Title: From Burnout to Balance: The Holistic Health Framework for Business Leaders with Justin Roethlingshoefer

Summary:

In this episode, Seth Bradley interviews performance and holistic health expert Justin Roethlingshoefer, who shares his journey from overweight and obsessed with data as a child to becoming a thought leader in elite athletics and executive performance. Justin reveals that while most people approach health through a "body up" lens, obsessing over diets, workouts, and gadgets, true health and healing come from the opposite direction. He advocates for a "top-down" method where spiritual identity and emotional clarity are foundational, which then naturally align the mind and body for sustainable, lasting change.

Justin explains how high achievers, even billionaires and franchise owners, often remain unfulfilled and unhealthy because they treat symptoms rather than root causes. His company, Own It, integrates data-driven physical health with deep mental, emotional, and spiritual coaching to create real transformation. True health, he argues, is only possible when all areas of life are aligned — and while results may take time, the impact is profound and permanent.

Links to watch and subscribe:

Bullet Point Highlights:

• Body-up health solutions are backwards. Real, lasting transformation starts with spiritual identity and mindset before physical optimization.
• Holistic integration is required. Mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health must be aligned for true healing and performance.
• Success ≠ health or fulfillment. High-performing entrepreneurs and executives often suffer because they chase outcomes, not alignment.
• Transformation takes patience. Sustainable results require commitment to small, integrated steps, not quick fixes or shortcuts.
• The solution is full integration, not fragmentation. Own It’s model addresses all aspects of health in one place to create life-changing outcomes.

Transcript:

Seth Bradley (00:02.062)
What's up, builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.

If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you, and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Man, excited to have you on the show. Let's just jump right in, Tell the listeners a little bit about your background and take it back as far as you like.

Justin Roethlingshoefer
So man, how long's the show? I think the big thing, to be honest with you, anytime I kind of get asked about my background, my background shaped me. My background kind of brought me through to what it is that we're doing now. And I kind of speak in terms of anointings and callings and what it is that was stamped on us from a young age. And for me, it was health. I knew that.

When I leaned into that as a young boy at 12, 13 years old, I was a fat kid. was the one that I was just made fun of. But I also had this deep desire to know and understand my body at a level that didn't make sense to a lot of people. And there was, I still remember I did this study at the University of Alberta, born and raised in Canada, and was a very athletic kid, but was just overweight. And I did this study.

And they were looking at how kids and based on their habits and behaviors, whether you could actually be fat and fit. And so they brought me in and we did all these tests and all these studies and my VO2 max was at the 99 percentile. My muscle mass was at the 99 percentile. My time spent watching TV, playing video games, all these other things was at the 99th percentile of not doing those things. But yet I had a BMI that was obese. I had a body fat percentage, I think of 34%, something in these areas. And I still remember the article that came out, it was the front page of the paper, because it was a really groundbreaking study in Canada, and it said, and fit, question mark, with a picture of me.

and I was on the bike and it really just started, like it messed with my mind. And obviously only continued the teasing, continued all these things. But I was the kid that wore a heart rate monitor to bed, wore a heart rate monitor all day long, had a pulse oximeter that I would look at three, four times a day. When I was reading, when everyone else was reading comic books, I was reading medical journals. And this was something that I was just fully enthralled with. Well,

That experience threw me the other direction and from about 14 to 18 became severely anorexic. Had a really hard ability to see myself well and just love who I was and I had a major body composition issue and that propelled me down into the United States. I still happen to be a very good athlete. I came to the United States on a hockey scholarship.

