You know, you've done

so much and really from what I observed, even you really started in 2000 and I'd say the, the sort of external social media content journey started in 2016. Yes. That is mad. That is mad. You've gone from 2016 making your first content to in 2022 now just, and you're this global household name as it relates to content, self-improvement, meditation, all of these topics, right? That's a short period of time. When you look back and you try and connect the dots, as Steve Jobs often did about how Apple came to be in the little moments and the little things, whether it was a moment of good fortune or whether it was something that you have spotted in hindsight in your character, why was Jay Shetty successful in such a short period of time in such a big way?

Give me the honest practical answer. I don't want any, want that why why were you successful so i'm gonna give you the i'm gonna give you my monk answer and then i'm gonna give then i'm gonna give the media answer so and and i live by both right like you have to you have to see things as both and that's why i love my my monk answer is i was really fortunate to meet incredible people when i was young I met a few people that absolutely transformed my life I'm eternally indebted to them grateful to them and I owe it all to them and so I give all my success to them you know without meeting those amazing mentors and those phenomenal thought leaders and thinkers who are not famous who are not known who are not present like they're not they're not in the social media world they not big names or whatever. Those people, you know, those people, if I never met them, none of this would have happened. I can see

the emotion in your face when you say this.

Yeah. I just, I really, you know, we, we skipped it earlier, but I just feel like the gratitude that I have for people who saw potential in me when I didn't see it in myself, that is just the greatest gift you can give to someone. Like I today have self-awareness and I have confidence and I know who I am. And I, I wasn't always like that. Like there were tons of years where I was insecure and, you know, I was bullied for being overweight and I was bullied for being the only Indian at school. And there was so much like baggage to do with just my body, my language I used and all this kind of stuff. And to have someone notice that you may have something. I mean, you've had that. And that is just, you like honor that person for the rest of your life. And the best thing is those people don't even want it. So, you know, the best thing about all of this is the people there are not going, oh yeah, we did that. They're actually saying, no, no, no, it's not us. Like it's you. And I think that's the beauty of that. So I have to say that it's important that I share that answer, not because I'm trying to give a more strategic answer, but I think it's important because it is a big part of it. And so that would be the monks that I met. It would be the coaches that I met, the guides that I met. Looking at it from a very practical strategic standpoint, shifting now, my parents forced me to go to public speaking and drama school when I was 11 years old. And I really didn't want to go because I was shy. I was unconfident. I was insecure about being on stage or being in a public setting. I actually loved acting growing up. I really enjoyed acting and doing theater and things like that, where I was playing another character. But being myself on stage, that was the last thing I wanted to do. And my parents saw that and they saw that as something that I should work on. So they forced me and my school to enroll me in a public speaking course. So from the age of 11 through to the age of 18, for three hours a day, three days a week, so nine hours a week for seven years, I went to public speaking school. Really? For seven years of my life, I went to public speaking school. So when I look back at my ability to communicate, my ability to understand ideas, and by the way, public speaking school is examination based too. So we had exams where they would give you a topic 15 minutes before. You have 15 minutes to research a topic from the books in the room that they give you because there was no smartphone at the time when we were 11, 12 years old. And you'd have to create a speech in 15 minutes about that subject from the books that were in the room. You had to read from a book that you'd never read before. They'd pick a random page and they'd ask you to read it out. So the examination of a public, and this was at the London Academy of Music, Drama and Arts, it's called Lambda. And that's where I studied for seven years. So that's a very strategic skillset that I had the time to develop thanks to my parents. You know, like without my parents, none of that would have ever happened. And I think that's a big part of why people hopefully appreciate how I communicate ideas because I've spent a lot of time understanding communication. But when I was 18, I had nothing to talk about. So even though I had all these tools and skills, I didn't really use them because I didn't care about anything. So sure, I gave a good presentation at university and work experience and an internship, but it was never something that brought me to life. And so then when I met the monks and I got an opportunity to study the Vedas, which are 5,000 years old, and again, we were put through rigorous study. We sat down, we had to learn verses, we had to analyze purports, commentaries on ancient scriptures, we had to do comparative analysis of religions and tradition. Like when I was a monk, we were massively trained in philosophical analysis. And that to me gave me a real strength and confidence in these ideas. So some of the ideas