Show Transcript

0:00:00 - (Kevin Lowe): You know, the best part about hitting rock bottom is that the only way to go is up. And today's guest is a beautiful example of this very thing. Biete Chalet found herself a single mother, an immigrant, halfway across the world from home, and she was $135,000 in debt. And yet, because Bietech chalet is who she is, aka the growth architect, she would bounce back. She would wind up selling her business for millions to none other than Bill Gates.

0:00:39 - (Kevin Lowe): And that was during a prolonged recession. The key, Biete Chalet realized, the only way to go when you hit rock bottom is up. Today's episode is here to share her story of love, of loss, of dreams, of regret, of the things that happened and the things that maybe she dreams would have happened. It's the story of her life. The story of moving away from home, away from her home country of Germany to the Florida Keys, and eventually to Los Angeles, California.

0:01:16 - (Kevin Lowe): Bietechlette is an amazing entrepreneur who has an incredible story that is sure to leave you entertained and even more so, empowered to realize what is possible in your own life. This is episode 256. This is Grit Grayson, inspiration. Enjoy today's episode. What's up, my friend? And welcome to grit, grace, and inspiration. I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life saving surgery, only to find that I was left completely blind. And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

0:02:01 - (Kevin Lowe): And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you. Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be. You ever wonder why bad things have to happen? I mean, why do bad things have to happen to good people?

0:02:28 - (Kevin Lowe): Why do bad things have to happen at all? Well, I don't know. But I do know this. The greatest breakthrough that you can have is when you can find purpose in the hardest thing you have been through. Let me say that again. Your greatest breakthrough will come when you can find peace and purpose in the hardest thing you have been through. My friend, I would love to help you to discover your life's purpose hidden inside of the challenges you have already walked through.

0:03:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Text the word discover to 5544. Again, text the word discover to 5544, and I will get you more information into how I can help you to discover your purpose.

0:03:19 - (Beate Chelette): So, I'm originally from Germany. I was born and raised there, and I came in my early twenty s to the United States, and first I spent some time in Key west on a houseboat without water and electricity. And then I eventually landed up in Los Angeles, which I very lovingly call the city of misfits, because everybody that doesn't fit anywhere else fits in here perfectly.

0:03:42 - (Kevin Lowe): I almost would say the same about Key west, too.

0:03:45 - (Beate Chelette): Yes, key west. You just have to add the tie dye shirt.

0:03:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, absolutely. So. So me being in central Florida, the keys have always been a popular vacation destination for us in the. That's. That's pretty cool. Now, what prompted you to move away from Germany in the first place?

0:04:06 - (Beate Chelette): Well, there was a number of different factors. So, number one, I have a fairly abusive childhood story that I escaped by moving out when I was 17 and pursuing a career in the photography arts. I always wanted to be a creative, and then I realized that I was better at the business side, behind the creative side of things. But to this day, I work with a lot of creatives and visionaries, and I help them land planes.

0:04:33 - (Beate Chelette): And what I found is that in my work, know first as a photographer and then as a photo editor for first, kind of like a hip magazine by the name of Wiener, which is united America is like, why would a magazine be called Wiener? But it's really the name of a city called Vienna, translated in German. So it has nothing to do with an actual wiener, but it's a Vienna type of thing. And then I became photo editor at l magazine in Germany.

0:05:03 - (Beate Chelette): And what happened is that my dad was a CEO of a dairy company, mid sized dairy company. And he got fired. He had gone to the board of directors, and he was a very competitive and a very. How would I say that? Very opinionated person. And he pushed the board. And then the board wanted to teach him a lesson and put a vote on whether or not they still had faith in their CEO. And then the board had a majority, and he got voted out on the spot and let go.

0:05:39 - (Beate Chelette): They didn't even have a plan on who his replacement would be. And the company got in big trouble afterward. But my dad was out. And what I realized is that I had a lot of what my dad's attributes were in me, and I wanted to not be loved or liked or appreciated for the position that I had, but for me as a person. And so a lifelong journey began, and then I decided I was going to go and do something I always wanted to do and never had the courage to do, which is to go abroad, to go to America for the year abroad. That never ended to this.

