Investing in Transparency to Build Trust with Tim Nash

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There is a conversation happening about the state of our stock market and our market-based economy. And so to me, being able to be a part of that conversation and to introduce this concept, that really by being nice, that everybody makes more money.

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Good day. And welcome to the Leading With Nice Interview Series podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill, and you know, we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results. And as I was explaining to our guest just before we started recording, I don’t remember exactly where I came across him and his service and what he does, but I remember going to the website and it stayed open on my computer. It was one of those perpetual tabs for, like, three or four weeks, and I just kept on going back to it and reading more about what he was doing and Googling because I didn’t necessarily personally at the moment have a need for that.

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But I was like, this is the kind of person I want to be involved with. And eventually I was talking with about him to my team, and they’re like, Why do you have him on the podcast? That’s an amazing idea. And thankfully, we have Tim Nash day. He was very gracious and he is giving us some of his time. And Tim, Yuill, let you talk about exactly what you do because it’ll be better from your mouth and from mine. But hey, man, thanks so much. Welcome to the program today.

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Thank you so much for having me and happy to have a little conversation and answer any questions that you’ve got.

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Cool. So the people that listen regularly to this podcast, they’ll know that at Leading With Nice, one of the mantras we like to espouse is that we care about you, about your company and what you do. Also take that same approach to the individual. Could you tell us a little bit about your company and what you do and how it’s done?

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Sure. So my company is called Good Investing. I am a certified financial planner, and so the business model is that we offer financial planning. We’re not advisers or brokers or managers. We never touch our clients money. Instead, it’s all about education and coaching to help investors who want to be deliberate or intentional about the types of companies they’re investing in and who want to do it themselves. Really, in my mind, DIY investing — do-it-yourself investing — is the best approach right now. It’s certainly the cheapest approach, and I think people have a lot of emotions going into it that they’re sort of scared or they’re intimidated and they’re really worried that they’re going to mess things up and sort of ruin their financial future.

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So we offer what’s called fee for service financial planning, where we get paid by the hour and we teach people how to invest online according to their values.

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So I know how it works. And we’re seeing a lot of commercials right now about it from financial institution companies. As a battle for, like, who gets to control your money you talk about, we’re not a broker or an adviser. How do they get paid?

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The way it generally works is that people pay. There’s this horrible acronym called M.E.R. (Management Expense Ratio), and this is a code word for annual fee. I think the default setting for most people when it comes to investing is that they walk into a bank and they meet a really friendly person in a suit who sells them a mutual fund. And as part of that mutual fund, you’re paying this M.E.R., this management expense ratio. The average in Canada, is about 2.25% that gets paid to the bank every single year, regardless of how the market performs.

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So it doesn’t matter if the markets are up or down. You’re paying that two and a quarter percent every year. And then from that, the advisor, that friendly person in the suit takes their cut, which is often called like a trailer, and that’s usually in the ballpark of about one to one and a half percent. So there are all these people that line up to get their cut of that two and a quarter percent. But really, for the investor, for the person who just walked into the bank, you are paying this hidden fee.

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You’re not giving that advisor any cash. You’re not writing them a check, you won’t get an invoice for it. But you’re paying this fee every single year for as long as you own that mutual fund. So what a lot of people are realizing is that there’s no real need to go through a salesperson anymore. I use the analogy of booking an airline flight. If you wanted to book a plane trip, you used to call up the travel agent. They would do everything for you. Nobody does that anymore.

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Of course, you just book the airplane online, and it’s the same way that a lot of people are just managing their investments online. So instead of mutual funds, we can use these things called exchange traded funds, or ETFs. They’re very similar to mutual funds, but they trade on the stock market directly, and you can buy them online. And they are typically much lower fees. So you save a whole bunch of money every year. But they’re also way more transparent, which is really important for what I’m doing.

