Services

In a very interactive way, Diane seeks to provide a balanced perspective that helps her clients question their vision all while helping galvanize what is truly possible .

Theresa Snow

SALVATION FARMS

What's it going to cost?

Your organization is focused on making your community stronger. Without being a slave to the spreadsheet, financial stability is a critical piece of your triple bottom line. I work with clients to help them organize their finances, break down costs of products and services, explore creative business models, identify appropriate financing opportunities, and project financial health without compromising what makes your company unique.

Clients include:

Salvation Farms, Sensimilla Lifestyle, Boneyard Farm

What's it going to take?

Businesses Founded Include:

Mtn Seasons Woodfired Bakery, Beet Box Farm

Diane helped me make a choice by laying out the timelines, budgets, and implications associated with each pathway. She then worked with me to take my ideas and transform them into a coherent plan of action.

Leah Perkinson

MY VIRTUAL ADVOCATE

You've started a fresh business, project, or organization because you love the product you make or the service you provide. I can free you up to focus on the aspects of your business that you love the most. My commitment to transparency means that the relationship will be educational, not opaque, leaving clients with both deliverables and a greater lasting understanding of the process and key business functions.

Hannah Doyle

BONEYARD FARM

Diane is one of the most driven and dynamic people I’ve worked with. She has big ideas and energy, and even more importantly, deliberate and thoughtful follow-through. Diane works hard to engage those she is working with, and she listens carefully to her peers.

Who can help me grow?

Entrepreneurship is hot, but entrepreneurship does not have to equal scale-fast-take-no-prisoners. Work with me to think through the different options for bootstrapping, financing, pricing your products for your market, and assessing product-market fit. We can work together to present your business opportunity to customers and potential investors based on the appropriate information, process, channel, and communication style for each audience.

Experience Includes:

FreshTracks Capital, VENTURE.co, Celia Vine, VSECU

Kaylee Rumley

SENSIMILLA LIFESTYLE

Working with Diane has been a pleasure. Her ability to share her knowledge and communicate it in terms that were easily understandable and digestible was very helpful. She helped me connect the dots in my big picture. Diane guided me through the steps to take to bring my business and my understanding to the next level.

What is this approach?

My roots are grounded in sustainable agriculture. The difficulty creating a financially sustainable lifestyle while living and working my values has been the impetus for every business I have started – for myself and others – beginning with Dig the Garden State. I believe in business models that use empathy for innovation, that grow with constraints and absorb the cost of all decisions. Like a well run farm, the business I can help you grow is one that is highly planned but also highly adaptable to change.

Clients Include:

Herkimer KOA, Health, Love & Soul, SOMS Adult School

PROJECTS & CLIENTS

TESTIMONIALS

The opportunity to work with Diane was a welcome one, and upon reflection a fortunate one. Diane joined the ranks of our team with ease, while acting as a consultant, she fell right in step with and quickly became a contributing member of our team. Diane has a high level of professionalism in all area's of her consulting work, from meeting with her client to speaking with constituents to presenting her work visually, verbally, and in writing. She is committed to understand where her clients are coming from, their needs, desires, and weaknesses. In a very interactive way, Diane seeks to provide a balanced perspective that helps her clients question their vision all while helping galvanize what is truly possible while also identifying realistic challenges.

If you need a business consultant who can roll up their sleeves and get into the thick of it with your company - Diane is a perfect match for you.

Theresa Snow,

SALVATION FARMS

Diane is competent, dependable, and easy to get along with. I go to her when I have a project that needs fresh insights, clarity around goals, and a solid action plan for meeting those goals.

Diane is a listener. She listens to what I want, and helps me think outside of the box and then some. It's a collaborative relationship. Together we get things done faster and better than if I was working on my own.

Before I started working with Diane, I had lots of potential paths to go down but had a hard time prioritizing which one to pursue first. Diane helped me make a choice by laying out the timelines, budgets, and implications associated with each pathway. She then worked with me to take my ideas and transform them into a coherent plan of action.

Leah Perkinson,

MY VIRTUAL ADVOCATE

PRESS

BioCycle

Innovating To Reduce Wasted Food Left On Farms

"A social venture is an emerging new business model that applies commercial strategies — a revenue-generating business — to maximize the benefit to social, environmental and economic well being — a nonprofit mission — for the organization and its stakeholders. A successful social venture can accomplish the public benefit of a nonprofit while remaining more financially independent and thus sustainable, regardless of external economic and political factors."

Seven Days

Mtn Seasons Invents a Vermont-Style Bagel, With a CSA

"Since winter, Brewster River Pub & Brewery has looked this way at least five mornings a week. It's serving as the temporary kitchen for Mtn Seasons, a new bakery that applies the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model to bagels — a first in Vermont."

Seven Days

Mtn Seasons to Open Jeffersonville Bagel Shop

"While Silver and Abruzzini will continue to sell their wares at the Farm Storein Jeffersonville, their market is expanding. This week and next will see the advent of their signature "Vermont-style" bagels at Hunger Mountain Co-opin Montpelier, Sweet Clover Market in Essex and Healthy Living Market in South Burlington."

VT Digger

Cabot supports business adviser at Salvation Farms

Abruzzini comes to Salvation Farms with experience working with sustainable agricultural business models. She has started multiple small businesses, including an edible landscaping firm and a farm to table bakery.'I have spent most of my career focusing on innovative ways to increase population access to local food, both the supply and demand side of the equation.'