And how did you get, I mean, was that just, when did you get a vision for Metal Miner? I mean, what I mean is that's a big difference between where you started and where you are. And did you always have a sense that's where that was headed? Or it just kind of happened. So - I think we had a sense that consulting, so basically what we found in the consulting part of our business was that we couldn't find the information and the tools that we needed to do a good job as a consultant. - Got it. - I couldn't find the price information that I actually needed. And it's basically because, and this is the example I love to tell and everyone who's heard me talk knows that I say this all the time, but Ford does not put an aluminum ingot on their Ford F -150. They put a 50 -52 H -32 aluminum coil on their Ford. And there's a $2 ,500 or more price gap between those two items. And so all that was in market was the ingot price, the whatever the LME price was, and the Midwest premium. And that's all you could get. So it was hard to, So in OEM land, where I live with manufacturers, I'm trying to map their very specific materials that they're buying to whatever price index was out there and couldn't find very much. So we started in 2012 collecting our own data. And a lot of it was not be gotten using an aniosco process, if you trade data, which you can free to take. You're free to take government data, you're free to take trade data. But we just started putting a database together to inform our consulting practice. So, it was born out of a need. It was born out of a need. That was supportive. Getting the data was to help us consult better. So, we're doing a project and somebody said, "Well, we're going to benchmark Farachrome. So, where are we going to get those prices?" That's kind of where ... That's kind of where that's a good question where you come to metal miner if you need ferrochrome. Yeah. Oh, you can handle Yes, yes, so it started like that It was it was kind of the need and we built the database literally with bubblegum duct tape That literally like two guys And it was it was it was a terrible database, but anyway, it was the genesis of the business, right? It was sort of like when we need information, we could go to our database and pull data out. We never sold any of that data because it was not for not for client eyes for a lot of reasons. So then we started, a lot of people would call us and say, "Do you have a forecast for any of this? What do you think aluminum is going to do? What do you think?" And that became like... That surprised you the first time that happened. You're like, "Oh, Or did you kind of see that I saw it was happening and more people were asking like who doesn't you have a fork? Where do you have a forecast for this and so we would hire I call them kids But they're double master's degree candidates out of IIT Illinois Institute of Technology And there was a purchasing professor there that we worked with and he would give me candidates job candidates and interns And so I would bring these interns in to try to tackle specific problems. And one of the interns we hired, I said, we need to think of how we can do forecasting. And so we started trying to model things using multiple linear regression, correlation, and all those tools. And it worked until we did the back testing and then we couldn't get the models to work anymore. And I'll never forget the kid that I had working for me at the time. It was now six. He started his own business He basically we're sitting at this long table. We were in the startup land We're in this long 12 -foot table. He's sitting at the end of the table and he sends me an email Okay, I'm sitting at the other end of the table since I was sitting there. Yeah, we're all sitting there He sends me an email and he says I Think we need to talk, but I think I'm gonna need to quit. I'm I don't have a way to create an aluminum forecast for you. I don't know how to build one. And I wrote him back and I'm like, do you think we should talk about this or should we send emails back and forth? - Right, are we doing this now? - Right. So I basically said to him, I said, quitters never win and winners never quit. He said, so I'm not firing you and you need to figure out another way. Like another way to do forecasting. I said there has to be people in the world that do forecasting for commodities. Go find out what they're doing and copy it for us for metals. Figure out how we're gonna do this. - Yeah. - So, sent him on a research project and he, it's not only took a few months and he came back and he said to me, I think we need to use technical analysis to understand market movements. I'm like, okay, where are you going to learn about that? And he bought this giant textbook, which by the way is the Bible textbook we give to everybody that comes in in that forecast analyst role. Okay. So we started that in 2015, and this is where we worked with somebody from the CME who came to us, marketing guy, and he basically, voice of the customer, researched this thing, the doth to create sort of this format. Let's metal per page. So we did, we covered the six base metals, the four forms of flat rolled steel. And this guy, you know, his name's Raul built this kind of using technical analysis and he would read the markets and we put this report together. And that's what that was in 2015. And we are still doing that report today. We do it now in a much more advanced way than we did it. I mean, we've used AI because we have AI trained on our data and our database. And this kind of introduces sort of the next phase of our business. So as we've grown, we've been able to continue developing forecast capability. So we had a client in the energy sector approach us and say, we need a grain oriented electrical steel price, but what we actually it is a forecast for the China price. But we don't wanna use statistics, we want you to build a neural net. I'm like, okay, quick, let me go study up on what a neural net is. So we had to, you know, we basically, our development team, and again, this is part of the advantage of working with these, you know, double masters candidates, young people, we're all learning on the job. - Right. - And we're learning to build a neural net to create this forecast. And we worked with, this is a, what do I wanna say, Fortune 50 conglomerate giant company. And