Kat Cole: How to scale iconic brands (Athletic Greens/AG1 CEO, Cinnabon, Hooters) | Masters of Scale

Hi, Kat.

Hi.

Welcome to Masters of Scale.

Thank you.

I should just start by saying that I'm like a net promoter score of 100 of AG1.

Yay.

I start every day with it as part of my like getting ready to work out routine. So thank you for what you do. Before we get to AG1, 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.

Yeah.

You as well.

Yeah.

I don't know that we've had anyone who's been at Hooters. And so I'm curious—

Proud to be the first.

Yeah, awesome. How did that happen? How did you end up at Hooters?

I mean, I have to go back a little because I grew up a child of a single parent, alcoholic father. We left my dad when I was 9. I helped raise my 2 sisters. I'm the oldest of 3 girls. And all of that and a few other dynamics led me to working early, similar to what you just described. And it started with neighborhood jobs, not proper W-2 employment. And then I started cleaning gym equipment and doing trade-outs because I was an athlete in junior high and high school, and then got my first kind of fancy paying job in a mall selling clothes. And so working was a thing for many years before I started working at Hooters. 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.

Wow.

And they were going in to find women who were good at sales, comfortable interacting, and saying, come apply to be a Hooters girl, to be a waitress at Hooters. This was Jacksonville, Florida. Hooters was founded in Florida, in Clearwater, but it had grown throughout this kind of central northern part of the state and been there for well over a decade. So it wasn't a big deal. It was just like a beach shack, casual dining restaurant. Everyone knew what it was. It seemed fun. And if you were, 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.

Right.

And, or did at the time in the state of Florida. But I still went into apply. And, uh, I, I worked in a clothing store called The Body Shop, and we sold a denim, um, duo of shorts and jean vests called— by a brand called Bongo. I mean, and we happened to have orange and white denim, so I literally bought the orange jean shorts and the white denim vest.

This is the Florida Hooters version of the Canadian tuxedo, basically.

Exactly. Yeah.

Okay.

And so I go in to interview, 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. I was opening the door saying, see you next time, cleaning bathrooms, supporting the waitresses and the bartenders in any way, busing tables. So that was my first job at Hooters. And then when I turned 18, I became a waitress, went through all of the training, alcohol certifications. We were only beer and wine, only sold beer and wine at the time. So it was way less of a bar than anyone would think it was. I think our percentage of alcohol of gross sales was like 18%. It's quite low, lower than TGI Friday's at the time. But it was a job to pay the bills. And at the time, I was still working in malls. I was still babysitting. I still had multiple jobs.

And you were still in high school.

I was still in high school. Um, and then, but once I became a waitress, the income of being a Hooters girl was far greater than the others combined. And I had So much more fun. So I quit all the other jobs and that became my only paying job, my hourly job, all the way through until I went to college. First person in my family to go to college. That was my way to pay for school. And that's all it— that's really all it was at first.

Where— I mean, growing up in a family with alcoholism, with, you know, only your dad who was an alcoholic, Working a white-collar job, everyone else blue-collar jobs or no jobs.

That's right.

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

I think, you know, who knows really, nature, nurture. But my best assessment as I reflect is one, I viewed work as honorable. Like 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 I didn't wanna rely on my past, my father's track record. I just didn't wanna be stuck. And my currency was learning. And so as long as I had income, I had some degree of independence and flexibility. As long as I was learning new skills, also feeding that independence and flexibility. And in every company I joined, very quickly I started at the bottom and worked my way up.

Yeah.

As the great poet Drake Articulates. And so I did that like over and over at, and at the Body Shop when I was 15, I started as a sales associate, worked my way up to a senior sales associate, got president's awards for sales even though I was only part-time on the weekends. And then 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. Not at any point did I have an ambition of I want to run this company or I'm going to be a president in this industry. It was all just at the time a path to pay for school as the first person in my family to get into college. And I really thought that's all it was, but it turned into much more.

Yeah. I mean, Um, we're recording in LA, so we'll have to drop a Kendrick line in here as well.

Of course. Yes. Got to keep the universe in balance.

Our producer Kenyon was very happy to hear that. Um, um, for, you know, for me, I, I grew up in Maryland, uh, um, pre, pre-climate change. And so I shoveled snow in the winter. And, um, there was something about, um, that kind of work, uh, the non-W-2, the just get out and hustle that gave me a sense of control.

Yeah.

And also gave me a sense that if I have nothing else, if I work hard, something good is gonna happen and I'll have money in my pocket. Was that part of it for you as well?

I think it was. And as long as I kept my living requirements simple, which I did, I had this over time independent energy. This, it doesn't matter if I fail because I can always go back and be a waitress. Because I actually loved that job and I was really good at it. And it doesn't matter if things don't work out as I hope or think with one path or another, because I can always fall back on these skills. So I guess it is control. That's a great word.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you know, doing all the things at Hooters. You're all of a sudden making pretty good money with the tips, et cetera. Then 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?

There were a series of events that led up to the ability for me to say yes to the opportunity that came. So one, when I was an hourly employee, when I was 18 and 19, a few things happened. The cooks, some of the cooks quit one shift and I went back and helped. And so I learned how to cook and I liked it. And so I added that job to my options for shifts for the week. I would first fill my shifts with the ones that paid the most, being a Hooters girl. And then if there was more time and more opportunity. I could, I could control my income. I could work all the time in different jobs that I enjoyed. 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.

God bless Bonnie Reinhardt.

