Join us as we dive into the world of mining with the hosts of Money of Mine, Matt Michael, Travis Ricciardo, and Jonas Dorling.
Since launching their Daily Mining News YouTube channel in April 2023, Money of Mine has quickly become one of Australia's top sources for mining news. These guys bring a ton of knowledge and unique perspectives. Matt's an ex-underground miner, while Travis and Jonas come from investment banking and equity research backgrounds. The trio break down the daily mining news with a great mix of banter, financial info and current affairs.
In this episode, we'll dig into their journey and experiences in the mines, how they teamed up, and the current state of the mining industry. We'll also uncover how they've dominated their niche, the advertising perks of running a mining podcast, and what's on the horizon for them. Plus, I'll share a bit about my own adventure getting involved in a mine overseas.
Check out Money Of Mine's Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyofMine
You can subscribe to the Mentor newsletter here: https://mentored.com.au/newsletter-sign-up
Follow Mark Bouris on Instagram, LinkedIn & YouTube.
Welcome to the Mentor and Mark boris.
Man, Michael's Travis Ricky Travis. That's a pretty fancy name, Travis Rickyardo and we're mispronouncing it and I'm.
Not even God, it's easier for everyone.
Welcome to the Mentor.
Guys, thank you, thank you very much for having it.
And your business is called Money of Mine's podcast, Money of Mine podcast, So is it a money of mine? Like this is very centric, So what are we talking about money of the in the mind or money of belongs to you guys both we're talking about playing words already.
I can't say there was shiploads of thought that went into it. It was because I had a podcast called Life of Mine and we're we're going to start talking about finance, will just change it to money and that was it. Too much analysis scorn that went into it, that's for sure.
So you started the whole thing basically, Yeah, Well I was.
I was doing a potty before, just talking to people about people in the mining industry, and then wanted to get out of mining. And this was I was doing five file at the time.
So this was which means first in, first out.
Then fit in or off.
Then I was like, this is me tick it out, so I'm not going to try this full time and then was sort of limping my way through it, but obviously got the attention of these two blogs that are like, we could probably come and save this guy, and had a bit of financial credibility to the show because I was the mining focused.
And what's that mean? What's what's your background?
Mining engineer?
And underground minor so which means much about mining, So it means you you actually put one of those hard outs on and go down to the in the box and got a couple of commas underground.
And he was on the Jumbo and like the way to think about a jumbo, that's the bottleneck to production. You're like at the oar face trying to you know, buddy, break Rock is fast big thing.
It's like a big bloody transformer. It's one of those YouTube things. You'd have to look it. It's like he's got these big two it's like twenty nearly twenty meters long, and it's got these bloody arms on it with the drill steels and you use that to put all the ground support up. Then you drill all the holes in the face to charge it. With explosives and like.
You literally blow it up, blow up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the sort of the main thing that develops all the travel ways and accesses undergrounds.
Where about we're talking about oh this was.
Oh god, worked all through Western Australia. But yeah, there's you know, underground mines everywhere.
So the podcast is Westtralian Business.
Yeah, we're Perth based. Yeah, I'm from here originally, so I haven't got into AFL yet. Yeah, I've been there for fourteen years or something. So yeah, that's that's the Perth's the w A, that's the that's the center of mining that's in Australia.
Like think.
So it's certainly runs the economy over there, that's for sure, in terms of rawties for the state government.
That's that's mental over there. And what about you two guys, so Jerry, what about you?
So I'd worked with Trav previously and we'd heard the podcast that Maddie was doing Life of Mine and it started to get into the financial things a bit, so spoken with people in the funds management sector who specialized in natural resources, and Trev and I were living in Melbourne at the time, and I remember actually bumping into him and you know, chowing them phone is like, have you heard this one? You listened to this? Actually it's actually pretty bloody good, you know. So Maddie was interviewing a couple other people, you know, on a not as frequent cadence because we do it pretty much, you know, four days a week now, and he.
Was a full time thing.
Yeah, exactly, and he was doing sort of weekly ones, if I remember right at the time. And yeah, Trav got so excited he just walked out the shop we were in with a handful of clothes and everything just walked out. And then you know, I had to go running back in, but didn't.
Pay for him.
Eventually I realized.
Yeah, and then we'd sort of trave and I caught up again for a beer late late the year before last, twenty twenty two, and were sort of keen to sort of start a business. And yeah, there was a few other things rumbling in the background in our personal lives and everyone was sort of keen.
To make let's talk about that.
Oh well, from my perspective, I was just pretty bored in my job, just incredibly bored with what I was doing doing with that I was.
Doing management consulting. So yeah, probably.
Flash as boring as it sounds, and yeah, just itching to start a business of our own and you know, get a bit of a grasp and work for ourselves and stuff, and that the boys said had pretty similar thoughts of their own, and yeah, it was Traphood reached out to Maddie sort of late twenty twenty two, sort of early twenty three. By the time they caught up. I was still sort of in Melbourne at the time. One thing's led to another and we just had a bit of a three way phone shout and thought, let's just quit all our jobs and everything, give this a crack. Decided pretty much on the spot that we're going to give this a go. And then in April of twenty three he kicked off full time, going five days a week, releasing a podcast talking about the the financial aspects of mining companies and you know, perhaps a bit what's misunderstood across Australia and in a bit of a different lens to anything you'll get out there.
The first day. The first day was very funny that we because we literally met JD for the first time the day before, the day before we were going to do the first ever shut and there was obviously hanging around with Trav. I hadn't met Trav till he approached me either, And so JD's like moved over from Melbourne back to Perth to start this business. And then day one I was like going through a bit of a phase where I was back on the darts and so I'm sitting out the front having a rolle and JD's like lot probably thinking who is this done? And then then there was oh, are we allowed to tell the other one.
The cop that just a couple of rocks up at the front of the house, like looking.
This is this is an awful we started the business.
They're looking for the previous person that lived there, not me. I just moved anyway. It just it looked horrible, like Maddie's bloody, you know, withdraw from smoking. And I'm dropping up and Jad's like I'm relocated back to person.
What are we doing to start a podcast?
