January 19, 2021 • 41 mins
Kathryn Minshew is the founder and CEO of The Muse, a career platform used by over 75 million people to research companies and careers. In 2018, The Muse was named one of Fast Company's 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World and #3 Most Innovative Company for Enterprise.
Kathryn has spoken at MIT and Harvard, contributed to the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, and appeared on TODAY and CNN, among others. Kathryn worked on HPV vaccine introduction in Rwanda with the Clinton Health Access Initiative before founding The Muse and previously worked at McKinsey & Company. Her first book, "The New Rules of Work: The Modern Playbook for Navigating Your Career," was a Wall Street Journal national bestseller.
She joins us to talk about what employees should be demanding from their employers, the future of the four-year university, and how contributing her writing without pay helped launch The Muse from it's "only eating ramen" phase to raising millions of dollars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Katherine Minshew. Katherine is the CEO and founder of
The Muse, a career platform used by over seventy five
million people to research companies and careers. In two thousand eighteen,
the Muse was named one of Fast Companies, fifty most
Innovative Companies in the World and the number three most
(00:41):
innovative company for Enterprise. Katherine has spoken at M I, T,
and Harvard. She's contributed to The Wall Street Journal and
Harvard Business Review, and appeared on Today and CNN, among others.
Katherine worked on an HPV vaccine introduction in Rwanda with
the Clinton Health Access Initiative before founding The News, and
previously worked as a consultant that mckins. Her first book,
The New Rules of Work, The Modern Playbook for Navigating
(01:04):
your Career, is a Wall Street Journal national bestseller. She
joins us to talk about what employees should be demanding
from their employees, the future of four year university, and
how contributing her writing without pay helped launch them Use
from its only eating Ramen phase to raising millions of dollars.
So please enjoy my conversation with Katherine Minshew. Welcome to podcast.
(01:28):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely.
We're recording this on the day after the polls closing
for the presidential election. So what a wild time to
be alive. Huh, it really is. And it's been a
wild time to be a leader to right trying to
figure out how much to you know, to to lead
from your personal beliefs here, you know, and and how
(01:51):
much to allow space for just the wide diversity of
experiences that people are having right now. So it's, um,
it's an intense time for sure. Well, I'm so how
be that you're here on the podcast with us, you know,
as the founder of the Muse and the host of
the New Rules of Work. One of the topics that
I just find to be the most intersectional and important
right now for us to be considering is the future
(02:12):
of work, And to your point, I'd say, the other
is how we bridge that delta in that gap between
everybody's disparate and wide perspectives here. Absolutely, I think it's
a really it's it's a really interesting time for all
of us, as you know, as individuals, as employees, as leaders,
and in particular, I'm also just fascinated by how the pandemic,
(02:33):
the protests this summer around the murder of George Floyd,
like so many different big things are happening that are
changing how we work and how we show up in work.
I happen to think a lot of the trends that
are being accelerated are really positive ones. But it's a
time of a lot of change, and I'm sure it's
you know, it's it's very overwhelming as well. Well, unpack
that further for us, if you don't mind, just because
(02:54):
you get to think about this and where. I mean,
you've worked on this for a very long time. I
remember a decade ago you are already putting together and
hosting you know, communities and forms for young entrepreneurs and
female entrepreneurs and that you know, of course grew into
and your career. I mean, if you've seemingly, you know,
for the last decade plus really just leaned in on
this subject. So I would love to hear more about
(03:16):
what you're seeing and experiencing absolutely well. So I started
the news about nine years ago to help people, and
especially people who are in kind of early and mid
phases of their career find that right fit job, company,
and and career path. And I think you've got to
hit on all three right, because if you're in the
right job but the wrong company or the wrong career path, um,
(03:37):
you're you're not really firing on all cylinders unless you
can kind of get people in the middle of that
ven diagram. And so I've I've been building the news,
talking with job seekers, talking with employers, you know, everybody
from like big companies like you know, Nike and Facebook
and Apple to a lot of like small and midsized businesses.
And I think there's a couple of trends that I'm
really interested in in in this sort of you know,
(03:59):
quote unquote for tature of work. You know, One is
there's there's just a real redefinition happening of the expected
relationship between an individual and the place they work, right
and and this is maybe not new But if you
think back a couple of decades, like work was your
time and your you know, your efforts and your output
(04:19):
in exchange for a paycheck. There was there was a
clock in, clock out. There was not the sense that
employers are you know, sort of taking social issues. There
was much less of a sense on behalf of employees
that they should be asking and even demanding so many
things from their employers. And I think we're seeing, you know,
with the rise of knowledge workers, with the increasing competition
(04:41):
for lots of types of talent such as technical talent
and sales talent and frankly millennial and gen z talent,
I think we're really seeing, you know, a lot of
big changes. And so I've been fascinated by what talent
is asking for. You know, this is like the ten
years of research. So I'm going quickly. But you know,
a lot of the talent that uses the news, they're
(05:01):
they're not just looking for a job, they're looking for
a path. They're looking for an employer with values that
aligns to their own. You know, if you think about
as well, a lot of young employees on the coasts
being vocal in their workplaces as one of the perhaps
the highest leverage places they have to affect change, you know,
especially if you live in a in a state where
(05:21):
you know, the sort of state's outcome you know, in
the electoral college is fairly predetermined. You might actually, as
a young person make the calculation that being active in
your employer and pushing for things like you know, racial justice, inclusion, flexibility,
all of these different themes, that pushing for these themes
through your employer is you know, maybe just as effective
as fighting for them on the streets or at the
(05:42):
ballot box. And so I think we're seeing a lot
of just you know, again interesting activism on behalf of
younger employees. For companies, they really have to work for
talent in a way that they didn't ten years ago.
So if you're an employer, yeah, you've got to you've
got to say why us, Why would you pick my company?
Over all of the different companies that are hiring marketers,
financial analysts, engineers, And I think that's really redefining the relationship.
(06:06):
And we can you know, talk maybe more later on
about how that that manifests and authenticity, how you know,
workplaces are becoming more human. But I think it's a
it's a fascinating time to be in this space because
everything that you thought you knew about how HR worked
is being questioned, and a lot of it is is
really the rules are being rewritten right now. Yeah, it's
(06:29):
interesting to hear you unpack it that way. I think about, how,
you know, back a decade ago, there was still this
like breakonnet competition for best in class, say engineering talent,
or like best in class, say enterprise salespeople, and you
would essentially get them by overpaying or by having a
better like food program in the cafeteria, or like a
(06:49):
bus that gets you to Palo Alto or whatever. But
what you're describing is an intrinsic motivation. It's internal, not external.
And I think back to myself as like a young
profession at all, and I really didn't have an intrinsic
compass like I think young people today do. Like we
had more of a life that we knew we wanted
(07:09):
to get to, or a professional you know, reputation that
would unlock the lifestyle that we were seeking. I find
that young people today that is the secondary or tertiary.
And I don't mean to speak in like this gross generalization,
but like to your to your point. It's the culture,
it's the community, it's the values and the mission of
(07:29):
the organization that seems to motivate our best you know,
workers to to to get after it. Absolutely, and I
think it's it's it's so interesting for a number of reasons.
You know. First of all, there's that as a society,
many parts of our society are becoming you know, very
values driven, very mission aware. We're seeing this in consumer behavior,
(07:50):
So there's that thread. There's also, though, I think this
really interesting impact of social media and and sort of
specifically the fact that we are not only for many people, um,
we're living our lives and seeing other people live their
lives in real time all the time. And when you
think about you know, let's say, fifteen years ago, the
(08:10):
biggest thing that a lot of college students and young
people looked at were these published lists of the best
places to work. And I'm making that voice for a reason,
right because they were often these very like kind of
classic lists, full of the same classic employers. And you know, now,
I think when you look at the diversity of things
that people are looking for from their employer, the idea
(08:31):
that you could just stack rank every company in the
world on a single list. Frankly, to me, I think
it's a bit silly. It's like saying the best people
to marry in New York City, Like what sort of
a list is that. It's much more about you know,
who are you? What do you care about that? Yeah,
thank you? I I just you know, it's a big
part of what I'm doing at the muse. It's frankly,
it's a it's it's a big part of the first
(08:51):
section of my book is like, you've got it as
an individual, understand what matters to you, What do you
want and you need in your career. I've also what
can you bring to the table? But what do you
care about? What are your values? Not just big picture values,
but but what are your preferences? Do you want to
work in an organization where there's a lot of clarity
and a lot of consistency and a low velocity of change,
(09:14):
or do you want one where things are always changing
and always moving bam bam bam. You know nothing's stable
because you thrive on that. Those are both acceptable. But
you've got to understand what you want and then you
can go out there and get it. And I think
it's giving companies a lot of flexibility to be themselves.
Rather than saying, you know, we're going to check five
boxes and be on this list. They're like, okay, who
are we what can we offer to employees? But on
(09:35):
the flip side, you've got to practice what you preach,
because employees can be they can be very punishing if
companies are making big, expansive promises and then not living
those up. I think there's a you know, there's a
real desire for what's said externally to match what's experienced internally.
