What If You Were Given 7 Years To Live? Surviving The Storms - Bill Derrick

The moment Bill Derrick says the only sure thing about multiple myeloma is that it eventually comes back, the conversation stops being theoretical. Bill is the president of Derrick Companies and the author of “Restored by the Storm,” and he joins us to tell the full arc: chasing financial independence, stepping into a family construction business, then getting hit by two life-altering storms that forced a total reset on what “control” really means. 

We dig into family business leadership the way it actually plays out, including the tension between earning your own identity and honoring the legacy you inherited. Bill shares why he believes the best preparation is leaving home first: work somewhere else for three to five years, learn how to be an employee, and bring back real operating experience. He also explains how integrity becomes a business survival tool when you are negotiating with lenders and trying to keep a company alive through the Great Recession, collapsing real estate, and land values that fall off a cliff. 

Then the story turns personal. After years of grinding through the downturn, Bill is diagnosed with multiple myeloma and ultimately goes through chemo and a stem cell transplant at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. What comes out the other side is a simple framework for resilience and mental toughness: focus on what you can control, especially your attitude and your effort, and let the rest shape you into someone stronger. 

If you care about entrepreneurship, family business succession, crisis management, resilience, faith under pressure, and leadership that holds up when life turns, this conversation will stay with you. Subscribe, share this with someone walking through a storm, and leave a review with the takeaway you needed most.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome back to one on one with Mr. Yu. Of course, I am your host, Mr. Yu. Join us today is the author of the book Restored by the Storm, navigating through life's unexpected challenges. Speaker and president of Derek Companies, my guy, Bill Derrick, is in the house with us today. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I am great. It's uh it's a great day as usual.

From Farm Kid To Leader

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Absolutely. We got yellow snow out here, so it's not great in some respects, but it's great every other way, man. But yeah, great to have you in here. If you guys are watching and listening for the very first time, firstly, thanks for making us part of your week. Uh, of course, we are live on YouTube and Facebook as we speak. All the platforms, including our listening platforms, will have this episode up within the next 90 minutes or so after we close today. But thanks again for watching, listening to 101, Mr. You. And of course, if you'd like to follow from our previous shows, the link is in the show notes. You can grab that or grab it from any of our social media platforms and catch what we do here on one-on-one. So, Bill, good to have you here, man. I'm gonna jump in real quick and kind of get a quick assessment of who you are, man, where you come from, and how you believe you got to the place from being a child to the success as you are right now. What's the key factor that happened in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, um, I've always uh I'm the oldest of uh five children. So I always feel kind of kind of we grew up on a most of my life grew up on a on a farm outside of uh in Western Wisconsin, a small town in western Wisconsin. And as the oldest, I always felt like that made me the most independent. And I think I've I've bore that out through my life, is uh conformity is not necessarily what I'm looking for in life. Um, but uh I went to uh school at the University of Minnesota to become a civil engineer. And shortly thereafter I got a master's degree in business from there, and uh, you know, I wanted to uh lead a large a large company and was my goal. And I worked for a couple of construction companies for 10, 11 years, and then my father asked me if I'd come and join the family business, which was a construction company in western Wisconsin. And believe it or not, that was kind of a tough decision. Uh I wasn't sure if I wanted to be part of the family business. Um, I was doing okay on my own, and I didn't want my success necessarily connected to being part of the family. That sounds really selfish, but that's just the way I thought.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe you could flesh it out a little bit more. I don't think it's as bad as it sounds. I guess you gotta understand who the family is for one thing. What did you see in the family? What did you notice that made you say, you know what? I want to be independent because you said that from the outset. You're an independent person. Something about the family, something about the environment that said, you know what, I need to kind of make my own mark and not kind of uh be a uh carbon copy of what I saw, it or just something like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, and I it and I think that was in the discussions we had. I the firm basically was my father as the founder, but he was looking to retire at an earlier age, and uh, so he was looking at secession planning, and in his mind, the secession planning was his son's, and um which is fine. And uh so it was myself and two younger brothers, and then another gentleman that we knew very, very well, um, that was working with my father at the time. And in the end, I said, Look, uh our family business has made a mark on primarily being a residential contractor. Okay, I am not a residential contractor. Um, I've worked on high-rise office buildings, hotels, I've built uh distribution centers, medical facilities, things like that. And that's what I want the opportunity to do. And so, quite frankly, that was probably part of my fear will I be able to pivot the company, so to speak, to at least head in that direction, at least for me. And that's that's kind of where I was coming from. And and the agreement was yes, we want you to do that. But of course, the first day I came to work there, and I came to work, probably my attitude was I was better off being an owner of my own company than to work for someone else for the rest of my life, and that gets back to that independence. I want independence so, but anyway, my first day at work, my dad puts a house plan in front of me in my desk, my new desk there, and I said, What's this? And he says, A house plan. And I said, Well, I see that. And I said, What do you want me to do? And he said, figure it. And that's what he used to always say for putting an estimate together was just figure it. And uh, so I reminded him why I was there, and he said, Yeah, I know. He said, Do you have any commercial work going on right now? It's my first day, Mr. And he goes, Do you have any commercial work going on right now? And I said, Well, no. And he said, Well, then you got time to do this. So, right out of the get-go, the firstborn son and his father were already testing each other's limits. So, but you know what? In the end of the day, uh, there were struggles, there's ups and downs. I learned what a that a family business was different than a regular business as time went on. There were times where I was upset with my partners who my family, they were upset with me over things, but at the end of the day, we all, you know, if we got together on the weekend as family or whatever, we always got to, we always got along. And and and so that's kind of where you know where I kind of came from. And and um, you know, later on we got into a lot of land development, which was important to our company, but it also led to a uh situation where we almost had a bad downfall because of that, too.

