Minong, Wisconsin, is the type of place most individuals move by with out noticing. With a inhabitants of fewer than 1,000, there’s a automobile dealership, a greenback retailer, and a pair thousand cattle, surrounded by forests and lakes within the state’s northwestern nook.
However maybe improbably, it additionally has the headquarters of a $4 billion multinational meat-snack empire.
For the previous 40 years, Minong has been the house base of Jack Link’s, the corporate behind considered one of America’s most recognizable beef jerky manufacturers. What started as an effort by namesake founder Jack Hyperlink to flip his great-grandfather’s jerky recipe right into a livelihood has grown into a worldwide enterprise promoting merchandise in additional than 55 international locations.
Alongside the best way, the corporate has navigated shifting generational tastes, supply-chain complications, and pandemic financial upheaval. Now, as a protein increase—fueled partly by GLP-1 weight-loss medicine—drives renewed demand for meat snacks, Jack Link’s finds itself driving a broader surge within the class. In 2025, U.S. gross sales reached $5.5 billion, roughly double what they have been a decade in the past.
However for Troy Hyperlink, who took over the corporate’s day-to-day operations from his father in 2013, the philosophy behind success was formed lengthy earlier than he turned CEO.
Rising up round his household’s dairy farm and meat-processing operation in rural Wisconsin, mornings began earlier than most individuals have been awake. Being at work by 6 a.m. wasn’t aspirational—it was anticipated. His father, Jack Hyperlink, stored the identical rhythm, and many years later, so does the son who now leads the corporate.
“All of it goes again to historical past,” Troy Hyperlink stated. “Whether or not it was the dairy farm or the meat processing facility, it was all the time early morning begins.”
As we speak, the 54-year-old nonetheless wakes up between 4 and 5 a.m., typically with out an alarm. Earlier than mattress, he writes out the subsequent day’s to-do checklist, a ritual he credit with retaining him centered amid the calls for of overseeing a multinational firm.
“I by no means begin my day and not using a to-do checklist,” he stated. “…A minimum of when I’ve a to-do checklist, I’m going to get that checklist achieved each single day.”
The early hours, he stated, are reserved for the “heavy lifting”: technique periods, choices on innovation, bets on new know-how, and discussions about how synthetic intelligence can form the enterprise years down the highway. By midday, a lot of his most essential work is already achieved.
That rigor displays classes Hyperlink stated he inherited from his father, who constructed the enterprise round a handful of rules: effectivity, self-discipline, and staying grounded within the buyer. Whilst Jack Link’s has expanded into greater than 200,000 shops at practically each main retailer within the U.S., its headquarters stay in tiny Minong—a selection Hyperlink believes retains management shut to the realities of on a regular basis shoppers.
“If you’d like to know what’s occurring within the financial system—how meals inflation or how fuel costs are affecting individuals—go to small city America,” Hyperlink stated. “They’ll let you know, as a result of that’s all that they’re speaking about.”
Success comes down to grit, in accordance to the CEO of Jack Link’s
That mindset carries into how Hyperlink views the trendy office. Constructing a profession, he argued, nonetheless requires exhibiting up, placing within the hours, and creating experience over time—even when it’s inconvenient. It may be simplified to three questions:
“Are you able to do it? Would you like to do it? And do you’ve got the grit to do it?” he instructed Fortune.
It’s a philosophy that may really feel particularly related as we speak, when uncertainty round the way forward for work could make profession paths extra difficult than ever. However in his view, success comes down to self-discipline and a willingness to prioritize arduous work.
Chasing office flexibility, notably amongst Gen Z, comes at a price to the self-discipline that actual career-building requires. For the younger individuals that will moderately not report into an workplace or work on Fridays, Link’s message is straightforward: “I simply suppose you’re silly to say that.”
“I’ve three little children, so I attempt to get dwelling on weekends, but it surely doesn’t work on a regular basis. It simply doesn’t,” he added.
Whereas obligations inevitably come up, whether or not which means choosing up a baby from daycare or making it to baseball observe, profession ambition nonetheless requires flexibility within the different path, too.
“You’ll be able to’t say, ‘Hey, pay attention, I’m not going to go attend that really essential enterprise factor as a result of I would like extra stability,’” he stated.
For these keen to put within the work, Hyperlink identified that there at the moment are extra instruments than ever to achieve success. “So commit, and then stick to it, and be really good at it.”
MrBeast taught Troy Hyperlink to ‘suppose greater’
Not each younger particular person is struggling to discover their footing in enterprise. For Hyperlink, one standout instance is Jimmy Donaldson, a.ok.a. MrBeast.
The 28-year-old has leveraged his standing because the world’s most subscribed YouTuber right into a sprawling leisure and consumer-products empire, spanning an Amazon Prime collection, a chocolate bar line, and even monetary companies.
Final yr, Beast Industries expanded into the meat snacks class by a partnership with Jack Link’s, bringing co-branded merchandise to Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and their dad and mom.
“I’ve been consuming Jack Link’s since I can keep in mind, so teaming up is a no brainer,” Donaldson stated at the time.
For Hyperlink, the expertise provided a glimpse into how one of many world’s most influential younger entrepreneurs operates.
“He’s a beast in his motivation, his curiosity. I’ve by no means met anyone as curious as him, as passionate as him, and the willingness to do no matter it takes to win,” Hyperlink instructed Fortune.
He noticed this primary hand throughout considered one of their preliminary interactions. A chat that was scheduled to final for only one hour was a 10-hour occasion, during which they ended up at a retail location after discussing the partnership from prime to backside.
Total, regardless of the age variations of each themselves and their firms, Hyperlink stated working with Donaldson challenged his personal considering.
“I realized that I most likely don’t suppose large enough. He’s a really massive thinker, he’s a really long-range objective setter,” Hyperlink stated.
“We have now a variety of the identical synergies. He’s simply youthful and extra inventive than I’m.”
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