Chapter 26 Loose ends get tidied up and a revelation for the future.
It was fun that morning. I was able to reply, when Gordon apologised that they had to rush because he had a Board Meeting starting at eleven, 'Yes us too. Our's doesn't start until one though.' Cool huh. He had called a cab, probably didn't want to alert his driver that they were playing away.
When they had left I asked Susan whether she had anything to bring up to the meeting. She felt that to earn her position she could offer to design and furnish the apartments, she had some firm views on the positioning of the cameras for example, and she was already organising the next of the parties for Friday night.
I had a plan but thought I had better ask her how she wanted to be treated by the other Directors.
'What do you mean?'
'Don't take this the wrong way, but they all think you are a really hot bit of stuff. And, of course you are. They see your exploits night after night and really want some. They all want to fuck you and while I don't want to change their minds, I think you should be able to show them a little of your brains as well. That's why I was asking what you wanted to talk about. Look I don't want you to take advantage of your relationship with Gordon but why don't you become the VSX representative in charge of all the new apartments. Perhaps I mean I do want you to take advantage of him. You can wrap him around your pretty fingers and he will do deals with you that he will never do with Art.'
She thought about it. 'Sure. You are right, that would be fine with me. Yes, I reckon I could get better deals from him than any of you. That's not a problem, but do you think Art and Darren just think of me as a bimbo?'
'No certainly not. I am sure they think of you as bright and clever but they only know you as a good-looking girl who attracts men like flies. What I am trying to suggest is that you talk about your relationship with Gordon, even if necessary to the extent that you have had a fling with him, but show that it all helps on a business level. Let them know that you know how to use sex to your advantage.'
'I see. Yes okay, I wonder how I can do that?'
'Well if the worst comes to the worst and you haven't been able to find a way to prove it, I can strip you at the end to remind them how good you really look.'
'Not perfect, but now at least I am expecting it,' she laughed.
We went off to the meeting early, stopping as was our practice to have a quick one in the pub opposite. I had suggested to her that she should wear something classic but sexy. She chose a wrap-over dress, with a fairly small wrap. When she sat down there was definitely a lot of inner thigh showing particularly on her left leg where the dress didn't wrap over. No panties of course, but I did suggest that she wore a balcony bra to elevate her tits to new heights.
We went in about ten to one to find that so far Art and Darren were the only ones there. I knew we were expecting a few more. As it happens the others were not invited until two o'clock so we could get the important stuff agreed and out of the way.
Art started the meeting formally and gave us a report on the legal nature of our business. While the contracts that we all held and had signed were good as far as they went, the lawyers considered we would be better off legally to convert to a Limited Partnership in order to limit our liabilities in case the whole company went bankrupt. There was some discussion before we agreed that the Lawyers could prepare a new draft contract. Art had costed it out. He then gave a report on business to date.
'Alex and Susan, let me say at this stage after you have been with us now about three months you have revolutionised our business already.'
Darren then proceeded to give us chapter and verse on the number of visitor hits and the number of sign-ups that we were now getting.
Alex then continued, 'I know the deal you signed gave you a bigger percentage when you had doubled our turnover, well you have done that already, so you are on the better deal immediately. The most amazing thing about this business is how rapidly it can grow, and I suspect, how rapidly it can decline if things go wrong. One of the reasons why we wanted to form the Limited Partnership.
Darren and I have agreed that if the pair of you can double it again, and I know we are asking a lot, then we are prepared to give you an even bigger percentage. I am talking one third each for Darren and I, and one third for the two of you, split however you want between you to achieve the best tax efficiency. Don't forget that goal can be reached if we can keep getting a proportional rise in the customer base to match occupancy say, of another say, six to a dozen flats. It will be difficult to find both the right flats and the right tenants.'