we worked with their firm statistician and a couple of PhDs and they beat up on our models. And essentially we co -learned how to build one of these things. And then not very, maybe, I don't know, eight or 10 months later, probably my timeline wrong. We were brought in through a company called Exager that does a lot of supply chain risk management. And I had known an individual there that we'd been working with, with MetalMiner for a long time. He sold his business to Exager. He said, I think there's an opportunity that we ought to go in together on. And that is with DARPA. And that is to create their open program. where there's very little information on anyway, like, you know, I'm not an expert in antimony, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, homeium, yttrium, endymium, I mean, these are not things that like, motherhood and apple pie, you know, fabricators and OEMs are. - We don't learn that going through life. - No, we don't learn the nuances of cobalt or what's co -mined and dysprosium's not available, 'cause it's only co -mined with another, et cetera. So, We basically had to figure out how can we scale predictive models, get the error rate really low so that they were accurate, and then model in all this geopolitical stuff, all this geopolitical risk and everything else. So, I mean, we've been at it for a year and a half. It's taken a long time to figure out kind of what you have to do to do that. But now we're able to scale a little bit better, well, now a lot better. We can scale because we can see what elements drive different markets, but it requires that domain expertise. And this is the difference between just a technologist doing this versus a domain expert. In other words, my hypothesis of what moves the aluminum market is gonna be more accurate than somebody that doesn't have any metals experience. They're gonna guess at some stuff. And I probably can make a good educated guess. And by the way, there's a ton of predictive capability from metal to metal, which, again, only a metal nerd is going to really appreciate. But metals move in packs. Metal prices move in packs and in trends. So you can use other metal prices to predict other metal prices. And there's also the relative nature of it where metal type one should never be more expensive than metal type two I mean like you you know there is always going to be sort of they're gonna slot in a certain way from a pricing perspective Correct, so when you when your model starts to push a certain type more expensive than another type Okay, that's never happened right when hot rolled coil is creeping in on the cold rolled coil price. you're like what? Yeah, the Porsche should never cost less than the Corolla. Right, exactly. It kind of is the idea. Yeah. And it's simple thinking like that, that actually is really useful. Right, right. High level. So you have like a different challenge in trying to think through these minor used metals. Your hypothesis, you don't have the same hypothesis. First of all, they're not exchange traded. They're illiquid. There's a couple suppliers in the world for it. There's barely anything published on it. So it's like, how do you figure out what's gonna predict that price? And there are cases where there is nothing that predicts it. - I would say there's gotta be, there have to be dead ends, like that's just no, I'm sorry, I can't do this. - Exactly, so that's, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, like, well, how are we going to predict this? So we figured out we needed to create some what if modeling capability. I'm like, well, can we get expert on disruption events, geopolitical events, and understand at the metal and all through history what types of events create what kind of price impact and for how long? And the answer is yes, you can model that. It turns out. So, and this kind of ties into like modern day when we're talking about like Tara. It definitely has an impact. In 2018, tariffs had a between a six and a nine month impact. But the acute pain was in the first three months. And then after the first three months, the metal kind of slowly came down to its-- - It chokes through. - Right. And people forget things like, I always say this as one of my favorite lines, nothing kills high prices like high prices. People change their behavior. When things are really expensive, you do things differently. It's kind of like, you know, when the market is falling, is that when you're buying or you're going to wait until you are sure that it's done falling so that you're not. And also, if markets persist in a negative way, when you talk about engineering and design, people just start designing that stuff. Yes, product substitution, 100%. You know, they're like, Finally, someone walks in and they're like, "Keep that stuff out of our designs. It's ridiculously expensive." Right. Same reason people with standard -sized windows in their houses when they build them versus you know. Custom windows. Exactly. You know, so the ultimate correction for a market is how we design things. Correct. And you can just design yourself right out of the, I mean, you can price yourself right out of the design. Exactly, and that's what happened with nickel back in not even the recent run -up But like that probably that I can't even forget the year 2008 2009 when we went to $55 ,000 a ton and Everybody said you know what we don't need to have magnets stick to our refrigerators We can use 430 stainless instead of 304 right like because that necessities the mother of invention We're not paying that let's get the nickel content out of here. That's what's causing the pain. So in speaking about these these metals in the electric everything market, how is that squeezing these these metals markets? I mean, I mean, we talk about batteries there. So what what have you seen? Because you've really had a front row seat to watching this, I think the hype is all of the bite. Like, I think there's way more hype than there is. Now, let me clarify where I think there's hype and where there's not. - Yes. - So I think the EV clean tech market was overhyped. You wanna mean like wind, solar, and that use. And I think that's really come off a lot in the United States. Like that is not what is driving copper prices right now. It's grid, data centers, I mean, AI, that's what's driving the demand for those