VoiceActor: Welcome to Dream Business Radio, the place to create your dream business now. Get ready for some inspiration, some encouragement, some proven business building strategies and a couple of new ideas that you haven’t even thought of. It’s time to leave slow and steady as she goes to the other entrepreneurs because this program is all about speed and fast results.

And now, broadcasting from his floating home somewhere in theAtlantic Ocean, the dream business coach himself, Jim Palmer.

Jim Palmer: Well, good afternoon, everybody. This is Captain Jim Palmer, the Dream Business Coach coming to you. Well, right now we’re in Charleston, South Carolina. By the time you hear this, I’ll probably be a little further north near the Chesapeake Bay. But that’s nothing compared to the distance I’m talking to my special guest this week. Her name is Barbara Turley, and she is the founder and CEO of the Virtual Hub. And she is calling in from France. Pretty amazing technology. Anyway, as I said, Barbara Turley, she’s an investor and entrepreneur and founder and CEO of the Virtual Hub, a business she started by accident that exploded in the space of about 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains and manages virtual assistants or VAs, a subject that near and dear to my heart has helped me grow my amazing business all through VAs. And with a strong focus on customized training and ongoing career development, Barbara ensures that her team is trained in cutting edge programs like HubSpot, Entreport, et cetera, to meet their clients’ unique needs in digital marketing, social media, personal assistance services, and administrative support. She’s calling in from France. Barbara, how are you doing today?

Barbara Turley: I’m great, James. Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Palmer: Yeah. James, I don’t know how to fix my zoom. It says James. I go by Jim’s.

Barbara Turley: And I was thinking as I said it, I was like, I was sure it was Jim. In my head.

Jim Palmer: I’ve been called a lot worse. I’ll answer to anything.

Delegate Smarter With The Virtual Hub

Barbara Turley: Mr. Palmer. We’ll call you Mr. Palmer.

Jim Palmer: Oh, no, no, just call me Captain. No, seriously, just call me Jim. So I love the topic. when I saw your information come across my desk, I said, I want her because I love the whole topic of virtual assistance, et cetera. But I’m in my eighth year now of doing the dream business podcast. And one of the things I know I hear a lot from our listeners is they love the backstory and the whole entrepreneurial journey and the challenges and wins and losses in addition to whatever the expert topic is. So before we dive into the whole topic of getting yourself the help you need, talk a little bit about your journey, Barbara. Were you an entrepreneur at heart? Did you have parents who were entrepreneurs or grandparents or did you go get a big expensive degree at a university and then go off and start your own business? What did that look like for you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, it’s funny, you know, I mean, I definitely was not the person with the lemonade stand as a kid. So I had no interest in entrepreneurial anything. My dad did run, I mean, does run his own business. He still does. He’s a quantity severe and he’s run his own practice for my whole life. So I always knew that he worked for himself, but you know I wouldn’t, he wasn’t like a crazy entrepreneur. I mean, all I ever wanted to do was be in the corporate world. And I did spend 15 years in the financial markets, in high finance, really. I was in the trading floors, stock exchange, loved it. I went into a sales role and I spent the majority of my career doing that. But I can remember when I hit about 29, you know, when I was, you know, work hard, play hard and all of that, having a great time. But I remember one moment thinking, I’m not sure I see a future in this as a female. And I mean, you know, other women listening might, this might resonate with them. I really didn’t want to be a corporate mom. That was kind of the thing that came into my head. And I didn’t really want to tie myself into the corporate world, even though I loved it. I just didn’t see the future for myself personally there. And then I started thinking about, you know, what on earth was I going to do? And it was actually fortuitous on a flight coming back. I was living inAustralia at the time. I lived inAustralia for almost 20 years and absolutely loved it. And I was on a flight coming back from Brisbane to Sydney for work. And I saw this tiny ad in the back of the flight magazine that was for a little website called Blog Mastermind or, oh no, it was called Entrepreneurs Journey. That was it. And I’ve subsequently ended up becoming very good friends actually with the founder of that. But I started looking at that website and was someone who was writing basically about his entrepreneurial journey, how he started off blogging. And it was all about content marketing really and information products. And that was what started to whet my appetite about, I wonder, could I do something online? And I guess that was the start of it, but it’s never linear. I mean, that’s not, I didn’t just leave my job and then everything was rosy. I think one of the big things that happened though, and this is the power of the universe, I guess. You put something out there, something like this happens. gets your mind thinking. And then lo and behold, the financial crisis hit in 2008. And I was planning to leave my job around that time and think about my own entrepreneurial journey. I had no plan. I didn’t know what on earth business I was going to do. And then the financial crisis forced me into a situation where, you know, the financial industry went into meltdown. I found myself without a job. I did go traveling and blew up a load of money. That’s the whole of the story. I went and did a ski season in New Zealand and went all aroundAustralia traveling.