That makes a lot of sense, and I'm thinking back
I got historically, like you know that advice where it's like, okay,
(09:58):
you're a young person, you're during the job market. It's
like just do anything and figure out whether you like
it or not. That was sort of the advice I got.
I was like, well, try it, and you know, through
that experience, you'll get to know yourself and what you
know you enjoy the most. And now I'm listening to
you talk like, man, that's actually kind of terrible advice.
Because if we examine our motivations and the types of
(10:22):
environments that we feel most comfortable in and that we
thrive in, I think that would probably lead to a
greater level of engagement, which would make it more fun
and we'd perform better and we'd be on it. Like
time seems to be a little more finite as things accelerate. Yeah, well,
a couple of things. One. First of all, I love
that you brought the focus to when you get that
right fit, people perform better, like they do better, and
(10:44):
it shouldn't be you know, it shouldn't be this big idea.
But it's actually fascinating to me that talent and HRR
as a function are just starting to get really smart
about connecting pre higher and post higher data. They're just
starting to get smart about saying, wait a second, if
we'd a better job of being honest and authentic before
someone comes into the company, and we therefore make sure
(11:06):
that they're a better fit with our organization are you know, culture,
our values, our way of working, and their role, then
they will be higher performing, they'll be more likely to stay,
they'll be more successful here. And I think that's been
such an interesting part of my time leading the muse frankly,
because you know, early on, especially when the business was small,
(11:29):
I often really struggled where sometimes our early customers were
so used to measuring, you know, is a higher successful
based purely on how cheap was it to fill that role?
And I'd be like, okay, yeah, look, we all want
to pay less, but wouldn't you rather get the right person?
And then, you know, to your point about about young
people today, I do think, though, we've got to cut
(11:50):
ourselves some slack, because you know, ten twenty years ago,
there was not the sort of information available about what
different careers were even out there. I mean, I remember
when I was in college, I went to the career
center and think like a book and it was like
four hundred nine unconventional careers for liberal arts pages like okay, great.
(12:10):
You know, there wasn't the sort of like richness of information.
There wasn't this focus on understanding yourself and and matching
that with a different path. And so, you know, I
tend to think that like, people did the best they could,
but now they're there are tools, there's information, there's technology
that I think allows people to make smarter choices a
little sooner that are maybe a little bit less reliant
(12:31):
on trial and error, even though frankly trial and error
still has its place, and I did it a lot
in my own early career. Yeah, it's so. And when
you find people that are motivated by passion as an
entrepreneur and as a founder, you want to hold onto
them for dear life because you know, you you now
have someone that is going to grow themselves in a sense,
they're their curiosity is going to lead the next lead
(12:54):
that they onearthed for the company or their own you know,
career development. And essentially because I also I talk to like,
you know, ex ge executives who blow my mind and
they're like they understand career development and leadership and executive
training and development in a way and in a science
that it's just beyond me. But you know, when I
when I hear you again, when I think about like,
you know, young people dedicating themselves to something that they
(13:17):
care about, like if I'm in any of these you know,
and and it can be you know, very long tail,
especially to the point you may that you know, we
now know about all these jobs. Now can find all
of these people. If you're into like one particular type
of you know, molecular biology or if you want to
make meatless fish or whatever. There's like multiple companies out
there that are doing all this crazy ship in the world,
(13:39):
and if you truly have a passion about it and
you talk to somebody who is in that organization that
shares your passion, it is a breath of fresh air
because I get to talk about the thing I love.
I get to impart my knowledge and this thing that
I love to someone else there for extending myself and
you know, the body of work. So I just like,
you know, I love I love that this has been
the focus of the muse, and I mean I want
(14:00):
to know more. Like so, so I'm a young person,
I'm going down that path. You do you recommend like anagrams?
Do you recommend? Like what are some of the ways
that you think practically people can help themselves along this journey? Yeah,
so okay, so I think there's a few different things
that I'd recommend. Step one is to start with your values.
So I often recommend, and we've got a whole exercise
(14:21):
in my book about you know, a longer form version
of this, but I often recommend that people spend the
little time thinking about what sort of life do you
want to to lead? And not what job do you
want to do or what functions you want to do,
but literally, what does it look like, is flexibility important
to you? Do you want to work in an office,
you know, in one place? Do you want to travel?
Do you want to always be talking to people? Do
(14:42):
you want to be buried in you know, Microsoft Excel
or in a lab? Like what literal like sorts of
activities day to day matter to you, and then start
to to put down on paper, um, the the way
that you want to experience work again, you know, for
some people high compensation, high prestige of as might value, creativity,
and things constantly changing. You can keep it again, very
(15:05):
very high level at the beginning because it's just about
sort of what sparks joy if you want to use
an emory condo expression, but you know, what is it
that that excites you. It can also be really helpful
in this phase to talk to people who know you well.
And when you can start to zero in on what
some of those things are, then what I recommend is
to do a little bit of research. So if you're
really at the beginning of your career, that research might
(15:26):
look like, Okay, I think that you know, brand marketing
might be interesting or um, you know, I've heard maybe
I should consider sales great. Just write down, you know,
three to five possible career paths. UM. If you're a
little bit further in your career, these might be you know,
specific job titles, they might be specific companies. And then honestly,
I'd say, you know, just start with Google. UM one
(15:46):
of the biggest things. And this is something that you know, honestly,
it's It's part of why I started the Muse. I
wanted people to be able to hear from people in
different roles and hear from employees at different companies, and
to be able to go online without having to have
a big, fancy network and just watch a video of
somebody in a particular job at a particular company talking
about what they do and see like, does that excite you?
(16:07):
Doesn't interest you? UM. There's a lot of inks build
about informational interviews. And obviously I'm I'm a big fan,
but sometimes you don't have somebody in your network who
you can sit down, you know, one on one over
coffee with UM. But there's a lot of great resources
online and you know, obviously I'm super biased, but I
haven't a thing that the muses the best. But but
you know, Googling will lead you down a lot of places,
(16:28):
and I think back to some of the jobs that
I took when I was younger, the career paths that
I wanted to explore. And sometimes it is only talking
to someone who actually does that job that helps you
realize like, oh crap, that is not what I thought
or that is not for me. And that's great, right.
It's great to know what you don't want, just as
as much as it is to know what you do.
(16:50):
We'll be back with more out of the Hustle after
the break. You were a management consultant that Mackenzie, You
worked for the Clinton Health Access Initiative and travel the world.
How did you end up in these roles? Did you
have like a unique path or did it follow the
(17:12):
advice that you're giving here? So I I do think
it followed some of the advice I'm giving here, although
you know, there was frankly a lot of trial and error.
UM and I built a lot of the tools on
the muse because I wanted them and I didn't have
them back when I was younger. But yeah, that the quick,
you know, short version of my story is that, UM,
I got it into my head around probably aged fourteen
(17:34):
years old or something that I wanted to work for
the CIA or the State Department. Um. Yeah, so I
don't know that television show Alias back in the day.
It was Jennifer Garner played a double agent Sydney Bristol.
And you're also from Virginia, right, you're from Like yeah,
so I was born in Texas actually, but we moved
to the DC area and I was like twelve, and yeah,
(17:54):
that was around when like I started to get to
know people who worked in the Foreign Service, and you
know it, just I became captivated by the idea of
like international work and maybe undercover, maybe not, um, but honestly,
I mean, embarrassingly, the TV show was definitely a contributor
to what I thought that job was like. And ly, yeah,
it's you know this, and that's very common, frankly that
(18:15):
people get their earliest ideas of what careers are like
from the media. And so I had this idea. I
followed it for years. I made all of these decisions
in school based on you know, I'm gonna go work
for the CIA or the State Department. Boom boom boom.
And luckily, um in two thousand seven, I uh, you know,
we're talking about trial and error. Earlier, UM, I applied
(18:35):
for and was accepted to basically like a summer position
at the US embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, um in the Mediterranean. Yeah,
it was. I mean it was a wild experience. I
did a drill where I got chased through the embassy
with by marines with guns. I I mean it was,
I was. It was part of the drill. I was
playing a terrorist. They did a great job that caught me. Um.
(18:55):
But you know, I had all of these like insane experiences,
but I'm realized, like this isn't what I thought it was,
and so it was the error part of trial and error. UM.
I went into consulting after that. But you know, I
do think I saved myself from other moves that were
not that that would have been even further away from
where I should have been by you know, doing research online.
(19:17):
I used to just troll, like not troll and the
way that people use it now, But I used to
spend like hours looking at company career sites and you know,
going on everything I could find to try and learn
like what are these jobs actually like? Because I realized
after that first experience, I better get a lot smarter
about what company culture was like what you know, what
the day to day of a job was like before
(19:37):
I jumped in, because for a full time job, you really,
you know, you want to try and stay a couple
of years. And I think that, uh, that was a
lesson I learned the hard way. I guess I'll say, yeah, totally.
