Barbara Turley

Founder & CEO at The Virtual Hub | Speaker | Podcast Host 🎙| Operational Efficiency Enthusiast 💥| Passionately helping businesses remove bottlenecks & scale 🚀

A 'Mum first' entrepreneur who has bootstrapped and scaled a 350 employee, digital first support assistant company with clients spanning the globe, all while attending toddler ballet, kids ski club, playdates and living between the mountains of Europe and the beaches of Australia.The usual question I get asked is 'how the hell did you do that?' To which my usual reply is ......'By focussing on building great systems, nailing process delegation and leveraging cost effective teams of support assistants in The Philippines.'Platforms. Processes. People. Everyday I see great companies full of great people who are roadblocked by the vortex of busywork. From small businesses with 5 people to large organisations with 500 people the story is the same. Great people bogged down by necessary but inefficient and time consuming busywork. By identifying the 20-50% of most peoples day that is taken up by admin and/or process driven tasks any business can strategically optimise their human capital budgets by delegating to a team of offshore virtual assistants. From e-commerce and SAAS to coaching and service businesses, we help unlock business growth by freeing great people from the time-suck of busywork.At The Virtual Hub, we provide fully managed, in-house trained and dedicated virtual assistants starting at $1,000 USD per month.By integrating great support assistants inside your business we act like a 'bolt on' scaling partner to your growth plans.

Founder & CEO

Helping companies work smarter, move faster & scale better with a combination of operational efficiency frameworks, tech stacks that work and offshore team strategies.

Riley Ghiles I.

Most early founders build the wrong thing. I help you fix that, and scale up to $12K MRR with my proven S.T.A.R.R method (95% success rate).My Mantra: Inspire & Empower People 🇺🇸 🇫🇷 l

Life’s too short to build a SaaS no one wants.

42% of startups fail because they build something the market doesn’t need.

You quit a good job, code nights & weekends, burn 6–18 months of savings…
Only to end up with zero paying customers.

Your problem isn’t skill.
It’s that no one taught you to validate and sell before you build.

I’ve been there I failed 5 startups before I figured it out.

───

I’m Riley Ghiles Ikni.
Software engineer turned startup advisor & angel investor.
15+ years in Engineering, Product, and Design from raw startups to seasoned billion-dollar tech giants.

I run the SaaS & Startup Kitchen:
a training ground for solo tech founders launching their first product.

My job? Help you validate and sell the 🥐 before you bake it.

In 2025, my bootstrapped clients are on track for $1.2M+ in combined revenue.
NPS 77.5 with video testimonials from every active client. (Ask me.)

───

🧑‍💻 WHO THIS IS FOR

→ First-time solo founders building SaaS or dev tools
→ Senior / Principal engineers (5–10+ years experience)
→ Based in North America, bootstrapped, not chasing VC

You know how to build.
You just can’t afford to guess anymore.

───

🔧 WHAT WE FIX TOGETHER

✴️ From a blurry idea → to real pain & a clear ICP
✴️ From feature soup → to a simple, sharp offer
✴️ From building in the dark → to VALIDATE & SELL with real humans
✴️ From chaos → to a mini OKR system focused on revenue

We run the interviews.
We sort the feedback.
We validate the opportunity.
We iterate — together — until you can fly solo.

───

📈 HOW IT WORKS

We start with a deep dive:
✴️ Your North Star Metric → the WHY
✴️ Your first revenue goal → the WHAT
✴️ The shortest path to paying customers → the HOW

Then we roll:
→ A simple GTM plan
→ Weekly execution & feedback
→ Clear decisions: Go / Pivot / Kill
(no zombie products lingering)

It’s part consulting, part mentoring, part hands-on help.
🚫 No motivational fluff
🚫 No “DIY video course”
🚫 No artificial flavours

───

You don’t need more features.
You need paying customers and a repeatable way to get them.

👉 Unsure? Book a call.
Link’s in the profile.
(That’s my signature right here) 🥐🟧

No post today, am traveling and some of us don't have ghostwriters

PS: Talk to your customers
Life is too short to build something nobody wants to buy

- 
The Amazigh* (Startup) Advisor
*Not a typo 🟧 🥐

Solo 1st-time SaaS founder? Helping you stop coding for 0 customers & get you to $12k MRR even if you are still in ideation | Startup mentor, advisor & investor | 7 Clients Bootstrapped revenue 2025 $1.2M+ l NPS 77.5

🚨Lead Magnet Masterclass by a Young SaaS Founder
You want people to care about your product?
Stop selling features.
Show them their problem exactly how they experience it.

