It’s Cool To Be In Integrity With Your Money

A conversation on storytelling, stewardship and the role of emerging Indigenous leadership to reshape our collective story of wealth.

Shealeen Marie: Can you introduce yourself?

Joss Biggins: My name is Joss Biggins. I am a Portfolio Manager and Responsible Investment Specialist. I cultivate and bring consciousness to what your relationship is with money and how you are relating to our capitalistic world, and figure out how to navigate that in a way that feels really good for both you and the world that you exist in. That's the core of what I do. I've been doing that for about 10 years now. I spend most of my time traveling through the Americas. I’m based in Victoria. Born on Hornby. Have an office in Comox. But I spend a lot of my time in Nicaragua and in other countries through Latin America, just living, working, and getting up to, well, no good, honestly.

SM: What have you had to unlearn about money to live and work in the way you do now?

JB: When I first got into my field, I was asking myself the questions “What do rich people know that I don't know? How do I find out what they know?” Because they are playing a completely different game than I am, even though we're both interacting with this thing. They know stuff that I don't know. I had all this judgement towards people that had money or people that had no money and very much looked at it as a scoreboard. And, you know, your self-worth is not your net worth. That's the first thing that we have to start to unpack. However, we can take things to an extreme. There are a lot of people that play this game of wealth accumulation, and their identity is caught up in the game. And there's other people that have just completely opted out of it. I mean, we get to choose our path. Whatever that is, as long as we choose it consciously, it's all good. I'm taking this path, I know what the ramifications of this path are and I'm okay with that. 

One of the things that I had to unlearn was, it's not necessarily one extreme or the other. It's, what am I going to choose my relationship to be with money? Let me live through that. Let me live my philosophy with money. And, I had to unlearn that people are not defined by their economic status. I can tell you as someone that came up in the welfare and foster systems that I very much clinged to my economic status as an identity. First unconsciously, and then consciously. And there are many identities that we can choose in this world. I don't think that the ones that we should choose should be tethered necessarily to our economic status. I don’t think that's a wise choice. So that was unlearning number one.

SM: Talk to me about climbing a coconut tree.

JB: Oh, obviously. Yeah. So, many friends of mine were demonstrating to me that they could get up this vertical thing. It's very small, and I went, What the heck, I want to do that. And then I realized I was really, really bad at it. Climbing a coconut tree is so analogous to life. And of course, you wouldn't think that. The coconuts being the incredible abundance that they are in the meat, in the husk, in the water. The technique that you actually need to get up that thing. The fear of heights, at least that I have, that I had to overcome. So for me, coconut climbing is incredible. It allows me to integrate my childish nature. Anytime I see a nice beautiful palm.
 Um, I gotta get up that thing. It's just, it's my basic nature. And then, you know, it's also beautiful teamwork. You've shimmied your way up there. You're hanging out. You have this beautiful view. You're twisting the coconuts and you're throwing them down to your homie. What an incredible, like, I don't know what most people do on a Saturday night, but I want to be doing that.

SM: I want to be doing that. I climbed a coconut tree in Sri Lanka and it was hard as bloody hell. 

JB: Yeah. No, my God, you gotta get the hips back. You gotta have strong hooks, loosely held. You gotta learn your ape walk. You gotta learn your koala crunch. Listen, we can talk about ethical investing. We can talk about climbing coconuts. It's all biomimicry. It's all going, hey, what if I actually don't know better? What if my prefrontal cortex doesn't know better than this pre-existing technology that we've been existing in for like 100s and 1000s and 1000000s of years that's had this time to develop? So a lot of my practice, a lot of my work, and a lot of my philosophy is around going, hey, what if we viewed nature as a technology as opposed to a biology? 

SM: Biomimicry invites us to look to nature as a guide for resilience and balance. How might we apply these principles to the way we think about money and financial systems?

JB: Totally. I mean, right off the bat, people are going to go, what the heck are you talking about? There's this man-made capitalist system and you're going to tell me that it's like nature? Get the F out of here. Capitalism seems so far from nature. That's what people think. And if I want to reject capitalism, I need to go back to nature. So I'm going to flip that around and go, if we want to work with the existing systems, we're going to have to do it in a natural way because there's no other way that's sustainable.

