2 Geos Interviewed 100+ Top Discoverers — Here’s What it Takes (Steve & Ahmad) - Money of Mine

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So someone like Bennett knows how to go through those moments.
Someone like Creasy knows how tohire the right people.
I would think that the best exploration right now, I think
it's very blue. I think so too, and I actually
think it's by a long, long way we we were talking.

(00:21):
Just then, mate, that discovering something, finding
something like a pure, genuine discovery, exploring of of of
significant deposit, you know, like being part of a team that
does that or having a significant role.
That is the most like glorified thing you can do in this
industry through a combination of of serendipity and
capability, minting literal economic value into existence

(00:46):
for the benefit of of everyone. That is, that's the penultimate
kind of glory, glory in our industry.
You're spot on, mate. It it takes something special,
right? It takes driving forces, it
takes human ingenuity, it takes a whole lot, and we wanted to
explore that, that and the perfect people.
Explore it. Yeah.
The perfect people to explore that with our guest today Mate

(01:06):
Ahmad and Steve, who taught us also a bunch about podcasting.
That they are, yeah. Ahmad's Lehmann and Steve
Beresford, you know, first and foremost students of exploration
history, but they're explorationists themselves and
have have have made significant contributions to, you know,
their their various interests inthe industry.

(01:26):
We're gonna we're just let's just get to it because it's this
was a wiki combo. We can start talking about
podcasting because they were theCo hosts of exploration radio,
which is a phenomenal old podcast.
If you ever get a spare 70 hoursto listen to all of your
episodes, it's worth it. And you can feel their fantastic
passion for this beautiful industry.
So here we go, mate. Let's share the conversation.
So yeah. And some people have to just

(01:47):
socialise with you. They need to get into the
conversation. They they're nervous when they
start because they've treated itlike public presentation or
something. That's why in person, chill in
person is so much better. It's it's harder to build that
rapport if you're just zooming something in completely.
So like this, we've already spoken for 20 minutes before.
Yeah, yeah. If you haven't, if you're, if
you're someone you've never met on the other side of the world,

(02:08):
it's harder to build that because you're like, all right,
you ready to start filming? That's right.
Yeah, exactly I do. So the other one is in a modern
corporate world, people want to be very careful what they say
and it takes a while to remove that.
Just that little comfort level of, you know, I've pre pay, I've
pre planned 10 things that I must say, I must make sure they

(02:28):
go in this order. It's like giving a presentation
and turning up and finding a slide that you don't know what
it is. Everyone goes that's the worst
thing you could ever do in giving a talk is be so
procedural that when something goes wrong, you.
Freak out. Yeah, and you fall apart.
You fall apart because your procedure has just fallen apart
on the stage right in front of everybody.

(02:49):
Whereas if you actually put together the talk logically and
you know your own material, and if the slide turns up and it's
not what it's supposed to be, you just keep going.
You are unfazed. And people saw like, yeah,
things like, yeah, like the pre plan, like, you know, like when
we when we did it, yeah. Like you got to remember, like,
you know, we started podcasting 10 years ago, right?

(03:10):
Like that's when we first started.
So yeah, it's a completely different landscape than what it
is now. Like, yeah.
Like people understand podcasts,you know, like we have to
explain to people, like, I mean,I hope you use this content in
the thing, but you know, like wehave to go to people and explain
to them what a podcast for people, like part what?
And you're like, well, you know,it's a radio show.
They're like, oh, you wanted me to do a presentation.
No, no, no, no, we just want youto talk.

(03:31):
And you're like, but why is thatinteresting?
And you're like, well, it could be interesting.
You're like, who's going to makeit interesting?
Well, I'm hoping you will. And they're like, but I don't,
I'm not interesting. We're like, well, we think you
are like, it's like, yeah, so this is like a lot of.
And then even then we would do all this prep and tell people
like some of the early days, like I think we must have done
like 3 or 4 pre interview conversations to kind of like,

(03:53):
like, you know, gear them up to be like, yeah, you got to come.
And you know, like do not do a presentation.
You know, next call, remember, do not do a presentation.
Third call, remember, do not do a presentation.
And when they showed up, they will come and be like, so do you
want me to talk about my this thing?
And they will just talk for like1520 minutes like a
presentation. And you're like, you know what,
let's just let them get this shit out of there like the

(04:15):
thing. And then we'll start recording.
Like that's where the kind of the material will come from.
And so the other things like, you know, like I like I watch
Rogan episodes a lot and I kind of realized that he used to have
this like structure where in thefirst hour he talked, he rarely
talked. Like if you actually count, he
might talk like 1020%. And in the middle hour he would
talk slightly more. And in the end, he would talk a

(04:35):
lot and kind of own the person. And so I kind of figured out
like, you know, that's one of the reasons why we went in long
form was like, you know what, let's just let the person talk
for 30 minutes. You know, if they're really well
trained, they might talk for 40 minutes in that presentation
mode. But at some point, they're going
to have to switch over to start talking normally.
And that's when the interview will kind of start.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then we would burn the firstwhatever minutes where they were

(04:55):
just in presentation mode. And then we would just get rid
of. That and that's why it's so good
to have politicians come and anddo that as well, because like
how much like pre scripted stuffcan you possibly get through?
If you're going to go up there and do a three hour
conversation, you have to be kind of a normal human to be
able to just have a conversation.
And that's fine. I mean, like, yeah.
Like, I mean, are we genuinely curious in, like, when you have
guests on, like, how many guestsask you whether you have a

(05:17):
script for the interview? Like as a percentage I'd say
it's close to 0. Never been asked if you have a
script for an interview. Yeah, the, the, the one thing is
sometimes people say, can you give us a list of questions?
Yeah, people. And we will say we haven't even
prepped for this yet. There is no list of questions
you know. So that was interesting, right,
Because when we started, everyone asked for a script.

(05:40):
So we had to write scripts and say, hey, this is going to be
the flow of the. Word for word.
Word for word, yeah. Script.
Yeah. And then and then, you know,
like what we realized, I don't know, like after the first
season was that, you know, we could totally screw people over
by just jumping around on the script because then they would
get more honest kind of, you know, because they had they were
obviously pre trained a certain certain way to talk.

(06:03):
And then you would go and then like, yeah, they will say
something, you go, well actuallylet's just jump here and then
jump back and then and in that thing they will get confused and
start talking to kind of normally.
Yeah. So that's what I mean.
I think it's like a lot's. Changed in 10 years.
Yeah, I think it's changed now because the, the, the, the guest
side I think understands what, what they're, what they're

(06:23):
bringing a lot more than us having to coach them where I
feel like we have to coach a lotof people on, you know, like
what a podcast was, what are we trying to do?
Like, you know, why a general conversation is interesting.
You know, most people were like,surely that's not interesting
because I built my career doing 100 presentations a year.
Like people want presentations. And we were kind of like,

(06:45):
actually, we don't want presentations.
We want the exact opposite. We want human beings.
We actually want the. I mean a classic the
conversation we did with John, John Van.
These were high end individuals in our industry and it's like
these are friends. Would you like to listen in to
my coffee conversation with these guys?

(07:06):
I'm privileged. I've done these things.
Is that something that other people would would love to
participate in? Most of the world doesn't get
that opportunity and you're like, and when you do these
informal, this is what normal day is like for me, having a
conversation with John or, or, or the like.
And they're like, actually, that's what people want.
They don't want to hear the formality.

(07:27):
They want to hear the real life interactions, which is, you
know, the classic is the one I did with John by myself, John
Van. And at the end of it, we're
going through it. And I said to John, you and I
sound like tosses. And then he goes and I went, you
know, we are, there's two dudes up in each other just as if we

(07:47):
were having a coffee. And it's like, this is a
conversation. It's what it's like having a
conversation with John. This is what I this is how I
interact when I'm talking with John.
The beauty about the medium is, is, is anyone listening?
Feels like they're a part of that conversation.
And if it, yeah, authenticity iskind of the key ingredient.
You said you started 10. Years ago, voyeuristic concept.

(08:09):
I think that's really, that's the part that I like podcasts.
It's like, you know, I feel likeI'm a voyeur to other people
having a conversation, you know,like I don't know them, you
know, like it's unlikely. My social circle is going to
overlap with theirs, but I get to be a voyeur on on like
listening to them and then and especially nice if they then put
as much of their self in there because you kind of feel like
you walked away with a little part of that person in in that

(08:31):
conversation. And getting those differences of
opinion is just fantastic. You know it, it might be like
you say outside your group of friends, outside of the people
you associate with and and how they think people from
completely different walks and being able to just listen in, be
a family on the wall. And also like, you know, I mean,
this is like, I mean, I hope youcan cut all of this thing in at
some point. But yeah, like one of the.
It's already started. This is it.

(08:53):
Yeah, what are you talking about?
This this. Is all we're going to do.
I mean, one of the aspects of, you know, like around, yeah, in
the preamble, you kind of told me like, why do we got to like
the podcast? So one of the points was, Steve,
was this like, if I'm a 23 year old in the industry, like what
are the chances that I'm going to be able to talk to someone
like John Aronsky or John Van orsome of the other people that we

(09:14):
had on the show? Pretty low, right?
So why don't we be that conduit where we have that conversation
and then they get to be a part of it, right?
And they can consume 10% of it or they can consume 100% of it.
They may understand 10% or they may understand 100%, but at
least they're better off by at least getting that 10% of the
conversation, right. So that was one of the the
guiding principles of doing a podcast early.

(09:37):
The other one was really around that.
I always felt that, you know, like people, people write down
what they do, but people speak what they think or they or they
talk about what they think. And sometimes it was I was
always more interested in like, you know, like, like, what were
you thinking when you did this stuff?
Like why did you do it this way?You know, like I have your
written, I have your presentation.

(09:57):
I saw, you know, you said we didA, then we did B, then we did C
and then whatever, right? But I'm always interested in
like, why did you start with A? Like, you know, you could have
started AD as well because you could have jumped or you know,
like why, why did you not do that way?
Right. And then people were a lot more
honest about things like, you know, like, well, actually I
didn't know. So I just started with a right.

(10:18):
And you're like, oh, so. Yeah.
So someone like John Van, you could like, like, push him.
You know, one of the, like, the moments in the John Van
interview was when he talked about the donut of neglect,
right? And it was almost like he was
kind of formulating that idea inhis head as we were kind of
talking, right? Which is essentially that on
some assets, you know, people focus on the mind and some
assets people focus on really far away from the mind.

