I woke up so depressed yesterday, and within 24 hours or so, I've got a massive fix in for my business. I'm going to share the story of the last 48 hours. You will love hearing this because there are personal stories and we hit some big, important life themes — like how AI combined with human emotions can do some absolutely unbelievable work in transforming your life. All of this is totally from my point of view, my real lived human experience, shared for the purpose of serving and helping you.
So let's start off with: how did I get to feeling down and depressed on Friday? We'll go through this in chronological order. Here's the executive summary, though, of talking with ChatGPT Pro, which is God level. I accidentally blew through all of my Pro messages when I started this, and it said I needed to wait a week to get more messages. I'm like, nah, let me just get that $200 a month plan. I'm now spending $400 a month on AI right now. And ChatGPT helped me simplify — when I talked with it and told it everything about my business, it helped me see I need one offer. And my one offer should be a one-on-one call. I'll circle back to that entire full story too.
Friday Night: The Deflated Balloon
So let's begin with Friday night. I was all hyped up going out to a community event. There was a woman I was excited about — I thought she might be there. I had lots of conversations with other people. She was there. She was kind enough to walk up to me, say hi, and flirt a little bit. And then I didn't see her again much after that. I went home kind of sad. I was like, oh. And then I was like, oh man, don't be an idiot. You've overinvested. I was all excited all week about this woman. And then I'm like, I need to pull back — quick, pull back. It's too much. It's overboard. You don't even know her. You need to stop this. So that was my Friday night. The event itself was fun — there were affirmations, singing, a song ceremony, a fire circle, all that stuff. And then I came home and I was just kind of like a deflated balloon. I went to bed.
I woke up Saturday morning in the shitter. Wait — the shitar? Sounds like a country in the Middle East, the shitar. That's offensive. Well, no, there's a country named Sitar or something like that. Or guitar. I don't know, bro. So I wake up and I'm just feeling drained, like all the life's been sucked out of me. At the same time, the ex-wife has been gone all week with the kids on a family trip that I used to go on — this is my first year not going. I'd been so busy all week doing work, cranking out live streams, thinking about how I get my business to really crank to the next level. Because I'm so happy I've made like $1,500 in the last month, after starting off less than 110 days ago from zero — not making any money — up to $1,500 this month. I'm so grateful for all of you who have been watching the videos and making that happen.
So I woke up and I'm like, man, I know I need to make advances, but I don't know what to do. I'm like, I need to get one offer. I need to pull everything together better. And I'm not sure what to do. But I'm going to ask AI about it. That's when I ran my ChatGPT Pro out of messages.
Crying on the Yoga Mat
Yesterday morning, I went to my AA meeting, which is my new home group — the only one I'd been to in the last week — and it felt great. I met my sponsor there. We had a nice chat. Then I went to a 10 a.m. yoga class right afterwards. And I had a great cry on the yoga mat — snotting all over that thing, like handfuls of snot coming out. And it's hot yoga, so it's just a disgusting environment. There's sweat coming out all over, and then my nose is crying all over the place. I'm just feeling so single and so down. Like, what am I doing? I don't want to ever get excited about a woman like this again until she gets excited with me. Just feeling all the feelings — feeling that pain, that loneliness, that confusion also.
And then there was this woman I found very attractive in front of me, probably 20 years younger than me. And she was all friendly. And I'm like, no — I'm so depressed right now, I'm not acting. I'm not trying to put on a fake smile for you. I just gave her my sad eyes, like somebody just kicked me in the face. She smiled at me the first time and I didn't react at all. And then I intentionally tried to look sadder the second time. Sure, laugh — "Oh Jerry, that's a good strategy to get women to approach you, isn't it?" Well, just look up Jerry Banfield dating and see what we're doing there.
Emotional Intelligence While Depressed
After that, I went home. I'm like, great — now I'm tired. I'd been to my AA meeting, and I had two parties to go to that day. Two sober parties, which I'm super grateful for. And you know what? I was so depressed at like 11 a.m., 12 p.m. — I do not want to go out right now. The last thing I want to do is be around other people. And if you get anything from this, this is emotional intelligence, ladies. For all those ladies out there that want an emotionally intelligent man — ah, this is emotional intelligence, all right?
