E77: Mining Investments Explained - How Investors Profit from Discovery

AIME Episode 77 Transcript

Sarah Florer (00:04.734)
Hello everyone, welcome to Alt Investing Made Easy. Thank you for joining us today. We're delighted to bring to you an interview with Nicole Brewster, CEO of Renforth Resources. It's a new topic for us to discuss today, exploration in natural resources. And so we hope you enjoy this topic today. Nicole, thank you for joining us.

Nicole Brewster (00:24.654)
Thanks so much for having me.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:27.069)
Hi Nicole, thank you for being here and this is really interesting to us. We were just talking before we started recording that you're located up near Toronto, Canada. Is that right?

Nicole Brewster (00:38.348)
Yep, yep. I'm in southern Ontario. Our properties are in Quebec.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:41.114)
And we're going to.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:45.935)
And so you're the CEO of a mining company in Canada. And we feel a real kindred spirit with you here in Texas because the oil and gas industry is so huge here. And so much of that industry overlaps and intersects with mining and natural resources.

It would be interesting for us to hear a little about your personal background and also what Renforth Resources does, Nicole. So just kind of turn it over to you and tell us the story about you and Renforth.

Nicole Brewster (01:24.024)
Fair enough, thank you. I was raised by an exploration geologist who worked around the world, so.

had summer jobs that were in the hard rock extraction business as opposed to your resource extraction business. And I became a stockbroker. Then once I had a family, I went back to being a contractor in the exploration space. And our part of the exploration space is boots on the ground. I ended up the largest shareholder of Remforth because they had to pay for some work with shares and eventually the president.

And the reason is, or what I bring to the table for Renforth is my ability as an explorationist, which is a multifaceted kind of field. You got to have logistics ability. You got to understand the development of a business case in the world of resource extraction. You have to be able to run on a budget because capital is very, very dear. And if you run out of it, you have a problem.

And you have to prove value. have to understand how to prove value subsurface, which it, and then, mean, that's the parallel to, your oil business, right? It's, those are subsurface geological structures. It's just, they're fluid. They're not hard rock. So a lot of the same, there's some technology overlap, but there's definitely mindset overlap. You know, the ability to look at an empty field and say, there could actually be value here. It's just, you're not going to perceive it as you're whizzing by on the road and you

Sarah Florer (02:55.947)
Hmm.

Nicole Brewster (02:56.28)
looking at grass. So it's kind of a neat world. It's really, it's like a, it's a very fecund place. You take a field and you demonstrate value and you can build it into a business if the endowment is sufficient to support it or the demand for the commodities supports it because it's very much a financial game at the end of the day. And I mean, it's funny, we're exploration, but mining is certainly run by accountants.

any as a contractor any mines I've intersected with or had the you know the pleasure of working on it's always been the accountants in charge and very long meetings about things like tire choices or you know where you process that's it's funny how it comes right goes right to the crux of it but where I am

Sarah Florer (03:23.925)
Right.

Sarah Florer (03:42.188)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (03:45.664)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (03:47.072)
I'm proving initial value. We're doing the discovery work, which we've done on two properties. And now we're doing the, we've established the resource, we've declared maiden resources. So we're the first to prove that there's value below the ground in these two locations in Quebec. One's critical minerals, one's gold. And now we're doing the work of continuing to develop and grow those resources. So.

Sarah Florer (04:13.59)
So I'd be interested, know, since we do talk about alternative investing and this is an area of private investing. And so let's just touch on a little bit more about the capitalization in this industry. I know we talked before about there are different ways that you as a CEO of a specific company with specific circumstances can raise capital. But generally, how does it work in this part of the industry? How does capital get raised for this initial exploration?

Nicole Brewster (04:44.174)
So you can enter as an investor this industry at a few places. The very insular place people do enter, but they're really only people like myself, is at the private company stage, where you go out and you stake land. So similar to your oil paradigm. But you go out and you stake land because it's perspective, it's promising, there are indications a prospector has found something.

Sarah Florer (04:50.113)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (05:05.632)
Mm.

Nicole Brewster (05:14.196)
So you stake the land and then you've got to have the capital, which is usually put up. You can fund it yourself or you can put together a little group and you fund initial work.

