Voice Actor: This is the Digital Savage Experience Podcast, hosted by Roman Prokopchuk, bringing you all things digital marketing, tech, business, and motivation. What’s stopping you from becoming relentless in all aspects of life? Are you ready to become a digital savage? Let’s get into today’s episode.

Roman Prokopchuk: Hey everyone, this is Roman Prakopchuk, and this is the Digital Savage Experience Podcast. Today I have with me Barbara Turley. Barbara is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, one of the leading companies that recruits, trains, and manages virtual 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. Thank you for joining me today.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me, Roman.

Roman Prokopchuk: My pleasure. So tell me a little bit about your journey. How did you get to where you are today?

Barbara Turley: Sure, so I’ve had a very varied career, quite a deep and rich sort of corporate career. And by the word rich, I really mean getting deep into the sector that I was in. I started out my career in the investment banking world, actually a far, far-flung place from where I am today. I was very attracted to that world at university, even before I went to university, to be honest. I had an interest in how money works, like if I could just put it in simple terms. And I was always fascinated by how money works. Where does money come from? And I couldn’t really quite understand the whole mechanics of it. And then I decided to study economics at university. I had never studied it before, so I hadn’t done it at school. I went to university and absolutely loved it, and then found myself just gravitating towards the financial world and was fascinated by trading floors and foreign exchange and all these kinds of things.

So long story short, I did manage to sort of fight my way in the 90s into a trading floor in Dublin, where I became a junior trader there. And I was totally hooked. I mean, even being female at the time—it’s not as difficult these days, but back then that was kind of—I was more or less told that would never happen, you know, so it was a fantastic experience.

But then after a few years, I sort of hit the skids with the career, and was like, I don’t know whether I want to. I wanted to do that, but I didn’t want to necessarily stay in Ireland. And I felt the pull of Australia, like many of us do. I wanted to live by the beach. I wanted to travel. I wanted to experience life. So I actually took a year off and I went, like lots of backpackers, backpacking around Asia. And Australia—fell in love with the whole lifestyle there—did go back to Dublin for a little while, but I just found myself. It was really hard to settle. And despite having a great career there and a really good career path, I just found myself going, you know what? I just want to go. I want to go and live in Sydney.

So I literally packed my bags, jacked my job, went off to Sydney, and decided I’ll just try my luck down there. I used as many contacts as I possibly could and managed to get myself into the investment banking arena in Sydney, which was great. I enjoyed—I was in Sydney, I’ve just left actually—I was there for 17 years. So I had a very long career in the banking industry and in the trading floors in Sydney.

And the last sort of—just cutting it short a little bit for the interest of time, because you could go on forever—but the next kind of rumble I think I had, like we all have these rumbles in our careers, was probably when I was reaching 30. And I was like, I just couldn’t see a future for myself in that kind of arena. I wanted to have children, like we were talking about kids off air. I couldn’t see myself being a corporate mom in that way.

So I decided to go for another year traveling, had met my current husband at the time, and went off for the year. And lo and behold, 2008 happened, which was the last sort of meltdown that we had in financial markets. And I found myself just struggling to know what the hell to do. I couldn’t figure out where to go. I had no job. I had sort of spent all my money. I was sort of broken in so many ways.

And I got the opportunity in 2009 to sort of hop on the coattails of a couple of guys that were taking a business out of one of the investment banks at the time in Sydney. And they were trying to buy it out, and it was kind of like a fire sale that was going on. And I got the opportunity. They were just like, you know, are you interested? And I remember just raising my hand and going, 100% I am. Yeah, but I didn’t really figure out how—I just was like, say yes and figure out how later. And I think that was probably the beginnings of that whole entrepreneurial feeling, where I just—I mean, I’d worked on a trading floor for 10 years, so I was used to kind of saying yes and figuring out how later.

