Ep 205: 87 Warm Leads In 30 Days with Annie Graziani

Meet Annie And Her Work

0:00

My guest today launched her business this past summer and launched with an 87 warm lead pipeline. She's gonna spell out exactly what she did to do that and get booked out within 30 days. I'm Sarah Nawa Block, and this is Tiny Marketing

Annie Graziani 0:22

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Annie Graziani. I'm the founder and CEO of Sovera Strategy, which is a research-based workforce transformation firm that closes the gap between what organizations design and expect their people to adopt, and how the people are actually experiencing the workplace in their lives. one of, one of the mechanisms for change could be leadership. Another one could be digital transformation work. Another one could be a mergers and acquisition where the people can get lost in the shuffle, and we're ve- very focused on the value of, keeping the good people in the organizations aligned with organizational objectives.

Sarah Noel Block 0:57

Yeah, that is such an important piece that's often missed. I work with a ton of consultants, and a lot of them work with change management. So they're dealing with those acquisitions and mergers and, AI integration, but they're dealing with the actual, this is how we're going to make it happen. And you're dealing with the people element, which is so important and often forgotten.

Annie Graziani 1:24

Traditional change management is absolutely necessary, just like the identification that some change needs to happen. these are all important complementary components. But so often we also forget that humans are having to adopt whatever that change is, and we expect that they're just gonna come along for the ride. And often there's a gap between what is shared with the or- with the organization, the people that are standing it up and holding it together, and how they're receiving, what their, what the clarity and the transparency is around how they execute their work, their talent for the jobs that they were hired to do. But we also pretty often forget to ask what their ambitions are. Where could we light up their potential even more, and how can that be in contribution to, these organizational objectives? And then there's the whole other component that touches on my research, which is how do we take care of the whole person, right? Without it sounding soft, right? how do we keep the people engaged here and loyal to this vision? 'Cause the vision changes. So it becomes a bit about culture cultivation as the organizational objectives are changing, keeping the people engaged, or at least understanding how do we keep them engaged. What is our best effort there as the organization is, experiencing some amount of change?

Sarah Noel Block 2:32

Yeah. Yeah. That makes so much sense because there's so much turnover that happens during change because people are just not on board with it. But that's not the topic of today. Today

Turning Doctoral Research Into A Firm

Sarah Noel Block 2:45

we're gonna talk about how you launched your business, which you did right on the back end of finishing your doctorate. No big deal.

Annie Graziani 2:54

thank you. The, the doctorate, I didn't know was going to be, I had a feeling, but I wasn't certain that it would end up-- I figured I would publish based on it or, something, some kind of impact work would happen as a result of it. I really didn't expect that I would stand up a consulting practice doing or foundationally standing on the data that was collected in my research. It was about, as my topic was becoming sharpened over the course of about a year and a half, really it was like three years, but about a year and a half where I was really sharpening where the gaps were in our work structures in society as a, as a major pillar in society, that I started to realize, oh my gosh, people are really sustaining, or I should say enduring, what, we can arguably call abusive work culture. And it's not per organization, it's related to the structure that is outdated in how we, how we take care of people who take care of organizations and, their work. and so I designed the, the research around, collecting as much data as I could about how people were experiencing the workplaces by asking them, right? Just asking them, "What does success look like? How do you... how... What does it, what does an evening-- A-after a day of success, what does it mean to you and when you're sitting down to a table, for dinner with your family?" If that's even in the cards, right? Because sometimes we just are in this always-on culture. So I wanted to understand, that's just one little sort of example of, some of the data that how are people experiencing, technology-accelerated workforces and all of this. What I realized is that so many organizations aren't sure what to do, so we start throwing other kinds of solutions at the problem that hasn't actually been pinpointed. And that's where I saw an opportunity to stand up a, a consulting practice based on this, you know, enormous amount of data that collected through these, these storytellings from my participants- and harboring that wasn't something that I could stomach. I really felt like I have this data, I have these stories that really mean something to the people who are sharing-- who were brave enough to share, candidly their experiences. And now, and I'm in that boat, right? And so many are. So many that I didn't interview are in that boat, and I just felt like the practice needs to honor those voices. then I had to get to what is the thing that we offer? What is the value-based argument that we can bring to organizations? And that's where it relates to bottom line impact. So it's, basically it's research that we have, using some of our IP to ask the right questions and understand the, the deploy the right methodology, based on my experience in, different corporate environments and, across different functional areas, curated in a way that, we believe at Sovera Strategy, offers value to organizations in a way that they can't say no to it. Because once you have that knowledge, you have the insights about what's really happening under the hood of the organization, it really, there's a, fiduciary duty and a responsibility to honor not just the people, but the bottom line

