Hi this is Richard, thanks for checking out my about page. Here are the cliff notes:

  • Back at the end of 2009 I left my job as Business Development Manager for a supported employment charity to start my own company. I started with what I had been doing in my job (bid writing for other charities, and social enterprise business advice), then moved into building websites and SEO.

  • In 2012 I launched a Shopify store (featured on the Shopify blog here) selling prints of iPhone panorama photos. I was also selling SEO retainers to local businesses in the UK.

  • In 2013 I had picked up enough SEO clients to make a comfortable living and sold them to another agency. I wrote the book Coffee Shop Entrepreneurs to capture my 1000 day journey in entrepreneurship.

  • In 2016 I sold my Shopify store on Empire Flippers – this made me realize I could build assets that were valuable.

  • In 2017 I sold a software review content site, funnelengine.com, on FE International. An investor bought it and wanted to retain me as operator. We flipped it a year later for 2x.

  • This made me realize there was a world of website investing. I started offering my services as a website operator to other investors under the business Flipping Websites, and built a successful Facebook group & podcast.

  • I sold Flipping Websites in 2019 to Alpha Investors, which became Investors Club.

  • In 2020 I started the Website Investing publication – a free newsletter & podcast plus paid subscription option for deals and insights – and sold it 8 months later to Travis Jamison. It got featured on They Got Acquired.

  • In 2022 I sold the alts.substack.com newsletter and Discord community to Flippa (PR).

  • In the first half of 2023 I sold acquire.gg and two newsletters on beehiiv to Scott Oldford at The Wisdom Group (PR). As an early user of beehiiv I was fortunate enough to be able to invest in their Series A round.

  • In the latter half of 2023 I continued to run my one remaining newsletter Digital Asset Investor on beehiiv and launched a done-for-you newsletter service at Letter Operators which I’m now scaling to a 7 figure business.

  • In 2024 I launched an AI automation agency helping charities apply for more funding at WhyNot.Bot.

  • Now in 2025 my focus is on leveraging AI agents and I launched the AI Agents: Digital Asset Pros product on Whop.