What’s the difference between confidence and optimism? Let’s say your accountant friend has been watching the Discovery Channel’s series on brain surgery. He’s confident he can do it.

As luck would have it, you’re in the market for a little probing. You call your friend and he arrives with his hammer for anesthesia. Surgery on!

Before going under the hammer, you luckily realize your friend is the living definition of unconsciously incompetent. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. That’s what optimism can do to you.

Coming to your senses you call the country’s renown brain surgeon. She, too, is optimistic about your surgery. However, she defines unconsciously competent. She knows what she knows while no longer knowing it.

What does this have to do with your business? Learn, study, get experience. Don’t watch. Do. Be optimistic. But become unconsciously competent as quickly as possible.