Between Tailwinds and Systems: How Zheng Zeyu Redefines the Business Logic of “High-Profit IP”

LAPost / Los Angeles (April 13, 2026) — At a time when many international students are still exploring their entrepreneurial paths, Zheng Zeyu has emerged as one of the few in this group with a systematic understanding of business and a well-developed methodology. Recently, the influential business consultant within the overseas student entrepreneur community visited Los Angeles. Through his extensive practice and high-frequency output in business model analysis, enterprise management systems, and personal IP operations across social media, he has gradually built a cross-platform, cross-community personal brand. During his visit, Zheng accepted an exclusive interview with this publication, where he, for the first time, systematically articulated his underlying logic and forward-looking insights on “high-profit business models” and the scalable pathways of individual IP.

Zheng graduated from the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. Early in his career, he founded Zeyu Consulting, and later expanded into Tengyu No.1 and Headroom Consulting, gradually establishing a three-tier business system encompassing business consulting, digital systems, and capital strategy. His business footprint now spans more than 20 countries and over 40 industries, having served more than 10,000 clients.

According to reports, his methodological framework has helped clients achieve multiple-fold revenue growth and has developed a replicable system in high-ticket business models. Zheng himself has also been included as a business case study at his alma mater and has been featured in a Forbes column and interviewed by a CCTV host, continuously sharing his business insights across mainstream and professional platforms. In 2017, he was named to the “Top 30 Chinese American Entrepreneurs Under 30 in the U.S.” list.

In the interview, Zheng first addressed the common challenges faced by entrepreneurs today. He noted that many are experiencing declining customer value per transaction, shrinking profit margins, and intensifying homogenized competition. Despite investing significant time and effort, returns continue to diminish. “The root cause is not a lack of effort, but a failure to capture the right trends and tailwinds,” he said.

He outlined business cycles as consisting of three distinct phases: growth, stabilization, and decline. During the growth phase, opportunities are abundant and competition is minimal—“you can make money even with your eyes closed.” However, once the market enters decline, even increased effort may lead to continuously shrinking profits. From this, he draws a key conclusion: 80% of profitability comes from trends and positioning, while only 20% comes from individual capability.

To illustrate this point, Zheng reflected on several industry windows he has experienced. During the rise of knowledge monetization in 2017, “courses would sell as soon as they launched.” In 2019, during the private traffic marketing boom, “conversions could be achieved directly through social feeds.” By 2021, with the explosion of short videos and live streaming, “a single video could generate hundreds of thousands of views.” In his view, the common denominator across these phases was not a leap in individual capability, but the fact that “being in the right place at the right time produces results.”

On how to build high-profit business models, Zheng proposed three core principles: pricing power, scalability, and high-margin structures.

He argued that true business competition begins with “pricing power.” If one remains confined to products or services alone, they inevitably fall into price wars. “The key to making money is not the product itself, but whether you can define value,” he said. Advanced business models often reconstruct value perception through the expression of ideas, identity, and lifestyle, rather than merely solving functional problems. For example, family education positioned as “homework tutoring” competes at a low-value level, whereas framing it as “whether a child is capable of inheriting a family legacy” elevates it into a new value space.

The second key is scalability. Zheng pointed out that many entrepreneurs still rely on one-on-one services based on personal time and experience, which inherently limits growth. A truly sustainable business structure should productize experience, standardize solutions, and convert them into replicable systems—allowing the business to scale beyond the founder’s time constraints.

The third core is a high-margin structure. He emphasized that high-ticket pricing is not a barrier, but a filtering mechanism. “Low prices require a large volume of customers, while high-ticket models allow you to focus on a smaller group of high-value clients.” According to Zheng, high-net-worth clients prioritize outcomes and efficiency over price, making them more receptive to high-value products and services.

Based on these principles, Zheng outlined a six-stage evolution path for business IP: from one-on-one consulting, to online courses, to high-ticket training camps and systemized consulting, then extending to equity-sharing and capital participation, and ultimately advancing toward investment and asset-based operations. In essence, this progression moves from “selling time,” to “selling systems,” and eventually to “selling assets and structures.”

He also introduced the distinct roles of his three business divisions: Zeyu Consulting focuses on top-level business model design and high-ticket consulting services; Tengyu No.1 specializes in AI- and SaaS-driven digital growth systems to help clients build scalable business structures; and Headroom Consulting identifies high-quality entrepreneurial projects and, through data-driven analysis, provides equity investment and capital support.

When discussing reasons for failure in the industry, Zheng highlighted two key factors: first, most entrepreneurs have not experienced a full business cycle and therefore struggle to recognize emerging trends; second, a lack of exposure to high-end consumption and business environments prevents them from understanding the logic of high-ticket value. “If you’ve never entered the high-end market, it’s difficult to design products for it,” he noted.

At the conclusion of the interview, Zheng summarized his business philosophy in one sentence: the essence of business evolution is transitioning from selling time, to selling systems, to selling ideas—while finding one’s position within cycles of opportunity.

In his view, the future of business competition will no longer hinge on isolated capabilities, but on the integration of structural design and trend judgment. As AI and digitalization continue to reshape the rules of commerce, this perspective—emphasizing positioning and systems—is becoming an unavoidable reality for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

(By: Richard Ren / LAPost)