Meet Beate Chelette | The Growth Architect

We had the good fortune of connecting with Beate Chelette and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Beate, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
For a long time I built my identity around one story. I sold my company to Bill Gates for millions. I had the exit, the headline, the version of success everyone can point to and understand. I let that story stand in for the whole truth, because it was clean and it made sense to people, and honestly it made sense to me too. I believed I had it figured out. Truth be told, I could not repeat that level of success. I was excellent at my work. I was disciplined and I showed up every single day. But measured in dollars, in the metric the world uses to decide if you won, I was mediocre. That gap between what I was capable of and what the story promised sat underneath everything I built next.

Then the Palisades fire came and took it all down, and I do not mean that as a metaphor. Everything I owned was gone. There is no version of that loss you can talk yourself around. You cannot perform your way through it and you cannot strategize your way out of it in the moment. You are simply standing there with nothing, and the question stops being about business and becomes about identity. Who am I when the story is gone? Who am I when there is no exit to point to?

That question is where I am finding the answers to keeping going. When everything is stripped away, you are not being asked to give up. You are being asked to build the next version of yourself, one that was not available to you while the old story was still standing. I do not think you can walk away from that intersection. You can only walk through it. That is not giving up. It is an upgrade.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I get tired of the lies. The marketing lies, the internet promises, the manufactured scarcity, the tricks, the hustle dressed up as strategy. That fatigue is where my business actually starts.

The technology that is supposed to support a growing business is complicated. No matter what you build, you eventually need an expert, and the expert knows automation, not business strategy. They can build the workflow, but they expect you to already know what you want. If you knew what you wanted, you would have built it yourself already. That gap is where most founders get stuck, and it is the gap I have spent decades closing.

I am an operator through and through. I design shortcuts. I design processes. I certainly tried and tested what works and then turned that into a formula that someone else can run without me in the room. Somewhere along the way I found a CRM structure and built it out into my own version, because I got tired of watching clients need infrastructure and feel daunted by the very tools meant to make their lives easier. We loaded our workflows, emails, and the entire structure we operate on into the CRM. So you know what you need to do and have an example to work from.

I love colorful people. I love big ideas. I love people who do not conform, because those are the founders who look into the future to building something the old systems were never designed to hold. That is where Founders of the Future comes from. It is my name for the generation of business owners who are done rehashing what already does not work, and destroys their life and families, and are ready to build with alignment instead of noise.

This is now an agency. You do not just get a CRM from us. You get it populated with the entire system, the workflow I built over decades, delivered in three stages I call Forges: Creation, Growth, and Legacy. Each Forge answers the question I hear more than any other from founders: what is the next thing I should be doing at the stage I am actually at, right now.

We show you how we do it and tell you why. If this is in resonance with you, you can hire your own people and run it yourself, or you can lean on one of ours, task by task, only for what you need at that moment. And I do not want people building alone. That is why we built Forum, a monthly accountability group, because I want this community leaning on each other and doing business with each other, not competing in isolation.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We are outside people, so the week has to start there. I will take a friend to Santa Monica Beach for a walk, because nothing beats that followed by just sitting and watching the waves with nowhere to be. From there we grab a coffee in Rustic Canyon and then go for our hike, usually Westridge and Michael Lane since Temescal Canyon is still closed.

For something different, I don’t do the Culver City Stairs, but walk in from Dusquesne. But that walk up from Dusquesne still gets you sweating for about an hour without wrecking anything. And if you like you can walk over all the way to Kenneth Hahn park and add another hour.

Before the gym I grab a coffee at Cafe Ruisseau on Colorado, that is my regular spot, Lunch is almost always Jackson Market in Culver City, often right after a facial and wax at Queen Bee, because a good week means taking care of yourself, too.

Dinner has two obvious answers, either Meet in Paris, for the mussels and the outdoor seating. When it is date night, or when we want to bring along another couple, we go around the corner to Chez Mimi instead. And when the sun goes down and we want a different kind of night, we are regulars at the Pantages, or we catch whatever is running at the Geffen or the Kirk Douglas.

That is the week. Outside in the morning, good food carrying you through the day, and a stage or a screen to close it out.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to start with Alice Kao. She has been featured on the Shoutouts before, and she is the one who put my name in for this. What makes her worth naming here is what she represents. She started as my mentee and somewhere along the way she also became my teacher, and personal friend. The more we allow people to see us, the deeper our relationships become.

And frankly, after the fire that lesson roared it’s head at full scale. For decades I am the one who shows up for other people. I am the mentor, the driver, the person others lean on. Then everything we own is gone, and I am the one who needs to be carried. I have so many shoutouts…

People drop off clothes because we have nothing to wear. Friends organize a fundraiser without asking us first. Adam Pontrelli shows up with bike to take my husband back out into nature. My daughter and her family shop for us, my stepdaughters pick us up from the airport, help us find a new temporary home. People stand in line for us and handle things we do not have the bandwidth to manage ourselves. One of my most beautiful examples is the daughter of a friend of my sisters in Germany. She stayed with us one night after a hiking trip and slept a night in our home. She says it was the best hot shower, meal and sleep she’s had! From the little money she has, she made a donation to the GoFundMe declaring that this was her house, too. My community in Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH) where I am on the Board of Directors. They nominated me for the mentorship award that I subsequently was awarded, recognizing that I needed to feel their support. I can’t even write this without getting emotional. I am so grateful.

We are living proof that the people we teach are often the ones ready to catch us when we fall.

Website: https://GrowthArchitect.biz

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatechelette/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatechelette

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@businessgrowtharchitect

Other: https://youtube.com/@businessgrowtharchitectshow

Image Credits
Linda Mariano (Headshot)