I'm intending to say thank you thousands of times every day until my brain is locked in on an attitude that sees with gratitude constantly. I'm doing it to break the trances I keep getting into, these negative trances that take over my thinking before I even notice they've started.
Here's the thing that pushed me over the top. I was at yoga this morning, and I cried at yoga. What pushed me over the edge is that I have a matchmaking date tonight that I paid $625 for, proportionately, twelve times over, so $7,500 total for the package. And my mind has just been criticizing the whole thing nonstop. What's the point of this? As soon as she finds out you're on YouTube, she's ghosting you. She's not going to find you attractive like that last one did. She's going to be fake and be really nice and then not call you back. She's not going to be interested in what you have to say. She's not going to be pretty. Blah, blah, blah. So much negativity. I'd already been through this cycle once, as I shared in I Paid $625 for the Worst Date of the Year. Next Time I Leave in 5 Minutes., and here my mind was running the same script before I'd even met her.
Sitting there on the mat it hit me: look, the only thing you need to be saying is thank you that there's a woman scheduled to go on a date with me tonight. That's it. That's the only thing you need to be saying about this. So that's what I've been doing all day, writing thank-yous on my whiteboard one after another while I talk.
Am I grateful my wife left me?
Someone asked whether I'm grateful my wife left me. Yes. I'm grateful my wife left me, because now I have space for another woman. Now I have a story that's more interesting. She has a boyfriend that, at least so far, she seems happier with, and I'm very grateful that I'm single today.
I just got an email from a woman who asked me to keep everything with her private, so I'll do that. But I'm grateful I got another real email from a viewer I recognize from the chat. I'm grateful there's another woman reaching out who really loves my YouTube videos, wants to meet up with me in person, and lives outside the US.
One viewer suggested everybody make songs to cheer me up. She'd actually already emailed me a song, which I think her husband made for me, so I listened to it. I was curious whether it was made with AI or in something like Ableton. Either way, I'm so grateful that I'm alive today. I'm grateful that I'm so healthy today.
Getting my positive EQ up
My mind needs to be filled with about 90 percent thoughts like these. It's funny, in yoga I was annoyed with the yoga poses. I was the only man in there, there were several beautiful women in there, and I was annoyed. I'm thinking, none of these women are going to talk to me, there's no point. I'm going to break this negative trance that my mind gets into. If about 80 percent of my thoughts are grateful, then the other 20 percent can pretty much slide. It doesn't matter that much what the other 20 percent are. But I need to get my positive EQ up, if you will, and I'm doing that right now, out loud, chanting, repetition. In my experience this is the way to make serious changes. Over the last three hours I've said or written some kind of thank you or gratitude more than four hundred times, and I think most of us could use simple things like this.
Picture it. If I went out on this date tonight and showed up with that negative attitude, what are the odds it's going to go well? I don't know, maybe if she was really toxic it might go well, but that's not the kind of woman I'd want to be with. Now picture me having said thank you a thousand times before I walk in and then going out. I'm going to have a totally different energy, a totally different vibe. A lot of us get overwhelmed with the world, but really I can choose what I chant. I can choose whether I say thank you or the opposite of thank you, and I choose to say thank you today.
Someone asked whether I'm going to wear my gold shirt on the date. Probably not. Someone else asked for my Fortnite tag, which is just JerryBanfield.
The final frontier is my attitude
What I see is that I have so many opportunities. I'm so intelligent. I have so much experience doing this online. I have so many of you who support me. I think literally the only thing I need to do at this point is make sure my attitude stays consistently above 80 percent positive. I think that's the final frontier. If my attitude stays consistently positive, I'm going to see all the opportunities, I'm going to see all the abundance in front of me, and I'm naturally going to accept that into my life. I think I've been keeping a lot of great opportunities away with my bad attitude. I guarantee you there are one or two women this year that I went out with where I might have had a girlfriend, and both of us could have been happy together, if I'd had a better attitude.
Someone asked, without giving away the location, what the plan is for tonight's date and how I'm going to win her heart. It's a dinner date, and my plan is to laser in on my attitude. All I can control is my attitude, and I am so grateful that I know how to change my attitude. I have had enough of having a bad attitude. I've shown up on live streams with a bad attitude, I've made videos with a bad attitude, I dumped on the ICP community with a bad attitude, and I'm grateful today that I see exactly what I need to change. My attitude needs to be absolutely lasered into positive, with repetition. I intend to be obsessively focused on what I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for this Sony FX30 camera with the f/2.8 lens, a $2,000 camera and lens that makes me look beautiful in this gold satin shirt, which is available on jerrybanfield.com. You could have this shirt in your wardrobe or on your back. I'm grateful for every single super chat I get.
Super chats are amazing. Right now, if I look at my analytics, there are about 15,000 people who have watched this Jerry Banfield channel within the last 28 days. If we do a little bit of math, if everyone on average gave $20, I would be out of debt. And yet if I go around saying this isn't enough, I'm in debt, I'm so frustrated, what do I need to do, that pushes away the very people who would want to support me otherwise. Every one of these chats, every super chat, is my debt going down in real time, and I'm extremely grateful for that.
I'm grateful for clear accountability, for having a clear target. For me, a thousand thank-yous during the day is enough. That's a thousand times I'm choosing where I'm focusing, and that's probably about the amount of reps I need to put in on my attitude. I imagine that if I consistently say thank you that many times, amazing things are going to happen. Instead of getting pissed off at people in my chat, I say thank you to every single one of you. Every one of you is helping even more people find this. Every one of you is contributing to the YouTube algorithm. Every one of you is giving your time voluntarily. I hope no one is holding you hostage, taping your eyes open and making you watch and listen to this. I read the Ceres Colony Cavalier series by Tony Rodrigues, and they describe mind-control programming done by taping people's eyes open and sticking them in chairs, and I'm like, I hope that's not happening to anybody. One viewer joked that they can't stop watching Jerry Banfield, they wish they could but they can't, and another called it a full Clockwork Orange situation, which made me laugh.
Women reaching out from all over the world
Somebody said if I really want to thank everyone, take the shirt off. I used to do a lot of shirtless streams. What I'm grateful for is that I've now seen two different women in the chat express an interest in me, and that's incredible, because that's exactly what I was asking for just a few weeks ago. I thought, I need to stop trying to date only in person and open up to women all over the world who watch my videos and see me. Look how fast that happened. It's amazing. It's the same lesson I wrote about in I Expected Her to Reject Me. Then I Made It Happen.: the moment I actually decide what I want and stay open to it, it tends to show up.
I'm very grateful that anybody is watching at all. Yesterday the average was over a hundred viewers for a lot of the live stream, and I'm grateful for anybody who shows up, whether it's five or ten. What I'm seeing today is ten-plus times higher than it used to be on average. When one viewer said a lot of women were fired up for Jerry in the chat, my honest reaction was hell yeah, I love it. I'm excited to see which woman I end up with. I'm excited to see which woman from YouTube I get to meet first, and I'm grateful for all the women I'm talking to.
In fact, the woman I was talking to in South Africa earlier helped me realize, when I went to yoga, dude, you have a bad attitude this morning. This attitude could be much better. A bad attitude to me is skepticism. I was going, oh, we're so far apart, when are we ever going to get to meet, and just everything was skepticism.
There is a time to be skeptical
Yes, it helps to be skeptical sometimes. I'm not one of these people who says you need to be 100 percent positive all day every day. There's a time to be skeptical. When those dudes on Microsoft Teams all had their cameras off, I should have been more skeptical instead of so positive. I should have said, hey, what the hell is going on here? I should have asked, Damien, or Darian, and Alex, why do you all have your cameras off? Turn your cameras on so I can see you're the people you say you are. And if they'd come up with some lame excuse, I might have bowed out. So there is a time to be skeptical. When you're watching things on YouTube, there's probably a lot of time to be skeptical and to say no. But I think most of life is a time to be open and to be grateful.
Somebody in the chat reminded me that MrBeast married a South African, and yes, I remember that. It fits the theme of the day, because the more I write these thank-yous on my whiteboard, the more I want to keep going on and on. There's no point in panicking. In fact, what I see is that all I need to do is more gratitude, and the odds of me going homeless go toward zero, because I have so many people who love me, so many of you who watch me, and you all have so much money collectively. When I show up with my attitude locked in, you've got enough. Just those of you watching right now, around eighty people, with viewership going up like it usually does in the first hour, you all have so much money. You're generating ad revenue. You've got me covered. I've got enough. So all I need to do is keep saying thank you, and I'm going to keep seeing more reasons to say thank you.
How the math already works
On these live streams, between ad revenue and super chats, you all are collectively giving about $50 an hour. I do a few hours of live streams a day, and that's enough to cover my rent. The MaxFi team sponsors me for $1,000 a month, and that's enough to pay the groceries and the utilities. Then I do some Internet Computer Protocol videos and some crypto reviews, and that's enough. All I need is to keep the same momentum that's going right now, and the finances are going to switch direction: from more debt, to flattening out where the debt is stable, to all of a sudden net worth going up.
What is essential, though, is that my attitude needs to be on point. I've noticed that when my attitude is negative, I'm pushing away people who would support me. I'm pushing away opportunities that would come to me with a better attitude. There's probably another sponsor out there who would sponsor this channel and might pay $2,000 or $3,000 a month. MaxFi sponsors my crypto channels for $1,000 a month, and there's probably a sponsor just silently watching here. I don't chat most of the time when I watch live streams myself. There could be a sponsor sitting here right now who would want to pay $2,000 or $3,000 a month and say, Jerry, just mention me every live stream, maybe put me on the thumbnail or something.
I know a guy who makes $80,000 to $100,000 a month. I've been over to his house. We've hung out. We've had dinner. There is so much abundance all around me. There's a guy who watches who says he lives in my neighborhood in some big house, and he knows people. There are so many people and so many things that could come to me. All I need to do is be open to receive them. Gratitude is the gateway to opening. So I say thank you for all the opportunities.
Someone wrote that they're grateful they get to watch me live today, and I'm grateful that I'm able to be here and able to live stream. I've got so much energy and I feel so good. I'm very grateful I have both my kidneys. I'm grateful for the people who watch, even the ones who are critical, because that's pushing the algorithm, and that's helping me get connected to more people who will help me.
Could a dictator be grateful?
It's easy to be grateful when everyone's doing what you want, although past a point, maybe you could get really miserable anyway. Think about being the dictator of a country. I think you would have a hard time being a dictator if you were truly grateful. I imagine a dictator is probably not usually very grateful for their people. I'd imagine most of the time a dictator doesn't really appreciate their people, can't stand their people, and that's why they're a dictator. Because imagine if there was a dictator who was actually really grateful. He or she would probably take better care of their people. Can you imagine being a dictator in one of these countries, having practically infinite power, and just treating all your people horribly?
Someone said they wanted to thank Beyoncé, and I said nice. I love the idea that women all over the world are watching and getting excited about Jerry Banfield, because I love women. Thank you for women. Thank you that it's not all dudes on this planet. How boring would it be if this whole planet was dudes? And to borrow the Jay-Z line, I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man, and I'm grateful to see each one of you here live.
Jobs, debt payments, and the sperm donation research
Somebody brought up sperm donation, and I do need to look into it, because my ex did not want me to do sperm donation while we were together. Someone else asked whether I've considered regular employment. I have, and I've been asking: is there any job I could do that would be more valuable for humanity than doing my YouTube content? So far I don't see an answer. And I feel no joy at the thought of applying to a job, whereas the thought of doing my live streams brings me joy. I say thank you that I can do these live streams. The thought of applying to a job does not leave me feeling grateful, and there are so many other people who want those jobs.
Meanwhile, I have never missed a debt payment in my entire life. Never. I'm paying down the interest and I'm paying all the minimum payments. I've got some things on payment plans, so it's not just the minimums. Every month I survive, I continue to pay everything down.
Then a viewer mentioned that some sperm banks pay up to $150 per visit, and I thought, dude, that could be my next thing. So I fired the question off to Gemini: how much money can I make donating sperm? I'm very intelligent, I'm in Mensa, I'm extremely healthy, I have two kids, I live in St. Pete, Florida, and how far would I have to drive to make the deposit? It turned out another viewer had already done the research and Gemini said the exact same thing: active sperm donors generally earn $70 to $150 per donation. Intelligence and proven fertility make a donor profile attractive, and having healthy biological children counts as proven fertility. I need to reactivate my Mensa membership so I can show that off. Then I read the part that said compensation is paid as a fixed reimbursement for time and effort. Ah. Time and effort. The catch for me is that I'd have to drive all the way to Orlando to make the deposit. Picture it: I'm going to drive to Orlando for 150 bucks today, bro. That's ridiculous.
