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.

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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.”

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What lengths would you go to for your dream house?

Would you move to another country? How about remodeling the interior of a space that was never meant to be a home at all?

For the Americans who invited CNBC Make It into their homes for an Unlocked tour, thinking outside the box helped them turn unexpected spaces like abandoned lighthouses, old baseball stadiums and decrepit Italian properties into the homes of their dreams.

Take a look inside some of the most unique homes we’ve toured and learn how they came to be.

When Michael Cox first told people about his plan to convert a former Indianapolis baseball stadium into a 138-unit apartment complex, they thought he was crazy.

But after a $14 million renovation and remodeling, Stadium Lofts is now one of the most unique apartment complexes in the city.

The former stadium, which was home to the Indianapolis Indians from 1931 to 1996 before eventually falling into disrepair, was in danger of being torn down before Cox’s plan was put into effect.

Along with business partner John Watson and his two sons, Cox acquired the landmark property for just $1.

The stadium’s renovation began in August 2011 and was completed in a little under two years. By the time it opened in July 2013, all 138 apartments had been leased.

It was converted into 95 one-bedroom apartments, 26 two-bedroom apartments, and 17 lofts. Rent in the complex ranges from $900 to $1,700 and each apartment has a washer and dryer.

The developers made sure to keep certain features in honor of the ballpark’s past, including the original scoreboard, old ticket booths and press box. They even put bases back on the field.

“We designed it such that when you walked in, you felt like you were walking into a historic stadium rather than an apartment building,” Watson said.

Jesse Wig never set out to remodel an abandoned school, but when he was approached with an off-market deal to buy the property in 2019 he was intrigued by the space’s potential.

After enlisting real estate investor Adam Colucci and developer Dan Spanovich, the trio bought the abandoned Bowtie High for $100,000. They embarked on an 18-month renovation beginning in 2020 to turn it into an apartment building.

The $3.3 million renovation’s price tag was more than they ever expected to pay, but once leasing began they reached full occupancy within six months.

Monthly rent for one-bedrooms in the building starts at $1,400, while two-bedrooms start at $1,600.

Some units that used to be classrooms have the original chalkboards and an enviable amount of natural light, thanks to massive windows throughout the space.

Apartments are also equipped with stainless steel appliances, in-unit washers and dryers, and walk-in closets.

After Bowtie High, the team decided to buy and renovate the abandoned school across the street, turning it into a 33-unit apartment building with amenities like a rooftop deck, indoor parking and lounge.

When test pilot Joe Sobczak was looking for a new home, he wasn’t worried about square footage or backyard space. Instead, he wanted a property where he could keep his plane.

In 2017, he found what he was looking for at a residential airpark at the Pine Mountain Lake Airport and bought his 3-bedroom, 7-bathroom, 5,000-square-foot home with a 3,600-square-foot hangar for $698,000.

The community where he lives has dozens of homes with hangars, each with their own deeded access to uses the taxiways and runways at the Tuolumne County airport.

As a test pilot, Sobczak works primarily out of the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Instead of doing the three-hour drive, he jumps in one of his airplanes and takes a 45-minute flight to nearby San Carlos Airport and drives 15 minutes to SFO.

Although Sobczak owns three homes, he calls this one his favorite. The former U.S. Air Force fighter jet pilot is an expert at the rural lifestyle and has no plans to leave anytime soon. 

“I plan on being here for quite a while,” he says. “I can live up here. Fly airplanes. Stay out of the congestion of the Bay Area. Breathe the fresh air and take a trip to Yosemite in 30 minutes. It’s all the justification I need.”

In 2009, Sheila Consaul’s search for a second home took an unexpected turn. Though the 65-year-old communications consultant was originally looking for a normal house, when she learned that the U.S. government was auctioning off lighthouses she was immediately interested.

Congress passed the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act in 2000. It allows the government to auction or give away “federally-owned historic light stations that have been declared excess to the needs of the responsible agency.”

Consaul had previously restored a historic home and was intrigued by the challenges that renovating a lighthouse would pose.

Built in 1925, the three-story lighthouse has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and is almost 3,000 square feet. Consaul is the first person to live in the lighthouse since it was abandoned in the late 1940s.

