Blog
Does It Hurt? Good. Work With It.
Beate Chelette shares why her insurance list keeps growing months after she declared the grief over, and what that has taught her about the business transformations she cannot rush either. A raw look at the breakdown, breakthrough, and breakout pattern from someone currently living inside it.
Cumulative Grief, Liminal Space, and the Slow Work of Recovery
Recovery from trauma does not follow a program or a calendar, and it rarely arrives as one dramatic turn. Beate Chelette maps her own recovery from the Palisades Fire onto the Breakdown, the Breakthrough, and the Breakout, naming the cumulative grief and liminal space in between, and what it takes to stop settling for tolerable.
Is There Really a Somewhat New Spiritual Movement?
The world has been optimizing the outside for so long that the pendulum had nowhere left to go but swing back. Beate Chelette writes about the war most founders are having with themselves, the concept of liminality, and why the spiritual undercurrent emerging in business right now is not a trend but is the only logical response to a world that has run out of external answers.
You Will Always Carry the Wound. Stop Letting It Write the Narrative.
Alice Kao was abandoned twice by her mother and still built six climbing gyms, raised millions from over 100 investors, and speaks to rooms of 900 people while the voice in her head tells her every single morning she is not good enough. Beate Chelette on why the wound never fully heals, why that is not the problem, and what it means to stop letting your story be the narrator. Transformation is always an inside job.
When You Know You’re Done With One Thing but the Next Thing Hasn’t Arrived
The three B’s — Breakdown, Breakthrough, Breakout. Beate Chelette writes from inside the first one. The void. The messy middle where the old is gone and the new has not arrived. A raw, personal piece about surrender, the Phoenix, and why the messy middle is not a detour — it is the work.
Keeping Up Appearances Until It Almost Kills You
When you are so deep in the grief of your own life, sometimes you forget that others — roughly 40,000 others — are going through the same thing. With over 14,000 structures burned in Los Angeles, there are many of us in different stages of grief and recovery. One year...
What Are You Doing This For
Why I Am Having This Conversation Now Every so often a conversation sneaks up on you and reverberates when you are not looking. The temper tantrum of the toddler. You, yourself doing things behind your own back — ouch. And suddenly with that punch line smack to your...
I Feel Like An Idiot. And That’s On Me.
I Walked Into That Call Excited. We finally had time to tackle something we had been planning. I had a list. I was prepared. I was looking forward to it. Within minutes I realized I was in a completely different conversation than I thought I had scheduled. Numbers...
You Are Doing Everything Right But Why Doesn’t It Feel Right?
I Had It All. And It Was Literally Crazy Making. I was 23. Photo editor at Elle Magazine in Germany. I had the job everyone wanted. The invites to every gallery opening, every glitzy event, every room worth being in. So much of all the desirable stuff. So much of...
We Are Still In It. And That Is The Truth Nobody Tells You About Rock Bottom.
Chapter 1: The Year Nobody Prepares You For We came back to nothing. I do not mean that as a metaphor. I mean we landed from our spiritual journey, four days after getting married, and we had nothing. No home. No clothes. No toothpaste. No phone charger. No Mother's...
The Most Dangerous Thing You Believe Is The Thing You Never Question
What a Harvard MBA and Former McKinsey Consultant Told Me That I Did Not Want To Hear — And Why I Invited Him On Anyway I have learned something after years of doing this work. And I see it every single day. We come to believe firmly what we believe in. That sounds...
The Question Nobody Asked Me Until It Was Too Late
Why Every High Earner Is Driven By the Same Thing — And It Has Nothing To Do With Money For the longest time I believed that if I was just successful enough, I would get everything I wanted. My mother's love. Her appreciation. Her admiration. Her acknowledgement. I...
You Can’t Shortcut the Inner Work — I Tried for Years
What a Former Internet Marketer and an Ayahuasca Journey Taught Me About the Gap Between Strategy and Truth I had already done it once. Built a business from nothing. Scaled it. Sold it to Bill Gates. Proved it was possible. So when I started over I thought I knew how...
When Your Body Stops You Because You Won’t Stop Yourself
What Acute Pancreatitis Taught Me About Identity, Output and the Belief I Still Haven't Fully Released I had been yellow for a while. Not metaphorically. Actually yellow. My skin. My eyes. My system was shutting down and sending every signal it had. Constant stomach...
Money Beliefs Are a Daily Ministry — And Most of Us Miss the Daily Part
I catch myself doing it still. Someone posts about their new house, their private flight, their record revenue month. And somewhere in the back of my mind, before I can stop it, a thought slips through. Must be nice. I wonder what they had to sacrifice for that. I...
How Long Can You Stay Silent?
The conversations I am having all include, at some point, a version of these questions. Should I get involved? Can I speak up without becoming political? How do I take a stand without inviting backlash and avoid being cancelled? Is it okay to speak up and share my...
Don’t Die at Your Desk – The Cost of Being “Good at It”
You want to love your work. After all, you spend so much time there. And when we find someone who says they love what they do, we call them lucky. They never work another day in their life. But there is an assumption we rarely interrogate: that loving your work is...
The Moment Things Go Well — and Why That’s When Leadership Is Tested
When success invites relaxation There is an assumption many leaders carry without examining it: when things are going well, we can relax. Revenue is up, momentum is strong, and energy feels aligned. The effort feels earned, even deserved. It’s a moment that appears to...