In 2012 Luke was inspired to build and donate a bed after learning about a 6-year-old girl in his community who slept on the floor. Realizing how widespread the need was, Luke founded Sleep in Heavenly Peace (SHP), a volunteer-driven nonprofit whose 285 chapters have built around 140,000 beds for kids without them. But there’s many more areas that need chapters and there’s many more kids without beds.
I got home and I just I looked at you and I said, you know what, no kid? And I was it was a mixed young a football field where you're just you're in between emotional, You're like pissed off, but you're you're happy at the same time. Right, you know, we're gonna we're gonna score that touchdown. I don't care who's in my way. We're gonna And.
I just looked down the CID adrenaline just pumping.
Pump, and I just said, almost, Matt, I said, there's no kid that's going to sleep on the floor in my town if I have anything to do with it.
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part unintentionally led to an oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people and nice suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather buying army of normal folks, us just you and me, deciding, Hey, I can help. That's what Luke Michelson, the voice we just heard, has done. Luke is the founder of Sleep and Heavenly Peace, whose two hundred and eighty five chapters have built over one hundred and thirty eight thousand beds for kids who don't have one. They're the largest bed building charity in the world. And it all started from Luke learning about one girl in this town who didn't have a bed. I can't wait for you to meet Luke. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, Luke Michelson, how are you man?
Good Sarah, how are you welcome to Memphis? Thanks man, Nice to meet you.
By the way, nice to meet you too. So you missed your first flo.
Oh man, You know, you wake up all excited and things can turn on a dime. We were driving home visiting some friends out here in North Carolina and we hit this pothole so hard that I'm surprised you didn't blow a tire. But you know, we made it home and everything was fine, and it sat for a day until this morning. Oh yeah, of course. Right when you get in the car, you drive in, then the arms go off, and it was terrible.
Well, I appreciate you scrambling around and making it. I thought, since you recently moved from Idaho to Charlotte, you just didn't know where the airport was.
Yeah, well there's some truth to that. We we typed the old search into the into the Google search, and it took us to like this. Granted, we're already late, so we're hauling, but to try to get to the airport on time, knowing we had a park, we had to get a shuttle all this stuff. First time we've flown out of Charlotte with our own vehicle, right, it took us to like the service area all totally on the opposite end of the airport. So we had a spin around.
And so you're saying, the Charlotte airport's a little bigger than Idaho falls a little bit little little. Well, but welcome to our podcast. I cannot wait to tell people about Sleeping Heavenly Peace. But before we do that, as you know, this is an army of normal folks, and we talk to normal folks that do normal things in their life and then somehow trip around and find something extraordinary. And that is certainly your story. But first, who are you where do you come from.
Man, Well, I tell everybody, look, I'm just a small farm kid from Idaho, and that couldn't be more true. You know, Idaho Falls is that Twin Falls Falls, and actually was a small town out of Twin called Kimberly. If anybody knows where that's at, then you know Idaho.
But it's kind of like one of those he Haw salute towns. Population and forty.
Five, not that little, but population three thousand, so it's definitely a salute. Yeah. Oh well there's trust me. There was like three bars and one stop sign. If that tells you anything, I got it.
But you know it was it was great.
It was a small like any small town, right, you know, you knew everybody, which is pros and cons. But growing up there was great.
You know. I was raised by a single.
Mom, you know, so uh so when my parents divorced, I was freshman and he kind of stayed by. You know, he wasn't much in our in the kids' lives at the time. He was a nice guy. You know, my dad meant a lot. He meant he meant well, let's put it that way. You know, just one of those guys that struggled internally with some depression and things that nature. But it was a testament to my mom. She was one of those gals that, you know, I'll put her up against anybody, real tough woman, and she grew up on a farm. She actually raced quarter horses back in grace. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you don't mess with her.
She's we do. I do.
So I've got an older brother, two older sisters, and a younger sister and my older brother. There's five of you, correct, yeah, and she had had all us, yep, raised us all pretty much on her own. My older brother was a little out of the picture, so it was me and my three sisters and my mom.
So what'd your mom do for a living?
Funny? She so she picked up jobs left and right, but her main income was she was a secretary at the school, which was really funny because when I went to elementary, she was, of course the principal of the elementary's secretary. Then I went to middle school. You could imagine she got a promotion to the middle school secretary. Then I went to high school and she was the superintendent secretary, which the office was in the high school. So I was never able to ditch a day because she just had to ask her. I was and I was there.
How does a mom on a secretary's income raise four or five kids?
Yeah, it's tough, you know. Luckily we had a lot of great friends. I mean I remember Christmas one time my mom went out to get the mail, and of course there was fifteen hundred dollars in cash just.
In an envelope.
We knew where it came from, you know, the family that helped us some. But that's how we got along, you know. And there was many times my mom worked multiple jobs and us kids had a help. I mean I remember after basketball games or a football game, we get home, it'd be, you know, nine o'clock at night, and what'd you do? You packed up and you went over and you cleaned Russet Valley potatoes. It was just an office wee cleaned every night.
You know. Did you ever wonder if you're going to get a meal?
You know? There was sometimes my mom hit it very well. I remember one time we got kind of an argument, you know, mean teenage kid and his mom, of course, right, and I remember I just I wanted to go to this this quarterback football camp so bad. I just wanted to go cost much.
It costs too much.
