The Breakfast Club Sits Down With Derek Lewis To Discuss 'Survive and Advance,' Corporate America, Entrepreneurship, PepsiCo. Listen For More!
Wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast Club Morning.
Everybody is thej Envy Jess, hilarious, Charlamage, the guy. We are the breakfast Club, just as out lawn, the roaster Filline. And we got a special guest in the building. We got the good brother, Derek Lucon Lewis. Welcome brother, Good on my brothers.
How you doing that?
How you doing now?
I'm doing great?
Excellent, excellent. Man.
Now For people that don't know who Derek Lewis is, besides going to the greatest university and college.
In the world, Oh, which is that? Does State? Definitely not Delawes.
State, Hampton University.
That's right. Breakdown who Derek Lewis is.
Derek Lewis is a inspirational leader. Grew up in Chocolate City back in the sixties seventies, single parent, familyhood lifestyle. Decided I wanted to be something different. I want to dream big for myself despite the circumstances I was under in the Chocolate City back at that time, and was inspired by getting a great education, inspired by joining a big company, inspired by putting that work in to coome who I wanted to be, my best version of myself to lead others be not only a go getter, but also a go give her and strive for excellence. And I was able to do that over a thirty five year career at PEPSI. Since then, I've retired now and I keep doing my work. I'm i'll sere released in a book that launches tomorrow. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about that today. And also I'm launching cheese Steak restaurants in Orlando, Big Dave's Cheese Steak. So you know brother Derek Hayes who azos. Yeah, I love him too, So Ivins first franchise E. I'm bringing ten units to central Florida. I've already opened up four locations, two in the Kia Center and two in Campbeld Stadium. We're off and running. I got two brick and mortars that open up at the end of marsh beginning of April and the Sky's limit. I'm also obviously serving on boards. I'm back of my alma mater, serving as a trustee and putting in the work there more nonprofit boards, doing the family thing. So life has been great, but I'm also maybe we'll still contributing the ways that satisfied me and my family.
Well, let's go back a little bit the way you got your job at PEPSI. Break that down and explain that a little bit. How you got that job and how you grew from you know, starting off there to damn running what you did at PEPSI.
Well, look, it was back in the late eighties. Job mark was pretty good.
You know.
I was interviewing my second semester. Interesting enough, I had PEPSI to come down, I had interview. I stayed up late the night before, kind of party in came to the career. It came to career fair and I failed the interview. I basically got a rejection letter. I want to say a week or so later in the mail, I was one of the most disappointing days of my life.
Why did they decide not to go with you?
At the time, Well, I think I was. I was not my best an interview, and I think for people having a lesson, when you're going in for an interview, you need to be at your best, and I was at my best. I took it for granted. I took as though I can stay up all night and party and not do all the research, and it's not be buttoned up, you know, and so I went in probably at a you know, one to ten, probably went into five or six, and guess what, that's just not good enough, not gonna be good enough for anybody, much less even a PEPSI. So I sort of retooled. They were coming back down a different sort of area was coming down from Baltimore. I hunkered down, very disciplined, studied my butt off that night, made sure I was as sharp as I could be, wanted and nail that interview, got subsequent follow up interviews, and got the job offer to start in Baltimore, Maryland. Three weeks out of college. I was a management trainee. Got out the car going into my first day of the office and prayed to God and said, God, I like for this to be the first day of my next forty years, because at the time you think it'll retire when you're sixty two, mid sixties whatever. And look, I prayed in that parking lot. I got in my maximum, my new maxim, I bought my advance, and uh, you know, the rest was history. And the day I felt the first day, I felt like I belonged there. I felt like this was the place for me. I learned a lot. I still wled a lot, but also if you read the book, you'll learn how being a paysetter mattered in that company, and showing early on that I'm willing to be a paysetter. I have the courage to be a pay set. I'm not worried about circumstances surrounding me. I'm going after it. That was a catalyst for me to really embrace the growth that came along the way throughout the entire journey.
