No Child on the Floor: Luke Mickelson's Mission to End Bedlessness

0:00 Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, if you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today, I am joined by non-profit leader, luke Mickelson. Luke has created a non-profit organization, sleep in Heavenly Peace, where it provides and builds beds for kids. His goal is to make sure that every kid sleeps in the bed comfortably.

0:44 So we're going to be talking to him about his organization, how he founded it, what they're doing and what they're going to be doing. So, luke, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, chris, thanks for having me. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself? My name is Luke Mickelson. I live in Twin Falls, idaho, which is a nice farming community. I've lived here pretty much my whole life. I was raised by a single mom. I'm actually from a smaller town outside of Twin Falls called Kimberly. I don't know if those listeners out there that's from a small town can understand that there's pros and cons to that, mostly pros.

1:25 You know. The beauty of living in small town America is you know you get to know everybody and they get to know you. And the bad side of that is you get to know everybody and they get to know you. So it's one of those things where you know when you have a lot of friends you have a lot of opportunities that otherwise in some of these bigger cities you don't Like. For example, if you knew how to throw a ball with any sort of accuracy or catch, you played sports and so that's who I was. I was a sports guy growing up in my small high school graduation class of only 69 people. So you know, and I tell people that the beauty of that is when you get to know everybody.

2:09 Everybody chips in and helps you know. So I think I get. I grew up with this sense of wanting to help and service my fellow, my fellow peers in my small town, my neighbors, and a lot of that came from my mom, who's my hero. I was raised by a single mom. There's five kids and an older brother, two older sisters and a younger sister, and my older brother he kind of left the house early and so it was me and four women. And so I tell everybody I was the sharpest dressed kid in town. When you're raised by four women, the sharpest dressed kid in town, when you're raised by four women, you get to learn the joys of service and sacrifice.

2:51 But no, that's me in a nutshell. I was a sports guy. I loved to serve through my high school career and then, when I got out of high school, went to college, then served a mission for my church for a couple of years in Texas and I think that's where I really learned the joy of speaking with people and serving strangers. I mean, I remember we'd go out and proselyte, if you will, and my goal was just to get to know someone. Right, I'd see someone mowing their lawn or I remember a guy packing stuff out of his house because he was moving and we just suits and ties, we jumped in and helped them, and that's where I found a lot of my true joy and I and I and I attribute that to my, I think, to my mom, who who really taught me the value of serving others, and so it was it was a great.

3:35 It was a great childhood coming up, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, sound like you definitely had a great time and you're doing great things. And speaking of the great things that you're doing, let's talk about your. How did you decide to get in the nonprofit? It's a great question. I don't know how I got no I, you know, in my in my career as I, as I got home from my mission and home from college, I I started outside sales in a water treatment company. So we sold chemicals for boilers and cooling towers. I mean, it's kind of technical, kind of not. I knew water was wet and that was about it when I started on this job.

4:17 But I'm a quick learn, I think, and I enjoyed talking with people, right, so I felt like I could really connect with people or find common ground and then, when I believed in the product, I was able to share what we did. But I think the best part of the job that I had was when customers would have problems or issues. They had to rely on me and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed showing up and figuring out, solving the problems for these customers. And these weren't small customers. We're talking Microsoft and power plants and food processing plants. There's millions of dollars online if you don't solve this pretty quick and I enjoyed that.

4:58 I enjoyed that service, end of things. Some of the best advice I ever got was from my mission president said you know, if you can, no matter what you do, no matter what job or career you're in, if you can look at your Employment as serving others and not just a paycheck, you'll enjoy it so much more. And he was 100% right. And so I kind of went into the business world, just like I did my mission and just like I did young growing up, you know how can I really serve other people? And I remember, you know I enjoyed my job and I was coaching kids and I was serving in my church. And then 2012 came around and you know, I tell people look, I don't know what a midlife crisis looks like.

