MINDFUL SLEEP : Sleep, But Smarter Be Inactive

Importance of Sleep 

Inactive Sleep Mask 

https://inactiveco.com/

What if the simplest tool in your bedroom could unlock better recovery, steadier mood, and sharper performance? We sit down with Jill McCray—co-founder of the Inactive Company and former executive at Spanx, Starbucks, and Delta—to unpack how a century-old sleep accessory became a serious performance tool for athletes, veterans, parents, and frequent flyers. Jill traces the journey from “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” to building a patented sleep mask that delivers complete darkness, active cooling with phase change material, and hardware‑free comfort that fits any head and even lets you open your eyes under the mask—an insight that dramatically increased adoption in PTSD cohorts.

We explore why sleep has jumped to the top of the wellness pyramid (hello, American Heart Association’s Essential 8), and how elite programs validated the design. From NFLPA reorders and college football travel kits to third‑party studies showing 15–30 minutes more sleep per night, the data points add up. Jill breaks down the four pillars of better sleep—darkness for melatonin signaling, thermoregulation for fewer 3 a.m. wakeups, deeper REM and slow‑wave quality, and comfort that drives real-world compliance. We also dig into their CBT‑I inspired Sleep Seven playbook, a personalizable routine that turns the mask into a reliable cue—your nightly “sleep warm‑up” that helps your body power down and stay there.

If you’ve tried apps, supplements, and gadgets with little payoff, this conversation offers a refreshing, evidence-aware approach to sleep optimization. You’ll learn how textile science borrowed from aerospace quietly stabilizes temperature, why design details matter for anxious or trauma-affected sleepers, and where performance sleepwear is headed next with infrared-friendly, cooling fabrics. Ready to treat sleep like a trainable skill and not a lottery? Tune in, try the playbook at inactiveco.com, and tell us your biggest sleep blocker. If this helped, subscribe, share with a friend who needs better nights, and leave a quick review—we read them all and they mean a lot.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Jill and Inactive Company
• 3:08 From Big Brands to Sleep Innovation
• 5:53 Why Sleep Took Center Stage in Wellness
• 8:08 Prototypes, Partnerships, and Early Validation
• 11:18 The Four Pillars of Better Sleep
• 15:43 Designing for Comfort and PTSD Needs
• 19:23 Expanding Into Performance Sleepwear
• 21:33 Evidence, Athletes, and Adoption Rates

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

Hi, Hori. This is Damaris Grossman, Mindfully Integrative Show. And today we have an amazing guest. Her name is Jill McCain McRae. She has um an amazing business about sleep medicine and sleep masks. It's called Enactman, and she'll tell you more about it. I'm not fully giving the right info, but I can tell you that it's necessary and we all need a little bit more sleep in our life. So thank you so much for being on. And how's it going?

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

It's going great. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm Jill McCray. I'm the co-founder of the Inactive Company. I know it's an unusual name, but we firmly believe that you have to be inactive and power down in order to power up and be your best and perform at your highest level. My co-founder Lori and I met after 25 years in big brands. We were on the executive leadership team for Spanx. Have you ever heard of Spanx by Sarah Blake? Of course, definitely. We both have a storied, you know, existence and experience. We have a lot of experience in consumer brands from Starbucks to Coca-Cola to Darden restaurants to Delta. We worked for those brands for a really long time, building businesses. And we, between the two of us with different partners, we have seven kids. So we were busy mom executives, traveling around the world. Also came from the generation who grew up saying, Oh, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Super high performers and always sacrificing our sleep for everything else. And it started almost be a joke while we were literally traveling around the world building these other businesses and we got competitive with our sleep. We would, you know, take vitamins or gummies or try to outbite each other in mattresses. And after we worked at Spanx, we both started our own consulting companies. And about four years ago, Lori called me and said, I've got it. I've got this idea that we can finally tackle sleep. We're going to reinvent a hundred-year-old sleep mask and a super easy, approachable tool that everybody could use. And we're going to patent it and make it available to everybody. And that's exactly what we did.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26

That's amazing. How and said you and you were talking to me briefly about how you just started, just started on your own for yourselves and then kind of grew from there. Now you kind of like are expanded. And why did you find this important? I mean, I can tell you where I love sleep medicine, but why did you find it so important to make it like this?

