Unveil the Power of Ownership and Break the Relentless Pursuit of Normal with Justin Roethlingshoefer

Speaker 1:
0:00

It's normal to hear that people are passing away at the age of 72. It's normal to hear that people are suffering from all of these different things, like when we think about this, john, two thirds, two thirds of adults are overweight or obese 70%, increasing at a rate of 170% over the last 30 years. The issue is not the medical system. The issue is that we don't have ownership of our health and we've accepted normal.

Speaker 2:
0:35

In this episode today, I speak with Justin Rothling-Sofa about his new book, the Power of Ownership. Justin shares his personal journey in the pivotal moment that led him to prioritize his own health after working in the NHL for many years focused on optimizing others' well-being. Justin emphasizes the importance of personalized, data-driven health solutions and challenges the notion of accepting normal symptoms as inevitable. Through powerful stories of transformation, he demonstrates the impact of shifting mindset from complacency to ownership. Listeners, you will gain insights in the intersection of responsibility and accountability, understanding the significance of quality sleep and cellular testing, and leveraging data to make informed health decisions. Justin's passionate belief in the transformative potential of his book and its actionable framework is evident throughout the conversation. Let's get started. Justin Rothling-Sofa, it's great to have you back on the Uncommon Leader Podcast. How are you doing, my friend? Good to see you.

Speaker 1:
1:33

I'm doing awesome. John, it's so great to be back here. You and I had such a great conversation on our first one that we just thought we'd need to dial it back again Absolutely Well.

Speaker 2:
1:44

This one's pretty specific. It's coming out. You got a book that's out the power of ownership redeem your health, live life by design and break the relentless pursuit of normal. I'm excited about reading the book and sharing it with many others as well, and leading up to this, I've seen some of the pieces that you've already shared with what's going on. But I'm curious tell me a little about the journey that led to this book. So it's not your first, but what led to this book and who did you write it for?

Speaker 1:
2:12

So it's such a great question and I'll start with the story because, for me, coming out of when I stepped into the NHL as a health and performance director, really, if you look at it, I was building systems in a very customized and personalized way of how people could live Right, you're not talking about doing testing. You're talking about looking at HRV, looking at sleep quality, looking at data data to drive the decisions that I was helping to build what I call a life by design for a lot of these top end athletes. But, at the same time, I was failing to do that for myself. And in 2019, even though I was in great shape, even though I looked the part, even though I was focused on what everybody says is health meaning I worked out every day, meaning that I got seven and a half hours of sleep, meaning that I was eating whole foods and kind of focusing on that I started to get this debilitating brain fog, this debilitating headache, this kind of fatigue. When I'd wake up in the morning, I felt like I didn't sleep at all and I couldn't figure out what was going on. So much so, john, that when I was in Chicago doing a workout right before one of our games. I picked up a medicine ball, I turned and the last thing I remember was the room spinning and the next thing I was face up on a bed and I said, man, I got to get this figured out, like this is not normal. Went to all the docs, went to all the functional medicine specialists. They would run tests, but then they'd give me this generalized protocol, they'd give me this supplement routine. They'd give me this general practice to try. Nothing worked.

Speaker 1:
3:58

When, all of a sudden, I went and I did my cellular deficiencies myself, I went and started looking at my own HRV. I came back and I had like 16 cellular deficiencies. I came back, my HRV was low. I looked at my sleep quality. My sleep quality was 50% less than what it should have been. And I went to a specialist and he did a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. They found four polyps the size of my thumb that were all precancerous in my colon and they found an ulcer the size of a quarter that was also precancerous in my stomach. And he said to me he goes, justin, if you hadn't come in, if you hadn't continued to push, if you hadn't looked for your unique solution, he goes you wouldn't have seen your 35th birthday, and that just hit me so heavily and I realized at that time in the NHL that my job no longer was to create solutions for athletes, but it was to create solutions for human beings, for human beings that needed that end of one solution. And so that's who I wrote the book for. I wrote the book for the people who are trying to find their unique solutions, who are trying to understand how do I change where I'm at, how do I get out of the system.

Speaker 1:
5:11

Because here's the thing, john everybody puts the medical system on blast. They say the medical system isn't helping us, the medical system isn't maintaining our health, the medical system isn't being proactive. Well, guys, the medical system was never built to be proactive. It was built to do two things fix things that are broken and make money. One make a decision and make money. What we have to do is we have to take ownership of our own health.

