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- [00:00]
Kat Cole
We got to over half a billion in annual revenue and never had the tools of the trade. And so this year we did. AG1 is at Costco. That's where AG1 Next Gen comes in.
- [00:12]
Mike
All the quality vitamins, probiotics and superfoods and this stuff.
- [00:16]
Host
I start every day feeling my best, ready to go. Has anybody ever gone like from, you know, the shop floor to executive in that time frame? Like that's very fast.
- [00:27]
Kat Cole
And by the time I was 26, I was one of the vice presidents of the company. Doing 800 million in revenue.
- [00:32]
Mike
Perspective is the thing that makes great leaders great because they're able to keep the most important things in front of them and not get distracted by the side quest is product quality.
- [00:42]
Kat Cole
Marketing only gets people to try a thing. It only makes them aware of a thing. What makes my customers keep drinking ag1 for 5, 6, 7. I talked to an 11 year ag1 drinker the other day. It's not marketing, it is the continuous improvement. It is the quality, it is the experience.
- [00:58]
Mike
And that you're being very scientifically driven on it. So it's easy to understand why people would pay a premium for that.
- [01:03]
Kat Cole
My dad, who was an alcoholic when I was nine, I have two younger sisters. I helped my mom raise them. She worked three jobs. That's why I started working so young. We launched an airline, a casino, a marketing company. We were fully vertically integrated, owned most of our supply chain and then the CEO died and his son had to take over.
- [01:20]
Host
Do you still have those moments where you're like, oh, this is going to fail? Like where you actually have doubt?
- [01:24]
Kat Cole
In the cases where it looks like my team or my company or I have taken a big leap, I have gotten very clear eyed that not taking that leap is a big risk. That is what I have confidence in. Not the exact what, but we have the right questions. Questions, scale answers. Don't.
- [01:40]
Host
Okay, I have a question for you. And no, this isn't some weird joke. And no, I am so not trying to get canceled. But what do you get when you combine a Hooters hostess, a global restaurant president and a 10 figure revenue CPG executive? Well, the CEO of a supplement company doing well over 500 million in annual revenue. Obviously our guest today is a true titan of consumer. She's had one of the most storied careers in the game. And after this conversation, you're going to see why. I'm not kidding when I say this. There are very, very few people who have operated consumer brands at the scale that this operator has. And she's done it multiple times over the last two and a half decades. She even oversaw one of the most public rebrands in recent history. You're going to know it when you see it. And yes, my fellow operators, I am talking about cat Cole, the CEO of AG1. This is operators Titans brought to you by Applovin. And today's episode is a real, real treat. From hot wings to Cinnabuns to green powder with a heaping side of rare human honesty, I hope you enjoy it and learn even more than I got out of this conversation. Let's get into it.
- [02:48]
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- [04:18]
Host
Okay, Kat, I. There's like a really cliche thing that I think everybody asks you. I don't want to start there. You've got an Incredible. Sort of, like career trajectory. And I would say varied career so far. I want to ask you about leadership because a lot of the people that listen to the show lead companies of all sizes. And I would like to know, to start things off, what. What taught you more about sort of like executive leadership? Number one, this, like, weird swing that you've done, from selling cinnamon rolls all the way to powdered greens. Number two, you've appeared on CBS's Undercover Boss. I thought that was super cool inside, like a gas station a few times. And then number three, navigating the whole, like, pandemic lockdown while you were at a company that was like, heavily reliant or I guess, like very much in. In. In person retail. Like food courts, the whole thing. Yeah. Which of those three sort of, like, posed the most challenge or taught you the most about, like, actual leadership?
- [05:27]
Kat Cole
I'll go with the first way you framed which one posed the most challenge. They all have their challenges. But I have a visceral reaction when one of the. One of the options you've provided is the period that I was leading a multibillion dollar, multibrand restaurant organization in the pandemic hit, like, I just. Even when you ask, I just get transported back to that. PTSD is. It may have. It may not have been the thing that taught me the most about leadership. It was the place where everything I had learned was most tested. So the. The highlights and the low lights together are one. Our business was global. We were in over 70, I think close to 80 countries at that point. This is early 2027 brands. So Jamba Juice, Moe's, Southwest Grill, McAllister's Deli, Schlotsky's Deli, Carvel ice cream, Auntie Anne's Pretzels, Cinnabon, Seattle's best coffee International.
- [06:43]
Host
Bloody hell.
- [06:44]
Kat Cole
Technically a. But Seattle's best was a international license. So we have these seven and a half brands. I'm managing all the presidents. I'm the COO of the company. So seven presidents of the brands, plus two presidents of operating divisions, one of international ops and which was all franchising, and then one of the licensing business, which was our big, probably three, $400 million revenue CPG business with product in restaurants and grocery stores, et cetera. So several billion together. So that's the landscape and most of it. Other than the licensing business, the CPG grocery business was restaurants, a brick and mortar franchise. So when the pandemic hit all around the world again, we had significant exposure in Asia. Auntiens is really big in apac. We knew before the United States knew that this was bad because our business just shut down in Asia. So February, there was this rolling like, oh, you know, this is bad revenue to, to zero. There's two buckets of revenue, right? There's the franchisees getting revenue from customers coming in that are no longer coming in, and there's us getting our revenue from the royalties of that revenue. So, you know, 8% royalty of zero revenue is certainly zero. So, you know, everyone's revenue dries up. You have all of your expenses, the hourly employees of the franchisees, the corporate operations, the franchise support infrastructure. And we were very fortunate that we had a fortress balance sheet. An incredibly well run company with incredible access to capital to weather such a threat storm at such a scale. So at least we didn't have that problem. We then navigated region by region, globally shutting down, getting to the United States in early March and all of a sudden everything shuts down. It kind of happens in a couple cities, couple states, and then lights out. The second thing that was going on is I was the coo. We had just gotten an a new CEO who had never worked in the restaurant business, had come from the hotel business and I think he had been there for four weeks. And so I like to joke, what
- [09:06]
Host
a way to start.
- [09:07]
Kat Cole
Yeah, it wasn't funny then, but it's funny now. You know, I joked, this guy doesn't even know where the bathroom is. Not that it would matter because the corporate offices were closed. Like you weren't even allowed. So I was uniquely in the position to navigate as a leader the decimation of revenue and demand, the questions and absolute fear and terror of our franchisees who were looking for answers, leadership and guidance, where we were all navigating an unprecedented event together. And then a third thing happened, which was my daughter, who was seven months old at the time, became incredibly ill. She developed a respiratory virus. It wasn't Covid, but it was right as Covid was hitting, she couldn't breathe, she almost died. We went into the hospital and there was, if you remember when Covid hit, there was a nursing shortage because there were no tests, there was no so people, if they had symptoms, had to quarantine. So you had hospitals being overrun with patients with mostly Covid, but normal stuff like this, a different respiratory virus, a shortage of staff. And so I remember this moment being in the hospital when I had my AirPods in listening to different franchisees calling frustrated, freaking out corporate meetings about, you know, how do we communicate and support our team? Incredible focus, like Cash and people is all that matters. Protect our people, which includes our customers and our team, and protect cash. Help our franchisees do that. And we do that so we can navigate this storm, whatever it's going to look like. And I have them in my ears. Meetings, calls, tears, anger, right? Yelling. People who just don't know what to do and are looking for answers. While I'm keeping my eye out for the doctor who isn't typically working in this part of the hospital because of nursing shortages or doctor shortages. Taking care of my daughter, who's on breathing support and NG tube, which is a feeding tube that goes into your nose because she can't breathe and she can't eat. And I just remember, and this went on for 10 days. It was just a nasty virus that there is no medicine for that. They have to just help her through it. And she was too little to clear it herself and breathe. And it was super scary. She almost died again in the hospital because someone turned her oxygen up to 10 and sent her into like respiratory duress. And I remember thinking, this is a lot like I was on the. I was in tears every day. Not, you know, bawling, rocking in a corner, but teary. Just emotion, right? The emotion. Emotion has a job. It is to be felt. I felt it, it was expressed. But I had to be strong for other people who were fearful in their own way, including my daughter. And my husband was with our two year old at the time and he was also working full time, so we're trading off. And I just remember thinking, I'm glad it's me. That's it. I'm glad it's me. No one's going to stick up for my daughter and advocate for her more than me. No one's going to fight for my franchisees trying to find answers when there are none more than me. I've worked in, in these restaurants and in restaurants like it my whole life. I'm an operator's operator. These franchisees are going through it. I have deep respect and empathy for them. We are a collective unit, even though we are separate businesses. And it was the most like badass mama bear leadership energy I've ever felt at one time. And then she was finally better and we went home with her feeding tube. The doctors are like, you got to get out of here. As soon as she can. As soon as she's good enough to be good to go, she's got to go because there's really sick people that need to get in here. So we left. I'm not a Nurse. I've never managed an NG tube and I remember dealing with her pulling it out and having to feed it back in myself while I'm on my AirPods work. I mean it was just insane. And so whether it's navigating a complete decimation of your demand, the, the understanding that no one has the answers, but someone must provide direction and decision and then the personal priority of caring for my daughter and my family and nothing else matters beyond that. That's a lot of leadership to be put to the test at one period of time. And the way the movie ends of that chapter is because of the innovation we had put long before the pandemic. Third party delivery, which was a nightmare to get through with our franchisees. No franchise owner wants to pay 30 cents of every dollar. That's what it was then for a delivery driver that's not their worker. Right. Like all that stuff to get it in place just to meet the modern consumer where they were. Those were the. And putting in apps and putting in different structures of menu for off premise. We were one of the fastest sets of brands to come out of the pandemic swiftly, incredibly profitably, with unprecedented sales. So lower costs, fewer shifts, higher sales because we had put in the innovation to allow us to take advantage of what was possible as soon as the world opened up. So that was great. The company performed incredibly well. On the other side, my daughter got healthy and we learned more about her airway dysfunction and things that were underneath it. And I went on a multi year health journey with her and she's even better now. And my family got closer, my team got closer. So it, you know, it, it all ended well, but it was really exhausting every single day.
