Big Announcement: I'm Done Being a Gaming Streamer
My friends, I'm back. Guess who's back? Back again. Jerry's back. Tell some men. Big announcement today: I'm tired of being a gaming streamer. I'm sick of streaming games. I've been sick of it for quite a while, and I'm not doing it anymore. I'm done playing games. I'm selling all my gaming stuff except my gaming PC, and I'm going to continue creating. I'm going to continue being live on Twitch every day for up to an hour, and I'm moving forward as a life coach. What that looks like is a just chatting stream on Twitch — that's what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to continue having just chatting streams on Twitch, and then I'm going to put the recordings of those on YouTube and on my podcast, because they might as well be there. The just chatting and the life coach topics should be on YouTube. So I'm coming back to my YouTube channel and my podcast, and I'm quitting game streaming.
Why? I'm tired of it, and I've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do than play video games. I've got such amazing help I can offer people, and there's so many other great gamers out there. For example, the top Gods Unchained streamer is theSambam. If he's streaming and I'm streaming, I'm like, why am I even streaming? People should just watch him. He's got more cards than I do. He's played the game way more than I have. There's no point in me playing while he's streaming. And it's the same thing with any other game — somebody's streaming every other game. Why should I stream that game? I don't need to. I know I'm entertaining and fun playing games, but you know what? Playing games on stream sucks. It sucks. I'd rather play a game off stream. There are some games I'd really like to play that I can't even enjoy properly on stream, because I'd like to just turn the lights off, be quiet, and get totally into the game.
Why I'm Quitting Gaming
There are a lot of reasons I'm quitting gaming. One: being a gaming streamer ruins gaming. It's not fun, and you end up just grinding for views and trying to make money instead of just playing the game how you really want to. If you just want some money, don't bother streaming games — just go do some real job and then play whatever video games you want. Turning video games into a job... I had a dream of playing video games for fun and just loving it, and I did that. I'm done with it. I made over $100,000 last year playing video games on Facebook, and it was awesome. And now I don't want to play any more video games. I'm good. I've had my fill — like when you eat and you've had enough. I'm full. I'm done.
I love streaming, and to me, the best thing I do is these chats. I love doing these chats. To me, the chats we have are the most meaningful things I have to offer. Some of my most dedicated followers, like Lisa, and those of you like Andrew, Drew, and Superman that came over from Facebook or from YouTube, want to hang out on Twitch. I want to stream where I'm just paying attention to what you have to say. I want to be able to just fully engage and interact with each of you that's live. If I'm gaming and just doing a stream where there's a bunch of people watching, it is no good.
One viewer joked that he would quit too if he'd spent the money on all the cards and wasn't very good. Well, I am great at Gods Unchained. I could continue to get even better and be a championship player. But the question that I've been continuing to ask myself is: don't I have anything better to do? Yesterday was a good example. I did a four-hour stream playing Gods Unchained, and I missed out — my mom could have used my help. I made no money. I lost money. And I got a few new followers, but most of those new followers will just evaporate. I've got 4,556 followers on Twitch right now, and probably 1,000 people followed me for Gods Unchained. Probably 600 will unfollow without me playing Gods Unchained. Now, the 400 that stay — that's great. And to be clear, I'm definitely not quitting streaming, and I'm hoping these videos will be better for you.
Exiting Gods Unchained
Superman Crypto is the best Twitch streamer to watch for crypto — pretty much my only source of crypto information. And after watching Superman's videos, I'm like, man, if I ever want to exit my Gods Unchained position, I kind of need to do it now, because it might go down another 50 or 80%. It could go up too. But if I want to exit, now's a good time. Now's a good time to make a change. There are some games I'd like to play, but they're not games you want to watch. And Gods Unchained is fun — it's a great game — but I was thinking last night, I don't know if Gods Unchained is going to make it. In my opinion, the Gods Unchained token is a big problem. I don't think it's going to work in the long term. And the game itself is difficult to engage with and interact with — just getting it installed is challenging. Now, that doesn't mean it won't work. I hope the game succeeds. But I've done my part. I've promoted it. I've shared it with a lot of people. I've got new people to play. I bought cards. I've traded. If you want any of my cards, I'm putting them all up on the marketplace, and I put them up in GODS so that you could buy them.
So I'm hoping, for those of you that are the most dedicated followers, that I can give you a pure, unadulterated experience that's just Jerry Banfield — just the chatting. And I'm free to talk about anything: one day we might do a stream all about crypto and investing. I'm free to do any topic I want on my stream, and we're just going to dedicate it to whatever I feel like talking about that day. I realize I spent four hours yesterday playing games and streaming, and I barely talked about anything that I think really needed to be talked about. I basically just kind of jerked off. It felt good, but nothing was really accomplished. And to me, I want to make sure I really accomplish something every day.
