????如果卡特?科爾堅持自己青少年時的夢想，這位35歲的Cinnabon總裁如今會是杜邦公司（DuPont）的一名律師。

????不是所有十幾歲的孩子都會渴望自己的職業是在一家化工企業擔任律師，但這樣的抱負卻讓17歲的科爾在貓頭鷹餐廳（Hooters）找到一份女服務生的工作，以便攢錢上大學。那份工作是科爾進入餐飲服務行業的介紹信，同時也是她邁向Cinnamon總裁寶座的第一步。

????18歲那年，科爾已經成熟到可以成為貓頭鷹餐廳的服務員，她當時就讀于北佛羅里達大學（University of North Florida）的工程技術專業。科爾是家族中第一個大學生。

????科爾在貓頭鷹餐廳贏得了一項聲譽，即作為雇員，她愿意挽起袖子去干別人不愿意干的活。因此，貓頭鷹餐廳總部致電她的經理物色幫助開辟澳大利亞市場的人手時，科爾的名字自然而然地浮現出來。她當時19歲，從未坐過飛機，而且只離開過佛羅里達州杰克遜維爾的老家一次。當晚，科爾第一次乘飛機前往邁阿密辦理護照。

????科爾在悉尼呆了40天。在回家的航班上，她閱讀了自己能夠找到的所有主要商業雜志。科爾說：“那一刻，很多事情混雜在一起，最終改變了我未來的人生道路。”她回來之后還不到一個月，貓頭鷹餐廳又指派她到中美洲去完成同樣的任務。

????因為去了好幾個全球市場，科爾大學畢不了業，于是她決定退學（她坦承，如果總不去上課，考試就很難過關）。從大學退學終結了她就讀法學院和去杜邦公司工作的夢想，但同時卻為她打開了一扇新的大門。緊接著，貓頭鷹餐廳就提拔科爾負責所有員工的培訓。那時候，她年紀太小，甚至不能租車。這個問題很麻煩，因為她總是在路上。23歲那年，科爾已經是貓頭鷹餐廳員工和全球管理人員培訓的負責人了。

????“我很幸運，貓頭鷹餐廳并不是一家復雜的公司，否則像我這個年紀的人不可能擁有那么多的機會，”她說。“沒有那么多從常青藤名校畢業的大學生爭先恐后地來貓頭鷹餐廳找一份管理崗位的工作。”

????貓頭鷹餐廳給予科爾一種她無法在其他地方獲得的教育。她供職貓頭鷹餐廳期間，這家公司還購買、運營過一家航空公司（貓頭鷹航空公司），推出了信用卡業務（貓頭鷹萬事達卡），還擁有過自己的商品和食品生產業務。公司管理層跟創始人發生了爭斗，在此期間，貓頭鷹餐廳首席執行官兼總裁兼董事長羅伯特?布魯克斯突然去世。隨后，人們又對他財產的價值發生了爭執。科爾說：“我目睹了其他人一生都沒有機會目睹的事情。”

????而此時，科爾已經知道自己想要經營一家公司，但她不認為那將會是貓頭鷹餐廳。她需要外部視角以及學習商業語言的機會。盡管科爾從未獲得本科學位，但她成功被喬治亞州立大學的工商管理碩士培訓計劃錄取。

????If Kat Cole had stuck to her teenage dreams, the 35-year-old Cinnabon president would today be an attorney at DuPont.

????It takes a certain kind of teenager to aspire for a career as a corporate lawyer at a chemical company, but that ambition led Cole at age 17 to get a job at Hooters as a hostess to save up for college. It was her introduction to the food service industry and also the first step toward becoming the head honcho at Cinnabon.

????At 18, Cole was old enough to become a Hooters waitress and was studying at the University of North Florida as an engineering major . She was the first person in her family to enroll in college.

????Cole gained a reputation at Hooters as an employee willing to roll up her sleeves and take the jobs that no one else wanted. When Hooters corporate called her manager looking for servers to help open the Australian market, Cole's name came up. She was 19, had never been on a plane before, and had only once been outside of her hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. She took her first-ever flight that night to Miami to get a passport.

????Cole spent 40 days in Sydney, and on the flight home read every major business magazine she could get her hands on. "A lot of things came together in that moment to change who I was going to become," she says. When she got back, not even a month passed before Hooters asked her to do the same thing in Central America.

????Several global markets later, Cole was failing college, and she decided to drop out. (It's hard to pass your classes if you're never there, she admits.) Leaving the university ended her pursuit of law school and a job at DuPont, but it opened up new doors for her. Almost immediately Hooters promoted her to oversee all employee training. She wasn't even old enough to rent a car, which was problematic since she was always on the road. By 23 she was overseeing employee and global management training.

????"I was lucky that Hooters wasn't a more sophisticated company, because there's no way someone my age would have had those chances," she says. "It wasn't like people graduating from Ivy League schools were dying to get a corporate job at Hooters."

????Hooters gave Cole the kind of education she wouldn't have been able to get anywhere else. While she was there, the company bought and ran an airline (Hooters Air), had a credit card operation (Hooters Mastercard), and owned its own merchandise and food production businesses. Management was fighting with the company's founders, and, in the middle of it all, Hooters CEO, president, and chairman Robert Brooks died suddenly. A battle ensued over the value of his estate. "I got exposed to things that people don't get exposed in a lifetime," she says.

????At this point Cole knew that she wanted to run a company, but she didn't think it was going to be Hooters. She needed outside perspective and the chance to learn the language of business. Despite never receiving an undergraduate degree, she was accepted to Georgia State's MBA program.