Founder's Story - Built a $34M Company on One Lesson From Her Dad at 7 | Ep. 401 with Kate Monroe

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Kate Monroe went from Marine Corps veteran to 8-figure CEO, actress, mother, and one of the most relentless entrepreneurs you'll ever hear from. But the lesson that shaped her life did not come from business school. It came from her dad when she was 7 years old. In this episode of Founder's Story, Daniel Robbins sits down with Kate Monroe to talk about how she scaled her company from $750,000 to nearly $34 million in sales in just three years, why she believes success starts with a decision, and how one childhood lesson taught her to handle pressure, problems, and pain without letting them ruin everything else. Kate shares the difference between being a "makeup bag person" and a "toolbox person," a simple mindset shift that helped her compartmentalize challenges, build a veteran-owned company, run for Congress, step into film, and launch Studio Mint. This is a conversation about grit, discipline, ambition, and what it really takes to keep going when most people would quit. In this episode, we cover: The lesson Kate learned from her dad at 7 years old How she scaled from $750K to nearly $34M in sales Why "decided" became one of the most important words in her life How she writes a full book in just 14 hours Why being the face of your brand can change everything The mindset behind outworking the competition Her move into acting, movies, vertical shorts, and Studio Mint Why she believes social media has made people more disconnected The difference between starting something and actually finishing it Follow Kate Monroe: Instagram / Socials: @KateMonroeCEO Website: KateMonroeCEO.com Subscribe to Founder's Story for more conversations with founders, creators, leaders, and entrepreneurs building extraordinary lives. Episode Sponsors: Take Cheers Restore after your last drink or before going to bed and wake up feeling at least 50% better — or your money back. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order at CheersHealth.com/FOUNDERS. #Cheers #ad Go to Schedule35.co and use code FOUNDERS for 15% off your first order. That's Schedule35.co, code FOUNDERS, for 15% off. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You're a Marine, you're an entrepreneur, a singer, film star. Who is the real Kate? I think I am all those things. I've written seven books I took my company from 750,000 sales a year to this year, nearly 34 million. So you have Body Man. You're obviously the main star in that. How do you balance the success of each of these things?

There's 100 apps open in my brain at all times, trying to figure out how I can make more money, how I can duplicate myself. It's healthy for you to finish things. A lot of people will start writing the book, but not to finish. If you can make content at a fast rate that people actually want to watch, you're a lot closer to getting cute. What has been the secret sauce for you to be able to skill to that level? So I just try to keep myself focused on. So, Kate, you are a lot of things, which, by the way, I would imagine people ask you like, how do you sleep at night?

Like, do you have any time to sleep? Because I always get the same question. I'm like, I'm a lot of things. And they're like, do you ever sleep? But I think, as we know, entrepreneurs, we're always moving. Like there's always something going on, but you're a Marine. You're an entrepreneur, a singer, film star. You just had a movie come out.

Basketball team owner, a mother. When you're alone at the end of the day, when the day is ending, who is the real Kate? Well, wouldn't it be nice if we can compartmentalize and pull everything apart? I mean, I think I am all those things. But when I'm at home at night and I'm winding down and I have a nine-year-old and I'm starting to put him to bed, it's that version of me that I think he values most. And because he is a reflection of me, I end up valuing that the most because I see myself through his eyes in those moments when he's just like, I love you so much, Mommy. Thank you for taking the time to snug me tonight.

Thank you for taking the time. And that fills my cup. And that lets me do all of the other things that I have to do. But at the foundation of it all, once a Marine, always a Marine, and I don't say that lightly, it does really sort of dictate every movement that you make, your resiliency or ability to get up and grind. In fact, it helps you fall asleep at night. Boot camp teaches a very good trick. Hey, you know what? I work really hard tonight.

I deserve my sleep. I'm going to go ahead and lay down and go to bed. I like that. So if you tell yourself, so essentially what I'm hearing is like, if you tell yourself something, you eventually do it. When you were nine years old, when you were your son's age, did you see yourself that one day I'm going to be something? Like, was the drive there even when you were younger?