Did two undergraduate degrees one in exercise science another nutrition went got my master's degree in exercise physiology concentration and sport performance Went and got my massage therapy license went and got my postgraduate doctoral studies in heart rate variability sleep and recovery science and that propelled me into the National Hockey League I started to really understand the body in a way that not many people did and realizing that health is

Holistic health is integrated health is mental physical spiritual and emotional conditions or states of the human being and they all have to be aligned and if there's any type of Disintegration between those four you will not be healed you will not be healthy and you will not realize what I call true health and so I took that philosophy of using data technology and Information to help heal the entire person to the NHL and all of a sudden we started to see

injury rates drop, we saw recovery times drop, we saw sickness rates drop, we saw performances increase, we saw energy increase, and the owners, the GMs are coming to saying, what are you doing? Like, I don't understand this. You're bringing a philosophy that is very weird to us, we don't understand it, but yet we see the fruits of it at the end of the day, what's happening? That, over the course of eight years, caused me to become a thought leader and really take...

some stages in some unique ways in professional sports and change the culture and the dynamic of how we approached performance. But going from Washington to Anaheim, I had one of the ownership team members of the capitals come and say, hey, I need to meet with you when you come out. And I'd seen this person and as they walked through the door, I was like, my gosh, I'd seen them six months previous.

And as they walked through, was like, you've aged 30 years in five, six months. Like what's going on? He's like, I don't know. I don't feel well. Like I'm not sleeping. I'm stressed. I feel like I've got no control of my body and I don't understand what's happening. Can you help me? And the back of my mind, I was like, this guy's a billionaire. He's just making copious amounts of money. He's a businessman. I work with athletes.

But then all of a sudden I realized, no, this isn't an athlete problem. This is a human problem. And I put him through the same philosophy. We did testing. We looked at heart rate variability. We started to track information. We started to have conversations that were very philosophical in nature, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally aligned, starting to go through a lot of these identities that he had that he wasn't able to shake. And all of a sudden, eight months later, the guy looks like he's 35 years old and

He's 80. And that was the turning point for me to be like, hey, I can no longer just stay in the national hockey. Like I have to walk away and be able to impact the health of the world because like I said, this is not just a athlete problem. This is a human problem. And the more that we can empower people, the more that we can help them understand their bodies and understand

how to heal. The definition of integrated is the exact same definition of heal. To make one, to make wholeness, to create oneness. And that's what we have to do mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally if we truly want to heal. You just can't be a muscle head on the outside and be sick internally and think that you're healthy. On the other side, you can't just not go to the gym and go to the therapist all day and be so aligned and do meditation and just know your purpose and be preaching from the stages.

there's still disintegration. We need to make sure it's holistic, all-encompassing and integrated to realize that deep healing. And that's what we've been doing for hundreds of thousands of people who are business owners and business leaders, entrepreneurs for the last two and a half, three years. So it's been, that's kind of been that journey in what looks like about six and a half minutes.

Seth Bradley
That's incredible, man. There's so much to unpack in six and a half minutes there. Man, I don't even know where to start. I mean, it sounds like you've had this almost an obsession with data and reading that data from your body before everybody had a Fitbit, right?

Justin Roethlingshoefer
Oh, for sure. A Fitbit or some sort of watch, right? And you were doing this before that kind of hit the stage because it just interests.

So like on that note, they're like definitely doing it before it was cool. But like quick story, when I was 12 years old, I asked my parents for a heart rate monitor for Christmas. And you have to realize this is back in 1998. So the heart rate monitors were not like they are now. You can't get them for 100 bucks. You can't get a wearable device that's cheap and easy. I think that the heart monitor then cost like $1,600. And they're like, why do you need a heart monitor? Like, are you sick? Is there something wrong? I was like, no, I'm just interested.

Well, they're like, we're not buying one of these things. And I said, no, like, pool your money that you give me for Christmas, my birthday, and pool grandma and grandpa's money and pool like aunt and uncle's. Put it all together and that's all I want. You can just never get me a gift for the next year, not till next Christmas. So that's what they did.

And that was literally how I got my first piece. And I've just been obsessed with it ever since of really being able to just provide information. Because I think understanding, knowledge is one thing, understanding is something completely different. And we need to be able to dissociate between information and understanding and help cross that bridge so that you can be empowered to take action in your own health.

Seth Bradley
Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. Your parents kind of made that sacrifice to make it happen for you. I don't know if you would have been a little bit set back because they didn't provide that for you at that time, but it kind of catapulted you on this journey. You know, do you think that, you know, reading that data is maybe the first step in kind of working towards analyzing that holistic approach? Or where do you kind of see all this beginning?

