The Four Words That Change Everything
Everyone in the room already knows you’re faking it.
There’s a moment that happens in every conference room, every strategy meeting, every product review. Someone asks a question. A hard one. About the market, the customer, the problem you’re actually solving. And everyone in the room does the same thing: They perform expertise.
“Well, based on our research...”
“The data suggests...”
“Industry best practices indicate...”
They build elaborate structures on foundations of air. They protect their credibility. They sound smart. And the question never gets answered.
I watched this happen last month. Startup, Series A, building something in climate tech. Investor asks: “Do your customers actually want this feature, or is this what you think they should want?” The founder launched into a five-minute explanation about market trends, competitor analysis, user personas. Beautiful presentation.
Total bullshit. Because the actual answer was four words: ”I do not know.”
Here’s what most people miss: Those four words aren’t the end of the conversation. They’re the beginning. The founder could have said: “I don’t know. Let’s discover. We’ll call five customers this week, ask them directly, and report back what changed about our understanding.”
Same four words. But they create a different outcome entirely.
1. “I don’t know” (admission)
This is the hardest part. Not because you don’t know – you already don’t know. You’re just really good at hiding it behind frameworks and jargon and “strategic thinking.”
The hard part is saying it out loud.
Admitting uncertainty feels like professional suicide. Like you’re disqualifying yourself from the room. But here’s the thing: everyone already knows you don’t know. They can smell the performance.
Saying “I don’t know” doesn’t make you look stupid. It makes you look honest.
And honesty creates space. Space to actually figure it out instead of defending a position you’re making up in real-time.
2. “Let’s discover” (action)
This is where the magic happens. This is what separates genuine intellectual humility from imposter syndrome dressed up as wisdom. You don’t just admit uncertainty and shrug. You admit it and move.
Call the customer. Run the experiment. Build the small version. Test the assumption. Do the thing that will replace “I don’t know” with “Now I know.”
Most people skip this. They stay stuck in the admission phase, treating uncertainty like quicksand instead of a starting line. Or worse, they theorize. They workshop. They build decks about what they might discover if they ever actually went looking.
”Let’s discover” requires action, not analysis.
3. “What changed?” (learning)
You made the calls. You ran the test. You shipped the thing. Now comes the part everyone forgets: closing the loop.
What did you learn? What changed about your understanding? What do you now know that you didn’t know before?
It isn’t about being right. It’s about updating your map of reality with new information. Most people are so busy performing growth that they never actually grow.
The four-word sequence only works if you complete it. Admission without action is paralysis. Action without learning is thrashing.
But all four together? That’s how you stop pretending and start building.
The next time you’re in a room and someone asks a hard question, about your customer, your strategy, your actual value proposition, try something radical: Tell the truth. Say “I don’t know.”