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Davis Smith has learned a thing or two about missionaries after working with four hundred and seventy-one of them over the past three years. He also learned from being the father of a missionary during that time. In his new book, the founder of Cotopaxi writes, "Over three years as a mission president, I read around twenty thousand weekly missionary letters and conducted five thousand interviews.

I saw the same pattern again and again: anxiety about going home, fear of losing spiritual strength, and uncertainty about how to apply mission lessons to real life. I also saw something just as consistent, a generation of covenant-keeping disciples and inspiring young leaders with the potential to change the world."

End quote. Davis's new book, The Next Ten Years, is an effort to help young missionaries thrive in that transition from missionary life to something even better. Davis Smith and his wife, Ajaline, served as mission leaders of the Brazil Recife North Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from twenty twenty-three to twenty twenty-six.

Davis is a senior fellow at Yale University, where he teaches leadership and social entrepreneurship at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO emeritus of Cotopaxi, a brand that has assisted millions living in poverty. He and Ajaline have four children and live in New Haven, Connecticut

This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am honored to have my friend Davis Smith on the line with me today. Davis, welcome. Morgan, it's so fun to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.

Well, I think the world of you and Ajene, Davis, and it is such a treat to get to learn from you. I feel like any excuse to learn from somebody as smart as you is, is just a blessing. And so thank you for being willing. I am so excited to hear about your mission experiences and to kinda have a good excuse to catch up.

But I, as I read your book, uh, it took me back to coming home from my mission, and I feel like I, I have this, like, distinct memory of laying in my bed and just sobbing. And I think that that's, like, a feeling that a lot of re- recently returned missionaries can relate to. It's just like, "What am I supposed to do now?"

And I think that's why your book is so needed and so important. So first, thank you for writing it. Yeah. No, I mean, even you talking about your return home and tho- those emotions, it makes me emotional just thinking of all these missionaries that we're sending home. You know, there's 88, a- almost 90,000 missionaries out right now, and, you know, they're all gonna be going through this transition coming home shortly.

And, you know, I went through a similar transition, and I know how hard it is, and I've been hearing how hard it is from all of our missionaries that are coming home. And I just felt like there was a need to, to, to help them understand how they connect the dots between this amazing experience they just had and this amazing life that's ahead of them, and how they use all these things they learned in this post-mission life.

So yeah. Well, I have a dear friend who they have two twins who in the last month have come home off missions, and I just was, like, trying to think, you know, thinking back to things like, for me, it was, "Am I ever gonna lose my mission weight?" And, and, and a- "Am I gonna get married?" You know? I remember my aunt saying to me, um, "Morgan, what if I told you you'll get married in the next three to five years?"

I was like, "Well, then I wouldn't worry about it." And she's like, "Morgan, you will get married in the next three to five years." And I was like, "You don't know that." And she was wrong. She was wrong. So, so- So ... I just feel like it's a, it's a crazy- It all worked out in the end. It all worked out ... it, it's a happy ending, you know?

A beautiful family. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I wanna ... I guess I'll start with this. From your experience, what are the greatest challenges that face recently returned missionaries, and what is it that makes that re-entry so hard? You're going through the re-entry right now yourself. Yeah, I've been back a month.

My wife and I have been back a month with our family. We had our, our kids with us, and it was such a beautiful experience. It was one of, it was one of the hardest, maybe the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was also just the most fulfilling and rewarding experience. And, you know, the amazing part of it was just watching these incredible, you know, about 500 missionaries that we got to love and care for and watch grow.

And, you know, watching them go home, it brought me back to going home myself. I remember I served my mission in ... As, as mission leaders, we were in Brazil, but I served as a young man in Bolivia. And I was so excited to get home and see my family after two years. Uh, I remember just getting off the plane, and this is back when family could be at the gate, you know?

So they were at the gate. I got off the plane and just... It's hard to, it's hard to think of, like, a happier moment, just embracing my family and some friends that were there. And, uh, I remember pulling up to my parents' home just, you know, 30 minutes away from the airport, and I just, all these feelings of joy just kind of went away, and I started feeling all this, this weight of guilt, of thinking, "Why do I get to live here?

Why do I get to live here when these people that I love in Bolivia so much have nothing?" And, um, it was this weird day filled with, like, so much joy and some sadness and, you know, eating these amazing foods that I missed and listening to music in my room and then also, like, laying on the floor of my room, like, crying.

And I just, I think the hardest part when you get home from your mission is you have this, this lack of purpose and of clarity that in your mission is so clear. You know exactly what you're supposed to do. You have this, this mission that you believe in and that you're committed to and that you're just so passionate about, and there's no question about what you need to do that day.

And then you get home, and you're like, "Now what?" You know, we did a, we did a survey of our, of our missionaries about six months before we finished our mission, asking our returned missionaries how life has been post-mission. And it was, in some ways, really encouraging, and in some ways, um, there were some surprising things that we found.

One thing that I saw was, like, two-thirds of the missionaries said that going home was harder or much harder than they'd ever expected. And I remember one sister said, returned missionary sister said that she felt she had no purpose. There was no need for her. And, you know, that's, that's something that we, we need to do a better job of in the church and as families of our returned missionaries, is helping them find that purpose, that clarity, because they need to find it.

You know, if you come home and you, and it's just about you, which it naturally is. You're, like, "What am I gonna study? Who am I gonna date? You know, where am I gonna live? What's my career gonna look like?" All these things they have to figure out. It starts to become very internally focused, and their, like, previous two years or 18 months have all been external.

And so, and when we're externally focused, we know that brings us joy. When we're internally focused, we know that it, it's the opposite. A lot of times we can, we, we lack the joy that we, that we're looking for. And so I think that's probably the greatest challenge for these returned missionaries, is how do they take the purpose that they had and evolve it into, into a new purpose, into new clarity?