Justin Roethlingshoefer
First step is, that's to be honest with you, that's the world's approach. The world's approach I say is a body up approach. So it's, there's four entities of health, right? Mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. And I attach each one of those to a different entity.

So physical, your body. Emotional, your heart. Mental, your mind. And spirit, your spiritual component.

And the world's approach is to take a bottom up body first approach. You need to get the wearable device. You need to start tracking all this stuff. You need to look at everything under the sun. You need to go get your DNA tested. You need to go get your blood tested. You need to go and do the cold plunge, the sauna, the red light, the intermittent fasting, the high intensity interval training. You have to do all the things because you have to get the six pack. You have to lose 20 pounds. You have to do whatever it might be. It's the body up approach.

Well, that body up approach creates a poisoning of the heart, poisoning of the emotions, it brings on anxiety, it brings on fear, it brings on this feeling of overwhelm. All things that I experienced as a child, which is why I continue to pair them through, I was fearful of becoming fat again, thus I took things to an extreme. I was fearful of...

not being able to have the energy to do what I wanted, thus I was acting out of certain things and I would have to go do my workouts and it would bring up massive anxiety because it was just so much and I was overwhelmed by it all. That poisoning of the heart creates a separation of the mind, thus I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm never gonna get there, I'm not consistent enough, I'm not worthy of all these things. And that separation of the mind creates a cloudiness

in our spirit, a cloudiness of who we are and what we identify with. I identified as a fat kid. I identified as the anorexic sick kid, the weird kid. That's what stuck with me and that's why I was never fully healthy even though at 20 years old to now at 36, I don't look any different. I've still got the six pack. I've still got the muscles. I still can lift a house. I still feel really strong.

But it's not until about two, maybe even three years ago that I was holistically healthy, that I loved who I was, that I was really rooted. What we have to do is we have to take a top-down approach. We have to really create oneness in our spirit first. Who are we? Why are we here? What's our calling? What's our identity? What is that true desire that we're wanting to live for?

Once we have that, we have a sense of oneness of our mind. We are worth it. We are good enough. We're exactly where we need to be. We're in a journey that's exciting. Thus that eliminates and creates a purification of our heart and eliminates the anxieties, eliminates the fears and puts us into a state of enthusiasm, energy, mental clarity, empowerment to go and step forward into these things powerfully, which then

we're able to create consistency, sustainability and longevity of our body through our habits, behaviors and lifestyles that are now something we look forward to. And so coming back to your comment is the first thing we have to do is not get the wearable device, is not do the thing. The first thing we have to do is get our self right spiritually, which comes back to identifying who we are. Who do we identify as? What are we?

What is our goal, our mission, our purpose? Because once we align that, once we get clear on that, everything else starts to fall into place.

Seth Bradley
Got it, got it. Yeah, and it's like that body up approach. It's easier to sell. The culture that we live in, it's just easier to sell products. It's easier to get people thinking they need to look a certain way. It's just that sales kind of approach, but it's backwards. You've got to get yourself right spiritually, mentally before the more the body type of physical things can even matter to you internally.

Justin Roethlingshoefer
I think, yes, I think you're right, but even as you start to look at that, why do you think we're more unhealthy now than ever? We are living in a place where there's more mental illness in our society than ever before. There's more anxiety than ever before. There's more depression than ever before. We're actually sicker physically than ever before. Diabetes is on the rise. Alzheimer's is on the rise. Alzheimer's is just type three diabetes. That's all it is.

An inability to control blood sugar. We have an obesity epidemic rising. We have now 52% of Americans that are obese, not overweight, obese. And so it's not more information. It's not getting more of these things. It's not go do this, gym, go and do this thing. There is 77% of people who lose weight and get healthy, gain back the weight they lost. Why?

Because it was done in an unsustainable way. They had a hole that they were searching to fill that didn't align along the way. And once they accomplished the certain outcome, it didn't make them feel any different. And so it comes back to this component of integrating everything together. And when I built Own It, that was the big thing I was focused on.

