Games not over: Financial principles that saved the 2002 Olympic Winter Games

It was like stepping into an elevator shaft.

That is how Mitt Romney, the newly installed head of Salt Lake Organizing Committee, described the situation in 1999.

"I would concur with his opinion," said Fraser Bullock, SLOC's Chief Operating Officer. "Others might see it differently, but we were there on the inside and we could see what was going on. There were indeed very deep challenges."

The Olympic movement had been rocked by scandal: Salt Lake City might have won the 2002 Olympic Winter Games by allegedly bribing top officials on the International Olympic Committee. Sponsors balked. And it looked like Salt Lake's Games would be remembered for controversy and bankruptcy.

But 10 years after the Olympic Winter Games the legacy is much different. Bullock was at the center of the team that took a projected $400 million deficit and turned it into a $100 million profit. And the principles he used have application not only for other Olympic Games, but for running companies, countries and even the family budget.

Kem Gardner, chairman of Gardner Company, a real estate development firm, is a friend of Mitt Romney's and remembers when Romney was hoping to recruit Bullock to work on the Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games. "Mitt knew he had to get someone with a great business mind," he said. "He told me he was trying to get Fraser, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to get him."

Romney and Bullock knew each other from working together at Bain & Company.

The first SLOC board meeting with Romney everything changed. He charged board members $1 a slice for the Domino's Pizza he ordered in. The $5 pizzas were cut into eight slices, netting the Games $3 per pizza. "That sent a huge message throughout the entire organization," Bullock said. "We approached everything that way."

It was a culture of frugality.

A matter of principles

Natalie Gochnour, currently an executive vice president with the Salt Lake Chamber, served as a state economist and helped review SLOC budgets and analyzed the economic and fiscal impacts of the Games. This let her see Bullock in action in meetings. "He was always the man who restored focus and discipline to discussions," she said.

That focus was almost a mantra: "Must have" versus "nice to have."