Believe it or not

Recently, Lu Zhou has been extremely busy. Not only is he occupied with writing songs, recording music, practicing the piano, running performances, and taking on commercials, but he is also busy meeting all sorts of people.

Today, having just managed to squeeze in an hour of piano practice under the strict supervision of Elder Qin, he had to rush off immediately to his next appointment as soon as he stepped out.

The person he was meeting this time was Qiu Mingbo.

After secretly maneuvering and testing the waters for so long, today marked the first time the two of them were meeting face-to-face.

Because both of their work schedules were rather tight today and they had both carved out time specifically for this meeting, they tacitly skipped the pleasantries. They didn't waste time and went straight to the point.

"I heard from Chengxi that you were very eager to collaborate with me and locked onto me as your agent from the very beginning."

Qiu Mingbo was a thirty-nine-year-old man, slightly plump, with a belly already showing signs of middle-aged weight gain, and wearing black-rimmed glasses.

His opening tone was quite confident and aggressive, putting him firmly in the dominant position.

This aura fit a veteran manager who had been a dominant force in the entertainment industry for many years.

Lu Zhou smiled, nodded, and admitted, "Indeed."

"It would be our utmost honor if Brother Bo agrees to collaborate with us. I believe that with the reinforcement of Brother Bo's capabilities, Legend Entertainment will surely carve out a brilliant path in the entertainment industry one day."

Lu Zhou poured on the charm, picking out pleasant words to say.

"We haven't even started negotiating yet, so how can you be so sure I'll agree to join you?"

Qiu Mingbo took a sip of his cocktail, observing Lu Zhou's poised and calm demeanor with growing interest.

"Chengxi must have already discussed the cooperation terms offered by Legend Entertainment with you in depth. You originally turned us down, but ultimately changed your mind and agreed to meet with me. Doesn't that already mean you've decided to collaborate?"

Lu Zhou had no intention of beating around the bush and laid his cards straight on the table.

Qiu Mingbo liked smart and straightforward people like him. He pushed a document he had brought across the table toward Lu Zhou.

"I've added three conditions to the original terms. Take a look. If you agree, then it's a happy collaboration," he said.

Lu Zhou took the document and began to read it carefully.

Most of the content was what they had previously provided him, but Qiu Mingbo had marked the three additional conditions in red.

First, a request for equity in Legend Entertainment.

Second, the title of Artist Strategic Executive Officer must come with both power and prestige; he must have sufficient say in the future planning of the artists.

Third, he had three or four artists whose contracts were about to expire, and their career achievements in the industry were quite good, currently on an upward trajectory. He requested permission to bring these artists along to Legend Entertainment, and their contracts must first be vetted and approved by him before signing.

The pitfalls he had stepped into at World Image Entertainment had significantly tempered Qiu Mingbo's edge, and the conditions he proposed were not phrased in overly sharp language.

The terms still felt within a reasonable range, and Qiu Mingbo had left a relatively large margin for negotiation for both sides.

At first glance, it didn't seem entirely unacceptable.

However, after quietly finishing the document and pondering for a moment, Lu Zhou spoke with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Let me respond to them one by one."

Looking at the words on the document, Lu Zhou slowly elaborated:

"As for the first condition, wanting equity in Legend Entertainment is naturally not a problem. If you join us, you will be a key executive strategist for the company, so granting shares is only right. But the premise is that your tenure must first meet the minimum standards required by the company."

"We can discuss this together in a meeting later. If we reach an agreement with no issues, it will be written into the contract. Do you have any objections to this arrangement?"

Finding it reasonable, Qiu Mingbo nodded and said, "Agreed."

Lu Zhou's gaze shifted to the second condition on the document.

"The Artist Executive Officer having sufficient say over the company's signed artists is also as it should be. Otherwise, why would we go through all the trouble to invite you here, just to make you a figurehead? Aside from myself, you will have sole responsibility for the development plans of all the company's artists."