She lives in the lighthouse from May to October and it sits empty when she’s at her primary home outside of Washington D.C.

Consaul started renovating in the summer of 2012, and over 10 years later, the project is almost done. “The renovation process has been long and arduous,” she said.

The property is a half mile from the nearest parking lot in Headlands Beach State Park, so big appliances like the stove and refrigerator needed to be transported by boat and then delivered by crane onto the platform of the lighthouse.

Despite going over her initial $200,000 renovation budget, for Consaul the time and effort has been worth it. “This was a great challenge, a great opportunity, and I loved every minute of it,” she said.

Rubia Daniels was thrilled at the chance to purchase a building in Sicility for the low price of 1 euro. The only catch? The property had extensive mold, water damage, a termite infestation and a collapsed roof.

The deal was part of an Italian initiative to attract foreign investors in towns with dwindling populations. In exchange for the symbolic price tag, homebuyers are expected to renovate their homes within three years.

Daniels told Make It that she didn’t just see endless amounts of work in front of her when she looked at the three run down buildings she purchased. Instead, she visualized the final result of a trio of dream projects: a vacation home, a restaurant and a wellness center.

Daniels is building the house of her dreams, “which I wouldn’t be able to do back in California because the cost would be much higher,” she said. Daniels plans to visit her Italian home for vacations and split her time between California and Sicily in retirement. 

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For the better part of the last four years, Julie Averbach has been visiting as many Trader Joe’s supermarkets as possible. 

She’s been to more than 150 locations in 20 states while researching her upcoming book, “The Art of Trader Joe’s”, in which the Yale art history grad breaks down the chain’s branding and iconography. 

“If I was ever going to visit a friend in an area that I hadn’t been to, I’d make sure to go to the local Trader Joe’s,” she says. “There were certain road trips where I would go to the Boston area or DC and visit 10 Trader Joe’s stores in one day, just driving straight from one to the next.” 

While the task of visiting hundreds of supermarkets may sound tedious, Averbach says it has been anything but. 

“Each Trader Joe’s is very much unique,” she says. “The artwork is very personalized to reflect the local community. They all tap into a sense of local pride and identity, which is something that I think is really unique for a grocery retailer.”

During her hundreds of hours spent in Trader Joe’s stores, Averbach has observed the things the retailer does that have made it such a fan favorite. She sat down with CNBC Make It to talk about three things that have helped Trader Joe’s build its loyal following.

More than 80% of the products Trader Joe’s sells are private label, according to the supermarket’s official podcast. And while non-brand-name products at most supermarkets are often shunted to the side in favor of their name-brand counterparts, at Trader Joe’s their products are front and center in unique, eye-catching packaging. 

“There’s this kind of stigma that private label is something that you settle for so that you can pay a lower price than you would for the name brand option,” Averbach says. “At Trader Joe’s, the private label products are affordable luxuries.” 

“The packaging and the art and design play an important role in turning these private label products — something that would be perceived as perhaps less expensive and inferior in quality — into something that feels high quality and attractive for a customer,” she continues. 

Indeed, products like Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, Peanut Butter Filled Pretzel Nuggets and Unexpected Cheddar are among the chain’s best-selling items. 

While every Trader Joe’s is unique, Averbach says they all have certain things in common when it comes to their designs.

“When you walk in the store, the first thing is you smell fresh flowers near the entrance,” she says. “You hear upbeat music on the speakers. You’re going to look around and see eye-catching products on the shelves, vibrant, colorful artwork and signs throughout the store. Many stores also have sampling counters for tasting products.” 

These decisions help it not only sell groceries, but also to “create the most joyful experience possible for the customer.”

By turning each store into an eclectic, interesting place to browse, Trader Joe’s encourages shoppers to look around and find something they might like.

“Trader Joe’s is encouraging us to slow down and actually enjoy the shopping experience,” Averbach says. “And once you slow down and enjoy, you’re also more likely to discover and buy things that weren’t on your original shopping list.” 

Trader Joe’s knows how to get customers excited about its products.

