Rachel Hollis

Rachel Hollis built one of the largest personal-growth audiences in publishing, and then went through a very public reversal in front of it. That sequence is what makes her a different proposition from the rest of a motivational roster.

She is a three-time New York Times bestselling author whose books include Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, with more than seven million copies sold. She built the Hollis Company around conferences, publishing and media, and hosts a podcast that has been among the most listened-to in the category.

In 2020 she announced her divorce, months after a podcast built substantially on marriage advice. She wrote Didn't See That Coming that year, about putting a life back together when the version of it you were publicly selling stops being true. She has also taken sustained public criticism in the years since. A roster that lists her without acknowledging any of that is not being straight with a planner.

The reason to book her is precisely that arc. Most motivational speakers describe a climb. She can describe a collapse that happened at scale, in public, after she had already told several million people how to live, and what the rebuild actually required. For an audience that has heard a lot of unbroken success stories, that is a more useful hour.

She is strongest with audiences of women in their late twenties to forties, at conferences built on personal growth, entrepreneurship and reinvention. She is the wrong booking for a room expecting a neutral corporate keynote, because the material is personal and the public history comes with it. Any organization booking her should know that history and decide it fits, rather than discover it afterwards.