Luke Mickelson Wants To Prevent Kid’s From Having to Sleep On A Floor In Your Town -Episode 024

Luke Mickelson, his family and his (Sleep In Heavenly Peace) chapters are on a mission to prevent children from having to sleep on the floor. You can vote for him to be CNN Hero for 2018 here. Vote Here for CNN Top 10 Heroes 2018       Luke.:               We're just humans helping humans and these are little humans and they need our help. Pat V.:              Hey everybody. I'm Pat V. and you're listening to the Rise Above Your Best podcast where I'm normally obsessed with interviewing those that have achieved success in their own pursuits, but also in uncovering the research that demonstrates that great success is available to all of us. And it all starts when we believe in the power of rising above our best. Today's episode is incredible in terms of the guest that's on it. His name is Luke Mickelson and he's such a humble guy in terms of all the publicity he has right now, yet in honesty, when we started this interview, I was so focused on one of the interviews he had with Mike Lee that I introduced him to Mike and he had to stop me and say, “Patrick, you just introduced me as Mike.” He didn't even skip a beat. Fortunately you won't hear me call him Mike in this interview, so thank you for that, Luke. Pat V.:              His story is so inspiring though, talking about how he started this and the power of, as he says, getting up off the couch and what that does for you in terms of inspiring your ability to want to help others and to have a purpose. And this is a guy that I certainly don't think spends too much time sitting on the couch. He talks about the growth that they've had and the incredible experiences that he says you'll never forget when you bring a bed to a child and watch the magic that happens when that happens. So rather than me ramble on, why don't we get started. Pat V.:              Luke, I want to thank you again for taking the time to speak with me on The Rise Above Your Best podcast. I first came across your story over the summer, I believe with your company Sleep in Heavily Peace and it was so inspiring. I think I first reached out to you on Instagram and I followed you just periodically through there. So I was wondering if you could just start off the conversation by going into what really inspired you to start the company in the first place in terms of what you're doing in the mission. Luke:                Sure, absolutely. When I reflect it back, I keep telling people I had no intention of starting some big national thing. I'm just a farm kid from Idaho, that I like helping people and if I saw a need that I could be a part of, I always tried to do my best to jump in. And at the time I was a leader over basically a boy scouts troop ages from 12 to 16 and I was in charge of activities for them. We'd go on camp outs and there was just events that we tried to do together. Anyways, one thing that we found out at one thing that was brought to my attention is there was a member of the community. I didn't know who they were, but I had heard that they had kids sleep on the floor and someone asked if we could help. Luke:                We got with these boys and some of the other leaders and we discussed how we can help and where could we go get bedding and we could go down to the store and buy these by some beds form. No problem, we could fundraise. And I don't know Patrick, just something, a thought came in my head. I said, why don't we just build them? It'd be a fun activity for the kids. And I'm like, yeah, no problem. And I think we could do that. And so everybody was excited about it. I'd never built a bunk bed before in my life, so why not? I had to borrow a lot of my wife's tools. I wasn't a woodworker by any means, but I wasn't afraid of picking up a saw or a drill. Luke:                But the funny thing was this, I went home, my daughter had a bunk bed and I just measured it, copied it. Was going to say, okay, here's kind of the design. And we went to the store and bought the wood, came back and the next couple of days, with just so much fun. I mean it was fun to kind of figure out how to do it and it was fun to see the kids do it, and these 12 year old kids, they were drilling and sanding and staining and doing all this and it was just fun. The funny thing was when we went to deliver it, I didn't go. Some of the other leaders went. I stayed behind and cleaned up my garage. I just had fun doing the bed building, but the next day when the leaders came back and the boys came back and they talked about what an amazing experience it was and to see the kids, how excited they were and in the parents how grateful. Man, I felt jealous. I missed that. Luke:                I just remember it was Christmas time. I was sitting on the couch, it was the next week. And as a parent you always want the best for your kids. But I think for me, I always kind of struggled with, okay, what do I do provide versus what are these kids need to struggle with so they understand what they have. My kids were complaining about the presents they knew I wasn't going to get for them. We're not getting another Xbox. We're not going to spend $60 on another Xbox game. And I was depressed in my own life. Just said, you know what, you got to make it to out there. Let's go build the beds. And I thought, you know what I want? That's exactly what I'm going to do. I want my kids to have that same experience, that same