Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else.

Blakely frames ignorance not as a deficit but as a strategic advantage for innovators. In the earliest stages of a venture, not knowing “the rules” of an industry can prevent premature conformity and make room for unconventional experiments. The quote argues that expertise sometimes narrows imagination: when you assume you already know what works, you tend to reproduce established patterns. By embracing uncertainty, a beginner stays curious, asks naïve questions, and is more willing to try approaches that insiders might dismiss. The underlying claim is that differentiation—doing things unlike “everybody else”—often begins with the courage to operate without a script.