Well, hey there
I'm Rachel Amies. I'm
an ex-lawyer turned digital marketer
an SEO and AI visibility nerd
a plain English enthusiast
proudly neurodivergent
an unapologetic animal lover
Pull up a chair. There's a story behind this.
So, how the heck did an ex-lawyer end up doing this?
01
Law
The short answer: This wasn't my grand master plan.
As a law student, I knew I wanted to own a business one day. I simply assumed that business would be a law firm.
I went on to spend around eight years practising as a litigation lawyer, where a large chunk of my working life involved researching complicated things, building arguments, asking a ridiculous number of questions and translating legal concepts into language my clients could unerstand.
It turns out that quite a lot of that would come in handy later.
After leaving legal practice, my career took a few more turns through Executive Assistant, office management and government roles.
02
Crazy Cat VA
Then, in 2018, while I was still in the corporate world, I started a little side hustle called Crazy Cat VA.
My first invoice was $99 for two hours of work. Please allow current-day me a moment to quiety wince at the hourly pricing.
At the time, I was drawing on my admin and office management experience. But I didn't stay a VA for very long.
Within about nine months, other business owners started referring to me as the human who's "good with words". And seven months after starting the business, someone who liked my website asked me to build theirs.
03
Crazy Digital Creative
So, I followed the breadcrumbs. Crazy Cat VA become Crazy Cat Copy. And Crazy Cat Copy eventually became Crazy Digital Creative.
Along the way, I taught myself WordPress, invested heavily in SEO training and kept following the parts of the work that made my brain light up: research, problem-solving, strategy, writing and figuring out why something wasn't working the way it should.
My service have changed quite a bit since that first $99 invoice. The common thread hasn't.
I'm still asking questions, digging into complicated things and working out how to make them clearer and more useful.
I have significantly better tools, considerable more experience and a very different pricing model (much to the delight of my accountant!)
It turns out a flying stapler can be quite the career compass
Life's too short for joyless work.
I've worked in some pretty toxic workplaces over the years.
I've been screamed at, undermined, and made to feel incompetent while quietly fixing other people's mistakes. And yes, I once had a stapler thrown at me.
None of those experiences were fun at the time. Some of them chipped away at my confidence far more than I realised until later.
But they also gave me a very clear picture of the kind of working life I didn't want to recreate for myself. When I started my own business, I wanted work to feel different.
I wanted clients to feel comfortable asking questions without worrying they'd sound silly. I wanted communication to be clear and honest.
I wanted to be able to say "I don't know, but I'll find out" rather than bluff my way through something. I wanted to do good work without cutting ethical corners. And I wanted there to be room for a bit of fun too (how radical!)
Those things still shape how I work today.
I'm not interested in creating some polished façade where everything is perfect and everyone pretends to have all the answers.
I'd rather build good working relationships with humans who value curiosity, honesty, mutual respect and the occasional riduclous nickname for a technical thing nobody knows the proper name for.
I left law. Quite a lot of it came with me.
Changing careers didn't mean starting from scratch again.
A surprising amount of what I learnt practising law still shows up in how I think, research, write and solve problems today.
I learnt to research properly
Some lawyers dread matters that involve disappearing into legislation, case law and obscure little rabbit holes.
I was the geek who quite enjoyed them.
These days, the subject matter has changed, but the curiosity hasn't. Whether I'm digging into search behaviour, competitors, AI visibility or why a website isn't performing, I want to understand what's going on before jumping to conclusions.
I learnt how to write in someone else's voice
I've lost count of how many affidavits I've drafted during my legal career.
They weren't supposed to sound like me. They were my client's evidence, so they needed to sound like them.
That turned out to be surprisingly useful for brand voice, copywriting and helping businesses communicate in a way that still sounds unrecognisably like themselves.
I learn that complicated doesn't have to mean confusing
One of the clearest lessons from practising law was that sounding clever and being understood aren't the same thing.
Clients usually don't need more jargon. They need someone to explain what matters, why it matters and what happens next.
That belief followed me out of law and straight into the work I do now.
I learnt to look beyond the first problem.
What someone asks for isn't always what they really need.
A client might come in asking for one outcome when the real issue sits somewhere underneath it.
