Be like a commercial credit professional. They make good self-directed investors in corporate stocks because they understand that companies who do not make profits are risks. They see the purpose of a company is to make a profit not to be bait for stock speculators.
Their decisions of whether to grant credit or not are based on the historical and current factual information that they are able to gather on companies. Unfortunately, few of the risks they must assess are public companies who are traded on stock exchanges and must report audited financial information on a regular basis. Credit Managers must dig for historical trade payment information, the absence of presence of public legal records like writs, judgments, security registrations, etc.
They are used to taking chances on newly formed small companies. Very rarely do they see a financial statement from a long-established financially strong company.
Thus, when out of the 25,000,000 companies in North America having to determine the degree of risk with a few thousand publicly traded companies on the major stock exchanges is easy. Every public company has a financial statement. In a few seconds you can not only see they are profitable, but you can see if their ever-increasing share prices and dividend payouts stretch back for decades.
Having dealt with deadbeats and shysters on a regular basis they are not impressed with the "potential profitability" of a hot stock being pushed by stock promoters. Unlike most speculators they want to see the financial facts that confirm before they invest that they will not lose money. However, they will also spread their risk among several stocks knowing that there is always the potential for a few unexpected losses within their portfolio.

Thus, when I set out to build stock scoring software it was so much easier than when I had had to build a commercial credit scoring platform. All the information I needed on the few thousand publicly traded companies was instantly available and constantly updated.
I decided to supply my stock scoring software with all six of my investment books, including my two latest "New York Stock Exchange's 106 Best High Dividend Stocks" and "Canadian High Dividend Investing - 215 Scored Stocks". Now, no one needs to be intimidated by the idea of investing in the stock market. Those who have lost money in the stock market often fail to recognize that stock investing is just another form of commercial risk.
If you treat a stock like any commercial risk. it is not difficult to achieve a safe, reliable dividend income while watching your portfolio grow in value and keep you ahead of inflation for the rest of your life.