[00:00:00] Davis Smith: I was driving home, I was in the car and I'm having a conversation about culture with another founder, and I pull into my garage and I get off the call and I'm sitting there and I'm realizing, the organization that matters the most to me, my family. I hadn't done this. It was literally being done by default, just like I had my first two businesses.
[00:00:19] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. What does it take to walk away from your dream job at the peak of success to serve others? Today, I'm joined by Davis Smith, founder and chairman of Cotopaxi, the beloved outdoor brand that has revolutionized how companies can build purpose into their DNA.
[00:00:49] Adam Fishman: After a decade as CEO growing the company at breakneck speed, Davis made the extraordinary decision to step away and move his entire family to Brazil to serve as mission leaders for three years. He's married to his wife, and together they're raising four kids who have experienced everything from survival adventures to international moves during pivotal moments like senior year of high school.
[00:01:15] Adam Fishman: Today, we talked about why he left his dream job as CEO to serve hundreds of young missionaries in Brazil, and what that experience taught him about leadership, his philosophy of mission-focused parenting, and how clear family values made their major life transition possible, the transformative power he's witnessed when young adults step away from comfort zones to serve others, his approach to survival adventure trips with his kids and how they build character and confidence, the intentional family culture he and his wife have created around work ethic and financial discipline, and his belief in unconditional positive regard parenting that helps kids develop resilience.
[00:01:57] Adam Fishman: We also discussed how watching young people transform through service has shaped his perspective on what really matters in raising the next generation. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts.
[00:02:15] Adam Fishman: I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Davis Smith. Welcome Davis Smith to "Startup Dad." It is my pleasure having you here with me today. Thanks for joining me.
[00:02:26] Davis Smith: Yeah. Thanks, Adam. This is great. I'm super excited about it.
[00:02:28] Adam Fishman: I can feel the enthusiasm coming through the camera. I've already mentioned this in the intro, but you are the founder and chairman of Cotopaxi, which is one of my absolute favorite outdoor brands. And I was, like, giddy telling people that I was going to get to connect with you on this, show.
[00:02:44] Adam Fishman: They were like, "Oh, that's so awesome." So, huge fan of the brand. Thank you for starting that company. it's just awesome and such great stuff that you make.
[00:02:53] Davis Smith: fun brand and fun product for sure.
[00:02:55] Adam Fishman: About three and a half years ago, though, you stepped away from your role as founder and CEO. So you're still involved. you're chairman of the board, obviously, and still the founder, but you're not the CEO.
[00:03:06] Adam Fishman: You're not running the day-to-day anymore. And you were at the helm of that company for a decade after founding it. So, I mean, my first question is why did you step away? What happened?
[00:03:16] Davis Smith: Yeah.
[00:03:17] Davis Smith: mean, it was my dream job. It was, uh, something I, I loved doing every day. It was something that really I dreamed about my whole life. my family had moved to Latin America when I was four years old, and I spent all my childhood living in different countries in Latin America. when I was 19, I went and served a mission for my church for two years in Bolivia, took a, a two-year break from school, and then, developed just a real passion for finding a way to make the world a better place of fighting poverty.
[00:03:45] Davis Smith: I grew up in some places where, uh, I saw a lot of, of really difficult things all around. and you just recognize how, how lucky and how blessed you are. I'd always wanted to find a way to help others. And, uh, after a decade as an entrepreneur, I, I was living in Brazil actually at the time, and I was building a business i- in Brazil and had this idea of building an outdoor brand, but that we used...
[00:04:08] Davis Smith: where we used our profits and our, our entire focus, the, the values of the brand were all built around helping others and giving back. And so moved back to the US and started building that brand, Cotopaxi, and it was just one of the highlights of my life. and then about 10 years in, and, and we grew a lot.
[00:04:23] Davis Smith: crazy growth. I mean, just a lot of challenges. Not always easy. Almost ran out of money a few times, but like, just a really fun experience. And then, uh, one day I got a phone call from my church and they asked if I'd be willing to set aside my life for three years And, uh, move with my family to Brazil and, and lead a mission for our church in Brazil.
[00:04:44] Davis Smith: you know, you might think that'd be a hard decision, not saying it, it was, it was only easy, it took me about one second to say yes. it really came down to the values that we had as a family, and it was perfectly aligned with the values that we had. And so, uh, I had this transformational experience as a 19, 20, 21-year-old in Bolivia as a young missionary, and I thought, you know, if I could go help a few hundred young people have a similar experience, it would be worth my time.
[00:05:10] Davis Smith: And so that's what we've been doing the last three years.
[00:05:12] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, I wanna dig into that a little bit more. obviously your whole family's there with you. your wife, and you both are serving as mission leaders in Brazil. and you moved there when you had a teenager, I think a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a 17-year-old, which I think was for her senior year of high school.
[00:05:30] Adam Fishman: You were like, "Guess what? We're moving to Brazil." I can't imagine that was easy for the kids. So I understand you felt called to do it, and I'm sure your kids are very supportive, but it's also a really hard thing. Like, transition like that is hard. Change is hard for kids, especially when they're teenagers, when they're, like, they have their friend groups established.
[00:05:48] Adam Fishman: So, what was that conversation like with the family? You obviously knew you wanted to do it,
[00:05:53] Davis Smith: it was not a hard thing for, for any of us. I think, and maybe we can talk more about this, but we have, like, very, clear values as a family, that the children all know. They know what our family stands for, who we are, what matters to us. Yeah.
[00:06:09] Davis Smith: And I think all of us knew this was just in alignment with who we are as a family. And so, again, it didn't necessarily just make it easy for everyone all the time. You know, there were hard things about leaving my work, hard things about leaving kids' friends and everything else, but at the same time, there was purpose behind what we were doing.
[00:06:27] Davis Smith: And I think we were all aligned with that. And, especially hard for a, a senior in high school. we have four kids, our oldest was in college, so, you know, she got left behind you know, she was solo and then, the other three came with us and, uh...
[00:06:39] Davis Smith: But it was just a, an incredible experience for, for the kids. And, now they're going to miss it. You know, our, our little boys are asking if we can extend, if we can stay a little longer. And it's like, well, three years is a long time. I think that's enough.
[00:06:53] Davis Smith: it's been a great experience for us, but not, not without difficulty, not without some tears.
[00:06:58] Davis Smith: Uh, not without some challenges. know, I'd say the first year was, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done.
[00:07:03] Davis Smith: honestly, it almost broke me. I mean, it was, it was that hard. and at the same time, it's been maybe the most fulfilling thing I've ever done with my life.
[00:07:11] Davis Smith: So- Yeah. very rewarding.
[00:07:12] Adam Fishman: I've never lived in Brazil or really anywhere outside the United States. I've visited. But what was so hard about it almost to the point of, you know, breaking you, like you said?
[00:07:23] Davis Smith: there's a lot of things. first of all, the pace was unlike anything I'd ever done,
[00:07:27] Adam Fishman: even versus starting a company.
[00:07:29] Davis Smith: it's crazy. I mean, it's, 24/7. during our time here, we'll look out after just shy of 500 missionaries. These are young- you know, 18 to, let's say, 25-year-olds.
[00:07:40] Davis Smith: Most are 18, 19, 20 years old. And, you know, a lot of them, it's their first time moving away from family. They're moving to... A lot of them are moving to another country, and, it's hard for them. It's not an easy job being a missionary. you're living in, in tough conditions.
[00:07:54] Davis Smith: you're dealing with a lot of rejection. You're developing resilience, and you're learning to love, they have a companion with them all the time. they get to learn how to resolve conflicts and how to love people that are different from them, and they learn how to serve and forget themselves 'cause, uh, as an 18-year-old, that takes some practice, right?
[00:08:12] Davis Smith: but they finish these two years, they are different people. I mean, they're just totally transformed. I, I wish I could explain to you, Adam, like how the joy that comes in seeing that. It's just, it's remarkable, and that's what's made this experience just so joyful is seeing these young kids. They arrive here, you know, a little bit afraid and unsure of themselves and lacking confidence, and a lot of times not even, not being able to communicate at all.
[00:08:36] Davis Smith: And they leave with confidence and joy and, just strength. they have belief in themselves, and they have a new vision of what they can do with their lives. And, you know, some of them come from privilege. You know, they come from the United States. And, we have others that come from Africa or from...
[00:08:52] Davis Smith: You know, we have 24 different countries, uh, that our missionaries come from. So a lot of them come from extreme poverty themselves. And so, but they go back with skill sets and, and training and, and confidence and an ability to kind of see for the first time what they're capable of. And so that's, uh, incredibly rewarding.
[00:09:08] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Wow. I mean, you got a front row seat to watching hundreds of 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds move away from home, step away from, like, the day-to-day life and the, you know, social media or their, like, you know, high school experience or whatever, and develop some of these new, new skills. And I think
[00:09:29] Adam Fishman: You know, if I recall, one of the things you, you told me in our prep was that this has helped you maybe develop this belief that, like, stepping away at that age, is really, really valuable. I'm curious why you believe that, and you probably believe it even more now, having lived it and having experienced it for so long.
[00:09:47] Adam Fishman: and then what are some of the things that you observed the kids like really learning while they were away from home?
[00:09:52] Davis Smith: I am such a big believerfor me in, in my faith, it's, it's a mission, but for others it doesn't, you know, it can be the Peace Corps. I saw some of my classmates in business school had served in the Peace Corps, had lived in, different parts of the world and had experienced something similar.
[00:10:04] Davis Smith: Uh, it might be in the being serving in the military, but this time at that age of like removing yourself from what everyone else is doing and committing yourself to serving others and forgetting yourself, there's something incredibly valuable in doing that. And I saw that, you know, firsthand experience when I was 19.
[00:10:21] Davis Smith: I remember having this just incredible experience that I wrote about in my, personal journal. I was at the tail end of my two years, and I was with a, a brand new missionary that had just started a few weeks before. he was from, the Seattle area in Washington and,blonde hair, just super pale skin.
[00:10:37] Davis Smith: Like, you know, he came off the bus and it was like, oh my gosh, this kid's like never been outside, you know? but he had this like huge grand smile and just radiated joy. Yeah.
[00:10:48] Davis Smith: And I just loved being with this guy. You know, I'm wrapping up my two years and, you know, we go for one day, we go in to, to grab lunch in this market and, Bolivia's incredibly poor.
[00:10:59] Davis Smith: At the time when I lived there, the average income was about $500 a year. many of the communities that we served in made less than that. And so we're in this little market getting some lunch, very simple lunch, you know, a pile of rice, some boiled potatoes, and then like some gristly meat. And, we sit down and we're eating and we're se- you know, all these little kids are around kind of asking people for the leftovers on their plate.
[00:11:20] Davis Smith: And, this little girl walks up to us as soon as we sit down and she asks this compa- my companion, she said, "Hey,can I have your potatoes?" And he immediately just turned over his entire plate to her. Just the joy on her face. I mean, this little girl's, like, clearly malnourished and, you know, we were hungry,
[00:11:39] Davis Smith: he gave his entire plate. And I remember wr- I wrote in my journal, that I never wanted to forget that moment. Like, I had tears in my eyes at that moment just watching what was happening, and I, I wrote in my journal and just said, "I hope that sometime in my life if I ever have money, that I wanna be able to use whatever I have to help others, and that maybe I can come back down to Latin America to help in some way."
[00:11:59] Davis Smith: Right. that experience for me was transformative. It changed the way, the lens in which I saw the world and it changed m- my purpose in life. It wasn't just about making money or having a career where I could get, you know, fame or fortune. It was, it was a deeper purpose. And I've seen our missionaries develop that here.
[00:12:16] Davis Smith: You know, one of,our great missionaries here, he's, uh, first generation college student right now. His mom is from Mexico, his dad's from Guatemala. Grew up in a small little apartment in the west side of Salt Lake City, and, shared with a bunch of- I think 11 family members lived in this little apartment, extended family all lived together.
[00:12:35] Davis Smith: He did horribly in high school, think like a 2.0 in high school or something, and then he came on a mission, and he came here and, this kid, was just mind-blowingly good. Just oozed charisma and was connected with people. He loved people deeply, and all the missionaries admired him, all these other missionaries, and he became, like, a real leader in our mission, helping me lead our entire mission.
[00:13:01] Davis Smith: what I saw in this kid was something he didn't even see in himself. he finished this mission and he had a new vision for what he could accomplish. He'd never even thought about going to college, but, he went to, a small local regional college for one year after his mission, got straight As, 4.0, and then transferred to Brigham Young University, where he's studying now, and he wants to go to a top law school.
[00:13:20] Davis Smith: when he transferred to BYU, he got, he kinda got his butt kicked a little bit by some econ classes. You know, lost a little bit of confidence in himself. But, like, this is life, right? It's like you get beat up a little bit. But we saw, that's what we get to see, uh, every single day is these kids developing a sense of who they are and what their responsibility is in the world to make it a little bit better.
