CEO Intern Cast Diary

Hi America I am back, sorry I left you for so long. As is always the case when we speak I have mountains share so sit, read, envision, and engage this blog for time is its spine and immortality is its reward. This past week has served to be another awakening for me, you may ask how many times will I wake? To that question, my response is simple; I will stop when the sun has finally set.

Lets move on to the details of this past week now. This week the five interns, Mr. Paulin and our producer Prescott started the city tours (Parker came too). St Louis was up first and in this city, we did two sales presentations one to a billion dollar military contractor known as DRS and the other to “a plant manager” of Omega steel. On a side note, I put plant manager in quotes because that is the repose I was given when I asked if making a trip to omega steel would be worth our time and gas. As you can imagine getting the door to DRS was no easy task, but thanks to some persistence as well as a few inside connections, we made it to a fancy conference room. Everyone needed to be an American citizen, and have a passport to get into the building, and that is one of the many reasons why Prescott’s camera was not allowed to enter the building. We asked the camera if it had a passport and got no response so we left it in the car with the king of the castle. Sorry we didn’t get the sales pitch on camera America, the presentation was textbook, take my word for it.

In the meeting with us from DRS there was a CTO, metallurgist, several other engineers, and a logician, oh my a logician (as he shakes his head and smiles). This sales pitch is exactly what school is supposed to be preparing me for but ironically, this experience can’t be taught in a class room America there is no simulating reality there is just reality so after graduation, at whatever level that may be remember one thing, school has started (another side note). Four interns presented a power point we created to kick things off.  From slide two our audiences was engaged and asking questions about information on the slides so, we had to pull out our terminator Mr. Paulin earlier than expected. He shot there question out of the sky as if he was shooting trap or skeet, PULL! After the slides were done, the questions continued and Mr. Paulin just kept loading shells.

When the meeting was finished, we made a stop toured Wachovia’s headquarters and continued to our 3’oclock with Omega. I had my reservations about omega but either way I look at it my resulting response is the same. It was an experience for the ages. Omega was like going into a large garage. There was no fancy table or leather chairs like DRS just a plant manager and an assistant in an office. We stood huddled facing the manager while Mr. Paulin politely engaged the man in conversation then bid him farewell. In one day we experienced both sides of the sales experience, one side exceeded expectations and the other was reality check.

Sales was not the only thing we learned about on the trip though, we also learned the importance of being prepared, polite, punctual, organized, aware, intuitive, energetic, dedicated and the list goes on America. The amount I learned in one day as been the theme of this whole trip and that is what  brings me to my current predicament, a question I have been struggling with since week two. The question is how do I say thank you to the Paulin’s for a summer like no other, one that has been filled with life lessons that currency can’t pay for, that a thank you letter alone cannot service. Let me put it this way I have taken a loan from the Paulin bank. My loan does not have an interest rate because the Paulin’s are not concerned with a rate of return but instead with the rate at which I learn. I call it a loan because I plan to repay. I know that I am deeply in debt and since time in this case is inflation, I will never be able to fully repay my debt. The answer then to the question posed above is time and service. The only way for me to make payments on my loan is to use my time and my hands to foster and maintain the relationship that has been established in my time here.

America you stay thank you for the intangible by giving of yourself and never leaving the thoughts of the ones you are indebted to.  Irie I, One Love. Charlie H.         

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Yesterday we started researching companies that we can try to sell to in the area. We're going to give sales presentations to 5 companies in each of three cities. We have to decide what companies to approach and research them and their need for cryogenic treatment. There are hundreds of companies in every major city that would benefit from cryogenic tempering the only question is how large of a company can we walk into, talk to the right person, and sell them on the benefit to the company? If a company makes $1,000,000/year in sales? Probably. $10,000,000/year in sales? We could, but is our time better spent with a $5,000,000/year company, or should we try our luck with a $100,000,000 company? I can't really say at this point. I've never been on a sales trip...

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I mentioned in a prior blog that I got to do a short intervies with Jay lefler and Kenny Wallace.  I thought that this was a once in a lifetime oportunity, but I may have been mistaken.  Our associate producer has been calling some race teams that will be in the area in coming weeks and getting some promising responses.  I'm really excited, because 300 Below has been working with the race teams for over 15 years.  I would love to get the chance to interview more drivers.  I would also love to interview thier engineers and pit crews to.

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Yesterday we received and assignment from the chairman. He instructed us each to research nine companies; three in Chicago, three in Indianapolis, and three in St Louis. After selecting the nine companies we are each responsible for selecting one company in each city that we will call and schedule an appointment with, for a total of 15 company visits. There are compensation incentives set out for us as well as being responsible for the dinner reservations after presentations. So can I get an encore, do you want more. Irie I, One Love. Charlie H.

