Hussein Hallak, serial entrepreneur and author of The Dark Art of Life Mastery, joins Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock to talk about what really keeps entrepreneurs in the game. It's not resilience or grit, it's clarity about why you're doing this in the first place.

The conversation covers the shift from pre-COVID to post-COVID startup communities, why watching customers do their work beats asking them what they want, and the critical difference between handing off your product and handing off your purpose. Hussein also challenges the wall-poster approach to company values and explains why living your principles matters more than declaring them.

Three Key Takeaways:

• Strategy is becoming - Choose who you want to become as a founder and company, then let your thoughts, words, and actions flow from there. It's about the experience you want to have, not just the exit you want to achieve.
• Hand off the product, never the why - Founders can delegate product development once the team understands the purpose behind it. But stay close to customers. That connection informs everything and keeps you from drifting.
• Live your values, don't announce them - Stop putting principles on posters. Instead, have honest conversations with your team about what matters to them, what's missing, and how you'll work together. Build culture through behavior, not declarations.

Topics Covered:

• Why entrepreneurship is really about your relationship with uncertainty
• The founder's role: stay with the customer, hand off the product
• How 80% of features go unused (and what to do about it)
• Why watching customers work reveals more than asking questions
• Building culture through honest conversations, not corporate values posters

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