Approach
How Adrian Campbell runs companies
Most of these rules were paid for. They come from a solar company that was run into the ground while he was in Bali, a distribution business that died over an electronic signature, and fifteen years of buying land in a country where the paperwork is the product.
Two signatories on every account
In 2011 I left a 40-person solar company in the hands of managers I could not see, and they took customer deposits for systems that were never ordered. I closed the company and refunded the customers, and I was prosecuted for it in 2015. Since then every operating company I run has two signatories on its accounts, and no single manager controls customer money. It slows things down by a day here and there. That is the point.
Nothing is signed until a lawyer has read it
Eco Boss died because a licence agreement with a UK supplier had been signed electronically and the supplier later said it never had been. Fighting it would have cost around $200,000 and could not have undone the damage. Every distribution, agency, development and sale agreement I sign now goes through counsel before any money changes hands, and the important ones are signed in ink.
Do not own what you cannot supervise
If I cannot watch a business, I should not own it. That rule took the solar company to teach me. It is why Kinnara Capital has a site office and staff housing in Buwun Mas rather than running Lombok from a desk in Bali, and why I am in Indonesia rather than Australia.
The land first, then everything else
Much of Lombok's coastal land has been held by families for generations without modern certificates. The brochure is the last thing that matters. Kinnara Capital buys only once ownership has been confirmed through the courts and the BPN land office, and it holds powers of attorney so that certificates move straight into the company's name once issued. It has assembled its land in Buwun Mas one parcel at a time. Slow, and the only way to be sure. The terms are in the glossary.
Buyer money never sits with the marketing business
Kinnara markets property. It does not hold buyers' funds. A buyer's money belongs with the contracting developer or in escrow, released against milestones, and the contract is between buyer and developer. I learned how much that matters in 2025, when a project Kinnara was marketing went wrong and I had to choose between the investors and the deal. I chose the investors. The account is on the Marina Bay City statement.
Check the partner before you check the project
Since 2025 Kinnara runs background checks on every development partner and its directors before it lists a project. A good render from the wrong people is still the wrong project.
Speak the language and hire the village
I learned Indonesian on the floor of a Kuta hotel at 22, and I regard it as the single most useful thing I have picked up in Asia. It lets me deal with landowners, officials and contractors directly. Kinnara Capital's local team is drawn from the villages around its land, and at Troppo Zone in Bali I employed about 80 local staff, some of whom are still there. A development only works if the village around it ends up better off. The community page shows what that looks like.
Build to the standard, not to the local norm
Building the Elysian display villa for Saraya showed that some locally available steel, concrete and electrical components did not meet the specification. We changed suppliers, upgraded the concrete mix and raised the mechanical and electrical specification across every villa. My trade background and my directorship at Earthcon Civil are part of why that was caught.
Tell the story yourself
The worst version of your failures will be written by someone else if you do not write it first. This site has a record page for that reason. Partners and buyers can read exactly what happened in 2009, 2015 and 2018 before they deal with me. I would rather they heard it from me.
Sell the maths, not the picture
I started in rooftop solar, where every sale was a payback calculation explained at a kitchen table. Property is no different. A buyer should understand the title, the structure, the payment schedule and the rental split before they are shown a sunset. The Lombok guide for Australians is written that way on purpose.