VoiceActor: Powered by Clear Vision Development Group. This is Better Than Before with Tony Richards, a business leader’s podcast. Each week, we’ll provide you with top business insights, fresh perspectives from world-class experts, and the tools you need to lead better than before. And now, here’s your host, our business coach, Tony Richards.

Tony Richards: Welcome to the program, where we have way more updates than the Grand Theft Auto video game. Today on this program, my guest is Barbara Turley. She’s a master of the virtual assistant and has a company that provides those. She’s going to be here in just a minute to tell us more about how you can leverage this kind of resource in your business. And this month, I’m showcasing communication. Everyone thinks this is a problem in their business.

So I figure everyone is gonna want these leadership lessons here in February. So I’ll have the first one for you a little later on in this program. That’s all today on Better Than Before, brought to you by University Subaru. Join us for the Subaru True Love Event going on now. From here, been here, always will be here. University Subaru, homegrown and proud of it.

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Tony Richards: Welcome back to Better Than Before. Barbara Turley is standing by in Chamonix in the French Alps. And we’re going to be talking to her in just a second. Let me tell you a little bit about her, first of all. She’s an investor, an entrepreneur, and a founder and a CEO of the Virtual Hub, a business that she started by accident that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains, and manages virtual assistants for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level. With a strong focus on customized training and ongoing career development, Barbara ensures that her team is trained in cutting-edge programs like HubSpot, Ontraport, and some others. We’ll talk to her about that to best meet their clients’ unique needs in digital marketing, social media, personal assistant services, and administrative support. Barbara is also a mom to her gorgeous daughter, Ruby, wife to her best friend, Etty, and an adventure-lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and spending time in nature. Barbara, welcome to the program.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me, delighted to be here.

Tony Richards: Yeah, thank you for taking the time. I don’t know what it’s like. Did you grow up in France?

Barbara Turley: No, I’m originally from Ireland. Ireland.

Tony Richards: I should have picked up on that right away.

Barbara Turley: Well, I spent 20, I spent almost 20 years living in Australia, in Sydney, Australia, and I just came back a year ago to France.

Tony Richards: Yeah, I grew up with horses in Kentucky in the United States. So I don’t know how much difference there is in Ireland and Australia with horses, but just something we got in common.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I have horses. They’re like, I feel close to source when I’m around horses.

Tony Richards: They’re beautiful creatures. So in your bio, it says you started this whole thing. The Virtual Hub is the name of your business, and it started by accident. How’d that happen?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, it literally was by accident because you sort of think, oh, everyone tells you you have to kind of develop a business plan and figure out a problem that you want to solve and all that sort of thing. I had actually left a corporate career. I was 15 years in the investment banking and financial industry. I left, like many corporates, because I didn’t want to be a corporate mom, to be honest. And I had these ideas of maybe building my own company.

Sort of, so I started out doing some consulting, and I was consulting for a lot of smaller businesses and just helping them to get their act together, I suppose, with systems and processes. And what I found was that it didn’t matter what the business was that I was working with. And I worked with everything from a swim school to naturopaths and a lawyer, and lots of different types of businesses, but they all had essentially the same problem.

If they didn’t hire staff, they were never going to be able to grow. And if they didn’t grow, they were never going to be able to afford to hire staff. So they were stuck in this kind of vicious cycle. And I had read Tim Ferriss’s Four-Hour Workweek, like many people did. And I said, well, I had got myself a virtual assistant in the Philippines to help me with starting my own business and help me out with various things. So I said, look, I’ll try and get you one of these VAs, and then they can do some of the work and we can get on with doing the more strategic stuff. And honestly, before I knew it, I just found myself getting more calls for that than I was for business coaching.

And there was one day I remember thinking, I wonder, is there a business in this? I don’t know why somebody would pay me to do this for them, but people seem to want somebody who seems to know what they’re doing with this. The beginnings of the business were messy. It was just an offer to recruit some VAs, and it just kind of snowballed from there. And I mean, today we have 150 staff, and we’ve got a Philippine company, and everyone’s an employee of the company there, and we’re growing rapidly with clients all over the world. So it literally was by accident. It was months before I got a chance to catch my breath and create a website and think about what the actual strategy was for this business.