And then we get to day one of where we're doing the first show and we've like prepped the show to talk about this is episode number one, and then we get we set up all the cameras and I'm like, right, Jada, you're you're there. He's like, I'm not in it, am I. He's like, I thought I was just doing all the research and stuff. I'm like, JD, what the fuck did you think you were going to be doing?
Of course there and what the podcast is?
Yeah, and the first, the first one, he was it took him like a few weeks to sort of bloody stop down cold sweats and everything. Before every episode it was just shipping bricks, but now on easy straight and just just the absolute natural now.
Yeah, it was.
It was pretty similar to public speaking before and I was like freaking out, what the hell am I doing starting the bloody podcast for?
Did you have a script it? You guys script it?
Yeah, we're just down points, not specific like not word for word at least, but.
Yeah, I mean the flow of the show is ultimately every morning there's a flurry of ASX listed mining company announcements and you know then.
Before the AX list, before the AX open.
Totally and so we're yeah, we during and we will basically because we've got diverse skill sets undergo mining, equity research, investment banking, we look to kind of untangle it and conveyed in a story that in simple language that a generalist can like understand. So in the morning we'll literally spend like six hours sort of like what's the most important story, like getting our facts and information, and then we'll type dop points and that'll be the basis of the conversation that will have when we record button on a few different company stories and that sort of thing. But there's probably like six hours of prep before.
But every day is enough material every day to have a.
Show, more than enough not having me.
These two pluck shit out of nowhere and I'm like companies or companies or commodities. I didn't even know bloody existed. And between the three, but then I'll do go off in some random tangent one day. So between the three of us there's always content.
But does one contribute? Is one? Does one of you lead the conversation each.
Day because it's your area expertise, your particular interest. For example, if there's a commodities day, does you know JD do it or has it work?
If it's uranium, that's me at the moment, anything mining underground mining specific or like metallurgy or something that's probably me from the mining background, And then I've gone bloody balls deep in uranium, recent drabs, bloody deals.
I love it, like you know, unpacked, Yeah, pointing out like real dubious behavior. I love that. I love showing the.
Big sh with him last year, like you know, the blue the competition between Juna, Ryan Hart and Minray's guys.
We were all over it.
Loved it.
We were like that was you know, getting tangled up in live hostile sort of m and a stuff. Is like, that's a huge, huge thing for us because it's like he's a big deal, is important people, big personalities, characters and and it's typically kind of stuff that you layman doesn't quite understand what's going on there. But if we can play a role and unpacking it and be what I particularly like is wedging ourselves into it, that's awesome. That's so much fun.
Yeah, we had the exact same concern as what you said before. It's like, is there going to be enough to chat about every day? There's always so much going on and like you know, mining might sound quite niche, but when you look at like the basket of commodities, how macro can I makes influences that the you know, thousand plus companies on the ASX, A good portion being mining companies from you know, Junior.
Explorers all the way through to b HB and Rio tinto. There is always something to talk about, you know.
So you're picking themes, like you know, like the big theme now is copper or one of the big themes you've given, you know, like how micro processes and computers that a new copper and evs or electric cars all that sort of stuff.
Do you do you pick themes?
I think there's sort of themes in what we interest Like what guides us is always what we're interested in, and that, you know, because we do a lot of interviews as well, almost you know, sometimes you know, half the week will be interviews, you know, two or three episodes a week will be interviews. And that might be with a metallurgist, it might be with a geologist, it might be with someone who's got specific knowledge on copper, on copper smelters and whatnot.
Or fund managers or not.
But I think that the guiding light is always what's interesting to us, and we just keep going down because the audience can feel when you're super passionate about something, when you're eager to get into it, when you're excited about what you're talking about you know, it's almost Buddy poalpable.
Ten years ago, I got involved.
A bloke got me to get involved in a copper mine in Chili, and I knew funk all about copper, but it seemed interesting at the time, and.
So I would we just want cash?
Yeah, basically, but I flew to Chili and one of the capital of chilis I come remember Santiago via New Zealand, So you know, it was all pretty interesting that trip itself. And then from San Diego we had to go up to where the copper mines were, so I didn't realize the andes were so close to the beach. And then went up into the mountains, up into the mountain like and you go from pretty nice like habitat to like you feel like you're on the moon, and then everywhere there's this rocks with green which is you know, the ore. It was amazing, Like it was an amazing thing for me to do. Like in the end, we got dudded by our partners because you had to have a partner, and they were they were dunning us in terms of registrations of exploration license and all sort of whatever the licensing stuff and and then I blew them.
I did my money. Well maybe I did. I don't know, Maybe I still got an interest in I don't.
Know, but I check.
It was very close to the BHP mine, the very famous bh copp of mind like it was like condit you can see it. So that was the cell to me, because you know what, the largest copp mine in the world, one of the large cop mines of the world. And that got me in straight well, I thought, well, fuck me, if that mountain air is full of this, one is.
Going to have some, He's going to have some.
It was, it was, but it was but I've never really been involved mining for but to be honest with it, was like I got like hooked like mining metal, you know, and it's something really magical about or adventurous, like it's pretty cool, and I'd imagine your audience, there'd be people in your audience like me who would be who would think the same him was like, it's really magical, like and and people make fucking.
Fortunes, like absolute fortunes out of it.
And it got me to fly from Sydney to Chile and you know, invested a reason about of money in it.
And and then there's always a good story. You can associate with it like a good thing, you.
Know, like right now as the cop has come back Cop, I think that the issue for me at the time was the thing that we met. The copper price are really high. The price to get this cop out of the ground was fixed. But because cop price was.
Really high, it made sense.
And then what happened is compon price has just died in the ass and all of a sudden it wasn't any longer viable. Now Cop has gone back the other way, and I think to himself, who.
Who the fuck ow is that that?
That the rights of that mine now? Like and I've actually looked a bloke up that got me in the first.
Place, and he doesn't even sit anymore.
Done his dog.
So mining has has got this sort of history around it, like if you look at Junior and the family and like Lang Hancock and you know, all that sort of it's sort of cowboys stuff, a little bit of cowboy stuff, and obviously it's it's cheme quite sophisticated too, but it is more very sophisticated. But there was a lot of that wild West ship associated with it, and I love that.
