As the founder + CEO of a company serving 75 million people worldwide, Kathryn shares her biggest leadership lessons around trusting your gut.
Every two weeks as part of The Heartbeat podcast, I
Kathryn Minshew is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Muse, a company that helps over 75 million people around the world find jobs and get career advice. In our interview, she shares the importance of trusting your gut, developing that instinct, and her framework for decision-making.
Claire: Hey, everyone. Iām Claire Lew and Iām the CEO of Know Your Company. Today I am absolutely thrilled to have with me someone super special. I have Kathryn Minshew, whoās the co-founder and CEO of The Muse. Youāve probably heard of The Muse if youāve ever been on a job search because they actually serve I believe over 75 million people in helping them navigate their careers, which is pretty phenomenal. Kathryn is someone who Iāve definitely looked up to in the industry. Just been a big admirer of your work. I know you recently published a book called I think itās āThe New Ways of Work.ā
Kathryn: āNew Rules of Work.ā
Claire: Excuse me, āNew Rules of Work.ā Just so excited to be able to ask you this one question about leadership.
Kathryn: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. Iām really excited weāre able to do this too.
Claire: Cool. Well, all right, Kathryn, hereās the question, itās whatās something you wish you would have learned earlier as a leader?
Kathryn: Oh.
I wish I would have learned to trust my instincts. I started The Muse when I was 25, seven years ago. Because I was so young, I was conscious of my inexperience, I sometimes I let other people overly influence the decisions that I made because it felt like I was so new to starting a business.
Claire: Yes.

Kathryn: As I look back, my instincts actually served me pretty well. Sometimes I trusted them and it was absolutely the right decisions. There were other times when I overruled them and went against my better my better judgment and I regretted it. I think on top of just the trusting your instincts, obviously Iām not the first person to give that advice, but I also think when youāre a leader and particularly when youāre the CEO of a company, a startup, at the end of the day, everything that goes wrong or that doesnāt work out, like you bear the ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of initiatives, of the business, et cetera.
I think when things donāt go wrong but you made that decision at your call, itās hard, but you can live with that because you made the wrong call. We all make the wrong call. When something happens, if thereās a failure and you knew better, you overruled your own instinct, you let someone else make a decision that really you felt deep in your gut probably should have gone differently, I think those for me are the hardest mistakes to live with. Ultimately, I would rather trust my instincts, make the calls, and deal with the results good and bad.
Claire: Absolutely. Iām over here sort of nodding my head laughing because Iām like, āI can totally relate,ā having started running Know Your Company when I was 24. I donāt think there was a bigger case of imposter syndrome. When that happens, I think thereās something to be said about being young, whether itās being a woman or whatever it is, or a feeling as though you need to take in other peopleās opinions for whatever reasons that there are. I think in a world where as a CEO you are inundated with advice all the time, thereās no shortage of articles or hey, video interviews about advice, it can be very easy to sort of get pushed one way or another.
For folks who are watching this, would you say that thereās a spectrum of decisions in which they should sort of rely on that instinct? I mean in what situation do you feel like thatās the way to go? For example, do you feel like itās when the decision is really big, is a really tough one to make, do you feel like when ⦠What if itās not your expertise, right? Just to push back. Someone might be watching this and going, āWell, Kathryn, what if itās not within your expertise? Do you still go with your gut?ā
I mean for you, what have you learned? Was there a specific situation or how do you sort of process how you make those decisions? Threw a few questions there at you.
Kathryn: Yes. First of all, I think getting better at making decisions, particularly small decisions, is something that I am actively working at right now.
Because as you build a company, especially if youāre trying to do something that no oneās ever done before, you are calling countless problems, youāre making countless decisions, and that can be exhausting. First of all, Iāve tried to get better at dividing decisions into two categories.
There are smaller decisions. This also includes maybe big decisions, but ones that are reversible. If you choose course A but you realize pretty quickly itās not right, can you just choose course B instead.
These decisions I try and make quickly. I often try and delegate. I think that you can get bogged down as a leader in over analyzing these decisions, which I have definitely been guilty of, but Iām working to just ensure like, āOkay. How big is this decision? What are the impacts of getting it wrong? Can we change our minds?ā If the answer to those three is sort of a green light, then try to make it quickly and move on. The other types of decisions I think are the sort of bigger, thornier decisions. To me, I think it depends.

