10 of Your Favorite HGTV Stars Reveal How They Were Discovered

With a hit TV show, a shop that people travel across the country to visit and a brand-new book, it's hard to imagine a time when Chip and Joanna weren't household names. But Chip actually started flipping houses back in college, and Joanna offered her help on the design side after they began dating. 

In an interview with Hooked on Houses, Joanna explained that they were approached by a production company after one of their flips was featured on the popular blog Design Mom. "They contacted us through our website and the rest is history," she said. In fact, Joanna recently revealed on the Today show that they almost didn't call back when the production company first called with the offer, because Chip thought it was a scam!

The star of Income Property first started investing in real estate while he was still in college. "I bought a rental property with a friend of mine and it was profitable," he told CountryLiving.com in a recent Facebook Live interview. "We used our student loans to buy our first property so you could say there was lots of risk being taken there, but it paid off." 

Scott continued buying properties, eventually becoming a licensed contractor when he was 26. "Right after I became a licensed contractor, a very close friend of mine who worked in television called me up and said 'Scott I'm working on a show, we need  someone to help finish this renovation, it's gone off the rails, can you help?"

At first Scott said he didn't become a contractor so he could display his skills on a "silly" TV show, but his friend convinced him to give it a try. "It was fun, I got to know people in production," he said. "Eventually they sent a camera crew to follow me around and they were like, we need to do a show about what you do with these rental properties and bam, here we are after 10 years of doing income property."

For the stars of HGTV's Home Town, which is expected to premiere in 2017, it all started with a new Instagram follower: "In June 2014, we were the featured Southern newlyweds by Southern Weddings and the day they posted about it on Instagram, we got lots of new followers," Erin told CountryLiving.com. "One of them was Lindsey, an executive at HGTV. A friend private messaged me to say, 'Holy cow! An HGTV executive just followed you!' I followed Lindsey back, assuming she would be a great connection for our letterpress stationery business and after a few weeks made a comment on a photo [of hers] that prompted a conversation about us meeting up when Ben and I came to NYC a few months later in December. I just knew we were closing in on a big order for some custom personal stationery! Instead, we were shocked to receive an email from her saying she had fallen in love with our town and our love story via Instagram and wondered if we had ever thought about doing TV. We absolutely never had any dreams or plans for that [but a] Skype interview turned into a sizzle [reel] turned into a pilot turned into a series. We're just along for the ride and thankful that we've somehow 'fallen into the pudding,' as my mama says."

In her new bookBetter Than New, Nicole explained that she first realized a production assistant for Magnetic Productions was attempting to contact her while clearing out her voicemail to prepare to make an offer on two Minneapolis houses.

"He said he wanted to line up real estate experts who could go on camera for segments on a TV show," Nicole explained. She would later find out he was booking for Sweat Equity. "The message was two weeks old. Leave it to me not to check my messages. I called the guy back and, to my surprise, he told me to come in the next day."

But the meeting didn't exactly go as planned. Nicole stood out as more than just a realtor: "I told him that my goal was to invest in the houses that no one else wanted, renovate them in a historic manner, and put them back on the market," she writes in her book.

Overall, Nicole says she thinks she was just in the right place at the right time. John Kitchener, the owner of the production company, was just starting out and looking for fresh talent to pitch to bigger networks. "Companies like his succeed only by throwing ideas at the network and seeing what sticks. I was determined to make the idea of Nicole Curtis, historic home renovator, stick," she writes.

You may recognize the duo behind HGTV's Open Concept from their popular blog Shanty2Chic. Long before their show debuted, these Texas-based sisters were self-made carpenters who create plans for customized furniture. 

"We started building our own homes together about 8 years ago," explained Whitney to CountryLiving.com. "We were both on limited budgets and loved repurposing old pieces and giving them a new life. We started documenting our projects along the way on our blog to help others do the same in their homes.  That led to a love of tools, and furniture design. We began designing our own pieces and sharing the plans with our readers on our blog. It was so amazing to have the ability to fill an entire room with furniture for the same price you would pay for a single piece at a furniture store. One of our now producers was looking to buy a dining table for her family. Her friend suggested she look at our site and build it herself. She discovered us there, and asked if we had ever considered doing a show. That is how it all started."

And so far, the sister say they've most enjoyed the opportunity to help others: "Our favorite part of the journey with HGTV has been being able to transform peoples' lives by helping them create a real home. It was the most rewarding part of every transformation so far."

You may recognize the stars of Vintage Flip even if you've never seen their show. That's because the Rodriguezes are actually friends of Christina and Tarek El Moussa and appeared on Flip or Flop before getting their own spin-off show. These couples collaborated to flip a craftsman home in Santa Ana, California, during season 3.