So, sustainable investing. Investing fundamentally has a long time horizon. Anything other than sustainable investing is unsustainable. Therefore, it's not investing definitionally, it's speculating. Speculation is a human phenomenon. Investment is a natural phenomenon. So as a sustainable investor, I look and go, what's sustainable over decades and generations that warrants investment and intention and relation? Okay, cool. How can I step into that? As opposed to speculating. Speculating is going, how do I make a buck? What's going to win? There’s a winner and there’s a loser. 
Did it fall on red, or did it fall on black? That's non relational. It's fundamentally extortive. It's a 0 sum game. We want to play a game in sustainable investing that we can relate with and that we can walk into knowing that this is not a 0 sum game. This is an infinite game where you can come in as an investor. Another person can come in as an investor. The company can thrive as the vessel being invested in, and each one of those things, each one of those entities, each one of those stakeholders, can come away winning. None of us have to lose. And of course, if we're living in a survival mindset, we look at capitalism and we look at stock markets and we look at these games as 0 sum games. There's only so much food, there's only so much resources. I need to have it because I'm gonna die. Right? But if we view things with an abundance mindset, or a growth mindset, or any type of mindset that is relational in its quality… If we approach money with that mindset, we're gonna win over any timeline that matters. And I go “win” in air quotes, because it's like, you win and I win, we both win. You know, and I think that's the fundamental basis. That's the concept that we have to start from when we start talking about what a healthy relationship with money is. We have to go, okay, first things first: in order for me to win, you don't have to lose.

"I started thinking about the principles. Principles of stewardship. Principles of timelines that matter. Principles of integration. Principles of deep wisdom."

SM: The Emerging Indigenous Leaders Bursary is a really meaningful initiative. I am thrilled to be contributing to it. What inspired its creation? What vision is it in service of? 

JB: Yeah. So. We are in a time where we have people in the globe that are extorting the system as best they can. And we have people that are rejecting the system. When I view that as an individual, you know, this little hippie kid from Hornby Island, I go, yeah, I don't like either of those options. I view our systems as a part of our natural order that we've created. And I don't want to abandon them. It's very clear that we are in the most prosperous time by a long shot that's ever existed. So, that system that got us there, we probably shouldn't throw that out. I know it's got some issues. But we probably shouldn't throw it all the way out. Like it's not working perfectly, but it's working. So let's not reject it. 

Most people try to figure out how they can earn the most amount of money. How can I make the best investments? How can I earn the highest return? That feels inherently very take-y. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. Let’s say you go to the gym or you go to yoga and maybe they don't wipe off their mat. Or maybe they don't put the block back. Or maybe they put it back, but it's a little bit off. That to me represents this, like, ‘I'm here, I'm using this thing.
 I don't care, and then I'm going’. That's 0 sum. So, me coming into my role as a portfolio manager, I saw this and I went, I don't agree with this. There’s got to be a better way. So I started exploring better ways, and I started thinking about the principles. Principles of stewardship. Principles of timelines that matter. Principles of integration. Principles of deep wisdom. For me when I go, where's the deepest wisdom? I started to look to, you know, all the religions of the world, and ended up coming back to myself. Myself as a part of nature. So then I went, okay, well, who are the communities? Who are the groups that are really living this philosophy? Who teaches this wisdom and lives by it? And it was right under my nose. It's the indigenous peoples. And this could be groups of people really in any part of the world that live in integration with nature. And that's when the light went off. I went, Oh, we're just missing the integration part. We're missing the relation part. So how do I mirror the concept of 7 generations, stewardship, in my own practice? Okay, that's called ethical investing. That's called being in integrity. And then I went, But why is it not cool? And why is this not a part of our system? And why is our system that we collectively either reject or extort, why does it not work this way? Because to me, this motion of integration actually feels better. And then I started to go, well, what's our collective story about money?
 Who are our leaders in money? I don't know if you know, but our leaders, the wealthiest people in the world, or the people that claim to be our teachers… Um, they're not the nicest folks.
 So much so, that we look at them and we go, "that's evil". And I'm not here to comment on whether that's evil or whether that's not evil, but the conception is, these people are evil and we tie it back to, “look at how much money they have.” Then I ask people, Well, is the earth evil? And they go, what are you talking about? And I go, well, the Earth fundamentally has all of the resources of the Earth. So like... It must be the most evil. And they go, no, well, that's not true, because it's nature. And I go, are we not of nature? Right? Just to start messing with them a little bit.

Anyways, back to the bursary question. I asked, how do we create new role models? Because we as humans, we believe in story. We believe in ‘They did it. They're like me. I can do it.’ All the major religions of the Earth give an archetypal person, and everyone's supposed to create themselves in the image of that person. In money, our leaders are shit, and there's no archetypal person. So I went, okay, how do we build the archetypal person? I think that my big bet with the bursary, and my big bet in my career, is that the archetypal person that we need as a collective society to lead us in money and in relating to finance, is likely going to be of a feminine nature. And is likely going to be a naturalist, let's call them. I think that the current group that represents both of those things coming together, which are the indigenous people, specifically of Canada, also happen to be some of the most systematically suppressed peoples that have really ever existed. Why is that? And how do we turn that around so we can create a role model with these principles that's homemade, and amplify their voice to reinvent a new collective vision of what capitalism can be. And I believe, with all of my being, that if we foster this person, if we amplify what is already there and give opportunity to all of these seeds, they will grow to proportions that we all need them to grow to as a collective Earth.