Speaker 1:
5:37

Proactivity starts with us. The villain is not the medical system. The villain is actually the one that looks you back in the mirror and we fail to take responsibility. We fail to want to know our data, we fail to want to know what's happening, and because we don't have data, we don't have a direction. We use data to ultimately determine what our real estate portfolios look like. We use data to determine how we run our businesses. We use data to determine how we run our finances, but we don't use it to ultimately determine the most important thing, which is our bodies. And so I wrote this to educate, to equip and to empower people to take ownership of their health in an extremely personalized way, so that we can ultimately achieve our mission as a business, which is to take the leading cause of death in the United States, which is chronic illness, from 71% down to 50% by 2030.

Speaker 2:
6:30

Just love the mission as you go forward and I love the unique solution for each individual, but it's system-based. I mean, I can tell I followed you on social media. I've seen your or I've subscribed to your weekly newsletter and I follow your podcast as well All things that we all have links to in the show notes for folks to learn about, as well as the new book. But certainly one of the things that you talk about is system-ness and how you do it, and you've got routines the way you do it. One of the things I mean there's a lot you said in that introduction.

Speaker 2:
6:59

I'm going to put pins in like HRV and having the folks that listen to this podcast the uncommon leader. They're the ones that sometimes have determined that normal is we just get older, we just get heavier and we just get out of shape, and that's something that I probably subscribed to five or six years ago before I had my own health scare that turned me around. But what do you see with others? That normal? You're talking about going from normal to different, and so, first of all, what I hear is normal is not necessarily the good normal kind of thing and that different is good. Tell me a little bit about that normal to different Dr.

Speaker 1:
7:36

Justin Marchegiani yeah, so in the book I talk a lot about this.

Speaker 1:
7:39

But when we think about what normal is normal is defined as really conforming to a standard or like the usual, typical or expected condition or state of something and if we think about what symptoms have become normal in this world. It's normal to gain weight after you lean college and start a career. It's normal to have your mind race at night, not be able to sleep. It's normal to work to the point of exhaustion. It's normal to feel like you've lost control of your body when you get married or have kids. It's normal to have up, have no energy when you wake up to power you through your day. It's normal to be overwhelmed with worry and anxiety because you're running a business, you're leading a team, whatever that might be. That's the normal that we've accepted, dr Justin Marchegiani. But when you think about what normal has become, we have to realize that stress creates deficiencies, creates symptoms that we consider normal, but symptoms lead to chronic illness and the chronic illnesses of the norm. It's normal to hear that people are passing away at the age of 72. It's normal to understand, to hear that people are suffering from all of these different things Like when we think about this, john, two-thirds two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese 70%, increasing at a rate of 170% over the last 30 years. The issue is not the medical system. The issue is that we don't have ownership of our health and we've accepted normal.

Speaker 1:
9:11

60% of adults in the United States have chronic illness. 71% of deaths in the United States are caused by chronic illness. That's not how it should be. Chronic illness we define as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease or COPD, stroke, alzheimer's which actually is called type 3 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. All of these things are chronic illnesses and they've been caused by lifestyle factors. Less than 3% of Americans have a healthy lifestyle. This has become normal. We've normalized this, and so when choosing different, different stands out, different elevates, different motivates, different, inspires, different is set apart, and that's what we have to realize is you are different, john, I am different, your wife is different, my wife is different. Your best friends are different. Your brother, your sister, your coworker, your best friends, your relatives everybody's different. So we need to realize that for unique problems, we can't accept general solutions. For unique problems, we need unique solutions.

Speaker 2:
10:29

Delivered in a systematic way. I just love it. I mean, as you talk through it, understanding, and you think about where you were on that journey. You're pretty healthy. You said you were working out several times a week. You understand that. And then the clients. So you've started to own it. Coaching Again another link that we'll have in the show notes, and your clients are coming in with some of that mindset as well. What do you see as some of the defects in the mindset when you come in that folks are thinking that lead you to help turn them around?

Speaker 1:
10:56

Yeah, it's so good, and I'll give a little bit of context again. Even going back to this, john, I was the guy who was running marathons, who was running triathlons, who was winning world championships in Deca and CrossFit races. This is what I was doing at the time, all while working in NHL and having all the education that I had. Like, this is what I was doing, but yet it still got me. I was still choosing the general solutions. I was still accepting normal for myself, because I didn't want to pick my head up out of the sand and go oh, you know what? I actually do need to do something different.