And I remember she said, she kind of went off crying, and she came back and she says, this is my last one hundred dollars bill. You go to your camp. Just I mean, I broke down and I said, there's right. Then I learned a lesson, right, I learned, you know, it's a little bit of humility, and I learned the value of what a mom would do for her son. And of course I didn't go right.
You know.
In fact, I think I went out in mode law to pay her one hundred dollars. You know, I just it was it was a good education for me to work with, you know, very little.
She grew up an apartment or a house.
We grew up in a house. Yeah. My parents divorced when I was thirteen, So I think part of that she kept the house, which is a big blessing for us.
You know, did you share rooms?
I did for a little while, and then it was a brother, Yeah, with a brother. And then I had a cousin come live with us for a while.
And of course your mom's broke, so let's bring in somebody.
Oh yeah, you know that's normally how it work. Yeah, but you know, yeah, it was.
It was a great home. It was everybody's sleep in a bed.
Everybody slept in a bed in your house, in our house.
Yeah, but it's interesting. But my father left home when I was four, and I didn't have any siblings. But I know very well what it's like to look at your mom's struggle. And you know, I bet you share. This is that I really didn't know we were broke. Yeah, I just this is I'll look back looking back on it now, I know we were broken. I'm struggling for every week's paycheck and every meal, but she kept it on the table. And you know, we grew up in apartments. But I know what it's like that you you know, you have a paper out, you pick up jobs. I used to watch cars, whatever I could do to hustle up a little bit of extra money because I didn't want to ask my mother for anything because I felt guilty about it. So Luke went on to serve a Mormon mission in Texas. For two years, he worked at his stepdad's water treatment company and rose to become head of sales and marketing. He got married, he had three kids. He seemed to be living the American dream.
But you know, I think you just hit a point in life where you're like, okay, you know you reflect. That was about thirty four to thirty five, and I think we all kind of sit there and reflect. Some people call it midlife crisis. Maybe that's what it was. But I I remember just thinking, you know, who am I?
What is this like about?
Well? I was. I was a normal more happy in some respects. Yes, I had just started what I call my faith crisis at that point, which is probably the biggest turning point. But it was a combination of many things. You know, my job. I had come out of a sales position in the field working with people. Now I worked, I worked for my salesman at this time, but I just didn't have the same savvy of what I enjoyed being out in the field.
You know.
It was a different challenge, and I think I was very successful. Grew the company, almost doubled in sales in a couple of years, and so I felt I was successful at it. But it just wasn't my cup of tea fulfilled.
I wasn't.
I wasn't and then you throw a huge faith crisis on it. You know, I was elder well, I was LDS Mormon my whole life. I mean, serve my mission and all this, and and once you pretty involved, very involved. Yeah. In fact, at the time I started SHP, I was what was called the Young Men's President, so I was over the Young Men's program ages twelve to about seventeen.
Eighteen, twelve to seventeen is young man? Yeah, young men it should be an idiot boy program. Well just sing as a twelve to seventeen year old young.
It's boy Scouts, so that I'll tell you how Yeah.
Yeah, young Idiot's program. Oh yeah, I hear it, young Jack program for the LDS chapter. Absolutely, So you're you're really involved. You're like and you're doing the Boy Scouts thing, correct, Yes, And I do know this LDS is real involved in the Boy Scouts. Used to be used to do so much. Oh no, since years ago, four years they started changing some of that. We're not going to get into that on this show. What we might, I mean, it could be interesting, we could all talk about the changes in the Boy Scouts. But at one time, I do remember that LDS was really involved in scouting. So that's what you were doing. You were kind of mentoring adolescent boys. I call them jack as you call them young men. And they were all through the Scout program, and you were their youth director.
Correct. Yeah, I wasn't the Scout master. I was venture what they call it venture leader if you're familiar with the Scouts. But I was over the boy Scout leaders, right.
Well.
A part of that position, if you will, is we'd have auxiliary meetings with other authorities in that particular congregation, and we talk about various things, some of which were people in either in the congregation or just in the community that the church was either helping with other things or needed help. And there was a family. There was a family where the lady, she was the local school bus driver, you know, for the elementary. Everybody knew her made no money, may of course not. And what you didn't know was that father was suffering from some mental health, right, couldn't hold a job for anything. They lived in this really run down in fact from Kimberly. I didn't even know where it was. That's how rundown and hidden it was us And they in Kimberly next to Twin Falls.
I keep calling out of them. But the point is, if this person lives in somewhere so run down that you don't even know where it is in a town of three thousand. Yep, that's really it's pretty down.
Yeah, and you know, give her every kudos she deserves, you know, working as best she can. And I believe they had three kids at the time. But in this auxiliary meeting, they were talking about this family and how they were helping with the rent and all this stuff, and it came up that they the kids didn't have any beds. And I mean, like maybe some of you listening, might you know, kind of cock your head back going what you know, every child has a bed and or at least a mattress of some sorts, right, So you know, I kind of perked up, and they said, well, tell me a little bit more about that. Well, you know, they just kids, aren't They're just sleeping on the floor. And it my first thought was like, you got to be kidding meeting, No one can get these kids some beds. How ridiculous is that? And I said, tell you atleast a mattress or yeah, at least a mattress. Yeah, yeah, something, you know, I said, the boys and I'll take care of that.