Bless Bonnie. She was like, I don't know, 4'9, 5 feet tall, and a leadership personality that anyone should hope to be able to, you know, to follow. And I would follow Bonnie anywhere. She was such an incredible leader. So she came to me and said, hey, the corporate office called. A woman named Cheryl, who was the vice president of training at— Cheryl called. Everybody knew Cheryl. Cheryl called, and 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. Are you interested? I'd never been on a plane. I did not have a passport. I'd only been out of the state of Florida twice in my life for cheerleading competitions and one little girl's trip to Savannah. And that was it. And so, but I didn't hesitate. There was no pause. There was no thinking, oh, but I can't legally exit the country, or I've never opened a restaurant. I just, it just sounded amazing. It sounded far away, cool, fun. I was I was so proud that Bonnie, you know, would recommend me. And I said, yes, I would love to talk to them. And I got on the phone. They gave me a little information. I walked through all of the training that I had done in the restaurant. I was one of the people selected. And so I said yes. They did not know I didn't have a passport. And so I did a little research. There were not the interwebs available at the time. So the research was a little bit of a different activity, a little bit more hustle.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Figured out I could buy my first ever flight to Miami. So 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 US you can personally get a passport expedited, and got my passport in 2 days and flew back home. And then a few weeks later left for Sydney, Australia to go open the franchise.

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. Yeah.

I mean, the 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. You know, it was definitely all figureoutable. It's not like I'm the first person to ever get on a plane. And so I knew that I didn't know what I didn't know, but it was very easy to ask people for help and then just be willing to do the work.

Yeah.

I mean, I had never opened a restaurant. I'd never been to Australia. I had never met any of the people I was going to be working with at this event. We met in the LAX airport and before we all converged on that very long, magical flight to Sydney on Qantas Airlines.

Right, right. Probably not in the front of the plane on that one.

Definitely not. And then stayed there for almost 40 days to open the franchise. 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, you know, the trajectory was materially different after. And at the end of the opening, and so much happened in the opening that was transformative and educational from a business perspective. I remember getting back in the Sydney airport and getting business magazines and just reading more.

Yeah.

And paying attention to brands. And the whole flight home was thinking about, will I ever get to do this again? Maybe this was just a once in a lifetime opportunity. If it was, I'm so lucky. If it wasn't, I'm so stoked. stoked to do more. I got home, have to continue working my shifts, you know, to pay my bills. And then the phone calls continued to come to start being a part of the training teams to launch the franchise, the first of the franchise on other continents, Central America, South America. And by the 3rd international opening, I was asked to start leading the teams. I was still 19. This all happened in a series of quarters back to back.

Really fast.

Very quickly. And so I started leading the teams. First one I led was Salt Lake City, Utah, then Nassau, Bahamas, and Argentina, and it was the opening in Argentina. Now I'm 20, and so much went wrong on my watch.

Really? What happened?

Oh man, the list is so long. It's a podcast in and of itself. One, we had not done our homework on how much the menu needed to change to be relevant. Even though it was an American concept, you still have some level of modification to evolve a brand around the world, any type of brand. We had failed to do that. We weren't We were growing quickly, but just because a company's growing quickly around the world doesn't mean it's sophisticated or thoughtful or being optimized. We were just going where the opportunity was. And look, you had a 19-year-old running around leading the franchise trading. So certainly there were some things likely not being done as optimally as they could have been. But there were several menu items that when the cooks were trained to cook it, the managers came over and said, we're not serving this. Because the steak was a flat ribeye, kind of a lower-end cut. This is Argentina. It is the beef capital of the world. Even McDonald's and Burger King fast food places had open flame broilers. And here we are with a flat top grill with a not so great cut of ribeye steak. And they're like, it was a— you know, offensive isn't the right word, but it just felt—

It was culturally insensitive.

Very much so. And not reflective of the price point of the menu or of the brand positioning that had been conveyed. And then it was served with a side of American baked beans, which was also viewed as more of like a pauper's food. Again, not to the level of a casual dining, slightly higher price point casual dining.

Yeah.

Big deal, iconic concept. So, and, and the list of those menu mistakes was quite long. So all of our plate presentations, our ingredients, the equipment was not reflective of what we needed. Then the employees put the uniform on, they're Try-ons to make sure they fit properly. And they all locked themselves in the restroom. They would not come out of the bathroom. And I'm like, what is going on here? Yes, they're small. That's the uniform. It's the concept. There's kind of pictures everywhere of us coming. That's not a surprise. And half of— I thought half of you are naked on the beach right around the corner. I didn't understand the cultural gap. And so, and there were many examples of that. And the headline here is there was a lack of understanding and thoughtfulness and sensitivity of the cultural norms. that needed to be considered and how they would be integrated, communicated, altered or not. But either way, make the decision eyes wide open. Don't be so brazen as to just bring your whole concept as it is, like square peg, round hole. And with the employees trying on uniforms, the issue was they were concerned about how their family would feel. And so there's a deep family orientation, yet there were people wearing less on the streets. It was just, what is this concept and what is this supposed to—

In context, it was—

That's right, in a restaurant. And in South America, hourly employees, at least at the time, are bound by contract. So it's not like in the US where I come, I go, I ghost you, it's fine. They were so upset because now they had signed up for something. They experienced this and they felt trapped.

Yeah.

And so 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 in context, and He was an incredible mentor. He and the manager there, they sat me down and they're like, a lot's going wrong.

Yeah.

And you're getting a lot of criticism. They could tell I was getting stressed. I was in tears every night.

You're also 20.

Every night.

I mean, this is brand new. Yeah.

Everything's in Spanish. I spoke enough Spanish to be dangerous, but still, when it's not your native language, there's a lot of emotional labor and trying to convey your concepts, your ideas, and represent yourself and your company as professionally as possible in a second language. And I was exhausted by the second week. You know, the first week The first week is construction, hiring, interviewing, then training. And all this is breaking down by the second week. 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 negative feedback is correct.

What a great note for an entire career.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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. Again, preserving the relationship in the process. And that guidance truly has carried through my entire career.

Wow.

At major crossroads, when I'm on a board of directors for a nonprofit, when I'm the president of a company in the Great Recession, navigating COVID in a complete decimation of demand and revenue for the industries that I was running. And this idea of bringing the humility yet maintaining the confidence needed and expected of your role was an incredible lesson. And so we figured it out. I ended up changing the plate setups and agreeing to be a bit of a rebel in the company. And even though my parent company didn't want to make the changes, I called Cheryl again and said, this is what I'm dealing with. No one else is on the ground. No one's getting on the 9-hour flight to come down here. This is not going to go well. I have to change. I need your help.

