Michael Stansbury, a successful CEO and business owner, talks about achieving personal success and having fun in life no matter the circumstances.
Michael Stansbury is a successful CEO and business owner, but he cares more about you enjoying life than your personal success. Tune in as Michael and I go over how to handle work and family when life throws hardship at you. We talk about how to have fun with your family when getting home from work and how to be the leader of the household. Michael Stansbury has been the Owner and CEO of MemFixerUpper since its conception in 2015. He has since started a highly successful real estate investment company from the ground up. Michael also serves as the president of his local BNI chapter and serves faithfully in his local church. He and his wife have four kids together and he loves spending time and being with his family.
MICHAEL'S WEBSITE: https://www.corymcarlson.com/
BNI BUSINESS PARTNERS: https://bnimidsouth.com/tn-memphis-bni-business-partners/en-US/index
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5TSIeVk1IY
MINISTRY MICHAEL'S BUSINESS SUPPORTS
MICHAEL'S SOCIALS
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/michael.stansbury
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-stansbury-59514510/
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4Jb6x2J4cnmWZiARCxO8Bg
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Life is hard. Life is difficult. Life will throw all it got at you, but how you respond matters. Michael Stansbury is a successful CEO and business owner, but he cares more about you enjoying life than your success. Tune in as Michael and I go over how to handle work and family when life throws hardship at you. We talk about how to have fun with your family when getting home from work and how to be the household leader.
This is the Brett Snodgrass show. Thank you for joining me. Before I get in and talk about our guest, make sure you go over to YouTube and subscribe to our Iron Deep channel and check out our new website, IronDeep.com. If you're interested in a brotherhood community of business owners between the ages of 32 and 57 that are men of faith, check out IronDeep.com and fill out the application. I'd love to have a conversation with you.
I have Michael Stansbury on the show with me. Michael is the owner and CEO of Memfixerupper, which is a real estate investment company out of Memphis, Tennessee. We talk about something different. We talk about intentionality as a leader not only in your businesses, but also in your family, in your relationships, how to get involved with your family, and how to have fun.
I see a lot of men these days stop having fun. They think that having fun means that they have to go out and have fun in a destructive way. Michael talks about having fun with his family and his wife after 21 years, being intentional about having fun, being involved with your family through the different aspects of life, and how to be an intentional leader in your home. I hope you enjoy it. Here is Michael Stansbury. What's up?
Things are great. Things are fun. It's great to be here on the Brett Snodgrass show.
It's awesome to have you. I always love chatting with you. You're always happy. You're always chill. You got a lot of stuff going on, but you always seem peaceful. I love that about you.
It’s a facade. There's a lot of bad stuff going on behind the scenes.
There always is. Thanks again for being on the show. I always start off with this question, so tell us this. Who is Michael Stansbury? Stans, for short.
That’s a great question. Mike is still trying to figure that out. He’s what he wants to be doing when he grows up. I guess he is that guy. I grew up here in Memphis, Tennessee. I have been here since I was ten years old. I went to school at the University of Arkansas. There are a couple of things I like. I like the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Memphis Grizzlies. Those are some of the teams that we like. I’m a big St. Louis Cardinal fan because a lot of them are family. I grew up in St. Louis. I'm half Italian, half Irish. I've got a family of four here. I’m married to Deidra and got four kids.
Who is Mike Stansbury? First of all, he is the father of four amazing kids and husband to an amazing wife, Deidra. Here’s another thing that's key for Michael. He is saved by the grace of Jesus Christ and is happy to be loving the Lord and on the path. I was reading the scripture this morning as I was taking the cat out, it's an inside joke for Brett. We may talk about that later on, but one of the things, as I was reading through the scripture, is being intentional about getting in God's word and letting it work through you. I'm a work in progress and I'm letting God do his work in me, getting discipled by other men, working it out, and excited for what God has in store for us.
That's what I also think about you. I've heard you talk a few times about being intentional. That's where we're going to go with this show, about being intentional. You're not only intentional in business but you're also a great businessman in real estate business, Memfixerupper. You’ve been running that for how long now?
