864 Kerry Siggins:

I think if you start with people, you put people first, you think about culture, you think about the value that you’re trying to bring to your (employees and then ultimately to your customers. You build such a much more sustainable and healthy company where people actually want to work, rather than a place that, okay, that’s great. You might be extracting maximum value, but is it  inspiring people to live their best lives? And you look around the planet, we need inspiration to live our best lives.

Yes, we do, and how many companies really put their people first, apart from a blurb on their website? Today on Wings we talk transformational leadership with Kerry Siggins, a serial multipreneur recognized as EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year and Silicon Review’s Best Leaders to Watch. Kerry shares invaluable insights on what it takes to built a standout fast scaling company rooted in trust and employee empowerment and ownership.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a five-time serial entrepreneur and I’m all about paying it forward, so this podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is doubling her business’s growth year after year after successfully transitioning to an ESOP, ensuring all employees share in the success of the company through employee ownership.

Kerry Siggins is the CEO and Executive Chair of StoneAge Holdings, a fast-growing manufacturing and technology company based in Colorado. From lessons learned earlier in her career from less-than-ideal bosses to the consequential shift in her leadership approach, Kerry outlines the essentials of clear expectations, recognition, and fostering development among her team. We also dig deep into the delicate balance of managing multiple business entities while maintaining a cohesive vision and the critical importance of focus, particularly for early-stage companies. We also go behind the scenes of her company’s intricate growth strategy involving organic expansion, spinning off businesses, and strategic acquisitions — including a deep dive into the acquisition of an IoT solutions company, Breadware.

Kerry will be here in a moment, and first,

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Who hasn’t had a bad boss? There are lots of ways for executives and managers to fail at leadership, and today we talk about how to succeed at building a great team culture that drives real results.

Kerry Siggins is an entrepreneur who truly embodies the philosophy of teamwork and trust. Recognizing that the responsibility of success never rests on a single pair of shoulders, Kerry truly walks her talk in putting her team first, grounded in the belief that a strong, diverse team with an “Own It” mindset is the hallmark of exceptional leadership.

Today we get into the power of “ownership mindset,” a key hiring trait that powers her company Stone Age Holdings’ impressive success. Plus, we’ll examine the transformational journey to becoming an ESOP-owned entity, aiming not just for profit but for creating shared wealth — with the ambitious goal of creating 1,000 employee millionaires.

We also explore the the mechanics of mergers and acquisitions, and the path to a people-centric, sustainable business.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Kerry Siggins and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock [00:00:04]:

Kerry, welcome to Wings.

Kerry Siggins [00:00:06]:

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. I appreciate the invite to come on the show.

Melinda Wittstock [00:00:10]:

Well, you are very honored as a leader. EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year last year. Best leaders to watch the year before by Silicon Review and so many other things. What’s behind all those accolades? What is your secret sauce?

Kerry Siggins [00:00:27]:

Oh, it’s building a great culture with amazing employees who are helping to build this really great company that we have. I couldn’t do without them.

Melinda Wittstock [00:00:41]:

Right. Well, that’s easier said than done. And I want to really get into the secrets of your success, because everybody sets out to be a great leader and inspire their team. But, gosh, people really struggle with that. What are the main things that you do to create that great culture? Let’s break that down because I think that’s something that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with.

Kerry Siggins [00:01:06]:

The first thing is, I always put the team first. I think that a lot of leaders mistakenly believe that it all falls on their shoulders and they have to be the ones to do it all. But the reality is the very best leaders know that their number one job is to build a great team, and so you don’t have to do it all. If you surround yourself with people who are talented and smart in different ways than you are, then you have a much better chance of being successful and not burning out. So that’s the first one. And then the second one is the foundation for what I call the ownership mindset, which is how you teach people how to think and act like owners. It’s trust.

Kerry Siggins [00:01:50]:

You have to build trust with your team, and you do that in many ways, but you have to get to know your employees. You have to create safe spaces for them to speak up. You have to be willing to take feedback. You have to be willing to put your ego aside, do things that maybe you don’t necessarily agree with, but let your employees try things. And all of that takes trust. So if you put others first and you create trust within the team, then you’re on your way to creating a really great culture and being a leader worth following.

