radicalducati Chapter 17 I, Bai Lu, am determined to become a big star!
Chapter 17 I, Bai Lu, am determined to become a big star!
When Bai Lu got home that night, he lay on the bed, holding the bank card in his hand.
She remembered that at the karaoke bar earlier, she threw down the microphone, said "I'm thirsty," and then picked up a glass and drank the wine in one gulp.
That's not thirst, that's clearly a guilty conscience.
They couldn't continue singing after getting to the line "Love is a light".
The kiss she gave him on the cheek was still burning hot.
Bai Lu turned over and buried her face in the pillow.
When did the changes begin?
She thought about this question seriously.
It was when he found her downstairs in the office building, tears streaming down her face, after being scammed, and said, "I'll pay it back for you."
It was when he placed the takeout bag in front of her, containing beggar's chicken and eight-treasure fish head soup?
Is it when he proactively invites me to go singing and then hands me his bank card?
wrong.
It's not about a particular day or a particular event.
He has completely changed.
The old Qingxiao was fine too.
However, he is very honest and reliable. We've known each other for over ten years and know each other inside and out.
But before, he was the kind of "good friend".
He'll be there for you when you're sad, and he'll lend you money when you're short, but he just stands there awkwardly, not saying much, let alone creating those heartwarming moments.
The current Qingxiao is different.
There's something indescribable about him now.
He is confident and composed, as if he can handle anything.
He doesn't talk much, but he can be quite funny at times, making me smile.
Qingxiao has started recruiting underlings, started a company, and makes creating hit products a breeze. He actually earned 60,000 yuan a month.
Moreover, he seems to treat Bai Lu differently now.
She wanted braised pork; he guessed it without asking? And then he brought it to her.
She didn't want to photograph cheap clothes, and he said, "I'll refuse all of them from now on."
She was covered in red spots from hanging on the Sijiqing shopping mall, but he didn't say anything. He just set a goal to make the shop successful and make her famous in the modeling world so she could choose high-quality merchants.
So that's how it is... So that's how it is...
Every time he said, "You can support yourself by doing e-commerce," it was true.
So that's how it is... So that's how it is...
Was he working so hard to fulfill that promise?
Bai Lu removed the bank card from her chest, sat up, and sat cross-legged on the bed, looking down at the card in her hand.
He was Bai Mengyan's good friend, a close buddy from Changzhou, and someone she could borrow money from when she was down on her luck.
But now, she's starting to think Qingxiao is handsome.
When he sat in front of the computer adjusting the direct traffic, his brows were slightly furrowed, and his fingers were typing rapidly on the keyboard. How come she had never noticed that focused look before?
When he carried the woven bag up to the fifth floor, his T-shirt was soaked and stuck to his spine, and the muscle lines on his arms were faintly visible. How come she never noticed before?
The more I look at Qingxiao, the more handsome he becomes; the more I look at him, the more pleasing he seems to the eye.
Bai Lu wasn't stupid; he knew what this meant.
It turned out that she had fallen for him.
No, it's not just liking.
It contained a little bit of love.
Bai Lu shook his head vigorously and slammed the bank card onto the bedside table.
Bai Mengyan.
She called her own name, her voice serious.
"Men will only slow down your rise to fame; you're too young to suffer the pain of love."
She stood up and walked around the bed twice, her bare feet on the cool floor making her head a little clearer.
"You want to strive, you want to become famous, you want to be a top female star—that's your dream, have you forgotten it?"
She stopped talking and looked at herself in the mirror.
The girl in the mirror was nineteen years old, with great skin, bright eyes, and sharp canine teeth.
This girl has wanted to be a star since she was a child.
During the preschool arts performance, she was standing in the center leading the dance when her skirt fell down halfway through. She finished the dance while holding up her skirt, and the audience laughed uproariously, while she cried her eyes out on stage.
In sixth grade, she wrote in her essay, "I want to be a star." Her teacher's comment was, "It's good to have dreams, but you have to be down-to-earth."
In junior high, she practiced crying scenes in front of the mirror and used up half a bottle of eye drops. Her mother found out and scolded her.
In high school, she saved her breakfast money to buy magazines like Rayli and Xinwei, cut out photos of models and pasted them on her bedside table, practicing her expressions every day.
At eighteen, she took a train alone to Shanghai to participate in SM Entertainment's auditions.
She never gave up.
It's not because of how much money celebrities can make.
It's because that was her dream.
This dream, like a seed, began to sprout when she came to understand things, and became one with her life.
She has saved money many times.
I saved 3,000 yuan by buying Taobao products, 5,000 yuan by buying catalogs, and 10,000 yuan by buying wall hangings.
Each time, she felt she was one step closer to her dream.
And each time, all the money was swindled away.
Talent scout scams, training fee scams, appearance fee scams—these are all scams targeting young girls, and their methods are ridiculously clumsy, yet she believed them every time.
Is it really because I'm stupid?
It's because she was so desperate to grasp at every straw.
What if it's true?
What if this really is an opportunity?
She was deceived so many times, but she still didn't give up.
This is Bailu.
This is Bai Mengyan.
This is the desire and dream of becoming a star.
Bai Lu looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath.
Once she fell in love, she knew herself all too well.
