YouSaid · the spoken record

Kat Cole

lines on the record: 72
first: 2020-07-28
most recent: 2020-07-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Define you and her making that generous, selfless decision is what allowed me to learn that lesson that we all have permission to change, that our truth is in our roots, but our past is not our jail. And I wouldn't know that as deeply as I know that. And I wouldn't have been able to apply that to life and business without her having made that decision for us, for my sisters, and me and benefited from it so deeply.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That choice that benefited me came in exchange for great pain and uncertainty and fear and discomfort for her. The other opportunities I've been given that where people have put their name on me, they took a risk, but it's nowhere near the risk that my mom took. And so that is the kindest, the most generous thing, regardless of her own motivations. It is the most generous thing that anyone has ever done for me that I can honestly say without which I do not believe the rest of the movie would have played out in the way that it did. And it led to this belief, and my mom used to write a version of this on my birthday cards once I was in the news or the media and she would write something like this. I changed it a little bit, but don't forget where you came from. But don't you dare ever let it solely.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I have to answer connected to where we just left off. And I'll say that there are many people along my career who have given me a shot and unexpected opportunity or an opportunity that didn't make sense for someone so young or so inexperienced. But the only reason any of that is possible was because of my mom having the courage to put herself in a position of discomfort to leave my dad.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Permission to change. My mom gave herself the permission to change. She was so grateful for that house and for that car and for that lifestyle. But she also eventually changed her mind and said, what is more important is my girls being able to be independent, being in a safer environment, getting away from other elements of our family members that were around where we grew up. And so I think the best advice I could offer is for anyone listening to just constantly check in with themselves like give yourself permission to be on a journey, make sure that you aren't so grateful that you are minimizing your right and your potential to make things better, but that you aren't so ambitious and driven that you're missing the real fruit of the journey along the way.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or deserve things that were better for her family. Now, eventually, she came to a different and better conclusion, which is just because things could be worse, just because, yes, I should be grateful for something, it does not remove my desire and maybe even my obligation to make things better. And I think that's where it ties to your word ambition or drive, that there is a healthy, there can be a healthy relationship between those two things and there can be a deep imbalance going both ways. And that's a very personal decision for any one person. There are many, many drivers typically rooted in our childhood of why we want to achieve the things we want to. And at what point we feel a sense of achievement or satisfaction or accomplishment. So that's deeply personal and I hope everyone who listens to this knows they have the permission to make that personal choice and should not use someone else's definition. But we also have”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Healthy relationship with money. Because to me, having money, which we were the only family in the family that had any, was not a good thing. So I rejected that. So even that wasn't my drive or ambition. I've learned over time to have a healthier relationship with money. But that took time. And so for me, I've learned that there can be a dark side of gratitude, which people don't often talk about. And that was what my mom experienced because we had a house and a car and her husband had a good job for many years. Even her family said, yeah, he's an alcoholic. And yeah, things are tough, but you should be grateful, right? You've got it so much better than everyone else. And in her mind, because she had the obligation to be grateful, that for a period disabled her right to want.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always had a little bit of an allergic reaction to the word ambition. I don't know why it's fitting for others and I have no judgment against it for others, but it doesn't feel fitted to me. I think driven, you know, I've always been driven and driven by different things. In the early days, it was just, you know, if I could be somewhere different tomorrow than I was today, that was growth for me because I wanted to get out of that world, out of that life with my dad and my mom and all of that. So I was driven to be different and better in some way and no other specificity to it. But also, you know, my dad had a really good job. He was the only person on either side of our family to have a fancy white-collar job. Everyone else were like truckers and factory workers or in jail or on drugs or vets struggling to find their way. And he was an executive. Yet he was an alcoholic. And so I also grew up with a very unhealthy.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If 10 out of 15 comments are one thing, fix that thing, right? And then go to the next one and then go to the next one and you do it every day. And so check-ins and asking this question are a version of that.