Many people want to know more about Canadian Kyle and I think I can better convey my thoughts on paper, rather than me talking to a webcam.
I started this podcast with a goal of 100 episodes. Goals are important and I think many people quit before they ever give themselves a chance to succeed. It's been 13 months and I am already three quarters of my way in completing this goal. Maybe the format will change in the future, but my goal was to just get started and to not give up too early. It is difficult to put yourself out there for the world to see.
So who is Canadian Kyle? I grew up in the sticks of Northwestern Ontario and have no technical experience in the mining or exploration sector. But my upbringing has instilled a strong work ethic. My four brothers and I lived literally in the middle of nowhere. The closest town had roughly 2,500 people and it was about 60km away. Our closet neighbour was about 8km down a dirt road and that was the only "nearby" neighbour. My parents, brother and grandma are still living out in the bush today. The houses are heated with word stoves and a diesel generator is used for electricity.
My parents house is actually an old logging camp. My great grandpa immigrated from Sweden to Canada and decided to establish his roots on this land. They used swede saws to cut trees and work horses to haul the timber to the river. From there they would float the timber down to the saw mill and load the lumber on the trains.
We came from honest work. My brothers and I would be considered fourth generation loggers, even though it is only the eldest brother still in the business. Back in the day there were many loggers but now it is just a father/son operation. But as children we worked hard. All year round we flagged blocks to outline the property lines for the trees to be cut. We assembled and installed culvert pipes. We built roads with loaders, excavators, and dump trucks. We put winter chains on the grader and helped fixed big machines where we could. We sawed timber and spit firewood. We also grew a lot of potatoes. A lot. My grandpa worked until the day he died and I know my father will do the same.
Maybe my childhood made me more desensitized to the extractive industries. But I feel it is that I have more of a better understanding of the economics and necessity of said industries. My family relied on logging and society needs toilet paper. Seems like a fair and honest trade to me. We as a society are so out of touch on where our consumer products come from. It is hypocritical to tweet about big oil and mining companies on your smart phone while not knowing exactly the supply chain and what was put into that small tiny device. Are there any North American produced smartphones? Do you know the supply chains and the operators behind them? Where did that nickel and aluminum come from? Is it hydro powered or coal powered factories? Is child labor common in the manufacturing factories and the mines that extracted the metals for the batteries and products we all use?
Supply chain awareness and accountability I believe is going to continue to be an every increasing and important topic, as it should be. If you are reading this you are probably interested in gold mining and exploration companies. I assume so because there are thousands of said companies particularly on this chat forum and in Canada. Money is to be made with gold. But the gold industry has a darker side as well. Impoverished people around the world illegally mine to feed their families. Again, that is honest work for not much pay. But it is also dangerous in many senses of the word. The chemicals used to extract the gold on a small scale, such as mercury is not the best thing to be coming in contact with.
Some artisanal miners and larger scale operations require chemicals like cyanide and other chemicals to extract the gold. If unregulated and unchecked, such chemicals can leak into water sources and affect local communities. Wonder why some communities protest mining? That would be a valid reason no? The mining industry notoriously had a terrible reputation when it came to human rights issues, child labour and the safety of their workers. Corruption and bribery is not uncommon and the rule of law need not apply in many countries. Additionally, high grade mining can pose many dangers as well because you are dealing with underground operations. To this day there is still child labour happening in mines around the world. That is a whole other discussion that I am not knowledgable enough in to have a comment on. There is also the cyclicality of the commodity space. So I can see why younger investors and speculators may be more interested in this newer crypto and tech software space. But people still need these natural resources and the demand is never going away.
Now the markets..that is a completely different beast in of itself. Did you know on November 29, 1999 which was not all that long ago. The Vancouver Stock Exchange merged with the Canadian Venture Exchange, now known as the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV). Did you also know that ten years prior in 1989, Forbes magazine labelled the Vancouver Stock Exchange the "scam capital of the world". Financially unsound companies that would have never been able to get listed elsewhere were able to get listed in Vancouver. There is a term in the industry; moose pastures. A land of no value. But whole companies are created around these polished turds in order to create value for a few individuals.
So to sum up and to get back on track here, extracting resources from the ground is a capital intensive business. There are still to this day questionable methods of extraction that harm the environment and the communities around them. To acquire such capital these companies go to the public markets, many on the TSXV. An exchange that has a bad history and reputation for shady individuals and financially questionable companies.
Now there are many legitimate companies and stewards of the environment out there. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is at the front of many investors and institutions minds now and money is to be made here. That is why we are all here and reading this article. I am sure you do not condone malpractices or child labour. But it is very easy to be disconnected from these underlying companies and just see them as a green or red number on a computer screen.
But we need these natural resources as an economy to function and to meet societies demand for necessary things. There are many legitimate companies out there with very promising projects. I have had the pleasure of talking to many of these individuals on my podcast and I can tell you that many if not most have genuine intentions. Even with the best intentions though, a thousand things can go wrong in this capital intensive sector. But if you pick the right management team, the right project and have a little bit of luck and patience; you can really experience some life changing returns.
