We recently connected with Shayah Reed and have shared our conversation below.
Shayah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
Happy to share my stories and experiences! Within three years of starting my design and marketing business I went from $0 revenue to multiple 6 figures a year. But scaling and growing, for me, is not only about the money and revenue, equally important is my time and location freedom as well as the impact I am making for my clients and on the world.
A large part of my success and rapid growth is due to my team. But I put off hiring for a long time and felt super scared about having anyone other than ME be client-facing. I used to think “nobody else can do it like me or as good as me”, “nobody else will care as much about my business and my clients as I do”, but of course those are just limiting beliefs that fed into my fear of losing a business that I worked so hard to build.
Assuming that I needed to do everything myself was actually restricting the number of people I could help and the value I could provide. Learning to give up some responsibilities and hire support has been a huge transition for me because my business is my baby and I love all my clients so much.
Thankfully, I have been able to build a team with amazing ladies who are just as passionate as me. Looking back now, I wish I hired sooner. Yes, it was hard to let go, but now, instead of doing ALL the things, I am able to focus on tasks that I enjoy and hire people for positions that THEY enjoy. It’s great because everyone is working in their zone of genius and doing what they are good at.
Stepping into my role as a leader was an equally difficult mindset shift of transitioning from solopreneur to an agency model. Not only showing up for my clients but showing up for my team members. This is still something that I work on becoming better at every day and something I believe only gets strengthened by experience. I find that hosting group Zoom meetings with the team really helps to keep everyone connected with the pulse of the business and develops a company culture that they all want to be a part of.
The crazy thing is that I never planned on having a big mission and growing or scaling my business to this level. All I wanted from the beginning was to make money online doing something I enjoyed that would give me the freedom to travel or live abroad. After achieving this within my first year of business, I knew the next level of growth would come from my team.
My team has enabled Virtuwell Balance to work with WAY more clients than I ever could have done on my own. I am not just talking about the revenue we bring in, but the impact we are making on the world. When I hear our client success stories and how they are able to grow their businesses and support their own clients through a health/wellness journey, I know that we are making positive change.
Another amazing thing about hiring a team is that I have been able to offer specialized services that I myself could not deliver on, like SEO for example. Search Engine Optimization is something I only have basic knowledge on, but now I have an SEO Specialist on the team and this is a popular service we offer our website design clients. Copywriting is another example. When it was just me in the business, I would offer “copy writing support” but now I have a Copy Specialist on the team and we offer a variety of different copywriting services.
And on a personal level, growing and scaling my business with a team has given me my time back. I am able to have a successful business AND enjoy slow mornings and hobbies on weeknights.
I’m so grateful that I learned to be gracious and flexible enough in my business to listen to demand and make changes as I go. Moving with the flow and following the path of least resistance ended up being the path of my greatest joy.
I realized that growth inherently involves adaptation. Flexibility, grace, and staying true to my values were pivotal lessons learned on my entrepreneurial journey. Embracing change and pursuing your passions while staying grounded in your values can lead to extraordinary outcomes.
I think back to when I worked at the hospital before starting my business and how badly I wanted change, but had no idea where to start. It’s so important that we take time to reflect on how far we have come and this will give you motivation to keep moving forward. I finally know that there is truly no end to what I can create and manifest in my life, and same goes for you!
This is all to say that, despite feeling lost and a little in the dark about what your future looks like, as long as you stick to your values, align with what you love, and don’t let anyone else tell you that you’re making a stupid decision, you will absolutely get there. Wherever “there” might be for you.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My journey into having a successful design and marketing agency really started with my interest in yoga and holistic health. In 2010 I became captivated by the beauty and elegance of the physical practice of yoga. I loved how strong my body felt when flowing on the mat and how centered my mind became when focusing on my breath.
In 2015, I was working in health information management at my local hospital and I had to beg them for 2 months off (unpaid) so I could embark on a transformative journey. India, here I come!
I underwent my first yoga teacher training and expanded my knowledge of a yogic lifestyle. Upon arrival in Rishikesh, I quickly became fully immersed in the culture and philosophy of yoga and thrown into the beautiful balance of movement and stillness (as well as honking horns, cows, and no personal space!).
Unlike how Western countries focus on yoga’s physical facets, India upholds the sacred essence of the practice through all eight limbs of its philosophy. I began to understand and see how beautiful and therapeutic the lesser-known limbs of yoga can be and realized the need for this at home in North America with all of our chronic lifestyle diseases. I wanted to not only bring these teachings home for myself, but share them with others.
After returning home, while still employed at the hospital, I practiced yoga daily (both on and off my mat) and I undertook multiple yoga and meditation teacher trainings to expand my knowledge and become a better teacher.
Among yoga’s eight limbs lies “ahimsa,” advocating non-violence and kindness towards sentient beings. This principle intertwined seamlessly with the yogic tradition, encouraged me towards adopting a plant-based diet. Many of my yoga students were also curious about plant-based diets and started asking me various nutrition related questions that I was not able to answer.
This compelled me to seek further education. In 2016, I started studies with the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition (CSNN), specializing in plant-based nutrition. I graduated from CSNN in 2018 andI finally felt ready to coach my yoga students into more of a holistic and plan-based diet, and began to do just that!
Once I realized yoga and nutrition coaching could actually provide a decent income for me, I wanted SO badly to make this my full-time work. But even with all my training and experience in the yoga and nutrition industry, I still did not know how to be my own boss.
I didn’t know how to start and run a business but I did know two things:
1) I wanted to make a living helping people improve their health and wellness
2) I wanted to create location independence in my life (to travel more often or live abroad)
I knew this second part meant working online in some capacity but I had no idea how this would manifest. Ever since my trip to India all I wanted to do was travel more and explore the world.
