If you are a solopreneur who wears long work hours like a badge of honor, this episode may change the way you think about what it actually takes to succeed. Carly Ries sits down with Justin Hai, author of Stress Nation and co-founder of Rebalance Health, to unpack the direct connection between your devices, your cortisol levels, and your ability to perform at your best.
This conversation explores why the phone in your pocket may be the single biggest barrier between you and the productivity, rest, and clarity you need to grow your business. Justin explains the science behind cortisol, how notifications trigger a fight-or-flight response throughout the day, why that keeps you from falling and staying asleep, and how chronic sleep loss cascades into fatigue, weight gain, anxiety, and poor business decisions. He also challenges the hustle culture narrative that glorifies sleep deprivation and offers practical, low-effort changes solopreneurs can start making immediately.
Every buzz, vibration, and notification signals your brain that you might not be safe. This keeps your cortisol elevated well past the point in the day when it should be dropping, which prevents your body from handing off to melatonin and preparing for sleep.
Your body produces all of its essential hormones — testosterone, estrogen, progesterone — during uninterrupted sleep. Even waking once in the night is technically a bad night's rest. When solopreneurs consistently sleep four or five hours instead of seven to eight, decision-making, creativity, and energy all suffer dramatically.
While some people can juggle multiple devices and tasks effectively, many solopreneurs are actually less productive when they split focus. Fragmented attention compounds stress and lowers the quality of everything you produce.
Technology is engineered to be addictive. Social media algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling for dopamine hits. Trying to resist through discipline alone is like asking someone with an addiction to simply stop. Structural changes to your environment — removing apps, silencing notifications, scheduling screen time — are far more effective.
Being available 24/7 is not exceptional customer service. It is training your clients to expect access at the expense of your health. Responding to texts and messages at scheduled times and establishing clear on and off hours allows you to deliver better work when you are on the clock.
Technology creates the illusion of connection but does not replace real human interaction. Solopreneurs who spend all day speaking to a screen are at higher risk for loneliness and depression. Scheduling a few in-person meetings or outings throughout the week makes a meaningful difference.
Remove social media apps from your phone and access them only on desktop with intention. Turn off all notifications except phone calls. Establish a consistent sleep and wake time seven days a week, including weekends. Avoid exercise, heavy meals, and alcohol close to bedtime. Keep your bedroom cold, dark, and quiet. Respond to messages in batches at scheduled times rather than in real time. Prioritize single-tasking during your peak focus hours.
Every notification from your phone triggers a stress response that keeps cortisol elevated throughout the day and into the evening. When cortisol is high at bedtime, your brain cannot wind down, which prevents you from falling asleep or staying asleep. Since your body produces essential hormones during uninterrupted sleep, chronic disruption leads to fatigue, weight gain, anxiety, and diminished decision-making — all of which directly impact how effectively you run your business.
Splitting your attention across multiple devices and tasks fragments your focus and raises cortisol over time. Many solopreneurs who believe they are saving time by multitasking are actually producing lower-quality work and burning through energy faster. Focusing on one task at a time during peak hours and protecting your sleep so you operate at full capacity is a more effective strategy than grinding at 50 to 70 percent all day.
Start by recognizing that 24/7 availability is not sustainable customer service, it is a habit that trains clients to expect constant access at the expense of your health. Remove social media from your phone, turn off non-essential notifications, and respond to messages at set times. Pair that with a consistent sleep routine and screen-free wind-down period before bed so that when you are working, you are performing at your absolute best.
Book: Stress Nation by Justin Hai
Website: rebalancehealth.com
Justin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rebalance Health, where he is redefining hormone and stress management through clinically backed, award-winning innovation. He has spent his career at the intersection of design, biotech, and wellness, launching ventures that fuse science with real-world impact, including Alastin Skincare (acquired by Galderma), GLO Pharmaceuticals, and now Rebalance Health.
He is also a New York–published author and the writer of Stress Nation, a national-release book from Wiley & Sons that exposes the silent epidemic of cortisol imbalance and its impact on mental, hormonal, and physical health.
Justin studied product design at RISD, earned his MBA from Pepperdine, and has pursued advanced studies at Harvard, MIT, and Yale. Along the way, he has received recognition from Fast Company, CNBC, Inc., and NASA for his work in innovation and health-tech.
Under his leadership, Rebalance has been named Glossy Beauty's Wellness Brand of the Year, won Best in Small Business for Innovative Product, and was honored in TIME's Best Inventions of 2024 for its breakthrough approach to menopausal health.
