Fogbow

Didn't lindell's lawyer argue against dominion that he's losing money because of his election lies and now lindell is blowing his lawyers argument for why they can't pay

Its also possible that he's telling the exact truth on this one.

Picture if you will, a company that used to sell 100 units per year through retail outlets and 20 units a year through online direct sales.

He suddenly loses all his retail outlets, so he pivots to online and recovers 20 customers.

So he's now doing twice as much online (but zero in retail), and he needs more staff to fullfil those orders.

LM K wrote: ↑Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:15 pm

Notaperson wrote: ↑Sat Aug 21, 2021 9:34 pm David Clements spoke at Lindell's cyber symposium.

This makes me so happy.

Just a little followup on Clements. I just completed proofing a transcript of his little "speech" at Lindell's symposium. You may have listened to it, I had not, but it's a doozie.

Not that that would be anything noteworthy, except I was proofing it because the disciplinary arm of the NM bar ordered the transcript, on their own initiative. Methinks there will be a disciplinary hearing sometime soon. I'll likely get to see that as well.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Wed Sep 08, 2021 10:13 am It should be simple enough (shouldn't it?) to make Lindell cough up records that show his profit over the past year and new hires. It's possible his numbers have gone up, but it's also possible he's still lying to save face. After all, I believe the guy is mentally ill and, in other circumstances, I'd pity him.

I dunno. Companies will have books and records that may or may not be accurate. Companies will file income tax returns that may or not be accurate. We bean counters are supposed to look at books and records with an eye towards company bias. Obviously, profitable companies want to pay as little income tax as possible while showing rosy numbers to lenders and investors.

A lot depends on Pillow's accounting software and Pillow's accounting personnel and how easily it can be to, ahem, alter or misrepresent transactions.

If Pillow received a full-blown audit, then I would request those reports. I would also invite the partner on the audit for a short deposition that would include his workpapers. (I don't know if this is within the lawyer rulebook or not.) If Pillow received a review statement, that is less in scope than an audit. I wouldn't put much stock in a review other than for comparative purposes. And you can throw away a compilation report. Those merely copy numbers directly from internal reports and are not subject to any scrutiny at all.

If there are no financial statements, I would pay for one. It would be expensive, especially if several years are involved. I'd have a Certified Fraud Examiner on the team to spearhead certain aspects of the investigation.

Lindell comes across as gullible and parrots other people for facts and truth. His financial statements might be a pile of doo-doo, and he easily could not know just how profitable or unprofitable his business is. For many people, as long as they have money in their pocket and money in the bank, life is good.

While quieter lately, Realist is still The Enforcer, behind the scenes fighting for truth, justice, the American Way, and Pup-Peroni. Awesome news about David Clements.

David & Doug are still running around spreading lies and inciting weak minds. No word if they stopped by Foggy's house while in NC.

The Professor's Record, [08.09.21 16:19]
Dr. Frank and I worked with the North Carolina Audit Force for several hours today.

It felt like a very effective workshop. First, we met with members of the NC legislature demanding that they pursue a full forensic audit.

We provided preliminary county data and some necessary tools to begin the canvassing process now.

Questions were asked and answered regarding the various legal processes to be pursued at the county and state level, both in the civil and criminal realm.

We also learned a great deal from our North Carolina leaders on who is responsive to the truth, and who needs the boot.

We (and many others) will continue to travel, and share the audit gospel to the best of our ability in person, and virtually.

Be encouraged.

We will win.

Be encouraged.

We will win.

Don't hold your breath.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 6:25 pm

Be encouraged.

We will win.

Don't hold your breath.

No no no. We want them to hold their breath until they get what they want. NADT, but maybe ADW (a death wish).

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 6:25 pm

Be encouraged.

We will win.

Don't hold your breath.

And send money.

Must have been a deep disappointment when they learned that the dining facilities at the WH had already been booked by another party

humblescribe wrote: ↑Thu Sep 09, 2021 3:24 pm
If there are no financial statements, I would pay for one. It would be expensive, especially if several years are involved. I'd have a Certified Fraud Examiner on the team to spearhead certain aspects of the investigation.

