Justin Sternberg
If you’re going to trust someone with the personal stuff, you should know who they are first. Here’s the honest version.
Who you’d be working with
Husband, dad, recovering approval addict, certified Primal Question Coach. In roughly that order.
I’ve spent 20+ years in recovery, serving in Celebrate Recovery leadership and training since 2007: step studies, hard accountability conversations, walking with people from rock bottom to solid ground. The testimonials on this site aren’t only from a coaching funnel. They’re from years of Thursday mornings and Friday nights.
I’ve spent my whole life learning what makes people tick and putting complex things in an accessible place. I co-hosted a podcast for two years — over a hundred weekly episodes with my friend Mark, a marriage and family therapist — digging into depression, boundaries, conflict, marriage, money, and faith. I’ve taught leadership, mentored, and coached formally and informally through years of management roles.
By trade I’m a web programmer and AI architect; I build systems for a living. When I started coaching, the gap I kept seeing wasn’t in the conversations. It was in what happened after them: insights faded, ground got re-covered. So I built Compound Coaching: every session captured, distilled, and added to a record you keep.
Credentials
- Certified Primal Question Coach — Mike Foster’s framework, used by 250+ coaches worldwide
- 20+ years in recovery; serving in Celebrate Recovery leadership and training since 2007
- Two years co-hosting the How I See It podcast with a marriage & family therapist
- Builder of the Compound Coaching system
The short version? I was the problem.
For years I was convinced the problem was everyone else. I was defensive, self-righteous, quick to blame, and genuinely believed I was the victim. A mentor loved me enough to tell me the truth, and something cracked open: the problem was me. Not partially. Not mostly. All the way down.
What followed wasn’t a moment. It was years: Celebrate Recovery, accountability partners who don’t flinch, a slow honest inventory of patterns I didn’t want to name. The biggest one got a name: approval addiction. I had let other people’s approval become god in my life. I don’t recommend this.
And the work isn’t finished. In 2016, anxiety attacks forced me to step back from the recovery ministry I was helping lead. I came back months later with boundaries I should have had all along, and helped build a foundation that ministry still thrives on today. I’m not selling conquered. I’m selling practiced.
Somewhere in those years I noticed something: the growth compounded. Every tool I picked up, every framework, every round of inventory built on the one before it. Some lessons overlapped neatly. Others multiplied each other. The fastest way forward was never starting over; it was building on what I’d already learned.
That included the failures. A failure only stays a failure if you don’t learn from it. Learned from, it stops being a liability and becomes an asset. It compounds into the growth like everything else. That’s what “no more rearview mirror living” actually means to me. Not running from your past. Not afraid of it either. Becoming a new person because of it. No shame.
Compound Coaching is that conviction, built into a system.
I blog about all these things if you want to know more about me and my journey.
“The goal isn’t to need me forever. The goal is to build something that doesn’t need me at all.”
How I coach
The work is built on the Primal Question framework, developed by Mike Foster. The idea is simple: every person carries one core question from childhood that quietly drives their adult behavior. When life answers that question with a “yes,” you feel okay. When the answer is “no,” you scramble. You do whatever it takes to force a “yes.”
My question is “Am I wanted?” When I took the assessment, it was the one I recoiled from the most. The question you run from hardest is usually yours. Once I named it, the scramble finally made sense. And from that place, real change actually started.
Most therapy is about the past — making sense of the wounds and the patterns. That work matters, but it often stops there. Most coaching is about the present — what’s blocking you this week. Also valuable. Also incomplete. This work is about your future. We start with the past because the root is there. Then we leverage it, along with everything your present is teaching you, and invest it in the person you’re becoming. Every session builds on the last instead of starting over.
I’m faith-grounded. I’m a Christ-follower, and that shapes how I see you: made for more than symptom management, worth more than your performance. The truth underneath leads to grace. And you don’t have to share my faith for us to work well together.
I’m action-biased. Mike Foster puts it bluntly: “Miserable people overthink and underact.” Every session ends with a commitment you choose, not just a takeaway.
I’m honest. I won’t just nod along. The most loving thing someone ever did for me was tell me the truth I didn’t want to hear. I plan to return the favor.
I’m with you, not above you. Twenty years in recovery rooms taught me one of the most healing sentences I know: “I thought I was the only one.” It’s why I write publicly about my own approval addiction and resentment, and why, in this work, you’ll never have to go first. I already have.
The work compounds. Everything we uncover gets captured and built on: nothing resets, nothing gets lost. By the end you don’t just have insights. You have a record of who you are, how you change, and what you’re building toward. It’s yours, and it keeps working after I’m gone.
I still catch the approval addiction when it flares up. I still have to balance the stick instead of pretending it doesn’t have a bad end. Some days I believe the good news more than others. But most days I’m struggling well, and twenty years of that is exactly what I bring to the table.
If that sounds like someone worth talking to, the first conversation is free. Thirty minutes, honest, and enough to tell whether this work fits.