by Chip Gaines
Unfortunately, Mike’s story did not end well. Despite our making every effort and giving him several chances, he never showed up for an interview, and we lost touch with him. But even though this endeavor did not turn out like we hoped, it was worth the effort. You never know; Chip might have been the only person to ever believe in him. Someday Mike might be ready to make a change and remember that someone gave him a chance.
Within my first week of work, Chip asked me if I had a Twitter account. I had never really used Twitter and didn’t know much about it. Chip told me I better get set up and quickly because he loves to use Twitter to connect with people. With a little help from our social media director, my account was set up, and that’s when I became @assistingchip.
Chip’s Twitter giveaways quickly became one of my favorite things about working for him. He has given away everything from all-expenses paid trips to Waco to a Jimmy Don (Holmes) sign that someone saw on the show and loved. T-shirts, hats, Demo Day hammers, concert tickets, Broadway tickets in New York City, school tuition—whatever captures his attention is fair game for a giveaway. I love to make these things happen, and the joy that they bring to people makes me so happy. It feels like Christmas all year round!
Working for both Chip and Joanna is a real juggling act. As their executive assistant I manage many aspects of their business and personal lives, from working with producers on the filming schedule to meeting with executives, making last-minute travel plans, and taking care of their vehicles and home projects. Every day is different, and there is never a dull moment!
One time Joanna was getting ready to go out of town for a meeting, and she asked me to have some work done on her car to get it ready to sell while she was gone. I scheduled the appointment and dropped off the car to have it repaired. Later that day Chip called and asked me what was happening with her vehicle. I relayed Joanna’s instructions to take it to the shop, and Chip told me to hold off on that repair for the time being. When I explained that Joanna wanted this done, he gave an interesting answer that made me laugh. As only Chip could do, he exclaimed, “Welcome to our world! People are always asking us who’s in charge, and the answer is, when Jo is gone, I’m the boss.”
NOTES
CHAPTER 3: LOST IN TRANSLATION
1.Oxford Living Dictionaries: English, s.v. “delusional,” accessed July 23, 2017, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/delusional.
2.You can find it in Luke 15:11–32 in the New Testament. If you don’t have a Bible, BibleGateway.com is an excellent resource. You can find one version of this story at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15%3A11–32&version=NIV.
CHAPTER 6: FEAR-LESS
1.“North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Here Is All We Know,” Al Jazeera, May 30, 2017, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/north-korea-testing-nuclear-weapons-17-5-4-82226461.html.
2.Martin Chulov, “Sarin Used in April Syria Attack, Chemical Weapons Watchdog Confirms,” The Guardian, June 30, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/30/sarin-was-used-in-syria-khan-sheikhun-attack-says-chemical-weapons-watchdog.
3.Nathanial Gronewold, “One Quarter of World’s Population Lacks Electricity,” Scientific American, November 24, 2009, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electricity-gap-developing-countries-energy-wood-charcoal/.
4.Amanda Chan, “The 10 Deadliest Cancers and Why There’s No Cure,” Live Science, September 10, 2010, https://www.livescience.com/11041-10-deadliest-cancers-cure.html.
5.Christopher Maloney, answer posted to the question “How Many Different Diseases Are Known to Exist That Affect at Least 1% of the People in the U.S. at Some Point in Their Lives?” Quora, April 7, 2015, https://www.quora.com/How-many-different-diseases-are-known-to-exist-that-affect-at-least-1-of-the-people-in-the-U-S-at-some-point-in-their-lives. For more information, see National Center for Health Statistics, “International Classification of Diseases, (ICD-10-CM/PCS) Transition—Background,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, page updated October 1, 2015, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd/icd10cm_pcs_background.htm.
6.Christian Alliance for Orphans, “On Understanding Orphan Statistics,” Christian Alliance for Orphans’ White Paper, October 20, 2015, 3, https://cafo.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Orphan-Statistics-Web-9-2015.pdf. These numbers were derived from information published by UNICEF, UNAIDS, and WHO in 2010.
7.United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, “Goal: Reduce Child Mortality,” UNICEF Millennium Development Goals, accessed July 20, 2017, https://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html.
8.Ibid.
9.Michael Graham Richard, “87% of Earth’s Population Lives Where the Air Is Toxic,” Treehugger.com, December 9, 2015, https://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/87-earths-population-lives-areas-where-air-toxic.html.
10.Laura Ungar and Mark Nichols, “4 Million Americans Could Be Drinking Toxic Water and Would Never Know: A USA Today Network Investigation,” USA Today, December 13, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/13/broken-system-means-millions-of-rural-americans-exposed-to-poisoned-or-untested-water/94071732/.