joy. It's Christmas time, we're going to show them how good they have it. I want them to have the same experience of giving back to someone else. Luke:                So we went out as a family for a couple of nights and built another bunk bed and so now what do you do with it? You got this bunk bed you built and I didn't know anybody that had kids sleeping on the floor. I didn't know that was a problem. So we throw it up on this Facebook page as buy sell trade Facebook page and said, hey, does anybody know of a family that has kids sleeping on the floor? This is going to be a Christmas present from us to you. And I fully expected to have every Tom, Dick and Harry asking for these beds. It's pretty bad, everybody's going to want one. And I was just blown away that it couldn't be further from the truth. Luke:                It was totally opposite. I had more people say, what a great idea. Here's a pillow, here's blankets, here's mattresses, here's food, here's toys. It was just crazy. The next thing you knew, I knew I had my wife's salon was floor to ceiling mattresses, sheets, pillows. We had everything that you can think of far more than the wood I had to build more. I remember looking at my wife, I said, this is incredible. There's so many people that want to help. They wish they'd helped. I said, why don't we do more? So we took our Christmas fund that year and we bought nine more, so we ended up making 11 bunk beds that year in my garage. Pat V.:              Isn't it amazing. Here you are, we hear all these stories of people not caring and being selfish and all of a sudden you do something like this and people come out of the woodwork. I mentioned to you before we started this was that my wife does a winter coat drive appear and literally I'll come home and there'll be a bag of winter coats on our porch [crosstalk 00:07:31] left a note knowing that she's doing that. Luke:                Isn't that the inspiring part? For me, it was like, hey, I did this. This is great. It was fun, but I don't think that it would have gone past that had I not recognized you know what? There's other people that were just as crazy and passionate than I was for helping a kid get off the floor. How can you not say that or how can you not follow that? I tell all these chapter presidents that come on now, we really stress with them what we call a balanced chapter because it gets away from you. It was very fast. It becomes addicting. It becomes consuming because of that exact thing. There are so many good things that happen and so many great people with great hearts and willingness to help that you can't help but not want to do more. And equal to the people that are helping you, you want to help more. It's just a big snowball. We always talk about how's that ball rolling for you? And they just laugh because it takes off. Pat V.:              What was it like for you growing up? When you look back on your childhood, was this something that your family did or? Luke:                Not really. I had great parents. I have the best mom in the world. I was always a mama's boy and not ashamed to say that. I grew up in my small town of Kimberley, Idaho, only about 3,700 people. I went to high school here. I played all the sports. I was student body president, my whole family was very involved. I was raised by a single mom. I had two older sisters, a younger sister. I was the best dressed kid in town, I was always involved. I was very good at sports and I always helped out with scouts and my church, I went to church and ... We had a great life. It was fun because it was a single mom with a single income. We didn't sleep on the floor by any means, but we didn't have things like other friends did, but I would never consider myself we were poor. We weren't like some of these families we deal with, but I always had my mom ingrained in us that we need to always look out for other people. Luke:                And even my dad was one of those guys that he had his own challenges in life, but one thing, probably to his dismay really is he's one of these guys that would give his shirt off his back if you needed it. He just was that type of guy and I always felt that there's anything I got from my dad it was that sense of no judgment and if I can help, I certainly will try. And so we had a good childhood. We had a good childhood. Pat V.:              I can see why you must have been the best dressed, with sisters. I'm the youngest of 10 with others. So my clothes were always a little bit bigger fitting into ... Luke:                Well you were top, that's a good value, right? Pat V.:              Yeah. I ate quickly or we didn't get a second chance at the table. Did you ever think this would get this big? Luke:                Oh, no. Like I said, we didn't start this with any inclination of this is going to be some big thing. I always wanted to do more. My wife always bugs me I'm one of those guys that if I start a project, I can't think about anything else until I finish it and of course it goes from one small project to a big project. But we just wanted to do a Christmas activity. That's all this was going to be and there was people that are involved, friends that came in and helped. That's all they want it to be. They just wanted it to be our family little Christmas thing. But the more we realized, the more I realized that there's more kids out there. Luke:                I remember the second year that we did this, we ran out of beds, we