Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.

The quote reframes not-knowing from a liability into a strategic advantage. Blakely suggests that intimidation often comes from comparing oneself to experts, but expertise can also lock people into standard methods and inherited constraints. By accepting gaps in knowledge, a person may feel freer to experiment, ask basic questions, and attempt solutions that insiders dismiss as impossible or improper. The “greatest strength” here is cognitive independence: a willingness to proceed without permission from conventional wisdom. In entrepreneurial terms, it champions beginner’s mind and contrarian problem-solving as pathways to differentiation and innovation.