Asking questions that scale

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Copy LinkInside the disastrous opening of Hooters in Argentina 

KAT COLE: The employees put the uniform on to make sure they fit properly, and they all locked themselves in the restroom. They would not come out of the bathroom. 

JEFF BERMAN: Kat Cole is supposed to be opening a Hooters in Argentina. At just 20 years old, she was recently promoted from her job as a waitress. Hooters, an American restaurant chain, is known for chicken wings, served by, well, let’s just call it what it is, women in short shorts and tight shirts.

COLE: I didn’t understand the cultural gap. And with the employees trying on uniforms, the issue was they were concerned about how their family would feel. 

BERMAN: Kat had a strict deadline to get the staff trained and the restaurant opened. This was her job. Fly around the world. Spin up a new location. Rinse. Repeat. But not everything about Hooters could scale easily. And she was learning this the hard way.

COLE: I was getting stressed. I was in tears every night. No one else is on the ground. No one’s getting on the nine hour flight to come down here. This is not going to go well. 

BERMAN: Kat found a compromise. She convinced the corporate office to let her make more modest uniforms for the women working in the front of the restaurant. And she took extra care to smooth things over with the rest of the staff. 

COLE: We invited their family in for friends and family day first, so they could get used to it and offered to let them out of their contract if they were not comfortable. So it was all this negotiation, change management, relationship building, culture connection that was happening in that second and third week. And the restaurant opened to be quite successful at the time, but man, it was a brutal leadership mirror.

BERMAN: Kat credits her success with being willing to look hard into that leadership mirror and make changes based on what she sees. It has empowered her to play a starring role in more than one remarkable story of scale. 

I’m Jeff Berman, your host. 

As an executive, Kat Cole has led teams at household name American brands like Hooters and Cinnabon. Now, she’s the president of a very different type of company: Athletic Greens, the makers of AG1. It’s a direct to consumer health supplement powder valued at over a billion dollars. I wanted to hear how she’s leveraging her decades of success at legacy brands to lead this upstart.

BERMAN: Kat. Welcome to Masters of Scale. 

COLE: Hi, thank you.

Copy LinkInside Kat’s early work experiences

BERMAN: Almost all of the entrepreneurs and leaders we have on Masters of Scale, started working early. There’s some form of hustle in their career. Some of us, myself included, started in mall jobs, you as well. I don’t know that we’ve had anyone who’s been at Hooters. 

COLE: Proud to be the first? 

BERMAN: Yeah. awesome. And so I’m curious how did that happen? How did you end up at Hooters?

COLE: I have to go back a little because I, you know, grew up a child of a single parent, alcoholic father. We left my dad when I was nine. I helped raise my two sisters. I’m the oldest of three girls. And all of that and a few other dynamics led me to working early. 

But one day when I was working in the mall selling clothes, a woman came in with a business card that had an owl on it, and it said, Hooters recruiter. And they were going in to find women who were good at sales, comfortable interacting and saying “come apply to be a waitress at Hooters.” This was Jacksonville, Florida. 

At least me, my friends, nothing about it seemed controversial. It seemed kind of cool and interesting. So when they came to me, and I was selling clothes at the age of 15-16 and said, “come apply to be a waitress,” I was too young. You have to be 18 to serve beer, or did at the time in the state of Florida, but I still went in to apply and uh, I worked in a clothing store called the Body Shop, and we sold a denim, duo of shorts and jean vests, we happened to have orange and white denim. So I literally bought the orange jean shorts and the white denim vest. 

BERMAN: This is the Florida Hooters version of the Canadian tuxedo,

COLE: Exactly, yeah. And so I go in to apply and interview to be what I thought was a waitress, but I didn’t know I couldn’t be one. So they said, “Oh, you’re too young to be a waitress, but you can apply to be a hostess.” So I applied to be a hostess and got the job, and so I was opening the door saying, “Welcome to Hooters,” cleaning bathrooms, bussing tables. So that was my first job at Hooters. 

BERMAN: And you were still in high school?

COLE: I was still in high school.

BERMAN: Where did this drive, this work ethic come from for you?

