SHOCKING Story of Billion $ Mogul Kat Cole | Leveling Up with Eric Siu

Top advice, get started, get experience in any way you can. Nothing will teach you more than real-life experiences. And that's also how you meet people, how people get to see you in action, how you get offered gigs, right? It's like starts leading to these opportunities that either come your way or that you get proximity to that you can raise your hand for.

All right, everyone. Today we got my friend Kat Cole. President, COO, also board director at Athletic Greens, also known as AG. Former COO and president at Focus Brands, which includes Jamba, Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's, and a bunch of other— is it Anne's or Anne's? Whatever. I mean, Kat is a powerhouse. She's very prolific on Twitter. We're in a lot of the same groups together, NFT groups. We degen into a lot of different things together, but Um, those of you that haven't listened to the Leveling Up podcast, go check out, check out that interview where we talked about how Kat went from— and Kat's heard this story probably many times— Hooters waitress all the way to running billion-dollar company. So Kat, welcome to Marketing School. How are you?

I am amazing. How are you?

Doing well, thanks. Um, so Kat's super busy. We're super grateful to have her time. But, um, I have to ask you, so, you know, in 2020 you decided to leave Focus Brands, and I think you were there for how many years?

10.

10 years. Okay, so 10 years, and then you decided— I remember looking at— I was just reviewing some of your tweets. You were talking about like, what am I going to do next? Like, am I just— am I going to invest? Am I going to go start something? What am I going to do, right? So you landed on Athletic Greens. So first question from my side is, why did you decide on Athletic Greens?

Many reasons. I mean, the way the relationship started is Chris, the founder, reached out to me because he was leaning into this incredible growth recognized he needed to bring different leaders and advisors around him. And I was in this advising mentoring phase after I'd left Focus Brands. And so I had several businesses that I advised or was sitting on boards and was investing in. And he reached out and we chatted and it was clear that his needs met my interests. And so I agreed to become an advisor and it started out as a very typical growth company advisory role, but still heavily involved talking with the founder CEO once a week. And then it became multiple times a week. And before I knew it, I had moved from like, no, this is the portfolio chapter of my career. Why would I be all in on one thing? To why would I not do this? The economics are amazing. The mission is aligned with my values. The founder is the real deal. The trajectory is unbelievable. It's a unique moment in this generation to actually create a healthy drink of a generation for the first time and build beyond that around the world. And so that was it. So started advising in April and took on this formal role in December of '21.

Got it. Okay. And just for those that don't know, what does Athletic Greens do exactly? And how were you guys growing? And so those, those of you that can see the video, it's actually right in the bottom right over there, you can see a little couple packages.

Yes. Oh, yes. I got to get my little— set it up beautifully there for the marketing audience. And so I'll share what we have reported publicly, which people could go look at from the fundraising round that closed at the beginning of this year. But when I joined the— or started advising, Chris, the founder, and the team had bootstrapped the company to $160 million in annual revenue run rate by mid-'21. That was the run rate. And it was just crazy acceleration. So essentially the company, 2 years in a row, grew between 150% and 200% year over year. So many people say, well, of course COVID, right? Like people are at home, more D2C, caring more about health. 2019 to 2020, I get it. But many companies then went into a little bit of a lull. lapping that growth year. And '21 over '20 was another just under 200% year-over-year growth year, bootstrapped. So Chris raised a small equity investment, $10 million in '21, did not even deploy that capital until the fall of '21 when the company rebranded, and then raised a proper growth round of $110 million At the end of '21 that closed January of '22, $110 million on a $1.3 billion post. And so pretty incredible, right? To bootstrap the company to that level with zero outside capital is kind of unheard of. A few things have to be true. One, the product's got to be really, really good because people are clearly repeating and staying. It's a subscription business. And while we don't share the specific numbers, we're What I can say is a super majority of customers are subscribers. It is far closer to 100 than it is 50. And there are reasons, lots of reasons for that. It's a daily habit. The benefits compound. The pricing structure is better, of course, for subscription than one-time purchase. And the business for the first time ever started leaning into talking about the brand and the business and resourcing the team. The team was I don't know the exact number, but a year ago, I believe the team was 60. And today we're around a little over 160. And the number of people on a team is not a badge of honor, and it is not the pinnacle of growth, but it's to give an example of how lean the team was doing $160 million annual run rate bootstrapped, that then leading into that fundraise, which has led into yet another year of well over 100% year-over-year growth on that base. I can say that is still this just phenomenal direct-to-consumer story with one hero product. We sell really high-quality omegas and vitamin D3K also, but the hero product is AG1. So essentially one product, a bulk version and a travel pack version, and one channel, no Amazon, nothing else. athleticgreens.com/kat if you want the promo offer.

