You Will Always Carry the Wound. Stop Letting It Write the Narrative.
Alice Kao was abandoned twice by her mother and still built six climbing gyms, raised millions from over 100 investors, and speaks to rooms of 900 people while the voice in her head tells her every single morning she is not good enough. Beate Chelette on why the wound never fully heals, why that is not the problem, and what it means to stop letting your story be the narrator. Transformation is always an inside job.
When You Know You’re Done With One Thing but the Next Thing Hasn’t Arrived
The three B’s — Breakdown, Breakthrough, Breakout. Beate Chelette writes from inside the first one. The void. The messy middle where the old is gone and the new has not arrived. A raw, personal piece about surrender, the Phoenix, and why the messy middle is not a detour — it is the work.
Keeping Up Appearances Until It Almost Kills You
When you are so deep in the grief of your own life, sometimes you forget that others — roughly 40,000 others — are going through the same thing. With over 14,000 structures burned in Los Angeles, there are many of us in different stages of grief and recovery. One year...
What Are You Doing This For
What are you doing this for? This week is a brutally honest conversation. Why not let the rest of it burn to the ground. Why I Am Having This Conversation Now Every so often a conversation sneaks up on you and reverberates when you are not looking. The temper tantrum...
I Feel Like An Idiot. And That’s On Me.
What happens when twenty years of trust dissolves in a single phone call — and what it forced me to ask about trust and myself I Walked Into That Call Excited. We finally had time to tackle something we had been planning. I had a list. I was prepared. I was looking...
You Are Doing Everything Right But Why Doesn’t It Feel Right?
When outer logic and inner knowing collide — and why the voice that makes no sense is the one worth following. I Had It All. And It Was Literally Crazy Making. I was 23. Photo editor at Elle Magazine in Germany. I had the job everyone wanted. The invites to every...
We Are Still In It. And That Is The Truth Nobody Tells You About Rock Bottom.
A year after losing everything in the LA fires, I am not on the other side. I am still in the middle. And something unexpected is emerging. Chapter 1: The Year Nobody Prepares You For We came back to nothing. I do not mean that as a metaphor. I mean we landed from our...
The Most Dangerous Thing You Believe Is The Thing You Never Question
What a Harvard MBA and Former McKinsey Consultant Told Me That I Did Not Want To Hear — And Why I Invited Him On Anyway I have learned something after years of doing this work. And I see it every single day. We come to believe firmly what we believe in. That sounds...
The Question Nobody Asked Me Until It Was Too Late
Why Every High Earner Is Driven By the Same Thing — And It Has Nothing To Do With Money For the longest time I believed that if I was just successful enough, I would get everything I wanted. My mother's love. Her appreciation. Her admiration. Her acknowledgement. I...
You Can’t Shortcut the Inner Work — I Tried for Years
What a Former Internet Marketer and an Ayahuasca Journey Taught Me About the Gap Between Strategy and Truth I had already done it once. Built a business from nothing. Scaled it. Sold it to Bill Gates. Proved it was possible. So when I started over I thought I knew how...
When Your Body Stops You Because You Won’t Stop Yourself
What Acute Pancreatitis Taught Me About Identity, Output and the Belief I Still Haven't Fully Released I had been yellow for a while. Not metaphorically. Actually yellow. My skin. My eyes. My system was shutting down and sending every signal it had. Constant stomach...
Money Beliefs Are a Daily Ministry — And Most of Us Miss the Daily Part
I catch myself doing it still. Someone posts about their new house, their private flight, their record revenue month. And somewhere in the back of my mind, before I can stop it, a thought slips through. Must be nice. I wonder what they had to sacrifice for that. I...
How Long Can You Stay Silent?
The conversations I am having all include, at some point, a version of these questions. Should I get involved? Can I speak up without becoming political? How do I take a stand without inviting backlash and avoid being cancelled? Is it okay to speak up and share my...
Don’t Die at Your Desk – The Cost of Being “Good at It”
You want to love your work. After all, you spend so much time there. And when we find someone who says they love what they do, we call them lucky. They never work another day in their life. But there is an assumption we rarely interrogate: that loving your work is...
The Moment Things Go Well — and Why That’s When Leadership Is Tested
When success invites relaxation There is an assumption many leaders carry without examining it: when things are going well, we can relax. Revenue is up, momentum is strong, and energy feels aligned. The effort feels earned, even deserved. It’s a moment that appears to...
The Question That Feels Natural — and Costs More Than We Realize
“Why is this happening?” is often the first place the mind goes when control disappears. It sounds reasonable. Even intelligent. It feels like meaning-making. But what I’ve come to see — personally, professionally, and most recently through a conversation on my...
When the Body Interrupts the Narrative
I thought the fire anniversary was enough. Some weeks arrive already carrying weight. Memory. Grief. A quiet accounting of everything that was lost and everything that somehow survived. I assumed that was the work of the week — to hold that, to move through it with...
2026 May Still Be a Trying Year — So Train Your Mind
People like to say the ones who win are the ones with the most resources. I’ve never been comfortable with that word. It feels competitive. Binary. Like life is something you dominate or lose. There is nothing in between. And sitting here in a hospital room after...