Melinda Wittstock [00:02:23]:

So how did you learn all of this? Talk to me a little bit about your genesis because everybody starts out with great intentions, but it’s a work in progress.

Kerry Siggins [00:02:33]:

It’s always a work in progress. That’s exactly right. And I’m still a work in progress. But I think a couple of things came together to help me have this mindset. First, I worked for a lot of really terrible bosses, and because I was always interested in leadership, I was always a natural leader.

I was studying them and trying to figure out how did they get into these positions, especially when they were not very good at their jobs. And so I would take note of the things that I wish that my boss would have done for me and said, when I’m a boss, when I’m a leader, I’m going to do these things differently.

Melinda Wittstock [00:03:45]:

What were some of those things just break down? What were some of the things that say a boss did where you said, oh, God, I wish this boss would have done this.

Kerry Siggins [00:03:53]:

Instead, just give me a couple of set, clear expectations. Tell me what winning looks like. I had bosses who were very vague in their expectations, and so you would work really hard on something, and then when you’d miss the mark and get that feedback, it was like, oh, well, that would have been nice to know that up front. And so having those clear expectations, somebody painting what success looks like, someone helping you quirks correct along the way, someone giving you positive recognition and constructive feedback on how to do things better, and someone who took the time to really get to know me, somebody who really cared that I felt like this person’s genuinely interested in helping me develop myself as a human being and in my career. And those were some of the things that I was missing from a few of my bosses in my early career, that I just wish someone would spend a little bit more time with me and help me grow. I mean, I didn’t put that responsibility on them. I knew that I was in charge of my own career. But when you have a leader who shows interest, who helps you define success and gives you those opportunities in a safe way to grow and expand your wings and maybe make a few mistakes and fail a little bit, that speeds up the growth process, and I didn’t have that a lot in my early career.

Kerry Siggins [00:05:20]:

I felt a little bit lost along the way.

Melinda Wittstock [00:05:23]:

What do you think goes wrong with a lot of those folks, right? Is it just that we’re not taught these things well enough, or is it just a lack of consciousness? Or is it just this thing where people, especially founders in the early stages, are kind of doing everything themselves? And so it’s a big transition as you build a team to let go of some of those things.

Kerry Siggins [00:05:45]:

I agree. I think it’s a combination, definitely. We’re not taught this, especially back in the day. My bosses were boomers, baby boomers back then, and they just didn’t have the leadership development opportunities like you have today, where there’s just so much more conscious leadership. So I think a lot of them just didn’t know any better. They didn’t have that development. And you do. You have to teach people a lot of these things.

Kerry Siggins [00:06:17]:

It doesn’t necessarily come naturally to everyone. And I’ve always worked in technical companies, which usually means that you have technical bosses. And that takes extra leadership development because if you are a really competent technical person, whether that’s in engineering or in accounting, then you don’t necessarily value the soft skills as much as you might the analytical skills and the getting things done skills. And so, I think that you have to really work with leaders to help them develop, to be a well-rounded leader where they can build upon their strengths. But understand, if you want to be a leader, you have to care about people. You have to be able to put them first. And I just don’t think that a lot of those former bosses that I had had that kind of mentorship or that kind of leadership. So I think you do have to teach people.

Kerry Siggins [00:07:12]:

I also think that there are a lot of people who get promoted into leadership positions because they are really good at an individual contributor job. But just because you’re a great engineer doesn’t make you a great engineering manager. Just because you’re a great accountant doesn’t make you a great CFO. And so, I think you see a lot of Peter principle happening because you want to promote your people who are rock stars, but a lot of times you promote them into things that they might not be very good at.

Melinda Wittstock [00:07:43]:

Gosh, I’ve seen that so often. I remember way, way back when I was an anchor and producer at the BBC very early in my career, and we used to joke that when the BBC played musical chairs, they added one. That’s hilarious, because often when people were not doing so well, they’d get kind of promoted or whatever into something and it would just be like, oh, my. Like, I loved Monty Python as a kid and I came to understand that Monty Python was really about that kind of BBC, sort of more civil service type kind know thing, right. And like you. I learned a lot. Yeah. Cultures that just didn’t work and why they weren’t working.

