Cold approach works for me, and I think it is the most honest way for a man to meet women in person. When I see a woman I find attractive, I walk up and say something like "You're beautiful. Are you single?" and then, if she is, "Do you want to go out on a date with me?" Most of the time she says no, and I walk on. The times she says yes, I walk away with a phone number or a date. That beats anything I got from dating apps.
The newest section on this page is the honest counterweight to that. In 3 Nights Out, 0 New Women: Why I'm Recalculating Cold Approach, I went to a run club, a matchmaking date and a comedy show three nights in a row and met no new women, partly because my curiosity was low. Then I ran the numbers from my year: 30 or 40 women talked to across about a hundred yoga classes, and one regular conversation became the best week of my year. Even 199 dead conversations are worth the one that goes somewhere. I also explain my rule now: a woman who wants me has to contact me, and not texting first is not ghosting.
Here is where I have landed: be direct early, skip the small talk, and accept the no. Over the summer of 2026 I went from polite and indirect to asking the question straight out, and I have not gone back. The posts below show how that view came together, and I will walk you through them in the order I wrote them.
My oldest post on this is the approach shirt from June 15, 2026. I describe a message I had printed on a shirt so that women could screen themselves before I say a word: who I am, what I want, and a clear call to action. It was the first time I treated the approach as a filter instead of a random hope.
By August 10 I had run into a new problem, and it is the subject of the pullback test post. I learned that a woman can pull back once the uncertainty disappears, and I had done exactly that with a woman I was seeing. My conclusion was that dating is a game with learnable rules, and that I had given too much certainty too quickly. If I want to be ready for a pullback, I need several women in my life at once, which means generating leads, which means approaching.
Two days later I published three posts that make up the core of my case. In I Started Cold Approaching Women. It Worked Immediately. I describe walking up to the woman at the front desk of a yoga studio I did not usually visit. She emailed me her number and I had a date with her that night. I had spent $7,500 on matchmaking for 12 matches, and this one came for free.
The second of those posts is Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps, and it is the comparison I care about most. Since my divorce I have spent well over a thousand dollars on apps and have not gotten past a first date with an average woman. A cold approach lets me see in person whether I am attracted before I say anything, and my very first one turned into a date.
The third post, I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women, is the honest one. After my divorce I was having polite, surface-level conversations with women I found attractive, then leaving without asking for their number. Those conversations wasted their time as well as mine. The friendly chat was really a way of avoiding the one question I cared about.
What I take from all of this now is a short list. Ask the question directly: are you single, and do you want a date. Skip the small talk, because it wastes both of our time. Respect the answer. If she says no, I say thanks, have a great day, and move on. If a woman tells me to stop, I stop, and I do not follow anyone around. I do not film the women I approach either. Accepting the no is what makes the whole method work, because most approaches end in one, and the rare yes only comes to the man who keeps asking.
The posts run newest first below, so you can read the story from the other end and then work back to the shirt. For more context on the same questions, see my dating apps page, what it means when a woman approaches you first, and my dating mindset.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- 3 Nights Out, 0 New Women: Why I'm Recalculating Cold Approach (October 17, 2026)
- I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women (August 12, 2026)
- Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps (August 12, 2026)
- Cold Approach Dating: Why I Quit Apps and Ask Directly (August 12, 2026)
- The Pullback Test: Learning to Play the Dating Game Again (August 10, 2026)
- The Approach Shirt That Gets Single Women to Hand You Their Number (June 15, 2026)
3 Nights Out, 0 New Women: Why I'm Recalculating Cold Approach
From my live stream on October 17, 2026.
I went out three nights in a row and did not meet one new woman, and I told the story on my live stream because it made me recalculate the whole math of cold approach. On Thursday I went to a run club. The next night I went on a date through matchmaking. The night after that I went to a comedy show. Three nights out, plenty of people every time, and zero new women in my phone from strangers.
Part of what I wondered about is whether YouTube has made it harder for me to connect in person. I have shared so much of my life on camera that I would almost rather meet people who already know my story. It sucks to meet somebody you don't know and sit through those boring starter conversations where you can't really get into anything because you don't know each other yet. I think dating is meant to be something where you get to know each other over time and then fall in love, and a first conversation with a stranger is the slowest possible version of that.
The Run Club Where I Talked to No One
The run club was big. There were lots of people there. There was one guy I knew, and there weren't any women I knew. I did not meet one new woman that night, and I have to attribute part of that to my own attitude. My curiosity was too low and my toxicity was too high. I remember thinking, I don't even want to talk to a woman who's not interested. I don't even want to make the effort to deal with an unknown woman.
Some of those women were definitely there hoping a man would talk to them. A few were literally standing by themselves. I still walked past, because I had no interest in dealing with an under-interested woman and having a superficial conversation. In that moment the negative experiences did not make the positive potential seem worth it. I have written before about walking past a woman instead of being direct, and the run club was the same pattern.
Why That Is Bad Math
That is how I got into the gratitude practice I had been talking about the day before. My brain was not making the calculations it needs to make. In the short term, yes, it can be annoying to talk to a woman who is clearly not interested, or to approach the wrong woman and find out she's toxic. But I was leaving out the joy that can come from asking, hey, what happens?
Here is the real data from my year. I talked to a number of women in yoga, maybe 30 or 40 women across roughly a hundred yoga classes. Out of all of those, one regular conversation turned into the connection with the woman I called the queen. That was so unexpected. Even though it ended up mostly being a painful experience, that was the best week I had all year. It was a lot of fun, and it was so cool to see a connection that felt significant come out of a regular old conversation. The story of how that started is in my cold approach at the yoga studio.
Then there were all those other conversations that went absolutely nowhere. So I think I have to recalculate. Even if I have 199 conversations that go nowhere, it is worth digging for the one that does go somewhere. The run club felt like a night of avoiding pain, but the pain of a dead conversation is small, and the one that works can change my whole year.
I also noticed a difference in how men and women look at this. I think women, at least with a man they want to date, are more accepting and even a bit turned on when other women are interested in him or when he has experience with other women. I am generally the opposite. If a woman I was interested in went on about another man the way I have gone on about the queen, I'd probably be totally uninterested. So maybe I should do something about that.
The Comedy Show
The comedy show was fun. My friend Ace, a fellow professional like me, did an amazing performance. He sang and he did comedy, and he crushed it. Angela was there, Lindsay was there, Uma was there, and a woman from California was there. It was a great night.
The one challenge I had was sitting in the crowd thinking, I should be on stage. I'm a professional. I could have gotten up there and crushed it. But it was also so relaxing to just sit and be in the audience for once and let somebody else carry the room.
There were some beautiful women at that show. There were at least three women there whom I had either dated or tried to date. One had just said no outright when I asked her out. Another I had actually dated. And the third was friendly with me all night. She gave me a hug, she kept touching my arm, and she said we should get together later and talk some more.
Am I going to reach out to her? Absolutely not. She had made it clear that she just wanted to be friends. And she told me she's the kind of woman who wants to reach out to a man when she feels like it. So I thought, I wonder how many women I can have in my phone that I'm waiting on to respond all at once. Still, I'm doing my job. I am getting women's phone numbers, and that is the part I can control.
You Have to Contact Me. That's Not Ghosting.
The woman I had dated raised a question I keep turning over. We kissed on the second date, and then I didn't contact her for several days afterward. Is that ghosting? I don't think so, because she could have contacted me just as easily.
