PERSONAL / EARLY SCHOOL & SPORTS YEARS
For starters, I’m a child of divorce (was six when it happened), I’m the oldest, and have one sibling (a sister, 11 months younger). Mom gets a call from my 3rd grade principal saying I broke all the records for my track events and she should keep a close eye on me. Mom enrolls me in soccer in the 5th grade, which the coach then says I’m the fastest kid he’s ever coached.
I entered junior high school, started playing football and running track. Excel at both so much I start breaking records and the local high school coaches start coming to my junior high school sporting events to see what upcoming talent they’ll have in a couple years. Oh, while in junior high, I really took to writing and with Mom’s help, got As and Bs on all my book reports. Who knew I’d have a knack for reading/writing at such a young age; interesting.
Entering high school, I played football → starting running back all four years. Scored dozens of touchdowns, ran for thousands of yards and loved hitting and running into guys, with gear on, naturally, and at → state champion sprinting speed. Team members would comment I hit the hardest and I loved it. Got tackled roughly 7,000+ times in my 7-years of playing football, which meant I got hit, oftentimes hard, taken down, piled on, and had to get right back up in seconds or my football coaches would not like me taking my sweet time back to the huddle. Ran indoor/outdoor track in high school at the Varsity level all four years. Won over 300+ races (i.e., prelims / semis / finals). Two-time state champion hurdler; junior and senior year. That means, I was one of the fastest kids in the entire state of Illinois. To date? I’m still fast!!!
So, suffice it to say, I was a very successful athlete while in school winning a ton of gold medals, trophies, first place ribbons, hall of fame induction, most valuable player awards, dozens of write-ups and clippings in our local and city newspapers every week, for each sport I participated in for seven years straight; enough to fill two 3-ring binders worth of print memorabilia.
I mention all this to showcase how this level of athleticism so early on in my years was quite serious, extremely successful and very rewarding. As you can see in the picture of medals, newspaper write-ups, plaques and more, if you effort you will be rewarded. Perform above and beyond and you'll be rewarded. Those lessons can be applied to anything you want to do in life. Right? You bet ...
Sports alone taught me a lot about dedication, discipline, teamwork, striving to be your best, winning and losing, handling defeat and the humility of winning again and again, not giving up, dealing with people’s emotions towards me (i.e., good/bad/ugly), getting hit/knocked down a lot and getting right back up despite the pain just inflicted upon you with every tackle.
Even my hurdles were once set up wrong on the track causing all of us hurdlers to go down, some, including me, scraping our knees and getting all banged up and bloodied. Despite how we felt, we had to run that race all over again, which I won, banged up and bleeding. Par for the course, right? That’s sports for ya. Hang tough or hang it up.
Looking back, I can't tell you how many times I've applied what I've learned from participating in sports (in my youth) with every day life, interacting with others, pushing myself, pushing others (i.e., my clients) to be their best, etc.
GOOD STUDENT / AWARDED FULL-RIDE TRACK SCHOLARSHIP TO UGA & OPTED OUT!!!!
While in high school, I took four years of English and Math, of which I got A’s and B’s. I loved reading, literature, writing, etc. I also took computer classes and spent my own time learning more software programs in my high school’s computer room whenever I had the chance. I also took two semesters of typing so by the time I entered college, I was typing upwards of 40-50 words a minute. Upon graduating high school, I was awarded a full-ride track scholarship to the University Of Georgia. Nice, huh? FULL-RIDE! What was cool about this scholarship program was the athletes had their own computer room with printers and everything. Guess what? It was empty every time I'd go in there. Well, I made good use of it anyway and started a small information-selling business BACK IN THE DAY! I'd type up my own information packets, pay for and place my own ads, cash the checks that came in for payments, etc. I'd make about $100-$300 a week selling information in newspaper ads, and whatnot and this was back in 1988!!!! WAY BEFORE the Internet and while I was a freshman in college.
