25 Years of Peer Group Stories: Tony & Katrina Magby
Laid Off and Leveled Up: Building Rent the Occasion from the Basement Up
In 2016, Tony and Katrina Magby were both blindsided by layoffs. Katrina had been working as an insurance agent, while Tony was a project manager at Cisco with two decades of engineering experience. Suddenly, with two kids at home, both found themselves without a steady income.
Instead of immediately looking for their next corporate jobs, they started thinking seriously about an opportunity they had noticed in their own neighborhood. Whenever they needed tables or chairs for a party, they had to drive across town because there wasn’t a convenient rental company nearby. Tony’s severance package gave them some financial runway, so they attended their first ARA Show in Orlando. Two weeks later, with Tony officially laid off, they began purchasing inventory.
“We weren’t just trying to start a business. We were trying to survive.”
—Tony Magby
Building a Business in the Basement
Rent the Occasion started in the Magbys’ basement with 300 chairs, 20 tables, two tents, and a basic collection of black-and-white linens. Katrina handled sales, customer relationships, and purchasing, while Tony focused on the numbers and operations. Their children pitched in too, helping until high school sports and eventually college pulled them away from the day-to-day business.
From the beginning, Tony and Katrina were careful about growth. Rather than taking on significant debt and buying everything they might someday need, they started with enough inventory to serve their customers and reinvested as demand grew.
One graduation weekend showed them that another investment had become necessary: people. Virtually everything they owned was rented, and Tony and Katrina handled the deliveries, pickups, and tent installations themselves. After their final job, they came home, collapsed onto their bed fully clothed, and slept until morning.
“We didn’t know what we were getting into. That graduation weekend broke us—and that’s when we knew it was time to hire.”
—Katrina Magby
Growing Smart
The Magbys began hiring slowly and intentionally, starting with high school students and friends of the family. Some of those early employees are still with them years later. They also built a flexible staffing model around the realities of the event rental business. Some employees had other jobs, others were students, and hours could fluctuate with demand.
“We’re honest with our team about the ups and downs. But when they’re with us, we take care of them.”
—Tony Magby
That balance has helped Rent the Occasion stay lean while maintaining low turnover and a strong employee culture. Tony and Katrina also established clear roles for themselves. Tony handles the books, operations, and hiring, while Katrina focuses on customers, sales, and purchasing. That division has allowed them to play to their strengths as the business has grown.
From Basement to Warehouse
In 2020, just before the pandemic, Rent the Occasion moved into its first warehouse. COVID threatened a business built around weddings and gatherings, but they survived. By March 2022, they had already outgrown their second warehouse and doubled their space again.
Today, Rent the Occasion operates with approximately 8–10 employees and has expanded well beyond its original tables and chairs. The company now offers Chiavari chairs, tents, children’s party décor, inflatables, and linens in nearly every color. Their core business remains backyard parties and weddings with fewer than 500 guests, but their sights are getting bigger.
Over the next three years, Tony and Katrina want to move into a larger warehouse and expand into corporate events and the film industry while protecting the employee-first culture they’ve built.
Financial discipline remains central to that plan. Influenced by thinkers such as Dave Ramsey, they’ve grown largely with cash and are proud to own most of their inventory outright. While they are open to using financing more strategically as they grow, they want expansion to remain intentional rather than taking on debt simply for the sake of getting bigger.
Learning from Peers
In 2021, Tony and Katrina joined Peer Executive Groups (PEG), connecting them with other event rental owners who had already encountered many of the challenges Rent the Occasion was beginning to face.
“There’s so much to learn. Every time we meet, we walk away with ideas—whether it’s job costing, scheduling, or just staying sane.”
—Katrina Magby
Through GroupMe conversations, monthly Zoom calls, and twice-yearly in-person meetings, their peer group has become both a business resource and a support system. It has also helped them look beyond where the company is today and think more strategically about where it can go next.
Built on Relationships
Despite the growth, the foundation of Rent the Occasion remains simple: take care of people. The company has built a strong collection of five-star Google reviews, with much of its business coming from referrals and repeat customers. That same philosophy extends to employees, where flexibility, transparency, and loyalty have helped the Magbys build a dependable team.
Their story offers a straightforward lesson for other business owners. Start with what you need, grow when the demand is there, hire before doing everything yourself becomes the bottleneck, define clear roles, stay disciplined financially, and surround yourself with peers who can help you see what’s coming next.
What began as a response to two layoffs has become a growing Atlanta-area company with bigger ambitions ahead. As Katrina puts it:
“We didn’t have a fancy plan—just a real need to survive, a gap in the market, and the drive to make it work.” —Katrina Magby