0:06:16 - (Beate Chelette): Off and off I went.

0:06:17 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my goodness. So at that point in time, when you left Germany, were you single, no. Kids, anything like that?

0:06:27 - (Beate Chelette): Yeah, I was 23. I was single. I had no kids. And it was the perfect time for me to go. I had a big relationship that fell apart at that time that I had really met the man of my dreams. And it was an amazing love story. And we were together for four years, but he now had come to a point where I had to move for a different position or a different education in a city that I just could not find myself in.

0:07:00 - (Beate Chelette): And I didn't want to be 22 and know what the rest of my life was going to look like. So I screamed in horror and ran.

0:07:08 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, well, good for you, for choosing you. I think that's pretty remarkable.

0:07:14 - (Beate Chelette): That's a decision, Kevin, I wrestled with for probably the know, because what? Because at the end of the day, and maybe we should just spend a minute on this, at the end of the day, we all are looking for the one love that is ours to have. And when the timing is not right, that's a really hard thing to wrestle with, because you go, well, this is a person that I could and would want it to be with. We're friends to this day. And to this day when I see him and he's married, and it's been married for a long time, I've been in a long term relationship, engaged to get married. But it's not that. It's not that desire is there, but that connection that never went away. So when you have that and then you let that go, because for external circumstances, definitely something you wrestle.

0:08:03 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, my last little question. You. You moving to America. You said that you moved to the Florida Keys. Why the Florida Keys? That is the most unlikely of places that I could think of, somebody moving to America to go to one of.

0:08:21 - (Beate Chelette): My colleagues, my editor, that I did a lot of the stories with. So I was the photo editor. She was an editor who wrote the stories, and she had a sister who lived in Key west. And so we had come to Key west to visit her. And I enjoyed the weather. I enjoyed the just. I just loved Key West. I fell in love with it immediately. And when I decided that I was going to leave the magazine and was departing from Elle, she had a friend who had a five year old who needed an pair. So I ended up after being a photo editor at Elle magazine as an pair on a houseboat without water and electricity for about four or five.

0:09:10 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Wow. What a change in life that was.

0:09:14 - (Beate Chelette): It's certainly not a thing on the resume where anybody would go like, well, that's a really good move.

0:09:21 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, my gosh. I love it. That is hysterical. So you said, though, from there, you ended up in Los Angeles.

0:09:29 - (Beate Chelette): Yes. And I like Los Angeles again, because I always felt that Los Angeles is my sole city where I belong. That's been recently changing a little bit just because there's just so much activity here and so many people and so much traffic. But I like the disjointedness of Los Angeles, and I like being at the beach and being in the mountains in a short amount of time. Love the weather, needless to say.

0:09:57 - (Beate Chelette): And I do like the creativity and just the craziness that is in this city and opinionated people. And so I landed here, and then I started my career here as an artist representative for hair, makeup and styling. I was pretty quickly then promoted to run a brand new photography division and started representing photographers. From there on, I went into photography, producing, producing shoots, and then all hell broke loose because then we had the riots in Los Angeles and a massive, massive recession.

0:10:39 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. Wow. That's so crazy. Now, in the photography realm that you were in, what exactly did that involve?

0:10:48 - (Beate Chelette): Yeah. So around photography, there's always a lot of support services that are where you don't actually take the photos, but photographers need a good amount of support services. So when I was representing them, I was the one who was running around with the portfolios to the different magazines and the different companies, like Ocean Pacific, that produces swimsuits. Too hot Brazil. Massimo was one of our clients, and we had a lot of clients here in the Los Angeles area that were all around the beach lifestyle. So back then, I remember casting Cameron Diaz when she came in the studio on Melrose that I had. Small studio where I did all the castings for my photographers. And I remember her telling the story on her just having been in this movie, in this weird movie with this comedian guy, Jim Carrey and the mask, and she know, just finished filming. I have no idea what this is going to be. And that was the last time we saw Carmen Diaz as the model. And then her rocket launch.

0:12:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. How cool is wow? Wow. So there's something that I read when I was getting ready for our interview today, and obviously, this is going to be having us skip ahead in your journey, because it said that at one point in time, you were, I think, $135,000 in debt, a single mother, and I can't help but wonder what got you to that point?

