I'm Jerry Banfield, and this is a day in my life, August 10th, 2026. I just saw a video where, I swear to God, the YouTube algorithm was not just reading my mind — it was reading what I needed. My mind wasn't even thinking of this, and it was so good. Actually, the first video I'd watched before. In my last video I talked about how I finally understand what went wrong with the queen, and I'm really grateful for everything I've learned. Then I saw two videos. I hardly watch any dating videos on my ICP channel, but it put two videos from Bobby Rio in my feed. One I'd actually seen before on another one of my YouTube channels. It's called "Why No Contact Is Making Her Move On." I didn't even want to watch it, but I just clicked on it and started watching. It was kind of annoying, because I had just gotten up and I'd had a bunch of dreams about my ex, feeling upset that I was divorced and everything. So I started watching this video about why no contact makes her move on, and I was kind of like, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Then right after that — I'm not even sure how I immediately got into this next video — I found one called "Why Women Pull Back and How to Pass This Test: Five Mistakes Men Make When a Woman Pulls Back." I'm like, oh my God, I never even heard of the pullback test. And yeah, that's exactly what I did with the queen. I flopped on the pullback test. So hard.
Dating Is a Game You Can Learn
What has made dating challenging for me over the last year has been that I want to know how to play the game. To me, there is definitely some magic in dating — absolutely. But there's also a lot of logic and game. I had this stuff down in my mid-twenties, and I just forgot it, got off the game. What's made dating tough has been that I just want to learn how to play the game again, to remember how to play the game again. As long as I know that there are logical rules that make sense — things that, if you know them and you understand how the game works, mean you're going to win — then I'm good. That's what's important to me. Going along thinking dating is random, or that it's so hard and so hopeless — that sucks. But going along thinking this is something I can learn, something where all I need to do is put the work in and I will win — that gives me hope. What is hopeless is that a lot of the dating stuff people are putting out makes dating sound so hopeless. It's not. If it's a game, you can learn how to play it. Then you just need to have the game set up and run the game.
Which is funny, because this woman, the queen, said she didn't want to play games — but the stuff she did is exactly what this guy describes in the game. Exactly what she did. And I played it exactly wrong. That's what I felt. It's not even about her. I felt bad about how badly I played the game more than I felt anything about her. I felt bad about my game, because my game should be strong. Look — I jumped into Call of Duty Warzone after not even playing for about a year, and it took me 27 games to win a hundred-person free-for-all. I get good at games. So it gives me hope to understand that there are concrete rules to this game, and once you understand them, you can play.
Take the pullback test. As soon as I heard it explained, I got it: the pullback test initiates as soon as the uncertainty disappears. It makes perfect sense. I gave the queen too much certainty. She was sure she'd hooked me emotionally, and ironically, that produces the feeling of "I can have this, so I don't want it." That's not logical, but it makes total sense from a feeling point of view. You might wish you could have something — some expensive thing — and then you buy it, and once you've got it, you kind of don't care about it anymore. It's funny, because I was trying to think back on my ex: did she ever do the pullback test on me? I was so self-absorbed, I don't think I would have even noticed it if she did. And that's exactly why this has been such a valuable learning opportunity.
Generating Leads: Working on My Cold Approach Game
Here's the conclusion I've come to: I need to be dating as many women as I can. Then if one of them does the pullback test, I don't care, because I'm going out with several others. To do that, I need to be generating leads. I need to be generating options. So yesterday I was watching a bunch of these cold approach videos, and I just know this is what I need to do. It's not like I've never cold approached. In my twenties, I approached all the time, all over the place. I still approach and talk to women — that's how I met the queen at yoga. I think of that one more as a warm approach: I already knew who I wanted to approach. She had never met me, I just walked up, she talked to me for an hour, and then we went out. I can do that even more intentionally. There are all kinds of women I could cold approach in the places I'm just normally around. I don't even have to go out and do dedicated sessions.