(10:38):
But there's this area in the middle which often gets
overlooked and, and is where, you know, like there's quite a
lot of value to be achieved. You know, and then as he was
talking, you know, you could kind of figure out that he
didn't quite get the concept completely himself, but he was
willing to put it out there to say, Hey, I'm working on this
idea. He's not going to go and give a
presentation on the doughnut andneglect because he has to have
analytics to show, you know, like this many opportunities

(10:59):
were missed in Anglo at the time.
And this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, you know, this is how the budget it was a proportion this
way. He's never going to put that in
the presentation, but he was happy to put that in a in a
podcast interview. All right.
And that's kind of what I mean, like, you know, people talk
about what they think rather than what they did.
And that was that was kind of what we were trying to get out
of out of those. I'm going to I'm going to Fact
Check you. You just listed 2 reasons why

(11:20):
you started expiration radio. I happened to have a clip where
you articulate very. I don't know how long it's been
since you've listened to this. Hi Music, I'm Ahmad.
And hi, I'm Steve. At Audio Exploration Radio, a
podcast focusing on the past, present and the future of

(11:41):
mineral exploration. Now some of you out there might
be asking, what is mineral exploration and why does it
matter to me? Well, there's no denying that we
now all live in a society that increasingly relies on
technology on an everyday basis.And as our reliance on
technology grows, so does our reliance to the raw materials
like metals that make a lot of that technology possible.

(12:01):
So the challenge is that we haveto be constantly searching for
new mineral deposits to replace the ones that we're exhausting
and using up. This is where mineral
exploration comes in. It's the science and practice of
finding these new mineral deposits.
As explorers, both Steve and I have spent most of our careers
searching for new mineral deposits and to be honest, we
haven't been very successful. And that's not just us overall,

(12:23):
the industry itself hasn't had agreat tracker for the last
couple of decades. This lack of success has led to
a number of people questioning whether our current practices
are adequate for the challenges we are facing now and we'll
likely face in the future. The idea for this podcast arose
out of a frustration that both Ahmed and I had about a lack of
media to have these conversations.

(12:44):
So we aim to bring you a look into the past.
We're going to deconstruct the successful explorers of the
past. What makes a good explorer, What
makes a good discoverer? And we're going to hear in their
words, their stories about discoveries.
We're going to look at this painful transition that we're in
the middle of. What are we doing and how are we
looking towards the future? Are we ready for the challenges

(13:07):
that we face? Are we having the right
conversations, asking the right questions?
We hope these stories will inspire you because first and
foremost, these are the stories that we wanted to hear.
We've searched for these storiesbecause this is what we want to
hear about the future of mental expression.

(13:29):
Cool. How does it feel listening back
to that? So prescriptive, you know, I'm,
I'm gonna put this straight up. No, no, I'm going to interrupt
you right here. When we first started, I used to
write these really long scripts and was me who did this and I
know this, but that one, you wrote that yourself entirely.
And then it was me who went the path of going you know what, we

(13:50):
need to be way less and you disagreed with me.
You were like, no, I like it needs to be organized,
everything like that. I went, no, let's just talk
rubbish, but I I know that I wasthe dude.
I wrote my part of that. I know I was the guy who started
us off on the whole, you know, writing it out.
Formality, flowery language, everything, everything.

(14:14):
I mean, before that, I mean, I think that like, I don't know
how long that script took, but like, yeah, it was like weeks in
the making, right? Like, you know, we antagonized
over every word, like all of this type of stuff.
And then, yeah, like Steve says,slowly we unbound a lot of that
because yeah, like, I mean, like, yeah, like I think we also
have to talk about the the fact that, you know, like I made this
comment that we started 10 yearsago, right?

(14:35):
And at that time, you know, likethe the leading podcasts were
really, you know, like like Serial or like, you know, things
that were like very well researched and.
Great. Production.
Production, though. You too?
Yeah. Like there were radio people
going into correct podcasts. And so and you know, like that
was really the the soup tujour at that time, right?
Like like out of the top whatever 20 podcasts, yeah,

(14:56):
aside was Rogan like, you know, maybe I'm not sure where he was
in that ranking probably would have been high, but most of them
were all of these kind of like highly serialized kind of
podcasts. And so.
So when we would like tell people we're doing a podcast,
you know, like you'd have to kind of create an environment
that that fitted the the the zeitgeist at that time, right?

(15:16):
And podcasts. So, so yeah, so that's why we
started. I think it's like very very
scripted and and. Heavily edited, even though we
were early on and the technologywas nothing like what you've
got, you know, if you take some of the this, the hours that went
into editing them and you're like, we can't keep up.
We are the fundamental limiter is our editing time.

(15:37):
I mean, the editing was high because we were just so shit at
it at the start, right? Like, I mean, like, yeah, like
when I listen to that again, like I can you know, how you
hear a certain audio and you know exactly where you were in
that time, Like that is all recorded.
I think that's like number. I don't know, whatever it take
of me sitting in my car in a Coles parking lot with towels
around recording that, right? And so that would have been

(15:57):
like, I don't know, a couple of hours of me just recording the
same thing over and over and over to try to get the sense of
how the audio works. And even like, you know, like
your clunky background kind of audio, you can tell.
Like I can tell he's definitely sitting in his car somewhere or
some parking lot because of the echo that comes in the
background. Like all of that stuff, right?
You know that. I reckon he's in a little room.
Cars have phenomenal acoustics so I reckon you're in like a

(16:18):
tiny little. Room.
Occasionally I would do it in myoffice, but I got a glass screen
and I was. In a glass wall as well.
And glass wall and so everybody can see me.
Yeah. And you know, as a senior person
in, in the, in the company, it'sa bad look, you know, just

(16:39):
sitting there at lunchtime or whatever, just.
Either you've lost your marbles,or you're just talking to
yourself, or people think like it's completely checked out, or
you're just recording scripts that we were.
Like as soon as we go to studio,the whole world changed because
we we were serious about acoustics and that was you.
You were 100% driven on making sure that we were serious about

(16:59):
changing that and that was a bigstep for us.
And also like things like, I mean, like, you know, like now
you guys have this capacity, right?
Like a lot of the tech that you probably have in this room
probably didn't exist for podcasting 10 years ago either,
right? So we, you know, so that the
podcasting studios we had to go to, you know, like we were
really in a like a music school in a backroom in a music school

(17:21):
that we paid to basically have the desk and the mics and
everything put into place. So we could actually use it as a
podcast studio, right, Because we could find nothing outside of
renting a professional radio studio, which is like thousands
of dollars, whatever it was a day.
It's so it was very like bootstrapped in, in that in that
time, not just from the fact that, you know, like we were a

(17:43):
podcast about mining and exploration, but also the fact
that we were a podcast in Perth,you know, like they just weren't
a lot of places that we can kindof kind of go.
Now you have things like like the what is it, the hen house
like you know, where they have these excellent podcasting
studios that are custom built. More and more popping up, yeah.
Yeah, like, you know, walk in, you know, like turn it on and
then bang, you're done. You know, like that didn't
exist. Like, you know, we would like,

(18:04):
we would have to like, you know,in the early days, I would have
to show up with our producer Dan, at that time.
And we would have to take the table, you know, like put it in
this location, you know, move all the chairs in, set up all
the mics, make sure all the cables ran into the, the control
room, all of that stuff. And then it all had to get
packed away at the end because I'm not sure what it was used
for. I think it was a storage room or
something, I can't remember. We'd have to take all the shit

(18:26):
out of the storage room, put it in the hallway, set up the room
and then pack it up away again. So that that's kind of how how
we started. Right, in the exact same way
that building out a podcast studio much more easier to do
today than it is 10 years ago. Things have gotten better,
better technology. The exact same is true for
building mind today, mate. Because one of the biggest

(18:46):
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They have solved this problem for the industry.
It's spot on mate. And it's not just the sources of

(19:07):
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It's the financing. They can look after the
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(19:27):
to get your mind up and running as fast as possible.
I wish we had zero CapEx podcasting mate, that would that
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Go cross boundary hundreds of hundreds of conversations with
the, you know, the industry's most prolific explorationists
and as self confessed unsuccessful explorationists at

(19:48):
that point in your career, did you figure out why the industry
has, you know, did you answer the question that you kind of
you were you were compelled to start a podcast about, you know.
I I don't think so, but I think it's a never ending journey.
If we go back to the actual words that were written in the
part, you showed that I still stand by those.
Two different people, Ahmed and I Ahmed went the direction of

(20:11):
very much commercially more likeyou during the podcast and
fascinated it just because his own self development was about
building things, the technology,moving into that part of the
business. Me, I've always been obsessed
with the concept of why we're sopoor at exploration as a royal
we and it's so I'm really heavily down the psych side, the

(20:34):
behavioural side and everything like that.
But both of us wanted to learn for ourselves.
It was about, hey, look, this ismy journey in development.
Do you want to listen in to my to my journey?
So did I learn a lot from that period of time?
Yeah, actually more than workingfor a company.

(20:54):
So that's a big call. If we invert what Trev just said
there, you guys also intervieweda lot of people that were super
successful. What are the characteristics
that stuck out from those people?
Like Mark Bennett is an example that really sticks in my mind of
people that did it and they did it multiple times.
I think it's. It's interesting, you know, like

(21:16):
I'll frame your question, both of your questions in the sense
that, you know, the ultimate goal of exploration is I think
to get to a discovery, right, todiscover something new.
And the thing that I kind of took away from was that I think
I had a very immature view or discovery was prior to prior to
going through the whole concept of exploration radio.
What was that? Is that discovery was really,

(21:38):
you know, like a like a moment in time with an individual,
right? And I think both of those aren't
true. I don't think discovery is a
moment in time. I think it's more like a movie
that has many moving parts and takes a while to to unravel.
And I don't think it's ever an individual.
I think it's the the role the individual plays is how they

(22:00):
interact with certain moments intime or certain, let's call them
decisions, right? Because that's I think a much
more easier way to understand how they interact with certain
decisions at that moment in time.
But I don't think it's ever like, yeah, that was my view,
right? Like it's like, you know, like,
and also like, you know, like kind of like I think some of
the, the, the constructs around like, you know, like the WMC

(22:23):
kind of way of discovering, you know, it was always like, you
know, there was like, you know, it's Doug Haynes is the guy that
discovered this. And as you unravel it, you
realize actually, you know, likehe played a part like, you know,
but but it was a movie. He was one starring character in
it. There were other people that in
the first act of the movie were actually massively important,
but they had faded by the time the final act came around.

(22:44):
And and so I think that's what Ikind of got out of it was that,
you know, like when you look at successful people, they, you
know, like, yeah, they were important, but but they were in
an environment that I think allowed them to to be successful
because of the people they had or the way they interacted with
moments and all of those type ofthings.
And now when I look at discoveries, that's the lens I

(23:05):
take. I don't I don't take that lens
that, you know, it was, you know, person X and they were,
you know, and they did it on a Monday.
Like, you know, I don't think that's how other stories work.
I think they are much more evolved in that sense.
And that's the lesson I got out of it.
When you talk to them, like, youknow, Bennett, you talk to him
like I'll give you an example, like the discovery of Sirius

(23:27):
doesn't happen if Bennett was not an Apex, right.
And Apex was a corporate disaster.
Like, you know, we talk about iton the on the show.
So it's because Apex happened then, you know, there was a link
with Creasy. There was this relationship
built between Mark and Creasy atthe time where, you know, like
Mark had a favourable relationship with Creasy.

