Where you work is critical to your overall well-being, so how do you choose where to work? Mika Self of American Homebuyer of Houston tells you how.
Mika Self, owner of American Home Buyer in Houston, Texas, joins us on the podcast this week to discuss all things work and business related. Where you work is critical to your health and overall well-being. Do you choose work because of the culture? The money? The work itself? Mika and I talk about his company American Homebuyer of Houston today and how Mika chooses to engage his team and what makes a good work environment. If you're seeking how to improve work culture or get your team more involved, this is a podcast for you.
Mika Self is the owner of American Home buyer based out of Houston, Texas. Their purpose is to glorify God by proving to be Houston's most trusted home buying firm. Mika has 2 kids and a wife that he loves to spend time with.
MIKA'S SOCIALS
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100014723674026
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikabself/
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Where you work is critical to your health and overall well-being. Do you choose work because of the culture? The money? The work itself? Mika Self and I talk about his company American Homebuyer of Houston today and how Mika chooses to engage his team and what makes a good work environment. If you're seeking how to improve work culture or get your team more involved, this is a podcast for you.
I have Mika Self on the show with me from American Home Buyer out of Houston, Texas. Mika is one of the most intentional guys that I know. He's been working in the real estate business for many years now and he has a culture that just inspires me. They have a kingdom culture and their business and he dives into that and how, over the years, he has cultivated this amazing culture with his business. He talks about what he's learned, some of the mistakes that he's made with his culture as well, and also talks about this brand new thing that they started doing in 2022. I don't want to ruin it, but it has gotten his team all in. It's very impactful and very special. I’m going to let Mika Self unravel that.
I want you to go over to our YouTube channel @IronDeep and make sure you guys subscribe. Also, leave a comment in the comment section. I love to look at our Iron Deep channel, see the comments, and respond to those comments. We have this particular show on the YouTube channel. We also have videos that come out every month. These are very special and very intentional videos that, hopefully, will move you in some certain way.
I have done videos on the Poison of Pride. I have done videos on family and how a lot of career and marketplace men will sacrifice their families for their careers and what that does to them. I have done a lot of cool videos, so check that out on my YouTube channel. Also, on IronDeep.com. We are starting this community. It's called Iron Deep, and we are hosting transformational leadership events.
We had one called the Men's Awakening in the Rocky Mountains. We have a Guatemala mission trip coming up, so we are businessmen with families on the mission trip to Guatemala. We are helping out an orphanage down there. We are going to have a lot of other types of a couple of soulmate types of retreats and leadership in the wild.
That's going to be interesting. A lot of cool transformational types of leadership events. This is the community that we are building. Check it out at IronDeep.com and make sure you guys apply. Even if you are not interested in going on a retreat or some event now, make sure you apply. I would love to reach out to you and have a conversation. Here now, without further ado, Mr. Mika Self.
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What's going on? I got our guest for this episode, Mr. Mika Self himself.
What's up?
Has anybody ever said that Mika Self himself?
Never. Keep going there. I have never heard of those.
Try having the name Snodgrass, and you are going to get lit up in elementary school and middle school.
I had a guy one time who had the name Oliver or something like that. He said, “My neighborhood, the only way to get from my house to the street corner without a bloody nose was to leave the house that way.”
Kids are cruel.
They are.
Thanks so much for being on the show. It's been a pleasure. I know we have been friends for years now. The same Mastermind group, CG in the house. Any CG readers out there, Collective Genius. That's how I met Mika. You are probably one of the most intentional people that I know, and you have inspired me with my business and family. You have given me some great ideas. I went to a JH Ranch camp recommended by Mika himself.
I was there with my son when he was fourteen. I went there with my daughter when she was sixteen.
If you guys have a teen child, I would highly recommend JH Ranch Camp. It's in Northern California, on a mountain. It's probably one of the best weeks I have ever had with my teen. Would you recommend that too?
Yes. Both of my kids have wanted to go back. Nathan did go back and do what they call track.
It's for teens and the leadership type of camp.
