WIRED Store Grand Opening Party

We took a few days to visit New York City this past weekend.



We visited the WIRED Store grand opening on Thursday night and went back on Saturday to get a closer look at everything. The party was crazy! The ground floor had a bar made of ice, and still it was hot from all of the body heat! It's a 3-story structure with lots of little rooms and alcoves. SleepPhones were on the bottom floor, and RunPhones were on the top floor. Lots of people, finger foods, alcohol, and very cool products. Since the party was at 7pm, and we didn't get to eat before, I stood by the food entrance and had a bit of everything.



Here are some pictures of various products. There were lots of retro themes.





While in the City, we met with Dr. Jordan Stern of BlueSleep, the comprehensive sleep center in the financial district. We met with Adil Soomro, a talented Harvard MBA to discuss business. And we visited the 5th Avenue Sleepy's where SleepPhones are offered in New York City. Apparently, SleepPhones are sold out at that location, but they have not been able to get clearance from central purchasing to sell any more yet. We'll keep working with central purchasing!

Choosing a Company Name - 5 Tips

One of the first steps in establishing a company is choosing a name. This is a critical step, greatly impacting marketing, operations, and ultimately, success.

1. Unique and memorable
   It doesn't need to be anything fancy, but it needs to be unique.
   Do a Google search on the name you choose. Ideally, nothing should show up. For example, I just looked up Mary's Cleaning Service, and all of the entries on the first page of Google were for different businesses. If you chose that name, someone looking for your business online may have a hard time finding it.
   
   
2. Easy to spell and pronounce
   When talking on the phone, it's much easier to just tell someone a name than to have to spell it for them. The spelling problem applies to pleural words and punctuations too.
   
   Jose Espinosa Graphics 'n Design might seem like a nice graphic design place, but it might run into some problems.
   
   • Is Jose with an accent or not?
     
   • Is is spelled Hosay or Jose?
     
   • Is is Espinoza or Espinosa?
     
   • Is there an "s" at the end of Graphics or not?
     
   • Is the "'n" spelled with the "'" or "and"? Can you even put an apostrophe on a credit card, and do you have to spell it out for the state registration?
     
   
   
3. Ranks low in the alphabet
   You'd be surprised how many lists are alphabetized. If you are listed near the top, you would have a better chance of being seen. If I'm going through a phone book, and there are 50 auto detailing places, I might only call the first 5 places.
   
   
4. Domain name is available in .com
   Even if you plan to be a local business, you need to have a .com presence. That means your company name needs to be available as a domain name.
   
   You don't want to have to be the company that puts a hyphen in their name because someone else has it. You don't want to be the one with the .net or .biz name because someone else has the .com.
   
   Once you buy the .com, you may also want to buy the .net, .biz, and .co. Plus, you will also want to buy any potential misspellings of your name.
   We have all of the following, for example, and they all redirect to the same place:
   sleepphones.com
   sleephones.com
   sheepphones.com
   sleepphone.com
   
   
5. Descriptive of your brand
   The bulk of what you do needs to be in the name. If you provide sewing services and alterations, you can't name your place Martha Baker Services, even if your last name is Baker. People will expect you to bake pies for them.
   
   If what you do is in the name, it would be much easier for people to remember you and what you do.
   
   

In retrospect, could we have chosen a better name for AcousticSheep, LLC? Probably. But we were new to this whole thing. I don't think we did too badly with the name. It's unique, memorable, tells people that we deal with acoustics, and invokes an image of our cute sheep. However, is it hard to spell. People try to spell it with two Cs and separate the words frequently. It is at the top of many lists because it starts with "a," and we definitely have the unique domain name.

Be sure to do research online for other company naming tips. I only listed the ones I feel are most important, but there are many other potential pitfalls and advice on brainstorming.

Dinner Party

Now that we're getting busier, I have to start delegating work! Besides, I'm not very good at many things. I'm okay at many things, which has gotten us by so far. But there comes a point in a business where it needs to start looking more professional.

We've retained a great graphic designer to make the nice brochures that people get now. And we have a packaging expert designing retail packaging. Our friend is our website designer now - she helped put together the RunPhones website and is now tweaking the SleepPhones website.

We have another friend doing PR for us now. I run out of things to say on Twitter and Facebook, so while I check them 2-3 times a day, I don't have much to say. He's much better at finding things to say and to spin things in a way to make it funny or more engaging. For example, I would have just said, "someone stole my cousin-in-law's SleepPhones in England." He said, "One wonders how thieves can sleep at night, but this thief likely will sleep fine thanks to illegally-acquired SleepPhones." See, now that's more like it.

All of this to say that with all of the new talent we have, we had to make sure they all meet each other. We held a dinner party last week and took a time-lapse video of the event. 4 hours condensed into 30 seconds.

Packaging Lessons Part 6

Printed boxes.