5:43 I think I was going through one at the time. I just didn't feel like myself. I felt like there was more that I could offer. I felt like I wanted to leave a mark on this world that was more than just trying to make money and trying to do that kind of stuff. I measured success wrong, I don't know. I just kind of felt down. And again, at the time I served in my church role as what was called a young men's president. So I was over the young men's program, ages 12 to 18. And I was responsible for the spiritual growth as well as the activity of the church and the boys' program, which was basically scouts, and so I was the leader of the leader of the scouts, if you will, and so sometimes I got to play and go and mess around with the kids.

6:36 But mostly I sat in meetings and we discussed like one particular meeting we discussed all the families we were helping in the community and in our church, and there was one particular story that we were talking about a family, a mom who was the local school bus driver and the dad he suffered from some mental health, couldn't hold down a job, and they had a couple of kids. Well, the church was talking about how they were helping them with rent and helping them with food and rides to school, and the kids didn't have any beds and they needed clothes and toys. I said, wait a minute, did did you say the kids don't have any beds? And uh, that really hit me. You know I I don't know why I'm not a stranger to serve.

7:17 You know we took the boy scouts and we would build wheelchair ramps and you know paint bleachers and do blood drives and do all that stuff. But this particular issue, it just really struck me. You know, I had kids of my own 10, 6, and 1 at the time and I don't know. I just felt like man, that's terrible, like we got to figure out what to do here. And so I remember I got really excited when I went home that night from that meeting because my daughter had a bunk bed and I thought here's a great opportunity to take these Boy Scouts, you know, get a Xbox control out of their hands and put a drill in it. We're going to teach them some good skills here. And so I started measuring my daughter's bunk bed and my wife was like what are you doing?

8:00 I said, you know, we're. There's some kids that are sleeping on the floor. If you can believe that, I'm going to take these boy scats, we're going to build them a bunk bed. And I'm not a stranger to a tool, uh, but I'd never built furniture before, so I was a little nervous. But we were, we were going to figure it out. And, uh, you kids. It was interesting. I worried as a leader of kids nowadays and I'm sure everybody out there that has them can relate finding an activity that they feel is worth their time or fun that didn't involve a screen or some sort of video game is difficult nowadays, and so I was a little worried that this wasn't going to fly like I wanted it to.

8:51 But I was surprisingly and happily wrong as I looked at these boys and how they just enjoyed and dove right in helping me build this bunk bed and I know it's because they were thinking about where it was going. You know we're going to take this to a couple of kids that are sleeping on the floor and so when we were all said and done, I actually had to stay back and clean my garage, because that's where we built it, my garage and it was just a mess. Well, the boys and their parents and the leaders went and delivered this bed to this child and the next day Churchley told me what an amazing experience it was and I felt really jealous because I wanted to be a part of that.

9:34 But it was great and it was great to hear the story. It was great to see that the kids were taken care of and the parents were grateful and all this were taken care of and the parents were grateful and all this. And I remember that night sitting on my couch just pondering this last week and how this hole that was being developed in my heart just got filled with this oddly strange satisfaction that I'd never really felt before in my service. And then an Xbox game commercial came online, or at least came on the TV while we were watching TV with my kids and I knew it was Christmas time.

10:17 I knew they were going to ask for this Xbox game. I wasn't going to buy them it. They knew that. But every parent that's got kids around Christmas time knows these kids are just going to ask for things that they know they're not going to get Sure enough. That's what happened, curtis. It just hit me right. It hit me. I'm back in my mundane, which sounds terrible. I didn't have a mundane life, but I was back in this rut that I was in, I'll say, and just had this amazing experience. It was gone. My kids are complaining about the presence. They know I'm not going to get. I just delivered, or built and helped deliver a bed to a child that didn't have one. These guys have been, I don't know. It was just this big emotional storm hit me just right, and I remember there was about two, three inches.

10:59 My feet were off the ground from the couch. You know I was sitting on the couch and I remember that was. I could either sit here and try to teach my kids, tell them what we did, tell them the things they had. Or I could do what I did with my Boy Scouts I could get my butt off the couch, I could get out in the garage we had some leftover wood and I could teach these kids of mine the value of service, the joy of service, and certainly appreciate the things that they have. Like they have their own bed Gosh, dang it. And so I jumped up off the couch and started walking to the garage and everybody's like Dad, where are you going? I said you know what? I'm going to build another bunk bed and you're going to help me.

