Maintenance Phase - Rachel Hollis Part 1: Hashtag Relatable

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

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Welcome to Maintenance Faze, the podcast that isn't going to tell you anything about your skincare routine. Girl, leave your face dirty. I am Aubrey Gordon. I am Michael Hobbs. If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase. You will get some bonus episodes with that. And our next bonus episode is gonna be Mike and I

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Stay with us. Also, don't. Stay with us. I'll record it. What are we talking about today? My understanding is that we're talking about Rachel Hollis, who is like a person's name that I know. Okay.

I know the title format of Rachel Hollis' books that is like, girl, wash your face or girl, what, I don't even know what, but they all start with girl, yes? Pronoun, comma, directive. Yes. Girl, wash your face and girl stop apologizing. And I don't really know more than that.

I feel like there was this point in time where it was like, are you gonna pay attention to Rachel Hollis or are you gonna pay attention to Caroline Callaway? And you chose your path. And I chose my path and I stopped you. I mean, one of the things that I learned doing the research for this episode

is that there are two kinds of people in the world, people who have never heard of Rachel Hollis and people who are obsessed with Rachel Hollis. And like, I went from one category to the other and I am extremely excited about taking you along with me and describing to you why people cannot stop thinking about this person as soon as they learn anything about her. Yeah, let's dive in.

I should say before we get going, that this episode involves some suicide stuff. Oh, shit. So if that's gonna suck for you, I would recommend skipping like the first 15 minutes probably. Got it. So we are going to start with a

Freeze frame needle scratch. I'll bet you're wondering how I got into this situation So in 2021 Rachel Hollis is a motivational guru lifestyle influencer choose your term She has 1.6 million followers on Instagram, her book Girl Wash Your Face, was the second most popular book of 2018 on Amazon. What? Yeah, it was a massive sensation. She has a line of products on QVC, she does sponsorships for Target, she was, of course, a speaker on Oprah's 2020 vision, your life and focus to her.

Yeah. The show is basically just us going through like the lineup of that event and talking about a speaker on Oprah's 2020 vision, your life and focus tour? Yeah! The show is basically just us going through the lineup of that event and talking about them, like, one by one at this point. Yeah. She has a conference tour called Rise that goes around the country and it often sells out in minutes. And these are, like, large stadiums. And some of the tickets for these events cost $1,800 each.

This also sounds like some real, uh, it feels like it's swimming in the same kind of waters as like mega church stuff. This is actually what got me interested in doing this episode. Her core audience is Christian Women. Bo. Her book mostly sold through Word of Mouth,

which is itself interesting that it becomes that big of a bestseller. And it's mostly selling in the South in the Midwest. The Washington Post calls her book Goop for Red State Women. As you're describing this, it feels like a really unique amalgam of this kind of like 90s self-help guru plus 2000s the secret. Yeah. Plus 2010s and 2020s like social media influence her. Totally. Yes without really knowing where we're going with this

I'm just like, oh those are three factors that I dislike individually Her core message it is I mean we're actually knocking a dwell on it that much just because it's such standard Motivational guru language. It's basically you are the one holding yourself back You've got to have more belief in yourself. The only point in her book where she actually mentions the phrase girl wash your face is in the final paragraph. It says girl get a hold of your life. Stop meditating.

Stop hiding out. Stop being afraid. Stop giving away pieces of yourself. Stop saying you can't do it. Stop the negative self-talk, stop abusing your body, stop putting it off for tomorrow or Monday or next year. Rise up from where you've been, scrub away the tears, and the pain of yesterday, and start again, girl, wash your face. Ugh, thank you, book. It's really interesting to hear this in the framework of Goop for Red State Women because it's feeding a couple of things here, right?

One is like, you're the master of your own destiny, but the flip side of that is anybody who's not doing that isn't taking charge of their own life and they really only have themselves to blame, right? It leads to this kind of like critique of like quote unquote victim culture that is like leveled at anybody who wants to talk about like racism or poverty or like larger forces than just like, hey, pick yourself up. Dust yourself off bootstraps. I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna get into like the deep woof of like everything that she's doing or done.

But for our purposes now, I'm gonna send you a clip. In April 2021, she uploads a TikTok that implodes the entire thing. Whoa! And so I'm going to send you the TikTok. Do a live stream. And I mentioned that there's a sweet woman who comes to my house twice a week and cleans.

She's my house cleaner. She cleans the toilets. Someone commented and said, you are privileged AF. And I was like, you're right. I'm super freaking privileged, but also I worked my ass off to have the money, to have someone come twice a week and clean my toilets. And I told her that. And then she said, well, you're unrelatable. What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable? No, sis. Literally everything I do in my life is to live a life that most people can't relate to. Most people won't work this hard. Most people won't get up at 4 a.m. Most people won't fail publicly again and and again, just to reach the top of

the mountain. Literally, every woman I admire in history was unrelatable. If my life is relatable to most people, I'm doing it wrong. Oh no. Even by the standards of a lifestyle influencer, it's like one of the most tone deaf things I've ever heard in my life. Boy oh fucking boy, it is a unique opportunity to just watch someone take a fucking swan dive. I showed it to my boyfriend and he was like is this a deep fake? Why would anyone put this on to internet themselves? But then tell me about the content, what are your reactions to what she actually said? Uh, okay, so when we used to do debriefs of, like, canvases, we would do worst weirdest and best. Okay.

Worst thing about that fucking video is all of this shit about, like, I worked for it. Hate it. I know. Weirdest is cleaning your toilets twice a week seems like a lot of toilet cleaning. I know. And also, I'm not wild about describing somebody who cleans your house as like, she cleans my toilets.

Like, I have had various jobs where I've had to clean toilets. And if somebody reduced the job to like, this is Mike, he cleans the toilets. Like, it's such a belittling way to talk about somebody else. Yeah, you literally found the one part of their job that's related to human excrement. Exactly. Cool. What a respectful and wonderful way to talk about someone who's in your home,

spending a bunch of time with your kids, with your family, doing a bunch of work to take care of you. It's also one of the things that many of the women of color in the replies point out is that she's juxtaposing her very open contempt of the woman who cleans her house with this rise and grind thing of like, I get up at 4 a.m. And it's like, do you know who gets up at 4 a.m. in America? It's like low-wage workers, many of whom clean your house and clean hotel rooms. You might get up at 4 in the morning to do Pilates or something, but a lot of people get up early because they can't afford a car and they are priced out of big cities and they have a three hour commute.

Or they work the fucking swing shift. Yes. And that's when they're at work. So it's like you're glorifying, like I get a bit for, while you're also denigrating people who probably get up at four, like fuck you. And then the other thing that I wondered about is she said something about like all the women I've admired

throughout history are unrelatable. And I I was like I would be fascinated by which I mean probably a little bit horrified to see a list of like who are the women that reach a hallows as myers throughout history. Oh my god. What? I cannot believe you are saying this. Okay. I was deliberately keeping an aspect of this clip from you. Oh no. what? When you post things on TikTok, you also put a caption. So when she says, all of the women I've admired in history are unrelated. Think of like who are the most offensive people

who she could compare herself to in the caption of this TikTok? I mean, it's gonna be like sojourner truth or something or like Harriet Tubman. Oh my god It's literally Harriet Tubman God fucking dammit. She mentions like free to call Oh Airheart and like Malala It's a parade of people who have no business being in the caption of a video like this posted by a woman like does?

