Barbara Turley: Hey there, my name’s Barbara Turley and when I’m not skiing and having other adventures, I’m listening to John Garrett on the What’s Your And podcast.

John Garrett: Welcome to episode 347 of What’s Your And. This is John Garrett and each Wednesday I interview a professional who, just like me, is known for a hobby or a passion or an interest outside of work. And put it another way, it’s encouraging people to find their and. Those things above and beyond your technical skills, the things that actually differentiate you when you’re at work. If you like the show and what it’s all about, be sure to check out the book on Amazon, Indigo, BarnesAndNoble.com, Bookshop, a few other websites. All the links are on whatsyourand.com. The book goes more in depth with the research behind why these outside of work passions are so crucial to your corporate culture. And I can’t say how much it means that everyone’s reading it, writing such great reviews on Amazon, and more importantly, changing the cultures where they work because of it. And please don’t forget to hit subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of the future episodes. I love sharing such interesting stories each and every week. And this week is no different with my guest, Barbara Turley. She’s the founder and CEO of the Virtual Hub in Chamonix, France. And now she’s with me here today. Barbara, thanks so much for taking time to be with me on What’s Your Anne?

Barbara Turley: Such a pleasure, John. Thanks for having me.

John Garrett: This is going to be a blast. My first guest from France. So this is exciting.

Barbara Turley: And you got the name right. You got Chamonix right. Even with a bit of a French twang.

John Garrett: There we go anything besides Chardonnay, I don’t know. Now I know two French words, so we’re good So yeah, so rapid-fire questions 17 right out of the gate get to know Barbara on a new level here So I’ll start you out with a pretty easy one. I think chocolate or vanilla?

Barbara Turley: Chocolate.

John Garrett: Chocolate. Oh, there you go. Sudoku or crossword?

Barbara Turley: Oh, crosswords.

John Garrett: Or neither, okay. All right, fair enough, fair enough. How about a favorite color?

Barbara Turley: I’d say orange.

John Garrett: Orange, okay, all right. How about a least favorite color?

Barbara Turley: Hmm, blue wouldn’t be least, but you know, blue probably be bottom of the pack for me.

John Garrett: All right, all right. How about you prefer more hot or cold?

Barbara Turley: Oh, tricky. Cold, I’d say. I’d pick, I’d say cold, yeah.

John Garrett: Okay, all right, all right. How about, you have a favorite actor or actress?

Barbara Turley: Oh, I don’t, you know, not big into it. No, I don’t really. I think Kevin Spacey is pretty cool, but I don’t know whether he’s controversial these days. Anyway, as an actor, he’s pretty cool.

John Garrett: You can separate the person from the art. So yeah, absolutely. As an actor. Yeah, great. How about more of an early bird or a night owl?

Barbara Turley: Early bird.

John Garrett: Early bird. Okay. All right. How about more Star Wars or Star Trek?

Barbara Turley: Star Wars.

John Garrett: Star Wars, yeah, me too, absolutely. How about your computer, more of a PC or a Mac?

Barbara Turley: Mac, all the way Mac.

John Garrett: Oh wow, you are way cooler than I am. I am not that cool. Good for you. Good for you. How about a favorite ice cream flavor? I love ice cream. So…

Barbara Turley: Oh, salted caramel, gotta be salted caramel. Here in France, like ice cream is the thing and salted caramel here is just incredible.

John Garrett: That’s awesome. Like, I wonder like, who thought of that? Like, hey, how about we put some salt?

Barbara Turley: I know, but that’s just…

John Garrett: It’s genius. It’s genius. Yeah, it really is. Would you say more heels or flats?

Barbara Turley: I want to say heels, but I’m very tall, so I end up wearing flats a lot. But I think, you know what, I’m more heels though. Like if I was shorter, I’d be heels all the time.

John Garrett: Good for you. Good for you. There you go. How about oceans or mountains?

Barbara Turley: Oh, tricky. I’ve lived in both and I, gosh, we’ll get into this later. I have to say both there.

John Garrett: Fair enough. The mountains that go into the ocean. We’ll count that.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, yeah, I need a bit of both.

John Garrett: There you go. What’s a typical breakfast besides salted caramel ice cream?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, I like the traditional porridge oats with a bit of fruit component on it, really. That’s kind of my do love a bit of toast and raspberry jam. That’s always nice to.