(23:47):
There was someone else who didn't have a favourable
relationship with Creasy was theother executive in the company
at the time. And Mark had a falling out with
him, but he got along with Creasy.
And so, yeah, So all of that relationship like, you know,
that was the ACT, act one of theserious discovery, right?
Serious was act three. That doesn't happen unless that
that that doesn't occur. Now if they can.
Go back all the way to Thunderbox and probably before

(24:09):
that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, you know, so Mark's own movie in that sense has to be
that, you know, like he acted a certain way to find Thunderbox
and Waterloo and the other discoveries he'd made, which
ostracized him to a large degreein, in the organizations that he
was in. But it allowed him to go out and
do his own thing in, in, in thatsense.

(24:30):
And so, you know, so that's whatI mean.
Like, you know, like that's the thing that I got away.
And, and I was, I'd seen Mark probably talk about serious, I
don't know, 5 or 6 times during that time.
And I don't think I ever got that part of the story out of
him until he came on the show And he kind of like, like
unraveled it all. And maybe he unraveled it in
real time with us. I, I think so.
I think I can remember back to the second interview or the

(24:52):
second part of the first interview we did with him where
I think we got him to a space where he was saying things for
the first time. So everybody in one of the
things that is a mistake about discoveries is they're told
retrospectively and all the warts are ironed out
retrospectively. And it isn't just corporate

(25:14):
speak, it's just human nature. So if expression discovery
happens under such high uncertainty, nothing like the
rest of the mining chain that when we look back on it, like
orders of magnitude higher uncertainties, What we do, we
solve for uncertainty. But what people don't realize is
it's just full of moments of absolute indecision.

(25:36):
Decision paralysis is the norm in this business.
And so it's easy to not act. So someone like Bennett knows
how to go through those moments.Someone like Creasy knows how to
hire the right people who go through those moments.
Yeah. And I learned, you know, and I
actually learned this from Ahmedduring the podcast because we've

(25:56):
spent a lot of time together over the years.
Ahmed has a tendency to act before I do.
We've had this conversation manytimes.
And we can tell some stories about this.
And he solves for these problemsand it's taught me.
So now I spend a bit of time, probably over overly talking the
talk. Nowadays I walk the talk way
more than talking the talk. Does this, does this speak to a

(26:19):
a fundamental differing of philosophy that that came out of
the WMC camps, By the way, like when we've we've had a
conversation about this, the, the camp that was the, the the
doers and the camp that was the the thinkers.
Do you think it's related? I, I mean, we, we've had this
conversation before around like,yeah, like, I think like, I
mean, I like, again, like, you know, this is also, I think, you

(26:41):
know, before you kind of jump in, like you asked about like
what, what also changed is I also, you know, like I also had
a pretty immature view about like, you know, the culture I
say like in WMC, like the exploration culture in WMC,
right? Like I had a pretty immature
view about how like what made that culture work?
And also talking to someone likeBennett, you know, like he, he

(27:03):
gave us a lot more about what that culture looked like, you
know, like, because he wasn't, you know, like even though I
think he desperately probably wanted to be, he wasn't part of
the like the technical kind of group in that sense.
Yeah. He was more the doer and so and
then that, I think, I think thatworked in his favor, but it also
irritated other people inside the organization, which is why
he didn't kind of fit right. So, yeah, so I think in a

(27:25):
nutshell, yeah, that difference between the thinker and the
doer, I got completely differentlessons out of what Bennett did
in the sense that Bennett just did shit right and you go, okay,
well, you can sit around and think as much as you can, but at
some point you just got to go dothings right.
So, you know, so and in that process, yeah, you're going to
get things wrong. But you know, like on the whole

(27:47):
you like, yeah, it's a yeah. Like I always ask this question
like in order to find islands, you know, you got to get wet
first, right? Like you got to go into the
ocean at some point. And that's kind of the idea that
I kind of got out of it. So we we actually talked about
this in with John Van about the concept of building things as
you go. But it's very easy to say those
words and way more difficult to actually do it to commit to

(28:11):
something that you don't fully know how is going to turn out.
And that's the kind of world that we live in.
And one of the beauties of let'sgo with Julian Malnick.
We'll go with Bennett from the star.
Is that confident to start the process when you don't know
where you're going? Now, this is what makes it
really hard in the corporate world or even with the investor

(28:32):
world is if I phrase it like that, that sounds nonsense, but
it is in fact the problem. The problem is some of the most
meaning thing, things that happen require you to turn 5050
decisions into 5149. They require a level of optimism
and uncertainty that is nothing like the rest of the mining

(28:54):
value chain. And one of the things that I
think I learned through the podcast is we have lost the
ability to treat mineral expression as a completely
discreet and separate challenge to the rest of the mining value
chain because we've lumped it all in, because we are, they are
the client, because it is one process, because we are funded

(29:17):
by them. And we have allowed ourselves to
not be brave enough to stand up and say, hey, wait a minute, we
are nothing like this in terms of personality styles and
drivers. What's the special source that
makes us drive is X? And we should be in a world
where we can live inside the both organizations with vastly

(29:40):
different diversity, cognitive diversity.
Now, it's all well and good to say that.
Try doing that inside a corporation.
It's actually quite challenging.But that is the challenge and
part of the reason we're gettingour ass kicked by, let's call it
autocratic countries. It's because the more and more
people you involve in the decision making process, the
harder everyone's going to get. And we have to solve for that

(30:04):
question. We have to solve for that
because if you want a democraticway of doing all this, why are
you asking why Friedland and Bennett and and Creasy and you
name it are more successful? They're making those really,
really hard decisions and you'renot.
You, you also wrote not too longago, I think you posted on, on

(30:25):
LinkedIn about this, about a sort of decline in exploration
across the, the Western world. And that's not limited to
mineral resource exploration. Why?
Why do you think that is? So I think one of the things
that I've learnt across this process and, and the podcast
helps because you got to talk toa lot of other people and bounce
ideas about this, is that most of our issues on a daily basis

(30:48):
are what I would broadly call behavioural.
And I'll actually challenge anybody who's listening to this,
who's an exploration. As scientists, we tend to solve
problems with science. We tend to look at it through a
scientific lens. As investors, we tend to solve
things through our finance. But actually, what are the
problems you are dealing with ona day-to-day basis?

(31:10):
I would say nearly 100% of mine,and I'll challenge anyone else,
these problems are behavioural. That is, why are people doing
things like this? So let's go for a concrete
example. Why do people believe that
advanced projects are low risk? Because they have more
information. I know John's mentioned this,

(31:31):
but it's absolutely ridiculous. It's just not the case in 99.99%
of the situations. This is really, really poor way
to run a business, I don't think.
I think it's that people aren't thinking this through.
They're just doing what everyoneelse says.
That might be offensive to some,but it doesn't make any sense to

(31:51):
me. The words you're saying are this
is low risk. It's like, no, no, this is
highest risk thing I can think of to do in the industry.
We are clearly talking past eachother here.
We are clearly not talking the same language.
Maybe it's semantic. Whatever it is, we are not
communicating because I don't understand what you're talking

(32:11):
about. I really don't understand.
Yeah. And I think this is, yeah, it's
a good point. Like, yeah, this is another
thing that we often talked about.
And this is like one of the things that we wanted to get out
of certain interviews often was this, you know, like this
fuzziness about why people couldn't go and kind of do
something right, that they, you know, like, what was the

(32:33):
barrier? Why it kind of kind of got to
that, Yeah. When you look at, you know, like
certain successful people, like,you know, we've had, like, Chuck
Fitki, I think was the same. You know, like you Bennett would
obviously be the same. You know, like all of these
individuals. You kind of like, Malnick was a
classic one, right? Like Julian Malnick.
Yeah. Like he developed a company
because he'd read the story of the Glomar Explorer, you know,

(32:54):
like this ship that went out andexplored the, you know, the
bottom of the ocean. And so he like that, that's all
it took for him to go and start a company about deep sea mining
because he read a book where he was, I think it's 14 or
something. I don't know, it was a teenager,
right? And you go, man, like his
threshold was pretty low, right.And so and then and obviously,

(33:15):
you know, like we have sat in, you know, you, you know, I have
sat in the same organisations. And we would go and sometimes
look at, you know, like, how come we didn't do that?
And it's, and it's because, yes,somewhere along the line,
someone has set a threshold thatwas so artificially high that we
were never going to do it because it was easier to say no
to not doing it than to actuallygo do it.
Yeah. Malnik started a deep sea mining

(33:36):
company because he had a a childhood kind of dream about
the global explorer. It's fascinating.
So that sounds romantic. And that's, to answer your
question properly, exploration is actually a universal
biological trait. We don't really think about it
like this because we work in mineral expression.

(33:57):
And all I've been trying to do is get people to realize that
this is a universal trait for all biology.
And I can give you hundreds of examples.
And as a result, there are many things that we know and learn.
And so it's very clear that the world is backing away from this.
We could go into why because it's free.

(34:18):
One of it's fairly logical. So let's throw one example up.
If I give you access to absolutely everything you've
ever wanted, every piece of information you think you
wanted, then you are going to react to that information.
You can maybe try and curate that information, but you're
going to be swamped. Let me phrase it another way.
You are distracted. You are distracted by volume of

(34:41):
data, not necessarily volume of knowledge.
Let me tell you that most of thethings you need in mineral
expression are not written down.They're 100% tacit.
So when we see people going AI route, we see people with a
possession with GPT, you're like, you are philosophically
and biologically not aligned with what needs to be done.

(35:03):
You have gone down a path and I understand why.
It's like my phone. My phone just gives me the
content that I it knows I want to to see.
That's happening to all of us and it's getting worse and
worse. Now everybody at this table
knows this is the case. The real challenge is not what
I've just said. It's actually how you deal with
it. But the reality is we're

(35:24):
avoiding. So why would we avoid something?
So let's make it a honeybee. Let's make something a little
bit more concrete. You're a honeybee and you want
to go off and find some some. Honeybee part is the more
concrete part for people. I never said it wasn't, so
actually just a detail on that alot of people got.
That one of the Modern Family like famous code.

