Barbara Turley on Teams, Trust and Time Freedom Through VAs
When the world locked down, Barbara Turley had 150 staff in an office in the Philippines. The office was sealed. 35% of her people had no computer and no internet at home. She had 48 hours to get everyone working from home.
Her reaction was not panic. It was, in her words, game on.
Barbara is the founder of The Virtual Hub, and Episode 86 of The Purpose Chasers is about what it actually takes to build a team you trust, delegate without losing quality and buy back your time. It is also the most honest conversation about virtual assistants I have had.
48 Hours
"I have 150 staff in an office in the Philippines where they all went into quarantine and we shut down and we had to send everyone to work from home, which sounds easy when you're in the West, but when you're in somewhere like the Philippines and 35% of your staff have no computers and no internet at home and you have 48 hours to get them out, I was like, it's game on."
What could have been a collapse became a case study in conscious leadership. Not because she had a perfect plan, but because she had already built the thing that matters most in a crisis: a team that trusted her enough to move fast.
It Started With Getting Out of the Weeds
Barbara did not set out to build a VA company. She was running a consulting business, stuck in the vicious cycle every solo operator knows: too busy doing the work to grow, not enough revenue to hire help.
"I had read Tim Ferriss's book, The 4-Hour Work Week, and I had gotten myself a VA in the Philippines online. And I started recruiting a few VAs for clients, not as a business, just to purely help them get out of the weeds so that I could help them to work on strategy."
Then friends of clients started calling and asking for one of those VAs. The business found her. She is quick to say it was still a fight.
"Entrepreneurship is a fight. It was a fight. Trust me, people only see the good end of it now. But there was a lot of personal toil in those years."
The Honest Version of Hiring Overseas
I told Barbara about Jonathan, a teammate of mine in the Philippines who would outwork most of a room full of Americans. She agreed, and then she did something most people in her industry will not do. She told me the downside.
"You'll get people who lie to you, who'll say they're working and they're not, and who go great for the first four weeks and then they're absolutely terrible thereafter."
Her answer is not to avoid the model. It is to run it like a real company: hire for values instead of resumes, onboard properly, pay fairly for the local economy without distorting it, and measure what matters.
"Our metric of success is longevity of client, longevity of employee."
The practical rhythm she recommends to every client is simple: record what you do, document it, assign it, run a 10 minute daily huddle, measure, repeat. Inch wide, mile deep.
Why Trust Is the Real Product
Here is what connects Barbara's business to mine. A team that trusts you delivers results. Results create clients who are happy to talk on camera. And a client talking on camera is the one marketing asset that keeps working while you are not. That is the Social Proof System, and it only works for owners who have bought back enough time to actually ask.
What Clients Say When the Tech Is Handled for Them
Justina Reaves is a public speaker, a coach and a top leader in network marketing. When 2020 hit she had to get her business online, but she did not have time to learn funnels, leads and drip campaigns. Her verdict:
"Mark has transformed my vision into reality."
Sarah Jones had wanted to get her business online for a long time and did not know how to start a landing page. We built two full landing pages and every automation in Go HighLevel, then recorded a walkthrough so she was comfortable running it herself. In her words:
"He did a great job and I'll definitely be using him again."
More real stories on the Happy Check client results page.
Keep Listening
The hierarchy of needs for your employees and for you as the entrepreneur
You are a reflection of your team, and other leadership lessons
Want Your Time Back and Your Proof Working for You?
On The Purpose Chasers I sit down with people who are building something that matters. In my business, The Happy Check, I help coaches, creators and service businesses turn that same kind of real story into video testimonials and content that bring in clients.
If you want to take your marketing to the next level, book an organic marketing audit call with me.
Or start with the free Happy Check book and learn who to ask, when to ask and how to use what they say.
Keep reading: fire your marketing company in 5 steps, how to scale with customer testimonials.
