Working from home may be the new rage, but there’s at least one business owner who was 10 steps ahead of the game and has been running her business remotely since its inception in 2012.

Meet Shawneil Bailey-Gordon, a Kingston, Jamaica native, and the founder and team leader of the talent management agency Zarabelle Limited.

A Wolmerian at heart, Bailey-Gordon’s venture into entrepreneurship began at the young age of 18 with a few friends and a dream to start a modeling agency.

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How it started

What initially started out as a modeling agency has since evolved into a people management agency providing main and extra talents for the big screen, television ads, radio ads, print ads, and social media posts.

No doubt a testament to her age, Bailey-Gordon’s journey through business has been everything but traditional.

For starters, in its almost nine years of existence, Zarabelle Limited has successfully operated without a physical location, depending on technologies such as Whatsapp messenger, Gmail and Zoom video conferencing to keep in touch with her team and talents alike.

So how does one successfully operate a remote business you ask? Well, Our Today caught up with Bailey-Gordon to have her spill the tea.

1) What advice would you give to a business owner who wants to transition to remote operations?

Use technology to your advantage and as much as you can try to avoid micro-managing your team. For example, I use Asana (a task management software) with my team.

Now processes and such are set up in Asana where when stuff happens within the different departments I get notified, I can chime in, I can whatever and I know what’s happening without being in the front of their computer, etc.

You have to trust in your team and put things in place to hold them accountable for the completion of tasks. In addition, don’t forget to celebrate your small wins.

You aren’t there every day to motivate your team, so it’s important that even when they are doing their usual tasks you commend them for a job well done.

2) What tools have aided you in successfully running your business remotely?

Currently based on the nature of my business I use Asana as was previously mentioned as well as Gmail, WhatsApp, HelloSign, Calendly, Social Media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn), business website and Typeform.

However before you even think about apps to get for your business, think about what you do all the time, so for example our talents are always signing talent release forms or contracts so we got a subscription to an online contract signing app, called HelloSign. But of course, that worked for us because of the structure of our business.