models right now. I mean, there's not much wind project stuff going on right now. Solar is a thing still, but we're importing a lot of it. We're not making a lot of it. We're making some of it. But the use is not like the automotive industry where it's just taking up big volumes. And people are not buying the EVs now because all the incentives have been taken away. So, you know, to me, the demand is really more on the data side, data centers and electrification, grid enhancements, everything power related. And I mean, grid enhancements, it's not always future tech. I mean, just have an infrastructure we need to keep working. Yes. And it's not, right? We're having like more brownouts, more, I mean, I live in Northwest Indiana, yes, between the two steel mills and our power goes out all the time and I never experienced that you know five years ago that never happens it goes out you know at least once a season I mean I put a generator in and that generator I'm probably gonna have to replace the generator at some points yeah it's gonna wear out yeah and so the EV do you feel like the hype was it's it's reminds me of an old Debate I used to have so I loved remote control cars growing up fine, and There was always when you want to go get a new one. You're like second an electric one or Should I get a gas one because the gas one's great because I can fill it up and I can run it all day, right? And with my electric remote control car, I've got to get a bunch of batteries I've got to recharge it a lot But there's no maintenance because there aren't all these these moving parts. So this debate has been part of my life for a very long time, because then eventually I got a gas powered one and I was like, I went back to electric because just for these little remote control cars, because all I do is mess with that one to keep it working. And this one, so there's always, there is this trade off between these two technologies. But I think that the, To what extent do you feel like it's misunderstood by people that you're just displacing the generation of the electricity, meaning that all of that electricity that's in that car is not local to that car. It is coming from somewhere. And when you transmit anything over a distance, there is a loss. I don't care if it's water, electricity, whatever it is. So does it take more energy to pump that electricity across the country versus it being locally generated under a hood by an internal combustion engine? I can't answer that question. I have no idea. But you raise a good point. And I don't know, I'm not sure exactly where the science is landing right now. I mean, people have strong opinions about this. And when they're doing what, and I can see in my own usage, where electric fits, but where gas also fits. - And for you, not speaking for the world, but like when do you feel like gas is the right route? - So I definitely, when I'm touring and doing long distance driving, especially if it's not routine driving, I definitely wanna be in my ice vehicle. - Yes. - Listen, I have a place in Florida, I thought about, you know, I should put some solar panels up and I can drive for free. Um, so I've thought, you know, we haven't done it yet, but because we're not there full time, but that makes a lot of sense to me. So I can see an electric vehicle for that. So I think it depends on your kind of your use case, your distance, what you're driving. You know, if you're driving big distance, but it's too info and it's predictable where you're going, you're going to the office or wherever you're going, it makes sense maybe to look electric. But if you're like driving for baseball games all over God's green earth and you're in towns that are literally, you know, have horse and buggies in them, which some do, and some of these Amish towns in Indiana, you know, I'm not sleeping comfortably, like where would I get charged if I needed to charge? So I think that gives me a lot of anxiety. So I'm a little bit mixed. So I could see in a family where you'd have both, you know, and I see a use case for both. - Yeah, well, that makes sense. And I'm gonna pivot hard in this conversation, something that we both think is interesting, which is critical thinking. - Good subject. - Yeah, it is a good subject. Before we can talk about it, will you tell me what it is? - Let's see if I can give a good definition. - No No rush. - Yeah. I think it's the ability to question, fundamentally, and not necessarily having the answer, but being able to question anything that's being presented to you and to be able to look at something via a different lens altogether. We recently joined a think tank organization as a member and I like the way they present issues. They give you the point of view and then they give you the counterfactual and this notion of a counterfactual, which is like an alternative viewpoint, it goes back to when I come back to the beginning of this conversation, what do you think the public policy intervention should be on this business issue, it's the alternative. It's the other one that you haven't thought through. And so, I don't know if I've defined it well, but I kind of think of it as being able to question something, to bring up and create in your own mind an alternative point of view, be able to attack something with that different lens, and to build up your own, whatever it is, if it's an idea or a concept somebody presented or a counter -argument, whatever it may be. So that's what I kind of think it is. But it's not in a rebellious way of thinking, it's just let's trust but verify, let's keep thinking on this. I think of it as a continuous learning, like I'm a lifelong learner. You don't learn if you don't question, If you don't ask those questions, well, how does that work? Well, why didn't that work for you before? I mean, even when you and I were talking about your business, what worked when you started it? Why didn't that work? So what did you do next? Then what did you do? What, you know, and through that, you have a more, I think, holistic view and not one that's just sort of like from the textbook. And so critical thinking as a topic is not in vogue right now. - Okay, so why is it important? - Why is it important? - So, yeah, I mean, the question, so critical thinking is to think critically of your thinking. - Right. - Right. - Right, and to consider