That can be done privately or that can be done in a public company which already has shareholders who purchase shares from treasury through a private placement issuance and that capital is used. So that's the run forth piece. I raise capital by issuing shares to shareholders and

those shares come out of treasury. So the money goes into treasury. We use that money to explore. Those shares are publicly traded, meaning that you can purchase them in the public market from other shareholders. That doesn't fund exploration per se. That's just pure speculative investment. But

Sarah Florer (05:52.956)
Mm. Right.

Sarah Florer (06:06.145)
Right.

but it also gives investors liquidity provided the market is stable.

Nicole Brewster (06:11.35)
It gives them liquidity and precisely it gives them an entrance and an exit point because you're speculating on the results that we're going to obtain in our field work. And you're also speculating just on the viability of the business plan as a whole. For example, geographic location, like Canada is a huge country as you're aware and a lot of it's covered in snow, including where I am. But.

Sarah Florer (06:29.098)
Mmm.

Nicole Brewster (06:38.976)
A lot of it's harder to access. Our infrastructure isn't so great. So if you find a mineral deposit that is only, for example, helicopter accessible through part of the year, your costs to operate are much higher. So you have to find something that's really worthwhile. Again, there is a business in the background of what we do. It's not just Indiana Jones crazy stories, stuff. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (06:51.905)
Right.

Sarah Florer (07:03.308)
Finding gold. then I think you also mentioned earlier there's a second play which is how that particular mineral resource that you're trying to access and maybe what else you might find because I think sometimes those are mixed, is what the global market is for those. So there's the cost of extracting but also the price globally is usually varying, isn't it also?

Nicole Brewster (07:29.482)
Absolutely. And I mean, if you're at all watching media in the hard rock or even the political space, specifically in the United States, although it's starting to become a dialogue, it's actually in the news here now, you've heard about critical minerals.

We used to call them base metals. think the US Geological Survey, I forget the number. There's about 32, I think, identified in Canada. It's higher in the US. And they're critical largely because they're critical for just supply chain.

For example, the resource we established in Quebec, it's polymetallic, meaning it's multiple metals. Just because of the geology, we're not going to go into the geology. It's not part of our conversation here. One of the metals is nickel. Well, there's a few uses for nickel.

Sarah Florer (08:02.028)
Mm.

Nicole Brewster (08:18.22)
People think about EV batteries and then you get sucked into the whole, EV is going to be the solution, blah, blah. Doesn't matter. You use nickel to build stainless steel. You use stainless steel to build data centers. You use it to build hospitals. You use it to build everything. We have zinc, which you use to galvanize or to coat, anti-corrosion coating. So these metals are critical just to how we live. Because the fun bit about how we live as a species on this planet is if we don't grow it, we mine it.

Sarah Florer (08:32.064)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (08:47.584)
is that fundamental. You either grow it in a field or a lab, or you mine it, be it hard or liquid rock, by taking it out of the ground. So we need these minerals, we need these metals, and geopolitically it's problematic because, as you pointed out, commodities prices fluctuate.

Sarah Florer (08:47.968)
Mm.

Sarah Florer (08:56.854)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (09:07.498)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (09:08.12)
They can be manipulated. Other countries stockpile. China would stockpile metals, flood the market, depress the price. And as I told you, there's a business case behind, and it's a very simple one, behind mining. Dig it up for less money than you can sell it for. It's that simple. if the commodity price goes down, your cost of production is

sitting at or above the commodity price, you're no longer viable. So mines close, but not only do mines close, this is what we're dealing with now globally, with the exception of China and Russia. In the Western world, when the commodity prices are depressed, exploration is canceled because exploration is a loss. It's a loss leader. All we do is spend money. We don't make money.

Sarah Florer (09:51.83)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (09:55.671)
the end of my business cycle is to open the gold mine that we're building our deposit towards or to sell the gold deposit to another miner. That's where we make back the money we spend. But if the major miners don't perceive the ability in their balance sheet to pay for exploration, they cut it.

Sarah Florer (10:04.064)
Mm.

