The Project Egg Show Host: Three, two, and one. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Project Egg Show. Today, we have the honor of speaking with Barbara Turley, an investor, entrepreneur, and founder slash CEO of the Virtual Hub, a business she started by accident that exploded in the space of 12 months to become one of the leading companies that recruits, trains, and manages virtual assistants for businesses who need to free up time and energy so they can go to the next level.

With a strong focus on customized training and ongoing career development, Barbara ensures that the team is training cutting-edge programs like HubSpot, Ondraport, et cetera. You know what I’m talking about. To best meet their client’s unique needs in digital marketing, social media, personal assistant services, and administrative support.

Barbara is also a mom, wife to her best friend, Eddie, and an adventure lover with a passion for horses, skiing, tennis, and spending time in nature.

Barbara’s also done a ton of other incredible things that I couldn’t possibly capture in this introduction. So, without further ado, I’m going to stop rambling and please introduce Barbara.

Barbara Turley: Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be on this show and streaming all over the internet. It’s pretty exciting stuff.

The Project Egg Show Host: And thank you so much for coming on the show and making time for this. It really does mean a lot to me. So let’s jump right in. All right.

Barbara Turley: Great.

The Project Egg Show Host: What is your story?

Barbara Turley: My story is an interesting one because you would think that running a business in the Philippines that is recruiting, training, managing people, you would think that my background was all HR, headhunting, et cetera. It’s so not.

I came from the investment banking world. Like, I had no experience even running teams. I always did jobs that were pretty sort of singularly focused. I was on a team, but doing my own sort of thing.

And yeah, I spent 10 years in equity trading, so on the trading floors, which was a very exciting part of my career that I absolutely loved. And I think I learned a lot of skills, actually, in that area that have helped me later in other areas. We can talk about that later.

But, so yeah, to cut a story short, I’m Irish. So I’m from just outside Dublin in Ireland. And I moved to Sydney, Australia, when I was about, it’s like 17 years ago now. Let’s not talk about how old I am.

So I’ve lived here in this beautiful country for about 17 years and forged most of my career here.

The investor thing, honestly, I got a bit lucky about 10 years ago when everyone else was kind of, I mean, I got unlucky first, like everyone in the big financial crisis of 2008. Everything went to hell in the handbasket.

That’s a bit of an Irish expression to say it all went to crap.

And then, through that experience, I got an opportunity. Actually, an opportunity came my way to sort of hop on the coattails of a startup that was happening at the time in the asset management world.

And it was a buyout that a couple of people were doing from one of the big investment banks. And they were like, “Do you want to hop on this?” And I just remember going, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

So I look at 10 years later now, and that company’s managing five and a half billion at the moment of funds under management.

And I learned an incredible amount in that company about how great companies get built. And I always had the desire to build my own company, but I did stay at that company for about five years, and I’m still a shareholder there. I’m still somewhat involved, but it gave me the kind of, it just whetted my appetite even more to sort of see what I could do on my own.

So here I am, sort of four and a half, five years into the Virtual Hub, and we’ve got 120 staff on the ground in the Philippines. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old and another one on the way. So you can’t see this, but there’s another one down here coming.

So yeah, it’s been a bit of a crazy, crazy journey. Yeah, a very exciting journey.

The Project Egg Show Host: Let’s jump back into your history a little bit. What first caught your eye with investment banking? Why did you go that route?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, that’s a great question, actually, because, again, it wasn’t my intention. It was sort of, I mean, I think a lot of things happen in life accidentally. And it’s about, it’s sort of that you’ve got to hone that skill of being able to sort of change your mind and being okay with pivoting, even if you’re not in a startup. Like, you can pivot in your own life.

And I think a lot of people today coming out of university and stuff get very fixated on what they’re planning to do, and they miss opportunities along the way.

So I actually wanted to be a doctor.

I really, and to this day, I’m still really interested in medicine and medical anything. But the truth of the matter was I didn’t get enough points to get into that course at university. And I didn’t feel that I could do any better. I think I was jaded by then with studying. And I thought, I just want to get into university and do something.

So I made a decision to at least do one year of an arts degree. I just thought, look, let’s just do something, make a move.

And I studied economics and English. And I had never actually studied economics before because I had done mostly science streams at school. And I absolutely loved it.

I just was like, wow, this is, yeah, I’ve always wanted to know how the money markets work and actually how do interest rates work? And I was fascinated by macroeconomics in particular. So that led me down that journey. I just ended up going that route.

In terms of the trading floors, I was working in a restaurant, actually, when I was at university, and there was a group of traders that used to come in every Thursday night. And I was just fascinated by the conversations they were having around the money markets.

And I did ask them once, “What do you guys do?” And they were currency traders.

And over time, I got to know a couple of them, and one of them said to me once, “Why don’t you come in and sit on the desk for a week or two and just see how it all works?”

