Tara Padua: You’re listening to the Next Fem podcast, the place where high powered women get vulnerable about love, leadership, and what it means to be a modern woman. I’m your host, Tara Padua. Join us at nextfem.com, where you’ll find loads of free resources like the Next Fem newsletter, and check out Next Fem leadership circles, 360 degrees of support to help you continuously level up, and the ultimate resource to accelerate your career and life.

Tara Padua: My guest today, Barbara Turley, is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, a business she started mostly by happenstance that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies to recruit, train, and manage virtual assistants in the digital marketing and social media space for businesses. And she is extraordinary. If you have a business where you need to free up some time and energy so you can go to the next level, then you should listen to this episode. I know for me, getting the right support as an entrepreneur has been critical.

Tara Padua: And my guest today, Barbara, is on a mission to eradicate small business overwhelm with a new virtual assistant model that’s at the core of its components. In this episode, Barbara shares the art and science of using virtual assistants to scale your business, why outsourcing with virtual assistants is the new lean business model,

Tara Padua: when you should fire your virtual assistant and the top five reasons someone can fail with a virtual assistant, and how to fix it. Grab the full show notes at nextfem.com slash episode 164.

Tara Padua: Subscribe to NextFem on iTunes, and while you’re there, leave us a rating and review. If you’re new here, you might want to check out our free weekly newsletter at nextfem.com forward slash newsletter.

Tara Padua: Okay, so with that, let’s welcome Barbara Turley to the show. Barbara, are you ready to become the next fan?

Barbara Turley: I sure am.

Tara Padua: So delighted to have you here. So I wanted to get this conversation going because I think that there’s a lot of interconnectedness, but can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Barbara Turley: Sure. Yeah. As we were chatting off air and keen to get on air because we were sharing so many stories. My background, look, I spent 15 years in the financial industry. I started out my career as an equity trader. So I spent 10 years in the trading floors. Yeah. And then I moved into asset management sales and got an opportunity through the financial crisis about, when was it now? Eight, 10 years ago, to get involved in my first kind of entrepreneurial pursuit. Basically, I jumped on the coattails of a few others at DeutscheAsset Management in Australia, where I live, that were doing a management buyout of a business during that whole period. And I kind of got an opportunity to literally hop on their coattails, so I did. And that led me on this entrepreneurial journey that I’m today, I’m doing something totally different, but I’ve got a company in the Philippines, and we do.

Barbara Turley: We recruit, train, and manage virtual assistants for entrepreneurs all over the world looking to build offshore teams cost effectively. And we’ve got about 120 staff now in the Philippines. So we have similar backgrounds, have sort of.

Tara Padua: Yeah, we do. Private equity, finance, entrepreneurship, you know, I love it so much. I have a not so crazy idea, which I thought that I could have a company called Talk to My Mother, in which case I would outsource it to the Philippines so that they could just talk to my mother, you know, and then Talk to My Dad would be all about technology. So it would be like, help my dad learn his iPhone X or something like that. You know, I mean, like, yeah…

Barbara Turley: Yes, yes, so virtual assistants for that would be my sort of.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, they’re very patient. My Filipino team are very patient with that kind of thing.

Tara Padua: So tell us, like, that’s your background, and now you run a company called The Virtual Hub, and we can talk more about that. But I guess I want to talk more about that. Actually, let’s just go there. So how did you go from private equity trading to launching The Virtual Hub?

Barbara Turley: Look, it’s actually a really interesting story. And you’ll love this because anyone who comes from this sort of the money industries or, you know, that opportunity is sort of that thing that you just kind of see it and jump on it, right? You got to be able to be quick, right? So I accidentally fell into this. I mean, you would think that being from this background that I would have this mad business plan, and I would have strategized out the five-year plan and everything. I totally didn’t. I just fell into this because.

Barbara Turley: After I did that, I got that sort of entrepreneurial opportunity. There was a group of people I was working with at DeutscheAsset Management who wanted to buy out a business from DeutscheAustralia that was kind of for sale at the time. And it was a distribution business of managed funds. So we did that. I got involved, and years later we launched our own funds, and actually I’m still a shareholder in that business today. I’m just not there day to day.

Barbara Turley: But today, the company manages five and a half billion of funds. We’ve got a suite of managed funds, and it’s just going from strength to strength in the Australian markets here. So I wanted to leave that because I learned a lot doing that, but I just had this vision that I wanted to build my own company. I’ve always wanted to build something that was impactful. So like many corporates, I left that and I started doing business coaching, and I started a website called Energize Wealth, which is still there, plenty of content up there. I just don’t really do much with it today. But you’ll love this because I started it because I just had this mad desire to convince more women to become interested and make friends with money, to stop seeing it as such a.

Barbara Turley: Like women were almost ashamed to say that they wanted to make loads of money. And I was like, but you want to have impact. So if you want to change the world, then take my advice. It’s probably a good idea to make a lot of money and then mobilize that money to have the impact that you truly want in the world.

Tara Padua: I just need you to have like 700,000 t-shirts with that on it so that we can all get clear about how to have an impact. Yes.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. And I look, one day I’m going to come back to this. I’ve left the website up there for anyone who wants to have a look because I will come back to that vision one day. But so I was doing quite a lot of business coaching through that. And I noticed that all the businesses I was coaching, they were all small businesses, and it was everything from a local tennis center to a naturopath, to an online coach, to a lawyer. And they all had the same problem. They were all trying to do everything themselves. They had no time.

Barbara Turley: They were completely overwhelmed, but they didn’t have enough cashflow yet really to hire local staff. So they were in that horrible bind of, know I need to hire people, but if I can just make some more money, then I can hire people. So I had a virtual assistant in the Philippines because I had read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, and I was like, that’s a no brainer. So I started.

Barbara Turley: Recruiting a few VAs. And I said to my VA, can you have any friends that want a job? And I was only doing it as a side gig to help the clients I was coaching so that we could actually get somewhere with the coaching. And before I knew it, I was actually getting more demand for the VA thing than the coaching thing. And it was literally over a weekend, I was chatting with my brother, and I remember saying to him, do you reckon there’s a business in this? Like, I don’t know why people are coming to me for this, but you know, you can go online and get a VA yourself. So.