Malala! How did I miss Malala? I know, dude. A fucking course. I was gonna save this for a twist, but like you totally messed it up. It's like the worst thing you can imagine. I just want... Look, if you're talking about someone who's like, I worked for everything I have, to me that often indicates someone who has not done much or any reflecting on the role of race and racism.

Much less poverty, much less anything else, right? If she had not specifically said women, I would have been like, Dr. King? Yeah, I know. She's gonna say Dr. King. So we're gonna sort of hit pause on this particular TikTok and we're going to return to it. This is the, you might be wondering how I got here. Yes. We're putting the TikTok in a little Jurassic Park piece of Amber. We're gonna, we're gonna sort of unpause it when we circle back to it

after we get all of the backstory. Great. I'm in. So I'm rewinding us to January 9, 1983 when Rachel Hollis is born in a place called Weed Patch, California, which is a suburb of Baker's Field, California, it's like 90 minutes outside of LA. Sure. This is the part of the story where like, Rachel is the most sympathetic,

especially to me because I am also a preacher's kid. Oh. She has a big family, she has three sisters and her brother. She describes growing up in an extremely sheltered childhood, which again totally reminded me of mine. So she says, my father was a Pentecostum minister, and again totally reminded me of mine. So she says, My father was a Pentecostal minister, and if any of you were raised Pentecostal, you have some idea of what that means.

Suffice it to say, Halloween was considered the devil's holiday, and we couldn't take any part in it. We also weren't allowed to listen to secular music, which means anything other than Christian radio, or be cheerleaders. I'm still deeply upset because I would have made one heck of a cheering section, or watch any movies above PG It seems like she really absorbed these rules She talks about going to a friend's house for a sleepover and they watch the body guard

Which is the first R-rated movie she's ever watched I think she's like 13 or 14 at this point and she feels when she comes home that her mom can like tell That she's broken this rule and so she immediately confesses her mom's like how was it? She's like I watched a movie, I shouldn't have. And it sounds like someone who's genuinely trying to do right by her parents and her parents' expectations. Yeah, I mean, she seems like a well-behaved kid. Yeah, she also admits to her credit

that she grew up in a really sheltered environment. So when she's in eighth grade, she goes to Disneyland. And she talks about like seeing other races for the first time and like interracial families, and she sees two guys kissing each other and holding hands like in line for the matter horn. And she says, you know, at the time, she was like looking at people like she was in a zoo,

like she had never seen this before. So as you're talking about these places, my dad grew up in Banning, California, which is similarly like, you know, an hour, hour and a half outside of LA, economically depressed small town. It would take some work, not to see people of color. That is an impressive sort of feat. This is also something that resonated with me because she's very vague about the details of growing up. So I'm not sure if she went to a religious school or something,

but being part of a church, especially when your dad is the minister, like that is your entire social life. There you go. And you know, the famous cliche is that like the most segregated hour in America is Sunday morning at 10 a.m. It's actually quite easy even in diverse communities. If you're, if so much of your life revolves around the church and the church has those demographics, you're going to be seeing those people, but you're not going to

be like meaningfully interacting with other groups. Yeah, that's interesting. I grew up like hard agnostic. Oh, yeah. We don't know, and there's no way to know and we're leaving it at that. Your dad is Bill Nye. She also talks about how her parents are like fighting all the time. They eventually end up getting divorced.

You know, there's four kids and the parents aren't getting along very well. She says this in a speech later, but I think this encapsulates so much of what will emerge later in her personality. She says, you're growing up in a home where you're kind of fighting to get attention. Later, she says, what this does to a little girl is it teaches her that the only way she can be loved is if she keeps producing. If she wants to get noticed by her parents, she has to win the science fair. She has to be the best singer-enquire, she has to be the best at sports. It's really only these sort of external markers of achievement that her parents know how to notice as something that she has done well.

Oh, that's rough. So the big event that happens in her childhood is when she's 14, her brother kills himself. Oh, God. And Rachel discovers his body. Oh, my God. I know. She's 14, he's 16.

This is from her first book. She says, My parents never parented me again. I have had more conversations with my 11-year-old about Fortnite than either of my parents have ever had with me about anything I saw that day, or the grief I felt, or how scared I was in the 23 years since.

It sounds like from that time on, her house is just like this silent, ghoulish nightmare. Everyone's dealing with the grief in their own way and acting out in these really sort of understandably unproductive ways, but not really processing or talking about what actually happened.

That seems really awful and like a lot for everybody to hold. We could do a whole episode on toxic positivity in organized religion. This is something that I have seen. This is something that many other people can speak to. It's a thing of like if you're acknowledging what happened, it's like you're like, if you're acknowledging what happened,

it's like you're dwelling on it and you're thinking about the past. And the whole thing is you're supposed to move past it. But the problem is that doesn't actually allow you to feel anything. And that doesn't allow you to form intimacy with other people, the only people in the world who understand what you're going through, you can't actually find communion with them. Yeah, that's so tough. So she responds to this by essentially counting the days until she can leave. She talks in her book of like, I knew I had to get through like three more birthdays and four more Christmas's and then I was out of there. Wow, yikes.

She says as soon as this happens, she gets on some sort of fast track in high school so she can graduate a year early and she graduates at 17 and she fucking leaves, like she's done. I mean, honestly good for her. Oh yeah. Is she someone who ever talks about availing herself of any kind of like mental health support or treatment? It's interesting. She talks a lot about that actually. Oh good. Like one of the parts of her platform that I wholeheartedly get behind is she's like, we need to normalize going to therapy. There's nothing wrong with going to therapy. I've been in therapy for years. It helped me deal

with my trauma. It helped me deal with my trauma. It helped me deal with my upbringing. And like, if you're feeling stuff, you should probably consider therapy. That's great. Yes. And I want to pause here because I think we're going to talk, and maybe we already have about like Rachel at her worst.

But I also think that like this, this is Rachel at her best. And I should say before we get into sort of the problematic content of her books, et cetera, that like she's an extremely gifted writer and like an unbelievably good public speaker, she's really charismatic. Like you watch one of her talks and you're like, I totally get why people listen to every single thing that this woman has to say. So I want to send you an excerpt from one of her early blog posts where she's talking about her brother and sort of processing grief. And I think this like really encapsulates like why she's a compelling and

likable writer and speaker. Okay, am I, am I reading? Let's do it. Go for it. Okay. As I write this, it strikes me that he's been gone for 17 years, which means that he's been gone for as long as he was here with us. You never truly recover from the loss of someone you love, but time passes and stretches out and it doesn't hurt as badly as it used to. You can manage a minute, then an hour, and then whole days without remembering what's missing. And then you realize how long it's been. You realize that next year, he'll have been gone longer than he was here.

That thought slams into you. And just like the day he died, you lose your breath and you're not sure how you'll catch it again. She's a good writer. She's a really good writer, and all of that is really real and true about Greece. Really, really true. Really, really, really true.

