Promoting Your Online Projects

Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year's. Yeah, it's been a while. It's me again, acting coach Dan Rodandan, teaching actors how to act. Some of you may know me, some of you may not. But I'm an acting coach. My name is Dan Rodandan. I was initially in my former life. I was a middle school administrator. And then after that, I was an acting coach in the fabulous Hawaiian Gardens area of Los Angeles. I was ducking and dodging the gunfire, running around, coaching acting, acting myself, interviewing people. You know, just living that Hollywood lifestyle. And wouldn't you know it, it caught up with me one day. And after a couple of bad Oscar picks, I got put into a coma.

Anyway, I'm in New York now. The right coast. California's the left coast. New York's the right coast. And it's the right time and the right place for a new year and a new face for Dan Rodandan. And you'll hear a little bit more about my new face later. It's got a big beard and a turban. But spoiler alert, we'll get there. Anyway, it's a new year. It's a new life. And I'm getting a little bit more accustomed to New York living.

As some of you remember from before, I did not necessarily have my own place of residence. So I've gotten really into Tinder. And that's been helping out on some of the colder nights as I'll find myself a place to... oh, pardon me. It's permanent indigestion. I couldn't go to a real doctor, but a lot of the people around me, they suffer from something quite similar. They just call it permanent indigestion. And it's where I'm, you know, just sort of when I'm talking to people or walking around in the street, I'll just vomit a little bit every day. You know, the same amount that you may blow your nose in your regular life. I'll just vomit into my own mouth. And it's, I gotta tell you, it's hell on my teeth. But, you know, there are worse things that could happen.

Where was I? Oh, getting used to New York. And so on some nights where I'm not lucky in love and I don't find a sympathetic bed or a sympathetic living room or whatever, I could find myself a sympathetic retailer. It's 24 hours and I was staying at a Best Buy. And, you know, you develop certain tips and tricks. The great thing about a Best Buy is they have almost no staff. So nobody really notices how long you're there. As a matter of fact, one time I just walked into the back and I put on one of the blue shirts that was laying around. And nobody said anything to me. For three days. I just walked around the store wearing that blue shirt. I kept sleeping in different places. And wouldn't you know it, they just said, hey, Kenneth, get up! And then when I didn't, nobody followed up. It was great.

One of the perks about being at a Best Buy is they got televisions everywhere. And when you got televisions everywhere, you got The Biggest Loser. I watched the entire season so far of The Biggest Loser. And I gotta tell you, it has been inspiring. Watching these giant, big, fat, blubber whale men and women with their hideously cartoonish bodies just look like, like, standing still. They look like somebody who jumped off a building and hit the ground real hard. It's terrible. But they got a couple of trainers there. These smoking hot trainers with their beautiful bodies. These smooth, smooth folks. And a lot of them are part-time psychologists or something, I guess. They're personal trainers and they yell at them and they give speeches. And the speeches are like, you gotta find out who you are. Or, hey, your wife died. Get over it. Do a push-up. Or they're like, hey, you've been eating too much goddamn chicken. And they turn their lives around with that. They say, you gotta jump rope because your kid has diabetes. And a lot of that didn't really apply to me, but some of it did.

There was a very, very fat, well, obviously, a hugely fat Irish man who was scared of heights. And he was looking down a waterfall. He said, I can't do it. I can't go out. I hate waterfalls. I'm scared. I hate Hawaii. The sun's too hot. I hate coconuts. I hate birds. And then his particular trainer stared at him in the face. And he said, this is gonna be your whole life. I don't know my parents. But look at me. He said, I don't care. I can't. And he just kept crying and crying. His legs started shaking and he was crying. And you could tell they had to cut because I think he pooped. And the trainer, Dolvett, looks at him and he said, I'm scared of heights too, kid.

I can't tell you how many times per episode I cried watching The Biggest Loser. And I'm not fat. I'm not a heavy person at all. I just like to sit there and imagine that they're giving those speeches to me. I like to sit there and pretend I'm afraid of heights. Or that I'm morbidly obese. Or that I poop myself. I look at those guys and I just wish somebody would pay that kind of attention to me. Make sure I'm okay. Just because I'm good at hiding it on the inside and not turning all of my problems into a hideous human lump of grease. Instead, I just have a permanent smile that's not real. What do you call it? What's that thing? An overwhelming sense of suicidal dread?

One of the other great things about working at the Best Buy, working, by living at the Best Buy, is I get to play around on the internet. And when you play around on the internet long enough, you get to see a lot of web content. One show that I watched in particular was called Voyage Trekkers, which is the story of a bunch of dickheads in outer space. And wouldn't you know it, there was some contact info on their website. So I used that to contact the creator of the web series. His name is Nathan Blackwell. And I have him here with me today on the telephone. And first thing I want to say, it's an old joke, but it's a goodie. Hey, Nathan, I got a phoner with your name on it. You know, from the old saying about the boner. But the phoner, in this case, refers to the interview that I'm doing with you. So, hello, Nathan, out here from New York City.

Well, you know, it's going, it's moving, it's shaking like a leaf on a tree. How is everything going with you?

Let's hear a clip.

All right. How do we get to see this thing?

So, when you say movie, what are you talking about? Are you talking about a feature-length film? Are you talking about something particularly for Redbox or for Netflix? Or are we going four-wall tour of the United States? Are we talking Japanese distribution with strange tentacle cartoon pornography? Are we talking Russian DVDs with lots of kickboxing? Or what are we talking about here?

Video. Now, video is not really a thing anymore, is it? With VHS and whatnot, it's all about the streaming. You've got to stream it, Daddy.

So, what are you going to do? Are you going to stream it, Daddy?

