Annette Lackovic: Hi, Annette Lackovic here. You’re listening to Cashflow Candy, episode number 17 with Barbara Turley from Energised Wealth and VirtualAngel Hub. Boy, does this interview take some twists and turns? Talking from investors to VAs. But before I go into that, let me share a little bit more about Barbara Turley.

Barbara Turley is an investor, entrepreneur, and wealth strategist for ambitious women who are ready to get their money pumping. What she also is gonna be sharing with you in this interview, though, is the accidental business, the massive pivot that happened in her business life, and she created a private moneymaking business that is helping entrepreneurs out there in the world really be able to help their business scale and really focus on the exponential growth that is available to them.

I’m proud to say that Barbara is a very good friend of mine. We have built a beautiful relationship in business over the past two years, and her expertise is exponential, a fantastic woman, and you’re going to absolutely love the power that she has in helping you embrace not only your wealth, but getting your business totally systemize to give it the maximum potential it truly can have.

So please enjoy this amazing and full of varied interview with Barbara Turley.

This is Annette Lackovic, and you are listening to Cashflow Candy. Join me while I interview successful entrepreneurs, business specialists, and share the ultimate information helping you increase your sales, doing what you love. So let’s start making some candy for your business.

Hello, Annette Lackovic here, and welcome to Cashflow Candy. Have you ever heard about a person creating a business by chance or by mistake or by a situation? Because that is what has happened to Barbara Turley and one of the reasons why I have her on today, and I say one of the reasons because, Barbara, how are you, Barbara?

Barbara Turley: Hey, Annette, how are you? So excited to be on your show.

Annette Lackovic: Thank you. I’m so excited for you to be here as well. And the reason why I say one of the things because Barbara is a wealth strategist as well and has a Wealth strategist turns Support Assistance expert absolutely gorgeous business called Energise Wealth. So it’s so great to have you on today, Barbara, and I can’t wait for you to share your insights.

And also the pivotal change in your life with your brand new business that’s just taken off.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I know.

Annette Lackovic: So, but can you just start to share with everyone just your journey, because I know that you were in the financial market and you’re a trader and it was completely different, a different thing for a female to be on the trading floor. So, can you just share with everyone your journey in the financial world, and then we’ll go into really about the change of life that’s been happening in the last, the last year. Not even that.

Barbara Turley: A couple, yeah. A year or two, really. Yeah. So basically, I mean, I started off, as you said, in the financial markets. I desperately wanted to be a trainer. When I was finishing uni and, back in the nineties, which is a while ago now, I can remember being told by a man in a business I was working in, he said, you’re never gonna be a trader. Girls don’t do that. And that was, of course, like a red rag to a bull to me, because I just thought, well, I’m gonna prove him wrong.

So I did, I managed to fight my way into a trading floor role. And honestly, I absolutely loved it. I did it for eight years. It was fast, dynamic, exciting, very masculine, I will say very aggressive and very masculine. And although I loved it, I kind of got to a point where it was sort of changing the woman that I was.

And I know a lot of women who work in that space will know exactly what I mean because you start to become very aggressive. You don’t mean to be, but you tend to become more masculine, energy-driven.

Annette Lackovic: Just like more of a dominant behavior style or?

Barbara Turley: Yes. Yeah. More dominant. I guess aggressive is probably not the word. Just fast thinking, fast moving, no patience with anybody else. Mm-hmm. That sort of thing. Yeah. So I did, you know, you sort of start to get to, I started to get to the age of 30, and I thought, I’m not sure I see a future for myself here. And it was a real problem because I actually loved trading. But I’d started to dislike the environment that I was in because it just wasn’t really serving me really.

And I think a lot of women would feel that, particularly in the corporate world, in very masculine, male-dominated environments. It can be fun, but it’s quite challenging. So I decided to sort of have a little change of career and I decided that I wanted to run my own business. Now, as many people who’ve made this decision will know, you sort of go, I wanna run my own business, I wanna work for myself, and what you’re going to do sort of stays in the background. I wasn’t really sure about what that was gonna look like.

Annette Lackovic: And you probably thought at that stage you’d have more time.

Barbara Turley: Time, freedom, work from home, all this sort of stuff. So at the time, I convinced my then boyfriend, who’s now my husband, I convinced him that it was a really good idea for us both to give up our jobs and go traveling for a year to think about what we were gonna do and to move back to Europe, where I’m obviously from. I’m Irish, and my husband is Hungarian.

