Welcome back everyone!

Julia told me that I should hurry it up with my part of the story.

She’s really excited to tell you about our first official tour of the village.

I completely understand why, I mean I was soo romantic that day.

Of course I was romantic!

Can’t you remember?

I held your hand the entire time.

I picked you a flower.

We kissed under the stars.

I think that’s pretty romantic.

Don’t listen to her, she just can’t remember everything right now.

Why don’t you want to tell the story just because of that?

Of course that’s more important than my building faith.

Anyway, Julia has told me to hurry up and get to the point of my business genius, according to her I’m taking too long "blowing smoke up my own ass".

Which I can’t believe my own wife would say!

I have never told you anything that wasn’t absolutely true.

I am amazing, and it takes time to get that point across.

It has nothing to do with me overdoing anything.

I just want to make sure you understand the importance of me in my own story.

Anyway, let’s get back into it.

***

The next day Julia and I met up with Darvel again, this time he had us brought to his study again.

I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t met in his study the previous day also.

I also couldn’t understand why there was a new door, why the wall behind his desk had been repainted, or why his wooden desk now had some sort of tablecloth covering it.

But I had to give it to the guy, when he renovated a place he was very efficient. At that very moment I decided that when I built my bar, I needed to use his contractors.

—Yes, obviously I now know why he had to do all of that renovations, but I didn’t at the time.—

"You have to tell me who did your renovations... they move quickly." I said.

Not expecting a simple statement like this to actually frighten the poor man out of his senses, he kept glancing at Julia again, swallowing hard.

I swear I could hear his chair rattling with his shivers.

"I... I can definitely do that."

Julia and I moved to the same chairs we sat on the day Darvel had his little... Oopsie.

"Right, so I assume you have my contract ready?" I asked.

Darvel didn’t even need to search around for it, he already had it prepared, and sitting right in front of him.

I could respect that kind of professionalism in a man.

I scanned over all of the terms of the contract with a keen eye, I wasn’t about to get screwed with the small print.

I’m not going to go into all of the details of the contract with you, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear all of it.

That, and if I keep this business planning going for one more session Julia might really have me sleep in another bed for a week.

And honestly if you guys only knew what it meant to sleep in the same bed as these lovely ladies, you would understand my hesitation to piss them off too much.

Their love for me might grant me a certain amount of leeway, but it’s definitely not infinite.

Anyway, I’ll just give you the gist of it.

Basically this was a partnership contract, which specified that any ideas I gave Darvel, would stay my property, and that he was only implementing them.

It also specified the profit share that I would be granted for the profits generated by them.

There was even a confidentiality clause in there stating that any information I shared with him, be that business or otherwise, would be strictly confidential.

Etcetera etcetera.

"It seems good enough to me." I said, grabbing a pen from his desk and signing with a flourish.

"Now we can get back to what I was about to suggest yesterday." I said as I handed one copy of the contract back to him, and stored my copy in my storage space.

Yes, you heard correctly the man even had two copies prepared, you can’t say anything bad about his business savvy.

The moment the iridescent portal of my storage spell appeared, and I stored my copy in there, I could see his eyes widen significantly.

"I told you last time that you were losing a bunch of money in opportunity costs with your waiting room, do you know why that is?" I asked.

"Because my customers have to wait too long before they can get a table, which means that indirectly I can’t meet the demands." He answered.

Now I had to admit that he wasn’t too far from the point.

"You’re not entirely wrong, but you’re not looking at the bigger picture." I answered.

"Instead of trying to serve your seated customers faster, why not capitalise on the waiting time? Why not profit from the people who are in the waiting room while they are there?"

I could see the realisation slowly starting to dawn on his face.

"Why not sell drinks to them while they are waiting?"

"I wouldn’t suggest selling them any sort of food while they are there, that would only lead to them not staying around waiting for the table."

"What I do suggest however is that you give them free salty and oily snacks while they are there."

"Not enough for them to get anywhere near a real meal, just enough to keep them both thirsty and sober."

That was the first and most important idea I had for his inn, it would significantly cut down the tension on his waitstaff, and improve the quality of the waiting time for the customers.

Of course I stole this idea from some of the restaurants on Earth, but it’s not like they would mind.

"That... That’s brilliant!" Darvel exclaimed.

Of course it was, I came up with it after all.

So we spent some time discussing the details of how he should set it up.

I pointed out that he should set up an independent area for serving the drinks.

And that he shouldn’t add any waitstaff to serve the drinks to the people at their seats in the waiting area.

We wanted to make it comfortable for them, not spoil them.

And hiring more hands to serve the drinks in the waiting room would only steal from the profits.

Basically we were going to build a bar in his waiting area.

So the only person who’s going to work there would be the bartender.

And I even volunteered to take the night shift.

I did have to work on my drink serving skills, this bar was only the start of my hospitality ventures after all.

We discussed the plan and the specifics of it long into the day.

Every suggestion I made excited Darvel more and more.

Which was only to be expected... I am a genius after all.

***

Are you happy now, wife?

I got past the first plan and the explanation of it in only one session.

Now you can have your turn again.

And that was how I came to my very first partnership agreement in this new world.

It wasn’t the last, and it definitely wasn’t the largest business venture I started.

I mean I am... Ahem... anyway, I don’t want to spoil any of your future fun in hearing all about me, so we’ll keep that under wraps for now.

In our next session my lovely wife will tell you all about how very romantic I can be.

Oh you know that’s what it’s going to come down to anyway.