"However, the career development plan for each signed artist needs to be detailed and reported regularly to the board of directors. In the event of concealed reporting, withholding information, or misreporting, the team you lead will bear full responsibility."

"There's no problem with this requirement, right?"

With that, Lu Zhou looked up at Qiu Mingbo again to ask for his opinion.

Qiu Mingbo narrowed his eyes, studying Lu Zhou for a long moment before nodding in response, "OK, fair enough."

Lu Zhou nodded, looked back down at the document, twirled the phone in his hand, and said, "As for the third condition, I'm very sorry, but I cannot agree."

Hearing this, Qiu Mingbo frowned.

He had originally thought that the third condition would be the one Lu Zhou agreed to most readily, and even expected him to feel grateful that he could bring artists along to join Legend Entertainment.

As it turned out... this was the only condition vetoed by Lu Zhou?

"Why?"

Qiu Mingbo voiced the question hidden in his heart.

"These artists are all quite good and can bring substantial revenue to Legend Entertainment. I don't quite understand why you disagree with signing them?"

Lu Zhou pushed the document back across the table to Qiu Mingbo, smiled, and said:

"They have already made a name for themselves and actually don't lack good companies vying to sign them. Going to other large companies would offer better resources and be more beneficial to their development."

"As for our company, I hope to reserve more signing opportunities for artists who haven't made it big yet and build their fame from scratch."

Qiu Mingbo furrowed his brows once more.

"That will incur high costs, and it's a long process. If luck isn't on their side, several years of time can easily be wasted transitioning an artist from obscurity to fame."

"You've been through it, so you should understand the hardships involved. Flipping the perspective, it's the same for the company."

Qiu Mingbo could not comprehend Lu Zhou's train of thought.

Lu Zhou replied, "That's why what we need to do is keep our eyes peeled, select artists with high potential, and strive to help them achieve success in the shortest possible time."

With a beaming smile, he added, "Isn't that much more challenging?"

Qiu Mingbo: "???"

What on earth is he doing?

Is he living in a fantasy world?

He's so young, yet his ambition is extraordinarily large.

Is choosing artists with high potential that easy? And making them famous in a short time—is that a simple task?

Previously, he felt Lu Zhou was no ordinary person, but now Qiu Mingbo suddenly wondered if he was just blindly overconfident.

Qiu Mingbo countered, "It is challenging, but this path isn't as easy as you imagine. Right now, Legend Entertainment only has you to hold down the fort. Adding a few more famous artists makes securing resources in the industry much easier."

Knowing that Qiu Mingbo was still struggling internally, Lu Zhou smiled and spoke again:

"Brother Bo, if you want to break through the bottleneck of your career, you need to step out of your comfort zone and take a gamble."

"Just like me back then—if I hadn't taken that gamble and terminated my contract with Jinhua Entertainment, I might still be squatting in an idol trainee rehearsal room, sweating profusely today."

...

Qiu Mingbo froze upon hearing this.

Dammit, although he didn't like Lu Zhou's phrasing, he wasn't wrong.

"You seem quite confident in yourself," Qiu Mingbo raised an eyebrow.

"Of course. Without sufficient confidence, I wouldn't dare open the doors to you, would I?"

"On the other hand, Brother Bo, are you confident in your own fresh start?" Lu Zhou retorted with a deadpan expression.

This question struck straight to the soul.

Qiu Mingbo paused.

Right, did he have enough confidence in his own fresh start?

If he did, why was he thinking of bringing old faces along to conquer the battlefield wherever he went?

Wasn't this also another manifestation of a lack of confidence?

Having realized this, a profound sense of shock washed over him.

As it turned out, he wasn't confident enough.

He relied too heavily on his past achievements and his halo in the entertainment industry, making the baggage he carried heavier and heavier, dragging it everywhere he went.

These were his baggage, but they were also his battle records—the foundational guarantee proving to himself that he would never fail!