Wow.

And so she helped me smooth it over at the corporate office while I made the changes with the franchisee. For the employees in the uniforms in the front of house, 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 2nd and 3rd week. And the restaurant opened to be quite successful at the time. And but man, it was, it was a brutal leadership mirror.

You referenced earlier the word ask and almost the corollary to this, assume the criticism is right just off the bat, is, is to ask for the criticism, ask upfront. Where does 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.

It is. It may be— it's a piece of what might be my most meta framework. I have a lot of techniques and principles and frameworks that, of course, were not that sophisticated at the time, but I realized I had patterns in behavior that were helpful and they became frameworks that I could teach and articulate and replicate, like the hotshot rule or the MMD D-log or check-in. all these things we can chat about, but they're all a version of ask, answer, act. And one of the 3 without the other 2 is a suboptimal body of effort for an individual or a leader. 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. Everything is ask, answer, act. And over time, as I've led different teams and opened businesses in different countries, you realize the thing 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.

Yeah.

Answers don't scale. Questions do.

Yeah.

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, like wartime or peacetime. And I've certainly led all of those and in between at scale.

Yeah.

And it's more important to be right as often as you can, but you never know exactly what you're doing. So the ability to, the comfort to, the muscle for asking really strong questions is a superpower.

One of the challenges that I've found leading earlier stage companies where we're hiring from bigger companies is usually, almost all the time, they've worked in a place where someone who looks an awful lot like me has sat at the head of the table, said something that's really stupid, and actually wanted them to walk out of the room, roll their eyes, say the old man doesn't know what he's talking about, and do it anyway.

Totally.

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?

There's so many things that I've learned to do. One is I practice something called the hotshot rule, and the hotshot rule, like a hotshot. So out of my ask-answer act, approaches. This is a very specific example of ask, answer, act. So the Hot Shot Rule, something I've practiced for I don't know how many years exactly, 17-ish years. It used to be a monthly exercise, or quarterly and then monthly, and it's so powerful it became weekly. Still is weekly for me today. Every Sunday at 1:00 PM, which is the window of time that my kids used to have naps. They're almost 5 and almost 7 now, so RIP naps.

Yeah.

But it's weekly. And so the first step of the Hot Shot Rule is I think about the role that I play that I want to improve in. So my role as mother, my role as partner, daughter, but often I'm practicing this for my professional role.

Yeah.

So I think current president, COO, AG1. So I envision myself and I just think for a second about how are things going? You know, my team, my business, the market, the environment. And then the next step is I envision someone I admire. Anyone, doesn't have to be more sophisticated than that. So I'll think of you, right? I envision you. And then I envision you in my role.

Hmm.

And there is something about the psychology of combining all the things I know consciously and more in the back of my mind about my business and dynamics. And, but I envision you taking over in my seat. So I'm gone tomorrow, you are in it. You inherit my Slack, my team, my emails, my partners, my problems, my wins. And then I ask, so I envision you there, like in front of the computer.

You can do so much better, but thank you.

And, but everyone can bring such great perspective. 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. And so now I have the thing.

Yeah.

That I really know deep down I should be doing better or differently. But we're all blinded by our own progress, certainly as a business scales, if you have success. And the blinding by progress can create a level of complacency, whether it is obvious to others or not. The reality is it's true. And we know this because look what happens when a real hotshot does come in to take over a company or a team. They aren't burdened by the company's wins and losses. They don't feel saddled by sunk costs. They don't feel a sense of loyalty to a series of initiatives that maybe should be the very things being questioned and undone regardless of how recently they were implemented. And so we know this to be true. It's that day one mentality.

Yeah.

And so this helps me self-coach and, you know, kick my own rear end into gear in micro ways every week. And so that thing comes to mind, I take action on it in 24 hours.

Wow.

Now, in my role, most of the things I would take action on involve other people. So I don't unilaterally 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 I 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 hotshot rule regularly. Because what I'm doing every week is going to my team saying— now they know it's the hotshot rule and my team practices the hotshot 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.

I love that.

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?

Yeah.

Or it's about time.

Yeah.

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 Hot Shot 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 9 and said we were leaving my dad, I looked at her and said, what took you so long? At the age of 9.

Yeah.

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 2 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.

Yeah.

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 And it does 2 things. It creates a culture of openness, vulnerability. I welcome it from them, but they also know I walk the talk. I'm gonna come to them.

It's so great. It's just great role modeling. It's also a great reminder if you're a parent, your kids know, they know, they see everything. It's the same with your team. They know, they see everything.

They know, they just have pieces.

Yeah.

You know, and they're not quite sure what the answer could be, but they know it's not right.

That's right.

And then I remember being a Hooters girl and watching a general manager who was not a good leader. Get celebrated, get rewarded. He had plaques on the wall for being general manager of the month just because sales were up. And he was getting all these accolades from the corporate office because of driving comp sales, year-over-year same-store sales. And he was terrible. I mean, he was out back all the time. He never communicated. The shift broke down. Ticket times were long. I mean, every other input metric was awful.

Yeah.

The only reason sales were up is there was a massive construction site right next door.

Wow.

And he was being celebrated. Yet you're the employee going, this is not— if anyone had asked, that store would've been up 10, 20% more had it been a halfway decent manager. I can't forget those moments. They are etched into my being of the truth of what the team sees and the leader's responsibility. And that's not to hold us all to an impossible perfect standard. It's just that better is often possible, especially in those that get rewarded, get comfortable, and have success over time. And I'd rather be a bigger part of motivating myself to do that thing than having others have to do it. Now, sometimes it is time for a real hotshot. Like sometimes it is time to go. I've transitioned roles over time and I have—

And you've been the hotshot who's come in.

Yeah, and I've been the hotshot that's come in. So it's interesting to think about this as it relates to just how we operate day to day.