And you said you want you said, you said a prayer to God to be there for the next forty years?
Were you there for forty I was a thirty five?
Thirty five? Wow? Yeah?
So what made you find what made you say, you know what? Let me for golds last five? Like with pivoty Well, I mean I was a good point.
Fifty five was the normal number. A lot of the guys I came in with. The campus program was really strong, robust at the company throughout the eighties and early nineties, was really strong program in the company, and so a lot of us that were there in my peers, fifty five.
Was a number.
Because the grind the business is a very intense business, hyper competitive, you know, going against our primary competitors and other competitors, and so there is some wear and tear. We traveled a lot. We moved eight times. It gets to a point where you have a next chapter. I've read the book Strength to Strength by author Brooks, and it opened my eyes to say, there is life beyond the thirty five years of the years, the time you spent at Pepsi, and so I wanted to always be an entrepreneur. I was talked about my book being an entrepreneur when I was a kid selling Dorito chips to school, selling Jolly ranchers and gum right as a side hustle. I needed to do that because I need to put money in my pocket, right, and so always had this itch to be an entrepreneur. The authorship piece just came from be retirement and kids and colleagues asking me, you can't leave without you know, so you're gonna bollow us up and take it away. You have to leave us with with some insight. You have to leave us with perspective on your journey. And so that's what I considered doing. The book was really the January of twenty twenty three and got with a ghostwriter and pace through publishing company and the rest is history. And here I am today.
What was your title at PEPSI right before you the.
Last title, I was President of PepsiCo Multicultural North America, So for the entire corporation, basically before D it wasn't D. So I want to clarify the D and I there it was D, and I had its own department. I was all about focusing on consumer, culture and community, and so I was primarily throughout my career, I was an operating executive, so I ran the P and L. I had billions of dollars responsibility. A one point, I was running North America, and then we did a restructure and I went I assume the South the South responsibility as president and then at the tail in that run, which is about three years, we delivered fantastic results and we developed such a good playbook at the time because COVID was involved in George Floyd, situations evolved and we had developed such a good model on you know, culture, community and company that the company asked me to step in and create this big role for the entire corporation. Use the best practices that we developed in sort of the Southern United States and be able to start to implement that. So that was the last role that I had had in coming primarily throughout my career, I was I was all putting sales and driving profit, driving market share. It was getting after it in the trenches each and every single day.
You were one of the first people, you know, corporate wise, right, I graduated from Hampton a long time ago, so I would go to all these different homecomings, but you would probably want of the first to bring huge corporations to all the HBCUs, right, not just the big ones, because you know, it's easy to just to go to the big ones where North Carolina A and T, which is the biggest university as far as students are, you know, concerned, or FAMU which is a big university. Why was it so important to you to do that HBCU run and to show up at those HBCU schools when other corporations weren't, but they started following after you did.
Absolutely it's all about legacy, right, and so my SPCU experience at Hampton was absolutely fascinating, incredible, and so to be able to take that experience build that you know, sort of legacy, not only through the corporate side, investing not only just events, activational camps, but also recruitment. I recruited heavily on HBCU campuses. I pushed hard to have recruitment centers go down to these schools, not just in called Mid Atlantic area, but also down throughout the Southwest. I was responsible for setting up the Swack partnership that we still enjoy today. That has been now a long term partnership and agreement based on the schools that are in Swack. Great schools, great campuses. Certainly the activation mainly revolves around sports, but I took that and extend that to recruitment and also community effort right and so me, it's a whole sort of end to end proposition, not just about the parties and social side. It's also about jobs. It's also about what we're doing in the community. It's also about setting up legacy for the future.
Will You in the open end of your book, you talk about going through like all of the pandemic and the riots that happened after George Floyd and my Ibbury, and you realizing like, I'm not an activist, but I do want to do something because I know what it's like to not know what's going to happen tomorrow.
When did you get to.
