After finishing his meal, Chen Jincheng headed to the Jinmao Building on Feifuxing Road with Sister Hong.
The Jinmao Building wasn't far from the Jingyuan Building. The only difference was that one was a commercial plaza, and the other was an office building.
After parking the car, Chen Jincheng and Sister Hong took the elevator straight to the 8th floor.
Stepping out of the elevator, they saw several branching hallways. Many floors in the office building were partitioned into separate areas, with several companies occupying a single floor.
Chen Jincheng led Sister Hong to the right, and at the very end of the hall, they saw the shining name "Second-Life Star."
Inside Second-Life Star was a spacious main office, divided into editing, photography, operations, planning, and agent areas, among others.
To get the MCN running, Chen Jincheng planned to personally train the first batch of girls to get the company operational. Once they signed more talent, he wouldn't be able to handle it all himself. He would need to recruit planners to create tailored strategies for each girl.
Besides, while he could use strategies from another world to make a girl famous, everyone's potential was limited. Not every girl could break the five-million or ten-million-follower mark.
Once their potential was maxed out, wasting more planning on them wouldn't be very effective. At that point, he would hand them over to agents for daily management. The planners would then just need to create custom filming schedules to maintain their exposure.
Of course, agents were also responsible for scouting new talent. But he came from a humble background and had no capital. In the beginning, he had no grand talent-scouting plans, no time to slowly search among ordinary people, and certainly no capital to sign already-famous stars.
Therefore, his initial directive was to recruit from nightclubs. He'd bring in high-quality girls in batches, saving on training costs and shortening their adjustment period, all to scale the business as quickly as possible.
In the other world, many top-tier MCNs had already perfected this path. Copying their playbook was easy enough.
'Hmm, I should check out the foot bath parlors too. During the initial boom of MCNs, those places also had batches of high-quality girls.'
Besides the main office area, the space was also divided into individual streaming rooms of various sizes. The larger rooms were naturally for the top streamers, who would need assistants to monitor their streams, manage the chat, or give them prompts.
Minor streamers and those just there to fill the numbers could just stream by themselves for fun.
The office space he rented was a total of 3,000 square meters, enough for over 170 streamers to go live simultaneously.
This office in the Jinmao Building came fully furnished, costing 60 yuan per square meter per month, which meant the monthly rent was 180,000 yuan.
So, "renovations" really just meant setting up workstations, installing lighting and air conditioning, and partitioning the streaming rooms with soundproof materials. That's why the work was fast and there was no need to let the space air out.
Some companies, in order to save costs, would even rent a place one day and start working with a few desks the next.
"Boss, Sister Hong!"
"Boss..."
When the two of them entered, several people came forward to greet them. They were the employees Sister Hong had hired earlier to supervise the renovations. Then, they called over the person in charge of the construction team to lead Chen Jincheng and Sister Hong on an inspection tour of the company for final approval.
Chen Jincheng mainly checked the quality of the streaming rooms. Even though they used the cheapest materials, there could be no safety hazards.
After confirming there were no issues, he signed the acceptance form for the construction team. He still needed to transfer the final payment to them.
On top of that, office equipment like computers, printers, and phones for streaming would cost another chunk of money.
After settling the beverage bill from the bar, and with these new expenses, the 800,000 yuan he had just gotten from Tiao Yin was about to be completely wiped out.
'Seriously, I'm a little envious of Lin Hao. He wanted to start an MCN and his family just invested 30 million. It's nothing like my situation, scraping by.'
'So, I need to get Jiang Xiaobai and the other girls streaming as soon as possible to start generating revenue.'
"Sister Hong, how is recruitment going?" Chen Jincheng asked.
Sister Hong explained, "Boss, I've already started recruiting staff. As you instructed, I'm looking for one manager with industry experience, and the rest will all be recent graduates. Applicants should be coming in for interviews over the next few days."
"That's good," Chen Jincheng nodded.
The main reason for hiring recent graduates was that they were cheap. At this stage, he just needed the company to run according to his plan: recruit high-quality girls from nightclubs and foot bath parlors to build a solid foundation. For that, he didn't need experienced employees, just people who would follow orders.
The process of building that foundation would also be how these employees gained experience.
Once the foundation was large enough, he would have the capital to think about other things, like competing with MCNs that had financial backing or deep roots from over a decade in the industry.
