0062: When You Hit A Dry Patch, Remember This About The Stock Market

Raw transcript:

i was perusing some facebook voice
over
groups the other day and
one of the posts was from a woman who
was absolutely adamant
that she had done something terribly
wrong and needed to figure out what it
was so she could correct it
because
she wasn’t getting much work these days
she’d gotten a lot of work before
but not so much these days what has she
done wrong
and
it caused me to immediately think of the
stock market and i’ll tell you why
in this episode of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]
we tend to think that there are some
processes and systems and progressions
in life
where
you can
predict what will happen based on what
has already happened
as we get good at things we can predict
that we’ll continue to
be successful with those things
um but they’re usually
things that we have a lot of control
over so if we get better at editing we
can assume that we’ll continue to be
good at editing and there won’t be a day
when we forget all about how editing
works or
if we’re good at a particular accent and
we get better and better at that accent
and other accents
we can pretty much assume
that we’ll continue to have
a successful approach
when performing those accents
and that that’s pretty much true in a
lot of the different things that we do
in our business as performers
but there are some areas
where our business
doesn’t operate that way at all
and that there is a parallel
in the world of
stocks and bonds investments
and
when i heard what she was asking and how
she was asking it she was asking it in
in a way like this i i i was doing great
for like two three years i had client
after client after client job after job
after job i was i was scheduled out
months in advance
uh you know and all of a sudden now for
the last eight months or so i can’t even
get arrested i got nothing i’ve been
auditioning my butt off i can’t get
booked for anything
and it reminded me of a phrase that is
often used by investors
people that
train others on how to handle
investments and and the mindset around
investing
and that is that past performance
has no bearing on future performance in
fact that’s an actual legal warning that
you get when you’re being presented with
the opportunity to invest in something
like a stock or a bond whose price and
and value fluctuates over time
you can listen to some investment guru
who says oh yeah i’ve outperformed the
market for years
and
next year they won’t because whatever
happened in the past
has no bearing whatsoever on what might
happen immediately or in the future
and that is exactly how our business
works
you can talk to any
a-list actor
and with very few exceptions
they all have versions of the story of
yeah i was really i was like the it girl
or the popular guy or the flavor of the
day for like two three years and then
i didn’t do any work for a long time i
was back to auditioning i was off of
offer only
uh you know where when you’re on offer
only they you don’t audition for
anything you’re fending off offers your
agents and your managers are trying to
figure out what you should do what would
be best for your career you have so many
opportunities
and they all have kind of versions of
the story of everything just dried up
and i don’t know what caused that
now it’s possible
there are some performers who have
really you know stepped into it and done
something really
stupid and
they can’t book anything because of
their personal lives or
comments they decided to make or actions
they decided to take or
a few drinks they decided to ingest
where they maybe shouldn’t have
but for the most part
there is no
good answer to the question of what am i
doing wrong what did i do wrong
to stop myself
from booking i was on a roll and then
all of a sudden
dead silence
and you have to bear in mind that that
is a
feature
you can call it a bug if you want to but
it’s not correctable it’s not updatable
and it’s never going to change for most
people there will be moments where
you have absolute
nothingness
going on in your life
and you need to be able to handle that
you need to be able to explain to those
to whom you’re responsible
you know your family your close friends
uh your peers
people in productions with you and so on
your representation they know that
everybody knows that to a degree but
they kind of get this selective amnesia
when it happens to them like what i do
what did i do wrong
you didn’t do anything wrong just
remember
past performance
has nothing to do
with future performance
and it’s kind of interesting that
performer performance perform is part of
that phrase
so the next time you think you’ve done
something wrong
probably not true
what’s happening is
life life is getting
lifey
i heard somebody say that the other day
and i don’t remember who it was but when
i do i’ll give you credit
life was being lifey and that’s it
that’s it
it happens we have ups and we have downs
just like the stock market
and usually it’s not you doing something
wrong
i would add the coda that if you can’t
get started doing something
you can’t get traction you can’t get any
success
at all ever it may be because
you need better training or you need to
adjust your performance or you need to
do something that gets you going i don’t
know
maybe
but don’t blame yourself give yourself a
break
it’s not you it’s
what people need
to get their jobs done in their
productions at this particular point
hasn’t included you yet because remember
there’s also that moment that occurs
when things do start working and you do
start booking and things are awesome
i don’t think anybody goes on facebook
group and complains at that point
what did i do right what what happened
here what this is awful what you know or
how do i repeat that how do i reproduce
that it’s all very capricious
and you just have to be at peace with
that and i hope you are
let me know in the comments below how
you feel do you feel like a failure or
do you think to yourself well this is
just the way my business is
and by the comments below i mean over on
voheros.com i’d really appreciate it if
you went over there that’d be great
i’d love to know what you think about
this because it’s one of those things
that can really kill you in terms of
your emotions
and your mental health
and your ability to relate to other
people i want the best for you for that
so let me know let’s talk about it 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
[Music]

from YouTube