It’s been nearly five years since Jordan Smith stood on a street corner in Halifax wearing a sign that read: “New Grad, Need Job, advert/market/sales.”

Despite the recession at the time, he got 15 job offers that day, finally choosing a business development role with the Coast newspaper in Halifax. In 2011, he started his own company, OneLobby, which aims to be the premier analytics and data company for event and trade show exhibitors.

Now, Smith is on the move again. He has recently accepted a part-time role as entrepreneur-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. And he has left Fredericton-based OneLobby to seek another position where he can use his experience to help other entrepreneurs.

It’s been a long, wild ride for Smith at OneLobby. He admits to feeling “burnt out” after four years at the startup. “I’m trying to decompress,” he said. “The OneLobby team has great leadership. They are looking to raise money and I didn’t think it would be fair to the team, investors and customers to stay when I didn’t have it in me to give 300 per cent.”

Instead, he is looking to share his expertise. “I’m looking to link up with a more established, funded startups or accelerators,” he said. “I’m looking for a position where I can apply what I’ve learned and learn from others.”

The role at UNB is part of that. “It will be great to listen to new entrepreneurs, their ideas and their challenges, and to help them get through those challenges.”

An entrepreneur-in-residence is an experienced hand who can impart knowledge and wisdom to a younger generation. Brian Lowe. co-founder of the First Angel Network, holds the position at Dalhousie University, and Jevon MacDonald held the post at Innovacorp before founding GoInstant.

Although he has only just turned 28, Smith feels he has a lot to offer. Like the best entrepreneurs, he believes he needs to keep learning.

 “From the team at the Coast, I learned how to run a free newspaper and make it profitable. I watched how they made hard decisions, did the right things.”

While studying at Memorial University in St. John’s, he worked as a waiter and bartender in a Tex-Mex restaurant. “The owner, Rebecca Quentin, was one of my first mentors. It was an eye-opening education in how to run a successful restaurant for 30 years in a sector where so many businesses fail. I asked a lot of questions and observed.”

Straight out of university, he worked as a door-to-door salesman in Australia, a job he found humbling, but most important and useful. Coming out of university, he now says, he thought he’d land a high-flying job and was above sales. But he ended up wearing a suit and bang on doors in the blazing Australian sun.

 “I was doing something I didn’t want to do, but I did it. It was an important obstacle to overcome and I got really good at it, too. I won customer service and sales awards. That job gave me a new lens and perspective to look through and an important skill set — in entrepreneurship sales is everything. Now, I can go into a room full of investors and sell them my idea. I can assemble a team and get people to buy into an idea.”

Whatever role comes up for him next, Smith hopes he can stay in this region. “I am glad to be part of the Atlantic Canadian community. That’s important to me.”