I am Kerry Siggins, and I am a force for positive corporate change.
I am passionate about transformational leadership, culture creation, employee ownership, and cultivating the “Ownership Mindset” – a blueprint for empowering yourself, others, and your company to reach your full potential.
What I Do
I am the CEO of StoneAge, a fast-growing manufacturing and tech company based in Colorado. I was fortunate enough to be named a Top Influential CEO in 2021 and was a finalist for Colorado’s CEO of the Year in 2017. StoneAge is recognized as a Top 100 Company to Work For by Outside Magazine and we are 100% employee-owned. I sit on several boards and am a Young President Organization (YPO) member. I deliver keynotes on transformational leadership, culture creation, employee ownership, and cultivating the “Ownership Mindset. I host several podcasts, including the popular podcast Reflect Forward. I am an author, blogger, and contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Authority Magazine, and BIC Magazine, and my blog is visited by thousands of readers each month. And coming soon is my book, The Ownership Mindset: A Handbook for Transforming Your Life and Leadership.
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My Leadership Journey
At the age of 28, I began my journey of leading StoneAge. I quickly learned how to adjust my style to effectively lead smart people who knew a heck of a lot more than I did. Being a relatively young leader, especially for my role, I had a lot to learn — not only about the product and the industry — but also how to manage and motivate people. And managing and motivating people takes exceptional leadership and communication skills. To be quite frank, I screwed up a lot in my early days and still am learning from the mistakes I make today. I am passionate about The Ownership Mindset, which is about growth, self-awareness, accountability, improved communication skills, and owning everything that happens in life, even the bad stuff. By doing the hard work daily, I’ve been able to embody The Ownership Mindset to transform my life and leadership. And now, my biggest impact comes from serving others by helping them learn how to transform their lives and leadership by Owning It, too
What is The Ownership Mindset?
Owners act and think differently than employees. To an owner, a business is more than a source of income. It’s part of their identity. They view its success as their own. But I believe that ownership is a mindset. The conscious development of the ownership mindset in oneself and others—learning to “think like an owner”—makes the difference between paycheck players and top performers.
Here’s what the “Own It Mindset” looks like at StoneAge
StoneAge is delighted to provide our employees with rewarding jobs and the opportunity to collaborate with remarkable teammates and accomplish meaningful work in our industry. As a 100% employee-owned company, we are responsible for conducting ourselves as savvy owners. In general, this means we dovetail the challenges and rewards of business acumen with our skills, talents, and knowledge. It also means we connect as human beings while we do our jobs to sustain the company as a leader in our industry. The values of Be A Great Teammate, Practice Self-Leadership and Deliver on the StoneAge Assurance Promise are the foundation of our culture and will assist you in understanding how your performance, as well as how you show up. Embodying the “Own It Mindset” will sustain StoneAge as a viable business. The ongoing cultivation of our culture is something we are all responsible for, and we take this responsibility seriously – because we OWN IT!
Why am I so passionate about ownership thinking?
Because The Ownership Mindset saved my life.
You see, I didn’t always embody The Ownership Mindset. In fact, in 2006, I was on the floor of my apartment, overdosing on controlled substances, in part because I wasn’t taking ownership of my life and career. Until I began the process of rebuilding my life, I was just a paycheck player. I blamed my boss and coworkers for my unhappiness at work. I definitely didn’t “Own It.” But by undertaking the dramatic shift from an employee mindset to an ownership mindset, I pulled myself from the depths of substance abuse and a dead-end lifestyle to become one of the country’s most inspiring employee-owned company leaders.
I’ve learned over the years the power of ownership thinking and I want to share what I’ve learned because I believe “Own It” cultures are the way of the future. When you embrace the ownership mindset, you can transform your life, team and company. You can buck the poor engagement statistics and build a more forward-thinking, profitable organization that your employees rave about.
I am here to help. Why? Because we leaders need to change how we run companies and build cultures. We need to treat people like adults, pay them fair wages, and above all else, value them as if they own the company, too.
Want to Know a Bit More?
I grew up in Montrose, a small town on the western slope of Colorado. At 18, I left home to attend Colorado School of Mines, a small engineering school in Golden, Colorado on a softball scholarship. At Mines, I quickly learned that I didn’t want to be an engineer. Quitting is not my style, so I stuck it out, graduated, and moved to Austin, Texas with the intent of working for a year or two and then going to graduate school. I found a jobs as a part-time waitress and as an operations coordinator for Eaton Corporation’s electrical engineering services group in central Texas. I quickly fell in love with the complexity of manufacturing, engineering, and operations and knew I found my passion. I did a short stint in the IT recruiting world where I learned about talent management, software, and client development. I never made it to grad school.
After 5 years, I decided that the crazy lifestyle of Austin and the heat of Texas summers weren’t for me. In fact, I was living an unfilled life fueled by substance abuse, body image issues, and constant negative self-talk. I decided that if life was worth living, I better do it differently. So I put my belongings in storage, packed up my SUV, and drove to Durango, Colorado where my mom lived. I cried most of the 1000 miles out of both fear and excitement, sadness and happiness. I think that’s just what happens when you follow your heart.
I had no money and only a little hope of finding a job that would allow me to stay in Durango, but I figured I could be a ski bum for a winter and then move to Denver if it didn’t work out. Luckily, I found StoneAge, where the two founders saw something in me that made them decide that I just might be the one who could take over running their company. They took a risk (although they thought I only had a 50/50 chance of making it) and hired me.
I was named one of the Top 10 Most Infuencial CEOs in 2021 and was a finalist for Colorado’s CEO of the Year in 2017. StoneAge is recognized as a Top 100 company to work for by Outside Magazine. I sit on several other boards and am a member of YPO where I am on the executive committee of the Doing Business Globally Network.
I’m an author and blogger; I’ve been featured in publications such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, BIC Magazine, Times of Entrepreneurs, and Authority Magazine, and my blog is visited by thousands of readers each month.
I host two podcasts, Industrial Theory and Reflect Forward, and am an author and blogger; my articles have been published in a variety of magazines and my blog is visited by tens of thousands of readers each month.
Finally, but most importantly, I am the mother of an amazing kiddo named Jack, and the wife of Ryan Siggins, a serial entrepreneur whose latest adventure is SoCo Wood & Windows, where we sell windows, doors, cabinets, and high-end custom millwork.
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