So I wanna move us a little forward in your journey, but before I do, who are your favorite hotshots to imagine on that Sunday before you head into your Monday with your team?

There are some regular visitors to the hotshot role. One is my mom, for sure.

Awesome.

I mean, she came from nothing. She's the youngest of 7 kids. Her dad died when she was 3. She navigated this relationship with my dad. She left. not knowing how to afford the life of raising 3 girls on her own. She had an entry-level job. She worked 3 jobs for many years, fed us on a food budget of $10 a week for 3 years.

Wow.

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 was the safety of her girls and the independence of her girls.

Yeah.

And that colored everything she did, possibly even to a fault. And so she's a regular character.

Amazing.

There are leaders that I've had in my past that I deeply admire, a man named Russ Umphenet, Steve Romanello, Phil Hickey, Bonnie Reinhart, some of the people that I've mentioned all along my journey. So it's often someone who I've worked with and I have a deeper understanding of their standards.

And you can almost channel them because you know them so well. 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, when I practice the hotshot rule and integrate my personal role, I'll often, for example, I had a friend who lost a parent.

Hmm.

And it was a Sunday where it made me think about my role as daughter. And so I envisioned that person who had just lost their parent as an adult in my role as someone who still has their mom. mom and what would she do? And it's, again, sometimes the actions are so small. I called my mom.

Yeah.

Right? I went on a walk and I called my mom and asked how she was doing and asked more about her background and her childhood. And in that moment, I was a better daughter because I envisioned someone who I knew good and well would not miss that opportunity, but I would've otherwise. And so it just brings this perspective that I allow to color my heart and my mind and to drive action.

Yeah, that's awesome. We're asking. Yeah. You made a decision along the way to go get an MBA, having not finished undergraduate.

I did.

And also having already achieved a pretty impressive level of success in the business world. Why'd you go back to school?

So, you know, first person in my family to go to college. I was an electrical engineering and computer sciences major, psychology of women minor at the University of North Florida. Go Ospreys. And but I dropped out before, right around the time I turned 20. I wasn't even finished with my second year because I was traveling so much opening franchises. I was failing and there were not the e-learning options to keep it all going. So I had a choice: keep traveling, no contract, no salary, no promises, but felt like more was going to come, or go not only go back to school to make up what I had missed, but I would have to work less to complete the hours needed.

Mm-hmm.

And that wasn't even an option because I was paying for my own personal expenses in my school. And so I dropped out, I quit. And then my career advanced and I became a vice president at Hooters that was doing $700, $800 million in annual revenue at the time. To your point, I had a job that many would say is pretty big and what many go to get a master's to go then qualify for.

They'd be lucky to get to that point with a master's.

But I had a friend of mine who became a mentor over many years. She was a recruiter in the industry, and she had always just reached out and been an advocate for me and connected me to other great leaders in the industry, a woman named Alice Elliott. And she called me one day, and I had been an executive for many years at Hooters. I was on the board of directors of the Women's Food Service Forum. I was active in the National Restaurant Association. I mean, I was known in the industry.

Yeah.

I was on the COVID of every industry industry publication. You were hotshot. I was the hotshot. And she called me and she said, I'm thinking about you. And I don't remember the exact words, but it was something like, if you want to get any job in this industry, you will have no problem. You have earned your stripes, even though you work at Hooters and everyone has feelings about that. Your leadership, your track record in the company and in the industry at large, is unquestionable. She said, however, if you want to cross the border to any other industry, even if it's adjacent, retail, hospitality, CPG, you do not have an advanced degree and you will not get past their HR filter.

Wow.

And she said, so I'm thinking of you and I wanted you to know that that was on my mind and I think you need to go back to school.

Do you think that's still true today?

This is what you're No, no, it's different now. This was 2008 because I graduated in 2010. And she said— I said, Alice, I love you and I get it. And I am obsessed with learning and I am obsessed with optionality. And when she said that, I didn't like the idea of doors being closed. I had never dreamed of it. I didn't think of it. I was loving what I was doing. But the idea that doors were closed was an unacceptable reality. That was ridiculous to me.

Yeah.

And so I said, but Alice, I am not going back to make up undergrad classes. And she said, well, good for you. I know a CEO who runs a publicly traded company in the industry that went back, got his GMAT, GRE, scored high enough. They made an exception to let him into an executive MBA program, and that's how he got his master's. Would you like to talk to him. And so I did. And so we got on the phone. I heard about his journey. I then applied to the business schools that had locations in Atlanta, Georgia State, UGA, Emory, got Georgia Tech, got into many, and chose Georgia State because of how international the cohort was. I had to go take my GMAT with no notice and luckily did well and had to do many interviews. You know, they have to de-risk making an exception and you need recommendation letters.

Sure.

I went and got 10 CEOs to write recommendation letters, famously including Ted Turner, because he had run Ted's Montana Grill as one of the smaller of his accomplishments. But that's where we interacted because I was head of the Georgia Restaurant Association. It was incredibly important to him. And I had never, you know, I'd never asked for a thing from any of these people.

Yeah.

But I had advocated for them, their managers, provided training, supported business-friendly Political candidates. I mean, you name it, I was shaping the industry.

And let's be clear, for those who don't know, 2008, Ted Turner might as well be king of Atlanta. I mean, right? I mean, this is no small deal here.

At the forefront of, you know, leading efforts around climate, certainly polarizing in the media, incredibly visible billionaire, multibillionaire, right? Just a big deal. BFD. And I sent the email and he said, I would love to. I had the letter in a day and sent it to Georgia State. He's also a polarizing figure, so you never know if it helped or hurt.

Right.

And so I got in and went back and got my master's. But it wasn't just that Alice said, you know, you're not going to have options. There was also a little bit of a voice in my head Which was, okay, I'm at Hooters. I've been at that point, I was at Hooters for 12 years. I'd been at Hooters for 12 years. I was there in total for a little over 14. And I thought, am I successful here because I'm actually good in business? I mean, this is the main company I've been with most of my adult life. Am I actually good or is it just because I know everyone in this company?

