Barbara Turley: You know, when it was like, you must trust your people. Like, of course we trust our people. However, there has to be some level of engagement. Or how about we forget trust, because trust is very emotional. And trust to one person can be very different to another person. And one person can unwittingly break the trust of someone else by accident and not even know.

So how about we just say, rather than not trust, how about we just build trustless environments where it’s like, irrelevant.

Ariana Cofone: Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of operations, one episode at a time. I’m your host, Arianna Cofone, and today’s guest is Barbara Turley, founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, which helps to scale businesses with virtual assistants. Now, if you are a founder, a CEO, an entrepreneur in any capacity, consultant, freelancer, you may be asking yourself the question, how and when do I bring on support staff? And this is everything that we dive into with Barbara during this interview. I found it especially helpful because I’ve had to ask myself that question. And a lot of it is reframing: how do you want your personal life to look? And how does that then get reflected into how you run your business? So if you are like me and walking that journey, this episode is definitely one to listen to. And if you’re not, I do think that you’ll pick up some fantastic tips along the way.

So let’s check it out. Barbara, welcome to Secret Ops. I am so pumped to have you here today because your knowledge is infectious. And the first time we had a conversation, I told you I left, know, buzzing to my husband about things that we talked about. But let’s kick off with your role as a CEO of The Virtual Hub. Now, it would be like a probably true assumption that with a team of over 350 virtual assistants, that your background is an operational execution. The fun part is your background’s actually in equity trading, and now you have started The Virtual Hub. So can you start us off with what is the connection between these two worlds that you have been intimately involved in for so many years?

Rewriting the Rulebook: Redefining Business and Motherhood

Barbara Turley: Sure. Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me. And I can concur that when we had our pre-call, you and I just connected so well on so many things around being female, in motherhood, all sorts of things, business and operations. And yes, you would think, I mean, even I would think that, you know, growing a business like this with that many employees, I mean, I had no background in HR, recruiting, or operations. I did not come from that world at all. And in fact, the world I came from was very much a single contributor. Yes, I was used to playing as part of a team. Really, being an equity trader on a trading floor, there is quite an element of it that is actually you.

And I mean, you’re interacting with other traders and things like that. But I think, you know, I used to always think, you know, this was an accidental business. I learned along the way. But as I’ve done this for sort of almost a decade now, I’ve realized that the skills that I picked up in my previous career were actually pivotal to me being successful here. So a few things I would say would be: on a trading floor, it’s really fast, right?

Decisions are made really quickly, and you learn the art of thinking fast and acting fast, and actually using a lot of intuition, right? And I think that was something that really helped me in my previous role.

And I know that in building this company, that has been a huge benefit to me—to be able to think on my feet, to be able to distill a lot of information very quickly into what matters, and then actually to make a decision.

The other thing that’s really interesting, and I think this is what came up in our pre-call, is that if you think about the business I’m actually in now, what we’re actually doing is clients come to us with a problem, and that’s our demand side, and then we manufacture and create and train our own VAs, and then we place those VAs into client accounts to help them to free up their time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And that’s our supply. Being in an equity trading role, you’re actually matching supply and demand at speed every day. That actually is the role. And really, when I first started off this business, I was the one that was doing the matching of supply and demand a lot. And we were able to do it really, really quickly.

And I was able to sort of get supply and demand right. And I think that was a key pivotal thing. It was a skill I took from that old world that I didn’t realize I was putting to work inside operations. I think, you know, being efficient, being fast, and being able to make big decisions quickly is a skill that I think has benefited me a lot, actually.

Ariana Cofone: Definitely. I, you know, when I think about equity trading, my familiarity is what I see in movies or in pop culture, right?

So I’m thinking like, you know, that’s my context. But the speed with which you have to make decisions, my guess is that initially the speed wasn’t there and you had to develop that muscle over a lot of different tiny decisions, just for the evolution of how you learned how to do that.

Because then you said a lot of it becomes an intuition. So how did it start out? Was it intentional, like, OK, here’s the data I take in to make a decision. Here’s what I need to do to create a decision around this. And then this is the output. Was it that intentional? Or was it like something that you think is in your DNA almost from the get go?

Barbara Turley: I think it’s in my DNA. Now, that doesn’t mean somebody else can’t do it. So as you were asking me that question, I was thinking, gee, it’s not that intentional. And that made me realize that maybe I’m just naturally like that. It brings me back to, I think we discussed this as well. When I was at school, I actually wanted to be a doctor, and I wanted to work in the ER. Like, so I wanted to be right there in the middle of the coalface of the whole thing. I wanted to be in the emergency rooms, and I was quite excited about the… I guess being at the coalface of that sort of an environment. And then I found myself, I didn’t end up doing medicine, you know, I didn’t get enough points at school, et cetera, and life took over, you know.

And then I found myself sort of… I did accidentally fall into equity trading and trading floors. And when I entered my first day ever entering a trading floor, I was like, the electricity of it and the same… okay, it’s not life or death, right? Let’s be honest. But the same speed of execution was going on that you would see inside of an emergency room or somewhere like this sort of area of a hospital.

And I think it fed that part of my personality that was craving this dynamic, fast-moving… that appeals to my personality, actually. And I do well in those environments. Having said that, though, now building the company that I’m in, I have to be careful. And I’m sure any of my leadership team listening to this are probably going, yeah, that’s the issue. I have to be really careful that I don’t drag people too fast with me because, you know, not everyone thrives in that type of an environment with that kind of pressure.

So I’ve had to learn to curtail that a bit over the years, I guess. Yeah.

Ariana Cofone: It’s interesting, these qualities of wanting to go into medicine, then being an equity trader, now being an entrepreneur. All of these qualities seem the same. And I actually never connected those together, where it’s not just the speed, but it’s what energizes you. I don’t… my husband is an entrepreneur too. And I’m like, what energizes you is not what energizes most people. We talk strategy at dinner, and I’m like, more? Can we talk about something just so boring? But that’s how the brain sort of gets focused. So what… let’s talk about the leap from equity trading into starting your own business. Because again, what drives you is similar, but different. Where did you see a need, and where did that leap take you?