A point of your career where you felt empowered to be like, my activism is in the boardroom, and this is what I'm going to do, because being like only or like one a few in a big corporation like a PEPSI, it's not easy to be like, you know what, you all listening to me, This is what we need to do, This is how we should get back, this how we should help.
That's a great question. I think mid career I felt that responsibility now because I was starting to really move up in your organization, and there weren't many people at the top, and so a lot of the younger associates looked for me for a guidance direction, and so I just started creating networks across. I moved around a lot, so you know, when I ended up in the West Coast, I would we would be at a national meeting and it would not be uncommon for me to call all the Black Associates to a hospitality event at the end of the night and we would have like one hundred people in the suite. I'd just go up and go run a suite, going to everybody together and just talk to them about their journey, what's going on, how I see the future of the company. I'm a historian of the culture at PEPSI. Going back to the forties, I had a relationship with Alan mckeller junior. He was the first person hired in Corporate America as an intern in nineteen forty two, along with Jeanette Mount. She went to Hampton, he went to South Carolina State, so first two interns of the corpor America. I had a relationship with him up until you passed away into twenty eighteen. I spoke at his homegoing service, which I was very honored to do. A lot of his family did you know the impact he had not only just the company, but in Corporate American. So you got to think for generation out of generation, the legacy of impact and evolution of the movement from the forties of the fifties to the Civil rights era. You started seeing more and more investment in advertising for the company did leaning and heavily. Wasn't all received well because there was a lot of tension back then. And you get to the eighties and you saw the Michael Jackson endorsement that was obviously a big breakthrough for pop culture and the company really saying entertainment music matters us. You know, the Afrimaric Court is a priority cohort. You got to the nineties of Elevator and the hip hop it started transforming in then you get to twenty two thousand, twenty ten, it became a core principle inside the company that it flowed through all the businesses. So anybody, any functional leader or any leader around the world basically had to embrace Varas City as a core priority and principle. And then you got to twenty twenty. I was right in the middle of all that because I was the top executive at the time to really sort of lead that and guide that, insuring that one I'm looking after the company, I'm also looking after the associates, I'm also looking after the community. Right. That takes a hell of a lot of courage because of the only time I'm worried, I have my own concerns in my own life about what's happening. But the time when someone leadership is needed, it was time for me to step in and step up.
And I did that.
I did it honorably and gracefully, humbly, and I was excited to do that. I was excited company gave me the platform to do that, and I think it turned out very very well for.
Everybody question did did did Michael Jackson?
I guess you could call it a controversy when he got his head set on fire film the commercial.
Did that hurt help Pepsi?
I don't know if it did. Want to know, other brought show, they brought a lot of attention. You know, I brought a lot of attention, and sometimes you know, when you get attention, that's that's really what matters. But I can think about all the iconic commercials in media that he did. When I think about, you know, choice of new generation PEPSI generation, I think about him a lot with that, and so that's what resonates for me. That incident. While it does get talked about, I don't think certainly overshadowed the the the the brilliance and sort of the scale of his awareness and what he brought to the company into one of the obviously our biggest brand at the time.
The reason I asked is random as hell.
That's why when you brought up I was like, damn, me and my guy glasses from alone, we were having this discussion.
We were having it in the group chat. I got Sallas, djhad all of us.
We were talking about Michael Jackson and DJ head was I mean, hey, Glasses was saying, how after that commercial, after his handcut on fire and everything, that's when Thriller really started to take off.
And that's true.
So I wonder if it was the Pepsi campaign or was it that controversy, Like what was it?
I know what helped Michael.
I think it was all the above. I mean, obviously he got a ride. We got a ride for it because we were one of the first ones to really get behind pop star of that magnitude, right, we signaled that that's our thing. Again, he was black, and you know, all the other cultural things that went around that surrounded that were started to become beneficial to the company as well. So there was just a series of statements made in the evolution going back to the forties. That's deep, that's rich history that I felt like I had to carry that on. So answer your question. I felt from guys like Alan, hey, the torch got handed you. It's your time now to step up like he did and others did back in the forties.
