I was recently on TikTok and saw a video of someone in South Africa bragging about a R200,000 bar tab. They were flashing expensive bottles of champagne, treating the display as the ultimate definition of wealth. The comments were exactly what you would expect, but the whole thing just smelled like empty flash.
It is a perfect example of a modern sickness: chasing the monetary result without any attachment to meaning.
As founders and leaders, we have to look at work through a completely different lens. True wealth is not what you get on a balance sheet or a bar tab. True wealth is who you become in the process. When you love your work, it is a privilege and a generator of energy. It stimulates your mind, body, and spirit. But if you are only running on the fuel of financial gain, you are running on a short fuse.
There is a classic story about three bricklayers that every CEO should keep top of mind. When asked what they are doing, the first says he is just laying a brick. The second says he is building a wall. The third looks up and says he is building a cathedral.
The biggest challenge of leadership is moving your team from the mindset of the first bricklayer to the third. If your people think they are just moving bricks from left to right, they will eventually burn out. Burnout rarely comes from a high volume of work. It comes from a lack of momentum toward a meaningful goal. Doing meaningless tasks kills motivation.
As a founder, you have to connect the dots for your team through constant communication. They need to know why the business exists, what problem you are solving, and how their specific role contributes to that cathedral.
Building a cathedral team starts at the interview table. Your hiring process must filter for more than just technical ability. You have to uncover a candidate's intrinsic motivational drivers.
Money is simply a hygiene factor. If people don't have enough of it, it is a problem, but once that baseline is met, interesting and meaningful work becomes the primary driver of performance. During selection, you must judge whether a person's personal ambition aligns with the company’s ambition. If they are just looking for a transaction, they are a bricklayer, not a cathedral builder. You need people who want to be pushed, who are mentally tough, and who see work as a vehicle for personal growth.
This alignment cannot happen globally if it isn't happening personally. I review my own vision consciously at the start of every year, but the core of my purpose is stuck right in front of my computer screen at home. I see it every single day.
When you lose sight of your purpose, a dangerous drift happens. You start feeling unfocused and heavy, but the moment you look back at that screen and realign with your why, the positive energy returns. Positive energy is a highly underestimated corporate asset, it functions exactly like an immune system for your business. When your team's immune system is strong, you can catch a cold from the market, but the business will survive.
We have tools today, like AI, that allow us to work smarter and do more with less. But technology is just a sharper blade. The blade is useless if the person holding it doesn't care about what they are carving.
Look at the piece of paper in front of your own desk. Are you just staring at the bricks, or are you still focused on the cathedral?