Melinda Wittstock [00:08:30]:

And then when you did experience working within or leading a great team, it feels so different because it feels like things are in flow as opposed to things being like pushing a boulder up a mountain or red tape or being frustrated or any of those things. And you have that in any business, and it’s just not going to do as well. It’s just not. So I had very similar epiphanies, kind of like early in my career, and to go from that, to understand that and see that and to transition from that to really being a great leader. When you’re in that early stage of a company, say, where there’s a lot going on, you’re growing, everything’s moving very quickly, and you have a lot of new team members, and you don’t necessarily have all the systems in place yet because you’re sort of building the plane, you fly it. A lot of mistakes get made there in that pressure, I think we all feel to grow and to move fast. So, what’s your advice for a founder CEO in that kind of scenario? Because I think that’s where a lot of stuff goes wrong or can go awry.

Kerry Siggins [00:09:45]:

Oh, absolutely. And I have so fallen into that trap. I think a lot of people who want to be disruptive, who want to grow a company quickly or do big things in an industry have a fear of missing out and so they can take on too many things or chase the next new idea. I certainly have been guilty of that because I’m a disruptive CEO. I’ve disrupted our industry multiple times over the almost two decades that I’ve been running stone age. And so The advice that I give is focus, focus. And that might feel counterintuitive, especially when companies are looking to grow fast or are not cash flow positive and are looking for ways to get there as fast as possible. But every time that I have stopped and said, we’re doing too much, and we need to focus on the core, focus on the thing that’s going to make us really good, that sets us apart, we’ve always been more successful.

Kerry Siggins [00:10:45]:

The team has always been far less stressed. So, know your vision, know your mission, and just focus on the few things that are really important to helping you get there and then say no to the rest. Even though it feels like you might be giving something up, you aren’t. Because focus really is the key to success.

Melinda Wittstock [00:11:05]:

That’s been a tough one for me because depending on your business model, where there’s so many things you can do and you don’t necessarily know in those early stages is what is the thing, right. That’s really going to differ, especially if you have a lot of options of what is.

Kerry Siggins [00:11:28]:

It’s so hard. It is so hard. I’m on the board of a manufacturing company here in Durango, the town I live in. And it was the very first thing I said when I came in as a board member. And they were really struggling, right? They trying to get cash flow positive and grow the company and they had big ambitions and they said yes to everything. And out of fear that if we don’t try all these different things, if we don’t go after all of these options, we’re not going to hit our growth targets, we’re not going to survive. I had to work with them really carefully to help them narrow in that focus and say, look, if you can test the market with this particular product, with this particular customer, you’re going to know so much more. You’re going to know so much sooner if you’re going to be successful or not.

Kerry Siggins [00:12:15]:

And so we did. We narrowed everything down and it was a painful six months. But once we planted those seeds and they started to sprout, then it began to snowball, and it was a really successful strategy. But I got it. And even as I was giving them advice as a board member, I was like, I hope I’m giving them the right advice because I don’t want my advice to be what sinks them. But doing this for two decades, I just think that focus is really important or going after just a few things. It allows people to focus. It allows people to really hone in on what they need to do to be successful.

Kerry Siggins [00:12:56]:

Not switching directions or being pulled in too many directions. None of us are successful that way. So I think it’s a really important exercise to go through, especially in early stage companies.

Melinda Wittstock [00:13:07]:

So true. So your company is a holding company. You’ve got a number of different businesses and so presumably different teams that you’re managing. So that adds a degree of complexity. How do you manage that same thing?

Kerry Siggins [00:13:25]:

Focus at the top level, the holding company, we’re an employee owned company. We’re an ESOP. And our vision is to create 1000 millionaires through our employee ownership. And the only way that you can do that is by building businesses that bring value to your customers. We’re very focused in the industrial space, so we don’t do anything that’s outside of heavy industry. I like dirty problems. Our core business is Stone Age tools, which is an industrial cleaning equipment manufacturing company. We make water jetting equipment, high tech squirt guns on steroids.

