Transcription
If you don't love waking up early, editing videos, training in the gym, eating healthy, whatever it is that your goal needs, if you don't love that process, then you don't really want to be that. You just want what it comes.
After creating viral videos about mindfulness and wellness, Jay Shetty took the world by storm in 2016. He was smiley and happy and full of all the right kind of vibes. Many followers found him really ridiculously good-looking. He soon became a symbol of modern mindfulness. It wasn't because his videos were better than any other influencer. It was because he told his story of being a Hindu monk turned motivational mentor to the masses. Offering dollar menu wellness and the public was loving it. They clung to his every word of hope. Hoping to become enlightened. His social media accounts grew into the millions and he shot to fame with an award-winning podcast and best-selling book in which he shared bite-sized bits of wisdom from his three years of living in an ashram in India. And then in true self-help fashion, he launched a life coaching school, a school that in many ways resembles a multi-level marketing company. Jay soon got to work with major brands like Gap, Coach, and BMW. Because every selfless monk drives a beamer. The monk was now marketed and monetized. And as the money rolled in, Hollywood rolled out the red carpet. He was featured on the cover of Vogue India. He appeared on Ellen multiple times, officiated Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's wedding, and appeared in her film This Is Me Now. He even got a cameo in 2024's Bad Boys with Will Smith. He and his wife moved into an $8 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills. And it seemed as if J. machete was unstoppable. He's been called the Tom Cruz of Krishna.
And his journey from monk to life coach became the foundation of a self-help empire. But there were cracks in that foundation. There were people who knew Jay before he was rubbing elbows with celebrities. There were even old blog posts written by Jay himself that told a different story than the one he tells today. And when the Guardian published an investigative report on him, people were shocked to find out that nothing with J. Shetty was as it seemed. This is the rise of J. Shetty, the scandalous self-help guru.
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Jay Shetty was born on September 6th of 1987 in London, England, and grew up in North London with his little sister Amy. His family came from India. His mother had been raised in Yemen, and his father was from Mangalore. They met through an arranged marriage before relocating to the UK where his father worked as an accountant and his mother as a financial adviser. His parents deliberately gave him and his sister westernized names as a result of the teasing his mother had faced over her own name when she arrived in England. Spirituality was not something Jay encountered later in life. When he was only 10 years old, his father began exploring different spiritual paths. And according to Jay's ex-girlfriend, Jay's spiritual transformation really took new heights in 2006 during a trip to France with members of the IPS, a youth organization connected with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, aka Isan, more commonly known as the Hadi Krishna Movement. Basically, the IPS is the youth group for Hadti Krishna. The movement was founded in 1966 in New York City and is a form of devotional Hinduism that centers on worshiping Krishna who they call the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They believe Krishna is the original source of all existence and the ultimate cause of all causes. In the 60s and 70s, the movement caught the attention of Western seekers looking for something outside mainstream religion. It offered an alternative to the usual spiritual paths and appeal to the counterculture of the time. At its core, is the main organization of the Hadti Krishna movement is all about bakti yoga or devotional service. Followers try to cultivate a loving personal relationship with Krishna through chanting, prayer, study, and service. Life in a Hadi Krishna household is highly structured. Daily routines often start early with chanting and meals are strictly vegetarian, usually prepared as offerings to Krishna before anyone eats. Followers avoid alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, and sexual activity outside of marriage. Children learn scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita and others, and take part in temple rituals, attend festivals, and sessions of call and response, chanting, devotional singing, dancing, and music. What they refer to as sava, which means selfless service, is another big part of life. Cooking, teaching, cleaning, or helping in temples is seen as a way to serve both Krishna and the community. It could also be referred to as free labor for the temples by believers. Iskan grew fast, opening temples, schools, and farm communities around the world. By the 1970s, it had become a recognizable spiritual movement, especially among Western youth seeking something meaningful outside traditional religion. Its emphasis on joy, ritual, music, and community made it appealing to young people. Tight-knit temple communities began to spring up everywhere. But not everything about Iskan has been so smooth. It's an organization with a dark past. The Hadi Krishna movement has been rocked by scandals such as allegations from the 1970s and 80s of horrific things done to children who were raised in the movement. Things that YouTube's community guidelines won't let me speak about. As if that wasn't bad enough, two Hadi Krishna members were unalived by a fellow devote for speaking out against the organization. Later, it had so many lawsuits from people who were raised in the movement as children for the unspeakable acts done to them that the large settlements Iscon paid out badly hurt the organization. It ended up filing for bankruptcy in Los Angeles and was forced to close all of its US boarding schools.
