Voice Actor: You’re listening to the Nancy Gaines Show. The goal of this podcast is to help business owners be successful and gain the advantage. Nancy has helped some of today’s top Fortune 500 companies across a wide spectrum of industries work through their toughest challenges. She can help you, too, so if you can’t find the solutions you need, there are no more books to read or workshops to attend. The Nancy Gaines Show can be the difference between your success and failure. And now your host, Nancy Gaines.

Nancy Gaines: Hi, this is Nancy Gaines, and welcome to the Nancy Gaines Show, where we provide actionable ideas for entrepreneurs to grow their business and be even more productive. The focus of today’s podcast is all about how to use virtual assistants to scale your business, and I’m super excited to have a very special guest with me, Barbara Turley. Let me tell you all about her. She is the founder and CEO of The Virtual Hub, a business she started by accident that exploded in about 12 months. It became one of the leading companies that recruits, trains, and manages virtual assistants in the digital marketing and social media space. Her mission is to eradicate small business overwhelm by simplifying the offshore outsourcing process and facilitating cost-effective business scalability. This allows businesses to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level. She is a mom to her gorgeous daughter Ruby, wife to her best friend Eddie, an adventure lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and time out in nature. She is also the host of the Virtual Success Show podcast. Welcome, Barbara. Thanks for sharing part of your day with us. What else do you want to add to that introduction?

Barbara Turley: Wow, Nancy, it’s so good to be on this podcast with you. And I think that’s pretty comprehensive, that introduction there. I guess the only thing to add is that, you know, you would think that with all that introduction, I would have a background in HR management or at least digital strategy, but I actually don’t. I spent most of my career in the investment banking world. So I made a massive pivot about 5 or 6 years ago into this game that I’m doing now called The Virtual Hub.

Nancy Gaines: That is awesome. And I know you and I connected many years back. In fact, we both had original companies around money. You were talking about, I think it was Energized Wealth. Is that right?

How to Use Support Assistants to Scale Your Business

Barbara Turley: That’s right, yes. And you were doing money mindset, I think, or money beliefs, something like that.

Nancy Gaines: I was doing money skills for women, and since then, we both have rebranded quite a bit. Tell us how you accidentally ended up from money to VAs.

Barbara Turley: Oh, yeah, it’s actually a great story because I do call it my accidental business. I didn’t intend to start this at all. I had no business plan. I had no concept of what I was doing. I also had no experience. I’ve never been to the Philippines, so it really was a bit of a chaotic mess, but it really got born out of when I was doing Energized Wealth. You know, that was a great platform, and I was doing—I had an online program there—but I was doing quite a lot of business coaching for some women in business who were smaller businesses. And what I found, it didn’t matter what industry, products, you know, whether they were brick and mortar, whether they were online, they were all different types of businesses, but they all had the same fundamental problem. And the problem was that they had no time. So I was working with them on strategy and ideas they could roll out to grow their business, but what I found was they weren’t able to get any of it done because I would leave them essentially with a massive to-do list, and they had no time to do anything to actually move the business forward. So, like a lot of people, I had read Tim Ferriss The 4-Hour Workweek, and I knew about this virtual assistant thing. I had a VA myself at the time in the Philippines. So I started, you know, recruiting basically my VA’s friends to try and help out the businesses that I was working with, just so they could actually get some of the work done. And to cut a long story short, before I knew it, I was getting constant phone calls from friends of clients, people who’d heard about me doing this. And they were saying, “Oh my God, can you get me one of those VAs?” And literally overnight, I was like, “I think I’m going to pivot, and I’m going to launch this as a business.” And I tried to do both Energized Wealth and The Virtual Hub for a while, and it rapidly became obvious that I needed to invest my time and energy in this one because it literally exploded within 12 months. So there you go, that’s how it happened—accident. Wow.

