Page 12 of Catching a Con Man

“Nonsense. I know Holden is mostly a hands-off kind of billionaire, so you won’t have sat in on many board meetings. But I need an outside pair of eyes. Need your honesty. Can you do that for me?”

I watched Tyler’s Adam’s apple move up and down. “Ade…I think I need to-”

There was a knock at the door, interrupting him. I wanted to tell my secretary to fuck off. Was Tyler about to be honest with me? I wouldn’t get the chance to find out.

“Let’s go.” I used my hand on his back to turn him toward the door. The boardroom was directly opposite my office. I liked being close to the very centre of things.

The board had always intimidated me a little bit. No matter how big and tall and rich I was, I remembered being a teenager and piping up in a board meeting with my father. The way all eyes in the room turned to me in condescension when I thought I’d made a good point. There was a reason I’d taken his money and ran to start my own business the second I had the chance.

We walked into the boardroom and I could easily tell who was on the most hostile end of things. One side of the table looked like they wanted my guts. My Chief Technical Officer, Xavier, gave me a tight smile. He had been on my side since the beginning, and had always been a fantastic ally. He’d worked his way onto the board with slow acquisition of shares in the first few years of operations. My father’s seat was empty as always. He owned ten percent of the company and could show up whenever he wanted, but preferred to stay absent.

“Thank you all for coming today, with the board’s permission I’d like to introduce Tyler Quinn as an observer. I propose.”

“Seconded,” Xavier said before anyone else could object.

“No objections? Then we’re carried.” I gestured for Tyler to take a seat on the long bench seat that ran along the windows, and he sat down with wide eyes, looking around the room like he was scared of getting burned.

I tapped at the laptop on the table to wake the screen behind me that showed two profit scenarios - if we sold the Electro Family at two vastly different prices. Both showed a profit, but one was a much slimmer margin than the other. “So, I understand that the board has called this meeting to discuss the decision taken to lower the starting price of the Electro Family by five thousand pounds?”

There was silence in the room for a second. That was something I’d learned about revolutions in business, they rarely had a leader. To my surprise, it was Xavier who spoke.

“There have been some rumblings within the board that your plan to reduce the overall cost could cut into profitability to a significant extent. There are also fears that the Electro Family’s release will generally affect the brand’s status as a luxury brand.”

I nodded at him. I wouldn’t shoot the messenger, especially when the messenger was on my side. “Ford makes the Mustang and the Fiesta. BMW is venturing into the family car market, because it’s lucrative. We can keep making only high end cars if our goal is to be a luxury brand. But Electro was created to decarbonise transport, from trains and buses to planes. And one of the biggest polluters on a daily basis is the family car.”

I looked around the room. Some had been convinced. But I knew there would be some still calling for my removal. I hoped Xavier was embedded enough in the board to be able to tell me if I was likely to lose a vote.

“What about profitability though?” asked Stephen, one of my newest shareholders, a man who’d been recommended to me as a shrewd investor by my father’s team. “It’s a noble goal, decarbonising the country, saving the world from the evil of petrol,” his tone told me he didn’t take either of those things seriously, “but if the company isn’t making any money then what’s the point?”

“The company will still be making plenty of money. The gross profit on each unit will be-”

“Five thousand pounds less than if you’d just left it well enough alone!” Stephen seemed to be getting more nods from the board than I’d like.

For a second, the room was quiet as I tried to formulate a response. This was exactly why I’d not taken the company public, I didn’t want to fleece people of every penny.

And then Tyler, of all people, spoke. “Why not make it even cheaper?”

“What?” I asked, perhaps a little too harshly. Tyler flinched.

“He’s just an observer! He shouldn’t even be allowed to speak,” said Stephen. Tyler shrank back in his seat a little, and I wanted to throw Stephen out of the room.

Instead I took a deep breath and looked at Tyler. “Do you want to demonstrate your point?”

Tyler nodded meekly and stood, looking down at his phone for a second. “You want to create one of the most affordable electric cars on the market, and you’re estimating you’ll sell, what, 30,000 units in its first year? Fantastic. But if you take down the price another 500 pounds…” He pulled the stylus from the laptop and tapped it onto the screen, changing the numbers. “Your largest competitor sold 45,000 units in that same timeframe at that price. So by equalling or undercutting their price, you’re in direct competition. You could drop the price in order to sell a hell of a lot more.”

There were more nods at the table than when I’d been speaking, somehow. Tyler was making financial sense as well as making the point I’d tried to make in the first place.

“Xavier, would you mind running those figures over the next week or so?” I asked. “Involve the market research department as well as Finance, and we’ll convene a meeting again when we have more firm financial figures.”

He nodded, and the board shuffled out. When I turned to look at Tyler, I couldn’t help but break out into a grin. “You were amazing there,” I said. “They were eating out of your hand, and…” I stepped in close. He was so close. So close I could kiss him if I wanted to. And I really wanted to. But something in his expression was sad. And I hated that sadness.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“It’s just…I need to talk to you,” he said. “There’s…well…”

I knew he was struggling for words, and I mostly knew why. But a little bit of me wanted to keep the fantasy going for a little while longer. Before that final layer peeled and the glamour faded. In case he told me something so awful that I’d not be able to look at him in the same way again.

And I’d always had a flare for the dramatic.

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