TT120 From $135,000 Debt to a Multi-Million Dollar Deal with Bill Gates: The Inspiring Journey of Beate Chelette

Imagine having to tackle a debt of $135,000 as a single parent and transforming that into a multi-million dollar deal with Bill Gates.

That's the story of our charismatic guest today, Beate Chelette.

She's not just a growth architect- she's a beacon of perseverance and resilience, an inspirer. Her journey from Munich, Germany to Los Angeles, overcoming immense obstacles while bootstrapping her passion for photography into a global business, is a story that will embolden you.

We dive straight into the trenches with Beate as she spills the secret of her success in building a stock photographer's syndication business.

Roberto further enriches our discussion with his experiences- how he dared to disrupt the existing narrative and built his authority. Beatte turns the tables and gets our host to share his journey of crafting a unique style, standing out from the crowd and his passion for helping others.

As we delve deeper, Beate unravels her personal and professional codes. She talks about her book, The Women's Code and breaking away from conventional business codes to help women advance in their careers.

We also explore topics like growth, transformation, fashion impact, staying relevant over time, and much more!

This episode is a gold mine of insights and experiences that will inspire you, entertain you, and most importantly, motivate you to push through, never settle, and reach for the stars.

Enjoy!

Find out what your #1 Business Growth Blocker is at https://GrowthBlockerQuiz.com

Head to https://AirtightAvatar.com to find Your Ideal Client In 15 Minutes. Look into your prospects mind and identify what your best client looks like in this done-with-you Action Guide from Growth Architect Beate Chelette!

Links:
Roberto on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/robertorevillalondon
Tailoring Talk on Instagram http://www.instagram.com/tailoringtalkpodcast

Credits
Tailoring Talk Intro and Outro Music by Wataboy on Pixabay
Edited & Produced by Roberto Revilla
Connect with Roberto, head to https://allmylinks.com/robertorevilla
Email the show at tailoringtalkpodcast@gmail.com

Chapters

• 0:10 Journey of Entrepreneurship and Overcoming Challenges
• 6:06 Building a Successful Stock Photography Business
• 17:07 Building Authority and Framing Your Value
• 24:51 Scaling Impact and Building Authority
• 38:50 Personal and Professional Codes
• 49:51 Transformation, Growth, and Fashion Impact
• 1:05:28 Growth Blocker Quiz and Helping Others

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Taylor in the talk show with your host, roberto Ravilla. I'm a bespoke Taylor men's wear designer and owner of Roberto Ravilla, london custom clothing and footwear. I activate your superpowers through the clothing I create and the conversations woven on this podcast. We'll meet self starters and creators to learn about their journeys, while they share valuable lessons to help you be the very best that you can be. Please support the show by subscribing, and it helps so much if you take a few seconds to leave a rating and a review.

Speaker 1: 0:40

Today's guest is the growth architect I should say the growth architect and founder of the women's code. She is also the host of the business growth architect podcast and is among people hums top 100 global thought leaders and one of HuffPost 50. Must follow women entrepreneurs. A first generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent. She bootstrapped her passion for photography into a global business and exited in a multi-million dollar deal, selling the company to none other than Mr Bill Gates, himself here to share her story and help you to become the authority in your industry. Tayloring talkers please welcome Beate Chalette to Tayloring. Talk. Beate, how are you?

Speaker 2: 1:30

I am excellent. Well, thank you for that awesome introduction. I feel like we need to have like an audience clapping right now in the background, going like right.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Thank you so much for joining me. I'm totally honored, like really, because you are a bona fide superhero. So, beate, you're in Los Angeles. Is that where you're permanently based these days, or are you moving around quite a lot?

Speaker 2: 1:58

No, I'm primarily here in the city of crazies, where everybody who doesn't fit anywhere else in the world fits in magically. I call it lovingly the city of misfits.

Speaker 1: 2:09

Yeah, Now your accent is tinged with one of my favorite European accents. You are originally from Germany. Yeah, yeah, you know, I love it, love it, and from Munich right.

Speaker 2: 2:28

From Munich, I just said it, where we drink beer, eat pretzels and when carbs are involved, people are significantly happier.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Yeah, exactly. So October Fest is coming soon, right, it's next month? Yeah, because it's October, so that's when some of my clients all go off and then come back. You know, five kilos, 10 kilos heavier.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Well, I mean, it takes a real person to manage all the food and the beverages served at the October Fest.

Speaker 1: 2:59

for sure, you mean a real person or a person?

Speaker 2: 3:02

you haven't got much discipline, yeah, like you know, I mean you have to have discipline to try all the foods. You have to go into every 10th and you have to. You know you don't take a little beer, you take the mass which is a full liter of beer. You do that, you know. Go to five, 10s, that's five liters. I mean we're talking about significant dedication to the cause of the October Fest.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Yeah, I'm not able to reach that level of dedication yet, which is why I keep ducking and diving all the invitations.

Speaker 2: 3:29

I get every single year to go. I'll have to do it one day.

Speaker 1: 3:32

I have been to Munich. It's a beautiful. It is a beautiful city. I guess what the audience is probably thinking is how did she end up in Los Angeles? So do you want to give a little bit of your origin story?

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah, happy to yeah. So when? Yeah, when I saw your podcast and I realized that you are in fashion, I had to be on the show because I come originally from photography and I have a photography degree and I ended up being a photo editor at Elm magazine in Germany. So this whole idea of the you know what fashion is and how to you know present yourself the photography what it looks like, was really intriguing to me, especially with the you know, with the pathway to what you do with podcasts today and I from Elm magazine, I went to the United States, I immigrated, I was a photographer agent and then a self photography producer. I had what I called a decade of bad luck. That includes real, real, heavy things and lots of natural disasters fires, floods, riots, an earthquake, september 11th, a tsunami lawsuit. I mean the hits just kind of kept coming and eventually I found myself under $35,000 dead, completely broke. And then I cracked the code and I got to sell my business to Bill Gates for millions of dollars.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Wow, that's it Is that. Is that what's on the back of your book?

