Evoke Greatness Podcast

Unleashing Your Potential with Justin Roethlingshoefer (Part 1)

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🎧 Episode 134: Unleashing Your Potential with Justin Roethlingshofer

In this episode of Evoke Greatness, Sonnie welcomes Justin Roethlingshoefer, renowned performance coach, bestselling author, and founder of Own IT Coaching. Justin shares his inspiring journey of personal and professional transformation, offering profound insights on evoking greatness through humility, endurance, and embracing discomfort.

Justin shares valuable insights on:

  • The true meaning of endurance and its role in personal growth
  • Redefining success beyond external achievements
  • The power of humility in unlocking one's full potential
  • Reframing the concept of intention and embracing tension

🔑 Key takeaways:

  1. True endurance involves suffering patiently to gain capacity
  2. External success doesn't always equate to internal fulfillment
  3. Evoking greatness often means being willing to "become nothing"
  4. Compromise kills more callings than lack of talent
  5. Intention requires tension - it should be challenging
  6. Suffering and discomfort are often necessary for growth and refinement

💡 Quotes to remember: "Evoking greatness means to be nothing. It means to be humble, means to be willing to be shaped." 
"Compromise has killed more callings than any lack of talent ever has." 
"An intention shouldn't be easy. Intention puts you in the direct intersection point between who you are and who you're called to be."

📚 Resources:


Whether you're seeking to redefine your own measure of success, struggling with your calling, or looking to embrace discomfort for personal growth, this episode offers deep insights and practical wisdom. Remember, true greatness often emerges from humility, endurance, and a willingness to be shaped by life's challenges.


A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of Evoke Greatness. Today we have an exceptional guest who's been at the forefront of personal and professional optimization for years. Justin Rothling-Schoffer is a renowned performance coach, best-selling author and founder of Own it Coaching, an eight-figure coaching company built to redeem the health of the world. With a background in professional sports and executive coaching, justin has helped elite athletes, fortune 500 executives and everyday strivers unlock their full potential and achieve remarkable results. His unique approach combines physiological insights, data-driven strategies and a deep understanding of human psychology to create personalized roadmaps for success.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're going to dive into Justin's philosophy on evoking greatness. We're going to explore the intersection of physical and mental performance and uncover practical strategies that our listeners can apply to their own lives and careers. So get ready for an inspiring and informative conversation that will challenge you to rethink your limits and embrace your own potential. So, justin, welcome to the show. I do have to give a huge shout out to Scott McGregor, because he is like the connector of the world and that was how I first got to hear you and a lot of your story on the Outlier Project call. So welcome to the podcast. Great to have you on.

Speaker 2:

So great to be here, sunny. I appreciate you and Scott's amazing. He and I came together probably two years ago and we've just made it a routine and a ritual. At least once a quarter we have a hour two hour long meeting, whether it's virtual or via phone or whatever, just to connect and it's just been, it's been a blessing. So I love being at the outlier project. I love everything he's doing there, so it's it's great to be with you.

Speaker 1:

Scott is one of those people that he just number one. He has the most amazing connections, he's the most genuine friend that you could ever ask for, and so it really does create like, and so it's no wonder that he created the outlier project with a bunch of really amazing people and people that the rest of us members get access to. So I'm grateful to be able to share your story and your insights with the audience today.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much, I can't wait.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dig right in. You know I always like to ask people. Your story has probably taken many different turns over the course of your career, but what has led you to the most recent version of yourself?

Speaker 2:

Wow, when I come back to that question and I really think about, like what was that last hard thing I got through? I think the biggest thing that I come back to is just the word endure, or endurance. And, by definition, the definition of endure is to suffer patiently. And when we think about endurance, everybody wants endurance. Everybody wants to be able to have the capacity to sustain whatever they're going through. But when we think about what's required to gain the endurance to do what it is that you are desiring, a lot of hands start to go down, a lot of people start to drop off, a lot of people start to close the door or turn the other cheek.

