Our guest this week is Mel Robbins, the most booked female speaker in the world and the bestselling author of The 5 Second Rule and The High 5 Habit. Her TEDx Talk, How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over, has been viewed over 27 million times.  Mel is at the top of her career and has seen so much success as an entrepreneur, but she went through a lot to get where she is today. She struggled with anxiety, panic attacks, negative self-talk, and self-sabotaging behaviors. So how did she go from rock-bottom to massive success? In our conversation with Mel she shared all of the details.  Entrepreneurship gone wrong After about 13 years of marriage, Mel’s husband quit his corporate job and said he wanted to fulfill his dream of running a restaurant. At first she really was against the idea because Mel knew how hard it would be as she grew up working in restaurants and they had a lot of bills to pay. But after her husband kept insisting and pushing for it, she agreed they could try it, but that they would give themselves a timeline.  They agreed that they had six months to write a business plan and raise some money, and if the deadline wasn’t made he would go back to his corporate job. And sure enough, her husband and his friend were able to meet the deadline and they opened a small pizza restaurant outside of Boston. That location worked out so well they decided to open a second location and they threw everything they could into that location, which looking back on it, Mel knows it was a mistake to do that. They used college funds, 401ks, they took out a home equity and they started a second location. The problem was when it comes to restaurants, the statistics show that one out of the first locations always fails. And when the second location opened it was 2007, right before the financial crisis. They found themselves $800k in debt with a mortgage and three kids under the age of 10.  Mel shares, “Nowhere in my life plan or my vision board was an image of a 40 year old, drunk, unemployed woman who could not get out of bed. But that became my life. I became somebody I didn't recognize because when the you know what hit the fan in my life, and it happens to all of us, I rose to the occasion, like a high functioning adult, I basically drank myself into the ground. And then every time I saw my husband, I wanted to kill him and I screamed at him. And you know, funny, those two things didn't really work to solve the problems. But I kept doing it, and doing it, and doing it.” She knew what she needed to do to get back on track--but she was consumed with fear, confusion, and anger and she found herself stuck. And one night as she was giving herself a pep talk about the next day, she had this idea of what if I could move myself so fast out of bed in the morning that I got things done before anxiety hits me. That was the genesis of the idea for her book The 5 Second Rule. And sure enough the next morning came and she launched herself out of bed like a rocket and faced the day.  And as Mel shares, we are always one decision away from a different life. Her life would be very different now if she had never decided that morning to launch out of bed.  Mel’s first presentation did not go as planned  Today Mel is the most booked female speaker in the world, but her first speaking experience did not go well. Her first speech was for TEDx and she had never given a speech on stage before in her life.  As Mel shares, she was extremely nervous and anxious, she got a neck rash because of it. She talked way too fast, she forgot how to end her speech, and she ended up giving out her email address on stage. She decided she would never give another speech again.  But a year later the speech was put up online and people started seeing it and reaching out to her to ask her to speak. And she ended up speaking at events for free because she didn’t realize people paid for that kind of thing. But after talking with a woman after one of her events she realized people do