Don Hutcherson: Hello world, welcome to Discover Your Talent, Do What You Love. I’m your host, Don Hutchison. Every Monday and Wednesday, I interview someone from around the world who’s discovered their talents to do work they love to create a life of success, satisfaction, and freedom. On Fridays, I interview a well-known expert from the fields of personal or business development who share experiences, tools, and insights to help our listeners along their journeys.

Barbara Turley: Not making a decision is the worst thing you can do. You never know whether you’re going to make a right or wrong decision, but making no decision is worse.

Barbara Turley: You make a decision and then it triggers the next decision. As long as you keep moving forward and you keep deciding and making decisions, then you’re in flow, you’re moving. And eventually you get a feel for kind of where you’re going and whether you need to change tack or whether you’ve gone the wrong path. But staying in indecision and doing nothing is terrible. You’re sitting on the fence of life and you’re not playing the game.

Don Hutcherson: I’m delighted to bring you our featured guest, Barbara Turley. Welcome, Barbara.

Barbara Turley: Hi, Don, thank you for having me on the show.

Don Hutcherson: It is our pleasure. Barbara, are you using your talents doing work that you love?

Barbara Turley: I am, yes, I am very much so now, and I have at various points in my career as well. Also, various points I haven’t, but that’s something we can explore, talk more about.

Don Hutcherson: Exactly, exactly. Barbara is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of the Virtual Hub, a business she started by accident that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains, and manages virtual assistants in the digital marketing and social media space for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level. She’s also mom to her gorgeous daughter, Ruby, wife to her best friend, Etty, and an adventure lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and time outs in nature. Well, that’s a summary of your remarkable life, Barbara. Tell our listeners around the world what you’re engaged in right now that has you motivated and excited, if you would please.

Barbara Turley: Sure, look, you know, I think like many of us, we always want to have some sort of impact in life. And I think when you make career choices early on in life, you don’t think so much about that. But when you get into your 30s and early 40s, you want to do something that impacts and influences, in a positive way, the world. And I think a lot of us spend a long time searching for that. And I’ve been very lucky to accidentally find a path to that in a way that I didn’t think that I would.

Barbara Turley: You know, for anyone listening, I always say, you know, when I say I ended up in an accidental business, it is very much that. But I ended up fulfilling the same sort of life vision, but through a different pathway than I originally thought. So today, I have The Virtual Hub, which has a hundred employees now in the Philippines. We are Philippines-based.

Barbara Turley: And what lights me up the most about this is I’ve realized the mission. Originally, my mission was to sort of help small business owners to eradicate this terrible overwhelm and the terrible to-do list that go along with running a small business. You know, it’s very overwhelming. There’s an awful lot to do. It’s very hard to hire people, you know, because you can’t afford to hire someone, but yet you need to hire someone to make more money, all that sort of thing, and to have more impact.

Barbara Turley: But then by doing this Philippine business, I actually realized the amount of families that I was impacting in the Philippines. And it was the staff that started to tell me, you know, I just love, know, they have private health cover. We provide some of their children on our private health cover in the Philippines. And that’s very, very important in a country like the Philippines. And I didn’t realize that until I started doing it. And I didn’t realize how families are actually decimated in those countries if someone in the family gets sick and there’s no insurance or there’s no stable job or there’s no stable security of income and things like that. I ended up helping a lot of business owners all around the world while simultaneously helping people in the Philippines get really dynamic next-level careers, security of income, private health cover, and all the really cool stuff that we enjoy in the Western world that they don’t necessarily have.

Barbara Turley: So that really lights me up at the moment, I have to say, when I hear the gratitude coming from some of the employees about how much they love the job, it really lights me up, helps me to keep doing it.

Don Hutcherson: Yes, yes, it’s wonderful work. Well, as you know, as we’ve discussed, everyone’s life is about turning points or passages from the day we were born till we leave this plane of existence. So if you would take us into the backstory of Barbara Turley, where it all began, family of origin, and tell us about the people and choices and decisions that have gotten you where you are today.

