Hiring enough girls to cover the bar and stage seems to help. They'll do whatever is most profitable, so if there's a vacancy at the bar because someone went into VIP, a bouncer is probably going to go over to the bar. If I hire enough to have at least one girl standing around, the bouncer slots all fill.
I agree. In my experience, the best method to start is:
1) Don't hire any girls at first whatsoever
2) Spend the early time talking to them at the various locations in town and building up relationships
3) Buy Room, Stage and Bar levels 2
4) Get a few girls to 100 in their relationship, and then you can offer then half of what they're asking for and they'll usually accept. Hire six cheap ones this way to get going.
5) Just keep going with this level for a while until you have a good amount of money and the first girls are trained as high as they can go.
6) Then buy the expansion for the rooms, and repeat the process with more girls this time, except that you can hire some more expensive ones if you feel you have the money to make it work.
7) Once you have about a dozen girls working, buy more improvements to the club, at which point the bouncers come into play.