EntreLeadership - #174: Kat Cole—The Value of Messy, Gritty Experience

Episode Date: November 21, 2016

Imagine trying to launch a brand with a different team, different country, different culture and different language every week. Impossible, right? Not if you’re this week’s special guest, Kat Cole. The Group President of Focus Brands, parent company to well-known franchises like Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Carvel and Moe’s Southwest Grill, joins us to discuss her amazing story. Plus, Kat shares how building trust with your team is one of the main ingredients of success. Also on tap, we’re heading down to Main Street to learn from EntreLeader Adam Kugel, CEO of Kugel Corporation in Chehalis, Washington. entreleadership.com/podcast Free Tool: "5 Habits That Kill Team Unity" Free tool: 5 Habits That Kill Team Unity Free tool: 5 Habits That Kill Team Unity Infusionsoft's Office Automation Guide Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of Leaders by Leaders for Leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's on tap. Our feature conversation is with Kat Cole.

She's the group president of Focus Brands. You may not know Focus Brands. parent company, but you know some of their brands. Sinabun, Moes, Auntie Ans, my favorite pretzels, by the way. And McAllister's, which happens to be Stacey Coleman's favorite place to get a sandwich. And so she has a wonderful leadership story. You talk about somebody who started at the bottom rung of the ladder and climbed up and really is somebody who understands great culture and great organizations.

And here's what's great, even though this is a gigantic company. What you're going to do is get a real scalable conversation. because they are working many times because of those different restaurants. They're working with entrepreneurs like you and all around the country. So this is going to be fun. You're going to enjoy that. And then we bring back a popular thing, something we like to do. It's our main street leaders.

We focus in on one of our entree leader members or a member of the tribe, in other words, somebody who is just like you who listen to this podcast, who comes to our event and is winning big. We love to share those stories. And, of course, we have some free resources. So, hey, let's get right to this. Adam Coogle is our main street focus this episode. Now, two episodes ago, you heard our live podcast. First time we ever had done a podcast in front of a live audience at the Entry Leadership Master's series.

That audience was 180 small business owners and leaders. And Adam Coogle was one of those audience members. And when we do these type of focused conversations on folks like you, it's because we want to highlight the fact that it's not about celebrity, It's not about how many people know your name. It's about winning. And Adam Coogle is winning. And so we wanted to share a bit of his story.

Now, Adam and his wife first attended the Entree Master Series in 2015 and then came back with another team member to kind of go deeper and deeper and make sure they were soaking in the information. I love the story. He got started as an entrepreneur, just like many of you. And now he runs a business which did $12 million this year.

My name is Adam Kugel, and I am the CEO of the Kugel Corporation. We are a construction company based in Shahelis, Washington. You know, I started probably when I was about 13 years old, I wanted to build a tree house. You know, you could see all kinds of different levels of quality as this thing went up as I kind of learned how to do the work. And one of the local church members, they had heard about this, and they said, hey, you know, we got a deck that needs some repair work on it. You know, why don't you come over here and do some repair work on our deck? They were paying me $7 an hour, which is, you know, that's like $1.50 more than minimum wage was at that point. And I was bragging on that.

I mean, I was pretty proud of that and pretty excited. So it kind of took off from there. I just started doing a lot of decks and small projects and things like that. And then when I was 17, I actually got licensed and started my business up and worked that through high school and through college, you know. Again, Adam started from nothing. and he learned a lot along the way. He had a fun and memorable first introduction to leadership. Yeah, I had friends would work for me.

And you go through so many interesting learning experiences. Like one that I can remember is my brother was working for me and one of my best friends was working for me and we were fixing my parents' deck. I kind of decided that it would be a good idea for me to kind of train my brother and my best friend a little bit better. But I wanted them to learn how to do it on their own. And so I thought for some reason that it would be a good idea for me to sit in a lawn chair

and for me to kind of watch them and let them do this work, then I would kind of coach them if they went down the wrong path. And of course, you know, in hindsight, you know, you look back on this and you just think, wow, that is the dumbest idea ever. But, you know, at the time, it seemed like a good idea. And, oh, I think that might have lasted a day or so or maybe not even a full day before. It was not a good method to train people. Obviously, you've got to kind of lead by example.

And I wasn't thinking about it from a perspective. I'm just going to sit here and sip lemonade. But, you know, it was more just I wanted to see if they were capable of doing it on their own. But you've got to look at things from the perspective of the people you're working with. And so in hindsight, you know, I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, well, actually, from their perspective, this probably looks pretty bad. Fast forward to Adams' businesses now growing and growing quickly. And then he gets his first $6 million job. But running a business debt free, that was not a concept that Adam was understanding yet.

In 2008, buddy of mine, he got this total money makeover book, started doing this cash thing. And so him and his wife, they told my wife and I about this cash thing. And, you know, I said, well, that's just crazy talk. I mean, why would you ever not use credit cards? You know, I mean, you got to live a little. And, well, until the economy crashes. At that point, I was beaten up enough that I was ready to do that. So I went through the class and I was probably about three, four minutes in

before I was pounding my head thinking, you know, what, you know, how on earth did I miss this information? I changed everything. You know, we were able to pay off all our personal debt, still working on the business side of it. So it was through that process of doing that that when I heard about entree leadership, I thought, you know, yeah, I mean, I want to bring this to my business. Went to a one day up in Seattle. And then, you know, I heard about this Master Series, you know, last year. Obviously, it's not a cheap program, but we decided to come.