Barbara Turley: You know, that’s an interesting one, actually, just the stage of life that you and I are both in, having children and doing all this sort of thing. You know, like being on a trading floor was great fun. I mean, I absolutely loved it. There’s not a lot of women in that role, but I really enjoyed it. I actually had a ball there. It was pretty… I mean, you know, looking back, it was pretty masculine and all the things that you think it will be. But I definitely knew, you know, looking at it every day, going to work, I was like, this is not like… we’re not going to be doing this as moms. Like, I’m not going to be doing this. I don’t know how long I’m going to do this for. And it was very clear to me that, you know, that was something that was going to be a time in my life, and I was going to move on to something else.

Now, then I sort of thought, maybe I would do my own business or something. And I did take a five-year trip into something else after trading. I actually found myself moving into a sales role in the financial industry. And then, lo and behold, the 2008 financial crash happened. Anyone old enough to remember that—it was horrendous. But interestingly, you know, out of that, it was horrendous. I mean, it was just a terrible time. But out of the ashes of that came a huge opportunity for me. And again, my sort of trading—I guess my ability to make quick decisions—came out. And I got an opportunity to hop on the coattails of some very clever people that were doing a buyout of a business from a big bank at the time. And that sounds enormous. It wasn’t as big as that sounds. But I remember just thinking I was given an opportunity to hop onto that, and I just remember going, yeah, I mean, you know… and I was like, I mean, it was a really interesting time because the markets were on their knees. You know, there was blood in the streets, all of the things that, you know… and everyone was like, are you mad? What are you doing this for?

And I basically sort of worked for free, to be honest, for a year to do this. But really, the way I saw it was, well, I mean, the markets are on their knees. So the downside is we’re all going to hell, or the upside is enormous. So it was worth… it was worth the trade for me. So I did that for five years, and I was an employee there as well. And I learned a lot about building companies. I just am so grateful for that experience because I learned so much about the hard parts as well as the glory parts. Like, it wasn’t all that easy. And that gave me a sort of a platform then to think about doing my own thing and going…

I’m actually still involved in that company today to a certain extent, but I left then and went on to build my own company. So that was the kind of journey, really.

Ariana Cofone: You picked up all of these skills throughout all these experiences, and then there’s the moment of you starting this business and like officially doing it. And I will say, having started Secret Ops and consulting myself, my husband and I joke that I’ve run through every single startup idea. Like, let’s make flaky salt. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. Why The Virtual Hub? Why virtual assistants? Where was the need that you saw, and what was the problem that you were trying to solve?

Barbara Turley: This is an interesting one, actually. And as I’m talking, I’m seeing a thread in my life going like, I just am someone who—and I’m still like this—I think when an opportunity comes my way, and maybe this is from my trading days, actually, I’m very quick to go, boom, there’s an opportunity. That’s the one I’m hopping on. And I don’t hop on many things. I say not a lot. But what I saw was I was doing consulting, just like what you were doing. I decided that, you know, I would do some business coaching, and I had this grand business idea, but it was my first iteration of business, and it didn’t really go anywhere, and I wasn’t feeling it. You know, I was trying to launch online programs in wealth creation for women and all these big things. And in the meantime, I was doing some coaching for some smaller businesses, you know, as an income stream while I was building this up. And all of them had the same problem. They were all like basically… and some of these businesses were 10 years in, you know, it wasn’t like they were new. They weren’t startups. But the owners of those businesses were running to the ground. You know, problems like, I wish I could pick my kids up from school. These were the things I was hearing. I wish I wasn’t always the mom that was, you know, dropping my kids off at vacation care during the school holidays or never the one at the school gate. And I was like, it doesn’t have to be that way.

And that was what got me interested in operations and scalable… I like systems and processes, and that seemed… I don’t know, maybe just appeals to my automation mind or my, you know, laziness, I guess, not wanting to do stuff over and over. I don’t know. But most of the business I was working with, I mean, they couldn’t afford to hire staff. They could bring on some systems, and I did help to build some of that. But when they couldn’t get staff in—support staff mainly—so, you know, they were doing their own admin and emailing and answering the phone and text messages and all this stuff. And I realized, you know, I knew you could get VAs in the Philippines simply because I had read Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week. Like everybody else knows this strategy. I’d gotten one myself, and I basically got some of her friends to work for some clients. And honestly, after about two months, I did that for a number of clients. And then I had some friends of clients call me to ask me, could I get them one of them? And one morning I woke up going, I’m in a new business here.

I’m running 10 VAs. I mean, this is a totally different thing. And I realized that actually the need and the problem was acute. And it was immediate with small businesses because people were calling me going, can you get me one of those VAs? I’m desperate. And I was like, but you can get one yourself online. But they didn’t have the time, the expertise, the confidence to run them, to manage them, to train them. And that was where it all started, really. Now, it was never… it wasn’t as simple as that, but, you know, that was the idea, the seed of the idea initially.

Ariana Cofone: It’s funny because what you’re talking about is that mental block of like, I don’t know how to get started. I don’t know how to source this thing. And I honestly, I’ve experienced that. Last year, I realized I needed help in running this Secret Ops thing. And I had an amazing producer, but I knew that I needed something else, and I didn’t know what that was. And the decision paralysis of trying to figure out… it’s horrendous. It’s really hard to figure out what you need. Especially for me, it wasn’t like, I need somebody to check my inbox. I need somebody to run my calendar. I was like, I need somebody to figure out how to run a whole podcasting operation. And how to do, right? Like it was this wicked challenge of technology and scheduling and how do we communicate and marketing. And it was really difficult to know what to do because I didn’t have a mold. So how do you guide people? Because I’m sure part of the process is literally just sharpening them through like figuring out their needs and then finding the right fit. But that’s the difficult stage. So how did you develop that over time? I guess how did you systematize it? Because that’s the part… it’s like, at 350 virtual assistants, clearly you figured out something that really worked.

