about BOMBA
The BOMBA Mission
Having learned (almost) everything about business the hard way, and having been successful despite my mistakes, I founded BOMBA to help as many business owners as possible achieve their dreams – helping them avoid the entrepreneurial pitfalls and make profitable, strategic, financial decisions.
1 in 5
Businesses survive 3 years.
4%
of businesses started reach revenues of $1 million. For women founders, only 2% reach $1million.
0.4%
of businesses scale to more than $10 million.
BOMBA’s Mission is to improve these statistics! Successful small businesses are the economic engine of the US economy. BOMBA is designed help them ALL succeed!
THE BEGINNING
In the mid-1990’s I purchased a ski and golf resort on the same ridge of the Green Mountains as the second largest ski resort in Vermont. This competitor served more than one million guests each year; my resort, less than 200,000.
The Valley, a quintessential Vermont Township, was served by numerous Bed & Breakfasts, 5-star restaurants, a gorgeous lake, retail boutiques and craft shops, but the area guests seldom let the big resort’s property. The local small businesses struggled to survive – including mine!
After a very bad winter with bankruptcy threatening, I spearheaded creating a cooperative marketing program and 42 small businesses started offering attractive “weekend getaways for the family that were more affordable and appealing than the ‘big resorts’. Our efforts were very successful – increasing the revenue of my golf course and ski area by 50% the first year and 100% by the third year.
Remarkably, I had also developed an entire business curriculum for small business owners – the foundation of BOMBA!
Meet Deb
I grew up traveling the world while skiing on the US Ski Team. I attended Dartmouth and Harvard – majoring in economic and real estate development. My business career began in Dallas — completing a bank credit training program and then underwriting real estate and business credit facilities.
I began my entrepreneurial career working with one of my real estate developers – he built residential properties and I developed shopping centers on the site. By the late 1980s, I had developed 7 centers and owed $62 million when the S&L; crisis hit. All the banks and S&Ls in Texas went bankrupt – so they called their loans. YIKES! Who knew? It took several years to sell my real estate. As I did, I learned all about managing cash flow, negotiating skillfully, and persevering, despite the overwhelming urge to give up and file for bankruptcy as most developers did!
I acquired a ski and golf resort out of bankruptcy and redeveloped it; rebuilding both the ski area and golf course, constructed 200+ townhouses and condos, a new base lodge, 60 room hotel, founded a sewer and water municipality, and planned a timeshare project. I managed more than 150 employees with a leadership team of 8. As told in my Founder’s Story, it was not always smooth sailing. When I sold the resort, I retired.
But… I was bored.
After 18 months, I went back to work – back to banking – working with other business owners who wanted to do what I had done; build a business and sell it successfully. In addition to banking, and managing commercial lending offices for several regional banks, I’ve been teaching my BOMBA chapters and the finance modules for the Dallas Goldman Sachs 10KSB program.