Tony Richards: So, from what I understand, you did all this, and you were in the process of having the gorgeous Ruby all at the same time.

Barbara Turley: Yes, I was. Actually, do know, I’m ashamed to say that, actually. There’s Ruby, who’s four and a half now, and I’ve had another baby since then. So I have Alexander, who obviously isn’t in that bio.

Tony Richards: Yeah, we don’t want to leave Alexander out.

Barbara Turley: No, Alexander’s there. So I always say I have three children. I have The Virtual Hub, which is six years old. I have Ruby, four and a half, and then Alexander, who’s one and a half. It’s been a journey, a journey.

Tony Richards: Are you planning on having additional kids?

Barbara Turley: Not a chance. This is it, I love them. That’s it. Too many sleepless nights. Yeah. It’s just being a mom. I mean, I sort of wanted to, I guess I wanted to show all women that with effective delegation that you can actually run, I mean, and you can run an amazing company and still be a mom and not drive yourself into the ground. But there have been moments that it’s been very challenging to do that. So yeah.

Tony Richards: So, were you using virtual assistants at the same time you were building the business about using virtual assistants?

Barbara Turley: Yes. So I have built the entire company with no people from outside the Philippines. So when people say to me, that doesn’t work for my business, I go, we’ve done this in every sort of business you could imagine—brick and mortar, online, or offline, product or service. Doesn’t matter. It’s just systems, processes, teams. That’s our thing.

Tony Richards: I was just about to ask what the most common objections are. I’m sure that doesn’t work for my business is one of them.

Barbara Turley: Doesn’t work for my business. How do I trust them? I mean, look, the environment we’re in right now with the current pandemic that’s going on globally has been an interesting thing because all of a sudden everybody has been catapulted into remote working, trusting the online thing, cloud-based everything. And we’ve been doing that for years. So I was kind of like, well, hasn’t everyone been doing this? But we’ve done sort of 10 years of digital transformation in the past year.

And that makes offshore staff and outsourcing all of a sudden much easier to accept and to get into for many businesses that may have had a block to it before, just because they didn’t understand how it would work.

You know, and so I have coached CEOs and business owners for all 16 years, coming up pretty soon. And you have to find ways to get them confident about using you as a service, right? So how do you instil that confidence in the people who are just a little uncomfortable with the whole idea?

Yeah, there are a few ways of doing that. So initially, it’s funny, the first webinar I ever put on, I used the word confidently and successfully, not because I’m a great copywriter. It’s just that was what I heard from people. I’d like to confidently and successfully nail this offshore VA thing. So I think because I’ve also done it—and I say me, but I mean the company is much larger now—

Because we’ve done this not only for our own company, as you said, we were building the company, we’re sort of walking our own talk, really. But we focus very heavily on client success. So we’re not just about churning through VAs and clients. We’re like, no, we actually want to partner with the clients that we have and with all of our VAs to grow their careers, grow these companies, and sort of have win, win, win scenarios.

Barbara Turley: And then what has ended up happening is people will talk about that. And we’ve been very successful with organic kind of referrals and people just hearing about us, and actually business coaches hearing about it or maybe hearing me on podcasts and stuff and promoting it to their people. So I guess, word of mouth, but also showing our success and people talking about it online has really helped.

Tony Richards: In my research, I’m just noticing in my notes here, it says that you say that using virtual assistants as an outsourcing tool is the new lean business model. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what you mean by that?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so the pandemic, like I said, it’s been an interesting thing because obviously a lot of businesses, meaning most businesses, some are thriving, but a lot of businesses have been thrown into kind of disarray. And I think over the last 10 years, we’ve automated, we’ve gotten efficiencies through business in so many areas, from marketing to sales, and particularly in the automation stuff that’s come in. It’s been a game changer for business.

But one of the last bastions, I think, of inefficiency is the number of businesses that have highly paid, very capable executives, let’s say, people who are doing high up the value chain, spending 30 to 40% of their time on admin that could be easily delegated down the chain. And that doesn’t mean that it’s lower value work. It just means that it’s stuff that could be delegated quite effectively, probably has a process in someone’s head, and could be delegated to someone in the Philippines who will be vastly cheaper, more cost-effective, but also you provide a great career for them. So it’s not like you’re doing anything wrong. And it goes straight to your bottom line. If you can actually free up your executive team, or just yourself as an entrepreneur, if it’s just you, to grow the business and to focus all of your time on the growth rather than the doing of all the process-driven stuff.