(35:45):
It's like, it's like standing inthe Meadow with a ladder and
it's like, and how big was the mouse?
It's like, well, it was as big as a car.
And he's like, how can a mouse be as big as a car?
He's like you're standing in themiddle in a Meadow on a ladder
with a mouse. You're like, that's when you
want to play logic police like this is another time.
So people, I am an abstract kindof guy and and McHale, who's a
friend of ours who is actually an abstract kind of guy who was

(36:07):
always going, Steve, you're way too abstract.
I mean, that's not good coming from McHale.
That's what. So why would you go abstract?
It's to either illustrate a point using language that's
bigger than my expertise or my niche is to try and make it a
common language. And the other one is because the
problem, it might be higher level.

(36:29):
So we sit there, this conversation about why is
expression declining. The easy way to answer is to get
talk about financing. And these things are real.
But you know what, there's several levels below the actual
problem. I'll give you an illustration.
If the problem was strictly financing, why is expression
declining all the way through the value chain from majors to

(36:50):
juniors? It's many things that are
broken. It's many elements that are not
going right. It's actually a lot higher level
problems. And the financing is a
derivative problem. And if you want to solve these
problems, sometimes you've got to get them up there.
And so when people say, oh, you're being too abstract, it's
like, that's why I'm not going to apologize because I know that

(37:13):
I need to somehow get people to listen to these more abstract
concepts, concepts like the honeybee.
So the honeybee, if the honeybeedoesn't go off and find new
resources, he's going to die. OK, There is nothing that can be
done. It's a biological need to
explore. Now, that seems rather a serious
way to take this conversation, to imply that mineral explorers

(37:36):
are going to die. But it's clearly true.
Exploration is a need, and it has to be balanced against
exploitation, which in this casewe could call the actual mining.
They're different. So there's only a scout bee that
heads off. The scout bee heads off and does
all the uncertainty of finding the next series of results,
comes back, does a little waggledance, tells everyone else, and

(37:58):
then come the resource drones. That's actually how the whole
process works. That's the same as glial cells
in your brain. Every biological life form, I
mean it, every one of them. If you stop exploring, you don't
find new things. If I keep telling you you've got
a source of honey and I keep supplying it on your phone all
the time, you will never leave for the new resource site.

(38:23):
You will never save the hive. And that is what's going on.
We don't need to. And it's always been a
biological need. Exploration is a biological
need. And I think.
You know, and so now you get a window into the conversations we
used to have before we did. Yeah.
Like Steve would go on these abstract things and like, I

(38:44):
would walk out going, what the hell we were talking about at
the end, you know, like, how's that?
Like, how can I condense that into a podcast episode out of
that? You know, like, can we go into
your honeybee out of that? But yeah, like, I mean, one of
the things that we like, you know, like it's it's always
interesting when when people always ask me like, you know,
like, why is exploration so bad now?
Right. And I think, yeah, So like what

(39:04):
we wanted to do, and I don't know how successfully we did it,
right, but we wanted to go through the gears, right, to say
that, you know, the obvious thing is that there's like a
capability and a finance problem, right?
Like, yeah, like we don't, we probably don't have the right
amount of capability inside companies to to properly explore

(39:24):
and we don't have the finances to kind of do it right.
Like that. That's I think the immediate
thing. Then you can go, I think all the
way to the other end of the abstract and go, well, you know,
like, are we like culturally or like socially in a, in a, in an
abstract way? Are we culturally and socially
in a point where we just not value exploration the same way
as we value exploitation, right,Because that that could be the

(39:45):
other things. And so when we like, you know,
we would like dissect these kindof like these topics on our
podcast, we were like, well, howcan we go?
How can we condense something really big into something small?
And how can we have something small and show how it impacts on
something greater? All right.
And, and I think like exploration kind of sits in the
sense I'm not sure. Like, like my personal belief is

(40:07):
I don't think it's there's one or the other.
I think that the finance problem, I think yeah, is a
small thing, but I think it leads to a bigger thing where
you know, like you're. If you're someone that wants to
go explore, you're probably not incentivized to kind of start an
exploration company because you're more incentivized to
start a exploitation company. So you yourself change your

(40:27):
skill set to go down that path, right?
Like, yeah, like there's no like, and you see this in like,
it's not just exploration. Like, you know, like I play
around in the startup space and you're finding it in startups as
well, right? That they like they, you know,
like there's now a completely different shift in like, I'll
give you an example. Like, you know, there was a
pretty well known rule that in order to get to like a Unicorn,
a billion dollar company, it would take you X number of years

(40:50):
and that X was a large number, like 7 to 10 years, right, to
get to it. And then there's now there's
belief that spread out because of the like the success of some
large software companies early on that you can get to a Unicorn
in two to three years, that you can get a billion dollar
company, right? So now when you go to investors,
obviously investors will want toinvest into a billion dollar

(41:12):
company, right? So they have now actively chosen
to believe the part that it can be done in two to three years,
when in fact, it's actually going to take 7 to 10 years to
get get to that level, right. And for example, Amazon, you
know, like lost money for 1718 years before it got to a point
where actually turned turned a profit.
It's so all of these kind of things.
So when I look at exploration, you know, like one of the

(41:33):
narratives I think that we have misled people on is that I, I
think we have sold it as a shortterm endeavour and it never was,
It was always a long term endeavour.
It always takes a while. Whether that's technically,
whether that's commercially like, however you want to look
at it, it was always a long termendeavour.
And we have sold it as a short term endeavour.

(41:55):
And so now we have created this malaise where everyone thinks
that, oh, it's only going to take like 3 years to go find a
Greenfield discovery. Well, that's never going to be
the case, right? Yeah, to say what you've said in
different words, which is something I think you've spoken
about Steve and Ahmad we've touched on previously.
Steve, you spoke about Nurulsk being discovered over a space of

(42:16):
decades. It's bit by bit by bit, Ahmed.
We've spoken about Escondida. The Escondida we know 40 plus
years later is not what they first discovered when they put
those. It's gone through like 18
expansions or whatever it is. You get to the size that it is
now. So you need to see something
like a vicuna or whatever what Filo did and similar type
projects and have the sort of vision in a sense and the

(42:40):
patience to your point that acknowledge that this takes
time. Yeah, I just, I just think it's,
you know, like when I, like I obviously sat inside companies,
I sat on the investor side of the idea.
Like I think this is the, the, the, the message that I find
that we have misled people on really grossly is that, you
know, like even technical peoplekind of do it.

(43:01):
You know, like you look at like the Russians, like, you know,
like the Russians did. I like as part of this, like
Nurul's talk that I'll do, I'll talk about how many expeditions
they did, right? They like between the time that
they first found coal in the time of peninsula to the point
where they found talanac, which is the big deposit now, you
know, they were somewhere on theorder of 112 different

(43:22):
expeditions, right, over years. And so, so 100.
So let's transfer that into an expiration program, right?
They had 112 expiration programsto get to to that discovery over
a period of 42 years. I think it was right.
So, so why do we have this perception that you can go find

(43:42):
Talmac or something like that inthe new area in three years?
I mean, what lunatic has come upwith this concept, right?
And so and now like, and and I get it that year, like if I'm in
the company and I was in the junior expiration company, we
sell the dream that, you know, like, oh man, next program, it's
going to tell us exactly what weneed to know, right?

(44:04):
It's not it's not gonna like maybe it might, right?
There's a small percentage. It might, but.
It's the instant gratification from all that swiping.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, I don't know,
like, yeah, maybe that's a good way to put it, right?
Like we're doing the instant gratification of swipe left,
swipe right on exploration programs now.
Let's turn this around because this is where I've been going in

(44:25):
the last few years outside of the podcast is times.
I actually think it's the issue.And as you've pointed out, I
think technical people don't even fully appreciate how long
it takes to do these things. So I don't think you can do
meaningful exploration as a result when there are retail

(44:46):
investors involved. OK, be cool.
As soon as you've got people with that sort of mentality,
things have to be way more concrete.
And that's causing people to go this advanced project rate
because they think that means concrete or closer to being a
mine. Of course it doesn't.
Most of them are further away. That's the that's the misleading

(45:08):
part that I don't know how that I don't understand.
So people think Greenfield's exploration will take too long.
So let's turn this around and go, why isn't a community?
Don't we accept that the world is what it is, it's changed and
the we all have phones and we all have social media and we are
all on the ADHD spectrum. So why don't we all accept this

(45:32):
and now turn back towards us andsay, how do we change mineral
expression to do this faster? How do we find, let's go for a
really radical one? How do we find neuroscan 3 years
And the standard answer to that should be can't be done.
Welcome to the challenge. Welcome.
Why should we we talk about we aren't recruiting the best and

(45:54):
the brightest. Well, one of them is an image
problem, but I actually still think that isn't even the high
enough level. If you want the best and
brightest, show me the challenge.
Show us the challenge for why this it is.
Put something in front of them. If the critical minerals,
critical metals theme is correctand we aren't going to find

(46:16):
enough copper, and we can have that argument, but say we need
to find these really big new deposits that'll lead us into
the next century, then we are not going to make it by working
business as usual. We need a transition into a
fundamentally different style ofmineral expression.

(46:37):
And Ahmad's looking at me like, do you really think you could do
this in three years? No, but I do think that's the
direction we should be going. I mean, yeah, that's this is an
important question, right? Like if, if, if the question is
that we need to find the risk inthree years, then the way we
operate is not how we should be operating.
Correct. You gotta change the way.

(47:00):
It's like me saying I want a sixpack, but I'm never gonna go to
the gym. Like at some point I'm gonna
have to change the way that I operate to in order to get the
fitness level that I need. And that I think is like, I
think we talk about the fact that people say like, yeah, like
we're going to find the risk in in three years and we're going
to do it by drilling 1 hole a year.
Exactly. You know, like, that's insane.

(47:22):
Like, that's not going to like, you know, like, so on one hand
you're telling me the story, butyour behaviour is actually
eliciting a completely differentoutcome.
Is that word again behaviour? So I think this is the problem.
There's just a disconnect from what we're capable of doing and
what we end up doing. So actually, if you listen to
someone like John, you listen tothere's just so many words of
wisdom and what he talked about and you're like, is that

(47:44):
translating on the ground? And the question, that's a
rhetorical question. The question is, why is it not?
Why is it not translating? And the answer is, we've evolved
from prospecting. It's a real evolution, but we're
transitioning into like another world.
And that world is a massive liftin expectations, technologies

(48:08):
and capability. And that's quite scary and.
Even on an organizational level,I think that they just never
this understand, like, you know,like I think it's easy to say
that, you know, this message is out there and you can choose
which one you want to like, which one you want to digest and
which ones you don't want to digest.
But yeah, even in an organization, I find like
there's this like the right handor talking to the to the left

(48:29):
hand kind of thing where like, yeah, like I remember, you know,
we were both in an organization.You can go check out which
organization was in our LinkedInprofile.
But yeah, like where we would belike, we want to find a world
class porphyry deposit. Yeah.
And our own internal like, yeah,analysis show that it would cost
somewhere between like 100 to $200 million to find one.
Yeah. And then our greenfields

(48:50):
exploration budget to find a world class porphyry deposit was
$4 million. Like, I mean, clearly the guy
that sits on the other end of the the dog bone that I sit on
on the desk is telling me that it's going to cost us $200
million to get there and you're giving me 4.
I mean that, that that's just, Imean, that's a strategy built on
just luck. Like, yeah, it's.

