Starting A Business Solo In Singapore: What No One Tells You
A few honest notes from building C9 GENYSYS solo. The parts that don't make it onto the website.
“Do It!” They Said. “You’ll Do Great!” They Said.
So you want to start your own business hey?
After spending what feels like a lifetime saying “I really want to but I can’t” for a million valid and invalid reasons, with new found confidence in hand, I tell myself, “Yeap, I’m going to do it. This is it. It’s time. #YOLO.” And finally take that long-considered, constantly judged and feared (mainly by me) leap to start my own business. On my own.
Great! The first step was ALMOST ALWAYS going to be the hardest. This first step alone instantly became evidence that my “hallucinations” (pun intended) weren’t real. All that I thought was going to fail, going to be impossible, that I couldn’t do, all faded. I finally did what I thought I could or would never do. That positive, encouraging voice in my head (let’s call it “Sprout”) was getting louder and louder, beaming with joy. Sprout had never been so loud before!
And then reality hits. Timelines I set in the beginning became so off the charts and unrealistic, unexpected hiccups, costs, barriers all came down on me because I opened the gate. Usually, when incidents like these happen, my self-doubting imposter (let’s call it Wobble) would start talking really loud and convince me that it’s right. I heard a faint “What are you doing? Are you kidding yourself?”. But at this point, I didn’t even have the energy or time to listen to Wobble - at all. I was wearing so many hats, hats that I’ve never even worn before, to do this (and it’s still ongoing mind you) - legal, finance, sales and marketing, IT, operations, website designer, creative designer - and I’m one person. Solo.
What I Got Wrong
Where do I begin? Let’s go back to July 2025.
Registering on Bizfile, the business filing portal of ACRA (Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority), a Singapore government, national regulator of business registration, was actually quite quick - the instructions were clear, the process was fast, and didn’t take long to set up. Locking in your entity and business name is easy. But what comes next?
Time is a construct, but let’s be honest. We need it. Did you not read the “many hats” bit above? I am one person doing everything. I had already done the leg work for C9 GENYSYS as a marketing and communications consultancy - my company’s brand, what I wanted to call it, what I wanted it to be, what I envisioned, the colours, the fonts, market position, ICP, mission, values, the works. This, in my opinion, is crucial in setting up a company or brand.
Every business decision made, big or small, would be justifiably clearer if it’s tied back to what the company is and what it stands for. The mission, vision, purpose, core values. The WHY. Your brand personality is basically saying “This is who I am, these are my firm beliefs and values, and this is why.” You’ll find that if a business has clarity and given this a lot of thought, if they practice what they preach, the probability of it succeeding is going to be higher. Because it’s the foundation of a business. Every decision from colour, tone of copy, design elements, content produced, how they operate and conduct themselves, hiring - this foundation sets up the guard rails. It’s a top-of-mind “please refer to” document. It might not make decisions easier, but if the conviction and practice is solid on the WHY and HOW this business even exists, it guides the WHY of every decision made.
Note that this took a long time for me, about 8 months, to get down pat. Because I wanted to do it right. If not, why am I even here? Sprout kept me going through this process - it was great. The more I progressed the more things made sense. Everything deserved and was given my undivided, full, and constant attention. But suddenly this shade of orange didn’t feel right, and took me five days to decide. This word suddenly didn’t sound right. That layout looked weird. One change led to another and sometimes it became cyclic. I was excited that all this was happening and progressing but some days I got hung up on certain tasks, frustrated. Impatient. Some days I was defeated. Sprout went silent for days (not helping the inevitable time construct). Go figure. I registered my business in July 2025. C9 GENYSYS only came to fruition, meaning we’re open for business, in March 2026.
You are going to get things wrong. Just know this. And it might be something you foresaw, or something completely left-field you didn’t expect. On the assumption you did a financial/set-up cost exercise of some sort, you would’ve had a rough investment figure for your startup. But trust me when I say this, along the way you’re going to discover some pot holes, and some that you eventually can’t climb out of because you realized cement has filled the hole. You just need to navigate and dig to another part to get yourself out. I started using GoDaddy to design my website as that’s where my domain lives - made sense, all in one spot. Well, not for me. I found the interface and limitations of what could be done on GoDaddy’s website builder to be awful. If you’re designing something simple with one page and stock templates work, great. You could probably get something up in a day. But not for C9 GENYSYS. And I had already paid for the website builder element as it came as a promotional package with the domain.