So now I'm like, all right, we're going to work on my cold approach game. "Hi — pause — I know this is random, but you're so beautiful. I had to stop to talk to you." Or whatever — just say anything to open. What's funny is that I'm a very direct person, but with women I've often, especially lately, been a bit scared to be that direct. Ironically, being that direct is very manly. It's very confident. And being that direct will also get some women walking away. There's this woman I walked up on in the park — she was walking hella slow, and I came up to pass her, and I was kind of indirect: "Hi. Oh, nice dog." I should have just walked up and been like, "Hi, you're gorgeous, and I've got to see if you want to talk to me," or asked what her name is — come up and be very clear with my intention, and then read the signals when she's like, "No thanks, I have a boyfriend." All right, see you later.
Although it's funny — I was watching this dude do cold approaches, and like half these women with boyfriends still gave him their Instagram. I'm like, that's a little sketchy, but okay, whatever. The ones who are like, "I'm dating this other guy, but it's okay if I give you my Instagram too" — all right, well, I don't have Instagram. I want phone numbers. I'd rather just ditch the low-commitment ones and get phone numbers. And this guy was talking about how he approached a hundred women, and then this one woman literally flew to go see him after he came home from the trip. So that — that's what I need to do.
I Want a Whole System
What I need is concrete, logical steps to take. What's difficult, I guess, for me as a man — and this is where women sometimes differ, again, not generalizing to everybody, all of us are different — is that it seems in general women are more comfortable with the uncertainty and actually like it a bit more, whereas I just want someone to tell me what to do. Which is funny, because I don't want anybody to tell me what to do — but I want to know what to do. With women, I want to know what to do. I want a whole system.
Step one, obviously, seems to be get my own life together. I'm happy with how my face looks. I'm happy with how my body looks. My clothes can maybe use a level-up, but my clothes look good enough even so. When I picked the queen up at yoga, I was intentionally dressing ugly — I wore green Dick's Sporting Goods shirts and shorts, and then I wore this green, Christmas-looking shirt with my name on it. So I'm like, she didn't care how I looked. When you walk up with the level of confidence I approach with, it works — and it was a little easier in my head because I knew we were going to talk content creation, and I know a lot there. I've got a lot of confidence when it comes to content creation. So I don't have to upgrade my clothes much more, but maybe I'll optimize my clothes a little bit.
Mostly I just want a system: okay, cold approach, and then from cold approach we're going to get a date. And I know what to do on a date, too. I know how to connect on a date and flirt and escalate and all that stuff. Then from there, it's about being ready for the tests — the pullback test. The easiest way to be ready for a test is if I have several women I'm dating and trying to date, so that any one of them is someone I'm not too concerned about. And then, ironically, from the woman's point of view, my feelings aren't clear, so there's more desire for me, because there's no certainty that she can have me. There's this sense of "this is a guy that women are competing for, and you want to be the one that gets him." Which is kind of frustrating to me. Maybe if I was gay, me and some other dude would just fall head over heels for each other and not play all these games.
And it is frustrating. A woman says she doesn't want to play games, but I've learned — especially from the queen — that it's not what the woman says. You've got to pay attention to people's actions. She said this herself. She says she wants to take it slow, but she's leaning in to kiss me. She says she doesn't want to play games, and then she's doing the pullback test. You've just got to watch the actions more than the words, and especially when the words and the actions don't line up, the actions are number one. Now, my words mean something to me, but I don't always match my words either, and it's up to me to own that.
One of the actions I'm really proud of taking within the last night is this: I realized that with the queen, I way over-invested too quickly emotionally. No person you just met deserves that much of your attention and your feelings that quickly. I realized I need to be paying more attention to the other people who are consistently in my life. That's one thing she seemed to do really well. She's used to being single her whole life, so her whole life is filled with all these people all the time — which makes it harder to bring somebody new in and really pay attention to them.
Being invested in everybody else makes it super easy to pull back from somebody — to just ignore them and not need them. And I'm like, I need a little more of that in my life. I've been keeping too much space open for a woman in my life. And there's a woman who needs more attention in my life right now, and that's my mother.