(49:10):
Built on hope. So yeah, back to your point,
which is really, you know, we want to find these special
deposits. So you mentioned FILO or we
could go back to the Neurilsk and stuff, not all.
So let's rephrase this. It's an axiom.
So in other words, it's a fundable belief that I have
that's different to a lot of other people.

(49:32):
Those deposits are not bigger versions of smaller deposits.
And as a result, they require different mindsets and it can
fundamentally different approaches.
So you can't just turn up to anyrandom deposit and turn it into
the Nexnarelsk or turn it into the next ESCON data.
It requires A dedicated act. A lot of people think that's

(49:52):
just too hard to do, but I'll tell you what's really hard to
do. It's really hard to find
something like that without doing it.
That's the biggest problem that we've got.
So if you don't, and this is another one of my abstract
moments, if Columbus doesn't leave Lisbon, he's got no chance
of finding America or whatever he finds.

(50:13):
It just isn't possible. That's what we learned from the
podcast as well, from Bennett and these people.
A lot of people are saying they're doing something and
they're never leaving the port because maybe they don't know
how to or maybe they disagree with that axiom that I started
with, which is that these are different.
Maybe they go no, no, maybe minecould be different.

(50:36):
Sure, serendipity is a genuine real thing in discovery.
But if you keep turning up to the same abused flower beds and
hoping for an A real discovery to drive the hive you driving,
you're making this really, really hard on yourself from a

(50:58):
business perspective. You are actually strategically
dropping down the probability ofsuccess and the ROI.
You are, and you don't know it, but you are making this so much
harder for a return than you need to.
Yeah, to get to the same goal, yeah.
I mean, I think this is where like, you know, like, I think
your question, like, you know, like what's kind of the like the

(51:19):
ailments in in exploration. So I think I think that's kind
of the the part is that maybe wejust don't walk the walk
anymore, right? Like we're not really, you know,
like we're because maybe we've been loud into the short term
malaise of like trying to do things in in a short term
period. I mean, one of the other things
that I, I now when I look back at all the content that we

(51:42):
created, you know, like one of the things I would do a lot,
something I would do differentlyis really work on like what are
what some of the environmental kind of aspects that that
created certain exploration success as opposed to not right?
I mean, I think like, you know, like, you know, you posted this
thing about the like the explorer's gene.

(52:03):
And I think, you know, like, I think there, there is that
component in there that maybe we're we're not you, you can
look at that view in two ways, right?
Like, I always think about it this way in that I think we are
far more governed by our environment that we work in than
any intrinsic kind of motivationat at times, right?

(52:24):
Like, I think there there are very few people.
And maybe that's what separates the really successful people
like Elon Musk and these guys where their intrinsic motivation
always overrides the environmentthey're in.
Always. Yeah.
Like if they want to do something, they're just going to
do it. And there's also a trait that a
lot of psychopaths have, right? Because, you know, like, because
they will not be bound by the environment that they're in.

(52:46):
So hence the the fine line between, you know, you know, a
psychopath or not like anyways, that's why I think that exists.
So when it's garnered, I think to a positive outcome, you get
the wonderful things that Elon'sdone and you create, you know,
like wonderful things. And that's, I think what that
explorer's gene kind of book wastalking about.
I think that family had that, you know, like intrinsic kind of

(53:07):
thing where they will override whatever environment they're in
to get there. Whereas I think a lot of the
other times it's the environmentthat kind of dictates how people
behave and, and, and, and curbs their behavior a lot.
And I see this a lot in the startup world that, you know,
like a lot of entrepreneurs wantto be, you know, they want to be
the Elon Musk where they have that intrinsic, you know,

(53:27):
override to the environment. But a lot of them are actually
dictated by the environment theykind of sit in.
And and I always like look back now in exploration, like, you
know, like the stuff content that we created and how would I
look at exploration? And one of the things that I
often find out feel is that I think the environment that we've
created in a lot of groups, exploration groups, is this fear
of failure kind of kind of environment in that.

(53:51):
And I and express this and I will define it clearly in the
fact that fear, like failure, isequal to incompetence, and I
don't think that's the case. Not.
Not when you're dealing with uncertainty.
Correct. And I think that's what I think
that's the from an environmentalpoint of view.
Like if I go to like organizations now and they ask

(54:11):
me how come we're not like how come we're struggling as a as a,
as an organization to find things.
I always think about the environment you've created.
And often I find the environmentthey've created is that failure
equals incompetence. And so hence nobody wants to to
risk that. In so many different sectors, we

(54:32):
are very scared that the Chineseor the East, if you like, would
do these things before us and metals of mining is no different
when it comes to the downstream parts of it.
And I asked this question knowing you've both worked at
Chinese business, but do you fear that that part of the world
will has that sort of motivationor will make these big

(54:52):
discoveries and that becomes a geopolitical issue?
Yeah. I mean, I guess the one thing
that, you know, like, like we found in our time in MMGI mean
I'll be interested in your perspective because you
obviously started much, much higher than me in the
organizational structure. But what I found was that, you
know, we, we had a lens that we,we could do things longer term.

(55:14):
Yeah, like so we weren't yeah, like we weren't very like, you
know, we would come up with a strategy and I I clearly
remember like, you know, in MMG we had a strategy and like the
like min medals was that, you know, you'll have seven years to
execute on this and after seven years, we'll come back and talk
to you. Right.
So it wasn't that you know, likeon a Monday, you have a
seven-year strategy, you know, Thursday.

(55:35):
Hey, how's the seven-year strategy going?
Right? Like I'm, whereas I find when I,
as I, when I work as a consultant for a lot of
companies, it's like, you know, like we spend all this time
coming up with a strategy and then it feels like they're like,
well, let's review that strategya month later and you're like,
you know, like, like the ink hasn't even dried on the
strategy yet. Like, you know, like, I don't
think we need to review it. I think we need to let some,

(55:56):
some water run under the bridge.And so, so I think that's one of
the things I found when I kind of dealt with people there was
like, you know, we have a seven-year strategy and I, I, I
don't think it was, I mean, I think they're tempered with it
closer to the seven-year period.But I think for the large part,
you know, they kind of let us dowhatever we wanted to do for for
a while. So I've worked for a few foreign

(56:18):
companies and and this is a common conversation.
Let's, let's just be abrupt to start with in terms of building
big things. The West is getting its ass
kicked and we have to solve thisproblem without moving towards
ideology because it's actually not really ideology.

(56:38):
So it's not just that they've got longer term plans, it's
actually they've got an element of autocracy, which just means
they've just got a refined decision making process.
And one of the reasons why this relevant to mineral expression
is the earlier you go in the value chain, the higher the
uncertainty, the harder the decision making process is.
Now a lot of people who are at the other end are going to be

(56:59):
offended by this, but I'm afraidit's orders of magnitude harder
to make earlier exploration decisions.
Remember, we start from nothing.There is nothing more uncertain
than nothing I've had. It's not uncommon for me to get
good geos who come and work withme who are not capable of
dealing with this. And and so sorry to interrupt,

(57:19):
but one thing I think it's really important to know is
that, you know, like you start with nothing and then the, the
incoming information can look the same, but the payoff it
could have could be phenomenal, right?
Like and and and and I think that's always a challenge,
right? Like, you know, like you look at
an early stage project and you guys always ask me this stuff,

(57:40):
You know, previously when I've been on here, you talk about
like, you know, like what project is is going to be the
next big project, right? And and sometimes like, you
know, they look the same, right?Like there, there's something
like, you know, like, and then Ithink that's hard.
Like I think that's hard to communicate out to go, well, why
would you believe in this and not this, right?
And and that and then really it comes down to really belief,

(58:02):
right? Like you have some tacit
knowledge or some like intrinsickind of thing that says, you
know what, I'm going to back this one over this one, right?
And that's, I don't think that'sthe easiest thing to write in a
memo to someone and say I believe in this.
Right. No, when we're trying to
translate this from the abstractthrough to say, investment

(58:22):
community. Well, it's like, you know, like,
like WMC probably did this wherelike Roy Woodall would have the
like the, I guess the relationship with the people
that were in certain things where they would go.
Yeah, like, I'm going to go and talk to Steve.
And if Steve says it, I'm going to back him.
What that is, that's trust, and the problem with bigger, more
democratic organisations is scale just doesn't trust,
doesn't scale. And that's actually we're

(58:43):
solving for. So the Chinese, as you
mentioned, have solved that element by taking it away.
And yeah, and so we're we're offended, we're offended or the
Russians, we're offended by thatcomment.
But actually it is a way of getting stuff done.
Actually, Elon Musk has taken that his way as well.
The reason why he's successful is because he solved that

(59:03):
problem. Let's let's let's come closer to
home. Why is Mark Creasy or Robert
Friedland successful? I honestly want everybody to
have a go at that because RobertFriedland has found multiple
world class true tier one ore bodies.
You cannot ignore that there's some secret source going on

(59:24):
there. And so if you're inside a big
corporation that's doing nothing, look over the the fence
and ask yourself what's going onthere.
Well, well, one element is that Robert, and he's probably
sounding abrupt, has the abilityto make these decisions.
It is entirely about the abilityto make a decisions under very
high uncertainty. So what do we need to do there?

(59:45):
Well, the first one is own that own the fact that not everybody
is capable and that it isn't actually even a critique of your
capability. So actually let's use a real
material example inside geology.The difference between an early
stage expression geologist and amind geologist is more than

(01:00:05):
where they work. It's actually.
Their comfort with uncertainty. Let's let's put make the word
uncertainty a little bit more abstract.
Uncertainty, phrased in common parlance, is anxiety.
The 2 are synonymous. If you're under high
uncertainty, you are under high anxiety.
So you can now see why it's not normal to deal with this kind of

(01:00:29):
level uncertainty. It's not normal that everybody
wouldn't. It's sorry.
It is normal that everyone will want to avoid it.
So why is everyone avoiding it? Because it's human nature.
So what kind of special circumstances are required to
solve it? Well, autocracy is actually one
way. Let's try and think outside the
box. Let's assume that the world

(01:00:49):
doesn't want us to go down an ideological based solving
mechanism. Let's say it just wants to
improve something. So why is it taking too long to
build like Sydney's airport? So why is it?
Why are these big things taking so long?
Why are they running over budget?
It's the same problem we're running into high uncertainty

(01:01:09):
and we're getting more people involved to make the decision,
more and more people who are uncomfortable with the
uncertainty of making decisions.So what's this?
What's special about Chuck 50? Maybe he goes straight through
the uncertainty without even considering it.
That might even be insulting, but that is one way to deal with

(01:01:30):
it. That's no different to the
Chinese going I'll solve it. 10 year plan, autocracy, problem
solved. Solve the problem that you've
got, but don't complain about that you can't solve the
problem, because that is actually the problem that when
choosing not to solve what seemslike an intractable problem,

(01:01:53):
I've got 5 layers of management to go through.
Well, that is my challenge. 5 layers of management.
You know what happens if I've got a good idea for the next
Neurilsk with a massive discovery?
If it has to go through 55 layers of management without
regressing to the mean, that's ahell of a talking.