Lindell comes across as gullible and parrots other people for facts and truth. His financial statements might be a pile of doo-doo, and he easily could not know just how profitable or unprofitable his business is. For many people, as long as they have money in their pocket and money in the bank, life is good.

As a privately held company, MyPillow is not required to file audited financial statements with the SEC.

However, banks and other lenders often require them when a company applies for a multimillion dollar loan or line of credit. I used to work for Ernst & Whinney, (later Ernst & Young, and now simply EY). One of the partners told me that the firm audited lots of privately held companies for just this reason.

Also, too, I doubt that Lindell is the sole owner of the company. He probably has minority stockholders who may ask for and receive audited financials.

So, it is likely that there ARE audited financial statements in existence. They are just not normally made public.

noblepa wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:56 pm As a privately held company, MyPillow is not required to file audited financial statements with the SEC.

However, banks and other lenders often require them when a company applies for a multimillion dollar loan or line of credit. I used to work for Ernst & Whinney, (later Ernst & Young, and now simply EY). One of the partners told me that the firm audited lots of privately held companies for just this reason.

Also, too, I doubt that Lindell is the sole owner of the company. He probably has minority stockholders who may ask for and receive audited financials.

So, it is likely that there ARE audited financial statements in existence. They are just not normally made public.

Any company with $500 million in sales (which is where he would be if he actually has 2,500 employees as he recently claimed) is going to have a significant bank line for working capital, especially if they sell to retailers (or, in Lindell's case, who used to sell to retailers), who rarely pay before 90 days. Most companies in that business either need a big revolver or they have to factor their receivables (typically more expensive than a revolver, but you don't have to pay it down every year). Lindell is a manufacturer, so he has to pay for raw materials, and they don't grant 90 day terms. So he's gotta pay for raw material around 4-6 months before he gets paid for what he makes out of it.

So if he's $500 million in sales, he's probably got a $200 million revolver. No bank in the world is going to loan that much without financials and management certification of effective financial controls a la Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. I haven't looked at the mechanics for that kind of certification, but I'm guessing it's done in a way that if you certify that you have effective financial controls but your CEO absconds with tons of money, that people who signed that certification (i.e., Lindell and top management) could be on the hook for bank fraud.

So my take is similar to yours: he's gonna have audited financials indistinguishable from those of a public company. Trump can play a much more devious shell game because the banks can ultimately reposess the buildings, but that's not possible with manufacturers.

Too, also, Sarbanes-Oxley passed in 2004. There was lots of bitching and moaning how hard it was to get internal software systems Sarbox compliant in the first few years, and a lot of people threatened to go private. But I bet you can't find an ERP/accounting system these days that's not Sarbox compliant right out of the box. So it's got to be hard to find software that doesn't give management effective financial controls.

Agree with you both. Vaguely remember he said did some profit sharing or "share" ownership with key employees so that would require some financials as well. Tax returns may be obtainable too. All of the disgraced loser's shell companies are flow throughs to his personal returns, never checked if Lindell's company is a Sub S but with the small number of shareholders wouldn't be too surprised since it started small.

Hmmm, D&B reports wildly lower numbers, that's unusual to be so off. Is Lindell lying about this too? Always had a feeling he had lots of ICs: https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/ ... 3c859.html

Company Profile
CORPORATION PARENT
Doing Business As Mypillow
Address
343 E 82ND St Ste 102
Chaska​, MN, 55318-2354
United States
Phone (952) 826-8611
Company Description
My Pillow, Inc. is located in Chaska, MN, United States and is part of the Home Furnishings Stores Industry. My Pillow, Inc. has 70 total employees across all of its locations and generates $35.93 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is modelled). There are 3 companies in the My Pillow, Inc. corporate family.

