Making Shots and IVs a Little Less Scary for Little Ones → $200k+/month

🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why did the entrepreneur keep a telescope at their office window? To keep an eye on distant opportunities!

Onto Today’s story….

When Dr. Amy Baxter was working as a pediatric emergency room physician,

she was disturbed by the unnecessary pain that children experienced,

from routine medical procedures like vaccinations.

As both a doctor and a mother, Amy was determined to find a solution.

She started Pain care labs and it is now making $200k+/month.

Here is how she did it.

Amy was a pediatric emergency doctor.

She was struck by how much acute pain kids experienced from routine IV starts, injections, and blood draws.

Amy, being a mom of two little kids, knew how scary these medical experiences, were for children and their parents.

She noticed that even though medical technology has improved in many areas, the methods to handle pain during procedures didn’t get better.

Amy was determined to change that.

In 2002, Amy had an “a-ha” moment while driving home after an overnight ER shift.

Her steering wheel was vibrating, reminding her of the gate control theory she had learned in medical school.

She realized that vibration could block pain by overriding pain signals to the brain.

Amy raced home to try it out on her kids, experimenting by combining vibration and frozen peas as ice.

To her excitement, her homemade prototype completely blocked poke sensations, proving her theory right.

She decided to name the product as Buzzy.

Over the next two years, Amy developed early Buzzy prototypes using makeshift materials like cell phone motors.

She developed some homemade prototypes, and tested them in the hospital with several kids.

Buzzy worked.

Now they needed money.

A friend told her about the Small Business Innovative Research program at the NIH.

She decided to apply for a $1.1 million NIH small business grant to research and develop Buzzy.

Amy and her husband decided that addressing needle pain was worth working part time for Amy.

She filed a patent, reduced her hours, and began grant writing for getting the grant.

She was trained as a clinical research scientist, but the business plan was new territory for her.

She learnt as she went.

Finally they received the grant.

Meanwhile they found a manufacturer to create the product.

To create the products, the money was not enough, so they mortgaged their house and got a $100K home equity line of credit.

Finally in 2009, Pain Care Labs launched Buzzy to the consumer market with an online store.

Early on, sales was driven by parents and hospitals, wanting painless vaccination and needle procedures for kids.

Word spread as nurses and organizations like UNICEF championed the drug-free pain relief device.

An appearance on Shark Tank in 2014 introduced Buzzy to a wider audience.

Soon arthritis, IVF, and chronic condition patients, discovered it worked for their pain too.

Amy says…. “It’s easier to find someone looking for your solution than to explain to everyone WHY they need your solution.”

They started developing the VibraCool products, to specifically target sore joints, nerves, and muscles.

They started selling on Amazon and sales increased 30% immediately.

They also did Facebook, Amazon and Google Ads, which worked out well.

Amy says, One lesson she learned is there is no big moment.

So many people expect to hit a tipping point, one big TV appearance,

or some other milestone after which the business gets easy.

She says…

“Thus far, I don’t believe those Moments of Destiny happen, unless perhaps in retrospect.”

“Instead, having a business, is step by step trial and error with many things.”

Today Pain Care Labs products are used the world over, in both medical and consumer areas, resulting in over 45 million pain-free procedures.

As a mission-driven social entrepreneur, Amy aspires to have Pain Care Labs products be as ubiquitous as Band-Aids one day.

They continued to grow and now they make $200k+/Month.

Amy says…

“Fall in love with the problem, not your solution.”

8 reasons why they succeeded

1. Identified an overlooked problem

• Amy noticed routine medical procedures caused acute pain for kids that technology improvements didn't address

• She was struck by bad experiences like IVs, injections, blood draws that caused needless kids' suffering

• Vaccinations were a common source of severe pain to kids that Amy realized had never been properly solved.

2. Used unconventional ideas

• Amy questioned the status quo and didn't accept pain as inevitable part of medical care.

• Inspired by a vibrating steering wheel, she conceived the idea of using vibration as a form of pain relief.

• She discovered a creative and unexpected pain remedy that combines the unconventional use of ice with vibration.

3. Tested her ideas quickly with scrappy homemade prototypes

• Amy first experimented with vibration and frozen peas on her own kids at home

• She made initial Buzzy prototypes from odd household objects like cell phone motors

• Early testing on kids at hospital validated pain relief effectiveness

4. Filed patents early

• Before even starting to build her products, Amy filed for patent to protect her invention

5. Validated her idea

• Parents and hospitals eagerly adopted Buzzy for helping with painless kids' vaccinations and procedures.

• This demand confirmed Amy's belief that Buzzy met real previously ignored needs

6. Used Low-Cost promotions

• Nurses and organizations such as UNICEF endorsed Buzzy based on the benefits they saw.

• The support of credible third-party advocates, particularly in the early stages, significantly boosted their credibility.

• These grassroots endorsements helped to build awareness and trust, in place of traditional advertising.

7. Expanded to other markets

• Amy saw wider applications due to interest from patients with arthritis, IVF, and chronic pain.

• Amy expanded scope from focusing solely on children to addressing the needs of other patients.

• She created another product called Spinoff VibraCool which expanded vibration therapy benefits to more people.

8. Sell where her customers were already shopping

• She sold her products on Amazon

• This increased her sales by 30%

Hope you enjoyed the story and their success tactics.

Keep Rocking!

Yours “Anti-hustle” Vijay Peduru