- [14:39]
Mike
I definitely remember that. I remember being exhausted at the end of every night, even though all I was doing was sitting in front of a computer, you know, like that was the kind of. The thing that I remember about that phase is just no, you weren't moving around. You, you would go to bed so mentally and emotionally exhausted. One question I have for you, Kat, about that. Do you think that. That it's true that the more you're having to kind of manage and triage, the less intimidating it gets? Because it feels that way a little bit to me as a leader sometimes that. Do you think it actually helped you to be a better leader in a business context that you were being forced to step up as a mom?
- [15:17]
Kat Cole
Absolutely. I have experienced a very similar pattern that the more something is an obvious crisis, you know, the benefit of an obvious crisis is that most people understand the difference between nice to have and need to have when things are good. That is very blurry in teams, leadership. It's just people have different definitions of what's necessary. But when something is a crisis, you get far. You know, the view gets far more concentrated. And so there's more clarity of where to act, less wasting of time and energy. And you often have fewer internal debates and fights around what that action should be like during the pandemic. Right. It's. We have to protect our people and protect cash. Don't talk to me about anything. And ideally, don't talk to me about anything that doesn't help both. That makes leadership like an arrow, where when times are good, it's sort of radiant. You know, you have these other opportunities, and when you are. When I have been put to the test that way, in those moments, I agree, you come out of it with still that clarity, with more of that sharpness, with more of that muscle. And it doesn't feel intimidating because when you are focused, whether it's because a crisis forces you to or because you maintain that discipline, you're often rewarded for it. And that is the part that, for me, makes it not intimidating. I know this is right. I know it's hard, but I know it's right. I know the rewards will come. I know there are more penalties for spreading out and being indecisive than there are for narrowing in and being decisive. And even if that decision is wrong, we will have clarity in how to address it. And that's pretty empowering, I think, versus intimidating.
- [17:11]
Mike
When I was in college, there's a woman named Sherry Cole who was the college basketball coach at the University of Oklahoma. She got inducted to the Women's college basketball hall of Fame. But she gave a speech that I heard as a student, and it has always stuck with me. And basically the title of the speech is knowing the difference between a lump in your oatmeal, a lump in your throat, and a lump in your breast. And it's that exact idea. That perspective really does change the way that we lead. And when things are good, it's amazing the things we can get frustrated about. We can get frustrated about missing last week's sales projection by 5% and, like, lose perspective. And maybe that's really what we're talking about, is that perspective is the thing that makes great leaders great because they're able to keep the most important things in front of them and not get distracted by the side quests. And you mentioned it, even the people around You. They're thinking less about their resume, you know, their. Their comp. All this other stuff. Every. You're able to kind of focus people on a mission together, and it's amazing what they can do when they're focused. Totally.
- [18:14]
Host
Kat, do you. Do you think you. You started off by saying, like, maybe didn't teach you something, like, you didn't learn the most, but it was certainly where it was tested.
- [18:22]
Kat Cole
Yeah.
- [18:22]
Host
This might be a hard question to answer, just a line of thought, but I'm really curious how you view this. I find that the older I get and the longer I do this job, that I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. I just feel like the context is constantly changing and, like, I'm just being reminded of the same things over and over again. So, like, it's like, I knew that. Holy. Now I have to apply it again. Would you, like, how often do you feel like you're learning something new versus oh, I'm just, you know, I'm moving through time, and I'm just coming back to the same lessons, and I'm coming back to the same practice, if that makes sense.
- [18:59]
Kat Cole
Yeah. What feels new in daily lessons is a bit of what you mentioned, which is the. The lessons around action and application. It's less a new principle, like, oh, this new value that I have, or this new principle that's generally true. We learn many of those things in kindergarten, in our early jobs, you know, in our early career. I think from family experiences. I certainly. It was very formative for me. But the how and when to apply those lessons and principles and the intersection of other people's experiences, lessons and principles, converging on a team to make swift decisions. And then the growing body of evidence, when you look back, the postmortem, the autopsy without blame, of how effective was that? You know, did we make the best decision? What could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? And those should have exercises are, I think, freeing. They're really empowering. I try to do them quite often.
- [20:11]
Host
Yeah. You're one of the things that strikes me about your. Your story or your journey is like, the tenure that you've had in some of the places, like, you've. You've been. You, like, you commit seasons of your life to the work that you do based on, like, what I see. So you started very young at Hooters. Like, I think you were 17 somewhere around there, and within 10 years, you were an executive in that company. Is it.
- [20:38]
Mike
Is that.
- [20:38]
Host
I mean, number one, has anybody ever Gone, like from, you know, the shop floor, so to speak, or like the back room to executive in that time frame. Like, that's very fast. But is that when you would. Is that like your most formative period of your career was just like, oh, my God, I'm. I'm starting at the very bottom, and holy crap, now I'm damn near the top?
- [21:00]
Kat Cole
It was greatly formative. I'd say there were several formative chapters. And to your point, I've been in each company, although the company has transformed over the time I was there. And I've often had many different roles in the window of time. I've been in each company, but for a significant amount of time. And that's a lot of life and a lot of learning and in one place. And so the first bucket of learning was childhood. You know, we left my dad, who was an alcoholic, when I was nine. I have two younger sisters. I helped my mom raise them. She worked three jobs. That's why I started working so young in hourly roles in the mall, cleaning gym equipment, eventually a hostess at Hooters. So there was a lot of lesson, leadership lesson in that window and in my family life. And then the second big leadership lesson chapter was this. 14 years at Hooters, which is summarized as. Started as a hostess at 17, became a waitress at 18. Thought I was just going to pay my way through college as the first person in my family to get into college. And it was just a job that I loved to get me through through. And then the company started growing. By the time I was 19, I was opening franchises around the world. By the time I was 20, I dropped out of college and took a corporate gig with Hooters, which is how I got to Atlanta. And by the time I was 26, I was one of the vice presidents of the company, doing 800 million in revenue. And then led through so many crazy periods. We launched an airline, a casino, a marketing company. We were fully vertically integrated, owned most of our supply chain and dsd, a direct distribution network. And then the CEO died and his son had to take over. So we had to navigate probate in an estate that was not really thoughtfully planned and was quite messy to live through as the largest asset in the estate and then finally liquidating that asset in the estate to private equity. So there was that chapter and all kinds of interesting lessons in that chapter. Being a young leader, traveling around the world, extending a brand in different countries, being in a franchise system where you are growing in partnership with someone else's capital, in addition to Our own corporately owned restaurant. So being an operator, a marketer, a brander and, and essentially a runner of multiple enterprises and, and then navigating being a, you know, an executive in my 20s when my peers were in their 50s and which brought so much good, a little bit of fresh, a little bit of tough stuff, but a lot of good. And, and then the sale of the company into private equity. We had been privately held so going from one ownership structure to the other was incredible, an incredible lesson. I went back to business school, I have a master's without a bachelor's, so I dropped out. But I did go to get an mba, Rare but possible. And then that next chapter was running multiple private equity owned portfolio companies at Focus Brands, starting as the president of Cinnabon, turning that business around out of the recession, building what was then an unprecedented multi channel enterprise, taking a restaurant brand and extending it into grocery products because it's the thing people do now immediately. But it was very unique then and it became so successful that it became a model in and of itself. Then I became group president of that company, managing multiple presidents who had previously been my peers and navigating that company's growth. I was there for 2, 10 years, so Hooters for 14 and all of that change. Focus Brands now it's called Goto Foods for a decade and, and then moved into more, more very focused into health and nutrition with then athletic greens now AG1 and I've been here for four and a half years. So it's funny, it looks I'm loyal certainly, but it's not that, right? It's that I, I, I have two questions that I ask when I have opportunity and I was recruited to leave, you know, each of those points and I get offers to go other places or sometimes I think about should I do something differently. Of course, like any person as my life changes. But I asked two questions. One, is my work here done? Just is it done as I see what is to be done? Is my work here done? Have I done what I came to do and want to do? And then two, if I'm being honest, could someone else do what needs to be done next, not now next. Could someone else do what needs to be done next better than me? Is that what's best for the company? And if the answer to both of those questions is yes, my work is done and someone else could be a do a better job of what's next, it is time for me to go. But when I would reflect on those questions, the answer was no to one or both, which results in me doubling down, changing something, staying, expanding my role. Like, oh yeah, my work is done, but no, no one else could do what I'm doing. So I need to change something here or my work isn't done. But someone else could do this part. I need someone else to do this part so I can go grow a different part of the company. Like my growth, my opportunity, my impact actually is here until it's not. And there's an opportunity to do something different and better that feels more aligned with my values, the opportunity in the market and what fits with where my life is, my personal life is at that point.
