#180 From Adversity to Opportunity: Beate Chelette's Journey to Selling Her Business to Bill Gates

0:00:01 - Mehmet
Welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. As you know, nowadays I'm continuing in my new format of having only interviews. We stopped the solo episodes for quite some time now and you are liking it, and this is why today I have someone very special joining me. Beate, thank you very much for being on the show with me today. This is maybe a traditional question, but can you just tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do? 

0:00:28 - Beate
Yes, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited and welcome everyone. My name is Beate Chelette. I am known as a growth architect and I work with visionaries and thought leaders to help them grow the authority and scale their impact by designing the strategies and the systems, workflows, processes, all that fun stuff to actually get to the goal. 

0:00:48 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great. Thank you very much for being with me today and I know you have a busy schedule, so thank you again for being here today. Now the first thing, and you know, usually I try as much as possible to prepare and see. You know what my guests were up to and I found that you have a very interesting journey, so from being in depth to selling your business to Beate. So can you share a little bit about this journey? 

0:01:17 - Beate
Yes, so the journey really starts, like all other journeys, right. It just starts with this general feeling of there's got to be something better out there for me and I come originally from Germany and I felt that there's a lot to be said about Germans that you know. They're very straight to the point, that they're no fun, that they're you know always. You know rules, rules, rules. Bullet points follow it over engineering, all that good stuff. And while that is certainly true, I felt that I just wasn't fitting in this environment. I always had this more creative aspect about me, and when I was going through the aptitude test in Germany which, of course, is taken extremely seriously I was asked questions like you know do you like being outside? Do you mind carrying heavy loads? Do you, are you afraid of heights? And I'm, you know, innocent as I am? I'm like no, I love it, I don't mind, I'm strong. And then the result of this aptitude test you'll never guess this A roofer. 

0:02:25 - Mehmet
Hmm Interesting. 

0:02:27 - Beate
Yeah, that's kind of the look I had on my face and I'm like, are you guys serious? And she says, well, you know, what would you like to be then? And I said, well, I would like to be a jewelry designer, I'd like to be a textile designer, I'd like to be a photographer. And she goes, no, no, no, no, there's just not enough jobs out there. Why don't you become a secretary? I'm like this is ridiculous. So. So I think that what happens a lot of times and you know the reason I start there at the story is that we have this vision of something that excites us and then our environment starts beating it out of us. Then mom, dad, the well-meaning uncle, you know, if you want to be a provider for the family, and you know you got to get really serious about this, or what's all this like dog, if can you get like a real job. 

So I think we, we get so you know exactly what I mean, right? So we get so quickly discouraged, and so I became a photographer anyway, and from there I became editor at Elle Magazine in Germany, went to the United States, immigrated and now live in Los Angeles. And when I got here, I first had a job. I got laid off in a big recession while I was having a six-month-old baby, very quickly going through a divorce because I married an alcoholic and a pathological liar. That wasn't going to work out. 

And then my decade of just brutal adversity started, where I had to overcome not just, not just stuff, but natural disasters, fires, floods, riots, earthquake, a lawsuit. September 11th wiped out my business in 24 hours and the hits just kind of kept coming and coming and coming and coming. And then, at the grand finale, I am in Germany and my father had a stroke. But my father didn't have a stroke. He had pancreatic cancer, bama, and so he passes away. 

While I'm at the funeral, my phone rings and it says we've been just served a notice and I'm losing the house. And I'm standing there. I'm going like WTF, what the heck is going on here? And I yelled at God and I said, if you have a plan, this would be a really good time to fill me in. And then I surrendered. And then what happened? I got a letter from the White House because I had written a letter to the White House and it put me in touch with a small business administration that helped me to get a restructure for my credit card debt into a 10-year fixed loan, freed up my loan of credit and three months later I'm break even. 18 months later I'm the world leader in my category. And now Bill Gates company wants to know how I do it. I told him no. I said if you want it, you buy it. And I said yes. And then they asked me how much? And I said a couple million and they said fine, and that's how I sold my business to Bill Gates. 