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Corporate communication issues are there equipment you can find patterns in those if people are like well the one thing you could do is to get a computer that works right if i hear a version of that everywhere that might rise to the level of wow i should do that and then when i used to open restaurants around the world we i learned this simple trick so much changed and i mentioned like every day and i mentioned these are all teams i had never met before and so i had to find a way to iterate quickly while we were there to get the business to improve and so we just had a clipboard with a piece of paper and it was called we heard it from this restaurant consultant years prior and he said when you open a restaurant you should always have an mmdd log and an mmdd log is a made my day difficult log and so we just put it up and every day at the end of every shift when people before they would leave we ask them to fill out the mmdd log and it's not hard to see the pattern”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Questions everywhere I went. One of them was what do we throw away? Because I needed to find a way to save money. So if we were throwing things away, spending money on things, we were going to stop doing that. And then I ask a second question that's one of my favorites, which is, when do we say no? Because if we're saying no often to customers or employees, that likely represents an opportunity. And then the third question, though, is given my role, what's one thing I could do differently, or our business or this store depends on the level of employee, could do differently to make the business better from your perspective. That third question, that's similar to what I ask in my check-ins doesn't necessarily, it's one, it varies more widely across roles because it's from their perspective, but it does typically either affirm or deprioritize what you heard in the first two questions, you know, what I heard in the first two questions. And there are patterns if I listen closely. Like, are there management issues?”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has different layers of emotion depending on how long we've worked together, how comfortable that person is in being candid. It takes time. So I think the level of emotion varies. It's one of the more obvious ways it might differ. But otherwise, it's quite similar. You know, the other questions are tell me something that's made you the most worried in the last 30 days. That's a big question, right? If someone answers it honestly, it's very telling. What have you been the most grateful for in the last 30 days? Of course, the very typical, what's been the best part, what's been the worst part, what are you most proud of? But that question, what can I do differently to be a better leader for you? Or the question I asked when I started working at Cinnabon, I'd go into all the restaurants, you know, working, did nothing about the first 60 days, but basically work in the restaurants to build relationships and understand the customer and stay close to the action. And I asked the same three.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are a lot of similarities, but I think with my husband, there are more extensions into multiple parts of our life, our kids, our profession, our emotions, our health, it is a bit more emotional, the personal one, because we've been doing this since the first month we were together. So we're on check-in number 57. Number 58 is coming up. And we learned that you can also get lazy with these where it's like a check the box instead of a check in. And so we made that mistake a couple check-ins. We called each other out and committed to having it be a much deeper dive on how we're thinking and how we're feeling about things and what might be behind that and how is that affecting us. It's really powerful. And a check-in.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got the specific questions in my article, my newsletter that's available to anyone and on my Instagram, but one that is my favorite. The wording matters is tell me one thing I can do differently to be more effective for you. There's something about the wording. One, I'm asking for one thing, not a list. It's not your place to pile on. The world is hard enough. And I can't act on a million things. So asking for one thing is a really important part. Using the word differently takes the pressure off of people. I'm not assuming it's bad. Just one thing I can do differently, which also means less, the same or more. Stop, start, or continue. To be better for you or for this business to be more effective, to be more effective for you. Also, the wording of it seems to optimize truth candor that I receive. That's a big one.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On it, those check ins that obsession, I have a true belief. I never know the truth. Like I don't know the reality of everyone because it's always changing and at some frequency I need to keep rediscovering that and unlearning what I believed was true previously because something about it's probably different a year later or a quarter later and if I don't figure that out the competition will”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Check ins. My husband and I have a check in every month. I've written about it on several platforms. It's the first article in my sub stack called checking in, but it's about these check-ins with my husband. And it's saving space every month where we ask each other questions to help us be better for ourselves and for each other. It's a space that's held to ask, answer these questions, but then a commitment to act on what we learn. And we get a little better for each other every single month. And I do that with my team members. My team members do that with their team members. Great leaders do this with their customers occasionally. Of course, research can be a way that you check in, but there's nothing like really personal check-ins, holding space so that people feel permission to be candid, asking questions that don't affirm our own beliefs, but really seek to know the true truth.