Today we’d like to introduce you to Billy Banks.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I graduated from Northwestern in 1998 with a double major in History and Political Science. As the oldest in a third generation family business, when college ended, I returned home to assume my place in the company. We were a diversified forest products (primarily) and steel company with operations in 11 states and over 1,000 employees.
I began my career on the steel side of the business. Prior to my arrival, the company had consolidated three fabrication locations into one new, gigantic operation. The new operation was struggling to perform so, I was assigned to a consultant who had been hired to turnaround the newly consolidated operation. I was thrown into a combustible situation and learned a ton along the way. In order to stabilize the operation, we had to fire almost the entire management team while simultaneously going to our customers to convince them to hang in there with us. I learned about lean manufacturing, continuous improvement and how to lead a team through massive change and financial stress. Within a year, we had succeeded in turning around the operation so, I moved to our adjacent industrial coating division to execute a second turnaround. During this effort, I applied what I had previously learned as well as learned about the world of quality control and ISO certification – which was required in order to business with automotive and military companies. After a year and a half in the role, it became clear that my History/Poli Sci background was not sufficient for what was being asked of me coupled with a falling out with my father over the direction of the recently turned around companies. So, I left in 2001 to pursue an MBA.
That Fall, I started at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN as the dot.com bubble was bursting. I entered with the intent of NOT going back to the family business. To pursue something new and different. The tech industry looked attractive and I planned to study Marketing. In my first weeks at school, Enron, Tyco, and Global Crossings imploded. The second month, 9/11 occurred and the business world changed overnight. I watched as companies cancelled campus visits and rescinded offers. I noticed most of these were concentrated in the Marketing job tracks so I switched my focus to Finance figuring that I could always pick up the latest marketing book but that I would never teach myself how to value a bond or to do a discounted cash flow analysis. I got my ass kicked all over the field, but I can still do both, under duress.
In the summer between my first and second year of school, I was working in Paris for a small consulting firm. One night, while hanging out with some friends, we began talking about the future. Someone asked me what my plans were. I described my internal struggle between my duty to the family business versus my desire to walk my own path. Instantly, the girl I was seeing looked at me and said, “it’s a father’s dream to pass his legacy on to his son.” Shit. My head dropped. I knew what I had to do. I called my father and told him I would be coming back after school. During the second year of my MBA, I took classes that focused on how to transition a company from the entrepreneurial wild west that my father and uncle grew up in to a managed for growth company in a maturing industry. Simultaneously, I began working with some colleagues from our old steel company (we had to sell it during the dot.com crash when the bank called the loan and forced a sale to cover it). We had been working on a project prior to my departure. The buyer didn’t want to pursue it – they were interested in a quick flip. So, we raised some capital and carved it out into a new entity. This would become my first startup, M-Tec Corporation. Our first product would be a large metal chassis for the motorized RV industry.
Upon graduating in 2003, I took up residence in Chicago and reverse commuted to Indiana where both businesses were located. I served as COO of our family business while concurrently launching M-Tec. For the family business, I focused on transitioning the business to a managed for growth model. I consolidated the back-office operations to our corporate headquarters and pushed decision-making out to our outlying plants. I revamped the incentive systems to encourage diversification into new markets and customer segments while using our size to streamline and optimize our back-office. After two years, I realized that my heart wasn’t in the lumber business (we hold sold our remaining steel assets in 2004) and had falling out #2 with my father. I told him I would be leaving to focus on M-Tec and to pursue some consulting opportunities. He asked me to stay on until he could hire a replacement. In the meantime, I did an analysis of our market following what I learned earning my MBA. I concluded that the market wasn’t big enough for two large national suppliers – we either had to get bigger or go away. Concurrently, I was working on a consulting project in Florida with a homebuilder that had a subprime finance lender attached to it. I got to see under the hood of the pending housing crisis. As such, I agitated quickly for a sale of the business. We concluded the sale in November 2006 to our largest competitor.
