Almost $400 Today, After Borrowing Tens of Thousands on Faith
It's August 26th, 2026. This is my vlog, and I am very grateful today. I made almost $400 from you all going to jerrybanfield.com. Three people, well, two people technically, paid for almost $300 worth of calls with me, and another person joined the Skool community. Very grateful for that, which is nice, because when I started all this on YouTube in March, I borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to go all in on doing YouTube instead of having a full time job, instead of getting any job at all. I just used my hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit cards, got a few new ones, and started taking balance transfers and cash advances. I was literally paying my rent with cash advance checks off my credit cards. I did it on faith that I would make plenty of money to support myself on YouTube.
Now I've gotten into these other platforms. I'm setting up automation to crank out all these videos across all kinds of other platforms as well, and as long as I can keep the money coming in that I'm making right now, I am going to be able to sustain indefinitely. I'm really grateful for that. To me, it's a big lesson about taking leaps of faith. I'm grateful I'm willing to take appropriate risks in my life.
So many people told me over the last year, after I deleted my channels. I tried writing books, I tried local businesses, nothing worked. Everyone told me to get a job. A few people said go back to YouTube. But almost no one thought that going back to YouTube and borrowing tens of thousands of dollars so I could do YouTube full time, with all my money and all my time and energy going into YouTube, was a good idea. Almost nobody thought that was a good idea. And I'm proud today that I go after what seems like the best thing I can offer to humanity.
I love my videos. I would love to find someone else who has videos like mine that I could watch, somebody else that you think is kind of like me. If you find someone, the best thing to do is go to jerrybanfield.com, join the community or hop in the chat, and tell me about them. I'd love to start watching their vlogs.
Is It Time to Take Massive Action on Dating?
I am proud of where I'm at today. I've been feeling very strong the last 24 hours, and I've been wondering: is it time to take some serious action with dating, or is this just a planning stage? There's one woman I'm wondering about. She's on a trip right now, so we haven't talked in several days because she's out camping away from cell phone service and phone charging, according to what she said. And I'm asking myself, do I want to take some massive action to change my dating life? What I do well is take action. But the challenge is that if I take the actions that are ineffective at getting the results, then I feel bad, naturally.
I obsess all the time over which actions I can take to help you and to get what I want. Because if I just help you and don't get what I want, that's no good. And if I just get what I want but don't help you, that's no good either. So I've been thinking about all the perfect dating profile pictures I could get, and I've been taking some notes. But sometimes in life we do stuff that we don't even need to do. One thing I hate doing is putting a bunch of effort in where it's not even needed. What if I already have a woman in my life that's going to work out into a great relationship? It'd be dumb to put a bunch more time and energy into dating.
Why I'm Getting Big on Matchmaking Right Now
I actually have four more women to come from matchmaking, and I'm grateful that I still have those to come. My matchmaker is amazing. She is selling these women on going out with me, so it's not a cold approach or something. In business terms, this is a very warm lead. This is a woman who has already heard from another woman why she would want to go out with me. I'm really getting big on matchmaking right now, because matchmaking is so time efficient.
The one reason I'm hesitant to go back to dating apps is because they cost so much time, and I need that time to crank out content, to get that content automated and publishing and get it everywhere with the least possible effort on my part. I need that time to build my business, because if I can keep making the money I made, or even less, if I can keep bringing that much money in, I can literally just pay for dates. Matchmaking ends up being maybe $600 a date. I literally pay the matchmaker, the matchmaker does the work, and then the woman actually shows up on a date. If she doesn't, I get another match. It's awesome. It's so time efficient, which is why I did it.
Almost Everybody Told Me Not to Do Any of This
It's funny now, because so many people are so extremely critical of almost everything I've done in the last year. Nobody said that I should get divorced. Nobody thought I should rent my own house by myself. Certainly almost everybody didn't think me renting a $2,700 a month house by myself with no income was a good idea. And while some people did say to go back to YouTube, most people said to get a job. Now my YouTube is paying and bringing in views. Now I'm expanding to all these other platforms, which should bring even more views to YouTube and even more money in.
