Professional practice at the speed of change
I build frameworks that help professionals see their own practice clearly — what they're actually competing on, what the market reads when it looks at them, and where the incoherence lives.
For 45 years I've worked with people who sell expertise for a living. I've founded and sold companies, run marketing for a $45 billion advisory business, helped some of the world's largest firms rethink how they go to market, and made every interesting mistake along the way.
Right now I work with commercial real estate practitioners navigating a market where the old signals don't carry and AI is rewriting the rules of who gets seen.
A diagnostic framework for professional practice
This started as a 30,000-word paper. Then it became 3,000 words. The diagnosis didn't change. It just got sharper.
The framework applies to commercial real estate, but the structural logic is portable. If you sell expertise for a living, you'll recognize yourself in here somewhere.
Commercial real estate has two markets: the institutional slice and the long tail. The boundary between them is moving, and AI is accelerating that movement in both directions.
The real threat to your practice is not elimination. It is decomposition — the unbundling of your role into components that can be sourced, priced, and replaced.
There are four operating systems. Each has its own basis of competition, economics, time signature, signal pattern, and delegation depth. When those five dimensions align, you become legible to the market. When they don't, you're broadcasting noise.
The customer has a thesis. You execute it.
The customer has a problem. You help them think about it.
Your mandate. Their trust. Ongoing.
These are the programs I've built and delivered over the past 25 years. They share a common intellectual engine: how professionals compete, create value, and stay coherent in markets that keep moving.
Each program is delivered live via Zoom, supported by reading assignments, video, and structured exercises. Current participants access materials through the client portal.
A practitioner laboratory where you diagnose your current operating system, find the incoherence, and build the instruction set your AI tools need to produce work that carries your signal.
The framework is here. The Lab is where you do the work.
Everything I think is important about ethical persuasion, pulled into one place. How to create value in every conversation. How trust builds. How to stop selling and start being the person people want to buy from.
This program has been delivered in various forms since 2000. The diagnosis hasn't changed. The tools have.
The corporate refugee's guide to building a knowledge-based practice. Superpowers, niche, business model, packaging IP, pricing, pipeline. How to turn what you know into a business that makes you smile.
I've lost track of how many people have copies of this. It keeps getting revised because the principles hold and the specifics keep moving.
What it looks like to take everything you've built — your expertise, your experience, your reputation — and reinvent it for what comes next. Not a midlife crisis. A deliberate act of professional architecture.
Available on request
A framework for making better decisions under uncertainty. How to separate information from noise, how to know what you value, and how to stop confusing intentions with commitments.
If any of this resonates, get in touch. I don't do sales calls. I have conversations.
I'm Kevin Hoffberg.
I've reinvented myself many times.
A few of those times, it was just a change of scenery. Those changes are tactical. I didn't have any significant new insights or ideas. I wasn't trying to roll differently or serve some other purpose. I just wanted to do what I was doing somewhere else.
It was the real deal more than a few times. New questions needed answering, and new insights kept picking at my imagination. I felt like my superpowers needed a stiffer workout. I wanted to see myself and have the world see me differently.
I started in the "advice-giving" business in 1981, with a big chunk of that time devoted to helping other professional service providers build better businesses. Over the following 45 years, I did the whole circle: founded, run, and sold advice-giving businesses; consulted to advice-giving businesses; and hired advice-givers in my role as an entrepreneur, owner, and senior executive. I think I know about selling intangibles as well as anyone.
Some quick highlights. I have . . .
To give you an idea, here are some of the firms I have advised.
Arthur Andersen, Advisor Software, Bank of America, Barra, Bristol-Myer Squibb, CapitalOne, CIBC, Colgate Palmolive, Colonial First State (Aus), Commonwealth Bank (Aus), EDS, Ernst & Young, Fidelity Investments (FESCO), Fleet Bank, KPMG, Lloyds / TSB, Microsoft, Russell Investments, Teletech, Trimble, Union Bank, United Utilities, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo Bank, Wells Fargo Mortgage, Young & Rubicam.
While working with those companies, I had the chance to observe and work with great leaders and those who are not so great. I learned firsthand what great team cultures feel like and what it feels like to work on teams and organizations where the culture sucked.
I started getting serious about marketing when advising Young & Rubicam in 1998. At the time, they were one of the world's premier advertising, PR, and branding firms. Years later, I ran one of the most highly regarded marketing teams in asset management.
There are more lessons learned from these clients than I can recount here. Having said that, if I were to boil it all down to just a few points, they would be these:
Forty-five years of building, advising, and reinventing.
Over 45 years I've authored training programs delivered to more than 25,000 people, published widely on decision-making, marketing, sales, innovation, and customer experience, and spoken at conferences worldwide. Selected works include Decision Quality Leadership, Selecting a Go-to-Market Strategy, Firing Up the Customer, and the Leadership and Decision Making whitepaper used by academics around the world. Program titles include Selling at the Speed of Change, Coaching at the Speed of Change, Good Decision Selling, and True Pro Selling.
Program materials for current participants.
Materials in development. Check back soon.
