With Singapore's desire to become a regional business hub, it plans to attract a good number of entrepreneurial minds into the country from overseas. The EntrePass is a type of Singapore Employment Pass that is designed to facilitate the entry and stay of foreign entrepreneurs who are ready to incorporate and launch a business in Singapore. EntrePass was introduced in 2004 and is aimed at attracting foreign entrepreneurs into the country.

Two categories of foreign nationals are eligible for the Singapore Entrepass:
A foreign national who is an entrepreneur ready to start a company/business and be actively involved in the operation of the company/business in Singapore.
A foreign national who is an existing shareholder/ partner in a Singapore registered company/business and who wishes to become actively involved in the operation of the company/business.

The EntrePass allows global value-creating entrepreneurs and innovators to establish and run their business ventures in Singapore.

You don't need to have a Ph.D. from top-notch school or have millions in the bank to get started. All you need is a good business plan and some investment to cover your startup expenses and support yourself in the early stages .

Important Facts about EntrePass

Application for EntrePass should be made prior to incorporating your business in Singapore.
Along with EntrePass application, you will need to submit a 10 page long business plan. The details of preparing a good business plan are described in the subsequent sections of this document.
Businesses not of entrepreneurial nature for example, coffee shops / food courts, foot reflexology, massage parlours, karaoke lounges, money changing / remitting, newspaper vending, and tuition services etc will not be considered for an EntrePass. The application processing time is usually
2- 3 weeks.
If your application is successful, you will normally be issued an EntrePass that is valid for two years. You do not need to incorporate your business in Singapore until the successful outcome of your EntrePass application. Your EntrePass allows you to bring your
immediate family members to Singapore to live with you.
The EntrePass is renewable for as long as the business remains viable. You are also eligible to apply for a permanent residence in Singapore in due course.

Importance of Business Plan for EntrePass Application

Preparing a good business plan for your new Singapore business is one of the most crucial aspects of applying for EntrePass. The Good news is that the business plan is expected to be relatively concise ie no more than 10 pages long.

In addition to its importance in applying for EntrePass, another important value lies in the process of researching and thinking about your business in a way. The act of planning systematically helps you to think things through thoroughly, study and research if you are not sure of the facts, and look at your ideas critically.

A well thought out business plan will not only improve your chances of getting a Singapore EntrePass, but it will also help you clarify your mind and better prepare for your entrepreneurship journey. The well-known fleas-in-the-box analogy applies to your plan as well; if you put a lid on the box, the fleas will learn to jump to that height only, but if there is no lid, they jump as high as they are capable of doing. Your plan should set that lid higher. At the same time you must be confident that figures in business plans are achievable. You must strike a good balance between optimism and realism.

Make sure business plan EntrePass is impressive in presentation. Your plan must get across to readers what is interesting about your business. Stress your marketing and sales strategy and include a break-even analysis. Be sure to include tax payments, payments to local accountants and other service providers and the fact that your business funds will be kept in a Singapore bank!

How to prepare a good business plan for EntrePass?

So are you ready to prepare your business plan and apply for Singapore EntrePass? The guide below will help you to get a better understanding of the various sections and contents that are expected in the business plan.

1. Executive Summary

Write this section last and keep it to half-page. Provide a brief summary of product(s)/service(s), target customers, owners, and the future for your business and industry in Singapore.

2.Business Concept

In this section you should include brief description of the proposed business and industry, a mission statement, company goals and objectives, business philosophy, strengths and core competencies of the proposed venture, critical success factors, and legal form of ownership. (To find out more about possible legal forms, see Singapore Business Structure Options for Entrepreneurs).

3.Product Service

This is the place where you need to describe your product(s) or service(s) in detail. How will you differentiate your product(s)/services (s) from the competition? What will be your competitive edge?

