BART SMITH OFFICIAL WEBSITE • AUTHOR • YOUTUBER • COOKIE BAKER • COOKBOOK CHEF • FUTURES TRADER
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 & 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?
BECOME A BUSINESS CONSULTANT, WEB DESIGNER & MARKETER IN MY 20S/30S
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!
STARTED SELLING MY "WORLD-FAMOUS" CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES IN 2011!
Would you believe my chocolate chip cookie adventure started back in August 1988, when I was a freshman at the University of Georgia on a track scholarship? Living in my first apartment, I realized something wonderful: I had my own kitchen, an oven, and nobody telling me what I could eat for dinner! So, I decided to bake myself a batch of chocolate chip cookies—and YES, I had COOKIES FOR DINNER! HAHA! Well, I never stopped baking. Over the years, I shared my cookies with friends, coworkers, and clients, bringing them to company potluck parties where they often disappeared before the main course!
Eventually, people started telling me, "Bart, these cookies are incredible! Why aren't you SELLING them?" So, I built BartsCookies.com, launched my online cookie business, and received my first online order on February 7, 2011! From there, I baked, packaged, and shipped my chocolate chip cookies to customers across America, all while running my other consulting Web and book publishing businesses.
Over the decades, I've baked an estimated 250,000+ chocolate chip cookies and served more than 1,000 customers nationwide! Not bad for a guy who simply wanted chocolate chip cookies for dinner one night, huh? HAHAHAHA!
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 (when I finally decide to launch it; HAHA).
In March 2021, I published the original edition of My Self-Publishing Manual, a 280-page, oversized 8.5" × 11" instructional manual that I wrote in approximately two months. FAST-FORWARD TO 2026, and I went back and UPDATED THE ENTIRE MANUAL to reflect today's self-publishing tools, technology, design techniques, publishing platforms, and audiobook opportunities! After all, the publishing world keeps changing, and I wanted my readers to have a more current, practical resource for writing, designing, publishing, and selling their own books.
Following the original manual, I wrote two more relationship books: Fantasy Boyfriend, a 288-page romance novel that I wrote in just THREE WEEKS, and Where Are You? & Where Art Thou?. Then came Lethal Confidence, which I wrote in just TWO WEEKS! My next major writing project was Wake Up Ladies, a whopping 500-page book that I wrote in approximately FIVE WEEKS while sitting on my living room couch! HAHA! THEN, I decided the world needed to know why I make such incredible chocolate chip cookies, so I wrote an entire book about them, finishing it in November 2024. Although gathering the material took several months, I designed the entire book—interior pages and covers—in approximately TWO WEEKS!
I CAN'T STOP WRITING BOOKS ;-)
Starting in early 2025, I spent approximately TEN MONTHS updating, revising, and modernizing many of my previously published books, while also writing FIVE MORE BOOKS! I also continued producing FREE AUDIOBOOKS for my YouTube channel so people could listen to my work whenever and wherever they wanted. Then, in the fall of 2026, I went on another writing marathon and quickly wrote Retire Before You're Supposed To Retire!, a comprehensive guide to getting smarter about money, building wealth, creating additional income, and preparing for retirement long before you're supposed to retire! I plan to publish it in a few months, following some additional updates, revisions, and finishing touches. With 35+ BOOKS to my name, more on the way, and no shortage of ideas floating around in my head, writing, designing, publishing, and sharing what I learn continues to be one of my greatest passions. AND TRUST ME, I'M FAR FROM FINISHED! HAHAHA!
MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Then, on July 25, 2021, I finally carved out time to start working on my YouTube channel, @BartSmithWorld, which has since become one of my favorite ongoing projects! To date, I've published 1,100+ videos, with hundreds more planned, including cooking videos, product reviews, interviews, comedic skits, business tutorials, book messages, YouTube Shorts, and 24+ FREE AUDIOBOOKS for viewers to enjoy!
Oh, and did I mention I do practically ALL THIS STUFF MYSELF? I write, record, edit, design, produce, and publish my own content. I don't outsource everything because I CAN DO IT MYSELF, and I enjoy saving time and money while retaining complete creative control. I DIG IT THAT WAY! Wouldn't you?
Now, as for growing my YouTube channel, I HAVE SOME SERIOUS PLANS! My goal is to keep building my subscriber base through milestones of 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and eventually 1,000,000+ SUBSCRIBERS! I've got plenty of content, new videos in development, and some exciting marketing and publicity strategies planned for 2026 and beyond.
MY FUTURES TRADING JOURNEY — FROM CURIOSITY TO TRADING!
For more than TEN YEARS, I've been fascinated by the idea of making money trading futures. The problem? I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW TO GET STARTED! HAHA! Well, fast-forward to 2024, when I finally decided to get serious about learning. I started researching futures trading, studying how everything worked, and taking LOTS of detailed notes—as I usually do whenever I become interested in something new. Before I knew it, those notes had turned into an entire book, My Futures Trading Manual! I haven't published it yet because I want to continue learning, gaining experience, and refining the material before releasing it.