And seeing your boy group correct my Boy Scout Group, presidente of the Jack Club's Gout, and now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first, we're now offering premium memberships for the Army of Normal Folks. For ten bucks a month. You receive special benefits such as being invited to a private yearly call with other premium members and me access to monthly Ask Me Anything episodes, and occasional bonus audio. If you're interested in this, I hope you go to normal Folks dot us and click on premium. But guys, that's really not what it's about. You get all that cool stuff, and we're going to provide all that stuff. But the truth is we're trying to grow the Army of Normal Folks and have a greater impact on the country, and with the premium memberships, we can fuel our marketing efforts to growth. This podcast speaked at number ten on Apple's podcast chart and all of the US, which is absolutely crazy, and it's not about me, It's about the guests, and it's about you. So we've decided to set an exciting new goal of trying to be on Apple's Top Shows chart for our entire first year, which will mean more at tension, more listeners, more army members, and most importantly, more impact. But we need you as always, so go to normal folks dot us and click on premium if you're down to help. If not, just keep listening. We'll be right back.
So we met, and as Scout positions go or Scout meetings go, you know, you want the boys to plan this stuff, right, that's because you're preparing them to.
Be adult exactly.
So you kind of lead them to water here. And they had some great ideas. They were like, hey, let's you know, can we let's go buy a bed that was the simplest one, or let's go find one. I think my cousin's got.
One, funny, yeah, you know, and.
All good stuff, oh, all great stuff, you know. And I don't know. Build. The thought came to me, you know, and I just got done building this in my third bay of my garage. I just got done building my wife at the Times hair salon, right, she was a hairdresser. So I built. It was the biggest project I've ever done, and I had a lot of help on it, but it was fun and I enjoyed it. So I kind of have this building mindset, right, I don't know, the thought came into me and says, you know, here's a great opportunity to take these akage actors, you know, and they were great boys.
By the Yeah, my sons are great. Yeah, but they're still jack at that age. Every I was for sure, and I know you were, Oh yeah, look at your mud head itself. I know you were playing football, and so anyway, go ahead.
I thought, here's a great opportunity to get an Xbox controller out of these boys's hands, because that's all they talked about, and build a bed and go build something.
But we don't even have a template for We got what, no idea, no hammers, our girls, nails, screws.
Yeah, and my daughter had a bunk bed and I just remember sitting in that meeting going it'd be fun to build a bed. I think I can do that. And so when I got home from that meeting that night, I mean I went straight to my daughter's room with the tape measuring path and started measuring this thing as you know, oh yeah, yeah, and our design is very similar to that bed as it stands.
For we go to that, which we're definitely dipping into that because that's really the crux of the story. You said something earlier that I'm trying to connect the dots on we're in the middle of all this year having a faith crisis because frankly, you're seeing dialed in.
Great question. You know, I don't. I'll only speak from my experience in my faith crisis. But you know it's quite quite embarrassing.
Really, you know here you I want to embarrass you, but it's important that people understand that we all have crisises, but it doesn't prohibit us from being successful in our endeavors.
No, and what I mean by embarrassing, I'm not embarrassed.
At all by it.
But when here I was this aka spiritual leader for these boys, President el Capitan, Right, uh, mission guy, mission guy, Raise your whole life, raised my whole life. I served in what they called elders corn presidencies.
All the boxes. Correct.
You know, I'm supposed to be dialed in. I'm supposed to be this guy that that comes to these boys, or these boys can come to me with a testimony strong enough to build their own. You know, Bill, I don't think I've ever shared much of this, but I felt really inadequate, and I think for the first time of my life, I really paused and decided, you know what, I'm going to stop putting stuff on the shelf. I'm going to stop kidding around here, maybe even kidding myself, and really face these questions I have, you know, maybe even as simple as who is who is God?
Right?
I decided to lack of a better term, really man up and be completely honest with myself. And when I did that, I realized, yeah, I don't really know what I thought I knew, which really dove me into a lot of personal in internal reflection spiritually of what did I know, what did I believe?
What was important? Right?
And all this was going on, we had this service project where we built this bed with these with these boy scouts. It was such a great experience, you know, I was I was my gap in my heart with this service pretch because I love service, and what better we had to service a kid? I mean it was great. And even here's a twelve year old kid. A bunch of we had deacons at the time or boy scouts building building beds. They couldn't get enough. And I thought, man, you know how hard it is to keep the attention span of a twelve year old kid?
No kidd servicing, you know, especially without something electronic and a screening.
No kidding, And it just shocked me. And I'd like to think is because they knew what it was going to and I think it was a lot of that. But the activity was fun too, you know, we just had fun. And then after long story, short after it was delivery. I didn't go on the delivery. The boys and their parents went, but I heard the amazing stories of how the boy they shared it in church the next day, of how fun it was, and you know, some were crying. And here I come home after church and I'm sitting on the couch and I'm going through this faith crisis, this work insufficiency, this hole that's being developed, and my kids are talking about all these presents. They know I'm not going to get them.
I'm not going to get you another Xbox.
We're not going to get that amazing control. I mean, I hear all this stuff was coming in and I had just experienced this amazing, you know, service project, and I just experienced these boys who forgot about Halo and forgot about their Xbox and focused in on something new.
I want that for my kids, and found out how fun selflessness can be exactly.
I wanted my kids to learn the joy of service and the appreciation what they had.
