Sponsored Content Provided by Better Business Bureau
At Better Business Bureau Serving the Pacific Southwest (BBB), the definition of a better business has evolved. BBB has been recognizing businesses for doing the right thing and operating ethically for over a century, and now we’re elevating those using their platform to create positive change in their communities with BBB4Good.
BBB4Good builds upon BBB Accreditation, empowering people to choose trustworthy companies positively impacting our community through the power of business. This is especially important in the current marketplace as a changing consumer base seeks to do business with a company aligned with their values. As a business owner, changes can not only keep existing customers, but actually attract new ones. In fact, 71% of consumers would purchase from a purpose-driven company over the alternative when the cost and quality are equal. In the same survey by Porter Novelli’s, 86% of respondents said they would trust a company more if it was led by purpose.
4Ocean, a BBB Accredited and BBB4Good Verified Business, saw an opportunity to work backwards by starting with an environmental challenge and using a business model to help solve it.
“The motivation for 4Ocean was to see a problem and find a solution. Seeing the amount of plastic that’s in the ocean was a big trigger for us to realize how we can find a way to create a sustainable business model that could fund our cleanups,” shares Alexander Schulze, co-founder of 4Ocean.
There are countless ways a business can address sustainable development goals, including environmental, health, ending poverty, and inequity. Purpose-driven companies who offer employee volunteer hours, commit to environmental sustainability in their products, donate proceeds, tackle social issues or hire marginalized communities, may qualify to become a BBB4Good Verified Business.
By becoming aBBB4Good Verified Business, values and promotion go hand-in-hand. BBB’s trusted vetting process for accreditation, and now for BBB4Good, is achievable for any size business. The simple application provides the opportunity for small and Main St. businesses to highlight their impact. Verified businesses can display the BBB4Good Trustmark as a symbol of their commitment to operate under four standards as a vetted, purpose-driven business:
Higher Purpose
Purpose-driven businesses create accountability and transparency throughout the organization, showing the intent, strategy, and reasoning to support a higher social or environmental purpose.
Community Engagement
Purpose-driven businesses invest a portion of their time, talent, and treasures into community impact initiatives that align with their businesses’ purpose.
Authentic Marketing
Purpose-driven businesses focus on ethically and authentically communicating what they are doing to impact social and environmental issues, and genuinely encourage their customers to work together to solve these issues.
Impact Substantiation
Purpose-driven businesses invest their organization’s time, talent, and treasures to further their company’s purpose to support positive, community facing activities, and hold themselves accountable to carry out their commitments.
BBB recognizes the efforts of businesses using their platform to make the community a better place. Eligibility vetting for BBB4Good verification is free of charge. Qualifying businesses will be provided a license agreement to use the BBB4Good Trustmark. BBB’s 501(c)3 Foundation for Education and Entrepreneur Leadership accepts voluntary donations to support ethical education and help small and aspiring businesses gain confidence, grow the skills needed to be successful and make the community a better place.
By validating your social or environmental activities through BBB, you provide customers with the confidence you are committed to a higher purpose. Consumers turn to BBB for trustworthy businesses and now they can expand their search to findpurpose-driven businesses.
Visit us at BBB.org or 4747 Viewridge Ave, #200, San Diego.
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2026
The Best Gym in San Diego Isn’t Really a Gym Anymore
Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped "athletic" from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
There’s a version of San Diego that lives in two extremes. On one side, the 5 a.m. crowd: biohackers, marathoners, people who’ve already logged a cold plunge before your alarm goes off. On the other, the after-dark crowd, the ones chasing sunset happy hours and late dinners with friends. Everyone seems to be either optimizing or unwinding, and most of us feel like we’re failing at both.
Fit, San Diego’s reigning Best Gym for the third year running, has built its entire identity around erasing that divide.
Walk into one of Fit’s three San Diego locations on a Tuesday afternoon and the lines blur fast. Someone’s mid-set on the squat rack. Someone else has a laptop open at a café table a few feet away, half-working, half-people-watching. A group is trading plans for the weekend’s event by the recovery lounge. Nobody’s in a rush to leave.
“We’re not competing for the same people,” says Emily Waybright, Public Relations Manager at Fit, addressing the arrival of a national luxury gym chain in San Diego this year. “We don’t really feel like we’re in the gym category. It’s this unique thing.”