Yeah.

Is it the relationships or the skills? And I didn't know the answer. And there were only 2 ways to gut check. One would be to leave, which I eventually did, but I didn't want to at the time. And the other would be to plunge into a pool of other really smart people who were much farther along in their professional paths than I was and to benchmark, to get a read, to understand.

Yeah.

And so there was this Unmet— there was this confidence gap. And if I know that what I've done here is replicable anywhere else, and going to get the MBA was both a way to keep the doors open that I wanted open, but also to find out, I mean, simply stated, am I as smart as I think I am?

Yeah, I think it's also common and quite natural when you have such achievement in one field, especially in one company, to look around and say, oh wait, there's actually— there are whole other worlds out there. And do I have what it takes to achieve there? Yeah.

Especially when you've worked from the bottom up where there's a lot of reasons to believe you're successful because you just know everything about the business.

Literally how to clean the bathroom on up.

That's right. And it was easy for me to lead from the front or from the back or from the side because I knew the experience of the team members in all of those areas of the business. So there were very few things that we rolled out from the corporate office once I was there that weren't effective because they were done with the employee in mind. They were done with the operation in mind, and certainly the operation at scale globally between franchise and corporate operations. So I had a lot of confidence in my ability, but still a question.

Spoiler alert, we get a good answer to the question. How do you end up at Cinnabon and Focus?

So through that volunteer work in the industry, the Georgia Restaurant Association, the National Restaurant Association, I interacted with members of the Roark Capital portfolio team, presidents of brands in the Focus Brands portfolio, which was one of their early portfolio companies, members of the Roark Capital team themselves because they were early investors in franchising and now now, you know, the kings, the unquestionable kings from a private equity perspective. And so, I met them. We interacted. They saw me not as a Hooters executive, as an industry leader. They saw me speaking, volunteering, rallying, fundraising. And I remember I was at a fundraiser at Ted Turner's penthouse in Atlanta.

Of course.

And for the Georgia Restaurant Association. And I had invited the presidents of Atlanta-based, and there were restaurant companies, and several of them from the Roark Capital family and the Focus Brands portfolio came. And we had interacted at events, but this was intimate and it was all presidents. And so there was time to talk and get to know each other. And that was one of the first times the conversation of, hey, you should talk to us, we're acquiring more brands and we should stay close and it'd be really fun to work together. And it was the first time I really thought something was interesting enough to be compelling to explore outside of Hooters. Because Hooters, I mean, we had an airline, a casino. We were almost fully vertically integrated. We owned half our supply chain. I mean, there was a reason I stayed.

Yeah.

It was complex. I learned so much. I got to lead within multiple industries. It was very hard for another company to compete for my talent with that dynamic at Hooters. And so, focus brands, having multiple brands, being owned by Roark, still Atlanta-based, which I was growing to love. was intriguing. And at the time, Focus only had Carvel ice cream, which was Roark's first ever investment.

Fudgy the Whale.

Fudgy the Whale.

That's right.

Moe's Southwest Grill, Cinnabon and Seattle's Best Coffee, and Schlotzsky's Deli.

Sure.

And so Steve Romanello, who was the CEO of Focus Brands but was transitioning to be a partner at Roark, And Russ Umphenauer, the new incoming CEO, reached out to me. And Steve said, look, I'm building this franchise team at Roark. I'd love for you to— I'd love to interview you. I'd love for you to come interview at the firm and talk to you about joining. And I remember thinking, nothing sounds fancier, sexier, and cooler than going from restaurants to private equity. I mean, it felt like the smartest, classiest move. I really, it was just like, I didn't even have this dream, but now it's my dream.

Yeah.

And now I know how much those early PE employees get run into the ground. And I don't know that my quality of life would've been so great. And, but man, all of a sudden this option, this idea, I was overcome by the idea.

Well, if you wanna prove yourself in a bigger pool, like, here you go.

That's right. And so I was like, what can I do? I was getting my MBA at the time. Just beginning. And I remember going to interview and I could speak about our operations inside and out, but I was thinking, thank goodness I went to class because now I'm communicating with a language that was a bit more of a match for how the firm communicated on valuing the enterprise and financials and the capital structure. And those weren't things as someone who moved up in operations, you talk about a privately held company, no one cares, right? We were printing money.

Right.

Everybody's happy. No one cares what you call it.

Yeah.

And so I felt that I was elevating in sophistication and my financial acumen, and they sent me for the intelligence test to make sure I was a match for the firm.

Literally an intelligence test?

Yeah, Dr. Bob.

Wow.

But this is really common for executive roles in big companies and private equity firms, right? It's part of the interview process when you get to the final stage. And I was offered the job. And I was so excited. And I remember Steve called me. I was at the Hooters headquarters. I had just finished teaching a workshop for franchisees, my team and I. And I walked outside and walked around the building on my cell phone. In my mind, it was a flip phone. It was that long ago. And he said, I'm so excited to offer you the role. Told me the pay, the equity, care. Like, I was just like, oh my gosh, this is happening. And I knew in that moment I had to tell him no.

Hmm.

We had just found out the CEO of Hooters had passed away a few years prior. The estate was in turmoil, and the probate judge mandated that we liquidate the most valuable asset in the estate to settle the estate's needs and obligations. And the most valuable asset was our company. And so we were just informed we had to put our company up for a fire sale. And while there was no good time to leave for what was my new dream, this was a terrible time.

Yeah.

It was like leaving my family. I didn't feel there was anyone in the executive team that was connected enough to the franchisees, the employees, the operations to navigate this very scary moment. I mean, the franchisees didn't love the CEO that passed away, but what they loved less was the unknown.

Yeah.

And so there was, I mean, real stress in the system. Not to mention you're talking— we're now navigating the Great Recession.

Yeah.

And so it was just tough all around.

Yeah. But you've just been presented with an opportunity that you've been dreaming of for, you know, a couple of years at least here. And it sounds like an A-plus opportunity balancing turning that down with or going to that with the loyalty to see this through.