And I was like, wow, that’s great. So I did that, and I was sold on that environment.

I loved the dynamic, fast nature of it. I loved the way, yeah, it’s crazy in there, but it appeals to my personality, I guess. A bit like an emergency room in a hospital, I suppose. It’s that sort of thing.

So that’s how I ended up going that route.

The Project Egg Show Host: What about that appealed to your personality?

Barbara Turley: I don’t like routine. It’s interesting, actually. I don’t like routine. I get bored quickly.

So for me, I realized that I need to be mentally engaged quite a lot, and I need things to be changing. Like, one of my highest needs is that sense of variety or that sense of change all the time.

I also like a lot of uncertainty. I actually thrive pretty well in that, which is quite stressful, actually. But it’s sort of something in me that thrives on having to make fast decisions and moving things, moving very fast.

And that environment just spoke to me because it fed all of those needs that I have in my personality type.

But what’s interesting about that is that since I’ve been running my own business, I still thrive on the, I love running the company and thriving on the uncertainty of where to go next, but I absolutely love structure within the company in how the operations are run.

The Project Egg Show Host: Okay, I like this. I don’t like this. This is where I feel comfortable. This is where I’m the most engaged. How do you actually go through that process of reflection and pinpointing exactly like, this is what I like, this is what I don’t like?

Barbara Turley: That’s a fantastic question. And as you were asking it, I was thinking, what is my answer to that?

I know immediately what it is. Your body will tell you.

So you’re going to feel it in your bones. You know, it’s like boredom. So your body is actually going to tell you pretty quickly what you like, what you don’t like.

And a lot of us are very disconnected from our own intuition, our own feelings. And I have been for a lot of my life as well because I’ve been in a very masculine kind of, you know, the corporate world, and you sort of lose that sense of feeling of what is good for you.

And I’m older now, I’ve had a lot of experiences in life, and I think what I’ve come to over the last few years is that your body knows. Like, you actually know deeply what’s right for you, but lots of us don’t know how to listen.

So I know very quickly if I’m feeling overwhelmed, kind of pissed off, sorry to use that word, but if I’m feeling all of these frustrated emotions, then I’ve got to look at that and go, what is it that I’m doing right now that’s causing me to feel this way?

Now, sometimes you can’t eradicate it straight away. It could take six months to get rid of the problem, but it helps you to identify what is the problem.

And the problem usually is that you’re doing something that does not appeal to your natural strengths. And you’ve got to figure out, how do I delegate that? How do I fix that, change that, so I can get back to what I love doing?

And that’s how I do it. I just feel it.

I just know it.

The Project Egg Show Host: It seems like the earlier on in your life that you can tap into that intuition, like really feeling what your body’s saying to you or listening, almost listening to the silence in a way, that it just seems like it’s much better if you can figure that out earlier, right?

Barbara Turley: Definitely.

The Project Egg Show Host: If you could go back, how would you advise yourself to tap into that earlier? And I know you talked about it a little bit, but I’m really interested in this and really interested in drilling down to that core concept.

Barbara Turley: So I think, look, I think it’s hard to tap into it earlier because you don’t have, I mean, I’m talking more about myself here. Some people might find it easier. And maybe nowadays people actually do find it easier because I think the world, I think we’ve all evolved.

And emotional intelligence is something that’s much more talked about these days. Whereas when I was in my twenties, it was all about getting the big job, career, climb the ladder. Like, it was still that kind of mentality out there.

So I think in my career, in my early career, I was very much like I am today. I was like, I know exactly what I want. I’m going to go after it.

However, I had a lot less confidence about it. I felt it, and I kind of intuitively knew it, but I didn’t want to speak it loud. And I would feel kind of a bit anxious about having these feelings.

And I think a lot of people might resonate with that.

So it’s having a deep sense of groundedness or confidence in trusting that what your body is telling you and your intuition is right. Like, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. At the end of the day, how you feel is how you feel.

Now, you’ve got to also look at, though, is that really my true feeling, or is it a belief system that I have that is blocking, that is infiltrating what I really feel, right?

So that’s the problem when you’re younger, that you can’t really, it’s harder to navigate that.

So, people get blocked from scaling businesses because they have a belief system around money or success or whatever. So it’s important to sort of think about those things. Is it intuition or is it fear?

And I think that’s the hard part when you’re younger because you haven’t got enough life experience to sort of navigate that. But looking into it, knowing is half the battle.

The Project Egg Show Host: All right, we just opened up a whole new can of worms here.

Barbara Turley: Whole can of whoopie just came out there. As I was speaking, I was like, yeah, we’re going into some really cool topics here.

The Project Egg Show Host: All right. And now I have to ask, how do we separate the fear from the intuition? How do we drill down there?

