Unicaus NEWS
After a profitable stint as an entrepreneur, Tom Grogan grapples with the transition to investor life, looking for new objective past his Wingstop empire.
After promoting his firm, this ‘bored’ entrepreneur is planning to work once more.
In 2023, the workforce bought a majority stake within the enterprise for a reported £400 million ($532 million) – an enormous payday that ought to have marked the beginning of a simple, carefree chapter. But for Grogan, it turned out to be something however.
“Money doesn’t fill that void”
“For seven years, your complete thoughts is occupied on making successful of this enterprise,” Grogan advised Fortune. “It’s all you concentrate on. And then if you get there, it’s only a bit surreal. It’s like, Okay, it’s carried out now. Now what? And cash doesn’t essentially fill that void both.”
After practically a decade of relentless focus, Grogan admits that navigating life after the sale has been unexpectedly difficult.
Learning to handle tens of millions
While his rise from building employee to multimillionaire in his 20s was meteoric, the transition from entrepreneur to investor has felt “slow-paced,” Grogan confessed.
“You must now change your head from we’re not enterprise constructing anymore. We’ve gone from being an entrepreneur to managing cash—and so they’re two completely different talent units,” he stated. “So now we have to find the world of monetary devices, shares, bonds—all of that stuff that’s all new to us, however we’re being strategically cautious.”
Despite the windfall, Grogan says he’s nonetheless renting and hasn’t splurged on luxuries like a mansion or a fleet of vehicles. He and his co-founders have as an alternative spent the primary half of the 12 months reflecting on what comes subsequent.
“I can’t stay life sat on a seaside”
One factor’s clear: Grogan isn’t planning to experience off into the sundown simply but.
“It’s boring,” he stated. “I can’t stay life sat on a seaside. I feel we’d like one thing to occupy our minds, to problem ourselves. You want a objective daily to get up for, which we don’t have proper now.”
For the entrepreneur who constructed a restaurant empire from the bottom up, the following massive undertaking may simply be discovering that sense of objective once more. He is, in actual fact, already planning to get again to the grind.
What will probably be his subsequent undertaking? Grogan isn’t certain but – “however it most likely gained’t be on the earth of meals and drinks,” he says.
