Entreprenista

“…without people, your operation doesn't run. And when you're really good at that, the company then takes a life of its own.”

In this powerful episode of the Entrepenista podcast, we sit down with Patty Arvielo, co-founder of New American Funding, one of the largest privately held mortgage companies in the U.S. and the nation’s biggest female-owned mortgage lender.

But Patty didn’t grow up dreaming of building a billion-dollar business.

She started cleaning houses at 12 years old to help support her family. From working entry-level jobs at 16 to navigating divorce, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome, Patty’s journey into entrepreneurship wasn’t fueled by confidence — it was fueled by responsibility, grit, and an unwavering desire to create security for the people she loves.

What We Talked About:

Buying and Evolving a Company [6:20]

Working with Your Partner [12:13]

You Don’t Need to be Louder to be Heard [22:18]

Finding the Right Candidates [26:56]

Imposter Syndrome [34:22]

Connect with Patty:

Website

@pattyarvielo on Instagram

Patty Arvielo on LinkedIn

Want to learn more about joining us at Founders Weekend or joining the Entreprenista League? Schedule a call with the Entreprenista team⁠ ⁠here⁠!

Join our ⁠Entreprenista League⁠ community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our ⁠website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? ⁠Sign up ⁠here⁠⁠ for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

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“We built a team. We built a family.And that family really helped us grow that business to where we ended up.”

On this episode of the Entreprenista podcast, we sit down with healthcare founder, investor, and serial entrepreneur Chantelle Preston for an unfiltered conversation about what success really looks like—and what it actually takes to build a business that lasts.

From launching and scaling a neuro-rehabilitation company to selling it to private equity, Chantelle shares the behind-the-scenes reality of entrepreneurship: the payroll scares, the hard pivots, the moments of self-doubt, and the grit required to keep going when no one else sees the struggle. She opens up about what she learned navigating M&A as often the only woman in the room—and how that experience reshaped her mission to invest in and empower more women founders.

What we talked about:

Starting Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation [4:59]

Selling the Business [10:51]

Chantelle’s Inspiration for Her Book [15:58]

Her Secret to Managing Everything [21:27]

Trusting in Your Decisions [26:55]

Connect with Chantell:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

Grab your free offer from Chantell!

Want to learn more about joining us at Founders Weekend or joining the Entreprenista League? Schedule a call with the Entreprenista team ⁠here⁠

Resources Mentioned:

Cowboy AI

Join our ⁠Entreprenista League⁠ community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our ⁠website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? ⁠Sign up here⁠ for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ | ⁠TuneIn⁠ | ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠iHeart Radio⁠

Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“Ignorance, people, is good! Jump in. Enjoy it. Ask the questions. Study. Learn. Be an eternal student. That's how you succeed.”

In this episode of Entreprenista, we sat down with Julia Haart, the founder of +Body by Julia Haart, a body-positive, technologically advanced shapewear brand that aims to empower women to unapologetically express themselves and feel confident in their own skin. Julia is a serial Entreprenista whose inspiring journey began when she left her orthodox community at the age of 42. Now, she stars in the hit Netflix series "My Unorthodox Life," a show that documents her extraordinary departure from her Haredi Jewish community and her journey to becoming a prominent figure in fashion and business. Since starting her entrepreneurial journey, Julia has created a successful shoe brand, served as Creative Director of La Perla, and now her latest venture, +Body by Julia Haart. Tune in and hear about Julia’s journey escaping her former ultra-orthodox community, the story of how she pitched her Netflix TV show, and a behind-the-scenes look at how she developed her new shapewear brand with feedback from her audience.

We talked about: 

Connect with Julia Haart:

Are you ready to make meaningful business connections that lead to real business results? 

Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders at⁠ entreprenista.com/join⁠! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our⁠ website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ |⁠ TuneIn⁠ |⁠ Spotify⁠ |⁠ Stitcher⁠ |⁠ iHeart Radio⁠ |⁠ GooglePlay⁠

Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“I often say I would not do a lot differently because, had it not been for those mistakes, I would not have been able to grow and to do the things I did as my career continued.”

Ever wonder how much luck, timing, and strategic focus play into entrepreneurial success? In this episode of The Entreprenista Podcast, Stephanie sits down with Andrea Johnston, founder of Fuel for Female Founders, and a seasoned agency owner. Andrea pulls back the curtain on her journey from launching a niche marketing agency to scaling it to success.

She shares why niching down, even when tempting opportunities arose, became her game-changing strategy, and how a single client referral led to explosive growth. You’ll hear about the realities of private equity partnerships, the exhilarating highs and the tough learning lessons, and why delegation and outsourcing are non-negotiables for sustainable growth.