This part of J Shett's life matters because it shows the world he grew up in. One where devotion, obedience, hierarchy, and service weren't just encouraged, they were expected in cult-like fashion. Many former Hotti Krishna's have described the movement as spiritually powerful, but also rigid and sometimes controlling. Some critics even call it a cult, pointing to the strict rules, intense devotion, and the way authority was concentrated in the hands of a few senior leaders. Knowing the environment that Jay was so involved in is essential because it explains something often ignored in his rise to fame. He didn't invent the tools he later used. He learned them. These same patterns would later appear in the way Jay ran his own brand and built his public persona.
During his teenage years, Jay went through a mild rebellious phase. He started experimenting with substances, getting into fights, and immersing himself in rap music, something his parents strongly disliked. At age 16, he got a tattoo on his neck of a fist holding a microphone. Not long after returning from France with the IPS youth organization in 2006, Jay was appointed chair of IPS. It was a huge honor. A grainy YouTube video from later that same year shows him jumping and spinning at the center of a Kenan circle, which is Iskan's chanting and dancing ritual. This was all led by Gangadas, the same monk Jay would later say he first encountered a year later. This fact would be the first in a series of inconsistencies found in J. Shett's story and videos he had removed from the internet.
By the time he graduated high school, he had abandoned his early ambition to pursue graphic design. He once said, "I think when you grow up in an Indian immigrant family, your parents are constantly reminding you of how hard they worked to be there. Life's about working hard and doing well in school." And that has kind of always stayed as the compass. Following that compass, Jay attended Queen Elizabeth School in Barnett, a selective grammar school before going on to study at Cass Business School, now known as BA Business School at City St. George's University of London. On paper, Jay's path seemed ordinary. A steady career near his family, corporate life, and a solid middle class existence. But that would soon change.
During his first year at university, Jay's student life was normal. He attended classes, played soccer, hung out with friends, and liked to read about successful CEOs. He also liked to read about something else, celebrities. Growing up, he constantly read celebrity autobiographies. He was enamored with their fame and glamorous lifestyle. While at university, he attended a lecture that would become the centerpiece of his personal mythology. A friend convinced him to attend a talk by a Hindu monk, Goranga Doss, promising a night out at the bar afterward. Jay had very little interest in going. He had attended such lectures before, but only ones given by business leaders. Still, he was talked into it, and that night he claimed to have been captivated, saying, "My whole life, I'd been fascinated by people who'd gone from nothing to something." Rags to riches stories. Now, for the first time, I was in the presence of someone who' deliberately done the opposite. He believed the monk had a meaningful life and from that point on Jay began following Ganga across the UK attending his university and corporate talks then traveling to India during summer and holiday breaks to stay at the ashram while the monk was there. One person who was on that same trip said Jay came in with a London rude boy attitude but immersed himself in the lifestyle. Jay split his time between corporate internships and ashram life, even hosting small weekly discussions on campus to share what he was learning. Gradually, the pool toward a spiritual path grew stronger, and by the time he graduated in 2010, he had made the announcement that he would leave the corporate world behind and dedicate himself to life as a monk.