- [26:16]
Mike
I'm just curious, Kat, that at this point in your career you've now been through this, probably like your third really major leadership role. Is that a good description?
- [26:26]
Kat Cole
I would call my executive tenure at hooters as the first. Right from 26 to 31. Then from. At 31 I became president of Cinnabon. This global France. It was my first like CEO of the brand, running the role. Few years into that. So that would be number two. A few years into that, four years into that I became group president and started a whole innovation division. So that would be number three. Becoming COO of the parent company of all divisions, all things. President and COO would be number four and then AG1 would be number five. So fifth. I've been the president or CEO of brands since 2010, man.
- [27:13]
Mike
So I, I guess one of the questions, because you alluded to it in your answer was what are the things that keep you motivated at this point? You've been in it long enough that I, I'm guessing that the kind of profit motive piece has kind of dropped off in importance or in necessity. So now you're able to function in kind of a post economic way of thinking about your career and the jobs you do. So what are some of those values that guide how you think about your career and the opportunities you take?
- [27:43]
Kat Cole
Now I've heard many people reference the, the concept of ikigai, right. These circles that overlap and I don't remember what they all are, but it's like mission and impact and purpose.
- [27:55]
Host
What are you good at and what does the world need? And yeah, all that stuff like the,
- [27:58]
Kat Cole
well, the, The Ven. The Venn. Venn diagram. Yeah. So it's a version of that certainly. But more specifically for me, I had, I have had such an, an unbelievable and incredible and at moments tough but mostly incredible life and that has included meeting my husband, the love of my life, later than many do. And having kids later in life than at least they used to. It's becoming a little more common now. But I had my. My son Ocean at 39. So I had a miscarriage. My son Ocean at 39, two miscarriages in between. My daughter Arrow at 41. And so that is such a force in how I think about things now. There's beauty, I think, in being a more mature or seasoned parent and partner. My husband and I, literally, we met and proposed to each other within two weeks. And he then rode across the Atlantic Ocean in a rowboat. He's an ultra endurance athlete on the side. We got closer through the row. It's not his job, it's his hobby. And we got closer through the row, not farther apart. When he landed, we tattooed our rings, we got married at Burning man. And then we started this like, miscarriage and baby's journey, all while I was COO of this multi billion dollar company. You know, we let. We grew by M and A. So I'm traveling around, meeting with brands to acquire. We grew our own businesses. And just wild right that season of my life, from my mid to late 30s to now. I'm 47 now. We've been together for 10 years, almost 11. And it's, it is the answer to what colors my thinking now. And so the way that plays out in my decisions is, you know, my purpose and pride. What am I proud of? What feels real and important? What can I grow and impact and put out into the world that is deeply aligned with who I am and what I believe? I want as little disconnection of that as possible. Not that you can't find purpose in any work and meaning in any work. But truly being able to grow a business and a brand, that helped me. I was a customer for multiple years before I ever met the founder, before I ever was asked to advise him. And it helped me as a busy mom running companies so much. I was, I had all these separate pills and powders. I was trying to be a super supplementer. I was going to Whole Foods, getting like vitamin C and Ashworth and all of that stuff, and it wasn't working for me. I had a lot of challenges around the birth of my second child. And so my husband, who's an ultra endurance athlete, was like, just try this. Like, half the stuff you've bought is expired. You travel so much, you can't keep up with separate pills and bottles. Anyway, try this. And AG1 made such a difference for me. My, my gut, my energy, my hair, skin and nails. I was getting Sick less. It's not a medical claim to my experience. So I was a super fan of the product. And that is an example of the alignment where I'm a customer, I'm a user, I'm a believer. I absolutely fell in love with the overall approach to nutrition. My mom had breast cancer while I was having kids late in life. And so I just got really serious about health and nutrition and I couldn't unlearn what I had learned. And I also saw the business opportunity there that the consumer was moving in that direction. So for me, making decisions in this like post economic state is about that. It's about layers of impact, layers of integrity and authenticity to how I live my life and what makes me proud for my husband and my kids and the structure of that work. We're a fully remote company and that's very difficult to do at this scale. But it works for me and it works for us, and that enables me to show up for my kids even at a very busy time in my life.
- [32:07]
Host
On all that. I mean, what's. I'd love to learn a little bit more about this hotshot rule you have, because you strike me as either. You've done a lot of deliberate work on mindset and. And maintaining like this what is clearly a very positive outlook on how you run your companies. Can you just touch on this hotshot rule thing? Because I find this an interesting. I've not actually seen it phrase this way before.
- [32:31]
Kat Cole
Yeah, Likely because of my background. Like when I'll share often when my mom came to me when I was 9 and said, that's it, I'm done. We're leaving. What she meant was, we were leaving. My father and I didn't get upset. I looked at her and said, some version of what took you so long. I was ready to go. I knew it was bad. There is something in that. And then the many experiences I had as a young professional, as a waitress, you know, as a waitress, it would be interesting to see the corporate office show up and give all the praise to this manager because their sales were up. And meanwhile you're like, this person's awful. The sales are up because there's construction down the road and all the construction workers come here. So you kind of learn. The people who are closest to the action know what the right thing to do is long before the leader does. The people who are close to the action have a detail that you don't have, but they don't have the authority to make a decision. They don't have the ability to Name a scaled problem or a scalable solution. And I have become obsessed with knowing the true truth, staying crazy close to the customer, staying really close to people's perspectives and their experience so that I'm not, I don't have blind spots or I have as few blind spots as possible. And I can make the best decisions for my life, my family, my business, and many of my practices, which of course I didn't know were frameworks and practices then they were just kind of things I would do to get through stuff and be helpful. And then upon reflection or when asked, I could call them a thing and put them into a succinct way to help other people use it. They're all a version of checking in, checking in with myself, checking in with others, checking in with customers, checking in with my husband. The hotshot rule is a version of checking in. It's just checking in with my understanding of what I'm going through and using the inspiration and perspective of someone I admire. So it's simply this. And I practice it weekly. I have for a very long time talking like, you know, well over 15 years, 17, I don't know how long. Now I practice it once a week. It used to be quarterly and it was so effective it became monthly and then so effective it became weekly. And anything more than weekly is a little much. And candidly at this point, it just becomes part of how I think. I think about my role that I want to do better in, which could be my role as mother, my role as a wife, my role as a daughter. I'm so fortunate to have my mom still on this earth, or my role as a CEO. And so I think of my role and just a few details around it, like what's going on right now, my slack, my team dynamics, the business. I just ground myself in what's up? Then I envision someone I admire. Could be anyone, could be my mom, could be someone I've talked to recently, could be someone I've read about. So I envision someone I admire. Then I envision them in my seat tomorrow. And whatever that seat is, I think of them in my role as CEO. They're looking at my slack. They're reading my interactions with the team. They're in my team meetings. If it's my role there. They're seeing how I show up for my husband or my family. And I just ask if, when they see that, when they're in that seat, what's the first, what's one thing in the first thing they would do differently to make it Better. And for whatever reason, when I see my life through their eyes, something comes to mind immediately. And I think the reason is because one, we often know the next thing we could and should do to be better, to have impact. We just, for whatever reason aren't.