11:39 And, curtis, we had such a great time. My six-year-old daughter was out there in her tutu, you know, swinging nails and sanders around. My son was hammering boards in place and you know we were listening to. You know butt rock 80s and it was just fun. You know, we just had a great time. And then I was stuck at the end of the week. You know we spent a couple of days on it and, you know, got it all stained up and then I was here. What do I do with this bunk bed? I didn't know child bedlessness was a real thing. I built this for my kids and so as I sat here thinking you know what do I do with this? It was recommended to me why don't you throw this on one of those you know, buy, sell, trade Facebook groups on the marketplace?

12:26 And I thought my first thought was okay, I'm going to put a free bed on the marketplace. I'm going to get every Tom Dick and Harry's going to want a bed, a free bed, and I really wanted to give it to a kid in need, a child that didn't have a bed. This was for a child didn't have a bed, this was for a child. Well, even though we got a lot of those people that wanted a free bed, two things really surprised me that happened. The first thing was we did get a lot of requests of kids that were sleeping in really uncomfortable situations. It shocked me. And the second thing was I had a community of friends, people I didn't know or people I'd known for 20 years I hadn't talked to him for 20 years All of a sudden came out of the woodwork and said Luke man, I want to help.

13:10 That seems really cool and I was like it just warmed my heart that we have those types of people in the community just sitting and waiting for ways to serve and help, and anyways. What really hit me, though, is when we finally found the family, the situation that I wanted. You know, a friend of mine said, hey, I know of a family. They've been homeless. They just got a house, they have nothing. And I said, perfect, that's, that's, this is what I was looking for. So, curtis, I showed up to and it's my Haley story. I showed up to Haley's new home, walked in and she didn't know why we were there. Her and her mom were there and there was nothing in the house. And I'd seen poverty and homelessness and all that before, but I never really looked at it through the eyes of a, of a child, cause that's who we were there to serve was the child and uh it, it blew me away.

14:03 It really, really tore at my heartstrings. And then to realize and to physically see there was nothing in the house. There was a hot plate sitting on a milk carton that had a can of soup on it, that was dinner and that was it, and it was pretty humbling, but little Haley, you couldn't tell, she was just so excited that we were here, that she had a house, she had a bedroom and so she said, you know she's like come, let me show you my bedroom. Just think about that. You know I have a kid so excited to show a complete stranger her bedroom. So we go back in her bedroom and you can imagine what it looked like. I mean, there's holes in the carpet and tears in the walls and you know there's no doors on the closets.

14:44 It was just a kind of a rundown house, but it was. It was theirs, and but what what shocked me the most was in the corner of this room was a pile of clothes. Um, and that's where little Haley slept. She'd come home from from school, she'd take her school clothes off, put, put her pajamas on and then sleep on her clothes and then, of course, in the morning reverse the cycle and go to school. And that really shocked me. That hit me so hard to think for weeks or months or whoever, maybe years, had we not shown up that little Haley would be sleeping in that nest of clothes.

15:25 So we were pretty excited to bring in the bed. And we bring in everything. We bring in mattress sheets, sheet sets, and I don't think the mom realized that. We start bringing in the pieces of bed and putting together, and then we bring the mattress in and I remember the mom going oh, there's mattresses and sheets and pillows too. I said, oh, absolutely, little Haley's going to sleep tonight. When Haley figured out what we were doing, she just erupted. She started hugging us and hugging the bed and kissing the bed, which was crazy. I never saw that before. And if that wasn't enough to just melt your heart, I looked up at Haley's mom and here's a single mom. All I saw was my mom, right, single mom, trying her best to raise her kids with the means that she has, which is, you know, small.

16:12 And I watched each one of her tears just fall off her cheek, knowing exactly what those tears were like. I experienced it myself, you know. I tell people. I remember we had one Christmas where we weren't going to get anything. You know it was five kids, my mom's single, my dad was was gone and we weren't going to get anything. And my mom came back from from getting the mail out of the of the mailbox and she had $1,500 in cash in her hand and someone had just stuffed our, our, uh, mailbox with $1,500. And I just remember. You know what that's going to be me one day to be able to help those in need. That's what I want. Um, and and here, here I was looking at this this mom just just crying tears of joy of, of, but tears of, you know, frustration just being released.

