The Achieve Podcast - Alicia Powers (Price Builders)

Welcome to Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industries, and having an impact. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and today we're excited to learn, to learn from Alicia Powers, the president of Price Builders. You can find them at pricebuilders.com. Now, Alicia, give us the backstory on how you got into the space and the organization you're now leading.

Sure. Well, thanks for having me, Taylor Baker Baker. Yeah, so I'm a military veteran. So I started out my career in the Air Force and—

Thank you for your service.

Thank you. I appreciate it. First started in air traffic control and airport management. And at that time in the larger sphere of the country, they were doing a lot of— we were doing a lot of stimulus investment. And so my airfield where I was stationed in Florida, we got a lot of money for construction of runways and airfield lighting systems and different projects. And so I got involved with construction then as a young lieutenant, basically being involved in the project management and execution of these kind of major airfield construction projects. And from there, I really— it kind of bit me, I guess. I really learned to love managing something on a large scale that you could also just see and touch and you could feel the You could feel the experience and feel the improvement. And, you know, saving people's lives in the Air Force is not so much, but it did make a difference for like what we were doing. It made a difference for the squadrons and base. It was easy to see. And I appreciated that about it. And I also really gained an appreciation for working with tradespeople. Also through working with the air traffic controllers, people who were real professionals in what they had done and had chosen, you know, a profession, an actual profession, and were very specialized. and had, took a lot of pride in what they did. And I, I showed up as a, what we call a baby lieutenant, uh, or a butter bar, and, um, was tasked with leading all these people. And the first, the first task when you're, um, in charge of people is to understand what they're doing and show them how much you appreciate them. And so I, I learned how to do that in the Air Force, and then I took that to, when I got out of the Air Force, I, I went to commercial construction for a while. So I did that for about 7 years working in the elevator space, and then transitioned to residential construction with a shower remodeling company. Um, and that's where I first started residential construction, which is like a completely different ball game than commercial construction. Um, but in a lot of— a lot— there's a lot of pros and cons, but it also— I kind of fell in love with kind of working with people in their homes and being in these intimate spaces with people and being able to really, you know, have this short-cycle measurable impact on their lives, um, and, and walk them through projects in their own homes, I think is a really neat experience. And then throughout that time, I got my general contractor's license myself, decided I wanted to be more of an entrepreneur. And so I was able to acquire the company Price Builders, which I had actually been— my husband and I actually been customers of for like 4 years prior to that and developed a relationship with the owner. And yeah, here we sit. So now I'm the president and owner and I still work with the founder full time. Um, and we're here in San Diego just doing work.

Wow, that's impressive. Now, how big is the organization right now?

Um, we're pretty small on the, on the GC side, so, uh, local to San Diego, focused on San Diego. And, um, we have an in-house crew, uh, focus on framing. We do self-perform, um, a good amount of the, the framing, the carpentry, and the foundation work. But we also have a real crew of subcontractors that we've been loyal to. So the company's been in business for 33 years, and some of those subcontractors have been with us for 33 years, believe it or not. And so that was part of what, what came with acquiring a business is you have this, this suite of this family almost of specialty subcontractors that, that we work with every day.

Wow, that's impressive. 33 years, that's a long time. So yeah, now at this stage, what would you say is driving growth for the business?

I think a reinvestment in marketing, um, is definitely a big part of it. And so when I, when I took over, the company hadn't really been marketing for quite a long time. They had been running off referrals, which is a great way to run a business. It's, you know, obviously lowest cost, highest conversion is, is referrals. But, um, you know, new owner, new energy, and I really wanted to, to start off by growing the business. So some kind of measured impact, measured investment in marketing, investment in the website, investment a little bit in branding, just kind of modernizing, modernizing the business and how we approach customers has made a big difference. We're, you know, I don't need like 100 leads a month, right? Like I need like, I don't even need 100 leads in the year. Typically it depends on what I'm looking for and how, how targeted and useful and specific my marketing is. Because of the size of projects that we do, I don't need like this huge marketing engine, but I just need— I kind of need like a steady trickle of folks coming in the door.

