Brisk Clean Air

My boss always likes to challenge his employees. However, he's the kind of person who wants results once he assigns a task. His no nonsense and ruthless approach had seen him retain some of the best staff in the industry. His policy was quite simple, an employee who doesn't bring in the needed results doesn't need to get paid by my company. This is what saw his business rise to become one of the industry leaders. We still liked him because he paid handsomely for delivered results.

Although he had given me countless tasks which I delivered on to his satisfaction, I wasn't prepared for what he had in store for me. He had just arrived from meeting an overseas client in London when he summoned me to his office. He continued to brief me on how the European market was ripe and he wanted us to operate from London.

There was however one problem, our London operations were to be on a budget. I was tasked with finding the cheapest way to run operations in London within a week or, risk losing my job. He gave me the estimated budget which I thought was appalling. I didn't want to lose my job so I took this as a challenge.

My first step was doing a search on the rent rates and, average salaries of staff we'd need to hire for our London operations. The resulting figure was well over 20 times higher than the estimated budget. Not the one to give up, I contacted a high school friend who was working in Manchester. After pleasantries, I explained my problem.

He suggested a virtual office and continued to explain that it was the trend companies were following in order to cut costs. I've never been so grateful. Based on the budget, I decided to find a cheap virtual office in London. Amazingly, the cost of the virtual office was less than what my boss had budgeted. I made my presentation the next day to the delight of my boss. Not only did I retain my job, I also got a promotion. I'm now the company's chief adviser on overseas operations.