Brett Hoogeveen

Leadership Keynote Speaker on Workplace Culture, Motivation, Customer Service, Sales & Decision Making

Expert on

  • Motivational
  • Sales
  • Leadership
  • Customer Experience
  • Corporate Social Responsibility 

Fee Range

$10,000–$15,000

Travels from

NE, US

Biography

Brett Hoogeveen, CSP is a nationally recognized leadership and workplace culture expert, keynote speaker, podcast host, and co-founder of BetterCulture, a leadership development and technology firm that helps organizations build better leaders, stronger teams, and thriving workplace cultures.

Brett helps organizations turn culture into a competitive advantage with practical tools, proven strategies, and a clear belief that better culture leads to better business. Over the past decade, he has trained thousands of leaders and partnered with hundreds of executive teams, from entrepreneurial startups to Fortune 500 companies, helping them improve leadership effectiveness, employee engagement, and workplace performance.

A graduate of the University of Kansas in civil engineering, Brett made an early career pivot into healthcare leadership and became the youngest executive at QLI, a nationally renowned organization that earned the title of #1 Best Place to Work in its metro area five times in a row. That experience shaped Brett’s conviction that culture is not a soft concept – it is a measurable business advantage.

Brett is one of fewer than 1000 Certified Speaking Professionals worldwide. His programs are engaging, practical, story-driven, and designed to help audiences think differently, lead more intentionally, and create workplace cultures where people and performance can thrive.

Brett lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife and three delightfully spunky kids. He also dabbles in angel investing, enjoys nighttime suburban mountain bike rides, and believes – according to absolutely no official ranking system – that he may be one of the top 10 Airzooka sharpshooters on Earth.

Speaker Videos

THE LEADERSHIP MINDSET: IMPROVE THE WAY YOU THINK AND LEAD WITH SEVEN TRANSFORMATIVE PRINCIPLES

In the modern world of work, organizations understand the value of culture. Culture drives talent; talent drives quality; quality drives customers; and customers drive revenue. But what does it take to actually drive culture? It starts with leaders who think differently about their role, their people, and the conditions that allow employees to do great work.

In this highly interactive session, Brett introduces a practical mental model for leadership based on BetterCulture’s Seven Principles of Leadership. These principles grew out of real-world experience creating award-winning workplace cultures and have been used to help leaders build trust, strengthen engagement, improve retention, and create teams people are proud to be part of.

Participants will explore current workplace trends, proven leadership practices, and practical tools they can use immediately. The session is designed for leaders who want more than inspiration; they want a clearer way to think, lead, coach, recognize, hold standards, and build a culture that supports stronger business results.

Takeaways:

  • State the business case for building a stronger workplace culture.
  • Learn seven leadership principles that improve trust, pride, engagement, and performance.
  • Understand how recognition, standards, accountability, and pride influence employee motivation and retention.
  • Leave with practical leadership behaviors that can be applied immediately with teams.

THE CORE VALUES CON JOB: WHY YOUR CORE VALUES AREN'T EARNING THEIR KEEP

Core values are everywhere – on websites, walls, welcome packets, and conference room posters. Yet few organizations can confidently answer a simple question: are your people living those values more consistently today than they were three years ago? If not, the problem may not be the values themselves. The problem is that the values are being treated as statements of belief instead of tools for improvement.

That is the core values con job: values that look important, sound meaningful, and appear to define the culture, but rarely change how work gets done. In this thought-provoking and practical session, Brett challenges the common assumption that declaring values is enough and shows leaders how to use existing values as a working system for behavior change.

Using BetterCulture’s Values Performance System, attendees learn how to translate values into observable behaviors, replace pass/fail thinking with progression, provide tools for development, reinforce improvement, and integrate values into everyday leadership and performance conversations. The goal is not to rewrite the values. The goal is to make them earn their keep.

Takeaways:

  • Assess whether core values are improving behavior or simply stating intent.
  • Translate broad values into clear, observable workplace behaviors.
  • Replace pass/fail values thinking with a progression-based approach to improvement.
  • Integrate values into meetings, feedback, recognition, coaching, and performance conversations.

STARS VS. VACUUMS: THE INVISIBLE BATTLE FOR THE HEART OF YOUR WORKPLACE CULTURE!

Every workplace has people who lift the culture and people who drain it. Brett calls them Stars and Vacuums. Stars elevate standards, bring positive energy, strengthen trust, and make the people around them better. Vacuums pull energy, morale, trust, and productivity out of the room – sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically, but almost always at a real cost.

While culture is often discussed as a top-down leadership responsibility, this session makes the case that culture is also shaped from the bottom up. Frontline employees, individual contributors, managers, and informal influencers all help determine whether the workplace becomes more energizing or more exhausting over time.

Brett helps audiences see the invisible battle for culture with fresh clarity, humor, and practical examples. Participants learn how to amplify the influence of Stars, reduce the damage caused by Vacuums, and take personal ownership for the attitudes and behaviors that create stronger teams, better employee experiences, and healthier workplace cultures.

Takeaways:

  • Identify the behaviors of Stars that strengthen team performance and culture.
  • Recognize how Vacuums damage trust, energy, morale, and productivity.
  • Understand how employees at every level can shape culture from the bottom up.
  • Commit to one behavior that improves personal, professional, and team success.

STUPID THINGS LEADERS DO: A GUIDE TO NOT RUINING YOUR COMPANY CULTURE

The fastest way to become a better leader is not always to become brilliant. Sometimes it is to stop doing the unintentional stupid things that quietly damage trust, drain engagement, and drive good people away. Many leadership problems are not caused by bad intentions. They are caused by blind spots, habits, assumptions, and behaviors leaders do not realize are costing them credibility.

In this refreshingly honest and highly relatable session, Brett takes a clear-eyed look at the common leadership mistakes that derail culture and performance. Drawing from years of work with thousands of leaders and dozens of Best Places to Work organizations, he uses real stories, humor, and practical insight to show what not to do – and what to do instead.

Audiences will recognize a few uncomfortable truths, laugh at the human side of leadership, and leave with specific leadership swaps they can put into practice immediately. The message is simple: leaders do not have to be perfect, but they do need to stop getting in their own way.

Takeaways:

  • Understand how small leadership missteps can sabotage culture and engagement.
  • Identify leadership mindsets that damage trust and workplace relationships.
  • Recognize avoidable behaviors that contribute to disengagement and unwanted turnover.
  • Apply simple leadership swaps that build trust, pride, accountability, and effort.

DECISION FAIL: TOP BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING MISTAKES (AND HOW SMART LEADERS AVOID THEM)

Few things are more fundamental to success in life and business than making smart decisions. Yet the human brain is hard-wired to lead us astray. We misjudge risk, jump to conclusions, overvalue the wrong information, overlook better options, and often feel most confident at exactly the wrong moments.

Why do some leaders make decisions with clarity while others get trapped by overconfidence, emotion, groupthink, or faulty assumptions? What do great decision-makers understand about the human mind? And how can leaders improve the quality of their thinking before the stakes get too high?

In this lively and practical session, Brett explores decision-making, probability, cognitive bias, and the hidden traps that cause smart people to make flawed choices. Audiences leave with a better understanding of how they think – and simple tools to challenge assumptions, slow down when needed, reduce bias, and make smarter decisions under pressure.

Takeaways:

  • Understand the difference between fast intuition and slower, more deliberate reasoning.
  • Identify common cognitive biases that cause smart people to make irrational decisions.
  • Learn practical ways to challenge assumptions, reduce overconfidence, and improve judgment.
  • Commit to decision-making habits that support better personal and professional outcomes.