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

Well, while we were, you know, building, while we were, you know, working on these other brands as well, I was actually chairing American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign. And at that time, sleep was becoming a much more important conversation. Now, sleep is a very important conversation everywhere, particularly in wellness, more so than it's ever been before. It used to be all about diet and exercise and you know managing your weight and meditation. And now they're saying that sleep is very important. And as a matter of fact, the American Heart Association changed its super seven, which talked about the seven levels of the pyramid for holistic health to the essential eight, and number one is sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 3:23

Yeah, I mean, obviously you can tell eight. So it's not that it's not in it's the other parts are important too, but sleep is really if your brain is not rested, oh people.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

Correct, correct. So we sort of knew we were on to something. And while we were developing it, you know, through our connections from a million years at, you know, working in business, people started to get really interested. And through a contact of ours, we got involved with the NFL Players Association, and they were really interested. And the University of Georgia as well, because we're both graduates of the University of Georgia. They bought our prototypes the first year that they were going to the national playoffs and said, we need to get these guys to sleep because they were going by coastal. And really, sleep was the one thing that the coaches and the trainers couldn't regulate. They're not in their dorm rooms, they're not in their hotel rooms. They have, you know, teams around them that are helping them with everything else, but they knew that sleep was super critical. If you follow football at all, you know, injuries are at an all-time high for multiple reasons. And so they really wanted to do that. So we knew that we had hit a nerve and started working with sort of this elite group of athletes, knowing that it would cascade down to everyone else. So while we were building the prototypes, we also were in an IRB study with Emory University's sleep clinic. We worked with the Wounded Warriors Foundation, with veterans. We got ourselves invited to Harvard Medical School Sleep Symposium, and we just did everything we could to find out more about sleep because we're not doctors nor were we sleep experts at the time. We were product experts and knew how to deliver a solution to a population. So we we learned everything.

SPEAKER_01: 5:04

I am I commend you just in general going and then where how far you've come with this. And then in I mean, it's it's a very important thing, but how did how did it how did it kind of turn into that? You said you just kept kept you had a good connections and good and then kept putting it out there.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

We just again, we just like sort of in ingratiated ourselves anywhere we could and learned as much as we could. And we're really excited to find out that people did want to share. You know, they felt like this wasn't an important message enough. They were willing to test us, back us, and help, you know, start buying the products to get them out to athletes. So while we were building it, we realized that there were really four critical areas of sleep that we needed to deliver on with a good tool that we could actually replicate and patent as well. So one is you need complete darkness for your brain to signal the production, you know, this, and this production of melatonin. And people just it it are surprised at how they don't realize they're actually that's not happening.

SPEAKER_01: 6:02

So our no, and you have to tell them. I may know it, but I want those listening to tell us the four because I think I they can hear it from me, but I, you know, it's like almost like the mom kind of like the wall. I they need it from people. Why is it important?

SPEAKER_00: 6:18

Complete darkness. You need your brain to signal the production of melatonin to help you fall asleep. Temperature regulation. So there are multiple studies out there, you know, everyone sort of has their own routine, but the optimal temperature is anywhere between like 65 and 72 degrees. I I personally turn it down as much as I can. My husband hates it, but I sleep in a cocoon, a freezing cocoon, and that works for me. So our mask actually has thermoregulation with a phase change material that helps you absorb the heat away from your face to help keep your face cooler. Because if you can stay cooler, you can actually sleep longer. As your circadian rhythm falls, rises and falls, so does your body temperature. And that's what actually causes you to wake up sometime, along with, you know, daylight. So that's number two. Number three is the ability to get, you know, full REM cycles in. So if you can sleep deeper with complete darkness and temperature regulation, then that also helps you actually get better quality sleep. It does, you know, people say, Oh, I slept longer, I slept for nine hours, and they wake up and they're still tired or they feel groggy. It's because the quality of their sleep isn't great. And then the fourth is really comfort. If you're not comfortable, you're not going to sleep. So we actually developed our sleep mask to be hardware free and to fit any head size. So we hearkened back to our Spanx days and got a performance elastic that's actually self-adjusting that you can actually fit the mask to any size head. So if you have braids or if you have a larger head or anything like that. The other thing that we added into the mask is that we added the opportunity for you to completely open your eyes underneath, no matter how how long your eyelashes are, or if you actually don't like the feeling of your eyes being covered. We actually learned that with the veteran study that we did with the university.