So let me just get this right. Okay, you're thirty seven, thirty five at this time, You've got a good paying job where you're working and doing what you're doing, and you're raising your children, you're involved in your place of worship, and somehow you are unfulfilled at work and trying to figure out halfway through life what you really think about the world and life and your place in it. And honestly you're struggling a little bit. Yeah, well you know what that makes you probably human that it's exactly what it makes you bro makes you normal? Yeah, I mean, I think there's no I believe, despite really pretty facades that we all put on, we all question in some level where we've come from, what we believe, if this step was right, if that stuff was wrong. We all have conflict in our lives. We all have sadness and joy and triumph and defeat and everything else. But it is weird when you get to be a certain age and it happened for me really around forty, is you kind of you know if at fifty and I figure if I'm lucky being the fat redd ud of a guy that I am, and the hard life I've lived. If I make it to eighty, I'm gonna do pretty well win. Yeah, which means I'm sixty four and a half percent dead. And it's just true. It's just true. And so at thirty five, you're somewhere between forty and fifty percent dead. And I think it's only natural to look at your life and start wondering about what your where you are, what your thought processes are. And so this is an army of normal folks. All of what we talked about has done nothing but established that you're just a normal dude, fighting normal insecurities and everything else, trying to do the right thing, trying to make a living, trying to provide for your family. And then oddly you find this level of happiness building a bed, yeah, I mean how cool is that? Right? Oh? And watching a bunch of young deacons or whatever you called them, Yeah, putting down consoles and helping building that and learning what selflessness well, and uh.
Don't get me wrong, there was some there was some selfishness about it too. You know, when people volunteer, there's always a little bit of selfishness behind it, and of course there is you know, uh for me. You know, here I was plagued with the thought that I'm being led down the Satan's path because I was losing my testimony about my faith and all this, you know, and and I just kept thinking, if that's true, then a does a guy being led down that path really have this much desire to help a child? And it it really dawned on me, I guess Bill. I took that moment and said, you know what, I really, honestly, for the first time in my life, I'm gonna be honest with this myself. I don't care what religion you or I or whoever is, I don't care. Great if that brings you happiness and joy, awesome, I don't. I couldn't tell you whether it's right or wrong. I'm not going to guess whether it's right or wrong. But what I do know for a fact, without whatever whatever deity you believe, in, helping a child get a bed is just the right thing to do.
That's beautiful. And I'm gonna I'm gonna share two things with you. One, this is not a theological podcast. And you know, I guess after this we might as well talk about politics, but not in Texas. But not Texas. We're closed to Texas. But you know, some would say that when you do a bunch of good deeds, it provides favor for your salvation. And I would say, if that's true, how does a stillborn child ever make it down? And if it's not for grace, there is no chance. And so it's not what we do to earn favor. It's that we do things and appreciation of favor of grace. And the flip side of that is how good it feels when you can share that grace with another human being, and that leads to that leads to all kinds of conflict resolution in my opinion, and what I mean by that is personal conflict resolution, because I agree with you, the things that I've done for other people in my life have been far warmer soup for my soul than the things that I've received in this life. And I think that's the beauty of an army at normal folks. Is normal folks struggling to just do life, and then they find something to do for somewhere one else, and the payoff is they get fifty times more out of it than they put into it, and it sounds like that's your experience.
Well, and I also learn at least my view, and I appreciate you're exactly right.
I love that.
I looked at what I was doing. Is you know what too many of us, I think, let's just call a spade of spade. You go to church, you're seeing the hymns, you read your scriptures. You know you're doing these things because you're told that's the right thing to do. Whether it is or not, great, I don't care, but that doesn't really help anybody in this world right now. And I just felt like, you know what, I appreciate that all those things may be in the favor of the Lord and make you know whatever is going to happen in this life after this life builds a mansion in heaven for me. Okay, that's great. But what I do know is there's a child in this world right now that needs my help. Right I can pray, I can read my scriptures, I can be as righteous as I want, but if I don't lift a finger, then that poor kid is going to suffer.
Yeah, it almost seems like it's a little hypocritical to set and that one of the knows that actually Alex sitting over here on the controls. One of the reasons he and I even are hanging out together doing this thing is I said in an interview that there's overpasses in every major city that when you drive over it, you look down there and you see the abject helplessness and loss and despair and hopelessness and poverty, and when you drive over it, it's you know, it's not overpass. You don't want to flat tyre on right, And when you look over it, you think, gosh, somebody had to do something about that, and then you keep driving as if that empty sentiment actually matters. The thing you should be saying is gosh, what can I do about that? And your points, while taken, is that there's all kinds of things in your faith that are good for you your soul and good for other souls. But faith without action is just hypocrisy. Man.
You know, my mom used to say, great, say, I'm sure it's not just hers, but she said, you know, good intentions are as a paved way to hell, And I never really understood that until that exact thing. You know, we can have all the great intentions in the work, but if you don't lift a finger, what really good are they?
So you delivered your first bed to the bus driving ladies family who lived in a house in a town of three thousand that was in such a bad place nobody even knew where it was correct, And you saw the excitement in your young jacket group's eye over what they did, and you did even get to go deliver it. But you heard the stories and you thought, nobody in my town is going to sleep on the floor.
