From Inmate to Entrepreneur

James Knauss found his Christian faith and a new lease on life while he was still behind bars. When Knauss stepped out of the Marshall County, Mississippi, jail in 2014, he knew his days as an angry, sometimes violent man were behind him, but he was unsure what laid ahead.

“They opened the doors and said, ‘You’re free,’” Knauss recalls. “But I had nowhere to go.”

Knauss found help at a Memphis, Tenn., shelter that connected him with Economic Opportunity, an organization that equips people who have been incarcerated with the skills they need to find employment. HOPE partners with Economic Opportunity to teach financial education classes and offer returning citizens the opportunity to open checking or savings accounts.

“I saw that as a golden opportunity,” Knauss recalls. “A classy person from a financial institution was coming to me and a room full of felons, saying we want you?

People who haven’t been in prison don’t know what an important step an account is toward becoming a productive citizen.”

Knauss found work through Economic Opportunity as a landscaper, and he realized he had a knack for the business. In June 2017, he opened his own landscaping company, aptly called Transformalawn. Knauss purchased the equipment needed to launch the business with a loan from HOPE.

“I will never go to any other financial institution,” Knauss says. “As long as HOPE is open, I will be with them because HOPE has been there for me.”

Today, Knauss is happily married, teaches Sunday School, and cuts grass for free for residents in low-income areas of Memphis. Occasionally, Knauss meets a teenager who reminds him of his younger self, a young man teetering on the edge between a life of crime and a life of promise. It’s not unusual for Knauss to buy that teenager a lawn mower, a tool he can use to earn a little money, build a work ethic, and perhaps build a more promising future.

When he hires new employees for Transformalawn, he has an unusual employment requirement.

“You have to be a felon,” Knauss says. “It’s an unusual prerequisite, but my desire to grow Transformalawn comes whole-heartedly from my desire to hire other returning citizens. Is it taking a risk? Sure. But HOPE was willing to take a risk on me.”