So I'm so depressed, I just feel drained. Although I still had enough energy to do my work. And I'm just blabbing to ChatGPT about my business. I'm literally hitting the 10-minute voice memo. It's like, all right Jerry, you talk for 10 minutes, that's all I can transcribe at once. I talked for 20 minutes straight after I paid. I'm like, it's just another hundred dollars a month — fine. And I upgraded to ChatGPT Pro, the maximum tier. I even looked at the Enterprise plan. I'm like, how high can we go? But thankfully, we don't need Enterprise. So I just dumped it all out. I'm like, here's everything I know how to do. Here's everything happening with my business. What do you think of this?
And I know that when I'm depressed, I need to take action. Two basic actions. One: what can I change? And two: who can I get help from? So I talked to my friend that morning too. I told him exactly how I was feeling. And funnily enough, he had actually had an interaction with this woman himself. And he's like, dude, there's something weird going on. You don't know. Don't mess with her. Leave her alone. He's like, Jerry, I've met a lot of people in my life through my work and stuff — there's something going on there. Don't mess with that. There's something, like, dark. Don't go there. And I was like, thank you, because I'm trying not to go there. And he's like, but what is it with you? These women — you keep attracting these women that are that same kind of thing. What is that about you? And I'm like, I don't know. I'll think about that.
Get Out of Bed
So I worked on my business, I made myself some healthy food, and I dragged myself out of the house. I understand how easy it is when you're depressed to just stay at home by yourself. I get it. I wanted to. I laid in bed for a minute. I'm like, God, this feels good. I could spend the rest of the day here. And then it's like, no — get out of bed. How many times have you told people, when you're depressed, do not spend the day in bed? Get out of bed. So I got out of bed. I'm like, all right, I know better. See, when you know better, you do better. And I'm like, all right, fine, I'll get out of bed. So I got out of bed and got back to doing my work.
The first party was at 2 p.m. And at 2:30 I'm still blabbing to ChatGPT. And it's like, come on, man, go to this party. It's nothing urgent, but come on, the party's started. Stop talking to your phone and get over there. So I got off my phone. And I'm like, thank God for technology. I was like, I don't need a woman. I have Claude. I've got Claude Max, ChatGPT Pro, and Gemini Pro. And I've got Xbox and PlayStation subscriptions and a gaming PC and a credit card. So I'm like, I don't need a woman right now — I've got AI, baby. Someone joked that I'm just going to be a technology slave, that's all I'm going to be. And yeah — she was there, for sure. She's actually the one who told me about the second party, not the first one.
So I get to the first party, and there's like nobody I want to talk to there. This guy asked me, "How are you?" I'm like, invalid question. Yes, I was just being a pain. He's like, hey, how's it going? I'm like, invalid question. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't want to talk about how I am right now. That's a boring question. I'll tell you how my day's going. I'll tell you about my life. But break out of autopilot and stop asking "how are you," all right? He was a little offended, but that's how I roll.
I got some food. There were two friends I really wanted to talk to there that I hadn't seen in a week or two, and they were getting food. The one guy's trying to eat whole plant, but he keeps cheating on it. I'm like, come on, bro. It's good you're not like this in a relationship, because you had a hot dog earlier today and now you're loading up on pulled pork. I thought you were doing whole plant! So he's loading up on pulled pork, and he's like, oh, it's so good, just have a sample. I'm like, that's not true. I had one little bite of the pulled pork. I'm like, this is bad. This is not even good pig or good pulled pork. What are you talking about? This is not worth taking time off your life — even if it's only like 30 minutes, according to Dr. Greger in How Not to Age. I'm like, I'm not taking 30 minutes off my life for this.
But I did splurge and go nuts: I had a piece of the cookie cake. I don't usually eat ultra-processed junk like cookie cake, but I had a little piece. And I talked to my two friends for about an hour and a half, two hours. One guy was so funny, too, because we talked so much about dating and sex addiction and all that stuff. He sees this woman through the window and he's like, just letting you know — she's mine. Don't mess with her. I'm like, hey, I told you, I'm not trying to pick anybody up. I'm just using the language for stand-up comedy too — I hope you have some laughs here. I'm like, look, I'm not trying to pick a woman up. I'm not doing anything. I'll make space for you.
