From Closet to Compass: How Helli Hendesi Turned Her Passion Project into a Platform for Personal Growth
In the noisy digital world of self-help slogans and empty motivation, finding a voice that feels honest, grounded, and quietly powerful is rare. But that’s exactly what Helli Hendesi has become for thousands of Persian-speaking listeners across the globe. In this episode of Cozy Corner with Hossein Nasiri, we sat down with Helli—founder and host of the podcast HelliTalk—to explore her extraordinary journey from managing high-profile corporate events to creating a soul-centered platform that now resonates with over half a million people.
This is not just a story about podcasting. It’s a story about identity, resilience, values, and the delicate art of transforming inner questions into public service. Through raw moments, deep reflection, and a consistent commitment to personal growth, Helli has built something more than a show—she’s built a movement. And it all started in a walk-in closet.
A Deep Winter, a Quiet Crisis
Before HelliTalk, there was a moment in a Chicago kitchen. The air was heavy, the city frozen, and the future uncertain. Following an immigration misstep caused by a lawyer’s error, Helli and her husband found themselves uprooted and isolated. They had lost their legal footing, their social circle, and their emotional anchor.
It was during this bitter winter—amid a deep depression—that Helli experienced a moment of crisis, standing in the kitchen, a knife in her hand, and a terrifying thought passing through her mind. “I had never had a suicidal thought in my life,” she recalls. “I put the knife down and ran to my husband. I knew something had to change.”
And change, it did. That moment became the quiet spark for a journey into psychology, self-awareness, and healing. It wasn’t about healing in order to teach. It was healing in order to survive. The knowledge she gathered was first and foremost for herself.
A Career That Could Have Been Enough
Before she became a full-time podcaster and coach, Helli held a prestigious position as a content and event strategist for the Association for Supply Chain Management, where she managed multi-million dollar educational events for executives from Tesla, Apple, IBM, and more. She built a stellar career—one that most would hesitate to walk away from.
“I loved my job,” Helli says, “I truly bounced out of bed on Monday mornings.” But over time, the double life—14-hour workdays at the NGO followed by late nights building HelliTalk—became unsustainable. She had to choose.
What tipped the scales wasn’t burnout. It was clarity. “My personal philosophy is rooted in harmony, balance, and growth,” she explains. “And I wasn’t living it anymore.”
From the Front Row to the Mic
Helli’s entry into podcasting wasn’t a strategic leap. It was a natural unfolding. First, she shared short videos and TED Talk summaries on Instagram. When followers asked for Farsi translations, she listened. That act of listening, again and again, became a theme.
Eventually, someone sent her an episode of Ali Bandari’s podcast and wrote, “This is what you should be doing.” That moment clicked. In 2018, HelliTalk was born—not in a studio, but in a walk-in closet, with a borrowed recorder and a pile of clothes for soundproofing.
From the beginning, HelliTalk was about utility over showmanship. “We don’t sell dreams,” Helli says. “We offer tools.”
Healing in Public
Helli isn’t afraid to take the mic in her darkest hours. When she lost her mother to COVID in 2020, she processed her grief not through silence, but by returning to her listeners with a podcast episode on loss.
It wasn’t viral. It wasn’t uplifting. But it was real. And it resonated. “We don’t learn how to grieve,” she says. “I needed to learn it for myself—and then share it with others.”
Her episodes are often structured around a central question, followed by psychological framing, relatable storytelling, and a buffet of practical solutions. “One tip might work for Hossein, another for someone else,” she explains. “We’re not prescribing—we’re offering options.”
Scaling Intimacy: From One-Way Broadcasts to Living Feedback Loops
What makes HelliTalk stand out isn’t its production quality or branding. It’s the direct line between Helli and her listeners. She reads every email. She replies to DMs. She listens to voice messages and uses them to inform everything—from episode topics to planner designs.
“I think that’s the secret,” she says. “You can’t stay relevant unless you stay connected.”
