The VoyageDenver magazine recently interviewed Hire With Ease’s Owner and CEO, Keely Berge Teynor, and decided to call the piece “Conversations with the Inspiring Keely Berge Taylor.” After reading the interview in the Denver based magazine, we felt inspired to boost it. Besides wanting to celebrate the the boss, we believe that many people, women business owners or otherwise, can really benefit from her story and her advice. Read the feature about how Keely’s storied career led her to Hire With Ease, the women who inspire her, and the advice she would give to young female entrepreneurs.

Keely’s Advice For Young Women in Business

Keely makes it clear that she comes by her advice honestly, even if she didn’t think she would be in such a position to give advice in the first place. Her experience as a woman business owner goes to show that conventional wisdom and normal career trajectories aren’t for everyone and aren’t necessary to attain success.

Instead, throughout the article, Keely’s advice for young women can be boiled down to the following:

1. Address your internalized Imposter Syndrome
2. Stay Inspired by all the Women in Your Life
3. Stay Passionate about what you do.

Address your Internalized Imposter Syndrome

Keely never thought she’d be a small business owner because she never thought she had the experience in order to do so. She majored in Communications in college, and never even came close to a business class. However, she spent the majority of her career in Recruiting and Human Resources, where understanding how businesses “work” is essential.

The inability for women in the workplace to value their own strengths is unfortunately very common. In 1978 psychologists Pauline Rose Clance & Suzanne Imes published a landmark study called The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention in which they studied how frequently and why women in power feel undeserving of the powerful positions they occupy. They noticed that many of the women they studied “despite outstanding academic and professional accomplishments… experience the imposter phenomenon… believing that they are really not bright and have fooled anyone who thinks otherwise.” While Clance and Imes list a variety of reasons, many boil down to how women are socialized in the US and internationally. For example, they observed some of their patients felt like they aren’t allowed to be smart if they have another (usually male) sibling because they have been labeled as “the pretty child” as opposed to the “fun child.” The popular theory has been challenged frequently in the modern era. This is mostly due to thinkers embracing the idea of intersectionality, and realizing that just telling women “to be more confident” doesn’t actually solve the root causes of the issue: internal and external sources enforcing racial and gender biases into young people’s psyches.

In Keely’s case, even when she took over control of Hire With Ease, she was nervous that she’d fail because she didn’t have any previous experience running a small business, let alone finance such an endeavor. But, she took a breath, learned as much as she could from her predecessor, Tammi, studied industry trends, and took the plunge.

Until we can rid gender and racial biases from our perception of success and who’s successful, Keely had to prove to herself that her earned business acumen and her innate ability to listen while taking the time to understand the world around her was enough to drive her and Hire With Ease forward. She breaks it down very succinctly quote:

“My advice for young women would be to know that you don’t have to have to know how to do ‘all the things’ before taking the leap towards small business ownership! There are so many resources available that I had no idea about when I started. Have faith in yourself, know that it’s okay to figure stuff out as you go along, and ask for help when you need it.”

Stay inspired by the women in your life

It’s not surprising to know that, as inspiring as Keely is herself, she has a long list of strong women who have inspired her and helped her get to where she is today. We love how they weren’t all world leaders either (or at least not yet.) Most of them are the women in her life, who she felt rallied around her when things weren’t going well, and celebrated with her when they were. Keely proves that when you have a strong network behind you, anything is possible.

• Stay at Home Moms: “I have had the opportunity to work full-time before kids, be a full-time stay at home mom, work part-time (and try to balance both), and now being a full-time business owner and raising two kids. For me, moms inspire me, whatever path she chooses (or doesn’t get to choose) as it relates to work.”
• Her Family: “My own mom had to work full-time from the time that my brother and I were six weeks old. I remember her telling me at one point — If you can, try and make financial decisions that will allow you to choose whether you have to work or not while your kids are young. My sister-in-law is a 6th-grade teacher and has such a positive impact on not only her own kids, but all of her students over the years. My aunts and cousins who live all over the country also inspire me. I talked to everyone one of them over the course of two family get-togethers to decide if I should buy Hire With Ease.”
• Her Girlfriends: “…some of whom I’ve known since I was 6 … 13 … and those whom I’ve become friends within my mid-30s and 40s. We laugh together, support one another, go on girls’ trips, and even mountain bike together!”
• Other female business owners: “Throughout this new journey, I have had such a great opportunity to meet so many wonderful women who are doing amazing things with their business and their lives.”
• Michelle Obama: “She is a strong, smart, graceful woman who has worked very hard, and I believe was successful to find the balance of work and family.”

Stay passionate about what you do

Based on the interview, it’s pretty clear Keely loves what she does. We agree with her that it feels so rewarding to work with small businesses, helping them find candidates for their open positions for an affordable flat rate (especially compared 20-25% of the new employee’s yearly salary, which has become the industry standard.)

While we understand many don’t get to pick careers based on what they love to do, modern studies have shown it really pays off to find ways to love your work. In a study conducted by the University of Warwick showed that companies like Google, who invest more in employee support and employee satisfaction, have even managed to raise their projected Productivity by 37% ,

Keely herself helps promote job satisfaction within Hire With Ease, and it shows, based on the metrics we value! For example, did you know the candidates the dedicated hiring partners at Hire With Ease brings you, on average, accept employment offers more than 90% of the time? Or did you know that, while we promise to bring at least 3 candidates to our clients, we often over- deliver? Even fact that 75% of business owners who work with us come back the next time they need to hire someone.

We love Keely, and we are so glad she is getting the recognition she deserves.

Want to work with Keely yourself? Schedule a consultation today