I'm Ed Cowan and this is scaling up it.

Doesn't matter what sector, people your number one resource.

I've had that all the way through my career.

You know, just look after people, do the right thing, be open and honest, have the hard discussions, kick people up the backside when they've stuffed up and pat them on the back and reward them when they're good.

If you look after people, they'll follow you wherever you go.

This podcast aims to educate and inspire by telling the stories of great growth companies as told by their CEO's and founders.

TDM is an Australian based investment firm that invests globally in fast growing public and private companies.

For more insights, visit our website tdmgrowthpartners.com.

Bill Beamont grew up in a working class family out of Esperance in WA.

He dreamed of being a general manager of a mine one day.

Instilled at a young age with a deep work ethic and an acute commercial sense, he achieved much, much more than this.

As CEO and Executive Chair of Northern Star, he reshaped the underground gold mining industry and built from scratch a $16 billion ASX 50 behemoth.

Not resting on his laurels though, he has more recently turned his attention to wrapping up all his learnings about mining, about people and about leadership to his own venture, Develop Global, which is on the precipice of replicating Northern Star's success in critical minerals with its unique business model of both mining services and mine ownership.

This is one of Australia's great stories, largely unknown and untold outside the resource community, so heavily centred on Perth.

But the scaling lessons, as you'll hear, are applicable to all sectors and leaders of businesses of all shapes and sizes.

This episode takes you underground into a world unfamiliar to most but applicable to all.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scaling Up with Bill Beamont, CEO and founder of Develop Global.

Bill, welcome to Scaling Up Your Career.

Reads a little bit like A boy's Own adventure, and I hope I I bring it some justice right through this episode.

I think a great way to to get through this is probably just to walk through your career chronologically, trying to elicit the stories and lessons from such an eventful and tremendous career.

Maybe we can go way back to the start.

You grew up just out of Esperance, which is, I don't know, probably 850 kilometres outside of Perth, which is the most isolated capital city in the world.

What were some of the the values that were instilled in you growing up both rurally and in a in a really, you know, rock solid working class family?

My first ten years I was on a farm at east of Esperance and grew up in a farming community called Conning Up.

And I learned how to be self-sufficient pretty early on, you know, living out there.

And then I moved into Esperance and Esperance and the surrounds and the town and the community of Conning Out where was was an awesome community to grow up in.

And my dad was a, you know, mechanic by trade and worked around that district fixing, you know, tractors and and harvesters for the farmers and then created a business wrecking them and selling the parts back to them.

So I got a good education of the farming community and and probably farming and mining a a very similar that, you know, like a lot of hard work.

It's not an easy industry, agricultural, the long hours and how hard my dad worked in his business and that work ethic in those long hours, you do get rewards.

Sometimes it takes a few years ahead, but like you do get rewards And I don't know.

I just, yeah, I saw that first hand at a very early age and, and obviously I was the only son, so I was the only one the old man dragged down to the yard and help him out.

So I had no choice but to work from a very early age and and work long hours.

But he did give me cash, so that's good.

I got paid for it.

If I was to join a common thread through your career, it would be one of hard work, certainly, and the old adage the harder you work the lucky you get certainly rings true to me here.

And so it's no surprise this thread really began to emerge in your upbringing.

I guess to roll the story forward a little, you attended the School of Mines, a technical school in Kalgoorlie, largely with the intent of becoming a mining engineer and eventually a mine manager.

At that point in time though, you made a pretty career defining move actually and went and worked underground for Bar Minko, getting dirty both literally and metaphorically.

Tell me what you learned underground at Bar Minko, about yourself, about the industry?

Really keen to hear more and and get in the nitty gritty so to speak because underground mining certainly isn't a world that I've lived and breathed.

I've always been a, a very driven person of where I want to get to and I know the, the hard work and, and the time and if it will produce results.

And, and in the resource sector, especially as a mining engineer, there is quite a defined career path that you have to do if, if you want to get into the upper echelons or where myself and others sit at the moment.

You've got to get certain time on mine sites, get certain certificates, exams you have to complete, you have to go underground to get that time.

So for me, it was just a journey to get the time underground and I just want to go with the best of the best underground operators.

And that stage that was the mining contractors because they're all run by X Western mining general managers, underground managers that, that have gone through a, a really good training system and management system themselves.

So I knew once I got that experience and got those certificates that my journey into management ranks and the upper echelons would be escalated and happen quicker, you know, bloody fortune to work some amazing talent, both at an operational level, management level and, and the owner of Baminko was still to this day, probably one of the smartest mining engineers I've ever come across in my career.

And I was very fortunate to work for his company and, and under his banner for a number of years.

And it gave me a huge head start for my next part of my journey.

Yeah, there's.

