This game needs a guide for getting to the point of opening the club at least once. Right now it's a confusing mess.
DISGRUNTLER'S BAREBONES GUIDE TO HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY IN TUSC:
Step 0: Download girlpacks.
If you're not coming here from Venus' Club, check the girlpacks link in my signature. Also, check out this form for Venus' Club itself, there's two generic packs (Basic Packs I and Basic Packs II) that will give you a handful to start with.
Step 1: Buy stage 1, rooms 1.
This is the absolute barest minimum. You can get more based on strategy and starting money. Just make sure you have the bare minimum you need to pay a girl.
Step 2: Go into the city, and find a girl.
My recommendation is to find a girl with popularity less than 10, though if you know what you're doing a 10 or 20 is fine. Just know that the higher popularity is, the more the cost per day, and your club needs upgrades before this stat starts to pay dividends. Strength is also a stat that you want to see on a girl, but for your early first hire if you don't got it you don't got it.
Step 3: Either grind her to be cheap, or go for an early hire.
From here you have two options. You can smooth talk her a bit to get her popularity up and start hiring her and getting her to work right away, OR, you can start working on getting her to 100 so you can hire her cheaper later. The former gets your club up and running NOW, and the latter gets you cheaper nights down the road.
Currently, me and others suggest the 100 relationship route, though this can be time consuming. Later, when hiring, the gain per day for doing so will be less so it's less recommended. For this demonstration, I will hire her as is.
To start, I 'Ask About Her.'
Now, she can take up to three compliments. I'll open by complimenting her eyes, and then her body twice. I could compliment her breasts but at relationship 10 that'll only gain 3 points, whereas body is 5 points here. Later on, it'd be boobs and butts all day.
With her relationship at 15, I can carress her for 6 points twice. Groping only provides 3 at this level.
Now, if you decide to hire her right away, save the game, and then try to hire her for a little more expensive than her asking price. It would have been double if you didn't do the relationship work. If this doesn't work, reload, go a bit more expensive--find that sweet spot.
I find that at relationship 27, you can hire a 200-cost girl for 230, or a 15% markup.
Step 3a:
If you don't want to hire her right away, instead, keep chatting up candidate girls in the gym and cafe in order to build relationship. If you get to the end of the day, go into the club and hit the next calender day and repeat. You can only lose money if your club opens, and you have no girls so your club can't open anyways. Relationship grinding now = profits later and means more girls able to run your club later.
Step 4: Train her!
You've hired your first girl!
Now let's look at what she's willing to do:
So, first things first, I can see she's willing to go down and fuck. This is good, if I had VIP slots, she could start working those immediately. I don't now, however, and I should spend time to improve her while my club gets going.
Let's train her.
Before you go in to train her, pay attention to these three stats. Memorize which one is the highest and has the best chance of working. Now, when you get into dialog, she'll have three options. One corresponds to excitement and having fun (lewdness), one corresponds to making money (boldness) and the last involves bullying her (obedience.)
When you train her, she'll express a concern--hit the response that corresponds to her best stat, and there's a good chance she'll improve and open up another thing she'll do in the club. This is important because this is what changes girls from stage strippers to VIP stars.
Step 5: Work on the club itself
Now that I have her, I want to look at better upgrades for the club.
I might be able to afford Marketting, but that's going to result in rowdies knowing about my club before I have bouncers, so I tend to avoid that.
The bar is a good way to convert money into more money, so some recommend that. The stage, however, boosts everything you do, and is pivotal to unlocking VIP, and really getting the ball rolling.
The only wrong answer here is to not leave yourself with enough money to pay girls to work. If ever you get in a situation where you can't afford any girl, you won't be able to open the club and make money. This means you must always have, at minimum, the minimum salary of one of your girls. I suggest having more.
For this playthrough, I'm choosing to get Stage 2, Rooms 2, Gym 1, Baths 1, VIP 1 on the first day, with 2000 left over. However, you can go into the bar, start doing that.
The gym lets me hire girls who show up in the gym , expanding my options, but also, this location favors TUSC-content girls, so I can make use of the gloryholes and spa. (disregard, everglow literally just changed this)
There is no wrong answer here, except for 'go broke.'
Never, ever, go broke.
Anyways, for this run I then work out at the gym (this is gains for later), and grab a coffee, and pad time until 20:00. You can spend this constructively working on girls.
Then open the club. This is where your work pays off. Your girls will work the stage, and if able, may even get VIP in if you have it. My girl doesn't have foreplay unlocked so she won't, but your starter girl might! Then you get a reply on how much money you made.
Now, had I waited and grinded relationship with her, I could have made 130 dollars extra, which adds up over time. But that's neither here nor there.
Now, I'm starting to look at my next hires. Your reasoning for hiring is up to you, but let's look at the advantages grinding to 100 gives:
Skylar Vox is a much more popular girl than Leana here, but because I got her popularity to 100, she's more or less the same price. This means she draws in more customers which maximizes profits. Lisa Lips is a far more expensive girl, but she's also a draw. Draw = more profits.
I've also quickly acquired enough to get vip up to level 2. Skylar and Lisa aren't yet trained to give handjobs, but VIP level 2 means they'll be able to work on oral which all of them have unlocked. As well, they can work more slots, so that means I have more revenue sources than just dancing.
I still have three more rooms, so I should look towards filling those.