Um, and that's, that's not easy to do I always say that the best advice that I got before my mission came from my grandma, who is a convert to the church and never served a mission. But I remember her saying, "This will be the only time in your life where you get to focus entirely on your relationship with God, so don't waste that."

Yeah. And I think it's so true. I remember being on the airplane coming home, Davis, and writing down these goals that were, like, very ambitious. You know, like- Right ... I'm gonna s- do personal study for 45 minutes every day. And the hilarious thing is, I told my dad that after I had been home for a bit. I was like, "I just feel like I'm failing because I, like, I had these goals and I'm not doing any of 'em."

And my dad just, like, kind of chuckled and was like, "I did the exact same thing on the airplane home." And so I think it's, that's, you know, the, all of that goes back to that idea of lacking purpose. And, you know, missionaries, they, they'll beat themselves up about these things, right? Yes. Like, why am I not doing all the things that I, all, you know, why am I not as, uh, feeling as spiritually strong as I was in the mission?

And it's like, well, this is, this is normal. Right. And at the same time, Morgan, I know that, I know a lot of missionaries feel this. I know so many of our missionaries feel this. They, they would ask me, they'd be like, "President Smith, like, how do I, how do I maintain this level of spirituality that I have on the mission?

How do I stay at the same level?" And, uh, I wrote this in the book as well, but it's like, I hope you don't. Like, you need to be much better and stronger. I'll be really disappointed if you're at the same spiritual level t- you know, that you're at today when I see you in five or 10 years. You need to have grown.

But that doesn't mean that you're gonna have the same focus, daily focus that you have as a missionary. That's gonna be impossible to replicate. Right. But there's ways to continue that spiritual growth beyond a mission, even though you're not immersed in it, you know, all day, every day I wanna ask you if you can elaborate on that a little bit because I do think that's, that's part of the thing that feels so daunting, is you're like, "Okay, so I'm supposed to grow spiritually.

I don't wanna stay where I am, but at the same time, how am I supposed to do that if I'm not being able to read my scriptures for 45 minutes a day? Like, that's where I'm gonna fall short and regress instead of grow." Yeah. So what do you feel like are the biggest things that can aid in that growth? Well, I think, uh, I think all of us would agree that the times we've grown the most spiritually is when we've had the biggest struggles, and oftentimes it's because of those things.

You know, I, I think of, you know, my first semester back from, from my mission. I was at BYU. My first time at BYU, I was so excited and, uh, you know, I had all these ambitious goals about my career and school. And I, I ended up taking like, I took an accounting class, an econ, a very challenging Econ 110 class.

I took honors economics. Uh, I took... I can't remem- ... Actually, I blocked a lot of these out of my head because of the trauma. Right. It was not good. It was not good. I'm glad you recovered. Yes, it was not good. Plus, I had fun dating, and, uh, video games were, like, like sucking me in with my, my roommates. It was a disaster.

And because it was a disaster, I grew, and I did better the next semester. And I had some pain that I had to experience. Right. And, you know, honestly, it's a little embarrassing to even think about how poorly I did that first semester, but the same thing will happen with all these return missionaries. Some of them are gonna be much more disciplined than I was when they get home, but every one of them is gonna experience some challenges and some pain.

We've seen that with our return missionaries. They, they write me, they're like, "Wow, this is way harder than I thought." Right. "My phone is such a distraction compar- like I thought I was, I mastered that on the mission, and, uh, I haven't," and- It's right back. It's... Yes. You fall right back into some of the same things.

And so but that's the beauty of it, that we get to grow through making mistakes. And so I don't think sometimes as parents or family members or mentors, you know, when, when we have these brand-new return missionaries, we can really, we kind of wanna immediately, or we can get tempted to immediately, like, start measuring their transition home.

Like, uh, you know, "Are you in school? Where are you going to school? What's your job? Are you dating yet? What's your major?" You know, "Are you thinking about an internship yet? Um, what happened to your missionary habits?" You know, we're, we're, like, kind of giving them all this pressure and, and instead, I think the questions we should be a- asking...

And honestly, I fall into that. Even with my, all of our little return missionaries, like, I wanna ask some of those questions. And some of those are okay, but I think instead, sometimes better questions might be, "How are you doing? What are you excited about?" "What's been really hard for you?" And then listen.

That's probably what they need more than us, you know, immediately quizzing them on all the biggest questions that they're already incredibly stressed out about. What they need to learn is they need to learn how to choose Christ even when no one's watching. 'Cause in the mission you have a companion that's with you all the time.

You have your mission president and wife that are always there to help and ask you how you're doing, regular interviews. That's all gone. And so they need to figure out how they, how they find Christ in their life on their own with no one asking how they're doing, with no one, like, you know, on to... their companion checking in on them or their mission president.

So that's, yeah, it's not easy. I love what you said about they need somebody to listen, and I guess I would just add to that, Davis. I feel like when I got home it was like, "How was your mission?" And people just expected it to be like, "Good And that was it. That's all they wanted to know is that it was good.

And I, I remember my aunt was the only person, she said like, "I want you to tell me a story about a time when you had some weird encounter with an animal." And she had like all these like very ... She had served a mission- ... so she had these like very distinct, you know, questions. And I was like, it meant so much to me that somebody actually wanted to hear about it.

And so I think also being willing to listen to what they experienced is important, instead of just jumping into what's next. Yeah. No, absolutely. This is, this is something that we've heard from missionaries, and actually I've experienced it coming home as well. Like, we had this three years, this crazy experience, like, but yeah, people, people's lives are busy.

You know, they're excited to see you. They want, "Hey, how are things? Hey, how was it?" But they, you know, they're, they don't really wanna know. They don't really wanna know how hard it was or what the experiences were like or the joyful experiences. Just, yeah. And I think a young missionary, you wanna talk about it, especially young missionaries.

