13212: Deal With Criticism Just Like Joe

Raw transcript:

so I just got finished reading a an
email from somebody who wrote me um
after watching a video that I had done
about uh narrating your own book it was
with uh Grammar Girl and we had a
conversation about it and I don’t
usually get emails like this but he had
uh an admonition for me and how I
treated it was really interesting let me
share with you his criticism and how I
reacted in this episode of the vo Heroes
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podcast so I had this um session with
Grammar Girl Lon Fogerty uh when I
launched narrate your own book and we
were talking about different things
around public domain uh narration public
domain titles what ACX expects what
audible requires Etc and I got an email
from someone in uh the northeast of the
United States who is a voice talent and
has been on my mailing list for four
years or so uh I think he signed up
during the
pandemic and he wrote me back and he
said yeah all that stuff you were
talking about I don’t want to read it
verbatim because it doesn’t it doesn’t
uh compute but um all that stuff you
were talking about you know there’s a
whole bunch of videos on YouTube that
will teach you how to do all this for
free and you’re going to charge just
saying and uh what popped into my head
immediately was something that uh Joseph
Brodsky uh very interesting writer poet
Etc and he has some advice for people
who have critics and what they say how
they say it and how to treat that moment
don’t we all have people like that and
the Really cogent part about what he has
to say in all this is rush through or
past them and by them he means the
events that they have created to
criticize you this email that he sent me
or a a public criticism or something
online in a in a Facebook group or
whatever rush through or pass them as
though they were yellow and not red
lights and he explains what he means by
that don’t Linger on them you know uh
but there’s something about that that he
doesn’t say that I think is really
interesting and that is yellow lights
mean
caution and yellow lights can give you a
moment to just
consider
what happened what is about to happen
What could happen you know my initial
knee-jerk reaction was to write back and
say yeah I know I’ve made about a
thousand of those videos on YouTube that
you can get for free I’m very well aware
and but I didn’t I haven’t written back
at all I don’t plan to write back um I
don’t know what his situation was that
morning this morning when he sent the
email to me um I don’t know if there’s
anything uh going on with him
emotionally or or mentally or socially
that that caused this kind of like uh
lashing
out um and it’s not the first time I’ve
gotten an email from people going hey
you know what you charge to teach uh I
can find that all out on YouTube great I
go to YouTube all the time to teach
myself stuff and it’s a great option um
what I do is I focus all of that
information in a way that is
deliberate and
methodical and uh designed to make
things easy and to make it stick and
yeah everything you know knowledge is
everywhere now you know beginning with
Google beginning with uh Al Vista I mean
go back to you know the the the origins
of the Gathering of knowledge on the web
and all of a sudden people like oh
that’s the end of that’s the end of
encyclopedias that’s the end of
libraries that’s the end of uh you know
anybody having to go to college to learn
anything oh my God the death nails but
the fact is we learn in all kinds of
ways and what I’m trying to create is a
valuable resource that people can refer
to in a systematized and uh Cate
categorized way so that when they want
to remember how to do cover art for a
book they can just come to that
particular they don’t have to search
anything they can just go right to the
lesson that I’ve created for them and
there’s value in that and some people
look at you know the notion of hey
you’re charging for this when you can
get all this on YouTube and they miss
the value of
context but it’s worth treating it like
a yellow light is there anything here
that I can use is there anything here
that has actual informational value or
is there some truth in what he’s saying
about what’s going on do did I create a
product that could easily be recreated
by just going to YouTube I don’t think
so but it’s worth thinking about for a
moment treating that moment as a yellow
light and not a red light so
um you know when when somebody
criticizes you you don’t have to feel
like you’ve been attacked even if you
have you can choose to react any way you
want and you don’t have to make it
something that stops you dead in your
tracks for any longer than a moment or
so as you consider whether there’s any
truth there but it’s like a nice little
litmus test you know so what do you
think about all this you ever get
criticized and you think to yourself huh
oh my God what happens now you know yeah
you’re right or or you immediately react
with no you don’t know what you’re
talking about no um so just want to know
what you think about what I’ve been
saying here hit the like button if you
like what you’re hearing you can
subscribe to the channel you can click
the notification Bell you can forward
this on to somebody who spends their
time sending you uh samples of emails
that they react with I don’t know uh let
me know in the comments and and please
feel free to forward this to anybody
else who you think might benefit from it
I’m David H Lawrence of 17 I thank you
so much for watching and for listening
and I will see you in the next episode
of the vo Heroes podcast
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(from YouTube)