She would willingly fall into it, and slowly lose herself in the process of being with the two of them.
She would accompany Qingxiao in running his online store, acting as his model, helping him with packaging, and helping him select items.
Maybe she'll help him create one hit product after another, maybe they'll make a lot of money together, buy a house in Hangzhou, and live a stable life.
and then?
Then her dream of becoming a star became a joke of her youthful arrogance.
It was put away in the cabinet and covered in dust.
She doesn't want that.
She didn't want to one day stand in front of the mirror and see a Bai Mengyan who hadn't become Bai Lu.
"Qingxiao".
Bai Lu held the bank card and muttered to himself.
"We're all young now. There's plenty of time for romance and love in the future."
"Let's each do our best, and then we'll meet at the top."
"I will definitely never date."
"If one day I really become a big star, and if you're still single at that time..."
"I'll marry you, bathed in the light of heaven, okay?"
Qingxiao returned home, took a shower, and sat back down in front of the computer.
The data in the Express Train backend is still fluctuating.
After the store's daily sales exceeded 200 orders, the growth did not stop.
It is increasing by 20% every day.
The number of visitors to a single product increased from 1,600 to 2,300, and then to 3,000.
The add-to-cart rate remained stable at 14%, the conversion rate was around 3%, and the cost-per-click for paid search ads dropped to 0.3 yuan.
For a small, individual shop, this data is quite staggering.
But Qingxiao was not satisfied at all; in fact, he frowned.
A 20% growth rate is the ceiling for a small shop, but nothing in a large market.
He knew that in 2013, top Taobao women's clothing sellers could ship thousands of orders a day.
Han Du Yi She achieves daily sales of tens of millions, while Inman breaks 100 million in a single day on Singles' Day.
Those are the real players.
At best, he's a slightly larger husband-and-wife shop owner in Jiubao.
SUNSA is still a long way from becoming a top player in the industry.
His goal is a monthly profit of one million, not a sales volume of one million.
If you don't have tens of millions in your bank account, how can you make that little deer a resource star?
Qingxiao leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the table.
He had never walked the path of the entertainment industry in his previous life, but he had seen Bai Lu walk it.
From the short film "Cat's Tree" to signing with Yu Zheng, from playing minor roles to "Zhou Sheng Ru Gu".
She wanted to be a star, so he provided her with resources.
But all of these require money.
The initial phase from 0 to 1 has been successfully completed.
One person, one best-selling product, one stall, went from selling a few orders a day to selling two hundred orders a day.
But this growth curve is the ceiling.
There are only so many things he can do on his own.
He's the one who takes the photos, edits them, lists them, promotes them, handles the ordering, packs them, and provides customer service.
Now Xiao Geng takes on the responsibilities of sourcing and packaging, but he is still the core of the operation.
To go from 1 to 10, or from 1 to 100, you must recruit employees and start a company.
He needs to hire someone, a dedicated operations assistant, to help monitor data, adjust paid advertising, and generate reports.
Specialized graphic designers can save time spent on photo editing and do more important things.
Dedicated customer service representatives eliminate the need for you to manually monitor and reply to messages on Taobao's messaging platform.
A dedicated warehouse manager has standardized and systematized the packing and shipping process, eliminating the need for two people to physically handle the work.
We also need to rent formal office space. We can no longer stay in the farmers' houses in Jiubao. We need to move to an office building, have a showroom, and have a warehouse.
However, the company incurred losses in the early stages after hiring employees.
The operations assistant earns 4,000 yuan a month, the graphic designer 4,000 yuan, the customer service representative 3,000 yuan, and the warehouse supervisor 4,000 yuan. Adding Xiao Geng's salary and venue rental, the monthly labor cost alone is close to 30,000 yuan.
In addition to office rent, equipment purchases, and marketing budgets, at least 500,000 yuan in start-up capital is needed for the first three months.
This money will not yield any returns in the short term.
Building a team is like laying a foundation; only with a solid foundation can a house be built.
But when they were laying the foundation, there was nothing on the ground.
It's tough.
We can afford to lose.
Qingxiao doesn't have that money.
The shop currently earns four to five thousand yuan a day, which amounts to 150,000 yuan a month.
But the 150,000 was for working capital; it cost money to buy goods and to promote the business. Bai Lu's 60,000 had already emptied half of his previously accumulated savings.
At the current rate of growth, if I save for another two months, I might be able to save 300,000.
But three months later, the peak season for autumn clothing will be over, and winter clothing will be the real market. If you miss this opportunity, all your hard work this year will be for nothing.
Can't wait.
Qingxiao leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
The image that popped into my mind was Shuya.
Her words still echoed in my ears: "Five hundred thousand. Come over and keep me company often, how about it?"
He refused at the time.
"You can't have your cake and eat it too."
He spoke of it so casually, like a true gentleman.
Qingxiao opened his eyes and looked at the business advisor on the computer screen.
He needs angel-level seed funding to get his team up and running before the winter peak season arrives.
Shuya is rich.
She worked at Sijiqing for almost ten years, in the best corner stall on the second floor, where there were always seven or eight young women working there year-round.
The cash flow she has is not just a matter of 500,000.
The 500,000 was just a test for her.
What she wanted wasn't money, but people.
Should we sacrifice our looks a little?
Qingxiao leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.