I had years where I was a millionaire 10 years ago, and now my current net worth is around minus $200,000. This is what I've learned from going from a negative net worth to a millionaire and then all the way back down again. I hope I can share my lessons here with you so that you can learn from my mistakes. Let me give you a preview of some of them up front, and then we'll dive into all of it a bit deeper, because what you'll see is how all of this is linked.
Lesson 1: I made money fast instead of sustainable
First, I got to be a millionaire because I was obsessed with making money rapidly, rather than making it sustainable. So in my experience, if you want to maintain wealth, you actually want to make money a bit slower. I made money — I turned myself into a millionaire within a couple of years.
Lesson 2: I got sober and cleaned up the rest of my life
The way I did that was I got sober and cleaned up the rest of my life. So what I've come to believe is that if you want to be a millionaire, you need to clean up all this stuff that's stopping you from that, which often is poisoning yourself with alcohol, drugs, and distracting yourself with toxic relationships.
Lesson 3: I built it with my wife — and lost it tied to her too
Number three, I became a millionaire in collaboration with my wife. And then the millionaire status and the financial destruction also happened related to the relationship with my wife. I'll talk more about all of these things in a minute — I'm giving you a preview of the key lessons to make sure you get this up front.
Lesson 4: I wasn't diversified at all
With me being a millionaire, I was not diversified at all. It was very easy for me to lose huge amounts of my wealth in the first place, in very specific areas. What I would recommend going forward, and what I'm doing going forward, is making sure I'm much more diversified — that I can't get wiped out by a crypto going down, or by a platform banning my courses, or by losing an algorithm somewhere. You ideally don't want to have all your wealth tied up in something that could plummet. Now, a house is one of the most stable forms of wealth, but ideally you want to have a variety of assets. And you don't want your assets locked up where you can't sell them — at least if that's what's making you a millionaire.
Lesson 5: I started spending like crazy, and I got a God complex
Finally, one of the last things I'll share is that I started spending money like crazy when I got to be a millionaire. I ramped my expenses up and I hooked all my friends up. There were friends I paid $100,000-plus, where they were getting like $100 an hour. These were guys that hadn't graduated from college, that were Xbox friends. And I'm grateful for my generosity to them.
At the same time, I got to have this God complex, like I can't lose. Because when you make yourself and blow your net worth up over a million dollars in a couple of years, you can start to think: I'm just that smart, and everything I do works. Going forward now, I'm a bit more pragmatic, and not of the impression that everything I do is just going to turn to gold. And that's been a valuable lesson.
"Why should I listen to you? You're minus 200K right now"
Now, some of you are thinking: well, why should I listen to you? You're minus 200K right now. And I made myself a millionaire — self-made, within just a couple of years, fully online. The valuable lessons I've got from draining that are extremely helpful, because it was actually much easier to learn to just blow up and be a self-made millionaire rapidly than to actually sustain that wealth over time.
And I'm not afraid to leverage debt either. I still have a fantastic lifestyle, my own house, and massages every week. I have money for everything I want, even though I'm leveraged right now. What's awesome to me is that, seeing what I've done before, I could be a millionaire again within a year or two from now. I know I've already done it before, so it's easier to do it again. And the real teaching is this: if you can teach from a position of what many would think of as being behind, and then you can document how you got there, that's what I think is really interesting about my story. Watch — a year or two from now, I'm telling you how I became a millionaire again. Or maybe it'll take a bit longer this time.
How I built my foundation: Udemy and YouTube
So first, I set up my foundations. A lot of people are like, how can I make myself a millionaire as fast as possible? Well, I did it by finding what was needed and how I could provide that. I ran into a platform called Udemy in 2014, and I was on YouTube in 2011. I've been into it for a long time. With technology, I'm continually ahead of wherever things are going — I am continually an early adopter in technology. And if you want to make yourself a millionaire, being an early adopter in technology is one of the best places to do it, because often when there's new technology, there are huge opportunities, and it's easy for anyone to just jump in there and deliver huge amounts of value.
Like on Udemy — I was one of the first instructors on Udemy. I mean, there were people before me, but I was one of the first who actually went all in and did serious marketing, and then blew myself up to hundreds of thousands of students. I built my Udemy up so big because I gave away hundreds of thousands of free coupons to my courses. And then I had this giant email list. I'd make thousands of dollars in a few hours every time I released new courses. I combined that with grinding courses out like crazy — I made like 60 Udemy courses in a couple of years, just by filming two videos a day. So what I did to become a millionaire, I obsessed about doing rapidly. I went all in on just focusing on Udemy and selling courses. And I'm doing the same thing on YouTube now. You can follow that side of the journey — how I build wealth online — over on my Money playlist.
What I noticed as I drained my net worth, though, is that my attention constantly got fractured. So there were two big things that drained my millionaire status — actually, three.
One: I got banned from Udemy
One, I got banned from Udemy. And I got banned because the same things I did to rapidly blow up on Udemy — to go from a relatively unknown person online to a top 10 Udemy instructor, a YouTuber that had more subscribers than MrBeast back in 2015 and 2016 — were what got me in trouble. I blew myself up by being very loud, running a bunch of paid ads, and being in everyone's face. And you only have to piss a few people off on the trust and safety team, not even violating any policies, and I ended up getting banned. Even though I maintain, and they often say, that I offered no proof that I violated any policies — they just didn't like me.