Well, what exactly what really happened? There was sitting in that couch after I heard those kids talk and you know, again a culmination of work and faith and all this stuff, and just feeling down and I could feel myself just kind of going down this dark hole again like I had been. And and here this whole week I just built this bed with these kids. I was just on the fired up. And then that could just feel me sink, you know. And then when my kids said that, when they said, Dad, you know, hey, we want another Xbox, something clicked.
Bill.
I just went, I gotta get my part of my French off this couch and get my kids out in the garage and we're gonna build another bed. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know anybody that needs it, right, And so I got up the couch.
Build bed building therapy.
Serious, seriously, yeah, And we went out and I had some extra would right, So we built. We built another bed with my kids.
You know.
I got pictures of my nine year old son and my six year old daughter and my my one year old walking around of drilling. I mean, it was just a great time with my kids. It was great times. Yeah, I was great. But then we were done. I had this bed, this bunk be I had no idea what to do with it, and so I was someone recommended, you know, why don't you just put it on Facebook? And I said, are you kidding me? Like, the only thing I put on Facebook or pictures of my sturgeon that I catch, that's it.
That's it. Yeah.
And so I said, okay, we'll put on one of these bicelling trade groups, you know. And really the message was, hey, my family and I built this bed as a Christmas project. We want to give it to another child or family has children sleeping on the floor? Does anybody know? And I had no idea what kind of response I would get. I figured there'd be a lot of well free bed Oh yeah, hand up, I'll take it. Although we got some of that, I was shocked of how many people contacted me and said, what are you doing? How can I help? Can I bring some pills? So? Can I bring some food? Can I bring some presents? It was kind of a really neat thing. It really fired me up for it. And it wasn't until one of my actually I served my mission. She was in my mission. Another sister missionary a long time ago obviously called me up. She says, hey, I've got the perfect family for you.
We'll be right back.
She told me about it, called my Haley story. Haley or Mom were homeless and it had been living in a car. Haley had never known a bed. She had slept in the back.
Seat of homes car. She was six six years old, six years old and had never known a bed and was sleeping in a car. Correct. And this is in Twin Falls, Idaho.
They actually lived in birth Falls, Idaho.
Has this idyllic, seemingly Norman walkwell filled to it. When I say Twin Falls, well, it's you don't think of homeless people in cars? I don't. I mean, I don't it's Idaho. I thought everything was okay and out of.
Oh well, and this is a very wealthy, fairly wealthy community. It's like a retirement community. I mean it's called Twin Falls because it's got a it's got a deeper waterfall than Niagara Falls. It's really neat.
I get that. It's beautiful. You just in Twin Falls. I mean if you were saying Chicago, okay, or Milwaukee.
Or Antella, I had no or even Bois, Yeah, I had no idea. I had no idea.
Okay. So so she tells you about Haley is a six year old little girl, yep.
And and so we're like, absolutely, this is the one.
We're great.
But me and my my buddy went out to deliver this bed to Haley. Now at this time, they finally had a house, right, they just barely got I mean moved in a couple of days before that, and Bill I walked into this written I don't know, I don't know.
They got they got a house, apartment or.
It was a house. It was really really run down.
How you can imagine Haley and her and her mom, and that's it.
There wasn't another daughter there. I didn't get to meet.
But again, a single mom got a job somewhere and maybe a little extra help from the government or something. Yeah, finally got into something. I think the local kind of a rundown thing in the local church was helping.
Yeah, I mean so. And I dealt with homelessness before, I've seen it, you know whatnot, But when you walk into a home with the thought of a child and seeing it through a child's eyes, it took on a whole new meaning to me.
Nothing, I mean nothing.
There was a hot plate with a can of soup on a milk carton.
That was it.
That was the only thing in the house.
I didn't have a stove.
They had they had a built in stove, and they had a refrigera so that was it. But there was no couch, table, chair, not even a chair, TV, no, of course not. And so I was like, oh my literally literally nothing. That was four walls, well there was walls and a floor. But Haley, the six year old girl, was just so excited a to interact. She was one of these just joyful kids at least she was around us, had no idea why we're there, and doesn't know me for Adam and says, come look at my room, right, you know, we walk into her room and you can imagine, I mean there's holes in the carpet and scratches on the wall kind of yeah, I mean there was probably some government yeah exactly. And in the closet there was used toys and dolls and stuff that I'm sure she got donated to her and stuff like that. But what stopped me was in the corner was a pile of clothes and that was that was where she slept. It was it was her mattress, a little nest she had made.
That was it. The clothes she also wore, exactly.
So Haley's routine was she'd come home from school, take her clothes off, put her PJS on, sleep on whatever clothes were there, and then repeat and go to school the next day.
She literally slept on her clothing. Correct or she wore her bed to school.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. She wore her bed to school.
That is terrible, I.
Know, and I I was so shocked at the time because I'd never seen that before. I mean, my gosh, who what child doesn't have a bed, that doesn't even have a mattress of some sorts. And so we got pretty excited about bringing this bed and now we couldn't fit it through the door. Back then, we didn't. We brought him in as assembled as we could.
Learned. Oh yeah, turns around corners. You know.
It was December tenth. It was freezing, you know, so we're taking the headboards off anyway, So we bring them in and you could see little Haley like trying to figure out what we were doing. And then when it got together enough that she realized to bed, she just kind of blew up.
I just was it. Did you have mattresses? Oh, yeah, we got We.
