Lindsay DesLauriers / Bolton Valley
Start Here Podcast | Episode #76 | 7/27/2023
Today, we sit down with Lindsay DesLauriers, president of Bolton Valley Resort.
In this episode, DesLauriers details her personal connection to the resort and her father’s original vision of crafting a working-class ski area. She also discusses her own mission of revitalization since taking over in 2018. Join us as we get a behind-the-scenes look at the year-round destination for outdoor enthusiasts and event-goers alike.
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Transcription:
Start Here – Lindsay DesLauriers
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
One of the things I know about myself, and one of the reasons why I feel confident I can navigate through new challenges, is because I’m comfortable reaching out to other people and leaning on people. I’m comfortable not knowing things, and asking for help to get up to speed. So I was comfortable doing that with my staff when I first got there, when they knew way more than I did, and I make an effort to be a part of different groups.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
From the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, it’s Start Here, a podcast sharing the stories of active, aspiring, and accidental entrepreneurs. Today we sit down with Lindsay DesLauriers, co-owner and president of the beloved Bolton Valley Resort. Welcome. This is Sam Roach-Gerber.
DAVE BRADBURY
And Dave Bradbury.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Reporting from the Consolidated Communications Technology Hub in downtown Burlington, Vermont.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Hi, Lindsay.
DAVE BRADBURY
Welcome.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Hi, thank you.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Are you a skier or a snowboarder?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I am a skier.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Skier! One for me, Dave.
DAVE BRADBURY
All right, we’ll go with the flow.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
We chill?
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s important.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And because you’re not technically the founder of Bolton Valley, which we just discussed, I do want to talk about your childhood. Little Lindsey, tell us what vibe you were throwing out.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, my childhood, I was obviously somewhat blessed because I got to grow up in a ski area, which is a pretty fun place for a kid. A lot of recreation, and definitely in the winter it’s extra awesome, because my friends were always coming up and skiing. It was fun, with lots of night skiing and things like that.
On the flip side, there were parts of the year where it was pretty remote. And you might think living in Bolton Valley, which I do again now with my daughter, she’ll tell you it feels remote sometimes even now. But now it’s a really vibrant community. Back then, there weren’t a lot of year-round residents. There was only one other kid on the mountain.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
No!
DAVE BRADBURY
Wow.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, and she was my brother’s age, so there was nobody my age. Which, poor me, not really. It was still an amazing childhood.
DAVE BRADBURY
You had the forest and birds and the squirrels.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yes.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
So would you say you were a pretty creative kid because you had to make your own fun?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I was a bookworm.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
So sweet! What a nerd. I thought you were so cool.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I was a very cool bookworm.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I bet you were.
DAVE BRADBURY
Could you give us just a little history of the resort, your family’s role there, and how long it’s been since your return to the mountain, please?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yes, I would love to. You mentioned I’m not the founder. The founder is my father. I wasn’t born when Bolton Valley was founded in 1966, but I was born –
SAM ROACH-GERBER
The year Dave was born.
DAVE BRADBURY
Yeah, 56 years ago.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
You were a babe in arms.
DAVE BRADBURY
But I was so snowboarder yet to be.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Snowboarding wasn’t even invented then. So anyways, my dad founded it, and the history actually connects to Burlington. My grandfather owned a farm in South Burlington, like where Dorset St. and the Sheridan Staples Plaza are. They had hundreds of acres right there; that was their dairy farm. The Interstate came through and the federal government bought up the land they needed for the Interstate and split the farm in half. But my grandfather was compensated for that, and with that compensation he bought 8,000 acres in Bolton with the idea that they would forest it.
And my dad, who was in his late 20s at the time, had the idea that they should build a ski area. So my grandfather said, “Go for it if you can.” And my grandfather actually partnered with Dan Smith from the Vermont Community Foundation. His grandfather was a banker. He got his first loan from Dan Smith’s grandfather, and the rest is history.
They built Bolton Valley, the access road, the village, and everything, and then my brothers and I were all fortunate enough to grow up there. It was great. My father was the majority owner, but he owned it with his brothers and sisters. There are seven of them, and they owned it right through my senior year of high school. That’s when we didn’t officially go bankrupt, but we had to sell it under duress. It was on really real financial hard times. And then I went away to college, and that ended also an era for my family’s connection to Bolton Valley. So as far as I’m concerned, it was like this moment of incredible change.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
What was your heart doing at that moment? Was it really hard for you, or was it like I’m leaving anyway?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
It was really hard. It was really hard for everyone, in many different ways which we don’t need to go into. But also, yes, I was embarking on this new adventure of college and adulthood in my own life. In a way, the transitions overlapping each other probably softened the blow, if anything, because I just went forth into the world. But that anchor, that foundation, that home, those roots, everything that I’ve always known and identified with changed and was gone in many ways. So coming home, relating back, and going back to Bolton, my father continued to live up there. Driving up the access road to return home was so different.