They were gone for almost two weeks, and he did that. My daughter wanted to do that, but her schedule wouldn't allow it. They love it. There are a ton of people in Houston who have gone to JH Ranch and are big supporters of it and love what they are doing. That's an amazing time. Being able to be there and be so intentional with your teenage daughter or son. You have their captive attention without the phones and everything else. You are out in God's beautiful creation, and you get to do a lot of fun stuff, rope courses, hiking, and whitewater rafting. Did you fall off? Did you fall in the water?
We did not. The rapids were not that rapid when we were there. It was a little bit more mild that season.
With my daughter, we started in the boat, and they said, “Lock in.” I feel like I'm locked in, and we hit like a little tiny bump. We were in the water for five minutes. I'm like, “I broke the ice.”
I highly recommend that. As Mika said, number one, you are undistracted and intentional with your teen. You don't get that very much in this season of their life. Plus, you are doing some crazy cool things doing ropes courses and doing these things that you don't do. I highly recommend checking out JH Ranch. That's not what we are going to talk about in this episode but I want to put that out there because you recommended that to me.
I don't know what we are going to talk about.
I do. I have a big agenda for us. Before we roll, our readers cannot wait to learn who Mika Self is. Why don't you just give like who you are?
I'm a guy that’s trying to get better every day. I'm a husband. I'm married to a beautiful wife, Nicole, coming up on our anniversary. I will talk about this, but as an anniversary gift, she's letting me go to spend time with you folks. The day of my anniversary is the day I get home. That was a sacrifice for her. I'm trying to be a better husband. I have got two amazing kids. Nathan, he's in his second year of college. He walked on to play basketball. My daughter, Jessica, is a beautiful young lady. Growing up way too fast. She's a senior in high school, and she's a little gymnast. I'm trying to be a good husband, good dad, follower of Christ, and trying to get better every day. He allows me to steward a business of his in the marketplace.
Yours reminds me, getting a little bit better each day. That’s to quote my dad. It still rings in my ears. My dad taught me. He said, “You are either going to get better or worse today. What are you going to do? You are not going to say the same. Better or worse.” He was talking about the game of basketball, but you can relate that to anything else.
Coaching sports translates into leading in life.
That's right. Number one, you have an amazing real estate business down in Houston, Texas. One of the things that I admire, and I watch you from a distance, is your culture. Very intentional about your team and pouring into your team. You have an intentionality around your vision and your leadership. None of us are perfect and I'm sure you are probably inside. You are like, “I mess up here. Make mistakes there,” but you are aware. You are intentional about the culture of your team. Can you dive into that? I want to talk about your culture a little bit. What has that meant to you? Maybe over the last couple of years, what are some things that you have done to try to cultivate that amazing strong culture in your business?
It wasn't always that way. I have been doing this business for a long time. A lot longer than sometimes I want to think about. As a Christian, I have been a Christian since I had the business, and I wanted to be a good Christian and also wanted to have a business. Putting those two things together was not clear. I want to do things right. I don't want to lie, cheat, and steal. I want to have integrity. I want to treat people fair and all of that. Sometimes we compartmentalize as we go through our day. Over time, it evolved to, how can I make God known in the marketplace?
He's given me this business. It's not mine. Every good thing given is from above. He's given me this. How can I use this as a platform to honor him? It doesn't mean I have to go preach every time I go talk to a home seller, vendor, supplier, or employee. It starts with the question. How can be a good steward? How can I best honor him in the workplace?
In 2013, I connected with a group called C12. I'm going to give him a shout-out to C12. It's a CEO round table group worldwide. There are local boards in each city. It's business owners from all different aspects that get together. We collaborated with a curriculum on how we could do what I was trying to accomplish. That's given me a lot of mentors, younger men, and older men. Not just men but women as well, but it is mostly men.
We meet together once a month. We have been doing that since 2013. Realizing that the business is a gift. How can I steward God's resources? Now, how can I pour into my team? How can I, first of all, from the hiring process, make sure that I'm hiring the right people that they fit into the team that we are trying to build? We started to create our core values and our vision for American Home Buyers to honor God. That's just it. Honor God.
Our mission is to help distressed homeowners. Our core value, number one, is integrity. Integrity is how we define each core value. Everybody has integrity as a core value. If you look at the wall of most businesses, integrity is a core value, but it's a sliding scale. It's all relative to what I believe integrity is. I may not cheat on my wife, but I have cheated on my taxes. That's not what God says.
