Elite Design Studios on "custom styling for woocommerce categories"

I was able to get categories to show outside of the loop by adding the code below to my functions.php file however it only works when the “Show subcategories on the shop page” box is checked in the catalog settings page. I feel like im in the right direction.

add_action( ‘woocommerce_before_shop_loop’, ‘woocommerce_product_subcategories’, 10 );
function woocommerce_show_categories($cat_args){
$cat_args['hide_empty']=0;
return $cat_args;
}