John Garrett: There you go. Okay, very cool. How about a do you have a favorite number?

Barbara Turley: Eight, I think.

John Garrett: Okay, yeah, that’s a good answer.

Barbara Turley: Don’t know why, but I looked at that question earlier and eight popped into my head. So there you go.

John Garrett: There it is that works my books out. I’m excited about it. Kindle or real books.

Barbara Turley: Kindle.

John Garrett: Kindle. Ok.

Barbara Turley: Do you know what? I can carry the whole library in my handbag. I’m a big reader.

John Garrett: There you go, exactly.

Barbara Turley: I love books, but really you can only bring one book or two, whereas you can carry a library with you with a Kindle.

John Garrett: Exactly. And I have an accounting background and you’re a CEO, so you probably care. Balance sheet or income statement.

Barbara Turley: Income statement.

John Garrett: And the last one I have a favorite thing you have or the favorite thing you own.

Barbara Turley: I hate saying this. I hate my answer, but I have to be truthful. My iPhone. I mean, I couldn’t live without it really. It’s like my savior. Two young children, my iPhone is like the escape.

John Garrett: It’s like your slash your third children. You’re like your third child. If you lose it, it’s equally crucial.

Barbara Turley: A night in the dark with the iPhone on. Yeah, that’s right. Listen to your podcast, of course.

John Garrett: Oh, of course. Good answer. Way to suck up. We’re already in there. So let’s jump into skiing and just outdoor adventures in the mountains by the ocean. Did you grow up doing this or was it something that you got into later in life?

Barbara Turley: No, I didn’t. I was brought up in Ireland and I didn’t have any skiing in my life until I was in my 20s. I wasn’t brought up near the ocean at all, but I was. I did a lot of horse riding when I was a kid.

John Garrett: OK.

Barbara Turley: And I still do a bit of that. It is one of my other passions. I have many different passions. You know, in the last 15 years, I haven’t been doing much of it. But it’s I was brought up doing a lot of horse riding, actually. So but neither mountain nor ocean. But I always had a fascination with those two.

John Garrett: Right, right. So then how did you get into the skiing side?

Barbara Turley: Look, after years of trying to convince my parents that we should go on a skiing holiday, I mean, you know, in Ireland, like when I was that age, many years ago, you had to fly to central Europe and like only extremely wealthy people went skiing. It was kind of this sort of thing, right? So we never went. And, you know, nobody in Ireland really went at the time. So eventually I convinced a boyfriend of mine when I was in my early 20s that we should go skiing for a week. And we had a ball. So we went skiing and it was like one of the best couples holidays I think I’d ever been on. We had a great time and I was hooked. I was completely hooked after that.

Barbara Turley: Yes, I spent, as I was saying to you before we recorded, I spent the last sort of 17, 18 years living in Australia, actually, in Sydney, beautiful Sydney, Australia, by the ocean, right by the ocean. So I woke up every day to the ocean. My husband is Hungarian and he’s from Budapest. And every year or every second year, we would travel back to Europe. And every time we came home to see family, we would always come to Chamonix, where my best friend happens to live, and we would always go skiing. So it’s been quite a big part of my life for many, many years. I did a ski season in New Zealand about 15 years ago as well for a few months. So it’s always been in there and I’ve been skiing in Australia many times as well and in New Zealand. So yeah, it’s been a pretty active part of my life for many years. More so now because I live in the mountains now. I live right on the slopes.

John Garrett: Yes, down the street or not even it’s in the backyard. I mean, it’s just Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s really cool that you’re able to yeah, just move closer to it and make it well a bigger part for a longer time You know as opposed to just a vacation week or a month or something like that.

Barbara Turley: Well, look, you know, coming back to Europe, I mean, both my husband and I are both European. And we always said that if we came back to Europe to live, that we’d like to be closer to family, but that we would like to also move to the mountains because we’re both skiers. Right. So we were like, that’d be pretty awesome. Now, we planned this for about 10 years, to be honest. And, you know, so we’ve now pulled it off, which has been great. But we did have this dream. I mean, and many people who are skiers out there and snowboarders will be listening to this going, yeah, my dream would be to work and live in the mountains. And you can make it happen, but it took us a long time to figure out how to make this happen. So yeah, the dream is alive right now and we’re heading into the ski season. We’re right in that. So it’s great.