My wife came with me. And it was just fantastic. After attending his first Entree Master Series, Adam and his organization was experiencing incredible growth, tripling their revenue. But they needed to continue to focus on growing their team. I remember meeting with Rick Perry, and I was trying to, I said, you know, how do I get the right people in the right seat on the bus? That's a big question of mine.

And so he kind of redirected me and said, well, you know, how can you get the right people on the right seat on the bus if you don't have core values? You don't have any DNA that you can even get them in the right place. Kind of went through that and it was like, yeah, you're right. I mean, I have personal values that I believe should be in the business, but, you know, I haven't really, you know, put that into the business, you know, for these other people to understand. I got on the plane to head home and I immediately started working on the core values on the flight back home. I think a lot of businesses, you know, myself included, you know, you get these bright ideas and you sit down in a meeting night and you say, okay, this is what we're going to do. And then that's it. Never goes any further.

And so I wanted to make this simple. And so I thought, you know, my team is going to have to memorize this. You know, if this is what we're going to do, they're going to have to take it to heart. You know, I put those into effect. At first, of course, you go back and you introduce that to your team and kind of get some eye rolls. But, you know, I just kept hammering it. I started, okay, we're going to start meeting more frequently. we're going to meet at least once a week and we're just going to go through this.

And so we kept going through it and we kept going through it, kept going through it. Adam continued to beat the drum for culture change. And soon began to notice that his team members were taking on a self-employed mentality. Dave tells this story. It was kind of a meeting to go over a failed project. And he said, you know, after the meeting was over, he was walking across this parking lot. And one of the team members ran out there and said, you know why we failed? and Dave's kind of like, well, yeah, you know, I mean, we just didn't do what we were supposed to do.

And the guy said, well, it was because, you know, you failed us, you dropped the ball. You know, we don't do that here. And so we kind of used that also as kind of a slogan, you know, that not kind of in a way that was looking down on somebody, but more as kind of a rally cry or just a battle cry that when somebody would maybe be gossiping or going down the wrong track that, you know, some of the rest of us would just kind of throw it out there, you know, almost sometimes even as a question, you just kind of say, well, do we do that here? And that really kind of benefited us a lot too because, you know, even myself as the owner, you know, there's times where you get frustrated and, you know, kind of a funny story.

You know, I had this plaque on my wall in my office and it said it is what it is. And so, and this was kind of, you know, one of those things where stuff would come up and, you know, you just be talking and you're like, well, and it is what it is. You know, so one of my team members walks in the office and says, you know, how does that fit in with the core values? You know, do we do that here? And it was kind of like, well, no, I guess we don't. Fresh off of his second Entree Master series, Adam now has some new goals and obstacles to take on. Yeah, we would love to be able to hire more people.

We are actually frequently turning away work because we don't have enough. capacity to do the work. You know, that's been one of the real struggles. In fact, that's one of our goals for this year to really fine-tune our processes, you know, because you go from, you know, $5 million in volume to $12 million in volume. In our office staff, we've increased, I think, we're net one person. So you're more than doubling your business and you're up one person on your, you know, management side of that. That's a lot to take on. Honestly, you know, just speaking candidly, I think that there are some things that suffered in that process. And You know, our margins this year, while our volumes way up, our margins are a little bit less.

And so, you know, that's one area that we're going to be hammering for this next year is to really try to get those margins back. And I think a lot of that can be done not necessarily in raising the price to the customer, but just in how we're managing it. I think the biggest challenge, you know, as far as the hiring the new people is that finding those team members that fit in with our core values that are thoroughbreds, that's been the biggest challenge. One of the characteristics that Entree leaders share is they have a desire to continually grow.

They're never satisfied. They want to continue to push through to new heights. I had the privilege of being given the Momentum Award this year for coming back. The bottom of that it says Adam Kugel. And my hope is that next year will come back and they'll say Team Kugel. And I'll bring a few more people with me. and that's going to kind of be our goal. Well, I hope you enjoyed Adam's story.

We want to thank him for spending time with Eric the producer in the studio. Big, big fun to share stories of those who are winning big. And the Ontario Leadership Master Series is something you should consider. And so on that note, I want to tell you about the dates of our next one here in Nashville at our campus. It's February the 19th through the 23rd. February 19th through 23, it is a three-day deep dive of teaching. And then on day four, we apply it. How do you take all this stuff you just learned and plug it in in your world?

It really is a fantastic event. It is worth it. And we've got a special offer for you podcast folks. We love special offers for the podcast tribe. So I want to thank Lauren Maxwell and the Entree leadership team for this. So this event is limited to 180 owners, leaders, personal growth junkies. Okay, 180. We're already halfway sold out.

This is not a gimmick. I'm just letting you know if you sit on this, you're going to miss. out. So here's the special deal for you podcast listeners. If you register by 5 p.m. on Friday, December 2nd, end of day, you don't want to be messing around. You want to do this before then. We will give you $200 off. $200 off of your ticket price. This is for podcast listeners only. You got to register by the end of day, Friday, December 2nd. Now, you've got to tell your advisor, if you're on the phone with them or you're filling out the forum online, make sure you let them know your podcast listener and you heard about this special deal on the podcast and will give you the $200

off. Entreleadership.com slash EMS. That's where you register. That's where you find out everything you want to know, Entreeleadership.com slash EMS. And we'll also have a link in the show notes of this episode. Well, folks, our future conversation is with Kat Cole. And as I told you at the top of the podcast, this is a lady who has started out as a waitress and moved all the way up to president of Focus Brands,

which operates great brands like Annie Annes, Cinebun, Carvel, Moes, McAllisterdelli, Schlottes, and 5,500 locations worldwide. So here's the thing I don't want you to check out on. And we actually talk about this in the conversation. Yes, that's a large organization. But think about this. They're working with franchisees, right, who are running small businesses. Yes, they're large brands, but made up of small businesses.

owners and operators. So there's a lot here that I think you can take away. She's a sharp lady. Let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with Kat Cole. Well, Kat, it's a privilege to have you with us, and this is kind of fun to get the behind the scenes of where you're at. I'm told you have been teaching at the Wharton School at Penn, which is legendary for folks listening. This is the world's first collegiate business school. And so I'd love to know. What have you been teaching on? Really, I am brought in by an amazing professor who's a friend, a guy named Adam Grant, and he brings me in to speak to either his MBA or other business school students on everything ranging from leadership to resilience to reflection.

