Book review: Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff by Chip Gaines

Most of us have heard of Fixer Upper, if not been addicted to the show that followed Chip and Joanna Gaines around Texas fixing up old homes and showing how old can become fantastically new. This book is to my knowledge the first attempt by Chip to author a book about something other than fixing up homes and I enjoyed reading the book as a lesson learned that famous people can stumble. What I took away from this book is that the problem are not making mistakes, but making a mistake and neither learning from it nor moving forward from it. 
I had no idea that Chips tried his luck at ventures other than home remodeling, but apparently he always had the drive to do something now and be his own boss. So he tried running a laundromat or opening a lawn care business in his earlier years to mixed results. Clearly the drive was there, but success did not always follow. This book is Chip's way of telling his readers, especially his younger readers that are at the beginning of a career that failure is part of the game and learning from it will pay in the end. Chips does not shy away from pointing out that he too was naive and inexperienced at times and yet that did not hold him back from trying.
In Fixer Upper Chip comes away to me as somewhat of a big kid and this book confirms that impression of him. Not that he he does not know what is important in life or that he shies away from hard work, but he does expect failure and can live with it. If that surprised some viewers, this book will reveal that Chip failed in life before he became a TV star and maybe that is the reason why some projects on the TV show that did not quite work out or proved more challenging than expected were just little stumbling blocks that he easily overcame.
I recommend this book to people that are just starting their career and may not have yet found the job they like or anyone who wants to start their own business and finds this a daunting undertaking because they may fail. This book will teach you that failure is part of the game, what you make out of it counts in the end. Keep on working hard, do not let failure bring you down and move forward.

available at amazon.com

Disclaimer: I received a free book in exchange for an honest review. The opinion expressed is solely my own and has not been influenced by any third party.