Oh, yeah. All right. How are you guys doing? All right. So we thought we'd do something a little bit fun since it's the last panel for the day. I'm going to let Josh lead us in this exercise. All right, everybody. Stand up. It's the last session of the day. We're going to broadcast you live to America, all of us. We're going to live stream just for a little bit. So we want you to say hello to America. Thank you. Can everyone just wave their arms and do a little jump? Don't hurt yourself. Little jump. Little jump so we can see you. All right. Awesome. In Japan. Go slosh. Thank you. Is someone going to keep their phone on for the entire panel? No. Okay. I think Aaron should do it. He seems like the positivity cheerleader. I'm good. All right. So we're here as the last panel to share some of the Silicon Valley secrets. So please stay awake. So what I thought I'd do is I'll let each of our participants here give a brief introduction on what they do and also maybe one particular sector or type of technology that's interesting to them that they're looking at today. When we start at the end. Sure. I am a former entrepreneur converted to an investor. I started two companies, one of which was bought by a Japanese company called Spinner. And when the Japanese company was Sony. And about five years ago I started an early stage venture capital fund with another guy that I've worked with for 20 years. And so we make early stage tech investments across pretty much every sector in technology. And let's see. What was the last part of the question? So what's an interesting sector? We like late adopting verticals. So we like funding companies that are helping doctors become smarter and lawyers become smarter. And retailers become smarter. So that's an area of interest for us. Otherwise we invest in everything. All right. Aaron Battalion. Co-founded and was CTO of a company called Living Social. Which was in the group commerce space. Grew it from Ford. Almost 5,000 employees. Took a couple of years off. And now I'm a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. We are investors in companies like SnapChat on its company. Affirm. But really a lot of enterprise and infrastructure businesses. Sectors that I'm interested in. I'm on the consumer team at Lightspeed. And I'm fascinated by businesses that have core network effects. Whether that's e-commerce, marketplace, or even some industries that Josh is talking about. There has to be a growth vector that we believe will improve over time and actually get better. And that's a really industry or market not specific to anything, but a characteristic of a business. Steve. I'm also a serial entrepreneur like these guys here. Did most of my work across three companies in social software. Consumer products and media streaming music. Three, four years ago I converted into sort of an angel investor and advisor. I didn't really have a specific theme area that I was focusing in on. But over time I've come to realize through intention and through hindsight that I really like consumer products in general. But I particularly like marketplaces. I like consumer hardware when there's a long term viable subscription services model. I get really enamored with the physical enclosure and the physical experience of that. I try to invest a little bit to learn and also make return, but also to learn in deep technology areas like material sciences as they affect some of the consumer markets that I'm excited about. Great. So my name is Eric Wu. I'm with Top Tier Capital. We're a venture fund of funds. So I work on the LP side. My colleagues here are on the GP side. So I invest money in them for them to make money for me. So it all works out well. We've been investing in venture capital funds since 1999. And, you know, happy and excited by the current innovation wave that we're in today. So my kind of area of interest right now that I'm looking at is pre-seed. And in Silicon Valley there's this interesting phenomenon now where you had a lot of upstart seed funds. And now there's this phenomenon around pre-seed, which is before seed funds. So that's some areas that I'm doing some investigation around. So maybe first question for our panelists. Each of you have been successful founders or operators and you have turned into investors. So how has your experience as a founder-operator influenced your investment philosophy? We'll start with Steve. I think to your point about pre-seed and seed, let's call that zero to one. That's where I feel most excited, most experienced, and most skilled. So I tend to focus in on that area. I have obviously a lot of companies that have grown beyond that in my portfolio. And I try to help out and stay involved. But really like the building products and hiring teams and raising money, those three things are things that you really don't understand in its detail until you've done it. And I think that that's the best benefit that I can offer to my investments. Because I don't want to be just a stock picker in a seed stage. I don't want to just be a picker. I want to actually have an influence on the outcome by being a great mentor and a coach on those three areas. And those are the three areas I can bucket every single email or conference call or a board meeting that I get invited to in one of those three categories. Having seen my own company scale from sort of 40 to 400 to 4,000, I think at each point in that journey there were important lessons learned about prioritization and sort of radical prioritization. What I like to see in companies is very clear, thoughtful approach. And where I try to help is to help them dissect of the million things you could work on today. There's probably only one that matters. And how do you build a structure and a culture and an organization where you're focusing on the right things? And you sort of tackle the hard problem at every stage of a business and it shifts and changes over time. So at Freestyle, we are all serial founders. And that means we've walked on your shoes. And so I think we bring this empathy, an understanding of what you're going through in a way that is, you know, we're fortunate. Most investors have not worked as operators before. Most are maybe lifelong venture capitalists. And so we all bring this understanding of what it means, how hard it is to be to do what you guys are doing. And the difference between being an entrepreneur and being an investor for me is I go home at six and you guys have to keep working all night. And so I've been there, I know what that's like. And so I support it. It's, there's no easy, something's never changed. Today there is no easy path for being an entrepreneur. You have to work as hard as you did 10 years ago. And we really try and support you along the way. Is there more competition today than when you were starting your companies? Yeah, so our first company was Spinner and we were the first internet music company and it was a rocket ship all the way. We never had competition. The second company was more recent. We had 30 competitors that were all fighting for the same pie and it was a very much more stressful rat race situation. The nice thing today though is that there is more capital available. You could do so much more with less capital. So that's the positive to having a very vibrant ecosystem. Fair enough, fair enough. So now that you have sat on both sides of the table, the investor side and the entrepreneurial side, as an investor, and I'll pick on Aaron first here, what's the hardest thing about your job? The hardest thing about this job is that I only get to invest in a couple companies a year. So the way that the structure works is we have a big pool of cash that we raise from our limited partners or our investors. We have X number of people in the room and each person can allocate a certain number of dollars per year to a certain number of companies. And I meet 1500 companies a year and write two checks. And there are some incredible people that I meet that I can invest in. I think as a former founder, feeling the pain and the tears and the blood and the sweat and the calls to my wife that I'm coming home late or I'm going to work all night at the office, I know what that feels like and every time I say no, it sucks just a little bit. Same. How about you, Steve? So obviously you're investing out of your own money, so you aren't accountable to LPs or other investors. So for you, what's hard? I think, you know, for me, I also sort of get hands-on and help start companies with founders that I've known for a while and that I've been able to build products with before. So I tend to split my time between really drilling down as well as like doing the sort of classic investing where you're meeting with companies that are pitching and you're making a decision. So I find the, and I think there are a lot of, I've met a lot of entrepreneurs and executives who are also angel investors here in Japan. I think it's a zero