Speaker 1:
11:35

And so the people that come into to own it, the people that get exposed to this what I think resonates with them the most and they've said this not time and time again is that it's a message they've always known, but they've never known where to find the solution. Because they hear anxiety, they hear overwhelm, they hear brain fog, they hear fatigue, they hear sleep issues and they're the things that everybody's talking about, because they know that it's the problem, but the solution that everybody's giving them has been the general one and because they've gone and trusted before, they've been let down before and thus their trust level isn't where it needs to be. And so when they hear me speak in a very systematic way, when they hear me speak in a way that makes sense, for the first time, when they hear me speak with such confidence and conviction, they're like maybe there's something here. And here's what I have to tell you. I don't have your solution, john. Your data has your solution, and that gives me the roadmap.

Speaker 1:
12:41

You're not going to come in and you're not going to run Justin's game plan. You're not going to come in and run one of our coaches' game plan. You're not going to come in and run the Onit system. You're going to come in and run John's plan and our team's going to help build that for you. Our team's going to help investigate and engineer that for you. Our team's going to help make that clear for you, because your data is going to give it to us. And so that's what's so unique is there's no preconceived notion, there's no template, there's no pre-done, blanket, general approach, cookie cutter system. It's an end of one solution, and that's why we guarantee results and that's why we get the massive transformations we do, and that's why it becomes sustainable for people, because it's built for you, not everybody else.

Speaker 2:
13:37

Justin, you've got short stories of transformations that Envils have gone through. You got a favorite one you like to have without giving anybody's names or anything else or place any confidentiality.

Speaker 1:
13:47

Yes, I've got two. I've got two. I've got one male and one female, just because these are both very, very cool stories. So first one this individual was a CEO of a nine figure business. Nine figure business owner had literally everything he could ever want in the world. Right, he had access to everything he could ever want in the world. He was about 45 pounds overweight. He was not sleeping well at night. He traveled probably six or seven times a month. A heavy travel schedule, high, high stress levels.

Speaker 1:
14:22

He had just been diagnosed with type two diabetes. Three years prior he was using about 100 units of insulin a day and he found us after the doctor had just increased his insulin dosing and he's like this can't be my life. This can't be where I'm at. I wake up fatigued every day. I don't sleep well at night. The only way that I can really calm down is by having a glass of wine. Like there's got to be something better for me. He stepped into our ecosystem and within six months within six months, john he lost 55 pounds. He started to sleep, his pancreas magically turned back on and today he no longer uses insulin at all. His diabetic numbers are down to 6.5 on his HBA1C, which is the indicator of diabetes or pre-diabetes.

Speaker 1:
15:23

This man's life is changed and that's where we operate from. He doesn't work any less. We didn't ask him to quit his job. We didn't ask him to stop doing the things that was motivating him, that he loved. We just designed a life that was built for him. We built his systems to make sure that they were supporting what his body required. That's number one.

Speaker 1:
15:49

Number two is this lady. She was about a $20 million hedge hunting business and she's based in California. She'd been trying to have children for about two or three years. She had had three miscarriages. She was extremely stressed at her job. She was the person that was at the yoga studio every morning, doing the Pilates a couple times a week, focusing on the quality foods and going to the juicing places and getting the smoothies and making her own lunches.

Speaker 1:
16:22

She was focused, focused, focused on the health side, but her body was so stressed, her HRV was so low that it didn't have capacity to actually make a human being. She had 14 cellular deficiencies. When we did her cellular testing, her HRV was low. She again was stressed and tired, day in and day out. Well, fast forward two years and she now has a family of four her husband and two children. Now that doesn't mean that we say we solve diabetes, we cure diabetes. That doesn't say we cure and solve for infertility. What we do is we get your body to start operating, to do the things it was designed to do, to function the way that it was designed to operate, because we put you on a plan and on a path that has only been designed by what your body is actually needing. Hey, listeners.

Speaker 2:
17:20

I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom. Forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show. Justin, those are fantastic stories and I'm sure you have so many more.

Speaker 2:
18:01

I think the key is for folks to make a decision that they don't want to live like that. They don't want to be normal and they want to be different. I wish that decision were so much easier for folks. A couple things when you see somebody come in, my guess is sometimes you're not seeing to your point. You were an athlete. You didn't know it until you went in to get checked out some of the deficiencies that you have. How do you suggest? And maybe we talk a little bit about the book. I don't want to give it all away because I want people to buy the book. But the steps that folks go through, how do they get started?

Speaker 1:
18:35

Where's the step they start. Really great question. I do it all the time, quite frankly, you heard me say this on my webinars. If people sign up with us, great. If people come into our ecosystem, great. I would love nothing more. Does it change my life? No, it doesn't, but I can guarantee you it will change their life. That's what excites me is being able to really do that, because seeing people's health suffer, seeing people get the wrong information, seeing people invest in things that don't get them the results, that's what breaks my heart. That's what truly breaks my heart is seeing people suffer unnecessarily.

