Jay Shetty was standing in the rain outside a Spotify installation in New York, laughing, soaked, and completely unbothered. He had spent the week filming indoors when Spotify sent over photos of a display set up in the city. He went anyway, weather and all. Seven years earlier, that same man had pitched a podcast about mental health and mindfulness to anyone who would listen, and almost no one would. Now his show, On Purpose, was relaunching in a first-of-its-kind partnership with both Spotify and Netflix, valued at $100 million.
A bedroom studio and a mission nobody wanted to fund
When Shetty first floated the idea, the response was consistent and discouraging. He was told the topic had no market, that mental health content would not find an audience, and that the format would not work. He had no budget for professional lighting, no money for a proper set. What he had was a bedroom he could convert into a recording space and then convert back each night. He put everything he had into it anyway. ‘It doesn’t matter if there’s a market for that,’ he recalled telling people. ‘There’s a mission for it.’
The early operations were lean by design. A shoot schedule of five days a month, two interviews per day, gave him a concentrated window to focus entirely on being an interviewer. Before each conversation, his team built a research document covering the guest’s timeline in detail. He then listened to as many of their previous interviews as he could find, specifically hunting for questions nobody had asked them yet. Three guest archetypes shaped the show’s identity: experts, celebrities, and what the team calls cultural figures. The through-line across all three was the same. Questions aimed less at personal biography and more at actionable insight the listener could use immediately.
About nine months into filming, a call came in from Kobe Bryant’s team. They had been watching the show and wanted Bryant to sit down for a conversation that had nothing to do with basketball. That call, Shetty said, confirmed everything. The team of one of the biggest athletes in the world had reached out for precisely the thing On Purpose was built to offer.
Three months of buildup, two platforms, and a billboard on Sunset
The lead-up to the Spotify and Netflix launch pulled Shetty across time zones for executive meetings, panel appearances, and a return to the Today Show, where he had given his very first national television interview seven years earlier. Standing in the studio again to announce the partnership felt, by his own description, like a full-circle moment.
A friend from his early days in Los Angeles, who had once shared a hotel room with him when both were broke and chasing long odds in the city, joined him during the New York stretch of filming. That friend pulled out a photo from those early days: Shetty mid-pitch, in the hotel room they shared together, making his case for the podcast to a company that turned him down flat.
By the time a Netflix billboard went up on Sunset Boulevard, Shetty walked past it and let himself take it in without over-explaining the feeling. ‘I’m most grateful,’ he said, ‘that I get to do what I love every day.’
The show has now reached 365 million views and counts guests including Michelle Obama and Oprah among its alumni. When people tell Shetty he changed their life, he pushes back every time. ‘No, you did that,’ he tells them. ‘I do not have that power. You do.’
A photo from a hotel room that turned everything down
Somewhere in Paul’s camera roll is that image from the shared hotel room in Los Angeles: Jay Shetty mid-pitch, making his case to a company that said no.
When Shetty started On Purpose seven years ago, he was told the space was too saturated. He ignored it. ‘You can either listen to the market,’ he said during a panel conversation this week, ‘or you can listen to your intuition and your talent and your skill.’ The billboard on Sunset, the rain-soaked Spotify visit, the Today Show return, the $100 million deal: all of it traces back to one bedroom and a decision not to wait for the market to agree with him.