A box of chocolate cookies isn’t just a box of chocolate cookies at Trader Joe’s. Instead, it’s marketed as “Astounding Multi-Flavor Joe Joe’s” and packaged in a unique hexagonal box designed to make the cookies look like they’re headlining a circus act.

These choices make you more likely to want to try a product, or even give it to someone else.

“Trader Joe’s is really expert at packaging products to make them feel like novelty items and very giftable items as well,” she says. 

When it comes to flavors that might be foreign to its customers, Trader Joe’s doesn’t stick them in the international aisle. Instead, the store highlights its products as things you should try.

In her book, she writes about how the chain’s “worldly product packaging” satisfies a desire to travel without having to leave home.

“At Trader Joe’s, the entire store is like an international aisle,” she says. “Shoppers are more likely to explore and discover products that they didn’t original plan on buying.”

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Todd Graves’ high-risk funding strategy for Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers was a bold gamble that almost cost him his dream.

Today, the co-CEO and founder of Raising Cane’s is worth an estimated $9.5 billion, according to Forbes, thanks to his over 90% ownership stake in the company. But getting there was no easy feat. He had to work 90-hour weeks in an oil refinery and fish for salmon in Alaska just to raise enough capital to open the restaurant’s first location.

When he was growing the chain, Graves said he took out loans with private investors at a 15% interest rate. He then took the borrowed cash to community banks, which treated the debt as equity, allowing him to secure even larger loans, he told the “How I Built This” podcast in 2022.

It was a risky decision that nearly ended up costing him the business. When Hurricane Katrina shut down 21 of 28 of his stores in the Baton Rouge area in 2005, it temporarily shut off the flow of revenue Graves needed to avoid defaulting.

“I tell entrepreneurs, ‘Don’t do that,’ because my dream almost just went away,” Graves told the “Trading Secrets” podcast in May. “It was stupid.”

The business “luckily” survived, Graves said, because of its ability to reopen relatively quickly after the hurricane. The experience taught him to better balance risk. Today, Graves makes sure his company has less than three dollars of debt for every dollar it owns, he told “Trading Secrets.”

He’s fortunate taking on such a heavy debt load initially didn’t hurt Raising Cane’s in the long run, according to Bryan Bean, executive vice president of corporate banking at Pinnacle Financial Partners. “Many business owners who hold that kind of debt may not make it to the other side,” Bean tells CNBC Make It.

Cash flow leverage indicates how much debt a company has compared to its EBITDA, or how much money a business makes from its operations before accounting for additional costs like interest and taxes, says Bean.

Keeping that ratio below three times, which is what Graves does now, is the industry standard, according to Bean. For smaller companies, Bean says that a leverage ratio of one or two times may even be more appropriate. Anything above a leverage ratio of three is considered extremely risky, Bean says.

Individuals also need to be cautious: Personal finance experts recommend keeping your own personal debt-to-income ratio lower than 36%.

Taking out loans can be beneficial for growing a company. Former Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s business partner Charlie Munger, who died last year, once said Berkshire Hathaway would be worth “twice what it is now” if it had used leverage.

And raising money through debt, rather than by taking on too many additional investors, is why Graves still owns nearly all of Raising Cane’s today.

The risk lies in a company’s ability to get out of the red, Bean says. Unexpected events like Hurricane Katrina can pose a significant threat to businesses carrying a lot of debt. Recovering and transforming Raising Cane’s into a business that generated $3.7 billion in net sales last year, according to the company, is no small achievement.

“It’s a really impressive thing that he’s done,” Bean says of Graves. “He chose a capital structure that, in his own words, was riskier because it was loaded with a lot of debt, and not only a lot of debt, but a lot of expensive debt — so I think that makes the degree of difficulty even harder because he had probably less room for error.”

In the end, Graves’ risky move didn’t sink his company, and he’s adamant he learned his lesson after a close call that he now blames on youth and inexperience: “I was in my 20s and I was stupid,” he said.

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Jayde Powell started her social media career over a decade ago, working for wellness brands and big name companies like Delta Airlines. She never imagined she’d make money creating content as herself — especially not on LinkedIn.

Powell started posting observations from her experience in corporate America on the job search-platform after she noticed other creators were shifting away X.com, formerly known as Twitter, at the end of 2022. Within a year, the posts started gaining traction and catching the attention of past clients.

