Many area entrepreneurs too busy for summer vacation

Ah, summer: A season for slowing down, for taking it a little easy, maybe even doing some traveling.

But don't tell that to Kerry Geyser.

Geyser co-owns Las Vegas Boot Camp, a fitness-training business, with her husband, Reinier Geyser. This summer, she'll stay on the job while he spends nearly a month climbing Alaska's Denali. Geyser's workload will jump as much as five hours a day as she takes over her husband's classes and handles company business.

"This is our busiest time of the year, and even though it's so tempting to go away, I can't afford it," Geyser said. "We are a big part of what makes our business go. We teach the classes and have the most rapport with our boot-campers. If we're not present, a lot of the time, we're not making an income."

A new survey from American Express OPEN, the small-business services division of the credit card company, shows that entrepreneurs across America share Geyser's outlook.

Fewer than half of small-business owners that American Express OPEN polled nationwide for its Small Business Vacation Monitor said they would take a full week off this summer. Just 46 percent plan to take a week's vacation before Labor Day. That's an improvement compared with 2010's 40 percent, but it's well below a 2006 peak of 67 percent.

The top reasons business owners gave for skipping time off? They're too busy (37 percent) or they can't afford to get away (29 percent).

For Brian Rouff, managing partner of local advertising and public relations firm Imagine Marketing of Nevada, both factors have kept him from summer breaks during the recession.

When the downturn began in late 2007, companies cut marketing to save money. With lower sales for his business, Rouff wasn't too comfortable spending on travel.

This year is different.

Imagine has picked up a lot of clients in 2011, with referrals streaming in and new businesses looking for marketing help. Rouff sees momentum building in his 14-employee business, and he's loath to interrupt the upswing with time off.

"I don't want to leave and miss out on opportunities. We've gotten business before where people will say, 'We hired you because you got back to us immediately,'" Rouff said. "Accessibility is extremely important these days -- probably more so than ever before."

But missing out on downtime isn't always good for business, said Brenda Prinzavalli, owner of Balanced Organizing Solutions and a contributing editor to Fox 5's MORE morning news show.

"When you take a break, you come back much more productive and more creative, and you're able to make better decisions," said Prinzavalli, who helps small-business owners streamline company processes and use their time well.

After a decade without a weeklong summer break herself, Prinzavalli is about to take her own advice.

Later this season, she'll head out to Northern Michigan to visit with extended family in a friend's cabin. It'll be her first real summer vacation since she founded Balanced Organizing Solutions in 2001. Why now? Prinzavalli's niece and nephew are halfway through high school, and she feels opportunities to reunite with them and their families in one place may be limited once the teens graduate.

"This summer vacation is long overdue, and hopefully, it will plant a seed for next year," she said.

Rouff also said he expects business to have stabilized enough by summer 2012 to allow him to escape at last, perhaps for a Southern California beach vacation full of barbecuing, hot-tubbing and "vegging out."

"In a perfect world, we would get away for a week. Everyone's always worried about burnout, and I do look for the warning signs," he said. "Creativity is paramount in our field. You need to recharge and refresh, and come back reinvigorated."

As for Geyser, summer vacation may have to wait beyond 2012.

Her husband plans to scale Mount Everest a year from now, and that could take him more than a month. She's considering taking two to three weeks off to accompany him to base camp, but as she describes the advance organizing required to keep Las Vegas Boot Camp going while both she and Reinier are gone, she seems to cool on the idea -- almost as if she'd need a vacation from preparing for her vacation.

"It would take so much planning. We would really have to nail down all of the instructors who would sub for us. We'd have to be very clear on equipment, and when and where people needed to be. We'd have to put someone in charge of handling the administrative part. It would take a lot of research beforehand.

"I definitely would not call that a vacation," she said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.