And I'm curious now, like here we are, twenty twenty,
the world changing. How do you feel about for your
universities and certifications and what we have versus where we're going?
(20:01):
Great question, you know, I think that there. I think
that the future is going to see a lot more
acceptable pathways and for some people. For your university is
going to be great. I learned a ton. I had
an amazing time. Like I think that there's gonna be
for individual students and for certain career paths. I think
that there's you know, there's always going to be a
place for a kind of classic for your university system.
(20:24):
But I'm also a big believer in other ways of
getting to the same goal and whether that's a certification program,
whether that's some of these organizations that help people leap
directly into working, um into you know, various forms of
m paid internships and externships. You know, I think one
of the for example, one of the very small crusades
that I've been on personally is that we shouldn't require
(20:46):
a four year college degree for jobs that don't require
a four year college degree, which turns out is a
lot of jobs. If you engineer, like just make sure
that they're a great engineer. Does you know, do you
care if they graduated from a you know, accredited university,
or do you care if they're great at coding? Um?
And I think if we did that, we might actually
open up some of these fields to a much broader,
(21:07):
more eclectic, more diverse, more interesting array of people than
by kind of arbitrarily putting requirements in because maybe that's
how it was done in the past. That makes a
lot of sense. And I think about that because you know,
like I went to a four year university and I
really didn't learn much inside the classroom, but I went
to I went to American University in d c UM.
(21:29):
But I learned so much by having kids in my
school from like a hundred different countries I went to
from like being a jock in Texas and having like
you know, not the most diverse network all those sports
was really the thing that allowed me to understand you know,
socioeconomic diversity and and you know racial or international diversity. Um,
that's where I got the access to people that were
(21:49):
outside of like say, my direct community. But really going
to college was where it like completely globalized my thinking. However,
had I gone to like you know, Texas State or
not to talk shit on Texas State, sorry all Texas
State grads out there, but I think I would have
had a lot of fun and New Bronfels and partied
a lot, But I don't know that I would have
come out of there with any sort of like professional
(22:10):
skill setter gains. So like you know, I'm just for
for for me. I look at you know this, all
of the jobs of the future that haven't been invented
yet in a sense, you know, like in the idea
that you know, crippling student debt and like just the
math typically doesn't really work out right now for a
lot of people, I think globally for sure, but in
(22:30):
the US now too. And you know, I'm happy to
hear you say that you think that we're going to
be in a future where certifications and just capability is
going to be the key, not you know, the crunch
is m that you know used to open the door. Yeah,
and I think you know your story is such a
is such a good one because it's often these other
experiences that broaden the mind, that that broaden your skill
(22:54):
set um that that may or may not be taught
inside a classroom. And frankly, I think any time in
human existence that you have people who just sort of
hop on the conveyor belt path of life, like first
you go here, then you do this, next you do this.
Like that serves some people, but it doesn't serve everyone,
and it doesn't necessarily serve society as a whole. And
so I hope that collectively we can move towards a
(23:16):
world where we're telling young people, look, here's a path, here,
the advantages, here the disadvantages, here's other paths. You know,
here are some of the other opportunities. Because it is
a great, big, wide world out there. And I don't
think we do a really good job sometimes of helping people,
especially people from certain parts of the country, certain geography,
certain family structure, certain backgrounds. I don't know that we
(23:39):
do a good job of saying, like here, here's what's
out there. So with the muse, I imagine that's changed
tremendously for you, you know, like that the media landscape
has trained tremendously. The way that people I imagine they
consume your content has shifted five times in the last
ten years. I mean, I can't even imagine. So tell
us a little bit about that journey just as an entrepreneur. Yeah,
(24:00):
I mean, it's it's been a really wild one. UM. So,
if you look at the business today, we have roughly
between five to seven million people every month who are
coming to the MEWS dot com and UM content is
obviously one of the things that we're really known for,
but a lot of people are coming to us as
well to research companies and browse the company profiles. UM
watch the different you know, employee videos and we have
(24:23):
a text based employee Q and a S and then
obviously applying to jobs, which is frankly how we make
most of our revenue. And and that's sort of the
part of the marketplace is when you can kind of
connect the right person to the right job at the
right company, it's great for everybody because ideally, if they
get hired, it's it's good for them, it's good for
the company. And then you know, obviously it's it's great
for us, and um I would say it's been a
wild ride. Of course, I spent the first four years
(24:46):
running the business with just no money. I joking. We
call it the blood, sweat and Ramen phase because from
you know, basically like two twelve to early two thousand fifteen,
we just we just never had any money. We were
this like tiny, tiny band of you know, kind of insane,
passionate driven people that we're going up against these huge
(25:09):
platforms like at the time, you know, LinkedIn and Monster
was big then, and um mad I think it. It
took us a couple of years to not only kind
of crack the code of the revenue model in the business,
but also frankly, to get enough traction that investors could
look past the fact that we were fairly young, all
(25:30):
female founding team, which is very unusual. And once we
were really able to demonstrate not only that we could attract,
you know, millions of people, but that we could actually
monetize in a really interesting way, that's when the business
as a business really took off. How did you but
how how did you do that? I don't mean to
interrupt you, but like that's that, that's like we just
we just blazed past the fact that you built this
(25:51):
and started it and then had millions of people that
were visiting the website monthly, Like, how did you grow
the business? How did you get that that exponent all? So,
there was definitely an element of throwing spaghetti at the
wall and seeing what sticks. Um, Okay. So basically, in
the very early days, I knew from my own experience
(26:12):
and from talking to others that many young job seekers
did not feel like their needs were being met and
less that seemed like a crazy statement, you know, if
you think back like nine years ago, basically like monster
dot com was still one of the biggest places to
find jobs. And I don't know if you've used that
platform in a while, but it is not not very modern.
It's not and the LinkedIn of two thou ten does
(26:35):
not look like the LinkedIn of two thou totally. And
you know, LinkedIn's asset has always been your network. But
if you don't have a network because you're early in
your career, it is struggled to be as effective for
younger people and younger talent people that are, yeah, that
are further in their career. Um. Not only that, but
there was a just an absolute like gap in great
(26:58):
career advice. You would google different questions like how to
negotiate a raise, and the content was just terrible, and
it was often from sources that were kind of, you know,
didn't really seem that legitimate. And so I had started
a blog about a year before The Muse that got
like twenty people very quickly through almost entirely word of mouth,
and so I had some confidence that there was this need.
(27:20):
But obviously identifying the need is only part of the battle.
So when we launched the Muse, I did a bunch
of like small, kind of almost guerilla marketing things to
get the word out. Let's see, so this would have
been very late two thousand eleven. First of all, I
personally emailed like nine hundred student and alumni groups that
had some sort of career focus, so you know, Stanford
(27:43):
Women in Law, the Baldwin Scholars and basically sent them
an email about why I was launching the mus, what
we did, and asked them, can we help your members?
Can we help with additional career advice? There were not
so many startups at this point in time, so it
was still a little bit novel at that point to
get an email about a new startup. We had a
(28:04):
very very kind of clear sense when you landed on
the News dot com you could really understand what we
were trying to do. So a lot of people who
came to the site told their friends, you know, we
we had everybody that we knew shared it on social
We actually got very lucky in that former colleague of
mine ended up working at a O L and he
mentioned what we were doing to Arianna Huffington's and so
she wrote an article about advice she would give her
(28:26):
younger self for the launch of the News that we
put on the home page, and that really helped legitimize us,
because when people came to the site and they're like,
you know, what is this random website I've never heard of?
There was an article with great advice by Ariana Huffington's. Yeah,
it was. It was incredible, and I think, you know,
we were very focused in the beginning also on helping
helping women navigate their careers, and so that was something
(28:48):
that I think she really connected with. Content syndication was
a nut that we cracked that probably drove at least
five thousand of our first month's users and maybe twenty
shortly after. Essentially we at that point in time, a
lot of these other sites on the web like Forbes
and places were first starting to take contributor content, and
(29:09):
so I was like, Okay, well, I have a product.
I need to get it in front of people. The
best way to do that is to find where those
people are and go see if I can, you know,
get in their field of vision and be like, hey,
come check me out. Um. And so I knew a
lot of people were on Forbes, and so I approached
editors at Forbes and said, I'd like to give you
really high quality career advice content for free with some
links back to this new site called The Muse. And
(29:31):
at that point in time I was able to convince
them through basically a combination of like cold networking and
I don't know, I guess being fairly persuasive, to put
the Muse as a contributor account. And at one point
in time, I think we had the number one, number four,
and number five most popular articles in the business section
of Forbes, and those articles were getting hundreds of thousands
of views on Forbes, which they were happy about, but
(29:53):
some small percentage, you know, honestly, probably one or two
percent of those people were clicking back through the links
and coming back and discovering this new site called the
Muse that was all about helping you navigate your career,
find a job, and that was one of our biggest
early sources of traffic over time, organic search, referral, partner's
word of mouth. Like now, there's a bunch of different
(30:14):
ways that people hear about us, But in the beginning,
when we had no brand, it was really about figuring out,
you know, who does have an audience, a community, a brand,
and how do we offer them something of value so
that they will give us space to be, to be
seen and to be discovered. Art of the Hustle will
be right back after this short break. I love that
(30:42):
story and it is just so like it's so street level.