Speaker 2:

And I think the biggest thing for me, where I've had to really kind of go through some things in order to get to where I am today and this has been a reshaping of just my identity and who I saw myself as and the component of being okay, going for the journey, being okay with one step at a time, being okay with being slow, and I think for a lot of times that would hold me back.

Speaker 2:

And I take a look back at my NHL journey as a performance coach and then my transition out between 2020 and 2022. Those were just really trying years for me, where I was trying to figure out who I was, trying to figure out where my value sat, trying to figure out where my value was I didn't have, I wasn't on fire for who God had created me to be, but rather who Justin wanted to be. And it wasn't until I really got aligned with that, humbled myself, that I was able to step into the man that I am today and continue to I always say I continue to try to become nothing so God can make it something. And that's just really where I think I've grown to and what obstacles I've overcome most recently in order to realize, kind of where I am right now.

Speaker 1:

Sounds like a humbling journey, however, probably more insightful than you could have ever asked for, had all of the worldly things kind of come to fruition.

Speaker 2:

Oh, without a doubt. I mean there's. You look back at 2014 through 2020, where my wife's and my wife and my journey is very much the same, where I was strength and conditioning, sports, performance, health and performance coach whatever title you want to put on it in the NCAA and then in the NHL, and finding all the success. And because I was doing things so differently, you all of a sudden get vaulted into this thought leader position in a league that's very small, in a world that's very small. You're writing books. You've got four, four books out in three years. All of a sudden, you've got your fifth book out, puts you on the USA Today bestsellers list, like all the things. Everyone's like wow. You're like crushing it, and little does people know behind the scenes.

Speaker 2:

I'm miserable, I hate my life, I'm frustrated, I'm insecure. I embellish a lot of things in the sense just to make me feel protected and at the end of the day, it was. I just felt really empty. My wife, on the same hand, was the youngest executive in luxury fashion. She was the executive vice president of Christian Louboutin, doing all the things that she could have ever imagined as a 10 year old child, visiting New York city for the first time.

Speaker 2:

And so she was all of a sudden like we were at the same pinnacle, the same unique spots, but yet we both felt like, is this it? Is it like? What else is what else is there? What else can we do? We don't feel like we're actually serving, we don't feel like we're in authentic alignment to where it is that God's called us and what we've been created for. And it created what I call like this spiritual frustration, where, every single day, I would wake up and I knew there was something else, I knew there was something more, but you couldn't put your finger on it. And, in fact, the thing that was holding you back was not any one thing, was not any situation or circumstance, but it was lo and behold. The man and woman looked at you back in the mirror, and it's once you were able to really just harness that and humble yourself and be willing to again be nothing. That's when, all of a sudden, the lights turned on.

Speaker 1:

I love that story because I think there's if you don't find an anchor for your life and your purpose, then so many people you see it all the time. You see it in Hollywood, you see it in professional sports, olympians it's always looking for the next thing Okay, great, I got this medal, I got this award, I got this, you know whatever title boom immediately. And and there are a lot of people who talk about the fact like Superbowl, and Superbowl is great for about an hour, two hours a day, two days, and then boom, it's like that emptiness starts to rise up if you truly don't have an anchor. So I love that you share the battle that you had through that, because I think it's hitting those bottoms and feeling empty when there's really so much around you until you find that anchor for yourself. And so that shoots us greatly into my next question, which is what does evoking greatness mean to you?