Sarah Noel Block 5:43

Yeah. You're so passionate about it. Now I'm wondering, do you speak on stages? Because that would be a great acquisition channel for you.

Annie Graziani 5:54

Thank you. That's just starting to happen now. I have done a little bit here and there during the doctoral work, as I was like navigating where to pinpoint what the consulting practice would do, particularly in the last year and a half of my doctoral journey. Yes, so I have spoken on some stages. I am starting to build that out because, I think people need advocacy, and like I said, I can't harbor this, this data, this research. It has to be out there in the world. And it's a little unfortunate that I ha- that I feel like I have a responsibility to that because I'm not very comfortable, being in front of the camera. I'm an operator. I'm a behind the scenes

Sarah Noel Block 6:28

No one is at first.

Annie Graziani 6:29

is at first.

Sarah Noel Block 6:30

to it.

Annie Graziani 6:31

But, getting there is, And, and becoming having this expertise on organizational, behaviors and human behaviors, and then also the data to support it becomes a much easier thing to talk about. And it's very, deep in its, in the data, right? So it's deep in the experience and in the data, which is I think actually why I wanted to get back to getting my doctorate was so that I could have that feel, that credibility of not only is it just my perception and my, my observations of what it feels and, and looks like to work in different types of corporate en- environments in different sectors and in different functional areas. But, I really wanted to have the thing to stand on, which is the data, right? that's where it becomes much more, credible.

Sarah Noel Block 7:10

I, yeah, I think stages and I think workshops with like HR associations would be so good for you.

Annie Graziani 7:21

I appreciate that. And it's in the plan. It's, we just stood up the organization six months ago, so we do have some, initial endeavors in those, in those channels. But,

Where 87 Warm Leads Came From

Sarah Noel Block 7:30

Yes, let's talk about that. So you just launched your business six months ago, and you launched it with 87 leads in your pipeline, which is crazy. Can you walk me through where that came from?

Annie Graziani 7:44

A lot of that came from, m- my, my networking. So I have had, these different evolutions like we, like many of us do, over the course of our professional careers. So I have different pockets of networks. One is, my, my fashion network, and I worked in, luxury fashion in New York City for a long time. And, those are where, really where I matured in the workplace and understood cross-cultural, behaviors and those kinds of things. And those friends that have moved on in their careers in different ways are... I've maintained those relationships. That, that matters a lot, right? They know what I'm capable of. They know... They've seen my work in practice. And so now that they're in different decision-making roles, when they need this type of work, that becomes, a conversation that is comfortable.

Sarah Noel Block 8:30

Okay. Can we pause right there? Because I wanna reiterate that I heard similar thing across the Solo Consultant Summit where, just maintaining those relationships, those long-held relationships, is such an easy way to get, new job, new job, new lead. Because as people transition into different roles and have new coworkers, then they bring you into that next organization and the next organization, and it really helps you to maintain those relationships.

Annie Graziani 9:04

and it's honest, right? Because they've seen you in action, you've seen them in action. You-- we know each other. We understand, especially in the early part of my career where I started working in fashion, that, that collection of peers are... We've all matured and dealt with, all of the wrenches that life throws, right? Personal lives and in the workplace. And y- and so we understand the comfort of knowing who to trust and that the work has been done in a way that we understand it. So it's it's just finding others who have had similar experiences, and it does matter a lot. the, the tricky part there, I will say, is that a lot of those people knew me then, right? And they haven't necessarily, Th- so I was like Little Annie then, right? 'Cause I was in my early 20s, right out of college, right? But that's-- my life has shifted. I, I've-- the experiences have grown and changed for all of us. And finding the tribe that has also been through that evolution is-- has been, magical. And I have noticed that so many of my friends that I-- were only coworkers originally, right? We were friendly coworkers, but over the years, because we've stayed in touch and we've maintained those relationships, those are the trusted relationships now as like peer advisors to each other. And then, I had another whole pocket was in technology, and so that's so it's the pockets of life, right? and the way that people know you and know how you work. And you're not gonna win them all, right? 'Cause that's just not the way... That's not the way the world works. But, that was like the starting point for me, is identifying who are-- wh- where is their alignment in the network.