Jim Palmer: So you’re still playing hard even though you weren’t working hard at that point.

Barbara Turley: So by the end of it, I was like, whoopsie, kind of a bit of a pickle here. I probably shouldn’t start my own business. But a very interesting thing happened. I took a job at Deutsche Asset Management in Australia and it was kind of a maternity leave contract that was sort of, look, it was like going from driving a Ferrari to driving a scooter. That’s the only way I can kind of describe it in terms of my career. But I took it and a crazy thing happened. I met this really entrepreneurial bunch of people who one was the CEO of Deutsche at the time, asset management in Australia. And Deutsche decided to sell off, well, there were some assets up for sale basically. And I got a chance to be involved in a sort of management buyout of a portion of the business. And I can remember being asked, was I by the CEO who I’d become friends with at the time. And I remember thinking, I just raised my hand and said, absolutely I am. I didn’t think about how I was going to pay for it. I just remember going, I’ll have a bit of that, please. And in the end, to cut a long story short, I ended up doing Swet Equity in a startup sort of company that I’m still involved in today. It’s 10 years later now and it has gone on, you know, the company’s managing upward of about 20 billion Australian dollars now. It’s an asset management company and it was a chance. I remember starting it up and it was really, difficult in those early years, but I learned so much about building scalable companies and how, you know, sales and distribution and all of this sort of stuff ties together to build a powerhouse company. And really that whetted my appetite. I did it for five years and then eventually I went on to move out and do my own thing while staying as a shareholder and part of that company, which I still am today. So here I am.

Jim Palmer: Yeah, now Barbara, you, so a lot of people that I talked to, if I throw out the term VA, even today, well, what’s a VA? Were you familiar with virtual, like 1099 Contractors, virtual assistants, or did you discover that? Yeah, how did that come about?

Barbara Turley: Look, I’d never even been to the Philippines when I started this business. I mean, this is like a crazy backstory. Look, I, you know, I remember, I don’t even know where I saw the book, The Four Hour Workweek. I think I picked it up. I think I was going to Bali on holiday and I saw it in the airport and I was like, oh, that looks interesting. Four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss’ book.

Jim Palmer: Yeah, who doesn’t want that?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I read it on holiday and was like, oh, it’s amazing. Wow. That’s, that makes total sense to me. So at this stage, I was starting to think about leaving corporate and the whole thing and starting my own business. And I actually started out, as many of us do, leaving corporate in a consulting sort of business coachy type role. And I was helping some small businesses to get their act together basically and try and grow. And I thought, I’m gonna get myself one of these VAs. So of course I jumped online. I did get lucky. I got a home run on my first one or two. There were some teething issues, but I did okay on the first ones that I got myself. And then I noticed the clients that I was coaching. They all, didn’t matter what industry they were in or whether they were online, offline, brick and mortar, whatever, it didn’t matter, product or service. They all had the same problem fundamentally. And that was that if they didn’t hire staff, they were never going to be able to grow. And if they didn’t grow, they were never going to be able to hire staff. So they were in that crevice that is very easy to slide into and very difficult to get out of in business if you don’t learn to delegate and you don’t manage this whole thing. So because they couldn’t afford to hire staff locally, I was like, well, we’ve got to get some of these VA’s offshore. And essentially, my VA, a few of her friends, I got them jobs with some clients. And before I knew it, I was getting asked for, can you get me one of those VA’s more than I was getting asked for business coaching? And there was a pivotal moment that I clearly remember. I was in Byron Bay in Australia, anyone who’s been to Australia, amazing, amazing sort of holiday location. My brother was there and he’d come from Ireland on holiday with his family. And I remember saying to him, you reckon there’s a business in this? And he said, well, I don’t know, but your phone hasn’t stopped ringing all week. And that was the start of it. No business plan, nothing. I just did a webinar out to a small list of people I had built up at that point and offered a service, which was, you know, do you want me to get you on and I’ll manage them for you. I’ll train them. And I got flooded with demand. And that’s what I mean about it being accidental. I didn’t really intend to start this business. There was no thought process behind it. I just put an offer out and solved a problem. And that was the beginning of it.