Speaker 1:

And what I mean by? That is the reason I named the podcast. Evoke Greatness was, I thought you know there's so much. People strive to be something, but when do we start calling it up from within ourselves? You know, when can we look inside versus looking at everything outside? And so what does evoking greatness mean to you, and how has this concept shaped your personal and professional journey?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, to me, I think evoking greatness means to be nothing. It means to be humble, means to be willing to be shaped, and when we think about suffering and I go back to like that component of enduring I and suffering is often seen as a negative thing, but I love when we can sit in the suffering, because the suffering is what creates the shaping. And if you're committed to being shaped, that's when you can actually realize the calling being shaped to be. And when we continually compromise it over and over and over again, that's when we kill our calling. Compromise has killed more callings than any lack of talent ever has. And the more that we can be committed to being patient, the better this is going to be, I'll tell you. I'll give you two stories here that I think really kind of shaped this really really well.

Speaker 2:

I just left the NHL, a bold step in. As I was getting ready to leave, I just heard the Lord say to me just overwhelmingly for probably three or four years, but finally got the courage. I need you to stop serving the audience you want to and serve the audience that I called you to. The audience I wanted to was the professional athletes, the NHL guys. Why? Because it was all about me. It was about hey look, justin's in the NHL it's the look that it gave to everybody else, whereas, in actuality, what was being formed was to be able to serve the business owner, the business leader, the entrepreneur, the people that didn't have access to the information, the knowledge, the wisdom that I had gained and, ultimately, had been blessed and anointed with. To be able to go and serve people with and, at the same time, not willing to step into that realm because I would have had to humble myself and go into a different space. And so that was number one. And so, as I left, I'm now sitting here going. Okay, I've been obedient, I've stepped in. Floodgates should just open and it should be easy and everything should be great and everything should be amazing. And, in fact, I struggled Like I struggled hard for those two years, and I still remember I was in Anaheim, that was where I finished my last job in the NHL and I flew out to New York City, moved my entire self, cross country because that's where my wife was, and so we were doing long distance for three years. So, crazy, cross continent and, as we were going through this, moved out to New York City and about three months in, I had no idea how to get clients or work with people or serve people or do anything. And so I found myself standing outside of luxury apartment buildings with flyers and kind of lying to the bell boys as to like how I could get in to be able to say, oh yeah, I've got a client here and just let me walk in and chat and talk. And when I didn't have any of those things and in fact it was so anyways, I had to sit outside and be able to have this very humbling moment. The second one was I'm sitting. I'll never forget this.

Speaker 2:

It was my fourth book release and I had gone to Lululemon headquarters in downtown New York City and I had said, hey, I've got this book coming out, it's launching on this date. Could we do a book launch opening on the Saturday afternoon evening, whatever time works for you guys? Would you have an open? They're like, yeah, we'd love to. It sounds great. We've got an email list. We'll blast at the email list, send it to your email list. I didn't have an email list at that time. Like I'm, I'm coming out of not even having a business but just having a little bit of an audience because of the niche in which I was in, and so I don't have an email list. I don't have an audience that would come and flock to this, and so they send their email list. I put it out on social media. We get like 60 confirmed registrants that were going to come.

Speaker 2:

And so Saturday, seven o'clock, everything's set up. I got sponsors to come in, I got camera crew, I got a video crew, I got a photographer, I got food all in the back, I've got the chairs all set up. I get somebody even to come and like have a fire chat discussion with me. And 6.15 rolls around, 6.30, 6.45. There's nobody in there. Seven o'clock, nobody in there. 7.15, nobody in there. Well, all of a sudden I'm like man, nobody's coming. And at 720 something, a homeless man walked in and was like is there any food here? And I was like bro, here's a book, here's some food from the back, take it, take anything, take everything actually.

Speaker 2:

And in that moment we're 35, 40 minutes after we were supposed to start there's nobody here. Zero, zero people, zero people showed up and at that moment I had to make a decision and in my mind there really was only one decision. It was I have to go and put this on and I have to go and deliver a message as if the room is full, and so went, delivered it. At the end, the camera guy looks at me and goes hey, can we go home now? I said, yes, you can go home, but mark my words. There will be a day when the room is full, when the book is around the world and it's impacting people and changing lives, and he goes Okay, kid, whatever you think.

