Empowering Women To Unabashed Success

Rachel Hollis is known for empowering and emboldening women around the world. 

Founder of The Hollis Company, a lifestyle media company that produces informational and inspirational content, Rachel is a sought-after motivational speaker, three-time New York Times #1 Bestselling Author, self-help expert, and top business and lifestyle podcaster. 

Through each of these mediums, Rachel shares her singular blueprint for attaining unabashed success. She also leverages the power of digital media, tangible products, and live events as a roundtable for upcoming voices to share stories of overcoming and thriving.

Her audience is global. Under the umbrella of her 3% Chance Podcast Network, two of her top podcasts—The Rachel Hollis Podcast and Your Fave’s Faves—have taken the world by storm. 

The Rachel Hollis Podcast is a Top 50 podcast on both Apple and Spotify, with an average of 30M+ downloads per year. It is designed for listeners who are looking for more joy and purpose in their lives and features candid interviews with top performers in business, media, and lifestyle, as well as deep dives into topics such as health and motivation. 

Your Fave’s Faves, which reveals a different side of renowned celebrities by asking them to get real about their ultimate “top five” in any category they want, premiered in November 2020 at number two in TV and Film, and remains a Top 50 podcast in that category. 

Collectively, Rachel’s shows achieve a staggering 50M+ downloads annually.

Growing up in Weedpatch, California, Rachel was enamored with the theater and dreamed of a career in entertainment. Even as a little girl, she practiced visualization—a tool she describes as “Everything! In all honesty, I used it to help me escape the reality I was inside of.” Although, at the time, she lacked a clear understanding of why she engaged in this practice, Rachel says it became the foundation of her imagination, ultimately leading her to become a writer. 

“I can always see exactly what my desires look and feel like,” Rachel said. “So often, we get dragged down into thinking about things that have happened in our past. And we naturally reach for anxiety, because there is some worry that those things might resurface in the future. This goes back to caveman times—your brain is wired to protect you. It’s wired to keep you safe. And in times of stress, it starts to shut down and revert to really basic stress responses. But if you can separate yourself from the thought, then you have the ability to figure out how to navigate around it. When you take control of your thought process and mindset, and focus on where you want to go, you can proactively turn the tables.”

Rachel is no stranger to mindset work. When she was just 14, she experienced a traumatic loss—the death of her brother Ryan, whom she was the first to find after his passing. Even with her strong faith background, it took years for her to fully understand the impact, as well as her post-traumatic stress. 

“It’s like this onion that you keep peeling back, layer after layer. I would think I’d gotten through all this stuff, but then I’d discover a whole other layer.”

Crediting years of therapy, Rachel is now able to discern those layers.

“Over the holidays, I found myself binge eating… truly harming myself with food, which is something I haven’t done in a really long time. I thought I had done all the work to get past that prior behavior. But I was able to recognize what was occurring and stop to ask myself exactly what was happening. And I had this epiphany. 

“When Ryan died, everyone brought food. People don’t know what to do, so they bring food. I was 14 years old when I binged for the first time. I couldn’t control anything that was happening, but I could control that. I’m 38 now, and I just made that connection. It really inspired me to keep trying to understand myself better, even if it means gaining a deeper understanding of that trauma from a thousand different angles.”

After graduating high school, Rachel moved to LA, eventually creating an event-planning business. One day, she received a call from a network representative who invited her to interview for a show-hosting position. In speaking with her now ex-husband about the opportunity, he mentioned that she likely only had a three percent chance of landing the gig. When they offered Rachel the job a couple weeks later, she went out that day and purchased a bracelet. She had it stamped with “3%,” and wore it for years as a reminder of her steadfast belief in herself. 

Rachel’s personal development journey included attending numerous personal development conferences. Although she enjoyed these life-changing experiences, she couldn’t help but notice that the speakers were all older white men. As “awesome” as they were, Rachel felt like her experience was different as a woman and mom. She had a deep desire to hear from women like (and unlike) her. 

The Hollis Company, and Rachel’s RISE events, are a reflection of that desire.

“I am so proud of the work we’ve done with women,” Rachel said. “Pre-pandemic, our conference would bring in 8,000 women to an arena for three days of working on personal development. And these are not women who would identify as ‘personal development kind of people.’ These are women who maybe haven’t thought of themselves in a really long time, having put everybody else’s needs, hopes, and dreams above their own.” 

Rachel’s conferences inspired her to create the Rise Fitness app, so women can continue in the space they create together. It’s designed to continue motivating and inspiring women post-conference to prioritize themselves. 

Rachel points to incorporating daily movement as a crucial part of that process. 

“Every day, move your body,” she said. “Do whatever you can with what you’ve got and where you are. Maybe you go on gratitude walks. It could be as simple as jumping around in a state of fun until you pee your pants a little bit. It is not Peloton. It is not high level. Nobody here has six-pack abs. We are really just trying to make that connection between physical movement and the lowering of stress hormones. Our conferences and app are all about loving you as you are. We just want you to have a good time and connect with other people who share a similar mentality.”

Loving who she is has been an ongoing battle—one she’s stayed the course to conquer. 

“People don’t realize that I’ve spent most of my life 60 pounds heavier than I am today,” Rachel revealed. “I strongly believe that health should be about the way we feel, not the way we look. Trying to please everybody is the surest way to an unfulfilled, awful life, because you will never win. It’s taken some time to get here, but I’m finally comfortable enough to live my life every day as who I am.”

Given all that Rachel has accomplished, it naturally begs the question of what’s next? The answer reflects what you might expect to hear from any other entrepreneur. 

“Like most business owners in 2020, I’ve been doing everything! In times of ‘war,’ you do whatever you have to in order to stay afloat. I am recording the podcast and videos, speaking on stage, handling the press, running day-to-day operations, writing the email copy…  as I look ahead at 2021, the greatest desire of my heart is to pull myself up out of the day-to-day and allow myself to do what I’m really good at—the visionary and creative pieces.” 

And, as she looks toward conducting more solo episodes of The Rachel Hollis Podcast, as per popular demand, she also hopes to elevate more female voices in the medium. 

“I feel really strongly that we need more diversity in the space. Women need to hear from women who look like them, women who come from the same areas and backgrounds. And so we’re leaning into elevating voices and releasing new podcasts via 3% Chance—my podcast network.”

It would seem that Rachel’s plate is full. But no… she is also a screenplay writer who has her sights set on Netflix, and she intends to get back to fiction writing. 

With so much going on, one can’t help but wonder how Rachel manages to find balance. 

“My business is constantly pivoting. Running it while doing really big, incredible things in this world and still being an exceptional mom and friend is absolutely possible—it just takes massive intentionality. And a bad-ass team. It’s like Paul Oberschneider said: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’

“I also journal, meditate, and visualize every day of my life. I do it all with the intention of taking control of my thoughts and bringing my focus back to what matters. This is what the Law of Attraction is all about. People think they can just create a vision board and look at it, and everything they want will come to them. But it’s more than that. When you are actively bringing your focus and attention back to what matters, you begin to notice things that will help you on your journey toward your vision. It works to help you focus. It’s not a magical cure-all.”

It may not be a magical cure-all, but Rachel is proof that it works: day by day, she is intentional in empowering and emboldening other women to create the kind of success she has—on their own terms.