Barbara Turley: So I think it’s about kind of rearranging the, I guess, the chess pieces, if you will, of your people’s strategy and deciding, right, well, these people should be doing this stuff. And then we could process up and delegate more effectively and have an offshore team strategy for this end of the business that is going to lower our cost of delivery dramatically. And I hope all that makes sense, because I kind of blabbered that out, but that’s my theory.

Tony Richards: No, it does make sense, and it actually sparked another thought that I actually had when I was just thinking about our program today and knowing you were gonna come on the show. I wonder if, and I can imagine that you have some people who will say, I just can’t think of that many things they could do. Yes, all the time. I’ve made a list, and there’s only a couple of hours’ worth of work here. Do you ever hear that?

Barbara Turley: All the time. And then invariably, what happens is that this happens quite a lot. They go, you know, within three months or, you know, they go, my God, I can’t believe I was thinking that. And now I want this person full-time, but I didn’t hire them full-time, and I can’t get them full-time. That’s kind of what happens. So to get around that, the easiest way I have found to explain it to people is to say, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a billion-dollar company or you’re like a mom selling, you know, making some stuff at your kitchen table and selling it on Etsy. Every business has departments, right? It has your marketing department, sales, product delivery, product creation, inventory, you know, whatever. It’s got all these different departments, even if you’re the only person doing it all. And within all of those departments, there are things that have to happen on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever basis to keep the engine of the business moving. And an awful lot of that stuff you will find when you dig in.

Barbara Turley: To each bucket is process-driven stuff that, if you could just jot down a process for it, you could delegate that to somebody else. And it’s about saying to yourself, you might feel like there’s only a handful of things right now, but once you delegate those handful of things and you take your time and you go do something more business-building with that time, then there’s going to be a whole raft of other stuff that’s all of a sudden going to come in because you went after more sales or whatever it is you’re going to use your time for.

And then you’re gonna need more of that person. So you wanna start building them up. You know, I just think it’s, if you’ve only got five hours to delegate, I would sort of question whether you’re really in business or whether it’s a hobby, if that’s not too controversial to say.

Tony Richards: I know a story I like to tell a lot of times is about Sir Isaac Newton and the discovery of gravity. Someone asked him, “How did you discover gravity?” And he said, “Well, you would have discovered it too if that’s all you thought about.” And I’m sure that you have spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this work the best. And so in thinking about that, I know you say there are at least five reasons that this will not work. And so what are some of the reasons that people, this doesn’t work for them?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it’s like glaringly sort of massive problem. Number one is mindset. So if you’ve decided it’s not going to work for you, it won’t. Absolutely. You’ll walk in and sabotage the whole thing and convince yourself that you were right. So, mindset is a huge issue.

Tony Richards: That’s amazing how often that happens.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, you just got to get that. You’ve got to deal with that issue first. And if you think that your mindset’s not an issue, then really dig into that and go like, are you skeptical or trust issues and all that. So you’ve got to get over that first. The next kind of most common problem is the mind-reading issue, where, you know, a business owner says, I don’t have time to create systems and processes. And I would argue you don’t have time not to, because if you don’t, you’re going to be doing exactly the same thing in 12 months’ time as you’re doing today, and you’ll be as frustrated, and you won’t have grown an inch. So the job of running a company or building a business or whatever, it doesn’t really matter how small it is. I sort of see the job of the business owner or the business operator as the person who needs to kind of facilitate system, process, team structures, and to get those things moving, because a business is a machine.

Systems run your business, people run your systems. That’s my philosophy anyway. And I think people who just don’t want to—people often say to me, I just want an A player who can walk in and hit the ground running. And I go, that’s awesome, right? First of all, they’re very expensive. And when you find them, they’re going to hit the ground running, and then they’re going to take all the IP to the next offer that comes along, and you’re going to have no— that’s when you get into that problem of what if my people leave? Well, if your business were a machine, you’d plug another one in.