Speaker 2:

And that was, I think, a pivotal point for me in really changing my mindset of who I was and what I knew was the truth for me, because I was an author, I was a influential performance coach, I was somebody who that that's that's what I had been called to be. I knew it inside, just nobody else knew it yet. And in claiming that, in stepping into that, in believing that, in doing what that future person would do, that was the first step in terms of opening up the doors to what was actually possible today. And so that was that. That's what I talk about like. Evoking greatness is being willing to be humble, being willing to be nothing, being willing to put a show on with the room empty, just as though the room was full, having confidence that one day it will be.

Speaker 1:

Wow, and if you didn't have, if you didn't feel like it was such a deep calling, imagine what that does to our human ego. Right, like it is a gnashing of teeth with our ego, but I liken it to any time I feel God tugging on me to do something. I usually go through three kind of stages. The first is disobedience, because it's like I feel it. However, I'm not totally bought in and so I'm like, maybe, maybe I don't really hear this, maybe I'm not really feeling this. So it's like there's that first stage of disobedience. Then I'm like, okay, god's clearly pulling me towards something, and I start to get like begrudgingly obedient, like, okay, yes, I'm going to do this for the sake of you know, not because my whole heart is in it or not because I I have faith in something that I don't need to see, but I can believe in it. And then it gets me to that third stage, which is, which is like joyful obedience, where you can truly lean in, but like I think that there's so much of that, that process, because again, we're human and we are, we have this pull of kind of a greater, something greater, and then this pull of our ego and man we can really get in a fight with that, but I love. I also love what you said about the suffering piece Someone recently posted on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

I think it was the CEO of NVIDIA I think that's the company name. I could be butchering it, but what he said was profound. He said as he's sitting in a room with people and they're coming up with ideas and trying to do all this people focused on getting better. He said I wish you all suffering, because it is not until you go through that suffering that you really are opened up to learn and I thought, wow, that really framed. It wasn't a negative, but if we could all go through something hard, something where there is a sense of suffering or suffrage to it, it really does, as you said it it forms us and it shapes us into something greater.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I think when you come back to that concept of suffering, it's simply shaping you and preparing you for what's ahead, because I talk about this same concept in. We talk about intentions all the time. I have the intention to be more positive, I have the intention to be more present, I have the intention to be just a more joyful person. Well, it's great to have an intention, but I think we've lost again the meaning To have intention. It requires you to be in tension. It should be difficult, it should have this component of friction. An intention shouldn't be like, oh, I have the intention to be more positive and like, oh, I'm just a positive, happy person all the time anyways, and it's really easy for me, but I'm just going to make it an intention. That's not an intention.

Speaker 2:

Intention puts you in the direct intersection point between who you are and who you're called to be. And when you're in that intersection point, it requires you to change, and change requires some tension. And that fire that you're in it's a refiner's fire. That's what's refining you. It's like when you see a gold ring. It's 18 karat gold, 24 karat gold. Whatever it is. To the naked eye. It looks beautiful, it's gold, it's shiny, it looks great, it's hard, it's metal, it's man. This thing must be really valuable. But you throw it in some fire, melts down. All of a sudden you see all the different alloys come to the top. You see the aluminum, you see the nickel, you see the copper, you see everything. And until you can skim it off the top, it's only at that point that it can be made more pure, so that now it's more valuable when it comes out the other side.

Speaker 2:

Well, so many of us are not willing to endure the refiner's fire. We're not willing to sit in the tension, and thus we abort any type of shifting, any type of change, any type of shaping, any type of refining that we're going through. So we ultimately aren't then prepared to handle what it is that was sitting on the other side of it for us. And then we sit over here and we complain. We sit over here and we mourn. We sit over here and we're comparing. We're sitting over here and we're wondering why we weren't able to get where we wanted to go when in actuality it was sitting there for you all the time. You just weren't willing to sit in the tension no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

I have never heard of intention being reframed like that before. I will never be able to see that word the same again. I will never be able to read that word the same again. I was just taking notes about the things that you were saying, because that is really powerful when you can reframe what your intentions are with being in tension. That's like goosebumps with being in tension that's like goosebumps.