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Day as it is the best it's ever been to them. It is the worst it will ever be to us because it's the beginning of the journey. So my hotshot rule is I'll write a book titled That One Day Really Going Deep Because this exercise has been foundational to my own personal professional growth as well as evolving brands. That act of pausing, reflecting, asking what someone else would do, acknowledging it very quickly because it's not hard to see it when you think about it through someone else's lens. the trick is taking action on it right away and then telling my team. That is how I get better every week. I think about what you would do if you had my job, if you saw my world, I acknowledge that that's something I can and should be doing differently. I take action on it within 24 hours. I tell my team. And every time I tell my team, they say what took you so long, right? Or finally, or some version of that. So that's the hotshot rule, checking in with myself envisioning outside in perspectives. And then there's actually.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is to be true, and I do deeply as a foundation of leadership, then how do you solve the gap? Because you can't be everywhere. And so I have techniques of checking in. And there's two ways to check in. There's checking in with myself using a lot of very easy to access reflective exercises. I call it my hotshot rule where I envision a badass in my role tomorrow and I ask myself what is one thing they would look at and immediately address because we've all been that person. We've all had that first day perspective. We've all been the new person on the job that took over from someone else or we bought a company from someone else and what's funny is the person's job we take over or the person's business we buy to them it's probably the best it's ever been but to us the new owner the new leader the irony is it is on the same”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The authority to do something about it. But the leader has both of those. So the trick is to stay as close to the action as I can, as often as is appropriate to find the patterns, because again, the people close to the action can't tell me what to do. They say things, and it is my role to find the pattern, to listen enough frequently enough to see the patterns and use that to impact the prioritization of the allocation of my business's limited resources. And every time I take action based on feedback from the frontline, employees say some line very similar to what I said to my mom back then, which is what took you so long because they knew it was a problem, right? Or they knew it was an opportunity. And I could give countless examples of this, but the question is if you believe.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is staying super close to the action. So I always tie this back whenever I do speeches or keynotes. It's one story I tell Because I had seen how bad it was. I was in three car accidents with my dad before I was nine years old. It wasn't a secret to me. When she told me we were leaving, as you can imagine, a conversation she dreaded for months, her oldest of three girls, I did not cry. I did not get upset. I looked at her and said, what took you so long at the age of nine? And the lesson in that is that people who are close to the action know what the right thing to do is long before the leader makes the decision. The tricky part, though, is that those of us close to the action, in this case me, the daughter in our businesses, it's our frontline employees often call centers, sales reps, frontline employees, hourly workers. There are two things that they lack that a leader has. They lack the language to fully articulate a scaled problem or opportunity or a scalable solution.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That importance of community, fan love, connection that comes from the most loyal, most frequent customers at the early stage in a business's growth is a portable required trait of brands in almost any category that are early in their journey. And it's even more important if there isn't a lot of money to go acquire fans.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It to have its strongest shot. Again, not its only shot, but its strongest shot. That thing, that attribute of meaningfulness to people, relevance and differentiation for some reason, it seems that it's almost higher in the DTC world. So portable from my world, but even higher because you don't have the other touch points of experience that my brands have. It's only what you see on your screen. And then it's only the digital transaction experience. And it's only the unboxing experience. That is it. And so within that, if the brand doesn't feel differentiated and if there's not community around it that makes me want to talk about it and try it again, it's susceptible to a lot of competitive leakage because it doesn't have those things.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those online businesses, and let's just use DTC as an example, or maybe SaaS solutions, I don't want to say they're commoditized because a lot of them are quite differentiated, but the barriers to entry have been lowered. They're not zero. So I'm not saying it's not hard. But basically, if you have a product, and that's a huge part of the first hurdle, but let's say you have a product, if you can partner with the right growth strategy, get the right website built, now there's access to low code, no-code tools that you can plug in much more easily with less upfront capital to power your brand or your business. I think that in those businesses, it is more true, even more true, that fan love and community be the nucleus has to be the nucleus in order for”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For community and brand obsession and like deep fan love. And somewhere in there is frequency, but that's a product of those other things I mentioned.