When Todd Graves and Craig Silvey came up with the idea for a restaurant in southern Louisiana that only sold chicken fingers, they probably didn’t expect to get the lowest grade in a startup-pitching assignment for Silvey’s LSU undergraduate business class — or to get rejected for bank loans when they tried to make it a reality.

Yet the concept, which eventually became Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, propelled Graves to his debut Tuesday on the Forbes 400, a ranking of America’s richest people. He’s reportedly the country’s 107th-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $9.5 billion, largely driven by his ownership stake in Raising Cane’s.

“If people tell you something can’t be done, it makes you strive so much more to do it,” Graves, now 52 and the company’s co-CEO, told students at Nicholls State University in 2009.

To raise enough money to open the fast-food chain’s first location in 1996, Graves moved to California from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to work 90-hour weeks in an oil refinery — and, later, fish for salmon in Alaska — according to the company’s website.

He spent between $40,000 and $50,000 of his own money, plus roughly $100,000 from friends, family and a Small Business Administration loan, to get his restaurant off the ground, he told the “Trading Secrets” podcast in May.

Today, Raising Cane’s — named after Graves’ yellow lab Raising Cane — has more than 800 locations internationally and brought in $3.7 billion in net sales last year, a company spokesperson tells CNBC Make It. Graves owns more than 90 percent of the company, and has no plans to take it public or sell his stake to private investors, he said.

“I want my kids in the business to be able to carry our values on after their mom and I are gone,” said Graves. “They can turn this into a worldwide business and continue to grow.”

When Graves and Silvey — who left the business in 1999 — opened their first location in Baton Rouge, Graves had zero business management skills, he said. He worked seven days per week at the restaurant, from opening at 8 a.m. to closing at 3:30 am the next morning, he added.

As the company grew, Graves figured out how to recruit employees and develop leaders on the fly, he said: “I was building a plane while I was flying it.”

Most entrepreneurs finance their businesses with a mix of debt and equity. Graves relied almost exclusively on loans when starting out, he told the “How I Built This” podcast in 2022. He’d offer private investors a 15% interest rate on a loan, which he’d then use to secure additional funding from community banks that treated the debt as equity, he said.

In retrospect, the approach was “stupid,” and nearly cost him the business when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005 — shutting down 21 of his 28 storefronts in the Baton Rouge area — but it allowed him to maintain his ownership stake while growing his company, he said.

“Debt to equity, you should have proper balances in your business, and that helps you get through tough times like a major hurricane — but I levered everything,” said Graves, who credited his business’ survival to reopening as much as he could quickly after Katrina passed. “Luckily I lived through that, but that’s when I really learned to balance risk.”

The company — which turned 28 this year and is on its third real-life yellow lab mascot, Raising Cane III — had its first billion-dollar quarter in sales earlier this year and is on track to finish 2024 with nearly $5 billion in sales, says the Raising Cane’s spokesperson.

Contrary to the company’s hard-charging early expansion, Graves now preaches the value of not rushing into opportunities or growing too quickly at his brand’s expense, he told “Trading Secrets.”

“The vision of Raising Cane’s is to someday have locations all over the world, and be the brand for crave-able chicken finger meals, great crew, cool culture and active community involvement,” Graves said. “You have to stay disciplined, because if you are successful, opportunities are crazy, and you can grow it towards something not special at all.”

His outlook echoes advice from other successful entrepreneurs. Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky and Vuori CEO Joe Kudla advocate for taking a step back to self-reflect before big decisions, and Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck says he takes his time to analyze any potential opportunity.

“Sometimes, you can take big risks. Sometimes, you need to be very safe and methodical about how to back out of situation,” Beck told Make It last year. “Control the things you can control and acknowledge the things you can’t control.”

Want to be a successful, confident communicator? Take CNBC’s online course Become an Effective Communicator: Master Public Speaking. We’ll teach you how to speak clearly and confidently, calm your nerves, what to say and not say, and body language techniques to make a great first impression. Get started today.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Holly Taylor estimates she’s interviewed hundreds of people in her decade-long career in the HR space.

The head of people at Public Digital, a London-based consultancy, says she tries to be innovative and equitable in the hiring process, such as recently sending interview questions to job candidates in advance.