Gemini also said these programs require routine deposits multiple times per week with strict 48-to-72-hour abstinence windows between visits. Forty-eight to seventy-two hours? I can easily do that. No big deal. I might have to hang out in the Orlando area, drive over one day and then drive over again a few days later. But thank you for your opinions, and thank you that I can check them against Gemini. Thank you that Gemini fact-checks the opinions you all throw out.
Have I read The Secret?
Someone asked whether I've read The Secret. I have. The Secret, to me, only puts out about half the formula, and this is what drives people nuts about a lot of education and a lot of teaching. Just visualizing, like me visualizing winning the lottery, is not going to lead to me winning the lottery, because if I don't have a deep-down belief that it's going to happen and it's possible, nothing moves. About half of The Secret is really good, and about half of it is kind of garbage.
The other aspect to consider is that I could visualize winning the lottery a whole bunch, but I can't control the lottery numbers. It makes sense to apply The Secret to things you have strict control over. I can visualize saying thank you and being super grateful. I can visualize showing up on the date tonight and helping the woman have a great laugh. I can visualize all that, and I can influence how I show up. But going around saying I'm a billionaire, I'm a billionaire, and visualizing being a billionaire, that leaves you in cognitive dissonance, where you go around thinking and saying you're a billionaire and then you're broke for real. The Secret backfires lots of times when you can't put it into actual practice yourself. And someone who is actually a billionaire would not be walking around chanting that. It doesn't match reality.
So The Secret has some great ideas in it, but the half you need to really make things happen is missing, and in a lot of situations the way people use it is selfish. Walking around going I'm going to win the lottery, I'm a billionaire, I'm going to win the lottery, I'm a billionaire, I think that's self-defeating and will actually make things worse. I believe in the reality of the world. Things like visualizing and saying thank you, saying I'm very grateful for the women who want to be with me, saying I'm sure I will really want to be with one of them and we can make that happen in all the practical details, that is very powerful. But going around saying all women are going to want me is not.
Yes, The Secret talks about picturing your dream partner. But when I went around picturing my dream partner, the Queen matched what I was looking for on the outside very clearly, and the inside was much less compatible. That's the challenge. I had this very clear picture of the outside, the activities, the hobbies, and then it was like, oh, this is it. And it wasn't. The Secret is about half right.
Someone asked what I would do with $99 billion. My first thought was, am I really here in this incarnation to be the next Elon Musk? I guess somebody with $99 billion probably feels poor next to Elon Musk, but I don't need $99 billion. I think a lot of the people who have the largest amounts of wealth are miserable. They struggle to say thank you. Whereas it's actually easier in my position to say thank you. With $99 billion would come all the stress, all the power games, all that struggle. So I'm grateful for where I'm at today. I'm grateful for the journey I'm on. And ironically, it's actually easier to reach and teach people as more of a regular person.
Somebody asked whether I'd take a swimmer donation from Ron Jeremy. Probably not.
Spending the money in my mind
Back to the $99 billion. One exercise I like to do with money is to picture all the different ways I could spend it. This is an exercise that, even if you're in debt, I've found can be very powerful for wealth. I picture, okay, I have this much credit, what could I buy? I could pay for a plane ticket to South Africa right now. I could go almost anywhere in the world on credit right now. And then I'm spending that money in my mind. I'm picturing buying the plane ticket. I'm picturing taking the vacation. I'm picturing all the fun I could have. I'm grateful that I have so much credit. I'm grateful that I'm able to articulate all of this. I'm grateful for a laugh and a smile from the people watching.
Someone asked what would happen when I can't get any more loans. I'm probably never going to find out. I'm grateful that it doesn't matter what might happen if I can't get any more loans, because that's not an issue right now. That's a bridge I'll cross if I need to, and I don't know that I'll ever need to cross it. There are people who watch my stream who could easily loan me $10,000 at a low interest rate. There's so much money in the world, and it's my responsibility to say thank you for what I do have.
It's amazing how much, with me focusing on gratitude, I've been seeing, wow, I have so much. A lot of these little things I take for granted. Thank you for the shower head. Thank you for the shower head I have that can adjust for different water pressures so the water comes out twice as fast. I remember when that was something I was focused on and really wanted to fix.
A grateful alcoholic will not drink
Someone asked what advice I have for Stuttering John, who they said is going bankrupt after losing a lot of money in a lawsuit. I don't know that I'm the best person to give advice to someone else, but the best advice I have for anyone today is what I'm doing myself. Say thank you. Say I'm grateful as many times as possible. Focus on gratitude, because, like we say in Alcoholics Anonymous, a grateful alcoholic will not drink. That's a big part of why I still go to meetings, which I wrote about in Why I Keep Going To Alcoholics Anonymous After 8 Years Sober. When I say thank you for being sober today, thank you for every single super chat, then I'm filtering my reality for more things to be grateful for.
Here's what I've noticed. Some of the messages in the chat today have been things I would have banned people for before. But I'm on a frequency of gratitude, so if you're not on that frequency, I'm just not responding. I'm even laughing and having fun with some of those people. I'm even thankful for the toxic negative comments, because some of them are making other people laugh, helping people who feel the same way relate, and bringing more people into the stream.
When I'm on a frequency of gratitude, I tend to find more things to be grateful for. I pay attention to a super chat, so I'm grateful for the super chat, so then there are more super chats, and then I'm grateful for those, and then there are more. When I say I'm grateful for this date tonight, then I get more dates. When I start talking negative and toxic, then the dates I have don't work out and I stop getting dates. So the best any of us can do, to me, is focus on getting our positive EQ up there.
Someone told me Jim and Them is pop culture, bro, and I looked it up. It's a pop culture and comedy podcast based out of Las Vegas hosted by Jim, Mike, and Jeff. I had not heard of them before.
Taping my mouth shut on the negative
This has felt like a bit of work for me, going through and saying thank you well over four hundred times. And yet I remembered when I was really annoyed with head colds a few years ago. I was saying I'll do whatever it takes to stop having head colds. Then my friend gave me the book Breath, and I was willing to read the whole book, to buy mouth tape, and to tape my mouth shut at night so I wouldn't mouth-breathe. That kind of willingness is the same thing I described in I'm Sad — and Then I'm Willing to Change. I thought, this gratitude practice is the equivalent of taping my mouth shut on all the negative comments that keep coming out of it.
Somebody said yesterday that I talk a lot of negative about my ex-wife. I do, and this is where I diverge from the people who are obsessively positive-thinking all the time. There is a place to be negative. Instead of saying thank you for those dudes on Microsoft Teams, that was a place to say, F you, get out of here, I'm not doing anything with you guys. But what's important for me is that in about 90 percent of my life there's every reason to say thank you. So right now I'm doing the equivalent of taping my mouth shut on those negative comments. About 90 percent of what I should be saying about my ex-wife should be thank you.
Ninety percent of what I have for my ex-wife is gratitude
Thank you for an ex-wife who I didn't have to fight about anything. Thank you for an ex-wife who is cooperatively parenting my children. Thank you for an ex-wife I feel safe with having the kids, who takes care of them. Thank you for an ex-wife who's found somebody she's dating, is happy, and is able to spread that happiness around, and maybe I'll be able to meet the guy soon. Thank you for an ex-wife I had fifteen awesome years with, who helped motivate me to get sober and get healthy, and who inspired me to get on YouTube. When we started hanging out, I got so much inspiration. She unlocked the next level in my life. I'm extremely grateful for my ex-wife. About 90 percent of what I have for her is gratitude, but since the divorce, over the last year, way too much of my energy has been going toward the negative.
I'm very grateful for an ex-wife who is still a good family member. I'm grateful for an ex-wife who helped me set this whole house up. The couch I have in here is from her house. Some of the furniture is from her house. She helped me find the dining room table that's in the living room. About half the stuff I have in the kitchen is from her. Even though she took more of the money, she said, I believe in you. You can make hundreds of thousands a year. I've seen you do it, and you're going to do it. Maybe it helped her to say that when it came time to get divorced so she wouldn't have to pay any child support. She said, you have an earning capacity of at least $9,000 a month, I've seen it, and if you try to claim less than that I'm going to argue with the figures. It's like if I were a doctor, I'd have the earning capacity of a doctor whether or not I was working. So I'm grateful for an ex-wife who said, I've seen you earn lots of money and this is what you can do, who believed in me when I was really down on myself.
What if I'm wrong about everything?
Someone sent 20 Mexican pesos, which I appreciated, and asked: what if you're wrong about everything? How would you fix it? Where I see that I've been wrong is this. I'm swimming in gold, baby. I have so much. And I was going around being ungrateful and toxic. That's being wrong about everything. I saw that I was wrong about everything today. I've talked so much junk about the Queen, and what I should have been saying is thank you for her. Thank you for that week we had, the best week I had all year. Thank you for helping me see how I can improve at dating. Thank you to the Queen for helping me see where my words did not match my actions. Thank you for showing me what it's possible for me to feel about a woman.
That's why I cried in yoga today. I realized that I'm walking around swimming in gold, living an amazing life, with all these banks lending me money because they trust me. They trust me based on the numbers.
That bank trust is fully automated. Because of the numbers I've put up in the past, they trust me. I've always repaid my loans, and based on the numbers they have, they trust me. So thank you to all these banks for trusting me to borrow money.
If being wrong about everything means anything, it means living in fear, when so many of the things most of us are afraid of never even happen. I've spent some time in fear. What if I have to give this house up? What if I can't make it financially? That has never happened in my whole life. I went through that exact fork in My Mind Went to Fear, But I Chose Faith, and the faith side keeps winning on the evidence. Some people have said, oh, you're financially unstable. I have never missed a meal that I didn't choose to miss by fasting. I've always had a place to live. I've always paid every single payment, every single obligation I've had my entire life, no matter how much money I was making. For the last fourteen years I have done work for myself. I haven't had to work for anybody else. That's actually a lot of stability. No matter what my situation has been, I have always had enough.
I have always had enough to give
I have consistently supported other people, even with the amount of debt I have today. I watched my friend Dave the Mad Traveler's video, and I donated $100 to a pastor in one of the most dangerous areas of South Africa. I sent him $100 on PayPal today because he's doing valuable work, and $100 will be very meaningful for him there. He put it to work right away, feeding people and doing very, very valuable work. And I don't notice $100 at this point. To be clear, the money I've sent to South Africa so far has not gone to the woman I'm talking with there. It went to a guy from Dave's videos whom he met in person, and to the pastor in that neighborhood.
Someone suggested I keep my Supertip link up so I can keep 90 percent of the chat money, and yes. If you want me to get the money in my bank account within a week and keep 90 percent instead of the 50 or 60 percent that comes through YouTube, you can use Supertip. Thank you to each of you who has used it. When you first sign up it might seem like a new, weird thing you don't know how to do, but once you go to supertip.gg/JerryBanfield and do it the first time, it's super easy after that.
I'm grateful that I have the mental health today where I'm okay. I'm okay with everybody who disagrees, and I can hold the space that people feeling very strongly is a very positive thing. The worst thing is apathy. Somebody made me laugh by suggesting the Freemasons, because I know right where the local Freemason lodge is and I know a guy who's a member, but I'm good, bro.
And crying is extremely healthy. I had a great cry in yoga today.
The hypothetical where I can't borrow and every decision is wrong
Someone sent 50 Mexican pesos and asked me to explore a hypothetical scenario: what if next year I can't get more loans from anyone and every decision I make is wrong? How would I fix my life? I imagine the other assumption in there is that I'm also not making more money in my business. So first, the business. I'm very grateful that the income I've been earning in my business has been going up by big percentages. It was zero in January, close to zero, maybe a hundred dollars, zero rounded to the nearest thousand. Zero in February. Zero in March. Then in April we got to around a thousand. In May, maybe around a thousand or two thousand. June, around two thousand or so. July, around two to three thousand. August, three to four thousand, and the Queen video was half of it. September hit higher numbers. And this month it's around $5,000 in the last 28 days. My business income, thanks to you and the people watching with you and my other channels, has continued to go up, sometimes by big percentages. It could keep going, especially with the super chats, the crypto videos, the sponsorships, the people watching, and the opportunities that I'm open to when I'm grateful.
