Jay Shetty’s goal is to make wisdom go viral. So far, the British-born author, podcast host and former monk has succeeded: He’s a best-selling author of Think Like A Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day, the creator of over 400 videos with a total of over eight billion views, a life and purpose coach with over 48 million followers across social media, the host of the popular health and wellness podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, on which he’s interviewed everyone from Novak Djokovic to Oprah Winfrey, and, most recently, a co-founder—along with his wife, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty—of Sama Tea, an organic tea...

Jay Shetty’s goal is to make wisdom go viral. So far, the British-born author, podcast host and former monk has succeeded: He’s a best-selling author of Think Like A Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day, the creator of over 400 videos with a total of over eight billion views, a life and purpose coach with over 48 million followers across social media, the host of the popular health and wellness podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, on which he’s interviewed everyone from Novak Djokovic to Oprah Winfrey, and, most recently, a co-founder—along with his wife, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty—of Sama Tea, an organic tea line that launches this month. 

“I grew up in a family where I felt like I had three options—I could be a doctor, lawyer or a failure,” says Shetty, 34, from his home in the Beachwood Canyon area of Los Angeles. On top of that, he was bullied for being overweight and for being one of the few Indian kids in his school. But around age 14 things began to change. He lost weight, found sports, became a bit of a class clown and began to think about what he cared about. “My parents started to recognize that I was treading my own path, and they started to almost back off a little bit and just say, Let him explore and let him experiment and see where he wants to go,” he says. The surprising part to those who knew him best was that what he found himself most passionate about was spirituality.

This month, Shetty, along with his wife, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty (left), will launch Sama Tea, an organic tea line.

Photo: Jack Strutz

Shetty grew up in a Hindu but not particularly religious family in North London. As a teenager, he read books and attended talks by people who had overcome adversity. A monk named Gauranga Das happened to be giving a talk at his university while Shetty was studying management. “I genuinely had zero interest in hearing a monk speak, because I thought to myself, I’m interested in people who’ve gone from nothing to something, not nothing to nothing. And what am I going to learn from this? What is he going to teach me?” Shetty recalls. “The monk starts speaking—he’s wearing robes, he has an Indian accent, he doesn’t look cool to me…and slowly I’m listening and I’m just becoming more and more captivated because he’s talking about things that I’ve never heard before—about how to use your talents and gifts in the service of others.”

Afterward, Shetty introduced himself to Gauranga Das, who invited him to his other talks around London. Shetty, then 18, became infatuated with the monk and was invited back to the ashram in India. “I started spending my Christmas and summer vacations from college with him in India,” says Shetty. After visiting the ashram for several stints, he felt that the logical next step was to become a monk and to live there full-time. Not everyone in his life got it. “When I told my friends in my final year of university that I was turning down my corporate job offers to go live as a monk, they were just like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why would you do that? Why would you give this all up?’ ” 

““I learned a lot from him. If you just spend an hour or two around him, you’re bound to pick up on some great advice.””

— Big Sean

Life at an ashram in India wasn’t exactly what he expected, from the minor (one room to sleep for snorers and another for non-snorers) to the more profound. He woke daily at 4 a.m. and divided his time between personal growth and helping others. “On the first day when we joined, we were told, ‘This is not heaven, this is not a perfect paradise; this is a hospital.’ And it means that each and every one of us has a disease, we have an impurity,” Shetty says. “We are not that disease, we are not that impurity, but you’re going to find teachers who act like patients. You’re going to find doctors who have the same challenges as you.”

After three years in the ashram, the elders told him it was time for him to leave. “I think it was their nice way of saying, ‘We don’t think you’re a monk,’ ” Shetty says. He had given up everything, from his prized soccer jerseys to his chocolate habit. He returned to his parents’ home in England not knowing who had won the last World Cup or who the prime minister was. He acted like someone who had just been dumped, eating Cadbury chocolate, listening to Drake and binge-watching How I Met Your Mother. 

After a month, he forced himself to incorporate some of his old spiritual routine to his secular life: waking up early to meditate, getting fully dressed to go to the library and read and think about what he wanted to do next. He ended up getting a spot in the global consulting company Accenture ‘s grad program, in which he was about five years older than the rest of his cohort. He taught a meditation workshop at an offsite meeting that was so successful he began to teach mindfulness across the company.

““It was clear to us, to our audience, and to the world, that Jay Shetty was something special. And I knew he’d be a star.””

— Arianna Huffington

In 2015 Ellyn Shook, the chief leadership and human resources officer of Accenture, introduced Shetty to Arianna Huffington, the founder and CEO at Thrive Global. “We didn’t exactly have a specific role open, but when I met with Jay I was so taken with him and his mission—to make wisdom go viral—that we agreed to produce three videos together, see if they got any traction and then talk about next steps,” Huffington says. “The first video got two million views, the second 10 million views. And the third got another five million. It was clear to us, to our audience, and to the world, that Jay Shetty was something special. And I knew he’d be a star.” 

Another fan is the rapper Big Sean, who was a recent guest on Shetty’s podcast. “I’ve been into that spiritual community of people from Ram Dass to Deepak Chopra to Abraham-Hicks to Marianne Williamson—somehow Jay Shetty just came into my frequency. As soon as we met, it literally felt like my long-lost brother I haven’t seen since another lifetime,” the rapper says. “I learned a lot from him. If you just spend an hour or two around him, you’re bound to pick up on some great advice.”

“I equated tea with presence,” says Shetty of the inspiration behind the new tea line (above). “I equated tea with my mom’s love.”

Photo: Jack Strutz

Shetty moved to the U.S. in 2016, first to New York and in 2018 to L.A. Now, he’s trying to learn the new rules in an increasingly crowded wellness space. “The wellness scene?” he says. “I don’t know if I pay much attention to it.” Sama, his tea line with his wife, who is a plant-based ayurvedic cook, was inspired by a time when his immigrant mother would pick him up from day care and they’d have a cup of tea together to mark the end of the day. “I equated tea with presence,” he says. “I equated tea with my mom’s love.”

But there is further defining to do. Consider the most notable motivational personae in the U.S.: If Brené Brown is about vulnerability and Gwyneth Paltrow is about clean living and Oprah Winfrey is about truth, then who is Jay Shetty, and what is he all about? “Purpose and service,” he says. “I want people to discover their purpose. I think the greatest lack in the world is purposeless living. I believe we become better people, better partners, better professionals, better parents when we know our purpose and we live our purpose.” 

What he’s chewing on is how best to sum up his approach. “I’m trying to find a conscious word for this, I’m trying to coin it. I haven’t figured it out yet. It’s almost been trying to build an empathetic empire or a conscious empire. And the word empire to me is too aggressive and too strong for who I am, but it has that element of strategy and sincerity together,” he says. “I want to be the person that unites both those worlds.”