A lot of manufacturers have their own custom printed boxes. Of course, we'd like that, but it does add to the cost of each box. Plus, there is the fee to step up the printing too. The benefit to having a printed box is for retailers to more easily identify our boxes. We could just put stickers all of the boxes like we do right now, but that looks pretty unprofessional. We decided that the easiest way for us to put our name on the boxes is with tape. We're getting custom printed tape that says SleepPhones on it. We can then close boxes with that, and it would be quite easy to recognize. We could even put a strip of tape across a few sides to make it that much easier to find our boxes. Here's a pic of our 2” standard packing tape!

Packaging Lessons Part 5

We have some sample boxes from the box manufacturer right now. We're still tweaking the exact final sizes and designs. The bigger boxes are 44-ECT instead of the standard 32-ECT. The 44-ECT cardboard is thicker, but not quite to the doublewall size.

For a pallet, we would need to wrap the boxes with plastic wrap or strap them with thick bands. I looked around and the commercial plastic wraps all come in boxes of 4, even on eBay. I'm not sure we will be needing to pack our own pallets for more than a few months. We only have one order right now that requires pallets. I really don't want to buy a wrap dispenser ($50) and 4 giant rolls of wraps ($70). I even considered using kitchen Saran wrap. But then I stumbled across U-Haul's moving supplies. It turns out that they have single tubes of plastic wrap pre-packaged on a dispenser. And if you ordered $25 worth of stuff, they deliver it for free! So I ordered an 18” tube and a 5” tube. I'm excited that I found a great low-cost, no commitment solution for wrapping boxes on a pallet!

Packaging Lessons Part 4

I've been buying boxes from Uline's box stocks. They aren't custom, but they have so many sizes that I can usually find something that fits well enough. They are fast, shipping from about 2 hours away. Unfortunately, they don't have anything close to what I would need to minimize wasted packaging per the requirements of our manufacturer's rep. So I have to start using custom-size boxes.

If you've never noticed before, on the bottom of every corrugated box, there is a circle stamp with the box manufacturer's information. I looked around at what other business use locally and found a box manufacturer about 45 minutes away. They have been quite responsive, and the sales representative that called on us has stopped by a few times with lots of samples to try out, per my specifications.

The problem is my specifications. There are lots of details in box design!

There are the inside dimensions for the products. That's pretty obvious. The typical 32-ECT corrugated cardboard measures about 1/8 inch in thickness. The outside dimensions are usually 1/4 inch bigger. The sides that have the flap doubled would make that side 5/8 inch bigger. But then depending on how they put the box together, there's usually a tab along one edge that would need to be glued down. That makes that corner an extra 1/8 inch in thickness. Add up all of the little extras to get the final inner carton outside dimensions (which is different from one corner to the next actually).

Packing the inner cartons into a master carton involves the same process of determining the inside dimensions and then figuring out the outside dimensions. But wait! If you make things exact, you'll never be able to get the inner cartons out. If they are packed in too tightly, you create no space for air to move around, and trying to get an inner carton out would involve fighting a vacuum. So you have to add an extra eighth or quarter inch around.

As explained in the previous post about pallets, the outside box dimension is important for fitting things on a pallet. I calculated backwards from 48” final outside dimensions to figure out what size the the 6-pack box would need to be. Once I have all of these dimensions, the box manufacturer can finally make the boxes!

Business Cards

We're working with a talented graphic designer, Tara Tallman, who is a friend of friends. (We live in a relatively small community.) She designed my latest business card! I had no idea how to put RunPhones and SleepPhones on the same card without it looking tacky. But she totally pulled it off! RunPhones are in the white background, signifying daytime, and the SleepPhones are on the black background, signifying nighttime. Curved line makes everything soft, like our headphones. Very cool. It's the one on the right side.


In comparison, the previous card design was made by yours truly (on the left). It's supposed to depict a door hangtag - like the "Do Not Disturb" signs. Get it? No? Oh. Okay.

Shake Up

We're very excited to be moving forward with a new public relations strategy and packaging designer!

It's been a while since we've been involved in direct conversations with our customers via Blogs, Facebook messages, and newsletters. The reason is because we had employed a PR firm and relied on them to help us with getting our message out. Over time, we figured out that we really need many of the tasks to be done internally or at least locally. We never met most of the people we conference called monthly because they are 5 hours away. Our new PR representative has worked in the field for many years and is a good friend.

And as for packaging, we're discovering talent we didn't know existed locally! Through networking with friends, we found out that Shannon Lake is a local powerhouse of packaging and business identity talent, having worked at firms in Pittsburgh and locally on many household names. Originally we contacted her for help with RunPhones packaging, but then figured that we might as well employ her for the SleepPhones packaging too.

From the business angle, firing the previous organization was a new experience for us. On the whole, it has gone well, and we have left the relationship amicably with the other party. Some business decisions involving people you like is difficult, but it's a little easier when emphasizing that it is just a business decision, not a judgment on the person(s).

Best New Sleep Aid, the Sheep of Your Dreams System, is Now Available

Do you have trouble sleeping at night? Do you find yourself tossing, turning, and wishing you could just drift off peacefully? Are you kept awake by distracting noises, such as your partner’s snoring or your roommate’s loud music?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, we want to encourage you to check out our Sheep of Your Dreams system, one of the best new sleep aids for anyone looking for a drug-free, all-natural solution to sleeping problems.

