Devin Nash refunded my $200
I paid Devin Nash $200 for him to go through and look at my YouTube channels through his consultation service, a review where he was supposed to look at everything and give me feedback. He emailed me back saying that he had refunded my $200, because when he went to look at all my channels, the six different channels where I've published 1,200-plus videos in 2026 starting from scratch, it was simply too much.
I started on YouTube in 2011, but I deleted everything in 2025 out of massive burnout, as I shared in After 14 Years and 10,000 Videos, I'm Deleting My Last Channel. I came back in March 2026, and I've uploaded 1,200-plus videos since then across six different channels. I've gotten 1.5 million views and 11 million impressions, all from scratch. I went through everything that run taught me in I Uploaded 1200+ YouTube Videos on New Channels in 2026. Here's What I Learned.
Devin looked at what I'm doing here, which is the deal he offers: for $200, he would look at what you're doing and give some suggestions. I'm not going to share his email, because that's his email and it's copyrighted. I'm going to paraphrase what he said, though. What he basically said is that it was too difficult, that it would need thousands and thousands of dollars to look at what I'm doing and to try to figure out where exactly the best opportunities are. He also sees that I'm in debt, because I'm honest about my debt.
I borrowed $90,000 on credit cards because I got divorced last year and gave my ex almost everything right after I deleted everything on YouTube. There was just bad timing on that one. I then borrowed $90,000 on credit cards so that I could get back to doing YouTube and have the time to build my YouTube channels up that way. Otherwise, if I got a job or something, I'd never be able to have enough time to really build up and start making a full-time income on YouTube again, which I imagine is the best way for me to make a full-time income. I told the whole story of that decision in I Quit YouTube. Then I Came Back for the Money.
Respect for the no, and the inspiration in it
I look at Devin and I respect the man for following his values and saying no to what he didn't think he could help with. At the same time, I've been on YouTube longer than Devin. I could easily help somebody else in my position. And Devin saying no inspired me. I thought, you know what? I should be offering the same thing Devin is. Because if I saw somebody doing what I'm doing, I could very easily give them some helpful insights and feedback. I wouldn't be scared to say, whoa, this is too much, I can't look at it.
I'd also be happy to take money from somebody in debt, because you can use debt. Debt is a tool. In my experience, debt is a tool that can help you build wealth. Obviously, it's also a tool that can bury you financially, just like a shovel. A shovel can dig a hole, dig a ditch, dig a foundation for a house. It could also dig you a grave, especially if you dug it deep and fell in and couldn't get out.
So I am available now. I've set up a service very similar to Devin's at jerrybanfield.com/review, but with clear boundaries. I have a personalized video review. If you have a YouTube channel, I am here to review what you're doing. I've uploaded 10,000-plus videos online myself, and my experience, for most of you, in my opinion, would be much more helpful than Devin's.
Devin is able to signal authority. He's worked with big brands and streamers, et cetera. But for Devin to see somebody actually doing their own thing on their own, doing it full time, and doing it with a different approach than he's used to with big brands, obviously he looked at it and he couldn't even figure out where to start. Which is why the easiest thing to do was just to refund my money and say, I don't know what you're doing, you're on your own, I can't help.
Whereas if you're doing something on your own, not with big brands, not trying to go viral, it's different. I've been viral, and a lot of the time going viral is a bad idea; I explained part of why in Why 99% of YouTube Views Are Worthless, and I'll do a full video about that later. If you just want to be a full-time YouTuber and make a full-time income, often what you need is somebody who's got a lot of experience to just look at what you're doing and give you any pointers.
What I'd have told myself if I were Devin
If I was Devin and I had looked across all my different channels, I'd recommend the exact thing I'm actually doing now. If I was him, I'd have looked and said, Jerry, you should ideally be selling one thing across all of these channels. You've got this gold satin shirt that's for sale on jerrybanfield.com. I see you're selling a bunch of different things. Then your dating channel doesn't look like it's selling anything. Your games channel, I can't tell what you're selling there.
If I was Devin and I'd have looked at my own channels, which I basically did, because I figured, look, if Devin's scared of handling this, if it's too much for him to look at and quickly see something that could be done better, then I should be able to do it myself. I have more experience than he does, and it's my own content. So I looked at everything that I'm doing, and I realized I need to be selling one thing, one single thing, across every single video, across every single channel. I wrote about this same realization from a different angle in From a Scattered Business to One Offering.
And then just grind out something like six videos a day across all these channels and keep growing like I've done this year, to where this vlogs channel has 290,000 views and almost 10,000 watch hours in the last month. That daily grind is the whole strategy in One Video a Day: The Simple YouTube Strategy Nobody Wants to Hear. But I've been trying to sell all these different things, and most of them have not been selling.
So the thing I need to sell is exactly what Devin was offering, except, because I have so many different channels (crypto, dating, YouTube channels, life situation, AI, business ideas), I'm able to offer feedback on a wide variety of things. That allows me to be a very unique person, where almost nobody else is going to be in a position to look at your YouTube channel and give you feedback, and then look at what you're doing in crypto without giving financial advice, and your life situation, and then your relationships, and then whatever you want to do with AI. That's a position I'm very uniquely in, because I've done all of that. I do all of that myself. And therefore what I see is that I need one single service.