Then it went through a number of different owners, four or five different owners, and struggled, frankly. The people who did the best with it were Doug and Larry, who we bought it from, the former partners of Redstone, Doug Netty, and Larry Williams. They did a good job with it. But I think the reason why they sold it – not that I want to speak for them – is that it’s a challenging enterprise, and it wasn’t the center of their lives. They had other businesses, and this was a side project.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
It’s a huge project.
DAVE BRADBURY
I was just imagining Doug snow-making, and I just can’t. I’m sure he’d love to.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
A little easier to maybe imagine Larry. But Doug has stayed in actually as an investor with us. He’s one of our partners now, and he’s awesome, so supportive.
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s so great that. Well, that was such a brutal period smaller ski resorts around Vermont. I was working in state government at the time, and Scottney, Burke, Haystack and, you know, probably six others – it was a really tough time in Vermont, where a lot of families that had carved these slopes out of the hills here had real changes.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And we’re seeing that consolidation. Obviously the name of the game in this industry now is consolidation. You really are seeing that bifurcation between ski areas that have moved into consolidation, and those like us who are really leaning into the independent ownership and independent spirit.
Interestingly, in a way that consolidation has created some more space for this independent model to also thrive. It’s shifted the way that people consume skiing. It’s strange, it’s like there seems to be more space now. If you had to ask me, good or bad, you have to pick one side, I mean, I think it’s been good for the industry in many ways. And I get the loss that people feel, I get the conflicted feelings that people have, but I think the ski industry right now is in a really good place.
DAVE BRADBURY
Yeah, it seems to be. Can you talk a little bit about the community? Who loves Bolton and goes there? Like you said, like you alluded to, everybody – I live on the other side of the range and we’re part of the big corporate group. Just describe your community that gets it, loves it.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I mean, I think the thing about the Bolton Valley community is that it’s multi-generational. Much like my grandfather bought the land, my father built the ski area, we grew up there, and now our kids are up there. Obviously it’s our home, and we feel that deep-rooted connection to it, which is what made coming back so special.
But it’s not just us who have that connection to Bolton Valley, or who feel that deep sense that it’s their home, that they have roots and family connections there. Because one of the things my dad did – which was really special when he created the resort – was by putting in the night skiing, he really wanted it to be like the working man’s ski area.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
He nailed it.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, he nailed it. Because skiing up until Bolton Valley in Vermont – I mean, granted, I wasn’t there, but this is the story he tells, and I think it tracks – when he went to Burlington High School, very few people skied. And so he felt like it was a sport for out-of-staters, and that wasn’t really accessible to the local Vermonters, to his friends, to the kids who grew up with other kids on dairy farms and stuff like that.
So when he built it, he really made it his mission not only to serve out-of-staters – which of course is an important part of the business model – but to really have night skiing so that kids could bus up after school, teach Vermonters to ski, get people to be able to come up after work, and have this kind of tavern scene and make it into a scene. And because we’re so close to Burlington and the population center, that model actually works for Bolton Valley in a way that it doesn’t for other people, because there’s not time to make it worth it to go up after work. But you can do that at Bolton.
So the reason why I – in a long-winded way – circle back to your question about who the community is, I think the community started back then with those buses that are now still coming up to Bolton, but now those are the grandparents or the parents of the kids on the buses. It’s very rooted in the community. We’re on our third generation of kids learning to ski at Bolton Valley thanks to the after-school program. Our community tends to be a lot of people who grew up on the buses, and now they’ve got kids on the buses. Sometimes we lose them in the middle there after they grow a little bit.
DAVE BRADBURY
It’s a little temporary, right?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
But people come back. They come back, they find their way.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
The thing that I love about it is it’s so accessible. It just feels like you belong when you’re there. I think so many mountains are trending towards being inaccessible for a variety of reasons, cost being a huge driver. But obviously proximity, like you said. You can go and ski after work at Bolton. One of the things I find really cool about it, besides it being super welcoming, is I remember moving to Burlington and people saying, “Oh, it’s a great local mountain, really family friendly.” But the thing that I’ve noticed too is it’s still the favorite of some of the most intense skiers and snowboarders I know.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
For sure.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I think there are mountains where people who have been skiing their whole life are like, “That mountain’s too lame for me, I’m so good at skiing.” Bolton doesn’t have that. Like truly, I feel like it just appeals to everyone.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I agree with you. I think about my two oldest brothers who were – you may or may not know this, they’re old enough now that people don’t know about it anymore, but you probably remember –
DAVE BRADBURY
I probably do. I still have the DVDs or whatever.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
But my older brothers were some of the best skiers in the world, and some of the early pioneers of extreme skiing, what we think of now as big mountain skiing. And they learned to ski at Bolton Valley. So Bolton Valley is a training ground and creates great skiers, not just because we’re on the “ice coast,” but because Bolton Valley has always been a pioneer for woods, glades, and backcountry thinking. I think that’s where people who are really rad skiers, really advanced skiers, still find a home, even though Bolton Valley is really forward-facing as family-friendly, and it’s the best place to learn, and all this stuff.
