Jaime Master: Do you need some business perspective? When you’re inside the bottle, it’s really hard to read the label. You’ve probably heard that before. And I highly recommend you getting a mastermind. I’ve preached and preached and preached to a coach, somebody that can help you, especially during these trying times, right? This is the epitome of if you’re in the arena and doing the work. We have to really push out all that negativity and work on our own goals because amazing things happen when there’s this much change for small business owners that embrace it and not push it away. So I highly recommend that if you don’t have a mastermind to coach, now is the time because everybody else is kind of running scared. So if you’re interested in my mastermind group, go check out eventualmillionaire.com slash apply. We are taking applications now for our April group. So make sure you check that out. And, of course, let us know if you have any questions. I will only accept you if I think it’s the absolute right fit for you and your business and where you want to go. Either way, have an utterly fantastic, amazing day. Stay tuned. Potent advice and inspiration from real self-made millionaires. Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire with your host, Jamie Masters. Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I am Jamie Masters. And today on the show, we have Barbara Turley. Now you should check out her site at thevirtualhub.com for all of your virtual assistant needs. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me, Jamie. It’s very exciting to be on your show.

Jaime Master: Thank you very much. Now, I appreciate people talking about virtual assistants because there are so many nuances when it comes to this. And I know we can dive really, really deep, but you’ve had this for a ridiculous—well, in the internet world years—a ridiculously long period of time. So tell me a little bit more about how you started the business and how you’ve come from?

Barbara Turley (01:45.704): Oh, yes, yes. So the funniest part about this business is I call it my accidental business because I really, really didn’t mean to start this. And, you know, we all try to have business

Finding and Managing High-Quality Support Assistants

plans and all these massive kinds of strategic ideas that we’re going to work on. And this one was very organic, happened by accident. I was doing business coaching, and most of the clients that I was coaching, they were all suffering from the same problem, regardless of the business that they had. They basically were trying to—let me just unmute my—that’s terrible—my Skype, hold on.

Barbara Turley: All my VA’s in the Philippines, they’re all coming online soon. Anyway, so basically they were all having the same problem. Essentially, if they didn’t hire staff, they were never going to be able to grow and do all the things they wanted to do. But if they didn’t grow, they weren’t going to be able to afford to hire staff. So this vicious cycle that we all fall into. So I had read Tim Ferriss’s Four Hour Work Week like we all had. I had a VA in the Philippines. And I just started recruiting friends of my VA purely to help clients out, not as a business. And before I knew it, I just was getting more demand for that than I was for business coaching. And I was like, I wonder if there is business in this. And I literally pivoted overnight. Within about a month, it was like, bang, we’re in a new business. That’s it. No website, no name, nothing, just an offer that people wanted. And yeah, it started very organically like that.

Jaime Master: And what year is that?

Barbara Turley: So that is five years old now, so what are we in? Yeah, so 2014 started out, 2014.

Jaime Master: And it’s grown like—I mean, now you have perfect timing as far as the wave goes. And I love how you’re like, I actually listened to the market. They told me what they wanted and I just delivered it. And you’ve seen a huge growth trajectory for it too, right?

Barbara Turley: I have. I mean, look, today we have 150 staff. We’ve got full—I’ve got a Philippine company. We’ve got full office-based operations in the Philippines. I mean, it’s a big operation now. However, when you look at competitors and other people, you think, oh, it’s 150, it should be 500. But full disclosure, I also have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a six-month-old son. So I feel like I’ve been kind of doing this whole thing with children. And, you know, it’s kind of hampered the growth a little bit, but yeah, I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way, though. So like you were saying, it’s just not as easy as people think to get outsourcing right, and especially in another country. So I’ve got a lot of war wounds and success stories along the way.

Jaime Master: Gonna dive into that, but what I find so hilarious—and I know you know this—it’s like, but all right, 150, but I could have been doing five, right? That’s what we always do, “but I could have been,” right? You have so many other things. We were talking about this the other day. Like, you’ve got small children and are running 150 staff. Like, that’s insane as far as what you’re able to handle capacity-wise too. How do you handle it all?

Barbara Turley: I have a really good team. So I realized early on that I was accidentally good. I didn’t realize that I was actually quite good at operations, and I was quite good at running people and team leadership and all that sort of thing. I have an amazing team, and I also love mentoring people. So I tend to allow my team and my people to kind of take ownership of certain things, and they love that, and they love to take something and win with it. Now, that doesn’t mean abdicating all involvement or responsibility. It’s about leading people correctly, which is a mistake a lot of people make. So I have a great team. Also, I’m very good at sort of learning the lessons very quickly. So I spent the early part of my career—I spent 10 years as an equity trader in investment banking. And, to be honest, it taught me how to make very fast decisions, how to listen to the market, which is what you said, and how to match supply and demand really quickly and to know when the market is turning. So, for example—

Barbara Turley: I saw a shift a few years ago that I was doing a work-from-home model, and I very quickly realized that the problems that were occurring with that—on a small scale there’s not problems with it—but if you want to scale that, it’s quite difficult. Now, other people have achieved it, and kudos to them, but I just realized pretty quickly that if I wanted to be taken seriously in the market, both globally and in the Philippines by the employee base, I was going to have to change the model. So a lot of the growth hampering, I think, that happened along the way for me, apart from having children, was I changed the model completely and I kind of started all over again after the first two years. So this model is kind of the new one, and that’s been vastly more successful for me.