Kerry Siggins [00:14:00]:

We literally clean the dirtiest stuff in the world. Our tools do, our products do. And so we’re really focused on going on those types of businesses. And then what keeps us all together, even though we do different things, is what we call the own it mindset. And that is our set of values and success attributes that make us really successful as employee owners. And so we all share that tie together of the own it mindset. And so that keeps us all tied together, even though each company is focusing on different things, different customers, and has different problems to solve.

Melinda Wittstock [00:14:36]:

100%. And so tell me a little bit about Stone Age. You’ve been doing this for some time now, and the company has obviously grown, and you’ve taken on new businesses. And have these been businesses that have sprouted up within, like entrepreneurial, like within your holding company, or have they been acquisitions, or how?

Kerry Siggins [00:15:04]:

Both. Yeah, both. Our grow is to grow organically, to spin off companies, which we’ve done, and to acquire companies that fit into our ideal industries and portfolios. So I see our future is still continuing to do the same. I know of another business that here, in a couple of years, will be spinning off, just like we did with our sewer tool cleaning business. We spun that off into its own. But then we also acquire companies. We acquire companies that fit into a business unit, or that might be a completely separate business unit. In 2020, we bought a company called Breadware. They develop IoT solutions.

Kerry Siggins [00:15:48]:

IoT stands for Internet of Things, which is basically connected devices, smart devices that are producing data. And they actually helped us develop our first IoT enabled cleaning robot. And they were for sale. And so I bought them, and then I really focused them on industrial applications to help other clients. Our clients in the shared industry develop these smart solutions in industrial facilities. It has a whole separate business model, and it shares some customers and has new customers. But the mission is still the same, solving really hard industrial problems. How do we make industry cleaner, safer, more efficient, more productive?

Melinda Wittstock [00:16:40]:

I’m fascinated by the M&A side of your business and how you evaluate which companies to buy and when you sell them. Talk me through that process a bit.

Kerry Siggins [00:16:52]:

Sure. So we have not sold any business yet, but I can see that happening in the future. So All we’ve done up to this point is acquired new businesses and we’re very careful about it. First and foremost, our culture is number one. And I think that’s a mistake a lot of companies make when they’re looking to grow by acquisition, is they focus on the growth rather than is this a good cultural fit? And most acquisitions fail because it is not a good fit and because people overpay for businesses, typically. And so you have that combination, and it’s a recipe for disaster. So, we always start with culture first.

Kerry Siggins [00:17:34]:

How is this going to improve our culture? How does this company fit into our culture? Are the employees that we’re bringing on are going to add to the owner mindset, embody the owner mindset? And if that’s a no, then we don’t even try. It’s just not worth it.

Melinda Wittstock [00:17:51]:

I can imagine your due diligence is quite an interesting process, evaluating the culture. I mean, do you go around all their employees? How long does that process take?

Kerry Siggins [00:17:59]:

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the acquisition. So, I did an acquisition of a competitor in 2022, and we didn’t get to talk to any of the employees because the founder of the company was so worried that it was going to fail that he didn’t want anybody to know. Right.

Melinda Wittstock [00:18:17]:

Like someone thinking of selling their business, they don’t want to kind of freak out their employees. So how did you manage that?

Kerry Siggins [00:18:25]:

I talked heavily with the founder and the few key people who were involved, and we both agreed that if it wasn’t going to be a good fit culturally, then we shouldn’t pursue it. And so, yeah, I couldn’t go in and talk to people, but I could talk about how we do things and how they do things and how they handle certain situations and how they treat their employees. And because a couple of the key employees were involved, I could get a pretty good read for it. So it turned out that it was a really good cultural fit, but it was an interesting one when you can’t go talk to employees. When we bought Breadware in 2020, which was a really weird time to acquire a company, we bought them at the very beginning of COVID in April, and when everything was just still so unknown, but I could go out and sit down and we talked to every single person on the team. I spent days out there before we made the decision to even put in an offer, to put in a letter of an intent. And so, I much prefer that where you can see people working and really understand what their culture is like before then you even get into, does this make sense from a financial perspective?

Melinda Wittstock [00:19:38]:

There’s another perspective on this, too. Is that the culture really drives the value of the business itself.