So funny story. When I was nine, when I was his age, I started babysat. Can you believe gin exers? People let us babysitting kids when we were nine. We would never do that now. But I was already babysitting. So I started babysitting. Then I got seven babysitters that worked for me.

I became their babysitter booking service. And I had kids mowing lawns. I got a paper out. I had somebody take it over by the time I was 12. I've always been so entrepreneurial. I'm like, if there's 100 apps open in my brain at all times, trying to figure out how I can make more money, how I can duplicate myself and clone myself.

So I've been this crazy since I came out of the worm problem. It's what do you say that? I always love to hear like the first business someone did, right? Or the first thing they sold. We just had the kind bar founder on. And he was also sharing something similar like when he was younger doing all these things. It's almost it's almost like innate. It's like you will become that one day because of the culmination of all the things that you did. What what else did you do in your life that has really culminating you to, okay, I want to also be a movie star. I also want to be a basketball owner. I also want to do these other things because it seems like you're almost never settled. It actually is that I'm never settled. I actually had to do some cognitive behavioral therapy because I was realizing that when I was accomplishing something, I was getting to the top of that mountain. I was feeling a loss.

And I had to teach myself, hey, I have all these micro wins that I have to focus on every day. You know, every little step I'm making toward my goal, I'm going to celebrate. And I've got better of celebrating myself. but I've got better at celebrating the journey because you're absolutely right. If you just wait until the moment that you finish it to win, you're standing up there by yourself gone, well, damn, it's over. You know, what do I do now? Shit, there's another mountain.

There's another mountain that I got to climb. So I think that that could be very difficult for a lot of people. And so I just try to keep myself focused on and and and have gratitude because it used to be and what and what next and what next and what next. And now it's like, I feel like God bless me to do quite a lot, to take a quite a lot on. I just feel really grateful to be able to do it. How do you become grateful? Because I feel like every time I become grateful, there's another milestone.

Or, you know, something bad happens, right? Like you have a deal. It's about to close and then it gets destroyed. And then another deal comes in and then you win. I feel like it's this roller coaster that sometimes causes me to not be able to do that. Yeah. Gratitude is hard. You know, having joy is hard.

You know, joy is supposed to take us the distance. You know, happiness. Well, I'm not happy. Well, okay, well, that's like Chinese food. Good luck being happy all the time. But you certainly can be joyful. And that starts with your choices. I make a choice every day to have gratitude.

I make a choice to give thanks and to recognize people in my life. Like, I take a lot of time to tell my little son how good he is and how grateful I am for him. Because, again, he's a reflimate. He's going to reflect that back to me. I just have always thought, you know, in the Bible that David and Goliath, story. You don't have to be a Christian who have heard this story. They say that God did not give David courage. He gave him Goliath. He gave him these problems. So for me, I feel like it breaks you and then strengthens you. To give you an example, I was a memory ankle or I got assaulted. I crushed my

nose and I sock it. I crushed my right elbow, my right ankle, all of my feelings. And very easily, that could have led my life down a very dark path. But instead, I said, you know what? I'm going to turn this on a dime. I'm going to go from victim to Victor very quickly and just pivot and pivot and pivot to the positive and stay grateful for what I do have and for what I don't have because that teaches it a lot. It's like belief system. It's like if you, a situation can happen, you can say this is positive or a situation happens and you can say it's negative. It's almost like you have the control is what I'm hearing from you. When I talk about words, because obviously words are extremely important, a word that's changed your life is decided.

Yes. And maybe that is along the lines of what you're saying. So what is the final thing that made you say decided is so important? Well, I think decided is a past tense word. So if you say, I have decided to do something. That means you should already be moving toward that target. You should already have made changes. You already got up earlier.

You're already stretching yourself farther. You already put your intention there. So I very rarely will ever say, I have decided to make a movie. I have decided to own a basketball team. might have decided to help 27,000 veterans and then not do it. Because that is where your intention goes. I think words are very powerful. Telling people what your intentions are, saying it aloud and holding yourself accountable is quite a lot. Like the power of choice, to give you an example, when I was in the military and the Marine Corps and I got assaulted. I went to go do some therapy with a chaplain for a week.

