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Garage Greatness: The Humble Origins of MyPillow

Bywittycow

There’s an old adage – anything that separates you from the ground is worth spending money on. It goes for good quality shoes, it goes for good quality mattresses, and – on a related note – it goes for a comfortable pillow! Everyone knows the hotel room struggle of trying different pillows and combinations of pillows, trying to find the one with the perfect mixture of firmness and softness, but for most people this hunt isn’t inspiring. For a certain kind of entrepreneurial spirit, however, any hardship is inspiring. Mike Lindell has just that spirit. 

Lindell tried everything to create the life he wanted for his family through an increasingly bizarre list of business ventures. In 2004, he finally found the million-dollar-idea – or to be more accurate, the multi-million-dollar-idea! MyPillow, a company that he begun in his residential home’s garage, has now sold over 30 MILLION pillows! Before he was the king of pillows, however, Lindell’s life followed a rocky path through business failures and drug addiction. In spite of this adversity, his drive never faltered, and Lindell has made a successful company out of humble beginnings in the family garage. 

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Garage Door Technologies: Top 4 Innovations

Bywittycow

The modern world is all about technology, and in today’s day and age, consumers want everything in their life to be smarter. Cutting-edge technology has improved our cars, our phones, even the credit cards in our pockets have chips inside them now! It should come as no surprise then that the garage door is not immune to these forces of modernity, and today’s doors have all sorts of tricks that old-timey carriage house doors couldn’t have imagined. Today, we’re going to talk about the 4 best innovative garage door technologies, and if you’re still using an older door, give you a chance to see what your missing out on!

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How to Instantly Transform your Garage Door!

Bywittycow

How often do you notice a garage door? If you’re like most people, garage doors are probably practically invisible to you. You might notice a particularly ugly residential garage door, or if a restaurant has a commercial door installed on the front wall you might think about it for a moment, but if you see a totally normal garage door you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. What if we told you that there was a product that could change that completely, and make every visitor notice and remember your garage door?

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The ONE Simple Trick to Extend Your Garage Door’s Life!

Bywittycow

Do you know how to treat your garage door right? The garage door is often a mysterious part of the home to homeowners who have never seriously examined their garage door, but to the informed and vigilant homeowner, the garage door can actually be a mark of pride. Charlotte, North Carolina is home to a range of beautiful doors, but many homeowners never think to dream beyond the simple door that their home originally came with. The garage door remains an eyesore for many homeowners, who prefer to put it out-of-sight and out-of-mind rather than tend to it. Today, we’re going to tell you an insanely simple tip to extend the life of your garage door AND keep pests out of your garage. This tip is so simple that you might already be doing it and just not know how much good you’re doing, but some of you might be accidentally making this mistake and not be aware of all the potential downsides!

Garage Greatness Dell Company Origin Founding

The Rise and Fall of Dell, Inc

Bywittycow

There are very few consistent details between all of the companies that we’ve featured on Garage Greatness. Sometimes, the people responsible for these international powerhouse companies don’t pursue their passion until later in life. Sometimes, they spend years or decades toiling with their idea before finding worldwide success. Sometimes, these companies are momentary successes that then see their sales decline, dropping in popularity as time passes them by. None of these are true about the company we’ll be examining today, Dell Inc. Dell had a mercurial rise to success, going from an unknown name with $1,000 of startup money to being the 51st company in the Fortune 500 list in 2014. And just like the rest of the companies that we’ve covered, Dell got their start in a garage. The year was 1984, the place was Austin, Texas, and the mind behind the company, Michael Dell, wanted to fill an expanding niche in the consumer computers market.

Cat Flap Garage Greatness Kitty Kitten Cute

Inventing the Cat Flap: Newton or Not?

Bywittycow

Hello readers! On this installment of Garage Greatness, we’re going to be exploring the dubious claim that Isaac Newton himself invented the cat door while in the garage! Although this claim is interesting and would certainly make for a good story, many people doubt that it is true, so we will also be discussing the other potential origins of the cat door. Having specialized doors for your pets is a very old idea, and tracking the exact origin is difficult, but we have done our best to verify the information we’re bringing you. We bring the same reliable and dependable service to our blog that we bring to our residential and commercial garage door installation and repair services.

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Etch A Sketch: The Timeless Toy

Bywittycow

There are certain timeless toys that are universally associated with childhood – dolls, action figures, building blocks, and so on – but there is one common toy that very few users understand. The enigmatic Etch A Sketch has an elegant design and has remained mostly unchanged for over fifty years, but the simple secret behind its magical erasable screen is not the ultimate reason for the toy’s success. The real reason that the Etch A Sketch has remained an unchanging cultural icon for the better part of a century is that it appeals to children of every background, of every level of artistic aptitude. The Etch A Sketch is an icon, and like many other great icons that we’ve explored on Garage Greatness, it was first invented in a garage.

Dyson Garage Invention Greatness

Dyson’s Innovative Vacuum Solution

Bywittycow

Dyson is a symbol of innovation around the world, but they got their humble start in a garage, just like so many other important companies of today. James Dyson, the inventor behind the company’s rise to fame and the continuing sole owner of the company, started working on a new way to vacuum after realizing that his Hoover Junior was losing suction over time, as the bag filled with dust and the mesh became clogged. Over 5000 prototypes later, Dyson implemented centripetal cyclones similar to those used in sawmills and build the G-Force, a revolution of a vacuum cleaner that propelled Dyson into the very lucrative vacuum cleaner industry. Now, Dyson sells to over 70 countries, produces vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, fans, and heaters, but the company continues to push the entrepreneurial inventor mindset that it was founded on. All of this, from Dyson’s early prototyping efforts in the coach house attached to his home in Cotswolds, England.

Nest Learning Thermostat Smart Home

Garage Greatness: Building Your Own Nest

Bywittycow

How often do you adjust your home thermostat? Many thermostats are outdated eyesores, installed by contractors who are more interested in getting the lowest possible bid than they are in the comfort of their home’s future inhabitants. Also, most homeowners use their thermostat in an inefficient way, and since home temperature control accounts for as much as 10% of total energy usage in the US, even just slightly wasteful habits can mean hundreds of dollars of cost for each household – hundreds of millions, across the country. Tony Fadell is the man behind Nest, the smart thermostat that is designed to solve these problems, and he is more qualified than anyone to create cutting edge technology: before he was prototyping a thermostat in a Palo Alto garage, he was creating the iPod and iPhone at his previous executive position with Apple.