Kerry Siggins [00:19:44]:

Agreed. Totally agree. I agree with you 100%.

Melinda Wittstock [00:19:48]:

And I think a lot of people don’t necessarily understand that. I think founders think, oh, well, as long as my revenue is looking good, my profitability, maybe IP or some of these things, right? The kind of traditional way you would value it. But the culture is actually the thing that’s helping you decide whether you buy it or not and what you pay for it too.

Kerry Siggins [00:20:12]:

I would argue that most people don’t agree with that. Then you have the PE who still continues to drive this whole idea that it’s all about value, value, value, and for the most part, it doesn’t really matter about the people. And I personally think that’s ruining businesses today. I would love to say I will never ever sell to private equity. We’re employee owned and we plan to stay that way for a very long time. But I think that it’s a vicious cycle when all you care about is the numbers and all you care about is extracting maximum value. I’ve heard that ad nauseam. Extracting maximum value.

Kerry Siggins [00:20:56]:

On what planet does that make any person feel good, except for the person who wins? And I just don’t think that business needs to be that way. I think if you start with people, you put people first, you think about culture, you think about the value that you’re trying to bring to your employees and then ultimately to your customers. You build such a much more sustainable and healthy company where people actually want to work, rather than a place that, okay, that’s great. You might be extracting maximum value, but is it inspiring people to live their best lives? And you look around the planet, we need inspiration to live our best lives. We have way too many good things as a human Species to be in the situation that we’re in. And I think businesses have that responsibility to try to create a really great place to work so people can live their best lives and they don’t get mirrored down in polarization and a scarcity Mindset and all of those things. And I don’t know, maybe that’s a little philosophical, but I believe that we can play a big role in helping shift that mindset.

Melinda Wittstock [00:22:03]:

I think this is so important what you’re saying. We’ve lived in really since the late seventy s in this very short-term type culture. Like if you look at the stock market, it’s like it’s all quarterly earnings.

Melinda Wittstock [00:22:24]:

So the decisions that leaders are making are incentivized to extract maximum value. And I see more female CEOs, not always, but being more inclined to take companies in this direction where the company is not only sustainable, but it’s good for all the people involved, it’s good for the customers, it’s good for the planet, and it’s a longer-term way of thinking. But it’s tricky though, because, well, let me just say this slightly differently, but in this culture that we’re in with expecting fast results, kind of short-term thinking, all of that, how do you swim in a different direction while everyone else, especially if you have investors in your company, are pushing you in this other more short termism sort of way of thinking?

Kerry Siggins [00:23:30]:

I don’t think it has to be an either or. To be honest. I think that’s a false dichotomy that’s put out there. Oh, you can’t drive results if you have this nice, cushy culture. And I just disagree with it. We are a very fast-moving company, and we move fast, and we are agile because my employees believe in the vision and believe in the mission, and they know that we have their back. And so we are incredibly agile and quick and can make decisions and we can pivot. And so I don’t think you have to have it as a tradeoff.

Kerry Siggins [00:24:07]:

In fact, when I hired the president to run Breadware for me, he said that he was a little bit skeptical, can we really have a culture like this and drive results? And then after he came in and in his first six months here, he was like, you can, you can have this really high performing culture and high performing team who’s driving for results and not have it be this head down, just drive the whip, just focus on the metrics and the numbers kind of culture. So, I don’t see myself as swimming in a different direction. I see myself swimming faster in the same direction, but faster than everybody else. And that just might be the way that I choose to look at it. But I think I’m building a company that is going to be a huge role model for what can be in however capitalism is going to evolve. And so even if other people don’t see it yet, I think that more and more leaders are, and I think that we have an opportunity to be a really shining example of how you build a people centric culture and take care of your customers and drive growth and build a company that’s going to be around for hundreds of years.

Melinda Wittstock [00:25:21]:

I agree with you 100% and thank you for articulating it in that way. I mean, you’re an example. Like when you say, let’s be the change that we want to see in the world.