0:12:30 - (Beate Chelette): Yeah. That's a WTF question, right?

0:12:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:12:33 - (Beate Chelette): Like, girl, what did you do? I made just some really extraordinary, wonderful mistakes. I met a man who looked perfect on the outside. He had two flaws. He was a pathological liar and an alcoholic. Abusive and not physically abusive, but verbally abusive and just completely incapable. So I married my mother, in essence, and before I knew it, I was pregnant and I had a small child. I'm in this massive recession. I'm being laid off from this artist representation job, and we're trying to figure out what's going to continue. There's been a massive earthquake in Los Angeles right after I had been let go and I had set up my company.

0:13:22 - (Beate Chelette): And so here I am. I'm starting a ten year journey of massive adversity with a big bang. And with this earthquake came the realization that I was certainly not going to spend another day with this person. And I divorced. So here I am, a single mother in a city where I have no relatives, where it's just me going through a very hostile divorce with a business that I started. And that's already in shambles, because who's going to come to Los Angeles to produce here or shoot here with this massive earthquake and the rebuilding that we had to do when the whole earth shakes? And I just had to figure out how in the world am I going to make it through that? And over the next ten years, Kevin, like, all the stuff that happens to other people just kept happening to me. And the betrayal of an employee that wanted to run her own business, which was my business without me, and went behind my back, joined forces with a key vendor, had invoices that I'd written, paid to them with lies and fires, floods, riots, earthquake. I mean, the whole nine yards. And it just kept coming and coming and coming. And every time I thought I was going to get ahead, something else would come.

0:14:36 - (Beate Chelette): And here I am. I'm finally then at this point, where I'm running a million dollar business, and I think I've arrived. Finally, I have arrived, and the lawsuit settled, and I get my bearings. And that's when I found out about the betrayal from my employee. And I literally, in a day, lost a half a million dollars when they did what they did, was involved in this lawsuit that lasted for an entire year.

0:15:02 - (Beate Chelette): Just as I'm thinking, the production season rolls around, and I have another half a million dollars in productions on the book, which at least would make me survive possibly this lawsuit for a little bit longer. And then September 11 came, and it wiped out my production business in 24 hours. And here I am. I don't even know how in the world am I going to do this with one piece of my business completely destroyed because of them, the other part of my business completely destroyed because of a terrorist attack.

0:15:33 - (Beate Chelette): And then given the lawsuit settles, and I get to wipe out my debt, pay my attorney, and I start with literally zero. I think I had, like, $5 in my bank account after I paid all my debt. And now I have this idea for the stock, photography, syndication, and I'm going back into debt to build this business. And that's what eventually brought me to the $135,000 in debt again. And it's game over because I have no more money.

0:15:58 - (Beate Chelette): I can't even borrow any more money to pay interest on borrowed money. It's game over. I'm done. So that's the point that I arrived at.

0:16:06 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. And I want to touch on one thing that you kind of said a little bit ago, and it stuck with me, is the fact that you don't have family support where you're living.

0:16:20 - (Beate Chelette): No.

0:16:21 - (Kevin Lowe): As somebody myself, I know that family is so important and so vital. But you didn't have anybody.

0:16:30 - (Beate Chelette): No, I did. And this is sort of an interesting thing, because, remember, I left Germany to get away, and I picked the furthest place on the planet. I don't think, from a mild perspective, I could be any further away from where all this stuff happened. But with that, obviously came that my brother and my sister are still there. My father was still. So here I am. Either I'm going to pull the tail between my legs, and I make my way back over to Germany, and I arrive defeated, which certainly wasn't an option. I'd rather die than do that.

0:17:07 - (Beate Chelette): Or I was going to figure out how I was going to make this work.

0:17:10 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes. So I have to ask, what was the turning point?

0:17:14 - (Beate Chelette): Well, I wished I could tell you that there was a turning point. At that point, it just got a lot worse, because then, with $135,000 in debt, I am going to Germany to drum up some businesses at an international conference, setting up contractual agreements to license the materials that we had had the rights to, which was architecture, interior, and celebrity at home photography. And my father has a stroke.

