March 23, 2023 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the inventor and CEO of “My Pillow” is here to tell the improbable tale of how a small-town guy with a dream somehow made it a reality. Mike Lindell’s story is a raw, authentic account by a man most people thought would never rise above his addiction-fueled failures.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This, says Lee Habbib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
the inventor and CEO of My pillow, is here to
tell the improbable tale of how a small town guy
with a dream somehow made it a reality. Michael Lindell's
story is a raw, authentic account by a man most
(00:32):
people thought would never rise above his addiction fueled failures.
Let's take a listen. I didn't know what I wanted
to be, and it was like that was the thing
to do going to college. I didn't go to class.
I went to class twice, and I was working two jobs,
and my roommate's going, why don't even here for And
I would just go take the tests and still get
(00:52):
seized at not even doing anything. And I just thought
it was a waste of time. And I'm going, it's
a repeat of high school. And that bothered me. I'm
not going to sit here and waste my time. That's
the way I thought. The driver for me was my
fifth three year reunion. Everyone's now is out of the college,
they get these amazing jobs, they've started families. In my mind,
(01:13):
they were way ahead of me. It was bothering me inside,
and then I'm doing stuff to show up and I mean,
you know, I was a card counter. Then I took
a card count in class professional card cound. I'm bragging
it at the reunion about skydiving with a parachute not opening,
and my car accidents and my card counter things that
they've never seen or the mafia coming after me, you know.
(01:34):
So I'm blowing their minds, and so we don't get
on the topic of yeah, how are you doing for work?
You know, what are you doing, Mike? How many kids
got how many know? How's your family? You know, I'm
just completely putting up this wall, you know, for these
other things, and so they're all thinking I'm nuts basically.
Then then I prayed. I said, you know, God, all
I want is say, you know for me the right
(01:55):
woman and have you know kids and the white picket fence,
so to speak. And then God brought that all to
me and hand it to me on a silver platter.
And by then I was a very functioning cocaine addict too,
and they but I lost it all, you know, eventually
lost it all. I had this mask on and probably
from the divorce from childhood when I when when all this,
(02:18):
you know, the divorce happened, and everything I always had
to have, that's when I got a hold of cocaine.
It was so easy everything I did. I had to
be on cocaine to be able to talk to people
and be able to have my confidence because I have
this unworthiness inside of me. That just been quite a
journey to where now. I mean, if you'd have told
me I would be speaking in front of people or
doing a commercial, I would have said, there is no way,
(02:40):
or you know, but when I noticed I could have
the same passion with with the cocaine or without, only
in one spot behind that booth. Once I left that booth,
I mean, it's like walking into another world. I'd walk.
If I'm in and I have to talk to you
and you're the next booth over and we're going to
talk about the weather, it's not happening. I'm climbing up,
I'm avoiding. Hey, yeah, we'll talk to you, or you know,
(03:00):
I didn't know what to say. It was very, very
socially stunted in that respect where where you go back
to my addiction and you're going you get stunted socially
where I probably have the social skills of a twelve
year old as far as you know, which probably isn't
bad today that people say, oh, you just talked about it.
You say what you want. Every part of it I invented,
(03:20):
you know, and it was and it was helping people
where people come up. Then it bought the pillow. Let's
say the day before and come back to the show
and say this changed my life, and just the look
in their face of helping them. The money wasn't money
never But for me, I didn't have money. It didn't matter.
If I had money, I would I had a skill,
I could go out and find get money. And I
(03:42):
never borrowed money. If I borrowed money, I would pay
you back double because I couldn't. I couldn't accept anything
from anybody. If I have another wound where I don't accept,
I'm a giver, but I can't accept, which I've worked on.
That's the way you know I am. And that's a wound.
That's actually it's not a healthy thing either. It's to
be able to accept up is also just as good
as blessing someone you would never see me, you know here.
(04:04):
I was an attic for from nineteen eighty four to
two thousand and nine, and there isn't one person out
there's that I borrowed money for drugs and didn't pay
them back. If you and I weren't doing drugs, I'm
not taking some of your drugs, you're taking mine. You know,
I'm not going to sell you anything. I'm going to
give things to you. And that it was but to
be able to be in that Pillow show and to
(04:24):
g see people coming up and that, I just felt
like this. You know, God gave me the idea for
the pillow in the first place, and it was I'm going, wow,
this would be when I never I wouldn't get depressed
because of that. It was like a constant feed of
people going, this is amazing. This changed. You know. I
had this with my neck and this and I'm getting
sleep now. I knew it was such a divine problem solution,
(04:48):
and it was I could have sat and just help
people forever and never and never got I wasn't thinking like, Okay,
I'm gonna make millions of dollars. My thought was always
I'm gonna help millions of people. There's a difference. What
happened was all my life, I tried every pillow even
when I was sixteen years old, I bought one of
my first paychecks went to buy a pillow. It's in
nineteen seventy seven, so I spent the most expensive pillow
(05:11):
thinking it would be the best. It was a down pillow,
and it was the worst because they you know, I
know now they just sell us air. I mean, I mean,
how can that be. It feels good the down it goes,
but I couldn't return it. That I do remember. They
would not let me return that pillow. But then throughout
my life I'm trying different pillows and people always say,
how ironic you are a cocaine at it? Can you
(05:32):
invented something to sleep, you know? But I always had
problems and U and it with sleep and wake up
in the morning, headache, netcake. But most of these sleep
interruptions are not being able to get to sleep right away.
They used to have old commercials say we spent a
third of our life sleeping. Really we all know that
it's the other two thirds. It effects how you deal
(05:53):
with your family, if you have a day off, if
you're tired, it's no fun. You know, you need to
have quality sleep, and it's so important. So in two
thousand and four. I had a very clear dream of
the name my pillow that just popped in. It was,
you know, a god dream of the my pillow name.
And I put my pillow. I go, that sounds really corny,
you know, But I go, well, where's my pillow? But
(06:16):
my daughter came upstairs and there was She looked and
there were pieces of paper written all over and wash
and Lizzie says, she gets a glass wild. She I
don't know, she's eleven years old maybe, And she said,
what are you doing? Dad? And I go, I'm gonna
met this pillow? And and now I realized I hadn't
even got the you know, what's gonna be made over?
What's gonna do. It's gonna be the best thing ever
I've seen it. And this's gonna be called my pillow.
(06:38):
And she looks at all these pieces of paper, she goes,
that's really random, Dad, And she went back downstairs. And
you've been listening to Mike Lindell, the inventor and the
founder and CEO of my Pillow in my pillow dot com.
And he's talking about how he came to his discovery,
how he came to the founding of his business and
also how so much of his life well it was
(07:00):
dominated by drugs and this early childhood feeling that somehow
he wasn't worthy. And when we come back more of
Mike Lendelle's story, the story of My Pillow, a gigantic
and successful American story, an American manufacturing story. No less
here on our American Stories. Lee Habibi here the host
(07:33):
of our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're
bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from
our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't
do the show without you. Our stories are free to
listen to, but they're not free to make. If you
love what you hear, go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:55):
a lot. Go to our American Stories dot com and
give and we continue with our American Stories. In two
thousand and four, Mike Lindell, my Pillow CEO, had what
(08:16):
he called a god dream, which gave him the idea
for the name of his Pillow invention. He's a eleven
year old daughter, called it random and thought his passion
would be over by morning. Let's return to Mike now.
Over the next week, or saw it, and then it
got to turn it into two weeks three week where
I'm trying different different things. I'm, you know, trying to
(08:37):
think what this pillos I mean. Well, then the kids said,
you know, they said to their mother at the time,
they said, Wednesday, I'm gonna get over this pillow thing,
and he said, oh, it's just a phase, it'll be
it'll be over again. I wasn't at that time. I
wasn't doing anything. I'd sold my little barbed restaurant for
thirteen years. My total focus was on in this pillow now,
and so I ran it completely out of money. Well,
(08:59):
then then I started getting the dreams of what it
needed to be, where this adjustability where you could move
it and it would hold, and the fabric you know,
as I god dreams, just amazing dreams. But I still
had to figure out the material for what I'm getting
in my dream. So we tried over ninety four different
kinds of foams and fills to put it in there.
(09:21):
My one son, Darren, and he was now managing twelve
hundred employees of the manufacturing that's what he does now.