'I have had a few thoughts about that,' said Susan. 'I, sorry we, have a friend who runs a property company. I know that at the moment he has a full block of flats, six I think, rapidly approaching completion. Somewhere round here. I would like to approach him and do a deal for all six. It would mean a very rapid growth pattern and cause an urgent problem to get the right tenants but it should be possible. One of the big advantages would be that the residents would all be involved. That means firstly there would be no prudish tenants not liking living next to porn stars, and secondly there is a synergy between the flats. We have seen in the results for the last few weeks how the efforts that Alex and I have put in have produced immediate results in the bottom line. We have exploited the synergy between similar residents. You have described how, not only have the number of tenants improved but also the take-up rate of the three-day trials and renewals of the one-month deals. Part of that is the first Friday night party we had and the interaction of the tenants after the party. How much better it would be if there were six in the same block. Also with eight flats already mixing with each other, the synergy between them and the new six will never be the same. There is a small third benefit as well that Darren will be able to wire the whole building in one go. Logistically, it makes sense as well.'
'Good point, before we vote on whether to explore that further what other plans does anybody have.'
'I would like to just mention the party next Friday night, same pub, the invitations have all gone out and all have accepted except Melissa, one of the three girls in the flat in our block. She has to go to a family wedding that weekend. I know where she would rather be,' joked Susan. 'There will also be the new tenant Tracy, who settled in this week. Of course, Darren has already met her.'
Darren blushed and added, 'Yes a charming girl, she will do well in our flats.'
I butted in, 'I have ordered another little gift for each of the girls at the party. Like the tabards I gave out last month. Loose crop tops, which will barely cover the girl's breasts, again with VSX on the front and back. They will show a lot of underboob. How about we order a few dozen extra and try to sell them through sex shops, even if we don't make much money from them, it is all advertising. I was torn between them and fox's tails, attached to a butt plug, which can look very attractive but are difficult to stencil VSX. I thought I would leave those until next time.'
They agreed that market testing the tabards and crop-tops was a good idea. I knew of a shop to trial it. I would see if they would take our stock. Both Art and Darren were intrigued by the fox's tails and were already looking forward to the next but one party.
'Has anything happened about the idea of a TV camera sex agency that we talked about, and also the Feed-back site online.' I asked.
'Indeed, I was just coming to the Agency,' said Art. 'The lawyers have suggested that we start a second company, with a similar structure to that which VSX has at the moment, for the agency adding possibly a side-line in showing repeats of the Camera girls shows, like a catch-up TV or archive. It will be obviously cheaper to see other people's time with a Camera girl rather than have your own. We can also use it for advertising to get the customers to move up the food-chain on to our VSX site. Originally, we will only advertise our own site but later if the site is popular we can add other paid-for advertising, say dating sites. The new company will charge the clients and accounts will be settled by our existing outsourced accounting company. They will pay the girls one month in arrears. I have told the Lawyers to set up the papers in the names of the four of us, with the same percentages. Hopefully they will bring them with them at two o'clock.'
'On that matter,' said Alex, 'I have a strong possibility of signing up Tracy who has just moved in and also potentially Sandra and Alice.'
Darren then told us about the Feedback site. He had prepared some trial pages. There was a Home page directing you to an individual feed-back page for each flat, and to a series of pages each which would host discussions about the flats or individuals in general. He wanted our input over the next few days, firstly to add a load of comments about the flats, how lovely the girls were, what great bodies the men had, on each of the individual flat pages and then to start discussions on which was the sexiest girl, or the hunkiest guy and anything else we could think of on the other pages. We would have to make up Avatar names for each of the comments, as if they were regular users, and once it went live we would have to monitor it for content. In the first place Darren would monitor it for racist, sexist, political, religious or terrorist style content, erasing anything possibly problematical. He had an alarm built in, alerting him every time someone contributed. He would only be able to monitor it at first for up to twelve hours a day so, temporarily, the three of us would have to spread the load of the other hours. Time would tell us whether we needed to hire a couple or three full-time monitors, before Darren could write a programme with algorithms to automatically remove any contributions triggered by certain word usage. In the meantime, Darren could direct the alarms to each of our home computers when he logged off. I told him that we would need a better desk top than the little lap-top we had at the moment.