Because it seems like there are many different layers. It seems like there’s the layer of this is who I am at my core, this is who I’m growing into, this is who I aspire to be, these are all the external influences that have shaped me, and these are the beliefs that I’m holding.

And there’s probably some beliefs that are part and part, some beliefs that are just one, and some beliefs that are just the other. How do you tell? How do you see that?

Barbara Turley: Yeah. And again, the reason I’m so passionate is because I’ve been through that.

And it’s this whole thing of nothing’s an overnight success. You know, people look at that company now and they’re like, wow, look at what that thing did. And I go, yeah, yeah. But I mean, there was a lot of, you know, that could have fallen on its face really badly a few times over.

So going through that journey, I had a lot of financial issues through those early years. My husband had started his own business, and we had a lot of problems going on at home. So it started to break the relationship.

And there were personal issues that came up.

And it got to the point where you just reach kind of a rock bottom moment where you go, I am just, this is just, there’s something not working. Like the universe keeps telling you that you’re not looking, you’re not listening. It’s more that the universe is going to keep telling you that you’re not listening.

And I ended up kind of having to go and get help, really. And I found myself, I think, at a seminar on business.

But there was a guy there that was talking about belief systems, and I was just hooked. I went, yeah, I need to deep dive into this. And that was kind of how it happened for me.

So take my advice, do it earlier. Just go do it now. Don’t wait for the universe to make you sick or unhealthy or bankrupt or whatever. Do it earlier.

The Project Egg Show Host: So now that you’ve been going down that path, what are some of the biggest takeaways? And I know we’ve talked about some of them, but I really wanna just ask that outright.

Barbara Turley: Yeah. So for me, I think that definitely the biggest takeaway is I’m a strong, confident person who knows what I want and need, but I’m not very good at communicating what I need.

So I had a problem with, which a lot of people have problems with, boundaries around, for example, running your own business. A lot of people struggle with boundaries with clients, boundaries with their team, what’s acceptable behavior, what’s not, and being able to say it in a way that doesn’t cause an argument. You know what I mean?

Or how do you communicate something negative, but in a positive way to get a good result?

So I had to learn a lot of new communication skills, and running such a large team has really challenged me to, you know, I’ve really had to go into that because when you’ve got 120 staff, you’ve got HR issues, you’ve got other people with belief systems, and then other leaders running their teams that need your help and guidance to understand how they run their team better.

So it’s definitely been a massive journey for me, and the learning, honestly, I think I’m just at the beginning of the learning. So lots of learnings there.

The Project Egg Show Host: So parallel to this journey of self-discovery, you’ve also been growing this business that is now a massive force to be reckoned with.

So how did you balance that self-exploration, the self-discovery, this very personal quest with building a business and running a startup and growing this massive team?

Barbara Turley: Yes. The biggest tip I can give anyone is every time something’s going wrong, the first place you look is yourself. What am I doing?

Not to blame yourself, because people can go into self-blame. You have to look at how am I reacting? And it’s so painful because sometimes you’re like, yeah, I probably lost it there.

And I’m quite a passionate person, so I’ve really had to look at myself all the time. And even when you get negative client feedback and it’s so painful and all these things.

But you’ve really got to try and look at yourself first because if you are the leader of the business, where goes your head goes the rest of the business, regardless of whether you’re on your own running something or you’ve got a team or anything.

And it’s a commitment to your own state of mind. And I haven’t always been in the best state of mind because running companies is hard, right? There’s an emotional roller coaster that you go on.

But definitely, where goes your head goes your business. So it’s important to try to balance that and keep your focus there. And that is what will lift you out of even the worst crisis in business, is to focus on yourself first.

The Project Egg Show Host: I am so glad that our conversation has gone in this direction.

Barbara Turley: Yeah.

The Project Egg Show Host: This is very exciting for me. So thank you for being willing to go there.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and look, I mean, I’m also very raw and real. And I think these are the real things that, in business in particular, people need to be talking about, actually, because everyone hears the successes, but nobody talks about these issues and the roller coasters and the journey to get there and how people actually do this.

So yeah, more than happy to share all of this sort of stuff on podcasts.

The Project Egg Show Host: So when you first started the business, what were some of the actionable steps that you took to get up and running?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so the first thing I’d say, let’s talk about the fact that this was an accidental business. It wasn’t my first rodeo, as someone said to me recently.

I left corporate, and I had this massive plan. I made the whole business plan and did everything right, okay?

And I launched, I think I launched something that actually would have been successful had I kept going at it, but let’s talk about the failure.

So I launched a platform called Energize Wealth, which is still there. I’ve left it there as like a passion project that I think I might come back to someday.

And I had an online TV show, I had a podcast, I was running online programs. It was the whole thing, right?

And I did a product launch. I did the whole Jeff Walker product launch forum, did the whole thing. Sort of fell on my face.

Like, it was very successful-looking, but in terms of sales, it did actually break even, but it was extraordinarily painful for me.

