IAM997- Speaker Helps Professionals Handle Cognitive Illusions

Steve Haffner is a decision performance expert. After a 30-year corporate I.T. career as a systems developer, manager, and executive, in 2011 he launched his own business as a magician, mentalist, and speaker.

Using research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, Steve helps professionals improve their decision-making by recognizing and overcoming their cognitive illusions – the primitive impulses, biases, and shortcuts that can undermine decision performance.

• CEO Hack: Decisive Book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• CEO Nugget: Set tripwires- reminders and checkpoints along the way
• CEO Defined: Focusing on how you allocate your resources

Website: https://www.stevehaffner.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SteveHaffner
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-haffner-42364228/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCNqKU-bbqLoNKTXqJu2_wg
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/decisionperformance

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:20 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

00:48 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today as Steve has Steve Hafner of Steve Hafner Calm Steve is awesome. Have you been on the show?

00:57 – Steve Haffner

Thanks. Great to be here with you Gresh. Thanks for having me.

01:00 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Steve. So you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Steve had a 30-year career as an IT professional and executive for companies such as Mercer, EDS, and Humana. His areas of expertise were performance measurement and quality assurance. And then in 2011, he chucked that career to launch his own business as a magician, as a magician, mentalist, and professional speaker. As a decision performance specialist, Steve helps leaders and professionals understand and break through their cognitive illusions so that they can elevate their ability to achieve their goals and understand and live their values. Steve, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:38 – Steve Haffner

Absolutely.

01:39 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I want to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started when I call your CEO story.

01:48 – Steve Haffner

Sure, yeah. So I had a 30-year career in IT. I had a computer science degree and jumped in as a programmer systems analyst, and systems engineer, various titles throughout my career. I did like programming, but my passions were really when I was younger, and I should say passions and talents, I was really into the creative side. I was into creative writing and performing. I was in all the plays in grade school and high school. I was into that side, but computer programming was a safe path to take. And, I have no regrets about going with that path. It served me well. I was very successful at it, you know, and made decent money doing it. Then, you know, it was back in about 2010, that I had developed a magic as a hobby, mainly at first as a way to entertain my kids.

I thought they would like it maybe as much as I did when I was young. And turned out as I started getting into magic again, I thought, I wonder if I could make this as a living. And I kind of looked at the environment, the local market, And I saw that there were a couple of people that were doing it. But the market was far from saturated. And I thought, Wow, could I could I do this? Could I actually make a living as a magician? And of course, I had this voice in the back of my head pop up and say, What are you crazy? We're in the middle of a recession. You've got a successful career, you've got a family to support, and you want to go do magic tricks, you need to grow up. And this was a loud voice. I call it the lizard brain voice.

And so I was like, well, you're right, you're Right. And so I put it on the back burner for a while. But then the situation I changed jobs, and I'd gone from the tech side into management. And I was a, I was in the claims department of an insurance company as a business analyst. And I wasn't really loving it. It was because I had shifted so much from the tech side, which I had enjoyed. And then this company lost their contract, they had one contract with the government and they lost it. They got outbid. And so we all thought we got to do something new how we got to update our resumes and find another job. Well, I had just done that a year prior. Didn't really feel like doing it again.

And I was kind of burnt out. I didn't have enthusiasm for what I was doing. And back in my mind, I was still thinking, boy, I would love to have a shot at making that magic thing happen for me. So I was out and I drove to work one day, I was sitting in my car in the parking lot and I wasn't getting out of my car because it's like, what am I going to do? I've got this tough decision to make, I really want to do this one thing. But I don't have the confidence to do it. I'm worried about it. And that was a painful situation. If you have any life decision to make, that's going to have a big impact on you and other people, and you're struggling with it, that can be very uncomfortable.

So I was sitting there in my car and I heard a song come on the radio that I had never heard before. And I started listening to it. And it was so bizarre that it came up just at that moment when I was struggling with this decision. And in fact, I've never heard that song since on the radio. And some of the lyrics said, there comes a time when you have to ask yourself, Where am I going? What have I done? Are you taking the orders that you've been given? Are you breaking the rules with your own decisions? Isn't it time you tried? Find out later, that this is called Living the Life by Martin Sexton.