And I come and share my life story and share perspectives and lessons from my very unexpected places along the journey and then take questions from the students and typically end up following up as a mini mentor to them after class is done. I know this is true for folks who teach, but we end up learning so much and what's something that has come out of this experience for you, whether it be learning from the students or observations that maybe you didn't expect. I think because so much of my discussion is about my own personal experiences, it doesn't require a lot of preparation, but what it creates is a ton of reflection. Anytime you get asked questions, whether it's the privilege of doing an interview like this or Q&A with students,

it forces you to reflect. When they say, why you, how you, and you have to give an answer, it's typically not something you're immediately aware of. You have to reflect and think, well, let me think of the things that might have contributed to this success or the things that might have led up to this failure or this miss. And so it highlights the importance of reflection for me. and being intentional about it, even in the periods of life where you don't have someone interviewing you, where you're not a part of a panel or a Q&A. You can and should do it on your own.

I love that. I've long been fascinated by your story, and for our audience, if you're not familiar with Kat's story, this is, I think, worth spending some time on because you go from waitress to a very successful leader and then move continually up to you become CEO of Sinabun and now even further up and some amazing business accomplishments. You really embody the American dream, which I think is alive and well. But I do want to go back and ask you, upon reflection, here you are a waitress and you get an opportunity to move from a restaurant up into the corporate sphere, what was going on in your head and heart at the time that you think allowed you to get that opportunity? You know, I think it was a series of things that I would say have to be concerned. one is not just the things I did, but rather what was going on in the environment. And so I joined growing companies. And at the time when I was a waitress at Hooters restaurants, that company was growing.

And so often companies that are growing quickly, not only do they hire from outside to fill their leadership roles, but they are forced to look within because the simple number of open spots they have for leadership roles can't be filled by simply the candidate pool externally. And so I benefited from the environment of high growth. And that often gets left out of my story. Now, that's what some people would call luck. I don't really use that word. It's simply a real dynamic that should be considered as a part of the equation of what

factored into making that leap from waitress to corporate executive. And did you know when you joined that there was some upward mobility? There was a chance for a waitress to move up the ladder. Did you know that? No. No, I was simply just a waitress. You know, I was a high school student looking for a job. It was no different than a typical high school student today where their parents say, get a job.

In this case, it was my third job. I'd been working since I was 15. But for me, it was never the driver for joining the company. I wanted a good job, waitressing being a cash business where you have the opportunity to pick up extra shifts, unlike a set, you know, 40-hour workweek where you get paid a paycheck is incredibly appealing. And when you're a student still, you need flexibility. And so waitressing naturally connects with that with the shift setup of scheduling. So that was the only thing that was a parent was that it was a waitressing job with a concept that looked fun that I had been familiar with going to as a child on weekends. And that was it.

It was only a parent that the company was growing when they started asking me to be a part of new restaurant openings. And then when I got the phone call when I was 19 and they said, not only are we growing domestically, we're growing internationally, we're opening a restaurant in Australia. you've done a great job at training employees in your own store and taking on different roles when needed in the restaurant. We'd like you to go to Australia and be a part of the team to open the first ever restaurant. But I couldn't have known that a year and a half prior when I became a hostess at 17 and then a waitress at 18. So give us a quick snapshot and then I'm going to dive into the parts of your journey. But just for our listeners, how long from the 19-year-old waitress to becoming CEO of Sinabon? So I was a hostess at 17 at Hooters, waitress at 18. By 20, I had taken my first corporate job at Hooters,

which is what got me from Jacksonville to Atlanta. By 26, I was one of the vice presidents of Hooters and stayed in that role until I was 31, almost 32 as an executive while we grew the company, and then became the president of Sineban at 32, one of the, if not the youngest presidents of a large food chain ever. I want to ask you about instilled skills and things that you learned along the way as you begin to move up versus those that were inherent. They were given to you at birth and you just had some of those skills and you developed them, obviously. But as you moved up the ladder, what was the key for you and your growth to adjust? Because there's this myth sometimes that we have to be ready for a position. And then I think many times the great leaders like you figured out that, hey, I'm not completely ready, but I can adjust on the fly and grow as I go.

What was your journey like there? Certainly, my journey was one of saying yes before I was completely ready. And that's evidenced clearly by the progression I just described. There's no way at the age of 26, I was fully seasoned to be an executive of a company doing 800 million in revenue. yet that is in fact what happened. I became one of the executives of a company doing $800 million in revenue at the age of 26. And so on one hand, you have to recognize that there will always be a period that you're the first. You're doing it first at your first time.