It's funny, I'm so excited to think about how my story is going to turn out, and there are already a lot of signs that things are going very well. I can say I went against what almost everybody thought I should do, and I did what felt right, and what felt fun, and what looked like the path for me. I like listening to the Scarface soundtrack. I identify a lot with some modern version of Scarface. I'm out here hustling videos on content platforms instead of what he was doing. And I feel so good about what I'm doing.
I'm getting less and less moments of doubt now. When I first moved into this house and I was paying the rent and I wasn't making any money at all, there were some nights where I was just terrified. I'd think, this can't continue this way. But the value of seeing that your life can't continue how it's going is that ideally you would change. If you see this can't continue, then change. Don't just keep doing the same thing and hoping it'll get better. Make some changes.
I'm looking at my dating life like this has got to change. I need more. Well, maybe I don't need more. See, that's the thing. I'd hate to put a bunch more time and effort into dating apps and trying to take these perfect pictures and get some new satin shirts or something that'll look really sexy. I'd hate to do all that if I ended up having a second date with the woman who already seems to really like me. At the same time though, my mind says no, don't even count on anything happening there, you should proceed as if that's not going to go anywhere.
What This Reminds Me Of, and What's Different Now
It's funny, when I was dating Laura, my ex, I didn't have any other options at the time. I was literally just dating one woman. But I was so into drinking and video games and doing graduate school that when I wasn't going out with her, and we'd go out like once a week, I was excited about what was possible, but I wasn't that distracted with her, because I was putting 20 plus hours a week into getting drunk and playing video games. That occupied a lot of my attention and a lot of what I really cared about. I was hanging out with the boys a lot of that time playing Xbox. We were playing Call of Duty: Black Ops back then. We'd get on at like eight and we'd play till like four in the morning and just get hammered. I would, at least. They didn't always get hammered. But that was where I was putting the majority of my time and attention, along with graduate school.
This time in my life feels similar, except I'm sober now. The downside is that by being sober, I have so much attention that it can be very easy to put my attention in places where it's not useful. I don't need to focus on whether it's going to work out with this woman or not, because there's nothing I can do about that today. Sometimes the biggest challenge for me is to literally just not do anything in a certain area. With my work, something needs to get done every day.
My son is sitting next to me playing video games right now while I'm recording this, because it's four in the afternoon. Even though I dropped my daughter off for school at 9:30 and all I did was a yoga class in between, I didn't have time to record. I recorded a 20 minute private video for my Skool community, but I didn't have time to do anything else today, because I spent a lot of time, like two hours, on calls. Then I was just eating and cleaning the house up and preparing things for videos. I used my crypto to borrow money against my crypto, and then I bought more crypto with it. That's what I did the video about in Skool today.
The Calls I Want to Be Doing Every Day
My life could get a lot busier with my work. I used to have an hour or two of calls scheduled every single day of the week, and I want to get past that. I want to get two or three hours of calls scheduled every day, where I'm making $400 or $600 a day and all I'm doing is sitting on Zoom, hanging out, talking, and mostly listening. The call I did today was an ICP call, very technical, like click here, click there, why'd that happen, go back here. Very technical call. The other one was ICP also. But I'd like to be talking a lot more about dating and about real life, because these are very important subjects, and almost anyone could use a little bit of conversation with someone new. Maybe somebody wants what I have.
What do I have? I have courage. I have courage to go my own way. I have courage to follow my dreams and take the risks I need to take to go after them. I'm so glad I didn't just get a job earlier this year. It's hard to even think about. Maybe my life would have been better, though. Maybe if I had gotten a job as a waiter at a restaurant somewhere that had a bunch of attractive women working there, maybe I would have gotten a lot of cool women to date. Maybe instead of paying for matchmaking and spending thousands on dating apps, which the dating apps are basically a total waste.
Over 10 Grand on Dating This Year, and What It Actually Bought Me
The matchmaking return on investment is unknown at this point. So far, two thirds of it has been valuable learning, but zero return outside of the learning. Most people in life do not seem to accurately prioritize learning. In my experience, anything where you can learn and grow and build character is extremely valuable. So yes, I've dropped over 10 grand on dating this year, but I've built fantastic character, and everything I've done in dating has helped build my business. Then what I've done with my business helps inspire me with the dating. It's like, bro, if you make enough money, you can just pay for matchmaking indefinitely. You'll have a woman who is going out, finding women, selling them on going out with you, and you just meet them. That's it. Or, with enough money, I could pay somebody to use dating apps for me. I have friends. I could say, bro, here's all my stuff, use dating apps for me and set up dates for me. I could do that.