After Chen Jincheng and Sister Hong finished inspecting the office, they walked out and saw a mature, beautiful woman in her early thirties emerging from the company across the hall. Her exquisite face held a look of determination and a hint of an imposing aura. She had to be a powerful career woman.
The woman glanced toward Second-Life Star before heading for the elevator.
Chen Jincheng also looked at the company across the hall.
Jinglan Women's Clothing.
It was clearly a women's apparel company.
The thought of women's clothing, which in turn made him think of Jiang Xiaobai, Lin Qing, and the other girls, prompted him to instruct Sister Hong, "Sister Hong, when you have time, go talk to the person in charge at the clothing company across the hall. Tell them our company can help them with better promotions and ask if they're interested in a partnership."
'If the talks go well, we might be able to make some money off them directly.'
Right now, clothing promotion was still done through traditional methods. But in the other world, short-form video had reached its peak, and using it for clothing ads had largely replaced traditional advertising.
A beautiful influencer plus a clothing ad—if done well, the results could be unimaginable.
He remembered one that got over 5 million likes and more than 100 million views.
With that kind of view count, it was more effective than hiring many A-list celebrities for an endorsement.
An A-list celebrity's advertising fee started at 10 million, and the ad they filmed wasn't even guaranteed to be seen by that many people. But for a Star Atlas ad collaboration, a company only had to pay the influencer a one-million-yuan fee.
The difference was plain to see, yet the advertising effect was just as good.
If they could secure a partnership, then once Tiao Yin in this world launched its "little yellow cart" feature and the era of MCN livestream selling arrived, he could leverage that good relationship and have his girls sell their clothing directly.
"Okay, I'll go talk to them in the next couple of days!" Sister Hong nodded. In truth, she had also been thinking of approaching the clothing company. After all, her boss was signing only female talent, so there were many opportunities for collaboration.
「That afternoon.」
When Chen Jincheng and Sister Hong arrived at the bar, Lin Qing, Yinyin, and the other girls were already there, not daring to be late after receiving the notice.
Sister Hong also had them all add the Second-Life Star guild tag to their Tiao Yin accounts.
A moment later, Wang Yuan came in with another group of girls. It was the 15 he had picked out the day before, nine of whom were particularly well-endowed. Such a ratio was quite eye-catching.
When these new girls came in, they naturally saw Lin Qing's group and looked at them with envy.
The glass-wiping dance those girls did yesterday had gotten really popular.
Seeing the new girls arrive, Sister Hong went up to them with the prepared contracts. A moment later, they were all signing on the dotted line.
Wang Yuan had already briefed them on their way in. Plus, seeing what happened with Lin Qing's group, they were more or less already on board.
Once the girls had signed their contracts, Chen Jincheng clapped his hands. "Everyone, gather around. Time to prepare for today's filming."
Instantly, over 30 girls flocked to him.
Then, Chen Jincheng called the girls with the biggest chests forward.
After all, the first video they were going to shoot was the Shaking Bear Dance!
Looking at the row of girls who had stepped forward, he nodded in satisfaction. "In a minute, I'm going to teach you all a dance, which is what we'll be filming today. Right now, I need a model to help demonstrate and fine-tune the dance's effect. Who wants to volunteer?"
With his "King of Clubbing" skill, he could perform the moves of the Shaking Bear Dance himself.
But he was a man, after all. To see how it would actually look, he needed to see a girl demonstrate it.
Hearing this, Lin Qing subconsciously started to step forward. 'Making a good impression on the boss is definitely a huge advantage. Yesterday, I was the biggest beneficiary of the glass-wiping dance besides Jiang Xiaobai. I feel like it's because the boss noticed me and gave my videos a boost.'
She didn't think she was more outstanding than the others. She was just a newcomer, after all, and she knew the importance of resources.
But Yinyin, the one with the most "assets," was faster than her and stepped forward first.
Chen Jincheng remembered her. After all, the impact when she had leaned over to offer him a toast was significant.
'With her assets, this dance is sure to be a hit.'
Yinyin stood gracefully before the boss, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw she was the only one.
She didn't think she was any worse than Lin Qing. In fact, she had been wondering if the boss had boosted Lin Qing's videos because of her performance yesterday. Once the idea was in her head, suspicion grew, and that suspicion made her want to compete for the opportunity.
And so, Yinyin looked at Chen Jincheng with eager anticipation.