Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future

Hosted by Beate Chelette

Business Entrepreneurship

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Oct 2026

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The Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future We are over-optimized, over-scheduled, and running on empty. Every moment has to be productive. Every system has to scale. And yet founders everywhere are crashing — their health, their relationships, their mental wellbeing paying the price for a way of building that was never sustainable to begin with. The old systems are coming down and good riddance, but that leaves a real question on the table: what do you build instead? The Business Growth Architect™ Show: Founders of the Future is where that question gets answered. Hosted by Beate Chelette, The Growth Architect™, this show exists for founders who want to stop forcing and start flowing — to build something that serves their clients, sustains their life, and grows through alignment and resonance rather than strain. We talk to founders in the messy middle, founders who just hit rock bottom and knew something had to change, and founders who came out the other side with a different way of doing business entirely. Because the truth every guest on this show has lived is this: it starts from the inside. Because change is an inside job. 🎧 Listen in and join the conversation shaping the future of business.

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October 19, 2026Episode 23431 min

An Atheist Found God on an Acupuncture Table

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: How to Be Spiritual: An Atheist Found God on an Acupuncture Table. Dr. Amy Albright was an atheist studying the brain, wanting to understand how it works. She was chronically ill and on lots of medications, and she tried acupuncture. The practitioner put the needles in and left the room, and she felt like she was levitating, sinking and hearing voices that were not audible in the room. She knew there is a God, and she knew science would never be able to explain it. She questioned science and ended up finding God. The topic of spirituality is at an all-time high. We know this, and it is why we do what we do. On Founders of the Future we bring you conversations about spirituality and strategy, and in this case science and spirituality, so you can form your own perspective and belief system. Everyone we speak to has had a reckoning, a spiritual transformation. I opened the show by asking her whether science is God. Her answer was "Absolutely not." Most people try to reconcile both sides. Amy built an experience that combines science and spirituality. In a laboratory, EEG changes how the brain functions in real time, and she says the brain does not respond the same way unless there is truth and safety in the room. She walked into every patient session with a prayer. Spirituality fits in everywhere, in business and well beyond it. If you were trained to trust what can be measured and you are asking how to be spiritual, Amy answers. Her answer has no bliss bunnies. It takes skill, and it leaves zero space for negative self-talk. She also says this is a time when investing in ourselves is more important than ever, and she gives away a free 20-minute guided practice. Her approach fascinates me, and it is why I had to have her on the show. Listen to the episode and find out. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 00:17 Is Science God? Absolutely Not 04:33 The Acupuncture Table Where an Atheist Found God 07:26 Why She Was Open: Illness and Her Grandfather 12:00 Anthropology, Indigenous Wisdom and the Sacred 14:21 From Chinese Medicine to the EEG Brain Lab 18:17 Working Inside the Prayer of May I Serve 19:55 How to Be Spiritual: No Bliss Bunnies 22:00 We Are Not Robots: Truth, Safety and the Brain 26:04 Why Investing in Ourselves Matters Now 29:01 Where to Find Amy and Her Free 20-Minute Practice 30:01 Outro / Closing Thoughts ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Amy Albright, Doctor of East Asian Medicine, Consciousness Practitioner and Brain Lab Founder, Holon Experience. She was a complete atheist studying the brain at 18, went on to study anthropology and indigenous rites of passage, and trained in Chinese medicine. She now changes how the brain functions in real time using EEG and offers a free 20-minute guided practice. Connect with Dr. Amy Albright : Website | LinkedIn ABOUT BEATE CHELETTE Beate Chelette is The Growth Architect™. She sold her company to Bill Gates and now helps entrepreneurs build scalable, aligned businesses. Website: GrowthArchitect.biz _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

October 12, 2026Episode 23310 min

Money Trauma and the Man Who Walked Away From $3 Billion

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: Does your money trauma make your financial decisions? This week's newsletter asks it, and this cut is the answer from a man who had everything money buys and walked away from it. Nery Gomez, founder, president and COO of Black Sun Private Equity, had the penthouse office in Beverly Hills and a seat at a $3 billion table, and none of it was his. What he built instead treats money as a source of energy, not the purpose. This is my cut of our conversation, the parts every Founder of the Future needs to know, without the fillers and the fluff. We call it The Architect's Cut. You hear whether the way the rich invest is changing, what a private equity fund does and where it went wrong, and what conscious investing looks like in practice. The full conversation is here: Apple Podcasts _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

October 5, 2026Episode 23325 min

What the Rich Are Doing With Their Money!

