Mitch Smith Background

Real Estate Sales (Existing Homes).

Licensed Realtor from 2005-2007.

Not only have I held my Oklahoma Real Estate license but I passed the test on my first attempt when I was 18 years old and had the amazing opportunity to train under the wing of one of the top producing brokers in the state at that time, Linda Almaraz.  I sold several homes during this time period but my primary intention was to learn about the real estate industry.  In addition to the sales and marketing aspects of the real estate business, I also was a leading sales rep for a la mode software.  In 2007 I turned down a sales management promotion to pursue the sales management position with an Insulating Concrete Form manufacturer, BuildBlock Building Systems, LLC. 

Insulating Concrete Form Manufacturing.

Sales Management &  Territory Management.

I was the youngest person working at BuildBlock by about 15 years and was a top producer in this role.   During this time I also became certified to provide accredited architects with continuing education credits for teaching them about Insulating Concrete Form construction technology, the cost / benefit analysis of using, best practices for design implementation, etc…  I used this certification primarily when I moved to Ohio, however.   This was obviously my first role of any business development capacity.   I made myself a resource for installers and builders across the country to come to me for advice on growing their businesses using our products.   I excelled greatly in this role for two years.  In 2009 I moved to Ohio.

High End, Ultra Energy Efficient Custom Home Building.

High End, Ultra Energy Efficient Custom Home Building.  Sales, Project Management, Marketing Management, Green Building Science Specialist.  

I left BuildBlock in 2009 when I was offered a position working for a customer who lived in NorthEast Ohio.  I lived in Ohio for two years and during that time, working  under one of the most influential people I have ever had the opportunity to learn from, Brad Camposo, owner of Premier Custom Builders.  During this time I managed $500k – $1mill+ open houses, created and managed the construction budgets for homes in the same price range, trained (primarily Amish) Insulating Concrete Form installation crews, provided continuing education and free lunches to many architects, learned to read and modify very extensive floor plans, create and manage construction budgets for these homes and evaluate existing homes for energy inefficiencies – along with solutions for resolving these issues.  I also learned and sold remodeling projects. 

Commercial Construction General Contracting & Subcontracting Sales & Project Management.

Project Management, Sales Management, Marketing Management, Business Development, Budget Creation & Management.

Insulating Concrete Homes & Commercial Structures. While I received my first taste of high end, extremely intricate home building in Ohio, it was not until I returned to Oklahoma City in 2011 that I was exposed to multifamily commercial project sales and project management.  In addition to schools and government projects we also provided many safe rooms.   This was about the time I became very interested in web design & development as their website was one of my first projects.  

Natural Cosmetics, Dental Whitening Products, Natural Healthcare Solutions

Entrepreneur, Owner.

When I returned from Ohio in 2011, I attended an Alliance of Emerging Professionals volunteer event working at the Infant Crisis Center in Oklahoma City.  At this event I made a good friend and business partner.  We started many different projects, all of which I designed websites for including an online podcast project, Nibiru Strata which reached over 10,000 followers.  The website ended tragically at the same exact time I learned a valuable lesson in choosing a reliable hosting provider and backing up websites.   We also developed a proprietary, all natural hair cleaning product derived from Ayurvedic principals of using essential oils and natural cleaning agents to cleanse the hair.  With a lack of real world testing, we moved to human subject testing on people with severe Alopecia and had some success regenerating hair growth to follicles which had previously been dormant.   We actually still have the product and are in the process of planning a relaunch or forming a strategic partnership to relaunch the product as there is a tremendous opportunity with this.  We still have bottles available but there is currently not a web presence in place as we put a halt to all efforts as we pursued some investment / financial projects which are also still underway.  Due to circumstances around those projects I am not able to discuss those in further detail, however.  

Semi-Custom, Production Home Building.

Production Home Sales.

In 2012 I left Insulating Concrete Homes & Commercial structures to pursue ‘stick frame’ home sales with United-Built Homes.  Oklahoma City had one of the strongest new home construction markets in the US at that time and although Insulating Concrete Form construction is something that most everybody wants to have on their home,  I learned that it was not practical on a wide scale, full exterior wall home construction application, at that time.  There were many more stick frame homes being built.  Although it was seemingly a backward approach to the construction industry, I was very successful selling these homes.  On April 29th, 2013 I was involved in a severe car accident and survived a traumatic brain injury.  

Electronic Music Production & DJing

Music Producer, DJ.  

This is actually more of a hobby than a career but since I am signed onto two different international record labels and have played in many of the larger nightclubs in Oklahoma City, it definitely counts.  I have been DJing since 2005 and from 2011 through 2015 I was a resident at several different establishments.  I still play at occasional events and music festivals but not nearly as much as I did at that point in time.  

I just started producing original music in 2015 but I now actively release music on Beatx Records (Bolivia) and Schwarzzmarkt Recordings (Germany).  Much of my free time is dedicated to music production, my other passion outside of web design & business development. 

Vapor Hardware & eLiquid Manufacturing & Disribution

Business Development, Web Designer / Developer, Sales Management, Marketing Management, Large Account Acquisition.  

After nearly a year of taking time off to recover from the head injury, I was offered a position in February 2014 working in an entirely new field.  Since the doctor highly recommended that I avoid stressful environments for as long as possible, I took on the endeavor thinking this would be the case.  When I started working for the company I was the first American in a 100% Chinese and Chinese-speaking staff.  There were organization hurdles, language issues, motivational problems and many more things which needed to be addressed immediately.  I have learned that any time you start with an organization and begin to ‘straighten out the kinks’ in the hose, the people causing the blockage tend to naturally go away for some reason or other.  It is not always pretty and definitely was not here. Fortunately it did not take long.  

I was in full time Computer Science school at this time.  Meanwhile I designed the entire website, which is still being used today, using OpenCart.   I was responsible not only for building and managing the website but also for screening and training sales reps, creating marketing budgets and campaigns, reviewing and making adjustments to packaging and designs for new, original vapor hardware and eLiquid Products we created.  In this position I had the opportunity to start to tie my formal web design & development education into real world application.  

I was fortunate in this role because I was able to see  a tremendous amount of vapor shops open and become very successful.  I was also privy to many of them being very short lived.  I started to make a distinction between the two groups and started a personal mission to make myself as valuable of a resource as possible for the clients we had.  This turned out to be a wise decision however, I still did not realize it would be something that would help me find my calling.  In early 2015, I identified an opportunity to take on a pay it forward experiment in which I applied the knowledge I learned in school, along with the vast number of shops I had seen, to a real world business.     I wanted to help him out but I also wanted to see how well it would work.  

I spoke with the business owner one morning and could hear the terror in his voice.  Traffic was slow.  No customers. But ‘surely’ they would eventually find him and he wouldn’t have to ‘close his doors’.  I took this project on, while in school full time as well as managing the vapor hardware wholesaler.  I created a website for him, set up all social media, directories, on-page and off-page SEO – the whole 9 yards.   After a few weeks of my efforts underway, the doom and gloom surely enough turned into a renowned excitement, not only for the business but for life in general.  The difference I was able to make in this individual did something for me that I had never experienced prior.  I actually really enjoyed putting the solution together and he was ecstatic.   Today his business is still very much thriving, actually.  I continue to manage some of his projects, but not on a volunteer basis any longer, however.  This experience allowed me to realize my true calling and changed the course of this business owner, in a major way.  

Since then I have been involved in many web design projects and this project has taken off.   I have now also been involved in many more projects since I took FogPusher on as a full time project.