11.Aline Brosh McKenna and Cameron Crowe (screenplay) and Benjamin Mee (book), We Bought a Zoo, dir. Cameron Crowe (20th Century Fox, 2011). Quotation found at “We Bought a Zoo Quotes,” IMDb.com, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389137/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu.
CHAPTER 10: WACKO, TEXAS
1.Elizabeth Abrahamsen, “Why Waco Is Becoming One of Texas’s Hottest Cities,” Wide Open Country, accessed July 20, 2017, http://www.wideopencountry.com/how-did-waco-become-one-of-texas-hottest-cities/.
CHAPTER 11: SCRAPPY IS AS SCRAPPY DOES
1. Urban Dictionary, s.v. “scrappy,” by preshere, June 19, 2008, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scrappy.
2.Sean Kim, “How to Remember 90% of Everything You Learn,” Lifehack, May 12, 2016, http://www.lifehack.org/399140/how-to-remember-90-of-everything-you-learn. This information is reportedly based on the Learning Pyramid, published by the NTL Institute of Bethel, Maine, in the early 1960s. For more information, see Wilda V. Heard, “What Is the Learning Pyramid,” DrWilda (blog), March 6, 2013, https://drwilda.com/2013/03/06/what-is-the-learning-pyramid/.
CHAPTER 12: NEVER QUIT YOUR DAY DREAM
1.David K. William, “Science Proves Funny People Are More Intelligent,” Lifehack, accessed July 20, 2017, http://www.lifehack.org/344730/science-proves-funny-people-are-more-intelligent.
CHAPTER 13: SEASON FINALE
1.Actually, Newton’s cradle demonstrates three fundamental principles of physics—conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and friction. For an easy-to-understand explanation of how it all works, see Chris Schulz, “How Newton’s Cradles Work,” HowStuffWorks. com, January 17, 2012, http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/newtons-cradle.htm.
2.This story can be found in Genesis 22:1–19 in the Old Testament. One version can be found online at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+22%3A1–19&version=NIV.
3.This is taken from Job 1:21 in the Bible. One version can be found at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1%3A21&version=NIV.
4.Look for this story in chapter 16 of the book of Exodus in the Bible, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+16&version=NIV.
CHAPTER 14: TEAM OF RIVALS
1.Jesus actually answered this question directly by telling a story. If you are curious, you can find it in the Bible—Luke 10:25–37, or https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+10%3A25–37&version=NIV.
2.The term “team of rivals” is taken from the title of a book by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Doris Kearn Goodwin, who profiled the relationship between Lincoln and his very disparate group of advisors. See Doris Kearn Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
CHAPTER 16: GO GET ’EM
1.Jim Sollisch, “The Cure for Decision Fatigue,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/t
he-cure-for-decision-fatigue-1465596928.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chip Gaines and his wife, Joanna Gaines, are co-founders and co-owners of Magnolia Homes, Magnolia Market, and Magnolia Realty in Waco, Texas. Together, they also host HGTV’s Fixer Upper, where Chip handles construction and Joanna serves as the lead designer.
Chip was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was raised in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. He graduated from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business with a degree in marketing. Chip is an entrepreneur by nature, and started and sold many small businesses before Magnolia. Having grown up spending time on his granddad’s ranch in North Texas, Chip became a true cowboy at heart. He says he was made for hard labor and always preferred digging ditches to academic pursuits.
Chip specializes in making the impossible possible for Joanna’s designs, and his design preference is “whatever Joanna likes.” To say he adds comic relief to their construction team would be an understatement.
Chip loves life with his four kiddos and is head over heels for Joanna. Hand in hand is exactly how Chip prefers to work, and he enjoys seeing his and Joanna’s passions merge to complement and serve one another.
*In case you don’t know, dinero is Spanish for “money.”
**Spanish for “beach.”
*** Spanish for “my dog.”
*Due to the tight budget, I had been very specific to only spend money on the “essentials,” so I had picked this up a few stops back at a five-and-dime.
**“Water.”
*“Mother.”
DE·LU·SION·AL
adjective
1. Based on or having faulty judgment; mistaken “their delusional belief in the project’s merits never wavers.”1
*“Fool.”
*Coup d’état, also called a coup, is “the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group”—or in this case, an individual. (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, s. v. “coup d’état,” accessed July 23, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/topic/coup-detat.)
*I haven’t been to France, but Google translator says this means “on the contrary, my brother.”
*And calm down, everybody. I hear your feedback loud and clear. Trust me; however much you hate the beard, I hate it more.
*An armchair critic is someone who sits on their comfy couch (or armchair) and criticizes people who are creating and moving rather than creating or moving themselves. But a torchbearer is someone who is on the move, leading or inspiring others in working toward a valued goal.