I asked Rick Rule and 10 CEOs if they're wasting your money

Brandon McDonald cautions against becoming 'single-mindedly obsessed' with a specific project type; if you do, you may end up forcing a mediocre project into a company framework just to have created something, then fighting to save it.

“I'd like to create my own company but I'm very wary of being so single-mindedly obsessed with doing that that I can't get a good project so I just get a crap project create a company around it and then you created this company you brought investors in it's bad but you're desperately trying to save it and the project may not be good enough to save it so now you're faced with like maybe a roll back and a new project”

Rick Rule has become agnostic on specific exploration ROI metrics and instead looks for the juxtaposition of price to value; specifically, he avoids sectors where other investors congregate and instead seeks out 'hate' trades—commodities and projects that others are avoiding but that have fundamental reasons to appreciate.

“I've I've I've become sort of agnostic really I'm interested in the ju deposition of price to value and people are shying away from exploration so I'm looking to fund exploration uh I I try to avoid where other people are most people in the business are Trend followers they try to find what's hot they try to jump on it they're hoping for a three-month trade uh and I don't like competing with what I would term the gr unwashed uh I look for hate”

Several mining companies recently announced decisions to take equity stakes through strategic subscriptions rather than traditional financing rounds, indicating a shift toward partnership-based capital raising with technical/operational benefits beyond capital.

“we've announced a $2.5 million subscription from a strategic Mining Company into Motes”

Ian Webster of Desert Gold Ventures sees conference value primarily in relationship building with institutional accounts and corporates—the industry's relationship-heavy nature requires physical presence to build trust and confidence that executives can execute on projects.

“no not at all I mean I think this is these are very good opportunities to build relationships and arguably a lot of this industry is is relationships I mean uh and you you can't do that without having a physical presence I mean if you're on Zoom sure people can you can give a good overview of the project and and give people a sense of the direction you're going in and what you're forecasting for the year but there's no chitchat outside of that you don't get the opportunity to kind of talk about people what they were doing to the weekend where they're going on holiday and just the little bits I think that really help build confidence and the individual to kind of execute on whatever it is they're doing in the program and and obviously that it's or sorry the company and obviously these are large sums of money that people looking into invest and arguably they're investing in the people and the team um as well as the assets so building those relationships build giving people confidence that you're going to be able to execute on what you say you're going to do”

Luke Henewa met a company at Beaver Creek that had good drill results coming soon that sounded promising, but he recognizes this creates a 'dangerous' situation where the excitement from pitch can bias judgment.

“I just had a meeting with a company I heard about but I didn't know the details and I listen to it and I feel like wow I should almost buy this thing because it's uh they're getting results soon and it sounds promising which is also dangerous in a way right because uh you get excited they promote you a little bit of course but it's really a good story”

When evaluating conference ROI, a company that adds $1 million in Assets Under Management (AUM) should assign 2% value ($20,000) to the conference's impact; this approach beats most exhibitors' methodology of 'I want to do this, so how do I justify it,' which is backwards reasoning.

“when I was actively doing conference speaking uh when I was as an example at Sprat uh I looked at AUM growth as a consequence of the conference and I would assign a 2% value so if I added a million dollars in AUM out of the conference as a consequence of new clients or Capital addition from old clients I would assume that the cl that the conference had made me $20,000 I had a much more granular approach to most other exhibitors whose methodology tends to be well I think I want to do this how do I justify it”

An exhibitor gets out of a conference what they put into it; most exhibitors come without a plan, without understanding their target audience, or without a clear pitch, making conferences unworthwhile for them, but for exhibitors with clear market targeting and strategic planning, conferences are invaluable for providing personalized pitches and structuring joint ventures.

