The real lesson of self-help guru Jay Shetty

First, meet Jay Shetty

Let’s get the masala bits out of the way—and introduce Shetty to those who may not be familiar with his brand of self-help gyaan.

The Jay Shetty backstory #1: The official version of Shetty’s life is that he grew up in an ordinary Indian family in the UK—trying to get his MBA and make money like any good Indian-origin boy. Then at the age of 19 (or 21), he attended a lecture by an ISKCON monk named Gauranga Das—that changed his life. After three years spent living as an ascetic in Das' ashram in India, Shetty realised his true purpose was to share the spiritual wisdom he had found. 

The Jay Shetty backstory #2: According to The Guardian investigation, Shetty grew up in an ISKCON family. In fact, he was a true Hare Krishna believer—knew Gauranga Das long before he went to business school. There may indeed have been an epiphany—but on an ISKCON trip to France not a lecture hall. And he spent those three years not roughing it in India—but at Bhaktivedanta Manor, a sprawling Tudor estate in his hometown, Watford. 

Quote to note: Here’s a gem buried in a 2023 New York Times profile that sums up the problem with Shetty’s storytelling:  

After graduating in 2010, he turned down job offers in finance and chose to live at the ashram full time, which meant shaving his head, swapping his wardrobe of corporate suits for two robes (one to wear and one to wash)  and sleeping on a thin mat on the floor in a communal living space. His life choice didn’t make sense to his tight-knit community at home. “They were like: ‘Jay, you’ve been brainwashed. You’re never going to get a job again. You’re joining a cult,’” he said.

Story of his success: Soon after leveraging his ISKCON network to promote his YouTube videos, Shetty caught the eye of socialite/ media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington (also a queen of self-help). He moved to New York, wrote his first book—‘Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day’—and the rest is history. Shetty’s recently released second book is called ‘8 Rules of Love’—and is also a big hit:

The new book explores the four Vedic stages of love — preparing for love, practising love, protecting love and perfecting love — with simple exercises and takeaways. There is a list of first date questions like, “What is occupying your thoughts most at the moment?” And for readers in relationships, there is a “social calendar” worksheet — to help people make time for themselves that is separate from time with their significant other or with friends — “because the time and space we spend apart enhances the time we spend together,” he writes.

He is so famous that he co-hosted an online event with Jennifer Lopez—who then asked him to officiate her wedding to Ben Affleck. Do you really need more evidence of his success? Fine. He has 50 million followers across social media platforms; and his podcast, On Purpose, is downloaded about 20 million times per month. Past guests include Michelle Obama, John Legend, Khloé Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey.

Where he is now: Shetty’s people have issued strenuous denials—but the story has gone viral. And there is added evidence that he shamelessly plagiarised his gyaan from others. All of which makes him seem like a certified fraud. It isn’t clear if his career will survive this PR disaster.

But, but, but: This is more than just a story of a ‘spiritual guru’ exposed to be a charlatan. Shetty’s fall exposes the business of self-help—which now operates as a very profitable pyramid scheme.

The ‘inspirational’ formula of self-help 

A quick history: The first modern self-help book was written by a Scottish doctor and published in 1859. It was called—duh!—‘Self-Help’. It was meant to help Victorians cope with the brutal conditions brought by the Industrial Revolution. But the global self-help industry owes its rise to a very American obsessive drive for individual success:

In some ways, self-help has long been evolving alongside capitalism, and the conditions in which people are working… Self-help has long shape-shifted to meet the demands of various economic crises. The most recognizable entry in 20th-century self-help in America is Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was published during the Great Depression. Amid the hardship of the era, it advised life-hacking your way to being more personable, and therefore more successful.

The genre truly came into its own in the 1980s—when job security began to erode—and layoffs became commonplace. And it has been thriving ever since—through the dot com boom, great recession and more.

The recipe for self-help success: Through it all, the path to becoming a famous self-help guru has remained fairly constant. It all starts with a bestselling book: 

The core of a self-help book comprises three themes – a secret method; a process based on ancient advice and the inclusion of a stunning ‘origin’ anecdote.

Every successful guru follows this to a tee. Naturally, anyone from the “spiritual” East—like Jay Shetty—has a real leg up in this business. 

Marie Kondo: is another famous example. She became a “Japanese Mary Poppins” to thousands of people yearning for order—in the midst of political chaos:

There's her self-created theory of tidying, which is based on a meditative Shinto philosophy. There’s even an epiphany tale: Kondo reportedly fainted due to stress at the age of 16 and when she came round two hours later a voice told her to “look at things more carefully”, and thus her KonMari tidying method was born. 

