Finding and managing high-quality Support Assistants
Eventual Millionaire
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Episode breakdown
Barbara Turley is an investor, entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of The Virtual Hub — a business she started by accident that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains and manages support assistants in the digital marketing and social media space for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level.
Barbara is also a mom (to her daughter and son), a wife (to her best friend, Eti), and an adventure lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and time out in nature.
- How crazy do the systems have to be when you start to hire a Support Assistant
- Sample tools to use in implementing your systems and processes
- How to have efficient and effective communication with your Support Assistants
- Recruitment tips in hiring the right Support Assistant
- When should you fire your Support Assistant
- How often to do the “How it’s going?” call with your Support Assistants
- Learn how Barbara built a business and had a baby at the same time with high-quality Support Assistants
- Reasons you fail with a Support Assistant (And how to fix it)
- It’s about leading people correctly, which is a mistake a lot of people make
- First thing I would suggest is before you go hiring a Support Assistant in the Philippines, it’s probably a good idea to map out what exactly that role is going to entail
- My first tip about firing people is to hire better. Take more time to hire better. Now, you will fire a few people
- The power of singular focus with a sense of urgency
The owner has to be the conductor of the orchestra. You’re not playing the instruments, but you’re the one driving it.
In this episode
00:00 Mastermind Groups and Business Support
Jaime Masters emphasizes the importance of mastermind groups or coaching for business owners, especially during uncertain times. She encourages listeners to join supportive communities to gain perspective and avoid isolation, promoting her own mastermind program as a resource for entrepreneurs seeking guidance.
01:45 Barbara Turley’s Accidental Business Journey
Barbara Turley shares how her support assistant business, The Virtual Hub, started organically when she informally helped coaching clients hire Support Assistants. Realizing the demand, she pivoted from coaching to launching a Support Assistant company without a formal business plan, growing it rapidly based on market needs.
03:30 Challenges of Scaling a Support Assistant Business with Family Life
Barbara reflects on balancing business growth with raising young children. She discusses scaling to 150 staff, her operational strengths, and the leadership lessons learned, including delegating effectively without abdicating responsibility and building a strong, empowered team.
05:50 Pivoting from Work-From-Home to Office-Based Support Assistant Operations
Barbara describes her decision to shift from a work-from-home model to an office-based operation in the Philippines. She highlights operational oversight issues at scale and the need for a structure that would support long-term credibility and growth, even though it required significant investment and rebuilding.
07:30 Managing Expectations When Hiring Support Assistants
Barbara explains the widespread misconceptions about support assistants, clarifying the difference between general assistants and specialized virtual experts. She emphasizes realistic expectations about skill levels, the necessity for clear leadership, and the importance of providing direction and systems for successful delegation.
09:45 Financial Impact and Long-Term Value of Offshore Teams
Barbara outlines the significant financial benefits of effective offshore teams, including increased profitability through time leverage and operational cost reduction. She advises persistence and proper management structures for entrepreneurs frustrated by initial challenges with offshore staffing.
11:40 Creating and Managing Systems for Support Assistants
Barbara offers practical advice on systematizing tasks before hiring a Support Assistant. She suggests mapping out recurring tasks by business department, creating simple process bullet points, and refining systems collaboratively with Support Assistant feedback to ensure clarity and continual improvement.
14:45 Documentation Tools and Simple Tech Stacks for Process Management
Barbara shares her preference for simple tools like Asana, mind maps, and Loom videos for task and process management. She stresses avoiding overcomplicated tech stacks and focusing on clear, accessible instructions to keep operations efficient and scalable without unnecessary software bloat.
16:40 Maintaining Process Evolution and Team Communication
Barbara underscores the importance of regular communication, recommending daily team huddles to keep processes updated and issues addressed promptly. She highlights that staying connected with the team ensures process improvements don’t fall through the cracks, fostering a culture of continuous operational refinement.
18:10 Client Onboarding Process Adjustments
Barbara discusses the importance of quickly iterating on client onboarding processes and creating clear oversight. She emphasizes setting reporting lines and ensuring responsibilities are assigned and followed up on, with regular quick check-ins to maintain accountability. She highlights her practice of having someone record decisions and task updates, typically in Asana, to prevent forgetfulness and gaps in execution.
18:41 Establishing Meeting and Communication Rhythms
Barbara explains the concept of a “huddle” as part of a structured meeting rhythm within a business, noting how essential it is to balance minimal meetings with effective communication. She stresses having clear, consistent communication tools and expectations — like tagging task owners in Asana — to prevent miscommunications, and ensuring that even leaders who don’t handle tasks directly stay aware and drive the business rhythm.
