The smartest people often fail the most.

When it comes to building a business, being clueless might be your greatest asset.

And the people who "know what they're doing" are often the most handicapped.

Every day, I watch brilliant people with fancy degrees paralyze themselves with knowledge, while the person who doesn't know any better builds something useful.

Because in a world obsessed with expertise, your ignorance can be a secret weapon.

The Paralysis of Intelligence

Back at my old CRO job, I ran experiments all the time that proved this concept.

I'd pair an "industry expert" consultant with a less experienced employee from my sales team and watch them tackle a business problem together.

The consultants started by listing frameworks, citing case studies, referencing patterns from other companies, and outlining potential failure points. They’d build a case for why so many things wouldn’t work:

“I’ve seen that before at XYZ company. Didn’t work.”

“We tried that before and it wasn’t effective.”

And finally, my less experienced sales rep would muster the courage to speak up — "How about if we just try this?" — offering a solution so simple that it made everyone a little uncomfortable.

Until we implemented the simple ideas and saw good results.

See, the consultants generally seemed paralyzed by possibilities. And my sales reps, three years out of college, saw opportunities in plain sight.

This isn't about celebrating someone being naive. It's about recognizing that “expertise” often comes packaged with past information that adds too much friction to take good, old-fashioned action.

The Freedom of Not Knowing Better

When you don't know the "best marketing channels," you try a bunch of stuff to see what works.

When you don't know what's "realistic," you attempt to do big, bold things.

And sometimes, you win because you didn't know you were supposed to lose!

Take Airbnb, for example. Industry experts "knew" people would never let strangers sleep in their homes. Hotel execs laughed at the concept. Real estate professionals called it a liability nightmare. Safety experts predicted disaster.

But the founders weren't hospitality industry veterans. They were designers who needed to pay rent. They didn't know all the reasons their idea "couldn't work" — so they built it anyway and changed global travel forever in the process.

They didn't follow a playbook because they didn’t know any better.

They wrote a new one.

How to Weaponize Your Ignorance

So, how do you use your not-knowing as an advantage?

First, question what you believe to be certain. And when you catch yourself thinking "that's how it works," add the words "for now" or "for some people."

Second, break the rules on purpose. Pick the business "truth" you're most certain about, and do the opposite in your next project. At worst, you'll learn something valuable. At best, you'll discover an opportunity everyone else is missing.

Third, seek out people who don't know what you know. And when someone asks, "Why don't you just..." (like my old sales reps), instead of explaining why their idea won't work, ask yourself, "Actually, why don't I?"

And finally, remember that the greatest advantage of ignorance is simplicity. When you don't know about the complex solution, you probably arrive at a simple one. And simple almost always wins.

The Sweet Spot

Knowledge isn't your enemy. Certainty is.

The most successful people live in a state of "educated ignorance" — knowing enough to be dangerous, but remaining skeptical and curious enough to question conventional wisdom, and even their own experiences.

They've mastered the art of holding knowledge without being held by it.

The Bottom Line

Your ignorance isn't something to hide — it's something to leverage.

Most great innovations started with someone who didn't know enough to realize their idea was "impossible" or “crazy.”

So the next time you feel disadvantaged by everything you don’t know, remember: that empty space is where breakthroughs happen. That confusion is where creativity can blossom.

So don't rush to fill that opportunity with someone else's certainties.

And that's all for today.

See you next Saturday.

P.S. If you want to set yourself up for success with your online business, consider checking out ​​The Creator MBA​​. It's 111 steps, in logical order, that show you how to build both your audience and your business simultaneously, even if you're starting from zero.

‍​Join 6,000+ online entrepreneurs here.