We do the whole We do the whole nine yards. Yeah, we don't leave a.
House unless they She seemed to actually have her first night sleep because of what you and your kids did in your garage.
And I've never seen a child kiss, hug and kiss a bed before. And if that wasn't enough to just wipe the tears away, I looked up at the mom. Now here's a single mom, six years of struggle trying to provide safe probably pretty tough. Oh my god, she's a tough lady, really neat lady, just balling her eyes out, and she she really got emotional. Win we started bringing in the pillows and the sheet sets and the quilts and stuff for her for her daughters because she didn't expect that. And that's when it hit me, you know, being raised by a single mom too. I it really struck home.
Now.
I was very fortunate I didn't have to experience that, but I wasn't far from that. And I got on the car, you know, when it was about a thirty minute drive from my house, Me and my buddy where Jordan Allen, were in the car, and we didn't say much to each other for thirty minutes and find the shock total shock, total shock, and overwhelmed just spiritually emotionally. It was just I mean, two adult football playing buddies crying in their big truck coming home. Is probably one of those things where I wish I had a camera or I'm glad I didn't rather, but I remember I got home and I just I looked at you and I said, you know what, no kid, and I was it was a mixu you know on the football field where you're just you're you're in between emotional, you're like pissed off, but you're you're happy at the same time. Right, you know, we're gonna we're gonna score that touchdown. I don't care who's in my way. We're going to And I.
Just looked down the city a dremaline just pumping.
Just pump, and I just said, almost mad. I said, there's no kid that's going to sleep on the floor in my town if I have anything to do with it. And right then, starting that day on, I went to different stores, you know, Home Depot, landed at Low's. The guy that Lows said, yeah, I told him what I was doing, right, and he says, fifty percent off anything you want. And I was like, oh my gosh. So we took I mean, I took my whole Christmas fund and we ended up we ended up building twenty two beds, two twenty two beds, and delivered them all before Christmas.
Hold it, what did what? What was the date when Haley got her bed?
So I built my first bed December seventh?
So you built twenty two beds in fourteen and eighteen days and delivered Yeah it was your kidding. Oh no, well you did was built bump.
Oh it was it was all I did the whole three weeks of Christmas. And it was funny. It's like there's.
Nobody was getting their water checked. You're building beds.
Well, I had to do it at night, you know, and I had friends come over and help me. And that was a fun part too. I was I was reuniting with twenty year old friends I hadn't seen some high school because they saw it on Facebook and they wanted to come in and help. I mean, I guys driving. My buddy came down from Boise to come help me as far as two hours, no kid, no kid, and he'd come down stay the night. We build a couple of bits, and it was really funny.
He get drinkity beer. Why are you building?
We were Mormon. We didn't drink beer at that time. I apologize, not even coffee. Maybe a lot of Monster.
I don't get how that works.
But but what was cool is is you know, it was fun.
I'm a Presbyterian. We did drink a lot of beer. Build the beds probably would have been everything's okay.
But as we built them, we got a little bit better and a little bit better. So I remember one time I'm like, oh my gosh, we just built now, not sanded or stained, which took some time built them, but we erected a bed in two hours.
Yeah, it's like it was unbelievable Nascar stuff.
Well, it used to be that we built a bed. We just did a build. Of course, we had a lot of chapters there. We built a bed every thirty two seconds.
Yeah, we're going to talk about that. So you built twenty two beds in seventeen days. And at this point it's no longer just built a bed for a kid in your garage. It's become kind of a thing.
Yeah.
So you got these twenty two beds out, and you know what's a thing? Now? So when did you name it?
That's a funny thing we get.
You know, I get the slogan nobody sleeps on the floor in my town something like that, No kids sleeps on the floor in our town. No kids sleeps on the floor in our town. Is that still the slogan?
It's the mission statement? Now, And I got a funny story about that. I'll tell you that in a minute.
All right, we'll tell me that now.
Okay, Okay, I'll tell you that.
Let's go.
Well, it was such a such a meaningful motto to us that we didn't have a mission statement. And I mean, I've run businesses before, and I just didn't. I wanted my mission statement to really be as simple and clear as possible.
Yeah, this is what we're doing.
And it was funny when when I was named a scene in hero in twenty eighteen, of course she did the whole TV thing and blah blah blah. Well, the next day they invited the ten scene in Heroes to a classroom and they had like scene in head of media there and they were they were going to go over some things, mostly prepping us for any interviews that we were ultimately going to be doing in the next year.
Well, because you don't want to screw up the CNN program if he rots, you better know how to do exactly through that before and I screwed up a lot. Sometimes I screwed him up on purpose. No about telling you how to answer things. If that's not how I wanted to answer them, I just didn't.
Well that's what they taught you. Actually, they're like, you know, I answer anything.
Then they've done that. You don't like it, don't answer it. No, I'll answer it. You just may not like the answer. I love it.
So we they kind of went around the room and they asked a funny question they said, so let's go over your mission statement, because that's the first thing, you know, it needs to be. It needs to tell the.
It's the elevator pitch. It is, it's what what you hear it you understand it?
Yeah, the consumer you know in business world, or in this case, a sponsor or or just a person needs to understand your business from their mission statement. Well, you know, and everybody went around there when it's fine. They came to me and I could see the guy kind of stop and he goes, that's your mission statement, yeah, And I said yeah, I said, but my mission statement isn't about my organization talking to the individual or the community. It's meant for the community.
