Short version: November 2026 opened with a thousand dollars I did not see coming and the clearest sense of direction I have had all year. I started this month with nine Founding 50 shirts sold, a new five-day immersion program on my website, a game I built with AI that just got its first buyer, two kids I see six days a week, and a woman in South Africa I talk to every day across a seven-hour time difference. The October diary ended with a week of acute emotional pain turning into the coolest merchandise I have ever made; this one begins with the support arriving. The backstory on the debt, the dating and the Founding 50 idea is all in my October 2026 vlogs. This page is where I keep going.
My November 3 vlog is one of the coolest days I have had in 15 years as a YouTuber. A viewer bought $500 worth of shirts and my Jerry Banfield 3D game while I was asleep, two Founders Edition shirts to get two names on the front and a third to get a name on the back. Then a viewer who thinks of me as a friend called in the morning, introduced me to a woman he thinks I should date, and once I had messaged her, sent me $500 on Zelle so the date would not go on a credit card. I was on the edge of tears, because it is usually easier for the trolls to get to me than for the love to land. He is a millionaire in a different industry, and he told me what I have been finding: the women he dates overseas treat him better than the women at home, so it is not about my debt. For me, my woman is my anchor. I forgot that with my ex, and I told my kids I may need to be in South Africa for a while, which my ex-wife, whose number one priority is our kids, supports. I go back through the Bonefish date where I made her split the bill, the $60 night at Mons Venus in grad school when dating felt like losing forever, and last week's fears of going bankrupt and living on a couch, and I set them next to the woman who fell asleep before our call and woke up to apologize instead of ghosting me. I share my kids' acai fruit bowls, the tattoo-with-your-name idea, the $20 mugs and shirts coming to the store, the CEO point of view of doing less and accomplishing more, and my first sub-nine-minute mile at 42 after a decade without running consistently. I close by asking that if you think of me as a friend, you schedule a call so I can think of you too.
My November 2 vlog is the thinking day that set all of that up. After taking inventory of my skills, I asked what the right work for me actually is, and I launched a five-day immersion program where you come stay with me Thursday through Sunday night in St. Pete, Florida, meals included, and we build whatever you need built: a business like mine, a book from start to finish, a video course, or an AI game with a working prototype. Six Founding 50 shirts had sold by then, with Barry Janfield, Zenith, Oily Trash Movies, Timothy Monsters and Lindsay Dorio among the first names, and the shirts had done $714 on the site. I decided to stop seeing myself as a YouTuber and to make income, not views, my bottom-line metric, because a thousand views with 16 likes and 126 comments are mostly people looking for drama, while one person who stays with me for five days is worth more than a month of sales. I played Detroit: Become Human, took a yoga class, walked, thought, and had three Claude instances building the landing page, and I explained why my woman is my top priority and my kids are second only because their mother is so reliable.
The two entries move from "what is the right work" to "the support showed up before I was done planning." I film these to say one thing a day that could make a difference in your life and to be a friend if you need one, and the thread through November so far is that wearing life like a loose garment opens me up to receive. If any of it lands for you, the way to turn watching into knowing each other is to schedule a call with me, and after the first call you have me on WhatsApp and in my messages for anything else.
On this page
Every post I have written on this subject is below in full, newest first, each under its own heading.
- November 3, 2026 (November 3, 2026)
- November 2, 2026 Vlog (November 2, 2026)
November 3, 2026
From my video published November 3, 2026.
A $500 shirt order overnight and a $500 date gift
I've been a YouTuber for 15 years, it's November 3, 2026, and this is one of the coolest days I've ever had. A viewer just bought $500 worth of shirts and my new Jerry Banfield 3D game last night while I was asleep. He bought two of the Founders Edition shirts so he could get two different names on the front of them, and then he bought a third one so he could get a third name on the back, plus the game. Then I had a call with a viewer this morning who feels that I'm a friend in his life. He watches these videos and he wanted to introduce himself to me. He then sent me his friend who he thinks I should date. I messaged her, I confirmed to him that I'd messaged her, and then he sent me $500 on Zelle. He's like, this is for you to take her out on a fantastic date. This is the most amazing generosity I've seen in all the time I've been a YouTuber. This is incredible. I'm on the edge of tears right now.
Sometimes this is difficult, because often it's kind of easier for the trolls and the haters and the people making reactions and talking junk about me to get to me. But the love and the support have overwhelmed me today. This is incredible, I'm super grateful, and I want to make sure I remember that. Each of you watching, each of those people who watch and say, I love this guy so much, I want him to take this woman out, and here's money for his date so he doesn't have to put it on a credit card. And then the other guy, who's like, I love this guy so much, I want two different names on the front of his shirt and three on the back. Wow.
At the same time, I've been wearing life more like a loose garment recently, and I think that's opening me up to receive better. Sometimes we just kind of get impatient. I deleted everything on YouTube last year out of frustration and burnout, then got divorced right afterwards, and started from zero this year, which is the whole story behind How Can Viewers Help Me Not Quit YouTube Again?. And I'm amazed how many people have found me, and how many other shows have talked about me, when really all I do is talk about myself on a day-to-day basis. Because that's all I'm an expert on. I don't know about everybody else. I don't even feel called to comment on hardly anything anybody else is doing, because I don't know enough to have much of an opinion that's valid.
