(NEXSTAR) — The Mel Robbins Show premieres on Sept. 16. Before the show, here’s Five Things to Know about Mel:
1. Before she was a motivational speaker and best-selling author, Mel Robbins earned a law degree at Boston College Law School and worked as a criminal defense attorney in New York City. She went on to join CNN as a legal analyst and covered the George Zimmerman trial.
2. Before she became a life coach herself, she hired a life coach who told her what she should be: a life coach. “At first I was like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she told her the alumni magazine for her alma mater Dartmouth College, in 2018.
Robbins was good at helping others figure out solutions to complex problems. Soon she attracted clients such as executives from Johnson & Johnson and Wells Fargo. “The mistake most of us make is that we think in order to change anything, we’ve got to blow everything up,” she said. “At the heart of innovation is a small decision somebody makes to change something. Those small decisions add up.”
3. She’s been there. Robbins says she hit “rock bottom” in 2008 when she found herself unemployed, deep in debt and at risk of losing her house, her marriage, and her sobriety. She says she couldn’t even get out of bed. That’s when she says a commercial showing a rocket launch on TV sparked an idea that led to “The Five Second Rule” that helped her take action and control of her life.
4. In June 2011, she spoke at TEDx San Francisco about the psychological “5 Second Rule” trick that changed her life. Her talk, viewed more than 20 million times on YouTube as of August 2019, has become one of the most-watched of all time and launched her public speaking career.
5. According to Speaking.com, Robbins is the most-booked female in the world on the speaking circuit.