The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

"Servant Leadership in Action" My Conversation with Robert Owens Part 2

• Mark Cundiff

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In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark interviews long-time friend and distinguished leader Robert Owens. Robert shares his journey from working at Lowe's to becoming Regional Vice President of Stratus Construction Solutions. 

He discusses his leadership experiences, the challenges he faced, and the key lessons he learned in both the nonprofit and business worlds. Robert emphasizes the importance of integrity, character, and caring for people in leadership. 

He also provides insights on balancing work and community service, the importance of safety in the construction industry, and the value of mentorship and continuous learning. This episode serves as a masterclass in servant leadership, grit, and humility.


00:00 Introduction: Building Influence Through Integrity

00:46 Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show

01:01 Meet Robert Owens: A Journey of Service and Leadership

02:39 Robert's Career Journey: From Lowe's to Leadership

03:47 Leadership Lessons from the Broom Closet

09:57 The Power of Influence in Nonprofit and Business Worlds

12:52 Continuous Learning and Personal Growth

15:43 Challenges and Strategies in the Construction Industry

19:48 Safety First: Leading with Care and Responsibility

23:29 Key Behaviors and Habits of Effective Leaders

27:09 Conclusion: Servant Leadership and Humility


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LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go.

It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.

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Integrity and caring for people will build influence. And if you have influence, people will follow. I think that for me, I can take what I see in the nonprofit world and I can bring it over into my business secular world, but for me they there's not really a separation because I also serve on several boards like WellStar. So one of the things I love about WellStar is that I get to be surrounded by very smart people who have a clear focus of what they wanna do. How do they get there? I learned that if you can surround yourself with passionate people who can pour into you're never too old to to keep learning, Hello. Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show where we help leaders learn and grow on the go. Today I have the privilege of having a long time friend Robert Owens on the show. Robert has been a friend of mine since early two thousands, about 20 years now. We have been members of the same church for many years until I moved away. He has just been a pleasure to know. One of the things I always remember when I think about Robert Owens is he's always got a smile on his face no matter what's going on, and he's always got a hug for a friend. Robert has been a long-term resident of Paulden County where he was just recently named Citizen of the Year for his many volunteer endeavors. He has been a long time Rotarian. He has served on many boards like the WellStar Ping Hospital Regional Board. He's been the vice chairman there. He's been on the. Pauling County Fire Advisory Board, the Pauling County Zoning Appeals Board, the Paling County Water and Sewer Advisory Board. He's also been a board member for a long time of Kaya. Come as You Are ministries in Dallas, Georgia, a non-profit that really helps the underserved and needy in the community. Robert has been a dedicated volunteer for Caye Ministries for many years. In addition to serving on the board professionally, he is the regional Vice president of Stratus Construction Solutions Company, a contract subcontractor specializing in multifamily apartments, renovations, and commercial projects such as hospitals and office buildings. With offices in Atlanta, Pensacola, Tampa, Nashville, and Memphis. Shortly, we're going to learn a little bit about Robert's career journey, the ups and downs, how he started out working in Lowe's many years ago and worked into having his own company for a while, suffered through the economic downturn that many did in the construction industry in the 2008 era, and then recovered from that to now be a top leader in the construction industry. For this company that he's working for now. Today we're gonna learn a little bit about his leadership journey, learn about how he has risen to the tops of his profession through many trials and tribulations. He's learned a lot along the way. I'm excited for you to learn from Robert today. He's married to his wife Tammy. They live in Paulden County still, and he is a proud grandfather. See his pictures on Facebook with his grandson Joshua. He's just a great family man, a great friend, and has some great leadership lessons for us today. So stay tuned and enjoy my interview with Robert Owens. Today we're gonna move out of the broom closet where we left Robert at the last episode. He was there after having been replaced by his former competitor. Today we're going to pick up in the broom closet and take part two of the interview. If you haven't listened to part one, you need to go back and listen to part one in the previous episode so that you can get some context to where we're starting out today. One thing I want to ask you, are you busy and still