Even The Bible (And Game Of Thrones) Has One-Star Reviews

hey it’s David H Lawrence the 17th and
every month when I do our monthly
accountability session with my clients
and students it’s called Pro Connect
live where we don’t concentrate like we
do in the workouts and the classes on
the art of voice over the commercials
and the narration and the animation and
the audiobooks and all that the styles
of voiceover that we do in the pro
connect live session we concentrate on
the Commerce and the science so the
business building and the technology
that you need to understand so that’s
those are the three tenets that we teach
from the art the commerce and the
science and mindset but that’s kind of
across everything anyway in these Pro
Connect live sessions I always begin
things with a thought starter something
that I heard about or read about or put
into use or I find really particularly
useful and one of those thoughts
starters is the idea that you should
really pay as little attention to
reviews as possible and I know it’s
really hard for audio book narrators the
thoughts started that I share is even
the Bible has one star reviews now
wherever you come down a religion the
Bible is still one of the most popular
one of the best-selling one of the most
venerated talked-about pieces of
literature in history and you would
think that it’s lasted this long because
it’s pretty high quality whether you
believe in its message or you believe in
what it has to say or not it still got a
tremendous track record and yet there
are still people who pick it to shreds
and give it a one-star review and you
know something current happened when we
were all reminded a few weeks ago when
Game of Thrones had their finale their
series finale that Game of Thrones also
had some pretty
poor reviews one in particular from the
New York Times and their reviewer at
jinniyah Belafonte in 2011 in April 2011
right when Game of Thrones came out oh
she just eviscerated it in the New York
Times she said Game of Thrones his boy
fiction patronizingly turned out to
reach the populations other half so she
was saying clearly that you know they
were showing good-looking men so that it
would they would draw women in and and
that it was unworthy of being on HBO the
network that had the Sopranos and
Deadwood and the wire okay she
complained about the subtitles for
Dothraki and for valerian she’s at
keeping track of the principles alone
feels as though it requires the focused
memory of someone who can play bridge at
a Warren Buffett level of adeptness I
mean there were lots of inner weaving
stories and lots and lots of principal
characters apparently too much for her
her taste she also said costume drama
sexual hopscotch you know for those of
you who know the show you know there’s
incest there’s there’s revelations of
nephew ant relationships and many many
things and lots of sex it’s HBO you know
there’s incredible violence and lots and
lots of sex the true perversion she
wrote though is the sense that you get
all of this illicit miss and that has
been tossed in as a little something for
the ladies out of a justifiable fear
perhaps that no woman alive would watch
otherwise and you know I don’t have to
tell you that Game of Thrones has gone
on went on to be one of the most popular
shows ever in the history of television
some 20 million people 20 22 million
people the final numbers at this point
still aren’t in watched the finale and
it one more Emmy Awards than all of
those other shows that jigna talked
about on HBO combined 38 Awards 100 and
eight nominations and you know so you
gotta be very careful even when people
work for what is arguably the most
venerable journalistic outlet we have
here in the United States the New York
Times that doesn’t mean they’re right
it’s just one person’s opinion and yes
they’re paying that person for that
opinion but let me bring it back to us
and how it affects us
when you voice an audio book and you
take any time whatsoever going to
audible or going to iTunes or going to
Amazon and reading the reviews finding
negative reviews and letting those
negative reviews affect you you are
engaging in a huge horrific degrading
and useless waste of time
these are people who have one opinion no
matter who they are no you know they’re
just normal everyday people or maybe
they write for audiophile magazine or
maybe they write for an outlet like the
New York Times right it doesn’t matter
what they think is their opinion and
that’s it the problem we face is that
sometimes we go oh they said it so it
must be true you know I see posts all
the time in audio book groups including
our own the ACX master class group and
the Facebook group that we have 4 vo to
go go
about you know hey I got this horrible
review what do I do about this and the
answer that I always have is absolutely
nothing when we talk about voice 1 2 3
you may get reviews from voice seekers
who didn’t pick you for the job and they
may give you a really low rating and be
very cutting in their comments who cares
what they say who cares
here’s the best thing to do don’t read
any reviews don’t go in the audition
outbox on voice 1 2 3 I tell people to
avoid that like the plague
if you must read reviews only read and
allow yourself to feel great about the
good ones just reject
I know and you’re thinking well wait a
minute isn’t there any value to what no
there is absolutely no value whatsoever
they’re not narrators they don’t know
what you’ve gone through you know
yourself you’ve read reviews where
you’re like really they’re complaining
about how fast or slow the person read
or they’re complaining about the
pronunciation of a word or they’re
complaining about yeah that’s not the
way I pictured the character in my mind
as sounding who cares right now you
think yourself well the problem is those
reviews might affect sales yep they
might affect sales and they also might
affect your psyche and they also might
affect your ego and they also might
affect your feelings
and I don’t want that to be something
that affects you at all one bit I’m all
for the great reviews that make you feel
fantastic that make you go yeah you know
I can do this I made somebody happy but
the reviews that don’t make you feel
that way the reviews that are there to
cut you and to cut the author or to cut
the brand that you’re working for or to
cut your audition quality just reject
those out of hand again I come back to
the fact that the people that watch
these videos are a very self selected
group of higher functioning performers
you got this and you don’t need a
reviewer to give you validation of that
you’ve got this know that whatever
people say negatively know that you’re
on the right path you’re on this journey
and you’re only gonna get better and
better and you don’t need them to tell
you one way or the other
the good reviews if they make you make
you feel great awesome
read them print them out put them on
your vision board do whatever you want
but the bad reviews avoid them like the
plague
don’t pay one bit of attention to them
and remember even the Bible and Game of
Thrones has some one-star reviews so
tell me what you think can you stay away
from reviews is it like this siren song
drawing you to them let me know give me
a comment below if you’re watching on
VOD go TOCOM give me a comment below the
conversation is saying and moderated if
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got a lot of great stuff for you there
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YouTube will play it for you I’m David H
Lawrence the 17th I thank you so much
for watching I hope this helped and I’ll
talk to you tomorrow.