And I kind of went into a hole after that where I was like, I can’t do this. I almost shut down.

And I think, you know, people these days, how I would have seen that had it happened again, I would have just gone, yeah, let’s launch again. Let’s just go and get feedback and let’s do it again, and not be so emotional about it.

Whereas I just went into like a depression.

And from that few months, everything kind of slid, and it was Christmas anyway, so I took some time out.

And I had a few business coaching clients, and I was helping them. They were small businesses, but they all had the same problem. They couldn’t afford to hire staff, but if they didn’t hire staff, they were never going to grow.

And this was like the catch-22 that everyone’s in.

I had a virtual assistant myself, who I found online in the Philippines. So I just started recruiting some of her friends to help clients out.

Like, I wasn’t thinking about a plan or a business.

And before I knew it, I was kind of getting more calls from friends of clients for VAs than I was for business coaching.

And I remember thinking one day, I wonder, is there a business in this?

And I did a webinar. I didn’t even put any energy into it. I just was like, yeah, I’ll put on a webinar, how to successfully use VAs in your business.

And it was the most successful one I did.

And honestly, we were in business within a second. I had no website, no business plan, no name, nothing, just a concept.

And I solved a problem that people had, and I didn’t even know I was doing it.

And therefore the business was born out of that.

And that was an eye-opening experience for me to go, business plans and logos and branding, yeah, it’s all great, but you know what? Just solve people’s pain point.

And that will be, so within a month, I had completely stopped Energize Wealth and was like, right, we’re doing this now.

And that was it, yeah.

Now, it wasn’t quite as easy as that along the way, but that was the initial start of it. So big lesson there.

The Project Egg Show Host: Okay, so wait a second. You had this idea and you’re like, all right, I’ll just throw up a webinar. And then it was just this rocking success, right?

Barbara Turley: Not quite. I mean, people bought, but what you’ll find when you solve for a pain point that people have, right, is you’ll solve the first bit and then everyone will be happy for a while.

And then the second problem will raise its ugly head, and that will be connected to the first problem that they had.

So for example, after six months, I nearly shut the business down because it was so painful because I had clients complaining, I had virtual assistants complaining, I had just a torrent of abuse every day.

Boundaries were a problem. Like, I had no boundaries, and it was just everybody wanting me to solve the problem of not being able to delegate effectively, not being able to communicate effectively with their VA, the VA not being able to communicate effectively with the client.

Like, it was a whole host of problems.

And I almost shuddered, and instead I was like, okay, I need to solve the next problem. I need to teach people how to delegate. I need to teach people how to create processes, and I need to train the VAs on how to manage the client.

Like, massive piece of work.

So over time, those sort of problems, we’ve ironed them out over kind of four years now, and now we’re in a good place.

But yeah, it takes a while. You know, there are very challenging times.

The Project Egg Show Host: Okay, there’s so many doors here to go in. So I just want to rewind for a second.

You do this first webinar, okay? You just throw it up there. How did people even find out about it? How did you get people to show up to your webinar?

Barbara Turley: Yeah.

Now, I had done other webinars, right? And I had put money into Facebook ads, and I had done all of that and got loads of engagement and all that sort of jazz, right?

This webinar, I didn’t bother with any of that.

I put it out to the small list that I had, which was about maybe 1,500 people. Maybe it was 2,000 or 3,000 at that stage.

I had a list, and I whacked it up on Facebook.

And for some reason, people shared it. The title of that webinar obviously hit a nerve.

It was called “How to Confidently and Successfully Use Virtual Assistants to Grow Your Business.”

And what I discovered from that, the reason I used the word confidently and successfully is because the people who had called me looking for a VA, I was like, why wouldn’t you just go and find your own VA? I mean, you can get them on Upwork, right?

And they were like, well, I’ve been burnt in the past and it was a disaster, and I just don’t know how to do it. And I don’t feel confident with it. And I got no success with it.

And that’s still a common theme out there, that people are saying, I get that offshore is great for my bottom-line profit, but I don’t know how to start. I’ve been burned before, and it was a disaster, and it doesn’t work for my business, is where they go to, which is a belief system that’s incorrect.

But they need somebody to show them how to do it right.

And I think that’s what worked because it spoke to the deep pain that was there, but it was a little bit accidental that I picked those words.

The Project Egg Show Host: So you had heard this pain point, you put up this video, you send it out to your list, you put it up on Facebook, people started sharing. How many people actually showed up to the webinar?

Barbara Turley: Not many. So I was a bit disappointed, and I thought, you know, not many people showed up live. But people listened to the recording.

And now, I didn’t get a torrent of buyers. I mean, when I say it was successful, I got 10 buyers.

But 10 buyers meant I had to recruit 10 people. I was like, I don’t even know where I’m going to find these people.