Yes. It's such a big part of your entire life experience. So yeah, uh, being a listening ear can make, make a real impact on these young missionaries. I love that. I, I think that sometimes a lot of those things that people are stressed out about when they come home come externally. So I love what you said about listening.

Is there anything else that you would say, Davis, to maybe parents of recently returned missionaries in terms of how they can most help in this transition? Yeah. Maybe, maybe one other thought on this one is that not every young person's mission turned out the way they thought it would. They might not have had the baptism success that they hoped to.

They might have had a harder relationship with their mission president than they expected. They might have expected to just love their mission leaders because everyone talks about how much they love their mission leaders, and maybe they didn't connect with their mission leaders or maybe they had a hard experience with them.

You know, maybe they had some really hard companions. Maybe they struggled with mental health. And it's okay to let your missionary grieve a little bit for what they'd hoped for. Missions can be really hard. You know, we had a daughter that served a mission while we were out, and it ended up being not what she expected.

You know, she s- she had struggles that she didn't expect to have. And You know, it's sometimes hard for missionaries to come home and not have had the exact experience that they dreamed about their entire childhood. And so... And we can also help them as parents and as loved ones and as mentors, help them understand that they don't need to, they don't need to define their entire experience or book by one chapter.

You know, they might have had a hard chapter, but that doesn't-- they don't need to rewrite the whole book based on that one chapter. They can look at all the other amazing things that they had. Now, it's sometimes hard to do, and we don't have to immediately jump to that and just try to point out all the good things.

You know, we can let them sit in that sadness a little bit and grieve a little bit, you know, the, you know, those, those hard experiences. But then hopefully we can help them understand that they can, you know, they had so many good things that came out of the experience as well. And I even experienced this a little bit as my, you know, as a, as a young missionary.

You know, not in any big way, but I remember there was one area that was harder for me. Um, you know, more a companionship that was a little bit harder and, um, some things that, like, made that area not as happy as I, as my other four areas. And so when I thought back to my mission, it was like the four areas were amazing, and that one area there was a little bit of, like, scar tissue.

But then I went back to my mission about a year after, and I went back to that area, and honestly, like, I was a little afraid to go back. But I went and met with some of my converts and oh my goodness, like, I love that area. And some of those, uh, those, some of those hard emotions slowly kind of disappeared, and I actually don't feel the same way about that area that I did when I first finished my mission.

And so sometimes it just takes a little bit of time or a little bit of experience to be able to, to navigate some of those hard, those hard feelings. Davis, I wanna touch on, because you brought it up, your daughter's experience. So your daughter left the United States, went to Brazil with your family, finished high school in Brazil, which had to be hard.

Yeah, yeah. And then got called on a mission to the Philippines, which she was very excited about because your wife is, uh, her family is from the Philippines. Yeah. And then she had these mental health struggles, and that led her to finish her mission as a service missionary back in Brazil. How did that experience change you and Ajaline as mission leaders?

I, I think there's very few things that impacted us more. And it was a gift to have her with us as a service missionary. But you're right, she, you know, she went and did her senior year of high school in Brazil. She was the only American in the American school from sixth to 12th grade, so it was very lonely, but she was so tough.

She never complained, and there were tears. We saw tears, you know, but she was so positive about the experience, which we felt very lucky to have, you know, a daughter that was so willing to, to try this. And then she, you know, she finished high school. She got her mission call. We were absolutely thrilled that she was called to the Philippines.

Uh, my wife was born in Seattle, raised in Seattle. Her dad's from Virginia, but her mom is from the Philippines, so she grew up in, like, in a very American household, but with, like, Phil- some Filipino food and hearing her mom speak her, you know, her native language. But my wife didn't know a lot, doesn't know a ton about the Philippines.

She's been one time when she was 15. But my children love their Filipino grandmother. She's just the kindest person. And so my daughter, as, as you can imagine, was just thrilled. Uh, we were all thrilled. And she, she'd spent a year going out with the sister missionaries in our mission weekly. She'd go spend days with them at times.

Like, she knew what a mission was like. Yeah. She knew how to proselytize. She knew how to, like, talk to people. She knew what it was like to be a missionary. She'd been to, she'd gone to all of our zone conferences, and so she just felt ready. She went to the MTC, loved the MTC experience. Just not one time did she cry or was upset.

It was just, like, so fun for her. And then she got to the mission field, and for whatever reason, things changed mentally And it started immediately. Uh, the first P-day, it was like, you know, she felt very isolated and alone and, you know, every P-- at first we kinda just chuckled about it. It was like, "Yeah, you know, welcome to the mission.

It's always... It's hard at the beginning, but you're gonna get used to it, and it's gonna get better." Months went by, and it did not get better. And I remember it was Christmas Eve, and she'd been out about six months, and I was calling my parents. Um, my parents had been mission leaders, and I was calling them, and they asked how M- how McKenna was doing, our daughter, and I said, "You know, honestly, she's not doing great.

Um, in fact, she's doing quite poorly." And my mom immediately said, "Davis, you need to bring her home." And I was a little bit surprised because my parents, uh, I kind of expected to be more like, "She just needs to s- you know, tough it out and stick it out. She's, you know..." No. Like, my mom was like, "Davis, you need to bring her home."

And I told her, "You know, Mom, she, she knows she can come home. We've let her know that she doesn't, you know... We're not gonna be disappointed if she needs to come back, if she needs to, to get well here. Like, she knows that." And my mom just said, "Davis, she's not in a mental state to make that decision on her own.

She's gonna need your help." And so we called up the mission president, and he was supportive and kind and, um, we called up our daughter and told her, and it was the greatest gift we could have given her. A few days later, she was home, and she arrived back. She was thin and emotionally very fragile. It was, it was sad to see her in that state, but we had the most amazing experience.