17:01 I don't know. It just really hit me so much that, you know, we had about a half hour drive home and me and my buddy, jordan, um, and my wife, we, we, we didn't really say anything to each other. It was just so overwhelming. And by the time we got home, I remember thinking you know, curtis, I'm a, I'm a Idaho farm kid, right, so I like to hunt and fish and play outside, and college football was my thing on Saturdays or football period, I mean, I just I liked to be active like that and those are the things I just lived for. Well, in a snap of a finger, all those things didn't mean anything to me anymore. To spend a few hours each night that week to solve that problem was well worth my time.

17:48 And by the time we got home, I remember going. You know what? I just looked at my friend. I said, jordan, no kid's gonna sleep on the floor in my town if I have anything to do with it Solve that issue. And he felt the same, you know. So we just started building beds. You know we'd post what we were doing. People would come over strangers. We'd just show up in my garage, we'd start, you know, they'd just chip in, build beds, sand, stain, whatever, and then we'd deliver them. And we delivered 21 beds. That you know, 2012 Christmas before Santa showed up, and it was just the neatest experience. Okay, well, your organization has been featured anywhere from PBS to CNN.

18:31 So you know, kind of tell us about that and how you know that helped get the word out and how did that feel to you guys? bad. Child bedlessness although not a real word, a real problem, really was or really is still. We just knew that there was a few people in our small little community that had kids on the floor. But the more we built and the more we posted and talked to people about it, the more we unraveled and uncovered this epidemic, this silent epidemic that's been plaguing our kids across our country.

19:11 And then the beauty of it was the more people that saw it, the more people wanted to help. And then we started. As, through the years went by, we said you know, we probably ought to make this a nonprofit. We can't finance it ourselves anymore. And we found that there was a lot of organizations, companies that wanted to give back, wanted to have a team building exercise, and when we take raw lumber because this is how we build beds we take raw lumber, we run it through kind of an assembly line of measuring and cutting and you know, put jigs that put holes in the right places and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, by the end of this train we have pieces of a bunk bed or a regular bed and we can build beds super fast you know, 40, 50 in just a couple of hours.

19:59 And so companies would want to donate money to us, but we weren't a nonprofit. So we decided, okay, it's time to be a nonprofit, right? We didn't know what that meant. I mean, we knew what charities were, but we didn't know how to set up a nonprofit, let alone run one. But we decided, we're going to fly this plane as we, we're going to build this plane as we fly it. And that's what we did. We just started going to town. I figured out how to do it, we do it. We figured out how to do a website. I put everything up. My friends came on board and really, really wanted to help my friend Jordan. He wanted to do it up in Boise. So we kind of said, okay, you'll be chapter, the Boise chapter, and this will be the Twin Falls chapter.

20:39 And then other people started saying, oh, you're expanding. Well, we want to do it in our town. You know friends of ours, and some of these friends lived as far as San Diego, california, or Lehigh, utah. And then we had a friend in Minnesota, a guy that we actually wasn't even a friend. We didn't even know who he was. He just felt the urge from God to build beds for kids. He just Googled it, came up with us, called us and says, hey, can you show me how you build your beds? And I said, hey, nate, better, yet why don't you just become a chapter and build beds all the time with us? And we saw a real shift. I don't know if it's a shift is the right word. We saw a real interest that the community had and people that wanted to give, and we quickly realized that child bedlessness is a thing, but so is the communities that we live in are filled with people that just they want to serve.

21:34 They're great people. They just don't know where to serve or how to serve or find some very meaningful service, and we provided that. We provided both the fun activity of building the bed, the fun and spiritual, I call it, or certainly emotionally impactful delivery of a bed, but it brought satisfaction and fulfillment to people's hearts, like it did mine, and so we just started growing. Well, in about 2018, well, it's the end of 2017, a couple of big things happened in my life. We were building beds, quite a bit people getting to know us.