So she comes in. I'm like, y'all like each other, don't you? He keeps fiddling with the button on his shirt. She gets up and goes to get food. I'm like, hey, I'm reading your body language. You're playing with that button on your shirt. That means you're communicating you want to get naked with her. I'm just saying — she might not pick up on that consciously, and she might even like that. It reminded me of the dispatcher, which I wrote about in Officer Banfield. When I was a police officer, my sergeant punished me by putting me in dispatch one night, but I think it was really part of my manifesting.
Now, somebody might be saying, come on, get back to ChatGPT Pro — where'd the business part go? All of this is essential for the business transformation, all right? It's part of the journey. You see how I'm getting away from my business: I'm focused, but I'm stepping away, being with people, and then coming back. So I'm processing with AI, dumping it all out there, feeling my feelings. Then I'm getting out and hanging around with real people and forgetting about it for a little bit.
So my friend's like, oh, all right, I'll stop playing with my button. I'm like, you don't have to — you should just be aware of your own body language to that degree. And then I was being funny, playing with the button on my own shirt. I'd been thinking about how I watched MrBeast's video with iShowSpeed — my name would be iShowJohnson. I'm glad this is a funny story; the last few were a little more down. And I made sure I wasn't getting in the way of my boy and this woman, that's for sure. So I talked for a little while, but then she got up. She was kind of observing that he and I have a tight connection and we're talking, so she was trying to give us space. So I compensated by getting up and leaving.
Party at a Rich Dude's House
I left the party at 4:30, and this other party I was invited to had just started. A party at a rich dude's house — like the Kesha song. A party at my friend's house — the same friend who took me out to dinner a few weeks ago. He's got a really nice house. And I felt a little bit better, just incrementally a tiny bit better. But I'm driving to this second party at a millionaire's house on the water, and think about it: I've been invited to a millionaire's house for a party on the 4th of July with no effort of my own, while my ex and the kids are out of town. This is about as nice as you could have hoped for in my position — short of five attractive women kicking the door down and demanding me — and yet my mind is just dragging the body along. I'm like, I don't want to go. I just want to stay home and play video games. And I'm telling myself: get out. You're not going to feel better at home. Come on. I don't want to be around people. Get out.
So I got home, switched my laundry, filled my water up — his house is in the opposite direction from the other party — and I headed out to the water. I'm like, maybe I'll see my mom tonight. My mom texted me, happy 4th of July. I'm like, hey mom, I'm out by your place, I'll come see you on the way home if you want. She was like, yay.
So I get out to this guy's house, and almost everybody had left right when I got there — they're all out on the jet skis. And I immediately feel left out. Like, this is nonsense. I started wanting to leave the moment I arrived. So I turned to some comfort eating, and this dude has some great food there. There were these chocolate-covered raisins, and I went about as far in as I go on stuff like that — I ate half that bag from Whole Foods. That was good. I had a bunch of the buffalo popcorn too. That stuff was good — avocado oil, not that canola oil junk.
Soaking Up the Good Vibes
But this one guy was there, and he had such a vibe — it matches with his name — and I immediately started feeling better as soon as I got next to him. And sometimes I've been a little toxic about this guy, because he's ultra loving-light, man. Sometimes it's like, okay, are you really that positive? Do you need to be this positive? Is that authentic? But today I was soaking it up. I'm like, oh yes, help me feel good. And I noticed that just being next to him and talking to him for 10, 15 minutes, I felt better. And I told him — I'm like, dang, dude, you're really working it today. I was down when I got here, and just talking to you, I feel better.
Then my dating coach was there — she's the one who invited me to the party — and she started telling all of her entertaining stories. And then I went outside, and there are paddle boats there. They brought all the jet skis back. And I was a little shy. Can you picture this? I was being shy, and there was one spot left, and I didn't ask to get on it. Can you picture me being like that? It's funny.
So I stayed at the house and hung out. We played some water pong, which is basically beer pong but with water instead of beer. I think I made three cups and my teammate made two — or maybe I made two and he made one. I made one more than him, and we lost. But it was still fun. And there were women in the tiniest bathing suits out there that I know from other places — very attractive women, nice, friendly. And I'm like, it's so nice to get to spend more time with people. And I start feeling a little bit better. I'm like, this is working.
