094: Doctor turned Entrepreneur Prescribes some Zzzzs… Wei-Shin Lai of AcousticSheep

Background on Wei-Shin Lai of AcousticSheep:

Wei-Shin Lai struggled to get back to sleep after late night patient phone calls as a family doctor. She needed a natural, non-drug solution to sleep. Relaxing music worked great, but she had no comfortable way to listening to it without disturbing her husband. So Wei-Shin and her husband invented the world's first and best sleep headphones: SleepPhones. Now, Wei-Shin is the inventor, co-founder, and CEO of AcousticSheep, LLC, makers of SleepPhones, the first headphones for sleep, and RunPhones, fitness headphones.

For the first 6 years, Jason and Wei-Shin ran the kitchen table business out of their house. After selling 100,000 pieces, they decided to take their business to the next level, hiring their first full-time employee and setting up their warehouse in Erie, PA. Since leaving their day jobs 3 years ago, Jason and Wei-Shin have won numerous awards as Entrepreneur of the Year in PA (SBA), Entrepreneur of the Year in Western PA & WV (Ernst & Young), and Small Business of the Year with the Consumer Technology Association. They have won 8 Consumer Electronics Association Innovation Awards for their products, 2 Pennsylvania ImPAct Awards (Entrepreneur and Exports), and a Red Dot Design Award. Locally, they have won the Disrupt Erie Award, Ben Franklin Award, and the Commitment to Erie Award.

From designing and manufacturing tremendously helpful products to running a fun, innovative company, Wei-Shin and Jason look forward to growing AcousticSheep to offer a fresh, new, natural sleep solution to everyone worldwide.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:13] Wei-Shin Lai is a medical doctor who turned into a successful entrepreneur. They started their business as a hobby, which eventually became a full-time job. They now have a revenue of a few million dollars every year.
[5:17] Wei-Shin does not think of herself as the typical business person. She describes herself as an introvert and far from being a business-oriented type of person.
[7:59] Wei-Shin created a business plan, but she has minimal knowledge in even writing a balance sheet. She provided a financial projection grossing a million dollars in 5 years, and she thought this was funny.
[9:11] She and her husband initially created the Acoustic sheep just for personal use, specifically for Wei-Shin.
[12:19] In the beginning, Wei-Shin did not want to underprice her product. She priced her acoustic sheep headphone at $80, but eventually went down to $40.
[13:29] She said there were really no big challenges during the first 4 years of their business. It was only at their 5th year that they started to hire their first full-time employees.
[17:16] They hired individual contractors to make their headphones. Eventually, Wei-Shin shifted to China for producing their headphones.
[21:29] When dealing with factories overseas, Wei-Shin Lai advises to facilitate batch production first instead of proceeding immediately to mass production. A few hundred pieces is good enough to check the consistency of quality.
[26:11] Wei-Shin and her husband agreed to hire her husband’s brother in order to handle the shipment.
[27:06] Wei-Shin moved their business to Erie, Pennsylvania, where they have the warehouse and shipment.
[29:08] Moving up to Erie was the turning point in their business. This is the time when Wei-Shin and her husband quit their day job and focused on the AcousticSheep.
[31:56] AcousticSheep won the Small Business of the Year in 2016. They bought a Tesla to reward themselves.
[33:49] There were some employees that Wei-Shin has to let go and fire. Some people cannot be corrected and change at work.
[35:15] Wei-Shin doesn’t have that specific formula for success. She warns against people giving bad advice, and she emphasizes on knowing yourself and your capabilities.
[36:49] She had her fair share of receiving bad advice from other entrepreneurs. She gave one example of a bad advice.

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? 1984 by George Orwell
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? As a consumer brand with knockoffs, we are not fond of Amazon.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Gimp – so much cheaper than Photoshop.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Customer education for a completely new type of headphones.

Key Point from the Interview:

“When you’re working with somebody overseas, you have to have very clear specifications”

Resources Mentioned:

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