So we did that. We jacked our jobs in 2007 when everything was, it was like the roaring twenties back then. Everything was great. And we went to New Zealand, we did a ski season, we had a great time. We traveled all around Australia, and then the financial crisis hit, and everything sort of went down the toilet overnight.

If people remember back in 2008, it was literally a meltdown. And Europe, in particular, Ireland, in particular, went from a roaring tiger to a total basket case. So I was left in this panicked position of going, yeah, I was gonna start my own business. I don’t really know doing what? And now it just feels like the wrong decision completely.

So I said, no, I’m panicking. I’m gonna go back to the corporate world. So I went back and I tried to get a job, and I could not get a job for love or money in 2008. I just could not. Nobody was hiring in the financial industry, and it was really painful. It was a very painful experience for me because I ended up, in all honesty, I ended up at the end of that, kind of the end of my tether, broken financially and emotionally. It took a whole year of being, I was away for a year and then a year of unemployment, and by the end of that, I was like, wow, how did this happen?

Annette Lackovic: Wow. And what a fall from Grace. Like, goodness me, like, oh gosh.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. So really, I went through quite a journey there, and in the end a friend of mine managed to get me in front of the CEO of Deutsche Bank, and there was a maternity leave contract that came up there, and they said, look, the markets are on their knees, everyone’s running for the hills. We’d really like someone who has a bit of experience in the financial markets, as in at the coalface, who could help our clients, who were all financial advisors at the time, to understand more what’s going on.

So I took a maternity leave contract, and I started traveling around the country talking to financial advisors. It, I did that for a few months, and then Deutsche Bank decided that they had to let the whole team go, ’cause again, this thing just kept rumbling on, and I got an opportunity from that. We were all let go, and I thought, oh my God, this is just going from bad to worse. But funnily enough, from the depths of that position where I really thought, I just don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do here, the greatest opportunity that has ever come my way came my way in that moment.

And it was a group of people from Deutsche Bank at the time decided to buy that business from Deutsche Bank and launch our own business, and the CEO asked me would I like to be involved in that management buyout. Now I had no money, and I can remember thinking, I’m gonna do this. I don’t know how. I’m just gonna say yes, and I’m gonna figure out how. And basically…

Annette Lackovic: Was this to be a shareholder? Is this what you mean, or what do you mean?

Barbara Turley: Yes. So there was a group of us, probably about six, really. It turned out to be about 12, but sort of six main people that bought that business, and I was one of them. And basically, to say beg, borrow and steal, I literally hit my family up, I hit my brother up for money. I did work for free for a while. I took some inequity rather than salary.

I did everything possible to get as much as I could, a shareholder company. And look, it’s seven years later now, and that business is now running 4 billion of funds under management, and it’s just going from strength to strength. It’s a multimillion-dollar business, and I’m still involved. I’m just not there day to day anymore. I’m still sharing. Yeah. So it was a great journey.

Annette Lackovic: And can I actually ask, it’s really interesting about jumping on and being a shareholder from the very start. And I’ve actually done the same thing, and we’ve actually just seen our shares last week, and I was doing big fist pumps in the air thinking, oh my gosh, it’s such a great idea. And the interesting thing was, the reason why I chose to take shares in this company was because I believed the people that were running it, the vision that they had and the business sense. So what was it that you really just went, yeah, I’m doing this and made you beg, borrow and steal just to get that cash together?

Barbara Turley: It was a couple of things, actually. And I love that you brought up the people there in the business that you’ve been involved in, because the key in, and I know we’ve had this conversation off air, but the key with any of these things is, there are loads of great ideas out there, but if you are ever gonna invest in something, you have to believe that the person or the leader of that is going to be the person to pull it off.

So, number one, the CEO of the company is Iron Bark Asset Management, is the name of the company, and the CEO was a man I didn’t know for a long time, but in the time I had gotten to know him, I knew he was the guy that was gonna pull this off. He looked the energy, the right attitude, the right vision, but it’s more about the energy and the attitude to creating something.

So that was number one. Number two was the markets were on their knees, as in, there was literally blood on the streets. Everybody’s selling, markets were down 50, 60, 70% as people might remember. So a lot of people said to me, is it very risky? But my 10 years as a trader had taught me that the best time to buy is when everyone else is running for the hills.

