Nick Peel

Hello, my name is Nick Peel and I am currently taking part in the CreatIf program Traralgon College are running for the year 10’s in 2017. I decided to take part in this program because I wanted to work on things that involve my passion and that I enjoy doing. My interests include Fishing, Hunting, Camping and basically any outdoor recreational activity.

The reason why I chose to drop the classes I did to do this program was because I didn’t enjoy them at all. My future career goal is to become a qualified boilermaker.

My passion area that I have incorporated into my project and small business is Metal Fabrication and Working with Metal. Our business is called D & N Homemade Metal Goods, and we make metal goods such as fire buckets, BBQ’s and seats etc out of mostly recycled materials being 44 gallon oil drums. We sell them for a profitable price that we have calculated by putting our cost price with our labour price.

For our business, we have created a Facebook page to get more sales and to get the word out about our small fabrication business.

Some of our achievements so far include:

- So far we have roughly sold 15-20 items for $50-$60 each.
- We created the Facebook page!!
- Purchased a MIG welder and metal cut-off saw.
- Made in between $300-$400 the whole time the business has been operating.
- Dalton and I created a pitch we presented to some bank representatives from Bank Australia and obtained a $300 funding which we come to an agreement about.

Some things I have learnt while undertaking the CreatIF program is new welding skills! I have learnt several welding skills by watching YouTube videos and practising in the workshop until I had the ability to finally teach myself. I already had a fair bit of knowledge about metal fabrication, but I have learned more than I could even imagine. Just by watching simple YouTube videos and reading articles on the internet. I have now had some experience in taking publicly in doing the elevator pitch. And for the first time, I could say I thought I did really well!

I hope the year 9’s coming into year 10 in 2017, are going to show as much interest as we did when we applied for this program. Best of luck to the students that are planning to do it next year.

By Nick Peel.