Barbara Turley: Sure, yes. So as we’ve discussed off air, I live in Sydney, Australia now, but I’m originally from Ireland. So I’m originally from a small town in Ireland. Well, it’s not that small anymore, a small town called PortArlington, which is about an hour from Dublin. So on the way south in Ireland, it’s a small country. So an hour is, you know, almost nearly halfway over the other side of the country. And I have three brothers. I was born in a family of three brothers, no sisters, which I thoroughly enjoyed, actually. I never felt like I lost out because I didn’t actually have a sister, actually. I have three amazing brothers. I have one older and two younger. So I’m in the middle. I’m the classic second child. Yeah, so look, I started out, lived in a small town, went to the local school, was very lucky in the type of family I think that I had. I think this is an important point for listeners to understand that, you know, I’m very grateful that I had a very solid family, very loving family, was brought up with lots of positive vibes about everything I could do and all that I could achieve with my life, right? So I,

Don Hutcherson: What did your parents do? What were their occupations or how did they spend their time?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, my dad ran his own business, actually. Interestingly, he still does to this day. He is a quantity surveyor. So that’s in the building industry, okay. And he runs a quantity surveying practice in our local town that has been very successful. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, very successful at that job. And I call it a job because it is a very important job that women have done for many years. Yeah. And I just had this idyllic childhood, honestly, of being—

Barbara Turley: Like my dad used to collect us from school at lunchtime and we’d all go home and have lunch at home with mom, and then he’d drop us back to school and he’d go back to work, and then Mom would pick us all up after school. So we had that kind of existence that today is actually almost unheard of with parents working and—

Don Hutcherson: Actually, I think it is unheard of. I’ve never even heard of anyone. That’s beautiful. I’ve never heard of any family doing that. That’s a wonderful story.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and you know, actually, just if we’re talking about impact on life, that is something that I didn’t know, obviously, when I was a child. I mean, in Ireland in those days, though, that kind of was the way it was, you know, when my aunties were all the same, my cousins, we all had that kind of existence. But when I came to later in life, and I can touch back on this later, in my later life, I ended up in investment banking in a big corporate career. But looking at the future, I was thinking, you know, if I was to have children myself, which I have now, I realized that I wanted that existence. I really started to crave getting out of the city, getting a less, a more simplistic life, etc. So having that upbringing has definitely had an impact on my decisions later and realizing how beautiful that actually was in my life.

Don Hutcherson: Yes, beautiful. What were you like as a young woman as far as your own interest and use of talents and passions, and how did you spend your time? Are you outdoors? Are you a good student? Were you an athlete? What was it like?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I was a bit of an all-rounder. I wouldn’t say, I would say I would lean more towards and was more of an academic. So very studious. You know, I was always, I mean, I was the classic, was always top of my class, my teachers all loved me. I loved school. I was, you know, I’d say I will use the word academic as opposed to intelligent because I think just being good at school doesn’t, you know, people who are not good at school, doesn’t mean that they’re not intelligent. So it’s like one thing. So I, but I was very studious, and I still love learning to this day, and I loved learning at school. Again, you know, that gives you a great start in life with the school system that we have because I slotted in there beautifully. I,

Don Hutcherson: What did you love? Math, English, history, science? What were your interests?

Barbara Turley: I was going to say pretty much all of it, but no, all of it except I wasn’t into history, funnily enough. And I still wasn’t even right up until this day. I’m now really interested in history when I’m older. But in school, I hated it. I just found all those memories of dates, and I didn’t see the significance of learning history at the time. I do think it is something that maybe as you’re older, you understand it more. I loved science because, as a person, I just love finding out how things work. I was very keen on chemistry, physics, and biology. I really wanted to be a doctor, for example. I always thought, you know, I always wanted to be a doctor. And the only reason I didn’t become a doctor was because I was in Ireland at the time. You had to achieve very high results in your final exams to get into medicine. And I worked very hard in my final year, extraordinarily hard.

