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The Women's Code Expert

Beate Chelette Quick Facts

Main Areas: Empowering Women, Success, Career, Making Money, The Women's Code
Best Sellers: The Women's Code
Career Focus: Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur
Affiliation: ASPP, PACA

I am not an overnight success. Actually, I’m a fairly normal person who had to stretch herself to her very lI a I am not I am not an overnight success. Actually, I’m a fairly normal person who had to stretch herself to her very limits to learn how to do extraordinary things to survive.

In my 20s, living in Los Angeles, I found the man of my dreams, who had one problem – he lied. But we got married and though the marriage was rocky, one of the great joys of my life was the birth of my daughter, Gina. When the recession hit, I was laid off, I had a six-month-old daughter and a deteriorating marriage. I had to figure out what to do next. I ran a photography production business.

But struggling to make it through another day took its toll on me. At the age of 30, I had a nervous breakdown. With no money for therapy, I found a low-cost holistic healer who lived on the other side of town. I don’t remember exactly how I got through this time, but I did. It was a fight for survival at its most basic.

Just before Christmas 2000, I fell victim to betrayal by an employee who had taken my business and set up shop for herself, and her boyfriend photographer (one of my photographers) was her first client. Not knowing any better, I sued them both. We eventually settled. In the end, paying off the debts and such, I ended up with exactly nothing in my bank account – again.

At the end of Summer 2001, my European clients had scheduled $500,000 in production volume, which would help my business survive. Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11th that tore into the nation. In addition to the scars that etched into all our hearts, I lost every single client – overnight.

What now? One sliver of my business was still going: the stock syndication segment. Somehow we had managed to secure the syndication rights to the images of a world-famous photographer. Here was opportunity: I set up a stock syndication for architecture, interior, and living-well images. I had only one, rather big problem – I had no money. I stayed afloat by saying yes to all banks’ offers. All in all, my debt was in excess of over $100,000, and I was desperately looking for more money to stay afloat.

With nothing to lose I wrote a letter to President Bush. I explained what had happened, how I had lost my production business in the aftermath of September 11th. To my surprise, I got a letter back from the White House, which got me to the SBA (Small Business Administration) to assist me, and help me find a loan. We were so close I could feel it.

At this point, I was supposed to head to Germany, for business. On every European trip, my first stop was to see my father. We’d always been close, and we spent two days together, but something was terribly off. It turns out he had pancreatic cancer that had metastasized everywhere. The cancer had spread into every organ and every part of his body.

My dad was my best friend and advisor. I lost him. On the day of the funeral, I learned I had been served a 30-day notice by my landlord to vacate the premises. All I could think was that the worst-case scenario had already happened; I had lost my father – what else could come now? I had to detach myself from the outcome. What else was there to do? Upon my return I retained a lawyer—with more money I did not have—to fight the eviction. I found a bankruptcy attorney and prepared myself to let it all go. Although I had just negotiated a huge deal with the largest image distributor in the world, Getty Images, I might not make it to see my business turn a profit.

Finally, a bank gave me the news that it would issue a loan for my business. On a dime, my life turned. Within a few weeks, my attorney negotiated an amicable split with the landlord and I separated my personal life from my business life for the first time in ten years. I moved my office into a real office building, and Gina and I moved into a small house in a great neighborhood. My life was moving forward.

December 26, 2004: I learned that my great friend and colleague photographer Fernando Bengoechea disappeared in the Asian tsunami. Fernando had wanted to spend more time with his partner, and I was going to help him do that through syndicating his photos. Another tragedy, but I was able I was able to ensure his legacy through his work.

During all of this turmoil, my business began to turn a profit. I am certain that my Dad and Fernando had a hand in it. Beate Works became a little star among syndication companies, the world’s most-recognized collection of architectural and interior images. In 2006, I sold my company to Corbis, a company privately held by Bill Gates.

That’s my story.

Everything boils down to these two questions: Are you going to be the result of your circumstances? Or do you actively choose who you want to be?

Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Beate Chelette

"You only have influence over two things, the beginning and the outcome. The path is not up to you"
-Beate Chelette
"There are a million ways to be successful and you only need to find one - yours!"
-Beate Chelette
"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
-Chinese Proverb
"Well-behaved women rarely make history"
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Getting Started With Beate Chelette

The Women’s Code Conference has shown how a community of women can come together to change their lives, through a radical system of self-empowerment. At the conference, many women are introduced to the concepts of the code, and how The Women’s Code gives women the tools they need to examine their thoughts and expressions and eliminate behavior that doesn’t serve them.

Not everyone can make it for a weekend of pampering and networking, however. Which is why our video lessons will guide you through the conference seminars, even the practice sessions. Through the video guides, you’ll be introduced to specialists in intuitive healing, in breathing and meditation who will help women strip away negative thought patterns toward themselves — and especially toward other women. The Women’s Code Conference has helped women get to the heart of their behaviors, and learn how to trust and support other women — and how to forgive and move on. The online guides will do that, too — and you’ll have the ability to go back and re-listen to what you’ve heard, something you can’t do at a conference, unless you’ve gone to the trouble of taping it yourself!

An online seminar also permits online worksheets, which are interactive and provide immediate feedback. You will get the results you’d get by attending a seminar in person, but you can do it from where you are. You’ll learn about The Women’s Code, Beate’s process for helping women understand their lives in today’s world, and how they can better work with each other at a time when women have more opportunities than ever but remain mired in outmoded forms of behavior. You’ll also learn about Beate’s remarkable ego-RHYTHM™, her discovery — based on her own experiences as a mother and entrepreneur — that each person, each woman, has distinct phases of her life that she can learn to appreciate (rather than dread). It’s a manner of accepting what life offers, and finding a path toward fulfillment. These online seminars not only provide the details and the background of Beate’s processes, they offer a blueprint for moving ahead in life.