BECAUSE Responsibility is foundational to functioning effectively as a human being (whether you seek success, happiness, teamwork, leadership, change, — or even a hot bod, an amazing meal on the beach in Morocco, a sense of calm, or anything else under the sun).

AND, because studying, practicing, and teaching Responsibility is what I am — and by extension, what The Responsibility Company is — all about.

AND, because the world is in more outrageous chaos than usual, and that chaos exposed a significant kink in my business model (and perhaps in life?!?).

THEREFORE, I’m making a change.

(“I” am Christopher Avery. It follows that if I’m pivoting then so is The Responsibility Company. I hope that won’t always be true, and it is true today.)

The Story

I’ve noticed myself complaining internally — and occasionally out loud to Responsibility community confidants — that I want to spend less time managing The Responsibility Company operations and more time creating and delivering valuable Responsibility content. And, that I could not find a way to make the transition since I could not hand off operations yet, and there are only so many hours in a day…

…yadda, yadda, whine, whine.

(Sound familiar? “If only I could get past X then I could Y!” Yes?)

One day, my mentor Bill McCarley (see his picture and short bio on the About page) called me on it. He said that when I get completely clear that I really want to create and deliver content instead of manage operations, then I’ll create content.

(Dang. I know this to be true about commitment and attracting our reality.)

Shizzle. Nailed — right between the eyes. My story (i.e., Justify) evaporated and I was left to face it, to own it.

(In case you are concerned about Bill violating my safety, he has 100% permission from me to assume “mastery-mode” anytime and help me “look” at my own limiting beliefs. He’s an expert at doing it with compassion and precision, for which I remain grateful.

This is what we teach our practitioners and coaches.)

And by the way, this awareness — that I was holding myself back while blaming it on circumstances — is a basic tenet of Responsibility — that we are ALWAYS creating, choosing, and attracting our experience, even when we are not owning that we are.

This is backed by a growing body of research. The quantum physics way of saying this is that our own consciousness creates our external reality. This view is referred to as “biocentrism“.

Quantum physics and biocentrism are great examples of some of the content creation and delivery I look forward to digging into for you in 2021.

The Pivot

So, I’m doing it. We’re pivoting.

I intend to create oodles of free (and hopefully valuable) content about Responsibility thinking.

And, since I’m a writer, I’ll write. Emails. Like this one.

And I’ll email them to all who ask for them.

I’m excited. We’re excited.

(By “we”, I mean my teammates at The Responsibility Company.)

So this is the pivot: I — we — are taking a new path to serve and build our community — you.

The fundamental element of this new path is simple and straightforward: Create and send valuable content free of promos and offers to anyone who wants it.

That’s right, valuable content and no selling.

That means that when you join the community you will never receive a “BUY NOW!!” message in any regular email.

Nope. Never.

No scarcity language.

No arm-twisting.

No indications of lack or not good enough.

No shoulds or “you need to’s.”

No FOMO (fear of missing out).

No psychological ploys.

None of that. It all ends now.

Promise.

The Inspiration

I have a confession…

I have never felt good about the “permission” marketing approach by which we offer a “lead magnet” and then immediately hit you over the head with a “buy now” campaign. And yet, it is what most “experts” teach and what most marketers do.

So that stops.

This pivot is the next logical step from the recent move we made to raise our standards regarding what we do with your email address.

So then, you may be wondering how will we sell if we don’t send you enticing offers in our emails?

(Or you may not be wondering at all, yet it seems important to address it here, so you know.)

That’s a good question since indeed we are a business. Profit allows us to serve. We intend to be profitable and serve an ever-growing community.

To sell, we will use a strategic marketing framework devised by a couple of smart fellows we have been following and learning from: André Chaperon and Shawn Twing.

The framework is brilliant.

In the valuable content that we email to you, every now and then we will alert you to a specific pain-point or problem for which we believe we may have a solution. If you want more specific content from us about that problem area, then you will click a link in the email which segments you into a sub-group of the Responsibility Community.

We send more problem-specific information to that segment only in a series of emails. And finally, if you raise your hand as a serious prospect for the product that we have in mind, we will send you an offer.

I hope I’m making sense as this is challenging to explain and I don’t want to bore you or over-explain. I’ve written about 2500 words on it all, which I’m calling a Declaration of Intention. I hope to make that available to you soon in some form.

So stay tuned for less “Buy!” and more of me sharing what I think you will find of value.

Addenda

In exploring and making this decision over the last few weeks, I’ve uncovered some things I want to share with you.

Values

This exploration and decision-process pushed us to examine our foundation and especially our values:

• Responsibility,
• Service,
• Love.

And doing so made this change solid in my mind. As I mentioned above, I’ll write more about this, hopefully soon, but I’ll summarize here:

Responsibility is our prime directive. If I have a problem, and it causes me frustration, then it is mine to own. Since I’ve never loved how I thought we “had” to market (i.e., Obligation), I’ve lived with the frustration without fully owning it. This gives us an opportunity to fully own it.

By Service we mean to actually serve first — i.e., to give — so that value we receive is the effect of value first created for you. I admit to being confronted by this as I’ve steeped myself in copywriting wizardry and the psychology of selling (even if I have not loved it). The invitation is to simply write what I’ve learned in nearly thirty years of Responsibility-thinking and share it with you.

Love — We are all in this together. We experience the same struggles and get to learn the same lessons. I recently heard love defined as “wanting one to experience happiness.” Our old way focused as much on separation and unhappiness(i.e., buy now, scarcity, FOMO, etc.) as on love and happiness. Our new way lets go of that language of separation leaving more pace for connection, community, and the pursuit of happiness

Messiness

This transition is going to be messy while we tear down the old messaging and landing pages and such, and build the new ones. This concern about messiness could have stopped me. And, it’s going to be okay. Why? Because we’re less focused on Buy Now! and looking good, and we are more focused on creating and delivering valuable content.

I assume that you are willing to put up with a messy transition if we are sincere and providing value.