Episode breakdown
Barbara Turley is Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub – one of the fastest growing producers of digital marketing support assistants for businesses who need to free up time & eradicate overwhelm by leveraging highly cost-effective offshore teams.
After a corporate career spanning 15 years in the investment banking industry, she started her ‘corporate escape’ from within by jumping on a management buyout business opportunity. This led her on a journey into entrepreneurship, angel investing and to develop a keen interest in scalable business models, content marketing and all things digital.
- The power of using a Support Assistant
- The process of identifying what is needed
- How to onboard a support assistant
- How to train a support assistant
- How to measure your support assistant’s performance
- How to identify how much work ou can offload
- How much time it will take a new person to do
The strongest business that you will build is when you take all that happens, you take it on the chin.
In this episode
00:00 - Introduction & Background
Host Justin Grimes introduces Barbara Turley, founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, a fast-growing provider of digital marketing support assistants. Barbara shares her journey from Ireland to Australia and reflects on her 15-year career in investment banking before transitioning into entrepreneurship and angel investing.
04:01 - Accidental Business Creation
Barbara explains how her business began unintentionally. After leaving corporate life, she started coaching and consulting, which revealed a common pain point: small businesses overwhelmed by tasks but unable to afford local hires. She began recruiting support assistants from the Philippines to help her clients, and demand quickly outpaced her coaching services.
05:09 - First Support Assistant & Delegation Strategy
Her first support assistant supported business tasks like podcast publishing, blog formatting, and content scheduling. Barbara emphasizes the importance of focusing on revenue-generating activities and offloading low-value tasks to free up time and mental bandwidth.
07:39 - How to Identify What to Delegate
Barbara recommends breaking down your business into departments—marketing, finance, sales, legal—and listing both recurring and project-based tasks. She encourages entrepreneurs to accept the overwhelm and approach delegation methodically.
08:40 - Training & SOPs
She advises recording videos of tasks and having support assistants create SOPs from them, with oversight. Barbara stresses that support assistants are not problem-solvers by default—they succeed when executing clear, well-documented processes.
09:14 - Performance Management & Oversight
Barbara addresses the common pitfalls of outsourcing, including dishonesty and miscommunication. She urges business owners to review their own processes before blaming support assistants and to maintain oversight even in virtual environments.
11:40 - Client Niches & Common Thread
The Virtual Hub serves a wide range of industries—from real estate and e-commerce to fishing education and naturopathy. The common thread is that all clients operate in the digital space and use platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Infusionsoft.
13:01 - Client Onboarding & Fit Assessment
Barbara outlines their onboarding process, which begins with a free outsourcing strategy call. The goal is to assess whether a business is ready to delegate and whether The Virtual Hub is the right fit. Clients are taught project management basics and digital security practices before being matched with a support assistant.
15:08 - Recruitment Process in the Philippines
Barbara shares that for every 100 applicants, only 2–5 are hired after a rigorous 2–6 week vetting and training program. She avoids relying on resumes or interviews, preferring real-world performance tests. She highlights the Philippines’ strong education system, English fluency, and cultural alignment with Western businesses.
18:01 - Dedicated vs. Project-Based Models
The Virtual Hub uses a dedicated staffing model, where clients work with the same trained support assistant consistently. Barbara contrasts this with project-based models that rely on anonymous backend teams, which she avoids to preserve continuity and trust.
22:02 - Rapid Hustle Round & Final Reflections
Barbara recommends two pivotal books: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber and Built to Sell by John Warrillow. She shares advice she wishes she had known earlier—don’t get too emotional about setbacks. Instead, use failures and complaints as feedback to evolve the business. She admits she still gets frustrated but now wastes less energy on it.
23:20 - Closing & Contact Info
Barbara invites listeners to visit thevirtualhub.com for a free strategy call and to explore her podcast, The Virtual Success Show. She also shares that she’s active on LinkedIn, where she posts regularly and builds her professional network.