But one question is her favorite to ask in interviews, even though “it stumped me so much” when she first heard it seven years ago: What is the most valuable piece of feedback that you have received in your career?

“The reason why I like that is because when they answer it, it gives you a really good understanding of how humble [or] vulnerable they’re willing to go with their answer,” Taylor tells CNBC Make It.

Some people reflect on a constructive piece of feedback they got at a crucial point in their career, and how learning from the criticism ultimately propelled them forward.

They explain “this was the feedback, this is how I approached it, this is how I changed, and this is the impact of having that feedback,” Taylor says.

Sometimes, people give an answer about how they work or interact with colleagues, whereas others discuss how they improved on a technical skill.

“When I was interviewing tech people, they’d say, ‘I was writing part of this code incorrectly,’” Taylor says. “So it is really interesting to see where people go with it.”

Asking this question isn’t too different from inquiring about someone’s greatest weakness or area of improvement. However, this framing prompts candidates to think about specific feedback they’ve gotten in terms of what their boss, team or organization needed them to improve on.

On the flipside, some candidates will focus on the positive and give an example of feedback they got about something they excel at.

Taylor says these responses can be equally insightful: “That’s no right or wrong answer. You learn a lot from the person when they say that.”

Want to land your dream job? Take CNBC’s online course How to Ace Your Job Interview to learn what hiring managers really look for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Stacie Grissom and Sean Wilson lived in New York City for almost a decade, and then the covid-19 pandemic hit.

In early 2020, Grissom was pregnant with their first child and working in marketing at BarkBox, while Wilson was working as an orthopedic surgeon in NYC hospitals.

Seeing the state of the city during that time made Grissom realize she was ready to move back to Franklin, Indiana, their hometown, which is about 30 miles from downtown Indianapolis.

“We had a reevaluation that it’s the people who matter the most, so we wanted to move back to our hometown to be by our families,” Grissom tells CNBC Make It.

“We got our chosen family in New York, and it’s the best city in the world, but we had to go where our family was.”

A couple of months after their son was born, Grissom contacted a realtor friend in Franklin and told him to start looking at “weird old houses.”

“I told him the quirkier, the better, and to send us a fixer-upper,” Grissom says. “His dad saw a school for sale and immediately said, ‘Send it to Stacie.’”

Since Grissom and Wilson were still in New York City at the time, they asked her parents to check out the property instead.

Grissom says the building was a school for local children between 1914 and 1934. After the schoolhouse closed, it was used as a barn.

Since Grissom’s dad had experience running a commercial real estate business, she knew he would give her an honest and expert opinion on the school’s state.

After getting her parents’ approval, Grissom and Wilson made an offer on the schoolhouse without ever seeing it in person themselves — and it was accepted within 24 hours.

“We wouldn’t have bought it if my parents hadn’t agreed because we knew with this kind of project we were going to need the entire village,” she says.

A week after Grissom and Wilson closed on the former schoolhouse, they saw it in person for the first time.

“I think back then I was a lot more naive than I am today, but I was so excited to see it and its potential,” Grissom says. “You could see that there could be giant windows, tall ceilings, and open spaces for a big family to come together around the holidays.”

“It’s like a Midwestern castle in the middle of some cornfields of Indiana. It’s a beautiful little brick building that is home now,” she adds.

After the couple closed on the former schoolhouse, the real work began. By the fall of 2021, the couple got the school down to its bare bones, but a renovation they thought would take two years ended up taking three.

The couple was still living in New York City at the time.

“Things were a little slow to get going but then the new roof started going in February 2022 and things started to move but it ended up taking us three years because we were basically building a new house inside an old shell of a building,” Grissom says.

Grissom declined to comment on how much the couple spent on the renovation but says they are still getting through it and not completely done yet.

While cleaning out the property, the couple and their contractors found random things, including a board that would hold old chalkboards with the words “Chicken coop” written on it.

“It was really cool to see because this is such a beautiful little school built by farmers for the kids in this rural area. The community was really proud of the school,” Grissom says.

Though the couple had to almost start from scratch with the schoolhouse, they were able to keep the floors in one classroom, all of the brick, the original doors and a water fountain that they are trying to restore.

