13253: How To Have A Healthy Relationship With Ratings And Reviews

Raw transcript:

Every so often, the concept of reading
and paying attention to versus ignoring
and paying no attention to reviews of
your work pop up. And I’ve never heard a
better, more succinct summary of uh what
I think is the most effective way of
dealing with reviews than I have heard
from Mr. Mark Manson. And I’ll share
that with you up next in this episode of
the VO Heroes podcast.
So we do this work whether it’s acting
or voice talent work or writing. We do
this for any number of reasons. Not the
least of which is the agilation that we
can receive from a receptive audience
from an enthusiastic group of fans.
Um, on the other side of the coin,
there are times when people have varying
opinions of our work and with the sort
of ease of use and anonymity of the
internet, uh, people are not shy about
sharing those opinions. And sometimes
those opinions are supportive, sometimes
they’re neutral, sometimes they’re
destructive. They’re insulting. They are
um
hard to uh both accept and then wrap
your head around what to do with them.
And Mark Manson said something that just
puts it all in a nice little package
from my perspective as to what to do
with the uh with the reviews that you
read. I I have a a fairly unique
approach to this. I pay all kinds of
attention to the positive reviews. You
know, I love having people say nice
things about me. It helps my mental
health. It helps my esteem. Uh, and I
totally ignore the negative reviews. Um,
mostly because I’ve noticed that the
negative reviews are wrong. No, I’ve
noticed that the negative reviews deal
with things that often the audience
doesn’t have any sort of idea about what
they’re opining about. Um,
I recently listened to the uh audio book
of Wicked and one of the reviews that
popped up in the very beginning. I was
reading through the the ratings and the
reviews on it, um, they said that the
narrator had no idea of keeping all the
voices separate. I actually was
incredibly impressed
with John’s ability to keep the voices
separated, even aging the voices from,
you know, the youthfulness to uh being
uh adults uh throughout the book. It was
it was stunning to me. I So, so I tend
to just completely ignore negative
reviews for a number of reasons.
And hopefully you’ve heard me say that
if you’ve taken any of my courses and
we’ve talked about or you’ve been in a
workout with me and we’ve talked about
reviews. I always say yes, accept the
good ones, enjoy them, consume them, be
nourished by them, and completely get
rid of the negative ones. Ignore them.
Don’t worry about it. If you’re a
professional, there’s very little that
an audience member can say to you that
is going to change your approach or help
you in any way, shape, or form. So, let
me just give you the summary that Mark
Manson came up with in his newsletter
recently that I read. He said, “Free
yourself from the prison
that is other people’s opinions.”
And I looked at that and I said, “Oh,
good writing, Mark. This is this is
compact. It’s easily transportable. It’s
awesome. And it embodies everything
about
What could happen to us if we start to
believe
a that what people are saying is true
and b that it matters
what other people think. You know, this
ties into the notion that I’ve presented
here before of if you’re doing this
work, I hope that you’re doing this work
for one person and one person alone and
that’s you.
I used to say on my radio show, I don’t
do this radio show for the audience, for
any member of the audience, because I
have audience members who have all kinds
of opinions. And if I do something that
one part of the audience likes, I can
guarantee you that another part of the
audience does not.
And if I move over to try and change
things so they like it, well then this
people that like the original version,
they won’t like it. You So that game, I
don’t want to play that game.
So, I do my work specifically to make
myself happy. If it happens to make the
audience happy, great. I’ll be rewarded
for that. I’ll be remunerated for that.
If it doesn’t, great. I don’t care. I I
really don’t care whether I tick off one
part of the audience and make another
part of the audience happy. I’m happy
for those people. I couldn’t care less
about the people that don’t agree with
me, the opinions of others. And whether
it be the audience or peers or people
who train you, like people, you come to
me for my opinion. If you don’t like it,
I’m not going to sit there and go,
“Well, why why did you even ask me?” I
don’t, you know, listen, I’m offering
you what I’m offering you. If it helps,
great. If it doesn’t, please find
somebody who will help you. I want your
success.
But I don’t want people to get locked in
a cell worrying about reviews. Whenever
I see posts on social media about,
“Yeah, check out this review.” And it’s
scathing. And they post it, I don’t
know, so that people will say, “No,
you’re great. No, don’t worry about it.”
Yeah. I just look at that and I go,
“Man, that was like a waste of my three
minutes and I’m not going to get those
back.”
I avoid
negative reviews. The moment a review
goes negative, I move on to a next one,
if I’m even reading them at all. You
know, I was pleasantly surprised one
year to find out that there were
hundreds of positive reviews for one of
the books that I’ve narrated, didn’t
know, and very few negative reviews,
which didn’t again didn’t matter one way
or the other. Let me repeat the phrase
one more time and then I’d love to hear
your thoughts on it. Free yourself from
the prison of other people’s opinions.
Tell me in the comments below. And by
that I mean on vioherooes.com where the
conversation is nice and calm and
respectful by rule.
Hit the like button if you like what
you’re seeing. Uh you can subscribe to
the channel. you can click on the
notification bell and get notified when
uh the next episode comes out. And if
you know of an actor or a voice talent
or a writer, uh you are my peeps. Uh if
you know of another one who could hear
this message and maybe benefit from it,
feel free to forward this on to them.
I’d love it if you’d do that. I’m David
H. Lawrence the 17th. I thank you so
much for watching and for listening and
I will see you in the next episode of
the VO Heroes podcast.

(from YouTube)