Seven to eight years. I had a partner for a while. It was a great partnership that ended last year. We did a lot of good fix and flips. We are in operation where we buy houses. We fix them up and flip them, and then we also sell them to other investors. I do some short-term rentals, but we have a lot of fun. We love the Memphis market. It's a nice market to be in. There's a lot of fun. I've got a lot of great competition here. Most of us are friendly. That's what I do for work and fun. It is fun. I have a lot of great employees. I get to work with my son. I get to work with some other young men in the business as well and get to watch them grow. I got a great COO, Miss Melissa Mescher, and some great virtual assistants as well that help in taking care of everything.
You’re running the business. Whenever I talk to you, the word fun comes out a lot. It seems like whenever you talk about business, you talk about, “We have so much fun. It’s a lot of fun.” Whenever you talk about your family, “We have a lot of fun.” Whenever you talk about church, “It's a lot of fun.” I know you're involved with the church. You're involved with some of your community chapters, think BNI. You serve at your local church like I said.
I want to talk about that fun. I've realized that for a lot of men during this season. You've gotten married for twenty-plus years. You’ve got four kids. You’ve been down that road. You're now getting into this phase. You've been running your business for years. Maybe some people stop having fun, wouldn't you say? Have you seen other men who maybe the heaviness of life, they're leading not only their businesses but they're leading their families? Their kids get to an age where maybe they don't want to talk to them anymore. Their spouses are roommates. Have you seen other men in season that maybe do not have fun anymore?
I see it a lot. I had a father and mother, and they split up and then divorced when I was about 18 and 19. My dad liked to have fun, but not the kind of fun that you're supposed to have. One of the things that was a struggle for me when that happened was when you're from a divorced family or divorce situation, there's always a crater left no matter how old you are. You could be five years old. I was nineteen when it happened. My whole plan was at some point, I wanted to get married and have a family. I thought that was going to be awesome. Now, I had this little seed planted in my own mind that “Maybe it won't work out.”
One of the things that God did is he brought people into my life that had good marriages and said, “There's this alternative where you can stay married, but you got to have this peace." That was Christ. The thing about these last 21 years is obviously, you don't have fun for all 21 years. What we're talking about here with men is being intentional about doing the right things. Your life doesn't have to be ho-hum. It doesn't require doing wrong things to be fun. You can be intentional about, “If I'm going to run this business, I want it to be fun for everybody.” What does that mean? It means you got to be somebody that's upbeat and positive and be intentional about how that's going to be fun. It’s got to be your responsibility to bring it.
When we're talking about fun, I've been in offices where you walk in and it's stale. People are looking at their computers and they're looking down. It's business as usual. When I walk into an office, I immediately try to crack a joke to lighten up the mood. Sometimes, people are doing business and it's so heavy, even when things are not going great.
I got done reading a book called The Gap and The Gain. Maybe there are some people in the gap. How do you lighten up? You figure out what are some positives or what are some things that people are doing that you can point out and encourage somebody, even in a situation where things may be going a little bit south. As we know, we've got to go through some of those valleys to find out a little bit more about us and to find out how we can overcome those things. Those valleys don't necessarily need to be taxing with anxiety.
One of the things I want to tell people is sometimes I do get anxious. The things that I know that help me get out of it when that snap hits me is I’m like, "I can get out of this very easily if I ask myself a different question about what's going on. What am I learning through this process? If I had to draw something good out of this situation, what would it be?" Those are questions I've learned to ask myself to get out of those anxious moments or down moments. That makes it more fun for me.
That's what I love about you. It’s not only in your business but you've also talked from our conversations about with your family and having fun with your family. Sometimes, my wife and I will have this conversation and she'll say, “I want to have more fun with you. I want to go do something fun, not so serious. I don't want to talk about the kids. I don't want to talk about our dreams or our goals. I want to go bowling. Let's fall down or go do some ice skating or something. Let's get embarrassed or something."