Identity, Race, and What Divides Us
A viewer asked me to talk about identifying as a black man, and that interests me. We are in a time where, in almost any way, we are free to choose how we are identified. I have a penis, but I could choose to be identified as a woman — that's the time we live in right now. And I think each of us should be free. If you want me to call you whatever pronouns you want me to use, I'm happy to use those. I don't care. I don't care what genitals you have. I'll call you whatever you want to be called. I'll call you an animal, or you can change your name. We live in a time where we're allowed and encouraged to change anything we want to, where there's tons of support for it. Gender is a pretty fixed concept in my mind, and I think it's good we blur the boundaries of gender. I've been very clear about my support for the transgender movement — although, personally, I am against any elective surgery. Breast implants. Penis implants — definitely against those. I'm against all elective surgeries. I guess you could count my dental surgeries to move my teeth around as elective surgery. But I generally believe you should avoid doing any kind of surgery on yourself if you don't need it. From what I've read, medical errors are among the leading causes of death, and in my view one of the easiest ways you can cause severe trauma to your body is by going to get a surgery you didn't need to have.
So, I am very in favor of identifying anyone as they want to be identified. And with that in mind, I choose that I would like my race to be identified as black — because the law says your race is a self-identified characteristic. That's what the law says. And I don't want my race to be identified as white. Now, I'm on the lighter side of black. And I prefer we not even deal in things like races to begin with. I think all this separating into all these different identifications divides us.
And here's something I've come to believe: it seems to me there's an extraterrestrial force — although they might say that we are the invaders to this planet — but it looks to me that there's some extraterrestrial force that is covertly controlling humanity. It wants to keep us divided and keep its presence secret, because if its presence was known, we would unite and get rid of them. So they must stay secret, or all of us would rise up and say, get the hell off our planet, and we would be a problem to them. They could not control us if they were publicly known. And two, they also can't control us if we're united. If we're broken apart into different races and genders and religions, and we're all fighting each other, we're very weak — easily manipulated and easily controlled. But if we unite and we stop identifying as particular protected characteristics — if we stop putting all this energy into whoever I am, and this is who I am, and therefore anything besides that is who I'm not — I think we need to identify based on the idea that God is who we really are. That said, if you want to identify me as a race, I prefer to be identified as black or African American.
And saying just that right there is what got me demonetized on Facebook. Now, I am monetized again on Facebook. And Twitch has proven to be a very supportive platform. Twitch has seen the logic in what I'm saying, seen that I'm serious in what I'm saying, and seen that you've even got a black celebrity that made a video that put Facebook on Donkey of the Day for demonetizing me. So Twitch has been a very supportive platform, which is why I love Twitch. YouTube has been a very supportive platform, as has my podcast.
One of my viewers told me he likes my just chatting streams, and I'm glad, because I love his crypto streams. His crypto streams are so high quality that I got to thinking: what can I offer that's my best quality? And it's clear to me that my gaming streams are not my best quality. I am a great gamer, but there are so many other people that are great gamers. I'm not needed being a gamer. There are so many other people that want to be gaming streamers. Did I rage quit because of no partnership? Not at all.
Why I Missed Twitch Partner and What Changed My Mind
In fact, this has helped me do what I've been wanting to do. Five months ago, I said I'm becoming a life coach. But for some reason, I wasn't quite ready to make the transition. I was a Facebook partner, but I did not get Twitch partner. Why? Because too many of my views, at least while I was playing Gods Unchained, came from GU Decks. Now, if I'm not playing Gods Unchained, I'm going to message GU Decks so they won't be featuring me anymore. Going forward, the next time I have enough numbers to apply for Twitch partner, I imagine they'll accept me, because all my views will be directly on Twitch. Here's how it works: you have to have 75 average viewers to apply for Twitch partner, and they want those views to be directly on Twitch. A significant portion of my views were coming from embedded Twitch streams on GU Decks, and if you take those embedded views out, I didn't meet the 75 average viewer threshold — and I wasn't close.
Someone asked me: are you retiring from Gods Unchained? Did you just play because you were sponsored before? The truth is I got really excited about Gods Unchained, and to me, if I'm going to play a game and stream it, Gods Unchained is the only game that makes sense for me to play and stream. But I don't want to play any more games and stream. I'm quitting all games. I just want to give the life coaching, or whatever topic within that comes out. For example, one day we might need to talk about investing, another day we might need to talk about getting sober. Whatever's in my heart to talk about, I need to get that out. And then, if I want to play video games, I can just do that off stream. So I'm quitting Gods Unchained completely.