[00:13:38] Davis Smith: So it's been a true joy.
[00:13:39] Adam Fishman: pretty amazing to, to somebody to like build back confidence when maybe they had none coming in, you know, and to find out that they're like better at something than they, than they thought they were, so speaking of which, I wanted to ask you about survival trips with your daughters.
[00:13:56] Adam Fishman: So you told me that you've done like literal survival trips, with your two oldest kids. so tell me what those are. I'm like, one, I'm in awe, and two, like I don't know if I can handle it. So, so I- I'm going to live vicariously through you, uh, on this one. So tell me about survival trips with your daughters.
[00:14:15] Adam Fishman: What are
[00:14:15] Davis Smith: Oh my gosh. Okay, so this is like one of my favorite things. And I did my first one when I was, uh, 11 or 12. I, I think I was 11, with my dad. Uh, we, at the time were living in Puerto Rico, and my dad was a Scoutmaster. And so my dad, like anything he does was like next level. Whether, you know, baseball coach, next level.
[00:14:34] Davis Smith: Uh, Scoutmaster, next level. And so, uh, we all made our own spears and, He got American Airlines to, to give us like discounted tickets. So it was $25. Back then 25 was maybe a little bit, you know, more than that. But to fly to St. Thomas, which isn't very close by, in the Virgin Islands.
[00:14:50] Davis Smith: And then we had this captain that would just drive us or, uh, sail us around during the day. He drops off on an island, we jump into the water with these dry bags. We'd swim with our snorkels and fins and our spears that we'd made in our bags, we'd swim to shore. He'd go take off and he'd work during the day, you know, the next day or two, and then he'd come back, pick us up, take us to another island.
[00:15:08] Davis Smith: We do the, the island and we do the same thing. And, you know, we'd just spearfish and eat coconuts and, uh, we did that for a week. it implanted something in me where it was like, "I love this." And so as an adult, I've continued it. every year I do some kind of survival trip, uh, with friends. I have a few entrepreneur friends and we go out and do stuff.
[00:15:25] Davis Smith: I've, I have a cousin that's kind of my go-to adventure buddy. We go do some crazy stuff and, and then I took my daughters, uh, on one of these trips as well, which was really, really fun. you know, usually go for about a week, don't bring any food, and we just survive off what we can get. it's pretty awesome.
[00:15:41] Davis Smith: You know, you create no waste. you finish a week and you're like, "I have literally no garbage to take out." you're kind of living off the land, which feels amazing, and just connecting with nature. You're disconnected from technology and your phone.
[00:15:53] Davis Smith: It's a, it's a pretty special thing. I, I haven't done it for three years and I'm missing it. I'm going to have to get one of these on the calendar again.
[00:15:59] Adam Fishman: Yeah, I love that you said that, you know, you're connecting with nature and disconnecting with your phone. Not, not a lot of, uh, of USB chargers, on the adventure, on the survival trip, I imagine,
[00:16:07] Davis Smith: Yeah, I think Gilligan's Island, I'm sure they could, like the doc could have figured out like the coconuts to somehow charge your phone or something, but yeah. yeah.
[00:16:15] Davis Smith: we're not there.
[00:16:16] Adam Fishman: You talked about values and you said that that's one of the things that helped your kids, obviously not without, a little hand-wringing when it came to, to moving to Brazil. But the family values are the things that really, kind of helped propel people forward.
[00:16:30] Adam Fishman: we already talked about the importance of establishing those, but, like, how did they come to pass in your, in your own family? Is this something that you all sat down together and talked through? Is this something that's, like, written on the wall? Like, how, how did you develop these with your, whole family?
[00:16:44] Davis Smith: it is something we did together as a family. But maybe I can talk a little bit a- about the inception of it, I did it, you know, when I first started our family. our two girls are almost 10 years older than our two little boys.
[00:16:55] Davis Smith: And, you know, my wife and I met in college. We started our family early, and we had this 10-year gap, and we kind of started all over again. It's been great, but, you know, a lot of learnings that happened during that, during that period. And, you know, when I was building Cotopaxi, I really tried to do a better job of building intentional culture.
[00:17:10] Davis Smith: My previous two businesses that I'd started, culture was just kind of an afterthought. It was just, it just kind of happened. It was just by default, With Cotopaxi, it was totally different. I, I had a very clear purpose when I built this business around fighting poverty, about doing good, and I wanted to build the business in the right way.
[00:17:25] Davis Smith: And I felt to do that, we needed to have a very strong intentional culture. So, uh, with the team, uh, there were six of us, me and five others, before we'd even sold a single backpack or jacket. we sat down in a mountain cabin in Utah, and we put together our values, and we identified, three core values, and we built rituals and traditions around those core values that reinforced the values.
[00:17:48] Davis Smith: Uh, understanding that those really kind of determine behaviors. And, so if you have those core values and you have the right rituals and traditions and the right behaviors, you have the right outcomes. And so, you know, the business worked and the culture was fantastic. You know, we were getting, several thousand applicants per job opening.
[00:18:04] Davis Smith: just a great place to work. And I started having other entrepreneurs that would call me and say, "Hey, Davis, I want to talk to you about culture, and what did you do? How did you think about it? How should I be thinking about the culture in my business where I'm, you know, I'm in the early stages. What should I do?"
[00:18:17] Davis Smith: And one day as I was driving home, I was, you know, in the car and I'm having a conversation about culture with another founder, and I pull into my garage and I get off the call and I'm sitting there and I'm realizing I'm sitting here telling everyone about how to build this great intentional culture for their organizations, but the organization that matters the most to me, my family I hadn't done this.
[00:18:38] Davis Smith: Like, it was literally being done by default, just like I had my first two businesses. Yeah. And so I went in and I told my wife this epiphany, and she's like, "Well, let's do it." You know? So we sat down and with our two daughters, and we came up with our values. And there's five core values. They're attached to the letters of our last name, S-M-I-T-H.
[00:18:56] Davis Smith: Each one stands for something, and, they're on the wall. And, and not just on the wall, like, we live them. we talk about them every week. We have a weekly meeting as a family. And, uh, we talk about our values. we have a little activity. We have a treat. It's kind of a fun thing.
[00:19:10] Davis Smith: You know, we talk about, you know, different parts of our, family, what we wanna do. And so, it's been transformational. I, I... Maybe just one quick story about that. Like, our, our teenage daughters, at the time, maybe tweens, around that age, I remember coming home from work and they'd always be watching some show, this, like, mermaid show, on TV.
[00:19:29] Davis Smith: Right. I, I think it was called H2O. It was, like, in Australia, and they loved the accents and stuff. Like, they were just totally into this, show. And I'd come home, and I, I remember telling them literally dozens of times, like, "Girls, get off the couch. Turn off the TV. Like, go read a book or something.
[00:19:43] Davis Smith: Stop watching that show. Read a book." Well, guess what? Every time I said that, nothing changed. They're always were watching that show. They weren't reading a book. Well, when we started, defined our values, the I of Smith, uh, stands for intellect. And it was just this idea that we, we love learning, we love reading, we love learning about new things and trying hard things.
[00:20:03] Davis Smith: And, to reinforce that, we decided, okay, well, what ritual or tradition are we going to create? So we decided as a family that on Sunday afternoons and when we came home from church, we were going to go and we were going to gather around in the primary bedroom of our home, and we had pillows and blankets set up and treats, and we all read a book for an hour.
[00:20:21] Davis Smith: And at the end, we'd share what we read. And so we started this tradition, and what shocked me was that within weeks, I came home from work, I walked into the house, and for the first time ever, my girls were on the couch reading books instead of watching that show. And it was like, what? Like, my mind was blown.
[00:20:40] Davis Smith: It was like, this really works.
[00:20:42] Davis Smith: And ever since then, like, our, our boys, they know those, those five core values by heart. You know, when our little boy, when we moved here, he was just barely turned five, you know, he could recite them. He knew exactly what they were, what they stood for, and not just the words, but what they meant.
[00:20:54] Davis Smith: And so, it's been an important part of our evolution as a family.
[00:20:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, so run me through those really quick. So intellect is the I. Uh, what is the SM and the TH?
[00:21:03] Davis Smith: S is for being selfless. Uh, so it's just selflessness. It's about service. You know, we believe in our family being here to help others. And so we, we constantly looking ways to serve and it means, you know, having refugees at our home. It, it means, uh, if we go on a vacation, it's not just vacation, it's like we're going out to wherever we're going and we're going to do some service there.
[00:21:23] Davis Smith: And that's, a big part of, of our family. M, stands for Mormon. we're members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a big part of our family's identity, of our core values and what we stand for, who we are. that's a big part of it.
[00:21:35] Davis Smith: It's, you know, we have traditions of, we go to church every Sunday, and every night, , we pray together and we, we read scripture together. And so, you know, it's a big part of, who we are. I talked about I, you know, intellect. T is for travel. So we love traveling, and we believe experiences are more important than things, and so we talk a lot about that.
[00:21:52] Davis Smith: And so when the kids, if the boys want a phone, it's like, "No, you don't need a, you don't need a phone." And the girls when they wanted the newest iPhone, it's like, "You don't need the newest iPhone," you know? we're going to go take that money. Why don't we plan a trip together?
[00:22:03] Davis Smith: And our girls, even when they were little, young teenagers, were like helping us plan trips and looking for travel deals and, you know, helping us plan and, right now we're, we're planning a trip to go to Egypt as a family for Thanksgiving. Well, our boys are becoming experts in, in Egypt.
[00:22:16] Davis Smith: Like, they know more about Egypt than I do now. It's like they're like reading all these books about it, uh, reading online. They're like talking to those teachers about it. So it's been really fun, to watch them kind of prepare for that. Uh, and then H is hard work, just the idea that like we work hard.
[00:22:30] Davis Smith: our girls from the time they were young had jobs. our oldest daughter when she was like 13 started working at Cotopaxi as a janitor. So she cleaned our bathrooms, the toilets, she slowly graduated over the years to working in the retail store. And now she's, she's had, you know, different jobs and internships and,
[00:22:46] Davis Smith: the kids know when they turn 16, whatever they've saved will match, for a car. So they're motivated. You know, those girls, they turned 16, they'd saved up, you know, a bit of money, like, uh, I think $6,000 or $7,000 each.
[00:22:58] Davis Smith: And if they want a nicer car, they can save up more money. If they just want a beater, you know, they, they don't have to save as much. And so, uh, it's good motivation for them.
[00:23:05] Adam Fishman: That's pretty awesome. Thank you for sharing those values with me. I re- I really appreciate it. I've talked about values with a few founders on the, on this show. and one of the things that I haven't asked people, which I realize is like kind of a, an error on my part, is, kids inevitably will fall short of one of those values at some point in their life.
[00:23:24] Adam Fishman: They're kids, right? their frontal lobes or their frontal cortex is not fully developed until their mid-20s, you know? They're going to make mistakes. They're going to do something that is different than what you would do and make a choice that's different than what you would do. And so I'm wondering what you do in your family when one of the kids inevitably doesn't live up to one of those values sometimes.
[00:23:45] Adam Fishman: how do you address that? how do you talk about that?
[00:23:47] Davis Smith: Obviously this is inevitable, right? You know, you can build, you can do all this so intentionally, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to have a kid that goes off track or that just isn't aligned with what you envision for your family. And so, my wife studied family science,
[00:24:01] Davis Smith: before we came to Brazil, she was a, a court-appointed special advocate with foster children, and really is passionate about this. And, there's something called unconditional positive regard and conditional positive regard. and there's cultures, uh, within organizations or within families that, can reflect these two things.
[00:24:17] Davis Smith: And there's probably no family that's perfectly one or perfectly the other. But I think ideally you'd have unconditional positive regard, meaning that no matter what the situation, a child is, is loved and welcome in your home. there's nothing. There's nothing that a child could do that would make them not welcome.
[00:24:35] Davis Smith: No matter what mistakes they make, no matter what beliefs they have, no matter where they are in life, unconditional positive regard means, we love you no matter what. even something like timeout, which we've used in our family, if you study this, it actually says, like, timeout that's conditional positive regard.
[00:24:49] Davis Smith: It's kinda like, "Hey, we're going to separate ourselves from you now because you messed up." I'm not an expert. My wife would have, probably a more interesting conversation here. But as a parent that's been doing this for a while, 'cause I have, you know, daughters in their 20s, early 20s, and then I have little kids still.
[00:25:03] Davis Smith: you know, I'm starting to learn better what this means and that?
[00:25:06] Davis Smith: actually we get the best results. And I see this with our missionaries, you know? they might mess up or, you know, do something they're not supposed to. And it's like, I can either be angry at them and just let them know how disappointed I am in them, or I can just love them show them that unconditional positive regard.
