Chapter 108: Work Before Leaving
After resting early that evening, they spent the following Monday resting as well, as it had been a very intensive three days during the competition. It was at times like these that having money helped them have the flexibility to consider rest before any additional troubles, without having to think about the costs, especially if the money was coming from someone else’s pockets.
At ten in the morning, just as she was done with breakfast and was about to go through information regarding Fatih’s currently active companies, her plan was interrupted by a phone call.
It was Mansur, TOSFED’s Karting Sporting Director. After the customary greetings, they immediately got to the main topic and reason for the call.
"I was calling to inform you that with Fatih triggering a formally agreed-upon clause, we are going to move forward with providing the largest agreed-upon support percentage. I wanted to be the first to share the good news, as I couldn’t wait too long after receiving the post-race report from RFM," Mansur said, chuckling at the end, showing how excited he was.
His excitement was not surprising, as he was the one who had spearheaded this idea in the first place, so its success also reflected positively on him.
"Hahaha, thank you for the information. I was planning to send you the whole weekend’s footage once our editor is done cutting all of the still parts, but this is good news for me nonetheless," Rümeysa said, her tone pleasant as she was happy that one piece of the puzzle had finally defined itself and was no longer ambiguous.
"I would love to watch it, as the report painted such a good picture that you can’t help but want to watch it and see for yourself to believe it," Mansur said, laughing with Rümeysa for a moment before calming down and continuing, "That is not all I called to inform you about, as there are two new developments from our side."
"I’m all ears."
"We have started receiving information requests regarding Fatih, which at the moment we have responded to by providing only publicly available information. You will most likely soon start receiving requests for written consent to receive more detailed information from us."
"Oooh, that is good news, right?"
"Yes, it is. It means that Fatih has caught their attention enough that they want to know more about him. But at the moment, that is where their interest most likely ends, as they will not want to take a gamble and reach out to you immediately but will elect to wait and see his performance in his second weekend. Although there might be a few who might try to reach you, we suggest you wait until the second race weekend, where you will most likely receive the most requests if he delivers a good performance, in order for you to choose which team’s requests to accept and which ones to decline, since there is really no benefit in accepting all of them, as it risks the data being leaked."
"I see. Then that is what I will do if I receive requests within the week. As for the second weekend, if nothing goes wrong, I expect him to deliver a good performance. It is something he had said when he saw the competition calendar."
"As for the second topic, we have already started the process to apply for an accelerated change of his inclusion status in the FIA talented drivers list from temporary to permanent. If he delivers good results in the world championship next week, then we will most likely receive the confirmation then."
With all the good news provided, the call came to an end shortly after they discussed a few additional things, but it left a very good impression on Rümeysa, who hadn’t had a good experience with contracts when it came to matters related to motorsports.
After taking a short moment to reorganize her thoughts, she immediately got back to work, checking on the situation with Fatih’s companies.
It had been about three months since she had learned that her son was a multi-millionaire before dealing with the tax services, with whom they had managed to negotiate the smallest penalty possible. They ended up having to pay 1.2 million dollars in back taxes and penalties before the rest of the money was considered clean and free to use however they wanted.
During this time, she had already invested nearly eight hundred thousand dollars in Fatih’s companies and the remaining million in stocks that Fatih had recommended.
Conqueror Media LLC had already ballooned from temporary staff to twenty full-time employees responsible for overseeing every part of the website, from moderation and video creation all the way to cybersecurity and more, with a majority of them working online while a few were now based in London, a decision she made in order to allow for the company to rapidly expand with a competent workforce if it was later required. Other than the twenty full-time employees, they worked with more than thirty motorsports reporters on a per-article basis, where they would receive a base payment for every article they wrote for the website, followed by additional payments depending on how the article performed.
This had allowed the website and all of its other channels to see very accelerated growth compared to their previous slow but steady growth that had brought it to the top of Formula 1-related information websites, as it was now pacing to solidify its position. However, it was still running at a loss, which was deliberate, as they tried to maintain the quality for as long as possible to solidify themselves on top and leave others no opportunity to challenge them before they tried to see which monetization avenues they could pursue. But it didn’t mean that they were not earning anything at all, as they had a very passionate group of premium subscribers who paid to have early access to the articles, and a small amount of revenue was being earned through the company’s social media channels.
All of this deficit was still being financed by loans from TC Analytics Ltd, which still remained the main cash cow of all the companies under Fatih’s name, as it continued bringing in a steady quarter-million a month with no changes at all, while the line of people wanting to enter continued to increase, the more they proved themselves.
This company still existed in name only, with Fatih continuing to be the sole employee, as it was something that only he could do, and it didn’t even require any additional work from him since he had moved to the premium version of the forum that allowed automatic subscription renewal. But she hadn’t stopped there, as she had already commissioned a website that would allow them additional freedom and privacy. It was still in the works and would be ready before the start of the next season, which should allow them time to migrate all of their active subscribers there, along with an increase in the subscription fee, which all of them would accept, as with each year, the betting business of motorsports racing continued to increase.
Although the forum could handle everything at the moment, the reason they wanted to move to a dedicated website was to implement a feature that would only make the predictions visible once the user uploaded evidence of having created a new account for each weekend, in order to reduce the chances of them being discovered and locked from betting sites, which had happened to quite a few of them. It was a move to make sure the profits remained as high as possible for both Fatih and those paying him for information.
Once she was done going through that information, she moved on to the information about the last company under Fatih’s name, Yıldırım Racing.
As the company with the rights to his brand and likeness, it was also experiencing very rapid growth. The Fatih Yıldırım YouTube channel under them was still experiencing a continuous meteoric rise due to the quality of the content posted, which, now, due to having more editors responsible for it, allowed for a weekly upload schedule. Being the first to post this type of content gave him a starter advantage, and through it, he had reached half a million subscribers in just a few months, with his videos now reaching at least a million views per upload due to capturing all of the starved motorsports fans and casual viewers who wanted to watch something high-quality and entertaining. This allowed him to start earning money from it, and paired with the advertiser-friendliness of the content, he received quite a high CPM, allowing him to earn at least $5k per video.
This was also the company from which Fatih was earning his day-to-day income in the form of a monthly salary for his work.
Once she was done going through the information and gave orders where required, she had finally finished her work for the day and spent the remainder of it touring the city with Fatih before resting early that evening as well.
On the following day, they finally left the hotel, heading to the nearest airport, planning to start their journey to their next destination: Muro Leccese (La Conca), in southern Italy, the opposite direction from where they were and more than a thousand kilometers away.