Jaime Master: What did you see? What were the little inklings that you were seeing that you’re like, I totally have to switch it? Because that’s as far as expenses go, and a totally different shift. Yeah, that’s a lot.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and I made everyone an employee, right? So there was health cover and benefits, and I did the whole thing. Yes, it cost an absolute fortune, and I’m probably still trying to come out of the back of that. But I’m looking at the long game and not the short game. Look, things for me like—I mean, let’s be honest, right? You know, do you know that someone is working, or are they at the hopping mall on their phone saying that they’re working? So there was a lot of operational oversight that became quite difficult to do. And at 20 people, if you’re running 25 people, you can totally do that. I got to 50 people and imploded. I was like, I just can’t handle this anymore. And the complaints and just too much going on, too much trust. And I thought, can you do this with 500 people? Now, there are companies that do it. For me personally, I was like, I can’t do it with 500 people. So that was a personal decision that I wasn’t doing it for me.

Jaime Master: I love this. Okay, well, we’re going to dive into that in just a second too, but you talked about abdication versus not and to be able to go into the nuances of what that is because I feel like, especially as newer business owners, they’re like, you should totally delegate to a VA and, no offense, they suck as managers. And then, you know what I mean, they don’t even know what to delegate first of all, then they don’t even know how to be a good manager. Give us a—I mean, let us walk through all the information that you’ve got.

Barbara Turley: Sure. So the first thing to remember is that the word virtual assistant has unfortunately exploded in terms of its meaning: anyone with a heartbeat who can type to anyone who can code an app, right? So you’ve got this whole breadth of virtual assistants, and what we’re forgetting is that they are assistants. They are not project managers. They are not content writers. Now, some VA’s will do that stuff, but it’s because they have specialized in those areas and they’re not really what a traditional virtual assistant is anymore. They are virtual experts. They have an expertise in a certain area, and they happen to be virtual. So coming back to the assistant thing, everyone thinks, just get a VA, it’s the policy, it’s going to solve all your problems. The reality is first you’ve got to temper your expectations around what it is, first of all, you’re looking for, and then what it is that the person you’re hiring for $3 an hour online is actually capable of delivering. So a lot of people come to us, even, and they say, “I need a VA. My biggest fear about hiring one is that I’ll have to constantly talk to them. I’ll have to micromanage them.” Now, nobody likes to be micromanaged, but in my speech, what I hear when somebody says that is, “I don’t want to create processes. I just want them to get on and show initiative and do the job.” And I’m like, even a local employee—like even someone who’s pretty good—you still have to lead, provide direction, have your systems, have your processes, and then delegate those out to your people to run. Systems run your business, people run your systems, and you’ve got to train your people, regardless of their level, on how your systems are. And I would say sort of the lower rung is the virtual assistant that’s taking on the recurring operational-type, process-driven task.

Barbara Turley: That is really low-hanging fruit for you to take off someone else’s place. So if that makes sense. No offense to the VAs that are there. The VAs in the US and Australia that are listening, you guys are like online business managers. I mean, you’re sort of a cut above, and you’re probably underpricing. So just me talking about the VA world, you just gotta be careful around your expectations.

Jaime Master: Thank you, thank you. The hard thing is because we’re sold a dream that’s like, it’s $3 an hour and we want somebody who’s going to be a CMO. You’re like, does that commute that way? Just so you know, it does not make sense. I can’t say that I haven’t been through what that was like, but I thought it was like this. Then you start getting in there and you start realizing what the expectations can be and how you can work within that.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. All right. Well, if I could put it in financial terms—and obviously I’m selling my own book here—but the reality is I do have a background in investment banking and in the financial world. If you get offshore teams right, if you get it right, and that’s a big caveat, it pays the largest dividends that you can ever imagine in your business because of the cost effectiveness on your bottom line. Like you are basically freeing—if it’s just you, for example, in the US or wherever—you’re freeing up your $100, $200 an hour time or whatever your time is worth to do more sales, to do more strategy, to do more client work or whatever it is you’re doing, or freeing up your team. Let’s say you’ve got a large business and you’ve got account managers and you’ve got salespeople and they’re doing admin work that’s tying them down. That really is cost effective to leverage an offshore team who are delighted with the career progression of this type of work. Yeah, dividends and pay is enormous for your business if you get it right.

Jaime Master: Well, exactly. If you stick with it. So I had a bunch of people in the Philippines for VA’s beforehand when I was managing, and then I realized that I am not a good manager and I can get better, and I put someone in between me and the team in the Philippines. Now we have a handful of people in the Philippines. That works so much better when you actually have someone that’s a better manager doing that. So please don’t give up just because you felt like you tried it as an entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs suck at managing anyway, and we need to get better. So there’s so many nuances, like I was saying before, about how to do this. When it comes to—let’s say we have a lot of tasks—we have admin, we really want to shirk—not shirk—but put these low-level tasks. Maybe if we have an executive admin and we know that they have even more tasks. Where do you start on the system side? Like, how crazy do the systems have to be when you start to hire a VA?

Barbara Turley: That’s a great question because some people go nuts on it and other people are too vague, right? So it’s kind of a happy in the middle. So the first thing I would suggest is before you go hiring a VA in the Philippines, it’s probably a good idea to map out what exactly that role is going to entail. So a lot of people don’t do this. They’re like, “I just need a VA,” right? And they’re going to just throw what it is. Yeah, exactly. So they go, “I need a VA, but I don’t know what I want them to do. But surely when the VA comes in, we’ll figure it out together.” Now, you can do that if you’re a good manager. That’s OK, and you can work that out together. But it’s probably better to sit down. People, when I say map out what the role is—the tasks—and are there processes attached, people get overwhelmed with that. They go, “I don’t know what that means.” So let’s distill it down into what actually does that mean. Every single business, no matter how tiny, teeny, tiny, small, or large, has departments. You’ve got your marketing department, your sales department, product delivery, invoicing—you know, there’s all these little departments. So if you were just to map out each of your departments and then list down the recurring tasks first—what are the little small tasks that need to happen on a recurring basis daily, weekly, monthly that keep the engine of the business moving? And you write those down. And then you think about, well, of those tasks, is there a specific way that I like it done in my business? Because everyone has a different flair. And I would suggest starting out with a few bullet points of how that task is to be done. And there’s your process. You don’t need to go wild. Now, the next step of it, though, is once you delegate that process, you want to see how someone else performs doing it, and then get feedback from them on their experience of doing it. And that’s how, together, you start to evolve your process because mistakes might happen because you didn’t think of the IP that you have as you were doing the process, etc. So usually people just fire the VA rather than saying, “Well, maybe they didn’t think the way I do through the process,” or “I didn’t explain it properly.” So that’s a very simple way of starting, and I think most people can handle that concept of doing it that way.