I wanted to go back to the DEI conversation, slo May mentioned with companies taking off the table, how will that affect a company like Pepsi, How would that affect those big companies Since you've been there and you've seen whether they hired African Americans or minorities, how does that affect that? And do you think it's a good idea.
I think they'll be fine because again, they're going back to the history. The history is so strong, and the torch passing from CEO to CEO has been really strong and solid. So it's like runs relay erase that that never stops, right, So I feel like they'll be in good shape. But I think for what I'm seeing now, it's not Obviously it's unfortunate, but a the same time, as I talk about my book a lot, it's an opportunity. Right. So while there, you know, looks appear to be a setback, there's times for now leaders, companies, cultures to step up to the plate. I do think it's weak that when you know there's bandwagoning and this student bodies, student body left, student body right. I think all the knee jerk reactions I think is not good. It's not healthy. I think it's not the ideal leader you need now in this era of time. So I do think that that, you know, while companies are pulling back, they in my might haven't articulated what they're doing with that right, So yes, I agree that that D and I EI playbook needs to have evolved. I think it was dated. I think the circumstances in the sixty seventies are very different than the circumstances now. Back then, we obviously had you know, extreme tension, unlawful things happening. Social norms were accelerating very rapidly and different. We're in a different era now, not that those things still don't exist, but not certainly at the intensity level they did back in sixteen seventy. So this agenda should have evolved from where it is. It's it's a sixty year old playbook. This playbook needs to be more comprehensive. So it needs to account for the greater good, because that's how the world is moving now. It needs to be more collaborative. People need to work together more. Yes, okay, so comprehensive, collaborat It needs to be compassionate. You need to have an agenda where you are it's about people and so even in this case where you're telling a cohort that we're demphasizingself to deprioritize in, you haven't necessarily come back with something you're doing to to offset that, something in that revolves greater good, more collaboration, sort of more sensitivity around things are going on. That's how you treat people. And right, so that lack of sort of compassion that is being shown in the we're cutting it and we're not talking about really anything else, I think is just not good. So I think this is a time for leadership to step up to the plate. It's not hard to write this new play with by the way, it should have been read a long time ago, at least like myself could have done it. I saw, I could almost feel in twenty twenty what was happening. It was a more in your face moment. Everybody was going to get on board because no one wanted to be left behind or deal with the rash of being sort of on the outside looking at And then obviously what happens is time moves on, Things move on. There really really weren't any call it scorecard metrics or calibration against what you said and what you were going to go do to now can anybody go back and even remember what people said back in twenty twenty, right, So there was always a question around sustainability of that effort.
I can't remember.
I can remember then plaguing all that money to them qualifications and not delivering, right.
Yeah, r a lot of money, a lot of checks written, Yeah, a ton of checks written. But we're already a lot of pleasures with checks exactly exactly exactly you had. You had to happen too, right, And so you have people, you know, in a quiet way, resisting or just reacting instead of really reimagining what the new playbook be. So we actually took the time to reimagine the old d n I into something more modern that focused again on being more comprehensive, certainly being more collaborative, and being more compassionate. We can get there. That's not hard to do, by the way, like that, it's not hard also to execute that plan. What's hard is getting everybody on board.
But do you know I always said that the problem I had a corporate DEI. It didn't feel for us, by us like it should have been more. It should have been black people right telling these corporations right, what is needed right, not in these corporations saying Okay, here is what we're going to.
