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Most professionals spend 80% of their workday communicating — and almost none have a system for getting better at it. Conversations That Count changes that.
Hosted by David Shaft — President's Club Banker at Rocket Mortgage, Dale Carnegie graduate, and Detroit storyteller — CTC delivers real conversations with executives, industry leaders, and everyday professionals who break down the communication skills that actually move careers forward.
New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Professional multi-camera video production on YouTube. Full audio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
What you'll learn:
• Workplace communication: better meetings, tougher feedback, and difficult conversations that don't blow up relationships
• Public speaking and presentations: how to open strong, handle Q&A, and keep any room engaged
• Professional networking: small talk that leads somewhere, LinkedIn outreach that gets replies, follow-up that builds real relationships
• Storytelling: how to tell your story in 60 seconds and communicate with impact in any room
• Leadership communication: negotiation, influence, and the Dale Carnegie principles that still work today
CTC is syndicated on the Mission Matters Network and features professionals across automotive, finance, tech, healthcare, and Detroit's growing entrepreneurship scene — because great communication looks different in every industry.
Whether you're a mid-career professional chasing a promotion, a manager who needs to run better meetings, or anyone who wants to communicate with more confidence, credibility, and impact — this show was built for you.
Free resource: Download the free Communication Playbook — 10 frameworks, scripts, and exercises to help you communicate like a pro. Get it at: https://ctcpodcast.media/free-playbook
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube — and never miss an episode.
Stories That Stick. Skills That Scale.
📍 📍 📍
Hook
The power of no can change your life.
📍 📍 We don't have a labor shortage; we have a talent shortage.
So actually, I took a quote from Candy that's one of
📍 📍 At the end of the day, we all know that embarrassment makes us shrink from the work. We all know that salesperson who the thing
📍 📍 gosh, this is gold. Spend major time with major people and minor time with minor people.
📍 📍 Say no. It's okay. Just say it one time, one time where it feels wrong to do. I guarantee you,
Everyone, welcome back to the podcast, "Conversations That Count." You're joined again with your host, David Shaft, and we're gonna recap Tuesday's episode with Candy Shaw, and this was a very exciting one. I really enjoyed being there for it and rewatching it. So, as always, I have handy-dandy notebook and eight frameworks that we're gonna go over that I thought were great takeaways and that we can all put into practice tomorrow.
Now, as always, if there's anything you heard, anything you enjoyed that maybe I missed, I didn't get to, please share it in the comments. Let us all know what your biggest takeaways were. So, with that being said, we're gonna start with framework one.
Framework 1 — Talent Shortage, Not Labor Shortage
Framework one: We don't have a labor shortage; we have a talent shortage.
So actually, I took a quote from Candy that's one of her principles. We don't really have a labor shortage as much as we have a talent shortage. People dial it in, drive by skill instead of true commitment to craft, right? So what that means is a lot of people are just showing up. They're doing the bare minimum.
They're doing just enough to be employed, right? A lot of us have people on our team, professionals who are showing up to work, but it doesn't mean they actually care. If you're choosing for that to be your career, the place you go to every day, show a lot of love to it. Ask yourself, what's the difference between someone who's just showing up to a job and someone who's really committed to mastering their skill or c- ma-mastering their craft?
Framework 2 — Stop Apologizing For Your Craft
Now, this is framework two. Your work should be a first choice career, not an apology. S- A story that she told that really hit me is when she described her dad and that he would tell a lot of people that he was a consultant because he was uncomfortable saying he worked in the beauty industry even though he was very successful at it, and his success changed and went to the next level when he embraced who he was and what he was doing.
At the end of the day, we all know that embarrassment makes us shrink from the work. We all know that salesperson who the thing holding them back is that they won't share with anyone they know what they do, that marketer who says they're in tech, or the, you know, fitness coach who says that they're in sales, ironically, right?
So just accept who you are. Embrace it. Be the best at it. Ask yourself, where in your life are you apologizing for what you do when instead, if you embraced it, you could be helping the people around you the same way you're helping all of your other clients? You know, to share my own personal story, I work in mortgages.