Speaker 1:
19:11

This doesn't have to be your normal. This doesn't have to be how you operate. You can have different. Different is available to you, but it requires you to make a step and a choice and a decision. That's different. Where I help people to start is start with two things. Number one get a wearable device, start tracking heart rate variability and start tracking sleep quality. If you all of a sudden start doing that and again, if people are listening to this go to joinwoopcom. Slash, own it. You guys can grab a free wearable device there. You can go and you can do it on your own. What I'm telling you is that will not solve your problems, it will drive awareness to them. Joinwoopcom slash, own it. It'll get you that free wearable device so you can start tracking HRV and start tracking sleep quality. Once you start to do that, it'll drive awareness to man.

Speaker 1:
20:08

Am I actually not sleeping well? There's four stages of sleep Light sleep, rem sleep, slow wave sleep and ultimately, a wake cycle at the end of each 90 minute cycle Four stages we should be spending 50% of our total sleep time in REM and slow wave sleep, so it should be somewhere in that 50% range. So if we're sleeping for seven hours, it should be about three and a half hours. That shows that we're getting quality sleep. Quality sleep that's going to turn into true healing and regeneration of our mind and our body.

Speaker 1:
20:45

Number two is heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is the most universal metric for understanding how our body is adapting to stress and strain. If your HRV as a 40 year old person is not 45 to 80, your body's communicating something to you. If it is less than 40 or it's in the lower echelon of that range I just gave you, your body's communicating something. It's not adapting to the stressors and strains, and in a very good way, and so you need to change habits, you need to change behaviors. There's things in your life that are not creating a proper rhythm. So that's the wearable device side. That's why I would suggest people get one of those to be able to start bringing awareness to the things that they didn't have before.

Speaker 1:
21:28

The second thing I would encourage you to do is get cellular testing done, because when we have chronic stress chronic stress from poor sleep, chronic stress that's determined and shown by HRV chronic stress creates chronic deficiencies, chronic deficiencies at the cellular level. And when we talk about cellular deficiencies at the cellular level, it's what is available vitamins, minerals and amino acids to our body to be able to function at a level that is so, so important. And so when we get this done and you can go to ownittestingcom, you just go, you simply click it. You get the test done, sends the kit right to your home. The phlebotomy shows up at your home. It gets the test done. You get on a call with our team. They go over your deficiencies with you, they go over the solution with you, they go over the plan with you. They create your custom supplement formula for you and then you determine what you do from there.

Speaker 1:
22:22

But this would be how you get started by yourself without even coming into our system, without even coming into our program, without us even even being able to help you.

Speaker 1:
22:29

If you want to try and put this together yourself for very minimal dollars and be able to kind of hey, I'm going to figure this out, joinwoopcom, slash ownit for your wearable device, ownittestingcom to get your cellular testing done, and that's going to put you in a really powerful position to be able to lean into something, to say, hey, I'm going to actually have some agency to understand what's going on now. But now, agency and understanding isn't enough unless we have a plan of action, for what's next and that's what I want people to understand is, once you have this information, once you have this now, let's use the data to drive our decision. Let's use the data to drive the direction that we're going in, so that we can have very personalized solutions and what we ultimately are doing can either be validated or, ultimately contradicted, based upon what the data is, based on the habits that we've been trying to put into place.

Speaker 2:
23:28

So you're not talking about a diet, you're not talking about exercise. You're talking about some pretty simple things, about understanding. The first thing we really need to look at is quality sleep and then understand where we are at a cellular level to get that data that we need and you touch on this in your book as well. So when you have data, you can I've written it down somewhere what is the data driver for you in terms of getting that done? But ultimately, if we have the data, we can make the decisions that we need to make to become more healthy and understand how that goes. And this is again, I think it. I hear you, I listen to it. It's a mindset more than it is a physical change. The title of your book, the Power of Ownership and I'll turn one of your favorite podcast questions back to you with regards to how that works suggests a shift in mindset to take responsibility for one's own health. So we talk about that title the Power of Ownership. What do you mean by ownership when it comes to your health? I love it.

Speaker 1:
24:24

I ask this question on my podcast all the time what's your definition of ownership? I define ownership as the intersection point between responsibility and accountability. Too often we choose one or the other and think we're going to get the outcome that we want. We all know the people that have said hey, I want to take responsibility for where I'm at, I want to take responsibility for what's happening, but they fail to set up the accountability mechanisms. And there's always then a reason why we stop.