What drives Justin is deeply personal. He has lived the consequences of chronic stress, burnout, and hormonal disruption, and knows firsthand how urgently people are searching for relief. His work is rooted in scientific rigor, personal experience, and a belief in the body's ability to rebalance. Whether through innovation, education, or storytelling, he is on a mission to help people feel like themselves again.
If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to The Aspiring Solopreneur and leave a review to help other solopreneurs discover the show.
Episode Transcript
Carly Ries: What if that hustle mentality is actually sabotaging your business? Well, today, Justin Hai, author of Stress Nation, breaks down the science of why technology is hijacking your cortisol levels, wrecking your sleep, and quietly killing your productivity. Plus, he shares the small practical changes you can make today to reclaim your focus, your rest, and your edge. And this one might hit close to home for a lot of you, so be sure to not miss it. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.
I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneur ship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.
No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. So Justin, our audience is made up of Solopreneurs, one person business owners. But every once in a while we have a guest on that I feel like they're speaking to my personal life, and not just the one person business side of my life. And my husband and I recently got these devices that block certain apps at certain times of the day, so that we don't have our phones out when our little kids are around and they don't see mommy and daddy just continuing to look at our phones. we were talking about it all last night.
And so when I was preparing for this interview I was like, oh, I have so many questions, but I will tailor them to our Solopreneur audience. thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Justin Hai: Thank you for having me, Carly. I appreciate it.
Carly Ries: before we kick everything off, because I feel like the topic we're gonna get into today is just so necessary. But before we do that, we ask all of our guests an icebreaker question. And for you, I'm gonna ask, what is the wildest thing that has happened to you as a solopreneur?
Justin Hai: Well, full disclosure, I'm not a solopreneur.
Carly Ries: That's okay. So starting your business, we'll go with that.
Justin Hai: Actually, the craziest thing was the epiphany that I'm obsolete. And it was sitting in the back of the room with my partner, my co founder in my last company. We just hired a chief medical officer to help with the science and some clinical studies. And we were sitting in the back and he'd been with us for about, I don't know, six to eight weeks. I don't even think he'd signed on as a chief medical officer at the time.
And he was giving a presentation around how he could tell the story in a better light, in a better way. And we sat back there and it became painfully obvious that we just became obsolete. We were simply the co founders, we're the ones that came up with the idea. Yeah. We have a hand in the business moving forward.
But it was then, at that particular moment, where he leaned over to me, and he is my senior, and said, this is the moment you will remember for the rest of your life. We just became obsolete. And that hit me for the first time in a very very wild and crazy way because you're like, oh my god. Of course. And he said, from this point on, you'll only hire people that are smarter than you.
Carly Ries: Did that stress you out or did that excite you?
Justin Hai: It excited me because it was like, where can these people take the company that I possibly couldn't? I never had an ego that, you know, it's me or nobody. It was very much like, wow. Now watch it get wings, our little idea that we had as a little seed, and watch it just grow and blossom and bloom. And it certainly did.
And, you know, it's one of the largest companies in the space globally today, and we haven't been actively involved in it for over six years. And so it's very, very interesting when you have that epiphany, when you have that little idea and you watch it grow to a modest place, and then all of a sudden you bring someone in and you go, oh, yeah. Now it's gonna take off.
Carly Ries: And just for it to be relatable to the solopreneur's listening, we always say flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. you need to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you So that doesn't need to come in the form of an employee. That could be contractors, partnerships, whatever.
Justin Hai: A 100 %.
Carly Ries: That does not mean employee. I'm so glad you brought that up because so many people listen and they're like, I do everything on my own. It's like you work in a silo, you're not gonna get the ideas that all of these other people have. So thank you so much for bringing that up.
Justin Hai: Well, the expertise that people have that can be leveraged for the common good.
Carly Ries: Oh, absolutely. Well, speaking of the common good, I want to well, first, I want to talk about your book, Stress Nation, because I feel like that is going to kick off everything we discuss today. Tell me about Stress Nation, why did you write it, and why is it such a big deal right now?
Justin Hai: Well Stress Nation was written as the why behind the company, and the company is Rebalance Health. so we were focused primarily on cortisol and sleep. And the book kind of explains how we've gotten into this place in the first into into this place we are today compared to where we were thirty years ago. And it really kind of gives people the context for understanding why everyone's feeling stressed, why they're feeling burnt out, why they've got fatigue, why they're gaining weight, not losing it, jumping to GLP ones like, Ozempic and Weygovy and things like that. There's an explanation for it.
But it isn't always so obvious until you read the book. And when you read the book, you go, oh my god, it's really obvious. In fact, one of the reviews on Amazon, my only one, star or two star review on Amazon was someone saying, it's blatantly obvious. Well, if it was so obvious, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. But putting the pieces together and explaining it in a simple way that doesn't speak you know, above people's heads was very important.