Jaime Master: Self-responsibility is always an interesting thing. So I love that you’re 80-20-ing the beginning of this because I feel like, just like you said before, people either go way too far all in, like I have to have all of the systems and processes, and then they’re so fine-tuned that sometimes the VA can’t follow it. They’re like, “I don’t understand,” right?

Barbara Turley: There’s too much detail, and they’re like nitty-gritty every time they do the task, and then the complaint is they take too long to do the task. Exactly, a chapter of a book before they can do it, you know.

Jaime Master: Exactly. It’s so funny. And I’m hoping one day—I know there’s things like WalkMe, and there’s some more virtual sort of training for SOP’s that we’re getting a little bit better at besides just the documentation. What do you guys use as far as documentation goes to make it easier for the software side of giving systems?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so I’d love to say that we do—I mean, you know, we should be doing it all—videos, audio—but the two we do: we use maps a lot, visual maps, like mind maps. Can you tell I’m not the one who builds them? So we do a lot of mind mapping. We do step-by-step processes as well. And we’re huge users of Asana. It’s not a process management tool; it’s a task management tool. However, inside the task, in the description, you can easily put the bullet points and the little Loom video of how to do it if that’s what you want to do. Keep it simple. You don’t need an intranet. I mean, that’s all great, but we just keep it simple. And ours runs pretty well with that. We’ve got a huge team that runs off that.

Jaime Master: That’s exactly what we do too, also, just as a side note. So I totally condone that method also because otherwise it can get too complicated. When you think of corporate—and I remember having the internal wiki and all this stuff—and sometimes people that are business owners are like, “Okay, well, I’m going to do all the things.” And it’s like, let’s just get you moving like this much, and we’ll figure—we’ll add in videos later. We’ll add in more.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, like just get a free version of Asana and put a couple of bullet points in the description. There’s a process, right? And then you will evolve that over time as mistakes happen and as experiences change. But people, you’re right, they try to overcomplicate things. They have too many SaaS products. They’ve got like Slack running, then they’ve got Asana, then they’ve got 400 other things that you don’t really need. Just keep it simple because otherwise you just overcomplicate everything.

Jaime Master: So when you evolve things like you’re saying, I think that’s the thing that’s tough too, is even if we have part of a process, a busy business owner taking the time to go, “I need to update that process,” usually falls to the bottom of the priority list. So how do you make sure that they get the information they need in order to perform the task?

Barbara Turley: So the VA—therefore this is where you come—this is where you’ve got this team huddle. The team communications are really important. So as a business owner, a lot of business owners, again, are not connecting enough with their team. They’re like, “I don’t have time to talk to them. How often should I talk to them?” I recommend the daily huddle, right? Huddle concept, where you bring all your team together for a non-negotiable sort of—say 10 minutes, but depending on the size of the team, it can be half an hour.

And we do it. I bring like 12 people together every single day across the world, and we do 30 minutes, and we run through all the pipelines—from recruitment, training, onboarding, clients, leads, sales, customer support. Now, customer support is a really important area because you’re getting feedback there on what the experience is like for your client. And typically, that’s the first area I say to people that you want to be evolving processes from there because every time you get a question or a complaint—

Barbara Turley: Go back to your onboarding process for your clients and change the process right there and then. Now, you don’t have to do it. You can say to your VA, “Can you change that process? And I want to know in a week’s time”—this is important—“how is that new process going with the clients?” So you don’t get “I forgot to do it.” You know they didn’t do it because you just haven’t asked, right? So you want to set up the reporting lines as well, and you want to stay—that’s oversight—you’ve got to stay abreast of what’s going on in the business. It’s a two-minute conversation the following week.

Jaime Master: Who writes that down? Because that’s the other—I have somebody record everything that I say because I forget to write things down, right? So who—who’s putting—do they put it in Asana? Where does that go, that information?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so first of all you need—so the huddle concept falls into the meeting rhythm concept. So in your business, you need to establish with your team a meeting rhythm. Now, people hate meetings, but you don’t have to have loads of them. We have hardly any of them, but everyone knows the huddle is a big thing for us every day. And then we have a couple of other huddles that are, you know, like HR or sort of smaller meetings. But then you also need a communication rhythm.

So you need a set of rules around how everyone on the team communicates. So for us, even though we discuss it on the huddle, whoever’s discussing it has to write it in the task and tag the person whose baton is being handed to. So you can’t say, “But I said it on the huddle.” Now, I’m terrible because I don’t write anything down, but I lead the huddle. I don’t actually do anything. There are other people. I’m the conductor of the orchestra. They play the instruments, right? So that’s the—

Jaime Master: Yeah.

Barbara Turley: The best tip I could give any owner listening to this is that you have to be the conductor of the orchestra. You’re not playing the instruments, but you’re the one driving it. Yeah.