Well, that's the difference with a PEPSI is that we were always at the table, you know, throughout the history of time, whether it was a black salesforce back in the back in the forties or up until modern era. I was at the table when these programs are being developed and had a point of view and have perspective. And I give all the cities credit to all the CEOs who listened, who adapted, who empowered the executives take charge. And I would do the same thing. I would ask the employees instead of putting your head down with all this, now you're empowered to do something about it. I believe in the structure of erg's employee resource groups, and I believe you have to have places to be safe where you're if you feel isolated in the company, no matter where you come from, you have to have a place to go and should go. And so those things should structurally stay in place. But it's up also incoming upon those groups to lead a new agenda for the future, not keep looking up going where we're going, where we're going, guess gout you're looking up. There's nobody. There's nobody looks like you up at the top. Okay, think about it. CEOs right now fourteen five hundred less than two percent, So how much progress is that really from the nineteen sixties and now we have two percent less than two percent of people running the top five run the companies in the world. They're qualified people out there, there's all doubt about I'm one of those qualified people are going to run a forty five hundred company. So I'm not trying to do that now. But I'm out here and there's hundreds, if not thousands of people like me. There are quality, but they're not getting the opportunities. So in some some regard, you can look at, did the d I structure actually hurt progress from people over and because of this perceived you're getting an express card, check the box, you know, a fast mover, you know, without sort of having the merit and having the credential do that. I think there were a lot of conservas and it actually held a lot of people back. So let's reimagine this, Let's rebuild it. Let's not while we respect the ground and nature of how it was built, Let's evolve into a way that is more comprehensive, more collaborative, and more compassionate, and we get there everybody wins. You can't have winners and losers in the space. You can't have mandates in the space. I was there.
I mentored, you know what you just said, true, it can't just be a mandate, right, because a lot of it was just pr for these corporations.
Yeah, checked the b I mentored just as many call it Caucasian h executives as I do block executives or other executives for that matter, because they want to really learn how to get this done. And so my teachings were always more open to the greater good because I as you teach people, especially where there's majority representation, they're likely going to affect. They're going to be able he effect change, and they feel like they're part of the process. But when you're alienate and told you have to do this, man, that resistance is high. People going, Man, I ain't doing that, I ain't doing that. I don't have to do it. I'm not gonna go do it. It's the wrong thing to do. It should always be about best talent, So what are you doing? My book is all about what are you doing to one better than yourself? What are you doing to believe in yourself? And what are you doing to be yourself? Right? That's been my mantra my whole life. I'm investing myself. I have to get better. I have to take risk. I have to invest myself to get But I have to have discipline, I have to have commitment, I have to dream big, and I have to be authentic and stay authentic. And that's why I try to roll model myself my entire life. And all that book tells you about the lessons on maintaining those disciplines and those principles.
I want to ask you this right because I love the title of the book, Survive and Advanced lessons on living a life without compromising. It's rooted in the DEI think. Right now, you have a lot of people saying they want a boycott Target, right because they rolled back their di initiatives, which I.
Don't get it.
You know, it's a lot of different companies that roll back the why just Target, But what they're saying is they want to make an example out of this one company. But then now people are saying, hey, let's meed, let's do a compromise. Let's support the.
Black brands in target with boycott everything else. What do you what do you think the best course of action?
I think the best course of action again is I think I think leaders around the space, people who have experienced, people who have you know, dealt with struggle in their life like I have, who've been through a journey. I've been through HBCUs. You know, I have this experience. I serve a trust the HBCU. So people that have the experience out there need to lead a new agenda, need to lead a more modern agenda. That again, I go back to these same three c's right, that is absolutely more comprehensive going this this boycott angle and only supporting this support and that that's not the answer. That's not the answer. That's very short term. Uh yeah, it drives a lot of engagement, but it's not the right answer. You're going to increase even increase polarization to even a greater extent when you do that. Our chance, our time is now to look at this as a positive in terms of change and creating new change for the culture and do it in the right way that's going to create sustatement. Doing these sort of side hustles and taking these tactics that are abrupt, abrasive, temporary don't solve the long term problems. I'm into solving the long term problem. Let's solve the long term problem. Let's get people leaders together with the corporation and say, hey, we want to take a different cut at this, looking at it again, looking at all your cohorts, looking at all the people that matter, looking at all the things that you're going to do, look at the money as you spent before, and giving you opportunities and ideas of how to spend that money a little bit differently, maybe to create programs that everybody can win, to create programs everybody's working together. Our uniqueness is the one thing that we actually all have in common. Our uniqueness is the one that everybody brings that to the table. If we use that to our advantage, the teamwork will be unparalleled in this entire country. But instead we look at it only in the basis of really gender and race, that's how we sort of measure uniqueness. Really, we need to look at a cross the spectrum. Everybody has different lived experiences, everybody has different backgrounds, everybody thinks differently. We need to celebrate that in a very different way where everybody at the table is being represented. That's going to give your greatest output. That's going to give your big greatest culture. That's going to give you the best results. It's proven when you have people that celebrate you uniqueness or really value uniqueness at the table, it drives the best business results. So you have this triangle where you got consumer, if you're a brand company, you got sole the consumer, you sort of got the company, and you got the community.