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And I think for your audience because the other problem with the banks mutual funds is you don’t know what’s inside that person selling you. These funds often does not know what’s inside. And as soon as you start to unpack and look at what’s in there, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you’re probably not comfortable with. So by doing it yourself, you really get control. And certainly you save a lot of money in terms of these management fees. Most of my clients, we get their fees down to about half a percent per year.

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So instead of two and a quarter, it’s like half a percent, the lowest. I’ve gotten it down to like, 0.2%.

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Wow.

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If you really want to go over the lowest cost possible, and then not only are you saving all that money, but you’re also able to make these very deliberate, intentional decisions about what companies you want to invest in and support.

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There’s so much to unpack there. I think the first thing I want to talk to because I think it really speaks to the type of service you want to provide and the type of service that we are leading with nice want to provide and people that listen to this, they want to buy that kind of service. And it’s this idea you said education because you could still do your job as a coach or as somebody giving that sort of education without actually doing the deep dives.

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Right.

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But you do spend time making sure your clients are aligned with what they’re purchasing. Now that really speaks to like, you teach a person to fish, as opposed to give them a fish. Where do you think that came from with you? How did that kind of bubble up to be like, yeah, I want to do this because you have a very good in a suit in a bank. I’ll tell you right now, you’re very friendly. You have a great smile. You’re halfway there, man.

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Oh, yeah. I grew up in that world. Right. So I grew up with my dad in the investment industry. So I think it would have been very natural for me to get a job in a bank and start climbing. And really, it came down to a few things. One is that I studied economics and philosophy in my undergrad, and the philosopher in me really questioned the economic paradigm and a lot of the principles that I was being taught in those courses and realized that the economic system was completely ignoring social and environmental issues.

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And that was just like this huge a-ha moment where, like, whoa, this thing that drives our world right now, like, the economy, is so in the driver’s seat of all of our government decision making and everything, and it just completely ignores people in the planet from there. I graduated with my undergrad in economics with way more questions than I had answers. So I went to Sweden, and I did my master’s in sustainability. And that’s where I started looking at this idea of responsible investing or sustainable investing or ethical investing.

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Or now the acronym is E.S.G. (Environmental Social Governance). These are all kind of synonyms for the same thing. And what I found is that people automatically assume to lower financial returns. Right? When actually we were finding you could do just as well, if not a little bit better financially by investing in companies that are leaders when it Corey to sustainability, responsibility or ethics or by investing in nice companies to use your language. There is actually a correlation there to profitability and treating your employees well and treating your customers well.

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So it was really cool for me to kind of have that click that investors can do just as well while also aligning it with their values and encouraging a better economy. And then on the financial side, it came back to Canada, July 2008. I was probably ready to go work in a bank, and the big crash hit. The stock market collapsed and sustainability got thrown on the back burner. There were no jobs available for me. So I just started my own company and started that entrepreneurial route.

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And then really what it came down to was I got an early inheritance from my grandpa, and it wasn’t a huge amount of money. But I probably had about 6,000 $7,000 that I wanted to invest in a TFSA tax-free savings account my first time investing, and I started to look at my options, and they were terrible. Like, these mutual funds were so expensive, right? And I was like, okay, I want to do it yourself. And the way you do it yourself is through these ETFs exchange traded funds.

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But I looked what was inside of them. And I was just like, hell no. And so I started thinking about how I wanted to invest my own money. And then as I talked about my journey and I started writing about it, people started reaching out, saying, Tim, how do I do this? I want to do this as well. And it was clear to me that there was just this really nice niche where people who are just getting started, who kind of give a damn about the world and what type of companies they’re supporting with their investment dollars.

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I just started listening to them and answering their questions. And people had the same questions over and over. And so I developed a product and a process. And now it’s been whatever. Ten years later, it’s amazing because people are really excited for this. And so really, what I’m seeing is a tremendous opportunity here, both in terms of being able to help all these people. But also in terms of my career, I think I’m almost sort of better off on my own right now than I would be working in a bank trying to deal with those power systems.

