From Accidental Hotelier to Longevity Pioneer: An Entrepreneur's Journey with Allen Law
Fresh out of the studio, Allen Law, co-founder of MOVE Repeat, chairman of REVL, and principal of Seveno Capital, joins us to explore the holistic approach to wellness, fitness, and longevity across his entrepreneurial ventures. In the conversation, Allen explained his journey from "accidental hotelier" to longevity entrepreneur, outlining the six pillars of longevity. He emphasized that the gap isn't in knowledge but in action, highlighting how his upcoming 38,000 square foot facility in Singapore brings medical, fitness, recovery, sleep, and nutrition services under one roof to help people change their lifestyles. Allen discussed how MOVE Repeat has acquired three brands operating in 50+ studios across five countries and shifted from traditional subscription models to pay-as-you-go to ensure consistent customer satisfaction. Last but not least, Allen describes what great would look like for his fitness, wellness and longevity businesses.
"I think the why is so important, but it's always not really being asked. Most people want to know, 'What's your growth look like?' or 'How is this offering different from another offering?' Those are the questions we get most of the time. But going back to the real why we actually do this in the first place is the most critical question if you ask me. For myself personally, it is all about having a positive impact in society. We have chosen to go down the route of wellness, fitness, and longevity to have that positive impact, which we believe is extremely important and a strong one whereby I'm personally putting a lot of energy, funds, and capital behind it to ensure we educate the community and society to establish and adopt healthy and active lifestyles that will only benefit the entire population." - Allen Law
Profile: Allen Law, Co-Founder, MOVE Repeat, Chairman, REVL Training, Principal, Seveno Capital, Founder, Park Hotel Group. (LinkedIn)
Here is the edited transcript of our conversation:
Bernard Leong: Welcome to Analyse Asia, the premier podcast dedicated to dissecting the powers of business, technology, and media in Asia. I'm Bernard Leong and everyone wants to live longer. How does longevity combined with wellness and fitness help us to live longer? With me today, Allen Law, co-founder of MOVE Repeat, chairman of REVL, training Principal of Seveno Capital, founder of Park Hotel Group. Allen, first of all, a big thank you to you and Grand Park City Hall for hosting me here and having this face-to-face interview. So to begin, welcome to the show.
Allen Law: Thank you.
Allen Law's Origin Story
Bernard Leong: Your journey from hotel magnet to a wellness entrepreneur is fascinating. I always want to start with origin stories. Can you share how your business career began?
Allen Law: I started with hotels as what I call an accidental hotelier. My family originally was in government manufacturing. Then they ventured out to fashion retailing and real estate back in Hong Kong during my grandfather's days.
As the generation grew, our family had one very good philosophy whereby we only have one family member in one business unit. So as that generation grew from my grandfather's one to my dad's generation with six of them to my generation now with over 20 of us, and the next generation I cannot keep counting already.
The idea for the family is to grow a business that you can somehow relate to, but yet it's a separate business. It then becomes a seeding venture and a business group on its own. For me, I started with hotels but in recent years I've started to seed businesses in the wellness and longevity medicine field, hoping to bring it to a much bigger platform and standalone as a business venture.
Leadership Lessons from Hospitality
Bernard Leong: You stepped into leadership at Park Hotel Group at just 24 years old, then transformed it into a regional hospitality leader. Reflecting on that experience, what leadership lessons did you internalize early on, especially from observing your family in business?
Allen Law: I was literally a fresh grad from university in UK and I just got a call from my parents that they had invested in a hotel property in Hong Kong. They had no intention of learning how to run a hotel. So as the next generation who just graduated, I got the call from my father saying it was time for me to come back and start learning about the hotel business.
I took the next flight home and literally drowned myself in the hotel. I started with almost a fast-track management training program that typically would take 24 months, but I completed it within nine months doing two shifts every day.
At the end, I wrote a proposal to the family saying I saw tremendous opportunity for tourism across Asia. For us being in real estate, I felt putting more funds behind investing in hotels was a good move. That's when I got the family to set aside funds for me to invest further in the hotel business. That was less than one year after I joined.
Bernard Leong: I remember you telling this interesting story at King's College. My wife was an alumni, and I happened to sit in as a spouse. That talk about how you set up the business from your entrepreneur journey was very inspiring.
Transition to Wellness and Longevity
Bernard Leong: Based on your shift from hospitality to wellness, fitness, and longevity business, what lessons from your career journey can you share with my audience?