Nicole Brewster (10:16.366)
which means you have no future supply being developed. And that's the situation we're in globally now. That's why you're seeing all the commodity prices are up. That's why you're seeing the Vault Act. It's a buffer. It's a stockpiling act in the United States. You're seeing initiatives from the Department of War and the...

just the US government, Department of Energy specifically, to identify and try to support the US government with the property in Northern California. They've done a price floor equity investment slash price floor agreement to guarantee a floor price to the commodities to give the company the assurance that they can continue to develop their processing capacity. Because that's the other piece of the puzzle. For example, the only nickel mined in the United States is

Sarah Florer (10:56.811)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (11:03.12)
at Upper Michigan, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's mined there. It's got its primary processing, its crushing is there. But the refining, it's shipped to Canada, and it's refined in Canada because there's no refining capacity for nickel in the United States. So we're playing catch up as Western, as the Americas, as North America, we're playing catch up now because we don't have a, you know, there's,

Sarah Florer (11:18.354)
Nicole Brewster (11:32.174)
I'm lucky where Remforth is in Quebec, there's a smelter within an hour that can process the ore and then there's multiple operating gold mines that can create dore. So we have our processing on our doorstep, but how far do you have to truck it to processing? That's another cost driver in exploration. So it's fascinating.

Sarah Florer (11:36.361)
Hmm

Sarah Florer (11:49.65)
Mm-hmm. And then how do you get it out of Northern Quebec into the hands of whoever wants to buy it from you?

Nicole Brewster (11:56.097)
Well, we're in the southern part of Quebec.

Sarah Florer (11:59.395)
Southern Quebec, okay.

Nicole Brewster (11:59.867)
We're north, like we're from Toronto. We're about, it's an eight hour drive northeast from New York. It's about a 12 hour drive north and from Montreal it's six ish. But Quebec goes a lot further north. So we're on national highways, municipal road networks. have rail lines and Montreal is a deep water port on the St. Lawrence. But you can drive down into Vermont and you've got the entire US seaboard. So we're incredibly well.

Sarah Florer (12:04.716)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (12:10.624)
Okay.

I know.

Sarah Florer (12:18.39)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (12:23.713)
Right.

Nicole Brewster (12:29.751)
located. Our logistics is to our benefit and it's also in the mining world. Like if your investors are thinking of dipping their toe in, one thing I've been talking to my shareholders about for a long time, it's kind of like yelling into a well because I mean I run a little junior company. I don't have a big audience but one thing I tell people to pay attention to is jurisdiction risk.

Sarah Florer (12:33.644)
Mm.

Nicole Brewster (12:53.453)
because you're seeing regimes around the world decide they need more money, so they seize assets, or they change the tax code. Or they preclude the minerals from leaving the country, the mining companies from exporting, unless the processing is done in country. This processing discussion is a very broad one in the industry. But if you're going to start investing in this industry, I would caution people to stay in North America.

Sarah Florer (13:20.747)
Hmm.

Nicole Brewster (13:21.263)
In United States and Canada, we do have rule of law. Mexico has rule of law as well. But continental North America is, we can debate the law, but continental North America, specifically the United States and Canada, are governed by stable governments which are torn to an established set of rules. A lot of the world's not like that.

Sarah Florer (13:24.779)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (13:31.98)
Hahaha

Sarah Florer (13:43.018)
Right. Yeah, I think especially with mineral and natural resources, because as you said, it's the bounty of the land. And there's this long argument, I guess, from the early days of the extraction industries getting going as to who those resources belong to, right?

Nicole Brewster (14:00.127)
They belong to the government and power, the mining company that's done the identification investment and proven it, the people that live nearby. Social license is a growing concern in the industry as well. And I'm sure you see that in oil and gas. I can't imagine it's terribly different because it attorns to our oil industry in Canada. We have the oil sands. They have their own license issues as well.

Sarah Florer (14:23.371)
Right.

Nicole Brewster (14:26.133)
So it's a fascinating place, but it's, mean, I'll tell you, I'm the Wild West. I'm the littlest fish in a very big pond, but...

Sarah Florer (14:27.232)
Roland looks.

Nicole Brewster (14:37.461)
I'm the place where if I drill a hole and I press release the results, that can translate directly into the trading price of the stock. And that's where the speculation comes in. Speculation, I spent a long time with a very smart man yesterday who pointed out to me when he first started in business, he used the word speculation. Everyone's like, you can't say you speculate, it's negative. So he went back to the Latin and he's like, speculation is fundamentally an educated decision on a predicted outcome.