Speaker 2: 5:04

I mean, it is so difficult. It is so difficult, roberto, to take all of this and say and some, it's like, what's the highlight of it? And do you go? Well, it's, it's this insane journey of a step ahead, three steps back, two steps forward, one step back, six steps forward, 20 steps back, and and it just keeps going and going and going.

Speaker 2: 5:30

And I think what we talk about a lot in entrepreneurship is that we think that there is a starting point in a destination and then we would like it to be that nice straight arrow from there to there where, you know, just consistently goes up until one day, you know, the angels sing, the sky opens and God's hand himself hands you the price and the journey is nothing but that. The journey is I'm not going to make it. I probably don't make it. I could make it. I'm going to make it. Nobody tells me what to do for sure, I'm going to make it. This is never going to happen. How am I going to get out of this? Until you finally get to the point where you have the skill set, the mindset and done the actions that were required to even get to that point, and then you have this full alignment and then hopefully you get to have an exit story or a success story like mine, but the getting there is just absolutely brutal.

Speaker 1: 6:29

No, I can imagine, because you go through this period where you've come to a new country, continuously getting knocked over and having to try and pick yourself up, when you must have had some really bad moments where you were thinking I can't do this anymore. Yet you kept all the time as a mother. You kept going.

Speaker 2: 6:49

The burning of the ship yeah this is like the burning of pardon me that I interrupt, but I think this really important thing, the burning of the ship. When you think about mindset or you have a dive into mindset, there is this concept of the burning of the ship, that there is a point of no return, and I think when you have a point of no return you kind of keep going. So I'm sure that that was your next question, anyway.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Yeah, basically, I mean mentally most people would have probably thought do you know what? This isn't happening, I'm just going to go back and maybe reset or whatever, but you just kept moving forward, which is amazing. I mean, that's why you're known as someone who is an authority figure on talking all things, overcoming adversity. What was the business again just for the listeners as well at home what was the actual business that you started, cultivated and then grew into this thing that Mr Microsoft came along and said right, I'll snap that up. So the business was a stock photographer's indication.

Speaker 2: 7:55

So when you look at the story and I think this is important to point out, because we sometimes think that when we start with something and then that doesn't work out, that that's the dead end but when you really look at the story and you think the photography, the photo edit at Al Magazine the artist representative, the producer then where I had clients from all over the world that came doing really large things you know, mercedes Benz, bmw, ranglai, levi Strauss, and now I am starting a stock photography syndication for architecture, interior and design. So it took every skill set that I had and it's kind of just incorporated that in this business. So I knew how to manage photography, I knew how to manage photographers, I knew how a production would work, so I could see something through all the way, from point A, all the way to point Z, because I have that strategic thinking of, like you know, after this, what comes next, after this, what comes next after this, what comes next after this, what comes next. I think it's the same thing in fashion when you construct a jacket or a suit, it goes in a particular order, like you can't change the order. The order is the order, otherwise it won't look right. Or the, or the parameters or the lines are completely off. And so there's a natural skill that you have, or it's a learned skill where you go. I just know how to do that.

Speaker 2: 9:20

And so I had gone after A-listers because I had learned in all my mistakes that the C and the B and the C people are okay, but there are a lot of work. But the A-listers, once they make up their mind, that's it, because they look for shortcuts, they look for people that are qualified at your level and so if you can sell that from the get go, you're good because they're good. You're good because then B and C is going to come automatically because they always follow A. And so I got these A-listers and I didn't realize this at the time. But the A-listers work with A-listers, so they were working with the best architects and interior designers who design homes for the A-listers. So next thing, I know I get Julian Moore, francis Ford Coppola, seal, simon Baker, terry Hedger, madonna.

Speaker 2: 10:13

I get all these at home stories because they were in vocasa, they were in all the big magazines all over the world. These were the A-list photographers that shot all these homes, these great homes, and so they come in my office and they literally dump it on my desk and says, Beate, can you help us with this? And I'm like well, I used to buy them when I was at L. Of course I know how to do this. So I built up a global syndication network selling these at home stores in 79 countries, and because I knew business and because I knew how these things would work, I became the world leader in that category.

Speaker 2: 10:53

And then Bill Gates privately held a company called Corbis, which is the competition to Getty Images, and they had purchased a high end celebrity at home portraiture collection and they couldn't grow it because it was a high touch model. Their stock syndication model was not a high touch model, it was a high volume model, and stock to this day now is a high volume, not a high touch model, which is why you can't have a large company to a high touch model. It's just not possible. And so then they looked at this and said this is literally the only thing that we can buy to grow that brand. And I was the only one out on the market and I had put myself out on the market. So that's how they became interested in said well, can you tell us how you do it and I said absolutely not, you want it, you buy it.

Speaker 1: 11:45

What was the point where business went from being something that was a necessity, something that was providing you with a level of income so you could support yourself and your child, to really being something by design? Because there are lots of stock photography sites, businesses out there, and obviously you've got the famous ones like Getty, and then when you go to kind of, I guess, mid to low tier, then it's the other famous ones are things like Shutterstock and so on. You've really got to climb head and shoulders above all of these, but obviously there had to be a level of intent to really put yourself above the rest of the crowd. When did you work that combination? You know the numbers in the combination lock.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Yeah, yeah. So this is so astute of you. I just want to point this out to your audience. This is such a clever question because what you did is you just looped it right. You said wait, what? Yeah, that's very cute on the cover of the bio, but what was that thing? Because that's not the thing. That's just a thing that everybody else is. What's the value proposition? What's your unique positioning here? So it was like this. I realized when I went to these conferences you're going to love this that all the men that held all the power and all these big agencies would go to the bar Right, because when they go to conferences, they need to blow off steam. Their wives and kids are not there. Nobody asked them to take the trash out. There are alphas amongst other alphas. They can smack themselves on their shoulders, drink a couple of drinks and, you know, feel really good about themselves.