That's pretty cool.
If there's one observation to make about the mining industry that is so different to any other industry. It's that people with not much capability or credibility can get extremely wealthy with a little bit of luck because of expiration success. And that lends itself to an industry where you have some fascinating characters like I don't think any other industry at the top of the game or the you know, the wealthiest people in the industry can sometimes be you know, proper, you know, like just Alarikens or loose Units.
Or Lang Hankog is a good example, by the way.
Yeah, well he was probably more of a pioneer in some ways. You can get lucky. You know, he took risk and you know peg ground and the first move advantage and sort of his ambitions. But you know, in the modern day mining success with expiration success, sometimes there's luck involved. You turn the rig around and' just like having to be deposit there, you can't you know, really put much thought into it.
An epeg ground for a commodity that was bloody a very low price per ton, that required billions and billions of dollars of capex, so you have at the time, Yeah, so compared to like a gold mine, like you know, it's not it's pretty easy to start a gold mine. It's not heaps, like yeah, you're mining a very high grade piece of material, whereas iron ore is just fricking bulk. The scale of like yeah, it's like this room's the iron all that's the cameras the gold mine in terms of just the scale of how big they are. So for what he did, and look at Andrew Forrest is a great example, Like he went into shit loads of debt and some got through. Like that was the biggest critic on Forsku was how much debt they have, but he still retained thirty six percent of the company. He will split between his wife, but like to retain that much equity lock he's he gets like what four billion dollars in dividends just in dividends per year then without.
Big ball and get through that on that scale with on.
Or that's what oors. But they're just all that capital has been sunk and their cost cost of operating is just absolutely being rea. They're just like ten or twenty bucks a ton, it's unbelievable and selling them for a hundred odd.
And lang Lange never owned a mine. It's like the way he's license, he essentually sold them for the royalties, which which Gina still has to this day, and got you know, the partners. Japanese funders read tinto to to fund the minds because it's like Maddie says, just phenomenal amounts of money need to be perhaps more money than any other industry, maybe semiconductors nowadays, where the capex is just that outrageously big, you know, building train trains that go hundreds and hundreds of kilometers and almost ships, everything, port sports, it's crazy.
And you said something really interesting before about macro macroeconomics. In order for you know, own or to work or copper or whatever it is, you know, you've got to get there's a global price that's got to make it work, makes sense in order to invest all the capital you've got to invest, and blah blah blah. That whole the way macroeconomics changes, which is interesting because probably years and years ago you would be out there on your own doing your macroeconomic report, your report on why copper is an important commodity, and you know where the demand's now coming from and why the price has moved from this price to this price the all price, the all price I should say, relative to cost price.
And you know, Maddie, you wouldn't been talking abouttie. Maddie would have been in there. He would have been deep in the mind engineering doing whatever they're doing, and then you would have been doing something else, you like working investment and trying to get the thing funded. But now the three of you pretty.
Much represents how a really successful mining organization probably operates. We've got macrocon and meet people around, analysts sitting in there. They've probably got someone in that's arranging the financial raising the capital or whatever topic capital they get from whatever the markets. Then they got someone like Maddie making sure that they can execute.
So to some extent, you are like the really high quality modern mining corporation.
Very poor HR standards, but something we're lacking. We don't we don't want to boss pretty much, we don't want to work for anyone. That's the and that's why we're why we're doing it. And we're literally just having fun doing something and with people are pain but it's.
Pretty serious too at the same time as a serious topic.
Very high well, the biggest difference is and why we're over here with our potty. And then there's a bloody shipload of other media, investor relations and podcasts all fighting together over here. And the difference is they're all getting paid by the mining companies to for them to come onto the podcast. Them companies you money. Yeah, so you like your copper copper mind in Chili. Back in the day, like that would have for instance, that would go on the managing director of CEO would go on a podcast, get interviewed about the project, and you listen to it, You're like, Jesus, here goods that sound should invest throwing the cash in, but it's paid for and then you've got people plugging it on social media the investor relations firms that the company is paying or with shareholder money, whereas where like, okay, and this was the when the when we started, the boys are like, right, we're not taking money off companies, and I'm like, I'm broke. How the how is this going to work? I'm like these two young pricks telling me what to do that we're not on fucking punched their head and I'll beat underground. But a year later, I'm like, Jesus Christ, thank god, I listen to them, they're so much smarter than because it was that fundamental decision from the start is that we are fully independent. We don't take money off a mining company ever, any listed company just separated us from the field. Because what we say is our independent view positive or negative.
Usually negative, negative, negative.
It seems more fun to talk about. And then all these bloody other mobs over here, they're just in our opinion, look bloody stupid doing it.
Maddie regularly talks down how smart he is is actually very switched on, and you know, the aspect that he brings, and I think the different skill sets we each have is like one of the one of the attractions if there is one.
About our podcast.
But like you know exactly what he said, the independence from mining companies is what the model was built on at the moment, and it just makes it a world more fun because we can actually say what we think about companies, what they're doing, about their announcements, their operations, their performance. It just wouldn't be it wouldn't be enjoyable any other way.
I'm going to straight the bring on a company because I actually want to talk about your model, your business model, and uh and and you know, we get your revenues from, probably more importantly, how you pick your yes and and how you pick your topics around your advertisers.
I mean, is it or is it around your audience. I'm got to talk about that, so we'll go straight.
To break back.
In the break, I'm here with the Three Musketeers.
The business called Money of Mine podcasters or money Mine is the podcast man Michaels, Travis Ricciardo, and j D otherwise known as Jonas Dueling is better.
There's a bit of German in there, honest, you get actually, yeah, totally.
You would, would you believe on half Lebanese Michaels, Yes, Michael, Yeah, that was the surname. They that was the first name. It was Mikhail Jaber. When they moved over more great grandparents or something, then they take the first name as the surname.
So yeah, no, no, because a lot of people named Michael's. They can be Greek and they can be Lebanese. And I've got I went to school. A whole lot of kids I went to Lebanese school here in Sydney. A whole lot of the kids were named Tony Michaels, John Michaels, etcetera.
Quite few know John Michael, that's.
