After reflecting on his painful lessons, Pei Qian decided to summarize his experiences and look toward the future.

For the sake of the “mysterious surprise within the system rules,” Pei Qian still needed to strive for losses in the next cycle.

However, as the saying goes, one learns from mistakes. Pei Qian had already become much more savvy.

This time, he must learn from previous lessons and avoid making the same mistakes!

First, he absolutely could not pin all his hopes for making money on wealth conversion!

Previously, Pei Qian had always looked down on an income of ten or twenty thousand, thinking he could convert it to hundreds of thousands with just a small loss. This thinking was problematic.

In the last two settlements, he received just over thirty thousand once and just over twenty thousand another time. Averaging it out monthly, it was only slightly over ten thousand yuan.

Too little!

Pei Qian decided to think of other ways to make money.

Previously, acting in “Mr. Pei’s Daily Life” directly earned him thirty thousand yuan. Wasn’t that much more reliable than the system?

Indeed, these days one couldn’t support oneself through honest work. In the end, one still needed a side hustle.

As for exactly how to do this, Pei Qian hadn’t quite figured it out yet, but he already had a general idea.

In short, as long as it was within the system’s permitted range, exchanging some labor for compensation without going too far would be fine.

The specific operation would need to be tested against the system before deciding.

Secondly, there was the question of how to correctly generate losses.

Pei Qian had now roughly figured out the system’s nature.

The system had many restrictions. Products couldn’t be passed off as high quality when they were inferior. Garbage couldn’t be forcibly sold at high prices. High-value items couldn’t be sold cheaply. In short, all product pricing could fluctuate up and down, but must remain within a reasonable range.

This restriction essentially eliminated Pei Qian’s idea of deliberately incurring losses.

With low investment, he could only sell at low prices, which poor people liked.

With high investment, he could only sell at high prices, and when his reputation improved, rich people liked them.

So, certain crooked paths couldn’t be taken, as they were all within the system’s calculations.

But throughout this process, Pei Qian discovered a phenomenon: the system evaluated a product’s quality from both “income” and “reputation” perspectives.

In other words, burning money to gain a reputation was also feasible.

To earn less money, one needed to improve reputation as much as possible.

This was the enlightenment brought by the documentary “Breaking the Cocoon to Become a Butterfly”!

As long as the response was big enough and the influence widespread enough, the system wouldn’t stop it even if the film had no monetization method and couldn’t earn money.

Of course, because of the documentary, Li Zhengwei had hyped up “Sea Fortress,” leading to an increase in players and income for the game. This was a small flaw.

But after all, the documentary approach was still a good method, despite this minor imperfection.

Moreover, this experience wasn’t limited to documentaries; the same principle could be applied to making games.

If he invested enough and then made a niche game that everyone praised but few paid for…

Wouldn’t that be perfect?

Pei Qian felt this should be Tenda Games’ next stage goal.

Last cycle, Tenda Games had updated DLCs for all their games. If they didn’t develop new games, everyone would just slack off every day, which wouldn’t be justified.

Fortunately, although Pei Qian had been confused before, he had now found a new direction.

If this direction proved successful, losing a few million on a game wouldn’t be a problem!

As for Shangyang Games…

From the current situation, they had been consistently losing money, indicating Pei Qian’s plan was relatively successful. No need to worry about them for now.

If he encountered such treasure companies that continuously lost money in the future, Pei Qian wouldn’t mind acquiring a few more.

Besides this, he needed to explore some new fields.

Slackin’ Delivery was a relatively successful attempt, but the magnitude of the losses wasn’t quite enough.

As for Slackin’ Internet Café…

Strictly speaking, it was quite absurd that the flagship store became popular because of Chen Lei. Pei Qian still couldn’t quite accept this fact.

But for now, only the flagship store has become a tourist attraction. The other stores were still operating at small losses.

So, opening physical stores should be a sound general direction. There were just some minor issues at the operational level, and also, Mr. Pei’s luck wasn’t very good.

Therefore, physical stores could continue to be opened.

Besides the high-end restaurant he had already planned to open specifically for rapid spending, Pei Qian also intended to venture into logistics and warehousing, that is, express delivery.

If he could make annual losses like JD, Pei Qian would be laughing in his dreams.

Moreover, engaging more in such labor-intensive industries would give more benefits to each employee, providing an advantage when rapidly spending money.

…

After sorting things out, Pei Qian felt that creating some losses in the next cycle might not be so difficult!

So, let’s start with the first task: finding extra income!

Experience had proven that he couldn’t rely entirely on the system to make money. As long as Pei Qian wasn’t too excessive and didn’t maliciously extract system funds, the system wouldn’t stop him from selling his labor for compensation.

As for exactly how much salary would be considered extracting system funds…

That needed to be checked with the system.

Pei Qian silently asked in his heart, “If I invest in starting a company and exchange labor for reasonable compensation, what’s the maximum salary I can give myself?”

[It depends on the host’s actual business capability and working hours.]

Pei Qian: “…”

It didn’t sound very optimistic.

Pei Qian’s actual business capability was non-existent.

Although Pei Qian felt being a boss seemed quite easy, he wasn’t very capable when it came to taking on specific responsibilities.

This could probably be seen as the maximum salary Pei Qian could get if he set aside all his identities and positions and interviewed at a company.

And he would need to work regular hours to earn that much.

For example, if Pei Qian were to wash dishes at a restaurant now, he could earn at most two or three thousand a month, and he’d have to honestly work more than eight hours every day.

“This is too unreliable!”

“I’m counting on the system precisely because I don’t have these professional skills!”

Indeed, the system showed no mercy in this aspect.

However, upon further thought, Pei Qian realized this rule might have loopholes.

For some simpler jobs, business capabilities were easier to define, such as washing dishes or serving at restaurants, which had fixed salary levels.

But what about more abstract, complex jobs?

For instance… being an actor.

The pay difference between a top actor and an extra could be tens of thousands of times, and even actors of similar levels would have vastly different fees depending on the films they took.

How would the system calculate this?

The system’s text quickly appeared: [Host’s current maximum daily pay is 1500. This will increase with improvements in acting skills, fame, etc.]

[If a company unrelated to system funds hires the host, the system will not impose restrictions as long as it doesn’t arouse suspicion.]

Pei Qian was stunned.

Why was there differential treatment?

Upon further thought, he understood.

This was a patch the system made to prevent Pei Qian from “cashing out” system funds.

For example, if Pei Qian bought a film company and spent one million yuan to hire himself as an actor, that wouldn’t be allowed, as it would be considered malicious extraction of system funds.

If he invested his own money, his maximum daily pay would be 1500 yuan. When he previously filmed “Mr. Pei’s Daily Life,” he shot one episode per day for a pay of 1000 yuan, which was within this range, so the system didn’t prohibit it.

By this calculation, with 10 days of filming in a 30-day month, he could earn fifteen thousand yuan.

Considering Pei Qian’s current income level, this wasn’t small, but… it couldn’t be considered a lot either.

However, if a company unrelated to system funds hired Pei Qian for filming, the system wouldn’t care how much they paid him.

After all, this wouldn’t involve the malicious conversion of system funds.