Kerry Siggins [00:25:33]:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock [00:25:33]:

More folks just need to go do that. And so being able to operate, you mentioned agile, being able to operate quickly, and that makes a lot of sense to me. Like if people just going back to earlier in the conversation, if people know the expectations they’re getting, the support they need, there’s clarity and focus around the goals. And you have those good systems and whatnot in place and people actually love what they do, and they love the people they’re working with and all those things. Obviously, that’s going to go faster. It’s kind of like a no winner.

Kerry Siggins [00:26:05]:

Absolutely. One of the best compliments I’ve ever received came from a person who started with me about eight years ago, and he started in a regional sales manager position role, and now he’s my head of sales. And he said, there’s two things that have changed my life about working for this company. The first one is the quality of my thinking. Never did I ever imagine that I would think about things as strategically and as deeply and from all sides as I have. By working here, you push us to think about things in a different way, holistically. Not just focused on numbers, numbers. Because I tell everybody on my executive team, your executives love this company first, and then you are the leader of your department or your division.

Kerry Siggins [00:26:53]:

You always have to be thinking about what’s best for the company before you think about, but what does this mean for my team? And then the second thing he is, he taught me that by caring for myself, caring for my family, and caring for my team, that I’m going to be so much happier in life. And because of that, I’ve reached success beyond what I ever thought I did. He started out as a mechanic in the industry. He’s like, I just never thought that I would be where I am today. And those are the two things that have dramatically changed my life because of working here. And you don’t do that if you don’t have that culture where you really invest in people holistically. Help them learn how to think, help them learn how to see problems from all different sides, how to be a thinker. A person who can be able to hold multiple ideas, opposing truths in their mind, and know that no matter what, the company has their back, when they’re going through something tough, when they make a mistake, when they flat out fail and that’s how you build a great company.

Kerry Siggins [00:27:54]:

You don’t just fire people because they go through a hard time. You don’t just fire people because they make a mistake. You don’t just fire people because they’re struggling. Invest in them, and they will invest.

Melinda Wittstock [00:28:02]:

Back at you 100%. So, when you’re in your hiring process, what do you look for in your team members? Are you hiring character first or, like, how much of this is? Can you train anybody to be this, or are there a specific type of people that you’re looking to hire?

Kerry Siggins [00:28:24]:

We have a very extensive interview process. It can be very arduous for anybody going through it, but it’s really important for us to bring on future owners of this company who embody the own it mindset. And we have to teach people the own it mindset. Most of us are taught to be the exact opposite. Right. Blame and deflect. Don’t take responsibility.

Kerry Siggins [00:28:48]:

Focus on your career. Don’t think about the team. When they come into our culture, a lot of people are like, is this for real? And then they don’t really know how to engage in it. And so we do have to teach people how to think and act like owners. But there is one thing that I believe that you cannot teach people, especially once they are fully formed adults. And this is what we dig for, and that is accountability. If a person is not accountable, truly not accountable, I don’t think that you can teach that to an adult, not for real, not where it really sticks. And so if we ever hear anything where it’s, yes, I did this, but is a really easy way to be able to pick up on this.

Kerry Siggins [00:29:33]:

Like, is somebody deflecting or blaming here, then we really don’t hire those people. Because as long as you have a growth mindset and you’re willing to be accountable and learn, then we can teach you things. But if you’re not accountable and you don’t have that growth mindset, then you’re just not going to make it at stone Age.

Melinda Wittstock [00:29:51]:

Right? Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting way of saying it, that accountability, so many people are trained not to be right, to hide behind others and blame. And that puts people in a position of complete powerlessness in a. I agree. They think power, but it’s the exact opposite.

Kerry Siggins [00:30:12]:

Yeah. That’s why I wrote my book, the ownership mindset. It really is about empowering yourself. I think the ownership mindset, when you own every decision you make, when you have the mindset of things happen because of me, they don’t just happen to me, and I’m responsible for the outcome of my life. You can change your life. Having the ‘Own It’mindset empowers you to get through anything. It makes you learn from the mistakes that you make. It allows you to be that role model even when things are hard because it’s always going to be hard.

Kerry Siggins [00:30:43]:

Nobody has 100% great days, or nobody goes through life with a breeze as a breeze. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to analyze yourself, look at where you can do better, understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and that’s really where the owner mindset comes in. And if you embrace that, you can.

