It's the Jerry Banfield Show, August 2nd, 2026. Full-time YouTuber, authentic creator, single dad, out there dating, sharing my real, raw, authentic life every day here in St. Petersburg, Florida. So what's interesting that's going on today?
It's funny — in the last 24 hours I've really faced trying to say thank you instead of feeling like everything's not enough. I've been on Hinge a good bit today. I've been using ChatGPT to try and optimize my profile. I got a thumbnail shot of me in my studio here and stuck that on there, and apparently, according to ChatGPT, nothing beats the photo that Angela took that's at the top of my Hinge profile. If you want to see my whole Hinge profile, I've got it up on Jerry Banfield dating in the video where I talk about deleting Hinge three times — here's the profile I'm using.
The big thing this morning: I saw this woman that I had really liked. We had met, and I got her phone number, like, nine months ago. I'd seen her at a couple of events. She was saying she wasn't dating. Then I saw her about a month ago at an event, and she seemed really happy to see me — she had just gotten out of a relationship. I had deleted her phone number, though, so I couldn't message her. So I actually found her work number, and on Friday I sent her a text just saying, hey, it's Jerry. She's like, hey, Jerry, what's up? And it sounded kind of cold immediately. I thought about not even replying, but I said something like, oh, I haven't seen you at this event in a while. She didn't reply. Then I saw her this morning — less than 48 hours later, I saw her on Hinge. So I guess she is dating now. I sent her a rose, and I'm like, that's probably not going to go anywhere, is it?
Rejection Isn't Real
But then I have a video I'm planning on filming called Rejection Isn't Real. Think about going to the basketball court and shooting three-pointers. Every time you miss, that's not rejection. You just executed in a way that did not get the ball in the hoop. And it doesn't matter — just go get the ball and shoot again. That's the philosophy I'm at now. I'm just taking shots. I'm taking every shot I can take. I'm trying to learn how to date the most effective way so that I can share it with you. I especially want to help other people learn how to date and share that on my dating channel, because this is just what I'm really interested in.
Am I Actually an Average Guy?
I've also been thinking: am I a top-10 man? Because I go around thinking about and doing my dating channel kind of like I'm an average guy. Like, I'm just an average guy trying to date, and if I can do it, you can do it. But am I an average guy? I've gotten a billion impressions with all the stuff I've created online. I think I look pretty good — in person, I'm able to pick up some of the most attractive women, like the woman at yoga I picked up recently. Maybe I'm above average in looks. I'm definitely, provably above average in intellect — I always scored around the top 95th percentile on test scores as a kid, so I'm way above average on intellect. And my emotional intelligence, according to some, has gotten pretty good lately. I'm very book smart. I was a police officer, so I learned some street smarts for a few years. And I do YouTube, so I don't have a job, and I have a little bit of fame online.
Maybe I'm not an average guy. Maybe the results I'm getting aren't relatable for average men. Some of the guys I talk to are struggling — they haven't had a date in months — and I have two dates lined up right now, and I'm trying to line up more every single day. I'm very confident in person approaching women. You don't generally get a beautiful woman to give you her phone number and set a date with you the first time you met her unless you're pretty confident approaching. So maybe I need to stop thinking that I'm an average man.
Selling a Relationship, Not a Product
And hey — join the Family. We've had four days in a row where somebody's joined. Somebody just dropped an $81 annual membership, and I got super excited. I made them a reaction video as soon as they joined and sent it to them via DM immediately. I realized what I need to be selling is a relationship — a relationship with me. Because if I'm just talking at you, that's not a relationship. I need to get to know you. I want to know your name and your story, and I want to hear your feedback. But I'm not available to do that outside of that — you can do whatever you want in YouTube comments, and I'm going to stop paying attention to those. I'm just listening to people actually supporting me. That's what I need to hear.
A Breakthrough on the Gaming Channel
I had a big breakthrough this morning on my gaming channel. I've also been wondering, what do I do with my dating channel, man? And the analytics on this vlog are just awesome. My vlogs are a few days ahead right now — there are two days of vlogs scheduled ahead — and these are awesome: 10 and a half minutes average watch time, 11% click-through rate. That is awesome. I really appreciate your support.
On the gaming channel, I just had a breakthrough realizing I have hundreds of old gaming videos and live streams, and I know how to use AI to edit them. On Jerry Banfield Games, I tried making an AI edit of Punch-Out!! — I played Punch-Out!! on the Nintendo Entertainment System live, and I think that video is at least four years old. You can even catch me in the tube top in it. I took that hour-or-two live stream, gave the AI instructions to cut it down to 10 minutes, and it made an awesome video. Then I took a two-hour Hearts of Iron live stream and cut that down to 12 minutes. I also filmed some videos last year where I played games for first impressions. And I think the title on all of these should be Jerry Banfield Plays — like, that's all that's interesting, that Jerry Banfield's playing it. Nothing else. It's just Jerry Banfield. And then every single video promotes Jerry Banfield.
So I'm really hyped. I have this incredible AI workflow, and if you want to do this stuff, join the Jerry Banfield Family — I will show you how to do this stuff. This is really valuable stuff to learn. I looked, and I have 259 videos in my video editing folder, which is 1.4 terabytes of data that I've got set up in here. What I'm going to do is go through all of this and run the AI through and edit all of it. From that, I'm going to crank out hopefully 200-some gaming videos from my old live streams. That will give me a really strong foundation for the gaming channel, where instead of trying to just make new gaming videos, I can use all my old videos to start from a rock-solid foundation and then expand with new games after that. It will give me a six-month head start.