According to Jay, it was that one lecture that set him on the spiritual journey. But here, the first inconsistency appears. Records and accounts show that he had already been interacting with Goranga Doas and attending Iskan events at least a year prior which means the lecture may not have been the single transformative moment he later portrayed throughout his career and possibly the reason why the video of him in a kerton circle led by Ganga Doss was removed from the internet. Jay said he then traveled to a Hindu ashram in a village near Mumbai where he claimed to have given up materialism and the pursuit of worldly success by trading his suit for orange robes, shaving his head and taking a thin pallet for a bed in a bare room alongside a dozen other men. For the next three years, he said he lived as a penniless monk in which he devoted himself to service, living and traveling across India, Europe, and the UK, where he built communities, fed the homeless, and taught meditation. This became J. Shett's origin story, and it's compelling. But when journalists started digging into the details, a different picture began to emerge. According to the Guardian, Jay moved into an Iscon property outside Watford around 2010. He did travel to India, but his previous blog posts and accounts claimed that these trips were brief, reportedly totaling less than four months. Much of his time was spent writing, blogging, and speaking publicly rather than living in seclusion. He was even teaching a class at a university throughout all this. Former members of the movement told reporters that his lifestyle did not resemble the traditional monastic discipline. On the contrary, he was often seen in casual clothes like sweatpants rather than robes. Even the timing of the transformative lecture Jay attended is inconsistent. Jay has variously said he was 18, 19, or in his early 20s when he attended. And whether it happened during or after college shifts depending on the retelling. These inconsistencies are more than minor memory lapses. It's the very story that legitimizes his public persona. But despite the gaps and shifting details in his story, it wouldn't prevent him from using it to position himself as a spiritual guru and eventually turn himself into a celebrity and global brand.
It was also during this period, while Jay still described himself as a monk, that he met Rody Devlucia, who would later become his wife. Their introduction was indirect. As part of his training, Jay was tasked with guiding Rod's mother through a spiritual routine. She liked him and later passed along Rod's contact information so Jay could help her get more involved with Iscon's youth movement. Jay had seen her before and found her attractive, but he was so focused on his spiritual path that he didn't make anything of it. When her mom gave him her contact info, he passed it on to his sister. Through that connection, Rody and Jay's sister became friends. This led to Rody eventually meeting him. At the time, Jay was a tattooed, shaved headed devote who claimed to have little interest in romance. Still, Rody later recalled being struck by him. One day, Jay's sister said to him, "You know, Rody really likes someone. It's you." Jay admitted he liked her, too. And eventually, as he left the monk life behind, he and Rody grew closer and started a relationship. At the end of 2013, after leaving the ashram to go back to London, Jay proposed to Rody with a horsedrawn carriage ride and a surprise acappella group singing Bruno Mars. She said yes.
Not long after, Jay began a corporate job at Accenture. But he didn't step away from his spiritual path. Instead, he began offering meditation sessions and workshops for colleagues, translating the teachings of the Bavad Gita into corporate friendly lessons about mindfulness, decision-making, and leadership. He spoke to hundreds at a time, using interactive exercises, relatable analogies, and stories from the scriptures to connect spiritual ideas to modern work life. The corporate world was thirsty for more and Jay eventually spoke at over 15 major companies including NASDAQ, the BBC, the London School of Economics and the Bank of England to name a few. He hosted workshops and even took small groups of executives on retreats to Iskcon centers in India, giving them a taste of Krishna consciousness and showing how it could fit into their everyday lives. The meetups and workshops gave Jay something he didn't have before, an audience. an audience where he repeated the same myths truths about having been a monk who lived in an ashram for three years instead of just four months. We know this thanks to his blog from that time and the Guardians expose on him by journalist John McDermott. Jay and his lawyers claim he spent 3 years in an Indian ashram as a monk specifically from 2010 to 2013. We know this is false because he wrote in the essence, which was the name of his blog, that he didn't go to India until October of 2010. Then in early 2011, he wrote on the blog, quote, "Came back from India, went to see a few people at City University, was a good laugh. Then planned an action-packed weekend, but got sick. Stuck at home in bed for 10 days. Few nice souls came and visited. came back to stay at the temple where I've been busy going to programs, distributing flyers and books on the streets all over the UK and enjoying festivals. After almost four months in India, I realized that there was so much to process from my trip. End quote. Once the expose came out, the Guardian reported that Jay's blog went private, but that doesn't matter because we have the Wayback Machine, which archived everything from the essence.
