By Iman Milner
Damola Adamolekun is among only a handful of Black CEOs, and we may know the secrets to his success.
“My life is my work. My work is my life”, he said in an interview with Fortune. Happily welcoming the lack of separation between business and personal in his every day, Adamolekun says he’s always found pleasure in dedicating himself to what he loves. And those feelings predate his appointment at P.F. Chang’s, going back to his career in private equity. “I thought it was fun. So it wasn’t like I had to go in on a Saturday,” he said. “It was like ‘I got stuff to do, and I want to knock it out, or I want to look at something.’”
Some of his ability to see his grueling work duties as extensions of his personal life may be due to his dedication to a daily routine.
Adamolekun starts each day at 4 a.m. with a seven to eight-mile run to maintain his “calm, relaxed, autonomous nervous system,” according to Fortune. For the 34-year-old, an early morning exercise helps him show up to work at P.F. Chang’s headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a shaped mind and natural energy. His work day begins at 7 a.m. with meetings with both the COO and CFO of the Asian chain restaurant before delving into a day full of external and internal conversations that lead him to a 6 p.m. departure. If he doesn’t have to do the business of hosting dinners after-hours as CEO, he prefers to head home and relax with a cigar on the patio; thereby ending his day in the same way he starts it by activating his parasympathetic nervous system, according to Fortune.
It all seems to be working for Adamolekun as last year, shortly after taking over as CEO, he announced that he and his team had already overseen the remodeling of over 80% of P.F. Chang’s locations.
