Apparently, convincing your friends to sell chicken can pay off — big.

At 24, Arman Oganesyan was making $50 a night as a stand-up comedian with no restaurant or business experience when he pitched the idea of selling Nashville hot chicken to his childhood friends Dave Kopushyan and Tommy Rubenyan. Pooling $900 in savings, they launched Dave’s Hot Chicken in 2017 as a pop-up in a Los Angeles parking lot.

On Monday, private equity firm Roark Capital bought a majority stake in Dave’s Hot Chicken, which is now a franchise business with more than 300 locations, in a deal worth “pretty close” to $1 billion, Dave’s CEO Bill Phelps said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“It’s insane what we did,” Phelps said. “The vision of these guys was just great. Arman Oganesyan was the founder. A high school dropout, but a marketing genius, and he created all of this in his head.”

But the idea nearly didn’t happen. Kopushyan — a chef who had worked at Michelin-starred restaurants — initially told Oganesyan, “‘Chicken? First of all, I don’t even like chicken,'” Oganesyan said on the “How I Built This Podcast with Guy Raz” in 2024.

It took some convincing, but with Kopushyan eventually on board, they went to their other friends looking for investors, Oganesyan said — everyone turned them down, except Tommy Rubenyan. Oganesyan said the trio scraped their savings together and got to work developing a Nashville hot chicken recipe, drawing inspiration from popular Los Angeles restaurant Howlin’ Ray’s, which has two locations.

The friends spent months eating at various fried chicken joints, watching documentaries on chicken and experimenting in Kopushyan’s kitchen, Oganesyan said.

Some of their “crazier” ideas, like using gummy bears in the recipe, were struck down; others came unexpectedly, Oganesyan said, like using pickle juice in the brine, which they discovered by accident after tossing leftover chicken into a nearly-empty pickle jar.

“It was a lot of belief with a lot of doubt,” Oganesyan said.

Eventually, they were ready to start selling their fried chicken tenders, but couldn’t afford to buy a food truck, so they set up in a parking lot in LA’s East Hollywood neighborhood with a $150 fryer, a heat lamp for fries and tables they borrowed from their parents, Oganesyan said.

They made $40 the first night they opened from four meals they sold to Oganesyan’s girlfriend and three of her friends, he said. But five days into opening, they caught the attention of former Eater Los Angeles food critic Farley Elliott through word of mouth.

From there business boomed, and Oganesyan said they began selling out and making “a few thousand” dollars every night in a matter of months. At the end of their second month, they paid themselves for the first time, each taking home around $10,000 in cash, Oganesyan said. “It was the most money I’d ever seen in my life,” he added.

A year later, they brought in Rubenyan’s brother, Gary, who helped them open their first storefront.

In 2019, an investor group, which included Dave’s current CEO Bill Phelps, actor Samuel L. Jackson, Good Morning America anchor and former NFL player Michael Strahan, movie producer John Davis and Red Sox owner Tom Werner, bought a stake in the company with plans to franchise the brand, the company told Nation’s Restaurant News in 2019.

Phelps, who has served as CEO since then, has expanded the chain’s presence nationally and internationally, adding locations in Canada, the United Kingdom and the Middle East, he said on “Squawk Box.”

In the U.S., Dave’s brought in more than $600 million in systemwide sales last year, up 57% from the year before, according to data from market research firm Technomic. This year, the company expects to bring in $1.2 billion in sales and is currently “extremely” profitable both at the franchise level and in its corporate operations, Jim Bitticks, president and COO of Dave’s, told CNBC Make It.

While the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Oganesyan, Kopushyan, the Rubenyan brothers and Phelps will retain minority stakes in the company and continue in their current roles, CNBC reported on Monday.

“The timing was absolutely right,” Phelps told CNBC. “We were at an inflection point where we could get an incredible valuation, and yet there was still significant upside for Roark, so that’s the perfect place to be.”

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As a leadership consultant who studies workplace psychology, I’ve spent 30 years working with high performers across all industries. Again and again, one truth keeps proving itself: Being artistic in some way can transform you.