So you're not going to be perfect. And if I think about the alternative, simply preparing for a living and waiting until you believe you're fully prepared for a role. One, by the time you're fully prepared, that role has likely changed. Two, you haven't benefited from the real-world experiences. It would be the equivalent of simply training in a laboratory for something, training in a gym only for a particular sport in the Olympics, hoping to qualify for the Olympics, when really what would prepare you more quickly

is the true experience of competing in front of crowds, competing against other world-class athletes, competing in a diversity of environments, that that actually is what prepares you, for that elite level. And so I learned to appreciate the value of what real, messy, gritty experience provides more than I appreciated academic or simply thinking or closed individual preparation. One of the things that has been made very clear is your ability to really build teams

and to really see people perform well. That's something that's been a hallmark. obviously with the results you've gotten. And every leader and every executive has a different approach because it's very personal to them. Curious to know your style of leading people and working with teams. I would say my style is incredibly approachable. I believe in questioning success more than we question failure, which also means my style is one of celebrating failure. Because we don't question it as much, we question success more.

because you want to be careful what you celebrate and be careful what you duplicate because the things that made you successful that you think might not be the things that actually made you successful. And so for that reason, people feel a permission to fail. They feel a permission to make mistakes. We focus on the solutions and just really lighthearted and approachable. And I personally am incredibly vulnerable and open about everything, about life, about health, about money, about the interworkings of the company.

and that creates an environment where others are also more open, more vulnerable, more communicative, which helps you just get to the true truth and the real drivers of both individual behaviors and company behaviors much more quickly. And I would say it's one of celebration. We move really fast, but we try to celebrate every little win we can and celebrate failures because they're helping us learn and hopefully preventing a lot of. larger mistake down the road. Yeah, I want to follow up to what you just said, this vulnerability and how transparent

you are, because I just assume, Kat, that that has created an environment on your teams of great trust. Is that true? Yeah. Certainly, a little bit of it is from just being genuinely focused on and concerned about humans, and they feel that, and therefore there's trust. but the other piece, and in large part, the greatest contributor is vulnerability. And that comes from, when I was 19, I had to start opening restaurants around the world for Hooters.

But as I progressed, every time I would go to a different country to open a franchise, I had the same job to do, which is properly launch the brand and properly open the restaurant. But if you think about it each time, I was in a different country with a different culture, and I had a different team every time. And I always like to challenge people and say, you try to do your job. job tomorrow with a different team in a different country, in a different language. And then next week, you need to do your same job with a different team in a different country, with a different culture and language. And the muscle that that builds is it helps you learn how to build trust very quickly.

How do you build trust quickly outside of being genuinely kind to people and bringing them donuts and coffee or tea, whatever's culturally appropriate, is being vulnerable, is sharing the things you don't know, sharing your mistakes and even a little bit of your life and your background so that at least they know your motivators and don't have to fill in their own beliefs. I always like to say, in the absence of alternative information, people come to their own conclusions. So filling in the gap of why you behave the way that you do, but then it also gives them permission, not everyone, but some people reciprocate. And they will share things about themselves with you. And then you know their drivers and don't misinterpret some of their behaviors. So one of the great accelerators

of trust is certainly vulnerability. I learned it when I was young and I see it play out in leadership today. How do we maintain that? You know, it seems to me that that's a muscle that leaders need to keep working out or you can maybe develop a blind spot there. Curious to know what you'd say about that too. How do you and make sure that not just you, but the leaders that you're leading keep that vulnerability front of mind? I think the first way to make sure that the leaders I am leading keep vulnerability as a meaningful part of their behaviors is I have to demonstrate it first. So I can't tell them to do it intellectually or academically if they aren't living it every day because people follow what they see far more consistently than they follow what they're told.

And so I have to demonstrate that. The second is by sharing stories and the power. So maybe I'm having a conversation with a potential client, a potential partner or even an employee. And because of my sharing and vulnerability, it led to a discussion that either prevented a problem, or created an opportunity. I will share those stories with my leadership group. So even if they couldn't be there to experience it, they're being reminded of the power of sharing.

And it reminds them that not just is their power in it, but it gives them permission. And some people need that permission to be vulnerable. You know, if one reads your bio, you can get kind of overwhelmed, certainly in this audience. So a bunch of small business people, men and women, they're running small businesses. And you see, okay, well, Kat, she helped lead Sinabon,

past a billion dollars in revenue sales. And that can just absolutely kind of glaze your mind over as you try to process those numbers. But here's the other thing that you're known for. And this is what I want to talk about, that you've created these very entrepreneurial-minded teams. That's a phrase in your bio. And I love that that's in your bio because that shows me that you care about that. So break down a billion-dollar company into these entrepreneurial-minded team. So people can see, here's how we keep this culture alive in each little synabund store you might see, whether it be in the mall, or how do you do that? How do you keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive in such a large organization? Two major drivers for the process that we use and what

entrepreneurial-mindedness looks like in a large corporation. One, I invest in and advise early-stage startups personally. So I literally in my life stay very close to tiny, tiny, tiny, businesses. So that helps keep my brain thinking small, no matter how big my day job gets. Give me an example. Give me an example of what you mean when you say that. So could be a small startup that only has four employees that is launching an e-commerce business. They don't have resources. They don't have the marketing expertise. And they have very real operational challenges of high growth, but not enough inventory or not enough capacity, but they can't manage it all. So the resourcefulness that comes from a small business person because of constraints and resource limitations is something

that I stay very close to because those are the founders I'm advising. So even though I'm running a big company that has a ton of resources, in another part of my life, I am helping to run or advise or actually investing in a teeny tiny company with nowhere near the resources. So that keeps me grounded. It keeps me from getting big company brain because I'm using my small company, entrepreneurial brain. And then remember that although I run big companies and although focus brands is a compilation of multiple large brands that people know, it still is a franchise business, which means