COLE: I think, you know, who knows really, nature-nurture, but my best assessment as I reflect is one, I viewed work as honorable. Work was cool. And for me, work, any work, cleaning gym equipment, working in malls, it was both the income part, but also the skills piece felt like a path to independence. And in every company I joined very quickly, I started at the bottom and worked my way up as the great poet Drake articulates. And so I did that, like, over and over. 

At Hooters started as a hostess and then a waitress and then a certified trainer, bartender, cook, shift leader, ended up opening franchises by the time I was 19, ultimately ended up being an executive in that company. So there was something about getting in and moving up, taking on more responsibility. Not that you get to just take it, it’s earned and given, that was just my ticket. My ticket to I didn’t know where, but it turned into much more.

Copy LinkFrom Hooters hostess to VP

BERMAN: So, there’s this inflection point where all of a sudden you are moving into more of a management leadership role. And I mean, getting a passport for the first time and traveling. So what happens where you make that jump?

COLE: So, when I was an hourly employee, some of the cooks quit one shift, and I went back and helped, and so I learned how to cook. And so that would happen over and over. The bartender needed to go home, so I learned how to bartend. Very quickly, I knew how to run a restaurant. I did. That was not my aim. It was the outcome of my efforts, my desire to be helpful, and my desire to make more money. And as a result, a phone call came one day when I was 19 years old from the corporate office to my general manager of the store. Her name was Bonnie Reinhardt, and she herself had been a Hooters girl many, many years prior. 

BERMAN: God bless Bonnie Reinhart.

COLE: Bless Bonnie. So she came to me and said, “They’re opening a franchise in Australia. They’re looking for a training team to be assembled, to go train the new employees there. They asked for a recommendation. I recommended you.” I’d never been on a plane. I did not have a passport.

So I bought a plane ticket, flew to Miami, brought my paperwork, stood in line at the Miami Passport Agency, which is one of the few places in the U.S. you can personally get a passport expedited and got my passport in two days and flew back home. And then a few weeks later left for Sydney, Australia to go open the franchise.

BERMAN: And this wasn’t daunting? This wasn’t like, I mean so many people would have imposter syndrome or like ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, how do I even manage this?’ You were, you just said yes, and you went and you did?

COLE: Yeah. I mean the idea of saying no or hesitating or someone else stepping into that opportunity was a far greater risk than the work to figure out what I didn’t know.

And it was truly, I mean, for a girl of my background, it was life-changing. It is not hyperbole to say that it felt like it then. And I can look back and see that the trajectory was materially different after. And so much happened in the opening that was transformative and educational from a business perspective.

And then the phone calls continued to come to start being a part of the training teams to launch the first of the franchise on other continents, Central America, South America. And by the third international opening, I was asked to start leading the teams. I was still 19 

BERMAN: Kat learned an important lesson at this early stage of her career. The same approach doesn’t work in every situation or location. Part of scaling a business is constantly evaluating and being prepared to adjust your game plan as new data becomes available.

COLE: I needed to sit down with the franchisee and navigate all of these missteps of the corporation that really were many months in the making. It wasn’t just a bunch of bad decisions on site. It was the plans, the lack of training and context. And he was an incredible mentor.

He and the manager there sat me down, and they’re like, “A lot’s going wrong. And you’re getting a lot of criticism.” They could tell I was getting stressed. I was in tears every night. 

And he sat me down, and he said some version of, “Look, whenever you’re criticized, assume first it’s correct. Just allow yourself the opportunity to assume that something in how you’re being judged or being given, you know, negative feedback is correct.”

BERMAN: What a great note for an entire career.

COLE: And one of two things will occur as a result.

Either A, you will realize there is some portion of that feedback that is valid, and you will act with the humility necessary to both preserve the relationship and improve on the thing. Or B, you reflect and cannot see anything that is valid. But in how you approach that criticism, it’s focused on the why instead of debating the what.

Copy LinkAnswers don’t scale. Questions do

BERMAN: The corollary to this, “assume the criticism is right,” just off the bat, is to ask for the criticism. Ask upfront. Where does the ask come in for you in your career in a really meaningful way? Because it feels like it’s a through line of your career.

COLE: It’s a piece of what might be my most meta framework. I have a lot of techniques and principles and frameworks but they’re all a version of ask, answer, act.