Allen Law: Getting your hands dirty. Go back to principle. What is the business set out to do? What is its ultimate goal beyond financial success? In business, every business has its P&L, costs to pay, and wants to make money. But that is just financial sustainability, a given for any business. What makes a successful company is ultimately falling back to what is your ultimate purpose and impact in society. Once we have that "why" very solid, when it comes to the "what" and the "how," it will be a lot easier.
Bernard Leong: That's really good advice. First principles thinking is what you're alluding to.
Defining Wellness, Fitness, and Longevity
Bernard Leong: For the benefit of the general audience, could you share how you define the business of wellness, fitness, and longevity? During our lunch before this conversation, you spoke about the six-pillar framework on longevity. Can you walk us through the different pillars and explain how the framework informs your strategy?
Allen Law: The wellness and longevity view is quite wide, but ultimately it goes back to the principle of what are the foundations of living a healthy long life. If you follow the lifestyle medicine principle, they have six key pillars, some of which the audiences and the public already know, but somehow is getting tough for people to execute.
The Six Pillars of Longevity
Allen Law: The first one is sleep well. Literally just sleep well. Eight hours of sleep is essential. If you don't get good sleep, it affects the rest of your day.
Next is physical exercise. Everyone knows exercise is healthy for us and proven by many scientific research. It not only helps us keep a healthy body but helps our mind get sharper as we go through our day making important decisions.
Next is food intake. Do we go with the healthy diet or the junk food that is easily accessible today? In lifestyle medicine research, they say you probably make over a hundred decisions just on food alone - whether to look at this food, eat that food, how much to eat, and when to eat. In one day, you'll have a hundred of these questions. These small decisions you make daily will affect your food choices.
Then there's avoiding harmful substances like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. That's almost a given.
Having positive social connection is critical for mental health.
Last but not least is stress management. We are all somehow caught up in a very stressed environment, especially those living in the city. Most of us work in high-stress environments, but how we manage and de-stress is an important process to put in place.
Bernard Leong: I totally agree about stress management. I once went to the U.S., stayed in the Bay Area, and took a stress management course that helped me take away the heartburn I was having.
Market Opportunities and Business Strategies
Bernard Leong: What is the potential market opportunity and how are your businesses - MOVE Repeat, REVL, and Seveno Capital - poised to make a difference in these segments?
Allen Law: We started with exercise first. I co-founded MOVE Repeat two years ago, and we acquired the largest yoga chain in Singapore, Yoga Movement. Last year I brought Yoga Movement to Hong Kong as well, with the intention to continue a chain operation there and subsequently in North Asia. We also own the Strong Pilates Singapore franchise. Early this year we announced the acquisition of REVL Training from Australia. Currently, MOVE Repeat has three brands operating in five countries with over 50 studios.
Scaling Fitness and Wellness Brands
Bernard Leong: What drove that transition from hospitality to fitness, wellness, and longevity? How did your experience from Park Hotel Group shape the way you approach MOVE Repeat, REVL, and other businesses to scale so quickly?
Allen Law: When running Park Hotel Group, we looked at what part of wellness we were already involved in. All our hotels had a gym, a pool, and some resort hotels had spa treatments and yoga sessions. Fitness offering was already part of the hotel, just a very small business we called the "minor operating department."
I was thinking, since we already had some limited know-how in the fitness area, why not start looking into how we could grow that fitness segment as a business on its own. That's how MOVE Repeat was born. I was practicing at Yoga Movement at that time and loved their culture, brand, and service delivery, so I got in touch with their founder and we got a deal done.
Bernard Leong: Scaling is always one of the most difficult parts, but probably because you already have previous experience scaling hotels, this is much easier?
Allen Law: Scaling is actually not the difficult part, to be honest. The importance is having your initial concept right - the proof of concept. You need to make sure your first offering is good. We all make mistakes, especially with the first one, and need to continue fine-tuning until you've established a model you can multiply.
For Yoga Movement, Strong Pilates, and REVL Training, they all established proven models whereby they already multiplied to a certain extent within their initial geographical locations. For me, it's just taking something already well established and taking it beyond their home market. That's the easier part.
With my experience in different jurisdictions, understanding local rules, regulations, and nuances makes the inroad to a new market easier and reduces risk. Now we're focusing on building community in each market. You'd be surprised how many visitors come to our locations and express interest in becoming franchisees in new markets. It's about having that foundation of a community whereby your community is so satisfied with the offering that they want to bring you somewhere else.