She's writing this in this sort of early 2010s on her blog, and this is before she becomes a motivational guru. And what she does is oftentimes, when she tells stories in her books, she'll tell an anecdote like this, and then she'll immediately switch and turn it into universal advice. She'll be like, and that's why you should always remember

who you love, or like, that's why we should always keep close to people close to us or something. I'm just imagining the guy from arrested development, and that's why you always leave a note. Her career has a very like that's why you always leave a note kind of vibe, like these little like packed lessons at the ends of these stories. Sometimes even when they don't really fit all that well.

And I think what makes this passage strong is that she's not trying to make it relatable. She's not trying to relate it to me. And like I can't relate to something like this. Like, I really can't imagine what it's like to go through what she went through. And like, that's fine. She's just telling a story and she's expressing what it feels like to her. And that's it. This is sort of like where I wish that she had stayed. There's a real nugget of like truth and some insight in here. But she just ends up burying it under all these like platitudes.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the question with all of this stuff is like, once you've got a platform, what do you do with that platform? Exactly. And it sounds like part of the way that she built that platform is through these like real genuine gut wrenching kind of moments, right? And then once she sort of built out that

platform, she like took a turn and was like prescriptive. Exactly. And then it just, it's just like boring refrigerator magnets stuff. So in 2000, she moves to LA. She originally enrolls in acting school, but she ends up getting an internship at Mirror Max and dropping out immediately. Oh no. The Mirror Max thing is not going where you think it is. No, I don't mean it's just a cursed allegiance. It's what feels like it's happening. So this is where she meets Dave. Dave will eventually become her husband. She is an executive assistant at the time. He is, I had to go to his LinkedIn profile because like both of them are so vague about like what jobs they actually had at any

given time. At the time, he was the assistant brand manager for Miramax home video. And you can tell from his LinkedIn profile that Dave Hollis was one of these guys that was just like management fast track. He graduates from Pepperdine in the late 1990s. And then his LinkedIn is like year long stints in like higher and higher level positions. It's like assistant director, then like regional director, then director, then like VP. He starts out at like Columbia records,

and then he ends up managing Destiny's Child. What? Like, I guess when they toured with their first album, when they were not that big, he managed the entire US tour. We're already two degrees of separation from Beyonce at this point in the episode. He gets this job at Miramax,

he's there for a year and a half, and then he ends up working the rest of his career at Disney. So he pretty quickly becomes a reasonably high-level Disney executive. Interestingly, this quickly becomes a reasonably high-level Disney executive. Huh. Interestingly, like this is such a weird trajectory, he now also is a fucking self-help guru, so he also has a book. You gotta get your best life lessons from a pepper-dine grad who was fast-tracked in management. And who regularly describes his job as the easiest job in the world. Oh no! He's

like I was head of distribution for Disney, while they were producing like Marvel movies and Star Wars movies. Uh-huh. He's like, I didn't have to do anything. I was just like, hello, China. We'd like to show our movie in your country, and they're like, okay, yeah.

Why am I taking advice from you again? Is it okay if I look up a picture of Dave Hollis? Oh, yeah, yeah. Wait, let's Google together. Here we go. You know what some of these pictures look like, is he looks like a little bit of like Clark Kent. Yeah, he's got the glasses. All American, white dude.

He's got the glasses, a lot of chambray shirts, and a lot of, you know, my wife is big on Instagram, so these photos are washed out in this particular way. What does she look like? She has a blowout in every single one of these pictures. She looks to be very petite. Many of these photos include her sort of throwing her head back in laughing or she looks to be like giggling

or smiling at him or whatever. It's like the kind of vibe of Instagram photos that is like when they try and sort of capture the same kinds of moments as like engagement photos. Oh yeah, yeah. Like look how much fun we have together. And they're all very clearly posed, but they're all also pretending not to be posed.

Uh huh. You just happen to have caught us like this. You could see her having like, she would have like a live laugh love sign, but it would be like handmade by somebody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it would be one of her own quotes. Correct. So when they meet, he's like a quote unquote lowly, like mid-level executive at Miramax.

He is 26 and she is 18. And there's a fascinating like Rashomon thing where they both in their respective books describe their courtship periods. She describes herself, I think, extremely accurately, as, like, the most sheltered person in America, right? She grew up in this extremely religious household. She then has this traumatic event. She alludes to some boys that she's maybe kissed, kind of, sort of, in high school, but she's never had a boyfriend before. He is 26 years old, he's been touring with Destiny's Child, he understands the industry,

he's kind of on the fast track to success. In his book, this is so telling, he describes her as 18 going on 29. No. And it's like, he tries to do this whole thing that she's like, why is beyond her years? No, she's clearly intelligent, but like, this is one of the most naive people

on planet Earth in the year 2000. I also think that that thing of like, 18 going on 29, like, feels like reminiscent of the stuff that's like, she might have been 16, but she was all woman, right? I know. It just gets really creepy. That's not totally what he's doing here, but she was all woman, right? It just gets really creepy. That's not totally what he's doing here,

but it just, I don't know, man, it just feels like a red flag. There's a huge power differential here. Yes, he's not her direct boss, but he's in the management layer of a company that she works at, and she's at the lowest rung of the ladder. So I guess he had spoken to Rachel a couple times on the phone because she's like answering the phones

for this guy that she's the executive assistant to. He finally shows up the office and she describes it as like love at first sight. Wow. He walks in wearing like a business suit and like a leather carrier bag and she says that like our eyes met and it was like so cool that he's this like business suit guy but he also has like a leather carrier bag which is

like I don't know a lot of people have this but fine. He's wearing a suit but also he had a Kenneth Cole reaction bag. I smell the axe body spray as soon as he wanted. It seems like after they have this kind of meet cute when she sees him for the first time, they start flirting. At one point in some interview, she says that they were emailing rap lyrics back and forth. What?

And they just like, they were like, we used to email rap lyrics back and forth, LOL, but I'm like, wait, details. For some reason with these two, I imagine it's not gonna be like Wu-Tang. I know, it's gonna be like young MC's busta move. It's Tickletoon Typhoon. I think they think that's right.

The whole rest of this chapter where she's describing the portrait is just like flapping red flags in the breeze. He asks her out on their first date. She shows up at the date and she's dressed in the nines, and he's just like in a sweatshirt in jeans. And then listen to this fucking nightmare, she says, we were seated at a table, he ordered a bottle of wine.

I hope you're not one of those girls who's afraid to eat on a date, he laughed. Oh. I know, I know. It annoyed me too, Rachel. I didn't like the comparison to anyone else. Didn't like the reminder that this wasn't his very first date, too. I responded by eating more than half the pizza we were sharing. He talked about himself for two hours straight.

I didn't mind. I was fascinated. Oh, Rachel. Rachel. Oh, Rachel. I know where this story goes, and still I want better for her. I know. I mean, it just only gets worse.

So then, of course course they go on one date and she immediately starts like thinking like, well, now we're dating, like he's my boyfriend. They go on a second date to like a hip soup place. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, I don't understand how I like work. So I guess they go on the second date and they're emailing back and forth and he asks her like, where'd you go to college?

And this is the moment where she has to like disclose that like I'm actually 19, I just got out of high school. She says in her book, she's like, you know, I broke, I broke it to him. And then she says he responded like a champ. He told me I was doogie house her and did I feel like some sort of child prodigy? Because not only did I have this job,

but I was also in a real relationship with a grown-up. Nope, nope, nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. And like, she describes this as like, she's revealing something embarrassing to him. Like, I'm only 19. And then she's like, he responded great.