And he said, you know what? Sounds like you grew up and he had a pretty good life. And I said, I had the best life, best parents, best grandparents, everything perfect. He said, well, you have a choice to make that other people don't. And this is where I heard that word, that choice that I had to make at 19. He said, you get to decide because you had a trauma-free childhood. Do you want to make this an event or have it ruin your life? You want to say, hey, this is just an event and I'm going to lay it down and give it to God and walk away, or do you want to carry it with you for the rest of your journey? And at 19, I went to bed that night and I went, wow, that's really something. I have that much choice over my feelings. I can decide how much energy I want to give this for her.

And I said, bad, this is not for me. I don't want to carry it the distance. I prayed that night. I gave it to God. And I drew a line. I stepped over at my march on and on and on. So choice and decision and I have decided run my life for sure. Something I've always wanted to do is be an actor.

Because I want to know the feeling like when you watch something. Like if you're watching Netflix or whatever and you see yourself, what is the feeling? So you have body man that just premiered. It's coming out. You're obviously the main star in that or a main star. What was the feeling when you saw yourself there at the premiere? Well, it was actually different than I thought. I actually thought I would feel how I did when I watched the movie alone to critique the movie.

I thought I'm going to be sitting there seeing my face giant on the screen bigger than I've ever seen it before. And then I would be going, ooh, your neck, ooh this, oh that, oh, you sounded, all the nitpickery that we do of ourselves. But when I watched it with 300 other people, I got to watch it through their fresh eyes and listen to them laugh and say, wow, that would be. so good. They were not nitpicking me. And getting it to watch it with them made me appreciate it more. It made me appreciate my performance, the movie at large, the fact that we even tackled it in the first place in the face of adversity. That's a whole other story for another day. But I think it actually elevated my experience watching it with so many people. I, oh my gosh, I hate listening to myself. So you're right around. I might nitpick myself. So maybe I don't want to watch. But maybe that

gives me hope when you are with other people, you're not what you're doing when you're alone. I like that idea. You're also a singer. How do you balance the success of each of these things to where so one thing doesn't fall off, right? So it's like if I, if I have these two things here and now I move to these three or four things, how do I ensure that these first two things don't then fall off? Well, I think that it's healthy for you to finish things. A lot of people will start writing a book, but not finish it. They'll start an album and not finish it. Right. Everybody tinkers and toys around and as a hobbyist with things, but they don't finish it. So to give you an example, if you want to write a book and finish it while you're also running an eight-figure company, you have to put it in

your calendar. You have to happen to your life. So when I was writing one of the seven books, I just created a formula that said, for 14 days, I'm going to put an hour in my calendar every day and I'm going to write a book. And it only takes 14 days. An hour a day, it takes 14 hours to write a book. Period. I don't care what kind of book it is. If you say, you say, I'm going to put a hour in sit down and do the work. But that's not what most people do. They're like jack in the box, making abroles and hamburgers on the same grill and it tastes like garbage. They're not like in and out. In and out says, hey, we make fries, we make burgers, shakes and sodas. That's all that we do. And so when I snap in to do something, I'm a lot more like in and out. I snap in and I get it

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Listeners get 20% off at cheershealth.com with code founders. Tell them the founder's story sent you. That's cheershealth.com code founders. And I think that's kind of a secret to my success is that I happen to my life. One, two, through compartmentalization. Most very successful people are very compartmental. When I was seven years old, my dad said to me, I was having a bad day. I was self-reflecting, like, I did something bad at school and everybody ate me. And, you know, having one of those down days as little kids do. And he said, hey, I'm going to teach you a trick. There's only two kinds of people in the world. I said, okay, I'm seven great. Okay, dad, there's two kinds of people. He said, follow me. If your mom takes a red lipstick and the cap is off when she throws it in her makeup bag, what's going to happen to everything in the back? And I said, well, it's going to be ruined. This is going to be covered in that red lipstick. He said, but what if she took that same lipstick? and she put it in my toolbox in a compartment.

