In 2000, Bobbi Reed moved from Denver to Sydney, Australia, for a month and ran a V.I.P. hospitality suite at the Summer Olympic Games.
Two years later, at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, she and her team hosted 1,100 telecommunication workers, handling their food, housing and transportation.
As head of her own event-planning firm, Reed worked behind the scenes at four Olympic Games, meeting athletes and attending popular events.
This year, she doesn’t feel so lucky. She wasn’t at the Olympics in Beijing — instead, she watched them on television, at home, from her couch.
Reed is no longer her own boss. Over the last few years, for a variety of economic reasons, the business she had built over a decade slowly started to disappear.
Kiwanis Club members in Colorado who hired her to organize an awards dinner decided the next year to do it themselves to save money. She lost another client after it was acquired by a bigger company.
Finally, Reed decided that she should sell her company or close down. When she received an offer about a year ago to work as director of stadium operations at a complex near her home in Glendale, Colo., Ms. Reed decided to shutter her business and take the job.
Amid the current economic turmoil, many entrepreneurs and small-business owners like Ms. Reed are debating whether it makes sense to seek safety in the corporate life — and deciding that it does.
Suffering the most are companies in construction, manufacturing, retailing, finance and overseas travel, says Chad Moutray, chief economist of the federal Small Business Administration. As for location, he says, “small businesses have been hardest hit in areas where the housing crisis is at its worst.”
The biggest concerns of small-business owners now include the rising costs of fuel, supplies and health insurance, said the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group.
Photo by Kevin Moloney.
Chuck Bartok on September 15th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I can appreciate Bobbi reeds dilemma.
Personally for the past 50 years our small businesses have never been affected by “global” or “national” economic Trends.
An entrepreneur is usually heads and shoulders above Trends and are usually Trend Setters.
An example, we have successfully marketed “High end” Horse Housing for the past decade, and experienced Booming sales during the “Funny Money” period. Seeing that avenue drying up or slowing down before it “hit the News”, we switched to products that were less costly (broader market) and went “green”.
My consulting business has not seen a Diminishing customer base, in fact REAL entrepreneurs are seeking advice on HOW-TO capitalize on this exciting times for expansion.
Of course my foundation has always been primarily low cost consumables that are impervious to economic cycles.
Big ticket items and “high priced” talent are just added Income bonuses
cassy on September 27th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Ohh, I dont know how it feels when your business turn down…
Hope she immediately got recover.