our business partners own one restaurant or two restaurants. They are small business people. So actually by way of growing up and franchising, I've had the best of both worlds. Big corporate brands where you have big responsibility, maybe large marketing power, but you actually in practice are simply a collection of tiny businesses where I have to connect to the small business owner and make sure anything we do works for them and they have to live up to a larger corporate promise. So that's the how we keep the mindset. What it looks like deconstructed is first keeping a founder's mentality. So how do you do that? One, you very literally

remind people of the founding, the noble mission, whatever you want to call it. Our CEO talks about this quite a bit at focus brands. And that is a piece that is not hard for small business owners and new entrepreneurs. But when you get bigger and bigger and more into the corporate world, you are further disconnected from the root. It's like a giant tree, right? You're a big piece of fruit or a big flower at the way, way, way, top of a branch that grew off a branch that grew off a branch that maybe is loosely connected to the trunk. You're so far from the root. So part of the way of keeping things healthy, I love that phrase, the fruits and the roots. that you have to remind people of the why and the stories.

And for Cineban, it is, just like every large franchise, it started as one. Antianne started as one. They didn't just pop up out of the ground as an entire crop of franchises. It was one woman, Ann Biler, who started rolling pretzels to support her community. It was one guy, Rich Coman and his son, Greg, who started making cinnamon rolls with a famous baker in Seattle, and they opened one little 300-square-foot shop in a mall.

And so reminding people of that founder mindset and that resources could go away at any moment is a part of entrepreneurial thinking. The other part is being scrappy. So not kind of related to your question about career and not having to be fully ready before you say yes or launch, part of the way we use entrepreneurial thinking in a big corporate environment is kind of a minimum viable product. So if you're a scrappy entrepreneur and you have limited capital, you go with whatever is ready as long as it's good. enough just to get started because you need the revenue to start coming in. And so you start selling a small version of what your idea is, even if it's not the biggest that you think it could be. You don't just sit around and develop and develop and develop until it's huge because what

if you spend all that time and then it bombs? But launching things small before most people would than having lots of learning around that so you can iterate, learn from that test, but in a living laboratory. So we will launch products very quickly, more quickly than most people in a small environment and learn from it in its real environment, not just in a test kitchen, and then either evaluated and iterate it and keep it growing or kill it early so we know to move on to the next thing. So those are two ways, founders mentality and launching things before others would. So we can learn real time in its real environment instead of just in a quote-unquote laboratory that allows us to move more quickly as if we are small businesses when actually we're large. Yeah, it's just on

scale. Folks, that is a masterclass right there in entrepreneurialism. That's really good, Kat. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to stay here, but do a follow-up. I love the fruits and roots phrase. That's really good. On the roots thing, and this founder's mentality, you mentioned, I've had the privilege to work with Zaxby's, their founder, Zach McElroy, done a lot of work with those guys and seen inside the organization, same with Dan Kathy, Chick-fil-A. But the reason I bring it up is because I'd like to now go to you is because you talked about this founder's mentality. And I think sometimes when we see a large brand like Cinebun and all the other brands. And you think franchisees, you know, these people come in and you're trying to teach them and get them involved in the culture

and this founder's mentality. And there's a tremendous amount of communication that has to happen for you to distill that culture down to franchisees. I'm curious to know what has worked for you all from a communication standpoint. I think we can learn from you on how to communicate broadly, but effectively. It has very. since Focus Brands is a compilation of several different companies and brands that we have bought at different stages in their journey, Sinabon and Antianns both have the founders of those businesses still very much involved in the business, even though they don't own them anymore, which is such a beautiful thing. Just as you described, Zach and the Kathy family with Chick-fil-A,

those brands are fortunate that the founders are still not only alive, but very much involved in the business. Some of the other brands we have bought, that is not the case. They have been sold many times over, or the founders have been gone for quite some time. And so the beautiful thing is at focus brands, it forces us to be good at this regardless of the circumstance. And so in the cases of Cineban and Anteans, we can really point to the founders and literally use the founders for everything from videos to webinars to message points to keep that route alive. In the case of Carvel, you know, Tom Carvel, the man invented soft serve and the brand is 81 years old. He's no longer with us. in the physical form on this planet,

nor are his direct descendants involved in the business. So it's almost like he's a myth. And so we have to focus on his intentions, his mission, but connect it to the good work of the franchisees today as a part of the root of the brand. So it's a different way to use the founder's mentality instead of the actual founder,

rather the people that have been growing the business. In Mo's, the founders of the business were geniuses at brand building, but if you go by the legal records, It's not very good franchisors. So to that franchise community, celebrating the founders is really not a good idea, but celebrating what they created, the fan love for those recipes and the welcome to Moes cry. That is how you connect to the founder mentality without literally connecting to the founder.