Taking My Mom to Super Troopers 3
So yesterday I thought, man, I wish I had a woman to go to the movies with. And then I'm like, Super Troopers 3 just came out this weekend. I love the first Super Troopers. Farva's number one! Farva's number one! If you watch a lot of my videos, you've probably caught some Super Troopers quotes here and there — "meow how fast you're going." And I just realized yesterday that Super Troopers might have been the movie that got me to subconsciously want to be a police officer. After watching Super Troopers a bunch sophomore year, I then decided I wanted to be a police officer instead of an engineer. So Super Troopers might have had a big impact on my life. I watched the second movie too, and the third movie came out this weekend — last weekend, from your point of view. So I'm like, man, I wish I had a woman I could go see it with. And then, man, I wish I had one of the boys I could go see this with. But my friends who I used to watch it with don't live here, and I don't know any of my boys who'd be really hyped to see Super Troopers.
Last night was Sunday. The night before, on Saturday, I'm like, I'll just ask my mom if she wants to go see this, because I hadn't been to a movie with my mom in a while. My mom doesn't get out to do something with me that much — she comes to my house to hang out with the kids, but my mom loves going to a movie. Dad's been dead twelve and a half years. So I told my mom on Saturday night, "Hey Mom, I want to see this movie Super Troopers 3 tomorrow." She's like, "Oh, I've never heard of it." I'm like, "All right, well, if you want to go to the movie, I suggest you watch the first Super Troopers — a lot of dumb-guy humor — and see if you want to watch it." So yesterday I messaged her: "Hey, you want to see it at 7:45 tonight?" She's like, "Yeah, I watched the first one last night." I'm like, dang, all right. That's cool, Mom. So I went over and picked my mom up and took her to Super Troopers 3, and I had such a nice time with her.
And this is something I noticed: whenever I do find the real queen — whenever I find my queen — I'm going to pull back too, especially early on in the relationship, when she does the pullback test. I had some instinct about this before I even had the term. I remember being at yoga the day she started pulling back, and I remember thinking, dude, you need to withdraw emotionally right now. Back up, get off this, back up off it and set my cup down. You've just got to back up off it right now. And then I remember thinking, no, that's mean — I've got to stay heartfelt and invested. But no, my mind was trying to tell me she was starting to run the pullback test on me. I didn't have the term, but I could tell — I could feel it: she's running the pullback test on you. You need to pull back too. You need to let her have some uncertainty about what you're feeling and what you're thinking. She thinks she's got you. She thinks she can have you and she's got you locked in, so she's testing you to see how you're going to perform — and maybe you should just inject some more uncertainty into her mind to make her feel some more desire. I didn't have those exact terms, but I could feel all of that. And I'm like, oh, that's mean. No — that's not mean, that's playing the game. And the game needs to be played. It's a love game. Let's have some fun — this beat is sick, I want to take a ride on your disco stick. It's a love game, and we've got to play the love game and just accept that.
It's funny, though. I took my mom to Super Troopers and I was like, this is so nice, because whenever I do find my queen, I won't have as much time with my mom. And my mom lately has been saying, "Oh, I don't know how much time I have left." Maybe those are warning signs, or maybe she's just being dramatic. She's almost 70, and she's got a lot of health problems, so maybe she doesn't have that much time left. Either way, I'm like, this is the time to do stuff with my mom — and this is the best time I've had to do stuff with my mom. Although here's what I noticed: when my mom moved next door in 2022, my ex and I weren't doing as much stuff together. I was actually spending more time one-on-one with my mom than I was with my ex, which definitely should have been a warning sign. My ex was very resistant to going out on dates. I'd always ask, I'd always be interested, but I can even see now that the game with my ex had faded. She realized she totally had me. There was no more uncertainty, and her desire for me was dropping. That's an important lesson: even when you're in a relationship, there always needs to be a little bit of that uncertainty — or rather, I should be okay no matter what she's doing.