I just didn’t think people were going to buy it, right?

So I think maybe lack of expectation or no expectation meant that it kind of took off because maybe I wasn’t so emotionally attached to the results that it just seemed to work.

So while I’m not sharing particularly great advice for anyone there on what to do, I think you just have to try things, and you’ve got to tweak wording and just put something out there and throw stuff out there and see what sticks because something will stick eventually.

The Project Egg Show Host: Yeah, I love it. And it’s the real story. Like, that’s actually what happened.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, people can tell you the five-step plan to make your webinar go nuts and all that stuff.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the pain point that you’re trying to solve and whether the pain is acute enough for somebody to want to pay money for you to solve it now, as opposed to sometime in the future.

So when I was selling the wealth thing, loads of people signed up to the webinar, but they weren’t ready to buy now because they were thinking, well, I do want to make wealth, but at the moment I’m just so in the weeds about my business that I can’t think about wealth creation. I don’t have any wealth.

And I realized that. I was like, yeah, they’re interested, but they’re not buyers. That’s different.

The Project Egg Show Host: That is profound. So you want to solve a really acute problem, like a very, very specific acute problem that they need the solution to now. And they’re willing to pay for that solution now.

Barbara Turley: They wake up every morning and they’re like, I am in hell because of this thing today. And they will pay you to do that.

Because if they’re like, I’m in hell because I know I can’t buy a house, well, you can teach them how to save or whatever. But the problem is they’re not making money to save. There’s other problems.

They’re like, I know I need to save to buy a house, but the problem is actually my real problem is that my expenses are too high.

Or I have a, you know, there’s other, there’s more acute problems that are earlier in the journey of that person.

And that’s the thing to try to, that’s the hard part, is to try and find where they are in the cycle of what it is that you’re going to do and solve a smaller problem first, more acute, smaller problem.

The Project Egg Show Host: That is seriously brilliant.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, accidental. I mean, it is brilliant, but it’s brilliant because I found out by accident, and I had studied every course out there. I had bought all the courses, and they do say solve a problem, but I didn’t quite go deep enough with that and go, it’s like needle-size problem, you know, in the thing that is the real pain.

The Project Egg Show Host: That is brilliant because if you’re hitting that deep, tiny, but very deep problem, then you’ve identified buyers, and then you can keep serving those same people. Like you said, more problems will arise.

Barbara Turley: Definitely. So many problems that you can’t keep up. Like, your business will evolve so fast because you’ll be like, well, that was just the little thing, but that opens up a can of worms, right, of all of the other things that you’re leading them on that journey.

The Project Egg Show Host: But that’s a great problem to have. That’s a great problem to have because then people are paying you for the solutions to the problems. I feel like so many people are stuck at this point where they’re trying to sell something instead of trying to fix this.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and you don’t need a website. You don’t need anything. In fact, just try and find people in your local community or people around you somewhere and solve it for five people first and then get your testimonials and find out, like, you’ve got to use those as a beta case.

Get 10 people. Everybody wants to launch a membership site. I’m like, why don’t you just find 10 people that are willing to do a beta program on Skype and do it live and don’t invest any money in it.

Just get feedback immediately, even if the feedback is, that was rubbish. Sorry, I wouldn’t pay anything for that. Great feedback. At least you know.

So that’s, yeah, I burned loads of money on the previous business model where I did everything right and it didn’t actually really go anywhere. So big lessons, yeah.

The Project Egg Show Host: So at the end of the webinar, the call to action, you ask people to like, like, how did you frame it? And what, like, how did they literally do it? I mean, did you give them a PayPal link? Like how exactly did that work?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I had a few systems set up at that point. So like I was using Ontraport. Doesn’t matter. You don’t need that.

I mean, you can just give them a PayPal link to pay. It’s very easy these days to set up a payment page to do something. Stripe or whatever can do it for you.

But the offer was very basic. It was like, look, I’ll recruit.

It wasn’t just a recruitment offer. I had discovered that recruitment, like if I charge 200 bucks to recruit someone or 500 bucks, whatever, the real problem wasn’t the first problem.

The first problem was recruiting. I did that for a few clients. And then I did it for a couple of people, not before the webinar, but they weren’t able to manage them. They couldn’t figure it out.

So the offer on the webinar was a little bit deeper. It was the next step. It was like, I’ll recruit them and we’ll do a little bit of HR management. Like, we’ll pay them.

So we’ll just charge you X and we’ll pay them. And we’ll make sure that they show up to work every day and we don’t have any funny business going on.

And that was, I think, people, but we just charged a little margin at the time for that. The pricing wouldn’t work today at all based on what we do, but it was a test price.

But we still have, here’s the thing, I still have two clients that bought on that webinar that are still with us today at that pricing. They still get that pricing.

So they’ve been with us for five years.

The Project Egg Show Host: That is incredible.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, two of those early buyers are still with us.