“I think an exhibitor gets out of a conference what they put into it I think too many exhibitors come to a conference this one or mine without a plan uh without a sense of who Their audience is without a sense of what the pitch is to the audience so my suspicion is that for most exhibitors conferences aren't worthwhile uh for those exhibitors who understand what they're doing at a conference for those exhibitors who have targeted a market that they can access through the conference and have a plan to do just that conferences are invaluable”

Brandon McDonald argues that major recent mining successes (Great Bear Resources' Dixie Lake project, Filo Mining) succeeded partly due to acquiring projects that turned out to be fundamentally different (better) than initial understanding, suggesting that flexibility and willingness to pursue unexpected opportunities outweighs pre-commitment to specific project types.

“I think about the great successes of the market recently in The Last 5 Years Great Bear um they bought a project that it turned out to be a lot different than what they thought it was you know very good way right you know I don't think they conceived the lp fault when they bought the project uh felo was a really maybe sub economic oxide copper deposit that they made a great discovery there and sold for a hillion dollars right and it's um you don't always know what you you think you know what you're buying but it but it might be different for better for worse”

When evaluating conference spending as an investor, focus on the company's total general and administrative (G&A) expense relative to all capital raised; if G&A exceeds 25% of capital raised, the issuer is either substandard or too small to be public, making company-level conference spending less important to scrutinize than the overall G&A efficiency ratio.

“whether or not you have the discussion depends on the size of your investment uh if you are a fairly small investor there are other things that are probably more important for you to work on than the company's conference expenditure look before you worry too much about how they spend the money at the level of general and administrative expense relative to all expenditures if the company's General administ administrative expense in all categories exceeds 25% of capital raised understand that either the issue or a substandard in other words they're too small to be public or they're inefficient neither of those are good worry less about the conference expenditure and more about the level of total General and administrative expense relative to total expense the exploration to Administration ratio is what I call it”

Market timing in exploration investing is counterintuitive; when people hate a sector (e.g., uranium in 2021, silver in early 2024, sulfide nickel, PGMs currently), that represents the best investment opportunity because future prices must eventually reward production, and early investors capture maximum upside.

“I look for hate I look for trades like the trade that we talked about when we first met when nobody wanted to be in the uranium business there was an awful lot of opportunity for me in that space I understood from history that the uranium price had to go up up so forward-looking uh if you follow my thesis and you love hate uh I'm starting to develop uh a reference library on sulfide nickel projects around the world uh Market really hates them they're all losing money they're shutting them down two years from now that should be a pretty good sector”

First Nordic Metals' current funding positions them well into 2025 without requiring additional capital raise; they incentivized in-the-money warrants with existing shareholders to raise ~$4M Canadian, allowing work continuation with valuation upside optionality before doing opportunistic financing.

“we're the the program I talked about we're fully funded uh to take this into well into 2025 um we we did a pretty creative and interesting thing uh instead of U raising money at kind of lower prices than the summer we incentivized some existing warrants that were well in the money with existing shareholders and we were able to raise close to $4 million uh Canadian that we brought in um and and it was great it allows us now to push well into 2025 at the appropriate time you you have to fund them the company to continue doing more and more but it gives us a nice buffer of being able to get work done hopefully have some kind of valuation change and rate uh and then do something at the at the appropriate time so we're in a good position there”

Gerald Paneto visits Yellowknife community quarterly to conduct town halls with government, First Nations, and residents, establishing stakeholder communication as standard practice; this positions Cotera favorably for permitting relative to greenfield environments and reduces community surprise risk.

“I've been there and I'm going again uh the first week of October I'll be on site and I have a town hall meeting so I always every time I have a chance at least once a year I go about three times a year once a year I I I take the time to sit down with the official uh with much of the government People First Nation if they'd like to meet and and of course the town anybody in town so we do a town hall we invite people to listen to the presentation the project the the pro progress of the project we're not going to open a mind tomorrow but we're more than happy to make sure we communicate with all our stakeholder so they're not taken by surprise”

Arizona Sonora Copper has 11B pounds of contained copper in resource; at current share valuation, company should not raise capital for exploration expansion since market isn't rewarding exploration success; optimal capital deployment is metallurgical programs (Mainspring columns), measured/indicated drilling, PFS-level engineering study, and strengthening relationships with Newmont/Rio Tinto.

