did yesterday.)…

Details
The One Thing Customers Want

The One Thing Customers Want Most

Every year, billions and billions of dollars are spent trying to convince customers to buy things – clothes, toys, hot tubs, insurance policies, private jets, googly-eye glasses, cosmetic surgery, laser pointers, watches, and at least four other things – and 99.99% of the brain power behind that money is focused on trying to figure out…

Details
Customer Experience Keynote Article - Jeff Havens

This is What Honest Customer Service Would Look Like

A couple weeks ago, I was in a flower shop, buying flowers for myself so that others would think someone loved me. I was browsing, trying to remember what my favorite color was, when a lady entered in a perfect fury. She was seething, livid, beside herself with rage because the arrangement she had received…

Details
Generation Z Doesn't Exist

Generation Z Doesn’t Exist

How Our Current Generational Model Is Failing Us At this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Millennial thing has been talked to death. Billions of words have been written about Millennials, how they differ from their Baby Boomer and Gen X antecedents, and how companies need to change in order to attract Millennial…

Details
How to Write a great title

How to Write a Great Title

Because A Good Title Is Hard To Find In the next few weeks I’ll be launching my new keynote about how to deliver an exceptional customer experience. It’s called Decoding Your Customers!, which only took about 4 months for me to decide on. It took almost as long to come up with the title as…

Details
Jeff Havens Innovation Keynote Article

Want To Be More Innovative? Then You Need To…

I’m experimenting with those annoying headlines they run on news sites now. “Kid eats pancakes, and then this happens…” What do you think? Anyway, there are an absurd number of people billing themselves as ‘innovation experts.’ Many of them have worked for successful companies, and so what they’re really doing is going around and telling…

Details
Face to Face Communication

You Can’t Ignore Me When I’m In Your Face

So my wife and I are pregnant. I know some people take issue with me saying it that way, since technically she is the only one who is carrying a baby, but I feel like I’m a part of this process too. I get to wake up at night almost every time she does, I…

Details
How to personally connect with your customers

How to Personally Connect With Your Customers

‘Tis the season to squeeze as much money out of your customers as humanly possible! I know that’s not the standard phrase – it’s ‘tis the season to eat jelly,’ in case you were wondering – but the desire to trick people into paying us is always hiding just under the surface. You can hear…

Details
The psychology of handling massive changes

The Psychology Of Successfully Handling Massive Changes

Maybe you’re staring at next year’s numbers and wondering if your business is going to keep growing. Maybe your company is going through a merger. Maybe you’re getting a divorce. And maybe you just won the lottery and are trying to figure out how to keep everyone you’ve ever known from hitting you up for…

Details
Jeff Havens Keynote Speaker

2018 Year in Review

We just wanted to share a few quick clips of what we worked on this year and we hope you had a great 2018, both personally and professionally.

How To Handle Gen Z In The Workplace

How To Handle Gen Z In The Workplace

First off, let me say that I’m sorry for using the term ‘Gen Z’ in this title. Personally, I don’t think Generation Z exists. Somewhere along the line we decided that we were inventing a new type of people every 15 years or so, and I just don’t agree. However, that’s the language we use,…

Details
Everyday Leadership in Turbulent Times

Everyday Leadership in Turbulent Times

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…

Details

Funny and Unique Client Testimonials

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!

Three Flashy Careers That Aren’t as Great As They Seem

Three Flashy Careers That Aren’t as Great As They Seem

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.…

Details
Why Your Kids Should Pick Your Pumpkins

Why Your Kids Should Pick Your Pumpkins

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…

Details
How to Negotiate a Better Career

How to Negotiate a Better Career

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…

Details
Gift Ideas For the Girl Who Has Everything

Gift Ideas For the Girl Who Has Everything

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…

Details
How to Move on When You Simply Can’t Agree

How to Move on When You Simply Can’t Agree

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…

Details
How to Make Better Faster Decisions

How to Make Better, Faster Decisions

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…

Details
Are women better negotiators than men?

Are women better negotiators?

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…

Details