Barbara Turley: I just didn’t get enough points. I just missed it. I got very high points, but I didn’t quite get enough. And I made a decision, which was quite an adult decision at that point. I made a decision that I felt I had given it my all and that I didn’t feel I could go back and repeat. I didn’t feel that I was going to get in a second time round. So I made a decision to go to university and study something completely different for a year. And I thought I’ll go for a year, and I’ll see how this goes, see where it takes me.

Barbara Turley: And I ended up studying economics, which I had never studied before, even at school.

Don Hutcherson: What was the university?

Barbara Turley: I went to University College Dublin, and I studied economics and English. I decided to give myself two different ends of the spectrum and ended up absolutely loving economics to the point where I built an entire career off that decision that I didn’t think I would ever build. I never saw myself in banking or finance or anything, but I just was amazed by economics.

Don Hutcherson: Did it fit your talents and your skills and abilities? What about it engaged you so much?

Barbara Turley: Well, when I was there, I loved science and how things work. I think when I started to study macroeconomics in particular, it was like the world of politics and the financial system and all these are quite scientific areas, if you really think about it, how they actually work and how the world moves. I was just fascinated that something so confusing to me prior to that was opened up.

Barbara Turley: And I was hooked, I think, on the financial markets, how money works. I remember actually when I was in school at one point being very confused. Ireland went through a currency devaluation when I was in my teens. I was probably 15 or 16. And I remember thinking at the time, I was so confused because I didn’t understand what that was. And nobody seemed to be able to fully explain to me what it truly meant.

Barbara Turley: And then I went and studied macroeconomics and was like, now I get what happens in economies and how that can impact the social order, the employment rates, people’s lives right down to your own house. And I just was fascinated by that. So yeah.

Don Hutcherson: Well, so there you are. You loved economics. You were good at it. You thrived. Did you just go through in four years? Did you go straight through or what did you do?

Barbara Turley: Oh, interesting that you asked that question because it just triggered a memory for me. I didn’t. I got to my third year, which was my final year, and I had ended up in university quite young. I went when I was 17, which is very young, really. Usually you’re sort of 18 by the time you go there. So by the time I came to my final year, it was a couple of months before my final exams. I remember going into a complete meltdown. It was probably the biggest meltdown I’ve had at that point in my life.

Barbara Turley: And I remember calling my mom and saying, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t go and do these exams.” I just didn’t feel ready at all. And I told her, I said, “I’m going to repeat. I’m just not going to do it. I need another year.” And my mom was amazing because she told me that it was, she said, she knew I wasn’t ready. I was too young to leave university. So I didn’t sit the exams. I pulled out and I went off to Greece for the summer and I got a job in a bar over there with a couple of friends, and we had a ball for the summer. And I just kind of let loose a bit. I think I just needed to cut loose for a bit and just enjoy myself. And then I came back the following year.

Don Hutcherson: Wait, wait, wait, wait, I’ve traveled in Greece just on one vacation once. What part of Greece were you in?

Barbara Turley: I was in Crete. Crete is just a beautiful spot, and we had a whole summer there. I came back the following year and I blitzed my exams. I loved it. I did fine. I was mature. I was more mature.

Don Hutcherson: Since you’re taking the courses, did you open up to new other courses? Did you take more economics courses, different ones? How did you finish the final year? What was the curriculum like?

Barbara Turley: No, I had to do the same year again. But again, I just got deeper into it, and I ended up not first in my class in macroeconomics, but almost at the top. I just got a first-class honours degree in the macroeconomics subject, not in the whole thing. But yeah, and I just think I was more mature. I needed another year. I was too young.

Don Hutcherson: Yeah, yeah, of course, that makes complete sense. So what was your first step? Did you go to further academics or did you go into the world of work?

Barbara Turley: No, I was offered actually, because I did well in macroeconomics, I was actually offered to do a master’s in that at the university, and I declined that because again, as you’re probably picking up, very self-directed. I always know exactly what I need and want. I wouldn’t say straight away, I don’t know if it’s a natural skill or whether my parents fostered it or I was just born with it, but I have—

Barbara Turley: I always know exactly where I want to go at any point in time. And I sort of know right into the future what I can see that I would like to happen as well. So I’m very self-directed in that way. I didn’t feel like it, I just didn’t want to do a master’s. So I said no. And I just felt ready to go into the world of work. And again, I think at that point, I can’t remember if it was in my final year afterwards.