Speaker 1: 13:35

Yeah, and do all the stupid things that our stupid guys do.

Speaker 2: 13:39

Absolutely and with commitment. And then I realized that the women don't go to the bar, and so I was like, well, why is that? Well, why is it because men get drunk and then they do really stupid stuff. So I thought to myself perfect opportunity for me. So I came up with what I call the Cinderella rule for women who travel for business. It goes like this you always dress up for the bar in bed before midnight, three drink maximum and you walk to your room alone. And so what happened is I stayed sober, they didn't.

Speaker 2: 14:23

I was in with them because it was great fun. I was at the bar, I was one of the few women. I was always, you know, looking good, dressed up, lipstick here which is why fashion is so important and how you show up, because it's a branding, it's a positioning thing. And then at the next morning, and then around midnight, I would just excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and then I never came back. And then in the morning, like well, where did you go? I said, how long were you at the bar? Oh, until it closed at two o'clock. And they are so hung over the next day and they don't. They kind of remember that they were telling me things, but they don't really remember exactly what it was. They just know that they divulged secrets and I always said I don't remember anything. And that's how I, how I got in with everybody because they could hang out with me like it was a guy. I would never divulge anything. I've heard they were completely never in trouble because, you know, even though obviously you know there were offers and things like that, but I never went for that. So I kept that super clean and that got me the meetings, because that got me the respect.

Speaker 2: 15:41

And then when I did get the meeting I remember with Getty Images, the biggest distributor in the world, I'm flying up to Seattle, it's me and I'm sitting in a room of like whatever eight people at Getty and they say, well, what are you bringing to us? Because you know you finally, you know, got our attention. Please do your presentation. How many images are you bringing? What's the collection all about? What's the earning potential? And the whole nine yards. And I sat there and I said, well, here's the collection. And they said, well, how many images? And they're used to a number that's millions, right, 5 million, 10 million images. And I said, roberto, 453. They had a slightly puzzled, look just like the one you have with the kind of the giggle that comes after was like are you kidding me, are you? Are you like wasting our time here? And that that is when I pulled it out of my hand back and I said not so fast.

Speaker 2: 16:45

I represent the A-listers in a category that does not live on taking hundreds of images. It's one shot. I deal with the A-list. It's one shot, but that is the cover of Vogue Kaza. So if you want somebody just needlessly clogs up your collection with all the stuff you'll never sell, I said then I'm probably not the right partner. But if you want someone who gives you the stuff that is in all the top magazines, coffee table book at the banks, the brand-leading images of real estate companies you want that, then we do a deal and I will build the collection based up on the numbers that I get from you, so I know what will sell and I got the deal.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Wow, because you brought to them 453 gold bars, not 5 million pieces of basically crap. Because that's the thing when you get even getty images, when you're looking through stock photography of a certain any category, you see all the rubbish that's in there Like we would never. You know, if you and I were in my studio and we just finished a photo shoot and there were 500 images 500 images are not going in our library We'll probably end. We'll be lucky if we end up maybe with 20. Because you know there's going to be 480 bits of crap, right, but these guys just seem to take anything. I love that I was in the room with you.

Speaker 1: 18:34

The reason I was giggling is because I was next to you.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, yeah, and so you know, and so, as we talk about building authority, so this is like really, the big takeaway here is that you have to have a little bit of an audacity to really step up and say allow me to reframe that for you, because what happens is people have an idea of a story that they understand, that they're familiar with. In order for you to disrupt that story, you have to take them somewhere where they have not been, or you have to raise something that is subconsciously already simmering there. So if you want to go to a Ferrari dealership, you cannot go there with 30,000 pounds or $30,000. They'll laugh at you. You can't even get a used Ferrari for that kind of money. They'll send you to the Toyota dealership. So there is an expectation that there is a lower quantity at a higher level for a higher price.

Speaker 2: 19:43

So what I did is I reframed it in the sense of if this photographer gets invited to shoot Madonna's house, it is not your photo editor, who's never gotten out of the basement of the Seattle office, determining the quality of the image. It is Vogue Casa that ran that story. They already predetermined that this is the shot. So we're cutting all of this out for you. So it's all about how do I present it, frame it so that somebody says there is an authority. And so the authority that I took was by reframing it for them so they understood what they had, because they didn't, because they were only in this how many images? Certain X amount of images produce X amount of dollars? It's a numbers game. The more images we have, the more spaghetti we throw at the wall, the higher likely that somebody's going to be buying something.

Speaker 2: 20:49

And I disrupted that thought by saying why, how many girlfriends do you need? How many boyfriends do you need? You just need one partner right To love and cherish you. So why are you? Why are you? Why are you doing? I'm giving you the ideal boyfriend or the ideal girlfriend here, served on silver platter, and that that's how authority is really built by being very clear about what it is. That's what I like about you, roberto, because you don't go as a mass market product. You got very deliberate, with a particular style, a particular look. It's also an experience, because you helped me put it all together. That's what I want. That's why I come to you. So this is all this is a framing of. If you want to look like everybody else, go ahead and do that. That ain't not happening here, and for that you need to own that authority, and not just your authority, but the person that comes to you is elevated into authority just by participating in what you're selling.

Speaker 1: 22:00

Yeah, absolutely it's. There's so much within that as well when you look at other aspects of our businesses. It's knowing what you stand for and I think even at the if you can work out yourself what it is that you stand for, what your core believes and values are, what you will and won't do, and have conviction to stand by all of that, that can cause the 360 degree spin that you did on the people at Getty, that paradigm shift that you caused. You interrupted their thinking. But it's because you went in there knowing what you stood for. This is what I do. I don't do any of that bullshit that everybody else does. I'm not here to waste anybody's time. I'm not here to have my time wasted. I'm ringing you the gold of the gold.