Financial Data
Revenue in USD
ANNUAL REVENUE
$35.93 million USD

Maybe we should run a D&B on them.

2016:

League of Extraordinary CEOs: How MyPillow made $100M in 6 months with its first infomercial
By Steve Blue Contributing Writer, Sep 7, 2016

An overnight infomercial sensation, Mike Lindell turned his Minnesota-based company, MyPillow, into a multi- million dollar operation, now employing more than 700 people and producing as many as 30,000 pillows per day.
***
What about the company culture?
Lindell: We don’t even have an HR department on-site. We take such good care of our employees. What I do is think about what I would want my employer to be like. We started helping our employees with every facet of their lives, and our HR problems went from A to Z in reverse.
***
Early on when you were pitching for investment and materials, etc., did you have data, marketing projections, number of people in the U.S. who use a pillow, etc.?
Lindell: No. It was 100 percent belief. All I had was my passion, period. They asked, “You think you can really do this?” I said, “Absolutely.” We’re not very corporate at MyPillow. I see us transitioning into a billion-dollar-a-year company, so we may need a bit more corporate structure. But it started as just an entrepreneurial dream.

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals ... rcial.html

Damn Orlylicious you are tireless in service of The Fogbow!! I appreciate and love you for it. I need to get up tomorrow for yoga but have to check Fogbow one last time before going to bed.

orlylicious wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:32 pm Hmmm, D&B reports wildly lower numbers, that's unusual to be so off. Is Lindell lying about this too? Always had a feeling he had lots of ICs: https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/ ... 3c859.html

My Pillow, Inc. is located in Chaska, MN, United States and is part of the Home Furnishings Stores Industry. My Pillow, Inc. has 70 total employees across all of its locations and generates $35.93 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is modelled). There are 3 companies in the My Pillow, Inc. corporate family.

Financial Data
Revenue in USD
ANNUAL REVENUE
$35.93 million USD

I don't use D&B, so I don't know much about how accurate their numbers are, but $36 million seems way low. I think his ad spend has to be a fairly significant portion of sales, particularly after he got dumped by all those retailers. Let's pretend he's spending 20% of revenue on ad sales. At a $36 million run rate, that's $7 million per year, which doesn't really buy you a lot of the kind of repetitions you need to stand out. I am completely making up the 20% number, he could be a bit lower or maybe even higher on ad spend as a % of revenue. Whatever the percentage of revenue is, he needs a certain minimum absolute dollar ad spend to have recognition among a large enough audience to sustain the company.

My hunch is that he's probably in the $150 million to $250 million revenue bracket, typical of a lot of specialty brands in the highly competitive housewares market. It's hard to be a billion-dollar specialty brand; you tend to get pushed into commodity-type status Recent shifts to direct sales as essentially 100% of his business may have punched up his revenue towards the top end of this range, since his revenue per direct sale unit is probably 2.5x the wholesale revenue that he used to get from BBBY, etc.

However, his costs are also now dramatically higher, since he's driving all that ad spend himself, he needs more warehouse and fulfillment, and he has to pay much higher freight costs per unit to ship direct to customers. When shipping to retailers, either direct store distribution or to distribution centers, retailers often absorb freight costs themselves because they get better discounts from carriers or they can, like Walmart, use their empty trucks to pick up loads at suppliers after dropping off loads at stores.

So Lindell's dollar margins per unit are probably not that much different even though revenue is higher -- if they were significantly better for direct-to-consumer (DTC), he would have ditched retail long ago and gone 100% DTC. A lot of smart millennials who created cleverly marketed DTC brands and got them to $50 million in size are discovering that they can't stay DTC-only if they want to grow forever... they'll eventually have to consider a hybrid model.

