1Hala Taha: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] Yeah, fam, have you ever felt stuck spinning your wheels, desperately wanting to change, but not knowing how to break through? What if the key to transforming your life was simply learning to ask the right questions? Today we're asking the deep questions with Rachel Hollis, an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and host of the Rachel Hollis podcast.

She's also the author of the bestselling book, girl Wash Your Face, and her latest book is called What If You Are The Answer. In this episode, Rachel will reveal how asking life-changing questions can completely reshape your mindset, unlock your potential, and propel you towards a life you've always dreamed of.

Rachel, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. 

Rachel Hollis: Ah, thanks for having me. 

Hala Taha: I'm so excited to have you on the show. Rachel, as a [00:02:00] podcaster, I've always looked up to you and you've inspired so many millions of women and people in general, and so my first question is really a warmup question. Because you are such an expert on personal development and you're really known for your routines and your habits, what is the most powerful thing that you do every single morning to set off your day?

Rachel Hollis: Oh my gosh. This is like asking what is my favorite child? I think honestly, the biggest shift that happened for me about 15 years ago was understanding what a morning routine was and the value of creating one around not just what I wanted to achieve, but the season of life that I am in. I think there's so much content out there telling you how to build a morning routine, and it's really easy to.

Start to gather information and not really take that on board in what will work for you. So if you are a new parent with a new baby at home, your life and your ability to wake up in the morning is gonna look very different than if you are a [00:03:00] freelancer in your twenties. So for me, really understanding the importance of that time, like.

I have four kids, so waking up before my kids wake up. I know it sounds so simple, but if you start your day on offense versus on defense, it makes all the difference. So waking up before anyone else in the house, having my coffee, I sit in the same spot every single day. I read nonfiction. I do a gratitude practice.

I do those things that are really paramount to what I am trying to accomplish in my life right now. But that's not something I understood I needed a long time ago. So I know that's kind of like a bigger scope, but building that morning routine around your life and your goals is the key. 

Hala Taha: That makes sense because every season of life is different and requires different things.

Now what if somebody feels like they're just not a morning person? This is me, right? I struggle waking up early. I get really creative late at night. It's [00:04:00] just my natural rhythm to want to stay up late and not necessarily wake up super early. So what would you say to somebody like me? 

Rachel Hollis: Well, I would say if you don't have anything that requires you to be up early, then you should go with whatever your natural rhythms are.

So if I didn't have four kids, I'm not sure what my normal rhythm would be, but I have to make sure everybody gets up and gets out the door to school. And then there are other people listening who might have a nine to five job that they have to start a commute for. But if you don't have to, like I have a ton of friends who are entrepreneurs and they might not wake up until 11:00 AM 12 o'clock because they don't have to.

And they can stay up all night and really lean into when they feel most creative. That's why I was saying having a routine that works for you. Take a bunch of the information in, do the research, find out what works for other people, but at the end of the day, it needs to be applicable to your life or it's not gonna get you the results that you want.

Now, I will just caveat or add a little bit here. [00:05:00] For someone who does need to be up early and they really want to have a morning routine, they wanna be a morning person, but they don't feel like they are, that's a learned skill. Nobody comes into this world, nobody gives birth to a baby and the doctor looks at the baby and they're like, oh, it's an early riser.

That's not a thing. So if you want anything in life, if you want a habit that you don't currently have, you can teach yourself that habit. So if I were you, and let's say you get up every day at seven and you wanna get to a place where you're part of the 5:00 AM Club, set that alarm 15 minutes earlier every single day.

Let your body adjust to getting up earlier. Make sure that you have something exciting to wake up for. Like, I love coffee so it's really easy for me to pop outta bed. Or if I have a new book that I'm reading, uh, 'cause I'm super nerdy. But if I have a new book that I'm reading that I feel like I'm learning a ton from, that'll get me outta bed.

Have something that you're headed right into so that you've got a reason to meet your alarm where it meets you instead of hitting the snooze. [00:06:00] 

Hala Taha: I love that advice just. Setting the clock back 15 minutes early every single time so that you can just wean yourself. I love that advice. Exactly. So we are talking about seasons of life, and I know a new topic that you talk a lot about is reinvention, right?

And you've reinvented yourself several times. So talk to us about the different seasons of life that you've had so far, and where you are now. 

Rachel Hollis: Yeah. I don't know if this is every entrepreneur. I sort of think it is. A lot of my friends who are in the space or who are entrepreneurs, I feel like every five to seven years there starts to be a shift.

Or if there's not, I think the work begins to feel a bit stale, especially if you're an entrepreneur, you're a risk taker, you're ambitious, you're competitive, and so I think you're always. Looking around for what's happening in the market and how you might move with what's going on. So I actually started, my very first business was as an event planner in Los Angeles.

I started planning weddings and bat [00:07:00] mitzvahs, and then I slowly moved into getting to do corporate events, getting to work on movie premieres and press junkets and working in the entertainment industry. And then in 2007, 2008, I kept hearing about this thing called a blog. Everyone was blogging. I didn't really know what that meant, so I just started to blog.

I would literally write about what I ate for dinner last night, and I just kept putting it out. And I had an intern one day that said, you know, a blog's actually supposed to be about something, right? And I was like, oh, thank you. So I started blog about events and how you could host events in your home and.

Set a beautiful table, and slowly but surely, I kept figuring that out and figuring it out. And then one day a brand reached out and said, could we pay you to put our product into one of your blog posts? 

Hala Taha: And I 

Rachel Hollis: will never forget, it was Eggland's Best Eggs. And they offered me $250 and I was like, I am rich and this is a business.

And I realized that there was, I mean, now it's so [00:08:00] common, but back then we didn't really know what we were doing. So we just started to build a company around having a website that brands wanted to be a part of. And if we could just create content that was really, really good that maybe people would pay to get in front of our audience.

So I did that for a while, built that up to a place. I was really proud of it. And then because I was writing every day for the blog, started to dream about writing my own book. I've always been a book nerd. I've wanted to be an author since I was a little girl. And so I was like, okay, I am just gonna try this.

And I published my first book in 2014, and you know, like five people cared. I wasn't an overnight success by any stretch of the imagination, but I just kept writing. I'd come out with a book every year and on my sixth book, which was in 2018, I wrote a book called Girl Wash Your Face, which unbeknownst to me or anybody else in the entire world became this runaway success and it really launched my career in personal development.

I [00:09:00] never, I cannot even believe that this is my career, to be honest with you. Holla. But yeah, I just tend to, I think, move at the risk of being a hippie, like move with flow and move with where I feel like I'm being guided and then I test stuff. If it's just easy to move into it, I expand with what's going on.

So my career's had a lot of different versions of itself, but I. The entrepreneurial spirit is at the core of everything. So it's one thing to be interested in a certain kind of content, but to figure out how to monetize that in a big way is the key. And I think as long as I have done it, I've kept the same customer base.

So the woman who was reading my blog in 2008 is the same woman who reads my books and listens to my podcast today. 

Hala Taha: I love that. It's something that I talk about on the podcast all the time, which is creator entrepreneurship, and you're in an audience based business. Absolutely. So your product can always change and evolve, but you just keep growing that core audience.

So I love that you [00:10:00] brought that up and hit that nail on the head. I've got so many questions to kind of dig deep on this. Yeah. One of them is the fact that I was shocked when I was like, this was her sixth book. Girl, wash Your Face. Yeah. That's when I first heard about you and I thought that was your first book.

