Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and Founder of The Women’s Code and provides strategies blueprints and results-oriented, tangible tools and techniques that unify your teams, give you clear steps to improve your business systems, and strengthen your leadership skills.
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 Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal. She is amongst the “Top 100 Global Thought Leaders” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs” by HuffPost.
Recent clients include Chevron, Merck, the Women’s Legislative Caucus of California Cal State University Dominguez Hills, the Association of Corporate Growth, Advertising Agency TracyLocke and thousands of small businesses.
Beate 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.”
www.BeateChelette.com - main site
Gift: How to find really good clients - https://AirTightAvatar.com
Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and Founder of The Women’s Code and provides strategies blueprints and results-oriented, tangible tools and techniques that unify your teams, give you clear steps to improve your business systems, and strengthen your leadership skills.
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 Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal. She is amongst the “Top 100 Global Thought Leaders” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs” by HuffPost.
Recent clients include Chevron, Merck, the Women’s Legislative Caucus of California Cal State University Dominguez Hills, the Association of Corporate Growth, Advertising Agency TracyLocke and thousands of small businesses.
Beate 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.”
www.BeateChelette.com - main site
Gift: How to find really good clients - https://AirTightAvatar.com
Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan and today we're here with Beate Chellete which was the hardest name for me to figure out, thanks for the thumbs up because I tried to do my best but sometimes it's just so difficult.
Beate: You got it right on the first try, I mean, what's there to you Yeah.
Josh: And you know, what's funny is I have seen a lot of Beate stuff and so I was, I know how to read her name, but I had never converse with her before today so it's good to actually know how to pronounce her name so I want to give you all just a little bit of a cue into what we're going to be talking about today because Beate has such an awesome story, she's a first generation immigrant, she ended up coming here building a very successful company, selling it to somebody that all of you will know his name, but I want her to share the story in a minute, from on top of that, she's become really a success coach and what I would say is that beyond just success, quote, unquote, she's really here to get people on stuck, which is most of you know, that's one of the main reasons for this podcast is to help you get past that $1 million barrier that we all get stuck at so Beate say what's up to everybody, first off, and then let's hop in.
Beate: I can't wait. I've been looking forward to this, Josh, because I like your no BS attitude, and the outside of the status quo and all the stuff that you do for everyone so I'm fired up. Let's do this let's talk strategy.
Josh: Love it and I appreciate you that compliment so, I want to hear first your your story for coming to the US and then building that first business, give us a little bit of background on that and under, under a minute.
Beate: Yes, so I'm the unruly, that didn't fit in. So I became a photographer against all odds and then was photo added Elle magazine in Germany, when I was 23 years old and that bored me to tears in tears, immigrated to the United States, and then started my career in the photography, world photography, representation, photo production and all this stuff that happens to other people happen to me, you know, I was in a lawsuit, fires, floods, riots, earthquake, I lost my business in September 11, I lost a key vendor in a tsunami and so all these things just kept happening over a course of 10 years, with a big frying pan every six months or so I just got whacked again and then finally I said, all right, somebody needs to get a benefit out of how I keep getting up again and again and again and so when I finally had the winning idea, and I became the world leader in my category, and I sold it to Bill Gates for millions of dollars, I decided I'm going to share the information with everyone else.
Josh: Love that. What a cool epiphany story. For most of you, you're probably thinking about your own story with us and saying I've had similar successes and failures but what a cool resume builder to say, Hey, I sold my company to Bill Gates, now the industry I'm gonna guess here, if it was an industry thing was it was it, you know, an Adobe product, what, what was it that you built?
Beate: So it was as I was wondering, it was a stock photography business that was specialized in architecture and interior photography and we became the world leader in celebrity at home story. So when you read, you know, at the doctor's office, and you pick up the magazine, and you look at Madonna's house, or seals house or Heidi Coombs house, and you see these amazing properties that was a story that we would have syndicated throughout the world.
Josh: So awesome. And it's fun that you were able to be acquired and what's funny to me is a lot of people don't realize that big companies like Bill Gates, I assume at the time it was Microsoft was his company he has on multiple but being acquired by companies like that sometimes they're random niches like that, that you wouldn't expect to be to be able to be acquired, but sometimes they will, they'll come in and acquire you and you get a step out with with a fat fat wallet.
Beate: Yes, actually, this company specifically was a privately held business by Bill Gates, our interest one of the many ones yes so he had built a he was in competition with Getty, and the Getty guys and they they were buying up all the stock photography syndication, so he had bought a celebrity brands that he couldn't grow because it's a high touch business and the only way he could grow it is if he added something and because we did celebrity homes, they bought the celebrity homes and great story for your Titans listening is they only wanted the celebrity part but like any decent woman, I say, if you want what I have, you give what I give you and you're gonna have to pay for it and so they had to buy the whole archive and that's how the deal came to.
