When was bodybuilding com created

We were on the beach on a warm evening, and luckily, she said yes. It's funny how things happen when you least expect it. I inserted my small gold key into the PO Box door and swung it open. What greeted me was more exciting than finding a secret hole in the girl's locker room shower wall.

The PO Box was stuffed with so many orders that I had to get the rest from the front desk clerk. That was great, but the idea that this could grow and continue for years meant I was really on to something. At that point, I made a decision to stop working on any of my other businesses. This was when the hassles really started.

Now that we had orders, we had to ship them out. Now that we had customers, we had to answer the phone when they called. We had to deal with returns, inventory, order processing, purchasing, and more, all from my small garage in West Boise.

I didn? We had to figure it out all from scratch. Now you know why my hair started turning gray when I was in my early twenties!

At this point, my brother Jeremy came over to my house each day to work with me. Each day we checked our web site for orders we eventually were approved for accepting credit cards , entered the orders into Quickbooks, printed them out, put Higher Power labels on our generic creatine bottles, pack the orders, put them into my Chevy Blazer, and take them to the local post office. My friends were in college, partying it up and wondering why I was so stupid to want to spend my time working and reading.

But I loved every minute of it. Selling creatine was great, but I still wanted something more. Next I would buy something more valuable than pure gold. It is a something that you can't touch, hear, smell, or taste, but people ask me at least once a week about how I got it. Stay tuned for part three Part 3 It was two years before the end of the world , and business was going great.

We were selling more and more creatine monohydrate through our small web site, shipping it right out of my garage. We piled the creatine bottles high in my garage, using my old jet-ski as a shelf, and Jeremy would come over each day to help me ship them out. It was a very manual process, but we handled it. Our goal from the beginning was to ship our products out extremely quickly in order to get repeat business.

Soon we added another product, androstenedione, which was quickly becoming a popular prohormone supplement after home run king Mark McGuire announced he was using it. It was a new and legal product which gave people quick muscle building and strength results.

We bought the domain androstenedione. This definitely helped increase sales, but we still knew we couldn't grow as big as we wanted with only two products on a couple of simple web sites. One day while dreaming big, I noticed that the Bodybuilding. A guy in California owned it, but he was not using it. I contacted him and asked him about selling it. Immediately, he responded and said that he would not sell it because he had big plans for using it.

I was disappointed, but went on with my day. A few months later, I noticed the domain was still not being used. What a waste! I contacted the owner again and asked him to reconsider. This time he wrote back saying that he was busy with his current business and may never be able to get around to using the name. He might be interested in selling it at the right price. Now we could see if we could get a deal done.

At this point, I couldn't think about anything else! I would go to Barnes And Noble and study business books, and each day I was thinking of more and more great ways to build a business that was not just about selling supplements, but being a place where people could learn, interact, and reach their fitness goals.

I had started bodybuilding in junior high, and ever since then it was a major part of my life. I would read every magazine, idolize the pros, buy supplements and drinks from GNC, and buy books about how to get big and ripped. I loved everything to do with bodybuilding. I first started working out at home after school was out at Fairmont, then I moved to Valley Gym where I worked out before AND after school nearly every day.

When I first heard of the Internet, I searched for sites and bulletin boards about bodybuilding. I found some small sites and communities, and I joined a few mailing lists. I couldn? I was used to just reading the muscle magazines and talking to one or two of my friends that cared about working out, but now I could learn from thousands of people from around the world.

I would spend hours online just surfing bodybuilding sites. It was a like a dream come true, even though at that point there wasn't a lot out there compared to what was possible. The idea of being able to use the Bodybuilding. I continued to email the Bodybuilding. He had told me that at the same time a business owner in Japan was trying to buy it as well. A few days went by without a response. I would sit and check my e-mail every two minutes, praying for a positive response, dreading being turned down, and just wanting an answer so I could stop stressing out!

On one fateful Fall day, I clicked the "Check Email" button for the one hundredth time so far that morning. A new message was coming through! I was sitting in my small home office with my two dogs laying by my side, patiently waiting for me to get up and take them for a walk. Bryna was at the gym, so I was alone, sitting in my old Office Max chair, in my underwear like usual. The message appeared in my Juno e-mail program. My heart stopped beating and I held my breath, involuntarily, as a I read the first five words.

I started jumping up and down, running around my house in my underwear screaming. My dogs had no idea why I was acting like a Price Is Right contestant that just heard that it was their turn to "come on down"!

They were barking and jumping around, following me around as I did my best not to kick them with each spastic jump. It was mine. Now it was up to me to do something with it. I hired my cousin-in-law Travis Smith to come help me start building the first version of the site since he knew how to write HTML. After many late nights brainstorming at Shari's diner, trying to find more products to sell than just our Higher Power line, and creating web pages, the site was ready to go live on April 13th, On that day, we removed the "coming soon" page and put up the real site with a few clicks.