Barbara Turley: Yes. So I like simplicity, and most ops people would agree with me that there’s… you know, it’s actually easy to build something complex. It’s actually harder to build something simple. Like, so simplicity is at the core of everything that I do—for myself, for the business, and when I try to instill it in anyone I’m speaking to. So this may sound simple, but I’m going to tell you this works for a one-person business or like a 400, 500-person organization. It doesn’t really matter.

My philosophy that I’ve developed over the years is: you wanted to hire… like for that podcast thing that you’ve just discussed, that is an entire system that needs to be built. And that’s overwhelming because you’re like, my God, this massive system. And a system is made up of… like simplifying this: a system really is made up of a series of processes that are a series of steps, and then a couple of tools. And then you’ve got to figure out like who… who’s running the system and who’s doing the thing.

So my philosophy really over the years is to say to businesses: in every business there are departments. Inside every department there are recurring tasks and project tasks. This is as simple as it is. Recurring tasks keep the business… the engine of the business moving forward. Projects move it forward, generally speaking, like the podcast—that would be a project, right? Now that turns into a recurring task later. To start with, it’s a project.

And then within each of those sorts of buckets, within each department, there are things that can be processed up, and there is a layer below which you can get support teams to do that stuff. So you always need a strategist. Of course, you need somebody to know what they’re doing, to know what processes need to be put in. And oftentimes, as a business owner, that ends up being you, and you have to kind of do that unless you’ve got a CMO or you’ve got some sort of VP of marketing or something like that. But invariably, there’s all these… the more processes that we build and we refine, the easier it is to actually delegate those to great support staff.

And those people… I think the mistake I see a lot of people making all the time is that they overestimate the amount of experience or expertise that somebody at that layer needs. Actually, what you need there is a really enthusiastic individual with the right smarts and interest, who is coachable, trainable, and wants to do it, and wants to be at that level. And I’ve built an entire company off that philosophy where I say: allow your great people—even if that’s just you or your department heads or whatever it is—allow them to be free to do the creative work, to come up with the strategy, to build the system, and then to delegate that down. And obviously I’m selling my own book because we do virtual assistants in the Philippines, but that’s a very cost-effective way of doing it, and making sure that the people strategy in your business, even if it’s only one or two people or a hundred people, it doesn’t matter, is fully optimized properly.

Ariana Cofone: My immediate next thought is, how do you identify those people? So how do you find those people? And I think this is for any role, right? If you’re an assistant virtually, if you’re a COO, there are qualities that you’re looking for for your business. How quickly can you tell if that person has those qualities? Is it like five minutes into a conversation in an interview? Is it weeks in? Where’s the sweet spot?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so obviously, if you’re dealing with a very complex role, I think if you’re dealing with something like a developer, if you’re hiring a developer, I think if you know what you’re doing and you’re also a developer or you’ve got expertise in that area, I think you can tell pretty quickly with those types of roles. Support roles and other types of roles, or where you don’t have any expertise, are much harder. In addition, some people are great interviewers. Some people do great in interviews, and they have brilliant-looking resumes, but they’re absolutely shocking on the job. And we’ve all hired these people, right? I thought I hit a home run. This person’s resume was amazing. We hit it off in the interview. Everything’s fabulous, but they work in a way that is like nails on a chalkboard for me, you know, in my company, and it doesn’t work, right? So everyone has had that situation.

Barbara Turley: The Virtual Hub, the way I built it, probably because I’ve had that situation happen too many times, is that we don’t recruit for clients at all. We actually recruit for ourselves. So we have a huge recruiting team, but we’re actually going out and hiring people from all walks of life. We’re like, they can come from wherever. And we are a Philippines-based… they need to be there, but all walks of life.

And we have a very extensive recruiting testing type of scenario where interview happens last. So like, we’re not interested in anything—even your name, where you’ve come from, nothing, your background, the whole lot—until we’ve come through this funnel. It is quite well built. And the last step really is interviewing, only after they’ve sort of passed some… and it’s not to test expertise, it’s more we’re looking for traits that we can… we’ve honed this over the years.

And then we put them—we do hire people straight away, full salaries and benefits—but they go straight into our training programs first. And it does not matter what your experience is, they have to sit the training program because we want to see: how do you perform on the job? And how can you take in information and learn a new concept and then take a process and execute it? And how good are you at communication? And how good are you at reporting? Do you show up on time? And are you nice to the person on the door? So we do that for weeks.

So, and you know, we are a training-led organization at The Virtual Hub, but we want to train because we want to train great VAs, but it also serves as like an extension of our recruiting process because it is quite difficult recruiting people. It is hard.

Ariana Cofone: It’s one of the hardest things. It’s honestly one of the most important, daunting, and exhausting things that I’ve ever had to do. It is so tiring. And talking about the training piece, you know, I have worked with a lot of clients, and I have a lot of friends who own their own businesses. And when I think about a VA situation that doesn’t work out, it’s because there’s not that level of foundation of like, here’s how we operate. Here’s the expectation. Here’s the baseline. There’s the assumed baseline of like, here’s what… of course you should do it this way. But without that training, you’re missing a huge piece.

Because not everyone… everyone can have the qualities, but if you don’t know how to connect the qualities with the execution, then, you know, as a client that’s hiring a VA, there’s kind of a weird moment where you’re like, this isn’t working, but I don’t know how to not… like, I don’t know what to do. And this also… yeah, how do you navigate that?