Nice.

But that's it, right? So that growth story is unbelievable. And it's also where some of the few companies that get to that point get stuck for lots of reasons. You've got to figure out your next chapter in brand. A double-digit percentage of our business is in Europe, a high single-digit percentage of our business is in China. So we are truly a global business. And growing very quickly. And that puts different demands on supply chain, marketing, branding, and resourcing the team.

Got it. I'm just looking at the site right now. So just if I were to simplify it, it sounds like— so I'm seeing 75 vitamins, minerals. Is this like a super healthy green juice that's like I can just kind of shake on the go?

No, it is. It's interesting. It is. So much more than greens. And actually, one of our challenges that you would appreciate, Eric, from a marketing perspective, is the name of the company is Athletic Greens, but we renamed the product AG1 for a reason, because we were getting into this consumption comparison issue where people are—

Which I just did, right?

That's right. And of course, it's natural. Our name is Athletic— the company's name's Athletic Greens, and the drink is green. But greens, like a greens powder or a phytonutrient, is only a fraction of the ingredients. It is a full multivitamin, multimineral, so I don't take my multivitamin anymore. It is a pro and prebiotic. I don't take my pro, pre, symbiotic anymore. Yes, it is phytonutrients because those are great for you. It is a super mushroom blend, adaptogens, right? Ashwagandha, these other things that are now believed and researched to enhance focus and calm in addition to driving healthy, sustainable energy. But more than anything, it is a nutrient. and gut health drink, not greens. It just happens to be green. And the name of the company, again, for those who are branders and marketers, you'll appreciate there's real equity there. Like we're, you know, and, but it is a challenge. So we now are saying more AG1 by Athletic Greens. So it's very clear. It's this one comprehensive foundational nutrition drink. And really Chris helped pioneer this category of foundational nutrition, this idea of nutrients and gut health together, not just, oh, you made it easy for me to take it at once. That's part of it. But these ingredients actually work better when they're together. That's the way nature likes diversity. The body likes nutrient diversity. And so when you have these nutrients with gut healing, gut enhancing, gut feeding ingredients, it's why people drink it and say, oh my gosh, I used to feel bloated, or I have IBS, or Crohn's and I feel so much better, or I'm going through some type of medical treatment and I can't keep other supplements down, or I can't keep up with all the pills, or wow, I think I took separately many of the ingredients that I see are in AG1, but I didn't feel as good when I was trying to keep up with the pills and the powders and this time in the day. And it is because of how the ingredients work together. in a drink and the fact that they're super high quality. Like, we hold ourselves to a crazy high standard. And most consumers have a reason, a valid reason to be suspicious of the wellness industry because there's some bullshit out there. There's some hype. There are things that have been tested where even the ingredients aren't what they say or the amounts aren't what they say. And we're NSF for Sport. So we put ourselves through an expensive and time-intensive constant screening of our ingredients so that professional athletes can take it. But it also means us regular folks, you know, we get the good stuff because AG, since its inception, has been holding itself to a higher standard. So if I were to have to put it in one word, the category is foundational nutrition. This idea of bringing all the things together that you can for a basic foundation of healthy gut, uh, and healthy nutrients, nutrients and gut health being combined to be addressed and covered by one simple daily habit. And the only reason people stick with it daily is because it tastes good enough to do so. And that's also super hard to do with 75 ingredients.

So what, what does it taste like? Because I mean, I'm looking at my vitamins over here right now. I'm just like, I don't want to take these anymore. So I'm like, I need to get this right now. So what does it actually taste like?