That makes sense. And for you, as you look back, what has molded the way you think about running the organization?

I think, gosh, my— I've learned a lot from the founder who founded and ran the business for you know, 33 years, 32 years, um, I am continuing to learn from him. Uh, he is a true expert in a small business, running small business, and also running a general contracting business— how to work with your subs, how to manage your labor, how to estimate, how to plan things. All of those things I'm learning just so deeply. And combining that, being able to combine that with my experience, um, I, I did a lot of work in the aging in place space, uh, and thinking about aging-in-place design and how to reach those type of customers and how to, um, help build organizations that are, are sustainable, um, by putting in tools and processes and things like that and bringing some of that to this, to this experience, um, while also just really appreciating everybody that I talk to that's willing to share their knowledge and experience with me, which most of the The trades people that we work with, you know, if you start asking them questions, they will just, they won't stop. Like they just want to tell you everything. And I, and I love that. So I try and be, I try and be a sponge, just soak it all in and try and put it together and then, uh, you know, put it into a plan and execute it in a way that makes sense.

That makes sense. I like that. I'm sure the military structure helped a lot of that, that, that thinking. Now, as you guys try to grow and expand, what have been some of the biggest bottlenecks or obstacles that show up?

Let's see, obstacles. I think, um, it's, it can be a cyclical business, um, not cyclical like predictable cycles, but influenced by politics, influenced by economic chaos. Um, you know, people are, are trying to decide whether they're going to make this huge investment in their home that, or, you know, typically we're, we're working with residential additions. And so, you know, this is a pretty big project for folks. And it's really— they're deciding, are we going to move? Are we going to live with what we have? Or are we going to build our house into somewhere that we're going to stay for the next 20 years, 30 years maybe? And that's a big decision. And also it's really influenced by a lot of macroeconomic factors like people, you know, on the positive side for us, for remodeling industry, high interest rates make it harder to move, very high real estate prices make it harder to move. So it might be painful for people out there, but it's good for me because I've been— that pushes more people to, um, to remodel and build additions than just trading up houses and doing like the house ladder sort of thing. Also, in San Diego, there's a huge, um, there's a huge difference in the quality of school districts depending on where you live. And so a lot of the people that we work with They bought a house, they had young kids in a place with a great school district, not any more space, but they can't afford that same— they can't afford the space that they need in the school district that they are. And so that's when we start talking about what we can do with their existing house. So those are kind of some of the economic factors that push people toward additions. And then on the other side, if you have like government shutdowns and very high gas prices and cost of living and generalized uncertainty about people— or am I going to lose my job and am I going to get a job? And, you know, all of those sorts of things, those, those really hurt our industry and hurt people's ability to like make timely decisions.

Yeah, I definitely see that. Now, you had mentioned restructuring kind of the messaging and marketing. What have you found that's been working well and where are you still filling the gaps and frustrations?

Hmm. I think what worked well was modernizing the website. You know, when I took over the website, it was, it was written in stone in 2013 and it had never been updated, like literally never been updated. The pictures, nothing. And so, you know, that was almost a blank canvas. And so we took that, we, you know, put a lot of messaging out there, obviously paid attention to SEO and things like that, put all of our modern pictures, which of course we had, but never put them on the website. And that has really been a good tool to like communicate to potential customers like what we do and the quality at which we do it, you know, kind of the target range that we're at for type of projects. That's worked really well. I think also working with people, you know, building a little bit the brand around myself. Like you don't really run into a female general contractor like every day or every year or every decade really. Like there are very few of them. And a lot of people that come to work with us come because they want to work with a woman, um, and they want kind of this different experience, different perspective that you might get from working with a female general contractor. And so kind of leaning into that has been, has been really productive and, um, something I appreciate too, because then people who come to work with me want to work with me.

Yeah.