My cousin, even to my school. No, no I know John My I know is my agually seventy?
Oh no, no that's not him.
I'm real service. I don't think it is. We digressed.
All the time.
School in Kember a place called the Camera in Sydney.
You wouldn't even know her to know where, but it's a quite a quite an infamous area in Sydney, like Kember.
A lot of shootings happened there.
Yeah, from I went to I went to Union in Sydney.
Yeah, I'm from Sydney.
From Inverell in northern New South Wales. But then yeah, I lived in Sydney. God's country over to you mate too. Is new in Western Australia. I can't believe.
What do they drink there?
Oh, bloody mostly cat pisce Craft Swan draft, but it's actually Dingo lager has actually taken over now over it. Remember the Dingo flower logo which was Bondie Alan Bond.
Yeah, but he also owned Swann Swan Brew. Yeah.
So now the bloody someone got bought that bloody trademark and they put it on a beer.
Now, so let's get this is a digression. Let's just get so. I want to talk to you about your business model.
So one of you pluyees explains to me what is the business model in a financial sense? So how do you attract your audience and in terms of content, and then how do you attract your advertisers in terms of the audience.
Interconnected audience is key, right, like first and foremost where we're here to serve our audience. We call them the money miners. It's a bit of a you know, a pun on a book from the eighties about a nikoper. But like, if the audience is what is valuable when you create content, I think, like you, what are you actually selling when you create content? It's trust? So you should never do anything to jeopardize that trust. You should cherry shit, nurture it, don't ever do anything that could could risk it in any way, shape or form. And that informs the decision on the business model, which was to make sure that we never have a conflict of interest with our audience. Because the you know, the legacy model of creating content in the mining industry was get paid by a company, promote them to your audience. Your audience invests in them, then they lose money because it's a shit company that had to pay for promotion in the first place.
And then blame you.
We didn't we just you know, thankfully we didn't do that. And we thought, well, if we if we say what we really think rather than what we're paid to think, we'll be able to have an audience it's a hundred times bigger than anyone else. And by doing that you'll have enough scale to build an advertising you know, an ethical advertising business behind it, but also have optionality to explore other things in the future as well.
Can you give me a bit of analysis of say something audience, something I don't care about, mail firm, topthing or age, but what do they work in the minds or are there people who are associated with mining or are they everywhere work here?
Apparently the boys one of those.
This is kind of but he'd be an investor, he'd be a sideline investor.
Yeah, it's a really interesting like cross section. We're always like, you know, I'm flattered whenever we have a guest on. Ask a guest on who's like a buddy, you know, a hedge fund manager, right like managing billions of dollars, And they're like, yeah, a big fan of podcast, So it's every everyone from from that across the finance banking broking spectrum and all the way through to like, you know, the corporate development functions at mining companies. And then because you've got Maddie, who's you know, bloody represents the blue collar you know, minor like you even you even get like you know the people on site as well, and it's it's a weirdly wonderful thing to have an audience that is kind of yeah, hyper targeted to the mining industry, but crosses a lot of industry, like from from you know, professional to blook on.
And is it is it just podcasters YouTube?
What do you do both?
And and and where do you distribute the audio from is it done through Spotify?
How are you doing that?
It goes from like we use buzz Sprout and that just spreads it to every Spotify Apple Blood. It's not a Spotify exclusive or.
Is it free or is a subscriber It is at.
The moment, So that's.
Coming.
But that's and that's the thing we're always we're always analyzing, right, what's our what's our next? As soon as we chucked it behind the paywall, hypothetically that sort of caps the growth because it's not publicly available and it's been going a year and we're just we're still reaching, you know, if we start, when we start covering more global themes, which we are about, you know, commodities, the supply demand dynamics of any commodit. We're opening ourselves up to more North American listeners, bloody European listeners. But if we go beyond the paywall, that's just it's too hard defined.
Yeah, so we don't want to Well, you can do a special though, you could do your free every week Pate approaches and then you can go and say but by the way, if you want to go and see this, you know, like the Peter t Peter Tear style, Like there's a lot of free stuff, and then you can pay a little bit extra to get them behind them behind the scenes, not necessarily behind the scenes and how you guys operate, but behind the scenes, like a bit more in depth, bit more detail stuff that'll be interesting to see how you guys go from.
So right now, it's an advertising model, yeah, and.
We don't this is another wacky thing. Maddie accidentally turns out to be an advertising genius because he just like partinuic away, Like you know podcast advertising, what happens. You know, you might go to a break cart, Like you go to a break and you play a pre recorded at ad. So Maddie's like, what that that sucks? That's like, you know, I want it to be authentic. I want to give real, real service to the mining services companies are advertisers industry adjacent mining service providers that are unlisted. That's and they come to us because they love the show. And then Maddie will just add hoc rip and add that ties into the stuff we're talking about, does it on the fly and creates like a brand around the types of companies that you know, to give.
An example, it gives on a plug now well one.
So a lot of the stuff is like and half of the stuff will say is actually false. So one of our first advertisers was K Drills, so they were an exploration drilling company. So I've created this legend about the operations manager that he when there's machinery downtime, he they fly him from Perth to the camp and he starts actually drilling it with his bare hands, because that is the service they provide. And that's what separates them from the industry, and that's why they should be drilling, yeah, exploration holes. And it's just like this created this fake narrative of god. One of the other guys I made up that he was running for the Liberals. So I'm going to bring in Flip the uranium band and like saying, all these people are ringing him up, like are you actually running for Liberal It's like no, that dickhead Bloody's telling everyone now over on thinks I'm running for parliament. But it's fun and like whether it's true or not, like there is a lot of genuine stuff in there in the ads. It people never forget it. So the actual service to the companies that are paying is good money. I'm not taking that without doing the best job I can to try and get them an ROI on the advertisement. So we and that is our sole revenue source. So we take the advertising very seriously because we want them to make money out of it.
So someone told me your growth advertising anyways is sort of up in the sort of just starting to hit seven figures.
I've been a million dollar territory ball par not quite not quite, but that's pretty close a bit of mail on it.
No, you're pretty close.
Yeah, so that's pretty good in a year, because most podcasters make no money.