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And points of distribution, and just the overall look and feel of the brand and technology, the puzzle pieces started spreading apart and some of them even sort of dissolved like they were really behind in technology, no real app that was functional, not a really great loyalty program. And we knew we could make those investments and bring that puzzle piece back to life, invest in the product puzzle pieces with more plant-based ingredients and options and product and cleaning up the menu and then bringing it together with better storytelling and more technological digital access. And we did that. But the only reason we have permission and the time to do that is there is still a core base of like Jamba obsessed people that keep coming to us because of who we are today, but they'll stay with us and come more frequently because of who we're becoming for tomorrow.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Session here and a workable model to evolve the brand at a speed that we think is achievable, to bring it back to relevance and protect its differentiation, which for Jamba meant less sweet, more plant-based, which we've been doing, and just bringing it to a better place from a wellness perspective without violating the historic things, the sweet, bright orange smoothies, all of which had always been made with fruit juices and never any sugar was still, you know, super sweet, thick, delicious, not what you envision with smoothie and the most relevant smoothie and bulb. But it had the pieces, you know, it had the puzzle pieces. They had just, instead of being glued together with the relevance glue that it had in the late 90s, early 2000s, those puzzle pieces started to move away from each other. And if you can picture that on a table, right? Like product.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really fan love community and tied to that differentiation. It's not scale, right? Because scale, size can happen a lot of ways. It can happen in sustainable sticky ways. It can happen in purchased unsustainable ways. Scale doesn't impress me on the surface. It's like fan love. It's community and yes, differentiation. And so Jamba is this really interesting example. You know, one of the countries largest, one of the world's largest smoothie and bowl chains. It was publicly traded. We took it private. It had lost its way a little bit as smoothie bowl and juice concepts grew because it was burdened by a lot of things that came along with being public. It was too small to be public. It just had an innovated in the way that it should have to stay competitive. And so it was one of the reasons we bought it, part of the investment thesis was there's still enough fan love and upset.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you want more exclusivity, then you need to guarantee me protection for my opportunity cost and my downside. If you don't want any exclusivity, then we just make money together.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transparency out under the bright light of scrutiny. It is not a black box. It's based on opportunity cost. So if you don't want me to work with anyone else in this category, you're going to have to guarantee me some percentage of business that would otherwise come from the opportunities you're telling me to walk away from. And usually that shows up as minimums where whether you start a business in these categories or not, you're telling me I can't go work with somebody in that category. So you're going to have to pay me minimums and that's going to incentivize you to grow in that category. And that's only going to exist for a certain amount of time. It's going to burn off faster, the exclusivity will burn off faster than the overall contract because if you don't honor your part of that, if you don't grow something in those categories, I'm blocking off, it will make me irresponsible for not pursuing those categories and I'll need to go do that. So the whole concept of exclusivity is a sliding scale.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partner is going to bring to the table what is the value of distribution for me? What is the value of the national marketing they're going to do like Pillsbury or International Delight Coffee Creamer or Pizza Hut where we have product on their menu? Their marketing budget is more than like the EBITDA of the company. You know, it's like apples and grape seeds. You know, it's just so different. And so there's a real value that I have to honor comes with these partnerships. And you just learn to sort all that out. And that leads to the economics of a deal. And there's one other thing I want to mention about these deals. And it's the concept of exclusivity. And sometimes partners will say, okay, we're going to partner with you, Jamba Juice, but we want to be your exclusive partner. You can't talk to anyone else. Exclusivity has a cost. It has an opportunity cost. So the way we negotiate exclusivity in full...”