Are you afraid to use your charitable arm as a marketing tool? Don’t be.
On today’s episode, co-host Keith Moneymaker of Sweet Dreams Mattresses & More discusses how his non-profit, the Dreams4All Foundation works alongside his retail business.
Moneymaker didn’t start out in the charitable space. His retail business started back in 2002 out of necessity and after years of managing a team of RSAs, inventory, and focusing on P&L sheets, his heart again saw another need. In 2016, after Hurricane Matthew devastated the area around his community, he began providing used mattresses to keep people from sleeping on the floor. What was once a quick fix solution has now become a fully operational arm of his retail store.
Listen as Keith discusses how to set up a non-profit, intricacies of repurposing used mattresses, how you can use it as a marketing tool (without coming across as arrogant and flashy) and why you should.
Need More Marketing Ideas?
Check out how dressing up like Uncle Sam could change the way you do business.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark Kinsley
furniture appliances mattress. Filmed on news one man makes sure every person has a place to sleep regardless of their circumstances. And his foundation dreams for all doubles as a mattress marketing machine that won’t stop. The fam marketing show begins right now. Trivia Time right off the top with yo Adrian.
Adrienne Woods
Oh, hello, Keith, welcome to the show.
Mark Kinsley
Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. What’s up moneymakers?
Adrienne Woods
We always we always like to start out with our trivia questions, so I’m going to do a marketing trivia question. Okay. Skittles, like the candy were first released in 1974. But the colourful candies brand iconic taste, the rainbow tagline wasn’t developed until later. So in what year did the tagline and campaign first appear? I’m gonna give you four options. Okay. 1979 1986 1994 or 2003?
Mark Kinsley
Taste the rainbow. Tastes the rainbow. Do you remember? To taste the rainbow? Oh, you do? Keep saying 2003 You got to speak. We’re on a podcast. I know.
Keith Moneymaker
A trivia question the beginning are you waiting till the end?
Adrienne Woods
Oh, give me your guesses. But we’re gonna let people call in so if you think you know the answer, what year did the tagline Taste the rainbow come in Texas on our podium number and we will reveal the correct answer. Is Keith correct at the end of the
Mark Kinsley
show? Okay, so Keith is gonna guess 2003 I’m gonna guess. 1986 I’m gonna say it’s gonna go way back when but you have to stick around
Adrienne Woods
older than me.
Mark Kinsley
I do I think way back when?
Adrienne Woods
Well, I was born in 87. But that’s just man. Whenever you’re old. What? When were you born? Keep
Keith Moneymaker
an 88
Adrienne Woods
Oh, man. Yeah,
Mark Kinsley
good old. Man. I knew it was gonna happen. But I’m turning Oh, this guy in the room
Adrienne Woods
are turning into the oldest guy in the room. Well, I guess he’s not here. Fortunately, we have much more wise people here than Mark Kinsley. And that’s Keith moneymaker. So he’s gonna regale us with all of his wisdom today,
Mark Kinsley
Keith moneymaker is the founder of the dreams for all Foundation. And he’s also the owner of Sweet Dreams mattress. And this is not sweet dreams mattress and furniture although you have a great friendship with them, but to Sweet Dreams, mattresses, companies named you similarly in North Carolina. Yours is located where tell people the distinction here and tell us about dreams
Keith Moneymaker
for all. So Sweet Dreams, mattresses and more came to fruition after my parents lost their furniture business in a fire in 2001. A year later, my parents created sweet dreams out of a fiery nightmare. So Sweet Dreams, mattresses and more is what my dad had thought of. And 2002 as in the same year, two and a half hours west of us in Charlotte or Lake Norman, North Carolina. Greg law and the law family also came up with sweet dreams, mattress and furniture. So we also came to fruition in the same years. So wow, that’s for 1516 years down the road. Dreams for all came to fruition and I can elaborate on that as much as I need to. But it came after seeing so many years of just a huge need of just in genuine people just can’t afford a new bed. Yeah, so
Mark Kinsley
Keith do take us into drinks for all because whenever you and I have talked about marketing, your retail mattress store, you have shown your community you’ve shown other retailers and you shown the fam that you can do good in the community and really have a significant impact. And by doing that and being consistent with it, it drives lots of business to your store so effectively acts as this marketing machine. So give us the quick overview of where dreams for all came from and how it acts as that marketing machine what you do.
