Michael Hanna settled in his expansive office one Monday morning, sure he had his life mapped out. An advertising executive, Hanna wore suits and ties and managed 40 people at Comcast Cable.

The day was drawing to a close when Hanna's boss summoned him. The conversation was a blur: sour economy, contracting industry, bad advertising climate. Fifteen minutes later -- on May 4, 2009 -- Hanna was out of a job.

He called his wife and drove to their home in Portland's Laurelhurst neighborhood. That evening, he broke the news to their two teenage kids.

At first, he was confident. He had plenty of contacts from years as a reporter, ad salesman and executive at two Portland television stations,

and

He made calls, took lunches and met with managers who were sympathetic but just hanging on themselves.

Soon, thoughts of the mortgage, college for the kids and saving for retirement kept Hanna up at night.

In August, friends Steve and Debbie Schneiderman visited from Coos Bay to have dinner with Hanna and his wife, Mary Ruth. Something Steve Schneiderman mentioned offhand intrigued Hanna.

By the end of the night, Hanna had a plan: He told his wife he wanted to take out a home-equity loan to buy, sight unseen, a semi-truck full of factory-second mattresses from Los Angeles. His wife told him he was nuts.

But Michael Hanna, 47, was ready to take a risk.

In the end, he would learn something about business and himself.

Schneiderman, who owned a furniture store, had told him a Los Angeles furniture dealer was trying to unload mattresses. A broker had a truckload for sale, $9,000 cash. Hanna mulled it over and proposed that he and Schneiderman buy the mattresses and sell them in Coos Bay in a location where Schneiderman wouldn't violate any noncompete clauses.

But first, Hanna had to persuade his wife to go along with the home-equity loan on their 1911 Craftsman-style home, which had greatly appreciated in the 12 years they had owned it.

"We didn't know anything about mattresses," said Mary Ruth Hanna. "He'd never even shown a passion for mattresses. Here he was trying to find himself and talking about buying a truck full of them."

He, too, was nervous.

"The $9,000 was a lot of money," he said. "But I was at the point where I had to do something. It was the first time in my life I'd been out of a job. The job market in Portland was very soft, especially for guys my age and with my background."

His wife agreed to the loan, and Hanna and Schneiderman went ahead. Within months, they sold out.

Hanna took his share of the profits, tapped the rest of the home-equity loan and rented part of a building at Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 24th Avenue -- the site of a closed car dealership.

"He stopped in one day and told me he wanted to open a mattress store," said Alex Laws, co-owner of Timberline Dodge, one of hundreds of dealerships around the country that Chrysler ordered closed. "I was sitting there with 22,000 square feet of empty showroom."

Laws took a liking to Hanna. On rent, he told Hanna not to worry.

"I told him we'd figure something out," Laws said. "Just go ahead and open the store."

Hanna bought another truckload of mattresses, which arrived New Year's Eve 2009. Friends, also unemployed, helped unload. There, three blocks from KATU's headquarters, Hanna began a new career with a business he christened

.

"I'd never owned a retail store," he said. "I didn't know what to expect. But I had to give it a shot."

The store has a stripped-down feel and at times features live music;

a prominent Portland pianist, rents an adjacent space, and the Hannas hear him practicing.

Hanna had a television producer make a commercial and posted it on

Fifteen minutes after opening his doors, he made his first sale to a couple who had seen the ad.

"I'm still not sure how they found it," he said. "But they needed a bed. This was too easy. For many days after that, I just sat there. What had I done? What on Earth had I been thinking?"

During January, he sold only a handful of mattresses. "That first month, I would bring him a sandwich every day," his wife said. "He'd be sitting in there alone and tell me that not one customer had stopped by. I thought this was crazy, that he had to go find a real job. But I also saw his passion and commitment."

Sitting in the store day after day, seven days a week, wasn't easy. The suits and ties were stashed in the back of the closet. Hanna learned that business -- and life -- comes with detours.

Then things began to turn around.

Hanna hired a consultant from a Salem mattress store to teach him about side sleepers, back sleepers and why coil counts matter. He sold out and replenished with stock from Oregon Mattress Co. in Newberg, a family-run business that started in the 1930s. He met one of the owners when the man happened to stop in the store one afternoon.

Soon, customers, many from the nearby Laurelhurst neighborhood, started arriving. Hanna built a special trailer so he can make neighborhood deliveries by bicycle. Hanna and one of his workers will load the mattresses on the trailer and set out on side streets on a tandem.

Six months after opening the doors, The Mattress Lot is turning a profit.

"What I found is that there is a segment of the population overlooked by the large stores," Hanna said. "Our sweet spot for a mattress is $399 and $499. For many people, that's a lot of money. They might be buying the best bed they've ever had. We respect that."

Hanna, a lean and athletic man who likes to wear baseball caps, greets customers with a wave, but he's clearly a low-pressure salesman, content to let customers wander. He won't disclose sales but said business is good enough that he and his wife are on the payroll. They've hired five part-timers, including an architect who lost his job. He recently posted an online ad for help with sales and deliveries, and received more than 200 applications in 12 hours.

One recent hire was Sarah Lawsage, 29, who so impressed Mary Ruth Hanna while buying a bed that they tracked her down and offered her a job as the store's customer service representative.

"There's no corporate hoopla here," Lawsage said. "I feel like I'm a part of their family. I'm four months' pregnant, and they're letting me borrow their bassinet."

The business remains a lot of work for the Hannas. "Sometimes I look at Michael and say that we can't talk about mattresses anymore," Mary Ruth Hanna said. "I get tired of talking about mattresses. The kids get sick of it, too. It's a boring conversation for a 14- and 16-year-old."

But aside from finding a way to make a living, Hanna has learned a lot about life. He's learned how to improvise and adapt: "If I fail at this point in my life, I know I'll find something else."

He's learned about others. "A bed is one of the most intimate parts of someone's life," he said. "Customers like to talk, and I like to listen."

One customer complained because a platform bed broke. Fearing it was defective, Hanna learned it broke during "vigorous activity." He fixed it at no cost.

"Another time, a young woman walked in, bought something, and I offered to give her a ride back to her apartment when I delivered the bed," he said. "My 14-year-old son came along to help. On the way, I asked what she did. She said she worked at a bar." As a stripper.

Families stop by to get a big bed for children who've grown. Hanna has sold beds to people getting married and people getting divorced.

"Two men from Pakistan came in and said they each needed a king-sized bed to impress their wives," he said. "It was an arranged marriage, and they were going to meet them for the first time. Every bed is a story."

Now, Hanna doesn't manage. He works.

"It's very humbling to go from a corporate manager to being a delivery guy," he said. "That's what I do many days a week. I lift mattresses and go into people's homes. I'm doing the kind of work -- labor -- that I haven't done in 30 years since I was in college. My fingers hurt; my back is frequently sore at night.

"But I've never been happier in my life."

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