Barbara Turley: Within about a week or two, I put on a webinar, and it was the most successful one I ever did. And I got 10 buyers, and I just was in business overnight with no website, business plan, name, nothing. I just offered to do this.

Tara Padua: What made you do a webinar though? That’s interesting, like, because that actually requires some business acumen to put together a webinar.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, with Energize Wealth, I was always very interested in digital. I was fascinated by the digital world, and I had, look, Energize Wealth was like my little springboard for learning a lot of that. And I had dabbled in webinars. I had done some big webinars around wealth, success for women, you know, that had way more people attend the webinar, but nobody actually bought anything.

Tara Padua: What the heck is that about though? Like, what is that about?

Barbara Turley: I was like, okay, I love this Energize Wealth concept, but I hadn’t figured out how to, I just hadn’t figured out really how to monetize it properly. And then the trader in me was like, you know what, I’m just going to stop doing that. I’m doing this VA thing. There’s way more in this. And I just started doing it. And it took about, I think I came up with a name after about a month and put it on the landing page and was like, I don’t even have a website. I just shoved the landing page up. And then people started talking about it. And I.

Barbara Turley: Got interviewed on a couple of podcasts, and it was just very organic and very messy.

Tara Padua: So I guess there’s two questions. I definitely want to hear about the mess.

Barbara Turley: Yes, it was terrible.

Tara Padua: But before that, I want to hear about it, because I know this is another place, I think, where women, and again, if you’re not this way, that’s really fine, but women kind of get caught up in like, want to make a difference. And listen, I want to make a difference too.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, make some money first.

Tara Padua: Business, like it doesn’t sound like it sounds like what you were doing before was like altruistic, making a difference, contributing to people, helping people build projects. And then, but you decided to pivot into virtual assistant because it was like fill in the blank. What was it, like a viable business? Was it going to help? Like, what was the impetus?

Barbara Turley: I just found that people tell you when you start your own business, people say the advice is find a problem that you can solve for people and then go solve that problem. Well, I went a little bit deeper after I realized that women were desperate actually to learn about money. They were fascinated by what I was talking about, but they were like, I just want to learn that stuff, and then I’m going to go off and do my own thing. They weren’t willing to buy a wealth program.

Barbara Turley: At that stage, what I realized was you need to find a problem that people are willing to pay you to solve today and then go solve that problem. And what I realized was the people I was attracting were like, yeah, yeah, I do want to build wealth, but right now I can’t even breathe. I’m so busy, and I can’t make enough money. So I just thought, and maybe I was after the wrong audience, I don’t know, but I just realized that my audience that I had attracted had a different, more immediate problem. And I went after solving that one instead.

Tara Padua: My gosh, that’s amazing. It’s not only having the problem, but it’s actually honing in on the pain of living with that problem right now.

Barbara Turley: And the vision, the funny thing is the vision I had was to create, I wanted to create change. I wanted to lift more people out of this overwhelm and get them to make more money. And what’s so interesting about the thing I ended up doing called The Virtual Hub is that not only have we seen client businesses grow and hire more staff, we have seen happier entrepreneurs because they’re freer to spend time with their families or whatever they want to do.

Barbara Turley: But in the Philippines, an unintended consequence was I have seen people grow there, have dynamic careers, be able to get themselves out of the toxic call center industry that is massive there, and have a different career and have a different experience for them and their families, like having Christmas holiday for the first time in five years to spend with their families, right? So I didn’t realize that I actually, the vision remained the same, but the vehicle changed.

Tara Padua: I think it’s amazing, too, because I hear that there’s sort of downstream and upstream benefits. Like it’s a virtuous process. I love this so, so much. So, and by the way, the pain point for me is very real. Like we’re going to talk about firing assistants and things like that, but I’ve never had an effective experience. And by the way, I assume the problem is me. Maybe you’ll be able to debunk that.

Barbara Turley: No, not necessarily. I think we should dig into this because you can hear my pain as well. I’ve had pain with this.

Tara Padua: So I guess what I want to start with, to that point around do I suck or is there something missing? Which, by the way, I can ask that question for everything from email to any other sort of modern skill. Like it’s sort of the question is, is it the technology or is it me? But I guess, who is a good candidate for a virtual assistant?

Barbara Turley: Look, typically, sometimes it’s the client and what they’re doing. Sometimes it’s the virtual assistant and what they’re doing. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. So let’s deal with, and I’ll actually tell the story of the pain points I suffered.

Tara Padua: Yes, please tell me your pain points, because I will listen.

Barbara Turley: So after that first webinar, I got all these sales, and people were just jumping over themselves to get these VAs, and it all went a bit crazy. And then within about six months, I almost had a nervous breakdown and almost shut the business because it was horrific. Because I just used to wake up every morning either flooded with Facebook messages, Skype messages, text messages, emails from clients complaining and kind of almost abusing me, right? Because they weren’t getting success with their VAs. And I was like, what is this?

Barbara Turley: Why is this happening? How did I get success? How did the clients I was working directly with get success? And how is it I’m not getting success for these people? And these clients are really irate. So the second, I call this the second problem, raised its ugly head. So I solved the first problem, which was, I’ll get you a VA. And then very rapidly, I was like, there’s another big problem. These, a lot of these clients didn’t know how to delegate effectively. They were like,

Barbara Turley: Wow, I’ve got a body. I’ll just throw a body at the problem, and it’ll, you know, this VA’s.

Barbara Turley: What starts your problems? can’t. No.

Barbara Turley: And I was like, but you can’t just, like, need systems and processes. You need project management tools. Like email is not the way to deal with an outsourced staff member. So there were a whole pile of issues around clients understanding that working with offshore teams, right, working with virtual assistants, be they in America or offshore, is not as simple as people think. And you need very strict processes, communication guidelines, reporting structures.

Barbara Turley: All the things that I had learned in corporate that I assumed everybody knew about, but they didn’t. And this was a major problem. So then I started to build training programs for clients. And I said, you have to do this little, if you come and get a VA from us, we’re first going to help you to set up properly to get the VA or to make you realize that you’re not ready yet for this VA thing, because you’re just going to waste your money. After that, saw a lot of, we did see an improvement, a lot of improvement, in that some of the clients that really weren’t ready for a VA, actually, we turned them away and we helped said, you need to go and do these things before you waste your money on this. And then we took on better clients that were ready. But then we were still having problems. And I was like, what is this? So the third problem raised its ugly head. And this gets to the point of the other side. I realized that there is a whole HR minefield involved in offshore staff. There’s a lot of lying and messing and funny business that goes on, and anyone listening who has experienced this with particularly Filipino or Indian VAs and stuff like that will know what I’m talking about. They say they’re working, and they’re not. They say, I didn’t, I probably forgot to load that into the Google Drive, and actually the work just isn’t done. They’re working for you, but actually they’re working for someone else, so the work is sloppy. All of these problems were there.