Yeah. Lots of people realize like, man, like nothing is an overnight success, but there's a key here. Key. Your stuff was fiction before, right? You were writing novels and stuff and you decided to twist it and do personal development and use all the skills that you learned, and I guess you had a built in audience.

So you tell us in your own words what changed this time. 

Rachel Hollis: There is no such thing as an overnight success. I cannot tell you how many. Journalist when I came out with Girl Stop Apologizing, which followed Girl Wash Your Face. Were like, oh my gosh, are you so excited to have your second book out?

And I was like, this is my seventh. So part of what I think happened there is something that happens a lot with athletes at the highest level. [00:11:00] I am obsessed with athletes. I'm not obsessed with sports. I don't really know a lot about sports, but I'm so curious about. The athletes, the Olympians, how do they make themselves do the same thing over and over at the highest level and get the best results again and again?

'cause essentially, as an entrepreneur, that's what we're asking of ourselves. So I'm obsessed with this question, and one of the themes that I've seen over and over is that athletes at the high levels fall in love with the grind. They're in love with the process, they're in love with, how do I make this better by the tiniest millisecond?

So for me, I really think a big part of the success was I wasn't trying to be successful. I just really liked writing books. I liked writing and I was trying to get better. And that was my only goal was I thought, well, if you read my first book and you read my third book as a reader, would you think I had improved as a writer?

That's all I was trying to do. And girl, wash Your face was. Honestly, I think a [00:12:00] fluke in a lot of ways. I actually think my ability to write fiction is why I have success in the personal development space because my audience are not people who self-identify as personal development nerds. It's not like Tony Robbins entire audience goes over to me.

I was speaking to women who maybe had never considered personal development before. They might not even have ever gone to therapy. They really had not considered these things at all. So I think my ability to story tell and explain how I went through it and how it was helpful, that really was a massive unlock that wasn't in the space because I didn't really know how to be a personal development writer.

I think that I brought something to it that maybe didn't exist before, but gosh, I cannot stress that enough to any of your listeners. It really is an overnight success after working at it for a decade. [00:13:00] It's like what we do in the dark that gets celebrated in the light. Nobody's gonna cheer for you.

Nobody's gonna be there like rooting you on, especially at the hardest moments. It's can you love the process enough to keep going because you know you don't know when, but you know, at some point you're gonna get the results that you're striving for. 

Hala Taha: I know even in my own experience, I started my career in radio working at a hip hop radio station.

Nice. And then I had all these different music at a music blog in 2012. I had all these different music online radio shows before podcast and Young and Profiting was my fist show, but it was my first business entrepreneurship type show. That's great. And then it worked out when the other shows didn't work out.

So I always love to tell my listeners, there's no one straight path to what you want. You want it to be an author that had an audience. You did it in a slightly different way, and something changed with the way that people were really receptive to it and it worked. [00:14:00] 

Rachel Hollis: So I love that. Yeah, 

Hala Taha: absolutely. 

Rachel Hollis: Yeah, and I think going back to that idea of the audience, if you figured out your customer base, if you figured out your audience, and even as you were changing the format of your show, you were learning how to do a show, you were learning how to be better, you were learning how to tell jokes or do an interview.

So. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost. It's so easy to look at social media and see everybody else crossing the finish line and feel like you are not far enough along in your race, but like it's all stacking on top of each other to lead you where you're supposed to go. So just stick with it. 

Hala Taha: So you were one of the first mompreneur influencers.

 You know, like I always thought of you as this mompreneur and very big on Instagram and your blog, and you were really doing this influencer stuff before it was even a thing. So talk to us about what it was like during those days and then you had this big viral moment that really turned everything around.

So talk to [00:15:00] us about that. 

Rachel Hollis: Yeah, so we didn't have that word influencer. It's so common now, but you didn't call it that. I knew a lot of women like me who had websites where they created content. 

Hala Taha: You were a mommy blogger. I remember that term. 

Rachel Hollis: Yeah. Like we just created this content based on whatever we were interested in.

Like Joy Cho with Ojo did something very different than I did on my site and it. Changed based on whatever your interests were. But then brands wanted our audience. And you have to remember, social media did not exist back then like it does today. We had Facebook, but even then we didn't really know what we were doing with Facebook.

So many of these brands wanted access to people who were devout followers. I mean, they would check in every day to see what you wrote about. They'd share it with their friends. And so we didn't know what to charge. We didn't know what that was worth. And I think probably we all charged way too little for the amount of access we were [00:16:00] giving away or what they were able to get out of it.

But we really were, it felt like the wild West of doing branded content for people. But it was fun and we were figuring it out. And if I could go back in time, I'm sure I would approach it so differently, but. I'm sure there are versions of this today, of being in an industry that's either coming up for the first time or maybe shifting so quickly that you feel like you're building the airplane while you're flying it through the air.

There's this certain kind of magic and energy that happens inside of that, and it definitely was that for us. But yeah, we just kept like, okay, let's try this thing and now let's do this. And even building a team inside of a business that didn't exist before, like you couldn't call someone or look online and go, well, how do you build a lifestyle website?

How do you hire editors? How do you hire a photographer? We were making it up as we went along. For sure. 

Hala Taha: I love that. And then in 2015, a post went viral because of you showing your [00:17:00] stretch marks. 

Rachel Hollis: Yeah, for sure. Again, these things are common now. Back then it wasn't a thing, but I had just run the LA marathon and to celebrate, I went with my then husband to Mexico.

We were on a beach in Mexico and I was wearing a bathing suit that I thought was really cute. And I had a, a following on Facebook, but maybe 10,000 people. It wasn't huge at all. And I was like, oh, they'll like this bathing suit. 'cause the bathing suit was monogrammed. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna show them.

And it was a bikini. And I asked my husband at the time, I was like, oh, can you take a picture of me in this bikini? And he took a few pictures and then I went to the pool and I was looking through the photos, and in all the photos you could see my stretch marks pretty predominantly. And I was like, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm not gonna post this.

And I was like, oh, who cares? Everyone who follows me is a mom like me. They probably have stretch marks too. They're still gonna love this bathing suit. I'm just gonna write about how I didn't wanna post it because of these stretch marks and. I will [00:18:00] never forget this that I posted it. I was on crappy wifi, so I went, I did like a refresh to make sure that it had posted, and when I refreshed it, it had a hundred likes.

Now, that doesn't seem like a big deal, but I am telling you I'd never gotten more than eight likes on something in my entire life. And I was like, holy crap, a hundred likes, this is nuts. And then I like refreshed it again and it had like a thousand likes. My God. And I was like, my God, what is going on?

And over the course of that day, I just remember sitting by a pool refreshing and just watching it go and get bigger and bigger. And I probably had 10,000 followers on Facebook, and by the end of the day I had like a hundred thousand. I'll tell you what, too holla. If you're gonna have something, go viral.

That's not the thing. You want to go viral. It's not yourself in a bikini, like not feeling like the best version of you. But that taught me so much because of the [00:19:00] response from women to that post. I was like, oh, women really wanna talk about things that are real, because this was the era of the Pinterest birthday party and everything had to be perfect and our kids needed to look amazing.