I met somebody. I was working in a restaurant in Dublin, and there was a group of guys that used to come in every Thursday or every few Thursday evenings, and they’d have dinner there, and they were all currency traders. And I can remember being, it was like another moment where I was like, wow, this is like deeper into this whole currency thing. And I was fascinated by the work that they were doing.

And one of them one day said to me, “Why don’t you come and maybe we can get you an internship and you can come and sit on the currency desk and watch how it all happens?” I mean, I was just like that. That was the most amazing opportunity ever.

You’re not kidding. That opened a lot of doors for me.

Yeah. That was kind of the moment when I sat on that currency trading desk for, I think, for a week and was mesmerized by what was going on. And at that point, I decided I wanted to be a trader. That was it.

Don Hutcherson: Wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful? Wow. Wonderful, wonderful. So did you move into a position in that same firm or did you interview for other firms? What did you do?

Barbara Turley: No, it took a while, like any career, like, you know, and anyone listening who’s younger, it’s never linear. So I did that for a week or two, and then I had to go get a job. So I got a job. I think I got a job like that, someone got me a job in the back office of some funds manager and business. And I thought, well, that’s fine. I’ll do that. And I absolutely hated it because it was just pushing paper around. But at the end of the day, you know, looking back, I was too immature at the time to realize that you have to do those things. You’ve got to start at the bottom, right? You’ve got to start in the back offices and try to, nothing’s ever going to be handed to you on a plate. Like no one’s just going to say, “Hey, do you want this big currency trading job or do you want one?” So I did a couple of jobs like that and kind of bounced around for a little while trying to find my way.

And then there was a guy, there was an American guy that was running one of those firms. And I remember he said, I had a meeting with him and he said, “You don’t seem to like this job, do you?” And I said, “No, I don’t like it at all.” And he said, “What is it that you really want to do?” And I said, “I want to be a trader.” And he goes, “Honestly, girls never become traders.” And that was like a red rag to a bull to me. I was just like, I’m going to prove that I’m going to get this job.

So it took another couple of years. I ended up in a local stockbroker firm in Dublin. I did some work in their private client area. And then just look, a series of events occurred. I got an opportunity to go to one of the social events, like it was a client event of the firm. And I got introduced to the head of trading, and they were looking for a junior on the desk. And I just got on well with the clients, and everything kind of, and I was interviewed, and a few months later, I found myself as a junior trader sitting on the trading desk of Ireland’s biggest stockbroking firm.

Don Hutcherson: My goodness. How many years has this been since you graduated university?

Barbara Turley: That all took about three to four years.

Don Hutcherson: That was pretty darn fast, though, especially since we know women don’t make good traders, is the guy saying?

Barbara Turley: Yes, yes.

I know. I mean, this is 20 years ago, right? I know, and I think today they’re still going on with this stuff. But yeah, it was a tough game, you know, I did.

Don Hutcherson: What is the game like? What did you find? It looks to me, it’s interesting, I don’t know anybody who’s been a trader, but I know all kinds of other professions, but what is it like being on that trading floor and dealing with billions of dollars and split decisions and having to analyze what’s going on and make decisions and connect with clients? It just looks like just managed chaos.

Barbara Turley: Yes, and it kind of is. And when you first go in there, I mean, I remember being terrified. I was like, I even know what’s going on. How the hell do they make decisions? How do they know what to do?

And I can remember one day in the chaos of it, I remember the head of trading at the time saying to me, he looked at me and he said, “All you’ve got to do is just make a decision. Not making a decision is the worst thing you can do. You never know whether you’re going to make a right or wrong decision, but making no decision is worse. You make a decision, and then it triggers the next decision. As long as you keep moving forward and you keep deciding and making decisions, then you’re in flow, you’re moving. And eventually you get a feel for kind of where you’re going and whether you need to change tack or whether you’ve gone the wrong path. But staying in indecision and doing nothing is terrible. You’re sitting on the fence of life and you’re not playing the game.”

