Internship Position Open: Part Time Virtual Assistant (Blog)

[Erin Pavlina]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Erin Pavlina's blog:

Internship Position Open: Part Time Virtual Assistant

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Erin Pavlina's blog:

Internship Position Open: Part Time Virtual Assistant

I believe you will have a number of volunteers from which to choose your intern. Good luck to you and the intern!

[Alison]

Hey, you're getting help, that's great!

I'm wondering about your reasons for making this an unpaid internship rather than a paid position. How did you come to that decision?

[omia1234]

why not pay someone at least something. It just seems like a very tall order for a volunteer position.

Interested to know why.

[Erin Pavlina]

Part of the reason is that STeve and I still have all our finances tied up with each other and neither of us can use joint funds to hire anyone. So I have to wait for the divorce to be final before I can hire anyone. him too. At the moment not even sure I could afford to pay someone for this work, but hoping that with some of the burden relieved off my plate I can spend my time creating services and products that will increase my income and allow me to pay someone to help me.

This was my exact strategy when I ran VegFamily magazine. I was writing every single column myself, so I got volunteers to take over some columns so I could concentrate on growign the business. Once the business was turning a profit, I started paying all my volunteers. Couldn't do that any other way.

Same thing is happening to me now. I'm doing everything in my business on my own, not to mention being a single parent! I have to free myself up to work on the high level things so I can increase my income to a point where I can then hire people

[Alison]

Thanks for explaining, Erin. I'm sure you'll attract the perfect person!

I'm in a similar position -- already working full-time, trying to launch a new business and advance my fiction writing career, raising two little kids with my husband.

It's hard to move forward in any one area while keeping all the balls in the air. It sounds like you have a good strategy that's worked for you in the past.

[Weena]

Tasmania is probably not the closest region to Vegas so all i can do is sending you good wishes for the perfect assistant

[Weena]

Originally Posted by omia1234

why not pay someone at least something. It just seems like a very tall order for a volunteer position.

Interested to know why.

Money is not the only exchange of energy, you don't know that Erin might give the assistant a reading or a plate of nice vegan munchies, ah!

[Erin Pavlina]

Almost certainly there will be access to intuitive guidance along the way. I take care of my peeps

[Bing Wu]

Ahem ahem... I would like to submit my application for this position:

I'm an excellent cook - people call me the microwave whiz. You should see me pushing those buttons.

I take great care of kids - I've only lost 2 kids in my years a camp counselor.

I can even do psychic readings. So there you have it - hire me, I'm the best guy for the job.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Alex Wu

Ahem ahem... I would like to submit my application for this position:

I'm an excellent cook - people call me the microwave whiz. You should see me pushing those buttons.

I take great care of kids - I've only lost 2 kids in my years a camp counselor.

I can even do psychic readings. So there you have it - hire me, I'm the best guy for the job.

Alex, I absolutely vote for you as Erin's personal assistant!

[Weena]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

I take care of my peeps

I thought you would. Balanced exchange of energy comes in many ways.

Alex sounds very interested in the position, go Alex!

[nutella2]

Well, good to be reassured that there'll be a balanced energetic exchange for whoever decides to go for it, because for a minute, there I was naïvely thinking it sounded just like slave labour

[ogrekilleat]

You charge almost $800 an hour for a reading. If you can't afford to pay someone $10 an hour for a few hours a week, you may be charging more than the market will bear.

[Mabel]

[QUOTE=I'm an excellent cook - people call me the microwave whiz. You should see me pushing those buttons.[/QUOTE]

What Alex? Microwave oven? You'll forget what that is pretty soon.

[Erin Pavlina]

Ogrekilleat: You're not understanding the situation clearly. High income doesn't mean much when your expenses are also high and you don't have access to your money. And like I said in the entry sometimes it will be a lot of hours and sometimes not. I don't know until we get going. Unpaid internships are quite common and I'm not forcing anyone to apply.

[Weena]

I don't know for the US but in Australia, the more you earn, the more taxes are taken from you. My husband recently cut back his workdays to spend time with our children, and quite truly it's not a big diff' moneywise as when he works like an ox it's the government that benefits, not him. Erin, is it the same in the US? High income = high contributions?
Anyway, people's finances are not other people's business in my opinion (I would not like someone to go over my bank account and give unsollicited comments but maybe that's just me).

[Angela]

When you're amicably divorcing, you lose access to your money? Do they put your money in escrow or something? That doesn't seem right.

[Erin Pavlina]

No we haven't even filed yet. It's so extremely complicated, our situation. But we're totally tied together financially, neither one of us can "take" anything but what we need to cover the personal expenses (mortgage, groceries, etc.). If either one of us used money to expand our business or hire employees it would be at the expense of the other partner who doesn't get to use that money to expand his/her business. Not sure I explained that right. But bottom line is, neither of us can expend extraneous income until everything is split.

[Erin Pavlina]

And yeah, by the time taxes are taken out of our income, there's very little left for expansion, growth, and hiring. We're supporting two households now instead of one. it's taxing.

[Angela]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry -- it just sounded like an unfair and exasperating situation! But I get it -- it makes sense to be fair with each other that way.

[Anna Conlan]

Great idea Erin. I could do with an intern too!! What with a part time business and a full time job...