Ingram's March 2023

Mark Thompson Country Club Financial, Mission Hills That Missouri-Kansas border war thing? It continues to fade into history. Consider the case of Mark Thompson of Country Club Financial, one of the Kansas City area’s biggest Missouri based family-owned banks, who now calls himself a Kansan. “My wife is a

Charlie Tetrick Walz Tetrick Advertising, Mission As much as he loved growing up in Tulsa, Okla., Charlie Tetrick was ready to spread his wings. After landing at KU and catching the “advertising bug” his junior year, he looked east after graduation to start his career. “After college, Kansas City

Jayhawk—she was the Baby Jay mascot in the 1988 season— and, so far, so is one of my sons,” says the chairman of Country Club Trust, whose own educational roots trace to Georgetown University and its law school. “When we moved from our home in Missouri that my wife’s family grew up in (which was across the street from where my family grew up), my wife and I were really looking for a place nearby where we could build. It just happened to be on the other side of the state line.” So forget the history: Thompson has another agenda top of mind: “I’ve committed my life to influencing the growth of the greater Kansas City region,” says Thompson, who was in private practice and served as a federal prosecutor before joining the family enterprise. “My goal has always been for that growth to better our local communities, both for our current residents and businesses, and for those down the line.” Thus, he says he evaluates service and business opportunities with an eye toward their metro-wide impact. “Working together,” he says, “we can create positive regional impact and lift up both sides of the state line.”

was the perfect backdrop to start a company,” he said. “It had a vibrant economy, a booming civic class, and loads of opportunity.” Not long after, he became a managing partner and then the owner of Walz Tetrick Advertising. Today, the 56-year-old firm is part of the patchwork of privately held advertising and marketing shops based in Kansas City— something Tetrick sees as a big contributor to the city’s success: “What many may not know is that a tremendous amount of our (collective) work is done outside Kansas City,” he said. “And that means these agencies are bringing hundreds of millions of dollars back to our city, and that helps to employ thousands of people here.” Despite being in his leadership role, he still feels the same passion for the field he grew to love decades ago. “We get to tackle client challenges each and every day,” he said. “And that makes each and every day unique and interesting—that’s the fun stuff. Results for clients is why we do what we do.”

David Vander Griend IMC Inc., Colwich The mission is pretty simple for David Vander Griend and his team at ICM: It wants to improve agricultural sustain ability, advance renewable energy processes, and develop technologies that will increase the world’s protein supply. That sounds more like a mission statement for the United Nations than it

Ken Wagner Heritage Tractor, Baldwin City Ken Wagner tells the story about the day his new ag-implement company received delivery of its first piece of stock equipment. The driver bringing in that no-till drill zipped past the company site, back and forth, looking for an established business. Wagner and his partner were able to get

does for a Kansas-based ag-tech firm, but Vander Griend has been shaking up that space for nearly 30 years. He and his late brother, Dennis, founded the company in 1995, building dryers to improve the quality and longevity of grains used by distillers. By 2001, ICM had developed an ethanol production process, filed for a patent, and then designed and built its first ethanol plant in the U.S. The concept was a hit in the industry: Less than seven years later, ICM designed its 100th North American plant, and in 2011, it was officially an international company as one of the plants it designed began operations in Hungary, followed in short-order by others in Argentina and Brazil. In 2019, the company’s next iteration came as it partnered to create ELEMENT, a Colwich biorefinery capable of producing 70 million gallons of fuel each year, using ICM technologies that the company says “set new standards for operational efficiency and carbon intensity.” The ICM scorecard: It has designed 108 ethanol plants worldwide, which account for one-third of the planet’s ethanol production. Project revenue to date has passed $4.5 billion, thanks to 5,500 projects completed in 300 locations. See? Simple.

his attention, explain that the company was indeed a going concern, and even boasted of a $1 million first-month backlog of orders. To which the driver wryly responded: “You guys ought to quit right now.” Well, there’s no mistaking the presence of a thriving company today. Heritage Tractor, a John Deere dealership, operates more than 20 locations in the four-state area of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, selling new and used tractors, planters, sprayers, drills, and other ag equipment, along with parts and service. You don’t have to till the soil to be a customer: It offers a wide range of lawn and garden equipment suited to the needs of exurban dwellers on those oversized lots out in the country. From his lean early days to a thriving enterprise, Wagner has developed a set of rules to live by in business, especially for those who hope to become dealers: Surround yourself with a good corps of people, make sure you’re properly capitalized, don’t try to grow too big too fast, never forget who the customer is, and reward the employees who are performing for you.

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