But that business then—so we did that. I got involved as a shareholder and as an employee of that business. And I learned over the following—I worked in the business for the next five years—and then I eventually left to do my own thing and start my own company. I’m still a shareholder in that business, but I really learned how a great company gets built. I just learned so many amazing things from that, and it has sort of fed my desire to build my own company.

So leaving that, I made the decision in my mid-thirties that it was time for me to do my own thing. I sort of dabbled with a few things, did a couple of online product launches and a few various things, and accidentally found myself in the virtual assistant outsourcing business in the Philippines. I had never been to the Philippines, but essentially I found myself working as a kind of consultant business coach with some smaller businesses. And what I noticed was they were all suffering from the same problem. They couldn’t get to work on strategy and the stuff I wanted to work with them on because they were so bogged down in the day-to-day doing of the business, particularly anything around digital—which I know is your area—you would know the extended task lists and stuff that go along with anything digital.

And I found myself—I had read The 4-Hour Workweek like everybody else, and I had a VA in the Philippines myself. And I just found myself saying, well, I’ll get you a VA. And I just tapped my VA for her friends, and then we can sort of work on strategy. And before I knew it, I found myself getting more demand for that than I was for business coaching. And one day I sort of thought, I wonder, is there a business in this? And it literally just kind of happened very organically. I had no business plan, no website, no brand, nothing. And I just put an offer out to a small list that I had at the time, and it just went boom, to be honest.

I mean, it’s five years old now, and we’ve got nearly 150 staff in the Philippines. And it definitely has given me gray hair building it. It wasn’t quite as easy as all of that, but that was the genesis of it. That’s kind of the very quick version of my career anyway to date.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I think a lot of people have those kinds of pivots and realizations as they get older, as priorities change and what’s important to them. And also it shows that you should really take opportunities when they come because they may not come moving forward. Obviously, if you didn’t say yes to being a shareholder in that company, somebody else would have come along and taken that place, and you would be in maybe a different situation in terms of the variables you’re dealt.

But I think it’s really important now with the digital climate in terms of scaling and maintaining what you’re doing because everybody’s digital. I mean, remote, in terms of a digital perspective for digital marketing—so everybody’s remote, remote teams around the world. Obviously restrictions with a pandemic are stricter in some countries over others. But I think it’s important, one, scaling your business—if outsourcing obviously is potential—and having virtual assistants and what you can actually deviate to them. You know what I mean? Because some people do it, in my opinion, wrong. They lay the brunt of strategy and tactics and things of that nature, where a lot of the things that they can take away, like you said, are the day-to-day things that can be kind of automated but still need an eye on.

Barbara Turley: I mean, if I could tell you the number one problem I see—and I was seeing it with clients—it was one of the challenges when I first started the business, that I originally thought people just need me to help with recruiting a VA. And that was kind of the first problem that I solved. I couldn’t understand why people would come to me to do it when you can just go and do it on Upwork yourself. But I sort of thought, okay, I’ll do this.

And then slowly from that, I realized, well actually, gee, there’s another problem that’s much bigger than that. And it’s like, you solve one problem in business and then the next problem sort of raises its ugly head thereafter. And the problem that I saw was that people didn’t know how to delegate, and that was a massive issue. People, as you say, thought that—they would say to me, I want the VA to show more initiative. And when I dug into that, I was like, you need a strategist. Like that’s not a VA, right?