sum, right? Your time is a zero sum. And so I find that the better and the more I'm doing, which is a great thing on a particular company, it's time away from seeing perhaps a few great companies and teams that are getting started in that time period. So I think the angel investor has the benefit of flexibility and choice, but also has the sort of the unprofessionalized platform so they can't scale beyond the way, you know, a larger venture capital fund with many partners, they can coordinate to sort of address all of those opportunities. So I find myself having FOMO quite a bit, but that's an okay thing so far. Yeah, it's a huge difference. I was an angel investor for a handful of years and now I've joined an institutional fund. And on the angel side, when you're working with a founder, it's and, meaning I can invest and soak in my friend John and Bob and Mike. But on the institutional side, it's or. So it's me or John or Bob or Mike. And it builds a very different structure with the founder and how you relate to them and you just don't get to spend as much time or make the same decisions. Well, what's great is I can invest with both of them and they can't invest with each other. So that's good. Actually, we can because we're different stage. So the three of us can do a deal together. This is Steve's plan to like pit us against each other. Good luck. So he can take the spoils. Good luck. I'm more like junior high school and you guys are like high school and college in the life line. Yeah, grad school, college, high school. So on that point, and then like middle school, pre-seed. I don't know what you're doing over there. So anyway, so on that point, right? So if you think about, we're all from Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is a special place. It's a unique ecosystem. With respect to your personal experience, what do you think it makes that special and unique? What's the start, Josh? You want to start? I mean, we have like two minutes to. It's a tough thing to. I would say that, you know, the talent pool, while it is, it is recruiting is every entrepreneur's biggest challenge. But the talent pool in the Bay Area is amazing. I mean, it really is across every position. So while it's in demand, I think it's without that talent pool. I think we'd be hard pressed to be any kind of ecosystem. And I turn over, you're going to talk about the funding. I have been fascinated with Japan most of my adult life. I have a degree in Japanese. I speak Japanese. I've visited here dozens of times. Aaron, say something in Japanese so everybody believes you. No one believes you. I don't know what should I say. No one believes you. Come on. I want to invest in Japan as a country. I want funds like ours from the valley to look at early stage deal flow here in Japan. I think there's a lot of great operators that have become angels. I think there are starting to be some seed funds. I think 500 startups was up here earlier. That's one among many who are starting to write really small checks. I think folks like us can come in and write series A-ish checks where I struggle with is what happens next. Where is the follow on capital in Japan? Where are the corporate venture arms coming in and supporting some of these deals through the IPO? Where are the larger, more mature funds who are able to help these companies as they scale not only inside of Japan but around the world? And that's part of my personal hesitation. Would your advice just be more activity, more capital? What would you say if you think about a policy level and then obviously here in Japan the corporates are very active as it relates to trying to build and foster innovation? What advice would you give? I don't think we have enough time on this panel to talk about all the complexities of the startup issues in Japan. I think success begets success. The best thing that can really happen to Japan is some great startups win in big ways. So I think for all of the folks that are listening or in the room that have companies the best way to help the country is to win. And from that the entire ecosystem starts to build off of that. You know one thing just to add to that and I was talking to an entrepreneur here and they told me that if you work for a large company in Japan and you want to leave that company to go start to create a startup that you actually will lose all of your benefits that you've accrued over the years of that company. And it shows the social website it. I mean the bigger company should say okay go do your startup and if you come back to us after you have this experience and you've been steeped in innovation and entrepreneurship will give you your benefits back as if you hadn't left at all. I think without that it's so risky that it's hard for employees at bigger companies to actually jump into the startup space. I've been spending probably about two three years now visiting Japan quite a bit being helpful to some friends here who have started incubators and startup studios. And one thing I've noticed culturally and this is true of a lot of Asia still there's an inability to take the entrepreneurial risk and it's not because there's a desire to do it it's that there's a fear of failure which just over the last three years I've seen that kind of move and progress. So that's been an interesting thing to see the other less cultural but more sort of structural thing that Aaron was just referring to is super important. So now there's startup studios, incubators, 500 startups Japan, Mistletoe, a bunch of great organizations like that that I keep meeting actually. So I'll meet entrepreneurs that have the mojo. They're ready to go. They're ready to take the risk. They've learned a lot of the best practices that we've learned. So they've sort of leapfrogged and sort of gotten bootstrapped on that. But then if I were to make an investment the number one thing I'm worried about is not the product and not the hiring because I think they can get that done. But I think I worry about the last part which is fundraising for the A and it's a life cycle. It's not just you know companies don't just raise one round of funding they don't just hire one group of employees. They don't build one product as it is. And so that sort of process kind of has a gap. Imagine if you're walking down a path and there's just a deep ravine right there. And so you kind of want that bridge to happen. So I'm hopeful that it's corporate venture capital is sort of the majority of venture investing in Japan. It seems like it would be like markets like Korea are the same way. There's sort of a series A series B gap. And I'd love to see that filled with some great venture funds or corporate venture capital that is willing to take the risk as well. So I'm going to give you guys homework because we've said okay what advice would you give to people in this ecosystem to help promote and foster a more robust venture activity. So what's one thing that you'll do when you when we all go back what's one thing you'll do to keep this idea alive. This idea of trying to build that bridge between Silicon Valley here in Japan. Well I'd say it a little differently. I would instead of focusing on what you can do here I would say that if I were an entrepreneur starting a company in Japan I would try and get temporarily out of Japan. I would take six months and apply to you know Y Combinator, TechCrunch, Hacks. There are a bunch of great incubators in America and they will be happy to have you from Japan go spend that time, get steeped in the ecosystem in New York, San Francisco, even LA and get some experience like really take me a sponge and learn from those people around you and then take that home take that back to Japan and I guarantee you'll be a much smarter more effective entrepreneur if you do take that risk. This is an important point that I don't think you realize when I started a company which was not what the first ten people are capable of. It's if you're lucky enough to build something that people want and you start to scale there's a point where you need help and you need to recruit and it helps if you recruit senior leadership who has done something like that before. I don't mean the co-founders. I don't mean the first five engineers. I mean that SVP of engineering. That senior level marketing hire maybe a CMO. There are not that many people in the world that have scaled consumer software companies before. What in the entire world the predominance of those humans are in Silicon Valley. So if you do have the opportunity to go and spend time and work at a company in the west that is at scale or about to scale those lessons that you can then bring back here are invaluable not just for your company but for the whole ecosystem. So I'll take the opposite tack of Josh because I think Josh's point is right but I think that's cost prohibitive to a lot of startups here. So I'll take the tack of stay here, invite people like us, invite other