- [35:50]
Host
You said something there that I'd like to zoom in on, if it's okay. You like to stay extremely close to your customer. You check in with your employees. How are you doing that at? I, I can see how you can do that at your. At like Cinnabon and that company.
- [36:09]
Kat Cole
Walk in and talk to people.
- [36:10]
Host
Yeah. How are you doing that at at AG1, where your customers are largely direct consumer. Right. And your employees, as you mentioned, are all remote.
- [36:20]
Mike
Yeah.
- [36:21]
Kat Cole
It requires more intention, it has less serendipity, but it still happens and it happens at the same frequency. So the way I do it. And then our team as well. So it's a mandatory part of our leadership structure and schedule. And certain teams that have even more impact on outward facing decisions have more frequency with customers. So we have our cip, our customer interview program. And it's as simple as our team. Because we do have emails, because we do have the ability to communicate with customers, which you don't have in a restaurant setting. We reach out and say, our CEO would love to chat with you. This is what she does regularly. Would you be interested? We'd love to hear more about your experience, your advice. That's it. And we just, you know, we have a big member base, so there's a lot of people to reach out to. And plenty of people say yes.
- [37:10]
Host
And so you're getting on the phone
- [37:11]
Kat Cole
with customers on the on zoom or the phone often. Zoom. It's awesome. It is constant. Constant. It is my joy. It fills my cup. It sometimes makes me mad because when, you know, when you talk to customers, everything is so simple and often so consistent. And in an effort to continue to evolve a business, to grow a business, to bring more sophisticated things, to market things, you know, are right and good, sometimes you talk to a customer and they're like, I don't care about that. You're just like, so, like, oh, no. So it's grounding and it's empowering. So I do it. My team does it. The other is we recently expanded into retail, into Costco. And so we went direct to national and to Costco. And so my team, a good portion of my team, we are in Costco with the samplers. And so you're just. That's a little bit of a hybrid. Like my Restaurant days, right. You're in there, you're talking to people. You talk to people who are considering but not trying. You talk to people who are trying but not buying. You talk to people. It's. And that is. Oh, I miss that. You know, I do miss that in person ability to just talk and feel people's energy and really spend time. But we do get it virtually through our zooms and phone calls. And then we have traditional like quant qual work, proper work with prospects with existing customers and more kind of sophisticated company, legitimate customer insights work.
- [38:41]
Mike
It's a great point. I, I was a server throughout high school. That's kind of how I, I earned money in high school and early college. And it's amazing how much I learned about business and entrepreneurship through actually just waiting tables. And one of the things like you're saying, Kat, is even in this world where we have so many digital tools and all these different ways to survey and gather information, I'm, I just don't know that we've recreated fully the ability to qualitatively gather a feel for the customer the way that you can in person. And it sounds like that's what you're saying with the, the club sampling. And I've had the same experience that there's, there's really no replacement for actually talking to customers. And maybe, maybe that's one of the biggest problems with D2C is that we're so busy clicking on our keyboards that we don't get out there and talk to people and you're just able to pick up on things that, that are really difficult I think for a survey to pull through.
- [39:37]
Kat Cole
The other place we do it is we over the last few years have really ramped up the investment in community and activations. Our run clubs, Seiji one is very morning oriented and so being with people there too is. And that's got a special layer because it's not just interacting with people around the product and what's your experience and what are your questions and what's your advice? It's building community around that and that adds a different and very deeply, often missing layer to e Commerce and D2C. Like a deeply fulfilling layer to what is typically an E commerce or predominantly D2C business.
- [40:22]
Host
Here at Pela Applovin is the most incremental new channel we tested in 2025 itself. Serve as manager. Axon is now open and they're offering you $5,000 in credits when you spend $5,000. Every single one of us is looking for that next best place to put our ad dollars. It is just one of the laws of D2C. There are now brands spending six figures a day on apps love. And that kind of blows my mind but it is true. And there are brands that are running it as their number two and number three channel after Meta and Google. That is super impressive. You would be foolish to at least not try it out in 2026. Go to 9operators.com Apple to give it a shot. Oh and you'll also get access to the live operators Mastermind. We ran with over 25e commerce heavyweights plus our step by step playbook to channel expansion. 9 operators.com Apple let's get back to the show. Cat I I am so curious. When you joined AG1, did you come in knowing that this is like the playbook you're going to run? Like, did you come in knowing like we need to take this from a DC brand, we got to go into retail, we got to rebrand it? Or was all of this like you know, established after you joined? And then I would really like to learn a little bit more about this transition from AG1 being like very D2C, only D2C single product. And now you're in Costco as you mentioned and how that worked and was there a lot of resistance in the company to doing that? Like can you just like start at the top and walk us through how you got here?
- [42:01]
Kat Cole
I knew that the business's future would include multiple products and multiple channels. But what I didn't know was when would be the right time. I didn't know in what sequence would be optimal at first. And certainly as a new member of the team, I didn't know what might be in the way of that desired expansion. But generally when you're when a business is getting that big. So when I joined this is public information out there. When I joined we had just done we were doing 160 million in annual revenue, bootstrapped and growing. Crazy right? Growing at multiples, not percent. And we completed our only big fundraise, 120 million at a 1.3 billion post valuation and then continued the company's growth. And there were a few things that I learned early on that helped me get clarity on when will we be able to expand? How should we expand? The first was when I joined. We were only blending AG1, we were globally sourcing, but we were only blending AG1 in New Zealand and we were air freighting that green powder to the US. Most of the business was in the US. 90% of the business was in the US I think we were like a top five exporter out of New Zealand or something like that. So this idea of being sick single sourced, not blending locally was a real operational issue to improve before we did anything new. So blending exclusively in New Zealand and air freighting powder to the US from where 90% of the business of the 160 million annual revenue was located was a thing to deal with. And in my mind you have, I have no business creating new product. I have no business putting my product in retail where the inventory demands are very different until I address the operational structure. And so we put all of our focus on three things. One, making sure that our customer experience for what was still a crazy high growth business was excellent. And it wasn't, it was getting bumpy. We had shaker bottles that were leaking. We had gone through the supply chain crisis post Covid where it was hard to have consistent suppliers of lids and bottles. And so I had all kinds of customer experience issues we needed to improve. Second, we needed to stand up us blending facilities so that we had domestic production for a domestic business, which we did in the following year. And that was scary, right? Moving your recipe, your blending ip, all of your operations. And so we completed that, then we were, it was very clear that the consumer was moving to a much more science oriented marketing message versus just like, hey, a person I trust trusts this. And so we did a few things. One, put a ton of investment in building out a team of PhDs, scientists and human clinical trials that take years to conduct and complete. Which is painful, right? You're taking tens of millions, plowing it into something you can't talk about, you don't have the outcomes for and you can't tell the world about for a number of years. But it was so clearly the right thing to do to continue to level up that global sourcing. Add in more third party certification, so more quality work, bigger QA team, more third party labs, NSF for sport, Alchemist Labs Informed Sport Canada lista, which is the German version, the EU version of, of NSF for Sport. Because our customers are people whose bodies are their jobs, right? Athletes, Olympians, et cetera, in addition to everyday folks like us. And so that we needed to do all that work before we launched a new product that took two years, that was 22 and 23. But we had our product innovation on the roadmap. We had, we knew what we were going to Launch. We had AGZ and its formulation in the works, we had the AG1 next gen formula upgrade already happening and so we did that work quietly behind the scenes. The product development, the diary studies hundreds of people drinking the stuff for months as it was iterated and formulated. So we understood what does the science say about the ingredients, what does the customer say about their, their experience and then what do the human trials say about the outcomes and pull that together to in 2025, launch a very different company, AG1. Next gen more human clinical trials than any other similar product. AGC, our first ever, truly second product. Going from D2C and not to Amazon to Amazon, going from D2Z and Amazon to Costco, adding flavors to AG1. All that happened in a six month period. And normally I wouldn't recommend that speed of that much commercialization, but it was overdue because of the things we needed to prioritize. Keeping up with demand, shoring up operations, building the QA and science team and body of research rigor. And then once it was ready, we're like we're only going to learn how it goes if we get it out into the world. And so month after month last year was just launch after launch.
