We were lucky to catch up with Donny Daughenbaugh recently and have shared our conversation below.
Donny, appreciate you joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
This is going to sound kinda crazy but the thing that both of my parents did right was to show me what I’m not supposed to do. I grew up with Alcohol and drug abuse in my house until high school and there were so many days that I said to myself “this isn’t how life is supposed to be” so I changed my trajectory myself. Don’t get me wrong my parents tried and I’m sure it was their best but seeing a constant struggle growing up left a deep impression on me. I am constantly working on tempering my anger so that when I respond to my 15 year old son or my 6 year old daughter, they see the type of response I’d want them to give, or for their partners to give when they begin dating. Slow to anger, slow to respond but quick to listen. I work on this every day and some days I nail it while others, I’m on the struggle bus!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I work for a wonderful nonprofit that helps Veterans & their families and have for 12 years. I started as volunteer and eventually, through dedication, hundreds of travel hours, speaking engagements and small successes, was promoted to the Senior VP of Administration & Development. I didn’t join a nonprofit team to get rich but where I lack in potential earnings, my “feel good” payments are constant. No 2 days are ever the same nor are the challenges we face, individually or collectively but we’re always pushing ourselves to be successful and believe that failure isn’t an option. Being a peer mentor and advocate means a lot of time emailing, texting and on the phone but I have 8 people who told me that over the years, I’m the reason they didn’t take their own life. I’m striving to make that number stay constant and even increase so these warriors can live a long life and share their stories and experiences with others.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As I said before I grew up very poor. We got state delivered boxes of food, we shopped at Goodwill for school clothes and even got Christmas presents from our teachers in Elementary school because they knew we had nothing. To top this off, when I was 10-16, we (My 2 brothers I lived with) had chores around the house. Dishes, mowing and general cleaning up around the house stuff. If we didn’t do them, we’d often find ourselves grounded for 1 week to 1 month! If we DID do them, we would earn $5 in allowance. The catch? The $5 was food stamp coupon. It wasn’t the EBT debit card like now, oh no. This money looked like a bigger version of Monopoly money and we were always embarrassed to spend it at the local gas station or store, so we’d wait in the back until nobody was around then run up to the register and buy what we wanted. The bonus here is that the change came back in actual dollars and cents, not food stamps.
I like to joke that I have “poor person PTSD” because I don’t like to spend money BUT we live in an amazing house, have nice vehicles and my kids don’t want for much. I still want them to be appreciative and grateful but it’s such a sense of pride for me being able to buy them nice clothes, school yearbooks and know that when their friends come over that they’re proud of where we live.
My wife and I work hard for our money and I’m more of a keeper, she’s more of a spender but I’m constantly looking around and giving a pat on the back to see where being conservative with money can get you!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I work for a nonprofit and I travel all over the US sharing my story and the story of our organization. I have a reputation of being dependable, almost to a fault. If I tell someone I’m going to be there for work, personal etc., I’m there 100% of the time. I may be a few minutes late, but I always stick to my word. I think we’ve lost some of that dependability in our current society. A reputation is like credit. You can spend years making it really good and it can be dissolved in minutes. The other thing I credit with my reputation is that my story doesn’t change. I don’t embellish my story after all this time and although I’m constantly adding to it with more present info, my core story remains the same. Embellishment or adding things that never happened is another great way for a storyteller to lose their base. If you tell the truth, you only have to remember the truth, if you tell lies than you have to remember which ones you told to which person / group or soon you’ll have people scratching their heads about what you’re saying.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @donnydaugh1
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donny.daughenbaugh
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-daughenbaugh-msm-b960073a/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DonnyDaughenbau