“My life is my work. My work is my life.”
So says Damola Adamolekun, former Wall Avenue whiz turned CEO of casual-dining restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s. Within the midst of the distant work revolution, workers worldwide have been preventing for a greater work-life stability, pushing again in opposition to employer mandates to return to workplace and advocating for four-day workweeks. Even world celebrity Rihanna just lately expressed that discovering “balance is almost impossible.”
However for Adamolekun, work and life have by no means been separate. “I never really have been a person that separated work and life,” he tells Fortune. “It mixes.”
That is likely to be as a result of the 34-year-old has quite a bit on his plate. He’s one of many few Black CEOs main a serious U.S. firm; there are solely six black CEOs within the Fortune 500, and solely 8% of C-suite executives are Black, in accordance with a 2021 Washington Publish evaluation of the 50 Most worthy corporations. And Adamolekun balances operating the helm together with his job as a accomplice at Paulson & Co., the hedge fund that acquired the Asian-inspired restaurant chain in 2019.
It follows a profitable profession in non-public fairness, the place Adamolekun labored at high corporations, together with Goldman Sachs and TPG Capital. He says he devoted his finance period to “working all the time,” even on the weekends.
“I thought it was fun. So it wasn’t like I had to go in on a Saturday,” Adamolekun stated. “It was like ‘I got stuff to do, and I want to knock it out, or I want to look at something.’”
Though Adamolekun has by no means prioritized discovering a work-life stability, he acknowledges that work impacts individuals in another way. “It’s an individual thing,” he says, including that it is best to separate the 2 if work is nerve-racking. That’s why he encourages workers to construct in “buffers,” taking a day without work on a Tuesday or Wednesday since weekends are normally busy on the restaurant resulting from increased demand.
However for him, regardless of all of the pressures of being a chief govt, “work doesn’t stress [him] out.”
Adamolekun gave Fortune a sneak peek into his each day routine, which kicks off at 4 a.m. sharp.
From a.m. runs to p.m. cigars
4:30 a.m.: Adamolekun’s motto: “Early to bed, early up.”
He begins his day with a seven- to eight-mile run, which he says helps him really feel much less pressured and extra relaxed. The cardio train routine stimulates his “calm, relaxed, autonomous nervous system,” Adamolekun says, not like the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers your physique’s fight-or-flight response.
There’s a purpose you’re feeling good if you work out, he provides: “You’ll feel better the whole day. You’ll be smarter, you’ll be sharper, you’ll be more energetic.”
6:00 a.m.: After his run, Adamolekun showers and prepares to move to P.F. Chang’s headquarters in Scottsdale.
Earlier than hitting the highway, he takes a couple of minutes in his dwelling workplace to overview the chain’s efficiency numbers from the day past, checking to see in the event that they aligned with the corporate’s expectations.
7:00 a.m.: Adamolekun arrives on the headquarters, a 20-minute drive from his home, and casually meets with the COO and CFO earlier than leaping right into a day stuffed with conferences. His schedule is full of inner and exterior conferences.
6:00 p.m.: When the day’s conferences are over, Adamolekun clears his inbox and heads dwelling. However his workday doesn’t precisely cease there.
Because the CEO of a serious restaurant chain, Adamolekun isn’t any stranger to mixing enterprise with dinner, usually assembly with colleagues and connections after the normal nine-to-five workday ends.
As he places it, “It’s a hospitality business, so a lot of dinners are involved.”
On the events when Adamolekun can go straight dwelling with none post-work affairs, he relaxes with a cigar on the patio, ending his day the identical manner he begins by activating his parasympathetic nervous system.
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