SPEAKER_01: 8:13

And like their eyes open.

SPEAKER_00: 8:15

Yes. So that was one of their big qualifiers is that in order to be able to use the mask, they wanted to be able to open their eyes because the cohort that we worked with were PTSD survivors from 9-11. I can attest to that as a 9-11 survivor. So and so I can tell you for sure. And it was really interesting. The IRB study, we had about a 30% adoption rate. And at the end, we were up near 70%. So they were really excited that they could put the mask on and actually open their eyes.

SPEAKER_01: 8:46

So cool. That's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00: 8:48

And felt like they could sleep longer.

SPEAKER_01: 8:50

So question for you. I feel like you're gonna have your second, your your next thing will be like mask then blanket. You can do a blanket.

SPEAKER_00: 8:59

So we can prototype right now for what we're calling inactive wear. The mask is called the inactivators because they look like they actually look like aviator sunglasses. We wanted to design them so they look super cool. So our inactive wear sleep, performance sleep line actually has the same tenets as our mask. So it actually has infrared technology, also thermoregulation, cellular regeneration. You know, there's a lot of buzzwords that are happening, and it's not wearable technology, but it's actually blended into the fabric so that you can't, these things we can deliver these things to the customer as well.

SPEAKER_01: 9:35

That's super cool. Very, very neat. So tell me more about in the reference to how it's been effective for individuals, even for yourself, and what have you seen through the, obviously through the studies, which is very important. Obviously, everybody wants to know evidence-based, everybody wants to know how it's working. But you know, in real real life, what what's going on with most like NFL, MBA, those people in the athletic fields, they are so we were just briefly talking about the cortisol levels and how much they're so high alert. How do you get them to shut down?

SPEAKER_00: 10:12

So it's really interesting because we're now in our third season. We're still a young company, so we're only Okay, congrats.

SPEAKER_01: 10:19

I I get it. Business is a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 10:22

And we use that as one of our data points as you know, all these teams continue to reorder with us every season. You know, they contact us when they go into training camp and say, hey, we need our sleep masks, we're going on the road. The NFLPA contacted us this year and bought masks for the nine teams that were traveling internationally as part of their NFLPA-issued performance equipment so that the players would put sleep on the top of their routine. Because again, you know, that's that's one of the hardest human performance factors for the coaches and trainers to regulate for the athletes. But as a matter of fact, it's the one human performance factor that you can't actually fake, cheat, replace. You can't take a pill for it, you can't drink a smoothie for it, you can't add it to anything. Your body must sleep. You were born to do that. So we did a third-party consumer study that actually showed that people who were using the sleep mask were sleeping anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes longer. We did a qualitative study with the University of Georgia football team when we started building this pro we started building this company and self-reported, they were also sleeping. There's an 80% adoption rate and they were also sleeping up to 30 minutes longer. So we use all of those as sort of data points that it's working, as well as the feedback that we're getting directly from consumers.

SPEAKER_01: 11:43

That's really great. So, like you've been able to, so not just with the mask now that you're you're thinking of kind of growing it into another area. And in general, are you this athletic group? I feel like that that's a really important area. I feel like they're needed. I feel like between what NFL, that whole national side, and then also even like college, like the college groups, probably too.