I said, well, then it would only ruin that one compartment. He said, exactly. There's only two kinds of people in left. Who do you want to be? Because right now you're acting an awful lot like a makeup bag person, and you're like this one piddly shit thing, ruin your entire day. And from seven years on, I catch something

because problems happen outside of us and we let them in, I catch it, and I go, not going to throw that in the makeup bag. I'm going to put it in a compartment, and I'm not even going to deal with it. But right now, I'm going to go on with my day. And by the end of the day, I don't even remember that happened.

that that is very helpful compartmentalization. Oh, I love that. I'm going to use that quote. I'm going to quote you on that. I really like that. Do you want to be the makeup bag or do you want to be the compartment? Yep. Taco box, toolbox, toolbox, whatever it is.

Toolbox, you want to be a makeup bag or you want to be the toolbox? I like that. So you've talked about how being a female team owner can make other women realize that they can do it. It's like if you see it, you can be it. Who was a woman in your life that made you also realize this first? Well, I think both my grandmas are pretty powerful ladies. My dad's mom, who I'm named after, she was the president of the Chamber of Commerce. She was a president of the Women's Club.

She owned real estate. She was a very good speaker. She was a very driven lady. And you got to think for her era, she was way ahead of her time. I remember sitting at an old typewriter typing up her notes for her. Like, like, like, ding. You know, and I just remember thinking, wow, this lady is really important and people are taking her very seriously. And that made it okay from a really early age. I said, well, my grandma can do it. I certainly can do it in this day and age. And I think that that's where that spark came from. And I just have been a light bearer and carried that torch forward for her all of these years. She was a Mary Kay lady. In fact, when she died, I was giving, you know, a speech. And I reached back to touch her casket when I was talking about her. And I just started crying because it was like a pink cat.

basket. Like she went in the grave. Everything that she was, this pastel pink, beautiful, powerful woman. And I hope that I did the same. I would be so lucky. Isn't it crazy I think 30 years ago there was like a typewriter? This episode is brought to you by Schedule 35 and I'll be honest. This is a topic I was skeptical about for a long time. But the more I started researching psilocybin and hearing stories from entrepreneurs, creatives, athletes, everyday people, the more I realize this conversation is becoming impossible to ignore. What I like about Schedule 35 is they've made the experience intentional and approachable, whether someone is microdosing for focus, creativity, clarity, or taking a more recreational dose to disconnect from the noise and reconnect with themselves,

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I have a really deep question for you, though. What scares you? What scares me? I mean, aside from, you know, snakes, lizards and spiders and heights, what scares me about life in the world, I think is absolutely the worst. No, I don't understand. I'm going to ask God later, why spiders? But we'll get to that at a later date. But I think what scares me is apathy.

And apathy is the one thing that I would delete. Being our society being so apathetic, we're so inundated with. things. And we're so desensitized that we don't even know what we should stand behind, what we should be doing, what should I be mad at, who should I be marching for, what really matters? Because every second of the day, because a 24-hour news cycle, you don't even know it's true anymore. And with AI and with the way the news are, everything is so disingenuous, it has people be very apathetic. That's why the murder rate is up. That's why people can commit fraud, waste, and abuse at the level that they do, because we just go, well, I guess that's what they do. I guess that's just how it happens.

now and apathy is just a killer of men. It's absolutely horrible. Do you think that social media and maybe the structure of this very short video cycle that we're in, do you think this is in the end going to hurt society or help society? Because I've been really faced with thinking about this lately. Like, I don't know if social media is the worst thing for society in the end or the best for society. Well, I mean, this might be an unpopular opinion, but if I could snap my fingers, there would be no social media. There would be no cell phones. Our lives have not gotten better. We like to think it's brought us together. It's been the most divisive thing because it's a let people think that every little opinion you have that you can get so convicted in that everyone

really cares. So I think about the reviews people leave about restaurants. I mean, just think about the way that we're willing to talk to each other and troll other people and be threatened and bully and plus people out you would never do that in person you get smacked right in the mouth i mean i'm a j i'm gonna be 47 years old next week i could tell you right now none of this stuff would have would fly in the 80s and 90s people would go apart in you i will see you tomorrow you might not want to be so bold i think it's horrible i think people have never been more lonely i think gen z and gen alpha the the suicide rate amongst them is i actually asked i did i did a study i asked 300 gen zers we did a survey in a poll 70% of them said if They could go and get in a pod and go take a dirt map.