Legal practice taught me to ask questions, listen for what isn't being said and avoid jumping straight into the most obvious conclusion.
It's probably why I'm far more interested in diagnosing the problem than blindly delivering the thing someone first asks me to do.
I learnt how professional services really work
I know what it's like to work in an environment where expertise matters, reputation matters and words sometimes get scrutinised within an inch of their life.
I understand that compliance isn't something you ignore because it makes marketing harder.
And I understand why professional service firms need to communicate complex ideas without making their expertise feel less credible in the process.
Leaving the law didn't mean leaving it behind. But I did find a very different place to use what it taught me.
These days, I'm interested in the stuff that sits between visibility, clarity and trust
The interwebs changes quickly.
Search changes. AI came along and has also evolved. Google changes its mind about things just often enough to keep everyone humble (well, maybe).
What hasn't changed quite so much is what humans need. They still want to understand:
- who you are
- what you do
- whether you know your stuff
- and whether they can trust you
That's the bit I keep coming back to. I'm interested in how:
- professional service firms make their expertise easier to find without turning their content into keyword soup or AI slop
- AI search is changing the way people find businesses, and what that means for the content we write
- complicated ideas can be explained in plain English without stripping away the nuance that made them valuable in the first place
- a strong brand voice helps a business sound like itself rather than every other firm using the same five buzzwords
- how strategy helps you work out which of those things deserves attention before you start throwing time and money at it
I'm also a committed lifelong learner.
When I practised law, professional development came with the territory. These days, nobody's checking whether I've completed my required hours. But I'm still the human signing up to training, reading industry newsletters, disappearing into research rabbit holes and travelling to conferences as I want to understand what's changing and what's just the latest shiny distraction.
In digital marketing, pretending you already know everything is a particularly efficient way to become outdated.
I'd rather keep asking questions.
And when I'm not disappearing down a research rabbit hole ...
There are a few things worth knowing about me.
I've been playing trumpet since I was eight
It started because my childhood best friend was learning and eight-year-old me decided I wanted in too.
That tiny bout of jealousy turned into decades of music, a university performance degree I almost finished, and playing trumpet in an orchestra for Nelson Mandela when I was 19.
Not bad for an instrument that was, at one point, held together with building tape. Literally.
I'm an unapologetic animal person
My colleagues tend to have four legs, fur and very little respect for working hours.
These days, Lucas the Cavoodle regularly makes appearances in my content and takes his unofficial office supervision duties very seriously.
And yes, he definitely knows he's cute.
I've called three countries home
I'm a New Zealander who's lived in the UK and now calls Western Sydney home.
Kiwis don't think I sound kiwi. The Brits don't believe I sound British. And the Aussies certainly don't believe I sound Aussie. Go figure.
Gym junkie
I've exercised on and off for most of my adult life. But these days I see it as much as a head-clearing exercise as a physical one.
Some problems need a strategy session. Others need me to go lift something heavy.
If you're the credentials-checking type
I get it.
You've made it this far through the career detours, flying stationery and questionable early pricing. You might also want to know there's some experience behind all that curiosity.
Here are a few things that may be useful to know.
And because apparently I'm incapable of declaring myself "finished" with learning, there's usually another conference, workshop or slightly-too-interesting rabbit hole somewhere on the horizon.
I'm a qualified lawyer
I graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Criminology). I was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand in 2001. And admitted to the NSW Supreme Court in 2007.
Writing has been part of my world for decades
I spent years working part-time in Reuters' editorial department while I was at university, completed a contract with The Christchurch Press and later contributed to legal texts for LexisNexis.
I'm heavily invested in learning SEO and copywriting
That includes ethical SEO training through The Recipe for SEO Success, YoastCon, SEO Estonia and specialist sales page copywriting training.
I sat on the other side of the judging table
I've judged both copywriting and digital marketing awards.
I've spent time helping other copywriters with the techy stuff
Before The Clever Copywriting School closed its doors, I was its WordPress Ambassador.
Think I might be the right human to help?
If something you've read here has made you think "Yep, Rachel gets how my brain / business / website works", let's have a chat. Book a call and tell me what's happening, what you're trying to achieve and where things are feeling a bit stuck.
If I'm the right person to help, I'll tell you what I think the best next step is. And if I'm not the right person to help, I'll tell you that too.