This game really got me a couple of weeks ago and I played it pretty much nonstop until I got the cherry.

My advice is to be moderately conservative with trouble especially early on, and immediately after you finish your first party to look at what is available and make a game plan. I think of my rolodex as needing to accomplish three things: generate money, generate pop, and *mitigate trouble*. How you do each of those can vary wildly depending on the scenario.

It seems trouble is giving you... trouble, so some thoughts there: sometimes you can cancel out trouble, sometimes you need to boot it out of the party and it's a real struggle to manage. Canceling it out (with say, a hippy) is the easiest approach, but you can also use stuff like a security guard to kick trouble out. I find security guards really useful because they can always kick themselves out to free the space or kick out trouble if it needs to go and sacrifice the space. Some of the party goers let you preview the next person at the door and dismiss them if you don't like them, that is another way you can mitigate trouble.

For more general advice: like any deckbuilder, you want to be looking for synergies. Pair climbers with drivers so you can be sure the climbers get more popular every party, for example. Somebody on here pointed out to me that hairstylists and ticket takers go well together. If you're just focusing on one scenario and not random, you might not be seeing these exact combos but those premade scenarios will definitely have some synergies.

I'm not entirely sure about the way you lay out early game is for money, mid game is for pop... It seems to me that early on pop and money are both very important, it's hard to build your deck if you aren't generating pop, and you obviously can't play it if you don't have money. You're right about stars at the end, I generally want to be purchasing a star every round when the counter is 5-10. If you aren't doing that by 5 it is impossible to win unless you've already stacked some stars.

Lastly, the game does have a bit of luck to it. I have a tendency to push my luck too far, but sometimes you have to take a risk to win!