The Origyn Model for Envisioning and Cultivating the World We Wish to See

(Deep breaths to center in the present. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. Pause.)

In the most practical of instances, having vision for goals in life improves our likelihood of accomplishing them. We are more than 40 percent more likely to achieve goals by writing them down regularly, so we do not lose sight of them.

Without a clear vision for our lives, communities, companies, and world, we can get stuck.

As an old proverb puts it, “where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Given our current global backdrop of living through simultaneous biological, environmental, psychological, social, and economic pandemics, this article aims to inspire a healthy vision and practical models to enable success in our visions for the peoples and organizations of our planet.

May we remember our power to build anew and to cultivate our soil so that a healthy and whole present may emerge for us all by us all. As another proverb says, “we reap what we sow.” So, may we now sow exactly as we wish to reap.

Part I — Envisioning: A whole and sustainable present

(Before continuing, please allow a moment to breathe, letting the realities of today settle in, along with the possibilities of the present. Whatever arises within, simply allow this space to notice.)

Together, let us now envision:

The individual beings and communities of our world prospering and sustaining as our most authentic selves and thriving collectively, all in harmony — as a whole.

We can breathe, both because our quality of air has improved and because state officials don’t have their knees on our necks.

Given the sheer amount of Earth there is to share, no one is unwillingly hungry or homeless.

In fact, money is of no concern at all — because we have learned to innovate past its inefficiencies, as well as our biases around what and who is “valuable” and how “valuable” we are.

Wealth is equitably distributed, as we recognize the surplus of value we have in all beings.

Thus, all are cared for by the brilliant systems we, brilliant beings, have cultivated.

And where we struggle, there are collaborative care and justice systems in place to facilitate healing and restore wholeness within our bodies, minds, and hearts.

Women, children, and our elders can go outside without fearing for their lives.

All is regenerative.

Life is respected and vibrant.

We are actually alive while living.

We care about who we are and what we do.

Passion is abundant; so much so, one might think that we trade on love and passion alone.

We serve freely in whatever we commit to doing because we are free.

We know that we are valid by our being here.

There is no need to prove ourselves and live motivated by insecurity.

Children explore and are given the space and encouragement to evolve and discover their own path at their own pace.

Those who teach do so because they are deeply committed to the nourishment of the students.

Overall, this present values life and recognizes its abundance and the beauty of our diversity as strengths.

The biodiversity of nature is flourishing, and everything about this place gives back to itself.

The food is incredible; so much so that it is obvious the chefs and cooks pour love into it.

Love overflows.

This present is a healthy community where we are each accepted wholly, and opportunities to grow beyond expectation are abundant.

(Pause for breath here, recentering in both the possibility and reality of the present. May we allow this pause to be a moment where we tune into our own inner vision of what a more sustainable world can look like for us personally and collectively.

May we allow ourselves to imagine beyond what’s shared here. Please feel free to allow as much time as needed to continue envisioning, as well as remember glimpses of it already experienced in our own lives.)

Part two — Cultivating: Conditions for the whole and sustainable present we envision

Now that we are in the state of envisioning, how might we cultivate conditions for what we imagine to manifest?

Let’s first explore three simple and vital values that may serve as a sort of compassionate compass with guardrails for guiding our cultivation process:

1. Awareness

Understanding and acknowledging the realities of our current context.

In the words of Marianne Williamson, “If we don’t have a deep understanding of how we got to where we are, we don’t have a deep understanding of where we are now. And if we don’t have a deep understanding of those two things, then we don’t have a deep understanding of where we go from here.”

It is also true that the more aware we are, the better decisions we tend to make. In our current context, it is helpful when we are aware that our world is both naturally restorative and regenerative, and experiencing crises. Consider how much more likely the body or any plot of land is to heal when we provide it the nutrients it needs to function well.

2. Accountability

Once aware, it is important that we both acknowledge and operate with accountability (where all parts are accounted for) as every choice we make today directly impacts the trajectory for the moments to follow this present.

The crises we are experiencing are a direct response to many of the choices we have made, and we have the ability to shift course with the choices we make.

(Just imagine your accountant not showing the full picture of what was going on financially for your company or life. It would inevitably create complications somewhere, and/or reduce possibilities. Or perhaps, imagine your doctor not accounting for your family history or recent life activity when diagnosing you. This would have the same impact. Accountability is key.)