And I was like, oh, women really wanna talk about real things. So that honestly, I think, planted the seed of what girl Wash your face would become, which was, can we have a real conversation about what this really feels like? Yes, sometimes it's beautiful and yes, sometimes it's not, and our lives are all of it.

So can we hold space for all of that? 

Hala Taha: And so there's like silver lining, even though it went viral for something that was. Kind of embarrassing and you didn't know the world was gonna go see your stretch marks. It gave you a clue of what people might be receptive to and led to a bestselling book. And really, that was, to me, seemed like a huge turning point in your career of becoming an influencer.

Rachel Hollis: Yeah, I just, I got so much attention for that [00:20:00] post. I didn't really know what to do with it, to be honest with you, but it was, in retrospect, just a really great jumping off point of what my career and my writing style would become. 

Hala Taha: It's kind of wild to me to think about. Jenna Kutcher is in my podcast and a, she's one of my friends, and she kind of blew up in the same way.

She posted a picture of her husband and her husband's very attractive, and she had just had a miscarriage and then she was looking more overweight than usual, and then that post went super viral and kickstarted her. It's just so wild how you guys have similar stories. I think that era was just craving body positivity.

Rachel Hollis: I feel like a grandma when I'm saying this to you, but when all of these new websites came around, so let's say Pinterest is a great example, we learned very quickly as content creators that there was an aesthetic that would get you more noticed. That people really, they wanted the blowout.

They wanted full hair and makeup. The audience wanted perfect, perfect, perfect. Because they'd [00:21:00] never really had a website to see that before. And now you could look up anything on Pinterest and find the most aesthetically pleasing version of that. And we all started to chase that visual ideal, not just in the work we created, but in our lives.

So I think it was just right for this opportunity for some women to kind of raise their hand and go like, yeah, but that's not always what it looks like. Some days I feel like I look that pretty, but other days that's just not reality. And so if we can show up as our real selves, how would that be? I think there's such a better balance of it today because you have creators who are creating on both sides of that spectrum.

You have stunningly beautiful doing makeup tutorials, and then you have people who are like, oh, I, I haven't taken a shower in four days and I'm struggling with mental health and this is where I am. And it allows people to see themselves. 

 [00:22:00] 

Hala Taha: So let's transition to your book. The reason why you wrote that bestselling book, girl Wash your Face is because somebody asked you a really good question.

Rachel Hollis: I had the opportunity to meet an author I really loved and admired in Jen Hatmaker, and she was so many of us like, Ugh, we all just like were obsessed with her. And I got to meet her and I was fangirling so hard, and she asked me a question that truly changed the course of my life. She was like, oh, what's the next book you're writing?

And I was like, oh. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, 'cause I was writing fiction and I was telling her all about this fiction that I was writing, and she said, no, God, ugh, no, not that. What's the story of your heart? What's the thing you would say to women if you could say anything? And I truly did not know that I had an answer to that question.

I just started word vomiting all over her. I was like, oh, I just, I wish that women knew how [00:23:00] powerful they were and I wish they knew they could stand up and go again. And I wish they knew they could take ownership of their life. And it's like, girl, like please get it together. Stop crying, girl. And so I just kept saying like, girl, and she was like, oh, right girl, wash your face.

And I was like, oh my that, that. And I left that conversation with her that we were on a trip together. I left that conversation and wrote the first chapter of what would become Girl Wash your face in the aftermath of our chat. And so the idea that someone could ask you a question that completely shifts the way you see yourself or your work, oh my gosh, it's so incredibly powerful.

Hala Taha: So you wrote this book, I believe it's 26 questions. Why did you decide to write this book in a question format? Every chapter is based around a question. 

Rachel Hollis: Honestly, it feels like a really beautiful bookend to grow, wash your face. To be honest, when [00:24:00] you have the kind of success that I had with that book, everyone wants you to just keep writing that book.

They're like, uh, do it again. Do it again, do it again. And I've just gotten to the place in my life and my career where I don't wanna tell anybody else how to live. When I wrote Girl Your Face, I was like, I have all of your answers. I know exactly what you should do. And the older I get, the more I understand that everyone's on their own journey and without context into someone else's lived experience, you can't really offer great advice.

But I have had those moments and I have had those prompts and those questions where someone gave me a bit of wisdom that utterly changed the way I saw myself. So I thought, well, could I share some of the framework that I've used to figure out my own path and my own answers? So instead of a book of my answers, it's a book of my questions so that you can form your own answers to wherever you are or whatever's going on for you.

Hala Taha: You quote Mike Tyson in the book you say everyone has a [00:25:00] plan until they get punched in the face. So you were just talking about you shifting your worldview based on the things that have happened to you. I want my audience to get to know you really well because this is the first time you've been on the show.

What are some of those punch in, in the face moments that just changed the way that you think about things? 

Rachel Hollis: I think this audience will really identify with the fact that at the beginning of 2020, I had a staff of 60 people. I had a massive business that was based on live events, uh, through conferences for women to work on personal development.

And we were crushing it, we're absolutely crushing it and went into 2020. So freaking pumped, so excited. We did an event in January of 2020 in Florida that was like 6,000 people for three days. We were like, here we go. Let's do it. March the very first week of March, 2020, we did an event in Toronto. It was our first international conference.

Absolutely crushed it. And [00:26:00] I remember at that conference we started to hear about this thing that was happening in China and people were getting sick and we were like, wow, this is wild. By the time I got back to Austin, which is where I lived at the time, the world was shutting down and like most people, we were like, okay, I guess we'll work from home for a couple weeks and then we'll be back.

And obviously that's not what happened, but probably one of the worst businesses you could be in in 2020 was live events. So I went from being on top of the world and having this massively successful company to slowly having to lay people off. And by mid 2021, just everything had. Shut down. I just had taken my staff back to I think four or five people, and the podcast really became the core of my business.

But this business I had spent so many years building up to came crashing down. And I know your audience is gonna get this too. So much of that business was me. [00:27:00] That's how I saw myself. It was my identity. I had a massive ego death, like so many things happened. But that, so the business collapsing. I went through a really bad divorce in 2020 and just, it felt kind of like one thing had stacked on top of another and in 20, oh gosh, it's all running together in my mind.

Um, within the last couple of years, my ex-husband, my children's father, passed away unexpectedly, and that was. Sort of just getting your head back above water and then life kicks the crap out of you again. And I know I'm not the only one who has that story either. I know that so many people have their version of getting sick or losing someone they love or getting fired or trying to figure it out.

And I think it affects us all in different ways. But for me, there's just so much [00:28:00] psychologically tied up in all of it. And there are times where I've felt like, why am I working so hard? Why am I trying to build this? Why am I trying to do this thing if it can like go away that fast? And then other times where I'm like, oh, we've worked too hard to like give up now this.

So I sort of vastly between both of those things. But I really wanted to write about that lived experience because that's my trauma. But I guarantee people listening to this have way worse stories that they could tell and way harder things that they've lived through. There's some. Solace in understanding.

You're not the only one who maybe had to fight hard to get themselves going today, but by God we're here and we're doing it, and we're showing up as the very best that we can with what we've got. And hopefully it gets a little bit easier as we go along. We start to get some momentum and then we can do some really great work.

Hala Taha: And I feel like there's so many little lessons in all of that. We were talking about the audience-based business, the fact that you have all these [00:29:00] channels with all these different audiences. Yeah. You lost the live events, but you were able to lean into your podcast and grow that you were able to lean into social media and grow that.