My woman is my anchor, and dating overseas
I also told my kids this week, I said, I may need to go to South Africa for my dating life. I may need to be out of the country for a while to set up things with my next woman. And I had a great call with this guy today, and he said, for me, my woman is my anchor. I feel the same way. My woman is my anchor. I forgot that with my ex, and maybe it was just kind of dysfunctional. Maybe I prioritized her being attractive too much and didn't make the personality compatibility a priority, or maybe I changed. I don't know whatever happened in the past. But I forgot how important my woman is in my life, and I started to think I could easily find another one.
I am seeing that the kind of guy I am, dating overseas is ideal for me. I love how this woman in South Africa talks to me compared to how the women here talk to me. She always responds. If she's not able to make a call, like yesterday, she's like, I'm sorry, I hope you're not mad at me. It's amazing how nice she is by comparison. I talked to another woman in another country this year too, and it's just like, man, I love how I'm being treated. And my new friend who called today said, yeah, the women I'm dating overseas are the same thing. They treat me so well compared to what I'm getting at home.
What's interesting is that many of you would think it's about money. The guy who called me today obviously has enough money that he can send me $500 and pay for a call, and it's nothing to him, because he has so much money that this is what feels good to him. He's not going to miss that money in the bank. And yet, even though he's a millionaire, you would think women would just treat him differently and he'd be having a different dating experience than me. Some of you think, oh, it's because you're in debt and you're a YouTuber. No. This guy is in a totally different industry, he's private, he's online, and he's got money. And yet he's experiencing the same kind of treatment from women in the US. He's like, you've got to date overseas, you get treated so much better.
The way I see it, the US has become a matriarchy, where women collectively often feel like they want to run things and that you're not going to be the man to them. You're going to be living in their world, in their house, doing what they want. And yeah, that's how it felt with my ex. That's why I got tired of it. I'm like, I'm the man, this is my house, my life, and I don't want to be told what to do and how to do it and when to do it. I love that the women overseas, some of them, seem to be very happy with that.
Difficult days before the wins: Bonefish, Mons Venus and the fears
I'm really grateful for such amazing support. I'm grateful I've made it through the difficult days to get here today, the days I documented in Jerry Banfield October 2026 Vlogs: Debt, Dating and Reviews. If you've got difficult days in your life, difficult days to me are setting up potential for character building and for amazing things to come in the future. I had a lot of difficult days before I blew up online and made millions of dollars, which I told in I Made Millions Online and I'm Still in Debt. I had a lot of difficult days before I met my ex-wife. So many. I remember the date I went on right before I met her. This woman is at the table, she's pretty, but then she's like, I just want to be friends. And I'm like, good, since you just want to be friends, you can split the bill. We went to Bonefish and we split the bill. But then I kept texting her anyway. Then she canceled a date last minute, and I just remember feeling utterly defeated. I'm like, dating can't be this. I went to Mons Venus back then, the strip club, but I only spent $60, because I was in grad school and I didn't have much credit and I was being very reasonable. But I remember feeling so defeated. I'm like, is this all it's ever going to be, losing over and over again in dating? And then I met my ex-wife and had a mostly fantastic relationship and two kids with her over the next 15 years. That is the exact pattern I described in You Can Be Terrible at Dating and Still Find Love.
And I felt so defeated recently. I'm like, my business sucks, I'm going to go bankrupt, I'm going to have to be living on somebody's couch, I'm not going to get to see my kids that much, and all the women I go out with seem to hate me or have a bad attitude or act like they have all these other guys, even when they don't actually seem to, at least some of them. Why does everything feel wrong? But then today comes along. I imagine people winning MrBeast videos only feels a little bit better than this. To wake up today to $500 in sales on shirts and then to have a call with a viewer who drops another $500, it's like, you all just gave me a thousand dollars today. And from my point of view, that was very easy for you to do. I don't imagine either of these two viewers is putting this stuff on credit cards and charging it. I'm grateful. There is a small number of you watching who have a lot of money and relate to me, and I feel very honored. I feel like I've relaxed about things having to work out, and yet I feel like that's going to help things work out more.
I was sad yesterday. The woman from South Africa said she fell asleep last night, which makes sense. She worked all day, came home, cleaned, made herself dinner, and then it would make sense that she fell asleep, because that was the first time I was able to talk. And she woke up and sent a nice voicemail saying, hey, I'm so sorry I fell asleep, I hope you're not mad, I'd love to talk to you. God, that's refreshing. I've had so many women in the US that I've gone out with who ghost me, who flake on a date with no apology and no acknowledgement that it might have hurt my feelings. I go out, spend hundreds of dollars on a date, and don't even get a single text message back, all the while they act like they had fun. This is just so nice.
I took my kids to their sports last night, and I really enjoyed watching them. One night they were acting out, because I was feeling really bad, and I told them, look, let's enjoy our time together. Let's not waste our time together, because our time is short. I look back now at all the times my parents and my brother and I fought, and we wasted so much time fighting and arguing with each other when we didn't have that much time together. It seemed like we did at the time. But my dad is dead now. My mom lives just down the street, and I do get to see her a few days a week, but she couldn't come over last night because she was sick and overwhelmed with getting ready for her sister to visit. My brother lives about a nine-hour drive away, and I don't get to see him but once a year. We didn't have that much time together. And I told my kids, we don't have time to waste.
I may need to go overseas for a while, because my woman is my anchor. I understand some of you may think that's crazy when I'm a divorced dad. But if my kids were totally dependent on me, and if they weren't the number one priority to anyone else, then yeah, that'd be different. With my ex, the kids are the number one priority to her. Whoever she's dating is number two. They get whatever's left of her after she takes care of the kids. And she made it clear. I said, I'm talking to this woman in South Africa, I might need to go over there, and she was very, very clear.