So it's not a bad word and that is what you're doing. You're buying stock. If you're investing privately, you should know what you're doing because you're gambling that they have a path to the market to go public. If you're investing in the public markets, treasury, your stock will be restricted for months. That's the Canadian rules. The US, it's section 133 and I'm not as familiar with how that's lifted, but.

Sarah Florer (15:09.302)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (15:33.135)
you're restricted four months, so you're speculating that post the four months, the activity you're looking for, the stock price rise is gonna happen. Or you buy it in the public market, you can own it for a hot second, or you can own it for years. But in any case, you're buying stock because you're speculating on positive developments at the drill bit with the business plan and with the industry as a whole. So, but.

Sarah Florer (15:57.353)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (15:58.891)
A drill hole, if I put out a press release, a drill hole can move the market. we're a micro company. The value of the company is between $10 and $15 million Canadian. It's not a big company. But it could very quickly become worth a lot more. Or not. I can't tell you what the future holds.

Sarah Florer (16:17.28)
Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (16:18.983)
When it's, yeah, and you just pointed out such a big issue that is across the board with all companies and all investors is that disclosure. you said, depending on what you say about that test well or the test hole that you dig, you've got to be really careful about what you say. And you can't say anything that could be deemed to be misleading so that people think, well, she said that it was whatever.

Nicole Brewster (16:44.015)
Correct.

well that's why I just told you we don't know what the future holds you gotta watch this business is rife with lifestyle mining companies as I'm sure happens in the oil and gas industry where they're really only leveraging shareholders they're not trying to build value for anyone else we can't make forward-looking statements I can't tell you as much as people want me to I have people call me up daily what's the stock gonna do I knew that I doubt very much I'd be sitting here I'd have leveraged that knowledge but nobody knows what the

future holds. All I can tell you is what I'm doing. So we trade on an exchange called the CSE, the Canadian Securities Exchange, and their emphasis is disclosure heavy.

I have to disclose everything. I've been told by the old boys in the business, you put out too many press releases. You write these newsletters. Why do you do this? Nobody cares. Sure, nobody cares. Fine. I don't really care myself whether anyone cares. Big loop of who cares there. But I just sat at the PDAC, which had 33,000 attendees this year. And the newsletter I put out with a press release before the Prospector and Developer Association of Canada, that's what the PDAC is, convention.

world's largest mining convention happened in Toronto. said to readers, if you're still here at the bottom of the newsletter, come by the booth at PDAC and say, hello, I want to meet you. People did. People are reading it. It's very cool to see. So I overshare. Sure, for whatever reason you want to attribute it to, but I'm the largest retail shareholder today in the company.

Sarah Florer (18:12.406)
That's cool. Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (18:28.811)
I put everything I do and own into this company. My knowledge in this company is incredibly deep. Nobody wants to know what I know. We'd be days trying to fill you in and you would glaze over and likely pass out. However, I do believe that you want to know what your money is doing and why you're a shareholder. So I overshare.

One of my shareholders said his criteria for investment was to be able to always talk to the CEO. And the only company he found that he could do that was Renforth. Because I'll reply to an email. I'll pick up the phone.

Sarah Florer (19:00.404)
Yeah, it's funny because for us...

Roland Wiederaenders (19:01.789)
I think that transparency really engenders trust.

Sarah Florer (19:05.376)
Yeah, What Roland just said, just that as securities attorneys, we're definitely pro-transparency, pro-disclosure.

Nicole Brewster (19:14.553)
Pro disclosure, pro suitable warnings, suitable caution to the reader, like nothing's guaranteed. All I can do is tell you what I know. And you gotta do your own due diligence. I start every newsletter. I say, okay, here I am. We put out a press release. a link below. But first, you know, you should read the press release. You should do your own due diligence. You should ask questions. Ask me. But I'm not a financial advisor, but I'll tell you what I know.

Sarah Florer (19:39.404)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (19:39.907)
But there is a lot of promotion and arm waving in the business. And there's a lot of people that'll guarantee, as soon as someone tells you they guarantee what's going to happen, run, run away. Nobody can guarantee anything. So it is a buyer beware, but it's exciting. There's lots happening. You can read all my oversharing or not. But.

