Kat Cole went from Hooters waitress to Athletic Greens COO without a bachelor’s degree. She credits a simple exercise—the ‘hotshot rule’—for her rise

– A rule to live by. Throughout her unorthodox rise to the top in business, Kat Cole has stuck by one rule. The president and COO of nutrition brand Athletic Greens and the former COO of Focus Brands, the company behind Cinnabon and Jamba Juice, shared the practice with a group of women veterans participating in Coins2Day’s Future Leaders mentoring program, in partnership with the Foundation for Women Warriors, at Coins2Day’s Most Powerful Women Summit last month.

Cole calls her trick the “hotshot rule.” She imagines someone she admires in her shoes. It could be anyone—an athlete, a colleague, a family member. She thinks of the one thing they would do differently in her position.

The thought exercise was surprisingly effective—so much so that she moved the practice from quarterly to monthly and then to weekly. “I have the knowledge of my situation, but the freedom and the power of their view,” Cole explains.

The person’s hypothetical action plan “comes to mind immediately,” Cole says. And Cole “take[s] action on it within 24 hours.” “I send the email, I book the flight, I make the call,” she says. Over 15 years, the “compounding effect” has been enormous. “Every week I put in motion one thing I would not otherwise have,” she says.

Courtesy of Kat Cole/Steph Grant Photography

Cole got her start as a hostess and waitress at the restaurant chain Hooters in her teens. She started college, but left when she was given the opportunity to travel around the world opening new Hooters restaurant franchises. She cut her teeth as an operator and moved into a corporate job at 20 without a college degree. She eventually went back to school and became one of few executives to earn a master’s degree without a bachelor’s. The official qualification helped her jump from Hooters to Focus Brands, where she climbed to COO before leaving for the startup Athletic Greens.

Cole’s nontraditional career and educational trajectory prompted her to figure out other ways of pushing and advocating for herself. During her 14 years at Hooters, Cole says it was sometimes hard to find mentors outside of the company because of the chain’s reputation. She developed the hotshot rule as one way of gaining insight from others—even if only in her head.

Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe

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