Speaking of the internet, the internet is a big deal, right? You can put whatever you want on the internet. And you chose to put Voyage Trekkers on the internet.

And I'm making a podcast myself, and I want people to listen to that. What are the big tips and tricks of the trade that you use to get those eyeballs on those characters wiggling around on those computer screens?

So the trick is to confront them at family gatherings and say, hey, did you watch my show yet? And then if they haven't, you have them watch it on their phone in front of you, or what?

What about trickery? Can you just say, hey, this is my episode, and then you put up a picture of a lady with their whammers hanging out, or like a, instead of it saying Voyage Trekkers on there, can you say best fails of 2014 or something on the front, and then show Voyage Trekkers?

Now, my podcast is much more difficult to find than a YouTube clip, because people, most people don't know what a podcast is, and everybody's heard of YouTube, so they can watch their Steve Harvey bloopers at work or whatever on their lunch break, but how do you teach people about a new medium?

So you're saying that there's, you know, you could find yourself in a bustling place like YouTube, and you're going to try to make a name for yourself out there, like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday or whoever else is out there, or you might find yourself out in a desolate no-man's land, like some sort of podcast aggregator that's not iTunes out there.

Right, exactly. So you kind of have to watch yourself, but there's a lot of opportunities for people. Now, what do you mean watch yourself? So if you watch your own thing, does that get the view count up?

Can you buy likes like those sexy girls on Instagram with their, you know, the ones with their body parts?

How do you buy a like or a view?

Does this have to do with the Silk Road or the Deep Web or the contract killer heroin addict people? Or is this something more legitimate?

It's just Hong Kong?

So what you're saying is that you pay them $5 and then the Asian people will really enjoy what you're putting out there.

Well, anyway, do you have a top five? Do you have like a BuzzFeed top five things of advice that you would give anybody trying to break through in new media? Number five. What do you got, Nathan Blackwell?

That's right. I've got to improve then.

Have a Facebook event. Number four.

Hand out postcards. Number three.

Do a live event. Number two.

Number two. Create a Facebook event. Hand out flyers. Do a live event. Number two.

Solicit other news sites. And number one, obviously, is buttons.

Number zero is get your friends and family involved.

And number negative one, of course, is go on the Dan Rodandan podcasts.

Nathan, thank you for being on my show. By the way, do you happen to know any of The Biggest Loser producers?

Or how to...

Do you know the URL to their website?

It's been great talking to you, Nathan. And I hope everything goes really well with Voyage Trekkers and anything else you're working on. Thank you so much for all of your advice on social media.

All right.

Bye.

That was a fascinating interview about getting to know people over the internet. But I've found that sometimes you can make better friends face to face. So face to face, there was a gentleman who I met. And wouldn't you know it, I found myself in a new opportunity, a new way to make money, a new job, a new career, possibly. It all started out because I helped a gentleman who found himself in a bit of a pickle. They say there's no such thing as a friend. A friend indeed is a friend indeed. There's no such thing as a friend. That's the old saying, I think.

And there's a gentleman who runs a Nuts 4 Nuts cart. You know what I'm talking about. On the street, you know, some people sell halal food. Some people sell juice with pictures of the Hulk on it. But some people sell Indian fry bread at the fair or funnel cake or whatever else you want to call it. But Nuts 4 Nuts. This gentleman runs a Nuts 4 Nuts cart. And wouldn't you know it, his legs stopped working because of the cold. Lucky for me, my legs still work, for now at least. So I am doing whatever I can to look like the picture on his license. And I'm trying to run his Nuts 4 Nuts carts for him.

And Times Square is an interesting place when you're there legitimately, not in the middle of the night. When you're out there, you've got a cart. People are happy to see you. You stand there. You say, nuts for nuts, nuts for nuts. And people come up to you. I haven't really quite learned how to work the cart. And I've only really been trying to sell the same nuts every day for the past three weeks. I don't know where he gets his fresh nuts. But I haven't sold enough to where it was a problem.

One of the side benefits of the Nuts 4 Nuts cart is you end up smelling like nuts all day, every day. It gets in your skin and your hair and your eyeballs. I imagine that if you cut my eyeball out of my head and mailed it to somebody, when they open up that envelope, they'd say, oh, it smells like nuts. And that's not bad. Because it is bitter cold out there. And standing in nut smoke is one way to keep warm.

As soon as the weather turns back, I'm sure his legs will start working again. And then I'll be not working again. You know, it's funny. The link, the yin and yang between this man's legs and me. As soon as his legs stop working, I start working. And vice versa. Kind of hope it stays cold forever. Winter forever. Yeah, with any luck, Dan Quayle will be right. He was the guy. He made that movie, right? The Indomitable Spirit of the Frozen Earth or whatever that thing was. An unconsolable guy. I don't remember. Anyway, global warming. Let's speed that up. The longer we can keep this guy's legs from working, the better off I'm going to be. Maybe I'll just break him. I don't know. I don't know.

It's funny how far you can fall. Coming to New York with a dream of being the greatest actor who ever lived. And now you're just hoping an old man's legs don't work. So you can sell the same nuts every day. I gotta see another episode of The Biggest Loser, I think. Oh, hold on. Why did this never occur to me? I've got literally millions and millions of calories just sitting there and burning nuts. If I spend the next few weeks just eating nuts all day in Central Park like a chipmunk, just sitting there pouring nuts into my face, I could gain enough weight to feasibly become a contestant on The Biggest Loser. And then those speeches would be directly to me. And then I'd be on television. Oh, Dan Rodandan, you sly dog. Play the music. I've got work to do.

Dan Rodandan has got a new plan. Standing in Central Park and eating nuts. Just eating tons of nuts. Stuffing nuts in my mouth. Stuffing nuts in my mouth. Stuffing nuts in my mouth.