Tony Richards: Mm-hmm.

Barbara Turley: Depending on the role, but, you know. So thinking of a business more like a machine that is going to serve the vision that you have, I think that helps as well. That gets back to mindset. And then the third massive one is communication. I mean, how many marriages fall apart because of bad communication? It’s like the problem of the human race, really, is, you know, I say one thing and you hear another. It’s working on your communication style and, you know, handing the baton and delegation.

The communication of delegation is a sort of a skill that you need to master. It’s not something people are naturally good at. So for me, those are the top three. When would you say is the time to, let’s say your mindset is right, let’s say your processes are in place, and for whatever reason it isn’t working or there’s something—when do you know that this, maybe it’s just not the person for you?

Tony Richards: Maybe you need a different virtual assistant. How do you know when it’s not working?

Barbara Turley: Yes, that’s a great question. And sometimes it can be just a bad personality fit, right? It just might not work. Getting away from that’s kind of difficult because it’s sort of, you know, subjective and open for opinion and stuff like that. For me, the easiest way to solve that problem is to get really slick at systems and processes, right? Because then what ends up happening is if you leave very few places to hide, it will become obvious that it’s the person.

Now, it could be the person because of the training. So you might have a great person who’s actually a piece of gold who just needs more training. So again, you can’t just go, they’re useless, and shoot the person and get rid of them. You sort of have to be able to dig into it and decipher. Is this a skill issue or a will issue? And if it’s a will issue—if it’s a skill issue, you can train it potentially or move that person to a different, maybe better-suited skill area. If it’s a will issue, it’s going to become so glaringly obvious to you if you look at these other things first and you nail the other stuff, that it’s easy to have that conversation. You’ll be like, you know, clearly the person themselves will be able to see that they’re not a fit. So it becomes less of an emotional conversation and more of a kind of a data-driven, metrics-driven, you know, this clearly isn’t working. Perhaps we can agree to, you know, part company or whatever way you want to do it, but—

You know, people always go to the person first. That’s where I think they fail, and they just turn through hiring and firing all the time and wondering why it’s not working. It could be the process. It could not be the people; it could be the process. Go there first.

Tony Richards: Now, I noticed that there is someone named Peter who was copied on all our correspondence. Is Peter your virtual assistant?

Barbara Turley: No, he’s my brother.

Tony Richards: He’s your brother. Okay. I just wondered if you had one.

Barbara Turley: You know, I have loads of them, but here’s the thing. I started out with one VA, and then it got two, and then I had three. And then those people got elevated into higher-up roles where, you know, one of them became a project manager because I had too many people reporting to me. So this is kind of the trajectory that happens. You start off as your own business person, doing your own thing and managing everything, and you hire a VA. Then you get a few of them, and it’s all great, right? Then you have too many of them, and you think, no, someone needs to manage this.

So one of them will step up, potentially, to be sort of a team lead or a project manager role. Today, I mean, I’ve got a team of 30. So the internal team is about 30 people. I have a head of HR and a head of ops. So I don’t actually have a VA anymore because I don’t have a need for that particular role. But there are lots of them that work on these teams and are led by the head of HR and the head of ops, and we’ve got a more corporate structure now.

Tony Richards: Well, I’m glad we got into this. So how do you kind of know when to add one, and then how do you know when to add another one?

Barbara Turley: Yes. Adding one, and it’s all going great, I think it becomes obvious when everyone, the two of you, start to become stretched, and, you know, there are projects that aren’t—they aren’t getting to the project. And again, you know, it’s not the person, they’re overwhelmed. You’re now shoving too much down the throat of one person. You need to add another VA, right?

Barbara Turley: That’s kind of the easier bit. I think when you find yourself spending all day running the teams, if you have five or six of them and they’re all reporting to you, it’s that classic case of the minute you have more than five to seven people reporting to you, you’re gonna start—your whole role becomes managing them. And that’s when you need to hire a project manager or a team lead or that middle person so that they can all report to that person, and that person reports to you.

And then you start to grow your corporate structure from there.

Tony Richards: So it really needs to be skills-driven.