But fine, take the whole hypothetical: no more loans and the business goes nowhere. I don't know exactly what I'd do. I'd take my studio to whoever let me park it in their house and do videos at their house. I'd still see my kids. They might have to stay at my ex's house every night, but I'd see them and do more school pickups. If that's how things worked out, I would park the studio in someone's house, unload this house, cut my expenses, put all the money I made from my business toward what I owe, and just not have my own place. I'd crash with somebody and keep going.
So to me, this is a story. Fixed versus broken. I am extremely grateful for my life today as it is. There's not going to be a scenario I ever see again where my life is broken. The way I broke my life before was poisoning myself with alcohol, gambling, and destroying myself. As long as I don't destroy myself, I don't see a scenario where every decision I make is wrong, from my point of view. What's beautiful is that I refuse to make myself wrong. The more I affirm I am grateful, the more I say thank you for everything I have today and thank you for all of you watching, the clearer it gets: the most wrong thing I could do is to not be grateful for everything I've got. As long as I'm grateful, my life will never need fixing. And I'm sure there are people who will help me, as people have always helped me and I'm always helping other people. There are people all over the world I could stay with and move this studio in with. If I couldn't afford this anymore, I'd just move in with somebody. I've certainly thought about that a good bit.
Accents, podcasts, and saying yes a thousand times
Someone asked whether I can impersonate a South African accent. My attempt: Jerry Banfield is the best in the world, yeah? That came out kind of German, really, and not very well. Not yet. Maybe someday. I watch Jerry Banfield every day. I love Jerry Banfield. I will show him to everybody in South Africa.
Another viewer asked whether I've ever listened to the Gary and Dino podcast, the former producer and call screener for the Tom Leykis show, who they said are the best. I have not. I'm pretty selective about who I watch, so I usually limit it and try not to look through the home feed much. I searched for the Gary and Dino Show on YouTube and the newest thing was four years ago. Why don't they have anything new on YouTube? But thank you for the suggestion.
I remember I did a video about six years ago where I said, if you could just say yes a thousand times in a day, your entire life would change. I've noticed that the energy of saying thank you is the energy of saying yes. The energy of criticizing and attacking people is the energy of no. The energy of no does need to be used sometimes. But yes is where I'm living today.
One of the people I wrote a thank-you to on my whiteboard is Ashley Cummings, because I was wanting a woman to enjoy my YouTube and reach out and talk to me, and Ashley did that immediately, as soon as I thought of it. Talking to Ashley has been extremely validating, and I've enjoyed the live streams we've done. The dating live stream we did on my dating channel helped me see how to be friends with women. I can't be friends with women if I'm not going to be saying thank you for women. Thank you that women are different from men in ways that are attractive and fun. Thank you for women. And thank you that people look different all over the world. Thank you for the different ways all of us look, because if we all looked like me, it'd be so boring.
Someone said they'd like to give money to YouTube itself. You can hit the super chat, or I'm sure there's Google stock you can buy if you really want to give some money to them.
Letting the chat go
You can see the difference when I say thank you. I actually unbanned everybody again today, and I just let the chat go. I focus on saying thank you. I spend the most time on the people who've given super chats, but everyone can talk about whatever they want. The people I'm most grateful for are the ones with supportive chat, who are saying positive things and super chatting, because that's validation and that's attention. But I'm grateful for everybody here. Even the people who are criticizing are still pushing buttons on YouTube's algorithm. Every time, YouTube's like, good, people like this guy's stream, someone's watching this, good. And it makes the chat more interesting.
Nobody Has Bought a Review Yet, and That Is Fine
Someone pointed out that with my educational and career background, reacting to a true crime case would be hugely popular. So I probably should be careful about what I say I will and will not react to. The honest truth is I have not seen anything that was difficult for me to react to yet, because nobody has bought a personal video review so far. I say thank you to Claude anyway for helping me build that whole thing out, because the page exists, the checkout works, and the first person who sends me a video is going to get my full attention.
The thank-you background on my stream is not decoration. I wrote thank you to Ashley Cummings. I wrote thank you to the podcasts that have had me on. I wrote thank you to Roxy. I wrote thank you to MaxFi. I wrote thank you to the ICP community. I wrote thank you for each of you subscribing, for liking, for chatting, for sharing, for becoming a member, and for super chatting. Nobody has become a member on their own in a little while, and I am thankful for the members who are still here. That wall is what I have to focus on. Look at all of that support. Do you know how many people could go live today and nobody would watch them? Nobody would super chat them. What is happening here is unusual. The support you are all giving me and the time you are spending here is unusual, and I mean that one hundred percent. Thank you for being you.
One of my very top supporters from the ICP community dropped in during the stream and I noticed a word I did not recognize, which turned out to be Afrikaans. In Afrikaans you say "dankie," which sounds very close to the German "danke." I asked whether it is pronounced the same as the German or just looks similar, because I love learning how different people say thank you. Every language I can say it in is one more way to put the word into my day.
Why a Clear Target Makes the Habit Stick
Someone said that a hundred dollars of gratitude angle lasts less than forty-eight hours, meaning this whole thing will fade by the weekend. What helps me is having a very clear target and very clear objectives. Here is the comparison that gives me confidence. When I started taping my mouth shut at night to stop mouth breathing, it took about a month of taping every single night. Eventually my body just got in the habit of keeping my mouth closed. Now I do not have to tape it at all, and I do not mouth breathe while I sleep. It took about a month.
So what I intend to do with this clear target of one thousand thank-yous a day, spoken aloud or written down, is repeat it for a month or two. By then my brain is going to be so locked into positive thinking, so used to saying thank you, that negativity becomes something I use selectively and carefully instead of by default. You can already see it in my chat. I do not need to be fighting people in my chat. I do not need to be banning people. I can just say thank you to everyone, regardless of what they have to say. Even if I disagree with what you have to say, thank you anyway.
I intend to get this gratitude locked in until it is laser focused and habitual, because at this point I have had habitual negativity that was programmed in through repetition, and it is time to stop that. Enough negativity. Enough feeling like what I do all the time is not good enough. Enough feeling like I am never getting enough. Look how much I am getting. Ninety-six people watching while I write on a whiteboard. So many messages in the chat, so many super chats, so many super tips. That is enough. That is more than enough.
Positive Intelligence
A couple of months ago a guy had this exact conversation with me about positive intelligence. I even read a whole book about positive intelligence, and when I finished it I said, "I don't need that." I see now that the one thing I most need to do for myself is get my positive intelligence up. What is sad is to watch somebody with real problem-solving intelligence piss it away with a low positive intelligence quotient, using their brain and wasting it on being upset. That has been me.
I am very grateful to this guy. My friend referred him to me and he talked to me from Germany one day for free. He walked me through positive intelligence, and then he tried to sell me a coaching program that cost several thousand dollars. I said no, thank you, because I can just do the work. I can do the exercises every day myself to pump gratitude into my life. And part of why I am doing it this way is that I want to show you things you can easily replicate. You do not need a several-thousand-dollar program to say thank you a thousand times. You need a marker and a whiteboard, or your own voice. YouTube has its own rules about what can be said on here, and I did not censor anybody today for mentioning other shows. At this point I can do the exercise, and it is up to me to repeatedly do it enough to get my mind locked into positive emotions and positive emotional intelligence.
Ninety Percent Gratitude, Ten Percent Let's Fix This
Some negativity is healthy. Picture being in the worst environment in the world and being totally positive. You would look insane. Sometimes the right response is, "No, these people need to be stopped, and we are going to stop them." I am in the USA, and yes, there are places to have a tiny bit of negativity and yes, we can do better. But at the same time we have running water. We have food. We have so much. It is the same thing I was getting at in You're Richer Than You Think: most of us are walking around with more than almost anyone in history and feeling poor about it. So for me the ratio should be about ninety percent gratitude and ten percent "let's fix this." I am not one of these people who should be one hundred percent agreeable. Ninety percent is the number.
Someone brought up the woman I called the queen, and I had a thought. What if she popped into a stream one day? If she had a username I recognized, that would be cool. I regretted the negative things I said about her. She is so nice, and looking back I can hear myself saying, "You shouldn't be talking about her that way."
If You Only Picked One Word
Somebody joked that I should say a racial slur a thousand times a day instead. It was one of the funniest super chats I have seen, and my honest question back is: of all the words I could say a thousand times a day, why would I pick that one? If you are going to pick a single word or phrase, and you want something even simpler than thank you, I might try this. The simplified version of the thank-you practice would be just saying "yes." Yes, a thousand times a day.
Here is where that idea came from, and I will keep it clean. One thing I noticed when I am pleasuring myself is that I say yes a lot. "Oh, yes." And I thought, what if I took that approach to the rest of my life? What if I said yes that much? Because the rest of my day is no. No, no, no. And then for a few minutes it is yes, yes, and then right back to no. Shouldn't the rest of the day be a yes also? I feel like if the rest of the day had that kind of yes in it, it would be a better day. Somewhere in there I realized I was grabbing my own backside while I talked, and some of the ladies in the chat said they wished they were the ones grabbing it. I wish you were too.
Congratulations are in order for Barry Janfield, one of the fan channels, for reaching a thousand subscribers. That is now multiple fan channels built around my content. I have his email address, and I forgot to email him back yesterday, so thank you to him for emailing me and I apologize for the slow reply. Now that I have his email, I can send it to YouTube and ask them to let this guy monetize off my content. If people want to build channels around what I make, I want them to get paid for it.
The Cost of Not Saying Thank You
Yes, it does seem a little daunting to say thank you a thousand times in a day. But the cost of not saying thank you a thousand times a day is so much higher. I cannot handle another moment in my mind complaining about the date I am about to have tonight. So I am going to say thank you a thousand times today, and I am going to hit a thousand before I walk out the door for this date. I swear, if I do not show up with the best attitude I am capable of, I am not posting another dating drama story. The deal I am making with myself is simple: show up with the best attitude I can bring, or do not come back here and complain about how it went.
A supporter sent an unusually kind super chat yesterday, and some people questioned whether it was legit or whether I had faked the super chat to myself. It was real. The same supporter made an AI thumbnail of me on supertip saying "avoid my mistakes," and that got me thinking about what my main mistake this year actually was. It was not saying thank you enough times. I have certainly had a lot of gratitude this year, but the critical mass is probably eighty or ninety percent. Can I be grateful eighty to ninety percent of the time? That is the test. And to everyone who greets the ICP family in my chat, yes, thank you all for being here.
So Much to Be Grateful For This Week
I have a comedy event I am going to on Saturday with Lindsay and Angela, which should be fun. Apparently some people are trying to meet up with me at Mons Venus as well. If anybody buys Officer Banfield, just make sure the download works. I might buy it myself just to confirm the delivery goes through. If you want to come to the comedy event with Angela and Lindsay, send me a direct message.
Look at what is on the calendar. I have a date scheduled for tonight in just a few hours. I am going to hang out with my kids for several hours. My son has a baseball game. I have a massage booked. I have an AA meeting to go to, and then actually two AA meetings. I am swimming in gold and dressed in gold. There is so much to be grateful for, and I am going to be grateful for every bit of it. Thank you for all of these AA meetings. Thank you for the massage. Thank you for the baseball game.
Then someone asked whether they could get signed copies of my books, including the one I wrote in a single sitting that I shared in I Wrote a Book in a Day. That question deserves a real answer.
Signed Copies of My Books
Right now I can easily do signed copies in the United States. International shipping for signed copies is the part I am not sure about, because I do not know exactly how I would handle it yet. The other question is what to charge, because there is real work in it. I have to buy the book first, and I think most of my books are five or ten dollars to print. It takes about a month for the printed copies to arrive in the first place. Then I sign them, then I have to take them to the post office. So how much should I charge for a signed copy of my book locally versus globally? I do not have the answer yet, but I am taking the question seriously, and if enough of you want them I will figure out the logistics.
The Attitude I Was Bringing to Tonight
The woman I am going out with tonight is looking for a guy to get married and have a family with. She is out here looking for the same thing I am. Having the opportunity for that is something to be excited about, and yet listen to how I was talking about it. I was telling a woman from South Africa about this date, and she was encouraging me to be more positive about it. I was so down. "Whatever. It's just a waste of time. There's no point in this. As soon as she sees my YouTube, she's not going to like me." What kind of attitude is that? You have to have a better attitude than that if you want to really enjoy life.
One of the saddest things I can see is someone having so much and not appreciating it. There are videos from Dave in South Africa showing some of the poorest squatter areas, and the conditions are so bad. It is easy to take all the nice things we have for granted and then go rant and rave about what is wrong. I am not immune to that at all. I am a case study in it.