So I just knew, I thought to myself, okay, what’s the worst thing that can happen here? The worst thing that can happen is that the markets fall and continue to fall. And if that happens, well, the whole industry’s dead. I mean, really, if things got worse from that point, we were in a whole other situation.

Whereas the upside was, well, okay, things might be bad for a while, but markets tend to recover from each of these things. And the upside was absolutely exponential for me. So, you know, downside, I might have lost a year’s salary, and I was gonna be in the same position a year later as I was now.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah, I was gonna say, and you’ve been there already, so…

Barbara Turley: There’s the upside, a couple of million. And I thought, well, gee, I mean, there’s, you know, risk-reward. I’m willing to take that chance. So it also wasn’t technically a total startup. You know, there were funds we were buying, and there was already income coming through, and the model was good. So the numbers worked. It was the right time in the market, and it had the right team.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah, sounds exactly the same as how we jumped on it. It was already showing that success. And it’s quite interesting with Shark Tank, and I wasn’t expecting to go this angle of the interview, but hey, let’s milk that brain because I know your expertise is so wide. On Shark Tank, I noticed that the businesses they invest in are the ones that actually have runs on the board. So can we just diversify slightly? And what if we’ve got some people on here that are listening, and they are wanting to get some investors on board or angel investors. What are some key things that they really need to really get together to put something forward or even to be considered to have that type of a meeting?

Barbara Turley: Sure. I mean, look, the number one thing, everyone always thinks when they go to investors that the investor’s thinking, well, they are thinking, how much money can I make outta this? But often the bigger question in their head is, am I ever gonna get my money back?

Annette Lackovic: Yeah, yeah.

Barbara Turley: So that’s also something that we forget to consider. But also really what they’re looking for, and you’ll see this on Shark Tank, they’re looking for the person, like I said, the person who’s gonna pull it off. They have to believe in that person. And that person has to, almost like the self-belief has to be so strong, it’s magnetic to the investor.

But in terms of the more practical stuff, often businesses are very reliant on that person. So what they’re looking for is a business that is scalable. And a scalable business is one that is not reliant on the owner.

Annette Lackovic: Yes.

Barbara Turley: Or on the founder. It has to run. It’s not that the founder has to leave, but it has to kind of run by itself or have the ability to do that. And the only way you can ever really get to that level is by having systems and processes and automation and good teams and all of those things working like a well-oiled machine together.

And when you have those things, businesses tend to work nicely. Now, obviously, the big elephant in the room is you need to have something that people want. The product or the service has to be something that solves a problem. And when you have that, and if it really is a problem, then all of those things together create explosive businesses.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah. And two things you’ve said there. One is about that scalability. I just had a client yesterday, and she’s just been with me for a couple of months, and we’re just starting to put some new products together, and the new products were all so tailored and individualized. And I just said to her, this is just gonna be a nightmare for you as your business starts to grow because you are now just starting to get that growth stage. She actually acquired a business as she’s bringing it back, scaling it back down to re-systemize it. But they’ve already got great customers. I just said, this is gonna be a nightmare for you in six months’ time when your business starts to explode again.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. Do you wanna have, at the end of the day, we all want that personalized, and a lot of women say this to me, they say, I want a personalized, personable business. And I say, well, you can have that. Of course you can. But you wanna have something where the structure and the systems have simplicity at their core.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah, definitely.

Barbara Turley: Its business is a nice, simple, easy to understand, works beautifully. There’s no like, oh, well, she needs to know how to do that bit, and then that person, all this sort of… If you have to explain it too much, it’s probably not gonna work.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah. And that’s where it’s funny that the three of us were together, yourself, myself, me, and Heather. The three of us girls were together and we’re chatting about that, and we’re talking about packaging things, and I was saying how tailored my work is for my clients. And then afterwards, I thought to myself, what am I talking about? I’ve got so many models that I use, that I teach. How do I teach workshops?

Barbara Turley: Oh yeah.

Annette Lackovic: But that’s the difference, though. So if there’s any coaches there, you wanna make sure that your business is scalable in the way of systemizing a method. And when they want the one-on-one, they obviously will pay more, you pay more to have that personal service, but to really have that business growth, coaching-wise as well.

Barbara Turley: For example, I mean, I started out sort of as a business, I was doing a bit of business coaching, as you know, last year. And what I was finding was I had clients that were, I had a naturopath, I had a yoga teacher, I had a swim school, a tennis center, a lawyer, and a few financial advisors.

