EMPIRE service business strategy simulation
The Owner-Operator · Free Service business simulation game
You have $10,000. No clients. No team.
Build a service business from your first paying client. Practise pricing jobs, winning customers through marketing and referrals, and deciding when to hire, without running out of cash.
Your business
Pick your trade
A local trades and home-services business. You travel to customers' homes and workplaces in your van and get paid per job for hands-on work like repairs, maintenance and installations.
Your customers are local households and small businesses inside your service area. You start as a one-person operation, doing every job yourself, and can later add contractors, employees and new locations. Your trade changes the wording only: the money and decisions work the same for every trade.
Now the decisions are yours.
140 working hours a month. Balance delivery capacity, customer satisfaction and cash flow. Every choice has consequences.
Can you turn $10,000 into a $100 million company?
Starting cash
$10,000
Starting clients
0
Your capacity
140 hours/month
Goal
$100,000,000 firm
Choose a response or type your own business decision, then see what changes in your company each month.
Starting monthly costs: $600/mo overhead. Your $1,800/mo owner salary starts after your first sale. With $10,000 and no clients yet, that is about 16 months of cash.
How this business makes money
- Marketing, reputation and referrals create leads. Your conversion rate turns leads into clients.
- Every client consumes delivery hours. Hours come from you, your employees and contractors.
- Over about 90% utilisation, quality slips, reviews suffer and clients leave. Under-used staff burn cash.
- Price sets margin and filters demand. Systems cut the hours each job takes and make the firm worth more.
Prefer software economics? Explore SaaS business games instead. Your progress in each mode is saved separately.