If he wanted a breakthrough, he had to step out of his comfort zone.

Qiu Mingbo was ultimately persuaded.

When Lu Zhou left, he sent a text message to Pan Chengxi: [Done].

Pan Chengxi: [You're a beast]

...

The three-day consideration period was not long. Just before the day of Lu Zhou's scheduled meeting with Xu Junze arrived, Qi Jiajia gave him her final reply.

Fortunately, up to this point, everything Lu Zhou had proactively planned was still unfolding within his predicted trajectory.

The meeting with Xu Junze was set in his office.

It was late in the evening. Most employees had already left for the day, with only a handful remaining to work overtime, none of whom noticed Lu Zhou's arrival.

Lu Zhou had been busy all day and was quite mentally exhausted. When he met Xu Junze, his expression appeared somewhat stern.

At first glance, Xu Junze thought to himself that things looked bad. With an expression like that, was he really here to demand accountability? Did Lu Zhou genuinely have a phobia of manufactured publicity?

The corners of his mouth twitched, forcing a slightly awkward smile.

He felt somewhat awkward, having had a decent relationship with Lu Zhou during the variety show. Now that he was secretly helping Lu Zhou's ex-girlfriend hitch her wagon to Lu Zhou for publicity, from Lu Zhou's perspective, it must certainly feel like a painful betrayal by a friend.

However, Xu Junze was a traffic operations specialist; if he harbored that many misgivings, he wouldn't be able to play the game.

Meeting clients' demands and fulfilling their targets were what he needed to consider. Li Jiayan was half a client to him now, but Lu Zhou wasn't.

Lu Zhou was at best a friend he might not contact very often in the future.

Now that he was a public figure, he should mentally prepare himself to be used by others for hype.

So Xu Junze thought to himself.

"You look a bit thinner. You must have been very busy with work after the show ended, right?" Xu Junze initiated the pleasantries between old friends.

Lu Zhou casually pulled up a chair and sat down, letting out a soft sigh. "Indeed, I've been very busy. But the weight loss isn't from being busy; it's to look a bit better on camera."

Xu Junze smiled and nodded in understanding. As people familiar with working in front of the camera, they both knew that meeting appropriate image management requirements was inevitable.

"What would you like to drink?" he asked.

Lu Zhou replied, "Plain water is fine."

Xu Junze got up and poured Lu Zhou a cup of warm water.

"We planned to have dinner last time, but it got canceled due to scheduling conflicts. To make a special trip to see me this late today—tell me, what brings you here?"

Xu Junze glanced at the kraft paper document bag resting on Lu Zhou's lap and cut straight to the chase.

Lu Zhou took the cup and tilted his head back, gulping down half of it in one go; he was clearly genuinely thirsty.

"I have a business proposition I'd like to discuss with you."

After finishing the water, he set the cup down on the small table beside him, drew a document from the bag, and handed it to Xu Junze.

"Take a look. Interested?" he asked point-blank.

Xu Junze was stunned for a long while before taking it. "A business proposition?"

It wasn't to demand accountability after all?

That was truly bizarre.

Lu Zhou said, "I want to invest in this project and have you run it. If you think it has potential, we'll collaborate."

After skimming through the contents of the document roughly, Xu Junze looked at Lu Zhou with entirely different eyes than before.

Someone deep in the entertainment industry actually understood the internet influencer sector this thoroughly. He was no simple character.

"You run a web influencer MCN; what do you think of the current influencer brokerage market?" Lu Zhou asked with a faint smile, seeing that Xu Junze had finished reading.

"The market is massive, but the competition is also fierce. Everyone is racking their brains trying to forge top-tier influencers, but most of what can be mined has already been dug up. Audiences are experiencing aesthetic fatigue, and content development has reached saturation."

"To make your influencers stand out from the army of internet personalities, you have to play with distinctive features that truly pack a punch, and you need to keep them relevant for the long haul. Otherwise, even if you break into the top tier, you'll fade into obscurity before long."