Sarah Florer (19:48.115)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (19:55.445)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (20:01.675)
It's, I find it fascinating. I find it ridiculously exciting. And if you want, you can drive to Remforce Properties yourself. They're right beside the road. The road runs over them. They're open to public. There's no fences, nothing like that. So it's a pretty cool space.

Sarah Florer (20:11.082)
Huh.

Sarah Florer (20:16.726)
Well, you know, just to what you're just talking about, Roland, wouldn't you agree that this is also basic advice for any kind of alternative investing? So if we're talking about private investing or what we what we define as alternative investing in the United States, at least is a pure, basically purely private investing, although it's also can, I think, as you're saying, you're on a journey to full public trading, you do have a public trading element.

for your company, but there's still something that's, it's not a.

Nicole Brewster (20:46.585)
Mm-hmm.

Well, in the US, I think I'm on the QB, which is like your Wild West, OTCQB. have a listing. I have a listing in Frankfurt. I did not cause either of those listings to happen. Market makers did them. But that's certainly an alternative because there's not the there's not in the in US, there's certainly no and in Frankfurt, there is zero obligation on my part to inform the public. So I can only imagine.

Sarah Florer (20:57.131)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (21:16.341)
how fun that gets from a disclosure point of view the company's on there. So that's your buyer beware alternative right there.

Sarah Florer (21:20.65)
Mm-hmm.

That's pretty funny. No, just, I do think, sorry, Roland, go ahead. No, no, go ahead.

Roland Wiederaenders (21:25.671)
Well, know, one thing that we, go ahead, sir, go ahead. Well, you one thing we talked about before was, you know, how technology has changed the industry. And that was something that was really interesting to me when we talked to our oil and gas.

of deal sponsors in the past is how much technology has shifted or cost shifts in the industry and allowed you to do things now that have not been possible in the past. And we talked a little bit about that in our call last week. I would be interested in hearing about that from you is just how technology has changed the exploration business.

Nicole Brewster (22:07.681)
It's changed and it hasn't changed. It's so frustrating because I was a stockbroker dealing with an account. It was a Texas account on behalf of the broker I worked for. And what they had done was they were pioneering directional drilling in oil fields. A, that tells you how old I am. But B, that technology is not yet in hard rock exploration here.

Now they can drill under the road right to my house to bring fiber cable for internet and they do. But we still can't, you know, if we want to do directional drilling in hard rock, we have to put something down the hole and wedge off it, i.e. deflect the drill. So there's a bit of ways to go.

Part of it is the money paradigm. There's a lot more money in oil field drilling. It happens a lot faster than improving a hard rock resource. We drill tens of thousands of meters to prove a resource. You can spud a well with one hole if you put that hole in the right spot. So the actual physical technology.

It limps along slowly, oriented core, downhole mapping, downhole geophysics surveys. But where it gets really cool is what AI is doing to transform the landscape. And I mean, I have a call tomorrow with a company that can photograph all of our core, which has been logged by a geologist, but it's going to photograph it. They can examine it down to the, you know, the micro pixel size, tell you what's there on surface, which

Sarah Florer (23:19.328)
Hmm.

Nicole Brewster (23:35.809)
Which is all a geologist can tell you too, is what they see with their eyes. But then it's going to assimilate it, then it's going to apply its own proprietary AI tools. So it's going to get a lot more information out of the core than the geologist can, simply because it's not limited by being human, which is a scary, scary place we're going.

I have proven the polymetallic resource. It's a very large volume of rock right now. We didn't do a lot of drilling to declare that resource. I was very aggressive because I wanted to prove it. So we've got to go back and do more work and follow up on the higher grade areas of the deposit.

As it sits in that resource statement, it's large scale, low grade. It still works on a very high level first pass to be a resource. A deposit has to show to be a deposit. Mineral occurrence has to show economic viability, the ability to become a mine. At that point, I can use words like deposit. I can use words like or how I speak, as you previously pointed out, is very closely. If you're following the rules, there's a whole lot of words you can't use until you reach a certain point.

Sarah Florer (24:37.3)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Brewster (24:46.161)
And I follow the rules. I like that. But large scale, low grade. So that implies there's a lot of waste. That implies that I'm going to process a lot of material to get the material you want. So I sent material to Germany.