Regarding Jay's time as a monk once he returned to the real world, The Guardian also noted that quote, "Despite traveling constantly and spending time online while he was a monk, Shetty said he had difficulty reassimilating into society after leaving the ashram in early 2013. "That was the hardest point in my life," Shetty told the host of the British daytime TV show This Morning in early 2023. "I feel like I experienced depression for the first time. I had forgotten how to do small talk. I didn't know who the prime minister was. I didn't know who won the World Cup. I didn't even know how to have a conversation that wasn't deep and meaningful. He didn't mention he'd spent time a few miles from the TV studio blogging and lecturing students at City University. End quote.
Yeah. Was it hard to turn your back on being a monk? Like when you had to sort of when you went back into society, was it was it quite a weird sort of time? That was probably the hardest point in my life. I feel like I experienced depression for the first time because I didn't know who the prime minister was. I didn't know who'd won the World Cup. I felt like you knew your vocation wasn't being a monkey. So, you had to get back into society. Totally. But I'd forgotten how to do small talk. Like, I didn't even know how to have a conversation that wasn't deep and meaningful. So, it took me quite a while to feel like I could get comfortable again.
As Jay spoke to his colleagues and corporate executives, he told them how as a monk he embraced a minimalist lifestyle, woke up at 4:00 a.m., took cold showers, simplified his diet and did up to 8 hours of daily meditation for 3 years, and his fake origin story worked like a charm. By the mid-2010s, Jay started marketing himself to a broader audience and not just Hotti Krishna devotees and the corporate world. In 2016, he started posting motivational videos online. It was a simple move that quickly launched him into fame and fortune. His videos spread rapidly across Facebook and YouTube, later finding a home on Instagram and other platforms. Jay's rise was meteoric, but it was not solely the result of his own hustle, as his later narrative would suggest. It seemed that Jay leveraged his standing within Iscon and the IPS youth group, encouraging dozens of young devotees to help film, edit, share, and promote his content, all done without any compensation. Their free labor was framed as devotional service and a way of serving Krishna by spreading Jay's positive messages. One former member recalled that Jay was treated as a celebrity within the community and that people were eager to help him because of his perceived role as a spiritual leader. Jay's lawyers would later acknowledge that friends assisted him with content creation and promotion and that he did ask people to share his work. They denied that anyone was promised compensation. But when labor is framed as a spiritual duty, can it truly be voluntary? Critics argue that it's an important part of his career that is rarely acknowledged in his rags to rich's story. In fact, in an interview from the same year he started his YouTube channel. The article noted that within 7 days of Jay uploading his first video, it had racked up 8,000 views and was shared over 500 times on Facebook. People tweeted it with captions like the perfect way to begin the first Monday in 2016 and indeed everyday or very inspiring video and seriously powerful and brilliantly done. It's not known how many of those shares were from the IPS youth group, but their free labor gave Jay a huge push in the algorithm to launch his channel with, as that many views on a brand new channel's first video are quite rare. His videos contained inspirational music and showed him sitting somewhere looking enlightened. In between clips of himself, he used lots of stock video of people victoriously reaching the top of a hill, flowers blooming, people dancing and laughing together in unity, and even Gandhi and celebrities like Oprah, while he narrated about mindfulness, how to overcome challenges, and be a better version of oneself. He even included his own wisdom from his four months as a monk. While it sounds ridiculous now, this was 2016 after all. It was peak self-help and hustle culture. The girl boss era was going strong, and figures like Gary Vee and Rachel Hollis were telling the masses to never sleep or they'd be broke. The life coaching industry was saying, "Screw therapy. I'll be your bestie for 10 grand." And influencers and creators were taking over the online space and even being mentioned by mainstream media. Everywhere you clicked or scrolled, someone was trying to capture your attention by hyping you up and making you feel good. They told you that your biggest dreams could come true if you just worked hard enough and stayed positive while also low-key shaming you for never doing or being enough. But that was okay because they had a course or product that could solve all your problems. Regular people soon caught on that these online figures were making millions of dollars and they wanted a piece of the pie. A frenzy that could be described as a fever dream was taking place with a stay-at-home mom next door, your co-worker, or a once level-headed friend declaring they were going to change their lives and help others do the same. And J. Shetty tapped into all of this. Off the backs of the IPS youth group, he built a sizable library of self-help videos. But this is social media, and a hungry algorithm must be fed. So, he made short clips from his long-form videos. That way, he had a constant stream of uploads and bite-sized wisdom. It also made his content more sharable.
