From Crack Addict to Inventor and CEO of “My Pillow”

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Speaker 1: This, says Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. The inventor and CEO of MyPillow 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 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 Cs 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 college. They get these amazing jobs, they’ve started families. In my mind, 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. 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, you 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, you know, for me the right woman and have, you know, kids and the white picket fence, so to speak.” And then God brought that all to me and handed 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 all this, 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,” 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, 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, 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 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. I was an attic for from 1984 to 2009, 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 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, 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 1977, so I spent the most expensive pillow, 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 attic! Can you 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 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 2004, I had a very clear dream of the name MyPillow that just popped in. It was, you know, a God dream of the MyPillow name. And I put, “MyPillow.” I go, “That sounds really corny, you know.” But I go, “Well, where’s my pillow?” But 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 is gonna be called MyPillow. 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 MyPillow and MyPillow.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 dominated by drugs—and this early childhood feeling that somehow he wasn’t worthy. And when we come back, more of Mike Lindell’s story, the story of MyPillow, a gigantic and successful American story, an American manufacturing story. No less, here on Our American Stories.

Lee Habib here, the host 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 OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give, and we continue with Our American Stories.

In 2004, Mike Lindell, MyPillow CEO, had what 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 think what this pillow’s, 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 this pillow now, and so I ran it completely out of money. Well, 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. 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 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 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 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. But we had like three hundred pillows. And I went into the first pillow. I walked into a—it was a Bed Bath & Beyond, I’ll just say the name—in Bloomington, 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 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 shutout. 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 in one 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, 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, 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-bookie, 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?” 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. 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, 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 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. On January 16, 2009, 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 2008, 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 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 trying to—people tried to take it, destroy it from every angle. And in 2008, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 Lindell 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 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 turnin.