entrepreneurs from the US that are interested in entering the Japanese market and use your strengths. Japan still is one of the largest economies in the world. It's flush with cash. It has an aging population. They need a lot of services and products as well. There's a ton of opportunity here. A lot of US companies like Coinbase was speaking earlier and they've gotten some strategic investors from Japan and they'll be entering the Japanese market very soon which will be exciting to see. Blue Bottle Coffee which was sort of one of my early investments not meant to be sort of a tech or innovation investment but just a high growth retail, consumer retail business. They're doing super well in Japan. They have on a per store basis performing as well if not better than the average globally. So I think that inviting entrepreneurs, inviting investors, inviting large companies who probably already have a big office here, inviting them to check out what you're doing and building the base here, I think that's something that you can do today. And I think stuff like Slush is great but I think the ongoing action of making those connections and those bridges is important. So just quickly, maybe a raise of hands. How many founders or entrepreneurs in the crowd here today? Just a raise of hands. So maybe about half or so. So there's a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs. What would be your one sentence or one phrase of advice that you would give to people here in the audience? I was going to ask how many people are planning on raising capital in 2017 for their startup? Five.  It's a horrible experience. It really is horrible. But all it takes is one investor to believe in you and it can make everything come together. So my advice, it's soft advice. Don't give up, find that one investor and work with that investor and try and build momentum around that. Don't give up. I would say pick something you really love because if you are lucky enough for it to work you're going to spend every waking moment thinking about it and doing it potentially for the next 10 years. So make sure the idea you're working on is something that you're proud of, excited about and something that you'll give your whole self to because this is not something you can do as a part-time thing or as a nine to five. Building a company and scaling a team is a 24-7 job. So in a nascent market like this I would say that you don't have the full ecosystem of angels and seed investors. So one of the things that I love to see whenever I meet someone new that's talking about their business maybe they haven't built a working prototype yet but they have a presentation, there's some detail to it there's data, they understand their unit economics they understand the technology architecture they've done their homework and they present that crisply with articulation. Just that, you'd be surprised how many people no matter where you're talking about in the world don't actually put the effort and the precision into doing that. And I would say that that just is a great leading indicator of this person may has a higher probability of creating a great start-up hiring a great team because they can articulate their vision and they've done the upfront research and a lot of people just kind of like say I want to start a start-up which is usually not a good idea in starting a start-up you should have something you're passionate about but like do the homework, do the research that doesn't cost money, it costs time. Do that, get a co-founder that is a compliment to what you are not an identical partner and then present that in an articulate way whether it's on paper or it's verbally but paper is always good and then what I mean by paper is some digital document but that alone will get people excited and leaning into what you're going to talk about and a lot of people just forget that and they just kind of come with like verbal pitches and kind of don't have answers to questions so get those answers and that's the first step and then from there I think you can develop the team and the pitch so I always say focus on the upfront research and articulate it well This is a really important point that I think matters especially to this market I started a company a decade ago I think you started a company 30, 40 years ago like a while ago I think what the magic if you speak English you can essentially It's all about real age We'll talk about that later If you can read English because a lot of this content is in English on the internet you can learn everything you need to know how to measure a business how to grow a business how to think about cohort analytics how to scale, how to market There's so much There's arguably too much content online but there's no excuse not to learn how to do it well because someone has written about it on the internet Furthermore, the tooling now is so good I would argue it's harder to build a business because you could essentially duct tape together 20 services whether it's AWS whether it's SendGrid whether it's all these products and services do marketing analytics the list goes on It forces you to just do the magical thing in the world that you do better than anyone else and just focus on that piece and so much else that you can leverage from software and information makes it easier now to build a company than ever before My argument from anywhere in the world Cool Alright, we'll end on that note Please give a round of applause to our distinguished guests Good job, guys


Everybody for us here up in 2022 XR football hobby 14 bucks full case number one ran into visions Here we go. Let's see some one-to-ones y'all XR time first XR. I've opened of 2022 all right guys, what's the name of the one-to-one we're gonna pull down to be a specific card What one-to-one what's the name? Pick it pick it 22 XR We got JT on it. Let's go. So yeah guys those even when the stuff released. I was gone like I haven't ripped anything Other than transcendent and like a week and a half I'm pulling Abraham Lincoln putt autos to F1 drivers very different people Yeah, face cards First to go to the jacks to von Walker Jersey auto to 149. I said AFC South there we go Starts Exploits Jalen Hertz non-numbered sweet insert NFC East Ritter Falcons rookie to 249 NFC South AFC South Kyle Phillips for kid at 99 and a Trent McDuffie Acres Higgins Tyrion Davis Price NFC West on the rookie auto to 99 NFC South rookie triple patch Matt Corral 2 of 10 Good-looking card there AFC North Jerome Ford rookie to 75 Kaderious Tony to 199 NFC East Trey McBride 101 Jalen waddle Sean will cry You shed real tears Damian Harris Michael Thomas. We've got a Danny Gray NFC West on the Jersey out on out of 75 Impending greatness rookie gold James and Williams 7 of 10 NFC North you can go nice James Williams gold Damian Pierce AFC South rookie to 299 NFC South rookie Charleston Rambo to 99 Derek Stingley jr. Mills Metcalf NFC South rookie auto Desmond Ritter 77 of 99 luminous endorsements auto. I like that design. Yeah, that's cool Michael Pittman jr. On the Jersey card to 49 gamers Jersey. Oh Nice it actually has the game on it. That's nice Like that, that's cool go AFC South Fields NFC North to 249 James cook rookie to 199 AFC East Calvin awesome a third. I'm gonna make a look with that. Oh Yeah, that's right. You're on a Vegas soon, too digs and Stafford Sam Howell NFC East on the rookie Jersey auto to 49 Kenny Pickett rookie Exclusive AFC North Davis Mills to 199 AFC South It's a 249 AFC West Russell Wilson Cooper cook Troy Anderson NFC South auto here rookie to 75 This is a mere white rookie triple patch AFC West 4 of 10 as they are likely AFC South rookie to 249 Sorry, AFC North rookie to 249 So 49 magi Sanders rookie at NFC West Danny Gray XR definitely slept on product for me. I like I like the design every year That's what I that's what I've heard about it James. I Didn't even see the second Jurassic World because the first one I was like I don't need to see another one of these Kenny Pickett rookie Jersey auto two of 75 AFC North rookie excellence Nice hit there That's awesome and going to John B AFC South Extreme rookies to 99 Damian Pierce Is a spiller AFC West to 249 Crystal Lave NFC South rookie to 199. It's good to pack here Jalen Tolbert. This is going to be legit. Bevo. Gonna be legit this Jalen Weidemeier rookie auto AFC East to 199 rookie Jersey NFC South Matt Corral the 75 X Factor Materials AFC West Josh Jacobs to 75 AFC North I'm already Cooper to 199 Redemption Jameson Williams Ricky XL swatch autographs blue. That's going NFC North guy rated XR Aaron Rodgers NFC North it's cool looking one right there NFC North Christian Watson rookie to 249 to 199 D hop NFC West And Garrett Wilson NFC North Ty Chandler rookie out of the 199 AFC West cold rookie X Factor Materials 4 of 10 Isaiah Spiller three color patch NFC East Antonio Gibson to 75 AFC East Garrett Wilson to 199 Tyler Beatty oh the a-rod was a case hit how many case hits do they have this year?  