It's funny, I just posted an IG story this morning because I was getting this question. So our customers say— I'll use that because people say, well, you, you know, are with the company, you're biased. Well, of course I am, but I was a customer before, so I'll say what our customers say. It is like a light pineapple flavor, which shocks most people. What you don't get is what you get with what is just a greens powder, which is this like heavy grassy, like, oh, I have to hold my nose to get it down.

Yeah.

It's a drink. It's not like it's something that's so strong you've got to take it in a shot and grin and bear it. I was on Professor Galloway's podcast, and he's been a customer, and he's like, you know what? I don't even know if this made it to the pod. He's like, it tastes earthy enough to know that it's the good stuff, but good enough to drink it every day. And I'm like, well, I don't know that we would use that as our marketing slogan, but I think that's fair. Um, that of course it's full of really high quality shrooms and phytonutrients and minerals. And so yeah, earthy and green is definitely a base, but it doesn't taste like that grass, wheat grass. You know, when you buy a greens powder, which again, AG1 is not and is so much more than these powders that are like $30 for a 30-day supply or $40, they have like 10 greens, grasses, barley, wheatgrass, et cetera. It tastes like grass cuz it's grass. Like, this is just so much more. But the, the natural pineapple with a light citrus is the flavor note that everybody picks up.

So I can probably combine it with like a sparkling water or something to make it, I don't know, spice it up a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. So for people who don't wanna do the OG purist way, which is cold water, 8 ounces Cold water, 1 travel pack, or 1 scoop. I mean, truly, the colder the water, also you don't get the aromatic element, so it's just kind of like mild. That's how 80% of our customers drink it. Cold water, 8 ounces, first thing in the morning. Give yourself 10 or 15 minutes to let it like do its work before other things. The next step from that, if people are like, nah, I'm not even used to normal green stuff, so even for me this is a little Natural tasting is lime or lemon. So that squeeze covers it for the next group. The next group that's like, nah, still not enough, uses coconut water or milk instead of regular water, which is kind of big globally. A lot of people use nut milks or different milks. And then of course you can always put it in a smoothie and then you literally don't taste it because it's so mild. And we have a beloved AG1 smoothie with avocado, mango that people just Got it.

I love that. Now I have to get this.

Okay. Yeah. Give me your address. You're my degen partner and I'll get it to you.

I will send it to you afterwards. I'm like, I'm so sick of these vitamins.

Okay.

Anyway, so on the business side right now, I mean, from a marketing perspective, I'm just looking at it. It's very simple. There's one product, right? And then there's like just 2 options you can buy from. It's very simple. So I guess I have to ask, what's working? What's actually working for you guys from a marketing standpoint right now? Because I have to imagine you guys are spending a healthy amount.

