The Magnolia Story (with Bonus Content)

by Chip Gaines

  There was nothing terribly difficult about my childhood—certainly nothing like Jo felt when she walked into the school cafeteria. I always joke that my name was Chip, and that was tough enough. But other than that I was this athletic kid with friends, and I thought I had a pretty good life.

  My only problem, if you want to call it a problem, is that I just never fit society’s mold, especially at school. I was always talking at inappropriate times. I was always getting in trouble with teachers who said I didn’t do things right. I wasn’t writing right. I wasn’t staying inside the lines. There was always some structure that I just somehow couldn’t fit my little brain into. (That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me either.)

  I never thought of my dad as an entrepreneur per se. I thought of him more as a businessman. And yet I seemed to pick up the entrepreneurial spirit from somewhere early on. I remember having my mom drive me down to the tennis courts, where I’d sell juice boxes to the kids in summer camp. I obviously wasn’t getting rich off of this little business, but it was fun, and it taught me a little about money and work.

  My parents did teach me the value of a dollar—and of hard work too. We were always working together as a family, out in the yard or inside the house. That was the beginning of a thought that became a full-fledged goal after I graduated from college. I told myself that I was going to live the rest of my life as if it were Saturday.

  I told that to Jo early on, and she was a bit put off by that. At one point she said to me, “Chip, life just isn’t like that. Life isn’t always Saturday.” I realized I needed to clarify what that phrase meant to me—so I suppose I ought to clarify it here too.

  When I was growing up, Saturdays weren’t always easy for us. In our house, you didn’t sleep in until noon and then go to the beach. We would wake up at seven thirty on Saturday mornings and pull weeds until eleven. Once we were all sweating our brains out, then out came the lemonade, or here came the Popsicles. Then it was usually back to work—cleaning the house, cleaning our rooms, maybe helping Dad with some project. But when evening came, we would pack up the car and go for a real treat.

  A real treat to us sometimes just meant McDonald’s for dinner. If it were a big treat, Mom and Dad would take us camping for the night, or maybe we’d go to a movie once in a while. Whatever it was, it was fun. And that’s what Saturday came to mean to me.

  For us, Saturdays weren’t about work, even though we did a lot of work. They weren’t about going to an office somewhere, or to school, and having the whole family separated for the whole day. Saturdays were less structured. They were about getting the work done so you could go jump in the pool or have an ice cream cone.

  There was something about school that didn’t work for me—something about the fact that you had to turn in these assignments and you had to be there exactly when they said or else there was some disciplinary effort. Even before I got out of college, I vividly remember thinking, I’m gonna put up with this for as long as I have to. But the second I don’t have to put up with it anymore, I’m out. And I’m gonna live every day for the rest of my life as if it’s Saturday.

  There would be times in the coming years when I would be flat broke and think, Maybe I messed up. I feel like I’m living every day as if it’s Monday! But that feeling would never last long. Whenever I’ve been down financially, I’ve just picked myself up and worked a little harder. And whether it’s a little luck or God or a combination, everything seems to find a way of working itself out eventually.

  One thing my dad would preach to us when it came to money was, “I’ll provide your needs, but you have to take care of your wants.” So once I was old enough, if I told my parents I wanted some new toy or gadget, they’d say, “Well, great. There’s this lawn two doors down that we keep driving by and noticing that it needs to be mowed. What if you went and knocked on that guy’s door and asked him if you could mow it. How much is this thing you’re looking for?”

  “Well, it’s twelve bucks.”

  “Okay. Well, if you offered to mow it for five, it would only take you two or three weeks, and you could have it!”

  They never said no or “quit asking.” They just said, “If you want that thing, here’s an idea as to how you can go earn it.”

  There were times when I chose to be the lazy kid and wouldn’t bother. And there were other times when I decided I really wanted something, so I’d grab the lawn mower and head down the street, knocking on doors.

  When I was in third grade, my parents moved us to the Dallas area. Dad sold his sporting goods business and wound up landing a good job with American Airlines. It was a real corporate kind of a job, but my dad still managed to put his family first. He’d be home around five-thirty every night, and right after dinner he’d be out in the driveway shooting hoops with my sister, who was into basketball. Sometimes they’d play until nine or ten o’clock at night.

  When I got a little older, I really took to baseball, and Dad did the same thing with me. Every night and every weekend, he’d be out there pitching balls to me and teaching me to field grounders.

  The thing is, I started to get good at it. Dad got a bit of a gleam in his eye, thinking I might be some kind of a star player. I loved seeing him get so excited about it, and that made me try even harder.

  For my dad, achieving goals was basically a mathematical equation: “If you hit a hundred balls a day and you work out this many hours, this many times a week, then this is what happens and you win state championships.”

  I followed his advice and, lo and behold, A plus B really did equal C for me. If I did this, then I achieved that. I started to become the star player he envisioned. I received all sorts of accolades, and everybody thought I was the greatest thing ever.