0:17:41 - (Beate Chelette): My father did not have a stroke. My father had pancreatic cancer in stage four. So my father had literally only a few weeks to live. And so my father passes away. We are in Germany at this picturesque place with a baroque 14th century church right behind us and overlooking the whole valley. And it's the first week of spring, and the church bells are ringing. We literally just had buried my dad, and my phone rings, and I get a call from Los Angeles that this new landlord that bought the facility had just sent us a notice to vacate because my previous landlord, I had handshake agreement that I was allowed to do a home office, which the new owner, it wasn't in the agreement, so he had found grounds to get rid of me.

0:18:33 - (Beate Chelette): So that happens where I'm literally at the grave of my father. I'm getting this phone call. So I'm going to lose the house. And so the turning point was me breaking down, falling on my knees, raising my fist against the sky, and yelling at God. And I said, look, you have a plan. Wouldn't it be an excellent time to fill me in? Because it just wasn't normal that one person would be going through all these different things all at once.

0:18:59 - (Beate Chelette): And then I had to surrender to this and let it go and say, how do I get myself out of. I. What else is there? And there literally was nothing else, Kevin, that I could have done. I've gotten all the money out that I could get out. I did everything I could. I wrote a business plan at night. I just didn't know what else to do. And so I had to surrender to it and say, well, if this is the end of it, if I'm going bankrupt, so be it.

0:19:27 - (Beate Chelette): I literally couldn't do anything else. I come back to Los Angeles, and then not too long thereafter, I get a letter from the White House, from the president of the United States. Now, the reason I got a letter from the White House is because in my absolute desperation and because my former mother in law was an absolute nag, is she told me, write a letter to the president of the United States. If anybody can help you, it's the president of the United States.

0:19:54 - (Beate Chelette): He's the number one guy in the country. Why don't you go right to the top? Why are you wasting your time? And on and on and on. Did you write the letter yet? So I just wrote the letter just to not have these conversations with her anymore. And then I get a letter from the White House, and now the story turns, and it turns on a dime, where I get invited to the small business Administration because they also got a letter from the White House.

0:20:18 - (Beate Chelette): And the second in command, not some underling, but the second in command, wants to see who this nutcase is who writes a letter to the president instead of picking up the phone and calling him directly, which never even occurred to me.

0:20:28 - (Kevin Lowe): Kevin, of course.

0:20:31 - (Beate Chelette): And so as I'm sitting there, he says, I'm going to put in what you put in. I said, and then, for the first time in a long time, I had hope. And now, with that, I realized that I was going to be very close to making this happen. And they found me a bank that restructured my debt in a ten year fixed loan that freed up my line of credit, the $45,000 in cash that I needed. I was at break even. Three months later, 18 months later, I'm the world lead on my category.

0:21:02 - (Beate Chelette): And then a Bill Gates company comes and says, how did you do what you do? Can you tell us? And I said, absolutely not. You want it, you buy it.

0:21:13 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:21:14 - (Beate Chelette): And they said, how much do you want? I said, a couple of million. And they said, fine. And so that's how I sold my business, 18 months of the worst moment of my life, for millions of dollars, to Bill Gates.

0:21:24 - (Kevin Lowe): So that was 18 months later. Isn't it amazing how fast things can change, both for the negative and the.

0:21:35 - (Beate Chelette): You know, people always talk, Kevin, about quantum leaps. I think this qualifies.

0:21:40 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes, I would say so. Oh, my goodness. Wow. Now, that is just absolutely incredible. I have to ask, did you have to grit your teeth when you had to call and say thank you to what, was it your. Was it your mother in law who was nagging you?

0:22:03 - (Beate Chelette): That didn't even occur to me until much later, because other things happened. But, yes, I hold in my heart a very deep gratitude for her. And I believe we need to look at this. If we are saying, what are the lessons here to be learned? Is people always go, God help me. God help me. God help me. God, send me a sign. And then they send you a sign in the form of a nagging former mother in law, and you go, no, that's not the sign I wanted.