“The time it took was definitely a big challenge and having to renovate from afar was tough. I don’t think we were naïve going into it, but now I know we’re not renovating anything again after this,” Grissom says. “We did it, and we’re glad we’ve gone through, but no more old buildings for a while.”

Despite how hard the renovation was for the couple, Grissom says her favorite part was getting to work alongside her dad.

“It’s been really cool to go through my dad’s renovation boot camp, from how to work with other contractors to how to do the work ourselves. We learned a lot of trade-like things over the three years,” she adds.

To pay homage to the former school, the couple used the same colors that were originally painted on the walls back when the school was still open. Grissom also made two mosaics for the entrances with the name of the school and its date of creation.

Of the décor, Grissom says they’re “trying to get as much school furniture as we can put back into the school.”

Grissom admits that nothing about the renovation has been easy, but a highlight of the experience has been being able to focus full-time on being a content creator and sharing the schoolhouse journey on social media.

“It has been fun to document this process and find this old home renovation community online. I never thought my house could be a job,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to make an income from some of the storytelling while also getting advice and having a community of people who like restoring old stuff.”

Amid ongoing renovations, the couple and their now two kids moved into the home in September of this year.

“Moving into the schoolhouse was easier than moving into any New York City apartment we ever had,” Grissom says. “It was nice to wake up and see the sunrise over the cornfields. It will be a tornado in here for a while, but it was really crazy to finally set up a place that we’ve been thinking about for three years and pouring all of our money, energy, sweat, and tears into.”

The schoolhouse now has four bedrooms and two and a half baths, all on the 4,000-square-foot upper level. The couple still has a lower 4,000-square-foot sub-basement that they are trying to figure out what to do with.

The best part of finally moving into the schoolhouse and being back in their hometown, Grissom says is that her kids will grow up around their families.

“After living through the pandemic and all of the stress and anxiety, we all had a confrontation with our mortality at a much earlier age than most generations do and that totally shifted stuff in my brain. It’s beautiful to see my parents are healthy, our kids are happy and just appreciate the small things,” she adds.

Since moving in a few weeks ago, Grissom says that while she realizes it was a long road to move in, she would go through it again.

“I never want to lose the naivete of whatever made us say that we wanted to buy a school and it was going to be our house,” she says.

Want to be a successful, confident communicator? Take CNBC’s online course Become an Effective Communicator: Master Public Speaking. We’ll teach you how to speak clearly and confidently, calm your nerves, what to say and not say, and body language techniques to make a great first impression. Get started today.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Anthony Tan didn’t need to start a business to be rich.

He grew up as the youngest of three sons in one of Malaysia’s wealthiest families. His father, Tan Heng Chew, is the president of Tan Chong Motor, a multinational automobile distributor founded by Tan’s grandfather in the 1950s, that’s publicly listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.

You might call me a “rebel without a cause,” Tan said. But I was on a mission to create something that could be “a force for good.”

Now, Tan is the co-founder and CEO of multinational ride-hailing giant and super app Grab. After the business went public in the U.S. in December 2021, it brought in over $2 billion in revenue in 2023, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Today, along with offering ride hailing, the company offers food and groceries delivery, as well as financial services such as payments, lending and digital banking. As of 2023, Grab also serves over 35 million customers and provides 13 million gig jobs across eight countries in Southeast Asia.

“I remember when I was meeting with President Marcos in the Philippines, and he reminded my board and I… [Grab] literally changed the unemployment numbers nationally,” he said. “That’s what I would say makes us all really happy.”

In 2009, Tan began his studies at Harvard Business School, where he met his co-founder Hooi Ling Tan. Having both grown up in Malaysia, they became good friends after sitting next to each other in a class called “Business at the Base of the Pyramid.”

One day in 2011, they were having a chat about the Malaysian taxi system, which at the time was notorious for being unsafe, particularly for women. The two decided to take on the challenge.

“We want to make it just standard hygiene that women can get to wherever they need to get to [safely],” said Tan. “We both really believed we were very blessed [and] we wanted to serve Southeast Asia.”

They went on to draft up a business plan, which was submitted into a startup contest at the university. They won first runner up and took home a $25,000 prize, which was used as seed money for what would become Grab.

Today, Grab is backed by the likes of SoftBank, and the company has a market cap of over $14 billion.