[00:25:21] Davis Smith: that's what works. a quick story with these missionaries. When they first get here that first day, we bring them to our home out of the airport. You know, their eyes are huge. You know, we're, they're in Brazil and, starting this two-year thing.
[00:25:32] Davis Smith: I can see it in their heads. They're like, "Two years, this is never going to end. How is this going to go?" And,when we first started, I would tell them, "Hey, you know, this two years, like, we're going to give everything we've got. You know, we're going to serve, we're going to give everything we've got. So you've got two years to work, and then you can rest at the end of the two years."
[00:25:48] Davis Smith: And I remember when I said that, like, their eyes were just kinda like, it was like, "Oh, no." Like, "This is going to be very hard." I noticed that. And after a few months here, I decided, you know, I need to change that. That's, like, not the right message I wanna send to them. And instead, when they arrived, I would show them on my phone, I created a note for every single missionary before they even arrived with their picture, their name.
[00:26:09] Davis Smith: I have all the details of their hobbies, their interests, their family background. And when they get here, I'm like, "Elder so-and-so, like Elder Jones-" I know that you love football and that you know how to play the piano. And I've been memorizing your face and your name, and I've been looking forward to you getting here for months.
[00:26:27] Davis Smith: And I am so happy you're here, and I love you. And I can't wait for you to have this experience. And I promise you, I'm going to do everything I can to make this the most incredible experience of your life. I get emotional as I'm telling them, and I'm, you know, looking them in the eyes and telling each one of them how excited I am for them to be here.
[00:26:43] Davis Smith: they get emotional they get these huge smiles, and they can feel how much I care for them and love for them. It's like, you know what? That's a much better start than telling them, "Hey, you got two years to work." You know? And so same kind of approach with your kids, right?
[00:26:55] Davis Smith: It's, if they know how much you care for them and love them no matter what, I think a lot of times they're going to give their very best. They're not going to want to disappoint you. So,
[00:27:02] Adam Fishman: I love that. it's sort of like, uh, I think there's another thing you talked about, which is like connect before correct, which is a thing that I've heard, a lot, which is about building that stable foundation before you, provide feedback or, give your kids feedback and stuff.
[00:27:16] Adam Fishman: And so that's a perfect example of that, right?
[00:27:18] Davis Smith: the values are really-- they should be a compass. They're not... a club to, like, beat them it's just a guide. It's a guide to help us figure out our direction. And sometimes when we're out in the outdoors and stuff, we take a wrong turn, and we need the compass to kind of get us back on track.
[00:27:29] Davis Smith: And that's what the, that's what the values are
[00:27:30] Davis Smith: for.
[00:27:31] Adam Fishman: you obviously believe very strongly in developing a culture of, of work early on. You talked about that with your kids, and also financial discipline.
[00:27:38] Adam Fishman: very tied to those values. so obviously you gave an example of, you know, the car, so the matching funds when your kids turn 16, which I think is awesome. but are there other ways that you've sort of leaned into financial discipline and the culture of work in your household?
[00:27:57] Adam Fishman: And then I'm also wondering how did you develop that? Like, how were finances talked about when you were a kid? did that factor into this in any
[00:28:04] Davis Smith: absolutely, yeah. And I've done a few things differently than my parents, but, I did learn a lot of this from my parents. My, my dad had a, a little green, like a little metal box with a key. on the top of it, he wrote boss, boss. boss was the Bank of Smith Savings.
[00:28:20] Davis Smith: And so, when I was like four years old, I remember giving my dad my coins, and he'd had a ledger, a book. And he still has this ledger. I, I found it a couple years ago, and it's really cool. And he's got these deposits for me and my brother and my two sisters and, like, we're depositing our money as we do chores.
[00:28:37] Davis Smith: And I remember I could get 10 cents for every shirt that I ironed of his. And I remember, like, ironing shirt after shirt, and I got really good at ironing shirts as a, as a young kid 'cause I wanted to earn some of that money. Yeah.
[00:28:47] Davis Smith: we'd give 10% of what we earned as tithing. So we learned, you know, from that young age about giving and sacrificing a little bit.
[00:28:54] Davis Smith: you know, that 90%, my dad taught us this 50/40/10 rule. Yeah.
[00:28:58] Davis Smith: So 50% of whatever we earned, we had to save. 40% we could spend on anything we wanted, and 10% was tithing. It was giving- serving somebody else. I started depositing that money. And, as I was looking through this ledger a few years ago, it was interesting because I think I was, like, eight, around eight years old when I'd built up about 25 or $30.
[00:29:18] Davis Smith: and then there was a withdrawal, and there was a withdrawal for my siblings as well. I gave $20, I think it was, to a young man that, that went to our church with us that was, preparing to go on and be a, a young missionary, and he needed to buy clothes, ties and shirts and some stuff.
[00:29:35] Davis Smith: And so my, my dad worked with the young man in our church. And we knew Renaldo. He's this, this great young man that was at our house all the time. We loved him, and I really admired him. we all used our savings, and we, we chipped in. And it was, like, two-thirds of the money I'd saved over years.
[00:29:49] Davis Smith: but I remember doing it, and it was, like, gladly. Like, I didn't even hesitate. It was like, Yeah.
[00:29:53] Davis Smith: this is, like, why we do this. This is why we're saving, is to be able to, to help others." And so, those withdrawals happened over the years. Like, we'd go on Christmas, go to an orphanage, and there'd be a withdrawal where we were using our money to go help others.
[00:30:04] Davis Smith: And, You know, as I got a little bit older,you know, I got a real bank account and, I knew that I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to, to go be a missionary, and I knew I had to save, for that and pay for it. And so, by the time, I would turn 19, I had saved $13,000, which in today's money is like $26,000.
[00:30:21] Davis Smith: Like, this is in 1997. And so, you know, by the time I, I finished high school, I had saved up this money. I was working two jobs in the summer. I was always working during school at night and just trying to save money to be able to, to pay for my mission. And so, I knew that, I learned at a young age how to work and how to save money, and I look now as an entrepreneur and it was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me, was not just giving me money, not just giving me things, like having to go earn it and work for it.
[00:30:47] Davis Smith: And, you know, we're trying to do the same for our kids, even though, you know, we have more than my parents did. But, like, making sure the kids never feel like they're just going to get something just because they're our kids. Like they, they need to go work for it, ... You know, we hopefully can give them opportunities that they can go do anything in life, but we're not going to give them money so they can do nothing, you, know?
[00:31:05] Davis Smith: So that's, it's been an important part of our, of our family culture for sure,
[00:31:08] Adam Fishman: do you still talk to your kids about the 50/40/10 rule? Like, is that something that they understand in your, in your household too?
[00:31:16] Davis Smith: yeah, for sure. And, uh, and I'd say they've actually done probably better. I mean, I think most of the time the, our, our kids have been saving more than 50% as they're trying to save up for that car and, you know, get the most car they can because they know we're going to match it. And, one thing I found, and I found this in business, I found this here as a mission president in Brazil, and I've seen this in my family, when you build the right culture early on, it becomes easy.
[00:31:38] Davis Smith: Like teaching our kids about finances now, it's like our 20 year, we don't even have to talk about it. They just, it's ingrained in them. we built the right culture in our mission here, and it's like it makes my job much easier. these young kids, they know what's expected of them.
[00:31:50] Davis Smith: They know what I expect out of them. you know, in business, the same thing. When you build that foundation, that strong culture and the rituals and traditions, it's almost like they self-govern, really. And so, uh, the more work you do to s- create that structure and, and clear expectations, the easier your job is as a leader.
[00:32:06] Adam Fishman: what are some of the most surprising things that you've discovered as a, as a dad?
[00:32:11] Davis Smith: it's hard, and I have to be honest, I was nervous doing this podcast just 'cause, like, I don't feel like the greatest dad always, Like I do my best, and I, I think I've done some things well. But like there's times when I'm like, I'm working too much or where I'm on my phone more than I should be or,
[00:32:28] Davis Smith: my 11-year-old son you know, came up to me about, you know, 45 minutes ago right before this was starting and he's like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm setting things up." And he's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to be on this podcast." And he's like, "Isn't it just like audio?"
[00:32:39] Davis Smith: And I was like, "No, this is like, you know, there's going to be a video too." And he's like, and I'm like, "And I'm kinda nervous because this isn't like about, you know, I've done, done a lot of podcasts about business and entrepreneurship but this one's about being a dad." And he's like, "Oh, that means you're going to do great."
[00:32:53] Davis Smith: honestly I'm like feeling so insecure about doing this. Like, I'm not always the best dad. Like, I'm trying my hardest but like, but when my son told me that it's like I feel f- like a million bucks right now. "Oh man, that made me feel so good."
[00:33:04] Davis Smith: And I told him that, you know, he's 11. He can be kinda snarky sometimes so that was really
[00:33:08] Davis Smith: nice of him to say
[00:33:09] Adam Fishman: I know exactly what that's like,
[00:33:11] Davis Smith: that. yeah.
[00:33:12] Davis Smith: Yeah. so you know, it's hard being a parent you get an opportunity every day to just mess up over and over and over again and do it wrong and, uh, hopefully learn along the way and, it's not easy being a parent for sure.
[00:33:23] Adam Fishman: What have you learned about, the teen years and then also now having adult children? how do you think about those two sort of phases of life?
[00:33:32] Davis Smith: Honestly like the teen years were better than I thought they would be.I was nervous. teenage girls I was like I heard all the horror stories and, but man it was actually like for the most part it was great. I think the tweens were maybe a little bit harder but like the teens like we just really blessed with great girls that, we just had a lot of trust in.
[00:33:50] Davis Smith: Like, I never had to get them up in the mornings like they just got up and got ready for school. Like they were just wonderful. and then honestly adult years even better. So rewarding. So fun. just seeing them grow and develop and helping them explore different paths and, it's just a joy.
[00:34:07] Davis Smith: It's been so fun. Not without hardship. our 20-year-old daughter, she did her senior of high school here in Brazil. Not easy. The only American in the school from sixth grade to 12th grade.
[00:34:18] Davis Smith: very isolating and not easy. There were some tears but she never complained. She was positive and, you know she decided that she wanted to go be a missionary herself.
[00:34:28] Davis Smith: And so when she finished high school, uh, she submitted an application to our church to become a missionary. And you don't choose where you're going to go, they send you. And they sent her to the Philippines. which is a true joy because my wife is half Filipino. She was born and raised in Seattle, uh, American dad, Filipino mom.
[00:34:45] Davis Smith: She never learned her mom's language, but always had a real love for Filipinos, and the culture, and the food because, you know, she grew up in a home that was surrounded by it. And our daughter loves her Filipino grandmother, loves her. And so you can imagine how thrilled we were that she, you know, got sent to the Philippines.
[00:35:04] Davis Smith: she was prepared because she'd spent a year here with us. She was going out with the, the missionaries all the time. then she got to the Philippines and it was not good. no toilet paper, bathing with a bucket. but more than that, she'd call home, you know, they call home once a week, and she'd say like, "I can do that forever."
[00:35:21] Davis Smith: she's like, "Mentally, I'm just not okay." And she just felt isolated, and she had a companion that didn't really speak great English. And she's off in, like, the middle of nowhere, and she just felt mentally unwell. And we just kinda laughed it off a little bit 'cause it's like, "Hey, we've seen missionaries go through this."
[00:35:38] Davis Smith: Like, they figure it out eventually, but it didn't get better. after about six months, she was not in a good place. And we eventually, we told her, you know, "We want you to come home. it's not, you know, "you're not going to be able to finish your time there." it's, "we need you to come home." And, you know, she came home, she was thin and emotionally fragile.
[00:35:59] Davis Smith: And a few days later, my mother-in-law flew in to Brazil, her Filipino grandmother. And, I'll never forget when they saw each other for the first time. I'm going to get emotional here, but my, my daughter saw her, her grandmother, and she took her hand. And I'd never seen this before.
[00:36:16] Davis Smith: It's a Filipino tradition called Mano Po. And they take their hand and they bend over, they bow down, and they, they place their he- their hand against their forehead of an elder. Right. And she did this, and it was just like, it was emotional. And, like, for the first time, I think my, my mother-in-law connected with one of her children or grandchildren in her own culture.
[00:36:37] Davis Smith: Right. And for the next hours, we just heard them giggling and laughing and speaking in Tagalog together. And it was just, like, this beautiful experience where they just had this, this connection. But she went through something really hard and, you know, she was able to continue her, the rest of her mission.
[00:36:53] Davis Smith: She had another year that she spent here in Brazil with us that she wanted to continue. She didn't want to go back to school. We told her, "You can just go back to school. you don't have to stay." And she's like, she really wanted to and, you know, but she went through some hard things. And, as parents, you get to watch your kids suffer a little bit, and that's not easy to do.