were done and there were still people coming in, hey, I know about this guy and I know about this family and I know, but this kid. And I remember telling my wife, I said, “This is killing me.” I said, “I want these people to come and I'll teach them how to build a bed. Let's build a bed together.” And I had kids to come over and we built one for themselves, for the child of their own child right there in my garage. And so I just couldn't stop. We always want to do more and then the process became easier and then it was like, then it was a challenge. Then it was like, hey, we did 15 bunk beds and in eight hours last year, let's do 25 this year and the same amount of time. So we ended up doing that, and then it went from hey, if we change this and do this, we'll speed it up and get even more people involved and guess what, we have more volunteers get involved. Luke:                So instead of five people the first year, just a few friends and then we had family. The next year we had about 20 people. Then it went to 60 people that wanted to come in and then we actually had people that were almost upset because they missed out on the one build day that we had. “We were out of town you got to do that again?” We're like, “No, we do this once a year.” It was about 2016 is when we said, okay, what if we actually did this more than just around Christmas time. What if we, instead of freezing our tushes off at Christmas, what if we built them in the summer, heaven forbid. Right. Luke:                And so we started doing more eagle scout projects, little five bunk builds here. We did a big a youth conference, they call it. We were the service project. And so we had about 60 or 80 youth come by and we built that. It just got easier and more fun. We have more volunteers, we have more community involvement. We got more exposures, which means we got more applications coming in. You just couldn't stop. You do a bill and you have 60 people there. There was always two or three people that hadn't been to a build before that said, oh my gosh, I think my company would love to do this. Two weeks later you get a call and someone says, “Here's $5,000, can you come and do a build at our location?” How can you say no? That really was kind of how we grew it, then in 2017, all of a sudden we had people say, “Hey, what if we did this in our town?” Luke:                And we're like, “Well great, we'll teach you how to do it. It'd be awesome.” “Well let's set you up as a chapter.” And so we started putting on chapters about one every other month in 2017. And so by the end of 2017 when we were actually filming for the returning the favor, I told Mike, we have, I think I said we had nine chapters. Actually we had 12 chapters, but there was only eight or nine that were active, that actually had tools and we're working for stuff. And that was November to ... actually that was all the way to February of this year we only had nine active chapters. Pat V.:              And for those that are listening, I'll have in the show notes, the actual link to return the favor with Mike Rowe and if you don't cry at some point during that, I'm going to check for a pulse on you because I couldn't watch that thing without that [crosstalk 00:15:15]. It was amazing. So well done. Luke:                They did a great job. They had 13 or 14 people, producers and stuff showing up. When they showed up I was like, what the heck is going on? Pat V.:              It was awesome. Luke:                What was funny when they called me, I had done a few interviews because we were putting on more chapters and so I'd have a newspaper once in a while call me or from like Minnesota or from Texas and they want to do ... So you started this and your buddy down here starting this. And so I do these little interviews and then all of a sudden this lady called me. Well, even before that, I was getting a little bit more busy at work and I needed to focus in on that. And then we had these other chapters. I wanted to help them. I couldn't be a chapter president for the local area, for the Twin Falls chapter anymore, so I asked a good friend of mine if you want to be it, and he's like absolutely no question there and they put [inaudible 00:16:11] says she's fabulous. Luke:                But about two months after we did that, he said something funny to me that I know now what he meant, but he's like, “You're about to blow up.” And I was like, what are you talking about? We're doing good right now. Well, what happened was, is they had actually contacted him and said, hey, we're returning the favor. This is what it is. We want to surprise Luke, blah blah, blah. How do I get ahold of him? So this lady calls me and nice girl. She's like, “Hey, do you mind if I do this little video interview with you?” And I'm like, “Video interview with you? That's weird.” Okay. So it was at lunchtime and we jumped on and just did this little video chat and she's like, “Great. Well, thank you for your time.” And I thought, I didn't even think to ask, “Hey, what's this for by the way?” I did them, a few of them and I'm like, okay, this must just be some other deal. Luke:                Well I of forgot about it and went hunting and I was coming down off the mountain and I just happened to get this phone call and it said New York. And I was like, ooh, okay. It's one of those ... do I answer this or not? And we actually were getting applications from all over the country at this time because we