Barbara Turley: Like, I built the entire company to bridge that gap because I have felt that. I’ve seen clients go through it. And the amount of time it takes to hire people, to recruit and train and onboard and then manage them, that you kind of want to save your energy on that for the big roles. And I mean, with support roles, that’s where we sort of like to partner with clients, because although we don’t know your baseline as a business—we’re not in your business—but generally speaking, the clients… I mean, I kind of have a very high bar when it comes to excellence. So I kind of know what businesses really need.

And we try to do the heavy lifting on all of that through our training and our onboarding and our indoctrination of our people before we put them onto a client account so that we bridge a lot of those gaps. And it’s hard, like it really is. And you still get the odd one that doesn’t work out, and you’re like, what? You know, but it doesn’t happen very often. Thankfully, now we’re pretty okay with it. Yeah.

Ariana Cofone: There’s the two where it’s like, just like any role, sometimes personalities work out and they don’t. And that’s for any… we can’t always hit a 10 out of 10 out of the park too, which I think also kind of gets to part of me in hiring someone to assist me. The blocker that I had that maybe you can speak to is I was used to doing everything myself, and I had a certain way that I wanted to do it. And I had, you know, like I had this certain standard, and I thought that it had to be the way that I wanted it to be done. Obviously, in retrospect now, I’m like, well, that’s so dang silly, but it was a mental blocker for me to let go.

Barbara Turley: Well, I don’t know if it is, though. I don’t know… people say that to me all the time. Do you know what? People say that to me all the time. And I think we’re all just afraid to say, I’m a bit of a control freak, and that’s okay, right? Like, all entrepreneurs are control freaks. Kind of. I mean, within… really, I mean, it’s sort of something that… it’s like that question that everyone’s afraid to ask, like, how do I know my people are working? That is actually the question people want to ask online, but everyone’s… it’s too un-PC to ask that. It’s the same with this control freak thing.

Okay, so I’m micromanaging. I’m like, okay, nobody wants to be a micromanager, and nobody wants to be micromanaged. However, it depends on the role. So obviously, when you’re hiring someone who’s coming in with expertise, you want to allow… of course, you need to allow them the space and creativity and to come up with a strategy and then roll it out. However, from an operational point of view—and I think you would agree with this—I think in a company, we all need to agree on how we work, how we communicate, how we collaborate, and how we play this game inside this company together.

And we can’t have Billy going off and playing it one way, and then Mary liking a different tool. And like someone says, well, I don’t really like Asana. I prefer Monday, so I’m not going to use it. I’m like, well, unfortunately, we’re all on the one thing here. So there has to be some level of kind of… I call it flexibility within a structure. We have to decide on how we’re playing the game.

Now, when it comes to support teams, though, where really their role is to execute process—so all of the things that you were doing really well and doing it yourself and you have a high standard—I don’t think you should drop that. I think you make it into a process, and then you train someone to do it. And then you wait to see the holes, and then you retrain, and you explain why that step they did is different to what your expectations are. Now, you can’t do that ad nauseam, but, you know, let’s say you go on a journey with a person. And that is how you actually maintain a level of control over how things are done without doing it yourself. And that is process and system development and delegation.

And maybe I sound like a control freak saying that or like the manager, but it has worked really well for me. And I think people—certain levels of employees, certain levels of people that you work with—like it that way, because some people, especially in support roles, want to come to work, do a great job, know that they’re doing a great job, and have guidelines as to kind of what we’re supposed to be doing every day. And am I achieving? And then they want to go home to their families, and they want to get, you know, paid a nice salary for it. And not everybody wants to be creating their own pathway and trying to find their way through the fog in your business. You know, most people—they don’t want to do that, actually. They don’t want to do it.

Ariana Cofone: No, or they don’t want to do strategy, or they don’t want to do this.

Barbara Turley: No, that’s not the role, unless they’re in a strategy role—that’s different. Then they don’t want to be, you know, hemmed in on that. But I do think even people in high-up roles have to recognize that when they join a company—or even if it’s just one person—that there may be a way, an operational framework, that we work within here. And if they’re an operations person, of course, they can suggest change to that. But if they’re a salesperson who’s out talking to clients, whatever, and they kind of won’t use the way that we work, it can be really frustrating for the rest of the team because you’ve got this person who’s way out on the edge…

Ariana Cofone: Can we talk about that?

Barbara Turley: That drives me up the wall. I would fire someone for that.

Ariana Cofone: We need to talk about that.

Barbara Turley: Yep, I would just fire. I’d rather have a less successful person than that. That drives me mad.

Ariana Cofone: So if you’re listening and you are in sales, just know that we adore you. You do fantastic things. I was in sales. Yes. I will say there’s two groups that I find that are the hardest to get aligned with a way of working as a team: sales and certain creatives. I find it’s very difficult to get them to operate. And no matter what you do, it always kind of feels like you end up being a babysitter, which is the last thing I wanna be as an operator. And it feels unfair to me and my operational team. Why are we chasing this?

Why do we have to chase for this answer? You are a grown human who needs to, one time a week, do this update so we know what you’re doing and how we can help you. Is it really… this is the thing that I struggle with. Some people are like these lone wolves. They like the wild, wild west. They wanna do it their way. Do you just sort of create a boundary sandbox around them and say, all right, this is your sandbox, or do you say this isn’t the right fit? Like, I think if you can’t play…

Barbara Turley: I think… okay, look, it’s such a great conversation because I have felt it, you have felt that, people listening to this go, my God, this drives me mad. And it causes you to… any of the creatives or salespeople out there listening—the amount of stress that you put on the owner of the business, the person you’re reporting to, the rest of the team—is enormous right now. You can’t understand it because your mind is different. So creative people, salespeople, they tend to think differently. And we’ve got to talk about that.