Barbara Turley: And then the final one was that a lot of VAs were coming to us with resumes that said that they knew how to do all this stuff that actually they didn’t. It was all just rubbish. So I had to just do, I mean, I nearly died from the stress, but I had to rebuild the entire business to recruit differently, train the VAs before we ever let them meet a client. So if I just move forward today, this will help to understand where it got to.

Barbara Turley: And where anyone listening to this needs to get to. So today we have a business that our recruitment process is about six weeks long. It includes a three-week intensive full-time training program. And that’s before we ever let a VA meet a client. And the reason we do that is obviously to train them, but also it’s very hard to hide if they’re sitting in front of us full-time for six weeks.

Tara Padua: That’s amazing. So you see them. You get all the work ethic, you get it all out of the way, right? They disappear, or they do a runner, or they lie. We had one guy that was stealing, but we caught him on camera, you know, so. My gosh. Yeah. So our success rate today is through the roof, but our lead times are very long because we are just, you know, really strict about who we bring in. So I just hope that story makes you realize that.

Tara Padua: It might be a little bit of you, but there’s a lot to this that people don’t really, they’re underestimating the work involved in getting an offshore team to work effectively. But what I would share is that if you do get it to work effectively, the dividends that it will pay you in the end are enormous, not just from a cashflow and profit perspective, but from a personal freedom perspective.

Tara Padua: My gosh, preach personal freedom. So how can I tell if I’m ready? Like, who are the people who are like, yeah, you’re not ready? Because I’ve been assigned the virtual assistants, and I couldn’t tell. I was like, again, I think part of it is I’m recreationally obsessive compulsive and detail oriented, as you can probably imagine coming from our backgrounds. And I think in my…

Barbara Turley: That can be actually a good thing. That can work to your advantage.

Tara Padua: Also, what do you mean? I mean, don’t, listen, I’m like, if you can’t fix it, flaunt it. I’m a big fan of all of my imperfections, so I…

Barbara Turley: I would prefer to take what your little flaw there that you call it a flaw. I would prefer somebody who’s more detail oriented than somebody who’s like, although I just want to tell them to manage my blog and just go figure it out. Like, I don’t know, I don’t have a process. I’m like, well, you know, it’s better to have a process and actually lay out what it is that you want and then work with your person to ensure that they are able to deliver and implement and execute that process properly, time and time again, without you constantly having to check it. But you will, in the beginning, have to do that, but…

Tara Padua: I love that so much. Okay, so you just made me feel better, and I had fired somebody that I was working with, and part of it was I remember onboarding all of his stuff and blah blah blah, and then it would take me two hours to provide feedback on all the stuff that was not correct in the way. Like even something as simple as spelling NextFem wrong the first like 20 times, I was like.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, no, we would get rid of all of that in our recruitment. I mean, you know, this happens, though, and I think you’re probably right to fire the person because the attention to detail is low. But with a virtual assistant, one of the biggest things they need to have is attention to detail.

Tara Padua: Okay, so it takes two to tango. Who’s a good candidate for a virtual assistant? Like, how do I know if I’m ready or if I need to just go back and do the stuff that you tell me to do?

Barbara Turley: Look, on the client side, if you’ve got a couple of things set up, if you know what you want and you know what you’re doing in your business, and you’ve got a recurring task list, which is the stuff that keeps your business alive on a day-to-day basis, and you’ve got your processes for those things, and then you add your projects list and you know what needs to, you know, what’s going to push the business forward, and you’ve decided what you’re going to delegate to a virtual assistant. So what is their role in this business? And then when you bring them in, you’re going to delegate slowly.

Barbara Turley: You know, a couple of the initial tasks, and slowly you open up, like open the kimono over time, and eventually recurring task lists are probably the easier ones to hand over because they’re very process-specific type tasks. So once you do that, if you’re finding, you know, so then, like I said, the next problem that raises its ugly head is do you have…

Barbara Turley: A person who’s doing the right, like, let’s say, do you have a person that’s doing the right thing? Are they of good character and strong work ethic, or are they actually bullshitting you? If you know what I mean, like, are they just kind of, so let’s say that you have a good person, strong work ethic, all that stuff, like, are they able to follow a process and actually deliver on this process for you? Now, if they’re not, there’s two things you’ve got to think about. Number one,

Barbara Turley: You don’t shoot the messenger immediately. You may need to go back through the process with that virtual assistant and figure out, is there some iteration that is not there because you used to do it? So, for example, are they thinking differently as they do the process than you would think? You may need to kind of teach them how you think. If you’ve done that and you’re still getting tons of mistakes and it’s like, then you probably have the wrong person. I mean, realistically, at that point, like they’re, you know, you’ve tried to work with them.

Tara Padua: I totally get that, though. That makes a lot of sense because I feel like part of the issue is when I was developing leaders, there was sort of this balance between clarity about the vision and then also capability in terms of skillfulness, you know? And I kind of hear like there’s clarity, capability, and then I think inside of capability is like how impeccable are they, how thorough are they? And I think, but I also kind of hear some opportunity for folks like us to develop, you basically what you said, like figure out what you need to delegate.

Tara Padua: Have recurring systems and processes, and just really be clear about that project management piece of it.

Barbara Turley: Yes. And I think as well, be clear that a project manager is different from a virtual assistant.

Tara Padua: Say more about that, because I think that people definitely get confused about that.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. Now there will be virtual assistants that may be listening to this who are in the US or Australia, who, big shout out to you guys, in my view, most of you are way more than what a virtual assistant is. You guys are total rockstars, and you probably should be calling yourself a project manager or an online business manager and charging yourself appropriately for it. So let’s just talk about, like, the problem with the word virtual assistant is that it has broadened over the years of this industry growing. And it goes from everything from.