have chapters all over and we had more Facebook pages. So more people are seeing it. So I'd get a call once in a while, “Hey, my kid needs a bad, how do I get that?” But I kind of thought that's what it was when I answered it. It was this girl from this media center, she didn't tell me what the name of it was, but what they'd like to do is come out and film me. Luke:                And I'm like, “Oh, you want to come out and film me? Okay. Well, that's cool. Where's this coming out from?” “Oh, it's New York?” I'm like, wait a minute, you're going to fly ... And she used the word “we.” I'm like, you going to fly “we” out from New York? What is this? And they did a pretty good job of hiding it. And the other thing was, is they're like I said, tell you what ... they wanted to come out at a certain time. Pat V.:              So wait a minute. Literally you had no idea when he showed up. That was it. Luke:                That was it. Pat V.:              Priceless. Luke:                Oh yeah. I knew they weren't telling me the whole story, but I mean you turn around this mic we're all looking at you, right? And I thought it was really funny because when I was talking to her on the phone, I said, tell you what, instead of coming out that week, why don't you come up the next weekend and we have a bill going on in Utah so you can actually see what a bill looks like. Luke:                And they were adamant, “No, we want to come and see where it started.” I was like, “Oh, okay, well I don't have anything going on that week and it's in the middle of the week. I've got work, we'll figure it out.” And they were like, “Oh yeah, we'll just take a couple of minutes of your time here and there.” And at that time I remember my good friend Jordan Allan he was the Boise Chapter President and chairman of the board at that time. He says, “You probably should take Thursday, Friday off of that week.” And I'm like, “What do you mean?” Because I kind of told them about it and he was like, “Well, let me find out, let me make a phone call.” And he calls back. He was like, “Yeah, you probably should take Thursday, Friday off that week.” And I'm like, “Okay, if I need to.” Luke:                It was the last two days of my vacation. I didn't have any more. So I did that, and at that point, my employer, it was clear that I was going to have to make a decision whether I was going to stay trying to get SHP going or I was going to have to really back off and focusing on work. And that just wasn't gonna work. I could see the writing on the wall that this was my passion, this is what I wanted to do. So I ended up quitting, which then I had all the time in the world. So that's when our RTF came and there was, I remember they walked in, I'm like, “Holy crap, there's like six of us, there's three cameras, what is this?” Luke:                And it was funny that they never said ... I can read people pretty good. I was like, okay, obviously they're lying to me and they don't want me to know. So this whole two or three days that they filmed me, we had this kind of silent agreement that I didn't ask why they were there because I knew they were going to lie to me. But then you turn around and Sarah asked me, “Hey, can I steal you for a minute?" And I turned around there's [inaudible 00:20:50] and I'm like holy cow. What do you do? What do you say? Pat V.:              And you had just given notice that you done? Luke:                Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, like about 10 days. Maybe it was a week before that. It was November first and they came out November 14th. So it was about two weeks before that. And the crazy thing, here's the funny thing. I quit, I was excited because I'm going to do this full time and we're going to get this rolling, and this is going to be great. But everybody knew about returning the favor and Scott and Jordan told everybody, “Don't talk to Luke because we don't want anybody to know.” So think about it here. I just quit my job, I'm excited and then no one would talk to me. No one emailed me, no one responded my texts, I just sit there going, what have I done? It's funny looking back at it, but it was kind of nerve wrecking there for a while. I won't lie to you. Pat V.:              But there must be, just watching you on that show, the passion that you see. There must have been the thing that said ... and I know your family obviously must've been behind you when you decided to go in that direction and you just, you have faith, right? You just know that this is the way it's meant to be. Luke:                Well, I came home from work after I was told that I need to make a decision here. I came home and told my wife and I ... and I knew this was coming. It wasn't a surprise, and I said, “It's time.” My biggest problem Patrick was, this was a sacrifice that didn't just affect me or else that would have been easy. For me I was like, I can live in a shade, I don't care. That money and that kind of stuff, I don't care about that kind of stuff. But, I got three kids, I've got a wife, I've got a mortgage [inaudible 00:22:45] of the world. I got health insurance, there's all that stuff. And my partner in life looks at me and she says, “No question, you have to do this.” And I just broke down and I just said, “Thank you.” And I tell you what, it was really funny. I was stressed to the max, I was worried to the max, but I was never more happy. Pat V.:              Can you imagine, you almost in