So I am making it clear with women now: you have to contact me. It is not me ghosting you if you don't. If you want me, you have to be in the mood and be interested in me, because I am good on my own. I am happy to hang out, make my videos, talk with the people who watch me, and work on paying my bills. I went deeper on that in why I said I'd never ask a woman out again.
That is where these three nights left me. I still believe in asking directly, and I still believe the odds favor the man who keeps showing up and talking to people. What changed is that I see the 199 dead conversations as the price of the one that matters, and I see a woman's follow-up as her half of the deal. If these stories help you, you can support me on my tip page, where every tip helps me keep sharing what I learn out here.
I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women
From my video published August 12, 2026.
I pride myself on being this genuine, authentic person who just tells it to you real, straight from the heart. And I'm grateful so many of you have been enjoying that on my vlogs channel. But I realized that with women, I've not been doing that — especially since I got divorced. I would do all this polite conversation with women, and I wonder if you can identify with this. I'd start all these conversations with women about superficial things. Oh, hey, how's the weather today? Or at yoga: oh, that was a hard class. Yeah, what do you do? Boring conversations. And I realized that was the biggest area where I've been dishonest talking to women: pretending to be this surface-level friendly person.
What I Actually Want to Know
If I'm honest, look — I'm talking to you because you're pretty. And what I want to know is, first, are you single? If you're not single, I don't need to talk to you anymore. Second, do you want to go out on a date with me? Again, if the answer's no — thanks, don't need to talk to you anymore. And if the answer's yes, great. Give me your number and we can keep talking now, or I can plan a date and see you out there.
Wow, what a relief this has been, to make this change. To stop going around like I'm just this friendly person. I'm not. I'm very direct. Don't waste my time. That's the attitude I take in my videos. That's how I am with everybody — except, for the last year since I got divorced, with women. And it has felt so good. I've wanted to be more direct for a long time, but I've been scared. I've been scared to just come out and be that honest, because I'm thinking: oh, well, a woman will think I'm harassing her. Or that I'm not a safe man. Or, well, that's not polite. But what's ridiculous is I go around taking on the matrix and being as loud as I can online, pissing people off in person — and my indirect approach often gets bad vibes anyway. And then I'm not willing to just go around and be honest?
A Short Conversation at Yoga That Showed Me the Difference
I had a great conversation — short — with this woman from yoga yesterday. And it was a perfect example of what I'm doing now and how great it feels versus what I was doing before. What I did yesterday: I saw this woman who was attractive. She put her mat down near me. After class, I walked out at the same time as her. You've got to have something to open the conversation and get their attention, so I say, wow, that class was pretty intense today. She says, yes, that was a great workout — I can't usually make that class. I say, why not? So, curiosity. I'm not trying to do small talk immediately. What I'm trying to get to is: is she single, and will she go out with me? I'm trying to go for the fastest path there. From my opener, I'm digging into curiosity. Why not? She says her kids are usually out of school in the summer, and therefore she couldn't make it, but since they're back in school, she can go.
Then I go directly for the approach. At this point, hardly any dialogue had been exchanged. We'd only walked maybe 10 or 20 feet together on the sidewalk. Now, in the past, I would have just kept the dumb friendly conversation going and been like, oh, well, my kids went back to school today too. No. There are other moms in the studio I could have talked to if I wanted a surface-level conversation about my kids. Because why would she care about my kids or what they're doing or any of that? No — I'm there to find out: is she single? So since she said she's a mom, I asked her, are you a single mom? Because she has no wedding ring on. And that's why I talked to her. If she had a wedding ring on, I wouldn't have talked to her — unless she started talking to me. And then I might have been friendly and polite, and I might have asked, oh, are you married? To confirm that the wedding ring is accurate, and to confirm I'm probably not going to spend much time talking here — unless there's some other context that makes sense where we can help each other, which often takes some time to find in a conversation. If that comes up, then that's fine. But let's be honest about why I'm having this conversation.
So I ask her, are you a single mom? She says, no, I've got a husband. He works. And then I say, well, why don't you have a wedding ring on? I'm finally just blurting out right off the top of my head what I'm thinking. I'm kind of annoyed. I'm like, why aren't you wearing your wedding ring? I wouldn't have wasted my time talking to you and bothered you. You could have just left the class, and it wouldn't have bothered you, if you'd had a wedding ring on. That's what I communicated. She says, oh, my finger was swollen up, and I just said no, I'm not wearing a wedding ring, I need to take it off. I'm like, cool. My kids went back to school today, too. See you later. And it just felt so honest. It felt refreshingly honest.
The Women I Annoyed by Never Asking
I've had so many conversations with so many women that just felt dishonest to me. Because, well, why am I only having these conversations with pretty women? I'm not having these conversations with women I don't find attractive. And there have been times when I could tell that women were annoyed that I didn't ask for their phone number. I talked with them all this time, I'd taken their time, and I later confirmed one way or another that they were single and that they were interested. But after I screwed around having pointless conversations with them and didn't ask for their number, they felt rejected. And then when they saw me in the future, they were just annoyed by me. They're thinking: this guy wasted my time talking to me about stupid stuff, got me all excited, then didn't ask for my number. How annoying. And I didn't realize it. I didn't realize that by having all these dumb superficial conversations and being indirect, I was also annoying myself — I was constantly leaving, wondering if there was something else.
And yes, I look back. There's this beautiful woman who started talking to me first at the yoga studio like a month ago, right before I met the queen. She put her hand out and said, great job, that was a hard workout. Then she started asking me questions. And then I had to ask dumb questions like, well, what do you do? Who cares what she does? If she's married, does it matter what she does? No. If she has a boyfriend, do you care what she does? No — not unless there's some obvious overlap. And she said she had some job where there's no obvious overlap. Sure, I could learn stuff there. But again, why are we having this conversation? Would I have this conversation if this was a dude? Probably not. Would I have this conversation if this woman wasn't attractive? Probably not. I'd have better things to do. Can we just be honest about that?
Friendly Conversations Even Cost Me When I Was Married
When I was married, that was different — it made sense to have more just regular friendly conversations. But even then, I should have kept my mouth shut instead of having those friendly conversations. Because soon enough, a time or two, that turned into having a crush and being distracted from my wife. So now that I'm single, I'm going to enjoy this time. And honestly, maybe I'm not going to go to yoga classes anymore after I get with my next woman, unless she's there — because it seems like if I have friendly conversation, I'm going to get a crush on somebody while I'm in a relationship. And I don't even like friendly conversation. It's annoying. I like to get straight to the point: what do we need to talk about? And yes, I realize it might take a little friendly conversation to get there.
So this woman I was talking to — she ends up waiting for me, and I talked to her again on the way to the car. She asked me a question like, do you come to this class often? Obviously a question. She's kind of fishing, hoping maybe I'll ask for her phone number. That's one potential scenario. And I'm like, no, I'm not usually here — and then I walk off, because at that point I had decided that I wasn't going to ask women for their numbers. You're like, what the hell are you thinking, man? But I tried that, and I know I don't want to do that. At the time, I was telling myself the story that men are so toxic, they're just out there hunting for women. There are a lot of women who would love for a man to be hunting for them.