Her audience has been her co-creator. When people struggled with setting goals in uncertain times, Helli introduced a tool in her planner based on the Stoic idea of controlling what you can and letting go of what you can’t. It was grounded, practical, and born from real-world pain.
Turning a Project into a Business
Despite its emotional depth, HelliTalk is not a charity project. Helli has spent the past few years building a business model rooted in audience needs. The HelliTalk Planner, now in its fifth edition, is one of her most successful offerings. Structured around two notebooks—Roadmap and Success Path—it allows users to approach their lives with both strategic and operational tools.
But unlike most content entrepreneurs, Helli didn’t rush into monetization. After resigning from her job, she spent three months doing nothing—just thinking. “I didn’t chase projects. I asked: what kind of lifestyle do I want? And then I matched my ideas to that lifestyle.”
Her goal? A mobile, flexible life filled with deep work, real connections, and meaningful impact.
Workshops, Newsletters, and the Power of MVP Thinking
Today, HelliTalk isn’t just a podcast. It’s a multi-channel platform. There’s a newsletter that reaches over 15,000 subscribers weekly, offering curated psychological insights in Farsi. There are in-person workshops in Austin, designed with carefully structured exercises. There are events, planners, coaching sessions, and soon—maybe—a leap into English-language content.
The throughline in all of this? Testing. Listening. Responding.
Every product begins as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Ideas are prototyped, tested with real users, and refined. For the planner, even the split into two volumes came from audience feedback about weight and portability.
Impact Over Income
Let’s be clear: HelliTalk doesn’t yet pay what Helli made in her corporate career—not even close. “Right now, it earns a tenth of what I used to make,” she says. “But the fulfillment? It’s incomparable.”
She once received a voice message from a man on a bridge. “He said he promised himself that when he reached that point in his life, he would message me.” The message still gives her chills. “That kind of impact is worth more than Fortune 500 influence.”
The Myth of the Lone Creator
Helli is quick to dismiss the idea of the genius creator working in isolation. Collaboration, she says, is a core value. She has actively worked to connect Persian podcasters—especially women—and build community, not competition.
“I truly believe there’s room for all of us to grow,” she says. “We don’t need to step on each other to rise.”
Migration, Identity, and the Rebuilding of Self
One of the most powerful parts of the interview touched on identity loss during immigration. Helli describes the disorienting experience of becoming “invisible” in a foreign culture. Her jokes didn’t land. Her personality felt muted. “It took ten years for the version of me here to feel like the version of me there,” she says.
Podcasting became a way to re-inhabit her voice.
The Long Game
What keeps her going isn’t blind optimism—it’s structured persistence. “Motivation is like a good friend. It comes and goes. But discipline is the one you build a life with,” she says.
She wakes up, dresses for work even if she’s staying home, and treats each day as part of her long-term vision. She’s not chasing followers—she’s cultivating community. She’s not guessing her way forward—she’s experimenting, listening, iterating.
A Message for Creators
Helli’s journey offers more than inspiration—it offers a playbook:
• Start with your own questions. Make the work meaningful to you first.
• Build feedback loops from day one.
• Don’t scale too early—refine first.
• Let your audience co-create with you.
• Choose values over virality.
• Accept that identity is something you rebuild, not preserve.
• And never, ever forget: usefulness is one of the highest forms of meaning.
Final Thoughts: From Voice to Vessel
In a time when content is often created for clicks, HelliTalk is a rare vessel for reflection. Helli Hendesi isn’t shouting into the void—she’s listening, answering, and evolving. Her podcast isn’t just a voice in someone’s ears. It’s a mirror, a map, and sometimes, a lifeline.
For anyone wondering if their passion project could one day become their life’s work, this episode of Cozy Corner answers with a quiet, confident yes. But it also reminds us: it won’t happen by accident. It takes vision, structure, listening, and a profound belief in the value of impact over income.