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New to you, new to category, to make that margin compression that you're going to experience because you're going to have to make a more expensive product because you've got to use my ingredients and you got to pay me a royalty on it. And so it comes back to this honoring that for the partner, it must also be profitable. And the only way, and good and smart. And the only way that's true is if we optimize what we get for what we uniquely bring and don't try to get value from things that we don't. And anytime I've pushed the boundaries of that, anytime I've been a good salesperson and been able to get one or two more points of royalty that are probably a bit beyond what is really the fairest deal, those deals always end early. And so it is really about being honest about that math and the research and then truly valuing what that part”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the royalty rate or the license rate. So, first and foremost, is getting honest about the value your brand brings to a category. Second is doing the research on proving out or at least having some data around the level of incrementality, that is the word, not broad value, but incrementality that my brand brings to your business or your brand. Set another way. If you were to partner with an unbranded similar alternative, what would those sales, those margins, those customer growth numbers be, and then compare that to what it would be if it were my brand and my product. So the product's different, the brand's different, therefore the pricing premium is different because if I'm going to tell you you have to pay me a royalty, you've got to either sell enough more to pay for that or be able to charge more or both and or bring in more customers.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's big, and that means I've made a shitload of mistakes, specifically in these negotiations, but it also means I've learned a lot and I'll forget more than most will know. So that's why I love this question because few ask it. So the foundation of doing that well, negotiating partnership contracts, licensing contracts, is not just knowing what you own, but being honest about it because your baby is so beautiful to you. And I learned that there were times where we really had the rose colored glasses on as it related to the value that our brand would bring to someone else. It doesn't mean it brought no value, but if you go into a negotiation thinking, let you Cinnabon as an example, you need me more than I need you. Maybe that's true, but the degree to which that is true matters and literally is the foundation.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love that question and an interesting fun fact about Cinnabon, that out of its 1.3, 1.4, it flexes up from 1.3 to 1.6 billion in global consumer product sales between franchising, CPG, all these licensed businesses I've talked about. That's the total product sales number. Out of that number, 75% are the innovation channels that are not franchises, partnerships, alliances, co-branding, co-manufacturing. We don't own a single manufacturing plant. So let me start there, that what I'm about to say is born out of building a sizable business. In fact, we are focused brands is the sixth largest licensor of food and beverage brands in the world, only behind like sunkissed and Disney and Coca-Cola. And I forgot the others, maybe Hershey, one of the candy brands.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collabs, groups of other brands, I think that that is a beautiful way to learn from each other, to share customer pools. And yeah, when you do that, you give up a little bit of margin. But if the pie gets 10 times bigger as opposed to 10% bigger, and I have a decent slice of that and I'm growing an ecosystem, I'll do that all day long. I'm not saying that's the only way. I am simply suggesting that my experience says that for most of us that don't have the time to wait for the organic traction or the money to acquire the customers needed for the growth needed to then be on people's radar, that sometimes strategic alliances and partnerships is a low risk, high reward path to awareness and trial and potentially Ongoing distribution”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or Eve, or whatever. And he literally looked at the crowd and he said, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said, that's a stupid strategy. Under armor is not going to show up in anyone else's retail site. We are going to own the distribution channel. Why would I give away my IP and share in the success? And I was like, oh, yikes. Maybe I'm not that smart, but it highlighted a difference in philosophical approaches to distribution. Own it at all costs, share nothing, and there are benefits to that. But for most of us who don't have that luxury of being founder, owner, operator, and I would argue that that didn't work out quite so well for them for a season of their existence, that most of us don't have the time to build it that way. And that being open to partnerships.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are different schools of thought. I remember I was in this group, CNBC, recognized these innovators, like 25 most innovative people across industries. And I was one of them and was at this big fancy dinner with really important people. I had major imposter syndrome being there. I was like sitting next to Melody Hobson who was just this human, you know, that I admire and follow religiously and listening to these Titans of industry like Mickey Drexler on stage. And I'm like, what am I doing here? And so the guy who was the CEO of Under Armor at the time, my story played on this video they did, which was me talking about licensing and about partnerships and about putting my product in other people's retail outlets and co-branding. And he watched it. And, you know, he doesn't know me from Adam.