Addiction, Arrests, and Prison. Then He Built One of South Florida’s Largest Electrical Companies

Addiction Had Already Taken Derek Through Years of Trouble

Derek's problems started long before Razorback Electric existed.

Derek's early recovery years were part of a long cycle of addiction, legal trouble, treatment, and relapse rather than one isolated mistake.

For a while, Derek was still able to convince himself that things were not as bad as they looked. Like many people struggling with addiction, he could compare himself with someone who seemed worse off and use that comparison as proof that he still had control.

Eventually, the consequences became harder to explain away.

He went to prison.

And even that did not immediately solve the problem.

Prison Was a Turning Point, but Not the End of the Fight

There is a temptation to tell stories like Derek's too neatly.

Someone goes to prison, hits rock bottom, changes everything, and then begins climbing.

His story was not that simple.

After prison, Derek was given another chance in Florida and began rebuilding his life. He eventually put together four years of sobriety, which must have felt like enormous distance from the person he had been before incarceration.

Then he relapsed.

That relapse nearly cost him everything after four years sober.

That detail makes the story much more important.

Derek did not get one dramatic second chance and use it perfectly. He had to rebuild more than once.

He had to learn how to continue after failure without letting that failure become the final chapter.

The Company Started While Derek Was Still Rebuilding Himself

Razorback Electric's roots go back to 2012.

Razorback Electric, LLC was filed on July 12, 2012. The business was later converted into Razorback Electric, Inc. in 2014, with Derek Lewis as president and director. The corporation remains active in 2026.

That timeline is important because Derek was not waiting for his life to become completely perfect before beginning to build something.

He was trying to create stability while still learning how to maintain it.

A small trade business can begin with relatively little. Someone has a skill, gets a few customers, buys tools, and starts taking calls. But once the work increases, the business becomes much more complicated. The owner suddenly has to think about licensing, insurance, employees, vehicles, scheduling, customer service, marketing, training, and eventually management.

Razorback had to make that transition.

What began as an electrical business slowly became an organization.

Becoming a Licensed Electrical Contractor Added Another Piece

Derek became a Certified Electrical Contractor in August 2019. His license is active through August 2028, and he serves as Razorback Electric's primary qualifying agent.

By then, Razorback had already existed for several years.

But a larger service company needs more than the technical ability to perform electrical work. It needs processes that allow dozens of people to operate under one name while delivering something close to the same customer experience.

That is where the business began moving far beyond Derek himself.

Razorback Eventually Grew Into a Much Larger Operation

Today, Razorback looks very different from a small electrical startup.

Today, Razorback employs approximately 120 team members and has provided residential and commercial electrical services to more than 30,000 customers throughout South Florida. The company has grown into one of South Florida's largest electrical service operations.

Razorback's revenue has been estimated somewhere between $5 million and $25 million, although that should be treated as an estimate rather than an audited financial result.

What is much easier to verify is the size and longevity of the operation.

Razorback has been active for more than a decade, has a large team, serves residential and commercial customers, and has expanded beyond electrical work into air conditioning.

That is a substantial transformation for someone whose life once revolved around addiction and legal trouble.

Recovery Started Influencing the Way Derek Thought About Business

One of the strongest parts of Derek's story is that he does not describe recovery as something completely separate from entrepreneurship.

Recovery eventually became a kind of blueprint for the way Derek approached business, family, leadership, and giving other people second chances.

Recovery forces someone to confront mistakes without pretending they never happened.

Building a business does the same thing.

As Razorback grew, Derek had to move from simply doing work to building a company capable of continuing without every decision coming directly through him.

That meant trusting other people.

Growth Meant Learning to Build Leaders, Not Just Hire Electricians

A contractor can grow surprisingly far by being excellent at the trade.

But eventually the owner becomes the bottleneck.

There are too many customers, too many technicians, too many jobs, and too many decisions for one person to control everything.

Razorback's current scale meant Derek had to build management around the company. Derek serves as president, while the company developed an operations structure capable of supporting a much larger team.

That matters because roughly 120 employees cannot operate effectively if every question has to reach the founder.

The company had to become more than Derek Lewis.

That is one of the clearest signs that a small trade business has become an actual organization.

Trust Became Part of What Razorback Was Selling

Electrical work creates an interesting problem for homeowners.

Most customers cannot fully judge the technical quality of the work before they hire someone.

Razorback's current marketing focuses heavily on dependable service and giving customers confidence before, during, and after the job.

Those details may sound separate from electrical work, but to a homeowner they are often part of the same decision.

A company that grows to tens of thousands of customers has to become good at more than electricity.

It has to become good at trust.

Derek Eventually Became the Person Giving Other People a Chance

There is another layer to the story that has little to do with revenue.

Derek talks openly about the people who helped him when his life was unstable. Derek has spoken about mentors who continued supporting him even when he was struggling to support himself.

Later, Derek began talking about giving other people the same type of second chance he once needed.

That is a remarkable reversal.

At one point, other people were taking chances on Derek.

Now he is responsible for an organization that provides jobs and opportunities to more than one hundred people.

The past did not disappear.

It became part of the way he viewed the future.

The Relapse Makes the Ending More Meaningful

If Derek had gone to prison, immediately gotten sober, started a company, and never struggled again, the story would be easier to tell.

It would also be less real.

The relapse after four years of sobriety changes the entire arc.

It shows that the path was not a single upward climb.

There were periods of progress followed by setbacks. Derek had to make the decision to rebuild more than once.

Businesses often work the same way.

A company can have a strong year and then hit a difficult one.

Growth is less about avoiding every setback than about whether the company can keep moving afterward.

Razorback has now been operating since 2012 and remains active in 2026.

That longevity matters.

From Prison to More Than 30,000 Customers

The contrast at the center of Derek's story is difficult to ignore.

At one stage of his life, he was leaving prison without confidence that he could even stay away from drugs.

Today, the business he built says it has served more than 30,000 customers across South Florida.

Those homeowners are not calling because they know Derek's recovery story.

What Contractors Can Learn From Derek Lewis

The dramatic part of Derek's story gets attention, but the business lesson is much quieter.

Eventually, more than one hundred people were working under the same company name.

It is a system that keeps functioning long enough for thousands of small interactions to compound.

The Bigger Transformation

Derek Lewis' story began with addiction, arrests, prison, treatment, recovery, and relapse.

That would have been enough to define the rest of his life.

Instead, he continued rebuilding.

Razorback Electric became part of that process.

Razorback has roots going back to 2012 and remains active today. The company has roughly 120 employees and has served more than 30,000 customers. Derek remains the company's president and holds an active Florida electrical contractor license.

The story is not powerful because Derek became successful after making mistakes.

It is powerful because the mistakes did not stop.

He had to recover again after relapse.

He had to keep building when progress was not permanent.

Eventually, the patterns that had once worked against him began working in the other direction.

Consistency created stability.

Stability created opportunity.

Opportunity created a company.

And that company eventually became large enough to employ more than a hundred people and serve tens of thousands of customers.