The Virtual Hub: Scale your business without the overwhelm
The Unshackled Owner
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Episode breakdown
Barbara Turley, the CEO of The Virtual Hub, the manifestation of her personal desire to help as many entrepreneurs as possible scale their business without the overwhelm. Barbara relates how she was able to manage her tasks by finding a support assistant, which eventually led her to create her business and help others.
Her background has been in financial services, trading stocks and building a successful financial career. But there was a transformational moment where she went, and got some additional help in taking care of tasks in her life. She reached out, she found a support assistant that she liked and had such a good experience managing a virtual assistant. Before she knew it, she was the expert and was growing a business helping others.
- How Barbara Turley Started
- The mindset that you need in order to succeed in your business
- Why Delegation is Important
- What services can you get when hiring a support assistant from The Virtual Hub
- How to treat your employees
"If you don’t hire staff, you’ll never going to get out and unshackle yourself"
In this episode
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Purpose
Aaron Young introduces the Unshackled Owner podcast, explaining its mission to help entrepreneurs build businesses that work independently of their constant involvement. He discusses the common issue of entrepreneurs creating jobs for themselves instead of real, scalable businesses.
02:12 Barbara Turley’s Background and Why She Was Invited
Aaron introduces Barbara Turley, founder of The Virtual Hub, noting her transition from financial services to entrepreneurship. He hints at a deeper mission behind her business that aligns with the podcast’s values of doing meaningful work beyond just making money.
04:01 Early Life and Passion for Horses
Barbara shares her upbringing in rural Ireland, her love for horses, and how her environment shaped her. This part highlights her personal background and a shared love of horses with the host, creating a more personal connection.
08:00 Educational Path and Early Career in Finance
Barbara talks about her initial desire to become a doctor, missing the entry requirements, and how she pivoted into economics. Her growing interest in finance led her to a 15-year career in investment banking and on trading floors.
09:46 Trading Floor Experience and Decision-Making Skills
She discusses her time on the trading floor, the high-pressure decision-making environment, and how it mirrored the dynamic nature she had once sought in medicine. Barbara emphasizes how quick decision-making became one of her key strengths.
13:22 Importance of Quick, Confident Decisions
The conversation focuses on the value of making quick, confident decisions rather than overanalyzing. Both Barbara and Aaron share insights on how overthinking can hinder progress and how clarity and certainty lead to success.
15:59 Understanding and Trusting Your Intuition
Barbara and Aaron talk about the need to understand one’s inner desires and trust intuition when making life and business decisions. This theme ties back to the concept of becoming “unshackled.”
17:34 Clarity of Vision and Long-Term Goals
Aaron explains why the first lesson in his Unshackled Owner course is focused on gaining extreme clarity about one’s goals and vision, emphasizing the power of reverse engineering a path once the end goal is vividly defined.
18:50 Failures, Lessons Learned, and the Birth of The Virtual Hub
Barbara recounts her first failed entrepreneurial venture—a financial education program for women—and the emotional toll it took. However, through helping private clients find affordable support assistants, she accidentally discovered a business model that eventually became The Virtual Hub.
19:43 Starting a Business Without a Plan
Barbara describes launching a business in the Philippines with no business plan, no prior experience in the country, and a staff of subcontractors under uncertain arrangements. She solved the initial problem of clients being too scared to do the work themselves and emphasizes the value of hiring someone experienced, comparing it to using general contractors in construction.
21:02 Recognizing a Business Opportunity and Transitioning Focus
Barbara explains the pivotal moment when she realized she enjoyed recruiting support assistants more than consulting. She discusses the common startup mistake of pursuing ideas without real demand. Her breakthrough was realizing clients had an immediate need for support assistants, unlike her previous course aimed at future financial planning. Early success came despite lacking a formal website or contracts. However, challenges arose with client and support assistant training, nearly leading her to shut down before deciding to refocus on training and improving quality.
25:59 Evolving the Business Model and Challenges of Growth
The business grew to 65 staff working remotely, causing operational strain. A mentor advised Barbara to legitimize the company by registering in the Philippines and converting contractors to employees. This transition was costly and risky, with many staff resigning due to new tax and oversight requirements. Barbara reflects on the challenges of scaling, corporate formalization, and maintaining company culture, including relocating part of the operation to Cebu and dealing with COVID-related disruptions.