It's really nice to be where I'm at today, and I'm really grateful on YouTube. So many views on my vlogs, so many people caring and spending time and energy there, even joining at jerrybanfield.com on the Skool community or in other places to give me feedback, which I really appreciate. And one woman bought a shirt off of jerrybanfield.com, where I just listed my shirts, which I really appreciate. I'm glad, after all this, to be exactly where I'm at today.
Appreciate the Journey, Not Just the Destination
I hope you can appreciate the journey you're on, because lots of times we obsess about the destination. Part of me, especially with dating, is obsessed about the destination. Like, I've got to get to that woman and have more kids and get married. But enjoy the journey.
Twelve years ago, when I started out on Udemy, that was one of the coolest times in my life, because I had just gotten sober and my relationship with my then wife stabilized. My hair is standing up as I'm saying this. I saw this potential, but there was only faith. I saw that if I really went all in on Udemy, I could make serious money. There was a guy, Alan Hill. He had this course, how I make a thousand dollars a day on Udemy. I took his course at the end of 2014, and I thought, if this guy can make a thousand a day, I can make $2,000 a day. Within six or seven months from taking that course, I was making $2,000 a day on Udemy. I even got up toward $3,000 a day for a few months.
I look back on that, and lots of times you'd fantasize about the success. You would fantasize that the point where I was making two or three thousand a day was the point you wanted to get to. That's what you would fantasize about. But to me, one of the coolest parts about that journey was when I was getting started. It was when I saw it and thought, if I really hit this hard, I can do this. In November 2014, I made $6,000 for the month of November on Udemy and I was blown away. That was my earnings. I had sold tens of thousands, even close to $100,000 in courses, in a single month. All I did was make courses. I wasn't even promoting those with ads or anything. Udemy basically did that for me with their funding. And I was like, oh my God. But then in December, the earnings were way, way lower again.
And yet, despite that, I went into 2015 like, I'm going to cry, I crushed this, and I did what I needed to do to win. I paid freelancers in Europe to make hacking and technical networking courses for me, and then I marketed them. I did the intro. I did the first few lectures. And then they did the rest of it. And I ended up just crushing it after that.
I look back, and the time that was really special was the time when I didn't know if it would work. When I used all my credit cards back then, it was 13 years ago, I borrowed right up to the limit. I didn't have limits as big back then, but I borrowed like $60,000 or $70,000 on credit cards. My then wife, I had promised her in 2014, or 2013, back when my business was making more before I killed my business drinking, I promised her that she could take this low paying public sector job she really wanted to take as an attorney. She had cut her paycheck like in half from being a personal injury attorney. I promised I could contribute half. Well, in 2015 I borrowed all this money because I was dependent on her. I told her I can hardly contribute, I need all this money. And I put it into paying people and paying for ad revenue. If that didn't work, that was going to be a big problem. And yet then it did work.
The $90,000 Month Was Not the Best Part
It's funny. I look back and the beginning, when I was in the biggest kind of climax of the journey, the unknown part of the journey, was some of the best part. You'd look at the success and think that must have been the best part, right? Watching a $90,000 paycheck for a single month come in from Udemy to my PayPal account. I remember the maximum for a transfer was $10,000, so udemy.com sent 10 transfers, nine $10,000 transfers and then another one for a few thousand more. And you'd think that was the best part, right? No. It was when I didn't know if I could make that happen and I was hustling and I was grinding. Once I actually got there, in a lot of ways it was boring. It wasn't as good, because now I'm making so much money, and I know we can just make more, and now it was actually kind of easier. It's like, okay, I'm getting these huge paychecks, now what? And then it was like, well, what's the point? Why bother trying to make more than $90,000 in a month? It's kind of pointless. I still tried.
