by Chip Gaines
I would love to be a part of that. Eventually I want to be able to stand with the engineers and the other ditch diggers and everyone else, point to that beautiful bridge, and say, “I was a part of that.”
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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
BRIDGE-BUILDING SUMMIT
Tweet me @chippergaines with any ideas you may have for the bridge-building summit we’re working on. We want to hear about the things you feel passionate about and your thoughts on the topic of bridge building in general. Where does the divide affect you personally? When do you feel unheard, unseen, or undervalued? What are you afraid of about the direction we’re headed in? What do you think can heal this country, this planet? What messages of hope would you like to share? Also, if you have read a book or watched a film or heard someone speak on a topic that could be valuable to the ongoing effort of building bridges, please send me the name or the link or whatever. We want a fully stocked arsenal of resources as we begin to fight this good fight.
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CHAPTER 15
THE RUNWAY
I’ve always been taken by the big pecan trees that are on our property. These tall, aged trees are like a welcome committee for us each time we pull up to our farmhouse. I could stand there and marvel at the wonder of them. It’s not just their beauty that captivates me—though they are beautiful. I like to think about all that these trees must have seen; the stories they could tell.
Our house was built back in 1885. I like to imagine that the pioneer who built it surveyed the land and intentionally chose this specific spot, nestled between a grove of young pecan trees, to lay the foundation of this home. He recognized their worth. He knew that one day, years from now, they’d grow to provide shade and protection and that eventually they’d produce a bountiful and nutritious harvest. So, he pruned, tended, and watered.
The thing about pecan trees is that they need one to two inches of water a week. So in seasons of drought, he knew these trees wouldn’t make it unless he intervened. He had to have known that the harvest would be worth the work. And though their yield would be small during his lifetime, he knew that years down the road those trees would start producing larger quantities of pecans. He knew that the next generation and the generation after that would reap the real harvest.
Now, more than a hundred years later, my family gets to enjoy these massive pecan trees. We get the opportunity to walk down to the pecan grove and picnic under the shade of these magnificent beauties. And every autumn, when the pecans start to fall, the kids run around and gather them up. Jo makes pies, and we all go down to the seed shop to sell the surplus.
That pioneer knew just what he was doing when he chose this spot for our home. He knew the hard work he poured into tending these trees year after year would pay off one day—and it did, even if he wasn’t around to see it. He invested in this land even though he knew he would never get the chance to enjoy the full fruits of his labor.
Now that’s one heck of a legacy.
As a forty-two-year-old, I find it hard to imagine what my legacy might be or what kind of weight it will hold. I’m too young; I haven’t earned it yet. But I do think about it, hoping that someday someone will reap the harvest of what I’m sowing.
None of us is an island. What each of us does today will directly affect somebody else down the road. I’m still reaping the harvest of the folks who have gone before me. I’m still living in the warm light of their legacy.
When I’m on my deathbed, I don’t want people to only remember me for superficial reasons. I hope that when they think of Chip Carter Gaines, they think of me like a runway—that leveled strip of ground that gives aircraft all the space they need to take off and fly. What drives me these days is the idea of being a launching pad for others, someone who empowers people and believes in them even when they can’t quite believe in themselves.
My dream of becoming a runway for folks is not a random notion that just came to me one day. This ideal was modeled for me all of my life. I have seen it lived out, and that has dramatically influenced the kind of person I want to be.
My first “runway” was my granddad, J. B. He exemplified hard work and lived a simple life. Every day he woke up and put on the same boots and the same jeans and drove the same truck. Every day, day in and day out. Even though he wasn’t a perfect man, his strengths marked me forever. He instilled in me this unspoken sense of what hard work looks like.
Another inspiration for me is my father-in-law, Jerry. He is a man of few words and abounding grace. He raised Jo with such intentionality. He had everything to do with her becoming the woman of my dreams. He also got behind my dreams of making it as an entrepreneur and gave me the space to try it my own way, even when he knew better.
And the biggest inspiration of all is my father. His character, his integrity, and his faithfulness to our family—these are all parts of the legacy that he has left for me, a legacy that future generations will reap the benefit of.
My dad taught me to be a dad. He’s selfless to his core. When I lived at home, he was willing to forgo promotions and advancements at work just to have more time to throw a baseball with me in the evenings. He was teaching me the game, but on another level he was showing me how to be a man and how to be a father. He taught me the importance and value of investing in one’s family above anything else.
Dad’s belief in me—and the blood, sweat, and tears that he invested in me—was the major runway of my life. It gave me a foundation so firm that when my baseball dream was crushed, I still had a strong foothold. It took me a while to understand this, but what my father gave me was not really about baseball, but about hard work, discipline, and the art of never quitting.
Like my dad did for me, I want to spend my life ensuring that others get to live out their dreams. I want to live my life believing in others in a way that helps them to succeed. I want my everyday actions to have far-reaching effects. It is truly my life’s mission to empower people to relentlessly chase after their dreams, no matter the cost. To this I am committed.