There's no doubt that the time you did on the frontline has enabled you to succeed both as an executive and as a leader.

Having both that operational grunt and know how, coupled with your technical background as an engineer really gave you an advantage of earning the respect of your workforce.

What about the people you're working with and some of the lessons from leading these teams underground?

It wasn't long into your career that you were three IC at Bombinco, which was by now a a dominant underground mining services business in the industry.

I was managing people very early on, at a very early age.

And yeah, look, you can ask some of those old miners, they probably thought I was an absolute idiot to start with.

I think I got their respect after a period of time.

But you got to be at the coalface.

And I saw this time and time again.

But at any mine site, 90% of your workforce is what I call blue collar workers.

So they're tradespeople or they're process operators, or they're open pit or underground miners.

The other 10% of people like me, they're mining engineers, geologists, metallurgists, surveys, and we let the old bank counter on site and I'm not many of them hopefully sorry for accountants out there, but it's the 90% workforce.

That's your blue collar worker, that's your culture.

That's the people that work night shift.

The white collars don't work night shift.

They're on day shift.

So they, you know, they're on the night shift protecting your bum as a manager and all that sort of stuff.

And they're breaking the rock and they're pouring the metal.

It's that blue collar workforce that I love and I've spent my whole career with and I still do now.

And that grounding I had underground working hand in hand for that blue collar workforce.

There is still a number of those people that I'm still working with today.

You know, businesses like sport, There's so many parallels.

And I guess that honest locker room happens with the blue collar workers, you know, very different to 30 years ago that wouldn't tell you what they think, whereas now they're very empowered and, and you know where you stand.

And I, I love that honest locker room and, you know, blood, sweat, tears type stuff.

And the, the respect you get from that.

And that grounding of at the coalface is what I think a lot of management teams in any sector don't get right.

It's a hugely important place.

And the only way you can do it in resources is get your bum off the bloody CBD seat.

You got to get your bum into the coalface.

That's out in the Bush down underground or in the pits at the coalface with your workers or in the process plant and talking to them in their environment.

And that's I was just very fortunate.

I spent a lot of time at the coalface and you know, it's a different workforce.

You know, you do have to talk to different workforces.

How I articulate to a fund manager in Sydney or London is very different to how I speak to people out, you know, underground at the coalface.

It's a it's a different sort of tone and, and how you communicate.

But I love that blue collar workforce because they're the heart and soul of any business.

It's a great point you make around drawing parallels to to any sector because the great retailers right through time always talk about walking the shop floor and having that connection with their salespeople and, and the lessons can be drawn, as you say, right across sectors.

To move the career timeline along a little bit from Bar Minko, let's focus in on your time building Northern Star.

And this in itself is just an insane story.

In your time as CEO, you took it from essentially nothing to a $16 billion business.

Keen to zoom this timeline into the late 2000s.

I think the share price at the time was something like $0.10.

And I've heard you joke that when you're announced as the new CEO, it fell to seven cents.

For those that know the story, during the global financial crisis, I think the share price bottomed at closer to two cents.

And for context, it now trades around $13.

Take us back to the GFC.

The lessons that you learnt from such a tough period of time.

Yeah, look, it was, it was to be honest, it was an absolute shit period.

I was very fortunate.

I had a, a really amazing journey in, in that earlier part of my career coming through the, the contract ranks, in particular Bar Minko.

And that really gave me a massive grounding because look, look in Bar Minko, like, you know, age of 28, I was running 2/3 of that portfolio, you know, over 1000 people, 350 mill a year portfolio making a lot of money for the 100% owner.

And you don't survive in contracting unless you focus on your costs and your revenue.

A lot of people focus on revenue, but you got to get the balance between cost and revenue, right?

This was a private business and in fact, one of the Australia's biggest privately owned businesses at the time, owned by one person.

And like every dollar you waste is 2 you got to make.

And also that dollar you waste is actually the owner that you're seeing on a regular basis.

So that DNI of you treated it like your own.

That's gone through me all the way through my career and and no different when I hit the GFC, I've always traded shareholders money as the same as my own.

It's the same principle.

So in the hearts of despair of the GFC, you know, that was that was a horrible journey for me on a number of different fronts.

But you know, did I beg, steal, borrow, pinch, scratch, fight?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, it could have been really easy to walk away and take in a different job, But you know, I caught up with one of the major shareholders and, you know, I just said keep the thing alive and, and, and we did.

And that wasn't easy keeping a, a shell of an exploration company alive, which had basically no assets.

And my non exec chairman, who's still a mentor to this day, Chris Rowe was amazing in that early phase of Northern Star and or he was there for a long period of time, but to keep it alive, he was the non exec chair.

And and yeah, we tried to recap it a couple of times.

We had some deals that fell over that would have got us going.