But I think one of the tips I’ve learned over the years—and I don’t do this very well, but I’ve been listening to podcasts about this—is where it’s very important to explain to somebody you’re recruiting or interviewing how we work here, and actually making them aware of what they’re about to enter so that you can go like… they might have all the skill in this. And look, you may have to make a decision. Like, if somebody is a gun salesperson, you may have to just create that sandbox thing and let them at it. But, you know, I think it’s important to kind of lay it out from day one: the way we work here, because you are joining a team. And even if someone’s a lone wolf, you’re still part of a company. And you’re supposed… like, everyone in the company kind of needs to be rowing the boat at the same speed, in the same direction, towards the vision.

And it’s difficult when you have someone who just kind of wants to go their own path and doesn’t want to engage in that. So that’s step one. I think you can sort of say it up the front.

The other thing, you know, and I see this debate raging online at the moment on LinkedIn and everywhere about this remote work. And the big one is—this actually irks me, and I can say it publicly—but you know when it was like, you must trust your people. Like, of course we trust our people. However, there has to be some level of engagement. Or how about we forget trust, because trust is very emotional, and trust to one person can be very different to another person. And one person can unwittingly break the trust of someone else by accident and not even know. So trust is a very difficult emotional concept.

So how about we just say, rather than not trust, how about we just build trustless environments where it’s like irrelevant. And how we do that—so what has worked for me—is I instilled objectives and key results strategy two and a half years ago. And it took about a year to like… I mean, it was painful to get it in. Now I’m like, the people who are the lone wolves actually now like it because all they have to do is this one thing, and they know what they’re aiming for. They know what they’re working on. And then I just leave them alone because I actually have a status of… I know actually where it’s at.

And all I really want to know is—I’m not wanting to know, are you doing the job? I want to know the roadblocks to the deadlines, because if there’s a roadblock that I can remove for you… and often I found out later that there was a roadblock. I’m like, I could have removed that in five minutes if you just told me about it. They’re like, well, I wanted to do it myself. That’s fine, but we are a team. With roadblocks in particular, really all a COO wants to know, or a CEO, is: are we on track or off track? And if we’re off track, what’s the roadblock?

Ariana Cofone: Totally.

Barbara Turley: Well, I actually don’t want the details. I’m just like, if we’re off track, what’s the roadblock? Because maybe that roadblock is something that is insurmountable, or maybe we should kill that project because that roadblock’s too big, or maybe I can just remove that for you, you know. So I hope any creatives or salespeople listening—I think that is all that the COO wants to know or the CEO.

Ariana Cofone: Well, and the thing about it is, I say that my responsibility, like my goal, if I’m managing a team well, is to set up a way of working. And then I deal with all the ugly hurdles that you maybe can’t deal with, but I have to go to bat for and figure out. Like, my goal is literally to remove all of these things in your way, out of the way, or say, don’t waste your time on that. And listen, that deals with—

Barbara Turley: That’s your role. That’s the COO role.

Ariana Cofone: That’s the role. That is the role. Figure out the platform to get that thing out of your way. Figure out the stakeholder that needs to kind of get on board or get off board or be offboarded, right? Like, that’s for me to figure out, but for you to articulate.

Barbara Turley: I agree with you 1000% on that. I would think that is playing as part of a team and understanding that there is one… every organization, even if it’s just a one-person business or two people or three people, there is a vision, and you have to be aligned. Strategy and execution must be aligned. And when you have these sorts of, you know, outliers or people who aren’t really playing the game that way, it’s difficult. It makes it more difficult, and it slows the speed of execution down, which, given my background as a… I’m like, this is so slow.

Ariana Cofone: One thing you said got me too, which is with remote work. So I was a fan of remote work before it was a thing because for me, the open layouts in offices would drive me absolutely crazy. I couldn’t focus on work.

So I really liked giving the team the ability to do deep, quiet thinking work at home. But also, my team that I worked on traveled a lot at the time, so it’s like, we need to rethink what this looks like. Now fast forward—everybody’s working, there’s all these holes, people are taking advantage of it. Is my team working? And my question is, are they delivering on the things that you’ve articulated that they need to deliver on? And that comes from the objectives, the key results, and how that plays into their role. Guess what? If they’re not delivering on the thing, they’re not doing the work. Or if they haven’t articulated why they can’t do the thing, they’re not doing the work, and they’re not the right fit. That was the same in person as it is virtual. You just feel like in person that you can babysit and you can just have an eye on them to make them do the work. But is that really the right person that you want to be working with? And that’s where I get kind of annoyed in my work.

Barbara Turley: I would agree with you. Yeah. I mean, that’s what I’m talking about—these trustless systems.

Ariana Cofone: I never thought about that.

Barbara Turley: You know, this trust thing. I mean, I don’t really want to ask myself every day, am I not trusting my people? Am I trusting my people? I just don’t want to ask that question at all, you know, because like I said, trust is very loaded, and I just think we should remove it from the equation. And since I put in… I mean, the things that I’ve done at The Virtual Hub—we are all virtual. And I mean, I’ve got people in the Philippines working from home, and we used to be office-based, and then we went working from home after COVID. Now we’re hybrid. But hybrid for us is you get to choose. So they can come to an office if they want, or if a client needs them in an office, we have that, but we allow choice.

And really, the way that I’ve sort of managed to just build a trustless—meaning it’s irrelevant—environment is by saying we have objectives and key results. We’re a huge fan of the Asana platform. We’re an enterprise customer of Asana, and we run everything in there. We’re low on meetings. And I think once you have that kind of like an Asana or something like that—that’s our collaboration tool—it’s like our office in the cloud where we all show up to work, we do work, we report on work, we collaborate on work. And doing that with the OKR structure, for me, has been an absolute game changer. I don’t have to trust or not trust people. It’s either done or it’s not done. And as you say, if somebody’s not delivering on the results but they’re not communicating the roadblocks along the way, then that’s a HR discussion. We’re like, either you’re too… or maybe there’s no psychological safety in the team. I mean, but it changes the conversation because now you’re like, you’re either not engaging and playing the game with us and allowing us to collaborate with you to remove your blocks, or you’re not doing the work.