0:05:25 - Mehmet
Wow, really inspiring and okay, just I have to confess something Some people ask me sometime because recently, when I'm bringing people to the show, they are trying to relate to what's the relation? Mehmet, your show is called the CTO show and you know, like we think it's just a technology thing. I'm telling them technology is a human aspect and we need to understand that. Even if you are a technology executive, if you are a founder in the tech space, you need to be inspired, and the way to be inspired is to hear stories from people like yourself, right? So this is why now I am more, I would say, excited to get more to know about your experience and how you are doing things. And really congratulations on having the courage. 

Actually, and this is, you know, maybe I think today I just shared by the way, you know, there is a and I'm not hiding this there is a gap of around like 10 days, or sometimes 14 days between the recording and the release, so, but today I just shared this that you need to be prepared. You know, when you start a business and really it's something that you know when we listen to a story like yourself. I think everyone should get this courage again that say, hey, like I should not delay, I should start now, right away. Now, while preparing for the episode, I saw that you have mentioned something about you having a super skill in finding hidden opportunities. Can you give us some examples of how you found such opportunities in challenging markets? 

0:06:58 - Beate
Yes, so I I'm the queen of reframing, so I always figured that in every challenge there's an opportunity, which is also a very spiritual principle, that if it exists, if the challenge exists, the solution must exist. It's a universal law of opposites, right. 

And so I give you an example when, when I was running this stock photographer's indication and I was, admittedly, in everybody's book, pretty broke I had wanted to get a meeting with the industry leader, a Getty Images, and I just couldn't get. I just couldn't get to the table. So I realized, you know, looking for the opportunity in any market where people would go, and I realized that after the conference they all would be at the bar, but only the men go to the bar. The women don't go to the bar. And so I figured well, if the men go to the bar, I need to go to the bar. 

So I came up and I write about this in my book Happy Woman, happy World. I created the Cinderella rule for women who travel for business and it goes like this you always dress up for the bar three drink maximum, if you drink, of course, in bed. Before midnight you walk to your room alone and if you follow that rule you never get in trouble. Because then there comes the point, right at 11.45, sometimes things get a little rowdy because men often, you know hint, don't have a three drink maximum, and then I would just suddenly disappear and walk away. And so over a period of time I created a lot of goodwill because I was fun to hang out with, but nobody ever got in trouble. You know, I had a good sense of humor. I would not remember exactly what was said, so all secrets were saved with me. So I was abiding by the men's code of you know, what was said, you know, cannot be shared. 

And now I get my meeting. I get my meeting with Getty Images. This is the make or break moment, biggest distribution company in the world. So I go and I get this meeting. I'm in this boardroom in Seattle, I fly up there and there's what? 10 people sitting around this table and they all go, so be at it. Well, we can see you're persistent and excited for you to be here, so tell us how big is the collection that you would like us to take into our international distribution? Now, they are now used to people say 4 million, 5 million, you know, like large collections and I said 453. 

Their face was very similar to yours. 

0:09:51 - Mehmet
They were trying to I'm trying to relate from where you come up with this number. Yeah, Right. 

0:09:59 - Beate
So so, so obviously they're between amused and shocked and WTF, what's happening here? So they look at me and they say, well, this number seems a little on the low side for what we're, what we're used to. So, you know, let's talk about hidden opportunities. So I needed to reframe this very fast, to my advantage, and hidden opportunity most of the time, is something reframed or something being searched for. And I said look, I work with A-listers. This is the A-list photographer has the cover of Vogue Casa. This is a photographer who gets hired to shoot Julian Moore's house. This is the photographer who does Francis Ford Coppola's retreat. I said if you think these guys shoot hundreds of images, they do one because they're at the top of their game. I said so let me get this straight. You rather have me give you hundreds of images just to fill a database, or do you want me to give you the best off the money shot every time? Yeah, I got the agreement Wow, the smallest distribution agreement I've ever done and we became a well-known and a very sought after collection because I was able to find the opportunity in that, and I think that's what finding hidden opportunities in any economy and recessions is always about. 

