”There’s nothing that’s particular or fortunate or completely different between me and someone who picks up this journal,” Mel Robbins insists repeatedly throughout our interview.
It’s a humble evaluation that her longtime listeners and social media followers will acknowledge. The self-deprecating podcast host, writer and motivational speaker wears her typicality on her sleeve and even flaunts her largest failures as launchpads for her most listened-to and hard-earned phrases of recommendation.
Amongst them is a very painful interval that occurred 15 years in the past. That’s when she discovered herself, at age 41, unable to get off the bed within the morning. She’d been laid off from her job. She was ingesting an excessive amount of. Her husband’s restaurant enterprise was failing, and their household of 5 was suffocating below a mountain of debt—to the tune of $800,000. There have been weeks when she couldn’t discover a method to pay for groceries or fuel.
Robbins was determined to get again on track, however she stored discovering herself doing the other: nothing. The motivation simply wouldn’t floor. That’s, till she tried somewhat trick. She imagined she was a rocket getting ready for launch, and she or he silently counted down: 5-4-3-2-1. With this easy observe, she seen she was capable of get off the bed earlier than her mind might protest. “It felt like a small victory, however it was additionally a revelation,” she remembers in her newest ebook. “If I might push via these 5 seconds of concern, perhaps I might push via something.”
The invention was easy however efficient: She had 5 seconds to behave on any given thought earlier than her thoughts might shut down the concept. She began utilizing the countdown for every part she had been avoiding: getting up on time, confronting her overdrinking, discovering a brand new job, opening a stack of long-ignored payments and making a plan to get out of debt.
It turned the primary of Robbins’ many viral concepts when she shared it on stage at a 2011 San Francisco TEDx presentation. She remembers the speak as a 21-minute “panic assault” in entrance of 700 individuals, however to anybody watching from the surface, it’s something however. Robbins’ singular capacity to captivate an viewers with a easy however highly effective idea is displayed in full glory—as is her humorousness, her down-to-earth demeanor and a splash of crassness (the speech was titled “Easy methods to Cease Screwing Your self Over”). A video of the speak made its means on-line shortly after the stay occasion and has since been seen greater than 33 million instances.
Robbins’ countdown to success
The success of Robbins’ TEDx Speak propelled her right into a facet gig as a speaker at conferences and enterprise occasions. Inside three years, she was giving almost 100 speeches a 12 months and have become the most-booked feminine speaker on this planet. Sharing her recommendation was now not a facet gig, and the ability of Robbins’ countdown approach—what she got here to name “The 5 Second Rule”—solely gained traction. A ebook of the identical title was printed in 2017 and has bought thousands and thousands of copies; its recording turned the No. 1 promoting self-published audiobook of all time.
Since then, Robbins has constructed a formidable media enterprise round her concepts, analysis and conversations with consultants. She based 143 Studios, which now employs 30 workforce members. Many are middle-aged ladies—a supply of satisfaction for Robbins, who’s herself 56.
The bedrock of the enterprise is The Mel Robbins Podcast, which launched in 2022 and nearly immediately shot to the highest of the charts. Listeners have downloaded or streamed it over 200 million instances, devouring Robbins’ private takes on motivation, productiveness, wellness and mindset change, alongside her interviews with consultants in well being, psychology, habits and relationships. It routinely ranks inside the prime 15 podcasts within the U.S. and is the No. 1 podcast in Apple Podcasts’ training class.
A number of of her books, together with The 5 Second Rule, The Excessive 5 Behavior and her newest, The Let Them Concept, are bestsellers, and her audiobooks and packages commonly rocket to the highest of Audible’s charts.
”A fish in water”
It’s no shock that Robbins does notably properly within the audio area. When she talks, individuals hear. She has the voice of a smart, humorous, straight-shooting Midwestern aunt who drops a brand new reality bomb in seemingly each sentence and is endlessly quotable. She packages her recommendation in relatable, usually minorly embarrassing tales from her personal life. And in movies on Instagram and YouTube, Robbins seems straight into the digicam from behind her trademark thick-rimmed glasses, the corners of her eyes crinkling with the occasional wry smile, as she affords highly effective, commanding insights meant to snap listeners out of no matter funk they could discover themselves in that day.