To say it.
Because child bedlessness is going to be solved by the volunteer in the community, not by Luke Nicholson at Twin Falls Idol.
So what you're saying is an army of normal folks.
Absolutely, it's no kid sleeps on the floor in our town, not your town, in our town. So it doesn't make any sense for me as.
No kid sleeps on the floor in our town. If all of us would spend a little time getting together and fix them, yeah, absolutely, if they had So we're not going to call government, and we're not going to write for a grant, and we're not going to petition the mayor and the city council and all the other bureaucrowds, and we're not going to go to our state legislature and talk about the problem. And we're not going to drop on our knees and pray it away. We're going to Bill Betts. We're going to do something about it. Exactly, just an army of us deciding no child in my town sleeps on the floor. That's right. I love it. Yeah, So that's your that's your slogan motto, that was.
The slogans mission statement.
That's right as your misstatement. Then you had to name the team.
Yeah, that was the funny part. You know.
I didn't want to call it.
I mean at first it was just a family Christmas project.
And that's not that doesn't work.
No, No, that does a family project. Well, and you understand this, I had no dream of being a nonproget you know what I said.
But you still you got a thing, and anything has to have a name. You don't call it the thing. Yeah, exactly, we're gonna go do this.
That might have been better than my first choice, which was Beds for Babes. Yeah that doesn't Yeah, everybody, that's not a good Google search.
It misses a little.
Yeah, well it hits somewhere else.
But let's well, I mean the progress nobody sleeps alone in my you could do that. Yeah with that, an adult for Everything other another project.
Oh there's another story with that.
Yeah, So Beds for Babes was like, yeah, I got shut down about the minute I left my mouth got it.
But it was Christmas time and.
You know, babes, I get the idea. It just done work.
Yeah, it doesn't work. And uh, you know, Silent Night is just one of my all time classics and one of my favorite songs and Sleeping Emily piece. Although I had Rob Schneider who I met in an airport not too long ago, and he was pretty interested. He's helping us out a little bit, and he said, he pointed out for the first time, and it's a couple of times since then it sounds more like a funeral home, which it does.
We'll be right back, you know.
The first year we did it, just a family Christmas project. I had a friend from Boys. He's the one that went on the first delivery with me, So it's it touched him him just as much as it touched me. And if there's ever a co co founder would be Jordan now. And he wanted to do it up in Boise so you know.
He Mutton had a joint guy that was crying. It's precious.
Yeah, it is a tender moment. And I've known Jordan since Oh my gosh, five Yeah, pretty close.
Did you wipe one of our list years with your thumbs? Yeah?
Yeah, we did.
That's a really beautiful thing.
I see where this is going.
Yeah, breaking down. So Jordan's starts one in Boise.
Correct, and we didn't know what to call it. It was at that time, wasn't a chapter. It was just Boisy. And and then the next year we got this strange phenomenon where people wanted to actually donate money to us, but they couldn't because we weren't five one.
Actually have a really good story, which is which is a pain in the butt, but it's absolutely necessary. Oh yeah, you have to. You have to.
And I remember sitting at lunch one time with Jordan and we were getting ready for the next season of building in Christmas because we only built one time a year and we were going over this stuff and blah blah blah. And I remember this lady was walking by us and we were in this booth at this restaurant, and she stopped and she says, I'm sorry, I just eve dropped your whole conversation. I listened to everything. I hope that's okay. And we're like sure. She's like, I heard what you're doing. Here's all the money in my wallet, and I went, I mean we kind of looked at each other.
Wow, well you don't know what's from.
I mean, we could be lying to you, and you know, it was just it was a moment in the history of SHP where we realized this is a lot more than just how we feel. You know, there was other people that felt this way, which turned into obviously a lot more people coming in too.
Do you hate nobody? Listen? You can, you can. There's there's so many things that we can talk about people in need and our culture that yeah, can help them. Oh, I can help them. It's like I'm a football coach. Well I'm not helping a budding violinist that can't play for violins or a really talented ballet person because I don't, you know, I can't do that, But so somebody might be drawn to my story and then others might be like, it's a mudd in football, who cares? Right, nobody thinks a child should have to sleep on the floor. Man, I mean it's a universal thing, and so I get it. I mean people.
Pretty easy sell pretty pretty easy.
Yeah, lot easier than water chemical stuff.
Maybe not was lucrative, but.
Maybe not, but well it depends on for who. That's just so do people start saying, hey, I want to do this in my talent.
So what happened was is as we learn more about the need, and we were only building in Christmas, you know it's the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteen, But the fifteenth came around and I think in the fourteenth I did maybe one or two little Boy Scout Eagles service projects you know those.
Yeah, it was awesome.
It was you know, these kids would kind of wait till the last minute and they needed a project and this got approved.
So we did them. Right, build a bed. You can get your eagle scholar absolutely absolutely, yeah.
But twenty fifteen came around and we then decided and we were starting to get a lot of even organizations that were like, hey, we'd like to donate. Can we build beds with you? We're like, maybe we can do this.
And so we.
Actually did fifteen builds in two thousand and fifty excuse me, thirteen builds in twenty fifteen, because we did them through the year. That's when SHP took a big turn, because now we were pumping out a lot more beds. It was taking a lot more of my time. I was starting to use more of my vacation time from work and all your time, oh my time, that's right, you know, and buying a business from with my step brother, from my step dad and doing all this it is.