Like, it just wasn't even a question for me.

It was in your gut.

Yeah, it wasn't a question. And there are these 2 questions I've learned to ask. when it's, um, you have an opportunity to leave or you're exploring whether you should leave. And the first question is, is my work done here? And can someone else do it better than me? And if the answer is yes to both, time to go. And—

And if it's no to either, it's time to stay?

Yeah, it was for me at least. And it has been for me. And so my work isn't done. I, I, I don't want to look back and go, ah, I could have— I, you know, my, my heart's still in it enough. And sometimes times, is my work done here, is about, is your heart in it?

Yeah.

Are you tired or do you have energy?

Yeah.

And I felt my work was not done.

Wow.

And this moment, even though I was this very young executive, I was 30 years old, I was halfway through my MBA, no one on the team had navigated this. So we were equally inexperienced in this exact moment and we all had an equal lack of playbook. But I knew I could figure it out, and I knew that my ability to hold the teams together was going to be needed. Keep in mind, I had minimal upside in this company. I was being offered far more in other places. It was not financial. It was this, I've been here for 14 years, and I don't want anyone else to navigate this for this team that I've spent essentially my life building.

Well, it's acting in integrity. I mean, it's really Yeah.

And that's what Steve said. He said, you know, I'm disappointed, but I respect it.

Yeah.

So then go forward a couple weeks and months, we're doing back-to-back roadshow management presentations, or they were coming to us. Roark was one of those companies. So the team got to see me presenting now the pitch to these PE firms. I ended up being recruited by multiple PE firms from that experience. But Steve called back and said, you know, I understand you can't join the firm now because you're in this process and I respect it, but we're going to need a new president of Cinnabon, which is in the Focus Brands portfolio. The president of Cinnabon is going to join me here at Roark to help build out this franchise practice, and there's not as much time sensitivity around it. I think you should at least meet the CEO, Russ Umphenauer, or reconnect with him and interview for the role.

Yep.

And I thought, And I thought, okay. And so I went to Coby, the CEO of Hooters, and said, look, I'm not going to leave you. I'm all in. This is the son of the CEO who had passed away. But I have this opportunity to interview and I don't think I should turn it down, but I'm definitely not going to get the job.

Yeah.

They're not going to offer me the job. He said, just please don't tell anyone. I support you, but that'll freak everybody out. And so I interviewed, they offered me the job. I came back. He said, you promised you wouldn't leave me in the lurch. This process is dragging out. I said, I won't. And Focus Brands and Cinnabon and Roark held the job for me for 6 months. And I stayed, delivered on my commitment to be there until an offer was signed for the company. And I co-signed on the offer on a Friday and started at Cinnabon on a Monday. That's how I got there.

You got the whole weekend off.

Yeah.

What I— because I want to make sure we Before we get to the AG1 story, what did you learn at Cinnabon? What part of the scaling journey and your personal growth journey did you take from that that you've now deployed in the rest of your career?

A few things. I mean, it was the heart of the Great Recession. The business was based in malls and airports. There are 2 things people stop doing or do a lot less when there is depressed discretionary income, shopping and traveling. So multiple years of serious sales declines. stress, profitability, very small franchisees who were not well equipped to navigate such a moment. There was also the lending crisis at the time.

Yeah.

So there was no access to capital. So I learned a lot about my ability to handle a lot. I mean, franchisees calling crying, facing bankruptcy. Mall landlords, who are no small player in the business world, can feel a little mafia-like at times where they're like, you sign the lease, you have personal guarantee, your franchisee has personal guarantees. They owe us the money. I don't care if my traffic's down And of course, things would evolve and we would find a way to collaborate and partner and navigate. But I mean, it was one hit after another. So the business was struggling, but the brand was beloved.

Mm-hmm.

So my love for brand and innovating brand, but having this balance of going to a brand's roots and bringing out its legacy, like what brought you here has some value, but innovating the product offering, the pricing structure, and some of the positioning enough to bring it to relevance. was also a muscle that I had developed on the Hooters journey that I was able to bring to Cinnabon. 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.

Did you have a model for that? Did you create that?

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

Mm-hmm.

But it was— that was it. And the team— there was a small team that was working on some food service business, getting a little Cinnabon-branded product on Taco Bell's menu, which is still there today, which is crazy. 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 was 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 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, it was, I built my turnaround muscle, I built my global brand building muscle, I built the CPG omnichannel playbook that would scale.

Were there D2C elements, direct-to-consumer elements?

At the very end. At the very end. So this is where I got the CPG bug. This is where I got the e-commerce bug. first D2C bug. Then I moved on to be group president of the parent company to bring this alt channels model to the whole company.

Yeah.

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 $1 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 2 team members to launch innovation. And because it was an asset-light model, we were leveraging the brands that the teams were running, working with partners like General Mills and Kellogg's and WhiteWave 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.

Right. Well, it's not meant to be a consumer brand. Focus is a holding company. That's right.

That's right. And so, so that was a moment of where I had to think, what matters to me? And it was learning.

Did it matter to you? It was learning.

It was learning. It was the thing that was new because I could have run more franchises within the portfolio, run multiple. We were, we were evolving the entire operating structure at the time. A new CEO came in and we brought in a consultant to help us leverage the scale now of the 8 brands we had amassed versus the 4 when I started. 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, you know, CPG manufacturing, e-commerce. We had our own owned manufacturing as well for some of the products. And that newness, that learning, even though I acknowledged I'm not sure how much of my sense of self is tied up in leading huge teams with iconic brands that people know, but this is obviously the right next step.

It's really interesting. I mean, drilling into what really matters for you personally. Because for some people, I worked at the National Football League. There are people who work at the NFL who will never leave because when they get on an airplane or they walk into a Sunday barbecue, whatever it is, they work at the NFL.

Yeah.