Speaker 2: 23:00

And then you have to believe that 100% conviction. And then you have to yeah, you have to believe that. And I mean, ultimately we did create a second collection. That was then a royalty free collection. That was where we did take the material we didn't take for the A list to build another collection, and that was the initiator on how people started noticing us, and that's I think we got acquired six months after we launched that collection.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Wow, congratulations. And so now, so you, you're exited out of the business completely. Podcasts, what, what keeps you busy nowadays Outside of all of that?

Speaker 2: 23:47

Yeah. So there you know, there's these pivotal moments in life where you know that you open the, you open your computer, you see this number in your bank account. You go like I'll be having lots of beverages with umbrellas in it. I'm going to go to Neiman Marcus, I'm going to buy, you know, buy a $200 t-shirt and a Burberry code at full price. And then I went to Neiman Marcus and I looked at the $200 t-shirt and the Burberry code and I'm like there's a reason why I never bought a $200 t-shirt or Burberry code. It's just not for me. I just couldn't get that. I mean, I can see myself much more going and having an experience and having a suit made for me, because then at least right, I have this interaction and I feel that it's worth something.

Speaker 2: 24:33

But just to wear a brand like you know the house found brands I'm you know the wannabe brands and I'm in Los Angeles, so product is everywhere is is just not meaningful to me. And then I thought about what. What motivates me and what really motivates me is to make an impact, and we added this in our vision statement for the company. That's why I say I work with visionaries and, and and leaders who want to grow their authority and scale their impact. And scaling impact in itself is already kind of a weird way to put it, but for me it is if I help somebody make an impact and they their impact is how I measure my impact. So I am only successful if I have somebody out there who does it. So I'm going to give you an example.

Speaker 2: 25:27

I have a client, a data scientist, who lives in London, originally from New York, and she is just badass and she says I need help to build a system, a signature growth system, around this idea on how do I do an ethical framework for AI for luxury brand, luxury fashion brand search engines. I mean, it doesn't get any more specific than that. I would lie if I told you that I understood half of the stuff she was talking about, because it's data science language, but what I was able to do is I was able to help pull these pieces out of her visionary mind and organize them in such a way that a layman would understand what she said. A week later, she closed a $50,000 deal. So these are the kinds of things that that's what gets me up. You know, I'm working with someone right now. Where's this idea of taking all this information technology, all these SaaS products that companies buy and you know the HubSpot and the Salesforce and the and the 50 competing systems that companies buy for productivity and there's so much information overload? So he's building a framework to have them organize this information. So think about it. One person like that that I helped to build that framework so he can go to company after company after company to help them organize the information. Do you know how many people that impact?

Speaker 2: 27:07

That, to me, is true authority. It is not necessarily what I do because I'm also at that part in my life. I call this in my, in my world. I call this the Ruth Bader Ginsburg model, right? So Ruth Bader Ginsburg stayed relevant for a really long time and nobody really knows why. And when I looked at the model, the model was a classic understanding of what was and a conviction of what was charm, a clarity in the value proposition that nobody could argue. And then she connected with generation and the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. So when we looked at this as a company, we said we have to make sure that we keep the connection to the younger generation.

Speaker 2: 27:59

So we I want to go backward now in who I touch, because my clients aged with me and they're they have a what I call a bucket full of shit that went wrong in their life and so they always draw from that bucket. Well, you know, it's so difficult and I don't know if I can afford it, time and money. You know the risk. And then I realized people that are 30 don't have that. They don't have a bucket. I mean, they have a bucket but there's a tiny little stuff. I mean nothing's gone really wrong yet. So that's where they hope the courage and the power comes, because if I tell them to solve a problem, they haven't tried it 50 times yet they go like, oh, that sounds like a good problem, let me go solve it. That's where I want to be. So that's the model.

Speaker 2: 28:48

The model of authority is the relevance to how do you stay relevant time and time and time and time again without aging out of that.

Speaker 2: 29:01

And as you age, you need to adjust your brand message, your authority brand message, to make sure that there's a reason why that generation needs to pay attention to it. One thing that happened to me is that, you know, I have a client of Hungary and she wants to bring a women's empowerment site to the United States. Now I'm the founder of the women's code, so I've been I mean, god, women's have been doing for decades, but I realized it's time for me to hand this over to somebody who is young, cute, sexy, powerful, does not have a bucket, because my bucket's big. I've been. It's been a long, long, long long fight and then she says to me well, when I get older, I want to be like you. I'm like, what the heck does that mean? But then I took it as a badge of honor because it just says that the authority that I set out to build in this model, which is all by design, is working.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Yeah, absolutely. I want to be like you. I mean you also think well, not just through the brand authority, but you also help people through, because I mean you know you look at the challenges that people do face, no matter how well they're doing. I mean, take me, for example I released just a very short solo episode recently, having worked out what all the signs of burnout were, because I experienced it myself for the first time ever. You know, I got to, I was pretty much across this summer, but it came to a head in August where I literally was just running completely unempty. I was, but I had nothing to give. You know, I wasn't interested in anything at all, to be quite honest, to do with my work and I love what I do and I was like this really isn't me, what the hell's going on?

Speaker 1: 31:06

I came home one day and I started to Google what the signs of burnout and when I was looking, I was like, okay, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Okay, I need to stop what I'm doing, I need to get out of here, I need a break and, you know, went away to the Mediterranean for two weeks, did a lot of reading, didn't do much else, left my work phone behind disconnected, it was the best thing ever. And now I'm back. But I'm not going to sit here and sort of make out like I fixed myself. You know, within two weeks of being back I can kind of just slowly start to feel myself slipping again and I'm constantly like quicksand. You know, and you know what it's like because you've been there as well.

Speaker 2: 31:55

Yeah Well, the burnout is a scaling issue. So the visual to this really is there's two paths to growth. The one is the growth itself, where you figure out the sales, the target audience, and then you get to the point where you have a lot of work because it's going, it's finally working. That's when this that you need to flip to scaling, because then it's like how do I take what I've created, how do I systematize it? That's when I get the call, typically when people say I'm so crazy busy I need to hand certain things over to certain people. But everybody expects me, you know, everybody wants me, but I can't duplicate myself. This is, this is the burnout formula, when everything is built on you.

