David Shaft
Communication Strategist & Host of Conversations That Count • Conversations That Count
Detroit, Michigan, United States •
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About
Most communication speakers teach from theory. I teach from inside the work. As a President's Club banker at Rocket Mortgage, I run the conversations I'm teaching about every week — discovery calls, hard pivots, client trust repairs. As host of 58+ longform podcast interviews with executives, creators, and negotiators, I've built a working library of the moves the best communicators actually use, not the ones books say they should. Every keynote ends with the Try This Tomorrow framework: one specific action your audience runs the next morning, in the actual conversation they came in dreading. If you want a speaker who makes the room laugh and gives them something concrete enough to use Monday, that's the contract I'm here to honor.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (3)
Every leader has a conversation they're putting off. The underperformer who needs candid feedback. The colleague whose silence has gotten loud. The client who's owed a hard truth and a clear path forward. Most leadership advice tells you to have it. Almost none of it shows you how. After 58+ longform interviews with executives, creators, and culture builders, David has built a working library of the moves real leaders use to start, hold, and land the conversations most people walk away from. This keynote walks through three of them in detail and ends with the Try This Tomorrow framework: one concrete action every attendee runs the next morning, in the actual conversation they came in dreading. Best fit: executives, managers, and HR leaders whose work depends on communication that lands.
Key Takeaways
- Three specific moves to open, navigate, and close a hard conversation, drawn from 58+ interviews with executives and culture builders
- The "Try This Tomorrow" framework: one concrete communication action every attendee can run within 24 hours of leaving the room
- A diagnostic for identifying which conversation to have first, so leaders stop avoiding the one with the highest cost
Audience
Executives, managers, HR leaders, and anyone whose job depends on communication that lands
Format
Duration
Keynote (60 minutes), Workshop (90 minutes), or Half Day deep dive
Delivery
The biggest career moves rarely happen in the meeting everyone remembers. They happen in the conversations nobody bothered to track. The way you actually handle a 1:1. The question you risk asking in a team meeting. The line you hold in a hallway when no one's watching. Across 58+ podcast interviews with executives in finance, creative, and culture, the leaders who climbed fastest had the same small habits, and almost none of them were the obvious ones. This leadership keynote names the conversational habits that turn into trust, sponsorship, and authority — not as theory, but as specific reps you can run starting Monday morning. Audiences leave with the Try This Tomorrow framework and one rep tailored to where they're stuck right now. Built for leaders, managers, and operators who'd rather move their career through the quiet conversations than wait for the loud ones.
Key Takeaways
- The conversational habits that separate accelerating careers from stalled ones, with the surprises most professionals miss
- The "Try This Tomorrow" framework: one specific rep to run in the next manager conversation, peer exchange, or team meeting
- A practical lens for spotting which small daily conversations compound the fastest into trust, sponsorship, and authority
Audience
Leaders, managers, and ambitious professionals serious about turning communication into career velocity
Format
Duration
Keynote (60 minutes), Workshop (90 minutes), or Half Day deep dive
Delivery
Most sales training trains the pitch. The best closers know the pitch barely matters. What moves a deal is the discovery conversation that happens before anyone proposes anything, and the version most reps deliver is built to talk, not to listen. As a President's Club banker at Rocket Mortgage, David has spent years on the wrong side of dozens of those calls before fixing them. Add 58+ recorded interviews with executives, creators, and negotiators on the Conversations That Count podcast, and the pattern across high performers is unmistakable. This sales and negotiation keynote walks through the three discovery moves that consistently shift clients from polite interest to a committed yes, with the Try This Tomorrow framework as one specific move every attendee runs in their next discovery call. Best fit: sales teams, account executives, financial advisors, and anyone whose number depends on what happens before the proposal goes out.
Key Takeaways
- Three discovery conversation moves that consistently shift clients from polite interest to committed yes, drawn from real client encounters and 58+ interviews with high performers
- The "Try This Tomorrow" framework: one specific discovery move every attendee can run in their next sales call
- Why the pitch barely matters and what actually moves a deal — taught from inside a President's Club banker's daily client calls
Audience
Sales teams, account executives, financial advisors, and anyone whose revenue depends on client conversations
Format
Duration
Keynote (60 minutes), Workshop (90 minutes), or Half Day deep dive
Delivery
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