0053: How To Have More Control Over Setbacks

Raw transcript:

facebook has this thing where they
remind you of stuff you posted years and
years and years ago and most of the time
i look at it and go i posted that really
what the hell was i thinking um but
sometimes and this just happened a few
weeks ago sometimes they remind you of
something that is timeless
and in this case
they reminded me of a comment that one
of my clients made
about a phrase that i’ve been using
since i was a child
and i’m going to share that phrase with
you and hopefully it’ll help you in this
episode of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]
my grandfather as far as i know
never
sailed a boat
i don’t even know if i can remember him
ever being on a boat he was very much a
car kind of person but
he said something to me when i was still
in single digits in terms of age
that
makes all the difference in the world it
just it just
when i when i heard it it made so much
sense i’m looking at the screen so i get
it right
you can’t change the wind
you can only change your sails
and
that phrase has stuck with me through
elementary school middle school high
school college my my my working career
my entrepreneurial career and it became
really important when i started to get
involved with the performing arts
and with
digital marketing
just the creation of digital material to
begin with it’s a whole
world both of them are worlds filled
with curveballs
filled with setbacks
filled with gee i didn’t see that coming
you know
and it’s all how you handle it
it’s so
easy
to just raise your fist and go i can’t
believe the heavens are doing this to me
the gods are are against me the world is
against me the winds changed how do i
fix that how do i contr you don’t what
you fix
is how you capture
and adjust
to the things that you don’t expect or
do the things that
hold you back or to the things you
didn’t see coming
you can’t change the wind you can only
change your sales now remember when i
posted this this was right after
acx changed the
uh split
that they would share with rights
holders and narrators and themselves it
was 50 50.
they changed it to 6040. they haven’t
changed it since but boy there was a
huge hue and cry
about them changing the rules
that you needed to follow to play in
their stadium
and i remember saying at the time look
you can choose to just not play the game
anymore you can just take your ball and
go home if you don’t like the way the
rules are but it’s their game it’s their
stadium they set the rules if you want
to do it great i didn’t look at it as
any big deal for me it was like okay i
still have faith in my ability to be an
audiobook narrator and sell books for my
rights holders
so it doesn’t really bother me as much
as other people who were like i’m never
going to work for acx again blah blah
and it was all about
the big corporation laying down the
rules and and screwing the little guy
and all this and it was like the wind
had shifted
and the question was did you still want
to sail
did you still want to tack against the
wind
did you still want to be a part of
the day
or did you just want to go drive a car
or fly a plane
do something different right
so
that phrase you can’t change the winds
you can only change your sails
to me
comes up all the time when you’re
presented with something that you didn’t
expect that you’re trying to fix the
cause of as opposed to the response to
and sometimes you can do both
but
looking first the things that you
control you control your sales you know
your your uh
your
iconic sales whatever those are for you
you control your actions your behaviors
your choices
uh to a degree your environment
what you don’t control is what other
people set for their rules and what
other entities do when they change
things i mean we’re all going through
all kinds of things that as voice talent
we went through in the early 2000s
working from home auditioning from home
we’re going through that now and on
camera and there are a lot of people who
are railing against the wind as opposed
to changing their sails
so my question for you is does this make
sense
does this help
give me some examples of how you’ve
changed your sales when the wind shifted
in the comments below i’d love to hear
i’d love to find out
for me it’s a really powerful approach
to the things in our lives over which we
have little control
uh i appreciate you watching and
listening if you think this is
valuable for
another artist that you know another
actor or voice talent please feel free
to forward it to them
if you’re not watching this on
vogeros.com pop over there that’s where
the conversation is kept sane and safe
and so on we’d love to have you there
uh i’m david h lawrence the 17th i thank
you so much for watching and for
listening and i’ll see you in the next
episode of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]

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