But he's like nine or ten years old, and every
day we get home from school, and we'd try different
kinds of stuff on the deck and the foam would
fly all over the neighborhood. And we tried little machines
to get to work, and finally we get it and
it worked. But I wanted to make it so that
(09:42):
it would last. You know, in my dream it said
it would last ten years. And I've worked with these
engineers in Wisconsin that here's what I had my dream
make this, but it didn't stick together. Then I went
back to I said, no, I want this part, and
that same company, by the way, I have to this
day in Wisconsin where this is patent phill is made
amazing and and people said, oh, Mike, you can't make
(10:04):
a pillow here in the United States. You've got to
make it overseas. I said, no, you're never going to
get a patent on a pillow, and all these naysayers
and I'm going and I fought every single thing to
you know, it was a constant fight. Anyway, I told
my son, I said, I did a piece of paper.
I said, here's what our factory is going to look like. Somebody.
I still have it in my notebook. I said, he
(10:24):
was why, what's this quality? Control. I said, you're gonna
have this. This is very important, I said, And I'm
showing them all these things, and you could take that
and lay it over our factory nowadays. I mean it
was all divine and just so anyway, they once we
had the pillows all made, we had everything. We had
mortgaged our house, everything, and we had no money left.
(10:45):
But we had like three hundred pillows. And I went
into the first pillow. I walked into a it was
a bed bathroom beyond I'll just say the name in
blooming To, Minnesota. I go in there. I said, I
got the best pillow ever. I said, this pillow is
going to change, you know, change. You're gonna sell are
this and anything it helps? This helps you sleep? Blah
blah blah. And where's your buyer? Who's your buy where's
the manager? And he looks at me, he goes, you
(11:06):
need to leave. And I'm going, I just had all
this passion, you know, and I'm going, what do you
mean I need to leave? I said, I want to
talk to you by And I learned right away, and
I started calling on other stores and everybody. It was
the same shout out. My brother in law's brother said, Mike,
why don't you do a kiosk? And I said, what's that?
How do you spell kiosk? And then we did this
kiosk and we did sell about eighty pillows and one
(11:31):
day obviously we lost I don't know, like fifteen thousand
dollars because it's very expensive to have a kiosk on
November in December, and but one guy I was in
there the one day and he came up and he said,
he said he buys. He said, hey, you do you
have a card? And I go, I don't have business cards.
I go, oh, I'm all out. I sit here and
I gave him my number. And in January of that year,
(11:52):
now the kiosk was almost, you know, a complete failure.
Basically borrowed money from my ex booky to buy Christmas
presents at year. And by the way, the reason he
was my ex book he said, if you quit gambling,
I'll borrow your money. I mean, I mean that's you know,
he cared. So this guy called me in January and
he says, are you the guy that invented this pillow?
(12:12):
The one guy had gave my phone number two and
I go yeah, and he goes this Pillow changed my life.
He says, it is a miracle, and he was all
about that, I'm going, okay, and I'm excited hearing his
you know, hearing not worrying about where I am at
that this is I'm going. I was just so happy
for him on the phone that had helped him. And
he goes, I run the Minneapolis Home and Garden show.
(12:34):
Would you like a spot in there? And I go,
and I'm thinking to myself right away, well the kiosk
didn't work, and I'm going, I go, well, maybe there's
more people or something, you know, and I'm going sure.
But what I did is I got behind that booth
you know, where I could sell. And once I got
behind or was whoa, it was like wow. And I'm
telling people and as I'm seeing people that had come back,
(12:57):
they would literally come back the next day. So many
people after that first day going this is a miracle.
And the same thing the guy said, Now I'm feeding
off this passion and I'm just it was like amazing
where that I'd realized I could sell and I could
sell and help people. So this just went and I
sold out that four days sold out. I was and
(13:18):
I'm going, Wow, I can. This is where I'm going
to be. I can support my family in spite of
everybody turning me down. So I started doing home shows
and fairs. They had the Minnesota State Fair recently had
to move us this is two years ago. Last year,
move us from the grandstand because we were so busy
clog in the aisles. This is twelve years later or
whatever whatever it was. You know, I'll backtrack a little.
(13:44):
On January sixteen, two thousand and nine, that's when I
quit everything overnight, you know, crack cocaine and everything. If
you went back, there's a lot of stuff happened in
two thousand and eight, but we were actually it was
lights out. We were making we were labeling the pillows
in our living room, and these guys were taking our company.
They were went a little bit. We had it was
(14:05):
just us in but they they were taking that, and
we were losing our house. We end up getting divorced
that month. Later that month and I said, uh, Karen,
if we ever make it, I'm taking all the debt.
And if I were make it, obviously I'll never stop
taking care, you know, helping you and take care of
you and take care of the kids and but throughout
it all the thread was the company never died. It's
(14:27):
trying to People tried to take it, destroy it from
every angle. And in two thousand and eight, my dealers
they did an intervention on me. I get downtown Minneapolis
and all three of them are in the room. I go,
what are you guys doing it now? I'm in I'm
in a worst part of Minneapolis. In the one guy's apartment,
(14:49):
a second apartment, Joe's second apartment, said you guys know
each other. I'm up for fourteen days or you know.
They said it was nineteen. It's fourteen. And the one
guy says, he goes, he goes, what am I here
for it? And he goes, he goes, well, Mike's been
up nineteen days and we're shutting him off. And the
one guy leaves. He says he ain't get nothing from
any of my people or me, and he was just
discussed and left, and the other and they before he
(15:11):
left though there you know, the one guy says, he goes,
you made a promise to us, because all the time
when I'd be doing drugs and stuff, I would always
promise him this is a platform that's going to help
when I quit. I'm going to come back and help everyone,
you know, get out of this horrific uh, you know,
addiction and everything. And I prophesied that back then I
would be in There were many times I was in
(15:32):
crack houses or bars, whatever, and I would talk about revelation,
which I read about and when I was ever in jail,
you know, every time I was in jail, i'd read
the Bible about the only time I would, you know.
And so I'm telling these guys, well, they would quit
that day the next day, like twenty eight people quit
all through my life. I'm going, well, what did I say?
And they go, I don't know, but it sure made sense. Well,
normally you would think it's a hypocrite. Yeah this is
(15:54):
really bad, give me another line, you know, and they
would they would live. But all that time it was
me trying to convince myself whether it would be Jesus
or whether it would be to get off the drugs.
So anyway, these guys in the middle of this intervention thing,
and I'm going and the one guy kicks the other guy,
Joe out of his own apartment, and he sits there
in a chair next to me, says, how much you
(16:16):
have left and I I don't know enough to probably
last an hour or so. And he sits there, and
now I run out and I'm scraping the pipe. Anybody
that's on crack out there, you're scraping the residue out
of the pipe and re smoking it and trying to
Then you're looking on the ground all over the carpet,
trying to find pieces you maybe dropped over the last
few days. And it's horrific. And then anyway I look
(16:38):
over it, he's asleep. So I head on down to
the streets and you're hearing a remarkable and pretty crazy
story about how Mike Lindelle started his company. And by
the way, so many entrepreneurial stories are a bit crazy.
And here he is mortgaging everything, he's home, his life,
and all for the stream, all for this idea of
(16:59):
a pillow. When he finally gets the product down, he
does what entrepreneurs do. He goes to bed Batham Beyond
to sell doorshut everywhere. He's turning door shut and does
that stop Lindell? No? But what does happen is a
miraculous intervention. One person tells him one transformational experience and
opens up the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show, and Lindell decides,
(17:23):
I'm going to sell this pillow myself, and that opens
up so many more opportunities for what is now a
really great American company employing eleven hundred people manufacturing right here.
Can't make it in the US, he was told, he
said no, can't get patents for a pillow. Michaelendell says no.
But what he can't say no to is crack cocaine.
(17:45):
Imagine this, folks, drug dealer staging an intervention, your own
drug dealers saying enough, we're cutting you off. The story
of Mike Lindell continues here on our American Stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American Stories where Mike Lindell, my
pillows inventor and CEO, has been sharing with us his story.
In two thousand and eight, Lindell's drug dealers staged an intervention.
They came to him and said, you've been awake for
nineteen days. We're shutting you off. After one of the
dealers got kicked out of the apartment, the other fell asleep.
(18:31):
Let's return to Mike Lindell. So I head on down
to the streets. The only white guy they're going you
ain't getting nothing from me. You're not getting nothing from me,
and you're not getting nothing. You know, how do they
know it's me at all? My buddy, just that Joe
that he just he goes, he goes, yeah, he goes,
Mike didn't realize we told him. And off a crazy
white guy comes down with a mustache. You know. So
(18:53):
Joe just told his story the other day. And because
he works for now he's a Christian, he lives in
a works for my company, and he's one of the
one of the dealers. Yeah, and he just told the story.
