Hosted by Tim Curtis and Erik Martinez
This week on the Digital Velocity Podcast, Barbara Turley of The Virtual Hub joins Tim and Erik to discuss the opportunities of utilizing virtual assistants to help navigate the challenges of scaling a business.
When scaling a business, the owner and other significant people must focus on strategy and not be consumed with tasks that can be process-driven. Barbara says, “…if you're a business owner, you're in the business of business building…you've got to get out of technician mode and think about like, how are we growing this business? And the energy of the owner, and the creative mind of the owner, and the key people is actually the thing that you want to expand. And the only way to do that is to take the busy work off them, such that they can actually move forward, move the needle.”
Oftentimes, those key people don’t think they can free up enough time to delegate work to virtual assistants, but the extra effort will pay off. Barbara explains, “I don't have time for that. Yes, you don't have time. But this is this idea of in any business slowing down to speed up later. It's a marathon, not a sprint, all these sorts of things. And it is annoying, but the dividends that it will pay you in six months or a year's time are enormous because you will not be doing that job anymore. Whereas if you don't delegate it now and you don't spend the time to offload it properly and successfully in 12 months time, you will still be doing it…”
It's imperative to begin slowly and not try to hand off too much too quickly to virtual assistants. Barbara says, “It actually can be as simple as bullet points on a page to start with and delegating one small process, a simple one to an assistant…Otherwise, it will be overwhelming, but it doesn't need to be. It's just slowly methodically going through each process and slowly delegating. You're not going to delegate all of it in one day. It might take six months, but that's okay. Just one step at a time, and that's really powerful. I think people try to go too fast and then they get all caught up and overwhelmed and it doesn't happen.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about how virtual assistants can help grow your business.
About the Guest:
Barbara Turley’s mission is to eradicate business overwhelm and remove the friction that stunts growth by helping clients to optimize their operations using offshore teams of virtual assistants, clever automations and streamlined processes. The Virtual Hub makes this happen every day through virtual assistants who can aid with digital marketing, social media and administrative support plus consultants & system architects who optimize platforms and processes for growing businesses.
The Virtual Hub is a virtual assistant company with the added advantage of an operational efficiency consulting and implementation team. Rather than doing business “the usual way,” they actually create their own virtual assistant successes (and yours) through deep training programs (including software like Hubspot and Ontraport) as well as ongoing career development and customized coaching to best serve each of their clients.
Barbara proudly wears the label of Founder and CEO at The Virtual Hub as well as the titles wife and mom.
Tim Curtis: When you see those organizations where they're needing to give themselves permission, for example, to hire something, typically what you'll see is that same struggle to release, or to bring in additional resources, you'll, you'll see struggling in other areas of the business. It won't just be limited to this because there's a larger cultural change that needs to happen, which is we need to embrace the concept of engaging others to come alongside and help us.
Barbara Turley: Look, I think on that point as well, I think there is also a perception out there, or a fear that is real, where people go, I just don't want to give up control. And my argument would be if you learn to delegate properly, you don't give up control. [00:34:00] What you do is you're not the one doing it, but you control the process. I don't feel like I've relinquished control of anything across the business because we now have department heads and all sorts of people, but we still collaborate.
And I'll go back to this objectives and key results thing. We are collaborating as a leadership team to figure out like, well, all the stuff we're working on, you know, are the processes right? Are we getting the results we need? I feel really across things and really in control of things without actually doing any of the doing. So, I think we've got to forget this idea that delegation is relinquishing control. It doesn't have to be. We're all control freaks, really, all of us entrepreneurs. We don't like to admit it, but we actually are, and that's okay. It's just a matter of managing that.
Tim Curtis: Before we pivot here to close, I have a question. I'd love to kind of get your feedback on. And it's one that when I do get the opportunity to set either one on one with CEOs or chief marketing officers, or I also have a lot of opportunities to set within CEO groups and to hear kind of what the tone in [00:35:00] the conversation is and the largest, the number one point that was always being discussed in these groups was the tension of hiring in-person versus hiring virtually. You know, and the challenge and the back and forth.
What you really found was, people had a personal preference and they led with that personal preference. Their bias was somewhat informing the way that they were looking at things. But in this new world in which we live, you know, the concept of virtual, of course, cats out of the bag. That's done.
My question to you is, how do you facilitate a culture and an environment where you maintain those things that are important to you like culture, while still engaging either in a hybrid environment or in this case, through VAs? In your opinion, what's the tricks of the trade there to sort of manage or lead through that?
Barbara Turley: Okay. So, first of all, it takes work. People think that once we go remote, we just work the way we used to work, [00:36:00] except now we're all remote. Well, what happens there is connection dies. You can't just take how we used to work and then put it into a distributed model that's remote and distribute it all around the world. And I think that's some of the problem in the thinking of people who don't wanna, like the ones that are going, we just don't want to do this remote thing. It's a big fear and I get it.
And it's real because in their head they're going, I don't see how we can make our business, the way we do it, it is not gonna work over there. And they're right. It won't. You need a new model, right? So, this is a raging debate on LinkedIn at the moment, if you're following any of the future of work stuff.
COVID was an experiment and we were forced into it, but now we have the choice, but in order to make it work, and in order to make it successful, you have to put work into the operational frameworks, how we work, how we collaborate, how we communicate, and it is different from being in an office environment. You need to get really good at like the boring stuff, which is documentation, which is process mapping, things like how to write a status [00:37:00] update rather than have a meeting and don't write War and Peace.
