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.
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.
That Weed Eater cost what I made in a month, so I knew I was in big trouble. I hitched a ride back to the shop, and with my tail between my legs I told him what had happened. He was upset, but more in an “I trusted you” kind of way. You know, like when your parents would tell you they were disappointed in you rather than yelling. It’s almost worse.
David made it clear that if I ever did something like that again, I was gone, and I promised it wouldn’t. Right then and there I grew up a little. I realized having fun was one thing, but jacking around on someone else’s dime and being flat-out disrespectful was another. I promised myself I’d never disrespect someone that way again.
I must’ve done all right after that, because Uncle David and I rocked and rolled together for a whole year after that without a hitch. Then one day he said to me, “Son, you’re smart. You’re going to Baylor University. What are you doing working for me? Go start your own lawn business. You’ve already seen what we do. Go do it.”
He sent me to an equipment company in town, and I priced everything out, and the total for what I needed to get started came to $5,000. I didn’t have $5,000. They told me to go across the street to the bank and try to get a loan. So I crossed the street and met a banker named Carroll Fitzgerald.