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: Most people look at money as just that. Money for no other purpose than having money. But what if money is energy you can create, move and attract? That is conscious investing as Nery Gomez, founder, president and COO of Black Sun Private Equity, practices it, and it is the opposite of how most private equity has operated for the last twenty years. I wanted this conversation because private equity is in the news for the wrong reasons. Funds are sitting on tens of thousands of companies they cannot sell. Thirteen million Americans work for businesses owned by those funds, and many of those businesses cannot pay their debts. The people inside them are asking if their jobs are safe. Nery has been in this world for more than twenty years, from Morgan Stanley to a penthouse office at Merrill Lynch in Beverly Hills, and he says the companies that cannot be sold went at it the wrong way from the very beginning. He also tells the story of the day he left. He had the office, the view, Rodeo Drive when the elevator opened, and a seat at a $3 billion table. He walked because none of it was his and he knew he would never be his own man if he stayed. He took the elevator down and did not go back. What was his spiritual transformation that made him leave? What he built instead is a private equity firm that measures a deal by whether the community around it gets stronger. He explains what a fund is in plain language, what extraction looks like, and why the way the rich invest is changing right now. He also draws the line between ego and inner voice, and how he tells the difference when a decision is on the table. You will come away understanding how big money works today, why the old model is failing, and what it means for you when you decide who you take money from and who you build with. Listen to the episode and find out. Time Stamps 0:00 - Intro: “$3B table” 00:53 - Sovereignty: “It wasn’t mine” 02:38 - Inside the penthouse “top” 05:41 - The leap: elevator down 06:51 - Ego vs inner voice 08:00 - PE 101: What a fund does 09:42 - Conscious vs extractive PE 12:18 - Black Sun’s $7B megafund + platform 13:57 - Fan economy & ecosystem thesis 16:42 - How the wealthy invest now 18:32 - How to join the shift 22:44 - Takeaways: stewardship with capital 24:09 - Wrap-up Connect with Nery Gomez. Website | LinkedIn _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

September 28, 2026Episode 2338 min

The $20,000 Podcast Scam No One Talks About

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: This is The Architect's Cut of my conversation with Josh Elledge, founder of Up My Influence and PodVerified. In our conversation, Josh explains the level of podcast guesting scams that he's seen, and the one that charges you $20K is particularly infuriating. He also shares the rule a broadcasting legend taught him early in his career: never lie to your audience. If you are using AI pitches or are considering them to get on shows, you want to hear what he says about them, because most will get you blacklisted. To listen to my entire conversation with Josh, please listen to the full episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/33YO2pbaLFvRpCdjZJvlgb?si=ZSa11pxqQ6CHuMU7hGsnRw _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

