Jeff Havens is not your typical business growth expert. His uncanny ability to provide actionable answers to today’s business challenges in an undeniably entertaining and impactful way has put him in front of over 1,000 eager audiences across North America and Asia. Delivering well-researched and relevant business insight is something a lot of keynote speakers do, but combining that with the entertainment value of a comedy show is not. Engaging, charismatic, and full of energy, Jeff Havens is the only business growth expert who provides serious solutions in a seriously funny way.
But even more than that, Jeff makes things easy. All of us are constantly being asked to do more with less, so the last thing you need is someone to tell you how difficult your challenges are. Jeff has a unique ability to simplify seemingly complex problems in a way that will provide your audience with a fresh perspective, one that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of the business world. He’ll show you that we’re not actually creating a completely new type of person every 15 years, that being innovative is not something only a few special people know how to do, and that both exceptional leadership and exceptional customer experiences are built on surprisingly slender foundations. You will leave Jeff’s keynotes refreshed, relaxed, happy, and more confident than ever that you are prepared for the road ahead.
Speaking Topics -
Uncrapify Your Future!
Most innovation speakers introduce the subject like this: “The world is changing faster than ever before, everything you’re doing is about to become obsolete, and if you don’t come up with some amazing ideas in the next 18 seconds your business is going to disappear. Have a nice day.” And if that’s the kind of doomsayer message you’re looking for, then you can stop reading now.
But if you’d like to present innovation as a simple process that literally everyone is capable of mastering, then you might want to listen to Uncrapify Your Future! Jeff Havens will make the process of solving problems, exploiting opportunities, and surviving massive (and sometimes unexpected) disruption easier and more rewarding than you ever thought possible. Because it turns out that every innovation in every industry – from automobiles to streaming music, coffee cup holders to wartime treaties – follows the same straightforward pattern.
Oh, and did we mention that it’s also hilarious? Well it is. Imagine that – a keynote that’s both educational and enjoyable? How innovative!
Key Takeaways
- Understanding that innovation is typically a slow and incremental process, not an immediate disruption of existing systems. (This is true even for ‘disruptive’ products and technologies!)
- The three-step process which every innovation throughout all of human history has inevitably followed
- The one and only barrier to innovative thought, and how to overcome it
- Case studies of various innovative products and ideas – which any one of your audience members could conceivably have come up with on their own
- Various examples that illustrate how innovative each and every member of your audience already is. (How can I do that without having spoken to any of them? You’ll have to see the keynote to find out!)
Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!
The first of its kind, Unleash Your Inner Tyrant! helps managers and executives become better leaders by showing them everything they should avoid – including how to create a culture of fear and mistrust, how to oppress and demoralize employees, and how to stand firm in the face of all change – before wrapping up with a serious conversation about the kind of leaders we should all strive to become.
Covering four main areas of leadership – creating a healthy corporate culture; management/employee relations; crisis management; and change management – Unleash Your Inner Tyrant! is every bit as content-rich and intensively researched as a more traditional leadership seminar but has the added benefit of an unparalleled delivery style that will have your audience laughing the entire time they’re learning how to become more effective leaders. Simply put, there is nothing else like this in the business world, and no better way to energize your management team while providing them with invaluable training they will remember for months and years to come.
Key Takeaways
- How to create a healthy, vibrant corporate culture through open communication and active accessibility
- How to inspire trust and loyalty in your employees by setting reasonable expectations and delivering truly constructive criticism when necessary
- How to approach change in order to achieve seamless integration of new product lines, marketing strategies, department mergers, and other new initiatives
- How to employ one simple technique to move employees from satisfied to engaged.
- How to become the kind of leader others are excited to follow
Decoding Your Customers
Ah, the customer experience.
There are plenty of other customer experience keynotes. But the overwhelming majority of them either tell you how important it is to make your customers feel special (which you already knew) or share stories of businesses who have loyal customers (which you’ve already heard). And if you want to hear what you’ve already heard before, then hire somebody else.
Decoding Your Customers takes a vastly different approach. As hilarious as it is informative, this keynote concentrates on the human behaviors that have brought the customer experience to where it is today, then synthesizes those behaviors into four simple realities that provide a clear vision for how to move forward. Rather than attempting to predict the future of your business, Decoding Your Customers will answer why customers behave the way they do and how you can meet their needs so that you’ll never need to guess what they want – you’ll simply be able to give it to them, both today and into the foreseeable future as well.