22:15 We started putting on chapters. In fact, we put on five chapters in five different states just in 2017 alone. It just felt like we were going really, really fast and spreading. And all of a sudden, you know, I was employed and full time, I was executive vice president over the company and over sales and was going to buy the business with my brother and you know just, my career was set. But Sleep and Heavenly Peace, the name of our organization was calling a lot of and demanding a lot of my time, and the bigger we got, the more it demanded my time. And I was just left with a decision Do I quit my job and do this full time, which was not paying any money, or do I quit my charity and just get back to work?

23:05 And even though it was a hard decision it really wasn't a hard decision I already knew what I wanted. I felt that need that was just growing inside me. I felt that it was gone Almost like. I felt like the Grinch where your heart just swelled three times, and I didn't want to lose that and I didn't want to sit back, you know, 20 years from now, thinking, oh what? You know, the coulda, shoulda, wouldas. And I knew I knew me enough, I would have done that. And so we decided let's, let's, let's go all in. So I quit my job and right as I quit my job, I had this, what I thought was an internet magazine from New York.

23:47 People wanted to come to Idaho and film me and interview me and talk about this charity. So we're like sure, that's great. Well, what I didn't know was it wasn't an internet magazine, they were hiding it from me. It was actually a show called Returning the Favor, with the host, mike Rowe. Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, great guy, and he would go around the country and he'd highlight these do-gooders. He called them and their charities and then they would gift them something that they needed. Well, we were in dire need of a large warehouse because we were pretty cramped in the small little warehouse that got donated to us by an amazing little couple here in kimberly and, and so when I was getting interviewed and and um, they were, I was talking about the charity, talking about what we do, and and I was showing them a build process.

24:37 We had kind of a little makeshift build going on. All of a sudden I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn around. There's mike row, and I was shocked. My, I said, mike, what are you doing here? Right, it was. It was really neat, right, neat. And they gave us a warehouse that we could operate in rent-free for several years, but the beauty of what happened there was it was a megaphone for our charity it launched. We had 10 million views nationwide. We had 10 million views nationwide and we went from about seven, eight chapters to 125 or 30 in the first year and now we have over 400 chapters that we've trained.

25:18 We're in four countries. We've just surpassed 300,000 beds that we've built just since 2018, and we build about 90,000 beds a year. So we're actually the largest bed building charity in the world, because we have so many amazing people out there in their own communities that have seen the need and have felt the drive and felt the purpose behind this touch their heart enough that they want to start a chapter or be a part of a chapter and help a chapter build beds, and so that's and that, of course, as we, as we grew, and as people recognize that, yeah, that I've been on. I've been a good morning America and Lester Holt. And then I was in 2018, I was nominated as a top 10 scene in hero, which was a extremely big honor.

26:05 I mean, they're all great honors. I was on a Lay's potato chip bag. I even did American Ninja Warrior? How stupid is that? I'm not American Ninja Warrior, but we had fun. We had fun, we had a great time and all in hopes to spread awareness about this epidemic called child bedlessness. And I guarantee you, curtis, there's your listeners, people, a lot of your listeners and, if not, most of them, all of them may have never heard that child bedlessness is a problem and it even exists. And I'm telling you, it represents greater than 3% of the total population. So there's more than 7, 10 million kids in our country right now that are sleeping in really, really bad situations.

26:47 You know 10 million kids. And we are providing a platform that people in their own communities can get involved and help or start a chapter in their communities if there isn't one there. And we teach you, we provide you the tools and the necessary skills to be able to set up an arm of this charity and be successful in executing, raising money, building and delivering beds. Well, if there are parents out there that do need help from Sleeping in Heavenly Peace, can they get it, and if so, how? You bet. So the best way to learn about us is our website.

27:30 Of course, that's the first place I recommend people go to shpbedsorg. You know sleep and heavenly peace. So shpbedsorg and when you go there, we've got to arrange that in a kind of a unique way. So it's it's based on your geography. It'll bring up the closest chapter to you and it might be several hours, maybe even a state away, although we're in almost every state now but what it'll show you that? It'll show you the need that is in that chapter you might see kids a hundred, you might see thousands of kids and bed requests that are needed for just that chapter. But on every web page, every chapter web page, there's ways to participate.