It's like it's and it obviously you you must have
been a very talented writer and a very persuasive person,
and you know they you brought content that they wanted,
so you were very prescriptive in terms of like reading
you know, the platform and what you went to, what
(31:03):
you went with Forbes. But I just like saying that
back to you because we forget. I forget because like
here you are you know, like ten years later, you know,
you've raised tens of millions of dollars, you've touched millions
of people through the through the platform, and what you
guys do and and what you ladies do, um and
and you know we and and you literally were doing
(31:25):
free work for Forbes. That was your solution. You're like,
I'm gonna go and work for free for another company.
I'm literally not just gonna run my business, but I'm
gonna write content for you guys. And like it's just
that's the auspicious, auspicious beginnings of like all this stuff, right,
Like I feel like every the the story from the
mind that I has come to mind in this conversation
(31:46):
that I thought you'd appreciate because like, you know, it's
a different skill sets, a different type of product. Ultimately,
I built with Summit and you built with the News.
But you know, I remember watching the Woodstock documentary probably
around the same time, say two thousand nine, and at
two thousand and maybe started Summit, you know, with within
the year, and I saw Michael Lang on this documentary
and was like, this dude was a visionary. Like clearly
(32:07):
there's four founders, but this guy was the one who
sort of like had you know, the moment. Uh, And
and I've googled him and I found the Michael Lang
Organization on Google. And I literally called the office the
next day and I sent him an email and he
took a meeting with me, because do you know how
few people who are in their early twenties do that,
(32:27):
Like literally nobody reaches out to this guy like that, right, So,
so like it was and I did nothing special and
I just did it. And I think I went and like,
you know, flip flops and shorts to this guy's office
is like a twenty two year old idiot and uh
and you know, and I was like, man, how did
you do it? Like so incredible whatever? And he's like, yeah,
I I I built the stage. It's like a really
humble guy. I've actually had him on the podcast and
(32:49):
and there in lies the wisdom of like Michael, you know,
like he's he's, he's he's and and he hasn't it's
like Woodstock means peak experience moment right like it hasn't
necessarily happened again since then, But you know, I just
I just think it illustrates, like you're like all go
right for free at another platforms, you know, publication, and
(33:10):
you know, I'm like, I'll you know, cold call this
guy and take me and like, you know, of course
later on, like you spoke at Summit and you know,
it is really valuable to have as like a sounding
board for you know, hosting events and building events, which
is something I'm super passionate about, and just people don't
get the opportunity that. I imagine the people at Forbes
who met you were like, Wow, Catherine like loves this space.
(33:30):
She really cares about helping job seekers. We've got to
like do more with her. Yeah, And I think you're
you know your story too. I love it because it
illustrates so much of that early success is it boils
down off into the same couple of things. One showing
up putting in the you know, putting in the work,
like getting on the plane doing the thing, you know,
reaching out um. But also I think I early on
(33:54):
I put a lot of time and energy into thinking
what makes this a win for them? Because it's really
obvious for you what you want. But if you can't
go to people with ideally something that that helps them,
and sometimes that's as simple as you know, it makes
them like you said earlier, it allows them to pass
on their experience and to feel good about what they've
(34:14):
learned and and the path they've had. But sometimes it's
more concrete, like, hey, can I write content for your site?
Whatever it is. I think that there's a lot of
those little things that can help you get that toe hold,
and what you do with the opportunity is obviously up
to you. But but it's it's like, sometimes you've just
got to put in a very particular type of work
to get to get noticed or get that opportunity in
(34:37):
the first place. And if you're in you know, we're
talking about the like us climbing the mountain, but there's
also all these other mountain climbers that are starting right
at the same time as you. And so when I
fast forward to and I think about the greatest resources
I have today, it's actually the people that were around
me then who are also starting their own things and
have like whether they succeeded or failed, we all have
(34:59):
these incredible shared experiences and build all this different wisdom.
And you know, through those experiences, and I'm curious, is
that something that you also share? Like I just I
see that as such a phenomenon, and I look back
and I'm like, man, like, all the entrepreneurs and founders
that were around in my early twenties are the ones who,
you know, I can really lean on and rely on,
and we all sort of have that shared experience. Yeah, yes,
(35:21):
I mean, and I think that there's a few different
layers in which that's helpful. One of them is, you know,
a lot of the best advice and mentorship that I
got was not from people who were wildly successful five
to ten years ahead, but in some cases it was
from other founders who were just six months down the road.
And that could be powerful because sometimes they have more
time for you because you know, not not everybody's asking
(35:43):
for it, and they've literally just been where you are,
so it's very fresh. You know. Now people reach out
and ask me about seed investors for tech companies, and like,
I've got great relationships with the number, but I amn't
raised a seed round in like five years, so you know,
I'm not as close to it versus like someone who
just did a seed around last year might have their
pulse on what you need to do in some advice
(36:05):
and then also exactly what you said that there are
so many incredible people that you know, we were all
like just starting out together, you know, in the trenches together,
just nobody's trying to make our mark um ten years ago,
and it's been really awesome and inspiring to see where,
you know, where all these folks have ended up and um,
and I just can't even wait to see what the
(36:25):
next ten years bring totally. And I'm just you know,
I think one of the things that we all have
to always fear as entrepreneurs or creatives or whatever is irrelevance.
Right whether or not your organization is relevant. Like, that's
the real competition. It's not the other job site, it's
not the other you know, event or conference company. It's
(36:45):
whether or not like we are innovating in creating conversation
around our brands that that matters to people. So I
want to know, like, for you, you know, here we
are twenty I'm I'm obviously you're preaching of the converted here,
because like I think that the future of work is
like the predominant intersectional issue that we all should be
really considering right now. But I want to know for you,
(37:07):
like how do you how do you battle that? How
do you continue to keep the brand and the movement fresh. Yeah. Well,
I think that as as an individual, a human, and
as an organization, you've got to step out of your
comfort zone as much as possible. You've got to talk
to people who don't like your product. You've got to
talk to people who have never heard of your product.
You've got to try things ideally and sort of small
contained ways where you can learn um But I think
(37:30):
that that you've got to kind of shake things up
because if you stay comfortable, you will you will never
stay relevant. And on top of that, I think that,
you know, one of the struggles as well for a
lot of entrepreneurs is a balance between you know, you
need to be very respectful of data because your intuitions
not always right, but you also have to trust your
gut because data is sometimes incomplete um or or isn't
(37:53):
able to tell you the full story. And so, you know,
I think I try and have a lot of conversations
with a really broad, eclectic set of people. I try
and just you know, keep keep my perspective really fresh.
And this past year I spent a ton of time
like digging into you know, what our colleges doing in
response to the pandemic and how are students thinking about
(38:14):
getting internships and jobs with the whole world being upside down?
And that was really helpful for you know, staying relevant.
I think there's always more work to be done. You know.
Part of it is just staying really hungry and staying
committed and keeping people around you that push you and
that don't just like, you know, pat you on the
back and say nice job and let you kick up
your feet. Well, I really appreciate that. And and Katherine,
(38:37):
I I'm so thankful for you in your perspective and
for the muse and for the new rules of work.
I encourage our listeners, who are you know, in this
phase of their careers, to go down the rabbit hole
here because I've found you know, I really enjoyed the podcast.
I really love the website, and I always have like
you know, it's it's it's always been fresh, it's always
(38:57):
had energy in you know, a space at is seemingly
mostly dry and and pedantic, and you know it's more
databases than it is you know, culture and feeling and content.
So this being one of the craziest days, you know,
like probably someone one that will remember for the rest
of our lives. I want to be respectful of your time.
But again, thank you for being on the podcast, thank
(39:19):
you for your work, and if there's any other resources
that you think the listeners should should check out, if
there's any you know, deep, you know, as old as
the trees and the river's wisdom that comes up in
your head on an off on a regular basis that
you want to impart on our way out by all
means well, way to leave me on a way to
leave you on a b I you know, I I
(39:42):
always love the sort of the quote of the concept
that you know, if it was easy, everybody would be
doing it. And I think that sometimes we live in
a culture where, especially for entrepreneurship and building, people love
to tell the overnight success story. They love to you know,
kind of condense things really quickly into like oh, you know,
I I wrote for Forms and then we had all
(40:03):
these users like look, the real the real story of
everything is like days where it seems like everything's failing
and you know, nights where you lay in bed like
gripped by existential dread that it's all just you know,
it's all falling apart, and a lot of stuff like
all success is, you know, is surrounded by many failures,
many deaths of your dream. UM. And so I think that, UM,
(40:25):
you know, I think I would just say, like, you know,
if you really believe in something that don't don't let
people convince you that that success comes easily. If it
was easy, everybody would do it. But some of the
most meaningful things are the most challenging as well. And I, uh,
you know, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much
for having me. I hope people check out the muse
and or you know, tweet at me at at came
(40:46):
in UM on Twitter if you have feedback or comments.