You got to go back to what are people experiencing in this environment right now. And this is, I mean, going back to what you said earlier about don't wait, because people have issues at every stage in an economy. They're either doing really well or they're not doing so well. They're afraid of this or they're afraid of that. There's always some sort of a challenge because life is rhythmical, and so if you haven't gone back to taking a look at who your customer is we call this the Airtide Avatar and we have a program that we designed for that where you literally in 15 minutes, can go and check out what are they experiencing right now. You need to crawl into the minds of your customer and say is what I was talking about six months ago still relevant today? And so many business and I bet you see this all the time, especially in technology I mean, six months is an eternity in technology. 

0:12:43 - Mehmet
Right, 100%, 100%. 

0:12:47 - Beate
Gotta keep checking. Is what I do still relevant? And I mean what? Last November we kind of knew about AI, but boy did we not know about AI. So there's 10,000 AI apps available now. We estimate there's gonna be a million AI businesses within the next 18 months a million. 

0:13:08 - Mehmet
Correct, 100% correct, and this is something I also believe myself. So, the first thing, thank you for sharing this story. What I want to add here is, first of all, there is a lot of noise outside right, so, and this noise, in my opinion, is naysayers who are near you. There is the media, who keeps pumping negative things in your mind. So my answer is actually maybe this is repeated, this is not my own war that you can search it on Google. It will come up. 

I'm not sure who came up with this, but majority of the big company. They were actually established during Recessions Recessions, so Airbnb is the most famous one. If I'm not mistaken, netflix was the same concept, and every time I hear about people talking about the economy, I say there's one good thing that happened to humanity in the past, let's say 100 years. So, because before we didn't have a proper way of recording historical events, so it was just someone who witnessed that era and then passed it to someone, to the next generation and then the next generation, and we are not very sure is this thing true or not right Now? The good thing is now, after 100 years of, I don't know, like. I mean at least something visual, because people like to see visuals in cinema, tvs and documentaries. So at least now, with the internet, we have this history and we can't see it. 

Because you mentioned something very true, which is about the rhythms. So the economy is a cycle and actually the life, all life, is a cycle. Exactly the reason I'm mentioning this, because I get very irritated when I hear someone saying, hey, we should feel the economy is collapsing. We know that the economy will never collapse. People will never buy food, people will never buy clothes, and if you have these two in the economy happening, so there is the economy right. So I love this about getting how to find the hidden opportunity. So this is very true. Now, also, while preparing for the episode, you speak about importance of articulating unique value. So how do you think we can identify and articulate our unique values? 

0:15:43 - Beate
Oh my God, it's like soap box. Get ready, step in on it. This is like my favorite topic to talk about, so I want your listeners now to really think about this here for a second. So yes, so the economy tightened up. We look at the large companies, and the large companies have one in one obligation only, and that is to make money for the shareholder right, because if the valuation of the company is high, the shareholders making the money they're investing. Now everybody's pockets book a flush. That's really all there is. So when a large company says there is a diversity, equity and inclusion movement, they'll do some token stuff so that it looks like they're on board of it. 

The minute somebody says you don't have to do this anymore, they get rid of it. If the market says we need to bring in people and offer them free beer Fridays and ping pong tables, they'll do exactly that. The minute that's not necessary, all the ping pong tables are going. If somebody says everybody needs to work from home, because it's the only thing, the big company says here's your desk, here's your high speed internet. We do what we take. We're so glad you're here. The minute they don't have to do that anymore, they're gonna force you to go back to the office. Big companies don't care. 

So now that we have seen this and the illusion bubble is burst and people are that have been overpaid because in this overpay and over incentivize era, all lost their jobs I mean most of them we have now an influx of I think the number is over 2 million coaches, experts and consultants entering the market. What the internet marketing movement you know, the couple guys that constantly do one affiliate offer after the other have figured out is that they are now teaching these people that are entering the market how to be business strategist, how to be high performance consultants and coaches, and the promise is in only five days. Imagine that. I mean you've never done this before and now somebody comes and promise you in only five days, you can be a high performance coach. I mean, which is ridiculous, but it sounds like a great easy promise Only $10,000. In five days, I'm going to be a high performance coach and now you can go up against somebody like me and other people have been doing this for whatever decades with proven and true records. 