And so anyway, I get back to the room and
I defeated, and I get in there and he says,
held that work out for you? And I said, I
was so mad, and I you know, it was like
two thirty in the morning, three in the morning, and
(19:14):
he goes, he goes, give me your phone. You're gonna
take this picture. You told us you're going to write
a book. You're gonna need this for your book. And
you you know, you make your promise. You've got to
keep your problem. You ain't gonna be dying on us,
you know. And that was in the March of two
thousand and eight, and in fact, my book is uh,
it's gonna be amazing. It's got that picture and where
I am today, and it says, you know, what are
the odds from crack addict to CEO, That's called one
(19:37):
of the odds. So that so then an interesting thing happened.
A week after that little intervention. I'm sitting all by
myself at this place I was living, and I get
a phone call now from that little public access station
I was on, and that lady was nice Christian as
she would air it and I would get phone calls
that people wanting to buy pillows then, you know, so
it was helping me out. And and well that night,
(20:00):
it's about nine thirty at night and the phone rings
and I answer, and I'm up doing of course, I'm
still up for probably two three days. And she says,
you know the guy I've seen on Channel six And
I said yeah. She says, well, she says, God, God,
I prayed, and God told me to call you and say,
what you're doing is so important to the kingdom. Can
(20:20):
we pray about it? And I said, okay, So we're praying.
About a half hour goes by and she goes, I say,
you know, God bye, and I still ever name even
know by the way, for this, you know, the proof
that this happened. About another hour goes by. Another lady
calls up and this never had happened. Okay, I really
got one call to buy a pillow. And she calls up.
She says, are you the guy seen on channel six
then invented this pillow? And I said yeah. She goes, well,
(20:43):
I haven't bought one. End but she said I was
going to call him and see if it's okay to
pray with you, she said, and what you're doing is
so important to God. And I'm going okay, And so
we pray for about an hour. That was a long one,
and pray and I talked to right nothing. You know,
I'm doing lines of cocaine. I want to so I'm
gonna talk to you anyway, you know. And now three
in the morning, this guy calls up. Same night and
(21:05):
he calls up and he answers and he goes, I
want to get you the guy on TV. And he
was mad and I go yeah, he goes, Let me
get something clear here. I don't believe in God, but
I keep getting this dream that I'm supposed to call
you and tell you what you're doing is important to God,
and he slams the phone down, very upset. Now, about
seven in the morning, the phone rings and I get
(21:26):
on there. I go, you don't want to buy a pillow,
you want to pray, and she goes, how did you know?
And I'm going, it seems to be the thing tonight,
you know, And so we prayed. So that day I'm going, wow,
you know, and I knew that this platform. Then my
sister called me up a week later. She says, you
got to quit standing in front of semis and thinking
that God's going to pick someone else for this. He
chose you for some for a big calling. My sistress
(21:48):
telling me this, and I'm going and I'm thinking to myself, yeah,
I heard that last week, you know. She goes, you'd
have a calling and this, and she said, this window
is going to close and God's gonna choose someone else.
But then I'm kind of thinking, well, if I've chosen
for this, I can surely wait, you know. So I
procrastinated through the year and other things, and you got it.
(22:10):
On January sixteen, two thousand and nine. I sat there
and I'm going, okay, it was just like You're probably
too young to remember, but they used to have black
and white TVs and you turn them off, there'd be
that little tiny dot and you turned it back on
before that dot went out right. And in my mind,
I just knew that if I waited one more day,
(22:34):
someone else would be chosen and this would be And
at the same time, I thought, you know what, this
is going to help so many people, because this is
going to be God's going to show the best comeback
or the best. With God, all things are possible. Ever,
this story, this story is going to be an amazing story.
I actually thought that the day I quit, and so
I said, I prayed. I said, God, I want to
(22:54):
wake up in the morning and free me from all
these addictions. I don't ever want to feel them, you know,
the desire. Free me from the desire. So I overnight,
of course, I did a bunch of drugs. And then
the next day when I went to bed, I woke up.
I go wow. I thought I'd have all this pain
plus this big world on my shoulder, you know. And
(23:16):
what I did then is I go, Okay, God, here
we go. What do I do? Well? My company? I
found out these guys had taken all my shows, and
they had also taken my fabric. And I had to
pay for this fabric. The guy, I know he was
in on it, but I had to pay him for
it and act like I was still his friend. And
I needed thirty thousand dollars by that Friday. Now I
(23:38):
was led to these guys. That were eight of them.
Now they're all in suits, and I'm petrified of talking
to people much less suits. I had very insecurity that
I'm not worthy, I'm not as good as them. And
I walked in and there was a CFO, a CEIO,
a CD d O and all these seeds, and I'm going, okay,
I need thirty thousand dollars. I'll pay you back forty thousand,
(24:01):
and within three months I have nothing. I used to
be a crack cocaine addicant. I am nothing about. The
guy goes I'm telling this whole story. The guy goes
their CFO or something goes, well, when did you quit crack?
And I said last Thursday? And four of them got
up and left the room and shook their head like
as some kind of candid camera joke, and they leave it.
I didn't even blink, I said okay, now there's four
of Yeah, they're all going to put in seventy five hundred.
(24:23):
So they all put in there, they all put it.
They ended up doing it, okay. So in two thousand
and nine. Then I spent two thousand and nine and
ten getting back my company, getting back shows and fairs
and fighting these guys taking my company. One guy even said,
I said, you know this is going to be so big.
I forgive you come back. Three times I asked him,
(24:45):
and he still didn't do it. You know, it's kind
of sad now, I think, you know, I pray for
them all the time, the ones that have done that,
but they but I got through it. And then it
gets to be January second of twenty eleven, and I
had a dream that that I was going to be
in the Minneapolis Tribune. I had had this dream. They
(25:09):
finally they came out and interviewed me, and they didn't
know if they're going to run this thing or not.
And at that time, I'm out in Laughlin, Nevada, and
I'm talking to my uh Rob Laughlin. He's my Don
Laughlin built the tone of Laughlin or whatever in his name,
and he's from Minnesota, and and Rob's standing there and
my phone dinged, and he said, what's that? And I said,
(25:30):
that's an order. I said, someday my phone is gonna
get so a lot I'm gonna have turn it off
from And I know weren't said that, and we heard
did it. It just kept going and I'm looking at
it and it's spinning literally on the internet because it
orders orders, orders, orders, orders, and and he got he
(25:51):
looks sorry, he goes, looks like here it's working or
something like that. He made some comedy talks, real slow
and a real kind of a subtle sarcasm, and he goo,
and I brought Rob. This doesn't happened before. I didn't
think it was real. I mean, it was just well,
what happened was that article did launch in the Minneapolis Tribune.
(26:12):
I did more that day in sales than I had
the whole probably previous six months maybe, And that one
point I took twenty thousand minutes myself on that phone.
It doesn't matter when anybody called, I would try halfway
across Minnesota to get somebody at their pillow by the
guy's birthday. You know, This is the way I was.
Every customer was my only customer and you've been listening
(26:35):
to Michael Lindale's share his story, and what a story
it is, indeed, and for all the Americans out there
listening who've had that kind of transformational faith story and
faith experience, this is not new to you. And for
those who haven't, well, it's got to be at least interesting.
It changes Michae Lindale's life, it changes his nature and
(26:55):
his character. And here he is trying to forgive and
bring back many of the people who had tried to
steal his company from him, because this was the nature
of the transformation. It had freed him from the desire
for that drug and to do something else, to sublimate
that desire someplace more productive, someplace higher. When we return
(27:18):
more with Mike Lindell, the founder and inventor over at
My Pillow here on our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and Mike Lendell's story, and Mike
(27:41):
is the founder, inventor, and man behind the American manufacturing
enterprise My Pillow. Let's pick up where we last left off.
I would try halfway across minutes sorted to get somebody
did their pillow by the guy's birthday, You know this
is the way I was. Every customer was my only customer,
and I was. It was exciting times. I had other
(28:04):
people doing shows then and then but then I said
to myself, I'm gonna I'm going to duplicate that. I'm gonna.
Why can't I make an ad which that's real? People
like what's truth and real? And so I did. I
made an ad with myself holding the pillow, and I
just wrote him Mike Lindell, and I went through all
(28:24):
this and I put God bless and there and that
ad ran and it's called remnant adge and it can
drop any time. Well, we stid the first few and
it was just if you it was just exploit. It
was like ten times when we're paying, I'm going, Wow.