Even Steve Jobs agreed when he was interviewed for the PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1995: “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

Of all the artistic fields, I’ve found that mastering a musical instrument is the most powerful for rewiring the brain for greatness. Playing an instrument — whether it’s the piano, trumpet or guitar — activates nearly every part of your brain: motor control, pattern recognition, emotional regulation, creativity and stamina.

That’s why I believe parents should encourage their kids to learn an instrument as early as possible. Studies have consistently found that children who learn music are more likely to have increased IQ scores and better language development.

Plus, it encourages their brain to operate at full capacity, building the neural foundation for mastery in pretty much everything. Here’s why:

1. You make visualizing success second nature

Musicians don’t just practice, they fantasize. They see the stage, hear the notes and feel the outcome long before it happens. Hence, musicians build skill while just visualizing playing. That ability to rehearse and mentally simulate outcomes is a superpower: You learn not just react to reality, but to create it.

2. You develop a sacred relationship with time

When you practice an instrument, time stops being abstract. You feel in real-time the cost of distraction and the miracle of being fully focused.

Over time, you become fiercely time-conscious — not in a stressed way, but in a sacred one. You don’t want to rush, you want to make it count. This discipline shapes everything, from how you run meetings to how you build relationships.

3. You stop running from discomfort

Every musician has to face the parts of the music they hate and struggle with. There’s no shortcut. You can’t outsource it, nor avoid it. You have to lean in until the failure becomes fluency.

While most people avoid uncomfortable moments in life, playing an instrument teaches you to seek those moments. You no longer panic at pain; you see it as a sign of growth.

4. You learn that emotions are designable

Music isn’t just output. It’s a way of regulating your inner world by changing your emotional state with sound, breath, rhythm and in how you prepare.

It becomes an invaluable skill you carry into everything, like before a stressful conversation or during a conflict. You don’t just express emotions anymore — you direct them.

5. You realize boredom is just feedback

Musicians don’t just play scales mindlessly. They know what they’re aiming to improve: precision, control, phrasing. Without that goal, their attention drifts, and practice becomes boring.

We often think stuff we do is boring, but boredom is feedback. It’s your brain telling you: “Show me what this is building toward.” The insight that boredom is the absence of a goal changes everything. Instead of labeling tasks as boring or dull, you ask, “What’s my goal here?”

This makes you sharper, more engaged and harder to distract in any setting.

6. You turn being stuck into invention

Sometimes you can’t play it right. Your hand won’t stretch. Your fingers trip. So, you try it a different way. You improvise, rearrange, compose. Suddenly, the failure becomes fuel. This teaches you a profound lesson: When you can’t follow the map, draw a new one. Innovation isn’t a gift; it’s a response to friction.

7. Your standards rise and stay high

Once you’ve heard the difference between “okay” and “exceptional,” you can’t unhear it. Once you’ve experienced how moments of excellence feels, mediocrity becomes unbearable. Music teaches you to expect more from yourself and others, not out of perfectionism but out of respect for what’s possible.

8. You learn to create for others, not just yourself

When you’re playing an instrument, you can’t help imagining an audience, maybe to impress but mostly to move someone, to say something without words. That habit reshapes how you approach everything.

Your work becomes an expression of your standards, your values, your imagination. It forces you to ask: Is this good enough to matter to someone else? Will this make them think, feel, grow?

Your brain’s plasticity and ability to learn allows you to pick up a new instrument at almost any age, so it’s never too late if you didn’t learn to play music as a kid.

1. Pick the one that sparks emotion. You don’t need logic here. What’s an instrument that moves you? That makes you feel something? Piano, guitar, trumpet — follow the spark.

2. Practice for at least 20 minutes a day. Studies show that 20 to 30 minutes of focused practice can induce measurable brain changes, particularly in areas tied to motor skills and attention.

3. Celebrate improvement, not performance. Don’t worry about being good. Track what you can do today that you couldn’t do yesterday. Mastery is just small progress, compounded with love.