[00:37:07] Davis Smith: And at the same time, It's good. We all have to go through hard things, and it's good for these kids to have to go through hard things sometimes so they can grow and develop.
[00:37:15] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[00:37:16] Adam Fishman: And sounds like she did a lot. Thank you for sharing that. I know it wasn't easy, so. as a person who's been a founder, father, both of those things at different times, if you're talking to a parent who is thinking about starting a company, and you were this person, right?
[00:37:33] Adam Fishman: You were a parent and you started Cotopaxi, and other companies. What would you tell that, that parent about what they're about to get into or, like, what advice would you give to them? Again, knowing, like you said, you're not perfect,how would you prepare them for that experience?
[00:37:52] Davis Smith: first of all, it's, it's not easy. and there's no guarantee of success, obviously, and it can be really painful. And you can grind it out for years and years and years, and there's going to be failures along the way. The one thing I would say would be maybe most important is you don't need to live your life in a way where you have to sacrifice everything else to have success as an entrepreneur.
[00:38:12] Davis Smith: what I think is a lie, actually, told online all the time. You see it on LinkedIn. You see people talk about it at conferences where you just need to, you know, if you wanna be a great entrepreneur, you need to sacrifice everything else. You need to work all every night and weekends and sacrifice your family and relationships.
[00:38:28] Davis Smith: I don't believe that. I don't believe you need to do that. And, it's something that I, from the very beginning, I prioritized, like my family's first. And there were times where I had to make sacrifices and to prioritize my family ahead of a business. But it doesn't mean doing that all the time.
[00:38:42] Davis Smith: There's times where you s- where you sacrifice time with your family and your kids to-- 'cause you're traveling and you have a big, you know, you have your board meeting come on, coming up or whatever. But, living a balanced life means balance. I mean, it's like some days are going to be unbalanced with work, some days are going to be unbalanced 'cause you're spending it more with your kids.
[00:38:58] Davis Smith: And, my encouragement would be don't sacrifice the things that matter most the business doesn't matter most. It's fun and it's challenging and it's rewarding and it can really work you can make great money if it works. but that's not really what really matters.
[00:39:12] Davis Smith: What matters is those relationships. the most important calling you will have in life will be those as husband or wife or as, as a mom or dad. Those are the things that you'll have forever. you won't always be CEO of your company or founder. That's just seasonal. But you'll be those other things for the rest of your life.
[00:39:28] Adam Fishman: Wow, that is pretty powerful advice for, for somebody. So, you've had four kids and you've kind of had them in two tranches, right? You've got 10 years apart, like you said. what have you learned, across four kids and maybe what have you done differently, if anything?
[00:39:45] Davis Smith: I think I've evolved as a parent. I think in the very beginning, 'cause I was a young parent, I was in my, you know, I was in my mid-20s when we had our first. So I think there's a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress like you don't know what you're doing. Plus, like I was starting my first business at the same time, so it was like, right out of college, newly married as a young person, ha- starting a family.
[00:40:04] Davis Smith: It was like starting a business same time. It was like overwhelming. And so, I think by the time I had the two boys, life was, was very different. You know, I'm, in my 30s and early 40s and, life was a little more certain. I mean, still stresses, still uncertainty, certainly risk, in starting, you know, businesses still, but, I realized like, "Hey, life is going to be okay."
[00:40:23] Davis Smith: even if it fails, life will be Okay.
[00:40:25] Davis Smith: still. know, I think being more intentional, versus just kind of like winging it like I did the first, with our girls. A lot of learning and with the boys, you know, I talked about the intentionality of our culture and the rituals and traditions that we have, and so that's been fun.
[00:40:39] Davis Smith: my body's a little older, so with our girls, I, I think I could, do more stuff. Now I'm like, "Oh, like, uh, boys, Yeah. I'm not going to throw you around in the pool anymore. My back's hurting," you know? So, it's been great, great seasons all the way around with both th- those first two and the last two.
[00:40:54] Davis Smith: Even though I didn't know what I was doing early on, it was
[00:40:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah. you know, I always ask parents about the creative uses of AI that they've found as a parent. You mentioned to me something about frog and mouse bedtime stories. So what are frog, frog mouse bedtime stories?
[00:41:09] Davis Smith: this is the funniest thing. So when I was a little kid, my dad, in bed, my dad loves adventures, and he would tell us this bedtime story that he made up called The Adventures of Frog Mouse. And it was this little critter named Frog Mouse that was half frog, half mouse, and it had the best traits of, of both the frog and the mouse.
[00:41:28] Davis Smith: it would go on all these like crazy adventures and I just loved those stories?
[00:41:32] Davis Smith: when my dad would tell them to us in bed. as a dad with my kids, I, I did the same thing. I told these little Framous stories and my girls loved them. And then as my boys have, you know, they got older, like I, you know, started telling them as they were little boys and even still today, you know, 11 years old, 8 years old, they love Framous stories.
[00:41:49] Davis Smith: Anytime they're going to get a Framous story at night. But at some point as a dad like, uh, I don't have endless creativity. Like, I'm like running out of stories. I'm running out of adventures for Frog Mouse. but I have some ideas like for example, a few months ago I was like, "Hey, I want to teach the boys."
[00:42:03] Davis Smith: It might be about places in the world, travel, I decided, you know, I want them to learn about the Ivy League schools. So they're- Framous is going to visit all eight Ivy Leagues, League schools. And so, this is where I used AI. I was like, Okay.
[00:42:15] Davis Smith: I have got this story.
[00:42:16] Davis Smith: This is Frog mouse. This is the kind of stuff he likes to do. I'm going to each one of these schools, give me some ideas because I, I don't know all these schools. Like
[00:42:23] Davis Smith: what are some things that Framous would do at this campus?" And, and then I had it do a diagram, some diagrams of Framous in some of these places or doing different things and I started showing them this and the boys were like, "Wow, that's what Framous looks like. Yeah.
[00:42:35] Davis Smith: that's kind of what I thought he looked like." that's probably the, the most fun thing I've done with, with AI. I don't know. That's not that great, but, uh, it was, it's been fun to do with the kids.
[00:42:43] Adam Fishman: I mean, pretty fun and seemingly very engaging. the Frog Mouse bedtime stories. I love that. So thank you. all right, to end before our lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you?
[00:42:54] Davis Smith: follow me on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I find so much value in, in sharing. Uh, I love sharing about leadership and entrepreneurship and social, uh, social impact. It's a big passion of mine. So, I love engaging with others, learning from others. So, uh, you?
[00:43:07] Davis Smith: can follow me on there. love that.
[00:43:09] Adam Fishman: Awesome. I will do exactly that, and I will link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
[00:43:16] Adam Fishman: So, thank you. All right. Lightning round.
[00:43:19] Adam Fishman: Here we go. true or false, there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[00:43:26] Davis Smith: this is true and I think just like what we talked about earlier, when you put in the work ahead of time it makes it a lot easier. So
[00:43:32] Adam Fishman: agree.
[00:43:33] Davis Smith: you know, I group like the spoons all in one s- the same spot, the forks all in one spot, the knives in one spot. And then when it's done, you just grab them all and they're like, it's done.
[00:43:42] Davis Smith: And like it doesn't take any more time to intentionally put them in the right spot when you're putting them in. So yes, there is one correct way to load a dishwasher.
[00:43:50] Adam Fishman: Master of efficiency. I love
[00:43:52] Adam Fishman: that.
[00:43:53] Adam Fishman: what is your signature dad superpower?
[00:43:57] Davis Smith: Smoothies. I am a smoothie maker. And especially being in Brazil, it's like, it's amazing because there's fruit galore. I mean, mangoes and a gazillion different types of bananas and all this different fruit, pineapple, and some crazy fruit that no one's even heard of. in the US. And so I love making smoothies, and I always have my boys guess what's in them.
[00:44:16] Davis Smith: It's like I, I try different things and then they have to guess what I put in it. And it's become like a fun, fun family tradition.
[00:44:22] Adam Fishman: All right. I love that. Smoothie, smoothie master. the ideal day with your kids involves what one activity?
[00:44:31] Davis Smith: I love the beach. I love the ocean, I love the beach. you know, here in Jesife, Brazil, like we like live right in front of the beach. And, uh, love spending time with the boys there in nature and hearing the ocean. And you know, even that first year when I was here and it was really hard, that's where I found solace, was like going on a walk and just listening to the water, looking at, you know, the ocean and, finding peace there.
[00:44:51] Davis Smith: So that's, that'd be my, my ideal day with the boys.
[00:44:54] Adam Fishman: Great. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:44:59] Davis Smith: I would say it'd be encouraging. I, love encouraging my kids to try hard things, to try new things. I want them to know how much I believe in them, how capable they are. And so yeah, encouraging.
[00:45:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?
[00:45:14] Davis Smith: I have a pair of shorts on right now, I've worn these like at least 10 years. It might be longer than that. And I wear them all the time. They're just comfortable. I like even go outside with them. My daughters were like, "Dad, you got to stop wearing those shorts." Like, "Nah, like I, I love
[00:45:27] Davis Smith: these shorts."
[00:45:28] Davis Smith: So some point I'm going to trade them, but uh, why? They're working great.
[00:45:32] Adam Fishman: that. I love that. Always the daughters with the feedback on the
[00:45:34] Adam Fishman: shorts. That's-- And the clothing.
[00:45:36] Davis Smith: Like, "That shirt doesn't match those shorts, Dad." It's like, "Okay."
[00:45:39] Adam Fishman: okay, what nostalgic movie could you just not wait to force your kids to watch when they were old enough?
[00:45:45] Davis Smith: this last weekend I was talking to my wife. She's like, "I want to show the boys Back to the Future." She's like, "No, they're like not old enough, like too little." It's like no way. Like I can't remember how old I was, but like they're ready. This movie is awesome.
[00:45:57] Davis Smith: Like Huey Lewis and the News music, like the, the skateboards. Like, I just love everything about it. Michael J. Fox, it was just such a great movie.
[00:46:05] Adam Fishman: Yep. Okay. "Back to the Future," also a classic. Love it. how long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it?
[00:46:15] Davis Smith: Oh man, you know, I'm kind of a germaphobe and I've gotten better. With our kids actually, like I remember as a kid, like as a teenager myself and stuff, like I'd never like share a drink with someone or a straw. It would like gross me out. Now I do that with my kids all the time. Like I've gotten better, but like, I don't know, I'm kind of a germaphobe, so if it's gone on the ground, I, probably don't eat it?
[00:46:34] Davis Smith: Even like I tell my kids though, it's like, "Hey, five second rule." But like, "Dad, you wouldn't do that." And it's like, "Oh, Okay.
[00:46:39] Davis Smith: Yeah, fair."
[00:46:41] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right, last question for you. four kids, but I can't imagine that you have one of these in Brazil, maybe. what's your take on minivans?
[00:46:51] Davis Smith: when we had our second daughter, I bought my wife like a, splurge. You know, we were broke, but I b- I found a used Toyota Highlander, and I thought she was going to be so excited. And she got it and she was like, "This is so nice, but like, I actually really just want a minivan." It was like, "A minivan?
[00:47:07] Davis Smith: We just have two kids. You don't need a minivan." But she wanted it, so we ended up trading it. We got a minivan and I was just like, "What?" I'm like embarrassed to drive this minivan. You know what? She was right. Those minivans, like they're convenient. The sliding doors- yeah.
[00:47:21] Davis Smith: the access from both sides. Like, I have to admit like I still, don't love, you know, being seen in one, but like they are, they are great cars for families, no doubt about it.
[00:47:29] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least you have the shorts for it. You know, you pop out of the minivan in the shorts, you know, it's
[00:47:34] Davis Smith: That's right.
[00:47:35] Adam Fishman: it's totally great. So, okay. Well, we've got another vote for Team Minivan. It's a very polarizing topic, so that's why I
[00:47:40] Adam Fishman: always have to ask. yeah. yeah. All right. Well, uh, Davis, thank you so much for joining me on "Startup Dad."
[00:47:47] Adam Fishman: This was a wonderful conversation. I learned a ton. I appreciate you sharing your, your life experience and your, trip to Brazil. all the best to you and your family and, and especially a, a warm welcome back to the United States, which you're heading back to here in short order. So
[00:48:02] Davis Smith: wait. Looking forward to it. And Adam, thanks for doing this. This is a great podcast. I love listening to it myself. the world needs more of this, so Thank you. for what you're doing.
[00:48:10] Adam Fishman: Thank you. I appreciate that
[00:48:12] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Davis Smith. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
[00:00:19] Adam Fishman: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. What does it take to walk away from your dream job at the peak of success to serve others? Today, I'm joined by Davis Smith, founder and chairman of Cotopaxi, the beloved outdoor brand that has revolutionized how companies can build purpose into their DNA.