But this has been a ton of fun. Thanks so much,
of course, Thank you so much, Catherine, and thank you
for listening. This is the art of the awesome m
(41:13):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Katherine Minshew. Katherine is the CEO and founder of
The Muse, a career platform used by over seventy five
million people to research companies and careers. In two thousand eighteen,
the Muse was named one of Fast Companies, fifty most
Innovative Companies in the World and the number three most
(00:41):
innovative company for Enterprise. Katherine has spoken at M I, T,
and Harvard. She's contributed to The Wall Street Journal and
Harvard Business Review, and appeared on Today and CNN, among others.
Katherine worked on an HPV vaccine introduction in Rwanda with
the Clinton Health Access Initiative before founding The News, and
previously worked as a consultant that mckins. Her first book,
The New Rules of Work, The Modern Playbook for Navigating
(01:04):
your Career, is a Wall Street Journal national bestseller. She
joins us to talk about what employees should be demanding
from their employees, the future of four year university, and
how contributing her writing without pay helped launch them Use
from its only eating Ramen phase to raising millions of dollars.
So please enjoy my conversation with Katherine Minshew. Welcome to podcast.
(01:28):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely.
We're recording this on the day after the polls closing
for the presidential election. So what a wild time to
be alive. Huh, it really is. And it's been a
wild time to be a leader to right trying to
figure out how much to you know, to to lead
from your personal beliefs here, you know, and and how
(01:51):
much to allow space for just the wide diversity of
experiences that people are having right now. So it's, um,
it's an intense time for sure. Well, I'm so how
be that you're here on the podcast with us, you know,
as the founder of the Muse and the host of
the New Rules of Work. One of the topics that
I just find to be the most intersectional and important
right now for us to be considering is the future
(02:12):
of work, And to your point, I'd say, the other
is how we bridge that delta in that gap between
everybody's disparate and wide perspectives here. Absolutely, I think it's
a really it's it's a really interesting time for all
of us, as you know, as individuals, as employees, as leaders,
and in particular, I'm also just fascinated by how the pandemic,
(02:33):
the protests this summer around the murder of George Floyd,
like so many different big things are happening that are
changing how we work and how we show up in work.
I happen to think a lot of the trends that
are being accelerated are really positive ones. But it's a
time of a lot of change, and I'm sure it's
you know, it's it's very overwhelming as well. Well, unpack
that further for us, if you don't mind, just because
(02:54):
you get to think about this and where. I mean,
you've worked on this for a very long time. I
remember a decade ago you are already putting together and
hosting you know, communities and forms for young entrepreneurs and
female entrepreneurs and that you know, of course grew into
and your career. I mean, if you've seemingly, you know,
for the last decade plus really just leaned in on
this subject. So I would love to hear more about
(03:16):
what you're seeing and experiencing absolutely well. So I started
the news about nine years ago to help people, and
especially people who are in kind of early and mid
phases of their career find that right fit job, company,
and and career path. And I think you've got to
hit on all three right, because if you're in the
right job but the wrong company or the wrong career path, um,
(03:37):
you're you're not really firing on all cylinders unless you
can kind of get people in the middle of that
ven diagram. And so I've I've been building the news,
talking with job seekers, talking with employers, you know, everybody
from like big companies like you know, Nike and Facebook
and Apple to a lot of like small and midsized businesses.
And I think there's a couple of trends that I'm
really interested in in in this sort of you know,
(03:59):
quote unquote for tature of work. You know, One is
there's there's just a real redefinition happening of the expected
relationship between an individual and the place they work, right
and and this is maybe not new But if you
think back a couple of decades, like work was your
time and your you know, your efforts and your output
(04:19):
in exchange for a paycheck. There was there was a
clock in, clock out. There was not the sense that
employers are you know, sort of taking social issues. There
was much less of a sense on behalf of employees
that they should be asking and even demanding so many
things from their employers. And I think we're seeing, you know,
with the rise of knowledge workers, with the increasing competition
(04:41):
for lots of types of talent such as technical talent
and sales talent and frankly millennial and gen z talent,
I think we're really seeing, you know, a lot of
big changes. And so I've been fascinated by what talent
is asking for. You know, this is like the ten
years of research. So I'm going quickly. But you know,
a lot of the talent that uses the news, they're
(05:01):
they're not just looking for a job, they're looking for
a path. They're looking for an employer with values that
aligns to their own. You know, if you think about
as well, a lot of young employees on the coasts
being vocal in their workplaces as one of the perhaps
the highest leverage places they have to affect change, you know,
especially if you live in a in a state where
(05:21):
you know, the sort of state's outcome you know, in
the electoral college is fairly predetermined. You might actually, as
a young person make the calculation that being active in
your employer and pushing for things like you know, racial justice, inclusion, flexibility,
all of these different themes, that pushing for these themes
through your employer is you know, maybe just as effective
as fighting for them on the streets or at the
(05:42):
ballot box. And so I think we're seeing a lot
of just you know, again interesting activism on behalf of
younger employees. For companies, they really have to work for
talent in a way that they didn't ten years ago.
So if you're an employer, yeah, you've got to you've
got to say why us, Why would you pick my company?
Over all of the different companies that are hiring marketers,
financial analysts, engineers, And I think that's really redefining the relationship.
(06:06):
And we can you know, talk maybe more later on
about how that that manifests and authenticity, how you know,
workplaces are becoming more human. But I think it's a
it's a fascinating time to be in this space because
everything that you thought you knew about how HR worked
is being questioned, and a lot of it is is
really the rules are being rewritten right now. Yeah, it's
(06:29):
interesting to hear you unpack it that way. I think about, how,
you know, back a decade ago, there was still this
like breakonnet competition for best in class, say engineering talent,
or like best in class, say enterprise salespeople, and you
would essentially get them by overpaying or by having a
better like food program in the cafeteria, or like a
(06:49):
bus that gets you to Palo Alto or whatever. But
what you're describing is an intrinsic motivation. It's internal, not external.
And I think back to myself as like a young
profession at all, and I really didn't have an intrinsic
compass like I think young people today do. Like we
had more of a life that we knew we wanted
(07:09):
to get to, or a professional you know, reputation that
would unlock the lifestyle that we were seeking. I find
that young people today that is the secondary or tertiary.
And I don't mean to speak in like this gross generalization,
but like to your to your point. It's the culture,
it's the community, it's the values and the mission of
(07:29):
the organization that seems to motivate our best you know,
workers to to to get after it. Absolutely, and I
think it's it's it's so interesting for a number of reasons.
You know. First of all, there's that as a society,
many parts of our society are becoming you know, very
values driven, very mission aware. We're seeing this in consumer behavior,
(07:50):
So there's that thread. There's also, though, I think this
really interesting impact of social media and and sort of
specifically the fact that we are not only for many people, um,
we're living our lives and seeing other people live their
lives in real time all the time. And when you
think about you know, let's say, fifteen years ago, the
(08:10):
biggest thing that a lot of college students and young
people looked at were these published lists of the best
places to work. And I'm making that voice for a reason,
right because they were often these very like kind of
classic lists, full of the same classic employers. And you know, now,
I think when you look at the diversity of things
that people are looking for from their employer, the idea
(08:31):
that you could just stack rank every company in the
world on a single list. Frankly, to me, I think
it's a bit silly. It's like saying the best people
to marry in New York City, Like what sort of
a list is that. It's much more about you know,
who are you? What do you care about that? Yeah,
thank you? I I just you know, it's a big
part of what I'm doing at the muse. It's frankly,
it's a it's it's a big part of the first
(08:51):
section of my book is like, you've got it as
an individual, understand what matters to you, What do you
want and you need in your career. I've also what
can you bring to the table? But what do you
care about? What are your values? Not just big picture values,
but but what are your preferences? Do you want to
work in an organization where there's a lot of clarity
and a lot of consistency and a low velocity of change,
(09:14):
or do you want one where things are always changing
and always moving bam bam bam. You know nothing's stable
because you thrive on that. Those are both acceptable. But
you've got to understand what you want and then you
can go out there and get it. And I think
it's giving companies a lot of flexibility to be themselves.
Rather than saying, you know, we're going to check five
boxes and be on this list. They're like, okay, who
are we what can we offer to employees? But on
(09:35):
the flip side, you've got to practice what you preach,
because employees can be they can be very punishing if
companies are making big, expansive promises and then not living
those up. I think there's a you know, there's a
real desire for what's said externally to match what's experienced internally.
That makes a lot of sense, and I'm thinking back
I got historically, like you know that advice where it's like, okay,
(09:58):
you're a young person, you're during the job market. It's
like just do anything and figure out whether you like
it or not. That was sort of the advice I got.