3. Alignment

When leaders of Fortune 500 companies and nation states alike sit down to evaluate their goals and visions, they request awareness of where things are now and accountability for how it’s going. This enables them to explore options for how they might grow more in alignment with their goals or further them if already in alignment, leading to decisions that are made to head for that direction.

In order to be in alignment, we must revisit our vision and the values that support it, keeping sight of the goal to bring it to fruition. For example, if we envision a just world, justice must be a feature of every contract made, every program written, and how we approach the next steps.

Our tools for alignment begin with “yes” and “no.” What we say yes and/or no to ultimately reveal what we are committed to.

Part III — Sustaining: The Origyn model

Now that we are in a space of envisioning and cultivating, let’s consider how we might sustain this world. This requires new models guided by our values, such as the Origyn model.

The Origyn model is simple: If we want to understand the fruit we bear, then we must understand the source (the origin) of the fruits. The world we envision starts with the seeds we plant and the soil we cultivate for the seeds to grow. Our success in realizing the vision is largely governed by the alignment of our choices with what we envision. If our choices are in violation of the world we wish to cultivate, we hold ourselves accountable and align accordingly.

Our vision is to redistribute wealth equitably across our communities so that we might walk in alignment with our best selves and thrive as an ever-generating source and supply of our own sustainable health, wealth, and wellbeing.

When considering the above and envisioning how we might facilitate bringing the vision to life, we started with the understanding that a world that is for all must be by all. We also know it would be nearly impossible for even a few people to fathom and meet the unique needs of every single person in existence, nixing the idea of a singular savior.

However, it is possible for us all to grow aware of, account for, and align in meeting our unique needs together when we prioritize collective involvement as a value when we build. Inspired by elders and youth in our communities who stepped up to educate, prepare meals, and provide care while government and healthcare providers failed to meet the needs of the people during the pandemic, our team had to ask: “If our communities can cover our own needs and we have the internet to connect us all to one another, then why are so many still struggling, while companies such as Amazon are only growing in value and skyrocketing to ~$2 trillion in worth?”

If Amazon, the company, were to function like the actual Amazon River and equitably recycle life into the ecosystems that make it possible, what would our world look like? At the same time, there is growing demand to shop more consciously and with community-based businesses, but there is no easy way to do it nor keep track of how much we do.

With awareness of this, we decided to be accountable in responding to these questions and created Origyn, a post-growth, community-centered market platform that focuses on connecting us back to our communities as the source of our needs and making it easier than ever for everyday people to make choices in alignment with the future we wish for.

The Origyn model was founded on the following theses:

1. Anything our communities need, our communities can provide.
2. The simpler it is to make decisions with greater awareness, the better we will decide.

With our theses leading, we designed two interconnecting approaches:

Our Window — a shopping platform that connects people to brands and products aligned with their values.

1. When signing up, we ask customers about what goods they need, as well as their shopping values.
2. For example, a person might need moisturizer, and also want to purchase eco-friendly products locally from traditionally marginalized populations, such as womxn, Indigenous, Black, LGBTQIAA+ people, etc.
3. In this instance, the Origyn platform curates a set of completely unique and customized results that match both the stated needs of the customer and their values. Customers can then save them for later, share with friends, or make the direct purchase.

Our Mirror — a private shopping e-companion that helps people track the choices we’re making and reflect how aligned our choices are with our values.

1. When shopping, the tool captures our economic and community impact based on the dollars we spend.
2. For example, a person may want to uplift womxn-owned businesses, but their spending decisions reflect that they are only spending 10% of their money with such businesses.
3. In this instance, our tool provides the person with a chart that reflects this, as well as information on how to close the gap on their goal of spending more in alignment with their goal.

Because of the great resonance of our mission and vision with communities across the United States, Origyn grew from one customer in the first month to over 1000 in month three, with demand continuing to rise. Beyond that, we were even able to garner non-extractive support from Google.

Thanks to this overwhelming success, we were able to validate our theses and build a unique distribution model that recognizes the importance of both empowering individuals in our community and establishing systems-level change that embodies our values. Here is a glimpse into the Origyn distribution model, which mirrors the water cycle:

1. Origyn is structured as a Public Benefit Corporation and .eco company that serves as a platform to facilitate wealth being redistributed through our communities by leveraging collective interest in a more just, equitable world.
2. Origyn makes money from providing this service.
3. Origyn then puts a percentage of its profits into its non-profit arm, E.cosystem, as a regenerative way to return resources into the communities that nurture us.
4. All community members (shoppers, suppliers, employees, funders, founders) are treated as stakeholders that grow as the company grows.
5. A trust fund, similar to a family trust, then stewards the flow of capital to our “family”, our organization, planet, communities of patrons, suppliers, and investors in Origyn.