Don Hutcherson: Yes, yes, yes. Couldn’t agree more. Did you find a niche? Was there a particular, I don’t even know how the whole system works about trading, but was there a particular area that you liked trading in or with a particular client you liked representing, or what was your path in terms of your interest and passions as you got into that field?

Barbara Turley: Look, you know, that’s an interesting question because I think had I stayed in Ireland, because obviously I moved to Australia pretty quickly after that. It was about two years I spent in that job. And to be honest, I’ve never actually openly spoken about this, but I was quite heavily bullied in that job. I didn’t know it at the time. My mother knew it. I became extremely depressed. I went through a terrible bout of depression and self-doubt and all these things. And looking back now, I can understand what was going on there was a particular individual there that had come up the ranks through, you know, grit, basically, had left school at 14, ended up in a mailing room, and ended up, you know, like a lot of those traders at the time, they had come up from the mail rooms. And I think his attitude to me was, “If you think you’re going to come in here with your university degree and take my job, you’ve got another thing coming.”

And I didn’t see that really at the time. It was, you know, and yet it wasn’t his intention to be secluding me or leaving me out of things or making me feel whatever. It was just how it was. So it was probably a great life lesson for me. Yeah. And I didn’t mean to, but just—

Don Hutcherson: Probably intimidated by it.

I understand, but you were so intelligent and motivated and etc., etc. Plus being a woman. Ambitious as well. Of course. I’ve gone places, you know.

Don Hutcherson: Yeah, exactly. Wow. Okay, so that was at the same time that you were deciding to move to Australia?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, I had been looking for four years prior to that. Look, with all that toing and froing and jobs, I actually had taken time out and gone to Australia with my girlfriends. We went backpacking for eight months away. So I went to Asia, and I did take some time out before I got that big job. And I explored Australia, and I fell in love with this place.

Just always, you know what, when I came to Australia first, I remember arriving in Sydney, and the taxi was taking us in from the airport, and I saw, I didn’t even see Sydney Harbour. I saw another harbour, which is near Cockle Bay Wharf. It’s just a beautiful kind of harbour with skyscrapers everywhere. And when I saw it, I immediately knew that that was the image I had in my head years ago of where I wanted to work. And I had never been there before. Yeah, it was a moment of, “Oh my God, that was what I saw.” I saw blue skies and skyscrapers and water. And I knew that Sydney was where I was going to be.

So I went back home for two years, and I did that job, got all that bullying. Again, maybe that was the reason all that happened, was to push me to make a decision. And I decided, you know what, I’m going to jack this job. I’m going to give it up. I’m going to resign, and I’m going to go to Australia with no job, no contacts, nothing, no visa. And I’m just going to wing it when I get there.

Don Hutcherson: Guts, guts.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, the head of trading said to me at the time, he pulled me aside and went, “You do realize you’re making the biggest mistake of your entire career here because you’re throwing away your entire career.” And I just said, “I don’t believe so. I’m going anyway.” I mean, I’m a little bit like that. I just was like, that’s it. I’ve made my decision.

So I basically was like, well, I know a lot of people in the investment banks in London, and all the investment banks are in Sydney, and they all deal together. So surely a few of them know a few people in Sydney. And sure enough, they did. And I got introduced to a lot of people in Sydney. I ended up landing a job pretty quickly and a sponsorship visa down here. I started out at UBS Warburg as a sort of an intern thing. And then most of my career was at AB and Amro, which was a Dutch bank at the time that was here. And then Merrill Lynch. I worked at Merrill Lynch for a long time. So yeah, I mean, I’ve been here 15 years. I had a 10-year trading floor career down here that was very successful.

Don Hutcherson: Wow. What did you find your particular talents and skills were in that field? I mean, were you a trader all the time? Did you move up and take on more responsibility with more clients?