Barbara Turley: Yes, yeah. Or you might find that, you know, all of a sudden you’re doing more advanced marketing, and maybe you go, gee, my VA has been great, but, you know, she or he is not a strategist. You might hire a consultant. You might say, well, I’m going to get a strategist for like two or three hours a month, and my VA and I will be on the call with the strategist, and they will lay out the plan, and the VA will implement, and I’ll sort of just, you know, okay it all. That’s great, that’s called a high-low strategy. That’s fantastic. Because you don’t have to hire a consultant for 20 hours a week. You can just hire them, and then you can get the best consultant out there because you only need a few hours a month.

Tony Richards: So you have all of that at The Virtual Hub that can help a client figure all that out, right?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, you know, sometimes we see clients trying to get VAs to do something that really is outside of scope. And we’re like, look, we would step in and say, you know, your VA is going great, but you’re trying to get a $10-an-hour person to do a $150-an-hour job, you know. And we don’t have strategists, but we can recommend some, or we advise them as to what they need on that team.

Tony Richards: Yeah, that’s what I was saying. Yeah, you can act as their advisor on how to use particular strategies to structure all this.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. And we’re pretty clear about, you know, even when somebody comes to us, if we don’t feel they’re ready for a VA, we’ll tell them. We’re not really about just making the sale because it’s going to be a mess once they come in. We’re sort of—or if we say—I mean, I’ve been on calls with clients in the past where I’ve said, I mean, I used to do sales calls years ago, but I would say to them, look, a VA is not going to solve your problem. This is what you need. You need a consultant, and you need this, and then come back and get a VA when you’ve got all that in place.

Because otherwise you’re going to waste time, energy, and money, right? Getting a VA who is waiting to be told what to do, and you’re expecting the VA to come in and tell you what to do. You know, that actually happens. People think that that’s what they’re going to get.

Tony Richards: Right? Well, I love that way of doing business because you want to tell people how this is going to fail because of this, and is there a way to work around this, or maybe we’re just not a good fit for each other. Like you said earlier, if they don’t have the right mindset, if they don’t go into it thinking this is gonna work really well for me, it’s probably not gonna work really well for you. And letting them know up front that, hey, here’s a couple of ways I can see this working. If we can’t do it these couple of ways, the chances of success are pretty low.

Barbara Turley: Yes, and some people—we—but interestingly, the people, a lot of people we’ve done that with, they end up coming back. It could be two years later, and they show up again, yeah, and then they are ready, which is great. You know, that’s our whole website and everything at The Virtual Hub is designed to help people understand how to be ready because you need to be ready to bring anyone into your team, really. You know, there are a couple of things you need to have ready. You can’t just throw someone in the deep end and kind of expect it, unless you’re going to hire, you know, a big high-up role that’s going to map it out and strategize it up. That’s different from a VA.

Tony Richards: What is the typical size, either number of folks or revenue, or I don’t know how you define the small businesses that you work with?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, we, I’ve thought about this over the years, actually. Do you put a revenue thing in? I mean, we, we don’t ask revenue, but we kind of get a sense of, you know, if we think somebody, if money’s going to be an issue. But the reason being is that sometimes we’ve had some really small clients that came to us years ago that are still with us and going great, you know, and you think, you know, that some of them just have lifestyle businesses that they don’t necessarily want to become massive, scalable, you know, whatever. And then we have some very large companies that have grown teams with us. So I think it’s more for, I know at the Virtual Hub for us, it was very much about defining the type of client that we want to work with, the type of business. And that’s not an industry or anything. It’s a lot to do with mindset. So one of the pieces of feedback we get from all of the VAs when we do surveys and stuff is that they love the clients they work with.

And I’ve sort of said, I’ve done town halls and said, that’s no accident. Like we actually have a policy of taking on these types of clients that are nice to work with and are going to listen to our advice around delegation and, you know, team dynamics and how to bring this person who’s offshore into the onshore meetings successfully and all that kind of thing, and make them feel part of the whole thing so that we can actually get successful.

So it’s more about a type, and generally speaking, we like businesses that have a discipline around systems and processes and know the value of that in particular and are using tools like Asana or Trello. They’re already using LastPass, they’re onboard with something like G Suite, and they’re quite cloud-based. They’re using CRM platforms like HubSpot or Ontraport, like I said.