"The current influencer brokerage market is as easy as you want it to be, and as difficult as you make it. It depends on the scale you're aiming for."

Putting the document down, Xu Junze spoke the honest truth.

He wasn't afraid of revealing his hand; after all, not everyone could master the tricks of this trade and make it work. The waters run deep—of course, not as deep as the entertainment industry, but the deep waters of the entertainment industry and those of the influencer world aren't quite the same thing."

"Influencer management is a bit different from artist management," Lu Zhou noted.

"The success of an influencer has too low a replicability. Once you succeed with a certain model and want to apply that template to cultivate the next generation using the same playbook, you toss and turn for a while only to find that it doesn't work anymore."

"Artist management is a completely different state of affairs."

"After cultivating a successful artist, a brokerage agency can usually continuously output multiple generations through a mature, streamlined training system. The waves before push those behind, and the newcomers can seamlessly take over. That's the game of artist management."

"Why can artist management be played this way, while influencer management struggles to do so? Do you know why?"

Lu Zhou looked at Xu Junze with an ambiguous smile, tossing the question back to him.

Lu Zhou's words had already provoked deep thought in Xu Junze, who frowned and carefully deliberated for a moment.

"Most influencers' content lacks substance, and their substitutability is too high. Artist works are different; most of them are meticulously crafted by teams. As long as their works endure, they hold a place in the audience's hearts. That's why artists' fame lasts long, whereas influencers can explode in popularity quickly, but it's hard to sustain."

"If influencer agencies want to adopt the model of artist agencies, the capital backing and team effort required behind the scenes are on an entirely different level."

Lu Zhou flashed a satisfied smile. "Spot on."

"That's why simply signing promising influencers won't help you break through your bottleneck and realize your dreams."

"If you want a breakthrough, you have to change your model."

"The reason Star Chain MCN has reached its current volume and started experiencing growth slowdowns isn't because Chu瑶 left, but rather because at this tier, it has basically hit its ceiling."

Lu Zhou brought up Chu Yao, which happened to be Xu Junze's knotty emotional dilemma.

Xu Junze felt a surge of shock internally, unable to calm down for a long time.

Lu Zhou continued, "Interested in trying out a new model? Challenge influencer management using tactics similar to artist management; you might harvest a different kind of reward."

Xu Junze answered, "I'm not familiar with that set of artist management tricks."

"You'll get familiar once you play around with it. No one is born knowing how, but you have the edge, which is why I want to collaborate with you."

Lu Zhou smiled and tapped his index finger against the document.

"We can jointly establish a new influencer content company that mass-produces influencers capable of acting in short dramas. You'll be responsible for discovering, cultivating, and outputting influencers with this potential, while I provide the content industry chain, along with the strategies and resources of the entertainment industry."

Xu Junze was still in a hesitant phase. "Short dramas are currently a blank market. I haven't researched them yet, so I'm not sure if there's any meat on those bones."

Lu Zhou countered, "Precisely because it's a blank market, we need to take the lead in setting trends, capture the market, and reap the first wave of dividends. Afterwards, if we have the strength, we can delve deeper into producing high-quality content. Do well, and who knows, you might even get a chance to transition into the entertainment industry."

"Trust me, society has entered a fast-paced, bite-sized entertainment era. Short dramas will definitely have a massive market in the near future; it's only a matter of time."

Lu Zhou radiated a sense of absolute confidence that rubbed off on Xu Junze.

After deep contemplation for a long while, Xu Junze replied, "It's not entirely out of the question to give it a try. But you mentioned earlier that you provide the content industry chain—how can someone who plays music provide this kind of content? Do you have the resources?"

Lu Zhou smiled. "Rest assured, I do, and they're basically all in place. Right now, we just lack people."

Of course he did; he had already purchased the entire work library of an entire online literature site. Find some screenwriters to organize them, and wouldn't that settle it?

