At the Beach, Down the Shore, and Other Curious Colloquialisms

This weekend marks the 4th of July holiday, in America. My apologies to my colleagues in or from Great Britain…Too soon? The custom for many in the land of milk and honey is to take this weekend to head to the beach. In New Jersey, they call it “Going Down the Shore”. In other places it’s “Heading to the Beach”. In my particular corner of the world it’s called “Going Down The Ocean”. Interestingly, the local accent tends to mash the middle words together to create a very strange hybrid phrase that makes it sound like people are saying “Downy Ocean”. Ahh, Maryland, the land of pleasant living.
All of this beach talk got me to thinking of how much the Voice Over business comes and goes in waves, just like the ocean. A few weeks ago, I was having a bad week. I had sent out audition after audition with no responses. It was late Friday afternoon and I was ready to shutdown my computer for the weekend, when suddenly, I got a referral from a fellow voice talent. His client needed a new voice, and they hired me on the spot to do a series of Youtube videos. Literally, while I was closing that deal, I got a phone call from another lead I had contacted. They wanted me to produce a full audiobook for them, and then hire me for a series of audio hypnosis sessions. What was going to be a miserable week, suddenly turned into a great way to start the weekend!

Similarly, this week was also pretty slow. I sent out requests to a few agents for representation. One response was “maybe”, two more were “thanks but no thanks”. Then a request I had sent to partner with a studio came back “Let’s get started”! Much like that bad week before, within minutes, another studio which I had contacted weeks ago, responded that they wanted so sign me.

I had heard about these “waves” of activity from colleagues, but it really has surprised me how true it is. As we head into this holiday weekend, I’m going to watch for the waves in my business, as I watch the waves of the ocean.

Have you found a similar ebb and flow in your business? How do you manage it?