I’m actually writing this book in hopes that it can be a runway for you—to make a real impact rather than just filling shelf space or collecting dust. Even if you’ve never had anyone believe in you—a parent or a coach or a teacher—I hope that in reading these pages you’ll recognize that I believe in you, that I am confident you are capable of extraordinary things. I hope you’ll be empowered to go do something you never thought you were capable of doing. I hope your story somehow builds on my story and we have a sort of shared legacy.
I’ve gotten to dream up and start quite a few businesses over the years. I’ve kept most of these businesses under my wings, but I sold a couple along the way. Take my Wash-n-Fold business, for instance. I started it as a little laundry service for Baylor kids. But the boys who bought it from me took the original idea and made something extraordinary out of it. I never dreamt that it was capable of growing into a big multicampus operation spread over several states. But it did, and they made it happen.
A few years into our marriage, Jo and I had an idea for something that didn’t really exist in Waco yet—a collegiate housing development. We bought eleven acres of land to build it on. Then along came a firm who wanted to buy both the land and the concept from us. They took that original idea and implemented it on dozens of campuses across the country.
In regards to both of these particular businesses, the people who bought them from me were able to dream bigger than I ever could have. My part in them wasn’t the fancy part, the part that gets or even deserves the recognition. I was the small beginning, and that minor role is still plenty fulfilling to me.
Why try to predict what something is capable of or what it’s going to do? Instead, why not just make a runway for ideas to take flight—and then enjoy watching them soar.
As to the business I did keep—Magnolia—I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking through what I hope its future will be. Until recently, I just sort of assumed tha
t my biggest goal for Magnolia was for it to continue forward, growing in size and scope. And yes, I do hope for that. I want this company to be sustainable and strong and useful in a way that exceeds people’s expectations.
But these days what I want even more is for our employees to know that Jo and I believe in them, that we are championing them. I hope they realize that we want them to dream bigger than they ever have before because that’s in their best interest. We want them to fulfill their wildest dreams. Magnolia is just the beginning for them, and I want them to know that the sky’s the limit.
I am so keenly aware that God has entrusted us with Magnolia for a reason. This little company has always meant more to us than any amount of notoriety or recognition ever could. Magnolia will undoubtedly be an enduring part of what we leave behind. We pray that it will far outlast us. We dream that our children’s children will get to see what we’ve built and that it would be a monument symbolizing the value of finding joy in hard work.
Joanna and I also strive every day for the work that we do to create lasting, meaningful, and positive change in our people and our community. We want our employees to rise up as leaders in their own right. We want them to follow their dreams, whatever they may be—go back to school and get that degree, become world-renowned in their fields, or stay home with their children, if that’s what they feel they’re called to do.
Even if the company loses our valued employees to these dreams of theirs, that’s okay. It was our honor to be the runway for them, the launching pad that they needed to go for it. From there we’re anticipating a chain reaction of sorts with exponential impact. We believe our employees will go on to change the world in ways that Jo and I could never attain by ourselves. Our legacy is their legacy and vice versa.
I am a father and husband and I always will be, no two ways about it. At the end of the day, I want my four kiddos to know that they are free to do whatever is in their hearts and that they are capable of accomplishing anything they could ever imagine. There’s no cap to the amount of time or resources I would give to my kids if I knew it could help them fulfill their destiny. I want to instill in them that they are competent to go do anything in the whole wide world if they are willing to do the work and set their minds to it. And I am confident they’ll blow any of my biggest dreams out of the water.
Jo and I have no artificial expectations for our kids—no desire to force them into any particular occupation. In fact, one of the great joys of parenting for us has been to watch our little ones start to come into their own as individuals. It’s fun to watch their personalities begin to come into focus along with their own unique talents and preferences.
All Jo and I hope to be as parents are careful stewards of our children. We want to observe them and then slowly and carefully help them identify their God-given gifts. We want to get behind their dreams, and if those change over time, we want to keep evolving right along with them. Whatever they choose to do—large or small, in the foreground or hidden—we will help them navigate that journey.
As parents, we have the unique opportunity to champion our children’s dreams in a way that no one else can. We can instill in them the truth that no matter what they choose to do in life, they can change the world. And as long as they know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I gave them a long runway for takeoff, then I’ll be satisfied.
CHAPTER 16
GO GET ’EM
For as long as I can remember, I thought I was going to die young—younger than I am now. Maybe that’s why I’ve worked so hard, so fast, and so diligently. And maybe that’s why I started working at such a young age. I was racing some invisible clock.
I found this death calculator online (I know, morbid). Based on my height, weight, and body mass index (BMI), along with the fact that I’m pretty active and a nonsmoker, I am estimated to leave this earth on June 16, 2056. I will be eighty-one years old.
Once you see it in black and white like that, life takes on a bit of a different hue. You start to think about how your obituary would read. (I really encourage you to do this—it’s fascinating, or intriguing, or eerie, to say the least. And it really brings things into focus.)