My mother-in-law was visiting us in Brazil, and I'll never forget the moment that they saw each other Um, my daughter grabbed my mother-in-law's hand, and she pressed the top of her hand against her forehead and bowed down to her. And honestly, I'd never seen this before. I wasn't familiar with this Filipino tradition, but it's a way that you respect the elderly or respect people that are older than you.

My daughter even says that little children in the streets would come and do that to them, to the missionaries. They'd take their hand and press it against their forehead to show respect. And but when this happened, I could see the emotion in my mother-in-law as she connected with our daughter for the first time in this new way.

And they spent the next several hours talking to each other in Tagalog and giggling and laughing, and it was such a gift that she was sent to the Philippines, even if it didn't work out the way that she had hoped and expected it to. And then we told her, we're like, "McKenna, you spent a year with us here already.

Now you've spent, you know, six months in the Philippines. You've served a mission. You don't need to feel like you need to continue for another year." But she was committed. She was like, "No, I'm finishing what I started, and I wanna be a missionary still." And so she served in Brazil with us. It was a blessing.

She served in the temple. She's helped us in the mission office. She helped us, um, just like my wife, helped baking cookies for all the missionaries, which was just like a never-ending task, and she was... It was amazing. And like, even when we spoke at all the stake conferences, all the, all the old ladies would come up and look for our daughter, not for us.

Like, they wanted to talk to her 'cause they were just knew her from the temple. And, um It was such a blessing. And I'd say, Morgan, one of the things that impacted me the deepest, obviously as a father that impacted me, but as a mission president it did because I better understood our own missionaries. And when I had missionaries that were struggling with mental health, I had so much empathy and so much understanding for what they were going through.

And when I had to call parents and say, "Hey, I'm working with your missionary and they're not doing well, and we're talking about a service mission." And when sometimes parents would be hesitant because they're like, there's some s- some stigma, there's some... Yeah, they, they don't really know what that even means.

And I could tell them, "You know what? Let me tell you all about it." And my wife and I would talk about our daughter's experience and how, what a gift it was to have them with us. And so it really, it really helped us as mission leaders to better understand, um, the missionaries that, that need to go back and serve as service missionaries.

And there's a lot, you know. Uh, there's, uh... And it's such an inspired program, the service missions. I'm so glad this exists now because there's so many amazing young people that have a desire to serve, and the Lord accepts their desire to serve, even if they can't serve wherever they were originally called or if they can't serve like they were hope- some people just get called immediately as a service missionary.

And some of the times that comes with some disappointment. But I can just tell them like the Lord is not disappointed in them. He recognizes their willingness to serve. He loves them, and He's gonna use their s- unique talents and abilities to serve in a way that they couldn't have otherwise. And so, yeah, it was a real gift for us to have that experience with our daughter Well, I think so many people will be grateful that you shared that and that your daughter was willing to let you share it.

I think that it's just a very relatable thing. And all of us as members of the church could benefit from a little bit better understanding of what is a service mission, how it... Has that changed? Okay, I wanna get into kind of some of the, the more tactical. Is that the way to, to put it, to put it? As you get into the book, you talk about some different things that you think will help people in this transition from being a missionary to being home.

And very early in the book, you talk about committing to church attendance and service and callings. You write later in the book about how you were called into a stake presidency, and you had to have been pretty young at that point, Davis. So how has church service, and specifically just being willing to serve where the Lord has needed you, changed you as a leader both, both within the church and, and outside the church?

Yeah, you know, I think if there's anything that's shaped me spiritually more than anything else, it has been the willingness to serve in any calling I've been given, regardless of how important it seems. I know in the book I talk about being called to be a ward chorister, and I was like, "I am not a musician."

I, I'm not musical. And I was so nervous, and I had to, like, learn how to, like, lead the music better than I knew, and I'd practice in the mirror. I, I, I never learned how to use my left hand leading the music. But it was like, you know, I, I gave it everything I had. And, you know, I, I know that, uh, you know, Morgan, you and your husband lived in Philadelphia when your husband was going to grad school, and, uh, you know, I, we, we went to the same grad school.

Different times, right? But, uh, you know, the, our ward, we were d- I know we were kinda laughing about this earlier, talking about this amazing experience of, of being in these wards in Philadelphia. And, you know, I got called into Young Men's presidency there, and it felt absolutely overwhelming. You know, I was doing a dual master's degree.

It was the most rigorous academic experience I'd ever had. And I had two young children, which none of my classmates had. And it was overwhelming. And then you get called to be, to serve in this busy calling, and it shaped me. And it was a gift, you know, every, every Wednesday to go search, you know, drive around and find these kids and drive them to the church and have these activities.

And, um, you know, it, often it meant that Thursday I wasn't prepared for class. I hadn't done the re- the readings 'cause I hadn't, or I hadn't finished them 'cause I hadn't had the time to do it. But it really, it, it shaped me, and it helped refine me. And, you know, when I got called into a stake presidency, I was...

It w- it came out of left field. I never expected that, that calling. And my stake president, Joe Staples Has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. And he mentored me, and he guided me, and he taught me. You know, I, I made mistakes. I didn't know what I was doing. Luckily, I had another great counselor that knew what he was doing, and so he had maybe a little bandwidth to help me and coach me.

What I learned is that leadership in church is... It's, you know, it's, it's similar and different than leading. You know, I've been a CEO for a lot of years, you know, building my own companies, and what I found is that the principles that worked in business were just gospel principles. Whether it was, you know, building a great culture in a, in a business organization, well, it works when you're just building it off gospel principles.

You know, the most exceptional leaders that know how to inspire and guide teams and get the best out of them, it's because they're using gospel principles. And so I found that just using gospel principles in my work life was what allowed me to be the most successful. And what really g- what really changes in church callings and leadership in church is that you don't get to build your own team, right?