So yes, that's why most podcasts mad trying to go full time.
Pages you guys wage, Yeah.
It does. We're just about to go on wages, and so we're just been taking divvies to date drawings.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's all happened pretty quick.
Yeah, it's a year. Yeah. And then and do you have advertisers lined up?
Yeah? So we got we sort of, so we've got eight because we dropped from we were doing five shows a week, which was bloody, and then all come up with a wacky idea and like, how about we do four because jeez, that would be easier. But then so we dropped off a show, so we've lost lost advertised.
Because because you need space.
Yeah, so now we've got we do two ads per episode. But then we're like the theory was which has worked. It's like we're keep we're creating more fomo around those advertisement slots.
Now, so there's does I mean you can charge more?
Yeah? Well, and like companies might be waiting, and then obviously the existing ones have a ride first refusal to keep the spot but if they drop off, we bring another one in and I guess it's just sort of kept going like that.
How much you how much you rely on mining to be a strong industry, and particularly in your case services mining services as advertisers, How important is it for that industry to keep growing it in terms of strength?
Probably it probably matters. I'd like to think that we're relatively like you know, protected through the cycle, but at the margin it probably matters. I think, like the because we talked about how it's such a capital intensive industry, right, if you're a service providing a capital intensive industry, they're massive checks to get a job, massive fucking checks.
Is it.
Yeah, Like if you if you win a contract right.
Like Cadril for example, we're.
Talking you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars per job. So like if you can pay a real premium if to get some degree of r I because you know, because the difference between you're getting a job and not getting a job, because you reach the right person at the companies, because you had a really thoughtful, innovative way to reach and via our podcast. It actually makes sense because it's so capital intensive.
Percent of that you know, you'd happily pay a few percent of that to ensure you get the contract rather than miss out on a contract.
So therefore your model means that you've got to get them to the right person.
So your directors as well, they're like, do you want to hear.
A marketplace you're connecting indirectly the circleed people that they would like to have heard of some cred.
It wouldn't be like, you know, the promise, but I'd say, it's like it does happen for sure. And you know, the awesome thing is that we do the stories of our advertisers and like, okay, they might they because the right person that read tintels listened to our podcast, they got a phone call the next day and that job literally could be millions of dollars for them, right, And that dynamic, which exists in the mining industry allows us to charge stupid rates for advertising. But it's like it's still worthwhile for our advertisers. And because we've got bloody you know, Maddy's mad ads that actually work. You know, it just happens to be a really good business model.
Do you run the risk is a risk that when you say sort of kick the shit out of a mining company because they interpreted you're kicking this out of them. Do you run the risks that there's And some dude comes along to them and says, I was on these guys shows, and and the mining company says, well, stuff you, I'm not going to have anything to do with you. Do you run that risk or is it or as you do or do you do it in such a way. They're just sort of always taking the pierce and it doesn't really matter.
I'd like to think our advertisers they know how much that it's super important for us to have fierce independence. We heard secondhand that at one point one of you know, the companies, or a couple of the companies we've been critical of, had tried to put pressure on the advertiser to provoke funding. And what advertiser tell the company in return fuck off. You know the advertisers, because they're fans of the show, they know our style, and they think it's a really important function of the industry, to the extent that that the historically been willing to tell the companies who pay the money to fuck off to protect the independence of what we have, which is a blessing.
I guess would you see yourselves as a journalists.
No, no, I mean we're running are you running a public We don't.
Break news, and I think that's the distinction with like a journalist, like maybe more similar to like an investigative type journalist. So they wouldn't call any of us that. But we're not trying to break news.
But you're publishing, you're sort of publishing the result.
But we're performing, we're performing analysis rather than actually you know, you know, getting the beat on a story.
So would you see yourselves more like an investment bank or annalys analysts they're working for a you know, I.
Don't know, like an independent an independent research house would probably be the most similar analogy, just that.
Just the way you're about it, it's more a little bit more fun attached to it.
It's fun. It's an accessible medium as well. It's an accessible medium. You get a lot of information that comes back to you because your audience, who they've done their own analysis, or they're on a site at some place and they have some information. You know, you get a lot a lot of that too because.
Of a bit of a But also if your style wasn't fun, then it could be pretty fucking dry, and people are going.
To and then you're going to hit them up with ads as well.
Listener, because when a mining person, so yeah, it goes on a podcast as soon as that microphone goes on or they're getting interviewed about something, they chuck their corporate face on. They're polite as anything. Get them off camera, totally different people, whereas our things like, right, we want to be the same on camera as we are in the street. And that's it, like which makes it obviously relatable. We're just and it's just like sitting back watching a few talk shit about mining in the stock market and it's like the conversation.
Pointed at them.
Then yeah, yeah, yeah they're bloody, they're the.
Stock market stop on the rocks.
But people have been having these conversations for years, like you know, I go to the Bloody the Paragon Hotel and Sydney, all the brokers and all that, like these are the convoys they've bellion having't but we're now publishing it every day and they're like, shit, how good is this? This is what we always talk about. And then it's obviously another perspective and it's just like this fire that's kept getting fuel because the longer it's been gone. The more people have we've met and they're getting touch. A lot of people feed us information because they're like they love it.
They want as in, like you should talk about this, no just like just.
Views or like bloody anything could be like we call it word on the dcline, the rumor's going around, like whether it's like because might be out on the AX, but there might be a rumor something's going on.
Just great insight.
They might have worked at the mind, they might have met the management team that we're speaking about, just all that sort of stuff. They might have particular insight that we won't have getting up to speed on it come and you know, pretty shortly after the announcement comes out, people might.
Have worked with these people for five years, you know.
So and the sort of backflow from the industry, from the people that listen to the show has just been incredible.
It's been awesome.
Like the amount of people that we sort of knew of but had never met a year ago and now have you been fortunate enough to meet and actually like chat with and sort of call mates and a lot of circumstances is pretty bloody wicked because I might not.
Believe everything to anyone tells me. So someone sent me on a bum stey not long ago when there was a merger going on. They're like, no, it's this company. I'm like, it's this company, and it was this other one. I'm like, good one, dickhead.
How important is the show, the structure of the show, to have made his character.
