The small business with Lori Brooks Show
The Small Business with Lori Brooks Show
Want the transcript? Download it here.
Episode breakdown
Barbara Turley is an investor, entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of The Virtual Hub, a business she started entirely by accident. Barbara has quickly scaled her business to become one of the industry leaders in integrating in-house virtual assistance into her clients’ businesses.
- Barbara talks about her entrepreneurial journey
- Barbara talks about how she started The Virtual Hub by accident
- Barbara talks about the importance of creating a system in your business
- Barbara talks about the importance of optimizing your Platforms, Processes, and People
- Barbara talks about why delegation is important in business
- Barbara talks about how setting specific Objectives and Key results in your business can help you grow
VAs need to be trained. We have an entire learning and organizational department that's very large now. We actually recruit for ourselves. We have our own training platform. And only when we feel we have produced the quality VA that we know our clients are looking for, do we even attempt to start to try to pair with the client demand coming in
In this episode
00:08 Introduction and guest welcome
Lori Brooks opens the show, introduces guest Barbara Turley, and highlights Barbara’s success as the founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub. They express excitement about the conversation ahead.
01:15 Childhood career aspirations
Lori asks Barbara about her childhood dream job. Barbara reveals she wanted to be a doctor working in busy hospitals. She discusses how she didn’t get the points needed to study medicine and made an early decision to pivot.
02:51 Early career and gut instincts
Barbara talks about changing her career direction to study English and economics, trusting her gut feelings, and the importance of listening to intuition in life and entrepreneurship.
04:16 Investment banking experience
Barbara shares her experience working as an equity trader, likening the fast-paced environment to an ER. She explains how the dynamic nature and decision-making drew her in and how it parallels her current business in virtual staffing.
05:41 Founding The Virtual Hub
Barbara recounts the origins of The Virtual Hub, explaining how it began unintentionally when trying to solve a business problem. She highlights her journey of recognizing a market need and evolving it into a successful enterprise.
06:26 Business pivot and initial challenges
Barbara describes leaving corporate finance to start a financial education platform, which didn’t succeed as planned. While consulting small businesses, she discovered the widespread issue of entrepreneurs being too busy to grow and realized that assistants could fill this gap. Demand for assistants quickly surpassed her coaching work, leading her to pivot into an assistant business organically.
09:30 Rediscovering purpose and business impact
Barbara reflects on how this accidental business shift still fulfilled her original vision of empowering business owners and creating impact. She emphasizes that small and medium-sized businesses are crucial for economic recovery and growth, and that finding ways to support them is both vital and rewarding.
11:35 Operational philosophy and entrepreneurial modes
They discuss the danger of entrepreneurs getting trapped in daily operational tasks instead of building scalable systems. Both emphasize the value of mastering tasks before outsourcing and the importance of having personal knowledge about aspects like web development and SEO before hiring specialists.
14:16 Structure and training at The Virtual Hub
Barbara details The Virtual Hub’s unique approach to hiring and training. Unlike agencies that recruit to order, they hire for internal culture, provide full training and benefits from day one, and only assign assistants to clients once fully trained. This commitment ensures quality, high client satisfaction, and strong employee retention.
16:08 Industry specialization and service expansion
The conversation covers how The Virtual Hub serves various industries globally, with a focus on financial services. Barbara also shares how the business evolved to include consulting services for operational systems like Asana, Zapier, and process optimization — aiming to become a holistic scaling solution, not just a assistant provider.
18:30 Challenges of delegation and getting it right
Barbara acknowledges that while hiring assistants seems simple, executing it well is challenging. She advises entrepreneurs to prepare for a learning curve and highlights the importance of persistence, clarity, and alignment when integrating virtual team members.
20:12 Practical tips for hiring and managing assistants
Barbara shares specific advice: test assistant candidates with paid trial tasks, clearly define objectives and measurable key results OKRs, and use project management tools like Asana to track performance and alignment. These practices ensure both the business owner and assistant remain on the same page.
22:01 Troubleshooting team fit and performance
They discuss how having clear objectives and expectations allows business owners to identify whether problems are due to skills, attitude, or training gaps. Barbara notes this clarity makes it easier to resolve issues early and retain good team members while making informed decisions.
25:35 Industry challenges and ethical hiring practices
Barbara addresses issues of exploitation and misalignment in the assistant industry. She emphasizes the importance of prioritizing both client and employee experience, advocating for ethical business practices, clear expectations, and long-term relationship building.
27:22 Trusting intuition and life lessons
Barbara reflects on the importance of trusting one’s intuition — a lesson she wishes she’d fully embraced earlier. She encourages women especially to listen to their inner voice and intuition in both business and personal decisions.
29:24 Closing remarks and contact information
Barbara shares how listeners can connect with her on LinkedIn, where she actively shares insights, and through The Virtual Hub’s website. Lori closes the show with gratitude for Barbara’s wisdom and invites viewers to continue the conversation online.