Right. And that matters. And I don't— I say that with respect. Like, it's identity-based for them. Right. That, that saying like, I'm moving on from a brand that has like nearly 100% name recognition and nearly 100% beloved to a brand that, you know, someone's like, well, is that, is that a movie company? Is that Focus Films? Like, what, what, you know, what, what is that?

What do you focus on?

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like, so, so being able to isolate what really matters for you personally and to, to block out the noise of the other stuff that might matter to other people feels like a really important part of It is.

You've nailed it. And I think it started because I was working for Hooters. And over time when I became an exec, when you're in the restaurants, everyone wants to be there. So it's a very happy place. But 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 get reactions. And so I got trained at a young age to get really clear on about whose opinion do I care?

Mm-hmm.

Really clear. And that changes over time for various reasons. But I learned to ask myself that. And so then I developed a framework that, again, I didn't know it was a framework at the time. It just is now. And I've helped— I've sent it to many people to navigate big life moments.

Let's hear it.

So it is money, ego and optics, and capabilities. And so when you think about a major life change, there's just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Yeah, sure.

You know, what are your financial needs or goals or aspirations that I love tackling first with people?

Yeah.

So it's just not getting inappropriately attached to the other things. Let it stand alone for what it is. So, and this is true for investments. It's true for investing in an early-stage business. It's true for investing in an initiative. In a company.

Yeah.

And it's also true for career decisions. So financial, then next is ego and optics, what you're just hitting on. About whose opinion do I care? Where do I get my sense of self? So I would challenge people who would come to me and say, I want a promotion, or I want to be a president. Okay, what if I told you I had a president role for you? And you play around with the other levers, it doesn't pay very much, but it's, it's the job.

Yeah.

Or it, it pays a ton and it's the job, but it's at a company that is definitely doing harm in the world. And so you really help people parse these things out. So financial, ego and optics, and ego and optics also includes things like, do you need to lead a big team? Do people— do you need to lead a company that people know about? Is it important to you to make an impact on the world positively and to what degree and how do you define that?

Yeah.

So this whole ego and optics column, and then the third column has a part A Part B capabilities. So where can you shine and where can you learn? What are you objectively good at that almost anyone who has worked with you would acknowledge? And can you make an impact in this opportunity with those skills?

Yeah.

So basically, can what you've built be worth something? And then are you going to grow? Are you going to learn? Is there some— or are you just going to sit in that same place you've been? And I redo this every year. I just do a little reflection when I've considered opportunities, when people have come to me and said, I think I need a promotion. We literally walk through this.

One of my mentors is a man named Robert Raben. And as I was leaving my first job, he gave me a very similar exercise framed differently. 4 columns: things I must have, things I want, things I don't want, things I can't have. What he said to me is, you've got to be brutally honest with yourself about things like perception, about ego, about money, about, you know, the things that we may not want to talk about or be really honest with ourselves. So You know, and I do this annually, but also when opportunities come up, right? And so I have 3 teenagers who are not yet out of the home. Yeah, I can't take a job outside of LA. They live here, right? There's a certain amount of money that I have to make. That's my just what I have to do to pay, you know, for, for life. There's a certain amount of money that I want to make, right? And so putting—

What are you willing to trade off?

What are you willing to trade off, right? And the outer columns, the must and the can't, are going to be relatively short because they're true deal breakers. You're saying if someone's offering you $10 million a year, you're gonna say no because it doesn't check this box over here, right? So what I love about your framework is it's almost a crosshatch of these columns of saying you've got to focus in on these categories. And it's so interesting, the similarity of the process. Super valuable.

And as, you know, as our life evolves, thinking about our values, which is always a grounding exercise for me, and, you know, as time went on in my career, career, a few things changed. I got older and started focusing more on my personal health.

Mm-hmm.

That ran at an intersection of my observation of market trends and what was happening in health and wellness, but I was deeply personally motivated to own my health, and in particular, my nutrition and fitness. I started having kids. I was 39 when I had my first child, Ocean. I was 41 when I had my second, Arrow. I had multiple miscarriages in between. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer after I had my first child. I mean, we all have these wrecking ball moments, whether they happen to us or in our circle, and that alter our perception of the juice worth the squeeze, of values, of things that are in those columns, to your point of must and absolutely not. And so this idea of health, of wellness, of strength, health being a key priority really started to change for me personally about mid-tenure, 2/3 of the way into Focus Brands. It affected my filter on the brands we acquired. We ended up taking a public company private, Jamba Juice.

Mm-hmm.

Now Jamba, and making pretty meaningful healthful changes. We had the Moe's Southwest Grill company, McAlister's and Schlotzsky's, and brought in keto, paleo, things that just brought healthy optionality. And while that was informed by great marketing leaders and customer insights, it was also greatly driven by my, as the leader of the leaders, my personal belief of how important this was for the brands that I and we would be affiliated with, but at the intersection of where the market was going.

Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a very clean segue because you, you were working at Focus where there were a lot of fun-for-you brands, a handful of That's right. Good-ish, at least for you brands, if not good-for-you brands. You find yourself now at a really good-for-you brand.

That's right.

But, but you came in with, with a founder already in place and also in a position where you had a ton of optionality. I mean, there's so many different places you could have gone, things you could have done. Why AG1?

So many reasons, the first of which is I was a That helps.

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 this path I'd been on that I just described of a personal mission for nutrition, fitness, health, and wellness. Then add in a little-known fact 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.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

I have no desire to go from 0 to 1.

You don't wanna do dirt road. You've done paved road. Is gravel—

Gravel's great.

Gravel's great.

Gravel's great. Dirt, a little. I just don't wanna be the one whacking the weeds when there's— 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.

Yep. Great to own that, by the way, 'cause not everyone does.

That's right.

I should and I can and—

No.

Yeah.

I mean, even as I see people glamorizing founders and I understand human scale, human dynamics, customer momentum, operating systems, vision and resourcing to drive layers and layers of people whether they're customers or team members, that's my muscle. And so it was time for me to leave Focus Brands. I thought I was gonna 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.

Yeah.

