Randy Cass, CFA
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

• Founder of Nest Wealth
• Host of BNN’s “Market Sense”
• Co-founder of software company First Coverage
• Portfolio Manager, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan
• FX Derivatives Trader, TD Securities

What factors have lead to your long and unique career path?

As a default, I try to say “yes.” I’m a lawyer by schooling and a portfolio manager by trade. I never trained to host a business TV show or run a software company. However, both happened and turned out great because I kept an open mind about what I could accomplish and said “yes” when these opportunities knocked. I think that most people need to be convinced that something is worth doing. This means their default response to any new request is “no.” I take the opposite approach.

Now, there will be the occasional time when your gut is telling you to pass on something, when it doesn’t feel quite right, and I do listen to that voice because it’s amazing how often it’s right. However, in all other situations, saying “yes” to something that seemed new, interesting, compelling, or fun has been the driving force behind my career evolution.

What are some of the highlights and accomplishments in your career that you are most proud of?

I’m most proud of my current business, Nest Wealth. Building any business is a great achievement, but what is really empowering is building a business that has at its very core a desire to make a meaningful difference in the way Canadians save for their future, reach their goals and achieve peace of mind. The fact that this business has a mission to do good makes it so much easier to get through the long hours involved in starting any new venture.

When I was starting Nest Wealth, I had more people tell me it couldn’t be done than with anything else I’ve ever tried to accomplish. I’m now convinced there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people that tell you something is impossible and the chance that it’s actually worth spending your day-to-day waking hours doing it.

Can you share some of the best advice you have received in your career?

Best advice: Be true to yourself. Trite, but nothing matters more.

It’s easy to partner with the first person who offers you money. It’s easy to pick the business model that has succeeded somewhere else and just copy it. It’s harder to blaze the path that you know in your heart you want to blaze and see where you end up.

However, being true to yourself goes both ways. If the market is telling you that your idea isn’t what it wanted, you need to respect the integrity of that data and react to the information.

Who is your career role model? Why?

This one’s easy. My career role model is my wife. She’s my role model because she never leaves an interaction with somebody without making that person feel like they were heard, respected, and incredibly valuable to whatever just happened. Her ability to make others feel valued, combined with her talent, work ethic, and brains, is nothing short of remarkable and nothing I’ve seen in any other person I’ve ever encountered.

What are some of the biggest challenges and new business opportunities that you have experienced at the start-up phase of a smaller-sized operation?

The biggest challenge is getting through the highs and the lows and trying to keep it all in perspective. Everything in the early days seems as if it’s a make or break moment for the new venture, and it’s exhausting to keep yourself operating at that level of emotional intensity for an extended period of time. The truth is that there are no magic bullets to overnight success, but there is nothing that is going to turn out as negatively as you think it will. Once you understand that, it doesn’t become easy, but it definitely becomes easier.

As for new business opportunities, you have to be very careful. Unlike in your personal life, where “yes” can be a default to new adventures, with a small business, it’s almost the opposite.

Are there any books or research papers that have influenced your work?

A lot of John Bogle’s writings on the power of indexing influenced me greatly. It’s fascinating to see the marketplace begin to come around to his thinking on the power of index funds and low costs. If you combine Bogle’s work with the body of academic studies on the negative correlation between high fees and low returns, you’d have a pretty good start on the strongest influences that have shaped how I think investing should be handled for most people.

How do you feel about social media as a legitimate avenue for financial professionals to communicate with each other? Has social media amplified your public persona?

Social media is perfectly fine as a legitimate method of communication for financial professionals. That being said, it’s critical to understand that, whatever the method of communication, it has no correlation to the legitimacy of the message. Worthless information is still worthless, regardless of where it comes from.

Within this profession, social media used well can help inform people, give them a sense of who you are, be a platform to talk about what matters to you, and occasionally demonstrate different facets of your personality. Social media used poorly is just a waste of everybody’s time.

How do you balance these different aspects of your skill set in a public forum, such as BNN, to highlight your expertise?

I’m on BNN specifically because I come to the TV show with different experiences than most broadcasters. I’m a CFA charterholder, former board member, entrepreneur, someone who started a company that raised venture capital, someone who sold a company, and someone who has managed institutional money on the buy side.

I don’t feel that it’s about balancing these experiences as much as making sure that I utilize every single one of them to help viewers better understand how this industry works from the inside out.

It’s because of these experiences that I am able to inform the BNN viewer about things they might not know because they haven’t been where I’ve been. My goal every day is to make sure the viewer of BNN understands that I’m on their side and feels that I’m helping them make more informed decisions.