Who We Really Are Is Love
I think who all of us really are is love. When I do not have an ego, which happens sometimes in the space between sleeping and waking, I just feel this love and joy and excitement about life. Then I wake up fully, and what feels like baggage is the unnecessary negative thinking. I would say maybe ten percent of negative thinking is useful. You could be toxically optimistic about crossing the street with your eyes shut, and that would not be the place to be optimistic. Some of the people who cross the street around here seem to take exactly that approach, and most of the time they do not get hit, but that is not where positivity belongs. The other ninety percent of my negativity is just baggage.
Sober Twelve and a Half Years
I am sober, so I have no desire to alter my state either. I have been sober twelve and a half years now, and being sober means I am sensitive. My moods naturally take me into elevated states. I get naturally high, and I get low. Because it is natural, there is a safe zone around it. I get really high and euphoric, but I can still drive a car safely. I get really down and depressed, but I can still easily take care of my kids, and most of the time I can still make videos. When you start using alcohol and drugs, you take yourself out of the safe zone. You go way, way too high, and then you smash past the safe zone on the depressed side, and that is where the bad things happen. I know because I lived it, and I told some of those stories in 3 Drunken Stories. It is just nuts.
Why I Cried Last Night
In that rough neighborhood in South Africa, kids are getting hooked on drugs. I cried last night. To me, a sign that my heart is open is that I am able to cry. I should be able to cry with joy and gratitude, and I should be able to cry with sadness. Last night I cried with sadness picturing my son. My son is eight years old. He is such a happy boy. He is playing baseball, he is having so much fun, he is so healthy, and he has an awesome life. And there are little boys his age who are gangbanging. Not just in South Africa but all over the world, there are eight-year-old boys hooked on drugs and running with gangs. It is so sad.
If that does not make you sad enough to cry, it is usually because you are picturing it being someone else's little boy. Picture it being your little boy who is hooked on drugs, who is packing heat on the street, ready to shoot somebody at eight years old. That is so crazy. I just want to throw myself out at the world and say, "What can I do to help with that?" It is the same place I ended up in When the World Feels Hopeless, Give Value to People: the only answer I have ever found to that kind of sadness is to go be useful to somebody.
In one of those videos a woman was asked when she got hooked on drugs. Her drug use got really bad when her kids were taken away. Before that it was just a little bit to cope with getting through the day. Then her kids were taken, and then she was hooked. Can't we all work together on this? So I am really grateful that I am sober and that I do not take any drugs. Whatever you need to do is up to you. You are a grown person, I imagine. For me, the ideal way to live is with no mind-altering substances, because my mind goes far enough out on its own without anything to alter it.
Who Took the Photos on My Website
Someone asked who took the photos on my website. My wife at the time took some of them. For the photos of the queen first date shirt and the VIP night outfit, I actually set the camera up myself and used the timer. Most of the photos on my website I took myself that way. The picture on the personal video review page was taken by Angela. The photo of the one I am wearing today I took with my own camera on a timer, and the others came straight from the stream. The gold satin shirt is available, and I am going to wear it until somebody buys it. Somebody is going to buy this as an awesome Jerry Banfield souvenir shirt, and I am excited to see who it is. Maybe nobody will buy it. We shall see. I will keep it up there either way. Someone in the chat said to keep wearing it every stream and somebody will buy it for sure. We shall see.
We were up to 111 viewers at this point, and I am so grateful for every one of them. I intend to make a fantastic show. Someone asked about a super chat I had not read, and I checked, because I have been hearting and liking every super chat. If YouTube filtered it out, YouTube will be happy to give you a refund; I cannot issue refunds myself because YouTube handles all of that. Someone else announced they wished to wash their iris, and by all means, do it. Someone asked whether I know Ray DeVito, and I do not. Someone asked whether this was the first yoga stream with Ashley, and I was happy to read that one back.
A New Pair of Glasses
One commenter wrote, "I love how sad and mentally unwell you look in your selfies." That is a perfect example of how your filter on reality colors your perception. What he is saying is valid from his point of view. But if I go around with an everything-sucks, saying-no mindset, then everything I look at is colored by that. Everything gets covered up by it. A guy from AA named Chuck C. wrote a book called A New Pair of Glasses, and that is exactly the idea. That is why I am lasering in on a thousand or more thank-yous a day. I am grateful. I say thank you. I am appreciative of the 114 viewers who were here by then.
When I look at life through the lens of gratitude, what I see is filtered through gratitude. Today the comments are being filtered through gratitude. No matter what the comments are, they pass through gratitude on the way in. But on the live streams where I have been in the energy of "it's not enough, I don't like myself, I'm in fear," I was filtering the comments through that. Then I was using the arbitrary little power of banning people to feel better. This is so obvious, and at the same time it is so important. Somebody else told me to ask a woman about her sister's staff of paid gang stalkers, and I am not sure what I can say about that, so thank you and we will leave it there.
Pinning the Tip Link
A regular commenter pointed out that I needed a tip link people could click directly in the chat. That was a good idea, so I posted a tip link and pinned the message. It worked. Once it was pinned, it seemed redundant to also have the other link up at the top of the screen, so I rearranged the layout and centered the pinned message horizontally. Now the tip link can stay pinned for the whole stream. Thank you for helping me help myself. I really appreciate when people tell me how other creators do it, because I do not always notice.
"I Think You're Crazy, But I Love Your Honesty"
Then came a message that summed up a lot of my audience: "I think you're crazy, but I love your honesty and I'm really wishing you the best in life." I appreciate that so much. I am grateful for so many of the people who have come here, because the first impression many of you had of me was negative. People called me a jerk. People called me crazy. People made fun of me and laughed at me. And I am happy about that. If I can do something that facilitates laughter in the world, then I am accomplishing my purpose, because I think laughter is one of the best things we can engage in. If we can laugh about the worst things in life, we can get through them. If we can laugh at our mistakes, laugh at our failures, and laugh at our pain, then life is going to be good.
So I am extremely grateful for all of you who came here with a negative first impression of me and stayed anyway. You might still think I am crazy, but you appreciate the honesty and you are rooting for me. Isn't that an amazing thing, that so many people can discover me in a context like that and stick around? First impressions are powerful.
Working Past a First Impression
Lots of times the first impression we have of someone is very difficult to change. Many of you came in with a first impression that I am crazy, that I am a loser, that I am a bad father, that I suck at dating, and all the other things people have said about me. And yet so many of you have worked through that first impression to get to a place where you think, "Wow, this guy's kind of cool," or "I'm rooting for him," or "I can relate." That is amazing, and I do not take it for granted. It felt like such a natural ending that I joked about signing off right there, "Thank you so much for watching, I'll see you next time, bye," but we were nowhere near done, and I still had hundreds of thank-yous to write before the date.
I will keep the tip link pinned in the chat from now on, and I have been extra vigilant about reading the super chats and going over to heart and like every single one, so that every person who sends one knows I saw it and paid attention to it. I try to read as many of the regular chat messages as possible too. I do not respond to every one of them, but I do read as many as I can. If you took the time to type something to me, the least I can do is actually look at it, and the people who send money deserve to know for certain that it landed.
The Canine Tooth and the Camera
Someone said they really liked my upper canine tooth, so I zoomed the camera in to show it off, and then kept going to see how far the camera would zoom. It zooms in a lot. Look at that camera quality. Look at the lens quality. Haters, get on my level, because this camera is so nice. My face filled the entire frame, which was a little too close. That was the kiss camera right there, so I backed it up to a distance where you could see more than one tooth.
Someone asked whether I am gay. Some days I have wished I was gay, but I am not gay. I like dudes a little bit, but ninety percent of me is just nuts for women.
Why I Am Paying for a House So My Ex Can Have Nights Off
Someone asked whether the whole point of keeping the house is so that my ex-wife can look after the kids. The whole point of having this house is so that my ex-wife can actually enjoy time without having the kids all the time. So I am paying thousands of dollars a month, and borrowing money, so that it is easier for my ex-wife to go spend time with her boyfriend. That is how much of an amazing guy I am. I am borrowing money so my kids can be so comfortable here that they love being here, which means my ex gets several nights a week to herself and her new relationship. What an amazing guy I am. Thank you to me for being so considerate to my ex-wife.
Someone said my audio is perfect, and I am grateful for that, because I am grateful for my Rodecaster Duo and my RE20 microphone. I cannot stand bad audio, and mine sounds so nice. Thank you to the gear. I have listened to too many streams where the picture is fine and the sound is unbearable, and I refuse to be one of them.
Some people call what I am doing being cucked. You can call it whatever you want to. I call it this: my ex is always going to be one of the loves of my life. It is just that now there is going to be at least one more love of my life, hopefully just one more. But my ex will always be one of them, and I want her to be happy, even if that means she is getting that happiness somewhere else. I hope it is good. I am looking forward to meeting this dude. If there is something I can learn from him, I am always happy to learn. And for the record, my eyes are hazel.
Cheaper, Shorter Calls With Fans?
Someone suggested I offer cheaper, short calls with fans and then post videos of them, because some would be hilarious at my expense. I am sure they would. Here is my experience with that. I did a Cameo for twenty-five dollars, and everybody who rated it gave five stars, but the time it took did not work out to a great hourly earning. Maybe I will test putting Cameo-style videos out again, but the problem is I do not want to do third-party platforms anymore. I want everything on my own website, where I set the terms, nobody takes a cut, and the person buying deals directly with me.
I also tried scheduling shorter calls. If I charge the same hourly rate I charge now, a ten-minute call is my hourly rate divided by six, which came out to about sixty dollars. If somebody wants to pay sixty dollars for a ten-minute call with me, I am down to test it. I need to put that in my notes somewhere. The challenge, which I learned when I had cheaper calls before, is that a ten-minute call never actually takes ten minutes. By the time you get on, get settled, and wrap up, it takes longer, and so I would want to charge even more for it, and the same person who made the suggestion said that would be too much. That is the tension. I have a certain amount of time available, and the calls could make good content, but the math has to work, and so far every version of the short call I have tried either underpays the time or costs more than people want to spend.
What I do have right now is the personal video review. You can send me a twenty-minute video, I will put it on double speed, react to it, and make a video about it. That gives people the reaction content they are asking for without me scheduling a dozen ten-minute calls. And I certainly would not let myself get roasted by somebody for ten minutes for twenty bucks or something. Someone asked how much it costs for both of us to be shirtless on the call, and the answer is it is the same price. Although I generally offer free calls to women who are interested in dating me, so that might be a loophole in my whole system. If you want the regular version, a paid call is on my website.
Are My Ex-Wife and Kids Better Off Without Me?
Someone asked whether I think my ex-wife and kids are better off without me. I think we are having a better life living separately, where my ex has the house to herself several days a week. I have my kids Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights, and she can do whatever she wants when the kids are not around. Then she has the kids the other days, and sometimes we adjust so I take a weekend day or a Sunday when one of us needs it. But if you are asking in the bigger context, whether my kids are better off without me, absolutely not. My kids love me so much. I am a huge positive influence in their lives, and they are learning so much from me.
They used to get sick a lot, and I have shown my kids how to be as healthy as I am. I have helped my kids learn to play with each other without getting into fights. I have shown them that I can parent them and play with them without the fear-based, threatening style of discipline that I did not like my ex using. I remember arguing with her: "Stop threatening our children." Stop telling them that if they do not do this, then you will take away that. You do not need to do that when you are parenting. We would argue about it and she would just keep doing it. I am very grateful that now I am able to parent my kids without threatening them. I lead them by example and I love them, and they respond to that far better than they ever responded to threats.
My kids are the two most important people to me on this earth. Whichever woman I have more kids with will be the third, and maybe over time she slides into the number one place. My ex is still a very important person to me. She likes to say that no one is rooting for me more than she is, and I believe her. She wants me to have a great life too. She does not want me to disappear, and she does not want me to move to another country. When I told her I wanted to move up to Michigan to be near my family, she did not want me to go. She wanted me here for the kids all the time. She has a full-time job and a side hustle, so she needs the help I provide with the kids. So no, I am very much a positive, hugely impactful part of my kids' lives.
The Hot Bartender Who Applied to Play Video Games
Someone asked whether I would do a gaming live stream with a hired escort. Here is the story that question reminded me of. When I was blowing up on Facebook Gaming, I would have hundreds of thousands of views on a lot of my live streams, and I wanted to get some women into the streams to increase my click-through rate. I kept begging my ex: please get on the live stream, please do the stream with me. And she kept saying no. No, no, no. I had a stream that was already doing huge numbers, and I was convinced that having a woman next to me on camera would make it do even bigger numbers.