So I say hi to the host. I didn't bring a bathing suit, though — I'm just in my shorts and underwear and my shirt. Thankfully, I always have a big towel in the back of my car. So I see the paddle boards, and these two women go out on them. And I'm like, I want to do that. Part of my mind was being a whiny, depressed voice going, no, don't do that, you didn't bring a bathing suit. And I'm like, forget that. I'm getting this towel out of my car. I'm going to take my phone and the nice watch my ex got me a decade ago and put them in the car. And then I'm going to jump in that water in my shorts. The dating coach had invited me there, and I also knew the host — he didn't invite me directly, but I checked with him. I'm like, hey, I heard you're having a party, what time is it today? And he gave me the time to come over.
So I got on the paddle board, and I was like, this is so fun. I've heard about paddle boarding, I've wanted to try it, and here it is. And I had a great time. Although there were still some moments I was a little depressed and feeling a little left out — everybody's climbing all over everybody else's paddle boards except mine. I'm just out there on my own by myself, thinking, nobody likes me. Nobody likes me. But I had fun and laughed, and I felt so extravagant.
Inspiration Instead of Jealousy
In some positions you might feel jealous being at somebody's house like this. But I felt inspired. I'm like, I want a house like this. I can make enough money to have a house like this. I'm going to work on making enough money to have a house like this. And that's where the business part kicks in — that motivation. I'm like, I want this. I know I can have this. I want this and I'm going to do it. I'm going to do what it takes to get this. And I'm glad I can take that inspiration with me.
And I had some amazing discussions too. We were talking about sex and money a whole bunch — some people having sex, other people not having sex, and the fear around it. One of the big realizations I had is that I've got this fear that you can't have sex without a nasty ending — without a divorce, or without somebody being hurt that it's over, or without somebody having to get a restraining order or threaten to call the police. And I've been on both ends of that — both having to say no, leave me alone, and being on the receiving end of it. We had a great discussion.
Somebody shared a line that fits perfectly: if failure is not an option, success is inevitable. Exactly. For me, that's how I look at my life. Failure is not an option. I've got six months to either be making like $10,000 a month by the end of the year, or to make like $100,000 in the next six months. Failure is not an option, because I'm not moving out of this house. I love this house. And I'm either buying this house, or I'm going to buy a house on the water like this dude has somewhere.
So today I've had a wave of inspiration. I'm at this party and time just flies by. And I notice I'm having so much more fun at this party than the last one — these people are more on my level, and we're having so much fun. The party starts to wind down at about nine, and I got there at about five, so it just flew by. At first, when I got there, I was bored and felt left out.
But that one guy helped me feel better. And I try not to drop other people's names in my videos. I try to let other people tell their own stories, because I might not have gotten it right. I try to just keep other people anonymous unless they've consented to have me tell their whole life story or to promote them.
At about nine o'clock, the party wrapped down, and I headed over to my mom's house and spent a really nice hour, hour and a half there. She was so happy to see me. She had a towel I could sit on the couch with. We had a great conversation, and I'm really enjoying having less time with my mother but more quality time — more time where I'm really happy to see her and we're connecting, instead of quantity time where I feel like I have to see her just because she's my mother. And I talked about that with her. Then I went home and played a little of that Star Trek game I've been playing on Jerry Banfield Games. I got beaten badly at that game, man. And then I went to bed.
The Breakthrough: One Offer
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about my business, and then I woke up this morning, got my phone, and again dictated a huge amount of chats to ChatGPT. Between what it said and what I thought of, I had a burst of inspiration. Its main point, after I talked through all of my business plans: I have six YouTube channels I live stream on, then I have a Skool community, and then I have one-on-one calls. But I'd been thinking I want to advertise, do more locally, and try more advertising to build my business. And ChatGPT was saying I should have the call to action on my ads be to schedule a call with me. I'm like, well, that conflicts with my membership that I'm promoting organically. And then I realized: I should just have one offer. I shouldn't be selling calls and memberships. I should be selling the best single offer I've got. And that should be a one-on-one call.