So as you can see, I could go on and on with our brands. Evoking the founder mentality is relative to the situation, whether or not the founder is around. But founder mentality is another way of saying a sense of ownership. and an ownership mentality and a level of pride around quality and execution, but a level of belief around the brand and businesses potential. That's what founder mentality, owner mentality is like. And there are many ways we literally teach it with webinars and motivating sessions, and then we have to demonstrate it through our behaviors as an owner of these brands. You certainly embody the subject of this question, and I've seen it with great organizations

where, again, Zaxby's Chick-fil-A, I've seen it, where they take kids that come into their stores, much like you walked into a restaurant and they develop them. And developing leaders is such an unbelievably valuable skill for leaders in an organization. What do you do to keep that alive for those who are under you that you are leading to say, hey, keep your eyes out for the next cat, Cole? You know, I think a part of it is constantly bringing in a diverse group of participants into our activities. So young employees in the business, customers or guests that we meet online or in our restaurants, talking about the value of talent as a priority in the organization so that

people's eyes are always out. But a big part of it is simply continually involving a diverse group of people in our meetings and our discussion. And then just having the, this sounds silly, but the behavior of consistently talking about people. So in meetings, talking about top performers in the organization. Who have you seen? Who has impressed you talking about poor performers and how we're going to address those? Can they be developed? Can they be coached? Can they be redirected? Or do they simply need to find something that's better suited for them? That discussion keeps talent as a front of mind focus and it leaves space to talk about identifying not just top talent, but especially if you consider Mike background, I like to make sure our leaders are considering maybe some type of

candidates for roles that have non-traditional backgrounds and that don't fit the mold of X number of years of school at this particular type of school this many years in this position, but rather focusing on the skills that we need and how that person evidences those skills, despite the fact that they may have, I don't know, a criminal record or they may not have come from a specific set of industries that we typically spec. I mean, if I just think about all the chances I have been given, despite the fact that I did not have the pedigree, the resume, at least in the early days, I wouldn't be where I am without those people opening up and realizing that I had certain skills despite not having the resume. Now I have the resume. But I wouldn't if it weren't for those

people. So I like to tell people, keep an eye out for the skill and the scrappiness and the grit and the communication capability and the grace and the humility and the confidence. Those are the type of people we want to involve in our team meetings and our projects or be going to coffee with over time to build relationships with. So should an opening happen, we can recruit them. I love that. In your new role, it's very diverse with all these different brands that you're touching all the time. What do you specifically spend your time on currently? Because you can't just do everything. So I'd love to know, based on your skill set and what you do best, what are you focusing on? So my role that I've been in for the last two years,

is one of the group presidents of focus brands. And to your point, it is the global channel. So licensing retail, food service, consumer package goods. So all channels that are not franchising for all six brands. And I report to the CEO. So I spend time, one, managing short-term and long-term priorities and resources to fuel those priorities and goals. That's more and more of my time. The other big chunk of my time is a question you asked, which is talent. The further away you get from the day-to-day activity, the more critical talent selection, talent development culture around your talent is. And that leads me to the third bucket, which really is culture, making sure the behaviors

that are happening, my own and other peoples, are reinforcing what we want the culture to be. I heard a phrase from a professor once, I dropped out of college, but then I went to business school And one of my business school professors said culture, each strategy for lunch every day. That's right. And I loved that phrase. And as I move up and take on more diverse roles with more complex teams and in positions, much like a CEO where you must lead through influence. If you're the one making all the decisions, you've got a problem as the CEO.

You want to leave room to guide and make few decisions, but have the few decisions you make be big and help develop other people to take responsibility and make decisions. And the more you move up over that, the more important the right culture is. Because since culture is more powerful than strategy or plans or instructions, having the right mindset and belief systems is the single most impactful thing, a high-level leader, any leader, but a high-level leader can do because it's the rising tide that lifts all boats. if I spent my time on one process or one P&L or one particular brand or business, the opportunity cost of that versus building the culture where all the people that work with me

are making smarter decisions that are more aligned with the company that, by the way, don't require my physical presence every minute. The opportunity cost of that would be so great. So I would say those are the things I really spend my time on. And then the undercurrent of that is working across with my peers, across the organization under our CEO to help make sure that the back end machine that we've built at Focus Brands continues to add value to all of our brands, even though they're all sit in very different places in an appropriate way.

You know, I'm sitting here trying to, I'm listening to you, but I'm trying to think, what would it be like to know you've got all these different restaurants under these multiple brands? It would keep me up at night, I think, if I allowed myself to obsess about it. I know that doesn't happen to you, but I'm just curious on the culture issue. There's internal culture and then there's external culture and I'm referring to external culture being me the customer when I walk into a Cineabun store in a mall or an ante ante ante, whatever. What is that ideal culture experience for the customer look like if you were to outline that? I think there are a few things that I could say are of course consistent across all the brands, but just a few.

And then they all become very specific to the brand because each brand reaches. out to a different consumer with a different need state, stands for something, has very different founders, a different day part even of the menu. So I'll start with the consistent qualities. One is, especially in this, I sound like my grandparents, but this day and age, you want people to feel like their food is safe. We're in a food business. And so the culture needs to be safety as a priority. That should be true across all our brands, regardless of how complex the food is or packaged or not packaged, snacks or dinner, that's got to be cultural. That safety is critical. Food safety, personal safety, physical safety, all of that.

Next is, of course, hospitality. You know, we are in the food business, but we are in the service business. And so there should be, regardless of the way the business is set up, whether it's a Mo's Southwest Grill and you're ordering, you're making your burrito as you walk down the line, or it's a Cinnabon and you're simply pointing at the cinnamon roll that's totally speak in your language. You know, you want that one at the top left because it looks the gooiest and the biggest. Those are very different interactive experiences. One is sort of assembling product. Then we have a McAllister's where the food is physically brought out to you, same with Schlotsky's,

Carvel where someone's making your ice cream cone, Antianns, where you're similar to Cinebon, you're pointing out what you want. So the way our crew interacts with our guests is very different. In a mall or an airport, it's fast and you go to the counter and then you go away. But at Mo's you sit down and we're with you the entire experience, most likely. And so hospitality as a theme, no matter at what point or to what degree we interact with you, has to be cultural, this delight in serving, this desire to create a wonderful escape even for just a moment, even if that means we just make sure your package is clean and your box is

perfect because you're not even sitting with us when you enjoy the product or the Mo's employee that makes sure the bathroom is incredibly clean because you are staying with us. So hospitality has to be the theme. Outside of those two things, safety and hospitality broadly, then you start getting into the brand-specific cultural elements. Maybe it's warm and family-friendly. Maybe it's fun and high energy. Maybe it's value and more southern-style hospitality. And so each brand starts to branch off with its own cultural directives and norms, but those two, safety and hospitality are huge. I have to confess to you, Kat, while you're rattling through those brands, I'm overwhelmed with hunger all of a sudden.