When the Dominion suit was first filed, I was surprised that Dominion claimed that Lindell was doing this to sell pillows -- I thought he was doing this because he was a delusional Trump true believer, and he wasn't thinking about his business. But after writing the above, it certainly seems like all the lunacy is generating enough free advertising for the business to allow him to grow past the point where most DTC brands stall out on growth. Risky, but clever, if this is indeed a conscious plan and not merely blundering around and getting lucky.

orlylicious wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:32 pm Agree with you both. Vaguely remember he said did some profit sharing or "share" ownership with key employees so that would require some financials as well. Tax returns may be obtainable too. All of the disgraced loser's shell companies are flow throughs to his personal returns, never checked if Lindell's company is a Sub S but with the small number of shareholders wouldn't be too surprised since it started small.

Hmmm, D&B reports wildly lower numbers, that's unusual to be so off. Is Lindell lying about this too? Always had a feeling he had lots of ICs: https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/ ... 3c859.html

Company Profile
CORPORATION PARENT
Doing Business As Mypillow
Address
343 E 82ND St Ste 102
Chaska​, MN, 55318-2354
United States
Phone (952) 826-8611
Company Description
My Pillow, Inc. is located in Chaska, MN, United States and is part of the Home Furnishings Stores Industry. My Pillow, Inc. has 70 total employees across all of its locations and generates $35.93 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is modelled). There are 3 companies in the My Pillow, Inc. corporate family.

Financial Data
Revenue in USD
ANNUAL REVENUE
$35.93 million USD

Maybe we should run a D&B on them.

2016:

League of Extraordinary CEOs: How MyPillow made $100M in 6 months with its first infomercial
By Steve Blue Contributing Writer, Sep 7, 2016

An overnight infomercial sensation, Mike Lindell turned his Minnesota-based company, MyPillow, into a multi- million dollar operation, now employing more than 700 people and producing as many as 30,000 pillows per day.
***
What about the company culture?
Lindell: We don’t even have an HR department on-site. We take such good care of our employees. What I do is think about what I would want my employer to be like. We started helping our employees with every facet of their lives, and our HR problems went from A to Z in reverse.
***
Early on when you were pitching for investment and materials, etc., did you have data, marketing projections, number of people in the U.S. who use a pillow, etc.?
Lindell: No. It was 100 percent belief. All I had was my passion, period. They asked, “You think you can really do this?” I said, “Absolutely.” We’re not very corporate at MyPillow. I see us transitioning into a billion-dollar-a-year company, so we may need a bit more corporate structure. But it started as just an entrepreneurial dream.

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals ... rcial.html

The way to verify all of this is to see his payroll tax records. From how much he pays how many employees you can tell damn near everything about a company that size.

Gregg wrote: ↑Sat Sep 11, 2021 1:25 am

orlylicious wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:32 pm Agree with you both. Vaguely remember he said did some profit sharing or "share" ownership with key employees so that would require some financials as well. Tax returns may be obtainable too. All of the disgraced loser's shell companies are flow throughs to his personal returns, never checked if Lindell's company is a Sub S but with the small number of shareholders wouldn't be too surprised since it started small.

Hmmm, D&B reports wildly lower numbers, that's unusual to be so off. Is Lindell lying about this too? Always had a feeling he had lots of ICs: https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/ ... 3c859.html

Company Profile
CORPORATION PARENT
Doing Business As Mypillow
Address
343 E 82ND St Ste 102
Chaska​, MN, 55318-2354
United States
Phone (952) 826-8611
Company Description
My Pillow, Inc. is located in Chaska, MN, United States and is part of the Home Furnishings Stores Industry. My Pillow, Inc. has 70 total employees across all of its locations and generates $35.93 million in sales (USD). (Sales figure is modelled). There are 3 companies in the My Pillow, Inc. corporate family.

Financial Data
Revenue in USD
ANNUAL REVENUE
$35.93 million USD

Maybe we should run a D&B on them.