Speaker 2: 32:46

So what we have to do, we have to go in, we have to lasso those pieces and say, hypothetically speaking, what could we? What could we hand over to other people? Could they? Is there a particular method that you have? So so now think about Pilates. So Pilates was a dancer who got injured and then he couldn't find something that get him back from injury. So he designed these reformers and then he realized there was a lot of other people like him who were injured and so he took he could have now just gone out and trained all these dancers on his own, but what did he do? He designed the Pilates method and he created the reformer and then he trained other people in the method. So now what we do is we have to think about the scaling model is what is your method, how do you do it and how do we get that organized? And then, how do we train other people in the method? Because what if we could have other people? Now? Now that's the franchise model, that's the expansion model, that's a scaling model. Now, what if we could train people in how you do it? What if I could design that system for you? I literally do that in a day. And then we design which of these pieces can be handled by other people, because then we pull it out specifically and said well, the measuring goes by particular, by a particular method, which is the traditional method, plus the secret sauce the colors are. That's where already our proprietary method comes in, because we don't look at color the same way other people look at color. We have a piece, that's a functionality piece that we only. We don't want you to look like you go to war. We want you to look so comfortable that you could be an entire day in my suit and even if it's 12 o'clock at night, you started at six o'clock in the morning and flew to whatever from London to Paris, and you come back at midnight. You still feel like you're comfortable in it. That's my proprietary method.

Speaker 2: 35:08

What do we call it? How do we describe it? How do we reframe it from a retailer? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, please don't. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is not what we're doing here. We are creating an experience for people that move the world. We put them in, in, in, in, in. I wouldn't call it armor, but we had to come up with a good word that would sort of describe that in, in, in in a. You know, it's almost like in a safe room, right when you, where you can be in the safe room all day and no matter what. It's the bar, it's the breakfast, the lunch, it's the board room where you are in the safe room the entire day. I mean, who does that? You do? Nobody else does that. You want that. You come here.

Speaker 1: 36:01

So, for everyone who's listening, this will go out video one day and everyone will see that I am literally dressed like Steve Jobs or something, but it's Monday night in London. It's been a long day. There is a story there, biate, which I meant to share with you and our previous remind me before we go, and I'll you know the listeners will join in. So I'm grinning from ear to ear because, biate, what she was doing the last five minutes, I couldn't believe it. It's like she's reached down the phone line through the internet from LA to London and she was rummaging around in my brain. Because that's exactly. I mean things like the whole. You know, I tell my clients, you know my clients can leave the house at six in the morning, they can travel to Europe, go and do their business, come back and so on, and the suit is just something that they forget about, but it's there, it's doing its job, it's giving them the confidence that you need, etc. So, anyway, everything you said is exactly the stuff that I say to people. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: 37:05

It's not crazy, that's the intuition. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So, you know, I always say I only work with people that are activated, and only people who've been activated know what that even means, because it means that you're here for a larger vision in life and a larger impact. And I literally, like, when I look at you, I literally pull it, pull it down. I mean it just comes, you know, and and of course, that's how you would describe it how can it not be?

Speaker 1: 37:36

Exactly, wow, happy woman, happy world. What was the process of writing that like for you? Because you obviously have put, it was written with the intention to help people and to guide them, but it obviously was written with a lot of your experience and the things that you'd experienced yourself. What was the process of writing that like for you?

Speaker 2: 38:00

Yeah. So I think that one of the things that really irk me is that, because I come from a very colorful industry, and so I've been ever since I've started working around the most colorful, non conforming, crazy, interesting people, and it drives me literally bananas when I see people that go this traditional go to school, learn information that exists remember exists. Information that exists, regurgitate and information that exists, get an A, and then they go through life and they think that that's the essence of life. No, like, like at all, like not. That's. That's the path to a government job and God bless them. Somebody's got to do it.

Speaker 2: 38:50

But for those of us who have a different opinion, you have to break that at some point, because that's the story we're all raised in. That's the story of the stories that the business code is written by. Keep the people in check, make sure that not enough people come up with these crazy ideas, because, god forbid, you know what the world would look like if there's all these visionaries and thought leaders and doing all these interesting things. And then I looked at it and I saw how corporate America beats out the creativity meticulously out of anybody who has any any kind of possess. And so I said, the world is a code, a business code and how we operate after the educational code, which just sucks. And then we have men who realize that if we follow the men's code, the bro code, whatever you want to call it, which is unwritten, but there's very specific rules of what men do. You don't write a brother out, even if you seem cheating in front of your eyes. You don't say anything. You know you don't have to like them, as long as they're useful. There's always strategy involved. You always have to be careful, Always have to watch your back, which is why everybody in corporate America, all the men, are completely nuts and burned out because they can never be themselves.

Speaker 2: 40:18

And then they go like well, if we tell a woman she's just so emotionally we can just sit back, cross our arms and watch a derail in about three minutes and then nobody will ever take her seriously. And then we taken out half of the entire competition. I'm like are you serious? And I watched it over and over and over again. And the women go like what do you mean? And I'm like girlfriend, this just ended for you. You don't understand the basic principles of what it takes to advance.

Speaker 2: 40:52

And so I wrote the book the women's code because I wanted to give women the understanding that they have to have a code that they have to follow with other women before we can even take on the other code, and then we'll get this awareness. And I think my big idea is how do I take the women's code and the man's code and get this together and have this one new business code? That's what I want, because if I look at the men, men hate what they do Burnout, they blow up their relationships, they blow up their health, they blow up their careers. Because they get to that point where you are at right now, where you what are your options? You can blow up yourself, so you only can blow up your career or your health or your relationship. Those are your only three. What else are you going to blow up?

