Delegating the doing so you can focus more on growing
The Entrepreneur Way
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Episode breakdown
Barbara Turley is Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub – a business that recruits, trains, and manages support assistants for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level. With a strong focus on training and ongoing development, The Virtual Hub ensures their team is trained in cutting-edge programs (like Hubspot, Ontraport, etc.) to best meet their clients’ needs. Barbara is also a mom (to her gorgeous daughter Ruby), wife to her best friend Eti and an adventure lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and spending time in nature.
- Before leaving a job, ensure your personal finances can sustain you for up to a year without steady income.
- To hire effectively, test candidates' skills before interviews and assess cultural fit after confirming competence
- When managing someone’s time, define clear tasks, establish a process, and maintain consistent reporting and communication.
- Avoid prolonged indecision by making choices—even imperfect ones—so you can learn and adjust as needed.
- Stay focused on your long-term vision and keep progressing toward it.
- Our core mission is to eliminate the feeling of overwhelm and bring clarity.
You have just got to keep your eye on the prize, keep your eye on the vision and keep moving forward.
In this episode
00:00 - Mission and Purpose of The Virtual Hub
Barbara Turley shares that the mission of The Virtual Hub is to eradicate overwhelm for entrepreneurs by providing support assistants and showing clients how to succeed with delegation. The focus is on helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, not just providing staff.
00:51 - Introduction to Barbara Turley and The Entrepreneur Way Podcast
Neil Ball introduces the podcast’s theme — exploring the entrepreneur’s journey — and welcomes Barbara Turley, highlighting her role as founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub.
03:28 - Barbara’s Background and Journey to Entrepreneurship
Barbara recounts her move from Ireland to Australia, her corporate career in investment banking and asset management, and how a desire for entrepreneurial freedom led her to start consulting before founding The Virtual Hub.
05:49 - Identifying a Market Gap and Launching The Virtual Hub
She discusses the market gap she noticed — businesses stuck between startup and growth unable to afford full-time hires — and how she pivoted from consulting to providing support assistants, discovering her strengths in systemization and leadership.
08:04 - Early Challenges and Learning from Inexperience
Barbara reflects on how her lack of experience in outsourcing and recruitment was both a blessing and a challenge, sharing the difficulties of navigating new industries and cultures, and the chaotic early years of her business.
09:50 -Developing a Robust Recruitment Process
She explains how early missteps led to building a rigorous recruitment system for hiring Support Assistants, with a low acceptance rate to ensure high-quality hires and a strong company culture.
11:27 - Building and Managing a Growing Team
Barbara credits lessons from her corporate experience and a management buyout involvement for her ability to structure teams effectively. Creating an organizational chart for a 100-person company early on helped guide strategic hiring.
13:18 - Identifying the Right Clients for Their Service
She outlines what makes an ideal client for The Virtual Hub — businesses ready to commit to dedicated Support Assistants for at least 20 hours a week and clear on the difference between strategy and implementation roles.
15:03 - The Importance of Clarity in Client Expectations
Barbara stresses the need for clients to have clearly defined systems and processes before bringing on Support Assistants, avoiding blurred lines between strategy, project management, and execution, to prevent misunderstandings and inefficiencies.
17:04 - What Barbara Enjoys Most About Her Work
She shares that while she initially thought she’d love business coaching, she discovered her true passion lies in building companies, creating culture, and strategizing for future growth rather than client-facing roles.
18:32 - What Drives Barbara’s Ambition
Barbara describes herself as a classic high achiever who thrives in fast-paced, dynamic environments, and enjoys the challenge and excitement of building and scaling a growing company.
20:21- How Barbara Relaxes Outside of Work
Barbara talks about being an introverted extrovert, loving nature, reading, and solo activities to recharge. However, balancing a young business and family life currently leaves little personal time, prompting her to seek ways to create more personal space.
25:03 - Emotional Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurship
Barbara discusses the emotional challenges of transitioning from a successful corporate career to entrepreneurship. She highlights how entrepreneurship brings more failures and emotional ups and downs than the corporate world, and how dealing with public perception and personal fears was an unexpected hurdle for her.
26:55 - Reflections on Early Hesitations
Barbara reflects on the doubts she didn’t initially realize she had when starting her business. She notes how she over-focused on superficial elements like her logo and website, delaying real business activity, and emphasizes that early momentum is more important than perfect branding.
28:31 - Early Mistakes and Learning Curves
Barbara shares a key mistake from her first year — over-investing emotionally and financially in a product launch that didn’t meet expectations. The experience left her demotivated, and she advises taking setbacks less personally and using them as opportunities to iterate and improve.