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The reason why I want to have him on is because I love what he does. And I want you to take some of the ethos of what he does and why he does it and apply it to your own business. So you said you started writing about it and talking about it. And often I run across people that have these brilliant ideas that I would wish they had to share at the world, and they build the product and they keep it kind of hidden. But you just talk about one of your big successes was actually sharing it broadly.

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That’s right.

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How are you doing that? What does that look like for you?

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Yeah. So I’m a bit of a nerd. So when it comes to computer stuff and tech stuff, I’m happy to play around. And so I built a website. And really, it came down to a blog that this was probably back in 2010 or 2011. So financial blogs and blogs were a bigger thing. And what I did is I built sustainableeconomist.com. It still exists. I still have it up. I haven’t touched it for a while, but it’s in there. Basically, I turned myself into Superman, and I just started my own blog, which was my own little corner of the Internet, where I could start talking about these things.

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And I think what really sort of put it over the top is I developed these model portfolios. So this is a thing in finance, as you kind of build a pie chart, which is like a portfolio mix of different stocks and bonds and show the different funds that you do there. And I just basically built my first one I copied. There was a guy Dan Bartalotti referred to as the Canadian Couch Potato, and he talked about couch potato investing, and he was like, my hero on this sort of teaching people about DIY.

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And so I created my first portfolio, which was the organic couch potato portfolio, and people loved it. And it was great. But overwhelmingly, it just opened up this can of worms. It was like, okay, I love what you’re doing. I love what you’re talking about. I want an organic couch potato portfolio. How the heck do I do it? It brings up all these other questions and emotions and feelings. So that’s really why I went from, just, like, a blogger or educate teaching about that to getting my CFP destination certified financial planner and offering this financial planning service because everyone was like, okay, I like what you’re doing.

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But how did this apply to me in my life? And it was a really natural progression for me. But it absolutely started with just a website and search engine optimization. And people Googling these terms who are looking for it and they find me and they’re like, Hallelujah, somebody is talking about these things.

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When you said you were a nerd, I was fully hoping you said you had, like, launched a BBS on your Amiga or something. I was like, I might have been a subscriber. I was out on the 14 Fours, dialing in and playing risk online, that would have been amazing.

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Amazing.

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I would have joined that BDS, too. So one thing I want to dive into is, I think from what I’ve read on your website and what I’ve learned about you, the way you approach your relationship with your clients, I think it’s such a great model for how leaders can approach the relationship with their reports, because where the major overlap is people are trusting you with money right now. You don’t touch it. But de facto, they’re probably going to do what you two discussed, and they need to have that confidence.

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What do you do on your end to give them the ability to trust you and build a great relationship with you? What are some of the tips or keys? You can go bullet point form here. I’d love to give people two or three things they can concentrate on doing. They might say I’m going to try to improve in that area.

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So I think one of the most powerful things I’ve done throughout my career is saying the words, I don’t know that when somebody asks me a question that I don’t have a good answer for, I don’t try to BS them. And really, to me, that is such an important thing, because when we’re talking about finance and then we’re laying on top this sort of ethics or this moral philosophy, it’s just so broad. There’s so much going on. So that to me, is one thing is being very clear about what I know and what I don’t know.

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And number two, is it’s so funny. But when I talk about investments and this would be really probably the piece of what I’m doing, that’s a little bit more out there. That’s a little bit more on, like, the crunchy granola side of things that’s not traditional finance is this area called impact investing, where we talk about community bonds and green bonds, and we’re loaning money to nonprofits and coops in our community that are directly building the community infrastructure that we want in our lives and that those come with risks.

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And when I am upfront about those risks, where I talk about the worst case scenario, that’s what really builds trust that I think so often in finance, there’s kind of this psychology, it’s very salesy. It’s very slimy. It’s like get rich quick. This is the hot thing. And it’s sort of like talking things up. And what I find is when I actually am very transparent about the risks, that’s when people are like, you know what? Okay.