The Power of Choice
Imagine this, all right. Imagine that it was the other way around — that I could take my sexy ass into a yoga class and women would just hit on me and ask me for my phone number. God, that sounds nice. I would love that. And if I'm not interested, I'd just say no, thanks. Or I'd say I'm talking to someone. I'd give some excuse to push the ones I wasn't interested in away. And I'd walk my sexy little ass around and hope that some woman noticed it so that she'd talk to me. Wouldn't that be easier? But I have the power of choice, and the way I see it, women generally don't. Women rarely initiate conversations with me first, although some have — and in those cases, it's funny, I wasn't even prepared. I get to choose. I feel so empowered being willing to cold approach women. Like, there was this woman I saw walking last night, and I looked at her and thought: nah, not interested. And it feels so empowering. This is so good. I can just choose who I want to talk to, and then I get straight to the point: are you single? Do you want to go out with me? Otherwise, I'm not going to waste your time. Your time's valuable. I shouldn't be wasting it — unless, what am I trying to do, sell you on watching my YouTube channel or something?
So it feels so good, and I just hope I can encourage some others. Look, directness — yes, occasionally it will be awkward. But directness these days can also be very refreshing. So many people are so used to having their time wasted all the time, and at least directness feels good. Because I was indirect with women for most of the time up until now, and I still had dumb things happen at yoga studios. Like, some woman at the studio complained that I was trying to pick her up because I gave her a book — a book I gave her for free with my phone number in it, which I gave out to everyone for free with my phone number in it. And she thought I was trying to pick her up. I would have rather she complained that I just asked her if she was single.
And then when she says yes, if she is single, then I'd ask for her phone number. I'd rather have her complain about that. Because at least then — were you trying to pick her up? Yes, I was. It's much stupider to have problems and annoyances because of being indirect, because then you're not even putting yourself in a position to get what you want.
I've had dates with at least 20 women at this point this year. And there are so many more women out there. I guarantee you I'd have had 30 or 40 dates with different women — I've had that many dates with all of them combined — but I would have had dates with 10, 20, maybe 30 more women if I had just been direct. So many times, so many stupid conversations, and I never asked: are you single? Do you want to go out with me?
It Was So Easy
I just did it at the yoga studio the other day. I literally said, oh, you're friendly and cute — what about you, are you single? She's like, "High." I'm like, great, I'd love to take you on a date. She's like, great — I'll email you, here's my phone number. It was so easy. I walked away dumbfounded. I'm like, wow.
And now what's funny is she's actually in a better position to like me and fantasize about me. Because what I also did wrong with so many women over the last year is I would tell them everything about me in these conversations before asking for their phone number. That would cut the mystery. Whereas with this last woman, I just got her phone number immediately. Now she's wondering about me. She's like, who is this guy that walks up to me at work and asks for my phone number while other customers are just standing there? This is a bold, masculine man. But she knows almost nothing about me. So between when I got her number a few days ago and the date, she has like a week to fantasize, to wonder, to have some mystery, to have curiosity about me. I've killed so many things by having all these conversations about other stuff. And all I need to do instead is just keep my mouth shut for everything except: are you single? Do you want a date? And then we can talk a bit more from there. But if not — wow.
Being Direct About Everything
So I hope somebody else can learn from my lessons here. Because I've come to believe life generally would be so much better if we were all direct about everything. Hey, I'm broke — can you give me some money? In my experience, so many of our problems in life come from our unwillingness to just say honestly what is going on with us and what we need help with.
So I'm grateful, and I'm super grateful for everybody. Somebody just bought the first product on jerrybanfield.com — a lifetime chat membership. If you want to talk with me, give me every piece of feedback, ask me every question you've got, and get shown off on a leaderboard, come join the Jerry Banfield Family — and you don't have to put yourself out there, you can be anonymous if you want to. I'm going to put courses on, I'm going to have so much stuff for you. Right now I've got the chat, and you can talk with me — see if I'm online, get a call with me almost instantly, or schedule one. I'm here to support you and to help you.
Based on all the stuff I'm saying, you might not know it, but I'm a good listener. I will listen to you. And you know that I'm leading from experience — you can see exactly how I'm thinking, and I can share that with you. I'll tell you how this whole direct approach keeps going, and you can follow along on my Dating playlist. Hope to see you at jerrybanfield.com on the leaderboard soon.
Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps
From my video published August 12, 2026.
Dating Apps Have Been a Losing Game for Me
Guys, dating apps absolutely suck. I've spent thousands of dollars on them, and I haven't had one work out. Well, I guess I did get married 15 years ago, so I guess that was one. But since I got divorced, I haven't had anything more than a first date with an average woman. I hope she's listening to this, because I would have loved to do more than a first date with her. But that's the truth: off of over a thousand dollars spent on dating apps, I haven't had anything more than a first date with an average woman, plus several dates with women who were catfishing or who were below average — women there's no way I would have approached in person.
Meanwhile, with cold approach, I can verify immediately that I find the woman attractive, and I only talk to the women I'm interested in. I literally got a date on my very first cold approach. Literally — a date on my very first cold approach. Then on the last cold approach I did, the woman ended up being married. And I'm like, whoops, sorry, I didn't see it. Why didn't you have a wedding ring on? She said, oh, my fingers won't. But I'm going to cold approach any woman I see who's attractive and who I think might be interested in me. I'm reading the body language. I'm reading the room. I'm being respectful. But if it looks like there's an opportunity to talk to this woman, I have a chance to give her a compliment: you're beautiful — are you single? And from there, instantly ask for a date. If she says, yes, I'm single — great. I'd love to go out with you. What's your phone number? Beautiful.
Why Cold Approach Feels So Good, Even When It Doesn't Work
Cold approach feels so good, even when it doesn't work. Because on dating apps, all you do is get rejected, waste time, waste money, and accomplish nothing. You don't meet anyone real. You waste your time. But with cold approach, it's like you just got out there and showed what kind of man you are. It feels so good. It doesn't feel good to sit there tapping the like button on dating-app profiles. That doesn't feel good. Because when I get rejected on a dating app, the odds were stacked against me from the beginning, and it doesn't feel good to play a losing game. And it doesn't feel good to support these dating apps that, in my view, are predatory and have intentionally made it so everybody's unhappy and using the app addictively.
For Women, Dating Apps Can Work — With Help
Now, for women, dating apps can absolutely work. But you should probably have a man go through and do it all for you. Because, I don't know, I feel like we guys just understand dating apps better. It seems women often struggle with dating apps. Obviously, there are women who are awesome with them, but most women I've talked to in real life have a real hard time with them. And I tell them: you should just outsource that. If you gave me a beautiful woman's profile, I could set a date up for her every single day. Just show up here at this time, show up here at this time. And literally, the guy would even pay most of the time — you'd have a free meal every day. You just have to go through and filter the guys, and then be direct with them. That's what I do. You tell the guy: look, do you want to take me out to this place at this time? If no, move on, loser. I know women have a harder time being direct like that. I want to get a woman who gives me her dating profile and lets me use it for her, and watch me line up date after date after date off that profile.
But guys, you should not be on dating apps unless you've got dating apps maxed in your favor — and for at least 90 percent of you, the answer is no. Most of you are not going to do well on dating apps. But you could do amazing at cold approach. I know this guy. He's a beautiful man. He's got shoulder-length blonde hair — who am I thinking of? Like Brad Pitt as Thor. This is a good-looking guy. He's not that tall, so that goes against him on dating apps, and he doesn't stand out on dating apps. He's this new-age love-and-light, play-a-guitar, sing-a-song-for-you kind of guy. He's got nice muscles, though — a nice chest. This guy's gorgeous. And he just bombs on dating apps. But he also doesn't want to cold approach in person. I told him: you need to be cold approaching. I guarantee there are so many women you could walk up to and say, hey, are you single? Oh, you're not? Great. I'd love to take you out on a date. This guy could probably get more dates than me doing that. And yet he struggles with dating because dating apps left him feeling horrible — and then he doesn't want to cold approach. So guys, cold approach is the solution.
