Today’s Quote: I don’t just sing for free. It’s my work. You’re paid for what you do. And I work hard. – Celine Dion
Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today I am going to talk about why VAs don’t work for free. This episode is for VAs and business owners alike – and it’s just the simplest concept ever. When someone does work, they should get paid for it.
Click the play button above to tune in, or choose your favourite podcast player below:
Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
This week I saw a post in a VA group asking the group members if they were interested in a 3 month unpaid internship.
You would work 15 hours a week for 3 months (!) to ‘learn the ropes’ of a variety of marketing tasks for a private company.
The OP called it great experience, something to add to your resume, with a potential for some paid time 3 months from now.
And it would be great experience. But it’s pretty much illegal.
What??
Yep. In Canada you can’t be an unpaid intern unless the internship is tied to an educational institution. I’ll get into the specifics of that in a bit, but here’s the thing …
Someone is posting what appears to be an opportunity. So many VAs get excited because they can LEARN!
And so come the replies… I’m interested, PMing you now, this is my jam, I would love to learn from you, and so on.
And the VAs have NO idea that it’s against the law.
Not even the OP knows that it’s not allowed, clearly (if they do it’s even worse, butI’m pretty sure this one honestly didn’t know!)
Now I’m not trying to call out this person who posted this in that particular group. I want to use it simply as an example
I gave her the info that she clearly didn’t have, and she removed the post, but the problem is that this kind of damage is done DAILY to our industry, because we just don’t know any better.
And that’s what gets me riled up.
You must know! You need to learn what’s right. It is your obligation as a small business owner.
I actually bumped my regularly scheduled podcast episode to create this one for this week because I really want to know that you have the right information – at least where to get it – before you make these kinds of decisions in your VA business.
You have to know what the legalities are of what you are doing in your business. It’s 100% your responsibility to learn what you don’t know, and to do things the right way.
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV, and I bow the experts .. .every single time.
But I’ll tell you, one quick Google search will show you that you can not have someone do work for you and not pay them, claiming that they are getting an advantage or that it’s good experience for them.
Just because you both agree to something doesn’t make it legal. write that down!
Now, have I ever bartered work? Of course I have!
Have I ever hired interns? Yes I have!
Have I ever done free work for someone? You bet I have!
But NOT for 3 months at 15 hours per week.
And NOT for nothing else in return except the actual work you ‘get’ to do. Come on.
Let’s break down the math on this …
If you work 15 hours per week for 12 weeks, that is 180 hours of free work you are giving someone.
Presumably, they are getting paid by their clients for that work, so they are earning money for the work getting.done.
And yet you are not. They are getting free labour. It is as simple as that.
If you charged the bare minimum VA rate, $25 per hour, that is the equivalent of $4500 worth of work for no pay. Most VAs bill $30, so that’s already over $5K. Five thousand dollars you are giving someone!
If they paid you minimum wage in Ontario, which is currently around $16 per hour, it’s $2880. Almost $3000. interns are legally required to be paid minimum wage.
Why would you agree to this? Because you are learning something? Because you are getting experience?
Let me ask you this.
If I offered you a marketing course that taught you how to do a few marketing tasks, would you pay me between $3 and $5K to take it?
Of course you wouldn’t. That is exorbitant.
That’s red flag number 1 – never mind the legalities!
What is the tradeoff for you?
I’ll tell you one thing, it is absolutely not as much as the person providing the ‘opportunity’ is getting.
If you decide that you want to trade services with someone (ie barter) or if you want to do work with people for no money (volunteer), then here is what you should be doing instead.
Bartering
If you plan to exchange services with someone, do it properly.
Decide what you will each do that is equal in value.
For me, I bartered with my first business coach. $750 worth of my VA work for $750 worth of their coaching services.
We BOTH got equal value, and we helped each other.
Bartering is a good way to get experience, but you aren’t just ‘getting’ the experience. You are trading something else that is of the same value. I was a part of their mastermind group, I got training and coaching and it made me a better business person.
They got client care and marketing support for their business, we built procedures, and we even expanded their team when things got going.
The key with bartering is to have a contract in place – and a short time frame. As soon as possible, you want to start paying each other, don’t let it go long term.
You can trade VA services for learning … just make sure they ARE of equal value.
Free Work
Volunteering is one way to get experience that isn’t against any laws. But it’s not usually something that you do for 60 hours a month. And it’s definitely not called an internship.
Volunteering is something you do for a non profit organization, charity or public service if you want to, and not because you are getting them to teach you something. You work in your expertise and you provide a service, like maybe bookkeeping or marketing and you do it in kind for them – like your church or a business association or group. You are helping them because you want to and because you can.
So volunteering is not usually to get experience but it could benefit you by expanding your community of people who recognize your value.
Internship
An internship is a legal relationship or position that has rules attached to it.
In terms of unpaid internships, they are simply not legal. An intern has to get paid at least minimum wage (in the example I gave you that would be almost $3K for the work requested).
Unpaid interns are only allowed as part of an education institutional program (college or university etc), or through the co op programs. What does that mean? If your business isn’t a college or university, no free interns!
