Their Family Business Went From Bankruptcy to a $4 Billion Snack Empire: Inside Jack Link’s Wild Entrepreneurial Ride
Meat, risk, and NASCAR — here’s how Jack Link’s CEO Troy Link has grown his family business into a global phenomenon.
Hungry for some inspiration? I’ve got something meaty for you to sink your teeth into.
This week on How Success Happens, I spoke with Troy Link, CEO of Link Snacks. He’s the second-generation leader behind Jack Link’s—the meat-snack brand that grew from a Wisconsin family recipe into a roughly $4 billion global protein empire. Troy’s story starts in a small-town slaughterhouse and ends at the Jack Link’s 500 NASCAR race, with a whole lot of grit (and jerky) in between. Listen here and read on for Troy’s success insights to help you beef up your own plan for success in three, two, one!
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Three Key Insights
1. Use What You’ve Got—Even When Everything Breaks
Troy grew up in a “meat family,” working in his grandfather’s grocery meat departments and slaughterhouse, and watching his dad battle through high interest rates and ultimately bankruptcy in their early meat business. Instead of giving up, his father looked at what they had: “We had thousands of pounds of meat, and we had smokehouses and knowledge… So that’s really how it got started, was just pure entrepreneurism.” Jerky began as a necessity—turning a failing operation and excess meat into a new product—and evolved into one of the biggest protein snack brands on the planet. Troy describes his dad as a “phenomenal entrepreneur and phenomenal startup business guy… nobody better at driving a basic P&L.”
Takeaway: When things seem to fall apart, inventory your skills, assets, and knowledge—and build your next venture out of what you already have.
2. Focus, Grit, and “Soap and Water”
When I asked Troy about Jack Link’s “special sauce,” he boiled it down to three questions: “Can you do it? Do you wanna do it? And do you have the grit to do it?” He credits generations of meat knowledge, a deep belief in natural protein, and an almost obsessive focus on protein snacking rather than chasing every food trend. His dad has an even simpler answer: “Our special sauce is really the soap and water in the facilities,” meaning hospital-level cleanliness that lets them make products with as few as three ingredients and minimal preservatives. Even when headlines swung between “salt is bad” and “fat is good,” Troy stayed grounded: “We’ve never had to really chase trends because natural protein has always been based on being good for you.”
Takeaway: Pick a lane and commit to striving to be the best in your category.
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3. Don’t Fear Big Bets—Invest in Yourself First
Recently, Jack Link’s made a massive bet: a new $450 million plant, plus a greenfield plant in Germany, major automation in three facilities, and a huge expansion to their jerky plant, all around the same time. When I asked how he copes with that level of risk, Troy didn’t sugarcoat it: “If you were scared of risk, you’d sell the business, right? That’s why a lot of family businesses don’t get scalable and sizable because you start weighing out risk.” Coming out of COVID, they were “so sold out” that they couldn’t serve customers, so he vowed, “We are gonna invest in ourselves moving forward.” Because they control “everything from the cow to the consumer,” they chose to invest ahead of where the category was going so they’d never again be unable to meet demand.
Takeaway: If you want to scale, you can’t always out-manage risk — you eventually have to take some big swings.
Two Free Resources to Learn More
- You can learn more about Troy Link and Jack Link’s by visiting the Jack Link’s website and following them on social media to see how they continue to innovate in the protein-snacking space. (And see what their Sasquatch mascot is up to.)
- Read this no-holds-barred account of what it really takes to run a family-owned business.
One Question to Ponder
Troy identified a seemingly simple recipe for Jack Link’s “special sauce.” What’s your special sauce — the thing that truly sets you apart?
Email your answer to howsuccesshappens@entrepreneur.com—your response may be read on a future episode of How Success Happens.
About How Success Happens
Each episode of How Success Happens shares the inspiring, entertaining, and unexpected journeys that influential leaders in business, the arts, and sports traveled on their way to becoming household names. It’s a reminder that behind every big-time career, there is a person who persisted in the face of self-doubt, failure, and anything else that got thrown in their way.
Hungry for some inspiration? I’ve got something meaty for you to sink your teeth into.
This week on How Success Happens, I spoke with Troy Link, CEO of Link Snacks. He’s the second-generation leader behind Jack Link’s—the meat-snack brand that grew from a Wisconsin family recipe into a roughly $4 billion global protein empire. Troy’s story starts in a small-town slaughterhouse and ends at the Jack Link’s 500 NASCAR race, with a whole lot of grit (and jerky) in between. Listen here and read on for Troy’s success insights to help you beef up your own plan for success in three, two, one!