And the interesting thing was, this is where, I know we’re getting onto this pivot that happened to me, but the interesting thing that I found was that I was doing the same work and having the same conversations with every single one of them. It didn’t matter what their product was. The issue was that they had no systems and processes in their business, and so they couldn’t delegate anything effectively. They ended up chasing their tail all the time, doing all the work.

Annette Lackovic: So let’s talk about that now. I said to everybody at the start of this interview that you know how you hear about a mistake or a business that just sort of falls on your lap, or it’s an ideal situation. This is what happened to Barbara. So Barbara, can you please share with us your story?

Barbara Turley: Absolutely. And I mean, I’ll share with you, this sort of, it wasn’t quite a disaster, but how sometimes things can go wrong in your business and you think, oh my God, this is terrible. And actually again, like from the ashes of disaster can come the most amazing things.

And what happened to me was, again, getting to this power of the problem and understanding the problem of your client. I started Energise Wealth, and I have this big, I mean, Energise Wealth is really, it’s sort of like a media platform. It’s becoming that now where it’s everything to do with ambitious women creating wealth and impact.

So I started out with this thing of, I wanna teach women how to create wealth through either business or investing or both. But what I sort of started to realize from working with some businesses was that, yes, well, that’s great. It’s kind of far off in the distance a little bit, and some people, they’re so stuck in the trenches. And business owners will understand exactly what I mean here. You’re so stuck in the trenches of your business, just trying to get through the day-to-day and make it across that you just can’t even think about how you’re gonna end up being an investor or all of these other flash things that sound great, but right now you’re not in a position to even think about it.

So I launched a program last year, which went okay. It was a program called Get Savvy Academy, and it was really to teach businesses how to create scalable wealth through business and then to invest that money. But from working with clients, I realized that the actual problem, the real core problem that they’re having right now is time.

Where do I find the time to write the ebook, to do all the digital stuff everyone’s telling me I need to do, to even sit down and have quarterly strategy days? Are you joking me? I don’t even have time to breathe. That sort of, this is what I was hearing.

So I started, I’d had a lot of success myself in my own business in using virtual assistants and building systems and processes so that they could run the backend engine of my business without me having to really have much input. It took a while to get there, but that’s kind of what I was doing.

So I started doing it for some clients and saying, look, before we can work on strategy, I really need to free up your time, and I need to create some systems and processes in your business so that we can delegate it to a virtual assistant, and you can be free to do the higher work, the more income-generating work. And it worked a dream. It really was successful with clients.

So then I had a couple of clients said it to their friends, and of course their friends called me, can you get me one? Can you get me one of these VAs? And I had this happen quite a lot, and I thought, oh, hold on a second here. There’s a business. This is, I’m not even marketing this service. Here I am spending all my energy trying to get people into this program over here, when actually what they’re asking me for is, can you get me a VA?

So I launched a business called VirtualAngel Hub, as you know, Annette. And I had no website. I had no marketing materials. I mean strategy. I had a little bit of a strategy in that I knew the problem. And I did a webinar, and I grew faster than I could cope. That business totally took off. And yeah, it was an accidental pivot that was so fascinating for me.

Annette Lackovic: And it’s so interesting what you’re actually saying is that we’ve got this online world, and a lot of the women are stepping into entrepreneurship, and with that comes brand new work that they need to learn and create and to build their expertise now visually online and build their funnels and all their optic strategies. And there’s so much.

So let’s go into that because I know the majority of women listening are entrepreneurs, and they will be suffering from overwhelm. It’s all my clients suffer from that as well. And it is that they do try to juggle too much. And because the more their business grows, the more they’ve gotta work on their business, not just in their business.

So let’s start with this. Give me, say, two or three telltale signs when these people listening need a VA. So what are the two or three biggest telltale signs?

Barbara Turley: Okay. The biggest, biggest one, and look, I’m not saying you ever really get away from this, but the biggest one is when you’re having the, I actually have a picture that’s very effective to show this, but you know the picture of sitting at your desk, head in your hands, mascara running down your face and total meltdown, right?

If you are having those days, and I have seen clients go through this, and it’s heartbreaking, and any entrepreneur out there knows what I’m talking about when things, there’s so much to do, you just can’t cope. And as women, more so than men, I think our energy levels dip, go up and down, obviously with our hormones and our monthly cycles.

