In this solo advice video, Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about unpaid internships. He frames any job, especially an internship, as a learning opportunity rather than a source of income. While acknowledging that basic financial survival is essential, he stresses that the primary goal should be gaining industry knowledge, validating business ideas, and building contacts. He recommends targeting small companies (around 10‑15 employees) where interns can work closely with entrepreneurs, take on meaningful tasks, and become indispensable, rather than large firms where unpaid interns often perform menial work. He outlines how such experiences help confirm interest in a field, prevent costly mistakes when launching a venture, and can eventually lead to paid roles or a smoother transition to one’s own business. The video concludes with a call for viewers to share their thoughts on paid vs. unpaid internships.
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Are unpaid internships a waste of time? I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Nabila, who wrote in to ask a question. Hey Evan, awesome video. Your channel has some helpful videos and points. Something I notice you say a lot is getting started and get out there, which I personally feel is the best type of advice. This is because for me, I can be very unmotivated and just want something to happen. My question for you is, how do you feel about obtaining an internship in order to learn more about a specific field, how things get done, etc., so you can apply it to your own future company. More specifically, how do you feel about unpaid internship positions? Do you think it's beneficial or a waste of time? This is a great question. In my view, the only reason to take a job is to learn. You're working for somebody else to learn. So the main objective here of taking an internship or a job is not to make a lot of money, but to learn. Now, I have an entire Zuga guide that walks you through this whole process, but I'm going to do my best to crunch this down into one video for you. The important thing to remember here is, you know, you have to survive. You have to have enough money to, you know, if you're paying rent, I don't want you to live on the street and be homeless. I don't want you to not be able to eat. So, you know, money at some point becomes an issue if you're going unpaid or even low-paid internship. But your main goal here is to learn. That's your main objective. Are you going to learn at this company or not? So I don't know what kind of business that you want to start, but let's say you want to start a fashion company. So you want to start making dresses. If you went out and you had zero experience and said, okay, I'm going to make a dress company and just start and you're investing into machines and the staff and the location, you're probably gonna go broke. You're gonna invest all this energy, time, dollars into something that, because you don't have any experience, you're gonna make a ton of mistakes and lose everything. And I don't want that for you. The better path is to go find a company that has 10 employees, not a huge company, but a smaller company who's built up to a certain size, is a company you respect and look up to, and where you can learn from. And take a job. It could be internship, it could be a part-time job, it could be volunteer, paid, unpaid, whatever it is. There's a few reasons why it's so important, okay? The first one is to see if this is even something that you want to do. A lot of times you get ideas, I get ideas, I'm gonna try this out, I have this vision for this thing I want to create, and then you start into something and it's not what you thought it was. You know, you may get into it, you may say, I want to make dresses, I love dresses, I'm gonna start into the dress business. You get this job at a dress company, you realize, wow, this is a— I hate this industry, I don't want to be here. And so that saves you a lot of grief and agony because you figure that out working for somebody else instead of working, you know, for yourself and losing a ton of money and time on it. So that's the first thing it does. The second thing is it teaches you about the industry. It teaches you teaches you so that you don't make mistakes. It teaches you so that when you're ready to go and launch your own business, you have contacts, you have experience, you know what you're doing. Like if you went to university, right, you pay to go to university, you pay to go to college. Here, you're either volunteering your time, so you're not paying anything, or you're getting paid, maybe not a lot, but a little bit. You're getting paid to learn, right? University, you have to work, you have to work hard, right, to get your grades. You're gonna have to work hard at this company, but you're working to learn. And it's cheaper than a university education. So that when you are ready to go do your own business, you know what you're doing. You've already made your mistakes. The reason why it's important to start at a small company, not the biggest companies in the field, is because there's lots of opportunities to learn in a smaller company. Right, at a big company, you do an unpaid internship, you might be doing a lot of photocopying, getting coffee for people. You're not learning. Right, it may be something that's great for your resume to say, "Hey, I worked at this huge company." But if your eventual goal is to start your own business, your resume doesn't matter. You want to learn. So a smaller company, 10, 15 employees, if you can get close to the entrepreneur, they need help. Entrepreneurs, we need help, okay? Entrepreneurs never say, "Oh, I've got too much time on my hands," right? There's always so much on the go that you might be hired or brought on board as a free intern to do one specific thing. You'll almost always find if you can get close to the entrepreneur, there'll be more opportunities that open up. Entrepreneurs love seeing hardworking people. There aren't too many entrepreneurs who say, "Yeah, all of my team, they're highly motivated, they're super hardworking, I love all of them, they're all fantastic." Right? There's always room for great employees, for great workers at companies. So if they see that you're doing a great job, they're going to give you more. And more and more and more, and you want that even if you're not getting paid because the education is what you're paying for, right? Your goal isn't to be there working for free for the next 20 years. Your goal is to learn about the business and then go do your own thing, right? If you need more time there, they may find that you are, you know, your goals will be indispensable to them, and they may offer you a job and they may give you raises, and you have to decide, okay, well, do I Am I still learning here? Do I want to take this job that maybe started off for free and now I'm getting paid to do it? Or do I want to go on, am I ready to launch my own company? You have to make that decision at that time, but make yourself indispensable to the entrepreneur you're working with. Learn from them. They'll keep giving you new projects. Hopefully they give you some more money, but the whole point is not about the cash, it's the experience so that you can build a highly successful company yourself. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Let me know what you think. What are your thoughts on internships, paid and unpaid? If you've hired people or had people come on as interns, let me know. Leave it in the comments below. You have a question, put it below, make a video response, and don't forget to subscribe to my channel by clicking on my face if you want to see more videos like this. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon. Uh, lost my flow there. So Ba-da-da-da, just dance. It'll come back. It'll come back. It'll come back.
