Broke Friends with $80K Debt → $500K/Month Biz

🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why did the entrepreneur always carry a key? Because they believe in unlocking new opportunities!

Onto Today’s story….

Have you ever had a business idea that you thought could be big,

but weren't sure how to turn it into reality?

Many aspiring entrepreneurs face this exact dilemma.

These two childhood friends stumbled upon a simple but powerful product idea and, built it into a $500k/month breakout success story.

Here is how they did it.

Lior, worked at an overnight camp for special needs children.

They had a room there called the "Stimulation Room", and it had all sorts of devices and tools that were sensory-related.

One of them was a weighted blanket, which helped the kids sleep better.

Lior could see the incredible calming and therapeutic benefits himself, when he tried these clinical blankets.

But the blankets were also quite ugly, and were used only in hospitals and rehab centers.

Lior envisioned a more stylish and mainstream weighted blanket, that could help everyday people relieve anxiety and insomnia issues as well.

Meanwhile, his childhood friend Aaron Spivak, was cutting his teeth as an entrepreneur in lead generation software and the food industry.

But he was not seeing much success there.

Lior told him about his idea for the weighted blanket.

Aaron liked it.

So, Aaron and Lior decided to combine their talents and connections, to finally pursue the weighted blanket business.

They needed $80k.

They took out 3 credit cards and 2 lines of credits with 2 different banks, to help with larger purchases along the way too.

They also never had experience in physical product design, but that didn’t deter them.

They purchased samples of every competitor blanket they could find.

They spent many late nights analyzing these.

This helped them find ways to make their product more comfortable, breathable, and of better quality.

They made a special fabric for their weighted blanket, using top-quality cotton, spandex, and bamboo.

While competitors targeted medical markets, Aaron and Lior designed the Hush Blanket with style-aware customers in mind,

from its look to its branding and communication.

They knew that to stand out, their blanket couldn’t just perform better but also look more premium.

They decided to test if customers would like their blankets.

So, they manufactured a small batch of 1200 units.

During this time, they were also struggling from stress and sleeping problems rom time to time.

Once they started trying their own product, they themselves felt better and they fell in love with their product.

They quickly built a Shopify store to start driving pre-orders.

They ran their first Adwords Ad and their first sales came in the very next day.

Their homepage was setup like a landing/sales page, since they only had only one product and that helped with conversions too.

Sales starting coming in and finally they sold the 1200 blankets they had ordered.

Now they knew there was demand and so they started manufacturing more.

Sales slowly picked up and money started coming in.

They also started doing Google and Facebook ads.

This worked well and delivered a steady stream of curious customers.

They also optimized their website for “long tail keywords” related to anxiety and sleep solutions.

This worked and they started getting organic traffic too.

These initial organic and paid advertising efforts kept sales steadily flowing in.

Their idea was also validated and they knew they had a good product-market fit.

Word of mouth was also spreading through social media.

Rather than taking profits, they wanted to grow Hush Blankets the first year.

So they continued maxing credit cards and worked side hustles to increase their ad budgets and revenue.

They also started strategically testing new advertising channels and optimizing their funnels.

All this worked and they started to gain momentum.

By the end of one year, Hush Blankets sales rocketed to $250k/Month in revenue.

And then a pivotal moment came when Aaron and Lior appeared, on Canada’s popular Dragons’ Den TV show.

The Dragons’ Den publicity gave them good publicity and drove more sales.

Local news coverage about this drove a surge of traffic and sales.

Riding the momentum wave, Aaron and Lior expanded beyond weighted blankets into new products.

They launched the first-ever iced weighted blanket, on crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

These were a viral hit as they raised over $1 million.

They kept introducing new comfort items such as heavy blankets, and cooling bed sheets,

always based on customer feedback and confirmed by pre-orders.

Once they get pre-orders,they knew customers liked their products and then they would make these products.

This reduced their risk to almost zero.

Today, you can find a half dozen Hush Blanket products, all designed to improve sleep and help you relax.

They continued to grow.

Now they are making $500k/month.

Aaron says…

“If you have a business and want to move on to another idea,

make sure your current one has systems in place to flourish without you.”

7 Reasons why they succeeded

1. Identified a product solving real problems

• Lior worked at a camp for special needs kids and saw firsthand how weighted blankets helped them sleep better.

• He realized that these same blankets could help the wider population, suffering from anxiety or insomnia.

• Lior envisioned selling a more mainstream and stylish weighted blanket to the common people.

2. Believed in the idea

• They bootstrapped $80K through personal credit cards and bank loans.

• This provided necessary money to start initial production.

3. Analyzed competitors

• They purchased samples of every similar blanket on the market.

• They spent many late nights testing and analyzing these blankets.

• This allowed them to design the best blankets.

4. Very clear on their USP

• They focused on stylish look vs clinical feel of competitor products.

• Made their blanket with high-end fabrics like cotton, spandex and bamboo, to attract the mainstream customers.

5. Validated with small test batch

• Initially, they manufactured a small batch of 1200 units to test demand.

• These units sold well, confirming there was demand.

• Rather than mass production upfront, this approach reduced risk.

6. Simple Landing page

• Their website had a simple landing page describing one single product.

• This helped the visitors know that this was a solution for their sleep problems, and made them buy the product.

7. Use pre-orders to derisk.

• Before manufacturing anything,they tested new product ideas like their their cooling blanket via pre-order Kickstarter campaigns.

• They raised over $1 million and this confirmed there was demand.

• They got money and customers, even before the product was manufactured.

Hope you liked the story and the strategies which made them successful.

Keep Rocking!

Yours “Anti-Stress” Vijay Peduru