4 Mindsets that Separate 'Winners' from 'Losers' in Business with Kat Cole

Part of being an optimal leader is built on learning what it takes for each of us to be our best human selves.

All right, everyone, super excited to bring you Kat Cole today, who is an investor, advisor, and board member for multiple companies. Previously, she was a Hooters waitress, and she transitioned all the way to becoming a COO and president of Focus Brands, which includes brands such as Cinnabon, Jamba, Auntie Is it? I think it's Auntie Anne's. Yeah, Auntie Anne's. There you go. And I used to eat all this stuff, by the way. I used to eat all this stuff. It made me really happy. Um, so Kat, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Awesome. Thanks for having me.

So I do want to talk about some of those frameworks from, you know, you— so you had, uh, no degree, but, um, you know, you went to Hooters and then you constantly— and then you took a— you were making $45K or something like that at Hooters, and then you took a corporate job that, that brought you down in terms of salary. So you already had some of these frameworks before you kind of, you know, quote unquote made it, right? So what were you— what were some of those frameworks that you used to kind of level up through, you know, your early stage career all the way up to maybe— I think you were 26 or so when you became a VP?

I'd say that's giving me too much credit. You know, in the early days, I absolutely did not have frameworks. It looks far more strategic than it was. I just followed what felt right. And I, yeah, I was making over $40K as a waitress in the late '90s, mid-'90s really. And that was pretty cool. That's a lot more money than some people make even today. But I had a great opportunity to go jump and work in the corporate office. And that was not my dream. I didn't dream of working in the restaurant business forever, even though that's turned out to be a really cool chapter of my professional life. But there were amazing opportunities. I was opening franchises around the world when I was 19 years old. And I really believed in the company and where it was going. And so I was traveling so much, I dropped out of college, at least my first stint in college, and was offered a corporate gig at the age of 20. And I just said, yes. I didn't have— I think most people when they're that young, certainly for me, I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. I didn't have children. I didn't have a mortgage. And so it wasn't a big deal for me to say yes to making half of what I made before. I didn't have debt. I had learned a lot of those lessons pretty early on. So it was easy to go from $40K to $21K, which is what I went to, because the learning was my currency and the ability to do something that felt more professional was equally as rewarding. And ultimately, although I took a massive pay cut and it took a while to creep up the financial ladder, Eventually, I did so many cool things in those early days that once I started running companies, the money caught up.

Yeah, makes sense. And so, I mean, you didn't know that you had frameworks at the time, but, you know, intuitively you were chasing the opportunity. You weren't chasing the money, which is what most people do. You know, when I think about logistics, when I think about physical products and that type of stuff, I get the heebie-jeebies, right? It's like, to me, it's like, oh, you just, you know, you build software, get product-market fit, and then you just add marketing and sales, and then boom, right? To me, that seems a lot simpler than all the stuff that you were doing with Jamba, you know, Cinnabon, and all these brands. So how did you learn all these things? I mean, it just sounds super complex to me, right? So how did you, how did you make it very simple for yourself?

Yeah, like anything, you know, I always like for the advice or perspective to be very approachable for people. And truly, like anything, if you start in it, it is simple. You know, you speak the language from day one. And, and I mean the language of the industry and the language of the level of complexity. So if I grow up in the US speaking only English, and then all of a sudden someone drops me in a country that has a very different language and culture, that will be difficult and complex and exhausting to even do the smallest of things. And the same is true when you compare, say, SaaS enterprise software to brick and mortar, making physical things that make money day one. These are very different worlds. So in fairness, it didn't feel complex because I grew up in it. But as I started investing and advising technology companies and getting to understand the world of software, I really do appreciate how the nuances appear from both sides to be very complex, more complex than the other side. And so I'll just say, given that context, again, don't give me too much credit, But given the context that I grew up in that complexity—

A way to navigate it was just working every job. It's very easy to understand complexity when you have stood in every square. Then it's much simpler to envision how everything clicks together, and it becomes very clear and low stress to properly prioritize investments of time, energy, and money.

I feel like you have a lot of scar tissue from, you know, growing up, right? There's a lot of pain and stress that you had to deal through where you're just kind of numb to all the pain and you had to— you kind of were— that's what made you able to kind of, you know, take all the punches, you know, that you had to take, you know, leveling up in the corporate world to get to where you were, where you eventually ended up, right? Is that true or false? And if it's true, what's the story behind that?

I think, as you're suggesting, everything's relative. relative to our backgrounds, relative to our situation. So if someone just grows up coding and building software and putting that out into the universe, and all of a sudden I said, hey, go run a shift in a restaurant, I mean, they would definitely melt down for sure. And likewise, if I were asked to go do what they do, I would be like, I can't. Somebody, someone else needs to do this. And so for me, I always, I grew up in complexity. I grew up at a Whatever you would want to call it, a level of chaos and challenge and headwind. My dad was an alcoholic. I'm the oldest of three girls. We left my dad when I was nine years old. I became a leader and a father figure at home at a very young age. I started working when I was fifteen. So I've had responsibility for humans who are beautiful yet imperfect, literally since I was a child. And so influencing people, managing people, helping people make the most of themselves in tiny ways, one-on-one, and in big giant ways, like one to super many. I've been doing it a long time. I started early. And so leading human-driven business models was very natural to me. It was both nature and nurture. I think I came to some of it naturally, but I started having that level of responsibility for humans that have their own minds and their own desires and their own personalities. at a super young age. So it made me more resilient. And I don't know that I would use the word numb, although I totally— it's something like that. I built the muscle is maybe the way I would view it because it wasn't damaging. It was strengthening. And so I built this muscle to understand, oh, this is happening because humans, right? Just like hashtag humans. And so here's how I navigate that instead of, ugh, I threw my hands up. I don't want to do this.

What have you learned about leadership and creating great teams, um, you know, with all the, you know, companies that you helped?

I'd say first part of being an optimal leader is built on learning what it takes for each of us to be our best human selves. You can't separate the two. Like, there's no such thing of, I'm super broken as a human, yet I'm really an amazing leader. I mean, it's Change the World Start at Home. So the 4 mindsets, there are these 4 mindsets that as I've looked back, as I've distilled, as I've tried to think about what are the secrets to success and what are the things that differentiate the winners from the losers in the leadership world, they're the same things that help us show up as optimal humans. So it's humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence. And humility and curiosity are sort of nested together. They're different, but they're cousins. And courage and confidence, very similar. They often get confused, but they're quite distinct, but they're definitely bucketed together. And the individuals, as well as leaders, who are most successful have found command over these mindsets and have learned to turn them up and down in any given situation and are very aware of which way they naturally index. We all lean toward like one bucket the other. And just understanding that about ourselves and knowing that that is the version of us that comes out under stress and pressure, which is when a leader must really shine and step up. And learning that about ourselves and then learning to turn those dials and keep those characteristics in the appropriate harmony, like the right song for the right moment, the right blend of those things for the right moment. I can put almost any leadership mistake or success that you give me, and I can dissect it into those buckets.

Kat, this has been great. What is the best way for people to find you online?

I am in all the places. So Twitter, Kat Cole ATL. Same thing with Instagram. My newsletter is called Checking In. So you can look up by my name or Checking In. And certainly, I try to engage on Twitter and on Clubhouse, contributing to rooms or hosting rooms whenever I can find a small window.

Cool. Kat, thanks so much for doing this.

Yeah, my pleasure.

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