Nancy Gaines: That’s a great story. It’s kind of funny. I have a similar background as I thought I would. I retired from my job, and I thought I would just teach other people how to retire because it’s awesome and it’s freedom. And I was finding I wasn’t having any clients. Nobody was hiring me to help with their money, but they were saying, “Nancy, I’ve got a business question, I’ve got a business question. Can you help with this?” And I realized I needed to pivot as well. It wasn’t my whole calling—it was business and not money. So it took me longer than 12 months, but it’s funny how we accidentally end up where we are today. Love that story. Absolutely.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I think for the listeners out there, it’s really important to listen to your followers. What are they asking you for? And if people are literally falling over themselves asking you for the same thing all the time, then maybe that’s the business you should be running. That’s what happened to me. So, and you know, four years later, we’ve got 100 staff in the Philippines. You know, I’ve got a full operational capacity over there, and we’re growing really fast. So yeah, it was a good pivot for me.

Nancy Gaines: And sometimes it’s hard because what comes naturally to us—and which to me is business—I was like, well, doesn’t everybody know this? Isn’t this just obvious? So it’s hard for us to hear those signs because we think this is just how we’re like, what’s wrong with people? Don’t they have that skill? So I love that. With your 100 people, do you only focus on social media and digital marketing, or can you help people with all sorts of stuff?

Barbara Turley: Yep. So look, I initially was doing everything, like, you know, I was like, “OK, what kind of VA do you need? We’ll go out and try and find it.” And rapidly I realized—and this is another business tip—it was really causing a lot of chaos because, you know, I was allowing clients to customize their client briefs, and some of them wanted bookkeepers, others wanted digital video guys, and it was really hard for me to deliver that. So eventually, I sort of looked at what we were very good at and where we were getting the most success. And within that, in that sort of digital implementation was where we were doing really well—delivering on platforms like HubSpot, Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign, helping clients that just didn’t have time to navigate those platforms, didn’t have time to do their content calendars, you know, get their blogs optimized beautifully and looking good on their site. So all of that stuff—we niched heavily into that area—but we also do general admin. So we do—we have—our VAs do everything from, you know, helping you to manage your email to, you know, booking your clients, following up with client onboarding, or any of that sort of stuff around documents and, you know, sorting out your Dropbox folders, right through to, you know, running safe Zapier integrations between maybe a Google Doc and your ActiveCampaign account. So it really is quite a broad spectrum within a niche, if that makes sense.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, I love that. And I also like that you say people should have at least 20 hours a week of VA work. How do you help people who are like, “20 hours? What do I even give them?” Do you have some sort of—yes?

Barbara Turley: What would be—

Nancy Gaines: A good tool, yeah.

Barbara Turley: I think people—first of all, the first thing I would say is everybody underestimates the amount of work that they are doing in their business that they shouldn’t be doing, right? So if you’re really serious about growing a business, even if it’s a lifestyle-type business, there’s an awful lot of doing, especially these days when everyone has to have such a presence on social media. I mean, Nancy, you were mentioning to me before we recorded that, you know, each of these podcasts, you share them multiple times across multiple channels. I mean, even trying to create the Canva images for all of that stuff takes a long time. It’s very time-consuming work that really is—it’s high-value but low-value work at the same time. So when people think about their day, they just think, “Well, I’d like two or three hours a week,” but realistically, if you’re going to commit to growing your business, I think you’ve got to commit to something a bit more. Now, we help clients a lot with The Virtual Hub. So once clients join us, we have an entire—I call it the super task list. And basically, I listed out not only everything a VA could possibly do for them—our VAs in particular—but I broke it down into daily, weekly, monthly, recurring tasks, and then one-off projects. So people can just literally pick from the list, and when they see it, they find it really helpful, and they’re blown away by how much a VA can actually do for them that they didn’t realize they were doing themselves.

Nancy Gaines: I love that. And how about this question? Once people say, “OK, I can do that,” then the next question I usually hear as a business coach is, “But how do I find the time to train that person to do it?” How do you help them with that?

Barbara Turley: Again, this was a bit of a—you know—so the beginnings of this business for me were very much about recruiting. I was just recruiting VAs, like I’m saying, “Hey, here’s a VA, go work with that client.” And I rapidly discovered that that question was coming up all the time. And what I discovered was that the problem—the first problem I solved—was that people didn’t know how to—they didn’t even know how to recruit a VA. They were nervous about going to places like the Philippines and doing it for themselves. But then the next problem sort of raised its ugly head after I got the recruitment thing nailed. And I realized that, oh my God, the training gaps are just enormous. And clients don’t have time to train. So now you have a person, but you don’t have time to train them, and you don’t have any system.