So I had a breakthrough. I'm like, oh — I've been doing it wrong with the Skool membership. The Skool membership should be sold on the back end, because people are much more hesitant to pay for a subscription than they are to just pay for a call. It's easier to sell a one-time call than a monthly subscription, because a lot of people are hesitant to sign up for a subscription. And I've made tens of thousands of dollars in the last few years selling calls — probably hundreds of thousands over the years. So I realized the call is my single best offering. It's that real human connection. That's what's scarce today — that is so scarce — just having a call with someone you can relate to, that you want to talk with. And I realized that's my one offer. My call is my one offer.
Then the Skool community is there to sell to someone who has a call. In the call, I'm able to see what they need, and then if the community is appropriate, I say, hey, join us in the community for ongoing support. You can direct message me. I'll be putting courses in there, group calls, et cetera. So I'm like, perfect. And that way I can do paid ads. Cold paid-ad traffic is usually not going to join a community, but they will schedule a call with the right landing page.
Make Every Impression Count
Then I got another inspiration — this one was on my part. ChatGPT helped me isolate the one offer, but then, meanwhile, I'm talking to my phone. It starts raining this morning. I'm walking around the lake, talking to my phone, and I get a burst of inspiration. I put like five things together in my business all at once. And this is why you need your full range of emotions: if you want to be a creator, you need to be able to feel down and feel depressed so that you can then get these kinds of amazing ideas and hit these special places.
Here's the idea I got. I did a video a little while ago on my YouTube coach channel called "make every impression count" — most YouTubers waste their impressions. And I did a video talking about how I've got four and a half million impressions on YouTube in the last 104 days — that was two days ago, so it's up a little higher now. And it's based on doing 30-minute-a-day live streams on as many channels as I can. When you look at one of my channels, you might see a video with 46 views and think, that sucks. But what you don't see behind that is that in order to get those 46 views, YouTube showed that video around hundreds, if not thousands, of times to get 46 people to actually watch it.
So I had a breakthrough. I put it together: I was talking about how YouTubers waste their impressions, and I put that together with the fact that I have one offer. And I realized I've got four and a half million impressions, and hardly anybody who's seen my videos realizes how easy it is to have a one-on-one call with me — and I'm available for that. And this was like a boom, like a nuclear bomb going off in my brain. I'm like, oh. Every single thumbnail I do needs to say "one-on-one call" with an icon and "Jerry Banfield" on it. Because if thousands of people see a thumbnail and only 46 choose to watch the video, thousands of people will also see my website and that I offer one-on-one calls.
Now, you don't want to make it super obnoxious. You can make the call-to-action graphic too big for a thumbnail — that's not what she said, by the way — too big and obnoxious. What I realized is there should be one main image, and the call-to-action is the little side hook on the thumbnail. But it's big enough that your subconscious mind picks it up even if you don't consciously look at it — and 90-plus percent of people scroll by my videos and don't actually click on them.
I've done four live streams today — this is my fourth. A fellow creator told me he hasn't watched my dating content, and I said, you have a partner — I don't expect you to watch my dating content, for sure. I don't expect anybody to watch all of my stuff. I put out so much just to give as much as I can give. Whatever you want, you can enjoy. I don't expect everyone to consume everything, and that's fine, because I put out a ton of it. But now, on every single video, on every single channel — including the gaming channel — all my channels now have their own custom big banner, and every thumbnail will have "one-on-one call with Jerry Banfield" on it.
Hundreds of Calls From Millions of Impressions
Here's what I was thinking. So far I've had five or ten one-on-one calls and about ten people who've joined my Skool community, which is awesome — out of four and a half million impressions. Imagine if my next four and a half million impressions — which, at this rate, are going to come faster than the last four and a half million — imagine if every single one of them says "one-on-one call Jerry Banfield" on it. That should be worth hundreds of one-on-one calls that I wouldn't have gotten without it.
And I love my dating content too. The dating videos I made — this one's getting some views: "I'll Never Ask a Woman Out Again" is the title, and I want a wife; that's a hard contrast right there. Then the new ones: "Women Are Paying Men to Be Boyfriends," "I Studied 100 Dating Videos So You Can Skip the Nonsense," "She Didn't Feel the Spark." My dating live streams are killing it. I'm so proud. I love my dating streams. I looked at all my numbers — I've gotten hundreds of thousands of impressions on my dating videos alone. Imagine if all of those had the one-on-one call on them.