In fact, one of those deals now I've got a $400 million contract at Bellevue Gold mine.

So it's quite ironic.

I missed out on that deal back in 2009 by like the little fraction of skin.

But you know, my chairman kept me saying, look, there's always another deal around the corner, Bill.

So don't get disheartened.

Don't you know, because you can easily take your bat and ball and go home, mate.

You know, everyone, there's a lot of people, 99% of people will do that.

But he convinced me to just get over it.

And I had some pretty shitty moments like where I was throwing the toys out and I'm very upset.

But I've learned corporately in business that there's always another deal around the corner.

And sometimes, as you know, it is the, the deals that you say no to end up being the best decisions of your, of your business career.

So the thing I've always really focused on in, in my business career and doesn't matter what entity, it's all about people, doesn't matter what sector people you're #1 resource.

I've, I've had that all the way through my career.

You know, being in a mining services at the start for, you know, probably the 1st 10 or 11 years or 12 years, you know, mining services all about people.

I don't get when companies go and buy another mining services business because you're buying people that are fluid and they go with their manager.

But to me, I'll learn about people, people, people.

I took that into Northern Star as well.

And we started with one person, which was me, grew that into over 6000 people.

And I think it's probably 6 1/2 seven now since I've left.

But yet you can't grow business in a in less than, you know, in 10 years we went from one to 6000 and can't do that without having that people focus.

And, and that was my number one lesson is, you know, just look after people, do the right thing, be open and honest, have the hard discussions, kick people up the backside when they're stuffed up and pat them on the back and reward them when they're good.

And if you look after people, they'll follow you wherever you go.

And you got to have a time and and a team's not there without having the right people in it.

There's some lessons in that and some basic principles to follow, without doubt.

Let's pick apart the scaling journey, though quickly, of Northern Star.

You touched on the dark times, but eventually you did find an asset.

I think 2010.

You bought the Paulson mine.

I think there was 50K in the bank at that point in time.

This was still a very entrepreneurial venture, shall we say.

But from that point on, the in house underground mining expertise, the talent that you brought in from Bomb Minko, it really led the transition of the Australian gold industry as a standard from open cut to underground.

I'm keen to really unpack what makes a world class underground mine and the benefits of this, both from a dollar point of view but also environmentally.

I know you're very ASG focused now developed.

Can we just kind of try and unlock an idea of the underground mining industry and and how you shape them?

The underground industry, it's, it's like a, it's a little bit of an enigma.

It's a unique culture and a unique workforce.

And, and I, I'll make this general statement.

I think Australian underground mining industry is, is in my view, by far the best in the world.

Doesn't matter which commodity you're talking about.

If you want to build an underground mine, it is all about how quick you can get that mine into production and, and what size that production is.

And you can't do that without getting the capital development in.

And this is the part where I've spent the bulk of my career is, is building these mines.

And, and when I talk about capital development, I don't want to get too technical here, but you got to excavate tunnels underground.

You, you got to get tunnels and get into the ore body and then you can start drilling and blasting and, and getting in production.

But the quicker you can get those tunnels in and also the infrastructure like ventilation, pumping to get the water out and power so you can run away your electric drills and, and fans and ventilations there.

The quicker you install those tunnels in that capital infrastructure, the quicker you get in production, the way better the MPV is.

So that that's the secret to building a mine is, is getting that capital development in as quick as possible.

And it's not necessarily about price, just getting it in production a year or two, everyone else is far better than worrying about a 10% margin to a contractor or anything like that.

That's what I've always prodded my career on is, is that high speed development to get that critical infrastructure in.

And that's the secret of building any mine.

And and the Australians have got a monopoly on that performance.

And that was generated out of the Western mining days who who basically changed how we did underground development using certain type of machines.

And those managers went in and created the burn cuts and the bombing Co, the two premium mining contractors in the globe.

In my view on I do believe mining contractors make amazing mine owners.

So Australians have got that expertise in that high speed development and there's not a lot of it to be honest.

But the smart mind owners in the world have recognized that that's the core DNA and a lot of people don't appreciate how important that is.

And there's not a lot of management teams that have got that skill set to run that high speed development.

And like I say, it's the key performing talent.

They are, you know, they're the mercenaries, they're the Lionel Messi's of the soccer team.

You know, they are pre Madonnas to a degree.

We pay them a lot of money, but without that high speed development, we don't get mines built and we don't improve MP VS and and get production happening sooner rather than later.

So yeah, the real secret is is nurturing that talent.

And that's one thing we did extremely well in Northern Star.

And it's not just the jumbo operators.

You got to have the maintenance team, you got to have the electrical time, you got to have the people behind the jumbo, you got the shift bosses, you got to have the managers and the foreman that get all that.

So there's a whole suite of people involved in that side of the business.

