Dow Smith
Visionary
Dow.Smith@dowsmith.com

Dow started Dow Smith Company more than 30 years ago. His very first job, in January of 1992, was the renovation of Building 661 at the Smyrna Airport. It was a job Dow took for the late Colonel Steve Fitzhugh and current Executive Director John Black. Dow was working out of a red Chevy S-10, which was his office and the company’s sole piece of equipment.

After Dow completed that job, he decided to upgrade his office from the pickup truck to the building he’d just renovated. Since that first project, Dow Smith Company’s office has moved four times from our first office in Building 661 (Building 660, 301 Jefferson Pike, 51 N. Lowry, and now 205 Sam Hager St.—all in Smyrna.). We have transitioned from being a low-bid general contractor to a unique design-builder.

Today, Dow serves the company in the role of Visionary.

“A Visionary is a person who has lots of ideas, is a strategic thinker, always sees the big picture, has a pulse on your industry, connects the dots, and researches and develops new products and services,” according to Gino Wickman, author of Entrepreneurial Operation System. “The Visionary typically is the founding entrepreneur, operates more on emotion and has ADD (but not always).”

Dow first heard the call of entering his life and business into the “Marketplace Ministry” in January 2004.

“From that time to now, the company and I have been intentional in serving Christ in the marketplace,” Dow says. “I find great comfort and guidance from prayer. Among my favorites are The Welcoming Prayer by Thomas Keating, The Serenity Prayer specifically the portions about ‘accepting hardships as a pathway to peace; taking as He did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it,’ and the Lord’s Prayer. I am really drawn by the words of the great but under-appreciated theologian Bob Dylan: ‘If you are not busy being born, you are busy dying.’ That is a major theme I read and see in Scripture and what Jesus taught. I try to apply that to my life.”

Dow grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and is thankful for his education at Glendale Elementary, John Trotwood Moore Middle School, and the black and red fightin’ Bobcats at John Overton High School.

Auburn University, where Dow received a bachelor’s degree in Building Science, is his happy place on football game days. He is a regular tailgater at the AU football games. The Kick Six game still brings him tears of joy.

Dow says he’s at his best when he is with his bride Cindy, and they are at their best when they are with their sons, Harris and Mitchell. They attend Cornerstone Methodist Church.

Joey Rhyne
Chief Executive Officer

Shauna McConnell
Chief Financial Officer

Trey King
Chief Operations Officer