On December 30, 2020, Josh Smith did something most people would consider reckless. He walked away from his job as a journeyman lineman for the power company — a union position, with union pay, in the middle of a pandemic — and bet everything on a knife company he’d been dreaming about for two decades.
He was 39 years old. He had a garage, some equipment, and a business name he’d registered 20 years earlier and never used.
Four years later, Montana Knife Company did $50 million in revenue.
A childhood obsession, a lifelong credential
The story doesn’t start in 2020, though. It starts in 1992, when an 11-year-old Josh Smith got a knife for Christmas and his Little League baseball coach invited him into his shop to make one.