Jaime Master: Yeah, especially going through your strike—I know that even if I said I was going to write it down, I just am not good at that. I’m just not good. Even if I’m like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll totally do that,” somebody else has to be responsible that I can check in with because, yeah, Jamie’s not so good at that. But knowing that is really important.

Barbara Turley: Well, I can see them updating Asana. I mean, when people are updating all the pipelines and stuff in Asana, they can see that they’re doing it in real time. So we’re doing it while we’re on the call. There’s no “I’ll do that after the call.” We do a little bit of that, but it’s important to have people—now, that’s our communication rhythm in our business because it’s very live. But you’ve got to establish your communication rhythm, and then everyone has to be on the same page. Not one person doing email and one person doing Asana and another person like Slack. It’s like, nah, this is how we do it.

Jaime Master: Ownership. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going like, is the way it is and you guys are going to do it, even if I can’t do it, you guys know. You’re working for me. So yeah, that’s what’s important. How did you figure out your KPIs? Because it sounds like you’re very attuned to what those KPIs are for your daily huddle?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, no, all mistakes. I’m going to be brutally honest here. You would think, you know, she has this background in investment banking—blah. I wasn’t good at any of it. It’s all developed from mistakes that happened, okay? So even the huddle came not because I was reading all this stuff—I kind of knew a bit about it—but I wasn’t really focusing on it. And we were having mistakes happening, even though we had a great communication rhythm. Asana was working well, but for some reason things were getting missed. So I introduced the huddle, and I was like, “Okay, we’re going to introduce this now.” And then it improved vastly. And then we had people not listening in on the huddle, and I was like, “Okay, now we’re going to write things.” Now we have this new process.

So this is this process evolution thing that you have to accept, that SOPs and processes are living, breathing, dynamic things that do not stop. They have to be changed. And it’s moving with the market that is your business and the experience of the people in the business. So yeah, mine is all trial and error, and it’s pretty good now. But, you know, again, it’s for a business of this size. So what happens when I’ve got 500 staff? Everything will have to change.

Jaime Master: I appreciate you saying that too. There’s different levels. And how often do you experiment or test, especially with stuff like this?

Barbara Turley: Every day. Like I said, I’m matching supply and demand all day. So in the business that I have specifically, it’s a people business, so stuff is coming up all the time. I mean, there’s like sick leave—you get one person that’s always sick, and you’re like, okay, maybe we should change the process for that sort of—you know. So I feel that process development becomes too big a job if you’re saying we do it every six months. Then you’re never going to do it. So just tweak—small little tweaks around the edges every single day, and in 12 months you’ll have transformed all your processes.

Jaime Master: How do you get everyone on board with that? Especially if you’re making a lot of tweaks. It’s like, wait, we changed the sick leave and I didn’t realize—are you putting out a memo? Like, how are you dealing with all that?

Barbara Turley: That’s a good question. So on my internal team, I have about—you’d think I would know the exact number—I’d say there’s about 25 or 30 people, but really there’s, I’d say, 10 or 12 that are like the leadership team sort of thing. They then have their own pipelines and processes down. So the leaders of those departments have to disseminate that, and they’re pretty good at it. I think I’ve just trained them well so that information flow is important and that we all do the same—again, it’s the same methodology. They have their own pipelines that they’re running, and their team is trained to do the way we do ours.

So yeah, I think you’ve got to come together with your team and establish kind of your way of working, and then how that fits for the rest of the team, and try to, as much as possible, bring them into the way that you’re going to do it—without pushing someone who’s an introvert into being an extrovert, if you know what I mean. You’ve got to kind of work—you know, it’s working within—you want them all to do what you want, but within their own capability and their own version of it to a certain extent.

Jaime Master: We need way more into that because that’s the other piece, especially when we’re working with bigger teams and communication, but we’re also talking about different humans. They have different love languages, they have different ways that they take things, they have introverted experts. There’s just so many nuances to humans in general. So for having a human—very, very human-based company—how can you manage that? What do you do to try and go, this person’s introvert and they want to hear that information this way, or they get it better this way, or they’re visual or analytical, or how do you deal with all that?

Barbara Turley: That is a very good question. I’ve got to think a bit deeply about that. So basically, the leadership teams are the ones who are dealing with me, and maybe I’ve brought people and mentored people up into those roles. Okay, I know what I’m going to say here. This is about recruiting well, okay? So here’s a recruitment tip. You can meet someone you love who’s very, very talented, who knows what they’re doing. If they are the wrong cog in your wheel, it won’t work.

In my experience—now this is maybe just for me—I find that because we run a virtual team and we have a lot of processes and systems and I’m quite system-driven, I need people who are able to plug into our system and work the way we are. Otherwise you have like, “one of these kids is not the same as the others,” and it sort of just doesn’t work. We’ve had that. And it doesn’t mean I get rid of them. I’ve had situations where I’ve had people who just didn’t quite fit in the model, but they were very talented.

And one of them—this is a great example—one of them was kind of a developer-type guy, like just kind of quiet and likes a dark room. And we tried to get him into this thing, and it didn’t work. Like he’d forget to show up for the meeting—just disasters. So I said to him one day, “I just need you to find something to do. Find a project and bring it to me.” And he brought me a problem that our VA’s were facing where they had to do an end-of-day report, which was tedious, annoying—they hated it.

Barbara Turley: And he built a little tool that helped them to do it really fast, right? And that tool was about two and a half years ago, and it evolved into an entire custom-built platform that we now use for HR management. And he’s the leader of it. And it’s just like—it brings a joy to my face every time I talk about it because it lit him up and it unlocked him as a person. And he presents once a week to the team on the new developments for the thing. And the rest of the week, he just works on it, and that’s it. Yeah.

Jaime Master: I got goosebumps from that story. That’s perfect.