Like, he took it great. But like, what is there to take? He's in a relationship with like a really naive, hot, 19-year-old who's very easy to manipulate. Also, unless you're dating a member of the Wiggles, I don't necessarily want to date someone who describes themselves as a grown-up

in a way that's apprised. Can you imagine? No, thank you. No, thank you. So it seems like he kind of tries to break up with her at this point, but she like really lobbies to stay together. She says like very quickly after this conversation, she's like spending almost every night at his apartment.

I don't think she realizes at the time, but she realizes now that she was like kind of a booty call that like they didn't really do anything together. And whenever they went out with his friends, his friends would refer to her as the 19 year old. Ew! And he would like invite her over late at night. Like they're not having like sex sex at this point,

but like they're fooling around. Right, they're doing the, my dad is a Pentecostal minister version. Exactly. Dizzles with this thing, they go to a house party together and she introduces him, like, oh, it's my boyfriend Dave.

And then he gets so mad at her for introducing him as her boyfriend that he doesn't talk to her for two weeks. What? He just sucks ass. And this goes on for a year. Jesus Christ. His explanation of all of this, of course, in his book, he's like super vague.

He's like, I didn't always treat Rachel so great during that time, but like, he doesn't get into specifics. And then he has this whole thing that I guess he had just gotten out of a long-term relationship With somebody else and he's like I was afraid to trust I realized immediately when I met Rachel That like she was something special and I was afraid of how strong my feelings were so I like pushed her away Uh-huh It's just making me realize how many dudes have told me that shit. And that's just a way of covering up for their miserable behavior.

Yeah, that's right. Or for being like, I wasn't actually that into this person. Yeah. Or I didn't think they were deserving of my respect. Totally. I sort of clenched up when people talk about pushing someone away.

Because I'm like, uh-huh. Maybe that's what's happening. So the next chapter of the story, he gets transferred to Minneapolis for one of these like moving his way up the corporate ladder Disney things. And she says that she loses her virginity to him as like a way of keeping him. Oh, no.

He moves to Minneapolis, they try it long distance. It seems like that only lasts like a couple of weeks. He basically calls to like break up with her and is like, I can't do this. She's devastated, she's crying. She's just like completely destroyed by this. And then I guess a couple days go by. He calls her to be like, how are you? Like just checking in and she says this in her book. She says calmly and without any dramatic. I told him, I am done with this. I am done with you. Don't ever call me again.

Wow. Why? He choked out because I don't deserve to be treated like this because I am done with you. Don't ever call me again. Wow. Why? He choked out. Because I don't deserve to be treated like this. Because I can't go back and forth. Because I don't like what I've become. But mostly because you said we were friends. I don't want to be friends if this is how you treat someone you care about. Wow. She hangs up and goes to sleep. Bone dry eyes. Just like at peace. Good. And the most fucking disappointing twist to this entire story. So it's like she goes to sleep, everything's fine like Dave's out of her life, and then very next paragraph, you're gonna scream. I woke up to someone banging on my front door. No! Michael? No.

It's like the worst twist. It's the thing that they do in movies. And you're like, this is rapy and bad. Like this would never work in real life. But it appears to have worked in real life. And then I guess he like shows up to like declare his love for her. And then this is atrocious.

She doesn't get into details. But she says, this is therocious. She doesn't get into details, but she says, this is the great part of the story. This is the moment that feels like a movie or a romance novel. This is where I tell you that I woke up and found my husband on the other side of the front step. The man who treated me badly, who had strung me along and who couldn't make up his mind was lost

somewhere between his parents' house and my apartment that night. I know it seems dramatic, but that's really what happened. I mean, the thing that's like hard about this is she's right in that that is a lot of romance stories, right? Like we have a lot of things that are pitched as romantic narratives that are like pretty profoundly manipulative or abusive.

So I'm like, she's right. It does sound like a movie or something, but I'm like, don't the movies are does sound like a movie or something, but I'm like, don't, the movies are bad too. The movies are very bad. Ah. And then this is the thing that she always does, is she takes this story and then she turns it into this like universal bumper sticker advice rule.

So she says, in the next couple paragraphs, people will treat you with as much or as a little respect as you allow them to and our dysfunctional relationships started the first time he treated me badly and I accepted it. Ugh. Like, this is sort of the problem with this entire approach, is it's not clear from this story that you can draw like a universal lesson. That's right. I mean, she seems to have won like some sort of weird lottery,

where like the guy who treated her like shit seemed like he did, turned out to be a pretty good husband. Mm-hmm. But most people don't win that lottery. In like 99 out of a hundred of these cases where somebody treats you like this, the ending is he knocks on the door and you take him back and then he treats you like shit again. Yeah, I, oh, sorry, I'm like having a hard time.

Gallerick, my thoughts about this, cause it's so, it's so shitty. Cause right, like part of what she's trying to do is remind people in relationships and predominantly women in relationships that they have agency, but also part of what that does is it falls back on this old shitty rhetoric about

it's on women to be gatekeeper, to access to themselves in relationships with men. I don't know, man. It just feels bad. It just feels bad, and achy. So the next thing that happens in the story is Rachel sort of begins the on ramp to becoming a nationally famous influencer. And this begins in 2004 when she starts her own high-end events company. Okay. So it's called Sheik Events. And one of the things that made me go down a huge rabbit hole on this,

she's been the subject of a million sort of like people magazine, glossy profiles, like meat, Rachel Hollis. And there's all this like weird vague phrasing where they'll just be like, after she worked at Miramax, she struck out on her own and started an events company. all this like weird vague phrasing where they'll just be like after she worked at Miramax, she struck out on her own and started an events company. In her book, she says,

I went from production company to another production company and had the opportunity to do event planning. In another profile, they say like, she events like started in her garage. There's no like origin story. Yeah, it's conspicuous to me that she has written three books. Her husband has also written a book. And in none of these books is just a chronological account of how she went from being like a very low level executive assistant at Miramax to running her own company at age 21.

Yeah. She needs to actually explain how this happened and how she was able to do it. Right. This is the, I started this business with $5 in my pocket sort of thing where you're like, what? No, you didn't. You absolutely did not. So I had to go to her fucking LinkedIn profile

to get a timeline. She's at Miramax for 18 months. Then she goes to Ogleville and Mather, which is this huge PR firm, where she's an account coordinator from a tell and motor roller. And then for another like eight months, she's a brand coordinator for something called DIC Entertainment. I think that this is where she gets experience in event planning. She mentions

offhand that she got laid off at Miramax, or they downsized, or something, and somebody was like, hey, there's a premiere tonight, do you wanna help organize it? Huh. So we learn from her husband's book. He's very explicit about this, that like he supported her financially. And extremely importantly, neither of them say how she got her first couple clients.

Planning high-end parties is like really high stakes and really difficult. Yeah. We've all watched like my super sweet 16. Like the things that rich people want at these events are completely deranged. Yeah, they're wild. I found this like weird like 2013 interview with her, where she says her first party that she ever organized, her first event, was some rich family who was celebrating their son becoming an Eagles' Gout, and she said,

their budget is the size of some small island nations. So it's like, how is a 21-year-old getting like a five-figure event gig with like basically like six, eight months of experience as like presumably a low-level employee for an events planning company? That's bananas. Like every part of that's a madlib.