Barbara Turley: Here’s an interesting thing, right? I’ve always been told, I’m still told to this day, that I should always be client-facing because I’m very good at it. And I know I’m very good at it. I’m very good at people. But it’s taken me many years to figure out that although I’m very good at that, it’s not necessarily good for me. I get my energy from my own space. And then when I’m out with other people, clients, friends, I tend to give my energy to everyone, and I can walk away quite depleted. So it’s great for them and for me during that time. But I just found over the years that what I loved about trading is that I’m very analytical, and I do actually enjoy working by myself. I enjoy working on teams a bit, but talking on the phone all day and talking to clients all day didn’t really appeal to me. I loved sitting in front of the computer screen and analyzing data.

Barbara Turley: Which people, when they meet me, just can’t see that about me. So they find it really hard to realize that I actually enjoy that. Like, I really enjoy that. I’m very analytical. I love learning and spending time alone. I really do like that. So that’s why I think I was good at the trading thing because it just involves quick thinking and problem solving on your own. You’re not part of it.

But it is, I mean, obviously, you’re part of the big team as well. And there’s a lot of communication, but I wasn’t dealing with clients myself.

And today, I made a rule a few years ago because I fell into the client-facing things a few years ago again, and I absolutely hated it. Like, clients loved it, I hated it. So I decided a few years ago in this business that I am not client-facing, and I’m not front-facing, which means that I build the company in the background and I advise our leadership team. I have sales people that speak to the clients. My face is on the website, but you’d have to find it. And the brand is very much ahead of me. That’s becoming more and more, especially because I’m also a new mother. So I’ve got a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. So I want to have more children. I don’t want my energy depleted.

Don Hutcherson: Okay.

Barbara Turley: So it’s taken me 20 years to say no to that client-facing thing and to realize that although it is a talent of mine, just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I should do it.

Don Hutcherson: Absolutely not. You’re probably with that analytical side. I mean, I don’t know because you’re such a great articulate person, but you might be on the borderline between introvert and extrovert.

Barbara Turley: I completely am, and everybody who meets me would say, “God, you’re so social and you’re an extrovert.” I’m actually not. I’m just great in social situations as long as I can go away. Like for me, for example, my worst nightmare is going away for a weekend with a load of people all staying in the same house. I’m like, please shoot me now. I don’t want to do that. I’m happy to have a night with you, but I don’t want to spend a whole week with all my friends away.

Don Hutcherson: Yeah, I have the same profile. It’s very interesting. People think I’m an extrovert. I’m not. I lean toward introversion. But just because you clean up nice and you can go out and talk to people doesn’t mean you like it. It takes our energy away.

Barbara Turley: 100%. Like, I don’t answer my phone, and sometimes I’m so anti-social. My phone just keeps ringing. I’m like, don’t call me. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I’m annoyed that it has taken me 20 years to realize that. We should have that out earlier and to say no more.

Don Hutcherson: Yeah, but you’re doing an amazing job. Well, okay. So Barbara, the stats you’ve seen from Gallup’s 30-plus years of studying the workforce around the world, 85% around the world, 67% in America, 92% in Japan. Okay. You’ve been on this heroine’s journey with great courage and guts. And really, you talked earlier about you didn’t know why you were able to be so self-directed. Well, insights about that are my observations just knowing you a little bit. If you had great supportive parents, okay, which is really wonderful, but also you’re just conscious and you trust your own instincts and you have courage. So why is it hard? Why is it impossible for too many people to find their sweet spot and to do what you’ve done here, to do work they love and to contribute and feel fulfilled?

Barbara Turley: You know, I thought a lot about this little question because sometimes I wonder, is it just that you’re born this way? Or I do think some people are just born with it. They’re headstrong, if you will. I’m headstrong, always was, even as a baby. And my own daughter is the same. Even when she was three months old, she knew exactly what she wanted. You know, it’s just sort of in her DNA.

I think, look, one abiding memory I have is my mother always saying to me, “You can be anything you want to be.” She always said that to me. “You can be anything you want to be. You can do anything you want to do. The world is your oyster.” That’s what she kept saying to me when I was a child. I don’t think that she believed it for herself, but she wanted me to believe it. And she believed it for me, which was very interesting.

