The Business Ideas Thread

[sCrax]

26 minutes ago, Mahitto said:

 

Nah, I don't agree. Most jobs are completely boring and useless, which makes it extremely hard to start any business, and then we get this thread.

 

Sure, you can create role-play for yourself, but you can only go so far. I've been in that situation numerous times and there's only so many times you can RP mopping the floor, stocking shelves, decorating, or even sparking up a conversation and such. People aren't interested which turns this into a vicious circle, making jobs boring. At the end of the day, you're still spending hours idling behind a counter and typing.

 

GTA RP is honestly the only video game I've heard of that's so time intensive and yet so boring. It's the only game whre it's not only acceptable but perfectly normal and even regular to spend 3-4 hours online per day, yet only do so much. It's a mystery. 

I used to roleplay in a 24/7 for months and it was fun. Yes, the activities that you can do alone are very limited but you can always come up with some fun RP when there are other people around you. It's also all about marketing, you can always attract people into your business if you use your brain. I open my store even when there are 300 people online and it still attracts people and I'm never bored because I create RP for myself and others. When we hit a drought I just come up with a new way on how to attract people, it's really simple. You can make any activity and interaction interesting if you are just a tad creative. If you just stand behind the counter idly like an NPC and bitch about being bored you will never enjoy any interaction.

[Koko]

The best business ideas are those that rely on the fewest number of employees. If you can be self-employed, all best.

 

People seem obsessed with being managers and mention how being behind a counter is boring. On the other hand I ran a Jamaican food truck in Rancho for months, which could be seen as a cooking job, and never stopped having constant, meaningful interactions with the community.

 

You have to bring in personality. It's not about the service you offer, it's about the experience. My food truck was in a gang area, so I prioritized giving wholesome, meaningful interactions to teen characters who would leave with some free fruit cup and got asked if they were staying in school and looking after their little sister. I in turn had constant lines of clients.

 

Same goes for people who run small neighborhood bars that capitalize on hooking a small group of regular customers to chat with. The product is rarely the end goal, unless you offer particularly sought sfter prestige and status items like jewelry.

[knppel]

46 minutes ago, sCrax said:

I used to roleplay in a 24/7 for months and it was fun

This here.

 

I'm 34 years old , and thanks to gtaw discovered playing store can be hilarious.

 

41 minutes ago, Koko said:

You have to bring in personality. It's not about the service you offer, it's about the experience.

 

Also, this here.

Having that unique idea is overrated (and everything has been done before by someone. If it's not visible then because it did not prevail, or not aiming for visibility first hand).

More fruitful is to create your niche with whatever concept you want to do (and suits your character).

 

That can be something no one else does currently (like me with the news), but just as much a simple store or a nightclub.

 

PPS: I'd even go as far as to claim that opening your niche in a supposedly oversupplied market (read: Nightclub) will feel even more satisfying for both the player and the character, and gain street cred ic like no unique concept ever could.

Why? Everyone can be the sole expert in something no one else does, no arts there and not much effort needed.

Having competition ic, however, is a dynamic motivation driver to improve the own performance.

Edited March 11, 2022 by knppel

[Mahitto]

2 hours ago, sCrax said:

I used to roleplay in a 24/7 for months and it was fun. Yes, the activities that you can do alone are very limited but you can always come up with some fun RP when there are other people around you. It's also all about marketing, you can always attract people into your business if you use your brain. I open my store even when there are 300 people online and it still attracts people and I'm never bored because I create RP for myself and others. When we hit a drought I just come up with a new way on how to attract people, it's really simple. You can make any activity and interaction interesting if you are just a tad creative. If you just stand behind the counter idly like an NPC and bitch about being bored you will never enjoy any interaction.

 

That's not applicable to most jobs nor is it sustainable. I'm not saying it doesn't work for you personally, it might as well, but it's quite obvious it doesn't work for most people and businesses. That's why people are complaining about it, that's why businesses are so short-lived and have so many OOC issues. No one wants to come home from an 8 hour shift and spend 4 hours behind a counter, mostly alone. That's not an opinion, it's as visible as it gets.

[sCrax]

27 minutes ago, Mahitto said:

 

That's not applicable to most jobs nor is it sustainable. I'm not saying it doesn't work for you personally, it might as well, but it's quite obvious it doesn't work for most people and businesses. That's why people are complaining about it, that's why businesses are so short-lived and have so many OOC issues. No one wants to come home from an 8 hour shift and spend 4 hours behind a counter, mostly alone. That's not an opinion, it's as visible as it gets.