Chasing Independence And Financial Freedom

SPEAKER_00 7:14

So I got a couple of questions that just kind of uh sparked from what you just shared, Bill. Thank you for sharing that by the way. I know that wasn't uh an easy thing to walk through at the time, but just I got a couple of questions. Uh I'll ask you the first one first. Uh, when you talked about your independence, what do you think was the factor that kind of sparked? Because I really believe that there was something that was the reason why you said, you know what? I mean, because so many so many people, especially in in our country, the the mindset, and it's a pretty large mindset, you know, do what's stable, do what's uh best long-term, make solid long-term investments, get a good job, you know what I'm saying, have benefits, that kind of thing. You went into it, seemed like you went into entrepreneurship quite quickly. I mean, you had it uh uh uh exhibited around you and your family, but you jumped into it really quickly. Can you detect for us what you think was Spark kind of caused that uh independent mindset from you that made you not go into the normal water and holes?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Um whether it was books I read or at the time, cassette tapes I listened to, or my wife and I educated ourselves a lot with those leadership tapes, sales tapes, the old Tom Hopkins tapes, and and and all that. But I think very quickly, I it was a benefit that I and my wife also too, uh, we learned that if we want what 98% of everybody else has, just do what everybody else does. And we didn't want that. And at the time our our motivation uh was probably more money driven than anything else. Um, you know, as we grow up and and mature and and uh age, so to speak, we we learned there's more important things in life, but you know, we wanted financial independence.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

And and I think that that drove a lot of it, Mista. I really do. And I don't say that, I'm not ashamed of saying that. Um, but I remember I remember telling my dad once, and I'm not sure if I was working for him or not at the time, but I said something about that Jeannie and I had a goal of being financially independent by the time we were 50 years old. And my dad, I'm not sure how he put it, he says, well, that just doesn't happen anymore. And okay, no, my dad, the motivator. But but um I've come to peace with a lot of things about that, and and really, if anything, my dad helped me there by motivating me, saying, Okay, just watch me. And I've had that attitude several times in life. If you want to, if you want to motivate me to do something, tell me I can't get it done.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

You can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yep. So I've always had that internal engine, and um, and I think it had a lot to do with the fact that um I, you know, my my wife of you know 45 years, um her and I have been a good match, and we just kind of you know, we're we know what we want and we go for it.