But I've put some amazing quality management together and the underground workforce is really different.

They they really work for the person in the shirt.

They don't work for the shirt.

And that's how I built Northern Star is, you know, we'd started off and, and we were not one, but we had a lot of people that used to work for us.

So hence I recruited farming Co management and operators.

And once I got the right management and I call them the generals and you get the generals in, they get the colonels and the sergeants and the sergeants bring the armies in.

And we did it in Norton Star.

And, and that's how we grew from one person to 6000 really quickly.

And we're buying at one stage in two 13214, we're buying a mine a month.

And everyone thought we're crazy, but we just kept picking the phone up and, and the, you know, the armies and the sergeants and, and all the corporals and the privates come with it.

But unless you've got those generals, you don't have a workforce.

So much to pick apart and great color on the secret sauce and IP involved in being a best in class underground operator.

One thing to bring to life that you alluded to was given this operational advantage that you had built was the ability to buy mine sites much more cheaply than your competitors.

And in turn, this let you deliver really high returns on capital in these sites.

It was a great capital allocation strategy, but underpinned by operational excellence.

And it really is what built Northern Star into what it is today.

You took this same philosophy, packaged up all your experiences and lessons from 25 years in the industry and and wrapped it all in a bow, funded it largely yourself and brought it to market in your own little baby that is Develop Global.

What were the key lessons at Northern Star that have been crucial in these early years that develop?

The operational DNA that the time I had we created throughout our careers come from the contract and we took that into mine ownership in Northern Star and you know, we could lower costs, increase productivities and obviously make better returns and and better cash flow than prior owners.

That was now DNA.

We've done that our course of our career and we've built so many mines and turned around so many mines that was like a not a walk in the park, but we we understood that.

But the other part.

Of Northern Star, there's, there's probably 3 elements, there's that operation license.

The other one was we really understood the value of what the geology team was.

And I still have to bash miners in particular, like get out of the way of the diamond drills.

Let the let the drillers drill, let the G OS get the information and they enter it.

And then you know, they can give you a model and the engineers can design and then give you an execution plan.

But the one thing we did extremely well is understand geology.

And you know, I say people's your number one resource.

And when I talk resources, your number two is your geology without metal on the ground, doesn't matter how good a mine you are, you you might make money.

So the metal has to be in there and you need to know where it is.

And, and I learnt pretty quickly the geologists and, and you know, I like to say that the geologists are a little bit different on which side their brain sits to an engineer.

And I'm glad it does because it's not an exact science.

There's a bit of, you know, black art to it.

And we need them to think left of centre and, and geologists a, a, a different breed to an engineer.

And, and, and that's why we need them because like I say, it's, it's not an exact science.

And I learnt really quickly, they need money and they need a, a board and a management team that understands that, that they need that to execute.

And also very importantly, they need time.

They need time to analyse that data, think about it, circle back, spin the screen 20,000 times.

Anyone that's worked with me knows that when I go to site, you know, I put the biggest bloody TV screens that you can ever buy out of Harvey Norman into each mine site.

And I spent hours and hours with the geos spinning around the geological models and the raw data to understand the orebody and what's happening and the opportunity and where we can grow it, yadda yadda yadda.

So that was a lesson, you know, like not a lesson, but a real key take away is understanding geologists and and what they need to do to get stuff done.

And geology was was in an acquisition phase, was our #1 gateway.

I've bought 15 mines over 13 years now and I haven't got an obsession.

There are times where three or four years I've bought nothing.

We haven't bought one dot and geology is the number one gateway, you know, one of the classic gold mines.

I bought John D, which is an amazing asset for 82 and a half million bucks and we paid off in basically four or five months.

And now it makes that probably in a month with this gold price.

Bought it in 2014 with a two year mine life and Fast forward 10 years now and still brought a 1516 year mine life ahead of it.

So that was the, the key lesson I learnt on the geology.

And the third part was the entrepreneurial side and, and that's the merger and acquisition capability.

And mate, there's no playbook for that.

I'll probably put that back to my dealings, you know, or my, my background of gone around to all the auctions with my old man as bidding on, you know, parts and tractors and harvesters and, and buckets of scrap that, you know, he knew there was a $5000 part in there and you get it for a carton of beer, you know, and the dealings of, you know, how to cut a deal.

I probably learnt that from my dad.

And then obviously with contracting you're negotiating all the time and that M and I background that myself, Stu Tonkin, others like cries of the world, we were dealing and negotiating on a regular basis in our contracting careers and that was a key component of the success of Northern Star.

A key component developed as well is the M and I piece because we created with operational excellence, which include the geology, obviously been able to spot a bloody good deal and spot an asset that we knew had a lot of value and and we could execute on.

That's yeah.

Like again, I I can't sit here and tell you the playbook on that.