John Garrett: That’s so cool to hear. So cool to hear. And I guess, I mean, yeah, you can’t just drop, I’ve skied in Australia. I don’t imagine Australia. Like where does skiing happen in Australia?

Barbara Turley: I was shocked when I got to Australia and people were like, yeah, we ski here. There are actually mountains in Australia and actually parts of Australia are quite cold and it does snow. And sometimes you can get huge snow. Now it’s not big mountain skiing like what you get in Colorado and places like Europe, but it’s pretty fun. It’s great for a weekend or if you’ve got kids for a week, it’s amazing. And yeah, we went many times to Thredbo. Down near Melbourne, there’s quite a lot of great ski fields there. So you can ski in Australia.

John Garrett: That’s awesome. That’s very cool. Who knew kangaroos running across the—no, I’m just joking.

Barbara Turley: It’s been like that actually. It is like that.

John Garrett: That’s it. Australia, you’re so crazy. That’s hilarious. That’s super cool. So do you feel like these individual sports and adventures and things like that have given you a skill that you bring to work at all through your career?

Barbara Turley: You know what, actually, when I was preparing for this podcast, because I did, and I saw your questions around that, and actually it was great because it got me thinking about whether it has impacted my work. And it was something I hadn’t thought very deeply about before, because now I’m leading. I mean, The Virtual Hub, we’ve got 150 staff and I have found myself leading large teams and mentoring our leadership team and doing all these kind of team based things. And I had to think about this and go, gosh, I’ve spent my whole life. I mean, I play tennis, I ski, I love horse riding. I like swimming, reading. They’re all very individualistic things. They’re not team sports. So I was thinking about this, like, how has this helped me to lead this company or to build this? And I actually think about if you’re on a team, great teams are made up of high performers. And to be a high performer, in some respects, you actually have to be able to achieve individualistically as well as be part of a team. But those who are able to kind of learn how to master something silently on their own by repetition and getting something right. And then you bring those people together on a team. You actually can teach others how to be masters of their own skill set and to develop their own skill sets and to, yeah, just mastery. And I think that’s something. You know, I haven’t just done these sports. I have set out to kind of master them. You know, taking up skiing in my 20s and these days, you know, I can, you know, I mean, compared to some skiers, I wouldn’t be that great, but I can get to the top of any mountain. I’m a pretty good skier. You know, so same with tennis. I remember learning footwork and getting coaching and really wanting to master the steps of it. And I think that’s been pivotal, actually, when I think about, you know, having to learn so many new things in business. I mean, The Virtual Hub is a company in the Philippines, really. When I launched it, and this is a whole other story, but I’d never been to the Philippines. I had no background in recruiting or HR or outsourcing for that matter. I came from the investment banking world. So I had to learn a lot of stuff and a lot of stuff I learned by accident and mastering it quickly was very important. So I do have a kind of a sense of going at something until I get it, you know, and I think that those sports definitely help because skiing can be quite frustrating. So is tennis, so is horse riding. They’re not things that you’re going to step into and within a week be amazing at. You know, they take time. They take 20 years actually of like surfing is the same. It’s like impossible.

John Garrett: Yeah, exactly. In golf and a lot of those individual sports. And there’s so much great nuggets that you just dropped in such a short amount of time. And one is, especially compared to other skiers, but who cares? You’re in your own lane. And I think that that’s something that gets in our way if you enjoy skiing. That’s it. Are you good at it? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? I mean, I’m sure in your case, very good.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think as well on that point actually that you just made, which is worth highlighting. When you’re in an individualistic sport, yes, there are competitors, but you’re sort of focused on your own game. You’re competing with yourself. So it sort of teaches you in business. Yes, you need to watch the competitors in business, but I’ve always been of the view that if you spend all your time looking at how good everyone else is, well, your business will be rubbish, right? So I don’t really look at others. I go, you know what, I just watch for the nuances and watch for the mistakes and try to tweak and evolve and practice and all that sort of thing. And I honestly think, yeah, those sports have helped me to hone that skill. And that’s been very pivotal in my journey.