Good karma from the divorce and my body as a servant of the collective
She was very supportive. Some of my friends are like, oh, you got screwed in the divorce, you gave her everything, you could have gotten so much more, you could have gotten child support and alimony since you weren't making any money when you got divorced. And yeah, but I set up good karma. Because it seems like my ex might be willing to take care of the kids full time if I need to be out of the country for a few months. It seems like she'd be willing to help out, and that's invaluable. That the kids are the number one priority to her makes a huge difference, and the way we handle all of this is what I laid out in Single Dad: How I Co-Parent and Tell My Kids the Truth.
Sometimes it's hard to get honest with ourselves and admit what's important when it conflicts with what other people think. A lot of people think your kids have to be number one, and it doesn't matter whether you want another woman, it doesn't matter whether you want to have more kids. I'm like, but it does matter to me. I like to think on a humanity level. I'm not going around thinking all the time, what does this body need? I'm not thinking of this body in isolation. I know I might talk like it, but I think of this body as a servant of the collective, and the collective needs men who want to be fathers, who are proven fathers, and who can raise children successfully. There are many women out there who are not going to have kids unless they find a man like me. Not exactly like me, but a man who wants to be a father, who wants to provide for kids. I think that's really important.
My ideal setup would be like it was when my kids were babies and toddlers. Believe it or not, I made all the money, six figures every year, and I paid for everything. That's my ideal setup, and I want to do that again, with a woman who loves to hear about my business ideas, like this woman in South Africa. It's hard to make a living over there. It's not as easy as it is over here, and it's hard enough over here. So she respects my hustle and my grind. She respects and is excited to hear about my new ideas. Like my newest idea: maybe I'll sell a tattoo, for the hardest-core viewers who have the most money. Maybe I'll accept thousands and thousands of dollars to get a tattoo with your name on me somewhere. I tell her that and she's like, that's such a cool idea, how would you even think of that?
Nine founder shirts, $20 merch and the Jerry Banfield brand
There are still a few weeks left. If you want your name on my Jerry Banfield 2026 shirt forever, those founder shirts are there on my website. Nine of them have sold now. And I'm going to offer a bunch of cheaper products. I've been doing the work to set that up in the background. I'm going to offer stuff that's $20 or whatever, plus shipping: mugs, shirts, all kinds of stuff. I'm working on building all of that into my website. What I've been seeing is that what I need to do is build the Jerry Banfield brand. That's what I've got that's special. There are very few people out there who have an entire brand like this, with YouTube videos, books, music, games, a website and a community. If you buy anything on my website, you've got lifetime access to direct message me and to post in the chat community. I've got an entire brand built out around me, and that's what's hard to replicate. My brand didn't even die when I quit YouTube and deleted everything for nine months. My brand survived deleting everything, and now it's thriving. I'm grateful for everyone who's helping it thrive.
What's cool is I just feel a lot less attached to everything. I'd love to stay in this house. I love this house. I'd love to have enough that I could afford to travel around the world to work on my next relationship. I'd love to have the money that when I come back here, I can just stay in this house and immediately have my kids overnight when I get back. That would be the ideal scenario. I'd prefer that over crashing on anybody's couch. So dear God, dear collective, that would be my first choice: to keep this house, to make 10 to 20-plus thousand a month so I could pay all the bills, pay all my debts, pay for plane tickets, and maybe even start supporting my woman.
Because the woman from South Africa has not asked for any money. Everybody asks, has she asked for money? I've been talking to her for a month. No, she has never asked for money. She works hard, and she's able to pay her own bills. She's got a house about as big as mine, except it's practically free compared to mine. And I'd love to be able to pay for her to get a visa and a plane ticket over here so she could visit here also. We could have a great relationship if she could come visit over here for a few months and I could visit over there for a few months. I could show up for her, show up for my kids, and show up for all of you. That could be ideal. That would be my ideal scenario, and it's the same instinct I wrote about in I'd Rather Pay Her Than Take Her Money.
Time and space are limited: six days a week with my kids
When I was taking the kids to sports, I thought, what I'm grateful for is appreciating what I have right now, and that you only have a limited space. Right now I've got so much time with my kids. I see them almost every day. I've got three nights a week where I've got the kids all to myself. Today I'm doing everything: dropping them off at school, picking both of them up at school. I took them to their sports last night. I took them to school, I'll take them to school Wednesday and Thursday, and then they spend hours with me on Saturday and on Sunday. The one day I don't usually see them is Friday, because they're in school all day and then I have tennis at night. So I get to see my kids six days a week. When they're here, I spend hours with them every day, and even when they're not here, I still see them for like two to four hours a day. I don't have my woman here right now. Maybe later I'll be at her place, but then I won't get to see my kids. I'm just realizing there's only so much time and there's only so much space, and everybody you love and everybody who's a friend takes up that space.
I released my next video about Jerry Banfield 3D, and I'm grateful we got the first ever purchase of that today. It's like Duke Nukem 3D. I dumped about half of my Fable credits for the whole week on the Ultra plan on Claude, and I made that game so much better yesterday. I love the idea. I would love to sell thousands and thousands of dollars of video games. To be able to make the games and then play the games is an absolute dream come true, especially after what I went through in Video Game Addiction: Why Gaming Was My Hardest Habit to Quit. I'm also playing Detroit: Become Human, my second playthrough, and I'm having fun. Man, my life is so good. The last few months have been some special trials and tribulations, but I feel like everything's kind of coming together now, and that I've been planting a bunch of seeds.