You will never do something in life that you can't define. If you can't articulate something and what it means to you, you can never put it into practice. If you want to become humble, you have to know what humility truly means. Because guess what? When you don't define it for yourself, it becomes defined by someone else. That's why we don't feel successful because we're basing our definition of success based on what we've heard. We've never defined what success means to us.
One former IPS member interviewed by the Guardian stated, quote, "You have to appreciate that Jay was like a superstar within Iscon at that point, and he was getting people to do so much stuff for him for free. It was relentless. Facebook and WhatsApp and text and emails. I don't think he'd be where he is now without them." end quote.
Jay had positioned himself as a thought leader, life coach, and guru, and the Western world ate it up. Here was this hazeleyed, tattooed monk dressed in modern clothing, telling them how to have a better life. The public wanted more, as did Ariana Huffington, CEO of the Huffington Post. She hired him and he moved to New York to host a Facebook live show called Follow the Reader in which Jay interviewed other thought leaders, authors, and influencers about mindfulness and career success. That same year, Jay and Rody were married in a lavish Hindu ceremony. But a honeymoon would have to wait for the new bride as Jay's career was taking off and that's where the focus was. It wouldn't be until three years later that they would finally honeymoon in Bora Bora with Jay meticulously planning every detail. That same year, Jay did an interview with an Iscon affiliated website in which he stated he was trying to think of a way to make his message more palatable to Western audiences. Jay claimed that he and a team of urban monks wanted to bring Krishna consciousness to the apple generation, eventually leading people to Krishna faith. It's unclear if that so-called team of urban monks were actually members of the IPS youth group. Jay went on to say in the interview, "We can connect people across the world with Krishna consciousness and start a revolution online." It seemed his entire goal in promoting himself online was to recruit people to the Hadti Krishna movement. Although he said that in an interview four years later when he published his book Think Like a Monk, he wrote, "This book is completely non sectarian. It's not some sneaky conversion strategy. I swear."
Jay's time at the Huffington Post was short-lived as he soon realized he didn't need a boss or brand to help promote him. He just needed to post more of his own content. In 2018, he and Rody relocated to the land of influencers, Los Angeles, California. The following year, he launched his podcast called On Purpose. Celebrities like Russell Brand and Kobe Bryant and the typical self-help and business influencers like Gary Vee, David Gogggins, and Marie Forlio were among some of the early names he interviewed. The contradiction between a former monk preaching to his audience about mindfulness and wellness while also promoting to that same audience people who were chasing fame and wealth above all was hard to miss. Jay was selling spiritualism tailor made for rampant unchecked capitalism and it worked. His podcast soon established itself as a top ranking show. The same year it launched, OnPurpose ranked number one on Apple Podcasts in several countries. On Purpose garnered over 64 million downloads in its first 12 months. Some people began to notice that although he had been so devoted to the Hotti Krishna movement, he now never mentioned it or Hinduism in any of his content. The J Shetty brand took off and in the beginning of 2019 he was a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres show. In one interview from this time he said he was earning six figures a month from Facebook's ad revenue alone. Jay had officially made it but things done in the dark always come to light.