Be Respectful, But Get to the Point
Now, cold approach obviously should be respectful. You read the room. I'm trying to cold approach in the friendliest environments possible. I'm not trying to be creepy and chase some woman down at the park or something like that. Be respectful. But at the same time, if there's an opportunity to talk with somebody, get to the point. What's the weather like? Great. Are you single? Do you want to go out with me? Get to the point. What I've done over the years at yoga — well, mainly since I've been divorced — is have so many meaningless conversations, so many forgettable conversations. And I probably would have gotten 10, 20, 30 dates if instead of those meaningless conversations it went: she says, oh, that was a great workout. I say, yeah, it was. You're beautiful. Are you single? She says yes. Great — will you go on a date with me? Even if she says no, you can feel good. You showed what kind of a man you are. You took a risk.
One of the things I've just realized is that taking a risk for the right reason leaves me feeling good and respecting myself. Cold approach is an environment where I take risks that feel good, and then I respect myself. Whereas on dating apps, I take risks and I don't respect myself, because I'm sitting at home on a screen. Now, maybe you have a corporate job, or maybe your life's set up in a way where you can't do anything but dating apps. If so, great, that's fine — use them. But if your life's set up where you can get out there and cold approach women, then in my experience, using dating apps says to yourself that you're a loser, that you don't value your time, and that all you are is some superficial picture. There are so many dating coaches who try to help men optimize their profiles, and so few by comparison who teach cold approach. Because yes, cold approach is more intimidating than downloading an app. But cold approach is so much more fun. And as a man, we should be looking for fun. It's not just fun for us, though. It's fun for a woman who's single to get cold approached by a guy she wants to go out with. You can just make some woman's day.
The Beautiful Women Nobody Asks Out
I've talked to so many single women in person, and most of the beautiful ones are not on dating apps. I'll shout out the queen here. She was on dating apps, and she's around guys all the time. And she hardly ever gets asked out. She hardly ever has a guy cold approach her. This is a beautiful woman — all my friends are like, damn. I dated her for like a week, and then it blew up. And this beautiful woman hadn't been on a date with anybody in months, even using dating apps. The last date she'd had scheduled got canceled by some loser on a dating app. And she hadn't had a relationship in years. This is a beautiful woman who's out around men all the time, and almost no men are asking her the simple questions: Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me?
That's cold approach, utterly simplified. All you need to know: Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me? Those questions can feel really vulnerable, because you're not hiding. But taking a risk feels manly to me. And we're not trying to take stupid risks or trying to hurt anybody. We're taking a risk that says: I'm asking for connection. I'm looking for love. And I'm willing to get told no most of the time. But the payoff is worth it. I spent $350 on Hinge and roses, and every single one of those roses felt like a risk. And I just felt disgusting. I spent all that money and didn't get a single date out of it. Literally the first woman I cold approached, I got a date off of.
And what's worse is you get catfished on these dating apps, you get ghosted. Dating apps reward you for being mysterious and hardly saying anything. And the women often really need to see you in person to know if they're attracted to you and if they're feeling your vibe. They often need to hear your voice. Whereas guys, we can just look at dating profiles and get a good idea of whether we're going to be attracted or not — but women are often picking up on so much more than just physical appearance. So guys, cold approach is the answer you've been looking for. There are videos out there I could react to, but I don't like promoting other people's content, and I don't like reacting. The point is: there are women out there desperate for men to approach them.
The Script: You're Beautiful — Are You Single?
Generally, the women who are more desperate to be approached will also send more friendly signals. They'll make eye contact. They'll smile. There it is — you got eye contact, you got a smile. Hi, I'm Jerry Banfield. Actually, I don't even say my name. It's just: hey, you're beautiful. Are you single? If she just smiled and gave me eye contact — hey, you're beautiful. Are you single? Right there, I've set up the context of this conversation. We're not here to talk the weather or sports or my YouTube channel. Hi, you're beautiful. Are you single? If she says no, I'm out. Thank you, appreciate your time, see you later. We don't need to talk anymore. I'm done. I'm good. That's why I was here — you're not single, I don't need to talk to you. But if she says yes: Do you want to go out on a date with me? That second question matters, because even if she is single, maybe she doesn't want to go out on a date with me. It allows her to not have to be weird about the single question. You're beautiful. Are you single? She says yes. Do you want to go out on a date with me? Or, even better: I'd love to take you out on a date.
Masculine, Confident, and Fine With a No
That's what I said in my first cold approach. I asked if she was single. She said hi, and I said, I would love to take you out on a date. If she says, yes, I'm single — I would love to take you out on a date. That is very masculine, very confident. And if she says, no, I think you're ugly — fine. They're probably not going to say that. But if she says no thanks, at least you tried. And you can say: respect. Thank you. Have a great day. Next. Man, that feels good, doesn't it?
The Woman at the Vegan Sushi Place
There was a beautiful woman right before I was going to start this cold approaching. Beautiful woman. I was at this vegan sushi place — all right, so we already know we have that in common. And I look at her from across the room, and then I leave and I don't say anything to her, and I feel like a loser. Why? Because all I had to do was say, hey, we're both here — what are the odds of that? Or anything to open and get her attention. Then whatever she says afterwards doesn't matter, because the next question I have is: are you single? Or: you are beautiful — are you single? Imagine if I missed out on a date with a beautiful woman because I didn't go up to her. Because I sat there across the room waiting for my food. I could have easily. And from now on, anytime there's a woman by herself in a situation that's comfortable for me to cold approach — walking, standing around waiting for food, at work — I'm going for it. Because what sucks is how I felt walking out of that restaurant. This was right before I started cold approaching. What sucks is that I'd spent all that money on dating apps all week and not gotten a date.
Look Under Every Rock
Maybe 90 percent of the time, maybe 95 percent of the time, she says, no, I'm not single. Or she says, no, I don't want to go on a date with you. Maybe 19 out of 20 times. But what about that 5 percent of the time where she says, yes, I'm single — yes, I'll go on a date with you, here's my number? What about that 5 percent of the time where you're walking back to your car with a phone number, versus walking back to your car and you just don't know? See, dating apps to me are just guaranteed to feel disgusting for most guys most of the time. But with a cold approach, even if you fail — even if I'm walking back to my car hitting that 19-out-of-20 scenario where she says, no, I've got a boyfriend, or yes, I'm single but no, I don't want to go out with you — even then, I'm walking back to my car thinking, at least I know. Because right now, I hate that I don't know. I hate that I don't know which scenario it was. It's kind of like that cat scenario — Schrodinger's cat. I don't know. She could have said yes. She could have said yes. Probably wouldn't have. But I hate that the possibility sits there and I didn't check.
Imagine this: if you're walking around and you're broke, and all you have to do is look under each rock and maybe there's $20 under there — how many rocks are you going to look under? I tell you that getting a date with a woman you're excited about is so much better than finding $20. I would say it's more like finding $100,000. And all you have to do is say: you're beautiful. Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me? Or: I'd love to go out on a date with you. And you are going to have so many amazing things happen.