And there are times that you physically cannot cope with the amount of stuff that needs to be done. And with people who have brick-and-mortar businesses, it’s nearly worse because you have the day-to-day kind of flow of clients and customers and just general stuff, and then you’re trying to build, work on the business outside of that.

So if any of you are feeling that way, it takes a long time to get away from that. But if you are doing that, then it is time to stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you’re doing. And potentially you need to take the business to another level, which requires a bit of a team, processes, systems, so that you can be not in that position anymore.

Annette Lackovic: Yes. And what makes a difference for them saying, okay, I want a physical staff member to a virtual staff member?

Barbara Turley: Yes. Okay. So physical, the interesting thing about the internet these days, because all, just to be clear, all of the virtual assistants that we have are in the Philippines. So we hire them offshore.

So I, as I said, I’ve worked with brick-and-mortar businesses and online businesses with this, and the brick-and-mortar businesses all thought they needed somebody on the ground, and actually, they didn’t. They did really well with getting, even the VAs can answer your phone. To be honest, using Skype and there’s technology for everything. But of course, if you have a business that you need someone on a front desk walking through the door, obviously you need to hire somebody for that, but there’s just ways of, it’s just a matter of opening your mind to doing things differently and moving more stuff online.

Annette Lackovic: Mm-hmm. Definitely.

Barbara Turley: Yeah.

Annette Lackovic: And for myself, I was looking at having a new administration person and then you and I had a conversation. I was like, yeah, okay, great. Let’s just get another VA. And everything should be online anyway. If not, we’ve gotta create files on it so it is a paperless office as possible. So my belief was that I needed somebody physically there to tidy up stuff and do all that, but she just runs with the ball. She’s incredible, my VA.

And if I can just say to the listeners that Barbara mentioned about all her VAs are in the Philippines, and what you may not know is these girls, or you might be guys as well, but the girls that I know that I’ve had from the Philippines, they’re highly, highly educated, like gone through university, got degrees, and extremely intelligent.

And the other thing is that they actually have an American accent. So if they’re doing phone calls for you, they’re not gonna sound like a call center. And look, this is not to be judgmental in any way. But the sad thing is when we have all these call centers, they’ve got bad lines and they’ve got a very, very heavy, thick accent, and straight away they get hung up on.

And if your VA has that, it sort of just feels like it’s not legit. So what I absolutely loved is that my VA, I’ve had two, I’ve actually now the one that I’ve got from Barb, she’s awesome. She’s running with the ball. I’ve had her on calls with one of my clients, and it was getting pretty rocky.

We chose a very poor platform for a webinar. It just did not cut the mustard, so to speak. And we had Gem and myself on the call to really take him into a new premium model. And it was just beautiful to have her there with her intellect, her personality, and just the accent was very clear. And yeah, it was just a great experience.

Barbara Turley: I mean, just on that though, I wanna say as well, and I’d like to say this to the listeners too, because basically, VirtualAngel Hub trains, we recruit, train, and manage VAs for people. And we do, ’cause they need training too. They need ongoing training, and I’m finding more and more that they need an awful lot of my time, which is a challenge we’re facing in the business right now.

But there are also some people who think, oh, I’m gonna get a VA and just throw all these tasks at her. Mm-hmm. And my life is gonna change. And I want to be very clear that that is actually not how it happens in the beginning. And that you spent a lot of time with Gem and actually showing her your business because there’s only so far I can take them.

At the end of the day, they’re working in your business, and sometimes business owners want to just offload the tasks and not invite that person in as a team member, but keep them as an actual team member. You can’t just not speak to them for three and a half, four weeks and expect a great result, and that does happen.

Some business owners just offload the tasks with them and then don’t respond to messages, don’t have a weekly meeting with them, don’t really include them, and that doesn’t really work, I have to be honest with you.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah, ’cause they’re human beings at the end of the day. Yeah. And we all need that connection, that feeling of connection and satisfaction, and yeah, definitely.

Barbara Turley: I think valued. Being valued.

Annette Lackovic: Mm-hmm.

Barbara Turley: They sort of want to know they’re doing a good job. And mistakes happen. Mistakes happen, they do. But I always call mistakes gifts. It’s the other little tip I wanna sort of give you today, is that when mistakes happen, I call them gifts. It’s so frustrating. I mean, mistakes happen to me as well, but I always say to people to view mistakes as a gift because it’s either telling you it could be that your staff member is crap, and that maybe you need to revisit that.