I present today that may sound simple, they're based on these really ancient deep truths that I've had the time to grapple with, with the greats who really understand them. So that to me is a big benefit I've had where I've had three years of complete dedication to studying philosophy and not just studying the intellectual areas, but the practical and the applicable areas as well. So thanks to my monk teachers who gave me that. And then when I went to Accenture, where people were like, Jay, you're just a monk. Why did you go to Accenture? I had to pay the bills. couldn't rely on my parents and you know my parents are not wealthy that they could pay my way through life and I moved back into there I moved back into my childhood bedroom when I was 26 living with my parents with 25,000 18,000 pounds worth of debt and just feeling that you know I was like what do I do now? And I applied to 40 companies that would have given me a job. I'm a first class honors degree student. I'm a straight A student. And I was rejected from 40 companies because surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire a monk. So everyone goes, what are your transferable skills? Sitting quietly and sitting on the floor, like no one needs that. So 40 companies say no to me. Accenture finally give me a shot. And I meet someone called Thomas Power. And Thomas Power, I don't know if you ever met him actually. He's London based. He started up like an early LinkedIn kind of version called Academy. And he was, he's very networked in London in the business space. Definitely want to introduce you guys. He's awesome. And he was brought in by Accenture to train us in social media and train us in this new wave of this new thing that was happening. And it's really interesting because we've talked about it, me and him many times. I'm going to have him on my podcast soon. And I realized, I was like, you didn't really teach me much about social media, but you really taught me about breaking my mindset. And he would always repeat Napoleon Hill, you become what you think about. And he'd always tell me that. He'd be like, keep saying that to yourself. And I'd keep saying that to myself, you become what you think about, you become what, and then I was like, oh, what am I thinking about? I'm not thinking about anything. So what am I going to become? Nothing. And it was just really interesting. And so he would give me these little tools and little things to play with. He had another one called ORS, which he would say that successful people have to be open, random, and supportive. And he'd say that most unsuccessful people are closed, selective, and controlling, CSC. And he was saying that when you live in a CSC mindset, you limit your growth. But when you live in an ORS mindset, open, random, and supportive, you expand your growth. So he would encourage me to be open with strangers on Twitter. He'd encourage me to be open with random people would meet at a conference. And he was just training me in behaviors and mindsets it wasn't like how to post and what time to post and this is how you make it wasn't how to make something go viral like that wasn't it it was how to engage how to push your comfort zone how to challenge your fear why are you so uncomfortable to walk up to that person and tweet them you know all of those kind of things and i saw that my mind just became just open to the idea so he would always tell me you're an entrepreneur I'd be like no I'm not no I'm not I'm meant to work for someone and so he would keep pushing me until I'd get really angry with him like you don't even know who I am only for me to realize he saw something in me that I never saw and then I'd say from there on that's kind of what gets me to the beginning of it. I would say that for 10 years before 2016, I was making content and delivering it in small venues in London. So I had an event in London at university called Think Out Loud. Every single week, I would design a poster on Photoshop. I taught myself Photoshop and I would make a poster and I would talk about a movie from a philosophical, psychological, and spiritual perspective. So I'd take a movie like Inception and I'd break it down and 10 students would come every week. And then I'd teach meditation, which I'd learned from the monks. And then 20 students would come. And then by the time I finished university, a hundred people came every single week to hear me break down. And this was no followers. The events were free. I was preparing for free, doing everything for free. And I loved it. And I got so much joy. And then afterwards, when I was at Accenture, I ran an event in London called Conscious Living. And it was just a, it was an event, which was probably like five pound on a Friday night. And again, I was teaching philosophy, spirituality and meditation. And I was lucky if five people turned up. It wasn't university anymore where you could go and deck the halls with flyers and posters and the common room and the community area. So we'd get like five to 10 people every Friday night, paying five to 10 quid just for the food that we gave and, you know, the posters that we made just to cover the costs. So for 10 years before I ever made a piece of content online, I've practiced, rehearsed, experimented, grappled, challenged these ideas again and again and again and again and again without any followers, without any money and without anything else coming from it, apart from the fact that I love it. I love the idea of reading a book and trying to make it relevant. So I would say that the biggest reason is because I've done this for 10 years offline before it ever went online. So I've been doing it for like 16 years and that doesn't count the 11 year old public speaking classes.