Getting Told No to Your Face Makes You Stronger
And if some of you are thinking, oh, I can't do that, I can't get told no to my face — you'll be a stronger man for getting told no to your face. You'll be a much stronger man than getting told no on dating apps. Because on dating apps, if there were equal numbers, it'd be one thing — but there are so many more dudes on dating apps than women. And from the women I know in person, the best women are generally not on dating apps. Even if they are on dating apps, they're generally not doing a great job using them. They're not picking out the guys who are winners. They're not putting much time into them. And pay-to-win gets their attention.
So I have had such a great experience cold approaching. I'm going to do a bunch more cold approach videos, and you can follow along with all of them in my Dating playlist. And what's even better than a cold approach is a warm approach. If you can put yourself in a situation like a workout class where you just worked out together, that's not even truly a cold approach — you already have context. And that's enough on this one.
Talk With Me Directly
If you enjoyed this, what will be even better is to go to jerrybanfield.com. Imagine being able to chat with me for the rest of your life — the chat is fully on my website, and you can ask me anything you want to, about anything, anytime. And if you want to talk with me — unlike most other dating coaches — if you have something you want to talk with me about right now and I'm available, you can talk to me now. I'll generally get in touch with you within 5 to 10 minutes, and we'll talk right then, for 30 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever you want. I also have a community where you can DM me, post, and schedule a one-on-one call with me in advance if you want a specific time — come join the Jerry Banfield Family. I'm here. I'm available to help you. I'd love to get to know you.
I'd love to see you up on that leaderboard at jerrybanfield.com. I'm going to put much more dating material, comedy courses, and all kinds of stuff on my website — that's where you'll find me in the future. I'll see you there.
Cold Approach Dating: Why I Quit Apps and Ask Directly
Originally published August 12, 2026.
Cold approach works for me, and I think it is the most honest way for a man to meet women in person. When I see a woman I find attractive, I walk up and say something like "You're beautiful. Are you single?" and then, if she is, "Do you want to go out on a date with me?" Most of the time she says no, and I walk on. The times she says yes, I walk away with a phone number or a date. That beats anything I got from dating apps.
Here is where I have landed: be direct early, skip the small talk, and accept the no. Over the summer of 2026 I went from polite and indirect to asking the question straight out, and I have not gone back. The posts below show how that view came together, and I will walk you through them in the order I wrote them, because each one builds on the last.
My oldest post on this is the approach shirt from June 15, 2026. I describe a message I had printed on a shirt so that women could screen themselves before I say a word: who I am, what I want, and a clear call to action. It was the first time I treated the approach as a filter instead of a random hope.
By August 10 I had run into a new problem, and it is the subject of the pullback test post. I learned that a woman can pull back once the uncertainty disappears, and I had done exactly that with a woman I was seeing. My conclusion was that dating is a game with learnable rules, and that I had given too much certainty too quickly. If I want to be ready for a pullback, I need several women in my life at once, which means generating leads, which means approaching.
Two days later I published three posts that make up the core of my case. In I Started Cold Approaching Women. It Worked Immediately. I describe walking up to the woman at the front desk of a yoga studio I did not usually visit. I said she was friendly and really cute, asked what the odds were that she was single, and told her I would love to take her on a date. She said she was at work, emailed me her number, and I had a date with her that night. I had spent $7,500 on matchmaking for 12 matches, and this one came for free.
The second of those posts is Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps, and it is the comparison I care about most. Since my divorce I have spent well over a thousand dollars on apps and have not gotten past a first date with an average woman, plus a few dates with women who were catfishing or who were far below their photos. A cold approach lets me see in person whether I am attracted before I say anything, and my very first one turned into a date. The apps also reward mystery and very little talk, while most women need to hear your voice and see you in person before they know if they feel the vibe.
The third post, I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women, is the honest one. After my divorce I was having polite, surface-level conversations with women I found attractive, then leaving without asking for their number. I realized that those conversations wasted their time as well as mine, and that some of them felt rejected when I never asked. The friendly chat was really a way of avoiding the one question I cared about.
What I take from all of this now is a short list. Ask the question directly: are you single, and do you want a date. Skip the small talk, because it wastes both of our time. Respect the answer. If she says no, I say thanks, have a great day, and move on. If a woman tells me to stop, I stop, and I do not follow anyone around. I do not film the women I approach either, because that can be illegal in Florida depending on how it is done, and it is creepy. Accepting the no is what makes the whole method work, because most approaches end in one.
The posts run newest first below, so you can read the story from the other end and then work back to the shirt. For more context on the same questions, see my dating apps page, what it means when a woman approaches you first, and my dating mindset.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women (August 12, 2026)
- Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps (August 12, 2026)
I Stopped Pretending to Be Friendly With Women
From my video published August 12, 2026.
I pride myself on being this genuine, authentic person who just tells it to you real, straight from the heart. And I'm grateful so many of you have been enjoying that on my vlogs channel. But I realized that with women, I've not been doing that — especially since I got divorced. I would do all this polite conversation with women, and I wonder if you can identify with this. I'd start all these conversations with women about superficial things. Oh, hey, how's the weather today? Or at yoga: oh, that was a hard class. Yeah, what do you do? Boring conversations. And I realized that was the biggest area where I've been dishonest talking to women: pretending to be this surface-level friendly person.
What I Actually Want to Know
If I'm honest, look — I'm talking to you because you're pretty. And what I want to know is, first, are you single? If you're not single, I don't need to talk to you anymore. Second, do you want to go out on a date with me? Again, if the answer's no — thanks, don't need to talk to you anymore. And if the answer's yes, great. Give me your number and we can keep talking now, or I can plan a date and see you out there.
Wow, what a relief this has been, to make this change. To stop going around like I'm just this friendly person. I'm not. I'm very direct. Don't waste my time. That's the attitude I take in my videos. That's how I am with everybody — except, for the last year since I got divorced, with women. And it has felt so good. I've wanted to be more direct for a long time, but I've been scared. I've been scared to just come out and be that honest, because I'm thinking: oh, well, a woman will think I'm harassing her. Or that I'm not a safe man. Or, well, that's not polite. But what's ridiculous is I go around taking on the matrix and being as loud as I can online, pissing people off in person — and my indirect approach often gets bad vibes anyway. And then I'm not willing to just go around and be honest?
A Short Conversation at Yoga That Showed Me the Difference
I had a great conversation — short — with this woman from yoga yesterday. And it was a perfect example of what I'm doing now and how great it feels versus what I was doing before. What I did yesterday: I saw this woman who was attractive. She put her mat down near me. After class, I walked out at the same time as her. You've got to have something to open the conversation and get their attention, so I say, wow, that class was pretty intense today. She says, yes, that was a great workout — I can't usually make that class. I say, why not? So, curiosity. I'm not trying to do small talk immediately. What I'm trying to get to is: is she single, and will she go out with me? I'm trying to go for the fastest path there. From my opener, I'm digging into curiosity. Why not? She says her kids are usually out of school in the summer, and therefore she couldn't make it, but since they're back in school, she can go.
Then I go directly for the approach. At this point, hardly any dialogue had been exchanged. We'd only walked maybe 10 or 20 feet together on the sidewalk. Now, in the past, I would have just kept the dumb friendly conversation going and been like, oh, well, my kids went back to school today too. No. There are other moms in the studio I could have talked to if I wanted a surface-level conversation about my kids. Because why would she care about my kids or what they're doing or any of that? No — I'm there to find out: is she single? So since she said she's a mom, I asked her, are you a single mom? Because she has no wedding ring on. And that's why I talked to her. If she had a wedding ring on, I wouldn't have talked to her — unless she started talking to me. And then I might have been friendly and polite, and I might have asked, oh, are you married? To confirm that the wedding ring is accurate, and to confirm I'm probably not going to spend much time talking here — unless there's some other context that makes sense where we can help each other, which often takes some time to find in a conversation. If that comes up, then that's fine. But let's be honest about why I'm having this conversation.