- [47:44]
Host
There was a lot of activity. Yeah, it's, it's sort of the, we all run consumer companies here. The one of the things I actually struggle with in this business is that the rhythms and the sort of like the heartbeats of like product development in your case like the trials, that stuff is so slow compared to like this other machine over here which is marketing. So slow go to market like it's like you've got the heartbeat of a jackrabbit and then like of an elephant, you know.
- [48:11]
Kat Cole
And you're trying to manage both the team held back. Right. You can feel the. We want to talk about it. We have the branding, we have the messaging. And it's not only so slow, we add layers of third party certification rigor that add months to anything we do. Anything we do. If I change one ingredient, it has to go back through NSF for sport. That is nine to 11 weeks of review, testing, consideration, validation and money. So it's extra slow for us in a way which you can then understand why like if it's ready and we've now completed these things, let's get it out. Even if it's being launched in close proximity to a more frequent launch.
- [48:56]
Host
Get I gotta ask, like that's so much change. I'm assuming you guys have a board, right? And you've clearly got shareholders. So how much debate was happening before you started making these investments? Like particularly when you rebranded a company that was Doing really well. You know, you're going like you took a form like this machine is working right to by. For all intents. And then there's like a lot of change that was being implemented. Was this just all obvious and the board was like, this makes sense, let's do it. Or was there a ton of debate back and forth because like this is a huge set of shifts.
- [49:37]
Kat Cole
No, it was, it was obvious. There was the board, which is a very simple board and not overly complicated and really support supportive. And so the, the energy was more around. We have wanted, we and the board, including me on the board, have wanted to do this for some time. So the energy was actually, when are we going to get it out? When are we going to start doing this? And the, the friction or frustration was we all want it to happen fast, but it has to be done to a different level of thoughtfulness given our brand and our scale. We're not a tiny company anymore. We're not a startup. And so just putting stuff out carries risk. So extra months of diary studies and people's experiences, extra bodies of development and research on flavor and taste, because it's not just a supplement, it's not a pill, it's a drink. Right? You, it's got to taste good enough for people to make a ritual. And that takes a ton of iterations. So the board was more. There was much more energy around. When is this coming? When are we going to get it out? We all agreed it was needed, wanted and in some ways overdue for very good reasons because of what we needed to prioritize. So there was just like anxiousness and energy to get things out.
- [51:06]
Host
What I'm also hearing is like there's clearly this evolution of the product that's very science driven now. But then the brand itself is evolving at the same time, right? Like the, all of these things are changing the brand. But you made a. Or you and the team made a very clear decision to actually rebrand at some point. You went from athletic greens to AG1 and now AG1 is. This is obviously evolving. Can you. How the hell did you get around the risk of a rebrand? And how do you think about that as a leader? Like, you've been running some big brands for a long time. This terrifies me and I think this terrifies most of our listeners.
- [51:45]
Kat Cole
It was terrifying. It's a lot of was terrifying. But you know what was more terrifying is not doing it. And that's how you know as a leader. So our previous name, Athletic Greens, served us beautifully for our first decade, we were the kind of category creators, certainly the biggest name in the space. But then what you started to see in a lot of our customers were our early customers were athletic. And the product was significantly green fruits and vegetables, but not exclusively. And so what started to happen one, in the competitive space, you had everybody launching X, Y, Z greens, Bubba's Greens, Jenny's greens, purple greens, whatever. And if that happens in enough mass, it can create and dilute like product, it can create confusion and dilute product clarity. So all of a sudden if people look at AG1 and they're like, wait a minute, there's you're called athletic Greens and then this is Bubba's Greens and this is Jenny's Greens. But Jenny's Greens is half the price. And if I step back and squint, the label looks kind of similar. Looks like you're just an expensive greens. And it's like, oh, E G1 is so much more than greens. It's more a multivitamin. It's more the future of what the multivitamin was supposed to be. It's nutrients multivitamin, multimineral and gut health support pro and prebiotic together. So in a way, our name that had created opportunity was becoming a limiting factor. It created a ceiling. The other was we had gotten so large and started to move beyond a very narrow niche core where it is not just athletes. It was a lot of busy professionals. And we're like, is that a problem? You know, athletic is still aspirational. But when you put it all together and we worked with a great branding firm to help us go deep into customer insights, our customers, how they talked about it, what was happening in the category. We had three jobs to do. One, to make more clear that we were so much more than greens. So not calling ourselves greens was a big part of that. Two, be more gender balanced. Our customer base was actually 50, 50 male, female. And athletic greens at the time was skewing male in its perception. And then three, making it two letters and a number, which seemed crazy to branding people. And now look at all the knockoffs that have done the same thing. Was was a way to step into more precision engineering science. It also was a naming convention that could be used for other things. AgX, AgZ. Right. We saw, we saw that coming. We knew sleep would be coming. And so it. The shift served multiple jobs, but it was, as you said, very scary. We had a decade of equity built in it. Our website, our store store was called that Athletic greens dot com. It is how we were referred to in the media, on the Internet for quite some time. So you have this very practical and tactical concern about search efficiency and what's going to happen. But we managed it thoughtfully. There's a way to do this when you, when you have a wholesale name change, usually you need some bridge period, usually one to two years. But it depends on your marketing intensity that you associate both names together. So we were AG1 by athletic greens for a while and that's your bridge, right? That gives you a bridge where people are like, oh yeah, this is that thing. It's just something else. And then you have to make a call of when you drop it over time. And it's never perfect. Some people do it too late, some people do it too soon. And eventually it was, we didn't need that anymore. Some people still call us athletic greens and that's okay. That'll always happen and the team has to understand that. But we made the shift at the year we did 160 million in revenue, built a bridge strategy, packaging, branding, naming and then made the move. But it was complicated, like entities and assets and packaging and social media. It was, it took a person to manage just the checklists for a long period of time behind the scenes.
- [56:06]
Host
So you go into it knowing it's
- [56:08]
Mike
going to take years.
- [56:10]
Host
Do you also go into it with this thought that it's like it's going to be. It's going to force us to change like marketing mix and go to market and channels or do you. Did you view those as like, those are separate, they're going to have to happen at the same time.
- [56:25]
Kat Cole
Yeah, they're separate and they'll have to happen at the same time. I mean our, over the years, at least since I've been leading the company, our marketing mix has shifted in a way that I think is very typical of a company that scales and it's just become more mature, more typical, more diversified. It's yeah, referral and TV and out of home and direct mail and paid social and creators. Right. It's. It's this really beautiful mix. I think in our post purchase survey it's like depends on the month, but 25 to 30% will say I heard about you from a creator or social, 30% friend or family. So a lot of personal referral and then the other 30 is all the more, you know, like traditional media mix of linear streaming, CTV out of home activations, community, things like that.
- [57:24]
Host
How. I'm assuming you're not the one who's like deciding all of this on your team, right? Like this is. You've clearly got a great marketing leader.
- [57:33]
Kat Cole
Yeah, we have a great team.
- [57:35]
Host
How. I'm very curious though, from your role, when you think about. Because this is clearly like a big line item in a business like, like yours or ours, right? Like, marketing is obviously a huge bucket of cash from your seat. How do you decide or how do you weigh in on where that money goes, you know, or do you. Are you just like. I trust my team and they tell
- [57:57]
Kat Cole
me we have such an incredible team, but we're also a very focused, simple business in some ways. So, yeah, it's not a huge team, even though it's a large business. And so of course I'm involved in, in those things. But we have a phenomenal team. The people who are channel managers, the data scientists, the analytics and the leaders certainly of growth, marketing, performance, different forms of media and marketing. But we're just data driven, right? Like, and the tools just get better and better to help us understand who are we reaching, what does that reach, cost, what is the return on that reach? What type and quality of customer and relationship is that bringing us? Which would historically have been CAC to ltv, but now it's so much more. We have interrelated channels. We have Amazon, we have Costco, we have D2C. We have more upper funnel brand work. We just launched our ambassador ship with Hugh Jackman, who's been drinking AG1 for five years.