Because we felt like trying to stand out in the noise today has never been harder, in the history of, basically the internet, e commerce, marketing. It's never been as difficult as today because it's so readily available for everyone to promote and advertise. And so the book was going back to a traditional marketing medium in explaining the message and talking to everybody. basically, the book is explaining why we're all stressed out and it's not going away.
Carly Ries: How does reducing our technology usage directly affect our cortisol, our stress levels, our sleep quality, all of the above?
Justin Hai: It's interesting. It's not necessarily reducing our technology usage, It's understanding, how to use it. And I think I speak to that quite a lot in the book because technology is not going away. It's not the devil.
It's not evil. It is just a tool. But the problem is we weren't taught how to use it as human beings. And that wasn't intentional. we just didn't know.
The technology companies didn't know what the effect would be on us. And the net result is we've become addicted to it. And, Zuckerberg has been in court in California for the past few weeks defending that he's deliberately making the algorithms, addictive. And gamifying everything and wanting to attract more and more time on that screen to get that dopamine hit.
Basically, the cause and effect is very straightforward and linear. Cortisol is a very good healthy hormone for us. It does wonderful things for our body and it's also known as our fight and flight hormone, our fear, stress hormone. But really what it is, is our body's alarm system. And it tells our body when we're safe, and it tells our body when we should be more alert and we maybe not be in a safe environment.
When that cortisol is in line, it is naturally high in the morning, goes up in the afternoon, around midday, mid afternoon starts to come down, come down, come down, come down. By the time it's bedtime or getting close to going to sleep, it should be at an all time low. It hands off to melatonin, our body naturally makes the melatonin that prepares us for sleep, gets us ready for sleep, and then we fall asleep. We stay asleep, we wake up in the morning, cortisol rises, shoots up very quickly as we see the sun and that's called our circadian rhythm. That should be natural.
What technology is doing is causing our cortisol to think you're not safe. Because every time a buzz, a bing, a light, a vibration happens, we know that we need to look at something. Those notifications are tricking our body into thinking that we're not safe. And so we become anxious, and we become a little stressed. And if I'm in a meeting and it's vibrating and I can't get to it, I'm like, I'm always thinking, what's on that?
Is it good news? Is it bad news? Are my kids safe? Is my husband okay? Is my wife okay?
You're constantly thinking negative thoughts because that's what we've been trained to do. Am I missing out on something? And so our cortisol has changed. It's no longer high in the morning, midday, and it starts to come down. It starts to stay high and stay up there.
Well, what problem is there is when cortisol is high and you're trying to go to bed, you can't go from here to here and fall asleep. So we often go to bed and we're like, okay, gotta get my brain to stop thinking, stop talking, stopped reminding me of what I have to do tomorrow. Did I leave the stove on? Are my kids falling asleep? Everything okay?
Have I got my list for tomorrow? Our brains are constantly thinking, and that prevents us from falling asleep. And if we do fall asleep, we often wake up because again, our cortisol is too high in our sleep. And here's the moment. You make all your hormones for the following day in your sleep.
And from a medical perspective, if you wake up even once in the night, that's technically a bad night sleep. And so seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep is the holy grail as a human. And if we have too many nights where we've either been disrupted or we're not getting that seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, our health starts to unravel. Now come into play, I'm feeling exhausted, I'm gaining weight, I'm eating right, I'm exercising, I still can't lose the weight. I'm feeling anxious, I'm stressed, my perimenopause symptoms are off the chart, I'm having hot flashes, I'm losing my hair, all this stuff is happening because I'm not sleeping, because I'm not able to produce the amount of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone that I need at night to function my very best the next day.
That's the cause and effect that cortisol is having, and always trying to be on all the time with our technology is the culprit.
Carly Ries: So for solopreneurs, a big complaint is that they don't have enough hours in the day. so sometimes they'll multitask. And they'll be in a meeting while they're pushing something to social on their phone, while maybe a conference is on the TV behind them, and they're using all these devices in an effort to not be on their phones later at night so that they can get that rest, and they think they're doing something productive by multitasking to save that time so they can get these hours of sleep. Why is that not effective in productivity and overall work performance?
Justin Hai: It can be. I mean, it's about lifestyle. It's not just about one thing. So we developed, designed, invented, and tested a product that we call basically Rebalance Mello Mints or Menno Mints for women. They're going through perimenopause.
And what these mints do is help you throughout the day keep your cortisol levels more in the natural range. So that you're not going into that fight or flight high cortisol level. And so our supplements were designed specifically in mind to support people using technology and living stressful busy everyday lives. Right? It's only getting busier and busier.