Stefan Falk is an internationally-recognized executive coach, workplace psychology expert, and author of “Intrinsic Motivation: Learn to Love Your Work and Succeed as Never Before.” A McKinsey & Company alumnus, he has trained over 4,000 leaders across more than 60 organizations and helped drive transformations valued in excess of $2 billion. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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Growing up, Gabrielle Heyman, 53, did not know what she wanted to do with her life.

“I thought that I wanted to be in film when I was younger because I’m from L.A. and I have family in film,” she says. “But then when I tried it, I found people were just really mean,” especially to those in the assistant positions she was taking.

It was while working as an assistant at CBS in 1998 that she decided to apply for a job at the company doing sales for online campaigns. “It was the dawn of the internet,” she says, “so they were just building their internet ad sales team.” The people were nicer, it turned out, and she found she had a knack for sales.

Heyman continued to build her career with roles at Electronic Arts, Yahoo and BuzzFeed. Today, she serves as vice president of global brand sales and partnerships for video game developer Zynga.

Despite her eventual success, those early days of the World Wide Web were tenuous. Here’s how Heyman survived and her advice for anyone starting in a brand-new field — like today’s budding AI.

There was a lot of hype around the internet when Heyman started her career.

The 1990s saw lots of investment in internet-based companies, but beginning in 2001, when many of those companies ultimately failed and shut down, the Dotcom bubble burst. As many as 168,395 tech jobs were cut that year alone, according to outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“I was sure I was going to be laid off in the Dotcom crash,” she says. She was working at Electronic Arts by then, which cut 250 jobs in October 2001. “And I wasn’t laid off.”

Heyman believes what helped her hold onto her job was being both good at and passionate about what she was doing. You have to “know your s—” in these moments, she says. “Don’t be a fraud.”

When industries are the zeitgeist, many people flock to them to try to capitalize on the boom. That includes entrepreneurs creating businesses with no clear path for profitability, she says. The draw is the opportunity to cash in rather than their genuine interest in making something that works, she says. When demand for that field levels out and some of those companies fold, “there’s a lot of riff raff cut out,” she says of the people who aren’t genuinely interested — taking many jobs with them.

To survive in a new field — like AI, for example — you have to care about it. That means reading articles, “being up on what clients are doing, playing with the technology yourself,” Heyman says. And be discerning about who you’re interviewing with.

“Look at how the company is investing in long-term talent, infrastructure and leadership,” she says, adding that, “it’s often easy to spot the difference between companies chasing trends and those building for the future.”

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Ten years ago, my wife, daughter and I relocated from the Washington, DC area to Lisbon, Portugal. Living here has been one of the best experiences of our lives, so we’re not surprised that it’s the country Americans want to move to the most.

But once we arrived, we soon learned that some of our expectations before the move were unrealistic. For example, we thought we could fully integrate simply by mastering the language and making a lot of Portuguese friends. Ten years later, we still feel just as culturally “American” as we did when we first landed.

Now that we’ve fully settled in, our friends back home often ask about what living and retiring abroad is really like. Here are the top three myths about leaving the U.S.:

“Laid-back” and “low-stress” aren’t necessarily the same things, especially if you’re used to efficiency and attentive customer service.

It may take minutes to open a bank account in the U.S., but it could take weeks or longer for an American expat to do it in a country like Portugal, where banks require significant documentation and review periods before opening an account. 

And if you’re worried about American politics, moving abroad won’t stop the news cycle. In fact, without the reassuring familiarity of being “home,” moving abroad might make you even more stressed.

So if your motivation for relocating overseas is to leave your worries behind, you may become disillusioned with life in a foreign country. But if your goal is to pursue excitement, novelty and the great unknown, then you’ll have an easier time overcoming the unwelcome surprises that exist in even the most laid-back countries. 

The cost of living in a country like Portugal might be lower than comparable lifestyles in the U.S., but Americans often face extra administrative steps when they live abroad that can result in added costs.