During 2006, M-Tec was growing fast. We made an acquisition of a steel stamping operation and launched a new division. To do so, we had to switch banks in order to finance the growth. At one point, our new bank began pressuring me to hire a controller. I didn’t think we had a full-time need for one. We needed equipment, welders, not someone to keep score. I thought I had it covered. But the pressure continued from the bank. One day, on a flight back from the consulting gig in FL, I had the eureka moment. What if there were other companies like M-Tec. Ones that needed accounting or HR help but couldn’t afford it full-time. I sketched it out on a napkin and when I got home, I pitched the idea to our Controlled and VP of HR at the family business (one of the synergies in an acquisition like ours was that the buyer didn’t need our back office so these folks would all be out of jobs – I recognized the value of the whole was greater than the individual parts). They agreed and we started Reach360 right after we closed on the sale of the family business with one customer, M-Tec.
A year later, the housing bubble finally burst. M-Tec was growing fast, but our largest customer, representing a third of our sales went bankrupt forcing us into forbearance with our bank. I avoided workout by playing a high stakes game of chicken with the lenders – basically convincing them that I was their only hope to save their investment so leave me with the keys and stand back. 2009 was a brutal year. We went into forbearance in February. I remember staring out my window into the back alley as I realized that I might lose everything. I was 33 so starting over would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill. My parents had friends that got wiped out. Bernie Madoff and a host of others wiped out many more. I resolved on that day to not ask for outside help. That we were going to figure out how to get out of the hole. The M-Tec management team cut our salaries to the bone in order to keep the team together so we could innovate our way out of the economic maelstrom. I was fortunate because while M-Tec was zigging, Reach360 was zagging. While companies across the globe were cutting staff, Reach360 was well-placed to pick up work enabling companies to outsource parts of their accounting and/or HR to us as they reduced overhead. M-Tec provided me the capital and first customer to start Reach360, Reach360 provided me the diversification to cut salary at M-Tec so we could execute our strategy.
Months later, our bankrupt customer was bought out of bankruptcy and resumed operations by the end of the year. We had made it.
At the end of 2009, following almost a year in forbearance and what I thought was the most difficult chapter of my life, I met the woman that would become my wife. We had known of each other for a few years – she had dated a guy that I played soccer with on and off for a few years. We had bumped into each other at a bar in October. She was with another guy. I was with my friends. She had heard that I was engaged and felt embarrassed when I told her I wasn’t. In fact, I had broken up with my on again, off again girlfriend at the beginning of the year. She said, I have a bunch of single girlfriends, you should come out with us sometime. We played that dance for a few months until our calendars finally converged on December 20th. She told me to meet her at a bar for a friend’s birthday party. I was seeing someone else at the time, so I told her that I needed to leave early. I show up to the bar and proceed to walk right past her friends and starting talking with her. We never stopped talking and before leaving, I worked up the nerve to ask her out – what are you doing on Tuesday, I asked? How about drinks at 5pm (I was still a bit nervous since she had dated an old friend of mine). She accepted so we met two days later for drinks. Drinks turned into dinner. Dinner lasted until the restaurant kicked us out. The next day, I am headed to the airport to fly to Colorado to spend Christmas with my family. In the cab on the way to the airport, I look down at my phone. I decide to call her. She answers. How would you feel if I came home early, I asked. Great she said. So I hung up, called American and changed my flight from Monday to Saturday.
I get to Colorado. I get into the car with my Mom and tell her that I have to leave early. What did we do now, she asked. Nothing, I said, I gotta go see about a girl. Relief and from there, I have a great time with my folks. We talk all about Jennifer. My sister asks me, what about the other girl? Aren’t you taking her to Panama next week. Yeah, I reply. I’ll figure something out. On Saturday, my mom takes me back to the airport. There is weather in both CO and Chicago and the flight is already delayed. But I am determined. A man on a mission. She drops me off and I wait 6 more hours until they announce that they have a small window to get out. We board quickly and depart. I land at 11pm instead of 3pm. I get to Jennifer’s apartment just before midnight. We kiss, begin talking when I look at her and say, I know this is crazy, but I’m in if you are. How do you feel about going to Panama with me next week? She looks at me for a moment. Hesitates. And then says yes. We take the trip, fall in love, and 5 months later we are engaged. 6 months after that, we are married. 6 months after that, I sell most of M-Tec. Two weeks later, she is diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.