But one of the things that the book talks about and that we recommend highly is looking at your entire lifestyle. So it's about what you started off in the podcast saying, try not to use it as you're winding down for sleep at night. You're trying to give good examples for your kids, but that also is very important for you. we talk a lot about sleep hygiene and preparing for sleep, and making sure that you support yourself throughout the day in being effective.
Now, with a lot of people that talk about entrepreneurship, it's like a badge of honor. Right? I work eighteen hours a day every day. Well, great. Okay.
So you're getting six hours of sleep if you take that directly, but the odds are you're probably getting four. So now put your kids in the back of a car and say, I'm gonna drive across country and get four hours of sleep. Do you think that's the smartest thing to do? So do you think your decisions that you're making for your company are the best possible decisions you could possibly make when you're sleep deprived? And often getting a good night sleep, you become 10 times more effective than if you're just operating on three or four hours of sleep. so yeah, YOU can use technology to support you throughout the day and God knows we all multitask in this space quite, hopefully successfully. But it isn't a skill set that everyone has. I know a lot of people that multitask but they're actually less effective than focusing on one thing at a time. And so you gotta look at what is your genetic makeup, how you function, and I'm all for it, but I'm also for preserving and protecting your sleep. That's the most important thing you can possibly do for yourself, for your business, for your family, is making sure that you do get adequate sleep. So you can be a 100% at your very best the next day. No one wants you at 50% of your very best.
Carly Ries: So let me ask you this. If technology is such a powerful driver of stress, why is willpower alone not enough to fix the problem?
Justin Hai: Because you're addicted. It's like asking any drug or alcoholic why willpower isn't enough just to stop. so it is exactly the same thing. It is a drug, you are addicted to it because we're addicted to being successful. Right?
That's what entrepreneurs, solopreneurs are trying to do. They're trying to build a business to be successful to put food on their table and then hopefully a hell of a lot more because that's what they're looking for, the financial freedom. Right? And so hopefully in doing some good in the world and having a good time at the same time. But in order to do that, we've got to be effective and we have to understand where our limits are.
And if people are really being honest, they're like, are you really being that effective or you've been distracted by social media? Are you going down the rabbit hole for fifteen minutes? Are you, you know, sitting on the toilet a little too long because you took your phone with you and all of a sudden, you're sitting there for fifteen minutes, you should have been out of there in three. And so it's really being honest about what you're doing and how you're using it. For me, obviously, I take the products all the time, they're very helpful.
But also little tips and tricks that I talk about in the book, like, I remove social media from my devices. They're just not there. So I'm not tempted to look at my phone and start scrolling endlessly in social media. If I wanna look at social media, it's for a particular reason and it'll be on my desktop. So I'm sitting at my computer and physically doing something focused on that.
I try to put notifications on, like, do not disturb and so forth. When I need downtime, I need to focus and then not distracting. My phone never vibrates or buzzes other than for a telephone call. I don't even respond to text notifications. When I look at my phone strategically to look at returning some text, I'll go ahead and respond.
The problem with text is we've all been trained that if you don't respond immediately, then something's wrong. Like if I text someone, it's like, they'll respond to me right away, and you're waiting for those three little dots. And so I think it's training society, we're training ourselves as to what we wanna respond to and how, and putting kind of limits up, parameters up. I reflect on a lot of nostalgic things from the seventies and the eighties and early nineties in the book.
Because when our parents went to work, there were no cell phones. There was no email. Because email just literally was in the late nineties, mid nineties. So what's happening? When they left work, they left. They weren't to work anymore. They were off the clock. They were unreachable.
And so they got on with other things in their life. Today, you're bringing your office with you in your pocket everywhere you go on the weekend. so there are no boundaries, there are no endings anymore. And so that adds to the stress. You feel like you're always on and you don't actually get time to stop and relax.
And that's part of that addiction that we have, because we, as entrepreneurs, we wanna keep the business going. I want to work every moment so I can move the company that much further forward. But also you do need time to recharge and regenerate. That's what being human is about. You're not a computer, and we compare ourselves to computers because the world is now so small that you can talk to anyone that you want to by picking up your little device and dialing some numbers and you can talk to someone on the side of the world.
Right? You wanna find a way of being busy twenty four hours as an entrepreneur? You certainly can. But you have to learn to put limits in there because you're not designed to work that way. And so you become ineffective.
Carly Ries: So Justin, for the people listening, they're like, I totally get it. I totally agree what you're saying, but I need to be responsive to my clients. Like, if they need me. I want to make sure that I'm there for them.