When Family And Business Collide

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Congratulations, by the way. I want to ask you about it. I'm I'll come back to that question in a bit. I want to ask you about the family business. I want you to kind of uh kind of uh theoretically remove yourself from the equation, just you can answer this question for me because I know that we talk about family business, it's families, so there's some personal lines that get drawn there. Overall, Bill Derrick being out of the Derek family business, just for a moment. How do you feel about people going into the family business? Do you see it overall as a good idea? Do you see it as something that you need to weigh certain things, and what things would you be weighing? How do you feel about that overall?

SPEAKER_01 11:31

I have very strong feelings about that, Mr. I'm glad you asked. Um I've talked to other business people who have family business entrepreneurs and all that. It's a great discussion. Um, quite frankly, uh, I don't think the kids should go right into the family business, period. I think they should get out on their own for three to five years, um, go work somewhere else, even if it's a different industry than what your family business is in. You need to learn what business is all about. You need to observe, you need to learn what it's like to be an employee, um, to have to take orders sometimes from a boss that sometimes you don't really appreciate, you know? Uh all those things. And I think that that is very important. Now I say that in that I of my partners, I'm the only one that had outside work experience. I had worked for 11 years for three other companies. Um, and I had that outside experience, and I brought uh uh a wealth of experience, not to mention my business education and and that, um, to the company. And I saw that as a lot of value. I'm not sure if my brothers, partners, if they totally appreciated that, but that's where I was coming from. Um in our firm, most of the what is now the third generation, most of the third generation did not necessarily get that outside work experience, which is kind of a uh heartburn to me sometimes, but that's the way it is. And and sometimes even though you believe that that's the right thing to do, you know, when you're in a family business, you gotta also pick your battles. And so now I just had a son come to our business, I don't know what it is now, three and a half, four years ago. Um mechanical engineer. Uh he's our oldest son, oldest child, mechanical engineer. He too got an MBA from the University of Minnesota.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Um another golden gopher.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Another golden gopher. He loves he's also he also went to Iowa State, so he's cheering for the Cyclones, too. So um, so he waited. Uh he was in manufacturing. He was uh director of ops for a manufacturing firm that was local to our area, and one day he approached me and said, Dad, I'd like to come to work for your business. I'd like to come to work for you. And my response immediately was, no, you don't. And it was probably we were probably golfing nine holes or whatever after work. And and I said, I want you to think about what you're asking, Michael, because family businesses are different, it will be different than where you're at right now. And this went on for a while, and finally he said, I'm serious. And so we sat down. My brother Ron and I, who now run the business, excuse me, he and I sat down with him and and um had lunch and talked about it. And yeah, I said, You will go to you, you know, you can come to work here, but you're gonna work for my brother Ron. You're not gonna have me as your boss because I think it's important to, you know, that way. So um, but yes, long long answer, but yes, I think that you shouldn't just go from school to um to a family business. I think getting outside work experience is very valuable.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

I love it, I love it. And you you know that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

And I you know what, I did that and I said I was the only one. So I had a consultant one time, you know, uh part consultant and part psychiatrist maybe at the time, but uh he he said, Bill, let me help you out here. And he went to the whiteboard and drew four or three squares. There's four of us partners, drew three squares on the board and then a circle. And he said, Which one are you? And I said, I'm the circle, and he said, right. And they he used that as an example, which helped me a lot. He said, So why are you trying to make the your other partners a circle? Deal with the fact that you're a circle, they're squares, and you need to deal with that and work with that because you aren't going to change them, and it's obvious they aren't gonna change you. And that was a good lesson.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

By circle, you mean you were more uh well-rounded in other things.