So I had so much fun taking my mom to Super Troopers 3. I was the one laughing the loudest in the theater. I'm really impressed — they did an awesome job on Super Troopers 3. Two thumbs up. That was hilarious, and they did so many fantastic callbacks to the first movie. I thought it would be a little awkward to be at Super Troopers 3 with my mom, but it wasn't. And since she watched the first one the night before, she had the movie fresher in her mind than I did in mine. It's like she took notes or something when she watched it, because she was referencing all these scenes. I'm like, damn, my mom really paid attention to this movie last night. I'm not sure I would have been able to remember all that stuff if I'd watched some movie she liked.
A Business Breakthrough Born From Distress
And I had a big breakthrough in the business again yesterday. I was in distress, laying on my couch. The kids were over, I had just made kale chips, they were playing video games, and I just felt sad. I'm like, man, I've got to do better in my business, and I've got to do better in my dating. This is not good enough for me. And it's not about the results in terms of the outside — it's that I can do better, I can offer better, I can be better. I just need to know: what do I need to do? What do I need to learn? How do I play the dating game, the love game? What do I need to do in my business to crank my income up? What's nice is I've realized that when I'm suffering, when I'm feeling a bit down, that's the opportunity to reach out. So I was praying: what do I need to do? Guide me. What do I need to do? And right around then — I don't even know how I found these videos, it was on my ICP channel, not my main YouTube channel — I found this cold approach video from a guy I'd never seen before. Do I have a microchip in my head or something? It's like YouTube is reading what I need in advance and then sending it to me. I saw a guy on the side of the road the other day holding a sign with an X-ray of his head, saying "I have a microchip in my head." I'm like, did you need some money, bro? Or are you just promoting this message here? Because put that up on YouTube — maybe, I don't know if you can, but still.
And the answer that came to me was: you need to make jerrybanfield.com. You need to put your whole business — all your money-making ideas, all the services you can offer — on your own website. So I went into ChatGPT and asked, where am I leaving money on the table? What should I be doing? It gave me some pretty good ideas. It gave me this one site called something like "premium text" — a website where you can just pay to have a phone call with somebody, kind of like Clarity FM. But Clarity FM sucks: you have to try and schedule these calls, and it's annoying. And dude, this premium-text thing takes a ridiculous cut, like 40 percent. I'm like, forget that. Nobody's taking 40 percent of my earnings. That's ridiculous. That's for people who don't have a platform.
So I'm like, dude, I need to build this on jerrybanfield.com. I keep having ideas for things I could offer, and every one of those ideas should just go on jerrybanfield.com. So yesterday I went into Claude and said, dude, we need to build this on jerrybanfield.com — we need to turn jerrybanfield.com into an everything website. I had this vision like a year ago. I'm like, Claude is good enough to do it. We're going to build this out. I want a store. And right now I've been building jerrybanfield.com out — I'm just getting stuff set up, but I've got a store admin page, and now I've got it running on jerrybanfield.com.
I was also thinking, oh, do I need to cancel the Skool community? I was frustrated because one of the members joined, then dropped a couple hundred for a one-on-one call, and was all enthusiastic and messaging me — and then, leading into yesterday morning, they messaged me like, "Oh hey, how do I cancel this?" I was kind of like, man, really? You're going to cancel? But really, it's just two people out of 25 who've canceled so far since I launched it. What I took from it is that I need more offerings, because not everybody wants to join my Skool community, but some people want to have a Zoom call. And not everybody wants to schedule a Zoom call in advance. Sometimes people are in a panic and want to talk right this second.
So now I've got it set up on my jerrybanfield.com store: talk to me now for 10 minutes. I've got a setting on it where I can just click "online" — you can't buy this when I'm not online, but when I am online, you can just click it and immediately pay with Stripe. I'm also going to set it up so you can use ICP too. Either way, you'll be able to just immediately pay and immediately talk to me, without having to wait. I saved my status as online, hit refresh, and there it is: "Pay with Stripe."