By 2019 the internet was slowly starting to have a reckoning with influencers and the self-help industry. A reckoning that would only accelerate during the 2020 lockdown. Many who had once admired self-help gurus and influencers with rags to rich's stories were now getting sick of their greed and self arandizing in the self-help industry. That reckoning started with Rachel Hollis in January of 2019 when BuzzFeed called her out on plagiarism. At the time, Rachel Hollis had been the number one female author, coach, and thought leader in the self-help space. She got brand deals with QVC, Target, Disney, SiriusXM, and was a featured speaker on Oprah's Vision Tour. We've extensively covered both Rachel and her husband's downfall in the self-help industry in two separate documentaries on this channel. The plagiarism accusations were just the first crack in the facade for Rachel Hollis, and they would soon follow for Jay Shetty. Only 7 months after the article came out about Hollis, YouTuber Nicole Arbor accused Jay of stealing inspirational quotes and stories from other writers and authors and claiming them as his own, literally adding his own name to them. The video went viral, prompting widespread scrutiny. In response, Jay's team edited or removed dozens of posts to add attribution. More than 100 posts were changed following the plagiarism accusations. Several creators reached out to Nicole and said their work had been used without permission or compensation. These were smaller creators Jay had stolen from for his large platform. Some had tried to reach out to Jay long before Nicole's video came out, asking him repeatedly to remove their stolen content from his social media. Jay never responded to them or removed it until it went public. For critics, this reinforced a pattern of behavior. Jay did not simply share wisdom he had gained as a monk. He stole it from others and claimed ownership over it, often monetizing it through brand deals and speaking fees. And it wasn't just in posts. He often said the quotes or told the stories word for word in his videos and never credited the original writers, letting his viewers think he was original. While the accusations may have drawn more critics, they did little to slow Jay's momentum. The masses were more concerned with him making them feel good.
Just a year later in 2020, he released Think Like a Monk, a book that turned his story into a global phenomenon. The story was a familiar tale of old. A young man leaves ambition, money, and comfort behind to live as a monk, then returns with lessons meant to help the rest of us live more intentionally. The book blends practical advice with anecdotes from his own life, showing readers how to apply meditation and mindfulness in everyday situations. For fans, it felt authentic and inspiring. Critics pointed out that the lessons were simplified, and the three years as a monk story was presented without much context. Followers of Jay and Rody noticed that it was around this time when Rody dropped Jay's last name from her Instagram bio. In Think Like a Monk, Jay condensed ancient texts like the Bavad Gita into bite-sized lessons for a modern audience. And it was that approach that made the content more sharable. It was the kind of book people could pick up, read in a few sittings, and feel like they had learned something profound. And it wasn't just a book. It was a launchpad. It packaged Jay's personal story, his monk persona, and his so-called insights into something that could be marketed and monetized.
By this point, Jay was already getting close to Hollywood royalty. He became Will Smith's personal spiritual adviser. They became so close that Jada and Rody joke that Will and Jay were in a secret relationship together. It wasn't long before Jay started hosting in-person live events. One of the ways J. Shetty connects with his audience is through manufactured authenticity. In his talks, he sprinkles in phrases like, "I love you," and frames advice as family wisdom and keeps circling back to gratitude, forgiveness, and acceptance. It feels personal and comforting, but in some ways, it's also a form of emotional leverage. People who have attended Jay's live events recall moments that were deeply personal but staged as public milestones. For example, one woman was asked to call her aranged brother from the stage. It was framed as a sort of breakthrough without any thought to whether she was actually ready to make such a lifealtering step. And the fact that her brother didn't give consent to be put on blast was also ignored. When she got his voicemail, Jay instructed her to leave a voicemail. Many in the audience felt secondhand embarrassment for the woman, but Jay presents moments like these as transformative, and more importantly, they serve the brand. Vulnerability becomes spectacle, and the audience is reminded of Jay's influence and impact. The same pattern shows up in his online courses and coaching programs, patterns that are pulled straight out of the multi-level marketing handbook, but more on that later.