So I finally posted a job on Facebook in St. Pete. I said I was looking to hire people to play video games with me. I was offering at least thirty-five dollars an hour, maybe even fifty, because I was making bank on Facebook Gaming at the time. Within twenty-four hours, a really hot local bartender who also did modeling applied. This was legit, not some scam profile. She said which bar she worked at. A bunch of dudes applied too, but this hot local bartender applied within a day.
I told my wife about it. I said, "All right, so I'm going to be having people over to the house to play video games." She said, "What? I'll make you a deal. If you pull that job posting and don't have anybody else over to play games, I'll play with you." And that is how I finally got my ex on the live stream. There is a fan channel called Jerry Banfield Gaming that still has some of those streams with us up. But no, I would not pay hundreds of dollars an hour to do a gaming live stream with an escort. I did, however, find someone once, and that story has a very specific price tag attached to it.
The $700-an-Hour Chess Player
There was one woman whose profile talked about wanting to play board games and chess. If I were ever going to pay for company, she would probably be the one I would choose or reach out to. I found her almost a year ago, and I still have not reached out at any point, because, well, it was seven hundred dollars an hour. And depending on all the context, there could potentially be legal complications. So there is that. What I actually want is to find the next mother of my kids. If I were going to be with a woman who is not going to end up being my future wife and the mother of my kids, the context I would enjoy that in is with women who love my YouTube channel, who love what I do for work. I like my fans, and I could give back to my fans that way. But ideally, I would just like to find the future mother of my children. That is what I am really looking for.
For what it is worth, the live streaming studio back then was a standalone shed in the backyard, so technically I could have brought the bartender around through the back gate without anyone walking through the house. I wanted more views, more videos, and more money on Facebook Gaming, which seems kind of silly now, because I made a hundred thousand dollars in 2021 streaming on Facebook Gaming. It seems silly that I wanted to make even more than that. But I have consistently been willing to do what it takes. And some of the live streams with my wife did awesome on Facebook Gaming. We played Mario Kart. We played a couple of different Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. We had fun, and it was a nice activity to do together.
Someone said that if you know what you are doing, you can use debt as a tool. Exactly. That is how I think about the house. Someone else wanted to know which shirt is in the rotation for the date tonight. I am definitely not wearing the Mons Venus shirt. I think I am going to wear my kind of boring corporate clothes, because it is a dinner and I might as well. And someone told me they found their wife on Facebook Gaming. Really? That is awesome. I definitely need to hear that story.
The Life Coach, GoldenEye, and Running Around the Park Yelling "I'm Free"
Keep in mind that the only reason my wife ever got in the videos is because I had asked her a whole bunch of times and finally said I was going to bring other people over, men and women. And I did bring some dudes over. I brought home the life coach I paid a hundred dollars an hour in 2020. My wife was really mad about that. She said, "You have just destroyed us financially. I had to liquidate all my savings and investments to bail you out, and now you're paying this guy a hundred dollars an hour to life coach you." She was not wrong about the money. But that guy and I ran around the park yelling "I'm free," and it was worth it.
The next year, that same guy came over and we made somewhere between three thousand and thirty-six hundred dollars live streaming GoldenEye on Facebook Gaming. Most of it came in as ad revenue afterwards, but he and I got on there and played GoldenEye, and I whooped him up and down that game so hard. He thought he was good at it. I whooped him so badly he was embarrassed, but he was such a cool dude. His name was James. I think I edited a clip of that stream for Jerry Banfield Games. It was such a fun live stream. He came over and we played some other games too, and those streams printed money.
That is when I thought, okay, what I need is more people over here playing games, and especially a hot bartender, because that click-through rate was going to be nuts. My first choice was always to get my wife on there, but she was not being cooperative. So I said, look, I have a business. This is about making money and getting viewership. You can put aside what you do not like or do not agree with so we can make some more money. And it worked, in its way.
None of this is me knocking her. My ex-wife is an amazing woman. I am very grateful for my ex-wife. That is why I married her. We grew apart, which is okay. She has a new boyfriend who is filling the role I used to fill, and that is okay too, because I am going to have a new woman, and I am enjoying the women I am talking to now. I am excited to go out on this date later, and I have totally changed my attitude from this morning.
The Hands-On Assist That Opened the Floodgates
One thing that helped me change that attitude is what happened at yoga today. Some yoga studios do hands-on assists, and the instructor today did one. This is part of what helped me cry. She put her hands right on my waist and was adjusting one of my warrior poses. According to Lindsay, my massage therapist, the pelvis often holds on to sadness. So I had the yoga instructor put her hands right on the tips of my pelvis today, and yes, the sadness and the crying started right after that. But the sadness and the crying led me to see what I need to do. I need to raise my positive intelligence, like my friend's friend told me several months ago, and I am going to do that by saying thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you for that. I am grateful. Somewhere around here I passed five hundred thank-yous on my whiteboard.
Someone pointed out that, to be fair, I got there first with my ex. And no matter what this new dude gets to have with her, if he does not get to have kids with her, I got the best of it, because to me having kids with a woman is the best experience the two of you are going to have together. Although maybe dying together is up there too. If you hold hands in bed and peacefully pass away together, that might compete. Is he going to be with her in the afterlife, or is she going to have both of us up there? I do not know, and we are not going to need to worry about that today. I already had a really good cry, and yes, the pelvis does hold it all in. It is so nice to have it out.
Will the New Woman Be Better Than the Old One?
Someone said my new woman will be better than my old woman. Here is how I think about it. Whoever the new queen ends up being, my ex had maybe ten or twenty percent of traits I would call negatives, and some of those did not match so well with me. I would like to think the ten or twenty percent of negatives the real queen has will match very well with mine. I would like to think I will be a better match with the next woman. Now, I do not know if the next woman will be as hot as the last one. The woman in South Africa looks very attractive on video chat. I do not know what the woman tonight will look like, and I do not know what the real queen will look like. I have talked to a lot of very attractive women this year, and most of the women I have gone out with have been as attractive as my ex. But I am okay dating a woman who is not as attractive as my ex. I am very interested in how our personalities are compatible.
What Actually Turns Me On Now
Someone asked whether I have ever done a love-making-themed live stream and wanted some tips. To me, the magic is that you really love and care about the person you are with. That is what really turns me on now: having a friendship and caring about a woman. When I was in my twenties, that stuff did not matter. I just wanted to have sex, and it was mostly superficial. Now I am really attracted to the way a woman speaks to me and validates me, talks a little dirty to me, sends me pictures, and wants me to lust after her. That is a huge turn-on, and it was missing for a lot of the marriage. It was certainly there in the beginning. My attraction now is about how much the woman respects me and how much I respect her. The connection is much more important to me than it used to be.
Angela, who I hired for dating coaching, told me I should put six feet on my dating app profiles. I said, "I'm five eleven. I'm not six feet. It's dishonest. It's trifling." She said, "Come on, you're five eleven, just put six feet." I said no, because I do not want to be with a woman who filters for dudes six feet and over. That is a woman who is going to be too superficial for me.
Someone asked what if the new queen turns out to be a dude. I was going to say zero percent chance, maybe one percent, but no, there is no way the new queen is a dude. The most I could picture with a guy is a short hookup. For marriage and family, a dude is not what I need. It is like putting two batteries together at the positive ends: nothing happens. I need a woman.
The Right Woman Is Turned On by Me Crying
The right kind of woman is turned on by me crying. The woman I called the queen, the one from the $2,000 queen video, was very turned on by me crying. Not crying like "life is so hard," but me crying out of love and setting a clear intention. She got very turned on and snuggled up to me and put her hand on my thigh. That was on our third date, when we were out at coffee. She got very turned on, and then she cried a little bit herself after that. So the woman who is going to be my queen will love my emotions. As the queen herself put it, "Finally, a man with emotions." She said she could not stand being with men who do not have emotions, because then she has to bottle hers up all the time and keep a straight face. She said, "With you, I can just express my feelings." And I love that.
Unfortunately, there were complications. There were issues on both ends, and I found myself writing "thank you for her" on my whiteboard a lot of times today. Meeting her was one of the biggest character-building exercises I have done all year. The last time I saw her, she was talking about how she likes to push and test men physically, to see how much stamina and endurance they have. My reaction was: you pushed me to emotional limits that nobody else pushed me to all year. Being so warm and so loving and then just canceling a date, not making time to talk to me, and pulling away. That was brutal. She pushed me to my emotional limits, and getting pushed to those limits was valuable exercise. Now my emotional limits are wider. As I wrote in Never Say You're Busy Again, whether someone makes time for you tells you almost everything, and I felt that lesson from the receiving end this time.
On the crying question: yes, if you are a stranger, crying is certainly too much. But if you are dating someone, it is awesome. Some women go nuts for a sensitive guy. Other women do not. And this is what I love communicating: not all women are the same. Not all men are the same. People are different, and that is what is nice about it. Some women love a sensitive man. Other women do not. You need to realize that in life.
The worst advice I got while I was married
One of the worst pieces of advice I got when I was married and struggling and asking for help came from some of the same people who gave me great advice. The worst piece of advice was "all women are the same." No, they are not. There are some women who are so different from other women that you would have a hard time reconciling that they have anything in common, that there is any word that could somehow include both of them.
I read a book about a mom who betrayed her children in the worst possible way you could imagine. This mom was so horrible that reading the book made me want to throw up. It is hard to imagine a mother that bad. And I have met women in person who have told me similar things about their own mothers, and I just think, that is so hard. Comparing some women like that to my ex, my ex is an absolute saint and an angel in every way next to women who have done the worst possible betrayals to their children. Often we carry this idea that men are bad and women are good. The reality is that there are some women who are on trial, where you have seen what they have done, and there are many men who have laid their lives down and sacrificed and given everything for other people. Any time you make a statement that says women do not like this or men do not like that, it is automatically wrong. Now, maybe some of you mean that most women do not like a guy who cries, and when you say "women don't like a guy that cries," you realize it does not mean every woman. But I think the distinction is important.
No, I do not want to date a woman who is on trial. I had one woman I had been on several dates with, and a big turnoff with her was that she had active felony charges pending. She was still doing some of the same things she had done to get involved in those charges. There was not enough distance between how she was living when she got the charges and how she was living today. Even though she tried to make it sound like there was, from my point of view, the way she was living then and the way she was living now were not that different. So I pushed her away. I ghosted her, then made jokes about the charges, and then she let me have it after that one. That is fine.
Women in prison, Casey Anthony, and my first viral video
Someone asked whether I have considered dating women in prison. I have not. I have not thought about dating women who are in prison. Now look at that, what an original idea. Of all the things I have tried in dating, I had not thought about dating women in prison.
There are so many amazing women out there. I realize social media and our environment have been hard on a lot of us. Some would say it has been harder on women than men. And at the same time, there are so many beautiful, amazing women out there who are having kids, who are working, who are contributing. My ex is an amazing woman. One reason I am here today is that even in the divorce, I did my part to not fight and to be nice to her, but she also did her part to be nice and not fight with me and to set me up for success. I am very grateful for my ex-wife.
Someone joked that I could fix them and get a whole prison harem. That reminded me that one of my first videos ever was on Casey Anthony, and I was making fun of the entire case. The day the verdict came out, my video got thousands of views. It was the first video I ever had go over a thousand views; it got something like seven or eight thousand. It had about ten likes, all from my friends, and eighty-plus dislikes, all from people discovering me. The basic thing I was making fun of was: don't you all have something better to do with your lives? Why are you all obsessed with this case, watching YouTube videos about it, when you could have a real life doing other stuff? At the time I was in criminology. I was working on a criminology PhD, and I had been a police officer and a corrections officer, so that was my world. And at the same time I was making fun of people on YouTube: get a life, man. People were getting all upset and frustrated, and I was like, come on, get a life.
Someone suggested a "Jerry Law Tube" channel. Let's go. I still need to put up those letters I sent to my family, too. Someone else said I could start a whole new life after lockup, and yes, I could. I could get women. I wonder how easy it is for a dude to access women in prison. I would imagine there might be some roadblocks: hey, I just want to contact this random woman in prison. Maybe I should explore that. I thought about getting a job as a parole officer first.
Somebody said I am so toxic about my ex and asked how I am going to get a woman if I say all these negative things about her. You are right. Have you heard all the amazing things I have said about my ex-wife during this stream? That is why I am saying I am grateful. Grateful for my ex. Grateful for the queen. Grateful for all of them. I was going through and thinking about all the women I have been out with this year and how grateful I am for each of them, even though with most of them I never saw them again.