Speaker 1: 41:45

Men, they generally, on the whole, do go on this whole self-destruct kind of path, right? Yeah, I mean, my decision was basically I've got to do something about this for my wife and for my family and my friends around me and my business and so on, because obviously I'd realized, I'm realizing, that I've reached this tipping point or this kind of intersection in my life and my business and something's got to change and I've got to flip. And you hit the nail on the head, it's. You know, I'm now at the stage where I need to flip from what I've been doing to scaling, which. You know, if you could see my coffee table over there, it's now full of the. You know the books that I'm reading are starting to change. But you're absolutely. I look at my clients, right? You know I've got clients who are on the art a like fourth, fifth weddings and stuff. You know they don't learn at all.

Speaker 2: 42:44

No, because because the information is not out there. The journey you know, Princess Leia said to Han Solo and Star was as money is all you want, money shall be all you get.

Speaker 1: 42:56

Use any Star Wars reference with me.

Speaker 2: 43:00

And so I think, the game changer. So if anybody is listening and who is kind of like, maybe finding themselves some sort of awareness, date off, some off. What really got that articulated for me was Mark Madsen's book, the Art of Not Giving a Bleep. And he says you know, now watch the documentary on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. The document is just horrible, but the message is good. And he says, hypothetically speaking, if we knew we all had the same outcome, let's just say, hypothetically speaking, we knew that how would you reverse, engineer your exit?

Speaker 2: 43:41

And then we look at people and they go. They've never thought about the mortality. They never thought about that they're going to exit. They never thought about how they want to arrive there. They never thought about what do I want it to be? A transformation into a different realm? Do I want it to be a heart, a heart cold, end in a grave? What do I want it to be?

Speaker 2: 44:05

And when I looked at this, roberto, I said I know exactly what I want my exit to be. I want a big, fat, global party. I want everybody to like tell stories on how they heard things and how, how they took one thing and how they created an impact and what? The one thing that they heard somewhere on a podcast, on an online program, and the work that I did with them and just completely, completely blew everything up for them. I want a party, I want people to to say this was the brick, the cornerstone of something that really elevated me. Now tell me that there's something more powerful than that in the world and be able to wanting to say that.

Speaker 1: 44:50

I've just started. Sorry, it's quite emotional because I've just started to do this exercise through a lot of the reading and you know I'm in a fortunate position. I guess that I have so many people in my life now, not just for this podcast, but through you know, embracing and saying yes. I took a decision at the end of I think it was 2021. Yeah, it was 2021. I said, you know I'm going to do from 1st of January 2022. I'm just going to say yes to everything and the opportunities, the way it's changed my business, just the the opportunities that have been presented to me, the people that have come into my life, has been absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1: 45:31

You know one, one of these people in particular, who you'd gotten really well with him. Actually, he's an author of several books, he's a coach. His superpower is stripping people down and building them back up. But he asked a lot of these questions. You know, when the day finally comes because it's going to happen to all of us what does that look like? What do you want people to say about you? What's your legacy going to be? Or is it going to be just the hard stop?

Speaker 2: 46:10

I think that's the part, that's the part of the clarity of it. And so then, when you go and you drive for your Ferrari, then you go. Well, that's a great feeling Right now, but that Ferrari isn't going to go with you. What is going to go with you? The, the eternity is in the memories of the people that you touched. That's the true power, that's the true energy that connects everything. You miss it, you cut yourself off. The essence of life, the meaning, the true meaning.

Speaker 2: 46:49

And that is when because I think sometimes, roberto, it's easier to say I'm setting myself a goal and I'm going to achieve the goal. I'm going to set my another goal and so I am, I am who, I am what I achieve, I am my job, and then you take that away and there's nothing. That, to me, is the scariest thing in the world. So if all of this was gone, could you? Could you put your head down and you say it's been an amazing ride and that's one of the things I'm probably most proud about in my life. I mean, I made plenty of mistakes and I, I, you know, I betray. I mean all of that, but at the end of the day, the, the thought of how rich of a life I get to live. That's what I remind myself all the time is like. How rich is this? The relationships there's very few countries in the world that I would go to where I wouldn't know someone that you know is some part of my, my thing, and how cool is that? And how I kept a lot of these relationships for over 20, 30 years to, just because it's, it's about the people and that's, I think, where fashion, you know, just to kind of like tie this back to you, because I do think there's an important message in here Is to say it is an extension of this belief that I have in my worth, my value, my confidence, my courage, and when I go to my office and there's just me in my office, because my whole team is global and I, I I still dress up, I still wear makeup.

Speaker 2: 48:51

Why? Because I want to show up for whoever comes into my life as a professional. Sometimes it may be sneakers, sometimes that may be a heel, but I want to show up because the people that I touch deserve that from me. That's my expectation of myself. I think that's where where where your message comes in. In addition to that, because it asks the question how do you show up, not just mentally but also physically? Are you honoring the opportunity? Because if you show up like you don't even honor the opportunity, who's going to take you seriously? People are going to go. This is just about money. Maybe I'll be interested in the transaction, but not much after that. So you shut yourself off the layers of experience you could be having.

Speaker 1: 49:51

I've got all sorts of feels going on here and I was going to start. I actually have started kind of prying and tearing up a little bit, but that's the impact that you have, and we've only known each other for one hour exactly.

Speaker 2: 50:02

I love this. I love this so much Every day. I'm in so much gratitude that I get to do this. The people that I meet and when the light goes on, I was talking to this gentleman who was doing the SaaS product for organizing all this information, these technologies, and then I look at him and I mean it's literally a download. Right, it's a download and I had come up with this one concept. And then I look at his face and I mean it was like a changed person. I mean it was like it was lit from the inside. And I said how does that feel? And he goes oh my God, you just put in words what I've been trying to say the entire time. I mean, how can I not feel amazing about that? That's authority. And that's not just authority, but that's also trust. And that's, I think, the hardest part.

Speaker 2: 51:00

Especially when you go through transformation, you know, like the one that you were describing, what this transformation of a burnout really is. It is an invitation to grow into that next level that's expected from you and if you take that on, there's work involved and then you go not again. I thought I just finally got here. I mean it was so much work to get here. How dare you now give me the next thing? But obviously you're not done, otherwise this would be. You know, obviously the opportunities come because there's a next level. So the decision is now to step into that next level and surrender to that next level and say, okay, fine, who do I need to be? What do I need to do? Who do I need to bring in?