Jim Palmer: Wow, it’s interesting because I’ve interviewed so many people and it’s like some of the greatest success stories start out as accidents or like you trip over a stone and wait, hey, that’s interesting, you know? You know, by the way, I love what you said. Like, you know, one of the chapters in my book, as I was telling you before we live is called Delegate, Learn to Delegate or Stay Small Forever. And I think that’s such a challenge for small business owners who think, well, you know, because I remember my own mindset way, way back. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years, but early on I’m like, well, I can do it cheaper, faster and better than anybody. So why would I hire somebody else? I might as well just keep the money myself. Little did I know, every hour I was doing $10 an hour work instead of $400 an hour work and it was costing. It was big deal.

Barbara Turley: No. Delegate or die.

Jim Palmer: Delegate or die. That’s really,

Barbara Turley: Yeah, it’s very difficult to get people’s mindset around it in the early days.

Jim Palmer: So let’s talk about The Virtual Hub. You got this company, you’ve grown it pretty large in a short period of time. Do you have teams of VAs, like each one with different skill sets and does somebody come to you and you marry them up with somebody or do you just recommend them or like, how does that work?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, so I mean, the business started out very, like I said, quite messy. The first year was sort of like, I mean, you know, we’re here to talk about the successes as well as the failures. I can tell you the first year was a disaster. Like, although it took off and the demand was there, you know, I very rapidly realized that people need to delegate, but the majority of people have no idea how to delegate. It doesn’t like just getting the person doesn’t solve the problem. So of course, there’s the problem of recruiting the right people. But then if you put the right people into the wrong structures, the wrong framework and the wrong mindset of a business owner who has no idea how to delegate effectively, how to build processes, how to communicate and run teams and lead, disaster, right? So I sort of suffered all of that in the early days. And what I found was I had solved this first problem, which was people need staff and they needed cost effectively. The second problem was, oh no, people need to learn how to delegate. They need to be taught this. And then the third problem kind of coincided with that, which was these VAs sort of have a mishmash of experience and a bit of training that they kind of accidentally found on YouTube or they tried to do it themselves, but there’s no formal, they’re not being trained properly. And even if they know how to do some of the stuff and some of the tasks, they don’t know how to manage the client. They don’t know how to communicate. So the whole success rate is very low in the industry, surprisingly enough, because of those problems and not necessarily because of the people themselves, but everybody blames the people. So today, The Virtual Hub, from all of those problems, what’s actually happened now is that we’re more like a, we like to partner with our clients. We’re not a recruiter. So you don’t come to us and give us a brief and then we go and recruit for you. We don’t do anything like that. We actually recruit our own people. So we’re continuously recruiting, month in and month out. Our own people for our own supply and then we know, well, we go out and sell it later, but we do, we have an intensive training program. So people have to come jump through a lot of hoops to even get a job with us. Then they have to go through our training program, which is quite intense. Then they get onboarded into the operations teams and they often sit on the bench or they work on internal teams for a little while to give them, you know, give them some wheels. And then eventually we will start to present them to our clients to say, you know, you can meet some of our people. Who would you like to, which one would you like to work with? So it’s not really a recruitment model. It’s more like a, you know, a partnership type model. And also all of our clients these days are also getting a results coach and a client success manager. So it’s like a pod structure that goes in and services a client account to make sure that you get a win-win-win for everyone, including us as a company, but also return on investment for the client. And that model has been explosively successful because it’s solving multiple problems at the same time within this one delegation game.

