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Industry Ignited Podcast
Better Recovery Starts With Good Sleep | Ep. 104 [Sam Jacobsak]
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What happens when a frustrating personal recovery experience reveals a problem the healthcare industry has overlooked? On this episode of Industry Ignited, Dr. Leeanne Aguilar sits down with Sam Jacobsak, a former professional baseball player turned entrepreneur, to explore how his own shoulder surgery and struggle to sleep during recovery inspired him to build a solution designed around a real patient need.
Sam shares his journey from athlete to entrepreneur, the development of the Shoulder Sleeper, and the importance of listening closely to customers when building and improving a product. He also discusses scaling operations, working with surgeons, expanding internationally, balancing B2B and direct-to-consumer growth, and the potential role of better sleep in improving recovery. Tune in for a conversation about patient-centered innovation, entrepreneurship, and why some of the best business opportunities begin with problems hiding in plain sight.
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What if the most overlooked part of recovery, sleep, was actually the key to faster healing and better outcomes? Welcome to Industry Ignited. I'm Dr. Leanne Aguilar, and today I'm joined by Sam Jacobzak, a former professional baseball player turned entrepreneur. Sam, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you for having me.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo tell me about your story. You went from playing professional baseball to building a medical device company. What sparked that transition?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean it was really kind of born out of necessity, out of my own experience. I actually had shoulder pain for about a year and a half to two years leading into my professional career. Um I had shoulder surgery in 2022, the fall. I moved back home to who my co-founder is now. He's a physical therapist, Mike Scudo, and had shoulder surgery. I came to him and like probably within literally the first night, I was like, man, like sleeping stinks. A neck strap is brutal. I always roll on my shoulder. Um, and I wore a whoop and I was like, man, like I'm clearly not sleeping. This is probably the number one thing for recovery, and I'm not doing it. And I started to really notice myself be kind of behind on my rehab, whether it's like the mornings, I just had more pain, more inflammation, and I wasn't really hitting the check marks that I really was doing. So that's kind of really kind of how it was born is I came to him with the problem. I was like, man, it's got to be something else out there. There wasn't, and we kind of got to work from there.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOh, wow. So it's just your own experience realizing that you weren't getting sleep and you know the pain and what did they give you, you know, to sleep with.
SPEAKER_01And as time went on, we kind of understood that the standard sling is only built for standing. Once you sit down, lay down, and especially fall asleep and lay down, it loses all support. The way gravity holds your shoulder and your arm standing, it supports that. But once you lay back, gravity kind of hits your arm and your shoulder at a different angle, and it completely just loses all support it gives you.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarWow. So there really wasn't anything out there on the market that really addressed this issue. And so that's so interesting. I know. I mean, you would think, I mean, slings have been around a really long time, and shoulder surgeries have been a thing for a very long time. So it's interesting that hadn't been addressed, like the the fact that it was interrupting sleep.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, I mean, it it's interesting. We go to these conferences and it's it's almost seemed like it's a standard that like sleeping is just gonna suck. Um we talked to surgeons even this weekend at shoulder 360. We say, Hey, what do you what do you tell your patients uh about sleep and how you're gonna sleep? And they usually would just say, we just tell them it's gonna stink and it's gonna get better with time. So it's it's funny to see that there really has been no solution. And they the industry has almost accepted there's gonna be no solution.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, that's what it yeah, it sounds like it. They just accept that there's pain and just kind of deal with it until you get better.
unknownOkay.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo then you partnered with your physical therapist to build the first prototype. How did that collaboration evolve into a business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so right out of the gate, I'm definitely like a passionate person. So I mean, I came to him, I built this like fun prototype. I brought and then kind of sparked a really good idea from him. And he kind of came back after the weekend with a really good prototype. I slept with it that night, um, and I was like, man, like we have something here. Let's go 50-50, let's build this. And instead of going kind of the traditional, um, like, oh, what's the TAM on this? Like, what what are we gonna sell this for? I mean, that first year and a half was just like, we're just building prototypes. What's the best foam that we can use? What's the best shape? What's the best sizing? What's the best like fabric? And so we were really just product and customer focused for so long. And I think that's kind of really set us apart from everyone else.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarWhat would you say were the biggest mindset shifts that you had to make moving from athlete to entrepreneur?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely a lot of similarities, but I think the number one thing is as an entrepreneur, there's nobody out there telling you what work there's done. Right? Like your phone can ring, like you can kind of get DMs, but like you have to go out there and do things. And as an athlete, like you can walk into the day of that locker room. There's already a sheet for you. What are you doing? What you're doing at 8:30, what you're doing at 9:30, uh, go into the weight room. Everything's kind of planned for you. As an entrepreneur, it like the world is your oyster. You can start whenever, you can end whenever. So just creating work in the freedom is definitely the biggest difference from those between those.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay, so it's you are leading the process and you are leading the journey instead of it already being laid out for you, is what I'm I'm hearing. Okay. So you uncovered that sleep disruption is one of the biggest challenges post-surger. Why is this problem gone unsolved for so long?