30:13 - Preparing Personally Before Launching a Business
Barbara stresses the importance of sorting out personal finances before starting a business, especially for those leaving established careers. She advocates for reducing expenses and ensuring a financial cushion to avoid desperation-driven decisions early in the entrepreneurial journey.
32:04 - Building Company Culture from Day One
Barbara explains why establishing company culture is crucial from the start, even as a solo entrepreneur. She describes how she factored in hiring a support assistant from day one and how culture should be intentional and reflective of the business’s vision and values to attract and retain talent.
33:46 - Hiring for Cultural and Operational Fit
Barbara shares her evolved philosophy on hiring, emphasizing the importance of aligning work styles and operational methods, not just personal rapport. She recommends testing candidates for skills and work habits before interviews to avoid bias and ensure compatibility with team systems.
38:34 - Lessons in Recruitment and Firing
Barbara reflects on how she used to make emotionally driven hiring decisions and how she now favors structured, unemotional processes. She clarifies her interpretation of “hire slow, fire fast,” suggesting structured timelines and clear criteria for both onboarding and letting go of team members.
40:19 - Trusting Gut Feelings in Business
Barbara discusses how her trading background sharpened her instinct for anticipating shifts and risks. While she avoids relying on gut feeling for hiring decisions now, she actively trusts it for strategic business moves and pivots, a practice that has benefited her significantly.
42:18 - Managing Remote Teams and Avoiding Discomfort
Barbara admits she feels uneasy when unsure of what’s happening within her team. She describes how she uses systems like Asana and Slack, along with clear reporting structures and rhythms, to maintain transparency, accountability, and control in a virtual environment.
44:54 - Secrets to Success
Barbara highlights decisiveness as a key trait for success. She notes that the inability to make decisions often leads to stagnation, emphasizing the importance of action and the willingness to course-correct rather than becoming paralyzed by indecision.
48:01 - Implementing Communication Rhythm in Business
Barbara and Neil discuss the concept of communication rhythm versus meeting rhythm in business operations. Barbara explains how introducing a communication rhythm transformed her business, clarifying the difference between structured meeting schedules and the ongoing cadence of team communications — particularly important for support assistant management.
50:12 - Speculating on Business Aspirations
Neil invites Barbara to imagine what she’d do if she couldn’t fail. Barbara shares her vision of building a large, beautifully designed office floor in Cebu for her team of support assistants, explaining why financial and logistical limitations currently prevent it, but expressing confidence they’ll achieve it within a couple of years.
52:28 - Identifying a Key Skill for Business Growth
Barbara reflects on what skill could most help her double her business, ultimately pointing to marketing. While she believes her business could scale quickly, she highlights the operational and logistical constraints — like talent supply and office space — that must align for growth to be sustainable.
53:51 - Desired Future Business Reputation
Barbara describes how she’d like her business to be known in five years, hoping clients say it “changed their lives.” She shares stories of clients regaining personal freedom through effective delegation and business systemization via her services.
54:42 - Favourite Quotes and Their Influence
Barbara shares two favorite quotes that have guided her: “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” a saying she attributes to her mother, and an Arabic proverb, “The dogs may be barking but the caravan still passes,” which has helped her stay focused through adversity.
56:58 - Recommended Online Resource for Entrepreneurs
Barbara endorses Asana, a project management tool she credits with transforming her business operations. She explains how it streamlined team communication and task management, especially in a growing virtual team environment.
57:53 - Advice for Early-Stage and Scaling Entrepreneurs
Barbara advises new entrepreneurs to focus on sales first, cautioning against getting distracted by branding and websites too early. She emphasizes validating demand, iterating based on feedback, and the critical need for systems, processes, and a team when transitioning from startup to growth to avoid burnout.
01:00 - Overview of The Virtual Hub’s Mission
Barbara clarifies that while The Virtual Hub provides support assistants, its deeper mission is to help entrepreneurs eradicate overwhelm and find success through delegation and business systemization, positioning themselves as a partner in sustainable growth, not just a staffing agency.
01:01 - Special Offers and Contact Information
Barbara directs listeners to a special link for podcast listeners offering resources like a guide on avoiding Support Assistant hiring mistakes and a scalable business success course. She also offers free consultations for businesses considering working with The Virtual Hub.
01:02 - Closing Remarks and Appreciation
Neil thanks Barbara for sharing her entrepreneurial journey, insights on support assistants, business systemization, and practical advice for business growth. He encourages listeners to share and engage with the show online.
