Building the Research Habit

The difference between someone who researches occasionally and someone who researches consistently is not talent or time. It is a system. The 15-minute pre-meeting research sprint is the habit that makes everything in this course work. Without it, you will do great research before important meetings and skip it before routine ones — and the routine meetings are exactly where preparation creates the most surprise and the most impact.

1. The 15-Minute Sprint Block 15 minutes before every external meeting. Not 30. Not 60. Fifteen is enough for a company scan, a quick LinkedIn review of the person, and one industry data point. It is short enough that you will actually do it, and long enough to show up informed.
2. The Trigger Attach the sprint to a calendar event. When the meeting reminder fires, that is your trigger to spend 15 minutes researching. No decision-making required. The calendar tells you when to do it. The habit tells you what to do. The template tells you how.
3. The Template Use the same template every time: Company (what they do, recent news), Person (role, background, one personal detail), Industry (one relevant trend), Opening (one "I noticed..." observation). Consistency eliminates the overhead of figuring out what to research each time.
4. The Compound Effect After a month of pre-meeting sprints, you will have researched dozens of companies. Patterns emerge. You start recognizing industry trends before reading about them. Your conversational fluency improves. The habit compounds — each sprint makes you better at the next one.

## PRE-MEETING RESEARCH SPRINT (15 min)
**Meeting with:** [Name, Title, Company]
**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]

### COMPANY (5 min)
- What they do:
- How they make money:
- Recent news (last 90 days):

### PERSON (5 min)
- Role & tenure:
- Career background:
- Published content or talks:

### CONTEXT (3 min)
- Industry trend relevant to them:
- Why they might be taking this meeting:

### OPENING (2 min)
- "I noticed..." observation:
- Hypothesis to validate:

This is the foundation. Everything in BI-201 and BI-301 builds on this habit. Advanced customer intelligence — dark asset discovery, value gap analysis, competitive landscape mapping for the customer's market — all of it requires that you already have the basics down. The 15-minute sprint is not a shortcut. It is the prerequisite for everything that comes next.