Episode 135 - Finding a New Path: From HR to Community Building - with Anamaria Dorgo
Anamaria is an inspiring leader and community builder, who never planned on taking on that identity. But when an unexpected job offer came her way, she couldn't resist exploring the opportunity. Anamaria shares her journey of stepping outside her comfort zone and discovering her passion for building communities. From her previous role in learning and development to her current success in creating the Butter community, Anamaria's story is filled with valuable lessons in personal growth, empowerment, and the importance of embracing different visions.
Topics
Understanding of Learning and Development (LND) and its role in organizations.
Networking and learning from other professionals.
Letting go of control to empower others.
Feedback as a gift and opportunity for growth.
Personal curiosity, reading, and learning by doing.
Links
👉 If you are ready to have your most daring end-of-year so far, click here to join my intensive 1:1 Coaching program THE AUDACITY.
Resources
Anamaria on Twitter:
Anamaria on LinkedIn:
Transcript
[AUTO-GENERATED]
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:00:04]:
Hey, welcome to the self growth nerds podcast. I'm your host, Marie, a courage coach, creative soul, and adventure seeker. Since through hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019, I'm on a mission to help you embrace your most confident self so you can achieve your dreams, too. If you're eager for deep conversations, big questions, and meaningful connections, join me on the quest to discovering how we can create a more magical and memorable life. Hello, Nerds. How are you today? I'm really good because I'm hanging out with my friend Anna Maria Dorgo. I met Anna Maria at the do lectures. Once again, I've been telling you a lot about the do lectures, but that's because there were so many wonderful moments and wonderful people. Anna Maria was my tent mate, actually, and so I wanted to invite her on the podcast today because I love the way that she thinks. But before we dig into your mind, Anna Maria, can you tell my listeners a little bit about you? Say hello and tell us who you are.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:01:18]:
I can definitely do that. Hey, everyone. My name is Anne Maria. I sit in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I am originally from Romania, and I build communities every day, all day. I get to hang out with cool people, mainly in the realm of facilitation and learning and development. So I'm surrounded by that crowd and very excited to be here. Marie, thanks for the invitation.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:01:48]:
Awesome. Okay, so let me ask you this first question. I want to know when you were a kid, what did you want to do when you grew up?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:02:02]:
Different things, I guess. It changed a lot. But when I was really small, the first recollection I have of this question and of people asking me this question and me answering this question was, I wanted to be a nun. How do you call it? Just a nun that lives secluded and it's in communion with God. And it's so strange. Why do you want to think about it now? I grew up up until the age of six or seven, maybe very close to one of my grandmothers, like my dad's, mom and grandpa. So the first years of my life, we were living with them, and my mom and dad were working, and my grandma was at home with me. And so she was much more closer in those early life years to me than my mom because simply, she was more present and just like grandmas are really nice and caring for my needs and just allowing me to be and do everything. And she was a very religious woman. So I'm Romanian, and Romania is an Orthodox country. We live in a village. And so when you live in a village, even today, the church has a big influence on your life. And my grandma was an old woman, so she was going to the church, and I was going to the church. So there was this lot of prayer every evening, god was mentioned. It was just part of life and growing up. And so because I grew so close to the church, I always thought, like, oh, being a nun is, like, what I want to do. And that was the first thing. And then it changed. And I think by the time I grew up a bit, I went like, oh, do I want to be a journalist? I wanted to be a dentist at a certain point. I want to be a journalist. And in the end, I ended up studying psychology.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:04:11]:
What do you think? Do you see a common thread between all of them?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:04:16]:
No. Do you think so? I don't know, to be honest. I think that when I was like, the one thing, if I was to be super honest with myself, being a dentist was just something that made a lot of sense, rationally. And I was already in high school, and it's like, oh, I'm going to and then my very good super best friend, she was studying medicine. And then I had another good friend, she was studying again, like dentistry, or however that's called becoming a dentist. And I thought, like, oh, that's what you have to do in order to have a good life and have a real career, and you need to do something related to kind of medicine or lawyer or kind of this very big, strong career paths. But I didn't really it wasn't the thing that I really wanted to do. Whereas with the rest, even the nun thing, they had this very strong people oriented people linked to it, working with people, being surrounded by people. But also, in a way, I think, like, creativity. Whenever I think about journalism, or even Do, I want to start study literature? I really like that during my school years. So, yeah, I think those were, like, somehow two elements.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:45]:
Creativity and connection.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:05:48]:
Exactly.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:05:49]:
That makes sense with what you do today. Connection, connecting with people and connecting them together. I love looking to the past and what you wanted to do. And what about that? What are the values that were showing up already when you were growing up? So let's dig into your story a little bit more. So when we were at the do lectures, we were sitting in the grass one evening, and you were telling me about your journey. So you used to work in LND Learning and Development, and then tell us about what happened from there when you were in that role and you were feeling a little bit lonely. So start by, please educate my people about what L. D is, because I didn't know, so I'm sure other people didn't know, and then let's go from there.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:06:50]:
Cool. All right. So LND or Learning and Development is the department, the people that are sitting usually within a company, an organization, and NGO, and their role is the development of the rest of the team. All of the departments. And when I say about the development and I think about development and their performance, how well do they do their job, and then there are several things that add to that. So we care about all of the employee journeys from the moment they start in the company. How do we welcome them? How do we onboard them onto the new roles and align with the company values, the culture, the mission, the vision, et cetera, but also inserting them or welcoming them within their teams, making sure that they feel welcomed, that they feel prepared, equipping them with all the tools, the ways of working, the spoken, unspoken rules, et cetera. And after the onboarding, everything that comes from that, how do I get better at my job? How do I perform? Better. How do I move on the career ladder, upwards, sidewards? Can I switch departments? How do I grow my skills, soft skills, technical skills, et cetera, internal promotion, leadership, soft skills in general. So there's a lot of programs that we design and different tools that we use methodologies around adult learning, and how do we collaborate and how do we learn socially, formally, informally, and so on. So there's a big mixture to that, but that's basically what the department does. We are the development partners, the growth partners for the workforce, the rest of our colleagues. Usually this department sits within HR, so human resources, the people people. But when I moved, I moved from an HR role into a learning and development role. So from I overlook the whole employee experience to I overlook their growth and their development. And when I did that Pivot, I landed in a startup to scale up in Amsterdam. And I wasn't reporting, like you would traditionally think, into the HR or people department. I was reporting into the retail director because my role was retail learning and development manager. So I was supporting about 500 people in almost about 60 stores around ten European countries. And so that was my beginning into this LND journey. And I was the department. The department was me.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:09:41]:
You were the one person department.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:09:44]:
I was the one person department. And the company culture was great, and I had a lot of freedom and trust from my manager to figure things out and to experiment and to try things, even if I haven't done them before. And he was very supportive of me doing that. But I think I was about eight months into that role. I tried a lot of things. I had some setbacks, I had some wins. I was like, oh, I really like this thing, like trying to figure it out, and working with people to design onboarding and programs and elearning and platforms and engagement campaign and all that fun stuff. But I think I was eight months in, and I was kind of starting to feel like, oh, I don't know, what else can I do? I saw that all of my creativity and everything that I could. Kind of like I am pretty resourceful, and I can just go out there and build things or figure stuff out. But I started to become very curious of how is LND done in other companies because this was my first role in the department. And I was like, I wonder what other companies are doing. How do they do leadership program and how do they do onboarding, and what if they're I don't know. We were going the path, the journey to become a B Corp. B Corporation. So how is l d working in a different B corp? What is different? So there was a lot of questions, and I was bringing them into know, reflections, into my one to one with my manager. And one day he said, you know what, Anna Maria? I trust you, because I don't really know what you do. Like, I'm a retail director. I'm coming from a commercial background. I don't have a learning background, HR background, et cetera. So I have to trust you. But I'm wondering, how are you going to grow and develop? Because I can't offer you that support. And so you're alone here. You don't have a colleague to bounce off ideas with. So how are you growing? And he was the type of person that always encouraged me to go outside beyond the company. He was very talk to others, shared stuff. If he was talking to a retail director in another company, he was always asking, what about L D? How do you guys do that? And who's the person, and can I put her in touch with Anna Maria? So he was constantly just kind of encouraging me to look beyond just my tiny desk and our company reality to look outside. And in that one on one, he said, well, you're an extrovert. You like to chat. Why don't you go out there and just try to chat and see if you can find other people that maybe they're also alone in other startups in Amsterdam to kind of just get together and learn from them. And I thought, like, Damn, that's such a good idea.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:12:29]:
I see that he encouraged you to take responsibility for your own growth and your own fulfillment. I think everyone can benefit from this because if you're feeling limited in your job, it's like, okay, how can I take responsibility for my own girl? What can I do to expand that? Maybe I'm not being offered that's not right in front of my face. How can I go out there and make this path more stimulating for myself?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:13:08]:
Yes. I think he kind of recognized that I had the drive. I am that type of person. And he was just so interested in my personal development. Also, about that same time, I started sharing thoughts, things I was learning. I attended lots of workshops, conferences. So he knew that I was the type of person that goes to create opportunities. Right? He knew that I'm not shy. I'm not, like, someone that doesn't know how to figure stuff out. So he knew that there was a fertile ground for him to push me, and he showed interest. Like, I remember I posted my first LinkedIn article whenever I was sharing something on LinkedIn, because we were connected. I already knew that the next day, the very morning, he would come to the office and he would ask me about that. Hey, you wrote that article. I read it really good, by the way. That's all. What do you think about that? And how do we apply it here and how do we do that? We were sharing articles. He was just very interested in what I was reading and what I was doing and where my head was at. And so when he kind of proposed that, I was like, it made so much sense because I was already somehow I was very drawn to community. And I guess I could go back in time to see where that comes from, because there were some early indicators, I guess, that kind of pointed towards that type of learning through gathering and community. But in that moment, I remember because I was just eight, nine months in Amsterdam. It was a new city for me. And I remember that I was very drawn into innovation, just creativity. So I created a Meetup group on the Meetup app. And then by the time he kind of throw that ball at me, I was already having that meetup, and I was already hosting the first session with random people. I only hosted one random people who.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:17]:
Were also working in L d. No.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:15:19]:
So this was something totally different. This was a group on I created a Meetup, and I was like, hey, I'm in Amsterdam, and I'm very interested in innovation and creativity and brainstorming and how do we actually solve problems and come up with things and so on. So that was my own initiative in my own spare time. And in Meetup, people can just they discover your groups, and people started joining, and yeah, those were complete strangers. Like, just random strangers. Random people.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:15:51]:
I didn't know you did that. I did that, too. When I started my business, I was like, I have no friends who are entrepreneurs, so I want to surround myself with like minded people. Okay, who are they? I want people who are purposeful, who are just starting businesses that love nature, that would love to brainstorm in a chalet somewhere. And I tell people this all the time because it's like, well, if you don't have the kind of people you want around, you make it happen. It's your job to make it happen. Instead of complaining and feeling lonely, it's like, okay, there are so many opportunities, especially now with the Internet, to find your people, and that increases your quality of life massively.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:16:36]:
Yeah. For me, back then, also, there was one besides, I want to meet my people and so on. And I was genuinely interested in for me, I think I like to start things. I like to do stuff that I haven't done before. I enjoy that process a lot of starting something, doing something that wasn't there before and figuring that process out. I'm not as good as maintaining after that thing's out in the world. I'm like, I lose interest afterwards. I'm like, now, okay, fine. So I like to start things. And for me, back then, it was also like, I'm curious about innovation. I want to facilitate. I want to bring people together. I didn't have the team. I was doing that through my work a little bit as an L D professional. But I thought, I really just want to bring random folks together, and I want to learn, and I want to see myself facilitating that process. I learned by doing a lot. So for me, that meetup thing, it was I am now starting something. And it was very selfish in a way, because I was like, I would really like to do that type of work, and I really like to hang out with that type of people. And so I'm just going to create that for myself. That always felt like, much easier for me than trying to go out there and kind of find people. It was always easier to just like, I'm just going to make I'll make it myself, and then we'll see.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:11]:
And you know what? So many people are in situations where they don't necessarily like the work they're doing and they're dreaming about changing careers, and they think in an all or nothing way where, okay, well, I could change career and go there, but I don't know if I'm going to like it. And I love your mindset where you're like, on the side of your job. I'm just going to try these things.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:18:38]:
Yes.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:18:38]:
I feel drawn to that. So I'm just going to try it and see and learn by doing. You don't need to say, okay, I'm done with L and D. I'm going to become a community manager. No, you can just try things on the side and get to know yourself.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:18:52]:
Yes. Okay, I have a couple of thoughts related to this. Let me see if I don't lose them all, because the first thing, what you said, I'm very aware that we have different personalities, right? And sometimes for certain people, it's hard to start something, especially if they feel alone. And you need that encouragement. And for me, I have to say something that was helping me back then and helping me since forever and still helping me today is an accountability buddy, an accountability group. And back then, when I started this whole meetup innovation, blah blah blah what I was doing, I said yes to a learning experience which was called Working Out Loud. It's a framework designed by John stepper. That framework is now on their paywall. It was free back then. It was an open source resource, and in very simple terms, it was a twelve weeks program, a group of five people. So it was you and another four people. You were going through those twelve weeks. So it was what, three months? You were meeting every week for an hour with that group, and every week was coming with a PDF of activities. Like you were told what to do. So you kind of self facilitated that conversation, but you had stuff to do from meeting to meeting. It was very action oriented and working out loud. It's a methodology that helps people tap into networks externally, outside into their own resources and external resources, and using the power of accountability, like group accountability, to create stuff, to start stuff. Some people use it to start a podcast, some people use it to explore a career path, some people for whatever. Right? So I landed into that group, and this was my project. My project was to start this meet up on innovation and so on. So for those people that want to try something alongside or they want to change, I recommend finding at least one, if not two or three people that are also working