20:56 Evolving Processes Through Mistakes
Barbara admits that her operational systems were built through trial and error rather than formal expertise. She shares how mistakes prompted the creation of daily huddles and other process improvements. She views processes and SOPs as dynamic, living documents that must constantly evolve through daily tweaks rather than infrequent overhauls.
22:20 Managing Process Changes Within Teams
The conversation shifts to how to roll out frequent small changes without overwhelming the team. Barbara describes using department heads to disseminate changes within their teams, keeping everyone aligned through a shared methodology while allowing for individual styles within the framework.
23:51 Managing Different Personality Types
Barbara discusses the challenge of managing diverse personalities within a business and highlights the importance of recruitment fit. She shares an inspiring example of repositioning a misfit employee into a role where his strengths created lasting value for the business. The story illustrates how flexibility and human-centric leadership can unlock hidden potential in team members.
25:59 Recruitment Tips and Cultural Fit
Barbara emphasizes prioritizing character, enthusiasm, and positivity over skills in recruitment, as skills can be taught but character cannot. She explains the importance of cultural fit and realistically aligning roles with individual strengths to avoid forcing mismatches.
28:51 Detailed Hiring and Screening Process
Barbara outlines her company’s rigorous recruitment process, including attendance reliability, English proficiency, branding exercises, grit tests through unfamiliar tasks, and personality assessments via casual video interviews. The process focuses heavily on finding resilience, character, and cultural fit, with skills considered secondary.
30:57 Learning Recruitment Through Experience
She admits her recruitment process was built through years of trial and error, constantly refining based on bad hires and HR issues. Barbara encourages other business owners to be kind to themselves about recruitment mistakes, noting it’s a difficult skill perfected over time.
32:58 Firing Process and Performance Management
Barbara shares how her refined hiring process has significantly reduced the need for firing. When issues do arise, she differentiates between skill and will problems, addressing skill gaps through coaching and recognizing attitude problems as grounds for dismissal. She advocates for direct, honest conversations to resolve or part ways quickly.
34:31 Leadership Tactics and Vulnerability
Barbara touches on authentic leadership, advising leaders to balance vulnerability with strength. She recommends being transparent about challenges without burdening the team with personal drama, using honest admissions to foster trust and collective problem-solving.
35:50 Building Collaborative Leadership Through Vulnerability
The conversation opens with advice on how to frame challenges as team-wide issues rather than leader-only burdens. Barbara shares how she engages her team by openly discussing anxieties and seeking their input, fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels like part of a collective mission.
37:20 Balancing Vulnerability and Authority in Leadership
Barbara describes her transition from an independent trader to a leader, highlighting the importance of knowing when to be vulnerable and when to decisively lead. She shares how giving teams ownership over problems can ignite creativity and loyalty, while emphasizing the need for psychological safety to encourage risk-taking.
40:28 The Pitfalls of Weak Leadership and Team Dynamics
They discuss traits of weak leadership, such as public criticism and divisive tactics, and how these behaviors erode trust. Both agree that strong leaders can show vulnerability without undermining authority, and that leaders must self-reflect when facing team discontent.
42:42 Managing Entrepreneurial Overwhelm and Setting Focused Goals
The conversation shifts to how entrepreneurs often overwhelm teams by pursuing too many goals at once. Barbara stresses the importance of quarterly strategic focuses and giving team members permission to prioritize without distraction, which prevents burnout and promotes success.
44:48 The Value of Singular Focus and Regular Team Check-Ins
Barbara highlights her belief in singular focus for projects and business initiatives. She talks about using Asana for operational oversight and how she uses signs of slipping performance as triggers for one-on-one check-ins to maintain morale and clarity.
46:35 Simple, Practical Leadership Tools and Business Management
They geek out over Asana’s simplicity and utility in keeping projects on track, emphasizing that leadership isn’t about complex systems but about clarity and consistency. Barbara reflects on her personal life, balancing a business and small children, and how that impacts leadership capacity.
48:06 Realities of Working Motherhood and Leadership Fatigue
Barbara candidly shares her struggles with balancing part-time motherhood and business leadership. She notes the risk of personal depletion and the societal pressures on working mothers to present a polished image, advocating for honesty about the challenges.
50:47 The Importance of Focused Execution Over Diversification
In closing, Barbara stresses the importance of focusing on one thing at a time with urgency, both in business and personal goals. She shares how staying disciplined with her company’s service offering has prevented distractions and allowed for deeper expertise.
52:08 Closing Resources and Ways to Connect
Barbara invites listeners to explore The Virtual Hub, her content, and podcast focused on virtual team management. She outlines the company’s services and hints at creating more personal content now that she’s moving past the intense baby phase.