SPEAKER_00: 12:06

Or we have college games as well. And listen, we consider them to be sort of a sharp edge, right? So they happen to be the group that's most in touch with their body. They're more most aware of what they need, but really it's for anybody. I mean, sleep is again a human performance factor. So while they have that's their job, and that's what they're focused on all the time, what it does is tell us that it's another lever that we can pull for our own holistic wellness. And whether it's mental health, physical health, you know, overall health, that sleep is really important. So while it's really important to these elite athletes, it's clearly important to everybody else too.

SPEAKER_01: 12:45

Right. I mean, like moms, you know, where how many are always worrying about not getting sleep, you know, young moms, old moms, you know, parents or not just moms, parents, and you know, that in itself can can be, I could see an array of things here. That's uh sounds uh very cool. So tell me more in the sense of or for your family, has everybody in the family been using it, or you know, do you have like your own uh like quiet rooms with the or you just put it on? Or have you been able to use this like in a bright room and then put it on and and found it to change the dynamic of your sleep? Like if you were somewhere like in an airplane, right? And put it on.

SPEAKER_00: 13:24

For me, that's primarily where I use inactivators. I travel a lot. I also have a consulting company I speak, you know, and we we're also invited to speak to different teams. So for me, that's when I use it the most. My, you know, everyone has a different routine and it has different sleep issues, even though they have sleep issues. Mine is I can fall asleep anywhere. My husband says it's a little bit of a disease. Literally, I can fall asleep in the chair. That's not my problem. My problem is staying asleep. So I'll wake up in the middle of the night, and that could be because I have four kids and you know, I'm listening to every creak in the house, or my mind is just racing. But wearing the mask for me, particularly when I'm traveling, helps me stay asleep. I, in my sort of wake-up moment, my aha moment when we were also building this company is three years ago, I got pneumonia and I generally be healthy, but I was really sick. And it was mostly because I was run down. Since I have trained myself to have a better sleep routine and have been using the sleep mask, I haven't been sick in three years. And that's just my experience. Everybody, like I said, everybody sort of has their own routine, but um, my entire family uses. I mean, my kids still mind now. They're all, you know, my youngest just graduated from college, but it's amazing that he would bring like his pledge brothers home and they would rifle through and be like, Can I have some of those sleep masks? So they're using them in college, they're using them in apartments, and they're using them on airplants.

SPEAKER_01: 14:43

Oh, that's so neat. I feel like you definitely can add this in with a variety of different, you know, things that people reach out to me about for sleep, you know, whether it's um the uh fusers, the oils, the you know, the supplements and the cortisol levels. I feel like it it's a great complement to that. And it, but I think it it sounds it's sounds simple. You're making it sound simple, but the technology sounds very advanced.

SPEAKER_00: 15:09

It's it's simpler. I mean, I am an engineer, but you know, we worked with people who made it simple for us, but it is patented and it's not easy to do. I mean, it's really lightweight.

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

Congrats on the patent. I mean, that's for living too.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

We were excited about that because it was a utility patent that's not easy to replicate because it listen, there's there are a bunch of different sleep masks on the market right now, and we wanted ours to make a difference, right? We wanted ours to actually be able to deliver on that. In addition to the mask, we also developed what we call a sleep seven playbook because you're supposed to have um sleep experts who will say you should have a minimum of seven. So it's based on CBTI, so cognital be cognitive behavioral, sorry, CBIT, cognitive behavioral insomnia therapy. And it's sort of like seven steps to anything. You know, they say seven steps to be more successful, seven steps to better diet, better exercise. And we developed one, seven steps to better sleep that will help you sort of do you. Like I said, you know, everyone has their own sleep routine, and what works for you needs to be what you sort of double down on when it comes time to bedtime. And so we developed ours so that you can personalize it.

SPEAKER_01: 16:21

That's great. Are you able to is people able to reach that on the website? Uh is there like a PDF or is that like an app or something?

SPEAKER_00: 16:29

It's right on our website. Our in our website is inactiveco.com.

