Founder, President – William Lee
To truly understand the cause, you have to know the man.
Mr. Lee has trained his own body and mind for sports performance and health for over 25 years. He has trained others for nearly 20 years. However, HE HAS DONE MUCH MORE.
WI4EG Founder on the road helping truck drivers get fit with The Great Day Show project.
Mr. Lee loved to play sports and played various sports his entire life. He started supplementary training beyond what his coaches required when he was eight years old and weight training when he was about twelve. As he got older he usually held a job and/or attended school while training intensely and participating in sports. This hectic schedule undoubtedly would greatly influence the founding of the integrated exercise lifestyle that WIE4G promotes.
Vast work experience leads to REAL understanding of the plight of the modern worker.
Throughout high school and by the time he graduated college Billy had worked many jobs. He worked as a cashier, a cook, an amusement park ride operator, a landscaper, a janitor, a bottom coat boat painter, a tutor, a construction worker, a bartender, a business manager, a card counter, and more. He says he always managed to get his workouts in even when he carried on some of these jobs simultaneously. When discussing his many jobs, Billy says, “I have felt the body respond to an assortment of jobs. I have shoveled until I can barely stand up straight from low and middle back fatigue and strain. I have tied reinforcing bar until my hands would twitch at night and go numb. I have scrubbed floors with heavy equipment until I have past out on them. I have sat at a desk until my back has grown tight and my hamstrings have felt like you could play them like a harp, so bored I could scream. Actually, I did scream.”
Business experience in the most competitive industry (trading) leads to an understanding of the bottom line for businesses.
Out of college, he moved to Chicago to start his career as a trader of financial futures and options. He worked second jobs as a store clerk, bartender, and personal trainer until he started to make enough money as a trader. He continued to stay fit any way he could, sometimes jogging to and from each job, sometimes doing push-ups in front of his desk at his trading job. When he started to trade both the European markets and the U.S. markets, he bought a used stationary bike to ride during his long days and nights at the trading desk. Considering this time of his life, Billy says, “I knew I had to stay fit to handle all the stress of trading and to think as clearly as possible.”
The Wellness Institute for Economic Growth is born through feelings of patriotism, real understanding, great business acumen, and an amazing work ethic.
When it came time to take a break from the pressure-cooker trading industry, Billy began working as a trainer full-time. Having such wide and various work experience he could relate to clients of all backgrounds. Simultaneously, making it his focus to often train or work with elite athletes and having trained as one his whole life, he soon started to realize that the general format for training an athlete could not and should not be applied to training the average person. “I was around when the health and fitness industry, as we know it today, started to gain real traction. There was a time when weightlifters and fitness models, promising you unrealistic results with unnatural and altered images of themselves on magazine covers, were not waiting to ambush you as you checked out at the grocery store. Somehow, this has become what we must see in our society.”
From 2008-2010, with the television, radio, and other media in the background reminding him of our nation’s dire need to reduce healthcare costs, the WIE4G concepts were spawned in Billy’s mind. “All the wrong people are promising each other they have a solution to get each other fit. There is something innately wrong with this mindset – that someone else can do for the individual what only he/she can do for his/her self. No one else can make America strong and healthy again. Not the president. Not Congress. Not some out of touch personal trainer. Each person can work individually to make their body strong and consequently the collective America will become healthy and strong.”