Barbara Turley: Someone with a heartbeat who can type through to a coder who can create an app. And I’m like, look, it’s just too broad, you know. The real term virtual assistant is someone that you’re, they are an assistant. So you’ve built your system, you’ve built your processes, you’ve built the machine, and then you’re now going to bring a person in and teach them how to drive the machine for you. That’s an assistant. A project manager is where you say, hey, I’ve got the, here’s my vision, here’s what I see.

Barbara Turley: Here’s what I want it to look like and what the end result I’m looking for. A project manager is then going to develop a project plan with deadlines and milestones and check-ins and a whole pile of tasks and deliverables that fall out from the project that virtual assistants can do the tasks, but they’re not going to map out and manage the project and make sure that everything’s going to be on time. Now that’s me talking it down.

Barbara Turley: Most of our VAs can actually do that. I’ve had clients say to me, oh, my VA does that for me. And I go, yeah, but you don’t want to be overselling this thing because that is project management. Our VAs are great, right, but they’re not actually project managers. So some of them can do it, but you just got to be clear about what it is you’re hiring.

Tara Padua: And do a lot of the folks who aren’t ready need to hire project managers instead?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, the only problem with the project manager is they’re not going to do the grunt work for you. And again, this is a problem. People go, well, I have a project manager, and she didn’t do anything. But a project manager is only going to map out the project and manage the team that you’ve given them to do the work. They’re not actually going to do the work themselves because they’re not a virtual assistant. So again, it’s this whole people trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Same as a strategist or a consultant. You know, when I was a coach, and I’m sure you see this in your coaching business.

Barbara Turley: The problem is that you leave people, as a coach you’re there to tell them, or a consultant, the strategy, map it out, tell them all the things that need to be done. But then you’re going to leave and be like, hey, see you next week in our session. And you’ve left them with a huge to-do list that they don’t have time to do because they don’t have the people. So it’s being realistic about this and going, I know you don’t have any money. I know people say, but I can’t afford to hire all these people.

Barbara Turley: We’re like, then you need to become your own project manager, and you need to learn the skills involved in doing that until such time as you can hire that.

Tara Padua: My gosh, I love how ruthless you are about this.

Barbara Turley: Terrible. Just like I said, I won’t show you anything because it’s not easy. Like I said, it’s not easy, but the rewards for those who take the risk and who just focus on nailing this are enormous, but it’s not easy. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

Tara Padua: It’s so amazing. I love it because it’s really clear if you’re in the lane where you would need this type of resource. I think that I tend to be a little bit slow to integrate things because I know how wrong things are. Even simple technology systems that go wrong, where instead of sending one zap, you get 10,000 because you configured something incorrectly. I’d rather go slow.

Barbara Turley: That fast either. I mean, sounds like people say to me, oh my God, you have 120 staff. I go, yeah, hold on a second. Competitors have thousands of staff. I’m like, again, let’s be real. Like, I know it sounds amazing, but it depends what industry you’re in. I’m like, I think I’ve gone very slow building this whole thing because I’ve been trying to get it right, and I want to get the detail right along the way.

Tara Padua: I love that so much. So how do I successfully use virtual assistants to scale my business?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, okay. So the first, I’m going to do a shameless plug here for my own podcast. I’ve got a podcast. It’s kind of more a client-focused thing, but it is available online called The Virtual Success Show. And all of the things I’m talking about here, we have done specific shows on each of these little small topics. So like we even have a show called, When is it Time to Fire My VA? Right? We go that tactical and that specific on the show. So if anyone really wants to dig into this deeper, you’ll get more there.

Barbara Turley: The thing with how to scale, okay. So the hardest jump is to go from solopreneur to hiring your first VA because there’s so much work involved in what I’ve just spoken about. You’ve got to get your, you know, you’ve never had to build processes because you were doing it yourself. You don’t need to build a process for yourself because it’s in your head, right? But the minute you delegate to a new person, you have to start building all your systems. So it forces you to look at the infrastructure that is the platform.

Barbara Turley: That is your business. It’s a machine at the end of the day, and you have to start building that. Then when you’re successful with one VA, you go, my God, I’m going to get another one. This is great, right? And you go to kind of two, three, four pretty easily after that. When you start going to more than four, maybe three to five people reporting to you, the system starts to break because you need to start pushing people into, you can have three VAs all as generalists, and then you’ll find that they’re all

Barbara Turley: Good at different things, or communication breaks down between the team. So now you’re getting into team dynamics and how do you run a virtual team and make sure that Barbara is speaking effectively to Joe, who then has to pass a message to Mary, and things break down because communication breaks down across the channel. So that’s kind of the next hurdle is when you have a little team. The next hurdles you’ll face after that are when you have too many people reporting to you and you become totally stretched running the projects within each person’s list, and you don’t have time to run the business anymore. So you become your own project manager, and it’s at that point that you probably need to think about a serious project manager when you have more than seven or eight people reporting to you because you will be just on the phone all day answering questions at that point.

Barbara Turley: Interesting. So it’s understanding the journey, though. So I think for people listening, that sounds like how am I ever going to get to 10 people? But if you understand that that’s the journey and those are the pain points that you will experience along the way, it makes it a lot easier. Go, that was what Barbara spoke about. Now I have four people, and I’m finding it’s all breaking down. It’s because now I need to learn how to bring the team together and get them working as a team and not as individuals anymore, and that’s a little hurdle.

Tara Padua: And it’s also sort of identifying their power punch or their strength and how that fits into your larger business. And it sounds like it would also be pretty exciting for the assistants or whoever you have on your team because they get to develop more expertise.

Barbara Turley: Yes, and they get little promotions, and you know, you sort of, and you know, look out for the fact that one of those people might become your future project manager. You might not have to hire from outside. You could elevate somebody into that, but understand that then you have to teach them how to be a project manager and not a VA anymore because the skills are different.

Tara Padua: Amazing.

Tara Padua: Amazing. So, and I think this is really a nice segue to like why is outsourcing with virtual assistants a new lean business model.