I took a bunch of losses in dating, but it's also made me willing to do the work to date globally. Dating has been so brutal, and the treatment I've received has been so brutal, and therefore I'm willing to go to South Africa or go date in another country. If I can get treated better, if I can find a woman who really wants family and who is going to treat me like a king, that's worth it. I also realized I could date all over the country as well, so my mind is open. I'm grateful I can teach from this perspective, because even though it seems like there have been so many losses this year, sometimes what looks like a loss in the short term is setting up a big win, if you can make it through it. That's why I still believe what I said in Dating Is the Most Worthwhile Thing You Can Possibly Do.
I'm glad I didn't quit when things got difficult this year. My kids are a big part of that. I was telling the guy on the phone, once you have kids, you're anchored. You are stuck here, at least from my point of view. I'd have a lot more freedom without the kids, but the kids have so much love to give. I love their snuggles and how playful they are. I love raising them. I just made my kids even healthier fruit bowls today. I bought acai and I bought bags of fruit, so they have seven or eight different fruits in these fruit bowls they eat every morning. They have a banana or two in them, acai, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. That diversification of all those different fruits gives them a ton of good nutrition first thing in the morning. It's amazing to see how they eat with me. My ex was halfway cooperative, but she always had all this ultra-processed garbage around all the time, and she'd be cooking meat. In my house, all we have is ultra healthy stuff, whole plant foods, and that's what the kids eat. At first they were like, oh, Dad, you're not going to have candy in the house, or crackers? I'm like, no, none of that stuff in my house. All we're having is stuff you can eat as much of as you want. You can have as many noodles and sauce, kale chips and fruit bowls as you want. You can have as much of anything in my house as you want to eat. There's nothing in my house that needs to be limited.
Oh man, I'm so grateful for receiving so much from you all financially, and for seeing that there are women in the world, at least one specifically right now, who would be very enthusiastic to have me be a part of their life, who care a lot whether I like them and whether I want them, and who want me to be happy with them. It just feels great. And it's obviously partially the kind of guy I am too. There are probably plenty of guys who are just fine to do anything for a woman. I used to be more like that. But what I want now is to be the leader. I want to be the king, and I want to provide, to hold space so you can be safe as a woman and relax, and just have a really nice life with me where you don't have to be hustling and grinding and stressing and figuring everything out, where you can just relax and enjoy, have emotions and have fun, and enjoy all the love that kids have to offer.
The CEO point of view and paid speaking gigs
Enjoy doing something truly important for humanity, which is raising kids. You realize this whole thing called humanity can't go on unless women especially get pregnant and raise kids, ideally in cooperation with a man. It's funny, I feel like I'm doing less right now but accomplishing more, taking the CEO point of view and asking, what do I really need to do, and what should I stop doing? It does seem like the answer is to just keep cranking YouTube videos out and continue exploring ways to monetize. I'm also going to look for and apply for some local or regional opportunities to be a speaker, because I'm an awesome speaker. I know people putting on conferences are often looking for people to talk at them, and some of the smaller ones have a hard time finding a speaker. So I'm going to start applying to speak at more places. Maybe I can start getting some paid speaking gigs. I'm going to open my eyes to some more opportunities to make money and show you all those too, show up as much as I can for my kids, and take the best care of myself I can. That is the opposite of the grind I warned myself about in Never Say You're Busy Again.
A sub-nine-minute mile at 42 and running it like a marathon
I am going to play tennis tomorrow. I took a walk today around the park, which was so nice. I did yoga yesterday, and the day before that I took a run, and I ran my first mile under nine minutes out of my three-mile run. I haven't run a mile in under nine minutes in a long time. What's cool is I wasn't trying to run that mile fast. I was trying to endurance-run that mile as one of three miles, so I still had plenty of energy to run two more miles afterwards. That is incredible. I'm 42 years old now, and I haven't been training real hard. I just run a few times a week, do yoga and play tennis. But I've been running consistently for the first time in at least a decade. My miles were toward 10 minutes when I started, and now the first is under nine minutes, and each mile on the three-mile run is under 10 minutes instead of taking 11-plus minutes a mile on average. And I'm not trying to run as hard as I can either. I'm trying to run at a comfortable pace, not hurt myself or go too fast, the same approach to my body I explained in Mind-Body Health: Why I Stay Well and How I Heal.
One thing you learn is that time is extremely limited in life for what you can do. At the same time, pick a few things that are really important and do those: taking care of my body, finding my next wife, having kids, showing up here with my content, and sharing messages that truly matter. Then don't worry about everything else. But also plan things like it's a marathon. I want to keep my body healthy for the rest of my life, so I don't need to go super hard and try to get all these big muscles. I just want to keep this body functioning and healthy for the rest of its life. And for my next relationship, I'm grateful that with this woman in South Africa, I'm not coming at this like a sprint. One thing I did with the Queen, as I told in It All Comes Down to the Stories You're Telling: Yoga, the Queen, and My Worst Business System Yet, is that I came at that relationship like a sprint. Okay, let's blast into this. But the distance actually makes it easier to just take steps forward. With running, it's pretty obvious: just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Even if I need to slow down and run-walk, just put one foot in front of the other. You don't need to sprint the whole three miles. In fact, the more you sprint, the more you're going to have to slow down. And with my business, just think about what really needs to be done.
