From a Hawke’s Bay sheep and beef background, he completed a non-agriculture degree at Victoria University before moving south about 14 years ago.
Soon he realised dairying provided a better pathway for his young family to get ahead and jumped across via a Go Dairy campaign.
Speaking to a "real life" dairy farmer beforehand encouraged him to have a crack.
He was fortunate to work for good dairy farmers in Hawke’s Bay before heading south.
"I was young, 24 years old, thought I could take on the whole world and grow my equity in two seconds and got offered an opportunity which seemed too good to be true and spent five years of my life learning some of the best lessons of my life and some of the hardest lessons. I walked away after five years and started again."
Disillusioned and burned out, he thought about leaving until a good mate asked him if it was the situation or the industry that was the problem.
Mulling this over, he stayed, found good people and has grown his business.
Today, he is responsible for milking 4500 cows across five properties and will take on another 1000 cows next year.
Mr Smith was joined by couple Aaron and Frances Coles and brothers Sumit Kamboj and Manoj Kumar in a panel about pathways to wealth creation at the South Island Dairy Event (Side) at Lincoln University.
From early on he was ambitious, buying a Havelock North lifestyle block and overstocking it with sheep and calves.
Rearing dairy stock for farm owners he was working for, he began to see dairying’s value on paper.
Inspired, he and wife Chloe moved south to progress to 50:50 sharemilking on a large scale farm of more than 2000 cows, just south of Waimate.
Consumed with growing his business, he ignored warning signals and now sees the growth opportunities were there, but the people relationship was ill-aligned.
"When I finally made the decision to leave the weight came off my shoulders."
His wife and good mates supported him through this, he said.
Nine years later and somehow he juggles between being an operations manager, director, equity partner, farm owner and lower-order share milker as well as investing in rental properties and shares.
The 1580ha he helps oversee produce more than 2.1million kilograms of milksolids.
His second start began with working for the Paul family, initially carrying out contract milking.
"The reason we took that position was the gut feel on the person was huge. The warmth and the values had become very important to me in my relationships I was going to build in the dairy sector going forward."
After proving himself, a few years later he asked to go 50:50 sharemilking, but they were unsure because of their close connection with the cows.
"I was at that point talking to some advisers and the key was to not split the pie, grow it; and I took that on and we have grown the pie."
Cashflow from contract milking was put into a lifestyle block down the road and they bought as many calves as they could and reared them after work, growing a herd, grazing them out and selling some of them.
The small block was sold to buy cows put on a leased arable farm and the herd milked through the family’s cow shed after the idea was pitched to build the business.
Forever scrolling on TradeMe’s property listings, he saw an "ugly duckling" property with a barn on it and, backed by his business partners, developed it into a profitable operation.
A second farm bought between them about three years ago was always considered by the Paul brothers to be the Smiths’ farm.
They realised to keep the relationship going the Smiths had to feel like they were achieving the goal of owning their own farm and the arrangement was set up so they could eventually buy them out.
"From there we have grown to invest in more equity partnerships ... they were happy to help me to purchase a farm to grow and always driven by the return that had to be there and they weren’t doing it for love."
This partnership will extend to a sixth farm in June.
Over the next five years Mr Smith wants to repeat the model and grow the "pie" of wealth creation with other people.
Like-minded people would want to understand, learn and question the whole farming system, rather than just the job in front of them, he said.
Just recently he took on his first contract milker.
"When we sat down and signed it up I said ‘this will be a successful relationship if in three years we are buying a farm together’."