Do you have to have an exercise routine? You're darn right you do. Do you have to have a new way of eating? You're darn right you do. Do you want to be able to supplement the right way? You sure do. Do you want to make sure you're sleeping well and have a recovery routine? You're darn right that's important. But you also have to have...

the person who's gonna help you with self care, the person who's gonna get your mind right, the person who's gonna get your heart right, the people who are going to help you align in this way, which is why we've got everything in one place and everything had to be integrated. You can't be trying to put your own wheel together because when you put your own wheel together, you miss out. And so I wanted to create a space where somebody could walk in and everything is there.

You're gonna come in, you're gonna have your team, your team that wraps their arms around you. You're gonna get your DNA testing, you're gonna get your cellular blood testing, you're gonna get your custom supplementation, you're gonna get your workout plan, you're gonna get your wearable piece of technology so that your health coaches and your functional medicine docs and your RDs can track everything and help you and guide you and put these things in place for you in a slow, iterative way so that over 12 months, you don't even recognize the habits you were in before. But on the same breath, you're gonna be working

mentally, emotionally, and spiritually on identifying who you are and how do you get over this gap so we can create a bridge so that you do come in this state of oneness and you step into everything powerfully. And so as a business owner, as an executive, as a business leader, you have become transformed, not conformed to what we're telling you in the world.

Seth Bradley
Got it. So it truly is holistic, right? It's not let's start one thing two three four. It's all at once small steps to lead to a major change.

Justin Roethlingshoefer
100%. And I think the reason that people aren't willing to have patience with it, they're not willing to be developed. Everybody wants to arrive. Everybody wants to get to the end result. But nobody's willing to take the trip. Nobody's willing to have great story.

So we had a client who started, this guy owns 17 different franchises and he came to us about three months ago. Four weeks into his process, he called and goes, I'm unhappy, I'm not seeing changes. I've been in this for four weeks and I've just been adding some different habits. I'm looking at my wearable devices. I've just got my testing done. Nothing's changing yet.

I said to him — and let's call this guy Chris — I said, Chris...

We don't even have your full testing results back yet. We've only really started to implement a lot of these lifestyle changes and routines about three and a half weeks ago. We've only been able to get two really deep in-depth calls to get you realigned. We've only just started to add some of these things in. And you kind of talk him off a ledge, talk him off a ledge. He comes back, continues to be consistent. And just last week...

He's been with us, like I said, for about three and a half months. Just last week, he sends us a screenshot. His quality of sleep used to be at about 37%. So REM and deep sleep totals over total time of sleep time. His quality sleep was always about 37%. He just passed 50%. His HRV, which is an intrinsic measure of how your body's adapting to stress and strain...

was his average was about 24. Just for a little bit of context, your goal is to always see a trend line upwards. His trend line was always downwards. He has an average HRV now of 54. His respiration rate, meaning how many breaths per minute he's taking throughout the course of the day is dropping, meaning he's becoming more efficient. His blood glucose levels, because we've now tested twice, are half of what they were before. He was at a pre-diabetic level previously.

His anxiety in terms of just talking is half of what it was and he's down 16 pounds.

Seth Bradley
Got it, got it. Yeah, and it's like that body up approach. It's easier to sell. The culture that we live in, it's just easier to sell products. It's easier to get people thinking they need to look a certain way. It's just that sales kind of approach, but it's backwards. You've got to get yourself right spiritually, mentally before the more the body type of physical things can even matter to you internally.

Justin Roethlingshoefer
I think, yes, I think you're right, but even as you start to look at that, why do you think we're more unhealthy now than ever? We are living in a place where there's more mental illness in our society than ever before. There's more anxiety than ever before. There's more depression than ever before. We're actually sicker physically than ever before. Diabetes is on the rise. Alzheimer's is on the rise. Alzheimer's is just type three diabetes. That's all it is.