And last but certainly not least, this isn’t going to be a dry talk. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of customer psychology and how to adjust your business accordingly, but that doesn’t mean you can’t laugh as hard as you ever have at a corporate keynote. Because with Jeff Havens, you get serious solutions in a seriously funny way.
Key Takeaways
- Learning to resist the desire to predict the future and instead appreciate that customer needs and desires are rooted in our core psychology, which remains constant regardless of massive changes or unexpected disruption
- How the drive for convenience has changed in the past 30 years, and what that means for how you design and sell new products and services
- The effect of constant connection on customer behavior, and how smart businesses have learned to think smaller in order to grow
- How most businesses vastly underestimate the importance of marketing their products, services, and ideas, along with two essential types of marketing every business should engage in
- How the universal desire for meaning can inform your interactions with customers and drive greater sales
- Absolutely no buzzwords. That’s right, you will not hear ‘advocate,’ ‘tribe,’ ‘brand ambassador,’ or ‘rabid fan’ once in this keynote. How’s that for a refreshing change of pace?
Us vs. Them!
You’ve undoubtedly heard that there are four or even five distinct generations operating side-by-side in today’s working world. Apparently we’ve been creating entirely new types of people every 15 years, the world is more complicated now than ever before, and you need to learn how to deal with all these different people because they’re not going away and they’re not going to change how they operate. If that advice suits you, fantastic.
However, if you’ve ever been frustrated because you feel like you’re the only one who’s being asked to make any changes, then Us Vs. Them is exactly what you need. In this hysterical keynote, you’ll learn that there really aren’t four or five generations in the workplace and never have been. You’ll also learn how to understand, recognize, and resolve every generational issue facing today’s workforce. That’s no exaggeration; by the end of Us Vs. Them, you and your colleagues will walk away with all of the knowledge you’ll need to address 100% of the generational issues you’ll face for the rest of your career. Other generational presentations highlight and then exaggerate our subtlest differences; but Us Vs. Them focuses instead on how all of us are at slightly different points on the same journey. It’s an important distinction, and it will make implementing new solutions easier than you ever thought possible.
So get ready to laugh and learn with Us Vs. Them – the most hilarious and insightful generational presentation ever created!
Key Takeaways
- Learn to replace the complicated four-generation model with a workable dichotomy between older, more experienced workers and their younger, less-experienced counterparts
- Understand the key cultural, technological, and social changes that have conspired to create a disconnect between team members from these two generations
- Walk away with several immediately applicable strategies to address and eliminate problems caused by the disconnect mentioned above
- Inspire a healthier, more robust work ethic in your younger employees (and your older ones, too)
- Inspire a healthier, more robust attitude toward change in your older employees (and your younger ones, too)
Conquering Tomorrow
Change Management.
If there’s one thing that’s true for everybody, it’s that things are constantly changing. Sometimes that’s great, like when we win the lottery or land an important account – those changes are easy to deal with. But sometimes change isn’t so great, like when there’s a worldwide pandemic that comes out of nowhere and shuts the entire planet down – that happened once, remember? And when these kinds of changes hit us, we have a tendency to run and hide and kick and scream and basically deal very poorly with them. If only there were a way to see “negative” changes in a more positive light…
That’s where Conquering Tomorrow comes in. Designed for anyone who has ever approached an upcoming change with hesitation or dread (which is everyone), Conquering Tomorrow takes audiences on a journey through some of life’s most common “bad” changes – some personal, some professional – to reveal a profound and important truth: that while the process of going through difficult changes may not always be fun, the end result of those changes is usually far better than we’re afraid it will be.
Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing is funny? Delivered with Jeff’s trademark wit and infectious enthusiasm, Conquering Tomorrow is a highly personalized approach to one of the thorniest challenges facing modern businesses – getting employees to buy into the changes that will inevitably come. Part motivational speech, part change management seminar, and all hilarious, Conquering Tomorrow will leave your people feeling like they can handle anything the world throws at them – even if they weren’t looking for it.
Key Takeaways
- Recognizing the four main reasons we most commonly fear or resist unplanned, unexpected, or unasked-for changes
- Learning to distinguish between the process of change (which is sometimes frustrating) and the result of change (which is usually positive)
- Developing a long-term attitude toward change management to help reduce short-term frustrations and put temporary setbacks into proper context
- How to use current successes as a guide for how future changes are likely to resolve themselves
