SANDPOINT — It is not easy to hold the attention of hundreds of high school students for an hour, but motivational speaker Mike Smith knows how to do just that.

Maybe it was his long hair, beanie hat, tattoos and overall skater appearance, or perhaps it was his life story and how he presented it in a way in which Sandpoint High School students could relate.

“I just talk about my journey to chasing what I love, trying to make an impact and making change,” Smith told the Daily Bee before the SHS students packed the gymnasium on Dec. 5. “This is the stage in life where you start to create habits that you take with you, and I think that whether it is compassion and kindness, or even time management, these are the times in life where we always go back and say, ‘Man, I wish I would have learned that in high school,’ so I just wanted to go back and tell kids that.’”

SHS junior Abbey Freebairn said she enjoyed the assembly because Smith was able to relate with the students.

“He was very real with us and didn’t sugarcoat the truth,” Freebairn said. “I also loved how he told us stories about his life that would help us understand the points he was making. He really inspired me to be a do-er rather than a wisher. He taught me to work hard and never give up, and lastly, he taught me that no matter who I am or where I come from, I can do great things.”

SHS junior Reilly Donahoe said the assembly was different than most at SHS, because Smith didn’t just speak “inspiration,” he related to modern teens and their life struggles.

“So when he told us how it was, there was a mutual respect as he spoke,” Donahoe said. “He was technically saying, ‘Look what I did — do not make the same mistakes …’ He also put a lot of soul, passion and heart into his speech. So, overall, it was absolutely awesome.”

Smith was brought to SHS, as well as Sandpoint Middle School, on Wednesday with funds raised through the nonprofit Walk for HOPE, founded by Jennifer Wyman in 2016 through Underground Kindness. Wyman started the Walk for HOPE after her daughter, who was a student at SHS, took her own life.

The goal of Walk for HOPE is to promote suicide awareness, as well as to bring in speakers to connect with and help guide local youth. Last year, Smashmouth Presentations was brought in to all the high schools in the Lake Pend Oreille School District.

“We are just trying to bring in outside sources to keep positive vibes and keep these kids’ minds open to the possibilities, how they can contribute to their society or their groups in positive ways — that they can make an impact and that they matter,” Wyman said.

The journey that Smith shared with the students surrounded a question posed to him multiple times over the course of his youth: What do you want to be when you grow up? People told him that in order to be successful, he needed to get good grades, go to college and get the perfect job. He was not the perfect student, however, with a 2.4 GPA and not the best attitude — he described his younger self as a “selfish, cocky, arrogant high school kid who thought he was better than everybody.” His attitude really began to change just shy of his senior year when he learned his dad had cancer. He, of course, wanted his dad to be proud of him. He spent his senior year mentoring freshman kids from special needs class, one of whom ultimately became his best friend and still is to this day, he said. One thing he learned about helping others, he said, was that it was meant to be a selfless act; he learned that “helping people happens when no one is looking.”

His past and his passion for helping others led him down his current path, but it really started with something he wrote when he was 15. For that assignment, of writing about what he wanted to do when he grew up, he detailed his dream of a large warehouse becoming an indoor skatepark, with music and art and it would stay open as late as he wanted, with no one to tell him what he could or couldn’t do.

“It planted this seed in mind of this thing that I wanted to do someday,” he said.

Smith said there are three types of people: those who wish, those who talk and those who do. The latter group is the reason Smith said he spends his time talking to young people.

“They are not talking about a bunch of problems they are never going to solve … They are gonna get up, they are gonna go out, and they are going to do what they love,” he said.

And that is what Smith did. He ultimately remembered that paper he wrote in high school — he remembered his dream.

He ultimately opened the world’s first nonprofit, indoor skatepark, which has since expanded into a youth center inside a warehouse the size of a Walmart, he said. Next fall, he said, that warehouse will turn into a high school — the world’s first ever skateboarding high school, to be exact.

“People who change the world have one thing in common and one thing only — they wake up every single day and they fight for someone or something other than their first and last name,” Smith said. “... The people who create change, they make it about other people.”

As for what Smith fights for, the powerful message is tattooed across his left arm: “Speak for the silent, stand for the broken.”

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.