I'm assuming you've got an email list. Oh yeah. Yeah. Basically like you've made sure that you've diversified your audience enough and you've got big audiences in different pockets in case something like this happens. Yes. So question for you. Advice for the entrepreneur that feels on top of the world, like maybe me.

What's your advice for me right now where I feel like everything's going great, to your point? Who knows? Crossing my fingers. Nothing does happen, but what's your advice to somebody who feels on top of the world and then what's your advice to somebody who might be going through a rough patch in their entrepreneurship?

Rachel Hollis: That is such a good question, and I love that you're wise enough to ask that. Holla if you're listening to this and you're like, I am crushing it. I can do no wrong. 'cause there was a time where I was like, we're just doing all the things. This is working. One thing, and you kind of mentioned this [00:30:00] already, is anybody who has a business that is audience-based and you access that audience through someone else's business, you need to be really careful.

So I told you guys that, you know, I had the website and we built Facebook pages, which sounds so antiquated now, but that was the means to access an audience back in the day. And Russell, um, you mentioned Russell Brunson. He has his own version of this story of you build up this massive audience and then one day that company, you access them through.

Changes and now you don't have access anymore. So I remember with Facebook, we killed ourselves building up an audience and getting people to join that page, and then one day you posted something and it literally would say, underneath your posts, 3% of your followers saw this post. If you'd like to access more of your followers, boost your post.

Paying for Facebook ads is so normal now, but there was a time where you did not have to pay to access the audience. The same thing happens when an algorithm [00:31:00] changes. The same thing happens as podcasters. You know, this iOS did an update. A year and a half ago. Yeah, IO that completely changed the way. Yes.

It completely changed the way that our audience can access our content, and it really makes you aware of how vulnerable you are if you access your fan base or your audience through someone else's business. So yes, I've had an email since I had a blog, so 300,000 people, 60% open rate, because I have sent her an email every Sunday for 15 years.

And I very rarely use that audience. I don't monetize it, I don't sell access to them. I just utilize it so that if I'm launching something like a new book, I know that I can speak directly to my fan base without having to pay an advertising fee. So be aware of how you access everybody. That's super important.

Be aware that I'm gonna sound so [00:32:00] ridiculous right now, but just real talk the bigger that you get. Everyone's like, this is amazing. This is amazing. This is amazing. And like one day people are like, I don't like this anymore. Especially if you are a woman. Straight up real talk. You hit a point, everyone's rooting for you and they're so proud of what you're doing, and all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, this something's wrong here.

So I wish that I had understood that you have to tread lightly. I think you have to be a little bit paranoid when you hit higher levels of success, because I tend to be such a Pollyanna and I'm just like. Everyone's amazing. Everyone's kind. The world is beautiful and it is, and also it's not. So that's where diversifying how you get your revenue is really important.

Like you said, if one stream goes away, you know you've got another. But yeah, I just wish I had been a little bit more like a mobster or something, just like a little bit more [00:33:00] like, who's gonna get me more still? I know I, yeah, like I know that that sounds so dramatic, but honestly, I think that as women in business, particularly for building a company, particularly as you grow bigger and bigger, I honestly probably would've talked about my success less.

I thought if I share what we're doing, if I share how many people are employed at this company and they have 4 0 1 Ks and health insurance, and like if I share what we're doing, that will inspire other women to build businesses as well. But the more that I talked about success, the more it seemed to upset people.

And I wish I had been a bit more protective of what we were doing and the kind of numbers that we do. And now I don't talk about any of that at all. I used to think Hala, I was like, why doesn't Oprah, why doesn't Sarah Blakely, why doesn't Reese Witherspoon, these women are billionaires with a B? [00:34:00] Why aren't they talking about their entrepreneurial success?

And now I'm like, because the world doesn't like it when women succeed at that level. And if you wanna keep succeeding at a certain level, I think that the way that it is acceptable is to be demure and. Not admit your success, and maybe that's very pessimistic, but that's what I would say to you. 

Hala Taha: I feel honored that you shared that with us because I feel like that was really deep and thank you for sharing it because I think we need to hear it.

My mom always yells at me. She'll be like, stop telling everybody how much money you made, or whatever. 

Rachel Hollis: Seriously. It's so innocent when we do it. It really is so innocent. You're like, holy crap, this team has worked our butts off. We gotta tell people we're doing this stuff. But it puts a target on your back.

It really does. And I think I. I hate that it's the case because I don't think it's the same for men who are entrepreneurs and who are building. Like people are [00:35:00] inspired by that. But it's also like this is the game as it exists today. I hope it's not the same when my daughter gets older, but this is the game.

And so if you wanna play the game and you wanna succeed at the highest levels, you have to understand what's gonna allow you to keep doing that. And I know that there are people who get really frustrated by that. 'cause you're like, no, you should, but like break the glass ceiling and speak out against this.

And it's like, yes. But also there's a point at which that trying to do that starts to go in opposition of what you're trying to achieve as an entrepreneur. Just hold space for that as you're building this massive thing. 

Hala Taha: Have some humility. And I guess if you are gonna share your successes, make sure that there's actionable advice of why you brought it up 

Rachel Hollis: Right, right. Yeah. We do it too, because women are so often underestimated in business. So we wanna say, oh, but wait, I've built an eight figure company. Uh, I have 60 employees. Like I've done these. 'cause you wanna like [00:36:00] legitimize yourself. But then simultaneously, I think people just, the framework is they tend to hear that as bragging.

And you're not trying to brag, you're more just trying to share your story. But yeah, I just think, oh, I feel like such a, like cheesy, but like, be careful. Be thoughtful. 

Hala Taha: I appreciate that. So how about somebody who maybe they're like you, where they have to lay off a bunch of people. Something happened where their business got turned upside down.

They weren't expecting it. They didn't diversify enough and now they're stuck in a spot where they feel like a failure because they tied their identity to their company and now their company sucks. So they think they suck. Gosh. 

Rachel Hollis: First of all, you're not alone. That's so many people, but I think that if you're feeling like that right now, you really need to study more successful entrepreneurs because if you study more successful entrepreneurs, you're gonna find failures at the greatest, most massive levels, I promise you.

Failures that are way bigger than what you've just gone through. And the people whose names [00:37:00] we know, it's because they stood up and win again. I sat down with Alex for a month or two ago and he was talking about how many times he's failed, and if you follow his journey at all, you hear all these stories.

It's like four times he's had these massive failures where he's been not just failed, but someone else has taken all of his money kind of thing, where it would be so easy to get so bitter about that and to be like, see, like people are bad. The world's out to get me. I'll never succeed. And I asked him, I'm like, how on earth?

Do you stand back up and go again when this happens for the fourth time? Not the first, the fourth. And he's like, well, because I figure at this point I at least know what not to do. I actually have a lot more information than I had previously. I'm back at zero, but I'm not at zero in terms of knowledge.

So now I'm like, okay, I know how to build 'cause I've done that before and I know the pitfalls 'cause I've fallen into them. He really [00:38:00] sees that experience as this beautiful level up instead of as if he's done something wrong. So just study other people and listen to other people's stories because you're gonna hear that this is part of the journey.

