Donna Bordeaux explains why studio interns aren't free labor. For-profit studios must pay at least minimum wage unless the intern gets college or high school credit. Contact local art, business, and technical schools to find interns who can help with marketing and documentation.
Hi studio owners. Have you thought about hiring some interns to help out? It's really tough to hire employees right now and some of you may not have thought about the fact that you could hire an intern. Now I want to dispel some myths here. Interns, not free labor. Okay? When you talk about an intern or somebody who's working to volunteer, there are no volunteer opportunities in a for profit business. Those only exist in the non profit world, in the governmental world. So if you have somebody working in your studio, you must pay them at least minimum wage. Now there is one way to work around that a little bit and that is through interns. There are some rules where you may be able to exempt somebody from being paid a full normal wage if they are receiving college or high school credit. Most of the time that's going to be college in your case. So check with your local colleges and find out if they offer any ability for you to get an intern from one of their programs. They have a lot of art programs and even I would suggest looking at the business side, see if you can get a business related intern. Yes, they might not have the creative outlet like the art students might, but they may help you with a lot of other things. Marketing, getting your systems in place, documenting things. So check with your local technical college as well as four year colleges and see if there are any internships available that you might be able to fill in your studio. I'm Donna Bordeaux with pyopaccounting.com Please subscribe to our YouTube page. It means a lot to us to make sure that we have you there to follow along and you'll also get the latest and greatest releases on our page. Thank you very much.