on change. You don't have to work on the same thing. And actually, our group back then, everyone was working on a different thing. We were all from different countries. Someone was doing blockchain, someone was facilitating, someone was internal. It didn't really matter because everyone was working on their own stuff. But those meetings were there to kind of challenge ourselves, oh, have you done progress? I have not. Well, what's keeping you from making progress? Is it an objective external thing? Is it internally in your mind? So we were challenging each other with questions. And to this day, I still have several accountability sessions partners that I meet regularly once a week or once every two weeks. For every single one of them, I have a different goal and purpose. So that's a great tool to start. Because starting it might be maybe easy for me or you certain type of people, but for other people it might be a bit daunting, like, okay, so how do I do, what's the first step? And how do I surround yourself? And they will push you. Have them be that kick in the butt for you. So that was one thing that was yeah, I did an episode a few.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:22:35]:
Weeks ago about perfectionism and how there is different types of perfectionism. Some people are procrastinator perfectionists where they struggle to start something, and some others, like me, are messy perfectionists where we want to start a bunch of things, but when it gets boring, it's hard to keep going. And there's all kinds of people. You two, you're the same, right? There's all kinds of people. So we need to pair up with those who don't have a hard time to keep going so they can inspire us, we can take example on them. People who have a hard time starting need to pair up with people like us who can start easily and we can help each other out.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:23:16]:
Exactly. Yes. And then one other thing that I wanted to mention with regards to this is the side thingy, I can't really stress how important that mindset was for me for my development and still is today. I think I started involuntarily in school years whenever I was getting saying yes to kind of extra school activities and clubs and whatever. But as long as I remember, I think I was probably about like 1213. I always had something on top of school, on top of university, on top of job, something that I didn't had to do, something that no one was paying me to do. Something that no one was pushing me to do. Something purely that I wanted to do. And those were so many different things and I explored so many things and some I explored for longer and others for less. Because I thought like, you fall in love and then you fall out of love and that's perfectly fine. But for me, whenever I always have something on the side, always there's always something I'm working on on the side that intrigues me or that I find curious. And some of those projects end up now turning into really real career pivots and opportunities for me.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:24:47]:
Why do you think that's important for you to have those side things?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:24:53]:
I think remember what I said when you asked me about what's the common thread with the roles? I'm a curious person, I like to read, I'm a curious person and I love to learn by doing so. Yes, on the side. What I mean on the side, it's not that, oh, I'm learning something and I'm taking courses. Although that's amazing for me was always like I want to learn more about crafty things, but I'm not just going to do that in my own living room, painting and watercolor and take a course and whatnot. I'm just also going to have a blog and I'm going to blog about that. Although I have no clue what that is and I don't know where this is taking me. So I had a blog that not many people knew about for about two years where I just posted random stuff I was doing and I was an HR business partner, like traveling the world. And I always had something that involved doing. And then I started community or in high school I was just like, I'm just going to redo all of our biology posters with the digestive system. I'm just going to redraw them because they're old. After school I'm just going to stay there and redraw them. No one asked me to. I always wanted to have something to really put on my creative energy to create something that I don't have to and just make it because I want to. It gives me so much energy. It fuels me. It doesn't drain me. It fuels me. And some were short lived. Other projects were turning to great things today that are very impactful because that's where we started with Alan D Shakers. But yeah, and then I wanted to say one last thing related to this.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:26:51]:
Yes.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:26:52]:
That's proving very helpful to me still today, whenever I talk about the side projects, I don't take them too seriously. Not taking them too seriously doesn't mean not giving my best or trying my best. It means I don't want to put the pressure that this has to turn into something. I don't want to put the pressure that this has to be perfect and what helps me keep that mindset, that freedom to explore curiosity and shape it and even drop it sometimes after three months, because I thought it's something, and then it turned out to be something else, and I don't want that. And now I drop it, and I start something else, and that's perfectly fine. But what helps me not attach to the side projects and explorations is calling them experiments. I constantly tell them this is an experiment. Because when I say it's an experiment, I don't know how long will it take. I don't know what I will find out. I don't know where it will go, how it will go. So it's not really on my shoulders. Like, I don't feel any pressure. I'm like, hey, it's an experiment. I guess we'll wait and see. We play with it. So, yeah.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:28:02]:
I freaking love this. I freaking love this. Because that's where I think many of us hit a wall, is we put too much pressure on ourselves. Our bar is really high. We have good taste. We're overachievers. But calling them side experiments, we're just playing. Okay, so you've shared two things that helped give you energy and momentum. It's the accountability buddies and the side experiments.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:28:29]:
I love it.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:28:31]:
Now, if we go back to your story, I know about LND Shakers, but my listeners don't. So tell us about what are the events that led to LND Shakers, what that is, and how it brought you.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:28:47]:
The job you have today? Yes, it so, yes, let's go back to the story, because I left where my manager encouraged me to kind of search, kind of, like, outsource your team. I can't help you. You're on your own. You need to find someone to learn from. My first step was to go on LinkedIn, and I went to the search bar on LinkedIn, and I put Learning and Development Manager Amsterdam, and I went through the list, clicked on all the profiles, looked at their profiles, saw who they were, what they were working on, which kind of company, and I just started approaching them. So I did that for a day or two. I probably approached maybe 80 people and my message was very simple. Hey, I know you don't know me. My name is Anna Maria. I'm working at this company. In this role, it looks like we have similar roles. I don't have a team, so I'm the department. It's myself. I'm the department and I'm looking to find a small group of people in Amsterdam that are willing to meet. We called it a working group and then we called it a co learning group. So we had different random names for this. We weren't calling ourselves a community. It was a group of I was hoping to get five people that I can meet once a month for a couple of hours to talk about our work and see what they were working on and get feedback on what I was working on and do that. So basically outsourcing my team. That's what I was looking for. That was my initial goal.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:30:33]:
Your initial goal was four people and now there's more than 4000.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:30:37]:
Yes. Yeah. Funny how these experiments, they grow if you nurture them. So, yeah, half of the people ignored me. Half of the people came back and said, you know what? I need this in my life. Yes, I'm alone. Yes, I want to learn from others. Let's do this. What do we do? Everyone that came back to me, I created a LinkedIn group. I put them all in and we used that group to simply coordinate meetups. So we were meeting offline once a month in one of our offices with our laptops. And I have vivid memories of the first three, four sessions. I know who was there, I know what we talked about because it was so freaking impactful. I had a notebook next to myself and every single session I would walk out with pages of resources and links and tools to try out and BOOKMARKS and people to follow and courses to take. And it was just mind blowing. And in every single new meetup, someone was bringing someone new. Because I talked to Marie and I told her about our group and she also wants to be part of the group.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:31:56]:
Right.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:31:57]:
That's kind of how you build community. Very organically. So that was fun. And then COVID came. And then when COVID came, obviously we were like, no more meetups. And I think about a month in. My partner in crime back then was Monique. She works at WeTransfer. Shout out to Monique. And we teamed up. We were kind of steering this as a power duo. And we said, you know what? We need to meet online. We started meeting online and it was really interesting because everyone was home at home. And I don't know if you recall, but there was this kind of awakening of folks wanting to learn stuff. I don't know if you were the same, but I remember attending two webinars each day.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:32:46]:
Me too. I signed up for Skillshare. I was going to master classes. I. Wrote a book by following like a book writing course. Yeah.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:32:57]:
So that was kind of COVID kind of came with this wave of we're now at home, we don't have a social life, so let's learn. And so people started to discover our group on LinkedIn from all over the world. And we were accepting them now because we were like, well, it doesn't matter now if you're in Amsterdam or if you're in Vienna or in Delhi or in whatever, you're free to join. And I recall the group being 100 people. For me, that felt massive. I was like, who are these people? And they're from all over the world and they're 100 people, and what is this thing? And I felt that this thing was changing, right? It was not the thing that I intended it to be. At the beginning, the small group in Amsterdam, and then I didn't knew what it was. So I was like, what is this thing? And no one knew. And then I realized, well, if no one knows, we get to decide what it is. And so we hosted monique and I, we hosted a series of three workshops. We use the framework from liberating structures. If you have facilitators in your listeners, those are great conversation structures, open sourced on the Internet that you can use. We use one of them. It's called purpose to action. And you can use the Purpose to Action framework for any type of initiative that you want to bring into the world. Because it takes you to why do you do this? It takes you through that frame.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:34:30]:
Why do you do this? For?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:34:31]:
Whom are you doing it? What are the rules? What do we do? Actions? And then what's the impact? Why do we do it for? So it's just a beautiful framework that kind of gives you a reason to go structurally to making sense of stuff. And that was what we needed to we needed to make sense of what is this thing now? Because we're global and we meet online and it's clearly bigger than five people, so what is this? And those workshops were amazing because everyone was invited in the community, so anyone was able to join. And we went through that framework. And a lot of the ideas that came back then were the fundamental, the foundation of what LND Shakers is now. This beautiful global community for learning and development professionals that has over 4000 members from all over the world and so many learning experiences. But if you go back to three years and a half ago, we were in those workshops, and some of the questions we were asking ourselves was so what's the purpose? What is Alani Shakers for? Whom are we? Who's invited in? Who do we invite here? What is it that we do? We created that together.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:35:51]:
I love that.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:35:52]:
It was a full co created collaborative process. And the tipping point was you brainstorm. Okay, so what do we do? How do we create value? We're this awesome group of smart people from all over the world. We care about the same thing, which is learning. What do we do together? So what are the options? So people talk, let's do events and then let's have a yearly conference and let's have this. So people went all in with ideas. And I remember by the end of the third workshop, we were looking at this beautiful mirror, whiteboard with a lot of sticky notes and beautiful ideas. And then the pivotal question was, how are we going to do this? Because Alani Shakers is not a business. No one works there full time. Everyone has their job. They either work full time somewhere, they have their consultants, their freelancer, they have kids, they have dogs, they have their life, they have their free time, they have their whatever, right? So everything that happens in Adoni Shakers is on top of all that. And so people were very excited, but the question was like, so how do we like, who does that? That sounds like a lot of work, so how do we pull that off? And the community said, well wait a minute, but what if we have these different types of events that we want to have? We have event managers, so every single event is managed by one person. And what if every single thing that we're doing, we divide, we divide and conquer. Basically that was the idea. And they came up with this idea of we need a steering committee, like we need a core team, a group of people that kind of beyond the events and all the operational things that we're doing, let's say constantly thinks about the vision and where are we going? Like constantly goes to the drawing board and dreams big and strategizes and has kind of like the overarching purpose in mind so we don't lose track. So all of these awesome ideas came from the group, came from us as a collective. I couldn't have dreamed of those things by myself, never. Like me at my desk trying to figure this out. I'm pretty sure I would have fallen short of ideas. And not only has the community came together to come up with this idea, they also came to pick it up. There's a lot of whenever you try to create something or do change and it involves people, there's always this constant you need to get people's buy. In this case we didn't need a people's buy in because it was their idea. So it was our idea. So we all bought into the idea.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:38:38]:
Involved in the process from day one.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:38:41]:
There we go. Yes. And so I remembered by the end of last meeting we said, okay, so now we need the core team. Raise a hand. Who wants to be in the core team? Seven people raise their hands and that's how we started.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:38:53]:
Awesome. Now what does it require? From you as a leader, as the founder or co founder with Monique shout out from the founders to allow for that co creation.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:39:06]:
Yes. So, quite bluntly, in our case, I think it required not having a clue.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:39:14]:
Not having what?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:39:15]:
Not having a clue what we were doing. So we were like, we genuinely didn't know what this was, and we were like, okay, we can now sit and try to figure this out together. But at the end of the day, this is a group of 100 people, and they're showing up. They care, they ask questions, they come up to the event. So clearly, it's beyond you and me. And also for me was very clear. Marie and for Monique as well. I mean, she has a full time job. She has three kids. She's a superwoman. So for us, it was very clear from the beginning that none of us wanted to really make this into a second job or a chore or a.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:39:53]:
To do or whatever.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:39:55]:
And I constantly felt like, okay, and I was even telling people very often, often as I could, I started this thing, but I want to be part of it. I don't want to be at the top of it. I don't want to lead it. I don't want to have that responsibility on my shoulders. I want to be part of it and enjoy the journey as much as any of you do. So then, yeah, it was this openness to kind of not want it to make it about you or to put that pressure on us that we need to find all the answers somehow. Not knowing, being uncomfortable with not knowing. Again, that experimental mindset. We don't know what we're doing. We don't know, but let's figure it out together.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:40:41]:
Experimental mindset and also knowing what you want and what you don't want. Being comfortable with saying, you know what? I don't want this to take over being clear. Like, I don't want this to become a second job. So what needs to happen in order for this to be my reality?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:41:00]:
Exactly. I guess individually, each and one of us had that clarity, and we carried that. Even today, we carry that clarity. And now we have this big community, a big platform, and the core team is 40. So there are 40 people that make stuff happen on a regular basis. I'm not counting everyone that shows up every day to answer questions and share links and resources and PDFs. And I'm not counting those. Those are hundreds, right? Like, everyone. But I'm counting the people that right now host events. We have a podcast, we have a newsletter, we have a coaching program, we have a mentoring program. We have a resource database. We were hosting conferences on conferences and expo, like, big events, stuff like that. So, so many things that are happening. Local hubs, local chapters in big cities around the world, learning clusters. Anyone can launch a learning cluster around the topic they care about as long as they manage that. So we're already shakers. But the core team has this independence to run with their project because no one has the time to and actually, no one really wants to micromanage. And I don't want to turn into a manager, be like, hey, what's happening? And what do you do? And so on. And I had precious lessons along the way because now I think I sound very brave and very wise. But it was a roller coaster with that as well. I learned