Nancy Gaines: Exactly.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so you’re swamped again. And then what happens there, if you don’t have systems and processes already in your business and if you’re not kind of set up that way, what happens when you hire a VA is that you’ve created a whole new job for yourself on top of all the other stuff that you were doing. And this is a common reason why people fail at this, because they realize this is an awful lot of work. So at The Virtual Hub, how I solved this problem—because I said, “Well, we’ll just train them.” So we know how we operate—sort of a shameless plug for the business—but I solved this problem. We don’t just recruit VAs and manage them from an HR perspective, which the majority of our competitors—that’s what they do. I actually invest heavily in them before we even let a client meet them. So usually they come through a month-long intensive full-time training program with us, where we teach them everything from—we teach them about funnels, basically—so everything from top-of-funnel-type strategies like social media, how that integrates with Google, Google keyword research, optimization of blog posts, right through to landing pages, webinars, CRM setups, everything. So you basically get a pre-trained VA coming straight into your business, and we give you all of the processes to try to help solve that problem. Now, there are always things that are specific to your business that we can’t train on, but we get you sort of 70% of the way there, and our clients really love that because it takes that pressure off them.

Nancy Gaines: That’s awesome. I don’t know anybody else who does it, so you can do a shameless plug all day because that is really a key. It’s a different theater.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, yeah. And I’ve developed the training, so it’s been developed by me. I used to deliver it. I don’t anymore because I do follow—take my own advice—in that I delegate really effectively. So I have two amazing master trainers now that deliver those training programs for all of our people. So it’s been amazing.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, that is awesome. And I think I saw on your website that people can start as little as like $160 a week—is that right?

Barbara Turley: Yes, yep. So we’re very—like, you know, my other—if I’m going to eradicate overwhelm, like I said, the mission is to eradicate overwhelm for small businesses. Now the way to do that is to listen to the customer constantly and listen to the roadblock. So—and this is another business tip, right? So I’ve listened to clients saying, “Oh my God, it’s so much stress when I get the VA because then I have to train them.” So we solved that problem. And then the clients didn’t know how to create their own processes, some of them, so we solved that problem by creating a training program for the clients on the way through to teach them how to systemize and how to get set up properly before the VA arrives. And then the pricing—so, you know, people have said to me, “Oh my God, you guys are really cheap,” but I just think we’re in a sweet spot where I’ve priced it such that there are no objections to the price. Clients feel they can really cope with this, and you know, it’s a win-win-win. VAs are happy—we pay them more than the market rates in the Philippines. I’m happy because we’re building a scalable business, and the clients are happy because they don’t feel they’re getting ripped off. So it is—

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, that’s a really good deal. So for 20 hours, do you get the same person, or can people mix and match and say, “I need a CRM person here, and I need an admin here, and I need something else here?”

Barbara Turley: No. So you get—some people love that idea, others love what we do. We actually give you a dedicated person, so they very much look and feel like a staff member in your business. And the reason we recommend that is because then you build a relationship with this person. We invite clients to literally bring them fully into the business and make them feel like they’re totally a part of the team. It depends on the level of VA you pick. So if you pick a Level 1 VA, they’re generally—with us—more general admin-type stuff. They’re really good at admin. Our Level 2 VAs can do all of that admin, but they’re generally better at things like—they’ve got more of a creative bent—so they’re better at social media and blogs and that sort of thing. Our Level 3 guys are more techie, so they can do more of those CRM-type things, but they all do all of those. So it depends on the level that you go for. If you need something more specialist, I haven’t built this yet, but my big vision is to eventually have a hub internally within The Virtual Hub of video editors, graphic designers, website builders, so you can actually tap into that on a needs basis. But I haven’t built that yet. I’m focusing on the core.

Nancy Gaines: A great vision.