You can really challenge yourself in the glades at Bolton Valley. Particularly with our Backcountry program – which my brother Adam has really spearheaded and developed, and is totally on the cutting edge of the ski industry. I mean, really, truly, we are cutting edge in terms of our backcountry program. We really have that to offer in a way that I think no one else in Vermont does. No aspersion – I can see why it’s not worth their while from a dollars and cents perspective – but again, that’s where sort of the independent freedom comes in.
DAVE BRADBURY
Right. Or culturally they don’t – the Backcountry experience, paths, and investment you’ve made into that is leading the industry in that.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And that’s what Vermonters want, right? I think that’s one of the things I’ve noticed – and granted, I wasn’t around the first go-around – but it’s so clear that you listen to your customers on what they want and try to provide that. I feel like you’ve done a beautiful job of reacting to what people want, and I don’t think other mountains can do that, maybe because they’re bigger or the corporate structure doesn’t allow for that. But I think that, to me, is a big piece of the magic.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
That means a lot to hear that. And I think in the experience of planning, innovating, and talking about how we do things, a big part of how – in addition to listening to the guests and being part of the community generally – we also love the things we do. Like, we are skiers. My brother wanted to create the backcountry program not because he sat down and ran a spreadsheet or anything, or made a big pitch, but he’s been a guide. He’s traveled all over the world, guiding and backcountry skiing. So when we bought back Bolton Valley, “He’s like, it’s got this amazing backcountry. How do I want to spend my days? I want to spend my days in the backcountry. I’m going to create this guiding program.”
And the mountain bike park that we created – which is so awesome – was kind of my pet project because I love mountain biking. After I went away after college, I went out West and really got into mountain biking. There were these amazing trails that were really rowdy and raw, and intense and not accessible to everybody. It felt like, wow, we should have mountain biking right here in the backyard, because that would be so fun.
So I think we’re listening to the community, but we’re also such a part of it, and we also get to do the things that we like. I think if we’re doing the things that we like and we enjoy –
DAVE BRADBURY
It makes it so much more authentic.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Probably that’s a good match for other people. Probably other people would enjoy that, too. So we get to be driven both by that and also just by the things that we love as well.
DAVE BRADBURY
So no one in the family is a snowboarder?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
My nephew Henry. Adam’s son. He lives next door to me. Yeah, so very close.
DAVE BRADBURY
Oh, great. I had to go back to that.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Invested in the next generation, perfect.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Age 17, the DesLauriers snowboarder.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
A good kid.
DAVE BRADBURY
You’ve got to have one in the family.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Okay, so how many years was the gap between –
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
It was 20 years exactly.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
20 years. Okay, can you talk to us a little bit about what you got when you bought it back? What did things look like? What was sort of the, damn, we really got to take care of X, Y, and Z? What was keeping you up at night? Let’s just say, you didn’t buy it because it was an easy win here, right?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
No, I mean to be honest, it had been losing money for many years. I don’t know if in the 20 years maybe there were some years where it didn’t lose money, but I think by and large it was not in the black. It was a heart-driven decision for sure, and very risky, definitely. Our initial investors, who came in with us on the purchase, they also did it out of love for the place, and a belief that if anybody could make it work it would be us and our family because of our connection to it and because of commitment. It would not be a side project, it would be all eggs in the basket. The institutional memory and knowledge of pipes in the ground that my dad brings is actually, believe it or not, really valuable.
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s important. Where’s the stuff buried?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Where is the stuff buried? Because there’s a lot buried, it’s true.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s hilarious.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
So, what kept me up at night more than anything was literally the pipes in the ground. The water system was totally failing at the time. When we brought it, the drinking water system – we also own the water company – the drinking water system was not supporting – and it serves all the residents, not just the ski area. So everything was at risk, the whole community. There wasn’t enough water to serve the community there.
It turned out that we weren’t sure what the exact cause was. The wells were drying, this and that, but the leaks were so bad. The wells were running 24 hours a day, seven days a week and had been for years. I don’t know anything about aquifers, but that’s not good. So the wells were strained. The leaks were terrible. The reservoir couldn’t keep itself full; they were trucking water up to meet the water demand.
