25th May 1574"Overall, we managed to free only about one hundred and twenty people from nearby villages. We could hire more, but the proposed pay wasn"t enough to convince them."
Sitting in front of what was supposed to be a dining table, I was looking through the sea of various reports, resumes and estimates that Matsu prepared. Even though doing something like a resume was definitely a first for her, the dire lack of capable administrators that could manage all my projects while I would be busy setting new ones forced me to get her to ask around her friends and acquaintances.
"This one, Pawlo, might not be a n.o.ble but his family used to work at the vast fields to the south, allowing him to get a rather good reputation among the cossacks. While he is known from drinking a lot, I think he will suit for the role of the local cantor manager."
While the entire idea to invest in the southern steppes was based on nothing but a short talk with Michal Cherrie, I didn"t dare to omit it while preparing the list of the seats to be filled. Even though there was no way for me to realise this project anytime soon with how there was less than even a month before the troubling times would start, yet it could be a good way for me to obtain even stronger backing that would hopefully prevent any of the local instability affecting my projects!
"Good, if you don"t have any other candidates, then bring him in. Speaking of which, how is the construction of the auditorium going?"
Since there was no way for me to flaunt my knowledge in an official schooling system, all I could do was to create a place where I would give a crash-course of the ideas that my entire industrialisation was based, turning those manager candidates into capable workers able to further my ideas even without my presence.
"It"s almost finished. By the time we will gather the candidates, it should be completed and furnished as specified in your orders, sir."
While Matsu replied to my question, she still pa.s.sed me another paper, with yet another set of short information detailing the current achievements of the person described on it.
"Carpenter? We already have one managing the plant back at mining town, what"s the use for another one?"
Seeing the profession that was written on the paper, I was quite puzzled. While I included the request to gather as many experienced craftsmen as possible, I thought that Matsu would focus more on the people capable of turning the raw resources provided by my investments into cashable products!
"Sir, with all due respect… Do you really think I alone am capable of managing the booming beer business? Ever since the entirety of the castle garden was turned into breweries, I had to expand the production to the plains below the hill! At this point, the wage that you gave to me is fully distributed amongst five different experts tasked with crafting new buildings, managing the logistics, setting the production, providing the materials and managing the orders! Once again, with all due respect, but if you think that a single man is capable of taking care for a huge investment, then it"s only a matter of time before it will collapse!"
Hearing Matsu"s words, I couldn"t help but realise that she was, in fact, right! Due to how hard it was for me to procure more craftsmen to abandon their workshops and guilds for the sake of working for such a minor n.o.ble like me, I would love to expand the management of all my projects! Yet to think that even when it came to expanding the amount of administration that would work for my sake I was still blinded by my previous a.s.sumptions…
"You are right, that won"t do well neither in short nor the long run. But since you brought this topic, then let me take care of it. From now on, your line of work will change completely. Find someone capable of replacing you when it comes to managing the simple stuff, and hire even more people to manage the breweries. From now on, you are only going to make sure it all works properly while using the spare time on teaching the tricks of your trade to the people we will hire. As for your wage and costs…"
Since this was still a vital part of any agreement made between a worker and the employer, I decided to stay silent for a moment, both for the sake of raising the tension and sorting out the idea that appeared in my head.
But rather than picking up where I stopped and explaining it, I took one of the resumes, picked the nearby quill and written a set of numbers on the empty side of the paper.
"Rather than giving you the wage, let"s put it this way. Out of all the profits that the beer will be making in the future, seventy percent is to be invested back into expanding its production until we will reach a point where the market will be saturated. Twenty percent will be used to pay the ground workers, tasked with building, constructing or moving the stuff around. All that will remain, will be left to your own discretion, to split it between all your managers and yourself. What do you think about this?"
Considering the fact that with all the expansion that already happened to the initial single brewery, right now, the average weekly income from trading the beer was bottlenecked only by the capability of the merchants to transport away everything that was produced at once. Just a single look at the reports was enough for me to realise that despite all the growth, we have yet to reach the half of how much carriages could move daily through the s.h.i.+tty roads that connected Tarnow to the rest of the world.
Speaking of the profits, only when I returned to the castle did I realise that from the initial nearly thirty gold coins of pure income already turned to a bit more than six hundred golden coins per week!
Or rather, if not for the fluctuating price of the grain and other ingredients and the workers demanding the increase of their wage, that would be my current net profit, currently amounting to a measly four hundred red goldens a week, or nearly twenty thousand ducats a year!
Even though with the current state of the roads allowing us to increase the production only to twice its current state, as soon as the market would be finished and the traders would start flowing there from all directions, this upper cap on the income would be gone completely!
"My lord…"
To calculate how much Matsu and her managers would earn one simply had to take the current weekly income and divide it by ten. That meant that I just gave her two thousand gold coins per year to divide as she wanted between herself and only five more people!
When compared to about two hundred golden coins that cream of the top of polish cavalry that would be praised as the best cavalry to ever exist in the world, to the measly two hundred golden coins a year that hussars could make, one could understand what kind of news it was for a commoner like Matsu who didn"t have even a single drop of n.o.ble blood in her body!
"As for the people you brought up… Those who I put on the right will be set to form the first group, those in the centre will make the second one and those on the left will make the third. Each of the groups will receive two sets of seven meetings with you so that you can nail down the secrets of successful management to their heads. After then, they will each have one set of seven meetings with me, when I will add my part. Later on, they will move for a month to the mining town so that the craftsmen that I already worked with for an extended period of time, will be able to teach them the practical side of the teachings I will pa.s.s to them."
As I spoke, I hovered my hand over each of the piles of papers, indicating which one I had in mind to make sure Matsu wouldn"t make a mistake later on. While minor, those groups outside of receiving the general teaching from my econom would also be schooled on separate aspects of corporate life, so just for the sake of organising the entire process, I wanted to avoid any mistakes.
"What about those who you didn"t pick, my lord?"
Glancing at the remaining pile with only five people who surprisingly were closer to the top of the capability and experience than the bottom of the list.
"Those… I will teach them entirely myself. Summon them for two weeks later!"