About Village Found

I'm Shannon Hayes

Here's the part that has always been hard to explain at a party. I'm not really a marketer, and I'm not really a developer, and I've never once described myself as a founder without wincing a little. The most accurate word is probably fixer.

I'm a connector. It's how I operate in every part of my life. I can walk into a business, spot within about an hour what's actually broken (usually not the thing they think is broken) and then go build the fix. Sometimes that's a website that finally ranks. Sometimes it's a system that stops eating twelve hours a week. Sometimes it's putting the right person in front of the right audience and getting out of the way. I care about what it returns, not what it looks like on a slide.

Digital ecosystems are my forte: sites that get found fast, content that earns its keep, and AI tools a normal human will actually use on a Tuesday. I pair that with a lot of attention to how people actually decide, which is why I'm a big believer in storytelling and in newsletters that get opened.

Why "Village Found"

I think we lost our villages. Social media, the internet and now AI pulled us apart in a lot of ways, and I say that as someone who loves all three and lives in them every day. I also think they're the best tools we've ever had for finding each other again.

Every business I've helped grow needed the same two things. First, people had to be able to find it, on Google, in AI answers, and by word of mouth. Second, it needed a village: the customers, readers, partners and neighbors who keep showing up and bring their friends.

I've built a few of those villages myself. Meanwhile in Ridgefield is a local publication for my town. Bloom, which I co-founded with my friend since seventh grade, Lisa Tremayne, RN, builds perinatal mental health programs for hospitals and practices. Medspa Mastery grew out of fifteen-plus years in medical aesthetics marketing.

How I got here

I've been helping people turn their dreams into real businesses since Facebook was invented, and until recently every one of them found me by referral. I moved to Ridgefield, Washington from New Jersey, fell hard for the town, and have not stopped talking about it since. My consulting work used to go by Vitality Ventures Group. It now lives here, under Village Found, alongside the projects.

Who I work with

Mostly women building something of their own: small businesses, startups, a lot of medspas and local Ridgefield and Clark County businesses, plus remote clients anywhere. Some engagements are months-long builds; some are a single Zoom call. Either way, I'd rather teach you to run it than keep you paying me to. I keep the client list small on purpose so the work stays deep.