We've slowed down a lot. I mean, we lean in like many companies in nutrition and wellness, you know, in the December to February window. It's when so many people are really attuned to investing in health more than normal. Although I'll say with what's going on around the world with COVID that is turning into an always-on need state. But what is working is our Certainly our longstanding partnerships with top thought leaders and creators. We were very early to the creator economy. Many of these folks who now have well-followed podcasts or newsletters, they were just customers of AG 10 years ago, 8 years ago. And then some of them got big, and even others who didn't still use their platform to talk about how AG1 fits into their lives. And then as they've built businesses around that, of course, we support those businesses. We support those podcasts, we support those newsletters, but we only work with people who are actually customers because we don't want the inauthentic reads. We don't want people who, for whom it's just an ad. We want people who, when somebody DMs them and is like, is this real? They're like, yeah, and here's why. So certainly creator economy is big for us and has been for a long time. Because we were so referral-based, we didn't have as many challenges with the iOS 14 changes as a lot of people who were exclusively Meta, but we still very much believe in that platform. And so for us, we're on a journey like everyone else to getting better data, better attribution, to be thoughtful in the deployment of our capital. Because we were a bootstrap business, we have a far more conservative approach to growth marketing and performance marketing than people would think. I mean, again, you can't be bootstrapped to that volume. and just blow out on performance marketing. You can't. There's no way. You wouldn't have visibility to the cash coming back fast enough to self-fund from a customer acquisition perspective, or you would, but half those customers would churn. And we need and want to protect that long-time people who come are highly likely to stay. And that means we have to be more precise in our understanding of customers and targets and where people are spending their time. And so business didn't even have a meaningfully sized brand team until December of last year. And they've only had a few months working together. We're doing our first ever with this new brand team creative photo shoot for more assets and more content. As you know, that's totally required. Doesn't matter where you are and what works, you need diversity of content for where it is in the funnel, need state of the customer. And we just didn't have it. And the business grew so fast on the merits of the product alone, that we cannot attribute to performance marketing. At the beginning of this year, as many people can attest, AG probably stalked them on Instagram or Facebook for a couple weeks because we went super hard to understand like, where are our limits and what can we do with what we have? But we pulled back very quickly to just be more pragmatic and thoughtful. And then, you know, finding our way through these platforms. We love what we're seeing in the early stages of TikTok, but we're very early. We're actually quite early in YouTube, but we love YouTube. We love our creator partners, and we're building out a team to resource those platforms. So I'm not saying any new news that people don't know. I just think it would surprise people, the conservative approach that we have. And the hack is the product is that good. The product is that good, and people repeat and refer because it works. Which means we've got a little bit of good fortune because of the product being that good to not have to feel the desperation to grab all the customers that we can and see who sticks and then figure out where we go get more money to go do that again. And more money to go do that again. It's never been the company's model ever. And the bootstrapping was a forcing function for that. Very little performance marketing, very little growth marketing. lots of authentic referrals and partnerships. And now we're getting into this era where we do want to start layering on more traditional mechanisms of growth marketing, but we want to do it in a way that meshes with our cash focus and our return on invested capital and using data that we have and modeling in a more thoughtful way. And we're We're growing at over 100% on top of those numbers that I shared from last year, but we're still quite conservative on the inside. We want to be thoughtful, and we also have to be careful that, yeah, we could go screaming from the mountaintops, but there's also an element of diminishing trust. Like, even if your product is really good, if you market super hard in a tiny period of time, the natural psychology of some people is Well, if you have to try that hard, are you really that good? Now existing customers know, like, yes, they're that good. And I'm making a good choice. Like I'm seeing them everywhere. Others are— I was early, right? Others are finally getting it. But new customers, it might actually bring more doubt. So you've got to be really careful and thoughtful in how you weave in authenticity with scale.

Totally. And so what I was just saying too, is, is I think it's smart what you guys are doing, especially in the current climate that we're in right now. And, you know, my, my co-host and I on this podcast quite often talk about how marketing is changing. Like you can't, easy mode was relying on Meta and Alphabet, you know, in 2020. You can't do that anymore. You have to own your own data. You have to work with key influencers like you're mentioning too. And ideally, maybe you're out there, you're buying email lists or you're buying websites because again, those platforms are great and we're going to continue to use them. But this stuff's getting harder, which means it's a blue ocean, but it is just harder, which I think is great.

Cool.

So I do want to talk about your career progression a little bit because I think anybody that sees your career, they're like, man, I want to be able to emulate that, right? So I found a tweet where somebody actually said— basically this guy went through your progression. I think at 17 years old, you worked at Hooters as a waitress, correct?

Mm-hmm.

And then I see your tweet right now where it kind of went beyond that. So from 37 to 43 or so, but let's just put it this way. Um, right now you're, you're part of, uh, you're basically, you know, the number 2, right, for, for Athletic Greens, which is valued at over a billion dollars. Um, and then Focus Brands, you know, I think you guys did— was it billions in sales a year?

Is that correct? Billions in sales.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, look, you've gone— somebody might look at your progression and be like, I want to do that, right? So what, what would you say to someone that's maybe 17 years old? Uh, maybe they're a little lost. What would you say to that person?

