Nine Years of Doing Good Today!
Do Good Better Consulting turns 9 today.
Nine. Whole. Years.
Which means nearly a decade ago, a guy with too much caffeine, not enough business sense, and an irrational belief that he could help nonprofits fundraise better walked out of a stable job and said “I’m going to start a consulting firm.”
Nobody clapped. There was no ribbon-cutting. There was no launch event. There was a laptop on a kitchen table, a cell phone that didn’t ring for approximately three weeks, and a very patient wife who somehow didn’t say “are you sure about this?” out loud even though she was definitely thinking it.
And now, nine years later, I’m sitting in an actual office, with an actual team, having worked with and trained up thousands of organizations across the country, written two books, launched a podcast, built a training platform, keynoted more events than I can count, and somehow convinced nearly 10,000 of nonprofit professionals to read my emails and blog once a week without unsubscribing.
Well.
Most of them.
As a parent, I’m up to date on what it looks like for my kids to get through major milestones. So, what should be expected in year 9, if this business of mine was a kid? I just Googled "Key Milestones for 9-Year-Olds" and here's what we got:
1. Cognitive and School Skills: Kids read longer, more complex books, handle abstract ideas, and manage multi-step homework or book reports. Math skills often advance to decimals and long division. (Reading? CHECK. Math skill improving? NOPE)
2. Social and Emotional Growth: Friendships become very important, and children often prefer spending time with peers. This age can also bring a "9-year change" with increased self-criticism, mood shifts, or boundary testing. (Moody self criticism? CHECK)
3. Physical Development: Growth continues at a steady pace of about 2.5 inches and 7 pounds a year. (I’m not growing taller, but just looking at a box of Oreos DOES lead to 7 additional lbs. CHECK.)
On that doctor chart…looks like I’m right on schedule.
Health check aside, I need to say something I don’t say often enough:
Thank you.
Seriously, it almost doesn’t seem like enough words at all.
I’m going to get a little sentimental here and I’m not going to apologize for it. It’s my company’s birthday. I can cry if I want to.
This company exists because of you.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Every client who took a chance on a guy with a weird company name and a lot of opinions.
Every ED who said “I don’t know if we can afford a consultant” and then found a way.
Every board that let me into their retreat and actually listened.
Every donor who never met me but benefited because the organization I coached got better at asking, thanking, and showing up.
You shaped this company. Not my business plan - I didn’t really have one of those. (Still don’t. Don’t tell my accountant or Leah.) You shaped it by telling me what you needed. By showing me where the pain was. By trusting me with your problems, your fears, and your $19 board engagement budgets.
And I need to thank some specific humans too. Not all of them, because this blog would be 108 pages long and I’d still forget someone - but the ones who changed the trajectory.
The People Who Built This Thing (Whether They Know It or Not)
The first client who said yes. You know who you are. You didn’t have to take a chance on me. You did anyway. And that first “yes” became the foundation everything else was built on.
Leah - my partner in crime, my chaos wrangler, my operations manager who keeps the wheels on while I’m out drawing frameworks on cocktail napkins and bringing them back to the office whiteboards and looking for some sort of validation that “this is totally a cool thing we should do. This company is a two-person operation that feels like ten, and that’s because of her.
Shannon - who has lived with a man who cannot stop talking about nonprofit fundraising for the last 18 years and has only threatened to change the locks twice. Maybe three times. All totally justified. Would I suggest not being hyper communicative about doing something as crazy as quitting your job with benefits? No I would not. Does it help to have a spouse who make’s Job’s patience look like my daughter staring into a microwave waiting for water to boil? Yes. Yes it does.
The organizations that let me fail alongside them. Because I wasn’t always good at this. The early consulting sessions were - let’s call them “character-building.” I learned as much from the engagements that went sideways as the ones that went perfectly. Probably more.
The podcast guests who said yes when nobody was listening. The conference organizers who gave me a stage before I deserved one. The nonprofit professionals who forwarded my blogs to their colleagues and said “you need to read this guy” - that word-of-mouth built more business than any marketing strategy I’ve ever tried.
The blog readers. The DGU members. The people who reply to my emails with “PREACH” and “us too” and “holy crap, that’s exactly what we’re going through.” You turned a blog into a community. I didn’t do that. You did.
The organizations who invited me to sit on their boards and let me have a seat at the table and the opportunity to continuously dig in the trenches together. Seeing the sector from the governance and day-to-day fundraising challenges side has made me a better consultant, a better advocate, and a better do-gooder.
And to be honest, I really want to thank the people who challenged me. The board member who pushed back on my recommendation. The client who said “that’s not going to work here.” The feedback that stung. Because comfort doesn’t build better consultants. Friction and failure does.