And I heard it and I had this wave of knowledge, of relief, of kind of breaking through the uncertainty and it actually, I had tears because of this overwhelming emotional feeling and I'm not much of a cryer, Gresh, but there it was. And I knew, hey, this is what I need to do. So I went in 10 minutes later, I was standing in my boss's office telling him I was quitting to become a magician. And that's what I did. Since then, I have pivoted a bit and I am now a professional speaker. And I speak on decision performance. And I use what I learned as a magician, the psychology of how our minds are fooled and the subconscious illusions we have.

I use that as the basis of teaching people how to make better decisions by overcoming those kinds of illusions, which are cognitive biases, distortions, and heuristics, which are shortcuts that we make at the subconscious level that can all take us off our path, move us away from our goals and keep us from living our values. So That's basically, that's my path and that's how I got to be where I am now as a business owner.

06:05 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate you for sharing that. And I think so many times we have these, I guess, crossroad decisions that we want to make. And so many times we have that voice, that intuition, maybe even that's saying go with the thing that may not be the popular path. And then we have a lot of times to say path and I'm a big believer in it's easier said than done a lot of times. But sometimes the worst pain is not in trying and failing or trying and things actually working out. But it's sometimes trying and never trying at all, I should say. And that fear or regret is often the worst pain that you can have because that voice might get quieter, but it never fully goes away.

So I appreciate you for talking about that, talking about a lot of those wrestling decisions that we have to make, But I love how you went through and just made that decision and how that has manifested itself into everything that you're doing. Because I've always heard that one of the big parts about magic and magicians is actually the I guess, I don't know if it's tricks is the right word to say that it can play with your mind and understanding that aspect of it is a huge part to being like a really, really great magician. So I love how that translates.

07:08 – Steve Haffner

Yeah. And it's all about from a magician's standpoint, it's about being able to manipulate and control your attention and your expectations and your assumptions and your preferences. And that all goes into what makes the illusion and actual illusion look like magic, but it's those same types of underlying things that go on in our mind as far as our attention and our assumptions and expectations that can lead us astray when it when you take it outside of a magic show and talk about how it affects us in our lives and our decision making.

So, yeah, it's been really valuable. And you know what, I have failed many times in my business, I have it hasn't been a smooth ride. And I don't think any entrepreneurship, any, any business journey of the smooth ride, you're going to fail, you know, but, but you set yourself up so that you can make adjustments and pivot and respond to the failure, in a way that'll move you towards your goals.

08:01 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And failure doesn't become a true failure, at least I think until you actually quit. And if you understand that, hey, this didn't work, but let me pivot to this or pivot to that, that provides those opportunities to still continue on. And so I know you mentioned pivoting in your business and talking more about the speaking and everything you're doing and how that overlaps into the magician and all of those aspects that you do. Could you take us through a little bit more of how you serve your clients and what you do to kind of support them?

08:26 – Steve Haffner

Sure. So I had, you know, I was doing magic. I was doing magic shows mostly for kids. I mean, that's what that was my favorite kind of magic to do. I did school shows and festivals and fairs and that kind of thing. But I wasn't getting to the income level that I wanted to get. I was making money, but I wanted to go to a higher level. So I got into corporate entertainment, doing mentalism programs. And that's a branch of magic that deals with psychological illusions, mind reading, and subliminal influence, and that kind of thing. And, still, I found out when I was doing corporate work, that most events, corporate events, and association events don't have an entertainment budget.

So that knocked out most of them right away as potential prospects, but they all have an education budget. Now they do one entertainment. Here's the interesting thing. They want entertainment. They just can't call it that. So they run to bring in speakers and keynote speakers and, you know, breakout sessions that are entertaining and engaging but they have an educational element too you know so people have takeaways as well and I'm like ah so and I knew that I had this background both in the corporate world and through magic understanding psychology of decision making that I could build on and become a speaker and then I could reach a wider audience and prospecting and lead generation would not be as difficult because people would be like, yeah, we hire keynote speakers.

What do you get? So that's why that's how I went into speaking. And I coined the term decision performance. You know, that has been an ongoing process, but I love where I have it now with decision performance because I think that people can kind of understand what it means just by hearing it. It's not a term that they've probably heard before. So it's fairly unique to me. And they don't quite know what it is because of the uniqueness. So that incentivizes them to learn more. So that's what I like about that branding message, I guess, of I help people with decision performance, which is your ability to make your decisions, achieve your goals, and align with your values.

10:24 – Gresham Harkless:

This is absolutely huge. And so would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique is that ability to translate that message from something we probably all enjoyed as kids into something that is really tangible for us to use as leaders and executives.