And it's a company that uses its conventional conveyor belt set up, which are any factory you've ever seen. But they use AI and their proprietary algorithms, as well as sensing instruments to keep the mineralized material on the conveyor belt and discard everything else. That's profound. implies. Grade is an expression. Grade is a percentage of metal in its weight.

Sarah Florer (25:23.126)
Wow.

Nicole Brewster (25:31.297)
We never see it, but grade should actually be percentage dot percentage WT is the is how it's expressed. But if you can take out the waste, you raise your grade because you've got more metal by percentage basis in the rock. So you take out your waste, you're you're increasing your grade. You're also reducing your chemicals, reducing your water, reducing the waste at the end. It's profound impact.

Sarah Florer (25:49.184)
Hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (25:50.077)
you

Sarah Florer (25:55.116)
Wow.

Nicole Brewster (25:55.395)
That's AI-driven proprietary algorithms. There's a lot that's happening behind the scenes. I put out a press release yesterday. It's an incremental release. I'm thrilled about it. I found a geochemist who's going to pick up where an old legend in the industry for VMS exploration passed away, and he had been working on our deposit. His work's unfinished because he really has no peers, and he's gone. And that's one of the problems in the hard rock world.

I mean, I'm dealing with data. I mean, if I could find reports from the 80s, I'd be thrilled. But they're pre-computer. They're still on paper. And we know where all the paper went. It went in a pit. The paper's gone. Data's lost. And in mining, a lot of people do the same thing over and over again, either because it's what they can afford to do or because the data's been lost. So when Dr. Franklin passed away, lost everything that was between his ears that wasn't written down. But I found a geochemist, a doctor in geochemistry.

Sarah Florer (26:30.326)
Wow.

Nicole Brewster (26:52.881)
who knows the work. knows, he said, you know, Franklin's a legend. said, I know, but I need you to pick up where he left off. So I put up a press release to that effect yesterday.

Sarah Florer (27:01.845)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (27:05.327)
But it's VMS exploration. VMS is a kind of mine that if we can find the VMS mines, they're hard to find, but they're spectacular. If you find the VMS, it's the old volcano. And it's how the magma came up and it stops. It becomes rock, but it's rock with a lot of metal in it. We're seeing the outside edges of it. But if we can figure out where it came from, figure out is it still there? Was it scraped away by a glacier? We don't know. We don't know the answers. But...

Sarah Florer (27:13.473)
Huh.

Sarah Florer (27:17.549)
wow.

Sarah Florer (27:32.085)
wow.

Nicole Brewster (27:34.625)
we can follow it. So I put out a press release yesterday. So then today I'm like, I was busy all day, didn't write my newsletter. I have to send out my newsletter when we're done here. I'm like, okay, but I want to talk about how VMS occur in multiples. Why mapping guys off with his family, it's March break, so school age children here or families are away. I'm going to ask Claude. I've been playing with him.

Sarah Florer (27:55.37)
Yeah, like us.

You're gonna ask what?

Nicole Brewster (28:00.397)
I've been playing with Claude lately. Claude's fun. Claude's fast. Well, it doesn't check its work because I wanted a map. So it makes these funky like 3D interactive. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I want paper. Then I'm like, OK, I need you to check all of your coordinates. I need you to look at where you put the Cadillac break. And Claude's like, you're right. you're right. I'm like, I need to stop being right. need you to check your work.

Sarah Florer (28:03.786)
Yeah, I use her too or him or whatever it is.

Sarah Florer (28:27.22)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicole Brewster (28:29.539)
But for someone like me, where I was going with this with technology, it's transformative. Because Remforce, a small company, in the market cap's one thing, but we only generate money through shareholders. And I prioritize that money going in the ground. We have no employees. Everyone, including myself, is a consultant. So if I can use Claude.

And it saves me time, saves me money, replaces people doing very basic, it's very basic work. It's data compilation, really. That's changing how business is going to be done. And I mean, I have two university-age kids that are like, what can we study that Cloud can't do? It's a whole different story.

Sarah Florer (28:59.584)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (29:06.014)
It's going to give you an edge.

