Fast-Track Growth with Micro-Prioritization with Noah Curran

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like inclusion and marketing. Today, we'll be breaking down how to fast-track growth with micro-prioritization. To draw these value bombs, I brought to Noah Curran and EO Fire Studios. As CEO of Monkidia, EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist Noah has helped some of today's biggest brands and leaders fast-track their success and reach new heights. And today we'll be talking about what micro-prioritization actually is, why it's more effective at reaching our goals than other methods.

0:41We'll talk about incremental improvement. We'll talk about the first step. We'll talk about determining the right solution and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Noah and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn.

1:15Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. Noah, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What up, Fire Nation? Thanks, JLD, for having me on today.

1:54I'm excited to be here. What is something most people disagree with? I think it's how someone becomes successful is what I think most people would disagree with in my beliefs there. And I think most people say it's these big things in life that make a difference between someone being successful. It's not who you know, where you've been, those kinds of things. But I believe success comes in really small differences and minor decisions. I call it micro-prioritizing everything. Our time is everything, really, at the end of the day is what it is. And so working on the most important things that have the highest potential impact every minute of every day transforms your life exponentially.

2:35It makes you move faster than anything else, allows you to become more successful because you're only working on those big things. And so many people waste their time on not major priorities that they have in their life. Time is everything, Fire Nation, which is why we're talking about fast-tracking growth. with micro prioritization. And first off, let's just get to the bottom of this. What is micro prioritization? Let's say that there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be. You know, I think about this in terms of success, but it can be business, it can be personal, it can be anything of the sort.

3:10It's an extreme focus on prioritization that makes all the difference, right? We can say, hey, I have my priorities in order. You know, maybe it's my family, it's my finances, whatever it is, but we're looking at micro priorities. So let me give you an example. Let's say you're running a company and you're not making enough money. Pretty simple scenario. Lots of people deal with this. You would start out by going and ranking every single change that you could make and saying, which one of these has the greatest opportunity? Rank them, prioritize them in a long order, and then just pick the first one.

3:40So many people will go say, I've got to look at people or headcount or my inventory, my products, and try and handle all of them at once. Just pick once, and then you're going to rinse and repeat. So once you pick that first one, let's say it's your marketing, you go into your marketing and say, all right, here are all the different ways I could hit a home run on marketing. What is my biggest opportunity for success? What priority is at the very top that says, if I change this one thing, it could make a transformation in my life, in my business, et cetera. And then even when you pick that one thing, you do it again.

4:13So let's say you think, it's my website. My website is the problem. And so you do the same thing even when you're working on that website, right? Because we're putting all of our focus. You're a big one for focus, right? Putting all of our focus and energy into that website. But then what happens, right? You go, okay, I'm going to put this image here, some of this text here. And you're not actually prioritizing each word that goes onto that page. You wouldn't believe how one word in your primary headline on your website can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and clarity. And so you actually even prioritize inside of what it is.

4:47And so again, if you're saying the biggest thing that could transform my business and make it more profitable is a better website, why aren't you spending all your time focusing and prioritizing even what happens inside of that website? So what this really means at the end of the day is that you're getting the greatest value out of every minute that you're spending. You're working on the most important, most valuable stuff all the time. You are right that I'm all about focus because focus for me means follow one course until success. That means identify the one course that's the highest priority in your life right now and follow that one course until success.

5:25Not follow five courses until success. It's one course, Fire Nation. And you believe, Noah, that microprioritization is actually more effective at reaching our goals and other methods that we've heard about over the years. Why? I believe that the difference in good to great is fractional, right? There's not massive differences between somebody who's incredibly successful and somebody who's not. I've worked with thousands and thousands of business owners. And I will tell you that there's nothing special about the people that are making hundreds of millions versus the people that are struggling to get by.

6:01And I mean, we can look at this in all kinds of different venues. Look at sports. I mean, I love golf. I play golf with a lot of a lot of people. I have a number of my friends that are scratch that I think if you put them onto a golf, like they played the hardest golf courses, they're hitting from the hardest tees and they're still shooting under par. And many professional golfers don't do that. So what's the difference? Why aren't they on tour? Or basketball. How many great college basketball players went on to do very little with their career? They're still great players, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're the most successful.

6:34And the same thing in business, right? Look at something like Tesla, right? I mean, everybody wants to talk about Tesla. Tesla's the fastest growing thing. Their cars are great. But there's other electric vehicles out there. I really believe one of the biggest reasons for success that they had is they decided to put an iPad in the middle of their car so that people thought it was flashy and cool. And Ford and them decided we're still going to have the same old radio in the middle. So it's these small priorities that can make a massive difference down the line. It's cool if you have a Tesla. And if you don't, it's just not nearly as cool.

7:10And think about that, Fire Nation. Think about how many buying decisions that has impacted over the years. Is this just about incremental improvements or is there something more here, Noah? No, I think it's really a mindset. It's how you approach everything every day. It's a growth mindset versus a goal mindset. It's process versus an end result. It's a complete change in your thought process every day and how you analyze and think about your life and how you operate. It's not just about making something slightly better, right? It's about finding the biggest home run swings that you can take and then being meticulous about that effort.

7:49I think too often people looking for massive change or massive action, they make a tiny tweak that actually has no chance of that massive change. Or they decide to take a huge swing, but they really only give that huge swing half effort. It would be like a company saying, you know what? We're in trouble. I'm going to change the color of my product from blue to green and hoping that completely changes their financial future. Unless you're a stoplight company, that's probably not making a huge difference. At the same token, it would be like saying, you know what, we really need to add an entire new product line to our business if we want to stay alive because our product line might disappear in the next few years.

8:27And then just going to AliExpress and running a half-assed test was some kind of crap from China. I mean, you wouldn't believe how companies doing over$100 million will just try and throw together a test of a whole new product line to see if it works and then wonder why that it doesn't really work when they're getting 50 % returns coming back. They think it's the customer's fault and not the fact that they didn't put all of the effort into bringing the best launch they could out. They actually maybe analyzed the issue correctly, but then they didn't go further with their prioritization onto actual quality.

8:57Innovate, test, iterate, find your nation. why would you not do that if you're in a place where you're not at the maximum of where you want to be and we have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors the new year is upon us and that means new goals more growth and upgrading your day-to-day workflow while most sales folk are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling digging into data and tracking down leads let me share with you a better way to win so you can crush your Q1 the new HubSpot sales hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps It's built to help you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease.

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10:04Close more deals and get on track for your best Q1 yet. Explore the new HubSpot Sales Hub and AI tools like ChatSpot at HubSpot.com slash sales. More and more entrepreneurs and investors are discovering the awesome franchise opportunities that exist across a variety of industries. Franchising can simply be the better path, and interest in franchising is at an all-time high. Lucky for you, John Ostenson, founder of Frambridge Consulting and a frequent EO Fire guest, is here to help you explore the premier franchise opportunities today. John and his Frambridge Consulting team are part of the largest brokerage in the U.S.

10:40and have vetted the market thoroughly. Frambridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the franchise world, including both active and passive opportunities from TRT to insulation, use soccer to pets, senior care to health and wellness, and more. John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee himself, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. All right, we're back, and Noah, the first step is always the hardest and often the most confusing as well.

11:20So how can we identify where to start? What matters most to you in life? Really? Right. Like that, when you think about it, what it comes down to is you're trying to even prioritize what it is that you're going to think about changing or seeing action or success. Um, again, I work with thousands of business owners and I'll tell you the ones that are the most successful, the ones that are most passionate about what they're doing. Um, and so the same thing in your life, whether it's a personal or whether it's professional, again, what is, what, what's mattering most to you right this minute? I'll give you a couple examples.

11:52In my personal life, I actually was the top baseball prospect in the country for a number of years and was paralyzed. They said I would never walk again. I'm fine now. I'm very lucky. But much of it I actually attribute to this because I went through and listed every single possible solution that I could that could hopefully one day heal me. And then I went through each one and I went deep into it and tried every single thing. Now, it happened to be one of the one of the last things. It was kind of a crazy thing. It was actually this ice based massage therapy that ended up healing me. But I would have not ever gotten there because I would if I wasn't diligent about every single step in that journey, I would have said, oh, you know what?

12:34It's just never going to happen. But I had confidence that each wing wasn't working for me so I could go on to the next for from a professional or from a business perspective. I mean, that's what most people hire my company to do for them anyway. We help businesses both scale revenue and profits by implementing the same exact system. And what I mean there is like a client that I worked with a number of years ago came to me. Another one of my clients was on their board, actually, and they were literally looking at bankruptcy. They were running out of money. It wasn't working. It was actually a product line for Disney.

13:10it was a before iPhone and all that had all this built in it will allow you to manage all of your children's devices you could say 10 minutes on Pinterest you know or they can't go on this website or let's turn off the internet at at dinner time and they just weren't selling anything and so they they had a hundred thousand dollars left in the bank and it was coming up to the Black Friday Cyber Monday and so they called and they said this is our it's our last ditch effort to go about it. And so started working with them. We go through Black Friday. It's still not working and really went through every single item.

13:49And what had happened is they had paid some fancy marketing company out there to do some study for them that said, you know what, we actually believe that when you launch this product, this product is going to go best to families that have maybe one kid, maybe two, like smaller, wealthy families. And, you know, at the very beginning, I suggested the founder, I said, I don't think that's what this device is for. This is for the mom or dad that has six, five, six kids and is trying to control all of them as they sit around the dinner table. You know, I can yell it across the table or not yell across the table, but I can say across the table, time to turn that off, Timmy.

14:25But I don't want to say that to each one of my kids. Let's just turn the internet off or trying to manage that. And so after a terrible black Friday because they had asked me to only use that demographic profile. I literally called the founder that day. It was a great conversation we still kind of joke about. But I said, I would rather burn your money and throw it out the window. And we'll probably go viral for doing that and get more awareness out of this than keep running and doing what you're doing. I was getting paid a piece of that. Right. And so for me, that would have been absolutely stupid.

14:59But I told I told the customer this and he says, okay, fine, just do what you want to do. You don't have to abide by our rules anymore. Um, and the company took off. Like it was that one small micro prioritization inside of their marketing, um, that it took off a couple of years later, he ended up selling the company for$40 million and then started another company that, that I still help today, uh, and has grown up to be quite large, but literally it was just this fractional decision. Um, but for them, it was everything, right? It was what they, what mattered most to them was seeing some kind of success in their acquisition.

15:34And it was just going through the prioritization on that and saying, what is the biggest opportunity we have to completely change the game that made all the difference? Fire Nation, I hope you are fascinated with that whole thing. I mean, all the way at the beginning of, you know, talking about the different things that Noah was trying, you know, to, to get back to where he wanted to be. And Noah, I don't know if you're into cold plunges even to this day, because I know that cold therapy helped you, but I do a cold plunge at least once a day, 41 degrees for five minutes. I think it's one of the best things that I do every single day.

16:06I look forward to it actually, because man, I am all about cold therapy and you Fire Nation need to recognize sometimes it's just that one small shift that can unlock a whole new world of opportunity. And my favorite quote in the world is actually a JLD original. It's become the number one solution to a real problem, period. Become the number one solution to a real problem. But tell us, Noah, how can we determine the right solution? So I would say action is better than nothing. And so many times, you know, I hear all these speakers talking about the, oh, okay, you know, billionaires, when they go eat dinner, They don't actually order.

16:47They just let the person do or they'll tell you they know how much money you make based on how long it takes you to order when you get to a fast food line. And really, all they're talking about there is people that are more action oriented than not. So much of our blocks and our limitations come from a fear of taking action. So what I would say is you've got to see everything through a new lens of testing and retesting. It's just iterating. Every aspect of your life is iterating. If you don't get the result you're looking for, actually take a step. Don't sit there and think about it for five years.

17:19Take a step. Take a small one tomorrow, each and every day, and then you're going to start to see that shift. And whatever you're working on, focus all of your energy there, all of it. And ask that same question all the time. What is the one thing that would transform this area? And you just keep circling in. And you're not going to always get it right. But if you keep doing that time and time and time again, not only are you going to likely find the result after enough time, but you're going to actually train your mind to think in that way. And so you'll become more action oriented and you'll be able to identify solutions more and more often.

17:53No one knows everything you can possibly test either. So if you did, if you were trying to put all of your chips in one basket, which is what so many times happens, right? All of these people, they think about something, they think about something, they think about something, they think about it. And then eventually they just go all in on it. To me, I always try and give the analogy of betting in Vegas. It's like only doubling down. That's the only thing that you can do. You're eventually going to lose. And there's no testing involved in that. So allow yourself the opportunity to just keep testing and testing and testing and know you're going to get some wrong.

18:27But that's actually just giving you another leg up to know something else that allows you to make a smarter decision next time. No, we talked about micro prioritization. We talked about innovating, testing, iterating, just taking action. We talked about the first step. What is the one thing of everything we talked about today that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation? It's about focus and really iterating in and just saying every single time, what is what and why? I mean, so many times we don't ask the why question enough, but go deeper in, dig deep into it and say, what am I most passionate about fixing?

19:09All right. Now inside of that, what area of that can I fix the most? Okay. Now that I'm trying to fix that area, each step of that, be meticulous about it. If you micro prioritize, I guarantee you're going to see immediate results in your life. Noah, how can Fire Nation connect with you, learn more? What is your call to action for our listeners today? You can find me on Instagram and I am Noah Curran. You can go to noahcurran.com. You can check out my company, Monkedia, M-O-N-K-E-D-I-A.com. We help businesses with this all over the world grow and way over accomplish their goals by taking the same kind of structure to their growth, helping them grow faster and more profitable all the time.

19:50But I love connecting with everybody on a personal or a professional level. This is the same kind of of thing that we can do to not only make ourselves better, but the people around us better. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with NC and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Noah in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Noah, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

20:50accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs. And you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn.

21:23Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Franbridge Consulting has guided them. Franbridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, non-food franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com. Thank you.