Over the years, Jay's brand has slowly been woven into Hollywood circles. He was asked by Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck to officiate their wedding in 2022. Jay had grown close with Jennifer after interviewing her on his podcast. He married the stars on their 87 acre plantation outside of Savannah, Georgia. Jennifer then asked him to make a cameo in her film, This is Me Now. He also shared the stage with Gwennneth Paltro at a Goop event, and where there are celebrities, there are major brands standing by. Jay has worked with Coach, Gap, Kenneth Cole, and BMW. He even had a smoothie named after him at Airwan, the overpriced Los Angeles grocery store where Demi Lovado shared they bought a single $20 strawberry from and wasted $20. But that's not all. Nothing says I've made it like a mansion. Jay and Rody purchased an $8.4 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills. It was once owned by an heir to the Getty Oil fortune. It has 6600 square f feet with eight bedrooms and nine and a half bathrooms because every monk needs 9.5 bathrooms. The mansion comes complete with a pool, hideaway glass walls that open to city views, and a large garage that the couple previously mentioned turning into a maze for storage. Every brand deal and celebrity appearance has boosted Jay's profile. But it's also made the fact that he is going against his own teachings impossible to ignore. Here is a man preaching selflessness, mindfulness, and simple living, yet doing the opposite in more ways than one.
His lack of mindfulness becomes even more apparent when you look at how his life coaching school is run. In typical guru fashion, Jay created workshops, courses, and the J Shetty Certification School, which he launched in 2020 and promised to teach others to live and coach in his style in just 6 months. The school marketed itself as a way for people to become certified life coaches using Jay's methods and at a steep price. Participants pay upwards of $7,400 per level, and Jay's promotional materials compare it to a level seven diploma, which is the UK equivalent of a master's degree. Jay's name, image, and story are front and center in all the marketing. The idea is that by following his methods, students can learn to build their own coaching business, attract clients, and leverage social media just as he did without the free labor from the IPS youth group. Of course, in practice, the school combines online modules, live workshops, and mentorship sessions. It claims that students learn coaching techniques, strategies for connecting with clients, and frameworks for guiding others through personal growth experiences. But the program isn't without controversy. Critics point out that despite the language used in marketing materials, the certification isn't formally recognized by any university or professional body. The level seven diploma comparison is misleading and the credential is issued through a private awarding organization, not an accredited academic institution. This means that students are simply buying the right to say they've been trained in J. Shed's methodology, not earning a degree that carries any value in the real world. But what's worse is that Jay's certification school website listed several prestigious universities and claimed that by getting certified at his school, students would be able to get a top-up degree at one of these universities. A top-up degree is a way to upgrade a partial qualification into a full bachelor's degree. But when those universities were called and asked specifically about how they work with J Shetty's school, they said that not only were they not associated with Jay or his coaching school, but the universities didn't even know they were mentioned on his website.