“for us um we already have 11 billion pounds of contained copper in the ground and I would say at this type of share price and valuation we don't want to be now raising money just to put into expiration because the market is not rewarding us for expiration success after having 11 putting 11 billion pounds of copper in the ground I think for us now it's all about doing the metallurgical programs particularly to bring mes spring up to PFS level drilling out that deposit into measured and indicated ahead of a PFS next year and then later a definitive feasibility study”

Strategic intelligence gathered at conferences (which brokerages have traction, which funds are competent vs. whimsical) has no quantifiable dollar value but is extremely valuable for company strategy; this information asymmetry between informed insiders and retail shareholders cannot be easily resolved.

“talking to your peers and finding out which brokerages have traction these days or which funds are oh this we you know we we got money from this fund and they blew us out and you thought that fund was good and you find out that maybe they're not good right so this fund is really technical due diligence this fund just invests on a whim right so these are things that you don't get unless you're here”

Scott Hess of Lumina Gold notes that the current conference circuit tends to attract the same institutional and investor faces repeatedly, which limits the conference's ability to attract truly new capital pools—a structural limitation of the current conference model.

“if I was to say something negative about the conference scene it's that it is a lot of the same faces so perhaps that's maybe not the best way to entice New Capital um but I think uh it is you know a great way to maybe uh keep existing investors in the story and prevent selling”

Gerald Paneto (Cotera Mining, CEO) experienced raising $2.6B over less than 5 years at Detour to build largest gold mine in Canada; currently Detour's market valuation is significantly lower despite higher gold prices, indicating massive market disconnection from mining fundamentals; this reflects broader industry challenge where market prices companies far below actual production economics.

“for a person who raised $2.6 billion do in less than five years at detour to build the largest gold mine in Canada to today's market I I I wish I would have almost never come back in this situation because the market is a killer however eventually it will turn because there's a huge disconnect like gold production is difficult more expensive to produce the average is probably $15 to $1600 us an ounce all in and but you still have a [1:58:48] margin of $900 an ounce true and the disconnect i i i perceive my own interpretation is that the gold price is high because people are buying physical gold but where does it come where does a physical gold come comes from the producer”

Market dynamics do not always reward good fundamentals; comparable companies with good vs. mediocre drill results sometimes diverge dramatically in share price based on minor factors (media attention, influencer mentions, 'butterfly effect'); investors cannot always control or predict which companies become 'story of the moment' even with identical projects.

“some companies you know what we would call catch lightning in the bottle like like they manag to be the story of this spare market right and and you know sometimes even a dull star in a black sky looks bright yeah right and so so they there everyone's piling into you know xco because they got a good drill hit but it's not clear you'll see other companies that have maybe comparable drill hits and it's like why did this company get the traction not them and it might just be some little butterfly effect thing that maybe it's marketing but maybe it's just the right influencer on Twitter”

Luke Denevan focuses on companies that don't qualify as 'developer' stage (boring, capital-intensive, no exciting news releases) unless they have specific differentiators like multiple drill-ready projects or acquisition potential to larger companies.

“I'm not really a developer investor because they are in a boring phase and they need a lot of capital they will not have exciting news releases if they only have one project”

George Ogie has 35 years in mining and is in 'twilight of career'; management teams that believe they will be held accountable to shareholders for executing the Feasibility Study plan produce superior technical documents than teams pursuing M&A 'exit' strategy; M&A-focused teams often produce technically inferior documents that either fail to sell (forcing company to execute bad plan) or embarrass acquirers who discover inadequate due diligence.

