Dru Goodman is a highly accomplished Illinois businessman whose success is due in great part to the foundational skills he learned through his involvement with wrestling. 

Dru attended Highland Park High School from 1979 until 1983 where he wrestled on teams coached by 1997 IWCOA Hall of Fame Coach Dan Wisniewski. Dru wrestled all four years in high school for the Giants and compiled a 22-10 record his senior year where he achieved All-Conference and All-County honors and qualified for the IHSA Sectional. 

Dru feels his improvement in senior year was due to hard work and the coaching that he received and as a result, Dru earned the Most Improved Award in his senior year. Dru considers this award one of his biggest accomplishments and he is proud that his award will always be part of the Highland Park High School wrestling records. 

After graduation from Drake University in 1987, Dru became a sales associate for a local construction company. Dru excelled at his sales job and didn’t want to leave the position, but his father (the late General Bud Goodman) made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. 

Dru’s father was in the “turnaround” business, meaning the business of acquiring troubled companies and making them profitable. This is the type of business that requires hard work, strategic thinking, and the ability to deal with adversity which is the type of skills Dru understood from his years wrestling. Dru trained under his father’s guidance for nine years before Dru’s father asked him to take the lead role in the family’s business. About two years later, Dru successfully paid off the bank debt and with the business free and clear of any further debt, Dru started reinvesting the profits to make the business more efficient and increase its growth. 

Over the years, Dru built the family business by making additional acquisitions and growing the existing core assets. Currently, the “family office/holding company” known as DDG, Inc., owns two operating businesses, both in the metal fabrication and metal making fields, several real estate properties, and a multitude of other investments. To succeed to this level, Dru understands that the formula for success is to always try to learn and apply new ways of developing and expanding and not to be afraid of any setbacks when things don’t go your way. 

Dru credits wrestling as one of the keys to his success in business. Experiencing the setbacks and difficulties in that tough year of wrestling in his junior year was a great character builder. Only through hard work, commitment and perseverance was Dru able to achieve his Most Improved Award in his senior year. Dru has applied the same skills he learned in wrestling to successfully compete in business. 

Dru benefitted over the years from his coaches in wrestling and the “coaching’ in business and life that he received from his late Father. Having a successful family business is important to Dru and he hopes that one day all three of his children will join him and he can provide the same type of guidance and coaching that his father provided for him in hopes that his children will succeed him in the business. 

Dru believes he owes a lot to the sport and continues to participate in the sport as an official at the junior high/high school level. He has in the past volunteered in various local and national programs to help young men and women who are in a similar place as Dru was during his high school years. Dru encouraged his children to pursue athletics so that they could benefit in the same ways that he did. In fact, one of his sons followed his path and had a successful career in high school wrestling. Dru also contributes financially too many philanthropic causes including contributions to improve the wrestling programs at certain high schools and colleges.