It’s been called the tipping point, the breakthrough, and the breakout. It happens when our business graduates to independence and suddenly stands on it own.
You can compare it to the day your teenager get a driver’s license—your baby is suddenly an adult. Businesses also mature and take on characteristics of their own.
Our job as the leader, the boss lady, the CEO, is to recognize this moment of independence. This letting go is one of the hardest things to do. It can be hard for us women business owners to shift from one phase to the next. We get caught up in what we do and are so emotionally attached that we can’t recognize when one phase ends and the next one begins. The result is us turning in circles. We have a good year, an okay year, a really bad year. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I am not exempt from this plight. It’s just the way business goes sometimes. Over the past few months, I have had to take a step back and refocus my mission. The struggle for me is that I love Creativity and Entrepreneurship and Women and Women’s Issues. I was trying to do it all, and it became a convoluted mess. A few hard choices had to be made.
I asked myself: What do I really want to do and where is that in relation to what I am doing right now? (I strongly encourage you to ask yourself the same question.)
For me, the answer is Play Bigger.
The online market place is littered with coaches and consultants. I came across the website for some kid whose claim to fame is that he hacked one little thing. When I checked him out further, I discovered he had done NOTHING but found a hack to become popular for NOTHING. That was his business model. I nearly choked when I found out he charges up to $100K to mentor other people.
Uhm, no thanks.
Yes, I am a coach and a consultant. The difference is I show you the hack on how to become known for YOUR THING. It is obvious to even me that coaches are the hot new thing. You can spot them a mile away because they might use words like “irresistible,” “easy,” “amazing,” and “awesome.” They promise a six-figure income within three months, or working only 15 minutes a day while earning millions, and other such nonsense claims.
I was tempted, and admit I stepped lightly into the same trap. Luckily, I have excellent mentors and a few girlfriends who served it up straight.
Honestly, it hurt. Plenty of wine followed.
Then came the tears of frustration and anger, the self-beating up (yup, I am very good at that and bet you are too), followed by intense self-finding moments with a brilliant Shaman. And the vision emerged.
This was my personal breakthrough.
What I am really, really good at is setting up and growing businesses. Every business I have ever worked in—from my first magazine, to Elle Magazine in Germany, to the artist representation division of my first job in the US, to my own businesses (a production company, a photographer representation agency, and finally stock syndication)—everything has started from the ground up.
My pride and joy are the creation of systems that allow massive growth, equity opportunities, expansion, scaling, and in my case, the big bang at the end. I sold my business to Bill Gates for millions. BANG!
I became a millionaire as a single mom with a very young daughter in tow, and as an immigrant, and as a woman.
My proudest moment was when the acquisition team from Corbis combed through tax returns, financial reports, bank records, and even my divorce agreement. Finally, after months of due diligence, they said to me: “We’ve never seen anything like this. Sometimes this process reveals that the owner is a schmuck who’s cheated and lied. But not you. We feel this couldn’t happen to a better, more deserving person than you.”
Hooray! Pop the champagne!
Could it be true that all these years of struggle and doing the right thing were rewarded with that one big, fat, humongous payday?
Yes, it’s true.
With the help of my friends, I recently realized I have been spending too much time on the ground floor. I couldn’t get to the big stuff that really speaks to me. Things like helping partners to identify strength-based leadership teams, mapping out growth strategies, devising authority platforms and teaching how to get there, delivering team evaluations and team building exercises, improving processes and structures, clarifying the direction of the business and communicating it to stakeholders, designing concise verbiage and the dictionary for the business… The list of my passions goes on and on.
I am not the young kid who figured out a neat trick or new hack. I am woman who’s worked with some of the BIG brands in the world, who made her money by building and selling a business, and who has learned a whole bunch in the process. I am a woman who understands leadership and what it means to be a working mother. I came out on the other side and I want to not only tell the story, but to share it and help others to find their own paths to success.
This is what makes me happy. It lights me up and I am shifting toward doing more of it.
What does this mean for you?
Here is my first piece of heartfelt tough love. I want to be clear that if you are attached to being a broke creative and prefer to worry about losing or making money, versus being excited about growing, it is time for us to part ways.
But, if you are attached to growing your business and you understand some of the basics, like networking, hiring mentors and consultants, attending events, being a part of a mastermind, etc., then we are still good for each other. From here on out I promise to show up in a much bigger way. As your Growth Architect I am here to support you with everything I have. I know I can push you way past what you think you can achieve.
There is a formula to this. My 5 Star Success Blueprint is exactly that—your roadmap.
My promise to you is that I will be real and I will share what I have to offer. I can provide you with this blueprint to successful business building and a few options to choose from, depending on your starting point.
Your promise to me is that you will give me honest feedback, interact with me, and do the work that is required to see the results you want.
We both agree that neither of our businesses is a freemium model. We both charge our clients for services rendered.
Please take a moment right now to contact me and tell me if you are in or out. (No, not later. Please commit to your growth right now.)
This is all very exciting! It’s the brink of a breakthrough for all of us.
At her lowest point, Beate Chelette was $135,000 in debt, a single mother, and forced to leave her home. Only 18 months later, she sold her image licensing business to Bill Gates in a multimillion dollar deal. Chelette is a nationally known ‘gender decoder’ who has appeared in over 60 radio shows, respected speaker, career coach, consummate creative entrepreneur, and author of Happy Woman Happy World. Beate is also the founder of The Women’s Code, a unique guide to women leadership and personal and career success that offers a new code of conduct for today’s business, private, and digital worlds. Determined to build a community of women supporting each other, she took her life-changing formula documented it all in a book Brian Tracy calls “an amazing handbook for every woman who wants health, happiness, love and success!”
Through her corporate initiative “Why Acting Like a Girl Is Good For Business” she helps companies with gender diversification training, and to develop and retain women.
If you’d like to book Beate as a speaker on New Leadership Balance or Growth Architecture for your next event please connect with me.