Sarah Florer (29:12.106)
Yeah, that's the question for everybody, isn't it? I'm like, be a musician. Whoever thought I would say that?

Nicole Brewster (29:15.253)
Absolutely. Yeah, right? I'm like... Yeah, I'm like, plumber. Plumber!

Sarah Florer (29:23.018)
Yeah, Plummer. Well, listen, we're coming up on time, but Nicole, I did want to ask you because I love your attitude and you're just you seem so grounded and fact oriented and no nonsense. So I'd be curious if you'd be willing to share with us, like, what is it that kind of keeps you personally going in this space? I know you were raised in it, so there's that. But it seems like you have the personality and the mindset for this. Let's call it.

Roland Wiederaenders (29:24.669)
That's a good idea.

Sarah Florer (29:47.476)
speculating but it's as you say it's informed decision making. So do you have something that you you rely on every day as a habit or a practice to keep you going?

Nicole Brewster (29:57.269)
It's probably a lot of bad habits. I've been around a little while and I've always been a square peg that never fit in the round holes. So I've never tried to, gave up on fitting in or being popular decades ago.

Sarah Florer (30:03.914)
Yeah, I get

Nicole Brewster (30:10.733)
And there's a lot I don't care about. You gotta let go of a lot in this world. Like if it really doesn't impact you and it's not gonna improve your life or your family's or whatever, let it go. Who cares? Who cares is I don't care is actually a mantra. And it's funny because I'll say to people, I don't care. It's not that I don't care. I care, but I don't care. So it's really weird. I live in.

Sarah Florer (30:18.623)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah Florer (30:29.622)
I get it. You're not taking responsibility for things that you really can't do anything about.

Nicole Brewster (30:34.632)
Absolutely not. that's that's the way to say it. you know, and what is it? There's a.

I can't think of it. It's, it's, you know it, but it's, it's a, it's a saying around the lines of, know, you can only control what you can control.

Sarah Florer (30:51.957)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (30:54.159)
and and let go of the rest turn a cheek turn whatever it is just let there's so much to let go of that doesn't impact you and i bring that brings me a degree of peace because there's a lot i just you know i don't watch the news why we know what the news i consume media like nobody's business because i'm a geopolitical strategist and it affects what i do the macro picture but i don't watch the news they're just there to yell and upset people i don't need that i delete it out of my social media like a fiend just to control

Sarah Florer (31:00.929)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (31:05.985)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (31:19.326)
Yeah, I agree.

Sarah Florer (31:23.628)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (31:23.973)
Fuse data as well. But what else? Just do it. know, Nike, I love it. But just do it. Just stop thinking about it. Stop worrying. Stop trying to game theory what's going to happen. Just do it. You'll find out what will happen. And then you'll deal with it. You know? So yeah, just do it.

Sarah Florer (31:30.465)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (31:37.932)
Yeah, that's true.

Roland Wiederaenders (31:41.479)
Well, Nicole, one thing I wanted to bring out from the personal side is for my daughter, who's a goalkeeper, you told us about your goalkeeping experiences. So that was a fun thing for me to learn about. You're a goalkeeper on a women's soccer team, right?

Nicole Brewster (31:51.023)
We talked about that, that's right.

Sarah Florer (31:53.865)
yeah, I forgot about that.

Nicole Brewster (32:03.383)
Yeah, we go into the playoffs this weekend. Woohoo! It's great fun. I'm far too old to be doing this.

Sarah Florer (32:07.37)
Is that re yeah. I don't know how like sports are structured in Canada. Is it something like you still can do competitive leagues, you know, as you grow and.

Nicole Brewster (32:16.695)
Well, it's a league for women over 30. I I played very competitively or as competitively as I could relative to when I grew up, when I was younger. This is for fun. And it's teaching people. Nothing gives me more fun than to see people come into the sport. And I I stopped during half during a game because a young lady who's, I think we figured out she's literally 20 years younger than me, but she's starting to learn to be a goalkeeper. So I watched her. She was on the other end of the field. And at half, I said, I need to tell you something.

Sarah Florer (32:25.11)
Hmm.