Like, I’d be honest, they’re actually not doing the work or working. Yeah.

Ariana Cofone: Yeah, that was always a problem before or after virtual world. Always. Always a problem. Listen, that’s why you also bring on team members that are fantastic at handling people and culture issues and those conversations. I remember I was speaking to an employee in the first 90 days. We’re not going great. And you have the introductory sort of conversation, and I was learning some new skills as a manager at that time. And I literally was like, listen, I don’t know if this is the right fit for you. I’m not sure. This is what I’m seeing. This is what I’m not seeing. I don’t know if this is going to be a long-term engagement. I want to extend this introductory period because I’m not sure if this is the right fit. And you know what? It was the best thing I ever did for them and for me because then they knew where they were at. I could be honest about what I was seeing, and we worked together to figure out a way forward. But it was the hardest thing to ever do for the first time. It’s horrible.

Barbara Turley: It’s awful. I feel badly. I actually get other people to do it because I’m so bad at it. But, you know, I think as well, if I could give advice to anyone out there listening in any role, at any level, in any company, if the debate—this raging debate about remote work and people wanting to work from anywhere and having autonomy and trust and all these things—the way that you get that is getting really good at making sure that you’re visible in an online digital-first company. And the way that you have visibility is to identify what are the deliverables that you need to deliver on as part of your role. Make sure that you are delivering on them and that you are updating at various milestones along the way. That’s project management. Every role now needs to become better at project management 101, which is this, and communicating effectively with people in your team, your reports, et cetera, et cetera. And that will eradicate this problem.

Ariana Cofone: Oh my gosh, I could go down this rabbit hole way longer. I do want to talk about, you know, navigating different life stages and how to do that within your work because you have a very interesting life perspective. Not only do you have started this business and run this business, you also have children. You’ve gone through being an entrepreneur while doing that. You’ve also been a part of large businesses. I feel like you’ve got a very intimate view of this. Yes, because also the people that you’re helping are also going through versions of their life stages throughout having assistance.

When did the light bulb click for you to say, listen, personal life needs to be the priority, but I also want to have these goals and ambitions and I want to do these things? When did it click that I have got to rethink how I’m viewing this? Selfishly, I’m thinking that for myself and my stage of life is I have all these things that I want to build and do, but I also know that I will never get that personal time back in my life with my family and my friends. What was that light bulb for you? If it was a light bulb, maybe it was a whole year of light bulbs.

Barbara Turley: Now that’s another one where, yes, I have a lot to say on this. So I think part of my personality—and my daughter, I’ve got a seven-and-a-half-year-old, and my daughter is like this—and it’s like, I’m like, oh, there’s me. She’s like… I call her defiant, but actually she’s not. She is so self-directed, this kid. She knows what she wants, when she wants it, and it’s like very clear on what she wants out of her day, her life, whatever. And I’m kind of like that too.

And I think over the years I’ve learned to go, I know what I want. And I was always very clear on that at every stage. It has changed over the years as well. It’s not been like one big vision. And then I decide that I’m going to have that life or that thing. Or when I wanted to be an equity trader, I remember there was a guy in the industry telling me, girls don’t—this is years ago, like 25 years ago—girls don’t do it. Girls don’t get those jobs. And I was like, well, damn it, I’m going to get that job. So like, you know, I’m a little like that in my personality.

Cofone: Say I can’t, I will.

Barbara Turley: Yes, I know. I’m just a bit like I’m going to do it my way, regardless of what the rule book says. So, and then I developed this idea that’s always been innate in me. And then I sort of developed it into a philosophy later when I was thinking about, you know, you’re thinking about vision and what to talk about on podcasts and all these sorts of things. And I realized that what I’m actually doing, and really I think people need to do this more, is that you first decide what the vision for your personal life is. And every other decision that you make in your life around career, around business, around whose party you’re going to, around what you want your weekend to do, needs to be driven by that vision first.

So an example of that would be when I left corporate and I did want to be in corporate, like I wanted to be in that world for a long time. But when I no longer wanted to be in that world and I wanted to become a mom, and I didn’t want to be a corporate mom—that’s the honest truth, I did not want that—I decided if I’m going to launch a business… I literally mapped out my personal vision for my next stage of my life first, following 10 years. I wanted to be a mom. I was living in Australia, but I kind of wanted to have an option to come back to Europe if I so chose. And therefore, the business model that I chose had to align with being mobile. This is 10 years ago, before remote was a thing, right? I had to be able to do it from anywhere, and I had to be able to be a mom at the same time because I wanted to be a mom first. I was like, I have to be there for my children.

And then I accidentally fell into this business. But of course, I saw the business model and went, this is virtual, this is—wow—I can do this from anywhere. We’ve clients all over the world. And I kept going on that vein.

And I think every time I’ve said no to something, it’s not because… it’s because of my personal vision for my life, you know, and how I want to do things. So that’s been pivotal for me to just stay focused on that. And then when I did become a mother—I’ve got two children now—I was very much like, okay, I want to be mum first. However, the rule book will tell you—and 10 years ago, it was—the rule book would sort of tell you that you can’t have it all, can’t be mum and grow a big business. And I was like, well, damn it, I’m going to show that I can. Right now, there have been moments where I’ve gone, maybe I bit off a bit more than I could chew there. Maybe I forgot to leave a little percentage of my time just for me. But, you know, those are lessons.

But I really was like, I’m going to throw the rule book out the window, and I’m going to be a mom most of the time. And then I’m going to get really good at systems, processes, delegation, and building a business as a machine to free me to do the things I want to do with my life and to free my teams. And now I’m like, to clients that go, you know, this is possible, right? This is… you don’t have to… like, whoever said you had to work 60 hours a week? Or whoever said that in order to build a scalable, large global business that is digital-first, that you can’t also be at the school gate every single morning and every single evening, or, you know, at the ballet class or, you know, these sorts of things?