An inability to control blood sugar. We have an obesity epidemic rising. We have now 52% of Americans that are obese, not overweight, obese. And so it's not more information. It's not getting more of these things. It's not go do this, gym, go and do this thing. There is 77% of people who lose weight and get healthy, gain back the weight they lost. Why?

Because it was done in an unsustainable way. They had a hole that they were searching to fill that didn't align along the way. And once they accomplished the certain outcome, it didn't make them feel any different. And so it comes back to this component of integrating everything together. And when I built Own It, that was the big thing I was focused on.

Do you have to have an exercise routine? You're darn right you do. Do you have to have a new way of eating? You're darn right you do. Do you want to be able to supplement the right way? You sure do. Do you want to make sure you're sleeping well and have a recovery routine? You're darn right that's important. But you also have to have...

the person who's gonna help you with self care, the person who's gonna get your mind right, the person who's gonna get your heart right, the people who are going to help you align in this way, which is why we've got everything in one place and everything had to be integrated. You can't be trying to put your own wheel together because when you put your own wheel together, you miss out. And so I wanted to create a space where somebody could walk in and everything is there.

You're gonna come in, you're gonna have your team, your team that wraps their arms around you. You're gonna get your DNA testing, you're gonna get your cellular blood testing, you're gonna get your custom supplementation, you're gonna get your workout plan, you're gonna get your wearable piece of technology so that your health coaches and your functional medicine docs and your RDs can track everything and help you and guide you and put these things in place for you in a slow, iterative way so that over 12 months, you don't even recognize the habits you were in before. But on the same breath, you're gonna be working

mentally, emotionally, and spiritually on identifying who you are and how do you get over this gap so we can create a bridge so that you do come in this state of oneness and you step into everything powerfully. And so as a business owner, as an executive, as a business leader, you have become transformed, not conformed to what we're telling you in the world.

Seth Bradley
Got it. So it truly is holistic, right? It's not let's start one thing two three four. It's all at once small steps to lead to a major change.

Justin Roethlingshoefer
100%. And I think the reason that people aren't willing to have patience with it, they're not willing to be developed. Everybody wants to arrive. Everybody wants to get to the end result. But nobody's willing to take the trip. Nobody's willing to have great story.

So we had a client who started, this guy owns 17 different franchises and he came to us about three months ago. Four weeks into his process, he called and goes, I'm unhappy, I'm not seeing changes. I've been in this for four weeks and I've just been adding some different habits. I'm looking at my wearable devices. I've just got my testing done. Nothing's changing yet.

I said to him — and let's call this guy Chris — I said, Chris...

We don't even have your full testing results back yet. We've only really started to implement a lot of these lifestyle changes and routines about three and a half weeks ago. We've only been able to get two really deep in-depth calls to get you realigned. We've only just started to add some of these things in. And you kind of talk him off a ledge, talk him off a ledge. He comes back, continues to be consistent. And just last week...

He's been with us, like I said, for about three and a half months. Just last week, he sends us a screenshot. His quality of sleep used to be at about 37%. So REM and deep sleep totals over total time of sleep time. His quality sleep was always about 37%. He just passed 50%. His HRV, which is an intrinsic measure of how your body's adapting to stress and strain...

was his average was about 24. Just for a little bit of context, your goal is to always see a trend line upwards. His trend line was always downwards. He has an average HRV now of 54. His respiration rate, meaning how many breaths per minute he's taking throughout the course of the day is dropping, meaning he's becoming more efficient. His blood glucose levels, because we've now tested twice, are half of what they were before. He was at a pre-diabetic level previously.

His anxiety in terms of just talking is half of what it was and he's down 16 pounds.

Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:

Seth Bradley’s Links:

https://x.com/sethbradleyesq

https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq

www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq

https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq

https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/

https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/

https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq

https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq

https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en

Justine Roethlingshoefer’s Links:

https://www.youtube.com/@justinroethlingshoefer

https://www.facebook.com/justin.roethlingshoefer

https://www.instagram.com/justinroeth/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-roethlingshoefer/

https://justinroethlingshoefer.com/