0:22:33 - (Beate Chelette): Can it be like a hot guy with a six pack in a nice car? No, that's not how these things work. When you get the support or the help that you are asking for, it never comes in a form or shape that you have asked for, because you don't know what you ask for. God works in its own ways. And then it's up to you to take this and say, if I lean into the yes, which in spiritual work, we say, a lot of times you need to lean into the yes. And you don't know what that means until.

0:23:04 - (Beate Chelette): Because leaning into the yes in this particular, they would have been leaning into a nagging for my mother in law. And who wants that? Nobody. But then when you do and you do these things, that's where the magic happens. So this is also about not judging the path that unfolds for you.

0:23:21 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Well, before I ask you of what you did with your millions from Bill Gates, I want to ask, I read on your website that you talk about failing your way to success. What does that mean?

0:23:36 - (Beate Chelette): Yeah, I think we have this idea in life that our life is a series of battles that then eventually lead to the victory, but we don't really know what that means. But you are not going to be winning all your battles. You're going to lose some of those. That means you still can win the war and you can be victorious. But we are very attached to our fear of making mistakes. And a mistake is when you invest in a program, and then that was the wrong program, or the guy was a schmuck, or they lied and you don't get the outcome.

0:24:15 - (Beate Chelette): Or somebody says it's easy, and then it's not easy, then it's difficult, and then you are disappointed. Or you thought that learning to speak from stage would be the answer to all of your questions and you realize it's not. Or you realize that nobody really cares about your story. So we are always up against these things where we are experiencing failures. I compare this very much to you being in a car and driving, or in your case, being driven somewhere.

0:24:51 - (Beate Chelette): And the guy kind of knew that he should have updated the gps because the warning new software available has been flashing for a long time. And for some reason, that just wasn't done. And inevitably, now they're building a freeway on ramp and in your favorite shortcut, and it's a cul de sac. You can't get anywhere. There's construction. There's guys with the reflective suits and hard hats. So now you're going to get out of the car, you're going to throw yourself on the ground, you're going to throw a temper tantrum. You're going to go, oh, my God, I'm such a failure. I'll never drive another car again. Or, my God, the guy's such an idiot. I can't believe I got in the car with him. What a loser. He has no idea where he's going.

0:25:32 - (Beate Chelette): These idiots. They're taking things away from me. How dare they? There's nobody ever. You just go, you get back in the car, you wave at guys that should have updated my gps because you have this clear understanding that the destination, your friend's house, or the concert, or the party, or the event or the conference that you had wanted to go to is still there. And so it's just that this path has been eliminated to get to your destination. So it's really not a big deal.

0:26:01 - (Beate Chelette): But we do that in life that when these path that will not get us to our destination are exposed, we throw temper tantrums every single time, and we call ourselves failures and losers, and we have self esteem issues. Instead of saying, okay, this one's eliminated. Where's the next one? Until you find the right one to get there. That's what I mean with failing your way to success. If you lose your attachment to the emotion that's attached to failures, you do a hell of a lot better in life.

0:26:30 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I just loved that explanation of that, the thing with the gps. And that is such a beautiful example of failing your way to success. I love it. I love it. So, obviously, the question is, now, what did you do with the money from selling your business to Bill Gates? I was wondering if you went off and started just chilling on the beach, drinking margaritas or. I kind of feel like you probably took a smarter direction.

0:27:03 - (Beate Chelette): Well, so the story goes that I took my daughter and we went to Neiman Marcus and thought, let's go shopping and let's buy the stuff that I was never able to afford. I'm looking at a t shirt and looking at the price tag. It's like $200 for a t shirt. My daughter is looking at this cool coat from Burberry, and it's like $2,500. And I'm standing there and I'm thinking to myself, there's a really good reason why I never paid $200 for a t shirt and why really not interested in $2,500 coat? Because it really was meaningless to me. Absolutely meaningless to me.

0:27:35 - (Beate Chelette): And so I let that go, and I realized that what I did was a prelude to something else. And then I put myself in service of helping people with shortcuts to make their dreams happen. Land planes. So today I work as a growth architect. We work with visionaries and thought leaders and help them to scale their impact, grow their authority. In essence, I help people land planes because people have some sort of advice that flies, and then they just don't know where and how to land it. And they keep circling and circling until they run out of fuel and crash.