New Sleep Aid Kit

The Sheep of Your Dreams sleep aid system includes a pair of SleepPhones™, a soft and cuddly SleepPhones Sheep, the Dreams CD, and a lavender sachet. All of these components work together to promote relaxation, relieve stress, and lead you into a sound and restful sleep. Plus, there is no risk of harmful side effects.

We suggest plugging your SleepPhones™ into your iPod or MP3 player, stowing the music player into Sheep’s back pocket, and listening to the soothing tracks found on the Dreams CD. Don’t forget that your SleepPhones™ can also double as a sleeping mask in order to block out light and keep you sleeping soundly until your alarm goes off. Finally, keep the fragrant lavender sachet close by as you drift off to sleep. Lavender can help with sleep problems such as insomnia, anxiety, and nightmares.

Best Sleep Aid System

The Sheep of Your Dreams sleeping aid system can help you fall asleep faster, so you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead. For those who suffer from sleeping problems and want to avoid turning to pharmaceuticals, this is one of the best sleep aids available. With the holiday season just around the corner, it makes a great gift as well!

Have you purchased the Sheep of Your Dreams sleeping aid system already? We would love to hear how this new sleep aid is making a difference in your life. Tell us about your experience below!

Packaging Lessons Part 3

Now that we have the final package design for this holiday season, we have to box it up. We have been reusing the various boxes we have around from the things that we buy. So our wholesale customers get their SleepPhones in Amazon boxes, Staples boxes, and a variety of other boxes. We'd try to rip off the excess stickers and cover up writing with SleepPhones stickers. It wasn't very professional looking, but at least we were reusing – one step up the sustainability chain from recycling. Our manufacturer's representative advised us to get some more consistent packaging.

Retailers like inner cartons and master cartons. Inner cartons are usually in 6-packs of 12-packs, depending on the size of the item and how they night fit on a shelf. They want to be able to take out a 6-pack, put it on the shelf, and not have to take any back to the stock room. For our medium size product, 6-packs and 12-packs (for 6 of two different colors) seem reasonable.

If the store is a chain, then they would want to take a master carton, open that up, and send out a 6-pack or a 12-pack to their individual stores. A master carton of 24 would be excessive packaging, while a master carton of 108 may be a bit too much.

Ideally, I would have liked to pack 72 into a master carton. I drew out the geometry for that and was quite excited. Unfortunately, when I calculated the final sizing, I figured out that it would be too big. FedEx and UPS both have calculations for what they consider an over-sized box. If the length + 2 (width+height) > 84 inches, then it's oversized. They charge a minimum of 30 pounds worth of stuff for oversized packages, regardless of how much the package actually weights. 72 SleepPhones would weigh about 16-18 pounds. So I nixed that design.

Then I looked into packages of 60 pieces. It would fit in just under the oversized box limit, and it would be easy to carry. It's a nice even number, so people could order 300 pieces or 600 pieces. I did all of the calculations for that, and the final 60-pack box size would be about 31” x 14” x 12”. I took that information and tried to stack it onto a pallet. If someone order 1200 pieces, I'd need to put the boxes on a pallet for easier unloading. (It wouldn't be easier loading since we don't have a forklift, but we could just put the boxes onto a pallet in a truck if necessary.) I tried every configuration I could, and the size was just so awkward for a pallet! A typical wooden pallet is 40” x 48” x 5” and weighs about 15 pounds. The 31” length wasted lots of space around the edges of the pallet. So I finally had to give up that design.

The next design is for 48 pieces in a master carton. I shortened the inner cartons to make it fit, but I finally got a 24” x 14” x 12” box. That meant I could have two 24” boxes side by side on a pallet, so there wouldn't be wasted space. And if I turned the box on its side, I could have 3 rows of that. 6 boxes per level, 4 levels total, for a total height of 61”. 24 boxes would be 1152 pieces per pallet, a pretty good number.

I draw up everything and was about to send it off to our adviser. Then I learned from a box expert that the corrugation on cardboard determines its strength. If the warehouse were to put another pallet on top of our pallet, it would need to withstand a lot of downward force. When I turned the box on its side to fit it onto a pallet, the corrugation would no longer be straight up and down. So...I had to swap the width and height to get it to work. I re-drew the boxes.

Packaging Lessons Part 2

For the great packaging design, we approached a local print shop to get thousands of these printed. (We're optimistic about holiday sales.) I have been waiting to get these pretty ones in so we could ship some out to Art Van Furniture stores in Michigan. They placed an order earlier in the week.

I stopped by on Monday, and they said they'd have things ready by Friday. On Thursday, they call me up and ask if I can check the proof. So I rush over during lunch to make sure the sizing was correct for the package. They tell me they will try to have them ready for Friday. On Friday, I was on edge all day, waiting for their call, which finally came at 4:30 to say that they were printed but not dry. Without them, we couldn't spend the weekend packing like I had planned. So I wait until Monday. They called up and said that the color wasn't right and asked if we could stop by again. So we went over (3^rd time) to check, and it was too blue. So we wait until Tuesday for a reprint. Late in the afternoon, I drive over again to pick up what they had. It was printed and cut, but not folded. So I only picked up a hundred pieces. That night, we folded, packed, and shipped 7 boxes. On Wednesday, instead of making me drive out a 5^th time, they offered to send their courier van to drop them off. I waited all day long because we just received another order, and I was about to give up when the doorbell finally rang at 5pm.

