It’s 2024. It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 4 years since Covid started in early 2020. Who would have thought that we would have made it this far? I like to take this time of the year to evaluate the last year as well as look forward to what’s to come.
2023 was an interesting year to be sure. My business grew in different ways than I had expected it to. I did more audiobooks than I ever have before. That’s not a genre that I thought I would like to be a part of. I had always liked the quick in and out and get paid of commercial or promo. (make your own in and out jokes please)
But this year something clicked and I booked several audiobooks on various topics relating to business or religion or self help. I found I really enjoyed the long form narration and story telling. It was an honor on several occasions to help an author get their first audiobook online for the masses.
I also got back into radio this fall. I was turned on to an opportunity to do traffic for a couple of stations south of Atlanta from a fellow voice talent. I can do it from home, and I really enjoy the chance to get back into a medium that I was a part of in the early 2000’s. I’m older and wiser now and am prepared to take full advantage of this opportunity.
You may be asking, well that’s great, Mike. Thanks for bragging about your opportunities, what does this have to do with Bruce Lee and why should I care how this relates to my voiceover career? Ahhh, patience grasshopper.
Bruce Lee had a famous quote where he recommended that we should “be water my friend”. Formless, shapeless like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a teapot it becomes the teapot etc. Water can flow and it can crash.
Have to pee yet?
Now, Bruce (I call him Bruce) was referring to martial arts. You should not be rigid, you should be fluid and be able to flow. This is the same thing that applies to voiceover. You should be like water and be able to flow where your career takes you. We’ve often heard that the market will dictate your voiceover path. What you are booking is where you should put your talents. If you want to work on that cartoon for instance, but for some reason you keep booking explainer videos, you should be able to change course and go with the flow. You can always come back to that animation, but if you’re successful in another area, then do that.
As you’re working in your career, be open to opportunities that you might not expect. Be able to say yes and flow to that new path. Don’t be so rigid and resistant. Life will lead you.
One problem that I have in my life is control. I want so bad to control everything. Control the world, the markets, my career. I grip so tightly to everything that most things slip through my fingers. I’m having to learn to give up control over things that I have no dominion over, and let me tell you, it’s hard as shit. I have to give it up to God and let him guide me. I have become water, shape me how you will.