[00:00:49] Adam Fishman: After a decade as CEO growing the company at breakneck speed, Davis made the extraordinary decision to step away and move his entire family to Brazil to serve as mission leaders for three years. He's married to his wife, and together they're raising four kids who have experienced everything from survival adventures to international moves during pivotal moments like senior year of high school.
[00:01:15] Adam Fishman: Today, we talked about why he left his dream job as CEO to serve hundreds of young missionaries in Brazil, and what that experience taught him about leadership, his philosophy of mission-focused parenting, and how clear family values made their major life transition possible, the transformative power he's witnessed when young adults step away from comfort zones to serve others, his approach to survival adventure trips with his kids and how they build character and confidence, the intentional family culture he and his wife have created around work ethic and financial discipline, and his belief in unconditional positive regard parenting that helps kids develop resilience.
[00:01:57] Adam Fishman: We also discussed how watching young people transform through service has shaped his perspective on what really matters in raising the next generation. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to Startup Dad on YouTube or Spotify so you never miss an episode. You'll find it everywhere you get your podcasts.
[00:02:15] Adam Fishman: I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Davis Smith. Welcome Davis Smith to "Startup Dad." It is my pleasure having you here with me today. Thanks for joining me.
[00:02:26] Davis Smith: Yeah. Thanks, Adam. This is great. I'm super excited about it.
[00:02:28] Adam Fishman: I can feel the enthusiasm coming through the camera. I've already mentioned this in the intro, but you are the founder and chairman of Cotopaxi, which is one of my absolute favorite outdoor brands. And I was, like, giddy telling people that I was going to get to connect with you on this, show.
[00:02:44] Adam Fishman: They were like, "Oh, that's so awesome." So, huge fan of the brand. Thank you for starting that company. it's just awesome and such great stuff that you make.
[00:02:53] Davis Smith: fun brand and fun product for sure.
[00:02:55] Adam Fishman: About three and a half years ago, though, you stepped away from your role as founder and CEO. So you're still involved. you're chairman of the board, obviously, and still the founder, but you're not the CEO.
[00:03:06] Adam Fishman: You're not running the day-to-day anymore. And you were at the helm of that company for a decade after founding it. So, I mean, my first question is why did you step away? What happened?
[00:03:16] Davis Smith: Yeah.
[00:03:17] Davis Smith: mean, it was my dream job. It was, uh, something I, I loved doing every day. It was something that really I dreamed about my whole life. my family had moved to Latin America when I was four years old, and I spent all my childhood living in different countries in Latin America. when I was 19, I went and served a mission for my church for two years in Bolivia, took a, a two-year break from school, and then, developed just a real passion for finding a way to make the world a better place of fighting poverty.
[00:03:45] Davis Smith: I grew up in some places where, uh, I saw a lot of, of really difficult things all around. and you just recognize how, how lucky and how blessed you are. I'd always wanted to find a way to help others. And, uh, after a decade as an entrepreneur, I, I was living in Brazil actually at the time, and I was building a business i- in Brazil and had this idea of building an outdoor brand, but that we used...
[00:04:08] Davis Smith: where we used our profits and our, our entire focus, the, the values of the brand were all built around helping others and giving back. And so moved back to the US and started building that brand, Cotopaxi, and it was just one of the highlights of my life. and then about 10 years in, and, and we grew a lot.
[00:04:23] Davis Smith: crazy growth. I mean, just a lot of challenges. Not always easy. Almost ran out of money a few times, but like, just a really fun experience. And then, uh, one day I got a phone call from my church and they asked if I'd be willing to set aside my life for three years And, uh, move with my family to Brazil and, and lead a mission for our church in Brazil.
[00:04:44] Davis Smith: you know, you might think that'd be a hard decision, not saying it, it was, it was only easy, it took me about one second to say yes. it really came down to the values that we had as a family, and it was perfectly aligned with the values that we had. And so, uh, I had this transformational experience as a 19, 20, 21-year-old in Bolivia as a young missionary, and I thought, you know, if I could go help a few hundred young people have a similar experience, it would be worth my time.
[00:05:10] Davis Smith: And so that's what we've been doing the last three years.
[00:05:12] Adam Fishman: Awesome. Well, I wanna dig into that a little bit more. obviously your whole family's there with you. your wife, and you both are serving as mission leaders in Brazil. and you moved there when you had a teenager, I think a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a 17-year-old, which I think was for her senior year of high school.
[00:05:30] Adam Fishman: You were like, "Guess what? We're moving to Brazil." I can't imagine that was easy for the kids. So I understand you felt called to do it, and I'm sure your kids are very supportive, but it's also a really hard thing. Like, transition like that is hard. Change is hard for kids, especially when they're teenagers, when they're, like, they have their friend groups established.
[00:05:48] Adam Fishman: So, what was that conversation like with the family? You obviously knew you wanted to do it,
[00:05:53] Davis Smith: it was not a hard thing for, for any of us. I think, and maybe we can talk more about this, but we have, like, very, clear values as a family, that the children all know. They know what our family stands for, who we are, what matters to us. Yeah.
[00:06:09] Davis Smith: And I think all of us knew this was just in alignment with who we are as a family. And so, again, it didn't necessarily just make it easy for everyone all the time. You know, there were hard things about leaving my work, hard things about leaving kids' friends and everything else, but at the same time, there was purpose behind what we were doing.
[00:06:27] Davis Smith: And I think we were all aligned with that. And, especially hard for a, a senior in high school. we have four kids, our oldest was in college, so, you know, she got left behind you know, she was solo and then, the other three came with us and, uh...
[00:06:39] Davis Smith: But it was just a, an incredible experience for, for the kids. And, now they're going to miss it. You know, our, our little boys are asking if we can extend, if we can stay a little longer. And it's like, well, three years is a long time. I think that's enough.
[00:06:53] Davis Smith: it's been a great experience for us, but not, not without difficulty, not without some tears.
[00:06:58] Davis Smith: Uh, not without some challenges. know, I'd say the first year was, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done.
[00:07:03] Davis Smith: honestly, it almost broke me. I mean, it was, it was that hard. and at the same time, it's been maybe the most fulfilling thing I've ever done with my life.
[00:07:11] Davis Smith: So- Yeah. very rewarding.
[00:07:12] Adam Fishman: I've never lived in Brazil or really anywhere outside the United States. I've visited. But what was so hard about it almost to the point of, you know, breaking you, like you said?
[00:07:23] Davis Smith: there's a lot of things. first of all, the pace was unlike anything I'd ever done,
[00:07:27] Adam Fishman: even versus starting a company.
[00:07:29] Davis Smith: it's crazy. I mean, it's, 24/7. during our time here, we'll look out after just shy of 500 missionaries. These are young- you know, 18 to, let's say, 25-year-olds.
[00:07:40] Davis Smith: Most are 18, 19, 20 years old. And, you know, a lot of them, it's their first time moving away from family. They're moving to... A lot of them are moving to another country, and, it's hard for them. It's not an easy job being a missionary. you're living in, in tough conditions.
[00:07:54] Davis Smith: you're dealing with a lot of rejection. You're developing resilience, and you're learning to love, they have a companion with them all the time. they get to learn how to resolve conflicts and how to love people that are different from them, and they learn how to serve and forget themselves 'cause, uh, as an 18-year-old, that takes some practice, right?
[00:08:12] Davis Smith: but they finish these two years, they are different people. I mean, they're just totally transformed. I, I wish I could explain to you, Adam, like how the joy that comes in seeing that. It's just, it's remarkable, and that's what's made this experience just so joyful is seeing these young kids. They arrive here, you know, a little bit afraid and unsure of themselves and lacking confidence, and a lot of times not even, not being able to communicate at all.
[00:08:36] Davis Smith: And they leave with confidence and joy and, just strength. they have belief in themselves, and they have a new vision of what they can do with their lives. And, you know, some of them come from privilege. You know, they come from the United States. And, we have others that come from Africa or from...
[00:08:52] Davis Smith: You know, we have 24 different countries, uh, that our missionaries come from. So a lot of them come from extreme poverty themselves. And so, but they go back with skill sets and, and training and, and confidence and an ability to kind of see for the first time what they're capable of. And so that's, uh, incredibly rewarding.
[00:09:08] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Wow. I mean, you got a front row seat to watching hundreds of 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds move away from home, step away from, like, the day-to-day life and the, you know, social media or their, like, you know, high school experience or whatever, and develop some of these new, new skills. And I think
[00:09:29] Adam Fishman: You know, if I recall, one of the things you, you told me in our prep was that this has helped you maybe develop this belief that, like, stepping away at that age, is really, really valuable. I'm curious why you believe that, and you probably believe it even more now, having lived it and having experienced it for so long.
[00:09:47] Adam Fishman: and then what are some of the things that you observed the kids like really learning while they were away from home?
[00:09:52] Davis Smith: I am such a big believerfor me in, in my faith, it's, it's a mission, but for others it doesn't, you know, it can be the Peace Corps. I saw some of my classmates in business school had served in the Peace Corps, had lived in, different parts of the world and had experienced something similar.
[00:10:04] Davis Smith: Uh, it might be in the being serving in the military, but this time at that age of like removing yourself from what everyone else is doing and committing yourself to serving others and forgetting yourself, there's something incredibly valuable in doing that. And I saw that, you know, firsthand experience when I was 19.
[00:10:21] Davis Smith: I remember having this just incredible experience that I wrote about in my, personal journal. I was at the tail end of my two years, and I was with a, a brand new missionary that had just started a few weeks before. he was from, the Seattle area in Washington and,blonde hair, just super pale skin.
[00:10:37] Davis Smith: Like, you know, he came off the bus and it was like, oh my gosh, this kid's like never been outside, you know? but he had this like huge grand smile and just radiated joy. Yeah.
[00:10:48] Davis Smith: And I just loved being with this guy. You know, I'm wrapping up my two years and, you know, we go for one day, we go in to, to grab lunch in this market and, Bolivia's incredibly poor.
[00:10:59] Davis Smith: At the time when I lived there, the average income was about $500 a year. many of the communities that we served in made less than that. And so we're in this little market getting some lunch, very simple lunch, you know, a pile of rice, some boiled potatoes, and then like some gristly meat. And, we sit down and we're eating and we're se- you know, all these little kids are around kind of asking people for the leftovers on their plate.
[00:11:20] Davis Smith: And, this little girl walks up to us as soon as we sit down and she asks this compa- my companion, she said, "Hey,can I have your potatoes?" And he immediately just turned over his entire plate to her. Just the joy on her face. I mean, this little girl's, like, clearly malnourished and, you know, we were hungry,
[00:11:39] Davis Smith: he gave his entire plate. And I remember wr- I wrote in my journal, that I never wanted to forget that moment. Like, I had tears in my eyes at that moment just watching what was happening, and I, I wrote in my journal and just said, "I hope that sometime in my life if I ever have money, that I wanna be able to use whatever I have to help others, and that maybe I can come back down to Latin America to help in some way."
[00:11:59] Davis Smith: Right. that experience for me was transformative. It changed the way, the lens in which I saw the world and it changed m- my purpose in life. It wasn't just about making money or having a career where I could get, you know, fame or fortune. It was, it was a deeper purpose. And I've seen our missionaries develop that here.
[00:12:16] Davis Smith: You know, one of,our great missionaries here, he's, uh, first generation college student right now. His mom is from Mexico, his dad's from Guatemala. Grew up in a small little apartment in the west side of Salt Lake City, and, shared with a bunch of- I think 11 family members lived in this little apartment, extended family all lived together.
[00:12:35] Davis Smith: He did horribly in high school, think like a 2.0 in high school or something, and then he came on a mission, and he came here and, this kid, was just mind-blowingly good. Just oozed charisma and was connected with people. He loved people deeply, and all the missionaries admired him, all these other missionaries, and he became, like, a real leader in our mission, helping me lead our entire mission.
[00:13:01] Davis Smith: what I saw in this kid was something he didn't even see in himself. he finished this mission and he had a new vision for what he could accomplish. He'd never even thought about going to college, but, he went to, a small local regional college for one year after his mission, got straight As, 4.0, and then transferred to Brigham Young University, where he's studying now, and he wants to go to a top law school.
[00:13:20] Davis Smith: when he transferred to BYU, he got, he kinda got his butt kicked a little bit by some econ classes. You know, lost a little bit of confidence in himself. But, like, this is life, right? It's like you get beat up a little bit. But we saw, that's what we get to see, uh, every single day is these kids developing a sense of who they are and what their responsibility is in the world to make it a little bit better.
[00:13:38] Davis Smith: So it's been a true joy.