Bernard Leong: You have Yoga Movement, REVL, MOVE Repeat, Pilates - diverse modalities. What's the thinking about building an ecosystem versus scaling one dominant brand? Do you leverage their diversity for centralized economies of scale, or do they help fulfill the fitness/wellness pillar of the six pillars?
Allen Law: Each brand will have its own growth strategy, but at MOVE Repeat, we help each brand take out non-essential items - back-office administrative work, HR-related matters, marketing strategy. We handle these at the MOVE Repeat level, letting the brands focus on what they're good at - delivering service excellence at each studio and training their trainers and instructors to deliver new programs.
MOVE Repeat helps brands outsource nuances while they focus on the important parts. We continue to look at other modalities and brands to add to the portfolio. We'll see strategic growth in the near future where we have a sizable collection of brands and operations across the world. At that point, we'll potentially introduce a cap membership or cross-credit system where you can be a MOVE Repeat member and access all the various brands.
Bernard Leong: That would be what customers want given all these different modalities, accessible through just one brand. As chairman of REVL, what's the vision for that brand?
Allen Law: For REVL, it's one of our fastest-growing brands within the portfolio. We expect to double our size in the next 12 months, and in three years, grow revenue sixfold. The growth trajectory is tremendous. Our team headquartered in Australia is working extremely hard to ensure our backend can support that growth. The demand is there, so it's about ensuring our supply chain and operation can support it.
Bernard Leong: What drew you to that model? There's also localization required. Australia is somewhat similar to Singapore as city-based, but maybe different from other jurisdictions. How do you think about taking these global trends and localizing them?
Allen Law: The global trend at least for REVL Training is strength and conditioning group exercise. More people are joining events like High Rocks as fitness competitions, and many of our members want to be trained for their games. REVL Training conducts internal games as well. Recently in Singapore, we collaborated with Rugby Seven and had our REVL games at the National Stadium.
People now recognize it's not just about burning calories, which you typically see in running or cycling. People recognize you need to incorporate strength training as well. REVL is the best fit because you have both strength and cardio portions that train both sides. The global trend definitely supports what REVL Training is doing.
Bernard Leong: What's interesting about consumer behavior in Singapore, Australia, or greater Asia Pacific regarding how people engage with fitness, lifestyle, and wellness?
Allen Law: The trend is people want variety. The old model was each fitness brand trying to tie you in with a 12-month contract. We don't believe in contracts. We sell even single classes - you can just drop in for one class. If you want cheaper options, you can commit to 5, 10, or 20 classes. It's pay-as-you-go.
This forces us to be on our toes because if our service isn't satisfactory, customers won't come back. This is customer obsession. It helps our entire team focus on making every session count, every customer satisfaction count, instead of the old days where someone signs a contract, and whether they come in or are happy doesn't really matter.
Holistic Approach to Longevity
Bernard Leong: What's one thing you know about the longevity, fitness, and wellness business that very few do?
Allen Law: Everything I know the industry probably knows also, but what stands out is the word "holistic." The market currently focuses mostly on one piece of the puzzle. Exercise brands are all about exercise. They might touch a little on nutrition - your trainer may say you need to eat healthier or increase protein intake - but ultimately, each offering is niche in one pillar of the longevity pillars.
The importance is not about one pillar, but looking holistically at all six key pillars and how they interrelate. If you don't sleep well, how do you expect to go through your day properly? Exercise is important, but so is recovery and sleep. If you don't recover, how do you exercise again tomorrow?
Bernard Leong: My wife and I mandate ourselves to sleep eight hours a day because it really affects energy the next day.
Allen Law: It's all about holistic wellness. You need to focus on all key pillars, not just one. You may not be excellent in all - that's fine. Take small steps on each rather than taking one extreme.
Upcoming Ventures in Longevity
Bernard Leong: I know you're venturing into longevity with a new business still in stealth mode. Can you share about the upcoming launch and how it complements the broader MOVE Repeat vision?
Allen Law: It's exactly about being holistic. Many people ask what we're trying to do and how it's different from market offerings. What we're offering can be found, but you'd need to go to 6-8 different places. We're bringing all of this in-house to one location with one brand and one team to handle all 6-7 things you'd potentially need to go outside for, including the medicine part.
We have a longevity clinic focusing on lifestyle medicine with medical doctors and our chief scientific officer endorsing the protocols, research, and how we prescribe lifestyle to individuals, giving advice on active steps they can take to improve their health.