0:28:12 - (Beate Chelette): And I get on board, hopefully sooner before that, and help them to figure out which airport or build their airport and make sure that they achieve the destination or a journey that is aligned with who they are and what they are here to do in life.

0:28:29 - (Kevin Lowe): What do you credit to? Not just your success, but your talent, your gift for this type of work?

0:28:38 - (Beate Chelette): I have an ability when I talk to someone to immediately see what the best potential outcome is that they can achieve. And it takes me 20 minutes, 30 minutes. It really takes me no time. And it's part my intuition because I'm very aligned with my intuition and I trust it. And so I was just at a spiritual retreat and just to give you an example of what that looks like. And I see this young man is like 31 years old.

0:29:07 - (Beate Chelette): And I look at him and immediately in my head, I have an image in my head. And it's like this beautiful house with an infinity pool. And for some reason, there's some cement type of features in this house. And can I ask you a question? And he's like, sure, go ahead. I said, what do you do? And he says, oh, yeah, no, I'm kind of in construction, but I'm specialized in cement. And so I do these very complicated high end cement features.

0:29:35 - (Beate Chelette): And I said to him, you're going to have a business on your own and you're going to go and do all these high end homes. And here's an image. And I drew it out. I said, you're going to be known for the go to authority to build cement installations that are functional in high end homes.

0:29:52 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:29:52 - (Beate Chelette): And he says, yeah, makes total sense to me. And then I would sit down and I would look at where he's at. And so he is part of a construction company where he oversees a team that does all the cement stuff and then figure out, do you want to go on your own? Are you going to ask your boss to give you this division to help build this division, become, have co ownership in it and then build the business model around it and tell them exactly how to build it?

0:30:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. So is that what you would say gives you the title of a growth architect?

0:30:30 - (Beate Chelette): Yeah. Growth architecture just means that I have developed a blueprint on how you build something. I mean, I've been doing this long enough. I certainly have the shortcuts. You have the ideas? I have the shortcuts. So I can look at the idea and I can tell you if it's a good idea. I can tell you if I believe there's market demand for this idea. And I can tell you what I think the earning potential for this particular type of work is because I've been doing it for so long and I see the pattern and what you need to have to make it happen.

0:31:01 - (Beate Chelette): And then I can diagnose because I developed the five star success blueprint to figure out where you are in your journey, what you may have missed. I have a quiz at what's your talent worth? Where you can actually calculate what your earning potential is with the skill that you have. It's completely free. And then when you know how much your earning potential is, then we can go ahead and start building this.

0:31:23 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. That's just incredible. Now, there's another side of you. I really don't know when you sleep, but I also see that you actually have written a book as well.

0:31:36 - (Beate Chelette): Yes, I've written a book called Happy Woman, Happy World. How your food proof picks how to get from overwhelmed to awesome. That was a book that I wrote as a single working mom to help other single or working moms to figure out how can you have your own life while you are a good parent and manage to be in a good relationship and potentially even have a career. And it's very difficult for women to do everything equally well because something always suffers. If you work, you're guilty that you're not at home.

0:32:14 - (Beate Chelette): If you're home, you're guilty that you're not working enough. So women are really caught in an impossible situation. And so I wrote a book about helping women and helping men understand what women are going through.

0:32:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. You are so remarkable. I listen to you and I think to myself how amazing it is that I listen to your story. I've only known you for as long as we've been talking, and yet I see a woman who you came from a childhood that had its scars left, and yet the fact that you found a way, you've made a way very successful. And I just want to say, first and foremost, applause to you for just literally taking advantage of every second of every day to make your dreams come true. And like I said, I mean, publishing a book is one thing, but the fact that you publish a book while having a thriving business and also just being a mom in your personal life, I think it's incredible.

0:33:26 - (Beate Chelette): One of the things, and coming out of this spiritual retreat that I was just in, I feel that when we learn on how to take our trauma and the wounds that we come here to heal, and instead of being angry and victimized by it and turning the mess into the message, which is not my quote, I don't even know whose quote that is and where I heard this the first time. But we always have an option to lean into the pain and take that energy and channel it into something that actually creates a path for us.