Well, it soon hit me to ask my professors how could I make money with what they were teaching, in the real world when I got out of their prison (i.e., college classrooms). They all said the same darn thing, "Son, when you become a junior (in college) you can take economics and learn how money is made." ERRR! WRONG ANSWERS!!!! So? After much thought and deliberation, I choose to OPT-OUT of college and kiss that full-ride to the side. I'd forge my own way on my own without college. So, I packed my bags and moved home to Newport Beach, California, where my folks had relocated to. I soon began to self-study by reading anything I could get my hands on. I become a sponge of information. I became my own university. I worked temporary office jobs using my strong computer skills and I soon noticed I was picking up even more software knowledge, my typing speed was increasing up to 60-80 words a minute and then BAM!!!! The internet was born and I said to myself, … “I know what to do with this!”
BECOME A BUSINESS CONSULTANT, WEB DESIGNER & MARKETER IN MY 20S/30S
So, during my late 20s and 30s, I spent my time working for myself as a consultant, selling my services as a web designer, book designer, graphic designer, marketing consultant and a bunch of other things I was getting really good at. My ability to build websites, work with shopping carts (eCommerce), record/edit/produce audio and video tutorials back in the day was starting to pour out of me like a raging waterfall. People were coming to me for assistance, help, advice, guidance and all of them left my office or hung up the phone saying, “Bart, every time I leave you, I leave with great ideas, direction, what to do, where to go, resources and … confidence!” I think you can just imagine what I was thinking about at that time, right?
SELF-PUBLISHED MY FIRST BOOK IN 2004
I quickly started to research how to self-publish a book back in 1999 and soon started writing my first book, B.S. The Book, which turned out to be 550 pages, filled with my personal tips on how to overcome B.S. in your life and in so many areas. Little did I know I had a second book in me, which I published just 90 days later called Laws Of The Bedroom, a 300 page relationship book. Wow! I soon discovered I was pretty good at WRITING BOOKS and FAST! I went on to write a new book about every six months or so until I was writing them faster and faster. I found I loved writing about various subjects, such as: self-help, motivation, relationships, business growth, networking, coaching, marketing/publicity and others.
Fast forward to 2015 when I put B.S. The Book on a diet and dropped its page count down from 550 to 296. It was in this leaner version that I added a number of new BART BUILDERS, such as: (1) I’m Not Paid To Be Your Therapist; (2) I Have & Use A.D.D. (Avoid, Dodge & Delay) People's B.S.; (3) Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should!; (4) My 1/3rd Rule For Life & Living It; (5) My F.M. Solution For Overcoming People’s B.S.; (6) Either Way, You’re Gonna Feel The Pain! You Might As Do What’s Best For YOU! among others. Well, one other BART BUILDER I came up with was (7) LETHAL CONFIDENCE and where it comes from. So, as mentioned earlier, LETHAL CONFIDENCE, that phrase, was coined by me in 2015; some eight years ago!
SELF-PUBLISHED MY FIRST FULL-COLOR COOKBOOK IN 2017
Then, in 2017, I thought of creating a cookbook based on 20+ meals I like to make for breakfast, lunch, dinner and parties. I came up with the title, Who’s Hungry?, made a list of meals and beverages to add to the cookbook, saved upwards of $15,000+ taking my own food and beverage photographs in my own kitchen, I put the whole cookbook together in my book design/layout program and bam! Welcome to my kitchen, everyone! While I intended to make cooking videos back then, I didn’t get to it, but promised myself I would revisit that later, which is now!
Then, in 2019 I wrote a book called How To Prepare, Pitch & Become A TV Guest. Knowing I wanted to get on TV to showcase my cookbook meals and relationship books, and since I had never been on TV before, but knew a lot about conducting interviews and I did take one class on how to become a TV guest back in like 2004, well, not only did I write that book in one week (having never been on TV) I also registered TVGuest.com in 2004 knowing ONE DAY I’d want to be on TV.
What better way to do that than to create, what I call a directory of potential TV guest experts, me being one of them, to help increase my odds at getting on TV all without paying some high-priced publicist who would only get me on a few shows if not just only one. Well, I had other ideas! So, in 2020, I had finally researched the exact website directory software I needed to use to build TVGuest.com, I bought it, built the website all by myself (saving me upwards of $25,000) and now it’s ready to promote myself (and others) who desire to be seen on TV. Rock on!!!