- [59:00]
Host
I can't stop seeing Hugh's face all over my own Instagram feed.
- [59:05]
Kat Cole
If you haven't seen it, he's dancing now for 81, like impromptu tap dance that I'm trying to learn. It was so good. I'm treating it like choreography where he goes, it's time to wake up, it's time. He is definitely a morning person. And so you have that right, which is about the brand energy and the quality of the product and the quality of performer who trusts the product. But it's not pointing people to a lander, you know, it's. It's really saying who are we and who are people? Then we have extensions of that that certainly are paid media that do connect to a lander, that do take customers on a problem solution journey and bring them in to the funnel. And we have a team in analytics and processes that manage all of that on a, you know, minute by minute, hourly basis. And then regular leadership meetings of how are we performing, what are we seeing, what's resonating, what's not, where should we shift investment, where should we take down invest? I mean, the team's phenomenal. They are an absolute machine. But it's getting more complicated as the place where that demand gets captured is physical retail or multiple E commerce channels. And even something like physical retail is demand harvesting. Right. People are aware, they want to try it there. But it also is demand creation because people see it on a shelf. And so using the proper MMM tools and attribution tools to understand the interconnect, like the connectivity of these channels, what do they create versus what do they receive and then how that affects our investment approach while keeping the overall economic structure sound and healthy. We're a profitable company. We haven't raced since our one big round. We have no intention to. So, you know, all of that is a very powerful machine in the company that affects how the team makes those decisions.
- [60:56]
Host
And so I want to double click on this a little bit. You mentioned that, like it started out as CACT LTV and now it's something much more. I guess what comes to mind for me is like, how, how do you manage that cultural shift internally? Right. Like, I know that your company is very performance oriented in those early years. Right. Bootstrapped, had no choice to be. And clearly now these are like it's something much bigger.
- [61:21]
Mike
Yeah.
- [61:22]
Host
Is that a difficult cultural shift? Like, how do you think about that with the team? I mean, clearly the tools and the tactics change.
- [61:29]
Kat Cole
It can be challenging in pockets, not wholesale in New York. But the way to navigate the challenge one is to bring in people who know the new way to do things. If you try to only move and mold the people who've done things the old way to a new way, it's not impossible. It's just a slower, heavier lift. When you inject expertise amongst the team, it accelerates that transition. Next is, you know, what you measure matters. And so making sure that what you're measuring is able to drive the shift in investment strategy. And so if all you're doing is measuring CACT ltv, but yet in that month you're investing in massive brand campaigns or a big retail launch, that is that CACT LTV is going to look so out of whack, you could make the mistake and pull back all the marketing, which is damaging in the short term in many cases. And so getting the right analytics and the right view that help everyone understand what job are each of these things doing and what really is, then you shift to like your marketing efficiency ratio and things that are a bit more like total marketing investment to total revenue, while still keeping an eye on the heartland or the core of the business, I mean D2C still needs CACT LTV, but the business is now more than that. So you have to add a few more views in order to ask is our investment approach serving the business and building the business that we, that we want? And that's, that's not just investment in marketing and channels, it's investment in product and innovation in packaging and research. Right. All of that has to go into the bucket of where are we investing and what is the short, mid and long term return.
- [63:17]
Host
Would it be fair to say that as the company goes from like sort of single product, single channel CAC to LTV driven, too much more complex, right? Like more channels, more products. Would it be fair to say that like then your media mix from your seat, right. Clearly you're not like the one pushing the buttons, but from your seat. Would the media mix shift to things like television, like unskippable formats like app love and television, YouTube, like things where you like you're holding more attention as opposed to like channels where it's very click based.
- [63:57]
Kat Cole
Yeah. And it has over the years, over several years. I mean it really does look far more diversified than it did five years ago. Of course. And so whether it's more, you know, new channels or experimental channels or something much more traditional, it's rarely choosing one over the other. It's the mix. It's how is this mix showing up? And I remember this past Black Friday Cyber Monday, which was incredible for us. We for the first time had one. We had multiple products to offer. We had never had that before. So like 101 playbook is bundles and offer structure. We've never had that. We got to over half a billion in annual revenue and never had the tools of the trade. And so this year we did. And so we were actually able to create bundles and offer structure of AGZ and AG1 flavor packages, a cool gym Mac. Like we actually used the playbook of D2C fully and we had an out of home campaign and we had direct mail and we had television and we tested Applovin and, and, and right. We had all of this and enough creative diversity that allowed it to not feel like one campaign being overused, chasing you, beating you over the head on Instagram, but rather a, a far more like thoughtful spreading of brand. So upper funnel, mid funnel, a little more product, lower funnel, click here where to purchase. You know, highly attributable, coming together at one time. It was like a symphony and you're like, oh, this is what this feels like. That's really nice.
- [65:50]
Host
How it's supposed to feel cool.
- [65:52]
Kat Cole
We're, we're late to the party, but it's cool.
- [65:54]
Host
Yeah. Now I have to ask, like, you're at the size and scale of, of AG1 and you're used to, you're one of the few people and I think in consumer has genuinely operated at, at at these numbers, do you still have moments or, or like when you're doing this many things, do you still have those like moments where you're like, oh, this is going to fail? Like where you actually have doubt or, or does that maybe you actually don't believe in failure? Maybe you're, you're not.
- [66:20]
Kat Cole
No, it's just all part of the process. Right. If I really think something is going to fail, given this category, we put it through enough testing, it's going to show up in the process. And I went by testing, I mean consumer testing and people drinking it, people seeing it, testing an ad testing a message, you're gonna know and have it sharp enough to go out. You still don't know for sure. Sometimes things resonate way more than you think. And other times it's like it was good but didn't set the world on fire. But where in this past year, what was so new for us is for 14 years, AG1, our one product was only one flavor, just the original. That is highly unusual to get to the scale in a consumable product. Not just with a single skew, with one flavor, just this original flavor, not even called a flavor. And there's something very powerful about how it brings together both clearly very natural sensory attributes. It's got fruits, Vegas herbs. You can taste it, but it's tasty enough without juices and any added sugars to be tasty and surprise people relative to the category. It's funny, you can watch people drink it and they're like, oh, it's green. You know, I'm scared. And then they go, oh, not that bad. You know, it. I mean, I watch by the reaction and then. And then over time it become you. Your palate craves it first thing in the morning. And it's really interesting. And so we've had that one flavor profile that has ebbed and flowed over 15 years because the natural ingredients ebb and flow. So it's like wine or chocolate. Like, one month the apple will be a little more forward. Another month the pineapple is a little more forward because we don't have a artificial standard we're manufacturing to. It's got a very natural. But our customers are used to that. It's a little more green this month, a little more pineapple this month. But launching flavors was. It took a long time to get them ready because the human palette is so subjective. What you love will be what I might despise. And how do you deal with that if you've got customers coming into your reviews who are like, I love this, I hate this. This is delicious. This is terrible. And it's the same thing. And when you're D2C, it's not a restaurant I can't sample. So launching flavors had real risk to it because what if that flavor, flavor we launch that a customer chooses ends up having a lower rebill or lower satisfaction than the original? So then we put those flavors through the ringer and then launched with a three pack flavor sampler that would go in every person's shipment. So we were giving away three additional servings just in case what people got they didn't like. But the reality is there were always people who didn't prefer the original flavor that now these flavors allow them something they enjoy. So it's scary to see the problems a new thing may create. But you also have to acknowledge the other problem it may be solving. And on balance, find a way to navigate your reality. So we're like, oh, people can't sample it. Let's give them the sample. Oh, people don't like this flavor for these reasons. We know this flavor solves those reasons. Let's send it to them for free. And now we'll be, you know, eventually we'll move the flavors into retail, which we haven't done yet, but that will happen. That was scary, right? Because you just don't. You have 15 years of pretty predictable history of how do people feel about this, how many people love the taste, how many people don't, who rebuilds, who doesn't, who can you help find their flavor with just recipe, water temperature, et cetera, and who's just never going to get used to it? So will this solve more problems than it creates? Was the question about flavors? And in fact, it has. Like over 30% of new customers are choosing a flavor. Most of them are equally as satisfied with those.
- [70:10]
Host
I totally believe that. I totally believe that. It makes sense to me. Yeah. How? Man, I gotta know. And this is so selfish, but how do you spend your time in a given week? Like, you've got product marketing, there's like anyone on product, you have R D, you have customer type. Like there's many, so, so many elements to your business. There's go to market and channel. Then there's like people leadership, there's supply chain operations where if you had to take a swag at like the how you divide up your attention in those buckets, like how do you view that? How do you manage where your attention is going?
