Don’t miss this CNBC video about Mike Lindell! There are some interesting views of the MyPillow factory as well a great overview of about Mike’s history from crack to the highly success MyPillow company – to the White House!
Highlights:
- The video shows Mike’s original foam-shredding machine: a hammer mill – which was originally a piece of farm equipment! Also shown are the foam shredding machines that Mike designed to take the place of the hammer mill.
- Mike runs MyPillow in Chaska MN, the town he grew up in, where his early entrepreneur years were spent cleaning carpets, raising pigs and running lunch wagons. He was also, occasionally, making money as a professional card counter – until he was thrown out of the casino. In the 80’s, Mike got into the bar business – which, as he says, “probably wasn’t very good because I was an addict at the time.”
- Mike always had a hard time sleeping and disliked all the pillows he tried. Then, in 2004, he dreamed of a pillow which would hold its shape. After the dream, he wrote “MyPillow” everywhere in the house. When he told his daughter that he had this idea of a pillow called “MyPillow”, she simply said, “that’s random, Dad”.
- Mike spent months cutting up pieces of foam to create a pillow that would hold its form – he even learned to sew the pillows himself. After inventing the pillow, he went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and showed them his “best pillow in the world”. But, they were not impressed.
- Mike then did a kiosk in a local shopping center. One of the customers turned out to be connected to the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show and he invited Mike to debut the MyPillow at the show, and sales took off.
- Mike used to be a crack cocaine addict during the early years of MyPillow and lost his marriage, his house and almost his business due to his addictions. In fact, even his dealers put out the word that no one should sell drugs to Mike after Mike had been up for almost 2 weeks straight. Mike finally hit bottom January 16, 2009, and asked God to let him wake up in the morning and never have the desire again. When he woke up the next day he had the “most peaceful feeling I ever had.” His addictions were totally gone.
- In 2011, Mike had another dream: make an infomercial. Mike starred in the infomercial and ad-libbed the whole commercial himself. Due to the infomercial, MyPillow went from 5 employees to 500 by the end of that year. Now, MyPillow has sold over 30 million pillows.
- Mike met Donald Trump in 2016 and quickly became a fan. After that meeting, Mike’s reaction to Trump was that “this guy is going to be the most amazing president in history” based on all the jobs Trump wanted to bring back and his concern about the inner cities. Mike then went to the White House last July for a Made-in-America roundtable and sat right next to President Trump.
- Mike is publishing an autobiography and hopes to turn his story into a movie with the help of actor Steve Baldwin. Mike is also focusing on his foundation, the Lindell Foundation, to help the less fortunate.
A lot has happened in Mike’s life – and is continuing to happen. And, Mike’s reaction to his life is that “The only way that we were able to do this was Divine intervention.”