And then I got banned from Udemy. Then I blew up on crypto YouTube. Then I blew my finances up and the business idea failed. I started an in person show, and then I blew up on Facebook gaming and made a hundred grand in 2021 on Facebook gaming. And again, one of the best parts of that whole journey: I was jumping on a trampoline one day. I had no gaming equipment. I had utterly wrecked the finances. This was one of the reasons that my then wife wanted the divorce later, that I destroyed the finances trying a business idea that failed. I'm jumping on a trampoline, I have no gaming equipment, I stopped streaming, I sold all my stuff. And I just had this vision that I was going to be one of the best Warzone players in the world, and then I was going to be famous for playing Warzone.
Externally, that looked delusional and ridiculous. But I could see it in my mind. I could see it, and I thought, dang, I've got to start streaming again. And then within a year, I executed it. Some of the most special part of that was when I first started back on this crappy $600 used gaming PC that somebody made from used parts and put together in Tampa, streaming on a crappy Xbox One that could barely run Warzone, with a camera that had been used to film funerals. And yet that turned into, within a year, another professional streaming setup. I'm a Facebook partner. I made $3,600 in one single stream playing GoldenEye with a friend. We just hung out for a couple of hours, played GoldenEye, $3,600.
Some of the most special parts of life are the times when you're starting or building something, when there is that uncertainty. I'm trying to remember that with dating, because some of the most special parts with my ex wife were when we were first dating, some of the things we look back to before there was any certainty that things were going to go anywhere. In fact, I still remember those first six dates with her. Those are some of the best memories. And I never thought I'd even get to do this again.
Maybe It's a Better Story If I Stay Single Longer
It's funny that some days I'm so down, but not lately as much. I've gotten so down because things didn't work out. And it's like, what? This might be a better story if you stayed single longer. In some ways, if the one woman I went out on a date with, who maybe I'll have another date with from matchmaking, in some ways if that just works out from here, my story will be kind of boring. And this one guy messages me all these dating ideas, and it's like, I don't have to do those right now. I don't need to go to the beach and try to film what women think about dating in 2026, because I have my own videos and my own stories. And yet, if I don't need to date anymore and I'm in a relationship, what am I going to do with my dating channel? I bet my vlogs get hella boring. If I don't have to go to the beach, I don't know.
I'm dating again, seriously. I remember lots of days when I was vlogging when I was married. I'd show up and think, I don't even know why I'm doing this vlog today, because I literally have nothing interesting to talk about. I made videos today. I had a call today. I made money today. I parented my kids today. I played tennis today. These were my vlogs a year or two ago, and I'd think, I literally did nothing interesting today and I don't see why anybody would care about my life.
It's funny. How many times have I said this? Dating is one of the most interesting things I've done, and it has added a reason to watch my videos. I'm really enjoying observing all the complexities of it. Part of me really wants to find a woman I can get married to and have more kids with, but part of me wants to have as much adventure as possible. Part of me would like to just meet lots of women and go out on more first dates and second dates and just explore, and explore a lot more, and have more fun, and have more interesting stories to tell.
A Guy Shouted That My Life Is in Shambles
The goal of this has been to help you see your life this way, because that's what I've been hoping to transmit. This guy the other night shouted at me that my life is in shambles. I'm like a phoenix. I burn down and I rise. This has been a fresh rebirth of Jerry Banfield, and I'm really enjoying it. If somebody tells you your life is in shambles, I've come to believe you should be able to see how your life right now is absolutely beautiful, because that's what's most important. When I can see how the life I have now is absolutely beautiful and perfect, nobody can take that away from me. And I laugh in the face of anybody who thinks differently. And I'll take free publicity from anyone who thinks differently.
I'll Take the Free Publicity
I'll take free publicity from anyone who disagrees and wants to share something about my life with their followers, because I know it's true. This is a beautiful part of my life, and I'm really grateful for it. And I'm really grateful you've joined me on this part of my life.
I'm there at jerrybanfield.com if you'd like to share your life with me, or get help doing content, or help with dating, or help with building a business online. I know how to do all that stuff. Especially with dating, I can just mostly listen.
If you want the rest of the dating story, it's all in my Dating playlist. And yeah, I guess that's enough. 22 minutes. Feeling 22. I hope it was helpful for you today.