Josh: That is so awesome and I love that because you had to stick it to the man a little bit there.
Beate: I did.
Josh: This reminds me of my favorite, my favorite comedy if you haven't seen it School of Rock, go check it out. He talks about that right to get to the manly osis that just always comes to mind with stories like yours, you know, coming in and saying you know what, I'm going to dominate an industry, I'm going to sell it off, and then I'm going to go on to bigger things. So I want to I want to ask you this question, Beate because it really is what's intriguing to me and to our listeners is the transition from, you know, being at what I would call brick and mortar business owner to a coach, it almost feels like more of a calling than a business, the business just kind of comes because you're, you're called to actually share your passion and help other people so I want to ask you what was kind of the big epiphany for you that made you want to switch into the coaching realm, and start actually helping other entrepreneurs to be successful.
Beate: And truth of the matter is, Josh is saying, I got really pissed because once I sold my business, they made me an offer to come on as a senior director for global entertainment and as I did that, I realized there's such a discrepancy in how men lead and a women lead, that I just couldn't take it anymore and so I quit and I started a consulting company that really was primarily first, for creatives and for women, and really helping people understand what leadership looks like when you're nonconforming, when you're not white male and one into a corporate career, it's very different and from there on, it just kind of started emerging but you're right, it was definitely a calling, where I said, I know how to get up, I'm really the queen of failure if you still want to, or failing my way to success and I am a woman, and I'm a single mom, and I am an immigrant and so I felt that there are so many of us out there that are not that they don't have the rich dad in the great alpha, whatever fraternity with all the bros that are helping you out
Josh: the yacht club
Beate: the yacht club, what do you do, right and so that's why I wanted to really come up as the no bullshit strategists and saying, listen, you know, if you want the fluffy stuff, go somewhere else. If you want somebody to tell you only my system works, go somewhere else. If you want somebody who's going to give you a strategy, come here and I'll give you the strategy.
Josh: I love that and what I love about your attitude and the way you approach this, as you say, hey, there's a problem and it's with, like you said, the male and female leadership differences, I can't remember exactly how you worded it but what I love about you, and your philosophy is it's not placing blame, it's saying how do we learn to coexist and work together to help the company become successful and I love that, because you're implementing strategies that can be applied no matter what your gender or your belief system, what have you by just applying a really strong strategy and you've built this around the it's the five star success blueprint is that correct?
Beate: Exactly, that's exactly how I built it
Josh: I got that correct
Beate: extra points for that Josh.
Josh: I just keep the tally over here.
Beate: Yes and so the first success blueprint is something and you know, I'll compare it to like you're doing a podcast, right? So it doesn't matter who you speak to. It's always the same cadence of how you go through the process and so what I've found is that when people build their businesses, sometimes, and I'm going to give you one example, you know exactly what I mean. Sometimes I started doing social media ads, and then you go like, well, what are you advertising and they can tell you, and then you say, Well, why are you running ads? Well, somebody told him to get traffic traffic to what and then you go, well, what's your idea? Why are you unique? And they haven't even answered that but they're spending money to drive traffic to your website that's selling something that's really unclear and so I wanted to give the blueprint and say, okay, let's start with the idea first and then let's look at the offer, then let's build the system, that so get your team and then look at let's look at you as a leader, so that you know, it is always the same cadence and how you built it and those are the five stars because most people get some stuff wrong and some stuff, right nobody has everything, right, everybody has a sweet spot so how do you know what's in your blind spot, what's that one piece that you're missing and you were talking about a lot of your Titans being stuck in this $500 million, that's very typical, because that's the switch from business owner to leadership and that's a very big transition, it changes you have to change the whole way your business is set up in order to break through that.
Josh: So what are the common problems that you're seeing with most of these companies and I love your opinion on this because I mean, you're coming from working with brick and mortar businesses, digital businesses, real estate, you have all these different industries, what do you find the core problems are that are keeping people there keeping them stuck.
Beate: So the core problem is so if you are by yourself or with a very small or Freelancer stuff, you can get to about a million dollars at one point you you lose your sanity, once you get you know I'm working with someone who's doing about $3.5 million pretty much by himself with an installation crew and let me say this man has no no life and, and so what happens is that the country point where you need to start to delegate and you need to set up systems and processes that have that allow you to run your operations based on a consistent workflow that can be scaled up very quickly so if you don't set up a workflow, it's usually a workflow and a leadership issu because the leadership transition from going in your head from being this is my money, my business, I run the show, I know how to do this, I even fix my own WordPress, I build my own funnels, I get my own travel, I write my own copy, I run my this good luck with that that's not scalable, because you can extract more hours so now this is the point where you have to really learn to manage better and, and figure out how to find people that can do all this stuff, that's a full time position for someone else and that's hard for a lot of business owners because I call this the messy middle or running up the spiral staircase as fast as you can.