Melinda Wittstock [00:31:00]:

Transform your life 100%. I mean, that is such a big cultural shift that needs to change, because so many people get, like. I guess it’s like a dopamine hit. You see it on social media just by other people or getting angry at other people, and it’s so embedded in our culture. What are some of the questions that you ask people in that interview process to understand whether they have that accountability? Gene, I guess, yeah.

Kerry Siggins [00:31:32]:

I mean, we ask very direct questions. Tell us about the biggest mistake that you’ve made in your career. Tell us about a time when you let a teammate down. Tell us about a time when you had to take the blame for something that wasn’t your fault. And we’re less worried about the exact situation. What we want to hear are people willing to give real answers. Give real answers. Every single one of us have done that.

Kerry Siggins [00:32:00]:

Every single one of us has had to take blame for something we didn’t do, who let a teammate down, who made a big mistake, who really screwed things up. And so what we look for is we look for our answers that truly exhibit somebody owning and showing that they learned from it. We care much less about the exact situation that happened unless it was, like, an ethical issue. But even then, we’re willing to have that conversation, because, let’s face it, we are faced with ethical dilemmas every single day. Leaders especially. And my philosophy here at Stone Age is we always, always do the right thing. It doesn’t matter if it costs us money. It doesn’t matter if it embarrasses us.

Kerry Siggins [00:32:45]:

We always do the right thing, and we have to live by that integrity. And so even if it’s an ethical issue, I will still dig in with that person. What did you learn from it, and what changes did you make because of it? Because we’ve all been faced with those types of decisions, and let’s face it, we probably all have made a decision that maybe didn’t align with our values or wasn’t as ethical as it should have been.

Melinda Wittstock [00:33:13]:

100%. So, this gets now to what I’ve been dying to ask you about. Organizing your company as an ESOP, because it presupposes you’d have to have people with an own it mindset to really get to that mission of thinking like owners, to the point where everybody is literally an owner of the company. Tell me about the genesis of how you got to structure your company as an ESOP, what it means for all your employees, just all the specifics of how that works.

Kerry Siggins [00:33:45]:

Sure. So when I came on board to Stone Age in 2007, we were already an employee owned company, but it was a homegrown stock ownership program that the two founders had put into place. In the late 80s, they started a profit-sharing program that was really successful in getting people to think beyond just themselves. They started thinking about, oh, how do I improve profit? How do I improve efficiency? How do I affect my bottom line? And so, they decided to start sharing in the success of the company through a stock ownership program. So, every year, at the end of the year, employees could buy stock. And it was just a homegrown formula that the two founders put together. And it was really successful. When I came on board, I think employees owned probably about 25% of the company.

Kerry Siggins [00:34:31]:

And then when we decided to do an ESOP in 2014, employees owned about 40% of the company, and the two founders had the other 60%. So, it was a really successful program, but it wasn’t sustainable. We are sub s corporation, so you can only have 100 shareholders. We were growing internationally. You can’t have foreign shareholders in a sub s corporation. And we were buying and selling more than a million dollars of stock every year. So we were outside of the SEC safe harbor rules.

Kerry Siggins [00:35:00]:

And so we had to make a change to fix all of these issues, to be able to have some more of. More of a sustainable program. Plus, our founders at the time, they were getting into their mid to late sixty s. And I said, who owns this company when you two die, when something happens to you? A machinist who’s been buying stock for 20 years in the company, who loves the feeling of being an owner and has made a significant return on his investment, but he doesn’t want the responsibility of actually owning. So We debated a couple of different models, a management buyout and an ESOP. And we decided that broad ownership was what we wanted.

Kerry Siggins [00:35:43]:

And so we formed an ESOP trust and we started the process of buying out our founders and the. Oh, I guess we had probably 65, almost 70 employee shareholders. So, in 2022, we became 100% ESOP owned. It took us those seven, eight years to buy everybody out, and it was a really great program. But now we have something that’s much more sustainable and much more manageable than the homegrown program that we had.

Melinda Wittstock [00:36:13]:

That’s so interesting. So, for companies that are taking, say, investment, like VC investment or whatever, how do they look at mean, would you ever be able to do a venture backed company as an ESOP?