[00:13:39] Adam Fishman: pretty amazing to, to somebody to like build back confidence when maybe they had none coming in, you know, and to find out that they're like better at something than they, than they thought they were, so speaking of which, I wanted to ask you about survival trips with your daughters.
[00:13:56] Adam Fishman: So you told me that you've done like literal survival trips, with your two oldest kids. so tell me what those are. I'm like, one, I'm in awe, and two, like I don't know if I can handle it. So, so I- I'm going to live vicariously through you, uh, on this one. So tell me about survival trips with your daughters.
[00:14:15] Adam Fishman: What are
[00:14:15] Davis Smith: Oh my gosh. Okay, so this is like one of my favorite things. And I did my first one when I was, uh, 11 or 12. I, I think I was 11, with my dad. Uh, we, at the time were living in Puerto Rico, and my dad was a Scoutmaster. And so my dad, like anything he does was like next level. Whether, you know, baseball coach, next level.
[00:14:34] Davis Smith: Uh, Scoutmaster, next level. And so, uh, we all made our own spears and, He got American Airlines to, to give us like discounted tickets. So it was $25. Back then 25 was maybe a little bit, you know, more than that. But to fly to St. Thomas, which isn't very close by, in the Virgin Islands.
[00:14:50] Davis Smith: And then we had this captain that would just drive us or, uh, sail us around during the day. He drops off on an island, we jump into the water with these dry bags. We'd swim with our snorkels and fins and our spears that we'd made in our bags, we'd swim to shore. He'd go take off and he'd work during the day, you know, the next day or two, and then he'd come back, pick us up, take us to another island.
[00:15:08] Davis Smith: We do the, the island and we do the same thing. And, you know, we'd just spearfish and eat coconuts and, uh, we did that for a week. it implanted something in me where it was like, "I love this." And so as an adult, I've continued it. every year I do some kind of survival trip, uh, with friends. I have a few entrepreneur friends and we go out and do stuff.
[00:15:25] Davis Smith: I've, I have a cousin that's kind of my go-to adventure buddy. We go do some crazy stuff and, and then I took my daughters, uh, on one of these trips as well, which was really, really fun. you know, usually go for about a week, don't bring any food, and we just survive off what we can get. it's pretty awesome.
[00:15:41] Davis Smith: You know, you create no waste. you finish a week and you're like, "I have literally no garbage to take out." you're kind of living off the land, which feels amazing, and just connecting with nature. You're disconnected from technology and your phone.
[00:15:53] Davis Smith: It's a, it's a pretty special thing. I, I haven't done it for three years and I'm missing it. I'm going to have to get one of these on the calendar again.
[00:15:59] Adam Fishman: Yeah, I love that you said that, you know, you're connecting with nature and disconnecting with your phone. Not, not a lot of, uh, of USB chargers, on the adventure, on the survival trip, I imagine,
[00:16:07] Davis Smith: Yeah, I think Gilligan's Island, I'm sure they could, like the doc could have figured out like the coconuts to somehow charge your phone or something, but yeah. yeah.
[00:16:15] Davis Smith: we're not there.
[00:16:16] Adam Fishman: You talked about values and you said that that's one of the things that helped your kids, obviously not without, a little hand-wringing when it came to, to moving to Brazil. But the family values are the things that really, kind of helped propel people forward.
[00:16:30] Adam Fishman: we already talked about the importance of establishing those, but, like, how did they come to pass in your, in your own family? Is this something that you all sat down together and talked through? Is this something that's, like, written on the wall? Like, how, how did you develop these with your, whole family?
[00:16:44] Davis Smith: it is something we did together as a family. But maybe I can talk a little bit a- about the inception of it, I did it, you know, when I first started our family. our two girls are almost 10 years older than our two little boys.
[00:16:55] Davis Smith: And, you know, my wife and I met in college. We started our family early, and we had this 10-year gap, and we kind of started all over again. It's been great, but, you know, a lot of learnings that happened during that, during that period. And, you know, when I was building Cotopaxi, I really tried to do a better job of building intentional culture.
[00:17:10] Davis Smith: My previous two businesses that I'd started, culture was just kind of an afterthought. It was just, it just kind of happened. It was just by default, With Cotopaxi, it was totally different. I, I had a very clear purpose when I built this business around fighting poverty, about doing good, and I wanted to build the business in the right way.
[00:17:25] Davis Smith: And I felt to do that, we needed to have a very strong intentional culture. So, uh, with the team, uh, there were six of us, me and five others, before we'd even sold a single backpack or jacket. we sat down in a mountain cabin in Utah, and we put together our values, and we identified, three core values, and we built rituals and traditions around those core values that reinforced the values.
[00:17:48] Davis Smith: Uh, understanding that those really kind of determine behaviors. And, so if you have those core values and you have the right rituals and traditions and the right behaviors, you have the right outcomes. And so, you know, the business worked and the culture was fantastic. You know, we were getting, several thousand applicants per job opening.
[00:18:04] Davis Smith: just a great place to work. And I started having other entrepreneurs that would call me and say, "Hey, Davis, I want to talk to you about culture, and what did you do? How did you think about it? How should I be thinking about the culture in my business where I'm, you know, I'm in the early stages. What should I do?"
[00:18:17] Davis Smith: And one day as I was driving home, I was, you know, in the car and I'm having a conversation about culture with another founder, and I pull into my garage and I get off the call and I'm sitting there and I'm realizing I'm sitting here telling everyone about how to build this great intentional culture for their organizations, but the organization that matters the most to me, my family I hadn't done this.
[00:18:38] Davis Smith: Like, it was literally being done by default, just like I had my first two businesses. Yeah. And so I went in and I told my wife this epiphany, and she's like, "Well, let's do it." You know? So we sat down and with our two daughters, and we came up with our values. And there's five core values. They're attached to the letters of our last name, S-M-I-T-H.
[00:18:56] Davis Smith: Each one stands for something, and, they're on the wall. And, and not just on the wall, like, we live them. we talk about them every week. We have a weekly meeting as a family. And, uh, we talk about our values. we have a little activity. We have a treat. It's kind of a fun thing.
[00:19:10] Davis Smith: You know, we talk about, you know, different parts of our, family, what we wanna do. And so, it's been transformational. I, I... Maybe just one quick story about that. Like, our, our teenage daughters, at the time, maybe tweens, around that age, I remember coming home from work and they'd always be watching some show, this, like, mermaid show, on TV.
[00:19:29] Davis Smith: Right. I, I think it was called H2O. It was, like, in Australia, and they loved the accents and stuff. Like, they were just totally into this, show. And I'd come home, and I, I remember telling them literally dozens of times, like, "Girls, get off the couch. Turn off the TV. Like, go read a book or something.
[00:19:43] Davis Smith: Stop watching that show. Read a book." Well, guess what? Every time I said that, nothing changed. They're always were watching that show. They weren't reading a book. Well, when we started, defined our values, the I of Smith, uh, stands for intellect. And it was just this idea that we, we love learning, we love reading, we love learning about new things and trying hard things.
[00:20:03] Davis Smith: And, to reinforce that, we decided, okay, well, what ritual or tradition are we going to create? So we decided as a family that on Sunday afternoons and when we came home from church, we were going to go and we were going to gather around in the primary bedroom of our home, and we had pillows and blankets set up and treats, and we all read a book for an hour.
[00:20:21] Davis Smith: And at the end, we'd share what we read. And so we started this tradition, and what shocked me was that within weeks, I came home from work, I walked into the house, and for the first time ever, my girls were on the couch reading books instead of watching that show. And it was like, what? Like, my mind was blown.
[00:20:40] Davis Smith: It was like, this really works.
[00:20:42] Davis Smith: And ever since then, like, our, our boys, they know those, those five core values by heart. You know, when our little boy, when we moved here, he was just barely turned five, you know, he could recite them. He knew exactly what they were, what they stood for, and not just the words, but what they meant.
[00:20:54] Davis Smith: And so, it's been an important part of our evolution as a family.
[00:20:57] Adam Fishman: Yeah, so run me through those really quick. So intellect is the I. Uh, what is the SM and the TH?
[00:21:03] Davis Smith: S is for being selfless. Uh, so it's just selflessness. It's about service. You know, we believe in our family being here to help others. And so we, we constantly looking ways to serve and it means, you know, having refugees at our home. It, it means, uh, if we go on a vacation, it's not just vacation, it's like we're going out to wherever we're going and we're going to do some service there.
[00:21:23] Davis Smith: And that's, a big part of, of our family. M, stands for Mormon. we're members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a big part of our family's identity, of our core values and what we stand for, who we are. that's a big part of it.
[00:21:35] Davis Smith: It's, you know, we have traditions of, we go to church every Sunday, and every night, , we pray together and we, we read scripture together. And so, you know, it's a big part of, who we are. I talked about I, you know, intellect. T is for travel. So we love traveling, and we believe experiences are more important than things, and so we talk a lot about that.
[00:21:52] Davis Smith: And so when the kids, if the boys want a phone, it's like, "No, you don't need a, you don't need a phone." And the girls when they wanted the newest iPhone, it's like, "You don't need the newest iPhone," you know? we're going to go take that money. Why don't we plan a trip together?
[00:22:03] Davis Smith: And our girls, even when they were little, young teenagers, were like helping us plan trips and looking for travel deals and, you know, helping us plan and, right now we're, we're planning a trip to go to Egypt as a family for Thanksgiving. Well, our boys are becoming experts in, in Egypt.
[00:22:16] Davis Smith: Like, they know more about Egypt than I do now. It's like they're like reading all these books about it, uh, reading online. They're like talking to those teachers about it. So it's been really fun, to watch them kind of prepare for that. Uh, and then H is hard work, just the idea that like we work hard.
[00:22:30] Davis Smith: our girls from the time they were young had jobs. our oldest daughter when she was like 13 started working at Cotopaxi as a janitor. So she cleaned our bathrooms, the toilets, she slowly graduated over the years to working in the retail store. And now she's, she's had, you know, different jobs and internships and,
[00:22:46] Davis Smith: the kids know when they turn 16, whatever they've saved will match, for a car. So they're motivated. You know, those girls, they turned 16, they'd saved up, you know, a bit of money, like, uh, I think $6,000 or $7,000 each.
[00:22:58] Davis Smith: And if they want a nicer car, they can save up more money. If they just want a beater, you know, they, they don't have to save as much. And so, uh, it's good motivation for them.
[00:23:05] Adam Fishman: That's pretty awesome. Thank you for sharing those values with me. I re- I really appreciate it. I've talked about values with a few founders on the, on this show. and one of the things that I haven't asked people, which I realize is like kind of a, an error on my part, is, kids inevitably will fall short of one of those values at some point in their life.
[00:23:24] Adam Fishman: They're kids, right? their frontal lobes or their frontal cortex is not fully developed until their mid-20s, you know? They're going to make mistakes. They're going to do something that is different than what you would do and make a choice that's different than what you would do. And so I'm wondering what you do in your family when one of the kids inevitably doesn't live up to one of those values sometimes.
[00:23:45] Adam Fishman: how do you address that? how do you talk about that?
[00:23:47] Davis Smith: Obviously this is inevitable, right? You know, you can build, you can do all this so intentionally, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to have a kid that goes off track or that just isn't aligned with what you envision for your family. And so, my wife studied family science,
[00:24:01] Davis Smith: before we came to Brazil, she was a, a court-appointed special advocate with foster children, and really is passionate about this. And, there's something called unconditional positive regard and conditional positive regard. and there's cultures, uh, within organizations or within families that, can reflect these two things.
[00:24:17] Davis Smith: And there's probably no family that's perfectly one or perfectly the other. But I think ideally you'd have unconditional positive regard, meaning that no matter what the situation, a child is, is loved and welcome in your home. there's nothing. There's nothing that a child could do that would make them not welcome.
[00:24:35] Davis Smith: No matter what mistakes they make, no matter what beliefs they have, no matter where they are in life, unconditional positive regard means, we love you no matter what. even something like timeout, which we've used in our family, if you study this, it actually says, like, timeout that's conditional positive regard.
[00:24:49] Davis Smith: It's kinda like, "Hey, we're going to separate ourselves from you now because you messed up." I'm not an expert. My wife would have, probably a more interesting conversation here. But as a parent that's been doing this for a while, 'cause I have, you know, daughters in their 20s, early 20s, and then I have little kids still.
[00:25:03] Davis Smith: you know, I'm starting to learn better what this means and that?
[00:25:06] Davis Smith: actually we get the best results. And I see this with our missionaries, you know? they might mess up or, you know, do something they're not supposed to. And it's like, I can either be angry at them and just let them know how disappointed I am in them, or I can just love them show them that unconditional positive regard.
[00:25:21] Davis Smith: that's what works. a quick story with these missionaries. When they first get here that first day, we bring them to our home out of the airport. You know, their eyes are huge. You know, we're, they're in Brazil and, starting this two-year thing.