need to learn and grow and develop as a leader? If so, I've got the perfect solution for you. Today's podcast is sponsored by my own newsletter, the Learning to Lead Newsletter that comes out every Monday with five to seven minutes worth of valuable content to help inspire you, encourage you, equip you. And put you on your way to learning and growing in your leadership journey. You can subscribe by going to Mark j kdu slash newsletter Mark j kdu slash newsletter, and you can get that in the show notes as well. And then I wanna also encourage you to download our leader notes. Every episode I put together some leader notes that summarize the podcast interview or show that we did that day. And give you some insights that you can grasp. If you're out there driving and can't take notes or you just wanted to remember a book that was mentioned, I'll put all those in the leader notes and you can download those as well. Those are in the show notes, so if you would stay tuned and enjoy this great interview with Robert Owens. after I sold my company to my distributor, I ended up from day one becoming really a bonafide salesperson. I was working for a general manager who was actually my former competitor. He took great joy in humiliating me. I'll never forget the day after I sold my company, I came to my office and he had moved into my office where I sat and had set up a folding table in a broom closet at the front of the building. I said where's my spot? He said, your spot's in the closet. So here I am, on a Friday being the owner of this company. And on Monday I'm relegated to literally the broom closet of my building. And those were some sleepless nights. He did everything he could to make me miserable. Even at that time, mark you probably remember there were lots of phone calls you would have at night and I would just, download or vomit I would say at this point. To you, all of these things. And you would help me think through those things. I just, made the decision that, you know what he doesn't define me. I define myself. So what I'm gonna do is get up and do what I do, and I'm gonna do it every day to the best of my ability. That's what I can control. I'll never forget this. You gave me this tip, and I don't even know if you remember this or not, but one day I called you and I was crying out to you. This guy does this and why won't this guy do this? And he won't do this, and he won't do that. And you had me literally take out a piece of legal paper. Write a line in the middle of the paper and you told me to write everything I can control on the right and everything I couldn't on the left. And then you said, now do what you can on the right. Hold that piece of paper in half. That's what you do. You only worry about what you can control. That was very liberating to me because I realized how much negative energy I was spending, trying to figure out a strategy to change him versus just doing what I thought was the right thing to do in the moment and letting that be enough. So that was a strategic part of my journey because a very short time later. The man I sold it to, fired my gm and then asked me to run my old company for him. Wow. So I was back at a GM level, not a ownership level, but I had full authority to run my company again. That in itself had some challenges because I wouldn't say we were probably not equally yoked in in our view of life, not so much in our view of work. He was a very successful businessman. We didn't fundamentally think of. Of the nuts and bolts of running a subcontracting company differently. But how we went about doing it was totally different. He very much thought that he would use his authority to dictate, he used the pressure of a paycheck or a bonus to manipulate people, put the thumb on their neck. To make them do what they, what he needed them to do. And if they didn't, they were out. Where I was more of a kinder, gentler type of personality that was trying to influence and build camaraderie. For my team, it wasn't as hard as it was for me because I had, I stood in the gap between ownership and the employees. Then that led. Finally him selling the company to the manufacturer of the cement, which is a national company who then retained me to run my old company, but gave me even more freedom and formed a partnership. Then just to fast forward and then to tie bow around that through a series of acquisitions, I now am the regional vice president running five companies four including my former company, and I have total responsibility over the region. Wow. There's a lot of gold in that the stories that you shared there. And one, one of the things that I just want to commend you for is that you, you stuck to who you were. You were getting pressure to lead in a way that wasn't consistent with your personality, but you continued to work with the influence, with the relationships. Let's bridge that over because this is not the only area that you lead in. You're very big in the nonprofit world, just was named the citizen of the year there in your community, and that's come with many hours of spending time in the community, both in your church and other nonprofits. Kind of share a little bit about what you've learned about leadership when you're working in a nonprofit world and volunteer world and how that's. And, influenced and strengthened your leadership on the profit side? Sure. It's there comes a time, I