You just know what's good and what's not.

And that was probably the three key elements of success in in all the star.

And like you say, it's replicating that on to develop now and coming back to, you know, I've got an amazing team together.

You know, I think one of the skill sets that I've been able to do is spot talent.

Spotting talent is, I think a lot of people don't take the time to do.

Without doubt across industries as well, you would say that the number one job of the CEO is to build a great team.

And time and time again when that happens, magic can occur.

And obviously the inverse is, is true as well.

It's probably worth talking about develop more broadly.

You said there's no playbook, but the playbook was 25 years of bloody hard work and experience to to be able to spot a deal and that you've been able to do at develop.

The joy of the developed business model is that you are using this high cash flow generation from the mining services business to buy mines, often very cheaply and use that operational excellence inside the services business to ensure those mines are in turn highly profitable.

Unlike Northern Star, though, you've really turned your attention to critical minerals such as copper and zinc, as opposed to gold where previously your attention had been.

To go back a little bit of history, I, I saw this real change about seven years ago, yeah, probably about seven or eight years ago.

I was going through London, my biggest share, I was still the biggest share of, of Northern Stars based in London.

So I'd get over there, you know, probably three times a year.

And I got hit in the face with the ESG.

And this is before anyone was even talking about ESG and, and it was driven out of Europe and in particular, you know, London, you know, the UK funds in resources were right onto it and, and sector leaning.

And, and I'll never forget I just got hit in the face by 1 investor meeting where I normally catch up with one person.

There was like 7 in the room and like, there's the environmental, the safety and training person.

And we spent 10 minutes on the business and, and 50% on ESG.

And I was like, wow.

And then the next meeting, 2 hours later, it was the same.

And I went, things are changing.

And this is before, you know, Rio divested their coal business and, and others.

And I was like, whoa, this is going to hit coal really quickly.

This is going to hit oil and gas next.

Then there's going to go on the alumna.

And then obviously, unless you're digging stuff up that makes the world a better place, you're going to come under scrutiny.

And I could see this writing on the wall of, you know, society's expectation for miners.

What's changing communities.

You're operating traditional owners as well, you know, need much more of a sign in what happens on their country.

And I'm a huge advocate of that, but I was also conscious that the world needs critical minerals.

And I look at the critical minerals.

You know, we need copper, we need zinc, we need silver, we need nickel, we need lithium, we need rare earths, we need cobalt.

They're the building blocks that society's going to need in the future.

And and this has gone back three or four years.

Like people back then, I used to laugh.

They, they think we're just going to transition to renewables in three years and, and shut down all like coal-fired power stations and obviously like laughing at people on their face, but they're like, no, and it's going to, I'm like, no, it's going to take way longer than you expect.

You know, you got to find this stuff, you've got to finance it, you've got to build it and you've got to operate it.

I'll say this ain't going to happen overnight.

And in a nutshell, like my view was we're in a 30 to 40 year structural bull market on critical minerals.

You know, we've been booked on oil and gas and coal for 150 a 170 years as a society around the world.

We aren't transitioning off that in three or four years.

You know, that's mainstream now people realize that, but we're going to need, you know, these critical minerals and it's going to take us 30-40 years to get there.

A lot of these new discoveries and all this stuff are at depth.

They're, they're underground.

Like we've found everything about crops in the world.

You know, there's not many new surface discoveries of any commodity, but like when you start talking the other commodities, it's, it's underground.

That's where the discoveries are.

So you, you know, that's in my wheelhouse.

And also with that, you know, the world needs really efficient and productive miners.

It's getting really hard to permit any open pit anywhere in the world.

So I knew that was coming.

And, you know, even the president of Mexico a couple of months ago come out and said he does not want to permit any new open pit.

So this is, you know, this is happening all around the world.

So I just thought I've been waiting this moment where, you know, these commodities are underground also in underground mining, there's not a lot of expertise across the globe.

So that's going to be a skill set that's highly sought after in a highly efficient and productive miners.

And they've got to be underground and you're going to need that underground mining services and you need critical minerals.

So hence, you know, the formation to develop, which is a really unique business model because it is mine ownership in critical minerals and underground mining services.

And, and the only business globally doing what I'm doing is mineral resources, but they're open pit.

You know, it's, it's hard for people to get their head around the actual business model because it's, there's not many reference points, but amazing to have a mining services business that provides culture, capability and cash flow to go and build your mine ownership business on without shareholder dilution.

There's no doubt that there is a, a very strong comparison that you could draw between your journey and, and Chris Ellison, the CEO and founder of Min Res that we know so well here at TDM, both from upbringing, from operating mines right through to that entrepreneurial spirit to, to start their own company and, and have this entrepreneurial flair to understand the unique business model of both the services and then the mine ownership and, and how those capital allocation decisions can be made within that.