It's integrity in all things, meaning the Bible is the standard in how we conduct day-to-day business activities. That's on our business cards, on our walls, on our hiring, all of our material when we are hiring someone, or our job postings. Everything is there. All of our core values point back to how we do our work and how it's defined.
Refining those things over time, the hiring process, and how we coach and lift people. It's still evolving. It's still not perfect. I feel like we are trying to get better every day and every week. I will tell you a story. I had an employee that made a bad mistake. The world would say, “You need to fire this person.” If I had consulted with a hundred different business owners and said, “What should I do?” Everyone would have said, “Fire him.”
Even my C12 group would have probably said, “You need to let her go.” I didn't want to be reactionary. I want to look at how I can love this person. After praying about it and we were making some personnel changes. I said, “I can't trust you in the position that you are in. I will give you an opportunity, but I need to move you to a lesser position. It comes with less responsibility but also comes with less pay.” I allowed her to do that. She chose not to accept that and she gave me her two-week notice. I was still harboring some resentment because it was a big mistake.
It's potentially a six-figure mistake for our company. We have a Tuesday lunch meeting, where all of our employees get together every Tuesday for lunch. I buy lunch. We have a time of encouraging one another, and we pray for one another at the end. I can talk more about that later, but I said, “I don't think she should be there,” because she's serving out her two-week notice, and that hurt her.
I was still harboring some hardness in my heart toward the mistake that she made. Now, the reality is, as a leader, I'm responsible for the mistake that she made. After praying about it and after lunch that day, the next day, I called her in the office and said, “I need to apologize. If I'm going to accept your 2-week notice and allow you to work here for 2 weeks, that means you are part of the team. I did not treat you as part of the team. I'm asking for you to forgive me.” I didn't want to do that. That was hard, but that's what I have learned about the culture we have because we have to love each other whether we feel like it or not. I didn't feel like it.
That's hard to do. When you know, someone's out the door. They are going out the door in two weeks, and their first reaction is, “They are out the door. They will ride out, clock in, clock out, and that's it.” We don't include them on some of that special stuff. Let's talk about that l special encouraging lunch. Maybe that's one of the things that you do to help cultivate this culture in your team. How long have you been doing that? What comes out of these types of lunches?
I can’t tell you how long ago. It's been years since we started doing that. It’s been amazing because it is the time when we have people who are in sales and acquisitions and so forth. We see them periodically in the office. We don't necessarily see them every day or connect with them every day. They come in, bring their contracts, and they are back out again. It's a time that we can be intentional. We talk about where we are as a company. We talk about anything that's going on. We have talked about God’s moments. Who's had a God moment?
One of my guys, his dad, passed away. He was able to talk about how the time was so special that God allowed him to spend with his dad at the end of his life. He didn't grow up in a Christian home. He was not a Christian. His father and his sister were not Christians, but later on, he became a Christian, and his sister did. They were able to lead his father to the Lord later on in his life. He's able to share that with the team. It is such an encouragement.
Another story, I shared this at CG several years ago. We had a guy. I knew this guy from years ago. I met him at a Bible study fellowship. Probably when my wife and I first got married, and his name was Chuck. He was in the same business. He would wholesale and rehab a couple of houses here and there. I would bump into him occasionally, but not very often. I hadn't seen him in years. Somehow, I got an email from one of his friends that talked about Chuck going through cancer treatments.
They had a GoFundMe set up, and they were trying to raise money because he couldn't work. He had throat cancer. If you have throat cancer, you can't talk, so when you are in the business of talking to people. You have got no business. We started praying for Chuck. That's one of the things that we do on Tuesdays. At the end of our meeting, we got a journal. A little spiral-bound notebook that we keep in the conference room. One person will grab it and go around the room, “Who's got some prayer requests?”
We will jot them down, and at the end, right there, we pray for all those prayer requests. We turn them over to the Lord. Chuck, I put him on the team and said, “There's this guy I know. His name is Chuck. Let's pray for him.” We started praying for him, then I felt led one day to go see him. I went to see him, checked on him, and we talked for a bit. He had been going through the back end of his treatments, but he was eating out of a feeding tube because his throat was so closed up. He couldn't even eat. He could talk. It was a raspy voice. He couldn't even swallow the liquid. He had to have a feeding tube.