So I'm putting the money back in and people are
calling me from New York because it started to come out.
(28:44):
Now these other papers are going, did you make this ad?
Is this is terrible? Did you write this yourself? We
can do so much better, blah blah blah. And now
it's a number one ad in history. I look it up.
I'll put it up against any ad ever. We've been
in every paper over two three hundred times. In this kind. Well,
what happened then at that moment in time, I had,
you know, I also a parallel railroad track. Because I
(29:06):
didn't have any money. I told my friends and family,
let's let's all pull our money and do this infomercial
dream I had. If nobody's going to take my pillow,
let's bring it right to the people. And I didn't
know that infomercials don't work. It is just to get
in box stores. You don't make money on the front end.
But nobody told me that. It's like it's like I
use it to the thing when they said, and it
(29:27):
was an old Gilligan's Island episode when Gilligan's up flying
and the skipper goes, Gilligan, get down here, you can't fly,
and Gilligan says, I can't and he crashed to the ground.
He was flying just fine until somebody told him he
couldn't do it. Well, nobody told me I couldn't do it.
We couldn't make this impommercial and couldn't make it. You know,
I'm amazing it would be the biggest. In my head,
(29:48):
I'm going this is gonna be the biggest ever. I'm
telling my friends and family, Well, in order to what
I had in my head, I had to get people
believing in me. And one of them was the fabric
company that's in the US here and they're in their
corporate opts in New York. So I had to go
off to New York and tell them I need Craig
because he had to buy great goods which you can't return.
I mean this, you know, and they don't give credit.
(30:10):
He had told me that company had told me one
time and said we don't care. And in fact, this
was their quote. This is back in tooth. We don't
care if you're Donald Trump. Nobody gets credit because it's
a patent in fabric. Right. Well, anyway, he looks over.
I tell him about these, uh you know, my dream
and I said, I'm going to go to a million
dollars a week or two million overnight, and we're gonna
(30:33):
sell this much you know, this much pillows and I've
seen it. And he goes, you really think you can
do that? I go, yeah, I've hundred percent I can
do it. And he turns to his see affo guy
and he says, what do you guys think and he goes,
we have no He goes, we don't have any credit
on him. I go, I have no credit. I already
told you that. Or no, he goes, he already told
you has no credit, he has nothing. He looks back
(30:53):
at me again, he goes, you really think you can
do that? And I go absolutely. He turns and he
goes ordered the Great Goods and now he's it's arguing
with them, and he turns back to me again and
he goes, are you sure? And I go, absolutely, I
couldn't do it. I'll hit that market on and he turns.
He goes, I owned a company, ordered the Great Woods.
So I'm going on, you know, get out of there.
And so he orders this, but I'm I'm mopping my
(31:15):
floors and we're just working on this little tiny office
in this garage and I'm mopping the floors and this
phone rang and uh and it never rings. That phone
never rings, and I but I answered it and it
was you know, this is w ABC in New York.
And I said uh, and I didn't know what when
it was he says, would you like to, you know,
(31:35):
come out advertising? Right? I said, no, we don't do
any advertising. Radio advertising doesn't work or whatever. Because I
was doing this informercial and I hung up. And well,
at that moment in time, this gal walks in and
she says, I said, wow, that phone just rang. There
was some WABC things. She goes, that's the IMAS station,
and I'm going and she she was, um had a thing.
(31:57):
I mean just IMAS was like, you know, and I'm going,
who's miss I don't know who Imus is? And she goes.
She calls him back and she goes, Mike, we can
go out there in New York. I've never been in
New York before. And I go, I don't care to
meet this guy. And I said, radio doesn't work. I've
got this informercial. She goes, She goes, no, it's I
think it's important. So we fly out to New York
and we go to meet I. Now she has sent
(32:18):
pillows to him, right, Well, he never got the pillows.
So I go to meet Imus and his manager at
the guy, his guy at the time, this Jonathan. He says,
now you're only gonna get five minutes with him and
at the most, and I'm going, okay, that's great. I
don't care. And he comes in and I go to
shake handy. I don't, I don't what am I here for?
(32:39):
I don't shake hands. He sits down and I go, okay, um,
you know, I'm about ready to leave. I'm going that's
kind of you know whatever. And he goes. He goes,
what am I here for? And I go, well, didn't
you get the pillows? He goes, what pillows? I don't
know what you're talking about. And I go and now
all of a sudden, I went into action and there
was a decorative pillow on his couch. I said, let's
say this is one of my pillows. I said, I
(33:01):
invented a pillow. And I started telling him a thing.
And I'm standing up in front of him and I'm
telling me I used to be an addict at Craig
from Kane Attica. I mean, I'm just getting into all this.
I'm telling about menting the pillow about like I'm telling
right now. And he looks up and he goes, you're
up and crazy, and Jonathan tries to cut him off,
and I must says, I want to hear some more
(33:22):
from this guy. Well, I talked for fifty minutes. Okay,
now I must ends up getting the pillows, you know,
And he had changed his life. Him and I had
become friends. He's had me on his show numerous times
over the six years. But a phenomenon happened, right there
is that fall of two thy eleven. I knew radio.
(33:42):
You know it worked, and I must carried the ball
his passion, his passion for the pillow and for my
story that I had been an addict, and you know,
he believed in both. And you know, it was a
big amazing thing that because we would we had ran
out of money. We had no money, so that radio
we were living by a threat all the time. Now
(34:03):
in October seven, twenty eleven, I'm living in my sister's
basement and this aired at three in the morning. I'm
not sure what channel, and all of a sudden, this
half hour infomercial comes on and I'm going wow. And
we exploded. We went from five employees to five hundred
and forty days. We were hiring people as fast as
(34:27):
we could. We're working out of a little school house.
They go, Mike, you need to be CEO. I go,
that sounds horrible. Don't they just take money? And then
and then I go, we need an HR department. I go,
that really sounds bad. And someone says, we need a
corporate lawyer, and I'm going, oh, that's you know, I
mean all these things. I just wanted to make pillows,
you know, And we took in millions of dollars over
(34:48):
the next six months. And then all of a sudden,
I wake up one day, I'm being copied on TV
and we're six million in the debt and we don't
use a bang. I didn't know my I just I
didn't know my indirect cost um. I just wanted to
make pills, and people took such advantage of me, and
it was sad. I'm going, Oh God, what I said.
I said, God, I'm gonna work the rest of my
(35:09):
life for nothing. It's over. Basically. Well, then we got
noticed by because we ran more long form infomercial than
anybody in history. And then all these box stores and
the QBC, they all came on. I broke records everywhere
as soon as you know, we got into there. So
it was it did pay off. I look back, I'm going,
(35:29):
I felt, you know, I did a terrible thing by
not doing my due diligence, but by doing even the mistake,
I mean, once again, God protected the company. Then we
get to then the infomercial finally fatigued, and when it
did fatigue. In the summer of fourteen, I thought, you know,
it's over. I mean, it was just scary, weird. We
(35:50):
w within two days of going under during that time,
and I had fell away from God. I didn't. I mean,
I was like, when I took in all that money,
I'm going, oh, this is you know. I kind of
kind of forgot about the platform that he had given
me and everything started to just try up. In the
summer of fourteen, I met Kendra and I noticed something
(36:12):
with her that she had that I didn't have. It
was it was like this relationship with Jesus and she's
telling me things, you know, about myself and that company,
and I'm going, no, you don't understand. We got rid
of these problems. I'm and I'm trying to get it
back now. We had people come back from the past
that we're taking our money. I mean, there was just
a lot of bad things. But we were within two
(36:33):
days literally going under. That was in twenty fourteen, and
she came at the perfect time because I'm I'm I'm
going God, you know, give me another chance. You know.
I was like, that was my prayer, give me another chance.
I won't do it wrong. You know, And but I
seen someone her this relationship with Jesus. It was very
different than you know, and I wanted that. I really
(36:54):
wanted that relationship or whatever she had. February eighteenth, twenty seventeen,
is when Jesus showed up and I had this personal relationship.
Now and now I'm doing speaking all over the country
where I have the same passion for the pillow as
now I have for Jesus. And you're listening to Mike
Lindell share his story, the ups, the downs, the ups
(37:17):
the downs, and multiple occasions where he and his enterprise
flirted with literal bankruptcy. And that is many a story
of many an entrepreneur, that it is not a smooth ride.