The secular tailwinds are there and the IP and experience have all come together over the course of your career, so it's all there for the taking.

But in earnest, we've only been going pretty much two years.

So mining services, you know, two years ago had no contracts, no people, no revenue.

Fast forward now, we'll do it in excess of 200, easily over 200 mil this year and I reckon we'll be 4 to 500 mil in three or four years.

And mine ownership, we only basically settled our Woodlawn mine, which is our first mine.

We're going to Commission and start building later on this year and Commission early next year.

We only acquired that literally two years ago.

So for us, we've built our mine ownership.

We've got our Woodlawn copper and zinc mine.

We've got our Sulphur Springs, zinc and copper deposits going to be built in the Pilgrim in a couple of years.

And we've got our lithium deposit will be in mine in due course in in WA.

So our mine ownership's been done.

We've done all the feasibilities, we've done all the valuations.

We've grown resources, we've grown reserves.

We've de restored the operational mine plans.

So that's been a lot of heavy lifting for two years and we're now into the finance phase of that.

So we're getting right to the point the end of off take and project financing to bring Woodlawn online and and we said in the market, we want to have all that squared away by the end of July.

So pretty excited that we're going to depth fund that asset.

People think we're going to use equity, it's not.

So sorry to disappoint any shareholders out there or future potential shareholders you got to get on market and bias unfortunately.

And our mining services, like I said two years ago, we had nothing.

We've now got 3 contracts.

We're working on our 4th and that's an amazingly powerful business that's given us as I said earlier on culture, capability and and cash flow.

So we've built an amazing team.

I think I'm at 400 people now.

We'll be 750 probably mid next year and probably 1500 within two years.

So now it's just the execution of our mine ownership.

Our mining services is, is going really good.

We've got amazing clients that have given us a crack and an opportunity on their assets.

We don't want to be big in mining services.

The mine ownership is the value creation and we're about to you know embark on that hopefully very soon once we get our financing squared away later on this month.

So like any MD will say is you know we've put a suite of assets in three or four years time we've we've basically got cash flow around about 500 million a year and there's no more shareholder dilution.

We're going to dip from Woodlawn and and then bring the assets later on in life out of the cash flow and and debt.

So 500 mil market cap today, that's all we are.

In 3-4 years time we're actually going to spit out 500 mil of cash flow operationally per year.

So I think we're bloody cheap and hence you know why I've put in nearly 50 mil of my own money.

If there's anyone who has built a core culture of delivering on operational excellence and and promises, it's you who I'd I'd want to bet on.

I do want to touch on Woodlawn quickly because that's a a great example of using your operational expertise in IP to operate an asset that has previously been heavily invested in.

I think you paid you know 30 or $40 million for it.

It's already had hundreds of millions of dollars of CapEx invested in it by a previous owner and yet you can take on that asset and derive a large amount of cash flow just based in your operational expertise in IP.

Absolutely.

It's, it's amazing asset and again, it's the combination of how you look at these things and every single asset I bought in my career, I say I'm up to 15 after 13 years.

One thing that's really appealing if you go back and I'll give you a bit of IPOA on this, is I bought assets that have installed infrastructure.

Don't underestimate how expensive it is and time consuming to get stuff permitted, financed and built.

And tell me who brings projects or anything in any sector, commercial buildings or a mine or a bloody house.

No one comes on time, on budget ever.

Bloody rare.

And mining's notoriously bad for that.

So I love buying installed infrastructure because you quite often pay cents in the dollar for it, which is what I did.

So Woodlawn, brand new everything, they spent $340 million to bring that mine online and basically went bankrupt in commissioning.

And that's a whole, that's a whole big conversation.

That's another podcast Part 2 for you, Ed.

But in, in a nutshell, like the other part was geology, an amazing geological system there.

And we've proven that two years now we've had it.

We've invested $60 million in two years.

A lot of that went into the geology.

And guess what, you know, we, we actually grew reserves by 94%, the resources by 55%, grew the mine life from bloody three years to 10 years.

We backed ourselves, backed the geos.

Luke Gibson, his time done a fantastic job to identify that and execute.

And then we debris it from a mining perspective operationally and and now we're about to finance and turn it back on.

And you know, like everyone wants to throw a knife.

They didn't think you do in life.

If if you're successful.

And I love the tall puppies in our it's frigging right.

But it's like everyone always wants to see the negatives in in a person or in life or an opportunity.

Whereas I look at the positives and Woodlawn had some historical issues.

But yeah, they've been sold with technology, a way of difference and and how you tackle things.

You know why we do things now on a ground.

Mine is way different.

Back then this went into administration in 2020 because a number of errors.

We're not doing that.