John Garrett: That’s such a great example of that. And at the very least, it humanizes you. I mean, coworkers have something to talk to you about besides just the work. Hey, how was the last ski trip? Hey, I saw the pictures on social media about you, whatever. Those sort of things make you, especially as a CEO, like.

Barbara Turley: I think you need it too, like you were talking about, you know, like to lead large teams and especially in the environment of this pandemic we’ve all come through and everything. It’s really important to be able to get away and reach back to source of your own inner thing that you get, you know, when you go skiing and stuff like that, to be able to get away. Because, you know, just going down to the kitchen and having a coffee is not stepping away. You need to actually get out and get out of your head and into your body kind of thing. I mean, I do a lot of yoga as well. That’s also been again, a singular type of mastery sport, if you want to put it that way.

John Garrett: Totally. Yeah, no, I love all of that. Yeah, no, it is hard. That’s for sure. Yeah. And I love how it’s something you never really thought about until preparing to come on here. And it’s one of those things that that’s what’s so cool about the What’s Your And messages is that we’re doing it subconsciously. And then once you point it out, it’s like, wow, it makes such an impact on so many different areas of my life that I didn’t even realize.

Barbara Turley: Like even talking about this now, I’m like, there’s days where I think, my God, I have so much work to do. I really, I just need to focus on work. I’ve got a great private yoga teacher and the reason I get her to come to my house is because I can’t cancel on her. So I’m like, damn it, I’ve got this yoga thing, right? And the same with skiing. Like I’ll go up the mountain and be like, I shouldn’t be going today, too much work. And then I’ll get up the mountain and I’ll ski for two hours and I’ll come down and I’m on fire. Like my ideas, my…The vision, my whole energy system has changed. And it’s just vitally important that we give into it actually, give into it and do it.

John Garrett: I love that, give into it. because it’s work is always going to be there. And those passions are easy to put on the back burner, but they’re always going to be knocking. You know, they’re always in your head. And so give in and let it rip. You know, I love that.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, give in and let it rip. That’s going to be my new mantra for this year. Just give in and let it rip.

John Garrett: Exactly. 2021, give it and let it rip. I mean, what else could happen? That’s super cool. And so is it something that you do talk about at work or let’s even back in your investment banking days or things like that was talking about outside of work interests something you did?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I mean, you always do. I mean, it depends. These days, I probably don’t talk about it. I talk about yoga a bit, but I’m in an interesting environment right now because the companies in the Philippines, I’m the only one actually who’s remote, which is really interesting. It’s like they’ve all got the party going on in the Philippines and I’m on my own. So I live in a totally different country. I mean, you know, if I do scuba diving, which I used to do when I was in my 20s, I don’t anymore. But that’s probably a topic I could talk to a lot of our team about. Big into diving over there because the dive sites are amazing. Lots of yoga, but yeah, lots of guys doing sports and stuff. But in my old corporate career, yeah, we would have talked about it a lot. Lots of people were skiing and doing lots of cool stuff. Yeah.

John Garrett: I know that’s awesome. And that is, I mean, a good point that you brought up about, you know, that’s what they’re doing, but you can relate, you know, I mean, it’s asking them about those dives and things like that. And that’s kind of just light them up. Like, wow, the CEO is asking about something that I truly love, you know, above and beyond the work.

Barbara Turley: You just hit on something that I wanted to do for so long and to get to know each and every single person in the company, what is their AND actually what’s their and and then COVID sort of hit and we just kind of like all that sort of stuff’s gone out the window. But I need to come back to that.

John Garrett: Yeah, really, you know, especially now. And like you said, to make sure that they’re doing it, you know, because, like you said, going downstairs to get, you know, coffee or tea is not getting away from the work. And you know, what lights them up? What’s going to make them come back on fire?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, because there’s nothing worse than riding up on a chairlift and then riding back down on the chairlift. Like, you have to ski it like you can’t ride back down.

John Garrett: Yeah, it’s like the guy that the person that fell and one ski fell off and now they have to walk.

Barbara Turley: Yeah.

John Garrett: It’s like the guy that the person that fell that and one ski fell off and now they have to walk while holding their other ski because the other one just zoomed down the mountain.

Barbara Turley: Just sit down, slide, that’s it.