When the social media management platform Sprout Social, offered $1,000 for Powell to write a sponsored post promoting their upcoming event on her personal LinkedIn page, she says, it was a light-bulb moment. Powell — whose day job is running her Atlanta-based social media strategy agency, The Em Dash Co. — realized she could leverage the skills she used to write for corporate companies on her own accounts.

The epiphany has helped her grow her career and earn money in unexpected ways. This year, she has made $27,000 posting content as Jayde I. Powell on LinkedIn, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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As a solo business owner, that cash has come in handy. The money she earns from LinkedIn helps her pay her mortgage and utilities bills, and offset monthly business expenses, while she grows her own company, she says. Powell has made $32,700 through The Em Dash Co. and another $2,750 from other social media content so far this year.

The combined income hasn’t yet surpassed her $95,000 annual salary from her last full-time job at wellness beverage company Sunwink, she says — but it outpaces the $52,100 she earned solely from The Em Dash Co. last year. It’s also slightly higher than the median annual salary for social media managers in the U.S. ($60,000 a year, according to job recruiting site Glassdoor).

“Having brand partnerships [on LinkedIn] has really saved me and allowed me to pay my bills,” Powell, 31, tells CNBC Make It. “There have been times where I haven’t been able to pull in new client work [at the Em Dash Co.].”

Here’s how Powell developed her voice on social media and leveraged it into a lucrative LinkedIn side hustle.

Before Powell built her audience of more than 19,000 followers on LinkedIn, her specialty was making content for X.com, she says.

Her posts, which often reflected her personal experiences at work and prompted conversations among other users, regularly attracted hundreds of thousands of likes and reposts.

Looking for more flexibility than traditional corporate jobs offered, Powell started freelancing full-time and launched The Em Dash Co. in October 2022.

Her secret to going viral revolved around mastering one skill, Powell says: marrying corporate content with a conversational tone.

The key is injecting enough personality to make people feel like they’re talking to a real person. “Consumers are more savvy than ever; they know when they’re being marketed to,” Powell says. “It feels inauthentic when brands are like, ‘Buy this product,’ over and over again. The messaging becomes boring.”

That’s a big reason why “influencer marketing is very hot right now,” she adds.

Advertisers are on pace to spend more than $8.1 billion on influencer marketing this year, a 16% increase from 2023, according to estimates from eMarketer.

“People trust people, not brands,” Powell says. “Creators provide a level of personality, comfort and familiarity that brands just cannot accomplish.”

More than two-thirds of U.S. consumers say they are more likely to trust the recommendation of an influencer, friend or family member than they are to be swayed by content coming directly from a brand, according to a 2023 survey from PR firm Matter Communications.

Powell has worked to translate her personal voice from X to LinkedIn, where the tone remains “unserious,” she says. She tweaks her content to fit trends and issues young professionals experience.

After her first LinkedIn post for Sprout Social, Powell began seeking out clients for her personal page. She did it the same way she found corporate clients for The Em Dash Co.: She made a list of the tools she used as an influencer — like Teachable, where she hosts a webinar series — and slid into the platforms’ DMs, she says.

Businesses know their customers want to hear from real people, Powell says. That’s why she believes the income from her LinkedIn side hustle could soon outpace her solo agency.

At the same time, Powell — who now works about 25 hours per week for The Em Dash Co. and 10 hours per week on LinkedIn — says that running a business and a side hustle by herself has pros and cons.

“The traditional 9-to-5, 40 hours-a-week model is a bit much for me,” Powell says. “I like having more flexibility and the freedom to adapt my schedule … but it can be scary in those moments where you’re like, ‘When is my next paycheck coming? When is my next invoice going to process?’”

Still, after her unexpected success promoting brands as herself on LinkedIn, Powell is strongly considering shifting her focus to her personal content.

Her next goal: hit 100,000 followers on the platform by the end of 2025.

“I’ve just really been taking this platform so seriously, so I kind of want to see the fruits of my labor in that way,” Powell says. “I would also love to get to a place eventually where I can do this full time, [and] be a LinkedIn influencer.”

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