We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Weeks. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.

Hi Rachel, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I’m a copywriter and multidisciplinary creative for female-founded businesses across lots of different verticals, but my underlying mission is the same: to help business owners rediscover the fun in entrepreneurship. Having cofounded a (now-defunct) startup in the past and heralding from a family of founders, I empathize with the ever-mounting pressures of building a business from the ground up. Because no matter if you’re bootstrapping, crowdsourcing, or raising; working alone or heading up a team; manufacturing a product or providing a service, entrepreneurship is just plain hard. (Can I get an amen?) So my purpose lies in folding good old-fashioned fun back into the mix by approaching high-converting copywriting from a playful, lighthearted angle. In my experience, potential customers respond eagerly to marketing that comes from a place of creativity and joy – because who says marketing has to be so stuffy? But this approach also has a beautiful effect on the founders I work with, too. When we work together to create brand messaging and/or website copy that’s packed with personality and wit, these small business owners often end up feeling inspired to carry that light, ebullient energy into other aspects of their business and their lives more broadly.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a writer by trade and an entrepreneur by genetics, I think. My story as a copywriter begins with dinnertime conversation about things like seed funding, search engine optimization, and disruptive innovation – entrepreneurship runs in our family just like green eyes and easily sunburned skin. So after going to school for literary theory (and a stint as a startup cofounder) I spent several happy and formative years as a full-stack copyeditor and writer for the original founders of SparkNotes at their startup LitCharts.

In 2021, my heart for the written word and supporting female entrepreneurship collided when I made the leap to full-time freelance as a conversion copywriter. Under the name Scout House, I specialize in personality-infused brand messaging and SEO-informed website copywriting for small business owners who want to reconnect with the excitement and playfulness of entrepreneurship. My writing style marries the story-based strategies of my literature background with the creative experimentation of my entrepreneurship one to create original and engaging brand stories that customers connect with and business owners are proud to showcase.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In a copywriting context and in the wider marketing world, I’ve learned the deceptively simple lesson that what worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future. I think in a lot of situations – like when you’re a student or a longtime employee at a larger company – you learn what’s expected of you and figure out how to deliver that same result time and time again. Consistency feels achievable (or, you know, achievable-ish) in some of those contexts. This was definitely true for me at university many moons ago, because I was a really good student who knew how to memorize a lot of information quickly and rehash it for an exam. But cut to when I was a startup cofounder fresh out of school, and it was a jarring wakeup call.

The only true constant in small business ownership is the need to be adaptable (and, perhaps, the need for a healthy dose of optimism). In some ways, the idea that what worked in the past isn’t guaranteed to work in the future can be totally anxiety inducing, because it means that small business owners can never get too comfortable with the status quo of their marketing strategy. And most us really crave at least some semblance of comfort, stability, and knowability in our work lives, don’t we? But I’ve come to see this side of business ownership as really freeing: given all the moving parts and changing variables of entrepreneurship, you are allowed to experiment. To try things and see what sticks. To change tack. To change your mind. And when you embrace the freshness that comes with the landscape of business ownership – instead of holding so tightly to past methods – you can approach marketing with a playful and satisfied spirit.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

It goes against the current of traditional advice, but having a generally niche-less social media presence has been key for my client acquisition as a solopreneur. I think it’s because my target customer is someone who wants to work alongside a real person with lived experience – and cultivate a genuine friendship with them along the way – instead of just ChatGPT-ing their way through their website copy in WFH isolation. And I think, too, that my target customer wants to create a really rich, full life and multifaceted identity, wherein business ownership is part of the whole and not the whole of the whole.

So on social media, I try to show up as my hobby-having, Californian, class-clown self instead of framing my content exclusively around copywriting. (Of course, I know folks who do the latter with great success, so kindly take this with a grain of Maldon salt.) In a similar vein, when I meet with clients who are local to San Diego, we’ll usually skip a Zoom call in favor for an in-person strategy session over a glass of orange wine or a beach walk. Incorporating my other interests into my business has helped me connect with clients who also value balance, fun, and play.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thescout.house
• Instagram: @scouthouse