Uh, in fact, in, as a mission president, there might be people that in the business world you'd fire. You know? It's like, "Okay, you are too much work. This isn't working out. We're gonna let you go." The ironic thing is that as a mission president, those are the people you're begging to stay. You know, you're like, you're working so hard to get them to stay, and you're spending so much time on them, and you get emotionally so committed to them, and you love them so deeply.

And those become some of the most fulfilling and rewarding experiences because you've watched someone come at such a different level than some of the other missionaries that arrive, and then you get the gift of watching them grow. And, you know, serving the church, what a gift. What a gift we all have to be members of the church, that we get the opportunity to serve and, and wherever, wherever we're asked.

And, you know, right now we don't have a calling. You know, we just got back. We're, we're anxious to get a calling and we don't... We're anxious to see where we get called. Do we get to serve at the primary or teaching mission prep or whatever it is. We're just thrilled to find out where we get to serve and the growth that we're gonna experience doing it.

I think that that is So spot on. And, and I loved something that you said, Davis, in the book. You talked about leaders and, and I think the church invites us all to be leaders. You know, sometimes we lead and sometimes we're support staff, but the church gives us all that opportunity. And you talked about how leaders can be extroverted or introverted, and that whether you're extroverted or introverted, you carry with you different strengths that make you a better leader.

How did you see that as a mission leader? Yeah. It was incredible to see how the Lord used every missionary with all their unique talents. And some are extroverted and so naturally charismatic that they love talking to people, and it makes it really easy to be a missionary out in the streets. And there's others that are more introverted that maybe struggle to find the courage to talk to people.

They just find it so uncomfortable, so doing that every single day for years is like, is almost overwhelming to them. But then the Lord finds ways to use them. I had, uh, one really special missionary for us, Elder Manzano, Brazilian, but moved to Canada when he was a, a young kid, and more introverted, but the most organized and clean and tidy, you know, kid.

And we, we called him into the office and he did such a great job. We sent him back out to the field for six months, and I called him back to the office 'cause I lo- I needed him again. He was just so great. And, you know, the Lord used Elder Manzano to make our mission better and to make our lives better as mission leaders.

And, you know, the Lord is aware of each of our unique talents, and He will use us. You know, I, I love adventures, and it's a big part of my life is spending time in the outdoors and adventuring. I... One story I talk about in the book is going on this adventure in the Amazon with some friends where we were surviving for a week in the Amazon.

We're sleeping in hammocks and, you know, just I'll never forget the smell of decay and soil and trees and the sounds of all the different animals at night and day. It just evolves constantly. And one of the things that we noticed was that, like The plant life was so unique. You have these massive trees that just climb straight up without sticking out branches until the very top of the canopy.

They don't waste any energy. They just wanna reach the sun up at the top of the canopy. And then you have these vines that, um, don't have the strength of the tree, but they have this unique ability to, to, to use the strength of the tree to climb up, and then they reach the sun as well. And then you have these broad-leaved plants that are on the base of, of the jungle floor, and they just spread out their, these broad leaves to try to capture any sunlight coming through.

And the reality is that we need all of those plants to make up this incredible ecosystem of the Amazon. It couldn't exist without all of them. And the-- you know, it's the same with each of us in the church and in, uh, on Earth, is that we all have these unique gifts and unique talents, and we each serve a unique purpose, and we don't need to all be the same.

And in fact, sometimes we evolve. Sometimes we're that big tree out, you know, giving strength to others. Sometimes we're the vine that needs to rely on somebody that's really strong, that can help us through a hard moment. And so, um, we saw that within our missionaries, and it was, it was amazing to see them each grow in their own confidence and understand their own talents and skills that they would be able to use, uh, to serve in the kingdom I love something else that you share, um, that I think you have such a unique perspective on.

You have run successful companies, and you share tips for job interviews, uh, getting internships, seeking mentors. And I think that all of those things are, first of all, just very practical and super... I wish I had had what you, what you wrote. And so I wondered how, I know that you and Ajaline on your mission shared with missionaries life tips.

And so as your missionaries have come home, and they've tried to apply some of these things, how have you seen these specifically career-related tips help your recently returned missionaries? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we, we... This was such a fun part of, of our mission. My parents actually gave me this advice b- before we left on the mission.

My dad had suggested that we teach them some different life skills. And as we thought about it, we were like, we decided, "You know what? Let's do this at every zone conference. Let's conclude every zone conference with, uh, one of these life tips or life lessons." In Portuguese, we called them dicas de vida.

And we had a slide, an opening slide that had... It was, like, our, my wife's and, and, and my mission picture, the one that, that goes in the church news or whatever. But then we had these little word clouds, these little bubbles that came up and, and it would, as you click on the slide, it, uh, you know, I would say, "Dica," and she would say, "De vida."

And, like, as soon as we brought up that slide, the missionaries would all cheer. Like, they just loved these little life lessons. And, and we would alternate, my wife and I, teaching each time. And so, you know, I would teach about financial independence and teach them about, you know, what is compound interest?

What is an index fund? And I would, I would give an ex- I gave an example where I, I brought up one of the missionaries, uh, uh, Elder, Elder Vieda. His name's Kalua. And I was like, "Kalua, you finished your mission, and you were such an incredible leader in the mission, but life is hard when you get home, and you end up with getting a job making minimum wage in Brazil, which isn't very much.

And actually, interestingly, your entire life, you only make minimum wage, even until you're 60 years old. But you end up saving. You, you, you stick to this rule, this principle. You pay your 10% tithing, and you save 10% long term that you never touch. And this is... And you put it in an index fund. And if you're Brazilian, this is the index fund.

This is the app that you're gonna wanna use. This is the index fund that's tied to the S&P 500. And, you know, if you just do that, by the time you're 60, you're gonna have over two, like two and a half million reais, which is, like, equivalent of a Brazilian millionaire." And E-everyone's just like, "Wait, what?