Reading between the lines, she has to be using Dave's connections at Disney to be getting these clients. She eventually does events for Bradley Cooper. She does Al Gore, something something to be in truth. Yeah, she does. Like you can find old people magazine articles. If you go back into Google,

there's old articles about like some sitcom actress on like some CW show that I've never heard of, is like planning her wedding to like this pop star and like it's being planned by Rachel Hollis. Like she's a very successful celebrity event planner for like a decade. I do like that we get like really lovely feedback and compliments from people being like,

it's so wonderful to hear a show that's so deeply researched and reported and I'm like, yeah, we're fucking around in the People magazine archive. I've got archive.org every day. Primary sources. I have taught on you wrong about a million times about how like I don't I don't even really believe that the concept of a gold digger exists. Like I feel really weird. Seeming like I'm criticizing somebody

for using her husband's money and connection. I think use your husband's money, I don't care. I have financially supported people I've dated. I've gotten financial support from people I've dated. Like, oh, this is totally fine. And normal and lovely. It's super lovely. If these are husband connections,

that's like a good move from a husband who's not always been the king of good moves. Exactly, it's like this is your dream. I'm gonna help you achieve your dream. Like this seems like a nice thing to do, but then it's just very conspicuous for someone who's a lifestyle influencer, a motivational influencer who is giving advice

to other people on how to like make it, on how to be successful, and her whole thing is like wake up early and get rid of self-doubt. And all of this, you have the power within you. If your career is the result of your husband being a high-level Disney executive who knows a billion celebrities, just fucking own it. This is someone who's giving advice, but it's not just someone who's giving advice. It's someone who's saying, everything is in your own control.

Exactly. Yeah, man, of course you can do it on your own if you've got a husband with like extreme connections in LA and you've got startup capital presumably from. Exactly. His salary is presumably pretty generous. The vagueness of it feels like it points to some stuff she doesn't want to talk about. Well, it renders all of her advice moot.

Mm-hmm. She's very explicit about this. That she's like, this will work for anyone. Anyone can do it if you just work hard enough, right? Get up at 4 a.m. Make time for yourself. And it's like, Rachel, you didn't get here by making time for yourself or by getting up at 4 a.m. Work harder, immigrants. Exactly. We're a Carter immigrants.

Exactly. She seems like a hard working person and she's clearly intelligent. But there's a huge difference between building a skyscraper from the ground up and building a skyscraper from like a 99 story building. Yeah. So we're now in 2008.

She has this successful events planning company, but it's very obvious that Rachel wants more. And I want to be very careful here because I think women are criticized for having ambition in a way that men aren't. Rachel was like very openly ambitious. Like she talks in her book about like wanting to be wealthy and like wanting to have a vacation home in Hawaii and honestly, fine. Sure. Like men talk about the shit all the time, right? Like I wanted to be a billionaire wanting to have a vacation home in Hawaii, and honestly, fine.

Sure. Men talk about the shit all the time. Right? I wanted to be a billionaire when I was five years old and we're like, wow, what an ambitious kid and it's cool. It was clear that Rachel wanted to have a larger platform. So even when she has this events planning company, she starts showing up on daytime TV.

She shows up on the Rachel Ray show, and on the Steve Harvey show, as a sort of cooking lifestyle events guru. Like how to make the perfect martini and stuff like that. She also, in 2008, she's deleted these archives, but in 2008, she became kind of like a mommy blogger. It's hard to imagine this because it's not that long ago, but Instagram is not invented until 2010. The word influencer is not in the dictionary until 2019.

And it's only like 2015, 2016, when people even kind of start using it in the parlance that we do today. And in 2008, 2012, you know, the internet is sort of starting to catapult these people with like recipe blogs, advice blogs, like these people are kind of becoming celebrities in their own right. The whole influencer thing is basically a marketing innovation. It's basically brands realizing that, you know, word of mouth is a much more effective form

of marketing than advertisements. Like if you see an advertisement with Michael Jordan and he's like, where is this cologne? You like understand that you're being advertised to. So that's gonna exert less of an influence. But if your friend is like, I just tried this clone, it's really nice, you should try it, you trust them as a trusted source.

Yeah, or someone who you don't know, but speaks to you like you are a friend, which really seems to be the Rachel Hollis, the whole thing. Well, exactly, this is the whole, this is the whole influencer segment of the market, is that these are people who are public figures, but people have relationships to them that are much more like a friend.

And marketers start to notice this and they're like, wait a minute, people are like really taking seriously what this like recipe blogger lady says. And if she says like, you should buy this brand of pickles, people will go out and buy that brand of pickles. So the pickle people are like, hmm, maybe we can just pay her to talk about our pickles. And that's how we get the economy that we have now. Rachel's very lucky and that she got in on this early. And around this period around 2008 to 2015,

it's very obvious that she wants to catapult herself to some sort of influence her status, even though that doesn't, that term doesn't exist yet. This is very clearly what she's going for and she tries like three different approaches to getting there. The first is she launches in 2013, a website called the Sheik site.

It's a lifestyle website. It's basically like martisdouric.com. I imagine table scapes being part of that. A lot of tables. A lot of like nice photography. It's clear that she's hired people to write for it. She's hired people to present it really professionally. The archives are still up.

This is where I got the blog post about her brother. I think with this website, I think she was kind of trying to make herself into like a Rachel Ray or like an Inaugurton kind of figure. This was also time, I feel like the food network was like a bigger deal than two. She published two cookbooks during this time. Whoa, it also feels like worth lifting up like

the level that you have to be at both in terms of exposure and in terms of dollars in the door to be able to do a project like this. Dude, I mean this is another privilege thing. Like this is not a mommy blog. No. This is a professional operation with professional photographs and web developers. So we're talking about a team of numerous people professionally working on this.

Yes. So, I mean just take a minute at everybody and think about how much more money you would need to be making than you are right now to support either multiple contracts or multiple full-time staff or part-time staff. Like, there is money happening. Exactly.

For other play for influencer status, do you remember Chick-Lit? The concept of Chick-Lit? Yeah, do you remember this? Yeah, absolutely. It was like Books. Devil Wars Prada was one of them. The divorce was one of them?

Yes. Yes, totally. This was just a thing in book publishing that there were a lot of books written kind of by women for women. You know, like Bridget Jones' diary was like one of the original ones.. You know, like Bridget Jones' diary was like one of the original ones.

It's like women like dealing with stuff. Yeah. I feel like the entertainment industries are constantly rediscovering that women spend money on things. And they're like women by books. And it was like, yeah. It was the utter shock that like bridesmaids both

was good and made money. Hollywood is a goldfish? So this is fucking wild between 2014 and 2016, she publishes three novels. What? Yes. And this is wild. I found quite a few reviews of them.

And I guess they're good. Everyone who has read them says that they're well written and well-plotted, decent fiction. So at the same time, somehow, as she's running this website and mommy blogging, she also finds time to write a novel based on her experiences as a event planner. So it's called Party Girl, it's a kid from the sticks, moves to the big city LA, and these are her adventures in the wacky world of event planning. Sure, it's a little romana clef.