And one day you're up and the next day market exigencies, competitors,
and well your own stupidity can get you into trouble
(37:38):
and then you have to reinvent again and again and again,
like we all do in life. The story of Mike Lindell,
his addictions, his contradictions, and in the end, how his
faith saved him. Here on our American Stories
This, says Lee Habbib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
the inventor and CEO of My pillow, is here to
tell the improbable tale of how a small town guy
with a dream somehow made it a reality. Michael Lindell's
story is a raw, authentic account by a man most
(00:32):
people thought would never rise above his addiction fueled failures.
Let's take a listen. I didn't know what I wanted
to be, and it was like that was the thing
to do going to college. I didn't go to class.
I went to class twice, and I was working two jobs,
and my roommate's going, why don't even here for And
I would just go take the tests and still get
(00:52):
seized at not even doing anything. And I just thought
it was a waste of time. And I'm going, it's
a repeat of high school. And that bothered me. I'm
not going to sit here and waste my time. That's
the way I thought. The driver for me was my
fifth three year reunion. Everyone's now is out of the college,
they get these amazing jobs, they've started families. In my mind,
(01:13):
they were way ahead of me. It was bothering me inside,
and then I'm doing stuff to show up and I mean,
you know, I was a card counter. Then I took
a card count in class professional card cound. I'm bragging
it at the reunion about skydiving with a parachute not opening,
and my car accidents and my card counter things that
they've never seen or the mafia coming after me, you know.
(01:34):
So I'm blowing their minds, and so we don't get
on the topic of yeah, how are you doing for work?
You know, what are you doing, Mike? How many kids
got how many know? How's your family? You know, I'm
just completely putting up this wall, you know, for these
other things, and so they're all thinking I'm nuts basically.
Then then I prayed. I said, you know, God, all
I want is say, you know for me the right
(01:55):
woman and have you know kids and the white picket fence,
so to speak. And then God brought that all to
me and hand it to me on a silver platter.
And by then I was a very functioning cocaine addict too,
and they but I lost it all, you know, eventually
lost it all. I had this mask on and probably
from the divorce from childhood when I when when all this,
(02:18):
you know, the divorce happened, and everything I always had
to have, that's when I got a hold of cocaine.
It was so easy everything I did. I had to
be on cocaine to be able to talk to people
and be able to have my confidence because I have
this unworthiness inside of me. That just been quite a
journey to where now. I mean, if you'd have told
me I would be speaking in front of people or
doing a commercial, I would have said, there is no way,
(02:40):
or you know, but when I noticed I could have
the same passion with with the cocaine or without, only
in one spot behind that booth. Once I left that booth,
I mean, it's like walking into another world. I'd walk.
If I'm in and I have to talk to you
and you're the next booth over and we're going to
talk about the weather, it's not happening. I'm climbing up,
I'm avoiding. Hey, yeah, we'll talk to you, or you know,
(03:00):
I didn't know what to say. It was very, very
socially stunted in that respect where where you go back
to my addiction and you're going you get stunted socially
where I probably have the social skills of a twelve
year old as far as you know, which probably isn't
bad today that people say, oh, you just talked about it.
You say what you want. Every part of it I invented,
(03:20):
you know, and it was and it was helping people
where people come up. Then it bought the pillow. Let's
say the day before and come back to the show
and say this changed my life, and just the look
in their face of helping them. The money wasn't money
never But for me, I didn't have money. It didn't matter.
If I had money, I would I had a skill,
I could go out and find get money. And I
(03:42):
never borrowed money. If I borrowed money, I would pay
you back double because I couldn't. I couldn't accept anything
from anybody. If I have another wound where I don't accept,
I'm a giver, but I can't accept, which I've worked on.
That's the way you know I am. And that's a wound.
That's actually it's not a healthy thing either. It's to
be able to accept up is also just as good
as blessing someone you would never see me, you know here.
(04:04):
I was an attic for from nineteen eighty four to
two thousand and nine, and there isn't one person out
there's that I borrowed money for drugs and didn't pay
them back. If you and I weren't doing drugs, I'm
not taking some of your drugs, you're taking mine. You know,
I'm not going to sell you anything. I'm going to
give things to you. And that it was but to
be able to be in that Pillow show and to
(04:24):
g see people coming up and that, I just felt
like this. You know, God gave me the idea for
the pillow in the first place, and it was I'm going, wow,
this would be when I never I wouldn't get depressed
because of that. It was like a constant feed of
people going, this is amazing. This changed. You know. I
had this with my neck and this and I'm getting
sleep now. I knew it was such a divine problem solution,
(04:48):
and it was I could have sat and just help
people forever and never and never got I wasn't thinking like, Okay,
I'm gonna make millions of dollars. My thought was always
I'm gonna help millions of people. There's a difference. What
happened was all my life, I tried every pillow even
when I was sixteen years old, I bought one of
my first paychecks went to buy a pillow. It's in
nineteen seventy seven, so I spent the most expensive pillow
(05:11):
thinking it would be the best. It was a down pillow,
and it was the worst because they you know, I
know now they just sell us air. I mean, I mean,
how can that be. It feels good the down it goes,
but I couldn't return it. That I do remember. They
would not let me return that pillow. But then throughout
my life I'm trying different pillows and people always say,
how ironic you are a cocaine at it? Can you
(05:32):
invented something to sleep, you know? But I always had
problems and U and it with sleep and wake up
in the morning, headache, netcake. But most of these sleep
interruptions are not being able to get to sleep right away.
They used to have old commercials say we spent a
third of our life sleeping. Really we all know that
it's the other two thirds. It effects how you deal
(05:53):
with your family, if you have a day off, if
you're tired, it's no fun. You know, you need to
have quality sleep, and it's so important. So in two
thousand and four. I had a very clear dream of
the name my pillow that just popped in. It was,
you know, a god dream of the my pillow name.
And I put my pillow. I go, that sounds really corny,
you know, But I go, well, where's my pillow? But
(06:16):
my daughter came upstairs and there was She looked and
there were pieces of paper written all over and wash
and Lizzie says, she gets a glass wild. She I
don't know, she's eleven years old maybe, And she said,
what are you doing? Dad? And I go, I'm gonna
met this pillow? And and now I realized I hadn't
even got the you know, what's gonna be made over?
What's gonna do. It's gonna be the best thing ever
I've seen it. And this's gonna be called my pillow.
(06:38):
And she looks at all these pieces of paper, she goes,
that's really random, Dad, And she went back downstairs. And
you've been listening to Mike Lindell, the inventor and the
founder and CEO of my Pillow in my pillow dot com.
And he's talking about how he came to his discovery,
how he came to the founding of his business and
also how so much of his life well it was
(07:00):
dominated by drugs and this early childhood feeling that somehow
he wasn't worthy. And when we come back more of
Mike Lendelle's story, the story of My Pillow, a gigantic
and successful American story, an American manufacturing story. No less
here on our American Stories. Lee Habibi here the host
(07:33):
of our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're
bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from
our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't
do the show without you. Our stories are free to
listen to, but they're not free to make. If you
love what you hear, go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:55):
a lot. Go to our American Stories dot com and
give and we continue with our American Stories. In two
thousand and four, Mike Lindell, my Pillow CEO, had what
(08:16):
he called a god dream, which gave him the idea
for the name of his Pillow invention. He's a eleven
year old daughter, called it random and thought his passion
would be over by morning. Let's return to Mike now.
Over the next week, or saw it, and then it
got to turn it into two weeks three week where
I'm trying different different things. I'm, you know, trying to
(08:37):
think what this pillos I mean. Well, then the kids said,
you know, they said to their mother at the time,
they said, Wednesday, I'm gonna get over this pillow thing,
and he said, oh, it's just a phase, it'll be
it'll be over again. I wasn't at that time. I
wasn't doing anything. I'd sold my little barbed restaurant for
thirteen years. My total focus was on in this pillow now,
and so I ran it completely out of money. Well,
(08:59):
then then I started getting the dreams of what it
needed to be, where this adjustability where you could move
it and it would hold, and the fabric you know,
as I god dreams, just amazing dreams. But I still
had to figure out the material for what I'm getting
in my dream. So we tried over ninety four different
kinds of foams and fills to put it in there.
(09:21):
My one son, Darren, and he was now managing twelve
hundred employees of the manufacturing that's what he does now.