(01:02:13):
Somebody has talked their ass off to get through 5 layers of
management. The only way you get through 5
layers of management is if the idea is obvious.
Or they just end up doing, doingit without any kind of the
consequence, right. And that's the, I mean, I think
that's the autocratic way, right, Where they just go.
They take that that decision outof other people's hands and take

(01:02:37):
it upon themselves to do it. Yeah.
And I think that, I mean, like when I met, when I met an
interview, Chuck, like, yeah, every time you asked him a
question, like, why did you do this?
He's like, yeah, I thought it was something I needed to solve.
I said he just did it right. And he's like, I'm like, you
know, like, yeah, like, not manypeople know, but I don't know
how many people know. I should have phrased it that

(01:02:57):
way. And that Chuck runs a really
quite like leading edge kind of mineral analysis lab that he is
largely built I think largely byhimself.
In his garage. Yeah, like as an entity.
And he like asking me like, why did you build a like a mineral
processing lab, analytical lab? He's like, well, it was the one
thing I knew how to do and I could make money on.

(01:03:19):
And then so he just started, right?
Like he just started in his garage.
He processed other people's samples and then he obviously
along the way he figured out that there were issues in in
this way. And so he just kept building
these things along the way. I mean, I went and toured his
lab like, you know, like he has probably world renowned PhDs.
He probably holds, holds more patterns I think than the most
like ALS or anything like that because he he invests in it.

(01:03:42):
They have their own software, they have their own algorithms
that they run all of this type of stuff.
He does it because he wants to do it.
He takes a decision out of, out of like other people's hands
about why like, you know, shouldhe do it?
Should he not do it? You know, and, and so I think to
go back to your question about the East and West, I think like
what the East does is the, the, the general level manager, you

(01:04:05):
know, the five layers of middle management that most people in
the West have to go through. They just tell these guys, you
don't have to think, there you go, this is what we're going to
do. Just make sure that you do them
all the way to the end, right? And then that's what they do.
Now there is a consequence to tothat, like it's probably not the
most efficient way of operating,right?

(01:04:26):
But but I think that efficiency,you know, maybe if you translate
into a a certain level of failure rate, I think they
accept that they're just going to have a certain level of
failure rate as they go and they're happy to wear that
during the process. Whereas I think we are paranoid
about that level of a failure because we have to justify like
how we wasted the money, We're going to waste the money
anyways. Why don't we waste it and learn

(01:04:48):
something along the way rather than having endless meetings and
five levels of management and wasting the money anyways?
Let's, let's talk about the new emerging country in the space,
which is Saudi Arabia. So Saudi to me is in the same
situation as China has been. They're starting from near 0 in
terms of mineral expression, butthey're heavily committed and

(01:05:11):
they bring in the best and brightest and they're going to
do it differently. And they've committed so heavily
to this process. And so let's, you know, I'll ask
you the question, who's going tobe the world's leading mineral
explorer in inside five years? And now it's a loaded rhetorical
question. That is what's required.

(01:05:32):
And they have huge amounts of bureaucracy.
So this is going to be fascinating to see how they
develop this because they don't have the same autocratic
development. They're capable of it, but they
don't at the moment. But but you know, they have
like, I mean, I used to live in Melbourne.
You know, one of the joke I was told in Melbourne is there's the
Westgate, like, you know, bridge, you know, like it's

(01:05:53):
taken 20 years for that bridge to add 2 lanes to it.
You know, in that time, in that same time the whole city of
Dubai was built, you know, like so an 8 million person city has
been built in the same time thatwe like in Melbourne and
Victoria. That's an Australian success.
It actually got done. Yeah, that's right.
That is true. That is the the positive spin
that actually, but as someone that used to travel across the

(01:06:16):
bridge, did my life meaningfullychange after the the upgrade?
I don't think so, right. So and so I think like, you
know, like the like the the Middle East or some of the
countries, you know, they have taken somewhat of a like Chinese
approach or Eastern approach andgone.
You know, we're going to do this, right?
Like we're going to build an island.
It's going to look like a palm. We're going to do it right.

(01:06:36):
People are going to be like, it's insane.
You haven't sold any land. Yeah, but that will happen,
right? Because we'll build.
It it's extra fascinating as well because you think about
your resources and your scarcitythat you might have, and they
have an abundance of capital right now, but on the scarcity
side of things, they sort of know that their economy is going
to change over time. So they are desperate to
diversify that, but that is likea longer dated thing.

(01:06:58):
So to pull pull the idea back tohaving long term goals and
sticking to it. Their needs, so they they need.
So back to that biological abstract concept.
You know there is a need and it's very clear.
But the the impressive thing is that they understand that the
timeline isn't push of a button.Yeah, it's not going to be like

(01:07:18):
that's the mistake I think that China made.
And they have solved that as they always do.
But instead of discovering resources and paying, they made
a lot of it bad mistakes early. They've solved the problem
downstream. And they've completely caught us
all up with their pants down because it's turned out to be in
certain resources, certain metals.

(01:07:39):
The right call. Absolutely.
You know, I've been to places inChina, I've worked for a few
times in China. I've been to places where
there's capital infrastructure and no mine.
So they built the capital infrastructure when there's not
even resources present. And here we are scrapping and
saving and trying to find capital.

(01:08:00):
Capital first before resources. It's extreme.
And it can be like to the extreme where I remember working
on a project where we had intersected like sulfides, yeah.
And I went out on my swing on like 3 week swing out.
By the time I came back, there was mining equipment that had

(01:08:20):
been brought on site. And I'm like, what's that?
And they're like, oh, that's a processing plant that that has
been shipped down from wherever it was shipped down.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Processing plant? They're like, oh, you hit
sulfides. I'm like, yeah, we've hit
sulfides in like early stage drilling.
Like, like, what are you talkingabout?
And they're like, yeah, well, we've got it.
Like, you know, you found something, it's going to get
processed, right. Like they so they like, you

(01:08:43):
know, like now that's maybe not the most efficient way to
operate, right? But but someone is taking the
bet, right? Someone's taking the bet that
hey, you have something like essentially it's a bi model like
decision, right? Like it's either yes or no,
either we're going to mine this or we're not going to mine it,
but we have the equipment. If the equipment's here, we'll
mine it, right? And then they've already kind of
made that that decision go forward.

(01:09:05):
Whereas, you know, like how manyengineering studies do we do,
like try to decide, should it bemine, should it not be mine,
Should it be mine, should it notbe mine?
And I'm not sure that improves the odds and whether things get
mined profitably or not. There's one other aspect I can't
help but think of. And Trev and I were lucky to
lucky enough to travel to Africaearlier in the year and, and
chatting with some people at various operations, certainly

(01:09:27):
not Western operations. And you know, the, the swings
with 5 1/2 months on and and three weeks off, it like that is
not necessarily something we want to aspire to here in the
West, but it's something that needs to be noticed.
So it's just the point you just your point is so important,
which is people are solving problems in the way they can.

(01:09:49):
And our immediate reaction of course is we don't like that.
Well, the message is actually try and find another way to
solve the problem, not just solve it using the same tools
that you've got. Maybe we can't solve this
problem. If I go back to my time in First
Quantum, we had everybody on four and two rosters and they

(01:10:09):
would mature to two week on and one and everyone goes.
That's outrageous. Try hiring Australian.
One of my favorite people, people I won't mention her name
just to stop embarrassing her, was an Australian who came to
work for us. But we put people all over the
world. They got real greenfields
opportunity. They got a chance to live the
life, and pound for pound, they are better geoscientists, better

(01:10:33):
explorers, but they did some hard yards, but they lived the
life we promised them opportunities in the middle of
Africa, chances to work in Spain, remarkable things.
But all you had to do was come and live by the roster that we
needed for the locations that wewanted to work on.
And anybody who didn't want to come like, well, you don't

(01:10:56):
really want to do this. And of course that is
unacceptable, but we never lost anybody because in the end, and
This is why I talk about motivation, in the end, mineral
explorers are very simple creatures.
You know, we are driven by the chase.
And if we're not, we're not mineral explorers.

(01:11:18):
We're a different form of geologists and that's OK as
well. There is no judgement, but those
who want to do this will by months is pretty extreme but
just adapted to what you think is appropriate.
What you can't do is explore properly on a roster that's
close to one week on one week off like that isn't going to

(01:11:41):
work. I work for a company who remain
unnamed a few years ago and theysaid we want to move to
Greenfield's exploration and everybody said we won't still
live on the mine or still live in Perth.
And I that's cool. And they went, what's your words
of wisdom? I went can't be done and they
went what I went, no, no, think about it.
It just can't be done, you know?And I gave them various other

(01:12:05):
pieces of advice on how to do this.
But if people don't want to do this, it's a self selecting
criteria. Mineral expression is not on a
mind. Mostly mineral exploration is
this lifestyle. If you don't want it, that's
fine, but there are people who want this.
Yeah. I mean, one of the comments I'd
make like around your like, yeah, like 5 months on, you

(01:12:27):
know, as someone that like grew up in Pakistan, like, you know,
like I have a different view on,on, on that as well in that, you
know, like when I grew up, you know, like there was the concept
where someone in your family would go away for a large time.
Like, you know, a lot of people in my family would go to the
Middle East to work. And then they were, and they
were largely sacrifice a large percentage of their time with

(01:12:49):
their family. But the the fact that they did
it, the sacrifice they made would actually make not just the
immediate family, but the wider family much better off.
Yeah. So, so culturally, you know,
like, like obviously now growingup in the Western world, I see
both sides, right. Like I see, like, you know, like
I probably wouldn't do a 55 month roster, but I also accept

(01:13:13):
why certain people would. Yeah, like I understand the
sacrifice they make on the wholeactually improves lives for many
people. Circumstances are completely
different. Yeah.
And so, yeah. So I always think that, yeah,
like if I take, if I take the lens that I live in in Perth and
apply it there, yeah, it seems unreasonable to expect someone

(01:13:33):
to work five months of the year.But if I take the lens that that
person sacrificing, you know, a certain part of their their
family life or working five months improves their their
family life drastically enough where their kids have a better
opportunity and they're, you know, like their other family
members have a better opportunity.
I don't, I don't necessarily look at it as a negative.