Speaker 2:

Here's the thing, sunny when you start looking around at it, look at how the world has taught us to see intentions. Every book that you'll see it in it's like what's your intention today? You mean, like, what am I focused on? If you're asking me what I'm focused on, then that's a different question than what am I going to be intention for? Because what my intention is and for a lot of us and here's another thing that's going to be unpopular with a lot of people is oftentimes the thing that we have to be in tension with is not the hard thing that the world tells you, it's not the David Goggins go run 95 miles and be hard and grind it out. For a lot of people, the intention is becoming less. The intention is not doing the thing, the intention is not being that thing.

Speaker 2:

Another story of like why I come around to this is, for me, for a long time, my ego and my identity was placed in my fitness level, was placed in how I looked, was placed in how I was operating and something that I say now like an unblessed person either performs or rebels. And so, until you find where your identity is, it's only at that point that you can lean into what you're truly called to do. And so, for me, I was always performing, always. That's what I, that's what I saw myself, that's where I saw my value. And so I had to look a certain way. I had to have a certain level of fitness. Every time I went to the start line of a race. I had to win. And so I put a lot of pressure on myself. And so, as I had just finished up training within the CrossFit Games, had come out, had just started, then into triathlons, because I was like, if I can do this, then I can do that, I then into triathlons because I was like, if I can do this, then I can do that. I can do everything. I could just be like this big guy that competes in everything and just takes it all home and wins it all.

Speaker 2:

And as I started to finish races and just like you talked about with the Super Bowl, just like you talked about with other championships, I'd win, and I would feel so empty and angry and just like depressed after and not knowing why. And so I was like you know what? Fine, maybe it's just because I'm not doing enough races. I'm not. I don't have race season for another three months. So I'm you know what? I'm just going to go run a hundred miles.

Speaker 2:

And so I went to a track, I set up my own little nutrition station, I set my own little recovery station up and I just ran. So, for everybody out there, a hundred miles is 400 laps of a track and I just started running. I just started running and I just started running and I just started running and as I got through lap 398, as I got around lap 399, I started to have the same feeling in my stomach You're not enough, you're not good enough. Why are you doing this? You're just performing. This is what you have to do.

Speaker 2:

And as I finished about halfway through that last lap, I just had this voice in my head and this download of your win is not finishing. And I was like no, that can't be right. Three quarters of the way through the last lap, your win is not finishing. And I felt my legs stop. Win is not finishing. And I felt my legs stop. You just have one last corner, one last thing to go literally a hundred feet.

Speaker 2:

And I turned left, I walked across the track, I jumped the fence and I went home, because if I went to the recovery station, I would have to finish and cross the finish line, and so I went home, and it was at that moment I cried the whole way home. It was at that moment that I realized like that was, like that was the big thing, was saying. So somebody asked have you run a hundred miles? No, I have not. I've run 99.9% of it, but I haven't, I haven't run a hundred miles. And so that's this thing that comes back to me of what I was stating, where you have to be willing to be nothing. You have to be willing to be nothing, you have to be willing to drop that ego, you have to be willing to sit into that, and your concept of being intention is actually probably doing less than what it is that you actually think it's doing more.

Speaker 1:

That's it for part one of evoking greatness through humility and endurance with my guest, justin Rothling-Schoffer. Make sure to join us next week for part two, where he goes into the details around data-driven health decisions and how they can lead to inevitable success, the cost to leadership that we have to proactively address, as well as humility and becoming less, and how that can paradoxically lead to greater influence. You are not going to want to miss it. It will not disappoint. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode and I hope that you will join us again for part two next week. Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around.

Speaker 1:

If you liked this episode. It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.

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