Right.
That's the sort of three legg of stool inside that is culture. Get your culture right, you focus, you spend the right money against the consumer to drive the behaviors you need and to sales you need. You focus on company. You're getting representation right. You just look like the market. There's some markets aren't going to look like every market. Every market is like go to look the same. But you're looking like the market you operate in and you represent right, that's going to be different. And then you obviously have the community. We want to lift all the communities out. We don't want to just be sort of separate and discrete and carve out and say we only care about these communities we only care about these black brands in these stores. We want to make sure we're evolving the greater good and everybody gets go along for the rock. That takes real courage, that takes real strategic leadership, that takes real sort of collaboration and maturity to to pull this off and not look at it with your head down, look at what your head up on. What's the future look like in the space and having people to ta able to do that, we'll get us to the right space.
Absolutely.
I want you know, I wanted to talk about you your first paying job for people that don't know, what was your first paying job and who gave you that job?
My first paying job was under leadership of Mayor Marion Barry. The legend, the legend you know, daddy was in the rehabit. Marion Barry wasn't Jesus Danian South Carolina. Marion Barry was respect, struggles mad respect. That guy is a is a legend for the DC culture. Legend. He's a legend. To me, I realize that it's not about the mistakes he made. We're all making mistakes. But he cared about people, man, He cared about kids. He knew the risk of kids venturing off and not having time filled in throughout the day. So he created this sort of summer program every kid for we're teening up, guaranteed the summer job. I just got to fill out the paperwork. So I had my first paying job at fourteen. I was making three thirty five an hour. I was getting on the subway. I was excited every day I got to go up and go to I'm going to work every day, get on the subway and go to Brooklyn. And I was going to school or administrative place in filing papers. I mean, it wasn't like I was doing a lot of you know, strategic and heavy lifting work. But I had a job I was taught to be. I was already responsible going that, by the way, so it wasn't a matter Derrick Lewis understanding the role of having a job. I was already like the dad have the house and the big brother house, you know, when I was ten years old. But this was important to me now because it really defined and started elevating the sort of professional and as you're gonna be working with other people, you be working for people this and just the side house. Are you cutting grass, washing cars, cleaning houses, selling doritos at school like you were. This is now a professional job and sort of really shape my mindset around what I wanted to go do. I thought I was going to be a government worker up until I went to Hampton, and then I was able to dream bigger when I got school, saying all these companies come down here and they offer these kinds of moneies. And because all my family was the government jobs, right, so I thought that was my path. I dreamt I was going one day make one hundred thousand dollars, live in a single family home and be a happy guy. And that was at my age. Now you know, guess what, life took a very different circumstance, God have my back. Circumstances were very very different. As a child growing up, I knew I would to be have a different life for myself. I put a lot of faith in him and took that journey. And here I am today and still now you know, much more into go give her mode than go get her mode. For years I was go get her, I mean hyper go get her because we didn't have much. So I was never going to let something go by because of performance. And now my mindset is really shifted as I've aged and matured, and I've grown to paying it forward. So I was in pay it now for mode for many many years. Now I'm in pay it forward mode and I'm having the time in my life doing that. Hopefully this book will inspire many others. You know, whether you're a child going through the struggle as I did, if you read the book, a lot of struggles, a lot of dark days. There a lot of days where I didn't know if I was going to make it out to becoming you know, one of highest ranking executives in corporate America in a very recognizable organization that had my back. I had their It was a great run.