So it was very much trying to then solve that next problem for me—was trying to help clients to understand the process, systems, delegation of systems to people, and training them how to run them properly. And once I kind of solved that problem, I think that was really when it started to take off. And then, of course, the next problem raises its ugly head, which is training of actual VAs. But as you go through business, you start to unpack all the layers of problems that your client has. And then after that, if you keep concentrating on that, you can actually build quite a powerful business.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I agree. I think uncovering those business problems—and not having a process—you’re not going to get much out of a virtual assistant relationship because you’re going to have to give them something that they can do over and over again. Most of the time, they’re like you said, they’re not a strategist or a tactical-focused person. They’re given something to execute, and they execute usually repetitively over time. So finding those things and clogging up those holes in the business is awesome. And like you said, oftentimes the first step is exposing those holes within a business.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and if I could just add, the majority of any business—if you think about it, 80/20—80% of any business actually is the recurring things that need to keep the engine of the business going. 20% is probably the high-volume, the high-income stuff. It’s sales and client delivery. It depends what business you’re in. But a lot of it—people don’t realize the amount of tasks and processes that can be delegated to somebody that’s not going to cost you $100,000 a year. So it’s very cost-effective if you think about it strategically and you actually get it right.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I agree. And I think the hardest point is to get it to that point, to kind of let go. It’s hard to delegate where a business is kind of your baby, you know, when you’re looking to start outsourcing or building kind of a digital team or a virtual team. And I think getting to that point adds that level of comfort, and then also having trust that that virtual assistant, or virtual assistants, will fulfill and deliver time and time again.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and if I could just add, I think on that—if I was to just unpack that a little bit more—I think I used to always say that as well. I think one of the issues is people still mix up delegation with abdication. People always say, I just want to be hands-off. I just want them to do it. And yes, you delegate a process, but you still have to have reporting lines back, and you have to have oversight. And those are the two things I personally learned the hard way, because I was delegating really well, but I was still finding, if I went back and checked work, I would find mistakes. I would find holes. I would get frustrated with the team.

And at the end of the day, unless you have—like you’ve built into your system—a system for reporting so that there’s nowhere to hide, that kind of thing—not that you’re watching people, but you want everyone to be in this flow all the time—and then that you have oversight without checking everything, you can drop in and just kind of keep an eye on things. That really helps to nail that problem.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, monitoring for kind of quality assurance, per se, and then the skill set of that virtual assistant—whether they’re competent in that, if their skill level is above that—to kind of grade them and have some kind of vetting and review process in terms of the projects they’ve worked on and the level in which they kind of delivered.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think the difference there with what you’re saying is that’s how you would treat an employee. But a lot of people see outsourcing or hiring offshore VAs as kind of like a few hours a week—somebody else not involved, like they’re just kind of consulting into my business. And it’s kind of a mindset thing. If you are having someone just a few hours a week, well, that’s the commitment level you’re going to get, and you may not get better than that. They could be great. But if you’re really bringing someone in on a part-time or full-time basis, you want to treat them like an employee—even if they’re not, even if they’re just somebody contracting in. It’s hard to get to that point, but you really have to be serious about that if you want to get success with it.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I think that point of treating them like part of your company—that should be done, in my opinion, regardless, because they are an extension of your company. They’re doing work related with your company, and treating them and respecting them in that sense. Because I know people that outsource to the Philippines, to other countries—there’s like a negative stigma oftentimes—and they don’t necessarily treat the workers stateside the same way that the virtual assistants get treated. I think treating them on a similar caliber can really kind of find mutual respect in it. The business—it’s a relationship as well—that relationship will go a lot smoother.

Barbara Turley: Absolutely. For the record, we don’t take on those clients. We’re really strict about the clients we take on because we want our VAs to really—the big thing that our VAs say is they love the clients they’re working with. And I always say to them, that’s not an accident. That’s deliberate, right? Because we take on the types of clients that we want to work with, and we know that our VAs are going to be happy working with them.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, and it’s like a team dynamic. So if you have a company, the people you hire—it’s important that they’re a good fit and a good mesh. You can have the smartest person, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to add value to the team. They may actually take away and be toxic in terms of that kind of meshing of personalities and who they are.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, 100%. I’ve been there. Been there a million times.

Roman Prokopchuk: So what motivates you to succeed?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I was looking at that question actually before we came on, and it was interesting because I kind of had to dig deep with that. I’m still sort of digging deep with answering that. I think on the surface, I would say what motivates me to succeed is that I have a winning—I have a kind of a winning streak. I like to play to win. And I used to always say I’m not competitive because I don’t really like—it depends what I’m doing, though—but it’s very that I’m competitive with myself, if that makes sense.

