Greetings from beautiful Panama.  As many of you know we’ve taken Intern Profits (and our real estate investing business) fully virtual for the next few months.

As we shared with you in our announcement of our impending move and adventure we will be giving you tips and techniques on how to run your business completely virtual.

Now that we are in a third world country running both of our businesses remotely we figure it was time to share our top “must haves” for operating remotely.

1.  High Speed Internet

This might sound obvious, but running your business internationally absolutely requires high speed internet.  Unfortunately we found this out the hard way in Greece during a 2008 trip: the internet was painfully slow (think 1990s dial up) which made for unproductive business time, and grumpy business owners…not a way to spend your time working or having fun.

When you’re heading to an international destination, you can’t always be assured of high speed internet quality, but as the world develops, even here in Panama, we’ve found the internet to be very fast – in fact, the internet we have on a remote island off the coast of Panama near Red Frog Beach is faster than our internet in our old office in San Diego!

2.  Phone access to anywhere in the world

We’ve been using Vonage for nearly 6 years now, because it gives us unlimited long distance calling to anywhere in the USA & Canada, plus over 100 other countries.  But the best part about Vonage is that we can bring an adapter and a phone with us, and use our phone just as if I were in the USA.

This means that people in the USA (or Canada or the UK or anywhere else in the world) can reach us just by dialing our old phone number that we had in California!  We  don’t pay long distance to call anyone either!  The quality is awesome, and it makes it really easy for family, friends and business people to keep in touch with us while we’re abroad (they never have to dial internationally!)

The catch is you need #1 – high speed internet.

There are other resources out there as well including Magic Jack which we used while we were abroad in Greece back in 2008.  This is a device that gives anyone with high speed internet free phone service and a free phone number with unlimited local and long distance calling.  They have a free trial period and then there is an annual fee.

3.  Skype

Skype is really the main management tool we use on a regular basis with our team of contractors, virtual assistants, virtual interns, bookkeepers and accountants.  We can chat (think: IM), speak by voice, or even do video calls.  We listed Vonage ahead of Skype because Skype only works if the other party has the app installed.

4.  Electronic Signature technology/software

In our other business, real estate investing, signing documents is nearly a daily task so we have to be able to sign documents at any time, anywhere.  It’s essential to have software/technology that allows you to sign documents remotely.  In other words, you don’t  need to lug a printer, scanner or fax machine abroad, or track one down while you’re traveling.

Justin uses Docusign often to make and close real estate deals.  It is a great technology that allows you to sign documents with the click of a mouse!  They also have some great apps, including one for Microsoft Outlook and another for the iPhone and Android mobile devices.  And it’s free.

I recently purchased a Mac and using it’s Preview feature I can take “photos” of our signatures or initials and “sign” documents right from my computer.  Simple and easy.  If you have a Mac and you don’t have the “annotate” feature with signatures – I recommend updating your version.  Great app!

5.  A Great Virtual Team

While this is for certain the most important “tool”, it’s not something that you can just buy or download.  You actually have to spend time cultivating a great team.

Fortunately for us we’ve had a small team that we work with on a daily basis that have been with us for many years.  They all work remotely (from VA to New Orleans to Vancouver).  Some have fixed hours each week, others work on an as needed basis.  You can meet our core service team here.

And of course we have all our great virtual interns who we are able to continue working with and mentoring because they have always been virtual.  If you haven’t checked out our latest interns go here.

We also have two separate bookkeepers in Ohio who handle each of our different businesses as well as an accountant in Vancouver.

One of our bookkeepers is even getting all of our “snail mail” and opening, handling sending us bills, depositing checks, etc. for us.  There are tons of services out there that will also do this for you for a small monthly fee and/or per action fee.

Our Virtual Office In Bocas Del Toro

Our team is all over the USA & Canada so our being in Panama really doesn’t change much for us in business operations as long as we have the aforementioned technology solutions.

If you still haven’t hired an intern or want to learn more about what an intern can do for you check out one of our upcoming webinars.

If you haven’t considered hiring a virtual assistant and here’s a webinar we recently hosted revealing how any business owner an get a virtual assistant and get their first 40 hours of work done FOR FREE!

In closing, we are enjoying our team here in Panama as a family and putting the “virtual office” to a real test.

If you have questions about how you can set-up your office and work remotely leave them below.  We’d love to hear what you have to say.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been talking about how to determine if you need a virtual assistant or an intern, and we’ve also talked about what tasks you should assign an intern vs a virtual assistant.  

We took it one step further in last week’s webinar with Michael Hellickson, revealing how everyone can get a virtual assistant for FREE for 40 hours was a huge success. Check out the webinar below, or simply visit www.InternProfits.com/freeva to get started right away!