Oh so at this time it professionally, you were also becoming an owner of the company.
We yeah, oh yeah, we were working at it.
Yeah, do it.
And so because it was so fulfilling it was financially was yeah, yeah, I know, yeah, and it was too.
Don't get me wrong. It was a great job and I love the people that we were doing that. But the point is you still got that thing hanging around.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. And it was building more and more and it was far more satisfying as anybody can imagine delivering beds to kids is the most fulfeeling thing I've ever done, absolutely true, and so it just got more and more. Twenty seventeen came around and I went to a water treatment conference in San Diego. Well, a buddy of mine that I met probably ten years previously, lived down there and he says, hey, come come see me, and I said sure. So we met at a Prodre's game, and then I went back to his house and he says, hey, I've been watching what you're doing. You know, my company needs a service project. He says, can we do this a build down here? I said, why don't we just do a chapter down here? Because we then started talking calling him chapters we had boising twin and he's like, yeah, we can do that. So we started. We organized this build, and then my brother wanted to do a chapter in Gilbert, so we organized a build and they were kind of within two or three weeks. So all of a sudden, we were posting this and.
They have four chapters.
Correct, Hey, we're starting. Chapters went from Idaho to San Diego, to Utah or to Arizona, excuse me, to Arizona. And so that opened the floodgates of oh, I can start a chapter with sleeping on the piece. So now we actually got people from Maryland, from Minnesota. We had no idea who they were. We had some other friends recognize you on Facebook. Yeah, friends of friends of friends. And what's really funny is the one in Minnesota. He said he had built a bed for his daughter, loved it, and he wanted to build a bed for someone. So he went online to research, you know, give me some ideas, and found our website.
Wow, and it was I mean, it wasn't much of a website.
So we called us and I spoke with him on the phone in twenty seventeen. The end of twenty seventeen, we had nine chapters in five months. It just kind of blew up a little bit. And all of a sudden, I'll get to your answer in a little bit. All of a sudden, and I Jordan Allen, my buddy, says, hey, you need to take November fourteenth and fifteenth offt or fifteenth and sixteenth off. And I said why, And he says, I can't tell you. You just need to take him off. And I'm like, and he knew some of the some of the trickiness between work and this because it was kind of button heads a little bit. And I said, you know what, I'm asking what you're asking me to do? And he's like, oh, yes, And I knew I had to go talk to my stepdad and my brother and say, hey, these I gotta.
Take two days off and I'm not real sure why.
Yeah, and I said, I knew it was an SHP thing, right, And the whole time I'd been talking with this marketing group from New York that wanted to fly out and do this magazine article on SHPRE and I was like, yeah, exactly. It was funny about the whole returning. The favorite thing is you know, I something wasn't stirring the kool aid. But I knew not to ask because I was told not to, so I just kind of went along dumb, but you And that's when I approached my my business cohurts, my stepdad and said, hey, I need these two days off.
And it was time.
It was time. He recognized that my passion for SHP was far bigger than the company, and he said, you know, maybe you need to really think whether you want to be with.
And so in this company, fourteenth and fifteenth micro shows up, does this TV show, does this TV show and then it blows then it blows up.
Yeah, we had in the next year and a half, we had a five thousand chapters requested.
Five thousand people all over the.
Country in eight different countries request to become a chapter.
And so okay, well now you got to tell me how many chapters do you have?
So of that five thousand we've we've trained only three hundred and thirty only Yeah, I mean, come on, dude, that's it I'm proud of.
So there are three? Are they all in the US?
We're in four different countries, but only so Canada, United States, Bermuda and Bahamas. So we got the vacations by.
I mean, what started as I'm going to get these kids off their ass and build a bunk bed ten years ago is now three hundred and thirty chapters in four countries of people building beds and proclaiming no child sleeps on the floor in my death.
We're actually it's a proud thing, but a sad thing at the same time. We're actually the largest bed building charity in the world only because there really isn't there another one. Well, there's a few, but there are local church things type.
So when did you leave the water thing and become a full time bed builder?
So November fourteenth is when returning the favor was showing up to air, and I left November first.
You're kidding me. How many beds have you made since bed number twenty four?
I just looked today. I had a student call me from Texas Tech. I think that was doing a report and she says, can you give me a ballpark of where your bedcount is right now? I said, it's one hundred and thirty eight thousand, eight hundred and sixty one. Is that closest.
One hundred thirty eight thousand, eight hundred and sixty one one hundred thirty eight thousand, eight hundred sixty one beds and counting? That's just crazy awesome. Well that concludes part one of our conversation with Luke Michelson, and I hope you'll listen to part two that's now available as I kind of come to terms with a new phrase, child bedlessness. I don't even think it's a real word, but it certainly is a real problem that hadn't been solved yet. But if you don't listen to part two, make sure you join the Army of Normal Folks at normal Folks dot us and sign up to become a member of our movement. Y'all. It only takes committing to doing one new thing this year to help others, and there will be a ton of awesome ideas on this podcast from all the folks we feature. Some of them may resonate with you deeply and others may not at all, and that's okay because we're all called to do different things with our different talents. By signing up, you receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode, or you might prefer reading about our incredible guest. Together, y'all, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you in Part two.