Barbara Turley: I think every time I talk about that one—that was a lesson that sometimes you gotta find—you just gotta throw them a bone and hope they take it. Yeah.

Jaime Master: Okay, because leadership and managing employees is so important. Give me some more recruitment tips, though, especially with knowing who’s like you. So we know that we need to sort of match up company values for them. We know, especially if it’s a detail-oriented role, like there are assessments for this stuff, but what are some of the fine-tuning that you do to try and find the right people?

Barbara Turley: The biggest tip I can give is that, you know, it’s very hard to do—skills can be taught. Character—you cannot teach character, enthusiasm, positivity about life, and mindset, right? So we, in our recruiting for all VA’s, we’re like, don’t worry about skills and experience. We can teach you that stuff, right? But we cannot teach you to be enthusiastic about life. We can’t teach you to have strong moral character and values.

And sometimes we get that wrong, but we have ways now of kind of—we’re like, “Is this a cultural fit? Are they gonna shine here?” Because we can teach the rest, right? And that’s okay. Detail—that’s the first level. Then the next layer down is like, what role are we putting them into? So just because you find someone that’s a great cultural fit and has all the character and all that stuff still doesn’t mean they’re right for the job.

So you’ve got to think then, well, there’s no point in putting a floaty person into a detail-oriented role and trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. So it’s again being realistic about—and testing them. Don’t just ask them. Give them some tests and try and catch them out in the tests, and you’ll see their natural flair. And you might be like, well, this person isn’t detail-oriented, but God, they did a great infographic that was designed really well. Maybe they’re more of a social media person—or that’s how we do it anyway.

Jaime Master: So you actually—tell me about the tests that you actually run them through so you can take a look at them.

Barbara Turley: Okay, so our staff—this is why recruiting is so hard—our hiring rate would be about between 2 and 4%. So if we have to hire 10 people, we need 500 people to apply per month. So it’s really hard. And the first test—honestly—people will apply for the job, and we invite them in for testing. In the Philippines, over 50% won’t show up. They will say that they’ll book it, and they won’t show up, and they won’t contact us.

Barbara Turley: That’s the first test fail. We’re like, yeah, unprofessional. We’re like, it’s okay that something came up, but if you’ve contacted us and some people do and they’re like, “I’m really sorry. Can I reschedule?” that’s fine. So test number one there. Test number two for us is English because, of course, English skills in the Philippines—they all sort of speak English, but it’s different levels. So we have a couple of really deep English tests they have to do, and most people fail. That’s kind of 80% of people are gone at that point.

Barbara Turley: And then after that, we put them through branding tests. We make them listen to a podcast and pick out the top five points and make an infographic. Even if they have no idea what’s an infographic or what’s a podcast, we give them some training. And what we’re looking for, though, again, is not “are they a great designer?”—have they got the guts and the grit and the determination to take something they don’t know how to do and go, “I can do this”? And that’s what we’re looking for. I don’t care if the infographic is a mess. I’m like, you’ve got grit, right? So we’re testing for grit. That’s really what that’s about. And then if someone has flair for design, we’re like, wow, this person actually has great skills. And then we take that box and go, put them down a design route.

And then the final one is a bit mean—we make people do a video where we fire random questions at them that are off the wall, like something like, “What’s your favorite thing to have for breakfast?” And what we’re looking for there is people’s ability to just think on the spot and not panic and just goof out of the whole thing. And you get a lot of people’s personality through that. And then after all of that, we decide if we’ll bring them for an interview. So only at that point will we say, “Yes, we would like to interview you,” and 50% of people will fail the interview. So dubious character comes up in the interview. So recruiting is hard because it takes that level of focus to actually get it right. Yeah.

Jaime Master (29:27.138): We need to hear that information. I know a lot of newer—not even newer business owners—but newer to hiring are like, “Oh my God,” I’m like, this skill set people have refined over a long period of time, and they still are like—the percentages aren’t great. Well then, I bet you have firing tips then also. So what is your process for metrics and knowing when they’re not aligned and not doing a good job and then letting them go?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so here is the interesting thing about recruiting. We have refined our recruitment process to the nth degree at this point that we hardly ever—now I’m saying hardly ever—fire anyone. Even if we lose the client, we keep the VA because we have invested so much time and energy in training them, and usually they have worked out because they’re a cultural fit, they’re a character fit, and we can coach the rest. So my first tip about firing people is to hire better. Take more time to hire better.

Now, you will fire a few people. Sometimes, with mistakes—let’s look at the most basic things—people are making mistakes with the process. If you work together on, well, ask them, “Why do you feel this mistake is happening?” You might find some gold there. They might say, “Every time I do this step, this happens.” Or you will unearth that they’re just not doing it—like they’re just lying, right?

Barbara Turley: So it’s about knowing that nuance and not going straight for the “you’re a liar,” to trying to work with them first. And then if it just keeps happening, you can ask yourself, is it a skill issue or is it a will issue? Because they’re different, right? Skill—you might be able to fix it. Might. If they’re smart enough. If they’re not, well, you know, you may need to let them go. A will issue? Fire them because they don’t want to be there. Yeah.

Jaime Master: How do you determine will issues? Yes, and that’s the thing—because your hiring process is refined, you have a lot less than that. The people that don’t have as refined hiring processes will limp along for long periods of time being like, “It’s fine, everything’s fine,” and it’s not a good fit. And how do you determine the will versus the skill?