In our last blog post we talked about the three simple questions to ask yourself if you are trying to decide if you need to hire a virtual assistant or a virtual intern or a combination of both.

We want to break down the individual tasks and projects that would be most suited to each of these human resource solutions so you can have a better idea of how to better utilize these two resources.

Let’s first look at tasks and projects most suited for virtual assistants.  As we discussed in our previous blog post it is best to identify tasks and projects for virtual assistants that help you maintain your business on a day-to-day basis.  Most important is that many of these tasks require extensive training on software, systems and processes that would not be suited or efficient to have to re-train an intern on every few months.

Additionally, by the very definition of internships – your interns need to be learning transferable skills that will allow them to pursue their professional career by working for your company – administrative tasks, as listed below, do not allow for much of a learning opportunity for the intern.

Virtual Assistant tasks may include:

Virtual Assistant Tasks

1. Customer support and customer service where the virtual assistant is responding to your customer needs on a quick turn around – generally within 24 hours because they have set hours and requirements to address your day-to-day customer service needs.
2. Day-to-day database and customer relations’ management (CRM) maintenance so that your database and records are always the most up to date and someone who is working for your company on a daily basis understands how these important systems work.
3. Bookkeeping, billing, collections, etc. as virtual assistants are more plugged into your day-to-day operations and can track and follow-up on these items on a daily/weekly basis.
4. Arranging travel is better suited for a virtual assistant as he or she can become familiar with your preferences, accounts, etc. to make for a smooth travel experience.
5. Managing personal and company calendars.
6. Maintaining auto responders and customer lists.
7. Providing transcription services.
8. High-level executive assistant tasks.
9. Telemarketing

Intern tasks should be both learning activities and projects and tasks that will allow you to grow your business.  They are those tasks that, once completed, will help you acquire new customers, improve your brand, increase your sales and revenue, cut costs and ultimately increase your profits.

Intern tasks and projects can include, and can almost all be accomplished with a virtual intern:

1.  Video Marketing – creating, editing and posting videos then sharing those videos to social media and sharing sites.

Virtual Intern Projects

2.  Press Release Marketing – writing, editing and posting press releases; media outreach; creating media lists/maintaining media lists; following Google Alerts to stay on top of industry and find new partnerships; monitoring media listserv requests like HARO and providing and maintain canned responses; as well as creating a media kit and press page on your company website.

3.   Social Media Marketing – creating, monitoring, updating, engaging your customers and increasing followers, members, connections or “likes” for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles for you or your company.

4.  Website Analytics – monitoring the traffic to your website and what the visitors do while on your website.

5.  Research – book ideas, report ideas, blog posts, competition, article ideas, etc.

6.  Blogging – create, maintain and update your blog and comment on other blogs in your industry.

7.  New Product/Service development

8.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

9.  Writing and Copywriting

10.  Accounting – audits, creating new tracking systems, etc. – project based

11.  Advertising/Marketing -create ads, run ads, test ads, etc.

12.  Branding – create brand and plan for consistency throughout all materials, messaging, etc.

13.  New clients/customers – research new ideas for attaining new clients.

14.  Create new systems or processes and or audit current systems while also documenting systems or processes so others can implement in their day-to-day activities.

15.  Events – pre and post event preparation.

16.  General management assistance – researching new vendors, suppliers, etc.

17.  Implement home study courses or online training materials and resources.

18.  Create or edit presentations.

This list of tasks and projects should get you well on your way to hiring your first virtual intern and/or virtual assistant to hit the ground running helping you grow and maintain your business.

For more information on how to hire a virtual intern check out our white paper on virtual interns.

If you are ready to hire a virtual assistant then make sure that you register for the upcoming webinar we’re hosting this week, and discover how you can get 40 FREE hours of work from your first virtual assistant!

Have you been wondering lately if in fact you might need a virtual assistant (or assistant) instead of a virtual intern (or intern)?  Or a combination of both?

Well, often times when we talk to business owners we discover that in addition to starting an internship program they also need to consider hiring a virtual assistant.

Virtual Assistant

We decided to come up with a list of three simple questions you can ask yourself to quickly decide if you need a virtual intern or a virtual assistant.  Many of you will determine you need both.

In addition, and as promised, we want to share some of our business strategies and practices that allow us to work anywhere, anytime, as we embark on our 4-month working sabbatical.  You guessed it; we have both virtual interns and virtual assistants that allow us to have a remote work environment and workforce because we have a multitude of tasks and projects that need to be completed but are better suited for either a virtual intern or virtual assistant requiring us to hire both.

Here’s our list of three questions to ask yourself in order to determine if you need a virtual assistant or a virtual intern.  The answers to these questions will also help you determine the tasks that are appropriate for an intern vs. an assistant as you begin to grow your company.