Barbara Turley: Look, I mean, of course I’m singing from my own hymn sheet here because obviously I sell this, but in my opinion, there is no business that you could put forward to me that doesn’t need this strategy. Every business is about making profit, having cost-effective strategies where you can, getting the biggest bang for buck that you can. So why would you have somebody being paid a hundred dollars an hour

Barbara Turley: On your team in the States doing jobs like setting up your newsletter when you can get that offshore for 10 bucks an hour and provide an amazing career and introduce an offshore team aspect to your business? And then the person onshore that you have, or even if you don’t have anyone, but you can start to elevate them into more of the work they want to be doing, which could be more client-facing or could be more, I don’t like using the word higher value because it devalues what the offshore team are doing. It’s just a restructuring.

Barbara Turley: At the end of the day, this is all about cost, like leveraging the resources that you have to, I’m going to say make the most money, but I mean that in a positive way and not a greedy way so that you can have the impact that you want and that you can have the life that you went into your own business to create. Because we didn’t go into our own businesses to work seven days a week, 15 hours a day with no holidays ever and no life.

Tara Padua: So on a personal level, where does that come in for you? Because you’ve mentioned it a couple of times in terms of like make that money. And I totally agree. And for me, I think it comes from really wanting women to have a seat at the table and have a say. And for better or worse, one major way to do that is to make the money. Also, like I think there is a study of the wealthiest women in the US, and most, the majority, I think something like over 70 percent had inherited it, which

Barbara Turley: Oh yeah, were married.

Tara Padua: Yeah, and for me, that’s like, I’m happy that they have it, and it’s problematic because we need to be able to make more of our own. And so, yeah, where does it come from in you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. So for me, one of my, it’s funny, actually, as you were saying that, I was thinking most people would think my driving force is making money from what I’ve been saying. And then I was thinking about it, going my guiding light. I used to talk a bit about this at Energize Wealth. I used to say a lot of mistakes I see entrepreneurs making is that they create their business vision, and then they create a business model and a whole business that drives their personal life and their personal vision. And I’m more of the view of why don’t you start first with what is the lighthouse for your personal life, like what do you see?

Tara Padua: Be an example of that, because by the way, I’m totally with you. I spent three weeks doing my 2019 goals, and my personal life is the priority, like well-being.

Barbara Turley: Absolutely. Yeah. So for me, I’ll tell my story. So for me, my personal vision was always that I live in Australia currently. I’ve lived here for 16 years, but I’ve always had a kind of a little thing in me that I look, I like to have options. I’d like to change my mind around things, and I always like to have a free option. So with that personality type that I have, I always thought, well, I don’t want to anchor myself to a business in Australia. If I want to build my own business, it has to be virtual.

Barbara Turley: It has to be something that I could just up and move to Europe if I felt like it on a whim, and nothing in my business life would change. So therefore, I thought about becoming a financial advisor originally when I first left corporate. I thought, that’s going to tie me to Australia. It probably needs an office. I don’t know. I just felt it wasn’t really the right business model for me. So again, when I started thinking about what business I’m going to go after and how I’m going to build it, everything is guided by this freedom thing that I have.

Barbara Turley: I also wanted to have children. Like I was like, this business I build needs to allow me to be free to have children, to be a mother. I don’t want to be. So today, two days a week, I’m full-time mom. My daughter’s in daycare three days of the week. The other three days I have two big work days, sort of Wednesday, Thursday. And then Friday is kind of a day for me, and I do some podcasts and things like that and do some fun stuff. And I still run a really big business. So.

Barbara Turley: For me, that’s what it looks like. And I still make money. I still am impacting people’s lives, but not at the expense of my own or my family’s. I hope that makes sense. That’s just my sort of.

Tara Padua: It makes it, but where does that come from in you, I guess, is sort of my question. Because for me, I can tell you that it comes from being a recovering workaholic. It comes from just having a lot of experience. Actually, I have a very strong opinion against the whole move fast and break things and rise and grind, you know, that’s been sort of popularized in the startup space. I’m like, how about we take a nap and wake up. I’m just like not that because I don’t do, I literally am one of those people that takes

Tara Padua: Epsom salt baths, and I love walking my dog, and I meditate, and I do all these things. And I’m not like woo woo, I just feel like that needs to happen for me to be the best human being I can be.

Barbara Turley: For me, so one of the biggest driving forces, and even as a child I was like this, I just have quite an adventurous side, but because of that, I like to change my mind. I like to be able to shift and move around and live here and then live there. You know, I don’t want to be tied by anything. So freedom for me is my highest value, and freedom for me, it means different things to different people, but for me, freedom is choice. And I’ve learned over the years that

Barbara Turley: Money actually, it actually gives you choices, right? So if you have that nature but you’re tied to a job that you hate, a house that you hate, everything that you hate because you don’t really have the money to set yourself free, I think that’s the worst problem in the world. Not everyone would agree with me, but that’s my feeling. So for me, it’s freedom. And I don’t really need loads of money for myself. Just like to, like I do a lot of investing and stuff like that. I find myself often having

Barbara Turley: Not the most cashflow. I don’t have loads of flash cars, and I’m not into flash anything, but I am into building assets in my life to allow me to live the life that I want. And someday to have more impact, you know, like at the moment in the Philippines, I’m looking at social impact programs that we can get involved in as a company. But the reality is the company’s not quite big enough yet for us to be able to really impact, but in another little while it will be. So I need to build it bigger so that I can do that over there.

Barbara Turley: So that drives me.

Tara Padua: That’s amazing. So take us through, because you mentioned family. You were able to build and scale your business and, at the same time, become a mom.

Barbara Turley: I know people say, are you superwoman? What’s wrong with you? I go, no, no, I just delegate really well.

Tara Padua: That, because that was fascinating to me because I still feel like that’s, I think for a lot of people, whether male or female, sort of again either or, like either you can have a startup or a family life and never the twain shall meet.

Barbara Turley: Look, I, and you’re probably picking this up from talking to me, I’m very, I always sort of go, if I want something, I’m going to prove that I can have it. I hate when people say, well, you can’t, have to do it this way or you have to, I mean, maybe I’m a bit of a rebel like that. So I was always like, I’m going to show that a woman can do this and be a mother and not drive herself into the ground and not be superwoman. Like what is superwoman? Is it a woman who does everything?

Barbara Turley: Or is superwoman the woman who delegates everything and leads an entire team? So, you know, and in order to do that, yes, you need to make some money so that you can start to free up yourself so that. So right now I see myself as I have, look, it’s taken me years to build this. I mean, the first three years were hellish. I was doing a lot of work myself, but these days I have a big team every day.

