It’s been a wild ride for longtime Mission Beach entrepreneur Greg Knight, whose career has gone from kayaking to kid’s party rentals to songwriting and producing.
Knight, 55, moved to Mission Beach with his family in 1987. He didn’t waste any time laying the foundation for his small business career. “Right out of college, I started a kayaking company, Aqua Adventures Kayaks and Paddleboards, that’s still going,” he said, adding, “I got to kayak all over the world. That was great.”
He sold that business in 2005. A couple years later, Knight started a kid’s party rental business with no first-hand knowledge in renting out bounce houses, carnival games, and costumed characters, including clowns and a host of equipment and supplies for children’s parties. His only rental experience had been with kayaks.
“It was pretty entertaining, pretty open and brand new, and we were chugging along all over San Diego County,” Knight said of his party-rental experience. He noted his business offered “everything you’d have in a kid’s backyard birthday party.” His business also expanded into local schools, outfitting events like Halloween festivals.
Then COVID struck in March 2020, causing the party rental business to suddenly come to a screeching halt with social distancing restrictions.
“Nobody was able to have a party for a solid six months – it seemed like it lasted forever,” Knight said, adding his business was shut down again a short time later due to reimposed social distancing. “We weren’t sure if we were going to open again,” Knight admitted, noting, “the whole entertainment part of the industry just went away.”
So Knight researched all the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans available to small businesses to help them keep their employees on the payroll during COVID-19 and to keep his party-rental business afloat.
Ultimately, Knight started selling off things like inflatables from his inventory to raise revenues. “We started to prioritize our work time figuring out what parts of the party-rental business were the most profitable and getting rid of all the stuff that was not profitable,” he said.
But the COVID shutdown for his rental enterprise turned out not to be so bad after all, allowing Knight to consider pursuing an altogether different career path. “I’d always played guitar and sang and fiddled with writing songs,” he said, noting he now had the flexibility to “transition myself into writing and producing my music.”
Knight then took online courses and studied under a mentor in the songwriting field. “I was excited to do it,” he said, adding that things started to rebound in party rentals coming out of COVID, as his industry competition had been thinned by the pandemic, and people were eager to start getting together again. “There was a lot of pent-up demand without many options,” he noted.
But Knight already had a new calling. “I came up with a backup plan to write songs and get them produced and out there,” he said, adding, “And I’ve been doing the music ever since.”
Added Knight: “I’m a big believer in being able to transition yourself and change things, learn a whole new industry and skills, especially if you’ve had a run where you’re not happy. So, I’ve been learning about music and songs and getting better at playing and happy about sharing it with people who listen to it, making them happy. It was the start of a whole other chapter.”
Knight’s been counseled in his new musical pursuit to “keep on doing it and not be afraid, keep on writing a song every week, and if it doesn’t turn out, move on to the next song.”
Songwriting, said Knight, is all about “my voice and putting together what you feel inside, or things that are happening at the moment. If you have that (songs) in you, then put some music to them. That’s how a songwriter proceeds.”
Of his new career, Knight noted that, like any business venture, “it takes five to seven years before you feel like you’ve made it – or haven’t. He added, “This is a lot more fun than setting up bounce houses for parties. People like my music. I like being me and playing for their friends. It’s a great way to meet new people and have them experience my music.”
Visit Knight’s website at gregorknight.music.com.