You’ve heard the line. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
It gets thrown around a lot, especially by business owners talking about their teams. And honestly, I think it’s complete crud.
Here’s why. That line works fine for you. You’re the business owner. You’ve probably got equity, or you built the thing, or you’re at a level where the work genuinely connects to something bigger for you.
But the person stacking shelves, answering phones, or working the till? It’s not going to land the same way. And pretending it will is where a lot of leaders go wrong.
They’re not going to love the job the way you do. They’re not supposed to. That’s not a failure on their part, and it’s not something you need to fix by trying to inspire them harder.
So what do they actually want?
There’s a quote from Epicurus, the philosopher, that I think nails it. He said the good life isn’t found in ideal work. It’s found in freedom from disturbance.
Two thousand years ago, and it’s still bang on.
Your staff aren’t chasing some grand sense of purpose from a job stacking shelves or running a register. What they actually want is pretty simple. They want a job that makes sense. They want a system that works so they’re not constantly fighting it. They don’t want a boss who creates chaos. And at the end of the day, they want to go home and actually switch off.
That’s it. That’s the whole list.
Think about how many businesses get this backwards. They run motivational sessions, hand out mission statements, try to convince everyone that this is “more than just a job.” Meanwhile, the actual day to day experience is disorganised. The systems don’t work properly. The manager is unpredictable. And the staff go home stressed because they’re still thinking about the mess they left behind.
You can have all the culture posters you want. If the basics aren’t there, none of it matters.
So if you’re looking at your team and wondering why motivation feels low, I’d start somewhere different. Forget trying to make the job something it’s not. Just look at whether the job actually makes sense, whether your systems are doing their job, and whether you’re creating chaos without realising it.
Sort that out, and you’ll probably find your staff are a lot more motivated than you thought. Not because they suddenly love the work. But because you’ve stopped getting in their way.
The philosophers had this one figured out a long time before we did.