468: What It’s Like to Turn Around a Small Family Business With Josh Dick, Wave Investments [Main T4C Episode]

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Joshua Dick transformed a small family business, Urnex Brands, which sells cleaning products for commercial and household coffee equipment, into one of the worldwide leaders in the coffee industry. Josh was the CEO of Urnex for over 13 years before he sold the business and moved to Florence, Italy with his family. Earlier in his career, Josh worked on Wall Street for an investment bank and later, in marketing at Unilever. He is currently a partner in Wave Investments, a private equity firm that focuses on helping entrepreneurs grow their coffee-based companies. Josh is also the author of the book Grow Like a Lobster, which provides valuable lessons about the business world — centering around the idea that companies, like lobsters, must be ready to “molt” in order to grow. Josh graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Political Science in 1993 and then obtained his M.B.A in Marketing and Finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1997. 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE:

• What Josh does in the global specialty coffee industry (6:07) 
• How the coronavirus has affected the coffee industry (7:19) 
• Why cold brew coffee is so appealing (8:03)
• How Sprudge.com can help people better understand the coffee industry (9:39)
• How Josh makes a perfect cup of coffee (12:34)
• How Josh’s summers interning in politics in D.C. gave him clarity as to what he wanted to do (14:22)
• Why Josh went into investment banking despite having never taken a math class in college (19:53)
• Why Josh went into his family business in 2003 (23:01)
• How Josh turned a struggling family business into a thriving global supplier of cleaning supplies for coffee machinery — with inspiration from a movie (24:00)
• How Josh tried to make his product sound “sexy” (26:24)
• What tips Josh shares about professional growth in his book (29:41)
• Why understanding what makes you happy is so important (32:44)
• Why Josh liked to hire recent college graduates (34:57)