We've got Pierce Strong jr. AFC East rookie triple Jersey out of the 199 Traylon Berks rookie jumbo patch to 49 AFC South three-color patch NFC South Alvin Camaro to 199 NFC South Michael Thomas to 249 Chad Mooma AFC South rookie Adidas patch auto one-of-one John Matchy the third holy cow Glove brand logo boom for the AFC South That's freaking sick. That's freaking sick Extreme rookies NFC East Wanda Robinson did 149 AFC West Russell Wilson to 99 and The what are these this a case hit of kaleidosco? I forget what this is called It's a case hit though Davis Mills AFC South and Alec Pierce Yeah AFC West sky more rookie auto to 49 one of 49 AFC South rookie jumbo patch gold eight of ten Trevon Walker Alec Pierce rookie to 99 AFC South AFC North to Sean Watson to 199 Lawrence Gibson Aiden Hutchinson NFC North only jumbo patch rookie auto to 49 Three colors NFC North very nice card extra extra Derek Henry number nine out of ten AFC South NFC East Devontae Smith to 249 and Jordan Brooks the 99 NFC West Halfway through The same go crazy Eric is who comma rookie Jersey auto to 199 AFC East Sky more on the extreme rookies the 149 AFC West Jeremy Chen NFC South to 75 Derek Henry to 199 AFC South to Marvin leal Captain Kirk NFC North and the auto gold three of five have nice hit NFC North. There we go Kirk Cousins Captain Kirk. Oh, there's Captain Kirk and Twitch right there NFC North going to Lauren Jay God Wow Rogers and Watson tool patch to 10 NFC North NFC North having a really good break, too Overall nice stuff Kennedy Brooks NFC East rookie to 199 Matt Corral NFC South to 249 It's like one Thornton bring some stuff to sell tomorrow to show Traylon Berks triple patch rookie auto to 35 AFC South nice Berks Malik Willis rookie expose a 1099 AFC South AFC East easy comma to 199 NFC West Tyler Murray to 249 Sam Howell John Mets you the third again luminous endorsements rookie auto 11 of 49 AFC South AFC East James Cook rookie Jembo Jersey to 75 AFC South Traylon Berks Rookie to 249 Justin Ross to 75 Rookie AFC West Greg Dulcich NFC West Tyrion Davis Price Rookie triple Jersey auto to 149 Extreme rookies Damian Pierce the 99 AFC South Darnell Moody to 49 NFC North AFC East Hunter Henry to 99 Kenneth Walker the third 10 a.m. Start time at group breaks tomorrow everybody And sold out tonight for a while again personals resuming tomorrow night as well. They're full for tonight You know AFC West on the LT auto to 49 Acclaimed autographs of Danny and Tomlinson Team materials of Daffy OA Kyle Hamilton dual relic to 49 AFC North It's gonna be a recap DJ more to 199 NFC South Kyle Pitts to 249 NFC sound we recreate we recap most of our breaks If it's too short some if it's like a 10-minute break a lot of times we won't Mike Ditka On the gridiron greats auto NFC North Cool Ditka hit Desmond Ritter rookie Jembo Jersey to 75 NFC South Only does it because it drives you crazy AFC West Josh Jacobs at 249 NFC West magi Sanders to 199 you go AFC East of James Cook triple rally cookie auto to 35 I Get dinner. There's no dinner when you when you're when you're a breaker. There's no dinner. Yeah, you don't there's no eating when you break I might get an uncrossable or like a granola bar throughout like that the 12 at the 10-hour stream That's on Haskins Ricky to 49 for the AFC South Arnold have you can't take it to 49 NFC South Same division Rashad white to 99 Wait Walker Sometimes if it's personal's I'll bring like food to eat because you can take more time there, I guess When you're breaking on schedule, no way no way CD lamb here you go NFC East on the auto one of one There he is. That's a bad man on that card right there Dude is he's a stud now, right? I mean it's calm stud CD There you go Chris see congrats, buddy one of one CD lamb auto Jok Jersey card AFC north of 49 a who's who car moa two one of ones in the case is awesome Jeremy Chen NFC South to 199 To 249 zone of a night rookie AFC East Greg dulcet nice meal would do yeah, right a Nice meal would take I would have to Shovel it down Danny Gray rookie triple jersey out of the 199 NFC West Skymore AFC West rookie expose 8 to 99 Hadarius Tony to 75 NFC East Tremac Bride rookie to 199 NFC West Sam how two more boxes here and we're dropping frames. Cool. Cool. Very cool So great good times awesome so much fun John Dotson NFC East rookie Jersey auto to 99 John Dotson NFC East extreme rookies the 149 Davis Mills to 75 AFC South to 199 Trent McDuffie rookie AFC West signature highlights insert auto Michael Vic for the NFC South NFC South and Andre Johnson Jersey card AFC South the 49 Summit Summit Jersey NFC North Aaron Jones to 299 AFC South Christian Harris to 249 the rookie Momentan last one Do you want How do you use it right? Yeah Calvin Austin the third on the RPA to 49 AFC North extra extra John Hunt Taylor to 49 AFC South Got my homes though with 249 AFC West Jelani Woods to 49 a rookie for the AFC South Ferguson a bit of a sticky here Couple thick cards coming up There you go Garrett Wilson AFC East on the rookie luminous endorsements auto six of 25 Yeah, so many people have been asking at the bar Cooper cut Matt Stafford to 25 team materials dual patch NFC West last handful of cards here Devon Lloyd to 249 AFC South NFC West Matt Stafford to 99 and You're Wilson got a relics first. So is that Rams dual there NFC West Andre Johnson Jeremiah Osu Koramoa Desmond Ritter Oh a and Hamilton James Cook Rogers and Watson Trevon Walker Traylon Burks Isaiah Spiller Matt Corral is a mere white Michael Pittman Jr Matt Corral again Autos now Garrett Wilson AFC East AFC North Calvin Austin the third NFC South Michael Vick insert auto NFC East Johan Dotson NFC West Danny Gray AFC East James Cook NFC North Mike Ditka 2021 gridiron grates insert auto there AFC West on Danny and Tomlinson NFC West Tyrion Davis Price AFC South John Mechie the third AFC South Traylon Burks It's a nice one AFC East Erica Zucanma NFC North Aiden Hutchins and another nice card there AFC West Skymore AFC East Pier Strong Jr NFC North Tide Chandler Redemption NFC North James Williams rookie XL swatch autograph blue be a nice one NFC North did really well in this break AFC East Jalen Weidermeyer NFC South Troy Anderson NFC East Sam Howell NFC South Desmond Ritter NFC West Danny Gray and Tyrion Davis Price and AFC South Trevon Walker Right we had a one-of-one auto NFC CD lamb So five a Kurt Cousins auto for the NFC North three of five One-of-one rookie glove brand logo auto John Mechie the third AFC South gigantic adidas patch That's awesome and rookie excellence Jersey Auto Kenny pick it to 75 for the AFC North that is gonna do it Thanks again everybody got slight coming up next


The Frontiers in Service Conference is an annual go-to conference for service researchers and service marketers throughout the world. The conference started 20 years ago in Vanderbilt University. It was started by Professor Roland Rust, who is one of the pioneers in service research. Frontiers Conference is international, not just in the attendees, but it's also international in where it's held. So every three years the conference is held outside the United States. Being a truly international conference, it fit very well with the direction that the university is trying to go in becoming more or more international in nature. So I think that Fisher was really an appropriate place to host this particular conference because Fisher really is a leader in the study of services. It's now a must-go-to event for top service researchers everywhere. The conference features five to six plenary sessions, which are the keynote sessions of the conference. This is not a kind of experience I would have been able to have otherwise if they hadn't brought it here to Fisher. I have heard comments from delegates from all over the world who marveled at our infrastructure, our facilities, our ability to pull off such an international conference. For Fisher students it was a fantastic chance to network. To be able to attend just as a student was really exciting and a really unique opportunity. Built around these keynote presentations are concurrent sessions where academics present the cutting edge research and service marketing. A lot of the authors that we had read were there at the conference. So there were opportunities to hear them really in action and kind of engage them in conversation and discuss the concepts that you've read about with these true leaders in the industry. We thought from the start that it was really important to have more of an interplay between the academics and practitioners. I think that's been a huge plus for the conference over the years. Also there were a lot of opportunities to interact with PhD students from around the world who were really doing a lot of the leading edge research in services. A conference like the Frontiers and Service Conference enhances the profile of not only the Fisher College but also OSU, Columbus and Ohio in general.