The Project Egg Show Host: Wow. So you found this pain point, you run this webinar, you get some buyers, and then you’re like, yeah, that’s the thing. Let’s do that.

How did you then pivot everything and go, or maybe you didn’t, but it seems like you pivoted and you went all in.

Barbara Turley: I went all in, but all in was like, hey, we need to recruit now. Like, I was calling my VA, can you get 10 of your friends? Right.

She was like, sure.

Now, here was the trader in me, though. I was like, bingo, we’re in. That’s it. We’re doing it.

And it’s this sense of going, I have no idea what we’re going to do here, but the first step is we need people. At least find some people. I can then figure out what you’re going to do with those people.

And just, you know, I will tell you a story from my trading days.

When I first became a junior trader, like my first few weeks on a trading desk, I can remember being frozen in indecision. I was just like, the whole room was shouting around me, and I just was staring at the screen.

And the head of trading came over to me and he said, what are you doing? What are you doing?

And I was like, I don’t, like I was just totally lost.

And he said to me, you’ve got to get in the game because it doesn’t matter whether you buy or sell, you’ve just got to do something.

And then you’re in, and then you do something else, and you make the next decision.

And he’s right because in indecision, you’re actually sitting on the fence while everybody else is playing the game.

So you’ve just got to make a decision and don’t worry about whether it’s right or wrong initially. You’ve just got to do something, and then you’re in flow. And don’t get stuck anywhere. Just keep moving. Keep yourself in flow.

So that was a big lesson that worked in that moment for me. I was like, we’re in business. That’s it.

The Project Egg Show Host: That’s amazing. So you saw the results, you made the decision, you got in the game, and then you just figured it out.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I didn’t worry about things like competitors. You know, you should do competitor analysis.

So I was like, look, I just have this string of customers that are asking me for something, and it really doesn’t matter.

Even to this day, I don’t look at competitors. I just listen to our clients and I listen to our employees, and we build from there. And we’ve always done that.

You’ve got to keep an eye out to the side of what’s happening, but really your customers are going to tell you what their needs are if you keep asking them.

And then as you grow bigger as a company, listen to your employees because that’s where the gold is, right?

So you’ve got two customers, really. You’ve got your employees and you’ve got your clients.

And if you listen to both sides and, within reason, try to balance that in the middle, you will develop a powerhouse business doing that. Definitely.

The Project Egg Show Host: I was about to ask what happens if your employees are saying one thing, but your customers are saying another.

Barbara Turley: Yes, so your employees want one thing and your customers want something else.

The Project Egg Show Host: Yeah.

Barbara Turley: I’m trying to think of a good example of that.

So your employees are pulling back on something that your customers want more of.

Okay, in something like that situation, you’ve got to dive deeper into why the employee wants something different.

So it could be because they are already stretched, right? And you are not listening.

They’re not saying it. They don’t know how to articulate that actually what’s wrong is we don’t have enough staff. The systems are messy.

So remember we talked about the structure and the chaos. There’s chaos and chaos, and they’re feeling it, but they don’t know how to articulate that. They’re just saying, nah, we don’t want this, right?

So you’ve got to start to look at, well, is it because we have too much friction in our systems? Is there too much admin and mistakes happening and frustration?

That can be one thing.

With your employees as well, do you have a culture problem? Is there a cancer somewhere?

You know, the water cooler, someone who’s bitching and gossiping and this sort of thing. That can be a cancer.

One person in a team of a hundred can destroy the culture.

So then you’ve got to look at your hiring and recruiting.

So rather than just throwing your hands in the air and going, I just can’t get my employees and my clients to, you know, they’re my roadblock.

Again, you as the leader have to go, hmm, that’s interesting. Let’s dig into that. Let’s dig deeper.

And let’s listen more deeply. Let’s ask them more questions about why is that or what is it about you coming to work every day?

Same on your client side. Maybe you might want to get a group of your best clients together or your worst clients and put them on like a board where you discuss why is this a terrible experience for you?

And just be honest with them and say, look, I know you feel like this is a terrible experience, and I’m really keen to dig into it.

Even if you lose that client, it doesn’t matter because the next one you bring in will be better.

And if you do that, I think that’s how you’ll solve that problem eventually. It just might be painful.

The Project Egg Show Host: Barbara, you’re like a wizard.

Barbara Turley: I should put a witch’s hat on.

Trust me, it is all because of like, okay, the blonde covers up the gray hair, but seriously, this is all learned from experience.

It’s not because I’m a wizard. It’s because I have felt the pain of it myself, and I have solved these problems myself, continuing to solve problems every day.

The Project Egg Show Host: Well, it’s incredible that not only are you doing all these things, but you’re also on this incredible journey of self-exploration and, in between all of these things, managed to squeeze in some time to talk to me.

