Paretofit has won the Stellar Business Award in recognition of its digital-first health and performance coaching system for busy founders, built around documented outcomes and an evidence-based 80/20 approach. Founded by Tobias Burkhardt (M.A. Health Sociology and Clinical & performance Nutritionist), Paretofit helps entrepreneurs across the DACH region improve energy, sleep, body composition, and performance through healthy high-performance habits that work under real-world pressure.
In this interview, Burkhardt explains the principles behind Paretofit, why founders fail with “perfect plans,” and how an implementation-first system can produce consistent outcomes without turning health into a second job.
Q: What is Paretofit, and who is it for?
Tobias Burkhardt: Paretofit is a digital-first health and performance coaching system built for entrepreneurs and founders in the DACH region. The core idea is simple: founders don’t need more information, they need a system they can execute consistently under pressure. We focus on the few behaviors that drive the majority of results across training, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and behavior change.
Q: Why do busy founders struggle with health even when they’re disciplined?
Tobias Burkhardt: Because discipline doesn’t solve the real bottleneck: decision load and inconsistency. Founders can push hard for a week or two, but the system breaks when the calendar explodes with calls, client projects and deadlines. Most fitness plans assume perfect conditions: stable routines and unlimited willpower. We design for the opposite: chaos, travel, late meetings, and mental fatigue.
Q: What does “80/20 health” mean in practice?
Tobias Burkhardt: It means we don’t chase complexity. We identify the smallest set of evidence-based actions that reliably moves the needle: a handful of high-leverage training sessions, a few nutrition principles that reduce friction, sleep anchors, and stress downshifts that fit real schedules. The goal is not perfection. The goal is repeatable outcomes.
Q: What does “documented outcomes” mean in your system?
Tobias Burkhardt: We track progress through structured check-ins and measurable outcome indicators tied to the client’s primary goal. Paretofit reports a 98.1% documented success rate across 169 coaching engagements. We define “success” as achieving the primary, pre-agreed coaching goal within the coaching period, based on documented check-ins and outcome tracking. Results obviously vary depending on starting point, constraints, and adherence, and this is not a medical claim of course, but it ist he real results weh ave acheived with our clients in the past 8 years and we are proud of it.
Q: What does your system actually look like week to week?
Tobias Burkhardt: It’s implementation-first. We build a weekly operating system: what stays stable, what flexes, what gets tracked, and what gets adjusted. Founders need clear decisions: “Do this when the week is normal, do that when it’s chaos.” We create those rules, then iterate based on real feedback.
Q: What do you believe the Stellar Business Award recognizes about Paretofit?
Tobias Burkhardt: It recognizes that founder health can be built like a system, not a motivation project. Paretofit is designed to produce practical execution in real life, with an 80/20 structure and outcome documentation. That combination is what makes it reliable for busy founders.
Q: What’s the most common misconception founders have about health and performance?
Tobias Burkhardt: They think they need a perfect plan. They don’t. They need a resilient plan. A plan that still works when sleep drops, stress spikes, and time disappears. The best plan is the one you can execute on your worst week, not your best week.
Q: If someone has “near zero time,” where should they start?
Tobias Burkhardt: Start with the minimum viable system: two short strength sessions per week, a simple nutrition rule that reduces decision load (e.g. including at decent protein serving of 20 grams or more in every meal), and one sleep anchor like cutting caffeine at least 6 hours before bed or turning of screens 1 hour before. That already changes energy and performance. Once that foundation is stable, we add layers.
Q: What’s one non-obvious lever that makes a big difference for founders?
Tobias Burkhardt: Reducing friction beats increasing motivation. Establishing lifelong healthy habits is a marathon and works via consistency, and not a sprint driven by limited willpower and discipline. Most founder health problems are not knowledge problems. They’re environment and systems problems. If you remove friction, behavior changes become much easier. As James Clear famously said, „You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems“.
Q: What’s next for Paretofit?
Tobias Burkhardt: Scaling the system without losing quality. The goal is to keep the coaching highly personalized but structured enough that busy founders always know what to do next, even when their schedule is unpredictable. The more founders and entrepreneurs we can help to become healthy, happy and productive, the better for them, for us and also for Germany, where we desperately need increased productivity and economic growth in light of our ageing society. Win-Win-Win.
Award Details: https://tobias-burkhardt.de/presse-paretofit-stellar-business-award-2026
Paretofit-Coaching: https://tobias-burkhardt.de/arbeite-11-mit-tobias
