One year ago I announced to the world that I was going to stop doing the two things most people knew me for:
Voice overs, and blogging about it.
For over twenty years I had been a pesky but predictable presence in the world of voice acting, known as “that Dutch guy who dared to say out loud what others were thinking.”
What was I thinking?
Well, that’s all documented in over six hundred blog posts on this website, and in a book called “Making Money in your PJ’s.”
If we are to believe some of my old critics, I was the guy who bit the hands that were supposed to feed him (such as P2P sites), and the bloke that was always “negative” and “unsupportive” when it came to the VO industry and community.
Looking back, I now know exactly how I got that reputation.
Mr. CONTROVERSIAL
My most talked about and shared posts were the ones that exposed and criticized certain practices and personalities within the fragile VO bubble.
But these posts were just a fraction of my general output. At times I felt very much like that versatile actor who got famous for doing one specific role, and who was typecast for the rest of his career.
Pushing envelopes and buttons increased my readership and impact, so why shy away from it? Being vanilla doesn’t get exposure. Being polemical does. Name me one blogger who doesn’t want to be widely read and talked about?
Or would they prefer to be the sound of one hand clapping?
Anyway, those ten people who have actually read a majority of my output can confirm that ninety percent of my writings were non-confrontational. Most of my posts are filled with tips and ideas for colleagues who want to make their VO and freelance business more successful. All in the name of giving back and paying it forward.
I may have gone silent, but my collective output still speaks for itself. I still believe that any community or business can benefit from people like me who see things differently. Those new ideas may go against the grain and will rub some people the wrong way. So what?
Becoming universally liked and accepted was never my goal. To inspire and bring about some positive change, still is.
Listen, if you don’t stir the familiar pot as a blogger, you’re not doing it right.
FINDING A NEW NICHE
As you know, I have left the voice over kitchen last year, and I am cooking up some new things in a new place. It’s not a place that was handed to me. Just as with voice overs, I had to carve out a small path in my own way, using my own voice.
To be honest, it took me a while to find my niche (a word that either rhymes with quiche or bitch, depending on where you’re from. I think quiche sounds tastier).
A niche is something you know a little bit about. Well, more than a little bit. It’s your speciality aimed at a small segment of the market and population.
In my case my new niche came from longing and belonging. As someone who was born, raised, and educated in the Netherlands, my expat heart belonged to Holland. The longer I was away from home, the more I longed for what I no longer had.
It was not that I was unhappy in my cosy Vermont corner of the world. On the contrary. But as the political situation shifted in the USA, I was constantly reminded that I wasn’t one of those Americans that wanted to aggressively make certain things “great” again, whatever that was supposed to mean.
I always came back to my liberal Dutch values, my open-mindedness, my knowledge of the world, and my sense of freedom and justice for ALL.
GOING DUTCH
Now, most Americans (and whenever I say “most” I always mean “more than half”), have no sense of the impact the Dutch have had on their nation and culture. Dutch words have made it into the English language and Dutch inventors have given us things like bluetooth, the microscope, and dialysis.
Kids read books about a Dutch rabbit named Miffy. We watch popular Dutch shows like Big Brother or The Voice. Dutch actors like Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner), Katja Herbers (Evil), and Michiel Huisman (GOT), fill our screens.
English speakers use Dutch words like cookie, coleslaw, or stoop, and people drink Heineken, Ketel One, and Amstel… all made in Holland. And don’t get me started about stroopwafels!
I’ve made it my new mission to tell the world about the influence a small, flat country of 18 million people has had (and is having) on the world, and on the USA in particular. And by doing so, I’m strengthening my connection to my Dutch roots.
And so, the idea of a different kind of social media presence was born, and I’ll tell you more about that in my next installment.
Yes folks, it’s a new series, and I invite you to come along for the ride.
Click here for part 2.
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