But he's like nine or ten years old, and every
day we get home from school, and we'd try different
kinds of stuff on the deck and the foam would
fly all over the neighborhood. And we tried little machines
to get to work, and finally we get it and
it worked. But I wanted to make it so that
(09:42):
it would last. You know, in my dream it said
it would last ten years. And I've worked with these
engineers in Wisconsin that here's what I had my dream
make this, but it didn't stick together. Then I went
back to I said, no, I want this part, and
that same company, by the way, I have to this
day in Wisconsin where this is patent phill is made
amazing and and people said, oh, Mike, you can't make
(10:04):
a pillow here in the United States. You've got to
make it overseas. I said, no, you're never going to
get a patent on a pillow, and all these naysayers
and I'm going and I fought every single thing to
you know, it was a constant fight. Anyway, I told
my son, I said, I did a piece of paper.
I said, here's what our factory is going to look like. Somebody.
I still have it in my notebook. I said, he
(10:24):
was why, what's this quality? Control. I said, you're gonna
have this. This is very important, I said, And I'm
showing them all these things, and you could take that
and lay it over our factory nowadays. I mean it
was all divine and just so anyway, they once we
had the pillows all made, we had everything. We had
mortgaged our house, everything, and we had no money left.
(10:45):
But we had like three hundred pillows. And I went
into the first pillow. I walked into a it was
a bed bathroom beyond I'll just say the name in
blooming To, Minnesota. I go in there. I said, I
got the best pillow ever. I said, this pillow is
going to change, you know, change. You're gonna sell are
this and anything it helps? This helps you sleep? Blah
blah blah. And where's your buyer? Who's your buy where's
the manager? And he looks at me, he goes, you
(11:06):
need to leave. And I'm going, I just had all
this passion, you know, and I'm going, what do you
mean I need to leave? I said, I want to
talk to you by And I learned right away, and
I started calling on other stores and everybody. It was
the same shout out. My brother in law's brother said, Mike,
why don't you do a kiosk? And I said, what's that?
How do you spell kiosk? And then we did this
kiosk and we did sell about eighty pillows and one
(11:31):
day obviously we lost I don't know, like fifteen thousand
dollars because it's very expensive to have a kiosk on
November in December, and but one guy I was in
there the one day and he came up and he said,
he said he buys. He said, hey, you do you
have a card? And I go, I don't have business cards.
I go, oh, I'm all out. I sit here and
I gave him my number. And in January of that year,
(11:52):
now the kiosk was almost, you know, a complete failure.
Basically borrowed money from my ex booky to buy Christmas
presents at year. And by the way, the reason he
was my ex book he said, if you quit gambling,
I'll borrow your money. I mean, I mean that's you know,
he cared. So this guy called me in January and
he says, are you the guy that invented this pillow?
(12:12):
The one guy had gave my phone number two and
I go yeah, and he goes this Pillow changed my life.
He says, it is a miracle, and he was all
about that, I'm going, okay, and I'm excited hearing his
you know, hearing not worrying about where I am at
that this is I'm going. I was just so happy
for him on the phone that had helped him. And
he goes, I run the Minneapolis Home and Garden show.
(12:34):
Would you like a spot in there? And I go,
and I'm thinking to myself right away, well the kiosk
didn't work, and I'm going, I go, well, maybe there's
more people or something, you know, and I'm going sure.
But what I did is I got behind that booth
you know, where I could sell. And once I got
behind or was whoa, it was like wow. And I'm
telling people and as I'm seeing people that had come back,
(12:57):
they would literally come back the next day. So many
people after that first day going this is a miracle.
And the same thing the guy said, Now I'm feeding
off this passion and I'm just it was like amazing
where that I'd realized I could sell and I could
sell and help people. So this just went and I
sold out that four days sold out. I was and
(13:18):
I'm going, Wow, I can. This is where I'm going
to be. I can support my family in spite of
everybody turning me down. So I started doing home shows
and fairs. They had the Minnesota State Fair recently had
to move us this is two years ago. Last year,
move us from the grandstand because we were so busy
clog in the aisles. This is twelve years later or
whatever whatever it was. You know, I'll backtrack a little.
(13:44):
On January sixteen, two thousand and nine, that's when I
quit everything overnight, you know, crack cocaine and everything. If
you went back, there's a lot of stuff happened in
two thousand and eight, but we were actually it was
lights out. We were making we were labeling the pillows
in our living room, and these guys were taking our company.
They were went a little bit. We had it was
(14:05):
just us in but they they were taking that, and
we were losing our house. We end up getting divorced
that month. Later that month and I said, uh, Karen,
if we ever make it, I'm taking all the debt.
And if I were make it, obviously I'll never stop
taking care, you know, helping you and take care of
you and take care of the kids and but throughout
it all the thread was the company never died. It's
(14:27):
trying to People tried to take it, destroy it from
every angle. And in two thousand and eight, my dealers
they did an intervention on me. I get downtown Minneapolis
and all three of them are in the room. I go,
what are you guys doing it now? I'm in I'm
in a worst part of Minneapolis. In the one guy's apartment,
(14:49):
a second apartment, Joe's second apartment, said you guys know
each other. I'm up for fourteen days or you know.
They said it was nineteen. It's fourteen. And the one
guy says, he goes, he goes, what am I here
for it? And he goes, he goes, well, Mike's been
up nineteen days and we're shutting him off. And the
one guy leaves. He says he ain't get nothing from
any of my people or me, and he was just
discussed and left, and the other and they before he
(15:11):
left though there you know, the one guy says, he goes,
you made a promise to us, because all the time
when I'd be doing drugs and stuff, I would always
promise him this is a platform that's going to help
when I quit. I'm going to come back and help everyone,
you know, get out of this horrific uh, you know,
addiction and everything. And I prophesied that back then I
would be in There were many times I was in
(15:32):
crack houses or bars, whatever, and I would talk about revelation,
which I read about and when I was ever in jail,
you know, every time I was in jail, i'd read
the Bible about the only time I would, you know.
And so I'm telling these guys, well, they would quit
that day the next day, like twenty eight people quit
all through my life. I'm going, well, what did I say?
And they go, I don't know, but it sure made sense. Well,
normally you would think it's a hypocrite. Yeah this is
(15:54):
really bad, give me another line, you know, and they
would they would live. But all that time it was
me trying to convince myself whether it would be Jesus
or whether it would be to get off the drugs.
So anyway, these guys in the middle of this intervention thing,
and I'm going and the one guy kicks the other guy,
Joe out of his own apartment, and he sits there
in a chair next to me, says, how much you
(16:16):
have left and I I don't know enough to probably
last an hour or so. And he sits there, and
now I run out and I'm scraping the pipe. Anybody
that's on crack out there, you're scraping the residue out
of the pipe and re smoking it and trying to
Then you're looking on the ground all over the carpet,
trying to find pieces you maybe dropped over the last
few days. And it's horrific. And then anyway I look
(16:38):
over it, he's asleep. So I head on down to
the streets and you're hearing a remarkable and pretty crazy
story about how Mike Lindelle started his company. And by
the way, so many entrepreneurial stories are a bit crazy.
And here he is mortgaging everything, he's home, his life,
and all for the stream, all for this idea of
(16:59):
a pillow. When he finally gets the product down, he
does what entrepreneurs do. He goes to bed Batham Beyond
to sell doorshut everywhere. He's turning door shut and does
that stop Lindell? No? But what does happen is a
miraculous intervention. One person tells him one transformational experience and
opens up the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show, and Lindell decides,
(17:23):
I'm going to sell this pillow myself, and that opens
up so many more opportunities for what is now a
really great American company employing eleven hundred people manufacturing right here.
Can't make it in the US, he was told, he
said no, can't get patents for a pillow. Michaelendell says no.
But what he can't say no to is crack cocaine.
(17:45):
Imagine this, folks, drug dealer staging an intervention, your own
drug dealers saying enough, we're cutting you off. The story
of Mike Lindell continues here on our American Stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American Stories where Mike Lindell, my
pillows inventor and CEO, has been sharing with us his story.
In two thousand and eight, Lindell's drug dealers staged an intervention.
They came to him and said, you've been awake for
nineteen days. We're shutting you off. After one of the
dealers got kicked out of the apartment, the other fell asleep.
(18:31):
Let's return to Mike Lindell. So I head on down
to the streets. The only white guy they're going you
ain't getting nothing from me. You're not getting nothing from me,
and you're not getting nothing. You know, how do they
know it's me at all? My buddy, just that Joe
that he just he goes, he goes, yeah, he goes,
Mike didn't realize we told him. And off a crazy
white guy comes down with a mustache. You know. So
(18:53):
Joe just told his story the other day. And because
he works for now he's a Christian, he lives in
a works for my company, and he's one of the
one of the dealers. Yeah, and he just told the story.
