Gaining industry expertise quickly is a skill you need to develop when exposing yourself to some of the biggest names in the game. Don’t think it’s possible? Ken Courtright teaches you how to get there in 30 days or less. All this industry expertise, an “Industry MBA,” if you will, ultimately leads to open doors, wider networks, and closed deals. It’s not impossible; you just need to know where to look.
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An Industry MBA
This is episode 73. It’s called An Industry MBA. How do you get an industry MBA in 30 days or less? What can you do knowing absolutely nothing about an industry? Let’s say forestry. I don’t know anything about forestry. I know a few types of trees because I have a few on my backyard. There’s no way I could tell you anything about first aid kit you’d need in a forest, how to save a tree, how to cut a tree down. I wouldn’t know anything. What if I knew I had to go into an important meeting in 30 days, maybe a potential client 100 times bigger than the biggest client I’ve ever had and I have 30 days to prepare? If there’s only one thing I could do to get a crash course and get an industry MBA, I know what I would do. First, I would open up a tool called SEMRush.com. It stands for Search Engine Marketing Rush because you get a rush from all the results you see.
I would go to SEMRush.com. I would type in forestry and run the program. It would give me the top 200 related organic keywords of probably 600 to 10,000 similar phrases. I would take the top 50 because it’s sorted by relevance and one by one, I would put those top 50 phrases into Google Alerts. I would set Google Alerts to everything as it happens. When I do that, Google is going to email me anytime, anybody, any website, any newspaper, and anything worldwide that has the word forestry or the 49 other similar phrases in the title of whatever was published the night before.
Always go into a meeting the most well-read. Click To TweetIf Wall Street Journal comes out with an article, Forestry Fires Prevented, I’m going to get an email of that article. If maybe one of those related key phrases is Forestry in Zimbabwe and someone writes an article about forestry in Zimbabwe, I’m going to get that email from Google. Number one, I’m going to look for the 50 related key phrases and I’m going to make 50 different Google Alerts. If you’re not sure how to use Google Alerts, YouTube it and watch a twelve-year-old show you how to set it up. That’s who taught us. Number two, this is where I would lean towards the same SEMrush tool. You will go down a little bit to the left and notice it’ll say competitors.
Once you put in one main phrase, forestry, you’re going to look for a few different competitors that are competing on the word forestry. You’re going to see if you can make out or find out what is the largest website. You’re going to find out that name and let’s say it’s ForestryMagazine.com, I’m making this up. If you notice that ForestryMagazine.com is the largest competitor, you’re going to restart the SEMrush tool and you’re going to run it for the domain, ForestryMagazine.com instead of Forestry.com. You’re not running it as a website. You’re going to hit competitors again. Now, it’s going to give you the top 100 competitors to ForestryMagazine.com. You’re going to take the top 50 and one by one you’re going to make 50 different Google Alerts.
One by one, anytime Google sees any of those 50 companies either publishing a piece of content in the news, in media or getting talked about or referenced, they’re going to email you the article. If you did that for 30 days and you read top to bottom every article sent to you, that means you might go three days and get nothing. You might go one day and get ten articles, but a month later I got a funny feeling you would walk into that meeting with that big company. I would be willing to bet not only could you hold a conversation but you would have industry knowledge that everybody in that meeting doesn’t have.
Few people stay that in tune and that up to speed with what is truly timely and relevant in their space. We use this as a company thing and it’s one of the reasons when we go into meetings, especially our bigger meetings, we are almost always the most well-read and most respected people. It’s why almost everybody gathers around us after meetings and wanting to hear more. It’s not that we’re that smart, it’s just that we understand how and where to get our info prior to certain situations. Hopefully, I’m helping everybody get an industry MBA. Take care.
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