SPEAKER_01I mean, we act we ask this question to us all the time. Um, and me and my co-founder go back and forth. It's like, do we really just stumble upon this? Like, how did this go unsolved for so long? I mean, we do hear, I think the route everyone used to take was, oh, let's just make a better sling. And there's a million slings out there. And really, the route that we took was like, the problem is sleep, so let's just build a sleep sling. And that kind of evolution to the shoulder sleeper pillow. And that's kind of how we differentiate. We just went for that one problem to solve that one problem. And yeah, like people say, Oh, you reinvented the sling, like people use it as a sling, but we kind of really stay in our sleep protection lane at the moment.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. Yeah, exactly. So you saw the are focused on the sleep aspect instead of what traditional slings solve. And so, yeah, just took that different angle. And so are people having to put on the shoulder sleeper at night and then take it off in the morning and put their other sling back on? So is it something that you just use at night?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a mix. I mean, that's kind of at the beginning, that's how we saw it. Like, hey, like just use it while you're sleeping, and more and more customers we talk to. Really, the way we describe it is like you always talk to your medical provider, but once you walk through your home during during the day, I think 90% of the time after surgery, you spend in your home. And that's really like where you're using the pillow. You're sitting on your couch, you're laying in bed, relaxing, or you're sleeping, you use it. Well, we also get use cases we hear patients that they use it as their sling. They go to work in it, they go travel with it, they go on vacation with it. So it's interesting to hear like how everyone uses it. Everyone's different, but definitely like the main purpose is to kind of support them while they're sleeping and protect that shoulder.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay. Well, our most of our audience probably knows what a traditional sling looks like, but describe to us like what's the difference between this shoulder sleeper and a traditional sling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's definitely a few differences. I would say the number one thing is there's no neck strap, right? We hear the complaint, everyone hates the neck strap. We use like a patented design uh with straps that go around the waist. So it sits on your hip, it straps around your waist and kind of hugs you. So if you took your arm out of it, it would never move. And the second thing is what we decided was instead of making like a universal size or a universal side, we actually made a custom sized incise for everyone. So we have a custom left, a custom right, and then a small and large, and we'll actually come out with a third size as well as the time goes on. But yeah, that's definitely the main things that are the differential. But obviously, the biggest difference is when you lay in your bed, it actually supports your humerus. It doesn't let you roll onto your hurt shoulder, but you can actually sleep on your non-surgical side.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOh, okay. Oh, interesting. So it supports the arm while you're sleeping on the other side.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. 60, I think it's 65% of people are actually side sleepers. That was like a thing that we thought of because that's how I was. I was a side sleeper. I was like, man, I can't be on my back forever. I'm never gonna fall asleep. So the ability to kind of go on my side and really not be able to push my elbow behind me, and we prevent those two movements. That was a big part of the product.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay. And you mentioned custom sizes. How does that work? Is it just because they're adjustable that they're customizable?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or you actually yeah, we make it fully adjustable. The waist strap is adjustable, we can really fit everybody. Um, arm strap is adjustable as well. And then we offer just yeah, three different sizes, just small, medium, large, and then with those adjustable things. Um, so yeah, but not custom foam. Yeah, we get that a lot.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay. Right. So you mentioned that you took a very hands-on approach early on. You called customers to gather feedback. What were the most surprising insights that you shaped your product evolution?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, there's a few. I mean, at the beginning, like you hear the small complaints, like a piece of velcro or a piece of foams in a different spot. Um, I kind of mentioned earlier is like when I contacted them, like understanding like when, where, and why people are using it. I'm like at the very beginning, we were just immediately going right for surgery patients. As time goes on, we were like, oh, like people were like using dislocations, fractures. Like, okay, and then it kind of is now it's turned into chronic pain, right? It's like one in four, one in three Americans right now struggle with sleeping, which is shoulder pain in general. So just understanding when or why people are using it, how long. Like I would call somebody and she's like, Yeah, like I'm like been using it for a year now. I'm like, wow, like we kind of just plan for people to just use it for four to six weeks.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01But I definitely think the most impactful thing that we learned um was how much it made a difference how early. Like we call somebody and they say, Yeah, it helped me the night of. Like, I understood that first night I rolled a pillow, I slept through the night, I woke up that morning, like this made a difference. So understanding, like, it didn't take a week, didn't take a couple days. I mean, everyone's different after surgery, but the majority of everybody they see a difference that first night.