Keith Moneymaker
So, hurricane hit southeast of us 45 minutes Hurricane Matthew and in wiped out one of the highest poverty regions in the southeast in Lumberton, North Carolina. I went to Pembroke that’s in the same town but no relevancy where it was, but it was close by 40 minutes from where we live in one of the most affluent areas in North Carolina. And a couple months after it happened. Families are still living in they’re in college in high schools and churches and stuff because all the water had been flooded out. They lost everything. So a couple of months later when they started to do rebuilds. My buddy was down there doing tear outs with Moore county homebuilders Association and he took a video of driving through the streets and in front of every single house. Well guess what we all have a mattress in our house most of us from every single house there’s a pile of furniture and a mattress on top just kind of flopped over because it did soaking wet from the floodwaters and stuff so instantly came to fruition are in Shoot me, we get so many beds back like let’s let’s just did a call to action instantly. Now my number and information is forever in the metaverse because of that, so people constantly like that is constantly brought back to the forefront. That being said, we took 300 Plus beds down there just with our own trucks, our own guys, friends, family, just swear it was It wasn’t like a meeting for marketing. It just is like the right thing to do. It’s like I’ve got a lot of nice use beds, I know a place we can take them. Let’s just take them there. And so we started to arrange a FEMA and get beds to families. Shortly after that, you start to see other things and I had seen other things in the past families come in a couple kids to have a budget on the mattress set five 600 bucks, times that by two or three, that’s a lot of money for a family, getting school supplies, food, all the other stuff is things get more expensive, especially these days. And I would on occasion, not just like, hey, I got a nice used bed in the back or in my warehouse. Is there any interest like do you want it? Would you want it like how much they’re like nothing willing to spend money you’re gonna give us something for free? And like, yeah, it’s like, yeah, because I can give you for free is better than what you were trying to buy. And I just don’t feel like you should have this crappy bed. So that just kind of really shook people up. And it really wasn’t even a thing. Because this is before Hurricane Matthew and then after Hurricane Matthew, it really was like a wide eye opener. Fire departments that have funds for mattresses don’t really have a great budget for beds, domestic abuse, homes, foster homes, orphanages, recovery centres. You name it, homeless shelter, whatever the case is all those places that mattresses, and all this place to develop funds. And a majority of their expensive exception of food and water is actual mattress to sleep on. So I just started seeing all these openings to where like beds were needed. And I just stopped throwing mattresses away. And eventually came to a point where I started sanitising them through North Carolina State law because people do they’re getting a US bed even though they’re grateful they’re still kind of questioning the idea of a US bed, and it’s not anything they did. It’s just exactly what you’re doing your question and you use mattress, that sort of falling North Carolina guidelines and see the Department of Agriculture. So for 203 degrees, two hours you sanitise the bed, and it will kill anything on the inside. So we also then started sanitising beds for families before we gave them away. So we offer pickup, and we would deliver it out depending on where the location was. Fast forward a couple years, he raised enough money within like two years to purchase our own sanitation kiln. So we had a custom A, we were kind of like a prototype. So it was about after it was all said and done. It finally was finished, like a year and a half a year ago, was about $40,000. So we can sanitise our own beds now through North Carolina State law. And really, just fast forward, you know, we’ve repurposed over 3000 beds, to local families in our community all around North Carolina, I even have a text charity in Texas that has reached out that are sending a tractor trailer load halfway across the country to pick up beds because they can’t find anything in the state of Texas where somebody can help out. Not like our industry, how many? How big is our industry? $13 billion, or 30? Whatever the case is, here, what am I doing in North Carolina, just figuring out this huge mess we’ve all had this whole time. What came of that, after a couple of those events, especially after Hurricane Matthew, like in a being a press release and things on Facebook, people just like, hey, we saw what you did, like we just really wanted to support you. So it didn’t start as marketing machine. But the fact is, in the very end of the day, no matter what your business is, if you’re doing something to genuinely give back to your community, if anybody is going out to open a business, if you are genuinely in business, not just to make money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you are doing if you are expecting people to spend money with you, and you aren’t doing somebody to support them, then what’s your purpose? So this this model can be applied to really multiple types of businesses. But the fact is, you can talk about the goods you do I think it’s often frowned upon on social media, and things like that. You shouldn’t talk about all the good you do. We flash our houses and our cars and all these other things. So what can you talk about? Because you do that, to heck with that, like so? I talked about the good we did, we told the good story, why we’re in business, and it’s tenfold every other day, you know, because why did you hear about us? Oh, we know what you do with you is bad. And that’s like a constant thing in the store continuously continuously. And so yeah, the business has grown over over a year over a year with us in North Carolina. And I mean, I deliver in South Carolina. I mean, we go hours out, we take that to the beach to the mountains, because people just want to deal with us. And they don’t want to develop a new relationship with somebody I’m, I’m their mattress guy on their phone, apparently. And we all got a yard guy, the car guy or whatever, you know, I gotta get a mattress guy here in southeastern North Carolina.