While it is ultimately less expensive to have the printers do large printings, it was certainly a lot of hassle. We have been using our own laser printer with nice HP paper to do most of the printing up until this point.

Packaging Lessons Part 1

Who would have thought that packaging is so involved? As complete newbies into the world of business, we're constantly learning new things. This series of posts discuss SleepPhones packaging design.

For retail sales, we have these pretty polypropylene packs that keep SleepPhones nice and fresh. Retailers probably care more about packaging than they do the actual product. That is the first thing I've learned. If the package is really cool, the product will move off the shelves, which means money for the retailer. If the package doesn't sell the product, then it may just sit there forever, collecting dust. Customer don't buy dusty products. And retailers will just return the unsold stuff to manufacturers.

We're in a few small retail stores, and up until recently, I've been doing the graphic design. It's not hideous, but it's not pretty and certainly not professional. So we had a local graphic designer friend fix up the insert that goes on the front to sell the product. We knew about her in our network of local Twitter friends. She was a friend to many of my friends, but I had never met her. But given that her Twitter name had CMYK in it, I figured she probably cared a lot about good print design. I gave her some material to work with, and she turned out a beautiful design! I think we made the right choice.

College Students and Sleep Part 7

6. How much sleep is right?

So now, there are problems with most college students not getting enough sleep. And then there are problems with a some college students getting too much sleep. Just how much sleep is right?

The short answer is 7-9 hours.

Women who are done with growing and maturation, having started their growth spurt at age 10-12, will be fine with an average of 7.5-8 hours of sleep. If a woman is still possibly growing, 8-9 hours is recommended. Men who are still in their growth spurt which started at age 16-17 should have 9 hours of sleep. You may suspect continued late growth if your parents matured later than their peers.

While college students are legally defined as adults at age 18, many are still growing into physical adulthood. For women, if your breasts are still getting bigger (out of proportion to weight gain), the darkened area around the nipples are still darkening, and you keep getting more hair in the armpits and pubic area, then you're still growing. For men, if you're growing taller, your voice is deepening, your testicle are still getting bigger, the scrotum is getting darker, and more body hair is still showing up, then you're still growing.

Growth hormone is released during sleep, as well as many other hormones, some of which have not yet been discovered. It's clear that sleep is critical to growth and maturation. Most men want to be tall, and getting adequate sleep (9 hours) will help ensure maximal height.

Once a college student is full grown, then the typical adult rules follow. Most adults need 7-8 hours of sleep a night. For the long answer of how much sleep is optimal, please see my previous article, How Much Sleep You Are Supposed to Get.

Customer pictures of Sheep!

One of our Canadian customers loves SleepPhones and also happens to love rabbits and sheep. But they were hesitant to order Sheep because they weren't sure how their cat would react to Sheep. (We communicate on Twitter.) I told them that we have had many reports of both cats and dogs taking Sheep under their wing. Well, they sent back definitive proof that Sheep is very good with other animals.

"Mr. Sheep isn't here for more than an hour and Marcy T.F. Cat claims her for her own!"

I suggested for them to buy Mr. Sheep a newborn onesie so Marcy doesn't get him all furred up.

College Students and Sleep Part 6

5. Sleeping too much.

Sleeping too much may actually be a symptom of depression. At least one in five people suffer from depression at some point in their life. Depression and anxiety often go together as stress increases. Being away from home, having to make new friends, working hard in school, discovering intimate relationships, and worrying about grades are all stressful. Add financial instability, having to work a job, family situations, health problems, family history, and it becomes a set up for mood disorders.

Depression reduces sleep quality. Some college students experience insomnia while others sleep too much due to fatigue from decreased sleep quality. The neurotransmitters within the brain don't recover the way they should with sleep because they are imbalanced when a person is sad for an extended period of time.

College students may not understand their own feelings sometimes. A lack of motivation in school may be due to not liking their major or not liking life in general. While it's normal to feel poorly after a break up or poor performance, the student should feel better in a few weeks. It's when they don't feel better for more than a few weeks and start to spiral downwards that depression starts. The sooner they seek help to sort out what is going on, the sooner they will feel better.

Occasionally, sleeping too much is due to a medical condition like mono, thyroid disease, or anemia. Rarely, it's something more serious. The most common medical reason for sleeping too much is a mood problem like dysthymia, a mild form of depression. The Student Health Center at Penn State will have a small pilot study in which all of one doctor's patients will all be screened for depression at every visit. Suicide is the third most common cause of death in adolescents and young adults, so we are very aware of the risks of depression. College students who sleep too much, sleep more than usual, or just feel tired all of the time need to seek medical or psychological care.