[00:25:32] Davis Smith: I can see it in their heads. They're like, "Two years, this is never going to end. How is this going to go?" And,when we first started, I would tell them, "Hey, you know, this two years, like, we're going to give everything we've got. You know, we're going to serve, we're going to give everything we've got. So you've got two years to work, and then you can rest at the end of the two years."
[00:25:48] Davis Smith: And I remember when I said that, like, their eyes were just kinda like, it was like, "Oh, no." Like, "This is going to be very hard." I noticed that. And after a few months here, I decided, you know, I need to change that. That's, like, not the right message I wanna send to them. And instead, when they arrived, I would show them on my phone, I created a note for every single missionary before they even arrived with their picture, their name.
[00:26:09] Davis Smith: I have all the details of their hobbies, their interests, their family background. And when they get here, I'm like, "Elder so-and-so, like Elder Jones-" I know that you love football and that you know how to play the piano. And I've been memorizing your face and your name, and I've been looking forward to you getting here for months.
[00:26:27] Davis Smith: And I am so happy you're here, and I love you. And I can't wait for you to have this experience. And I promise you, I'm going to do everything I can to make this the most incredible experience of your life. I get emotional as I'm telling them, and I'm, you know, looking them in the eyes and telling each one of them how excited I am for them to be here.
[00:26:43] Davis Smith: they get emotional they get these huge smiles, and they can feel how much I care for them and love for them. It's like, you know what? That's a much better start than telling them, "Hey, you got two years to work." You know? And so same kind of approach with your kids, right?
[00:26:55] Davis Smith: It's, if they know how much you care for them and love them no matter what, I think a lot of times they're going to give their very best. They're not going to want to disappoint you. So,
[00:27:02] Adam Fishman: I love that. it's sort of like, uh, I think there's another thing you talked about, which is like connect before correct, which is a thing that I've heard, a lot, which is about building that stable foundation before you, provide feedback or, give your kids feedback and stuff.
[00:27:16] Adam Fishman: And so that's a perfect example of that, right?
[00:27:18] Davis Smith: the values are really-- they should be a compass. They're not... a club to, like, beat them it's just a guide. It's a guide to help us figure out our direction. And sometimes when we're out in the outdoors and stuff, we take a wrong turn, and we need the compass to kind of get us back on track.
[00:27:29] Davis Smith: And that's what the, that's what the values are
[00:27:30] Davis Smith: for.
[00:27:31] Adam Fishman: you obviously believe very strongly in developing a culture of, of work early on. You talked about that with your kids, and also financial discipline.
[00:27:38] Adam Fishman: very tied to those values. so obviously you gave an example of, you know, the car, so the matching funds when your kids turn 16, which I think is awesome. but are there other ways that you've sort of leaned into financial discipline and the culture of work in your household?
[00:27:57] Adam Fishman: And then I'm also wondering how did you develop that? Like, how were finances talked about when you were a kid? did that factor into this in any
[00:28:04] Davis Smith: absolutely, yeah. And I've done a few things differently than my parents, but, I did learn a lot of this from my parents. My, my dad had a, a little green, like a little metal box with a key. on the top of it, he wrote boss, boss. boss was the Bank of Smith Savings.
[00:28:20] Davis Smith: And so, when I was like four years old, I remember giving my dad my coins, and he'd had a ledger, a book. And he still has this ledger. I, I found it a couple years ago, and it's really cool. And he's got these deposits for me and my brother and my two sisters and, like, we're depositing our money as we do chores.
[00:28:37] Davis Smith: And I remember I could get 10 cents for every shirt that I ironed of his. And I remember, like, ironing shirt after shirt, and I got really good at ironing shirts as a, as a young kid 'cause I wanted to earn some of that money. Yeah.
[00:28:47] Davis Smith: we'd give 10% of what we earned as tithing. So we learned, you know, from that young age about giving and sacrificing a little bit.
[00:28:54] Davis Smith: you know, that 90%, my dad taught us this 50/40/10 rule. Yeah.
[00:28:58] Davis Smith: So 50% of whatever we earned, we had to save. 40% we could spend on anything we wanted, and 10% was tithing. It was giving- serving somebody else. I started depositing that money. And, as I was looking through this ledger a few years ago, it was interesting because I think I was, like, eight, around eight years old when I'd built up about 25 or $30.
[00:29:18] Davis Smith: and then there was a withdrawal, and there was a withdrawal for my siblings as well. I gave $20, I think it was, to a young man that, that went to our church with us that was, preparing to go on and be a, a young missionary, and he needed to buy clothes, ties and shirts and some stuff.
[00:29:35] Davis Smith: And so my, my dad worked with the young man in our church. And we knew Renaldo. He's this, this great young man that was at our house all the time. We loved him, and I really admired him. we all used our savings, and we, we chipped in. And it was, like, two-thirds of the money I'd saved over years.
[00:29:49] Davis Smith: but I remember doing it, and it was, like, gladly. Like, I didn't even hesitate. It was like, Yeah.
[00:29:53] Davis Smith: this is, like, why we do this. This is why we're saving, is to be able to, to help others." And so, those withdrawals happened over the years. Like, we'd go on Christmas, go to an orphanage, and there'd be a withdrawal where we were using our money to go help others.
[00:30:04] Davis Smith: And, You know, as I got a little bit older,you know, I got a real bank account and, I knew that I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to, to go be a missionary, and I knew I had to save, for that and pay for it. And so, by the time, I would turn 19, I had saved $13,000, which in today's money is like $26,000.
[00:30:21] Davis Smith: Like, this is in 1997. And so, you know, by the time I, I finished high school, I had saved up this money. I was working two jobs in the summer. I was always working during school at night and just trying to save money to be able to, to pay for my mission. And so, I knew that, I learned at a young age how to work and how to save money, and I look now as an entrepreneur and it was one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me, was not just giving me money, not just giving me things, like having to go earn it and work for it.
[00:30:47] Davis Smith: And, you know, we're trying to do the same for our kids, even though, you know, we have more than my parents did. But, like, making sure the kids never feel like they're just going to get something just because they're our kids. Like they, they need to go work for it, ... You know, we hopefully can give them opportunities that they can go do anything in life, but we're not going to give them money so they can do nothing, you, know?
[00:31:05] Davis Smith: So that's, it's been an important part of our, of our family culture for sure,
[00:31:08] Adam Fishman: do you still talk to your kids about the 50/40/10 rule? Like, is that something that they understand in your, in your household too?
[00:31:16] Davis Smith: yeah, for sure. And, uh, and I'd say they've actually done probably better. I mean, I think most of the time the, our, our kids have been saving more than 50% as they're trying to save up for that car and, you know, get the most car they can because they know we're going to match it. And, one thing I found, and I found this in business, I found this here as a mission president in Brazil, and I've seen this in my family, when you build the right culture early on, it becomes easy.
[00:31:38] Davis Smith: Like teaching our kids about finances now, it's like our 20 year, we don't even have to talk about it. They just, it's ingrained in them. we built the right culture in our mission here, and it's like it makes my job much easier. these young kids, they know what's expected of them.
[00:31:50] Davis Smith: They know what I expect out of them. you know, in business, the same thing. When you build that foundation, that strong culture and the rituals and traditions, it's almost like they self-govern, really. And so, uh, the more work you do to s- create that structure and, and clear expectations, the easier your job is as a leader.
[00:32:06] Adam Fishman: what are some of the most surprising things that you've discovered as a, as a dad?
[00:32:11] Davis Smith: it's hard, and I have to be honest, I was nervous doing this podcast just 'cause, like, I don't feel like the greatest dad always, Like I do my best, and I, I think I've done some things well. But like there's times when I'm like, I'm working too much or where I'm on my phone more than I should be or,
[00:32:28] Davis Smith: my 11-year-old son you know, came up to me about, you know, 45 minutes ago right before this was starting and he's like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm setting things up." And he's like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to be on this podcast." And he's like, "Isn't it just like audio?"
[00:32:39] Davis Smith: And I was like, "No, this is like, you know, there's going to be a video too." And he's like, and I'm like, "And I'm kinda nervous because this isn't like about, you know, I've done, done a lot of podcasts about business and entrepreneurship but this one's about being a dad." And he's like, "Oh, that means you're going to do great."
[00:32:53] Davis Smith: honestly I'm like feeling so insecure about doing this. Like, I'm not always the best dad. Like, I'm trying my hardest but like, but when my son told me that it's like I feel f- like a million bucks right now. "Oh man, that made me feel so good."
[00:33:04] Davis Smith: And I told him that, you know, he's 11. He can be kinda snarky sometimes so that was really
[00:33:08] Davis Smith: nice of him to say
[00:33:09] Adam Fishman: I know exactly what that's like,
[00:33:11] Davis Smith: that. yeah.
[00:33:12] Davis Smith: Yeah. so you know, it's hard being a parent you get an opportunity every day to just mess up over and over and over again and do it wrong and, uh, hopefully learn along the way and, it's not easy being a parent for sure.
[00:33:23] Adam Fishman: What have you learned about, the teen years and then also now having adult children? how do you think about those two sort of phases of life?
[00:33:32] Davis Smith: Honestly like the teen years were better than I thought they would be.I was nervous. teenage girls I was like I heard all the horror stories and, but man it was actually like for the most part it was great. I think the tweens were maybe a little bit harder but like the teens like we just really blessed with great girls that, we just had a lot of trust in.
[00:33:50] Davis Smith: Like, I never had to get them up in the mornings like they just got up and got ready for school. Like they were just wonderful. and then honestly adult years even better. So rewarding. So fun. just seeing them grow and develop and helping them explore different paths and, it's just a joy.
[00:34:07] Davis Smith: It's been so fun. Not without hardship. our 20-year-old daughter, she did her senior of high school here in Brazil. Not easy. The only American in the school from sixth grade to 12th grade.
[00:34:18] Davis Smith: very isolating and not easy. There were some tears but she never complained. She was positive and, you know she decided that she wanted to go be a missionary herself.
[00:34:28] Davis Smith: And so when she finished high school, uh, she submitted an application to our church to become a missionary. And you don't choose where you're going to go, they send you. And they sent her to the Philippines. which is a true joy because my wife is half Filipino. She was born and raised in Seattle, uh, American dad, Filipino mom.
[00:34:45] Davis Smith: She never learned her mom's language, but always had a real love for Filipinos, and the culture, and the food because, you know, she grew up in a home that was surrounded by it. And our daughter loves her Filipino grandmother, loves her. And so you can imagine how thrilled we were that she, you know, got sent to the Philippines.
[00:35:04] Davis Smith: she was prepared because she'd spent a year here with us. She was going out with the, the missionaries all the time. then she got to the Philippines and it was not good. no toilet paper, bathing with a bucket. but more than that, she'd call home, you know, they call home once a week, and she'd say like, "I can do that forever."
[00:35:21] Davis Smith: she's like, "Mentally, I'm just not okay." And she just felt isolated, and she had a companion that didn't really speak great English. And she's off in, like, the middle of nowhere, and she just felt mentally unwell. And we just kinda laughed it off a little bit 'cause it's like, "Hey, we've seen missionaries go through this."
[00:35:38] Davis Smith: Like, they figure it out eventually, but it didn't get better. after about six months, she was not in a good place. And we eventually, we told her, you know, "We want you to come home. it's not, you know, "you're not going to be able to finish your time there." it's, "we need you to come home." And, you know, she came home, she was thin and emotionally fragile.
[00:35:59] Davis Smith: And a few days later, my mother-in-law flew in to Brazil, her Filipino grandmother. And, I'll never forget when they saw each other for the first time. I'm going to get emotional here, but my, my daughter saw her, her grandmother, and she took her hand. And I'd never seen this before.
[00:36:16] Davis Smith: It's a Filipino tradition called Mano Po. And they take their hand and they bend over, they bow down, and they, they place their he- their hand against their forehead of an elder. Right. And she did this, and it was just like, it was emotional. And, like, for the first time, I think my, my mother-in-law connected with one of her children or grandchildren in her own culture.
[00:36:37] Davis Smith: Right. And for the next hours, we just heard them giggling and laughing and speaking in Tagalog together. And it was just, like, this beautiful experience where they just had this, this connection. But she went through something really hard and, you know, she was able to continue her, the rest of her mission.
[00:36:53] Davis Smith: She had another year that she spent here in Brazil with us that she wanted to continue. She didn't want to go back to school. We told her, "You can just go back to school. you don't have to stay." And she's like, she really wanted to and, you know, but she went through some hard things. And, as parents, you get to watch your kids suffer a little bit, and that's not easy to do.
[00:37:07] Davis Smith: And at the same time, It's good. We all have to go through hard things, and it's good for these kids to have to go through hard things sometimes so they can grow and develop.
[00:37:15] Adam Fishman: Yeah.
