How to actually make a business profitable?

[nielssenmatti]

I have difficulty with the mechanics of even a lemonade stand.

I hire employees, even one is too expensive as awareness rises.

I take on one contract, but eventually work gets too much with me and 1 employee at 160 hours. They take so long to complete, I never hang in there financially in the meanwhile.

I try getting awareness high, doesn't seem to help in terms of profit to cover rent, wages, supplies and loans.

I even try to do it myself full-time, but alas the character just doesn't get around to it to complete all work on time by the end of the month, even if I make tasks the no. 1 priority.

Can anyone give any tips who succeeded with businesses? I just wanna learn how the mechanics work.

[Zamori]

Originally posted by nielssenmatti:

I have difficulty with the mechanics of even a lemonade stand.

I hire employees, even one is too expensive as awareness rises.

I take on one contract, but eventually work gets too much with me and 1 employee at 160 hours. They take so long to complete, I never hang in there financially in the meanwhile.

I try getting awareness high, doesn't seem to help in terms of profit to cover rent, wages, supplies and loans.

I even try to do it myself full-time, but alas the character just doesn't get around to it to complete all work on time by the end of the month, even if I make tasks the no. 1 priority.

Can anyone give any tips who succeeded with businesses? I just wanna learn how the mechanics work.

reputation gives you more money for each hour.
awareness gives you more hours.
don't hire anyone until you are making enough money each day to handle the employee.
you have to take it slow and let your reputation build up from getting jobs done or contacts. at least this is what i have been doing and it has help a lot for lemonade stands not sure for other ones.

[HighPR]

You are not getting rich on the lemonade stand. Day to day you pretty much break even.
However, the money comes in from the contracts. Completing the contracts is what gets you ahead.

Take it slow is good advice. Hire only as you need. Remember that as your employees (and YOU) increase their skills they will be able to complete more work hours in less time.

[[Recon]The Famous Zombie Hunter]

I'm also gonna throw it out there; It's a Lemonade Stand, a business designed for children. It's probably not intended to be able to cover your rent; You can create an underage character, it's likely for them to earn some pocket change while attending school.

[nielssenmatti]

reputation gives you more money for each hour.
awareness gives you more hours.
don't hire anyone until you are making enough money each day to handle the employee.
you have to take it slow and let your reputation build up from getting jobs done or contacts. at least this is what i have been doing and it has help a lot for lemonade stands not sure for other ones. [/quote]

I actually got my business profitable this way as you said, so thank you! I trained to be a real estate agent, then started a real estate company.
Made it profitable with taking out contracts!

I'm just wondering, do you know how a "milestone" is defined when looking at contract? Is it per quarter of the year? It's annoying how there's so little tutorial/manual help to explain these things. Sometimes I look at contracts and they are very profitable and last only 6 months. Whereas there are other ones that last like 24 months but they pay per milestone. I'm trying to guess what each means so as to select the best contracts for my buz.

[Arakash]

Recently game where I owned 2 Real Estate business in New York. Starting at 18 and now 27 both businesses earn roughly 200k per year. Figured I should post some tips for anyone else who might need them even though the OP seems to have figured most of it out.
In response to "nielssenmatti" about milestones, personally I just use money per month to decide between contracts which I do with a calculator out of game.


Before Starting:
- When you get your business permit and select a business, you'll notice that it gives you an estimate for how much it will cost to start up the business. I've found these to be very accurate. In my New York start it listed 100-140k as cost and both times i got the business off the ground it cost in that region of money.
- Expect a long time (and losing a lot of money) before you start making money. In my New York Real Estate business, the second business I created took 17 months to even BREAK EVEN (i.e. making more money each month than losing). It took another 6-8 months to earn back my original money I had lost in the business.
- Having a character or two that can do the main job of the business isn't mandatory but without it you should expect to spend even more money to get the business going and even longer to get it profitable.