- [70:45]
Kat Cole
There's some baseline time and attention management. You know, with my team and with our customers that's foundational, that's just structured in the day, in the week to support the team, to have visibility to what's going on, to navigate anything that may be unexpected and to push things with intensity that people will move at the pace they're pushed. And so that's what I'm doing when I'm spending time and then listening, listening, listening. Like what are themes, what are patterns in a remote environment? You do need to listen more to get themes of where might people be, you know, going a little slow or get confused or where is this getting scattered and needs to be refocused. So that's baseline. Then there will be particular seasons in the company that might be. For example, as we were gearing up a lot of this first time innovation, I'm in our, I'm in our labs doing tastings, I'm with our co manufacturers doing sampling and tasting. I'm in the work because something has high risk and high reward for that season. So we calibrate as a leadership team around something new, then I can pull back. But by definition of something being new, the company wasn't built for it. And so I view it as irresponsible to not be involved, to calibrate how do we think, how do we work, what, you know, what should, where should someone be informed versus involved versus have a veto vote so we can build the new muscle and then I can go on to the next thing that's new. Something as big as going direct to national with Costco as our first retail move. Highly involved, right? I'm meeting with the team, I'm involved with the retailer, but that's just a season. And then we go, oh, okay, we're doing more of this. More retailers are coming. Now we have a team. I don't need to be as involved in the day to day. So it's this in when needed out as we build capability, muscle or talent. And then there's always something, always something else that is now new and next for me to be pushing or calibrating or building capabilities around. But most of this is enabling my team.
- [72:56]
Host
This is like the zoom in, zoom out function that like every, I find every great sort of CEO, every great Founder who turns into CEO has like a really good sort of like zoom in, zoom out. Would you still describe yourself as an in the weeds operator?
- [73:09]
Kat Cole
Yeah, I think there are many aspects where I'm in the weeds. I would say as we've built our team who is just incredible, there are many areas where I don't need to be, but I might be with them for a moment either for visibility or for the showing the team that the CEO of the company knows and respects what they do and has some sense of what they go through. And so sometimes it's involvement for culture versus impact. But that's something I would agree on with that leader.
- [73:42]
Mike
That's really valuable, by the way. I, I think leaders miss that all the time. That people care about the leader, knowing what they do.
- [73:50]
Kat Cole
Yeah.
- [73:50]
Mike
And that they spend. It's one of the things that you don't think about when you're a CEO, but that people in your organization spend a lot of time asking this question to themselves. Does the CEO know what I do? Do they care? How do they perceive me? And we don't think that way because we're thinking about driving results and, and different things. But it matters tremendously to them that they're seeing and obviously they're caring about their career progression. And I, I had a conversation actually in December where someone got kind of, I wouldn't say passed over for a promotion, but we went a different direction than they expected us to ago and they had no idea how to interpret it. And their first way of interpreting that was I don't know what's filtering up to the CEO about my performance, but it must not be good. And so being able to sit down with them and say no, not at all. Actually I have a great perspective and a great opinion of your contribution. Just for a variety of reasons. This is what makes sense, was really helpful for that person and in that relationship. But as you said, we can get so focused on like knocking things out and accomplishing tasks that we can forget that the number one thing we're doing is managing people and that people have their own like desires and insecurities and concerns and that sometimes just being there, hearing them, acknowledging them is a huge part of leadership.
- [75:09]
Kat Cole
Totally. And then there's the line you manage, right. You want to be involved and have people feel seen, but not be over involved and disempower leaders or convey mistrust. And so it's something you have to be thoughtful about.
- [75:25]
Host
Kat, you, earlier on you were talking about the, when Mike asked you about like, why do you Keep doing what you're doing. And you had sort of two questions that you asked yourself. What stood out to me is there's this. You strike a balance between like drive and ambition and humility or like courage and confidence and like really knowing what to do and when to charge. And then like this curiosity, humility thing. How do you decide where you're leading from at any moment in time? Because it seems like you move between them pretty even listening to you talk like you are moving between them very seamlessly. But most people don't. So how are you using those as tools in how you lead the company right now?
- [76:09]
Kat Cole
When it's funny, you use those words. I, I believe the most effective humans in the world have some command over and positive blending of four mindsets or characteristics. And it's what you, it's humility, curiosity, courage and confidence. And humility is the mindset, curiosity is the action, confidence is the mindset, courage is the action. They're related but different. So those, I don't know what you call them, right ways you show up, those are the right words. Like most things that drive effectiveness fall into one of those four buckets. Yeah, there are a few ways. One, I mentioned this idea of checking in the hotshot rule, reflecting on what would someone I admire do in my role. Checking in with my team one on ones feedback sessions, checking in with my husband. We it's been written about in a ton of other books but we've shared our monthly check ins where we ask the same six questions to each other every month. And it's not a thinking exercise, it's an action exercise. Like what what is this experience for you? And I'm going to do something with it to be better. I stay close to my customers, I talk to them all the time. My team does. I think that is a big way. I am informed of which of those buckets to lean into is feedback. Just reading the room, listening to people and okay, if people are feeling a bit hectic and unclear, then you need to be more clear, have more conviction, more decisive, you know, bring the courage and the conviction. If people are feeling clear and strong or there's some level of tension, then maybe more curiosity and humility is appropriate in that, in that moment. And it's an instinct and it's an intuition but it's formed from years and literal decades of leading people making mistakes, doing it differently, make doing it better, getting that feedback and then just staying fluidly connected to what is people's experience. Experience. Now what do they need? Now what do I not know. There's always something I don't know. Do I need to know everything? No. But there might be something I need to know that I don't. Who should I. So that. That's the humility. There's always this. No one does it alone. No one on my team, not me. Do we have the knowledge we need? Do we have the skills that we need? Do we have the opportunity or do we create the opportunity and then just taking action? That bias for action, it's humility and curiosity. But if you're just humble and curious, you're just a student. And if you're only courageous and confident, you're a bull in a porcelain shop. It's the two together. It's that humble courage. And courage to me, is I not. Incompetence is not. I know. I know what we're doing. It's. I know we can figure it out. I know we will figure it out. I know we with this team, there's a we. We will figure it out. That is what I have confidence in. Not the exact what, but we have the right questions. Questions, scale answers. Don't. Answers get dated. Beliefs and playbooks get dated. Especially in this industry. Right. Things change. But if you have the right questions, what matters to the customer? What's really standing out? What are we seeing? If you have the right questions and you ask them at the right cadence and then have the courage to act on the new thing, you learn then that that's how you make better decisions faster. Hiring people, firing people, pulling investment, taking up investment, experimenting with a new product or channel. It's the questions that lead to some degree of conviction that says making this change, taking this step, taking this risk is less risky than not doing it. And that's the. It looks like I'm so pro risk and so like, oh, you do so many things or you do. I've heard people say you clearly love risk or you clearly aren't scared. It's like, no, it's the opposite. I feel very clear eyed that in the cases where it looks like my team or my company or I have taken a big leap, I have gotten very clear eyed that not taking that leap is a big risk. That's really what
- [80:28]
Host
I get from this too. Listening to you is it's less about how you balance it. It's actually your. You're almost the balance for the team. So it's like whatever the company is required. Like you, when you sit in the seat of CEO, you carry a lot of weight, right? No matter what. And and you represent a lot of weight in everything in the business. So if the company needs one thing or the other, like, you almost. You know, I'm envisioning, like, you almost go and sit on the other side of that scale to, like, help them balance out and level out so that we're always kind of moving smoothly through the company. I. I have me.
- [81:01]
Kat Cole
Great feedback. They're like, hey, oh, in this meeting, in this situation, speak last. Or in this meeting, in this situation, can you help reinforce the tone? Start first.
- [81:12]
Host
That's a sign of a good team, too. If they're willing to do that. That's like, one of them.
- [81:15]
Kat Cole
They'll send me notes.
- [81:16]
Mike
Yeah.
- [81:17]
Kat Cole
Chill out.
- [81:17]
Ad Read Speaker
That's awesome.
- [81:17]
Host
I'm like, we all need that. We. We definitely need that. Kat, just to wrap things up, I have. We have this thing that we do on the show. It's called the Titan 10. These are, like, 10 questions that we like to ask everybody. We like you to try to sort of shoot from the hip, like, gut response. Okay. Right to each one. Some of them are personal. Some of them are more business. They're a little bit more tactical. But what I'm going to just, like, rapid fire them. And I would love to hear how you think about these.