(01:13:54):
I think, I think it's actually like, I think it's commendable
for them to kind of do that aspect to kind of improve other
people's lives in at the expenseof not improving their own in
that sense, right. So.
Turn that round. Instead of saying let's not go
for the five months because I think that's extreme, let's go
for something like 2 weeks, which would still be took longer
than most of the industry. What's it?

(01:14:15):
What would it take? Instead of being defeated by the
norm, what would it take to movepeople onto 2 weak rosters?
2 weak and one rosters as a global explorers and everyone
goes more money really. I don't think so, just it's
environmental. Thing.
Yeah, so I actually think it's the it's the the reward and the

(01:14:38):
thrill of the chase. If I'm and that I know people
disagree with me, I get yelled at for this viewpoint.
People are like, you're being naive, you're being romantic,
whatever you're trying to do. I'm like, no, no, you know what?
I've mentored a lot of geos and I talked to a lot of geos.
I'm right. I know I'm right about this.
People want more. We're not providing it.

(01:15:01):
If you provide no thrill, no no real expression and want to move
people on to longer, Ross says you can fail.
Of course you've got to provide.This is your word.
And this is one of the things I learned from Ahmad Currency.
You've got to provide something to someone to motivate them to
want to do something. So come here and let's try and

(01:15:24):
find the next narels. Now there are a bunch of people
going, well, no, I'm going to goto the Pilgrim, make more money.
Fine, no judgement again, dude. But you know what?
I'm actually it's it's there is no judgement.
They might sound like there is, but there is no judgement.
It really is a case of going like people who want to do this,
you know, let's go, let's do this.

(01:15:45):
But hey, you know, there's a fewlimitations.
You know, I love my lattes and and my and my long Max, but you
know, we're going to have to be making some some shittier coffee
for a little while and we're going to have to do this.
Now. If you don't like that, well,
you know, let me show you some of my world, what where the some
of the places I work and stuff and I and then there'll be
people who are going. Man, I really want to do that.

(01:16:07):
I know and I know that there arepeople who don't want to do that
as well. Good, you stay here.
We're going and. I think that, I mean, you know,
like the more, the more nuanced conversation in here would be is
how do you keep the people that have that, that intrinsic drive
to, to explore when they go through, you know, changing

(01:16:32):
personal or cultural. Like, you know, like when
they're going through a part where they want to have kids or
they want to have, you know, like, how do we create the
world? Like how do we create the
environment that still kind of keeps those people engaged and,
and not give them a job where, you know, like they, they maybe
get to a point where they're so jaded that they actually go and

(01:16:54):
do something completely different, right?
Like, yeah, like, like I'll explain it like in my terms,
right. Like I like at a point in, in my
career, I was working a job where I travelled 330 days on
the road average between somewhere between 300 to 330
days of the year. So 10 to 11 months I was on the
road right now. Now that is a hugely
unsustainable lifestyle to keep if you want to do other things

(01:17:15):
in, in your, in your career, right, or in your life, not
career like, like personally, ifI want to do other things, if I
want to have a family, kids, anything like that, that is
hugely unsustainable. And so, and so at one point, you
know, like I, like, I left the industry, I, I stopped doing
those roles and I kind of feel that desire by doing other

(01:17:36):
things like, you know, starting companies or, or going and
learning something new or exploring something new
cognitively rather than than physically in that sense.
But but what I find is that I think they, you know, like there
comes a point where I think companies are maybe not thinking
hard enough to create an environment where they can kind
of keep people doing that that part of their life because they

(01:17:57):
will come back. Like, you know, they will go
back. Like if I had the opportunity
when, when my kids are a certainage, like I would love to go
travelling again. I.
Can tell you as young kids, can't you?
I like you go, go, go, go do that because, because this is
the part that I value now there will be a part where I value
something else at, at some point.
But I, I think this is where, you know, like going back to, I

(01:18:18):
think one of the ailments that we have and, and This is why I
think companies like WMC and youknow, some of the previous kind
of companies did very well is that they created an environment
where they could keep people like this.
I remember when I first joined WMCI worked with eight people
and the, the shortest time span any of them had spent inside the
company was 22 years, which I found fascinating, right?

(01:18:40):
That everyone that I work with had been there at least 2
decades. Like that's that's pretty
unusual. I mean, like, I don't think you
would ever find that now. Like that a whole group had been
there for two decades. They all started as graduates.
Yeah. They all went through the
process. They all went and did further
study funded by the company, came back, you know, went
through that whole process, right down to the lady that did

(01:19:02):
the accounting, you know, like she started as a graduate and
worked all the way through in the accounting department.
Right. So how did they create that
environment which has allowed people to stay for that long?
They must have done something once.
People don't spend 2 decades in the same place unless it's good.
Guys, I think there's sort of limitless amounts that people

(01:19:22):
can learn from from this conversation.
I've found it fantastic. I think we should wrap it up
with a, a question you guys haveasked a lot and I want to sort
of serve it back to you guys. What is starting with one H?
Something that should stay firmly in the industry.
Oh dear, you were going to say that?

(01:19:44):
You got to give me time to thinksomething that needs to stay the
training of field geology. So one of the things that we're
under real pressure is that universities geoscience is in
decline as a university subject globally.
It's about the economics of universities and the economics

(01:20:06):
of running sciences and universities.
It's got nothing to do with our industry.
That's one part of a Venn diagram.
There's another Venn diagram that the industry is rising and
needs more geoscience. It sounds like an equation that
can't be solved. The way it's going to be solved
is to do what? To do things differently.

(01:20:26):
But the real risk is that peoplewon't get the training that they
require because it'll be too expensive to do so.
So field work has become one of our largest costs, the cost of
putting people into the field. But at the moment, even with the
promise of AI and every other technology, you can think this
is still a field based science. This is still a science about

(01:20:49):
observations and a science aboutgoing into the field.
We've got to keep that, even though at the moment the
equation looks like we're going to trend the wrong way.
I'm going to go on a similar point to Steve's, but I'll try
to make it. And I don't mean to say this

(01:21:11):
controversially. I actually think that like the
idea that we should keep in exploration is just not all
about the rocks. I actually think it's about
people. I think it's about the
environment you create, the culture, it's the relationships
you foster. It's all of those intangible
things outside of the rocks. I get that.
I take your point. I think you still have to treat
people like train people so theyknow what the rocks are.

(01:21:33):
But I, I think there is so much more you could do that we just
don't do it all because I think we value, we just don't put any
value onto onto any of those things at all.
And what's something that's got to leave the industry, guys?
I'll, I'll go first since I threw you under the bus last
time. I would say that the the one
thing that I would say that we have to get rid of is this this

(01:21:57):
idea that this one-size-fits-allparadigm works.
I think I got to get rid of that.
I don't think it it works. I don't, I don't think it works
from a people point of view. I don't think it works from a
geographic point of view. It it definitely doesn't work
from a jurisdictional point of view in the various
jurisdictions we work in. And it definitely doesn't work
on a on a company to company point of view.

(01:22:18):
Everyone wants to create this like one magical thing, like
this one magical paradigm. And I often say, and we talk
about this, right, like this WMCculture that people want to
create, you know, like WMC culture was great, but it might
have been one view is that thereis an artifact of history now,
right? Like it, it may not be able to
be replicated in that same way. So it's that one-size-fits-all

(01:22:38):
paradigm I don't think works. And I think we're as as mining
companies, I think we're we're definitely going down the path
we want to take one approach because it's that systematic,
like, you know, a system thinking in that it's one
system. I can teach you, you, you and
everyone understands the system and it'll work magically, but
you have, but you're an individual.
You're an individual and you're an individual.

(01:23:00):
Like your ability to look at that, like the conversation we
talked about rosters, again, I have a completely fundamentally
different view on rosters that you have, right, based on how
you look at it. So does the same approach work
for you as it works for me? I don't think so.
I think we need to have that leniency in there.
And the way to have that is to not make IT system or to make

(01:23:20):
some part system, but make some parts of it a little bit more
human and allow people to kind of add to it.
So the idea that I, in a long winded way, the idea that I
think should die is this, this one-size-fits-all paradigm just
don't think works. And I've actually changed my
mind just from listening to you.And I'm actually just going to
amplify the same comment becauseI think it's the problem.

(01:23:43):
I don't think we've ever been more conformist.
We're living in a time of massive development of
diversity, and yet we are makingpeople the same.
And that isn't going to work. One of the starting premises,
all the way back to the abstractagain, is that these are

(01:24:04):
different characteristics. If you don't want to acknowledge
the different, then you are literally following people into
decline. We cannot afford to build
businesses of so teams are not made of the same people, they're
made of compliments. One of the reasons why Ahmad and
I started working together. We're just very different.
There are different things that we do and want to do that help

(01:24:28):
get the complete job done. That is not a fatal flaw.
That's actually a secret to building a team.
A-Team is about finding compliments, not replicating
yourself. I think we are incredibly
conformist. Yeah.
I mean, like, you know, we started this whole premise in
like, like why did exploration radio work?
And I think that's really the reason, right.

(01:24:49):
Like I would have a certain viewof looking at things.
Steve would have a certain view of looking at things, you know,
like, was it a a situation whereit was like completely free of
tension or conflict? No, like, you know, they're
different. I jokingly always say this like,
you know, Steve in my relationship was very much like
if anyone that ever follow Seinfeld, it was J Seinfeld and
Larry David who, like, you know,were continuously trying to quit

(01:25:13):
the job of writing the show. There were times where we go.
I just don't really know how we can like how we're going to
create this, right. And, and I think you got to have
that healthy level of tension. I think, you know, I can.
So, so if you're an organization, so so here's
something that, you know, to extend that point, you can take
as an organization. If you're an organization and
you don't have the ability to handle like a certain level of

(01:25:35):
tension between your your employees, I'm not sure, you
know, like you got a question whether you're actually going to
get to something meaningful, because I think it's like you
need to have that kind of kind of tension between people to get
somewhere. So especially in a world like
exploration where so much is unknown, like, you know, you
have to have that. I don't know how you're going to

(01:25:55):
be able to do it without that. I'd frame it just because we
keep going back on each other. I would frame it that there's
not enough leadership and there's too, too much
management. People are trying to manage into
conformity as opposed to lead and allow people to just develop
their own idiosyncrasies and their own personality come
through. You know, sometimes the secret

(01:26:17):
sauce. I'll let's make a compliment
towards my former Co host. What's special about Ahmed is
his individuality. What's a pain in the ass about
Ahmed? Is it individuality as well?
He does things he wants to do. He really does.
That is a special characteristicand you've got to learn how to

(01:26:37):
deal with that or we're both going to have the exactly the
same ideas. I've I've selfishly loved the
responses, but I have to pin youdown for a few rapid fire.
You just got to say the first thing that kind of comes into
your mind. OK, not allowed to justify.
It's just a special part that you guys wanted to.
Do this is me managing your individuality man Perfect.

