About Justin Smith
I build systems and integrate AI for service businesses. I also spend my summers leading Adventure Idaho as General Manager. There, I lead the team and day-to-day operation, and built the systems the crew uses.
My bet
As software gets cheaper to build, understanding the business becomes more valuable. The difficult work is uncovering the rules, exceptions and judgment buried in people’s heads, then building a model that holds up in real work.
Connected to the right tools, that gives AI something reliable to act on, with people approving consequential decisions. That’s the work I’m betting on.
Read the whiteboard story Work with me
How I got here
- Locksmith business, Rexburg, at 22. Bought it, expanded the services, fixed the pricing, built a crew that covered calls around the clock, grew revenue roughly 6x, and sold it. Small, but it taught me pricing and staffing.
- Guiding the Middle Fork of the Salmon. A couple of seasons of multi-day wilderness trips for another outfitter.
- Hamilton Zanze · San Francisco. Financial & Operations Analyst Intern. Built financial and operational reports to identify portfolio trends, areas of loss and opportunities to improve returns across a multibillion-dollar real estate portfolio.
- International distribution and e-commerce. Worked across departments to identify bottlenecks and understand the systems behind the business.
- Door-to-door sales. The fastest education in rejection and conversion there is.
- Podium · Account Executive. Prospected, ran product demos and closed software sales for local businesses.
- General Manager, Adventure Idaho. Four years of rebuilding the business from the product outward, then building the foundation for AI to streamline operations and reduce repetitive admin. How the system works.
Looking ahead
I’m interested in investing in, acquiring and operating established Idaho businesses. My approach starts with learning the work, capturing the operating rules and building systems teams can trust.
See operational transition support · Thinking about stepping back?
Building people, not just systems
I’ve trained more than 100 river guides through hands-on instruction and guide-training boot camps. At Adventure Idaho, I built a multi-week program around International Rafting Federation standards, live rescue drills, and 50+ real whitewater case studies that train judgment under pressure. What holds it together is a fighter-pilot debrief culture, honest, humble and analytical, and it's why the reputation held while we grew. How the training program was built.
Software scales what a business knows. Training and culture scale what its people can do.
What I believe
Build the system, don't repeat the work
The second time I do something by hand, it becomes a checklist, a template or software.
Get the operator out of the critical path
A business that only works when one person remembers everything is a job with employees.
Judgment over tools
Software and AI are cheap now. Knowing what to automate, and what to leave to a person, isn't.
The product is the marketing
A consistent operation earns reviews and referrals no campaign can outrun.
They add up to an order I fix businesses in: product, people, demand, pricing, then the system underneath. Why that order.
What I built for myself
I built Personal OS: a private database connecting my plans, records and AI tools.
- Capture and organize: voice notes become actions, with projects connected to goals.
- Train with context: workout plans, strength sessions, benchmarks and Strava summaries together.
- Bring the pieces together: Google Calendar, Strava activity summaries and a structured database give AI context across my schedule, training, projects and goals.
- Give AI useful tools: structured context, permission-controlled actions and a history of changes.
I decide what changes.
What I've written
One argument runs through it: most companies bought AI and connected it to nothing. Start with that essay, read how our guides changed my view of search, read everything, or see what I'm working on now.
Other things
- FAA-certificated private pilot. Aviation runs on checklists, and writing them was my first move at Adventure Idaho.
- Eagle Scout, licensed Idaho guide, and two years of full-time volunteer service in Southern California.
- Involved with the surf wave project in Twin Falls, and manufacturing a new whitewater product.
- Photo and video, including FPV drone work.
- At 30, new personal bests at the mile and the half marathon, including a 5:42 mile at about 6,000 feet, plus a few Strava course records in Nordic skiing, running and paddling.