We incorporate health coaches to guide you along your wellness journey. Our facilities include exercise options like Pilates, yoga, and gym. We have a recovery area with contrast therapy, cryotherapy, and oxygen chambers. We're working with sleep specialists and consultants to guide you on incorporating sleep into daily life, not to mention food, which is extremely important.
We have dieticians and nutritionists helping craft menus for our F&B offering and providing consultations to meet each person's needs. Everyone's taste buds are different, and most want variety in cuisine. We don't stick with one cuisine, so we encourage the team to provide variety suitable to individual preferences and circumstances.
Bernard Leong: My wife and I took some of these practices. It looks like you're taking the whole thing to scale with the entire end-to-end process customized for everyone.
Longevity Startups and Investments
Bernard Leong: There seems to be a strong movement of startups entering the longevity sector. Singapore is a hotbed - I'm part of the Angel Network with tech executives, the XA Network, looking into longevity startups. There's Mito Health locally through Y Combinator, and a well-known venture capitalist who's a former co-founder of match dot com is involved. There are different spectrum approaches from healthcare, fitness, and technology perspectives. What are your thoughts on reconciling these different strengths?
Allen Law: Now you need to add Seveno Capital, where our fund is 100% focused on longevity and health span. We've received so much interest from various startups in the longevity field, which is why we set up this fund. We see a funding gap despite what you mentioned about funds putting money behind it. We're trying to provide a fund with extreme focus and know-how in the longevity field to back these ideas, while having scientists and researchers endorse whether these ideas and projects can potentially be successful.
Bernard Leong: Could they even be integrated into the business as part of the collaboration?
Allen Law: It's not a requirement, but potentially as our wellness, fitness, and longevity portfolio grows, there will be synergy across different brands in the portfolio. It's strictly not a must, but most partners see us as a better choice of funding partner because beyond money and capital, they get know-how and support from our wider portfolio.
Bernard Leong: I should probably bridge the XA team with you for a conversation.
Designing a Comprehensive Wellness Facility
Bernard Leong: The 38,000 square foot facility you're creating in Singapore is a significant step, putting medical, fitness, and wellness all in one place. How do you think about the medical science and clinical expertise embedded in the design and delivery?
Allen Law: It's the first of its kind in Singapore, if not in Asia. You'll find very little similar setup outside. We go back to first principles - what do we want to achieve? We want to cause positive impact to one's health span. The more people we can help, the more successful we are.
We asked if the issue is a knowledge gap and determined it's not. People know what's important to live a healthy life, but how come so many aren't living healthily and have chronic diseases? The data and trends show it's getting worse. The gap is between knowledge and action. The hardest part is changing one's lifestyle.
Everyone says they're busy, don't have time, don't have money. But if we do a zero-based analysis for our lifestyle - assuming we have nothing planned today, what would we do? We might start with meditation, maybe a yoga session, then eat a healthy breakfast before starting work. Instead, most people dive into email and check their phones first.
Perhaps we can dial back and apply a zero-based analysis to our routine for a healthier outcome. Our offering is built around that. We have a large team of experts and professionals to help people design their daily routines. We become their buddy to encourage, remind, and sometimes nudge them to ensure they make lifestyle changes, which are difficult. Sometimes you literally need a buddy on this journey. Sometimes you have cheat days - that's fine. It's about how you incorporate all this into daily life. It can't be too hard, or after a month, you'll forget everything and be back to square one.
Bernard Leong: I notice this in fitness training. You get a coach not because you need them to count reps but to push you to do more weight.
Evaluating Longevity Startups
Bernard Leong: With Seveno Capital, you have the mindset of an entrepreneur. When evaluating investments in the longevity space, what specific traits and qualities do you look for in founders or market segments that you find most compelling?
Allen Law: For Seveno, we have a very clear mission, so our first filter is whether the startup or founder's mindset aligns with what we set out to do - improving health span. The second is examining how the founder intends to deliver human health span benefits versus just creating a nice story or making quick money.
We need to drill down to the real intent. Is there a deeper story driving the founder? Every startup faces many challenges, and whether a founder can persevere with determination makes the difference between success and failure. Having a deep understanding of the founder's philosophy and mindset behind starting the business is our second most important criterion.
Bernard Leong: What are your long-term visions for integrating technology and science across wellness, fitness, and longevity businesses? It's very multidisciplinary. What mental models do you need to navigate such a business when technology people come from a tech viewpoint and medical people from a medical viewpoint?