So I ask her, are you a single mom? She says, no, I've got a husband. He works. And then I say, well, why don't you have a wedding ring on? I'm finally just blurting out right off the top of my head what I'm thinking. I'm kind of annoyed. I'm like, why aren't you wearing your wedding ring? I wouldn't have wasted my time talking to you and bothered you. You could have just left the class, and it wouldn't have bothered you, if you'd had a wedding ring on. That's what I communicated. She says, oh, my finger was swollen up, and I just said no, I'm not wearing a wedding ring, I need to take it off. I'm like, cool. My kids went back to school today, too. See you later. And it just felt so honest. It felt refreshingly honest.
The Women I Annoyed by Never Asking
I've had so many conversations with so many women that just felt dishonest to me. Because, well, why am I only having these conversations with pretty women? I'm not having these conversations with women I don't find attractive. And there have been times when I could tell that women were annoyed that I didn't ask for their phone number. I talked with them all this time, I'd taken their time, and I later confirmed one way or another that they were single and that they were interested. But after I screwed around having pointless conversations with them and didn't ask for their number, they felt rejected. And then when they saw me in the future, they were just annoyed by me. They're thinking: this guy wasted my time talking to me about stupid stuff, got me all excited, then didn't ask for my number. How annoying. And I didn't realize it. I didn't realize that by having all these dumb superficial conversations and being indirect, I was also annoying myself — I was constantly leaving, wondering if there was something else.
And yes, I look back. There's this beautiful woman who started talking to me first at the yoga studio like a month ago, right before I met the queen. She put her hand out and said, great job, that was a hard workout. Then she started asking me questions. And then I had to ask dumb questions like, well, what do you do? Who cares what she does? If she's married, does it matter what she does? No. If she has a boyfriend, do you care what she does? No — not unless there's some obvious overlap. And she said she had some job where there's no obvious overlap. Sure, I could learn stuff there. But again, why are we having this conversation? Would I have this conversation if this was a dude? Probably not. Would I have this conversation if this woman wasn't attractive? Probably not. I'd have better things to do. Can we just be honest about that?
Friendly Conversations Even Cost Me When I Was Married
When I was married, that was different — it made sense to have more just regular friendly conversations. But even then, I should have kept my mouth shut instead of having those friendly conversations. Because soon enough, a time or two, that turned into having a crush and being distracted from my wife. So now that I'm single, I'm going to enjoy this time. And honestly, maybe I'm not going to go to yoga classes anymore after I get with my next woman, unless she's there — because it seems like if I have friendly conversation, I'm going to get a crush on somebody while I'm in a relationship. And I don't even like friendly conversation. It's annoying. I like to get straight to the point: what do we need to talk about? And yes, I realize it might take a little friendly conversation to get there.
So this woman I was talking to — she ends up waiting for me, and I talked to her again on the way to the car. She asked me a question like, do you come to this class often? Obviously a question. She's kind of fishing, hoping maybe I'll ask for her phone number. That's one potential scenario. And I'm like, no, I'm not usually here — and then I walk off, because at that point I had decided that I wasn't going to ask women for their numbers. You're like, what the hell are you thinking, man? But I tried that, and I know I don't want to do that. At the time, I was telling myself the story that men are so toxic, they're just out there hunting for women. There are a lot of women who would love for a man to be hunting for them.
The Power of Choice
Imagine this, all right. Imagine that it was the other way around — that I could take my sexy ass into a yoga class and women would just hit on me and ask me for my phone number. God, that sounds nice. I would love that. And if I'm not interested, I'd just say no, thanks. Or I'd say I'm talking to someone. I'd give some excuse to push the ones I wasn't interested in away. And I'd walk my sexy little ass around and hope that some woman noticed it so that she'd talk to me. Wouldn't that be easier? But I have the power of choice, and the way I see it, women generally don't. Women rarely initiate conversations with me first, although some have — and in those cases, it's funny, I wasn't even prepared. I get to choose. I feel so empowered being willing to cold approach women. Like, there was this woman I saw walking last night, and I looked at her and thought: nah, not interested. And it feels so empowering. This is so good. I can just choose who I want to talk to, and then I get straight to the point: are you single? Do you want to go out with me? Otherwise, I'm not going to waste your time. Your time's valuable. I shouldn't be wasting it — unless, what am I trying to do, sell you on watching my YouTube channel or something?
So it feels so good, and I just hope I can encourage some others. Look, directness — yes, occasionally it will be awkward. But directness these days can also be very refreshing. So many people are so used to having their time wasted all the time, and at least directness feels good. Because I was indirect with women for most of the time up until now, and I still had dumb things happen at yoga studios. Like, some woman at the studio complained that I was trying to pick her up because I gave her a book — a book I gave her for free with my phone number in it, which I gave out to everyone for free with my phone number in it. And she thought I was trying to pick her up. I would have rather she complained that I just asked her if she was single.
And then when she says yes, if she is single, then I'd ask for her phone number. I'd rather have her complain about that. Because at least then — were you trying to pick her up? Yes, I was. It's much stupider to have problems and annoyances because of being indirect, because then you're not even putting yourself in a position to get what you want.
I've had dates with at least 20 women at this point this year. And there are so many more women out there. I guarantee you I'd have had 30 or 40 dates with different women — I've had that many dates with all of them combined — but I would have had dates with 10, 20, maybe 30 more women if I had just been direct. So many times, so many stupid conversations, and I never asked: are you single? Do you want to go out with me?
It Was So Easy
I just did it at the yoga studio the other day. I literally said, oh, you're friendly and cute — what about you, are you single? She's like, "High." I'm like, great, I'd love to take you on a date. She's like, great — I'll email you, here's my phone number. It was so easy. I walked away dumbfounded. I'm like, wow.
And now what's funny is she's actually in a better position to like me and fantasize about me. Because what I also did wrong with so many women over the last year is I would tell them everything about me in these conversations before asking for their phone number. That would cut the mystery. Whereas with this last woman, I just got her phone number immediately. Now she's wondering about me. She's like, who is this guy that walks up to me at work and asks for my phone number while other customers are just standing there? This is a bold, masculine man. But she knows almost nothing about me. So between when I got her number a few days ago and the date, she has like a week to fantasize, to wonder, to have some mystery, to have curiosity about me. I've killed so many things by having all these conversations about other stuff. And all I need to do instead is just keep my mouth shut for everything except: are you single? Do you want a date? And then we can talk a bit more from there. But if not — wow.
Being Direct About Everything
So I hope somebody else can learn from my lessons here. Because I've come to believe life generally would be so much better if we were all direct about everything. Hey, I'm broke — can you give me some money? In my experience, so many of our problems in life come from our unwillingness to just say honestly what is going on with us and what we need help with.