Now, most people see the highlight reel. The keynotes. The books. The podcast. The social media posts where I look like I have it together.
Here’s what nine years ACTUALLY looks like:
Year 1: Sat at my kitchen table wondering if the phone would ever ring. It did. Eventually. But it allowed me to really deal with the day-today anxiety of owning a business.
Year 2: Got my first big client. Promptly overdelivered by approximately 400% because I didn’t know how to scope a project. Learned that lesson the expensive way.
Year 3: Wrote a book. Became an Amazon bestseller. Still the most surreal sentence I’ve ever typed. Oh, and launched The Do Gooders Conference. Filled a room with nonprofit professionals who wanted to learn and laugh at the same time. One of the best days of my career.
Year 4: A pandemic hit. Everything went virtual. Pivoted everything. Survived. Started a podcast during quarantine because apparently that’s how I process existential dread.
Year 5: Took The Do Gooders Conference on the road. Midwest cities galore. Met hundreds of nonprofit professionals in person. Remembered why I started this.
Year 6: Grew the consulting practice nationally. Started working with organizations I never thought would call. Found my niche – which turned out to be the thing I started with and unknowingly moved away from.
Year 7: Tore an Achillies. Felt really bad for myself. Wrote another best selling book. Figured out how to take a compliment. Started helping with boutique sized capital campaigns.
Year 8: Rebuilt Do Good YOUniversity. Went HAM on blogging. Honed in on a voice and an audience that actually wants to hear it. Started thinking about what comes next.
Year 9: This one. Right now. The year everything started to compound. The emails. The replies. The community. The speaking invitations from coast to coast. The realization that this little company from West Fargo is actually doing what it set out to do: help people do good, better.
It hasn’t been a straight line. Not. Even. CLOSE. But I’m finally figuring out how to move through the world as authentically caffeinated as possible and still loving this more and more every day.
Now, nine years also includes things I don’t post about.
The client I lost because I overpromised and underdelivered. The keynote that bombed. The season where I seriously considered going back to a “real job” because the inconsistency of self-employment was eating me alive. The months where cash flow was a prayer, not a plan. The imposter syndrome that still shows up sometimes, usually on Sunday nights, usually before a big week.
It includes the guilt of missing family stuff for work. The guilt of working on family stuff instead of client stuff. The guilt of not being able to help those who couldn’t help themselves and taking the stress harder than those who were up to their eyeballs in chaos.
Nine years is not nine highlight reels. It’s nine years of showing up on the hard days and hoping the good days outnumber them. And they have. But the hard ones shaped everything.
I wouldn’t trade any of it.
ALSO: Year 10 is next year.
September 14th, 2027. Save that date.
Do Good Better Consulting turns a decade old.
And what better way to celebrate a 10 years than bring back some of the best things we’ve ever created.
I’m not going to tell you everything yet. Because where’s the fun in that? But here’s what I will say:
The Do Gooders Conference is coming back.
The OG nonprofit event returns. Bigger. Better. And with friends and colleagues I’ve met over the last decade standing on the stage alongside me.
Just typing that out makes me giddy. Time for the bestest nonprofit conference of all time.
Oh, there’s so much more. A lot more.
But I’m gonna have to do my best vague Instagram influencer impression, or like that one person on Facebook that we all follow just to see how many “Stay tuned…big news coming” posts they write, and just tease for a bit.
But for now I just want to sit in the gratitude of nine years. And say thank you to the sector that took a chance on a guy with a kitchen table and a dream.
And after nearly a decade? I now know a few things:
The work matters. The people doing it are extraordinary. The sector is messy and underfunded and exhausting and beautiful and worth every ounce of energy I’ve poured into it.
Year 10 is going to be the biggest year this company has ever had. And I want you to be part of it.
Stay tuned. (lol!) Stay subscribed. (Is there a “like” button you can smash?) I can’t wait to have you riding shotgun for all of it!
YOUR TURN
One question today!
What’s the moment you knew you were in the right sector? The story, the person, the day that confirmed: this is what I’m supposed to be doing.
Tell me. Because on a week like this, I want to remember why we all said yes to this work. And your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.
Send me your moment: patrick@dogoodbetterconsulting.com
And if you want to be part of what’s coming in Year 10 - the conference, the community, and the thing I haven’t announced yet - start here: www.DoGoodYOUniversity.com The people inside DGU are going to hear about it first. Just saying.
Together, we’ve freaking got this.
For nine years and counting.
-Patrick
P.S. Nine years ago I didn’t have an office, a team, a podcast, two books, a training platform, or a single client. I had a kitchen table and a belief that this sector deserved better support. That belief hasn’t changed. The kitchen table has. And next September? We’re going to celebrate in a way this sector has never seen. Mark your calendar: September 14th, 2027. You’re going to want to be there. :-)
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