Rachel Service is a serial entrepreneur. She's the creator of Mojo School, Presentation Bootcamps and Happiness Concierge, a company on a mission to help people find happiness and fulfillment in the workplace and in life. Happiness Concierge provides everything from corporate training programs and workshops to personalized one-on-one sessions for anyone looking to empower themselves to ace work and life.

While Rachel prefers in person and on stage interactions with her clients, she has also utilized the power of digital storytelling to build her brands and grow a community of happy customers. She uses videos to tell her personal story of healing and connect with individuals who are in a similar situation. I got a chance to catch up with Rachel to hear more about the brands she’s created, her take on digital storytelling, and how she helps people around the world get their mojo back.

Hi Rachel! Thanks so much for chatting with me! Could you start by telling me about the history of Happiness Concierge?

I founded the Happiness Concierge five years ago after experiencing anxiety and depression. I had an ‘aha’ moment at a Beyonce concert in New York City. I was at the concert, and I couldn’t enjoy it because I was crying, I was exhausted, and I felt so terrible that I’d spent all this money going to Beyonce’s show and I couldn’t even enjoy it. I realized I was the problem. So I started to write a blog and I called myself the Happiness Concierge.

Over time I started to create tools which eventually became Mojo School. This comprised of a People Audit, an I Want’ List, an Achievement Audit to get my mojo back, and I started sharing these tools online. I got such awesome feedback that I started created small products around my journey.

I’m the daughter of a businessman and a teacher - so I always say yes to opportunities and that has led me to creating Happiness Concierge, Mojo School, Presentation Bootcamps and plenty of things I can’t yet talk about! Now I’ve got a worldwide team of Happiness Concierge’s teaching, coaching, and facilitating to help people get their mojo back!

What kinds of programs do you offer at Happiness Concierge?

We have five workplace programs:

High Performing Teams and how to create them, Presentation Bootcamp, where we work with keynote speakers, TED speakers, CEOs, and leaders to learn how to communicate effectively in a bootcamp over two days, Essential Skills for Managers and Leaders, how to manage people effectively, clearly, and confidently, Communicating with Influence, and Mojo School to help get your mojo back!

How important was telling your story in getting the company off the ground?

It was critical. People naturally connect over a shared experience, and my story was about burnout and anxiety and depression. I created Happiness Concierge to heal myself, and in doing so I created a community of people who were going through the same things. A big part of our story is sharing what we’re going through as we go through it. So if you stumble across our social media pages, you’ll see that our story is critical to everything that we do.

Every Happiness Concierge is encouraged to share their own personal journey with finding a career that matters to them, how they ace work in life, and that’s very much celebrated. We connect with people when we laugh or cry with them, either a shared adversity or a shared connection. So storytelling is a non-negotiable in our business. Very early on, having images and videos to connect with our audience was critical, and I invested immensely in that because we cannot buy what we cannot see and we will not buy what we don’t connect to, so video is everything and always has been.

How do you use digital storytelling at Happiness Concierge?

We have different communities on different social platforms. Platform number one would be Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. We share under one minute videos on those platforms. We find that thirty seconds to forty-five seconds where there’s a key takeaway, a key message, that people are more likely to remember and repeat that message. We also have a Vimeo channel where we post all of our workshops, and we give our trainers and clients access to it. We’re a huge ‘watch people learn’ culture. Where we really learn is watching other people grow, so we often film our workshops to help with that.

How do these digital stories interact with your in person workshops?

The way that the body and brain and mind works, nothing replaces human connection. Once we’ve connected face to face we can build on that. So my priority is in person interaction and after that is video. One of our favorite platforms for our B2B companies is LinkedIn. It’s a huge growing market with higher traction and higher pickup. On Facebook and Instagram we share more of our personal stories as well.

What is a favorite memory you have from Happiness Concierge?

As a business owner, my proudest moment was when I was told to go home by two of my team members. We were running a Presentation Bootcamp and they told me “You’ve trained us, we’ve got everything we need. Please go home.” Ha!

So I wasn’t needed and that was a really proud moment as a business owner, that I had built a team that was self sufficient. From my interaction with clients, helping people land their dream jobs, some at Google, and feeling confident on the TedX stage are amazing accomplishments I’m really proud of!

What’s the hardest part about building and maintaining a company?

Nothing will test you more than creating a unique brand. You have to be willing to compromise. You have to have an unwavering sense of conviction and focus to create a brand and run a business. I think people underestimate the amount of internal work needed to succeed externally and that separates memorable brands from the rest. Yes, one must have passion but one must have an incredible work ethic and be willing to do things for an end goal.

How did you find Kapwing and what did you use it for?

We were doing beta testing on our online programs and one of our team members discovered Kapwing and said this app is fantastic, look how easy it is to use! I looked into it online and found that it was really cost effective to buy a year subscription. So now every week we’ll go through our video catalogue to subtitle. The most awesome thing about this tool is the auto-generated subtitles. They don’t always give you 100% accuracy but they give you a great starting point. No other tool I’ve found is as time effective and cost effective, and we use it every week now!

Do you have an advice for individuals who are looking to start a business?

I think the modern day fear of failing with social media means that most people don’t start, so my biggest advice would be: Start small, start something, start now.

It can be overwhelming to think about what the opportunities are, but we say take the smallest step you can right now with the least financial and emotional risk. So if you have a full time job, start a blog on the weekend. If you’re not interested in running a business but you have a creative side, take up a hobby. If you are not feeling fulfilled in your job or career, like I was, stop doing what doesn’t light you up and start thinking about: what would a life that served me look like?

This article is part of a series that features creators, the projects they’re working on, and how they use digital storytelling tools like Kapwing to share their messages with the world. Are you a creator who’s interested in being featured in a spotlight? Shoot us an email at [email protected]