Todd Graves is CEO and co-founder of Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers.
Billionaire CEO and Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers co-founder Todd Graves recently shared how he balances a 90-hour work week with raising children. talking CNBC did it; The 52-year-old billionaire, who manages 800 restaurants, opened up about how he missed many personal opportunities in the early stages to build a successful business. He revealed that he works 12 to 16 hours a day to grow his business. Even after becoming a billionaire, he said he had to work long hours and sometimes his wife would bring their children to the office so he could spend some time with his family.
“I can’t tell you how many days I worked 15, 16 hours straight. I had to miss a lot of things,” the 52-year-old told CNBC did it.
However, Mr Graves, who now owns a company valued at billions, revealed he has found a way to spread out his workload throughout the day, allowing him to make time for family and friends. For example, during the holidays, he would wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go to work so that he could be with his family by 11 a.m. and spend the rest of the day with them.
Mr Graves said: “I’m as busy as anyone I know and travel as much as anyone I know, but I can organize my schedule so that I can do most of the time I need to be with my kids, family or important people. Things friends do together.
The billionaire also pointed out that entrepreneurship requires dedication and that to be successful you need to “multiply it to infinity.”
Mr Graves previously revealed that in 1996 he was working 90 hours a week at a refinery in California, fishing for salmon in Alaska and opening a network of chicken finger restaurants in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Raising Cane now has more than 800 stores in the United States and the Middle East, and sales this year could approach $5 billion, according to the store.
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Meanwhile, in the same interview, Mr Graves revealed his most important “red flags” when recruiting staff. When he reviewed his resume, he discovered a pressing problem: the prevalence of job-hopping. He said he considers frequent job changes every two to three years to be a major red flag that calls into question applicants’ motivations and loyalty. “I doubt it because it’s like, ‘Are you in this just for yourself?'” the CEO told CNBC did it.
In his experience, job hoppers tend to prioritize titles and control over teamwork, often using language they think the recruiting manager wants to hear rather than providing real answers. During the interview process, Mr. Graves looks for inconsistencies in candidates’ answers to detect instances of dishonesty.
