679: Kat Cole - From Hooters Waitress to $500M CEO, You're Interviewing for Your Next Job Every Day, Learning vs. Ego, The Four Key Mindsets for Senior Leaders, and The Journey of Who You Become

What It Covers

Kat Cole, CEO of AG1, discusses how she grew the company from $160M to over $500M in revenue, her four-mindset framework for evaluating senior leaders, two career-decision questions she uses before every role change, and how she neutralized workplace opposition early in her career at Hooters.

Key Questions Answered

• •Career Decision Framework: Before accepting any role, ask two questions: "Is my work done here?" and "Could someone else do what this company needs next better than I can?" If the answer to either is yes, it signals time to move — either to a new role internally or to leave the organization entirely.
• •Four Senior Leader Mindsets: When hiring C-suite executives, Kat screens specifically for humility, curiosity, courage, and confidence in equal measure. Humility is the belief that others contribute to success; curiosity is acting on that belief through questions. Confidence is believing things will work out; courage is acting despite uncertainty or unpopularity.
• •"If Not For" Interview Technique: To reveal whether senior candidates have genuine humility, ask them to describe a major challenge, let them explain how they succeeded, then ask: "If not for that team, that dataset, or that resource — how would you have navigated it?" Candidates who can't acknowledge external enablers typically lack the self-awareness needed at the executive level.
• •Neutralizing Opposition Without Confrontation: When a senior colleague at Hooters dismissed Kat due to her age, she adjusted her communication style — speaking more slowly, asking questions instead of making statements — without confronting him directly. This neutralized the detractor and allowed work to proceed. She addressed it directly only after the dynamic had stabilized over 12–18 months.
• •Compounding Growth Through Product Quality: AG1's growth from $160M to over $500M came primarily from existing customers repurchasing and referring others, not from marketing spend. Kat's view: no marketing strategy can substitute for a product customers consistently use and recommend. Sustainable scale at that level requires compounding retention, not just acquisition.