After 15 years in the National Football League, Emmitt Smith took the lessons he learned on the field into the next season of his life.
"You gotta go through the process of learning the game itself and allowing people to bring out the best in you and teach you some of the things that you don't know about the game... and challenging you to become the very best," Smith added. Former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith at a football game between the Cowboys and the Los Angeles Rams. He threw himself into learning every component of the real estate and construction industries, eventually founding a real estate firm, a construction business and a solar company, creating a vertically-integrated operation. But the former running back couldn't do it alone.