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
Episode
58 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Leadership, Marketing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓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.
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.
Notable Moment
When asked to celebrate a one-year milestone, Kat bypassed any revenue targets and focused entirely on her husband's human-powered global circumnavigation — rowing oceans, cycling continents — reframing achievement as being about who you become and who you do it with.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the learning leader show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, one of my favorites. It's Kat Cole, CEO of AG1. When she was hired at at AG1 a few years ago, they were doing a 160,000,000 in revenue. Now they're doing more than $500,000,000 a year. Before that, she was president of Cinnabon and Focus Brands. And before that, she started as a Hooters waitress who earned an MBA before her undergraduate degree. I do not know anyone else who has done that. We first recorded together in December 2015, more than a decade ago. It's episode number 78, one of my all time favorites. We chose to do it again during this conversation we discussed. The questions she asks and what she listens for in executive interviews and how they reveal whether someone can actually do the thing or just talk about it. I love that Kat took us inside the room for this. And then, the two questions she asked before every career move that have nothing to do with money or title. I think this would be helpful for you. And then how she adapted her communication style at Hooters to neutralize opposition without confrontation and what it taught her about leading in any environment. I think this story could be super helpful for someone, especially when you may find yourself in a situation where somebody opposes you for no reason at all, which is the case for Kat. Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Kat Cole. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader. Kat, it's, it's so good to see you. Welcome back on the Learning Leader Show. Thanks for having me. Eleven years ago? I mean, 2015 was our first conversation. That's wild to me to think about. That's bananas. I know. Well, speaking of your life and what's changed, you go join AG one. Correct me if these numbers aren't fully right. I believe when you joined, the revenue was a $160,000,000 in 2021. Yep. And now are you guys doing, like, 600 plus a year million? Yeah. We've we've just you know, for what we communicate, we are doing over half 1,000,000,000 in revenue for several years and profitable. So it's been a pretty wild ride. We've over three x'd the business. I mean, that's an insane amount of …
Get the full transcript (10,478 words) + summary by email — free
One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.
One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.
You just read a 3-minute summary of a 55-minute episode.
Get The Learning Leader Show summarized like this every Monday — plus up to 2 more podcasts, free.
Pick Your Podcasts — FreeKeep Reading
More from The Learning Leader Show
705: Dr. Martin Seligman - Positive Psychology, Learned Optimism, Grit, PERMA, Agency, Resilience, and Predicting the Future
Sep 10 · 53 min
Masters of Scale
Always be the challenger, with Savannah Bananas founder Jesse Cole
Aug 6
More from The Learning Leader Show
704: Strauss Zelnick - The Leader Who Greenlit Dirty Dancing, Owns Grand Theft Auto, Loves Being Coached, and Might be the Fittest CEO Alive
Sep 6 · 52 min
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
Ep. 395: Should I Try a “Social Media Pause”?
Mar 9
More from The Learning Leader Show
We summarize every new episode. Want them in your inbox?
705: Dr. Martin Seligman - Positive Psychology, Learned Optimism, Grit, PERMA, Agency, Resilience, and Predicting the Future
704: Strauss Zelnick - The Leader Who Greenlit Dirty Dancing, Owns Grand Theft Auto, Loves Being Coached, and Might be the Fittest CEO Alive
703: Angela Duckworth - Why Grit Isn't Enough, Situation Over Willpower, How Belief Gets Borrowed, John Wooden's Socks, and How the Right People and Places Bring Out Your Best
702: Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS) - Hitting Every Goal & Still Feeling Worthless... Gratitude, Mantras, and Hiring Like a Champion
701: Mark Pincus (Founder of Zynga) - Why We All Need a Coach, Maintaining High Standards, The Book of Life, Aggressive Ambition, and Why Your Instincts Are Almost Always Right
Similar Episodes
Related episodes from other podcasts
Masters of Scale
Aug 6
Always be the challenger, with Savannah Bananas founder Jesse Cole
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
Mar 9
Ep. 395: Should I Try a “Social Media Pause”?
Practical AI
Aug 25
AI Proficiency: From Users to Builders
The Mel Robbins Podcast
Jul 2
Create a Happier Version of Yourself: Redirect Your Energy for Positive Thinking
The Peter Attia Drive
May 25
#393 ‒ AMA #85: A guide to medications and supplements: determining what to take, what to skip, and how to know if they're working for you
Explore Related Topics
This podcast is featured in Best Mindset Podcasts (2026) — ranked and reviewed with AI summaries.
You're clearly into The Learning Leader Show.
Every Monday, we deliver AI summaries of the latest episodes from The Learning Leader Show and 192+ other podcasts. Free for one show.
Start My Monday DigestNo credit card · Unsubscribe anytime