We changed the mine plan, everything about it we've changed.

We're upgrading and doing the mill properly.

And yeah, we're we're putting in a, you know, some accommodation facilities there so we don't have to rely on trying to get high performing talent like and drive and drive out, which is non existent in the area.

Just little things.

We bring in that operational DNA and then all of a sudden you, you debunk the mists of a project.

And and I love it when people say, well, what about this?

And you're like, yeah, that's great, but we're not doing that.

I've had this on every asset I bought, whether it was gold mines or what I'm doing now, every single acquisition we've ever done, we haven't bought 1 dud yet.

So you know, you can get lucky once in life with a good deal.

But I think when you when your team and yourself have been involved in 15 / 13, let's history dictate in a couple of years time what that looks like.

One thing I do want to touch on, and it feels like it's been interwoven right through this entire episode is the importance of people and culture and to get into the nitty and gritty.

It's not so much just the importance, but the lessons along the way.

Obviously, from a leadership point of view, the ability to be an executive that understands the operational needs of a business.

You know, the empathy and understanding the frontline, so to speak.

The ability to deliver on these operational promises and and know what that looks like.

Keen to get into like the the nitty gritty of hiring and training and and retaining the best and what this looks like.

I know you're a big advocate of promoting talent from within and and the importance of that culturally.

Your manager needs to recruit and bring their own time.

That's how I've always operated.

I never had AHR manager in in Baminko.

We never had AHR manager in Northern Star.

Don't have AHR manager in develop.

Too often you see these management teams rely on HR managers, then they use recruiters and, and I'm sorry, but my fiance owns a recruitment business and resources, but I'm not one of those people.

I don't use recruiters.

Use your networks.

That's super, super important.

I learnt that really early on.

And again, that's probably the, the DNA at the coalface with operators and just, you know, having those networks and those relationships, you, you knew who was good and who was bad.

Or you pick up the phone to one of your old bosses and, and say, what's this person like, you know, I used to have the three tick rule get 1-2 or three ticks and unless I got 3 ticks, I didn't employ.

And no one, no one gets 3 ticks off, you know, 5 referees too, by the way, I'm sure I get one or none of some people that have worked with me in the past, but there's always someone I know that knows whether that person worked at a mine and how they operated.

So even when I was the executive chair of Northern Star running 6000 people, I spent so much time out in the field at the coalface also networking, you know, industry things heavily involved in a lot of, you know, alumni committees, Chamber of minerals and energy, all that.

So you got to meet an experience and see a number of different people and, and you just the way I've always done a bit of recruiting as well as little bit of a W farmers model here.

I always research and look at great companies.

How do they build amazing teams and what do they do that was special or what sporting club did that?

So buddy, what, how have they been able to be in the top four for, you know, 15 years?

And what's the secret?

I, I spent a lot of time on understanding that, that culture element, that management element.

And I'll never forget listen to Michael Cheney at West Farmers talk at the 100 year anniversary and he was talking about coming across special talent that he spotted in other sectors or other businesses.

And he'd, he'd like, he'd just get him into West farms and create a role.

And he knew that within one or two years that have a role for him, but just don't let that good talent go.

And I've always taken that view as like spot good talent, put them in the memory bank and and keep connected with them because when the opportunity comes, like, bang, you can pounce.

You've already got a relationship with them.

You've sold on the vision for a couple of years of what your business is doing.

And then, you know, there's a weak moment where they get pissed off at work or they hate their boss or they're bored or whatever.

And you get them on a bad day and like, well, yeah, I'll come and have a coffee and entertain a discussion.

So I always do that a lot.

I keep connected with a lot of people, monitor where they are in their careers and their journeys and and pounce at the right times.

And HR manager can't do that.

They got no frigging idea.

So for me, you, you have to do your own recruiting.

That's the success of any manager or executive in my view is, you know, I've been out of the spot.

Talent put the time and effort caught him.

You know, like one of the best decisions I made in Norton Star was I missed out on some amazing assets that barracks sold to my opposition and and I had a management team that the company had sort of moved past and we missed out.

I didn't get pushed hard enough to go that extra 10 or 20 mil to buy those assets.

And they're, they're amazing assets still going now.

So I did a management change out and I managed to recruit, you know, Stew Tonkin, who's now the MD of, of Northern Star as my CEO back then.

And it took me two years to get him to come on board.

And my board was really patient.

They, they understood it.

My chairman Chris was like.

Yep, you've raved about this person and it did.

It took two years until he had a really got him at the weak moment and and he and he joined me and, and took a step backwards.

To be honest, the rest is history, but I don't know.

Again, there's no management playbook for all this.

It's just comes back to relationships, you know, treating people well.

I made some pretty, you know, bad career decisions early on that probably hurt me in a, in a financial and a, an accelerator basis in my early years.