They would do it. They have no hope. They are lonely. They feel disconnected. In a world where we're supposedly so connected by social media. Nobody goes outside. Nobody plays. People don't go talk to each other.

They sit on their phone. I think it's for them. I know people are going to hate me for this, but nuke it quit. That's what I will. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm beginning to understand what you're saying. And I see it too, you know, having kids that are in the Gen Z age range and seeing their friends what they're talking about also the news AI companions people will date robots

at some point like all these things could be escalated because of our lack of connection which is quite sad and I know the good thing is though we have people like you who I are and I think you I other great people who our goal is to create positive content positive things to also bring people together. Something I've been watching a lot lately is vertical shorts. I know we're talking about shorts, but I like vertical shorts. I really, really like, I can't stop watching it. And it's been kind of like a guilty pleasure of mine because it's a way for me to disconnect and to get into a story, but also not have to watch like a three hour bit of a movie. What are you doing in vertical shorts? So I watched 20 or 30 vertical short series and thought, oh my gosh, this is like Cracker Jacks.

so poppa. It's the worst. It's just the worst. It's so bad. You can watch so much of it. I said, what if we could deliver feature film level verticals? What would that look like? Would people be more enticed by watching that quality? And I think that they will. But what I want to do is there's all these creators out. There's creators out there making multiple millions month after month after month through fan monetization. So the creators make it a ton of money because the fans are watching them and they're getting paid for all these clicks. But the fans make nothing. In the model that I want to propose, the performance participation model, you can share and be a goodwill ambassador of other people's content and make part of the money. That way, when you have people with one to five million followers, they can be an ambassador of your vertical and then they can make thousands of dollars.

And the consumable nature of verticals is there's not enough people to make enough verticals. We're already out. Like the second you watch a vertical, you're like, we're like, we're a season two. I sent out my vertical to 300 people. Everybody called me like, we're season two. What are you doing? Like, they were already ready to watch it

because, again, our attention span is so low. The other thing the verticals do is there a good testing ground. Like, I think this crying drama I made the hails, I think that if it proves concept and has a good audience, somebody doesn't want to turn it into a show or a movie. It's an amazing way to test market ideas with a 10% budget of what you'd have to do to have a film. Wow.

That is an incredible model. because as we know, putting all your money into a film or a show, it's a massive risk. A huge risk. And I think as I've talked to people that do financing for films, majority of the time it's like a startup, nine times out of 10, it flops and it doesn't make money. And then you're hoping for that one out of 10 or one out of whatever. So this could be like game changer for the industry. Is that how is this like what you see that you'll be focusing on in the future, this like way, way, to be able to test things for a longer form?

I mean, right now I'm in the process of raising the first $10 million for studio mint, my company. We'll make a combination of movies in vertical shorts and we'll put them out proliferate them in the market, do all the marketing and ads. I can guarantee you this. I will start to monetize the hails that I just made and just got edited two weeks ago. I will get all my money back and have made money on it before body man hits the American United States market.

on streaming. That's how much faster you can deliver it to the market. So if you can make content at a fast rate that people actually want to watch, you're a lot closer to getting paid. So I think it's global. That's a great thing. You don't have to launch in a movie theater. You put on your phone anywhere around the world. People can watch it. I mean, I'm right now in Asia. They love vertical shorts here. Crazy. Pazs have been here. I think it started in Asia and it's kind of moved away. So China has spent $4 billion in one year on the vertical market. I mean, that's, that's wild. I mean, they already proved concept.

