We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kevin Knight a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kevin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Almost every entrepreneur we know has considered donating a portion of their sales to an organization or cause – how did you make the decision of whether to donate? We’d love to hear the backstory if you’re open to sharing the details.

We’ve always donated a portion of our sales to various organizations and causes throughout the years. Now that our own Non-profit, G.L.O.B.E. (Global Leadership Opportunity for Black Education), has officially gained it’s tax-exempt status, we’ll be focusing heavily on getting this organization off the ground. A couple of our goals focus on providing grants, scholarships or financial assistance to young African Americans looking to expand their education through study abroad programs. We’re excited about the program and looking to gain a lot of traction over the next few years.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Close calls: We definitely had a close call during the spring of 2016 while I was in St. Thomas. I flew my team out to scout out the Marriott Frenchman Reef, and meet with a few vendors, clubs and restaurant owners. At the time, I was using PayPal to hold the bulk of the Urban Event Global funds. It was literally one or two months after I retired from the Financial Services industry, and I was still restructuring my company. At that point, I hadn’t finished setting up my business bank accounts, and quite frankly, I didn’t really see the need to. I’d been using PayPal for 6 years at that point, and moving money was relatively easy; until it wasn’t!

I had to pay the Marriott 3 installments leading up to our first “Urban Excursion Weekend” on Labor Day weekend in St. Thomas. While I was in St. Thomas scouting, I attempted to transfer $50,000 from the PayPal account to the hotel. Low and behold, it was rejected. After many attempts and phone calls to PayPal, they wanted to verify my account NOW. The same account I’ve been using for 6 years! Apparently, this was our biggest one-time transfer out of the account, and it triggered red flags. Now all of a sudden, my business had to go through “underwriting,” and they wanted me to provide a bunch of legal and tax documents. This was something that they’d never asked of me before.

Long story short, I texted one of my boys. He wired me $20,000 in 48 hours, and I transferred $30,000 from one of my other accounts. The rest of my funds were tied up in investments that would have taken a few more days to clear, and I would have faced some pretty big penalties. It eventually took me almost 2 years to get all of my money out of PayPal, and I learned a very valuable lesson about their business practices. I was almost the infamous Fyre Fest! Definitely wouldn’t have been the best way to launch our first Urban Excursion Weekend Labor Day trip back then!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This is an easy and short story. Have you heard of the Pandemic!? Yup, so basically our travel businesses took an overall hit of over $1.2m over the last 2 years (and that’s VERY conservative.) I think what saved us was the fact that we keep our expenses relatively low for an organization of this size, and my knowledge from my past career in financial services and private equity. Once I saw the direction and scope of the pandemic, I pivoted our business slightly to countries and locations that I thought would be easier for us to continue to conduct business in. Also, prior to the pandemic, I was already searching for Campgrounds, RV Parks, and raw land that I could purchase in order to own real estate for our Urban Camp Weekend brand. See, one of our largest events had one big threat or risk. We were at the whims and wishes of a campground and RV Park allowing us on their premises. It only took a few racist run-ins and a few greedy campground owners for me to realize many years ago that I needed my own spot. Unbeknownst to many outside of my inner circle, I was in the process of researching alternative locations and options. The funniest part of the story; the last three campgrounds I chose to host Urban Camp Weekend at all thought that we had to come back to them, and wanted to charge us extra, not knowing that it would be their last time getting a check that large from me. I know for a fact Urban Camp Weekend kept one campground afloat for at least 5 years, and helped 2 campgrounds significantly through the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, the greediest of them all had to sell a portion of their land. Had they not been greedy, I would have brought the event back for at least one or two more camps max. Anyway, our loyal customers still supported and traveled with us throughout the pandemic. We lost the potential for some very large years, however, we still remained profitable and resilient. We’ve been voted in the top five of USA Today 10Best top adventure travel companies every year since the inception of the category. :-)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.urbaneventsglobal.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbaneventsglobal/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Urbaneventsglobal/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/urbancampweekend
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/urbaneventsglbl
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC22jobarcG0sA8LAMd1hyDQ
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/kjknight1911/