And so this idea of just asking, curiosity and humility, but then having the courage and confidence to either answer the question honestly or create a culture where others will give you honest answers and then the bias for action to act on it and just rinse, wash, repeat.

As I’ve led different teams and opened businesses in different countries, you realize the things that worked a couple countries ago or a couple of months or years ago, especially as fast as the world moves, those things don’t scale. Answers don’t scale.

Questions do. And finding the right questions allows me to make better decisions and have more fruitful actions, regardless of the dynamics, the situation, if it’s boom times or bust times, and I’ve certainly led all of those and in between at scale. 

So the ability to, the comfort to, the muscle for asking really strong questions is a superpower.

Copy LinkHow to build a culture that accepts feedback

BERMAN: So how do you build a culture where when you’re asking, you might actually be asking for criticism of a decision that you’ve made or of you personally, creating a culture where people feel comfortable saying, “gosh, I mean, actually, I think, this isn’t working,” or we’re missing what works in Argentina is not the same as in Australia. What do you do culturally to build that?

COLE: There’s so many things that I’ve learned to do. One is I practice something called the hot shot rule, so The Hotshot Rule, something I’ve practiced for, I don’t know how many years, exactly 17 ish years.

It used to be a monthly exercise. And it’s so powerful. It became weekly, still is weekly for me today. 

So I envision myself and I just think for a second about how things are going. You know, my team, my business, the market, the environment. And then the next step is to envision someone I admire.

Anyone. It doesn’t have to be more sophisticated than that. So I’ll think of you, right? I envision you taking over in my seat.

So I’m gone tomorrow. You’re in it. You inherit my slack, my team, my emails, my partners, my problems, my wins. So I envision you. There, like in front of the computer.

BERMAN: You can do so much better but thank you.

COLE: And then I ask myself, what’s one thing, only one, and the first thing that you would do to make the business better.

And for whatever reason, with incredible clarity, an answer comes to mind.

BERMAN: Wow.

COLE: And so now I have the thing that I really know deep down I should be doing better or differently. 

I take action on it in 24 hours. Now, in my role, most of the things I would take action on involve other people.

So I don’t unilaterally, like, mow over my team. I just put the thing in motion. But that’s not the last step of The Hotshot Rule. The last step is to tell my team. And so my answer to your question of one of the ways that you can build a culture where people give you honest answers is to practice something like the hot shot rule regularly.

Because what I’m doing every week is going to my team saying, now they know it’s the hot shot rule and my team practices the hot shot rule, but you can just say I was thinking. I was thinking there’s this thing I should have taken action on. I didn’t. I have now. I sent the email. We’re going to the meeting. I’d like your feedback. We’re going to take care of it.

BERMAN: I love that.

COLE: And every time I tell my team, this is what we’re now going to do, they have some reaction that is either verbal or simply body language that is ‘finally,’ or ‘what took you so long,’ or ‘it’s about time.’

The interesting connection to my very early childhood.

In this moment in realization that now happens every Monday because every Monday, I’m taking my Sunday hotshot rule and communicating to a team. There’s something I should have done, could have done and now am doing every Monday still to this day. When my mom came to me at the age of nine and said we were leaving my dad, I looked at her and said, ‘What took you so long?’ At the age of nine.

And I wasn’t upset, and I didn’t cry and that wasn’t me judging her. It was simply articulating that I’ve known it’s bad, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And there are two things that people in the trenches don’t have that leaders have as it relates to driving change. And that is articulating the problem or solution at scale.

And doing something about it. The leader can do that, but the people have the answers. So back to the point of getting candid feedback, getting people to speak the truth. One of the most important things you can do is lead by example with self reflection, critique, and action. And then people go, ‘Oh, she’s acknowledging on a regular basis that there’s something she could have and should have done differently and better and is doing it.’

And It does two things. It creates a culture of openness, vulnerability. I welcome it from them, but they also know I walk the talk. I’m going to come to them.

BERMAN: Who are your favorite hotshots to imagine on that Sunday before you head into your Monday with your team?

COLE: There are some regular visitors to the hotshot role. One is my mom. For sure, I mean, you know, she came from nothing. She’s the youngest of seven kids.