Q.1. What are my needs in my business that would require either an intern and/or assistant?

A.1.  If you answer with tasks like: customer support; customer service; data entry; scheduling; day-to-day database/CRM maintenance; bookkeeping; travel arrangements; managing company calendar; maintaining autoresponders/lists; or transcription services then you probably want to hire an assistant or virtual assistant.  These are more day-to-day tasks to “maintain” your business which are more suited for an assistant.

If you answer with tasks like:  video marketing; press release marketing; social media marketing; website analytics; research and writing; blogging; new product/service development; search engine optimization (SEO); and/or copywriting then you want to hire an intern or virtual intern.  These tasks are going to help you grow your business and are great tasks for an intern.

Q.2.  How many hours/days a week do you need help? 

A.2.  If you need someone more than 10-15 hours per week and more than 2-3 days per week that they MUST report to work then you probably need a virtual assistant.  If you don’t need the person to be available for more than 10-15 hours a week and they can work all of their hours in 1-3 days if needed, or if the work schedule is flexible, then you are probably want to hire an intern.

Q.3. Do you need regular ongoing help or just project based?

A.3.  If you have projects and tasks that are ongoing and daily repetitive that you’ll need help with for the foreseeable future then you should hire a virtual assistant.  Interns typically work for 3-6 months so projects that have a defined beginning and end are best suited for interns; or projects that could easily be transferred to a newly incoming intern.

At this point you have probably decided that you in fact need both a virtual intern and a virtual assistant.  In our next blog post we’ll further explain the types of tasks and projects that are best for a virtual intern or a virtual assistant.

For more information on how to hire a virtual intern check out our white paper on virtual interns.

If you are ready to hire a virtual assistant check out our preferred vendor at Virtual Assistant Staffing.

San Diego, CA, April 26, 2012, — Today, Efficient Enterprises, Inc. announced that they are releasing a report on how to start an internship program. The special report, titled, “How to Hire an Intern: Your Blueprint for Creating an Internship Program,” provides information on starting an internships program.

The special report on creating an internship program includes:

• The 3 Easy Steps To Setting Up Your Own Internship Program
• How To Find, Hire & Manage Your Interns With Ease
• The “Rock & A Hard Place” Facing Today’s Youth
• How to compensate interns
• How to identify the best tasks for interns to work on
• The best places to find interns and get flooded with resumes
• How to write a winning job description
• How to successfully manage interns

Read More »

San Diego, CA, April 24, 2012 — Today, Intern Profits announced the release of their latest Easy Intern Assignment™ with Expert Faculty member and Facebook expert Brian Moran of “Get 10,000 Fans.”

On this free training, Intern Profit’s newest faculty member and Facebook expert, Brian Moran, is going to show business owners how to use the new timeline.

Read More »

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the annual CEIA Conference in Chicago, IL this past week.  CEIA stands for the Cooperative Education and Internship Association.

The conference was primarily attended by co-operative education and internship coordinators across the U.S. and Canada, as well as a few employers, including some from Disney.  I also presented our latest White Paper on Virtual Internships to a very responsive group.  They especially appreciated hearing real stories about all of our virtual interns‘ experiences working remotely.

While in Chicago I finally got to meet in person Michael True, of Intern Qubeand Director of the Internships Center at Messiah College.  Michael is an integral player in the internship discussion and has been an ongoing adviser to Intern Profits.

Founder Dreama Lee with Michael True of Intern Qube and Messiah College

I was also able to meet with Graciela Kenig, the internships coordinator at Depaul University’s College of Communications.  I met with Graciela early in my trip to discuss how Intern Profits can further work with DePaul to develop their formal virtual internship curriculum and partner with our employers to place virtual interns.  More details on the next steps will be released in the next few weeks.

Graciela also joined me for my presentation and lent some insight from the schools’ perspective on virtual internships and the role they play for students as well as how they are impacting the new worker entering the workforce.

I also participated in several round table discussions, including one held by Kelly Harper, Co-Op Coordinator at Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State and CEIA Board member, on social media.  It was interesting to hear what the schools are and are not doing around social media.  Intern Profits offered to share their Quick Start Kit on Social Media with all the attendees at the conference to help them better understand how to use social media on their campuses.

Founder Dreama Lee & CEIA Board Member & Co-op Coordinator - Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State, Kelly Harper

[Stay tuned for more information as well on an upcoming Easy Intern Assignment on the new look of Facebook].

Overall the discussions around virtual internships were positive and many individuals spoke to me personally that they are interested in helping to formalize the process at their schools.   If you are interested in downloading my presentation you can do so here.