Why asynchronous beats one-on-one calls
I've been trying to offer one-on-one calls, but Devin showed me that an asynchronous service is much simpler and can deliver most of the value. I tried offering calls across all my channels, and one person did buy my call for $350 for an hour. But I see in myself how quickly I threw $200 at Devin, even though I didn't know him, because all I wanted him to do was this: Devin, look, just look at my channels. Give me a quick suggestion. You don't have to totally make everything perfect and turn me into a millionaire. I just want you to look at these.
I actually have seven channels, including a music channel, but that one doesn't actually have any videos. So I have six channels with videos, and I just wanted Devin to look at everything. And Devin easily could have looked at all this and said, you need one thing to sell. It's fine that you do all these videos and all these channels. That's great. You need one thing to sell, and you should sell it consistently, all in one place.
I tried to make calls that thing, but calls take a lot more investment. I notice I'm much more hesitant to sign up for a call with somebody, because I have to pick a specific time on their schedule, and then the hourly rate can get high. I looked at Devin charging $200 for a priority review, but his didn't have quite as clear boundaries. So mine is 20 minutes of my total time. That means if it takes me 20 minutes to look at something, then that's it. Basically I'd have about 15 minutes where I could look at something, watch something, and then send a five-minute video response.
What's beautiful is this can work across all different niches. You want me to take a look at your dating life, and you record a 10-minute audio message? Then I can record a 10-minute reply. You want me to look at your YouTube channels? Then I look at your YouTube channels for 10 minutes, then I make a 10-minute reply.
And what's beautiful is this is scalable. If somebody else like me came to me and had all these channels, what they should probably do is start off with just a simple one. If somebody like me came along, I'd put in 20 minutes and say, hey, look, I looked at the big picture of what you're doing. What you need is one single thing to sell. And if you want to buy the service again, we could zoom in and figure out what that one thing should be. That's the way to do it.
You don't have to be an expert to review something
I think this is one of the best possible things for anybody to sell right now, because you don't have to be an expert to review something. In research, there's a popular concept called peer review. Even if you think you're just as good at YouTube as I am, a review still helps. When I look at Devin, I'd say Devin would be an equal with me on YouTube. I've got tens of millions of views on YouTube, hundreds of millions of impressions. I've built pages to millions of followers on other platforms. But the unique thing is I've done it all on my own. I've done it all on my own stuff. I got myself popular, not working with other brands. I made myself a self-made famous person without having to leverage big brands. I just leveraged the algorithm and the audience, and I've blown myself up all over the internet. And that's what most people are trying to do.
I look at that and I realize that's what's so great about a review. Even if you think you're just as good at dating as me, having my thoughts on your dating situation might be useful. Even if you've been in crypto 12 years like me, you could just ask, hey, which coins are your favorite and your least favorite, here's my portfolio, a down-to-earth question like that. I don't give financial advice; I just share what I think.
So I'm really grateful for this experience with Devin. It was pretty hurtful when I got his email back, because I was all excited. I thought, all right, here's someone I can ask who knows a lot about YouTube and can give me some feedback. It felt like a rejection of the kind I've experienced a lot with dating. To be fair, I've rejected a lot of women in dating this year myself. But it felt like a rejection just like dating: oh, you're too much. You're doing too much. This is too overwhelming. I can't handle you. I wrote about living through those moments in I Went Speed Dating. They Asked If I Was Using It for Content.
And yet I realized that's my opportunity, because Devin probably says no to other people too. And for every person who's aware that Devin does channel reviews, there are probably tons more people who aren't, who would love to have a review of their channel from someone who knows a lot about YouTube, a lot about content creation. So I am really grateful, even though with this experience I was excited and then very disappointed. Now I'm very excited again, because I figured out this is the thing.
The thing to offer today: a real person looking at your stuff
I was just talking with another YouTuber, Joe Paris, and we were talking about what the thing to offer today is. To me, it seems what we need is personalized video reviews. It's basically like sending a message to ChatGPT, except instead of having the AI look at it, you have a real person look at it. The AI does a great job providing a fast response, but the AI does a poor job providing a very educated, deep-knowledge human response on certain subjects, and that is extremely limiting when it comes to something like YouTube. That's the whole reason I wrote You Don't Have to Figure YouTube Out Alone.
I wish I could just find a hundred other YouTubers doing what I'm doing now, very easy to access. I hate paid courses. I hate the business systems people are using where they want you to apply for their coaching. All of that disgusts me. This is the opposite of that.
So I'm excited to see who's going to purchase a review on jerrybanfield.com/review. All you need to do is purchase the video review on my website, then send an email to review@jerrybanfield.com with the same email you used to purchase. Send me every single thing you want me to look at. Keep in mind, I only give 20 minutes of total time. I can pretty much instantly hit record, talk, and upload, so I'm very fast. I can take 15 minutes to look at what you're doing, take a break, run and process it, clean the house, and then come back and fire off a five-minute video response and give you fantastic value. If you want more of my thinking on building a channel before you send anything in, it's all in my Content Creators playlist.
I'm excited to see who sends the first one in. And I am ultimately grateful to Devin Nash for showing me what should be the one thing that I offer across all my channels.