But usually in my experience, what I’m seeing is that when I see both sides, it’s usually a process that is messy. Messy, inefficient processes that have margin for error that’s massive. And I’m a systems person, so I always look at it and go, oh my God, we could make that system so much better and more streamlined, and then less mistakes would happen. So yeah, that’s just a little…

Annette Lackovic: So, imagine this, we have the lady there. She’s hands in her head at a desk, mascara running down her face. I can just see that visual. She’s so pushed for time, and she’s thinking to herself, I don’t even have time to train somebody. Yeah, because to train somebody means that I need to step away from my busy schedule.

So let’s talk about the changeover, because I know it’s hard. Hard. I’ve done it twice, and it has to be done. So what can we do to ease that up to make it a lot easier?

Barbara Turley: Okay, there’s two things here. And the first thing I’ll say is thank you for bringing this up because I call it the bottleneck. And how I describe it is I say, you know those years ago they had those little boats that sit in the bottle, like a little ornament that sits in older ladies’ houses, I guess.

Annette Lackovic: Oh, yes, yes.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. Imagine, in order to get the boat out into the ocean, it has to sort of collapse down and get through the bottleneck. Now you can sort of, if you imagine that being yourself, when you’re inside the bottle where most small businesses are, and it’s kind of, okay, you might be crying at the desk and all that, but it’s like, I’m okay.

There’s, I’m making money. I’m working all the time, but I can kind of cope with it. And you do know that in order to go to another level, you have to first clamp down and go through that bottleneck, which is painful, but when you come out the other side, the ocean is there for you.

And that’s the hardest thing to get your head around, that actually it pays you in dividends later to stop for a second. And I would literally say, I’m in a situation right now where I’ve literally said there’s a couple of projects that are happening, and I need to pause them. I’ve gone on pause with a load of projects because I have a couple of systems that need to be fixed in various areas of the business.

It is worth it for me to just say, that’s it, go on pause. I might lose a bit of income for a bit, but I need to do it because the bigger picture is a long-term game.

Annette Lackovic: And you would not be able to get that extra income if you didn’t.

Barbara Turley: Yes. And the income that I’m gonna generate by pausing and actually getting this right and working with my team and my VAs and asking them, why is this a problem? Why are you making mistakes all the time? How could we work together to make this better? And often you get great insights from them when they tell you what’s happening.

So that’s number one. Sometimes you have to step back to step forward. Number two, and this is something I help with a lot with VirtualAngel Hub, I actually give people, everyone who comes into VirtualAngel Hub, the first thing they get is a training program for me. It’s not even that long. There’s three videos. They’re only about 20 minutes long, but they actually get you set up properly before the VA starts.

They help you to get set up so that when your VA starts, you know how to, you’ve got a sort of a system in place that they can just step into. And one woman actually said to me yesterday, she said, even without the VA, she just said to me, I have never run my business in the five years I’ve been doing it, I’ve never run my business this way. And even following the videos has been a game changer for me. And that for me just lit me up, because that’s what I wanna do.

Annette Lackovic: I’m going back to watch those videos now.

Barbara Turley: I think I need to remake them. I’m like, oh, so much better.

Annette Lackovic: So, so Barb, do you believe that we need VAs for different areas of business, like different qualifications? Like, when do you know when to step up to get a second VA or extend your VA’s time? Because I know a lot of people, they start off with just a small chunk ’cause they think, oh, I just wanna try it, but then they realize they need them for longer. So that happens. So when’s the, yeah, so let’s just go into that. When do we know when it’s time to get more or to extend the hours?

Barbara Turley: I actually, I’ve started calling our project managers, ’cause this is how I feel it should work. You need a, they’re called general VAs is the kind of main term for them. And basically, what they all are is they’ve got general skills. They can kind of like a jack-of-all-trades. They can do a lot of stuff.

But what I think you need is you need one main one, and then you need to be able to tap into specialists. You need like a web developer, a graphic designer, writers, bookkeepers, all these sorts of people. What I’d like to see is you’ve got a business owner doing the high-level work, VA keeping the whole systems running, knowing what they’re doing, and liaising with the experts in the background.

The other more specialist roles on a project basis…

Annette Lackovic: Mm-hmm.

Barbara Turley: To keep it all moving.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah. Good.

