Business Strategy Game Guide – How to Run a Business – Part 1

There are 2 ways to run a business. The right way and the wrong way. As a grand champion who has played the Business Strategy Game for 4 years, my early years were extremely aggressive. By the second time I played BSG, I made 3 people outright fail the course, 5 people fail BSG, and about 3 others barely pass. I was a shrewd thinker, and I wanted to dominate other companies.

But as my hostile tactics became more and more known, I began to receive the reputation of being merciless and how I’d simply be the greatest of a bankrupt industry without having a lot of money myself. I fundamentally changed my strategies on how I’d wield absolute power in an industry, and while I’d dominate, I would channel more energy inwards to making myself greater, than outwards trying to make other companies go bankrupt.

For anyone who researches BSG on the internet comes across the Corvallis “How To Win BSG Online.” This site is managed by a handful of Industry Champions who hope to educate new players on the game. While most of their content is respectable, one has to remember that the information is coming from Industry Champions, who at best have seen a few companies, and at worst have only played and won their game once.

I have played BSG rounds hundreds of time now and have seen a plethora of circumstances as a grand champion. One of Corvallis’s big sayings is “expand, expand, expand”. Now there is a grain of salt to this this mindset. A winning company usually is the biggest, but unbridled expansion is not how you win. That is far too simplistic of a winning idea, which may suffice from an industry champion, but not a grand champion.
A company I’ve seen had a strategy of “playing big, to win big”. The foundation to this strategy is Corvallis’s motto “expand, expand, expand”. The first few years the company did “all right”, but as time went on, the company started to lose it’s glory. Amongst the several circumstances surrounding the company, such as a recession, the main reason why this company fell was because they took on far too much debt without sufficient revenues. By the mid game, they were crippled by the amount of debt they took on and the best we could do is simply contain their situation. There is no immediate cure for 400k in debt during a recession.
This company played far too aggressively, spent money before they earned it, and ultimately fell because of it. To think of the strategy “play big, to win big”. That isn’t really strategy at all. That is what is called GAMBLING, and in his circumstance he lost the bet. Try not to spend lots of money in your business if you’re having trouble getting a dime in.

Do not overload yourself with debt trying to reach for the stars. Every company has aspirations to win when they start the game. Pace yourself, grow in sequence with the industry. But to think that overloading yourself with all this debt and everything is going to be OK is not the way to run business. I liken the circumstance to “if you eat too much sugar when you are young, you’ll get diabetes when you’re old”. In BSG it is “take on too much debt in your early years, you’ll pay for it dearly when your company matures when it can’t handle it.

So now we know not to be overly aggressive, especially when you have not set the foundation of your company. But is wise to be all out aggressive even if your company is doing extremely well? Read Part 2 to find out.

The Grand Champion of The Business Strategy Game and The Glo-Bus Simulation Game
For more Business Strategy Game Help that teaches how to Win Business Strategy Game and The Glo-Bus Simulation Game go to www.bsgtips.com