What we talked about:

How Andrea Started Her Own Business [4:55]

How Spending Leads to Growth [24:25]

How Andrea Lands Her Clients [33:00]

Andrea's Agency Owner Power Group inside the Entreprenista League [39:40]

Andrea’s Business Tools and Solutions [44:50]

Connect with Andrea:

⁠Agency Owner Power Group⁠

⁠Get Fyxer.ai⁠

⁠Andrea’s LinkedIn⁠

⁠Fuel for Female Founders on LinkedIn⁠

Join hundreds of ambitious, purpose-driven founders at The PGA National Resort for a life-changing weekend of inspiration, motivation, and transformation for the 2026 Founders Weekend!

Join our ⁠Entreprenista League⁠ community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our ⁠website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? ⁠Sign up here⁠ for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ | ⁠TuneIn⁠ | ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠Stitcher⁠ | ⁠iHeart Radio⁠ | ⁠GooglePlay⁠

Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“The mind is the most untrustworthy part of your entire being. You can't afford to listen to your mind. In this moment, because it's trying to talk you out of something, I could expand you, that might feel a little unfamiliar. There could be a whole bunch of reasons, but none of those are aligned with who you're becoming and what you're creating.”

In this powerful episode of the Entreprenista Podcast, we’re joined by transformation coach, speaker, and founder Tracy Litt for a conversation that goes far beyond business strategy. Together, we dive into what it really takes to sustain success as a founder—mental resilience, self-trust, alignment, and the relationships that carry you forward.

Tracy shares why the mind is often the most untrustworthy part of our being, how to recognize when you’re building from pressure instead of alignment, and what it means to step into your next-level self before the results show up. We also unpack why in-person connection is irreplaceable, how collaboration has officially replaced competition, and why no founder is meant to build alone.

You’ll also get an inside look at Entreprenista’s Founders Weekend Retreat—a wealth and wellness experience designed to support your mind, body, business, and soul. From powerhouse speakers and real-time integration to deep relationship building and nervous-system regulation, this is the room where expansion happens.

What we talked about:
Founder’s Weekend! [3:33]
The Ethos of Entreprenista [9:39]
How Founder’s Weekend Can Benefit YOU [15:27]
Building Awesome Relationships [20:15]
Operating Through a Different Lens [23:45]

Connect with Tracy:
⁠Instagram⁠
⁠LinkedIn⁠
⁠Website⁠

Want to learn more about joining us at Founders Weekend or joining the Entreprenista League? Schedule a call with the Entreprenista team here

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ | ⁠TuneIn⁠ | ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠iHeart Radio⁠
Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“I needed support, community, someone to reach their hand down and pull me up. And now I'm always reaching my hand down to pull someone else up.”

Mary Seats is the founder of The Icing Agency and The Bakery CoWork, a co-working space designed for women entrepreneurs. From a young age, Mary showcased her entrepreneurial spirit by selling handmade Barbie clothes to all of her friends.

Despite facing challenges, including being fired from her own company, Mary persevered and created a thriving business and is an Entreprenista 100 Award Winner. She is dedicated to empowering women founders, fostering community, and breaking barriers for minority women in business. Tune in and hear how Mary launched her first business with only $300, how she scaled her first company to $4 million in revenue, and the hard lessons she’s learned about navigating contracts and partnerships.

What we talked about:

The Marketing Strategy that Made Mary’s First Brand Successful [07:03]

Lessons Learned from Selling to Retailers [13:48]

The Vision Behind The Bakery CoWork [24:49]

The Importance of Community Support [36:38]

Connect with Mary:⁠⁠⁠

⁠@MzSkittlez⁠ on IG

⁠@thebakerycowork⁠ on IG

⁠The Bakery Cowork⁠

⁠The Icing Agency⁠⁠

Join our ⁠Entreprenista League⁠ community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our ⁠website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? ⁠Sign up here⁠ for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ | ⁠TuneIn⁠ | ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠Stitcher⁠ | ⁠iHeart Radio⁠ | ⁠GooglePlay⁠

Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

Relay is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Thread Bank member, FDIC.

“I want you to go buy a house or I want you to go, you know, pay off your student loans or your debt and to be tangible about what you're doing. And if you can't say it in an authentic way, I think that's where things kind of fall apart.”
In this episode of the Entreprenista Podcast, we sit down with Kass Lazerow—serial founder, investor, and New York Times bestselling author of Shoveling $hit: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success. Kass shares the unfiltered reality of building companies from the ground up, from selling websites in the late ’90s when people were still asking “what’s the internet?” to building and scaling iconic businesses like Golf.com and Buddy Media, the latter reaching $50M in ARR in just three years.

Kass takes us behind the scenes of the highs and devastating lows of entrepreneurship, including surviving the dot-com crash, going months without paying herself or her team, rebuilding after bankruptcy, and betting on radical transparency as her defining leadership principle. She dives deep into how and why she structured companies where everyone owned a piece of the pie, her unconventional approach to scaling (including why she sometimes laid people off after raising capital), and what most founders get wrong about incentives, focus, and growth.