So I'm grateful, and I'm super grateful for everybody. Somebody just bought the first product on jerrybanfield.com — a lifetime chat membership. If you want to talk with me, give me every piece of feedback, ask me every question you've got, and get shown off on a leaderboard, come join the Jerry Banfield Family — and you don't have to put yourself out there, you can be anonymous if you want to. I'm going to put courses on, I'm going to have so much stuff for you. Right now I've got the chat, and you can talk with me — see if I'm online, get a call with me almost instantly, or schedule one. I'm here to support you and to help you.
Based on all the stuff I'm saying, you might not know it, but I'm a good listener. I will listen to you. And you know that I'm leading from experience — you can see exactly how I'm thinking, and I can share that with you. I'll tell you how this whole direct approach keeps going, and you can follow along on my Dating playlist. Hope to see you at jerrybanfield.com on the leaderboard soon.
Why Cold Approach Feels Better Than Dating Apps
From my video published August 12, 2026.
Dating Apps Have Been a Losing Game for Me
Guys, dating apps absolutely suck. I've spent thousands of dollars on them, and I haven't had one work out. Well, I guess I did get married 15 years ago, so I guess that was one. But since I got divorced, I haven't had anything more than a first date with an average woman. I hope she's listening to this, because I would have loved to do more than a first date with her. But that's the truth: off of over a thousand dollars spent on dating apps, I haven't had anything more than a first date with an average woman, plus several dates with women who were catfishing or who were below average — women there's no way I would have approached in person.
Meanwhile, with cold approach, I can verify immediately that I find the woman attractive, and I only talk to the women I'm interested in. I literally got a date on my very first cold approach. Literally — a date on my very first cold approach. Then on the last cold approach I did, the woman ended up being married. And I'm like, whoops, sorry, I didn't see it. Why didn't you have a wedding ring on? She said, oh, my fingers won't. But I'm going to cold approach any woman I see who's attractive and who I think might be interested in me. I'm reading the body language. I'm reading the room. I'm being respectful. But if it looks like there's an opportunity to talk to this woman, I have a chance to give her a compliment: you're beautiful — are you single? And from there, instantly ask for a date. If she says, yes, I'm single — great. I'd love to go out with you. What's your phone number? Beautiful.
Why Cold Approach Feels So Good, Even When It Doesn't Work
Cold approach feels so good, even when it doesn't work. Because on dating apps, all you do is get rejected, waste time, waste money, and accomplish nothing. You don't meet anyone real. You waste your time. But with cold approach, it's like you just got out there and showed what kind of man you are. It feels so good. It doesn't feel good to sit there tapping the like button on dating-app profiles. That doesn't feel good. Because when I get rejected on a dating app, the odds were stacked against me from the beginning, and it doesn't feel good to play a losing game. And it doesn't feel good to support these dating apps that, in my view, are predatory and have intentionally made it so everybody's unhappy and using the app addictively.
For Women, Dating Apps Can Work — With Help
Now, for women, dating apps can absolutely work. But you should probably have a man go through and do it all for you. Because, I don't know, I feel like we guys just understand dating apps better. It seems women often struggle with dating apps. Obviously, there are women who are awesome with them, but most women I've talked to in real life have a real hard time with them. And I tell them: you should just outsource that. If you gave me a beautiful woman's profile, I could set a date up for her every single day. Just show up here at this time, show up here at this time. And literally, the guy would even pay most of the time — you'd have a free meal every day. You just have to go through and filter the guys, and then be direct with them. That's what I do. You tell the guy: look, do you want to take me out to this place at this time? If no, move on, loser. I know women have a harder time being direct like that. I want to get a woman who gives me her dating profile and lets me use it for her, and watch me line up date after date after date off that profile.
But guys, you should not be on dating apps unless you've got dating apps maxed in your favor — and for at least 90 percent of you, the answer is no. Most of you are not going to do well on dating apps. But you could do amazing at cold approach. I know this guy. He's a beautiful man. He's got shoulder-length blonde hair — who am I thinking of? Like Brad Pitt as Thor. This is a good-looking guy. He's not that tall, so that goes against him on dating apps, and he doesn't stand out on dating apps. He's this new-age love-and-light, play-a-guitar, sing-a-song-for-you kind of guy. He's got nice muscles, though — a nice chest. This guy's gorgeous. And he just bombs on dating apps. But he also doesn't want to cold approach in person. I told him: you need to be cold approaching. I guarantee there are so many women you could walk up to and say, hey, are you single? Oh, you're not? Great. I'd love to take you out on a date. This guy could probably get more dates than me doing that. And yet he struggles with dating because dating apps left him feeling horrible — and then he doesn't want to cold approach. So guys, cold approach is the solution.
Be Respectful, But Get to the Point
Now, cold approach obviously should be respectful. You read the room. I'm trying to cold approach in the friendliest environments possible. I'm not trying to be creepy and chase some woman down at the park or something like that. Be respectful. But at the same time, if there's an opportunity to talk with somebody, get to the point. What's the weather like? Great. Are you single? Do you want to go out with me? Get to the point. What I've done over the years at yoga — well, mainly since I've been divorced — is have so many meaningless conversations, so many forgettable conversations. And I probably would have gotten 10, 20, 30 dates if instead of those meaningless conversations it went: she says, oh, that was a great workout. I say, yeah, it was. You're beautiful. Are you single? She says yes. Great — will you go on a date with me? Even if she says no, you can feel good. You showed what kind of a man you are. You took a risk.
One of the things I've just realized is that taking a risk for the right reason leaves me feeling good and respecting myself. Cold approach is an environment where I take risks that feel good, and then I respect myself. Whereas on dating apps, I take risks and I don't respect myself, because I'm sitting at home on a screen. Now, maybe you have a corporate job, or maybe your life's set up in a way where you can't do anything but dating apps. If so, great, that's fine — use them. But if your life's set up where you can get out there and cold approach women, then in my experience, using dating apps says to yourself that you're a loser, that you don't value your time, and that all you are is some superficial picture. There are so many dating coaches who try to help men optimize their profiles, and so few by comparison who teach cold approach. Because yes, cold approach is more intimidating than downloading an app. But cold approach is so much more fun. And as a man, we should be looking for fun. It's not just fun for us, though. It's fun for a woman who's single to get cold approached by a guy she wants to go out with. You can just make some woman's day.
The Beautiful Women Nobody Asks Out
I've talked to so many single women in person, and most of the beautiful ones are not on dating apps. I'll shout out the queen here. She was on dating apps, and she's around guys all the time. And she hardly ever gets asked out. She hardly ever has a guy cold approach her. This is a beautiful woman — all my friends are like, damn. I dated her for like a week, and then it blew up. And this beautiful woman hadn't been on a date with anybody in months, even using dating apps. The last date she'd had scheduled got canceled by some loser on a dating app. And she hadn't had a relationship in years. This is a beautiful woman who's out around men all the time, and almost no men are asking her the simple questions: Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me?
That's cold approach, utterly simplified. All you need to know: Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me? Those questions can feel really vulnerable, because you're not hiding. But taking a risk feels manly to me. And we're not trying to take stupid risks or trying to hurt anybody. We're taking a risk that says: I'm asking for connection. I'm looking for love. And I'm willing to get told no most of the time. But the payoff is worth it. I spent $350 on Hinge and roses, and every single one of those roses felt like a risk. And I just felt disgusting. I spent all that money and didn't get a single date out of it. Literally the first woman I cold approached, I got a date off of.