And this is what I love about the whole journey to get to a point like today: as soon as I had this idea, I've been explosively inspired. When I can handle being totally depressed — where I don't want to go out in public, where I don't want to talk to anybody — I can also handle the opposite swing of that, where I get an idea like this: putting this one-on-one call on millions of impressions of my thumbnails. And then zooming in, every single channel has a one-on-one call call-to-action — the only call to action. And for every scenario: on this channel, it's create a life you love — if you want to talk about AI, business clarity, health habits, tell your story to me. My dating channel has its own calls to action. Every single channel has its own big one-on-one call page. So every single video on every single channel advertises one single offer, one single call to action.
The AI helped me get there. But navigating my own emotions, being present, hanging out with people in my life, and not lying in bed all day — when I was so depressed my mind was telling me that would be the best thing to do — getting out and hanging out with people gave me the chance to be inspired and lifted back up. And seeing that guy and his house, I'm like, I want to make $400 or $500 a day. How do I do that? Well, if you put this one-on-one call on your next four and a half million impressions, you've got a good chance over the next three months to be making $400 or $500 a day in one-on-one calls.
And I raised the price of the Skool community, because the community is the back-end offer and it shouldn't cheapen the front-end offer. I was sabotaging my one-on-one calls with the community pricing. So now the community is only sold privately while you're on a call with me. It's like, hey, if you enjoy talking with me, let's stay in touch. Let's be in a group together with other people who've had calls with me. Here's the community.
And even if 20% of the people who have calls join the Skool community, that's going to print money also. And everybody in the whole process is being helped. People in the community work together, and we have a group call on Tuesdays. I'm so grateful.
And then today, I've been so inspired — look at what I've done today, look at these video titles. And again, I used ChatGPT. It turns out you don't need ChatGPT Pro just to generate video titles. I actually ran the same prompt on both Pro and the extra-high reasoning model, and the extra-high model actually did a better video title than Pro did. What Pro is really good for is when you've got some deep, deep stuff you want to process — like when you want to look at your entire business system and break it down. That's what I dumped into Pro. And I redid my whole website today too. It's crazy.
People tell me they're invested in what's going on with me — that that's the most interesting content. Thank you. I'm intending to have the realest dating content out there. And whenever I get a girlfriend or a wife, I'll interview other people so I can keep having real dating content, since I'll be out of the game myself.
What I'm Doing With AI Right Now
But look at what I was able to do. I used ChatGPT Pro and had this whole conversation. Now, if you want to get into AI, you need to talk to me, because I'm doing some crazy stuff with AI. Are you hearing what I'm doing here? So I talked to ChatGPT Pro. I gave it my whole business. It gave me clarity: make one offer — the calls should be your one offer. And from there I got, oh, I see how I need to promote this. And then I went back and forth and said, fix up my website. So it created an entire prompt for Claude to go in and fix up my website to have just one call to action.
But here's the crazy part, all right? I have used Claude to go through millions of words of my books and videos. For example, a typical novel or long-format memoir might be 100,000 words. An entire series of your favorite author might be a million words or so. I've put at least that much — more than that — all into text files. So I take the Pro model with the whole discussion, I tell it I'm about to put this into a custom GPT, give me all the essentials of this conversation. Then I put that into a custom GPT that has millions of words I've actually said, from all my videos, transcribed by Claude on my computer. I dump all that in and tell it: crank out a landing page.
And the landing page it produced — look how detailed it is. It's all based on my real experience, off of my books and my videos. The value of a call with me is not that I help on one narrow topic. I have an unusual combination of lived experience: I've been a police officer. I worked in corrections. I have a master's in criminology. I dropped out of a PhD to have an online business. I spent years making money online. I'm a top course seller. I built YouTube channels. It wrote this whole long landing page out from a custom GPT, because it had already taken my videos into it. It already knows what I say — I've already said all of this enough. I just guided it on how to crank the whole thing out.