think, in everybody's life where you start to kinda look at what success and prosperity is. And for me you spend a lot of us spend an early part of our career trying to. Get, gain our footing and have success in whatever endeavor we're trained to do. And in my case, it was the business world. But then I began to I've always always of course loved the Lord and wanted to serve my, my church and my community. But I just really had a passion about that. And one of the things that I've noticed about nonprofits is in their leadership model, they have to be very. Myopic and what they are called to do. Most of these nonprofits have a specific need or mission field, and so in my case, if it's Kaya, it's serving the spiritual and physical needs of the community. And they do that by providing food. And these nonprofits are laser focused on the end goal. For me, seeing how passion will drive their effectiveness and then how they have to take people who aren't getting paid and they have to get those people to be on the front lines of their success. They're only as good as their people. So from that, I, you you get shown the model that that character. Integrity and caring for people will build influence. And if you have influence, people will follow. And so I think that for me, I can take what I see in the nonprofit world and I can bring it over into. Into my business secular world, but for me they there's not really a separation because I also serve on several boards like WellStar. And so one of the things I love about WellStar is that I get to be surrounded by very smart people who have a clear focus of what they wanna do. How do they get there? And I learned that if you can surround yourself with passionate people who can pour into you you're never too old to, to keep learning, right? Yeah. And I was telling my wife, when I go to these meetings, sometimes I just pick one little nugget, one little phrase, one little saying and I bring that back with me. And then I find myself using that in, in my world of subcontract. Let's bridge on that a little bit because that's one of the things that you've done over the, you're, you've, you're a very curious person. You're very humble and you're always trying to learn, and so you're sharing how you're learning from these other people that you're on boards with your peers and other people that you're. Involved with, what are some other ways that you go about sharpening your soul and growing as a leader? I think I do try to spend a couple of things. I try to spend some time reading. Of course. I think that we're never too old to learn. And so I, I enjoy reading leadership books. I have a couple of favorites myself. Good to great, but Jim Collins is my to go. And I read and reread that and listen to that on audio. Because that book in itself taught me where I used to have this thought of, I have this employee, you're not doing what I want. I have to get rid of you and get a new employee. And I have that cycle. Maybe perhaps the concept that I have an employee who, who just is on the wrong seat on the bus. And so you've got this guy who is really struggling over here, and then you move him over here and he just thrives. Yeah. And so I've seen that play out time and time again in, in my company where I've just been able to sit and listen and move people to the right seat on the bus. So that's one thing that I do. I try to spend some time in some podcasts. I try, for me, I try to spend because of my faith, I try to spend time in the word I don't think there's any great leadership book than the Bible. And, one of the things that's, that, that's my life verse is from the Book of John where he talks about, Jesus says a new commandment I give you that you'll love others just as I have loved you. And Jesus modeled that he came to serve and not be served. And so for me, that kind of refreshes it. And then the only other thing that, that I do, which. Comes unnatural to me, but it's becoming more natural. And that is to try to create some margin to just think, running five companies I'm constantly shifting gears and so I'm shifting gears from one meeting to the next, from one company's problems to the next. And then, and then I go to my, to the nonprofits or, but sometimes I just need to get away. Think. And I used to feel like that would just come naturally, but I'm learning that you have to create that margin yourself. You have to fight for that margin in order to just give yourself just a little bit of bandwidth to think and then reenergize. That's really good. When you think about your journey. And you're now leading organizations in multiple states and in multiple different types of personalities and so forth. What are you seeing the big challenges that leaders are facing out there on the front lines that, that you try to help'em with and try to help'em now go? What are some maybe common themes that you're seeing out on the front lines with leaders and the things they're struggling with? In the construction world it's interesting because success is defined by the bottom line, at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year. But with construction, you have so many moving targets because things can affect it. So we're bidding jobs. That that aren't, the ground's not gonna be broken for a year. We may not start for a year and a half later. And now even though we are pretty good at at estimating what our