Chapter 40: Inspiration for Spending Money

Lin Ruoyan tricked Hao Heshan into joining the company and asked him to go to the human resources department to handle the formalities. Then she closed the door of her luxurious office and turned on the computer.

It was impossible for her to work. As a boss, what kind of job was she supposed to have? She'd definitely been slacking off. The company had only been open for a few days, so there was almost nothing she could decide on.

Each department director formed their own team, leaving it to the HR director to oversee the process. She felt her job was simply to wait for the hires to be finalized and practice her handwriting by signing employment contracts. Logically, after only one night, the directors would be struggling to schedule interviews.

But after turning on the computer, she realized that computers of that era were slow and lacked any games. Even with the most advanced internet, it wasn't nearly as fast as it would be decades later. Major websites were essentially portals, emails, and forums, with more text than images, and standard titles. Nothing eye-catching or new. Even if the screen was large, you couldn't watch movies online. Installing a disc yourself certainly wasn't as enjoyable as watching movies on the big screen in your home entertainment room, complete with food and drink.

So she started thinking again, should she leave the company and find somewhere else to spend her time?

Since she was planning to build a luxury home, she should first go see what a proper luxury home looked like. In the real world, she had researched luxury home projects, and with the then-developed internet, she had access to data and photographed and analyzed famous luxury homes not only across the country but also around the world.

The boss of her company was reluctant to let his employees travel around the country and the world to see the real scenes, so he arranged for his subordinates to compile detailed data, make it into a PPT, and take a "cloud" tour from time to time, which opened everyone's eyes.

At the time of the book, domestic real estate was just starting to take off, and the design and construction level of luxury homes was still at the stage of large villas, far less sophisticated than those of the old capitalists overseas.

She runs her own real estate company, so the projects can obviously only be low-rise buildings and not villas. As for luxury houses, she certainly cannot copy the ideas of existing luxury low-density villas in China, so she can only draw on the concepts of high-end apartments in some overseas cities.

When she thought of this, she hurriedly wrote down her inspiration for spending money on paper.

First, she'd organize an overseas trip for the entire company under the guise of inspecting luxury properties. While visa processing and other matters might take time, and the trip might not happen this month, once the plan was underway, she could find a travel agency to handle the process. Booking hotels and flights would require paying them. A single ticket to Europe or the United States would cost tens of thousands. She aimed to hire all the employees this week, and this company trip would cost at least one to eight hundred thousand.

Secondly, she must look for a regular design institute, both at home and abroad. In addition, she must find an expensive consulting company to plan her project well.

Unlike the mature real estate development model in reality more than a decade later, in the era of the book, real estate had just been established as the country's future pillar industry. There was a period of hot house and land speculation in the 1980s and 1990s in China, but the impression left was that everyone lost money. Not many people knew how to make big money in real estate.

Real estate consulting and planning companies emerged as a result. This industry already existed abroad, as professional consulting firms. China also followed the mature operating model of overseas companies, adapting it to national conditions, deploying people to conduct research and sell reports for money.

Stronger consulting firms often include pre-planning, design consulting, and sales consulting. This is like Party A hiring an external professional team, eliminating the need for a design or sales department, and focusing solely on cost and engineering.

Lin Ruoyan has already laid out the company's overall structure, and each department has been built by itself, so she will not use the outsourcing model.

She already had a relatively clear understanding of the project's positioning, so hiring a planning firm was primarily to strengthen the confidence of her employees and future clients, as well as to satisfy professional design firms. For example, if you hire a foreign design institute for a project, they'll undoubtedly ask for a consulting report or project plan. This plan, ideally in a foreign language or from a reputable consulting firm, is more persuasive.

Of course, the average client, typically looking to build a home for basic needs, wouldn't waste this kind of money. They typically hire a domestic sales company, research customer preferences during a planning consultation phase, create a design brief, and submit it to a domestic design institute, who then develops it based on these requirements and design specifications. The entire process typically costs around 100,000 to 200,000 yuan, and a contract worth 2 to 3 million yuan, including design fees, construction drawings, and construction services, is considered a good deal.

According to this normal operation, for a small project of 100,000 square meters, the total expenditure of the client's design department would be at most two to three million.

But how could Lin Ruoyan save money in the early stages? She hired a design director like Zhao Xingxing, who had studied and worked abroad, just to have him raise the design department's spending limit.

She planned to spend at least 20 million yuan on all the upfront costs before the project construction bidding, so that there would be 80 million yuan left to invest in a film and television project, or to acquire a building, so as to achieve the small spending goal of 100 million yuan this month.

In reality, she is also an insider in the real estate industry. Lin Ruoyan picked up a pen and roughly listed the cost budget in her mind.

The consulting fee is two million, the design fee starts at five million, and the remaining ten million or so is allocated to domestic construction drawings and other specialized services. These drawings are broken down into specific disciplines, including architecture, interior design, and landscaping. Specialized services also include curtain wall, lighting, steel structure, and even signage systems. Even the optimized layout design of the underground garage requires a dedicated team.

With just a few words like this, the expenses of 20 million are all listed. If the contract is signed this month and the down payment is at least 30%, then there will be 6 million to spend first.

The prodigal system exclaimed in admiration: "Host, you've got some great tricks! You haven't even gotten anything yet, and you've already spent six million just signing a contract. Speaking of which, are those consulting reports and foreign concept designs any use? Don't you already have a plan in mind?"

Lin Ruoyan responded: "If I just explain it to others with empty words, they won't believe me. That's why I need to pay people to do it for me. These well-known institutions are well-known enough and charge high prices. The results they write at least look like they're worth it. This can also be used to report to the people in the district committee."

Oh, and by the way, I also have to invite these leaders to the conference room of a five-star hotel to hear about project progress under the guise of a report. You see, that's another expense. Renting a hotel conference room, setting the meeting time at 10:00, just in time for lunch after the meeting, doesn't that mean I can get a meal discount?

System reminder: [These leaders are very honest and will not easily go to non-agreement hotels. ]

Lin Ruoyan said proudly, "Then invite them all to my company. I'll hire a hotel or outsource a conference and banquet service to do the full reception here at the company, and bring all the unrelated employees along for the meal. Wouldn't that cost more?"

She compiled the initial budget and immediately called in Zhao Xingxing, the design director, to describe it. She dictated everything, never showing her writing to anyone else. If anyone in the future questioned how a factory girl could come up with this, she would humbly explain that it was the work of her own professionals, and that she had no idea what she was doing.

Even if Zhao Xingxing, a professional, told the truth that she was instructed by her boss, others would simply assume she was afraid to take credit and was giving the boss credit. After all, the firsthand materials others saw were all Zhao Xingxing's own hard work, written down on paper.

If things really didn't work out, Lin Ruoyan could still blame it all on Fang Yue. Wasn't it all Fang Yue's advice at the last reception? How could Fang Yue deny her ability? The leaders of the CY District Committee had heard it firsthand. Lin Ruoyan's decision to start a real estate company was also inspired by Fang Yue.