The Offers Are Live on My Website
I'm going to get these on the homepage eventually. On my jerrybanfield.com store I've got the one-on-one Zoom call, where you can go out to Acuity and schedule a call with me in advance — I'll just keep that one up. I've got the Jerry Banfield Skool community right there too. And then there's the new one: talk to me now for 10 minutes. When Jerry's available right now, the talk-to-me-now offer is live.
Somebody just clicks "Pay with Stripe," goes to Stripe, pays, and then I get a notification that I received a Stripe payment. I still need to set up the back end to collect their phone number, so I'll be working on that today — but by the time you read this, it'll have been two or three days since I recorded it, and these should be about ready. You just click, pay, and then you can have an immediate call with me. Sometimes what you need is immediate — somebody to talk to right now. You don't need to schedule a call tomorrow; you're like, "Can I just talk to Jerry for 10 minutes right now? I'm in kind of a panic." Quick 39 bucks right there — 10-minute call, 39 bucks, check. If I did a few of those a day, that adds up. And that's what almost nobody offers: the ability to just jump in and get instant help or instant support with something, especially from another content creator. That felt really good.
And then I realized: dude, build all of it out. Build all of it out. So I took the games from jerrybanfield.net and put those on jerrybanfield.com/games — all those games are on jerrybanfield.com directly now. My comedy will be on there too. I'm going to put a leaderboard on there, so all the money you spend shows up — anonymous unless you set it otherwise.
I also realized I need to have a Jerry Banfield chat directly on my website. So I'm going to set up jerrybanfield.com/chat, where everybody who's paid — I'll probably make it a small one-time cost — can get in there and chat indefinitely. It'll be directly on jerrybanfield.com, and the chat will only be visible if you're signed in and you've paid. It'll be nice: a group chat with everybody else who's paid, kind of like OpenChat, but straight on my website.
My Website Is the Platform
What I see I need to do is get people onto my website — people bookmarking it and coming to my website every single day. My website is the platform, and the website has all the blog posts on it. The website needs to be the main revenue-generation engine — not YouTube, not Skool. YouTube can generate leads, and Skool can have some recurring revenue, but jerrybanfield.com should be the driving force, because then I can put whatever I want on there. I can put up a comedy special I recorded for a few bucks. I can make a new game and charge a few bucks for it. I could have a "spend the whole day with me" for a thousand dollars. I could put a Jerry Banfield silver coin on there — a one-ounce .999 silver coin with my face on one side and the ICP symbol on the other. I can just put stuff up and sell it, and all of it will be in the same place, with Stripe payments and ICP payments coming straight in through jerrybanfield.com. So instead of it being "join my Skool" or "schedule a call," it becomes "go to jerrybanfield.com" — the main place everybody hangs out. That said, the Skool community is nice because it has a complete feature list — DMs, notifications on my phone — so there's no reason to cancel Skool at this point. I'm not going to cancel it. But at the same time, for the future, jerrybanfield.com should be the place.
Taking Inventory of the Last 24 Hours
So what a day in the last 24 hours. I hope sharing all this stuff about my day helps you dig into your day. If you notice, I'm thinking, I'm reflecting, I'm considering the actions I'm taking. What helps me, too, is communicating all of it. It's like a tenth step in Alcoholics Anonymous: doing this vlog is like taking inventory of everything I've done in the last 24 hours, and then publishing it — publishing it publicly, accountable to it. If you want to follow the whole journey of me learning to play the love game again, it's all in my Dating playlist.
I'm so grateful. I took my mom to the movies. I had time with my kids, went to the store with my daughter, the kids played video games, I reflected on my business, and I went to a hot yoga class. I didn't make an AA meeting yesterday, but we went to one on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday — three meetings in the last week. That's solid. I appreciate your love and support, and I invite you, for the full experience, to go to jerrybanfield.com.