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“You sit down in a room with the two of us, and we don’t look like seasoned industry veterans,” said Jon Troen, president and CEO of Colorfx, speaking about himself and his company’s executive vice president, Nathan Kring, both young Harvard Business School (HBS) graduates. “I think there is a sense that if you’re really capable, then you need to go to New York, you need to go to Chicago, you need to go to L.A. – the most capable people go away – and that is not the case at all.”

Troen, who attended HBS from 2001 until 2003, started his postgraduate career at his in-laws’ family-run business, Rock Communications Ltd. in Newton. The succession plan was already in place when Troen joined the company at the vice president level, and later earned the title of president.

“In all fairness, I got to cheat a little bit because it’s a family business,” he said. “I was coming back to help run a business that was owned by my in-laws, so before I even came back, I was able to lay out a pretty clear plan.”

Part of that plan included the acquisition of Des Moines-based Colorfx (pronounced color ef ex), which in order to successfully manage a staff that was going to double in size, required another right-hand man. So Troen approached an old friend and HBS classmate, and was able to lure him from the coast to the middle of Iowa.

“I was thinking that I was going to work for some big-branded company, thinking I’ll probably go work in a large city for a large corporation or a consulting firm,” said Kring, who had lived in several cities across the country, but never in Iowa. However, Kring’s presumed career path changed when Troen approached him with an offer to work for Rock as its executive vice president – a chance that gave Kring immediate access to senior-level management.

“If (Kring) goes and works at GE, he’s got 15 years working his way up through the meat grinder, whereas here, he’s got an accelerated path to leadership,” Troen said.

So in December 2006, after his obligation to the U.S. Navy ended, Kring moved to Des Moines to help his college buddy expand the family business.

“Professionally, it gave me an opportunity to make a greater impact sooner,” Kring said. “I would have probably not had that opportunity otherwise at a large company in Chicago or New York. I would have had to start off in the smaller ranks of management and work my way up from there, and I knew travel was going to be considerable, so working for a small family company and being able to enter the business at a fairly high level where I could make an impact on the business and make an impact on people, that was very attractive.”

Within a year after Kring came on board, Rock Communications acquired Colorfx, and has since spent the past year aligning the two print businesses, which Kring and Troen claim is now the largest printing operation in Iowa.

“(Troen) kind of lured me here with the promise that we were really going to grow the company, and we did it, and I think we have had a lot of fun running this business in a pretty challenging time and a pretty challenging industry,” Kring said, pointing out that this is an unusual career path for HBS graduates. “You’ll find that very few graduates after their M.B.A. program at Harvard actually go into manufacturing.”

Kring said that more than 40 percent of HBS graduates enter a career that involves some variation of banking and another large segment become consultants. Troen echoed Kring, saying that those two tracks are “by far the dominant ones” after graduating from HBS, which he believes is unfortunate.

“Execution is not a part of what those two career paths are about – it’s about moving money around or giving guys advice and then having them go and actually execute,” he said. “I think for both of us, our personality types, we believe that it’s easy to give advice, but it’s hard to actually do it, and we’re doing it. We are out working with employees, working with vendors and working with customers to make it happen, and that is becoming less typical, and I think that is unfortunate because as you can see, it’s not enough to just have a good idea. You have to be able to actually carry it through.”

The two men hoped to carry their success story to their five-year HBS reunion last summer; however, both admitted they were a little nervous about how their story would measure up to those of their former classmates.

“I think we were both a little apprehensive about how we were going to feel after the reunion was over, but I think both of us walked away feeling very good about the choices we had made,” Kring said. “I think a lot of people, in some ways, would like to be in that kind of position where they are able to make big impacts on companies, and be able to lead and impact people’s lives. It’s hard to do that if you are working at a consulting agency; you just can’t do it. And I talked to a lot of people that, I think, were getting tired of that and were looking to do something where they could go and work at a smaller business somewhere.”

Walking away from the reunion with reassurance and confidence in their postgraduation choices, the two young Harvard alumni continue to look for ways to expand their printing enterprise and said they are working on some more potential acquisitions for the upcoming year.

“I think the initial reaction is, ‘You’re where?’ but then you talk about what your day-to-day life is like and what you’re doing both professionally and at home, and it goes from ‘You’re where?’ to ‘Where is that again?'” Troen said.

Reporter Marjorie Simoens can be contacted at marjoriesimoens@bpcdm.com