I was like, well, try it, and you know, through
that experience, you'll get to know yourself and what you
know you enjoy the most. And now I'm listening to
you talk like, man, that's actually kind of terrible advice.
Because if we examine our motivations and the types of
(10:22):
environments that we feel most comfortable in and that we
thrive in, I think that would probably lead to a
greater level of engagement, which would make it more fun
and we'd perform better and we'd be on it. Like
time seems to be a little more finite as things accelerate. Yeah, well,
a couple of things. One. First of all, I love
that you brought the focus to when you get that
right fit, people perform better, like they do better, and
(10:44):
it shouldn't be you know, it shouldn't be this big idea.
But it's actually fascinating to me that talent and HRR
as a function are just starting to get really smart
about connecting pre higher and post higher data. They're just
starting to get smart about saying, wait a second, if
we'd a better job of being honest and authentic before
someone comes into the company, and we therefore make sure
(11:06):
that they're a better fit with our organization are you know, culture,
our values, our way of working, and their role, then
they will be higher performing, they'll be more likely to stay,
they'll be more successful here. And I think that's been
such an interesting part of my time leading the muse frankly,
because you know, early on, especially when the business was small,
(11:29):
I often really struggled where sometimes our early customers were
so used to measuring, you know, is a higher successful
based purely on how cheap was it to fill that role?
And I'd be like, okay, yeah, look, we all want
to pay less, but wouldn't you rather get the right person?
And then, you know, to your point about about young
people today, I do think, though, we've got to cut
(11:50):
ourselves some slack, because you know, ten twenty years ago,
there was not the sort of information available about what
different careers were even out there. I mean, I remember
when I was in college, I went to the career
center and think like a book and it was like
four hundred nine unconventional careers for liberal arts pages like okay, great.
(12:10):
You know, there wasn't the sort of like richness of information.
There wasn't this focus on understanding yourself and and matching
that with a different path. And so, you know, I
tend to think that like, people did the best they could,
but now they're there are tools, there's information, there's technology
that I think allows people to make smarter choices a
little sooner that are maybe a little bit less reliant
(12:31):
on trial and error, even though frankly trial and error
still has its place, and I did it a lot
in my own early career. Yeah, it's so. And when
you find people that are motivated by passion as an
entrepreneur and as a founder, you want to hold onto
them for dear life because you know, you you now
have someone that is going to grow themselves in a sense,
they're their curiosity is going to lead the next lead
(12:54):
that they onearthed for the company or their own you know,
career development. And essentially because I also I talk to like,
you know, ex ge executives who blow my mind and
they're like they understand career development and leadership and executive
training and development in a way and in a science
that it's just beyond me. But you know, when I
when I hear you again, when I think about like,
you know, young people dedicating themselves to something that they
(13:17):
care about, like if I'm in any of these you know,
and and it can be you know, very long tail,
especially to the point you may that you know, we
now know about all these jobs. Now can find all
of these people. If you're into like one particular type
of you know, molecular biology or if you want to
make meatless fish or whatever. There's like multiple companies out
there that are doing all this crazy ship in the world,
(13:39):
and if you truly have a passion about it and
you talk to somebody who is in that organization that
shares your passion, it is a breath of fresh air
because I get to talk about the thing I love.
I get to impart my knowledge and this thing that
I love to someone else there for extending myself and
you know, the body of work. So I just like,
you know, I love I love that this has been
the focus of the muse, and I mean I want
(14:00):
to know more. Like so, so I'm a young person,
I'm going down that path. You do you recommend like anagrams?
Do you recommend? Like what are some of the ways
that you think practically people can help themselves along this journey? Yeah,
so okay, so I think there's a few different things
that I'd recommend. Step one is to start with your values.
So I often recommend, and we've got a whole exercise
(14:21):
in my book about you know, a longer form version
of this, but I often recommend that people spend the
little time thinking about what sort of life do you
want to to lead? And not what job do you
want to do or what functions you want to do,
but literally, what does it look like, is flexibility important
to you? Do you want to work in an office,
you know, in one place? Do you want to travel?
Do you want to always be talking to people? Do
(14:42):
you want to be buried in you know, Microsoft Excel
or in a lab? Like what literal like sorts of
activities day to day matter to you, and then start
to to put down on paper, um, the the way
that you want to experience work again, you know, for
some people high compensation, high prestige of as might value, creativity,
and things constantly changing. You can keep it again, very
(15:05):
very high level at the beginning because it's just about
sort of what sparks joy if you want to use
an emory condo expression, but you know, what is it
that that excites you. It can also be really helpful
in this phase to talk to people who know you well.
And when you can start to zero in on what
some of those things are, then what I recommend is
to do a little bit of research. So if you're
really at the beginning of your career, that research might
(15:26):
look like, Okay, I think that you know, brand marketing
might be interesting or um, you know, I've heard maybe
I should consider sales great. Just write down, you know,
three to five possible career paths. UM. If you're a
little bit further in your career, these might be you know,
specific job titles, they might be specific companies. And then honestly,
I'd say, you know, just start with Google. UM one
(15:46):
of the biggest things. And this is something that you know, honestly,
it's It's part of why I started the Muse. I
wanted people to be able to hear from people in
different roles and hear from employees at different companies, and
to be able to go online without having to have
a big, fancy network and just watch a video of
somebody in a particular job at a particular company talking
about what they do and see like, does that excite you?
(16:07):
Doesn't interest you? UM. There's a lot of inks build
about informational interviews. And obviously I'm I'm a big fan,
but sometimes you don't have somebody in your network who
you can sit down, you know, one on one over
coffee with UM. But there's a lot of great resources
online and you know, obviously I'm super biased, but I
haven't a thing that the muses the best. But but
you know, Googling will lead you down a lot of places,
(16:28):
and I think back to some of the jobs that
I took when I was younger, the career paths that
I wanted to explore. And sometimes it is only talking
to someone who actually does that job that helps you
realize like, oh crap, that is not what I thought
or that is not for me. And that's great, right.
It's great to know what you don't want, just as
as much as it is to know what you do.
(16:50):
We'll be back with more out of the Hustle after
the break. You were a management consultant that Mackenzie, You
worked for the Clinton Health Access Initiative and travel the world.
How did you end up in these roles? Did you
have like a unique path or did it follow the
(17:12):
advice that you're giving here? So I I do think
it followed some of the advice I'm giving here, although
you know, there was frankly a lot of trial and error.
UM and I built a lot of the tools on
the muse because I wanted them and I didn't have
them back when I was younger. But yeah, that the quick,
you know, short version of my story is that, UM,
I got it into my head around probably aged fourteen
(17:34):
years old or something that I wanted to work for
the CIA or the State Department. Um. Yeah, so I
don't know that television show Alias back in the day.
It was Jennifer Garner played a double agent Sydney Bristol.
And you're also from Virginia, right, you're from Like yeah,
so I was born in Texas actually, but we moved
to the DC area and I was like twelve, and yeah,
(17:54):
that was around when like I started to get to
know people who worked in the Foreign Service, and you
know it, just I became captivated by the idea of
like international work and maybe undercover, maybe not, um, but honestly,
I mean, embarrassingly, the TV show was definitely a contributor
to what I thought that job was like. And ly, yeah,
it's you know this, and that's very common, frankly that
(18:15):
people get their earliest ideas of what careers are like
from the media. And so I had this idea. I
followed it for years. I made all of these decisions
in school based on you know, I'm gonna go work
for the CIA or the State Department. Boom boom boom.
And luckily, um in two thousand seven, I uh, you know,
we're talking about trial and error. Earlier, UM, I applied
(18:35):
for and was accepted to basically like a summer position
at the US embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, um in the Mediterranean. Yeah,
it was. I mean it was a wild experience. I
did a drill where I got chased through the embassy
with by marines with guns. I I mean it was,
I was. It was part of the drill. I was
playing a terrorist. They did a great job that caught me. Um.
(18:55):
But you know, I had all of these like insane experiences,
but I'm realized, like this isn't what I thought it was,
and so it was the error part of trial and error. UM.
I went into consulting after that. But you know, I
do think I saved myself from other moves that were
not that that would have been even further away from
where I should have been by you know, doing research online.
(19:17):
I used to just troll, like not troll and the
way that people use it now, But I used to
spend like hours looking at company career sites and you know,
going on everything I could find to try and learn
like what are these jobs actually like? Because I realized
after that first experience, I better get a lot smarter
about what company culture was like what you know, what
the day to day of a job was like before
(19:37):
I jumped in, because for a full time job, you really,
you know, you want to try and stay a couple
of years. And I think that, uh, that was a
lesson I learned the hard way. I guess I'll say, yeah, totally.
And I'm curious now, like here we are, twenty twenty,
the world changing. How do you feel about for your
universities and certifications and what we have versus where we're going?
(20:01):
Great question, you know, I think that there. I think
that the future is going to see a lot more
acceptable pathways and for some people. For your university is
going to be great. I learned a ton. I had
an amazing time. Like I think that there's gonna be
for individual students and for certain career paths. I think
that there's you know, there's always going to be a
place for a kind of classic for your university system.