And what's worse is you get catfished on these dating apps, you get ghosted. Dating apps reward you for being mysterious and hardly saying anything. And the women often really need to see you in person to know if they're attracted to you and if they're feeling your vibe. They often need to hear your voice. Whereas guys, we can just look at dating profiles and get a good idea of whether we're going to be attracted or not — but women are often picking up on so much more than just physical appearance. So guys, cold approach is the answer you've been looking for. There are videos out there I could react to, but I don't like promoting other people's content, and I don't like reacting. The point is: there are women out there desperate for men to approach them.
The Script: You're Beautiful — Are You Single?
Generally, the women who are more desperate to be approached will also send more friendly signals. They'll make eye contact. They'll smile. There it is — you got eye contact, you got a smile. Hi, I'm Jerry Banfield. Actually, I don't even say my name. It's just: hey, you're beautiful. Are you single? If she just smiled and gave me eye contact — hey, you're beautiful. Are you single? Right there, I've set up the context of this conversation. We're not here to talk the weather or sports or my YouTube channel. Hi, you're beautiful. Are you single? If she says no, I'm out. Thank you, appreciate your time, see you later. We don't need to talk anymore. I'm done. I'm good. That's why I was here — you're not single, I don't need to talk to you. But if she says yes: Do you want to go out on a date with me? That second question matters, because even if she is single, maybe she doesn't want to go out on a date with me. It allows her to not have to be weird about the single question. You're beautiful. Are you single? She says yes. Do you want to go out on a date with me? Or, even better: I'd love to take you out on a date.
Masculine, Confident, and Fine With a No
That's what I said in my first cold approach. I asked if she was single. She said hi, and I said, I would love to take you out on a date. If she says, yes, I'm single — I would love to take you out on a date. That is very masculine, very confident. And if she says, no, I think you're ugly — fine. They're probably not going to say that. But if she says no thanks, at least you tried. And you can say: respect. Thank you. Have a great day. Next. Man, that feels good, doesn't it?
The Woman at the Vegan Sushi Place
There was a beautiful woman right before I was going to start this cold approaching. Beautiful woman. I was at this vegan sushi place — all right, so we already know we have that in common. And I look at her from across the room, and then I leave and I don't say anything to her, and I feel like a loser. Why? Because all I had to do was say, hey, we're both here — what are the odds of that? Or anything to open and get her attention. Then whatever she says afterwards doesn't matter, because the next question I have is: are you single? Or: you are beautiful — are you single? Imagine if I missed out on a date with a beautiful woman because I didn't go up to her. Because I sat there across the room waiting for my food. I could have easily. And from now on, anytime there's a woman by herself in a situation that's comfortable for me to cold approach — walking, standing around waiting for food, at work — I'm going for it. Because what sucks is how I felt walking out of that restaurant. This was right before I started cold approaching. What sucks is that I'd spent all that money on dating apps all week and not gotten a date.
Look Under Every Rock
Maybe 90 percent of the time, maybe 95 percent of the time, she says, no, I'm not single. Or she says, no, I don't want to go on a date with you. Maybe 19 out of 20 times. But what about that 5 percent of the time where she says, yes, I'm single — yes, I'll go on a date with you, here's my number? What about that 5 percent of the time where you're walking back to your car with a phone number, versus walking back to your car and you just don't know? See, dating apps to me are just guaranteed to feel disgusting for most guys most of the time. But with a cold approach, even if you fail — even if I'm walking back to my car hitting that 19-out-of-20 scenario where she says, no, I've got a boyfriend, or yes, I'm single but no, I don't want to go out with you — even then, I'm walking back to my car thinking, at least I know. Because right now, I hate that I don't know. I hate that I don't know which scenario it was. It's kind of like that cat scenario — Schrodinger's cat. I don't know. She could have said yes. She could have said yes. Probably wouldn't have. But I hate that the possibility sits there and I didn't check.
Imagine this: if you're walking around and you're broke, and all you have to do is look under each rock and maybe there's $20 under there — how many rocks are you going to look under? I tell you that getting a date with a woman you're excited about is so much better than finding $20. I would say it's more like finding $100,000. And all you have to do is say: you're beautiful. Are you single? Do you want to go out on a date with me? Or: I'd love to go out on a date with you. And you are going to have so many amazing things happen.
Getting Told No to Your Face Makes You Stronger
And if some of you are thinking, oh, I can't do that, I can't get told no to my face — you'll be a stronger man for getting told no to your face. You'll be a much stronger man than getting told no on dating apps. Because on dating apps, if there were equal numbers, it'd be one thing — but there are so many more dudes on dating apps than women. And from the women I know in person, the best women are generally not on dating apps. Even if they are on dating apps, they're generally not doing a great job using them. They're not picking out the guys who are winners. They're not putting much time into them. And pay-to-win gets their attention.
So I have had such a great experience cold approaching. I'm going to do a bunch more cold approach videos, and you can follow along with all of them in my Dating playlist. And what's even better than a cold approach is a warm approach. If you can put yourself in a situation like a workout class where you just worked out together, that's not even truly a cold approach — you already have context. And that's enough on this one.
Talk With Me Directly
If you enjoyed this, what will be even better is to go to jerrybanfield.com. Imagine being able to chat with me for the rest of your life — the chat is fully on my website, and you can ask me anything you want to, about anything, anytime. And if you want to talk with me — unlike most other dating coaches — if you have something you want to talk with me about right now and I'm available, you can talk to me now. I'll generally get in touch with you within 5 to 10 minutes, and we'll talk right then, for 30 minutes or 10 minutes, whatever you want. I also have a community where you can DM me, post, and schedule a one-on-one call with me in advance if you want a specific time — come join the Jerry Banfield Family. I'm here. I'm available to help you. I'd love to get to know you.
I'd love to see you up on that leaderboard at jerrybanfield.com. I'm going to put much more dating material, comedy courses, and all kinds of stuff on my website — that's where you'll find me in the future. I'll see you there.
The Pullback Test: Learning to Play the Dating Game Again
From my video published August 10, 2026.
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.
The Approach Shirt That Gets Single Women to Hand You Their Number
From my video published June 15, 2026.
Men, here's an idea I've never seen anyone show: wear a shirt that states exactly who you are and what you want, so women pre-qualify themselves before you ever say a word. You can do it for almost free, and it turns cold approaches into warm leads.
What the shirt says
Mine reads: "Dear Single Ladies, I am a YouTuber with two kids who wants more — give me your number," with "sober" on one sleeve and "single" on the other, printed on the front and the back (so the single mom standing behind you in the grocery store sees it too). It signals confidence and directness in a world where so many people are zoned out on headphones and the signals are confusing — where cold approaches are hard and easily unwelcome.
Why it works
Every line is a deliberate filter. "Sober," "YouTuber," "two kids," and "wants more" each repel the people I'm not for and delight the one I am. It's also a value proposition and a clear call to action — "give me your number" tells her exactly what to do, and she can act or quietly pass without any pressure or awkward confrontation. It even reaches beyond the women who read it: someone not interested herself might say, "you have to meet my friend." So being around 100 women effectively reaches thousands through their friends.
Make your own
Don't copy mine — start a trend with your own. Dump everything unique about you and what you want into ChatGPT, have it cut the message down to the fewest words possible, then write it on a thrift-store shirt with a Sharpie and test it before buying a nicer version. It takes real vulnerability and confidence to walk around with your heart on your chest like that, and that strength is itself attractive. The point is to honor the current environment (unfriendly to cold approaches), generate warm leads, honor your own time by filtering out time-wasters, and own exactly who you are. If you want to personalize this, you can talk it through with me on my dating playlist here.