If that's how you see it then don't own a business. Join a faction that you enjoy and leave business management to people that know how to do it. @Koko mentioned a great example. Any business/job can be enjoyable if you bring personality into it.

[Lomadias]

I've often found a lot of the fun with business RP isn't so much when the business is open to the public, but also the stuff that goes on behind closed doors as well.

 

Say you're a trucking company right? Sure, you make your script money with trucking. But, what kinds of RP opportunities do you have inside? Silly things in the warehouse with a leased forklift, dropping a clients pallet of goods and having to fork out to refund them.

 

I have a couple ideas buzzing around about business roleplay, functionality and financing, so keep the discussions going!

[Mahitto]

50 minutes ago, sCrax said:

If that's how you see it then don't own a business. Join a faction that you enjoy and leave business management to people that know how to do it. @Koko mentioned a great example. Any business/job can be enjoyable if you bring personality into it.

 

Your reply makes 0 sense. This isn't about me nor is it about owning a business. It has nothing to do with business management, actually. It's about all jobs on the server. Bouncers don't own the club. Security people don't own the company. Bartenders aren't managers. Truckers aren't CEOs. Same for all. However, they all share the same problem. The jobs ARE boring. It IS 90% AFKing on your own. The 10% IS monotonous interactions. This makes running any business extremely problematic and hard, because you can't find people and you can't find customers. NO ONE wants to spend their time "gaming" by sitting at a virtual counter for 4 hours straight, doing a "/me mops" and a "nice car bro" once every hour or so. That's not meaningful, it's not fun, it's not gaming, it's not role-playing.

 

And that last sentence is meaningless. Matter of fact, there was a guy a little while ago saying loud and proud how he loves RPing in segregation in TTCF, on his own, permanently, without ever interacting with any other player for any reason, pointing fingers and arguing how that's some astonishing character development, how it's perfectly normal and how anyone with mixed or negative feelings about that has no place on this server. You can sit here all day and argue all you want that it's literally everyone's fault for not RPing properly but at the end of the day? Nothing will change. You can act holier than thou and stroke your own ego and with a soft, warm whisper of "congratulations, amazing hardcore rper" but again, troblem is still there, and replies like yours aren't constructive in the very least.

 

Just look how hard it is to find an employee, for anything. It's then pretty much impossible to keep them for more than a week. Most don't even show to the first shift. Because, again, no one wants to. The ones who do show up will only be there until they get $X to start their own or to have enough money to buy stuff. That's why the number of long-term niche businesses is a big fat 0.

 

So here's the problem, and it heavily ties into this topic - unless we can figure something out in that regard, it's pointless to come up with ideas. It's like building a house without a foundation. Solve the core problem, then try out something else.

[Koko]

1 hour ago, Mahitto said:

 

That's not applicable to most jobs nor is it sustainable. I'm not saying it doesn't work for you personally, it might as well, but it's quite obvious it doesn't work for most people and businesses. That's why people are complaining about it, that's why businesses are so short-lived and have so many OOC issues. No one wants to come home from an 8 hour shift and spend 4 hours behind a counter, mostly alone. That's not an opinion, it's as visible as it gets.

 

A lot of us do in fact do just this, but a lot of players fight to open a business and expect that the business, by virtue of having a blip on a map and being a gathering point, will somehow by itself further your RP. Let's be clear: it doesn't. I've seen brilliant behind a counter RP from people RPing skater potheads working minimum wage jobs, who made 3 friends who'd just hang at the store while they get up to Clerks-style shenanigans, and I've seen people with super interesting business ideas who just sat behind a counter not offering anything other than selling their products. All concepts work, but they have to be a megaphone for your RP, and not be the RP itself.

 

It's an issue of optics for most. A business should be a provider of RP opportunities, and a business owner/worker should be a catalyst for these opportunities. If not, you're just RPing simple money transactions.

  

5 minutes ago, Mahitto said:

Bouncers don't own the club. Security people don't own the company. Bartenders aren't managers. Truckers aren't CEOs. Same for all. However, they all share the same problem. The jobs ARE boring. It IS 90% AFKing on your own.

 

Bouncers, if allowed to work in pairs, I've seen do AMAZING RP. I remember specifically characters like Anton Tzsyu (spelling) working a door with some other eastern europeans, probably at Dungeon Crawler if memory serves, and they were riffing and having absolutely insane, mysoginistic, roid-fueled conversations with each other. I've seen bartenders (at the club I have worked for over a year) do coke in the bathroom, get up to shenanigans, and try to mask being fucked up while they try to keep the bar going. There's opportunities for all jobs to shine in their own right.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Koko

[Mahitto]

53 minutes ago, Lomadias said:

I've often found a lot of the fun with business RP isn't so much when the business is open to the public, but also the stuff that goes on behind closed doors as well.

