What I Have Been Doing Off the Feed
A six-month update from someone who has been head down. The work, the home, and what the rest of 2026 will be focused on.
Two things hit me this week, less than 24 hours apart.
The first was from one of my mentors. She has this quote she shares often, by Leo Buscaglia:
“Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”
It met me at a moment I needed it.
I have spent the first half of the year head down. Doing the work. Pouring into clients. Pouring into partners. Pouring into projects I believe in.
The kind of work that does not always show up on a feed.
Less than 24 hours later, a panelist at another really impactful session I joined said something I have not stopped turning over:
“The people close to you can’t help you when they don’t know what you’re working on.”
That one hit me as well.
Because I love pouring into people. I love giving value. I try to do it every day, in some way, shape, or form.
I also know there is something to be said for letting people see what I am building too.
So this is the letter I have been wanting to write.
Six months into 2026.
The first six months of 2026
The year started hard.
Portugal got hit with storms I had never seen here. Wind, water, real damage for a lot of people we know.
We were in the middle of a move at the same time. Still on the Silver Coast of Portugal, but into a bigger town.
It made hangouts easier for our teenage son, transportation easier for all of us, and put us closer to friends.
We love it here.
At AI DISTRICT, my business partners and I ran a pilot for Client.RetentionOS™.
This is our proprietary framework for scaling service businesses in the AI era by capitalizing on the most important asset any service business has. The client.
A small group of founders.
We went deep into their businesses. We audited where their clients were leaking. We diagnosed the patterns.
We installed the process, the tools, and personalized dashboards so they could see the retention data they had been operating without for years.
That pilot taught me more than I expected. It shaped where the work is going next.
I closed my old podcast after four years.
The Mastery Matrix is done.
I needed the space for the conversations I have been having every day for the past year and a half.
With clients in the thick of the AI transition.
With business partners deep in tech, leadership and change management.
With founders scaling through something none of us have a playbook for yet.
Those conversations have been living in my private mini masterminds and 1:1 conversations.
I want them in the open. I believe the world needs them.
The AI work was the other big thread.
New client projects across industries. People doing things that have surprised me!
The creativity coming out of how founders are redesigning their businesses for what is coming is the most exciting thing I have watched in years.
We onboarded phenomenal AI implementation partners across Europe and have built strong project delivery muscle - it’s not been easy to find the right partners, and I couldn’t be more proud.
At home
Homeschool keeps going.
We moved the kids onto a more dynamic French curriculum, and their tutor still comes to the house, supporting them in their daily studies.
That has freed up time for Fredy and me to teach them the rest.
The spiritual. The health and wellness. The business stuff. The culture. The mindset.
How a home runs. How money moves.
Our teen Zaky raised his own money this year, sourced his own parts, and built his first high-performance computer.
I connected him with the right people to confirm his list and his sequence.
He did the rest.
Watching that happen was one of the best things about my year!
My daughter Sanaa has gone deeper into her craft.
She is the maker in our family. Anything with her hands.
She is now telling us she wants to turn it into a business, and we are looking at what that could look like in the second half of the year.
She also started supplementing homeschool with part-time Portuguese school.
Eight months in, she is speaking fluent Portuguese with her friends.
That has been one of the best things to watch.
AI in the house, but with moderation.
I have started letting them use it in limited ways. Only a few weeks in for Sanaa (she just turned 10).
I want them to learn how to think and solve problems on their own first.
The shortcut is easy. The cost of the shortcut shows up later. And we don’t want that.
Two non-negotiables I am clearing time for.
I have been studying Traditional Chinese Medicine on and off for years. I have decided to go after my license inside the next five years, on the side, while growing and scaling the business (I know, this is mental but hey!)
And I am going back to teaching Kung Fu in the fall.
Both of those have been clear on my life plan for decades.
The business has to be built in a way that protects time for them. That has shaped most of my reprioritization over the past of couple of weeks.
What is coming next
The commitment for the second half is to share more of what I am seeing.
Out loud. In your inbox. On the new show. In playbooks.
The new podcast launches Wednesday.
This is the one I have been wanting to make for two years.
I am co-hosting it with my friend Amber McCue.
Two women building businesses, parenting and doing life, working inside the AI shift, and willing to talk about all of it on the record.
Business. AI. Health. Parenting. What’s working for us, what’s not. Everything in between.
The conversations we’ve been having off-mic about the future women are building - we’re putting them on record.
Wednesday is launch day!
A playbook series.
These are more personal.
Each one is a snapshot of how I am operating in the midst of everything happening right now.
The decisions I am making. The way I am moving on a personal level.
What I am testing, what I am cutting, what I am doubling down on.
None of it is a prescription. If it is useful to you, I hope you take what helps.
The first one comes this month.
A bigger version of what we have been delivering one-to-one.
For several years now, we have been working alongside founders of service businesses, agencies, consultancies, and professional firms in the $500K to $10M range.
Founders who built their business for a world that no longer exists, and they know it.
They feel the friction every week.
What they do not have is a clear way to identify where the friction lives, how to prioritize the tweaks and redesigns, and how to align their business with where the world is going.
We are putting that work into a format more founders can step into.
Speaking.
Stages where I want to be saying out loud what is going on right now.
AI is the greatest equalizer the world has ever seen.
A $500K business can now produce work that used to require a $3M team. A $3M business can do what used to take a $20M team.
Clients can do parts of what they used to pay you for, in their own browsers, in minutes.
The founders who will still be leading their businesses in 2030 are the ones who started rebuilding before the gap got harder to close.
And The Saturday Shift, more often.
I have been writing this on the side, with everything else in the foreground.
That is changing.
I am putting real time into this newsletter for the second half of the year.
More of what I am seeing inside client work.
More of what I am learning and discovering.
More of what most of us are not saying.
Where you come in
A few things I would love your eyes on.
For the new show.
If you know a woman building a real business, using AI in her work, and willing to have a real conversation about what she is navigating right now, send her my way.
The show is not an interview.
It is a conversation that is already alive between Amber and me. We are pulling guests in to discuss, question and maybe even change our minds on the record.
Always with warmth. Usually with laughter.
We are looking for women who say the thing nobody else will.
For the speaking.
If you run, host, or are part of a community of service business founders feeling this shift, I would love to come talk with them.
About what AI is doing to the economics of service businesses.
About what is going on inside $500K to $10M service businesses right now.
About what the founders who got ahead have already done.
If your community would benefit from that conversation, write me back.
For The Saturday Shift.
If anything here is useful to you, please share it.
Recommend it.
Forward it.
Send it to one founder you know who is in the middle of all of this and could use the company.
And on Wednesday, when the first episode of the new show arrives in your inbox, send it to the one woman in your circle who has been waiting for this kind of conversation.
That is the update.
Thank you for being on this list!
The second half of the year is already here and I’m ready!
Glad you are here for it.
Much much love and gratitude,
xo Khaïry
Co-founder, AI DISTRICT | Industry Rockstar Venture Studios
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