Kat Cole, President and COO of FOCUS Brands: “I’ve had my team put in jail.”

9 to 5ish with theSkimm

theSkimm

Entrepreneurship, Careers, Business

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2018

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kat Cole started her career as a waitress at Hooters. At first, she was just helping out her family. But in her second year of college, she decided to turn that side hustle...into her main hustle. So she went to work at Hooters corporate instead of graduating. And at 20 years old, she was helping the company open franchises all over the world. A couple years later, Kat became a VP at the company. Eventually, she got a business degree and took over at Cinnabon, where she helped grow the biz to a billion-dollar brand. Now she’s the President and COO of FOCUS brands, aka the parent co of companies like Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s Pretzels. On the couch, she talks to us about addressing negative feedback, choosing to go to business school without a BA, and “the brutal leadership mirror”. We’ll let her explain.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Carly Zagan.
0:03.6	And I'm Danielle Weisberg, and we're the co-founders of The Skim.
0:07.2	Welcome to our podcast, Skim From the Couch.
0:10.1	On every episode we invite smart, inspiring successful women to chat candidly about
0:15.0	what it takes to get to the top and then what it's like when you actually get there.
0:18.6	So this is a podcast about the real stuff, the crappy days, the bad advice, the first big career win, and the people who are there
0:25.2	for the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. We started the skim from a couch, and we have only
0:30.3	one rule on this one, no BS.
0:34.3	So please join us in welcoming Kat Cole to our couch.
0:38.0	Kat started out as a waitress at Hooters
0:40.2	to help support her family while she was in high school.
0:42.6	In her second year of college, she decided to drop out
0:45.1	and turn that side hustle at Hooters
0:47.3	into her main hustle.
0:48.8	She went to work for the corporate side,
0:50.5	and by the time she was 19,
0:52.2	she was helping Hooters open restaurants around the
0:54.4	world a few years later she was a VP at the company.
0:58.8	Kat got a business degree and then took over as president of Sinibun,
1:02.8	yum, where she helped grow the company
1:05.3	to a billion dollar brand.
1:06.7	Today, Cat is the president and CEO of Focus Brands,
	...

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