College Students and Sleep Part 5

4. Substances use and abuse. Alcohol.

Alcohol causes most people to feel sleepy. There is a paradoxical reaction in some people, and it causes them to be more rowdy. Even in those who fall asleep more easily, the sleep quality is not as good for a variety of reasons.

The withdrawal from the chemical effects often occur in the middle of the night. Withdrawal effects are the opposite of the initial effects. So that means your blood pressure increases, heart rate increases, and you're tossing and turning more, whether or not you realize it.

Alcohol is a diuretic, so you end up going to the bathroom in the middle of the night/early morning. If you're living in a dorm, you may have to climb out of the loft bed, find your room keys and slippers, sneak out of the room without disturbing roommates, walk down the hall to the bathroom, turn on the bright fluorescent lights in there, use the bathroom, come back, and climb back up into the loft bed as quietly as possible in dim light. Going to the bathroom is a big production that severely interrupts sleep!

To break down alcohol, the liver has to change the chemical several times before it becomes harmless. Some of the intermediary stages make people feel poorly. If there are enough intermediary stages hanging around the next morning from binge drinking, then you get the sensation of a hangover.

Some people drink to help them relax. That's a dangerous justification for the use of alcohol. It's basically self-medicating with a very addictive drug. It is very likely that tolerance will build, and you'll need to use more and more alcohol to achieve the same effects. If anxiety is preventing sleep, talk to either a doctor or a counselor about the problem.

(I must admit that I didn't take my own advice just now. I decided to invent SleepPhones instead so that I could just listen to a hypnosis track whenever I had too many thoughts keeping me awake. Using headphones to listen to someone talking me into relaxing was a great natural cure for my insomnia.)

It is common knowledge that alcohol help people relax. But hopefully I've made it clear why alcohol use only reduces sleep quality and can potentially be problematic. Since most drinking in college is underage drinking (illegal), it's by definition, alcohol abuse.

College Students and Sleep Part 4

3. Substances use and abuse. Caffeine.

Teens and young adults like to push boundaries. They take risks. Some take bigger risks than others, and the types of risks vary. Alcohol is often abused, as is caffeine, by college students. Both decrease sleep quality. 8 hours of sleep many only be as restful as 6 hours after drinking alcohol or caffeine.

I am seeing an increase in caffeine abuse. The promotion of energy drinks among college students definitely work. In fact, there's a Red Bull car that drives around downtown. Admittedly, it's a pretty cool-looking car with a giant can of Red Bull on the roof.

In my opinion, occasional caffeine intake (a few times a week, in small quantities) is fine. So eating a chocolate cake, drinking a cappuccino with friends, having a cup of tea while studying for a test in the afternoon are all fine ways to enjoy and use caffeine. Someone who has a cup of coffee every morning is probably chemically dependent on that drug. Someone who uses coffee to fend off the effects of alcohol has a serious problem with both substances. If you can't stop drinking daily coffees without getting a headache, you know your body's dependent. If you use caffeine to get high and act crazy to impress friends, you're abusing it.

I've seen students jittery and shaky, not knowing what's going on with their body from ingesting too much caffeine in the form of energy drinks and caffeine pills. One student ended up missing the test she was up all night studying for because she was having severe physical effects.

The slightly older and highly-stressed graduate students develop high blood pressure through their indentured schooling. They don't have as many problems with alcohol, but they certainly love their caffeine. Most hang out at the coffee shops downtown all day long during dissertation writing. Despite a family history of high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes, and a steady trend to developing those diseases themselves, the grad students ignore their health in favor of a chemically-induced zombie-like constantly-wired state of being. What they don't realize is that when they stay up late trying to get an experiment done, they are probably making mistakes and will have to repeat the experiment again anyway when they are alert. It's hard to make the right decisions when tired, no matter how much caffeine is in the brain. (Trust me. Been there; done that.)

Caffeine as a drug is underrated. Abusing it is not as shameful as alcohol, and in some circles, is even promoted. Yet, it has harmful effects like high blood pressure, palpitations (racing heart beats), and insomnia. Addiction rates are high. If someone is concerned about sleep quality, caffeine use must be minimized.

College Students and Sleep Part 3

2. Owl habits.

Teens and young adults are well known for their ability to sleep in until noon. A significant portion of 15-25 year olds are known to sleep scientists as "owls." Their internal clocks are longer than 24 hours. That means, if they were kept in a dark room for weeks, they would awaken and sleep in cycles of 26 hours, for example.

In the case of a 24 hour cycle, someone who wakes up at 8am would be sleepy by midnight. But if they have a 26 hour cycle, they wouldn't be sleepy until 2am. But in both cases, they would still have to wake up at 8am the next day. The owl suffers from sleep deprivation because they can't fall asleep and they still have to wake up 2 hours earlier than when their body is ready.

The best way for owls to deal with the faulty internal clock is to train it every day. Bright outdoor sunlight is the most powerful device for training the clock. Owls should get as much sun as possible early in the morning. Making sure that the dorm room window faces east and opening the blinds first thing in the morning are helpful. Once awake, plan an activity that involves being outside - like studying outside or walking to class. In the evening, avoid bright lights, including bright computer screens. Turn down the brightness setting on the computer screen and don't watch too much TV.

