The Experiment
I’m Mark. Mid-fifties, thirty years in tech, and I’m learning to build an online business with AI — in public, with every number on show, including the ones that don’t flatter me. If you’re around the same age and wondering whether it’s too late, you’re not the only one.
Follow the experiment →The short version
30 years in US tech and Australian startups. 4 continents. 70+ countries. My wife’s a doctor and we co-own a medical centre in regional Western Australia. Built to follow the rules, and pretty good at it.
And I’d take it again. That’s the part nobody says out loud — it isn’t a trap, it’s a cage with the door open and a very comfortable chair in it. I work longer hours now than I did at 30. The life it was all supposed to buy keeps getting rescheduled to a quieter month that never arrives. Nobody did this to me. I built it, one sensible decision at a time.
So I’m building something else. A location-independent business powered by AI, documented in public, with real numbers. Thailand is the target. USD $20,000 a month is the number. This is the public record — including the parts that go wrong.
Read the full story →What’s here
AI workflows, marketing, automation — what I’m actually building, what it cost, and how long it really took.
Strategy and tactics, tested in real time. No fluff, and no men in their twenties pointing at private jets.
Location independence, expat life, Thailand — and what leaving actually costs, in real numbers rather than infinity-pool photography.
Tax, investing, cash flow. The unglamorous financial mechanics of making a move like this actually work.
It’s never too late. Reinvention, new skills, calculated risks — for everyone who played by the rules and arrived somewhere smaller than they’d built.
My personal documentary. Chapter One was thirty years of doing it properly. Chapter Two starts in my mid-fifties, on camera, learning as I go.
The Weekly Escape Report
Every Sunday: what I built, what broke, and exactly what it cost. Real numbers, including the embarrassing ones. One email a week.
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