Hers is an endearingly approachable media presence that manages on the similar time to be extremely polished and authoritative, because of her earlier careers as a radio speak present host and an on-air CNN authorized analyst. However life formed her communication fashion in much less glamorous methods too. Robbins has been open about her grownup diagnoses of ADHD and dyslexia, situations that impacted her from an early age. Surviving the latter as a pupil, she believes, is what propelled her to turn into an distinctive verbal communicator.
“Should you can freestyle and speak, you possibly can type of distract individuals from the truth that you don’t fairly perceive the passage within the ebook,” she says. “Being the primary to speak, being charming, with the ability to learn social cues, being brave and simply type of going first—it turned a life talent.”
Certainly, Robbins did properly at school and went on to earn a historical past diploma from Dartmouth School and a regulation diploma from Boston School. The trail wasn’t with out its challenges, although. “I used to be horrible at regulation faculty,” she says. However in her program’s third 12 months, the scholars started mock trial workouts that relied closely on verbal arguments, and she or he remembers the distinct pleasure of lastly feeling like “a fish in water.”
After commencement, she labored as a public defender, the place she seen that deliberating juries tended to solely bear in mind just a few standout phrases from the trial arguments. To win a case, she realized that “you’ve acquired to have the ability to distill it down into one thing tremendous easy that someone can bear in mind… and that’s the center of what I do.”
Robbins and her workforce have taken her podcast properly past productiveness pep speak territory, partially by bringing on consultants for conversations on well being and wellness, which has resulted in a reshaping of the cultural lexicon on some matters. Her episode with visitor Dr. Mary Claire Haver, an OB-GYN and menopause professional, for instance, turned the podcast’s most-listened-to episode of all time and has spurred numerous new discussions between ladies and their medical doctors about medical remedy for perimenopause signs. Episodes tackling nervousness are additionally ranked in her prime 5, together with one with Dr. Russell Kennedy, often known as the “Nervousness M.D.”
The podcast’s success has led to a landmark three-year settlement with SiriusXM, which secures 143 Studios’ income stream properly past the standard 60-day advert gross sales cycle. The deal, alongside her books, audiobooks, programs and talking engagements, places the corporate amongst large gamers in international media. “And I’m simply loopy pleased with the truth that a bunch of, largely, ladies of their early 40s and 50s are those operating it,” she says.
Moving into the footwear of chief and entrepreneur is one thing Robbins discovered from her mom, Marcia Schneeberger. “She simply had this moxie,” Robbins says. “I simply noticed this girl [who] would determine what she wished to do, after which she would simply go do it.”
She remembers the time her mom and a pal sought a financial institution mortgage to open a gourmand kitchen retailer within the Nineteen Eighties in Muskegon, Michigan. The financial institution, impressed with the marketing strategy, agreed to present the 2 ladies a mortgage—however provided that their husbands would cosign. Her mom, who was joint account holder with Robbins’ father on a number of private accounts on the financial institution, “stood up and marched proper over to the teller and promptly began to shut all their accounts.” After that, Robbins chuckles, “they have been very happy to present her a mortgage in a short time.”
Residing life as an open ebook
On-line, viewers get a peek into Robbins’ personal marriage and household life, say, in a video of the couple tenting out of their yard or in a podcast interview along with her son Oakley about his nervousness. She embraces the social media influencer mannequin of self-promotion, showing on social media each day—usually a number of instances a day—with a phrase of recommendation or just a momentary thought she needs to share. Typically, the recordings happen alongside mountain climbing trails close to her dwelling in southern Vermont or in her workplace or studio, whereas others she movies whereas she’s getting within the automobile to go to yoga class.
When requested about her willingness to share a lot of her life on-line, she says that whereas she has no intention of turning her life right into a actuality present, “I actually simply love deeper conversations, and I feel we’re all largely going via the identical issues, and we are able to study from it.”
One such private revelation got here final 12 months on the day of her son’s highschool promenade. He hadn’t made dinner reservations, purchased a corsage or ready for the climate (a rainstorm was headed their means). Robbins describes how she repeatedly tried to intervene to assist her son whereas he, as youngsters do, resisted any help. One among her daughters occurred to be dwelling visiting and watched the scene go down with scorn, imploring, “’Mother, allow them to…. It’s their promenade. Not yours.’”