Someone pointed out that I just need an email address to start emailing women in prison. I wonder if they could watch my live streams and we would have a women-in-prison audience. I definitely would date a woman who had been to prison. She would have to be cleaned up, though. No drugs, no gang banging. I have met some women in AA who had just gotten out of prison. One woman had killed somebody drunk driving and had just gotten out of prison for that. I met her in a meeting. I am also grateful for the South Africa fans watching; I love that.
How I stay honest: taking inventory
Someone asked how I manage to remain so true to myself and so honest. It is because I am always taking inventory and doing stuff like this. I identify things: look, I need to stop being so spoiled. I need to start being more grateful. I am always doing something like this to take inventory of where I am at and then course correct. And it is not just me taking my inventory. Other people are taking my inventory too. You could argue that many of you are taking my inventory, that many of you are telling me the things I should be hearing. What would help a lot of people is more feedback from more people. I am grateful I get so much feedback from so many people. Now, with some of it, maybe it makes sense to be a bit toxic and say I do not need that feedback. But I take in a ton of feedback from people in person, too.
Last night I went out to a run club, and I met one guy I already knew there, but I did not meet anybody new. I literally sat at a table, and it was because I was in such a negative mindset. I was reflecting on that last night: what are you doing? You went out to a run club. There are all these attractive, active women there. There are literally women just standing there. Some women I have talked to have said they go to a run club specifically to meet dudes. That is why they go. They could run at home or at the gym. They are going to a run club to meet dudes.
There was one woman I tried to date. I gave her my books, and she did not want to date me after that. I actually had coffee with her the day after my ex and I got separated; I had already scheduled it before, and the timing was perfect. She is more than a decade younger than me and very attractive, although my friend said that she is nuts and that I should not date her. I ran into her at the first run club I went to, and she did not want to spend much time talking to me, because she was there to meet dudes.
So I am at a run club knowing that some of these women standing there by themselves are hoping some guy will walk up to them. Maybe not all of them, and maybe not all of them want me, but some of them certainly want a dude to just walk up and start talking. And knowing that, I did not talk to any new women. I might have casually said hi if a woman was running by, but I sat there for thirty or forty minutes afterwards, and I kept thinking about why I acted like that.
The answer was that my attitude was so bad. I figured, why bother talking to these women? As soon as they watch my YouTube, they are not going to like me, and more than likely we are not even going to get that far. So I am sitting there thinking I do not even care what their names are. I do not care where they are from. There is no point in talking to them. Unless a woman comes up and talks to me, then maybe she is interested enough and it will go somewhere.
So I told myself: okay, next time you go to a run club, you are going to talk to women. You are going to walk up and say hi and try to get them to talk about themselves, because you sit here and talk about yourself all day, every day. Ask them about themselves. Why are you here? Is it your first time here? Literally just walk up and say hi. If she says hi back, fine. If she is not interested, move on and try talking to someone else. There were so many women there. There were two women talking to each other, and I easily could have said hi.
It was interesting to watch, because there were so many dudes doing the same thing I was doing. Most of the guys were talking to other guys and saying hi to other guys. Most of the women were talking to women and saying hi to other women. I watched how many people overlapped, and I did not see any dudes make a new connection with a woman the whole time I was there. There were all kinds of women I could have just said hi to, maybe sat down at a table with. But I realized my attitude was so negative that I could not go out like that. You have to shoot your shot, but there is no point in shooting your shot if your attitude is so bad that you are basically asking people to reject you and make you feel bad. So what I am imagining is a more consistent focus on saying thank you and I am grateful, like I have been doing all day today, and then I will be ready to go connect with people. It is the same thing I noticed in Move-In Day and a Hundred Thousand Thank Yous: the gratitude has to come first, and the connection follows it.
How much should I charge for an autographed book?
Someone asked how much I should charge to put an autographed book on my website. I think my best book is Un Fn Myself, so I grabbed my copies. This is the book I would recommend reading. It is my entire life story, from before I was born and picking my parents all the way through to the end of 2025. This is the book I would recommend getting, and this is the book I would recommend having autographed.
The other one, Speaker Meeting 2017, has some of the best raw material in it. What I would recommend for that one is the video version on my website. It has all of my addictions and my recovery in full detail: my alcoholism, sex addiction, gambling, video games, money, eating, all of them laid out, and it has the recovery too. It is better in video, and it is also special because I recorded it when I was only about two and a half or three years sober. I have been sober nearly another decade since then, and honestly it is hard for me to even remember or relate to that version of myself now.
One viewer said she would pay a hundred dollars. Really? If I put this up for about $99 on my website, then for a hundred dollars I could offer worldwide shipping. Would you all pay a hundred dollars for an autographed book with personal comments written in it? Someone said the cover was nice. I designed the cover myself, if you cannot tell. I also have audiobooks: if you search Jerry Banfield on Audible, or search Jerry Banfield books on Amazon, you will find them. Another viewer said he would pay five hundred. Really? All right, I am going to put it up for $99. Another person said they are reading Un Fn Myself right now and the story of me sleeping in a rest stop bathroom stall is haunting them. That book has so many great stories in it, and I have told similar versions of that story before.
Then the pricing debate started. Someone said no, make it $59.99. Someone else said make it $89.99, like it is reverse psychology. Some people are trolling me, and that is the thing: how do I tell? I do not think the first woman who offered a hundred is trolling, that is for sure. I was laughing at another comment because it was so ridiculous. And to be clear, I am not terminally optimistic here. I have been so negative lately that this is what I have resorted to. At this point, even if I sell five books for $99, I would be extremely grateful.
So here is the plan. I am going to put it on my website where you can get a copy of any of my books autographed. It will be autographed specifically to the buyer, whoever they want it made out to, and at that price I can easily afford to ship it worldwide. Anywhere in the world, I will ship you the book, and that will be perfect. Someone suggested using AI to price the book, and I will get to that. Every one of you here is helping me do what I do. Every one of you is a member of the Banfield World Order, and I am super grateful. Someone pointed out that if I am going to sell for ninety, I should make it $89.99 because it looks cheaper. I was thinking of making it about $99.
Not everyone is trolling me
Not everyone is trolling me. Some people are trolling me and others are not, and that is what makes it more interesting. If everybody was trolling me, it would actually be easier. But some people are being serious. Most of you would think that somebody saying they would pay $2,000 for a video I sent to a woman was trolling, but somebody actually did pay $2,000 for that video. Now, I am not going to run a business on someone paying $2,000 for a video once, but I can run a business by listening and selling whatever you all ask for. So if anybody is willing to pay for a signed book, I will sign it and put personal notes in it. I will sign it to you and write a specific note, especially if there is any history between us.
Someone in the chat said I am up on their TV with their foot in the foreground and me in the background. That is awesome. Someone else suggested I thrust my pelvis and release the negativity. Yes.
And everyone is definitely not trolling me, because the woman in Africa is a real woman. I have spent hours, probably at least five if not ten hours, having WhatsApp video calls with her and exchanging audio messages. Believe me, I am in the best position to understand that some people are very serious, some people are trolling, and then there are some people who troll sometimes and are serious other times. It is fun.
Someone asked whether I have anything else to chat about or whether I should keep the show going. I have some time before the date, so I could film a couple of crypto videos afterward. Someone asked about the edition: yes, this is the first edition. Someone else said my books read like a diary, and that is because they are a diary. My books are a diary. And someone asked whether I have ever accidentally hit myself in the face. I will say absolutely. It happens to the best of us.
Asking Gemini to price the book
Someone noted that other folks charge fifty to sixty dollars for an autographed book. Thank you for that information. So I asked Gemini. I like how it does not listen for a minute. The question I gave it: how much money should I charge for an autographed version of my book, especially with worldwide shipping? Some people are saying they would pay a hundred dollars, others are saying most people charge fifty to sixty. What would be the best price? The book costs about five or ten dollars each to print, and then whatever the shipping would be worldwide needs to be taken into consideration.
Gemini said the best pricing model is fifty to sixty dollars for US domestic orders and ninety-five to a hundred for international orders, or an all-inclusive hundred-dollar worldwide rate. Domestically in the US it is only going to cost about five bucks to ship, but it could cost thirty dollars to ship overseas. So if somebody in Australia or the UK buys the book, the international shipping could be twenty to thirty dollars. It looks like what I would need to do is have a US order be fifty to sixty dollars and an international order be a flat hundred dollars.
The ideal scenario, though, would be not to price it differently and to just have one flat cost for everybody at about a hundred dollars. I could give people in the US a discount, but it would be simpler to just charge the same rate and make a higher profit on the people in the US. That is easier. I might as well do a flat rate, one cost for everybody, because I do not want a "this is for international and this is for people in the US" setup where people in the US simply pay more. And if somebody wants a really cheap book, they can just buy it off Amazon. For the record, I am not banning anybody in the chat today. Someone said to bill South Africa more. Someone else said I will sell a whole bunch less at a hundred than at fifty or sixty, and I am not sure, but that is valid. Americans might look at it like they are helping a brother American out even more.
You could look at it that way. So what do you all think? Should I put one or two different versions on my website? I could have it be fifty dollars for people in the US, and then a higher price if you are in the UK. But to me, that just irritates people overseas who have to pay a whole bunch more. I guess they are used to it, though. So should I have one single worldwide offering for about a hundred, or two offerings, a US version and a worldwide version? I am interested in what you think.
Some people said keep the price. Someone said to include a bonus feet pic for people in the US. In the US, fifty or sixty dollars works, and the shipping overseas is going to be twenty to thirty-plus dollars more. It was funny, I was thinking that sometimes when you ship overseas somebody might steal it, and I love the idea of somebody stealing my book in another country because they want it so bad. We will figure out how to put it up.
I do have a few overseas fans, so I asked how many of you are US versus worldwide. According to YouTube, about 70 percent of the audience is in the US. In that sense, it would not make sense to charge 70 percent of the audience more because of the other 30 percent. Someone said bill Canada more, and it is a little bit more expensive to ship to Canada. Someone else requested a signed-in-blood edition. It does seem like a higher percentage of the international audience is actually in the chat. North Carolina was in the house, we had Pittsburgh earlier, Europe, and I know there are some from St. Pete. It is nice to see where you all are from, and you all know I am in St. Pete, Florida. Someone called themselves a well-behaved demon, and that is okay.
Nobody has to buy anything. But I do need to be offering the things that people who want to buy them say they want to buy. How silly is it that I do not have books up? So at a minimum, I will offer a signed copy of any of my books. I prefer simplicity, though. I would rather just charge a hundred, have everybody pay the same price, and make less money overseas. The confusion of "okay, am I in the US or not?" is what I want to avoid. We will see.
Somebody in Tampa wanted to go out and take me to Mons Venus. Are you paying for lap dances? Are you paying for the lunch buffet? What exactly are you paying for? Somebody else said I barely think about anything, that I am like a stray cat just living on these streets.
How my books were made
Someone asked how I wrote the books. I dictated all of my books, and on some of the newer ones I use AI to polish my dictation. Someone asked what else I use the AI to polish, and no, not that. On the earlier books, I paid an editor to edit them. English was his third language, but he was cheap. For Speaker Meeting 2017, I paid thousands and thousands of dollars to get transcriptions from twelve hours of video, and then I paid the editor twenty-something dollars an hour. He was in Thailand a decade ago, so that was great money for him. That is why this one reads a little rough. I highly recommend either listening to the audiobook version of Speaker Meeting 2017 or just buying the video version on my website.
What I have for you on my website
Someone told me I need to remind people in every video of the products I have for sale. I will be happy to do that. I did not know whether they were being serious, but I think one of the best things some of you would enjoy getting from me is a personal video review. This is like a Cameo, but more detailed. You can send me a twenty-minute video, and I will watch it at double speed, react to it, record my reaction, and send it to you. Or you could tell me about your dating situation or your money situation. You could send me a forty-minute video of you and your life, or an audio memo, and I will put it on double speed and just listen to you and get to know you. I can watch it and react in real time and then send you a video back.