One, don't compare your hustle and your beginning to someone's highlight reel and their later stage. Like, it's daunting and possibly not even helpful unless you truly can use it as just creative inspiration. I would say use people like me at the stage that I'm in as creative inspiration. And so when I think back to 17 or those early job days, And I literally just had a tweet from someone yesterday who said, I'd love to know the earlier stages of Kat's career. And literally was like, because the stories about her now don't help me now. And I was like, well, tell me what you mean. Because if it's age-based, that's one thing. If it's life stage-based, that's different, right? It's just because someone's young doesn't mean they might have kids. Life stage matters when you talk about career choice. Or is it career level? Like, I'm an independent contributor and I want to get to the point where I'm the CEO. What's my journey to managing people and getting broad? So one, even in just what I just shared, these are 3 major contributors to your early career decisions. One, just what you've amassed in experience to date. And if you're younger, it's obviously less, but still could be very interesting and useful. Your responsibilities. I'll call it that, your responsibilities, but often is viewed as life stage, whether it's kids or parents or financial responsibilities, right? That shit's real. And it really affects what you say yes or no to, or what you believe you have the freedom or the creativity to go explore versus just take, you know, that's in front of you. And then the third is this idea of career progression. Like managing people, seasoning in different environments between early stage and mature. You just, of course, you get more well-rounded as you have a broader variety of experiences. So I'll put all that together and say, step 1 is just get started doing something, because at a minimum, you're going to start to get dinged for not having experience. And then people say, well, how can I get experience if you don't give me experience? Well, if you're 22 and you don't have experience, and there's people who've been working their asses off since they were 17, and they can speak to dealing with people, customer service, being responsible for money, of course, I would hire that person whether they're younger or not all day long over someone who's like, I've just been trying to figure it out for a couple years. And so just get started. And it can be a paid job, it could be an internship, it can be an apprenticeship. Like, I love people who go deep into specialties and explore. It could be getting into a DAO and like helping to manage the people and the backend and the processes the decisions. You just want to show that you have perspective, that you appreciate that things are never what they seem, that you have a way to navigate tough moments, that you have some EQ, some emotional intelligence about you to navigate moments, that you have curiosity and a desire to learn, and that you're coachable, that you're willing to move up and get feedback and then And then there's another layer that's to get you down a path of expertise. But then there's another layer of, can you, do you want to, will you lead people? Because you don't get to running companies without being very good at leading people and then leading other leaders who lead people, among many other things. And the more experience you have in that, the better. I've been leading teams since I was a teenager. That gave me— I didn't think, I never thought I'm going to grow up and be a CEO. It was not my dream. My dream was to be a lawyer. That was the thinking. I was gonna go to engineering school, get my engineering degree, then go to law school and become a lawyer for a big company. Like, that is what sounded cool and sexy to me when I was a teenager. And, but yet I started leading teams in my restaurant and being responsible for the shift and then traveling around the world at 19, opening franchises, leading entire teams of employees in places I'd never been. And that then led me to be qualified to interview for a corporate gig where I literally was the department leader. and had corporate employees. And that just kept happening. But all of that stems back to, I had an early start at leading teams. Not everyone wants to lead teams, and some people should not lead teams. But I got an early start. So top advice, get started, get experience in any way you can. Nothing will teach you more than real-life experiences. And that's also how you meet people, how people get to see you in action, how you get offered gigs. Right? It's like starts leading to these opportunities that either come your way or that you get proximity to that you can raise your hand for.

Totally with that. Um, I don't even know if I can link to this tweet, but I just want to call out some of the highlights here. 17, hosted at original Hooters. 18, mastered all the jobs there. 19, opened franchises around the world. So that's leading as a teenager. Um, VP at Hooters at 26, president of Cinnabon 32, president, COO, Focus Brands at 37. then the accolades just keep building, right? And actually in that tweet, within that tweet, Kat talks about how it's not all highlights, right? It's not all sunshine and rainbows. But anyway, I know we only have a couple of minutes left. And the other thing I want to call out there too, something that stuck out to me is it's kind of like investing. It's about time in market, right? So starting early, it's not like you have to be a genius or anything. You just keep going, right? And I've learned that the hard way. Cool. So Kat, last time we did a podcast, I wanted to— you kind of touched upon this a little bit, but I wanted to expand on Basically, your, your process for kind of checking in with people that are close to you, your loved ones, your monthly process. So do you want to talk about what you do there? Because you, you probably still do it, right?