In its vital Yeah?
Yeah, and because you know there's only one that Michael. Yeah, and because I've seen this in other industries. But he's the way he speaks, his cadence, his language, and I dare say his content is you know, he's probably correct or like his knowledgeable.
Yeah, but there's a good example.
That's a good example, right, seventy funny but equally probably close to being correct. You know, how important is that interns to you guys in terms of when you first recognized when you first met him day one?
Did you this? We knew this?
Well?
We knew him, like because he had a podcast, Yep, we we knew. It's like you know someone because you've listened to podcasts all that sort of stuff, and you one hundred percent you listened to his podcast. You like, I didn't have to do dd. It was like I know who you are, because I can tell you're authentic via the content you've put out in the past. But it was JD talked about that, you know that when Maddie was doing these interviews with a Perth fund manager once a month, and that was the first time he dabbled in that finance thing. But you could, we could I could see independently. JD could tell the same thing if you combine Maddie with the finance now. So it was like, fuck, where has this been? You know, this is like such like this is such awesome content, you know, and I think it's a really unique combination when you put this like wicked personality, a very relatable person who has like great insight too, and just bloody you know, just the ultimate Aussie bogan like mining guy, like you know, you're the caricature of that, and you combine it with like all of these like you know, spreadsheet nerds, you can actually get some like like genuinely magic content from that. That was my my process when I reached out to him.
I can I can sort of see the visuals too, like like the juxtaposition of his character with your characters. In a visual sense, it's like sort of completely different, and you're just sure you're just the way you sit and the way you sit relative to the way he is.
He's sort of jumping into the mic you guys.
Are sitting back from, and there's there's sort of like there's a difference between the but there's also a similarity between the three of you. There's a difference between the three of you, like it's quite contrast. The difference is contrasting, and I can imagine I can see why it's popular. I know DIMMI out he's only like twenty or something, but dim he's listening to it. One of our interns outside. He's a last student, but he's like extremely ambitious kid, like he probably would be investing, like off the back of what you guys are saying, or not investing.
Selling.
He might be shorting someone for all I know. But he's quite a sophisticated young kid.
For his age in particular.
I can see that looking to that sort of slapstick too, because that would appeal to dimmy or his cohorted people. So when you look at your age groups, he's twenty, where are you going up to? Do you have any sense of this?
Yet?
It's way older than we thought, okay.
Keep forgetting to read the monthly.
That you know, thirty to forty sort of bracket, I mean different different animals break out the analytics differently, but that thirty to forty bracket, you know, sort of thirty five is a midpoint, is the you know, the median.
Would you say the investors, Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
There'll be a lot of people that work at the companies as well as well. When we're talking about they want to know what's going on with people that are paying me.
I wouldn't say they're like, you know, job is always as investing, although they might do that on the side, you know, but like Mattie says, they might work in a corporate role at a mining company, at a mining company, be in the industry in one form or another, or like you know, like dim you know, there is a good portion that twenty to thirty bracket as well.
They might be not many younger than twenty, very younger than twenty. I'm surprise against sixteen percent older than fifty five. So the system is older than sixteen percent older them. And then when what's the dealers and diggers do you sort of diggs dealers?
I mean, do you get the chance, do they call you Nash to come and do a little special for them, Well, cal gooley.
Well let's take it through that. So we are we've learned when we go to conferences to shut up. It's like this big gathering of bloody of mining people and finance people. And we've gone there, we've tried to record things, and then you've got every bastard coming up to you, especially the small expiration companies. Oh hey, can I come on tell you about my story. We're like, no, piss off because they're trying to get a free plug to bloody, take money off bloody for some chill and copper mine or something like that. And anyway, So it might go all right for the first day, but then there's always the social gatherings that come with all the conferences, and I'm a bit susceptible to really getting involved in them. And then the next day, can't bloody talk properly, got cold sweats and bloody. Then the content shit and we're trying to rip ads for these people, and then day two gets even worse. Day three and it's just like, no, we're just not doing it anymore.
So you don't, don't It's Blake.
We're probably will, but we it'd be good to actually just go there and enjoy to it because the value we get is lot going to talking to all these people and the fund managers, but trying to bloody film shit while you're there. And then yes, anyway, I'm working on more maturity.
It's a fun fund managers as opposed to fund managers. But fund managers are they a big part of your content?
Yeah, because we think that there's just far better alignment like a fund manager.
So neutrality, yeah, yeah, and they've they've.
Okay, so like a mining company MD comes on the podcast, I'll only ever say good things, and they've probably got a perverse incentive. It's not aligned with the audience because they want you know that they might have got some stock options that they didn't actually have to pay real money for it, and if they pumping the price up, happy days for them. But fund manager actually had to put skin in the game. They've got a thought process. They put skin in the game. They bought shares in the company. They're articulating their thesis, and you, as a listener, get to evaluate the merits of that investment thesis. I'd love that content before we did this, I'd listened to so much fund manager content. I loved it, and I know JD loved it too, So we like that. And we just think there's better alignment between fund manager views, you know, even commodity experts and stuff like that than there is having mds of ship goes on the on the mic.
Running stock stock brocus. Because you've got like fund managers are what we call the buy side. Then you've got the cell side, sell side, or all the people doing the capital raisings and all that. But like if you if you get them on the show, they're incentivized to drive this stock up because they might be selling it to their clients or like promoting. They might want the next list on coverage, give it positive coverage, so they get to clip the ticket for the capital raise, like that's how they make money. So they're incentivized that way. Whereas the fund managers, as Trapp said, they're the closest thing to that matches our show in terms of the independence. They've put the cock on the block to put the money into that company for whatever reasons. So that's that's why we align ourselves with them.
And do you guys have to disclose with do you invest in in mining companies?
Every time anytime we mention a company that we happen to own shares, you have to say we do it. We just say ding ding ding. Our audience knows what that means, ding ding ding, I'm a share.
Because from the bad aspect. So if travel owns something and he gets he gets on there even and but even if he does disclose it, but then he's just harping on about it every day, and like, won't bloody stop talking about this one thing that he owns, the audience thinks I don't trust this prick anymore because he's just pumping up his holding. And our show is ship, So we're like one we disguised, but like we give our reasons about why we don't say we think it's a buy or anything, but we have to be We probably go more negative on things.
