How To Get Up To Speed In Any Industry…Quickly

Getting started in a new industry can be super challenging but in today’s world of shorter stints with companies, quickly building working knowledge of a new industry is an extremely valuable and essential skill. Becoming fluent in your industry quickly means you start providing value sooner to your team, customers, employers, investors – everyone.

Back in the day (2012), I showed up to a lunch meeting in Pittsburgh with Adam Paulisick unprepared to answer his questions about the economics of college admissions, the industry I was running a company in at the time. He gave me some advice that stuck with me ever since: To win, you HAVE to know more about your industry than anyone else – there are no excuses.

Since that embarrassing episode, I’ve tried to apply Adam’s advice to everything I’ve done and developed a step by step process that makes the challenging process of getting up to speed in a new industry a bit more methodical:

Step 1: Read as much as you can about the market 

There’s nothing to replace this step. Read EVERYTHING – articles, journals, books, forums, industry history, even tweets. Don’t judge anything you read yet – at this point in the process, you don’t know anything. If there’s some kind of overview book, start with that – if not, start with articles because they’re usually written in layman’s terms. You should absolutely be taking notes – the key here is to start building a knowledge base. Allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole.

One last thing on this topic: give yourself the time you need to read about the industry. Study for this like you studied for the SAT and make sure you block the time off on your calendar. This is just as important as any meeting.

Step 2: Find people who know a lot about the market and spend time with them 

Talking to knowledgeable people and asking questions is something that should be done mostly in parallel with reading but make sure you’ve at least read a little bit first so you can ask relevant questions. Don’t worry about forming opinions yet – just keep building knowledge. Asking someone for their time initially feels scary (why would they want to talk to me?) but you’ll find that smart people: a) generally want to be helpful and b) are generous with their time when they sense you’re genuinely curious about their life’s work.

A simple hack here that’s been magical for me: Ask each person you talk to in the industry for one other person they recommend you talk to. Even better, ask if they can introduce you. Very quickly, you’ll have a network of really smart people who genuinely want to help you learn. #winning

Step 3: Form opinions and test them 

The first two steps in this process are fairly straightforward – they require work but your ego isn’t at stake. The third step is what will require some courage. To figure out if your mental “picture” of your new industry is correct, you’ll have to form some opinions AND get a reaction on those opinions from knowledgeable people. Without getting a reaction on your opinions, you’ll simply be forming a (likely) incomplete/incorrect mental map of the industry. Feedback is what allows you to correct, iterate, and improve on your mental map to create something resembling reality.

One of the most amazing things about the discovery process is that this is the stage where tons of ingenuity comes from, likely because at this stage, you’re reasoning from first principles (as opposed to ingrained dogma). Cherish this point of the process even though it’s scary sometimes. The worst-case scenario is that you say something stupid – no big deal.

Step 4: Repeat, repeat, repeat!

This process isn’t something that should only be done when you first start working in a new industry. It should be done constantly so that you continually grow your knowledge base and keep your mental map up to date. The ultimate goal is to have what athletes refer to as “fingertip feel” of your industry.

Bonus Tip: Your ego is your worst enemy 

All of the suggestions above require leaving your ego at home. If you can’t do that, all the feedback in the world won’t improve your mental map of any industry. Remember, feedback isn’t an insult – it’s a gift and a huge competitive advantage. Allow yourself to accept feedback and you’ll find that you’ve learned more about your industry in 6 months than most people learn in 10 years.