So if you are an existing expert, coach, consultant, in whatever industry you're in, and that doesn't alarm you, I am going to give you a big, fat wake up call right now, because what they're going to do? They're going to erode the entire experts industry. They don't know how to run the business. They have friends, though, because they were laid off from Facebook, amazon, meta, whatever that was. So they have big names behind them. So they're going to go in and they're going to do what you're doing for a fraction of the cost, which brings us back to the value proposition. 

If you don't know now how to talk about what it is that you are bringing to the table the unique proprietary system you created to achieve a distinct client transformation journey for your customer, you are in deep, deep trouble. I mean, I'm shouting this from the rooftops. This is the time now. I had a consulting call with one of my clients yesterday, and then it came to a call that it came down to the question where she says it's a tutoring company and she says, well, but then they say to me well, we can get math tutoring from somebody who is not $50 an hour but is $20 an hour. Why would I go with you and she choked up and she says I don't know what to say. That means that the value proposition is not clear. 

I said to her. I said to her I remember when somebody says this, I said that is when you need to get excited, that's when you need to go. I am so glad you're asking me this question. This is the Toyota versus Lexus question. Allow me to explain. 

And then you go in and you say, well, if you just want a tutoring company, like Princess Leia said to Han Solo and Star Wars, if money is all you want, money shall be all you get. But if all you want is the low cost math tutor that terrorizes your poor child into math equations, go ahead. Do that. That's not us. We teach your child self advocacy and learning, because the reality of it is that the educational system is broken because they teach kids how to take existing information, learn existing information, regurgitate existing information, and then you get an A. We have an army of school kids that go into the real world, that look at you like the boss and says where's the information I can learn, where can I repeat what I just learned and where do I get an A? 

And so I said and if you come in and you say and we help you to get your child not just an advocate for themselves in education, but to understand how to use this as a springboard for the stuff that really happens in life. Now, now I pay you $50 versus 20, because now there's a skill here, a value proposition, but it's tutoring right, but it's a different kind of a tutoring. So in the value proposition and you can tell a passionate about this, but in the value proposition, I need to wake you up at three o'clock in the morning and if I ask you, why are you different, why should I hire you? You need to be able to tell me this in 30 seconds. 

0:21:39 - Mehmet
Which is that kind of elevator pitch. 

0:21:42 - Beate
It is an elevated elevator pitch, exactly. And an elevator pitch is not the. We help companies to solve their technology solutions. We are punctual. We show up on time. Dude, if you can't show up on time, you shouldn't be in business. We are qualified to do even the most complicated of things. Welcome to the club. If you don't know your current technology, you shouldn't be in business. We have very satisfied clients. Well, they better be satisfied, or you shouldn't be inclined in business. So people just regurgitate this like really like try, blah, blah and you go like you're not telling me anything. Because if you can't tell them differentiation factor, the go to measurement then becomes price Right and then they are going and asking for the lowest cost provider, because then that is the only criteria they understand. If you fail to give them the value proposition, now I'm off my self box. 

0:22:49 - Mehmet
Oh, like you, like it's a very I would say it's a. I run sometimes Master classes and this is a mini master class from you, because, on multiple things you mentioned, first, take a ways, education system is broken 100%. I mentioned other times. Someone need to change this. I don't know who, but yeah. Second, you need to create this. You know fear of missing out, right, if you don't buy from me. Yeah, there are plenty of service providers out there. Okay, you want the $5 guys that are websites called after the world five. You can go and find people there Right Now. 

The reason I'm mentioning this because, again, one of the things that I want to talk about. You know, I'm sharing with a lot of people and commenting on. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I get irritated, I get very upset of people who are still training the new generation of this old approach that you just mentioned. We are a well established company, very deep knowledge in XYZ, and you know we have done 100 projects. So what? There's like 100, if not thousands, 10,000 clones of you. What are you doing to become? This is my own opinion and this is why I want to ask you about this as well. What I'm repeating recently and I'm sharing this. People will like it, hate it, I don't know, but this is my own thought about it. If you are in technology business, whatever it is, you need to be very special and become a magnet. 

0:24:36 - Beate
Yes. 

0:24:37 - Mehmet
If you are not a magnet, there's something wrong with you because you're going to be a parrot. So either you are a parrot or a magnet. What do you think? 