Yes, yeah. And so this is like also to her credit, she, I guess she pitches it to a bunch of New York publishers, again, which you have to have connections to get those meetings, but fine. These are all secular publishers, and they all say that like there's not enough sex in the book, and Rachel is a Christian.

And so Rachel's like, no, I want it to be about a Christian girl from the sticks. And her wacky adventures, but her wacky adventures don't necessarily involve sex, like they involve romance and other things. And so all of these publishers pass. And she says she cried for like an hour. And then she stood up and she Googled

how to self-publish a novel. And so she self-published this book. I guess word of mouth, it started selling like five copies a week, 10 copies a week, 100 copies a week, and just became this rolling snowball. And then as it started to get more attention, a Christian publisher sort of found it and found that it was becoming this deal on the internet

and offered to give her a real publishing deal. Oh. And then she publishes two sequels over the next two years. I mean, that is like good work. Yeah, it's actually like a kind publishing deal. Oh. And then she publishes two sequels over the next two years. I mean, that is like good work. Yeah, it's actually like a kind of a nice story. Yeah, she didn't compromise her creative vision or her values or her worldview or any of that kind of stuff.

I get that. This is wild. So, okay, the third play for influencer status. So, as she's becoming Martha Stewart and she's also becoming Bridget Jones Diary, she also kind of tries to become a YouTuber. Oh what? This is also peak clickbait YouTube videos. This is when YouTube was like becoming a thing. Is this the era of YouTube that's like you won't believe what happens two minutes in?

This one weird trick. Yes. She has one of her videos is called American tries Filipino food No, this was like a genre of YouTube videos like viral YouTube videos white people trying like non-American food It's like one of the cringiest things I've ever seen she's like oh it tastes like fish It's just like her like mocking this cuisine. It's so gross. All right, so I'm sending you this Rachel's play for viral fame. Here we go. Oh my god.

Moms fashion. I get up every day at 5 a.m. And every time the alarm goes off, I want to cry because it's still dark outside. And I don't have to get up that early, but I really wanted to write a book and I really wanted to get in shape and I really wanted to make sure that my kids ate something healthy before they left for school. And the truth is that we all get the same 24 hours.

Oprah has the same 24 hours and Beyonce and Paralympians and that mom you know that has six pack abs even though she has four kids, we all get those same hours, but you have to decide how to use them and I Hate with a passion of a thousand sons waking up that early But it's the only time that I have for my dreams So you have to decide if your dreams are worth losing some sleep if your dreams are worth losing some sleep. one bedroom and all that good stuff stuff. So I'm like, yeah, man, I guess we all get the same 24 hours. Not all of us are married to somebody who works for Disney or run event sites. Yeah. The other thing that I am noticing about this video is it is, as you say, very of that moment of YouTube. And today, as we watch this in 2021, this video published in 2014, it has 10,598 views, which is not a lot of views.

It did not go viral, the way that she went. It did not go viral, Rachel. My favorite thing is I am primed to notice this because she does this throughout her career. She pretends to be telling you something embarrassing. This is called mom sessions. Yeah, I'm about to admit to something, which is that I work all the time, and you better work harder. Like what? And then it's like, I wake up early and like, I hate waking up early, but anyway, I work harder than you.

Can you like Rachel? What part of this is like a confession? I do appreciate that you and I just instinctually descended into Christian bailbatman, voice. She also, this is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen. She also has one called, I'm married, dot, dot, dot, and I'm dating someone. Come on. And is it like, I date my husband, I take my husband on dates, and that's how we keep it a lot, fuck off.

It's like the most obvious thing. Because I saw the title, I was like, she's not really gonna do this. Like this much, she's, she's gonna be like a twist, right? And then she's like, I'm dating someone, I'm dating my husband. You're like, right, Rachel,

I'm having an affair with my best friends, just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Oh. Okay, Rachel. I'm like, is she talks in here about like she hates getting up early? I don't believe her.

Once you watch like an hour of her videos, you realize she just gives you the same advice over an over again. And it's always get up early. Like that's one of the only pieces of advice she actually has, like actionable advice. And I will say as a morning person, myself, fellow morning people, shut the fuck up about getting up early.

It doesn't make you a better person. Like I have been a morning person since I was like 13 years old. I would be getting up at like five in the morning so I would do homework before school. Oh, buddy. It doesn't make me virtuous. It doesn't make me productive. It's just like genetically upbringing,

like I don't know what it is, but like I did not choose to be this way. I just, I have my best most creative hours are in the morning and other people have their best most creative hours from like 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Yeah, there's no moral difference between those two things. Yes, and you and I both know there will sometimes be days at a time where you don't get shit done on the project

that you're most excited about. Weeks, Aubrey, there will be weeks. But that's not a salable perspective and it's not one that gets people excited and feeling like I could do it too. Exactly. Well, I think we should make a maintenance phase self-help book that is just like long questions and like really complex ethical dilemmas from people and our answer is always just it depends. You know, I would need more information. It depends on what your situation is.

I don't know. I was thinking we should do a maintenance for you self-help book that's just, and like advice book that's just like aggressively honest about your schedule and mine. Oh, every time I get stuck on something, I take the dog for a walk, so the dog gets between five and seven walks a day. about your schedule and mine. Every time I get stuck on something, I take the dog for a walk,

so the dog gets between five and seven walks a day. If I don't wanna get started on something, then I get real big into meal prep. Dude, I basically didn't do any writing for like three months of summer because I was playing Stardew Valley. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha So do you want to see the thing that finally catapults Rachel into national attention? Yes, I do. This is it. She's been trying to go viral for seven years now since roughly 2008.

And in 2015, this happens. I'm sending you a clip where she's describing what she does and how she goes viral for the first time. I really enjoy a clip show. We show the picture. Yeah, that one. Did anyone see that? Couple people. So when this post went crazy,

the question that I got over and over from press was what was your intention? And the truth is, I feed my Instagram every month from press was what was your intention? And the truth is, I feed my Instagram every month to a color, and March was orange. And so I had the super cute bikini top, and I'm Southern, so I love a monogram. And so it had the monogram, and it was orange,

and I was like, oh my gosh, my Instagram followers are going to dig this. I'm going to post this picture. So my husband had to speak at something down in Cancun, such a hardship, and I went with him, we got a week in the way from the boys, so I said, hey Dave, will you go down to the beach with me and will you take a picture? Dave took this picture, and the first thing I see is my stretch marks. And as I was looking at it, I thought,

you know, gosh, I've never seen a woman that I know post a picture of herself with stretch marks from a place of pride. So I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna leave it in. I have a few, a lot of my followers are moms. I have a lot of girlfriends who follow me. So I'm gonna just leave it in and they're totally gonna get a kick out of this.

So this is what I wrote under the picture. I have stretch marks and I wear a bikini. I have a belly that's permanently flabby from carrying three giant babies and I wear a bikini. My belly button is saggy, which is something I didn't even know was possible before kids. And I wear a bikini. I wear a bikini because I'm proud of this body and every mark on it. Those marks prove that I was blessed enough to carry my babies, and that flat beat tummy means I worked hard to lose what weight I could. I wear a bikini because the only man whose opinion matters, knows what I went through to look this way.

That same man says he's never seen anything sexier than my body, Marx and all. They aren't scars, ladies. They're stripes and you've earned them. Flant that body with pride. BELL RINGS Ooh. Ooh. We got to the health and wellness section of the episode. Fucking Jesus.

