From Service to Scale: Mastering Digital Growth with Shannon Teague
Shannon Teague is an entrepreneur and expert in the world of remote hiring and online business.
With extensive experience in both service-based and product-based businesses, Shannon’s journey began in the luxury hospitality sector, where she specialized in recruiting spa therapists for five-star hotels.
Over time, she transitioned into digital entrepreneurship, founding her current business that offers comprehensive remote hiring solutions.
Shannon is also passionate about helping businesses streamline their hiring processes and build effective remote teams. Through her work, including online boot camps, webinars, and digital resources, Shannon equips business owners with the tools and strategies to succeed in today’s virtual workplace.
Her personal journey of adapting from traditional service-based business models to digital product-based strategies has been a massive learning curve, and she now shares this knowledge to empower other entrepreneurs.
Shannon’s expertise is highlighted in her latest venture, Scaling Up Simplified, where she offers valuable guidance on scaling businesses through remote work and digital marketing strategies.
Key takeaways
Transition from Service to Product-Based Business: Shannon highlights the stark differences between service-based and product-based businesses, especially in terms of marketing strategies.
Challenges of Digital Marketing: How running a product-based business involves building a strong digital presence, utilizing content marketing, and developing sales funnels, which was a learning curve for Shannon
Importance of Free Content: Shannon emphasizes offering valuable free content as a key strategy for attracting potential customers, particularly in the digital product space.
Adaptation and Resilience: Shannon’s journey involved overcoming challenges, including shifting her business model during tough times like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Focus on Remote Hiring: Shannon dives into her current expertise which lies in helping businesses build successful remote teams; which she supports through various online platforms like boot camps and webinars.
Connect with Shannon
Website - https://www.scalingupsimplified.com/
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-teague/
Here is the full transcript:
Paul Urwin 0:01
Welcome remote business growth. Your go to source for all things remote work and business growth. Join us as we delve deep into the strategies, insights and success stories that will help you thrive in the remote work landscape. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a remote team leader, or simply curious about how to grow your business, this podcast is your gateway to unlocking your full potential. So get ready to embark on a journey of innovation and success. Hey there, Paul, here. Welcome to episode 12 of the remote Business Growth podcast. Well, we've been off on a little bit of a break, so this is the first episode that has been released in a while, and we're now absolutely back at it. So I hope you enjoy this one, and I hope you enjoy all the future episodes that we've got in the pipeline, because we've got some great ones coming up in the next few weeks and months ahead. So keep listening, and please let me have any feedback I'd love to hear from you. If you are thinking of building a remote team or you'd like to hire a virtual assistant or remote specialist for your organization, then head on over to https://thereistalent.com/, that's https://thereistalent.com/ and we can analyze your specific situation and help you to get that set up right. Today, I am talking with Shannon Teague, an amazing guest. I just love her story. Shannon started with Xero and built a temping recruitment company, providing spa staff to Blue Chip hotels across the UK. Initially a one woman show, she grew her team to 70 contractors and a remote support team. Within five years, she also invested in a startup selling popcorn flavorings to view cinemas to run her business remotely. Shannon hired a tech expert and created a 24 hour online booking system, automating most processes despite facing challenges and failures, her positive mindset and determination led her to success. Shannon's journey inspired her to teach small business owners how to grow their businesses remotely, achieve their potential and live their dream. Lives. Her first book, scaling up, simplified, brings her vision closer to reality, guiding readers worldwide to achieve their dreams. Shannon, welcome to the show.
Shannon Teague 2:14
Hi Paul, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. Thank you for the opportunity.
Paul Urwin 2:20
Now, really looking forward to this one you've got, well, an amazing story, really. So please take us back a few years to the start of your entrepreneurial journey. Where did it all start for you? Shannon,
Shannon Teague 2:32
Thank you, Paul, that's a great question. So I'm sure you and all the listeners are familiar with an author called Tim Ferriss, the four hour workweek is one of his famous books, absolutely, yep. So my journey started at that point, back in about 2013 I was traveling Thailand. I'd met a friend there, and he was fully living the remote lifestyle, and that was the first time I ever heard about it, and during that time, I was also reading the Tim Ferriss Four Hour Work Week. Met this friend of mine and realized that that's kind of a lifestyle that I wanted to achieve for myself. So I went back to the UK. I was based in the UK at the time. I'm originally from South Africa, but I was living in the UK at the time in London, went back to South Africa, and quit my job and started preparing for starting my first business, which was a recruitment temping agency to the five star hotel sector in the UK. So I was a spa therapist myself, and I started to outsource myself as my first contractor. We cater to the five star, sparse sector within the UK, so super niche, and I slowly started to grow my contracting team and remove myself from that element of the business to prepare myself to be able to start traveling and living remotely and enjoying a remote business lifestyle. And I slowly grew my team to by the time I left the UK, we were around 40 contractors. I had a small support team at that stage, and I slowly started to grow my business over the years to about 100 contractors and a support team of 10. And we're all based around the world. The support team and I met up in various parts of the world while my business ran in the UK, and this provided me the opportunity to live in India, to live in Thailand and Bali. I spent most of my time in Southeast Asia, and that first business gave me the knowledge and the foundations to be able to do what I'm doing now. So because my business catered to the hospitality sector. When covid happened, it was a massive hit for us, unfortunately, but in my opinion, everything happens the way it's supposed to, and it gave me the foundation and the knowledge to be able to do what I'm doing now, which is teaching small businesses through digital programs and. I've also authored two books since then, how to develop hiring and operational systems in your business to hire remote and online teams, starting with your very first hire, and then building your team from that point. And had I had not gone through this journey of being fully remote and starting my first business, and all the knowledge that I learned from that and also running a recruitment agency, then I wouldn't be where I am right now, which I think is the perfect place for me, because it aligns in every way. I'm teaching businesses how to hire on a remote level, how to be remote. That's my target audience, and that's the lifestyle that I live and every decision I make is around complete location independence. So that's kind of my story in a nutshell of how I got to where I am right now.
Paul Urwin 5:52
Excellent. There's so much good stuff in there. Tell us a little bit more about the London mobile spa. So I'm really interested in how exactly you got started, so you were obviously working in that industry, how you had the idea and how it looked at the beginning. I'm really interested in how businesses look right at the beginning. That's
Shannon Teague 6:12
a great question. Thank you. So I wanted to start a business to be remote. So I was a spa therapist, as I mentioned. I worked within the five star hotel sector myself, and I first started to outsource my own services as a mobile therapist to spars and to people, and then I was very close to the managers, and I grew quite a reputation as a spa therapist myself. And they started asking me whether I knew therapists and whether I had a network of therapists myself, and I kind of saw an opportunity there and then started building a temping agency from that point. So that's kind of how it all started. But yeah, at first it was, as you can probably appreciate and understand. At first it was intense, working crazy hours, like 16 hours a day being my own therapist, and then working on the business in the evening, and then doing interviews here and there, and trying to, like, start to finally remove myself from that point. But I had a breaking point where I realized that if I didn't actually start taking serious action towards removing myself from being a contractor in my business, then I was never going to achieve the lifestyle that I wanted to achieve. And this breaking point happened when I actually had a panic attack, which is not normal for me. I was overworking myself. And that was the point where I made a due date, where, by this date, irrelevance of where I am financially, what is happening. I have to stop being a contractor in my business, and that goal really made me push myself and work towards making that happen. And by that time,