And they play in the space that we do in that digital marketing kind of thing. And that really is what defines the client, big or small.

Tony Richards: Well, regardless of their size or their revenue, I know your mission is all about absolutely stamping out small business overwhelm. So you’ve obviously done a great job helping people with that. And I’m sure that you’ll get some inquiries from being on our program from people who may want to explore this idea some more. So gorgeous is the adjective for Ruby. What’s Alexander’s adjective?

Barbara Turley: Gosh, yeah, the gorgeous Ruby. I was about to say the word cheeky. That’s the word that came to mind. He’s so funny. He’s hilarious. He really is. He’s only 18 months old, but he runs around after Ruby and pulls her hair and everything.

Tony Richards: Well, gosh, it’s, it’s, it’s nine thirty or a little past in France right now at night. So I’m hoping that the gorgeous Ruby and the awesome Alexander are down for the night. I so appreciate you spending this time with us. It’s just an awesome topic, and it sounds like you’re just killing it and doing a great job. So before I let you go, I’ve got a standard list of closing questions I ask every guest that comes on the show, and these are kind of rapid fire, so are you ready for this? All right, here’s the first one. What is the best memory that comes to mind for you immediately?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, let’s go. Oh, the best memory. Oh my God, the thing that shot into my head. I have a memory of when I was about three and I was lying. I think I might have been in a big bed for the first time, and I can remember the traffic going by and the lights on the road outside my house. Isn’t that weird? I don’t know why that came, but that was what popped into my head.

Tony Richards: That’s awesome. Who’s the number one hero in your life?

Barbara Turley: Gosh, I’m gonna say my mom. And I didn’t realize that until I think I became a mom myself.

Tony Richards: And what was your mom’s name? What is your mom’s name?

Barbara Turley: Ann, we call her Granny Annie.

Tony Richards: Well, everybody’s got something with their name in your family. What’s the top value you subscribe to?

Barbara Turley: Freedom. I like to feel free. I like everyone to feel free.

Tony Richards: As most entrepreneurs… yep. Who is the most important person in your life?

Barbara Turley: Do you know what I’m going to say? And this is a controversial one. I’m actually going to say myself because the more I look after myself, the better I can be for everybody else. You know, if I don’t… yeah. Yes. That’s what popped into my head.

Tony Richards: I love that answer. Be the best version of you if it’s possible. What is your favorite thing?

Barbara Turley: What is my favorite thing? My God, I was thinking coffee, wine, probably sleep. I love sleeping. I just love, yeah.

Tony Richards: Sleep is good for those who can. What is your favorite food? This ought to be a good one, living in France.

Barbara Turley: Gosh, you know what? This is—

Tony Richards: or Ireland or Australia.

Barbara Turley: My favorite food, I just love, you know those breadstick things, like especially if there’s a bit of flavor on it, like a cheese thing. I can’t believe I’ve said that. I should say something like brie or something really awesome, but I love anything crunchy.

Tony Richards: Yeah, sure. You know, I went to pick up some Italian food the other night, and they had a small bag with the breadsticks in it. And the lady, when I picked it up, said, “Are two breadsticks going to be enough?” I’m like, “Absolutely not. I need more.”

Barbara Turley: Two packets? Two bags?

Tony Richards: Yeah, that’s right. What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever been to?

Barbara Turley: Santorini in Greece.

Tony Richards: Yeah, I’ve got a Greek background, but I’ve never been. Yeah, I gotta go. It’s on my list. If you could describe success in one word, what would the word be?

Barbara Turley: Stunning. Yeah. Freedom.

Tony Richards: How do you want to be remembered?

Barbara Turley: Yes, I want to articulate this one right. I want to be remembered as the person who believed in people until they believed in themselves.

Tony Richards: Yeah, that’s the definition of being a good coach. If you could go back and give some advice to a young Barbara, what would it be?

Barbara Turley: Slow down, well, slow down, but I guess we worry so much as when we’re younger, you know, about sort of being successful, you know, sort of just trust in your own intuition and your own knowing. Yeah, that’s the key.