Marriage That Holds Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 16:45

No, no, there was nothing to that, it was just he could have drawn a triangle and uh a hexagon, you know. Okay, okay, but it was different. You're I'm different in in the way I think, the way I do uh things, just that's that's fair.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

I'm coming back to the genie question now. So, first of all, congratulations you've been married to Jeannie for over 45 years, which is quite an accomplishment. So, congratulations to you guys. That's wonderful. You got four children and seven grandchildren last time I heard. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, we're we're yeah, we're we're stuck on seven for the time being.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yeah, you got you got me, you got me, you got me beat by one in that in that respect. Well, just got trying to catch up. Well that's that's not my assignment, but we got uh we have to have three great grandchildren now that we uh uh are learning about. So it's like, oh wow. So this is a lot. But I want to ask you a quick question, so just for our viewers and listeners who you know, and I also we get into a lot of different topics. I guess this is the relationship portion of the show, I guess. Talk to me about how you feel like you were able, you and Jim were able to accomplish that and make that work. Some people were never saying, but some people settle and can get that far. But I don't feel like I don't get the sense from how you talk about her, and that's what you did. What do you think was uh one key if you have one that made you guys have the kind of longevity you guys have over 45 years of an incredible accomplishment? What do you think that key is?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Uh her. Um it would be Genie, I think. Um we're both uh I said that in case she watches this. So no, I'm just kidding. Um we're both what I would say type A personalities, okay, I knew that, which is very tough. She was very successful in business, she was in computer sales back when a computer filled a whole room type of thing. And she worked for some big companies, yep, and she was very successful, and uh and she after our at about the time our third was going to be born, she uh left her job, and after the birth and all that, she decided to stay home and be a full-time mom. And she had a little business on the side that she did very well with, a little home business that she was very good at. And uh, but for the most part, she took responsibility to make sure our children were raised uh with a with a full-time mom, which was really important. She gave up quite a career to do that. Now, I talk about it in my book. There was a time during the Great Recession when things were dire. I'm putting in all sorts of hours. I mean, it's you know, you you do what you have to do, you know. And she grabbed me at the house one day, the kids were in the other room, and she grabbed me and she said, Bill, uh we need more time with you. You're spending too much time at the office, you're spending too much, you know, all that. Um and I basically said, Jeannie, I'm doing this for you and the kids. I'm trying to make sure we're successful enough so we can have the life we want and things like that. And she looked at me and she said, Evidently, we've have a misunderstanding. I didn't marry you for your money. And that that was a pretty powerful moment, Nista. And I don't know if Jeannie understood that at the time. I don't know if I understood that at the time, but it did have an impact on me. In fact, there, you know, I wrote about it in my book. And sometimes sometimes we have to. I think that we're a couple that tries as best we can to understand what each other wants in life, whether it's on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly, whatever. We try to understand what each other want. We have individual needs, but um we try to live life as a unit. And many times, you know, I'll tell her that she'll be off doing her own thing someday, and I'll be off doing mine. And there's kind of this feeling of, you know, worrying about each other, hoping that you know we're not together. So we enjoy being together. Um you know, so that's I think that's part of the success. I mean, we could we could be like a lot of others, live separate lives and meet up at night, but uh we don't do that.