Barbara Turley: And then them liaising with you on what’s happening with all those different projects. So I say to people, in your business, you have two types of tasks. You’ve got business maintenance tasks, and you’ve got projects.

People often mix these things up. Business maintenance is all the things that keep the lights on, keep the business moving in the background. Projects are what drive the business forward. So, are you gonna do a webinar, for example, there’s a project. Are you going to launch a new product? That’s a project that might take a while, but it wouldn’t be an ongoing thing.

Whereas business maintenance is ongoing, daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that need to be done all the time.

Annette Lackovic: And so the VA, the permanent VA would manage those tasks, or would that still be the owner of the business?

Barbara Turley: No, no. The owner of the business kind of has to set them up. And then, you know, I sort of say to people, create your daily, weekly, and monthly task lists and then create processes for each one of them. Terribly painful, I know. But then you can hand that over to someone else to manage it, and this is how people can go on holiday for two weeks and not worry.

Yeah, because all those things just keep going, keep happening. And then with the project stuff, a lot of the VAs can actually do a lot of the projects. They can run webinars and stuff like that. But let’s say you wanted to create a whole new website, then you need to bring in a web developer and probably a graphic designer, but your VA could kind of liaise with them on your behalf and keep the project moving once you’ve decided what it looks like.

Annette Lackovic: And if you think about how many projects that we continually have, and especially with webinars getting bigger and Facebook marketing, and there’s all these different tasks that people are continually doing, I think it’s a great idea to actually have these project managers. Love it.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. We’re bringing in, I mean, we’re just building it now. That’s why I’ve had to pause for a bit. We’re bringing in all these specialists into the hub so that you have a space to go to one place and say to your VA, can you just go into the hub and see what they’ve got for, I need a website built or any, you know, and we’ve got people that we’re plugging into that process.

Annette Lackovic: Mm. So do you have something that the listeners can watch or listen to or download? What type of gift can you give them today?

Barbara Turley: Sure. We’ve got, if you go to virtualangelhub.com, we have got a three-part video series there, which is the three steps to outsourcing success.

Annette Lackovic: Beautiful. So it’s a three-part video, is it?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. Three. Yes.

Annette Lackovic: Okay, great. And if they want to find out more…

Barbara Turley: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Annette Lackovic: Where can they go to find out more?

Barbara Turley: You can go to virtualangelhub.com to find out more about that particular business. Or you can simply go to energisewealth.com, which is, if you’re more interested in more the wealth space and the women creating wealth and impact, that is another website that I run. So you can also connect with me on LinkedIn, Barbara Turley on LinkedIn, and social media. We’ve got Energised Wealth on social media across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, the whole lot. Yeah. Pinterest, everywhere.

Annette Lackovic: Look, before we finish up, tell me about the Feminine Wealth TV because you do have a fantastic blog video. Can you share everyone a bit about that?

Barbara Turley: Sure. Yeah. So I, a bit like your show here, I do a video filming, which actually has its own complexities, but we do…

Annette Lackovic: Yes, I used to do that, but then the hair and the makeup and then the broken microphones all the time. I do podcasting.

Barbara Turley: And yeah, so I have an online TV show called Feminine Wealth TV, and on there I interview female entrepreneurs, investors, and philanthropists. And the whole point of the show really is to showcase women who have done it, but to talk to women who are trying to do it about the steps they actually took to get there. So a bit like what you’re doing here.

And to show them it’s never linear. Sometimes people look like overnight successes, but you don’t know, you didn’t see the years they spent in their bedroom trying to build this sort of stuff in the beginning. And look, the feedback from the show has been great so far. You know, one woman messaged me recently and she said, I’m just curling up with a cup of tea and ready to watch Feminine Wealth TV, and I thought, that’s just my job done. So you can find that on YouTube and on Energise Wealth.

Annette Lackovic: And see, wouldn’t it be beautiful just to have a TV channel that you could just turn on after a hard day and curl up with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and just sit there and be able to watch things that are stimulating instead of some of the crap that’s on TV these days.

Barbara Turley: Married at First Sight, which is the latest one in Australia. You’re better off watching, listening to Cashflow Candy and Feminine Wealth TV. I’m sure you’d concur here. I actually learn a huge amount from the women I have on the show.

Annette Lackovic: Oh, yes. I continually take notes. I’ve got a page already from our notes today.