 

Say you're a trucking company right? Sure, you make your script money with trucking. But, what kinds of RP opportunities do you have inside? Silly things in the warehouse with a leased forklift, dropping a clients pallet of goods and having to fork out to refund them.

 

I have a couple ideas buzzing around about business roleplay, functionality and financing, so keep the discussions going!

 

Exactly. There's a TON of role-play you can do around a business, any business. And it's fun too.

 

One of my character runs a liquor store, recently acquired. We could just run it as a regular business, /startshift and sell booze, get the cash and close up, but here's what we got so far.

• custom mapping inside and outside (sitting area, hotdog cart, coffee van) with music and signs and stuff
• store-owned taco truck parked outside
• the store runs the taco truck/coffee/burger stands, employs people, generates extra RP and also profit, people eat and hang out outside the store
• a buy-back program for people to sell their unused alcohol to us for a cheaper price - we clear their inventory, and then sell it further for even cheaper
• private deals with businesses
  • sponsoring businesses and events
• store-ran logistics (hire our own drivers/truckers to supply and RP deliveries)
  • also includes organizing and RPing deliveries to businesses and events and pickups for larger buy-back orders
• hiring of various player-ran companies and contractors to
  • install fire security measures (sprinklers, fire alarm, extinguishers etc) and perform checks
  • property alarms and surveillance
  • construction and maintenance - companies, contractors, or random kids needing an extra buck
  • landscaping
  • pest control
  • @Anders ISP 😛
• hiring a ton of staff that would normally work for such a store, and creating RP for more people
  • cashiers
  • janitors
  • unarmed security to make sure people don't start shit
  • delivery drivers
  • taco vendor, coffee vendor
  • social media manager
  • accountant
  • secretary/assistant
  • lawyer
  • graphic and web designer
  • etc. - whatever people want to RP
• create a social media presence
  • maybe hire some locals or influencers to visit and promote the place?
• hire a law firm and use actual "contracts", write invoices etc
• run a marketing campaign
  • hire kids to distribute flyers
  • work with a news agency to advertise on their broadcasts and articles
    • get them to write a piece on the store
  • social media posts
  • email advertising
  • in-game ads
• hosting events
  • especially community events like cook-outs, rap battles, stand up nights, anything that works and is wanted
  • provide booze to others and act as a sponsor

If anyone needs ideas, here you have a few. Some of these work for any business, regardless of concept.

 

Only downside is that sponsoring this much RP will likely run you on a loss (luck with the sales and $4,000/hour bonus in some cases), but it's worth it.

[Mahitto]

11 minutes ago, Koko said:

 

A lot of us do in fact do just this, but a lot of players fight to open a business and expect that the business, by virtue of having a blip on a map and being a gathering point, will somehow by itself further your RP. Let's be clear: it doesn't. I've seen brilliant behind a counter RP from people RPing skater potheads working minimum wage jobs, who made 3 friends who'd just hang at the store while they get up to Clerks-style shenanigans, and I've seen people with super interesting business ideas who just sat behind a counter not offering anything other than selling their products. All concepts work, but they have to be a megaphone for your RP, and not be the RP itself.

 

It's an issue of optics for most. A business should be a provider of RP opportunities, and a business owner/worker should be a catalyst for these opportunities. If not, you're just RPing simple money transactions.

  

 

Bouncers, if allowed to work in pairs, I've seen do AMAZING RP. I remember specifically characters like Anton Tzsyu (spelling) working a door with some other eastern europeans, probably at Dungeon Crawler if memory serves, and they were riffing and having absolutely insane, mysoginistic, roid-fueled conversations with each other. I've seen bartenders (at the club I have worked for over a year) do coke in the bathroom, get up to shenanigans, and try to mask being fucked up while they try to keep the bar going. There's opportunities for all jobs to shine in their own right.

 

I'm not saying that doesn't happen, I'm saying that only 1%-2% of people do stuff like that. That's why it is so memorable, because it's rare. You encounter it once every two-three months, in general. I've done it, I've seen it done, I loved it.

 

But we need to find a way to rope in the other overwhelming majority who doesn't do this kinda stuff. Because let's be real, how many people do?