28:14 The first way and the first thing I tell people is just help us raise awareness. Tell people that child bedlessness is a real thing. Tell people that, hey, did you hear about this company, sleep in Heavenly Peace, that provides beds for kids? I live in a town of, right now, about 50,000 people in my surrounding communities, about 50,000 people. We've been here since the start, 2012. There are still organizations that help children that don't know that Sleep in Heavenly Peace exists In my own town, which just blows me away. It just goes to show you that and they have issues, they have needs for beds for kids and instead of going and buying them, all they have to do is go to shpbedsorg and apply for the kids that they're serving and they get a bed.

29:00 And so, by raising awareness, if your audience can raise awareness and let organizations know that this problem exists, raise awareness and let organizations know that this problem exists, I guarantee you those organizations are going to love you, because they're always looking for children's beds, which is one of the top needs that is not being fulfilled for transitioning, homelessness, foster care, adoption and other needs that our communities have. So raising awareness is one. If this pulls at your heartstrings and you want to be a part of this, you can find your local chapter and reach out to them and say, hey, I'd like to participate, I'd like to volunteer.

29:43 They're always looking for core team volunteers, people that could show up every month to either help deliver, help build, help maybe run some of the leadership of the organization In that particular chapter. We're always looking for great volunteers. And then, of course, another way is to donate. You know, we're a 501c3. We're a nonprofit. This is how we finance it. But what I like to say is that one of the more critical and important things about donations you've got to remember I'm a farm kid from Idaho. I've dealt with charities like everybody else and heard great things and then heard horrible things about finances for charities and I said, if we're going to do this, we're going to be as transparent and run as lean as we possibly can.

30:29 And, being a businessman, I'm an entrepreneur. I started and stopped and sold a number of companies and I enjoy it. I know what's needed there and I feel like I know how to run as lean as we possibly can, and so that's what we wanted to do. And so the only way we finance the management of our organization is we pull 10%. So if you donate $100 to your local chapter, we only pull 10%. So 90 cents of your dollar stays locally, because I wanted your dollars, I wanted anybody's dollars, I wanted my dollars to know that I'm saving kids in my own community that live next door, and all the beds and the sheets and pillows and all that that get donated or purchased stays locally, and that's really important to us.

31:15 So when you donate your dollar which is the only way we finance this right 90% of it stays local and it's even greater than that because the local chapter doesn't have to pay for taxes or registration or insurance or anything like that. We pay for that out of the 10% that we pull. So donations are really critical, obviously, but I think it's important we're transparent about what we do with those dollars. And then another way, obviously, is applying for a bed. Applying for either yourself, apply for your neighbor across the street, or maybe you know someone five states over that hasn't applied or can't apply and you want to help them out. You can apply for a child.

31:56 All they need, the only requirement we have, is they're ages 3 to 17. We can place the bed in a home because we won't drop it off. We actually go in the home and we build it so the child can sleep that day, you know, and the mom's there, mom or dad, a legal guardian's there to be able to sign for the kid. That's the only requirements we have. You know. We serve anybody that we can, any child that's in need. Our mission statement is no kid sleeps on the floor in our town and we just want to make our town your town, you know. And then the last thing and this is really special.

32:38 If this really pulls at your heart, if this is really something that you want to do as a listener and you don't have a chapter close by, you can start one. You know, I tell people it's kind of like running your own little business, but you have people that will refuse to let you fail. You know, we have a robust training program on teaching people how to start chapters, how to be not just start, but how to be successful in raising money which is never a problem for us how to raise money, how to build and organize build days and then, of course, schedule deliveries and how we report back and we provide impact reports and all these things that nonprofits do. We have a handle on it.

