Interview | Money, Iranian-American Identity, and Romance: Chelsea Fagan on Building a Business and Writing a Political Love Story
Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Chai & Conversation
4.9 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
In this episode of Growing Up Irooni, Leyla sits down with Chelsea Fagan—founder of The Financial Diet and author of the new novel High Dive. Known for blending personal finance with cultural critique, Chelsea joins Leyla for a wide-ranging conversation that covers:
- Why she wrote a romance novel with a Persian American love interest
- Navigating privilege, assimilation, and identity in immigrant communities
- Representing Iranian culture through a “cultural reader” and deep research
- The challenge of launching a joyful project in a dark political moment
- What it means to speak out as a business owner—and how capitalism shapes silence
This is a conversation about complexity: what it means to hold joy and grief at the same time, to create art that is political without being preachy, and to run an ethical business in a deeply unequal world.
📚 High Dive is out May 27th!
👉 Learn more about Chelsea: @faganchelsea on Instagram and @TheFinancialDiet
🎧 Leyla mentions this video by Chelsea: Watch on YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you are explicitly only about political issues or economic or whatever the case may be, |
| 0:05.9 | generally speaking, you're only going to me today. Oh, thank you so much for joining me today. |
| 0:40.3 | Oh, thank you for having me. |
| 0:42.1 | Yes, so you are actually my first guest who has no Iranian heritage and can't speak the Persian language, either one of those. |
| 0:48.8 | I am very honored to be the first non-Persian slash non-Parsi speaker on the show. |
| 0:53.8 | It's an honor. That's right. So let me talk |
| 0:56.6 | about a little bit about how this came about and kind of my background with you, because I've been a |
| 1:01.2 | big, big, big, big fan of yours for a long time. I'm complete personal finance nerd. I came into |
| 1:07.2 | actually my work because I love entrepreneurship. I love business and a lot of people |
| 1:11.3 | don't know that seeing my work. And I've always been into personal finance. I actually read |
| 1:16.4 | the only investment guide you'll ever need by Andrew Tobias when I was in high school and I kind |
| 1:20.9 | of got hooked. So I've been in this space for a long time and you are someone who is one of like |
| 1:26.5 | the OG, like you've had a podcast, |
| 1:30.0 | you've had the financial diet, which I've been a close follower of for a long time. |
| 1:34.7 | And I think you're, you've kind of paved the way for talking about personal finance, |
| 1:38.7 | but then also talking about social issues and system, you know, systematic issues of the system and seeing everything |
| 1:46.3 | in that context and not just talking about personal finance. I had muted myself. Thank you. |
| 1:51.7 | It is, that is very flattering. Thank you. Yes. So, so you're one of the originals. And then also, |
| 1:56.0 | just from a like business perspective, I've really loved the way you've conducted your business. |
| 2:00.5 | I've listened to |
| 2:01.8 | so many interviews with you and you talking about how you really like put your money where your mouth is. |
| 2:06.9 | You not only preach these things, but you run your business in a really ethical and beautiful way. |
... |
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