September 21, 2026Episode 23241 min

Your AI Pitch Is Getting You Blacklisted

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: Media veteran Josh Elledge on the #1 podcast pitching mistake. Is your AI pitch getting you blacklisted from every podcast? If you want to build your authority platform, and frankly, you should, because podcast guesting is a must for you. But so it is for everyone else and that is the problem. Internet marketers have found yet another way for mass spamming through AI slop, flooding every podcaster inbox. And they, myself included are rejecting everything that reads like a template mass pitch outreach with fake hyper personalization AI style. Meaning that you are wasting money and literally blacklisting yourself or your agency. Josh Elledge, founder of Up My Influence and PodVerified, explains what the current methods are, including a particularly infuriating $20,000 podcast booking scam that sounds legit, but you will not get a proper ROI. A podcast has a particular hook, a style and we look for a fit so we can deliver to our audience what we promise. And most of us honor our obligation and promise to our audience. Back to Josh, I've been on his podcast and I have been watching him for years. Call me a fangirl. He's the real deal, and he's a professional in the truest sense: he tells the truth and says it as it is because he follows a simple principle he learned from his mentor, ‘do not lie to your audience.’ That integrity is one of the cornerstones he's built everything on. One of the things I admire most about him is his ability to watch, observe, apply critical thinking, and then make a change when necessary. He embodies lifelong learning, and on this show he gets personal and shares his personal transformation by walking away from decades inside organized religion. That kind of openness is his secret, and he is sharing it on Founders of the Future. Many people who let go of certainty go looking for a new version of it. Josh didn't. To hear his enthusiasm, clarity and choice to be a lifelong student is inspiring. That's exactly why this conversation matters for Founders of the Future. Things are moving fast. Business changes and transforms in rapid succession, and you simply cannot hold on to a previous version of yourself or your strategy. And when it comes to speaking out loud in your voice, podcast guesting or even hosting is a great way to reach an audience. So what does Josh do that makes him so successful? How did he get to over 3,000 media appearances, 2,500 hosted episodes, and more than 300 launched podcasts? Listen to the episode and find out. Time Stamps: 00:00 Is your AI pitch getting you blacklisted? 00:35 Intros + AI’s promise vs “AI slop” 02:05 Why AI mass‑pitches backfire (reputation + blacklisting) 05:00 Human‑in‑the‑loop: using AI without sounding AI 10:05 The $20K podcast guesting scam 13:30 Integrity in media: the Adrian Cronauer lesson 20:45 Personal transformation and values in business 24:50 PodVerified: standards, score, and DIY tools 30:15 What great guests must know (gear, hooks, show flow) 35:40 Key takeaways + treat podcasting like real media Connect with Josh Elledge: Website | LinkedIn _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

September 8, 2026Episode 23135 min

The Corporate Job Was The Ceiling, Not Her

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: From Zero to $60K in 8 Weeks She'd already given corporate every hour she had. The only way to make more was to stop working for someone else. That is the math Rachel Castro did after eighteen years in corporate. She had a six-figure job, weekends that disappeared into binge sleeping, and by Sunday night she had stitched herself together enough to face Monday. It was the golden cage: paid enough to need it for the lifestyle it funded, while it was killing her one week at a time. A huge commission check got mishandled, she got screwed. And that was the trigger point she stopped tolerating self-abuse by mislabeling it climbing the corporate ladder. She hit the ceiling. She was done. Rachel came to me with no clients and no business, but she had an idea, and she was motivated and ready to do the work. She started with Turn Your Talent Into a Business, an eight-week program that helps you design your business model. By week eight she landed a $60,000 client. Listen to the show for how she explains it: the client had hired her for something that wasn't working, and instead of accepting that loss, we figured out a solution together that turned it into a $60,000 engagement. Suddenly everything was worth it. Rachel's story is not a spiritual awakening but a wake up story. Someone ready to take charge, to steer her own ship. She doesn't mince words, it takes work. The reason I brought her on the show is because not only am I her teacher, but she is also my teacher too, as I was forced to redesign my own business after the fire, which overlaps entirely with her magnificent rise. And she showed me once again that clients can become your friends. If you are still working to get to someone else's number instead of your own, this conversation is for you. Listen to the episode and find out. Timestamps: 00:00 - Cold open: “People want change without any change” 00:48 - Welcome + Rachel’s first-class goal for her mom 02:09 - Meet Rachel Castro: Founder of NoBS, Revenue Architect 02:59 - Leaving corporate: burnout to consulting 04:22 - Facing the fear of losing a steady paycheck 05:15 - The tipping point: commission loss and a clean exit 07:05 - Why the first‑class Europe goal matters 07:58 - Inside the program: turning ideas into a business 08:38 - Landing a $60K first client + message testing 10:31 - Detaching from labels; focusing on revenue outcomes 11:44 - From solo to a team of five; defining the ideal client 13:56 - Multiplying revenue streams (SMS, affiliates, subscriptions, education) 15:14 - Coaches as accelerators (and the miniseries win) 17:35 - The Revenue Architecture: diagnostics and three pillars 19:07 - Marketing in high‑compliance industries (peptides, etc.) 20:20 - Who counts as high‑risk or highly regulated 21:41 - Lead gen myths vs. what’s really broken 22:31 - Turning revenue into profit: ops and CPA roundtables 23:38 - Keep more money: merchant services, dual pricing, and capital 26:18 - The real bottleneck: the owner and resistance to change 28:38 - Why ops must scale before leads do 29:26 - Iterate, A/B test, and build thick skin 31:40 - Let the system carry the weight; investing before results 32:50 - One takeaway: bet on yourself and get coaches 34:48 - Outro and call to action (Uncovery Session) Connect with Rachel Castro: Website | LinkedIn _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