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Yeah.

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I have the information I need right now, and I’m okay with that risk. And I feel confident making a decision. A good example of this is divestment from fossil fuels. It’s like the hot topic right now. Really, everyone’s worried about climate change. Oil could be on its way out over the coming decades. What does that mean from investments? A lot of people want to get that out of their portfolio, which I fully support. That said, there is a trade off, like what happens if the price of oil pops, which it kind of has this year that you’re not going to have exposure to that.

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But most of my clients are like, you know what? I don’t care about that. But me disclosing it and being upfront about the trade offs about the sort of downsides of what they’re doing. I think it really builds that trust that once people understand the risks and what they’re doing, they’re much more comfortable taking those risks. And I think they feel like they have the full picture that it’s not something that’s just been sort of sold to them.

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That they don’t fully understand what you just said about the way you approach your customers. I’ve had this with executive directors and C Suite folks who are fortunate to work with where we talk about transparency with their reports. And clearly, there are times where there are legal and business strategic reasons why they cannot share certain things. But often I think leaders feel a sense that they need to protect or coddle and often empowering your reports with the information as he builds loyalty with them, as opposed to saying, oh, things are a bit bad.

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I’m going to jump ship. I find more often people are actually more loyal after being shared the transparency and the ones who do jump ship, you’re like, great. So, for example, you say transparency around fossil fuels. If somebody said that to you, well, the Tim I want all in on, like, fire and brimstone, you might be like, Well, we actually may not be a good match. Then maybe you should go elsewhere. That’s still a win through your transparency.

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Absolutely.

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Oh, man, I love that. So I want to talk about two more things before we head off the responsible investing. We talked about the idea of negative screening and getting rid of sin stocks you mentioned right now. It’s a big deal. But why do you think, like, just beyond fossil fuels? What do you see happening in this world? What is the motivation for people to be divesting themselves of the stocks that are being negatively screened and stocks?

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Sure. So first, I want to be clear that everyone has a totally different idea of sort of where they are on this spectrum, that there is no perfectly sustainable portfolio. And at the same time, not everybody wants to deviate wants to move far. Some people are really happy taking sort of a small step in the right direction. So just to be clear that when it comes to the more philosophic side of things, really, it’s not about what I want to say. It’s about what my clients need to hear and what they want.

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And each person is going to be so individually unique. Now, when it comes to this idea of negative screening or divestment, really, what we’re doing here is we’re just taking those companies out of the portfolio. So if you think of a portfolio, it’s like a pie chart. Diversification is an absolute core value. We want to own as many stocks as we possibly can. Some funds own, literally the entire global stock market. And then as sustainable investors, we’re saying, Well, there are certain things I don’t want.

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Now, the origins of this came up in the religious communities so the Mennonite communities or there’s Sharia compliant investing, and those are going to be things around weapons and alcohol and gambling. And these, quote, unquote sin sectors from there. Now, a lot of people are taking it further than that. Certainly, climate change is a big deal with oil companies. I have a lot of people who don’t want to support some of the utilities that are burning coal, and really everyone is going to be different in terms of what those screens are, and there are a wide range of options.

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The impact that we’re having is that by denying those companies our capital, by not investing in them, you know, me alone with my little retirement portfolio isn’t going to have an impact. But as more and more people do this, it makes it harder for those companies to access capital. So there’s this metric that companies have, which is their cost of capital, which is that if a company wants to build infrastructure, wants to build a project, they need to raise that money, they can either do it through debt or equity.

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Both of those are going to have a cost to them. The more people just aren’t giving the money at all, the higher their cost of capital is going to be. The opposite is true that if I want to support renewable energy or water infrastructure or energy efficiency companies by investing in them, going out of my way to invest in them, if more people want to invest in them, that’s going to lower those companies’cost of capital. And the way I look at it is that really the economy is the driving force in the world right now, and the lifeblood is money when money is flowing towards certain things that I want, that’s going to allow those things to grow.

