Sam Smith, Birmingham
CEO at Smith Limited Agency
Age 19
About
I was given discipline and the skillsets needed to succeed from my parents, Kim and Chris Smith. From there, my journey as an entrepreneur started when I was introduced to entrepreneurship principles by my grandfather, Bruce King, and once he passed, it lit a fire under me to make something of myself. I knew I needed seed money to start my company, so I immediately applied for jobs and got to work supervising a swim program. I took every bit of cash I could and saved it for five months until the deadline I set for myself where I had to quit my job and jump ship from varsity wrestling to start my company as I started my senior year at Vestavia Hills High school.
From there, I started Smith Limited Agency as a marketing agency but due to saturation, I successfully identified the need and made the pivot to a B2B sales agency, which is what Smith Limited Agency is today. Now, I am continuing to scale Smith Limited Agency out of Innovation Depot, while I work on building my software product under my new stealth startup, while also attending UAB, majoring in entrepreneurship.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
My proudest accomplishment was overcoming the hardships leading up to the deadline I'd set for myself to to start my company and still having the courage to do so, knowing that I would have to make many sacrifices for my dream of becoming a serial entrepreneur, including my senior year in high school. Those sacrifices were tough, but they were instrumental in shaping me into who I am today.
How can we get more young people involved in tech and innovation in Birmingham?
Birmingham should pay attention to this question because establishing Birmingham as a tech and innovation giant alongside already being a health care giant is a surefire way to permanently put Birmingham on the world map and drastically increase Birmingham’s influence globally. In a perfect world, solving this issue would all come down to improving youth introductions to tech and entrepreneurial education and retaining young innovators in Birmingham.
Birmingham is highly regarded when it comes to health care but when it comes to tech and entrepreneurship, Birmingham is often overlooked, which drives an intense underdog mentality. With that being said, a comprehensive solution would be to have stronger cross-sector coordination among Birmingham leaders of firms and ventures that serve the regional startup ecosystem. This coordination would lead to better branding and marketing of the city. This would yield a supportive infrastructure with the capacity to retain young entrepreneurs in Birmingham.
Birmingham already has world-class resources. UAB’s Barefield Entrepreneurship Program Chair, Dr. Patrick Murphy, actively collaborates with thought leaders around the world to bring a best in class entrepreneurship education to young founders. That program has already raised millions of dollars and won national awards. Also, Innovation Depot’s CEO, Brooke Gillis, is building the community and program required to make Birmingham the next startup hub.
Birmingham has great infrastructure for solving this issue but requires more cohesive and coordinated leadership instead of individuals acting separately. On top of that, because Birmingham has the educational resources, infrastructure and leadership, the next steps would be to marshal resources to conduct more large scale rebranding and educational marketing campaigns to build awareness for Birmingham’s tech and entrepreneurship scene, especially the Barefield entrepreneurship program at UAB. It will also be very important to build awareness of what Birmingham has to offer outside of work life. A common phrase heard in Birmingham is 'I feel like there is never anything to do in Birmingham,'' which is essential to address because doing so would bolster awareness for everything Birmingham has to offer and would help improve the retention required to snowball Birmingham into a world-class entrepreneurial ecosystem. In the end, ultimately, I believe the best way to ensure Birmingham prospers beyond belief is to establish Birmingham at the forefront of the biggest frontier, which is tech and entrepreneurship in addition to being at the forefront of the health care space.