Speaker 1: 51:40

That's exactly the journey I'm on now, because we are literally right in the middle. We're almost there just waiting for the final paperwork. But I had this dream for a long time of what I wanted a tailoring studio, client tailoring spa, whatever. I haven't actually got the exact name for it to be, but I've had the vision in my mind. And through this whole burnout phase, literally just before I jumped on the plane to go to Cypress, an opportunity came up and I saw the space. It was within a building that a client of mine owns the lease on, and they've converted a couple of the floors and they've refurbished a place to try and encourage people to be back in the office a little bit more often, and so on. They've done such a great job. But anyways, they said we're going to sublet this kind of space on the first floor and I said, oh, could I have a look? And as soon as they opened the door, my jaw dropped. I was like I could see every. Yeah, I was there. And so, anyway, from the 2nd of October, that space is going to be mine.

Speaker 1: 52:54

Now there are people around me who I know it's because they care, but they're saying you've achieved a lot and you're doing really, really well and things are more than comfortable for you and you've just been through a bit of an episode, burnout, all the rest of it. Why do you want to put yourself back down there again and take this whole new thing on? Because this is like it. And I said because it's time Because when I made the decision it didn't feel like a burden. It doesn't feel like a burden. Maybe two, three, four years ago it would have been frightening because you know what comes with growth right in business, but when I made the decision I was completely calm about it. And when people say, are you frightened? I say no, I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 53:51

It's their projection, though it's their protection, because you have to also remember that most people stop before the miracle happens. And I think this is back to what we said. I think this is the toughest part. When I sold my business and I thought this was it, this was the moment, at 42, this was the moment my ship had come in luxury liner. I mean, I didn't make as much money as other people. You know, I had a friend who sold his business with 70 million. I didn't make 70 million, far, far, far, far from, but it was a number that I technically would never have to work again.

Speaker 2: 54:24

And then there comes the point where you go oh, oh, no, what? Oh, this was just the warmup for the thing. I thought this was the thing. Oh, oh, what you're saying is the thing. That's the really the prelude thing to the other thing. We didn't talk about that. There was no permission slip signed here. How did this come up?

Speaker 2: 54:52

And then you have a choice, and then you're either going to stop, which is what 99% of all people do. They say, good enough, save enough, 401k, you know, pensions, it's all going to be, I think it's going to be okay. And then, and then I'm going to retire and then I'm going to die? No, I'm not. I'm going to retire and then I'm going to go to a Marjorca and then I'm going to go, and I'm going to take an RV, and then I'm going to travel and that's it. But that when you're a visionary, a thought leader, or you hear really with a mission, you've really been activated. You don't have a choice. You don't have a choice because you're a change maker. So what are you going to do? You're going to go. Oh, okay, I guess it's another thing then. I mean, you're nuts and you. Thank you for sharing. Please don't project your mediocrity to me.

Speaker 1: 55:52

Well, and that's the whole thing, I'm not done yet, because everything that I've done the last 21 years, you know, it's like I say I love to help people and the way that I do it at the moment is through clothing, but I want to do more.

Speaker 2: 56:07

I mean, can we just talk about that? The fashion industry needs a real makeover anyway. Yeah, yeah, go for it. Because I think that the part you know and having been at Elm magazine and on this idea on how what fashion is and how it's perceived and how it's being used to actually create this complete false narrative of over injected lips, bad makeup and contouring and breasts, and I mean I'm all for please, by all means, be your best. But I think there's a misconception now about fashion as being a replacement to self-esteem, confidence and courage. We are using fashion to express what's on the inside to the outside world, not cover what's on the inside with someone else's idea. If you can help people to break through, that, that's. Now let's talk about impact. Is this an extension of who I am? Is this a transmutation, a transformation of what I feel inside to the outside world, or am I hiding? Big concept difference.

Speaker 1: 57:18

Huge, huge that's the thing because people walk into you know tailors or you know whether it's a tailor or a designer store or whatever. You know Bond Street in London or Fifth Avenue or whatever it is in New York, the equivalent and they walk in. They're just another clothes horse with a credit card and we're just creating all these photocopies. And then when you talked about body contouring and the lip thing and so on, oh my God, like what is it these days with the pressure that is on young girls to change themselves in that way? You know, walking around with injected lips and stuff, and there's this kind of distortion, this distorted view, or where they think they've got it drilled into them that this is attractive. No, we need to find out what's in here and bring that out of people. You know, when people come in to see me, I don't start showing them fabric straight away and start trying to sell them stuff. I'm not interested in that. I want to get to know them. I want to get to know who they are. I want to get to know.

Speaker 2: 58:28

And I want to come to you and have you made me a suit, you know.

Speaker 1: 58:33

I'd love that.

Speaker 2: 58:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll be in Germany in the beginning of next year. Awesome you know these are, but I really do see that for you because Sorry, just really quickly hold that thought.

Speaker 1: 58:52

So we're just in a process of launching ladies, where, for partly the reason you were talking about about 20 minutes ago, with the guide code and this happens a lot. But it's just got to the point where I'm like, look, now I've got to do something about it. Women's tailoring is a really tricky area. If there was some magic code to it, people would be doing it already. But women's tailoring is a difficult area for multiple reasons I won't go into right now. But anyway, the point was is that you know, I was at a client's house.

Speaker 1: 59:24

I do pretty much everything for him and we're in his kitchen and I'm fitting him with his new because we launched custom footwear six months ago. So now not only am I doing his suits, his shirts, his smart casual wear, his jeans, now I'm doing his socks and I'm making him his vegan trainers and all this other stuff. I've just caught his wife in the background just kind of looking and I said are you okay? And she said yeah, yeah, no, I'm fine. And I said is it that you're sick of seeing him? You know, with me looking after him, making his life so easy? Are you having problems with finding clothes and so on. And so then we got into a bit of a conversation and I turned around to her husband and I said I'm going to measure her up now before I go and I'm going to create some clothes for her.

