Chapter 254: Director
Director
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After the incident in the gym, Lin Ruoxi hadn’t spoke a word to Yang Chen the entire weekend. Yang Chen looked at the lady who looked frozen completely, he couldn’t help but to feel sad that the journey for the ice to ‘thaw’ still had a long way to go.
Currently, he was seen as a gangster once again by Lin Ruoxi. Although legally speaking, he wasn’t considered a gangster, there was nothing he could do if the lady’s side wanted to think of him this way.
Going to work on Monday, Yang Chen brought breakfast for the ladies in the public relations department as usual. After chatting with Zhao Hongyang and a few others for a while, he saw that it was almost time, so he left Yu Lei’s headquarters and headed to the new building opposite.
Taking the lift to the fiftieth floor, Yang Chen got welcomed by the refreshing signboard ‘Yu Lei Entertainment Culture Company’.
There were two young girls sitting at the front counter who looked around 23 or 24 years old, basically safely assumed to be fresh graduates.
“Director Yang, you’re here,” Wang Jie who wore a blue office suit said with a smile. She had been waiting at the entrance before Yang Chen came. Beside her, there stood Zhao Teng who paid just as much respect when he nodded at Yang Chen.
Yang Chen didn’t expect his assistants to really look at him this highly, to wait for him at the entrance early in the morning. Fortunately, he wasn’t late and came to the place on time. Otherwise, he would’ve disappointed these two colleagues who treated work seriously.
Looking at how much his right hands respected him, Yang Chen subconsciously made a decision, though he wouldn’t treat work seriously and get devoted, he would do whatever that is necessary properly. At the very least, he couldn’t let these two great colleagues down who wanted the best for the company.
“Have you had breakfast yet?” Yang Chen asked with a smile.
Wang Jie and Zhao Teng got shocked. They didn’t expect the first sentence that came out of Yang Chen’s mouth to be such a question, not to mention his smiling face. He didn’t have the slightest superior’s pride.
To them, the fact that Yang Chen managed to climb on such a high position at a young age and yet acted this humbly, they looked up to him even more. Of course, Yang Chen wasn’t aware of their thoughts.
The two nodded. Zhao Teng smiled as he made a hand gesture to show welcome, saying, “Director Yang, I’ll bring you to your office to have a look. Since you couldn’t come last week, I’ll introduce our different departments to you as well.”
Although Yang Chen wasn’t the slightest interested, he still accepted the suggestion and followed behind Zhao Teng and Wang Jie to tour around the office.
SInce it was an entertainment company, there weren’t just administration staffs, producers and entertainment workers were present. Naturally, there were training rooms and artist rooms as well.
It was clear that the decision made by Yu Lei International to purchase ten floors of the office building had to be made.
After running seven floors with the two, Yang Chen arrived at the upper management floor. Entering the bright and tidy hall, lots of busy employees turned to look at Yang Chen out of curiosity.
Everyone was wondering who this young man that needed two senior managers’ companies was. When Yang Chen walked into his ‘director’s office’, almost everyone dropped their jaws.
This average-looking man who held a smile which made him look brainless, was unexpectedly the company’s true leader, the director that had never shown up before!
Yang Chen’s office wasn’t as big as the previously seen Lin Ruoxi’s CEO office, but it still had an area of at least a hundred square meters. Outside the large windows, there laid the flourishing Zhonghai City—the tall buildings, while the exact opposite of Yu Lei Entertainment was the headquarters of Yu Lei International.
The office was decorated with flower-pots which looked well attended to, office table made of mahogany, real-leather swivel chairs and a few leather sofas which were black in color.
An Apple desktop was already turned on, which displayed the wallpaper of Yu Lei’s logo together with the words ‘Entertainment Company’.
Yang Chen was very satisfied. He suddenly felt that he made the right choice for taking this position up. At least this office looked really pleasant.
“The decorations are well done. I really like them,” Yang Chen said to Wang Jie and Zhao Teng.
“It’s great that Directors like it. If there’s anything you feel lacking, feel free to voice them out to the secretary,” Zhao Teng said. “Oh yea, do you need a secretary or an assistant? We basically have plenty of administration staffs already, but we’re still recruiting assistants. If you need, I can help Director find an exceptional one, or you may pick one yourself.”
Secretary? Assistant? One sentence suddenly appeared in Yang Chen’s mind: The secretary does the work, while the boss does the secretary.