For example, you may need to hire both a U.S. accountant for your U.S. income taxes, plus a local accountant to file your taxes for your country of residence.

Depending on which country you move to, you should consider the volatile nature of currency exchange rates. For example, the euro rose from about $1.03 early this year to nearly $1.14 today, so most things that my family buys in Portugal now cost us over 10% more than they did a few months ago. 

Most importantly, don’t overlook the value of your time. A medical prescription in Portugal might cost a fifth of what it costs in the U.S., but can take five times longer to fill.

If one of your goals for moving abroad is to lower your living expenses, I suggest doing three things:

1. Create a budget of your current spending.
2. Create a projected budget for your ideal life abroad. This way, you can compare costs and see whether (and where) you can save money by moving abroad.
3. The costs of things are never fixed. Ask yourself: Are some costs more or less likely to change over time? If so, how would those changes impact your projected cost savings?    

In Lisbon, there’s a huge number of expat-focused group activities. There are co-working spaces that cater to expat communities and language schools. But as welcoming and friendly as Portugal tends to be, you may struggle to make new connections if you’re based in more rural parts of the country. 

So how can you meet new friends and colleagues? If you’re traveling with school-age children, does the school organize parent activities? Do you have hobbies you can pursue in a group setting, especially groups that meet regularly so you’ll start to see the same faces over and over again?

Also important: What about your “helper” network? If you face a sudden need to take a return trip to the U.S., for example, who will care for your pets while you’re gone? If you get into an accident, who will notify your family back home if you’re unable to do so? 

My best advice is to have a written contingency plan, complete with names and phone numbers for who will stand in for you if necessary. It’s okay if there are blanks in your contingency plan — you can fill those in as you develop new relationships in your new country. 

As for the one belief about moving abroad that actually is true? “You’ll love living near the ocean on a glorious, sunny day.” A picture tells a thousand words.

Alex Trias is a retired attorney. He and his wife and daughter have been living in Portugal since 2015. He writers about tax planning, investing, early retirement and expat living on Substack.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

When Phoebe Merrick first arrived on Waiheke Island in New Zealand, she thought she’d only be there for two months.

It was June 2023, just before Merrick’s final year of college, and the Virginia native planned to work a summer internship at a winery on the island. “I was like, ‘This cannot be real,'” Merrick tells CNBC Make It of the view while ferrying over from Auckland. “I just thought it was so beautiful.”

Two years later, Merrick is still on Waiheke and getting ready to move into a new house with her boyfriend, Reuben Sandoy, who grew up in the area. The two met during Merrick’s summer program and, by autumn, Sandoy had traveled to meet her family in the U.S. and the two decided they would live together abroad.

Merrick, 22, works remotely as a freelance marketing and social media manager while Sandoy, 29, runs his own plumbing business on the island. Together, the two make roughly $132,000 U.S. dollars per year.

Here’s how they live and spend their money on Waiheke.

Waiheke Island is the second-largest island in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand and is a roughly 40-minute ferry ride from Auckland. The area is known for its wineries and beaches.

Roughly 9,000 people live on the island during the winter, and the population swells to upwards of 45,000 each summer. More than 900,000 people visit the popular tourist destination each year, and it’s sometimes referred to as the “Hamptons of New Zealand,” where the rich and famous vacation.

But ultimately, what drew Merrick to Waiheke is the reason why Sandoy has lived there the majority of his life: the beautiful scenery and slow pace of living.

As a local, Sandoy appreciates that everything is close and there’s little traffic. He also has little competition as a plumber to earn business on the island.

Adjusting to life far from home took Merrick some time. There were differences in routine, like driving on the other side of the road and living without the conveniences of Amazon delivery.

It also came with a level of culture shock around money and the price of living far from a big city.

“I felt like a millionaire when I first came over,” Merrick says, noting that paying with the strong American dollar versus the New Zealand dollar made her savings go farther. As of May, $1 USD is worth about $1.70 NZD.

Her earnings don’t go as far in local currency, but “it’s worth it for the lifestyle for me. I love living on an island,” Merrick says.