We've created a way of working at The Virtual Hub that while you want to have, I call it flexibility within a structure. So, for example, you bring great people in who do great work and have brilliant experience in a certain area. Great. And you say to them, that's brilliant. However, how we work here is that we work off objectives and key results. We have an update cadence for this, that is bi-weekly or monthly, or whatever it is.
And how we do it is, in our company, for example, everyone does their status updates in the same way. And it's basically, you know, a summary of kind of where we're at, just like what we've achieved. What's the roadblock? Now that's really important. And what are we doing next? Because the roadblock is where we may have to trigger a meeting. We may, we may not. We may be like, you know, we can solve that roadblock.
And then, obviously we're big users of Asana. So like, you don't have to use that platform, but you definitely need a place in the cloud where everyone shows up to work, does work, collaborates on work, reports [00:38:00] on work, and has this kind of connection, and it's not Slack. Like, Slack is just noise, to be totally honest. You can use Slack, but like another rule we have at The Virtual Hub, for example, is that we were using Slack for a while, but Slack is for chat and we can chat about something.
But when we agree the instruction, the instruction must be put at the site of the work and that's in Asana. Whether it's at the task level, the project level, or the objective and key result level, or the team level, the actual instruction is put at the site of the work. And that's the documentation thing. I don't mean big books of documents. I'm just talking about how we actually structure things is different in a virtual environment. That's how you make it work. You move to the new frameworks.
Tim Curtis: Yeah, I don't think, Asana as an example, I think there's a lot of those integrations where they will come in with like a Slack, but you have to understand Slack is a wonderful tool. It's amazing how you can communicate and dialogue via Slack. You can maintain a culture. There's a lot of those fun things within Slack, but it is not a project management [00:39:00] tool and it is not a replacement for that. So, yeah, no arguments here.
Barbara Turley: I could talk for four hours about the operational structure. I mean, interestingly, we've in the last two years, because this is such a major problem, we've actually launched an entire department. We have an operational efficiency consulting and implementation team with system architects and our consultant sits in Sydney, we've got project managers. And we actually do that work for clients where we build Power BI dashboards for them so that they have live feeding data to help make decisions quicker in an online environment and things like that.
And I mean, we just launched it because we'd been doing it this way for like I said, eight years. I mean, we've been doing this for a long time, and it is a different way of working when you're in a fully remote environment. And those who feel like, We can't go to a remote environment. We don't feel like it's going to work. They're probably right because the way they're currently doing it is probably not going to work in a virtual environment.
Tim Curtis: No. And it's ripe for change.
Barbara Turley: Don't get overwhelmed though. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day. Start with one step. That's why actually bringing on remote VAs can be [00:40:00] handy with process maps and stuff because you can put those in Asana and just start there. And you're like, Oh, that's working really well with those remote teams, maybe we could do this with other people who are not in the office this week or next week or whatever. That's how you build from there.
Erik Martinez: That makes perfect sense. So, just before we move to close, Barbara, we could talk about this all day long, and I would ask you lots of nitty nitty gritty questions, which nobody wants to listen to. But are there any last pieces of advice that you would love to leave the audience with? Because there's a lot to unpack in this particular episode, lots of little action items that you have notated throughout the conversation. If there was one last piece of advice, what would that be?
Barbara Turley: I'm going to follow on with what I just was talking about in saying that, I know you've got to start with the end in mind, but that doesn't mean that you today have built what the end is going to look like. Like anything, you know, if you want to move into this digital realm and get digital velocity is what you guys are talking about. I mean, if you want to get digital speed like [00:41:00] that, in terms of operations and stuff like that, it really is just not getting overwhelmed don't overcomplicate it.
It actually can be as simple as bullet points on a page to start with and delegating one small process, a simple one to an assistant. Maybe bringing on Asana and trying that with just a VA, and building from there. Otherwise, it will be overwhelming, but it doesn't need to be. It's just slowly methodically going through. Each process and slowly delegating. You're not going to delegate all of it in one day. It might take six months, but that's okay. Just one step at a time, and that's really powerful. I think people try to go too fast and then they get all caught up and overwhelmed and it doesn't happen.
Erik Martinez: I think that's right. Many people who listen know I coach fast pitch. That's one of the things I tell the girls when they're making a lot of mistakes, it usually goes to rushing and not taking time to do the things properly so that they can do it faster later down the road. So, I think that's very good advice for anything that we [00:42:00] do. Barbara, if anybody wants to reach out, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Barbara Turley: Sure. So, I'm putting a lot of content out at the moment on LinkedIn actually. And we have a process of course, for that, for, I only do the bit that I need to do this podcast, I only show up and do the podcast, all the other stuff happens in the background. So, on LinkedIn, please connect over there, Barbara Turley on LinkedIn. I talk a lot about these topics.
And of course, thevirtualhub.com if you want to pop over there if you're just thinking about getting a VA or you want to have a chat with us, we've lots of content on our site to help you. And you can also book a call with some of our team, and they can help you decipher for what we can help you with and if we're the right fit for you, et cetera.
Erik Martinez: Yeah. And you know, everybody remember the VAs aren't just one thing, lots of different potentials for utilizing virtual assistance in your business. Well, that's it for today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. I'm Erik Martinez from Blue Tangerine.
Tim Curtis: And I'm Tim Curtis from CohereOne. . [00:43:00]
