Living in another country alone is a huge endeavor and totally outside the norms of knowing how to do something. There's no guide book on it. I feel like it taught me a lot about being resourceful because there was no other way. When you're forced into a position where the only way out is to figure it out, you have to get creative. Either that or you sink.

I have to say that I probably use about 2% of what I learned in school. Life was (and I think this goes for most people) my biggest education. It's your work ethic that helps you more than anything.

Working in one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles [Providence] taught me more about attention to detail than anything I've ever done. It was one of the best schools ever. It taught me to move quickly but to also think things through, to care about everything. The entire purpose of a restaurant is to make the customer feel great. If you just take that [philosophy] and apply it to any business, you change the game. You don't want to be the business that puts people on hold for two hours and then hangs up on them. You want to be the business that's real and tangible. It's all about making people feel something that's special.

Right around the time I was finishing culinary school, I was acting to basically pay the bills (along with modeling, booth-babe shit, commercials, and who knows what else). I got an opportunity to do an audition for TV AZTECA, which is like NBC or ABC in the U.S. I did the audition and I got accepted. Out of nowhere, I was in a pool of talent that was being groomed to be the next set of big soap opera stars of Mexico. [The experience] was actually really amazing, and it wasn't just acting. We would do like fencing and crap loads of exercise classes and voice-over lessons, and I got rid of any semblance of an accent in my accent classes. I did that for 6 months, which was kind of like the inaugural period, and after that they said, "OK, so you've passed every test. You're in. The next step is committing to 10 years working exclusively with us.” 

I was 21 or 22 and they were pretty much saying "you're ours.” I looked at my life. I had just finished culinary school, and I was doing really well. It was totally and utterly a turning point in my life. I could either take the runway to a successful soap opera career in Mexico or take this little scrappy ass career as a cook and move back to LA to do something with it.

It was scary as hell, but I took the road less traveled—I decided to come back home and to make something out of myself from nothing. For me, it was the challenge. The other choice was so laid out for me, I just had to show up.

Living in Mexico made me grow the fuck up so I was able to come back as a new me. To see how I dealt with LA as the new Ellen was something I couldn't pass up, so I took the leap.

There was no transition, honestly. From age 14, I handled my mother’s finances, did the grocery shopping, and cleaned the house while she worked. Not because I had to but because I felt responsible for helping my mom, who'd gotten divorced when I was 10. Starting early set my standards pretty high for what I wanted to do in life.

From there, I had a series of jobs in several industries. I started as a nanny for a family with five kids—talk about juggling. I was a personal chef for a bit while nannying, too. Next, I worked as a translator, which was intense to say the least. People are truly counting on you to do everything right, which required more than the normal responsibility a person my age typically had. After that I was a booth-maid, meaning I sold products at trade shows in a pretty outfit. Anything from bulletproof vehicles to canola oil. You had to learn how to market the product in the right way and get people to love you.

So that’s the school of life right there, and how I learned about business. It’s about human relationships, juggling your time, handling your finances, and learning from those experiences. It’s about not pouting and making the best out of it.

I was cooking at Providence and was tired of the miserable apron that I had to put on every day. I had enough know-how to believe I could make a better one so I told my chef that I'd make him an order of aprons before I even had a prototype. Then I ran around like crazy to find out how to do it and ultimately just made my first one. It was a yellow linen apron with wobbly straps that a friend had to help me sew, but it showed the bare bones belief that I had in a great apron, and it was a damn good start.

It was hard as hell and it's still hard. You have to learn that you can't do it all on your own. To really, truly grow a business, you have to have a team, and learning how to let go so your team can effectively execute [your plans] is unbelievably hard. You can't just throw someone in and hope they get it. They need some guidance from you.

My circumstances were unusual because I held onto my job at Providence for a year and half while simultaneously starting Hedley & Bennett. I didn't actually quit my day job until I could fully and confidently support myself 100%. Instead of cutting the ties all at once, I recommend you start by lowering the amount of work days [at your current company.] That way you still have some means of income while you also get your company going, and you don't add any extra stress to an already insane act like starting a business.

I have zero background in fashion design, but I freaking love Home Depot. I’ve always loved building shit and making things and making something ugly into something better. When you look at Hedley & Bennett, I think that's where our functional side comes from. [Working in] food taught me a lot about creating things, too, and it gave me a cool platform to invent things on a whim. I think my life is a hybrid of cooking, designing, inventing, and making stuff better—and all the while hustling.

I want to have stores. I want to fully build the bridge between the culinary and lifestyle worlds. Actually, no. I don't want to build the bridge. I want to be the bridge. I love the idea of growing and growing and growing. Not for the sake of growing but because the growth gives you the capacity to do things. Like when you can say "I want to open a charity in the middle of Africa," and you can do it because Hedley & Bennett can support that. I want us to be able to do whatever we dream of doing. I also want to teach the people around me that they can do anything that they set their hearts out to do.

Totally. I think anybody who says they “never wanted to give up” is a freaking liar. Shit gets hard. The way I push through it is by reminding myself how lucky I am to be alive and healthy and to have eyeballs and arms and legs that work. Then I say "shut up and keep going," and I always get out of whatever rut I’m in. I've never had a problem that went away when I ignored it. You just have to suck it up, face it, and get through. The only things you can't escape are death and taxes.

I think it's un-fucking-believably important to be able to speak another language. It makes people trust you because you speak their speak. Not only do I automatically have twice the audience, but I was able to go into Mexico and speak the language like the Mexican I am. I think Spanish is an unbelievably important language and that everyone should speak it. We're opening Hedley & Bennett Mexico, and the sky's really the limit. You want to get in the market that fits for you. Maybe not every market fits for us but the ones that do, you better believe we're going to be there. 

Being able to see outside your block, outside your city, and outside your community opens your eyeballs and makes you dream even bigger. The more you've experienced and seen in the world, the more you can imagine from the world. I think it's huge for people to get out there. I [also] think people take traveling a little too seriously. It's not difficult and can be done on a budget. There are totally ways to make it happen. I think the biggest thing is committing yourself to a day and saying “That’s the day I'm going to go to Africa” and then doing it. Once you book that ticket, you start finding people you know. That's where the scrappy resourcefulness comes in. People think they need millions of dollars to do things in the world, and that's bullshit. Hedley & Bennett is living proof of that. We had no money, and we figured it out regardless.  

Life, really. The whole damn thing. The adventure of it. What problem am I going to solve today? What person is going to fall out a window? How are we going to tackle today? It's a crazy wonderful thing.