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo that was a really cool thing to hear from the getting good sleep impacts your healing process as well. The better you sleep, the better you you heal. It's not not just, you know, because you feel groggy or you know, can't sleep, but it actually, I mean, that's when you heal is while you're sleeping, right? So, how are you leveraging clinical studies and surgeon partnerships to validate and strengthen your product's impact?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I mean, right out of the gate, we really didn't want to just be some pillow on Amazon. Like we wanted to have some backing to it. So we we built a we built a medical board with some leading surgeons in the country. From there, they kind of helped us like, hey, this is the conferences that you need to go to. Um, there's gonna be surgeons there. So we really built the surgeon education first. Did some like internal data with like surveys and customers calling them, like I said. We're really leaning into now just like randomized trials. This year is gonna be a fun year. We're gonna launch probably two to three of them this year, focusing on opioid reduction, or just pain scores as well, and just like how well those sleep, the whale or sleep devices, compare and contrast them with the standard sling and our product. So it's gonna be great to really show the industry. It's like there is no there's no solution. You can say, hey, we solved the problem, but until you have like true white paper data, which we'll have this year, it's gonna be cool to really show them like, hey, this problem is no more.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarVery exciting. Sorry, are you partnering with educational institutions or just you know, clinics or it's a mix of them, right?
SPEAKER_01There'll be some of them that will be like with the university, some will be with a private practice. Um, some people will help fund them to do it, others will fund us to do it. The government does a lot of things with opioid reduction reduction, so we'll fund some of the studies as well. So just a mix of everything. Um, but yeah, we definitely look forward to seeing that data this year.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo you made the strategic decision to go direct to consumer rather than pursue traditional medical device reimbursement. What drove that choice?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would never say never, but we really kind of differentiate ourselves from the standard sling. Like the way billing works is you only can bill one sling. And yes, I think we can solve, we can do exactly what the sling does. But I think at the moment, like the bread, our bread and butter is connecting directly to the patients. Um, most medical companies, medical manufacturing, distributors, they're not the best with kind of D to C. Um, and we've really leaned into that. And there could be an opportunity in the future to go that route, but we really differentiate ourselves and let them do their lane of kind of build their product, send them home on the pillow with uh the sling, and we'll just be there kind of waiting for them when they come home from surgery. And yeah, we kind of really kind of liked our model. It's easier to open up and connect with clinics, distributors. It's like less pushback. It's like, hey, like you're still using the sling. This is an addition, we're solving different problems. It's also really easy for us to open up international markets with this model as well.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarWow. Have you moved into international markets?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. We launched our first international market was Australia. We've been there for about two years now, and we've recently launched uh in the Nordic countries, uh, Singapore, EU, and the Middle East. So we're excited to see that expansion. That was a cool thing. We were just at the conference this weekend and to be able to meet international surgeons and like they already assume, like, oh, you're in the US, like it'd be hard to get this. I'm like, no, here's this contact. Like, we can ship the pillow in two days to like think it's like 30 different countries at the moment. So it's good to be able to solve the problem, not just in the US, but around the world.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. Yeah, very exciting. So your growth has been has been rapid, even breaking internal systems at what point? What did that teach you about scaling operations effectively?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm running a manufacturing distributor. We kind of have so many moving parts sometimes, it's definitely tough to keep up with. It's good to the team we have. I mean, they we think we have a really good kind of values of like, it's good to make a mistake and it's good to break a system because it'll show its kind of capabilities. But also, like, kind of our motto is like, it's okay to make a mistake once, but don't try to make it again. And that's kind of allowed us to do a lot of A-B testing. Like, don't be afraid to reach something, right? It's like a different assembly process or it's a different type of packaging. Um, it's been good to be able to make that mistake and have the confidence in the team that, like, hey, no bad idea is bad. Just try it out. If it doesn't work, great, we'll never do it again, and we just go the other route. So it's been a fun journey on that side of things.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. So you're and then you're taking customer input and incorporating that into your research and development and then creating new prototypes as you go along. I'm I'm guessing you're continuing to create prototypes and evolve.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're right now we're building, we call it the perfect shoulder sleeper. I mean, we've taken the feedback, we've definitely like changed the product throughout the years, but we're gonna really take all of that together and really build and launch um kind of the perfect shoulder sleeper by the end of the year. I'm pretty pumped about that.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarExciting. So will that be uh an additional product line or a replacement for what you currently have?