Manual Segmentation And Finding Fit

Sarah Noel Block 10:34

So let's look at the process element of that. You started off with a solid pipeline already. How did you go through your network and figure out who would make the most sense to connect with?

Annie Graziani 10:49

Very manually. AI was still like the, the co-work and all these efficiencies that we have even just several months later, when I started looking at what is this thing that I'm gonna stand up and who, who do I talk to about it? Like, how do I get it out there in the world? I quite literally downloaded all my contacts on LinkedIn, all my contacts on, from my various emails, right? I basically looked at who do I already know and segmented all of that, and it's well over 10,000, right? over 10,000. I don't even know

Sarah Noel Block 11:18

And you had to do that manually. That is rough.

Annie Graziani 11:20

but I, I-- okay, I come from a pre-cloud world, right? Like a, like rinky-dink technology world, right? I was-- I grew up in an era where cell phones didn't exist, and I didn't have a personal laptop until I was 21, so I can do the work. So and yes, I was, I wanted to... I also wanted to go through that. I wanted to experience like, okay, who-- let's take a walk down memory lane, right? And like really appreciate where the value is in these relationships. Who are the relationships? Not just like for Savera and for me personally, 'cause I'm not-- I don't like that transactional. transaction has to happen 'cause that's what makes the world go round. But I didn't want it to be a transactional engagement type of a feeling, I want it to be

Sarah Noel Block 11:57

No, I get what you mean. exclusively. you're hoping an end result is going to be a transaction, but that's not the process

Annie Graziani 12:05

so I really wanted to I had a professor, in my doctoral program who's, who, I said to him one day, I don't... When I-- Once I'm doing something and I'm done with it, it's in my past. I don't necessarily re-emerge that and, play it into..." it's just part of the, the snowball effect of life, right? it just, it has its play naturally. I don't necessarily go looking to figure out, like, how do I culminate that in a way that I can story tell about it. I'm not good at that. and I never really had to be. And he said... I remember he said to me something like, "That's a real miss." And so that played on my mind for a c- for, three years. And so I thought, let me just do the work." I'm gonna go in and understand and, quite literally go through. you can do some filtering and sorting and all of that to understand, who do you really know and who's just there, right? 'Cause there are plenty of LinkedIn connections that are not relevant to the thing that I'm doing now. So then it was, like, just continuing to narrow down and narrow down. I did hire, um, a marketer, and she has been incredible in helping me with, identifying the, the ICP and pinpointing within this giant list of contacts, who I know that I don't, that I wanna maintain relationships with, so I'm not gonna treat them transactionally, right? And then some are- Sure who are my cold leads, and that's okay too, 'cause it's a different, it's a different narrative. It's a different conversation. It's a different iteration of the same messaging, based on who we've seg- how and who we've segmented into each category so that it c- so that it can be as authentic as possible. So that's what I'm... That's at the heart of how we approach conversations. Yeah.

Sarah Noel Block 13:36

go back

Becoming A Category Of One

Sarah Noel Block 13:37

to what your professor said real quick because it reminds me of a conversation I had on the podcast just a couple episodes ago with Kendall Cherry, who was also part of the summit, and it was about create-- like becoming a category of one. And the way you're able to do that is by weaving in your history and figuring out the stories that really connect to what the value is that you do today, so people can see the vision of... you don't have to have, like-- So many people when they think about niching, they think about "Okay, I'm only gonna work with this industry. I'm only gonna do this thing." Like they go super, super narrow, where this is a way of building your positioning around you, so you become the only option for the people that it's right for.

Annie Graziani 14:28

Yeah, I can't argue that we are the only organization that does what we do. There's a lot of different iterations, right? But so then it does come down to trust and relationship building, which I've spent, a lifetime figuring that out and how to do that authentically. it's a very... I say this all the time, it's a very Dale Carnegie approach, which is authentically what's best for everyone involved. And if there's not a match there, we can't force a match, right? Like it-- and it really...