August 24, 2026Episode 23029 min

Crazy Aware, Crazy Good, Crazy Nevertheless

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: He loved every minute of the breakdown that made everyone around him want him committed. Steve Barton loved every minute of his breakdown. That is the part people cannot get past when he tells this story, and it is the part I could not get past either.Steve ran his family's flower business for over thirty years, starting at twenty-two after his father's stroke left him no choice. He built the life everyone tells you to build. Successful. Respected. Decades in. And he realized he had everything he wanted and he was not happy.So he did the work. Therapy. A Course in Miracles. Every book, every teacher that showed up once he went looking. He did not dabble but fully committed. And the work blew up in his face. He started seeing the dead. He was running on an energy high he didn’t know existed and could not turn off. He was telling people the truth before he had learned how to hold it. He loved every second of it. The people around him did not. They called him crazy, and not the good kind. They wanted him committed.Steve knew he was crazy. He loved it anyway.On the other side of crazy is so much simplicity. Someone who is fully at peace, has forgiven everyone. The result you ask? A coaching practice with a tool he is patenting, the Game of Ten. And a promise he brings to everyone who will listen: you are enough. You have always been enough. He does not look at a breakdown as a bad thing. He welcomes it in, and he wants you to love this call to awareness at every step of the way just as much as he does.Listen to the episode. It's a little bit crazy. Connect with Steve Barton: Website _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

August 10, 2026Episode 22827 min

3,144 Items Into Grief, and Still Focused on Building

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: A solo episode on loss, faith, and what it takes to keep going. I'm 3,144 items into my insurance list. That's where this episode starts. What cracked me open while I was counting was a photo of the kids stacked in a tower on the living room floor, laughing, my husband Gary looking at them, thinking about adding himself to the pile. A house that doesn't exist anymore. And a question I couldn't shake, will we ever have a moment like that again? This is a solo episode, and the honesty in it is a commitment I made to tell you the truth. I really, truly, deeply, 100% do not want to be here telling this story. I want to tell the comeback story, the glorious coming out on the other side. And that's just not true. So I can't tell that story. I have to honor the lesson I am in which is unbearable, long, drawn out, continuous grief. Eighteen months ago, our home and my office both burned down, four days after I got married and four days after I received a spiritual calling to let go of everything I thought I knew. I declared the hard part of the grief over two months ago. I was wrong. The list keeps growing. Because life is, well... life. One of my gifts is being able to see repeatable patterns and build frameworks around them. When I work with my consulting clients, I'm almost always watching the same transformation pattern play out, and it has three parts: the breakdown, the breakthrough, and the breakout. This year, I had to live inside that pattern instead of just naming it for someone else. Typical business challenges like cash flow, people leaving and arriving, a masterclass format still being tested, and a grief that doesn't move on the timeline anyone promised. If you've gotten a calling that you can't explain and can't ignore, if everything that used to work has stopped working, this episode is for you. I'm not offering you a resolved story. I'm offering you the real one, still in progress, and an invitation to build alongside me while it's happening instead of waiting for the polished version. Listen to the episode and find out why it always takes longer and goes in a different direction than we think. Connect with Beate Chelete Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | Podcast | Substack _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