(20:24):
But I'm also a big believer in other ways of
getting to the same goal and whether that's a certification program,
whether that's some of these organizations that help people leap
directly into working, um into you know, various forms of
m paid internships and externships. You know, I think one
of the for example, one of the very small crusades
that I've been on personally is that we shouldn't require
(20:46):
a four year college degree for jobs that don't require
a four year college degree, which turns out is a
lot of jobs. If you engineer, like just make sure
that they're a great engineer. Does you know, do you
care if they graduated from a you know, accredited university,
or do you care if they're great at coding? Um?
And I think if we did that, we might actually
open up some of these fields to a much broader,
(21:07):
more eclectic, more diverse, more interesting array of people than
by kind of arbitrarily putting requirements in because maybe that's
how it was done in the past. That makes a
lot of sense. And I think about that because you know,
like I went to a four year university and I
really didn't learn much inside the classroom, but I went
to I went to American University in d c UM.
(21:29):
But I learned so much by having kids in my
school from like a hundred different countries I went to
from like being a jock in Texas and having like
you know, not the most diverse network all those sports
was really the thing that allowed me to understand you know,
socioeconomic diversity and and you know racial or international diversity. Um,
that's where I got the access to people that were
(21:49):
outside of like say, my direct community. But really going
to college was where it like completely globalized my thinking. However,
had I gone to like you know, Texas State or
not to talk shit on Texas State, sorry all Texas
State grads out there, but I think I would have
had a lot of fun and New Bronfels and partied
a lot, But I don't know that I would have
come out of there with any sort of like professional
(22:10):
skill setter gains. So like you know, I'm just for
for for me. I look at you know this, all
of the jobs of the future that haven't been invented
yet in a sense, you know, like in the idea
that you know, crippling student debt and like just the
math typically doesn't really work out right now for a
lot of people, I think globally for sure, but in
(22:30):
the US now too. And you know, I'm happy to
hear you say that you think that we're going to
be in a future where certifications and just capability is
going to be the key, not you know, the crunch
is m that you know used to open the door. Yeah,
and I think you know your story is such a
is such a good one because it's often these other
experiences that broaden the mind, that that broaden your skill
(22:54):
set um that that may or may not be taught
inside a classroom. And frankly, I think any time in
human existence that you have people who just sort of
hop on the conveyor belt path of life, like first
you go here, then you do this, next you do this.
Like that serves some people, but it doesn't serve everyone,
and it doesn't necessarily serve society as a whole. And
so I hope that collectively we can move towards a
(23:16):
world where we're telling young people, look, here's a path, here,
the advantages, here the disadvantages, here's other paths. You know,
here are some of the other opportunities. Because it is
a great, big, wide world out there. And I don't
think we do a really good job sometimes of helping people,
especially people from certain parts of the country, certain geography,
certain family structure, certain backgrounds. I don't know that we
(23:39):
do a good job of saying, like here, here's what's
out there. So with the muse, I imagine that's changed
tremendously for you, you know, like that the media landscape
has trained tremendously. The way that people I imagine they
consume your content has shifted five times in the last
ten years. I mean, I can't even imagine. So tell
us a little bit about that journey just as an entrepreneur. Yeah,
(24:00):
I mean, it's it's been a really wild one. UM. So,
if you look at the business today, we have roughly
between five to seven million people every month who are
coming to the MEWS dot com and UM content is
obviously one of the things that we're really known for,
but a lot of people are coming to us as
well to research companies and browse the company profiles. UM
watch the different you know, employee videos and we have
(24:23):
a text based employee Q and a S and then
obviously applying to jobs, which is frankly how we make
most of our revenue. And and that's sort of the
part of the marketplace is when you can kind of
connect the right person to the right job at the
right company, it's great for everybody because ideally, if they
get hired, it's it's good for them, it's good for
the company. And then you know, obviously it's it's great
for us, and um I would say it's been a
wild ride. Of course, I spent the first four years
(24:46):
running the business with just no money. I joking. We
call it the blood, sweat and Ramen phase because from
you know, basically like two twelve to early two thousand fifteen,
we just we just never had any money. We were
this like tiny, tiny band of you know, kind of insane,
passionate driven people that we're going up against these huge
(25:09):
platforms like at the time, you know, LinkedIn and Monster
was big then, and um mad I think it. It
took us a couple of years to not only kind
of crack the code of the revenue model in the business,
but also frankly, to get enough traction that investors could
look past the fact that we were fairly young, all
(25:30):
female founding team, which is very unusual. And once we
were really able to demonstrate not only that we could attract,
you know, millions of people, but that we could actually
monetize in a really interesting way, that's when the business
as a business really took off. How did you but
how how did you do that? I don't mean to
interrupt you, but like that's that, that's like we just
we just blazed past the fact that you built this
(25:51):
and started it and then had millions of people that
were visiting the website monthly, Like, how did you grow
the business? How did you get that that exponent all? So,
there was definitely an element of throwing spaghetti at the
wall and seeing what sticks. Um, Okay. So basically, in
the very early days, I knew from my own experience
(26:12):
and from talking to others that many young job seekers
did not feel like their needs were being met and
less that seemed like a crazy statement, you know, if
you think back like nine years ago, basically like monster
dot com was still one of the biggest places to
find jobs. And I don't know if you've used that
platform in a while, but it is not not very modern.
It's not and the LinkedIn of two thou ten does
(26:35):
not look like the LinkedIn of two thou totally. And
you know, LinkedIn's asset has always been your network. But
if you don't have a network because you're early in
your career, it is struggled to be as effective for
younger people and younger talent people that are, yeah, that
are further in their career. Um. Not only that, but
there was a just an absolute like gap in great
(26:58):
career advice. You would google different questions like how to
negotiate a raise, and the content was just terrible, and
it was often from sources that were kind of, you know,
didn't really seem that legitimate. And so I had started
a blog about a year before The Muse that got
like twenty people very quickly through almost entirely word of mouth,
and so I had some confidence that there was this need.
(27:20):
But obviously identifying the need is only part of the battle.
So when we launched the Muse, I did a bunch
of like small, kind of almost guerilla marketing things to
get the word out. Let's see, so this would have
been very late two thousand eleven. First of all, I
personally emailed like nine hundred student and alumni groups that
had some sort of career focus, so you know, Stanford
(27:43):
Women in Law, the Baldwin Scholars and basically sent them
an email about why I was launching the mus, what
we did, and asked them, can we help your members?
Can we help with additional career advice? There were not
so many startups at this point in time, so it
was still a little bit novel at that point to
get an email about a new startup. We had a
(28:04):
very very kind of clear sense when you landed on
the News dot com you could really understand what we
were trying to do. So a lot of people who
came to the site told their friends, you know, we
we had everybody that we knew shared it on social
We actually got very lucky in that former colleague of
mine ended up working at a O L and he
mentioned what we were doing to Arianna Huffington's and so
she wrote an article about advice she would give her
(28:26):
younger self for the launch of the News that we
put on the home page, and that really helped legitimize us,
because when people came to the site and they're like,
you know, what is this random website I've never heard of?
There was an article with great advice by Ariana Huffington's. Yeah,
it was. It was incredible, and I think, you know,
we were very focused in the beginning also on helping
helping women navigate their careers, and so that was something
(28:48):
that I think she really connected with. Content syndication was
a nut that we cracked that probably drove at least
five thousand of our first month's users and maybe twenty
shortly after. Essentially we at that point in time, a
lot of these other sites on the web like Forbes
and places were first starting to take contributor content, and
(29:09):
so I was like, Okay, well, I have a product.
I need to get it in front of people. The
best way to do that is to find where those
people are and go see if I can, you know,
get in their field of vision and be like, hey,
come check me out. Um. And so I knew a
lot of people were on Forbes, and so I approached
editors at Forbes and said, I'd like to give you
really high quality career advice content for free with some
links back to this new site called The Muse. And
(29:31):
at that point in time I was able to convince
them through basically a combination of like cold networking and
I don't know, I guess being fairly persuasive, to put
the Muse as a contributor account. And at one point
in time, I think we had the number one, number four,
and number five most popular articles in the business section
of Forbes, and those articles were getting hundreds of thousands
of views on Forbes, which they were happy about, but
(29:53):
some small percentage, you know, honestly, probably one or two
percent of those people were clicking back through the links
and coming back and discovering this new site called the
Muse that was all about helping you navigate your career,
find a job, and that was one of our biggest
early sources of traffic over time, organic search, referral, partner's
word of mouth. Like now, there's a bunch of different
(30:14):
ways that people hear about us, But in the beginning,
when we had no brand, it was really about figuring out,
you know, who does have an audience, a community, a brand,
and how do we offer them something of value so
that they will give us space to be, to be
seen and to be discovered. Art of the Hustle will
be right back after this short break. I love that
(30:42):
story and it is just so like it's so street level.