Josh: Right, when and let me give you a scenario here Beate because what I've been finding even with myself, right, I feel like we're kind of in that same position, we've been actually in the attempting right now to, to outsource more of our work, hire more people and get more things done but I found that the bottleneck has been me knowing how to train and how to share what I have so what would you do with someone like me, who's having that difficulty training new employees to have more success in that realm?
Beate: Yeah, so the first thing that we would do is we probably would go through a process called the system formula builder so we've identified very clearly what it is that so unique about your business, and then we'll take that I call this the knowledge, the knowledge, but because most people, they do knowledge vomit so when somebody walks into your door, and you take all your knowledge and just want to vomit your 20 years of experience all over them, and then they run away, they're scared, they're dirty, filthy, they stink, they can handle it, and they're overwhelmed, and they'll never come back so rather than that, we'll take everything that you know, we bake it into a bread, and then we'll slice it into slices and that's going to be part one, part two, part three, Part Four, or step 1 2 3 4 5, or phase or module, whatever you want to call it and then we'll take that piece, and we figure out in the slices, which is the lead generation piece, which is a entry offer, which is a high ticket item, which is a high touch item and then once you have that, then suddenly becomes so clear to you where you go, oh, that goes to that that goes to the that team, I'm going to hire somebody, this is going to the business development team, because I need to hire a business development team to bring me in the leads from my high ticket items, because you just don't have the time anymore or you have to hire a salesperson, when you don't know who to hire that means it's not clear how you're going to scale it out and if it's not clear, how are you going to scale it up, who, how would you know who to hire?
Josh: Right? Yeah, I love that. What a cool concept and how are you helping people find these people, who are kind of those key players do you feel like it comes from just networking or is this more of a of a direct outreach approach?
Beate: It's really trial and error so I have very high standards for quality of work, I do not tolerate sloppy work at all so I find that in the beginning, you know what I recommend when when when costs is an objective, you find subject matter experts, many subject matter experts in very specific categories so side note, no mini me cloning allowed, do not look for somebody who is like you, that is the death of every business but find subject matter experts so we have in my business, we have about 10 people all over the world that do only one thing, they either just do editing the videos, or they just do the social media management or they just do the graphics because when I when when we get busy, now I can scale up because I can give these people more hours, if I have one person's already working 40 hours, on six different things, there's no way to scale, you're screwed again so that's why you have to be really diligent about the way you set it up so that when, when the business comes in and you get more business, you can scale up pretty quickly and that's one of the most frequently made mistakes if people want to find that one right hand person that they can rely on and then if that one person is not the person or falls off, it's a disaster
Josh: right? wow, I love that one and let me ask you this Beate because you're we are coming up to the end of the interview here, what some of what's one more thing that you'd like to share about the five star success blueprint with our audience that you feel like would be crucial to their success?
Beate: So number one, I want to tell you that you're not unique in the sense your struggle and that you need to find something that really helps you to identify where that thing is you're stuck right now and then you pick a horse and you write it and so if you're if you've been trying 10 different other internet marketers right and you gone here for the lead generation and you listening to Neil for for for the conversion and you going to find out what whatever that is, and it's still not working, you don't have a system so focus on the core aspect of your business what's the message and the system in which I push it out and then you plug everything else in with the stars weird belongs
Josh: love that love that. Well, let me ask you this back to where should people go to connect with you?
Beate: Well, the first thing I would like everybody to go to is the airtight avatar which is my complimentary masterclass for anyone who needs to figure out who is my ideal client and we made it you know, everything I do is super simple, I break it down it's steps modules the Germans coming through if you want to reach out if you have a question, my email bc@beatechellete.com shoot me an email I love to hear from the audience, there's no secrecy to what I do is I can help you I'll help you. If you heard something and go I must work with her immediately go to uncoversession.com fill that out and look me up on any social media and don't be a stranger.
Josh: Love that so make sure you go check her out check out her website and honestly go take that free masterclass, very few people give away their what I would call like the bread and butter for free and the author has done that so make sure you go check that out. What was the URL one more time for that?
Beate: airtightavatar.com
Josh: airtightavatar.com So if you're outside just to wrap up this interview, let me ask you one final question so if you could leave us with one final parting piece of guidance, what would it be?
Beate: I would say don't take it personal and failure is really an opportunity in disguise, look at it like a stop sign that says not this way and then just get back in the car and drive it somewhere else.