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It means more projects are going to be built when I want to sort of cut off part of it. When I cut out things that I don’t want, that’s restricting their access to capital and making it more expensive for them to grow and expand. So this isn’t going to be like me as one person. This is very much collective action, Adam Smith’s, The Invisible hand. But what’s really cool is that global investors have caught onto this. And so a lot of these principles around there’s divestment, which is one which is just cutting them out.

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This other one is ESG environmental, social governance, which is measuring the company’s sustainability performance and preferring companies with a better ESG score. And then the third one is shareholder engagement, which is using your power, your voice as a shareholder to push that company in a more sustainable direction, and that this is now kind of becoming the default way for these pension funds and these large sovereign wealth funds like these multibillion dollar funds in Canada, but also around the world are now using all of those approaches.

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And this is having a huge impact. Every company now has to pay attention to this and that we’ll see, really, the question is going to be, is it happening fast enough, especially with climate change, where the clock is ticking, that we can pull this lever of the financial system. But is that going to be enough? Obviously, we also want government regulation. We also want consumers buying stuff and advocacy and nonprofits really pushing those companies at a grassroots level. But the hope is that we’re using the financial system as a lever to push these companies in a sustainable direction.

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Part of my problem right now is I want to talk to you about eight more things out of that topic. Right. So while we’re actually here, by the time this is released, you’ll have launched a podcast of your own with The Toronto Star. So what’s the podcast called? Where can we find it? How often does it release?

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Totally. So we’re about to launch. We’ve got the trailer up, and the first episode is about ready to drop. And it’s called Responsible Investing for a Sustainable Economy, which I know is a bit of a mouthful. The acronym is Rise R-I-S-E. So I refer to it as Rise, but it’s responsible Investing for a Sustainable economy. I partnered with The Toronto Star on this, so I’m the host, but they’re helping me out with so many different things. It’s going to be a weekly podcast. So it comes out every Friday, and we’re doing an 18 week season.

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So the first episode comes out in early November, and I think we’re going to be running it through sort of mid March. And absolutely, we’re going to be exploring so many of these different topics and being able to get some absolute experts in the space to be able to come on the podcast to be able to really dive deep.

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Okay. That’s great. I wanted to pop it in there. Wait, before we move on to our last topic. Okay. So you have the system. You have the knowledge. I’m really curious when you look into the future from your chair, how do you think good investing can help shaping our world for the better? Like, what role do you hope to play?

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My stated mission is to help 1 million Canadians invest intentionally. And that really if I can get to a million people investing in line with their values and seeing the same level of returns and maybe even a little bit higher, maybe then I think that that’s going to become the default way for people to invest, that it’s not going to be responsible investing or sustainable investing or ethical investing. It’s just going to be investing. And so that’s really the dream now. The way I do that is twofold.

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Number one with the business is through experiential learning that when it comes to investing, it’s really high level people have all these emotions. It gets really tricky.

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It can be confusing, intimidating, for sure.

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Oh, my God. But once you do it. You realize it’s not that hard, especially if you’ve got a system and with the tech, the fintech stuff, it’s so much easier than it’s been. It’s like buying a plane ticket online. It’s literally that easy. So the more people experience that and do that. I think that’s what’s going to allow them to be able to have the confidence and tell other people. So that’s on the practical side is that through the private coaching program and one on one, I’ve launched an online course that people can access from my website for people who are just getting started or sort of want to dip their toe in the water.

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And that really the second piece is to build the awareness that not everybody is ready to take that step to dip their toe in the water for the experiential learning, and that there is a conversation happening nationally and internationally right now about the state of our stock market and our market based economy. And is it actually working? And who is it working for? And so to me, being able to be a part of that conversation and to introduce this concept that really by doing the right thing, by being nice or by being good by your customers and by your employees, this idea of what we call stakeholder capitalism, that everybody makes more money.