It is a nuanced sector. One that moves in cycles and has many moving parts but I was drawn to it.
I went to school for commerce and honestly probably not the best use of my time, but it was not all that bad! We had a portfolio management class that had a stock simulator project. Each student was given $1,000,000 fictitious dollars on the Investopedia stock simulator program. It trailed the real markets by one day. That is where I really got interested in self directed investing and speculating.
I decided to open up my own TFSA self-directed account after experiencing some success in this class. A coworker told me about a local mine that was nearing production and it was going the be the next gold mine of Northwestern Ontario. This was my first ever commodity stock speculation. I finished the trade with a loss of 75% AFTER "averaging down" in my position.
I bought right before the announcement of first gold pour (not the brightest decision). From there the rubber hit the road and it was a bumpy one. So many things went wrong and I made so many mistakes. I "averaged down" when I should have been selling. There were many hard lessons learned with that first trade.
I told myself, "OK. I am going to give myself three years and $10,000 to figure out this space and if I fail it was not meant to be and I will move on".
At the time I did not have $10,000 to my name but that was my limit. I continued to make mistakes along the way as I kept researching and learning what I could about the space. Compared to the stock simulator course there was no comparison with real life speculating. When your hard earned money is on the line you deal with all the psychology challenges of speculating in this risky space. But I became very passionate about it. So much so that my good friend said I needed to start a podcast.
We were having drinks one night and after a joint (good ol Canada eh) we started talking about the resource sector and stocks. He saw my passion and without this extremely supportive friend I do not think I would have ever started this venture. Find a supportive friend and when you do never let them go! Anyways, a year or two went by before I really took the leap. On December 24, 2020 I decided to buy myself a MacBook Air for Christmas and commit to starting a podcast. I had no idea how I was going to start but I was going to start!
I started coming up with ideas, a brand name and logo. It was not until February before something happened. I subscribed to the newsletter of a new investment at the time. The investor relations manager reached out to me noticing I subscribed to their newsletter. She asked if I had any questions about the company. Now was my chance to give her the elevator pitch for the podcast. This was the first time I ever talked to someone from a company I invested in.
Tip: Talk to the people and ask questions! This is scary to do but do it!
So I pitched my idea and she loved it! She set me up with three interviews just like that. One being Nova Royalty ($NOVR), the company she worked for. Alex was the first guest on the podcast and I hit the ground running. Like I said at the beginning of the article. I set a goal of 100 episodes and I strived to release one every week.
I never told many people about my podcast. At the time of writing, I have 785 subscribers on YouTube. I did not spend any money on advertising. All of this was grown organically. Some interviews get only 100 views while others can get over 1,000. The best to date was Lynette Zang with over 5000 views. The YouTube algorithm sure loves fear mongering content. But my goal here is to learn more about the industry and potential investment opportunities. There are good companies out there and some of the best ones I found were from no outside influences.
I am not looking for the views or trying to best understand the YouTube algorithm. It is nice when I get an episode with an abnormal amount of views, but I am trying to find the next promising speculation. I am also trying to cater to the listeners out there. If you have a company you are interested in, feel free to shoot me a message on here and I will try and get them on the show. Follow me on CEO.ca and see who I will be interviewing next. If you have questions for future guests, send them my way and I will try and have them answered.
Full disclaimer, for the first few episodes I did not take a dime from my guests. But I do now for the majority of my guests but it is still not that significant. I have been told multiple times that I charge much less then other "influencers" for the work that is involved here. Doing the research, preparing the questions, cold calling potential guests, conducting the interviews and editing the videos. It is a lot of work to do for free. Why should I do it for free while these companies can financially benefit from a nice piece of marketable content?
That being said, my goal is to make money through speculating and picking the right companies not by having companies pay me. Perhaps I will look at potential sponsorship because I do strive to conduct honest interviews without being biased. If I can quit my 9-5 job with somewhat reliable income and focus on a passion that makes me happy that would be ideal. But what I really want is to find those diamonds in the rough and continue my educational journey. I may have companies on here that are not worth our money. But we do not know until we sit down and talk to these individuals.
Also I'm Canadian. I'm a nice guy and I don't want to be trying to grill my guests in a disrespectful way. I do try and ask questions that we all want the answers too and to learn more about the personality and character of these CEO's.
I work a 9-5 right now at a credit union. Not the job I had in mind but it gives me the opportunity to focus on this podcast. So if you like what I am doing here it would mean a lot if you go and subscribe to my YouTube channel and give me a follow on CEO.ca. Reach out to me anytime and I will try and get the companies you are interested in on the podcast.
Let me know if you enjoy these articles. Sometimes it is hard to get thoughts on paper but I do enjoy writing them and hearing your feedback!
Cheers
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHmbyVwnZqnuMLbmrucjQZg/videos
