Bill Phillips

William Nathaniel Phillips (born September 23, 1964) is an American entrepreneur and author.

He wrote Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength with Mike D'Orso.

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.

Other books that Phillips has authored are Anabolic Reference Guide, The Natural Supplement Review, and ''Transformation: The Mindset You Need.

The Body You Want.

The Life You Deserve''.

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.

His father, William Phillips Sr., worked for the Coors Brewing Company while taking law classes at night.

He reached the level of corporate analyst at Coors, then quit to open his own law practice.

BP later worked for Phillips at EAS, along with other family members.

Phillips started bodybuilding in 1982, then moved to Southern California to train at Gold's Gym Venice beach (known as the Mecca of bodybuilding) in 1983, remaining until 1986, a period during which Phillips admits to steroid use, at different times cycling on Deca Durabolin, Andriol, Sustanon, and other drugs that helped him grow from 185 lbs.

to 215 lbs.

After not succeeding as a bodybuilder, the 21-year-old Phillips moved back to Colorado where he took classes at the University of Colorado at Denver, specifically the study of exercise physiology and sports nutrition.

He then began his publishing career.

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.

He lost 70 pounds.

When Phillips was admitted to the hospital he already had pneumonia.

″I did not get vaccinated because I made a mistake,″ Phillips said after recuperating in August 2021.

In 1985 Mile High Publishing began with a small newsletter teaching bodybuilders how to use anabolic steroids.

The newsletter was written and printed in his mother's garage.

Funded with $180 he had made from mowing lawns, its original name was The Anabolic Reference Update.

Bradshaw was convicted of dispensing human and animal steroids without prescriptions in 1986.

This eventually would lead to Bradshaw serving four years in a Louisiana prison, where he educated himself on marketing.

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.

In 1992, Phillips moved out of his mother's home and changed the publication's format and name to Muscle Media 2000 (usually referred to as "MM2K").

The magazine published frank discussion of the underground aspects of bodybuilding such as the use of and how to smuggle steroids, and columns by writers such as The Steroid Guru Dan Duchaine, Editor-in-Chief TC Luoma, Charles Poliquin, Mike Mooney, and Michael Dullnig M.D. aka "Dr. X."

Muscle Media 2000 debuted in March 1992 and featured bodybuilder Lee Labrada on the cover.

In MM2K Phillips highly endorsed MET-Rx (a meal replacement supplement), and this relationship with readers helped it become the highest selling bodybuilding supplement ever at that time.

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.

This partnership also included bodybuilders Lee Labrada and Jeff Everson.

It was around this time that Phillips began working with James Bradshaw (later of SoCal Supplements).

According to former Muscle Media 2000 editor-in-chief TC Luoma, it was Bradshaw who convinced Phillips to market MET-Rx heavily in the Natural Supplement Review, Phillips' supposedly unbiased review of numerous bodybuilding supplements.

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.

Sales of MET-Rx rose exponentially.

Bradshaw and Phillips had stumbled upon a very successful method of marketing to bodybuilders, and they, and original investors Everson and Connelly, got very wealthy.

Their partnership was short-lived however.

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. Connelly however, had other ideas and began selling it to mainstream distributors and department stores.

Phillips believed this move lessened its appeal to bodybuilders, and destroyed the "mystique" of the product.

″I thought since I had COVID in January 2020, I was immune to it."