Nicole Brewster (32:46.639)
I don't want to not not trying to be mean but it'll help you and did the same thing after the game so then one of my teammates was like could you teach my daughter because she keeps getting put in net nobody teaches her but I love sports and that's where just do it comes from like you cannot your daughter will tell you if you're in the net and you're thinking about something you've already been beaten you don't think you react you've got to be grounded enough in your skills to just react to what you're seeing in front of you

But as a goalie, and I read this somewhere, this was somebody else's brilliant thoughts, but you let go of things. I get scored on, big deal. It's done. It's done. It's behind me. It's back here. I can't see it. You know, there's a, there's a philosophical, if you can't see it, is it even there? Like, I don't know. it back there?

Sarah Florer (33:25.473)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (33:32.457)
Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (33:34.589)
Well yeah, and it's a lesson for business, right? I mean, we all make mistakes in business or things happen that are beyond our control and do we dwell on those? No, we have to move forward and that's the thing that I've always admired with my daughter and I think it's the mindset that you've adopted as well is that, you know, that goal that just happened, we can't go back in time and fix it, it's done, so let's move forward.

Nicole Brewster (33:55.233)
It's done.

Sarah Florer (33:57.184)
Mm. Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (33:58.191)
And I mean, I take responsibility for my piece and I'm Canadian, I'll apologize profusely, but you know, it's, it's done. Move on. Just keep moving forwards. Always, always forwards.

Roland Wiederaenders (34:03.037)
her.

Sarah Florer (34:05.3)
You

Roland Wiederaenders (34:09.285)
Right, that's right.

Sarah Florer (34:09.727)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (34:14.799)
It was the serenity prayer was what I couldn't think of earlier, which is basically to acknowledge what you can't do and move past it, let go of it. But once it's done, it's back here. And maybe nothing's back there. I'm not looking at it. I don't know if anything's behind me right. I mean, this world is a very, very interesting place. And I think we only know a part of it. So.

Roland Wiederaenders (34:18.417)
There you go.

Roland Wiederaenders (34:22.077)
Yeah, no. That's right.

Sarah Florer (34:22.304)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Florer (34:29.572)
That's...

Roland Wiederaenders (34:29.692)
You

Sarah Florer (34:37.707)
Yeah.

Nicole Brewster (34:38.787)
But every day on the correct side of the grass is a fantastic day. It's a privilege that's guaranteed to no one. And seize the moment and just do it. Do it. Go forwards.

Roland Wiederaenders (34:42.461)
you

Sarah Florer (34:46.144)
Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (34:47.505)
That's great. That's good advice.

Sarah Florer (34:48.692)
I love it. Nicole, it's an absolute delight to get to talk to you. I just want to say, like, I'm so glad that you reached out to us and we got to have a nice conversation before. If there's ever anything we can assist you with or if you ever want to come back on, talk about it, talk about your company. If you're going to make a transition into the United States, let us know how we can support you. And if anybody who's watching is interested.

We'll put some details, I guess we'll put the company website and any information you want us to put in the show notes. you just share by email and we'll make sure we get it in there. I always love learning about new things, especially things that are so fundamental in our daily lives, such as the commodities that you're talking about extracting.

Nicole Brewster (35:36.769)
And I think people are starting to realize just how fundamental those things are. yeah. Yeah, just look at Rem4th resources. Join the newsletter on the website. It's free. I don't do anything with your email. Maybe I entertain you. Maybe I bore you silly and you unsubscribe.

Sarah Florer (35:40.266)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sarah Florer (35:48.012)
Cool, I'll join.

Sarah Florer (35:54.092)
It's great for helping you go to sleep at night. No, I'm kidding. All right. Well, I think. Yeah, thank you.

Nicole Brewster (35:58.639)
Right? Perfect. Well, it was a pleasure. I hope it's helpful to your audience of investors looking for alternatives. And if I can be of any help, reach out.

Sarah Florer (36:09.214)
Okay, thank you. Roland, do you have any?

Roland Wiederaenders (36:12.059)
No, no, that's it. I think we should finish it out.

Sarah Florer (36:13.728)
Alright, I'll close it up then. Thanks everyone for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we're really grateful to have Nicole here. And look forward to seeing you next time. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe.

Nicole Brewster (36:16.057)
Cheers.

Roland Wiederaenders (36:28.123)
And remember everyone, take aim with your alternative investing strategies.

Sarah Florer (36:32.854)
See you next time.