Is this a guiding light or a principleās decision or is this a sort of structural or tactics decision? Iāll give you an example. This is a metaphor Iāve been thinking about recently. I donāt think itās a particularly good one, but itās the best Iāve got, which is in the early days of starting a business, youāre almost an explorer. Think sort of Lewis and Clark. Youāre charting the wilderness and you have an idea. You have a small team, but ultimately youāre deciding where to go. At some point, you find sort of your product market fit, your sweet spot, and then you start building a town.
You can be an explorer with great instincts and some level of training or very little training to some extent. But if youāre building a town, you may want to actually bring in like plumbers and electricians and people that have deep technical expertise.
For things like that, I would empower those people. Let them make decisions. Let them really lean into their skillsets because you hired them for a reason, right? Itās not necessarily your job to know how to be a better electrician than the person youāve hired to help build your town.
Claire: Sure.
Kathryn: But when it comes to sort of principles, the core ethics, the values, the big picture direction questions of how that town comes to be, I think is where you canāt delegate because I think those are the most weighty, and theyāre also the ones that are hardest to undo.
People talk a lot about building culture, but changing culture is very hard. I think understanding where decision falls and how sort of irreversible it is is a really important tactic for deciding whether and how to delegate or when you need to just make and own that decision.
In fairness, I get a lot of advice.
When I was earlier in my leadership journey, people often mistook my interest in their advice for, āOh, well, donāt just do what I tell you to.ā Iām like, āDonāt worry I wonāt.ā I really appreciate and enjoy hearing different perspectives, and itās an ingredient to my own thinking that ultimately produces a sense of what the right answer is likely to be.
Claire: Absolutely. I do like the explorer analogy because I think what we often forget as CEOs is as an explorer, your role is to say, āHey, hereās the kind of town you want to be. Here are the things we want to stand for. Here are the kinds of people we want to attract,ā et cetera. You could take this metaphor in a lot of ways. I think your point about the tactical decisions to getting to that point, you might not always need to be relying on your instincts and you can delegate those decisions, et cetera, and rely on expertise to carry them out, but thereās something to be said for making a stand.
It makes me think of this quote, what youāre talking about, is āWhat hill do you want to die on?ā For the decisions that are irreversible, those are the ones you want to make sure are with your core. One thing that you alluded to is this idea of taking in peopleās perspectives as an ingredient to building out your own perspective. What advice do you have for entrepreneurs, leaders, managers who are trying to enrich their perspective, who are trying to develop a better gut instinct? Is there a way to do that?
Kathryn: I think there is.
Firstly, I try and speak to at least three different people for any big decision or any area where itās newer to me and Iām learning. In particular, itās not just any three people.
One of those people, I like to find someone who is very similar to myself. Letās say itās a big fundraising decision or some sort of CEO strategic decision, I will specifically look for a woman CEO who potentially has had somewhat of a similar years of experience before starting a business. It doesnāt have to be spot on.
Claire: Sure.
Kathryn: This is helpful because sometimes people ⦠When I was fundraising for The Muse in the early days, there were not a lot of women fundraising. I got a lot of really well-intentioned advice from them and a lot of it just didnāt work. The first time I really started talking to other women who had raised, I was like, āOh, their experience is a little more relevant in this because thereās a factor about fundraising that makes a difference,ā particularly in 2011ā2012. I hope thatās changing. TBD on whether it is fast enough.
Claire: Iām with you.

Kathryn: But anyway, I would look for someone whose experience was similar. On the flip side, I also like to make sure that one of those people is someone whose experience is very different and whose perspective is likely to be very different. I have an old friend, someone that I love talking to about business issues, who could not be more different in a lot of his leadership styles. Heās a very aggressive leader. I mean heās known for in sort of the entrepreneurship ecosystem for big, bold, offensive, controversial bets, and yet heās a phenomenal resource because I have a little bit more of a collaborative style.
And yet sometimes I think that this is the sort of playing field available options and heās like, āYeah. Also, you could over there or over there,ā and it widens my understanding of what decisions are possible and what factors someone totally unlike me would consider. I think thatās a really useful element of developing your gut as well is spending time and developing deep relationships with people who might have a totally different approach or perspective. Then the third person is kind of just someone I think might have expertise or relevant something to share.
Itās less particularly important, but I think getting both the sort of near term perspective and the far away.
Then usually if itās a big decision, I try and sleep on it at least one night because sometimes itās like itās putting all the ingredients in the sort of cocktail shaker of your brain. You shake it up. You let it settle and then in a day or two it becomes clear what you want to do.
Claire: Absolutely. No, I think thatās invaluable advice and something that Iām going to be taking away and thinking about how can you sort of set out those differences and opinions to be able to form your own and then give yourself the time to let it percolate and have whatever pours out of that cocktail shaker to be really good instinct.
Kathryn: Iāll add one other thing, which Iāve been trying to do more recently, which is vision retrospective.
Claire: Yes.
Kathryn: I think to the question about developing a gut, itās not only important to practice making better decisions, but also after the decision has been made, whether itās a couple days, a week, three months, looking back and thinking, āWhy did I make that decision the way that I did? What were the factors that influenced me? Am I happy with how it turned out? If not, what additional information or insight?ā
I think you have to be nice to yourself. Like youāre not going to make all the decisions well and sometimes youāre like, āYou know, it would have been great to know that, but I had no idea.ā
Thatās fine, but sometimes you can realize patterns like, āOh, I was too loyal to this idea or this principle. I was blind to this thing. If I just asked this personās perspective or if I have done this type of diligence, I would have uncovered the information that might have changed my mind.ā Thatās incredibly helpful because you learn those skills and they translate to better decisions in the future.
Claire: Thatās invaluable, invaluable advice. I think everyone whoās watching this is going to be thinking, āAll right. How am I going to be developing my gut instinct better and leaning on that maybe a little bit more in the bigger decisions?ā Well, Kathryn, thank you so much again. Itās been an honor to be able to have this conversation. I know folks who are watching have learned a lot.
Kathryn: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to hopefully doing this again some time.
Claire: Awesome.