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It’s so true.

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But there’s this mindset in the financial community that the way to maximize profits is by cheating and stealing and exploiting that if we raise the minimum wage, it’s going to be chaos. If we implement a carbon tax, it’s going to be horrible. The only way to make money is by doing bad things. And any conversation of sustainability or being nice or being kind is a waste of time and money. But that psychology, I think, is the dominant one right now. And so my dream is to really empower the people who don’t agree with that worldview, who actually know by treating my neighbors well, and by looking after each other like I benefit too.

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We all win helping those people realize that. Well, if that is your world view, you need to look at your investments. You need to understand who you’re trusting with that money, how they’re investing. It, what companies are in there. And if you can buy a little education and a few small steps really shift that in a direction that is so much more aligned with your worldview and your values. And hey, you don’t have to sacrifice returns like you can do just as well. Then I really think that that is kind of a world changing idea, and that that will then empower us to be able to elect governments and to be able to support companies that also understand that world view that by looking after each other and treating other people the way we want to be treated, then we can all be prosperous and wealthy.

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Stop with that crazy talk, right no, that amazing. But it’s so true. You say that you will immediately think, oh, that means he wants to tax me more. None of that. I didn’t hear you once say, I want to put my hand in your pocket to take away from you. You actually said no. I want you to encourage you. There are companies that are already doing this really well. Back then, you will both make money again. I’ll go back to what I talked about. An employer has a difficult employee, and the immediate response is like, we need to figure out how to get them out of the company.

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We need to put them on a performance improvement plan. We’re going to do this and that they’re going to leave angry. It’s going to be awkward for you. You’re going to have all these onboarding costs for a new employee, or we can invest in some empathy training and some communications research. And can we salvage something for much cheaper? I’m not saying it’s not as easy. Kind of like learning how to invest is necessarily always easy, but a little bit of investment in that can go a long way.

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How do you get a hold of you? Where do they find you?

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Right. So my website is goodinvesting.com on Twitter. I have to handle Tim NASA CFP. I’ve got a YouTube channel. I haven’t been as active there lately. I’ve been focused on these other projects and that really if you go to the Torontestar. Com and check out their podcast, there’s a little podcast button or wherever you get your podcast. Wherever you’re listening to this right now, look up responsible investing for a sustainable economy. And all those places are wonderful ways to be able to reach out and get a hold of me.

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You the listener. You have an abundance of capacity to take information. Normally, podcasters. We shouldn’t be encouraging you to listen to my podcast and my podcast only. No, you need to have the leading of Nice and the Rise podcast back to back. I think that will take care of your social, emotional, financial learning like that would be just a great combo pack before you go to there’s so many people that help takes a lot of work to get these done. People that help me. Naomi Grossman helps research and write questions.

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Kerry and Amber are taking care of our account, so I’m watching text messages in our slot channel blowing up as they take care of accounts, like in Jaw Wag with you. If you hear about this on social, Jamie Hunter is a guy who got this done. Austin Pomeroy is our audio tech. He makes us sound well, mostly me. You already sound great. Tim makes me sound. He actually has slowed my voice down by three X just so you know, I talk much faster than you’re hearing right now.

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Jeff Anhar, if you saw this on TikTok or Instagram, Realtor, Facebook or YouTube, he did all the video for us. If it was left to me, it would literally be like Oregon Trail graphics from 1980. It looks so horrible. You would have died of boredom by now. Forget disentry. It has nothing on boredom. But, yeah, all those people that helped us get on this podcast. Thank you to them. Thank you to you. Thank you so much for coming on.

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Thanks so much for having me.

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It’s been a blast for more of this visit leadingwithnice.com you can check this podcast and there’s a little write up more about it and link, of course in the show. Note to connect with him. Thanks very much. We will talk to you next time.

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Bye you.