two time. Number one, New York Times bestselling author. She connects with a highly engaged and growing global audience of women who treasure her transparency and optimism.  Right.  You're unrelatable. What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable? Rachel Hollis, bestselling author, motivational speaker, became a spearhead in the motivational speaking industry, an inspiration to women and a success story. And then it all seemingly collapsed. After a messy and public divorce and a lot of bad PR, it seems that Rachel Hollis's career has completely fallen off. And you can now find her books in the discount section in almost any given Walmart. So what happened to Rachel Hollis and how did she destroy her career? Throughout my time on YouTube, I've gotten a ton of requests to cover Rachel Hollis. And I haven't just yet, because first off, there's so many great YouTubers who have covered Rachel Hollis, two great creators, Savvy writes books and me and Kat have been covering Rachel Hollis and doing an incredible job at it. But recent events that have transpired in Rachel's career and the kind of timeline of how it all happened has really interested me and made me want to kind of look into it and cover it. I think a lot of what happened to Rachel Hollis really speaks to the dangers of the self-help industry in general and the toxicity of motivational gurus cleaning the toilet. Who likes to have someone else be able to do that if at all possible, right?  I always forget to say this nowadays, but if you're new and this is your first video of mine that you're watching, subscribe if you want to and like this video if you like it. Right now, I'm just kind of making whatever video I want to make. But if you want to join that journey, then subscribe and come along with me. And yeah, let's get into the video. So first off, if you haven't heard of who Rachel Hollis is, let's talk about who she is and what she's known for. I thought we'd read the about page on Rachel Hollis's website so that we can know straight from her perspective who she is and what she's known for. I'm Rachel Hollis. I'm a proud working mama for living in Texas Hill Country just outside of Austin. I worship coffee like a deity, read books like My Life Depends on It, and think LaCroix is one of the greatest inventions of the last decade. How relatable. I'm probably most well known as the author of the book Girl Wash Your Face, which has sold about 4.5 million copies in the last couple of years. Bananas, I know. Long before I wrote all my books, there are nine total now, or hosted one of the most successful podcasts in the world, or produced massive conferences, or founded a media company, the Hollis Company, I was a food blogger. Definitely giving me very relatable, I'm just like you, vibes. I started from the ground and worked my way to the top, kind of, vibes. So Rachel Hollis is an American author, motivational speaker, and blogger who, as most of you probably already know, really rose to fame through her book Girl Wash Your Face. I don't know why, but that book title always just threw me off. I think that's what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be shocking, or like, what's this book? But for a while, I thought it was like a self-care book about how to practice hygiene, and I was like, that's very odd. I also don't like being told what to do, so a lot of her titles just don't fit with me. But Girl Wash Your Face seemed to resonate with a lot of people, and was a top bestseller for a pretty long time, which is definitely an accomplishment. When you really look into Rachel Hollis and the content that she makes, her YouTube videos, her podcasts, her self-help books, her Instagram, it's really just taking self-help as a genre, and the things that have been said and passed around for years and years and years, and then repackaging it to a primarily women audience. And you start realizing, I'm living in a home, and the most of them I don't want, you can change it. No matter who you are, and no matter what you're going through, and no matter what you're afraid of right now, real or imagined, you can control your mindset. The number one thing that I have seen as I've gotten older that has been very obvious to me is that most of the people here today do many of the things they do because of one to five people's opinions in their lives, whether they're parents, their spouse, their older sibling, their neighbor. Guys, comparison is the death of joy. The second that you start comparing your life to hers, your marriage to theirs, your relationship to those people, your business to that business, the second you start to compare, you take all of the wind out of your sails. It's basically age-old self-help rhetoric, but with a girl boss twist. The main message Rachel Hollis preaches is once again a standard self-help message, which is that you and only you at the end of the day are responsible for your own happiness. No matter who you are, and no matter what you're going through, and no matter what you're afraid of right now, real or imagined, you can control your mindset. And I want to challenge you in the idea that you are the one who is ultimately in control of this. Is life happening to you or is life happening for you? Which I definitely think is a good message to teach in general, that we have a certain level of control over our lives, and that no one can truly take our happiness away. But I also kind of think a lot of that is a privileged outlook as well. At least if you're dealing with a serious chronic condition or illness or you're neurodivergent or things that society doesn't commonly accept, and I always find the you're only responsible for your happiness message to be a little bit too simplistic because it really does ignore those greater issues in society that so many people have to struggle with.  But anyways, girl wash your face contains a memoir, motivational tips, and bible quotes. Once again, self-help for the girl boss. And I think Rachel had really great timing in terms of when she entered into the self-help arena because it was not a similar time that there was the rise in the girl boss rhetoric. I was in ink magazine. I was one of the top 30 entrepreneurs under 30. Every time I heard no, I figured something else out.  I'm doing a video right after this one on girl boss and the rise and fall of the girl boss movement. So it's just kind of on my mind. But Rachel really launched into her career right around the time that the nasty gal founder came out with the book hashtag girl boss. I think the girl boss movement had a lot of great intentions, but the movement was basically taken, turned into these basic quotes and commodified so that it could be sold to the masses. Also, if you want to learn more about Rachel Hollis's life leading up to her career, my husband and I actually did a podcast on that, diving more in depth into her early life. But in this video, I just want to focus on the rise and fall of Rachel Hollis's career and not go too much into her personal life details, unless it's absolutely necessary to this bigger picture. Another big breakthrough in Rachel Hollis's career was in March of 2015, when an Instagram photo of her celebrating her stretch marks went viral. Yeah, that one. Did anyone see that? I have stretch marks and I wear a bikini. I have a belly that's permanently flabby from carrying three giant babies and I wear a bikini. My belly button is saggy, which is something I didn't even know was possible before kids. And I wear a bikini. I wear a bikini because I'm proud of this body and every mark on it. Oh my knee. Ow. This once again was really good timing because body positivity was becoming more movement and Rachel Hollis was really able to position herself as a spokesperson for these various movements and was able to in a way kind of piggyback off of these growing movements and find her audience through voicing the messages of those movements. It seems like in the early days of Rachel Hollis's career, she was really unstoppable. She had entered into the self-help arena at the perfect timing and found a really strong audience through women that really resonated with the messages that she was sharing. But even still, her early career was not devoid of controversies. On January 31st, 2019, BuzzFeed News published an article by reporter Stephanie McNeil detailing multiple, multiple times where Hollis plagiarized quotes from other authors on her Instagram and claimed them as her own. So that whole repackaging, classic motivational rhetoric thing is no joke. Like, that's literally exactly what she did. She just took everything that worked for other motivational speakers or inspirational figures and then applied it to her own work, copy, paste style. The most egregious example of this is when Rachel Hollis plagiarized Maya Angelou's Still I Rise as if no one would notice as if no one would notice that. Hollis issued an apology after that one specifically and blamed her team for the oopsie, which seems to be a pattern. But it seemed like even though some were calling out Rachel Hollis, for the most part she was largely adored by people and absolutely unstoppable. She became lifted up on a pedestal as this idealized version of what women want to be. The thing that Hollis was really genius at was identifying an untapped niche and untapped demographic and becoming the face of that demographic. Hollis marketed herself to more conservative women who wanted to feel empowered but didn't necessarily identify as a feminist. These women were maybe even struggling with where they fit into the recent wave of women empowerment. Politically and ideologically they may have not fully identified with feminism and the Me Too movement but they wanted to feel a similar level of empowerment just in the categories that they value which is mainly the capitalistic ideologies of success in business, making money, and excelling at family life. Girl Wash Your Face sold predominantly to women in the South and Midwest and also found a niche in the Christian community. Even at times being sold in the Christian category at bookstores. My daddy was a preacher so speaking to a church is not something I've done since I was a little girl and I was really nervous about coming here so I am washy taped the back of the last card because when I'm nervous I craft and this made me feel better about talking to you today. And Rachel Hollis very much knew her demographic. You can even see in the conferences that she's done over time she's developed more of a southern accent. Like you got all the stuff and you're super excited but dang it now you're embarrassed to sell. I'm sorry my accent shows up. Sale. My grandma would say we're gonna sale something today sister. My theory personally is that Rachel Hollis just knew that the majority of her audience were southern women and wanted to speak more to her audience like both literally and figuratively.  