Adrienne Woods
That’s incredible. And you know, I know you’re big on social media, Keith, the things that people love to watch are the good that is happening in the world right now. Like people just need a little bit of happy. So you’re absolutely right. Why not give people something happy to watch and see on social media?
Keith Moneymaker
Yeah, exactly. It’s good. It’s good to talk about you made it through every single thing. There’s plenty of things we do that I don’t I don’t. I don’t want to make it the backbone of what we do. But there’s plenty of stories that that we share and people love that we share them. So we keep sharing them and things keep getting bigger and better and brighter for us and so much is that I’ve had other stores not just North Carolina but like sweet dreams mattress and furniture, they reached out to me wanted to know how to do this in their own state. Because guess what? A mattress stores getting used beds back, I bet you 97% of the people listening to this podcast right now. They’re they’re used beds in the dump. What if you could turn the use beds, we’re already getting back into something to do good for your community, give something for your employees to care about and invest in, do something you could market about do something for the environment and just do something because it’s the right thing to do. And at the end of the day, your business will grow. It’s a five times win situation. And we’re throwing them in the dump. But a little extra emphasis and effort in it. And I mean, it’s it’s I’m just my mind, I just don’t I don’t get it.
Mark Kinsley
I don’t take it. Take us into it. I’m the one that figured it out. Take us into the mind of the retailer right now. That’s reaching out to you said you’re working with Greg and Katie law and Andrew Batman over switchings mattresses and furniture. Have they implemented the programme? Are they up to speed and rolling with it? Because, you know, there is the effervescent machine that is Keith Lagrange moneymaker. And then there are retailers out there that have positioned themselves in different ways and don’t have this organic thing that bubbled up, they were able to do it for their community. So are you able to effectively franchise this out? Are they able to put this in play and do it like you’ve done it?