Barbara Turley: It’s the attitude. So you can tell from the tone of the person—how do they take feedback if you give them the feedback or you ask them to do something and you’ve asked a few times. And like, we all hate doing this. It’s like, I’ve asked, and they’re just not hearing you, right? They’re just ignoring you, and they’re just not doing it, right? And they’re just continually—then I think it’s—even if it’s not a will issue, it’s not a good match. And I think that person—you can tell them that the next step is, listen, I’m going to have to let you go. Or you can just ask them straight out, “Do you want to be here?” I mean, I’m very direct. I’d just be like, “Do you want to be here or not?” Because if you don’t, I think we should cut it. But if you do, I think we can work on it. Do you want to give it another month? And that’s it then. Yeah, be direct. Yeah.

Jaime Master: Yeah, and it’s always an interesting thing. And this is where you are an amazing leader, and a lot of the people listening might need to step up into the leadership role a little bit more instead of pussyfooting around, or—you know what I mean—there’s just a lot of tactics. So give me some leadership tactics that you’ve really learned as you’ve grown this.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so, you know, people talk about being vulnerable as a leader. Now, that doesn’t mean being a drama queen, right? So you can’t be on the phone every day giving your life drama to your team. But at the same time, it’s okay. Sometimes I’ll say to my leadership team—I will literally be in the huddle and I say, “Guys, we’re bleeding, and I’m just—I’m anxious. I feel anxious. I feel scared. I just want us to—you know, I just want you to know that we just need to lift.” And then they rally around you.

They come and rally around you. So that’s tip number one. So no drama queen, but it’s okay to tell them when your anxiety is high and that you need them to just know that you’re there for them. The business is okay, but you’re feeling a little anxious, and you want everyone to step it up a gear. They’ll respond well to that.

Jaime Master: Yeah, I want to break that a little bit more because that’s like the new things that you said are very, very—not unique—because we’ve been told a lot with Brené Brown and vulnerability and stuff like that. But there’s a very fine line between drama queens—you need to—right, making it their problem versus them supporting you, right? Because it sounds like the way that you did it, they can rally around, whereas I’ve seen other people do it—it’s like you’re blaming your team. You know what I mean? There’s just a lot of ways that they can do it that can be interesting. Can we just break it down a little bit more on how you learned how to do it?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so I think I was—because the business started very organically, it kind of was a mess in the beginning, and I was quite close to the team. And you’ve got to be careful—you’re close, but not too close as well. So there’s a fine line with that, too. So I think if I could distill it into one comment—because we could talk about this for hours—it would be that we are—I’m not the head and you work for me. We’re a team. So I’m like, “Hey guys, I’m anxious. Here’s what’s happening. Can we get together as a team?” I ask them, “What do you guys think? What do you think? Tell me. Like, what are you seeing out there? What’s happening?”

And it’s just amazing. It won’t happen the first time you do it, but if you build that kind of a, “Hey, I’m on the team too. I’ve got my sleeves rolled up here, and I want us to work together and share, and you tell me what you think.” If I could distill it into one thing, I think that’s it. It’s not like, “your fault,” and I’m the leader and I own it. It’s us. We are in this together. Yeah.

Jaime Master: And that’s a level of openness that makes it encouraging for them to actually help and want to help and support you instead. I really appreciate that. Okay, more leadership tips. I love this.

Barbara Turley: Yes. So another one, a follow on from that point would be what I have found through my journey with learning to lead, because honestly, I wasn’t in a leadership role in corporate at all. So I had to learn. No, no, I was a trader. So I was working by myself. So I was quite insular. I was on teams, kind of, but in a role that I ran myself. So that was kind of new to me to run people.

So that vulnerability thing at the right moment is good. And then there’s a moment where they need you to lead. So they need you to go, I’m now stepping, I’m going to go into the jungle, and I’m going to cut the jungle down, and you guys come behind me. So there’s that balancing act. But the other thing I find is when I do that and I throw them the problem—now, not all teams are going to do this—but I’ve thrown a couple of times, not expecting them to come back with a solution, and they have rallied together and taken ownership of it. And say to them, God, I didn’t expect that. And the answer I get is it lit us up to do that. We were like on fire with ideas, and it’s allowing people to take ownership, to feel ownership over a problem and to solve it, because everyone loves doing that. And if you allow them and give them permission to do that, you will find that you get great results eventually. Maybe not the first time, but over time you do. And they trust you.

They have to trust you. So, for example, if they try something and it goes wrong and you like to rip everyone’s face off, well then they’re not going to try anything ever again, right? So you’ve got to allow them space to make mistakes and to try things.

Where does it come in though on your—what was that?

Jaime Master: That’s exactly, that’s where I was going with that actually also, because it is one of those things where having the openness to be able to do that, but then you can’t, if it’s not the way that you would have done it or whatever, the criticism after the fact also creates a loop, right? There’s just so—

Barbara Turley: But if you know, here’s the thing, though: if you know how you would do it, then that’s the time to lead, right? That’s the time to say, here’s what we’re doing. If you’re facing a problem that is causing you anxiety and you’re kind of thinking, I’m stumped here, and you go to your team, and then you’re one team, one dream, saying—admit to them that you don’t know. Tell them you don’t know. And I think that will really work.

Jaime Master: Love it, love it. Actually being honest with how you feel. Not in every situation, of course. I really appreciate that there’s a navigation to it that I’m sure you’ve learned from.

Barbara Turley: Don’t start crying. Don’t start crying on calls with them or anything like that. You just got to temper the vulnerability a little bit.

Jaime Master: That’s the other piece, right? We’re hearing that it’s better to be doing this, which is amazing, and I love Brené Brown’s work. It’s absolutely amazing. And I also appreciate how much she talks about it because there are definite levels to where we’re at, right? It’s not permission granted to be your crying self as if you would be to your husband or to your inner circle, right? It’s not the same thing.