Failure is part of the path to success period. And every time you reach a new level, you fail at new levels. Every single time you get to a new level, you're gonna encounter ways that you're gonna mess up or lose money or lose time, or hire the wrong person. It's just what happens. But if you can learn from that and keep going, keep pushing forward, you are so much further along than 90% of people who encounter a hardship and give up.

Hala Taha: So while we're on entrepreneurship, I do wanna ask you about your early entrepreneurship years. So you actually started your first business, I believe, when you were 24, and you dropped out of college, right? You never graduated college, is that right? 

Rachel Hollis: No. Yeah. I went to a year of college, and I'm gonna use air [00:39:00] quotes because it was an acting conservatory, so it wasn't even like legit college.

Hala Taha: How do you think about college now? You have kids, do you encourage them to go to college? 

Rachel Hollis: I encourage my kids to go to college. My oldest is 18, so he is about to choose. By the end of this week, he will know all the places he got into and where he's gonna decide to go. Congrat, thank you. And I encourage them to go for two reasons.

One, because I think college gives you four more years before you have to be a responsible adult, and I think we all wish we had that. So I love that they can have this time to experiment and learn who they are with a bit of a safety net. The other reason that I encourage 'em to go to college is because they won't have to pay for it.

I work really hard to make a really beautiful life, and that means that my kids won't have to pay for school. But if my kids did have to pay for school, I think I'd have a completely different perspective on it. I know that it is possible to be incredibly successful without going to college. If you [00:40:00] wanna be a doctor.

Yeah, if you wanna be a lawyer, like there's certain things you need to do to get that accreditation, but. Lots of other things. I feel like you can be very successful in this life learning as you go through apprenticeships, learning through online, there's so much freaking information that you can get online for free.

I would never encourage someone to go to college if it was gonna put them into debt. That makes no sense to me. 

Hala Taha: Okay, so back to the book. It's called What If You Are The Answer? How did you come up with these 26 questions?

Rachel Hollis: Well, I looked at moments in my life where I felt like I had had what Oprah calls the aha moment. When I had had a moment of like, oh God, how did I not see that before? So there's one in the book for this talking about. Being a manager of people [00:41:00] and being an entrepreneur. So this one will maybe resonate with the audience, but I had an employee at the time that I was really struggling with.

I was trying to figure out how to be a better manager. 'cause I was like, it must be me. If I could better manage this person, then we wouldn't be having these problems. And so I was trying to become a better manager and I was reading a ton of books and I was watching all the YouTube videos I could find.

And I happened to find this YouTube video, super old school from early two thousands. And this guy was talking about hiring and firing people. And I think probably my fatal flaw as a manager of people since I first started my business is. I don't want anyone to be mad at me. Yeah, same. I wanna be like a nice person and I, you know, and I give people way too many chances, and then the work really suffers, and then the quality of your team's work overall suffers because everyone else on the team is like, well, you let that person get away with coming three hours late.

So I was watching this video and he [00:42:00] said, would you hire them again today? He said, if they came in for an interview and you knew everything about them that you've just experienced over the last time, would you hire this person again today? And if the answer is no, you need to fire them immediately. And I was like, whoa.

And that, I love that I became such an Inc. Right? It became such an incredible question, like with friendships or with commitments that I had or with relationships with people, where I was like, wait a minute, am I in this relationship with my friend from high school? We have totally different lives, and I feel like I kind of become the worst version of myself when I'm with them.

Would I sign up for again today? No way. So why am I still showing up for this relationship? And I'm like, oh, because I'm pot committed. Like I feel like I've given so much time, I've given so much effort, or I don't wanna be the bad guy and so I stay inside of things I shouldn't be inside of. And I don't know if you've ever heard that quote.

It's not the employee you hire that destroys your business. It's the one you won't [00:43:00] fire. That as a question for me to keep asking like, would you sign up for this again? Would you hire them again? Would you go on a second date? And I say this again and again in the book, you don't need to make a decision based on the new information you have.

If you're like, yep, I wouldn't hire Robert again today. You don't have to do anything. You might not yet have the courage to do what needs to be done, but just knowing that information is empowering, it changes the way you approach the relationship. It changes maybe how you give them direction, maybe little fire in your belly.

You're like, dang, this cost me a lot of money and I'm not leading. Well, Dave Ramsey says to be unclear is to be unkind. I'm not being clear with this employee. Just having the information is empowering. So I looked at times in my life where I'd been given a question that really helped me, and then I tried to share them in the chapters of the book.

Hala Taha: I feel like that question in itself, what I do, whatever again, could be a whole book itself. Yes, it be a whole [00:44:00] book by itself. Honestly, I love that's so powerful. I feel like there's gonna be so many instances in my life where I'm just gonna be like, even I'm dating right now. Would I do this date again?

If not, then no second date. You know, you can apply it to so many different things. I love 

Rachel Hollis: that. We have to be careful, I think, as entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs, even if we get stuff done, if we knock it outta the park, we do it. We're also dreamers. In our heart of hearts, yes, we're dreamers and we can envision big things and we can imagine big things.

And that is so powerful. It's also super dangerous. I say dangerous because we'll meet someone. We desperately need to hire a marketing manager and we meet someone and they're a marketing manager and they're like sort of good, and you really need help. And so you're like, you can envision in your head what Becky's gonna be, and you make up this whole fantasy about how great Becky's gonna be and how it's gonna clear a bunch of time in your day.

And really that had nothing to do with this employee and who they are. You just made it up [00:45:00] in your own mind. So continuing to ask yourself again and again, would I sign up? It's also if someone's listening to this and they're an employee, let's say you have a side hustle or you're dreaming about starting your own thing.

If you wouldn't sign up for this job again, if you're like, this job is the worst. I hate this. I don't wanna be here. What are you doing? There are a lot of ways to pay your rent. There are a lot of ways to make money, and life is too freaking short to be miserable. So if you wouldn't sign up for this job again, again, you don't have to make a change today, but you definitely have some information now that should affect the way you are living your life.

Maybe you start to be on the lookout or maybe you need to increase the side, hustle that so that you can have more income. Everything that I do, the podcast or the books or even the website has always been about this idea that we get one shot to do this life. One you get one time, you one journey through this, and [00:46:00] I just think we have to do everything in our power to.

Enjoy the experience to live the best that we can and to stretch into our full potential. And if you are miserable in your day job, I don't know how much you're gonna be able to show up for the people in your life that you love. I don't know how much you're gonna enjoy your weekends. I don't know that you're giving the full energy and full capacity to the dream that you're trying to build.

Because if all of your vibration is being lowered going into the nine to five all week long, that's gonna affect what you're able to do in the off hours. It's gonna affect the side hustle. So if you could pay your bills in a different way, if you could maybe have a job that doesn't require quite so much, and maybe it's not as exciting, but like we're paying rent and we can like fully put our heart and soul because we have the energy and a higher vibration to put into the dream, I think you'd be shocked at what would happen.

Hala Taha: I feel like [00:47:00] on the flip side, if you decide I would be an entrepreneur, I would do exactly what I'm doing now. I could imagine that that would really fire you up and then you'd realize the highs and lows, it doesn't matter. I would be doing this no matter what, and I feel like it would make you feel more optimistic and inspired to do the work.

Rachel Hollis: There's a fantastic book that everybody should read, honestly, everybody in your audience, it's very small, super easy to get through. It's The Dip by Seth Godin. It's so fantastic if you find yourself in a season of, do I really wanna do this? Should I keep going? Should I keep, should I stay in this?