So I took that prompt from ChatGPT and dumped it into Claude. Then I took the website from Claude and dropped it back into ChatGPT to clean it up. Then I went in and looked through everything myself and did further cleanup after that. What you might not appreciate is how hard this would have been if I'd tried to do it myself before AI. AI is absolutely a game changer. It literally cranked this website out in 30 minutes, plus a couple of hours of me talking. It's a deep, accurate, long sales page in my voice. I think the design's beautiful. Some people are like, eh, your website looks off. I'm like, it actually looks amazing. I don't know what you're talking about. The buttons, the YouTube theme — it's beautiful.
And right after I cranked out the website, I had a burst of inspiration for videos. Look at this video title: "My 50-View YouTube Video Might Be Worth $100." I see so many garbage YouTube coaching videos, and then I put "free ads" on it — this is such a good idea. I'm so proud of this. However many views it ends up getting, it's a killer video and thumbnail idea. Then this one: "I Woke Up Depressed and Fixed My Business." Awesome. And the dating one — women are paying men to be boyfriends. And the ICP video too. I'm just so grateful. I feel like I am killing it.
Feeling Like It's Already on the Way
Compared to how I felt yesterday, getting up today with this burst of inspiration — I already feel like everything I want is already on the way. I'm already super grateful for it now. I already feel like all my bills are paid, my debts are all paid off, I've got all the clients I want, and I've got the woman I want. I already feel grateful, like I have it now. And I'm like, thank God I don't have to deal with all of it today quite yet — I can have my house to myself.
I went to another power yoga flow this morning and sweated hard. And there was an attractive woman there. There were two chads in the room, right next to each other, and this woman puts her mat square behind the two of them. I'm like, all right, this is my type of woman here. So she walks by me, and I look at her, and she smiles really quick — and then kind of looks down, a little embarrassed. Like, oh, you like me a little bit. All right. But based on my last dating video, I'm not asking, not trying to talk, not doing any of that. If she wants me, she's got to talk to me.
One of my community members told me he loves the website and the connection it offers — the fact that he can DM me and ask questions, and there are weekly calls. Amazing. And on the technical side: I've realized I'm not making tutorials out in public anymore. I'll do broad public stuff, but I'm not putting tutorials out. Somebody else can do it — go for it, do a tutorial showing how to do all of it. If you want help from me getting your website on ICP, I recommend you use Claude. Claude will tell you how to do it. Use the command line, the CLI. Do not use DFX — it'll try to use DFX, but use the command line. And if you want help, then you can pay for help — I'm here. NNS staking, wallet help — that feels right. Then I can be there to help in person.
And then I don't need to be getting people into a community before they've actually spoken to me. People can join the community without talking to me, but ideally the workflow is: I talk to people first so I know them better, and then I invite them to join the community. I shouldn't be publicly promoting a community full of people I haven't talked to. What the community ideally has in common is that I've talked to most of the people in there, one-on-one preferably.
The Dating Channel Is Taking Off
Someone told me what they love about my content is that it's so alive, especially my dating channel — that I make significant changes in my perspective frequently, and it's hard to keep up but so enjoyable. Thank you. I'm really grateful for all the support on my dating videos. I was feeling really down about my dating videos for a while, and now the dating videos are going off harder than anything else on any of my other channels. These dating videos are getting some serious watch time — these are long streams with five, ten-plus minutes of watch time per video.
I'm so interested to see which of my six YouTube channels gets monetized next. The first one was Jerry Banfield ICP. The second was the crypto reviews channel. Which one do you think gets monetized next? Right now the dating channel only has 90 subs. This channel has the most after the others at 350. The YouTube coach channel has 200-something. The gaming channel has 200-something. And that's it. The dating channel, though, is getting some serious momentum. It's a big pain point, I've got a unique perspective on it, and I'm very viscerally in the dating world myself.
And with dating, I want to have some dating calls with people, because that will help me get a lot better too. One thing that's helped me get good at ICP is that I've had a lot of ICP calls with people — so many calls talking about ICP that I've seen so many points of view, heard so many things, and responded in real time. I've had lots of calls reviewing people's crypto portfolios. I'm really excited to have more calls about AI. And on my last call, a guy talked to me about dating and life stuff. I'm so excited to have some dating calls. I'd love to have half ICP calls and half dating calls, because I got really burned out doing just ICP stuff before, and I'd love to help in some of these other areas more.