Selling All My Gods Unchained Cards
If you look at my MutaScan, I've listed my most valuable cards already on Gods Unchained. I just sold my Pyramid Warden, I sold my Magic Missile Launcher, and I sold my Lysander Spear. And I'm trying to do my part on the way out here to help the Gods Unchained marketplace. Right now, things are sometimes a lot more expensive if they've been listed in Gods. So if you've got a lot of Gods right now, I've listed things like Demogorgon, Therial, Jason, Blade, Magic Missile Launcher, Avatar, War, and Martyr — all my more expensive cards — for a lower price, or for the same price in Gods as in Ethereum. For those of you that have a lot of Gods and wish the really expensive cards were cheaper, I've listed them at the same price in Gods. In some cases, that means the cards are $10, $20, $30, $40, or $50 cheaper in Gods than they usually are. So I'm selling all my Gods Unchained. I withdrew the Gods I've already got, and once we sell most of the other cards, we'll withdraw some more. I'm going to cash this out.
And I'm going to start doing giveaways on Twitch — Twitch gift card giveaways. Twitch gift cards seem like a great thing for me to give away. Can you figure out why that'd be a great thing for me to give away? Because that's going to come back, isn't it? I can buy a Twitch gift card and then give the Twitch gift card away. And then some of the people who get the Twitch gift cards can subscribe, so they won't have to watch any ads on my Twitch channel. In many cases, I'll probably get back half of the Twitch gift card I gave out, which is pretty cool. So instead of giving out Gods, I'm going to start giving out Twitch gift cards on my stream.
Somebody asked if I could loan out a couple of cards — two clones and Lost in the Depths. I'm just going to sell them. I just want to get rid of all my cards. If you really want something, just go get it. It would be too complicated to loan cards out and then get them loaned back. I also needed to turn the Nightbot commands off. We are going to keep doing the giveaways, but they're not going to be for Gods. I'm unloading all the Gods. In my opinion, the Gods token is also extremely problematic. The Gods token is a problem — the Gods token could go to one cent, in my view.
Disappointing People Comes Second to Inner Guidance
So yes, I'm selling out completely in Gods Unchained, and I am quitting streaming all games. I know this will probably cost me hundreds of followers. I know some people will be sad and disappointed, but one thing I've learned in my life is that it's very important to follow my own inner guidance and my own passion — and disappointing people is secondary.
This is why I want to just do life coaching live streams, and I just want to do a maximum of one hour. Because your time is valuable. If I can't cram what I need to say in one day into a one-hour live stream, it's too much. Take one of my most dedicated followers, Superman Crypto — if you're interested at all in crypto, crypto markets, and crypto ups and downs, he's worth following. He likes my Just Chatting streams best. Now, let me put myself in his position. He enjoys my videos and my Just Chatting streams. So if he sees Jerry Banfield doing a four-hour gaming live stream, is he going to watch a four-hour gaming live stream? Probably not. He might hang around for a while, but most of the time when I'm doing a four-hour gaming stream, I'm not even really chatting — I'm just playing the game and talking about the game. For him, if I do an hour-long Twitch stream every day that's Just Chatting, just interacting, based on a certain topic, that's so much better. For those of you that are devoted followers, this is so much better. And for me, it's so much better, because I collapse everything I need to say into a one-hour-or-less stream every day, and we just chat.
On my Gods Unchained streams, sometimes we were getting over a hundred concurrent viewers. And one viewer told me they couldn't handle the game I'd been playing — I get it. I remember when I streamed Magic on Facebook, I'd often have 10,000 to 100,000 views per video, an average of maybe two to five hundred concurrent viewers. Then I played Magic: The Gathering and we dropped to, like, a tenth of that. People hated me playing Magic: The Gathering. Unfortunately, my gaming has been obscuring what I really need to say. These chatting streams are what I really need to say, and my gaming has been obscuring me listening to you. It's hard for me to listen to you when there's a bunch of other people talking. It's hard for me to listen to you when I'm going on and on about the game. Yesterday, I talked a little bit about God, the universe, and higher powers — and that's the main thing I really wanted to talk about yesterday, and it got totally lost in four hours of playing Gods Unchained.
One viewer joked that he'd wasted his Prime sub on this quitter. Well, he didn't waste that much — it's two bucks, and I sent him 10 Gods, so it kind of works out even. You could look at it as he traded his Prime sub for 10 Gods. That seems like a fair deal.