All the confessions that she makes in her book have to do with relatable things. I shave my toes. I used to be bad at sex. I'm failing all the time. Because just in life I'm going for a target sports bra. Why would I wear underwear? I don't hate myself. I'm only wearing underwear like a normal bra if I need it for an outfit which I did and I forgot hashtag sorry hashtag pig socks. Look at that. Who wouldn't want to be with this? I don't know because I got a list of men in my phone. I got a roster. No I don't. She was relatable but simultaneously painted herself as an idealized version of what these women wanted to be. Successful but with a great marriage and family life. Self-empowered but also present and there for her kids. She made a great role model for these women because a lot of this specific demographic didn't have very prominent female role models at the time. Rachel Hollis also found an intersection between these women and the demographic that she tapped into and MLMs and very soon Rachel Hollis began to work with a lot of MLMs. I think the main reason for this is that MLMs exist in a lot of conservative and Christian communities. The same market that Rachel Hollis was tapping into. So not only was Rachel Hollis already speaking to a lot of the women who are in MLMs but on top of that MLMs became a great way for her books to be shared. I've talked about this briefly on my channel but there's a huge intersection between the MLM world and the motivational speaking world and a lot of it has to do with toxic positivity. MLMs often spread the message to not look at the hate to ignore the haters and to just focus on the positive. So if you want to just focus on the positive who do you go to? You go to a motivational speaker and MLMs love this because a lot of motivational speakers will say the same thing again and again and again.  You can create a beautiful, blessed, abundant life if you stay focused on where you want to go. Not what you fear might happen. Only you can make yourself happy. Don't listen to others. Don't listen to outside voices.  See right now a lot of you who are watching this are allowing the world to decide your perspective. You're allowing the news to decide the way that you look at this.   You have to have a why that is so strong that nobody can throw you off where you're going. Because when people see us start to change, when the people that we love see us start to change, if they're not changing too, it scares them. Which is interesting too because that kind of sounds sociopathic? It's not just me, but MLMs and motivational speakers are kind of mutually beneficial, which is why you see so many MLM conferences where motivational speakers will come and speak. They get to promote their work to the MLM audience and the MLMs get to encourage their reps to ignore the haters and focus on themselves and just the positive, which remotivates them to keep working on their business. But I definitely think Rachel Hallis was the most successful motivational speaker when it comes to tapping into the MLM market. How do I promote myself for my business? You've spent all of this time and energy to build your Etsy shop or get your first kit from Noonday or you're selling rodent in fields or you're doing Luluro or whatever it is. A lot of her books were shared between MLM reps and all of their down line. So that whole dynamic was extremely beneficial for Rachel Hallis and a big way that I'm sure she made a ton of money.  When I did my video on Gary V, I listened to a Joe Rogan podcast where Gary V spoke with Joe Rogan and talked about how he gets paid upwards of $100,000 per conference that he does. And Rachel Hallis is even on another level than Gary V, I would say personally, in terms of her success and best sellers and all of that. So to just think about how many MLM conferences she did, how much she must have gotten paid for each conference on top of selling 4.5 million books, a lot of it through the downlines of MLMs and that whole pipeline. It's fascinating. I mean, a lot of money was involved. But in a way, all of these niches that allowed Rachel Hallis to succeed also became the very reason for her downfall. The reason why is because Rachel Hallis now had to sell herself as all the things that these niches and demographics value. The reason why so many women wanted to buy her books and go to her conference is because they saw her as the idealized version of what they wanted to be. They saw her as the definition of their idea of empowerment. So now she had to be that. She had to fully embody that. And surprise, she didn't. Because in my opinion, the con of motivational speakers like Rachel Hallis is to sell you their success story in an idealized way. When in reality, their life is so, so far from the perfect picture that they paint. I mentioned this in the rant that I posted about a week ago, but I like to call this aspect of motivational speakers performative success. Performative success is when people are performing their success to you or to the masses.    Performative success first relates to your insecurities in your own life.   There's a lot of problems with performative success. The problem on the performers part is they have to paint their life in a perfect way or else you wouldn't have a reason to listen to them. Even if they are painting it in the quirky, relatable way, it's still with that tone of, but I'm still better than you. You know? They have to make you believe that their life is perfect or else you wouldn't buy every book they make, you wouldn't go to every conference that they have. But performative success is problematic for an even greater reason. Performative success teaches people what success is and what it isn't. And a lot of what performative success is, is obtaining materialistic or very, very expensive things. But is that really success? Is that really success? Or is it just a success that's much easier to perform? There's so many aspects to life fulfillment and it varies from individual person to person, so this whole idea of success in itself is fake. It's not real. All motivational speakers are really selling you is just a dream, plain and simple. And every dream has an ending or a point where we have to wake up. And unfortunately for Rachel Hollis, her made-up reality began to slowly crack until it completely shattered, which brings us to the downfall of Rachel Hollis' career. You know, we were together 18 years and I don't consider that a failure. I think our marriage was a massive success, but it looks different now. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Guess what she used to tell people? Go to therapy, which if you feel like your life is falling apart, go do that. And I think it's all marketing and I think that's disingenuous. I don't think it's authentic and I think it's making money off your audience who is trying to find a way forward in really difficult times and I think it's gross. What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable? While there has been a lot of missteps that I could cover in depth, I think there are really three major things that super sealed the deal. So I think the best way to illustrate the downfall of Rachel Hollis' career is through three strikes. There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, fool me once, shame on you. If fool me, we can't get fooled again. Strike one, divorce.  I think it's rarely ever relevant to the conversation and I really, really hate that I have to do this. But unfortunately, Rachel Hollis' divorce really matters in her career because she built so much of her image around the fact that she has a perfect marriage. Both her and her husband really played into this idea that they were living the perfect life, had a great marriage, were so happy together, and they used that relationship strategically to benefit both of their careers. Even to the point where Rachel's rise motivational conference also did a rise together conference for couples where couples would spend over $1,800, $1,800 on tickets to learn from Rachel Hollis and her ex Dave about marriage as non-experts, as non-marriage counselors, just motivational speakers. People paid $1,800 to learn from their expertise and what they had to say about marriage. Imagine the anger and frustration of spending $2,000 at least in terms of food and hotel and travel expenses on top of the ticket to go to a conference to learn from someone about how to have a great marriage, only for them to get divorced less than two years later. I would be pissed.  I'm sure that's a horrible feeling to go through something personally and then have it kind of speculated and dragged into the public eye. But at the same time, you put yourself in that position. Unfortunately, if you didn't lift yourself up and make a huge part of your brand, having a great relationship and marriage life. All right, five tips to do immediately following this video. Number four, hire a cleaning lady. I'm not even kidding. I'm in on this. Yeah, that was one of the greatest things we ever did in our marriage. I don't think if you didn't do that, people would still be picking apart your marriage in this way. A lot of people just feel lied to. The couple would also regularly post marriage motivational stuff on social media, like all the time. A lot of their Instagram photos having the same exact face. Oh, okay, let's just learn from social media stars. Let's just say if someone is always making the same fake face all the time, let's maybe take that as a red flag in the future. Like let's just take that in as a red flag. So anyways, Rachel Hollis and her ex Dave would constantly post photos together, work together, talk about how great their life is, and they were never really open about there being huge problems in their marriage until all of a sudden one day when they announced their divorce. Because I mean, who would want to spend $2,000 to get advice from a couple who's just kind of doing okay? So it is, it is my duty and frankly, I think it's everybody's duty who is in the influencer space to show what real life looks like to show the beautiful pictures. Heck yes, I love scrolling through that before I fall asleep, but you've also got to show us what it took to get there. So once again, you have to sell the perfect marriage and say our lives are perfect and we have the best relationship so that you can get that money from people who want the relationship that you're portraying to have. On June 8th of 2020, Rachel Hollis announced the divorce. There's a lot of drama and like Instagram posts going back and forth and Dave kind of turning a lot of her fans against her. A lot of it is just messy, but once again, a lot of it is just assumptions that people have made off of Rachel and Dave's social media postings. And as you can probably tell from the fact that they were happy