Then in March of 2021, I published The Ultimate Self-Publishing Manual: Learn How To Write, Design, Publish, Print & Sell Your Book For Fun & Profit, a 280 page (8.5” x 11”) manual, which I wrote in about two months. Then, came two more relationship books called Fantasy Boyfriend, a romance novel, and Where Are You? & Where Art Thou? These were the last two books I wrote before Lethal Confidence. So, as you can see, I’ve been pretty busy writing and recording my books. In fact, I wrote Fantasy Boyfriend, a 288 page romance novel, in just 3 weeks. I wrote Lethal Confidence in 2 weeks.
My next book was a 500 page book, which I wrote in 5 weeks on my living room couch, which is called Wake Up Ladies. THEN, I found the need to write a book about my world famous chocolate chip cookies, which I wrote and finished in November '24. While it took me a few months to gather all the material for that book, I actually designed the entire chocolate chip cookie book (inside and out/covers) in 2 weeks as well.
I CAN'T STOP WRITING BOOKS ;-)
To date, I’ve written 28 books (with 3 in the works) and I know I’ve got another ten books in me! Some of them, I already have the covers designed for them to remind me about the books I still want to write when I have time. Oh, did I mention I recorded about 17 of those books? Yeah! 100+ hours of high quality recorded audio from my home studio!
MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Then, on July 25, 2021, I finally carved out time to start working on my YouTube channel @BartSmithWorld, which now consumes my time. To date, I have 1,100+ videos on my channel, with another 500 videos coming soon this year, which include cooking videos, product reviews, interviews, comedic skits and more.
Oh, I also do all this stuff myself. I don't outsource anything, and I don’t plan to. I do everything myself BECAUSE I CAN, and I like to save time and money and retain all the creative controls. I dig it that way! Wouldn't you?
Now, while my YouTube subscriber count is at 499 subscribers (as of 1/25/25), I have serious, calculated marketing and publicity plans to grow that subscriber count to 1,000, then 10,000, then 100,000, on up to 1,000,000+ subscribers by the end of the year (2025) and beyond and WITHOUT BUYING SUBSCRIBERS LIKE SOME PEOPLE I KNOW WHO DO!!!
WANNA TRY MY "WORLD FAMOUS" CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?
Oh, I forgot to mention my plans to conduct a decadent, nation-wide COOKIE TASTING TOUR where I let folks across the nation sample my world famous chocolate chip cookies so I can attract the attention of some big name food brand who would love working with me exclusively to bring my $20,000,000,000+ cookie recipe / cookies (BartsCookies.com) to market once and for all. You see, I wasn’t born to be a baker, no. I’m a marketer. I come up with ideas, promote them and/or sell them, make money and enjoy life and on my own terms. (i.e., work when/how I want, make passive/residual income in my sleep, sleep in whenever, etc.)
... AND THAT'S MY STORY, SO FAR! ;-)
Now, with all I’ve shared with you thus far, you can just imagine how (1) DRIVEN and ON FIRE I’ve been for 40+ years doing what I do, making the kind of positive impact I want on the world, (2) that I’ve GOT A LOT OF GREAT IDEAS for making money, coupled with tons of SKILLS and PLANS to make it all happen with my own effort, and (3) COMBINED with DECADES OF Lethal CONFIDENCE makes me practically unstoppable in anything I WANT TO DO! I won’t even mention another website I aim to build that could generate over $1,000,000 a month for myself and another ambition to go down in history if I can pull that one off in the next 5-10 years. We’ll see, naturally. So, now that you’ve heard some of my story, what I want to know now is → WHAT’S YOUR STORY now that you’ve found the source to having Lethal CONFIDENCE? What’s your future hold? → I’m all ears!
CONTACT BART SMITH
If you have any questions or would like to contact Bart Smith for any reason, please send him a message online first and your inquiry will be responded to promptly. In advance, thank you, for reaching out!
I look forward to speaking with you,
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