Barbara Turley: My main role is leading that team. And by that, I mean being like the conductor of the orchestra. I am not in a fit playing any of the instruments. I don’t even speak to clients. I just go, no, I’m not doing any of that. I just lead the team, build the company, do these podcasts, stuff like that. So I think that’s the new superwoman is realizing that it’s to do none of it, but to run all of it is super.

Tara Padua: My gosh, to do none of it.

Barbara Turley: You have to have the baby, right? You’ve got to have the baby yourself. And I don’t outsource motherhood. That was something I was very passionate about. I actually wanted to do that bit myself. I had to concede defeat on part-time. I was like, I can’t do a full-time mom and this, but I definitely spend a lot of time with my daughter, and I’m actually having another baby at.

Tara Padua: Gosh, really, as this podcast is really.

Barbara Turley: Yes, I’ll be having another baby later this year. So in a few months’ time, I’ll, so I’m currently working with my team to get the business into shape so that I can, you’re never off completely when you run your own business, but, you know, if I have to check in for an hour a day with a new baby, that’s okay.

Tara Padua: I’m so inspired by that because it’s sort of, that’s one of the things I think for me personally that’s been sort of daunting. Like there never seems, are you in a relationship? Are you married? Do you have like a partner? Like how does that, okay.

Barbara Turley: Yep, I am. I’m married. I am lucky. I have a very supportive partner. I’ve got a great husband. I think that is important, but I still believe that, and I haven’t proven this, but I still believe that with the right strategies, if you are on your own, any women out there listening, or men, because I know a couple of men that are single dads, you just need to do this even more. You need to grasp this concept of delegating to others even more. And you need to make the money. You need to build a system so that brings the money in so that you can do that. And offshore, I’ll go on about it again, is the cheapest way to do it. So it pays you to get this right and to try to work with this to get it right. I actually did a podcast show on this where, when I was having my first baby, about a year after she was born, I have a cohost on the show, and he interviewed me about the steps that I took. And it was like a five-step thing, and I talked deeply about everything I did to prepare the business so that I could have that baby in the end.

Barbara Turley: So anyone who’s looking to do that, I can give you the link to put in the show notes if anyone wants that particular episode.

Tara Padua: That would be awesome. It sounds like you’re setting up, it sounds like what you did is just kind of set up your business again, like systems and recurring properties and things like that so that.

Barbara Turley: And empowering your team. There’s a lot about leadership, which you’ll be really interested in. And it was stuff I had to kind of learn by accident along the way and make mistakes. I wasn’t naturally the best at leading teams because I hadn’t done that really in my career. I sort of worked with people, but I hadn’t led, you know, the whole team. So I did learn a lot of that by accident along the way, and I do share a lot of that in there.

Tara Padua: Yeah, just tell us a story about that, because, you know, for those of us who are not going to go listen.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, exactly. Look, one of the things I noticed, and again, it’s this whole thing of all the problems that raise their head along the way that you have to solve. Like you think you solved the first problem and then the second one and the third one, it’s like a domino effect of all the problems that will occur. But as you solve for them, you make a more powerful business. So for me, I taught clients how to do this systems and processes thing in the early days. That was my first thing. And then some clients were still failing, and I was like, well,

Okay, what’s happening there? Well, you can’t just throw the task list at a VA and say, see you in a month. There’s reporting back, there’s training. You know, then there is learning how to do team communication. Like I touched on this, but again, communication is something that breaks. You know, many a marriage has fallen apart on bad communication, right, or misunderstandings. And this happens within teams as well. And I guess how I got good at this was I saw mistakes happening or things falling through the cracks, even though we had great systems and processes, and I just couldn’t understand what was going on with my team. And then I started implementing the concept of a daily huddle. It’s a scrum technique. You can Google this. It’s like every day it’s a standup meeting that is geared towards physical offices, but I wanted to prove that you could do this in a virtual environment. So every day I brought my team together.

Barbara Turley: And I realized that there were little nuances of communication that get missed in written, in Asana or project management systems. And I talk about handing the baton, you know, like in a hurdle race where they hand the baton to the next runner. I talk about the huddle is where you, if you have teams collaborating on projects or pipelines or whatever, the handing of the baton is really important, and you have to make rules about how the baton is handed to the next person. I’m hoping that makes sense to people. Might just be

specific to my business, but I’ll give an example. Let’s say in our team, we’ve got a recruitment team, a training team, HR management, operations. And as people move through that funnel, so people apply for a job with us, the recruitment team do all their bit, and then when they decide who the final lineup is to be going into the training program, they have to hand the baton successfully to the training program, to the training team. And it really is the responsibility of the person handing the baton

to make sure that the baton isn’t dropped by the next team, if you know what I mean. So there’s the huddle in the communication and the process around that. There’s almost a process in the middle that you have to then insert. So where am I going with all of this? I’m trying to say that just leading teams, you have to learn a lot of this by the mistakes that happen. And I think what I see entrepreneurs doing is they go, oh, this is just easier to do it myself, and they run back, fire everyone, and run back to doing everything themselves rather than going, this is so annoying, it’s frustrating, but the only way to move forward is to re-examine, go back, evolve the process, look at the people, see where are the nuances of things failing, and be inquisitive about why it’s failing and then fix that, and know that next week you’ll probably have to fix another.

Tara Padua: It actually makes a lot of sense because if communication is sort of like a game of catch, and I think you’re using this example of passing the baton, it just makes perfect sense that you would need to actually, you know, like so in order to be effective, you need to coordinate, you know.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think, you know, I think leaders, people who’ve led teams before maybe knew all that. I didn’t know that because in my previous career, I was usually working by myself, sort of. I wasn’t leading the team. So I kind of did have to learn that by the frustration of mistakes myself. And now I talk a lot about those experiences on my podcast with clients that come through to help them to understand that it’s okay that you don’t know how to do this, but you have to hone the skill, and you have to learn this because this is the only way you’re going to grow it.

Tara Padua: So how do we know when to fire someone, and how do you do it best?