go lucky in a great relationship all the way up until like literally the day that they announced the divorce, yeah, I don't think these people are going to be very truthful on social media. I don't think we should necessarily take what they post on social media at face value. Reality is we really don't know what happened within their marriage and we will never probably really know the truth and some serious stuff could have gone down so I don't think it's good for anyone to place blame on Rachel or Dave for their divorce. A lot of people kind of turned on Rachel at the time of the divorce because she had supposedly just sprung this on Dave and was like hey I want to get divorced but like we don't know that and I just don't think it's anyone's place personally so you know that's a situation that I must stay out of and not speculate on. The one thing that I will speculate on is I do have to wonder how much pressure it put on the marriage to have to portray the perfect marriage and the perfect life and relationship constantly. Like I can't imagine how much pressure that puts on a relationship. Similar to how I wonder if family vloggers run into problems having to portray the perfect family life all the time. The second that you mix your personal like very personal and professional life together and portray it all to be perfect I have to imagine that puts strain and pressure on the whole dynamic. Though I'm not a psychologist so I'm not well versed on how it could mess one up psychologically. So anyways people were outraged by this news because first off the tea, the drama but also because much of the brand that they built was built around having the perfect marriage and once that was found to not be true cracks began to emerge on Rachel Hollis's seemingly perfect life. Strike two, Rachel Hollis denounces MLMs in her latest book. Ever heard of the saying don't bite the hand that feeds you? Rachel Hollis who made tons of money speaking at MLM conferences denounced them in her latest book. In the book Rachel Hollis says if you're not sure how to make extra income there are so many ideas to help you but please remember this important prerequisite. Figure out a way to make new income that doesn't cost you any money to start. Which by the way is super hard I mean even with YouTube you have to pay for video equipment and editing software and all of that. Not that you should join an MLM but I'm just saying is it that realistic to start a side hustle and not have to pay any startup cost? For now I'm positive that someone is going to read this and be inspired to head on over to the internet and ask how she can make extra income and then four weeks later her starter kit has arrived for the new at-home business she paid $700 to join. Don't be dumb, figure out a way to make money that doesn't require money.  Rachel why why did you have to say it that way? Why did you have to say it that way?  I can't tell if I think this is a boss move or horribly offensive I just can't. Why she chose to do this I will never know. In a way I partially respect it because at least it's more authentic at least she's sharing her true thoughts and opinions and not simply just conforming her entire brand into what her audience wants to see but at the same time this outraged so so many of the women who had supported her endlessly and so many of her fans turned on her I do think it was toxic and dangerous for Rachel Hollis and for other motivational speakers to speak out all these MLM conferences and basically put legitimacy on MLMs by being like I'm a respected motivational speaker who's speaking at this conference you're basically giving that company your vote of choice you're saying this is okay I'm cool with this I support this today I'm answering your number one business question to me which is Rach how do I promote myself for my business you've spent all of this time and energy to build your Etsy shop or get your first kit from Noonday or you're selling rodent in fields or you're doing Luloro or whatever it is and you want so badly like you've got all the stuff and you're super excited but dang it now you're embarrassed to sell and in all of those conferences she repeats the message of like keep grinding keep working out your business keep being a boss babe go all in you can have the business you can have the relationship you can have the family you can have the health you can have living debt free you can have whatever it looks like in your life if you're willing to stick with it the problem is that so many people leave because it gets hard right go for it don't listen to haters there is this um like deep thing in us that says when we're unsure or when we're insecure about something that we need to look outside of ourselves for the answers and encourage probably so many women to keep going in their MLMs so to just turn around and be like yeah no this is not a good idea yeah stupid for doing an MLM I mean I would be pissed so here's what one former fan had to say about this decision an open letter to Rachel Hollis as I read the post flooding my facebook news feed last night I sighed shook my head and felt every ounce of the shock disgust and sadness of your ex fans as you sat on your throne and judged and labeled an entire group of women as dumb yikes sister not really your best moment but neither was you spending years openly plagiarizing other people's words and ignoring it and neither was you knowing your marriage was falling apart and painting a totally different picture to your fans and followers and giving them relationship advice under the guise that your own marriage was peachy keen but let me ask you this Rachel did you think at all about the many network marketing events that you've spoken at overflowing with women hanging on your every word before you wrote these extraordinarily insulting words I guess you didn't think it through or you might have thought twice about mocking someone getting their starter kit and insinuating that the 4.6 million women network marketers across the world are dumb listen you are allowed to have your feelings about MLM and I'm not even saying you are wrong for voicing your thoughts however your delivery was atrocious rude and demeaning to the women who you're supposed to be uplifting encouraging and empowering unfortunately when you paint yourself as positive only and insert yourself into the MLM world where they only accept positive sentiments any sort of criticism on that it all of a sudden you will be ousted just like you have told you specifically have told women to cut off people in their life because they weren't supportive when people see us start to change when the people that we love see us start to change if they're not changing too it scares them and if you truly think that women who join and direct sales are dumb and you want to stick to what you said great you should stand in your truth but then you need to stop taking their money honestly I agree with this pro MLM her in that sentiment it's your ongoing lack of responsibility and overwhelming hypocrisy that's going to cost you your audience girls start apologizing and honestly I can see where Chelsea is coming from there even though I don't agree with the MLM business model I can't imagine how ridiculous I would feel to put a ton of money into a motivational speaker who's basically encouraging me to keep going in whatever thing that I'm doing and then they just turn around and they're like yeah you're dumb haha jokes on you it's like if you were I don't know like a Honda Civic driver who likes Gary Vee and likes to listen to Gary Vee and is a huge Gary Vee fan and maybe even Gary Vee spoke at a Honda Civic conference and was one of the main figures who encouraged you to drive a Honda Civic and then all of a sudden Gary Vee comes out and is like yeah you need a car to go anywhere but if you drive a Honda Civic if you drive a Honda Civic you are disgusting you are stupid why would you even do that to yourself a great weakness of the human being if that happened you'd be like whoa wait a minute what that's kind of a weird analogy but that's the only thing I can think of at the time for explaining what this would feel like if Rachel Hollis has a problem with MLMs why did she offer credibility to them by speaking at their conferences that's not very girl boss women supporting women of you and once again I just can't think of how many people were encouraged to keep wasting money on their MLMs side hustle through Rachel Hollis content and now maybe feel ridiculous because she's come out and called them dumb like that's noble of you to think that way and to hold that opinion I respect you for sharing it but why did you share it after taking hundreds of thousands if not millions from these companies and the MLM reps within these companies so that was strike two when Rachel Hollis lost a huge huge chunk of her fan base and it all just gets worse from there I also came across a video by Emily D Baker an awesome YouTuber who pointed out a really big issue with Rachel's latest book in the fact that Rachel Hollis marketed her latest book didn't see that coming as a sort of solution to the pandemic or a self-help book for 2020 itself and how to recover from the aftermath of 2020 and this is a book that well let me just ask you what this book is about what motivated you right this book I guess first so I went into quarantine here in Austin in March I have a lot of experience with crisis and trauma and grief and what I feel like I'm seeing is people are having identity crisis but they don't understand that that's what's going on Rachel Hollis seems to be through the marketing of this book and the way that she talks about the book and why she wrote it she seems to be praying on people who are struggling during 2020 or who had struggled during 2020 and that's a little crummy a little sus are you kidding me are you are you kidding me are you kidding me you're lying to people to sell a book because they are grasping for a lifeline in the middle of a motherfucking pandemic and a crazy election cycle and you're like I have a one hour e-course that will fix that and give you the tools to rebuild your life you're not a therapist Rachel Hollis and I doubt you've got your life back together and I think it's all marketing and I think that's disingenuous I don't think it's authentic and I think it's making money off your audience who is trying to find a way forward in really difficult times and I think it's gross so while that's definitely not an action that directly led to the downfall of Rachel Hollis's career I thought that was an important aspect to talk about because I do see it as problematic and potentially dangerous if people are reading Rachel Hollis's book didn't see that coming and not actually seeking therapy or help for traumatic things they may have experienced in 2020 strike three the toilet controversy