Last night, you talked about you did something with your family that you can describe. You did some karaoke together, which I thought was awesome. I would imagine if you're going to do that with your kids, your kids are pretty young, but that's not true. Your kids are still in the home, but they're not 3 to 4-year-olds. To see teens, middle schoolers, and high schoolers get there and do some of that. How have you maintained some of the intentional fun within your home? I feel like maybe we can have fun outside the home sometimes, but sometimes the home seems extremely heavy and too serious.
Here’s what I'll say about it. We have to be intentional about that. Sometimes it happens organically. It happens organically when your house is fun in the first place. My wife and I, when we got this house 4 or 5 years ago, we built some things to the house. We wanted to be the hub for all our kids' friends. That has been the common thread. Every week, there are kids over here.
We have a nineteen-year-old who still lives at home. His buddies come over a lot. They're playing blitz ball. They're swimming in the pool. They're in college football season. They're in there watching college football for twelve hours, and I may be in there with them. I don't know. It's super fun. It's hilarious and super fun. If somebody's team loses, and it's October or November, that losing team’s fan will jump in the pool. We'll make them jump in the pool in the cold. We do that.
My daughter is seventeen. She's a very good singer. She likes to sing, and we do a lot of karaoke sometimes. She’ll have all her friends over too. She had all her friends over on Sunday night. All are kids from church. It’s like it's known. We wanted to make it known that if you want your friends over, all you do is say, “I'm going to have my friends over,” and then it happens.
My wife and I, we want to make all those kids feel comfortable here. We feed them. We entertain them. That’s foundational. That's what we've done for the past 3 or 4 years. Last night was a fun night because it was the first night that we'd been with no school. School is out. We decided to play karaoke. We sang some Shania Twain and Carrie Underwood. I didn't sing any of that. I sang Chicago. I don't know if you guys know Chicago.
I'm sure some people in our audience know Chicago. They're in that age group.
What else did we sing? We sing Shallow. I did a duet with my daughter. We like to have fun, on the borderline, embarrassingly fun. We have some videos. I may be able to send you. You may be able to cut it in there. I'm not a great singer. Be intentional because we struggle with the same thing. Every family struggles with this. We want to keep our kids off their phones, iPads, and television. We want to be engaged as much as possible. It’s the dad's job to do it.
My wife, Deidra, is excellent. She always says, “I know what the bible says about what a husband has to do for his family.” That's scary. I know I'm not built that way. She holds me accountable to that standard. Sometimes, you're like, "I don't want to be held accountable." We have to be because we're dudes. This is what God gave us as his helper. We get to choose to listen to the helper or not.
If you have a wife that exudes the qualities that scripture points out, which I've got in spades, and they tell you something, then you got to listen. Sometimes, it's not what you want to hear. Oftentimes, it's not what you want to hear. Sometimes, it takes a while for that information to sink in and to have wisdom. Back to it, we got to be intentional about the fun that we have. Your kids are looking to the dad for that.
Back to the karaoke, I used to be a big karaoke guy. I used to do karaoke. My favorite song, which if you guys never heard of is by George Michael, Faith. That was my karaoke jam right there. You sang Shallow. People said I look like Bradley Cooper sometimes.
You do. I was going to say that. I would think you were a Careless Whisper or a Freedom! '90. I bet you could do those well.
We'll have to get together and do that. I do agree. It's hard to lead sometimes, especially if you're leading so much. We all say that we want to be leaders. Especially as driven men, we all want to lead. Sometimes it's maybe more of a burden. I like to lead businesses. I like to lead communities or groups of people. That's why we're doing Iron Deep and a retreat coming up. Sometimes, we're worn out.
When I get to the family, I'm tired of leading. Sometimes I've seen a lot of guys check out. They’re like, “I'm tired of leading.” They feel comfortable in their homes. They're like, “I'm going to sit back and check out for a little bit.” Do you do anything to muster up that leadership? I know you're running a successful business too. To get home but to still wear that leadership cap, how do you lead well within your home? What are some of the things that you do practically?
