MBA2668 Must Read: The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins

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Today I'm gonna break down why this simple idea in this book changed the way I show up as a business owner, as a creator, as a human being, and why I recommend this book to so many friends and family members. First of all, the proof is in the pudding. This book has sold over 5 million copies and has been a smash hit in 2025. Like this podcast, the book is very no fluff, very raw, very practical, and actually very relatable. Foreign welcome back to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. Before we jump in, can I get 30 seconds of your time? We love guiding you on your business journey and we want to help even more people build their dream businesses and lives. So if you could hit the follow button on this podcast, it would be greatly appreciated. It's completely free and it helps us out more than you know. Thanks. There's so much I want to cover in today's episode, but I've worked hard to pull out the best nuggets so that you can get Inspired to read the let them theory as well. First of all, let's talk about the author, Mel Robbins. If she sounds familiar, it's because she's a baller. Okay? She has done some really successful things, including this book of course, which has been a smash hit. But she's had the number one podcast in the world for most of 2025. I mean that is a huge feat. I mean, she's been on top of the charts, on top of Rogan and all of the other mainstream podcasts that you know of. And her podcast is a self help type of podcast, which is not particularly mainstream. But because she's so relatable, because of her work and what she presents and the experts she brings on, she's been able to really smash that ceiling and really do an amazing job with her podcast. I'm obviously rooting for a colleague here. Mel Robinson's podcast and our podcast share the same network, SiriusXM. But the numbers don't lie and she's been prolific for the last few years. Now she has another bestselling book called the Five Second Rule. She's have a lot of success on stages. She's got one of the most popular TED talks on the Ted.com website. And she does it with a down to earth personal style that a lot of people can relate to. She doesn't speak in metaphors or vague theory. She teaches from real life challenges, deep research that she's done with experts and years of practical experience. She's not just a motivational speaker, she's a motivational doer. And that's why the let them theory hits so hard for so many people, because of the examples she shows in the book in her own life, and how it's helped her go through some tough times. So what's the big idea of this book? Well, the concept is, is that you have to let people do what they want to do and stop trying to control people, stop trying to make whatever they do your problem. This means you got to let them not believe in your idea. You got to let them say no. You got to let them misunderstand you and misunderstand your work. You have to let them leave your company, you have to let them copy your business, you have to let them be upset with you. Why? Because the alternative is trying to control and convince people and that's impossible. And you trying to do that in your everyday life is causing burnout, it's causing distraction, is causing you to have low self worth. Mel's whole thesis is that peace comes from acceptance and the most powerful boundary you can set is to let people be who they want to be. You don't need to fix, you don't need to chase, you don't need to explain. You just need to focus on building your thing for the people who get it, people that actually want it. Now, this book talks a lot about life, but I'm going to relate a lot of the concepts to business so that we can apply it to our own companies or our own projects. But also we can also see how it could apply to our own personal lives as well. Let me start with key insight number one, which is let them leave. There's an entire chapter dedicated to this one idea, and it's absolute gold. And that's when someone decides to leave. They leave your team, your customer base, your life. Let them. Let them leave. Early in my career, I would take it so personally when someone left our program or left us as a customer, when they even unsubscribe to our email list. But here's the truth. It's not rejection, it's redirection. If someone's on aligned with your values, your vision, or what you're doing, they're not your people. And that's great news. But as an entrepreneur, I always want to improve and I want to know why they're leaving just so that I can know if there's any way I can improve in a way that's aligned with my values. And if they're leaving because of reasons I don't want to change, then that's fine. In business, Churn isn't just a metric. Churn is when customers leave. It's also a filter. Especially in the first few years of your business, you trying to hold on to people who aren't bought into what you're doing will kill your momentum. You guys just let them go. This chapter helped me shift from trying to retain everyone to focusing on serving the people who actually want to be where I serve them best. Are you buried under nonstop meetings and struggling to remember what was discussed or agreed? Next steps? Don't worry, you're not alone. I've been there. And luckily, there's Fireflies. Fireflies is an AI teammate that keeps track of it all. From key takeaways to next steps. Fireflies keeps you organized. This AI tool is incredible. It transcribes, it summarizes, it analyzes your conversations that you have in your meetings so you can get the most out of every single meeting. It's the smarter way to work, helping you understand what was said, generate personalized Notes to find information that was discussed and also to take action action on the next steps that you have to take in your business. It also develops workflows to create internal efficiencies so that your meetings are getting more and more productive. Listen, I mention on this call all the time that I like to have as little meetings as possible, but they're required in order to collaborate with the team to train your team members to get things done. So what we like to do is use Fireflies when we run these meetings on Zoom. It makes it so much easier to extract what was discussed and what needs to be done next, meaning to create our to dos for the week or the month or the quarter so everybody knows what they need to do or get done so that we accomplish our goals. How many times have you been in a meeting where you discuss some great ideas and things that you should do and then nothing happens? 