What Is Mike Lindell's Net Worth?
Mike Lindell is an American entrepreneur, business executive, and author who has a net worth of $0. At his financial peak, Mike Lindell's net worth easily topped $100 million and may have been as high as $200-300 million. Prior to his election controversies, Mike's company, My Pillow, grossed $110 million per year. Mike has claimed that in 2023, his company is on pace to gross just $5 million, a 95% drop. Much of that drop occurred after his products were dropped from stores like Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond. Further adding to his problems, Mike's legal expenses and the costs of attempting to prove the 2020 election was rigged have apparently wiped away the vast majority of Mike's former fortune. In various interviews in 2022 and 2023, Mike claimed to have spent $25 – $50 million of his personal money trying to prove the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. He also claimed to be spending $1 million per month at one point trying to launch and maintain his social media app, Frank Social. In October 2023, Mike's attorneys in a defamation case filed a claim that he owes millions in unpaid legal fees, and therefore they requested to drop him as a client. In response, Mike claimed to be "out of money" and that he had "lost everything. Every dime. All of it is gone."
Mike was, at one time, an example of a very inspirational story of recovery and American entrepreneurship. A college dropout, Mike launched My Pillow in 2005. In 2008, he was so badly addicted to crack cocaine that he once stayed awake for 19 days straight, by his own account. He had one final party on January 16, 2009, and then quit everything – booze, cocaine, and crack.
Between 2009 and 2016, My Pillow and Mike were incredible stories of recovery and success. His commercials were ubiquitous on television, especially on Fox News. At his peak, circa 2016-2017, Mike Lindell's net worth was $200 – $300 million. Before Mike became an entrenched conspiracy theorist and subject to a $1.3 billion defamation charge, his company generated well over $100 million per year in gross revenue. The products were best-sellers at stores such as Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohls, HEB Stores, Wayfair, and the Canadian Shopping Channel. Based on similar comparable company valuations, My Pillow was worth around $500 million in 2017.
As you likely know, today Mike is less known for My Pillow than he is known for being a vocal and controversial supporter of Donald Trump and peddler of false conspiracy theories. Lindell has been deeply involved in Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, providing financial support and spreading false conspiracy theories. As a result, dozens of stores (including all six outlets mentioned in the previous paragraph) stopped carrying My Pillow products. Mike's most significant financial blow came in June of 2022, when My Pillow's biggest retail partner, Walmart, stopped carrying the company's products.
In November 2022, Mike Lindell announced his running for Chair of the Republican National Committee. He lost on January 27, 2023, after receiving only four of the 167 votes cast.
Early Life
Mike Lindell was born Michael James Lindell on June 28, 1961, in Mankato, Minnesota. He grew up in Carver and Chaska, Minnesota, and he began gambling as a teenager. After graduating from high school, Mike enrolled at the University of Minnesota, but he dropped out a few months later.
Lindell became addicted to cocaine in his twenties, and in the '90s, he began using crack. His drug abuse and gambling debts led to his first wife ending their marriage, as well as the foreclosure of his home. Mike's drug addiction became so severe that his crack dealers held an intervention in 2008. According to Lindell, "They were three of the biggest dealers in the cities. They said I had been awake for 19 days straight. They refused to sell to me again. One of them tried babysitting me until I fell asleep." Mike has said that prayer helped him get sober in 2009.
My Pillow
In the '80s, Mike launched several small businesses in Minnesota, such as bars, restaurants, and a carpet cleaning business. In 2004, he invented the My Pillow pillow, and for the next few years, he sold the product at trade shows, mall kiosks, and state fairs. He established My Pillow, Inc. in 2009, and the company took off after its first infomercial in 2011. The 30-minute show cost $500,000 to produce, and it aired an average of 200 times per day. Lindell has said of the infomercial, "It became the number one infomercial in the world. In 40 days, we went from five employees to 500."
At its peak, the company generated a reported $280 million in revenue per year. As of this writing, the company has sold over 50 million pillows and employs more than 1,600 people.
In 2017, My Pillow, Inc.'s accreditation was revoked by the Better Business Bureau due to customer complaints, and its rating was lowered to an F.
Mike appointed his son Darren the company's CEO in 2020, and as of 2021, many retailers no longer carry My Pillow products. Lindell believes that retailers stopped selling his products because of his claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but a Bed Bath & Beyond spokesperson said that My Pillow was one of many "underperforming items and brands" the retailer decided to discontinue.
In March 2021, it was announced that Mike was launching a social media platform called Vocl that would be a cross between Twitter and YouTube. He later changed the name to Frank because of a dispute with a company that had established a website called Vocal. Lindell spent four years developing Frank, which launched in April 2021 with numerous technical difficulties. As of April 2022, Lindell had 308 followers on FrankSocial, more than any other user.
Lost Revenue and Lost Fortune
In December 2021 Mike Lindell claimed in an interview that he spent $25 – $50 million of his own money between November 2020 and December 2021 trying to prove that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.
In the short-term wake of Mike's public rantings about the election, many retail stores pulled his pillows from their shelves. This move caused MyPillow's sales to drop significantly. In January 2023 Mike claimed these actions caused My Pillow to lose over $100 million in annual revenue.