He was constantly refilling his feeding tube because that's the way it was. He had lost a lot of weight. He was down to 120 pounds. I went and talked to Chuck anyway. We are praying for him every week. One Sunday morning, my wife and I were at church, and I was praying. Chuck kept coming to my mind because I was head of position in the company. We were interviewing for a position. I told my wife, I said, “I don't know if I'm supposed to pray for Chuck or hire Chuck, but Chuck keeps coming to my mind when I'm praying about this position.”
I called Chuck on Monday. I ran it by my number two and we said, “Let's go. Call him.” I called Chuck and invited him in. We sat and talked to him, “This is what I have got.” He said, “Let me talk to my wife.” He comes back the next day. He says, “This is an answer to our prayer.” It went from six months of praying for Chuck to hiring Chuck. That summer, he had surgery to open up his throat, to stretch his throat open and he almost died on the table. He needed to eat. He wants to eat. Chuck would go buy ice cream, put it in his mouth, then spit it out because he couldn't swallow it.
Every day, when he was working for us, we were having our weekly lunch and he was holding his feeding tube. His green stuff is pouring into his belly. We adjusted to Chuck. He would go out to show properties and he's got his feeding tube sometimes. We loved Chuck through that. We hired him. He's been doing a good job for us. He's still with us. Those are the things that have come out of our weekly prayer time.
I love that you have a culture that gives space for that. You give space for the Lord to move to encourage people and for people to share. Most companies don't have a space for that. It's about results, accountability, numbers, sales goals, and all that.
We have all of that.
You have to have that to run a successful business.
We can administer people all day long. If we don't have any profit, then we have to stop administering to people.
One of your passions, which I heard you talk about often again and again, is about giving. I know our readers now are typically like if you go to church and you hear about giving, people already get defensive. I want you to express your passion for giving and what does that even mean to you? Is it financial? Why are you so passionate about this and steward this stewardship of giving?
My wife is a great example. She has been someone who has led our family through serving others. My wife is an amazing servant. She will do for so many others and never even expect anything in return. She's such a giver and servant to others. She's been a great example to me. I'm not as much of a doer in that respect because I'm running a business and so forth but she also works as well. For us, as a company, what we started doing. We started giving in a way, giving our time.
We want to have at least one service project a quarter. We started putting that as part of our KPIs a few years ago and we still do that. The team went down. I was not able to go because I was sick or getting over it. They served food to the homeless downtown. We have done things like that. All things that we have done every quarter. One thing, my wife and I have always been passionate about giving financially but it's been a secret.
Not because we are trying to hide it but that's been a personal thing. It is our giving and the way my company is, whatever profit we make in the company, we would give that on a personal level because everything flows through to our tax return. For 2022, I felt led to change that to get to allow our team to be involved. I proposed the idea of maybe starting a giving committee so we could give back.
We could set metrics on how much we are going to give based on the number of houses we buy. We set a goal and a couple of people started coming to the committee and so forth. Someone presents something and we vote on it. We have a process of getting something approved. We had 10 people out of our 18 people employees show up for the committee. We hired a young lady. Her name is Heather. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this.
In the interview process, she was telling us, “Why do you want to work here?” She has to drive over an hour to get here every day. Her response was simply, “I feel like I'm supposed to be here.” She didn't get into a lot of detail. She's not taking a sales position where she has the potential to make an unlimited amount of money. It's a salary position and a little bit of bonuses. It's a good salary but to justify driving an hour or an hour and a half every day. You think that she would want to make more.
She said, “I feel like I need to be here.” At the end of the committee meeting, she presented something that she was passionate about and we approved it to give some money to support. She said, “In the interview process when you asked me why I wanted to work here I said I'm supposed to be here. This is why.” It gets me fired up. There are three things that I have a passion about. I'm going to ask you, “If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?” I couldn't name one thing. It had to be three, eradicate pornography, eradicate human trafficking, which they are related to, and eradicate abortion.