What's so funny is that somehow I've got almost that Office Space calm, like when they hypnotized him in Office Space and he just got super relaxed. About a week ago is when I wrapped up looking at the wall, looking at the grim possibilities for my life. I looked at the grim, horrible ways my life could turn out, and I'm like, almost anything I do is going to work out better than that. So I just feel like I can relax. Whatever. I'm just going to try every day to say something that will make a big difference in your life, to be a friend if you need a friend, to be as real as possible, to open myself up to receive, and to try to give you all what you ask for. You want shirts? I got shirts. You want cheaper shirts? I'm going to have cheaper shirts. You want mugs? You want blankets? You want iPhone cases? You want key chains? I'm going to put all that on my website. You want a call with me? I got you.
Nobody rides for free, Jerry Banfield 3D voice acting and a call invitation
And also to say no. Somebody emailed me saying they're local and they want to do a book with me, and they wanted to hop on a Google Meet call. I'm like, no, you can schedule a call at jerrybanfield.com. They got upset and said they're not interested. I'm like, that's great, because nobody rides for free. Oh, and my Jerry Banfield 3D game, that's available at jerrybanfield.com/jb3d. I'm going to record the voice acting for that soon. Dude, wait until you hear the lines in this game. The lines in this game are going to be hilarious. Who's going to put this thing together? Me. That's who. It's going to have so many great lines in the game, and the game's going to keep getting better and better. You can see me on my Jerry Banfield Games channel playing the game before the voice acting is in, and I can probably record most of the lines in an hour or two. When the voice acting goes in, it's going to slap. You're going to be laughing. I'm going to have so many funny lines in that game, all the stuff you've heard me say and all the stuff you don't even know. Maybe the game will start off with me going to bed, and I'll say lines for the trolls too. I feel like I've kind of run the gauntlet lately. Oh, it's election day too. I need to go vote. Well, I don't need to, but I probably will.
And let's have a nice life together. If you think of me as a friend, please, will you go to jerrybanfield.com and schedule a call? Because then I can think of you. Once you schedule the first call, then you can message me on WhatsApp or text me, and then we can be more real friends. But until you schedule that call, I don't know you. I'd like to get to know each of you. If you schedule it for an hour, we can talk, and if you don't have an hour, we can talk 15, 20 or 30 minutes. In fact, most of the calls people have been scheduling have been hour-long, but they only talk for 20 or 30 minutes, and most of the time it's whoever's calling who is talking. So I'd love to get to know each of you better. Then you have me on WhatsApp, you have me on DM on my website, and anything else, we can go from there.
I really appreciate you watching. I'm going to make sure I think mostly of those of you who consider me a friend on these videos. If people are trolling and stuff, I'm going to look at it as them doing free marketing for me, all the trolls and the haters, except the worst of the worst, the craziest of the craziest, because that's too much. But to the vast majority of people reacting to my content, thank you for the free marketing. I appreciate it. You can follow the whole diary on my Daily Vlogs playlist, and that's enough.
November 2, 2026 Vlog
From my video published November 2, 2026.
Taking inventory and finding the right work
I'm Jerry Banfield, it's November 2nd, 2026, and this is my daily vlog. In yesterday's video, called "I Made 5,018 Videos, 1,518 Videos in 8 Months, Why Am I Still Struggling?", the goal was to take inventory of my skills and figure out some new things I could offer, which I have done. What I hope I can share here that will be helpful is the idea that if you will open your thinking up and see what's possible for you, there could be some incredible things that come your way. That's exactly what I'm doing right now. And there are only 15 likes on that video for some reason.
What I've been thinking about a lot today is: what is the right work for me to be doing? A lot of us are locked into this employee mindset, even business owners like me, that says as long as I'm grinding, as long as I'm doing something, I must be accomplishing something and going in the right direction. But especially for me, I can work all day and not hardly create any value or make any money out of it. So what I've been really locked in on in the last 24 hours is this: I need to think about what the right work is for me to do. I need to put myself in a position where I really stand out and offer things that almost nobody offers, things people might not even realize are something I would be able to do. And then I need to publish those things and make them available as soon as possible.
A five-day immersion program in St. Pete
So I went back and forth with Gemini and with Claude yesterday, and they gave me some awesome ideas. The first one I'm going to offer is a five-day immersion program where you can come stay with me Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in St. Pete, Florida. It's all inclusive: you come stay with me, meals included, and then we work on whatever you need to work on that I can help with. For example, if you want to build an entire business out like I have at jerrybanfield.com, we could get that done in the time you stay with me. I know how to do all of this already. All of it could be built out in a few days. Maybe you want your own platform with your own products, like all the ones I have built out, including this game, Jerry Banfield 3D, that I've been grinding on and that keeps getting better and better. My Jerry Banfield Games has it up: you want a game made with AI, we get you a working prototype done.
Do you want a business and life reset? I'm ultra healthy. I'm 12 and a half years sober. I eat a whole plant-based diet. I don't drink, don't smoke, and don't hardly do anything besides raise my kids, do things like yoga, running, massage and tennis, and get full nights of sleep. I went deeper on how I stay well in Mind-Body Health: Why I Stay Well and How I Heal. So for some of you who want a living example of what it's like to live an ultra healthy life, staying with me for five days and four nights could be: here is exactly what it looks like. You get full immersion into my world. I've got this up on my website now at jerrybanfield.com/in.
What I'm looking at is: what is the easiest thing for me to do to just put something out where there's huge potential? If you look at your life that way, you're constantly putting the equivalent of lottery tickets out into the world. All right, let me see if this works. Let me see if that works. And what's so nice with my business at jerrybanfield.com is that I'm going to just keep building this store deeper and deeper. At the same time, I have AI working on building print-on-demand shirts.