And I think that most of us are brought up to believe that others, we’re taught like it’s about the connections you have. So other people are better than you. You have to have connections if you want to do well, rather than being taught we all just figure out what it is you want to do and go after it. Like nobody else is going to make it happen for you.

And I think our school system and the way our entire society is built is that we’re all taught to kind of be employees, if you will, to follow the, you know, to take the safe path.

Barbara Turley: We’re taught that risk-taking is not good or that to be adventurous is dangerous. You know, like things like when I rang my mum that time and said, “Look, I’m going to go to Crete for the summer and just party it up and forget about my final year of university, and I’ll just come back and do it again next year.” And my mum was like, “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. I think you need to just cut loose for a bit and come back and get a bit of maturity.” And most other parents would be like, “You can’t do that. I’ve paid for your university and you’re going to—”

Barbara Turley: You know, so I think there’s a lot of that. And from the moment we’re born and from the moment we’re in society, this is how we are trained. And I think that’s a huge problem. And until people wake up to that and go, there is a different way. I think that’s what impacts you later in life.

Don Hutcherson: No, I could not agree more. I could not agree more.

Barbara Turley: Especially our school system. Our school system teaches us to be employees. Not followers, not leaders.

Don Hutcherson: I know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. Somebody said, I was talking about 100 years ago, was just to make, you had a job to be workers, and then 20 years ago you wanted a career, but now what’s happening with millennials especially is they’re looking for a lot more than the yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. You know, they do want more meaning in everything, but it’s also more difficult than ever. In some ways, the opportunity to do your own business and get out there and do side hustles, they’re everywhere, but it’s difficult.

Barbara Turley: Well, I would say, I would make a point on this. I think not every, and what I mean by employee, there’s nothing wrong with being an employee, but we should be, even industry should be fostering entrepreneurs and allowing people to be entrepreneurial within your structure. That’s right. You know, like allow them to explore. Like with my team, my leadership team, they all started out as just virtual assistants doing work for me. And I’ve allowed them to explore their talents and to make mistakes. And I’ve encouraged them to voice their opinion. I’m like, I want to hear your voice. Your voice has power. Five years later, my leadership team, who are the directors of the company in the Philippines, you know, they’re doing things like leading our training program, developing new concepts for the business, are all those original virtual assistants that never thought that they could or ever would reach something like that. But it’s about fostering, making them believe in themselves before they believe in themselves, if you know what that means.

Don Hutcherson: You couldn’t be more right. The American Workplace study that Gallup just came out with in this country that was a year ago, Jim Clifton, the son of the founder, said exactly those same things, that if these organizations of whatever size don’t do what you’re saying, instead of worrying about how they’re perceived by their customers, they’d better be worrying about how they’re perceived by their employees.

Don Hutcherson: 100 percent because the employees have a zillion opportunities. There’s no longer a lifetime employment for 30 years. People change every few years, and you better be about the business of doing just exactly what you articulated so nicely. You better be about the business.

Barbara Turley: Just when you were saying that, I was thinking of my own company today. That decision I made a few years ago to stop being client facing. I’m actually more involved in the operational and the employee side than I am on the client side. And since I made that decision, the business has done a lot better because I’m looking at the employee side and going, if I can make the supply side, as in our people, amazing, happy, good culture.

Barbara Turley: They’ll look after them, let them look after the clients. They’ll love the clients, right?

Don Hutcherson: Yes.

Barbara Turley: Well, they’re, yes.

Don Hutcherson: No, no, no. It’s the service profit chain, those fellows that wrote that. Drucker way back then said culture trumps strategy every time. Drucker was saying that 25 years ago, but now more than ever culture trumps strategy. Yeah, exactly. Well, you’re all over it and I’m not at all surprised that you’re doing as well as you are and that your employees are thriving. So my deepest congratulations to you on that. What is your personal vision going forward just in a minute or so?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, that’s an interesting question because if you’d asked me that five years ago, before I was a mother, so let’s say that’s a huge turning point in any parent’s life, but I think for a woman in particular, five years ago, I had a more egotistical vision for my life in that I wanted to be this influential, this person who was, you know, positively influencing the world through my message and all that stuff. These days, I want to be an amazing mother. I want to foster that life that I had, which I now have, because I work from home. I only work three days a week. The rest of the time I’m with my little girl. I teach her things. My husband works from home as well. So we have fostered that lifestyle that everybody, it’s like the Holy Grail. But we’ve worked very hard to build that.