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A lot has happened this weekend and rather than explain day by day, I will explain the weekend to you as one whole. I believe I left you hanging a few days ago when I mentioned that we presented our industry research and financial analysis to the chairman. So to summarize the presentation let me say it went well, for practice that is. I don’t say that to discredit the time and effort put into the making of the presentation but instead to say that I knew that the bar for this task was significantly higher than we jumped. None the less the chairman said he was pleased and impressed with our work.

Now earlier the morning of the presentation we woke late, it was 7:45, we had not left the cabin and we had a half hour drive ahead of us. In the interest of time we left Beni behind because he was not ready. Later that day we find out that Beni made his way to a nearby town called Champaign and intends to stay there for the weekend since the night life there is better that that of Decatur. Champaign is an hour drive, he made it there without a car and he left from the cabin which is out in no man’s land. I was baffled by the fact that he had made it out to Champaign but not surprised that he would behaved so irrationally. Somehow the team ends up in Champaign to check out the night scene, when low and be hold Beni pops up. At the end of the night he decided to join the rest of the group for a ride home. The following day Mr. Paulin informed Beni that his behavior needs to change if he would like to continue to be apart of this experience. As usual Beni was not receptive to criticism and heard everything that Mr. Paulin and the team had to say but didn’t listen. Shape up or ship out. Irie I, One Love. Charlie H.

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Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised with the Midwest.  Being born on long island and having spent most of my life within 20 minutes of Boston, I grew up with the stereotype that there’s nothing to do here.  If you like shopping for expensive clothes and surfing, you're right, but if you like tractor pulls and dirt track, you'll fit right in.  Truth be told, I have a strong preference for races that occur on pavement, but I'd take dirt track over the mall any day.  There's just one thing that that puzzles me.  I can't understand why people who dirt tracks in every county and tractor pulls at every fair drive soo slow.  Everywhere we go, the road is full of drivers traveling at or below the speed limit on the straightest, best maintained roads that I've ever seen in my life.  The worst part is the tendency of most people here to assume the speed of those around them.  This leads to an inordinate number of slowpokes riding side by side, for miles.  They can't be bothered to speed up or slow down a fraction of a mile per hour to pass or allow you to do so or drive in the same lane as the car that they're pacing.  This makes me wonder just how they got there.  Did their similar speeds result in them winding up next to each other after hours of driving?  Did they start out together?  Or did one of them just take a liking to the speed of the other during the process of passing them?

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We've got most of our surpluss capitol on ebay now and its time to get down to buisness for real. We have untill thursday or Friday to make a plan to double the revenue of the company. There's no time to waste if we're to do a good job on it.

We watched the footage of me interviewing Jay Leffler and Kenny Wallace. It was clear that Kenny didn’t know that I’ve built part of a car that I later raced, but a majority of the people that he’s interviewed by are TV personalities and not engineers. Even more amazing than interviewing Kenny Wallace was meeting his father and seeing him with his entire family. I met his father! Do you know how many NASCAR babies that man has had? But seriously after that it was time to get to work, for real.

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Ladies and gentlemen, horses and cows, I come before you to stand behind you to tell you something I know nothing about. This Thursday the day after Friday there will be a ladies meeting. Men aren’t allowed but they are still permitted. Wear your best cloths, if you have none still come. Seats will be provided to sit on the floor, thank you for this wonderful announcement. Well I am strapped for time right now so I am typing and thinking a mile a minute so I apologize if I write in circles or incoherent sentences or have spelling errors. I am afraid I will not have a chance to go into much detail today but much has happened.

My days have begun with this work out program called CrossFit know to Beni as cross fight, I guess it’s a Russian thing. I do the work outs with Lieutenant Paulin in the mornings and since he is off to the Marines soon he is whipping himself into shape via a CrossFit trainer. He told me about CrossFit when I got here since I pestered him about daily exercise. Now the catch to this “great work out” is that I must wake up at 4am and start the work out at 5, which along with the work out being designed as a “burn out” makes cross fit a defining part of the morning since I head to the office right after I get burned out.

Moving on, after working out I went to the office and had our morning meeting then meet with Dave and Mr. Paulin to talk about the product they introduced to us, so long story short we ate lunch with Dave and talked business. Went to tractor pull in the evenings and now I am at the cabin and I just took a bite of the steak that nick took off the grill so got to go if I want to get to sleep soon.

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