4. Marketing Plan

No matter how good your product and/or service, your business venture will not succeed without effective marketing. And it begins with careful research and planning upfront. Talk about the size of your market , current demand, and future growth prospects, and opportunities for a business of your size. What barriers will you face with your new venture and how will you overcome them? Write about your targeted customers, their characteristics, and their geographic locations, otherwise known as their demographics. Write about your direct and indirect competition: who, their size, position in the market. How will your offerings compare with your competition? Use a competitive analysis table to compare your new Singapore Company with the two most important competitors. Include factors such as price, quality, selection, service, reliability, technical and management expertise, sales and marketing strength, etc. Make an honest assessment of your company's strong and weak points against the competition. Outline your marketing strategy. How will you identify potential customers? How will you create awareness of your offerings? How will you advertise? What is your marketing budget (startup and ongoing)? What image do you want to project? What is your plan for creating marketing collateral (logo, website, business cards , brochures, etc.)? How will you retain customers? Write about distribution channels. How do plan to distribute your products/services? What will be your pricing strategy?

5.Operational Plan

Explain the operations and resource needs of your new Singapore business venture. How and where your product(s)/services(s) will be produced? What equipment do you need? What is your procurement plan? Explain production, delivery, and quality control processes for your product(s)/services(s). Describe your location and space requirements? Who will be your suppliers? What will be the proposed credit, delivery, and quality control policies? What are the legal requirements for your business? Business licenses? Other regulations that apply to your industry? Insurance coverage needs? What are personnel requirements? What type of workforce (skills and experience) do you need? Pay structure? Job descriptions? Duties & Responsibilities? Organizational chart? HR policies? Recruitment plan? What services do you plan to outsource and to whom? What are your inventory needs and how do you plan to manage it? How do you plan to manage your accounts receivables and accounts payables ?

6. Financial projections

Provide projected sales and net profit before tax for three years, startup expenses, cash flow projections, and breakeven point, key assumptions. The intended startup capital for your new Singapore business must be able to cover your startup expenses and keep you afloat for the first 6-months. Many startup businesses fail because they run into cash flow problems soon after they start. The person who will be evaluating your Singapore EntrePass application will definitely be paying close attention to this.

7. Management Team

Talk about your past employment and business experience, achievements, key competencies, and roles & responsibilities. Identify weak areas and how you plan to address them.

8.Supporting Documents

Here you can provide any supporting documents that you have to backup the information you provided in your business plan. This might include customer leads, written articles, awards, certifications, etc.

Although it requires some effort and research, preparing a good business plan is not as difficult as you might think. Writing a business plan is just capturing your longer-term goals, objectives, estimates, and forecasts on paper. It typically takes couple of weeks to complete a good plan. Most of that time is spent in research and re-thinking your ideas and assumptions. So make time to do the job properly. Those who do, never regret the effort.

Creating a brochure is something anyone can do now with the many brochure making software available on the Internet. Those who do not have the time or the inclination of making their own brochures can always hire one of the many online and offline printers who will print brochures for you at a price. However, it is the tips to create a professional quality brochure that has to be kept in mind when making a brochure.

The first and best thing to do before creating a brochure is to collect and study brochures found around you. Find out what it is that sets one design to be more appealing than another is. By carefully studying the other designs, you can very well develop your sense of good design to create a good-looking brochure. 

Once you have got an idea of ​​what the brochure should look like, you have to decide which group of people you are catering your information to. Choose a font that best expresses the voice you desire, like perhaps a professional, humorous or casual one, and still manage to keep your message clear. It is not advisable to use more than two fonts in the brochure, as in doing so; you distract the reader from your message. Instead , to get your message through, you could vary the font size of individual parts of the design according to its importance in the brochure. It is of no use underlining matter for prominence as it only causes clutter and makes the text harder to read.

Next comes the part of placing the right information in the respective pages of the brochure. Decide which information is necessary, and arrange this information in order of its importance. The clearer you are about the order of importance in the brochure, the better the brochure will be. To get the best placing for your matter, it is better to make sketches and move the matter around till you get the best layout. If you have to use boxes and bars in the brochure, use them sparingly as although they work well for directing one's attention and separating busy areas, too many of them makes your brochure look cluttered and confusing. You could try other options for grouping and separating like making the more important information being larger, bolder or brighter than other information.