DAVE BRADBURY
Oh my God.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
This is giving me –
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And the cost of trucking water was more than the entire rate base of the water company. So the water company was hemorrhaging. Furthermore, to make matters more complicated, the water company as a private utility is regulated by the Public Utility Commission, which means you can’t set or raise your rates without going through a rate case, which is a very long regulatory process of over a year.
DAVE BRADBURY
You thought you were going to get into the ski business, didn’t you?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, this thing about the ski business is it’s like all business. What’s unique about the ski business is it’s like 20 businesses in one. It’s civic planning, it’s everything.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Real estate.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
So the water was the greatest risk.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I wasn’t going to guess that.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
People don’t. But we’ve stabilized the water company, and to be honest, that’s one of the things I feel most proud of.
DAVE BRADBURY
Yeah, and there’s never a headline about that, unless let’s say it goes wrong. It’s one of these quiet victories.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Well, that’s what sucks. Who do you tell? I mean, sure, your team obviously celebrated that win, but Joe Schmoe going for a ski doesn’t know what you just did.
DAVE BRADBURY
Right, the PSI works! Woo-hoo!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
But it’s awesome. That feels really gratifying. It feels like we saved not just the ski area but the community.
DAVE BRADBURY
What gives you the greatest joy on a daily basis?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, if you ask my dad that question, his things is the kids getting off the school bus. I know you just asked me about myself, but I’ll talk about my dad as the founder. And I know it’s true, when you see my dad talking to the kids, you can see why the first thing he did was start an after-school program. He’s like a child whisperer. The kids love him so much, and he loves them so much. I can tell you that that’s what has always more than anything driven my dad.
It’s similar for all of us. When I first took the job, prior to this I had been a lobbyist, and so I was working at the state level in Montpelier and stuff. And Matt Berowitz, I’m not going to remember his title, but he crunches all the numbers for the state. He’s an economist for the state. I’m sure if he here’s this, he’s going to be like, “What the heck?” But I bumped into him –
DAVE BRADBURY
We could try to edit in a title here.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
If I had the actual title, because I can’t remember. But no, he’s amazing and brilliant. But anyways, I bumped into him outside, like in the parking lot of the National Life building about a year in or something, and it was just like, oh, it’s so good to see you. He’s like, “Boy, you know, you’ve got the best job. You sit around all day thinking about how to make people have fun.” And it just really stuck with me. That offhand comment, because it’s so hard and there’s so many things that you don’t think about that go into it and challenges. But really it does just come down to, how lucky are we that we get to sit around all day and think about how to make people have fun. And so that is really fun.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
You’re such an optimist. I’d be like, excuse me, sir, I have been trying to get water to hundreds of people.
DAVE BRADBURY
We totally could have used that yesterday when our network here was having some issues, and we were at like Category 5 stress levels.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
So one of the things that I have talked to you about before – and I think you just have such a unique view because there’s so many areas that you need to focus on – but hiring. You have a seasonal aspect, you have full time, and you have every kind of job under the sun. Can you talk a little bit about how that’s been, highs and lows, and maybe some advice for other business owners out there?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
That is such a hard question, and if I had the answers to it, we wouldn’t have half the challenges that we have. I mean, really, the last two years have been so hard with regard to that. Hiring has been insane over the last couple of years. I don’t know anybody who’s got a silver bullet. Even my friends, some of whom are known for being the best employers, whatever, and they never have any problems, have been having problems. The last two years have been brutal.
I do think it’s easing up now. It feels different. We still have very challenging areas, but it just has a slightly different feeling. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s almost like a vibe where you can just feel it easing up just a little bit.
But I will say, I think for us, like many businesses with good reputations, we have a reputation of being a fun place to work and we are a fun place to work. And so there are people who want to work in the ski industry. They want that lifestyle. We’re like a lifestyle job, so we benefit from that for sure. But there’s a lot of those in Vermont, so it’s not like we’re a total standout. And there’s those key areas in Vermont. But then there’s also a lot of people, a lot of our staff who have deep personal connections that are rooted in a lot of the things I was talking about earlier. And so a lot of people come to work at Bolton Valley because of their own connection to Bolton Valley.
So I think those things really help us. We do our best with wages. I will say, one of the things we did start to do right when we got there was to try to bring our wages up the best we could. Very hard to do, especially when you’re starting from a point of losing money and you have no runway because you were undercapitalized, so it’s harder than it may sound. But we’ve definitely moved that as fast as we can, the best we can. And of course, that helps. We’ve done what we can with our benefits package, especially with paid time off, because I think people really value paid time off.
