Who Needs a CEO? I Choose Stardom

The first season of Ni Bingyan’s World Travel had twelve episodes. Each episode was split into two parts, airing at 8 PM on Friday and Saturday nights, respectively.

The first season aired over twelve weeks, but filming was done at a pace of one episode every three days. Including travel time, the entire production took over forty days to complete.

In order to make time for this variety show, Ni Bingyan had to work non-stop before joining the cast of Zui Sheng Building.

She couldn’t even dream of having a single day off.

But the results were truly impressive. In the first week alone, her two Weibo accounts each gained seven to eight million followers.

You really couldn’t underestimate a variety show’s ability to attract fans.

No wonder some actresses could become top-tier stars and land all sorts of luxury brand endorsements just from a single variety show.

Even if their popularity faded along with the show’s, the money they earned in just a few years was more than they could spend in a lifetime. It didn’t seem so pitiful, really.

For Ni Bingyan, the intangible benefits of gaining more followers weren’t the most important thing at the moment.

What mattered most was that the show’s popularity had attracted more advertisers. Although the price with the TV station was already set, the price for online broadcasting had yet to be negotiated.

This meant that not only would she not cause her fans to lose money, but she would actually make a huge profit right alongside them.

With that huge weight lifted from her shoulders, everything she did felt a little easier.

Her posture and etiquette training had improved significantly, earning her high praise from her instructor. Even when Mou Sanyang dropped by one day for a surprise inspection, he was very satisfied with her progress.

However, a perfectionist is never truly satisfied.

He presented her with a new set of demands.

Yes, new. Demands.

Ni Bingyan gritted her teeth and accepted.

’All I have to do is add more detail to make the character more three-dimensional. As long as I’m willing to grind, it shouldn’t be too hard... right?’

With a new level of difficulty added to her training, Ni Bingyan focused solely on practice and no longer went online.

Occasionally hearing a few updates from Duanmu Li and Wei Shuojie was enough to keep her entertained.

Over the past weekend, the guesthouse guest she had happened to serve went viral; the warm and grateful guesthouse owner who had hosted her went viral; Director Luo, the diligent and long-unrecognized head of Wutong County’s poverty alleviation office, went viral; and even County Magistrate Gan, who had passionately sold products on livestreams without a care for his image to help the poor, went viral!

Even the Tan sheep and goji berries of Ning Province, and the potato feasts of Lao Gua Village, became incredibly popular!

People from all over the country flocked to Wutong County.

They came to see the snow in Wutong County, the snow-covered terraced fields of Lao Gua Village, to eat Ning Province’s Tan sheep, and to buy the province’s local specialties...

Some bored people even staked out the dilapidated county government building just to catch a glimpse of Director Luo and County Magistrate Gan.

And if they happened to catch them doing a livestream sale, it was even more of a thrill!

A single person had made an entire city famous.

She had helped a nationally designated poor county shed its ”impoverished” label in a single year and put it on the fast track to rapid economic development.

It was nothing short of a miracle!

No one could deny that she was incredible.

Countless officials from all over the country came to Wutong County to study its success, but not a single one was able to replicate the ”Wutong Miracle.”

When you thought about it, she hadn’t done much—just sold some potatoes for the impoverished households.

Livestreaming just meant setting up a phone. It seemed so simple that even a pig could probably learn how to do it.

As a result, places all over the country began hiring celebrities to sell products, but the consumers weren’t buying it.

Even with A-list celebrities, the hype would only last a few days. Once the star left, the place would return to poverty.

It wasn’t like Wutong County, which remained prosperous long after Ni Bingyan had left.

Some had even tried to pressure her through relevant departments to get her to help them out, but the results were never satisfactory.

Many things are truly a case of ”the times make the hero.”

Wutong County’s success wasn’t just due to Ni Bingyan’s dedication. A bigger reason was the unified effort of the entire county, and the fact that they happened to be the first to ”eat the crab” of celebrity livestreaming.

When others tried to copy them, it was merely a clumsy imitation. Not only did no one buy into it, but it also attracted a great deal of criticism.

Compared to the booming success of Wutong County, the fact that she was single-handedly carrying an entire variety show seemed like no big deal.

In an industry where most people lived off of hype, Ni Bingyan had suddenly become a plump little lamb, and everyone wanted to latch onto her and suck a little blood.

In just one short week, Sister Wei received countless collaboration requests. The agents and bosses who wanted to shove their own artists into the travel show were as numerous as fish in the sea!

Wei Shuojie was tearing her hair out. She rushed over to Ni Bingyan’s house that night to discuss how to handle the situation.

Rejecting everyone would offend too many people, but accepting everyone would change the flavor of the show.

Ni Bingyan first ruled out several artists who she recalled would eventually be caught in scandals. She quietly told Wei Shuojie what their issues were and that it was best to stay away from them, lest she get dragged into the mess when they eventually fell from grace.

Wei Shuojie just assumed that Ni Bingyan moved in different circles and had unique sources of information. To be safe, she rejected each of them one by one.

The two of them discussed it for a long time before finally deciding to invite a few people she had good relationships with and who weren’t direct competitors to tour Rongcheng City with her.

That’s right. For the fourth episode, she planned to take her friends home to visit her family.

A person had to be flexible, after all.

If you don’t have a vacation, you create one.

A trip is a trip, no matter where you go, right?

The Ni family estate wasn’t a place the average person could just enter.

Inviting a few friends over, bringing the production crew along to film the place where she grew up—how’s that for a gimmick?

What special skills had a culinary family with an unbroken two-hundred-year legacy passed down?

Wouldn’t it be enlightening to follow the cameras into the back kitchen of the Ni family’s private restaurant?

Then there was the soccer field that Mr. Ni had just finished building and put into use this year.

The finals of the ”Village Soccer Cup” were just a few days away. The showdown between amateur teams would be absolutely spectacular! Wasn’t that better than watching a bunch of pot-bellied players throwing matches?

On top of that, the second season of Mr. Ni’s Chef King Competition was also in full swing.

The original plan was to build the competition stage on the soccer field during its downtime, but after some thought, they decided to just build a massive studio right next to it instead.

Furthermore, relying on the year-round stream of events from these two venues and the proximity of Qingcheng Mountain, which was just a stone’s throw away, Mr. Ni had also developed a food street.

It had only been open for half a year, so it wasn’t well-known yet.

Taking advantage of the hit variety show to bring everyone over for a look and promote her own family’s business—wouldn’t that be great?

After all, it was less than an hour from Rongcheng City by intercity rail. You could easily make a day trip out of it, so the potential was huge.

Anyway, she was calling this episode ”Come Home Often.”

Her family’s estate really was that big, and it really was right next to a tourist attraction. And to avoid accusations of using public resources for private gain, she was even bringing along a group of friends from the industry. It was all perfectly reasonable!

The main premise of Ni Bingyan’s World Travel was that she arranged everything herself. But every time she finalized a plan, she would still run it by Sister Wei. She did this even though Sister Wei never gave her opinion, wanting not to interfere with her creative process.

When she presented this plan, Wei Shuojie was stunned!

She had been agonizing over how to deal with all the people who had come knocking, but as expected of the heiress to a culinary dynasty, Ni Bingyan had just tossed them all into one pot, stirred them up, and served them in a single scoop—all while killing several birds with one stone.

Tsk!

She used to be young and inexperienced, but now, her vision had grown remarkably broad.