Awesome. I just wasted money I technically don’t have.
I started hearing Wobble again. It’d been quiet for a long time but the familiarity of the voice just meant that it got louder much faster. “You’re already broke, and you spent money without even doing proper research on what you need/what it can do? Seriously? You can’t even get this right.”
I ended up using Squarespace in the end as it was simple yet customisable enough for my needs. It also has useful capabilities (you can inject code for schema for GEO/AIO/SEO, add CSS scripts) and streamlined a lot of processes easily (I already paid for my domain on GoDaddy but you can connect Squarespace to GoDaddy with just a few clicks).
But wait. There’s more. The Squarespace SEO conflict nobody mentioned. This bit sent Wobble into bouts of laughter. I set up Google Search Console as I optimized my website to be GEO/AIO/SEO ready. But it was taking aaaaages. Google does tell you it might take 2-4 weeks before all your website pages are visible on search, but surely not a few months. What is going on? Heaps of testing and changes, and it was like watching a snail climb Mount Everest.
I tried troubleshooting throughout the wait, but somehow missed it - apparently Squarespace automatically generates some structured data schema code for you so your site is searchable. Adding in the same structured data (that Google will pick up by the way) caused a conflict that confused Google. Stuck.
Wobble was ROFL-ing. “You know about Search, you’ve spoken about it countless times on a strategic level, understand it, have basic programming background, but come on, you’ve never, ever implemented it with your own two hands!”
I didn’t even know where to start. I could already tell that finding the problem(s) was going to take a lot of time (it took this long for me to even realize there was an issue), if I could even find them. So I did a hard reset. I deleted all the schema code and started from scratch. It was cleaner and more straightforward. It took time but I felt more comfortable doing it this way.
Honestly, thinking about it now, unless you/the person doing your Search optimization is a seasoned SEO guru AND is also very familiar with website builders and what they do/don’t do, you wouldn’t know. This bit of info was found in one of Squarespace’s support pages, squeezed into two sentences with six dot points. I don’t know for sure, but I think even if I had asked my SEO friends, they may know about schema code structure and how to apply them, but I’m not sure they’d know Squarespace did some by default.
“Why isn't my Squarespace site indexing properly?”
Building your website on Squarespace and adding custom SEO schema? Read this first:
Squarespace automatically generates schema markup code for six structured data types - WebSite, Article (often used for blog posts), Event, LocalBusiness, Organization, and Product. Please take this into consideration if you are building your website using Squarespace and implementing schema code. This cannot be turned off, edited, or customized. If you are implementing advanced SEO or rich results, you must manually add custom schema code. Be careful not to add any of the six types Squarespace already generates, as this will cause duplication. Duplicates confuse Google and can hurt site search visibility (Google will get confused, stay confused, and won’t know what to do with your site). Read more here and here.
Sprout was proud - “Extra knowledge doesn’t hurt for future conversations. And it’s better you found out sooner rather than later.” Sprout was right - sure I hit a hurdle, but if my search optimization was damaged and I didn’t know for an even longer time, that would seriously hurt my search visibility. Knowledge is a gift - this one keeps paying out. You’ll be learning until the end of your days, if you want to.
What I Learned
To be considerate. I gained mad respect and appreciation for every department I worked with in the past and what they all did. Because now I know how much it took. Be patient, be polite, be respectful. Just because you don’t see what’s going on in other people’s worlds doesn’t mean they’re not working.
Practicing Pause and Reflect. Stop and think about what you need and what you don’t. I do this in my own personal life so it was odd I didn’t apply it here. It’s a great habit not only for personal growth, but for leadership and businesses to assess performance and adapt.