How?" And you kinda, you know, just kind of explaining how, you know, financial independence comes through discipline and through learning to save. And then I taught... And by the way, all these lessons, sometimes they felt like disconnected from the mission, but they're all connected to, to the mission. The mission is just preparation.

We'd always tell them, "Mission is just preparation for life." So in the mission, if every, you know, twice a month they'd get, you know, their, their allowance that would, that would come to them. If they were struggling and running out of money every time, I said, "That is a sign that you're gonna be struggling after the mission.

So I want you to put into practice these principles today. Start putting that money aside so that when you need to buy a pair of shoes or your pants get a hole in them or whatever, you, you have the, the funds to go do that." And so, um, you know, I taught about networking and, you know, taught about, uh, you know, building a personal brand, which is not about your online persona.

Your personal brand is about living the same way on Sunday as you do at work. It's about living in a way that reflects the principles that matter most to you, the values that ma- that matter most at all times, in all places. And then Ajalean would teach about dating and about marriage and about parenting and about mental health.

And so, you know, we took all these principles that the missionaries just loved so much. They'd always be asking for the slides afterwards and, um, but we took all those, and that's really the inspiration for this book. This book was just a, a compilation of a lot of those favorite lessons that our missionaries loved so much that we put all together.

And you know what I think our missionaries began to understand was that the skills they were learning as missionaries, you know, introducing yourself to a stranger, communicating, networking, dealing with rejection, getting back up after you fail, working without constant supervisions- vision, uh, setting goals, managing your time, inspiring other people, helping other people see, uh, the vision that you see in them, like this bigger vision, learning to listen, learning to work with diff-difficult people, receiving feedback, solving problems.

All these skills that they learn as missionaries are not mission skills, they're life skills. These are the things that are gonna prepare them to succeed professionally in their families and in helping build the kingdom. And so the mission was really, it is the best preparation you could ever receive anywhere, uh, for life.

And, uh, that's what I hope missionaries understand, and that's what this book hopes to do. It helps maybe help translate some of these mission skills into life skills Well, I think it is so needed, and I always... I'm, I'm amazed when I have had, like, students from BYU or whatever reach out about career advice.

One of the biggest things that I always say is, "Get an internship," because it gives people an opportunity to have an experience with you. And if they know this person shows up on time, this person tries really hard, immediately you go to the top of the pile in terms of resumes and all of that. And so I love that you talk about getting internships, seeking out experiences, and it seems like some of the things that should be, like, a no-brainer, but the truth is, like, some, depending on background, some people, like, it's never even occurred to them.

And then there are those of us where it's like, okay, well, we're, we have strengths in some areas, but not as much in other areas. And I wanna touch on just a couple of these areas that you talk about. You mentioned finances, and you ran a business that for years, Davis, was just getting off the ground. Now people see your backpacks and fanny packs all over the world.

But I wondered which of the financial principles that you share in the book most helped your family remain on solid ground financially during that time period? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think- I think for me, this, this all starts back when I was like four years old. My dad-- We lived in the Dominican Republic when I was four and five years old, and then my family stayed in Latin America in a number of different countries.

My dad had this little green safe, a little green metal box that on, on top of it was written in like a black Sharpie, The Boss, The B-O-S-S, and it was the Bank of Smith Savings. And he had this little book, a little ledger that he would track all of our deposits, and so we could make money by doing things around the house.

I remember I would, for every shirt I ironed, I could get ten cents. And so I was like ironing shirts sometimes for hours 'cause like, I can make like three dollars if I iron all these shirts. So I'd make all these deposits. My dad would write them in this ledger, put the coins in, you know, into the little safe.

I actually found this little ca-- this little safe with all the coins still in it and the ledger just a few years ago, like three or four or five years ago. And I was looking through it, and it was so touching to see because not only were we, my si- my siblings and I saving, but then there were like, there were withdrawals.

And the withdrawals were like, you know, like I remember one, I had like saved like thirty-five dollars, and there was like a twenty-five dollar withdrawal, and it was to help Reynaldo Reyes, this young man in our ward that my dad was the, the young men's president, to help go on a mission. And so my parents, I remember they asked us if we wanted to help him for his mission.

Like, he was buying clothes and needed some money, and so we all contributed. And it w-- And I just see this over and over again in this ledger. It's like we'd save up money, and then we'd use our money to go help somebody else. And so Those principles really helped guide my entire life, which is like I'm-- the reason that finance matters is not to make a bunch of money, it's not to stockpile money, it's to be able to use whatever we have to help others.

And so that principle that my parents taught me was really, really important. You know, with, with our family, some other things that... other financial principles, like with our, with our girls that are now in their, uh, they're both at BYU down in Provo, and then we have two little boys still that are eight and 11, so they're just in the beginning of this.

But our girls, we told them, and we told our boys already too, "For every dollar you save until you're 16, we will match it. So when you, when you wanna buy a car, you know, we'll, we'll match whatever you've saved." And this is such great motivation 'cause they don't want a junky car, and they're gonna work hard 'cause they know whatever they save, you'll match.

And so both of our girls, they got jobs really young. I remember our oldest daughter, Savannah, she was like our janitor at Cotopaxi. She'd clean the toilets. She'd go every day after school, she'd be in there cleaning and mopping and, like, she was doing hard work. And, you know, they'd, they'd be babysitting constantly and doing all these odd jobs to try to make money and save money.

And what we found was that it was a lot less about the car. Our girls, what I've seen is they learned how to work really young, and they learned how to save their money, so they're frugal. They're really, really frugal, and they, they know how to save. And, uh, our oldest daughter is married now, and, like, it's been a gift, I think, for her husband to have, like, a wife that's, like, hardworking and that's, like, really disciplined with their money.

