Experience that spans industries and roles.
I've spent my career helping people and businesses grow. With over two decades of diverse experience, I've worked in nearly every environment imaginable — corporate jobs, sales teams, retail operations, hospitality management, and federal government positions. That breadth gives me a perspective most consultants don't have: I've been on every side of the table — as an employee navigating a career, a leader managing teams, and a consultant advising owners and executives.
Before Piedmont Avenue, I held consultative sales and technology positions at LexisNexis (six years conducting CLE presentations at top law firms across the West Coast), United Healthcare, Providian Financial, Nordstrom, Limited Brands, Constant Contact, the YMCA, and Ben & Jerry's. Each role taught me how a different kind of business actually operates — what scales, what breaks, and what's worth borrowing for the next one.
Things don't just happen. You have to create opportunities for luck to occur.
In 2011 I opened the doors at 3873 Piedmont Avenue in Oakland with a clear thesis: bring the Fortune 500 playbook to small and midsize businesses, but deliver it the way it actually works — embedded, hands-on, six-month minimum, and grounded in the local business community. Fifteen years later the office is still on Piedmont Avenue, and the thesis hasn't changed. What's changed is the proof: Ben & Jerry's, Orange Theory, Holiday Inn, Brinno Camera, McDowall Cotter, Curry Pizza House, and dozens more.
The firm grew slowly and intentionally. A second arm — Professional Connector — was launched to formalize what was already happening informally: monthly networking dinners introducing clients to one another, to investors, to vendors, to attorneys, to journalists. Today Professional Connector produces 50–75 events a year and serves a community of over 8,000 Bay Area entrepreneurs. It's not a side project. It's the top-of-funnel engine that powers everything we do.
Where psychology meets business strategy.
What sets the firm apart is the combination of two worlds most consultants only operate in one of. My doctorate in Clinical Psychology gives me a working understanding of how customers, teams, and decision-makers actually behave — the motivations, the friction, the barriers that keep people stuck. Twenty-plus years of business strategy and real-world consulting gives me the practical framework to turn that understanding into action.
The result is the ability to see the whole picture — not just what to do, but how to clear the internal and organizational obstacles that make most strategy fail in execution. Clarity creates momentum. Momentum produces results.
Clarity creates momentum, and momentum leads to tangible results.
The values below aren't decorative. They are how every engagement is structured and how every difficult conversation gets resolved.
A note on credentials: David Mitroff, Ph.D. holds a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology but is not a licensed psychologist or psychotherapist. All consulting and coaching services focus on career development, leadership growth, business strategy, and personal success — with a forward-looking, action-oriented approach.
David Mitroff, Ph.D.
David is a fourth-generation San Franciscan, born in San Francisco and raised in Walnut Creek. His credential stack is unusually deep for a consulting firm of this size — and it's the foundation of how the firm thinks about business problems. A doctorate in Clinical Psychology with coursework in Business Administration, Legal Studies, Marketing, and Culinary Arts gives him a working understanding of how customers actually make decisions — the discipline marketing departments most often skip.
Today David teaches Marketing and Entrepreneurship in UC Berkeley's Global Business programs. He is a Google for Startups Accelerator mentor. He has delivered two TEDx talks — "When Are You Good Enough to Become an Industry Expert" at TEDxAndrews (2020) and "How Leaders Create Luck" at TEDxPurdueU (2022) — and has spoken at conferences and companies internationally, including Google, AT&T, the Restaurant Executive Summit, the Eastern Food Service Conference, HardwareCon, and the Association of Defense Counsel, with engagements in Korea, China, Turkey, Mexico, Dubai, and across Europe.
He has been a featured media expert for NBC, ABC, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, California Lawyer, The Meeting Professional, and Hospitality Technology. He is the author of five business growth books — including Online Business Growth Strategies, The Event Effect, Law Firm Business Growth Strategies, Critical Success Factors, and StartUp Business Growth Strategies — and serves as a registered advisor for the East Bay Small Business Development Center and an expert witness on marketing and business practices through Round Table Group and ExpertConnect Litigation Support.
Credentials at a Glance
His personal tagline — "Things don't just happen, you have to create opportunities for luck to occur" — is also the operating philosophy of the firm. We don't believe in waiting for inbound. We believe in building the network, the system, and the brand that makes inbound inevitable.
Read David's Full Bio →The people who do the actual work.
David leads the firm, but no single consultant does every engagement. The right team for a restaurant client is not the right team for a law firm or a luxury retailer. Below are the senior practitioners who run our verticals — each with deep operational experience in the industries they advise.
Six months, embedded, outcome-obsessed.
Engagements run a six-month minimum because shorter cycles produce strategy without execution and execution without measurement. Real growth is a compounding process — and compounding requires sustained attention, not project sprints. Within that engagement, work tracks across four operating modes:
- Career Clarity & Advancement For founders, executives, and rising leaders: identify the right path forward, optimize how you show up online (resume, LinkedIn, brand presence), and create the opportunities that align with your goals.
- Leadership Development Strengthen executive presence, build a First 90 Days plan for new roles or promotions, and develop the team-management capability to scale without losing the culture that got you here.
- Business Growth Coaching Build the strategies to market, scale, and lead your business effectively — across brand awareness, customer loyalty, and lead generation. This is the firm's flagship offering and the longest track record.
- Personal Growth & Confidence Break through the limiting beliefs and operational habits that keep capable people stuck. Drawing on the psychological work that grounds the rest of the practice.
Where We Work
The firm operates a hybrid model. Most clients work with us virtually from anywhere in the world — the format is built for it, and most of our consulting happens this way. For clients in California, we frequently meet in person in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and travel for on-site work as engagements warrant. The result is the flexibility of online consulting without losing the ground-truth value of being in the room when it matters.
The result is what we call compounding clients: businesses that finish a six-month engagement and renew, not because they're dependent on us, but because the runway we've built keeps producing returns. Roughly half of the active book is composed of returning clients on Advisor-tier maintenance contracts.
Explore Our ServicesOutside validation.
We don't lead with awards because awards don't grow client businesses. But for the prospects who care: a partial list of where the firm and the founder have been recognized over the past several years.
- 2022 TEDxPurdueU — "How Leaders Create Luck" TEDx · West Lafayette, IN
- 2020 TEDxAndrews — "When Are You Good Enough to Become an Industry Expert" TEDx · South Carolina
- Featured Featured Media Expert NBC · ABC · Forbes · Inc. · Washington Post · Chicago Tribune
- Industry Press Trade publication coverage California Lawyer · The Meeting Professional · Hospitality Technology
- Intl Keynote engagements abroad Korea · China · Turkey · Mexico · Dubai
- Corporate Speaker for Google & AT&T Plus Restaurant Executive Summit · HardwareCon
- Ongoing Listed: Top Social Media Marketing Agencies in Oakland Expertise.com
- Ongoing Listed: Top Oakland Consulting Companies Built In
- Active Business Advisor for City and County of San Francisco SF SBDC
- Active Business Advisor for Los Angeles Regional Small Business Development Center SF SBDC
- 6 Years Google for Startups Accelerator Mentor Google
- Featured Local editorial features & interviews SF Chronicle · Diablo · East Bay Express