He is also the author of Eating for Life and the founder and former editor in chief of Muscle Media magazine and the former CEO of EAS, a performance nutritional supplement company.
Phillips made a promotional movie called Body of Work which was filmed in Las Vegas, Nevada and chronicled the first EAS Challenge.
Born in September 1964, Phillips was raised in Golden, Colorado, where he lived with his father Bill (often referred to as BP), mother Suzanne, sister Shelly and brother Shawn.
[3] On June 25, 2021, Phillips was admitted to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood and attached to a ventilator after a COVID-19 infection, where he spent 47 days intubated recovering from being in a medically induced coma.
[6][7] In 1991, Phillips began working with doctors and research scientists to develop performance nutrition products that could help athletes get better muscle-building and fat-burning effects from their workouts.
It was later revealed however, that Phillips and the creator of MET-Rx, Dr. A. Scott Connelly, were in fact business partners, and the endorsements clever marketing.
[16] He also had the idea for Phillips to give the Review away for free to readers of Muscle Media 2000, thus obtaining the addresses of potential MET-Rx buyers and toward which a large amount of advertising may be targeted.
[15] Phillips and Connelly had an agreement that distribution of MET-Rx would be controlled, and that they would not sell it to retail outlets in order to keep supply low during the period of high demand created by the advertisements in Muscle Media 2000.
Athletes like José Canseco would contact Phillips for advice on steroids,[17] and he also consulted with celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld, John Elway, Sylvester Stallone and Demi Moore.
[18][19] In 1999, Phillips sold his majority interest in EAS (though he remained on the Board of Directors for a number of years afterward) to North Castle Partners for $160 million.
MM2K changed from targeting the hardcore bodybuilder to the more mainstream exercise participant, and the July 1997 issue saw the magazine redubbed simply as Muscle Media.
[21] While Muscle Media 2000 had a distribution of 500,000 copies per issue at its peak,[22] the change in direction alienated many traditional readers, and sales numbers reportedly declined sharply afterwards.
In the book Phillips offers his plan "to help inspire and guide even more people to improve their health and lift their quality of life to new heights."
[32] Over the past 20 years Bill Phillips has granted over 600 wishes to kids facing life-threatening medical conditions through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
On June 24, 2014, Bill Phillips was inducted into the Fitness Hall of Fame along with Jack LaLanne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jillian Michaels.