Important to note: Any person ought to be able to follow this ‘secret’ method—like stacking your T-shirts or ‘manifesting’ a pink Lamborghini by simply asking the universe for it. Deepak Chopra, for example, claims you can access the “soul of success” by “repeating a sound like 'om' or 'rama' with no history and therefore no karma, you can cancel out thought and achieve pure consciousness.” 

Levelling up to the big league 

Any successful guru builds a self-help business—with highly priced seminars, events, books, podcasts—even luxury cruises (Chopra is a league in himself). But the real money multiplier is the training and certification program—like the Jay Shetty Certification School which offers a six-month online course for $7,400. 

The hook: If you ‘invest’ in the right training, you too can become a self-help guru—pulling in $10,000 a year. In fact, however, many of the graduates of these programs become recruiters themselves:

The Jay Shetty Certification School doesn’t meet the formal definition of a multilevel-marketing (MLM) company, in that success is not entirely dependent on recruiting others to join the school, but it does share a lot of characteristics with companies that operate as pyramid schemes, according to [MLM expert Professor] William Keep.

 

“There are so many similar patterns here,” Keep said. “What we’re seeing more in the MLM world, especially recently, is services instead of products … Someone builds credentials that are difficult to verify or exaggerated, and then suggests they have a secret: ‘I’ve got these wisdoms to share with you. What you do with them is up to you.’”

Another example: Self-help guru Yang Taoming—who was the youngest person in China to own a Rolls-Royce—but has now been arrested for defrauding his students. The description of his seminars sounds remarkably like MLM conventions:

During the seminar in February, people claiming to be entrepreneurs and salespersons took to the stage and shared testimonies on how their lives miraculously turned around after taking lessons from Yang. Students were then ushered on to the stage and pressured to sign up for further seminars, which cost from 5,800 yuan to 140,000 yuan ($840 to $20,300). The most expensive was a one-on-one session with the guru himself, which was priced at 600,000 yuan ($87,000). 

The life coach business: The similarity is the most striking in the area of life coaching—which is poorly defined and regulated. There are no oversight boards, standard curricula or codes of ethics. Anyone can call themselves a life coach. Ergo: anyone can claim to train you for a career as a life coach. Example: Brooke Castillo:

Over the past handful of years, she’s become the reigning queen of the world of life coaching, thanks to her savvy marketing techniques, fusion of new age therapyspeak and girlboss rhetoric, and the parasocial relationship she cultivates with listeners to her popular podcast, the Life Coach School (LCS). Castillo doesn’t merely coach people to improve their lives. She’s built a multimillion-dollar business by persuading her fans that they, too, can find meaning (and money) by becoming life coaches.

The big bucks: If you want a life coach you can enrol in a $297 monthly membership program. But those wanting to become a mini-Castillo have to shell out $21,000 for a three-month program. Castillo’s dream: To turn the Life Coach School—which makes $10 million a year—into a $100 million-a-year business by 2028.

The biggest scam: Self-help gurus don’t ever have to show results—because failure is always your fault:

“Self-help is a promise, but it’s also an obligation,” says Erik Baker, a Harvard lecturer whose forthcoming book covers the history of the work ethic in modern America. “The converse of ‘you can help yourself’ is, if you fail, then it’s because you failed to help yourself, to seize the opportunities that are available to you.” You didn’t have the mental fortitude; maybe you didn’t meditate deeply enough. Whatever the reason, you’re on your own.

That’s true for the graduates of those overpriced ‘certification’ courses, as well: 

Within the world of [Life Coach School], there’s only one reason you’re not succeeding: your thoughts. “If you can’t make your money back on your tuition, you’re doing it wrong. Period,” Castillo has said. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: more coaching. Stacy Boehman, whose website tagline is I help life coaches make money, is one of a number of Castillo’s high-profile protegees who specialise in coaching coaches.

And so it goes—until the next self-help maven figures out a new recipe for human happiness—and offers to share it with the world… for a price.

The bottomline: Danish author Svend Brinkmann has a different kind of advice—on how to opt out of this obsession for self-improvement and success: 

Go for a walk in the woods, he says, and think about the vastness of the cosmos. Go to a museum and look at art, secure in the knowledge that it will not improve you in any measurable way. Things don’t need to be of concrete use in order to have value. Put away your self-help guides, and read a novel instead.

Sounds pretty helpful to us.

Reading list

The Guardian offers two excellent deep dives—its investigation of Jay Shetty and an excellent exposé on Brooke Castillo—and the life coaching MLM scam. For Shetty’s glory days, read the New York Times’ profile of him. Vice reports on the fall of Chinese superstar Yang Taoming. Vox looks at the rise of the corporate billionaire guru. BBC News looks at Marie Kondo and other gurus—and how they reflect the economic concerns of their time. This 2017 New Yorker piece on our unhealthy obsession with self-improvement is a good read.