Here’s one possibility I came up with:
Waco—Chip Carter Gaines, 81, died Friday, June 16, 2056, at 8:36 p.m., alone in his hospital bed. He leaves behind his former wife, Joanna Stevens, and their four children: Drake Stevens, Ella Rose, Duke Camden, and Emmie Kay Carter.
Chip’s marriage ended in a bitter divorce after an unfortunate run as an ongoing celebrity player in the World Series of Poker. Unbeknownst to his wife, he gambled away the entirety of his estate, causing the collapse of his beloved company, Magnolia Inc. The financial infidelity proved more than she could bear. Overcome with shame, he distanced himself from his children, convinced they were better off without him because of his tainted legacy.
Chip grew up as a golden child and lived a charmed life early on. He was a baseball standout in high school, graduated from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, and enjoyed a successful career before his downward spiral began. His short-lived foray into D-list television culminated in a brief appearance on Celebrity Apprentice, from which he was eliminated before the first week for insubordination and public urination. Penniless, Chip faded away to live out his life in complete obscurity.
Or instead, it could read something like this:
Waco—Chip Carter Gaines, 81, died Friday, June 16, 2056, at 8:36 p.m. at his family’s estate, surrounded by loved ones, who were there to usher him into eternity. He leaves behind his beloved wife of fifty-three years, Joanna, and his four children, whom he adored: Drake Stevens, real-estate tycoon and president of Magnolia, Inc.; Ella Rose, world-renowned interior decorator and style maven; Duke Camden, international luxury real-estate architect and developer; and Emmie Kay Carter, acting CEO of Magnolia Omnimedia; as well as their supportive spouses, his sixteen grandchildren, and countless dear friends.
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of Robert Kenneth and Beverly Gayle Gaines, he made his home in Waco, Texas, while attending Baylor University and remained there as a lifelong resident and ardent advocate for the city he so loved.
In his early years, Chip excelled in athletics, playing both baseball and football until he graduated from Grapevine High. He was the team captain for both sports his senior year. He attended Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business (later named Gaines International School of Business in his honor), and graduated in 1998 with a business degree with an emphasis on marketing. He and Joanna Lea Stevens were married at Waco’s historic Earle Harrison house in 2003. Later that same year, they opened a small home-decor store called Magnolia, which grew in size and scope over the next few decades, culminating in a cultural phenomenon in the second half of the century. For four of those years they were featured on a popular television reality show called Fixer Upper.
In 2017, Chip and Joanna started the Magnolia Foundation, a nonprofit focused on providing orphan care, youth development, family housing, and community restoration. Over the course of the last thirty-nine years, the funds raised by the foundation have made massive strides in helping to solve child homelessness and providing world-class entrepreneurial training for at-risk youth. Chip also devoted many hours campaigning and working to lower the poverty rate of his beloved city, and by the time of his death, it had been successfully lowered to 6 percent.
In 2040, Chip’s bride, Joanna, won a surprise victory in the presidential general election as the first female half Korean to take the oval office. She went on to win a second term. Chip was her running mate and two-term vice president. Though he never acknowledged it, Chip was largely credited with the successful campaign strategies of criminalizing fear-based living and creating a comprehensive strategy for bridge building.
In addition to his political contributions, Chip was a lifelong lover of animals, babies, and world peace. He also loved to run, and from age forty-two to eighty-one, he completed sixteen marathons a
nd participated in four IronMan triathlons. An avid humanitarian, he toured the globe as an agent of reconciliation and an ambassador of hope. After his second attempt at retirement, Chip spent the last decade of his life teaching Spanish-as-a-second-language (SSL) in Playa del Carmen to aspiring entrepreneurs.
His ashes are being scattered at the Gaines estate outside of Waco, in the southernmost pasture. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the Magnolia Foundation in his memory.
SPOILER ALERT: WE ALL DIE
I don’t care what your death calculator says, whether you’re estimated to live nine years or ninety-nine. From heaven’s perspective, it all happens in the blink of an eye. And death happens to every one of us.
I’m not afraid to die. But I’m also not afraid to live. I’m not sure which of these two possibilities scares folks more, but I’m guessing it’s the really living one. Death is just an instant in time. But life is one million choices, one million chances to go all-in, up the ante, double down, or cash out. To keep choosing to go all-in, day after day, can sound exhausting and scary. But stick with me here.
The world is full of people who choose the safe and predictable path. They save for their 401(k)s and work their fingers to the bone, focused on climbing the corporate ladder all the way to the tippy top. These people spend a considerable amount of time checking off all these invisible boxes. They live in fear that if they don’t do this, that, and the other to ensure their security, something bad will happen to them. It’s the monster lurking in the closet, the thing that goes bump in the night. They can’t quite put their finger on it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not out there.
It’s been said that most adults make around thirty-five thousand conscious choices every single day—a staggering number.1 And each one of those decisions has the ability to direct our paths one way or another. So many things can affect them too. Hunger, fatigue, mood, our spouse’s mood, the weather—any of it can play a part. And I’d bet that a good percentage of many people’s decisions are made simply because they provide the path of least resistance.