Kerry Siggins [00:36:29]:

Absolutely. KKR, a big private equity firm, is setting up ESOPs everywhere. So, yes, there’s always a way to do it, but I would say that to do an ESOP, I mean, that’s one of many employee ownership models. It’s a pretty unique situation that you would need to be in to be an ESOP. So I probably wouldn’t start out as being, becoming one until you establish yourself as a company. But one of the things that I think that VC backed companies do that’s a mistake, is that they don’t look at their equity compensation as ownership. They talk about it as compensation. So, a lot of times you have to give equity because you don’t have the cash to be able to pay the salaries that you need to attract the type of talent that you need.

Kerry Siggins [00:37:18]:

And so, you give equity, but they should talk about it as ownership. This is how you own a piece of it, not just how you benefit financially. This is part of your compensation package. Create an environment where people see it as ownership, and that is how you can start to get people to think and act like owners, rather than. I’m just in this for me. How is this company growing so that I can make sure that I’m maximizing my stock options? So, venture backed companies, even though ESOPs don’t necessarily make sense, you can talk about your compensation package through the lens of ownership. If you’re giving equity as part of that comp.

Melinda Wittstock [00:37:59]:

Yeah, 100% my company. I mean, when people join, everybody gets an ownership grant. I actually make a point of saying this is not part of your compensation.

Kerry Siggins [00:38:09]:

Yeah, right. That’s great. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock [00:38:11]:

So tell me, how does it work for an average employee? Does their ownership grow over time, or what’s the kind of average kind of ownership? How does that all work? Your cap table? I’m curious.

Kerry Siggins [00:38:27]:

Yeah. So it’s a five year vesting period, so it rewards longevity. Every year we contribute new stock into the plan. Anywhere between 10% to 20% of people’s compensation depending on what’s happening that particular year. And then because we’re a growing company, then we also see the valuation grow, which means that the stock price increases. So, they’re getting new shares put into their ESOP plan every year. Plus, they’re getting the growth of the stock as well. So, it’s a very rich benefit if it’s a growing company.

Kerry Siggins [00:39:07]:

And how you maximize that is you stay with the company for as long as you can. It’s a long-term ownership model. And then if you leave the company, it’s your money. If you don’t want to pay a 10% tax penalty, then you roll it into an IRA. Or if you’re a retirement age, you can just start taking it as retirement, but it’s your money. So, if you say, hey, I want to go start a business, or I want to use this to buy a house, you can take a 10% penalty and take that money and use it for what you want. But it’s set up as a retirement benefit. We don’t talk about it as a retirement benefit.

Kerry Siggins [00:39:40]:

We believe it’s an ownership structure. This is how all of our employees get to be owners in the company. And so We really teach people and educate people around this long term thinking around ownership. And how do you really grow your wealth? And that is add value to the company, help us grow and be with the company for as long as possible.

Melinda Wittstock [00:40:05]:

Well, that’s amazing. So inspiring. Kerry, I could talk to you for a lot longer. I just want to ask you what’s next for you. I mean, just continuing to grow. You have a lot of board seats. You’re doing a lot of. So, tell me, what’s the next thing that we’re going to see from you in the next kind of five years? Where do you want to be 5 to 10 years from now?

Kerry Siggins [00:40:27]:

Yeah, I mean, executing this mission of, this vision of creating 1000 millionaires. So, you’ll see us absolutely focusing on growth, and then I’ll continue doing what I do to advocate for employee ownership and whether that’s from a board perspective, from a speaking perspective. I plan to write book number two. I’m going to start that this year. So that should be out within the next couple of years. It’s just to keep the visibility on what we’re doing from an industry perspective, really driving our industry forward. We’re in really tough, dirty industries that need help to revolutionize with technology and safety and efficiency and also just keep preaching this whole idea of, of shared wealth through more conscious capitalism.

Melinda Wittstock [00:41:21]:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today, Carrie. It’s so inspiring. And we’ll have all the ways to contact you and everything in the show notes. But thank you so much.

Kerry Siggins [00:41:35]:

Thanks for having me. This was so much fun. I really appreciate your great questions. Thank.