0:24:46 - Beate
I think this is really it and I give you an example. So I was talking to a technology company and they do call centers and they first came to it from analyzing the conversations the customer service conversations and the sales call conversations and then they evolved this business out into doing additional offers and then when I looked at the suite of offers that they did, it looked like a random collection of things. So what are you? Are you a call center? Are you a technology data company? Like what exactly are you? And I said, the problem is there's a very simple solution here to being a magnet and that is to create your signature growth system. It's really easy when you think about somebody like Pilates. Pilates was a dancer who got injured and he couldn't heal his body with the traditional methods. He designed a device specifically for flexible bodies of dancers where the rehabilitation could be done quicker. So he designed a method, he designed a device. Today it's a worldwide, global movement that is the Pilates method, and there are 16 different versions of it. 

That's a signature system. So anybody can create a signature growth system and say you know, like we, our tag is the growth architect. My signature system is the five star success blueprint. I use this as a diagnosis so I can see in the client transformation journey, where my clients are stuck, what the pieces are that they're missing. So when I sell, I don't sell myself, I sell my system and I can scale because in my system I then can say this piece is now handled by this person. 

this piece is handled by this person. Now I get my freedom back over time. So if you do not have a proprietary signature growth system, it is very difficult to be a magnet because you still stumble in the dark about the services that you offer. But if the system solves a transformation journey issue and has different entry points, now your clients can self identify where on that scale they fall. It's magic, magic, and I do more and more and more and more of it because I keep seeing the most brilliant, smart people. When you ask them what they do, it sounds literally like a fifth grader. 

0:27:31 - Mehmet
Yeah, and this is what you call authority, right? 

0:27:34 - Beate
That is authority. 

0:27:35 - Mehmet
Yes, yeah so so you need to differentiate yourself somehow from from, from the mass, and if you don't do this and now I, I became a very advocate of this. I don't know, I'm not sure if I should, you know, I will be in trouble or not later on. But I have to mention it because what I'm seeing recently happening, especially in the corporate world I wasn't the corporate world, I worked for like long time 10 years, more than 10 years, and then before I was on a normal client side and what I start to see recently, that in the corporate world they are nurturing something very dangerous and this is it's like kind of a propaganda I don't know what we should call it where you see, for example, everyone in the company, they copy the same message and they post it everywhere, right, and they think, oh, the more people will see our message, the better it is. But you know, like this is kind of a. For me it's a propaganda, right, this should not be done using a propaganda. You should be educating people why you are doing it better. 

What's your differentiator from the others? So people they say, okay, this guy is keep showing up, this company is keep showing up, we are seeing them everywhere, so, and they are saying something very different from the others. Let's see what they have Right. I'm really, you know, sad for young people who are usually fresh graduates, and they put them in this situation. Hey, whoever invented this software and we have it on the city or show. I was doing this mistake myself, by the way. I was copying the company message and sharing it as is, and then I figured out before I leave, that I'm doing a propaganda, and I don't like to do propaganda. I like to be me right. So what you mentioned now is something that can awaken a lot of business leaders, startup founders, tech executives that, guys, you need the authority, you need to establish your own brand's outside. 

0:29:49 - Beate
You said something very interesting. Actually, I think that that also ties into a larger issue. Is that this idea of if you look at the political climate and I'm not going to go political, but if you look at the political climate worldwide, it's not just the United States, it's everywhere right now, there is a very hard right movement and typically, when we see something like this in history, there are a few people that feel that it's their job to tell everybody else what to do. Now, on the other side, we have this unbelievable evolution with AI and technology. That is the smartest person you never knew you had access to, that can solve things that you didn't even exist. Now we're feeding this machine because it's still in its infancy and learning. So we have to be very careful with all the stuff that we put into this learning experience, because what you put in is what you get out, which is, I think, everybody in the technology and AI space is so worried about. So now you want to look at it and you say, m is it my job, if we think about this on an evolutionary perspective, as a parent, if we are good parents, our job really is to get this kid ready by 18 to go and conquer the world. That's our job. 

But we don't do that. We tell our kids a lot of them still live at home at 30 because we have successfully been able to really take away all this responsibility from them. We help them not to fail, we bail them out, we make excuses, we're paranoid that they're having a bad experience in life, instead of allowing them to have experiences in life that then will shape them to be the person that then knows how to handle adversity. Because life is not a princess or a prince story where we were born royalty and then somebody one day handed out as a crown. Mostly, it is far from so. 