Her dad died when she was three. She navigated this relationship with my dad. She left, not knowing how to afford the life of raising three girls on her own. She had an entry level job. She worked three jobs for many years, fed us on a food budget of 10 a week for three years. So there’s so much there.

There’s so much leadership that I admire, even though she came by it quite organically. There were no examples or she wasn’t reading books telling her what to do. Masters of Scale wasn’t around, right? And so I think of her often, that scrappiness, that resourcefulness, that deep, deep clarity of prioritization.

And for her, the most important thing. It was the safety of her girls and the independence of her girls.

And that colored everything she did, possibly even to a fault. And so she’s a regular character. There are leaders that I’ve had in my past that I deeply admire, a man named Russ Umfenauer, Steve Romaniello, Phil Hickey, Bonnie Reinhart, some of the people all along my journey.

So it’s often someone who I’ve worked with, and I have a deeper understanding of their standards.

BERMAN: And you can almost channel them because you know them so well.

COLE: Absolutely. But every once in a while, I’ll envision, you know, a well-known figure that I don’t know personally, but who’s done something important in the world or in society, based on whatever the situation is that I’m navigating, it just brings this perspective that I allow to color my heart and my mind and to drive action. 

Copy LinkLessons from Cinnabon

BERMAN: The Hotshot Rule helped Kat keep climbing in the Hooters organization, and eventually she caught the attention of executives at Focus Brands, a holding company that owned Cinnabon. They asked her to take on the role of president. 

Under her leadership, the beloved but then stagnated cinnamon roll retail shops expanded into an omnichannel brand worth more than a billion dollars. 

A giant pastry can only be, as Cookie Monster would now say, a “sometimes food.” But Kat saw an opportunity to bring a little Cinnabon flavor into countless CPGs — consumer packaged goods. 

Now there’s Cinnabon-brand flavored coffee, popcorn, protein powder… 

COLE: I learned a lot about launching innovation businesses. So the brick and mortar franchise was a legacy business. I ended up expanding what at the time was a fledgling CPG alternate channels business that became the playbook for turning around the brand and became the operating model for how we would not only manage our existing portfolio, but how we would evaluate future investments. 

BERMAN: Did you have a model for that? Or did you create that?

COLE: Yeah, it was built over time. When I got to Cinnabon, there was already a CPG business with Pillsbury, but that was it.

But it was so obvious to me that expressing a restaurant concept in a completely different channel, in a way that made sense for the channel, but that honored the brand, not diluted the brand, was the way to grow a brand in the modern world.

But that was not easy in a franchise business. Franchisees don’t want you selling that branded product anywhere except their stores. And so there were a lot of feelings, emotions, not necessarily logic to manage. And then there was building the real business case capabilities. And learning the hard way of launching innovation businesses in a mature business environment where you have very few resources, it makes people uncomfortable, it distracts from the core, yet it might be the very thing that is the secret to the future, like the irony of what honors the past is often something new in the future, but you have to do it in a way that does not conflict with what the core business was built to do. So, at Cinnabon, I built my turnaround muscle, I built my global brand building muscle, I built the CPG omni channel playbook that would scale. 

BERMAN: Were there D to C elements, direct to consumer elements of that? 

COLE: At the very end. So this is where I got the CPG bug. This is where I got the e-commerce D to C bug. Then I moved on to be group president of the parent company to bring this alt channels model to the whole company.

And it was a very interesting moment for my ego because I went from managing a brand that everyone knew, Cinnabon, with tens of thousands of employees and this beautifully expressed brand, now well over a billion in annual sales, that we had grown in just a few years out of the recession, both the core business and the innovation business, but it was largely the innovation business driving that.

And now I’m going to this company, Focus Brands, that no one’s heard of, with two team members to launch innovation. And because it was an asset-light model, we’re leveraging the brands that the teams were running, working with partners like General Mills and Kellogg’s, and others to bring these brands to market to commercialize.

And so I thought, ‘Man, how do I feel about this? What is my sense of self? My feeling of importance?’

I now have a small team for a company that’s actually much bigger, but that no one’s heard of.

BERMAN: Right. Well, then it’s not meant to be a consumer brand. Focus is a holding company.

