a Transparent Look on Action.

the last few months, with international drama and local re structures.

A moment of appreciation to my readers.

Thank you for reading and indulging me with my writings, I want to start by saying that appreciation can not be expressed. But being consistent in writing should be considered a sign of respect for any single person who is reading my little rants. For you I am grateful and shall keep working at it.

Thank you

Please know that every day, you are a part of my journey, and one of the main reasons I return to this expression and bring the world closer to my reality..

With gratitude, Tarek H Ghosn

Now, I claim a distinct separation between “Honesty “and “Transparency”. For three and a half decades I was “honest” but the past 5 years I have been building the skills necessary towards transparency. Yes, there is a difference between the two… when I was “honest” I was called an “Ass Hole”, while now as I am “transparent” I am being called “Annoying”.

Tadaaaaa … #same-same-but-different (there is just no winning with people.)

Jokes aside though, “Transparency” comes with a lot more information and communication. To quote one of the earlier MeMe’s of the year 2000s “ Aint Nobody Got Time For That”.

So… while “Honesty” just comes with the end result of your thought process, “Transparency” is the process itself. Meaning: when someone is asking me “ What’s on my mind?” it should come with a little footnote that clarifies, whether she just wants me to be “Honest” and have me state the last opinion that came to me or whether she wants “Transparency” to hear how my opinions are manufactured and my thoughts came to be.

On this note… This article started with a weird dream and ended with how “ the act of Focus is unnatural when you are in Creative mode”. Yes, that implies that productivity is not measurable as efficiently as we would like it in the creative act. That should make sense since creativity is more qualitative than quantitative. The above is an honest opinion though, within the next few lines I will be discussing transparently how I reached that conclusion.

Sooo, with a whole month worth of honesty to share, I ask you to hang on for the ride.

First things first, we have an office now,

Picking up on a decision to get an office and work from there was the response to yet another failed launch. (I still feel it’s our failure to launch instead of the product itself), but I understand fully that our product is still incomplete and still unappealing to the market. After all, our goal is what the startup industry called “Product Market Fit”, which is referred to as PMF and means, the market needs to find what we are doing

• interesting to try,

• easy to use and

• exciting to talk about.

PMF comes with a certain need for the product, so Startups are always in the process of iterating and asking questions around:

• what the people want,

• why they are not wanting their product still

• What is in the product that has not caught their attention

• Are they targeting the wrong market.

• Is it a valid one ……

• etc for infinity and beyond

But with the drama the world is going through. to take a decision around spending more time for a better understanding of the “core theme behind the structures of entrepreneurs”. And exploring“the new micro business culture that is emerging” was appealing to my senses, Or as I would say “exciting my sensitivities”. My instinct was shaking me all over, pulling me towards a new systematic design of our approach.

And the thoughts that followed were

• More time together means less distractions

• A space for ourselves means only what contributes to the platform will be included

• A neutral space for frustrations ( instead of online or coffeeshops)

• Etc…. and many many more

So over the past month, we have been moving forward with the space under the logic of building an office.

Ps: it’s complete 🙂

Then came the conundrum of “The Platform” vs “The Space”.

First things first, our work is primarily and only to reach a PMF for Tipper. Which means everything we do, every person we connect with, every question, advice… all of this world that people share with each other, is a sandbox for us to extract information and build around the vision that we have towards it by building the platform that will make people connect with it and make us realise it.

But in March ( after realising our last failed launch), we went back to the drawing board, focusing our energy on the community initiation instead of the entity onboarding.

Then we realised that, to be honest with our principles, we have to initiate the Tipper community ourselves and as we build it with the people willing to use it we will be able to get the feedback that is necessary for us to truly hone the product and get closer to a PMF.
Using that approach, we noticed the difference between “What we think is a Right approach to communities” vs “What is a Neutral approach to communities”.

So the strategy became to use the space. Then establish a difference between the platform and the community.

This removed our vague opinions on how the platform is to look like, and allowed us to start seeing more clearly how the people will be interacting with the Entities and their communities.

For the first time we saw a big difference between “Work” vs “Effort”. Just because we are putting in effort, it doesn’t mean we are getting any work done.
Remember growth and goals are a direction, not a movement ( I remind myself).

Taking and receiving our space

Finding the space was an act of manifestation. The location was perfect, situated on the outskirts of my home town and with an upstairs segment that went from ‘this is where we will have our office’ to ‘that is where people who are having activities can come do them’..

I still remember clearly the first time we saw the space. Looking at the road with my team mate next to me, I yelled the F* word. She turned to me looking in shock as if something was wrong.

I responded with “ Well… Now we have a choice to make. Which means no more talking, it’s time to commit.” So I called the guy and set things up. Within 3 days the place was ours.

Designing our space .

Because of how big the space was, we found ourselves designing a small portion of it for our own work with the boards, tables and wall painting, but the rest of it remained vacant in our heads, until..
The idea that others can use it,

• Those that have a purpose in mind they are moving towards

• Those that are trying to find a place for them away from public and social structures

• Those who could potentially be the testers of our work.

• Those who need a space for their own but also where like minded people are gathering for inspiration, focus, work and growth.

As we agreed that the rest of the space would be used by others, we started building towards that as well.

In the back of my mind though, I kept writing daily that we need to remember what exactly we are trying to do, in order not to forget Tipper and our actual vision towards why we started.

There came a split between our own projects ( GAF and Tipper)

Returning to the “Fundamentals” of this new Move.

Fundamentally we became our own first official client
(kinda feels like losing your virginity to yourself )
And these are the experience points which got exposed for us to take action.

1. Not sure if this is an inspiration, or just a reckless act of a cornered predator but given how the more consistent we talked to potential clients, the further away we saw ourselves.