Make sure to promote your company in the brochure, as this is the main aim of a brochure! People are always more comfortable dealing with a known entity. So if you promote you and your company with it's credentials and credibility, the customer feels more comfortable dealing with you. Make sure you include such information in the brochure that speaks for you when you are not there. Don't forget to stick to general terms of quality and leadership when promoting the products of your company instead, state what it is that you have and no one else has. This is bound to increase sales to your company.


When promoting service and warranty in the brochure, make sure that it also relates to reliability, as people need reliable and loyal services when dealing with a company. You could also consider including testimonials or client lists in your brochure. You will be surprised at the wonders good references make! There is no point on including cliches and trendy jargon in your brochure, as not everyone can understand this jargon . The prospective of the brochure is lost if not everyone can understand whatever it is that you print in the brochure.

Try to keep some negative space in the brochure to create a relationship between the contents and the page and bring specific information into focus. Having some empty or white space in the brochure affects the overall tone of lightness and heaviness of the brochure. Whatever design or layout you choose for the brochure, it is always better to keep the brochure as simple as possible. Place only the necessary ingredients for communicating your message in the brochure. If you feel like placing graphic elements in the brochure for ornamental reasons, first ask yourself if they help in directing the reader's attention or only serves as a distraction.

There are hundreds of paper colors available for using on the brochure. However, the most effective brochures are usually done in only one or two colors. Sometimes, black and white brochures prove to be more dramatic than colored brochures. Remember that the cost of printing has to be taken into consideration when choosing colors for the brochure. The more colors there are, the more expensive will be the printing costs. Paper too comes in a wide range of colors, sizes and textures. You could also consider using recycled paper which adds an interesting flair to your brochure design and also reduces the impact we make on our natural resources. However, recycled paper is more expensive than regular paper, and could make the printing of your brochure more expensive.

After completing the layout and choosing the font and paper for the brochure, it is important to proofread your brochure. Proofread it several times before having it printed, as once printed, it is impossible to fix an error not spot. Reading lines backwards is a good idea for checking errors. Once all this is done, stand back and look critically at the overall layout of the brochure. If needed, you could also get someone else to look at the layout to give his or her views on it. If everyone , including you, is happy that this is a great brochure, then go ahead and print it!

Who among us hasn't had a conversation with a pre-baby-boomer [senior] who didn't take pleasure in pointing out that their generation was made of sturdier stuff compared to ours? “We never suffered from depression and stress!
” they say. “We accepted what was, sucked it up and soldiered on…. We never had time for 'nothin' else!... You kids today aren't as tough as we were!” Sound familiar? The important question

then is, are they right?

At least on the surface, things like, stress and depression were far less prevalent 'back-in-the-day' than in our time. Why? Is it because that generation suppressed their stress and tried not to let it show? Was it, like divorce, something you just didn't do back then? …Maybe.

Did their generation have less stress to deal with than ours? The current common belief is we are the most stressed generation the world has ever produced but try convincing any WWI or WWII Vet that they don't know stress in all its ugly forms. clearly do! Nevertheless, there are fundamental differences in the way they and we handle the problem. For example, we know today that

PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] is real and emotionally devastating. In there day, they called it 'Shell Shock'… and they also called it something else – LMF - which stood for LACK of MORAL FIBER. It's not up to me to say

which generation's approach is right, only to highlight the differences.
Another point pre-Boomers like to make is, our generation doesn't know how good we have it.

Senior: “In our day, we didn't have money, we had to make due. We found ways to entertain ourselves and we were happy!”

Whether they were happy or not is debatable. The fact that they had far less money than we, is not. So it is here, I believe, we can put this fundamental difference under the microscope to track and determine whether they may, in fact , be right and, how something a simple as money, may be at the root of this generation's moral decay and its impact on the Resilience Factor. The Baby Boom

Generation

Fact : The 1980s ushered in the greatest increase in personal wealth compared to any generation in the history of man.

Along with wealth and disposable income, came 'Choice'. Unlike the previous generation, Boomers suddenly had unlimited choices to make because they could afford to – and they did. Boats, cars, large homes and lavish lifestyles were all possible thanks to nouveau riches.
New choices also allowed attitudes and behaviors to change. Boomers no longer had to 'make do' or find 'inexpensive ways to entertain themselves' . They could afford to do whatever they wanted and when they got tired or bored of that, they could simply do something else.