And so anyway, I get back to the room and
I defeated, and I get in there and he says,
held that work out for you? And I said, I
was so mad, and I you know, it was like
two thirty in the morning, three in the morning, and
(19:14):
he goes, he goes, give me your phone. You're gonna
take this picture. You told us you're going to write
a book. You're gonna need this for your book. And
you you know, you make your promise. You've got to
keep your problem. You ain't gonna be dying on us,
you know. And that was in the March of two
thousand and eight, and in fact, my book is uh,
it's gonna be amazing. It's got that picture and where
I am today, and it says, you know, what are
the odds from crack addict to CEO, That's called one
(19:37):
of the odds. So that so then an interesting thing happened.
A week after that little intervention. I'm sitting all by
myself at this place I was living, and I get
a phone call now from that little public access station
I was on, and that lady was nice Christian as
she would air it and I would get phone calls
that people wanting to buy pillows then, you know, so
it was helping me out. And and well that night,
(20:00):
it's about nine thirty at night and the phone rings
and I answer, and I'm up doing of course, I'm
still up for probably two three days. And she says,
you know the guy I've seen on Channel six And
I said yeah. She says, well, she says, God, God,
I prayed, and God told me to call you and say,
what you're doing is so important to the kingdom. Can
(20:20):
we pray about it? And I said, okay, So we're praying.
About a half hour goes by and she goes, I say,
you know, God bye, and I still ever name even
know by the way, for this, you know, the proof
that this happened. About another hour goes by. Another lady
calls up and this never had happened. Okay, I really
got one call to buy a pillow. And she calls up.
She says, are you the guy seen on channel six
then invented this pillow? And I said yeah. She goes, well,
(20:43):
I haven't bought one. End but she said I was
going to call him and see if it's okay to
pray with you, she said, and what you're doing is
so important to God. And I'm going okay, And so
we pray for about an hour. That was a long one,
and pray and I talked to right nothing. You know,
I'm doing lines of cocaine. I want to so I'm
gonna talk to you anyway, you know. And now three
in the morning, this guy calls up. Same night and
(21:05):
he calls up and he answers and he goes, I
want to get you the guy on TV. And he
was mad and I go yeah, he goes, Let me
get something clear here. I don't believe in God, but
I keep getting this dream that I'm supposed to call
you and tell you what you're doing is important to God,
and he slams the phone down, very upset. Now, about
seven in the morning, the phone rings and I get
(21:26):
on there. I go, you don't want to buy a pillow,
you want to pray, and she goes, how did you know?
And I'm going, it seems to be the thing tonight,
you know, And so we prayed. So that day I'm going, wow,
you know, and I knew that this platform. Then my
sister called me up a week later. She says, you
got to quit standing in front of semis and thinking
that God's going to pick someone else for this. He
chose you for some for a big calling. My sistress
(21:48):
telling me this, and I'm going and I'm thinking to myself, yeah,
I heard that last week, you know. She goes, you'd
have a calling and this, and she said, this window
is going to close and God's gonna choose someone else.
But then I'm kind of thinking, well, if I've chosen
for this, I can surely wait, you know. So I
procrastinated through the year and other things, and you got it.
(22:10):
On January sixteen, two thousand and nine. I sat there
and I'm going, okay, it was just like You're probably
too young to remember, but they used to have black
and white TVs and you turn them off, there'd be
that little tiny dot and you turned it back on
before that dot went out right. And in my mind,
I just knew that if I waited one more day,
(22:34):
someone else would be chosen and this would be And
at the same time, I thought, you know what, this
is going to help so many people, because this is
going to be God's going to show the best comeback
or the best. With God, all things are possible. Ever,
this story, this story is going to be an amazing story.
I actually thought that the day I quit, and so
I said, I prayed. I said, God, I want to
(22:54):
wake up in the morning and free me from all
these addictions. I don't ever want to feel them, you know,
the desire. Free me from the desire. So I overnight,
of course, I did a bunch of drugs. And then
the next day when I went to bed, I woke up.
I go wow. I thought I'd have all this pain
plus this big world on my shoulder, you know. And
(23:16):
what I did then is I go, Okay, God, here
we go. What do I do? Well? My company? I
found out these guys had taken all my shows, and
they had also taken my fabric. And I had to
pay for this fabric. The guy, I know he was
in on it, but I had to pay him for
it and act like I was still his friend. And
I needed thirty thousand dollars by that Friday. Now I
(23:38):
was led to these guys. That were eight of them.
Now they're all in suits, and I'm petrified of talking
to people much less suits. I had very insecurity that
I'm not worthy, I'm not as good as them. And
I walked in and there was a CFO, a CEIO,
a CD d O and all these seeds, and I'm going, okay,
I need thirty thousand dollars. I'll pay you back forty thousand,
(24:01):
and within three months I have nothing. I used to
be a crack cocaine addicant. I am nothing about. The
guy goes I'm telling this whole story. The guy goes
their CFO or something goes, well, when did you quit crack?
And I said last Thursday? And four of them got
up and left the room and shook their head like
as some kind of candid camera joke, and they leave it.
I didn't even blink, I said okay, now there's four
of Yeah, they're all going to put in seventy five hundred.
(24:23):
So they all put in there, they all put it.
They ended up doing it, okay. So in two thousand
and nine. Then I spent two thousand and nine and
ten getting back my company, getting back shows and fairs
and fighting these guys taking my company. One guy even said,
I said, you know this is going to be so big.
I forgive you come back. Three times I asked him,
(24:45):
and he still didn't do it. You know, it's kind
of sad now, I think, you know, I pray for
them all the time, the ones that have done that,
but they but I got through it. And then it
gets to be January second of twenty eleven, and I
had a dream that that I was going to be
in the Minneapolis Tribune. I had had this dream. They
(25:09):
finally they came out and interviewed me, and they didn't
know if they're going to run this thing or not.
And at that time, I'm out in Laughlin, Nevada, and
I'm talking to my uh Rob Laughlin. He's my Don
Laughlin built the tone of Laughlin or whatever in his name,
and he's from Minnesota, and and Rob's standing there and
my phone dinged, and he said, what's that? And I said,
(25:30):
that's an order. I said, someday my phone is gonna
get so a lot I'm gonna have turn it off
from And I know weren't said that, and we heard
did it. It just kept going and I'm looking at
it and it's spinning literally on the internet because it
orders orders, orders, orders, orders, and and he got he
(25:51):
looks sorry, he goes, looks like here it's working or
something like that. He made some comedy talks, real slow
and a real kind of a subtle sarcasm, and he goo,
and I brought Rob. This doesn't happened before. I didn't
think it was real. I mean, it was just well,
what happened was that article did launch in the Minneapolis Tribune.
(26:12):
I did more that day in sales than I had
the whole probably previous six months maybe, And that one
point I took twenty thousand minutes myself on that phone.
It doesn't matter when anybody called, I would try halfway
across Minnesota to get somebody at their pillow by the
guy's birthday. You know, This is the way I was.
Every customer was my only customer and you've been listening
(26:35):
to Michael Lindale's share his story, and what a story
it is, indeed, and for all the Americans out there
listening who've had that kind of transformational faith story and
faith experience, this is not new to you. And for
those who haven't, well, it's got to be at least interesting.
It changes Michae Lindale's life, it changes his nature and
(26:55):
his character. And here he is trying to forgive and
bring back many of the people who had tried to
steal his company from him, because this was the nature
of the transformation. It had freed him from the desire
for that drug and to do something else, to sublimate
that desire someplace more productive, someplace higher. When we return
(27:18):
more with Mike Lindell, the founder and inventor over at
My Pillow here on our American stories, and we continue
with our American stories and Mike Lendell's story, and Mike
(27:41):
is the founder, inventor, and man behind the American manufacturing
enterprise My Pillow. Let's pick up where we last left off.
I would try halfway across minutes sorted to get somebody
did their pillow by the guy's birthday, You know this
is the way I was. Every customer was my only customer,
and I was. It was exciting times. I had other
(28:04):
people doing shows then and then but then I said
to myself, I'm gonna I'm going to duplicate that. I'm gonna.
Why can't I make an ad which that's real? People
like what's truth and real? And so I did. I
made an ad with myself holding the pillow, and I
just wrote him Mike Lindell, and I went through all
(28:24):
this and I put God bless and there and that
ad ran and it's called remnant adge and it can
drop any time. Well, we stid the first few and
it was just if you it was just exploit. It
was like ten times when we're paying, I'm going, Wow.
So I'm putting the money back in and people are
calling me from New York because it started to come out.