So I appreciate that. I appreciate you being willing to go so deep on all these things.

I do have a few more questions for you, and then we’ll wrap it on up.

We’ve talked a lot about your professional journey and a little bit of your own personal journey of self-exploration, personal development.

But what else has been going on in your personal life this whole time?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so obviously, you know, I have the unique challenge of navigating motherhood and entrepreneurship at the same time.

And a lot of people will say to me, my God, you’re like a superwoman. And I go, no, I’m actually not. I just delegate very, very, very well.

So to any women or even fathers out there listening, it’s extraordinarily tiring, right? I will admit the nights are long, you know, children up at night and this sort of thing.

And I’m in a constant personal conflict, honestly, between loving business and entrepreneurship and me, my own personal space and my vision and my loves and my daughter and soon-to-be son who’s coming soon, but wanting to be a mother because I actually love doing that as well.

And I have managed over the last few years to really split it 50-50.

I only work three days a week. Well, I say that, and then I think, I’ll probably do a bit in the other days.

But I have my daughter in daycare three days a week, and I’m adamant that the other two and the weekend, like there’s four days in the week where she’s with me or my husband or we’re together or whatever.

Now, what I have discovered, though, is that’s worked really well for the last couple of years, but I’ve been very stretched in the last year with that.

I have discovered that, wow, I made this 50-50 thing work, but what I forgot about was that 50-50 means there’s nothing left for me. There’s no 10% left for me.

And I think that was a mistake. I think I should have done like even 45-45 and had 10% that I was very strict about that’s just for me.

Because I don’t get to read anymore. I don’t get to do anything other than business and mommy.

And there have been moments I felt like I’ve been losing myself, and that’s…

Barbara Turley: That’s not a good thing because you start to lose the intuition and the touch, and you get cranky with your team and your children, and then nobody wins.

So that’s definitely something I’m working on right now before baby number two comes, of how do I make sure that I don’t go into the vortex of overwhelm?

Yeah. So for all the moms and dads out there listening, I get it. I’m not superwoman. You’ve just got to be very strict on boundaries and time.

The Project Egg Show Host: What is, I’m trying to think of the right way to phrase this.

I believe that one of the bedrocks of humanity is connection. And we’ve been talking a lot about, interestingly, it usually doesn’t go this route, but we’ve been talking a lot about connection with yourself and being very intimate with yourself and with your own thoughts and who you really are.

But on the other side of connection is that with another person.

So I’m really interested in learning what your philosophy is on developing deep, meaningful, and genuine connections or connection with another human being.

Barbara Turley: Yes. Okay. Something I’m not great at, right?

Not that I’m not great at building connection with another human being. I’m very good at it, but I need to make sure that my phone is nowhere.

So with my daughter, for example, I do have a habit of my phone is there and there’s work going on. I’ve gotten that was working fine when she was very little. Now she’s a toddler, and she will even come to me and be like, “No phone, mommy.”

She doesn’t even want me listening to a podcast while we’re, like, she knows I’m not present.

So I think what I’ve learned is the importance of presence.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re listening to someone or you’re physically present or you’re there. Unless they feel you, you’re not there.

So don’t delude yourself into thinking that just because you’re physically with someone or you’re listening, that they feel you and they feel heard by you.

So there’s a difference between somebody listening to you and feeling heard by the other person.

And I think that’s the key to connection, is to deeply make the other person feel heard and feel your presence.

And that’s not easy to do in today’s crazy world where we’ve got social media and constant pinging of things, and you’ve got to put it away.

And it’s hard because we’re addicted to the phones and things, you know?

So I have to put it in another room with my daughter, yeah, and be strict that that’s now no more working.

Hard though, not my strength.

The Project Egg Show Host: What’s your greatest theory?

Barbara Turley: If I was to put it simply, life is an adventure.

The word adventure, I love the word adventure because it has that sense of chaos, uncertainty, unknown, and that is life, right?

And if you embrace the adventure of it, it’s a lot of fun.

But with fun, with adventure comes risk.

And that’s kind of my philosophy in life, definitely. Yeah.

The Project Egg Show Host: Wow, that’s interesting. I love that answer.

Barbara Turley: That’s just it in a nutshell, yeah.

The Project Egg Show Host: Can we peel that nutshell?

Barbara Turley: You can, yes. Yeah, more than happy for you to peel into that one.

The Project Egg Show Host: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know the right way to peel. Where should I peel there?

Barbara Turley: Well, I think, you know, my philosophy in life, life is an adventure, right?

So I’ve always, I love life, right? And my life’s been, I mean, it’s been a lot of fun so far, but it’s had a lot of challenges too.

But I think my greatest growth experiences have come out of the worst adversity or the things that really were quite ugly.

And I think accepting that every sort of five, seven years, you will go through a time that will be ugly. And it might be ugly for a couple of years because we have relationship breakdowns. People die. You might go through grief.

