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The only thing I own, SpaceX, is a long sleeve shirt.

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I bought my first bike when I was 12 or so. My Mom had just bought one for me but it was a mountain bike and I wanted a freestyle BMX.

She wasn’t going to buy me a second bike. The refund from the return wouldn’t be enough and I wasn’t interested in the store’s version.

I applied for a loan from The Bank of Mom and started a small business to self-employ my way to the purchase of a brand-new, all-chrome, GT Dyno Zone branded with blue stickers.

The loan was for $20.

That experience built confidence in me to go out and get what I want which leads me to the prompt for this post…

What’s the best way to build self-confidence?

I’ve found that the best way to build self-confidence is to close my mouth and open my ears, my eyes, and most importantly… my hands.

Self-confidence comes from knowing who to call. And the status of being somebody to call.

A common line used by a confident person is, “Call me. If I can be of service, I’ll find somebody who can.

The method of building confidence that yields the biggest return has to be replication, creating a new capacity for confidence in somebody where it didn’t exist PLUS a clear path to max it out.

A baby step for building self-confidence is starting replacing doubt with failure.

Going back to the story about me getting the bike, I started with failure.

I bought 1 box of chocolate bars to flip. I bought by the box but each bar came at a cost of 33 cents. I sold each for $1

I sold to my neighbors, I sold at store fronts. I sold anywhere I went. And I got a lot of NOs. I got a lot of YESes too. Enough to buy myself a bike.

There’s more to the story. A lot that I won’t recall. But it happened and I got some self-confidence out of it.

I hope that bike is still in great condition today. I left it to a friend whos parents were renting a unit in the same building when we were moving out.

Some of the feedback for this prompt is nuts. I listened to some songs that were anything but good mood songs. And some songs were not songs at all. The sound of nature. What the…

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How do you stay motivated when learning something new?

If I need to stay motivated to learn something NEW, I have a problem. That problem is blissful ignorance.

Blissful ignorance is walking through a bookstore and not scanning the titles.

Blissful ignorance is having a bookcase full of unread books.

Blissful ignorance is meeting an expert investor/business owner and making the conversation about poverty in another state when I could use every tip he or she has to offer to change my financial status.

The price of ignorance is all I need to motivate me to learn.

Consider the cost of rent or home ownership. That is the cost of not learning real estate. As long as ignorance is maintained, something with a non-comparable return must be utilized to cover the cost.