SPEAKER_01I think we're still kind of figuring out like which way we go with that. We could be like using one some of them for just international markets and one for the US. So definitely don't have a definitive answer on that, but probably we'll kind of just slowly replace kind of what we're using right now and we'll we'll uh use the other molds and the other designs for something else.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah. Or it could be like your luxury line, right? Where you price it higher and yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you've built strong traction through surgeon endorsements and patient advocacy. How do you balance B2B clinical channels with D2C growth?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think we're in a unique position where we kind of do both. Like an example is if you were partnering with a clinic um and they don't really a lot of them outsource their products to a distributor locally. We try to make the setup as easy as possible and we kind of blend B2B with B2C with D2C. And like if we put a poster up or we give them trifolds for the waiting room, or we put like a link or a QR code in their take-home packet. Um so we kind of like we're yes, we're in B2B, but they're still directing their patients and to us, to our website. So it is a mix of both. We're definitely still leaning into D2C, but as that comes on, a lot of patients will buy the product, bring it to their surgeon office, or bring it to their PT clinic, and then they reach back out to us. So it's kind of like a reverse instead of going B2B to D2C, it's like D to C to B2B back to us. So it's interesting.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOh, interesting. Yeah, that's so interesting. So you'll have customers actually go to their clinicians, surgeons, doctors, and then they reach out to you because they're like, oh, this is a really cool, you know, yeah um sling, you know, we need it, would like to have it for more of our patients, and please send us information like that kind of uh situation.
SPEAKER_01And we just make it as easy as possible. It's like if they want to buy from us and resell the patients or do a bundle in their office, they can do that. Or it's like they want to be hands-off and they want us to handle customer support, storage, shipping, we can easily do a drop shipping program as well.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarWow, very cool. Now, with such a short customer life cycle, how do you think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand building differently than traditional e-commerce companies?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's a great question. And it's definitely different, like people really you're not having multiple surgeries throughout your life. Yes, people end up having multiple surgeries, but this kind of goes back to the very beginning is we really just care about the customer. And we just try to give them the best possible experience from logistics of getting it to them as fast as possible to customer support to sizing. And the way we see it is whole surgery, shoulder pain, and injuries is such a it's turning into a commodity. It's like one in four people at one point in your life are gonna have it. So we just want to give that one person the best possible experience so that when it comes around and a family member or a friend or a neighbor mentions, I'm having shoulder surgery, advocate. I use a shoulder super pillow. It was amazing. Like you can't not use it after surgery. And that's how we've really seen a lot of growth is just word of mouth. That's been great. So it's definitely different, right? A lot of people can just buy customers and they hold them and they use like email marketing, and it it's that's definitely hard for us, but it's definitely doesn't show like fluctuations for us of like a bunch of customers come in, a bunch of cover customers go out. We really see it as every day there's 10,000 people in need, and the next day 10,000 people in need. And as long as we give that first portion uh percentage of that 10,000 on Monday, then they'll somehow kind of push to the customers on Tuesday. And we definitely spread the word.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And because most um shoulder surgeries, what's the recovery period? What six to eight weeks or so?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Everyone's different at our booth. We had a we had a study that showed that like most people don't go back to normal sleeping up to like six weeks, uh six months. So it's crazy that people are just struggling to sleep for so long. It's it's a difference. I mean, some people like the total shoulders, they see like a few weeks, but the rotator cuffs are like up to six months, if not more.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarOkay. Okay. So that is, yeah, that that's a wow. So so the product they they would use, it would last that entire recovery period.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. We always guarantee that's one thing we guarantee. I mean, nothing's guaranteed in life, but we always guarantee uh fit and comfort. So if they don't fit it, they can send us a photo, we can help them fit. If it's still not fitting them, we can exchange a pillow to them, we'll overnight them a new size. And then if the quality, right? If the cover rips, the strap rips, kind of whatever happens, they send us a photo, we'll overnight them a brand new cover, and we can kind of go from there.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarAnd as far as manufacturing, are you manufacturing there in Southern California or are you outsourcing that part of the process?
SPEAKER_01We assemble everything in Corona, California. Um, we have an assembly line of our foam in Mexico that gets shipped up here every two weeks. And textiles come from overseas. We're still trying to get them in the U.S. It's tough. It's tough to get kind of exactly kind of what we want here. But uh yeah, we're trying to get the best we can to be fully American-made.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, very cool. So, beyond your current product, how do you envision expanding into a broader recovery ecosystem for orthopedic and pain management?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great question. That is something that we are trying to solve as a company right now. Uh, we've been talking about it and we're still leaning into kind of the just be the total shoulder. Like, once that customer walks through the door, we're gonna be there for everything they need. Kind of goes back to when we kind of called everybody. We're like, hey, like, what else are you buying? Like, what do you need? What do you want? And we slowly launch a few products. We just obviously launched some ice packs. We do we just launch an adjustable wedge pillow. Um, a lot of people have to sleep sitting up that first week to two weeks just because of the throbbing of the shoulder. So we launched a wedge pillow, but we do have a lot of really cool stuff more deeper into the sleep stuff, the sleep wearables and the sleep technology that we're gonna try to lean into, but we're still just kind of going all in on just shoulder and sleeping, and then kind of as we kind of grow, we'll kind of slowly transition laterally from there.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarRight. Awesome. So, what role do you see innovation playing in reducing reliance on pain medication and and improving patient outcomes?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think the number one thing is just being able to sleep. Um, we talk to customers that if they constantly wake up every 30 minutes, um, they're just gonna go over to their their pill bottle and like, oh, like I'll just like take a painkiller and go back to bed. So we're really just trying to help them stop trying to constantly wake up and also just dreading sleep. Like if you're already understanding that wow, like sleep is gonna stink tonight, they're immediately gonna prepare for that. And it's kind of just already in their head. And if we can give them that solution and kind of convince them, like, hey, like it's not gonna be as bad as you think, right? Like, let us help you sleep pain theory. And yeah, hopefully some of that clinical data is gonna prove that show that's like, hey, like, people aren't thinking as much. People aren't relying on opioids or pain management to sleep, they can kind of rely on just other recovery products. Right.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarSo finally, Sam, for founders building in healthcare or medtech, what advice would you give about identifying real world problems worth solving?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I definitely stumbled upon it. I was definitely lucky enough to just kind of wouldn't say lucky enough to have surgery, but I stumbled upon the problem. But I think the number one thing is just finding a problem, right? Finding something that you can hear people always advocating for. They can't do it. Um just people always ask me all the time, like, oh, how do I start something? It's just like pick an MVP, pick a minimal viable product, see if somebody will buy it, see if somebody is gonna save them time, save them energy, or just kind of just solve them pain. So, I mean, that's kind of the number one thing is find a find a problem that you can solve and see if it's gonna kind of save somebody time or it's gonna help somebody.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, and I guess even looking at their own lives, what problems are they experiencing that haven't been taken seriously enough to for somebody to find a solution?
SPEAKER_01And yeah, yeah, I mean, you never know. You never know. I mean, there was there was a lot of people at the very beginning that saw our product and be like, why would somebody ever buy that? And now we changed, I mean, we just we just crossed 25,000 patients wearing their shoulder super pillows. So, I mean, went from like someone looking at our product being like, Why would somebody ever buy that? to we're at 25,000 patients so far and we'll do a hundred thousand next year. So wow. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarThank you. Very cool to see. Yeah. Well, obviously they hadn't had shoulder surgery then, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they just experience it.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarYeah, yeah. Well, Sam, thank you for for being here for joining me today. How can listeners learn more about you and the shoulder sleeper?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they can just visit us at shouldersleeper.com or find us on social media or find me on LinkedIn. I'm always on there. But yeah, always reach out. More, more the merrier.
Dr. Leeanne AguilarAll right. Well, thank you again for joining me. And to our audience, thank you for tuning in to Industry Ignited. Be sure to subscribe and join us for the next episode. Until next time, stay bold, stay curious, and keep igniting industry.