I'm somewhere over Europe right now, fully connected, listening to the Industry Season 1 soundtrack (what a show!), and I haven't been able to stop thinking for hours.
It isn't the WiFi. It never was.
Flying is LIMINAL.
Back in 2009, my English literature lecturer at university, Valerie, from Canada, was the first person to give me that word.
She had us read The House of Mirth and sit with the idea of existing on a threshold.
No longer what you were.
Not yet what you're becoming.
The in-between.
I didn't know then that I was about to spend the next fifteen years living inside that word.
London.
Then Bali in 2014, before anyone else went.
Amsterdam. Berlin. Lisbon.
A bit of Singapore and Japan.
Phnom Penh in 2024– yes, I know that one's unexpected.
Dubai and, possibly, Switzerland.
And between those cities, another twenty or thirty countries I can barely account for.
Always in transit.
Always between chapters.
Always liminal.
And somehow, most myself in the in-between.
*
I think that's why AI found me (or I found it?).
Because AI has put all of us in a liminal state.
And I don't mean that abstractly.
I read your emails. I see exactly where you are.
…Some of you are telling me there are too many tools and you don't know where to start.
That you're jumping from one thing to the next and can't make anything stick.
…Some of you are trying to build a business helping others with AI, and you're stuck on getting the first client, building enough authority, figuring out what to actually offer.
…Some of you have a clear vision - a business that doesn't need you present every hour... but the platforms and automations won't talk to each other.
…And some of you are simply exhausted by the noise.
I hear all of it.
Here's what I know from fifteen years of living in the in-between: the discomfort you feel right now isn't a sign you're behind.
It's a sign you're standing at a real threshold.
Iza, our businesses are currently on the AI adoption threshold…
We’re in the messy in-between: AI is here but we haven’t fully integrated it yet, or it hasn’t proven to work as expected.
But that's actually exactly where change happens: not after the clarity arrives, but before it does.
The threshold keeps moving.
That's not a problem to solve.
It's the reality of the next decade.
And it's the only mode I've ever known.
I've been thinking, from up here at 35,000 feet, about how to make that crossing feel less uncertain and more possible for you.
And putting together something to help you not only navigate the in-between, but profit from it.
Best,
Darius