Justin Hai: You're just training someone that you're there twenty four seven. So you're not looking after yourself. You're just not looking after yourself. You're giving incredible customer service. And absolutely, but at what risk? what are you compromising? Your health? Not sleeping is absolutely one of the worst things you can possibly do for your health. I mean, four days, you're delusional. No sleep for four days, you're delusional.
So how good a customer service and how good is your company gonna be if you're not looking after yourself? I'm not saying be absent minded, I'm just saying learn to put boundaries up and parameters for which you can operate, when you do, when you are on the clock, you're operating at total optimum capacity versus 70.
Carly Ries: So a big thing that solopreneurs struggle with is isolation. How does technology feed into that loneliness and isolation feeling?
Justin Hai: It doesn't. That's the problem with technology. You need human interaction, you need human connection. Human connection is one of the reasons why people were suffering from depression during COVID, I mean, true isolation. We still had Zoom, we still had, you know, abilities to connect with people through technology, but speaking to a screen all day, every day is going to make you very lonely.
It just is. So I highly recommend that people actually try and get out and meet people. It doesn't have to be every day, every moment, but a couple of meetings throughout the day where you get up and you're moving, you're in the sun, then you're moving around and you actually get to meet people, that is actually one of the best things you can possibly do. Because human connection is fundamental to being human.
And I think where entrepreneurs get caught up is they try to be as efficient and effective as the devices that they're using and that's just not right. We are not computers and we must not lose track of the fact that we are human and we still need core fundamental elements in our life like food, water, and sleep, as well as exercise.
Carly Ries: Yeah. Okay. So really quick, I wanna circle back because you were talking about ways that you've kinda stepped away from your phone. You don't have notifications on, you don't have social media apps. What are some other small changes people can make today that have the biggest impact on, let's say, sleep and stress?
Justin Hai: For me, obviously the biggest thing is obviously taking our supplements and reading the book and understanding what is applicable to you and what isn't, Right? Because there are so many points and tips that I can share and we don't have endless amounts of time. But for me, some of the big things are try and get a routine in your world that you can stick to religiously. The body likes to go to bed at the same time, likes to wake up at the same time, even on the weekends. So try and pick a schedule that works for you.
Carly Ries: Does it matter what time? Like, do you recommend certain time?
Justin Hai: No. Does not matter. What matters is you get seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Ideally, the same period of time every day. So I wake up every day at 04:30.
I go to the gym first thing in the morning because that helps get me going, gets my cortisol elevated, and that's ultimately the very best time you can work out. I try to get to bed every day before 09:00. I mean, asleep by 09:00 every day, seven days a week. And if you can get that going, that helps get your body into a natural rhythm. And you'll be amazed at what you can achieve really early in the morning compared to what you can achieve in the afternoon and late night.
I know that some people are night people, some people are day people. It's when you just adjust it for whatever works for your lifestyle. But working out at night is a big no no because that raises your cortisol levels. That's what exercise does, and that means now you're gonna have a hard time going to bed, eating late at night, drinking late at night, not great, especially as you get older because your body simply can't hold the fluid in the waters anymore, and you're gonna use the bathroom or be woken up in the night to use the bathroom. So when you do go to bed, setting yourself up for success is critical. Making sure that it is on an empty stomach and that you don't need the bathroom and that when you go to bed, the room is cold, that the room is dark, there's not a lot of sounds, and so you can stay asleep . So very simple tips and tricks there. But obviously, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, stress is part of that kind of lifestyle. You're starting out for that. it's not for everybody.
And so, the Rebounce lozenges and the mints that we have support people on that mission for sure. I mean, I basically have them on my desk and I take them, pop them all day long because it helps keep me even and support myself throughout the day.
Carly Ries: Well, Justin, this has all been so helpful. I feel like people listening, there are a few people that are like, oh, I need to improve on this in one way or another. So I hope this episode and your book helps them find the success they're looking for through all these tips and tricks. And on the topic of success, we ask all of our guests this question, what is your favorite quote about success?
Justin Hai: Well, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
Carly Ries: Great. I love it.
Justin Hai: That's simple. If it was easy, everyone would do it. It's not easy.
Carly Ries: Well, Justin, where can people learn more about you and find the book?
Justin Hai: Absolutely. Go to rebalancehealth.com.
Carly Ries: Easy enough. Alright. And that will also be in the show notes. Well, thank you so so much for coming on the show today. This was so helpful.
Justin Hai: Thank you for having me.
Carly Ries: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please leave that five star review. It helps us spread the word to other one person business owners. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube, and share this episode with a friend that you think could really use it. We all have those friends who are stressed out and don't sleep enough and don't have the routine.
You know who you are. So share this episode, And we will see you next week on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures?
At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.