What we talked about:
The First Business [6:57]
The Rollercoaster of Entrepreneurship [9:31]
Scaling Secrets [17:28]
Know Your Employees [24:38]
About the Book! [30:24]

Connect with Kass:

Instagram

LinkedIn

Website

Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our website and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? Sign up here for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Radio | GooglePlay
Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“So the tools that are being used behind the scenes that are hopefully reducing administration costs and that will hopefully trickle down to our costs as health care consumers. But I think where it really gets exciting is applying AI to what we call personalized medicine.”
‍In this episode, we’re joined by Halle Tecco, founder, investor, professor, and author of the new book Massively Better Healthcare. Hallie has done it all: she founded and sold women’s health company Natalist in under three years, launched one of the first venture funds focused on healthcare tech, invested in over 50 healthcare startups, and now teaches at Columbia Business School while advising the next generation of founders.Halle shares the lessons she wishes every healthcare innovator knew from day one—why great ideas often stall, how to de-risk a business without dimming your ambition, and what truly separates breakthroughs from dead ends. We dive into her journey of publishing a book without an agent, why healthcare’s biggest challenges can actually become a founder’s moat, and the four emotional stages every entrepreneur cycles through while building a company.
What we talked about:
Women’s Health Founder [5:24]
Getting Hit With Reality [12:57]
The Next Big Thing in Women’s Healthcare [18:53]
Coaching Different Founders [24:48]
The Talk of Incumbents [32:26]
Connect with Halle:

⁠Instagram⁠

⁠LinkedIn⁠

Grab a copy of her book, Massively Better Healthcare
‍Join our ⁠Entreprenista League⁠ community of women founders!
You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our ⁠website⁠ and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!
Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? ⁠
Sign up here⁠ for a free info session.Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.⁠
Apple Podcasts⁠ | ⁠TuneIn⁠ | ⁠Spotify⁠ | ⁠Stitcher⁠ | ⁠iHeart Radio⁠ | ⁠GooglePlay ⁠
‍Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

‍

“​​I grew up sharing clothes and thought it was lovely and fun. And so rental to me is like that expression helped by the internet.”
Ambika always had exuberant ideas for what she wanted to do for work. It wasn’t until she decided to quit corporate America to go to business school that she was able to combine her passion for helping women with her need to start her own company.

Today, we sit down with Ambika Singh, Founder of Armoire, a subscription based clothing rental company. She shares all about her career path, her advice on fundraising, the challenges she’s faced growing a company like hers, and so much more.

This week's takeaways from Entreprenista:
The career pivot that changed everything(6:18)

Fundraising advice every Entreprenista should hear before pitching (22:05)

Navigating tough investor feedback (27:48)

The challenges that test you most—and what it takes to keep going (31:34)

The biggest surprise she didn’t see coming as a founder (34:46)

Connect with Ambika Singh:

Instagram

LinkedIn

Website

Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our website and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? Sign up here for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Radio | GooglePlay
Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.

“So that is what I shifted my focus to, really partnering with the marketing team on, what are the channels that we want to invest in today for future growth? What are the channels that we want to really build loyalty and build loyalty with our customers, create excitement for them, so they display that repeat purchase behavior with us? And that's where I invested a lot of my time.”
In this episode of The Entreprenista Podcast, we sit down with Meenakshi Lala, CEO of Urban Stems, to go behind the scenes of one of the most complex and emotionally driven e-commerce businesses out there: flowers.
Meenakshi shares her journey from two decades in fashion retail to leading a high-growth floral brand with one of the most demanding supply chains in the world. From forecasting blooms a year in advance to navigating Valentine’s Day weather chaos, she reveals how trend forecasting, brand obsession, and operational excellence come together to deliver happiness—one bouquet at a time.

What we talked about:
Business of Flowers [3:38]
Extreme Forecasting [9:52]
How Fashion Operates [15:58]
Partnering with the Marketing Team [22:31]
Trust Your Gut [30:30]

Follow Meenakshi:
Website

Instagram

LinkedIn
Use code ENTREPRENISTA for a special offering from UrbanStems

Join our Entreprenista League community of women founders! You’ll have access to a private community of like-minded Entreprenistas who are making an impact in business every day, special discounts on business products and solutions, exclusive content, private events, the opportunity to have your story featured on our website and social channels, and access to Office Hours with top founders who have been on our show! We can’t wait to welcome you, support you, and be part of your business journey!

Curious about joining the Entreprenista League? Sign up here for a free info session.

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Radio | GooglePlay
Be sure to share your favorite episodes across social media to help us reach more amazing female founders, like you.