2016:

League of Extraordinary CEOs: How MyPillow made $100M in 6 months with its first infomercial
By Steve Blue Contributing Writer, Sep 7, 2016

An overnight infomercial sensation, Mike Lindell turned his Minnesota-based company, MyPillow, into a multi- million dollar operation, now employing more than 700 people and producing as many as 30,000 pillows per day.
***
What about the company culture?
Lindell: We don’t even have an HR department on-site. We take such good care of our employees. What I do is think about what I would want my employer to be like. We started helping our employees with every facet of their lives, and our HR problems went from A to Z in reverse.
***
Early on when you were pitching for investment and materials, etc., did you have data, marketing projections, number of people in the U.S. who use a pillow, etc.?
Lindell: No. It was 100 percent belief. All I had was my passion, period. They asked, “You think you can really do this?” I said, “Absolutely.” We’re not very corporate at MyPillow. I see us transitioning into a billion-dollar-a-year company, so we may need a bit more corporate structure. But it started as just an entrepreneurial dream.

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals ... rcial.html

The way to verify all of this is to see his payroll tax records. From how much he pays how many employees you can tell damn near everything about a company that size.

Of course, this assumes that all labor is not only paid as wages but also is paid from the My Pillow corporate entity. Mikey could outsource some of the manufacturing to another company, related or not. He could structure certain labor as 1099 compensation, so those filings would have to be reviewed and parsed to determine whether those are disguised labor payments or genuine outside services. He could hire a labor contractor for basic and routine, repetitive work. While more expensive, he does not have to worry about hiring and firing and unemployment insurance. In some industries (particularly ag related) there are more seasonal and part time employees than there are full timers. For all that I know, he could manufacture 'round the clock for several months and take advantage of yuge discounts on raw materials; generate a lot of inventory, and shut down manufacturing until inventory is depleted to a low level before ramping up again.

So, while examining state payroll tax records (federal 941s merely reflect total wages and the number of employees on the twelfth day of the third month of each quarter) might provide some insight, they would not be terribly probative if there were a lot of turnover or part time/seasonal help.

I do not purport to know the manufacturing of household goods industries. But I've seen enough over the decades to know that oftentimes business owners can structure their businesses in certain ways to reduce payments for pensions, payroll taxes, and employee benefits.

Dr. Ken wrote: ↑Fri Sep 10, 2021 5:08 pm

David Clements attended this Aug 13 meeting. He wants to be a lawyer for Trump.

Trump over dinner on Aug. 13 — the date Lindell had previously promised would bring Trump's "reinstatement" as president — sources have told Salon. The previously-unreported meeting occurred shortly after the bedding tycoon's "cyber symposium" in South Dakota, which failed to produce anything close to proof of election fraud.

Josh Merritt, a former member of Lindell's "red team" at the South Dakota gathering, told Salon that the meeting occurred at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach on the evening of Aug. 13. According to Merritt, New Mexico State University law professor David K. Clements, a Lindell associate and "election truther," talked about the potential Trump meeting ahead of time, during the cyber symposium. "David said he was trying to get on as a lawyer for 45," Merritt said adding that Clements saw Lindell's relationship with Trump as a way to gain access to the inner circles of TrumpWorld.

Following the Aug. 13 event at Mar-a-Lago, Clements took to Telegram to praise Trump and boast about their meeting. "The greatest honor of my life. My President. Your President," he wrote. "Spent an unforgettable evening with the real President of the United States."

Just over week after this meeting, Clements pulled his shit in his classroom. I wonder if Clements thought his theatrics would make Trump take him more seriously.

Clements is a narcissist. It much be difficult to be turned away from the biggest narcissist in the room.

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/12/mike-l ... y_partner/

Some of the biggest names pushing pro-Trump conspiracy theories were unable to draw much of a crowd at a "We the People Reunion" rally in Kentucky.

"The event is hosting speakers such as the CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, former national security advisor Michael Flynn and Pastor Greg Locke, who has in the past admitted to being at the Capitol during the January 6 Capitol riot," WFIE 14 News reported.

The station reported on attendance at the event.

"Promoters said they expected crowds of around 10,000 people. Fewer than 300 were at the event when 14 News arrived," the network reported.

that made me lol.

They should have offered free beer.