I totally get that this is a real and empowering and meaningful thing to people. And also, I understand that those same people will be like, get it, those are tiger stripes. You did earn your stripes. You earned that belly. And I'm like, what about people who didn't fucking earn the belly? What about people who didn't do the things that you think make it okay? Right. Just I have a really strong visceral and negative reaction to this kind of stuff because it's all the shit that's like, you should love your body, but not if it looks like that.

This post gets 10 million hits. No, God. If this sensation, it's a massive deal. We understand that this kind of rhetoric coming from this kind of person on that platform, 99 times out of 100 comes with, but other women shouldn't be doing this or just immediate shift to judgment of other people.

Yes, it's the, I'm body positive as long as you're happy and healthy. And I'm like, well, depressed people should be able to be body positive too. And people who are not perceived as being healthy should be able to like have good feelings about their bodies. The reason I wanted to include a clip from this talk, because it's like a 30-minute long

talk. She opens with describing this picture and how it went viral and it was this source of like huge pride. She got these like thousands of messages from other women talking about how meaningful it was. And then she immediately, without any acknowledgement that this is what she's doing, she shifts into weight loss advice. She's just like, you know, the things that I was putting into my body were like really gross, and then I saw a nutritionist, and the nutritionist was like, would you feed your kids like this? No. And then I realized I shouldn't be eating like that either. And it's like, wait a minute, two minutes ago, you were saying your body, like, doesn't matter,

people should have pride, but then you're also like now telling me how I can lose 10 pounds to look different. That's how it always all shows up. Exactly. It is this sort of thing where I'm like, are you not gonna acknowledge that you're I'm gonna lose 10 pounds post baby or even 20 or 30 pounds post baby?

It's like maybe not the entire world of weight loss. And like, are you not gonna acknowledge that like this kind of weird, facile logic also very directly feeds into deep judgments of fat people? It's so frustrating, because I don't want to take away anybody's ability to work through their own body stuff. But also, people overwhelmingly do that in a way that deeply, deeply reinforces and relies on their own biases

against fatness and fat people. I don't know, man. It's just, it's a real mess. I don't like to take things away from people, but like the minute I saw this, I could feel myself pulling out like a bucket labeled like that's problematic. And like filling it up with juice. It's also telling that in the caption of that photo, because of course you're training people how to react to the photo with the caption that you posed. She says, like, I've lost as much weight as I can.

Oh, God. We're not trained to see photos without all that context and have the same reaction. Also, she has this photo that's her with again, some sort of like loose skin from pregnancy and weight loss and whatever else She also has a visible fucking thigh gap. Yes. I don't I don't know man I just feel like such a dick when I talk about this stuff. We're like it's like both of us are like We're like a thin white woman is doing body positivity

Like oh It's when you can feel the ramp up to fight her flight, but you're not all the way there yet. Yes. That is the response that I'm having. It's just like, I know this person is gonna say horrific fucking shit about people who look like me. And then if I say anything about it, they'll go,

you just don't want me to love my body and you're just jealous. No, no, no, no. I know how this conversation goes. What about the dovads? Oh, what the fuck? What? Yeah.

What the fuck? I'm about to dovads. Okay, the other thing that I really want to talk about in this clip, and I don't know if you noticed this, is the baffling, fucking lies that she tells. Oh, I did that she tells. Oh, I did not notice this. Did you notice in the beginning? She says like, I'm Southern and we love a monogram.

Oh, oh, yes, I did hear that. And I was like, she said, I'm Southern and she keeps going, y'all. You're from Bakersfield, California. You're from where my dad is from. If you listen to whole talk, she does this numerous times where she says later, she's like, I'm Southern and you know we love a fake lash. Is there anything about her living in the South ever?

Again, this is why you get obsessed with this person, is because you're like, she's telling weird fucking lines. And then I spend hours on the internet, being like Rachel Hollis, the South, like Rachel Hollis, Texas, Rachel Hollis, Louisiana. The closest thing I could find is that I think her dad might be from Texas because she talks when she was growing up, how her dad had some sort of like corporate job where they had offices in California and offices in West Texas.

And I guess a couple times, it seems two, three, four times as a kid, she and her dad would drive to West Texas together and have like a road trip and a road trip back. So that indicates to me that like maybe they had family there. Also like my dad is from Ohio. I don't go around being like, I'm a Midwestern. You know us Midwesterners. Right, totally. I straightforwardly grew up in Seattle. Yes.

And this is like a pattern that shows up in like throughout her books in this presentation. She talks about how her and Dave, after they get married, she says like, we didn't have much money, but like we scraped together enough savings to travel to Europe for the first time. What? And it's like Rachel, he was an executive at Disney. Like, you didn't scrimp and save.

Yeah. Again, I don't care. Like, go to Europe, but it's weird to build this mythology around yourself of like we were like two hard, scrabble young people, and like somehow we made it to Europe. It's like he was making seven figures. There's like a little bit of hilarious ballad

when happening here. Dude, I know I kept thinking about that. Almost CDC cucumber. A little bit of that. So this photo goes like a mega super duper viral. This catapults her into another level of fame. I believe, again, she hasn't really said this, but I think this is how she gets publishers

sniffing around to publish girl washer face. Oh, god, Chef. She's selling empowerment to a conservative Christian audience, which is also a really interesting thing, in that there had been sort of, you know, body positivity and stuff, like this was sort of bubbling under the surface, but it was mostly a left wing thing at that point. There's this movement on the left,

but all of a sudden you have this person who's like the perfect avatar and vessel for that, who's speaking to right wing women. And when that post goes like super duper viral, they realize that like there's money in them-dar hills. You can sell an empowerment message to conservatives. So before we get to the content of Rachel's books, I cannot help myself, and I want to talk about her podcast, which she launches in 2017. I was trying to absorb like a kind of representative sample. And one of the first episodes that I went to

is a podcast episode called How To Start a Podcast. Oh! So we are going to watch another clip. You are, okay, you are going to die. Okay. I was like, I just want a 12 episode season. So then I needed to find 12 people who would let me interview them.

And I did not have any of the connections that I have now. I had no idea who to ask. Really, I mean, I had like five followers. Nobody really cared about what I was doing. And oh, hi, I'm, you know, over here, I'm gonna start a podcast. We let me interview you. People are like, no, or they wouldn't respond at all.

So I had to get really creative. And that first season, to be honest, like it's a bit of a miracle that people said, yes, because I don't think that I really had earned the right to like ask them. I honestly think so much in life is having the courage to try is having the audacity to just ask, because you really never know, and I just asked, and just to give you a little insight there, I asked in a really concise and

professional way. So I would get contact information in those days it was an email, and I would say, I have this podcast, and you know, here's what I'm doing, and here's the why, here's how many followers I have on social media, I'll make myself available to your schedule, please let me know if you can do it. I think that the reason that I handful of people said yes is that I was concise, I was quick, I told them I would make myself available to their schedule, because people are always super busy,

and I had some stats, so I was like, here's how many followers I have on Facebook, or here's what I'm doing on Instagram, so I had something that was like, there's not, like, people will listen to this. T.T. Thoughts. Yeah, I'm gonna say a similar thing

to what I said in our shallow howl bonus episode, which is this is a rich text full of bad points. I know. I mean, I guess my question for you is like, does it get to be something you can actually operationalize? No, all she's doing is repackaging her own experience, but like being kind of vague about it, because she doesn't want to admit how many connections and how much privilege she has. So she's talking around the fact that like my husband is a Disney executive at the time I started

my podcast in 2017. I had more than 100,000 Instagram followers. I had a mega viral photo. I had written three novels. So like what she actually did to launch her podcast is like she called up her connections. Right. One of her first podcast guests is Joy Cho, also like a lifestyle influencer.

