While I disagree about the difficulty, I too cheat just to save time (i.e. use cheat engine to max my stats and then stick a few billion $ in the bank to fund everything off interest).
Or rather, the difficulty is a curve and it's easy to bite off more than one can chew. For example, even with sixteen girls assigned to the nightclub, a 100% marketing rating and a 100% service rating I'm still six months in and it has only just now started bringing literally
any money - all while costing over $100K per month to operate. And since you can't sell it, this will absolutely break the bank for anyone who buys it before they're ready.
It's the same way with the strip joint and even just opening a studio. The full staff needed to make that transition will easily run over $50K per month, and if it isn't
immediately making more than that then it's another financial waterfall leading to certain doom.
So far, camwhores have been the only start-up project that
almost can't fail, and even then as new game iterations have arrived their tolerance for my "fair cut" has dropped from around 25% to 10% or less. Websites can be easy to run, too, and should be the next step after that. Quality won't be great but the fans aren't that demanding with that particular venture (i.e. just pick generic boy-girl and flood it with home movies).
Meaning that most people (who don't cheat) will be stuck making home movies with cheap hookers for, oh, two or three
years before amassing enough cash to expand into other things safely & successfully. Mind that this method
is reliable and it
will pay all your bills and you
will make a profit... just very, very slowly.
If you don't want to cheat you can still grind your way to success, however. The trick is to keep dumping all your profits into the bank and sucking up to the manager to get better and better returns. Eventually, once you're making enough off those returns to hire
one employee, go ahead and so - and make sure that the person you hire is Jenny so that can stop wasting time & energy at the gym. Don't even
think about expanding your staff or facilities in any way until their expenses are safely covered by your bank income. Do this and you will have a very long, if very dull and grindy, career - and without cheating.
Or you could just cheat and skip straight to the good parts