Barbara Turley: Eventually, that will be coming, but that’s quite a big project for me to roll out, and I think that will be more 2019 delivery.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, because you have a young—now you’re a mom—so you’ve got, how many kids do you have?

Barbara Turley: I’ve only one, and she’s 2. Like, so my business is 4 years old and my daughter is 2. So as you can imagine, it’s been a labor of love on both parts.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, you’ve got like 2 under 4 if you think about it.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But again, you know, I take my own advice. I haven’t driven myself into the ground. And for the women out there listening, you can do it. You’ve just got to be a master delegator. You’ve got to figure out how to use teams and systems and processes effectively in your business so that you can be a mom, so that you can have your lifestyle or whatever it is that you want to do. You know, I’m literally part-time mom, part-time entrepreneur.

Nancy Gaines: I love delegating. I’m probably one of the few people that loves delegating because I always tell people if it’s below your hourly rate, which I call your magic number, you should not be doing that because you could be spending your hour doing something much more profitable. So whenever I speak, I have people come up with that magic number and then start listing things that they’re doing that they shouldn’t. That’s really cool. So can people—do they have to commit to a certain time frame? Or could it be, “I need 20 this week, and I don’t need anybody for a few more weeks”? How does that work?

Barbara Turley: Unfortunately, not, because that’s notoriously difficult for us to manage. So what I’ve said is basically if you do 20 hours a week—so we do. Now, a lot of our competitors actually don’t even do part-time. They say, unless you want someone full-time, go somewhere else. We do part-time because I still feel, again, if I’m on this vision of eradicating small business overwhelm, 20 hours a week is quite a lot to have somebody. It’s a nice number. But when you go part-time, it is literally 20 hours a week. And we have set times, and I do that also because feedback from our VAs was that when it’s very flexible, they feel very scattered too. And clients are contacting them at 10:00 at night when they might be with their family, and you know, there’s no boundaries and all that sort of thing. So we are quite strict about that. So you may have someone—we do run 24 hours, though. So for our US clients, we run in their time zone because we have offices in the Philippines where we have a full night shift running.

Nancy Gaines: That’s awesome. I really, really like this. You also have some tips on when it’s time to break up with a VA, so finding somebody who might be a better fit. What’s your tip on that?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. So first of all, I’m lucky, and I definitely say this with pride in a couple of things. I must be doing something right because we typically get, in the first lineup of VAs that we show to a client—we usually show people three people, sometimes two, because it depends on the level—and literally like 99% of the time, somebody picks someone from that lineup straight away, and they don’t ask to see another lineup. So usually we nail it on round one. The other thing we find is that clients tend to stay; it’s very sticky, and VAs tend to stay with the client. So again, we’ve had a lot of success. Our success rate is very high, and our retention rate is very high. But if someone feels that they have picked a VA and it’s not quite working out, what we do—and this is just me talking about our business for a second—is we’ll go in and either fix it. Usually, we can fix it with a bit of coaching and mentoring of the VA or mentoring of the client, or both. Or if we can see that it’s probably maybe just not the right fit, we take them out, we put someone new in. Now, if you’re doing it yourself—so let’s say you’ve got a VA right now and you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “Yeah, I’ve got a VA. She’s in the Philippines or wherever she might even be in America, and I just feel I’m not getting the most out of it.” The first step is to look at yourself first because we always want to blame the VA. So there is actually—I did a whole podcast show on this. Maybe we’ll put that in the show notes because we delve deep into this. You’ve got to look at your systems and processes and first figure out, like, is this person not working out because there’s confusion around my processes or my instructions or how I am dealing with them? Like, for example, are you giving tasks over email? Email is a notoriously bad project management tool. It’s not a project management system, put it that way. So always look at yourself first, look at your processes, and then try to figure out, well, if I were to refine my process and make it deeper and more clear and discuss this with my VA, then try that for a while. If that’s not working, then you can sit down with your VA and ask them why. Now, if you’ve got a great person that just maybe needs more training, you’ve got to look at that. The final one is, you know, do you just have the wrong person? Like, is the VA slippery? So the word—when I say slippery, I mean, you know, they say they’re working, but they’re not. They say the work is done, but you can’t find it. That sort of thing happens with offshore VAs a lot. Now, if you’re experiencing that, your gut is probably right, and that person is probably lying to you and working for someone else at the same time. Let’s just be honest, put it out on the table. That happens a lot. So yeah, if you’re feeling that, it’s probably happening, and you probably need to think about that. So we’ve got obviously measures in place to make sure that that doesn’t happen with our VAs. So that’s just my few tips.