a completely different area, but going off on my own and having that same support, you wish everybody could feel that. That sense of it's just a calling. You just know that you're going in the right direction. Luke:                Well, and that's what makes it easy. I look back and for those who haven't experienced yet and I call it the “get off the couch.” For those that haven't experienced getting off the couch yet, these decisions, they're tough. That decision to get out of the couch is tough, but once you make it like you and the other entrepreneurs and all of these, once you make that decision, you're like the best thing I've ever done in my life. And then the decision seemed like it was easy. Pat V.:              And as you're now, things just, you do the work, you've got the faith, the expectation, and it just falls into place. Not without struggle certainly, but it just falls into place. Luke:                Yeah. Pat V.:              How did you decide to do the chapters? Luke:                When Jordan came down that first year and helped me build that bed, he wanted to do it in his own hometown of Boise, which is about two hours from us. And I said, “Well, great. Yeah, I've got the tools. Why don't you set up a build day? I'll come up.” And actually we didn't call them build days at that time. I said, “Why don't you just set up a day and I'll come up with the tools and we'll build beds up there.” And I can't remember when we decided to call it the Boise Chapter, it hadn't been the third year because the third year we built Christmas 2012. We built Christmas 2013 and we decided, hey, let's stop trying to finance this all on our own because we've had people that were starting to bring in donations right? Luke:                Someone said, "Hey, if you were a fiber one through three, you could have corporations donate to you and you wouldn't have to pay for yourself." And we're like, "Oh, that's a great idea." So that was the only reason why we became a nonprofit is just so we could get donations locally so we didn't have to pay for ourselves. And in doing so if I recall, that's when we said, hey, you know what, why don't we just call yours a chapter. We got the Twin Falls chapter, and you're the Boise chapter. And so we did that to then the next year we did a build outside of Boise and Twin. We did it in a town called Pocatello, which is about an hour and a half, two hours the opposite direction. And a friend of mine wanted to start a chapter there and so we started one, but it kind of fell through. He got busy and anyways we ended up not doing a chapter. We did a build and it was a great build, but we didn't do a chapter. Luke:                So we kind of have this, I'm not going to say a bad taste in our mouth. We just had a bad first go at as expanding to another city. So that was about 2014 and then 2015/16 all came along and we started doing more builds and got the process more under our belt and then we start getting a little bit more donations. Now we are up into the teens, the almost $20,000 a year of donations, which was just, it just blew us away. I remember thinking, what if we got up to $25,000? We would build, we'd take all world. Pat V.:              In bunk beds. Luke:                In bunk beds. We'd take over the world. It was just really fun, but then we had more people. I don't know what it was, it was just something quick. We were just ready for it. And that's happened a lot with SHP. It was just the right time. And we had a chapter that wanted to start. We started it, and then as soon as people saw that we went to San Diego and started a chapter, I didn't get home that weekend before I had calls. “Hey, you're starting to chapter? I want to talk to you about starting one.” And next thing you know, we had Minnesota, we had Maryland, we had Texas, we had Utah, Washington. I mean it was all over. Pat V.:              And if someone wants to become a chapter, what do they need to do? Luke:                So when RCF hit this year, February 13th, we had over 2000 chapter requests. And so we actually had to pull the link off of the website because it was too much. But now if anybody wants to start a chapter, they just go to ... you have to type it in. You can't find on the website anymore, But it's shpbeds.org/start-a-chapter. And when you click on that or when you select that and click on it, you're entering just a little bit information. Name, email address, but it'll prompt you to watch a webinar. And that webinar is about a 5,000 foot view of what a chapter president does, what SHP does, how we do it, the whole nine yards. And then after you watch that, if you still want to be a chapter president, then it'll prompt you to fill out of a new chapter request application. Luke:                That application is more just so we get to know you and you get to know a lot of what goes into being a chapter president. For example, rate yourself on how you think you will do raising money. How do you feel like you are handling a group of people or talking in front of the media, that kind of stuff because all that stuff's going to happen. And then once they fill that out and they submit it, then they get placed into a region. And we have the country broken up and regions and each region has a regional director. And that regional director holds other webinars like every other week or so, and people are invited to those zoom meetings and that's where they learn the 500 foot view of what