I'm a mortgage loan officer, right? I'm licensed in thir- in 32 states and I have a federal license. For a lot of my career, I was uncomfortable talking about this because mortgages, they have kind of a bad connotation on them. At the end of the day though, what I have been able to do is I've been able to help a lot of people pay off their debt, become financially free.
I've helped a lot of people become first-time homeowners or multiple-time homeowners. And because I was so afraid of sharing that with other people, it allo- it didn't allow me to help the people closest to me own homes, pay off their debt. Instead, they had to go to strangers for advice that I could have easily given them and helped them with.
So don't shirk away from helping others. It's important. Now,
Framework 3 — The Power Of No Can Change Your Life
framework three. This one is very special to me, and it's on the how the power of no can change your life. Gonna repeat that one more time. The power of no can change your life. So this is a special principle for Candy, right? It's the single two letters in our English language that teach us how to stop and how to start.
No doesn't mean never. No just means not right now, or it might even mean later in the right circumstances. Standing up to your no is the line you draw in your life. So this one is something that we talked about a lot on the episode. I don't know about everyone else on the, on the podcast. I know myself though, I overcommit to things all the time, and one of the best things that I've ever done in life is taking this principle and acting on it.
I say no to more things now than I ever have. There's nothing worse than the fear of FOMO, right? The fear of missing out and saying yes to a million things that I can't do, and all it does is it fi- it makes me find myself wore out, drained, and overcommitting and under-delivering. I've been able to get more done, do more for my family and friends, all just by being honest and saying no when I know I can't do it or even saying no if I might be able to, but just being safe and saying no rather than saying yes and having to say no later.
It's way better when you say no, and then you get to come back and say, "Actually, it turned out I had the time I didn't know I had, so I can say yes now." Do yourself the favor. So ask yourself, what's that one yes you're carrying right now that should have been a no? All right. Oh, I also love this one. This is, this is one of the best communication skills that we all need and even I can do better with.
Framework 4 — Two Ears, One Mouth In Direct Proportion
Use two ears, right? You got two of them, two ears, one mouth in proportion. A lot of the times we all wanna say our point Say what we're thinking, say our thing, when in reality we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Make sure you're listening way more than you're talking. Two to one ratio for a reason.
Here's what's important. In your last meeting, were you using your ears in the right proportion or were you using your mouth?
Framework 5 — Major Time With Major People
Framework five. Oh my gosh, this is gold. Spend major time with major people and minor time with minor people. You need to spend major time with the people who lift you, minor time with the people who don't.
Disconnect from what Candy calls the serotonin suckers. Amazing. There are so many of those people in your life, they drain your energy, drain your soul, and what ends up happening is when you're spending that time with the wrong people who drain you, all the people who you need to be pouring into and sharing your life with, they miss out on you, and they miss out on spending time with you.
Our professionals, as working professionals, our calendars get hijacked by minor people who concern our... consume our time all the time. You know, now that I've, I've gotten busier, and as you get better in your profession, you start finding that you have to actually turn down clients. I thought that was the craziest thing.
I would read all types of books, talk to all kinds of coaches, and they'd say it'd get to the point where there are just some people they can't work with. They have to turn business down. I thought they were crazy. No, there are people now where they'll drain so much of my time, whatever they're willing to pay me, it's not worth it, because I'm missing out on the people who really wanna work with me, who really want my service, who I can really help.
So be careful for those people. Best way to do it, audit your last seven days. Who got major time? Who got minor time? And was that distribution intentional or accidental? I guarantee you, when you do that audit, you'll know.
Framework 6 — Be Your Own CEO, Protect The Company Which Is You
Framework six: be your own CEO. Protect the company, which is you. Candy's principle, whether you run a company or not, you are a company.
Your brand, your health, your wellbeing, without that, you don't have anything. Remember, comparison is the thief of joy. Something that she compared it to was don't, don't compare yourself to someone's chapter 12 when you're still on chapter three. It's very easy to compare yourself to where someone else is and miss out on where you are.
Enjoy the process. So ask yourself, when's the last time you sacrificed yourself for some... your wellbeing, in fact, for someone else's deadline, to make someone else happy? Protect yourself. It's important.