We don't even have to wonder if it's going to work. It works. You're consuming it now. You know, you're already watching them. Well, I can't wait to watch yours, by the way. I'll send it. When you think about what's next for you, is there something that you've dreamt about doing that you have not even started yet? So not the final frontier, but where I'm going, where I'm going, where I'm.

I'm angling, why I'm doing all this. I look out into the market and you're like a Mel Robbins, Tony Robbins, you have Grant Cardone. You have all these great speakers out there. And I think a lot of them are decent, but people leave there going, oh, I'm motivated to do what? Like, what are you going to do now? I have been speaking for a very long time. And I think if I can get on stages that big, where there's 2,000, 10,000, 100,000 people in an arena, I have enough magnetism and enough to deliver the world. by a way of I wrote a book called Wake Up Ready. All of my catisms can radically alter your life. That's where I'm heading.

I'm heading to big stages to changing people's lives from the inside out through very small, easily consumable new tricks and tips. Because you're not going to, we're going to go read a 300-page book and then do all the stuff in that book. No, you're not. But if you can understand the makeup bag and the toolbox idea, now you can make new decisions within 30 seconds. Somebody could watch us today and go, dang, I've been being a lot.

a makeup bag person for a really long time. Maybe it's time to shift over and become a toolbox person. I think it's a shorter distance to change people's lives with stories and with, you know, analogies than it is to talk to them for three hours about the same damn concept and just hope, hope and wish and pray that when they go home, they radically change. I like that. It never works, which it's like they always have to go back to the person because they never changed.

I don't know if that's good business for that person, but. Oh, it's great business for them because they know they're not going to. kind of change so they got to keep going back to the well that you want to really change and fix people on a massive level you have to do it very quickly people need to leave your if somebody sat at lunch with me and i gave them all my kateisms they could immediately go deploy them all every single thing you teach somebody they should be able to do right now in this minute they should be able to draw a line step over it with that new information becoming a new human you want to be the smartest toolbox in the tool shed yes a large shield toolbox be the toolbox be the toolbox

box and the smart. Like a whole truck. Like a similar truck controls. I like that. Be the smart. True story. I at one point in my life, probably my lowest point in my life, I lived in a tool shed for a year. It was horrible.

And I always joke around. I say, I was the smartest tool in the tool shed. But Kate, I wrote this book here with my wife called Unlimited Possibilities. And it's about breaking through barriers that you didn't think were possible. What was an unlimited? possibility moment for you in your life. Hang on that's such a good question because I never, growing up the way I did with my way my brain works, I guess I never thought anything was impossible.

You know, I guess when I ran for Congress, knowing that I likely wouldn't win, you know, giving my party and I'm here in California, I kind of knew, okay, it's not in the cards. I did it anyway. But I didn't realize that all of a sudden by doing that I was going to get on TV for the first time and then be on thousands and thousands of times. For me, that wasn't even in the cards. I never thought I would be on TV. I never thought I would run for Congress. I never thought any of these things. And so for me, I think up until about 2023, I had carried everything with me.

I'm up to that point, like, you know, growing up in a little town with great parents, but, you know, smaller minds going into the Marine Corps, like, and having all that happened to me. I had all that crap with me. All the turbs were still with me in my basket. And at about 2023, I said, look, if I'm going to run for Congress and try to be bigger, better, taller faster stronger, I'm going to need to do something. And I drew a very deep line. And I said, the stuff that's on the backside of this line with me, I'm not willing to carry it any further. I'm going to step over and I'm going to sprint for my new destination. And I change my name. In changing my name to Kate Monroe, and then having to be Kate Monroe every single day for like six months, I just became a wholly new

human being. If you knew me three years ago to now, you would go, oh my gosh, girl, you've been collapsing timelines. I mean, I have lived like 20 years in the last three years. I mean, I've written seven books. I took my company from 750,000 in sales a year to this year nearly 34 million. I mean, that's a big step in three years. Never been on the news now a thousand times. Never made a movie, now made a movie and a vertical. I'm going to go to con or can, however you want to say unless you're very fancy, you can do anything. Wow. I really think there's so much power to doing something knowing that you're most likely going to fail.

But failing.