What you are saying is that, if I am now a leader, is it better to give the message of what we lead by and what we achieve and who we are serving and what our mission is for our clients, and then allowing you to interpret that within the parameters of the sandbox I just put you in? But I don't tell you you need to use the green shovel because you like to dig with your hands or you want to bring in your yogurt cup Like, what do I care? What do you do it with? But I think that that in an environment that we're in right now. It goes so far out. No, you must use the green shovel, and you can only use the green shovel between 8 am and 10 am, and after that you must switch to the yellow rake, and the yellow rake you're only allowed from. It's just ludicrous. So I think this propaganda stuff looks like propaganda in an environment like this, because it actually is. Why cannot I say I believe that what we do is changing the world, and here is who we are, here's what we do, here's who we serve. And now I want to hear from you and how we can make this greater instead of keeping you confined. I think that's the challenge we're in right now. 

0:33:21 - Mehmet
Wow, yeah, 100% I agree with this and I love this approach. You mentioned a few moments ago about your five-star success blueprint and how it can help in getting to know if the business is stuck, so can you elaborate a little bit on this one? 

0:33:41 - Beate
Oh, 100%. It's very simple. So the five-star success blueprint has five stars, as the name says. The first one is the idea. So you want to start looking at what is it that you're doing? Who is it for? What does this client look like? Why do they need it, what's the problem that they're having and why am I the right one to provide the solution? That's the basics. Then you go to number two. Short and sweet is the offer. Only when you have figured out what the first one is should you actually make an offer. 

Because, then you can create the offer specifically designed to solve the problem for the person being you. And you need all these elements to do a proper offer. Once you have that, then, and only then, are you starting to build your systems, because now you know which systems you need to make the offer that solves the problem for the person you've identified. Then, and only then, are we building the team that operates the systems that manages the offer that solves the problem for the person we've identified. And then, finally, we look at you and we say who do you need to be as a leader to manage that team that manages that system that operates that offer to solve the problem for the client? And if you look at it from this, it's just like simply the simplest way to look at it. What do we do? How do we sell it? How do we deliver it? Who is doing it? How do I need to, who do I need to be to make that whole thing happen? It's not magic, it's simple. 

You just figure out what the steps are. 

0:35:26 - Mehmet
And I think it applies very much to even startups and tech entrepreneurs. It's very valuable and very easy. I get to add a little bit about it. Actually, it's very logical, I would say it. It just tells us to come back to the logics, because what I see, sometimes people get so excited and sometimes they have egos as well and they start to do assumptions. So basically this, I think your framework let us again come to reality and if we answer these simple questions, as you said, we will have a lot of more clarity. 

0:36:07 - Beate
I have such a fun example. So I'm literally sitting at the hairdresser a couple of days ago and the sky walks in, completely ignored the no solid citation sign, and immediately goes into a sales pitch and he's talking, and talking, and talking, and talking and talking. He's asking no questions and then finally, about six minutes and I looked at him and I said dude, you need help. 

You need help with the sales pitch. I said this is like really bad. And he goes like well, you know, and he gets like all defensive and I said look, if you really in sales, you know that you need to ask your potential client questions. I said and you haven't asked her a single question. Well, you know, I haven't gotten to that yet. I'm like well, you know, as far as I'm concerned, you're six minutes in. 

So there was such a disconnect that he was so obsessed with his product, which was more expensive, which he couldn't demonstrate on why it was better than the existing product. Other than then he was very cool and a bunch of celebrity stylists were using it and that he really didn't need the money. I mean, he made a complete idiot out of himself. He could not explain any of these and that's exactly what I talk about. He did not know who his client was. He made the product about himself Instead of saying the reason I want to be here with this product is because what we have found that our competitor they rip so easily, so we've done a stronger product a little bit more expensive. But you know this is for especially here. That's whatever difficult to manage, didn't do any of that. So you think you always it's so easy. Let me put it this way it's so easy to fall in love with your product. 

0:38:04 - Mehmet
Yes. 

