December is a notoriously bad month for voiceover. The Christmas ads are already running and everyone is on vacation! But what about us!?! Gabby gives you some insights on how to make the most of the "holiday slump" to keep your business on track!
It’s the Holidays. You’re a Voice Actor… and you’re broke! – 4:12
Ho, ho, ho, bitches! Hey everybody, welcome to a special holiday edition of The Gift of Gab. Ho, ho, holy crap, where did all the work go? It’s December, my voiceover friends, and this pretty much means that for the majority of you, your business just took a massive financial dive. It’s OK, we’re going to talk about it. I’m gonna help you get through it. December is notoriously a terrible month in the voiceover industry. It really shouldn't come as a big surprise. Right? Most of our work is advertising dependent. The advertising industry is really slow this time of year because all of the holiday ads have already been produced and created. They’re already on the air, so there’s not a lot of demand for us right now. We’re going into the first quarter, which is really slow for the ad world. There’s not really much of anything coming up except for Valentine's Day.
So here's the thing. About the middle of December, to the end of December, most companies are shutting down, working on skeleton crews, and a lot of people as you know are on vacation. So there is not a whole lot happening. And as a voice actor, especially if you’re early in your career, this can be pretty scary. There's many a times that you find yourself just kind of waiting around.
[clock ticking]
Where's all the work? That's just the thing, there really isn't any, but it doesn't mean that you can't stay busy. The last two weeks of December are an amazing time to work on all of the infrastructure, entrepreneurial, accounting, strategizing things that normally you’re either procrastinating on a little bit, or they’re getting pushed aside because you’re busy with other stuff. Those last two weeks of the year are an amazing time to stay productive and to really challenge yourself to get all of the things done that normally you don't have time for. So in between holiday activities, in between time with friends, no matter what you celebrate, make sure that you’re staying business minded and business focused. Just because there's not a lot of work coming in, and you’re not being asked to be on mic a whole lot doesn't mean there isn't work to be done. You have to kind of shift your mental focus and shift the way you view a slowdown in your business. Yeah, it might be a tough month. Hopefully you have planned for this throughout the earlier parts of the year, and you’ve thought about it in advance, and you have a little bit of a cushion until things pick up and get back to normal.
Happy holidays from all of us at The Gift of Gab, and from all of my staff, my amazing squad that helps me to make these videos a reality, and also my website and everything else that I'm doing for the voiceover community. In addition, one of the things you can do for the new year, if you want to set a little voiceover resolution for yourself, is to join the VVE, the Virtual Voiceover Exchange. It’s a monthly Meetup group that I host online via Zoom. You can participate no matter where in the world you are, and you don't even have to be there live. If you sign up and RSVP for a meeting, and you don't actually make it, we'll still send you the recorded version. It’s a fun group, it’s copy workouts and topic exploration, and we really kind of dive into little segments of the industry and spend a couple of hours as a collective working out some of the various problems we might experience and having a whole networking, learning opportunity. You can check that out on my website at GabrielleNistico.com.
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
Gabrielle Nistico, Gabby Nistico, The Voiceover Vixen, The Business First VO Coach, #VoiceoverVixen #VoiceOnFire #BusinessFirstVOCoach Voiceover, Success, Entrepreneur, Voiceover Coaching, VO Coaching, Voiceover Coaches, Working Actors, Los Angeles, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, booking work, working actor, holidays, ho ho ho, website, Virtual Voiceover Exchange, December, happy New Year, Christmas