Should I go? He gives this beautiful quote, which I reference in this book, is the opposite of quitting, is not to continue to do the same thing. The opposite of quitting is recommitting with passion. So people find themselves and they're like, should I quit or should I keep going? But. If you decide not to quit the way that you come back and you add life to that and power to that is [00:48:00] you're like, not only am I gonna keep doing this thing 'cause I believe in my dream and I believe in my company, I'm gonna show up.

But you recommit with passion. You are like, I'm all in. You get fired up. You remember your why, you show up for what you're trying to do because otherwise you're gonna be in the exact same spot. Questioning the exact same thing again next year. 

Hala Taha: So let's talk about another question.

You actually opened the book up with a question. What must you let go of? Why is that important? 

Rachel Hollis: Because I think that the world teaches us that the answer to everything we're looking for is to add more things. The world's like add a new house, get a new car, get a bigger job, make more money. And the older I get, the more I understand that.

The clarity and the sense of purpose and the real true impact of our work happens when we start to strip things away, not when we add to them. So, you know, if [00:49:00] you have people in your community who are working on side hustles, same with my peeps. And whether it's at a book tour or maybe they call in to ask a question on the podcast, I will inevitably have people who are like, I really wanna build my own company.

I'm like, that's amazing. Tell me about it. And they're like, well, so I am a dog groomer, but also I am a wedding photographer. And also I bake cupcakes and also, and I'm like, yeah, no, you gotta pick one. You have to pick one thing. I don't think that with all the responsibilities we have in this life that we can successfully try and build 10 completely different businesses at the same time.

So this idea of what must you let go of, I ask myself at least once a month, and I encourage everybody to do this, to ask in order to be the best version of myself, what do I need to lose? What should not be here? Whether that's excuses, whether that's a habit, whether that's something you currently consume, [00:50:00] whether that's, you know what?

I need to stop trying to do 50 things and just go all in on one. What do you need to let go of is really powerful. It's like, girl, we are not asking you to add one more thing to your life. We're asking you to stop signing up for the class bake sale. Stop signing up to throw your cousin's baby shower.

Stop saying yes to things you don't really wanna do so that you can have as much time as possible to work on yourself or work on your dreams. 

Hala Taha: It's so good and running this company that I'm running, I've noticed focus is so important and the bigger that you get, the more opportunities, the more sexy red dresses as Alex from Mozy says, there are, and you've gotta just stay focused.

So I love this question and even thinking about putting it in my leadership meeting every week, we can say like, what are we letting go of? What do we have to let go of in order to get our priorities done?

Rachel Hollis: Yeah. There's a fantastic author named Bob Goff. He's really like everyone's favorite [00:51:00] grandpa, very, very wise.

And he says he quit something every Thursday. He's like, Rachel, I quit something every Thursday. Him and his assistant ask each other, what are you quitting today? I am like, that is a lot of quitting. He's like, I know, but it really works. So they'll come up with these little habits. It's more just like creating the intention of asking what should not be here.

Especially if you built a business from the ground up, it's amazing because it means you know how to do every part of your business. It's also so dangerous because you know how to do every part of your business. So it's so easy to be like, I can do that. I can figure that out. I'll write that. I'll post that.

I'll do the thing. And it's not the best use of your time. What are the things that only you can do and only you should be doing? And if you teach yourself to ask what shouldn't be here, like if you brain dump, you take all the stuff that's in your head right now, write it down in a journal. You're like, I gotta do all this stuff.

The first thing [00:52:00] to do is look at the brain dump and ask what is not mine? What can I just absolutely delete? What can I delegate? And then once you've cleared that out of the way, you're like, okay, these six things, that's what I actually need to do, and I need to be better about pushing off the other stuff that should not be on my agenda.

Hala Taha: Yeah, and I feel like as an entrepreneur, when you're first starting out, and let's say you're a solopreneur, you don't have any team, you're like rewarded for wearing all these hats, doing all these things, inventing things. But then once something sticks and you actually start to grow a business, that's when you have to focus.

And you can't be like how you were, even though you used to be rewarded for it. 

Rachel Hollis: I'm sure you've read it, but. Traction and rocket fuel are both such incredible books. Every Entrepreneur needs to read. But the idea of having someone who can integrate your vision for you instead of you doing every single thing in the business to have someone who comes in operationally so that you can be the visionary [00:53:00] and be the person who's imagining like where you're gonna go and what you're gonna do.

It's really hard to teach ourselves 'cause we're like, mm-hmm. It's just faster if I do it. Yeah. But what we accidentally do is also then teach our teams to function that way. So then you have someone who's your marketing head who's posting on social 'cause they're like, well, I can just do it. But then they're not able to function at their highest level and give you the results that you're paying them for.

So it's not just important that we lead ourselves, but it's also the reminder that how you function in your role, your team is watching you to understand how they're supposed to function in their role. 

Hala Taha: Okay, so you have a couple other questions that I wanted to bring up. You say what big thing is actually little and what little thing is actually big?

Rachel Hollis: so the big thing that is actually little is just asking yourself, are you giving way too much power and way too much energy to something that's [00:54:00] really truly not that big a deal? For instance, if we're speaking in terms of entrepreneurship, are you currently doing something and putting so much emphasis and so much time around this piece and it actually isn't giving you the results that you think it is or it's actually not that huge of a deal, but you're just so in the cycle, you can't step out of it.

Or the example I use in the book is. So silly, but going to concerts or vacations or traveling by myself is so normal. But I know a lot of women that that would be their worst nightmare to go to a concert alone or go on a vacation alone. They're like, I'd love to travel, but I don't have anyone to go with.

And I'm like, well, if you can afford it, then go on the trip. And they're like, oh my God, I could never. And I'm like, okay, well you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This is actually not that big a deal. I was on a podcast tour a couple years ago and I would ask the audience, what's a crazy thing you've always wanted to do?

But [00:55:00] you tell yourself, that's for other people. I'm not that kind of a girl. That's for other people. And the overwhelming response was, get a tattoo. And I was like, girl. Literally you could leave here tonight and go to a tattoo parlor and get like a dot. It doesn't have to be a big deal. And then all of a sudden between one breath and the next, you are a person who has tattoos.

You've done it. You've actually changed the way that you see yourself. So you have to be really careful in life that these things that have become really big tent poles or really big belief systems, every once in a while you need to like shake things up and ask, why do I believe that? Why am I so scared of this?

Why do I keep doing this same thing? So what big things actually little, and then what little thing is actually big is really a call to understand how powerful we are as individual people. I don't care who you are listening to this, [00:56:00] where this finds you today. I don't care. How lost you feel or stuck you feel.

You are powerful. Beyond measure. You have so much capability, you have so much potential. There's that great quote, which I'm gonna mess up. If you truly understood how powerful you were, you would be shocked. So it's a just a call to remember what is it that you are capable of? Are you truly living into your potential?

If you get really honest with yourself, what percentage are you at right now? If a hundred percent is you showing up as the best version of you every day? If you were being really honest with yourself, what's your percentage rating today? And again, that's not to make you feel shame, it's more just give yourself the knowledge.

