The Magnolia Story(36)

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.

I had learned a few basic things about putting together a business plan at Baylor, but I didn’t think that was enough to get me a loan with no collateral or experience. Carroll didn’t think so either. He quickly said no.

But I wouldn’t let up. I was a perpetual salesperson. I talked Carroll’s ear off, saying, “Look, I’ve got five lawns I can start tomorrow. That means I’ll be making X amount of dollars. I’m gonna quadruple that in a few months, and you guys are gonna make every cent back plus our agreed-on interest. I promise.”

Carroll finally gave in and lent me the money—my first $5,000 loan. I walked out of the bank, walked back across the street to the equipment company, and spent every last penny on the things I would need to get my business off the ground in a first-rate way.

I repaid that loan in six months.

I was so excited by the whole thing. I got hooked—hooked on starting businesses, hooked on borrowing money, all of it. I still joke with Carroll to this day that he created a monster. I love borrowing money!

That was my senior year of college. And over the course of the next few years, as I’ve said, I sold that business off more than once. I built it up to more than a hundred accounts, with a crew, equipment, and a truck. And then I sold it to somebody else who wanted to get into the business.

To be honest, I never made a ton of money off of it. I treated it more like a part-time thing, and I had a lot of expenses paying the crew and everything. But I basically flipped that business the way I’d later start flipping houses. There wasn’t always a ton of profit, but it was enough to keep you in the game until you could hit a lick and do it all over again. I was well on my way to building it up and getting ready to sell it again right when I met Jo.

Chip had basically gone through this whole education in the real world of entrepreneurship, and he told me all of these stories as we were first dating. I was in awe. I’d never met anyone who was such a go-getter at such a young age or who did things in such an unconventional way. It was like every time he opened a door, he encountered another door, and another, and he just kept opening every door. In fact, it was his Uncle David who sold him the eleven-acre property on Third Street that would eventually allow us to launch Magnolia Homes.