Aged 45 in mid-2018, launched Boma Global which generates revenue from a combination of program fees, sponsorships, and event ticket sales. Pivoted to online during pandemic and grew it from 3 FTE to 11, and expanded it globally (Kaila Colbin)

Mar 21, 2021

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

In this episode, I interview Kaila Colbin, the co-founder of Boma Global and the CEO of Boma New Zealand. Boma is a global network of local partners offering transformational learning experiences to help us be more intentional and intelligent about the future we're creating. Kaila is also a co-founder and trustee of the non-profit Ministry of Awesome and has served on many boards, including as Chair of the Board of the New York-based Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts and Deputy Chair of ChristchurchNZ and CORE Education Ltd.

She spearheaded the hugely successful SingularityU New Zealand and Australia Summits, introducing more than 2,500 people to exponential technologies and their impact on humanity. After training with Brené Brown, Kaila became a Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, and has worked with hundreds of people to increase courage as a core competency.

She is also a certified ExO consultant, a Climate Project Ambassador who trained with Al Gore, and a Project Management Professional. She is a renowned national and international public speaker, sought after by corporates, government agencies, industry groups, and more. Before co-founding Boma, she spent 10 years running TEDxChristChurch, one year running TEDxScottBase in Antarctica, four years at SingularityUniversity before bringing it to New Zealand.

They publicly launched Boma in mid-2018 when she was 45. They started with three full-time employees and now have eleven. Globally, they started with Boma New Zealand, Boma France, and Boma Germany. They have since grown to ten country partners as well as added many more partners in other areas of the organization. Kaila says the hardest thing in growing a small business is keeping the faith and shares that the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, "Be patient and give yourself grace" If you really wanna learn how to succeed in growing your business, this is one episode you won't wanna miss. Enjoy!

This Cast Covers:

Helping people be more intentional and intelligent about the future.
Revenue generation: Fees people pay to attend their program, sponsorships, and ticket sales for their events and now working on creating packages.
Working with global organizations that are changing the world.
From in-person delivery of services to going online since the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Training with Brené Brown to be able to help people increase courage as a core competency.
Growing from three team members to eleven, and from three country partners to numerous more partners in different areas.
Why every startup small business owner must embrace hustle and opportunism.
The pride of achieving a Net Promoter Score of 75 and the challenges that come with raising capital.
Getting venture capital funding for Boma Global and the individual funding that goes into the different Bomas globally.
Building the kind of leaders that the future needs.
The importance of small business owners understanding what it means to have unearned revenue.
Learning to have more patience with her team and create more space for them to grow.
What she enjoys most about growing a small business.
Embracing forgiveness in order to achieve resilience in business.
Explicit and intentional culture versus emergent and by-default culture.
How having a family made her a more effective leader and helped her attain some work-life balance.

Additional Resources:

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/