Oh, yes. Religiously, every, every month. We have been together for 7 years. Well, we'll be on this date, 10/10/15. And literally since our first month together, we developed this check-in. because we wanted to be better at home than we were at work. And we had individually never said that in our previous relationships. And so all of a sudden it's like a light bulb went off. And so we said, well, how do you do that? Well, you need to be intentional. Where can we find inspiration to be intentional? Business and leadership. And part of that is having a good solid way to check in, to ask, answer, and act on the most important questions. Ask, answer, act. One of them alone is not good enough. Asking is just curiosity. Um, asking and answering is just learning and understanding. Acting is where the change happens. And we wanna be on a journey, like together. I'm gonna change and grow over time. He's gonna change and grow over time. So we use like leadership check-in inspiration to develop these 6 questions every month on our monthiversary, the 10th of every month. We protect at least 20 minutes. It gets faster as time goes on, but we also call each other out if we're not going deep or want to know more. And it's what's been the best part of the last 30 days, what's been the worst part of the last 30 days, what's one thing I can do differently to be a better partner for you, what has worried you or weighed on you the most in the last 30 days. And this is all as it relates to our relationship. It could be something outside of the relationship that's most weighing on it, but it's, you know, about us. So what's worried you the most is number 4. What has— what are you most grateful for is number 5, and what are you most proud of is number 6. And then we do a quarterly, like, recap and talk, start layering in some of our goals, our personal goals. There's like a goal check-in. And then, as you can imagine, there's an annual one at our annual family vacation. We get a nanny for the kids for half a day, and we are literally at just some cool-ass coffee shop looking through our notes for the year. reflecting, learning, giving each other feedback. And this spans personal and professional, um, and our family, and then set our goals for the next year.

This is like Traction for relationships, um, or Scaling Up or whatever. Those, those 2 books are great. Um, you got to create a book around this. Um, so actually, I should introduce you to my friend. He actually created a program called Managing Happiness, and he hasn't fought with his wife for like 20 years. Um, you both have frameworks actually, and I think they're very complementary. But anyway, yeah. Um, okay, cool. So do you, do you do that primarily with your, your husband? Do you do that with anybody else? Because last, last time I understood maybe you did it with your direct reports.

Yeah, yep. We have a version of the check-in when the whole team gets together in person. So that my whole team, our whole team, um, we do a little baby version. When it's group, it's different, right? Instead of one-on-one, because in the check-in I ask you you answer the first question, then you ask me that same question and I answer. So it's this mutual thing that would take a long time in a big group and be a little uncomfortable for some big groups. So we boil it down to a little mini check-in when we get together every month as a fully remote team. We do get together as an executive team every month in person for a couple days, and we start by just asking, what are you most grateful for? And what is weighing on you? or distracting you the most, you know, right now? So it's like, you know, it's just a little grounding. And we're all human. And 50% of the time when we ask and answer the question around what has worried you the most, what's weighing on you, there are tears 50% of the time because we're human, right? And it could be my mom is sick or my daughter was just in the hospital or I'm having a tough time at home. And then sometimes it's just straight up business. But the point is we're human and we're comfortable being human together. So this idea of checking in, it's why it's the title of my Substack, is kind of a modern superpower framework because things change so much. I just have learned whatever plan I have is not going to scale. Whatever path I'm on is not going to be best for the next season. And so instead of worrying about having the perfect thing that scales forever, I'd rather have a framework of constantly checking in to ask and answer. And then I know the things I'm spending my time on have a high likelihood of impact.

Got it. Love it. I have a billion more questions to ask, but I want to be respectful of your time too. So, Kat, what's the best way for people to learn more about AG and also to learn more about you?

athleticgreens.com. And if you want a special promotion, you can just put /kat, athleticgreens.com/kat, and that gets you like free travel packs and free vitamin D3K. So it's kind of a booster kit. for a subscription. And for me, just all the socials, right? On Twitter, Instagram, certainly LinkedIn, and, and my newsletter Substack, which is really an occasional posting of leadership lessons and kind of an archive of the frameworks that I use on a regular basis.

Well, and that's Kat with a K, everyone. So athleticgreens.com/kat. Kat, thanks so much for doing this.

Awesome. Thanks, Eric.