Jim Palmer: And then I also think Barbara in the last year, I mean, it’s all of us, all of us on planet earth, I think pretty much have experienced the whole COVID situation where people are working at home. So I know companies, I have a friend of mine, he’s got a company with about 45 employees and he always resisted letting his employees work at home. He wanted to be in control and see what they’re doing. And now he’s like, I’m thinking of selling his big place and just continuing this way. Was that somehow a boon or did that wake people up to the opportunity that, I don’t have to be in an office with employees, so to speak. I can have people working remotely from anywhere.

Barbara Turley: Yes, I mean, you know, one of the big things is, you know, anyone who was resisting it before, well now it’s irrelevant where anybody is. Like here’s the thing, right? Next door, next state, next city, next country, it doesn’t really matter. Like if somebody is in the next house to you, it’s almost irrelevant whether they’re the next house or the next country in some ways, because especially with the lockdowns, because you can’t see people anyway. And that has caused people to shift their mindset quite quickly. And now the next step of course is, once you get their mindset right, then people are still trying to get their heads around how do I make this work? But I think the last year has catapulted the digital transformation and using cloud-based technology and stuff we’ve been doing for years, but we’ve had a huge surge in demand. And digital has taken off as well. And that’s the wheelhouse that we tend to play in, which is more digital marketing implementation is kind of where we specialize. So those two things together have been really good for us. Now, having said that though, we’ve had an explosion in demand, but we also had our own challenges because we were office based in the Philippines and overnight we had to move something like 140 staff. At one stage of the height of it, we had to move 140 staff into work from home setup and we had about two days to do it. And that sounds fine in the Western world, but for us, about 35% of them had no internet connections at home and no computers. That was hell. Like, I mean, the operational costs of doing it, thank God we had an explosion in demand because, you know, there was a lot of cost in that last year and a lot of stress of trying to move that many people, but we did it. We did it in two days.

Jim Palmer: That’s incredible. One of the challenges I think people have, and myself included in what I call the early days, was they’re working with a virtual assistant. It’s a 1099 contractor, not your employee. And I know there’s different tax laws, but we don’t talk about that because our different countries are probably different. Assuming somebody is a 1099 contractor with your company means they’re not an employee. And therefore, you can’t necessarily tell them when to work, how to work, you know, because that makes them an employee. Is that, well, I just asked you a specific question. I said I wouldn’t, but is that similar in other countries? Like even the mindset, Barbara, is the mindset one where you have to realize this is an independent business owner themselves. They just happen to be, you know, hiring themselves out to perform a service for a certain amount of money?

Barbara Turley: Well, yes. So in the direct market, let’s talk about the differences here. So this is important. If you go into the direct market and you’re going to engage a VA, virtual or anyone directly, even online, it doesn’t actually matter what their role is. If they’re not going to be an employee of your company, then they’re a contractor. And then there’s rules around that. But for us at the Virtual Hub, we actually have a Philippines company and all of our team are all full-time employees of our local company. So they all have like top level private health cover, all of their benefits and everything is paid by us. And it’s a full blown culture. And people who come to us, their contract is actually with our company. And therefore we have strict rules around what time people are working. We know when people are supposed to be showing up. We can do all of that on behalf of the client because the client’s contract, there’s no, your contract is actually with our company. It’s not with any of our people.

