F&E: What advice would you give someone starting their entrepreneurial journey?

ELLEN: I'm going to give you one that's nerdy and tactical: document every conversation you have. Follow up with a recap. Clarity is kindness. As a young entrepreneur, I definitely assumed best intent everywhere, which you should. But for your own clarity and your own organizational skills, it's good to have a meeting and say: here's what I heard, here are the next steps, did I miss anything? The older I get and the more time I've been in business, the more I do that, and everyone around you appreciates it. You have notes, you have references—if something goes right, if something goes wrong, you actually have something to look back to and say, what did I do that made this work?

The other one is nerdy too, but it's a tax thing. There's something called QSBS—Qualified Small Business Stock. Most entrepreneurs when they're starting don't necessarily know what that is. Get yourself a good accountant that understands it, and make sure you're set up so that one day, if you sell your company, you can get a tax exemption on the money you make. It's all it takes—somebody just taking the time to tell you that. It's not pretty and it's not sexy, but entrepreneurship is 94% not sexy.

F&E: Do you have an everyday uniform?

ELLEN: I end up wearing the Frank & Eileen oversized white button-up—the one that's longer in the back and shorter in the front—with cream or white denim, a black belt with a gold buckle, gold hoops, and a fun or quirky shoe. I wear some version of that three to four times a week. It feels effortless and clean, but you don't look too formal, and you don't look like you're just wearing jeans. It's a little more put together.

F&E: What keeps you grounded?

ELLEN: My children keep me super grounded and really humble. Every day I think to myself; I work for them. Previous to my children, and in addition to them, my mom and my Mexican aunts. They all worked really hard to come to the United States, all college educated, and they had to redo all of their university in the States to be able to use their knowledge here. My mom is a registered nurse, and she had to go through college all over again to be a practicing nurse in the U.S. That is such a level of commitment to wanting to succeed in life. I always think of my mom when things get really hard—and I remind myself it's not as hard as what she had to do. Not forgetting your roots keeps me forever grounded, no matter how successful I become. I know where I came from, and that is such a wonderful anchor.

F&E: What would the world look like with exponentially more women entrepreneurs?

ELLEN: I think we would have more collaboration and more energy pointed towards solutions than problems. I find that women have less ego and more desire to fix the thing than to say I'm right, you're wrong. There's more willingness to sit down around the table and say: what's the problem, how do we get to the solution? We can read a room really well. There are so many layers to our lives that we've just had to navigate, and that's such a gift and a skill that sometimes gets missed.

F&E: What does it mean to be part of this community of founders?

ELLEN: There are a lot of women that have come beforehand that have paved the way, made a lot of mistakes, and shown up to make their dreams happen. And behind us, there's a whole tranche of other women, and so on and so forth. Ask for help, get the advice—but then share it too. Keep the knowledge train going. I'm not going to die with my knowledge. I want to share as much of it as I can so that more and more women say: I saw that Ellen could do this, I could do this too. That's one of the biggest reasons I will get on any soapbox I can to tell my story. If even one singular woman says I'm going to try because Ellen tried, then hell yeah.