Create a lot of I want to talk about your your You come up with your wife as well.
Yeah, okay, how long you've been married. We've married thirty two years.
Now, Explain how that is having the right partner by your side. It's been everything. It's been me and showing me talk about it all the time. With the right partner that keeps you out of trouble. I'm doing foolish and sometimes she got a smack in.
The back of your head.
So talk about that journey about having that right partner on your side to make sure that.
You yeah, I mean, it really has been the key to the success I've had. And I talk about this a lot, especially recently. We've been talking about a lot is our line shared vision on how we want to do liberal lives. Now. The story at Hampton, you know, it was volatile.
We met.
I was a senior, she was a freshman. Things didn't work out. They worked out great at the beginning, but as you know, those things are temporary down there, didn't work out. I moved on. I wanted to be this Go get my job, go establish some income, go buy my first house. Before I started taking relationship seriously, it was a big mistake that I'm glad didn't cost me because I wouldn't be here now if if she was a part of my life. But we reunited, Tom take Tom Heels. I matured, I came back. I saw the value, true value, she brought to the table. And I knew all along that our vision on family, our vision on career, our visional community, our visional faith were so aligned that it was it was obvious for me to say, hey, we need I need to lock this down right because I knew that the place I wanted to go go. I absolutely had to have a partner that was willing to go along with that ride, and that that ride wasn't gonna have lumps to it. The rod has had lumps to it. But we've been there for each other the whole time because we never wavered on the share of vision. You know, she had to quart her job when we had our third child. That was not an easy time for her to do that. I talked into doing that, but it was it was again, it was a tough time. We adjusted to it. Obviously have come out fine with that, but that was the time where I had to really sort of lean in with her. There's times she had a leaning with me. We moved around a lot of new communities. Can imagine how sisters are going to place like Portland, Oregon, where it's two percent block and trying to find a place to get your hair done. You know, you get the town. Well, okay, we're here now, Where I get my haircut? Where do we get our hair done? What're we get nails done? Where are we socialized? What do we do to sort of relax and become ourselves in the culture. We found ways, we found places, We eventually would make our way around there. But then by the time we got comfortable, it was time to move again and again and again again. So a lot of sacrifice that we had, but we've built the family we wanted to build. We call ourselves Team Lewis. She's the co captain or she's actually the chief household officers I would tell it, would say to her, and been an ogal part of all that. But shared vision has been the absolute focal point of our success. Leaning on each other, trusting each other, grinding each other. She's made me better. I would like to see have made her better, but she certainly has made me better in this whole journey.
And there's a.
Point in the book. Sorry, there's a point in the book, not the statistic, and this point in the book just talking about your wife and leaning on her. You talk about like your journey with like finding out that you had a cancer's mass, and just things you overlooked because you were working and just you know, just in day to day and the title of the book survived in advance you talked about feeling like you survived and you got away from a lot of things you didn't have to worry about, what was going to happen next to your life, and then you're successful and then cancer comes and your wife is there any families They're like, can you talk to me about, like what that journey was like for you? Yeah, all the way so that you're still you kind of get emotional.
Right, Yeah, that was great. That was It was a tough time, right. I mean, I'm retired now, I'm playing a lot of golf and I'm having the time of life. And then I started seeing blood in my stool. And again, sloppy for me, undisciplined for me. I never had a kolonoscary, you know, And so here I am fifty six and every year I go get my executive physical, check in the box and doctor's like, hey, Derek, is you over fifty hours? Time to get your colonoscar. I'm like, I got you, I got you, I got you. But I'm going back to the grind. I'm going back to grind. I'm focused on people. I wasn't scared. I just ignored. I deprioritized it. I made it feel like my executive physical was good. I'm feeling good. The boxes were.