Sarah Noel Block 14:53

There's a good like attraction and... Like attract and repel marketing is so good because you're only going to attract the people that are the best fit for you

Annie Graziani 15:05

So I would say then the, the shift... There's a shift in another area as well that should probably be named, which is, for a long time, for my entire career, I was a doer. give it to Annie, she'll get it done. there are so many of us who are just, taking the work and getting it done and reliable and, old school, just get it done. And shifting from being the one who's doing everything, to being, like, an e- expert on a subject matter or a way of doing something is... That alone is a transition in the mindset. and also in the perception. So acknowledging that shift is important. Otherwise, you can-- It's easy to get, imposter syndrome or to be perceived as an imposter. So it matters a lot to, acknowledge that the expertise is there, and now it's converted into something that adds value to somebody else, which is, an art. Yeah.

Sarah Noel Block 15:56

whole episode on its own, talking about, like, how hard it is mentally to shift from the doer to the strategist, the expert in the room, 'cause a lot of business... Yours business didn't start like this, but most businesses start with, "I'm going to provide this service for you, and this is what we'll get done. We'll get X amount of things done in this amount of time." And then usually they transition into, "Okay, now I'm the strategist. I'll explain how this works," and you either run your business as an agency and you have people who do the work, or you have them do it internally. That is, I've talked to hundreds of consultants over the past year. That's pretty much the usually how it goes. Yours wasn't, but, it is mentally really hard to, figure out how to reposition yourself when your value is equated to, "I can do this thing, and I can get it done fast." It's not the same

Annie Graziani 17:03

Yeah, no, it's, it isn't the same. And when he said those words to me, I started to put my antennae up for understanding how... What is the process for that evolution of mindset? how do you become... what needs to happen to shift that? Because you wanna do the work. So delegation is a big part of that, right? Finding who your tribe is to help support. And for me, I didn't waste very much time at all knowing what I didn't know. I tried to find people that could support those, those functional areas because I could learn it. Anyone can learn anything. we w- we literally have access to anything that we wanna know. But- But

Sarah Noel Block 17:40

but is it worth your time? Is what it comes down to

Annie Graziani 17:43

Exactly. Is it worth the time, and could you ever become the expert? And i- if that's what you aspire to do, that's fine. if that's w- a-accessible to you, sure. But, I knew I had to get this work out there in short order because of what people were suffering and, Yeah right? and, and as clo- and in close proximity to the post-pandemic reality that people were experiencing, and then right in the pinch of that happening and, AI becoming something that is... there's agita all over the workforce for, w- how do we adopt AI? If we adopt AI, what does that replace about my work? And then how is my job description changing? Will I have a job? all of these things, and even organizations understanding how to adopt it into their business processes.

Why Work Feels Broken Now

Annie Graziani 18:26

So there's, a lot of shifts happening in the workforce right now in the human experience. Humans are, are advancing. We've evolved. We've ex- we've experienced all these changes, and we've adopted it all. We've done really well in our evolution of how the workplace has changed. The structure itself has been stagnant for 100 years, so there's a misalignment right there that Savera aims to experience. That alone is an experiential gap. So understanding that and shifting it, is what we aspire to. That's our goal, is to adjust that social structure that is such a major pillar of society and how we operate in the ways that other, other societies have done this. They attend to the wellbeing of their people, and it's not just, with mental health resources or, how we take care of the people and those kinds of things. It's like, how are the people experiencing it, and then how do we rightsize or align what the expectations are and the productivity as well with how the people are getting things done, AI-enabled especially.

Sarah Noel Block 19:23

Yeah. We were talking before we hit record, we were talking about, the shift in workplaces starting with COVID and how drastic it was. And, as we're talking, I keep thinking, like you mentioned, workplaces haven't really changed their structure in about 100 years. I really think that worked okay up until COVID, and ever since then it's been an insane just upward trajectory of how much workplace has shifted in the last seven years, that it's, a real struggle for them to figure out, how do I adapt to this now? Because it was the same-ish for a long time until COVID changed everything, and then I- AI came, two years later

Annie Graziani 20:10

Right on the hills. So I would argue that our work structures have been broken since, the '50s or '60s, right? So we installed this type of architecture in, the '40s, like '30s, '40s, right? to create this boundary management, this work-life balance, and when it actually could be called work-life balance. But when knowledge work became the majority of the workforce, knowledge work being, people that go on from high school into higher education certificate programs, you learn something so that you're not working on, basically away from blue-collar work, which of course is the most protected work right now, with- It is. So this to me is...

