🌏 The Hard Truth About Doing Business In Singapore

If you’ve ever tried to start something in Singapore, a business, a side hustle, or a dream, you know this truth:
It’s getting harder.
Not because you’re not good enough… but because the ground has changed.
High rent, manpower rules that get tighter every year.
Costs increasing faster than profits, and policies that, by design, must protect the MNCs that drive over 90% of our GDP.
It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way the system is built.
And we grew up believing that as long as we work hard enough, we’ll make it.
We were raised to study hard, find a “good job,” and leave our future in the hands of our employers. And while this works for some, we all know the truth - employers aren’t all-knowing, all-savvy, or all-secure. The world changes faster than they can protect us.

That’s why you’re reading this.
We all have a little rebel in us. The part that refuses to settle.
Our parents rode the wave of the 60s, 70s, 80s.
We didn’t.
They entered a world full of opportunity. Factories rising, foreign investment flooding in.
The Singapore miracle was real. It’s a Singapore Dream.
But that miracle belonged to their era, not ours.
We aren’t less capable than them.
We aren’t less hardworking.
We aren’t less intelligent.
We’re just in a different time.
A time where the wave is no longer here.
And you can’t ride a wave that has already passed.

🔍 So if you’ve ever felt tired…
Don’t think you’re weak. It’s just because the tide in Singapore is going out. And deep down, you know it.
The rising cost of everything.
The shrinking profit margins.
The endless compliance.
The feeling that no matter how much effort you pour in…
it’s always just enough to stay afloat. Most of the time it isn’t.
Hard work isn’t the problem. The environment is.
And sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is to admit that you’re not stuck, but just standing in the wrong ocean.
There is a growing wave, just not here.
Like it or not, China is the only super-economy that’s still expanding.
Still opening doors,
Still welcoming investors,
Still hungry,
Still rising.
It is burning the same fire Singapore had 50 years ago.
If you missed the Singapore wave because you were born too late, which isn’t your fault., maybe you don’t have to miss the next one.
🌱 If reading this makes something inside you shift, even slightly,
Reach out.
Because sometimes the right conversation at the right moment is all it takes to change the direction of a life.