Here’s how Merrick and Sandoy spent their money in April 2025.

• Savings: $4,689
• Food: $854 for groceries and dining out
• Transportation: $504 for gas, rideshares, ferry tickets and bus fare
• Discretionary: $297 for shopping, pharmacy needs and sporting event tickets
• Health insurance: $59 for private coverage
• Phone: $26

Living on an island like Waiheke is expensive.

The couple has been living in Sandoy’s mother’s house rent-free for several years. What they saved on rent they’ve funneled away for a down payment, mortgage payments and future renovation costs for a new house.

After their savings, the couple’s second-highest spending category was for food. Food costs are high because a lot of things have to be imported; going out to eat also comes at a premium when many restaurants cater to wealthier tastes and higher budgets.

“You’ll go to restaurants, and it won’t be like just a casual pizza or burger — it’ll be a truffle ravioli or caviar on crayfish and all of that,” Merrick says.

The two enjoy food and are willing to spend on it — Merrick likes to host dinner parties and cook most meals, especially if she can recreate American recipes she misses, while Sandoy enjoys little luxuries like a steak dinner. “It’s probably what we enjoy spending the most money on versus anything like shopping or going into the city,” Merrick says.

The couple’s third-largest budget item for the month was on transportation — Sandoy drives around the island for work and spent about $800 NZD, or about $470 USD, on gas. Merrick prefers to take the bus around the island; the two will also visit Auckland via ferry and use rideshares to get around for the day.

New Zealand has a free health insurance program, but Sandoy pays an additional $100 NZD, or about $58 USD, per month for premium coverage. Merrick is on her parents’ health insurance and schedules doctors appointments for when she visits home in Virginia.

Sandoy says he’s been preparing to buy his own home with Merrick since they began dating, but the housing market has been tough to navigate. Real estate prices jumped in 2021 and remain elevated compared with pre-pandemic trends.

In late May, Sandoy closed on a house worth $1.055 million NZD, or nearly $621,000 USD, handing over a 10% down payment. While the price is “pretty average,” Sandoy says, he says he was able to afford it because it’s a fixer upper in need of renovations. Sandoy and Merrick have both been saving for future mortgage payments and renovation costs.

They moved in right away and will live there while renovating the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home over the next year.

“We’re both very excited to renovate together,” Merrick says. “It is something that we both find quite fun. It’s a great financial step to take as a couple, so it will be worth it in the long run, even if it is a bit scary right now.”

Sandoy works up to 50 hours per week doing repairs and home projects for clients on the island; he makes around $153,000 NZD, or roughly $91,000 USD per year. It’s labor-intensive work involving “crawling underneath houses or working out in the elements.”

Sandoy says his job can be demanding because he’s self-employed.

Merrick works about 40 hours per week doing social media and marketing for four local clients she found via a Facebook message board. She makes $70,000 NZD, or roughly $41,000 USD, per year. As her own boss, Merrick says she’s able to make a little bit more than what other entry-level marketing roles typically pay in New Zealand.

Merrick never had a full-time job in the U.S. but says “moving to New Zealand definitely changed my perspective on work-life balance.” Workers are generally entitled to four weeks of paid leave each year on top of about a dozen public holidays.

Merrick says many of her friends from college work over 40 hours per week, and some have as few as three vacation days per year. Merrick says that her contract jobs are flexible and her supervisors value taking breaks.

“All my bosses are very understanding and definitely believe in taking time off as well, [including] for mental health,” Merrick says.

“I definitely do feel a lot happier just because my lifestyle is different,” she adds. “Back in the U.S., everyone was too busy to spend time with each other [due to] work.”

On Waiheke, meanwhile, “people have a lot more free time, and we’re able to all spend time together, and it feels a lot more social,” Merrick says, whether it’s going to the beach or traveling around the island and greater New Zealand together.

Conversions from New Zealand dollars to U.S. dollars were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 NZD to 0.58 USD on May 16, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar. 

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