Ep 140.1: The No-Nonsense 'Lucky' Hotelier?! | Loh Lik Peng (Founder, Unlisted Collection)

So This Is My Why

Want to know how a lawyer became a successful hotelier with 40 hotels & 9 Michelin-starred restaurants in Singapore, London, Ireland, Shanghai & Sydney?!

Look no further than today’s STIMY guest: Loh Lik Peng, the founder of Unlisted Collection.

Lik Peng grew up expecting to be a doctor, like his parents.

But ended up practising as a commercial litigator for 3 years.

During that time, the world was hit with the Asian Financial Crisis and a rundown property called Hotel 1929 came onto the Singapore property market.

Hotel 1929 was located in Singapore’s red light district and Lik Peng saw potential in it, so he took a year off from law to develop the hotel with the full intention of going back to being a lawyer thereafter.

But life didn’t turn out that way.

He ended up opening his first restaurant at Hotel 1929, then another hotel and restaurant, and another and…

In fact, he bought so many properties in the area that his friend once remarked that the street should be renamed “Peng Road”! 🤣

Lik Peng has now become one of Singapore’s most established hoteliers (he struggled with imposter syndrome for a long time when people called him a hotelier!) despite starting out by taking projects “by the seat of his pants”.

And his Michelin-starred restaurants include:

⭐️: Burnt Ends, Marguerite, Nouri

⭐️⭐️: Cloudstreet, Da Terre

⭐️⭐️⭐️: Zen

So do you want to know how he did it?

Let’s go!

P/S: This is Part 1 out of 2 of Lik Peng’s episode (Part 2 is coming out this Weds).

Highlights:

• 2:32 Dad as the Chief Glutton
• 3:24 Boarding school were the best years of the life
• 4:42 Being a lousy doctor
• 5:32 Learning important lessons from the Asian Financial Crisis
• 7:14 Hotel 1929
• 8:24 The “Peng” Road?!
• 9:15 Worried about being in the red light district?
• 10:41 Family thought he was insane?!
• 11:30 Turning the corner
• 12:43 Being hit with SARS
• 13:55 What crisis management looks like in a hotel
• 14:52 Expanding to London
• 17:54 Romanticism overruled my logic…
• 20:57 The secret to getting things done
• 22:35 Managing risks
• 24:11 When Lik Peng thought he could call himself a “hotelier”
• 25:43 The magic behind what he does (while being pragmatic?!)
• 26:48 What properties interest him now
• 30:24 Any regrets investing in Old Clare, Sydney?
• 34:41 Navigating unsexy regulations & red tape
• 35:46 Surprising things about the Australian hospitality market?
• 36:45 Dr Stanley Quek
• 40:37 Family friend to business partner?

Special thanks to Limpeh Studios (Hepmil Media) for the studio!

📍Show notes: https://www.sothisismywhy.com/140

🍿 YouTube: https://youtu.be/w22CAJupO48

💌 Weekly STIMY Newsletter on the art of storytelling + building your personal brand (+snippets of STIMY behind-the-scenes): https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/acd5bd1062

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