Which is different than the corporate world where it's like, here's your team, here's your customers, here's your boss, like everybody work with them. Um, and I, I like that that side of entrepreneurship a lot. And I think, um, what's not working as well, I think trying to figure out, you know, what's the right mix of marketing, what do we do, what's the paid spend, what's the right amount, you know, figuring out the funnel. You know, we're coming in, um, to a legacy company. We don't have— we don't really have a CRM, we don't really have any marketing metrics that we're able to track or any sales metrics that we're able to track, and trying to build that all up from from scratch and also, you know, keep it all updated and also do all of the input myself and also like try and build the integration between our website and our CRM. And, um, you know, at a very, very small business level, like, those things are challenging.

Yeah, for sure. And to your point with the, the, the female GMO, is that, uh, or general contractor, as you open that door, I love that aspect. That, that women are leading that because I think there's a lot of a bias and standard like, no, this is a man's world, this is how the man has to do it. And so I'm glad that there's more of that happening.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, I think so. And it's, you know, it's interesting once you get into the, into the residential construction world because the people generally who are making decisions about construction and what people are building and certainly about the design inside the home, it's almost always the woman in the household. If there's only one woman in the household, it's almost always her. Um, and then, but also then you're kind of working with an industry that prefers to, or has historically worked with, with men. And so you're making this, this balance of like, who's making the decisions but who's communicating them, and how are they communicating them. And we just cut all that out because I can work really directly, um, with the person who's the real decision maker oftentimes, and I'm able to communicate really well with those people. And also my, my way of working, you know, this like hyper-communicative, major attention to detail, um, conscientiousness is like, is, is very, it's very much appreciated by the people I've been working with.

Yeah, and I can see that, especially with somebody's personal home and how much that matters in their day-to-day life. My dad's a general contractor and my mom was an interior designer. and so they both had to tag team it, or you've consolidated into one and it makes communication so much better. It's right there.

Yeah, that's really cool.

I love that. Now with AI and automation, where have you found ways to utilize it internally and where you still see some great opportunity?

Yeah, the, it's everywhere, obviously. I have really loved having my phone system be integrated with AI. And having AI transcripts, AI doouts from all my phone calls and having all of that linked back into my CRM, which also provides AI summaries for things. And so if I, you know, go into my CRM and I type in a customer's name, boom, it's like, you last texted this person on Wednesday and this is what they said and this is what you said you would do. Like, this is very, very important to me. They're very, very, very useful to me. That has been really good. I've also used some AI, um, like visualizations. And I, you know, when I'm doing some design, I'm able to produce 3D renderings from my design software and then maybe put a roof on it with Gemini, which is pretty cool. Um, and it did a remarkably good job. And I think the really nice thing about an AI tool is that you can talk to it in jargon as much as you want because it understands all of it, you know. So I could give it very specific instructions, like, I want this part of the roof to be a hip roof and this part of the roof to be a gable roof, and I want the gable roof to be 3 to 12, and I want the hip roof to be 2 to 12. And it's like, bam, and it just made a roof. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is fantastic. And also, it really helps bridge the gap between people who are able to visualize those things, which, you know, I've been doing it for quite a while, and so I'm able to look at a, look at a floor plan, look at a set of plans, and kind of understand what it's going to look like. But most people we're working with, like, they don't have— that's like a different type of vision, right? Like, they've never looked at plans before. They don't need to look at plans in their daily life. And so helping them, helping it, uh, helping bring it to life in some sort of visual way is so powerful. And being able to do it quickly and, you know, even roughly, like, it's just like that particular visualization with the roof. I sent it to her, she's like, Man, that's fantastic. Let's go ahead, like, plan package permits. Like, let's do the whole thing. So that's been really neat. I think where AI— there's a lot of AI activity out there is in estimating. And I'm even working with a company about estimating. And it just— it's a lot at the level that we're operating at. It is such a complicated task. Like, you're taking information from so many different sources and using so much judgment. And so much experience. I am interested to see what people come up with, um, but I, I am not super optimistic that we're going to train AI to like read a plan set and then estimate how much baseboard we need and how much that's going to cost and do that also repeat that for, you know, my 30 to 40 line items on every estimate. But I would love that because it takes me forever and it's a lot of work, so Yeah, a lot of nuance to building a home and so little details.