  In some ways it was easy. It was just this mathematical thing. It would help keep me on the straight and narrow as I got into high school too. When a buddy was going off to a party, I could easily walk away by saying, “Man, I’d love to go and have a few beers—I’m not gonna lie to you. But jeez, I gotta go take a hundred ground balls. If I don’t take a hundred ground balls every day, then I don’t make the state tournament, and then I don’t get a scholarship to go play ball in college.”

  Being a star athlete in high school sort of automatically buys you a lot of friends and attention. I was always the guy who had funny stories to tell, so when I walked into the cafeteria at Grapevine High School, everybody was calling me to come over to their table and eat with them. I just led a charmed life.

  But somehow, instead of taking that and just running with it like some kids do, I never let go of that spirit I had when I was little—that desire to lift people up along with me and help them out if I could. I made friends with a kid who had Down syndrome, grabbing him to come play football with us on a Saturday afternoon. One of my friends was an Asian boy who’d been adopted from Vietnam. I just always loved getting to know people, all kinds, even if they weren’t athletes or in the “popular” crowd.

  Some of these friends of mine lived in the same neighborhood I did, so naturally we all became close. It was easy to make friends with the kids who lived close by, but I didn’t forget about them in the cafeteria or in the hallway just because things were “different” at school. It was just never like that for me. I didn’t like being put in a certain box, and I didn’t appreciate people doing that to my friends either.

  Being a popular guy in school actually had its downside. Sometimes I just wanted a day off. I felt a lot of pressure to show up to friends’ parties, and people were let down when I didn’t make it or even if I left early. It was actually a lot to live up to.

  He’s not a bragger, so he won’t say these things if I don’t speak up here, but Chip was the football captain at the same time he was playing scholarship-worthy baseball in high school. He was also voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” “Most Likely to Be the Next President”—whatever you think a charmed-life kid would have, he had it.

  I did. That’
s true. But the pressure of being Mr. Perfect, Mr. All-American, Mr. Most-Liked, and Mr. Well-Dressed was a lot to take, especially since my grades weren’t very good. I became sort of addicted to the applause and praise, even from my parents, and I just felt awful anytime I let anybody down. Honestly, when I didn’t play so well in a game and I saw the disappointment on my dad’s face, it was hard. He had such high hopes for me, and I wanted to live up to them.

  In some ways it’s as if I was the Zack Morris character in that teen series Saved by the Bell. I was that guy. And our school was that wholesome in a lot of ways too. When we got in trouble, it was for TP’ing the vice principal’s house or something. It was all “Come on, guys; let’s win a state championship” or “Do the right thing.”

  There were nearly seven hundred people in my graduating class, but there was very little in terms of drugs, at least as far as I was aware. There was plenty of alcohol around, but I was scared to death of getting caught, so I pretty much steered clear. I seemed to have this innate ability to do the right thing and somehow make it look cool simultaneously.

  Then I wound up playing baseball at North Lake Junior College, and going to that school was just a complete culture shock. A lot of the kids who went to that school came from very different backgrounds and seemed to have very different worldviews. I was used to being around disciplined athletes who dedicated themselves to being the best they could be on and off the field. But at North Lake some of the best athletes on the team were the rowdiest dudes. Athletes who were much better than I was were doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t have been doing at the parties we went to.

  Interestingly enough, girls hung around that team almost like groupies, and I hadn’t expected that kind of thing at a junior college. It was eye-opening. I felt like I was an innocent Leave it to Beaver character from the 1950s watching this wild spectacle from the sidelines. I went on dates with pretty girls, and I hung out at the parties, but I just never got into the whole scene. I never fit in. That was a weird position to be in after feeling like the king of Grapevine High.

  I did manage to make friends with a couple of guys who were more like me, and those friendships helped get me through that first year, but my heart just wasn’t there. I got this little notebook and started journaling, writing songs, and sketching out business plans in it. I’d spend hours in my apartment writing down my thoughts and ideas in that thing. I’d never done that before, but it was strangely therapeutic. I wish I could actually find that notebook. I would love for Jo to see it since that’s so fitting in her personality.

  That was the only season in my life when I ever tried to do any of those artsy-type things. I was just trying to express something that needed to come out, I suppose. And I’m sure it was one way of dealing with my loneliness.

  I wanted out of that junior college. And luckily enough, a recruiter for Baylor happened to be in the stands when I made one of the greatest plays of my entire baseball career. I was playing second base, and I made this diving grab on a shot hit between first and second base. Then somehow I twisted around as I slid through the dirt to make a monster throw and get the runner out at first.

  That recruiter offered to get me into Baylor and to make sure I would have a spot in the athletic dorm. I honestly couldn’t even tell you if they covered my books, because I didn’t care. I took it. I was ready to leave North Lake and start fresh.

  As it turned out, I loved Baylor. I loved being around all those rich kids, even if I was nothing like them. I loved the girls. I loved the campus. I wasn’t a very good student, and I struggled to pass every semester. But I did fall in love with the city of Waco and started to see myself staying in that town pretty much forever, especially once I started mowing lawns.

  It’s funny. Here I was, at this prestigious school, playing baseball and studying business. But instead of daydreaming about the major leagues or running some Fortune 500 company, I found myself in class looking out the window at the guys mowing grass and wishing I could trade places with them.