Nancy Gaines: That’s awesome. So tell us about your podcast. Is it just you? Do you bring on guests? How do you help people with that podcast?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. So I launched the podcast a couple of years ago. I have a co-host there. My co-host’s name is Matt Maloof. I brought Matt on because Matt’s a business coach, and he was my original business coach. And he was there when I came on a call with him one day, and I was getting coached by him for Energized Wealth. And I said, “Hey, Matt, I’ve got this idea. People keep asking me about this VA thing.” And he was like, “Nah, Barb, stay focused. Don’t get carried away and go off on a shiny object.” And I kind of said to him, “I don’t care, I’m doing it anyway.” I just went off on my own path. But he has been instrumental in a couple of very key pivotal moments for me, trying to navigate the future of the business. And when I brought up—I said, “I want to do this podcast because I think there is a need in the market out there. People don’t fully understand this outsourcing thing. They just don’t know how to get it right.” And he said, “You want a co-host?” And I thought, “Yeah, that’d be fun,” right? So we bring this great element—for I’m really good at that outsourcing, you know, VAs, virtual teams world—and he’s very good at the strategy behind making teams work, systems, processes, business. So the tagline of the show—it’s the Virtual Success Show—it’s the inside scoop on outsourcing success for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. And the show is a mix of shows that Matt and I do, where we dissect a case study of why things are going wrong, and we give tips on what’s happening. Then we interview some bigger entrepreneurs that are running larger teams, anything from a team of 10 up to a team of 100 in a virtual environment. And we get them on to teach the listeners how they do it and how they’re getting success with it. And then we do interview each other sometimes as well. So Matt has interviewed me on the growth of The Virtual Hub and how I’ve coped with that, and the big roadblocks that have happened to me. And I’ve done the same with him. So it is quite a diverse show. It’s a good show.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, that sounds like a great thing. I never thought about doing case studies, but I really like that concept. So people, if you’re listening, that is the Virtual Success Show podcast, and check it out. It sounds really cool. Do you do that weekly, Barbara?

Barbara Turley: We do it biweekly, and we did take a bit of a break there for a while recently because both of us went through a mini explosion in our businesses, and we wanted to revamp the show a bit. But the next show is going live. It’ll be live, actually, by the time this one goes live. So we’ve got about 50 shows up there, so there’s so much content. Like, if you’re struggling with the outsourcing thing and you want some inspiration, we have shows on every possible thing. Like, even that whole thing of when is the time to fire my VA—we go really that specific, and we do a whole show around that.

Nancy Gaines: That is awesome. Are you ready for the signature question everybody gets on this show?

Barbara Turley: Yep, go for it.

Nancy Gaines: All right, Barbara, if you had one more hour in your day—25 hours every day—what would you do with your extra hour?

Barbara Turley: I definitely wouldn’t work, put it that way. With my extra hour, I would read, actually. I would love it. Now, you know, I have a toddler, so I suppose I’m quite busy at the moment, but one of the things I miss right now in my life—and, you know, moms with young children will understand this—you know, the days when you were able to just read the newspaper for half an hour uninterrupted. I think I love reading, and I just think I would love that hour to just be by myself and read. I hope that answers the question.

Nancy Gaines: Yeah, I’ve been trying to read more lately, and especially in summertime here because I can sit on the deck with a glass of wine and watch the sun go down as I’m reading a book.

Barbara Turley: That sounds lovely to me. That’s exactly what I would do with my hour.

Nancy Gaines: It’s amazing, and as it gets colder, we put on the fire pit. But I’ve been trying to mix a fiction book with a nonfiction book, so I typically read a lot of nonfiction.

Barbara Turley: I love nonfiction, but I’m sure I would like to read more fiction, though, because it’s good for you.