Now, when you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?

Um, I am really excited about growing. I'm excited about doing, you know, getting, catching this flywheel of projects and just, you know, starting them, designing them, getting them, permitting them, like, and building them well and doing, like, creating a good experience, finishing it out well, and then shaking hands with that customer and you know, a month from now, 2 months from now, they refer us to somebody. Like, that's, that's so exciting. And is, you know, it's something that if we keep pushing that flywheel, it keeps going, going, going, going, going. And, you know, I have larger ambitions for the company. I'd like to expand to different, um, uh, different types of construction here in San Diego. But first, like, we— I want to build and, and really, um, really get going what we're— our, our core our core tasks and our core, our sweet spot for construction, which is additions. Like, I just really, I want to be the best player in additions, and, um, they're out there. We just gotta, we gotta go find them.

I love that. Now, when you think about your own journey, the wins, the mistakes, what lessons stand out to you, and what do you wish you understood sooner?

Hmm, let's see what lessons stand out to me. I think, um, curiosity is what drives connection between people, uh, finding ways. In a lot of, a lot of places in my career, I've been in positions to, to lead, um, people that I don't have anything in common with. Like, I absolutely, you know, I don't have anything in common with necessarily like a 65-year-old elevator mechanic from Boston. But it's, it's so important for me to build a connection with that, with that guy and understand what, what his motivations are and what, how to do right by him. And I think the way to build those connections is curiosity and demonstrating how much you care about what they do and also learning, which is like a great side effect of asking a lot of questions. But I just, I really think that the more curiosity you express about the people that you're working with, potential customers, the customers that you are working with, you know, anybody you come in contact with, um, the more you'll learn and also the deeper connections you'll form. And so that's been, that's been a big lesson. Um, and then I think for something that I could have learned sooner is Um, gosh, I guess I came upon the entrepreneurship thing at a good time, uh, I think, in life. Like, we, you know, it's a big family move for, for one person to go off and all of a sudden throw away all their income and start investing in a business and sending a bunch of money that way. Um, but I do sometimes wish that I didn't have to struggle for so long in the corporate in the corporate life and struggled to, to constantly, um, justify myself and prove my competence, you know, over and over and over again to the next, to the next boss and the next boss to the next boss. Um, that was just exhausting and, uh, it was really, really tiring and a little bit pointless. So in some ways, I wish, I wish maybe I had started with entrepreneurship sooner in life, but then I wouldn't have the experience I have.

So builds the grit, the tenacity.

Mm-hmm.

So, but I love that, like curiosity drives connection, learning how to do right by people. And it, instead of assuming, like being curious and asking, you'll find out what their priorities are. I love that. That's a great principle of life.

Awesome. Yeah.

So last question, uh, if you had to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days, What would it be?

Gosh, 90 days. Um, focus on and solve. And I don't think I can solve any of my constraints within the next 90 days. The problems are too hard. But I am working on trying to make our estimating system faster and trying to make it happen, take a major plan set and turn it into a proposal and a estimate faster. I don't have a good measurement or goal for what faster means at this point, but we can improve that within the next 90 days, and I think it'll make a difference for what we're able to do.

I can see that for sure. Well, so thank you again for joining. Any final words for our listeners, others on a similar journey, advice?

Uh, no, it's been, it's been a pleasure talking to you, so thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and, uh, if there's any ladies out there in the construction world and they want to connect, I'd be, I'd be super happy to do that.

That's awesome. Yes, definitely reach out to Alicia and the team. Again, you can find them at pricebuilders.com or LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else you want to send them?

Uh, we do have an Instagram, but, uh, you know, I'll work on that. Okay, LinkedIn and the, and the website, or you can email me at alicia@pricebuilders.com either.

Okay, so reach out. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode. Achieve Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you're a woman who's wanting to get into construction, it's like there's a lot of good opportunity. Reach out to Alicia and the team. She'll show you, it's like you have just as much opportunity as anybody else. So we'll see you on the next episode of the Chief Podcast. Thank you for joining.

Thank you.