Thanks for 2011 & Here’s to 2012!

Give the fans what they want Jesse Beiber!

So yeah, it’s taken me 4 months to update you, my legions of fans, on my crazy triathlife.  What a rotten superstar.  Jesse Bieber is ashamed of himself.  So I’m going to start this first day of 2012 with one and only one resolution – to write this blog.

Thank You for an Awesome 2011

I know you’re devastated that you haven’t heard any updates since World Champs in September.  Well, to make it up you, I will start the New Year with a big fat THANK YOU for your support in 2011.  In all seriousness, the last year, with it’s incredible ups, and super bummer downs had it all.  It drastically exceeded my expectations.  I started 2011 by interviewing myself on this blog, and now, because of you, I’ve got my own column in Triathlete Magazine (see below).  From early season drop outs to career changing wins, it was a wild ride that would not have been possible without your support.  Thank you all so much.

Now on to 2012 – Updates

While may you think I’ve just been chilling, hanging with Lebron, Leo and Marky Mark, I’ve actually been working my ass off to make 2012 even better for me (and hopefully you)!  Here are the most relevant couple of announcements from the last couple of months:

It was graphs like this one that gave Triathlete Magazine a sense of my prizeworthy authorship.

Triathlete Magazine Column – I’m honored to have monthly Triathlete Magazine column/page/whatever you call it.  This is due entirely to your support reading and responding to this crazy little blog.  THANK YOU.  I get a page to basically do whatever I want, Jesse style.  My first article is already written, and I think it doesn’t suck.  So please, go out and buy the March issue of Triathlete Magazine (comes out in February) and write, email, call the editors about how hilarious/intelligent/ridiculously good-looking I am.

2012 Sponsorships – Oh my god.  Getting sponsors is a pain in the ass.  A crazy process that I’ve spent a ton of time on the last couple of months and will write about fully later.  It’s still too early to “officially” announce anything yet – my ESPN “Decision” is booking advertisers. But I am very excited to say that I will have some amazing partners that I’m super stoked to work with next year.  So be on the lookout for some announcements in the next couple of weeks, can’t wait!

Steve Carell’s The Decision is much funnier than Lebron’s.

The Picky Bar Holiday Card – hard at work.

Picky Bars is blowing up – So the real reason I haven’t blogged is because when the season finished I went straight into full-time Picky Bars CEO mode, and holy cow I’m glad I did.  Exposure from Lauren’s Runner’s World Cover and NY Times article, literally QUADRUPLED our monthly sales from August to November, basically taking us from a project to a legitimate company.  While that sounds awesome, it was a LOT of work fighting fires and dealing with growing pains.  I hired six part-time production staff and brought Jenn on as a full-time operations manager.  We launched the Picky Club, our monthly automatic delivery club, which more than doubled our expected enrollment.  I’m in the process of hiring two more full-time marketing/operations people and evaluating contract/increased production and sales/distribution options.  If anyone has some experience, resources, advice, etc. that you’d like to pass my way, feel free to email me – jesse@pickybars.com.

The hairy chest club - David Lee and I post benchmark swim at Tower 26.

Training is going well – And finally, that whole training piece of the triathlife – yes I’ve been doing that too, and it’s cruising right along.  The focus this winter again has been swimming, and I feel like I’m months ahead of where I was last year.  Matt had me swim 52,500 yards in one week (blog about that coming soon).  I’ve done some gnarly swims with ridiculously fast teenagers, and just did an awesome benchmark swim set with Gerry at Tower 26.   I’m really excited to see how it translates come race time.

In case you didn’t recognize David.

Help Me Help You – What do you want from this blog?

I want to make a New Year’s resolution to update this blog once a week, but I’m scared.  In order to do so, it would help me immensely if you could answer the questions below to let me know what you like, don’t like, etc!   To incentivize you, I’ll send a free Picky Bar Varsity Pack to 3 randomly drawn participants.  Booyah to that!

Here’s to 2012 peeps!  More to come soon, and as always, thanks for reading!