“I mean I've been in this industry coming up for 35 years now I'm getting into the Twilight of my career and I've always found that management teams and project teams if they they ultimately believe that they're going to be held accountable to the shareholders of the company for delivering on the plan that's in the definitive feasibility study which the project financing and the financial investment decision is based upon you end up with a superior technical document in a lot of instances where you have companies that are purely marketing their project with the only goal of selling it sadly a lot of those technical documents are not even worth the paper they're written on and either the acquirer if they don't do the proper due diligence they obviously are highly embarrassed or if the current the company is unable to sell the project and they ultimately have to build it and deliver on that it ends up being a huge disaster and a black eye on the entire industry”

Minimum compliance expense for running a public company is $1 million annually; combined with G&A efficiency requirements, a public mining company must be investing $4-5 million per year total in operations, making companies with market capitalizations of $2-3 million operationally unviable unless they plan immediate rapid scaling to $10-15 million.

“understand now the just the compliance expense now is so high uh it probably costs if you're going to be compliant a million dollars a year to run a public company minimum if General and administ of expense has to be less than $25 25% of total expenditures the company has to be investing four or $5 million a year in total many of these companies don't have $5 million market caps the idea that they could spend enough to amortize the general administrative expense across a business if their market capitalization is two or three million becomes a non-starter”

W Resources has transitioned from nano cap to a serious discovery in less than a year; the company's growth trajectory and ability to absorb capital efficiently from Newmont suggest future ROI depends on allocating capital between: (1) developing 100% properties, and (2) advancing the Newmont joint venture toward demonstrating whether it's a Newmont-scale project.

“the topic of Roi with you specifically is interesting to me because you the type of company that you are has changed dramatically over the last uh less than a year I suppose or about a year let's call it a year he went from sort of a nano cap to to to now a very serious Discovery where do you go next like where do you put money from here on out to get a good Roi um for us at the moment like for the a money it's developing the the the 100% a part of the projects um and you know that's that's a focus for the a money at the moment and and but also you know we've got numont who want to you know reach their decision Milestones about where they are and where the Project's going and is it we we've got fantastic discoveries um and and we need to sort of push that towards is it a newon scale project or or isn't”

Luke Denekas (investor) believes conferences like Beaver Creek are worthwhile for companies with meaningful progress or results to communicate, because multiple presentations of a strong story to different investor groups often yields 5-6 serious investors per week, and sometimes a single significant investment (e.g., $1M) can fully justify the conference expense.

“I think if you tell that story 40 times in a week and you get five or six good investors from that uh I think it's really worthwhile you never know sometimes you have to talk to companies to people like 10 times before they get to invest um sometimes a conference is not worth your money until the last guest and they put in one puts in $1 million so I really think companies need to do these things at a certain level”

Luke Denekas believes quality shareholder base is more important than quick share price spikes; marketing campaigns that rapidly raise share price through media volume dilute shareholder quality, whereas quality-focused marketing (interviews, conferences, selective promotion) builds a more valuable investor base.

“I don't really believe in in real campaigns in the sense that you get 20 YouTube videos in a row maybe it get gets you a quick Spike and you can raise money on it but you're also diluting your quality share base a little bit sh shareholder base I believe in a quality shareholder base and not just you know trying to get 100 people in to get the price up to do a financing and drops again”

Mike Burky of Sitka Gold emphasizes that in-person meetings are fundamentally different from virtual/Zoom meetings because physical project visits and face-to-face strategy discussions provide qualitatively different information than online presentations.

“like even a mining property um looking at it online looking at a presentation that I give to you compared to you coming out and physically visiting the project it's night and day so it's a similar analogy to that”

Beaver Creek is specifically structured as an invite-only summit that maintains 'quality' through selectivity of attendees—both companies and investors, which contrasts with open-registration conferences that lack curator quality control.

“Beaver Creek this precious metal Summit you know it's an invite only Summit so you get Quality Companies and quality investors and larger mining companies so our meetings span a wide range of mining companies to investors”

Most of the 3,000 public companies ostensibly in the mining business serve no useful purpose, and investors need to quickly separate the 500 worth worrying about from the 2,500 that don't deserve attention.