College Students and Sleep Part 2

1. All-nighters.

An occasional all-nighter is part of the college experience. It normally takes 3 days to recover from one. The first day after an all-nighter may actually be okay. Adrenaline is running high. The test or paper is done. It's time to celebrate! You might feel a little tired, but can usually stay awake all day long, especially with the help of caffeine and salty and sweet snacks.

The second day is the day you really drag. All day long, you can't focus, your eyes gloss over the page, and you feel like taking a nap in class. It's a wasted day where nothing gets done, or gets done poorly and you have to do it all over again later anyway. The third day, you feel a little bit better. By the fourth day, your body has finally recovered from the all-nighter.

The best way to avoid them is to plan better and to stick with the plan. That's easier said than done. Procrastination may be due to not knowing what to do, having perfectionist expectations, giving in to distractions, or lack of interest.

If you have to pull frequent all-nighters, then something needs to change. Analyze why they occur. Try to avoid getting into those situations. Perhaps it has to do with procrastination. Turn off the phone to focus. Seek help from your professor or teaching assistant. Ask questions. If it's a motivation problem, you may need to see an academic adviser.

College Students and Sleep Part 1

Penn State University's Student Affairs department is working on a module to teach students about sleep. I've been asked to look over the module. I work part time as a physician seeing the students, so I see many of the problems related to sleep. I hope it helps students understand the importance of sleep and how to get it. The goal of sleeping well is to function well during the day and be happy!

College students simply don't get enough of sleep. If I had to choose the biggest problem concerning sleep in college students, it's just that they choose to not sleep. There are many reasons for it. Going out to have fun with friends is often more important. Other students over-extend themselves with taking too many credits and participating in too many extracurricular activities. A growing percentage of students don't sleep enough because of their financial circumstances. They have to work 20-40 hours a week just to pay for school.

These young students have the stamina to stay up frequently, getting by on naps. However, they may not realize that just because they can do it, they shouldn't do it. Ultimately, daytime performance suffers. Over the next week, I will explore some sleep-related topics concerning college students.

Videos!

I finally took the 5 minute tutorial on iMovie from the Apple website and figured out that you have to press the space bar to play back the movie. Once I figured that out, iMovie was intuitive. We took some footage and uploaded some movies to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc4z4gVJlLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKO8RAFi2xg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th1BdTCcezA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFjfy3DMu4I

And then I edited the movie Brittany made too.



Hopefully the videos are clear enough to explain what SleepPhones are all about. Brittany's video is up to 20 watches after being uploaded about 40 hours ago.

I also went through an made the SleepPhones YouTube landing page into our color, filled in the profile info, and updated friends, subscriptions, etc. Now that I've figured out just how easy it is, we'll probably be able to upload a video every month. Just have to figure out what to film... maybe sheep!

Sheep's Photoshoot

Sheep is almost too big for our home-made light-box. He has to sit very still and try to smile!



The pictures are turning out well!



Uh-oh! SleepPhones are a big too big for Sheep. He's only about a foot tall.

Sheep Weighs Over a Ton

Sheep arrived in a big truck.

It took some time to unload Sheep.

Now the ton of Sheep lives in our living room!

On sale now.

SleepPhones in SkyMall Page 65!

Look for SleepPhones in the July-Sept issue of SkyMall page 65! It cost us a lot of money to be in there, so we're very nervous and excited about the prospects!

New Dreams CD

New CD! Limited time for $7.95. Normally $9.95.

Joel Steudler is a composer and graphic artist whose work can be found in film, television, video games, and comic books. Joel is equally adept at crafting musical scores filled with pulse pounding action and gentle melodies that will lull you to sleep... and he tries to avoid getting one mixed up with the other. Living in hilly western Pennsylvania, Joel whiles away his days crafting audiovisual media, watching hockey, and digging out from under the snow every spring... kind of like a groundhog.

Laura Raczkowski is an artist we met at the State College PA Arts Fest of 2009. She was one of the artists at the Penn State University student booth. She created some beautiful pictures of clouds and natural images, which we loved. We commissioned her to create the CD cover and CD design for the SleepPhones Dreams CD. She is currently located in Norman, OK.

CEA Lineshow Booth Pictures

We were at the CEA Lineshows last week. This was the fantastic team representing SleepPhones. Me, Jason, Jeff (Jason's brother), Brittany (current intern, Fall 2010 Happy Valley Communications Account Executive), and Lucy (Spring 2010 Happy Valley Communications Account Executive).

We had lots of interviews.

Lucy had to leave a little early, so Sheep was temporarily named Lucy. When Sheep is delivered, we'll have a naming contest!

When the show was over, we stopped by the Sleepy's on 5th and 39th to check on the SleepPhones there.

Graphic Design

Up until about 2 months ago, I was still doing all graphic design. It's really quite involved. Airbrushing things, merging pictures, and removing the background all takes so much time, especially if you aren't very good at it, like me. I'm the type of girl who doesn't wear make up, wear heals, or care about the latest clothes. I never had any glossy fashion magazines, and I only had one Barbie that I played with once. I can wear the same pair of jeans for days until it gets dirty from me playing in the garden dirt. So my sense of style is not very keen, as you can see.