Barbara Turley: Yep. So the trick with firing someone is to, first of all, you want to make sure that you start off in a way that you don’t have to fire them. Okay, so number one is just like systems processes. Then you’ve got to set expectations with people. So, for example, a lot of, and we all do this, right, people assume that the person they fired knows what your expectations are or what you think is a good job versus what they think is a good job. So setting expectations is talking about things like,

and a great example is this. So if you’re in the type of business that you’re in meetings all day, you do not want a virtual assistant in the Philippines pinging you on Skype with every question. You would prefer to condense all of that into a 10-minute quick catch-up every day, answer all the questions, and move on. Other people like me, who tend to be around and available and doing stuff, I say to them, yeah, just, you know, ping me if there’s something wrong. So I prefer it that way. But if you didn’t set that expectation, you could be very frustrated

with somebody who thought you liked to be pinged on Skype all day with immediate questions. So that could cause a real issue for you. So you’ve got to set the, you know, when do you like to speak to them? What’s your meeting rhythm? What is your communication style? What’s a good job for you? What does that look like? What does failure look like? And how are they, you know, say these three things will see you fail. So with me, it’s better not to do these three things.

Tara Padua: How can I identify mine? Because I think we kind of don’t know ourselves, you know what I mean? So if I were.

Barbara Turley: Well, you identified one for yourself that’s very high on your list earlier in the podcast, which is attention to detail. So your next person that you hire, you say to them, look, if you come back with a spelling error, grammar mistakes, and basic, you know, maybe for you that’s okay, but for me, I just need you to know that that’s a deal breaker.

Tara Padua: Yes, my God, I feel so relieved. It’s normalizing.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, you just say, look, you might feel like I’m over that. It’s better that you know today that that’s a deal breaker for me. I also find it very stressful if you don’t report to me when a task is done or give me an update. Like for me, I can’t stand when they don’t give me updates. So I say to them, just give me an update in Asana. I don’t want to chase you. Don’t make me go, where’s that thing at? I hate that. So for me, I’ve set that rule and expectation.

Tara Padua: Do you find that there’s, it’s kind of like a weird question, but do you find that different cultures, you know, so for example, I think that I’ve recently talked to someone who really struggles with the whole people needing constant acknowledgement and praise for everything. Do you encounter that at all, or is it something that gets worked out in the wash, so to speak?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I would find it annoying to give people constant praise. However, I do think it’s important to spontaneously recognize people. So, for example, on one of our daily huddles, occasionally I might just say, hey, big shout out today to Rach. Wow, she did an amazing job last night with this thing. Could be a little thing. And just spontaneously pick different people on the team. Don’t do favoritism because you’re going to make sure then that you hit everyone at some point.

But don’t make it a routine thing so that then they expect it and they think they’re not doing a good job. Or discuss that in your expectations meeting at the start of the relationship. Or don’t hire somebody that is that kind of needy. If you’re not into needy people, definitely don’t hire a needy person because it doesn’t suit your style. You’ve got to think about your own style and what works for you.

Tara Padua: So before we get into the FEM Five, I wanted to ask you, like, so the flip side of that is something like conflict, right? So there’s a presentation, and then maybe there’s conflict. Like, do you have any advice on how do you handle conflict with your—

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I know. And I hate, I would say this is what I’m weakest at. So giving negative feedback is very tricky. And what we tend to do, and I’m totally guilty of this, is that you do the negative feedback sandwich. So you sandwich the negative feedback between two pieces of awesome feedback. And then the person walks away and only remembers the amazing thing that you put either side of the negative bit.

So I think what I’ve learned to do is to deliver feedback. I have a podcast episode on this: how do you deliver constructive feedback that feels good for both sides? Take out the word negative, right? Because the word negative makes us feel guilty and like we’re criticizing someone. And I’m not a fan of criticizing anyone. I hate the word criticism. I think it’s a terrible word with awful connotations.

You’re having a catch-up to discuss how things are going. I think it’s always good to ask the person first how they feel it’s going and how they would rate themselves. Say, like, “How would you rate yourself with this task?”

Barbara Turley: And they might say, you’ll find they’ll be honest. They’ll be like, “Look, I think I’m a three. Cause actually…” And you go, “Yeah, look, I find that you’re continually doing this bit and you’re tripping yourself up and things are happening. How do we work together to improve this?” And then it’s a more collaborative approach.

Now, if you’ve done that a couple of times and it’s still not working, you may have to have, I call it the come-to-Jesus talk, which is, “Hey, one more time. And that’s the end of it. You’re not doing this process anymore. I can’t work with this.”

Now, not everyone’s going to respond well to that type of tone. That’s more my tone. I’m the type who’s like, “Nice, nice, nice, mentor, mentor, mentor, mentor, cut.” I’m like, “That’s the end of it.” But you got to let your people know that, look, we’re going to work on this. But, you know, if it’s not working, so they know what’s coming. And often they’ll resign if they’re really bad so that you don’t actually have to fire them in the end anyway.

Tara Padua: Amazing. It kind of is sort of, I think the advice is kind of know thyself and know your style and know your… I’m actually really effective at one of my… I’m very effective at direct communication.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think it’s better early. You know that woman who talks about candid—

Tara Padua: Radical Candor.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, Radical Candor, amazing. Watch the TED Talk, Radical Candor. It’s empathetic, direct conversations and not being, again, take the word negative out. It’s just, you know.

Tara Padua: Well, I think so much of feedback is like there’s two kinds of feedback. There’s building feedback, which is appreciation, and then there’s developmental feedback, which is the building. It helps you grow. And I don’t relate to them as a coach in my work. They’re not negative. It’s really just holding up a mirror.

And I like the idea of letting them get their fingerprints on it, so to speak, in advance, so that it’s like, “What do you think about this?” Because they’re bringing their awareness, and they’re not victimized by your brilliance or your insight or your comments.

Barbara Turley: Absolutely, yeah, and it gets them to look at themselves. You’ve got to get them to rate themselves and go, “Where do you think you can improve?”

Tara Padua: Yeah. Barbara, do you know what time it is?

Barbara Turley: Absolutely. So what is your favorite book to recommend for women?

Barbara Turley: Is it time for the Femme Five?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so this is not necessarily a book for women, but I thought about, could I get a women-focused one? And I thought, no, I’m still going to recommend the same book. Even though I’m good at building systems and all this sort of thing, a book that changed my life and sort of reformulated my thinking is Built to Sell, which is The Rockefeller Habits rehashed, and it is just—read it. It will change your life. It shows you how to build a machine because a business is a machine at the end of the day.