“if you start with the premise that there are 3,000 public companies in the world ostensibly in the mining business you come very quickly to the conclusion that probably 2500 of them serve no useful purpose and you as an investor need to very quickly separate the wheat from the CHF find the 500 out of 3,000 that are worth worrying about”

Gotera drilling costs approximately $200 per meter because of proximity to infrastructure, which is significantly lower than costs for companies that have to deal with permitting for new projects in greenfield environments.

“when we drill we are $200 per meters when you look at the con mine the con mine is quite interesting because the car mine has all the surface leas and Mining leases existing so I don't have to go to a very lengthy process of Permitting a new project in a green field environment”

Brandon McDonald (former FireWeed CEO, now independent investor) distinguishes between conference tiers: inaugural/top-tier conferences (e.g., Fort Lauderdale conference with major mining company CEOs) are excellent value; PDAC provides good value but declining ROI as CEO; smaller retail conferences provide minimal ROI.

“if you're big enough to get an invite to the conference in in Fort Lauderdale Florida you go that's an excellent excellent conference and you're you know rubbing elbows with the CEOs of the biggest mining companies in the world right so it's a pretty pretty great place to be um pedac I'm actually finding less and less value at pedak is a CEO so this last year I was actually only there for two days um I kind of dropped in and you know had some meetings and got out the technical staff spent more time there but in terms of Roi for a company it's actually really I mean some are definitely a waste of time and and in a bad Market more of them are a waste of time”

Lithium prices fell by 75% after a couple billion dollars was spent on lithium exploration, and lithium was never short in supply—the constraint was processing capacity, not ore availability. Future lithium projects will trade at massive discounts when hated.

“the world was never short of lithium we were short of lithium processing capacity when the processing bottleneck got resolved the lithium pris fell by 75% after a couple billion dollars got spent in lithium exploration so there will be lithium projects that had $150 $200 million spent on them that will change hands for five or10 million do”

For mining sector evaluation, retail investors should focus on long-term company behavior and execution tracking: Do companies say they'll do X and actually do it? Long-term pattern recognition allows investors to identify which companies execute vs. merely market themselves; this requires years of observation to develop discerning judgment.

“the best thing you can do is is is continue just to learn and take in and listen to companies um you know if a company says it's going to do X does it actually do that you know and and uh because there a lot of companies that say they're going to do one thing and never do it um so it's a process over and it takes years of kind of to to figure out what you know those Discerning qualities you need to have um to determine you know which compan is real which ones aren't which ones are going to likely give you a risk adjusted reward that that's worth your investment dollars”

Victoria Gold's pad failure at Eagle Gold Mine has created short-term challenge for Yukon explorers including Sitka Gold, impacting ability to raise capital; however, long-term impact is manageable because: (1) incident is being addressed through remediation, (2) regulatory response will likely be process-focused, (3) heap leaching + cyanide are essential for Yukon mining future (Western Copper/Coffee mine), (4) incident is opportunity to demonstrate safe mining practices.

“Victoria gold incident is getting figured out it did impact Us in the short term but as I mentioned we've been able to raise money uh investors are seeing that uh the impact of that incident will be perhaps some regulatory change some things when they figure out exactly what caused the incident but in the long run it's not going to change mining in the Yukon you know it really doesn't make sense to you know like the extreme ban Heap Leach mining or cyanide there's a number of projects in the pipeline the coffee mine project Western copper and gold that will use that technology so it's part of the yukon's mining future”

Having a strong technical team with the right people in place (such as recent hires Andrew Back, John, Kermit, and Adum) leads directly to exploration discovery; leadership hiring also enables the CEO to focus properly on company leadership rather than wearing multiple hats and putting priorities aside.

“having the right were a strong technical team in place is is what leads to Discovery so in in short having these like Andrew back is a coup um but getting John and and Kermit on on the project as well is um you know if it's there we'll find it on on our 100% a ground”

Despite fundamental value in resources, executing on plans is what matters; having a plan and a team that can execute is more important than just having resource assets.