Checked, said you had all the best doctors.
Yeah, your cognitive skills were good. Your motor skills the highest they've ever been. You know, your blood comes back fine, you're good. So I'm like, I'm good man. I got to get back to the grind, and I ignored it was. It was a terrible, terrible decision. I don't want anybody out there that is fifty or over and has not had a coldonoscary. Now a matter of fact, you need you start getting younger. Now, starting to get a lot younger.
I think it went down to forty five.
Depending on your family history. A lot of it has to do with your family history. But the earlier the better. So there's no there's no such thing as an early start with checking out your checking out yourself in that regard. And so it was. It was a terrible decision. It would have cost my life. It would have cost my life. But the beauty came out at all my relationship. That we sat in the car, this was the story I found. I had the tumor. We got in the car and we're looking for like the the basically the doctor was basically very store because like, hey, you have a cancer. As a cancer's tumor, I suggest that you look into an on collegist. Now, you made need surgery, made need radiation. Here's a recommendation we give you guys that down the street. You know, you can pop in there. Here's your paperwork. I hope to see you a year from now. That was really the conversation.
That's how it is.
So we get out of there and we go walk down the block to go see the guy because obviously like, hey, I needed like set something up. My urgency is you know high right now. And it's okay, it's like three o'clock closes. We get in the car and I could feel that moment where like it's silenced for like a minute or two, trying to collect everything, like ourselves, like what's going on here? And so I taught called a friend. I had a friend phone, a friend who I know and had gone through cancer, and boy, she bailed me out. And by that time, three or four hours later, I was on the phone the chief medical officer of the advent Health Network, my eventual surgeon, an oncologists, all within hours, uh to talk about my problem. Get them the paperwork. They died. They did early diagnosis over the phone. They said, hey, it's serious, but it's not like we can fix this. So you need to have the faith. We got you, We got your back, and so I never got scared. I never had that moment. I'm like, Okay, it's like, is this a six month thing? Is that? Am I on o'clock?
Now?
Like?
Really?
Amoun o'clock? Because I had so much in front of me. God has sent me a lot of signals about what I was going to do in my next chapter, and I feel like, you're not gonna You're not gonna show me. All have to take that away from me. But this is a chance to reset your life. We set your health. Prioritize your health to your health needs to be prioritized because I didn't prioritize it the way I needed to. And I would tell everybody, everybody, make sure your health is the number one thing. If you can't be the best version of yourself, you can't be there for everybody else. So how in the hell can I become a hypocrite? I'm out out, I'm out here for everybody, but I'm not here for myself. And so self care is really elevated in my life in a big, big way. And obviously the health part of that, not only the physical part, but the mental part and emotional part very important for me now and it's given me the foundation now to do things I actually haven't done before in many, many years. So, but my wife was fully behind me. She took it actually hard, and I did. We talked about that a lot. You know, She's like, Derek, I'm going through this too. You know, when I would get short with her, I'd say, it's okay, trying to not make it a big deal. But it was a big deal and needed to be talked about. But she was a rock of strength for me in ways that I would never ever forget. You know, I know if it was reversed, I'd be there the same way for her, and God forbid it. It gets that way, So let me take all that pain for the family to keep the family going. But she was the rock and this whole thing and wouldn't have got through it in that at that level if it wasn't for her and her support. She came through big time, and my network came through big time. And it was one of the most incredible experiences. I say, I say in the same breath it was the hardest lesson I learned. It's also the greatest lesson I learned the same time because I got a lot of runway left, and that you just motivated me now for the next thirty some years of my life to go after in ways that I haven't gone before. It refueled me and re energized me. It put me in a different space and again this whole notion of going being a go giver. Man, I'm in that space and I see the vision of what the future holds for that.
That's right, all right, Well, pick up the book his memoir, Survive and Advance Lessons on Living a Life without Compromise. It's out right now, Derek Luis.
We appreciate it. Thank you, thank you so much for what y'all do.
Man, it's the break good morning, wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast club.