When I was lobbying, I was working on workplace issues – like in fact paid sick days and other things like that – and so I was very attuned to different structures for paid time off. One of the fun things that I did was shifted instead of having to earn your paid days off, you get them right at the front, so they’re just front-loaded when you’re hired. I think that’s nice because it makes it easy to come to a new job, because you don’t give up all your paid time off. You can still get a vacation even in your first year and take time.
DAVE BRADBURY
Right, because you can’t control when you get sick or when you have to go do something.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Or all that, yeah. Or even the value of just taking a break.
[ad break]
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Also, being able to take a break to go on vacation or have whatever. So we do things like that the best we can. I will say, our managers some more than others, are really aggressive. They go out, they go to job fairs, they’re salespeople for us, and they do an amazing job recruiting people. I have to give a shout out to Nick Lemire, who is our director of guest experience. He’s amazing. He brings so many people to work at Bolton Valley. He’s a great recruiter. So like anything, it’s your staff, it’s your team, and you count on them. But it’s really hard.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I’ve just kind of assumed, based on what you said and the nature of the organization, I would feel like there’s a lot of room for growth there, right? You can get hired in an entry-level position, and there are places for you to go within Bolton.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
For sure, that’s true. Yes, we have a lot of people who work their way up through the ranks. In fact, Nick, who I just mentioned, is one of those people who’s now at the senior executive level and came in as a minimum wage worker. Yeah, we definitely have a lot of that, and that’s a fun thing if you really want to be in the ski industry for a long time. I have no great answers to that. Well, I think the silver bullet would be employee housing, and we do have some employee housing.
DAVE BRADBURY
You have some.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I would triple it if I could, and I think that would really unlock. We looked into developing an employee housing building apartment complex up on the mountain, but with the cost of building right now and various factors, I couldn’t get it to pencil out even such that we could make up for it. It was so out of whack.
DAVE BRADBURY
Even with the water, right? Even with the free water!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
But employee housing would be the winter.
DAVE BRADBURY
So the ski business and resorts are so capital-intensive, right? Both on an operating basis, with the fluctuations of the season, but also the investment into infrastructure and real estate. How have you approached the capital path for Bolton? Any insights on that that might be relevant for other businesses or sectors?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, I mean, that’s right. Well, I mentioned in an offhand way that when we first made the purchase, we were really undercapitalized. That’s because of the capital investments that were needed to address not just the water, but the other infrastructure issues that I didn’t mention but that were also many.
DAVE BRADBURY
We try not to get people to cry on the podcast. We used to have tissues here, but the last podcast went through them all.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, I hope we can get to the second part of this where we’re doing amazing now and we’ve shored it up.
DAVE BRADBURY
100%, this is all set-up.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
This all set up for the victory lap. But no, the operation wasn’t breaking even when we took over, so there was going to be no extra cash flow to fund capital projects. We also were 100% unbankable, because it had been losing money for a long time. We were a new enterprise.
So we did a capital raise. We brought in equity partners, and that was really successful for us. We basically figured out a plan of what we felt it would take to shore up and stabilize the business and bring it to profitability. So we developed a master plan for that, and then I just went on the pitch circuit and pitched my heart out. It took a couple of years, but we raised the money we needed to be able to make the capital improvements.
We also really focused on operating efficiencies and other strategies, and even before we made the capital investments, I’m really happy to say we were able to stabilize the company and bring it to profitability – kind of a break-even – to where it could support itself while we made the capital investments.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Within a couple of years?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yes.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Holy shit!
DAVE BRADBURY
And that’s no small feat.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s insane.
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s a big deal.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s a huge deal.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And so we did that through really focusing on the operation and just improving the operation. And look, we had all the pieces there to make it successful. We had our passholder base. We have people who love us. We have business. We just had to balance the numbers.
DAVE BRADBURY
Again, a lot of history, a lot of time. It takes a bit to undo it, and you have the terrain.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And we had to do things like, some of the first investments we made, if you remember, were those RFID gates. Bolton Valley interestingly, because they didn’t have any gates or ticketing system, they sold the old wicket ticket. Essentially, people felt that they could just ski at Bolton Valley without paying. And everybody thinks, “Well, the chairlift is running, so what’s one more person? It’s not like a product I’m taking and eating and consuming, so I can hold it and touch it and feel it. I’m just sitting on something that’s bringing me up the mountain.” But that is the product, and so if we didn’t capture that revenue that was there from the demand that was there – if we were just letting people have it for free – then we’re going to fail and keep failing. One of the things that we really focused on was just getting paid for the service that we provide. That was like the very first –
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s some low-hanging fruit right there.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
There was a lot of low-hanging fruit, and we would just talk about, where’s the low-hanging fruit?