Tara Padua: That’s amazing. That’s such a good—it’s an oldie but a goodie, a classic. What is your favorite self-care hack?

Barbara Turley: Mine’s a funny one. Whenever I’m really overwhelmed, you know that horrible thing of the to-do list, you just can’t get anything done, go and have a shower. Something about water, it’s just something. Get in the shower, it just resets me, and it might only take five or 10 minutes, and I can actually change the world after that. I just need to move away and come back. It may not work for everyone, but that’s for me. That’s my little thing.

Tara Padua: Awesome, that totally works. Best advice you’ve ever received and who gave it to you?

Barbara Turley: Yes. So I’ve had lots of great advice over the years, but a more recent one when I was really struggling with The Virtual Hub and going through a lot of transitional pain around what was going on. And a woman who—she’s become a very close friend of mine, but she also runs a large business in the Philippines and she lives there. Her business is much larger than mine. And she became like a mentor to me in terms of understanding the local market.

And she gave me, I think it’s an Arabic proverb, and it said, she said, “The dogs may be barking…”

Barbara Turley: “…but the caravan still passes.” And it’s this concept that, you know, you’ll have clients complaining and employees annoyed and stuff going wrong, but the caravan is still going forward and it will keep going regardless of who’s barking at you. And that just has helped me in a lot of very difficult situations to stay focused and keep my eye on the prize.

So, you know, in Egypt—I should know where this comes from—but anyway, in the deserts—

Tara Padua: So what does it mean?

Barbara Turley: Of the Arab countries, the caravan is the camels and all the… when they travel through the desert. And when they pass through little small water holes or whatever along the way, there’s often stray dogs, and of course they’ll bark at the cars going by or the caravans going by, but they don’t—the caravan doesn’t stop. It keeps going. So a caravan is like a procession of—

Tara Padua: That makes sense now. For all the people who don’t know what a caravan is or…

Barbara Turley: No, yeah, maybe look it up, but that for me…

Tara Padua: Have sayings like that in Spanish too, like my friends in Puerto Rico where it’s like, “Sweep the door and open the windows,” and then the editor’s like, “Okay, that was just a lot.” Who is the female CEO or female thought leader that you’re into right now?

Barbara Turley: Now I think you in particular are going to love my one because I reckon most of the listeners are never going to have heard of this woman, but she continues to be, and has been for about 15 years, someone I just absolutely love, is Dr. Pippa Malmgren, M-A-L-M-G-R-E-N, right? She is amazing.

Tara Padua: I know that—was she in politics or something or—

Barbara Turley: Yes, she was ex-head of currency strategy at UBS Warburg. Then she became an advisor to the Bush administration in the White House. She has run a hedge fund. She is advisor to tons of hedge funds around the world. She travels around the world talking to big hedge funds, asset managers, and her main thing is helping people to understand the economic impact, the small signals that are in society that we can all see that help you to understand where the markets are going, social unrest.

She has an amazing book called Signals, which is—anyone can read this. It’s not an economics book, but it’s very interesting. It’s about understanding even where little signals that fashion trends are telling us about what’s happening in the property market or how to understand things more deeply.

So I just love her. She has lots of YouTube stuff. She’s always on CNBC. And for me, with my background, I think you’d really love her. And she also has a… I guess her daughter’s probably nine or 10 now, but during that whole thing she also had a baby girl, so.

Tara Padua: Gosh, I love these women who are just like living their best life.

Barbara Turley: It’s amazing how she is Superwoman.

Tara Padua: She also has amazing hair, and I think I just like the name Pippa. So that’s why I was like, “Wait, Pippa, okay.” So good. And what’s one piece of advice you would give to your five-years-younger self?

Barbara Turley: Oh yeah, I was thinking about this one. So five years ago, I was in that kind of hell of the beginnings of this business and just in the throes of overwhelm. And I guess all the things I talk about today and that I’ve talked about on this podcast, I wish I had known more deeply those things at the time.

So you might think from listening to me today that I knew all this when I started. I sort of didn’t. I kind of had an idea of scalable business and stuff, but I’ve really learned what I’m talking about today from my own pain and being in the trenches myself and, you know, sitting at your desk, mascara running down your face from crying and overwhelm.

So I would encourage anyone listening to this to hear me when I say that and learn from my mistakes and don’t do those mistakes yourself. I know I sound a bit ruthless when I am so direct about this, but it’s because I have felt the pain. I love that.

Yeah, five years ago I was like, “You’ve got this, just keep—”

Tara Padua: You’re gonna survive. That’s awesome. Congratulations, Barbara. It’s official. You are the next Femme!

Barbara Turley: Yay. You know, I coined a phrase about eight years ago that I love and still use today called Femme Trepreneur. I wanted to build a thing around this Femme Trepreneur concept because the whole Femme… so I love what you’re doing with the Next Femme podcast.

Tara Padua: Yeah, we just geek out about it and then for Nora, so I love that. So where can people find you online if they want to connect and hang out with you more?

Barbara Turley: Sure, so LinkedIn is kind of where I share a lot of my content on there. So you can just look up Barbara Turley on LinkedIn for me personally. I also share a lot of my content on thevirtualhub.com, which is our website.

And for your listeners, we actually have a couple of freebies. So if you go to thevirtualhub.com/nextfemme, on there we’ve got a free mini guide, which is the five reasons people fail with VAs and how to fix it, which is very simple, you know.

And we also have a seven-part video course, actually, which is, again, it’s the scalable business success formula. A lot of it is what we talked about today. So if you just want to have a bit more insight there, and if you want to talk to us about getting a VA or whether you’re ready, you can have a free strategy call with one—not with me. I don’t do that anymore. I speak my own language, yeah.

I’ve got two outsourcing consultants, one in Ireland and one in Australia, who are great, and they’ll help you to navigate whether you’re ready. And if you’re not ready, how to get ready.

Tara Padua: That’s awesome. And friends, you can also grab Barbara’s free gift at nextfemme.com in the show notes for this episode.

Next Femme Nation, thanks so much for tuning in. I’m so glad you could join us. If you enjoyed this episode, I would be grateful for a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Every one makes a huge difference and will also earn you a shout-out on nextfemme.com.

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Until next time, be great and take exquisite care.