I’m not really interested in being in a race with other people. I don’t really care what anybody else is doing, but I like to be at the coalface of whatever I’m doing. I like to be the best that I feel I can be, and I’m always kind of pushing myself to be a leader, to be at the top. Now, when I dug into that and I was thinking about your question, I sort of had to ask myself, well, what’s underneath that? Like peeling back the layers—what’s really underneath that?

Well, I mean, it must be some sort of—could be some sort of feeling of not being good enough? I don’t know. I kind of had to unpack that one. And I think we all have a sense of that, actually, especially people who are high achievers. You’re always striving to be at the top, the best. And whatever that is in your personality, I get great satisfaction from it. I love excellence. I love perfecting something, and I get a great sense of achievement from doing that. So I think that’s really at the root of it.

The idea as well, though, when I started The Virtual Hub, the idea in the business that I’m currently in—what sort of motivates me a lot—is when I hear from the people around how you’ve changed their life or how much they hated the job they were in before, because that was a call center where they were just hammering calls and they just hated the toxic environment. And since they’ve come to The Virtual Hub, they love the client, they love the work they’re doing, they love the team. That is a lot of what motivates me to keep going as well.

And especially right now, as we’re recording this, we’re right in the middle of this coronavirus situation that’s going on. And in the Philippines, a lot of people are losing their jobs. And what’s motivating me today is to go, gee, our business is in the digital marketing space—we’re in a strong space. So I feel an incredible sense of responsibility right now that I have to step up and lead, and I have to win because I have to create the jobs that other people are losing.

So we’ve got VAs where their families are losing jobs in other companies, and I just feel, well, if I have the ability to win right now, then I owe it to all of them to step up and fight for them and to actually go into battle and win for them. And that’s bringing out my winning streak as well. So I hope that’s kind of answering the question, unpacking parts of that deep question.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, it does. I mean, the first step, like you said, it should be a you-versus-you approach. You can be competitive to an extent where it’s somewhat toxic, or you can be competitive with yourself to be a better version of yourself the next day and the next day and keep growing. And I think it’s kind of the double-edged sword to be a perfectionist. Everybody wants to be a perfectionist, especially people that are high achievers.

But I think getting past that and putting something either in market or starting something before you actually have everything figured out—I think it’s one of the hardest things to overcome. And like you said, it is important with everything going on around the globe. When you can impact people and obviously deliver and keep their livelihood going, in terms of being an advocate for them and grow your business, and in turn grow what they’re getting and helping support their families as well.

Barbara Turley: And I would add to that, anyone listening to this right now or even later on—maybe after this crisis or whenever you’re listening to this—at the moment, the frontliners are the people who are the doctors, the nurses, people in the hospitals. I mean, wow, they’re just doing an incredible job. They’re putting their lives on the line for this whole situation.

But if you think about this, this virus is going to pass. And what’s going to happen after this? The economic impact and the fallout is going to rumble on for a long time. And who’s going to be the frontliners next? Who’s going to be asked to step up next to the plate? It’s going to be the entrepreneurs, the small businesses. You’re going to be asked to step up to the coalface and take the challenge to bring the economy and actually to lift the next infectious disease, which is the disease of economic collapse.

So that’s how I’m sort of feeling at the moment, and that’s really driving me right now. I think that can help anyone who’s feeling bad about selling or like it’s not the right time. I’m like, get out of that headspace because you have a responsibility now to step up into this front-liner position when the doctors and the nurses are all stepping down from theirs.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, and figure out kind of what it will look like after this, you mentioned, and if you have to pivot or figure out how business will be different. Because I don’t think we’re truly going to go back to 100% of what it was before. Obviously, every company is remote, so that kind of work I think is going to be carried over to a certain extent.

And people see the effectiveness and the productivity of remote and virtual assistance as well in that field. So I think it’s important because I know a lot of companies, a lot of Fortune 500s, have the stigma of people working from home consistently—they don’t have the same level of performance and don’t get the same amount done because it’s “a distraction” being at home.

