Hi friends, welcome to my new series of vlogs on my live channel. I'll throw the recording on X too. I'm a full-time YouTuber, and if for some reason you care about my normal day-to-day life, I'm going to start just hanging out and doing a live chat, talking about various topics and doing the things I'm working on for my YouTube channel. This sounds boring to start, I know, but many of you have asked me to make a vlog in the past, and I'm finally going to do it. I'm going to do it on my main Jerry Banfield channel: just make a vlog, hang out, and do whatever I'm doing that day, live, like I am right now, and put that up on X as well. I basically want to mirror my content on X and hang out more with you all live while I'm playing around and having fun, then take video clips over and put them on my Jerry Banfield clips channel. Instead of doing one long two-hour stream, I'll do a two-hour stream here and then just pull clips from it.
How do I give in the most effective format on YouTube?
What I've been thinking about and working on all day today, and really wondering a lot about, is this: how do I give in the most effective format on YouTube? This has been on my mind quite a bit, and the best place I'm at right now is that I have three channels, all of which are monetized. I rebranded the old Jerry Banfield crypto-reviews channel into Jerry Banfield clips, where all I'm going to do is take little video clips and put them there. That's ideal for search traffic and browse features to get discovery.
Then I've got two other channels. I have a Jerry Banfield crypto channel, and this is my most popular channel right now. It gets tons of views, like 10, 20, 10-plus thousand views a day, so I'm going to go live on it every day if I can, 30 minutes to an hour. Then on this original channel, I'll just show up and do a little vlog, talk about what I'm doing, play with my music, do some inspirational topic, and create little videos out of what I'm doing here. That way, if you're a hardcore Jerry Banfield fan and you just want to learn what's going on with my life each day, I'm going to start these live streams off with a little vlog of what I did that day, then hang out, answer questions, play music, and do whatever else is fun after that, and then take clips from all the live streams and put them on the one clips channel.
So this is the best thinking I've got in terms of how to be effective on YouTube. You might ask, well, why don't you just do everything on one channel? The crypto channel is ripping right now and this original channel is kind of dead, so this original channel is ideal for experimenting. Then you might think, well, why don't you just do crypto and forget this original channel? Because I love playing around, having fun, and experimenting, and I don't want to lose that. I've struggled a lot with burnout in the past. I've optimized too much, and while in the short term I've often succeeded in growing very fast, I've often grown myself into something I didn't want to do. When I was a Call of Duty: Warzone streamer, I grew rapidly, but I built into something I didn't want to do, and that's counterproductive. So I want this channel to be more of an intimate, personal experience rather than just focused on crypto, and I want a clips channel where I can just put videos out.
Live streaming is my gift
Live streaming is my gift. I'm really good at live streaming, and at the same time it's my best videos. Most of the things that have gotten the most views for me have been shorter, 10-, 15-, 20-minute videos. That's the main thing. Someone asked if I can play Modern Warfare 3. It's certainly technically possible, although I switched my graphics card from one PC into another, so I'd need to switch that back. But I think a lot about the best use of my time, and I'm careful about where I put it. I made a long live stream about gaming, and if you want to hear the whole history of my gaming, maybe you already watched that, or you could watch the one called Jerry Banfield Gaming Stories: Why I Quit Being a Professional Gamer. The short version out of that is that I've got maybe three hours, three or four hours a day maximum on average, that I can work, six or seven days a week, and playing video games at this point just seems like an ineffective use of my time.
What is an effective use of my time? Going live on the crypto channel is definitely an effective use of my time. People really appreciate it. There are tons of members, thousands of people who usually show up for the live streams, many of these videos getting eight, ten, twelve thousand people watching, thousands of views on a live stream. It's helping people a lot, and it's good money. At the same time, though, you don't want to purely do things just for money. In fact, I was surprised recently to see someone had scheduled time with me on January 5th, the day after I get back. These days, the best way for us to work together on this stuff isn't a one-off call anyway, it's to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where I show up and we can keep building on it together.