That we aren't.
We don't we point out that like the ship parts of the or the Risks company, because.
We as soon as the audience thinks that we're pumping up something, we've lost the trust.
Have you show ship that have you at any stage of you've seen a stock price fall off the roost as a result of something you guys might have said.
One, I'll drove on down pretty early, you have, you have? It was so the one. I don't know if it was correlated, but everyone bloody, all the forums were freaking wanted my head. But it was like there's so much perception around, like a mineral resource estimate saying now, this is how much bloody golds here. So and one of the early ones is like, well, this might be how much golds here, but and this is the grade of it. But in a practical sense to mind this and this is and I'd actually worked at that mind previously and I did a lot of d D on it to talk to people to make sure I was right. So in a practical sense, this is what the grade will be to get it out. This is that there's risks of the continuity of it at these things, and it's like, look it's not The share price was still in this and then I gave my independent view of it and to go on the other way. Didn't get bloody, I didn't try and sue me.
And you guys, do you guys interact much with things like that? Lea forums like hot Copper not really like or do they interact with you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they probably do.
But like do you just ignore them?
Well, it's a bad way, But we have a really good audience and I'm sure a lot of our audience also are on Hot Copper as well. So like it's just it's a it's an interesting platform. There's some dubious like engagement.
On that platform. They don't even disclose their own names, do they.
Well, it's all like bloody yeah, like some user names.
There's some stuff that you learn about the industry that really makes you scratch your head, and like there's a lot of Hot Copper engagement that's artificial because people have an incentive for a narratively dominant and that that's a crappy part of the industry.
Some people are paid to go on Hot Copper and write about companies.
Well yeah, it's probably been.
Match exists, which is one of the reasons why people would want to listen to your podcast, just at least to balance it to up at least and a minimum, or they would reject the so called independence of Hot Copper, which I mean.
We use our real faces, our real names, Like yeah, that's as a start, you know, and like to the people that listen to the potty and can sense it there's some authenticity. Then that that's great because like the one of the limitations of hot Copper is, you know, the lack of individual accountability to.
An identity's no fact check, there's no truth. You can't check the truth in order.
Usually all the people posting in hot Copper on one stock are all shareholders. They wanted to go up. Yeah, And that's how we analyze every piece of news or that comes out of every media organization. It's not right, what is the incentive for this article to be here? Who has put that article? Who is incentivized for that article to be published, who's maybe given them the information to bloody? And so we're always trubs this king of the cynical approach. He's bloody. It's like something's fishy here. This isn't here just by a bloody accident. And that's like it becomes a bit bloody. It's addictive because you're like you're like, nah, well there's something dodgy going on here. We're going to find out.
Just give me a bit of an idea.
How you do one of these a day, But obviously the whole day is must be a lot of project planning, so yeah, like a big production meeting every morning.
Has it work. She's pretty casual.
So we do a newsletter as well as of last month, so get in first thing, we try and shoot the newsletter.
Daily yep, daily newsletter.
Yeah wow, And we get in.
We try and shoot that off by eight eight thirty ish in Perth obviously, and then get straight in. That's already started the process because we're looking at what news has come out, and then we just you know, pick between us a couple of stories, a couple stocks, a couple events that we want to talk about, you know, I'd say, on average a couple each, and then we just you know, open up a joint word doc and start hammering away and we'll probably film by one one pm on average, film for we can talk for quite a while, so an hour ish, and then Maddie's the champion of doing the edit.
I was going to say, who's the poor bogus to the editor.
Yeah, well, we sort of divvy up.
Maddie would do the edit and then one would do the thumbnail, the other would do the descriptions, the chapters, these sorts of things, and.
Then more time you push out.
Usually out by what four o'clock for five o'clock personal and then we've gotten it. She's a well old machine. Now trap Trav is the bloody I'll tell you what next level in technical friggin design and what he's done with this office. Some of it isn't even legal, I don't think, but it's like it's all the automation of everything, the cameras and bloody it's it's a pretty streamlined process now of how we get it out. So if it was and JD would still be friggin setting up tripods every day and by getting it out at nine o'clock at night.
It's really interesting for us to walk into studio here Mark and see that you know, like a the spa, you know, but be the staff as well, and they're all wicked, lovely people, have a great conversation, felt comfortable walking in. But when we when we combine and it's like ship like we all quit our jobs. The opportunity cost is to my money. We don't have like a huge bloody honeypot to live off. So we love the simplicity of just keeping the business small as well and not having heaps of overhead. So as much as possible. We got on the tools, particularly Maddie would yet it. But we just want we just wanted to like minimize headcount because with the traditional personal person comes complexity and managing people in.
Cost cost and we've got to play bloody tax soon. I can't believe it. Make your money bloody there, but Jesus cross, it's ludicrous. But then we're like, if we've got a bloody employ people as well and you know things might fly, don't wear shoes in the office level bloody hr. But it's like as a business, then we look at what are the best businesses in the world. They run a lane, they watch their costs and so much leverage to the upside if we're not stressed about paying people. So it'sought right we've got to We've got Ali as well. She's the nucleus to the operation. You'd say keeps us all together, but she she'll be coming on full time. But unless we can bloody employ someone that is going to make more money than a cost to have them without putting stressing the shit out of us, we're just running Alan.
We've got to make money. Every every individual's got to be like a little profit center. And who finds you guess who's who's the collective guess.
I don't know where JD pulls some of these people. It's a lot some of them haven't even been born yet, I don't think. But made he like globally like he's the man number one, two, three, So.
I'll get the how many bar meis you go to? Because's what you mean your guess at the.
Bar A couple of mine, They've got to really do their on my ones because I'll get convinced pretty easily. So we're talking to like a uranium expert in New York the other week, one another guy in that's in California, or people in bloody fund managers in England and like just everywhere.
And when you see them, Jay, do you sell them the show?