33:19 We've got training programs that teach people how to do that, and I mean you come to our training sessions. We do a training session once a quarter. We fly everybody to Lehigh Utah and we spend a weekend teaching them how to run the programs that we have and all that. And it's such a neat experience to see these people that are so excited to do what they're excited to help these little humans in their own town find beds. Because, let's be real, curtis, these kids are in these situations not because of their choices they're too young for the most part and even the choices of the adults. Sometimes it's just they had no choice.

34:00 I can't tell you how many moms, especially, threw clothes in a garbage bag, grabbed the kids, threw them in the car and just took off, just trying to escape some situations or house fires or loss of jobs, some situations and and or or house fires or loss of jobs. I mean child bedlessness knows no economics or no circumstances. It's not. It's not an unknown thing to live in a in a fairly wealthy community and see child bedlessness, you know, scattered throughout. And so those are the ways right Raise awareness, help out in your local chapter, of course, donate or start a new chapter of your own.

34:41 There's plenty of ways to help out and I promise you, I've talked to thousands, hundreds of thousands of volunteers that have participated, people that are very philanthropic, people that have served in other capacities, and almost every single one of them say this was the funnest thing and the most fulfilling thing they ever did. You know we have a saying, curtis, it's called the happiest volunteer, is the sweatiest and the dustiest, and that's because, you know, when you take time out of your day, especially a Saturday, right? You take time out of your day to go and help. You really want to feel like you participated, and boy I tell you what. Sleep In Heavenly Peace. When you come to a build day, you walk away knowing you participated.

35:22 You're sore, you're sweaty, you got sawdust everywhere. You know you've been packing around thousands of pieces of wood, but it's nice to know every single one of those pieces of wood that cut, that screw that you put in. Know that piece of board you just sanded that's going to literally and physically be touched by a child that's going to be sleeping on it, who would otherwise be sleeping on the ground. And so it's just such a neat, fulfilling experience well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you and your company are working on that listeners need to be aware of. Absolutely. And there's one particular we just finished, actually just this last weekend.

36:03 Lowe's is. You know, lowe's Home Improvement is our largest sponsor. They have partnered with us for the last well, really since the beginning, but on a very corporate level for the last eight years or so. And we just got done in Charlotte, the downtown Charlotte Convention Center. We just took 5,500 volunteers of theirs and built, had a build day for 24 hours straight. We started at noon and ended at noon the next day. We had shifts that went into. I worked from the 7 to 3 o'clock in the morning shift. It was awesome and we built 5,000 beds in one 24-hour period. It's super fun. Just to kind of put a perspective on that, it was, on an average, a bed every 12.6 seconds.

36:49 So it was super fun. But the beauty of it is we do these small builds all over the country in chapters all the time. And if you want to know what's going on locally, you can look at the Facebook page. Excuse me, look at the website, find out. A lot of them post there or they post on their Facebook page. You can find the local chapter just by typing in sleepandemilypeace-yourabbrevi uh uh, abbreviation for your, for your state, for example, id for idaho and it'll populate your that chapter or you can find them online. It'll. It'll have their chapter links on on their website but if you can find your local chapter, connect with them.

37:31 There are big projects coming up all over the country. We team up with NFL, we team up with a lot of college sports teams but more importantly, it's all on a local level. You know, this problem called child bedlessness, we know is not going to be solved by some guy in Idaho or some big corporation in a big city. This is going to be solved by us common folk, these normal farm kids. You know that. Come together in the community and solve community problems. That's the only way this is going to work. And so to provide a platform or a template for people locally in their own communities to follow and to be successful in providing beds for kids.

38:20 That's where we shine and that's where we want. We don't need recognition. We love it because it spreads the awareness of this problem and how people can solve it. But really, where the rubber meets the road, curtis is locally. People can get involved. And I tell you what I talk about when I give my speeches. I'm a public speaker and so one nugget I share is my TBF framework. It stands for two-by-four framework, but TBF framework stands for transforming, building and flourishing. And what I found, and where that comes from, is we're a community of do-gooders we all are.