You don't have to change anything today, but if you have the information, if you're like, you know what, if I'm being totally honest, I. I'm giving 70%. I have more to give. I think [00:57:00] I'm gonna get the percentage wrong, but David Goggins is this really famous ultra runner says, when you feel tired for the first time on a run, you're really only at like 40%, which is so crazy, but I cannot, I'm a long distance runner.

I cannot tell you how often I've been on a run and I'm like, I'm tired. And then I hear David Goggin say like, you're only at 40%. I'm like, 

Hala Taha: okay, let's go the race we just started. Yeah, 

Rachel Hollis: exactly. So just asking yourself these questions gives you some more information for where could you put a little bit more effort in?

Where do you need to challenge your limiting beliefs so that you can move further along this year? 

Hala Taha: There's another one that I really like and it's, what is your floor? I thought this was really powerful. 

Rachel Hollis: When I was younger, I used to think that. Everything, like all of our success was wrapped in our imagination.

Like how big could we dream and what was possible and how hard were we willing to work? And I have learned over time that it really isn't about your [00:58:00] dreams, it's about your standards. It is what is the minimum standard for your life that allows you to grow. So it's not, in the book I say it's not about expanding your ceiling, it's about raising your floor.

Because if you elevate, if you draw a line in the sand and you say, I will never go backwards, I will never be that person again. I will never smoke another cigarette or drink too much tequila. I'm trying to think of leverage points in my life where like, you know, I got sick 'cause I had too much Jose Cuervo, and then the next day I was like, I can never have tequila again.

It was like a very definitive line in the sand. But if you could approach habits that way. If you could approach conversations with yourself that way, if you could be that hardcore about, you know what, I am never gonna commit to this kind of thing again, or I'm never going to allow myself to be spoken to this way again.

If you can raise your floor, if [00:59:00] you can raise your standards, then you actually get closer to the ceiling without the ceiling needing to break. So now we're actually achieving more, and we're setting a new level for ourselves because we're not backtracking. I think most of us can get really excited because it's the new year and really excited because we've just celebrated a big birthday.

We can get pumped up and motivate ourselves to go do something big that pushes us closer to our goals and dreams because of what's going on in our life. That's easy. The question is, can you do it next Tuesday? Can you do it when life gets hard? Can you do it when you get punched in the stomach? Can you do it when your girlfriend breaks up with you?

Can you keep doing the thing even when you don't want to? That's a standard. Years ago, one of the women in my community was going through something really hard. I ran into her like an airport or something and she said, I do all the things you say, 'cause I'm big on morning routine and the habits that you have in your day.

So [01:00:00] she's like, you know, I drink the water and I get up early and I'm doing gratitude and whatever, but my mom has cancer. I don't know how I'm supposed to keep trying to like add to my life and do all these things that I used to be excited about when I'm going through something hard and I was like, oh no.

I don't think that we build habits so that we can keep expanding when life is hard. 'cause life will absolutely be hard. I think we build great habits so that when life kicks the crap out of us, we don't lose all of the traction we've gained. So we're like, okay, I'm not expansive right now, but by God I'm also not backtracking.

I'm gonna adjust minimum effective dose. I'm gonna keep showing up in the same ways you build those great habits when you can so that they're there when you need them. It's not about doing more, it's about raising your floor. 

Hala Taha: I love how it's drawing a line in the sand and preventing you from being like wishy-washy going back on your [01:01:00] word.

I. That's how you just stay in a hamster wheel doing the same thing over and over and over again and nothing changes because you don't have enough self integrity to just say, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not doing this said thing that is messing my life up. Right. I love that. I love thinking about it that way.

I. This is for anybody. '

Rachel Hollis: cause this used to be me, where you've started and stopped a lot of dreams. You've started and stopped a lot of health plans, exercise regimens. You've tried to quit smoking a million times for anybody who's started and stopped and it hasn't stuck. You've actually created a pattern in your psychology that says that you're a quitter.

You're like, well, you know, I try, and then I quit. And every time you quit, it reinforces the belief that you have that you are a quitter. It's why the line in the sand is so freaking powerful because you're like, but I stuck with something. I didn't quit on this one thing. So one of my favorite things to encourage people to do [01:02:00] is to give up one thing that you currently consume.

Alcohol cigarettes, binge watching TV until 2:00 AM and messing up your sleep schedule. Anything that you currently consume that you know is not good for you, doesn't matter what it is. Everyone will have something that pops into their head. If I just stopped doing this thing, I would feel better. I don't even care if you replace the thing with a different thing.

It's just for 30 days. Can you commit to not consuming that one habit? And if you do, at the end of those 30 days, you're like, oh dude, I can keep a promise to myself. I can keep my word. We will keep our words and our commitment to every single person in our life and break the promise we made to ourself.

So just for 30 days, if you can do something, you will shift the way that you see yourself. It literally doesn't matter what it is. It just matters that you keep Your Honor, in this pact you've made with [01:03:00] yourself 

Hala Taha: so young and profits, I want you to take a moment. I want you to think of one thing that you're gonna stop doing for the next 30 days.

What are you gonna set your floor at? Love that. Okay, so another good one, especially for entrepreneurs. Did you win or did you learn? 

Rachel Hollis: Oh my gosh. I 

used to beat my sub up. Like I think a lot of people for not being where I wanted to be for not winning every single time, for not knocking it outta the park.

And honestly, I think most of us have experience with this that you're like, I can either look at these losses as an example of why I shouldn't keep going and why I'm not who I thought I was. Or I can gain as much information as possible out of this lived experience and I can use it to help myself move to the next level.

So it's not a question of did you win or you lose, it's a question of did you win or you learn Because as we're going through this. You are going to fail. I [01:04:00] cannot stress this to you enough. You're gonna lose money, you're gonna lose time. You're gonna piss people off. You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna hire the wrong person, probably over and over and over.

'cause just every entrepreneur I know has that story. It's part of the process. But if you can ask yourself, if you have the courage to look at what has happened and ask yourself, okay, what went wrong? How could we do that better next time? How was I responsible for this? How were they responsible for this?

Okay, we're moving forward with this information. Then suddenly, you are empowered. You are not like the loser who keeps messing up. You're like, oh, I keep trying stuff and in trying stuff. I'm gonna make mistakes and I'm gonna learn as I go. I heard once that when you can remember something that used to make you emotional and it doesn't make you emotional anymore, it's now wisdom.

So when you could look at, you know, I'm sure Holly, you have an experience in your business where you're like, oh, I can't believe I did that. The [01:05:00] minute that you can get to a place where you can look at that with acceptance and you're like, yeah, I did the best I could, I didn't know better. Now I do, but it doesn't make you upset anymore.

That is like, ah, chef's kiss. That is the goal. And as we grow in our entrepreneurial careers, the faster we can get to that, like the quicker we can get to the postmortem, like looking at what happened and not being emotional about it. Oh my gosh, it is the biggest unlock because now you can move faster than the competition.

'cause you're not obsessing over the things you did wrong. You're like, yes, and where are we going from here? 

Hala Taha: And so it's really important to look back, get that postmortem, but it's also important to ask what's working. Right. That's another question that you have in your book. Let's take this one as the last one.

Rachel Hollis: This one I actually heard very early in my entrepreneurial career. I used to go to any conference I could go to, and I really hope your listeners try this as much as you can. Go [01:06:00] listen to other successful entrepreneurs talk about their life. Now. You've got so much access with podcasts and YouTube, but being in person and listening to someone share their story, even if they're not in your industry, is just, oh, it's so helpful.