32:55 Adapting Through COVID and Maintaining Vision
Barbara shares how COVID forced the company to shift back to remote work, investing heavily in equipment and infrastructure. Despite difficulties like recruitment and retention, she emphasizes the importance of trusting the business vision and the growing demand from clients and employees as motivation to continue scaling rather than closing.
34:52 Work-from-Home Realities and Outsourcing Benefits
Aaron and Barbara discuss misconceptions about remote work in expensive Western countries, noting many employees struggle with distractions and loneliness at home. They highlight how countries like the Philippines offer educated, English-speaking workers at competitive rates. Barbara notes that while language accents may vary, the work quality remains high.
36:53 Industry Challenges and Niche Focus
Barbara critiques the support assistant industry’s broken, high-churn model and describes her company’s subscription-based approach emphasizing partnership with clients. She explains her strategic decision to niche down into digital marketing VAs, leveraging her own background to create tailored training, SOPs, and support. Deep listening to both clients and support assistants allowed constant iteration and improvement, distinguishing her business from competitors.
39:53 Customer-Centric Approach and Competitive Advantage
Barbara shares advice from a former CEO to ignore competitors and focus on truly understanding client needs. By continuously listening and adapting, her company has been able to provide superior solutions and naturally outcompete others in the market.
40:48 Barbara Turley’s Operational Role and Matching Process
Barbara describes her daily operational role as similar to a trading floor, where she leads daily huddles with team heads and matches support assistants to clients based on detailed data and performance. She emphasizes the difficulty of delegating this role but notes the strong team and processes in place that could sustain the company if she were absent.
42:58 Building a Team to Become Unshackled
Aaron discusses the importance of building a strong team and delegating recurring tasks to free up the entrepreneur’s time. He highlights how focusing on core strengths and delegating the rest is key to scaling a business, no matter its size, and stresses that delegation is crucial once product-market fit is found.
46:20 Delegation and the Role of COOs
Barbara expands on delegation as a critical but often overlooked entrepreneurial skill. She explains how COOs build systems and delegate tasks efficiently, particularly through offshore teams, to improve bottom-line results. She also notes that the core principles apply equally to small businesses and large corporations.
48:51 Ideal Client Profile and Services Offered by Virtual Hub
Barbara outlines Virtual Hub’s ideal clients as small to medium-sized businesses with a digital strategy in place, engaged in activities like podcasts, YouTube, webinars, and content marketing. They mainly provide support for digital tasks rather than general admin or accounting, focusing on assisting clients with specialized, process-driven support assistance.
50:48 Clarifying the Role of a Support Assistant
Aaron and Barbara clarify that support assistants are not strategists but support staff who execute tasks based on clear processes. They emphasize the importance of separating strategic roles from administrative “hands-on” roles and the benefit of offshore teams taking on tasks like client onboarding to free up internal resources.
52:45 Philosophy on Hiring Support Assistants and Global Impact
Barbara shares her philosophy that hiring support assistants is beneficial not only for business owners but also for creating meaningful career opportunities in countries like the Philippines. She stresses the importance of building an employee brand alongside a client brand and how this approach positively impacts global economies.
54:04 Treating Employees with Respect and Building Company Culture
Barbara and Aaron discuss how treating employees with respect, acknowledging their contributions, and fostering a positive culture leads to greater employee engagement and business success. They highlight investing in employees’ education and creating a work environment where people feel valued and empowered to contribute ideas.
57:27 Cultural Fit and Company Purpose
Barbara explains the importance of hiring employees who are a cultural fit and aligned with the company’s purpose. She shares how Virtual Hub’s purpose evolved from eradicating overwhelm to unlocking dreams for clients and employees, influencing hiring decisions to ensure mutual growth and fulfillment.
1:00:15 Closing Quote and Mindset for Entrepreneurs
Barbara shares an Arabic proverb, “The dogs may be barking, but the caravan still passes,” as a metaphor for persevering through challenges by focusing on vision and forward momentum. This mindset supports entrepreneurs in staying focused despite obstacles.
1:01:40 Podcast Wrap-Up and Encouragement to Delegate
Aaron concludes by encouraging listeners to embrace delegation to avoid being shackled by daily tasks. He promotes Virtual Hub as a resource for growing digital businesses and urges entrepreneurs to adopt the mindset and practices shared during the podcast to achieve freedom and business growth.
