Show Up: Interview with Kerry Siggins, CEO of StoneAge
I recently went one on one with Kerry Siggins. Kerry is the CEO of StoneAge, Inc., a global leader in designing and manufacturing high-pressure waterblasting and sewer cleaning tools and equipment used in the industrial cleaning industry. StoneAge sells and supports its products throughout the world and has over 170 dealers in 45 countries.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers
would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Kerry: I grew up in Montrose, Colorado, a rural town on the Western Slope, with my mom and younger brother. My mother is the hardest working person I know, and I watched her spend endless hours to ensure my brother and I had a good life. In fact, when I was 12, she decided to go back to college to get a teaching degree and drove 60 miles each way to attend college while maintaining two jobs. It was incredible to watch, and it taught me that I could do anything if I put in the effort. Like many teenagers, high school was bumpy and I was wild, pushing boundaries anywhere and everywhere. After getting in a bit of trouble, I decided to put my head down and do everything I could to earn a softball scholarship at Colorado School of Mines, a highly rated engineering school in Golden, Colorado, just outside of Denver. My hard work paid off, and I left Montrose for Golden, swearing I would never live again in a small rural town.
When people ask me what inspired me to take this leadership journey, it is always interesting because it wasn’t as much inspiration as desperation. After graduating from college in 2001, I was lost. From a career perspective, I knew I didn’t want to be an engineer, but I didn’t know who I was or what kind of job I wanted. Feeling useless, I succumbed to my wild ways again and developed substance abuse issues. I decided a fresh start would help, so I moved to Austin, TX, working for Eaton Corporation. Eaton helped me find my love for people management and the complex world of manufacturing and engineering operations. Still, my drug issues, ever-present, diminished my effectiveness and almost took me down. In 2006, I decided enough was enough. I knew I had potential and could live a more fulfilling, successful life, so I moved back to a rural town in Colorado to start over, once again. When I got to Durango, I did what you do in a small town, apply for jobs posted in the local newspaper. StoneAge was looking for a General Manager, and even though I was grossly underqualified, I applied. The co-founders saw something in me — potential, drive, smarts, and a positive attitude — so they took a risk and hired me. I had just turned 28.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Kerry: Listen well, solve problems, build a strong team, and create a plan that everyone could understand and execute. Being a young and relatively inexperienced CEO, I had to build credibility quickly. It's amazing what you can do when you listen carefully to what people tell you and then help them solve problems. It consistently helped me build trust, which led to deeper, more meaningful connections with my team.
Additionally, you can’t grow and scale without a strong team. I believe deeply in helping people understand how their talents fit into the organization and giving them opportunities to try new things, develop new skills, and grow personally and professionally. Once you have the right people on your team, you must make sure they are in the right roles, aligning their talents with their job. There is nothing more important than building an exceptional team made up of extraordinary people. You won’t get far without great people and great teams. I spend a lot of my time developing and investing in my team. In fact, my team calls me the “Human Engineer” because of the emphasis we put on developing people and making sure they are in the right roles.
Another critical aspect of executive leadership is creating and articulating a simple strategy that everyone understands and feels connected to. People are more likely to find purpose in their work when they know how they fit into the big picture and see that the work they do every day adds value. Working closely with my management team and key employees, we created a plan that did these things and more. We grew the company by double digits year over year, and because we are an employee-owned company, everyone shared in the success.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topic of product development?
Kerry: The best product development companies have a clearly defined roadmap that ties to the company vision. This product roadmap should also have clearly defined “points of infatuation,” which are ways your customers will love your product over and over again because they bring them new value each iteration
StoneAge is a product leadership company, and our roadmap has changed as we develop more technology products. This roadmap is critical to our success as we evolve because our future products will require new resources and different skill sets—the roadmap lines out the investment necessary to develop and sell the product. We’ve learned this lesson the hard way – a few years back, we developed a product without a clear path to success, and it flopped when it hit the market because it’s wasn’t tied to our vision, and we didn’t invest enough in the market channels before launching. A well-defined roadmap points the product development team in the right direction and paints what success looks like.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing and branding?
Kerry: Find ways to blend online and offline sales and marketing techniques. The best companies know how to leverage both in a way that serves customers what they want: easy access to your product or services, low and high touch interactions, and ways to understand your brand story, both through your digital presence and your in-person sales and support efforts.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?
Kerry: I touched on this in a previous answer, and I’ll repeat it: If you want to be successful, leaders should spend most of their effort building a great team.
What defines a great team? Simply put, it's cohesion. If you do not have a cohesive team, it's hard to be a high-performing company. I describe team cohesion as each team member working in tandem for the good of the whole. What makes a cohesive team? A team that is built on trust and a shared belief in the mission of the team and company. One that has robust and open communication and is made up of givers rather than takers. I suggest clearly defining your team’s operating principles which describes the team’s purpose and required behaviors and attributes. Then use it relentlessly when building your team. Everyone on the team should live and breathe the operating principles and if they don’t, remove them from the team. Team dynamic is everything in a successful company.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Kerry: Integrity, authenticity, transparency, and decisiveness. Great leaders always do the right thing and show up as themselves, warts and all. Great leaders are honest and transparent and make well-thought-out but decisive decisions. People are looking for more from leaders, and these are four simple, albeit not always easy, qualities to embody.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Kerry: Hire a coach. Just like professional athletes utilize the power of a coach, all leaders should, too. I’ve worked with several life and business coaches over the years and still work with an executive coach today. The best thing about working with a coach is they will hold you accountable, push you to grow your business, listen when you need to vent and help you create action plans that propel you to the next level.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?
Kerry:
Show Up: Commit to doing the work. Put yourself out there, even if it means being vulnerable.
Dig Deep: Take a hard look in the mirror and be honest about what you see to develop the self-awareness needed to take your leadership to the next level.
Be Impactful: Exceptional leaders want to make the world a better place. We need better leaders. Be an impactful leader.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Kerry: A mentor once told me, “hard work will only get you so far. To build an exceptional team and company, what matters is the quality of your relationships.” I’ve heeded this advice and put significant effort into developing meaningful and deep relationships. I even give a keynote speech on building relationships because I’ve learned the hard way how being self-centered can ruin your relationships and your life.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Kerry: Thanks for allowing me to share a bit of my story and leadership philosophy!
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
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