Juan Manuel Rangel Montilla, known in the internet cosmos as Juancito Venezuela, makes “Yes, you can” an apostolate in his program “Desde Cero”, broadcast from Miami on YouTube, where he adds an average of 70,000 views and achieves that artists, entrepreneurs or immigrants open your heart to talk about how hard it was to achieve your dream.
“How much is zero worth? It depends on where you put it. Zero is the beginning of everything and we all once had to start from scratch”, is the phrase with which this young man who turns 31 today and six years ago emigrated starts his program to the US from his native Venezuela, and as his guests, he also started from scratch.
“They are stories of their personal lives”, says the Venezuelan about the guests to this program that began to air in 2019, and through which the Mexican Julieta Venegas, the singer Maffio and the actor Carlos Villagrán (“Kiko”, from El Chavo del Ocho), among many others.
CRYING AND OVERCOMING
“We were four brothers, we were very poor, so poor that the poor did not join us because they were poor,” says Carlos Villagrán in one of the programs, who related how with his journalist credential he went to studies to ask for work and somewhere moment of the talk is broken remembering moments of his career.
“Juancito Venezuela”, which in some broadcasts has reached more than 400,000 views, affirms that of the up to 70 characters with whom he has talked on camera, at least 60 have been sensitized or directly cried when sharing “things they had in the heart “ and that few knew.
A special broadcast of this program, “From Zero, The Documentary”, is nominated for an Emmy Award for the Suncoast region (corresponding to South Florida) in the Human Interest category.
Its protagonist is the Venezuelan Dalia, who with almost 60 years emigrated to the United States to start “once again” from scratch.
Dalia’s story is one of the many that nurtures the imagination of the “American dream”: she worked as a truck driver, taxi driver, combine harvester, house cleaner, she also had a son die, and when she seemed to be hitting rock bottom, she managed to get ahead with a business bakery in Miami.
Programs like this one, which Juan Manuel claims has become the first “web-show” to be nominated for an Emmy Award, elicit “incredible messages” from viewers and allow him to perceive the presenter and his wife, producer of the space, that provides content that “adds”.
“There are people who tell me they have been sick in bed for months and that after watching my program they have gotten up,” he said.
“THE ONE WHO SETS THE STONE IS HIMSELF”
Juancito, a lawyer by profession and who, upon his arrival in the United States, worked for three years in construction in Massachusetts, give “From Zero” a testimonial spirit that begins with himself.
He relates that he moved to Miami from that state of New England with the idea of the program in mind but with the main goal of pursuing a career as a comedian, and while he was working again in construction and as an Uber driver in Florida he decided to take the step, despite having no knowledge or contacts.
He recorded a first broadcast in which he presented his own case and promised to return next week, without even having a guest insight. To his surprise, that first show attracted more than 4,000 people.
Since then he has not stopped and, on the contrary, has transferred the concept to the world of the company through “From Zero Business”, with which he says he seeks to “humanize brands”, and also with “From Zero Musical”, wherein small enclosures with capacity for 200 people the singers relate the origin of their compositions.
The communicator affirms that in many cases “the one who puts the stone is oneself”.
“There are people who have ghosts in their heads,” he adds, to later confess that he also sometimes falls victim to it, that he has falls caused by the anxiety that was diagnosed during the covid-19 pandemic.
“I had an emotional downturn,” recalled the Venezuelan about the breakdown he suffered during confinement, and that led him to seek professional help, from which he learned to recognize when the origin of his emotional issues is inside him and how to overcome them.
He says that the trigger was the death of his sister in 2008 in a car accident, as a result of which they took care of his niece at home and he tattooed her name.
“It is the most screwed up that a human being can live, but I am a believer in God, and it gave me the strength to continue forward,” he confesses, and then adds: “My happiness is a way of honoring my sister.”
In search of his happiness, he plans to have his own studio next year ( “because the internet gives us the opportunity to be our own channel” ) and finally releases his first one-man stand-up comedy.