My world was flipped upside down. I got the girl. I sold my first company. And now, everything I worked for and waited for was under attack. Shortly after her diagnosis, the GM of my steel company (I kept one of the divisions – the company I acquired in 2006) decided my distraction was a good opportunity to go back into business for himself so he left and took several people with him. Now, I had a sick wife and an ailing business. I recognized I couldn’t be effective in two places so, I quickly hired a replacement GM and my brother left his job in Minneapolis and moved back to Indiana with his new wife to help run the company. Later, the day before Christmas, while Jennifer was in treatment, my father threw my mother out of the house after 37 years of marriage and proceeded to blame her and everyone else for his indiscretions and handling of the divorce. I haven’t spoken to him in almost 6 years. The rest of the family followed suit over the next few years.
One of the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation is infertility, so following her bilateral mastectomy but before starting treatment, we did two rounds of IVF and put 23 embryos on ice. During her 16 weeks of chemo, we hired a surrogate and after 8 weeks of radiation, while my wife was still going through reconstruction, we started the surrogacy process. 4 failed transfer and three lost babies later, we were down to our last 3 embryos. Life sucked. Every time we saw a baby, I could see the pained look on my wife’s face. My brother and his wife got pregnant and I couldn’t celebrate in front of my wife. She felt like her body had betrayed her. That she was letting me down. I couldn’t do anything. I was a bystander. It was utterly out of my control and men are fixers. How do you fix your wife in this case? Treatment was during the winter. I spent lots of lonely nights on the couch, in the dark, sitting with my emotions, trying to understand or run from them while she was in the other room fighting for her life. Surrogacy was even more feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. Constant questioning of life, marriage, kids. Is it worth it? I loved Jennifer but each of us can only take so much.
We were at a wedding in Mexico when we learned we lost baby #3 (on transfer #4). We were devastated. Normally, we would have returned home but Jennifer was in the wedding. We drank to ease the pain. Not a good idea when you are emotionally spent. We had our biggest fight. I stormed off and started driving north up the Baja in the middle of the night. After several hours, I something forced me to turn around. We returned home. We went through the motions while waiting for our next transfer. Two months away.
Then, one Sunday in July, my wife woke up, ran to the bathroom and projectile vomited. I figured it was residual from her treatments. She was taking Tamoxifen which induced menopausal side effects. I was heading to the grocery store. As I was heading out the door, she asked me to pick up a pregnancy kit. Sure, I thought. Whatever. Life sucks. I don’t really want kids at this point. Not after all the shit we have been through. I come home, she rips the pregnancy kit from my hands and runs to the bathroom. A few seconds later I hear, Ah Billy. No, I think. I walk around the corner and she is sitting on the toilet holding the pregnancy stick. I’m pregnant she says. Holy shit, I say. We call the doctors, they tell her to stop everything and come see them tomorrow.
That was a Sunday. We had our final transfer with the surrogate scheduled for that Thursday. Jennifer looks at me and says, you know we don’t have to go through with this. To which I reply, there’s no way the baby you’re carrying is gonna make it. Besides, we’ve already paid for the transfer and she’s pumped full of hormones. Let’s just do it. So we do. It hits. But, it has hit before so we put it out of sight, out of mind. A few weeks later, I’m sitting at breakfast when my phone lights up. I look down and it’s a picture of an ultrasound with two dots and one word. Twins. I come home and Jennifer is sitting at the dining room table with her hands in her face. She looks at me and says, we don’t have to keep them both. I reply, there’s no way all three of these babies are gonna make it. Let’s just play the hand we’ve been dealt. Fast forward, my wife delivers a healthy baby girl (River Rumi Banks) on February 3rd, 2014 and ten weeks and a day later, our surrogate delivers a healthy twin baby boy (Bodhi Windsor Banks) and girl (Raven Skylar Banks).