That unique thing has a name now. Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped “athletic” from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
It’s a small wording change with a bigger idea behind it. Fit was never built around escaping the workday. It was built around the people who genuinely like what they do, and who want workouts, work, and friendships to happen in the same place instead of three separate ones. Because sometimes red light therapy with a stranger turns into weekend plans.
Fit’s philosophy traces back to its founder, who started the brand nearly two decades ago after failing to find a gym he actually wanted to belong to. He looked instead to the old-school country club, where people came for a shared interest and stayed for the community. His version was made for a younger generation, minus the golf, plus the loud music.
Which makes it a little ironic that the very award putting Fit back in the spotlight this year is Best Gym.
What does the best traditional gym look like when the definition of a gym is becoming less traditional? It’s a fair question, and Fit’s answer is that the fitness industry itself is shifting. The 45-minutes-in, 45-minutes-out model is giving way to something closer to a genuine third space, the kind of role the office and the bar used to play before remote work and changing nightlife habits rearranged how people spend their time
For Fit, community isn’t a marketing add-on to fitness. It’s the through-line. Members aren’t just paying for a treadmill; they’re paying for an entire day of social wellness that’s built on performance, recovery, connection, and a plan for the next event on the calendar. That’s a much harder membership to walk away from.
Ambition and ease aren’t opposites here, they exist side by side, where passion and play share the same morning. On September 12, Fit is hosting Sol, a full day wellness festival at Fit Social. The morning focuses on wellness classes and vendors and then the evening is a full party with multiple DJ sets and an open bar. Think of it as a kick-off to locals’ summer in San Diego.
Ready to see what a social wellness club actually looks like? Visit fitclubs.com, or follow along at @thefitclubs on Instagram.
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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Your feet and ankles probably aren’t something you give much thought to—until something goes wrong. Orthopedic surgeons at Scripps Clinic are on the leading edge of foot and ankle reconstruction, treating patients with sports injuries, deformities, traumatic injuries and other conditions. That includes repairing torn Achilles tendons with a minimally invasive procedure that shrinks the incision site to less than a centimeter, and performing advanced ankle replacement on some patients with ankle arthritis. Read more about Scripps’ innovations in foot and ankle care here.
For more nutrition, wellness, and healthy living tips, sign up for the San Diego Health newsletter here.
Mai Vue was just 34 weeks pregnant when she delivered her baby. Her pregnancy had been complicated, and she’d had a recent second trimester pregnancy loss, which led to her receiving specialized care from Sean Daneshmand, MD, a Scripps Clinic perinatologist who oversees high-risk pregnancies. Dr. Daneshmand and his team took care of Mai during her pregnancy, through the birth of her healthy baby girl and beyond. Mai was part of a program Scripps launched to provide support to new moms in the weeks and months after delivery. The postpartum program, known as Scripps Health’s Fourth Trimester Continuum of Care, provides care for women with high-risk pregnancies to optimize their health after childbirth and reduce the risk of complications in future pregnancies. Click here to learn more.
For more nutrition, wellness, and healthy living tips, sign up for the San Diego Health newsletter here.
It’s estimated that one in five people in the U.S. will develop skin cancer at some point in their lives. When you factor in living in a sun-soaked city like San Diego and the outdoorsy lifestyle that comes with it, that figure can jump to as high as one in three, which makes early detection and intervention all the more important. Dermatologists at Bighorn Mohs and Dermatology Center are using innovative imaging methods and advanced surgical techniques to diagnose and treat skin cancer. For certain cancers in sensitive spots, like the face, dermatologists perform Mohs surgery, removing skin tissue layer by layer until reaching healthy, cancer-free tissue. They also use a process called immunohistochemistry to view tissue samples taken during Mohs surgery in far greater detail than previous methods. Read more about how Scripps is advancing skin cancer care here.
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When endurance athlete Isaac Sanchez learned he had cancer, he felt blindsided. He was healthy, surfed often and was training for an Ironman triathlon. But he had to put that on hold to undergo treatment. His physicians at Scripps Cancer Center developed a plan to treat the cancer in his tonsil and lymph nodes that included six-and-a-half weeks of near-daily radiation and weekly chemotherapy. He also worked with a Scripps Cancer Center dietitian to enhance his nutrition to promote strength and healing. Today, Isaac’s back to doing what he loves. Read more of his story here.
For more nutrition, wellness, and healthy living tips, sign up for the San Diego Health newsletter here.