And the more I do that, I’ve realized that, okay, I can expend all my energy by going out into the world and attending lots of events and being the big thing, or right now I can accept that the stage I’m at in my life is about my young family. And what’s wrong with waiting another five years to write the book or be a speaker at events or maybe never? I don’t know if I want to do that anymore. It’s more, maybe I’m just in my 40s and that’s what happens when you mature. You start to realize that impacting my own family and my own and just the people within my company is enough actually for me to impact the world.

Don Hutcherson: Well, I think it’s very self-aware and conscious to be making that decision because so many people are just caught up in the matrix, go, go, get, get, get. But you’ve been, especially since you started your own company, well, even when you decided that you didn’t want to stay in the other field, you have been paying attention to what your feelings and your values were and how that was in sync with or not with what you were doing. So that’s very wise.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think getting the strength and getting the courage to follow your intuition actually is not an easy thing to do because it takes a lot of self-confidence to say no when everyone’s telling you you should say yes to things. And you go, no.

Don Hutcherson: Yeah, you’re exactly right. I co-authored a book a number of years ago called The Lemming Conspiracy. You know, the legend of, hey, it might have started in Ireland, actually. You know, the lemming’s legend is they go to runoff cliffs and it’s a metaphor for mindless conformity. And it was just the study of systems, and everything you’ve been saying about education and organizations is exactly true. They don’t have hearts and souls. That’s the people inside, but the systems have been set up over years and years and decades.

And there’s just a way you do things at that big company or that school system. It takes a real firebrand or somebody who’s way outside the dots to make any change in that. So everybody has to do it on their own. Everybody has to take their own initiative. Well, what a delight having you with us today. It’s Barbara Turley. You shared so many important insights and lessons in your heroine’s journey. How do our listeners get in touch with you?

Barbara Turley: Sure, so I tend to send people to LinkedIn actually. I don’t do the Facebook thing anymore. I don’t know. Again, I don’t know whether I’m just getting older. I’ve got an awful lot of social platforms personally. LinkedIn is kind of where I connect with people and I share a bit of content. I would like to share more content about this sort of thing. I do share these podcasts and that over there.

You can just look me up as Barbara Turley. You can also find out more about what we’re doing at The Virtual Hub if you go to thevirtualhub.com. We’ve lots of cool content over there. And if you want to hear more of my ideas in terms of, well, they’re more business focused, but I do share a lot of personal stories there as well. I have a podcast called The Virtual Success Show, which is all about getting success with virtual teams. And we talk a lot there about that people-first thing and leadership and how to get people to buy into your vision. So you can hear a lot of stuff over there. You can do that on our website at thevirtualhub.com under our content.

Don Hutcherson: Wonderful. Listeners know that they can go to discoveryourtalentpodcast.com, click on podcasts in the navigation bar, and there are the show notes of this very fine interview.

Barbara Turley: You know, sorry, there was one more link I have to share because we actually have some cool stuff, more business stuff, but there’s some bonus little giveaways on a certain page on the website. So if you go to thevirtualhub.com forward slash D Y T for this podcast, there are, for those interested in virtual assistants or scalable business models and things like that, there’s a little course over there by me and we have a little cheat sheet about getting the most out of virtual assistants over there as well. So anyone interested in more the business end, you can get that at thevirtualhub.com forward slash d y t.

Don Hutcherson: Good, good. Thank you for adding that. In closing, every one of us is born with unique talents and gifts. We don’t learn them. We can’t ignore them. They’re just a part of who we are, our DNA. Whenever we discover them and use them in our lives and careers, we do not merely survive, we thrive in every way possible. So until next time, all my best and whatever you do, have fun out there today.