Jim Palmer: You know, very similar to hiring an employee. I think another challenge is when to bring on a virtual assistant or two or four or five, and then when to fire them, even if that’s the right terminology. But I’d love to hear your take on when to hire. When do you know it’s the right time to get some help?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, usually people leave it too late. Let’s just, people usually go to hire someone when they are absolutely sinking themselves, right? That’s too late. Like, let’s be clear. If you’re saying I need someone yesterday, it’s too late. You’ve left it too long. So, you know, in theory, it’s easy for me to say that, to plan ahead. But if you, I think what a lot of people are doing in business, and I’m sure you see this, they have a kind of a vision in their head, but they’re not planning for that vision strategically enough. So if you know where you’re planning to take the business now, obviously things like COVID can happen, you know, stuff comes from left field and you’re never guaranteed it’s going to go there. But if you’re making a plan, people forget to plan the resourcing. So you’re like, well, I want to do this many sales and we have all these products. And so many people forget to think about how you are going to service all of that? And what they try to do is hire people when they’re already flooded. And people think that that’s the most cost effective way to do it. Well, it’s not because what’s going to happen is you’re going to have to slow down in order to speed up. So it’s far better to try to plan ahead for the resourcing needs that you think might come and try to hire or like bring someone on before you get to that point where you’re like, just need, I’m desperate, I need somebody yesterday. And we hear this a lot. We actually tend to turn people away who are like that, because we don’t want to, you know, the whole onboarding process and making sure that we get success. We know the types of clients that we like to work with and we want people to come in and know that it’s a partnership thing and that we need them to get them ready. Some people are ready. So I hope that helps. You know, it’s not a direct answer, but it’s definitely people are leaving it way too late. I’ll share a story with you. A few years ago, this is about five years ago, way back in the early days of this business. I can remember a friend of mine who’s also a great business coach and helps me a lot in business. He, I was talking about who I wanted to hire next and I was like, I think I need a salesperson. I think I need, and he said, hold on a sec. Why don’t you do, I think I had 20 VAs at the time. And he said, I want you to do an org structure, an org chart for a hundred VAs and tell me what you need then. And it was the most powerful exercise I think I’ve done because when I drew it out, I was like, if we had a hundred VAs, wow, we would need 16 leaders and we would need a head of HR. And all of a sudden it started to get me very super focused on the next five years or the next three years of resourcing to deliver my vision. And that’s what I don’t think people are doing right enough.

Jim Palmer: One of the reasons, not one of the reasons, when somebody asked me when’s the right time, I said, I think it’s like when you’re out hiking or exercising in some way and your mouth is dry, you feel thirsty, you should have been drinking already. That’s too late. So if the book that you’ve, if the book that you’re going to write and you know is gonna help your business has been on your to-do list for three months or six months or a year, it’s way too late. You’ve got to stop doing the menial task or not even menial, you’ve got to do the big work that’s going to bring in the big money. So I think people do wait way too long.

Barbara Turley: Do you want to know when I hired my first virtual assistant? I hired one just as I was starting to do my own business. I did it straight away and I didn’t mess around with I’d like someone for three hours a week. I was like 40 hours a week, full time with me, let’s do it. Yeah, I went straight. Now, I mean, I went to the Philippines though. I went cost effective. I knew I could do it. And I found that yet people are investing enormous amounts of money in coaching programs in other courses that they never do or whatever. And it is very important to have coaches and all of that stuff. But it’s also very important to have people who can do some of the doing for you so that you can get on with doing the business end of it and not get caught up doing Canva images for social media or answering the phone or whatever else it is that you’re doing that can be done from offshore.

Jim Palmer: Is the Philippines kind of like the new capital hub for VA businesses? I mean I talked to a lot of people, it’s all the, you get great service and work and the rates are great. Is that true for, well I guess it is for your business as well. Is that where most of your VAs?

Barbara Turley: We’re Philippines based. I mean there’s a, you know, it was accidental in the beginning, but I’ve been asked many times over the years why the Philippines and apart from the fact that I accidentally found myself there in the first place and then I started a business there. But these days, you know, I know that the level of English is great. Now, is it great across everyone? No, there’s a hundred million people in the country, you know, 90 million of them might not speak great English, the rest of them, you know, there’s a high percentage of people that speak amazingly good English. So that’s brilliant. They’re very highly educated. There’s a great education system there. And they’re probably, I feel the Philippines is probably the closest to the Western culture that you’re going to get from Asia in general. They’re great fun anyway.

Jim Palmer: Yeah. Are there any apps that you would suggest if somebody is going to be working with a team? And let’s say they’re not working with a company like yours. They just want to kind of do it on their own. What kind of apps should they be looking at?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, the number one is something like Asana or Trello, free project management tool. Don’t try to run teams using email. If people try this and it just doesn’t work, you need to have a project management or a task management system where your team can all collaborate on tasks together. And I mean, pairing that with something like G Suite or whatever Google call it these days, Workspace or whatever they’re calling it. So cloud-based systems and then pair all of that up with something like LastPass for password security. And those are the kind of the key things that you need.

Jim Palmer: It seems like working with virtual assistants, that’s kind of like the new lean mean way to run a business, right?