I’m not an expert guys.
This information is readily available on the Canada.ca website. I Googled it, and you can too.
As I said, I’m not a lawyer or a tax specialist, and I never give legal or tax advice, but I do tell you where to go to find it.
It’s soooo simple folks. Go to your Government website pages. They have all of the information you need to do things the right way.
They tell you the rules, they tell you what the consequences are, and they can be severe.
It is not good enough to say ‘I didn’t know’.
It’s your responsibility as a business owner to learn what you need to learn to run your business where you live.
On the intern info page you will also learn about misclassifying employees as independent contractors, which is another BIG issue in the VA industry, but not one that I’m going to cover in this episode (essentially if you are working with just one client, you are their employee … you can’t be called a contractor if you don’t have multiple clients … and both of you can get caught! Bet you didn’t know that either… but now you do!)
Protect yourself when you are getting started, or when you see what appears to be a great opportunity – investigate it.
Don’t assume that the other person knows what they are talking about.
Here’s what to do instead:
Learn for free, don’t work for free. There are umpteen thousands of free places to learn what you want to know online. Don’t do free work for someone else to learn – especially if they are being compensated. You need to get paid at least minimum wage as an employee, or your minimum rate as a VA.
Subbing for other VAs is a great way to learn on the job. They get to do all the marketing and business running, and you just need to help them with the work. I subbed for a great VA for 4 years because I just kept on learning more stuff from her (that is a great perk for a lot of VAs who run teams), but I got paid for every single hour I worked.
And quite frankly, trust yourself. Offer services that you know how to do NOW – if I wanted to hire you today, what could you do for me? Those are the services that you need to be out there getting clients for. Don’t try to get clients doing something you’ve never done – it’s much too hard.
Once you have revenue coming in, then you can take some training and change your service offerings. I started with some bookkeeping and finance type of work because I could do it (but I didn’t like it) and as soon as I got a few months of revenue in, I joined Freelance University and learned how to do digital marketing.
I found my target clients and started marketing my new services to them (I wasn’t a new VA anymore, I just had new services). My business exploded because I did what I knew.
I didn’t need to intern with anyone and I certainly never worked for free – never mind knowing whether it was against any laws or not, I just knew that I was getting paid to do THIS at a job, and therefore I was getting paid when I did it for anyone as my client.
So there ya go.
That’s my rant. I had to do it.Now back to your regular schedule program! 😉
PLEASE learn what you need to know – don’t sell yourself short, and do NOT work for free. Just ever.
And to those business owners who think they can get VAs to do free work, just do better. Pay someone to help you. If you don’t have a large budget, work within it. Value your VAs. They are soooo valuable to your business.
Now in the interest of transparency, you heard me say earlier that I did hire interns – so I want to be clear on that. I did not pay my interns at the time. (gasp!). I bartered with my interns. They got trainings in return for the work they did for me – and they did 3 months of work for me during their internship. But it was for up to 10 hours per month (or 2 hours per week) – up to a total of 30 hours. Which amounted to about $600 of work I got, to their $600 of VA training.
One of the things I bartered was my Getting Started as a VA training self study program – which is 10 hours of training and resources to help you start your VA business. They got immediate access to that and could easily get their business plan and business started within a few days if they went through the program and did all the homework.
During their internship, they also got access to me as a coach and could ask questions, talk to me about setting up their business, which I only offer as private coaching services. It’s valuable.
So I know I did right by the few women that I hired as interns. It was a barter. And like I said bartering can be very valuable to both sides. The key is to offer very clear terms, a contract, and a stop date. And be reasonable with what you are trading – if someone needs 15 hours per week of support, they have to have revenue to support that.
All right I’m jumping off my soap box now.
The bottom line is there are right ways to work with people and there are wrong ways. If you find yourself in a wrong way, fix it.
Value the people that you work with and who do work for you.
If you have any admin experience whatsoever, you do not need to work for free. If you need to learn to set up your business or run it, then learn that. If you need to learn how to get clients, then learn that. If you need to learn to upgrade your existing skills, then learn that.
And then when you have revenue coming in, learn something new and you can change the course of your business.
Value yourself above all. I do!
I am your advocate, and I need you to know that!
Be Celine! You work hard, just like she does. Just like I do. Just like your clients do. They get paid for what they do. You need to get paid for what you do too. Celine gets paid!
Need Some Help?
This is exactly what I help VAs do. As a VA coach and trainer, I help you set yourself up for success, helping you fix the specific things that are going wrong in your business. When we work together either privately or in a group we talk specifically about your business and you – there is no one stop solution for everyone when it comes to service businesses like VA businesses.
I’ll help you get clarity around your issues, and cheer you on as you walk through the steps to fix them.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through their challenges and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
You can work with me privately, or you can join The Virtual Circle, my mastermind group for Virtual Assistants. Check it out at www.YourVAMentor.com/TVC (the virtual circle) – I bet it’s exactly what you need to start running the VA business you dreamed of.
Reach out to me if you are interested.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week, see you next time!