DAVE BRADBURY
And you did it with the backcountry access too, which never used to have the expectation to contribute or purchase in between.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
That’s right.
DAVE BRADBURY
There are always some people that gripe and moan about it. “I’ve been doing it forever.”
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, but there’s a cost to us to groom it and do all things so. So yeah, we focused on a lot of low hanging fruit. We focused on efficiencies. We reorganized the staffing, the team, and built the right team, did all the things that you would do. So we stabilized the business through smarter operations. And then we went to the capital raise, and we raised some money through building equity partners. We’ve got a group now of incredible people, just a list of amazing people, all of whom or most of whom – some of them were pretty absentee, I don’t see all of them – but most of whom have become really good personal friends.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Those are the best ones!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And then we started to make those capital investments in things like snow making, which is maybe in the background, but you definitely feel the effects of it. Obviously the bike park was a big one. We did a hotel renovation. We’ve done small renovations this year. We’ve replaced the roof on the Sports Center. We’re doing a roof replacement on the baseline. So a lot of this stuff is pure infrastructure, but a lot of it too was really designed toward focusing on summer business.
So we bought the ponds. Now we’re running the weddings out of the ponds, which we weren’t doing before. We’ll start that this summer. This is our first summer, fingers crossed everything goes smooth. We’ve got the mountain bike park. Again, the hotel renovation, a lot of skiing infrastructure stuff. Now we’re over the hump from breaking even, and now we’re in a stable position. There’s still so much more to do that the infrastructure needs, but we’ve spent through the capital. So now the free cash flow that we have, we’re recycling back into capital improvement projects. And so now we’re in this space, and we are bankable.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yes!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
We’re kind of off and running now.
DAVE BRADBURY
I was hoping she’d say that, right? Again, no small feat for a ski resort, particularly one with a lot of history. The future isn’t built in one day.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Right. Six years!
DAVE BRADBURY
Yeah, it’s kind of true about that right? Because we’ve had a bunch of thedealer.com and others that, we all think that it was an overnight thing. They’re like, well, yeah, it was eight to ten years of overnight success.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, it feels sudden, but no, it’s been a grind. But definitely there’s still a lot of things that need to be focused on. There are still real challenges remaining, I guess is what I’m saying, but we’re definitely kind of in more of the fun part now.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
There’s some breathing room. It’s not like putting fires out constantly. There’s absolutely fires put out –
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
There’s always fires, but yes, absolutely. We feel like the whole house isn’t going to burn down.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yeah, that’s bad-ass. That is so cool, what an inspiration. I love when can you go back to those banks and say, “Hey, remember what I told you I was going to do?” Boom.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
It does feel kind of like a miracle, because we wrote the business plan to raise the money, and you’re pitching everybody like, “I believe I can do it.” But then you’re like, can I? And now here we are, fast forward, it’s like, wow, we did hit those milestones. The plan is working the way that we said it would.
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s so rare in any sector or business to do, and you and the team deserve all credit.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, especially the team, because that’s where the execution happens. The execution happens there.
DAVE BRADBURY
You’re active with the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance still, VOBA? Why is that important for Vermont, and in particular Bolton?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Like I mentioned, coming from a background in policy work, it’s so easy to feel like what happens in Montpelier is disconnected from what’s happening on the ground in your own tiny microcosm, but obviously there are repercussions. The decisions that they make there have real-life implications for us. We have to live with those decisions, we have to navigate them, and they define how we can run our businesses and what we can do. So that’s why it’s important. It’s important to stay connected to those conversations, to the extent that you can. I will say it’s much harder from where I sit now to stay connected than I thought when I was a lobbyist.
I was the lobbyist who was working with business owners and working with them on issues, and I definitely will say that I know so much less from where I sit now than I thought I would. Because it’s actually really hard to follow what goes on in Montpelier, and you can’t follow it if you’re busy running a business. So you need organizations who have a sense of what you care about, so they can flag when things are happening. They can say, “OK, this is the moment where you need to pay attention,” because you simply can’t, at least I can’t. I don’t have the bandwidth, and it’s very hard to imagine anybody could.