Sometimes, all three could be related. Those three things that my wife and I both are deeply passionate about, as well as other things as well but are the things that get us excited. That's what makes me excited about coming to work Monday morning because we get a chance to make an impact in the marketplace and an impact on the lives of our people. On top of that, God, in his grace allows us to make money so we can do those things.
It comes back to the culture because what has that done? You said you had ten people show up and what has that done for your culture to let them help own a little bit of that? You are right. For a lot of business owners, everything flows through to our tax returns, especially if we are 100% owner and we do it in secret. That's how it's done most of the time but what has that done for even the passion of your employees? You are giving them that gift of giving?
I'm hoping that it's encouraging them to give something as well personally for them to take a look at their finances no matter how much they make. It could be a part-time, hourly employee or it could be one of our top salespeople. No matter how much it is that they make, the story of the widows might be. That's what is talked about in the Bible is how that was the treasure. That was a huge treasure because the widow gave a big portion of all she had. The blessing that people can get from giving personally and I'm hoping that we are being an encouragement for people to give personally and to receive that blessing as well.
Let's turn it over. We have talked a lot about how you have built this strong culture, this business, a kingdom business. You have put these things in there, letting people have ownership in the giving and you are doing that as a company, which is awesome. It brings life. Are there any mistakes that you look back over the past few years? Maybe in your company as a culture, you are like, “I missed the mark there?”
It's pretty much been on the mark the whole time. This could be a longer conversation about the mistakes I have made but I try to forget those. We want to forget about our mistakes but yet that's where we learn. Everything that we have done today is because of the mistakes we have made. Maybe mistakes have been hiring and thinking maybe it's the right culture fit but not necessarily the right job fit. Forgetting about the job, hiring for the job, and not hiring for the culture.
It takes a long time usually for us to hire for any position because it has to check all the boxes. I know that I shared in CG how long it took us to hire our acquisitions. It took us months because we could hire fantastic salespeople but there wasn’t a culture fit. We hired a guy that he's a great sales guy. He's the number one salesman at Cadillac Leadership. He's an incredible culture fit. He gets fired up with what we do.
He was at our committee meeting. The mistakes have been not doing the right due diligence in the hiring process, whether it be culture fit and combining the two and also leading. It's one thing to hire but then you got to lead them in a way and set an example. I look back and I didn't put the right measures in place.
You still have to put things in place so that you can inspect what you expect. Not having the right measures in place and not coaching in the right way. Allowing sometimes a performance to speak for itself. Someone might think they are doing a good job. The reality is, if they are measuring it only with what they think, then they might not be doing a good job based on what I think. I learned a long time ago if I let someone go, they are surprised. I haven't led them well.
That happened with a previous employee we had. It was frustrating because he was never doing the job that I expected. I thought that I was putting the right expectations in place because I told him at the beginning. I didn't put the right measures in place along the way, then when I let him go, he was shocked because he thought he was doing a good job. Based on his standards he was.
Those are probably the biggest mistakes I have made. It's not leading well and not being a good encourager sometimes. Naturally, I'm not a natural encourager. It takes effort for me to be an encourager, which is interesting. As the boss, I'm thinking, “I hired you to do a job that means that I'm paying you. That's your encouragement.” Every two weeks you get these certificates of appreciation. You got a paycheck but that's not what people need.
People need to know. A pat on the back, handwritten card, or handwritten letter, which I want to do a better job of even now is writing these little notes of a thank you or saving them in the hallway. It's got to be specific too. It can't be, “Great job.” They are like, “For what?” In their mind, they are thinking that they are not going to ask. I'm still learning. I'm a slow learner but 7th grade with the longest 6 years of my life.
People want to be valued. Some people feel valued if they make a lot of money but other people receive it in different ways. We all could do a better job at encouraging people. You are a good encourager. I feel encouraged when I talk to you sometimes.
Your hair looks good.
Thank you. Thanks for sharing your mistake. That's how we learn and thank you so much for opening up about that. Let's end with this last question because one of the things that I have learned a lot from you whether you know it or not is you have this culture of your business and that's awesome. I love that but you also have this family. I know that we are in a small group together and it's not perfect. I hear some things, “No family is perfect.”
