Get big by having the courage to be small

Kat Cole has learned a lot of lessons, sometimes the hard way, in her career path from a waitress at a Hooters restaurant to CEO of Cinnabon, a chain of retail bakeries. She took over Cinnabon in 2008 during the Great Recession.

Kat Cole

“We had no sales, but from 2010 to 2012 we turned the business around, despite all the challenges,” she said during her Opening Ceremony keynote speech at the 2017 Annual Meeting. She attributes her success in growing the business to two things: staying close to customers and staff, and taking risks. That included lowering the cost of owning a franchise and even closing many of them, feeling they needed to get smaller and refocus before they could recover.

“Sometimes having the courage to be small gives you the ability to get big,” she said.

She also decided the business had to try new things to push the brand forward. “You have to think, ‘If I don’t do something, my competition will,’” she said. “But, on the other side, just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should.”

Learning from failure

For example: Cole told individual franchises about new products before they had gone through other company members. By the time they had, the products had changed, and it looked like she had lied to the franchises.

“I lost trust and apologized,” she said. “I had failed as a leader because I failed to ask the questions I should have asked.”

She learned that the people closest to the action know what the right thing to do is sooner than the leader does. “As leaders, we have to stay close and connected to the business, employees and clients,” she said.

Cole often challenges herself to grow and innovate by asking, “If tomorrow I was gone and someone else took over the business or client, what is the one thing they’d do better?” She asks herself the question each month and focuses on making one change that month based on the answer.

Cole also recommended getting involved in the community and in people’s lives. “Being rooted in the community is the single, simplest way to build a business,” she said.

Written by Liz DeCarlo, Round the Table editor.