30 years of doing everything right.
Still not free.

The cage isn't locked

I'm Mark. 30 years in US tech and Australian startups. 4 continents. 70+ countries. My wife is a doctor — we co-own a medical centre in regional Western Australia. Built to follow the rules, and pretty good at it.

By every external measure, the system would call it success. Good income. Professional credibility. Property. Stability. The full package they sell you at 25.

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 at 55 than I did at 30. I pay more tax now than I did at 40. The life all of it was supposed to buy keeps getting rescheduled to a quieter month that never arrives. Nobody did this to me. I built it, carefully, one sensible decision at a time.

Thailand, and a spreadsheet

In July 2026 I was in Koh Samui. I ran the numbers on a whim — a three-bedroom villa with a pool costs roughly what a deposit on a standard Australian house costs. Not the house. The deposit. I've spent thirty years assuming leaving wasn't affordable. I had never once checked.

So I came home and started planning properly. What would it take to build income that isn't tied to a postcode? To stop trading hours for money and start building something that compounds while I sleep? To move, deliberately, within two years?

The answer: an online business, built with AI, documented in public. The target: USD $20,000 a month in location-independent income by July 2028.

Why this is public.

Because I've watched enough thumbnails of men in their twenties pointing at private jets to last a lifetime, and I've never once learned anything from one. "I made $47,000 in 30 days" isn't information. It's an advert with a face on it.

I'm 55. I have 30 years of hard-won experience. I also have absolutely no idea how most of this works yet. Both things are true, and watching someone figure it out in real time is more useful than any polished success story.

Every win gets published. Every failure gets published. Every number, every mistake, every thing I got wrong and had to redo. Fair warning: I'm learning video editing, I'm not good at it yet, and it took me eight takes to say seventy seconds to camera. You'll see all of that too. That's the deal. That's The Long Game.