Gaming, though: I've played so many video games in my life. Is a Modern Warfare 3 or a Warzone lobby the best place for me to show up? I don't think so, because to me gaming isn't something I can do casually. If I play a game or two of Warzone, either it's not going to be fun, or it'll be fun enough that I want to get better at it and do more of it, and I know at this point I don't want to be a professional gamer. I want to just show up, experiment, and have fun. What I really like in gaming is learning something new, and there are so many better things to learn, and to teach, than video games, especially because there are so many other video game content creators. So what I want to do on this channel is what's most useful for other people, and gaming just feels like a waste of time at this point.
I also want to make videos I'd like to watch back, or that years from now I'd want to watch back, where it'd be interesting to see what I was thinking. I really wish at this point I'd done videos every day just talking about what I was thinking and doing. So I've been thinking a lot about the most efficient way to do my YouTube channels, and the best idea I have now is to live stream on my two channels every day and put video clips out on the third one. In about three hours of time, that's an hour stream on one, an hour stream on the other, and then a video or two on the clips channel, and then that's my job, it's done.
What I did today
So what did I do today? Well, I got up about 7 a.m. with the kids. I had a Larabar and a banana for breakfast, cleaned up the dishes around the house, and then Laura did some of her work in the morning. I hung out with the kids a little bit, sat and talked with them, and responded to my messages. My open chat community has been doing amazing. Open Chat is like Discord or Telegram, except it's hosted fully on chain, and it's been growing rapidly. I responded to some Discord messages too. All the stuff I mentioned is linked from my website.
Then I went to my 9 a.m. yoga. I saw a woman there I hadn't seen in a few weeks who'd been sick, and it was nice. We had a nice class, and then I left wondering, should I have given her a hug or not? Well, you know, maybe next time I'll slow down. I do the 9 a.m. yoga and then go to a 10 a.m. AA meeting, so I'm always ready to jet out of that yoga and go straight to the meeting. I get to the AA meeting 10, 15, 20 minutes after it starts, but the only AA meeting you're really late for is your first one.
So I went to my AA meeting. They were talking about hope as the topic today, and I shared that I saw people at Alcoholics Anonymous who really gave me hope. I could see they had lives better than I could even imagine. They loved themselves, people loved them, they were helping other people, and they were going through challenging things with grace and dignity, and I'm like, man, I want that. I shared that, and then I talked to a lady afterward and she told me about her life. I asked her if I could give her a couple of suggestions, and she said yes. She was dealing with some loss in her life, and I said, you need to fill your life up. She's retired, so she's spending a lot of time just at home by herself. I told her, in my experience you need to fill your life up: get out more, go to more AA meetings, go to other kinds of meetings or groups, go to yoga or something to take care of your body, and talk to your husband about how you're feeling. She said, it was so great listening to you and how good you feel. She said, I get up in the morning and it's a struggle just to be okay. That's why I listened to her for a while, and I said, you can feel better than that. I wake up thrilled first thing in the morning. It's not a struggle to get to okay. I wake up excited for the day, I'm ready to go, and I'm thinking about how I can optimize my helping of other people and how I can enjoy everything I've got to do throughout the day.
She told me she didn't want to mention this to her husband because he works and has a lot going on, and I said, "You need to talk to your husband about how you're feeling." It helps to be honest with other people. When I'm feeling down or bad or depressed or confused or angry, I tell people. I say, "Look, this is how I'm feeling, and this is how I want to feel. I want to learn from this feeling, get through this feeling, and get back to feeling good."
This channel is my big passion project. I've been working toward this for over a decade, and I really appreciate the people coming over from my crypto channel. I have so much passion for talking about things besides crypto, as well as crypto, so it's very important to me to balance that out. If you want more on ICP staking, I've got a whole tutorial on the network nervous system that walks through it. Whatever you want to do, you can do it.
