Beate Chelette
About Our Guest
Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and founder of The Women’s Code. She creates strategies, designs process maps and blueprints for visionaries and leaders who want to maximise their profits and scale their impact.
A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, Beate bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly-successful global business and eventually sold it to Corbis (owned by Bill Gates) in a multimillion-dollar deal.
Beate is “One of 100 Top Global Thought Leaders in 2021” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs by HuffPost. She is the author of the #1 International Award Winning Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go from Overwhelmed to Awesome” – a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.”
Recent clients include Amazon, Chevron, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Johnson & Jonson, Merck, the Women’s Legislative Caucus of California Cal State University Dominguez Hills, the Greater Los Angeles Realtor Association, Advertising Agency TracyLocke, and thousands of small businesses.
About this Episode
Overcoming Uncertainty & Selling Her Business to Bill Gates
From growing her business to $1M then spending it all on a lawsuit, seeing her business fall apart on 9/11, having her father die six weeks later, and losing her house on the very same day as the funeral, it’s needless to say, Beate Chelette has faced her fair share of adversity.
Despite it all, as a single parent, German immigrant who has started and stalled several times in business, she grew her business, Beate Works. Until 2006, the year she sold Beate Works to Bill Gates for 5x earnings.
This episode is a rollercoaster of ups and downs, diversity and triumph. Tune in for insights on the art of bouncing back, transforming setbacks into growth, and achieving a life-changing exit.
What you will learn in this episode
- How to reframe roadblocks to unlock growth
- How opportunities are often disguised as challenges
- How to identify strengths in a diverse leadership team
- The calculations Beate used to determine her number
- Hiring for diversity – and meaning it
Connect with Beate Chelette
Website: https://beatechelette.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatechelette
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beate.chelette
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeateChelette
Show Notes
(9:52) From a mother who shut her down, to a culture that wanted her to conform, Beate believes that those who are here to make a really big impact tend to have gone through adversity to a much larger degree.
(15:28) Beate Works was formed at a time when she was laid off, with a small child, no family, living as an immigrant, not knowing what to do or how to do it, with no money.
(20:00) After a terrible lawsuit, Beate found herself $135K in debt with the September production season as her only glimmer of hope on the horizon. The date was September 11, 2001. In 24 hours, she lost everything.
(25:31) After getting a letter from the White House, Beate was back on track with a bank that helped restructure her debt and freed up her line of credit. Three months later, she has broken even, and 18 months later, she was the world leader in her category.
(48:20) After selling to Bill Gates for 5x gross earnings, Beate now operates as a Growth Architect turning her experiences into a mechanism to help others on their journey.