If you want a call, that is available too; one person did buy a call and has not even scheduled it yet. If you want the queen shirt, I actually went out last night and ran in that shirt. It is my VidSummit shirt, and it has become my favorite shirt. You can also buy the VIP night outfit, which I just wore on stream the other night. The gold satin shirt I am wearing right now is up there as well, and I am going to keep wearing it until somebody buys it, because I know somebody is going to buy this one. Maybe I will even put the price down on it. If you want Speaker Meeting 2017, the video version is on my website: twelve hours of my realest, rawest recovery stories, recorded nine years ago. You will really love that. If you want to play a game I made with AI, that is there too, especially if you are into crypto at all, or even if you just want to see if you can beat the high score. Officer Banfield is on there as an audiobook. And I am going to keep adding more and more to the store. Thanks for asking me about that.
Someone said the reaction you have to anything is all about your filter on life, and that is true. Someone else said the strip clubs near them serve a breakfast they call "legs and eggs." That is awesome. If you have an Audible account, I have twenty-something books on there. I would listen to Un Fn Myself first and Speaker Meeting 2017 second. Then I have daily autobiography books as well. The same person who said to remind people about my products said they were being serious, that it is about consistency, and that I need something short and sweet before we start. I will keep on top of the products, especially as I keep getting more of them up. Someone said they are going to Mons Venus this weekend, so definitely buy something. I just need to make sure the website actually works with this new version, so I would love for somebody to buy anything on the website right now. Lots of people from the UK are watching, which is great, and one person said they were watching from Mars.
My services are about you, not me
Someone asked whether I have any products or services that are not about me. I do not have any products or services that involve anybody else, but I am available to do coaching or reviews, and a review is not about me. If you are on my website and you buy the review, that is about you. It is about you getting a chance to help me get to know you. Let's say, for example, you are struggling with something like your weight, and you would like to hear my thoughts on your situation. You could say, "I've been struggling to lose weight. Here's what I've tried. What do you think?" Then I listen to what you said and make a personal video reaction based on exactly that: hey, based on what you said, here is what I went through, here is a book you might want to read, here is what I do when I get that craving, and so on.
The services I have are designed to help you with things I have already fixed. I have lost 80 pounds and kept it off, which is roughly 30-something kilograms, and I told the whole story in How I Lost 80 Pounds and Transformed My Health. I have fixed so many things in my life, and my services are there to be of service to you.
Then I noticed I had a new customer. Did somebody buy something? I had not made a sale on my website while I had been live yet, so I checked the admin dashboard and looked at orders. Somebody bought Officer Banfield right then. Thank you for buying Officer Banfield and for actually showing that the website does work with this new version. You now have access to DM me and to post in the community chat. The chat has not been very active lately, but it is there. I do not have a Discord, because Discord gets taken over by scammers. I have my own website that I control. If you buy anything, whether that is Officer Banfield or a ten-dollar tip, you will be able to direct message me indefinitely on the website, and there is a community chat that lives only on the website too. I am really grateful for that sale, and the payment came through right after.
This shirt is on the website right now too. Someone brought up eBay, and yes, people ruined my auctions on eBay. I cannot auction anymore because trolls just put in fake bids. People ruined my auctions, so I am just selling everything on my own website.
Someone asked whether I would pay for a review of my own channel. I do not know anybody I could pay to do a good job reviewing my YouTube channel for $99. If you know of somebody who would review my YouTube channels for $99, I would pay them immediately. I do not know anybody who does that. There are so many things like that. My whole website, by the way, I created with AI. This shirt was not created with AI.
The first thing that made weight loss possible
Someone asked whether I get tired of being a vegan. I do not. I love eating whole plant foods. I eat mostly whole plant foods, and my body feels fantastic. So, the two main ways I lost weight. The first is that I stopped drinking, because anything else I was trying was kind of pointless as long as I was drinking. I would get drunk and then blow my diet by drinking thousands of calories of alcohol and eating an entire pizza. Then the next day I would be desperate to feel better on a hangover, so I would eat anything to get through it. The two things I did that were extremely helpful for losing weight, in my experience: one, stop drinking, because as long as I was drinking, I was never going to be able to stick to a diet.
The Second Thing That Changed My Body: Eating Whole Plant Vegan
The second thing I did was read a book called How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger, and ever since then I have eaten whole plant vegan. Most diets failed me because I would be hungry. I would have cravings. I do not have that eating whole plant. I am telling you, I do not crave meat. I do not want ice cream. I do not want cheese. I do not want garbage food. I do not want fish or any animal products. I do not want butter. Butter tastes disgusting to me now. Meat tastes way too rich. It is like wanting a little massage and having somebody walk up and slap you instead. It is too much. I do not want all of that in my mouth at once. That's what she said.
So many of the things we carry around in our minds are just programmed repetition. When you have seen ten thousand commercials in a row telling you about burgers and meat and bacon, that is an artificial, programmed craving. It is not real. I have eliminated all of that. I do not crave burgers and meat, and eating whole plant is effortless for me now. There was effort in the beginning, getting used to eating a new way, but I dropped 80 pounds, which is somewhere over 30 kilograms, and I have kept it off for more than ten years, since 2016.
I initially started losing weight in 2014 when I got sober, and then I hit a plateau trying to keep eating meat and processed garbage while tracking calories. When I switched to whole plant, I dropped another 30 pounds, and honestly that was too much. I had lost muscle because for a few years I was just walking the dogs. I had stopped personal training and running and all I did was walk the dog. So I have put some muscle back on since then. The two main things I did to lose the weight were, one, stop drinking, and two, eat whole plant vegan. It took a little while, but now I do not have cravings, I do not want other food, and I am full all the time.
In fact, I have to be careful about that. I have to time my eating, because if I want to do a live show like this one and have energy, I cannot have a big meal first. Earlier today I made a lot of food, beans, chips, and green peppers, basically a big taco salad, and my meals are so filling that hunger cravings just do not come up. Unlike a lot of diets, I do not have to count calories. I stuff myself with whole plant foods all day, every day, I am full all the time, and I get all of my nutrition. My body pulls tons of calcium out of the almond butter I eat. I get tons of protein out of the beans and the almond butter. I get my vitamins. My body feels great, and in my opinion it looks great, which is the most important opinion, with the opinion of some of the women watching coming in a close second. I feel great, I look great, and maintaining my weight and losing the weight to get here was very easy and very sustainable. As I shared in I Haven't Been Sick Since October 2022 — My Best Health Ever, the way I eat is a big part of why my health has been the best of my life. I am grateful for that. I have heard from so many people who switched to eating this way, and I love whole plant vegan. If I were ever struggling with my weight for some reason and I was not eating this way, this would be the first thing I would try.
It is challenging, though. Switching to whole plant when you have been used to eating a bunch of processed garbage, meat, and animal products means a whole lot of unknown. It is a lot of new recipes. It is buying different things at the store. It is changing which restaurants you eat at. It is a commitment. When I switched, my wife was so annoyed. She loved going to Ruth's Chris and Bern's and fancy steakhouses, getting seafood and steak and chicken, and all of a sudden I did not want any of that anymore. All I wanted to do was eat hummus and salads, blend up smoothies, and make couscous. She cooked, she tried, and she made a bunch of things that were vegan. But after all of that she was still annoyed. She said, "I want to go out to a steak dinner." I said, "I'll go with you." She said, "But you're going to get a cauliflower steak. I'm tired of it." So now, I guess, she has found a guy she can go out to steak dinners with, and I am going to find a woman I can eat vegan with, because I love how I eat.
Someone brought up that Hitler was a vegetarian too. Yes, but I am a vegan, and as far as I know Hitler still ate animal products. Someone else mentioned they had heard vegans fart a lot. Yes, if eating beans is the main thing, that is fair, although I have not farted that much so far today. I did time the beans, so I may have to pucker up on the date tonight, but that is okay.
Someone asked whether you can make money on YouTube by eating bad food and drinking excessively, since "no one wants crypto anymore." Some people do want crypto, and there is a big difference between no one and someone. Another viewer dug up an old 2012 interview of me, and yes, I was so young and so chubby in that interview. I actually put on at least 30 more pounds after that interview before I hit the top, and then I lost all of that and more.
My Dogs Eat Plant-Based Too
Someone pointed out that I switched my dogs to plant-based food as well. Well, they are dogs, and it is perfectly legal to feed them in a way that is nourishing. I feed my dogs plant-based because I think that is the right thing for them, and any dog I have is going to eat plant-based, because I am not paying to have animal-based food, God knows what parts of which animals, in my dog's bowl. My dogs were fantastically healthy eating plant-based. I had one dog who, according to the vet, had a fatal disease, and eating plant-based she was able to fast, eat whole plant food, and fully recover. Some people say the dog food most dogs eat gives them a lot of their health problems, and my dogs did not have many of the health problems I know some people's dogs have. My dogs have been super healthy and did not need to go to the vet, except that one dog who was having a hard time living, and it seemed to me like she had built up her problems from all the meat-based dog food she had eaten before. When she switched to whole plant, it helped her. The dogs had full bellies and ate great, and any dog I feed will be plant-based going forward.
Someone argued that dogs are carnivores. That is not correct. Dogs are omnivores, and wild dogs eat all kinds of plant foods, including nuts. Here is the simplest test: let your dog out in the backyard, watch your dog start eating grass, and then tell me your dog is a hundred percent carnivore. My mom is a vet too, and she totally disagrees with me on this, but to me it does not matter, because I am not buying meat-based dog food that is made by cutting up animals, however that is made. I am not supporting it and I am not buying it. It is great to hear other people's opinions, but my dogs eat plant-based dog food and it has all the calories, all the fat, and all the protein they need. If you have not done the research to see that protein does not need to come from animals to nourish you and allow you to grow, then I would invite you to do that research instead of repeating things you have not actually looked into yourself. Every dog I have had lived to over a decade, and they were all big dogs. One of them ate meat-based dog food for a lot of his puppyhood, then ate whole plant for maybe the last two thirds of his life, and he lived to be 12, which is the average life expectancy for a dog of his breed. The plant-based dog food clearly was just fine for him.
I did enjoy one comment that said Hitler cried during yoga. That is a good one. I do not know whether Hitler ever did yoga. I do not think they had yoga, although they were going over to Tibet trying to explore things there, so who knows. And someone mentioned they had heard grass settles the stomach, which may be exactly why dogs go eat it.
I am going to wrap up soon. I need to take some time to sign the autographed copy of Un Fn Myself that someone ordered, I am going to need some quiet time before I go on this date, and maybe I will film a crypto review video. My crypto videos have not been as popular lately, but that is okay, because I have a thousand-dollar-a-month crypto sponsorship.
Why I Cried at Yoga
Someone asked why I cried at yoga. I cried at yoga releasing the sadness and realizing that it is time to fill my life with gratitude. A lot of the suffering I have been experiencing has been due to my attitude. The biggest opportunity I have in my life is to laser in and have the best attitude I can possibly have, and everything is certain to work out from there, because if you have a good attitude you are going to be happy and grateful. You are going to be grateful for whatever you have. I will be grateful whether I am living in my house or living in somebody else's house. I will be grateful whether I have money or I do not have money. I will be grateful whether I have debt or I do not have debt. I will be grateful whether I have 98 viewers, 140 viewers, or 10 viewers. I will be grateful no matter what.
Here is how I am structuring the live streams right now. When I start a live stream, I focus in on the initial topic, the title of the stream, so if you miss one you can know that the first 10 to 30 minutes of the video speak very specifically to that subject. That is what I did at the beginning of this one. To summarize at the end: I went to yoga today, I took inventory of myself, and I realized I can do a lot better with my attitude. So I am going to, and the concrete practice that goes with it is saying or writing "thank you" at least a thousand times a day. That is the concrete gratitude practice I need to take my attitude to the next level, and if my attitude is locked in at the highest level it can possibly be, then I have nothing in my life to be afraid of.
If I am grateful for what I have now, I can be sure I will be grateful for what I have later. If I can say thank you for what I have now, then I do not have to worry about what I am going to have later. But when I am coming from a place of lack, I am scared about what I am going to have later, because if I am afraid right now of what I might not have in the future, then I am not grateful for what I actually do have right now. I had a breakthrough on that in yoga today. I had a nice cry, especially after the instructor went around giving manual adjustments to people. She pressed on the tips of my pelvis, which is a spot that has released sadness for me before. It was fantastic.
One of the people watching today is one of the only ones still here who used to hang out on my old live streams on the old channel, the one with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, back when I would be lucky to have ten people watching live. It means a lot to have someone like that still around, and now a member, after so many streams. If you have money in crypto, I have two Jerry Banfield crypto channels for that, and I have calls and other things on my website. And that is about it.