Barbara Turley: You have to be a strong leader. So like there’s being a strong leader and being vulnerable as a strong leader, and then there’s being vulnerable as a weak leader. And if your team sees you as a weak leader, they will not follow you. They will go to someone else. And that’s when the will will go, right? So people need a strong leader, and it’s OK for you to be strong but vulnerable at the same time. If that makes sense. It’s hard to give you exactly what that means.

Jaime Master: That’s exactly why I love these things. It’s funny because a prospect that I spoke to not that long ago was saying his whole team had turned on him, and I was like, give me the breadcrumbs on how this even happened, right? And so the distinction of a weak leader, what are some character traits or what are some things that come up if you are a weak leader to see if people can self-identify? Because nobody wants to call themselves a weak leader, right? Nobody. And yet I have a feeling some people that are listening are doing things or feeling things that may be leading them towards that way.

Barbara Turley: Things like divide and conquer, criticizing people on public calls, like big team calls. We all lose it occasionally, let’s be honest. We’re all human. It’s OK to lose your shit, right? Sorry, but it’s totally fine. Apologize afterwards. Come back and be vulnerable afterwards and go, I’m so sorry, I did it the wrong way, whatever. But when I hear of teams kind of ganging up and leaving a leader, it’s very hard to look at yourself in the mirror because a strong leader that is respected and people want to follow you, it’ll take a lot for them to leave you, like a lot, and they would probably be devastated leaving you. So yeah, I think you’ve got to look in the mirror at that point and ask yourself why people don’t want to follow you. But it’s a hard one to do. I mean, it’s kind of like people who just have natural sex appeal. I feel like it’s just a natural innate ability of some people to lead really, really well. But you can learn to be better. So I think if that happens to you, do some work around yourself, yeah, to be a better leader.

Jaime Master: We have a tendency to work with the owner and the operator, and then we ask the operator confidentially, like, how is it really working with them? And then we can coach the owner around some things that have to do with that because it’s hard to have these open conversations, especially if you haven’t built that trust to begin with, to realize what you’re actually doing. It’s like they see all the problems, but they don’t know why. I’m so confused and aware of the first step, but trying to figure out what that is is really difficult unless you have somebody that can be honest and truthful.

Barbara Turley: I think as well for your leadership team, it’s important. As entrepreneurs, we tend to overwhelm our teams because we are charging forward and leaving our teams in a bloodbath behind us. Yeah, and we’re always talking about revenue targets and how big we want to be, and does that really matter for them? I think of breaking things down into strategic quarterly focuses.

They came after me! Yes!

Barbara Turley: And allowing people to have one or two focuses and giving them permission to say, these other things are going to happen later this year. And that’s leading. It’s saying to even your ops manager, I want you to do this in this quarter, and I want these other things, but let’s talk about them later this year and map that out. So that’s leading and allowing them to revel in the success of that particular project and then reward that and be like, that was brilliant. Now let’s move on to the next one. You know, people need to feel that and not feel overwhelmed. Your job as a leader, you can be overwhelmed, but don’t overwhelm your team.

We need to shout that from the rooftops. I need to hear that again too, right? I need to remember that as well for my own team. They’re probably listening going, oh really, oh really?

Jaime Master: Let’s write that on the wall for later. Yeah, let’s do that. Well, that was my next question. How do you understand what your team can handle? I know working with them for a long period of time is like being with different types of people. How much do you chunk and give them at a time?

Barbara Turley: Look, I’m a big believer in the power of singular focus, right? So in anything that you do, it’s like if you start a business, well, nail one particular revenue stream first before you start diversifying and offering loads of other things. And I think it’s the same with even sprints or project management or just allowing people—you’ve lots of projects on, but you’ve got to give them permission to focus, to have singular focus and not to go, what about this other thing? Because you’ve told them to focus on one thing. And again, that’s kind of a leadership thing. Might not work for every business, but I have found that to be very successful for me personally. And then to ask them every now and then, catch up and be like, how’s it going? How’s it going call? It’s OK to be overwhelmed. Let’s talk about it. And then dig into why you’re overwhelmed.

Jaime Master: How often do you have—because the how’s it going call is amazing because especially for people that are overachievers, sometimes they just keep taking it and won’t actually complain or tell you how crazy it is, right? Unless you check in. So how often do you do those calls?

Barbara Turley: Well, I think I don’t do them very often, actually. I should do them more. And one of my leadership goals is to do those more often because I kind of—but the way I run the business, I can see when things are slipping because one of the things that I’ve done quite well, because it works for my control freakness of being the owner, entrepreneur person, is Asana for us is like the motherboard. And I can see in 10 minutes flat every single day everything that’s going on.

So I can see what results are happening, I can see what’s pushing through, and I can see what’s falling through the cracks. And if stuff is falling through the cracks, I think to myself, well, there’s something going on there for them. And that’s when I’ll trigger a what’s it going call. Yeah.

Jaime Master: I would love to see your Asana. I get so jazzed about Asana dashboards.

Barbara Turley: Oh no, you know what the hilarious thing is, right? I am the queen of simplicity. People think I’m not even an advanced user of Asana. I just keep it simple, and we’ve got loads of projects, but they’re all pipelines and things moving. So you’ve got to keep things moving. Don’t really use the dashboards. So I just can see everyone’s kind of load, what’s been left behind.

Jaime Master: I love it. And we didn’t even have a chance to talk about the fact that you also have two small children while you’re doing all of these things. I just adore that you’re like, we’re paying attention to leadership and we’re improving on this and we’re doing all these things, right? And you have a six-month-old at home and probably not sleeping very well either. So pat yourself on the back for all that stuff.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, look, one of the tips I will say, one of the learnings from doing this is that I really wanted to prove that through the power of very good leadership and very good delegation, as a woman, you can run a large company and be the mother. Now, what I say about being the mother is like actually being a hands-on mom part time. So I am working part time. So I’ve done that. I’ve done 50/50.