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about founders who might be doing something that's a one time or a rare activity. I give them grace and permission to not be amazing at that because do I care? Do I really care if they're awesome at this thing they're going to do one time or do I care that they're going to be awesome at the thing they're going to need to do over 20 years? And that mindset of saying, you know, you need to be good at this thing. You're only going to do once, but I don't expect you to do that by yourself. So how do I help you think about how to resource yourself with the help of, say, fundraising or setting up manufacturing for the first time? These are activities that are critical but are sporadic. Whereas running a successful business is the business. And I care more about that. And I've learned that through franchising and I'm able to be maybe more graceful or even more challenging.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It helps me ask questions that are a bit deeper, and that's not true of all business models. There are some industries or business models, biotech might be one of them where I don't know that my experience makes me a better or worse investor. But in a lot of businesses, I understand the sequence and the stops and starts of operational phases and the overall journey of from small to maturity, which means I don't expect miracles where miracles shouldn't be performed. And I know where to pressure test and ask, hey, are we investing enough in this thing or I respect the role that sales may play at a certain stage? And I've seen franchisees get overwhelmed with opening a restaurant, which is a one-time activity versus running a restaurant, which is a 20-year activity.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really is beautiful and painful. Every light casts a shadow. And so there are things about it that are incredibly challenging, but I would say that the franchise model might be the single greatest thing that has impacted my leadership style. And that is because of the nature of the relationship. Sure, there are contracts of what they commit to do and what we commit to do for them as a franchisor. But no relationship goes well when you're managing via compliance. It is about shared commitment. And so, yes, we have a contract to fall back on, but that doesn't cover every scenario. And I'm often, we, a leader of a brand is often going to franchisees who have invested in the brand asking them to commit above and beyond the minimum that's required in the contract for the good. Of the future of”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That way happens all the time. So the irony is if that's done well, it protects differentiation via protecting mindshare and reinforces key brand attributes that are the reason the brand is differentiated in the first place. But as you know, that can go very wrong if you don't do that. It can diminish the brand. It can dilute the brand if you're not making sure, like we make sure it's our cinnamon, which is actually different and milled different. We make sure it's co-created with our chefs. And it's not NASCAR, right? Slapping the logo on a box, which a lot of people do. It is a highly collaborative architecting because we are super clear if we get that wrong, it will actually hurt the core over time. And so it's either virtuous or vicious when you start extending the brand. But there is a way to actually strengthen a brand as”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big choices of how to alter the brand when it shows up somewhere and have the courage to say no to some opportunities that may come your way. There's something about expanding and being a part more a part of people's lives. Again, you have to honor the DNA of the brand to protect the differentiation. But ironically, by being in those adjacent channels, it's a little bit of a moat. You know, it starts to put the brand and its attributes, its aromatics, its flavor profile, its textures into all of these places that if we aren't there, I love this phrase, if we don't, the competition will. So somebody else who maybe at some point has a growing cinnamon roll brand could go into ice cream, which we did with Briars, or could go into coffee creamer, which we did with international delight. And maybe they could be so successful that they would reverse build their brand.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of that licensing strategy was extending it to adjacent categories, right? We launched it's still today, like seven years later, Cinebon Coffee Creamer with International Delight and Cinebon Coffee with Green Mountain in their K cups. So all these non-baked, non-core yet still very relevant adjacent categories. And to your point, I always heard from the academics scarcity drives value. What I've learned is that is true sometimes, but not always, that there are other ways to drive value. There is such a thing as a creative ubiquity. If you do it right and you have enough differentiation and clarity of brand and you honor that brand as you expand, not degrade it, not diminish it, not foolishly sloppily extend, but really understand the brand's DNA and have the courage to make.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out and said, We're the king of the whopper, and we just invented the world's most delicious cinnamon roll. You'd be like, nah, no way. But if it's where Burger King and we're bringing you a real cinnabon cinnamon roll, holy shit, right? I can go through the drive-thru and get one of those little things. That's amazing. And that's what we did. And it worked. And there were many other versions of that expansion strategy that was multi-channel, licensed product, right-sized for the occasion and the retail point of distribution and the competitive set and the changing frequency that that product format might have. Those are two very specific things we did to address the relevance challenge that was growing at the time that I joined Cinnabon.