Copy LinkLearning what matters to you

COLE: That’s right. And so that was a moment where I had to think: what matters to me? And I had a pick. I could go run a big group of multiple franchises. So do more of the same, more sweet treats, more snacks, more franchises, or go into this innovation division and, that newness, that learning, this is obviously the right next step.

BERMAN: So being able to isolate what really matters for you personally and to block out the noise of the other stuff that might matter to other people feels like a really important part of this.

COLE: It is. You’ve nailed it. And I think it started because I was working for Hooters when you’re an executive in a suit at a networking event, and you hand someone a business card with an owl on it, you know, you get reactions.

And so I got trained at a young age to get really clear on: whose opinion do I care? Really clear. And that changes over time for various reasons, but I learned to ask myself that.

BERMAN: That core question helped Kat realize when it was time to move on from Focus Brands, and head into new territory. Even if she didn’t know what that would be at first. More on how she landed as president of AG1, and the impressive scale story underway there, after the break.

[AD BREAK]

BERMAN: Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this interview and more on our YouTube Channel.

Copy LinkTransitioning to AG1

You were working at Focus where there were a lot of ‘fun for you brands,’ a handful of ‘good-ish, at least, for you brands,’ if not ‘good for you brands.’ You find yourself now at a really ‘good for you brand.’ I mean, there’s so many different places you could have gone, things you could have done. Why AG1?

COLE: So many reasons. The first of which is, I was a customer. That helps. It made such a difference for me after my second child, energy, digestion, immunity, hair, skin, and nail support.

Like, I just had an incredible experience. But I had heard about it from my husband, who’s an ultra endurance athlete, and I was an occasional user. I wasn’t a daily AG1 drinker. So set that aside. Then add to the equation that I’m an angel investor in over 60 early-stage businesses, over half of which are healthy, good for you, better for you, or having something to do with the wellness ecosystem industries. So I’d been putting my personal capital into early-stage businesses, which helped me work with founders and understanding that journey and deeply respecting that journey, but also getting clear. I’m a scale girl.

I have no desire to go from zero to one.

BERMAN: You don’t want to do dirt road, you’ve done paved road. Is gravel great?

COLE: Gravel’s great. I have so much respect for the people. I mean, deep. I have deep reverence for founders who just make it to certain levels. It’s truly magic

And unbelievable work and perseverance. And it’s brutal. And it’s not my jam. 

BERMAN: Great to own that, by the way. Because not everyone does. That’s right. I should, and I can, and no.

COLE: I mean, even as I see people glamorizing founders, and I understand human scale, human dynamics, customer momentum, operating systems. That’s my muscle. And so, it was time for me to leave Focus Brands. I thought I was going to take a year off. I’d been there for 10 years. I had delayed my departure because COVID hit, and that was a time to lean in and lead, not leave. I’m so glad that I did. Very proud of what we navigated at that time.

But then, it was really time. And I thought I was just going to advise and invest and help founders. That was the plan. I got connected to Chris Ashenden, the founder of AG1, about three months into that time off in March of 21. And it was just one of my many advisory roles with growth stage businesses. And, we got connected, and he said, “Will you be, you know, my advisor? I’m leaning back into the business. It’s growing like a weed. I know what I don’t know. I need help. I want to build a world class team.” And he had heard me on a couple podcasts. And, so I said, “Sure.” So I started advising him. I loved it. And then after, you know, as great founders do in the first couple of weeks or months, he’s like, come help me build this.

BERMAN: Come help me build this. 

COLE: Like sell the dream. And I was so taken by the mission. All the incredible things I learned once I got deeper into the company that were greater than I appreciated as a customer. The quality of the product, the rigorous testing, the crazy famous high performance individuals that drink this every day. Like, just the standards, right? The quality and standards. And so I was more and more proud to be affiliated. It was also much bigger than I thought, it was growing far faster than I could have.

BERMAN: How big was it when you joined?

COLE: When I joined, we were doing, at the end of that year, we did around 160 million. It’s the only time we’ve revealed revenue numbers.

BERMAN: All direct to consumer.

COLE: One product. D to C. Three years ago. And we have grown, let’s just say healthily, year over year for three years. But Chris was about to take outside capital for the first time. He bootstrapped the business to $160 million, which is unbelievable. One, it tells you it’s a, you know, economically healthy business.