And that is the nature of life.

And I think my mother used to always say to me, and she still does, life is a bed of roses, but roses have thorns.

So it’s this sort of duality, I suppose, of life and embracing that and accepting the downtimes.

And I haven’t always done this well. I definitely fought against the downtimes when I was much younger.

But these days, even when I’m up all night with a baby and it’s so tiring and you feel so frustrated and kind of angry, the moment you go into acceptance of it, everything releases and you actually feel better because you just accept what is, you know, in certain situations.

I hope that helps to peel it a little bit, but I don’t know how else to dive in there.

The Project Egg Show Host: You’ve been seriously dropping some gems, and I would really encourage everybody who’s watching and listening to go back and actually listen a couple of times or watch a couple of times.

Like, there’s a lot of wisdom there that I’m not even sure I could fully unpack right now, but I mean, it’s very profound.

Barbara Turley: Thank you.

The Project Egg Show Host: That was awesome.

Barbara Turley: Like I said at the beginning of this interview, my background is interesting, and I’ve learned a lot through my life, and I’ve been very lucky in lots of ways to have a very, so far, I mean I’m not that old, not that old yet, but a very rich life in terms of experiences.

That’s probably the dynamic nature of me in that I see opportunity everywhere, and I get excited by adventure and maybe a bit of risk-taking.

Risk is exciting if you know how to harness it properly.

The Project Egg Show Host: I’m really trying not to open that doorway too big. Maybe we could do a follow-up on that.

Barbara Turley: Anytime.

The Project Egg Show Host: So is there anything about yourself that you think is an important part of who you are that I did not ask you about today? In other words, what did I miss?

Barbara Turley: Well, I don’t think you’ve missed anything.

I think what I would say, though, is that I’m also very aware that I’m one of the lucky ones, right?

I was brought up in a family that, I had a great family upbringing. My parents fought, and we had all the usual family dramas going on. But in general, I come from a strong, solid family.

So my belief systems as a child, if we were to go back to beliefs, I’m one of the lucky ones that had positive beliefs embedded into me early about what was possible for me.

I was always told you can be anything you want to be. Those sorts of things are natural for me.

And not everyone is brought up that way.

So anyone listening who’s feeling like, wow, she’s got, dig into the belief thing because you may not have been as lucky.

And I am very aware that I count myself very lucky that I got a good start that way in life.

And I do think it has a huge impact on you later. Every decision you make later on is linked back to that.

So if you have children, anyone listening who has kids, think about what are you embedding in their mind before they’re six or seven years old?

It’s important to think about that because it does impact how they think later in life, and I do think that’s an important point that I would just leave you with.

The Project Egg Show Host: Last question for you. I’m 24, and I really have to know, what is one question that I should be asking you, specifically me asking specifically you, with your knowledge, your wisdom, your experience, your genius, your wizard powers, that I just wouldn’t think to ask?

Barbara Turley: I’ve got to think about that for a second because you’ve asked some very insightful questions.

I think you’re already on a path. Like, you’re only 24, right?

So I’m trying to think when I was 24, I think I was out in Thailand at some full moon parties and just, you know, pretty wild, not really thinking about any of this stuff.

I think what I would impart to you, I don’t know what question I would ask you to ask, but what I would say is that it is also important to not be too serious early in your life, right?

So you’ve got to look into these things, but it’s really important to cut loose a bit and have some fun.

Not saying you’re not, but in my twenties, I’ll be honest with you, my twenties were quite hedonistic.

Like, I had this crazy sort of corporate banking career. I partied a lot. I had a great time.

And my sole purpose in my twenties was how much fun can I have?

And I really do think that actually, I’m really glad I did that because I really just found myself to kind of be free.

I traveled a lot. Like I said, I went to plenty of parties and stuff like that and met loads of cool people.

And I think your twenties is like an extension of your, like your teenage years can be full of angst and kind of confusion.

And then your twenties, you feel like, I’m an adult now, I’m out on my own.

And really explore that and enjoy that because then later on you can really reflect on those things, and you’ll change anyway as things move on.

So yeah, I sort of encourage people, particularly young entrepreneurs, don’t get too serious too early on. You’ve plenty of time to make the big bucks and to pivot, you know.

The Project Egg Show Host: Well, Barbara, I want to thank you so, much for coming on the show and sharing this time with me. It’s been very special, and I feel very honored to be able to speak with you. So thank you very much.

Barbara Turley: Thank you for having me, and thank you for such great questions. Really, really insightful questions and great conversation.

The Project Egg Show Host: Thank you.

And to everybody who’s watching and listening, I love y’all. I do, you know I do.

And thank you so much for supporting the show and sticking with us till the end here.

Y’all rock, every single one of you. I’m talking to you.

So thank you very much, and I will see you guys and gals on the next episode. Take care.