I have a fun time, doing the meet and greets, the pictures and the autographs. Every show I've ever done, lends itself to that kind of thing. My convention life has legs.
I do meet-and-greets at every show and meet a minimum of 20-35 fans at each.
I try to find 15 minutes a day to just be alone without any distractions just for headspace to meditate and get my Zen on. I think that helps me get through the hecticness of the day on tour with the interviews, the sound check, the meet and greets, the show and the post-show meet and greets.
I was at an autograph show, and there were a lot of people from TNA there doing meet and greets. One of the girls from TNA there asked me why I hadn't joined yet and I said I'd tried and it didn't work out. She asked me to give her a video and pictures, and a few days later I got asked to do a tryout.
I do a lot of meet-and-greets with the people, and I do 'sign shows' where I meet people and sign autographs.
We value doing things grassroots, even at this level. That means no real high ticket prices or meet-and-greets and all that kind of stuff.
On every show I've ever done, one of the first network notes is, 'You have to put a time clock on this thing.'
The most fun thing about doing the show is that, as a nerd, the fun has been in learning and having it be like a grad school for me, every day. Every moment is a new experience. Every conversation is a new gain.
I don't even like to go out onto the streets sometimes because I can't get anything done. People want pictures and autographs all the time.
I don't like my thighs, the back of my legs or my chubby knees. I wear clothes that show off my legs in pictures and videos but not often when I'm appearing live.
I love to meet my fans, and after every show I usually hang out for a few hours, talking to my fans, signing autographs, and selling T-shirts.
I speak to everybody. I'm one of those kind of artists that I'm cool with everybody. If they [fans] want to meet me, it's cool. That's as far as it goes. But I'm the cool artist. I shake everybody's hand, try to sign all the autographs, take pictures when I can.
Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to doI don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.
Doing a show eight times a week is kind of like doing yoga or tai chi. A vinyasa is the same every single time you do it, but depending on how you're feeling, it tells you a lot about what's happening in your life.
Not every story lends itself tonally to humor, so you have to navigate that territory properly. You can put a humorous spin on anything, really, if you know what you're doing, but it's not always desirable to have your reader laughing on every page.
It's one thing to be dumb or ignorant or be in over your head. But if you can be the person who knows how much he does not know and be curious about the things you do not know, then that automatically lends itself to being a big-hearted, welcoming person who wants to know about every single person you meet.
Career wise, I'm looking into different opportunities to do a TV show, but in some way that's not a goal in itself. To me, the goal is creating content and doing fun stuff that I'm proud to show. I don't want to do a TV show for the sake of doing it.