It's really, there's something really beautiful about that because it, I think it gives a sense of, it's incredibly inspiring, but it also gives a sense of peace to people who are at a stage in their journey where they're sat on the phones in a call center selling I don't know double glazing like I was and they're thinking this is a waste of time they're thinking picking up this phone and trying to persuade Margaret to buy some windows is a waste of time and it's not serving my where I want to go and it's only in hindsight when you speak to people like yourself or you hear about Steve Jobs journey or really anybody that sits here on this podcast. You. Yeah. Like, so those are some of the most unbelievably formative and most pivotal experiences as it relates to the thing you will go on to do. And you never know when that's going to happen, right? You never know when opportunity is going to meet preparation in your life.

Totally.

And that also speaks to something you said earlier, which is it's about the mindset you have when you're doing those things and if you believe i think if you believe that sitting on that phone is going to be the rest of your life forever you're increasing the chances of that being the case and i'm not putting down people that do call center jobs it's actually one of my one of my favorite and the job i did the longest um but i just think that's such an important mindset shift that can inspire and not demotivate.

Yeah, I think we have to look at our life as a series of things that add up each other rather than like,

this is a waste, this

is a waste, and that's not a waste. And by the way, you said call center, that sparked a memory. I had a internship when I was 16 years old at the business design center in Angel. And I was working for a company called Upper Street Events that sold event space to companies for these big exhibitions and events that happen in the venue. And I remember at 16 having to call up Nissan, BMW, VW, Audi, Vauxhall, etc. because they were doing a big car exhibition. Now, by the way, I was a 16-year kid who didn't really know what I was doing, but the people trained me really well, and I was cold calling. And I completely agree with you. I think that gave me so much confidence to be able to pick up the phone to anyone and everyone, to tweet anyone and everyone, to DM anyone and everyone. By the way, Cristiano Ronaldo has the longest list of DMs from me that he's never seen, right? He has the longest list of DMs from me that he's never seen, but I'm hoping that one day he's going to see them and I'm going to get to interview him. And it's the idea of like, I don't, I'm not worried if he doesn't see them. I'm not upset if one day he sees 30 DMs from me, because I know that that's what it takes. And I'm okay with that. There's no ego that I'm so happy. If Cristiano Ronaldo opened it up and saw, oh, this guy's desperate I would take that all day because I think he's a I think he has a phenomenal mind and I would love to sit down with him what did you lose what did you lose right but that comes from when you're cold calling in the call center you learn that mindset of what did I lose if this person said no and there's 300 people on this list and that person might be the one that wants it now and that person might come back around and you get to develop those skills so i just i just hope that wherever you are listening to this right now wherever you're watching it you just take a moment to realize that that place can teach you everything you need to know about your purpose and if you just approach it in that way you're going to walk to work with a pep in your step and like this energy that's going to be so electric and so magnetic that everyone's going to know what's going on with you. And all it is, is that you're looking at life as an addition rather than a subtraction.

And you'll receive in a completely different way, right? Correct. Yeah. We have a longstanding tradition on this podcast, um, where the previous guest writes a question for the next guest in the diary. That's genius. I love that. It's a fairly new edition. It's beautiful. I love it. The reason why we did it, and I've never really explained this, is we want to basically connect the episodes together and the guests together in some way and doing that by a question written in the diary is our way. Who

came up with that? Great idea. It's brilliant. It's absolutely fantastic. I'm going to tell my team. I'm not happy with my team. From

what we were talking about. It's funny because this question is actually one I think I asked you already. So you can ask me another one if you want. You

can pick a random one. I can

just make one up. So the question asked, what is your definition of true success?

I'd say my definition of true success is that there are four important decisions we make in our life. And if you can make every decision intentionally with the desire to learn and serve, then that's all you can do. So the four most important decisions we make in our life are how do i feel about myself what do i do for money who do i give my love to and how do i serve others and if you spend your life focusing on intentionally making those choices then your life is a success because all you can do is try to live intentionally and try to hope that it helps other people amen listen

jay