So I got to hear Miriam nei, who founded Minted, this was eons ago, very early in their career, and Minted started as a website for artists to show their paintings off or something. It was not at all what it is today, and she said, this line I never forgot, which was Follow the Signs of Life. So she's like, we launched this company.

We were so excited. And it just did not work. And she had gotten like investment money and everyone was freaking out and it was.com era, so everything should work. But this website was not working and just month after month after month, it was failing. And she was like, okay, is any part of this site working?

And I'm gonna botch [01:07:00] this story, but it's some version of this. She's like, is any part of this website working? They look in the backend and they see that there's this one thing, an artist was putting their art on stationary and they were like selling the stationary. No one was buying the paintings, but this one artist or this handful of artists, the stationary was selling.

It was the only part of the business that was working. But we saw that and we were like, could we take artists work and put it on more stationary? Might that be a thing? And of course then that was the foundation of minted and it's very successful. Huge. Yeah. And it's all these years later, so big. But it happened because they were looking at what was working and trying to figure out how to expand on that.

So in the business, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it's so easy to get bogged down in like, this is the way we've always done things. Or assuming that you know how the audience is finding you, or assuming that you know the data, [01:08:00] you have to actually know what's working unemotionally. You know, if you're looking in the back and you're like, wow, this is crazy.

So many people are listening to this kind of podcast episode, or so many people are buying only this product. So pay attention to what's working in your business. Pay attention to what's working in your life. When you're going through your day, which parts of your day feel really good? Are there friends or relationships in your life that.

Really pump you up. Are there friends or relationships that really drain you? Okay? Some part of that equation is not working, so how do we put more energy and our own life into the parts that work? If you as entrepreneurs have not studied Pareto principle or the 80 20 principle is such a game changer in understanding the idea that a small amount of your effort actually equates to a very big return.

The problem is we're doing a hundred things and we don't know which of the hundred are giving [01:09:00] us the results. When you can start to identify which things are actually working, you can pour more gasoline on that, and then you start to get these exponential results without exponential effort. 

Hala Taha: I don't think you necessarily wrote this book for entrepreneurs, but as I was reading it, I was like, this is, this applies.

This applies. I wanna use this. Sony you this. So awesome. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. I end my show with two questions I ask all my guests. You can just answer them from your heart. It doesn't have to be about the topic of today's show. So the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profits can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Rachel Hollis: Know where the highest revenue comes from. So I know we're at the end, but let me give you this like bit of wisdom. 'cause it was huge for me. So I told you all that I started as a wedding planner back in the day, and I used to advertise on a website called the Not, which was like the probably still is the place to get clients if you were a wedding planner.

And it cost a lot of money to do that advertising. And I would, at the end of the year, you [01:10:00] know, oh, I made this money and I'd go on with my life. And I went to one of these business conferences and I heard someone talk about margin, which truly I did not know about what margin was. And so I went home that day and I made a list of all the clients that I had and how much money I had made and the margin on each of them.

And then I put where I got that business from. And when I looked at that list, I was shocked to discover that all of my highest revenue, like the best margin. Best budget clients came from one person. They did not come from the website, they did not come from advertising. They came from a photographer, this high-end photographer who only had high-end clients.

So when she referred them to me, I knew that they were people who had a budget to afford me and they ended up just being a better clientele overall. So the next year I stopped spending money on the website and just absolutely kissed up to this one photographer and bought her gifts, took her to lunch spa days, and I did the same for some other vendors and I saw [01:11:00] my business explode and my revenue explode.

So the best piece of advice I could give you about profit is know where the best clients are actually coming from. 

Hala Taha: So good. Oh my gosh, you just gave me so many ideas for my agency. Good. Thank you. Good, good, good. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And that could go beyond business.

Rachel Hollis: I think it really has to be about. Checking in with yourself about what success looks like this year or this quarter, because it really does change as we get older, and it really does change as you have more responsibility, whether that's employees or family who is counting on you. And you have to keep checking in with what matters, right?

And it's so, so easy to get caught in the race of trying to one up people or compete on social media, or how many followers do you have or. And at the end of the day, we can achieve success in the eyes of the world and live a life that's [01:12:00] completely bankrupt and absent of joy. And I really want to find a balance.

When I was younger, I was a workaholic. My early entrepreneurial career was just nonstop. There comes a point where a toll will be paid, and usually, especially for women, but this happens with men too. The toll is paid in our health. We start to experience health problems. We start to get anxiety. We start to get just all kinds of things go wrong because we are so good at forcing ourselves to keep up with the hustle.

We don't take time to decompress. We don't take time for self-care. We're stressed to the max. And so. That is gonna cost something. So as I've gotten older, I've learned, yeah, I want to be very successful. I want to make a lot of money. I got four kids. I wanna live a beautiful life, but simultaneously, it can't come at the cost of my health or my peace.

I have to balance both areas. 

Hala Taha: so good. Rachel, it was such an honor to [01:13:00] have you on the show. I hope you come on whenever you have something new to promote. You're always welcome on the show. Thank you. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? 

Rachel Hollis: If you like a podcast, I also have a podcast.

I tend to talk more about holistic success, so that's the Rachel Halls podcast and can grab my books anywhere. Books are sold and I'm on social media. 

Hala Taha: Rachel, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Rachel Hollis: You are so welcome. Thank you for having me. 

Hala Taha: Fam, what an inspiring conversation with Rachel Hollis. She dropped so many gems on reinvention, learning from failure, the power of asking yourself the right questions to keep growing, and I could just go on and on. I loved this conversation. I. But if there's one thing I could take away from this, it's that failure isn't truly the end.

It's just a plot twist, and sometimes you're just gonna get punched in the face when you least expect it. But even that can be overcome. Also, as Rachel reminded [01:14:00] us, the questions we ask ourselves will certainly shape the lives that we create. And I loved so many of the questions that she shared. For example, what must I'd let go of?

When you're first starting out as an entrepreneur, you have to wear so many different hats, and you're rewarded for wearing all these hats. But as you get further along in your journey, you're gonna have to start taking some of these hats off, putting these hats on other people, because these hats are gonna slow you down.

Another great question is, what is my floor? Like Rachel said, true progress isn't about expanding your ceiling. It's about raising your floor. It doesn't matter how lofty your dreams are, if you aren't able to raise your standards. Finally, did I win or did I learn? Growth isn't just about celebrating victories.

It's about understanding what we can do even better next time. And every loss, every setback, frankly, has a lot more to teach us on that front than any single one of our successes. So pay attention to why you failed and learn from it so young. [01:15:00] Anders, what is one question that you're gonna start asking yourself today?

Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you listen, learn and profited from this conversation with the amazing Rachel Hollis. And please share this with somebody who needs a little push to step into their next chapter. And if you had a good time and picked up something valuable, then show us some love with a five star review on Apple Podcast, Spotify cast Box.

Player of fm, wherever you listen to the show, it is the best way to help us reach more people. And if you'd rather watch this podcast on video, head over to YouTube, just search Young and Profiting. You'll find all of our episodes uploaded on there. You can also find me on Instagram at y with holla LinkedIn.

Just search for my name. I'm not hard to find on there at all. Huge shout out to my amazing YAP production team. I love you guys. You do such an amazing job. Thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA, the podcast princess signing off. [01:16:00]