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How this entrepreneur went from a crack addict to a self-made multimillionaire, CNBC, 9-20-17

Mike Lindell's story on CNBC.

Mike Lindell on CNBC

You can watch all about Mike Lindell and his story on this CNBC video. You can see what the MyPillow factory really looks like, along with the whole history of Mike Lindell and MyPillow.

Highlights:

  • In the first part of the video, you can see Mike's original foam shredding machine: a hammer mill, which is a farm implement. After that, you can see the current foam shredding machines that Mike invented.
  • Mike has stayed close to his origins - even the MyPillow company is in the town he grew up in: Chaska, MN. It was in Chaska that he started his early entrepreneurial career by cleaning carpets, raising pigs, and a lunch wagon. Later, he even tried his hand at professional card counting. He then got into the bar business in the '80s which, as Mike says, “probably wasn’t very good because I was an addict at the time.”
  • Mike turned to pillows as a business due to the fact that he just couldn't get comfortable with any pillows he had. He was so obsessed about pillows that, in 2004, he had a dream about a pillow called "MyPillow". When he awoke, he started writing that name all over the house. When his daughter asked what he was doing, he told her of the MyPillow idea. She just said "that's random, Dad", and walked away.
  • Years were spent trying to make the perfect pillow, including night upon night of shredding and stuffing foam. Mike even learned to sew so he could sew his prototypes together. At last, he created his "best pillow in the world” and took it to Bed, Bath and Beyond to proudly show it off. They were not impressed, though.
  • So, Mike sold his pillows at a kiosk in a local shopping center. Sales were not great, but one great thing happened: one of the buyers was conncected with the Minneapolis Home and Garden show, and invited Mike to have a booth at the show. Sales from that show were so good that Mike started selling the MyPillow at home, fair and craft shows around the country.
  • During the early years of MyPillow, though, Mike was also abusing cocaine and crack cocaine. In fact, his drug abuse caused him to lose his marriage and his house. In fact, he almost even lost the MyPillow business. His crack cocaine use was so bad that, during a time when he was up almost 14 days, his drug dealers refused to sell drugs to Mike out of fear for his life.
  • Mike finally was able to stop his addictions by appealing to God, asking God to take away the severe addictions he had. Miraculously, he awoke the next morning, January 16, 2009, with the “most peaceful feeling I ever had" and he has been sober ever since.
  • The MyPillow really took off due to another dream Mike had in 2011: to create the first infomercial that Mike has become so famous for. Mike hosted the infomercial with a friend and ad-libbed the whole way through. The success was phenomenal. Before the infomercial, MyPillow only had 5 employees. By the end of the year, there were 500 employees. And now, MyPillow has sold nearly 300 million pillows.
  • And, Mike is cooking up yet more MyPillow products, so the MyPillow business will continue to grow. So check back often!

It is quite a life history, which is very inspiring. In fact, even Mike says that:

“The only way that we were able to do this was Devine intervention.”

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