I mean, yes, we’re in a pandemic, and oftentimes people have kids at home and pivoting in that sense and making it work. But when it’s kind of a truly remote situation, whether you’re employing virtual assistants or internal teams remotely, I think it can really benefit business, and they can actually get more done than if they were in the office setting—avoiding different in-person meetings, unnecessary conferences, things that can be situational and handled with a simple email.

I think evaluating the effectiveness of business moving forward is going to be one of those things that’s going to be interesting.

Barbara Turley: Well, it’s interesting actually that you bring this up because we’re an office-based operation, and I’m obviously remote. And I started The Virtual Hub as a work-from-home contractor-type thing, like a lot of the VA companies are. A few years ago, I decided it was time to kind of step it up. And again, I felt that sense of motivation to do something better, and I legitimized the whole thing.

I launched a company in the Philippines, I made everyone an employee, we pay out massive healthcare and benefits and everything to everyone, and we moved to an office-based operation. Mainly because the company, as the number of staff that I had grew past about 60 people—we were really good at running a work-from-home thing—but it imploded. I’ll be honest, it was fraught with issues. And I realized that for me personally, it just wasn’t serving what I wanted to build.

And we have collaboration as one of our core values that we just build everything around at The Virtual Hub. And that became—it just wasn’t as easy to collaborate when everyone wasn’t together because we run learning and training workshops. And now we’re all working from home again because we had to go home because of the crisis. So I’m facing this kind of dilemma of like, well, what does it look like going forward? What do people want? What do I want? What does the market want?

So yeah, all of these questions are plaguing me at the moment and trying to think about the future.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I mean, all we can really do is work with what we’re dealt. And if we have to pivot as a global economy, then we pivot. Businesses over time that didn’t pivot kind of faded out. So I think being nimble and doing what’s best for you and listening to the market is key in that sense as well.

Barbara Turley: Absolutely, doing lots of that.

Roman Prokopchuk: So what’s one thing you may have seen as a weakness in yourself in the past that you’ve turned around and utilized as a strength today?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, there is one. So one of my biggest weaknesses—which is also a strength, but it can really trip me up—is that I’m extremely loyal and I’m very trusting. And I have been run over like a million times because of it. Particularly when I started working in the Philippines—and it’s not just in the Philippines, it’s happened in other situations—but I sort of take everyone at face value and I trust everybody.

And then you struggle with boundaries and everything’s a bit loose. And I kind of had to learn the hard way that not everyone is what they say they are. And that has been very difficult for me to deal with because I’m just not naturally wired that way. I’m naturally very open and very honest.

Now on the flip side, it’s also been a strength because it has enabled me to forge very deep, close relationships with those who are similar to me. And in terms of the business that I run, some of those people have started out as VAs with me, just with no experience. And I trained them myself. And years later, they have grown up in the company with me and taken on roles that were way higher than I think anything they could have done by themselves.

We’ve mentored each other up together, and they’ve helped me to build this company, and they’ve become a driving force in this company. I’ve seen others struggle to do that. Other business owners say, how do you get such loyalty? How do you get such great people that would do anything for you and for the company?

And I just say, well, not everyone was like that. I mean, I did have a lot of war wounds from being that way. But at the same time, I sort of have to weigh it with the positives and say that yes, I have some people I can really lean on. They’ve become not just friends, but people I would rely on. So I’ve got very deep relationships with my leadership team, and they trust me very deeply as well. People start to open up and be very authentic in those kinds of environments. But you do risk being run over with that trait.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important that you stayed that way and didn’t kind of harden up, put a shield up, or become guarded. I mean, it’s important through all those pains and being taken advantage of—obviously honesty and giving your all and being loyal are positive traits.

But I think there are people that aren’t like that, and through that, you vetted those out and found the people that have similar qualities that you can really build the business with. I think through that journey of trials and having negative experiences in that sense, it’s also brought about the positive ones as well.