0:34:01 - (Beate Chelette): Because if it's happened to me, it must have happened to other people. And if it was difficult for me to overcome, other people must struggle with it. So what am I going to do with this? Am I going to be upset at my mother? My mother doesn't even remember it. My mother has taken all these memories that are just too painful for her to even admit this ever happened. I mean, if you go there, Kevin, she'll invite you in the house and she would want to prove to you on how happy we were.

0:34:29 - (Beate Chelette): She's shown friends of mine photo albums and said, well, look, in every photo, biate is very happy. Therefore, she has had a happy childhood. And the pink song plays in the background in our family photos, we look pretty happy. Yeah, there is definitely something in there where you can have your circumstances define you or you define what your circumstances made you be. And to me, there was not a chance in the world that my mother would be right about anything that she said to me.

0:35:06 - (Beate Chelette): I was going to be in charge of this, and I am in charge of this. And I love nothing more than helping other people to figure this out. And then just go. Just go do it. Just stop thinking about it. Stop crying. Waiting for one day. Today is day one. You're listening to this interview on great grace and inspiration. Today is day one. There is no whatever. The past is where it's at in the past. Sure, you're going to need to do your trauma work and somehow manage that and channel that energy into something. The future hasn't happened.

0:35:40 - (Beate Chelette): Whatever you think of yourself as a failure, impostor, and on whether or not you have a right to be here is irrelevant. What happens and matters is now. What are you going to do today? You're listening to this interview. You heard my story. You have no more excuses. If I can turn myself out of this into a self made multimillionaire with everything that I was up against, so can you. So do it?

0:36:04 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. My last question for you, another little sound bite, little snippet I pulled off of your website, which I can't help but think that it probably sums up what you've just said, is you talk about turning your adversity into authority. What does that mean?

0:36:25 - (Beate Chelette): It means exactly that. It means you take your story, you bake your story into a nice little long loaf of bread. You take a bread knife and you cut it into slices, and you decide which of these pieces you will use to turn yourself into the authority. So I have really not talked a lot about my abuse, because my mother is still alive. And it is important for me that I'm respectful to that, not for her, but for me, because that is how I want to show up in the world. But it did happen.

0:36:57 - (Beate Chelette): And so that part of the story is a slice that I really haven't talked about, but other slices, like my crazy ex husband, that's a slice I talk about. So you need to figure out which part of the story of the adversity that you went through becomes your authority, because that is the deep desire to help other people, especially women or people that are considered minorities or are, from the get go, a little bit behind.

0:37:25 - (Beate Chelette): That's my favorite thing because I have so much compassion for them because of what I went through. And that's where we hook in. How do you turn this into what you're helping other people with? And I always say to my clients, is what happened to you happening to other people? Yes. If it's happening to other people, do you think other people could benefit from the experience that you have? Yes. What do you need to give them?

0:37:52 - (Beate Chelette): How do you need to package your experience that it will help them to overcome that? Very simple.

0:37:56 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. You have totally blown me away. You have been such a joy to speak with today. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, for sharing your wisdom and advice with me, with the person listening today. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being on the podcast.

0:38:15 - (Beate Chelette): Oh, thank you, Kevin. It's my pleasure. And for all of you listening, please do Kevin a favor. Go to wherever you pick up this show and subscribe to it and give it a five star review with a comment. And here's why the comment matters so much. Because the comment shows the algorithm that what is being talked about on the show is really landing with you, the listener. And it is a labor of love to do a podcast.

0:38:40 - (Beate Chelette): And so give Kevin a little bit of love back so he can give more love to more.

0:38:45 - (Kevin Lowe): Aw. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And for you listening today, as always, thank you for being here with me, getting to have another just incredible conversation with just the amazing people in the world. I always say that that's the best thing about having a podcast, is I get to meet people who I never even would have known existed. So all of your links to your book, to your website, to your podcast, everything will be inside of today's show. Notes for easy access.

0:39:18 - (Kevin Lowe): With that, get out there and enjoy the day.

0:39:35 - (Beate Chelette): Make a.