2. See… information is key, especially when it comes to their interests and our product. The more information we gathered, the more lacking and weak we saw our position in regards to their needs. As a product and as a system, our perspective was still limiting. After all, if people don’t want what we have to offer, then what exactly are we building? and for who?

3. So a realisation happened: that people who already established something in the real world are already set in their ways, and the uniqueness that everyone pursues is something that is approached in the commonest way possible.

4. Point out anything when you are trying to get information from people doesn’t work. In fact it puts the other side in defense mode ( even if you’re being subtle).

5. The frustration is real, until you realise that what you are working on is not yet a product that others want or even can use.

6. So to attract the people who are looking for ways to test their uniqueness made more sense for us as a platform to approach. We can do that in a unique way instead of trying to onboard people who are already in a pattern.

7. The result is a Co-creation space and a step by step approach towards the digitization of our testers, from the invitation of the individual to the place to the onboarding process on the platform.
   Pretty exciting I tell you. The calm after having clarity on your next movement is worth all the energy.
   It has been a while since I have felt this misunderstood by the world. The last time was in 2024 when I recklessly started talking to everyone about Tipper, the Vision and the Philosophy behind it.
   And now it feels like a new starting point. One for new misunderstandings and detail discovery around the approach.

So this Month’s actionable ( visible efforts)

1. the logistics of filling a space,

   1. Setting up an empty space is more energy consuming than you can prepare for.

   2. The thing to consider is that building a place requires partnering up with others
      Other companies, services, professionals.
      It means you are effectively connecting with people in their own daily work flows. ( the workflows in which I have absolutely no control)

   3. So it’s not patience but tolerance.
      Hear me out: Since the world I’m building is in my head and I daily am active in making my reality translate into this world, how can I deal with the realities of others who only care about getting their work done???

   4. It’s training to work with others at their own pace, their own time and personal aptitudes.
      I’m not saying there is a comparison, I’m just saying on one side I am building a culture inside my own organisation, and the lessons I am learning from working with other organisations is shedding light on how deep I am in my own world.

   5. A startup is first and foremost world building, and I have realised that up till now I have not really included other parts of the world when building mine. Hehehehe only people that are invested directly.( users and clients)

2. Wallowing in unproductive insecurity

   1. Yes the place was filling up in front of my own eyes, but I had to remind myself daily of why we were doing it, not forgetting that Tipper is the core of everything..

   2. Which left me noticing the mental space and energy that is not being invested in coding, platform design, and work on the platform itself.

   3. Yes, the decision to get an office opens up multiple segments like

      1. getting data,

      2. understanding our users,

      3. a chance of income,

      4. focus on team building.

But it seemed that the flow we were building on for the platform was cut off (even when it was for good reason, reason being it was not going anywhere productive)

4. Yet detaching from these feelings is a bit more intense than we give attention to. Effectively we are intentionally breaking apart an old pattern of approach and taking our time reconstructing a whole new one ( outside of what we are comfortable with 🤨)

3. Questioning, questioning, questioning.

   1. Effectively we took a little swampy pond and opened a little creak for the water to enter from a river, the pond grew, got murkier and is now over flowing on all edges

      1. In this analogy, the pond’s reality is turning into a lake

      2. It has to pick an exit for now in order to reach stability

      3. With new water comes new life and new energy, but water also gets murkier in the process

      4. Until one exit is secure and the flows within it are properly established leading to clearer waters ( for fish and all forms of life to grow)

      5. And with stability comes more flows into it, and more exits growing into a proper ecosystem that hosts life, just like Tipper will)

   2. Definitely questioned what am I doing with my life

      1. How would people I know see me?
         The truth is at the moment I only have people I remember. Nobody from my past that I can talk to, and in my present the only people sticking are the people testing our work.

      2. How would people I care about see me?
         Same truth but different response. “To love” and “To like” are two different things.

      3. How does this look like in 3 months to a year?
         I couldn’t find an answer to this but I realised something. When asking this question, I got to be creative with how the new space gets built on top of Tipper. That allowed me to ask a whole lot of “Who, What, Why, Where, How, and When” questions.

   3. A vision of a ditch somewhere.

      1. The most intense thing that kept coming to me was an image of me in a ditch somewhere. This commitment broke all ties I had with my old lifestyle.

      2. This new space is telling me that this is “It”. as if it is the final commitment possible. A feeling where this is me clearing out all the nonsense paths the world could offer up as distractions.

      3. It’s telling me that even uncertainty will look different.

      4. That 99% is closer to 0 than it is to 100. And now we are finally 100% In.

I end with a realization.

One that wells up from deep within my chest and travels to the outskirts of my body’s surface area.

A realisation that whoever I was, no longer is within this world.

That over the past 4 years, with every step, the whole was broken. Broken to be rebuilt, with new discoveries and a bit of the old.

That the Vision of a ditch somewhere is the final Gift from my old life. Telling me that I am finally Free.

That the price of freedom is walking upright, but even when surrounded by everything and everyone, you are alone,

That “Tarek” is! and “I” am!

That even with the responsibilities of the world, you always get to choose.

That the basis of our choices

• Internally: are our Values and Principles

• Externally: we have the Mission and Vision

• And that everything else should live in between.

That even with the paths you build or choose, you are still the Sovereign. The one who gets to take the decision and pick the best one that suits where we envision ourselves to be.

That we should Express to our hearts content, however it comes out.

That our Intention is all we have within this realm, and its the only thing worth following.
That, whether it is possible or not, do what you want to do, simply because you want to do it.
That it’s not about Right or Wrong, but about staying True, Honest and Transparent.
That once you realize your dream, even if you have to die fighting for it…
So be it!