John Garrett: Right, there you go. There you go. That’s all. Yeah, because that’s why I snowboard because then they’re stuck. They’re not coming off. Yeah.

Barbara Turley: Oh, do you know what? I actually was planning to learn snowboarding this year, right? So you’re a snowboarder, I’m a skier. I was like, I’m going to learn snowboarding. And then I had one season here because I arrived a year ago and I was like, I’m not learning snowboarding because I just don’t have the patience now. I just want to enjoy myself because the minute I take up a new thing, I’m going to try and master that. And I’m going to spend like a week on my ass, basically, and probably broken wrists or something.

John Garrett: For sure. I luckily skied as a kid, but it was in the Midwest of the U.S., which is probably similar to Australia, where it’s more hills than mountains. And then I had a long period in between where I didn’t at all. I skateboarded some and, you know, like on junior high and stuff. But so that’s where the snowboarding was more natural. So I was starting from scratch a couple of years ago when I moved to Colorado. So that made it easier where I could see if you’re a skier to go to snowboard. That’s weird.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I’d like to. My friends are snowboarders, but doesn’t matter. Just going to do like powder skiing instead.

John Garrett: There you go. There you go. No, that’s that’s fantastic. And so I guess how much do you feel like it’s on the organization? A little bit going back to you finding out people’s ANDs. How much do you think it’s on the organization to create that as the norm versus how much is it on the individual to maybe just start with a small circle of who they work with?

Barbara Turley: You know what, I’ve always had this philosophy kind of buried that I knew, right, about culture and about building cultures in companies that it’s got to be kind of like a family and you have to care about the people, not just, you know, there’s profit and all that, but you have to deeply care about your people. When COVID and this pandemic and everything that we’ve come through in the last year came along, I sort of realized how much deeper that thought needs to go in that. I think as companies, we almost have a responsibility to help the whole person develop and not just the career. So we’re big into training, learning and development at The Virtual Hub. So we’ve got our own training department and we kind of accidentally got known. We started doing really well with training. So we were training VAs in digital marketing. That’s what we were doing in the early days. And now we’ve sort of developed this out into a learning and development platform where my vision is to say, well, what about teaching people about managing their own finances or dealing with their own subconscious beliefs or whatever else they may want to discover about themselves. So as a company, I just feel these days it’s important for people to be able to work in a place that honors their wellness, their dreams. What are their dreams? Their personal development that has nothing to do with what it is that you do as a company, but actually it leads to happier people. It leads to a culture that people are aligned with and they don’t want to leave them. So you get longevity of people as well. So I’m really playing with this idea now and it’s just come to fruition even more through COVID. And COVID has been a good thing in that way in that I’ve gone, hmm, that’s interesting. We need to help people. We’re in a people business actually. So, yeah, I’m going further into that philosophy now.

John Garrett: I love that so much. I mean, that’s so great. I mean, really, every business is a people business. I mean, yours is exponentially so, but every company, I mean, it’s still human to human interaction, whether it’s colleagues or to clients or to customers. Those are humans on the other side. And the more that I’ve interviewed and researched and even my own experience, if people have an outside of work life that’s chaos, their inside of work is never going to be good.

Barbara Turley: No, it’s chaos. Yeah, total chaos. I mean, you can’t help everyone.

The other problem is you can’t save everyone. Actually, I heard, if you know, Russell Brunson from ClickFunnels. I saw him speak at one of those. I’ve never been to one of the conferences, but I saw this video where he was asked, you know, what about all the people who buy your software and they never make it kind of thing? And he was talking about this speech he had heard. I’m probably totally misrepresenting this, but the concept was I think it was about rescue helicopters when they’re going into big seas where this, you know, a boat has gone over and these people have gone over and only a certain amount of people are going to fit in the helicopter. How do you choose who you’re going to save? Right. And the answer was we can only save those that swim towards us. And I thought to myself, bingo, you know, and we’ve actually changed our entire recruitment process to sort of say, right. When we’re recruiting people, if they have the skills, that’s great. But we need to figure out like, are they aligned with our core values? And our company purpose is to unlock dreams for both our employees and our clients. Or that’s the purpose that we’ve sort of set out for. We’re like, first of all, do our core values resonate with them? And second of all, do they have a dream that we have the ability to unlock for them? Or are we just on different pages? And therefore, are they going to unlock our company dream of growing and all that sort of thing and our clients, etc. So it’s this whole thing of if we can recruit people in the first place that, you know, we are going to swim towards us in that way, then we can do loads with that person, you know, so we’re not actually hiring broken people, we’re trying to hire people that genuinely are swimming towards us and have that sense of personal mastery that we can refine. Hope that makes sense. I’m sort of formulating that thought as I’m talking.