Well, I got sidetracked with other projects for a few months, but eventually picked up right where I left off. THIS TIME, I STARTED TRADING! Demo trading, to be specific. After practicing and learning the ropes, I signed up for my first $150,000 prop firm (proprietary trading firm) evaluation challenge. And guess what? I PASSED AND QUALIFIED FOR A FUNDED ACCOUNT IN JUST 30 DAYS! BOOOOOOYAH! Encouraged by that accomplishment, I opened four additional $150,000 evaluation accounts, bringing my total to FIVE accounts representing $750,000 in advertised account sizes! Now, that doesn't mean I personally own $750,000 in trading capital. These programs have specific trading limits, rules, and payout requirements. But it certainly gave me plenty more to learn!
Now, let me tell you something. FUTURES TRADING IS NOT FOR THE WEAK OF HEART! There are days when your account balances climb by thousands of dollars, and other days when you watch thousands disappear. How would YOU feel watching $11,000 IN LOSSES accumulate across your accounts? NOT EXACTLY MY IDEA OF A FUN EVENING! HAHAHA! But that's part of the reality I'm learning to deal with. Losses hurt, and they can be expensive. That's why I'm constantly studying my results, refining my approach, improving my risk management, and learning when to trade—and when to WALK AWAY!
BUT HERE'S WHAT MAKES FUTURES TRADING SO FASCINATING TO ME! On three separate trading days, my accounts recorded gains of approximately $5,040 in 10 MINUTES, $2,848 in 10 MINUTES and $5,533 in just 4 MINUTES! WHAT?!? HAHAHA! When was the last time you saw numbers like that in such a short period? Basically, I profited $13,421 in just 3 days and in a total of 24 minutes. WOW!!!! DOESN'T EVEN EXPRESS HOW COOL THAT IS! Now, those are trading results recorded across my accounts—not necessarily cash I could withdraw or take home. Those profits are dedicated to passing prop firm challenges. But, still, those are some pretty cool figures. If that was real money, yeah, that'd be a nice day of persona income. Note, prop firm fees, account rules, profit splits, losses, and payout qualifications all matter. And those impressive winning days certainly don't erase the losing ones. Still, the possibility of participating in financial markets from something as simple as MY LIVING ROOM COUCH continues to fascinate me!
So, where does this adventure go from here? WE SHALL SEE! As I continue trading through the fall of 2026 and into 2027, I'll keep studying, recording my experiences, and updating my futures trading manual with everything I'm learning firsthand. My long-term goal is to become a consistently profitable trader, qualify for regular payouts, and build another potential source of income. Will there be more winning days? More losses? More lessons? YOU CAN BET ON THE LESSONS! HAHAHA! I'm in this for the long haul, and I'm excited to see where this journey takes me. STAY TUNED!
... AND THAT'S MY STORY, SO FAR! ;-)
Well, there you have it! After everything I've shared with you, I think you can see that I'VE BEEN DRIVEN, PASSIONATE, CREATIVE, AND ON FIRE FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS! And guess what? I'M JUST GETTING STARTED! HAHAHA! I've got new books in the works, more audiobooks and videos to produce, interviews and media appearances planned, exciting business ventures to pursue, and plenty of ideas I'm determined to bring to life!
I'm also gearing up to take my WORLD-FAMOUS CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES on the road with meet-and-greets, cookie taste-a-thons, and opportunities to introduce my cookies to new audiences and markets across America. WHO KNOWS? MY COOKIES MAY BE COMING TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU! Through it all, my mission remains the same: keep learning, creating, having fun, help others making a positive difference in their lives, and living life with the LETHAL CONFIDENCE I've developed over the decades.
So, now that you've gotten to know a little more about ME, I'd love to hear about YOU! WHAT'S YOUR STORY? WHAT ARE YOUR DREAMS, GOALS, AND AMBITIONS? Don't be a stranger! Reach out, introduce yourself, and let's see what exciting opportunities life has in store for all of us. AFTER ALL, LIFE'S TOO SHORT TO SIT AROUND DOING NOTHING WHEN THERE'S SO MUCH LEFT TO DO! HAHAHA!
CONTACT BART SMITH
I'd love to hear from you! Whether you have a question, comment, suggestion, business inquiry, or simply want to say HELLO, please don't hesitate to reach out and contact me! Feel free to ask me anything about my books, websites, businesses, cooking, cookies, YouTube channel, or anything else that interests you.
And while you're at it, TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF! Who are you, where are you from, what do you do, and what prompted you to contact me? I'm always interested in hearing from people, learning about their stories, and making new connections. SO, DON'T BE SHY! DROP ME A MESSAGE!
I look forward to speaking with you,
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