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In this guide you will find tips to stay organized and to maximize profits
Guide to Increasing Your Profits
Hey everyone, I thought I would create a practical guide to help those starting out in the game on how to help maximize their time and profits. I am currently on day 200 making around 500k a day and wanted to share some tips I have found along the way.
Expanding Tall – Maximize Store Hours and Maximize Profits
Most games will start off the same way… Start off with 2 or 3 business, work hard to stock your stores and find employees. However once you are established it is time to expand.
In many RTS or strategy games there are two approaches to this, ‘expanding wide’ or ‘expanding tall’.
The first in this game is obvious, open up more business and continue to expand, and this will be reviewed later in the game.
The not so obvious tip is expanding tall, making the most out of each individual shop you already have established. This is accomplished in a number of ways.
1) For any of your retail business ensure to have 24/7 staffing. While certainly there is increased sales during prime-time hours and it can be tempting to run an 8 or 10 hour business you should reconsider. For retail stores you have already paid rent, you have purchased all the machines and items for the store, the inventory is on the shelves. Thousands upon thousands of dollars and time invested. To staff the store for an additional 16 hours a day per register at $10 wage an hour is only $160 a day, this is a no brainer (note, it is less clear for office business such as lawyers and programmers, as to have 10 of them around the clock is significantly more money – in these cases consider doing 24/7 coverage Friday, Saturday and Sunday when business is booming!)
2) Ensure everyone has a uniform, this is easy go to employees, select all, assign uniform default
3) Make sure the inside of your store is finished, spend at least $5000 on the walls, get a speaker in the store for some music, make sure there are some places for people to sit and eat, and spend some time occasionally in a store if it is under performing to see what the customers say
Bottom Line: While it can be tempting to continually expand wide with more and more stores, you are leaving easy money on the table and paying more and more for rent, expand both tall and wide at the same time!
Maximize Your Time
Once you are through the very early game the most important factor to consider is how to maximize your time.
1) Human Resources is your friend… Seriously.
They will save you a TON of time and money. The role of human resources is 2 fold – first they will replace people if they call in sick which is a nice bonus. the better thing is at maximum skill they will passively train up to 25 other employees in their primary skill every single day. No more sending people on $300 a day training seminars! The best part, the human resource officers can passively train each other, I currently have 10 HR reps and it is a blessing! (Remember to switch their sliders to train people to 100%)
2) Who needs a Drivers Licence?
A car is very useful early game as it allows you to transfer multiple items from a store at once…but once you have some cash, a taxi is the way to go. No more gas bills, no more collision repairs or parking fines, and no wasted time getting lost in the city.
3) Set-up the back end
Take some time to set up your warehouses, logistics and purchasing agents well. Once this system is in place it will run itself and it is the only way expand wide. Set up specific warehouses (e.g. A clothing specific warehouse, or a fast-food specific warehouse), this will allow you to quickly and easily set up further businesses and make ordering supplies simple.
Pro-tip, purchasing agents should buy supplies daily, never risk profits.
4) How to spend your time?
So you have the backend set up, you no longer drive, human resources is training everyone and replacing those who are sick… What should you be doing? You should be setting up business.
Early on make sure you talk to the manager at every supply store and ikea. Do not waste time going there to buy individual items, have them all delivered to the new store you are setting up.
Set Goals & Rituals
This is pretty simplistic, if you want to min-max then you should have thresholds and rituals you follow. For example my current practice consists of
1) Goal is to open 2 new businesses a week. On Monday I take a I take a look at the four districts, see what type of commodity is in demand as well as how many competitors there are. Find one where a few of the same objects in one store are at 80% or higher demand with no or minimal competition in an area. Once located purchase a location, call the office depots and ikea to get deliveries set up, call the employee agency to find 10 customers services and a few cleaners in 1 day and get things moving, it should only take a couple of days to full establish a business
2) Set a ritual review – I choose Sunday to review my current shops. I take the time to see how price adjustments from the previous week have impacted my business, ensure everyone has a uniform, ensure marketing is close to 100% as possible. One important thing is traffic, it seems like a ‘healthy’ graph if checking on Sunday is a V shaped graph, business generally declines mid week and then peaks again on the weekend, so if you see a V shape to your number of customers a week things are looking good….if not, check any changes you’ve made (e.g. price changes) as you may need to revert these
Gamble For Profits
You heard me right, go to the casino every week — this serves 2 purposes
1) Increases your happinness which improves work environment
2) It is an easy way to make money on black jack.
I personally use the double-down method in game, where if I lose a hand I double my bet the next hand. As long as you do not run out of money, when you eventually win a hand you will be up in profit whatever your initial bet was. Once you win a hand, return to your initial bet.
Example:
Bet 100,000 – Loss.
Bet 200,000 – Loss.
Bet 400,000 – Loss.
Bet 800,000 – Loss
Bet 1,600,000 – Loss
Bet 3,200,000 – Win
– Congrats, you have made $100,000.
The key here is you need to make sure you have the bankroll, I suggest a starting bet of no more than 1% of your current cash on hand (for example 10,000 if you have a million on hand), this will get you 6 bets before going bust, but obviously bet less if you want a larger margin of safety.
Select The Right Business
When I was looking online I saw a ton of advice… Jewelry store is the best… No liquor store is the best… actually, lawyers make the most money.
This is a game where it is certainly hard to compare apples to apples. What is the foot traffic of the 2 buildings? In what region is it located? What is the demand for this product or service? How much can you raise the price before customers get mad…
What I recommend is a multi step approach
1) Search to find what products or services are most in demand, try to find one where multiple products in a shop are over 80% (e.g. Cigar 93%, Liquor 82%). Don’t fall for the lone 100% trick (E.g. Coffee 100%, Donuts 50%, Cupcakes 25%).
2) When all things are equal select the richest neighbourhood
3) Foot traffic is everything. There is no reason to have a 75 person capacity building with 5 foot traffic, I would much rather have a 15 capacity building with 60 foot traffic, the buisness will be super quick to set up, low overhead and you will hit capacity and be maximizing return.
4) Any foot traffic over 40 is excellent, and once past this point I would start to prioritize building size
5) If there is no high foot traffic building in the region you chose, select a new region and store this time
Invest
When you first start the game go to the bank.
No Not the started bank Jensen Capital, the other bank.
Why? this bank has much better investment vehicles, specifically the Asia Dynamic Industry investment (-2 to 10% return) which averages an 8% return which is excellent.
Invest any capital you are not using into the fund as soon as possible. It only takes a couple hundred thousands dollars to set up even the most expensive new business, I tend to Invest anything over a million to start making that sweet sweet money.
Speaking of this, loans are excellent early game to get you a boost, however once you are making 5-10k a day it is time to pay off the loan. There is no reason to be paying someone else 20%, when you can only invest at 8%
The End
I hope you have found this guide useful, please post below if you have any other questions and I will be sure to expand the guide!