In early 2012, I lost the love of the game. My heart was no longer in my businesses so, I sold Reach360 to the management team in May. I tried selling Windsor Steel (the name of the company spun off following the sale of M-Tec) but ran into an environmental problem during due diligence with the buyer that killed the deal (fortuitously as it turned out since that income would become critical when the triplets arrived).
Later that summer, with time on my hands, I decided to explore some things that I thought would interest me. I took photography classes, began teaching myself Spanish and reached out to Northwestern so see if there were any opportunities for mentorship. I was introduced to Design For America. The same day I was there, someone from Luna Lights was also in the room. They need a mentor, I was told. Ok. And so it began (and I have been their mentor and now advisor ever since). From there, I fell in love with DFA and joined their Council (equivalent of their board) to help them develop a business model to sustain growth to more universities. I had a chance to speak with DFA and Luna Lights at the Big Ten Development Conference. That eventually led to an adjunct professorship to teach Entrepreneurship. Teaching had always been a fantasy of mine. When I was in business school, I was drawn to the business professor model – they get to teach, consult, publish – basically their own business. Now, not only did I get to touch my dream, I got to do it at my Alma mater. The triplets arrived in February and April of 2014, so we pushed back my start date until winter quarter, 2015.
During this time, having sold my businesses, I had time on my hands. In addition to the above activities, I was also working through the emotional ass kicking from cancer, divorce, infertility and then becoming a father of triplets. In addition, once you sell your company, you get to invest in others. So, I made several investments including into a local food company that sold higher end desserts into Sysco, Whole Foods and a host of other food service and grocery companies. In hindsight, making investments when you are not emotionally available and dealing with some serious life shit is not a winning formula. While on paper, everything looked good, the team turned out to be a disaster. I figured as an entrepreneur, my time and money could solve anything. I ended up firing most of the management team and trying to work with the original founder to make the business work. The business was in Aurora and I lived downtown with three babies at home and a wife still recovering from cancer and pregnancy. It was a recipe for disaster (pun intended). I wasn’t passionate about the company. I had no industry experience, and it became rapidly apparent that no amount of money was going to rescue the business. So in the summer of 2015, I stepped out of the company and cut my mounting losses.
My wife looked at me and said, whew, that was fun. How about a real job. So, I spent the next several months re-packaging myself from a former entrepreneur of 13 years into a company man who’s main task was to convince a future employer that I was going to stick around longer than 6 months. On top of that, with triplets at home, travel was not an option. So my option set was further restricted. Talk about a humbling experience. Company after company told me I was too qualified. Not qualified enough. Too expensive. Every excuse you can think of, I heard in one form or another. Yet, having recently taught, I was intrigued by the intersection of academia and entrepreneurship. I ended up as the Executive Director of the Coleman Center at DePaul in November, but after 2 months there, I was lured back to my Alma mater to take my current role as the Associate Director of The Garage where I get to live my dream of teaching and inspiring young men and women to find their passion and give them the courage to pursue it. It is truly a dream job that has opened up an entire new network of people and opportunities that I could only have dreamt about before.
Today, I still own Windsor Steel in Indiana. I have a competent GM now running the business who has an equity stake in the company. I sit on several boards and work with a local startup on the side helping them to sell their services and soon, to raise capital and launch. All of that, in addition to my full time gig at Northwestern and at home.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Grit
Resilience
Perseverance
Creativity and innovation in finding solutions to complex problems.
Becoming vulnerable as a result of everything I have endured to get here.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 773.350.2595
- Email: wpbanks76@gmail.com
- Instagram: billybanks9
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