SPEAKER_01: 16:37

So inactiveco.com and then say that last part again. Sorry?

SPEAKER_00: 16:41

They'll see playbook right at the top of the page. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 16:44

Oh, awesome. All right, perfect. All right, and then you know, they can reach you. What would you like to tell the audience in reference to not just the, you know, your company, but what would you like to, you know, discuss about where what came into this, you know? I know you were saying you you came up with this and you know you guys were having no sleep, but what would you like to like discuss and and and tell the audience about?

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

Listen, I would say because sleep was so elusive for so long and there was such focus on other areas of wellness, and sleep is now sort of this coming of age right now. Sleep isn't magic. It's actually something you can practice, perfect, and train for, just like anything else. You can train to have a better physical performance. You can train to have a better professional performance, and you can practice for anything, and you can do that with sleep as well. It sounds weird, but the truth of the matter is sleep is just the other 12 hours of your day. I say 12, seven to nine hours of your day, where your body is working just as, if not harder, than it is when you're awake. And I think that's what people don't realize most of the time, and they sort of don't put focus on it because it's subconscious.

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

And yeah, they they don't realize the importance of the healing process, right? And and how like our body needs to regenerate. And it's like, but I I think what you're you know, trying to bring it back like, yes, it's become a little bit more in the mainstream, but I'm I'm glad it's in the mainstream. I'm glad it's being discussed because sometimes, and it seems like it's simple-ish, but I think the mask is maybe helping people get a little grasp, grasping it a little quicker. So I think that's really important.

SPEAKER_00: 18:27

It's almost Pavlovian. I mean, when we you know 90% of people have actually never tried a sleep mask. I never tried a sleep mask before. My partner convinced me, you know, to get into this with her. But what starts to happen even with your sort of bedtime routine is you see the mask, you're you're like, okay, I know it's time. Your shoulders drop, your body starts to get into the zone and like it's it's my time, right? You sort of like psych yourself up to sleep. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but that's what the seven steps are about too. And if you can make that part of your behavior, your sleep routine, your sleep warm-up, we call it, then you have a better chance of actually, you know, relaxing and having a more seamless transition into sleep. We call the sleep mask the little black dress of your sleep wardrobe because you can take it anywhere, you can wear it anywhere and help you sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 19:17

I love that. I love that. And is it kind of have like a you said because of the temperature regulation, it's not too hot, not too cold. Like it, if you don't feel nothing.

SPEAKER_00: 19:28

It's it is really you have to do nothing, you don't have to put it in the refrigerator, there's no plugging it in. It's a phase change material that's actually woven in on the fabric level, and that's actually part of our patent. Also PCM phase change material is not new, it's been around for a while. They actually use it on the space shuttle, it's using tennis rackets, it's using other, you know, performance uh apparel and clothing and also shoes. And it it think of it, it's almost like wicking for heat. So it actually attracts the heat away from you so that your body will regulate itself.

SPEAKER_01: 19:59

Got it. Okay. Yeah, that that does sound like the thermal rate. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's really neat. I mean, I think it's well I'm excited for you guys and what you guys will additionally, you know, bring into the, you know, your company and to and also into the world to you know bring out for people. And I appreciate you being on. What before you leave, is there something that you like to add in for and ways for people to reach?

SPEAKER_00: 20:22

Yeah, our website is inactiveco.com. You can reach us there. We're on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. You can reach out to us, and there are direct direct links to our platforms on our website as well. And there's also you can contact us directly if you want to reach out with any questions. There's a button on our website.

SPEAKER_01: 20:40

Great. Thank you so much. And is there anything else you'd like to say before we go?

SPEAKER_00: 20:44

No, I mean, I I I hope that everybody tries inactivators and I wish everybody a restful sleep. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01: 20:52

Well, thank you so much for being on. And like we said, we're gonna have all the information in the show notes and hope you guys reach out to Inactive Co. And I'll have all the info for you guys there. So make sure you make it a mindful way each and every day, and a mindful way in night too.