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partnerships. We then produced a licensed product that we could quickly distribute through other channels, Burger King carried the mini bond, the smaller thing that we had come up with, in 7,000 Burger Kings. At the time, we only had 600 domestic Cinnabon franchise locations that, I mean, many outside the U.S., but in terms of the US, that had taken 20 years to build. And overnight, of course, it wasn't overnight. It took time to negotiate this deal, but quickly we added 1,000 points of distribution to the brand. So that was a different way to improve relevance by providing access in a way that required us to be open to co-opetition, partnering with someone that you might argue does a little bit of what we do, provides food and beverage, but in a way that they could add value to us. They had the distribution channel, but we had something they needed, which is a premium-baked product. If Burger King had come.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because people appreciate a smaller portion, you can actually charge a little more per ounce. And so the gross profit per ounce was better for the franchisees. The top line sales went up because it was something they could afford to treat themselves with and or because it was something they wanted via a smaller portion, a more responsible indulgence, something they wanted to choose. So that's one, it's a product solution that led to a pricing solution to access which improved relevance. The other lever we pulled was multi-chain.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, if you're a premium brand and your point is to be aspirational, then that might not be the lever you pull for relevance. But when you're a snack, pricing and being accessible is a huge lever that needs to be pulled to grow relevance because it is a way to get to access. And so we did two things specifically, and well, we did many things, but two that are great for this discussion and the time we have. One is we shrink the portion size of the giant cinnamon roll that not only made us smaller and therefore a more approachable indulgence during the height of the Atkins crisis, it was a crisis for us. It was a craze for other people, but it also brought the price point down because it was smaller, right? So instead of paying $4.50 for a giant thing the size of your face, you were paying $2.50 for something smaller than your fist. And oh, by the way,”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the diagnosis of Cinnabon was high in differentiation, no doubt, and waning in relevance. And relevance, if the definition of relevance or a definition to use is it matters to my life today. Part of that equation is access. It's harder to matter to people if they can't find you. And our research showed that Cinebon had a massive access problem, that people loved it, they wanted it, but we're going to malls less, going to airports less because of the recession in 2010. And so giving them a taste of the brand in more accessible ways was a key part of building relevance. The other part of relevance is, in fact, pricing. And if I can't afford you, I can't get you. Therefore, you are not relevant to me.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My learnings, and we grew cinnabon from out of the dumps into this multi channel, multi-billion dollar sales business. And then we've had other brands that we've bought that were successful. And the investment thesis was don't eff it up. I appreciate the brand, respect the brand. And it just needed some zhing, you know, a little bit of improvement and some just need investment in technology or improving access because customers can't, they love it, but they can't find it and that improves relevance.”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quickly become irrelevant. A good example is something like Rolls Royce back in the day, super differentiated. Everyone know what a Rolls is or was and knows the shape of that car and how premium it is. But was it relevant? No, there were tons of premium cars that were becoming far more relevant to different groups around the world. And then the opposite's true. Brands that are highly relevant but not differentiated and they become commodities. And then it's a race to the bottom from a pricing perspective. So I learned to think about brand in these frameworks, but then be really clear that the only way to optimize what's in those frameworks is the human side, people, teams, culture, customer service, being obsessed with customers, because how can you know if something's relevant to people's lives if you aren't connected to their lives? So I'll stop there. I could go on and on about brand, but those are some of”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was an electrical engineering and computer sciences major, although I dropped out. Some of the natural thinking is still there. And I really love breaking things into its parts. And I learned when you don't, you can make big mistakes by making huge assumptions about what a brand is. Is it premium? Is it accessible? Is there a difference between those two things? Can something be both? I then learned to appreciate that real brand sustainability comes down to two things, which is relevance and differentiation and everything fits into one of those two buckets, something either affects a brand's relevance. It is meaningful to my life today. And it's differentiation. It is unique. And I can identify that uniqueness. Everything falls into one of those two buckets as it relates to brand. And the goal is to be high on both. I learned that there are some brands that are highly differentiated, but can”
2020-07-28 · Invest Like the Best · Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership - [Invest Like the Best, EP.184] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source