“it's not just one unanswered question that we have it's not the only one now it's all about you know what do you do next what is your plan for the future do you have a plan do you have a I was talking to a friend yesterday and the guy has a market value bigger than mine and he has zero on two showings a little bit of money in the bank and he's got a market cap of $20 million $30 million well isn't that telling you what the market wants they want excitement they want discoveries of course but without money without support by the market you can't go anywhere”

Battle Bank has a waiting list of approximately 15,000 people eager to do business with it, compared to zero when EverBank started; the technology backbone (costing approximately $15 million to build) is effectively complete, positioning the bank to open within 60 days of FDIC approval.

“the waiting list to do business with us is approximately 15,000 people oh wow when we started ever bank which you won't recall but it was we grew that bank from Z to$ 28 billion doll over 14 years when we started that bank our customer backlog was zero so we're starting this bank at about 15,000 including many of our former customers at EverBank so in that sense uh we're in very good condition uh the backbone of the bank the technology backbone which probably cost us $15 million to build out at every bank is effectively done so we're basically ready to open the doors uh it would probably take us 60 days to get open after the FDIC said go”

Mexico experienced political turbulence creating uncertainty for mining companies; Mina Alamos CEO notes that skill in presenting has been overshadowed by political cloud for past 1.5 years; executives expect 'snapback' when current political period ends (September 30), with institutional sales teams able to move Mexico plays starting October.

“the hard part of our business the last couple of years is you know the it's been over anything we've done has been overshadowed by this political turbulence uh created so if that's removed then we what we're doing on the company side doesn't change but the political environment does you know there that's a positive we'll start getting recognition for what is a smart business plan being executed by a good team with a real history of doing well in Mexico so not much change”

Doug Rusha remains confident in Mina Alamos' business plan execution and is not changing company plans based on political transitions; permitting process at Sororo and production recovery at Santana continue as planned.

“the hard part of our business the last couple of years is you know the it's been over anything we've done has been overshadowed by this political turbulence uh created so if that's removed then we what we're doing on on the company side doesn't change but the political environment does you know there that's a positive”

Gotera is focused on proving up more ounces below existing mines and controlling 70 km of Cal Shear (50 miles equivalent) that has already produced 14 million ounces in just 5 kilometers, making the company potentially the best-placed junior to acquire the Carine project from Newmont.

“we're probably the best party to acquire the carine on newon perspective and I firmly believe there is million aners to be found and demonstrated it's just a matter of drilling them now some of them are deep but don't forget we have almost 600,000 ounces near surface side of the mine that can cover the first 5 years of a operation plus what we trying to find below the mine plus controlling 70 km or 50 mil of the Cal Shear that produce already 14 million ounces over just 5 kilometers”

It is difficult to quantify immediate returns from conference meetings, as investors rarely commit on the spot; companies find out weeks/months later that meeting attendees have taken positions or invested, making ROI measurement inherently delayed and probabilistic rather than immediate.

“all the time and often it's it's pretty hard to quantify exactly what that is um you know there's never a dollar amount Sometimes some investors will tell you that they've taken a position from this or they've you know they've they've put x amount of dollars into the company that's rarer so it is a little harder to quantify but uh I'd say it it I mean we're talking about return on investment for that what it cost the company to come to these conferences you you easily pay pay that back um by by the meetings that you have the relationships you build and the opportunities it provides”

Mike Burky (Sitka Gold) raises capital through drill success and positive results, which drive investor interest and financing; company strategy is focused on drilling rather than conferences; press releases are best marketing tool; maintaining low cost structure and putting money in ground achieves better returns than conference marketing spend.

“our company we try to be very strategic about where we go um our marketing strategy is the more money we can put into drilling at our project the better we do we think press releases are the the best marketing tool we have so that's where we focus but it's still very important to get out and get your face out and meet people face to face they have to know you to trust you to look at your management and understand who you are so that's the value of these things that's what I'm finding myself it's still very much an an in-person business”