I'm Richard Patey. For fifteen years I built, operated, and sold online businesses. Content sites, Shopify stores, newsletters, communities. I built digital assets that created freedom, then sold them to create more of it.
Somewhere along the way I stopped trading assets for money and started trading them for autonomy. Where I live. How I spend my time. Who I work with. What I think about.
Then AI arrived, coming for exactly the work that bought me that freedom. The vetting. The research. The building. The operating.
Here is what I believe.
The grind is going to get automated. All of it. That is not a threat, it is a deadline.
You can do it to yourself first, on your terms. Or you can wait for someone to do it to you.
Owning the work is not doing the work. Keep the judgment. Automate the grind.
Don't go all in on one thing. Run a portfolio. Three legs hold better than one.
Make yourself redundant before AI does.
That is the whole bet. Everything I build and write here serves it.
