What We Can Learn From Rachel and Dave Hollis’s Recent String of Disastrous Fails

Some valuable lessons from self-help gurus

Newly divorced couple, Rachel and Dave Hollis, have been brought back into the limelight recently thanks to Dave’s total train-wreck of a book launch.

The divorcee and dad of four seemed to be doing his very best to obliterate his entire image and brand in a two-hour-long live rant on Instagram, which took place on his “Patio of Peace”, now deleted. However, Hollis-critics didn’t miss the opportunity to save the whole thing and post it in a YouTube video, which I have linked at the bottom of the article, in case you wish to see the whole dire affair. In this epic rant, he perfectly fitted the model narcissist by telling his fans to just spend a measly 18 bucks and buy the book that he had dedicated his past 18 months to write for them. And that, if they hadn’t already bought it, they may as well unfollow him.

He also told a fan who had no job that it was going to be more valuable to that viewer to buy the book than spend the $18 on a cab to go to a job interview. Besides the obvious total inability to understand that people without jobs don’t usually take cabs, and the complete idiocy of implying that someone should skip a chance to get a job when they need money in order to own his book, I am sure — and please correct me if I am wrong — that a blatant claim that an investment is going to give a return more valuable than a salary is completely illegal and akin to pyramid scheme mentality.

In addition, and probably the worst part of all, his 4-year-old daughter, Noah, made an appearance 27 minutes in and started asking for pancakes for breakfast. Dave hadn’t seen his kids for a couple of weeks during the build-up to the book launch and, instead of wrapping up the live stream and going to be with his kids, he remained on for another 90 minutes while Noah begged for breakfast. When she came to him with some vitamin gummies, asking if she could have “some more” (probably trying to fill the hungry space in her tummy), he gave her some spiel about the FDA recommendation that a 4-year-old would just not understand, and told her to “get a life”. All the while, his viewers were telling him to go be with his family.

Needless to say, Dave had to apologise (of sorts), removed the video from Instagram, and has since played a marginally more humble role. Not without, however, cancelling the showing of his documentary only days before it was due to air. He claims that it was his decision — because the film lacked some important detail that he morally couldn’t leave out — and that he would be remaking it and re-releasing at a later date.

The ticket sales company, however, had a different explanation — that it was being cancelled due to low volume of sales. Which story tells the most truth, we will probably never know. But, somehow, I don’t think many people are inclined to take Dave that seriously any longer.

Why do I care?

I have never paid much attention to Rachel or Dave Hollis, but have been aware of them, their books, their influence, and, more recently, the scandals surrounding them.

However, my interest is not in the scandals but in the roles they played and how they fooled a huge clientele.

As a coach in the online business world, I have been skirting the edge of the self-help industry for some time and love to devour good books and teachings of those with something valuable to share. Many of my clients and wider network have followed and read Rachel Hollis’s work, and some — in the network marketing industry — have seen her speak on stage at events, to which she would be invited for her motivational business advice and encouragement.

I have to confess that I have never read any of her books. I found the titles unappealing, even condescending (I don’t think Brits find it as endearing to be called “Girl” as people from other continents may), and have generally been aware that many people are offering personal development guidance without real experience of the very struggles and lessons that seekers have contended with.

However, I have listened to some of her (and Dave’s) podcasts out of interest and heard or seen snippets from her books.

The reason why I feel the need to comment and write this article is because I believe that too many people are trying to make money, and many are succeeding, out of people’s vulnerabilities, and I want to draw attention to this. I believe that Rachel and Dave Hollis have done exactly this, but I also feel that they have shown us who they really are over the past 18 months, and this needs to be discussed, in order to highlight the difference between genuine teachings and fake talk.

I also believe that there is a story for all of us in the development of their saga of them being reduced to their true selves, without the façade.

Who are the Hollis’s?

Rachel was building a career as a blogger and interior designer when she hit it big on Facebook with some body-positive photos of her postpartum belly while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico.