So you’ve got to have organizations who are keeping an eye out for you, letting you know when it’s time to engage, giving you the information, telling you to come in and testify. You need that assistance, or you’ll miss it. And even with that assistance it’s hard to engage. I’ve got to tell you, it’s way harder than I thought.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I mean, that’s a pretty crazy career shift. Like, just your day-to-day must be so different. I know you engage with a lot of other women business leaders in this state. Have you had any mentors as you’re going through this process that have really helped you be a voice of reason, run stuff by, or encourage you to keep moving?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I don’t have one specific mentor. I think it would be cooler if I did, but I didn’t.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
We’ll just cut this whole part out.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yes, you picked up the reference. No, I don’t have one particular mentor, but you’re right that I have a really great community of other business owners or business leaders that I’m friends with, women and men. I’m someone who is comfortable asking for advice, reaching out, or utilizing that network. And that was part of the reason why I felt I could make the shift into this role, even though it was new territory for me. One of the things that I know about myself, and one of the reasons I feel confident I can navigate through new challenges, is because I’m comfortable reaching out to other people and leaning on people. I’m comfortable not knowing things and asking for help to get up to speed.
So I was comfortable doing that with my staff when I first got there, when they knew more than I did. I’m comfortable reaching out to friends. I make an effort to be a part of different groups, whether it’s the Hula community, or I’m part of this women’s CEO network. Whatever groups or opportunities I have, I invest my time in those places. Because those relationships are valuable to me, whether I’m doing a capital raise and networking for that, or whether I have a question about whatever, I always have people I can call. So not one specific mentor, but a lot of reliance on the people I know.
DAVE BRADBURY
That’s great. It’s great to have that fearlessness, humility, and curiosity to just ask, “How’d you do it? How’d you face it?” Whether it’s at a business round table gathering or something like that.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Exactly.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
And also, how empowering for your staff to have you come to them saying, “You know more about this than I do. Tell me what’s going on.” I think that’s a sign of a great leader as well.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I definitely appreciate that. I will also just say again, to go back to the complexity of it, you’d be crazy to think you knew more than your staff. You’d have to be an engineer, a mathematician, an accountant, a chef. I was like, no, you definitely don’t know.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I do think, though, sometimes leaders make decisions without thinking through how it impacts their staff. I would say don’t take that for granted, because there are people out there who don’t think that way. It’s so obvious why you’re a good leader when you say that.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, thank you. Okay, I’ll take it.
DAVE BRADBURY
I make uninformed decisions every day. I shouldn’t, and I’m working on that one, to be like, I don’t know what I don’t know, so let’s go find someone that might.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yeah. Hey, have you screwed up? Can we get into that a little bit?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
That’s what I was just about to say when you said that. It’s like I cannot tell you how many mistakes I make, some bigger mistakes, and some days where I just ruin everyone’s day. And I don’t mean to. And then I have to apologize, and then they –
SAM ROACH-GERBER
You’re like, please come back to work tomorrow!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I do. I try to own it and apologize. But you know, yeah, I totally make a lot of mistakes. And then when we have people who move up into management positions – because we do have a lot of upward mobility, and we recruit from within every possible opportunity – one of the things that I try to say to people is, if you’re coming from the staff, then you’re mad at us when we make mistakes, which we definitely do. So one of the things I say is, you’re just going to have to be patient with yourself. You are going to be the one who’s making mistakes. You’re going to be ruining people’s days, and you don’t mean to, so try to like – don’t let it get you down. And apologize, try to learn from it, and then you’ve got to let it go. You can’t blame yourself. And sometimes that lesson is harder when you’ve done things like wasted money by accident. That can hurt, for sure. But I try to just acknowledge that I’m not alone. Everybody’s making mistakes, not just me.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Totally, but owning your own makes other people feel comfortable in doing the same, and that’s a really healthy culture.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Well, one of the things when we hired our director of sales and marketing, Scott Pellegrini, who –
DAVE BRADBURY
We know Scott well! He used to work right up over there.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
He’s probably sick of me saying this and embarrassed by me saying it, but when he interviewed, he was not in the ski industry. He came from a tech background. One of the things that you guys say in tech, right, is “Fail fast.” So poor Matt Berowitz comment stayed in my head forever, lie it was during the interview. And I’m not from tech, so I didn’t know that phrase. And he was like, well, in tech, we say “fail fast.” I was like, “Fail fast? That’s what we need. We need to fail fast a lot.”
SAM ROACH-GERBER
You’re hired!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
And so now that’s how we think that We try things, and because we’re so small and independent we can try things, and when they don’t work we just change. Also, we’re getting to the point now in our maturity, where we’ve tried a lot of things we need to have – we’re settling more. And that’s important for the staff because failing fast all the time can be a little tiring.
DAVE BRADBURY
It’s exhausting. You want to turn the failures into learnings. Or fail once and then you’ve learned, and sort of to put structure around it or some sort of process.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I’d like to think we’re maturing into this, but initially that was definitely the approach. Because actually our home management team, most of us are not – I mean, you could say I’m born of the industry, but then I wasn’t in it for those 20 years. So in a very real sense I came from outside the industry, and actually a lot of our leadership team is from outside the industry. I think that’s fun, I think that’s fresh, and so that “fail fast” mentality in the early years was really a good way to think about it.