Knowing What to Quit and What to Stick With
We often are programmed in life not to quit things, but there's a time to be persistent and stick with things, and there's a time to quit. I've played games for two and a half years — well, off and on, I've done game streaming since 2015. There's a time to quit things, and there's a time to stick with things. And we need other people's help to figure this out. For example, in my experience as an alcoholic, I needed to quit drinking — that's something you should quit. But often what kicks in is our will to win, our will to fight. We don't want to quit. Eight and a half years ago when I got sober, I needed to quit drinking. In the meantime, I have not quit my marriage. There were times my marriage was difficult and I thought about quitting, but I've stuck with my marriage — and I quit drinking. You need to figure out what to quit and what to stick with. You don't ever want to just persist in everything, and you don't ever want to just quit everything. There are things you should quit, and there are things you should stick with. In fact, I've come to believe one of the best things to do is quit something that's not working and not fulfilling you as soon as possible.
Someone mentioned watching 50 hours of my gameplay without a win. Well, that's another thing. If you're on the Just Chatting stream, I want guaranteed wins for you. The Just Chatting streams have guaranteed wins. This is why I want to set something up that I never need to quit — something I can do indefinitely. And I've been working on that. But I can't keep gaming indefinitely. I've quit gaming twice before; this is the third time now I've quit gaming. And I looked at the other times — why did I quit gaming? I quit gaming because it sucked and it wasn't making any money. Because I was putting a bunch of time and energy into it, it wasn't making any money, and I wasn't feeling satisfied that I was really doing what I need to do. I quit twice because of that. And here we are the third time: I'm quitting gaming because I'm not enjoying it that much, it's not making money, and I don't feel like I'm giving what I really need to give. The difference this time is that I've fulfilled my dreams as a gaming streamer. I've had pretty close to the top of success you could have as a gaming streamer. I will keep my Nintendo, my Super Nintendo, and my Nintendo 64 — my childhood consoles.
Selling My Consoles and My New Streaming Schedule
If you want to buy any of these consoles, just message me in the Jerry Banfield Family and ask, and I will send them to you. I'll pay for shipping. If you pay for the Xbox Series X — you drop $500 for it — I'll pay for shipping, which will probably be damn near $100. If you want my Xbox Series X or my PS5 or my Nintendo Switch, I will be happy to sell you those. I'm going to get rid of the Nintendo Wii and the Sega Genesis and the PS2 I bought, because those aren't consoles I grew up with or anything — I just got those from the game store. I'll keep my old Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 for now.
Someone asked a great question: will I be back to multi-streaming, or just Twitch, or uploading to Twitch later? Here's the plan. I will continue doing lives just on Twitch, with a maximum of one hour. If at any time I see that we've gone over an hour on Twitch, I'm turning it off immediately. Maximum of an hour a day live on Twitch. If, for God's sakes, I can't say everything I need to say for a day online in an hour, I need to just wrap it up — I'm rambling by then, if it hasn't been rambling already. Then I'm going to take the recording. I record in OBS, and I'll be putting the recording from the Twitch stream — the entire Twitch stream in just one video, because in most cases I don't see the need to split it up. We can talk about one single subject every day, record the whole stream, respond to chat along the way, upload that to YouTube, and then upload that to my podcast. So I am now uploading again to my YouTube and my podcast.
And then I'm going to set up my website. I actually took my website and often forwarded it to Twitch. I had my life coaching set up earlier this year, but I wasn't quite ready, and I didn't get as many appointments as I thought I wanted. But thankfully, streaming games has put it in perspective: if I get one life coaching client a month, that'll make as much as gaming. One life coaching appointment a month will make as much as gaming. Today, the best way to work with me on any of this is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, my community.
Why I Believe I Can Be a Life Coach
Someone challenged me on this: you wanted to become the best Gods Unchained player, and now you quit — do you really think you should become a life coach? Absolutely. My wife asked a similar question. She asked, why would I be a life coach? And I said, because I've handled some of the toughest things other people are struggling with in life.
Something a ton of people are struggling with is being overweight. I've been overweight. I weighed 80 more pounds than I do now, and I felt very powerless to actually lose weight. I felt like I was continuing to get bigger no matter what I did. At least a third of the population is overweight, and in my experience, I can help people lose weight because I've done it for myself — and I've done it on all fronts. There's a spiritual, mental, emotional component to weight that doesn't really depend on your diet, and there's a diet portion to your weight. There's the emotional, mental, spiritual component and the physical component to weight. So if you're overweight, I believe I can help with that.
If you struggle with alcoholism and drinking, I can help with that, because I'm sober eight and a half years after being an active alcoholic from 2003 to 2014. I know how to get sober. I have a very happy marriage, and I struggled a lot with dating, so I'm able to help other people with dating. People consistently at AA meetings tell me how much they love what I share. I've been a very lonely person, and I'm not lonely anymore. I've been filled with self-harm thoughts, and I don't have self-harm thoughts anymore — I don't harbor self-harm thoughts. Occasionally some dumb thought comes through, but there's a big difference between having a crazy thought for a moment versus seriously considering it all day. I've reprogrammed self-harm thoughts. I drive peacefully.
