You can’t put customers first if you can’t get motivated about them.

People are taking jobs because they can, not because they care. The result? Products built by teams who view customers as obligations rather than opportunities.

When you’re not intrinsically motivated by the problem you’re solving, customer empathy becomes performance theater. You run the discovery sessions, attend the support reviews, read the feedback all while fundamentally not caring what happens next or, even worse, optimize for your own success metrics instead of theirs.

The leaders I know who consistently build products that customers love genuinely care about the problem space. Not because they should, but because they can’t help it. That intrinsic motivation fuels the persistence needed to understand what customers need versus what they ask for.

It’s difficult to sustain customer-first thinking when you’re grinding through work you don’t enjoy. Find problems that energize you. The empathy follows naturally.

If you can’t get excited about your customers’ challenges, you’re solving the wrong problems.