Nancy Gaines: It’s been so fun, just like—and I’ve been reading James Patterson, so of course it’s really good writing. Do you have him where you live?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do.

Nancy Gaines: And it’s actually making me a better speaker because as I read how descriptive he writes, I was like, “OK, I need to be more descriptive in everything—in my copywriting, in my speaking, in my conversation.” So that’s what I’m getting out of reading a nonfiction book. Isn’t that interesting?

Barbara Turley: That is interesting. I hadn’t thought about that because I think for me, I don’t read nonfiction enough. And I was on holiday last year in Bali—I went to Bali—and that’s near Australia, right? So for the US to think, “Oh wow, how exotic,” we’re like, we all go to Bali. It’s like, you know, it’s like Cancun for you guys. But when I was there, I actually got a nanny while I was there, which was—she was in the villa with us, and she was amazing. So I actually had some time to sit by the pool with a glass of wine and read, and I read a nonfiction book. I felt so engrossed in that. I just felt it took me away from all the mind—you know, the constant thinking about business and real-life stuff—and it really was good for me. I found it very relaxing to do that, so I’d like to do more of that. Awesome.

Nancy Gaines: That’s great, Barbara. For people who would like to work more closely with you, how can they connect with you?

Barbara Turley: Sure. So if you want to talk about getting a virtual assistant, like I said, I take my own advice. So these days, I don’t do sales calls anymore, but I have two amazing guys that do my sales calls. One of them happens to be my brother, so he manages all the US clients that come through. And we have another one in Australia for this end of the world. So you can book a call—they’re free—a strategy call with our outsourcing strategy consultants. You can get that on—we actually have a special page for you guys listening to this podcast, and it’s thevirtualhub.com/NancyGaines. So your full name, Nancy—you can book a call there. And we also have some other goodies on that page for you guys. We’ve got a downloadable checklist for you on the things not to do if you want to succeed with a VA. And we also have a Scalable Business Success Formula e-course, which I created myself, which you guys can have for free there. And if you want to connect with me personally, LinkedIn is always the best place to get me. I like to connect with people over there for other business discussions outside of getting VAs.

Nancy Gaines: That’s awesome. Thank you for being so generous with your content. I know people will really benefit. Is there anything else you’d like to add that I didn’t even think to ask you about, Barbara?

Barbara Turley: Well, I think the only thing I would add is—look, getting the first thing is virtual assistants. Every business needs them. If you’re thinking this won’t work for my business, that’s a mindset issue. It works in every business. So every business needs them. It’s a very cost-effective way of growing your business, especially in the early days. But like anything, it’s not as simple as people think. It does take some investment of your time and your energy in the early days to get it right. But I can guarantee you, if you invest the time and energy and you slow down your business temporarily, get this right, the dividends that it will pay you in the end are enormous if you get this right because you actually have something that is more scalable, and it’s very cost-effective to do it this way. On top of that, if you don’t feel like going offshore to the Philippines and you’re nervous with that and you don’t want to dip your toe there yet, there are loads of great VAs in the US, in Australia—they’re more expensive—but there are ones everywhere, and it’s worth doing it.

Nancy Gaines: I love that. What a great way to wrap up this entire show. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast. Lots of great tips and actionable things people can do. Listeners, I am looking for newer business owners interested in accelerating their business in just one year. The next TurboAscent Group is forming right now. It’s a combination of coaching, training, accountability, peer advisors, and the mastermind think tank, so lots of stuff is all packed into one program. Check it out at nancygaines.com/consulting, and if you love this show, please subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes. It helps other people find us. And until next time, go out and gain the advantage.

Voice Actor: You’ve been listening to the Nancy Gaines Show, where you can gain the advantage. To schedule a VIP strategy day or speed consulting session with Nancy, connect with her on her website, nancygaines.com. That’s nancygaines.com, on Twitter Nancy L Gaines, and on LinkedIn Nancy Gaines. Be sure to check back on Nancy’s website for new episodes. Until next time, you’ve been listening to the Nancy Gaines Show. Go out and gain the advantage.