10:38 – Steve Haffner

Yeah, I think so. And I think that speaks to my variety of backgrounds because there's a lot of magicians that, you know, have never been in the corporate world, they've never been in that business environment. So because I had that 30-year career prior to making this jump, I think it gives me kind of unique perspective, taking insights from both of those and what I have learned by researching, reading about psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience, and combining that all, I think is a pretty unique combination of, I don't know, skills and perspectives and insights that I can bring to my programs.

11:17 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or habit that you have but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:28 – Steve Haffner

Yeah, I discovered the Heath brothers, Dan Heath and Chip Heath and they are authors. And a book of theirs that is a little lesser known because they're known from their book, Switch and Made to Stick. Those are 2 of their more popular titles, but they had one called Decisive, which just opened up so much to me as far as decision-making goes.

11:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:00 – Steve Haffner

Yeah, I would say to set tripwires. So this was something that was talked about in the book, Decisive by the Heath brothers, but it was something that I had already implemented earlier. And what that means is when you make a big decision about how you're going to move forward, say in your business, set tripwire, set reminders or checkpoints along the way that you're going to say at this particular point in time or this other particular milestone I am going to take a look at. I'm going to sit down and reevaluate the decision. What has happened regarding that decision since then? Do I need to make an adjustment?

Do I need to reevaluate? For example, I had decided I was going to work in the trade show market, doing entertainment for companies that were exhibiting at trade shows. And that's a big potential market. If you can get people to understand the value of having an entertainer in there who talks about your message. But anyway, I had decided I was going to go into that. I was gonna reach into that market. And after a year, I decided it was going to be June 30th of that year. If I had not made the inroads that I didn't and that I wanted to, and I set a specific monetary goal and I said, if I haven't made this much revenue from trade shows, then I'm going to pivot into speaking.

And so I did. And when I got to that point, I had, I had made some money in trade shows, but I didn't reach the level that I had set for myself, said, Okay, I am I'm going to now go into my speaking business. You know, that's what I did, I set that tripwire to reevaluate and take a look Because if you don't set those tripwires ahead of time, you're gonna forget. And you're just going to keep going, you may be going down the wrong path and not going towards the goals that you know that you set and that you want to achieve.

13:42 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So it has been a CEO mean to you.

13:51 – Steve Haffner:

And you know, you're talking about how to spend your resources and that's key. And I think that is what being a CEO really means to me is focusing on your resources, both your personal and your organizational resources, and how are you going to allocate those and be deliberate, make the decision, this is how I'm going to do it. And that speaks to productivity and reaching your goals and living your values and that's all based on how you allocate your resources.

14:22 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Steve, well I truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate all the awesome work you do and what I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

14:36 – Steve Haffner:

Oh absolutely. Yep, well they can get a hold of me at my website stevehafner.com and that's s-t-e-v-e-h-a-f-f-n-e-r.com And I have a small ebook out there that's available for free. It's called 7 Strategies for Making Great Decisions. So it's a quick read. It's like 25 pages and gives you some things to think about that you can improve if you want to improve your decision-making. Also, have a weekly newsletter and it's called Cognizance. And it's all about what basically what we talked about today, how to make better decisions, what's going on in our mind, what are some of the illusions and the biases and shortcuts that may be tripping us up, in how we go about our thinking and decision making.

And I know people think, ah, newsletter, I don't want any more email, but if that email is valuable to you and useful, maybe you do want it, right? So you can subscribe to that on my website as well. And you can unsubscribe, I'm not gonna spam you or anything like that if you sign up for the newsletter. So, and I'm doing lots, lots of speaking in the speaking industry, the speaking business is opening back up, COVID completely shut it down, at least as far as in-person goes, but I'm doing lots of virtual speaking, and, and in person one since people are scheduling into the summer and the fall and next year. So yeah, if you're, you know, for your organization, if you're looking for somebody to speak on decision performance, you can get ahold of me that way.

16:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Steve. We will have the links and information in the show notes to get ahold of you as well too, but you're absolutely right. You provided loads of amount of value into everything that you're doing and the understanding of self and how our mind works, which I think is huge because it manifests itself into our decisions, the things that we see in our lives, where we are, where we aren't, and just how we're able to kind of understand all those steps and how that works all in tandem. So truly appreciate you for the work you do. Of course, the time you took today and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:30 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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