otherwise known as the moment when Rachel Hollis's career went down the toilet while Rachel Hollis has also done a lot of other problematic things the nail on the coffin of her career is in early April of this year when Rachel Hollis posted a pretty problematic video on instagram and this is what she said doing a livestream and I mentioned that there's a sweet woman who comes to my house twice a week and cleans she's my my house cleaner she cleans the toilet someone commented and said you are privileged af and I was like you're right I'm super freaking privileged but also I worked my ass off to have the money to have someone come twice a week and clean my toilets and I told her that and then she said well you're unrelatable what is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable no sis literally everything I do in my life is to live a life that most people can't relate to most people won't work this hard most people won't get up at 4 am most people won't fail publicly again and again just to reach the top of the mountain literally every woman I admire in history was unrelatable if my life is relatable to most people I'm doing it wrong so there's a lot of things wrong with this post but the worst part to me in my opinion was the caption also that she put under this post if I can find it the caption reads Harriet Tubman Ruth Bader Ginsburg Marie Curie Oprah Winfrey why can I never say Oprah Winfrey's name right Amelia Earhart Frida Kahlo Malala Yufsi the last name I'm just gonna leave a clip of how to pronounce because I did not research how to pronounce it beforehand I'm just realizing and I don't want to mispronounce this woman's name Empress Wu Zetian of China all unrelatable AF happy woman's history month so the only thing that you're noting all these women for is for being unrelatable I think there's a little bit more to these women maybe just me so that whole post is about how she's so unrelatable and that's a great thing and something that other people should aspire to be which also is interesting to me because in terms of successful people and relatability I feel like more successful people need to be more relatable and grounded in reality and that a huge problem in society is that so many rich and privileged people lose touch with reality are no longer relatable can't relate to anyone anymore and that either causes the downfall of their career or it causes problems as they just don't no longer treat people with respect or understand the struggle of the everyday person like in the video when Rachel Hollis says yeah I'm privileged and like where's that so proudly it's bizarre to me how so many people just lose touch completely with others and just how it is not something necessarily to be proud of to be privileged it's something that's important to acknowledge and how you can maybe help others using your privilege but the main thing in this video is how Rachel Hollis is speaking as if she is the only person who's responsible for her success and privilege as if her privilege comes from her hard work alone and all of the success she obtained is only due to her and herself but there are so many people and environmental factors that help you to gain opportunities that help you reach successful milestones in life just like I am currently growing a baby right now but that wasn't without a little help so this whole notion that her success comes solely from herself is just not true it is not true at all but what's so interesting is you look at how she attributes only herself for her success and you look at the main rhetoric that she was sharing with people which is that you are only responsible for your own happiness and you realize holy crap that's what I've been listening to this whole time someone who thinks that all of their accomplishments come from only themselves and that only they're responsible for everything that's happening in their life and may have no ability to understand or discern from things that they might just be lucky for and things that are outside of their control that have happened in their life and the thing is this isn't the only time that Rachel Hollis has said similar things ultimately nobody is gonna do this for you who's gonna want you to say I got this her approach was just so shocking and harsh that it really flabbergasted a lot of people so a lot of people started sharing and talking and posting about how wrong this instagram post was even if they didn't know about Rachel Hollis beforehand but I mainly want to focus on her fans surrounding this controversy because like I said earlier the main thing the main thing of her book was like I'm just like you but a little better basically is what she was sharing with people and now she's turned around and people found out that she lied about her marriage she disavowed a huge portion of her audience and now she's like also I'm not relatable to you at all all of these central and integral points of her entire persona and brand how can someone just flip like that going against everything that they claim to be when building up their career and who is the real Rachel Hollis well I really don't know who the real Rachel Hollis is that's something I can't say in this video but the real Rachel Hollis is certainly not the woman who was sold to us all I think in general we tend to idolize a lot of people that we see on social media that we see as having the perfect life or the life that we want and so often we hear the message that nothing is real on social media but rarely is there ever such a huge case of that as in the case of Rachel Hollis where it really just slaps you in the face how much of her life that she shared on social media was just a complete lie who has a friend like not a close friend but maybe someone you went to like middle school with or high school with and your friends with them on facebook and they're always talking about how in love they are anyone have a friend who's like oh my boo no my boo and they're like vacationing and they're swimming on that island where people swim with the pigs you guys want to talk about anyone have a friend like that and then they get divorced have you ever known anyone on social who pretended life is here I am here's my new car here I am here's my new house here's all of these things and then all of a sudden they're filing for bankruptcy anyone know what I'm talking about nobody knows what I'm talking about so the problem with that is we are so busy pretending that we're swimming laps that nobody knows we're drowning to make matters worse after all the backlash on Rachel Hollis's instagram post she posted her first apology which put basically not really basically like literally all of the blame on her team so the initial post was basically her saying I'm privileged because I worked my butt off but then she makes a mistake and she's like oops I made that mistake because of my team you know the team of people that I have working with me that have helped me get to this point in my career like I can only imagine how toxic of a work environment that is and also I have to mention a friend of mine Savvy writes books here on youtube did a video interviewing a former Rachel Hollis employee so that you can hear from the employee themselves and their perspective working with the Rachel Hollis company and team so I'll link that below in the description so you can watch that too and learn from that perspective if you'd like then after that apology also received backlash she posted another apology and I just got to say girls stop apologizing we already know you don't mean it it's also especially ironic for Rachel Hollis to compare herself to women of color when so much of her career was built off of plagiarizing women of color so Rachel Hollis's public persona completely shattered at that point and the former put together girl boss in a successful marriage just no longer exists in the public eye it also looks like Rachel Hollis is facing further repercussions and being dropped by major companies for example if you go on the target website and you search the name Rachel Hollis her books no longer pop up none of her stuff pops up on the target website anymore and instead her ex Dave's most recent book pops up and not her the shade the reality is bad PR is not always a bad thing we've seen this with so many people who use bad PR to their advantage to get their name out into the public eye to get publicity and articles written about them and sometimes bad PR is used as a strategic advantage in one's own career but where Rachel Hollis went wrong is that her entire niche demographic that she had built up and built her career off of she ended up losing touch with and that's where I think that Rachel Hollis's career is not going to bounce back as easily as other influencers and motivational speakers who have gotten into major controversies before because a lot of times when that happens the influencer will still maintain a relationship with their audience unfortunately the most egregious case of this is the James Charles situation where he's being called out for some very very serious acts but his core fan base seems to still love him support him and care for him Rachel Hollis did not maintain that relationship with her core fan base and instead went against their values and even at times blatantly disrespected them the women that she pretended to relate to she no longer pretends to relate to so I wonder if she will ever become the huge motivational speaker that she once was and I'm not sure if that means that Rachel Hollis's career is completely done but it kind of should be in the nicest way possible Rachel Hollis is kind of a fraud a modern snake oil salesman a charlatan of sorts who sold a complete lie of her own life and life story to so many people Rachel Hollis is constantly talking about how it's okay to fail and I agree with that but failing is like posting youtube videos on content that no one's really interested in failing isn't blatantly plagiarizing people's work and passing it off as your own in college if you get caught plagiarizing you can't just be like oopsies but everyone fails though right that's just not how this works and it's bizarre to me how motivational speakers will get away with time and time again just spewing blatant lies and in the process spread really toxic ideologies not only do I honestly think that Rachel Hollis did all of this to herself I'm also surprised with how much she got away with for so long like how so that's the end of this deep dive in my perspective on Rachel Hollis and the downfall of her career and if you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe if you want to like if you want to and stick around to watch some more of my other videos if you want to and if you made it this far in the video comment on the civic and just confuse everyone else who didn't get to this point and I'll catch you guys in the next one