Speaker 2: 1:00:18

I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:00:19

And he said yeah, he said fine. And I said I know it's fine, I have your Pekamex card, but I said we need to do this.

Speaker 1: 1:00:28

You know she just had a baby. You know, nearly a year ago. She's quite petite, used to shop at places like Karen Millan lost that when they got bought by Boohoo because the quality has now gone down and they've changed everything. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I could just see, I could feel it when I looked at her and I looked her in the eyes and I was just she's. She needs help.

Speaker 2: 1:00:52

I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:00:53

And she needs someone to help to bring her confidence back. And again, you know, before I measured her, you know we were looking through fabrics and things and I just got her talking about how she feels when they go to all these nice places and I said don't worry, by the time we're finished together, I'm going to make sure that you're walking tall again.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

I think. But that's really what struck me about you and again, you know I do a fair amount of podcasting. I typically stay away from, like you know, personal training, nutrition, fashion, things like that, because it's not my thing but what I was really interested about you is like, how does somebody like that get to this? So so my curiosity was piqued because, intuitively, I know that there's a message here that obviously I felt I needed to listen to. And what you're describing is that, especially right now, in the in the world we are in right now, where everything is about perfection and if you're not perfect, you make a mistake or get canceled. And it is so treacherous right now that you don't even you go like can I say Asian? Is that? Is that okay? Can I say black? Is it African American? What, what, what can I say? Am I going to get punished? If, if, if I, if I speak up? And so people have to understand that, throughout history, when this totality, totalitarianism, right, these like strong characters show up, it is designed to keep people in check, and so this, this, this concerted campaign that the media just keeps buying into because they have nothing else to do, is designed to keep you off your game so you don't. It's like a magician, so you don't see the real issues because you're so busy over there that you don't even see what's going on. And to come in at it and you're looking at the wrong thing, you need to look over here and that is building people from the ground back up. And I think I mean, if you think about it, you know, with your burnout, you have to do that with yourself. So if you have to build yourself back from the ground up, even though you're very successful, what, where's the? Where's the? Where's the message in here? I mean, if you think about how brilliantly this done by God, spirit, the universe, on giving you this understanding at this time where you need these tools to create whatever that next level is, and I think what it does in our journeys, if we choose to accept the mission, is that it connects us on this core level to the actual problem. So, instead of saying this is the problem, I can't believe this is happening to me to say, hmm, that is so interesting. I wonder where the opportunity is, because opportunities and I did learn this in my life do not show up as Tiffany boxes with bows on it. Ever opportunities show up smelly, gross, difficult, challenging, sweaty, is like I don't want to touch that.

Speaker 2: 1:03:58

When my luck turned, it was because my former mother-in-law was such a nag about me writing a letter to the President of the United States. Who in the world writes a letter to the President of the United States? Well, I did. Why? Because she says why are you wasting your time with everybody else? Just go after the number one person in the country. If anybody can help you as the President of the United States, go ahead, write the letters to the President. I cannot have another conversation with you about writing a letter to the President. I'm going to write the damn letter. So, just so we are done with this, I wrote the letter.

Speaker 2: 1:04:34

That was my turning point when I got a letter from the White House, from the President of the United States, who of course, never saw this letter, but it put me in touch with the Small Business Administration here in the United States, an organization helping small businesses obtain funding and other business help. And because they also got a letter from the White House, it put me in touch with a second in command who then called me and he says you know, it's very nice to get a letter from the White House. You could have just picked up the phone and called me. Never even occurred to me, but I couldn't have done that and that is what helped me to restructure my financials. So I qualified for restructure of my $135,000 debt. That is what freed up my line of credit. That got me to break even three months later. That got me to be the world leader 18 months later in my category, and that's what led to this. A nagging former mother-in-law, if you really break it down, not a Tiffany box, definitely no bow on it.

Speaker 1: 1:05:36

I could just hang out with you like all night.

Speaker 2: 1:05:40

Let's do it. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:05:43

When you come over here, you know January. If you're here early in the new year, that's my birthday month as well.

Speaker 2: 1:05:49

Is it Excellent?

Speaker 1: 1:05:51

I tend to remind everyone about like the whole month.

Speaker 2: 1:05:56

Yeah, why do a day if it's January Exactly?

Speaker 1: 1:06:01

It's just a day in January.

Speaker 2: 1:06:02

So it's the whole January.

Speaker 1: 1:06:04

Honestly, this has been amazing. I mean, I'm the luckiest person on earth to get to start my week with you. This is awesome, but I can't hold on to you forever. We'll have to do this again, please. Yes, Awesome. Now, again going back to the fact that having an impact and helping people is what you like to do, and helping people to grow. So you have the growth blocker quiz. That's still a thing, right?

Speaker 2: 1:06:32

That is still a thing, yeah. So we looked at this and we go like, well, why are people going through this? And so if this is the entrepreneurial roller coaster or the sine wave, then there's a growth blocker, and it's one out of three things. So I created a quiz called the growth blocker quiz. How to find out your number one business growth blocker that you find at growthblockerquizcom Takes literally two minutes and then we'll send you a report to show you exactly how to remove it.

Speaker 2: 1:07:02

And if anybody who's heard this and goes like I need to talk to her, go to uncoveresessioncom. Make sure you mention the show so you get priority treatment and then talk to a business growth advisor for 15 minutes, and potentially me, and then we'll see what we can do to help you. And while we edit, I really ask you to subscribe wherever you get to listen to this show and do leave a comment. And here's why a comment is all the difference in the world. If you're still listening. There is a thing where you put a green heart and a comment, it means you listen to the entire episode and that alone will make an impact, because the algorithm looks for engagement, and the more engagement Roberto has, the more people he can be served to. And then please do share this episode with one other person who probably needs to hear what we're talking about today.