(28:44):
Now these other papers are going, did you make this ad?
Is this is terrible? Did you write this yourself? We
can do so much better, blah blah blah. And now
it's a number one ad in history. I look it up.
I'll put it up against any ad ever. We've been
in every paper over two three hundred times. In this kind. Well,
what happened then at that moment in time, I had,
you know, I also a parallel railroad track. Because I
(29:06):
didn't have any money. I told my friends and family,
let's let's all pull our money and do this infomercial
dream I had. If nobody's going to take my pillow,
let's bring it right to the people. And I didn't
know that infomercials don't work. It is just to get
in box stores. You don't make money on the front end.
But nobody told me that. It's like it's like I
use it to the thing when they said, and it
(29:27):
was an old Gilligan's Island episode when Gilligan's up flying
and the skipper goes, Gilligan, get down here, you can't fly,
and Gilligan says, I can't and he crashed to the ground.
He was flying just fine until somebody told him he
couldn't do it. Well, nobody told me I couldn't do it.
We couldn't make this impommercial and couldn't make it. You know,
I'm amazing it would be the biggest. In my head,
(29:48):
I'm going this is gonna be the biggest ever. I'm
telling my friends and family, Well, in order to what
I had in my head, I had to get people
believing in me. And one of them was the fabric
company that's in the US here and they're in their
corporate opts in New York. So I had to go
off to New York and tell them I need Craig
because he had to buy great goods which you can't return.
I mean this, you know, and they don't give credit.
(30:10):
He had told me that company had told me one
time and said we don't care. And in fact, this
was their quote. This is back in tooth. We don't
care if you're Donald Trump. Nobody gets credit because it's
a patent in fabric. Right. Well, anyway, he looks over.
I tell him about these, uh you know, my dream
and I said, I'm going to go to a million
dollars a week or two million overnight, and we're gonna
(30:33):
sell this much you know, this much pillows and I've
seen it. And he goes, you really think you can
do that? I go, yeah, I've hundred percent I can
do it. And he turns to his see affo guy
and he says, what do you guys think and he goes,
we have no He goes, we don't have any credit
on him. I go, I have no credit. I already
told you that. Or no, he goes, he already told
you has no credit, he has nothing. He looks back
(30:53):
at me again, he goes, you really think you can
do that? And I go absolutely. He turns and he
goes ordered the Great Goods and now he's it's arguing
with them, and he turns back to me again and
he goes, are you sure? And I go, absolutely, I
couldn't do it. I'll hit that market on and he turns.
He goes, I owned a company, ordered the Great Woods.
So I'm going on, you know, get out of there.
And so he orders this, but I'm I'm mopping my
(31:15):
floors and we're just working on this little tiny office
in this garage and I'm mopping the floors and this
phone rang and uh and it never rings. That phone
never rings, and I but I answered it and it
was you know, this is w ABC in New York.
And I said uh, and I didn't know what when
it was he says, would you like to, you know,
(31:35):
come out advertising? Right? I said, no, we don't do
any advertising. Radio advertising doesn't work or whatever. Because I
was doing this informercial and I hung up. And well,
at that moment in time, this gal walks in and
she says, I said, wow, that phone just rang. There
was some WABC things. She goes, that's the IMAS station,
and I'm going and she she was, um had a thing.
(31:57):
I mean just IMAS was like, you know, and I'm going,
who's miss I don't know who Imus is? And she goes.
She calls him back and she goes, Mike, we can
go out there in New York. I've never been in
New York before. And I go, I don't care to
meet this guy. And I said, radio doesn't work. I've
got this informercial. She goes, She goes, no, it's I
think it's important. So we fly out to New York
and we go to meet I. Now she has sent
(32:18):
pillows to him, right, Well, he never got the pillows.
So I go to meet Imus and his manager at
the guy, his guy at the time, this Jonathan. He says,
now you're only gonna get five minutes with him and
at the most, and I'm going, okay, that's great. I
don't care. And he comes in and I go to
shake handy. I don't, I don't what am I here for?
(32:39):
I don't shake hands. He sits down and I go, okay, um,
you know, I'm about ready to leave. I'm going that's
kind of you know whatever. And he goes. He goes,
what am I here for? And I go, well, didn't
you get the pillows? He goes, what pillows? I don't
know what you're talking about. And I go and now
all of a sudden, I went into action and there
was a decorative pillow on his couch. I said, let's
say this is one of my pillows. I said, I
(33:01):
invented a pillow. And I started telling him a thing.
And I'm standing up in front of him and I'm
telling me I used to be an addict at Craig
from Kane Attica. I mean, I'm just getting into all this.
I'm telling about menting the pillow about like I'm telling
right now. And he looks up and he goes, you're
up and crazy, and Jonathan tries to cut him off,
and I must says, I want to hear some more
(33:22):
from this guy. Well, I talked for fifty minutes. Okay,
now I must ends up getting the pillows, you know,
And he had changed his life. Him and I had
become friends. He's had me on his show numerous times
over the six years. But a phenomenon happened, right there
is that fall of two thy eleven. I knew radio.
(33:42):
You know it worked, and I must carried the ball
his passion, his passion for the pillow and for my
story that I had been an addict, and you know,
he believed in both. And you know, it was a
big amazing thing that because we would we had ran
out of money. We had no money, so that radio
we were living by a threat all the time. Now
(34:03):
in October seven, twenty eleven, I'm living in my sister's
basement and this aired at three in the morning. I'm
not sure what channel, and all of a sudden, this
half hour infomercial comes on and I'm going wow. And
we exploded. We went from five employees to five hundred
and forty days. We were hiring people as fast as
(34:27):
we could. We're working out of a little school house.
They go, Mike, you need to be CEO. I go,
that sounds horrible. Don't they just take money? And then
and then I go, we need an HR department. I go,
that really sounds bad. And someone says, we need a
corporate lawyer, and I'm going, oh, that's you know, I
mean all these things. I just wanted to make pillows,
you know, And we took in millions of dollars over
(34:48):
the next six months. And then all of a sudden,
I wake up one day, I'm being copied on TV
and we're six million in the debt and we don't
use a bang. I didn't know my I just I
didn't know my indirect cost um. I just wanted to
make pills, and people took such advantage of me, and
it was sad. I'm going, Oh God, what I said.
I said, God, I'm gonna work the rest of my
(35:09):
life for nothing. It's over. Basically. Well, then we got
noticed by because we ran more long form infomercial than
anybody in history. And then all these box stores and
the QBC, they all came on. I broke records everywhere
as soon as you know, we got into there. So
it was it did pay off. I look back, I'm going,
(35:29):
I felt, you know, I did a terrible thing by
not doing my due diligence, but by doing even the mistake,
I mean, once again, God protected the company. Then we
get to then the infomercial finally fatigued, and when it
did fatigue. In the summer of fourteen, I thought, you know,
it's over. I mean, it was just scary, weird. We
(35:50):
w within two days of going under during that time,
and I had fell away from God. I didn't. I mean,
I was like, when I took in all that money,
I'm going, oh, this is you know. I kind of
kind of forgot about the platform that he had given
me and everything started to just try up. In the
summer of fourteen, I met Kendra and I noticed something
(36:12):
with her that she had that I didn't have. It
was it was like this relationship with Jesus and she's
telling me things, you know, about myself and that company,
and I'm going, no, you don't understand. We got rid
of these problems. I'm and I'm trying to get it
back now. We had people come back from the past
that we're taking our money. I mean, there was just
a lot of bad things. But we were within two
(36:33):
days literally going under. That was in twenty fourteen, and
she came at the perfect time because I'm I'm I'm
going God, you know, give me another chance. You know.
I was like, that was my prayer, give me another chance.
I won't do it wrong. You know, And but I
seen someone her this relationship with Jesus. It was very
different than you know, and I wanted that. I really
(36:54):
wanted that relationship or whatever she had. February eighteenth, twenty seventeen,
is when Jesus showed up and I had this personal relationship.
Now and now I'm doing speaking all over the country
where I have the same passion for the pillow as
now I have for Jesus. And you're listening to Mike
Lindell share his story, the ups, the downs, the ups
(37:17):
the downs, and multiple occasions where he and his enterprise
flirted with literal bankruptcy. And that is many a story
of many an entrepreneur, that it is not a smooth ride.
And one day you're up and the next day market exigencies, competitors,
and well your own stupidity can get you into trouble
(37:38):
and then you have to reinvent again and again and again,
like we all do in life. The story of Mike Lindell,
his addictions, his contradictions, and in the end, how his
faith saved him. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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