How MusclePharm Went From Swole to Twig

For years, Brad Pyatt’s supple ment company bulked up on celebrity endorsements and penny stock trades. Then the SEC started kicking sand in its face 

- Ira Boudway and Zeke Faux

Brad Pyatt was golfing at the Phoenician, a resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., when he decided to go after Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was the spring of 2013. Pyatt had picked the Phoenician— set against the southeastern slope of Camelback Mountain, a jagged pile of granite and sandstone sprinkled with saguaro cactus—to host an executive retreat for MusclePharm, the sports- nutrition company he’d founded five years earlier. Palm trees frame the greens of the golf course where Pyatt was playing alongside Cory Gregory, MusclePharm’s co-founder, and Jeremy DeLuca, its chief marketing executive. Between swings, they tossed out the names of athletes whose endorsements they might want. When Schwarzenegger came up, DeLuca recalls, they agreed he’d be “sick”—the “best athlete you could ever have.”

About a month later, the trio flew to California to pitch Schwarzenegger at his office in Santa Monica. Meeting the bodybuilder turned-movie-star-turned governor-turned-wise-elder-of-musclemen was a pinch-yourself moment for all three. Pyatt is a former NFL kick returner and wide receiver; Gregory, a gym owner and professional bodybuilder; DeLuca, a co-founder of the online supplements marketplace Bodybuilding.com. “I get the goose bumps talking about it,” Pyatt says. He carried a box he describes as “tricked out, just Arnold logos all over,” filled with empty bottles covered in more Arnold branding—mock-ups to show Schwarzenegger how his line of supplements would look on a shelf.

Ten minutes into Pyatt’s spiel, Schwarzenegger stopped him, turned to Gregory, and, in his famous Austrian rumble, demanded, “Stand up. Let me see your arms.” He asked Gregory to pretend he was curling barbells. As Schwarzenegger launched into a critique of Gregory’s physique, Pyatt knew he had a deal. (A spokesman for Schwarzenegger declined to comment.)