Three Storms That Define A Life

SPEAKER_00 21:57

So that's wonderful, man. Congratulations again, man. It's an incredible story, man. Thank you, Mr. Uh before we uh end the show. I have to go into this area. I think it's one of the most astounding parts of your story. So there are three things that I wanted to talk about. That's how we're going to end the show for today. And I'm going to have you take a few minutes at the end and just speak to the people, whatever's on your heart, whatever you want to share. But the three areas I want to talk about, I want to get into how you led your business through the recession, which I think is powerful. A lot of people can't really say that. They say they ended their company during the recession. Not many have led it through it and came out on the other end of it. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about one of the big storms that probably the biggest storm of your life that you encountered during that time. Uh I think we know what we're talking about here. I hope I'm not losing you. It's your story. And the last thing I want you to kind of get into the book, why you wrote it and who you were writing it for. So I'll lead you on all three, but for the first thing, how do you just speak to me about you know what happened when you entered into a recession as a business owner, and how did you come through it? Share that briefly for us.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Real quickly, it was it was certainly very much unexpected. We had a successful business that seemed like in western Wisconsin where we're at, the recessions never touched us. Uh, so we kind of went into it with maybe a little overconfidence about our business. Okay, we probably went into it thinking that we couldn't be touched. Um, now I say we, you know, I've got three other partners at the time, plus my dad's still around, he's still part owner. And uh so when I say we, I'm probably talking more about how I felt. I can't speak for my partners, but you know, the way I look at it, they can write their own book if they want to talk about what they did, you know. But um went into this, and it's like, okay, um this is only gonna be a 10% downturn for six months. That's what the experts said. Well, the experts were wrong. I mean, uh real estate, real estate just fell off the cliff, and um so we weren't you know we weren't selling houses, uh we were doing enough commercial industrial work to make a few bucks, but not enough to make up for our losses in other places, and we had all this land that we were gonna develop in the future. And and so, but a lot of that land, at least part of it, was financed by banks. And at the time it was financed on a most of it was interest-only loans. So we just pay the interest on a monthly or quarterly basis, and when we start to sell it, then we can start paying back the principal. Yeah, well, that works, provided that the uh value of the land doesn't go down. Well, most of that land went down 75% in value. We weren't making enough money to make the interest payments, things were bad. So um I think the best way to put it is that we didn't know what we didn't know, and um we had to start negotiating with the banks. Uh that was the thing to do back then. And uh but we had we had a basis with our lenders of integrity, so they knew when we said, we want to work something out, we want to pay you back. They knew that we were serious, and I think in the end, we just had to convince them that we were going to be worth more to them alive than dead, and uh you know, help keep us alive. Um we met as a group, I met separately. It was kind of my responsibility to kind of lead us through that situation with the financing while the rest of my partners tried to keep the operations running and making as much money as we could, if at all possible. Um and it was kind of like during that time, I'm gonna throw this in. I realized during that time why I had come to the family business. And um, you know, um in the book of Esther, in the uh in the Old Testament, Esther's queen of the queen of uh Persia, whatever at the time, and her uncle says to her that you have to help save our people, the Jewish nation. And she was afraid to. And he said, Did you ever think that maybe you were where you're at for such a time as this? And I really felt that at the time, and so I don't take sole credit for us getting through. I mean, we were we were a team, we worked hard. I did what I could, and um um, we did it with a no-quit attitude, and that was really important every day, and I learned that lesson during that time, and this was five years missed of doing this. So, yeah, did that I can get in more detail, but does that kind of give you an idea of it?

Multiple Myeloma And A New Reality

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Let's talk about let's talk about the that huge storm that you walked through, man. Somebody, there's many people who have walked through storms like that, but again, like similar to the business, but in a more personal way because it's health related, you know, they don't always come out on the other side of that. They they it it it changes them forever, and sometimes they don't make it. Yeah, talk to us about the storm and and how you got through this.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