I started reading books, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries and YouTube videos of successful people doing the things that I wanted to do. I took all of their tips and advice to heart and I started implementing the strategies, routines and processes into my life that they claimed helped them to become successful.
During this time, I learned a lot about myself. I also learned the importance of branding, and how to optimize my social media accounts and leverage them for business. I learned how to build and manage my own website, best SEO practices, copy-writing techniques, and email marketing strategies. I created an online store and sold digital products that I made such as recipe books and yoga videos.
Living the digital nomad lifestyle started to seem more and more like a possibility for me!
Within 6 months I began to do all of my wellness coaching online which gave me the freedom to quit my full-time job at the hospital. I was not making a ton of money at this time, but it was enough along with my motivation to succeed. And I always knew that if it didn’t work out, I could just move back home and get another job – so I had to try!
In January 2019, I move down south to Central America with my fiancé at the time (now husband) who was also working on building his own online business and recently quit his full-time job as well. We ended up living in Nicaragua for 7 months where I led my very first yoga wellness retreat, which was an absolute dream come true.
Nicaragua was an ideal first country for us to start in while we got established with our businesses because the cost of living was so low. We lived in a town named Granada and they had a co-working space (Selina) where we connected with some other online entrepreneurs on a similar path as us. I think finding like-minded individuals was key to keeping us motivated and co-working spaces are a great place for that!
After Nicaragua, we moved to Thailand for 3 months, then lived in Bali for 2 months, and then lived in Vietnam for 6 months, then back to Central America where we’re now living in Guatemala. We have lived in Guatemala for over 2 years now and adopted a street dog (she’s the sweetest) and feel like we are able to give back to the community here in ways I never imagined.
Beyond yoga and nutrition, I began to discover an affinity for the design and marketing facets of my business. Designing websites, crafting sales pages, and implementing marketing strategies excited and invigorated me just as much as teaching a yoga class. So, I decided to pursue courses by experts like Paige Brunton, Jenna Kutcher, and The Bucketlist Bombshells, to hone my skills in the realm of online entrepreneurship.
As my wellness business flourished, peers in the industry sought my expertise in areas such as email marketing, website creation, brand design, and digital product development. I was happy to provide advice but most of them were too busy or simply not interested in learning these things themselves, so they actually wanted to hire me to do it for them (like a VA).
They recognized that my intimate understanding of the wellness industry coupled with my design and marketing knowledge made me a valuable asset. This role would allow me to help wellness professionals amplify their reach and impact, aligning with my goal of broadening well-being globally.
There was a moment in time when I considered refusing these requests for help – because after all “I’m a yoga & nutrition coach not a virtual assistant” and I spent all this time trying to figure it out for myself so maybe they should do the same. Right?
All the while I was trying to manifest more income into my life, and you know what they say about opportunities presenting themselves… So, I reminded myself that who I am and what I do is constantly evolving and expanding.
Not only have I grown to LOVE this tech and design work, by working with other wellness professionals I felt like I was still indirectly helping people. Instead of working one-on-one with my wellness clients, I’ve learned that I can help even more people by collaborating with and supporting other wellness professionals in growing their businesses. I felt like I found my calling and decided to start a second business.
This is how Virtuwell Balance was born! In July 2019 I launched Virtuwell balance to the world.
I become passionate about helping heart-led businesses grow their businesses online, maximize their time, and improve their bottom line all while focusing their energy on what they love to do. With Instagram and LinkedIn being my main sources for finding clients, I started out by offering all kinds of virtual assistant services until I was able to hone in on what I really enjoyed and what my zone of genius was – website design. I then positioned myself and my business as expert website design for health and wellness businesses.
It took me about a year of trail and error working with clients to figure out the best processes, procedures, platforms, pricing, packages, etc. And for the first year of Virtuwell Balance, I was doing everything myself… this got overwhelming fairly quickly and I was becoming the bottleneck in my business. I soon realized that I would need to hire help and grow a team if I wanted to work with more clients and make a bigger impact.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Stepping into my role as a team leader and developing a company culture was not something I ever thought I’d need to do, but I did understand the importance of this from the beginning.
I have seen (and worked in) other agencies that lacked company culture and team leadership. Nobody felt like they were collectively working towards a bigger goal or mission, and the company had a very high turnover rate with their employees/team members – I wanted to avoid this at all costs.
Not only was I responsible for showing up for my clients, now I also have team members to support. I have to set the precedence for how we communicate with clients, the quality of our work, and the values we uphold as a company. I take pride in our work and client satisfaction, but I also find it very rewarding to build a business and company culture that people want to work for.
This is still something that I work on becoming better at every day and something I believe only gets strengthened by time and experience. Since we work fully remote, I find that hosting group Zoom meetings with the team really helps to keep everyone connected with the pulse of the business and develops a company culture that they all want to be a part of. We also have a group slack channel for easy communication, and all client projects are managed in Asana so the entire team can see the positive feedback from clients which always inspire and motivates the team!
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Oh my gosh, YES – so many books! I’ll share some of my top suggestions…
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (you may not assume this is a business book, but it helped with my outlook and philosophical view of commerce)
Run Like Clockwork (book and podcast – amazing for small business operations)
The Inspirational Leader (great book for anyone stepping into a leadership position and wanting to inspire and motivate their team)
Also, investing in business coaches who have ran similar businesses as me and been through a lot of the challenges I currently face, has been huge for my success as well. It’s so invaluable to get insight from someone who has “been there, done that”
Contact Info:
- Website: www.virtuwellbalance.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/virtuwell.balance
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/virtuwellbalance
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/shayah-muller