0:38:06 - Beate
That you don't think about. Does anybody even want it? 

0:38:10 - Mehmet
100%, 100%, 100%, and not only this, like you need to think also. This is I started to talk about recently and I said especially if you are in kind of a business or you are selling a service product, whatever it is that is replacing something else, you need to also put into consideration that the guy you're talking to, he took a decision about the previous product and if you go immediately and, you know, start to position your product in a way that it it let him feel that. Excuse me for maybe being a little bit rude, but maybe the client will feel himself dumb or herself dumb because she did the previous decision. You are doing a mistake. This is where the question part comes into the picture and I want to add one thing, and maybe I'm repeating myself Do it in an authentic way, not robotic way, not because someone put for you you know a, a, a, a book and said, okay, follow these steps. 

You know, don't do it this way. Don't be robotic, be authentic. That's what I would say. And they are like we are almost done. I would say you have a lot of experience and you know you work with a lot of businesses, so what advice would you give to others who are on the verge, maybe to leave you know what they are doing today and start their own ventures. Or maybe they are just fresh in the market and still hesitating to start something. So what advice would you give them? 

0:39:53 - Beate
Yeah, I think that the most important advice when, when you think about starting your own business or you're early in the startup phase, it costs money. People always shocked that it costs money. The second thing is that you are not going to get a medal for doing everything yourself there is no reward. 

when, when, when we go to your funeral, nobody ever said here he allies a man or a woman who did everything themselves. That's never because you know what. Nobody's going to be at that funeral because that was a lone wolf. So you want to be very clear very early on that it is not a question of how can I myself do it all, but who do I need that can get me there the fastest and then make sure you have a budget for that, because it is time or money you spent and if you don't value your time, you're going to pay more and lost time and opportunity than in the money that you would if you would have hired a coach or consultant expert like you in the first place. Right, and then you go, I just lost three years of my life. 

If I would have paid this person, whatever the 1020,000 that they were asking for, I could have saved myself three years. Now, if you don't think that 20,000 is worth a three year saving in time, because that's lost the opportunity and income, so, unless you want, only make $20,000 over the next three years. So I think that's what gets often miss misunderstood. Yeah, consultants and experts and they all, you know, want money. That's what we do. We do this for a living. We are experts at this. 

We save you know I, when I work with people specifically on the signature growth system, it is you know. I mean we're not allowed to say typical results because of the laws, obviously, but it is not uncommon for people to start selling while they're in the course. Why? Because they finally understand how they need to present and position this. So now you've been trying for five years to to get this, this piece of how do you talk about yourself, squared away. I can take you through in eight weeks. Now you think about what you lost in those five years of sales that you couldn't close because you didn't have the language that I could have taught you in eight weeks. And that's really something that, especially right now in poor people to look at, on, on, on, and obviously doesn't have to be me, can be, you, can be other other people. I mean you have to find somebody that resonates with you. But to really get clear and say who can get me there fast, because speed right now is not your is key, time is not your friend 100%, 100%. 

0:42:44 - Mehmet
lot of advices, lot of, I would say, provoking moments, but I have to ask my, my famous question at the end, which is anything you wished, I asked you and how you would answer it. 

0:42:58 - Beate
Yeah, I probably would say that the one thing I I I get asked is about resilience and failure. And how do you, how do you get a better mindset around this feeling that you are a failure when you made a mistake and because I made so many of them? My piece of advice is that I want your listeners, men, to really think about this from a very pragmatic perspective. So I want you to think about that. You, you have this car and in the car, the GPS has been telling you for weeks you need to update the software but you don't have time because you're on the way to pick your kids up. 

You're away to the meeting. You know you can't, just, I mean, just takes so long you don't have time. Well, inevitably now, the place that you usually go, the route there's construction because they're building the freeway. Well, you didn't update the GPS so you didn't see it. So what are you going to do? You're going to get out of the car. You're going to throw yourself in front of the construction guys in the middle of the road. Are you going to throw a temper tantrum? Are you going to say I'm a failure, I'm such a terrible driver I'll never drive again. I'm going to sell my cars. Just not worth it. I'm the worst driver in the world. This is ridiculous. How could I not have seen this? You're not doing any of this. 