I know that if I put in a long day at work, I'm going to come home with a bunch of excuses on why I'm not engaged in leading the family that night, “I had to do this today. I had these closings. I had all this stuff.” I've done that before. I've said, “Deidra, you got this. I'm out. I'm done. I got to go.” That’s happened more often than not. There’s no hack to it. The only thing I could encourage people to do is to check their habits.
I think Steve Cook from Lifeonaire told me one day that what he did was he was able to trick his brain into thinking that once he walked past this rose bush that he had in his house, he left everything from work right there. He paused right there. He literally spoke to Jesus, and then he went in and serve his family. We put a lot of emphasis on whether it's a crisis or not or the unanswered questions or whatever is going on. We never leave it somewhere where we can come pick that back up when we want to.
I think Steve helped me figure out that if you can do that and not forget to leave it there, you can come back and pick it up anytime you want to. Your 8, 13, or 17-year-olds need you. They need your full attention and all of you. That’s what I try to do. What I encourage men to do is check their habits when it comes to work. Are you bringing work home? The answer for me sometimes is absolutely yes, and I shouldn't. There are times when I have to, but most of the time I don't. My leadership needs to be focused on my wife and my kids.
Thanks for saying that. I've noticed there have been times and seasons in my life where I get home, maybe say a prayer, and shift down a little bit, where I'm like, “I'm going 100 miles an hour. I got to shift down and be present with my kids and muster up.” I can muster up the energy and trick your brain for a few hours and be intentional with them. It’s getting into that habit. I love what you said about checking your habits is extremely important.
Let’s shift gears. You've also talked to me personally about being involved. Sometimes we make excuses as men, “I'm busy and I'm running a business. Someone else can coach that team or my kids' team. Someone else can volunteer at church.” You've even said and I think I even asked you personally. How do you lead your kids in some of these activities? I think you've baptized your children. I'm like, “That's so awesome. I haven't done that or experienced that.” How did that all happen? You talked about being involved. Can you talk about that and talk to the dads and even husbands out there about how have you been involved with your kids?
I had discussions with my wife about who we wanted to be. We want to make this a priority of the church. We have a great church and good pastors, but we hear so many complaints all the time regarding maybe the middle school or the high school that it's not run the way they want it from other parents. The way that I work is like, “Are you involved? Are you coming in to help?" I found myself doing that a little bit. I was like, "I can be the solution." When I'm trying to lead people and my kids, I'm trying to figure out how they can figure out the solutions for themselves by asking questions.
We talked about we want to be involved in our kids and specifically in a church, and go and disciple them and their friends throughout their middle school and teenage years because it’s actually pretty fun. It’s not boring. The amount of relational capital that you get with your kids is unmatched when their friends like you. There are some challenges with it, but they're well worth it.
It’s a great use of your time. We talked about this earlier before we were hit record, but our kids live and we do well, God has blessed us. We try to do well with the resources that God has given us. We want to utilize those resources. The best way to do that is to serve. When you are a church member, most church members that go to church maybe are involved in a small group. The way that I've seen it work well is that you get more out of getting involved in some aspect where you're serving and you're consistently serving over a long period of time. It does some deep things to your heart and soul. There are kids that have wrecked home lives and they're going to church.
There is a kid, Landon, that is thirteen years old that comes every week. When you look at him coming to church, there's a little sadness in him. His mom and dad abandoned him and his grandparents raised him. His grandfather has dementia and his grandmother is dealing with cancer, and yet this kid comes to church every Sunday. He is always the first to volunteer to pray for everybody. He is reading the scripture and understanding it.
When you see this stuff happen, you're thinking in your mind and your humanness comes like, “That kid has got it tough. He got it rough.” You're speaking life into those kids for two hours a week. You see what God is doing with Landon and with other kids. There’s no other way to see that. There’s no other way to experience that without serving and without walking these kids through their lives.
One of the things that my wife and I observed while we go to church is some of these kids are coming to church and their parents are dropping them off. To get into the minutia of it, a lot of these kids today are dealing with things that you and I never dealt with growing up. The amount of confusion in 13 and 14-year-old girls, my wife comes to me and tells me these things that I think are outside of our location. That stuff doesn't happen in Bartlett, Tennessee. It may happen in California or somewhere else, but that doesn't happen in Bartlett, Tennessee. It happens in our suburbs.
These girls are being confused by the culture and they're looking to us. They're looking first to their parents. They're looking to the people that love them at church to walk with them and show them what the truth is. It is tough. There's a burden that she carries and that anybody carries when you're doing that, but it's well worth it. As I said, it makes you turn to Christ more and know that you're just the vessel here and that these kids ultimately need prayer. They need to be guided by scripture. They need to be discipled. They need to be told about the hope that that is in Christ and know that you're doing that, and then over the course of time, seeing the fruit from it. It’s only something that God can do.
For men, specifically, this is a thing that frustrates me. There’s a lot of passivity in alpha males that own businesses when it comes to church. It drives me crazy. You can bring the same set of skills that God has given you as an alpha business owner, and you can bring it to this part very easily. God will use some of those same personality traits in a good way. It’s about men rejecting passivity.
The most important thing that is in our culture right now is that God's definition of masculinity is completely being buried by our culture. We need men to get out of that and lead their families, have them go to church, lead them to church, and lead them in service beyond taking them to church. Teach your kids scripture because that’s what we're mandated to do. It’s a good thing.
It's crazy how you can see a very driven man in the business or an alpha male in the business, but then be passive in certain areas of his life. Thanks again for pointing that out. We need us all to step up and lead not only our businesses but also our families and our relationships. As you talked about, kids that are not in your family need us as well.
Before we wrap up the show, thank you so much for all of your wisdom. There's probably a man tuning in to this right now and you're talking to him. He is in that boat where maybe he's not as intentional with certain important areas of his life, whether it's his family or a different area. Are there certain times when you take a step back and reflect and try to re-adjust? What does that look like for your life and move forward? Do you do anything like that? Do you take a step back to reflect and reprioritize? Is that a daily thing maybe in your scripture time? Do you do intentional times like that to reset?
I do. The habit that I’m getting better at is I journal. I write sounds and things. I write down the wins that I did. What you'll see in my journal is, “We did karaoke last night. We had a great time.” I saw this in my thirteen-year-old boy, and that was wonderful to see. I have so many memories, but when I write them down, they come back instantly. I want to make sure I'm writing those down.
As I'm reading scripture in the morning, my wife does a lot more journaling than I do in the morning, but I do meditate on God's word. There's a daily bible reading plan that I've been doing for the last four months. I utilize that, but the other thing that I do is I've tried to intentionally limit the amount of entertainment that I do. I love sports, but I'm very intentional about a couple of pastors and teachers that I listen to. That has been an incredible effect on how I lead as a man.
One of the things is for these men that want to reject passivity, you've got to be interested in other men that are rejecting passivity, giving you the word, going through scripture, and showing you, “This is how you reject passivity. This is how you lead your family. This is how you lead in your marriage.” I've been a massive failure in some of those things. God has used those failures, and this is how he does it, to call me back and, “Check this out.” He'll put those little things in my life.
I'm listening to a sermon and I’m like, “I need to repent. I need to get back on the horse and be intentional again.” That's the cycle of it all. Once I think I have it and I'm like, “We're good. We're rock and rolling,” then he jacks me up again. He goes, “This is a part of your person that we need to work on.” I'm like, “Okay.” Being intentional about getting good sermons and good readings in my life has had a dramatic effect on how I've plowed through life.
I love that. That's some practical wisdom right there from Michael. Thank you so much, Michael. This wraps up today's show. Thank you for sharing all your wisdom. I know that we didn't talk a lot about business, but intentionality, having fun with your family, being intentional leaders, and rejecting passivity, I love that term. I know that there are certain areas in that I'm very active and not passive, but then there are certain areas I need to work on like taking a step back each day, meditating on God's word, and getting in the scripture, so a lot of habits and good wisdom. Thank you, Michael, for being on the show.
It's my pleasure.
