Page 20 of Dr. CEO (The Doctors)

I glance up at the screen. People are muted while we wait for additional team members to arrive. I stand and move away. I’m not sure if I’m hiding or if I want privacy. For what? Am I going to message her back?

“Sure,” I reply. “I loved it.” So much, I’m going to buy the place, I don’t say.

“It’s a very special place,” she replies. “I’ve lived on the estate since I was seven years old. There’s nowhere else I’d want to call home.”

The adrenaline turns to ice and I press the button on the side of my phone, turning the screen black. She lives on the estate? She must be in one of the staff cottages. The ones that I’m planning to turn into additional accommodation if I buy the place. She’s going to be forced to call somewhere else home.

I close my eyes, trying to push down that familiar feeling of dread that swirls in my stomach from time to time. She’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out. Something just as good as the place she’s in at the moment. I’ll make sure of it.

I take my seat. Back to business.

“So,” I say, “if we want at least four-fifty square feet in each standard room, where does that leave us?”

Peter, who I’ve brought on board to advise me about hotels, chips in. “We want between fifteen to seventeen percent of the rooms to be suites, with floor space of between ninety and one hundred and thirty square meters. The outlier is the Royal Suite, which should be about two-twenty. If we take the suites out, how many standard rooms does that leave us with?”

He’s asking the architect, who starts lifting the drawings she has in front of her. “Taking out the suites would leave one hundred and twenty two standard and executive rooms. Plus the rooms in the converted staff cottages.”

That was the answer Jason and I were hoping for. Jason’s tell is he doesn’t react at all if he gets the answer he wants. He learned it from me.

“So one hundred and thirty-three rooms in total,” Jason says.

I know he’s done the math, and at that number, the house is viable as a business. We just need to know what I can offer the earl, which depends on building and refurb costs.

Jasons speaks again. “Preston and Frank, you can give us your numbers now that you have number of rooms, right?”

“I can give you a range,” Preston, the designer, says.

“I don’t want a range,” I interrupt. “You know how many rooms. You know how many beds to buy. I want you to tell me budget requirements.”

I find people can do things even they don’t think they can. You just have to push them in order to find their real limits. People will never work at their boundaries or beyond them if they don’t have to.

After additional discussions, Jason and I get our numbers, and one by one, everyone leaves the meeting until it’s just Jason and I remaining on-screen.

“This is a big investment,” Jason says. “One of your biggest. You’re looking at nine figures.”

“But it works. WACC exceeds twelve percent?”

“It does.”

I hear the caution in his voice. He’s worked for me for far too long for me to be dismissive about it. “Tell me how I get out,” I say. I always need an out. In all my investments I make sure there’s an open door for me to exit when I want to bolt. I’m bound to nothing.

“We can structure it a number of ways. If you want to keep the debt simple, lease before the refurbishments start. Grant a twenty-year lease to the Four Seasons or whoever.”

“So I’m just landlord?”

“Yes. Or you could do a sale and leaseback if you wanted to release the capital. Or you can just leverage the entire project.”

“That doesn’t get me out.”

“No, it would just release your cash.”

“I suppose that’s a start. When don’t the numbers work?”

“You can’t overpay the earl for the estate. And you’ve got to get planning permission.”

“I’ll get planning permission.” I’ve already had fireside chats with the planning department. I prefer to deal with areas of greatest risk personally. The committee members I spoke to knew the earl was going to sell, just as they knew the house isn’t sustainable as it is.

“It’s a risk,” Jason says.

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