From delivery tech to operations head for a flourishing franchise, Chip Guy is creating a ripple effect of influence and positive change.
Six months ago, Chip Guy was feeling pretty good about life.
Approaching his 40th birthday, Guy was a rent-to-own career man with Buddy’s Home Furnishings, having served the company in one way or another for almost half of his life. He was, at that point, overseeing a six-store operation, co-owner of a two-store company, and the owner/operator of his own store in Tulsa, OK. His wife, Carla, and oldest daughter, Kristen, were managing stores under his supervision, and business was buzzing along.
“I don’t care to grow a bunch of stores,” Guy asserted. “I want to grow people. A store is just a building. You can buy all the inventory you want, but it’s still just a building with inventory. If you don’t have a group of people working there who love working for you, then it’s still just a building. So I want to add five people to my portfolio every year and keep on adding people. And I believe the growth, the money, the rest of it just kind of comes along—it’s all a byproduct of the people.”
Guy voiced a wish to the Universe, and the Universe—with the help of some more corporeal folks—responded with a little-over-the-top opportunity: Going into 2020, Chip Guy had sold his business to and been named Vice President of Operations for Buddy Mac Holdings, LLC. Now, somewhat suddenly, he is growing 250+ people at 50 stores in six Central-Southwestern states.
Clifford “Chip” Guy grew up in Missouri, the son of a career Army man at Fort Leonard Wood who ran a strict household built on respect. But whenever Guy’s father was stationed overseas, Guy and his sister were cared for by their paternal grandmother, who taught the children “a lot about religion and a lot about love.”
Smart but academically unenthusiastic, Guy followed in his dad’s footsteps, first getting into Junior ROTC, then joining the U.S. Marine Corps [“The uniforms were nicer than the Army, and I got to brag about it,” he quips]. Guy went through training to become one of only about 140 Marine Loadmasters worldwide, and worked for a while on the versatile C-130 aircraft.
“I soon realized being a Marine meant you had to live a very stringent and ‘this is how you’re going to do it’ lifestyle, and my mind was beyond that,” recalls Guy. “My mind was more entrepreneurial, more ‘I want to innovate, I want to create and develop and influence and do all these things in my career.’ That’s not what the military is about, so I realized it wasn’t my passion and got out.”
Guy went to the small city of Perry, Florida, to live with his mother while he searched for work. It wasn’t long before he spotted a help-wanted sign on the front of a Buddy’s Home Furnishings store.
“They had a delivery driver position available,” Guy remembers. “I actually took the sign off of the building, walked in, handed it to the manager, and said, ‘You don’t need this sign up anymore. I’m here. Just go ahead and hire me, and I’ll do the job.”
Guy quickly rose through the ranks at Buddy’s, becoming a store manager within a couple of years. He also met fellow Buddy’s manager and future wife, Carla. Carla had three children from her first marriage, yet 21-year-old Guy was up for the challenge— they wed in 2003.
“For the first few years, it was pretty rough going for us,” says Guy. “The bell-to-bell lifestyle of both adults in the household working as rent-to-own managers, with three school-age kids…Let’s put it this way: We had a lot of 9 p.m. dinners and a lot of 6 a.m. mornings with our hair on fire.”
Several years down the road, Guy became Buddy’s Director of Operational Training at the company’s Tampa-based headquarters. The steady corporate pace helped settle life at home, but once again, Guy felt the fit of the job wasn’t quite right for him.
“My biggest passion with RTO has always been how to go out and influence people, create a culture where people want to change other people’s lives,” Guy explains. “How do I identify what an employee wants to get out of life, determine how to help them get it, and then inspire them to do the same thing for someone else? That’s what I want to be doing. But as director of training, I sat in a cubicle and wrote a bunch of books and programs and e-learning courses. I didn’t get to go out and work with people one-on-one.”
So, when Guy’s longtime mentor Todd Homberger offered a job running his Buddy’s stores in central and northeast Oklahoma, Guy and his family made the move to Tulsa. And in 2016, Guy, his father and uncle, and Homberger gathered their resources to launch Guyberger RTO and get Guy his own store.
And, as of about six months ago, that’s where Chip Guy expected to be for the foreseeable future—operating his own store as well as Homberger’s and a couple of others he picked up along the way. And then, Buddy Mac Founder/Chair/CEO Ian MacDonald came calling.
“I had talked with Todd several months beforehand about his vision for our future,” notes Guy. “‘Like, am I going to be a single store operator in a regional overseeing a handful of stores from the age of 39 for the rest of my career? Or is a day coming when we wake up and we’ve got 40 or 50 locations, we’re doing business on a grander scale?’ So when Ian called, Todd’s response was that no matter what we decided to do, the future was going to be bright for both of us!’”
And so it has turned out to be. Just a few weeks after the Guyberger RTO acquisition, MacDonald promoted Guy to VP of Operations for the whole company; since then, Buddy Mac has also bought up three more companies, taking the business from 16 stores to 50 within a six-week period.
“Rather than overseeing seven managers, I’m now overseeing eight regionals,” Guy states. “And my job duties cover everything from building a culture to ensuring profitability to protecting against liability. I want to make a culture of fun and make work a fun place to be, while also making sure the decisions made are in the interest of our people and our company.”
In addition to being one of only six members of Buddy’s Advisory Board, Guy is also currently serving as a member of the TRIB Group Advisory Board, and as President of the Oklahoma Rental Dealers Association. Carla has shifted to Buddy Mac’s corporate accounting department.
Once they’re away from work, the Guys love to get away from it all, camping and fishing with their three grown daughters—Kristen, Taylor, and Brooke—as well as their shared teenage son, Drake, and four grandkids who call 40-year-old Guy “Papa.”
Six months ago, Guy described his favorite thing about rent-to-own as the chance to “change lives and influence people to go change others’ lives.” And that hasn’t changed.
“Every day, our employees are changing customers’ lives by providing a good or service they wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” affirms Guy. “And every day, we’re changing our employees’ lives by being here for them, providing for them and their families, and helping them grow. I want to grow and influence as many lives as possible as fast as I can. Because when you wake up and there are 500 employees whose lives are good and they’re happy to work for you? That’s building the right culture, that’s when you’re living the dream.” For Chip Guy, that dream is closer than ever to becoming reality.
Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for RTOHQ: The Magazine for more than 15 years.