They say that if you aren't very good at an aspect of running a business, you should fire yourself and hire someone else to do the job. Well, with some of the high-profile events coming up, I decided it was finally time to pay someone who actually knew what they were doing.

This is the original banner design for the CEA Lineshows.


I think our graphic designer did a good job, don't you?


Here's my version of the next SkyMall ad.


We'll see what the graphic designer does with that!

Cart Abandonment (Part 2)

Since implementing the PayPal payment option in addition to Google Checkout, our cart abandonment rate has dropped from about 53% to 45%.

From June 4-14, we had 3340 Unique visitors from 102 countries with a bounce rate of 46%. About 1/3 of them actually looked at an item for purchase. There were 244 unique views of the shopping cart page, which approximates 244 different people putting things into their shopping cart. 223 of them proceeded to click on checkout button. 123 people actually completed the checkout process to buy something. For this period, our checkout abandonment rate was 45%.

Free SleepPhones System Giveaway!

Check out the SleepPhones System Giveaway!

We're giving away four (4) SleepPhones Systems! You can choose which one you want when you win!

Valued at $64.95 - $69.95 [more info]

WHO

Anyone from all over the world can enter! We will ship it to you for free anywhere in the world.

WHEN

You only have until Friday June 11 to enter the giveaway. We will select a random winner on June 12 and contact the winner via the method they used to enter.

HOW

We will select a winner from each of these entry methods. (You can enter once in each category!)

1. Tweet about SleepPhones using Twitter! Be sure to mention "SleepPhones Giveaway" in your tweet! We will search Twitter for SleepPhones Giveaway to find the winner. If your Twitter settings are private, we won't be able to see your tweets! Please enter via another method.
   
2. Like SleepPhones and post a comment on Facebook! Be sure to mention "SleepPhones Giveaway" in your comment! We will check the SleepPhones Facebook Page for a winner.
   
3. Write a blog post (if you have a blog) about SleepPhones and send the link to us with "SleepPhones Giveaway" as the subject.
   
4. Make a YouTube video about SleepPhones and make sure SleepPhones is in the title of the video. We will search for "SleepPhones" on YouTube to find the winner.
   

Yummy lunch with Dr. Gurgevich!

Steven Gurgevich, Ph.D., is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine, where he teaches mind-body medicine to physicians in Dr. Andrew Weil's courses at the Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine. He has also directed the center's Mind-Body Clinic since 1997. Dr. Gurgevich is an approved consultant and fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.

We carry his Sleepy Time Hypnosis CD. It's my favorite CD to listen to for sleeping when I have a lot on my mind.

Jason and I just had the privilege of meeting him for lunch. We had a great time talking about healthy food, using mind-body techniques for medical problems like insomnia and irritable bowel, running a business from home, and exchanging great contacts. Both his wife (Joy Gurgevich at Joy of Food) and daughter (Dr. Elise Gurgevich at Penn State University) are big nutrition experts. Since I love to garden and eat, we talked a lot of about our love of interesting foods.

Dr. Gurgevich has been traveling for nearly a month now, teaching at various places. The last place he taught was at Kripalu, the fabulous yoga retreat in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. He visited his daughter here at Penn State on his way home, so we had a chance to meet up!

SleepPhones will be carrying more of his CDs soon, including a series of Hypnotic Tonics, which are clinical hypnosis tracks to help people with various illnesses, including addiction to tobacco.

Cart Abandonment

One of the banes of online retail is cart abandonment. I heard one statistic where it was about 50%. That means of the people who put something into their shopping carts, only about 50% actually complete the checkout process. That's why big retailers do the One-Click thing, so if you decide to buy it, you click once, and the order is placed. You don't have 3-5 more pages of filling in your credit card information, filling in your address, checking the shipping charges, and reviewing, and then clicking the final okay. Those are all opportunities for a customer to change their mind, get distracted, or grow tired of filling in forms. I hope that using PayPal and Google Checkout will help to reduce those issues because most people buying things online already have accounts through those places. They won't need to fill in their address in 2 different places.

I checked our checkout abandonment rates just now to do a comparison of before and after the PayPal option implementation. I'm hoping that we'll have more people make that final click to order because they already have PayPal, and it's just easy to say yes.

Customers who click to start the checkout process abandon the process about 51.7% of the time from April 27 - May 5, 2010 (n=178). Over that same period of time, we had 3024 unique visitors from 90 different countries with a 42.5% bounce rate. 71% of the traffic came from search engines, 12% from referring sites, and 17% direct traffic (like from Google Adwords). The front page got the most views, followed by downloads, catalog, and SleepPhones System. Of the 3024 unique visitors, 192 unique visitors placed an item into their shopping cart.(1) The Google Checkout button was clicked 178 times. An order was placed 86 times; no order was placed 92 times.(2) Of the 83 orders, 79 actually went through, paid in full, and were shipped.(3)

From March 22-31, we had 3326 Unique visitors from 83 countries with a bounce rate of 44%.(1) About 1/3 of them actually looked at an item for purchase.(1) There were 273 unique views of the shopping cart page, which approximates 273 different people putting things into their shopping cart.(1) 240 of them proceeded to click on the Google Checkout button.(2) 127 people actually completed the Google Checkout process to buy something.(3) One customer changed their mind in 15 minutes.(3) Two customers's credit cards could not be processed.(3) And so far, one person has returned their purchase.(3) For this period, our checkout abandonment rate was 53%.