So I’m there for all the feedings and I’m playing with the kids, and it’s half the day that I’m literally with them. The problem I think with that and the lesson I learned the hard way is that if you do 50/50, you can do it, but there’s nothing left for you and you become so depleted. And I did, and it’s happening again at the moment. I moved to another country as well.

Jaime Master: I didn’t even mention that. Yes, exactly. Because that’s a good idea to do also at the same time.

Barbara Turley: I wanted to be closer. I’m from Ireland, so I wanted to be closer, but yeah, I’m finding that this is happening again and I need to watch it this time because the last time with my first daughter, the business was a lot crazier because it was in that real startup stage, and I just became so depleted and the brain fog was horrific. I made bad decisions. I was a bad leader. I just found, and I was a bad mother too. I didn’t do either particularly well.

So yeah, I would be very honest and open about that and say, I’m loving doing it, but it’s hard. Like it’s hard work. Yeah. We always try to prepare as a great leader, right? Wash your hair at the same time.

Jaime Master: The reason why I love talking about this stuff is because it does matter, and it’s usually us that goes to our self-care, any time for yourself. Like you can’t even go pee without your kids banging on the door, right? To be able to have any time. And I love that you said that because I think, not that it’s shameful, but we have a tendency to be like, I can do it all, everything’s fine, right? And then die a little.

Barbara Turley: I think all the moms out there are hiding it. We’re all saying, wow, look at me, I work three hours a day and I still have my mom and I can do it from home. One of these days, I would love to do a TEDx talk or something and actually make it funny and be like, here’s what it was really like working from home with my kids outside the door, right? Everyone thinks it’s this amazing thing. You get to work from home. I’m like, honestly, I think I should go now and work in an office because it’s like hell on earth, like trying to manage it.

And like you sort of think I’ve gone from changing a diaper to doing like a team call. It’s just not conducive to a good mental state. I know.

Jaime Master: Thank you, thank you for saying we used to have an office that had windows and I was like, I can’t. And the kids would be on the window and I feel like the worst mom in the world, shut the curtain.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I know. And then my daughter went through this phase of like, and is still going through this. I might only work for a few hours a day, but I am the devil because I work for a few hours a day. I give her all this attention and she’s still not happy. And I go, I would have been better off doing 10 hours a day in corporate. She doesn’t see me for the whole day. She’s happier.

Jaime Master: Isn’t that hilarious? It’s so funny too. Same thing where it’s like they always want more no matter what it is, so we just have to be happy with everything that we’re giving them and make sure we’re happy on both sides of the coin. Otherwise, we’re going to drive ourselves crazy, and that’s not worth it either. Yeah, life first. This is amazing. I know we have to start wrapping up. What is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Barbara Turley: Yep, definitely the power of singular focus with a sense of urgency. People try to do too many things at the one time, even with investing, right? They try to buy a house, start a business, save all this sort of stuff. Do one thing and do it really, really, really well, and with a sense of urgency and a timeline, and then nail that and do the next thing. And otherwise you get scattered, and honestly, you will not achieve anything particularly well. So I have been very good at focusing on one thing at a time. People have often said to me at the Virtual Hub, why don’t you offer, like we do VA’s, we do three levels of VA’s, but we just do VA’s, right? And we only do it in the digital marketing kind of area as well. And people have said, why don’t you do project managers? And why don’t you do—I’m like, I’d love to do all that, video editors, the whole lot, but we’re still nailing this bit. And I don’t feel that we have nailed it enough yet to be distracting ourselves with all the other stuff we could do. It’s just distracting, to be totally honest. Yeah.

Jaime Master: Thank you for saying that because there’s too many companies that I’ve seen do that, so I appreciate knowing the inner working of you trying to nail it. That’s amazing.

Barbara Turley: And I’m trying to be a mom as well. So I just go, I can launch all these other things, but then I’m going to sacrifice that. I’m just trying to, I think, the power of singular focus and being OK with that is good.

Jaime Master: I appreciate your openness and honesty. Where do we find out more about you? How do we get a VA? Tell me more about all your offerings.

Barbara Turley: Sure, yes. So the best place to find out about us and even a bit about me is thevirtualhub.com. We’ve got tons of content on our site for anyone who’s anywhere from starting out and just getting into this VA thing, people who’ve made massive mistakes and want to know all the, I even have a podcast, shameless plug, the Virtual Success Show, where I talk, it’s very tactical. Like we talk about things like when is the time to fire my VA? How many times a day should I talk to my VA? It’s very much like that sort of podcast. If you want to find out a little bit more about me, you can go find me on LinkedIn. I don’t do a lot over there, but I’m planning to do a bit more now that I’m out of the baby phase. I can actually do a bit more content. And yeah, if you’re looking for a VA, we cover all time zones. We are office based, we are Philippines based, and we do three levels of VA. And we mainly focus on the digital marketing world. So platforms like Ontraport, Infusionsoft, HubSpot.

We’ve got VA’s that can do all the tinkering and build your campaigns and mess around with Zapier. And all the stuff that’s tying up all your time that really you shouldn’t be tinkering with, just come to us for that. And that’s what we specialize in.

Jaime Master: I love it. I just had Zapier’s CEO and told us a million things that we can do. So I know everybody’s waiting with bated breaths to be able to do some of these things that have been really, really low on their to-do list because who’s got time for all that your team does. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really, really appreciate it.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me.

Jaime Master: If you enjoy this show, I would really appreciate your wonderful words of feedback. Go leave me a review. I would love a rating. Whatever you can do in the time that you’ve got, I would appreciate it.