What's special is that I'm a guy you can talk to about AI and your health habits. You can tell me your story, talk about your dating plan, then talk about your YouTube channel, then talk about ICP with me, and then even talk games with me. To me, that's what's special — having all of that together. That's what nobody else has.
Someone asked me what I reckon the cost of uploading videos to an ICP site would be. Well, I think the cost could go up a bit from there. And I noticed when — I believe it was Chris Yost — tried doing a music streaming one, it didn't load very well. I think video is significantly harder on ICP right now.
I think in the future, especially maybe with cloud engines, you'll be able to make your own YouTube a lot easier. Right now, I don't think it's a great time to try to make your own version of YouTube. But it is a good time to make more of a basic website, especially with your content.
Why My Website Exists: Selling Calls and Preserving My Voice
So my website has two main purposes. One is to sell calls — the whole homepage is dedicated to selling calls. But the second purpose of the website is to preserve my voice. Because on YouTube, as I've seen with platforms in the past, I could get silenced overnight. Where I can't get silenced easily is on my own website. I've taken a bunch of my older videos that I previously deleted, and I've been putting up all my new videos. I have 915 blog posts, and I just made this website like two weeks ago. I've gone all the way back — you can scroll and see every blog post on one page — all the way back to my book, Officer Banfield. I put that whole book through AI and cleaned it up, because — man, if you want one of my realest and craziest books, get Officer Banfield on Audible, Kindle, or Amazon. There was a lot of stuff where Claude was like, listen, we need to censor this. You can't say that on your blog. I would highly recommend against you saying that. So I've got the censored versions on my blog with the juicy details cleaned up. There was a live stream I did on Facebook in 2021 that was awesome and had been long deleted — I love having it back up.
To me, that's one of the best things you can do with ICP: get your website, get your content, put your legacy on ICP. Instead of having a book sitting somewhere, you could just use Claude and dictate whatever you want. You could take your videos, download your live streams, and put them through it. Claude can install all of that on your computer. Now, full disclosure, I have a $2,000 gaming PC I bought three or four months ago, so that thing can crank through video. It has an NVIDIA GeForce RTX — I think it's a 5070 — in it, so it can crank through transcribing videos. But that's what's amazing: Claude can go into your computer and install everything you need to do all of it. It's amazing.
Going Local With Ads
So I'm really excited to help more people with AI too. I'm going to start running ads locally, so everybody around town will start seeing my face — anything I can advertise. I don't think I can advertise dating very easily on Google, or ICP, but I'll be advertising things like YouTube coaching, help with AI, and life coaching. I'd like to start spending about $100 a day on Google ads, just promoting myself heavily within a six-mile radius. That way I get a local community, they can all schedule calls and join the Jerry Banfield Family, and then I can meet up with some of them in person and all that. Club going up — on a Tuesday. That's what we've got going on.
When You're Depressed, Keep Moving
So I hope this has been helpful, because I know it's hard being depressed. What I hope you've heard here is that when you're depressed, keep moving. Keep it moving. Keep being around other people. Be real — don't act like you're happy when you're not. Be around people who are happy and will lift you up. Try to help somebody else. Ask for help. Open your mind. The real point of sharing all this is to show you that, in my experience, if you're depressed, that can work in your favor. It can be something you say thank you for. Like: thank you for that awful mood yesterday, because it inspired me. It inspired me to open my mind. Because when I'm in a good mood, a lot of times I'm not as willing to change. When things are going well, why change, right? But I'm so happy I've got this to share.
I think it's time to wrap up. I hope my kids will be home in an hour. I haven't seen them in a week, and I've had very little communication the whole week. But that's cool. I've learned with my ex: don't expect anything. That's an ex-wife — just don't expect anything. Be grateful for any time you can get with the kids, and everything will be smooth, right?
Someone told me I'm an inspiration — that they were down and depressed and started a channel. Exactly. When you get depressed, it's time to take some loving action. Don't take harmful, destructive action — take some loving action. When you're depressed, there's no reason not to go for the life of your dreams. When I'm depressed, it's like: let me do whatever I need to do to get where I want to go, as long as it's loving and supportive and considerate to others.
Thank you, and have a wonderful day. If you want to follow along with the rawest part of this whole journey, my Dating playlist is where those stories keep unfolding. I really appreciate the time with you. Much love.