And as an entrepreneur, you know, being f- And I, I paid for my mission as a young, as a young kid because my f- eight kids in my family. My dad worked for the church, so we knew we needed to pay for school, we needed to pay for our missions, and so we, we worked and saved hard. And that ended up being a real gift for me as an entrepreneur because I don't know that I could have been an entrepreneur had I not had that financial discipline.

Because, uh, we never... You know, early in our marriage, we didn't have much money, but, like, we had been really disciplined in saving, and that, that little cushion that we had allowed me to go take some risks that I might not have been able to take otherwise. Because I knew if everything went wrong, I'd have this tiny little...

It wasn't much, but it was something that I could fall back on if I needed to. And over time, you know, that grew, and over time it allowed me to continue taking more risks. So I think learning that financial discipline on your mission or coming home from your mission. And that's why this book, you know, The Next Ten Years, is 'cause this next ten years for them is gonna shape their entire life.

And so if they can develop the right, you know, the right frameworks and principles that allow them to have success today in their twenties, their thirties and forties and fifties and sixties are gonna be much, much easier I think that finances, I remember years ago, I, I have a dear friend who got married really young, and so we're like the same age, but her kids are like graduating from high school, you know?

And I have toddlers. Don't ask me how that happens. But I remember observing- Divine design, by the way ... Yes, yes. It's great. It's all worked out. But I, I remember observing and realizing that one thing that was such a strength in her marriage was the way that she and her husband approached finances. And rem- I remember thinking, "That's something that is important to me, somebody that is wise in the way that they approach money."

Speaking of marriage, I do wanna touch on that because I love how you talk about reading an article that you said helped you see the unseen emotional toll women often carry in a marriage, and how it opened your eyes and made you wanna be a better husband and father. Can you speak to that, Davis, as well as whether there are specific skills that, and obviously there are, specific skills developed as a missionary that can help make us better spouses if we let it?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that article that I read, uh, I think it changed our marriage. And not that we had like a, a hard, difficult marriage, but I think I became a much, much better husband. And to be clear, I'm still learning here. I'm, there are a lot of opportunities, just ask Aileen, uh, there are a lot of opportunities for me to improve, but it helped me understand sometimes I think especially in the church when we, you know, we grew up in a very, in very, a very traditional home.

My dad was the one out working in the yard, and my mom was, was in the home doing a lot of the in-home stuff, and my dad had a, a full-time job, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom for, for my entire childhood. She wa- she became a teacher as my youngest sibling went off to school. But I, what I started realizing was that I needed to be more aware of the emotional weight that Aislynn carried every day.

You know, I'd come home and just, not intentionally, but just kind of oblivious, like I'd pr- I'd walk... I, I, I'm embarrassed to even say it, but like I'd walk down the hall and there'd be a pair of socks thrown on the floor from one of our kids, and I'd just keep walking , you know? And I started doing a better job of just noticing, like I need to be more aware.

If I'm walking down the hall and I'm seeing clothes that need to get picked up, I'm picking it up. If I see the f- the floor needs to get vacuumed, I'm grabbing the vacuum and vacuuming. I started doing the dishes a lot more, and actually I found I really enjoyed it. I could, I could listen to part of a book that I'd maybe on my commute I'd been starting to listen to, and I could keep listening to it while I did the dishes, or I could catch up...

I love the Dodgers. I'd, I'd ca- I'd catch a little part of the Dodgers game while I did the dishes. And I think it meant so much to Aislynn to see me doing more around the home and, and being more aware of some of the emotional weight that she carried constantly as a mom. And as missionaries, you are learning a lot of those skills, um, that are gonna be great for your marriage.

You're, you're learning to listen, to ask inspired questions. You start to noti- you know, you're aware of more of people's needs. You start, uh, you know, seeing those things in others. You know, you start... You're, you're serving as a missionary without expectation of recognition. So actually, I found this too, like sometimes in the beginning, I'm, again, embarrassed to say this, but like I'd go do the dishes and it'd be like, without saying anything, I'd kind of be like, "I hope she noticed.

I hope she'd say something to me." Like, "Thank you for doing the dishes," you know? But it's like, was I saying that to her every single day, like, all the time? So just starting to get to the point where it's like, I'm just doing this not to be recognized, not so that Aislynn will notice that I'm helping, but just because I love her, and just because I recognize, like this is part of my job as being a good husband and a good dad.

So, you know, as missionaries, y- you're learning to communicate better. You're learning to apologize when you make mistakes. You're learning to forgive, to be patient, you know, to put someone else's needs ahead of your own. Those are marriage skills, and those are skills that you learn as a missionary. So, uh, again, the mission, best preparation ever to, to learn to be a good, a good partner and spouse I love the way you put it in the book, uh, talking about this idea of, you know, you weren't doing it to get recognized, but you said, "I, I realized, like, I wasn't doing these things to help Aileen.

I was doing it because that was part of my responsibility." And I think sometimes that gets lost in translation a little bit. I love that, and I love that you shared... You know, I, as somebody that's written some articles, you know, you're like, man, if I could have a, an article that made that kind of impact on, on a marriage, that'd be really cool.

I want to, before we get to our last question, there's one line in the book that I really loved and that stood out to me. I imagine it's something that you taught your missionaries, but you said, "High love and high expectations are a winning combination." Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. I can. And I might just share, uh, two stories that I think are, that kinda hit this home, and these are things that I had to learn in the mission When, uh, we started our mission, I remember we'd, we'd go pick up the missionaries from the airport, the brand-new missionaries that arrived.

We'd bring them to our mission home, and we'd have a meal with them and get to know them. And then we all sat down on the couches and we'd, we'd do a little presentation. We talked a little bit about our mission and what it was like. We'd show them a map of the mission, and we'd show them all the missionaries and say, "These, you know, these missionaries are here.