You just go, touch your head and say, ah, no, to self update the GPS next time a little bit earlier. And then you do the shocking thing you turn around and you find another way. Why? Because you know the destination is still there. The meeting is still on the books. You just have to find a different way. So when your listeners now have an obstacle or they go into this, I can't bloody believe I did this. I want you to imagine the gentleman or the woman in their full on safety suit, with the neon colors and the reflective stripe and a big fat stop sign, smiling at you, ever so gently pointing at the stop sign and saying it's the wrong way. And then you wave back and they say got it, finding another way. 

0:45:19 - Mehmet
Wow, this is really good advice actually. Yeah, and for me, you know, like you mentioned about resilience and failure, for me, I don't love the word failure. I call it experiment, I call it I don't know. 

0:45:35 - Beate
Learning, learning. 

0:45:37 - Mehmet
I prefer learning. Yeah, actually, it's an experience which better that you learn from it. Like this is the way, because some people, yeah, if you do the same mistake again and again, like you have something wrong with you. But I don't know, maybe you need to say someone specialized. But I mean, yeah, like you know, down the road, everyone does mistakes, and sometimes it's not only mistakes, it's like big failures, which is fine and this is the whole. I think this is you know part. When I was reading this, I was thinking, like this is very romantic. Like, yeah, like we see, we hear about these entrepreneurs like they struggled and this, but you know, when you start to also yourself live it, oh, you say no, this is this is true. So you need sometimes to struggle, you need to learn let's not call it fail so you can reach to your final destination. I would say the final thing where the audience can find more about you and your program. 

0:46:35 - Beate
Yes, so you can find me all over social media under either my name be at a show that and the proper spelling is going to be in the show notes, sure or under growth architect, and I would encourage you. We have a couple of things that you can think about if that resonates with you. Number one if you now have this feeling that you better be, should should look at your avatar. Go to airtight avatarcom. Check that out, see if that's right for you. You know we've designed it 15 minutes and you'll know exactly who your airtight avatar is. 

If you are not sure what your business needs, go to our growth blocker. Go to growth blocker quizcom and in two minutes, take our, our complimentary quiz to figure out where your business is stuck and how you can remove that blocker. And if there was anything you heard and you go, wow, maybe I should talk to her. Go to uncovery sessioncom. Please make sure you mentioned the CTO show so we can give you priority and talk to our business growth advisors for 15 minutes and we'll help you to figure out. You know, maybe some ideas on what you can do to take your business to the next level. And while I'm at it, I want to give you a shout out, mehmet. So for all of you listening, this is a labor of love. Will you please go wherever you pick up the CTO show and give Mehmet a five star review. 

0:47:59 - Mehmet
Oh, thank you. 

0:48:00 - Beate
And make a comment. Share this with one other person because we need the comments and we need the shares for the show to get a better ranking so that we can inspire more people with all the great work that Mehmet is doing. 

0:48:12 - Mehmet
Oh, thank you very much, beati, for this. Actually, you know, as I told you before we started, that my goal now is to empower and educate and get the best minds I can find, as much as possible, and my guests are, you know, from all over the world. Like you are in the US, I have guys who joined me from all parts of the world and I'm on the hunt of people like yourself who has stories that they want to share and inspire. Of course, all the links that Beati mentioned they will be available in the episode description. You can find all of them there, and thank you, beati, actually, for you know, asking for the review and for the share. So this is a small ask from me as well. 

If you find this show useful, let me know. If you find it horrible, also, let me know. Like you know, I always try to learn from the audience. How should I do? If there anything that I can enhance any feedback about this episode or the show and learn it. Don't hesitate where you find me. You find me on LinkedIn, twitter, mali and my email is available in the podcast description itself. Reach out If, as I said, you want to become a guest on the show, same as Beati was today. Don't hesitate. You can do me directly, we can discuss, we can arrange it. Wherever you are in the world Doesn't matter. I can do record this mid of the night, I can do very early in the morning, the time difference is not an issue. And Beati again at the end. Before we close, I want to thank you very much. I know you all have a very busy schedule. Thank you for being with me today and for the audience. Hope to hear your feedback and until we meet in a new episode, thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

0:50:05 - Beate
Thank you for having me. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet