651: From 7 Years In Recruitment To $60K In 6 Months Selling Mouth Tape

651: From 7 Years In Recruitment To $60K In 6 Months Selling Mouth Tape

From The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan by Foundr Media

April 15, 2026 · 31 min · Episode 651

About this episode

Michael Forshaw shares his journey from recruitment to launching a successful sleep tape business in just six months.

Michael Forshaw read a book, taped his mouth shut every night for a year, and then built a business out of it — launching Breath Sleep Tape from idea to live store in just ten weeks. A recruiter by trade with zero experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, or product development, Michael turned a personal obsession with nasal breathing into a brand that hit $60,000 in its first six months. The product? A sleep tape designed to keep your mouth closed at night — something that sounds strange until you realise an estimated 70% of people breathe through their mouths while they sleep. In this episode, Michael gets real about what it took to get there — an $8-10K first production run, the customer objection that completely changed his product design, and why two years in he deliberately pulled back on paid ads to focus on something more sustainable. What you'll learn in this interview: How reading a single book sparked a product idea — and the one-year personal experiment that confirmed it was worth building Why launching in ten weeks is possible, and what actually has to happen to pull it off The customer objection during validation that led to a physical product change — and the…

People in this episode

Host: Nathan Chan

Guest: Michael Forshaw

Topics covered

  • e-commerce
  • product development
  • digital marketing
  • customer validation
  • manufacturing
  • entrepreneurship

Keywords

  • mouth tape
  • nasal breathing
  • business launch
  • customer feedback
  • production costs
  • Google Ads
  • sustainable marketing

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Breath Sleep Tape, Alibaba

Books & works: a single book

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