Sarah Noel Block 20:47

are thriving

Annie Graziani 20:48

Yes. And so sidebar, what is the next generation going to want? Because they don't want the corner office. They don't want the corner office, they don't care about the big house. They... Most of them don't... That intergenerationally, what they consider success and what they want out of life is different than what, the two generations prior aspired to. It was what we were conditioned to aspire to. So I would argue that this has been a broken system since, really, since the '60s, '70s, when a whole lot of things changed about our society. And then again, in the early 2000s or, the ni- you know, 1990s, 2000s. But now fa- Yep. And now faster than ever. But we had an awakening opportunity. We had an awakening. It did happen. The pandemic happened as an ultimate equalizer, regardless of where people are in the hierarchy, regardless of the kind of work that they do. We had an adoption of technology. We had a generational shift in the workplace. and we had, children climbing over our shoulders, right? Or we're taking care of an aging population. This all became real and equalizing during the pandemic. So now we have an opportunity to say, "Okay, if we want to go back to pre-pandemic behaviors, we've got to shut up, put the laptop down at 5:00," right? We've got to, have that boundary management. We have to provide... We've provided a ton of resources of access to work. We haven't managed the controlled boundaries between work and home life. And so-- And now we've also had this tipping point on dual income households are now the majority of households, right? And that becomes, let's say, financially dependent. we're now a financially dependent society on that. So it's not discretionary anymore to hold things together because the cost of living has shifted too. So we're basically further tamping down human potential. We're also telling people, you're more compressed because things cost more, you have less time, and you can't get out of it. You're entrapped, right? Yeah. So it's for all these reasons You know, this is why the study became designed the way it was. This is why Sovera Strategy exists, because it has to, and it's why we have our two channels, B2B, to attend to social structural change in work organizations through research, through listening from the people and closing gaps, and then through individual, our individual channel, which is people are desiring some amount of hope, right? Because we can't keep operating like this. we are crushing potential.

Sarah Noel Block 23:04

We're all burnt out.

Annie Graziani 23:05

Everyone's burnt out. my chair on my committee is like the queen of burnout. she writes on the subject of burnout and how hurried our society is, right? And so, and we're burning ourselves out because of all that. And it's also k- it comes back to the why: human potential and human purpose, right? Why are we doing this? And if we start to question that, then it's like, what can we do about it? But if we're trapped, then it... those options, our optionality reduces as well. So we stay in this cycle and then, it lends to like mental health crises. Who's raising the next generation if both parents are, working all the time? And, how are we cultivating the future of our society? I can't even get into educational structures and the outdated nature of that or other social structures, but what I can attend to and activate through is the work channel. So hence Sovera Strategy, and it's because of, if we're connecting this back to the parts that establish a business, and how to get the work out there, it's like there are so many of us that are experiencing this. It sh- it shouldn't be hard to get, 87 warm leads right away because everybody is experien- by and large, most of our society is experiencing this compression, this operation under duress kind of moment. Yeah. Yeah.

How To Connect With Annie

Sarah Noel Block 24:18

we're at time, but can you tell everybody how they can find you and work with you?

Annie Graziani 24:25

Yeah, sure. LinkedIn is probably the easiest way. That's my channel right now. I have a Substack. I'm on Instagram both for Savera Strategy but also Annie Graziani. and then the website, and, and reaching out to me there as well, so saverastrategy.com.

Sarah Noel Block 24:41

And for anybody who's watching this on video, it'll be on the screen for you. Thank you so much for joining me. This was a fun conversat- I wouldn't say fun. It was eye-opening. It was an eye-opening conversation, and really struck a chord. It... Something I can definitely relate to

Annie Graziani 25:01

That's the hope, and thank you so much for having me, Sarah

Sarah Noel Block 25:04

Thank you