You try to be intentional with that, especially with the kids in this season of your kid's life. It's hard. It's this transitioning season. You have to balance that and go home and be intentional with your culture in the house too. You have taught me to get them out in that undistracted environment. Can you talk to us about that a little bit? Maybe do some encouraging with someone who feels that their house is out of sync or something. I don't know what the question is but can you talk to us about how you have been able to instill the culture also into your home?
That's probably the bigger challenge than the work because sometimes there's nothing left. When we get home when I get home, do I have anything left for everybody else? In the past, my wife would point out that we would be trying to treat her like an employee. Walk in and I would point out the things that were wrong. No one can load and unload or dishwasher the way I can. You are doing it wrong.
The first thing is to make sure you have enough left and sit in the car until you can decompress and say, “I'm not leading a company. I'm leading my family and how can I serve my family? How can I serve my wife?” I'm saying this but I’m being very bad at it. “How can I serve my kids? How can I be an encouragement to my kids?” Find the things that they are doing right and don't dwell on the things that they are doing wrong.
Mistakes, disobedience, or disrespect. Those things need to be corrected. Also, don't be surprised when they mess up. It's like, “I have been a great father. I have taught you these things and yet, you are doing these. You are messing up still.” That's because we are human. Also, because their brains aren't fully developed, they are going to mess up. They are going to make bad choices.
I make bad choices every day and God doesn't run down from heaven and berate me until I correct it or whatever. He didn't say, “I told you and told you again.” God doesn't treat me that way. He doesn't lead me to treat my family. Especially my kids that way as well. I heard a great analogy is parents like a referee. When your kids mess up, blow the whistle, hold the flag, assess the penalty, and move on. No emotion, just do it but love them. Do love them.
As parents, we have such high expectations for our kids. It's like we can have all these lower expectations and talk to anybody else. It's not our kids or our family when it comes to our own family and kids. We expect so much.
Plus, we go to church and everybody has their best on and dressed up Sunday best. Everyone wants to put on these fronts that we got it all together. I remember when my son was in middle school. He was not a mean kid. He never was mean. He was impulsive and so he would mess up. The way we felt was like, “Our kid's the only one messing up.” We felt small. We felt like failures as a parent. The reality is no. He's a good kid. He made mistakes. He was learning from those things. That's how we all learn.
I love that and I love what your comment was. Make sure you have enough margin as a business owner. One of the things that I used to do was I would leave the office and I would get on. I had to make a couple of calls. I would talk on the phone all the way home and I pulled into the driveway. I'm on the phone and my kids are running out. They are knocking on the door and I'm on the phone. I got like, “One more minute.” I'm trying to squeeze it all in so I have it all done so I can walk in but then my mind is mush. I'm back in this conversation and I'm not there. Now I have tried to say, “The last twenty minutes, I'm not going to get on the phone. I'm going to chill out.” That's one thing.
We shouldn't forget that we are supposed to lead our kids spiritually too. That's the main thing. You want to have a relationship with them, so you have the right to lead them spiritually. That's something that we forget to do. Sometimes, we think our job is to raise good kids and that's not our job because we are not going to be kids forever. Our job is to raise kids to be great adults.
We talked about it at JH. We are to call them up to adulthood because that's where they are going to end up. That's where they are going to spend their life as adults. They are not going to spend their life as kids. We should always be pulling them up to the next level of maturity and growth. A lot of parents are doing things for them all the time, serving the kids, making the kids the center of the family instead of making the family the center and the kids are part of it.
That's most of our season. A lot of times, we are going to have a relationship with our kids a lot longer after they turn eighteen too. I have seen some parents too. They have been so hard and harsh, and they break that relationship when the kid turns eighteen. They are like, “I don't want a relationship with you.”
I have been guilty of that with my kids, as being too hard and harsh and the past. I have probably haven't asked for forgiveness enough but I have had to ask for forgiveness. I had to ask for forgiveness for my wife. I have an amazing forgiving wife. She forgets so much. She's got a short memory and I'm so grateful for that.
I appreciate you. Thanks for being on the show. Mika is the real deal. Check out his company, the American Home Buyer, if you are interested. I'm sure he would love to give you tips on the real estate game and that culture.
Thank you. I always enjoy spending time with you.
