One of the things I most enjoy about my career is the opportunity to meet from all over the globe and all walks of the life. The stories are fascinating. Recently, I was introduced to Dr. Jim Hengst after being told by three people that I had to meet him. The more I learned about his story, the more I found it both inspirational and aspirational. Because so many marketers dream of starting their own company, I thought I’d share the story in two parts. The first part is how Hengst went from a modest beginning to building a multi-hundred-million-dollar biotechnology firm. The second article is how this growth was in part due to Hengst’ ability to understand key marketing principles. Below, I share Hengst’s story.
Kimberly A. Whitler: I’ve now heard from several people that I must hear your story. Can you start with the early years and describe what life was like in the Hengst household?
Dr Jim Hengst: When I was born my parents were both Navy Officers. Dad joined the Navy straight out of high school in 1938. His first day, an officer strolled into the barracks and asked if anyone knew how to type (for young people, this meant on something called a typewriter). Dad had taken typing in high school and he told me while everyone else was running PT and digging latrines, he was in an air conditioned office. He ate lunch with the officers and they convinced him to take the OCS exams (officer candidate school). He was then sent off to the King’s Point Merchant Marine Academy and in 3 years got his BSME. He spent the rest of the war as an engineering officer on freighters in the North Atlantic and on submarines in the South Pacific. At some point he was wounded or injured and ended up in the hospital where my mother, a Navy nurse, and he met. Dad left active duty, ended up as head engineer at Pabst in Peoria Heights and that’s how I ended up in Washington IL. Dad was a great influence…spent a lot of time with me and my brothers and was our scoutmaster for a long time. I remember, once a year dad would leave on Saturday morning and come home that evening covered in black crap. Pabst had 6 coal fired boilers that provided steam and electricity and once a year they’d shut them down, send teams inside with steel brushes to “scale” them. The boilers were still over 120 degrees. It was the dirtiest, nastiest job they had. On Saturday morning Dad was the first in, the last out. He told me “You can tell people you’ll never ask them to do something you won’t but that’s not good enough, you have to show them you mean it.”
Whitler: After high school, how did you become an innovator?
Hengst: I grew up a middle-class existence in Washington, Illinois. For perspective, the “big” city near Washington is Peoria, Illinois, roughly 180,000 strong.
I chose Eureka College, a small…
Read More: How A Small Town Boy Created (And Sold) A Large Biotech Firm