So I told this lady to tell her husband how she was feeling, and she cried a little bit while I was talking to her. I said, "Yeah, get those feelings out there. Get hope, and get excited for the future." Because I am. I love my life and I'm very excited for the future.
A full life leaves no room for extra
At the same time, my life is full. I don't have room for anybody or anything else. People have to leave my life just to have room for anybody new, and that's been one of my challenges. You don't have time to have new friends, you don't have time for new hobbies. You have a full life. This is a life you've chosen, and there's no time for anything else.
Helping other people is the key to feeling good. Maybe some people are just extremely selfish, and for them being selfish and not considering anybody else is the key, but I think most of the time it's the key to feeling good. I've come to believe that for most of us, the more we're surrounded by other people and the more we help other people, the better we feel.
A day built around being of service
Before I asked about her life, I said, "Let me tell you about my day." I get up most days in a room where my kids have bunk beds. They want me to sleep in the room so they feel safe and don't have to get up out of bed. I've been sleeping in the room with my kids, all of us with our three twin beds, for years, and my wife sleeps on the opposite side of the house. That's how everybody's decided we want it. My wife would love to have me back in there with her, but the kids right now prefer to have me in the room versus being in with her, so I sleep in a room with my kids. I can hear them all night, I sleep really well, and they sleep really well too.
I get up and I'm helping with the kids immediately. All I do all day is stuff to be of service to other people or to take care of myself. I eat so I can be there to take care of everyone. I go to yoga, which both helps other people and helps me. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And my work is getting on here, trying to figure out how to help other people as effectively as I possibly can while wasting as little time as possible. I'm over at my mom's house hanging out with her. She's retired, and now I'm one of the only people she consistently sees every day. I encourage her to get out, but she doesn't feel good enough to get out, so that's a bit of a challenge for her.
I told this lady, "I'm around and helping other people almost all day." Even in my studio, I want to be live as much as possible, because if I'm just recording videos I might as well do them live instead, so people can show up, interact, and ask me questions. A nine-to-five job feels good in the sense that you're helping people out, but I don't like to be confined. I hope everyone gets to break out and have the freedom to do what they like. I am certain you can. In fact, I see that more people than ever on this planet are going to have more financial and work freedom than ever before, and I'm really excited about that.
Why I still go to AA every day
Someone asked a great question: why do you go to AA? It doesn't look like you need it. I did a whole live stream going deep on that subject, from sad drunk to happily sober after nine years, but here's the short answer. The main reason I go to Alcoholics Anonymous at this point is to help. I definitely could, for a while at least, get away with not going. I feel great and I have a great life. But I go today and this lady is having an okay day, and I'm like, "Look, you can have better than okay days, and I'm an example. I'm having a wonderful day, as almost every day is." I'm there to lift her up, and by lifting her up, I keep my feet on the ground.
If I didn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous, there would be a big danger that I would kind of fly off into the stratosphere of "I am God and I can do anything," and at some point I could easily get tempted into destroying it all through alcohol or some other addiction. So going to Alcoholics Anonymous helps me help other people, and by helping other people I get help myself.
There have been a few days this year where I was struggling. I raised my hand in my AA meeting and talked about what I was struggling with in clear detail, whether it was being mad at my mother or angry that my wife won't let me have a girlfriend, or whatever it is. Those are two real things from this year. I raised my hand and shared, and then from other people's perspective it's like, oh, you're right, I am lucky, I do have a wife, and I am very happy with my wife. You're right, it is kind of greedy and unnecessary and lustful to think I need another girlfriend. And about my mother, it's like, yes, I am glad I have a mother, she's alive, and she lives next door to me. That's why I go to AA every day. The crypto channel is useful, but this channel could really be life changing.
The lunch date, and speaking the truth
Today I went out to lunch with my wife. We had a lunch date, and what I love is that by helping other people I also get to practice what I preach. I told this lady at AA that she needed to just tell her husband how she felt and be honest, and then an hour later I'm sitting at lunch with my wife. These dates are precious. We often only have one to four a month, and some months we don't have any, and maybe some months we have five or six.