- [81:50]
Kat Cole
Okay.
- [81:51]
Host
Okay. So first one's a classic one. You get to a desert island. You have to manage your business from the desert island. You only get three metrics to take with you to tell you how the company is doing. What are the numbers that you're looking at? You only get three.
- [82:05]
Kat Cole
Revenue, growth, cash, customer satisfaction.
- [82:12]
Host
All right. You also get to take a book or a resource, Any resource, but it cannot be about business. What are you bringing?
- [82:23]
Kat Cole
I would bring almost any book on organizational behavior by Adam Grant. And if I have to pick one, Think again. I would bring. Think again.
- [82:39]
Host
Yep. Great book. What is one contrarian belief about business that you think other CEOs would say you're a little crazy for?
- [82:55]
Kat Cole
I don't know if other CEOs would think I'm crazy for it, but most of the answers the company needs for the future, not all. Most lie within the existing customer and team base.
- [83:11]
Host
Yeah, okay. That's actually pretty contrarian. Most. Most CEOs would probably say, like, you need to be upgrading those things all the time. I like that. Okay. What is the single most important word in leadership to you?
- [83:25]
Kat Cole
Action.
- [83:27]
Host
Then what is the single most important word in business?
- [83:31]
Kat Cole
Customer.
- [83:33]
Host
I had a feeling you were going to say that. You seem very customer oriented.
- [83:38]
Kat Cole
It's. It's. It is Extreme.
- [83:42]
Host
Yeah.
- [83:42]
Kat Cole
I don't hang out on social media. I hang out in our Slack reviews channel. I see.
- [83:47]
Host
I love it. Our customers say it still drives my team nuts, but I read every single review and every single response that we get as a business, Right. And it's like, at scale, it's a lot.
- [83:58]
Mike
But I think, how do you not become captive to that is my question. Like, because.
- [84:04]
Kat Cole
It's.
- [84:04]
Mike
Because I do the same thing, and it'll drive my team nuts. Sometimes it'll be like, hey, I saw this person say this thing, you know? And so it's like, how do you kind of strike the balance between listening to the anecdotal and then looking at the large data sets, the surveys, and all that stuff?
- [84:22]
Kat Cole
You know, I look for patterns. If something is just exceptional for some reason, and I don't mean that necessarily. Good. I mean, it's just. It stands out as an exception. I might make a comment, and often I say to my team, I want to talk to this person. And so I don't. I don't whiplash the team around. It. It's about me. It's about my curiosity. It's about what I, you know, I want to know more. So that's one way manage myself, not. Not stir up the team. The other is look for patterns. And sometimes I'll see things that start to look like a pattern, and it's just the nature of primacy and recency. Like, I'm just seeing a lot, coincidentally, in a short period of time. But it's actually a nothing burger. It's not as good as it looks. It's not as bad as it looks. And in those cases, if it looks like a pattern, I think that's shifting or we should pay attention to. I ping the customer insights team. Can you give me the data on this? Is this a pattern? Sure. Looks like I'm seeing a lot of. And sometimes they're like, nope, just the ones you're reading. Thank you for not overreacting. And other times it's like, actually, yeah, this is a shift. There's a. There's a there, there. So that's how I try to do it.
- [85:27]
Mike
Yeah. I mean, I love how you said you start with a question. You know, it's like, you're not coming in hot. Like, people are pissed off. Like, we've got a real problem. Everybody needs to drop what they're doing, you know, like. But it's. It's easy as a CEO to get that way, I think. And so, like, I found that, like, anyway, pressing down that urge and asking the question. It's a good.
- [85:45]
Host
Yeah, it's a good approach. Most of the speaking that a CEO does should probably just be asking questions.
- [85:51]
Kat Cole
That's right. We don't, shouldn't be making that many decisions. The team makes those. The few that we do are, you know, there's a reason they're on our plate.
- [86:02]
Host
What is your favorite meal of the day and why?
- [86:05]
Kat Cole
Oh, my favorite meal of the day is my AG1 and coffee time with my husband. It is our little window, our little ritual. I know it's not food, but that is my grounding. If I miss that in the day, I am do not have as much energy. I am not as sharp. My bucket is not as full. That little window with my kids who are now 6 and 8 and my husband is gold. It is fuel for the day. I've owned my morning. Everything else can be tough if I've started that my bucket is full, my cup is big. I can hold a lot lot.
- [86:41]
Host
Love it right now, as you see things, what do you think the most overrated sort of tactic or line of thought growing a brand is?
- [86:54]
Kat Cole
What a good question.
- [86:56]
Host
What is overrated?
- [86:58]
Kat Cole
Building a brand.
- [87:00]
Host
I know because it's always changing.
- [87:03]
Kat Cole
Yeah, yeah. It's always. I would say that there, that there is any singularly effective playbook for a brand that like this is what you need to do. It's this, right? If you do this, it's 90% usually that's not true. The most underrated. I don't know if that's one of your questions, but I'm going to share.
- [87:25]
Host
It's gonna be the next one so you should just go there.
- [87:28]
Kat Cole
Underrated is product quality. Right. Like we get so much credit for marketing when as many customers in our post purchase survey hear about us from a friend or family as they do from our more traditional marketing. It is about the product. Marketing only gets people to try a thing. It only makes them aware of a thing. What makes my customers keep drinking ag1 for 5, 6, 7. I talked to an 11 year ag1 drinker the other day is not marketing. Right. It is the continuous improvement. It is the quality, it is the experience. Yes, it's the customer service, but it is the product. No one keeps buying a thing that they put in their body if they don't believe in it and have a good experience. And that doesn't mean it's going to be for everybody. But that is the work. Like that. That is the work. And our business has grown the way that it has because of the compounding revenue growth from prior years of people who stay. And now that we have a few products, find other things that they like and the new customers that we bring in to the journey, that's what makes a business that's so simple get so big.
- [88:41]
Host
Yeah. It's funny that those were your two answers, because on this podcast, I think we sometimes get criticized for only it's like the default answer to everything is make your product better stupid. And then the other thing that we do is like, for a. For some. For literally like we do a show so people listen to us and we often just say, you shouldn't listen to us because there is no one way to do anything. So it's great that that's. That somehow that's where you went.
- [89:05]
Kat Cole
Yeah.
- [89:07]
Host
Mike, any closing. Any closing questions while we have. Cat? Kat, this has been awesome. I just love. I could talk to you for hours just listening to you, how you think about running a brand. Leadership.
- [89:17]
Mike
I love how we're ending, which is that context really matters and that there's like principles to good leadership and principles to running a good D2C company, E Commerce company, and we always try and pull those out. But also, like, we want to encourage people to find your own leadership style and that your business is going to take its own unique synthesis of those things. And even, you know, Kat, one of the things I take away from your story is that with AG1, really athletic greens has become a new company, which is AG1. The distribution models change, the name has changed, the products that you're selling have changed. There's. There's certainly some things that carry through, some threads that pull through, but it's a reinvention of a company. And so that's the nature of business, I think, is that not only is it, hey, there's not one playbook that you can always run, it's that even in your company's life cycle, the same playbook doesn't work right. Because your company grows and the economy changes and people's preferences change. And like, I think that your company is a really interesting and an expiring example of a company that's reinventing itself into an even more effective, more scaled version. And it's really fun to watch from the sidelines. As somebody who's interested in health, like, I'm. I just think it's. It's interesting. I see your company as a pioneer in the health industry, and I think that industry is going to continue to explode as we start to understand more about the human body and that we really can impact our. Our quality of life and our health span. And so, anyway, it's great. I. I learned a lot. But that's probably my number one takeaway, is that your willingness to reinvent the company has really helped take it to another level. And I think it's interesting, your diverse experiences. This is always interesting to me because I have a very diverse background. You have this diverse set of experiences that you would never necessarily guess. Like, okay, if you're looking for the CEO of a health supplement company, you know, what's the first thing you want them to do? Well, obviously, work at Hooters. You know, that's number one. And, you know, but it is interesting how you've used all of those different experiences to help you to be the effective CEO you are today. And I always love hearing stories of that, how people have used their interesting, you know, backstories to help them have a unique perspective and be more effective as a leader. Totally.
- [91:47]
Host
Kat, thank you so much. This was awesome. I think people are going to love this.