When asked if she “knew a guy” on Norman and Hayden Farrar’s podcast, Melissa Simonson, manager of Empowery eCommerce Cooperative, responded in a fashion completely congruent with her mission to empower other women: by saying, actually, she knew a gal. Simonson was referring to the founder and CEO of RankBell, Izabela Hamilton, who would go on to share her remarkable life story on her own episode of the ‘I Know This Guy’ podcast.

The women have both overcome their own hurdles and point to their different upbringings during their interviews, but both return to the idea that helping other women achieve success leads to personal betterment, and in turn, the betterment of a community that will benefit from empowered female voices. Following are some of the core takeaways from Simonson and Hamilton.

People want to be seen, heard and understood

Both women place a lot of value on providing assistance to others and have curated their careers around upholding this value. Hamilton’s company offers concierge services to Amazon sellers, helping entrepreneurs launch and rank their products in an increasingly competitive market. One reason Hamilton has such a large network of clients and colleagues is that she knows people want to be seen. She says “They want to be heard, even those that are introverts and shy…they want to be loved as well.” Her understanding of this facet of human nature has broadened her community and strengthened her stance as a businesswoman. 

A self-proclaimed introvert, Simonson understands the challenges of appearing at networking events, but she knows it’s important to “do it anyway; it makes it so that you have to rise.” This can be exhausting as an introvert, or, as Simonson points out, as one of just a few women within an industry of men. Finding herself in such a position was the catalyst for Simonson to host the Empowery eCommerce Women’s Conference this February, which featured an all-female panel of speakers.

Whether through giving a wide platform to women in eCommerce or by making space to hear a single voice’s story, both women champion the act of understanding others for the sake of advancing their business communities.

Visualizing success and trusting goals

Leading a cooperative, Simonson connects sellers with much-needed knowledge, experience and services for the purpose of creating a powerful community of businesspeople. But she has had her own share of disheartening experiences, which have required her to challenge the way she hustled. At one point, she realized she’d worked herself beyond her limits but she never let that sway her commitment to her goals. “The thing that kept me pushing to keep trying was that I was certain I could succeed,” she says of her past failures. Realizing she could work smarter, not simply harder, allowed her to grow beyond the limitations of gender roles and to rely on her independence to acquire her goals.

Similarly, Hamilton credits the method of visualizing her success as a primary motivator. She knew as a child she wanted to emigrate from Romania to the United States; she visualized the house she’d eventually have as a proxy for the success she wanted to achieve. Now she visualizes goals that, to any other entrepreneur, might seem out of reach, holding firm to the importance of dreaming big. Of creating a goal, she says, “if it doesn’t scare you, it’s not good enough.”

Women can be subject to an array of unique hardships, from juggling parenting to navigating a male-dominated industry. It’s paramount though to focus on advancement; Hamilton and Simonson prove that by centering their ideas of success, they could achieve, and surpass their goals.

Grow the chain of inspiration

Simonson is quick to acknowledge another woman in her industry on the I Know This Guy stage. By naming Hamilton as an empowered entrepreneur, she added another name to a host of inspiring female leaders. This call-out not only brought Hamilton to the podcast’s platform, it invited a series of other names to share the spotlight.

Hamilton closes her own interview on the podcast by listing the many women in business she admires: Elena Saris of Shopify, Sara Blakely of Spanx; even Kylie Jenner’s name gets dropped. Hamilton doesn’t hold back when praising the success of other women, saying “I like to be an ambassador…of inspiring women to know that they can do anything they want at any time…there’s so many inspiring women out there that I get my inspiration from.” That she bolsters the success of other women allows her to continue pushing herself to achieve more in her own work, while making space for upcoming entrepreneurs.

This continual praise amounts to a chain of successful women, all of whom have stories, insight, failures, and knowledge of their own. By naming their inspirations, Simonson and Hamilton have opened the door for other women to seek guidance from female resources. Inclusion, as Simonson puts it, curates a more equitable, celebratory industry.