material costs are, the biggest issue is labor. And labor can just absolutely kill your organization. And so what I see really is the common frustration of trying to figure out as a leader. How do I get the labor? How do I get that labor in control? But more importantly, how do I get full buy-in from my people? And so I think that's the struggle because as the authority, I can command someone to do what I ask them to do by the position of my title, I can demand that doesn't necessarily mean that they will follow me. What I need them to do is to follow me and to believe me, and if I can influence that where they believe in my calls and they'll trust me and they follow me, then they'll want to. To stand in our processes that we do. And so I find that as I'm talking to other leaders, that's the common theme is that they're trying to figure out a way to convince people to pull the same way on the rope and in construction. You've got I was talking to my team the other day and and I gave them this analogy about success and mine. So in my world, success for one of my laborers means that he has a job and he gets a check on Friday, and that's the extent of his success for his boss, my pro, my project manager. He needs that guy to be successful by showing up to work, not getting hurt and doing the job and the customer being happy. That's success for him. And that's where it ends. But then when it makes its way up to me, my success. Is every one of their successes, but did we make money? Yeah. The bottom line. So how do I tie in where the guy that is busting a cement bag in a hundred degree temperature in Atlanta, Georgia, in July, how can I connect his success to my success and my success to his. And because otherwise we just go about worried about our own success. And so what I've come to learn is the more that I invest in that guy who's busting a cement bag, that he knows that I care about him and that I worry about him, and that I want his dreams to be my dreams and I care about his ambitions and his family. When I can achieve that, then he cares about my success. And so I think as any organization, especially in construction, that's the underlying issue of if you can win that, then you can get a long way toward your goal. That's really good, connecting those dots, but it takes a time and an investment. It doesn't, you can't just snap your fingers and have that happen. You mentioned safety in, in, in the world that I was in, in industrial manufacturing and in your world that's a big thing, but it's often a very challenging thing to lead and lead effectively. How do y'all approach leading safety and making sure that your people go home the same way that they came? What's your approach to leading that? One of the things that we did that I'm really proud of as our organization is of. The front lines or the forward thinking lines of safety as a subcontractor, what would happen would be that, that people would look at safety as this burden, I've gotta buy the PPE and my guys have to wear the hard hats and the glasses and all the safety paraphernalia that goes with that. And so what we did was we turned the script and we said, we want you to go home to your family. That's the very most important thing. It's not about the dollars, it's about you going home to your wife and your children. And so we want to place an investment in that. And so we're gonna outfit you with the very best equipment. I have a full-time safety director. We reward people. And my, my safety manager might go out to a job and hand out gift cards just because, they're wearing their hard hats without anybody kind of cracking the whip. Now on the alternate side, what I noticed as the guy that signs the contracts, I started seeing this 172 page contract and three pages of it. Was my scope and the rest of it was safety. So I started realizing pretty early on that what these builders really were doing, these builders were really risk managers for investment people who are building multifamily projects. And so they're gonna hire a general contractor to be that risk manager, to create a product that will eventually create a return for their investments. And so they started seeing. Hal we now see that you guys have made an investment. We're not having to come and warn you and give you citations. You're stepping up with your safety manual. So for me, safety's no longer a thing that we should do. It's a thing that we have to do, but the have to is not because of the dollars the have to is because we want people to go home to their families. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, that, that's the way I've always approached it because it's all a part of what you said earlier about caring about the people and it's not just caring about them, their families and stuff, but it you're caring about their wellbeing. And I also like what you said there, it, it's really becoming 30 years ago when I started in manufacturing there, there was some lip service to a lot of the safety stuff and like a lot of command and control stuff that you've talked about. But then. Eventually it moved into, if you're not doing this, your safety record's bad, you're not gonna get the contract. And so it's really become, an expectation for many companies. That you're going to do this. And so if you're not doing that and you're not connecting with your people and they're not bought into that it can