Thanks, Justin, for sharing. I definitely agree. 🙂

“Getting hooked on wanting to learn more”.

That is an awesome attitude to have! 🙂 Just make sure at the end that you’re taking action in your own business the same way you are now for your internship.

Congrats!
N

Absolutely, Alice. It is a true balancing act. The expectation has to also be set so that the intern understands they are going to be doing some grunt work and not going to be hand-held the entire time.

That’s where I struggled the most in the past with a few of my interns. Setting boundaries. I learned that it really would have been better just to look for someone efficient and qualified and just paid them to do the work.

Another mistake I see is people looking for interns when they themselves haven’t made consistent money – on purpose, yet. That’s the blind leading the blind and I really think it’s unfair to the intern.

Agreed, David. The balance has to be there.

I wouldn’t accept an intern who, for instance, didn’t know how to use his or her computer. That learning curve wouldn’t be worth it for me to teach.

But someone who is comfortable using their computer, already using Social Media, and who has taken the initiative to start something… anything… even if it later gets tossed away? That’s someone who I would look at.

“I think there’s a good time to just hire people to do the work and also a good time to have interns.”

I definitely agree, Angela. There are several things to take into account.

1. Obviously security of your business. You wouldn’t set a new intern or even a new Virtual Assistant up with access to too much of your business.

2. Return on Investment. For me, one of the projects that my intern will be working on is updating the formatting for all of my Kindle books – and the new ones that I will be writing soon. This is something where I’m uncertain on the Return on Investment, at least initially, so I don’t want to pay a Virtual Assistant $20/hour (for instance) if I later find that the Kindle books don’t sell as I’d hoped.

3. The ongoing nature of the task. I have systems in place for a lot of the things that I do. I wouldn’t want to interrupt those systems to get temporary free work, and risk upsetting things that already work and risk losing my loyal helpers who are running things smoothly already.

Just a few thoughts I had on that issue, as well.

HTH,
N

Hi Collette. 🙂 Hope you are doing well!

I’ve been thinking about your question. Here’s my answer.

* There can be mentorship during an internship. (And there should be.)
* There can also be mentorship without the internship side of things.

For instance, I mentor my coaching clients, my friends, and even some of my Virtual Assistants, even after they are out of my internship program. I mentor my readers to some extend through my blog and infoproducts.

However, an internship is a very specific arrangement that leads through mentoring but through DOING.

At least that’s my vision.

What do you think?
N