13264: Instead Of Looking Back (Or Ahead), Do This Instead

Raw transcript:

As we wrap up the year and head into the
new year, we see an awful lot of lists
of things. The best of this year, what’s
coming up in the next year. I I got a
better idea. I’ve got a better idea on
how to spend your time. Let’s talk about
that in this episode of the VO Heroes
podcast.
So, it’s natural there’s this watershed
event, the new year that happens around
now and uh you know it’s it’s natural to
look back on things that happened in the
past year. There’s all kinds of articles
and listicles of the best movies, the
best books, the best audio books, the
best commercials, the best sporting
events, concerts, etc. or what’s what to
do for a great new year. What’s the best
thing to do for the year that’s
upcoming? How to not make the same
mistakes we made this year, next year.
And I think part of that is most of that
actually is a bunch of useless naval
gazing. I’m just going to say it. It’s
like, you know, okay, you know, maybe
it’s the tradition to do that, but there
are things that you can do around this
time of the year when not a lot is
happening in the industry, no auditions,
no spec scripts, no no writing samples,
no voiceover auditions. As we head into
the new year, what you can do to maybe
make up for things that have gotten
behind. And what I’m talking about
is your admin work, your office hours.
You know, we don’t talk about these
things except when we’re first learning
how to be a performer. You know, we we
get uh you know, maybe an hour’s worth
of training and what we need to do to
keep our resume updated, our reels
updated, our writing samples updated.
Oh, and by the way, here’s some advice.
Do this every week or every month or
every day. Um, you know, have office
hours every day. We tend to forget that
because we get wrapped up in the cool
stuff, the performance stuff, the the
ethereal stuff, the the skill stuff as
opposed to the kind of boring stuff for
some people. Now, I have this um
unfortunate tick in my makeup. I love
doing
mundane work, repetitive, boring work.
It calms me down. It soothes me. It
makes me happy to get those things done.
If I have to rename a folder full of a
hundred files on my hard drive with
dates or with something, I love doing
that kind of work. I’ll figure out how
to systematize it to make it happen
faster. It just it’s bear with me. It
just it’s weird. So, I tend to look at
admin work and office hours work as
something that I like doing and I and I
actually try to keep up with it. But
there are still times when I’m about to
submit my resume and I thought I think
to myself, I’m going to take a look at
this and see if it’s up to date and I
go, “Oh my god, I I’ve been in six
television shows and I’ve done 16
commercials or I’ve done eight audio
books or whatever that I haven’t put
here yet or I haven’t put on my profiles
yet.” And so it’s always sometimes a
surprise that I do have that kind of
work to do. So my my my advice to you
this time of year is don’t make the
mistake of thinking that what happened
this year has anything to do with what
happens next year or that you can
predict your future based on your past
or that even looking at your past is
going to be some sort of magical formula
for making your future better. You know,
you got to treat your your your your
career like the stock market because
what we do for a living can’t be
predicted. Your past performance is no
indicator of your future performance.
But you can make it easier for yourself
and for the people that are going to
book you. If you keep your admin stuff
updated, do it now. You got the time to
do it now at the end of the year when
you got nothing else to do, right? So,
update your resume. uh you know, look at
your reel and see if there’s things you
can add to it or take away from it. Uh
look at the samples that you have on
profiles, on casting sites, and see if
there’s things you can do to move things
around. Don’t do it for the sake of
doing it, but do it for the sake of of
showing your best stuff, putting your
best foot forward. Now is a great time
to do it. That’s what I’m What do you do
this time of year other than try to
avoid questions from your family about,
you know, how your career is going? What
kinds of things could you possibly put
it in the comments below? I’d love to
hear what you have to say. You can hit
the like button if you like what you’re
hearing. You can subscribe to the
channel. You can uh be notified when the
next episode comes out in the new year.
You can do all those things. Uh you can
also share this with another performer,
another creative type who might want to
hear uh this advice, this this
suggestion, this one weird tweak. I’m
David H. Lawrence the 17th. Thank you so
much for watching and for listening and
for having a great year with me and I’m
so looking forward to the upcoming year.
Uh and I will see you in the next
episode of the VO Heroes podcast.

(from YouTube)