Investing at its core takes a leap of faith. As an outsider to a business, you need to be confident that the people running a business will have the ability and smarts to make it grow and thrive over time, making customers happy and building a self-sustaining enterprise. Many potential investors never get started because they cannot get over the fear they will make a bad choice and buy shares of a lousy company that does not make the grade to become a giant of its industry. Yet when you look at some of the most successful businesses in history, you will see that many of them have leaders with an inherent sense of optimism about their business prospects. Often, optimism is itself a cause of success. Optimistic business leaders are slow to accept defeat and quick to switch gears to find better solutions, and they are the ones that...