So after uh you know, after five long years, I'll say about 2012, uh, we were finally we finally realized that our business, that the light at the end of the tunnel was actually the end of the tunnel and not another train coming. Uh, we realized that you know, we had to start to switch our attitude from survival mode to thriving mode again, and that was tough. Um, but things are looking up, and all of a sudden I start feeling all sorts of aches and pains in my body. Uh things just weren't right. And uh, you know, so I started having all sorts of tests commencing in fall of 2012, and you know, it was just all sorts of things, and and then uh this went on and kind of dropped it for a while, and then in the fall of 2013, I had a another ailment, uh a GI track ailment, and uh I went to the gastronologist, and he said, Um, I think I know what it is, it's not a problem. We can get it taken care of, um, but I need to do additional blood tests. And the next day he called me up and he said, You're gonna need to see a hematologist. Uh, your protein levels in your blood are way high. So I went to hematologist, did a bunch of other tests, and um, basically the week of Thanksgiving in 2013, I was diagnosed with a non-curable blood cancer called multiple myeloma. Average life expectancy at that time was seven years from diagnosis. It's killed many people. Um, you know, didn't matter how rich you are or how powerful you are. Sam Walton, that's what he died of, was multiple myeloma in 1997. Back then they didn't have the treatments they have now. Um, but now I'm facing I'm facing death in the face at this point. And um we switched, uh, thanks to my wife, we switched to going to Mail Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 2014. They found a tumor in my death in my disc between my shoulder blades, had eaten away my T4 disc. I was two inches shorter than I used to be because of it. Um, yeah, I was kind of a mess at the time, and uh went into chemo in uh late 2015. Uh my body did not react well to it. The cancer, it took care of the cancer pretty well, but it was toxic to my body. And in two the summer of 2016, I had a stem cell transplant, which is basically where they put uh chemo into you and uh it kills every every cell in your blood system. Uh and then a couple days later they put their your stem cells back into uh your blood system where they can regrow into the cells they need to be, that type of thing. It's a medical miracle, is really what it is. And um, so I have been I'm a survivor of uh uh MISTA, I'm a walking-talking miracle, and I learned during this time, you know. I realize tomorrow uh I go take get blood tests and go to Mayo Clinic every three months. Um and I realize the only sure thing about multiple myeloma is that eventually it does come back, even if you're in remission. Um but right now I've surpassed the life expectancy. Um, I've surpassed the what they call the duration of a stem cell transplant. I've surpassed that. Um I've uh and I've learned through this, and this is a great point, is I've learned through this that I'm not in control like I thought I was before the Great Recession. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of how my book starts out about how I was in control, and I have life just where I wanted. It goes back to that independence thing again. And I learned during this time, whether it was on the radiation table or suffering through that stem cell transplant, or even during the Great Recession, that kind of started changing my attitude. Um, I learned that I probably can control two things that I need to concentrate on, and that's my attitude and my effort. And quite frankly, the rest of the things that I can control are gifts from God, and I best do the best I can. I I'm a person who understands very well, um, at least I believe I do, that God has kept me alive for a reason. And at 71 years old, I better keep the journey going and figure out what it is he wants me to do. And uh that's my life right now.

Where To Find The Book

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Thank you, brother. Thank you for sharing that, man. You're welcome. He's the president of Derek Company's speaker and the author of Restored by the Storm, navigating through life's unexpected challenges. You can hear a lot more of his story or his battle against cancer in the book. I'm sure his marriage, all the areas he's grown as a person and seen a lot of life. It's great for us folks who haven't gotten that far down the road yet. It's great to hear stories like this. It's uh definitely a blessing to hear. He's a walking-talking mirror. But that book is going to be something you definitely want to check out. So it's called Restored by the Storm, Navigating Through Life's Unexpected Challenges. That's Bill Derrick. Bill, if you don't mind before we walk out of here, can you please just let everybody know where they can find your work and just offer maybe perhaps a word of uh wisdom or encouragement for our viewers and listeners, and then we'll close out. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Well, I you they can go to my website, which is billderrick.com, and that is all the information on me. Has additional information. You can book me as a speaker for your organization's events. Uh you can find out more about the book, obviously. Um, and I would just say that uh it's important that people understand that when you get into these storms, um they will end. They're not a permanent deal, it's a transitional time, and you have to decide whether it's gonna be for the better or for the worse. And that's the idea of these storms, and they will change you, and you will have to decide whether it's the new normal is gonna be better than the old normal, and it's not easy for everybody. Some of us can say, Well, of course it's gonna be better. Well, some people don't look at it that way, and they need to change. That's why I wrote the book was to inspire others that you too can get through this, and most importantly, you can learn more from the hard times than the successful times, and you need to look at it that way and look at look for the blessings. And that's that that's how I would end this.

Final Encouragement And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 35:39

I love it. Excellent stuff, sir. All the information you need to be in the show notes if you're watching and listening for the first time. Thanks for making us part of your week. I'm Mr. Yu. Thanks for watching one on one. Have a fantastic day.