Framework 7 — Choose Your Partners More Carefully Than Anything
Framework seven: choose your patterns more carefully than any other decision in your life. I'm gonna say that one more time.
Choose your part- Sorry, I said patterns. I thought I said something weird. Choose your partners more carefully than any other decision in your life. I would say choose your patterns too, right? Choose your habits carefully. But framework seven is on choosing your partners carefully. They're gonna be the biggest decision you make in your life.
Your partner decides your future or your past, whether your business partner or your life partner. Candy also talked about going into the wrong partnership and how her body told her before her head did. She... Her stomach was sick, her heart was giving her palpitations, and she listened. So this is really important because if we don't listen to our intuition when we're dealing with people, energy is real.
If you're not listening to what your body is telling you and how it's responding to the people you're around, that goes back to giving your time to the major people instead of the minor people. Don't go into partnership with someone who's minor and who's gonna drain you of your energy. Be very careful.
So this actually, and I actually talked about this in the episode. Before I move on, this is pretty important. So when I decided to do Conversations That Count without a co-host, do it independently, it was a big decision because I wanted to really take it serious and I wanted to go all the way, and I felt like this is a major move in my life.
So to share that with someone and not be 100% bought in and them not be 100% bought in, my body was telling me that it wasn't the right move, and it was a great decision to make. So with that being said, be careful with anyone who shares your brand name, 'cause just as they can build it up is just how they can tear it down.
Framework 8 — Chase What You Love, Not The Dollar
Framework eight: chase what you love, not the dollar. Now, this is a quote from Candy based on her principle too. If you're chasing just the dollar, you're chasing the wrong thing. The dollar comes when you chase what you're great at and what you enjoy. At the end of the day, when it stops being fun, she'll stop.
Until then, the joy is her strategy. Now, I know we hear that all the time from gurus, and they're like... You hear the gurus who are like, "No, you have to do whatever makes the money." And then you hear from other gurus, "No, you have to do what you're passionate about, what you love." At the end of the day, you really do have to enjoy the process.
It might sound crazy. You don't necessarily have to enjoy the specific act, but you have to enjoy the process of where it's taking you. Sometimes you have to do the thing that you don't like, but you have to be bought into the joy that thing is gonna bring you later on. If you just hate the entire process though, you hate where it's taking you, you're gonna be miserable.
You have to stop. You have to change direction. So at the end of the day, a lot of professionals were conditioned to optimize that dollar first. The money's important, but we have to optimize for fulfillment as well
And I, again, I can't stress it enough. I know that's easier said than done, especially when you're in the thick of it. But I guarantee you there are ways to find fulfillment. And again, fulfillment might not be in doing that specific thing in the moment. But that thing you're doing in the moment, even if you don't like it, you have to use that thing to then take you to what is gonna fulfill you.
But if that thing isn't moving you towards what's gonna fulfill you, you're wasting your time. So you have to find love in the process. So again, back to framework two, if you're not chasing what you love, you're also apologizing for what you do. Both habits drain you the same as well. So with that being said,
Try This Tomorrow
try this tomorrow challenge.
Cha- try this challenge tomorrow. Why'd I say that so weird? Why'd I write that down so weird? Practice saying no this week one time intentionally, without guilt, without explanation. Notice the change in 24 hours after you do it. Say no. It's okay. Just say it one time, one time where it feels wrong to do. I guarantee you, give it 24 hours, it'll feel like the best thing you ever did.
Thank you everyone for watching another episode of Conversations That Count. Sometimes what we find is YouTube will unsubscribe us from our favorite channels, as well as when we finish an episode, we'll have enjoyed it so much, we'll forget to hit the subscribe button because we'll be so caught up with it.
My ask is so that we can keep the channel free, so that I can continue bringing you amazing guests, continue bringing you amazing practices that improve all of our skills as we go into every day and every week. If you can hit that subscribe button, if you can like, share, it goes a very long way to, again, keeping the channel free, allowing us to continue providing you amazing content.
And my promise is I will only continue to improve the content, improve the guests, and improve the best practices every single time. I will make sure every week and every month that it only gets better for you. So again, thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode