We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dave Knox. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dave below.

Dave, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

In 2007, I was debating what I wanted as the next steps in my career. I had been promoted to Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble at the age of 26 with the opportunity to work on the Customer Team for Walmart, our largest retail partner. The tried and true path after that role would be a move back to Cincinnati as a P&L owner for one of the company’s large brands. My passion was a marketer instead of a general manager and I was presented with the opportunity to take a role in the newly formed Corporate Digital Strategy team.

For most Brand Managers, taking a role like that was a lateral move away from the “correct” career trajectory. But for me, it was a risk I wanted to take. This was the emergence of Web 2.0 and companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter were in their early days. I decided to take the leap and it was one I never looked back from. The role allowed me the opportunity to build a network with the digital leaders of our day and to deepen my exposure to venture capital. And most importantly, it allowed me to play to my strength instead of trying to be “good enough” at the areas that I didn’t enjoy.

That role set the foundation for what has been the next nearly 2 decades of my career including launching The Brandery, joining Rockfish as Chief Marketing Officer and writing Predicting The Turn. None of it would have been possible if I had taken the role that was expected of me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Today, I am the Executive Director of Blue North (www.bluenorthky.com). Blue North is an entrepreneurial support organization that serves as the champion for the entrepreneurs and startup founders that call Northern Kentucky home. For those that arent familiar with the area, Cincinnati sits at the intersection of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana with about 1/3 of the population living on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

Before moving into this role, my career has been as a brand marketer, venture investor, startup advisor, and agency leader. I worked for Procter & Gamble for 7 years and then for 7 years as the CMO at Rockfish. At Rockfish, we grew the agency to over $70 million in yearly revenue working with companies like Ford, Mars, and General Mills and sold the business to WPP. While building Rockfish, I was also the co-founder of The Brandery – which was one of the top 10 Startup Accelerators in the US and co-founder of Vine St Ventures. After that, I wrote a book called Predicting the Turn: The High Stakes Game of Business Between Startups and Blue Chips, advised startups like GoPuff and Reliaquest and ultimately bought a small consumer brand called Nature’s Willow that I expanded in Walmart and CVS before selling in 2022.

The common thread in my career has been a passion for digital marketing and its potential for changing industries and growing brands. It was my embraced of digital in the early 2000’s that ultimately led to me joining P&G”s Corporate Digital Strategy Team, leaving for Rockfish, and everything else that has come since.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

In 2019, a good friend of mine called me about a small brand called Nature’s Aspirin Willow Balm. It had been started 10 years before my an amazing entrepreneur named Michelle Mills. She had invented a patented pain relief cream that used the power of white willow bark as a natural pain reliever. The business was mainly sold at Tractor Supply Company of all places and had incredibly loyal fans. I acquired the business only 6 weeks after meeting Michelle and relaunched the brand as Nature’s Willow in April 2020.

When I was introduced to Michelle, she had just spent the previous ~6 months in discussions with selling the business to another large company. In this regard, it made the process much smoother than others and is why we were able to move so quickly. She had answered nearly every due diligence question you could think of in that previous process, which allowed me to evaluate the good and the bad of the situation. I had also spent 2 years working on P&G’s Personal Health Care business, so I was able to quickly identify the areas around regulatory that might have slowed down other buyers. Given the size of the business, the most important of the due diligence process for me was figuring out what elements were a strong foundation to build off of and what needed to be changed in order to unlock growth. After talking with customers, consumers, and our partners, the focus on the first 12 months post acquisition was around modernizing the brand, outsourcing our supply chain, and upgrading our manufacturing partners so we could eventually expand our product line-up. For anyone thinking about buying a business, I think its vital to invest the time before the deal in order exploring the question of what’s working and what could be improved. If you are buying the business, you need to believe in the core strengths but also believe that you can bring a unique value that takes it to the next level. Look for the deal where you can bring an unfair advantage to the growth.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Over the past year, I have become a huge fan of what David Senra has built with the Founders podcast (https://www.founderspodcast.com/). I originally came across the podcasts because I was re-reading the Essays by Paul Graham. Paul’s work was incredibly influential in my early days of The Brandery given his work in parallel with YCombinator. It was after doing a Google Search related to Paul’s essays that episode #275 of David’s podcast popped up. Its a very unique format as a solo podcast where David is reading the biographies of some of the greatest entrepreneurs and leaders in history. He then connects those lessons back to what founders today can learn from them. What has been amazing to me is how David connects the dots between leaders, threading the lessons between Steve Jobs and Charlie Munger to Michael Jordan and Paul Graham. They are fascinating listens that lead to even more interesting reads as a result.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.predictingtheturn.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveknox/
• Twitter: https://x.com/daveknox
• Other: https://www.bluenorthky.com