Nick Price: Valley View Industries

September 8, 2022

Nick Price: Valley View Industries

“We’re well-known in town for what we do because we do a good quality product, so it’s an easy sell.”

Nick Price

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast. Today your host Steve Larosiliere sits down with Nick Price from Valley View Industries. From ambitious beginnings to the story of a long-held family business, you won’t want to miss this one!

“Our origin story is that my dad started the business well over 30 years ago. When I graduated high school in 2009, I started working for my dad; I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get rich, and it will be awesome.’ But that was not the case. My dad’s a pretty stern old man, and I got quite the whoopin’ and learned how actually to work. So it was a pretty good opportunity for me.

As the years went on working for him, I was like, ‘Hey, I liked this. I love working with cedar.’ That’s the wood we work with primarily, and it just went on and on. Then he started going away in the winters going to Thailand. So I naturally took over parts of the business and started learning more about business and marketing. And I was like, ‘Oh, I really like that.’

So in 2017, I purchased the business from him. We were a six-figure business then, I took it over in 2017, and now we’re into the seven figures. So doing great and growing the business, and yeah, it’s awesome.”

Nick Price

Transitioning to the Next Generation

Family-owned businesses are fascinating because the transition from the older generation to the new generation is a significant opportunity for growth if handled well. In the case of Nick and Valley View Industries, he has accomplished that goal by growing the business his father started into a huge seven-figure company!

“Right now, we’re a sawmill. We manufacture cedar lumber, with a dry kiln on site and different finishing equipment. So we’ll make tongue and groove or deck boards out of cedar or for Serrano’s or that type of thing, and we also build products out of cedar. We have carpenters on staff, so we’ll make bows or pergolas and offer installation on those.

We also do fence panels, which is another division of the business which we offer installs on as well. There are all these divisions, hence having maps and stuff because we have a two-acre facility. So now we’re using every inch of the property, so we’re just trying to plan it out.”

Nick Price

Steve’s Advice Corner

“I’ve wanted to teach my staff more effectively, so I’ve been thinking about creating video content. I’ll probably put it on YouTube, but I want to do a good job with this. I don’t want just my 16 staff to see it. I want to reach a larger audience with that, so people see that, and they go, ‘Oh, wow, we really liked what they do. Maybe we want to buy their products.’ So what would you suggest for reaching a bigger audience with that type of thing?”

Nick Price

Creating video content, whatever its purpose, is a worthwhile venture in the current marketing landscape, especially if that content can be repurposed for various reasons and/or audiences. In the case of Nick’s plans for video, he has a reasonably clear idea of what he wants. He just needs to refine it.

“I’ve done something similar in another business that I was in, but I didn’t do it with the intent of reaching a larger audience. I did it specifically to solve your first problem. So one of the things that you could do or think about is what the Valley View industries pipeline looks like. Everybody from the executive to the bottom learns customer service. In this system I read about, if you were hired for customer service and hit certain milestones along this pipeline, you became a manager within 18 to 24 months. So they charted out a whole career pipeline for people that worked in this business. I very much like this idea.

If you want to grow, what if you created a video series on every aspect of the production job, from the sawmill to the pergola, fencing, and bookkeeper? What if they all did different talks about their business and the essential parts of what success looks like? What skills that you need, and how to develop those skills? And you created a learning management system for Valley View industries, so the lowest person who comes in can learn what your number two person does in action and how actually to get there.”