Speaker 1:
24:55

There's always an excuse to why something fell through, because we didn't take the next step, we didn't truly invest to make sure that we had the accountability system, the accountability team, the mentor, the community, the coach to help us get to where we wanted to go. But then we know the people that said oh, you know what, I'm going to get the coach, I'm going to invest in the community, I'm going to invest in the mentor, I'm going to invest in the things to get me to where I want to go, but they're not willing to take responsibility. There's always an excuse as to why it didn't happen. There's always something that's more important, there's always something that comes up, but the power of having them cross over, the power of having them come together where you're able to say, man, I'm going to get the team, I'm going to put the system in place, I'm going to take responsibility, I'm going to create some change in my life and all of a sudden, you look back six months and you don't recognize that person.

Speaker 1:
25:52

You don't recognize the habits, you don't recognize the energy, you don't recognize the sleep quality, you don't recordıyoruz the body. You don't recognize the way the eyes light up when you look yourself back in the mirror. You don't recognize the tightness of skin. You don't recognize the fullness glow of your face. You don't recognize the muscles that are starting to come out. You don't recognize the way that your clothes fits. You don't recognize the swagger that you have. You don't recognize these things because you never thought it was possible. But that's what ultimately stepping into ownership looks like, is it's realizing a different version of you and knowing that you're perfect just the way you are. But God created you for so much more so that you're just too good to stay where you are at.

Speaker 2:
26:37

Thank you, justin. I love that as you went through. I just wanna ask you one more question, and it's the book test. So folks are gonna get your book. I know they're gonna buy the book, they're gonna read it, they're gonna highlight it, they're gonna underline it and they're gonna put it on a bookshelf, just like this before, and they're gonna look back on it a year later and what is it you want them to think? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do with your book? I mean, when they see that they see the binders sitting there, that they need to, or reminding them that they've read your book.

Speaker 1:
27:08

So when I wrote this book, I wrote it with a very purposeful intention, and the purposeful intention was so that it wouldn't just become something you read and threw up on a shelf. It would be something that would become a toolkit a toolkit for you that you would continue to come back to, that you would continue to readdress, reassess and ultimately determine hey, how can I use this in a unique way, how can I come back to step into this, so that I can ultimately take it from what I'm feeling today and now put a system in place tomorrow, because what you put in place for a system today won't be the same place won't pardon me, won't be the same system that you need to implement three or four months from now, because your body will have changed, the season of life might be different, you might have different priorities, and so we're gonna have to reassess where we're at. And so what I hope people do when they read this is that they look at it and they one learn something. They become educated.

Speaker 1:
28:06

Number two it entertains them. It's something that is very entertaining. There's great stories, there's things that they can see themselves in this. But number three is that it equips them with a path to create a personalized solution for themselves, gives them the understanding of where they need to go next, gives them confidence and conviction that they can actually take ownership of this and that they can do it. And so, as they do the different worksheets, as they do the different workbooks, as they go through the different chapters, not only have they learned something, not only have they been exposed to new information, but they've ultimately gotten a framework and a game plan for how to customize their own journey so that they can realize health in a different way.

Speaker 2:
28:57

Love it, justin, I hear you saying it Dog ears, sticky notes, a lot of underlining and highlighting to come back to on a regular basis and just wear it out. Don't let it sit there on the shelf when you go forward. Justin, you've added value in your comments and words today. I know folks are gonna find great enjoyment of the book. They need to go out there and get it. Where can they find it and where can they learn more about you as well?

Speaker 1:
29:19

Yeah, if you go to thepowerofownershipbookcom, it's gonna give you everything there. If you pre-order before April 23rd, you're gonna get access to a couple workshops that I'm gonna do live for all of our pre-order community. You're gonna get access to the vault that has videos, PDFs, frameworks, a whole bunch of different worksheets that just have so much value there. So I really encourage you to go pre-order that book. We're in a Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller Chase right now, so we're super excited about that. What a blessing that's been the response from people who've gotten it in their hands already. So hopefully people can jump on board and get copies for themselves and for members of their family, members of their community, members of their business, just because I know the impact that this is gonna have. But thepowerofownershipbookcom is where they can find that. And then again, anything that they wanna message me about I'm super active on Instagram at Justin Roth is where they can find me there.

Speaker 2:
30:28

Excellent, justin. I appreciate you investing your time. I know you're busy as you get ready for this book launch up. Investing your time with the listeners, the Uncommon Leader podcast. I wish you the best, all right.

Speaker 1:
30:38

Thank you so much, John, it was great.

Speaker 2:
30:43

And that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of Uncommon Leaders. Until next time, go with Grow Champions.