Ep. 952: Leaving Your Successful Outdoor Company - Davis Smith
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2023
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Adventure Travel: Davis Smith, Cotopaxi Founder, on Leaving CEO Role for 3-Year Brazil Missionary Mission – From Amazon Raft, Cuba Kayak, North Korea to Gear for Good and Family Detour. Davis is the founder and CEO of Cotopaxi, an outdoor gear brand with a humanitarian mission of creating “gear for good”. Davis is also an adventurer who has floated down the Amazon on a self-made raft, kayaked from Cuba to Florida, and explored North Korea. Davis grew up in Latin America and currently lives in Utah with his wife and four children.
Here’s why we’re talking to him on AS though, he’s leaving his role as CEO for a 3-year mission in Brazil. Davis and his family have answered the call to move to Brazil this summer to serve as missionaries.
We often hear of folks leaving their corporate jobs, or school to start a career in the outdoors, or how they took the path less taken and never looked back. But what about those who start that company, and then have an unexpected detour once things are going well? It’ll be exciting to follow up with Davis in the coming years.
https://www.instagram.com/davismsmith/?hl=en
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, welcome to the adventure sports podcast. |
| 0:16.1 | I'm your host, Mason Gravely. |
| 0:17.7 | Today's episode is really interesting. |
| 0:19.4 | I'm talking to Davis Smith, and he is the CEO |
| 0:22.8 | and founder of Cotapaxi. If you've ever heard of Cota Paxi, it's this awesome outdoor gear brand that |
| 0:30.6 | makes everything from jackets to bags to just all sorts of outdoor equipment, backpacks. They're |
| 0:37.0 | really well known for their luggage and kind of duffel bags. |
| 0:40.8 | I have a bunch of their items. |
| 0:43.0 | What I love about what they do is it has a really strong humanitarian mission. |
| 0:48.0 | They call it gear for good. |
| 0:49.8 | And they also use a lot of remnant materials from other manufacturers and like the leftover pieces |
| 0:56.5 | of material to piece together to make these really unique and beautiful pieces of equipment. |
| 1:02.7 | So I love that and I love that it's very colorful. If you know me, you know I love color. I love |
| 1:08.1 | having colorful things and their gear always really stands out and I love it. |
| 1:12.9 | I've been a fan of them for a really long time, so it was a huge pleasure to sit down with Davis. |
| 1:17.8 | But oftentimes on this show, we hear the perspective of people who are leaving their corporate life or something really structured to start something new, whether it be a guide |
| 1:28.9 | service or an outdoor brand or something like that. It's that entrepreneurial journey we often |
| 1:33.9 | talk about. This is totally unique. Davis is leaving his role as CEO of Cotapaxi to answer basically |
| 1:43.5 | a call to go on mission in Brazil for for a few years and take |
| 1:48.7 | his whole family. So he's literally going to walk away for three years from this amazing role, |
| 1:54.2 | the pinnacle of, you know, being at this company, the CEO and founder of something that's |
| 1:58.8 | growing rapidly to focus completely on |
... |
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