The Three Cs of 2023

On the heels of this season’s professional development break, our team was inspired by thought leaders in impactful changemaking. This included Laura Oldanie and Michael Hoag’s book Growing FREE, which calls out consumption choices as the most foundational element of creating the resilient future for which we strive.

A lightning bolt of focus struck us upon our return: the interplay between content, consumption, and connection – the three Cs - is where our attention needed to be. These three Cs supported our intention-setting for 2023, which informed our decisions about how we will engage with each other, our clients, and the world around us this year. You could think of this in terms of a dinner gathering – we set intentions about what we are eating (content), how we are showing up (consumption), and who is sitting around the table (connection).

What follows are our commitments to ourselves and our clients. We hope you find inspiration as we share our thoughts here.

Content

Throughout Revalue’s 10-year history, we have co-created an immense amount of content with and for our clients and the general public. This includes videos, recorded webinars, podcast interviews, articles, and open-sourced educational series as guests on other platforms.

We are educational navigators for our clients first, which made it so disheartening whenever we found ourselves experiencing feelings of overwhelm or anxiety about not having enough time, energy, or focus to get to that next scheduled content piece.

Therefore, this year we are taking a different approach to content through a series of agreements:

• Content will be short form, instead of lengthy and time-consuming.
• Content will be what our clients ask for, not what our industry says they need.
• Content will be produced as inspiration strikes us, instead of forcing a schedule into existence.
• We will take a best-efforts approach, instead of seeking perfection.
• We will let our clients find the content when they want it, instead of us pushing it upon them.

Consumption

Once we covered what we are eating, we then turned our attention to how we are showing up for those meals. Making conscious choices about consumption is a topic of deep conversation. It reaches into areas of our lives that can trigger trauma, defensiveness, and our own sense of self-worth. We see trends and receive feedback of overconsumption and toxic consumption in ourselves and our clients, and we do not want to add to that.

Therefore, this year we are taking a different approach to consumption through a series of agreements:

• As professionals, we will only consume information that feeds our mission and purpose, instead of getting distracted by mainstream financial and news media.
• The content we produce will be formatted for our clients to consume according to their own needs for time and space.
• We will ask our clients to consume notifications from us only once per quarter through a newsletter, instead of sending a notification about every new event or piece of new content.
• Following a staff trend that has already gained steam, Revalue will not engage on social media, thereby not asking others to consume social media from us.
• The gifts we will give to clients or others will uplift the antonym of consumption – conservation – instead of adding more things to the world.

Connection

So now we know what we are eating, how we are showing up for dinner, but what about who we are enjoying those meals with? This is where it got really exciting for our team. Building community is at the root of resiliency and is the lifeblood of our work. We recognized that sometimes we invite our people to come together, but afterwards we did not feel like connections had deepened or new connections had been made in that time together. We also noticed a trend in our client base around desiring face-to-face connection as opposed to asynchronous messaging or posting.

Therefore, this year we are taking a different approach to connection through a series of agreements:

• All events will be focused on building connections, not asking people to consume content they could do at their own pace.
• We are returning to in-person events through the support of the Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti (iFFY) in April, a pub gathering in New York for our East Coast people in the Summer, and a pub gathering in California for our West Coast people in the Fall.
• We are hosting two Cohorts for building connections among existing clients – one for Community Investing and one for Financial Planning. More information on this will be made available in the coming months.
• We will host Fireside Chats in the evening, in which kids, neighbors, and bevvies are welcomed.
• We will NOT host any events in November and December, to relieve our clients’ social calendars and to allow our team flexibility to be MORE accessible for year-end planning needs.

Your opportunity

Life is incredibly short, making time immeasurably precious. Our ability to effect change for the seventh generation is contingent upon our actions today. For the team of professionals and the community of investors we serve at Revalue, it means being intentional about the three Cs this year. What does it mean for you? What are you doing with the opportunity this year presents that benefits seven generations ahead of you?

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