If things got a little too tough, Boomers could easily abandon them and move on. Included in that were things like jobs, careers and education. The move to convenience – away from challenge or discomfort - clearly demonstrated, the paradigm shift separating the mindset between the Boomer generation and the one before. The need to 'suck it up and soldier on' was no longer necessary. Money took care of that.

Although the 1990s leveled the playing field a little, the dye was already cast for this generation's new attitude . Even corporations had changed their way of thinking. Gone were the loyalties to employees – once a given. If things weren't the way the company wanted it, change it, regardless of who or how many it affected. Loyalty was only to be given to one's self.

The Fallout

“There is a price to be paid for everything my son.” my Dad would drill into me as a lad. “The scales always balance” It

would appear the scales are indeed on the move. Statistics Canada reported that in 1999, $12 Billion was spent on stress-related illnesses and employee absenteeism. The New York Times reported September 2004 the same problem was costing the USA $300 Billion a year and in 2005 the UK estimated its annual costs to be in excess of 12 Billion pounds. Although anyone could argue the accuracy of these reports, what can't be argued is whatever the correct figure is… it's BIG!

The bigger question, though, is why is it happening? Why are so many people in this generation negatively affected and unable to cope with stress?
There may be two good reasons:

Without question, we are the most stressed generation the world has ever seen. The need for both parents [where there are two parents] to be in the workplace to make ends meet, longer hours on the job, daunting responsibilities, unrealistic deadlines, global competition, lack of corporate loyalties, unemployment, increased drug and crime rates…. the list goes on. The net? We live in unprecedented stressful times
.
This generation lacks the Resilience Factor! In just over two and a half decades, the emphasis on the pursuit of what's 'pleasurable' leaves in its wake, a generation bereft of resilience-training and turpitude. Simply put, there has never been a time in human history when stress was not present. How to deal with it is, and will always be, a learned skill. Some people learn quite naturally on their own. Most of us, however, rely on others parents in most cases  to teach it to us. nevertheless, it has to be learned.

Could it be that the current working single-parent phenomenon - also unprecedented in tandem with two-income families have preoccupied the lesson-givers and the next generation is now ill equipped? Absolutely! But the problem still systemically exists in this current generation. Have we, over the last twenty-five years forgotten how to be resilient? Yes but better put, we have learned more, how 'not' to be resilient. Let me explain. Trained psychologists tell us that behavior of any kind
positive or negative] is learned and it is learned through repetition. The last generation focused on things like, stiff upper lip, soldier on, turning ones cheek and in Churchill's words, “Never, Never, NEVER SURRENDER!” That generation believed it, lived it and learned to be Resilient because of it.

Compare that to a generation that followed whose newfound wealth and ability to choose, allowed them to learn new ways to live, that meant Resilience training was suddenly off the radar. Add to the mix, unprecedented daily stress and responsibility, more uncertain competitive times and the picture suddenly becomes clear  we are unarmed  we lack the Resilience Factor.

This generation was told that it is okay to show one's feelings, be upset, angry or sad. I can't argue with that logic but I can if people are not also taught proper boundaries - how to qualify, quantify and rebound to natural negative emotions. That is the other important half of the lesson. My Dad always said, “Control your Downs and your Ups !” Resilience is the ability to bounce back, to cope. It has so everything to do with learned healthy boundaries and control.
The good news is the same psychologists tell us that behavioral modification is possible and it is achievable at any age.

There are breathing techniques designed to control blood pressure, reduce stress. Behavioral Triggers are excellent ways to immediately transform one's negative thoughts and actions. Stress Minimization exercises and techniques, Music, Power-Talk, all blend together to reduce stress and bring more balance and harmony into our daily lives. Moreover, the better news is, anyone can learn these strategies and without question, they WORK!

The Bottom Line

This generation and the one to follow can learn a lot from generations past. What they did instinctively, are the building blocks we can use on a conscious level to embolden ourselves in this new, more competitive and stressful world – saving companies and healthcare systems Money! The success of our health and happiness lies in the strength and quality of our Resilience Factor!