I'm so glad that I did, and very proud of what we navigated at that time. But then, then it was really time, and I thought I was just gonna advise and invest and help founders. That was the plan. I got connected to Chris Ashenden, the founder of AG1, about 3 months into that time off. in March of '21. And it was just one of my many advisory roles with growth stage businesses. I started to get away from really early stage and more in growth stage because it's that nice intersection of, you know, it's past product market fit. You're really starting to lean into some signs of scale. 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, as great founders do, first couple of weeks or months, he's like, come help me build this.

Come help me build this. Come help me build this.

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 ever— How big was it when you joined? 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.

All direct-to-consumer.

One product.

Yep.

D2C.

Yep.

3 years ago. And we have grown, let's just say healthily.

A lot.

Year over year for 3 years. But Chris was about to take outside capital for the first time. He bootstrapped the business to $160 million.

Wow.

Which is unbelievable. One, it tells you it's a, 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.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

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 in more of a whole food structure that's simple, high quality, and tastes good enough to drink every day blew my mind.

And how— I mean, because you entered a company in a space that is semi-regulated, not really, and reputationally off the charts. But how did you verify that the product was what it said it was?

I mean, I went deep. I just went deep. And one of the areas we needed to build was supply chain. The business had grown so quickly. And I know there are often the questions or explorations around near-death moments as a company is scaling. And one of them for AG1 was the growth was so rapid that we only had one blending house in New Zealand. And so we were running out of capacity. You have incredible risk in a single point. And so we needed to— and most of our business was in North America.

Not easy to ship product from New Zealand to North America.

Lengthy and expensive. And so, and we were investing investing a lot in carbon offsets just to offset that as a climate-neutral committed company.

Yeah.

And so we needed to stand up US blending. And so this, like the business is growing like this, you've got this point of potential risk that's beautiful and amazing, but the global business is growing, not just North America. We need to stand up North America blending. And so I went deep as an advisor in that. I mean, the benefit of advising for 6 months is you try before you buy. Like, We got to really get to know each other. And I went deep in supply chain, in quality, in science, in nutrition, in testing, and really understood more about the product, its foundation, and the opportunity. It had been iterated many, many times. It's like the iPhone. Chris has continued to upgrade the ingredients for customers without increasing the price. Different than the iPhone in that regard.

Yeah.

And so it had been on this improvement journey, but was at an inflection point where we needed to shore up sourcing. 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, were like buying vitamins. 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.

Sure.

And tests that come out that say what's on the label isn't on there. And 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.

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 gotta go back through the process. And so, and it's tested for over 500 herbicides and pesticides, not required.

Wow.

Tested for over 200 banned substances, not required. The average supplement is tested for 10.

Yeah.

So this just, the truth of what was going on was so much greater than the industry standard, which is a low bar to be clear, but so much greater than consumers knew. So I knew, one, we needed to tell that story. Two, we needed to lean into 3, while the formula, like most high-quality supplements, was created using peer-reviewed research on the ingredients, we needed to add the layer of clinical trials and in vitro SHIME studies on the finished product. So we've got both. Most don't. Most have only peer-reviewed literature that says, here's what these ingredients do, because they've been studied individually. So you put those together, you get all those studies. That's why brands like AG1 or others can say, and say thousands of studies. It literally is thousands of studies. There are hundreds on vitamin C alone, you know, as an example.

Yeah.

So, so you have thousands of peer-reviewed studies, clinical trials, double-blind, placebo-controlled, that are used to formulate a product. But then AG1 has layered in studies on the finished product, the synergy of it together, showing gut health improvement, showing energy, showing mineral absorption. And so it was so clear to me that the industry's going that way.

Yeah.

It's not required.

Yeah.

But in a way it is, right? It's required by the customer, and we need to lead the way, especially as a premium— as a premium product.

Yeah.

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.

And Kat, I mean, you know, when it's announced that you're going into AG1, or Athletic Greens, I think at the time, um, uh, one might reasonably have assumed, 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, um, you understand this so deeply. Why have you stayed in this lane? I mean, obviously it's working, but—

Yeah, the obviously it's working is an important line, which is, and we say this often, 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. 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.

Mm-hmm.

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 D2C 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.

Yeah.

And so it's not just like this marketing thing for D2C. 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.

Yep.

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 2 years that I joined, it's just rocket ship growth.

Yeah.

And keep up with the momentum while not only maintaining the quality, elevating it.

Yeah.

More studies, more research, more tests, more quality. You got to protect the baby when you're doing that.

Yeah.

Not to mention, our business is not just comprised of normal CPG, like get 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.

Yeah.

To be of the same quality, to taste consistent, even though it's all natural and whole foods. So there's a terroir 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, et cetera.

Yeah.

That, 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.

Well, you gotta have a solid foundation to grow from. And frankly, the travel packs are a game changer for, for me. So thank you for that.

They're amazing.

We're gonna have to have you back for a full AG1 episode.

Yeah.

out of time. I, I wanna wrap with 2 questions, if I may. Um, over the last few years at AG1, what is the ask-answer-act moment that has stood out most for you?

You know, I come from very mature businesses previously. If you're growing a mature business at 10% year over year, you are like crushing it. You are top decile. You are getting all kinds of love. That's backward in hypergrowth. 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 hypergrowth 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, Yeah. 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 2 years in a role, which might represent 5 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. 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.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah. 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 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?

It's back to those questions, right? Is my time here done? And can someone else do the job now better?

Yeah. Last question. What was the last hotshot moment that really mattered for you at AG1?

It was the founder and I navigating a pretty big wholesale organization shift around culture and talent. I mean, I practiced the hotshot rule 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 leads Advantage Solutions. And I just admire him so deeply.

Mm-hmm.

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, 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 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. And 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.

It's so great that you developed this framework and this format, this process, and you're sticking to it. And generations of people who work with you get to pick this up and take it on. Now we get to share it with our audience. I could talk with you for hours. Likewise. Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I hope we get to do this again.

Likewise.

And thank you for the product as well. It's an amazing product. Thank you.