I feel like when I'm playing video games, I'm pissing away my real talents. Sure, I could be a world champion Gods Unchained player. Or I could help people solve some of the most difficult problems in their life. I've been in my share of physical pain before — nothing compared to some of you, but I've had my share. And I'm free of that. I used to have a lot of back pain, a lot of neck pain, a lot of headaches, a lot of muscle aches, a lot of tension, a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. All that's gone. Occasionally I get a little depressed, and occasionally I get a little sad, but that's normal. What is an opportunity for change is if you're sad and depressed all the time. In my experience, I have the ability to help people who are sad and depressed all the time get out of that.
And I've learned a lot about money. I've made a lot of money. I've dramatically changed my finances for the better in the last two years — paying down hundreds of thousands in debt, getting hundreds of thousands more debt to a lower interest rate. I've had a year where I made a quarter million dollars in profit online. I've made way more money doing my own thing online than I ever did working real jobs. So I can offer a very holistic improve-your-life program to people, work with people one on one, and then offer free life coaching and advice and help on Twitch live and on YouTube and on my podcast.
Waking Up at 2:30 AM With a Clear Answer
I've got to do that. I have to do that. I'm looking at my life, and if I died one year from now having kept doing the same things I've been doing, I would regret pissing a bunch of my time away playing a video game instead of getting out there and making videos like this, and getting out there and helping people get through the hardest stuff in life.
You can call BS, but I've proven I can do anything that I set my mind to — that I also have pre-existing talents and abilities and choices that support. So I have the potential to be a world-class Gods Unchained player. But I can't spend all the time and energy I would helping people with life coaching and be a world-class Gods Unchained player at the same time. And if I set out to be a world-class Gods Unchained player, I'm making it slightly more difficult for everybody else — I'm cranking the competition up for everybody else just a little bit. Which is fine. But I've got to go with my highest calling in life, where my passion is. My passion is helping people with the most difficult stuff in their life. I can help you learn how to play Gods Unchained — and what is that going to do for your life? That's going to do nothing for your life. If I put the same energy toward helping you be a better Gods Unchained player — which somebody else is perfectly willing to do — versus putting that same energy toward helping someone get sober, I can make a big, huge, positive difference there. That impacts all the rest of humanity.
If you've noticed on my streams, I've consistently been asking: is there anything better to do than Gods Unchained? And I woke up at 2:30 in the morning — which is often the time of divine revelation — and I got a very clear answer. Yes, your life coaching is much better for you to do than Gods Unchained. This Gods Unchained game may go down the toilet completely — are you willing to go down with it? No. Are you willing to devote your life to this, and therefore choose not to devote your life to the other things? No.
Crypto Streams, Debt, and Investing
A friend from the stream, Superman Crypto, told me his community would love me doing crypto streams — he said I got him into crypto in the first place. What's nice with doing life coaching is I can talk about any topic each day, and there are some days — probably at least once a week — we'll do a stream about money. And with talking about money, we're definitely likely to have some crypto streams. Now, what's made it challenging for me is that Superman Crypto does such high-quality pure crypto streams that I figure, why should I even do those? Why don't I just tell you to go watch Superman Crypto? He puts seven hours a day into researching all of these things. He's been doing this for years. He knows — he's got a much better feel of everything than me. But occasionally, maybe I'll have a specific crypto topic to talk about. I'll be watching his streams, and if something he says gets me wanting to have a discussion about it, we'll dig in.
I'm wondering right now: if I did want to hold my money in a crypto, which one would it be, and how much? And should I pay my debt off before putting money into crypto? I'm thinking right now we need to pay my debt off, because paying my debt off is a guaranteed return. I can't lose money paying my debt off. Whereas putting money into Bitcoin, I might lose some or all of it. And it seems unwise to me to be investing when you have debt. In my experience, the ideal way to invest is to get rid of all your debt and then invest. Once all the debt's gone, you can invest, and if you lose all of it, so what? But if you've got debt and you fool around and you lose money investing, then you can really screw yourself into financial insecurity and poverty and being homeless.
Yes, the subtitle is real. But you won't be losing a streamer.
Why I'm Done Playing Games on Stream
I'll be here every day with what I hope is more valuable than doing a Gods Unchained stream. There are so many great Gods Unchained streamers — actually, there aren't that many. There's pretty much Sam Bam, H Pain, Clutch, and a few others. There are several others, but we could be here another couple of minutes naming them. The point is, you might as well watch Sam Bam or Clutch or H Pain. There's not a big reason to watch me playing Gods Unchained. There are better players you could watch who will teach you the game better. They have more cards than I do. But for me, I need to give what I really have inside that's most valuable to give.