Barbara Turley: You know what I just thought of when you were speaking? It’s funny how on these podcasts you can actually discover parts of yourself you haven’t had time to think about. I have done that, but I also learned how to build systems that take the trust away from me.

So for example, I will openly admit that I run a business where it’s actually difficult to hide. It’s difficult because I’m brilliant at reporting lines and transparency. I can see everything that’s going on. It’s not that I micromanage anyone, but the reporting lines are so strong that it would actually be difficult to hide anything.

So I think I’ve probably done that because the wounds from other situations have forced me to build those, rather than building bitterness walls around myself. I’ve built systems to deal with it so that I don’t have to personally deal with it, and I don’t have to change myself or my approach. So anyone listening—you can build systems to take that pain away without you changing yourself.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, I mean, it’s adjusting your process and creating kind of a failsafe to take care of that aspect of it.

Barbara Turley: I try.

Roman Prokopchuk: So yeah, that’s awesome. So what’s one piece of advice you have for the audience, personal or professional?

Barbara Turley: On a professional note, I would say—and this is me talking my own book, I sell VAs—but at the same time, if you can get an offshore team strategy right—and it’s not easy to get it right, there’s a lot of moving parts with it—it’s not just picking a VA up on Upwork. It can be that, and you can hit a home run, and you can be great at it.

But having an offshore team strategy as part of any business, for me, is an absolute no-brainer because the dividends it’s going to pay when you build that team and you get that wheel moving really well are enormous. It goes straight to your bottom line. It frees up your onshore people to do what—I’m not saying more high-value work—I don’t like saying it that way—but they might be doing more sales.

You as the business owner can be more the conductor instead of the person doing all the doing. You can serve more clients better, you can launch more products, you can even just talk to your clients more instead of just being bogged down all the time. So it is something that it’s worth getting right and focusing on for any business.

From a personal perspective, I think one of the things that has been in each of the pivotal moments in my life—I have a very strong intuition that I just try to tap into as much as possible. Now it’s really hard when you run a business because you’re in this masculine energy of systems and processes, and that’s very masculine energy. But the feminine energy—which we all have, including men—is that sense of listening to the deep voice that is not maybe the most rational one.

But if there’s something really pulling you, you’ve got to ask yourself—is that fear, or am I going the wrong direction? And for me, at the most pivotal times, I have dug into that and just tried to feel the fear and do it anyway. And that’s worked for me really well.

Roman Prokopchuk: Yeah, and I think that’s obviously developed over time and through experiences—developing that sense of empathy and emotional IQ, which is really hard to teach and goes a long way more so than hard skills, in my opinion.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I agree. And it takes years to cultivate it. I think when I was younger, I was maybe acting more on impulse and not realizing what it was, or pushing it away and feeling anxiety and just forgetting about it, or drinking your way through it or whatever you do when you’re in your 20s. But yeah, you can cultivate it over time.

Roman Prokopchuk: Well, I really appreciate you stopping by today. Can you let the audience know how they can find you?

Barbara Turley: Sure, so we’ve got a special page for your listeners. It’s thevirtualhub.com/DSE for Digital Savage Experience. And on there, we’ve got a couple of freebies for you guys. We’ve got a mini guide—you don’t even need to sign up for it, you can just download it—The 5 Reasons People Fail with VAs and How to Fix It.

We’ve also got the Scalable Business Success Formula, which is an e-course that I wrote, typically about how to use teams and delegation to scale your business. And then on there, you can also book a call with one of our consultants to decide whether The Virtual Hub might be a fit for you, whether you’re fit for us. And if you’re not, we help you figure out where to go next, what you need to do. And if you are, we’re ready and waiting to help you out.

Roman Prokopchuk: Awesome. Thanks again for stopping by.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much.

Voice Actor: This podcast has been brought to you by Nova Zora Digital. Find out how Nova Zora Digital can help your company grow online. Learn more at Novazoradigital.com. Until next time, all you digital savages.