You’re listening to Burnt Toast! We are Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay.

For our last August hiatus episode, we’re looking back at a conversation we ran back in February of this year — exploring the work of attorney turned self-help guru Mel Robbins.

Did Mel steal the concept of “let them?”

Is she just Andrew Huberman for the “We Can Do Hard Things” crowd?

Is high-fiving yourself in the mirror every morning a diet?

As you’ll hear, Corinne and I didn’t totally agree… until we did. Let’s get into it.

To hear our discussion, you’ll need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Subscriptions are $7 per month or $70 for the year.

Episode 207 Transcript

Corinne

Today, we are talking about motivational speaker and author Mel Robbins and we have maybe some surprising opinions on this topic.

Virginia

We have different takes about Mel Robbins. Some evolving takes as well. In the course of researching this episode, I think we went on a little Mel Robbins journey.

Corinne

I’m going to introduce this topic by saying that I first heard about Mel Robbins a few weeks ago. My coach at the gym was like, “Have you heard of Mel Robbins?” And I was like, “Hmm, sounds familiar? What is that?” And she was like, “I just listened to her on this podcast, and I saw she was on Glennon Doyle, and I was just wondering if you knew who she was.” And I didn’t know who she was, but I was like I’ll listen to her Glennon Doyle episode.

I listened to it, and I liked it. I found it interesting and helpful.

And then, just a few days later, you messaged me, and you were like, “should we talk about this person on the podcast?”

Virginia

Yes, because I had no idea who she was. We should be clear, this is someone with 22 million followers on Instagram. Us not knowing her was an oversight. She’s an enormous celebrity, but I had somehow missed her completely. Amy texted me one of her reels and was like, this feels like a Burnt Toast episode waiting to happen and I sent it to you.

Corinne

And I was kind of like… No.

Virginia

You were like, she’s not a diet. I like her. It’s fine.

Corinne

I enjoyed her episode on We Can Do Hard Things. She’s a run of the mill self help-y person.

Just to give a little background, she has been a self help person for a long time. One of her first biggest things was she did one of the early TEDx talks that went insanely viral.

Virginia

In about 2011 or 2012.

Corinne

She had this book called The Five Second Rule. The concept is basically if you’re thinking about doing something, count down to five and then do it. Which, like, how is that helpful? But okay, a lot of people found it extremely helpful.

Virginia

Is it that it’s supposed to make quicker to do a thing you don’t want to do, or make you pause before doing a thing you should not do?

Corinne

I think it’s preventing you from overthinking / talking out yourself out of something.

Virginia

I guess that’s not my struggle. But I can see for people for whom that is a struggle, having somebody push you off the diving board—I mean, as someone who would never jump off a diving board, I would need to be pushed. I get it.

Corinne

She also has a podcast.

Virginia

The Wall Street Journal calls her “a billion view podcaster,” and Time Magazine says she gives millions of listeners around the globe a reason to believe in themselves.

Corinne

She’s very, very, very popular.

Virginia

Very popular. I also want to note that she is someone who is writing books about how to change your habits, how to overcome emotional hurdles. She is not a psychologist. She is not a social worker. She is not a therapist of any kind. She is a former attorney who first became famous because she started doing legal analysis on CNN. She covered the George Zimmerman trial for them and then that led to her first book in 2011 which was called, Stop Saying You’re Fine. So this high powered lawyer backstory to self help Guru is a is an interesting path.

Corinne

So I did get her book to research for this episode—

Virginia

You got the newest book?

Corinne

I have her newest book, The Let Them Theory, but I want to talk about that later.

But at the beginning of that book, she goes over her story, and to be honest, sitting here right now, can’t remember the details. But she has a struggle. Either she or husband got laid off, they’re having a hard time, and then she’s depressed, and that’s where the five second rule comes from. You’re saying she’s this high powered lawyer who goes into self help, but her story is like “I was struggling. I came up with this theory.”

Virginia

Okay, I also just want to note that—not to take away from her truth about herself—but Wikipedia also taught me that she and her husband own homes in three locations.

Corinne

I mean, she’s very wealthy right now.

Virginia

I’m just holding her personal struggle, overcoming how hard things were, and she is a former-attorney-turned-self-help-guru who owns three homes. So we can just hold those things together.

Corinne

Her struggle was 15 years ago.

Virginia

Different time! Maybe one home, one-and-a-half homes tops at that point.

Corinne

Do you want to talk kind of about her Instagram reels and the diet culture of it all?

Virginia

Yes. My assignment for this episode was Mel Robbins’ social media, which I spent some time on, and I’m still recovering from a little bit.

Her whole aesthetic on Instagram—you know how every influencer has their branding? Hers is very talk-to-the-camera, intense little pep talk videos. Or it’s excerpts from the podcast. She always starts the intense pep talks with like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” That’s her little like, “Hey, it’s your buddy Mel.” So this is our buddy, Mel, we’re going to talk about.

And, you know, they’re a real mix. Some of them are the five second rule. Sometimes it’s about letting go of your expectations for other people.

There was one reel I really liked where she’s just saying, like, if you’re going through a really hard time, like you have a terrible ex, or you are surviving some kind of trauma and you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, that is actually what you should be doing. That’s not you failing, that’s you having a logical reaction to a hard thing. And I was like, yes, okay, I’m on board that seems right. It is important that it’s okay for us to be sad when things are sad and angry, when things are unfair. Especially given the current state of the world. That vibe I’m here for.

But in this reel, she talks about how important it is to drink a glass of water in the morning before you drink your coffee.

And again, this is a former attorney turned life guru, so I’m not clear why is Mel Robbins the expert for me on water before coffee?

Corinne

I mean, I don’t know, but it does seem like a good idea.

Virginia

I’m not saying it’s not a good idea. I’m just saying, why is she presenting it?

Corinne

She’s famous now, she gets to give advice on anything she wants.

Virginia

She starts talking about hormones and it gets very science-y, but there are no citations. There’s not even a nutritionist sitting next to her. Maybe this is from a podcast interview she did with a nutritionist? I don’t know. But there is no sourcing. She has this very emphatic way of speaking, and she’s like, this is the thing you need to do. And I just watched this, and I was like, oh, so she’s a Huberman bro! This is Huberman husband stuff, right?

Corinne

I mean, it’s self help! She’s telling you what to do.

Virginia

Mel Robbins would love to tell us all what to do.

Corinne

In the intro to her book, where she’s talkin