Kat Cole – How to Operate: Lessons in Brand, Distribution, and Leadership

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:17)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of Oshanose Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:42)
My guest today is Kat Cole, the COO and President of North America for Focus Brands, which owns famous companies like Cinnabon, Carvel, Jamba, and more.
Kat's story and career trajectory are remarkable, as are the lessons she's picked up along the way, which she shares with us all in this conversation.
We discuss negotiation, distribution, brand building, brand extension strategies, and leadership. I always enjoy having a true operator on the show, so I was very excited to discover Kat and her thinking. Please enjoy this great conversation. So Kat, the moment I heard you appear on my friend Pomp's podcast, I knew I would love to record a conversation with you. It was one of my favorites that I'd heard this year. And so my goal will be to make this complimentary to that one. I encourage everyone to maybe even go listen to that one before this one. We'll cover maybe some similar ground, but try to make it really fresh. And in order to kick that off, I would love you to begin, if you could, by sharing the story that I found about you in Egypt around a call to prayer that you heard.

**Kat Cole** (2:41)
Yeah, I was, I think it was my first year as president of Cinnabon.
And Cinnabon has a massive presence in the Gulf and in the Middle East and in Northeastern Africa. And so part of my tour was meeting franchisees all around the world. And Egypt was one of those stops.
And it was the first time I had been to Egypt. And I was with our franchisees and I'd spent a little bit of time in Istanbul.
So it wasn't the first time I had heard the call to prayer come over the speakers from all the mosques. And I was in the car with the franchisee and the call to prayer came on blaring from the speakers from the mosques. And I just looked at him and I said, God, this is so beautiful. I love it. And I pulled up my phone and showed him that I had an app on my phone.
That played the call to prayer because I was so impressed by it in Istanbul. I went to the app store and found an app that played every country's different call to prayer. They actually all sound a little bit different. And he was his face. I can't even describe it. He looked at me like I had three heads because we would later discuss that he wasn't expecting an American, much less this leader of the brand that he's a franchisee of, to be so deeply in awe and appreciative and sharing reverence for something that I guess he assumed would be polarizing. And I understand why. And it just opened up this gorgeous relationship between us and let him know the type of person that I was. And it reminded me that the reason he might have been surprised by that is he's likely had alternative experiences where people might have complained and been like, oh, that's so loud or, oh, I wish that wouldn't play all day. And so it was I could feel almost this invisible weight lift off of his shoulders. And it opened up a great dialogue and literally we're like family now have been since then. And he would tell everyone whenever he would come to company events every year, you won't believe what Kat did. And I thought I was just sharing that I love it, but it just showed how important human connection is in business and respecting cultures and being open if you find something that you might not be familiar with beautiful and appreciated.