I know. I kid you not. It's like attacking me. Here's an idea for our listeners. What if you dump the Moes casso over a bun instead of put the cinnamon on, just it's a caseo bun. Try that out, Kat. It's all yours.

You can run with that. It's frightening. I know it is. It is. All right. So we have a large audience. And I know in an audience this size, there are a lot of people who are listening in and they want to be moving up the ladder. They want to lead. They're compelled to lead. They feel like they can lead. And it's just not, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe there's some angst in the midst of the hustle. And I want you to speak to that group of people because you've been there and you've moved up the ladder. But I think this is always an important message to an audience like this who's so committed to personal growth. And they want to get there. And it's really hard to. wait while hustling. What would you say to those folks? I would say first to assess what you define as success. Some people spend so much time saying, I'm hustling for this goal, but I'm just not getting it. And I'll pause and say, well, why do you want that? Why do you want that title or that job? And sometimes they say, well, because financial advancement comes with that. And I say, well, let me tell you two

other ways you could get financial investment. Why are you only focused on that one job? Or they say, because it's a point of pride for me to show advancement. And I'll point out, guess what, you're not with a company that's growing. So advancement's going to be really tough. So my first tip to this audience that where the next achievement just hasn't happened yet is to give yourself the gift of reexamining why you want that and then be scrappy and creative and asking yourself, are there one or two other ways that I could actually get the thing that it is that I want that might be different from that current goal. My mom used to say I was like water where a physical, you know, Plato, if you run it along a wall and then that wall hits another wall, you've got to just keep spreading it along the wall.

But if you're like water, if there are cracks in the wall, you can go into the crack. And there are so many different ways to get what you want if you actually deconstruct what you want. But if the work becomes about the work, if the goal, like being a man, or a director or a president or whatever it is. If the goal becomes just about the goal and you forget why you wanted it in the first place, you will miss the opportunities that might be right in front of you to actually still get what you want. It just might be disguised as something else.

So that's one. The other is I find that people are not aware of their own detractors that might be in place. And so they think, I'm technically checking all the boxes. I'm doing everything I should. I'm doing the job well, yet I'm not getting the fill in the blank. Notice visibility, recognition, promotion. I like to play the devil's advocate because most people don't have these conversations. They just get told what they want to hear or they get patted on the head.

And I like to say, you know, maybe you're doing all the technical things, but there might be something about your persona, your attitude, your style, that is detracting from your otherwise readiness for a role. And I could tell you so many stories of this being true. and people I've mentored or people who've applied for jobs and companies that I've run or be a part of where they're saying, I did the time, I meet the qualifications, and I would say, yes, but every time you talk to someone in the hallway, you're complaining. Who's going to want you on their team? So I just, obviously, I defer to the personal accountability side of approaches to things

instead of the environmental approaches. So that's something I've done for myself, is evaluated, how am I perceived? What are the behaviors that I have that might be separate of being technically good, getting in the way. And if I really want to advance, then I'll address those behaviors. And then the other piece I would say, which speaks to the first piece of advice of finding the crack, being like water, is be creative with your goals. I literally just finished talking to this amazing woman, brilliant student here at Wharton. And she has been interviewing with several large firms. And she's like, I'm not getting exactly the roles that I want thrown at me. And I'm starting to feel maybe not as accomplished. And I had this exact conversation with her. She's like, I really want to focus on finance. But her major wasn't finance. So of course, a big firm is not going to hire her for a financial role. I said, but you know what you could do. You could start with a smaller firm where you're taking not a financial role, but more of an operating consultative role. But because the firm is small, you will definitely be involved in the financial activities. And they need your brain so you can ensure that in the interview that you want to be on these financial committees. So it might not be.

be the job you get, but you can be on the committee that has the function that you want. And if you do that enough, you build a resume, guess what? Next job, you absolutely can get that financial role. So it's being willing to get at things differently by being creative and scrappy, sort of the definition of entrepreneurial thinking except applied to your career. Where are you growing intentionally in your life, whether that be personally or professionally, that you'd be willing to share with us? Well, always growing, certainly. I love that old phrase, if you're not growing, you're dying. And certainly I have felt that way my whole life that literally, if I'm not learning and making mistakes, I feel lazy. I feel fearful that I am not doing the most with what I have been given.

And so there's two areas where I would say I'm most focused. One is personally, I just got married recently. Congratulations. Thank you. And so our goal is to be the most amazing force together that we can be and to be an amazing couple. And literally I and we apply principles that most people only apply to either their athletic training, if they're professional athletes, or to their career, if they're highly ambitious. We apply to our relationship. We do check-ins every month where we ask each other, what was the best and worst part of the last month?