Barbara Turley: I’m learning a lot as the host. I always say to people watching, oh my God, like, I learn so much from watching this show.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah. And I play back my recordings all the time and have a bit of a giggle while I listen. And yeah. Barbara, to finish up, two pieces of advice. One for the entrepreneurship in startup mode, and when I mean startup mode, first six months of a business, just dived in and just starting to get it out there. And then the other side is the female entrepreneur. She’s in business, she’s got the confidence, her business is growing, but really needs to take it to the next level.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so for the first one, and I learned this probably the hard way myself, and you’d see, I know you see this in it as well when you deal with startups. We are very obsessed with our logo and what our branding looks like and what our website looks like. And I would say to you, get out and the first thing you gotta do, get out and talk to your ideal customer, figure out what their problem is, and then create a solution for it. You won’t even need the website. You don’t even need the website.

Annette Lackovic: It’s actually, you know what’s really funny, Marina, so Marina Passalaris, she was just on and her interview’s just released today. She said that she booked an event, rang the newspapers, and said, this is what this business is about. It’s running an event on this date. She hadn’t even created the business. It wasn’t even registered. No logo, nothing. And she’s been in business now for quite a few years, and just the last couple of weeks, she’s organized a business card for the very first time.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. You don’t need all that crap. No, no. I mean, I’m from a very corporate background, and I would tell you honestly, I don’t even have business cards now. I don’t even bother with them. Because I agonized over the color of my logo, and now I look back and go, oh my God, now I want to change it.

You know, your brand also is going to evolve with you. Your website is gonna change because you are going to evolve as a business owner, and all of a sudden, you’re gonna look at your website and be mortified that it doesn’t suit your brand anymore.

Annette Lackovic: Exactly.

Barbara Turley: You can see change so quickly.

Annette Lackovic: Mm-hmm. It’s the 80-20 rule, the Pareto principle.

Barbara Turley: Don’t worry about logos, branding. I know it’s important, but actually, in the startup phase, it’s not. It’s really not. The problem that you’re solving for the client is the most important thing ever for a startup.

When you get to the level where you’re making money, you’ve got a nice business running, and you wanna take it to the next level, usually the block happens where again, we, women in particular, we try and do everything ourselves. And the idea of delegating—and let’s face it, as entrepreneurs, we’re all control freaks. I mean, we are all control freaks, and that’s why we’re successful, because we know how we want it done.

But remember that delegating does not mean losing control. It means gaining more control because you control the process. If you create the process and you teach your team and mentor them to do it the way you wanna do it, it’s explosively good. And then it frees you up to do the bigger, higher work of growing something that you need a team, you need a team. Very important.

Annette Lackovic: Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Barbara, for such an amazing journey in business and your story. And congratulations with VirtualAngel Hub as well.

Barbara Turley: Thank you.

Annette Lackovic: That’s just such a service that I use, and I obviously always highly recommend anything that I’m passionate about. So if any of you business owners do need that help, check it out. Check out the three-part training series as well. And if you just want help with the financial side of it, building your wealth, go to Energise— is it energisewealth.com.au?

Barbara Turley: No. Dot com, just energisewealth.com. We’ve actually got that side. I think by the time this show goes live, we’re actually bringing lots of experts onto that platform. And the idea basically is to take women, meet women wherever they’re at in their own wealth journey and take them on the next step for them.

Annette Lackovic: Mm.

Barbara Turley: So it’s not just tips over there, you’re actually gonna go on a journey for you. And we will be featuring Annette Lackovic on that.

Annette Lackovic: Yes. You’ve been trying to get me for about a year now on your Feminine Wealth show.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, we’re getting you there. We will. But great programs are gonna happen this year on that platform for wealth creation and business and lots of different things, so.

Annette Lackovic: Awesome. Great. Thanks so much, Barbara, for sharing your insights today.

Barbara Turley: Thank you.

Annette Lackovic: And guys, hope you enjoyed this segment, and if you absolutely loved it and you know that there is another lady out there that needs to hear this message today, make sure you share the love and share Cashflow Candy with all your friends. Thanks very much, everyone. Bye-bye.

Voice Over: You are listening to Cashflow Candy. This is Annette Lackovic, and if you wanna join me for more interviews and great sales and business advice, make sure you subscribe to my Cashflow Candy show. That way, you get regular updates. Let’s keep boosting your sales and building the business of your dreams.