July 27, 2026Episode 22834 min

Optimized Out of His Own Identity

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: Mike Weisman spent thirty years building other people’s brands. As the owner of his own advertising agency, he understood exactly how a performance becomes a product, and he built a career optimizing his clients external image for the world. Then his business disintegrated within six weeks, and he found himself standing alone in his own awards hall, throwing plastic trophies into a trash bin. The moment those trophies hit the trash, so did the version of Mike that had built them. That version was never him, only a performance. That is imposter syndrome, the distance between who you are and the image you have been showing up as. Take the award away, and ask what is left? I brought Mike onto the show because that question follows me too. He spent decades selling the promise that the right image solves everything, then discovered, at the cost of his business that the persona built for an audience and the person who can carry a business through a real collapse are not the same person. This conversation moves through the shame that comes before the clarity, the false idols we worship, the ones he calls the five P’s, and the trust he had to find so he can rebuild from nothing. Mike now runs Higher Ground Life Consultancy, and what he teaches today is the opposite of everything his old industry trained him to sell. Listen to the show for an honest conversation around imposter syndrome and how over optimization fuels you spending years performing an external image of you, that you know deep down is not you. Timestamps 00:00–03:22 Cold open + over-optimization: culture’s performance trap 03:22–08:32 Collapse and awakening: business implodes, trophy-in-the-trash moment, “Who am I?” 08:32–14:08 Shame to stillness: fear, people-pleasing, 18 months of quiet, shift from self to service, image vs. identity 15:42–19:46 Liminal space: staying in the void, quiet confidence, the in-between ends in stages 21:04–24:36 Serendipity, no agendas: vulnerability as the gateway to trust 25:08–27:01 Trust over transaction: core metric, relational vs. transactional, ditch the “personal brand” 28:57–31:05 Growth arc: breakdown → breakthrough → breakout; don’t defer life—be a light; fingerprints and values 32:34–34:21 Redefining success: beyond money; where to find Mike; outro + CTA ABOUT MIKE WEISMAN Mike Weisman is the founder of Higher Ground Life Consultancy, working with leaders on identity, trust, and what he calls the true self beneath the performance. After thirty years running his own advertising agency, he lost the business, went through eighteen months of self-imposed silence, and now writes and speaks on reclaiming identity before the world defines it for you. Website: thehighergroundlife.com Connect with MIKE WEISMAN Website | Facebook | LinkedIn _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us

July 13, 2026Episode 22731 min

What Should I Charge?

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it: Why That Number Isn't What You Should Be Asking? What does the market bear? What does your competition charge? What do you think you can get away with? These are the three questions most founders ask when they set a price, and Ed Lee has spent the last decade watching them lead people straight into underpricing themselves. Ed is the author of The Last Mile of Trust and has worked with over two thousand companies on how they price what they sell. For years he watched founders carry the same insecurity into every pricing conversation, shrinking the number the moment a client hesitated. Then he started to see that insecurity eroding the very thing that made his clients worth paying for. In this conversation, Ed makes the case that what someone pays is directly tied to what they believe they are getting, not to what the comps say. A consultant pricing at $3,000 because that is what the market shows, while delivering $50,000 worth of transformation, does not read as a deal. It reads as a mismatch, and mismatches make buyers walk away, not the quoted price. Ed shares how to find the right number for your business. It’s not the number he says, it’s how much they trust you. Ed and I have worked together for the last year, and what stands out about him is that he is unapologetic about needing time with his family. His business supports his life, not the other way around, and I watched him live with that friction and resolve it one step at a time. The friction he feels when charging what he is worth is the same friction he faces every time he puts his family first. It’s an investment for him. If you are tempted to price something by asking what everyone else charges instead of what you are worth, this episode is worth a listen. You will walk away with a way to find your number, and proof that facing friction instead of running from it is what makes the number hold. Chapters: 00:00 Cold open — Pricing builds trust, not just numbers. 00:46 Intro — Beate welcomes Edward Lee, author of The Last Mile of Trust. 03:32 The friction myth — How “frictionless” can erode your secret sauce. 04:52 Price as identity — Your number signals value, impact, and trust. 08:39 Adobe case — Subscriptions, AI add‑ons, and when features backfire. 12:40 Pricing as a filter — Qualify ideal customers; repel discount‑seekers. 14:41 Values and balance — Family, presence, and the workout analogy. 23:33 Evolving the offer — How Ed reshaped Hello Advisor’s pricing and model. 27:14 Book + key takeaway — Where to get it, toolkit bonus, and why price is the last mile of trust. About Ed Lee Ed Lee is the founder and CEO of HelloAdvisr, a pricing strategy consultancy, and the author of The Last Mile of Trust. He has advised more than 100 high-growth companies on pricing and monetization, with a combined valuation exceeding $1.4 billion. He teaches at UCLA, serves as expert-in-residence at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, and hosts the Margin for Error podcast. Connect with Ed Lee Website | LinkedIn | X | Instagram | Instagram _____________________ We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you. Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared. Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com) Follow us on Instagram: Check us out on Tik Tok: Work With Us