Six Founding 50 shirts sold and what's next for the store
Right now I'm grateful six orders have come in so far for the Jerry Banfield 2026 Comeback Tour Founding 50 shirt. Six people have bought these already and there are 44 spots left before the end of November. What you get by buying one is a shirt plus your name on the shirt. Barry Janfield was the first purchase. Zenith got the first founder's one and is also on the front. Oily Trash Movies, who I talked to on Zoom yesterday or today, which was awesome, is on the front of the shirt also. Then Timothy Monsters and my friend Lindsay Dorio round out the first six names on there. This is something I was able to quickly and easily build out and test on my website, and then we've got some nice actual sales on it. You can see the comeback tour shirts have already sold $714 on my website. Somebody bought a one-on-one call, and those are now up to $745. If you want something like this built for yourself and your business, this is something we could do and have everything built in five days. You'd probably want to bring your laptop, and we'd get Claude Code installed directly on the computer, build all of that out, and you'd go home and just talk to the AI to maintain it and upgrade it.
I'm also using Claude right now to build out the next thing, because I realize not all of you want to pay $79 for a shirt. Those are special shirts that you can have your name on. What I'm going to do in the future is have a bunch of cheaper shirts on my website. I'm going to put all my different shirt ideas on there. I'm going to have cups. I'm going to have all kinds of merchandise, and I'll have all of it in the store. Then I'll be able to show off each of those different shirts, list all of them for sale, and just test that out. I've also realized I could start an AI web design agency if I wanted to.
I'm much more than a YouTuber, and income is the metric
But the goal with my thinking, and I've been taking a lot of time to think, is this: I want to make serious money with what I do. Step one is to stop looking at my identity as a YouTuber. I'm much more than a YouTuber. One thing I do is YouTube, but I also research crypto. I'm having a call on dating tomorrow. I've written 35 books. I've made 350 songs. I'm making an AI game right now, and I'll do a new version of that. I've done stand-up comedy. I'm a teacher; I've taught all kinds of people all over the world. I'm an entrepreneur; I build businesses. I'm a single dad. I play tennis. I play video games. I do yoga. I have a master's in criminology. I'm a guy who is not just one-dimensional, and it's time to give myself the chance to make money in a way that's not just one-dimensional either. Because the YouTube path is get bigger and more all the time. I want where I'm at today to be enough, so that I could just keep doing videos like this every day and have the potential to make serious money on sales.
On my Jerry Banfield channel I've made a little over $1,000 in ad revenue on YouTube. What's so cool is that now, with my business dashboard, I can look at exactly how much money I've made in the last month too. If you go back to October 2nd, you can see I made $2,500 on my website. That's a little over $3,500 with YouTube at $1,400, so close to $4,000 in October, the month I documented in Jerry Banfield October 2026 Vlogs: Debt, Dating and Reviews, plus some other sources of income like crypto sponsorships that don't go through there. That's a long way from the first order I celebrated in My Website's First Sale After 15 Years of Middlemen. So I'm grateful. I'm feeling very positive about my finances, but it feels weird. It's felt weird today because I've taken a lot of time to think. I actually played Detroit: Become Human, the game sitting there on my PS5. I took a yoga class. I took a walk. Today what I needed to do was think properly. Today I needed to be the CEO of the company and ask: what should Jerry Banfield be doing? Where are Jerry Banfield's highest offerings?
What's kind of sad or stupid with YouTube is that if you're just looking at being a YouTuber, then I always need more and more views all the time, and I judge my success by my analytics and whether enough people are watching. But a lot of the views on YouTube are worthless. If my last video is any indication, how is it that there are 16 likes on a video with a thousand views and 126 comments? Think about who's watching that video, with an 11-minute average watch time. Certainly some people are fans who are watching, but what is the intention of a lot of the people watching? Are a lot of the views potential buyers, or are these people just looking for some drama? Why are people watching? When I gave YouTube 74 days to make $30,000 in Everyone Told Me to Get a Job. I Gave YouTube 74 Days to Make $30,000., I was still measuring myself by views. For me, my bottom-line metric needs to be income. What is actually making money? If that's the bottom-line metric, then I can optimize from there.
What I've been doing, thinking of myself as a YouTuber, is: whatever's getting views, it doesn't matter if people like it. There are 126 comments and I've read zero of them. I have the AI summarize them and ask it to remove the critical feedback. So I asked Studio to summarize. When you're looking at things purely from the point of view of getting views and watch time, you have to ask: do I need watch time from people who are never going to buy anything from me? No. That doesn't matter. The watch time that matters is whether there is one high-net-worth individual watching who loves what I do, wants what I have, and is willing to pay for it. What's cool is I've put all this effort into doing all these videos in the last month, which is awesome, and I've got $2,500 in sales on my website. But one person who stays with me for five days puts that up to $10,000. Yes, during those five days I can't hardly do anything else besides hang out with them. But then the other 25 days of the month, that's full-time income.
So right now I'm just obsessing over what I need to do to crank my income up. Cranking the income up is not just about me making money either. It's about offering someone an experience that could dramatically change their whole life. That's worth $7,500. Coming to stay with me for five days and four nights could dramatically change somebody's life. For example, picture somebody who's had an idea for a book their entire life and never written it. They decide, okay, I'm going to drop this $7,500 with Jerry Banfield and finish that entire book from start to finish while I'm there with him.