So I'm across the table from my wife and I'm not feeling right. I'm not feeling happy and excited to be out with her, so I told her that. She looks at me and says, "How are you doing?" I said, "I just don't feel good right now. There's no reason, I don't know why, I just don't feel good." And she said, "Yeah, there's a lot of emotions going around this time of year." For some reason, just telling my wife I wasn't feeling very good and speaking the reality of my situation, I started feeling better almost immediately.
When I tell somebody I'm not feeling good, I'm asking with the intention to get help and to feel better. What I see a lot of people struggle with is that they tell people they're not feeling good, but their intention behind it is to get reinforcement, to feel worse, and to keep feeling bad. So your intention behind something makes a big difference. I told my wife, and she helped me almost instantly feel better, and we had a great time out at lunch. Then we came back home and tried to take a little bit of a nap together, but then our daughter came home.
Writing a plan, and asking whether I need a mentor
That's when I wrote a little plan out for my channels. My daughter wanted us to come draw with her, so I quickly wrote this down: my main channel should just be whatever I want, mostly live streams; my crypto channel live streams should be scheduled in advance, answering questions and building community; and the clips should be videos optimized for search results and to grow the other two channels.
I've been wondering whether I should hire a mentor, because I see how much I help other people. I have a guy who has had three one-on-one calls with me, and I helped him get access to ninety thousand dollars of crypto that he either didn't have access to, didn't know how to access, or wanted to make sure he didn't lose. In one call I helped him get access to seventy-five thousand dollars of crypto that was sitting in his wallet, but he couldn't see it because the token wasn't displayed. I helped him get the token added so he could see it. I see how helpful that kind of work is for people. These days, the best way for me to help you with your crypto investing the same way is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we do this together.
So I've been thinking, should I schedule some calls with other YouTubers and get their feedback? But then I ask myself: I've been on YouTube twelve years. Do I really need a mentor? I know so much. Do I need somebody else to give me feedback on my own channels, or do I just need to apply what I already know?
Somebody in the chat said, "Jerry has the best wife in the world." She is absolutely amazing. At the same time, the reason I have the wife I do is because I said no to anything else.
Saying no, and not chasing
I said no to everything else. I said no to girls who weren't attractive enough for me, and I said no to girls who were too crazy. And plenty of girls said no to me. When they said no, I didn't keep stalking them and chasing them. I'd think, okay, I'll go find somebody else. I didn't get hung up on any one person. Most of the time it was, okay, you don't want to go out with me, so I'll ask ten more girls to go out with me, and one of them would say yes, and I'd go out. I'm glad I approached it that way.
One reason it worked is the better I took care of myself, and the fact that I positioned myself where the odds were in my favor. I lived in Columbia, South Carolina, and the odds were stacked heavily against me there. There were so many good looking dudes in Columbia, and most of the hot girls were not in Columbia at all, they were in Charlotte or Charleston. All the dudes were in Columbia. So I came to Tampa, Florida instead.
Repositioning yourself where the odds are in your favor
In Tampa, St. Pete, and Sarasota there are all kinds of attractive women, and for some reason there aren't enough straight guys for all of them. There are a lot of gay men here, and not enough straight men for all the straight women here. So I moved here because I could see the odds were stacked in my favor. Sometimes you need to reposition yourself to get what you want. Maybe there's nobody who's right for you where you are right now, but if you moved somewhere else, there'd be a lot of people who'd be right for you.
Asking for advice from people who've lived more
I asked people for so much advice along the way. I love talking to people who have so much more life experience than I do, and I want to keep asking for more of that life advice. That habit of learning from people ahead of me is one I've come to value more than almost anything, and it's the same spirit behind a lot of what I share in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
What I'd love to do most now is talk about my weight loss. I'm going to move into my history of losing weight, because I know a lot of you really want to lose weight, and it's a part of my story I care about sharing.