I couldn't even see how many hours of video it was at first, but I got it: 348 hours. I'm trying to figure out what I have that nobody else has and how I can use it. See, I didn't have AI to edit all this stuff before. I have 348 hours of gaming video footage sitting here on my hard drive, and I have a graphics card and a cloud that can rip through all that footage and edit it according to my instructions. We're going to cut this 348 hours down to probably about 250 hours — 356 videos that instead of averaging an hour and a half long get cut down into 10-minute videos, most of them playing different games. And that should be a hell of a foundation for my gaming channel. With a strong foundation for the gaming channel, I should get some viewers that come over to all my other videos, and those of you that already watch videos on my channel and play games might enjoy the games.
Man, I've been struggling so hard with the gaming channel, and it's such a breakthrough. Like, dude — take the 349 hours of footage you have, rip through all of it with AI to cut the best parts out, and put one of those videos out a day. I should have gaming videos out the rest of the year on my channel. I'll still plan to do some gaming live streams — I'm Jerry Banfield — and we'll just constantly have videos coming out too. I may download some of my old live streams that I did as well and strip out the best parts from those too.
Resilience and Doing the Damn Work
I'm really grateful, because you see how resilient I am. A week ago, I was just destroyed. And last night — it was Saturday night — I was feeling a little lonely. I'm like, man, couldn't something happen? I was thinking about going out to Grassroots, the kava bar. But that's not a good idea for me. As an alcoholic with 12 years sober, I've come to believe kava tea is probably fine if you don't have any addictive tendencies — but that's not me. I was like, maybe I'll just go out and see if I can meet someone. But dude, you have two dates lined up already. What you need to do is do your damn work. So I filmed three more YouTube videos.
I went to hot yoga yesterday, looked around, didn't see anybody there. And I'm gentle — I'm looking for warm leads. I'm not trying to do a cold push at the yoga studio. If a woman makes eye contact and smiles, or seems to be giving friendly signals, or is talking about something I can jump into, I'll go for it. But I'm not cold approaching at the studio.
And I did a whole bunch of Hinge strategy today. If you want to talk dating strategy, join the Family, because I'm on all this stuff right now. I got Hinge Premium. I've spent $300 on Hinge in the last few days. And dude, my mind's been like, what if your money doesn't work out? And I'm like, my money is not going to not work out by a few hundred dollars. The money is not going to work out by $10,000 in one direction or the other. Like, either I'm going to be short $10,000 or everything's going to be fine.
It's not going to be like, oh, maybe if you add up a whole bunch of expenses they come out to $10,000. But I'm going to go so hard on YouTube. And be the band. Sell this Skool community — like my financial future depends on it. And the way you all have been joining, and the energy in the community, it's huge. I'm putting all my old online courses in there, so there's a fantastic one in there right now for you. The thing is, though, it's there for you to build a relationship with me.
T-Shirts Are Finally Here
Yesterday I also got my t-shirt set up, which I posted first in the Family. I'm going to create a new product every day. If you click through from my website, it will take you over to Amazon, and you can go take a look at the shirt and buy the shirt on Amazon. Right now on Amazon, duh, the shirt is $23. It comes in a bunch of different colors. I might make two bucks off the shirt, but you all have asked for shirts. These come in a ton of different sizes, and I just ordered a purple one for myself. I'm going to keep cranking out different product designs for those of you that want to know. If you want to show off Jerry Banfield, I got shirts. I've also got some Phoenix designs on there — I think I'm going to delete them, so let me know in the Skool community if you want me to keep them.
I'm really proud, because last night I was kind of lonely, kind of unmotivated, and I'm like, what — do your work. Film a bunch of videos. I filmed three videos last night and I felt great about that. The kids came over and spent a few hours playing video games. I got my daughter to take a picture of me for my dating profile, and then I got another one done.
My Hinge Strategy Right Now
I went through Hinge today, and I realized — here are my current strategies, to summarize. I'll go more into detail on the dating channel. I send roses to women I think I have an extremely high compatibility with, that I want to make sure they see me. Roses are $2 each if you buy 50 of them for $100. So especially if women are in St. Petersburg, and they want kids, they don't drink, they look like they live a healthy lifestyle, and they're a handful of years or so younger — then I'll send a rose. That's extremely high compatibility, and I need to make sure they see me.
Then what I tried today is expanding the radius out further and sending a bunch of likes to women who are further away, who are less likely to be a perfect match, especially because of the distance. I dropped some of the other filters too — I put "sometimes" or "yes" on drinking, meaning I would accept that — and I just sent out a bunch of priority likes to see if I get any action. I did find one woman in Sarasota, though, and for some reason I sent her a rose. I just had a feeling I should send her a rose. So that's my current strategy: rapid-fire a bunch of likes out to a wider radius, then play home-field advantage in a 10-mile radius, filter it, and drop roses on the absolute most compatible women.
We'll see how the two dates I have set up this week go. It's funny, though — I've been feeling like, man, you've got two dates set up already, how many more do you need? And I'm like, well, if one or two of them cancel, I probably need one or two more. I've put out so many offers, taken so many shots at the basket, that something's going to go in. I'm excited. I'm so curious to see what it is.
I went to a hot power flow yoga class this morning with my new Liforme mat. And I don't know — I kind of like the cheaper mat with a towel a little better. The Liforme mat's better if it's not ultra sweaty, and it's a huge mat too.
Get In There
All right — checkout time. Time to film other videos. See you on tomorrow's vlog, and you can catch every one of these daily episodes on my Life playlist — or I'll see you on another channel.
Get in there. Get in that Jerry Banfield Family. Get in there. I want you to get to know me, and I want you to share yourself so I can get to know you. I'm tired of not knowing you. I want to know your name, and your face, and your story. Get in there. Send me a message. Introduce yourself to me. Send me a video you want me to watch. Ask me for a custom video request. Give me feedback. Get in there and be a part of the family.