Allen Law: First and foremost, our offering is anchored by science. We ensure everything we do or advise is science-backed and evidence-based. Data is important - tracking how your biometrics look today, and then after going through certain programs, diagnostics, and protocols, how your numbers look three months later.
We want to show people realistically and scientifically what the data looks like if they follow certain steps with us. We believe those data will drive people to want more and progress through their health journey with us.
Building a Health-Conscious Community
Bernard Leong: During our lunch, I clearly remember your emphasis on community. How do you envisage the role of community in promoting holistic health across your ventures? The Pilates and Yoga Movement initiatives are all community-based growth.
Allen Law: If you look at today's longevity offerings, most attract the wealthy top 5% of the population, with some even marketed as status symbols costing hundreds of thousands a year. What we're trying to do, with the help of technology and AI, is democratize our offering to bring down costs and open it up to the middle 50% of the population who can afford healthier options, improving the Blue Zone in Singapore and the region.
We strongly believe the science is strong but the action is weak. Improving health at a population level for a Blue Zone is achievable. The stumbling block is creating a model where it's easy enough for people to start making small changes that, with data feedback over months, they can see results and become advocates themselves.
The more people involved, the more it becomes the social norm. The old social norm was going to a bar to drink and chat. Now alcohol sales are reducing, and we hope to see the social norm shift to yoga studios, gyms, or healthy diets as places for social connection.
Bernard Leong: In fact, people don't even want to drink alcohol anymore. They want non-alcoholic beverages that taste similar, which has taken away about 24% of alcoholic business.
Allen Law: Exactly. Most big alcohol brands now sell non-alcoholic versions of the same products.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Bernard Leong: What's one question you wish more people would ask you about REVL, MOVE Repeat, or any of your businesses or longevity?
Allen Law: I would say the "why" behind why we are in this business. The "why" is so important but is rarely asked. Most people want to know about growth or how offerings differ from competitors.
For myself personally, it's all about having a positive impact on society. We've chosen wellness, fitness, and longevity to have that positive impact. I'm personally putting a lot of energy, funds, and capital behind it to ensure we educate the community and society to establish and adopt healthy, active lifestyles that will benefit the entire population.
Bernard Leong: My traditional closing question: What does great look like for REVL, MOVE Repeat, and all the businesses including Seveno Capital for the next few years?
Allen Law: It's definitely community building, whether building an investment community supporting small businesses in the same field, or like REVL or Yoga Movement, continuing to build communities that engage with individuals and share why yoga or strength conditioning training is beneficial.
Building that community is ultimately our most important task. With that, the organization will grow with community growth. If our community doesn't grow, the organization will stagnate as demand is capped.
Bernard Leong: I like the approach because one of the six pillars you highlighted is the importance of social interactions. The community part is actually very hard. The first five pillars are possible, but the community part is really the strength of what you're building.
Allen Law: It's actually the magic touch. It's like the old saying that word of mouth is the best marketing. If you build a community where users or customers are happy with your offering, they'll tell their friends and family.
I can do yoga anywhere, even roll out a mat in my backyard, but when I enter a yoga studio, the vibe and energy shared within the studio is totally different. That community, whether verbal or non-verbal, just being in the same space, you sense the energy in the room.
When you're chilling in the lounge area chatting with others who are either new to wellness and exercise or have been practicing for years, the conversation is very positive and encouraging for the entire community.
I always urge friends and associates to just take that first step of engaging with some of these wellness communities. That's all you need. You'll feel the vibe, get positive energy from it, and want to do more yourself.
Bernard Leong: That's a very good way to close the question. Allen, thank you for coming to the show. In closing, any recommendations that have inspired you recently?
Allen Law: I recently read "The Whole Story" by Whole Foods founder John Mackey. It's quite inspiring how he started Whole Foods and is now engaged in a similar business called "Love Life" - a lifestyle offering encouraging healthier lifestyle choices with facilities to support that.
Bernard Leong: That's an interesting book. I bought it but haven't started reading it yet. Final question - how can my audience find you?
Allen Law: The easiest would be my LinkedIn profile. I regularly update it - Allen Law - you'll find me there.
Bernard Leong: You can definitely find the podcast everywhere. We just hit 100K subscribers this week. Allen, many thanks for coming on the show. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Allen Law: Thank you very much.
Podcast Information: Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) hosts and produces the show. Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G. Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn). Here are the links to watch or listen to our podcast.