so much about myself as a leader and about how I want to show up. And I was very fortunate to have people in the community slap my hand and hold me accountable for things and just push back. And it was a beautiful journey. Yeah, because I guess at the beginning it was this I don't know what this is, and let's steer it and so on, but after a year, a year and a half, you grow attached. I grew attached. I grew attached and I am still attached. And when you growth attached to something, you know what creeps in. It's beautiful. Growing attached to something is not a bad thing. I think it's natural for us humans. But something creeps in. And maybe what creeps in and what suffers when you grow attached is this wanting to control or steer according to your vision. You can't do that with community because it's all our vision and we're building this together. And whether you want it or not, very few things in life are absolute black and white. So when we talk about a project or really anything that we were doing as a community, there are literally 100 ways to make that happen. Hundred visions and 100 possible ways to implement something. And none is better than the other. They're just so different. But because I grew attached, I started to have certain my own vision of how things should look like, how things should be implemented, how things should be communicated, how things should be launched, how things should look like, like from the visuals and the page of something and the whatever. And I was like, oh, we were distributed. So the core team and people were doing stuff, but I was like, looking at it and constantly like, oh, but can you change that? Or by the way, maybe we can do that. Or I could feel the manager in me coming out, the person that wants to control and manage and have things according to my wish. And that does not work because again, your way or their way, someone else's way, they're both valid. It's just different. Yes, I want that blue and you want it pink. But I'm like, is that somehow undermining our community purpose and values? It is not. Okay, then actually it doesn't matter if that's blue or pink or if you wrote that or tone of voice and so on. So I realized that in order to let go, you truly need to let go. And then put I learned to trust people. I was like, you think, like I say that I trust you, but deep down in my heart, maybe I don't. So I go to kind of look at your work and give you feedback. And that was very but at the.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:45:34]:
End of the day, I think my idea is better than yours.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:45:37]:
It's better. Yeah, I was like that. I'm not going to lie. There was a beautiful I'm grateful for all of the lessons that I learned there and grateful to people that came back and said, well, like, hey, do you want me to do this or do you want to do yourself now? Or what's happening here. People came back and they were like, hey, either we're distributed and you let go of control or you don't. But you can't be somewhere in the middle. You can't tell me that this is mine and then come and kind of control every single step of the way. And I don't mean not giving feedback, because I still give feedback because at the end of the day, everything's a learning opportunity. So feedback is a gift. When you see things and you believe they could be done better, there's nothing wrong in passing that feedback on to the person. But at the end of the day, to be aware that it's up to them whether they want to take and implement that feedback or whether they thank you and they park it somewhere and they continue to do their own thing. So for me, I think that's the biggest thing that changed. I still see things. I still pass on my ideas or feedback to people. And many people ask me for feedback, hey, I'm working on this. What do you think? The same way that I ask them for feedback when I work on stuff. But I guess where I'm going first, I give that feedback in a very this is what I think. This is why I think that this is your own project. Run with it. And very often they say, great idea, Anna Maria. Let's implement it. And equally, 50% of the time, they come back and say, I don't see that. I see where you're coming from, Anna Maria. I don't see that the same way. So I'm going to run with my idea. And then me, I can in full with a very easy heart, I can let go of that and be like, okay, I made my voice heard. That's their project. They decided to run with it and go with their vision. I respect that so much, and I love that because then it truly means that it's their own. Then it's truly their own.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:47:50]:
And that's the voice of wisdom talking because, yes, then it means it's their own. And also, it just feels better for you. It feels more light hearted for you because your well being doesn't depend on what they do with your suggestion. Because when it does, and I think many people get stuck in that is, when you're too attached and trying to control your well being depends on, are the people going to understand what I want? Are they going to do what I think they should? And that's the red flag, what I think they should do. And then you just spend so much time feeling flustered because you're too attached. So the art of letting go, we could keep going in that direction for hours. I think that's fascinating, but we are running out of time. So the last thing I want you to share is the plot twist of how L. D. Shakers ended up leading to the current job. That it's funny because you said, I don't want this to become my second job. And it didn't. But it did lead to a career.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:49:01]:
Change, didn't big a big go. Let me go back time. I was an L e. Manager, and I was part of the L. E. Shakers, and I think we were about two years, two years in the journey, living your best L. D. Life, living my best L. D. Life, loving my job, my manager, everything. I was very happy in my role and with where I was, the job was amazing, and I was fueling all my creativity through L. E. Shakers and doing just lots of things. And then one day, a member from Alani Shakers community, a good friend, actually, she texted me, and she said, hey, so I did something. I just recommended you to Jacob, the CEO from Butter. Butter, it's a virtual session tool, all in one tool to host virtual collaborative sessions, whether those trainings workshops meetups, et cetera. That's the product. I knew about the product, so I knew what Butter was. And she texted me and said, they're looking for a head of community. They want to build a community. They don't have one. They want to build one, and they're looking for someone to start that project. And I recommended you to him, so don't be surprised if they reached out, if they reach out to you. And I remember having a very good big laugh and thinking, wow, a, I'm flattered. Thank you very much. Someone recommending me for a job that almost never happened. And I thought, that's so beautiful, right? Amazing. But then I immediately told her, I don't think these people will reach out because I'm not a community builder. I'm an Alan EU manager. And I remember she was like, are.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:50:52]:
You for real now?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:50:53]:
Or is this a joke or what's happening here? Because, you see, it's like, the identity is what we believe we are, right? So my identity was, I'm a learning and development manager that has a community or it's part of a community, and that's called Alan D. Shakers. Having a lot of time, a great fun. There but I wasn't calling myself a community builder. I wasn't seeing myself a community builder. And then I parked it and we had a good laugh and I thanked her and I was know, very grateful. And then I was like, yeah, I just parked it somewhere in the back of my head. I think it was a week or two weeks after where my current manager reached out. She's the chief growth officer at Butter. She reached out via LinkedIn and she was like, hey, Anne Maria, we heard great things about you and your Alody Shakers community, and we're looking for someone to start this community. Do you want to have a chat? And so I was like, oh, my God. Wow. First, I was offered jobs before internally, so internal promotions, like, I was having a role and I was doing good. And then I got promoted, so I was offered jobs, but I never before was offered a job or approached to apply for a job by another company externally in any shape or form. I always had to be the one applying for jobs. I always had to be the one struggling and going there and trying to prove myself and so on. So for the very first time ever, someone approached me and said, we have a job. And I think you might be interested in that. I think you might be a good profile. Do you want us to start the conversation? So that was one thing, because when that happens, you're thinking, dear Universe, what's up? Are you trying to send me a message? But also, when I read that message, I thought from somewhere deep down, this question came or this curiosity came. Is community building the thing that I am meant to be doing? Because I was enjoying it. I was loving it. I was like, if I could spend all my life doing L d. Shakers, that's what I would do. So when this opportunity came, it almost felt like too good to miss. And I said, I have to explore this. It probably won't lead to a job, but at least I want to talk to them and I want to see, how does that look like, making this your job? What do they ask me? What will I answer? How will that whole process look like? So I said yes to you, and we went into different conversations and so on. At the end, they offered me a job. And it was a very hard decision to take, really hard decision to take, because I loved LND. I still love L-D-I loved the company I was working for, my manager. Everything there was great. And so it was that type of decision where you have to pick in between something you like and love and know and pick something that you hopefully probably going to like and know. And it's new and it's kind of calling. And I guess one thing that made me kind of take that decision was, well, if I don't like it, if this doesn't turn out well, I can always go back to LND. As I know it, and it's fine, I'll just come back, it's okay. So, again, like, trying to kind of mentally set a safety net for myself. So that was my safety net in order to be able to make the jump. And so, yeah, two years ago, I started two years and a half, almost started at Butter and as a head of community, and I've been building the Butter community again from the ground up while still being very much involved in Alani Shakers, very much present. So that's kind of how a side project that was always an experiment led to a very big, unplanned, surprising, exciting career.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:55:05]:
I love I love that story so much because there's not just one way to have a career pivot. It's not necessarily about going back to school, starting from zero. It can be so much more playful. It was organic. You organically just followed the crumbs of curiosity, and it led you where you are today just because you're a curious, creative person who dares to follow what they are called towards. I love that. And you have such a wise, wonderful brain. Where could my listeners find you if they want to learn more, if they want to get into conversation, if they want to join L D Shakers, where can they find you and your communities?
Annamaria Dorgo [00:55:52]:
Yes. So the easiest way to reach out to me is via LinkedIn. You can find me under Anna Maria Dorgo. It's my name and maybe Maria, we can share the link.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:56:04]:
Yeah, it's going to be in the show notes for sure.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:56:07]:
Exactly. So I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I love hanging out with my network there and learning out loud, sharing out loud and all that. L D shakers can be found also on LinkedIn. And then the Butter community is just buttercommunity.com, so you can just Google us and land there. Yeah, I hope just to see some of you, your ears. Your ears and then faces inside those faces. Awesome.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:56:37]:
Thank you so much, Anna Maria, and thank you to all the listeners, and have a beautiful week.
Annamaria Dorgo [00:56:44]:
Thanks for having me. Have a great rest of the day. Bye.
Marie-Pier Tremblay [00:56:50]:
Hey, if you love what you're hearing on the Self Growth Nerds podcast and you want individual help finding a new direction for your life and developing the courage to make your dreams a reality, you have to check out how we can work together on Selfgrowthnerds.com or message me on Instagram at Self-growth Nerds. My clients say they would have needed that support years ago. So if you're tired of feeling like you're wasting your life, don't wait. Get in touch now. And I cannot wait to meet you.