And when I say that is, you know, I got an amazing opportunity in a, in a mining company, but I hung around in Balminko because I just recruited 20 people.

And I thought, well, if I leave after one year, you know, like these people never work for me again.

And, and that was Stu Thomas, one of them, and a number of other people.

Like if I walked out the door and just recruited him three months ago, there's no way he would have joined me in Northern Star about, you know, six years later, seven years later.

So being disciplined and, and staying true to yourself, it's people work it out.

And, and very fortunately, they'll, they'll join you in, in your next venture.

And probably the, the best thing that I'm enjoying at the moment is just seeing my alumni that I've worked with that are now in the equivalent positions of myself.

So I can't get them to work for me because, you know, there's only one MD.

But like, I'm just loving seeing some of my colleagues and my alumni that have been with me and helped me build my career now BMDS and be super, super successful.

And that's my probably my proudest thing is just watching people evolve.

So many great lessons for CEOs and and founders in regards to recruiting there.

One thing I do want to touch on is your philosophy around remuneration.

I'm always fascinated in the mining industry given the volatility of earnings.

How CEOs think about remunerating their workforce?

I know that you roughly sort of have two options, high cash, low equity or high equity, low cash, but just the role of remuneration as a motivator of your workforce.

I know you touched on the the messy of tunnel machinery earns big money and and various roles can certainly command that, but how you manage that both from a principal point of view and then the methods involved to make sure that people are well remunerated?

It's really hard in the public listed space and and I despise proxy advisors.

I just think they should be regulated.

I think they're one of the worst invention for investors.

And unfortunately, you know, they're good intentions, but out come poor and they get very frustrating.

You know, like my last couple of years, you know, as exec chair of an IO650 company, it wasn't enjoyable.

And you know, when you're dealing with non core business for 60% of your time, then your shareholders are missing out.

And unfortunately proxy advisors create that.

So it it's really hard to renumerate executives.

And, and I think this is a really burning platform that probably needs to be addressed because talent is mobile.

There's a lot of cash around the world.

You're seeing private equity increase.

And, and I take an entrepreneurial view of this.

My view is pay the best, expect the best.

So like I'll pay the best in the underground miners and maintenance in the industry because I want the best of the best.

If I've got the best of the best, I get the productivity, I get in the middle or I get the results from my client and we all make money.

Buy peanuts, you know, get monkeys.

I've had that view all the way through my career and I've been fortunate all the organizations I work with that had that same philosophy.

So for me, the way I always work is I've got 2 views.

If you want to come and join me, I'll give you a high salary in no equity or I'll give you a low salary and high equity.

Back to self, back the vision, back the company, back your people, they're going to work for you.

And if you create value, you'll make way more of that equity position.

That's really like the owner's mindset.

And, and unfortunately, in the current landscape of the ASX, there's not really an owner's landscape full stop.

You know, I've seen a lot of, you know, other companies and management teams that proxy advisors.

It's, it's really hard to be entrepreneurial, especially when you get above a certain size.

And I don't really want to be ASX 100 ever again.

That's not fun.

It's it's horrible.

And I and I'm seeing a shift away now.

I'm seeing non exec directors now that are in those ISX 5100 companies.

They're actually leaving that arena and going to smaller companies and and also private equity.

I think that's one of the big things.

There's so much money around the world and it's got to get placed somewhere and the private side is growing and you're going to see more and more executives and management teams switch to the private arena where they can get renumerated accordingly.

And it's like me, I, I'm a business owner.

I've got a number of private businesses as well.

It's like you give a share of profits right in the private light.

It's just if you want good management.

I've got a number of my best mates that have got multiple businesses and, and they share profits with their senior management, but that's frowned upon on the publicist companies.

But when you own it and you can't get staff and you can't get management, well, you've got to give something away.

And, and for me it's yeah, you got to be generous on that, that profit or equity share.

And you know, I've set my staff up here and you give an equity upfront for five years.

So that means they get no more annual issues or anything like that.

It's upfront because, you know, I don't want any proxy advisor voting against it in five years time.

It's all done upfront.

And you know, if we achieve what we want to achieve, they're, they're life changing figures.

But I I still don't get if executives and senior management, if they make eye watering prices, well it's only because the share price has gone up and doesn't everyone win with that?

But unfortunately, in the current landscape, that's frowned upon, which I find extraordinary as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Bill, that's been an incredible walkthrough of what has been an incredible journey both as a leader and entrepreneur.

I think it's been a bit of a 101 for many of our listeners in into the world of underground mining.

Thank you so much for joining this podcast.

There are just so many lessons to pick through there for for operators of all businesses of all shapes and sizes.

So thank you.

Thanks Ed and and thanks for listeners for jumping online and and hearing the story.