One person a month could change everything
That's priceless. I know at least one guy locally who could afford to pay for that, but he's dragging his feet on getting started. Many, many people have interesting life stories and plenty of money and drag their feet on getting started because they don't know how to do the whole process or aren't sure how to go about all of it. Even if I had one person a month come stay with me, that would work. I had a friend come stay with me a few years ago. And you don't have to stay with me either; you can get an Airbnb or a hotel room. This friend actually got an Airbnb a couple of blocks from my house, and we filmed an entire video course from start to finish. In just five days we filmed 40-plus videos. I'd just show up and we'd knock out 10 or 15 videos at once, then go have lunch or go to the beach. We went to the beach and shot photos. So for people who are very busy and have things they want to accomplish but feel like they don't make the time, which is exactly what I wrote about in Never Say You're Busy Again, I've got a container for that now.
What's cool is my videos and my authenticity put me in a position where it can feel like: okay, I know this guy well enough that I want to go stay with him. I see he's got 35 books published, so he knows how to do this. He did 1,519 videos in 2026, so it's obvious he can film a video. And it can be customized. If you're thinking about this, you could just schedule a one-on-one call to discuss your ideas. If you wanted to come do a five-day live streaming marathon and do a bunch of live streams with me on my different channels, that's something we could do too. Or if you wanted to make an AI game from scratch and then be able to continue developing it yourself or sell it, I can make a whole game with you in five days. Right now I've got six or seven games on my website.
Monday is sprint day for Claude
But it feels weird. I feel like I'm not doing anything, because what have I done today? I got up, took a walk, thought a lot, talked to the AI a little bit, and had Claude running. I have three different Claude instances running on my computer right now, and two of them just finished. On Claude you have these weekly usage resets, so Monday is the sprint day for Claude. Whatever you want to build out, go super hard on that. I've used 77 percent of my Fable usage, and it resets in about three hours. So let's grind. We're going to grind Fable hard on everything before the usage reset.
I've got a bunch of other ideas too, things I can offer or other things I can do. I've gotten very open-minded in the last few days. If I could find some remote job that wasn't too hard, I'd do that. I'm going to do what it takes to make some money and just relax. But the top level of thinking is the primary thing. So I went to yoga and I thought. I came home and had a nice big lunch and listened to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Then I had a call, and I actually played some Detroit: Become Human for a while. Then I sat around, talked to the AI, thought some more, and then got to work and launched this entire landing page on my website. It's a different rhythm from the one I showed in A Day in My Life: Yoga, Tennis, AA Meetings and ICP Crypto, because today the thinking was the work.
A lot of us go through our lives so fast and grind so hard that we don't stop to think about what we should be working on. To me that's one of the hardest parts of doing what I'm doing: I don't know what to do. I need to take some time to just think about the big picture and stop doing grunt work.
This is what's so amazing. I talked this through with the AI and thought about it, and I built this entire thing. I'm a genius with AI at this point. The things I can do, like building my own game and building my own entire business out. I built this entire page, well, the AI did, but I thought about it, I researched it, I went back and forth, and this entire landing page is built out. In the worst-case scenario nobody buys it. So what? This took me an hour. It took me an hour to think about it, set it all up and put it out there. This is just a lottery ticket at this point. If nobody buys it, so what? I'm already setting up more and more. I've already got more plans down the road. Maybe I can sell a bunch of cheaper shirts. I'm going to have several more services coming right after this that I'll put on my website too.
So I'm grateful. I don't know exactly how all of this is going to work out financially, but I feel this massive power at my fingertips. You have the brain to process this. You have the AI tools to process it, to do the research, and to execute the details. And you have the space. I have months where I don't have to make any more money, where I'm already making enough. I have the space to set myself up for success, and for that I'm very grateful.
The woman in South Africa and a seven-hour time difference
I was supposed to talk with a woman from South Africa today, but I don't know if she fell asleep or something. It's kind of sad, because we were supposed to have a call. She's seven hours ahead of me now, so for most of the day we can't talk because one or the other of us is sleeping. She did send me a nice picture today and a few pictures of what she did, and we exchanged some messages, and I'm really grateful for being able to talk to her. I also want to build a business where I could afford to go spend time anywhere in the world and still do my work from anywhere. I'm grateful I've thrown away the local business idea. We don't need to do that. My superpowers are doing stuff online, but I do want to have things in person that people can enjoy.
I'm also really lasered in today on this: it doesn't matter what any critics or trolls think. Everybody's opinion who is not here, that's not my business. If you're spending money on my website, if you're paying to talk to me, I care what you think. I'm interested to get to know you. You're invested in my success. I care what you think. I'm grateful for the people who are watching and helping get more views on my YouTube videos. But if anyone who is not supporting doesn't agree, anything anybody has to say or react, it's none of my business. I don't care. If anything, the people who are the most noisy are helping me get discovered more. And what's funny is that sometimes somebody who thinks I'm crazy will attract someone who thinks I'm brilliant, because there's a very small line between genius and insanity, and I'm definitely walking it. I realize that. But how cool would it be if someone found me on some hater's channel, started watching my videos, and then dropped $7,500 for five days with me and got an entire book or video course or AI platform built out? Or just wanted to see what an ultra healthy sober life looks like? Or watched enough of my videos to say, okay, I want to see what this guy's deal is for real, in person. I'm so interested to see what works out at this point.