This post blew up not because it’s technical.
But because it talks about something everyone struggles with:
👉 “I can’t find fresh LinkedIn posts where my clients hang out.”

No AI buzzwords.
No fancy stack.

Just a mirror. 

📌 Golden rule: If your customer can repeat your promise out loud, you win.

Ask yourself:
Do I speak like them?
Or am I trying to sound smart?

🟧🥐
#StartupKitchen 

PS: Yes he is a member of the Startup Kitchen 
Am in tears, they grow up too fast

🟡 1 year of posting on LinkedIn: what worked, what flopped, what’s next
(Because you cannot improve what you don't measure)


In 2025, I showed up (almost) every week on LinkedIn.
Here’s what happened:

208,710 impressions (+39.3% vs last year)
5,594 followers (+299.9%)
47,678 people reached
93 saves, 44 shares
4,026 comments
7,231 reactions

Here are my Top 5 posts by reach:

📈 “I gained 22lbs in 6 months, same 2 reasons most founders don’t grow” (9,114)
🚀 Interview with a CEO who turned his idea into a product, fast (9,051)
🧱 “90% of founders will never know what product-market fit feels like” (5,309)
📣 “Same post. 48x more reach. What changed?” (3,589)
🕰️ “Some build McDonald’s at 52. KFC at 65…” (3,145)

And these were the Top 3 by engagement (reactions + comments):

“Why I do what I do” 💬 (187)
“Everything is about AI. I focus on real connection” (171)
“Here’s what you’ll get from me soon” (159)


What I learned:

Posts that hit emotionally > pure business content
“True story + tension + brutal truth” beats everything
Raw data works only if it tells a story
The posts I thought were “meh” sometimes blew up


✨ For 2026, I’m doubling down.
More depth. More 🥐. Let's Artificial Flavours 

Tell me about your linkedin year in the comments

- 
The Amazigh* (Startup) Advisor
*Not a typo 🟧 🥐

Riley Ghiles Ikni

“Once the product is better, I’ll market it.”
Said by 100% of founders making $0 with 0 users.

You tell yourself:
“it's not ready yet.”
“I need to add Apis first.”
(worse)" There is no dark mode"

Result:

0 calls
0 user feedback
0 Stripe notifications
6 months of coding for nothing

You have an invisible product.
Not an “unfinished product.”

The truth: you’re not improving your product.
You’re putting coco butter on your ego

You’d rather:

add one more feature than take a “no”
redo the UI instead of booking a call
optimize the stack instead of pitching your offer

And every line of code gives you the illusion of progress.
But you’re stuck in the same place: no market, no proof, no cash.

The day you finally open the door:

nobody understands it
or nobody wants it
or someone is already selling the same thing… just better marketed

Not because they’re “smarter.”
Because they were willing to get punched in the face by reality
while you were “getting ready”.

Stop “finishing the product.”
Start finishing your excuses.

🥫 No Artificial Flavour tip:

- talk to 20 people in your ICP this week
- sell a promise before you show a feature
- use a simple page, a Google Doc, a call
- get 3–5 people to pay for the imperfect version

If you can’t sell the promise,
no one will magically “discover” your perfect product later.

Life’s too short to ship v3 to 0 users.
Sell the croissant BEFORE you bake it. 🥐

Follow Riley me for more content about SaaS, Startups and food!

I tell my clients to “shadow their customers”…
and maybe I wasn’t clear enough.

You want to validate your idea?
Go talk to your ideal customer.
But not your shadow, ok?
(Not your dev friend. Not your ex-boss.)

🎯 Talk to someone who can actually pay for the problem.

Follow Riley the Amazigh** (Startup) Advisor
For more content about SaaS, Startup and food

“Be brutally honest. What did I do well? Where did I suck?”
What I asked ChatGPT at the end of the year. My mentors and clients agreed !

In 2025, I plugged it into every corner of my business:
→ Offers
→ Sales calls
→ Client wins
→ Content drafts
→ Marketing data
→ Even my own thoughts

So Dec 31 I asked it to summarize me.
It answered in one word: Catalyst.

I dived deeper to get the full retrospective

This carousel is the blunt feedback I got from ChatGPT.
No fluff. Pure butter 🥐🟧

Have you done your retrospective?

taplio

The Battle

Barbara Turley

Riley Ghiles I.

Followers

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Performance ScoreRiley Ghiles I.'s LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Barbara Turley

Riley Ghiles I.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Riley Ghiles I.'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRiley Ghiles I.'s LinkedIn Performance