Lu Zhou's phone rang. He glanced at it and rejected the call.

"Think it over carefully. If you're interested in collaborating, give me your answer."

"Is a week enough? If I don't get a response from you after a week, I'll look for someone else. I originally had two prospective collaboration targets in mind: you, and Wang Bin..."

Xu Junze: "..."

Wang Bin—damn it, that was his mortal rival.

Lu Zhou, you ruthless bastard.

"I haven't talked to Wang Bin yet, after all, my primary collaborator choice is you," Lu Zhou said.

Xu Junze conceded, "Let me think about it and I'll give you an answer within a week."

"Good." Lu Zhou pursed his lips into a smile and said, "Oh, right, there's one more thing."

Xu Junze asked, uncomprehending, "What is it?"

"Did Jiayan come looking for you?" Lu Zhou asked with a smile.

Xu Junze felt a slight thud in his chest. Did what was bound to happen finally arrive?

"She did," he didn't hide it from him.

"Did you sign her?" Lu Zhou asked straightforwardly.

Xu Junze paused, "What?"

"The video of Jiayan playing 'Starry Night Sonata' on Doule previously—that was the strategy you gave her, right?" Lu Zhou said with an ambiguous smile.

Xu Junze's lips trembled slightly. "It was."

Since he knew, there was no longer any need to hide it.

"She came to me for help, so I gave her a suggestion. I figured it would be a win-win for both of you—she benefited, and you benefited. You shouldn't have any objections, right?"

Xu Junze gave a dry chuckle.

Lu Zhou smiled, without stating whether he had objections or not. "You want to sign her into your Star Chain, and since she's tasted sweetness now, she's also interested in collaborating with you. Am I wrong?"

Xu Junze replied, "You're not wrong."

In his heart, he couldn't help but marvel: This kid's mind is really sharp; every single guess hits the bullseye.

"Did you sign her or not?" Lu Zhou pressed on.

Xu Junze shook his head. "Not yet. We're about to, still in the stage of negotiating terms."

Lu Zhou thought for a moment and said, "If you're interested in collaborating with me, I have one extra little condition."

Xu Junze looked at him quizzically. "What condition?"

Lu Zhou answered, "You can sign Li Jiayan, but she must be signed into our joint company. If you agree to that, I'll wait a week for your decision on the partnership. If you don't agree, then I won't wait."

Xu Junze narrowed his eyes slightly. Why on earth would he request this?

What does this matter have to do with Li Jiayan?

Sign Li Jiayan into the cooperative venture between him and Lu Zhou? Is he planning to keep her future career under his thumb? What kind of fetish is that? Weren't you over Li Jiayan? Was that fake?

"Are you still harboring lingering affections for her?" Xu Junze joked.

"Not at all. It's just that if she's hell-bent on walking this path, I'll feel more at ease keeping her under my nose. I don't like you guys poking holes in my boat every now and then," Lu Zhou confessed candidly.

"Signing her into Star Chain won't bring you much benefit; placing her in our cooperative company won't cause you any loss either."

Signing her into Star Chain wouldn't just lack benefits—it would drag you down into an abyss of eternal damnation. My brother, your career hit rock bottom in your past life because of her.

"But Jiayan isn't material for short dramas; she's heading down the music route and isn't suited for this at all." Xu Junze felt that Lu Zhou was starting to talk out of his depth.

"Wrong. Betting that she'll become famous down the music route is a mistake. On the contrary, she is prime material for short dramas, and I'll make a prediction—she'll be a top-tier player in this industry in the future. Believe it or not, I understand her better than you do."

Lu Zhou spoke with utter seriousness.

This perspective of Lu Zhou's completely subverted Xu Junze's understanding.

Lu Zhou's phone rang again. He stood up with his phone and said, "Brother Jun, think it over carefully. I have some work to take care of and need to leave now. Let's stay in touch."

Xu Junze nodded and saw Lu Zhou out the door.