To take breaks. For two reasons. First, to reset. Jump out of the spiral for a sec. If you’re like me you’ll get fixated on things and the pressure is x100 compared to working for someone else. I get that its high stakes but think about whether this task requires this much time and effort. Almost no one is going to be able to tell the difference between #xxxxxx and #yyyyyy, or they won’t care. A set of fresh eyes, mind, and body will help put things in perspective. Second, for your well-being. I can’t stress the importance of health, both mental and physical. I don’t care if it’s ten minutes of playing with your cat or going on a two-week retreat. Just do what you need to - for you. Re-evaluate and delegate your human resources (you) effectively.
To be prepared, and prepare to adapt. You’re never going to be 100% fool-proof, especially if you’ve never done this before. Plus all the other variables, both expected and unforeseen (name me one business that accounted for COVID-19). In my case, I didn’t map out the full structure of what I wanted/needed on my website (my OCD on colours and layouts did not help). Content supersedes aesthetics. It’s better to take more time and come up with a time/cost/resource efficient strategy rather than rush things and end up in a worse situation. You might discover you don’t need to do some things yet (hurray, less work)! Be resourceful and identify opportunity costs. For me, cost was a limitation. I did more research on free tools I could use to soften my cost mistake (Microsoft Clarity, Calendly, Kit), and didn’t actually have to pay for Adobe Suite even though I accounted for it. Re-assess what you really need, what’s available, non-negotiables, then prioritize.
*This is also good introductory practice to risk assessment - a good business usually has a methodology and framework to identify, evaluate, and to put measures in place to soften potential operational and financial blows. The impact won’t be zero, but it may not hurt so bad.
To prioritize. Pick your battles. Realistically, you are not going to do and get everything you want all at once. So ask - do you need to launch this now? Your GTM can be flighted in phases, you don’t have to do a full blast launch at one go. In my case, what role does my website play and what do I want it to do/say at launch? I ended up scrapping some sections. “Yet you’ve spent all this time, energy, effort, for nothing.” Wobble giggled. “No, it’s not for nothing. You learned something. And it’s okay. Reset, re-evaluate, research, and start again.” was what Sprout countered with.
The Stuff That Actually Kept Me Going
Relationships and hard work go a long way. And they’re not always rewarded financially or immediately.
My GTM was a soft launch - my first step was setting up meetings with people in my network - ex-colleagues, some of whom are now on client side, ex-clients, in different cities, all different professional walks of life. I am so grateful to all those I reached out to for my initial conversations. They were happy to meet and took the time to have a chat. An ex-client whom I hadn’t seen in over two years (I was afraid she wouldn’t remember me) actually proposed meeting for dinner so she wouldn’t have to rush back off to work and we’d have more time to catch up. The network I’ve built over 15 years wasn’t solely from the work I did. It was also how I did it. Work ethics, integrity, respect, transparency, relationship-building - the building blocks of how I operated. Fundamentally, stakeholder relationships (clients, vendors) are transactional. But I don’t see any benefit in being rude or demanding, pointing fingers, pulling rank, or manipulating. I prefer to approach with facts, evidence, and reason, aligning with all parties towards achieving the same goal. That way everybody wins (not necessarily equally but you get what I mean). And we’d support, overcome challenges, push through, and have a better chance of achieving (or exceeding) our goal together. I try to be cognisant of stakeholder’s pressures - you have to report and explain things to your boss, so do they. I’m guessing now that it probably led to why people gave me time of day. They were all so supportive, helpful, and that led to referrals - “Yes, maybe you can speak to xyz…” - which led to more meetings with people in different cities, more walks of life - it kept compounding. An ex-colleague put me in touch with someone in Bangkok, who was again, doing something totally different. And I went - and it was again, great conversation.
All the conversations felt (at least to me) very genuine, rich, informative, and it was great to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. We’re so caught up in this AI/tech world that human connection is often overlooked and we forget how important it is. I’ll put this plainly - in my experience, it’s much quicker and easier to resolve a problem in a F2F meeting or phone call compared to sending 100 emails back and forth.