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Key insight number two. Let them talk. One of the things I learned from this book is you have to just accept the fact that people will talk ill of you. People will disagree. At the best, being polite. People will say nasty things about your business, about your products, about you as a person. You can't stop them. Whenever you post something, you launch something, you build something, and then someone decides to to run their mouth. There's nothing you can do about that. So Mel's advice is let them. Let them say bad things. Critics don't build things. Spectators don't ship products. Okay? And people who talk are mostly not your customer. Okay. People who talk are mostly usually just doing the least amount of work and are not committed to doing anything. This chapter really helped me stop overthinking What I said publicly, it reminded me that I'm not here to help everybody. I'm here to help people that want to be helped, that resonate with my message, period. Let them talk if they don't agree with me and let me build right. Let me do what I got to do. But the key takeaway here is that you can't stop them. You can't stop them from talking, you can't stop them from criticizing. Just accept the fact that people will criticize you, people will say bad things about you and just be like, okay with it, because there's nothing you could do. Let them talk bad about me. And that really empowers you to just focus on what you do best. Key insight number three Let them be wrong about you. This one stings. This is where Mel dives into identity and reputation. How so many of us get stuck trying to explain ourselves to people who already made up their minds about us. In the book, Mel writes, if someone wants to believe something about you that's inaccurate, let them. Trying to change their mind is a waste of your time. Oh man, this is so true. This hit me hard because in my early days as an entrepreneur, I used to explain myself constantly. Why I left teaching, why I charged for my program, why I made certain business decisions. I just say, let them right. People are going to interpret you and what you do through their own lens, through their own baggage. That's human nature. You don't need to control their lens. You need to stay true to yours. Here's how some of these insights I learned from this book. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins help me transform my mindset and how I run my business. I no longer overly obsess about unsubscribes to my email list or refund requests. I let them. When a team member quits or doesn't align with me anymore, I let them go or I let them leave. When a podcast episode doesn't land with everyone the way I hoped it would, I just let it happen. It's okay. It frees me up to make bold moves, to test new ideas, to show up more fully without the fear of rejection, even if that rejection's within myself. Right? And this doesn't mean you don't learn from your mistakes. It means that you don't get dragged down by the result. If the result is not where you want it to be, that's okay. Learn from it. Move forward. Because often the result is out of your control. What people think and how they resonate with it is out of your control. And when you stop fearing rejection, you start attracting the right customers, the right team, the right opportunities. And of course, this is not just business. This book is really a great book that sets your mind right when it comes to your friends, your family, and even strangers. You can't build a healthy life if you're always managing other people's emotions. And a lot of us are walking around every day trying to manage other people's emotions, thinking it's our responsibility. This book gives you emotional leverage, so to speak. It gives you the freedom to stop chasing people, to stop explaining your value, to stop personalizing everything and thinking that it's all your fault or all your responsibility. No, sometimes things are just how they are because that's how they are. And that space that you create for yourself, that's clarity, that's momentum, that's confidence. And that's where confidence breeds. Listen, I'm telling you firsthand. When I was reading this book, I knew Mel was a smart woman and highly successful. But this is not earth shattering information or ideas. It's earth shattering in its delivery, right? In its application. Mel takes a concept that you might have heard of before and makes you feel it. It's short, it's a practical read, it's no fluff. And more importantly, it's something that you could start applying today. As soon as you start reading this book I'm talking about in the first few pages, you're going to start seeing yourself in the examples. You're going to start applying some of the stuff. Hopefully as soon as you put the book down. This is one of those books that's so well articulated, you find yourself recommending it within minutes of finishing. This is a well written book. It's also an incredibly easy read. It reads like a novel because there's so many great stories and examples. And honestly, you are so surprised by how honest Mel is in the book. She really exposes a lot of her faults, a lot of her mishaps so that you can learn, so you can benefit. So I tip my hat to Mel's bravery and authenticity. So here are my final thoughts and kind of biggest takeaway from this whole book. This whole book is all about, you cannot control other people. You cannot control how they think, how they feel, how they act, how they react, how they do anything. Okay? You cannot control other people. Right? You're not a dictator, okay? You can't make people feel a certain way. You can't make people like you. You can't make people be happy. You have to let them be mad. If they're mad. You have to let them be sad. If they're sad, you have to let them be meh. Indifferent. If they're indifferent, different, there's nothing you can do about. So stop trying, okay? And too many of us are in this cycle of trying to manage everybody and make sure everybody's happy, make sure everybody's okay and make sure no, no matter how much you work on that, how much effort and energy you're going to put into that, you can't guarantee that you can't ensure anybody is going to be anything other than yourself. Now the second part of the Lethin theory is the let me. Right? So she really emphasizes this. The book and I didn't touch on this before but this book is not only about let them do something but also let me what am I going to do about it. Okay? So if somebody is being difficult, I'm going to let them be difficult. But I'm going to do this so that I protect my own energy or I'm going to remove myself from the situation or I'm going to make sure that I don't, you know, schedule lunches with this person who's always negative or whatever it might be. Okay, the let them than let me. It's like a two parter here. So you got to make sure you do the let me part too. You can't just do the let them part because then you become resentful and you don't really empower yourself to take control of the situation. There are a lot of things you can do to change the situation for yourself and you can't just say oh well let them do this and then you don't do anything about it or you don't do anything to prevent that situation from affecting you again. So I love that balance of the let them and then let me. Mel Robbins has done an incredible job with this book. She deserves all the success that she has gotten from this book or have received from this book. It's well written. I absolutely recommend it as a must read. It will help you become a better leader, help you create faster. It'll protect your energy in the process because you're not trying to manage other people's emotions. And if you want to hear more must read episodes books that I have read and I give you kind of my summary, my takeaway, how you could apply those takeaways but also why you should read the book yourself. Just go to 100- MBA-NET go to our website on the top navigation. You'll see it says book reviews all our must read episodes are there. We have literally hundreds for you to go through with all different kinds of book titles. You could search by topic or by title or by author and you can find all my thoughts on all the books I've read over the years. Until next time, let them talk, let them doubt, let them go and let you do what's important for you. Keep building. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever, you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to to growing your business. And now that you subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.