May 16, 2017

Meet Frank Knight of Mr. Porch in Avondale

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Knight.

Frank, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Born and raised in Chicago by a single mother in the 70s and 80s, we didn’t have much money for anything other than food and bills and many times didn’t have enough for that. We moved almost every year to new areas due to being late on rent or not being able to pay. I went to 9 different public schools in the city from south to north which at the time was the worst thing to go through. I was forced to make new friends at every school almost every year. I had no idea that this would help me in the future. Due to my mom never having any money and never knowing my father, I had to go out and make my own money if I ever wanted anything. I remember standing out in front of the local grocery stores and asking customers if they needed help with their bags or making my own glow necklaces out of safety sticks and selling them at feasts or carnivals. Bottom line is there was never a time I wasn’t out promoting what I had. This hobby took a lot of time which eventually effective my school work because I would skip school to go shoveling snow or go do handy work for neighbors. My mom was disappointed every time she received a call that I wasn’t at school. I eventually dropped out of high school because I needed to work to make money. I worked many different jobs throughout my teens and 20s.

I always dreamed of owning my own business because I thought that would make me rich, I was driving a concrete truck at the time I started my first business in 2001 installing and refinishing oak floors, I eventually had a crew of 26 men, this was a great business due to the great economy, it was easy to sell flooring because the work was so plentiful. As the housing market started to crash in 2007, I was left in a bad situation because all my work came from new construction, I held it together for a while but eventually had to dramatically downsize and I mean to the point that I was the worker installing the floors. I was finally offered a job in which I promised myself that I’d never work for someone again, I was to be the project manager of 6 properties that were being Condo converted. This job did pay well and I was still the boss so it wasn’t too far from my dream plus I was learning more about the trades which eventually led to where I am today. Towards the end of the projects I was completing one of the buildings at 57th and calumet when a gentleman approached me and asked if I build porches, well because I just got done building three porches with a company on the building I was at it wasn’t hard to get pricing together. I put myself in the middle of the porch project and was able to turn a profit.

I eventually got laid off because nothing was selling and the owner could no longer pay me to manage his properties. So I had to make some moves. I was in a bad place when this happened because my mortgage just adjusted up and the bank said my property had lost over 1/3 of the value which made it impossible to refinance. We started the new porch company in 2008 with the name F.Knight construction, I started getting busy but it still wasn’t filling the calendar for 52 weeks. I was driving down the Kennedy when it all hit me like a ton of bricks, “MR. PORCH” I just about had a panic attack because it was so good for what I wanted to do. In that same moment I came up with 877-mrporch as the phone number and soon after that was able to purchase the web site. I thought this was the greatest idea I’ve ever came up with even though I had everyone that surrounding me would laugh every time I brought it up. This made me more determined to make this right. Thanks to google AdWords It seemed like it happened over night. Mr. Porch has sold consistently over the past 5-6 years approximately $2-$3 million in sales and has become one of the biggest multi story porch companies in and around the city of Chicago. We average 800-900 estimates yearly. We are also grateful for our success that we donate one porch every year for the past three years to military veterans in need of a new porch. I pride myself on leading customers in the right direction.

Has it been a smooth road?
Our struggle is that our customers are being forced by the city to repair or replace there rear porches, this is not always a happy situation.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Mr. Porch story. Tell us more about the business.
We specialize in 2-3 story wood and steel porch in and around Chicago.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We are looking to open a porch and deck supply store. I’d love to pass the savings on to my customers.

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