And Joy Cho years before had given a blurb to Rachel for her cookbook. Oh, look at her cookbook. It's like I like cooking these recipes, Joy-Choe on the back or whatever. So they already had some level of contact. She obviously called somebody who she knew on some level, but for her to give that as advice would require her to admit that she has connections. This would be like, finneas making a video, being like, how I landed a guest spot on a Billy Isles record, and you're like, well, you're her brother.

Yes, that's how you did it. Like, that's actually reasonable advice. Yes. Use your connections. I had already been in the industry. I had been planning celebrity weddings for 12 years at this point. So I was lucky to know a lot of high status people who I could write emails to.

Just say that Rachel, it's fine. But then she does this whole rigmarole about like, make sure you write a concise email. And like, I wrote a really business like email. It's like, Rachel, they didn't reply because your email was good. Right. They replied because it's like, who's Rachel Hollis? Ah, yeah, I know her. I think somewhere in her brain, she actually thinks that she got guests on the first season of her podcast because her emails were good. Well, and like a very bad email is a good way to get a quick no, but it's not the answer to getting a yes.

It's also the other genre of information in this clip other than just weird lies, is just useless advice. It's like, yeah, when you reach out to people in a business email, you should probably write it in a business-like concise way. Right, you shouldn't just write an email that's like a voice memo attached of you being like,

podcast? Exactly, don't send news. Write a normal adult email, great Rachel. And at other points in this podcast episode about how to start a podcast, she talks about how you should have a consistent release schedule. If you have a podcast that's easy to record, it might be better for time management

if you record three episodes at once on the same day and then release them every week. This is all fine advice, but it's like if you googled how to start a podcast, those would be like the first three things that came up. Yeah, it would be like if she was like, come to me for my exclusive list of what's coming to Netflix this month,

but I'm like, there are hundreds of those on the internet. We already know that. We can find from so many places, Rachel. This is something that I actually find really fascinating and weird. Like, I have watched hours of Rachel Hollis. I have read hundreds of pages of Rachel Hollis stuff. There's, no, there's nothing actionable.

Huh. She has this fascinating chapter in her book. I didn't see that coming, which is about like, how to overcome challenges, where she's talking about like during the recession. All of her, like high end weddings and stuff get canceled. She says, I looked at where we really were. I got rid of any expenses that were non-essential.

I figured out every way I could think of to make extra revenue for my business without spending money. Okay, you cut expenditures and you raised revenues. If you want to make more money, what you should do is make some more money, Mike. I'm literally, I'm not taking this out of context. Like there is nothing specific. This also plays into sort of like a logic about employment

and success and all of the sort of stuff, which is just like, you just gotta pound the pavement, you just gotta get out there and like, do the work and you're like, okay, so what's the work? And they're like, you just gotta go do it. It's specifically, and it's like, okay. Her weird approach the work? And they're like, you just gotta go do it. Yeah, specifically. And it's like, okay. Her weird approach to this also leads her to give bad advice. She has like just this ludicrous advice

on like getting advertisers. She talks about like local podcasts. She's like, you might wanna start a local podcast first. Uh huh. The like local national distinction doesn't really make sense in podcasts because all the distribution is international. Yeah.

Then she says, one of the things you should do is if there's like a restaurant that you like, what you should do is you should insert an ad in your show for like Joe's Pizzeria. And then send the Pizzeria your show and be like, if you pay me, I'll keep doing this. What? It's the worst device. Like, you're supposed to just give free ads to random businesses. Mike, at this point in the show,

I'd like to just say thanks to our good friends at McCallan Scotch. McCallan! It's the only Scotch I drink. Like, what are we fucking doing here? I have listened to this infernal episode about how to start a podcast twice. It's also incredible to me how it includes no research.

So like she has a team of 22 people working at her company now. What? Yeah, it's like a it's like a media empire. She easily could have assigned somebody like, hey spend a day, like call around a couple like podcast agents, ask them like what's going on in the podcast industry these days? True crime podcast are up and conversational podcasts are down or movie podcasts are in, like get some intelligence on the industry and give us some insight.

Also just like, things like how do you pick a format? What kind of growth can you actually reasonably expect? Yes. This whole clip was just like, I was listening to it and I was like, well, we have a podcast and we don't really tend to have guests, but then what? Exactly. She also does this thing.

She's like, you need to make sure like, be very deliberate with the format that you choose. You might want to do a solo podcast like this one where you just talk into microphone. You might want to have guests or like, you might want to do something solo podcast like this one where you just talk into microphone, you might want to have guests, or like you might want to do something more in depth, like serial. Whoa!

You're like Rachel, those are completely different levels of expertise required, technology required. Like you can't just tell people, like you might want to do something like serial, which takes months of work. Right, maybe you want wanna have an investigative journalism podcast from someone who's been in the industry for 15 to 30 years.

How would anybody do that? Here's what it reminds me of, is there is a great Maria Bamford bit where she talks about going on a date with some dude, and he's like, what do you do? And she's like, I'm a comedian and he goes, yeah, you know what? I would do if I was a comedian and she goes, what? And he go, I just like come up with something like totally original

that nobody's ever thought of before, like, so unfilled. And then I just like put that out into the world and then I just fucking coast. And this is like really a hop-skip and a jump away from that kind of like quote unquote advice. That's like, yeah, man, sure. You know what I would do? If I were a YouTuber, I'd make a video and then I'd like have it go viral. And I just find it gross. I mean, I also, I do think that a huge percentage of quote unquote life advice is just people telling you what they did. Yeah. And not realizing that they're just describing a study with an N of one. Yeah. It's actually fine to just describe your own experience.

Yeah, but what's so weird about Rachel Hollis, she's not doing either one. She's not giving you so advice, and she's not just telling her own story because she's so fucking vague about her own story. Well, and she'll toss in little gems like, I'm Southern and you know we love a monograiner. We have a monograiner. Wait a minute, are you even telling your story? It's

buried under these layers of like her lack of self-awareness about what she's actually doing. Yeah, that's right. Okay, I have no, we've never done this before, but we are, we are exactly halfway through my notes. And we've, and we've been recording for three hours. Should we make this a two-parter? Yeah, should we just cut here? This is kind of in the middle of everything. But next week, we are going to focus in on the content of Rachel's books.

And we're gonna talk about the downfall, which is actually a weird six-step process. And then we're going, of course, to circle back to the infamous freeze-frame TikTok. Look, we've all underestimated Mike's passion for both Rachel Hollis and face washers. How is this the one that I have to split into? How is it not the one about like international development, which I did as a career? How is it the fucking influencer?

Yeah, you're like, well, Dr. Oz, Dunn and Dustin, but Rachel Hollis, now we gotta focus in. Thank you.