a chapter is and blah, blah blah. And we teach them how to raise money. So the ultimate goal is they need to come to Twin Falls and that's where they get their formal physical training. Pat V.:              What's the farthest call you've had so far? Luke:                Japan. We have a lot of requests right now coming out of Canada. I bet you were over 100 of chapters request in Canada. We've had ... I mean all over Germany, London, Japan, of course, Mexico. And there's probably way more than we know. When people can go to the website, they fill out a general inquiry email and those get sent to my assistant and she'll filter those through and she knows that a lot of times we just can't handle that right now. We're trying to just get our baseline and the country secured. And once we get that and we got some really cool stuff coming up overseas that are gonna really help us springboard into globally setting up chapters. We've got some IRS things that we need to make sure we're covered on before we dive into that pool. Pat V.:              Got it. Now I noticed, I looked on the map, the one that that was available. It looked like Massachusetts was the closest that I saw, because you know I'm up in Maine. Luke:                Yeah, come on Maine. Pat V.:              I was going to say, I mean- Luke:                I think we had one inquiry from Maine of being a chapter president, but yeah, that whole far northeast area, yeah. We're in 40 states now. There's four or five of them that are up there. Pat V.:              So it was Massachusetts, is that the closest? Luke:                Correct, that's the closest. Plus Boston, what else we got up there? Middlesex, Massachusetts. Pat V.:              What do you recommend for somebody that says, look, I want to be involved in this thing, but I don't think I could do a chapter. Luke:                And we get a lot of that and that's great. I tell everybody, if you want it the quickest way, you can either go to our website, find out which chapters close to you, you can hit the contact page on our website and email that chapter president directly, or you can go to the Facebook page and type in sleepinheavenlypeace/ whatever chapters closest to you and you can message them. There you can see their activity, what's going on. But I'll warn you, I'll warn you right now and these chapters need help. The best chapters that we have, the ones that build the most beds are the ones that have the biggest team and the reason why it's because it is addicting and it is fun. And Patrick, when you go and deliver a bunk bed to a kid that doesn't have one that I promise you will change. Will change who you are. It changed me. I just was a different person afterwards and I couldn't build beds fast enough. Pat V.:              So along with the beds is there anything next? Dressers or anything to go along with that are just strictly beds. Luke:                No, strictly beds. That first year we got toys and we got food and we made a whole build for Christmas. I remember the next year where we going to do the same thing. We kind of did it. We didn't do it as much of the other stuff, but I remember I went to another nonprofit because we started kind of talking about this nonprofit thing and how do we do it. So I went to a nonprofit here locally that was kind of ... They were well known. They supply pretty much anything for family, whether it's coats and shoes and socks and clothes and everything. I walked into this house and I was so overwhelmed with all of the stuff. It looked like a garage sale. There as volunteers and they're trying to sort stuff and I just, I went back and talked to Jordan and my wife and I was like, you know what? I think it's probably best that we stick to one thing and we do it the best. Pat V.:              Stay in your lane. Luke:                Stay in your lane. We use that phrase a lot and look what happened. So now, we encourage people, if you need a desk or you need something else or whatnot, here are some agencies that you can go. But you know what, it's very clear and we want everybody to know. It's very clear that we provide beds for kids. That's what we do and we feel like we do it the best. Pat V.:              So last question for you. The logo, it's a great logo. Luke:                Isn't it? Pat V.:              It really is. It's a great logo. I'm getting one of those hats. I love it. Luke:                Absolutely, I'll give you one. The funny thing about the logo, where it came from when we first delivered that is actually the second year we delivered the beds. No, think about this, it was the first year. My sisters pretty is artsy [inaudible 00:34:21]. She's kind of an artist and she made this tag that we're going to put on all the beds. Because hey, this is an SHP. At that time it was SIHP. So here's what looks like to be a misspelled word ship. It was SIHP. And we were like, that isn't going to work. The next year my buddy's shows up and he actually made a brandy iron of SHP. And so we start branding these beds with SHP, and I'm like, “Oh, we need to make a logo, and SHP would be a great one. What do you think?” And my wife was like, “Yeah, that's great.” And I said, “And you know what? We have a perfect opportunity to make the H a bunk bed.” And Patrick, no one loved it. No one liked the idea. They hated it. Pat V.:              Yeah? Luke:                Yeah, I'm serious. I'm like, man, if there's one hill I was going to die