And my entire net worth in 2016 was tied up primarily in Udemy. When that drained, well — my Udemy was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I made $600,000 on Udemy in just two years. So my Udemy, if I would have sold it, would have been worth at least one, if not two or three million dollars. And I created all that from scratch in two years. But that ban annihilated my net worth.
Two: I made a second million in crypto
Not to be taken down easily, though — within the next two years, I made myself a millionaire again in cryptocurrency. I was one of the first crypto YouTubers in the world. Again, I was an early technology adopter. I blew up on crypto YouTube because I was one of the first people in the world doing videos consistently about crypto and altcoins.
Again, I made a similar mistake to Udemy, though. I went all in on one coin, and most of my valuation of being a millionaire again in 2018 was tied up with one single crypto coin. At which point I realized — I knew so much about it — I realized the team was about to rug pull the token, and it was going to crash. I started selling it, and I couldn't sell most of it in time to avoid the crash. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars of my net worth, like at least $500,000 in net worth, from that coin crashing.
And I had sacrificed my YouTube channel and my Facebook page, with millions of followers. I had made them go all in on this coin. From there, I drained the net worth of not just the coin itself — I had pushed so hard to make fast money and become a millionaire again that I had gone all in across all my social media. And when this coin obliterated in value, my credibility, my YouTube, and my Facebook all got obliterated with it.
Three: the crack in my marriage
Right about the same time, I easily would have found another opportunity, but something happened in my marriage. My now-ex-wife said that she didn't want to have any more kids. Up until that time, I had been the leader in the relationship. I had been the man, I had been the provider, and we had been very happy and cooperating very successfully. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I gave her thousands of dollars a month to do whatever she wanted with, plus paid all the bills. She had time to be a stay-at-home mom, hang out with her family, go do yoga or whatever she wanted to do, hang out with her friends. I provided everything, plus I helped out around the house.
And then suddenly, when she said she didn't want to have any more kids — she didn't ask me about it. She didn't have a discussion. She was not gentle. She was very abrasive. And it created a huge crack in the foundation of our relationship. Now, my wife at the time, and the inspiration and teamwork we had, were a huge part of me feeling successful inside, and that funneled into my business. Well, this huge crack in my marriage happened at the same time my coin went down towards zero. And from there, I absolutely destroyed the family's finances. My net worth has been in the tank ever since then.
Part of being in that relationship — the fractured marriage — was then holding me back from again becoming the provider. My ex decided she couldn't trust me to be a provider, even though she had taken a critical action to sabotage my ability to provide. I had been obsessed with my business, but I started to hate my business after that. The marriage and the business were so intertwined.
How one weak area drags down all the rest
What you can see is that often we'll try and compensate in one area, like money, but another area that's weak can drag down our money. This is why it can be tough to really turn your life around — because often one area you're really weak in, that you're suffering in, will drag down your efforts in another.
Round 3: rebuilding on YouTube
Now that I'm single, even though I've borrowed a bunch of money like I talked about — I've borrowed over $60,000 this year so I can focus totally on YouTube, pay all my bills, and maintain my millionaire lifestyle — I am on my way. I can feel it. It feels similar to me to crypto. I'm on my way to becoming a millionaire again on YouTube.
I've got a website at jerrybanfield.com that has a school community you can join, if you want to build a life you don't need to escape from — and that's across technology, across relationships, and across health. I've got a community, and people are joining; I just started it in the last week. That community, plus the content — I'm uploading 12 YouTube videos a day now. Six shorts and six long videos, spread across six different channels. And from everything I'm seeing, I'm going to absolutely blow up. I've already got millions and millions of impressions and hundreds of thousands of views.
Focusing on the most important area
What I learned is that if I want to be a millionaire, I need to focus on the most important area. And one thing I messed up across all my years is I kept focusing on things like Udemy, where Udemy should not have been the primary focus. YouTube should have been the primary focus. Same thing in crypto.
Those were things where, if I had taken it slower and just built my Udemy gently, made some sales, I wouldn't have become a millionaire — I would have been more like my friends that I coached. They've sat there and made $10,000, $20,000 a month for a decade, while I was the big man making $50,000, $100,000 a month, but then it didn't last. So I'm building up my next millionaire to last the test of time. That means it's going to take a little bit longer, but it'll also be more sustainable.
Being intentional with dating this time
I'm also being very intentional with my dating. Now that I've divorced from my ex, I'm in a position to build myself a business. I want to build myself up as a millionaire again without our relationship dynamics sabotaging my ability to earn money, be a provider, and love my business. So I'm being very clear, and ignoring dating unless I happen to come across a woman that wants me to be a provider, who loves and is proud of what I do on YouTube, and wants to live a traditional family lifestyle and raise more kids with me. Outside of that, I will not be paying attention to dating anymore. I think a lot about this side of life too, and I share more of it in my Dating playlist.
Because I've noticed something. I've done awesome on my first three months on YouTube, coming back after I deleted all my YouTube last year because I got so down on it — but my ex also hated what I did for work as well. And that's the holistic approach to life that I'm seeing is so important, and what I embody.
A life you don't need to escape from
So if you actually watched all of this — if you read all the way to here — you will love having me as a mentor and being a part of my journey from what some would say is the ground up. When you join me at jerrybanfield.com, you'll get a 30-minute call with me, and the end result is a life you don't need to escape from, that you can stay a part of indefinitely. If you want to follow the whole story — money, relationships, health, the comeback — that's exactly what I document on my Life playlist.