Chapter 49
Chapter 49: Your Friend Circle Exploded
Su Yang had planned the roadmap for his company properly. The first two weeks should be spent adapting to the operations since it was not suitable for him to expand the business yet, so he only accepted weekend jobs.
In order to reduce the odds of something bad happening, he and Wang Dong would take shifts to lead the part-timers in executing their job just so they could control the situation and filter the candidates.
After the first two weeks, he would choose several honest and hard-working students among the part-timers and appoint them as team leaders to lead the others. A long-term contract would also be provided to the team leaders.
In the future, the team leaders would take his and Wang Dong’s place to guide the new part-timers. Only then could Su Yang and Wang Dong spare themselves from the basic operations of the company.
Wang Dong was in charge of two things. First, he was responsible for contacting Junqing Intermediary and liaise with them for more job selections. Second, he had to search for more companies to work with, which also meant that he had to search for other clients other than Junqing as backup and as a way to expand their reach to other companies.
Su Yang was in charge of expanding the group of students. He had to increase the number of available part-timers so that he could accept more jobs.
According to Su Yang’s calculation, his faculty alone had more than 5,000 students, 100 to 200 of which worked part-time constantly. Sometimes, there would be 500 to 600 of them during semester break.
If he could recruit all of them into his company’s operation line, he could arrange two jobs a week for the long-term part-timers and one job a fortnight for the other students. Using 130 yuan per head as a reference, Su Yang’s company would achieve 260,000 to 270,000 yuan sales per month with a net profit of nearly 80,000 yuan.
Excluding all the miscellaneous fees, the net profit would surely be above 65,000 yuan which was a considerably large amount. If he could expand to the entire campus or even all the universities in Shanghai, a monthly profit of over a million would not be a problem.
Of course, that was just an ideal calculation. As the number of part-timers increased, the company’s manpower and operation fees must also increase.
However, this would certainly be an untapped market!
Moreover, Su Yang also thought of the company’s future. This company was just the first of many projects in his grand future plans. Other than getting himself the initial capital, the company’s goal was to raise the first batch of users for him.
His grand future plan was to build an empire that had businesses all over Huaxia.
It was finally Saturday, and the first job for the company was due. The job was to pretend to be potential clients for a property event.
Su Yang and Wang Dong brought the 20 students there themselves.
The job went well. Su Yang leveraged on the students in the chat groups beforehand and informed them about some of the tricks and keywords, so the 20 students performed quite well.
The sales manager of the property company was suspicious at first, but halfway throughout the job, he gave Su Yang a big thumbs-up and promised to even contact them for the next job.
Su Yang exchanged contacts with the sales manager. Whether or not the sales manager was just trying to be polite, he was still the first potential client.
After the job with the property company, Su Yang and Wang Dong headed to Junqing Intermediary to settle the remaining fees.
He also signed a draft contract for Han Yi’s event. The reason why it was a draft contract was that Su Yang’s company was still under processing and would only be ready next week.
By then, Su Yang would bring the company stamp over to complete a formal agreement as well as the framework for a year-long agreement with Junqing Intermediary.
The framework agreement was an effective contract. Both companies signed to commit to a year of cooperation, and regardless of how many times they worked together throughout the year, as long as there was a signed and stamped invoice, it would be protected by law. It could also effectively reduce the trivial procedures between their multiple collaborations.
After he got the money, Su Yang distributed the payment to the part-timers. He had 400 yuan left while 40 yuan belonged to Wang Dong, so the remaining 360 yuan was the profit from the job.
It was by no means much, but it was a good start.
When he got home at night, he lay on his bed and started to figure out a way to save costs and increase the profit.
As he pondered about it, he suddenly thought of Han Yi’s event. An online artist might need fake fans, but could he somehow find some of Han Yi’s real fans in his course? If he could get real Han Yi’s fans to pose as ‘fake fans’, could he save on the payment to the students?
Even better, he could charge both sides and create more income for the company. No matter how he calculated, he might be able to earn 200 yuan per head.
However, he discarded the thought soon enough. If this fake fan event with Han Yi was organized by the management company, it was very likely because Han Yi had a fanatic fanbase that was uncontrollable, hence the company decided to get fake fans to keep the situation under control.
Therefore, in order to exercise control over these potential candidates and make sure they followed orders, he could not ask the fans to pay for the event. He must tell them it was a free event so that they listen to his order.
Su Yang believed it was workable. Nevertheless, he had to first find out whether Han Yi had real fans or not.
How? By doing market research.
Su Yang posted a status in his Friend Circle: ‘I might have a chance to see Han Yi next week. Are there any Han Yi fans?’
It was simple and brief.
Even though he barely had any reference, Su Yang believed he would be able to tell how popular she was with the fans and how great her review was.
After posting the status, he tossed his phone aside and had an apple. When he came back, before he even unlocked his phone, Deeny’s voice rang out, “Master! Your Friend Circle has exploded!”
“Exploded?!”
He picked up his phone and Deeny automatically showed him his Friend Circle. In less than 5 minutes, Su Yang had received 15 notifications from his Friend Circle.
He tapped on them. Other than some random likes, the rest of them were comments on his status.
‘Me, me! I’m a fan!’
‘Here! Han Yi’s fan here!’
‘I really admire her!’
‘My hand is raised!’
Even the straight-A student, Li Runze, left a comment, ‘Are you also a fan of Han Yi?’
As expected of a straight-A student, the ‘also’ that he included in his sentence was beautiful. It showed that he was Han Yi’s fan and was also searching for someone who shared the same thoughts, similar to how Mr. Lu Xun had described the two jujube trees[1]. The approaches might be different, but they all contributed towards the same goal.
‘It seems like there are a lot of Han Yi’s fans.’
Su Yang was more confident in his plan now.
The next day, he spent his time searching for Han Yi’s fans. The process was a boring one since he had to verify them one by one after all and promote the job in all the other chat groups.
However, whenever he added a candidate to his list, Su Yang muttered, “100 yuan”. It boosted his motivation to work harder.
As he continued to search for Han Yi’s fans, he filtered out the 20 part-timers who took part in the property viewing job with him. He picked 10 out of 20 of them and assigned them as team leaders. At the price of the job, which was 150 yuan per day, he asked them to find more fans and gather all the fans’ support.
His work sped up exponentially, and in the end, the registered number of candidates reached more than 130 people.
It was the first time Su Yang had a general idea about Han Yi’s fanbase. Of course, some of them might just want to see the artist or be there for the show.
Su Yang arranged his time and met the ten team leaders to brief them about the job. He then assigned them to take care of their own team members and promised to prioritize their part-time job applications the next time.
Soon, after the initial selection, a fan group of 100 members was founded.
After settling everything, Su Yang went into the personal space and took a bath, enjoying the weekend life that he had never experienced before.
Deeny was busy doing something outside the villa.
While he took his bath, he chatted with Deeny who did not seem to have an idea about what she was doing.
“Deeny, can you be like those AI in the movies and hack the bank server? Can you increase the figures in my savings account?”
[1] This refers to Lu Xun’s literary work, “Autumn Night”.