39:01 I mean, we might not recognize it. It's hidden and it's buried underneath some of the negativity and the division that's in our country right now. But the gosh honest truth is we're all great people and we all want what's best for especially our youth and our kids, right? I don't know One person's like ah, I hate kids and I don't want them to flourish. No, no, no, of course we do. And when you start working and focusing on helping these kids, I tell you what happens is you're the one that transforms, you're the one that builds character and you're the one that flourishes, especially when you dive in. And guess what? You're the one that builds character and you're the one that flourishes, especially when you dive in. And guess what? You're helping someone. Do that too. I always say true joy is found in serving others, when you stop looking at yourself and start seeing how you can help other people.

39:48 I'm not going to say your problems go away, but I'm going to tell you they just don't seem as heavy. I don't know one person that walked away from delivering a bed to a child. You walk into this room and here's this nine-year-old boy hiding behind his mom because he's got strangers in a room with loud drills and screws and pieces of wood and they're doing something. And then all of a sudden he recognizes oh my gosh, this is a bed. Look here's a mattress, look here's Superman sheets. And this apprehension turns into appreciation, which then turns into love, and these kids then quickly realize there are people in their community they don't know, strangers that they don't know, that love them, that taking time out of their day to help them sleep better.

40:42 These kids that don't have beds, they are behind, they don't sleep so they don't study. They don't study or they don't learn or they're in bad moods and so behavioral issues. They can't even have sleepovers. They're embarrassed to have friends come over. It's a confidence booster. It's a place for kids to go away and hide from their troubles once in a while. I mean these kids don't have blankets sometimes to put over their heads to hide from the monster in the closet. I mean these are real, real things. We can kind of laugh and joke about it, but it's real. It's real to them. I mean, how many times us, as adults, you have a hard day at work? I mean, sometimes all you think about is your bed.

41:22 I just got home from a long trip yesterday my wife and I woke up and I mean she leaned over to me literally just this morning and says I just love my bed, and I know exactly what she means. And when you don't have that, what do you have, like the couch? I mean, I don't know what these kids have, and so that's what we provide. And there's kids right now in this community, in your community, in your listeners' communities, right now tonight they're going to sleep on a hard floor or a really itchy couch, or they're going to sleep with three other people in the same bed, because that's all the family can afford. And you as an individual can be a part of stopping that and solving that and being a part of something bigger.

42:03 It almost fires me up, I almost get angry at it and this is the jock or the competitiveness in me coming out is gosh, dang it. There's a pathway, there is a vision here. You can be a part of it. All you have to do is get off the couch. All you have to do is drop your feet on the floor and get up. Get up with some bold determinants to say you know what? I know I've got I'm working a full-time job, I've got so much stuff, I'm busy, I can't do it. There's all these obstacles, they're always in the way and they'll always be in the way, right, but if you can make some time, that's the effort, that's the reward that the kids get, but that's the transformation that you get and that's the.

42:46 The end of transformation comes from the build process, or the action that we all need to take to help people in our own communities. And that action if this really is something that touches you, that action can be had, it can be done and you can do it. You can be a part of it. You can sign up to do builds. You can sign up to raise awareness and deliver beds to kids and I promise you you do that. Like everybody I've talked to, no one walks away from delivering a bed to a child, going man, that just I could have done something better with my time. I just don't. I just can't see it right when you see little Haley's of the world and you see the nest of clothes that they sleep in, day in and day out on a hard, cold concrete floor, and then you bring them a bed and watch them transform from apprehension to appreciation, from joy, from misery to joy or from fear to love.

43:51 Man, I don't know about you, I know about me, and it changed my heart so much that that's what I do for a living now. Absolutely and definitely. Thank you for your service and all that you're doing to make sure that no kid sleeps on the floor. Ladies and gentlemen, visit shpbedsorg dot com dot org. Shp beds dot org. That way, you can check out everything that Luke has going on. You can set up a chapter, you can apply for somebody, follow, rate, review, share this episode to as many people as possible and get this around and get this stuff going and make sure that no kid sleeps on the floor.

44:38 Follow us on your favorite podcast app. Visit wwwcurveball337.com for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast. Thank you for listening and supporting the show and, luke, thank you for all that you and your company is doing to make the world a better place, and thank you for joining me. Thanks, Curtis. For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit wwwcurveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.