A log cabin with lit windows on the shore of a forest lake at golden hour, reflected in the calm water

Solid growth is built, not chased.

Cabin Consulting is the practice of David B-R — an international business consultant who supports agencies, non-profits, and startups strategically scale, sharpen their story, and turn relationships into revenue.

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Client Portfolio

Trusted in the room where deals & decisions happen

Current

Flex BundlesShopify app for complex bundles, native to checkout and fulfillment — business development & sales consulting.

Current

BubHubPlatform that shows what’s building — plans, venues, campus nights — before the moment arrives. Fractional consulting, a few sharp hours a month pointed at growth.

Current

Gun Violence ArchiveNon-profit research group tracking gun violence in America — communications director: social, media, and the daily public ledger.

Vaulted Oak / Barrel HoldingsWebsite support & development agency for Shopify and WordPress, part of Barrel Holdings — a holding company for specialized agencies.

Big SeaMarketing & web design agency for nonprofits, healthcare, and purpose-driven organizations — story-driven campaigns and strategic websites.

CommunalAll-in-one software for community & member organizations — memberships, programs, bookings, and giving on a single member record.

Reserved For Future Clients

Your company could be next…

Selected work

Case studies

Three engagements, written up in full — the problem, the move, and what came of it.

Communal

A cabin is honest work: a solid foundation, no wasted space, everything built to last. That’s how I run a consulting practice.

No account-manager telephone game. When you hire Cabin Consulting, you work directly with David — the person who builds the strategy is the person in the meeting, on the call, and closing the deal.

The practice is deliberately small: a handful of engagements at a time, each one senior-led and hands-on.

What I do

Four ways I help companies grow

Every engagement is scoped to the actual problem — not a package pulled off a shelf.

Business development & partnerships

Pipeline built properly: target accounts, warm introductions, outreach that respects people’s time, and partnership structures where both sides actually win.

Pipeline & outreachBrand partnershipsDeal structure

Digital marketing & media strategy

Positioning and go-to-market thinking for media and marketing businesses — what to say, who it’s for, and where it will actually land.

PositioningGo-to-marketInfluencer & creator media

Communications & social

High-volume, high-stakes communication handled daily — social channels, public data, and media moments where accuracy and speed both matter.

Social managementPublic communicationsContent cadence

Fractional consulting

Senior thinking without a senior hire. A set number of hours each week or month, embedded with your team and accountable to real outcomes.

Embedded advisoryFounder supportSales enablement

Working together

Three shapes an engagement can take

Start with whichever fits the problem. Most clients begin small and grow the scope once the work proves itself.

Fractional retainer

A standing block of hours each month — BD, partnerships, or advisory — with clear priorities set together and progress you can see.

Best for ongoing growth

Defined project

A fixed scope with a fixed end: launch a partnerships program, rebuild a pitch, stand up a communications operation.

Best for a clear goal

Advisory sessions

Short, direct counsel for founders and leads — a second set of senior eyes before a pitch, a hire, or a big decision.

Best for a gut-check

About

The person behind the practice

David’s career has run through digital marketing and media on both sides of the border — and a stretch in Mexico in between — which tends to make for practical advice: what works in a boardroom in NYC still has to survive contact with the real world.

Today that means business development and partnerships work with an influencer marketing agency, serving as communications director for a national research non-profit, and fractional consulting for founders who need senior help without a full-time hire.

The through-line is relationships. Deals, audiences, and reputations are all built the same way a cabin is — one solid, honest piece at a time.

Have something worth building?

Tell me what you’re working on and where it’s stuck. If I can help, I’ll say how. If I can’t, I’ll say that too — and point you at who can.

Email hello@cabinconsulting.ca

All case studies

Case study

From Calgary to Edmonton: landing the federation

Communal · Market expansion & partnerships · 2020–2023

Membership management software for non-profits, community associations, and recreation centres.

The problem

Communal had a proven platform and a home base in Calgary, but no presence in Edmonton — a market where community leagues don’t buy one at a time. Edmonton’s 163 community leagues sit under a single federation, the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues (EFCL). Win the federation and you win the city; miss it and you’re selling league by league, forever.

EFCL, for its part, was running a 163-chapter network on fragmented data and manual work: inconsistent member records across leagues, dues reconciled by hand between the federation and each chapter, and no real-time visibility at the parent level — including the membership numbers its primary funder reporting depended on.

The move

I didn’t arrive in Edmonton as a salesperson — I was already there as a volunteer, with The Meadows Community League. That put me inside the exact problem Communal solves: I could see, from a league’s side of the table, where the membership data, the dues, and the paperwork actually broke down.

The Meadows became an early Edmonton adopter, and it worked. A few other Edmonton leagues followed, and together they built the proof of concept: real leagues, in EFCL’s own backyard, running better on the platform. That changed the conversation with the federation. The pitch was no longer software features — it was fit, with evidence. Communal’s federated model (central oversight for the parent organization, real autonomy for each local league) matched how EFCL actually operates, and it answered their two most expensive pains directly: the manual dues reconciliation and the lack of visibility across the network.

