Senior Projects

Wednesday morning we had a zoom meeting discussing different HVAC systems. What are the best for sustainable purposes? What is the most cost efficient? (this is normally what you want to use in a flip since you want to make the biggest profit margin.) After that, I was searching the area to find possible flips to go visit on Friday. In the afternoon we visited a house in North St. Louis that one of her agents want to flip.

Thursday was a short but very informative day. In the morning we had a meeting with the mortgage company they use. We discussed the best types of loans for different situations. Currently, there is a huge shortage of houses in the market. You are almost guaranteed to sell your house if you put it up right now. There are about 4,200 houses/properties on the market in the STL area roughly 80% of those are move in ready, the other 20% want most people to consider junk houses and will not look at them. Since there are such few houses on the market if you can renovate those properties people will start to look at them.

Later Thursday a smart home sales agent from Vivint came in to discuss smart home options for houses. Long story short this meeting was not anything we were expecting but I did learn a lot from it. Vivint relies mostly on door to door sales. They have high school and college kids go from door to door throughout the summer selling their product. The majority of the meeting he was trying to sell me a job and tried telling me I could make $300,000/year. Well all you have to do is a quick google search to find the real numbers. We tried questioning him on his product and he couldn’t even give us specific details. He also hinted at specific ways they are taught to gain more sales, most of them are by lying. I also looked them up and found they settled an alleged false information scandal from their sales reps for 3.2M 3 months ago. In the end I learned a lot of valuable lessons from the meeting.

Today was fairly similar to yesterday in that I am working with Cabinet Vision to create a rendering of a room for a customer. I had to submit a student application to Chief Architect to get the free student version but we are still waiting on an answer. While we wait I am continuing to learn about using the Cabinet Vision software and how to make precise measurements to creat cabinets that fit perfectly for the customers space. I have also learned a lot about what I think I wanna be doing for my career as an adult and also what I don’t want to be doing. Staring at a computer all day can be draining but so can working around a shop all day. But I am enjoying them both an look forward to continuing with various projects around the shop and company.

Today I spent more time working on and learning how to use some of the software that the company I am interning for uses to create 3D renderings of cabinets and rooms. Today I was supposed to be using a program called Chief Architect to create an actual rendering for a client project, but we couldn’t get the program to work so instead I am doing it on the program I used last week called Cabinet Vision. I have the entire room lasted out and have a table, windows, and one wall finished. I am still learning how to use the program but it’s getting easier the more I work with it. Below is a picture of my progress so far:

Today I spent a majority of the day helping a worker here make some finishing touches of different parts for the cabinets he was working on. I spent a lot of time sanding and smoothing out and cleaning up edges and fixing blemishes left behind from the CNC machine. I also applied a putty to various cracks and holes created by drilling and nails in the wood. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot about how precise they need to be to get things to fit together well and work as they’re supposed to. Below is a picture of one of the edges I cleaned up. It started like that and then I sanded off the edges until it was smooth.

Today I sat in on a CRMG meeting. This is the meeting where they access and review clients’ loans where they have loaned a million dollars or more. Our two cases were easy and everybody approved with in five minutes (they were both annual reviews with minor changes to them). The case after us was a new customer proposal and they (the five people of the board) discussed the risks for about twenty or twenty five minutes. This meeting is about assessing risk. CRMG means credit risk management group. They have to be alert in current events to assess how is a business is going to do. Also with sitting in on these meetings ( I sat in on two today), I learned that those meetings are nothing like school projects meetings. Everybody is jumping in and stating what they have to say and it is very productive. Obviously, you should voice your opinion because (in this case) a million dollars is a lot of money on the line (let alone the multi million dollar loans). Key things to take in:

-Make connection to your clients (people pay back loans so it is nice to know who your money is going to regardless of their financials). We, at Carrollton Bank, go out of our way to be the George Baileys of the world. We feel that the personal connections are key and makes us different in a good way.

-Voice your opinion

-Know what is going on (because current events can impact weather or not people can pay their balance)

The first day we toured a house with Lori (the owner and lead realtor) for a possible flip in the morning. When we got back to the office she showed me how they compare it to similar houses in the area and decide if its a good fit for a flip. For example after you buy it and renovate it can you still make a profit. In the afternoon she gave me a first time home buyers guide to read along with looking through biggerpockets.com while she worked on contracts.

Day 2 started out with a meeting with the owner of ARS Construction. We then went back to the office and had a zoom meeting with a local solar panel company.

Yesterday I did quite a few things to start the week. I went to breakfast and talked over what the process is like to order from vendors and how it’s done with the owner. After that we went to work and we were very busy. I built a few bike racks for inventory and checked in a lot of bikes for repair. The trick when checking in bikes is to give a lot of detail in the notes so that the mechanic can get everything done quickly. I also sold a couple bikes and talked to a lot of customers about what they were looking for. Unfortunately it’s been hard to get inventory so many of them were looking for a bike that we didn’t have in stock.

This week I will shadow a credit analyst. I did this last Thursday; however this time I get to dive deeper because I have the entire week (minus Thursday) to learn more. On Wednesday we have a presentation to present to the board for their approval on a million dollar plus loan. All the bank’s branches will be there doing the same thing. I was told last week that banking is a “who do you know” deal. I am learning a great deal of business through the bank. A key thing I started to learn is that business is not only money. It is the relations with the clients. Repeat clients are key and a good thing to have. One of the loans we were going over was a multi million dollar unsecured loan. You do not even consider doing that unless you have a “good business” with that client and vice versa. The two main take aways from today are:

-who do you know

-good business= having a good relationship with clients

The first week of my senior project was very succesfull. I learned a lot about the mechanics of a go kart along with setting it up for race day and changing it as the day goes on. We also spent some time on marketing, the business side in karting, and racekraft. I spent most of my time with Bobby Krug who is the assistant manager at Kartplex. He is also a racer which made it a lot easier to understand. He could explain things in terms of driving rather than the fully technical terms. Some key points I took away from the week are “a clean kart is a fast kart”, you need to stay on top of the changing track condition throughout the day, when you let the track conditions change and you don’t make changes is when you will fall down the timing sheets. Next week I will be working with a real estate investor and learning about sustainable building.

For the third day of my senior project I spent my time working on the next step of the process in making a cabinet which was lamenting the sides of the wood. When the wood is cut the sides that will be exposed and visible in the final cabinet aren’t finished and are just rough pieces of wood. To fix that they have a machine that automatically adhere the finishing laminate to the thin sides of the cabinets and shelves. I basically spent the entire day operating the machine you can see below. I learned how advanced some of the machines that they have are, and how much they speed up and ease the workflow of creating the cabinets and was very impressed by what it could do. Below are images of the machines, as well as before and afters of the wood I put through it.