  My junior year at Baylor, I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. I wasn’t going to quit school. I would stay and finish my degree in business. But I wanted to go out and make money like I did as a kid—and not just in the summertime, the way I did with the book company and the fireworks stands. I wanted to work while I was going to school, to get outdoors, to start my own business. And I knew I would have to give something up if I was going to find the time to do that.

  Turned out, the thing I needed to give up gave up on me first. A new coach came to Baylor and decided he wanted to make some major changes, so I was gone, along with a bunch of other guys who were on partial scholarships. And just like that, everything changed.

  My dad was all fired up about my transferring to another school and finding a scholarship, and a few of my baseball buddies would go on to do that with great success. But I wasn’t interested in chasing baseball all over the country. I had already seen the writing on the wall. I was a good baseball player, but I wasn’t good enough to turn it into a full-time career. It just wasn’t meant to be. It was time to move on.

  I dreaded telling my dad, though. He’d spent all those years throwing balls to me for hours and hours every day. He’d come to every single one of my games, going all the way back to when I was a little kid, and when I grew older he’d acted almost as my agent or manager when it came to talking to schools or considering my future in the sport. He was so proud of me, and knowing I was going to let him down was pretty hard for me.

  I put off that conversation for as long as I could, just worrying and worrying myself to death over how he was going to react. When I finally told him, I had tears in my eyes. But my dad looked at me and said, “Son, I love you. If you’re telling me baseball is out, then it’s out. It’s okay.”

  It was this beautiful conversation. He was concerned about what I was going to focus on. I was too! My whole life had been about baseball, and when he asked me what I wanted to do, I told him I had no idea.

  I told him I wanted to go out and maybe earn some money and start up a little business, and all he said was that whatever I did, he hoped I was as dedicated to it as I’d been to baseball. He wanted me to go out and hit the proverbial hundred balls every day, to give it my all no matter what I was doing.

  I just remember vividly, for the first time in my life, really knowing in my heart of hearts that my dad loved me no matter what. It wasn’t tied to baseball. It wasn’t tied to something I did or didn’t do. It was just an awesome feeling to realize that. And to this day that is one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with my old man.

  I think I learned another lesson that day too: Sometimes worrying about something is much worse than the actual thing you’re worrying about. So really, what’s the point in worrying?

  TEN

  FLIPPING OUT

  By the time Chip and I met, he’d managed to combine these two conflicting sides of himself: the kid who steered clear of trouble and did the right thing, and the kid who rode his Big Wheel full speed into the street without looking both ways. I had never met anyone like him. It’s funny to me to think that the whole opposites-attract thing might have been programmed into my DNA. Just as my outgoing mother was drawn to my quiet dad, I was this shy girl drawn to the super-outgoing Chip Gaines. And the fact that he owned a successful lawn and irrigation business and had made up his mind that he loved Waco and wanted to stay put was somehow a perfect fit with everything I knew I wanted myself.

  Jo didn’t even realize that the lawn and irrigation business I was running when we met was actually the third version of that business I had launched. I’d managed to start each of these lawn businesses from scratch, build a clientele, and then sell it lock, stock, and barrel—meaning clientele, equipment, and employees—to somebody else. And that was on top of getting into the business of buying houses as rental properties, plus a little corner wash-and-fold business that I’d started. I almost forgot to mention that.

&
nbsp; It all began when I tracked down the owner of the lawn service that took care of Baylor’s landscaping. Remember when I’d look out the window and wish I could trade places with the guy mowing the grass? Well, that guy worked for this man. His name was David. And when I asked him for a job, he didn’t think twice—he just simply told me no.

  David was this real interesting guy who lived in a loft apartment he’d built inside his lawn company’s warehouse. You’d never guess by looking at him, but I swear he was worth millions of dollars. I chatted him up the way I chat lots of people up, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I wanted to get a job cutting grass, to learn the trade from the inside out. So I asked him, “How did you get your start?”

  He said, “I don’t know. I quit school in the seventh grade and just started mowing grass.”

  I kept asking questions, and he kept answering. Turns out, he was a really, really smart guy, and he basically became a mentor to me. I grew to call him Uncle David, and it’s almost like I was sitting at his feet, as if he were some old guy whittling a stick on a front porch, teaching me these million-dollar life lessons. So I was getting the academic side at Baylor and learning common sense from one of the most commonsense guys on the planet. It was the perfect education for me.

  Oh, and he finally hired me. I was persistent, if nothing else. And I grew to love that man, even though he was hard on me. He wasn’t a real encouraging guy by nature. As a matter of fact, he used to joke to all his buddies that hiring me “was like losing two of his best guys.”

  I didn’t mind. I had always had thick skin—thick skin and a positive self-image—so it took a lot to shake me. But one day after having worked a few months under Uncle David, I was on campus mowing with his guys, and I saw a fraternity soccer game going on at the intramural fields a few blocks over. Well, like a dog after a squirrel, off I went to watch, leaving my Weed Eater right where it was. Time got away from me, and it got dark before I knew it. My heart dropped when I went back to find the guys all gone—and no sign of the Weed Eater.