DAVE BRADBURY
Well, I’m gearing up for it. I want to ride along as a snow groomer sometime. I think I would buy that ticket.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Make it absurdly expensive.
DAVE BRADBURY
I won’t touch anything that’s got, you know, motors or lights on it. Just, you know, a little Grateful Dead tape and just sort of hang out.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
It’s actually pretty cool riding in the groomer after a big snowstorm, pushing that big pile of snow.
DAVE BRADBURY
It’s got to be just magical. I think there’s something there. How can listeners support Bolton Valley and what you’re doing? Because it is so important? We all look at it. I see the lights on when I go home in the wintertime. It’s really neat. We can buy tickets, we could show up. Are there are summer things that folks should know about?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
If you’ve got a wedding coming up, you could look at that, or an event if you’re a corporate business. We’ve expanded the Timberline Lodge, which is so good for corporate events now. If you haven’t seen it, it’s truly a beautiful and functional venue.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
We’ve got to come by.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
If you’ve got group events, consider Bolton Valley. We’ve got the hotel there, we can do everything. We’ve got the mountain bike park, so you’ve got to check that out.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Out disc golf, too, right?
DAVE BRADBURY
A skate park, skateboard stuff?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, there’s an indoor skateboard park. The mountain biking is – our reputation was so gnarly, but we have completely eased the whole thing. We worked with Gravity Logic, literally world-class, best in the world trail designers, built Whistler, built Killington, all the best parks that you can think of. So we have a world-class mountain bike park, everything from the absolute green beginner trail, full rental fleet, lessons. It’s basically a mimic of winter.
DAVE BRADBURY
Sam likes to chuck it off the big ones.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Yeah, I believe it!
DAVE BRADBURY
We had a staff mountain bike day out the last two years.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
It didn’t go great.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Oh, no! Oh gosh.
DAVE BRADBURY
It was awesome.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I felt like I was biking uphill at Traps for about six miles, but it’s fine.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
In Apple Valley, you can take the lift.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
That’s true, yeah.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
You can the chair lift, so even better.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Okay, great, I’m in.
DAVE BRADBURY
All right, so we don’t have to wait till the fall then to get up there and have some fun.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Definitely not. We’ve got music on the lawn through the summer in July and August every Wednesday and Friday. So you come up, you mountain bike, then before the mountain bike closes– because we run mid-week till dusk, same concept with the after work – you come up, you ride with your friends, the music starts playing, your last lift right up. You come down, you get a burger, you get a beer, you’re hanging out. You’ve got music, it’s everything you want.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
You’ve really figured it all out.
DAVE BRADBURY
I need something to do on Wednesdays. This is great. Sam, we need to get to the magic wand time.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I feel like that was a 10-minute podcast. It is not.
DAVE BRADBURY
We yammered on.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
We get too excited. All right, Lindsey. Final question, magic wand. If you had a magic wand superpower, as Dave says, if you could change one thing about Vermont instantly –
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
About Vermont the whole state, not just as pertains to Bolton Valley?
DAVE BRADBURY
Come down off the road for a sec here.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I mean, it could be very selfish if you want it to be.
DAVE BRADBURY
Someone wanted In ‘n Out Burgers. It was purely selfish, right?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Could it be a Bolton town exit?
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Totally!
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
We need that.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Did someone else say that?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s the longest stretch of interstate without an exit.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yeah, it feels like an eternity, yeah.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
It’s such a pain if you miss your exit. And then you’ve got traffic on the 2. I mean, we need it. The state needs it.
DAVE BRADBURY
I think someone wanted traffic lights on Spear Street extension or sometime.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Yeah, Dustin Glasgow had a traffic light thing.
DAVE BRADBURY
Sorry, so the exit. That’s the magic wand?
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
I mean, I wish I had known I was going to ask for – what I could change – it’s a hard question.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
I mean, I love that answer. I do think I’ve heard it before, which is a good sign that there might be momentum there. Well, we can have you back for another catch up if you come up with more options.
DAVE BRADBURY
Lindsey, so exciting, and congratulations on taking Bolton into the future your way. I really have all the respect for that and wish you the best.
LINDSAY DESLAURIERS
Thank you so much.
SAM ROACH-GERBER
Thanks, Lindsay.
DAVE BRADBURY
This has been Start Here, a podcast sharing the stories of active, aspiring, and accidental entrepreneurs and co-owners. The series is supported by The Vermont Technology Council and Consolidated Communications.