What's one thing I could do to be a better partner for you to be more effective? What's something related to our relationship that has worried you in the last might be a weekly check-in or a monthly check-in? What's something you're most grateful for? I mean, literally the amount of intentionality and communication. It is phenomenal, but it's really the minimum that anyone should be doing because we both are at a point in our lives and we realized, wow, think of all the books we've read about business. Think of all the time we spent in a gym or running to prepare for a race. What have we ever done to be intentionally amazing as a partner? And the answer when we reflected on our past relationships was, you know what, we probably did pretty little.

and most people probably do pretty little because you just meet and you fall in love and you like each other and you cohabitate. And no wonder little things become big problems because you haven't put the intentionality around it. So we are almost desperately seeking a level of intentionality and depth and vulnerability and communication that will help make us not just as good in our personal life as we are in our professional lives or in his case athletic lives. He wrote across the Atlantic Ocean and is an endurance athlete. but we want to be better for each other than we are in any other part of our life. And when you put that as the bar, it really changes things. So that's one area. And the other area is just on constantly reflecting, spending that time to reflect so that I'm really evaluating is the way I'm spending my time and my money connected to the things I say are the most important to me.

And if not, it's my job to improve that, to make sure that the things I say I value the most and the way I'm spending my time and money are as closely connected as possible. And the first step in doing that is being aware and conscious. So I'm spending more time with that reconciliation, reflection on time and money and values and trying to bring them all closer together. That's a terrific challenge. That's worth the entire conversation, folks, right there. I got to tell you, we have to be. have to wrap up because I'm ravenously hungry all of a sudden. It's never happened to me before in an interview. But before I let you go, I have to ask you a massively important question of these amazing restaurant brands that you help bleed. Don't make me pick. I know. I have to. Come on. We won't tell anybody. If you were only going to pick one meal of those brands, which one do you pick? Come on, you can do this cat. This is not tabloid stuff. I can't. It's like saying

Which of your children do you love? They're all my favorite. Here's what I will say. If I were at McAllisters, I would have only the baked potato. Oh, I like this. The soup. At Mose, I would have the Joey bag of donuts. Joey bag of donuts, for sure.

At Cinnabon, I would have the mini bond but topped with salted caramel. At Carvel, I would have the classic vanilla cone but dipped and maybe a little bit of Fudgy the Whale Cake. And at Antian's, I would be torn between the pepperoni, pretzel and the mini pretzel cheese nuggets. That's impressive, folks. I am. That's what I really wanted.

That should have been the question there, is just pick your favorite item off of each menu. That was good. You could run for office the way you handled that. We certainly have not seen that type of ability to pivot in this election cycle. That's not a political statement. This is a communicative statement. So there you go.

Hey, Kat, you're awesome. And our audience is better for listening to you. We appreciate you. We know how that. valuable your time is, but you have really challenged us, and we appreciate you. And as a father of a little girl, I also appreciate your role model and business. It's very inspiring to see your journey. And thank you so much for sharing with us. Thank you so much. Big thanks to Kat Cole for spending time with us. Hope you got a lot out of that. I certainly enjoyed that conversation.

And we're hearing that you're enjoying our Entree resource for the month of November. We're calling it the Five Enemies of unity. And this is big, big stuff. When Dave teaches, Chris Hogan, they teach on this entree leadership material, this is always one of the most popular lessons, and we've turned it into a resource for you. Five enemies of unity. It doesn't matter how big your organization is or how small it is. Unity matters. And this resource is going to help you with these five enemies. How do you identify them? And then how do you defeat them? Poor communication. Gossip. Unresolved disagreements. Lack of a shared purpose. Sanctioned incompetence. I mean, these are the five enemies, and any one of them can kill you.

Certainly hurt productivity. And so we walk you through how to win on these issues. And folks, I've got to tell you, if you pick any one of these issues, I mean, they can become a cancer. So don't miss out on this great resource. All you have to do is text the word enemies to 33444. enemies to 33-444 or you can click on the link in the show notes of this podcast. Entreleadership.com slash podcast. Get this resource.

Read it, digest it, soak in it, and then lead with it. I promise it'll help you. Speaking of things that will help you, Infusion Soft, phenomenal tool this month. Folks are gobbling this up. We're getting great feedback on it. The Small Business Office Automation Guide. I recently went off on the podcast.

Eric's producer was laughing at me. I was so passionate about automation. But I'm just telling you, automation for me, it's huge. I love it. And think about your small business. And think about all the things that just drive you nuts. You can get gumbed up with them and all these kind of things. Where could you?

How could you? What should you automate? And so they have an amazing guide here. This is an e-book, and it's absolutely free. and so they're going to help you with routine communication, administrative tasks such as data entry, billing, paperwork, those three words when I say it, I literally, my throat gets constricted. You know, appointment scheduling, follow-up, hiring, training, all the tasks that are so vital, but that certainly could be more efficient in your operation.

That's what this resource does. So you go to infusionsoft.com slash office and then a dash. automation. Infusionsoft.com slash office dash automation. And if you can't remember that, don't worry about it. Eric, the producer has the link in our show notes. You just go to entreleadership.com slash podcast this episode or any of the November episodes for that matter.

And the small business office automation guide is sitting there waiting for you. And here's the thing. Here's a piece of data that I got since the last time I talked about this. Entrepreneurs are saying, Eric, this is crazy. that they spend 68% of their time managing daily tasks in their business instead of working on their business. So again, another reason why this is a great resource. So go check that out. It will help you.

I want to thank Adam Kugel again for sharing his story in Kat Kohl for her time. And hey, we would love for you to subscribe to our podcast. You can do that on iTunes and write a review. That's a good thing that spreads the word. It's all about the digital water cooler. That would help us. So we appreciate that very much. On behalf of Eric the producer and the entire Entree leadership team,

thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.