Christopher R. Smith

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About Me

I'm a husband, father to three daughters who I've taught to cook, dog-father to Marvin & Magoo, grandfather & gifted amateur chef. I've had a long career in marketing & have worked for many of the world's largest companies including Microsoft, AT&T Mobility, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Verizon wireless, First Data & Samsung, just to name a few. My focus has primarily been content writing & I have written a great deal of web content, white papers, case studies, social posts, etc. I also am regularly paid to ghost-write for lawyers and doctors who have to publish frequently to retain their career status. In recent years, I've expanded into podcast production for my biotech clients. As a teenager, my mom told me that girls liked a guy who can cook and offered to teach me how. Apparently they do, because I've been married for a long time & despite the fact that my wife is also an excellent cook, I have always been the primary chef for my family. As knowledge of my skills spread, I was often called upon to execute large events, sometimes for hundreds of people. This has always been a side pursuit because marketing pays well. Four years ago, my wife & I decided to relocate to Las Vegas after a lifetime in the Seattle area. Our kids are grown & married and/or in college & we were tired of the rain, traffic and general political nonsense in WA so we sold our house & went for it. We love it here. The weather, the people, the food, the fun & events... Everyone we know comes here so we still see our friends regularly & though we didn't hate the rain, we definitely don't hate the sun. I'm extremely active on Yelp & Google business & have maintained "Elite" status on Yelp for more than five years. I get invited to all the Yelp events here in LV and get to sample a lot of great food & meet a lot of great people. Over the years, I've had eight different offers to be staked with my own restaurant. As I mentioned, marketing generally pays well so I passed but I'm looking for new things to try & a year ago, a friend whose business sense I greatly trust, came to me with a presentation to urge me to start creating YouTube cooking videos. I thought that was an interesting idea and I could easily do it on the side while continuing to work as a marketer so I came up with a concept & shot 31 videos, which can be viewed on my YouTube ObesitySherpa channel. My concept is "hybrid cooking", a technique i developed to make sure that there was always a good meal on the table for my kids while they were growing up even when there isn't a lot of time to prepare a good meal. We are big believers in coming together as a family every evening to talk & enjoy each other's company. No one in my family likes frozen food & fast food is a solution of last resort. My kids favorite quick restaurant food is Vietnamese Pho, which is what they were raised on & what they'd always choose before a burger. Hybrid Cooking involves combining pre-made elements with things you prepare from scratch and generally getting a meal on the table in 20-45 minutes that tastes entirely homemade because most of it is. I have no formal training whatsoever. My mom was a schoolteacher but by no means a trained chef & I surpassed her skill level many years ago, so though I can't tout an established culinary pedigree, I do have over 40 years of experience & a line of references that could stretch from Las Vegas to the CA state line!

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