Thinking of this, Yang Chen felt rather tempted. It was unfortunate that the women he could touch only included the department head of public relations Liu Mingyu, the head of a gang Rose, or Tang Wan whom he hadn’t kept in touch with for many days, although he hadn’t managed to touch Tang Wan so far. However, why would she become his secretary while having so many financial assets.
The most appropriate candidate was the chick An Xin who passed cultural and quality requirements with flying colors. She’d score well when it came to ‘doing things’ or ‘being done’. Unfortunately, she was still playing hide and seek on the plane.
Although he really wanted to think whether there was a beauty who suited being his secretary, Yang Chen still gave up at last. He unintentionally hooked so many women already, he wouldn’t be able to take care of the trouble if he recruited more of them.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’m a really lazy person after all. You guys mustn’t have too much faith in me. I’ll have to trouble you two to take care of the usual work, I believe in your abilities. When you come across issues that you feel are too challenging, or require a discussion with me, you may find me by then,” Yang Chen said.
Zhao Teng and Wang Jie looked at each other as they felt helpless, but still agreed to the request.
Yang Chen looked at the office table and noticed a whole stack of folders. He asked, “What are these?”
Zhao Teng quickly explained, “Director, although we haven’t recruited enough artists and managers, we can’t be unproductive while waiting for the recruitment to be done. So we’ll temporarily start one or two projects at the moment. These are the projects we plan to invest in and start. As this will be the first official major project since the company was founded, I hope that Director can take direct involvement in this.”
Yang Chen felt a slight headache, but looking at how committed these two assistants were, he could only sit down and put up an act as he started flipping the stack of documents.
Zhao Teng and Wang Jie sat down on the chairs opposite as they silently waited for Yang Chen’s speech.
Yang Chen looked through them very quickly. Although he couldn’t understand certain professional terms, it didn’t affect his reading significantly.
Having read through around eight proposals, Yang Chen frowned. “Involvements in these projects including movies, TV series, commercials or variety shows, all require external help and participation to carry out, based on our current resources.”
“Yes, Director. Actually, we can produce low-budget movies by investing two or three million, and still make a respectable profit,” Wang Jie suggested. “I feel like we can start by looking for a decent script and hiring one or two excellent movie stars to make our cost lower than ten million bucks. This way, the profitability of the end product should be very high.”
Smiling, Yang Chen said, “Let me ask you a question.”
“Eh?” Wang Jie was surprised. “Please ask.”
“What’s the size of our company Yu Lei International?” Yang Chen asked.
Wang Jie didn’t understand why he asked such a question, but still gave an answer. “Excluding liquid funds, around 30 billion of total assets.”
“Then what rank does the business belong to, in the entire country?”
“Of course the market leader. Two years later when the new material gets launched, we’ll definitely be one of the biggest fashion companies in the world,” Wang Jie said proudly.
Yang Chen nodded. “Then, being branded under the company Yu Lei, how do you think people would react if our first investment move is merely a mid-to-low-budget movie, in our perspective of course?”
Wang Jie and Zhao Teng started pondering as they wrinkled their brows. “Director, you’re saying…”
“That’s right, there are only two possibilities. Firstly, we don’t have determination, courage and confidence, our senior management is incompetent, our employees and the outside would would be disappointed, and the board of directors of Yu Lei International… Erm, although more than ninety percent of the shares are owned by Boss Lin, Boss Lin would at the very least be disappointed. Secondly, our competitors wouldn’t take us seriously, and it’d be hard to partner up with other firms.”
Zhao Teng said in agreement, “Director’s words make sense. Since it’s our first major project, we indeed have to gain reputation. The major films produced by the West often are huge box-office hits although they aren’t reviewed highly, solely due to how large the projects are. A high production cost is always a huge selling point. Even if a respectable amount of profit isn’t earned, these movies can usually break even. More importantly, the reputation of the production team and the company would boost significantly.”
“But… our company is still in its early stage. Although the funds provided by Boss Lin are plenty, investing hundreds of millions out of the blue would cause a temporary cut in our cash flow, which would bring serious harm to our operations, since we still have to sign a lot of well-known artists and bands,” Wang Jie said. Being the manager of the marketing department, she was rather worried.
Zhao Teng also said, “Yeah, Director Yang, leaving investments out of the equation, solely signing top artists and bands would induce an extraordinarily high cost.”
Yang Chen nodded understandably. “You don’t have to worry about it. I can pull a good string to partner up for an investment. If it’s done well, we can work together in the long term.”
Wang Jie and Zhao Teng got shocked as they didn’t expect Yang Chen to have a workable partner already.