Entrepreneur Kirk Lazarus brings his eclectic ideas to Asia

It is a sunny Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, and Kirk Lazarus has just rounded out a beach volleyball session with a bowl of spaghetti vongole cooked by his personal chef. This exemplifies the laid-back lifestyle the South African-born, Sydney-raised entrepreneur espouses, and the open-minded approach he takes to everything he creates - no matter if it is a resort retreat or organic ice cream.

After all, this is a man who "likes to walk barefoot a lot" and who cycles to work in Venice Beach at the new headquarters for his companies, Molori Private Retreats and Molori Design. The word "molori" means "to dream" in Tswana, a southern African dialect, and "dream" is a word that peppers any conversation with Lazarus.

"I'd like to create a dream-like life," he says of his approach to creating the private and exclusive resorts that launched his career as a hotelier.

Lazarus is now the proud owner of a safari lodge within Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, plus resorts in Clifton and Cape Town, and Port Douglas in Australia, plus a superyacht called Told U So. Once upon a time, however, he was in the energy business. He was "one of the first guys at Glencore", he says of working with Glencore Xstrata, a multinational company trading and mining natural resources.

"I used to have to do a lot of entertaining, and I decided that the private residences I rented didn't fulfil the needs of my guests," he says. "I wanted to fill what I saw as a gap in the market."

So Lazarus created utterly private boutique retreats with only a few luxuriously appointed suites, enabling guests to receive personal service 24/7. Butlers are on hand to meet the needs of their charges, whether it is for helicopter services, Cuban cigars, horse riding on the beach in Cape Town, or jungle surfing in Australia's Daintree Rainforest.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg: dedicated staff at each Molori Retreat are able and willing to tailor any activity to suit guests' tastes. No wonder dignitaries and celebrities - including Kate Moss and John Travolta - have flocked to each of Lazarus' properties.

While services are a core part of the Molori philosophy, design is just as important. Lazarus is, as he puts it, "personally involved in every detail, right down to the knives and forks". Each of his retreats is different: Missoni Home fabrics, animal skins and a treasure trove of objects sit beside Dedon daybeds and Chesterfield sofas, and yet everything works together.

Lazarus is not a trained designer, and despite - or perhaps because of - this, his layering of different finishes and styles is fresh, bold and at times beautifully eclectic. Whatever it is, it's not cookie-cutter - this term has no place in Lazarus' vocabulary. "I was never a rule boy," he says. "I don't have a signature style. It's just whatever is the flavour of the day for me."