I ended my stay in Chicago with a meeting with Dan Gershon who recently wrote a fantastic blog post on the value of internships in response to all the negative publicity internships and most importantly unpaid internships has been receiving.   Dan is a brand strategist and content marketing expert.  I’m pleased to announce he is going to be our Brand and Marketing Strategy Expert Faculty Member for an upcoming Easy Intern Assignment to add to our growing library of Easy Intern Assignments.

We wanted to update you on Intern Profits’ upcoming move to Vancouver, BC.  At the end of April we will be packing up all our belongings, taking a road trip with our kids back to Vancouver (where Justin grew up) and then a 4 month working sabbatical in Panama.

We’ve spent the last 2.5 years in sunny San Diego building our businesses and professional contacts (what we set out to do when we moved here) and enjoyed a sun filled few years in one of the most beautiful areas in the U.S.  Our plan had always been to return to Vancouver where we have a large support network of family and friends and for our oldest, Stella, to start school.

From May to August we will be working (and playing) in Panama.  We will also be selling our villa in Bocas Del Toro, Panama.  Our villa is located in a resort called Red Frog Beach.  It was an investment property that we purchased way back in 2004.

So what does this all mean to our Intern Profits community?

Let me explain.

Well, if you’ve been following us for awhile you may know that Justin and I have been in business since 2003 and have been fortunate to live in 3 of the best cities in North America:  Washington, DC. (where we started our first business in real estate investing); Vancouver, BC (where we started our second business in internet marketing and had our 2 beautiful children); and now San Diego, CA (where we launched Intern Profits).

Because of the way we’ve structured all of our businesses we’ve been afforded the luxury of working anywhere, any time.  We have a full team (virtual interns, virtual assistants, consultants, contractors, property managers, realtors, bookkeepers, accountants, graphic designers, web developers, etc.) spread out around the globe helping us run and maintain our business 24/7.

It doesn’t matter if we are visiting family in Virginia (like I am the past week and this week) – I’m able to do interviews, conduct webinar presentations, stay in contact with my customers and clients, and even write a chapter for an upcoming book on internships – all because we have systems, process, technology and software and of course excellent human resources that allows us this lifestyle.

We’ve set-up our business in a way that we can work any time, anywhere successfully and we want to share how we do this with our Intern Profits community.

We know that many of you are solopreneurs or have a very small staff and we want to share with you how we have set-up systems and process, and tapped into cutting edge technology and resources to allow us this freedom.  We will be sharing this with you over the next few months as we embark on the next chapter in our lives.

For those of you in the U.S. who may be wondering, what does the move to Canada mean to us?  It means that we will continue to grow Intern Profits internationally and learn what other countries are doing that can improve what we do here in the U.S.

We’ve been following the Canadian Small Business Internship program closely and are excited to learn more and share this information with our community.

We’ve always been engaged with what is going on in Canada and England around internships and this move will help us further engage and build the Intern Profits community.

For our Canadian customers we are excited to now be able to help you more closely navigate internship programs in Canada.

We have many exciting things in store over the next few months so be sure to tuned.

Thanks to all those who filled out our survey.  We are very pleased with the amount of responses we received and found the results very informative as we move forward with Intern Profits!

Stay tuned for upcoming trainings, service announcements and opportunities based on the findings from the survey.

We also wanted to announce the winner of the survey draw:  Dropwise Essentials

We’re very excited to help DropWise Essentials find an intern and learn more about their business!

In other Intern Profits news, if you haven’t seen our announcements yet we wanted to share some exciting news about an upcoming webinar presentation we will be doing for The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).

This opportunity is very important for our business and will allow us to better get the word out about the value of internships.  The National Federation of Independent Businesses is the leading small business association representing small and independent businesses. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 1943, NFIB represents the consensus views of its members in Washington and all 50 state capitals.

The webinar will cover:

• Why now is the best time to start an internship program and hire interns
• The best places to find interns
• The crippling effect of a “bad hire” (and how starting an internship program can help avoid this problem)
• The top 10 projects to assign an intern (no matter what kind of business or where it’s located)
• How to hire “virtual interns” (a great solution for home-based businesses, businesses that do not have adequate office space, or those without a school near their place of business)
• The single best way to train interns (to maximize your ROI)

If you’ve never been on one of our webinars this is your chance to learn about how to hire an intern!

To register for the free educational webinar please visit:

http://www.nfib.com/internshipwebinar

We look forward to seeing you join the many other businesses across the US on the webinar.

San Diego, CA, March 22, 2012, — Today, Efficient Enterprises, Inc. is pleased to announce that the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) will host Intern Profits on one of its upcoming webinars to educate its small business owner members on creating an internship program.

Justin Lee and Dreama Lee, Co-Founders of Intern Profits, will be presenting “How To Start Your Own Internship Program- in 3 Easy Steps!” This live webinar will show small business owners how to create an internship program in 30 days or less.

Read More »