John Garrett: It makes total sense. It’s also, you know, the technical skills are important, but they’re not the end all be all because everyone applying for that job has those technical skills.

Barbara Turley: Or they can be coached. A lot of technical skills. Like you can’t teach enthusiasm. You can’t teach certain things. You have to hire for them. So my philosophy has always been you give me a great person that’s a glass half full person who’s smart enough and loves what it is that we do and is enthusiastic about life in general. I can teach them anything. It’s just you need that fundamental base.

John Garrett: I love that. That’s awesome. And then I love how you’re nurturing the whole person. How can we better serve them? Training for life beyond just the technical skills of the work that happens here. That’s so fantastic. That’s awesome. Just imagine if investment banking companies did—

Barbara Turley: If every company did that.

John Garrett: Yeah, if every company. Yeah, I mean, you know, then it would be just a great place to be everywhere. That would be super awesome. So I guess, do you have any words of encouragement to anyone listening that has a hobby that they’re like, it has nothing to do with my job and no one’s going to care.

Barbara Turley: Look, I’ve fallen into so many times where I haven’t pursued hobbies and I’ve worked, worked, worked. We’ve all done it. And you think I’m too busy. I can’t, you know, I can’t, I can’t. And I spent years doing that. Right. Don’t do that. Go and what was you said? Get out there and let it or whatever it is. You know, and obviously you can’t. I mean, some people can get addicted and not do any work, but use it to fuel better work. Your energy fields will open up. All your chakras will open up. Everything will be lighter and you’ll come back. You’ll solve problems while you’re on the mountain or while you’re out gardening or whatever it is that is your thing. You have to pursue it. It’s so important for your own success in every part of your life, not just personal life, but business as well.

John Garrett: That’s so perfect. I love that. That’s awesome. Well, it’s only fair before I wrap this up that I turn the tables because I so rudely peppered you with questions in the beginning. So this is the first episode of the Barbara Turley podcast. Welcome everyone. Thanks for having me on as your first guest. I appreciate it Barbara. I guess I didn’t really have a choice. I just made it my own. But yeah, so do you have any questions for me?

Barbara Turley: I do.

John Garrett: Okay.

Barbara Turley: Groomed or powder.

John Garrett: Oh wow, okay!

Barbara Turley: I’m gonna say on peace or off peace, but I reckon you’re off peace. I think I know the answer, but…

John Garrett: I don’t know. I mean, powder is always fun. You just get to carve your own way. Yeah, that’s always fun. Yeah. Yeah. Make your own path, which I guess I’ve done accidentally in life. So there you go.

Barbara Turley: Yep. Books or podcasts.

John Garrett: Oh, books or podcasts. You know, I’m a books guy. Yeah. I really don’t listen to too many podcasts. So, yeah, books in like the paperback or hardcover, like in my handbook. I do agree with your Kindle. You can carry the whole library with you wherever you are, which is always handy. But I guess if I had my druthers, I guess I would pick. Yeah.

Barbara Turley: Do you know what? I have two very young children. I have a four year old and one year old. If I didn’t have those, I’d probably be with you on that. But since I have those, podcast, I can only get a half an hour podcast on double time.

John Garrett: Exactly, squeeze it all in. Well, this has been so much fun. Barbara, happy to be a part of What’s Your And. Thanks so much.

Barbara Turley: Thanks for having me.

John Garrett: Yeah, and everybody listening, if you want to see some pictures of Barbara in action or connect with her on social media, be sure to go to whatsyourand.com. Everything’s there and also buy the book. And while you’re on the page, please click that big button to the anonymous research survey about corporate culture. So thanks again for subscribing on iTunes or whatever app you use and for sharing this with your friends so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread that who you are is so much more than what you do.