Wearing the world like a loose garment
Last week was pretty tough emotionally; I was feeling kind of hopeless. Now I have this kind of apathy toward it: if it doesn't work out, so what? I'll just keep trying. I'll do my best with where I'm at. I'd like to stay in the house I'm in, and if I can't, that's fine; I'll stay somewhere else. I'd like to meet the woman in South Africa, and I might go see her in two or three weeks or so, depending on how the elections go there. I'd love for that to happen. But if it doesn't work out, I'll have other plans after that. I'll open my dating back up, and I'm just going to keep making an effort. Wearing the world like a loose garment feels better today, the same way it did in Ten Days After Meeting Her: Slowing Down, Trusting God, and Coming Back to Life. I'm not so attached. I am very much aiming to make things go the way I'm interested in them going. I'd like to make $15,000 to $20,000 a month doing work that's extremely valuable for people in exchange for that money, and then have the money to keep this house and go travel for half the year if I felt like it.
If there is sufficient motivation, will I fly to South Africa to get laid? Absolutely. My matchmaking, the night at Mons Venus and all the money I spent on dating apps have made it very clear that I'm willing to do what it takes to find a woman who's really into me and who I'm really into. That is very special. And I accept that I'm a bit of an anomaly. I'm not like most guys. I truly am pretty different. While that is going to put off a lot of women, there's a very small number of women who will have to have me, which is the whole point of You Can Be Terrible at Dating and Still Find Love. Out of those women, I'm sad about the woman from South Africa. I don't know if she fell asleep tonight or something, but it is a bit of a concern. You said you'd be available in an hour and then disappeared. What happened? That's a little bit of a concern. I was a little sad for a while, but then I stepped up and did my work. These bills aren't going to pay themselves.
And I'm glad I didn't just grind out YouTube videos today. At this point I've concluded it's pointless for me to try to grind out six YouTube videos a day. It doesn't matter how many videos I make each day. I need to make the right videos, and the right videos need to make money. It doesn't matter how many views I get, especially from reactions or trolls or haters. I don't understand why people watch videos they don't think are really helping them.
Only listening to what helps or entertains
All I want to do is make money, and even that isn't quite it, because I don't want to just make money. All I listen to are things that are really helping me or that are very entertaining, like stand-up comedy or a good book. Maybe I am very entertaining for some of you. For those of you, imagine having the full experience for five days and four nights. Boy, am I looking forward to getting that notification. And there are meme coin discounts if you pay with JBBJ, although the price could go up so much that it might get a little prohibitive. There is somebody holding $29,000 worth of JBBJ, which they probably bought for a few hundred dollars, so they could essentially come get a five-night trip with me for free. That's obviously not financial advice.
I'm grateful I got to work and did my work today. Often when I'm a little sad, like about not hearing from the woman from South Africa, it's: all right, you've got an hour until your kids get here, film your video and get your landing page set up. The one thing these vlogs motivate me to do is think about what I'm going to have to say in them. I wanted to have a brand new landing page and this brand new offer set up just in case somebody buys it, which is the same accountability I described in Life in St. Pete: Daily Vlogs With Jerry Banfield. This is certainly very reactable as well: now Jerry thinks somebody is going to pay $7,500 to stay with him. Just wait. I've got so many lottery tickets out there. I'm just excited to see what hits at this point.
Why I think the lottery is rigged and $150,000 is enough
I don't believe in playing the actual lottery, because I figure it's rigged. They probably pass out the winning scratch-offs to their friends, and all the dummies who buy them at the gas station or the grocery store are getting ripped off while the people close to the scratch-offs pass the winners out to their friends. Maybe not all of them, but I imagine there's some corruption that goes on with that. Then there are probably psychics looking at Powerball numbers, or quantum computers, or something. I even think things like Powerball are rigged. Obviously I have no proof of that, but my feeling is it's probably rigged. And even if you did win, that's too much money. The ideal amount of money to be happy, according to the happiness statistics, is about $100,000 to $150,000 a year. After that you tend to experience more stress and no additional happiness. So that's all I'm looking for: to make about $150,000 a year. I don't need any more than that, and as I argued in You're Richer Than You Think, most of us already have more than we count. I just want to pay all my bills, have a nice place to live, be flexible, and be able to be there for my kids.
My woman first, my kids second, and why
And yes, I saw the video about my kids. My kids are the second priority in my life. My woman is my top priority, because that's the main avenue. I'm like Neo in The Matrix: my woman is the main avenue through which I exchange love, and the key to making my next family. My two kids are the number one priority to my ex, and she is very reliable. If she wasn't, my kids would be my number one priority, but she is very reliable, so my kids are number two. That's the unfortunate reality of being a divorced dad: I'm the number two parent, which I explained in Single Dad: How I Co-Parent and Tell My Kids the Truth. But the freedom in it is that I want a relationship where my woman actually sticks around no matter what, and where I do my best to be the best I can for her every day. I'm sure I'm moving in that direction, and we'll see where this all ends up.
Complete and total annihilation, so YOLO
We know where this is all going eventually, right? Complete and total annihilation. The one thing that can help you relax in life is to realize the end destination for all of this is complete and total annihilation, so completely gone that it's as if none of this ever existed. As evidence, just tell me what you were doing a hundred years ago. I can remember a little bit, but how about a thousand years ago? Whatever you were doing then, you were very much still alive, but whatever you were doing is so far gone and annihilated that you have no memory of it. It's like it never happened. So am I even really here saying this right now? Yes. But at some point in the future, this will seem so far away that it will be like it never happened. So YOLO, right? I'm going to go for the life of my dreams and we'll see how that works out. If you want to let me know you're watching because you love and support these videos and find them inspiring, follow along on my Daily Vlogs playlist, and I can't wait to see who books the all-inclusive stay with me.