As if that wasn't bad enough, we have to look at how the school operates. Reports claim that it's heavily dependent on Jay's personal brand. Success stories are celebrated and shared, but struggles are treated as personal shortcomings. It's the same psychological playbook MLMs have always used in which the system itself is always perfect and if someone falls short, it's entirely their own fault. And while it isn't a multi-level marketing company, critics have compared the J Shetty Certification School to other MLMs. William Ke, a marketing professor who studies MLMs, explained why the comparison keeps coming up, stating that these days MLMs aren't always about selling products anymore. It's about services. Someone creates credentials that are hard to verify or may be exaggerated. In J Shetty school, students pay thousands of dollars for certification, which promises expertise. Once they graduate, they're encouraged to launch their own coaching businesses using his methods, language, and branded materials. Jay also has an incentive structure set up for his sales adviserss and anyone who refers others to his high ticket courses. It can't be called an MLM because students and affiliate partners don't earn a percentage off the money made from those they recruit and the people that those people recruit and so on down the pyramid. But it does set off alarm bells with antiMLM experts. Journalist John McDermott noted that when he asked a sales adviser for Jay's school how students recouped their $7,400 investment. The adviser mentioned he had not only went through the school himself, but also set up a successful life coaching business earning $10,000 a month. McDermott asked him why he quit his life coaching business if it was earning so much money. The sales adviser claimed he now makes just as much as an enrollment adviser for the certification school, a job that is entirely commission-based. He went on to say, "It really aligns with my purpose with life coaching. I impact one person or I can be here and help people like you who are going to go on and impact thousands of people. It's as if he didn't see the irony in his own statement as he was once on the other end of the phone and a sales adviser probably told him that he too would impact thousands of people in his life coaching career. So if the workers for the school are only commissionbased and it's based in the US, that would mean J. Shetty doesn't even pay an hourly wage to his sales advisers. How you get away with that in the US is by hiring only 1099 contractors, not employees. If that's true, it means Jay wouldn't have to provide health insurance, benefits, or sick pay for any of his contractors. One could speculate that the J Shetty Certification School is a pyramid of not only coaches, coaching coaches, but a system where a lot of people provide free labor until they sell a course, if they ever sell a course. And sitting at the top of that pyramid is J. Shetty. And we know how others have accused him of using their free labor for his financial gain. The Guardian reported that very few students were making a full-time living from coaching a year after graduation. And according to the school's own brochure, more than 1100 students have been certified in 3 years, generating upwards of $7 million.
Jay later co-founded a talent agency called House of 1212 aimed at what he calls purpose-driven creators. The agency promises guidance on brand partnerships, coaching, and audience growth, all while taking a portion of earnings. Lily Singh and Jay's wife, Rody, are listed as talent on the website.
In February of 2024, The Guardian published a detailed expose of J. Shetty and his businesses. By then, a lot of whispers about J. Shetty had already been floating around. Former followers had shared concerns in private forums. Ex-members of ISCON and the IPS youth group had told stories behind closed doors. Coaches, writers, and spiritual teachers noticed their work popping up under his name. Once you see it all together, the pattern is hard to ignore. The monk's story was highly overstated. The monk and his team of lawyers immediately sent a legal complaint to the Guardian, disputing the accusations and claiming J. Shetty had been telling the truth about his story all along and that he never exploited members of the IPS youth group but just asked for their help, which they claimed was given willingly. As for the plagiarism scandal, his lawyers called it a learning experience. But those who had their work stolen were never compensated, and it's been reported that while Jay is still posting other people's quotes with attribution, he is not asking them for permission to do so. At the time of this recording, Jay has never disproved the claims made against him or spoken out publicly about them, and The Guardian stood by their article. For critics, the accusations were telling. For supporters, it was swept under the rug. The news cycle moved on, as it so often does in influencer culture, where brand deals outweigh accountability.
Despite all the criticism, J. Shed's influence hasn't faded. If anything, it's just grown in new directions. By 2025, at age 37, he had landed on Time magazine's first ever Time 100 creators list, and he was featured on the cover. His podcast, On Purpose, remains one of the top wellness shows globally. He's also expanded into corporate wellness and lifestyle guidance, working with the Calm Meditation app to release a series of short segments that blend meditation and practical tips for managing stress. It's called the Daily J. His life coaching school is still going and he is doing commencement speeches at universities like Princeton, giving corporate keynotes, and being quoted in mainstream media alongside research studies. Instead of critiquing the system that overworks and undervalues people's labor, driving capital to the 1%, Jay gives superficial feel-good advice, which isn't surprising considering it seems like he is a part of that system of exploitation. For all the growth and praise in today's digital landscape, it seems that a compelling story often outweighs documentation. Charisma becomes assumed credibility and accountability oftentimes becomes optional. Without his monk story, J. Shetty is just another influencer grifting off of vulnerable people. But with the monk story, he becomes a type of guru that helps the public become self-aware. a monk who was so kind to share his insight from his $8 million mansion. This has been the rise and scandal of self-help guru J Shetty.
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