Running the business:
- REPUTATION is king, you need it 70-80% before you'll make any reasonable money. Don't raise awareness too fast before reputation is high as all those extra work hours might not be profitable. I always attempted to keep awareness at the same level as reputation, until both hit 100%.
- Contracts are critical to get reputation. When your growing your business, accept as many 6 month contracts as you can. You don't want the longer ones as in the first 18 months you will gradually be offered better contracts. Once your business is stable(making profit every month), just pick the contract with the most money per month. (divide total by contract duration)
- Don't hire terrible employees. Their poor work skill makes them less efficient but most importantly poor employees increase your reputation decay, which makes your business harder to grow and your maximum reputation lower.
- Don't be afraid to hire employees generally. Failing to complete work hours will reduce your reputation, which as I've mentioned, is terrible. If you feel like your losing too much money(as a reminder, losing 100-200k to build the business is expected), just don't advertise at all until your reputation hits 70-80%.


That's about all I can think of atm.

Edit: Edited to remove some incorrect assumptions I made.

[PokingWaterGames]

Originally posted by Arakash:

Recently game where I owned 2 Real Estate business in New York. Starting at 18 and now 27 both businesses earn roughly 200k per year. Figured I should post some tips for anyone else who might need them even though the OP seems to have figured most of it out.
In response to "nielssenmatti" about milestones, personally I just use money per month to decide between contracts which I do with a calculator out of game.


Before Starting:
- When you get your business permit and select a business, you'll notice that it gives you an estimate for how much it will cost to start up the business. I've found these to be very accurate. In my New York start it listed 100-140k as cost and both times i got the business off the ground it cost in that region of money.
- Expect a long time (and losing a lot of money) before you start making money. In my New York Real Estate business, the second business I created took 17 months to even BREAK EVEN (i.e. making more money each month than losing). It took another 6-8 months to earn back my original money I had lost in the business.
- Before you start a business, Check your growth figures for your city industries, which you can see when you select New Game and select the city. A real estate business (relying on residential and commerical property growth and costs mainly being professional services) might work fine in New York where commercial growth is good, but much worse in a city where Professional Services growth is 3x higher than property.
- Having a character or two that can do the main job of the business isn't mandatory but without it you should expect to spend even more money to get the business going and even longer to get it profitable.

Running the business:
- REPUTATION is king, you need it 70-80% before you'll make any reasonable money. Don't raise awareness too fast before reputation is high as all those extra work hours might not be profitable. I always attempted to keep awareness at the same level as reputation, until both hit 100%.
- Contracts are critical to get reputation. When your growing your business, accept as many 6 month contracts as you can. You don't want the longer ones as in the first 18 months you will gradually be offered better contracts. Once your business is stable(making profit every month), just pick the contract with the most money per month. (divide total by contract duration)
- Don't hire terrible employees. Their poor work skill makes them less efficient but most importantly poor employees increase your reputation decay, which makes your business harder to grow and your maximum reputation lower.
- Don't be afraid to hire employees generally. Failing to complete work hours will reduce your reputation, which as I've mentioned, is terrible. If you feel like your losing too much money(as a reminder, losing 100-200k to build the business is expected), just don't advertise at all until your reputation hits 70-80%.


That's about all I can think of atm.

Good tips! One correction I will make is regarding:

"Check your growth figures for your city industries, which you can see when you select New Game and select the city."

The industry figures on the New Game screen are how relatively large each industry is in the city (and influence how strongly it affects the Central Bank's interest rate decisions). Whether an industry is growing or declining is based on the industry inflation rate which can change between games and over time.

[Arakash]

Originally posted by PokingWaterGames:

[

Good tips! One correction I will make is regarding:

"Check your growth figures for your city industries, which you can see when you select New Game and select the city."

The industry figures on the New Game screen are how relatively large each industry is in the city (and influence how strongly it affects the Central Bank's interest rate decisions). Whether an industry is growing or declining is based on the industry inflation rate which can change between games and over time.

Thanks for the info. Ill edit this and another one of my posts to correct it.
Seems i must have just got lucky in my previous New York real estate business, when it had positive commercial property growth for basically 10 years. (residential and others did drop into negative a few times)

[Berserker]

Originally posted by ReconThe Famous Zombie Hunter:

I'm also gonna throw it out there; It's a Lemonade Stand, a business designed for children. It's probably not intended to be able to cover your rent; You can create an underage character, it's likely for them to earn some pocket change while attending school.

If you knew how much those little businesses make, you'd quit your job and get yourelf a food truck. Just for example, a bag of soft serve icecream was like 100$ tops, and would probably give you 3 times that amount of money back. food trucks and small juice stands/stores bring in an insane amount of money. or at least used to