Building a Business Is Not Easy. But It Is Extremely Satisfying.

Building a business is not easy.

Anyone who has actually done it knows that.

There is the excitement of having an idea and imagining what it could become. But there is also the uncertainty, the fear, the financial risk, the long nights, the sacrifices and the constant responsibility that comes with knowing that the outcome ultimately depends on you.

For me, building Secret Basement has been something much more than simply starting a gelato business.

I have spent almost 20 years working with large organisations, running projects, solving problems, making decisions and, perhaps most importantly, watching how decisions made at the top can create both success and failure.

Over those 20 years, I have learned a lot from successful projects. But I have probably learned just as much from the mistakes.

I've watched organisations make decisions that looked perfect on paper but didn't work in reality. I've seen how bureaucracy can slow things down, how decisions can become disconnected from the people actually doing the work, and how sometimes the simplest solution gets buried under layers of process.

I've also seen what good leadership, disciplined execution and proper planning can achieve.

All of those experiences stayed with me.

And when I decided to build something of my own, I realised I had twenty years of experience to draw from. Not twenty years of running a gelato business. But twenty years of understanding people, projects, operations, decision-making, risk, execution and what happens when things go wrong.

So I decided to put all of that experience into Secret Basement.

Was it perfect? Absolutely not. It still isn't.

There are things I would do differently. There are things I'm still learning. There are decisions that I have made along the way that I will probably look back on and think, "I could have done that better."

But there is something incredibly satisfying about being able to look around and say:

I built this.

Four months ago, much of this didn't exist. Today, there is a physical shop. There is equipment. There are products. There are employees. There are customers. There is a brand. There are people walking through the door and enjoying something that started as an idea.

And that, for me, is a remarkable feeling.

Because in a large organisation, you can spend months working on a project and never physically see the thing you are building in front of you. Here, I can walk into the shop and see it. I can touch it. I can taste it. I can see customers enjoying it. I can see employees working in something that I helped create. And I can see the result of decisions I made.

That comes with an enormous amount of responsibility.

When you work for someone else, there is a certain comfort in knowing where the responsibility ends. When you build your own business, it doesn't.

If an employee doesn't turn up, you deal with it. If something breaks, you deal with it. If a supplier causes a problem, you deal with it. If customers aren't coming in, you deal with it. If the numbers don't work, you deal with it.

There isn't another department to pass the problem to. There isn't someone else who ultimately owns the decision.

You do.

And that can be frightening.

There have been nights away from family. Nights where I'm still thinking about the business when everyone else has gone to sleep. There are days when you question whether the sacrifices will eventually be worth it. You invest money without knowing exactly what the return will be. You make decisions without having perfect information. You take risks knowing that some of them will inevitably be wrong.

But then something happens that makes it all worthwhile.

Someone walks into the shop. They try the gelato. They smile. A child gets excited about choosing a flavour. A customer comes back and says they loved something they tried the previous time. Someone tells you that they discovered the shop by chance and now wants to come back.

Those moments are incredibly satisfying.

Because suddenly, the business isn't just about revenue, costs, operations or growth. It is about people. People enjoying something that you and your family and team created.

Why We Want to Keep It Personal

Till today, Secret Basement remains a family-run business.

We have considered bringing investors into the business. We have thought about what outside investment could help us achieve and how much faster we could potentially grow.

But there is something we deeply value about keeping Secret Basement within the family.

Because this was never started simply as a financial investment. It was built by the family. The sacrifices were made by the family. The late nights were shared by the family. The excitement, the stress, the mistakes and the small victories have all been experienced by the family.

And we don't want Secret Basement to eventually become just another large corporation. We don't want a conglomerate sitting somewhere far away deciding how our shops should operate. We don't want the personality of the business to disappear as we grow.

We want to know our customers. We want our team to know the people who walk through our doors. We want someone visiting Secret Basement to feel that there are real people behind the counter, real people behind the recipes and real people who genuinely care about what they are serving.

We want to grow, but we don't want to lose the personal touch.

That is an important distinction for us. Growth should not mean becoming impersonal. Scale should not mean losing the soul of the business. And success should not mean becoming disconnected from the people who helped make the business successful.

More Than Just a Gelato Shop

Ultimately, our ambition for Secret Basement is bigger than simply opening more outlets.

We want Secret Basement to become part of Singapore. Not just another brand that happens to operate in Singapore. We want it to become truly Singapore.

Singapore is a place where different cultures, generations, traditions and modern ideas come together. It is a place where a small neighbourhood shop can become part of someone's memories. Where food isn't simply food — it is connected to family, friends, celebrations, late nights, conversations and everyday life.

That is what we want Secret Basement to become. A Singapore-born business that people feel belongs here. Something that visitors to Singapore discover and remember. Something that Singaporeans can feel proud of. And something that remains personal even as it grows.

Maybe one day there will be many Secret Basement shops. Maybe the brand will become much bigger than it is today. But I hope that even then, someone can walk through the door and still feel the same thing they feel today:

There are people here who care.

That is the kind of business I want to build. Not the biggest. Not necessarily the fastest-growing. But one that has character. One that has a story. One that remains connected to its roots. One that started as a family business and, hopefully, becomes part of the story of Singapore itself.

Secret Basement is not perfect. But it exists.

And it exists because I decided to take everything I have learned over 20 years and actually build something with it.

In just four months, an idea became a physical place. A place where people walk in. A place where people eat. A place where people smile. A place where employees work. A place that my family and I can stand inside and say:

We built this.

And perhaps that is the most satisfying part of entrepreneurship. Not that you get everything right. You won't. Not that it becomes easy. It doesn't. But that you get the opportunity to take everything you've learned in life — all the successes, all the failures, all the lessons, all the mistakes you've watched others make — and finally put it into something that belongs to you.

Then you stand back and watch people enjoy it.

And for all the fear and uncertainty that comes with building a business...

that feeling is hard to beat.

Because at the end of the day, we're not just trying to build a successful gelato business.

We're trying to build something worth belonging to Singapore.