Talked Out and Ready to Listen
I feel like I have about talked myself out, which is quite a relief, because I think I will be ready for the date to show up and just listen. In my opinion, the ideal on a date is for me to listen as much as possible, because most people love talking about themselves, and I already know about myself. I want to get to know her. So we shall see.
I have certainly had the thought that I should keep YouTube completely out of it, at least until things are physical, and never tell her about it at all. But here is the thing: I do not know how women are going to respond to my YouTube. The kind of woman I would really want to date is a woman who would respond positively to my YouTube. That is exactly the kind of woman I want. I realize that this YouTube channel has far too much information for a brand new woman to take in, and it can easily trigger red flags. I do not know how many women get triggered around financial red flags in particular. But consider a story Owen Cook tells about a woman he was dating. He has a mansion to offer her, his attitude, his fame, his experience, and this woman chooses to go date a guy who is a failed musician and a drug addict, has a kid with him, and ends up working in nursing homes cleaning up after people just to survive. And this woman, he said, is very intelligent and beautiful. She chose a guy who, some of you would say, is more like me. That is the beauty of it: one woman's idea of the perfect man is another woman's idea of the opposite of the kind of guy she would ever be with.
So I figure I keep showing up, especially on YouTube. As I shared in Going All In on YouTube, showing up here every day is the one thing I am sure I can control, and I am grateful that multiple women who have watched have now contacted me and are interested in getting to know me further. Who knows? I am sure there will be a new queen. I am not sure exactly who she is yet, and I am not going to call the new queen early this time. I am enjoying talking to a woman in South Africa. Then a new woman reached out. Then I got a date tonight. And the old queen keeps running into me from time to time as well. I am also going out trying to meet people in person. There are women out there who like all different kinds of men, and I am excited to see who I end up sharing my life with, but I am not calling it early this time.
What Women Actually Care About, in My Experience
I know that as men, this can be difficult, because men imagine that women care as much about appearance as guys do. Women tend not to care nearly as much about appearance. If you look at how much guys prioritize appearance versus how much women prioritize it, women generally do not prioritize appearance anywhere near as much. A few months ago, when my ex and I were walking around together, I asked her what her type was in a guy. This was before her new boyfriend, whom I am interested to meet. She said, "I don't have a type. I just like whoever likes me." That should be so enlightening for a lot of guys. That is why, to me, having a great attitude is essential, and me genuinely desiring a woman while having a great attitude is essential, because for a lot of women what is really attractive is that the guy really likes them and desires them.
Picture my ex: beautiful, in law school, with every opportunity. She could have had her pick of guys. Why did she choose me? Well, partly she did not meet that many guys in the first place. And then I desired her and I was fun. You could make the argument, "Well, why would a woman want to be with you now?" For the same reason my ex wanted to be with me before: she loved how she felt when she was with me. She felt desired. She felt like she was having fun. She felt like she was with a man who was strong and could hold his own reality, who would not just cave in under hers. She felt like she was having a great time, she was desired, she felt attractive, and she felt put on a pedestal by me. I gave her what she wanted.
Women have different desires, of course. Some women these days are a lot more superficial at first, and when I say superficial, I mean that I do not think most women really care that much what most guys look like. I do not think appearance matters that much to women, and the data I have seen supports it, especially once a woman gets to know a man over time. Women tend to care about how they feel with a guy. Now, some women care mostly about money. Some women want a guy who is arm candy. But I would say most women care about how they feel while they are with a man. What seems to matter most is, "How do I feel when I'm with this guy? Do I feel good? Do I feel loved? Do I feel like I'm having fun?"
Guys, on the other hand, tend to care a lot about how attractive a woman is, and I am doing what I can to scale that back in myself. What I care about now is how a woman makes me feel. Does she leave me feeling good and supported, like she has my back, like she is loyal? Is she healthy? Does she care about family and will she do whatever it takes for the family? Is she a good communicator? Can she express her feelings honestly with me instead of dumping them on me?
Why I Will Never Make Attractiveness That Important Again
A lot of people thought I had a wife who was too attractive, as in, "Oh, you're never going to get a wife like that again." What I would never do again is make attractiveness that important. I was so used to having a really hot wife that I wanted a second wife at the same time, and I would get crushes on other attractive women. A focus on attractiveness means there is not as much attention left to focus on personality, and I have learned the hard way that I would not be divorced right now if I had placed more importance on how compatible our personalities were. My ex used to say, all the time, that she did not think our personalities were that compatible, and I agree with her. We are not the kind of people who would have been friends. We had almost nothing in common, which can be okay on its own, but her personality and her communication style and what she wanted, set against what I wanted, sabotaged my work, and I made things difficult for her. I could find a woman with a lot better personality compatibility: a woman who, when I am down, wants to support me and cheer me up, and who, when she is down, can wallow and cry and feel upset without pushing those emotions onto me and blaming me for them.
When I was dating before, all I cared about was appearance. Is she hot? Is she fun? Can we have a lot of sex? That was it. Those are no longer my top three priorities. My priorities now are: Is she healthy? Is she committed to family, is family very important to her? And can she communicate? If she can do all of that, then we are going to be able to stick together without getting divorced in fifteen years.
Someone said a first date is supposed to be fun. Yes, and I agree that fun is important. For a lot of women, fun is important, and I will show up and be fun. But if you are focused only on having fun, you are missing something, because I think if personalities are compatible, the fun comes naturally. Picking a man just because he is fun might be good in the beginning, but how much fun is it when you are at home with the kids and he is out drinking beer with his buddies, having fun with them because having fun is what he cares about, and you are stuck being not-fun at home with the kids? That is the challenge. A lot of people date for fun, and then they are in a relationship and the fun disappears. To me, you obviously still need to have fun with each other, but the personalities need to be compatible enough that it is not just about superficial fun and attractiveness.
Someone in the chat said they want a woman who would make a good parent to their existing kids. Exactly. The kind of woman who is really attractive and just wants to have fun, have sex, and travel may not be very compatible with what I am looking for right now. But a woman who really wants to have kids and spend her time taking care of a family, a woman who values that I can communicate this well, a woman who appreciates that I am a healthy man with energy all the time, who can father healthy children, be there to play with them, and support her, that is who I am looking for. And there are women like that who have reached out. There are women who, just from watching my YouTube videos, are very interested in me.
As for the woman I called the queen, if I had had a better attitude, we might still be together right now. But are the two of us that compatible personality-wise? Probably not.
That is probably why things went the way they did. With her, I was thinking, "Oh my God, she's so hot. She does yoga. She plays tennis. She wants kids. This must be my queen." But what about her communication style? Can this woman communicate when she is feeling a certain way, and communicate it with me? Or is she going to avoid me and pull away when she is having a hard time? Maybe I need to put more importance on how well a woman can communicate, how healthy she is, and how much she really cares about family. Because if a woman really cares about family, she is probably not going to carry around fifty different standards. She is going to want a man who can be a good father to her kids and a good husband, without a whole bunch of individual conditions like "he shouldn't have been married before," "he shouldn't have kids," and "he has to be perfectly financially stable." I am financially stable enough. I have never missed a payment. Although I have debt, I also have cash and I have earning power. Such is the power of Jerry Banfield in your life.
Yes, anything can be fun with the right person. At the same time, you are going to need to be able to communicate. And there are all kinds of different scenarios. Some women are financially set themselves and all they are looking for is a quality man. The woman I am going out with tonight is at least a decade younger than me. Someone suggested that because I am in my forties with no kids, a lot of women want nothing to do with me because they feel I still need to grow up. Really? That is interesting too. Some women want guys who feel very grown up, which might mean a little less crazy and a little less fun. And who knows, things with the queen may not be entirely finished either. Anything is possible. We shall see.
Grateful for the Things That Did Not Happen
I am very grateful for all the time I have had with all the women I have gone out with, and I am very grateful for everybody who watches. There have been a lot of things in my life that, at various points, I did not think I could get over, and I am very over them now. When I dated the dispatcher, we took an out-of-town trip together. The experience with the queen was much easier than the dispatcher, and one reason it was easier is that we never had sex. It was bad enough how things went with the queen when we did not even kiss. If we had slept together and the same thing had happened, I have a hard time imagining how emotionally destroyed I would have been. I would hate to think it could have been worse. So a lot of the time, the things that did not happen are a gift. I did sleep with the dispatcher, and that was so bad it ruined my entire life at the time. I could not stand to be a police officer anymore. It blew up my whole idea of reality. It also, I have to admit, made it much easier to get with attractive women afterward, because after being with my definition of a perfect ten, a woman I thought of as an eight felt like something I knew I could do.
I definitely agree with the people suggesting I not mention YouTube on the date. Ideally, I would prefer she talks mostly about herself. The women who have had the best dates with me talked mostly about themselves, probably 70 or 80 percent of the time. I know some of you might have a hard time picturing that, but I try to get women talking 70 to 80 percent of the time on a date, and the women who had the best time on a date were the ones who did. On all the dates the queen and I had, she did most of the talking, maybe 60 or 70 percent. Some of the women I am matchmaking with, 70 or 80 percent. I just consistently got them talking about themselves. I asked questions. I was curious. I made statements. I guessed. Believe it or not, on dates, the focus is not on me.
The Dispatcher Story Is in Officer Banfield
Someone in the chat started reciting a version of my police story that was simply made up. For the person who just bought it, Officer Banfield has the full details of my time as a police officer. Unless the dispatcher has written a book, there is no other side of the story out there. It is only my side. As far as I know, I have never seen her online. If you do see her online, let me know, but as far as I know, I am the only one sharing this story publicly, so my side of the story is all there is, and anything else is imaginary. That is part of what I chose when I decided to share my life this openly, as I wrote about in Living Out Loud Instead of Playing It Safe: when you are the one telling the story, people will test it.
Someone asked whether I have ever cried with a woman on a first date. I do not think I ever have, and I am not advocating for crying on a first date. I did cry with the woman from South Africa, though. We both cried a little on our second or third call.
Someone noted that my ex's new boyfriend seems to be fun, according to her. I know. And the last time I saw the queen, she texted me afterward, "Nice seeing you today," and I did not respond. I did not know where to go from there. What was I going to say? "Nice seeing you today too," and then we would have had to try to have a conversation. I just think it is easiest at this point, because I do not think we are very compatible.
To the person in the chat making claims about the dispatcher story: if you have receipts, you are free to DM me. What you are saying is inaccurate compared to what I put in my book and what I remember, and the drugging claim in particular is ridiculous. If you have receipts, share them with me and I will believe what you are saying, but the odds of that are pretty low. It is very easy for anyone to say anything in a chat. It is much more difficult to actually have the truth. There have been people who said all kinds of things. There was somebody in the chat saying they were getting their leg amputated, and maybe they were, but then they posted other comments that made it seem like they were trolling. That is what is difficult online: you cannot tell who is telling the truth and who is not.
Here is what I know. The dispatcher and I got drunk together. She came over to my house. She told me exactly which liquor to order. She said, and I am quoting her, that she knew she wanted to sleep with me as soon as we made out, and we made out after only a couple of drinks. She said the next day that she really enjoyed it and wanted to do it again. Then she took an out-of-town trip with me. She also told me on the phone that she did not want to just be my friend. So I have everything I need to make my own story complete and accurate. The dispatcher did tell the police department some made-up things later, after I brought our dating into the department by talking about some drama she had with another dispatcher. That is when she started inventing things to defend herself and make me look bad, things that had no relevance to reality. And yes, when the police department sat me down to talk about what they were going to do, they did take my weapon away. I detailed all of that clearly in the Officer Banfield book. It is all laid out there, and I am so excited that somebody just bought it. The best thing to do would have been to keep the relationship a secret, but I was drinking and making bad decisions. Our relationship was supposed to be secret, and when I was drunk and running my mouth I told the other dispatcher about it. She was very angry that I brought it into work. That is where things stand with that.
Closing Thoughts
I think we have hit the peak of this one. It has been almost three hours, and I have been trying to keep the live streams a little shorter, plus I definitely want some quiet time before my date. If you have enjoyed all of this, I encourage you to get Speaker Meeting 2017 and Officer Banfield on my website. You will really enjoy them. And if you want to keep following along with how the date goes, the gratitude practice, and everything else day to day, that all shows up in my Daily Vlogs playlist.
I started today crying at yoga, and I am ending it with a whiteboard covered in thank-yous and a thousand a day ahead of me. Thank you to everybody here. Thank you for the questions, the pushback, the jokes, and the time. I am grateful whether the date goes well or not, whether the money comes or not, whether there are ten of you or a hundred and forty. That is the whole point. Thank you.