Bodybuilding.com Employees Of The Year!
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007Below is a little rough draft write-up that I put together for my quick speech at our recent Bodybuilding.com Boise Fitness Expo. (View info, pics, video, and more from the event!)
First of all, thanks to everybody for coming! Vendors, Pros, Athletes, Models… and of course everybody else that showed up. The vendors and athletes that come from out of town are always surprised that so many of us Idahoan’s took time off from potato farming to come to this event.
2006 was a great year for Bodybuilding.com. Another record year in terms of revenue, profit, visitors, and more. 2007 is starting off great. Thanks to our loyal customers!
I would like to talk for just a minute about a few things that weren’t so great. A month ago my two year old niece, Jayden DeLuca, passed away from a heart defect that she was born with. This was my brother Jeremy and Karalie’s beautiful daughter. I appreciate all the support from friends and family that we have received. So far we have raised over $35,000 for the American Heart Association to help with their research in this area. Jeremy and Karalie set a goal to raise $100,000. You can donate and view her page here.
I’d like to announce that Bodybuilding.com is donating $65,000 to the American Heart Association in her name. This will bring the total raised to over $100,000, meeting their goal.
Recently I also received the news that one of my best friends and high school lifting partner was diagnosed with inoperable, stage 4 (the worst stage) brain cancer, and they expect him to only live another 12 - 18 months. He’s 29 years old. His name is Rendell Wilkinson and he graduated with me from Capital High School in Boise.
These recent events have made me think a lot about my life and my family. I see these things happen and I couldn’t help but feel worthless since I’m not doing anything to help prevent these types of tragedies from happening in the future by figuring out how to cure diseases. What could I do? How could I just go on with my normal life, watching American Idol (go Sanjaya!), playing sports, and not worrying about it.
I realized something recently though. Although Bodybuilding.com is mainly focused on helping people look better, whether it is from bigger biceps on the guys or helping girls look better in their bikini (which the guys appreciate), the effects of a good diet low in fat, weightlifting and cardio exercise, and the right supplements can help actually prevent a lot of diseases in our customer’s future. These things help anything from cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, depression, stroke, and much more… Preventing somebody from getting cancer or having a heart attack is much better than figuring out how to cure it once they have the problem.
At Bodybuilding.com, our employees work hard everyday to help people get the information they need to reach their goals and stay motivated enough to stick with it over the long term. We’ll never know how many of our customers would have had health problems in their future if it wasn’t partly for the work our employees are doing each day.
That’s our company mission, which is by far more important that how fast we grow or what our bottom line looks like. I think each employee deserves our thanks for their hard work in these areas.
Just remember that there is not a lot that is more important than your health. When was the last time you got a physical checkup? Seems like most of the people I ask say it was back in high school, and they only remember they had to drop their shorts, turn their head and cough. (And why can’t hot nurses do this part instead of some old guy?)
It’s always much better to find out early if something is not right in your body. Don’t just wait until it is too late. Get annual checkups and make sure your entire family does to. I know you are probably just thinking… “Yeah, I need to get a checkup one of these days”. Don’t just think about it… Do it. Tomorrow morning, call your doctor, or find a general health or family practice in your yellow pages and schedule one. It will take you 10 minutes, and the checkup will take you 20 - 30 minutes. Do it. Encourage your family to do it. You are the CEO of your own health and nobody will take care of it for you. Don’t wish you had listened to me later.
So! On a better note, it’s time for me to give out the employee of the year award. This year it was tough to pick the winner… so tough in fact that we decided to pick two this year. We have so many great employees, and they are the reason for our success over the last eight years. Every week when we get together to have meetings, I look around the table and I can’t help think about what a great team we have. Everybody is not only smart, creative and hardworking, but dedicated to being the best that they can for our customers. That’s truly hard to find. I feel lucky to be able to work with them each day. I consider each employee to be a friend and a part of my family.
This year, the employees of the year are Joe Guilliams and Josh Brouse!
Joe Guilliams is the manager of the store side of our site, so that’s kind of important. He is also our FDA Compliance Officer, so he’s in charge of whether we are compliant with the many rules and regulations in our industry, and if he messes up, we could be shut down. He has taken our compliance programs to new levels, and always cares so much about doing things the right way. He has the hard job, having to work with big-wig Washington DC lawyers, which nobody ever likes to do.
Josh Brouse is our General Operations Manager. He started in the receiving department in our Idaho warehouse, and now runs both our Idaho and Florida warehouses, overseeing this vitally important area of the business, and nearly 70 employees. He is constantly working on figuring out ways to get shipments to our loyal customers in record time, while being productive and without errors. It’s tough to manage one team, but he is managing two teams, and one of the teams is over 2000 miles away. He cares about reaching our goals, since he knows how important it is to give the absolute best service to our customers.
Until next time! Schedule that physical!
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