Two, he’s an expert capital allocator. And three, it’s a product that people love, reordered, and told their friends about. And so it became very obvious that on one side, I was thinking, this is too small for me. I run departments bigger than this company, like this, I don’t think this is the best fit of my skills and use. I went from that to: I would be crazy not to join this incredible company with this incredible product with this incredible team.

And be a part of the rocket ship and really what I believe has become a movement of people owning their health in a more simple and comprehensive way. And just this idea that like, multivitamins were a good idea and probiotics are a good idea, but the reality is something that puts nutrients and gut health support into one and more of a whole food structure. That simple. High quality and tastes good enough to drink every day. Blew my mind.

BERMAN: And how, I mean, because you entered a company in a space that is sem- regulated, not really, and reputationally off the charts, but how did you verify that the product was what it said it was?

COLE: I went deep. I just went deep. I mean, the benefit of advising for six months is you try before you buy. Like, we got to really get to know each other, and I went deep in supply chain and quality, and science, and nutrition in testing, and really understood more about the product, its foundation, and the opportunity. It had been iterated many, many times.

And so it had been on this improvement journey, but was at an inflection point where we needed to shore up sourcing, scale of supply chain of blending, and then really building a more robust science and nutrition team to come in, and lead the way of what I saw as a market shift of customers of supplements who before, you know, we’re like buying vitamins and you take the vitamin, but then you hear this, like it’s expensive urine or what, you know, there are bad actors in the space, and tests that come out that say what’s on the label isn’t on there.

What gave me confidence with AG1: One, it’s NSF for sport, which is a very rare certification in the supplement space that says not only what is on the label is guaranteed to be in it at shelf life, but it is also free of banned substances for Olympians and professional athletes. Huge. The average customer doesn’t know what that is, but from day one, Chris was paying for that, insisting on it.

It adds months to your innovation cycles. Every time you change an ingredient materially, you have to go back through the process. And so, it’s tested for over 500 herbicides and pesticides. Not required, tested for over 200 banned substances, not required. The average supplement is tested for 10.

So just this, the truth of what was going on was so much greater than the industry standard, which is a low bar to be clear. 

It’s not required. But in a way it is, right? It’s required by the customer, and we need to lead the way, especially as a premium product. We have to lead the way. And we’re only halfway through that journey. The amount of clinical trials on the finished product that we have in process, in addition to finally accessing more and more ingredients, that have the science and research at scale is something I’m incredibly proud of. So all that gave me such confidence then, and it still makes it very fulfilling now.

Copy LinkWhy hasn’t AG1 expanded faster?

BERMAN: And Kat, I mean, you know, when it’s announced that you’re going into AG1 or Athletic Greens, I think at the time, one might reasonably assume given your background, ‘Oh, they’re going into retail, like the brand is going to see all these different extensions. We’re going to see new product lines.’ I mean, this is so much of your career. And you understand this so deeply. Why have you stayed in this lane? I mean, obviously it’s working. 

COLE: We are experimenting with retail. We are expanding into alternate channels, and we do have an innovation pipeline, but it’s thoughtful, and we have been rewarded for our focus. We have done this one thing for 14 years and improved on it over 14 years, and not gotten distracted by, ‘Oh, we could sell customers bits and pieces of it, and break it into its parts,’ or we could jump into retail anywhere, everywhere.

We could, yet there is a sequence to that. That’s important. There is a layer of what partners, I learned this in my co-branding partnering-licensing journey for many years, where the brand shows up as a premium brand matters. How those points of distribution interact with a D to C e-commerce model.

I mean, the product is a daily health drink. People drink it every day, mostly in the morning as a result of it being daily to cover nutrient gaps and support gut health. It’s well suited for subscription. And so it’s not just like this marketing thing for DTC. It actually makes sense for customers who get it.

But what we understand is there’s a whole wide world of people who don’t want to buy before they try and they want to see it, and touch it. And retail and those channels, is in fact an important next step for us. But over the last few years: one, the first two years that I joined, it’s just rocket ship growth, and keep up with the momentum while not only maintaining the quality, elevating it. More studies, more research, more tests, more quality. 