I did all of it. I was at toddler ballet. I was doing all these things. And I just fit my life around it, really. But that came first, and everything else had to fit in there.

Ariana Cofone: When we were first talking, I haven’t actually talked about this on the podcast yet, but I’m expecting a little one to come very soon. And the biggest problem I had was I had no molds of what this could look like—owning your own business, having this. I had no one in my life really that had walked that path with all these options, right? I think part of the paralysis, again, with the amount of flexibility and decisions I had to make for myself, because it wasn’t dependent on what maternity leave or what family leave am I going to get from my work. What will short-term disability… you know, like it wasn’t determined by these parameters or these insurance policies. It was determined by how do I want to show up in my life, and what do I want my world to look like in this moment in time? And when you’ve never done it before, it’s like, I don’t know what I want this to be, you know? And I don’t know what I want this to look like.

I would say just in what you said was when I, like, for me, the light bulb moment clicked, which is I can make this look like however I want it to look like.

Barbara Turley: However you want. There is no rule book. The rule book is actually… the rule book, unfortunately, has been created by men. No offense to men, they’ve done brilliant. But if you think about women, our generation—maybe our mothers, maybe our mother’s generation—but really our generation are the first generation of women ever in the history of humanity to do the things that we’re doing.

Like, just think about that for a second. Our mother’s generation did do some, you know, of course women were working and that… I mean, look at what women are doing now and what our daughters are going to do. And there is no rule book. The rule book was written by men, and it was written really, really well, but it doesn’t really work for women. And we have the opportunity now to rewrite our own rule book. And that’s kind of what I did. I was like, I remember people telling me there’s no way you can run a company in the Philippines by not living there. And I was like, well, I’m about to. So.

Ariana Cofone: Watch me.

Barbara Turley: You know, you’re not there. I was like, no, I can’t be. I don’t live in… I’m not there, but I just found myself in it. So, and there’s been moments of that a lot through my career as an entrepreneur, and I’ve had to just go, there is no rule book. It’s my rule book, and I’m going to make it work. And if it doesn’t work, I’m going to feel it and go, that’s not really working, I need to change this.

And know that, I guess stand firm in having that within your control. It may involve changing your business model. It may involve, you know, shifting to different things, but that’s okay. And I think embrace it and trust that that is the right direction for you. I’d say that to any mom out there.

Ariana Cofone: And that’s a truth in any business at any point in time, right? You evolve, especially if you own your own business, it does evolve around your life as well. I feel like, like you said, there’s been this sort of segmentation of like, this is work world, this is personal world.

No, this is how… it’s like, whatever gender or whatever you identify as, you will have these two things and different life experiences, and your way of bringing in income and sustaining your life will need to look different based on that. Part of me, when I spoke to people about like, hey, so this is what I’m thinking I want to do for a leave, is this like completely bananas? It was interesting because I also watched the people I was asking—which are close friends, friends who’ve walked the path of motherhood before—I watched their brains stretch out what could be possible in front of me too. Is this possible? I think it is, but what do you think? What am I missing as a first-time mom that I could… and then all these good things came out.

The cool thing is, though, is that once I started allowing my brain to stretch, and I’m talking to my mom about it, then her brain is stretching, and I’m talking to my husband about it, his brain is stretching, and now what our life looks like in this phase is unlike anything I’ve seen anyone else in my life do. And there’s something really freeing about that. But it did take that moment of like, I don’t have to do it the way that everyone else is doing it. And in fact, that’s probably a stupid way to be doing it. Like, that’s not going to work for us.

Barbara Turley: I mean, when I had my children, I made the decision that what I wanted to do, I kind of did need to do. I mean, it wasn’t completely free. I couldn’t just decide anything. I did have to keep working, so I wasn’t really able to just take time off at that stage. I mean, I couldn’t. But I was able to reduce my working hours to like an hour a day. I was like, that’s okay. I actually don’t mind that. That was good. And I worked hard to get systems and processes and things down so that what I was actually doing was just mentoring the team an hour a day rather than doing anything. So I was just there for them to answer like, do this, or that’s an interesting problem. You know, and I sort of coached them to take over anything I was doing for a while. And that worked.

And the other thing, just outside of children, I mean, I also was like, you know… I mean, I’ve built this business from a laptop, which is sort of, you know, bruised and battered looking at this point. And I’ve done it from, you know, anywhere. And now that doesn’t work for everyone, so people like to be in a more structured environment. I didn’t mind, it worked for me. I was like, I did it from cafes, from all over the place. And I go, you can do anything you want to do, really. You just got to have the will and the want. And then you have to kind of lean into that and trust yourself that that’s what you’re going to do.

And if it’s not working, it’ll become apparent. And then you can… and that’s okay too. You’ll be like, this was a disaster. I should not have done this. And then you’re going to change course and go like… let it go. It’s fine. You’re not going to get it all right.

It’s been moments, for example, for me—I was just speaking with a friend of mine about this yesterday—when the entrepreneur journey and the motherhood journey, the negative… when the negative parts of those things collide, you’ll have days where they collide, and you’ll just be like, my God, this is so intense. And I guess that happens in corporate too. But I think that’s something that kind of has hit me that I didn’t expect to be so intense, but it is. And the days it is, you have to just go, today’s that day. Tomorrow’s a new day. I’m just going to let today go. I’m not going to achieve anything today. That’s okay.

Ariana Cofone: Totally. Well, the good thing is time keeps moving forward, whether or not we want it to. It keeps moving forward. If today was a hot mess of a day, tomorrow is going to be a better day. I mean, honestly, through this whole pregnancy journey, there’s just some days where I’m like, I don’t even know how to function. Like, I don’t even know how to be a human right now. And I have to do all these pieces. But if you do take a step back and just say, hey, today is going to be… I’m going to get maybe one thing done and not the list of 20 things, that’s still great. And also, when a little one comes along and they have that kind of day, would I want them to beat themselves up about it? Absolutely not. That’s life, right? You can’t have a 10 out of 10 day every day. But the wisdom of growing is understanding that having empathy for yourself and others is the greatest gift that you could give, right?

Barbara Turley: Yes. Yeah. I mean, there are days you’re going to change the world and days you’re going to do absolutely nothing. And I mean, the days, you know, it’s kind of difficult to… and I mean, I’m actually quite the procrastinator. I mean, you might not believe that, but I actually do it on purpose, though. I don’t actually procrastinate. But when I find myself procrastinating, I’m actually not procrastinating. I just don’t feel the decision yet. I know there’s something I’m not… there’s something I’ve learned this as I’ve gotten older, going, actually, I wasn’t procrastinating. I just knew in my gut there was something not… there’s something I haven’t connected yet. The dots are not connected, and therefore I find myself not making a decision or not doing something. And then one morning you wake up and go, ah, there it is. Today’s the day.

Ariana Cofone: Yeah, you get that shower thought.

Barbara Turley: Yes, in the shower.

Ariana Cofone: Doing your hair, you know.

Barbara Turley: Water, you’re like, ahh, there it is.

Ariana Cofone: Yeah. Yeah, something soothing and therapeutic. I honestly could pick your brain so much about this topic, but it’s time to get to know you as a human a little bit more. So we’re going to do some rapid-fire questions to wrap up this interview. I’m going to throw them your way—you go with your gut instinct—and here we go. Okay, what is your favorite part of your day?

Barbara Turley: Morning. I used to not be a morning person. I was a real night owl, but I love the very early morning. There’s something very pure about the very early morning when nobody’s awake and it’s nice—unless it’s 3 a.m. That’s terrible. Five is okay.

Ariana Cofone: I have to ask because you are truly a global person. You live everywhere, you go everywhere, you have your business in different locations. Do you have a favorite place in the world or a favorite city?

Barbara Turley: I think Sydney is actually my favourite city. Sydney, Australia, has been a very great place for me. I lived there for 18 years, and I spend half my year there and half my year in the Alps, actually, in France, which is very nice. This is a recent thing, though. It was a sort of goal of mine for a long time. I do love being in the mountains, in the snow. Not particularly in the heat—I’m more of a snow person.

So I love being… there’s something about the silence at the top of a mountain in the snow that’s like deafening. So beautiful.

Ariana Cofone: I don’t know if people would be like, deafening is beautiful.

Barbara Turley: No, it’s silent—it’s almost a sound, you know. It’s silent. It’s incredible. Yeah, I love that.

Ariana Cofone: What is the best purchase you’ve made under $50?

Barbara Turley: Wow, that’s stumped me. What’s the best purchase I’ve made under $50? Lipstick?

Ariana Cofone: Love it. Love it. I’m not short of anything. Totally. What is your favorite quote or a quote that has stuck with you?

Barbara Turley: Yep, my mom always told me, feel the fear and do it anyway. Feel the fear and do it anyway. And I’m like, that has stuck with me through my whole life. And I think it was… I don’t think she realized the impact she was having on me when she said that. It was very powerful. Yeah.

Ariana Cofone: What is something that makes you little-kid happy?

Barbara Turley: Look, I love skiing. I do love skiing. Actually, do you know what? Horses. I was into horse riding as a kid, and I don’t do it now. But even the smell when I walk into a stable—other people are like, that smell. I’m like, breathe it in, it’s so beautiful. I love the feeling. Horses are like close to source. It’s like you look in their eyes and it’s just incredible. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Ariana Cofone: If you were to go back in time and talk to yourself at the beginning of your adulthood and career, what’s a piece of advice that you would give them?

Barbara Turley: You have to cultivate deep… I’m not going to call it intuition because that’s hard. That takes time in your life. You have to cultivate a deep knowing in your gut, in your soul, of what you want outside of anything that anybody else is going to say. And cultivating that and learning to hear that is really, really important in your life. And it takes a long time to realize it. In retrospect, when you’re 50, you’ll look back and say, oh, I wish I’d known that earlier. I don’t know if you can have it when you’re 18. But I do think it is something that should be talked about more because every human being knows in their soul—you can feel it when something’s right. And you’ve got to listen to that.

Ariana Cofone: Yeah, tapping into that and understanding how to do that. Last one, which is: what do you want to be when you grow up?

Barbara Turley: Free. I’ve always chased sort of freedom. And, you know, I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that, you know, freedom is actually a state of mind. It’s not like some people think, if I didn’t have this job, or if I had more money, and all these things… and I’ve had all of those things, and I’ve still had days where I’m like, I’m still not free. I have a lot more moments of freedom now. But I think, yeah, I sort of strive to cultivate the freedom in my mind more. And on the days that I don’t feel free, I go, this is a mindset state. This has nothing to do with what’s happening around me.

Ariana Cofone: I’m sad that we’ve come to the end of our time here, but if people are listening to you and they want to see what Barbara’s up to or learn more about The Virtual Hub, where can they find you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so these days I’m doing a lot on LinkedIn, actually, and I’m posting a lot about, you know, building digital-first companies. That’s a big topic of mine, obviously—delegation, all these things. But I also talk quite a bit about, you know, some of the personal stuff and how it has changed my life and my team. And we’re going to be doing a lot more over on LinkedIn. So I’m just barbaraturley on LinkedIn. And if you want to find out more about The Virtual Hub, I do talk about it there a bit, but thevirtualhub.com—head on over there. And if you watch us over the next few months, we’re going through a massive rebrand, which is going to be exciting, so you might see some changes there.

Ariana Cofone: I’m going to have to stay tuned. Thank you again—you are fabulous. Thank you, Secret Ops listeners, as always, for tuning in. Please remember to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts, or on YouTube as well if you are a visual learner like myself, and we will see you next time. Bye.