Wanna Read a Good Brand Story? Start with Ours.
Our founder, Shannon Baylor-Henderson, always knew she wanted to be a writer. From the time she could hold a crayon (and spell a few two-syllable words), Shannon started crafting sentences which told vivid stories that stemmed from her observations and imagination.
At the age of 9, Shannon started her first business, a greeting card company, where she crafted special and personalized messages inside of blank business cards for her family members. At $2 a pop, Shannon was swiftly on her way to becoming a millionaire–well, not really–but she knew that her writing could translate into big ideas and dollars.
Elementary school homework and cheerleading competitions got in the way of her ambitions to put Hallmark out of business–so did middle school and high school. But, she met some incredible writers along the way, including Adina , who also wanted to use her writing chops to build an exciting writing career.
Eventually, Shannon made it to college. Somewhere between roaming the campus, crying through a French III oral final exam, and changing her major four times, Shannon embraced the idea that she would become a college drop-out. Upon telling her parents that college wasn’t a good fit, she faced her first grown-up decision: what would she do with the rest of her life?
After dropping out of college (with a 3.98 GPA), Shannon started her first adulthood semi-successful business, a digital magazine (when digital magazines didn’t exist). She met Irving, another aspiring writer. They began to write books together under their writing company. Shannon began to build her brand as a professional writer. They married and built a family together, including four awesome sons.
The “starving artist” phase of her writing career soon emerged, and bill collectors seemed to fully support the idea of her “getting a real job.” The corporate world called her name. Shannon found herself transitioning through a few jobs, hoping that it would subdue the buzz of her artistry and love of entrepreneurship. Although steady paychecks were excellent, she felt writing and entrepreneurship constantly smacking her upside the head and suggesting, “You know better than to give up on your dreams!" Irving always encouraged Shannon to keep writing and to never ignore her artistry.
While soothing the bruises from the entrepreneurial smack upside the head, she met Kim, a talented digital marketer, via Twitter. They agreed to test an idea that converged storytelling and digital marketing. The two strangers built a program and promised to split any money they made. The idea worked, and they decided to strengthen their relationship–over 1500 miles apart. Who says you can’t trust people on the internet?
Shannon toggled back and forth between entrepreneurship and corporate quicksand and eventually dived–again– into full-time entrepreneurship–this time it was in the middle of a global pandemic.
That’s when Content Commanders was born. This time, she knew that she didn’t want to go back to the corporate world, and she had an idea with real traction and power.
After building and operating Content Commanders for a few months, she started seeing tremendous growth and success. There were so many stories to tell and so many people who just needed professional guidance to tell those stories. Irving introduced Shannon to one of his colleagues who, in turn, introduced Shannon to ArLynn. Shannon learned about ArLynn's passion for theater and writing and that she had a knack for untangling complicated business processes. Shannon convinced ArLynn that she would be perfect for Content Commanders.
And now, Content Commanders has written over 1 MILLION words in storytelling content, worked with brands across the country, received recognition in media outlets, and even won an award for their impending development of a content development app. There was just one more piece missing from the team's puzzle--someone who could translate stories into visual art. Whitney waved her hand from across the Facebook room, and said, "I'm crazy enough to work with you!". She rounded out the team and now the Content Commanders are ready to conquer the storytelling world.
And to think, it started with a snaggletoothed little girl, who wore big eyeglasses, frilly outfits and loved to write words on paper for people to lose themselves in her stories.
Some things never change*.
*Shannon did eventually get Smile Direct to fix her snaggletooth appearance.