That work landed the deal: EFCL adopted Communal as its federated membership platform.

The result

Per Communal’s published EFCL case study:

163 leagues supported on one federated system, with seamless onboarding
500+ admin hours saved annually — the equivalent of a full-time role, freed from manual dues reconciliation (now automated through Stripe)
100% real-time data access — EFCL can pull membership sales numbers instantly for funder reporting
Membership sales increased at every league using the platform

“We no longer have the burden of financial reconciliation for 163 Community Leagues… We have been very happy with their platform and all the positive changes it has brought for EFCL and the Leagues we support.”
Darlene Dudley, EFCL

What it shows

The right anchor partnership is distribution. One federation deal, properly landed, did what years of one-off selling couldn’t — it put Communal at the centre of an entire city’s community-league infrastructure.

Full case study: Communal — EFCL Federated Membership Management

All case studies

Have something worth building?

Tell me what you’re working on and where it’s stuck. If I can help, I’ll say how. If I can’t, I’ll say that too — and point you at who can.

Start a conversation

All case studies

Case study

A chance meeting, the right introductions, a launched app

BubHub · Introductions & launch support · Ongoing advisory

An app for organizing, broadcasting, and discovering local social events.

The problem

BubHub started the way a lot of good products do: a founder with a clear idea and no team around it. Payton was building an app to help people organize, broadcast, and discover local social events — your social circles, your “bubbles,” made visible. What he didn’t have was a brand, a development partner, or a path from idea to the App Store. Founders at that stage don’t usually fail on the idea; they fail on the build-around — the wrong agency, the wrong shop, the wrong order of operations.

The move

This one didn’t start in a boardroom. I met Payton at Harpo’s, near Mizzou, while I was on a road trip across the States — a chance conversation we actually stayed in touch after. So when BubHub reached the point where it needed real help, I wasn’t a cold consultant pitching services. I was the person who already knew the founder, the idea, and what it needed next.

What it needed was two introductions, made in the right order:

Bolster — for branding. They ran a brand design sprint for BubHub and built the visual identity around the bubbles motif: playful arrangements representing the collections of social circles a user can curate.
Atomic Robot — for app development, to build the product itself.

Then I stayed in the picture through the App Store launch — the unglamorous middle where launches stall: sequencing, decisions, and a founder having someone in his corner who’d seen the whole board.

The result

BubHub went from an idea one founder was carrying to a branded, built product, live on the App Store — with a visual identity designed for exactly what the app does, and a development partner matched to the build. And the relationship didn’t end at launch: BubHub remains a client today, an ongoing advisory engagement that still runs on the same foundation — calls, connections, and introductions when they’re needed.

What it shows

Sometimes the deliverable is the network. The right two introductions, made at the right moment by someone who knows both sides, can do what a year of agency shopping can’t — and a chance meeting, kept alive, can turn into a company getting built.

All case studies

Have something worth building?

Tell me what you’re working on and where it’s stuck. If I can help, I’ll say how. If I can’t, I’ll say that too — and point you at who can.

Start a conversation

All case studies

Case study

The data was always there. The audience wasn’t.

Gun Violence Archive · Communications Director · Since 2017 · Ongoing

U.S. non-profit research organization tracking gun violence incidents nationwide.

The problem

The Gun Violence Archive holds something nobody else has: a comprehensive, near-real-time record of gun violence in America — every incident, verified and counted. But data sitting in a database doesn’t shape a national conversation. When I took on the communications role, the Archive’s Twitter account, @gundeaths, had roughly 10,000 followers — a fraction of the audience the work warranted. The numbers were definitive; the reach wasn’t. Journalists cited the data, but the Archive’s own voice wasn’t yet part of the daily public record.

The move

I run the account like a newsroom, not a marketing channel. Every day, the ledger: the running count of deaths, injuries, and mass shootings, posted in the same plain format until it became a fixture people look for. Around that backbone — real-time monitoring and response when major incidents break, the data packaged so a journalist on deadline can use it in seconds, and a voice that reports the numbers and lets them carry the weight.

The other half of the job is being available to the press: coordinating media requests and giving interviews in English and Spanish, so the Archive can speak to audiences on both sides of the language line.

The result

@gundeaths has grown from roughly 10,000 followers to 50,000 — a fivefold audience built organically, on the strength of the data and the discipline of showing up with it every day. The account’s posts are regularly amplified well beyond its own following, retweeted by media figures, celebrities, politicians, and influencers, and the Archive is now a standing reference in national coverage of gun violence — with interview requests coming from news organizations in both English and Spanish.

What it shows

Distribution is a discipline. An organization with the best data in its field still needs someone to run its voice daily — consistently, credibly, in more than one language — before the data becomes influence.

All case studies

Have something worth building?

Tell me what you’re working on and where it’s stuck. If I can help, I’ll say how. If I can’t, I’ll say that too — and point you at who can.

Start a conversation