Keith Moneymaker
They are they have been effective as far as like, we have done it in in a falling forward kind of motion. Like we do a lot of things we change and cancel and we move around all the time. And I know my team sometimes I’m sure I stressed them out sometimes just like some of the things that change your mind up on the weekly. But I change your mind it for the better. I always take their input but Greg and Katie law and they reached out to me cash it’s been over a year ago with Matt man, and they already like did things and they just do so much into their community. And then the stage itself, this is like an opportunity for a huge win. So they’ve been actually on the back end, not even talking about it for a year now giving beds away, I think it’s close to 200 I want to say. And in this process, they’ve one of the people they’ve been given beds to veterans bridge has actually come up with storage space for them to give them for some of these beds. So just without even talking about it just in genuine relationship building. They’ve already got space to store these beds through another nonprofit. So ideally, this scenario is you find nonprofits to give them to and you don’t eat up your own storage. And yes, we’ve seen it successfully workout now they’ve had it a year and we’ve been real slow because we’re still learning and to teach somebody else’s we’re learning you know, they understand the process. And then it’s we’re moving forward. They’re about to have their first press release on it. So the thing is, is we show you if we come in as you can call branding and marketing. It’s not just a giveback programme. It’s an all in programme we’re building and with them, they’ve helped me kind of figure out the do’s and the don’ts like not just within our own community, but like all the questions they’ve been asking we’ve been taking note of and how do we build this programme out? So other dealers can do it because you’re already getting these beds back. I’m just showing you the method to the madness. We’re showing you the marketing plan. How do you put it into your marketing? How do you talk about it as a sales rep? How do the delivery team which we’ll talk about a little teaser, talk about it to the end consumer to give that end consumer the little bit of chills on your skin when they’re like you’re not just like oh man, as you always hear it as a delivery team and I did deliveries for years. Oh, that sucks that matters has got to go to the dump. Well, now it doesn’t. And you tell that person that the end game, the very end person and delivery teams, oh yeah, we’re actually this beds good enough, were able to sanitise and give it to a local family or kids sleeping on the floor or something that’s power, that’s serious power. And it’s serious word of mouth. And it can be done on just about any scale, whether it’s a smaller entity, or it’s a bigger entity, the more the bigger you are, the more power you have to do it. But we’ve tested some things out and we’re just kind of going with the flow. And there’s another big dealer that has 29 stores that we’re in conversations with to bring it to their doors. We have a marketing deck, a marketing plan, we show you how to do the press release, I come in, I do a training programme for the delivery team, I come into the training programme for the sales team for their main champions. So the story you have to talk about the story and in your book that you wrote your marketing route. You talked about how do you set yourselves apart in your marketplace? And and I really, and I love that idea. And I am not going to contradict anything in that but except for we’re all trying to be way too different. We have the most simplest thing or industry that we can all link together already linked together through the Deus Marcos into the fam Marketing Show into the fam news already linked together in this industry and why not continue to build that mountain of just like support and offer something up? That doesn’t have to just be isolated to many southeastern North Carolina. This is a programme that can be applied to any store and it benefits the community in that community works apply. It doesn’t benefit me. I’m just going to show you how to do it because I just genuinely care. And I think it’s a huge mess in our industry.
Mark Kinsley
Well said, and I think you’re right, if we concentrate and we had some sort of shared mission and shared vision as an industry, that’s only going to elevate the entire category. And when we do that, we make sleep more important. We make the products we sell more important. And people live better lives because they come out on the other side, feeling more awake and feeling more ready to take on their mission in the world. Okay, Keith moneymaker, this has been an incredible episode, we keep him to 15 minutes, and we just scratched a little bit over. But luckily, if you subscribe to the fam marketing show right now, there will be future episodes with Keith. His beard is named Lagrange moneymaker. And by the way, we got to close the loop on the Skittles. trivia question and I was just as I was looking at your beard, I was thinking to myself, you know, I guess that the the Skittles tagline was from 1986 and I’m pretty sure that if a Skittle got lost in your beard, it could be lost since 1986. So Adrian, you’re gonna you’re gonna have to give us
Adrienne Woods
I’m not gonna go there. All right, for those of you that don’t remember, we’re trying to figure out what year the tagline Taste the rainbow. That was I think that’s how they whispered it. Taste the rainbow from Skittles debuted gave you said 2003 Mark, you said 1986 the actual answer is 9094.
Mark Kinsley
Oh, hey, they split the floor right down the middle 1994
Adrienne Woods
It debuted in over 40 commercials that the actual marketing can be they came up with that is now defunct. So last tagline did what I like crazy word
Mark Kinsley
defunct. Hey, man, man. Hey, Keith, thanks for being on the show. Brother. Appreciate you appreciate your heart for this industry and what you do for people, the amount of beds you put people on that otherwise would have been sleeping on the floor or a couch or something. That was terrible. It’s just really inspirational and we truly appreciate you. We’re gonna have you back on the show, like I said, and in the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the fans. Newsletter go to fam dot news, subscribe to the fam Marketing Show. And we’re gonna continue to bring you marketing magic on these wonderful fam marketing shows.