However, Tan’s journey to starting Grab was no easy feat.

Growing up working in the family business, Tan was expected to return from his studies and go back to working for the company. So, when he went to his father with his idea for Grab, the conversation was not taken lightly.

″[My father] said ‘Hey, I don’t think it’s going to work out, so please don’t disturb me about this anymore,’” said Tan. “It was tough. It was this idea of like, never being enough… but, I think those [moments] pushed me to say, ‘Look, I can create something that really solves real societal problems.’”

He took the same pitch, refined it, and brought it to his mom, who ultimately became Grab’s first individual investor. With the money from the startup contest and his mom, Tan also invested everything he had in his bank into starting the company in June 2012. At the time, the company was known as “MyTeksi.”

The first few years in business were not glamorous by any means.

Tan and his co-founder had essentially just tasked themselves with building new infrastructure for the Malaysian taxi system, but money was a big limiting factor.

The original office was in a small room in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — a part of the world notorious for having hot and humid weather year-round. The office lacked ventilation, air conditioning and even WiFi. “We had to tether from our mobile phones,” said Tan.

It was also difficult for the team to bring drivers onto the platform without sufficient funds, so they had to get creative.

To get drivers on board in the early days, Tan was on the ground traveling across Southeast Asia, trying to convince taxi workers to try Grab.

Tan noticed that before starting their shift in the morning, drivers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, would stop at a gas station to drink coffee. So he would show up at around 4 a.m. to give out free coffee to the taxi drivers, which is also when he pitched them to join Grab. “That was the only way, and it was just a lot of this,” he said.

“In Manila, I remember going to meet taxi fleets, because they always change shifts at about four in the morning… and then [I spent] time with them [with some] cheap beer, [to try to] understand their pains, their problems, why they need more income,” said Tan.

“It was very intense,” he said. “Between the flying — I was doing two to three cities a week when we were going through the growth and the scaling stage — I was probably doing 15, 18, sometimes 20 hours a day, and it was a Monday to Sunday thing.”

In 2018, after a long and taxing battle, Uber agreed to sell its Southeast Asia business to Grab in exchange for a 27.5% stake in the company. As part of the deal, Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joined Grab’s board of directors. This deal established Grab’s dominance in the region.

What began as a dream to fix the safety problem in Malaysia’s taxi system has now become Southeast Asia’s dominant super app, but this dominance has been nothing but controversial. The company has faced antitrust allegations from critics and regulators.

There’s no arguing, however, that Grab has shaped the very infrastructure of Southeast Asia.

It has transformed the way that people in the region go about their day-to-day lives, and empowered folks “at the bottom of the pyramid” by giving them access to things like micro-financing programs, so that they can afford to buy a smartphone and start making money as drivers.

“That’s what differentiates us, right? Understanding what is their problem,” he said. “People may say, ‘hey, Anthony, you’re just serving a niche.’ Well, it’s a big niche that has a very poorly, underserved market.”

“It’s all about really helping them, serving them as an ecosystem that nobody else can… and that’s what differentiates us from any of our peers.”

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor’s degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

Ashley Quezada has found a career she loves in a place some dread, and others avoid: the dentist’s office.

For the past decade, Quezada, 38, has worked as a dental hygienist in offices throughout California. 

It’s a lot different than the career Quezada imagined for herself as a teenager growing up in northern Virginia. Inspired by her father, who served in the U.S. military, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy when she was 17 and left for boot camp in June 2004, two weeks after graduating from high school. 

“I was undecided on what I wanted to do after high school and my dad was always a huge inspiration to me, pushing me to be my best self, take risks and help others,” Quezada recalls. “I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” 

Quezada spent the next three years working as a military police officer in the Navy, a job that took her to Spain, Greece, Bahrain and other far-flung countries. 

But when Quezada met her now ex-husband — an active-duty Marine — balancing two military careers became difficult, especially after the birth of her first son. “It’s hard when you’re in two different branches … getting stationed together in the same place is nearly impossible,” she says.

In 2007, just a year after becoming a mother, Quezada decided to leave the military. “I needed a different career path that would create stability for our son and future children,” she says. 

Her transition from the military to working in dentistry was inspired by another family member — her aunt, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard before becoming a dental hygienist. 