Well, So, firstly to start with that, come across generally they've sort of either done a podcast in the past already, and you know, we're all pretty big consumers of podcasts, we're all pretty eager on it, or we will have heard about them in a research note or anything like that. And then yeah, I mean you always go to go with the approach assuming they've never heard of us before, why would they have especially if they're overseas people, and then yeah, there's a bit of a spiel about what we do and you know, particularly why we want them to come on. And you generally find kind of like us here, people love talking about something they're passionate about, about their interests, about what they do all the time. So you know, you get them on and asking them about what they work on. That's it makes for great content.
Were the king of tin the other day?
The king of tin?
The King of Tin was Thompson. Yeah, he's a Pomi Falla and just bloody loves tin. So not hard to get him on to talk about tin because he's like, oh well this will bloody hopefully lift the frigging tin equities up for me.
What do they use tin for now? Anyway? I mean older solder. Solder a big thing.
It's the glue that keeps all our electronics.
So the iPad in there is just essentially a frame of solder and then everything's stuck on it.
But tin is the glue.
And there's not many pure play tin minds or companies. And the one that metals X is the one that operates in Tasmania. Oh yeah, you bloody, but that's like, that's an example, and it's like, so, once we look at tin and this supply demand dynamic globally and where you actually what companies are producing this and the risk that like Indonesia and Me and Mahi like will not be able to supply tin to the world, It's like, holy shit, that puts so much pressure upside on this company. And that's digging into that whole, the whole vertical integration of what this commodity does that drives a big that's a that's a story, and we cover it.
And when you on that example, and let's say there is a tin mine or a company as a tin mine in Tasmania and all of a sudden the demand is not being met by a supply do you call the company out?
Oh, I've called it that company out plenty of times, but not necessarily for the supply demand dynamics, but because there are parts of that company which, like you look at with questioning eyes. For example, the board there is controlled by the major shareholder, and the major shareholder has interests that aren't perfectly aligned with shareholders because they have a commodity trading business and they have an interest in the off take. So for me for a company that's supposedly got independent directors, but by my assessment, I don't call them independent because they were all effectively nominees of the one major shareholder they got twenty control. Like, I'll call them out. From that perspective, I also called them We called them out because they were sitting on a pile of cash, two hundred million bucks of cash, and they no explanation to shareholders about distributing that, like and their growth project kind of you know, a lot of question marks about it, and ultimately you know, they've subsequently declared a buyback and the stocks had a rerate. But I don't think the podcast can take credit for that necessarily, But I think it's part of the stuff that adds up from that activist perspective, which I love too. If you make enough noise about things that maybe aren't perfectly aligned with shareholders of the margin the margin, you might be able to collectively have a little bit of influence.
Yeah, that's cool though, so and maybe JD you describe yourselves earlier on but maybe a little bit of activism it sort of sits in the business modal.
In your framework.
Absolutely, I mean, I think that just ties in with the core of call and out behavior that we don't know, in our opinion might not be totally acceptable.
Or you know, just totally is worth investigating.
Absolutely, And you know, unfortunately it pops up pretty frequently in the mining industry that there's sort of dubious behavior, and you know, no means is that all the time. There's some awesome people, great companies and everything, but you know, we do use the platform every now and then just to sort of question things, to ask people, you know, what's going on here?
Is it worth looking into?
But that is you know, after a lot of hours of digging into something and trying to answer the questions that we've got. And you know, if you've dug into something for you know, plenty of hours and you've still got a whole bunch of questions, and maybe it's worth just throwing one out there and seeing what comes back.
And how many how many episod you goes down?
Now?
Fifty a week, that's bloody April four a week now.
So you as soon as they're bringing you three hundredth I think.
Is not quite there's not far off ten weeks, another fifty in and around there.
Yeah, so just over a year now since we started, which is pretty pretty cool.
Just all you do today, Mark, don't go bloody chuck of money in some Chile and copper company run first.
Well, that was about ten ten years ago when I just got over excited about a whole lot of stuff. I just it was one of those you know those times when you just you think you've got to invest your money instead of leaving in the bank.
You think, oh, I'm good investor invest it.
And of course as soon as you start to thinking like that, must you must ride it across your for and some some blay walks sees you walking down the street.
Day he's got he needs to invest his money. I'll be to get onto him.
And that's exactly what happened. I never met the do before in my life. And the next thing, you know, somehow he's.
In my world. I don't know how the fun he got into my wall. Somehow I was in my world.
And then that's just coming out of my pocket left right center. And the way he got me in was come on, come on our and have a look.
And like never been a chilli before. We had been in Santiago before.
And I can't remember Las Arena was the area. I had to go to a place called Las Arenda. I flew from San Diego to Las Arena as a.
Beach and it's the first time I've ever experienced an earthquake. I was in a hotel.
It was right on the beach and there was a casino downstairs and there was I was in my room up the top and the fucking earthquake happened.
It was just after the tsunami period that was in around Pouquet and Land and I'm in my room.
The fucking room starts shaking because a lot of earthquakes over there and the fox. So I thought, this is going to be a bloody tsunami for sure, and this hotel is going to get mode over.
So I went downstairs. I was trying to find someone, recepricent.
Find anywhere. It was like two o'clock the morning, three o'clock morning. Of course, that's always when you get an earthquake. And I saw the casino and I walked into the casino and like over the door and it was cigarette smoke and cigar smoke. It was like no.
Jay was like thick. I couldn't see any passing. They couldn't give a fuck still gambling. No one fucking moved.
You're on the You don't get off the.
Ship in his pants, because then he's going to come through the fucking door in his second. I didn't know whether I should stay up up my room because the tsunami won't go that high, or should I sort of run for the fucking hills, or I really don't know what to do. And I can look looking for some guidance from from the locals and they can give us stuff. Mate, they just keep pulling the fucking Pokemontines and Smoker Sigkis.
You hadn't been in your element, bloody.
Oh No, I can't go to seuth America. Too many, too dangerous for me.
I'm never going again.
Matt, Travis and Joannice, thanks so much for coming in. Actually a really cool conversation. It's it's for me seeing three three young blokes, because you guys, from my point of viewre young, taking on and backing yourselves and having a crack. It's pretty cool and doing really well in a pretty niche industry, but something that actually a lot of people are interested in.
I really appreciate it and