Confidence in me and you.

Confidence.

This week, I have been thinking a lot about confidence. Sure, it came up in a podcast, but the topic for me this week is a lot deeper than just a podcast episode.

We often think of confidence as something that someone either has or doesn’t have. We are often attracted to (or maybe turned off by) people with a lot of confidence. When people have it and it’s good, we want to emulate them. When people have it and it’s bad, we try to figure out how they got it.

I’ve been thinking about that type of confidence, but I’ve also been reflecting on having confidence in something. When we get on a ladder to pull down Christmas lights, we have confidence in the ladder’s ability not to crumble. Why do we have that? Well, we’ve seen it hold people up before. It has held people up 100% of the time, so we assume it will hold us up this time too. Honestly, even if a ladder held people up 98% of the time, I would probably still get on it.

So we have confidence as a trait we possess and confidence in the reliability of other things.

Many of us use both types of confidence to shape how we view ourselves. I might say, “I am smart (confidence I have) because I went to college (confidence based on evidence).” It’s almost like an equation—except it’s not.

I’m sure one of you read that and thought, “I know a lot of dumb people who went to college.” So does our confidence become fake because someone disagrees with our assertions about ourselves? Probably not.

What if you got off a ladder, and the owner of the ladder patted you on the back and said, “Phew, I’m glad that went well—95% of people fall off that ladder.” Suddenly, all the confidence you had is under inspection.

So how do we create lasting confidence that isn’t dependent on other people’s perspectives or information we aren’t aware of?

The first part is easy—your confidence has to be your own. You cannot rely solely on external opinions for validation. Perspectives are fickle.

The second part is having evidence you find reliable. You have to test your own hypothesis about what makes you confident over and over again.

I’ve been on a Steve Magness train recently, and I’m not done. One of the things I love about distance running is that coaches and athletes operate as applied scientists. Either the coach or the athlete forms a hypothesis about how the athlete can run their goal time or compete at a certain event. They create a plan, document a myriad of information, and then the day comes to compete. Afterward, they sit down and discuss what worked and what didn’t, then start planning for the next event.

After doing this for years, you not only create a strong baseline, but you also gather a lot of evidence that you are the runner you say you are.

This doesn’t have to apply only to running.

If you want to be confident about something, ask yourself what someone confident in that thing does. Then create a system around doing those tasks. After some time or an event specific to that thing, ask yourself how you did. Make your edits and start a new cycle.

When I was a child, maybe 7 or 8, I remember people saying it takes eight years of school to become a doctor. I had only been alive for eight years, and I thought that was a long time. The idea of becoming a doctor felt impossible to me.

What I’m learning as I get older is that something taking eight years looks a lot more like getting up tomorrow, doing what you have to do, and stacking those days. You can’t do two days at a time—you just have to keep doing the things you want to get better at each day. One day, you’ll wake up a doctor (or something else that takes a lot of time).

The Hero’s Journal

A few weeks ago (wow, time flies), we left our heroes with a Kickstarter that started slower than they had hoped. Fast forward to the end of July, and the journals for that Kickstarter are now arriving at The Hero’s Headquarters. One big problem—Nick and I were on a plane to North Carolina. The original drop-off day for the journals was two weeks earlier, but they were held up at customs, and we had already booked our flights to a comic con in Raleigh.

We didn’t have a loading dock or really any tools at all. So receiving journals was actually a super tall task—something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. So I called my best friends and brother to help me out.

Fun fact: This also happened on Trey’s birthday, when he had a broken hand.

Trey, Carlie, Anthony, and Bert watched as the truck backed up the driveway toward the garage. When it opened, they saw a pretty cattywampus pallet actively breaking before their eyes. I was sitting on a plane, getting text message updates about all the chaos while sipping my ginger ale (the only correct drink order on a plane) and feeling astronomical levels of guilt.

The one thing that kept me grounded was my utmost confidence in the people unloading the truck. By that point, I had unloaded what felt like thousands of boxes of journals with Anthony, who, for all intents and purposes, is 1,000 times better at organizing that type of assignment. Trey had always been willing to show up for the business—he even made a quick cameo helping fulfill the June launch I talked about back in 2020. Carlie, who was interning for us at the time, had knocked out 3,000 wax-sealed stamps in just two days of work. And last but not least, Bert was there to help. What more do I need to say? He’s my big brother—I damn near think he can fly (he just won’t show me).

It wasn’t just that I trusted these people because they are close to me—I had seen them dedicate themselves to their own crafts and show up to help time and time again.

Also, they helped us fulfill the Kickstarter, which was a whole other monster.

Atypical

This week, there is a bit of a surprise release. If you’re paying super close attention to Trey’s videos, it won’t be that surprising. But if you weren’t—oh boy. The brand is launching two different pairs of shorts on Sunday the 9th.

I was going through all the photo assets for this drop, and I was so excited. The photos are so cool, and the product is definitely the star in all of them.

I think that this is the best product the brand has ever made and shows the growth in Trey as he tries to better at building new product lines. 

One good thing about having to ask Trey to read my newsletter to hear what he thinks is that I can throw sneaky shade at him, and he probably won’t ever read it unless prompted.

Trey always talks about how he isn’t “cool” and isn’t trying to build a hype brand. But don’t tell him I said this—his photos look pretty cool.

Reading

I’m still working through Do Hard Things by Steve Magness. I’m really enjoying it. I don’t know if I have many thoughts from it yet, but he does have a whole chapter on confidence, so maybe this whole newsletter is a big analysis.

Coffee

Tomorrow, my girlfriend’s best friend Rachel is having a birthday, so I’m bringing my espresso machine over to her house and doing a KC’s Cafe.

I like coffee because it allows me to serve other people. Oh, and when I make a drink for someone and they love it—that’s a little drop in the outputs for my coffee confidence.

Conclusion

This week, I spoke with both Mark Mandi and Micah Murphy about their pretty incredible training blocks. It was interesting hearing from them because, at the time, we were all kind of watching and thinking it could go well, but there was also a level of risk. (Mark was running over 100 miles a week, and Micah did four solid workouts a week.)

It was cool hearing them reflect on their experiences with those really tough training blocks.

The coolest part was talking to them about what they learned about themselves.

My advice: approach your life like an applied scientist. Have a hypothesis, test it, measure the results, reflect, repeat.

You’ll wake up in eight years an MD.

Kyle