You got to protect the baby when you’re doing that. Not to mention, our business is not just comprised of normal CPG, like getting lots of people to buy it a few times a year. I’ve got a massive base of people who need this every month delivered to their door, to be of the same quality, to taste consistent, even though it’s all natural and whole foods.

So there’s a terror to it. That is a big job. 

Then layering on digital new customer growth, new channel expansion, and then new product innovation as well as our international expansion, Europe, Asia, etc. That’s a big job to do. So I wanted to be sure the team, the capabilities, the science, the research, the supply chain that we had was even more rock solid for the next tier of scale of the business before just rushing in.

Copy LinkFocusing on the speed and talent

BERMAN: What was the last hotshot moment that really mattered for you at AG1?

COLE: It was the founder and I navigating a pretty big wholesale organization shift around culture and talent. I mean, I practice the hotshot role in my role and thought, what would someone I admire do? And I actually thought of a man named Dave Peacock. He was a former franchisee of mine at Jamba Juice. Then he became CEO of Schnucks. Then he was with Conti’s, just an incredible leader. Now it leads Advantage Solutions.

And I just admire him so deeply. His integrity, his clarity, his brand focus. He was president at AB InBev for quite some time. I mean, the man knows brands, and I was seeing so much growth in our product, but the opportunity to lead our brand into a place where more people feel emotionally connected to the brand while we’re continuing to grow the more, like, functional product-science side of the business and in that Hotshot Rule.

And I thought about Dave and thought about what he would do. And it came to mind very quickly. There were some shifts that were needed in talent in key areas of the business, and in how we set the bar for what we expected in certain parts of our marketing and brand. Chris had been picking up on this as founders do very early on, and it helped me have a very different and more productive, and quick conversation with him around what we needed to do differently.

And we took action in the company and we are reaping the rewards from that shift.

BERMAN: So great that you developed this framework, and this format, this process, and you’re sticking to it.

Kat says that at a rapidly scaling company like AG1, she puts the most energy into thinking about just two things: talent and speed.

COLE: You know, I come from very mature businesses previously. If you’re growing a mature business at 10 percent year over year, you are like crushing it.

BERMAN: You are crushing it. 

COLE: You are in the top decile. You’re getting all kinds of love. That’s, you know, backward in hyper growth. I mean so adjusting for speed, asking, am I building the right ways of working, setting the right standard, leading by example, putting in the right processes, shaking things up in the right way — that keep us in that hyper growth mode that I have now learned to immerse myself in with mentors, advisors, and just leading through it.

And then talent, when you’re growing that quickly. And there’s a big innovation engine growing underneath as we get ready to launch these channels and product innovations. I have to constantly ask, answer, and act on talent. And someone who was amazing for two years in a role, which might represent five years at a slower growing company, it might be time.

It might be time for them to be in a different role or to no longer be with the company.

BERMAN: Reid Hoffman introduced me years ago to the idea of tours of duty. And it’s so helpful in this, of just being able to say, ‘Hey, you know, you came here to do these things, these things are now done, time for a new tour of duty, or maybe extend the tour of duty, revise it, but also maybe time to go do a tour of duty at another company.’

COLE: Sometimes we see that first. Sometimes they see that first. But just constantly making sure the ‘who,’ right? It’s about the ‘who;’ the ‘what’ we can figure out. We’re a very clear, focused, mission driven, quality-centered company.

The what is very clear ,and it’s not complicated, but the ‘who,’ as we evolve on the journey and making sure it’s this intersection of gritty enough and willing to be in it enough to do the work. But has been along the scale journey enough to help pull us into the future where we want to go. And it is a nonstop exercise in my role. It’s the job. 

BERMAN: Thank you for being here, I hope we get to do this again.

COLE: Thank you likewise.

BERMAN: Whether it was traveling the world opening restaurants as a teen, or insisting on innovation with legacy brands like Cinnabon, Kat Cole has constructed a fascinating career by learning not to expect every solution to scale. 

Instead, she’s figured out how to ask the questions that forge the path to where she wants to go.

Like the question she asks each week in her Hot Shot Rule exercise. 

Picture someone you admire. Put them in your shoes. What’s the first thing they’d do? 

I’ve already started this exercise with Masters of Scale. I hope you find it useful too.