I woke up that morning in my ? We did! But it wasn't what I expected? Part 4 Imagine being strapped into an old wooden roller coaster with a blind fold on. At first the ride starts out deceptively slow, climbing the first huge hill Eventually, you reach the top and the clicking sounds stop and the silence is deafening. Then it's a freefall into the unknown. All you can do is hold on tight to the rickety handle in front of you and hope that you don't get thrown out like a crash test dummy in a Ford Pinto.

In my life, I had reached that exact point. I was strapped in and had no idea what was in store next, but I was ready to take it on, head first, with nostrils flaring. April 14th, was a Wednesday, and Bodybuilding. It was the next step in my journey that would eventually teach me more about the world, business, and myself than anything else.

It would either bankrupt me at the age of 21 or make me a multi-millionaire. I would not accept anything in the middle. That first morning I groggily went to my computer to check if we had any orders. We knew that the Bodybuilding. I typed in the URL to get into our shopping cart admin area. The first message that greeted me was "New Orders Available". I clicked the message to see how many we had.

To my disappointment, we only had one. I don't know why, but I naively hoped we would have at least the first day. I know now that with our limited product selection, bare bones site, and low traffic levels, that was extremely unrealistic, but back then I had no idea what to expect. I've always been an optimist. I clicked to view our first order, and immediately recognized the signs of fraud. This wasn't a real order. It was some thief in Nigeria using a stolen credit card.

So in reality, we didn't have any orders at all. I hid my disappointment when I broke the news to my brother Jeremy and my cousin Travis. It was okay.

It was only the first day and we have a lot of work to do to build it up, one day and one web page at a time. Over the next few days, weeks, and months we added more and more content and products to the web site. Those days were spent furiously writing articles, adding new features like message boards and chat to our site, filling orders in my garage, ordering supplies, answering customer e-mails and phone calls, and marketing our site all over the Internet using free methods like link trading, search engine optimization and more.

Slowly but surely, we started to get some orders. At first, it was just one or two a day, but would slowly and consistently grow, like a snowball rolling downhill. We would celebrate our first "10 order" day, then 20, then 30 and on and on. Every month brought a new milestone, along with the pressure to keep up. That pressure has not stopped to this day. As I write this on February 26th, , I'm happy to report that we just had a record order day yesterday with orders.

I know this is just the beginning of what is possible. To get from 10 orders per day to where we are now had many ups and downs, sleepless nights, fights with family and friends, big celebrations and big letdowns, lost friendships, lawsuits, fear of losing it all, a failed attempt to sell part of our business, and much more which I'll detail in the coming chapters.

One moment in our history I will never forget. I was working in one of our first real offices outside of my house a year after we started Bodybuilding. Our warehouse was in the "meth lab" part of the city hey, the rent was cheap , so I figured they were busting somebody in the trailer park next door. Imagine my surprise when federal agents wearing bullet-proof vests busted into our office with their police dogs, demanding that we stop working and stay off the phones.

Ten minutes of shock and fear went by as they secured the entire building and brought all of our employees into one area. What was going on? Was there some type of misunderstanding or did we do something illegal without knowing it? Grimek, unparalleled in muscular development up until that point, became the catalyst for a new direction in physical improvement.

As bodybuilding became more popular, the quality of physique improved. With physiques arguably more impressive than Grimek, Clancy Ross and Steve Reeves made their mark in the '40s. Ross won the Mr. America in , and many believe him to have been the first modern bodybuilder, although at this time bodybuilding was still regarded with skepticism by many. However, Steve Reeves came along and further popularized bodybuilding due to his movie star looks and perfectly proportioned physique.

Reeves eventually became revered as the greatest bodybuilder of all time after winning the Mr. America and the Mr. Universe the other big contest to have sprung up in light of the success of Mr. He went on to become one of the first heroic movie stars, gaining a fan base of thousands.

Other bodybuilders, such as Reg Park, followed Reeves' example, and became great champions. The first large-scale bodybuilding competitions were held by these organizations: the Mr. The s marked the period during which the most influential bodybuilder of all time would make his mark. Arnold Schwarzenegger beat Dennis Tinereno for the Mr. America title in and immediately began dominating the international competition. He would go on to win Mr. Universe on five occasions and Mr. Olympia seven times.

The Mr. Olympia had been won first by Larry Scott in , who went on to win again in ' Sergio Oliva won in '67, '68 and ' Arnold cemented his spot as the number one bodybuilder in the world by winning the Olympia for the next five years straight, and again in He would also conquer the movie world, becoming a Hollywood star. As bodybuilding increased in popularity into the s, Arnold and other superstars such as three-time Mr.

The movie industry often specifically targeted muscular actors, such was the marketability of this type of physique. As the muscular body became more desirable, the gym industry gained momentum, and the industry as a whole became lucrative.

In the s, the IFBB rose to prominence as the dominant bodybuilding organization. Toward the end of this period, the IFBB consisted of more than member countries, and had become the sixth-largest sporting federation in the world. Bodybuilding was regarded as a legitimate sport, had become a multibillion-dollar-industry and had adherents in all major countries.