A viewer told me that selling my Bitcoin at 19K was a great idea, and I'm very glad I unloaded that Bitcoin at 19K. Although I think I'm going to take a $3,000 to $5,000 bath on my Gods Unchained investment, I got $8,000 more — at least $8,000. I should be able to get $4,000 or $5,000 more off of Immutable X. I'm good. My wife pays all the bills. All I need to do is not piss my money away and everything's easy. So I imagine my life coaching will actually have a great paycheck too. Maybe not in the beginning. But I'm grateful that doing my gaming streaming has set the bar really low for my life coaching.
Another viewer in crypto told me not to feel too bad — he'd taken a multi-million dollar loss in this market. And that's the thing: the more you succeed, the farther down the drops are. The higher you go up on the roller coaster, the bigger the drops can be too.
Conversation Over Gaming
Someone asked me, "How do I meet new friends? I only work, drink, and meet people on Tinder sometimes." Well, that's the kind of stuff I want to talk about all the time while I'm live. I hoped I could just use Gods Unchained as a background — play Gods Unchained in the background and talk about stuff like that over it. I can't, though. I can't just play Gods Unchained and talk over it in the background. My videos suck when I do that. I wanted to do that. I hoped it would make things more interesting. My videos suck. I need to be fully focused.
So I'm not playing any video games. I'm done playing all video games on my stream. I love Gods Unchained — if I was going to play a game, it would be Gods Unchained. But I'm quitting all games. I'm going to get rid of all of my gaming stuff except for the retro consoles I grew up with. And I'm keeping my gaming PC also. The gaming PC allows me to have one monitor I can stream off of and then four monitors on my streaming PC, which is really nice. So I'm not playing any other games. If I really want to play a game that badly, I'll play it off stream so I can actually enjoy the game. Like, if I want to play Returnal, I should just play that off stream.
One of the crypto guys in my community tested doing some Facebook games while talking crypto. But the people want crypto talk. They want crypto charts. Playing the game kind of ruins the conversation. So I've come to a place where I've got to choose between conversation and gaming, and the conversation is what I care about. I've been saying ever since I streamed games way back when, the game is just a background. And it's time to ditch the background, because the background has become the foreground. So I won't be playing Hearthstone either.
What I Want to Succeed At
Someone told me I have a bright, positive, entertaining energy and that they believe whatever I do, I'll succeed. I really appreciate that. I want to be able to just give that energy too. And if I can succeed at anything, I want to succeed in helping people turn their lives around. If I can pick one thing to succeed at, I want to succeed at raising human consciousness — helping pull people out of the gutter, and helping people who are already out of the gutter climb onto the roof and help others. If I could choose between being a world-class Gods Unchained player and helping more people get sober, I'd rather help people get sober. But I can't have it all. I have to pick something. If I want to talk really in depth about how to meet new friends, I can't be playing Gods Unchained and do that. I can't be playing any video game and do that. I have to just focus and do one thing at a time.
I'm looking at everything people say to inspire me to have specific talking points each day. So what you'll see is a title or an idea for what to talk about — I may do a dedicated stream one day on how to find more friends. The main piece of advice I give everybody is almost exactly the same: think about what you want to have, what you're willing to do to get it, and what your values are. What a lot of people think about is what they don't like, why it's wrong, and how they can't do anything about it. That is like the opposite of what you want to do. You need to withdraw attention from what you don't like and put it into what you do want. So if you want friends and you're tired of being lonely, imagine how great it will be to have friends. And imagine what you would do with those friends. What would you do with friends? Would you play board games with friends? Would you play video games with friends? Would you go skiing? What would you do with friends? And then, what are you willing to do to have those friends? This is a key stopping point for a lot of us.
See, for me, I've been thinking about what I'm willing to do to help people get sober, to help people not be lonely, to help people lose weight, to help people turn their lives around. Well, I'm willing to do anything within my value system. And then the question comes: are you willing to stop playing video games in order to increase the effectiveness of how you can help people? Yes. That was a question I asked myself in the dark, meditating for hours in bed today. Are you really willing to do what it takes? Yes. Okay, well, then you need to quit playing video games if you want to really help people. You can help people a little bit playing video games, but you can help people a lot if you stop playing video games and laser in and focus on the help you've got to offer that people need the most. Today, if you want that kind of help from me directly, the best way is to join the Jerry Banfield Family community and talk with me there.