“She raved about the work-life balance and how fulfilling it was to work with patients,” Quezada recalls. “As a new mom, that resonated with me, and I liked the idea of having another job focused on helping people, just in a different setting.”

Now, Quezada is a dental hygienist and earns about $140,000 a year as a specialty regional director at Pacific Dental Services in Murrieta, California. 

Here’s how Quezada made the switch and built a six-figure career that allows her to make her own schedule and pursue a side hustle she’s passionate about — without a college degree:

Quezada decided to become a dental assistant first to see how she felt working chairside with patients before committing to the schooling and training required to become a dental hygienist. 

Shortly after leaving the Navy, Quezada moved back home to northern Virginia and completed a nine-week dental assistant certificate program at a local community college. 

During the week she worked part-time as a bank teller, and on weekends, she attended classes, where she learned basic tooth anatomy, the ins and outs of medical billing, equipment sterilization and other skills. 

Within months of completing her certification in early 2008, Quezada began working as a dental assistant in Northern Virginia.

 But she quickly realized that she wanted more — specifically, a role where she could make a deeper impact on patients’ health and well-being. 

In 2012, when her then-husband received new military orders to California, Quezada enrolled in Concorde Career College’s dental hygienist program in San Diego.

She graduated from the program, which cost about $81,000, with her associate degree in dental hygiene in 2014. 

The requirements to become a dental hygienist vary state by state, but at a minimum, prospective hygienists need to have an associate degree; pass the National Board Dental Hygiene Exam in addition to a state or regional clinical exam; and complete extensive training in patient care (performing cleanings, taking X-rays, etc.). 

Quezada started working as a dental hygienist for a temp agency as soon as she graduated to gain experience in different office environments. She made $45 an hour — double what she had earned as a dental assistant.

Within two years, Quezada started earning $100,000 and landed a full-time job as a dental hygienist at Pacific Dental Services (PDS) in Riverside, California. 

“Most dental hygienists can expect to earn six figures straight out of school,” Quezada points out, adding that the field is an “amazing option” for those without a bachelor’s degree. 

Dental hygienists earn, on average, about $93,000 a year, regardless of their educational background, according to ZipRecruiter. 

This is largely due to a persistent shortage of licensed professionals: The American Dental Association reports that 40% of dental practices are struggling to fill hygienist positions. The demand for dental hygienists is expected to rise as the need for dental services increases with an aging population. 

Quezada says the hardest part of working in the dental field is managing uncooperative or nervous patients, as many people struggle with dental anxiety or fear. 

She’s tried to curb those bad feelings by making her dental cleanings feel like “spa treatments,” Quezada jokes, hiding an oil diffuser in the corner of the office, offering patients a warm blanket or playing soothing music in the background. 

Overall, Quezada says working in the dental field is exciting and has kept her on her toes; although she’s still a licensed dental hygienist, she’s recently taken on other responsibilities at PDS, working as a professional development coach and a specialty regional director, her current job title. 

In the role, which Quezada has had since 2021, she mentors new hygienists and oversees nearly 30 dental offices in the southwest United States, helping them run their day-to-day operations and use new technologies like oral DNA and saliva screening in their practice. 

“I wear a lot of hats, but I love it,” she says. “I get to work with so many people and learn so many different things, I’m never bored.” 

Quezada says the flexibility of working in the dental field has been one of the best benefits; as a hygienist, she worked four days a week, and now, she says, PDS trusts her to choose her own hours and adjust her schedule as needed. She can also work from home 1-2 days per week. 

“If one of my sons has something at school, whether it’s a class event or a presentation, I can adjust my meetings and make sure I’m there,” Quezada, who’s a mom of two, says. It’s a freedom I don’t think I’d have in many other professions.”

That flexibility has also allowed her to pursue her passion for fitness, and take on a side hustle as a part-time spin instructor. 

“It’s something I absolutely love, and I’m so grateful I found a career that supports that passion,” she says. 

As dentistry continues to evolve, Quezada is excited about the future of her field and the new opportunities it offers, especially for those who don’t see a four-year degree in their future. 

“It’s such a dynamic and rewarding career,” says Quezada, “and in a market where hygienists are high in demand, there’s no ceiling on how much you can earn, the opportunities you have.”

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.