actually hurt your bottom line a lot more than buying PPE oh, you're, no you're exactly right. We now. We call it most of these larger organizations and developers, they use third party prequalification vendors. And so they want what we call our EMR rating. They want our OSHA 30 logbook, and if those numbers don't meet the criteria, yeah, you could be on the outside looking in. Yeah, for sure. That, that's great that you've developed this positive what I call positive reinforcement on that safety, catching people doing things right so that you're not reacting to bad situations. And it sounds like you've put together some really good practices there. If you were to advise a leader. About, an avatar of key behaviors, habits, practices what would be some of the things that Robert would want to see an aspiring leader or a leader that's coming up in your organization? What are some key things that you look for in a leader? I think that, I think for me, one of the things that, that I would say as a leader is really the character reinforcement. I believe that, you should of course do what you say you're gonna do. But I also think there's just some things that we can do internally. One of the things that I use anybody that kind of knows me is that I carry a notebook with me. And I not only take notes, but I make lists. Those lists really involve and my wife makes fun of me sometimes, but I never end the day without creating a list of what I wanna accomplish the next day. And I have this list broken down into I have to, I need to, and I'd like to and I try to always check off the have tos, who wouldn't do that? But like the need tos for me is, hey, have I called one of my employees today and told'em how thankful I am for them? Have I called one of my customers today and just not because they have a job that we're getting ready to buy out, but I just wanna call'em and see how they're doing. Hey, I heard, I heard your wife was sick or, how's that new baby? And all that kind of stuff. I think that to, to develop the habit of taking your day and not just waking up and saying, gee, I hope I can get done what I get done. And then being frustrated that you didn't because when I walk in the door, I typically am gonna get a curve ball or four. I just am. And so with that list, I can at least try to stay on point. So that's just some advice I would give someone is to plan out your day and to work your plan. I do think that you need to spend some time investing in others on a daily basis, whatever that means. It could, you can't be too busy not to find out what's going on in people's lives. And try to be part of that. And then obviously we talk about this too. There's such good material out there. Find a mentor, find somebody. It doesn't have to be in the same field that you are, but find someone that you can talk to and you can share, not just the loft, the lofty good things, but really get down and dirty and share where you're struggling. Where do I struggle in my leadership abilities? And is there anything that you've gone through that you can help?'cause I think people typically, they hear something, they might remember it, right? But if they're involved, if they can touch it and feel it then they're gonna apply it. And so a lot of times that's even done with, with life coaching or even leadership retreats or with a good friend. And I, you and I have talked about this. That's what you've been to me over many years where I've, I found myself struggling with an issue and I just can't see beyond that issue. And so sometimes a phone call and an hour later. I'm making that list. I'm figuring it out, and it gets me over the hump, and so don't be afraid to reach out and look at your failure. Yeah. Robert, man, I appreciate your time today. You have shared some real pearls of wisdom and if. Our listeners will just take one or two of these things. It can really be a game changer for'em. Yeah. And appreciate your time and good luck as you continue to run these different companies. I appreciate that. Thanks, mark. Always good to talk to you. Thanks. Robert Owens gave us a raw and honest look at what it means to lead when you unprepared under pressure and out of options. He took us from a story of taking over a business he did not even ask for, to leading through concrete soaked weekends and economic collapse. Robert's story is a masterclass in servant leadership, grit, and humility. Here's what I hope you took away today. Leadership isn't about polish. It's about presence. It's not about titles. It's about trust, sometimes the best leaders are forged, not in the boardrooms, but in the broom closets if today's episode spoke to you, share it with someone who's in the trenches. make sure that you get your copy of today's Leader Notes. This is a summary that gives you quotes, key takeaways, and gives you some insights into today's podcast. Make sure you download Leader Notes. It's in the show notes if you got some great value out of today's content, please subscribe, share with a friend, and give us a five rating on your favorite podcast player of your choice. Let others know about the Learning to Lead Show so that we continue to help leaders grow on the go and go from being a good leader to a great leader who influence their communities, their families, and their organizations in a positive way. Until next time, keep learning, keep leading, and stay humble.