Why Being a Gaming Streamer Sucks
For me, I'm tired of being a gaming streamer. Being a gaming streamer has been very unfulfilling for me. It was fun and fulfilling at first just to try it, but here's what sucks about being a gaming streamer: the pay really sucks. If you're just doing it as a hobby, the pay is not a concern or an issue. But if you're looking at being a gaming streamer full time, then it needs to have income, and the income from being a gaming streamer sucks. Only the top two tenths — or maybe it's even two thousandths — barely anybody streaming games on Twitch makes a full-time income. I mean, something like one out of two thousand Twitch streamers makes a full-time income off of Twitch directly. The gaming streamers who are really earning good money like I did last year are the ones that are endlessly grinding and hustling. The only reason I was able to crank out six figures last year being a gaming streamer is because I had nine years of digital marketing experience, and then all the lockdowns and stay-at-home crap came along and put me in a position where my experience was extremely valuable and I could capitalize on kind of a short-term situation. So to me, the height of being a gaming streamer was 2020 and 2021. From here, the prospects of being a gaming streamer continue to go downhill.
So first, the income sucks being a gaming streamer. Second, being a gaming streamer actually ruins gaming. Now, playing Gods Unchained while streaming, I would say, is more fun than playing Gods Unchained not streaming — playing a competitive game like Gods Unchained with a chat that can help you, that's fun. But a lot of the games I want to play are not games you want to watch. Like, I had so much fun playing Returnal, but you don't want to watch that. I might want to play Duke Nukem, but you probably don't want to watch that. And if I have a game I'm really excited about, I'd rather play it off stream so I could just shut up and play the game. When I need to focus just on the game, it's easy to have fun and get into it. I can turn all the lights out and really get into the game. But when I've got to play the game and look at that and look at this, and all the lights are on, I can't really get into the game. It takes me out of the game. Part of the reason you play the game is to escape. Especially a lot of the games that are really fun to me are sci-fi games — Mass Effect, Fallout kind of games. You turn the lights off and just play that for a few hours and you can really get into the game. Live streaming just ruins that. You can't listen to the cutscenes. You've got to talk to people. And I would say that was the first thing, before the income even: streaming often ruins the gameplay.
Turning video games into a job really sucks. It's probably like this — if you ask escorts and prostitutes, maybe sex could be really fun if you just do it for fun, but you turn it into a job and then it's not so much fun anymore. There's probably some overlap. Like, I love sex, but I don't think I'd like to do sex as a job. I really don't imagine that would be a fulfilling job. I love having sex, but I don't think I'd like to do that full time. I mean, what's nice, though, is I probably wouldn't have to work that many hours. But what's fun to do in my free time in my bedroom with my wife — I don't imagine it would be so fun to do with somebody who's wanting to pay for it. And that's how I feel with video games. Just playing video games is fun. Whoring myself out and playing video games on stream? Not so much fun. So I want to make some real money working too, helping people turn their lives around — and that's the second piece I've been setting up.
Gaming Is a Hobby, Life Coaching Is My Career
If I want to play video games, I want it to truly be a hobby and not a job. Therefore, I'm not going to stream any more video games. I'll keep my gaming PC. I don't think I need to keep my PS5 — I'll think about that a little bit more. I definitely don't need an Xbox Series X, or some of these other systems.
Someone asked me what my turning point was — and honestly, which turning point do you mean? Another person told me they support me and just to never stop going live. Thank you. That's exactly what I've been thinking about. I need to set up something that is going to work no matter what in the future. Me life coaching will work no matter what in the future. Gods Unchained could very well go downhill and fall apart. Me playing video games has already gone downhill and fallen apart twice. I'm getting a hint that maybe there's something better for me to do.
When asked what I want my community to identify with me as in the future, my answer is this: I want to be identified as a life coach. That's what I do. I show up. I try and help people have a better life. And by life coach, I mean I lead by example. I'm just a mentor. The things I'm learning and the things I've worked on, I help other people with those. And then I'm always learning myself. One viewer shared that they're also searching for what they really want to do — life is passing. I hope you can find it too.
Someone mentioned that Fallout has an incredible atmosphere — it does. And on the earlier question about Twitch partner: I think me locking down and just being a life coach, uploading the recordings to YouTube and my podcast — plus a second component I just got last night — is actually going to put me on a more sustainable path than being a Twitch partner. Now, in the short term, sure, I'm going to be farther away from being a Twitch partner by doing just-chatting streams for just an hour a day. But in the long term, I'm going to be live an hour or less every day on Twitch, and you can watch recordings on YouTube and on the podcast. Every single day it's going to be some kind of life coaching thing, or a vlog, or just a chat. You know exactly what you're getting, and you know you've got an hour or less to get it. I watch Superman Crypto, and you know what you're getting on his streams — he's going to be on there talking about crypto. That makes it easy to build a community.