on, it was going to say, “Guys, you can do anything you want, but that H is going to be a freaking bunk bed.” And so one of my friends, his wife, she's kind of a graphic designer. She was a photographer but she liked to play with it and I kind of gave her assignments said “Hey, why don't you and I work on this?” And so she'd say, “What do you want?” I said, “Well, I want the SHP but I want the H to be bigger than the S and P, and I want it to look like a bunk bed.” So she put that together and then she put a little star on it because [crosstalk 00:35:50] the peace. The original logo, the sleep and the peace was kind of a smiley face around the SHP and so that's what our logo was. Luke:                That's where it came from. And then when RTF came around or when they start filming that, my buddy that came on board was an actual graphic designer is what he did for a living. And he's like, “Yeah, we need to tweak a few things." And I'm like, “Well, you can tweak one or two but you're not touching anything else.” So yeah, it was fun. That's a good logo. And we're really big on branding. We want to make our message very clear. So people that see it, they recognize that they know what we're about. And it helps our chapter presidents that are struggling to try to raise money. We can cross brand from chapter to chapter because it's done the exact same way. Pat V.:              The recipe is there. Luke:                Yeah. And we wanted to make the onboarding process for these chapters as easy as possible, as simple as possible. They don't have to worry about registering with the IRS or doing CPA work or insurance or any of that. We do all of that for them. All they need to do, we tell chapter presidents, you have three main focuses. Raise money so you can build beds and deliver beds. That's it. Don't worry about anything else. It's the reason why we can onboard chapter so fast. It's a reason why they're successful so quickly. We're going to reach 13,000 volunteers here in a couple of weeks and that's done because we've got chapters all across the country with great people that want help. Pat V.:              Wow, you're doing great stuff. My final question now, I know one of your favorite quotes must be "no kid sleeps on the floor." Is there another one that inspires you? Luke:                I think I get asked a lot, why do we do what we do? Or why did you do what you did? And I simply say, "I do it because you know what? We are a group of people. We're just humans helping humans and these are little humans and they need our help." So I think my second most favorite saying I guess is what I share. When I tell people that I say, "Look, if you want real joy, stop looking at yourself and help someone else out." And that really is exactly how I feel. True joy comes from helping other people through service. I would encourage anybody, if you're down in the dumps, if you want more of life, take some time to see how you can help someone else out. And I promise you it'll put a smile on your face. Pat V.:              Yeah. So a lot of the stuff that I do on the leadership side, it speaks to a lot of the research that backs up that the happiest people are the people that have a purpose not for themselves, but for somebody else. Luke:                Well said. Well said. Pat V.:              Luke, I got to tell you. I was looking forward to this ever since you said yes, and I really with everything you have going on right now, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time for this and you're an inspiration. So thank you. Luke:                Well, thank you. Thank you for your time and appreciate the willingness to help SHP spread a little word out there so we can help others. Pat V.:              And good luck with the voting. I know I've voted several times and put it out on Facebook too. And that's tomorrow. Does it close tomorrow? Luke:                Closes tomorrow at I think midnight eastern, something like that. Yeah. So tomorrow's the last day. Pat V.:              Okay. Luke:                Yeah, please vote. Please vote for us. Pat V.:              I'm going to. I'm going to go back on again. Luke:                Alright buddy. Pat V.:              Hey, thanks a lot. Luke:                Thanks Patrick. Pat V.:              I hope you really enjoyed this episode. As you can see, Luke, his company, what they do, Sleep in Heavily Peace, they're doing such great work and it's such a niched concept of what they're doing. As he said, stay in your lane. They're doing three things; raise money, build beds, deliver beds. And that's allowed them to really stay focused and fill a need that is so great everywhere. You can see how much it's continued to grow, so maybe you'll be making the next bed. And that's how you'll rise above your best. Again, if you have enjoyed this episode, I'll ask you go on, leave a rating. And certainly subscribe if you haven't by this point or forward this on to somebody that you know that may be interested in getting involved. And until then, I hope you're able to go out there and rise above your best.                                             Vote Here for CNN Top 10 Heroes 2018     Sleep In Heavenly Peace   Mike Rowe’s Returning the Favor Episode   Thanks For Listening!   Emery Leadership Group To share your thoughts: Leave a comment below. Share this show on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest   To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes