Creating Your Million Dollar Offer By Focusing On A World-Class Solution With Nida Leard

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey. Hey, today's guest, Nita l is serial entrepreneur, podcast host, coach, and consultant who leverages her two decades of experience to help experts become outliers by building an innovative business that stands up from the crowd with a one of a kind solution. And today we're gonna talk about turning that one of a kind solution into a million dollar offer. Hey Nita, welcome to the show. Nida: Hi, Diane. thank you so much for having me here. Diane: So let's start with a little intro to you and your business journey. Nida: So my career actually started 22, 23 years ago. So after I finished my master's degree, I came back to to, to my home country, which at the moment is Thailand. And I started working with L'Oreal, which is the cosmetic company and managing all these amazing cosmetic brands, right? And I worked for Unilever, I worked for Rapid Ben Keezer, so all the, these FM c g global giant companies. And I worked as a product manager, brand manager. And then for a few years I always kind of knew that corporate life wasn't for me. You know, I'm an inventor, I'm an innovator, I'm a disruptor. So clearly corporate life, not for me, . And so I left and I started. , several businesses actually since teen, my teenage years, I've always had a business. So I really had that entrepreneurial like that, that, that need to invent things and create things and sell things, you know? So I always have these, these ideas. You know, I might not implement all the ideas, but I've always been entrepreneurial in that sense. And so I started a child development center. That's how I got into psychology. I've always been a business consultant, business strategist you know even when I was working in corporate life, you know in the corporate world. So I love, and I'm obsessed with solving problems. . Fast forward to what I do now. I am a business consultant and coach, [00:02:00] so I do coaching as well. So it's kind of a mix of coaching and consulting, meaning that there's the business strategy side and then there's the personal development side, because we know that it's, you know, there's, it's always an internal problem that's causing the external problem, right? Diane: It's a little connection somewhere. Nida: yeah. So I'm really, really into both worlds. The business and psychology and I com combine that and I use that to work with my clients. And what I specialize in is I help clients create, Solutions that can be found nowhere. You know, like in whatever niche you're in. I help them invent and innovate and disrupt their niche with a new solution that fixes the client's problem better than anyone. And that's kind of like the short version of you know, what we do, combining psychology and research and consumer insights and, you know, coaching and strategies and all that. All the fun stuff. Diane: Wow. I have so many questions. I dunno where to start. So let's talk about this innovative solution When you start talking about , let's make an innovative solution, let's make it like world class, what does that actually entail? What kind of offer does that look like? Nida: Yeah. Well, we try to come with a blank piece of paper, you know, and it, that's very challenging. It's easy to say, but it is very challenging because not everyone is an innovator by nature. We have different strengths and weaknesses, and also by human nature, we are programmed to kind of go and just copy what everybody else is doing because that feels safe, right? That feels safe. It's familiar. We are a program to stick with whatever feels familiar. That's the psychology, right? So when you're, you're even attempting to think of something new that feels dangerous. Right. That, that feels like, oh, that, that's not [00:04:00] safe. Like who would buy that? Right? Like I don't wanna, you know, do something that's different from other people. Right? But in this world, especially today, where the competition is just so high and there's so much distraction and noise, you don't really have a choice but to be different. Cuz that's the only way you stand out. Otherwise you end up, you know, competing in the red ocean and, you know, trying to sell the cheapest thing there is out there . And so when I talk about differentiating or innovating you need to start with empathizing with a client at so many levels. And that's where like why when you're interviewing your clients, you need to have that research background because and that psychology and consumer behavior background, because asking just normal questions, you won't get those answers from. your clients. Right? So it's about totally empathizing and putting yourself in your client's shoes and understanding what are their fears, what are their struggles, what are their priorities? And you know, what is, what are they struggling with, you know, and what do they do? They truly want whatever your, your business does, right? People just have this tendency that we think we know everything humans are driven to be right, to be good and to be, to be sure of like, okay. Because if you doubt what you know, then that, oh my God, like, you know, it feels dangerous again. Right? So we wanna get rid of the fear and we wanna say like, what I know is true, right? And, and you wanna stick with a thought that my clients are happy and what I do is perfect , it takes courage and vulnerability for you to accept and, and take a look at, okay, what's the problem here? And what am I doing? That could be improved. Or maybe, you know, my client isn't happy and I'm not serving them at the highest level. So that, just, that to start this whole process already takes courage and you have to be able to embrace being vulnerable to go through this process, right? So the innovation process, [00:06:00] To be simply explained, starts with empathizing. So you need to understand your client at the deepest level, at every level of all the things that they are experiencing. And, and then you, you'd go through this process of defining the problems, which could be so many, right? And then you, you'd pick and choose which problems you think you would solve better than anybody else in this world, right? You don't wanna solve every problem cause you're not, you're not great at everything, right? despite Diane: That's where I thought you were going, and I was like, I'm, I'm trying like not to hyperventilate live on the podcast here, Nida: Yeah. And so it's like, then you, you, you look at this list of all these possible problems that this person or this client could have, right? Whether this client is a be it's a business, it's a person, it's a consumer, whatever, right? And then you look at what are the problems that you, given your strengths and your superpowers as a business, as a team, as a company could actually solve better than anybody else. And then we ideate, which is the, the part where I love the most. And I find that this is actually a step that's quite difficult for businesses or entrepreneurs that have not really done it right. They, they haven't really you know, they don't think out of the box and they're kind of like, yeah, exactly what you said. They've been successful with this and I'm doing fine. Why? Why the heck would I wanna go and do something new or take the risk of stepping out of my comfort zone and, and coming up with this totally crazy idea? Right? And I would say that sometimes you have to kind of hit this hit a wall and then you start to realize, okay, this is like plateauing the results in my business. It's not growing there, it's hitting this, this level where I can't move to the next level. Then they'll start. Think, you know, ponder like, okay, maybe there's something I'm not seeing in my business. And then they, they start to think, okay, maybe there's something that new that needs to happen in this business. Right? And then after that, it's kind of the prototyping and the testing of the [00:08:00] idea, you know. And that's essentially the kind of the process of what we do to create this, this unique offer. Diane: It's so interesting to listen to you describe the process cuz I'm an ideas person as well. So to me it sounds really exciting, but I can see like, even going back to the very beginning when we start as entrepreneurs, it's such a struggle to not doubt yourself, to get that confidence, to go out there, to sell. Like you've spent all this time building this confidence and now the first thing we're gonna do is like, let's just step back and let's just doubt ourselves for a minute. Right? So I can see there'd be so much kind of resistance to that. I find though. And tell me if you find this as well, is it often when people hit that wall, they hit that plateau? I find that the blank piece of paper empathy, customer research piece doesn't happen. I find it's more a case of I know what the next thing is, here's my next idea, and I'm sprinting off after it. Do you find that you have to like reign people in when you're doing the first customer research piece of it? Do they wanna run straight to the idea and what's the risk if we run straight to the idea? Nida: yeah, entrepreneurs. We are innovative by nature, right? Maybe not everyone into certain different levels, but yeah, we have clients coming in. Entrepreneurs are like, you know, I have this idea. I don't know whether it's gonna work. Can I try these five other ideas? And then I had this idea, I tried it already and it doesn't work. And then I don't know what the problem is with it. And you know, this offer isn't selling really well. Clients buy this service and they never repeat purchase or they never tell anybody about it. And that goes into the customer experience and the net promoter score. And that's another story. But then they, they struggle because we were all in love with our own. We have this bias, this like self confirmation bias, that our ideas are brilliant . And it could be brilliant, but maybe it's Diane: I mean, Nida: to Diane: are, but Nida: Yeah. . Yeah. Mine are like other [00:10:00] people's idea. I don't know, but mine are, right? Yeah. And so we, we, we can keep those ideas and it's great. And then we usually, when we do a workshop or something, we have this like blank piece of flip chart. And then we write all the ideas that come through our brains throughout the whole process, right? And any idea or whatever, how crazy it is, can be put onto that piece of paper. And it's like, we kind of use it as a parking lot, you know? Okay. We, we put that idea up. . It's kind of like you get to do all of it, you know, it's all there. You, we didn't lose the idea. We're not throwing it away. It's there. Okay. And then that gives the, the people the peace of mind that okay, we kind of like have that on the board already, and then we have to go through this process and see what happens. But I think it's very important to go back to the empathizing because that's, that itself is a very important problem. It's like if you don't fully understand the real problem, then the solution that you create will not be the right solution for the real problem. You know? So the empathizing part is very important. Even if they come with ideas, we still like get them to go back to the blank piece of paper and. answering your question, what are the risks? The risks are like you invested all this energy and teamwork and you went and created all these things and invested so much money, and then you found out that, well, it's not really working. Right. So that's, that's the risk. You know, if, if you're fine with risking that and, and wasting time as well. Right. That's, that's kind of the, the, the downside of it, and. for some entre entrepreneurs, I would say that they are gifted in that way, where they already have done the empathizing in their mind. they understand their clients because they have been in that position the same position as their client. They've kind of gone through the whole process in their mind without knowing that they've been doing it, you know? Diane: so, let's say somebody's not that, so they weren't their original client, you really want them to go and do the empathize stage. Can you give us an example of just like one [00:12:00] of your kind of more psychology based deeper questions that you would ask someone? You know, I think we are taught very surface level to go and, you know, talk to your past customers and go, where were you before you worked with me? what did you love about working with me? What could have been better? Okay. Where are you now? Like very kind of testimonial based research versus necessarily a deeper research. So do you have an example just so that people can see what you're talking about? As in like, if you ask the right question, you're gonna get a different answer. Nida: yeah. Well, we do, sometimes we do one-on-one interviews with clients where we go deep and it could be ours, and sometimes we do like focus groups, so it's a mix of focus groups as well, where we bring 10 to 15 people to talk about what they have been experiencing with this part particular business. So we interview employee. The companies employees, they know, they have so much insight about, you know, what clients are not happy with what are they complaining about and, you know, what could be improved, you know, and things like that. And sometimes these ideas come from employees that never were able to voice themselves, you know, because they were not in the innovation department or whatever. Right. . So it's very important to imp to interview the employees. We interview past clients, we interview current clients, and we interview ideal clients that you, that the, the company or the business was, has not been able to acquire yet because there's a reason why you haven't been able to acquire them yet. Right. And we look for things that are not working with a current solution. We look for pain points. We look for, what is not like amazing in their experience working with you. Right. We don't care if it's 99% perfect, we wanna know the 1%. That's not perfect. So we're kind of like the true pillar So that itself, the feels uncomfortable, right? For the business owner and the team, but we always preframe them to understand that this is [00:14:00] amazing. This is a process where you will feel the pain, but it will lead to something better. So we always kind of make a joke about this, this bad feeling in the initial phase. So questions, I don't feel like there is a spec specific question, but it's about like asking them about, what is their experience or some maybe even crazy innovative questions like, if you could just snap your fingers and have this fix, what would it? and what are the things that are like these, it's not being fixed at the moment or there's not a, a complete like great, amazing solution that is happening now for you. And it's about like totally going and understanding their problem. Like why did they even hire this consultant or this coach or this agency in the first place? What were, were your emotions before you hired 'em? Can you share with me what were your problems and what did those problems lead to? You know, sometimes three, these three problems led to 30 other problems, right? And along this, when we listen to these interviews, sometimes ideas just come up because they mentioned this, oh, they mentioned that and they wish that we had this and that, you know but what they say, , it won't be the answer to our business. We have to take those problems and then kind of diagnose them. Then we come up with a creative, uh, solution. And the other part is understanding their customer experience in working with you, you meaning the entrepreneur, the business, right? Like we wanna get them to have the best amazing customer experience that possible. And so there's this. , a whole lot of data that we collect through this interviewing process to understand their needs, their desires, their problems, their problems, and 30 other problems as well. And how did they experience working with this company or this business, and how have they helped them and how have they not helped [00:16:00] them? It's a really long process and a whole bunch of open-ended questions and so that's how we do it. And I wanna talk about like how to not do it , Diane: Absolutely especially if the business owners are smaller business and they're doing it themselves and they're trying not to be defensive and you know, just wanting it to end Nida: Yeah, exactly. It's like I've been interviewed by the other service providers that I have hired as well. But when I listen to their questions and what they ask, it's a very surface level. It doesn't go into. Into the deep stuff. So they'll say something very general like, okay, what do we wish would be better? What, what could we do better? You know, how can we improve? Or just a general question like do you have any feedback for us? Now humans we're lazy and we will, uh, it's a psychology thing where we will access the data in our brain that is the most easiest to access. And sometimes that data is like, oh, I don't know. Or No, there's nothing to improve. Oh, I'm totally fine. You know, and plus the fact that we don't like conflict and we don't like making people feel bad about themselves, right? So there's just so many of these human factors. A human is just our human nature that goes into this process, and that's why they never get the real feedback. And they're like, , they totally don't know what's going wrong. They don't know why clients are leaving or why clients are, don't become like raving fans. And so it's because the question is not specific enough and the question is not designed to get the client to give you the real answer. You know? So when you, you an, you asked that sort of general question, people will just give you a very general, general answer. Like, yeah, it's fine, it's good, or whatever, you know, unless it's a client that's very, very unhappy with you, then they might tell you, but you know, statistically, only 4% of unhappy clients will tell the [00:18:00] business that they're not happy. Only 4%. That's very low. For every hundred people that are unhappy clients, 96 of them will just walk away and you never know what happened. Plus this, these. Diane: probably tell other people though. Nida: yes. Unhappy clients tell, , an average of 16 people per person about their experience, that negative experience. Diane: And even if someone's listening to us talking and they're like, no, no, no, my solution is it like I already have a million dollar offer. I know my people it probably wouldn't hurt you to just maybe go do some of the research piece of it just to confirm that you do know and to find out what these 96 people might not be telling you. Right. Nida: yeah, It's important,, very important to collect like NPS scores, net promoting score, where you measure your cu the customer experience . NPS score is a score that measures business growth, and h how will your business be sustainable in the future? Diane: So this is, just to clarify, this is that question, when you finish something often on a help desk or something that goes based on your experience, how likely are you to refer us to a friend or family member, one to 10 kind of thing? Nida: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So if people give you a zero to six, those are the detractors, those are the people that will go and tell 16 people on average about their bad experience, right? So that's like so damaging for the business and for the brand. Think of all those like money that you invested into building this great brand and then you have all these people going and talking, you know, negative word of mouth. So that's just terrible for the brand. Now what we want is people giving us a nine and 10, and these are the promoters. These are the raving fans. These are people that will have high, such brand loyalty. They will buy again and again and again from you, and they will go and tell everybody to buy from you as well. So that's what we want because these are the people that will feel your growth, your business growth. And. for the passives that give you a seven and [00:20:00] eight, that that is just like, we think like seven and eight is pretty, it's pretty good, right? But actually they are called passives because they're kind of like satisfied. They're kind of okay, but they don't tell anybody about you. And if the competitors come with a great offer, they are just like gonna, they can swap, they can switch immediately to your competitor. Diane: So we've gone through the process, we're thinking about finding that problem that we have a great idea to solve and we can solve it better than anyone else. And we know that we can give the best customer experience possible in this one particular solution. Do you have an example or two maybe, that your clients have created? I want you to stretch people's minds as to what innovation could be for them. Nida: yeah. Well, I'll start with my example I run another business, which is related to relationship coaching and matchmaking and. Normally matchmakers, they just have this profile where you fill out and they have a database of how they would match you with another person. Right? But then in reality, if you go and interview people that use matchmakers, they will have hundreds and hundreds of problems to tell you. They will tell you how bad the experience was and like how they will match with this person. And it was totally not my type and all that, you know? So we go in and we look at all the pain points that a person actually experiences when they are working with a matchmaker. And that means, Their internal problems as well, and you know, their matches as well and how they were matched and the, the person that they were actually working with to the matchmaker that was working with them. And the, there's just so many problems we have. I say, if you cannot list 200 problems, then you haven't really got all the problems yet. You know, we wanna get into all the details of like, every single problem that you could possibly think of in that person, in the client's mind and, and act what actually happens to them. Right? So what we [00:22:00] do is we actually coach them throughout the whole five stages of relationships. So that means it's a solution that goes on for two to five years Diane: Oh, so it's not just like, okay, you've met, you've decided that you like each other. Thank you. Bye-bye. Nida: Yeah. Because so many things can go wrong after that, right? And you have your emotional baggage and you are not even rel relationship ready. And then there's like his stuff and my stuff and then boom, no, he's just not the right one. And sometimes it's not really, he's not the right one. But there's other things, right? There's like your mindset, there's this like, oh, your bad experience from your past relationships and stuff. And we know that this internal work is just so important. And then we, we actually have a very unique process for collecting data which is called, we call the bio data. We don't just talk about, you know, what's your type and what are your values and what is your lifestyle and the typical stuff. But we actually go into, A very deep, very deep, very deep. Now, it's not super uncommon for people to, for matchmakers to ask about your past relationships. We also do that. We ask about the past relationships, but then we go in and we dig in for the patterns and we kind of like psychoanalyze everything and like, okay, what's the pattern here? How's this related to your past and then we actually have to coach them so that they are relationship ready, so that they can attract someone that we call the equal partner. Meaning like both of you feel that you have gotten a good, great. . And so we have all these frameworks and ways of doing things, and we customize the solution to fit every single client. that's why it's hard to copy because there's, there's no like sop no standard of procedure for it, Diane: The matchmaking is such an interesting example because when you talk about it, it's kind of like, well, you're gonna go to therapy , and then you're gonna get match made And then you're gonna have dating coaching. And then you're gonna have like couples therapy, like at what point do you stop? It's [00:24:00] really expensive for me to think about how you have gone. what is every single problem this person could have on this particular journey and how can I solve those problems Nida: yeah, Diane: a world class way? I can see like the giant company that of like multi-skilled people that you have working in that way where someone is smaller and they maybe don't have that team and they still wanna do something that's start to finish for their people. Could they niche down into one piece of it? So, you know, do you encourage people to be like, Hey, maybe you come up with the world's best solution, but maybe you only develop phase one. Nida: Yes. Yes. When I say to de to, to invent the world's best solution doesn't really mean to do everything right? So my example, I don't want people to take it wrong. Oh, you have to do this, like all these steps and everything, and you wanna be a specialist in everything. That's not really the case. You, you can't choose to do only one thing. Maybe you can't. You have this amazing process, uh, like if you've seen this like series on Netflix where they match people with ai, they, there, I think it's called the one or something where they take your DNA and you are matched in their data. Yeah. So if you are able to do that, that's like amazing. That's the, that's, that's the inventing the world's best solution. Right? And actually that's one question that I start this innovating process with my clients is I ask them what is the ultimate solution? Like the out of this world that's not really possible now. I'll give you an example. How do we transform someone's mindset? If we think what's the best solution? Magic pill, like in the metrics, right? The blue pill, red pill, maybe taking a magic pill, right? What else? What else? Then we get people to come up with crazy ideas. We write them on the board, then we start to look at, okay, what's a more practical idea? What could be doable? Right? So that, but we wanna start with like crazy. That kind of breaks the people's kind [00:26:00] of limitations, you know what I mean? And, and then, and then we ask them like, what's the maximum price that X would pay for y to solve the z problem for them? You know, and maybe you'll think of the richest person in the world, how much would he actually pay it's not just about finding love, it's about not wasting time. It's about being efficient. It's about like, you know, we don't have forever to live. Right? What is the price that someone would pay to find that person today, this week, this month. So this is about just no breaking all the rules and not looking at, at the market of what they're doing. This is like, no, we're looking at the client, how much would they pay? Why would it make sense for them to pay this amount of money? I love these types of questions because they're so fun to work with, and it, it sparks people's like creativity. And then they start to, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Yes, he would pay, you know, like a, a billion dollars. It would still make sense for him, right? And so I think when people start and they start to think like, how much can I charge? That's always a question when people come to like, how much can I charge? Like, you know, when you say high ticket high, how much do you think I can charge for this service? So I'm always flipping that question and I say, no. Think about the richest person in the world, or like the, your richest client or the person that is like, can pay the most money for this to solve this problem. Why would it make sense for him to pay this amount of money? How much would that be? You know, and, and why would it totally make sense for them to pay happily that, that price for the, for you to solve that problem. And So then after that you empathize, you understand the problem, then that's when I said like, define the problem, then you come up with all these problems, right? Then you need to think, do you wanna solve five of these problems? Do you wanna solve 20 of these problems? Or maybe you just wanna solve one problem and you wanna [00:28:00] really be the expert at that. But that problem has to be a really big problem that the client is willing to pay a lot of money to solve. Diane: If you're premium pricing, then. you can personalize cuz you don't need to have like 400 new purchases coming in like every month or whatever. You just need that one with that big price. So if there was one thing that you could tell every business owner about becoming that outlier in their markets, about innovating their offer, what would that one thing be? Nida: Questioning yourself, questioning your thoughts, questioning your beliefs, questioning like how you could do better. How, how could you help your clients better? And questioning the reality, questioning your truth, . I think curiosity is really what helps us become great innovators. Diane: So I think we've gone through a lot and like it's been so interesting for me and so expensive and, and I'm sure people listening are gonna have that moment of like, whoa, this is amazing. And then they're gonna sit down with a blank piece of paper and they're gonna get like a little bit scared again. Nida: I think being scared is just part of human nature, you know, we just have to understand that. Yeah. We were programmed this from like 2 million years ago that, you know, if you see a tire, you have to run away. You have to, you have to think they're gonna eat you . You can't say, oh, the tire's gonna be friends with me. But really it's, it's not helping us anymore. We need to, to understand that it's just a, a mechanics, it's just like how our brain works, but it's not reality. I would say if you're, if you're scared, if you go into that mode, just write, start writing, writing your thoughts down on paper. and you ask yourself like, what's the worst that can happen? Diane: Awesome. This has been such a good conversation. To finish up, I always ask my guests the same two questions. First of all, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? Nida: I will never [00:30:00] do something that is misaligned with my vision, my, my mission on earth and my values and that's not even just for my business, it's for my life as well, if something is like, misaligned with my values, i'll know immediately that this is not the right decision. This is not the right thing to do. I'm super intentional about what I choose to do and not to do. Diane: Yeah. That sounds super firm. Okay. Finally, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you have been given as an entrepreneur? Nida: I don't like when people try to, I guess, tell people to, to do exactly what they did. Like when people say like, oh, okay, you wanna make million dollars, just go live on camera or something like that. And then there will be people listening and like, I can't do that because I don't, yes, I can go live on camera, but maybe I won't go live on camera as good as you did. You know what I mean? They're trying to standardize everything and making their lives easier in delivering the service. The other thing is, it's like coming from the assumption that everybody is the same and everybody has the same resource, and everybody has the same strengths, and everybody has the same team and same employee. You know what I mean? And Diane: that, there's no market change. Like you did something three years ago when you could go live and you automatically got an audience, but you're still teaching people like, just go live today when actually all the platforms are trying to get you to pay to play Nida: I'm not saying that it doesn't work for, for some people. I just, just personally don't, like, don't like that, that idea because I feel like people are different. Yes. Maybe I believe in this framework that I teach, and then this is how you innovate or whatever, but there's, there's always some exception, you know, or there's this way you have to customize this to make it work for you. There's this like taking into consideration all these factors that we are different and our gifts are different, our [00:32:00] superpower is different. So, you know, you can't just take what I'm doing and copying it, Diane: I mean, that was my entire plan. I was, I was planning to launch my matchmaking service this, this afternoon, this has been such a fun conversation. I know people are gonna want to follow you and, and keep listening to you. Where is the best place on the socials or your website for them to find more of you? Nida: Well you can go to needle alert.com. There's also a quiz there where people can finish this simple four question quiz and then you get this blueprint sent to your inbox. And, or if you wanna chat with me, I'm on LinkedIn. My name is Nita Lu Zuki, just search my name. And I'm also on Instagram, so I have need alert and then need alert Official as well. And you can contact me either account is fine. Diane: Awesome. Thank you so much. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Nida: Thank you. I had so much fun as well.