We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Westfall a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The missions behind my digitizing work (Digitizing by Rachel) and my tech startup (name TBD) are one and the same – to help people preserve their precious pieces of personal history so they can re-live, pass down, and share those memories.

Everyone has a story; big, small; long, short; adventurous, tame – we all have memories that piece together our life story.

Today that history is captured on our phones but before the camera phone, we had generations of memories saved in analog media that was stored away in boxes in the attic or back of a closet.

My work in this space started from a desire to preserve my own family’s collection of photos, slides, videos, etc. and eventually, I branched out into doing it for other people in my community.

As I worked with more clients and my own family’s media I started to get a better understanding of how vast and impactful these collections are and how important it is that we preserve these stories.

My last remaining grandparent passed away in the summer of 2020, he was 99 years old and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for years. Most of my memories with him are bittersweet since he was such a wonderful man but the Alzheimer’s had taken away the ease for us to communicate and connect. Like many things in life, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, and that hit home with my grandfather’s passing.

A few weeks after his funeral I was working on some of my family’s home videos and up pops my grandfather. It was a VHS tape that he had put together for some of our extended family that lived across the country. The video shared an update from him and each of his children and their kids (I was one of those kids). This was from years before he had Alzheimer’s and I almost didn’t recognize him because I had been so young when he got sick. But there he was, speaking clearly and animatedly and a few minutes later there I was, about 5 years old, squirming around in my parent’s lap because I wanted to go play. It was wonderful to take that moment to say hello again and bring life back to the memory of someone I had just lost.

I’ve had a number of clients share similar experiences. They reach out to me for help digitizing photos and videos for memorial services for a loved one that had just passed. And others share how they were able to look back on memories from decades ago with an elderly family member and the joy it brought them to re-live those happy moments together.

This is what stokes the fire I have for the work I do. Looking back through photos, videos, documents, and audio recordings can be a wonderful way to remember those we have lost and a way to connect with and celebrate loved ones that are still here.

Both Digitizing by Rachel and my tech startup play important roles in facilitating the preservation, sharing, and passing down of stories so we can turn to them in times of grief and in times of joy.

Digitizing by Rachel brings those memories into the 21st century. My tech startup provides a place to find what you need when you need it and maybe discover something you didn’t know was there.

The mission of my work is to make sure the stories of our lives are not forgotten.

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m Rachel Westfall, I provide digitizing services in the Washington DC metro area and I’m developing a web application that allows users to efficiently preserve and share the memories behind their digitized media.

I started my digitizing business, Digitzing by Rachel, in early 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I lost my job. I had started digitizing my family’s photos a couple of years prior but the scanner I was using wasn’t great and the work fell farther down on my to-do list as other priorities came up. With my newfound free time in 2020, I decided to jump back into it and invest in some better equipment as well.

During one of my weekly video calls with a friend I mentioned what I was doing and how much I enjoyed it. She shared a bit of her family’s experience with digitizing photos and said I should consider doing it for other people. And the rest is history.

I’ve really enjoyed helping my clients re-live and share memories that have been packed away in a box for decades through my digitizing work and I’m looking forward to continuing that work in a new way with my tech startup.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

When I first started I got most of my clients from word of mouth and local neighborhood list-serves. Now, I still get a few clients from word of mouth and list-serves but the majority of my clients come from Google Maps search results.

I have a Google Business page for Digitizing by Rachel and it’s been a great way for people to find me when they are searching for local digitizing services and to read reviews to get a better idea of what it’s like to work with me.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’ve been fortunate to have clients that leave detailed reviews of their experiences with me and that has been a great way to share and build a reputation in the community.

I make every effort I can to keep my client’s collections safe and secure during the entire process as well as be as clear and concise in my communication with them from the start so there are as few surprises as possible. I think that’s something that clients really appreciate when working with me.

It can be overwhelming to put together family photos and videos for digitization and I think when clients come to me they experience an efficient and clear process of figuring out what their project needs are and can trust that I will treat their precious memories with exceptional thought and care.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.digitizingbyrachel.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-westfall/

Image Credits
Rachel Westfall