Barbara Turley: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it’s very cost effective and it’s highly leverageable. It’s just that people think, you know, and we talked about this off air. I think the problem is that people think if I just get myself a VA, my whole business is going to boom. And that’s just completely flawed thinking. I mean, you know, it is part of your strategy, but you’ve got to get delegation right. And you’ve got to get scaling right. And then you’ve got to get systems and processes right. And then you can bring in cost-effective people to run it. And that’s what VA’s are there for. Most see too many people thinking I’ll get a VA and then they’re expecting them to be a strategist or to tell them what they need to do in their business. And I’m like, this is a virtual assistant, this is not a strategist or a project manager or, you know, it’s an assistant coming in to help you to run your systems, run your processes, but not necessarily to develop them. And that’s a mistake people are making every day, constantly.

Jim Palmer: This is not your vice president of human resources.

Barbara Turley: Yes, that’s what people want though. They’re like, you know, so they just, you just got to be, you just got to manage your expectations around what your, people, know, people, need to be, they need leadership. They need somebody to be the conductor of the orchestra, if you know what I mean, to know what they’re doing.

Jim Palmer: Exactly. Well, I got about two minutes left, Barbara, gonna squeeze in another question. What would be one or two reasons why somebody who now is gonna go and embark on this journey of working with a virtual assistant, what are a couple of reasons they’re likely to fail and how would you advise them to not fail or to fix it?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, that’s a great question. And you know, there’s a number of them, but I think the top two, number one is mindset. And we touched on that earlier. You must go in with the mindset that this, I have to master this and that there’s an accountability on your part also to master delegation. Now, obviously you might get a rubbish person, but if you can master the delegation thing and you put your mind into that, that you’re going to master this, that’s step one. And then key is processes. You need to have a machine. At the end of the day, a lot of people want to, they have a vision, they want to create this amazing business, but they forget that a business is a machine at the end of the day. And you need to be committed to building it as a machine that is efficient and effective and therefore can help you to deliver on your vision. And that’s the bit people kind of brush over because it’s kind of boring.

Jim Palmer: Very good. Well, what a fun, I always, when my interviews, I look up and I go, man, I only got two minutes. I know it’s a great interview. So I know my audience is loving this and they’re gonna wanna learn more about The Virtual Hub. So how can they connect with you and learn more about what you do?

Barbara Turley: Sure. So we actually have a special page for you guys. Yep. We’ve got some goodies on there. So if you go to thevirtualhub.com, don’t forget thevirtualhub.com/DBR. Not sure why they picked that.

Jim Palmer: Dream Business Radio.

Barbara Turley: Okay. Yes, of course. DBR for Dream Business Radio. On there, you can download a mini guide. Don’t even need to sign up for it. You can just download five reasons people fail with VAs and how to fix it. There is a scalable business success formula e-course that you can sign up for there. And also you can book a call with us if you want to talk about how we might be able to help you in your business. Wonderful. If you want to follow me personally, you can jump over to LinkedIn. Not on there that much, but I do, I do keep telling myself I’m going to share more over there.

Jim Palmer: I know, I have such a love hate relationship or hate love hate relationship with LinkedIn. I just, well, what a great fun interview, Barbara. Thank you so much for joining us this week.

Barbara Turley: Thanks for having me.

Jim Palmer: Hey folks, that wraps up this very special interview with Barbara Turley from The Virtual Hub. And she has a special link set up for you. Go to the virtual hub, T-H-E virtual hub, h-u-b.com forward slash DBR for Dream Business Radio and you get a nice download. You don’t even have to opt in it sounds like. So that would be awesome. Thank you, Barbara. My name is Captain Jim Palmer. I am the Dream Business Coach. If you’re connected with me here only on the podcast, you can fix that by going to getjimpalmer.com, www.getjimpalmer.com. If you’re interested in my Dream Business Mastermind, that is Dream Biz Coaching, dreambizcoaching.com. But until this time next week, another fantastic interview. You take good care.

VoiceActor: Now it’s time to go implement what you’ve learned. Great ideas are nice, but results only happen through action and implementation. So stay focused, kick all distractions to the curb, sleep a little less if you have to, and create your dream business now so you too can live your dream lifestyle. To learn about building your dream business, join Jim’s free dream business Facebook community at dreambizgroup.com. That’s dreambizgroup.com.
See you next week for more Dream Business Radio!