5 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Steve Lichtman argues confidence comes from doing, not waiting. He introduces the RISE framework—Reset, Identify, Simplify, Execute—to break through fear and build competence through small, repeated actions. Hoarding ideas without acting on them kills momentum; start now, imperfectly, because confidence grows through reps.
Everyone thinks confidence is something you're supposed to feel before you take action, but it's not confidence that comes after the action, not before. Confidence is the reward, not the prerequisite. You know, all the time people tell me they lack confidence in their content, they lack confidence in their sales calls, they lack confidence in their messaging, they lack confidence in their visibility. Oh, man, it's exhausting. And they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. And it's never because they're incapable. It's because they haven't repeated the action enough times to feel grounded in it, to feel confident in it. So they might have a million ideas in their head, but they've only put out one. Maybe they did it shoddily, maybe they did it in a rush. Maybe they didn't really think it all through. There could be a million reasons, right, of why somebody puts some kind of messaging out into the universe. No matter how it is, no matter what it is, whether it's the con, like I said, the content, the sales, your messaging and visibility, whatever, it's not incapability. I worked with some insanely smart people in the last 20 years and in my career, I mean, people that really, really. Oh, man, like, just straight assassins in what they do for a living and what their knowledge base is like, literally the dude with the sniper scope and knowledge. And a lot of times they can't hit the mark and it's because they lack confidence. They think maybe, oh, yeah, I got all this confidence, Steve. I'm going to put this together, man. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do what you told me. I'm going to deliver this, yada, yada, yada, I'm going to do this, that and the other thing they don't, because they never took that small action to make something decisive and to make a change. They kept piling and piling and piling and piling and waiting, waiting, thinking, oh, I could be a collector of knowledge, a collector of content, a collection of bullshit. And in the end, when it comes time to put something out, they sit on, you know, a hundred word documents, a thousand images and God knows what else sitting there in their files and in their OneDrive account or their, their Apple Icloud or wherever the hell it may be, their Google Drive, and it just sits there, just crashed down on the ground. No confidence. They have all this great stuff and because they lack the confidence to do anything, because they never did the first step because they're afraid Right. People get afraid of the reaction. People get afraid of how they're gonna be perceived and they don't put it out there. And to me that's like the crappiest thing in the world. Holy hell. It's so sad because there's so many amazing people out there. And you listening may be that exact person. You might be one of those people I spoke to 10, 15 years ago at either an event or at a conference or behind closed doors. So let's talk about how the rise framework is going to work here just beautifully for you. Reset clears the emotional static. Identify. It gets you honest about what's actually blocking you. Simplify, like always will. Break it down, that action into something small enough not to trigger your fear. Just a simple small action that you could do today. And then execute builds the reps. Like going to the gym, you're building the reps that eventually build your confidence. Confidence isn't built in the day. Anybody who shows up brand new and bushy eyed and all that, but was it wide eyed and bushy tailed? Yeah, I think that's the right way to say it. Wide eyed and bushy tailed and they're super, super, super, super, super confident. Guess what? They're probably full of shit in acting and they're probably terrified on the inside. The person. You know, Robert Herjavec said a great tale the other day on social media. He had talked about how there was one guy in a room, he was at a business meeting and Everybody was in $10,000 suits. And there was one guy in the corner in a T shirt and like a pair of shorts and he didn't give a flying, you know what he just did. Him, he had a $10,000 suit like everybody else and it was crumpled up and it was over by the chair and on the floor and falling all over the place. And he went up and he met that guy. You know who that guy was? That guy was Mark Cuban. Now forget politics, forget the other bullshit that people talk about on social media about all these cats. Let's just go business to business on it. Broadcast.com was enormous. He built it. He, you know, he was one of the creators behind how we deliver things to the Internet. And he was also the kind of guy that just didn't really give a toss and did things his way. That's confidence, right? Confidence is the guy in a room full of suits being willing to just hang out in a, you know, a band shirt and some shorts. That's confidence for me. I mean that's, that's somebody who did so much that he just knew, like, whatever, like I'm me and this is what I do. And if you don't like it, you know, kick rocks. Kick rocks is a great statement to use for people that try to shake your confidence, right? And people that want to take away from your confidence and tell you that you're not good enough. Or now that they comment on your one post and they go, dude, you suck and now you don't want to post again. Meanwhile, the only person that really sucked was the person that wrote dude, you suck, because they had no inner ability to be happy for somebody else trying to do something with their life. So remember this much and this will be the riff. Confidence is built by doing, not by thinking. You could sit there. You could think about it all day long. You could plan, you could plot. You could fill your chatgpt up with bullshit. You could fill your onenote files with hundreds and hundreds of ideas and posts and content and videos and marketing things and sales strategies and new audiences and whatever else it may be. It doesn't matter if you don't actually take a step forward and do something with it and you just sit there and think about it all the time and play with your food, you're never going to get any confidence. And you don't need to be confident to start. You need to start, though, to become confident. And with that, folks, I want to say thank you as always, for being here and for listening. It's another nice, short and sweet episode of Unfiltered and Unshakable with me, Steve Lichtman. Have a great day.