In January 2022, one of Lindell's personal banks, the Minnesota Bank & Trust, reportedly described him as a "reputational risk." A month later the bank dropped him as a client.
In June of 2022, Walmart, My Pillow's biggest distributor, pulled all of the company's products from its stores.
In March 2023, Mike claimed he had been forced to borrow $10 million in 2022 to keep My Pillow afloat. He further claimed to have been selling assets and borrowing money personally to "stay liquid." In his own words:
"I sold a building I had in Savage, in Minnesota, in October. And I had to borrow $2 million, too. I've spent it all fighting for this country."
Private Jets
On social media, Mike is often pictured or recorded aboard one of his private jets.
In July 2021, it was reported widely that MyPillow sold a 1993 Dassault-Breguet Falcon 50 private jet. The 10-passenger plane can travel from LA to NYC in 5 hours at a top speed of 539 mph. Depending on age, miles, and condition, similar models sell for $1.5 – $3.5 million.
In an interview in March 2023, Mike implied that he still owned at least one other private jet.
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Personal Life
Mike married Karen Dickey on May 9, 1987, and they have four children: Lizzy, Heather, Darren, and Charlie. Lindell and Dickey divorced after two decades of marriage, and Mike wed Dallas Yocum on June 8, 2013. Lindell filed for divorce the following month after Yocum left him.
In early 2021, the "Daily Mail" claimed that Mike began a nine-month relationship with actress Jane Krakowski in late 2019. Krakowski's rep denied the allegation, stating, "Jane has never met Mr. Lindell. She is not and has never been in any relationship with him, romantic or otherwise." Lindell also denied it and filed a lawsuit against the publication.
During a March 2021 appearance on "The Domenick Nati Show," Mike revealed that he had been living in undisclosed locations due to safety concerns. He stated, "I haven't been back to Minnesota, and anybody out there that is looking for me, I haven't been back there in two months. I can't go back there." During the swearing-in of Dan Patrick as Lieutenant Governor of Texas on January 17, 2023, Patrick revealed that Lindell had moved to Texas a few years earlier.
In 2012, Mike founded the non-profit organization the Lindell Foundation, which helped drug addicts obtain treatment, and in 2019, he launched the Lindell Recovery Network to "help struggling addicts find hope, restoration, and the love of Jesus."
In 2019, Mike published the book " What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO."
Minnesota Mansion
In August 2016, Mike paid $745,000 for a 5,400-square-foot mansion on 2.5 grassy acres in the town of Chaska, Minnesota. He listed the home for sale in September 2022 for $1.1 million. He ultimately accepted $945,000 in December 2022.
Donald Trump Support
Lindell became a Trump supporter after meeting with the then-presidential candidate in August 2016. Mike later said:
"When I met with Donald Trump, it felt like a divine appointment, and when I walked out of that office, I decided I was going to go all in."
Lindell attended the final presidential debate as well as Trump's inauguration, and he has spoken at Trump rallies and the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference.
In 2019, he met with Trump about the issue of opioid addiction, and he was in attendance when the then-president signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, which dealt with opioid use disorder. During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mike temporarily changed the focus of the My Pillow factories from bedding products to face masks at the Trump administration's request. Around that time, Lindell appeared at a White House COVID-19 press conference, and he became the Minnesota campaign chair for Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. During the pandemic, Mike has promoted oleandrin, a toxic plant extract, as a COVID-19 cure, and he is a board member of Phoenix Biotechnology, a company that manufactures products that contain oleandrin.
Election Conspiracies
After Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election, Lindell was involved in sponsoring a bus to go on a two-week tour to challenge the results of the election. He also spoke at a few stops on the tour. Mike attended the rally that preceded the January 6th attack on the Capital, but he has said that he was not present at the insurrection. However, he did spread conspiracy theories that Antifa was behind the attack and were probably "dressed as Trump people."
Mike has also promoted conspiracy theories that the Smartmatic and Dominion voting machine companies teamed up with foreign powers to rig their machines and steal the election, which resulted in Dominion filing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him. In January 2021, these false claims got Lindell permanently banned from Twitter.
In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho, began a recount of ballots that were cast in the 2020 election after Lindell alleged that more than 40 Idaho counties had been hacked. The recount concluded that accuracy was within 0.1% with no evidence of hacking, and Idaho's Chief Deputy Secretary of State, Chad Houck, announced that the state would be billing Mike for the cost of the recount.
In 2021, he also directed, produced, and starred in the documentary "Absolute Proof" to try to prove that Trump won the 2020 election. Fact-checkers have criticized the documentary for including "debunked, unsubstantial claims," and it was removed from YouTube and Vimeo a few hours after it livestreamed on the One America News Network website.
$5 Million Challenge Lawsuit
In August 2021, Mike held a three-day "Cyber Symposium" to present "irrefutable evidence" of voter fraud, which he never produced.
As part of the symposium, he also launched the "Prove Mike Wrong Challenge," which offered a $5 million reward to anyone who could debunk his data related to the 2020 election. A cyber security expert named Robert Zeidman took Lindell up on the challenge and subsequently debunked the data conclusively. Lindell then refused to pay the $5 million reward, so Zeidman filed a lawsuit. In April 2023, an arbitration panel confirmed Zeidman's work and ordered Lindell to make the payment. In their findings, the panel said:
"Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract. He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover."