Tony Richards: Yep. Believe in yourself some more, right? What’s your favorite sound?

Barbara Turley: What’s my favorite sound? Gee, that’s, you know, actually here’s a funny one. You know, when you’re at the, well, if you’re into mountains, when you’re on the mountain and it’s silent, there’s like a sound. It feels like a sound, and it’s like, hey, silence.

Tony Richards: I know exactly what you mean.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, like I can’t, that’s amazing. It’s like a sound actually.

Tony Richards: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, but I can’t describe it. But I know what you mean. And finally, the last one, what is the best lesson you’ve learned?

Barbara Turley: To trust my gut. Yeah.

Tony Richards: Barbara Turley, I am so glad I got the chance to visit with you and become friends with you, and thanks for doing this again. Tell everybody how they can find out more about the Virtual Hub.

Barbara Turley: Sure, we actually have a special page on our website for your listeners. If you go to thevirtualhub.com forward slash better than before, you can get there. We’ve got the mini guide, which is the five reasons people fail with VAs, which we sort of delved into a little bit. And you can also book a consultation there with one of our team members if you’d like to discuss more about getting a VA. And there’s also a free e-course over there, which I’ve pretty much written, which is the scalable business success formula. So it’s just a bit more about using systems and processes and teams to scale your business.

Tony Richards: I love that because I have no doubt in my mind that if people contact you and they work with you, they will be better than before. There was no doubt about it.

Barbara Turley: Well, we’re on a mission to make sure they are.

Tony Richards: Well, Barbara, listen, since you enjoy sleep, I’m going to let you go. And thanks so much for doing this, and I hope we can catch up again sometime. Barbara Turley from the Virtual Hub. I’ve got your leadership and business lesson coming up next on Better Than Before.

Barbara Turley: That’d be great. Thanks for having me.

VoiceActor: Tony’s Monday Morning Coaching Memo covers topics ranging from leadership development to teamwork to company culture and more. Text the word leadership to 38470 to sign up for Tony’s Monday Morning Coaching Memo or sign up online at ClearVisionDevelopment.com.

Tony Richards: Welcome back to Better Than Before, time for our leadership and business lesson. And all this month, we’re doing topic communication. And today I want to talk to you about exceptional communication. It’s probably not what you think. Here’s a question for you. Have you ever noticed how many exceptions we place into our communication? Using the word but is typically a red light indicator. It’s an exception. We’ll be rattling off a string of nice compliments in our conversation, such as, enjoy being around you. You always have interesting things to say, and then we’ll throw in, but. Everything in the first part of that conversation is about to be canceled out by the thing we are about to say following the but. How could we eliminate the but from the conversation? We substitute and, as with most things, the majority of it comes from our thinking process. Many of us have a thinking process of either or. I can either do this or I can do that. I can buy this or that. I could become this or that. Either I stay home with my children or I have a career. I can clean the garage or I can play golf. The either-or thinking process limits you severely. I’m not saying that sometimes we don’t have to make tough choices because we do. We have a tremendous need to categorize things. We can put it here or we can put it there. But it has to go in either this place or that place. What if instead of either-or, we thought in terms of both-and? How can I get this and that? How can I stay home with children and have a career? How can I clean the garage and play golf? I always enjoy being with you. You always have interesting things to say, and next time you see a sentence, do not use the word but, use the word and. Next time you’re having a conversation with someone, do not use the word but, use the word and. Instead of thinking this or that, try thinking this and that. See what a difference it makes in your thinking and consequently in your communications. That’s our show today. Better Than Before is brought to you by University Subaru. Join us for the Subaru True Love Event going on now. From here, been here, always will be here. University Subaru, homegrown and proud of it. Go to our website, clearvisiondevelopment.com. We’ve got great products, great resources, and a lot of fun there. On behalf of our associate producer, Whitney Coker, and our chief producer, William Foster, I’m your host, Tony Richards, reminding you that everything gets better when you get better.

VoiceActor: Thank you for listening to Better Than Before with Tony Richards, a business leaders’ podcast powered by Clear Vision Development Group. For more resources from Tony, visit ClearVisionDevelopment.com. Join us next time for another episode of Better Than Before with Tony Richards.