Why One Focus Builds a Community
When I've been doing all these different things on my stream, it makes it difficult to build a community. When I build a community just around my life coaching, things are going to go really well. When I build a community around me life coaching and me playing all these new games, retro games, Warzone, Gods Unchained — when I keep building a community around all these different things, it keeps having problems. Because those of you that followed and loved my life coaching stuff get sick of watching Gods Unchained videos. Those of you that followed for Gods Unchained get annoyed with my life coaching stuff. Those of you that followed for Warzone are like, "For God's sake, will you please play Warzone 2 already?" And those people that followed for my hacking videos years ago — I don't know what they're still doing coming back.
So I see that life coaching is something I can do and would love to do for 50 years, because that's something that will continually evolve and grow with me. I'm not up for being a gamer for the next 50 years. Someone described it as an Oprah Winfrey kind of a Twitch show — yes, exactly. And yes, I did hacking videos back in 2015 and 2016; those are my most watched YouTube videos. So I'm looking to do something like an Oprah Winfrey, Wayne Dyer kind of show. Something that's inspirational. Something useful that you could learn from every day. And something that's interactive.
Begin with the End in Mind
I have been a gamer. But I'm also a life coach and a mentor. I can still be a gamer, but gaming needs to be purely relegated to a hobby. Life coaching is a career. Gaming is a hobby. And it's time to get that in its proper place. If I want to play some video games, I can play video games off stream. I've had my time to be a professional gamer, and I see I don't want to be a professional gamer — because being a professional gamer doesn't allow me space and time to be a life coach.
I'm big into beginning with the end in mind. Looking back from the end of this body's life, what would I most care to have accomplished and given? The life coaching is essential — I've got to give that. The gaming? Like me becoming a world-class Gods Unchained player? Eh. From the point of view of the end of my life, when I'm dead, I don't really care about that. But having helped a whole bunch of people get sober, like I've already done — I want to do a whole lot more of that. I want to help more people lose weight. I want to help more people be considerate. I want to help more people with their money. I've got to do that stuff. And if I don't do that stuff, I'm pissing my life away, and I'm not living what I'm here to really do.
The Missing Piece: Going Local
And I got the last piece to this. The last piece I was missing is that this is something I can do in person really well also. It is hard to make a community if I keep switching it up, and this is why it's time to pick something I can stick with indefinitely. Life coaching is something I can do indefinitely. Life coaching is where I really get the most enthusiastic followers. Life coaching is where you get people that are absolutely devoted fans. And the last piece I got when I was five hours into meditating in bed last night: I realized I could do my life coaching very easily locally. I do an hour a day on Twitch, upload to YouTube and my podcast, and then I print out pieces of paper and I go door to door — to the hundreds, maybe thousands of houses within walking distance of my house — and I drop stuff in their mailboxes. I drop a letter in their mailbox that says: Are you lonely? Do you think about hurting yourself? I know what that's like, and I can help you. Here's my phone number. I am available to come work with you. You can look at my videos online. You can look at my podcast online. You can watch me live on Twitch. And I drop those off over and over around my neighborhood. I drop one off that says: Are you struggling with alcoholism? Do you feel like once you take the first drink, you're out of control? And I drop these notes all over, repeatedly. I will get some clients in my neighborhood. I'll get some new viewers in my neighborhood. And I'll help develop a community locally around what I do — because there's no community locally right now. I don't get to see anybody in person who loves my gaming stuff. But I'm going to be able to build a local community, combined with my online community, around coaching. That's really important, and I really need that.
Yes, it may sound creepy to some. To somebody else, it might save their life. Because I know a guy who drank and cut his wrists. And you know what? Maybe if he would have gotten a note like that in his mailbox, maybe he'd still be here now, instead of being a statistic. Maybe if somebody had cared enough to think about him and put a note in his mailbox and be available to help him, maybe he'd still be here. And maybe he'd be helping other people, who would be helping other people get out of the same spot too. But instead he's gone, and I'm here with his experience in mind.
So I'm going to put all these little stories out there. I'm going to repeatedly canvas my neighborhood and put in little flyers that ask a question like: Hey, are you lonely? I've been really lonely too, and I got out of that, and I'm available to help you. Here's my phone number. Here's my website. Here's my Twitch. Let's talk — I'll help you get connected. I'm really excited to do that. That's the missing piece of my life coaching before.
One Hour a Day, Maximum
So I've committed to a firm one-hour maximum time limit on my Twitch live streams. If I can't say it in an hour, I don't need to say it — we'll say it tomorrow. I really appreciate you being here. If you watch this somewhere besides Twitch — on YouTube, or if you listened to it on my podcast — I would love to see you on Twitch with us, where you can actually talk with us live. And if you want to work with me more personally, today the best way to do that is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, my community, where we can actually talk.
I love each of you. I'll be back tomorrow on Twitch, and then I'll upload the recording to YouTube — you can find more of my videos on building a channel like this in my YouTube Coaching playlist — and to my podcast.