Ep. 12: How Beate Chelette Scaled and Sold a Photography Business to Bill Gates

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Resistance builds muscle. No one knows that better than Beate Chelette, the Growth Architect behind Chelette Enterprises and The Women’s Code. Her path to entrepreneurial success follows the hero’s journey as she immigrated from Germany to the U.S.

In this scale tale, Beate chronicles a series of natural disasters and the profound personal and financial loss she suffered after starting a photography business. To her surprise, when she humbly asked the President of the U.S. for help, he answered! Not only did she strategize her way out of debt, but 18 months later, she sold her photography business to Bill Gates.

Now she applies the strategy lessons she learned through the school of hard knocks to help other business owners, particularly women entrepreneurs, successfully scale.

Beate also shares a series of questions she recommends asking yourself to drive innovation and problem-solving in your business. Listen now and learn from this master of her craft on how to best leverage technology to streamline your business operations to achieve scale and maximize profit!

Episode Info

Special Guest: Beate Chelette, Founder & CEO – Chelette Enterprises, Inc.

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Air Date: November 10, 2024

Credits

Producer & Host: Alicia Butler Pierre
Audio Editor: Olanrewaju Adeyemo
Sound Design: Sabor! Music Enterprises
Video Editor: Gladys Jimenez
Show notes: Erika Ve Revilla
Sponsor: Equilibria, Inc.

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Bios

More About Guest, Beate Chelette:
Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and founder of The Women’s Code. She creates strategies, and designs process maps and blueprints for visionaries and leaders who want to maximize 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 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.

More About Host, Alicia Butler Pierre:
Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder & CEO of Equilibria, Inc.. Her career in operations began over 25 years ago while working in various chemical plants and oil refineries. She invented the Kasennu™ framework for business infrastructure and authored, Behind the Façade: How to Structure Company Operations for Sustainable Success. She is the producer of the weekly top 2% Business Infrastructure podcast with a global audience across 70+ countries.

Alicia is also an adjunct instructor of Lean Principles at Purdue University and serves as the USA Chair of the G100’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. The Process Excellence Network recognized her as a Top 50 Thought Leader in Operational Excellence. A chemical engineer turned entrepreneur, she’s designed and optimized processes for small businesses, large enterprises, non-profits, and government organizations alike.

More About Sponsor, Equilibria:
Equilibria, Inc. is an 19-year-old boutique operations management firm. We build the business infrastructure necessary for fast-growing businesses to scale with less pain. With a range of services and products, entrepreneurs can get the operational support and resources they need on demand.