By the s, bodybuilding had become a popular sport with great crossover appeal. Film stars and athletes from many sports were increasingly using bodybuilding to improve their marketability and performance.

The practices of weight training and dieting, so central to the bodybuilding ethos, had clearly been adopted by mainstream society to increase profile and enhance performance. Competitive bodybuilders were also becoming more muscular as an increasing emphasis on size dictated a more extreme approach to physical development. Anabolic steroids had been used during the '60s, and their use correspondingly increased as bodybuilding grew in popularity.

Prize money, sponsorships, and endorsements had increased due to the growth of the bodybuilding industry, and had become a major motivating factor for many entering the sport. A general trend in aesthetics and balance gave way to a mass-at-all-costs approach, and top placers were generally those carrying the most size, especially into the '90s and beyond Although steroids were used prior to the '80s, the stacking of various types of steroids using more than one at any one time and use of dangerous growth hormones and insulin were becoming commonplace as the '80s drew to a close.

Amateurs and professionals alike engaged in this disturbing trend, with the intention of making a name for themselves and increasing their earning potential. Indeed, with the increase in competing bodybuilders came increased competition among these athletes.

This would mean a great bodybuilder would have to become greater to distance themselves from the closest rival, who would be taking the same extreme approach to developing their physique. As the '90s approached, the quality of physique improved due to advances in training techniques, dietary strategies, and, yes, drugs.

The '80s witnessed the rise of Lee Haney, who won seven Mr. His physique at around pounds had surpassed any other bodybuilder up until that point. When he retired, Haney had beaten Arnold's record of six Olympias, and in the eyes of many, surpassed him in terms of muscular development. Other notable bodybuilders of this period were Lee Labrada , one of the few successful underpound professional bodybuilders due to his classical symmetry and presentation skills , Vince Taylor, Shawn Ray, and Mike Quinn.

Shawn Ray would go on to compete throughout the '90s, placing highly in every Olympia he entered. The '90s could truly be defined as the era where competitors demonstrated a leap forward in terms of muscle mass. Dorian Yates won five Mr. Olympias between and , and heralded a new benchmark in mass at pounds ripped. Same with obesity - if you hang around with obese people you become obese. And why is that? It's partly because the activities. Most likely obese people aren't going for jogs today or hiking, or they're not eating the right foods, and you notice that.

But it also affects your norms. So I'm the skinny one. I always use the example of walking into a place you've never been and not knowing what you're supposed to do. Am I supposed to eat with this knife or do these other things? So you look to the person to your left or right to see what they do. So naturally people just do what the crowd does a little bit. If you're hanging around with obese people who are just eating fast food everyday and don't have the right lifestyle choices, you're going to do the same thing.

Ryan DeLuca: When we started BodySpace, we thought, We've got to get something out there and kind of hack it together, and then we'll "iterate" on it as we go. We continued adding features, but after a while when any site does that, you get this clumsy interface where things don't work quite as well - because it's been years and years of just adding random stuff.

Eventually it becomes hard to add new features because things aren't built the right way. We were missing so many things with this platform, we would never get where we wanted to go with BodySpace. So we created a new platform. The biggest thing with the new platform is a "look-and-feel" update. It'll look more modern and be something you'll want to show off. You want to create a BodySpace profile and feel awesome about it, and now you will.

How do you find information? Right now BodySpace is a profile page with just modules of stuff. No rhyme or reason, it feels like. So it gets real cluttered and hard to navigate and elicit feedback. You could have written 10 BodyBlog entries yesterday that could have been super-interesting and I would have no idea.

If you're going to spend all this time writing BodyBlog entries and get no feedback, how long is that going to last? By comparison, the main reason you do anything on Facebook is to get feedback, to get "likes.

That's just like real life. Ninety percent of what we do is based on getting the approval of the people around us, from the way we dress to where we work to who we are. So the interaction in BodySpace is going to be a major new feature. A lot of basic Facebook-type features will be built in, along with a vastly-improved workout tracker, focus on a nutrition tracker, more long-term supplement tracking, vastly-improved charting and progress charts, goal-setting features, and so on.

Another big thing I want users to be able to go to is an inspirational profile, like Kathleen Tesori's , and be like, Holy cow she's got exactly the body that I want right now! So you want to know how she does it. Currently, you could sift through her BodyBlog stuff, and hope maybe she posted a link somewhere. Now, we will make it simple to see her workout, her nutrition plan, her supplements, and follow what she's doing everyday, so you can copy it directly, along with 10, other things.

Ryan DeLuca: It'll be more Facebook-like when it comes to the interaction. Because that's what people expect. It's like when you're creating a car. Just put the steering wheel in the middle and make it round. Don't mess with it and be creative on that part.

Then [in our case] add all of the fitness and bodybuilding features around that. Ryan DeLuca: I'll be optimistic with my crystal ball, owing to this new platform, because of the interaction and viral features, and how it's going to be much more useful for people I would say three years.