[00:37:16] Adam Fishman: And sounds like she did a lot. Thank you for sharing that. I know it wasn't easy, so. as a person who's been a founder, father, both of those things at different times, if you're talking to a parent who is thinking about starting a company, and you were this person, right?
[00:37:33] Adam Fishman: You were a parent and you started Cotopaxi, and other companies. What would you tell that, that parent about what they're about to get into or, like, what advice would you give to them? Again, knowing, like you said, you're not perfect,how would you prepare them for that experience?
[00:37:52] Davis Smith: first of all, it's, it's not easy. and there's no guarantee of success, obviously, and it can be really painful. And you can grind it out for years and years and years, and there's going to be failures along the way. The one thing I would say would be maybe most important is you don't need to live your life in a way where you have to sacrifice everything else to have success as an entrepreneur.
[00:38:12] Davis Smith: what I think is a lie, actually, told online all the time. You see it on LinkedIn. You see people talk about it at conferences where you just need to, you know, if you wanna be a great entrepreneur, you need to sacrifice everything else. You need to work all every night and weekends and sacrifice your family and relationships.
[00:38:28] Davis Smith: I don't believe that. I don't believe you need to do that. And, it's something that I, from the very beginning, I prioritized, like my family's first. And there were times where I had to make sacrifices and to prioritize my family ahead of a business. But it doesn't mean doing that all the time.
[00:38:42] Davis Smith: There's times where you s- where you sacrifice time with your family and your kids to-- 'cause you're traveling and you have a big, you know, you have your board meeting come on, coming up or whatever. But, living a balanced life means balance. I mean, it's like some days are going to be unbalanced with work, some days are going to be unbalanced 'cause you're spending it more with your kids.
[00:38:58] Davis Smith: And, my encouragement would be don't sacrifice the things that matter most the business doesn't matter most. It's fun and it's challenging and it's rewarding and it can really work you can make great money if it works. but that's not really what really matters.
[00:39:12] Davis Smith: What matters is those relationships. the most important calling you will have in life will be those as husband or wife or as, as a mom or dad. Those are the things that you'll have forever. you won't always be CEO of your company or founder. That's just seasonal. But you'll be those other things for the rest of your life.
[00:39:28] Adam Fishman: Wow, that is pretty powerful advice for, for somebody. So, you've had four kids and you've kind of had them in two tranches, right? You've got 10 years apart, like you said. what have you learned, across four kids and maybe what have you done differently, if anything?
[00:39:45] Davis Smith: I think I've evolved as a parent. I think in the very beginning, 'cause I was a young parent, I was in my, you know, I was in my mid-20s when we had our first. So I think there's a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress like you don't know what you're doing. Plus, like I was starting my first business at the same time, so it was like, right out of college, newly married as a young person, ha- starting a family.
[00:40:04] Davis Smith: It was like starting a business same time. It was like overwhelming. And so, I think by the time I had the two boys, life was, was very different. You know, I'm, in my 30s and early 40s and, life was a little more certain. I mean, still stresses, still uncertainty, certainly risk, in starting, you know, businesses still, but, I realized like, "Hey, life is going to be okay."
[00:40:23] Davis Smith: even if it fails, life will be Okay.
[00:40:25] Davis Smith: still. know, I think being more intentional, versus just kind of like winging it like I did the first, with our girls. A lot of learning and with the boys, you know, I talked about the intentionality of our culture and the rituals and traditions that we have, and so that's been fun.
[00:40:39] Davis Smith: my body's a little older, so with our girls, I, I think I could, do more stuff. Now I'm like, "Oh, like, uh, boys, Yeah. I'm not going to throw you around in the pool anymore. My back's hurting," you know? So, it's been great, great seasons all the way around with both th- those first two and the last two.
[00:40:54] Davis Smith: Even though I didn't know what I was doing early on, it was
[00:40:56] Adam Fishman: Yeah. you know, I always ask parents about the creative uses of AI that they've found as a parent. You mentioned to me something about frog and mouse bedtime stories. So what are frog, frog mouse bedtime stories?
[00:41:09] Davis Smith: this is the funniest thing. So when I was a little kid, my dad, in bed, my dad loves adventures, and he would tell us this bedtime story that he made up called The Adventures of Frog Mouse. And it was this little critter named Frog Mouse that was half frog, half mouse, and it had the best traits of, of both the frog and the mouse.
[00:41:28] Davis Smith: it would go on all these like crazy adventures and I just loved those stories?
[00:41:32] Davis Smith: when my dad would tell them to us in bed. as a dad with my kids, I, I did the same thing. I told these little Framous stories and my girls loved them. And then as my boys have, you know, they got older, like I, you know, started telling them as they were little boys and even still today, you know, 11 years old, 8 years old, they love Framous stories.
[00:41:49] Davis Smith: Anytime they're going to get a Framous story at night. But at some point as a dad like, uh, I don't have endless creativity. Like, I'm like running out of stories. I'm running out of adventures for Frog Mouse. but I have some ideas like for example, a few months ago I was like, "Hey, I want to teach the boys."
[00:42:03] Davis Smith: It might be about places in the world, travel, I decided, you know, I want them to learn about the Ivy League schools. So they're- Framous is going to visit all eight Ivy Leagues, League schools. And so, this is where I used AI. I was like, Okay.
[00:42:15] Davis Smith: I have got this story.
[00:42:16] Davis Smith: This is Frog mouse. This is the kind of stuff he likes to do. I'm going to each one of these schools, give me some ideas because I, I don't know all these schools. Like
[00:42:23] Davis Smith: what are some things that Framous would do at this campus?" And, and then I had it do a diagram, some diagrams of Framous in some of these places or doing different things and I started showing them this and the boys were like, "Wow, that's what Framous looks like. Yeah.
[00:42:35] Davis Smith: that's kind of what I thought he looked like." that's probably the, the most fun thing I've done with, with AI. I don't know. That's not that great, but, uh, it was, it's been fun to do with the kids.
[00:42:43] Adam Fishman: I mean, pretty fun and seemingly very engaging. the Frog Mouse bedtime stories. I love that. So thank you. all right, to end before our lightning round, how can people follow along or be helpful to you?
[00:42:54] Davis Smith: follow me on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. I find so much value in, in sharing. Uh, I love sharing about leadership and entrepreneurship and social, uh, social impact. It's a big passion of mine. So, I love engaging with others, learning from others. So, uh, you?
[00:43:07] Davis Smith: can follow me on there. love that.
[00:43:09] Adam Fishman: Awesome. I will do exactly that, and I will link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
[00:43:16] Adam Fishman: So, thank you. All right. Lightning round.
[00:43:19] Adam Fishman: Here we go. true or false, there's only one correct way to load the dishwasher.
[00:43:26] Davis Smith: this is true and I think just like what we talked about earlier, when you put in the work ahead of time it makes it a lot easier. So
[00:43:32] Adam Fishman: agree.
[00:43:33] Davis Smith: you know, I group like the spoons all in one s- the same spot, the forks all in one spot, the knives in one spot. And then when it's done, you just grab them all and they're like, it's done.
[00:43:42] Davis Smith: And like it doesn't take any more time to intentionally put them in the right spot when you're putting them in. So yes, there is one correct way to load a dishwasher.
[00:43:50] Adam Fishman: Master of efficiency. I love
[00:43:52] Adam Fishman: that.
[00:43:53] Adam Fishman: what is your signature dad superpower?
[00:43:57] Davis Smith: Smoothies. I am a smoothie maker. And especially being in Brazil, it's like, it's amazing because there's fruit galore. I mean, mangoes and a gazillion different types of bananas and all this different fruit, pineapple, and some crazy fruit that no one's even heard of. in the US. And so I love making smoothies, and I always have my boys guess what's in them.
[00:44:16] Davis Smith: It's like I, I try different things and then they have to guess what I put in it. And it's become like a fun, fun family tradition.
[00:44:22] Adam Fishman: All right. I love that. Smoothie, smoothie master. the ideal day with your kids involves what one activity?
[00:44:31] Davis Smith: I love the beach. I love the ocean, I love the beach. you know, here in Jesife, Brazil, like we like live right in front of the beach. And, uh, love spending time with the boys there in nature and hearing the ocean. And you know, even that first year when I was here and it was really hard, that's where I found solace, was like going on a walk and just listening to the water, looking at, you know, the ocean and, finding peace there.
[00:44:51] Davis Smith: So that's, that'd be my, my ideal day with the boys.
[00:44:54] Adam Fishman: Great. If your kids had to describe you in one word, what would it be?
[00:44:59] Davis Smith: I would say it'd be encouraging. I, love encouraging my kids to try hard things, to try new things. I want them to know how much I believe in them, how capable they are. And so yeah, encouraging.
[00:45:10] Adam Fishman: Okay. What is your go-to dad wardrobe?
[00:45:14] Davis Smith: I have a pair of shorts on right now, I've worn these like at least 10 years. It might be longer than that. And I wear them all the time. They're just comfortable. I like even go outside with them. My daughters were like, "Dad, you got to stop wearing those shorts." Like, "Nah, like I, I love
[00:45:27] Davis Smith: these shorts."
[00:45:28] Davis Smith: So some point I'm going to trade them, but uh, why? They're working great.
[00:45:32] Adam Fishman: that. I love that. Always the daughters with the feedback on the
[00:45:34] Adam Fishman: shorts. That's-- And the clothing.
[00:45:36] Davis Smith: Like, "That shirt doesn't match those shorts, Dad." It's like, "Okay."
[00:45:39] Adam Fishman: okay, what nostalgic movie could you just not wait to force your kids to watch when they were old enough?
[00:45:45] Davis Smith: this last weekend I was talking to my wife. She's like, "I want to show the boys Back to the Future." She's like, "No, they're like not old enough, like too little." It's like no way. Like I can't remember how old I was, but like they're ready. This movie is awesome.
[00:45:57] Davis Smith: Like Huey Lewis and the News music, like the, the skateboards. Like, I just love everything about it. Michael J. Fox, it was just such a great movie.
[00:46:05] Adam Fishman: Yep. Okay. "Back to the Future," also a classic. Love it. how long can a piece of food sit on the floor and you will still eat it?
[00:46:15] Davis Smith: Oh man, you know, I'm kind of a germaphobe and I've gotten better. With our kids actually, like I remember as a kid, like as a teenager myself and stuff, like I'd never like share a drink with someone or a straw. It would like gross me out. Now I do that with my kids all the time. Like I've gotten better, but like, I don't know, I'm kind of a germaphobe, so if it's gone on the ground, I, probably don't eat it?
[00:46:34] Davis Smith: Even like I tell my kids though, it's like, "Hey, five second rule." But like, "Dad, you wouldn't do that." And it's like, "Oh, Okay.
[00:46:39] Davis Smith: Yeah, fair."
[00:46:41] Adam Fishman: Okay. All right, last question for you. four kids, but I can't imagine that you have one of these in Brazil, maybe. what's your take on minivans?
[00:46:51] Davis Smith: when we had our second daughter, I bought my wife like a, splurge. You know, we were broke, but I b- I found a used Toyota Highlander, and I thought she was going to be so excited. And she got it and she was like, "This is so nice, but like, I actually really just want a minivan." It was like, "A minivan?
[00:47:07] Davis Smith: We just have two kids. You don't need a minivan." But she wanted it, so we ended up trading it. We got a minivan and I was just like, "What?" I'm like embarrassed to drive this minivan. You know what? She was right. Those minivans, like they're convenient. The sliding doors- yeah.
[00:47:21] Davis Smith: the access from both sides. Like, I have to admit like I still, don't love, you know, being seen in one, but like they are, they are great cars for families, no doubt about it.
[00:47:29] Adam Fishman: Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least you have the shorts for it. You know, you pop out of the minivan in the shorts, you know, it's
[00:47:34] Davis Smith: That's right.
[00:47:35] Adam Fishman: it's totally great. So, okay. Well, we've got another vote for Team Minivan. It's a very polarizing topic, so that's why I
[00:47:40] Adam Fishman: always have to ask. yeah. yeah. All right. Well, uh, Davis, thank you so much for joining me on "Startup Dad."
[00:47:47] Adam Fishman: This was a wonderful conversation. I learned a ton. I appreciate you sharing your, your life experience and your, trip to Brazil. all the best to you and your family and, and especially a, a warm welcome back to the United States, which you're heading back to here in short order. So
[00:48:02] Davis Smith: wait. Looking forward to it. And Adam, thanks for doing this. This is a great podcast. I love listening to it myself. the world needs more of this, so Thank you. for what you're doing.
[00:48:10] Adam Fishman: Thank you. I appreciate that
[00:48:12] Adam Fishman: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Davis Smith. You can subscribe and watch the show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Visit www.startupdadpod.com to learn more and browse past episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
