By Andrew Dalton
For Dr. Wei-Shin Lai, helping people live happy and healthy lives has always been her #1 goal. Pursuing a career in family medicine helped her fulfill this goal, but also came with some unintended side effects. One of the requirements of the job was that she would receive phone calls at all hours of the night from patients needing anything from prescription refills to advice and guidance. In time, Dr. Lai found that after taking these calls it was extremely difficult to fall back to sleep, leaving her foggy and making it hard to focus in the office the next day.
As a solution to this problem, Dr. Lai’s husband, video game developer Jason Wolfe suggested she listen to calming, meditative music to help her relax. Unfortunately for her, headphones were bulky and earbuds were uncomfortable to wear in bed. Since there were no headphones specifically designed for sleeping on the market at the time, they decided to invent their own and call them SleepPhones®.
Dr. Lai slept so well the first night she used their new invention that she decided she had to offer them to patients of hers who were currently relying on medication to fall asleep. Setting up shop at the kitchen table of their Bellefonte, Pennsylvania home, Mr. Wolfe soldered the speakers and wires together while Dr. Lai hand-sewed the first 500 headbands.
Initial feedback of this newly invented product was phenomenal, and one patient of Dr. Lai’s was even able to stop taking her sleeping medication after 10 years of continuous use. Another patient said they saved her marriage because she could finally sleep in the same bed as her snoring husband. Riding the momentum of this incredible feedback, Dr. Lai and Mr. Wolfe decided to patent their invention and start a real business. They completely sold out in their first year.
For the next six years the couple ran their business out of the kitchen of their home. After selling 100,000 pieces, they both decided to leave their day jobs, move north to Erie, Pa, and take their business to the next level. Since leaving their day jobs in 2013, Dr. Lai and Mr. Wolfe have sold over one million pairs of SleepPhones® worldwide and have won numerous local, state and national awards for their revolutionary sleep product.
