Meet Enrique Arteaga | Founder, elevate.epo | Executive Psychologist & Identity Architect

We had the good fortune of connecting with Enrique Arteaga and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Enrique, how did you come up with the idea for your business?
People assume elevate.epo came from some dramatic awakening. It didn’t. It came from design—data design, system design, human design.

In 2022, I was tasked with building a national mental health report. That project opened my eyes to a simple but devastating truth: most of the tools we use to “measure” mental health are biased junk. They track symptoms but ignore structure. They capture surface emotion but miss underlying motive. Worse, they can be gamed—skewed by social desirability and masked pathology.

So I built something better. A psychometric tool that accounted for bias, pierced the noise, and leveraged modern tech—AI, behavioral analytics, and systems thinking—to quantify what had never been measurable before. What began as a cleaner diagnostic evolved into a performance engine. It quietly cracked how to detect masked borderline traits in high-functioning adults. But more than that, it laid the groundwork for the first mental health system that can actually deliver measurable, repeatable, real-world results.

From there, I reverse-engineered what works. I used my own transformation—losing nearly 80 pounds, healing long-standing emotional patterns, and rewiring my nervous system—not as a brand story, but as a stress test. Then I ran the process on real clients. High-achievers. Founders. Creatives. The ones who didn’t want therapy—they wanted traction.

That’s what elevate.epo became: not a practice, a platform. A new category. Built at the intersection of psychology, identity calibration, and executive performance. A system for those who lead with intensity and are ready to evolve with precision.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
elevate.epo isn’t a therapy practice. It’s a system—a recalibration platform for people ready to lead, not just cope. Built at the intersection of psychology, behavioral science, and personal sovereignty, it’s designed to deliver what most mental health models can’t: measurable, repeatable, identity-level transformation.

What sets us apart is that we’re not selling insight—we’re engineering outcomes. The system I created doesn’t just explore your past; it realigns your present and recalibrates your future. Clients don’t come to vent. They come to evolve. They come to move.

Getting here wasn’t easy. I walked away from institutional systems that I helped hold up—clinical roles, nonprofit leadership, private practice—all of it. I knew the model was broken. I had seen how compliance was being mistaken for healing, and how the metrics used to justify care were out of step with actual human outcomes. So I built a new system from scratch.

It started with rebuilding my own life. I lost 80 pounds. I rewired my nervous system. I extracted myself from loops I didn’t even realize I was in. But the real turning point came when I created a psychometric tool in 2022 that measured mental health with clarity and accounted for masked traits like covert BPD in high-functioning adults. That tool became the diagnostic backbone of elevate.epo—and the catalyst for something bigger.

Today, we serve founders, creatives, operators, and leaders—people who want to show up with presence, erotic containment, emotional discipline, and actual power. The people who don’t want another therapist. They want a system. They want results.

What I want the world to know is this: your story isn’t static. You’re not broken. You’re just uncalibrated. And once you shift from survival to structure, everything changes.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If my best friend was in town for the week, here’s how we’d run it. Each day hits a different part of LA—because this city isn’t one vibe, it’s a constellation.

Monday – Pasadena.
Nothing better than grabbing a coffee at Urth Caffé across from the office and watching the theatre district wake up. You might even catch Shia LaBeouf pacing around with a script. From there, we’d take a slow walk through Old Town while the week is just starting to stretch its arms. Lunch at Russell’s on Fair Oaks—classic, reliable, grounded.

Tuesday – Glendale.
Sure, the Americana and mall are standards, but Gold’s Gym on a Tuesday night is its own energy. It’s a self-improvement temple, especially for anyone on their physical recalibration arc. After the lift, we’re hitting Shamshiri for some post-session kabob. Macros, handled.

Wednesday – DTLA.
Midweek reset at Grand Central Market. Mr. Donut, carnitas tacos, Golden Road brew. No notes. You’ll feel like the city belongs to you.

Thursday – Redondo Beach.
The pier’s seen better days, but the coastline still knows how to speak. Sunset hits different here—mai tai and cotton candy skies, every single time. Dinner at Spoon House seals the deal. Still one of the best under-the-radar spots for soul food disguised as pasta.

Friday – Exposition Park.
We’re doing museums. Natural History, the African American Museum, and California Science Center—all in one hit. You can catch the new George Lucas museum construction while admiring the Coliseum’s silhouette. When the culture run is complete, we’re grabbing Yucatán cuisine at Chichen Itza. That’s a real LA finish.

Saturday – Highland Park.
We’re walking York and Figueroa. NELA is the birthplace of the modern LA cool: mom-and-pop ambition, post-indie grit, and just enough space to think. This is where LA breathes deeper.

Sunday – East LA.
El Mercadito on 1st Street. The smells, the sound, the culture—all compressed into three floors of pure vibrancy. It’s not curated. It’s lived. And that’s the point.

LA isn’t about chasing hype—it’s about knowing which corners still pulse with life. That’s where I’d take them.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
If I had to name one source of credit, it wouldn’t be a single person—it’d be the archetype of the mirror. The women who reflected me back to myself, whether through friction, intimacy, or creative tension. Some of those moments broke me down. Some lit the fuse. All of them shaped the man I became.

I’ll give credit to the mentors who let me see the system from the inside. Some were brilliant, some were deeply flawed—but all of them taught me something critical about how people change, and how institutions don’t.

And I’m thankful for the silent supporters—the ones who’ve witnessed the rebuild from behind the curtain and never needed applause to stay close. You know who you are.

This journey was never solo. But it’s always been sovereign.
And to those watching from a distance: I see you, too.

Website: https://www.elevateepo.com

Instagram: https://www.instragram.com/elevate.epo

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enriquearteaga/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/elevateepo

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@elevateepo

Other: https://substack.com/@elevateepo

Image Credits
Images courtesy APG – elevate.epo