It's like it's and it obviously you you must have
been a very talented writer and a very persuasive person,
and you know they you brought content that they wanted,
so you were very prescriptive in terms of like reading
you know, the platform and what you went to, what
(31:03):
you went with Forbes. But I just like saying that
back to you because we forget. I forget because like
here you are you know, like ten years later, you know,
you've raised tens of millions of dollars, you've touched millions
of people through the through the platform, and what you
guys do and and what you ladies do, um and
and you know we and and you literally were doing
(31:25):
free work for Forbes. That was your solution. You're like,
I'm gonna go and work for free for another company.
I'm literally not just gonna run my business, but I'm
gonna write content for you guys. And like it's just
that's the auspicious, auspicious beginnings of like all this stuff, right,
Like I feel like every the the story from the
mind that I has come to mind in this conversation
(31:46):
that I thought you'd appreciate because like, you know, it's
a different skill sets, a different type of product. Ultimately,
I built with Summit and you built with the News.
But you know, I remember watching the Woodstock documentary probably
around the same time, say two thousand nine, and at
two thousand and maybe started Summit, you know, with within
the year, and I saw Michael Lang on this documentary
and was like, this dude was a visionary. Like clearly
(32:07):
there's four founders, but this guy was the one who
sort of like had you know, the moment. Uh, And
and I've googled him and I found the Michael Lang
Organization on Google. And I literally called the office the
next day and I sent him an email and he
took a meeting with me, because do you know how
few people who are in their early twenties do that,
(32:27):
Like literally nobody reaches out to this guy like that, right, So,
so like it was and I did nothing special and
I just did it. And I think I went and like,
you know, flip flops and shorts to this guy's office
is like a twenty two year old idiot and uh
and you know, and I was like, man, how did
you do it? Like so incredible whatever? And he's like, yeah,
I I I built the stage. It's like a really
humble guy. I've actually had him on the podcast and
(32:49):
and there in lies the wisdom of like Michael, you know,
like he's he's, he's he's and and he hasn't it's
like Woodstock means peak experience moment right like it hasn't
necessarily happened again since then, But you know, I just
I just think it illustrates, like you're like all go
right for free at another platforms, you know, publication, and
(33:10):
you know, I'm like, I'll you know, cold call this
guy and take me and like, you know, of course
later on, like you spoke at Summit and you know,
it is really valuable to have as like a sounding
board for you know, hosting events and building events, which
is something I'm super passionate about, and just people don't
get the opportunity that. I imagine the people at Forbes
who met you were like, Wow, Catherine like loves this space.
(33:30):
She really cares about helping job seekers. We've got to
like do more with her. Yeah, And I think you're
you know your story too. I love it because it
illustrates so much of that early success is it boils
down off into the same couple of things. One showing
up putting in the you know, putting in the work,
like getting on the plane doing the thing, you know,
reaching out um. But also I think I early on
(33:54):
I put a lot of time and energy into thinking
what makes this a win for them? Because it's really
obvious for you what you want. But if you can't
go to people with ideally something that that helps them,
and sometimes that's as simple as you know, it makes
them like you said earlier, it allows them to pass
on their experience and to feel good about what they've
(34:14):
learned and and the path they've had. But sometimes it's
more concrete, like, hey, can I write content for your site?
Whatever it is. I think that there's a lot of
those little things that can help you get that toe hold,
and what you do with the opportunity is obviously up
to you. But but it's it's like, sometimes you've just
got to put in a very particular type of work
to get to get noticed or get that opportunity in
(34:37):
the first place. And if you're in you know, we're
talking about the like us climbing the mountain, but there's
also all these other mountain climbers that are starting right
at the same time as you. And so when I
fast forward to and I think about the greatest resources
I have today, it's actually the people that were around
me then who are also starting their own things and
have like whether they succeeded or failed, we all have
(34:59):
these incredible shared experiences and build all this different wisdom.
And you know, through those experiences, and I'm curious, is
that something that you also share? Like I just I
see that as such a phenomenon, and I look back
and I'm like, man, like, all the entrepreneurs and founders
that were around in my early twenties are the ones who,
you know, I can really lean on and rely on,
and we all sort of have that shared experience. Yeah, yes,
(35:21):
I mean, and I think that there's a few different
layers in which that's helpful. One of them is, you know,
a lot of the best advice and mentorship that I
got was not from people who were wildly successful five
to ten years ahead, but in some cases it was
from other founders who were just six months down the road.
And that could be powerful because sometimes they have more
time for you because you know, not not everybody's asking
(35:43):
for it, and they've literally just been where you are,
so it's very fresh. You know. Now people reach out
and ask me about seed investors for tech companies, and like,
I've got great relationships with the number, but I amn't
raised a seed round in like five years, so you know,
I'm not as close to it versus like someone who
just did a seed around last year might have their
pulse on what you need to do in some advice
(36:05):
and then also exactly what you said that there are
so many incredible people that you know, we were all
like just starting out together, you know, in the trenches together,
just nobody's trying to make our mark um ten years ago,
and it's been really awesome and inspiring to see where,
you know, where all these folks have ended up and um,
and I just can't even wait to see what the
(36:25):
next ten years bring totally. And I'm just you know,
I think one of the things that we all have
to always fear as entrepreneurs or creatives or whatever is irrelevance.
Right whether or not your organization is relevant. Like, that's
the real competition. It's not the other job site, it's
not the other you know, event or conference company. It's
(36:45):
whether or not like we are innovating in creating conversation
around our brands that that matters to people. So I
want to know, like, for you, you know, here we
are twenty I'm I'm obviously you're preaching of the converted here,
because like I think that the future of work is
like the predominant intersectional issue that we all should be
really considering right now. But I want to know for you,
(37:07):
like how do you how do you battle that? How
do you continue to keep the brand and the movement fresh. Yeah. Well,
I think that as as an individual, a human, and
as an organization, you've got to step out of your
comfort zone as much as possible. You've got to talk
to people who don't like your product. You've got to
talk to people who have never heard of your product.
You've got to try things ideally and sort of small
contained ways where you can learn um But I think
(37:30):
that that you've got to kind of shake things up
because if you stay comfortable, you will you will never
stay relevant. And on top of that, I think that,
you know, one of the struggles as well for a
lot of entrepreneurs is a balance between you know, you
need to be very respectful of data because your intuitions
not always right, but you also have to trust your
gut because data is sometimes incomplete um or or isn't
(37:53):
able to tell you the full story. And so, you know,
I think I try and have a lot of conversations
with a really broad, eclectic set of people. I try
and just you know, keep keep my perspective really fresh.
And this past year I spent a ton of time
like digging into you know, what our colleges doing in
response to the pandemic and how are students thinking about
(38:14):
getting internships and jobs with the whole world being upside down?
And that was really helpful for you know, staying relevant.
I think there's always more work to be done. You know.
Part of it is just staying really hungry and staying
committed and keeping people around you that push you and
that don't just like, you know, pat you on the
back and say nice job and let you kick up
your feet. Well, I really appreciate that. And and Katherine,
(38:37):
I I'm so thankful for you in your perspective and
for the muse and for the new rules of work.
I encourage our listeners, who are you know, in this
phase of their careers, to go down the rabbit hole
here because I've found you know, I really enjoyed the podcast.
I really love the website, and I always have like
you know, it's it's it's always been fresh, it's always
(38:57):
had energy in you know, a space at is seemingly
mostly dry and and pedantic, and you know it's more
databases than it is you know, culture and feeling and content.
So this being one of the craziest days, you know,
like probably someone one that will remember for the rest
of our lives. I want to be respectful of your time.
But again, thank you for being on the podcast, thank
(39:19):
you for your work, and if there's any other resources
that you think the listeners should should check out, if
there's any you know, deep, you know, as old as
the trees and the river's wisdom that comes up in
your head on an off on a regular basis that
you want to impart on our way out by all
means well, way to leave me on a way to
leave you on a b I you know, I I
(39:42):
always love the sort of the quote of the concept
that you know, if it was easy, everybody would be
doing it. And I think that sometimes we live in
a culture where, especially for entrepreneurship and building, people love
to tell the overnight success story. They love to you know,
kind of condense things really quickly into like oh, you know,
I I wrote for Forms and then we had all
(40:03):
these users like look, the real the real story of
everything is like days where it seems like everything's failing
and you know, nights where you lay in bed like
gripped by existential dread that it's all just you know,
it's all falling apart, and a lot of stuff like
all success is, you know, is surrounded by many failures,
many deaths of your dream. UM. And so I think that, UM,
(40:25):
you know, I think I would just say, like, you know,
if you really believe in something that don't don't let
people convince you that that success comes easily. If it
was easy, everybody would do it. But some of the
most meaningful things are the most challenging as well. And I, uh,
you know, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much
for having me. I hope people check out the muse
and or you know, tweet at me at at came
(40:46):
in UM on Twitter if you have feedback or comments.
But this has been a ton of fun. Thanks so much,
of course, Thank you so much, Catherine, and thank you
for listening. This is the art of the awesome m
(41:13):
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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