They have blank spaces. Those are gonna be your trainers." And I talked a little bit about the culture of the mission, and I remember in the very beginning of the mission telling the missionaries, "You have two years to work, and then you can rest when the m- when the mission's over." And I saw it in their faces.

It was fear. It was like, "What have I gotten myself into?" You know, this... Like, uh, they were-- It was almost overwhelming. And I quickly changed that with future groups. And instead, I replaced it with, I'd show them a picture I had in my phone. I have a little note of every single missionary. Every... almost five hundred missionaries.

I have every-- I have a picture and note of every single one of them and an individualized note that has the details around their hobbies and their interests, their parents, their family life. I took notes throughout their mission from their letters and from their interviews with me and... But I would-- It starts from the moment they get to the mission.

I take notes from their missionary application, and I have notes from the, the letters from their bishop and their stake president about them. And so I'd sit down and I'd say, I'd show them some of these pictures, and I'd just say, "Elder so and so, Sister so and so, we have been waiting for you for months.

We've wr- we've memorized your name, we've memorized your face, and we know, Elder so and so, that your dad served in Brazil. Sister so and so, we know that you love the violin and that you're so gifted with music. We can't wait to hear your talents here." And we just tell them, "We love you. We love you, and we're so excited you're finally here."

And I would promise them that I would do everything I could as their mission president to make sure their mission was an incredible experience. And I'd tell them how much I love my mission, and I hope that they love their mission the same way I did. And what I saw was something totally different. They, when they felt loved They were willing to give everything to the Lord because they, they ha- you know, they knew that they didn't wanna disappoint us, they didn't wanna disappoint the Lord.

Oftentimes, instead of this fear that they had in their eyes, it was tears of, of joy and gratitude that we all felt together. And so that was a really special thing. And so it didn't mean that I didn't have high expectations when I told them how much I love them. It was just together, all of a sudden it, it was magical.

It worked so well. Another experience was early in the mission, the first week of being a mission president, I got a call from a missionary, and he said, "President, I, I just wanna let you know there's a missionary in our mission that's struggling, and I found out that he's breaking some rules that I think you need to be aware of."

And so it wasn't something really, really serious, but it was something serious enough that I needed to be aware of, that this missionary needed to talk to me about. And so I ended up calling that missionary, and we had a conversation, and he lied to me. He didn't tell me the truth, and he didn't know what I knew, but he didn't tell me the truth.

And I got off the phone with, with him, and I was not sure how to address it. I didn't wanna, like, call him out right on the phone call. I needed to figure out how to do it. I wanted to take a little bit of time to sit on it. And I prayed about it, and I was honestly feeling angry. If I'm being honest, I was feeling angry.

It's like, this missionary wasn't honest with me, and I can't believe he lied to me. And I felt the strong prompting to go read his missionary application. So I went and read about him, and it was the first time I'd ever read one of the missionary's applications. I'd never read one until that point, so I didn't even know exactly what was in it.

And so I started reading about this missionary, and it was shocking I read about how he was, as a young child, abused in unimaginable ways, that he was rejected by his family as a child, that he ended up living on the streets, having some of the most awful experiences as a young person, addictions, all sorts of things.

And then he found the church. He met the missionaries, and a year later, he was out on a mission. And my, my feelings of anger disappeared, and they were replaced with awe. And I drove out to meet with that missionary in person, and I thanked him for being here. And I told him what a privilege it was to be his mission president, how blessed I felt.

And I was just so impressed by who he was becoming. And then we talked about what we needed to talk about. And you know what? It was a beautiful experience, and I have such a close relationship with this missionary even today. And you know what? He continued to struggle throughout the mission in some ways.

He's continued to struggle after his mission in some ways, but he knows how much I love him, he knows how much the Savior loves him, and he's on the right path. And so having high love and high expectations together is what helps us become closer to Christ. And this was just simply Christ's model. This is what He taught us.

And so if we can replicate it, which isn't always easy, and I don't always do it right. I didn't always do it right as a mission president, but I did my best and I tried my hardest to always model that. And I think if we can do that as parents, as spouses, or at work, I think that combination, that eternal gospel principle will help us succeed in all those different ways Davis, I feel like one of the biggest blessings of my mission and perhaps of my life was my mission trainer.

And as you talked about high expectations and high love, I think that was what I felt from my trainer that then helped me become the kind of missionary that I wanted to be. And I could elaborate on it, but I don't wanna take away from what you just said. I think that those stories are so powerful, and I appreciate you sharing them.

I think that that principle of high love and high expectations can be applied to parenting. It can be applied to our service and callings. It can be applied professionally. So thank you for sharing that. My last question for you is: what does it mean to you to be all-in the gospel of Jesus Christ? You've answered this one before.

I have, and I don't even remember what I answered before- ... but I'll, I'll tell you what I've learned since then, which is for me, being all in doesn't mean I'm never struggling. It doesn't mean I'm never having questions or I'm never falling short. Being all in simply means I've decided who I'm trying to follow.

And I'm gonna... It's gonna, it's gonna be a lifelong pursuit, and I'm gonna continue to do my best every day to follow Jesus Christ. He is the cure. He is the answer. He was the perfect example, and if I can just do my best every day to try to be more like him and, uh, even with all my shortcomings, then that's what it means to be all in for me.

Thank you, Davis. Thank you so much for sharing all of this, and thanks for writing this book. I think it will be such a blessing to so many, so I, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Morgan. It was awesome to be with you. Thanks for inviting me to join you and talk about the book.

We are so grateful to Davis Smith for joining us on this week's episode. You can find Davis's new book, The Next Ten Years, in Deseret Bookstores now. A big thanks, as always, to Derek Campbell of Mix at Six Studios for his help with this episode, and thank you for listening. We'll look forward to being with you again next week.