“You don’t know what you don’t know.” ~ Socrates
The most dangerous thing in the world isn’t ignorance, it’s certainty. Think about all the times you’ve been absolutely convinced of something, only to realise later you were completely wrong. Mark Twain put it best when he said that “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The only way to uncover the gaps in your knowledge is to move forward and find out where you’re wrong.
The biggest reason people never start is because they think they need all the answers upfront. They believe that with enough research, enough planning, and enough thinking, they can eliminate uncertainty before taking the first step.
But no amount of preparation will ever replace experience. You can’t outthink the unknown—you have to meet it head-on.
“You can’t know about things you have yet to discover.” ~ Jonothan Raymond
When I first got into entrepreneurship it was with a friend selling sneakers online. It worked for a while, but like most early ventures, it didn’t last. We went our separate ways, but in the process, I’d learned something invaluable: how to market a business online.
I hadn’t set out to build a marketing agency—I just wanted to make money selling sneakers. But without realizing it, I had stumbled into the skills that would eventually become my career. I started selling my time (for free at forst), doing SEO and digital marketing for businesses, and over time, Friing Digital became the business it is today.
Looking back, there’s no way I could have planned for any of it. If someone had asked me years ago where I saw myself in the future, I never would have said, “Running an SEO agency.” I didn’t even know what SEO was. But I knew how to take a chance.
“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.” ~ Adam M. Grant
This happens in business all the time.
Take Slack, for example. It didn’t start as the workplace communication tool we know today. It started as a video game company called Glitch.
Glitch failed (hard), but along the way, they developed an internal communication system to coordinate their team. What they didn’t know at the time was that this system had more potential than the game itself. When the company shut down, they pivoted and turned that tool into Slack—now one of the most widely used business communication platforms in the world.
The point is, you can’t know about things you have yet to discover. If the team at Slack had waited for the “perfect” idea, they would have never built Glitch, and without Glitch, they never would have stumbled onto the idea that actually worked.
“Pivoting is not the end of the process, but the beginning of of the next leg of your journey” ~ Jay Samit
Most businesses, careers, and even relationships unfold like this. We take a step in one direction, thinking we know where we’re going, only to end up somewhere completely different. And that’s okay. The goal isn’t to predict every twist and turn—it’s to start moving and figure it out as you go.
Imagine where you could be now had you started working on your dreams years ago. Imagine you’d just taken that step instead of thinking about it, trying to plan it out perfectly.
Chances are, even if you had conceptualised it right after years of thinking, it most likely would look very different in reality anyway. Much like Slack, you have to try and fail because you don’t know what you don’t know. So you might as well try and see what happens along the way.
What am I reading?
Curious to see what I’m reading this week? That’s easy, I’ve attached a copy of the book’s details down below. If you’re looking at getting into reading yourself, that might not be as easy. If you want a hand, you can download our free Think Big Reading List right here
The Gulag Archapelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Wishing you all the best for the week ahead, I hope you crush all of your goals!
~ Nick
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