These conversations were nuggets of gold - it’s something I highly value and it makes me rich, just not in the traditional money sense. I personally find these “nuggets” of higher value, especially in the long-term. And it can materialize in different ways. This transcends the transactional vendor-client relationship dynamic - it’s like the “added value” component that might not be immediate, may not take shape in something you know or are familiar with, and did not even ask for or expect. The result of something you didn’t even know had an impact. I am fully aware that they are of high value to me because of what I perceive as “value”. I have no hard evidence, but I think it’s simple - people remember how you treated them. It’s like karma.
“Good things come to those who wait.” Sprout said. And it does. In more ways than one.
My “soft” GTM launch was intentional - I did not want to sit there presenting a PPT creds deck. The objective of these meetings were twofold - first, to tell them I’ve started this business, this is what I do and why, but just to let them know, and I do this at the start of the meeting, to be upfront, and then asking them if they feel I should be speaking to anyone, but I do this at the end of the meeting. Second, which is the “meatier” objective in the middle, is to catch up and ask about them as I have not seen or spoken to many of them in a long time - ask them about their own challenges in their professional paths, their experiences, a lot of which differ to mine greatly. Even similar paths to mine had differences. I wanted to get a download of as much information I could get from all angles of the MarCom world. And add relevancy to it - I asked how each were using AI if at all, and impacts/benefits/challenges/what’s next (it’s the elephant in the room today, there’s no way I was going to ignore it).
Where the real value showed up - this huge info download provided further clarity on MarComs - I identified themes, similarities, differences, challenges, potential risks and benefits - this challenged me to think further outside the box. I learned things about client and vendor side, different industries I have never (and may never) work in or have visibility of. I thought about what each meant, the impacts, potential solutions, can this be tested/applied/scale, identified synergies, is it sustainable, how do I future-proof, how/if these apply to me - and this also shaped future conversations. The more I listened, the more solid my knowledge and understanding became. I would’ve never known a lot of this if I stayed on my previous career track. The conversations kept evolving into something bigger, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and was excited for the next one.
What surprised me most - Wobble always reminds me not to get ahead of myself, or that I’m not that great. “Sure you’re good but you’re not that good. Don’t flatter yourself.” And it’s kept me in check (maybe a bit too much) over the years and to this day. I’ve always been a focused operator - I’m hired to do a job, and I don’t like doing anything half-baked. It’s 100% (sometimes more) or nothing. I try to give all tasks the same effort and diligence as reasonably possible. But sometimes Wobble says I should’ve done more or known better. You won’t believe the calls and messages I am getting to help, get involved, and potential job offers - some from people that never crossed my mind. My first client is someone I’ve never met from an industry I have no knowledge of at all. My second client is from a friend, not surprising, but again an industry I was clueless about. And this just in - I had a call from an acquaintance, not even someone close, for a marketing role or how I can get involved. How are these people approaching me, having never worked with me before, yet trust me at least enough to even reach out to have a chat? It became apparent that my name was coming up in conversations.
I can’t even begin to tell you how rewarding this journey has been. It will probably be a WIP till the end, and based on how things are going, the “gold nuggets” will keep coming. Hand on heart, I still don’t know where C9 GENYSYS will end up - I cannot say with confidence whether it will fail, succeed, become a unicorn, or fall flat on its face, and when. I will confidently say this - if my business shuts down tomorrow, I have ZERO regrets. Even at C9 GENYSYS’ infancy stage, it has been so rewarding, everything that I’ve learned, gained, people I’ve met, all the conversations - I wouldn’t see it as a loss at all. I will still walk away with something. And at least now I can say “I tried".
You know the other great realization? That I was far from alone. Through many networking events with founders and SME owners, I discovered that most if not all that I spoke to went through the same kind of pains and frustrations, and could relate to what I was going through. And they were more than happy to give me advice and guidance, suggestions, and recommendations.
At every stage, Sprout said “Get up. Keep going.” And I did. And will continue to do so.
I want to be clear - this is just my experience, not a playbook. I’m one business in, figuring it out like anyone else. Take what’s useful, leave the rest.
This is C9 GENYSYS. One person. Ten hats. If you want to tell me your story, I’d genuinely like to hear it - I’m just one click away.
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