Robbins took the plea to coronary heart and commenced repeating the chorus “allow them to” to herself. Inside per week, it turned a mantra that she says allowed her to rise above the annoyances, inconveniences and outright offenses of each day life and relationships. She felt the white-knuckled grip she had held on a lot of her life begin to loosen.
Robbins shared the revelation on her social media channels, and the posts blew up instantly. When she began receiving photos of followers’ tattoos that includes the phrase “allow them to,” she knew she was on to one thing large.
The Let Them Concept
In December 2024, she printed The Let Them Concept, a extremely anticipated launch that particulars how the observe works in each day life and in quite a lot of relationship eventualities.
Necessary to the idea is an equal measure of private accountability captured within the accompanying phrase, “let me.” She explains within the ebook, “Whenever you say Let Them, you make a aware resolution to not permit different individuals’s habits to hassle you. Whenever you say Let Me, you’re taking accountability for what you do subsequent. What I really like about “Let Me“ is that it instantly reveals you what you possibly can management. And there’s a lot you possibly can management. Your angle. Your habits. Your values, your wants, your wishes and what you need to do in response to what simply occurred.”
The speculation is one among big private development for Robbins, whose work has largely targeted on particular person motivation and self-empowerment, and takes her recommendation right into a broader realm of relationships and group.
“This can be my legacy,” Robbins says. “[We’ve] all missed this hidden first step to non-public development and alter…. Earlier than you possibly can take management of your personal life, you have to first cease attempting to manage all people else’s.”
It additionally acts as an antidote of types to the tendency many people have to match our lives to others in a contemporary world narrated by social media feeds and slick advertising and marketing imagery.
“The facility is in studying how you can let individuals have damaging opinions, as a result of that’s what you’re afraid of,“ she says. “That’s why you’re managing every part. Since you’re attempting to verify no one has a damaging opinion about you. Effectively, what when you simply did the other? What when you simply allow them to have a damaging opinion, and also you then targeted on saying, ‘Let me make choices that make me pleased with myself’?”
A renewed ardour rises in Robbins’ voice when she talks concerning the Let Them Concept and its prospects. “Allow them to, allow them to,” she insists, “as a result of you’ve got such an enormous, superb life to stay, and you could take all the ability again that you simply’ve been giving to different individuals…. Use that point and power in your desires, your happiness and the imaginative and prescient that you’ve on your life.”
Is letting go of worrying what others assume is a pure subsequent step for a 56-year-old girl who has dug herself out of debt, efficiently raised three youngsters, nurtured a wedding of 28 years, launched a thriving media empire and made her means into the earbuds of thousands and thousands of People? Maybe. But it surely’s a knowledge we might all stand to listen to too.
4 issues Mel Robbins needs you to know
Robbins has a message for you: “Should you’re studying SUCCESS®, you even have large targets and also you need to do large issues.” Listed here are her 4 tricks to set you in movement:
Allow them to: “The extra that you simply let different individuals stay their lives, the higher your life will get, and the extra that you simply let different individuals be who they’re, the higher your relationships are going to be.”
Flip the script: “One of many largest alternatives in your life, actually, is to learn to flip persistent comparability right into a type of inspiration…. Let [other people] encourage you, allow them to train you, allow them to present you the best way and allow them to present you the method.”
Comply with the method: “Each enterprise has a method. Comply with it…. You’ll make it distinctive as a result of you may be placing your self into the method. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Comply with the method, and use it to your benefit.”
Get “unstuck“ in 5 seconds: “Deal with getting off the bed within the morning and simply beginning the day. Merely saying that I’m going to get up each day and get off the bed, and I’m going to do one factor that I’ve been avoiding—and that may very well be [taking] a 10-minute stroll, it may very well be journaling, it may very well be meditating—is an act of defiance. Use the 5 Second Rule (5, 4, 3, 2, 1—go) and it’ll take you a couple of week, and also you’ll really feel utterly completely different since you’ll be transferring in a brand new course.”
This text initially appeared within the March/April 2025 difficulty of SUCCESS journal.
Images by Brian Nevins
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