(01:27:00):
Good. So if I fail this then.
You're I'm deleting the individual.
The podcast's not going up. Yeah, exactly.
The most memorable. I'm at the most memorable
podcast conversation you ever had over the 10 year journey.
It was a lady named Samantha, I forget her last name.
It was about serendipity. So it was this researcher that

(01:27:20):
researches serendipity. It's probably probably one of
the few times where I've had like a Skype call or whatever it
was at that time that went 8 or 9 hours.
Like I just talked to her the whole day and, and she was based
in the Netherlands. And I remember getting off that
call at, at like, whatever, two o'clock 3:00 my time and going,

(01:27:41):
wow, I just talked to this lady for a whole day on the phone.
And yeah, so like, you know, like that's the one that like,
yeah, it always sticks with me about the stuff that I learned
because it was just like everything that you said was
just completely new to me. Steve, the one guest you wanted
to have a conversation with on the podcast but could never get
over the line. So many man, that's opening up

(01:28:05):
wounds. So we really wanted to talk to
David Lowell and he died. And the reason that's relevant
is that we did get to talk to David Kingston, which is one of
the more memorable episodes you'll ever listen to.
It's a petroleum episode, and hedied after the episode.
But these are true legends. These are the sort of people

(01:28:26):
that you tell people to go and watch your own podcast because
the person is on another plane. That's so we talk about, you
know, Mark Bennett. No offense to Mark Bennett, but
he's one of the most successful people that you'll ever meet.
But David Lowell is the man. You read my next my mind from my
next question I had the most themost important explorationist in

(01:28:50):
modern day era. The most important
explorationist minerals. Explorationist.
See, this is where I like, you know, like Steve and I kind of
kind of differ in that sense, right?
Like I, I think, you know, like David Lowell is definitely from,
from a, from a scientific point of view as a geologist, I think
it's definitely the the person Iwould think that the best
explorations right now. I think it's Friedland.

(01:29:11):
I think so too. Because I like, yeah, his track
record is, is unbelievable. It's and I actually think it's
by a long, long way, like it's not.
He's done that with. Different teams, yeah, different
areas, You know, like clearly hehas like, like, I don't know,
his technical chops on what he, I'm sure he has some right.
But but yeah, I think like I think what he's done is I think

(01:29:34):
he's incredible. It's it's I'm staring at the big
score as you're answering that question.
And like we could have a whole nother conversation just about
Fred then alone, I'm sure. But I, I, I, I, I want Steve the
most important exploration book or the book that you read that
maybe maybe have the biggest exploration outlook impact on

(01:29:56):
you. So it's behind us as well.
It's the Copper Mountain. I, I challenge anyone to read
that book and imagine being Jacques Dozy and taking that
long to get to a discovery without knowing it's there in
the 1st place. It's 28 days.

(01:30:18):
That's incredible. But even even more incredible is
that Freeport redo that journey knowing it's there with that
length of time in front of them.I don't think that's even
possible in the modern age. I don't think it's even
conceivable in the modern age. And I don't know who impresses
me more, Rosie or Freeport. Both of them are on another

(01:30:44):
plane. I'm at the billion dollar mining
company or or higher that is most capable of making a
significant discovery. But you know, so the the true
Unicorn in the mining space in that sense.
Yeah, the mid tier and higher that is capable.
I mean, I'll go a little bit different in that, you know,

(01:31:07):
like what I'm interested in is like, I may not name one, but
what I'm interested in is companies like like Cobalt or,
or things like that, that are trying to do something
different, right? And I think I'm always
interested in that because I, I look at it from the lens that
I'm, I'm, I'm sure 99% of them are not going to be successful,

(01:31:29):
right? But what I'm interested in is,
is there's someone that can comeout and set up a new paradigm,
right? And then, and then how does that
happen? Like how, how do we go from the
point of looking at exploration like a certain way to completely
changing it and looking at it a certain way?
And so I think this company's like, you know, like, I know

(01:31:50):
Cobalt has its distract like detractors and it has all of
these kind of issues of whether they're true exploration company
or not. But I think what they're doing
that's interesting is that they're just able to access a
like a, a source of capital thatI don't think other people have
ever had. And so, so if they can combine
the source of capital, which is really the thing that's like
hurting a lot of other companies.

(01:32:11):
And they can combine it with thefact that they that they, if
they take a longer term view, which I think they're somewhat
struggling with, which is why they've gone down the path that
they have, then I think that would be an interesting kind of
company to then to then see. Steve that they're the most
gripping discovery story of all time.

(01:32:32):
Look, I'm talking to somebody who's almost obsessed with the
discovery of Norelskan Talnak. It's been a life's work almost
to put it together because it's not something that's in the
public domain. It's the deposit style I focus
on, but it's just, it's almost from another era it it feels

(01:32:53):
like. It feels like a Columbus, kind
of like. Story right?
It does. It feels like it's too
inspirational. And I think that's the same with
the discovery of Grasberg and Itzburg.
People will immediately go, no, we're not doing it because it's
too aspirational from our current starting point when
we're getting on a plane and flying off in our in our orange

(01:33:16):
suits, we just can't imagine howwe can go from there to there.
Are either of those two the bestsite visits you've done as well,
or have you got a different answer to that question?
So this is actually one of my how long we got here.
This is one of my favorite topics.
There are you can't read your way to the success.

(01:33:38):
There's so much to read and it'seasy to imagine, but you've got
to get off your ass and do stuff.
And so I'm it's been to Narelsk.I've had the fortune to both
work in Western Siberia and be at Narelsk.
There's, if you see a super giant, like something so octave
risky is 53 times the size of Nova.
OK, you're not looking at a comparable base.

(01:34:01):
No offence to Nova. I love the deposit.
You're looking at a very specialmoment in your own personal
life, in your own personal development.
So clearly that's what I call a teacher.
So I believe that there are all bodies that are teachers and it
isn't necessarily all about grade, although that's got to be
something like it could be something just it could be

(01:34:22):
diversity. So a couple of days ago someone
posted something on the Internetin Russian on Narelsk and it was
a phenomenal piece of work. I went to the bother of
translating that in the last fewdays.
So what I did is went through a OCR followed by automatic,
followed by manually went through every single line to

(01:34:42):
translate this just to give it to people so they so they could
see the diversity of things thatwas in there.
And I got an e-mail back from someone this morning.
They went, Oh my God, that's different.
I mean, I know, imagine if you could have seen these like I've
seen these with my own eyes. I honestly, I wish you could

(01:35:05):
have seen through my eyes because you wouldn't have the
same opinions about these sort of things.
You've got to go and do this because it's teaching you and we
do the best we can with teaching, but go, you just got
to go. It will change your life.
I mean, that's so seriously thatyou should pay for it yourself

(01:35:27):
if that's your only option because it will change your
life. Who is the guy you interviewed
once on expiration radio and he was renowned for doing these
site trips and coordinate the order.
Does he still do them or? He's retired now, but but yeah,
I mean, I think that's like, yeah, like that's why I wanted
to kind of get Mike, right? Because I think my, I mean to
like Steve's point, you know, like, yeah, I had studied

(01:35:51):
nurals. I studied mafic systems for a
long time. And then when I went there, I
think I came back with an understanding that overlapped
maybe 10% of what I knew before going there, right?
Because when I went there, I waspart of an international
consortium. But I consciously made a
decision to actually not hang out with those guys.

(01:36:12):
And I spend most of my time withthe exploration and the mind
geologist and people that workedat neuros because I wanted to
figure out what they how did they look at this whole body.
And the way they looked at it was completely, fundamentally
different to how we looked at itin the West.
So the classic is the chief geologist of Octobrisky is which
is the world's biggest mind. I'm not sure if he knows what

(01:36:33):
he's doing, but my God does he know more than anyone else.
That dude could talk your head off for weeks and you will
learn. But you're also he's got some
crazy ideas. But the bottom line is the man
works on the world's biggest deposit.
That's like going to Olympic Dam, but it's 1 1/2 times the
size of Olympic Dam. That level of complexity, you

(01:36:54):
could spend your whole life there and not touch the surface.
That's not the same kind of experience that some deposits
give you. Now you can do it with small
deposits. So the real answer to that is so
to answer that question fully, the people who will be listening
to this and go, but I can't go to Norelsk.
Not only is Russia not an optionfor me, but actually foreigners

(01:37:17):
can't visit Norelsk in the 1st place.
They never could. They never have been able to.
You have to get. There is a thing over the
documentary film crew and then. Yeah, or in my case, you work in
an alliance with Norelsk in Russia.
So you can't just choose that. So it seems unfair to name
something that the majority of the world is listening to this
podcast to like I can't do this.So you got to come up with
something that's easy, that there's a deposits like Manali

(01:37:40):
which sit in Zambia, which have so much complexity in such a
source space. I call them teachers.
It's actually a non economic deposit.
It doesn't sound like a very good teacher, but it is a
microcosm of Nurelsk and that's the best that we can do.
There are there are options in Australia, you just got to
constantly go. Not everything is the same, so

(01:38:03):
let me explain it fully. The third largest deposit of
this type is Jinchuan. It's an awful teacher.
Shotcreted immediately after production, seismically active.
Oh my God, it's, it's just not ateacher.
There's just nothing about the way it's mine that's going to
teach anybody that fundamentallychanges how you work.

(01:38:25):
So there is a difference. And I know it's a nuance that
I've learnt through experience, but I do pass it on because the
one thing about experience that you want to pass on is how could
I shortcut your learning? Well, don't do this is the
simple answer. Do this, don't do this and maybe
you will not listen. Trust me, I've got teenagers.

(01:38:46):
People don't listen, but just really stress that point.
If you get an opportunity to do the big things, pay it yourself.
And if you can't, look for the little microcosms that teach
you. But it isn't everything.
The passion you guys have is is palpable.
I love it and I am sure our audience will just sort of
gobble this one up. So really appreciate it guys.

(01:39:08):
Thank you. Thank you.
No worries. Thanks for having us.
Mate, how good was that conversation?
I hope all the money miners out there loved that one as much as
I did and it is all thanks to our fantastic partners Rounded
Cross, Boundary Energy and SandyGround Support.
Good to read money minors. Good to read.
Now remember, I'm an idiot. JD is an idiot.

(01:39:29):
If you thought any of this was anything other than
entertainment, you're an idiot. And you need to read out a
disclaimer.

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2 Geos Interviewed 100+ Top Discoverers — Here’s What it Takes (Steve & Ahmad)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}2 Geos Interviewed 100+ Top Discoverers — Here’s What it Takes (Steve & Ahmad)