Following that, she released her first self-help book, Girl, Wash Your Face (2018), which fast became a long-standing bestseller, followed by her second, Girl, Stop Apologising (2019). She held her own weekend workshops for women, for which she charged between $25 and $1,800 per person, and she quickly became a sought-after guest speaker at personal development and business conferences.

Dave, formerly working in a high-profile position in Disney, joined his wife to form a joint company, called The Hollis Co. Together, they offered self-help guidance to individuals, as well as relationship advice to couples. They created their joint podcast, Rise Together, specifically for the relationship advice, and offered weekend workshops that would cost $1,750 per couple.

In other words, they positioned themselves as sought-after experts, and charged high-ticket prices for their guidance.

Dave also released his own book, Get Out of Your Own Way: A Skeptic’s Guide to Growth (2020). His popularity was built almost entirely off the back of Rachel’s success.

A 2019 article in The New York Times claimed that The Hollis co was a multimillion-dollar venture.

The beginning of the history of blunders

This story kind of begins with the announcement of the couple’s decision to get divorced, in June 2020.

So, divorces happen. Sadly, it’s a fact of many people’s lives these days, and no, we should never judge or lay blame when people come to this difficult decision.

However, this was a major piece of news for the followers of Rachel and Dave Hollis. The couple had branded themselves as relationship experts, created their podcast, in which they discussed how to navigate the inevitable struggles that arise in romantic partnerships and marriages.

Hundreds of thousands of people listened to, and followed their advice and teachings. Many paid good money for their 3-day workshop, to gain some of their “wisdom” on having exceptional relationships.

While being transparent about the fact that they weren’t trained relationship therapists, they promoted themselves as the perfect guides, based on the fact that their experience didn’t come from qualifications but from being living proof of a successful union.

In Rachel’s words:

“We decided years ago that we didn’t want to have a good marriage. We didn’t even want to have a great marriage. We wanted to have an exceptional marriage.”

This was from a promotional video for the couples conference that they ran with the same name as their podcast, Rise Together. The promo explained:

“RISE Together is an event for couples in a romantic relationship who want to: grow together, work through a rough season, rekindle the romance, have a weekend away to reconnect or learn some tangible advice for improving their relationship.”

And so, when the couple announced that they were ending their marriage, people felt like they had been lied to for all of this time, and were royally pissed off.

Now, I am sure that they made the decision because it was the right one. But, no one leaves an 18-year marriage, involving children as young as 3, on a whim. It’s clear, from other hints about their relationship, that this was brewing for many years.

The fact is that this couple was no more exceptional than any other couple navigating marital issues, but they sold the façade and made tens, if not hundreds of thousands from doing so.

Yes, people had a right to be pissed off.

Rachel’s blunders

Within a short time of announcing the divorce, Rachel’s Instagram feed was filled with smiling selfies promoting the imminent launch of her book Didn’t See That Coming. Ironic name, hey?

In the days following the release of the book, my circle of acquaintances were putting out Rachel Hollis hate posts. She ruffled some more feathers pretty impressively.

She stabbed in the back the very industry — the network marketing industry — that had been paying her extortionate quantities of money to speak at events. In a chapter that discussed how to begin a business or side income from scratch, she advised people not to “be dumb” and invest money in an online side hustle when they could do anything else to bring the pennies in.

Perhaps cleaning toilets was one of her suggestions? I say that with tongue-in-cheek, since her following blunder was on the topic of having toilet-cleaners, now known as #toiletgate.

In the Spring of this year, she put out a post in which she talked about getting the help you need in life to stay on your mission, and how she could only keep working in the way she was because she had someone who came and cleaned her toilets twice per week. Someone commented that it wasn’t very relatable, since many people trying to build their businesses couldn’t afford to pay someone to do that.

She responded by way of posting a video on TikTok in which she stated:

“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. … If my life is relatable to most people, I’m doing it wrong.

Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian…all unrelatable AF,”

Besides the obvious — the fact that she had built her career out of being the relatable, regular woman who had just figured things that others had yet to figure out — she managed to compare herself to a list of women who had undergone genuine hardship. She seemed to imply that she was not only on par with these women but just as influential, and revealed a sense of entitlement that was beyond how she was really viewed by her audience.

As one commenter wrote:

“Malala was SHOT on the bus by Taliban for going to school. What does this have to do with your little relatability fight on the internet? This is appalling to me.”

Needless to say, Rachel stopped ranting against the very people to whom she claimed to offer guidance and support after these two dire episodes.

Reduced to a mere example of their own teachings

Seeing the crumbling of these two humans who had once professed to have figured it all out, I am inclined to say that they made their own beds.

No one can create a façade in the public arena and uphold it forever. Eventually, it will come to light and come back to bite you, and this is exactly what seems to have happened to Dave and Rachel Hollis.

In her book, Girl, Wash Your Face, Rachel begins the first chapter by saying:

“You, and only you, are ultimately responsible for who you become and how happy you are. That’s the takeaway.”

It may be that they are both coming to that realisation now.

The aftermath

Having followed a little of their journey, I feel inclined to give Rachel the benefit of believing that she does have the ability and the willingness to recognise and learn from her own mistakes.

I believe it’s possible that the divorce, which she openly stated was at her request, was a long time coming, and the result of years of dealing with a difficult man.

We know that Dave had an alcohol problem which he kicked, with her support along the way. We also know that he had a history of being emotionally abusive. And we know that they talked about divorce around 5 years before it happened.

They discussed this in one of their podcast episodes, along with the struggles that they were experiencing as a couple as a result of Dave’s stress in the run-up to his first book launch, in Spring of 2020. Seeing his total self-centred and probably stress-induced rant on Instagram at the climax of another book launch leads me to believe that he wasn’t easy to live with at all.

Asking for a divorce when you have an entire brand resting on your existence as a couple is a huge deal, and I don’t believe that Rachel made this decision lightly. I believe it was a pretty strong move on her part.

The fact that she also created a short bonus podcast episode as a follow-up to #toiletgate also leads me to believe that she actually wants to learn from her own mistakes. In this episode, she apologised for the things she had said, stating that she genuinely thought that it would help people and had been proven wrong. She openly said that she now realised that she has a lot to learn and a lot to unpack from her own behaviour.

My own opinion is that she is realising the true depths of the teachings she professed to have all figured out but clearly hadn’t.

As for Dave, I am not so sure. I have met plenty of such bigoted people in the past, coupled with a painfully male ego, and this kind of ego is not shed easily. I don’t have great hope for him, but I may be wrong.

The biggest lesson of all…

…is the lesson that we all need to learn from this.

We can only truly learn from our own experiences, our own mistakes, and our own lightbulb moments.

Rachel and Dave put themselves on a pedestal without qualifying themselves as true leaders, and they fell.

This is a vital lesson about the self-help industry as a whole.

I am not saying that there are not genuine people who are teaching genuine lessons. There absolutely are. There are truly genuine people out there who are sharing wisdom that they acquired through genuine hardship and obstacles.

But there are many who are professing to have discovered something truly unique simply in order to make a pretty buck.

Look at people’s stories and backgrounds. Look at the attitude they profess to have towards their audience. And don’t buy into them because of hype. Buy into them because of how they came to these lessons.

In the long run, we can’t really learn true life lessons from books and speeches. We learn them from experiences, and Rachel and Dave Hollis are being faced with those experiences only now.

“When you have transformation, it is the recognition of my gifts having been used well here. So, I have a vested interest. I want to see you transform your life. I want to see you become the best version of yourself. It’s super selfish. Because every time that somebody that I interact with has a transformation, it is a reflection of me having been a good steward of the talents that I’ve been given.

I just want to be able to finish my life knowing that I did everything that I could, with what I was given, to affect as many people as possible.”

Please excuse me while I cringe.

Now, please go and be strong in the knowing that you are already amazing and you don’t need Dave Hollis’s book to tell you so.

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