Ignorance Isn't Just Bliss - It's Also a Strategy

Ignorance Isn’t Just Bliss – It’s Also a Strategy

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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Jeff Havens Conflict Resolution Techniques

How to Productively Argue With Somebody

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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Jeff Havens Conflict Resolution

How to Deal With Yellers, Screamers, and Other Unproductive Arguers

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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How the Internet Made Marketing More Important Than Ever

How the Internet Made Marketing More Important Than Ever

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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How to Change Business Strategy

How to Choose A New Business Strategy

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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Why You Should Fight for Fewer Choices

Why You Should Fight For Fewer Choices

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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How to Rid Yourself of Unnecessary Decisions

How to Rid Yourself of Unnecessary Decisions

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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How to Compete Against the Internet

How to Compete Against the Internet

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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How to Handle Negative Google Reviews

How to Combat Negative Social Media and Google Reviews

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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Interviewing Training Videos

Interviewing Video Series :: Blooper Reel

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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When Should You Raise Your Prices 2018

When to Raise Your Prices

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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How to Raise Your Prices in 2018

How to Raise Your Prices

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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Jeff Havens Smart Marketing Matters

Smart Marketing Matters

A couple weeks ago I was on a plane – shocking, I know – and got into a conversation with a woman returning from a public health conference. The main concern of the attendees was how to combat the proliferation of high-sugar, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods in our schools, primarily (shout-out to my fellow Midwesterners coming)…

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Jeff Havens - What My Infant Son Taught Me About Other People

What My Infant Son Taught Me About Other People And Why They Drive Me Crazy

First off, I promise this will have some business relevance. I generally don’t write a lot of articles that deal with parenthood, mostly because there are a trillion blogs that do exclusively that and I have no intention of turning into one of them. However, I’ve realized something recently that I think might help all…

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Jeff Havens - Electric Shock

Would You Prefer Time to Think, Or An Electric Shock?

So I stumbled across this study about six weeks ago, and ever since I’ve been mentioning it in my keynote presentations. I included then link so that you’d know I wasn’t making this up, but I also don’t expect you to go and read the BBC article I’ve linked to, so here’s the summary: A…

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Jeff Havens - Buy Happiness

How To Buy The Life You Want

Forgive me for using a title that sounds like a get-rich-quick pitch. “And if you act now I’ll throw in TWO copies of my book for the same price as THREE!” Which would be a terrible deal for you, by the way, but that’s not the point. You’ve probably read a thousand business articles by…

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Sizzle Reel

This video is a quick intro to each of my four most requested keynotes.

Jeff Havens - The Upside of Complacency

The Upside of Complacency

My grandmother died last month. It was not an unexpected thing – she was 95 years old, and her health had been failing very gradually for the past few years. By itself, the knowledge that a loved one has lived a long life and that “it’s their time” doesn’t do much to help us deal…

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Know your Weaknesses article by Jeff Havens

Why You Should Know Your Weaknesses

I am generally of the opinion that the only good reason for running anywhere is to escape danger. I sincerely hope to die without ever having run a marathon. However, since my working day consists of sitting at my desk and/or in plane seats for hours at a time, I do occasionally go to the…

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Jeff Havens video blooper reel

Employee Engagement Essentials Video Series :: Blooper Reel!

We recently released our 9-part video series, Employee Engagement Essentials, to our members at JeffHavens.com.  Of course we messed up a few times (or several… or a lot) and we thought you’d like to see it.  Hope you get a laugh and make sure you check out our membership options or contact us to see…

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Jeff Havens - How to Overcome Fear

How To Overcome the Fears That Are Holding You Back

I probably haven’t met you, but I’m pretty confident that you’re scared of something. Plenty of somethings, more likely. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, since it’s true of all of us. For example, I am scared of being eaten by sharks (or even just one shark, really the number of sharks is not the…

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