(1) Data from Google Analytics
(2) Data from SleepPhones.com Order ID
(3) Data from Google Checkout

I will repeat this analysis in a few weeks to see if we have improved the checkout abandonment rate by adding PayPal as a payment option. I expect that it would, but it's certainly not without its hassles. PayPal is so slow to load up compared with Google Checkout. The selections like size, color, or even SKU are not transmitted to PayPal. That means we have to look in 2 different places for each PayPal order. That involves extra time to process each shipment. I'll have to set up new passwords in all of these places so our employee can do the processing.

Help! Which Ad catches your attention? Thank you coupon included!

Place your vote above!

#1

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#3

Thank you for your help!
Coupon Code: BLOGSPOT
You must use Google Checkout to use the coupon. It's for 15% off, and is valid through June 5th.
We don't have a coupon for PayPal unfortunately.

PayPal Working!

After fiddling around with the checkout process for a month, we managed to get PayPal order processing working!

Up until recently, we could only take PayPal when someone "sent" money to us and told us what they wanted in the comments. Overall, it worked surprisingly well. Nearly everyone remembered to add in the shipping, pay in USD and not their overseas dollar system, and write down exactly what they wanted.

However, right now we have an order sitting in PayPal from 3 days ago that we can't process because the person didn't tell us what color and size they wanted. I've tried emailing a few times, but the person has not responded. It's possible that my emails are in their spam folder. I can't call because I don't have a phone number. I guess I'll wait a few more days and see if they email complaining about not receiving their order.

We use a back up version of SleepPhones.com for testing purposes. We make changes to that and test repeatedly. I've ordered about two dozen lavender sachets for myself using PayPal and Google Checkout, with and without affiliate credit, from PA, outside of PA, and internationally. More than half of those orders didn't quite work perfectly. I guess it's just one of those things.

Once we tested the heck out of it, we rolled it out into production. That occurred at about 1pm today. We tested a few more times, and called it good! We had a celebratory late lunch/early dinner at our favorite Mediterranean restaurant during which time 2 orders were placed with Google Checkout and 1 placed with PayPal, all of which worked!

Now we just have to figure out how to charge for Pennsylvania Sales Tax for the PayPal orders .... Only Pennsylvanians have to pay sales tax since we're located here. If you're from another state, you should be paying use taxes on your annual state income tax return. Many people don't know that, so they don't do that.

RealSleep for Adults Now Available!

The inventors of RealSleep were interviewed at Boston's NPR station. You can listen samples of the RealSleep CD at "Music That Messes With Your Brain To Help You Sleep."

To order RealSleep by Dr. Horowitz, please see our CD section! They come in Classical music and Ambient music.

Black SleepPhones Most Popular

Over time, we've noticed that black SleepPhones seem to be the most popular color. It's a particular problem right now because we're sending out a big wholesale order to ThinkGeek. They order all black ones, so our inventory is very low now. We're focusing on making more right now, but we may have a few days where we can't keep up. Our high school student employee is not really obsessive-compulsive as these pictures might suggest. He's the one who packs these. But I might be! I love how they line up!

Smarthome Expresses Interest in Carrying SleepPhones

I've bought some battery-powered motion-activated LED lights from them before. The staircase down to SleepPhones Headquarters has a nice over head light, but that light is so high up that I'm seriously afraid of it ever going out. I can't imagine changing it! It would probably take a ladder two to three times the height of our current ladder. So I hesitate turning it off and on all of the time. Instead, I got these motion activated LED lights that would prevent me from falling down the stairs in the dark. And we use rechargeable batteries in them, so it's okay - we're not creating too much of an environmental hazard. And yes, we properly dispose of our old batteries.

Well, just like that smart solution for a potentially hazardous staircase, Smarthome carries many other interesting items. If we ever get a new home, we might install a fiberoptic light system, built-in wall speakers, hidden cameras, and all kinds of gadgets. Smarthome has a solution for any home-related problem.

So what about sleeping problems? Well, Smarthome wants to solve that too! They are interested in SleepPhones. They sent us an email asking us to send them a sample for evaluation. We certainly will! There's a lot of paperwork too, so it will take some time, but we're very excited about possibly working with them!

Centerpointe: Holosync

Centerpointe, the people who make Holosync just contacted us! I think we might have contacted them in the past, but it's nice that they are now coming to us! We hope to be able to forge a relationship with them. In fact, Holosync was one of the technologies we had in mind when designing the product. Over the years, many people have chosen to buy SleepPhones for use with their Holosync CDs. We have a few friends who love and talk highly of Holosync too. If you're a fan of Holosync, we'd love for you to tell them that you're a fan of SleepPhones too!