From this example, we can see multiple ways that Origyn’s distribution model flows and cycles the wealth generated back into our communities so that all of us can prosper together through the success of just one organization.

In all of this we realized that, with today’s accessible data tools, any organization, leader, or community can apply the model of offering a window for us all, including organizations and everyday people, to make healthier choices, as well as a mirror to help us be aware of our truth and align accordingly.

As we all begin to act with awareness, accountability, and alignment, we can actualize the present as a whole, regenerative, loving, and just one through our unique gifts and resources — both on a systemic and individual level.

But remember to first envision, to be clear on the world we wish to see, to align actions with that vision, and to always be accountable.

In conclusion, whether Origyn (the company itself) is massively successful or not, the Origyn model, values, and distribution approach itself have already proven that if we offer platforms that make it simpler for us to do better, then we will. So, regardless of if we’re in business, politics, law, art, science, our daily life, or whichever field one is in, we hope this inspires the leader in each of us to get clear on our vision, values, and begin aligning accordingly.

Before transitioning into the next thing today, breathe again to center in this present, moving from this energy with a clear vision around how all of our actions in each moment align from here.

Next steps — Scaling sustainably

Our early success was swiftly followed by offers from impact investors and venture capitalists. In the end, we declined over $2M and decided we had to find other paths for funding because none of the terms of agreements aligned with our deepest values and vision to redistribute wealth across our communities, rather than balloon the pockets of a few successful investors.

Though every investor was well-intentioned by statement, the actual terms of the contracts always gravitated away from our overall goal and pointed back at a model such as Amazon’s. As investors made statements such as, “I’ve never seen such a model,” and “I don’t know how that works — at the end of the day, we’re investors, not philanthropists,” the goals of capitalist growth became more apparent.

This led us to consult lawyers across the world about the precedence of compassionate, non-extractive contracts that could allow investors to invest and wealth still to be equitably distributed across our pool of stakeholders and community members. We were unable to find such contracts, and it indicated a larger issue: The great majority of our society is built on agreements that, even when well-intentioned, perpetuate extractive approaches through an underlying structure that rewards exploitation in exchange for gain.

We have since found examples that reward community stakeholders in the co-op and community-owned business space, but none of them are structured for an organization to scale nationally or globally. So we are now exploring ways to establish trust agreements that are kind and compassionate, respect the value of all stakeholders and community members equitably, and can scale sustainably while distributing resources appropriately. These would also be able to be in the public domain, so we can make more aligned agreements.

If you have any leads to organizations who have set precedence in this area, who are creating this, or have already created it, please email us at: davionziere@gmail.com

Three things you can do right now:

1. Join the Origyn family: Sign up to the US waitlist as a customer or supplier.
2. Help promote this article by sharing these posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Sign up here for email alerts when articles like this are shared on social media.
3. For alignment consultation, speaking engagements, or to collaborate around the future of our world, email Zi: davionziere@gmail.com

Davion Ziere, aka Zi, (pronouns: we/us/ours) is a Post Growth Fellow and global citizen focused on being, aligning, and embodying the world we wish to live in.

Founder of Origyn and Illuminator of the Origyn model, Zi is an artist, serial post-growth entrepreneur, writer, and community bridge who cultivates visions and systems that value and respect all forms of life. Zi was formerly #1 Sales Leader for TESLA, co-leading their National Sales Learning Council, and has both successfully generated millions of dollars through his startups and turned down millions of dollars from investors who were not aligned with his organization’s values. Zi has provided strategy consultation for orgs such as Mission Investors Exchange and various Chambers of Commerce, and his accolades include being recognized by the State of Georgia for substantial economic development work, co-writing legislation for the US House of Representatives, crafting curriculum for national nonprofits such as the Children’s Defense Fund, and consulting universities on how to build community around creativity and innovation. Zi has successfully empowered organizations, artists, students, and many more to be our best self not only by traditional metrics of success, but also in alignment with clear values. Zi attended thirteen schools prior to starting college at the age of fifteen, is the eldest of ten siblings, and loves his family, community, travel, and exploring all that we don’t know.

Find out more about the Post Growth Institute on our website.