Hedge fund giant Citadel hosts a staggering number of meetings to try and make sense of the world

There is no such thing as too many meetings.

Not for $26 billion Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, where frequent business meetings are a pillar of the company's business model.

"We'll do about 15,000 management meetings this year," Kenneth Griffin told CNBC's Kate Kelly on Thursday in his first ever television interview.

15,000!

That's about 57 meetings a day for a year - excluding non-workdays. Citadel employs about 1,600 employees.

"So we've got a lot of people on the ground trying to understand what's changed in corporate America, what's changed in corporate Europe where opportunities emerging on the back of a significant change we are seeing across the world," Griffin continued.

The legwork is worth it, said Griffin, who was the highest earning hedge fund manager in 2014.

"The key to our business, it's a lot of research."