And so that's what the bursary fundamentally is. How do we create indigenous leaders, female leaders, in the entrepreneurial and finance space to reinvent what it means to be wealthy. And I think if we do that, we'll stand a chance at changing our collective story about money and not have to reject it or extort it.

SM: Did you create the bursary yourself?

JB: Yes I did, in 2021.

SM: You’ve been in this business for a decade. When would you say this awareness around leadership came into play?

JB: Yeah, I mean, a long time ago. But there was a moment when two things clicked at one time. One was this notion of storytelling. So I came up playing basketball and when Kobe Bryant retired, he actually created an animation studio and said, ‘I'm gonna start telling kids stories.’ I thought that was the most noble and coolest thing that anyone could do. To start creating personal legends that we hadn't necessarily ever seen before through children's animation stories. 

And, I believe in systems and I believe in people. I don't necessarily believe that we can throw money at an issue and it can be solved. Or that we can throw even political will or even social will at a problem and it can be solved. What I do believe in are leaders coming to the forefront and those leaders then creating leaders. So the notion of collective story, Indigenous naturalist principles, and leaders creating leaders all kind of came together at one time as I was witnessing the Black Lives Matter phenomenon in the United States. That's when things clicked and I went, Oh, we need a phoenix to rise from the ashes here that can give us a role model that embodies these principles of integrity and stewardship. That we can all then see ourselves in, or start to create ourselves in their image and most importantly, tell ourselves a new story about how we can relate to money. And I think the same thing goes with the environment. How do we tell ourselves a new story about how we relate to the environment?

SM: If money were viewed as a relationship rather than a resource, how do you think people's lives might change?

JB: Totally. You can view it as a resource, but then you have to ask yourself, how am I relating to the resource? I do a lot of money coaching with people. One thing I go through fairly frequently is, you know, if we want to create a relational relationship with money, then let’s make it a person, and we start talking to money as a person. We start defining our relationship, what we want it to be, what it has been, what it is right now. Maybe we're writing apologies. Maybe we're writing thank yous. Maybe we're just getting some shit off of our chest. So really viewing money as an energetic entity in our life that we can choose to relate to. And it's in that relational process that a lot of healing occurs in the same way that someone might say, ‘Healing occurs in community’. I go, ‘Absolutely. What you mean by that is healing occurs in the relation. So let's create a relation. And we could heal through that.’

SM: I would love to play out the Victim Villain Hero triangle with Money as one of the relations.

JB: So that’s an incredible point, which is the truth in archetypal storytelling. People often don't know how to approach money. So I go, ‘What do you know how to approach?’ And maybe they’re a carpenter, or they run a second hand shop. So I go ‘How do you run a great secondhand store?
 How do you be a great carpenter?’ And they'll start going off about understanding the wood that you're working with, or about relating to your customer, et cetera, et cetera.
 And we can find these universal truths. Then we just connect the dots and go, hey, you see that universal truth that you've spent 10 or 20 or 30 years discovering in your field of work? And you know how, like, you really believe in that? You constantly return to it? It's actually a part of your magnum opus, it's a part of your principles, it's a part of your constitution? I really fuck with that and I think that's a universal truth. Now, look how that’s the exact same thing in money. And we just start drawing the lines. Let me show you how we can create an internal constellation within your relationship to money. All these things, if they're true, they're true. And we can connect the dots. And then you can make your own goddamn story.

SM: We're all just out here writing stories!

JB: That’s all we are fundamentally, just a story. And to create your own story takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of ingenuity. It takes a lot of imagination. It takes a lot of self-belief. It's really, really hard. And so we have to pick our stories very wisely. And in our society, we want to make everyone feel safe. One of the things that we do in order to make everyone feel safe is we assign them a story, and we start to adapt that story. The problem is that when it comes to money, we don't have any healthy stories.
And now we get to create them.

SM: What are you looking forward to right now?

JB: Oh, so awesome. I am really looking forward to this collective challenge that we have right now with technology that's being presented to us. How are we going to relate to technology with this new wave of algorithms coming to us? Whether that's through artificial intelligence or through social media, I think there's a tremendous opportunity that we have to sit down and rework what our purpose is and who we are as people. And I think that that is so epic. And I can't stop thinking about it. So I'm really looking forward to unravelling and getting into all of that juiciness in an intellectual way, and in a felt way as well. So that's something that I'm looking forward to.

Read Joss' Substack: The 8 Sacred Wont's of Ai.

Work with Joss.

Euspira's second annual silent auction was held April 1-3rd, and 100% of proceeds were donated to the Emerging Indigenous Leaders Bursary. 

This conversation has been condensed for clarity.