alternatives, because I think we get, I think we as people, we get tunnel vision. We pick the news channels that match our politics. We hang out with people that are like us, And so there is a natural tendency to seek out that which is like me. The problem with that is then you can miss things. You can miss really important things, like maybe even critical things because you're not opening yourself to that alternative, whatever that alternative might be. - So critical thinking, you think it's important though? - I don't, I think as a business owner, you have to be a critical thinker. Not just a problem solver, but a critical thinker. How would that work? Let's play that out. But what if they did this? Then how would it be? Well, let me lay out three scenarios. Would it still work in all three scenarios, or where would it fall? I think people sometimes just pick something. They go with it, they try it, they see if it works. I think critical thinking might be a time saver, and not always, I think-- - I think it's the, an amazing rapid prototyping system, critical thinking, right? - Yes, yes. - If you can sit there and kind of, I call it the cone zone, which is if you can get in the cone zone-- - There you go. Love that. - And you sit there and then, you formulate what you think are good ideas, or maybe you want to find out if they're bad ideas, you bring in group, and you just, and it's, you really have the structure of critical thinking sessions though, which is like, well, let's not worry about that right now. Let's, we got to stay on this, sort of beat up this one very linear thought, because we can't, to me, we can't get concentric. We've got to stay on this middle piece. Right. And really, I guess, pressure test this, and why, and why, and why we should do. I'm just asking the question. And then I give it to different team members. And, and initially everyone's reaction to almost everything is, is no, no. And I don't think so. And then I'll say, okay, that's fine. You can say no, after you've looked at it and dove into it, and then give me the why. And sell me on why, why no. So I had one of those recently where there's, I had heard on a podcast about, I don't even know what it's called. It's like some way that you connect your data to a large language model. So the large language model can query your data very efficiently without the large language model sucking in your data, if that makes sense. - Yeah, still, no spying happening. - Right, exactly. And so I send it to one of our developers. Should we do this? I don't think so, no. And then, you know-- - Literally drives me I mean, then this individual is like a superstar. So he, you know, his gut was no, but he, you know, looked into it and he came back and he goes, maybe yes. You know, and so I'm like, now tell me why. And so he kind of like gave me the logic and he's like, here's a little test case and I was playing with it. And so, so I feel like my job as the CEO is to Just insert the tiny bombs, not big ones, little ones, to say, is this what we should do or not do. I know you and I were chatting about, it's easier to grow wallet than it is to acquire a new client. - Yes. - I said, so it's time we probably need to add somebody and as a client success person in our business and really think through how can we add more value more deeply with our existing clients. They'd think after how long we've honed this business, we would have done that years ago, but anyway, we're doing it now. Well, it's easy to get sucked into the operation of anything, meaning that it's clear and present what needs to happen when you're operating, oh, this needs to be dealt with, versus growth is very deliberate, like, we need to take a a timeout. I know that things on fire over there, but we have to ignore that for right now. Yeah. And I became really sensitive to that when I was in distribution, which is you must create time to grow. We call it working on your business versus in your business. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. And it's not an accident. That's right. You have to purposefully say, "I'm going to focus on this. We're going to solve this piece." And it's a little bit uncomfortable. And the reason I got sensitive to it was you hear so much, so when I became COO of the business in distribution, I would say, "Why do we do it that way?" And they say, "Because that's why we've always done it." And so that means to me, okay, you had a new situation rise, a set of circumstances or a use case, and somebody said, "Well, as a Band -Aid, we'll do this right here right now." And that became doctrine. And how many businesses are built on these layered Band -Aids. And it's an unpopular thing to go through that and tear it all down. But that's what has to happen. You just keep it's a it is a band -aid and now your ops are built on top of band -aids and people don't know why it was like that in The first place so yeah, it's how I was trained right someone showed me how to do it This goes back to critical thinking so how can we re -imagine how we do this in a better way and what should that way be? Yeah, you know in our business. I look at and go come back to the price reporting You know the way that it's always done by the industry is through a survey method, either web -based or phone -based. And I'm gonna rip on it right now because we don't do it that way, but people, large companies will come in and they'll say, "I don't trust the number." And I'll say, "Why don't you trust the number?" He's like, "Because I don't know who else is in the benchmark group. I have no visibility. I don't know if they're talking to Joe's garage shop or another Fortune 500 company, but I'll tell you we're buying differently, like we are. So there's a trust issue. And as we looked at our business, I said, I don't want to get into a confrontation with a client or a prospect. How can we do this differently? And so, you know, our methodology is like open kimono. And then they're basically theoretical should -cost models. We basically say, all right, what is it you're trying to figure out? They're like, well, it's an aluminum alloy. Like, okay, let's get the recipe of what goes into that aluminum alloy. And literally I went to a scrap dealer, a friend of mine, brought some donuts, and I'm like, how does this work? Somebody comes in, they bring this. So we're going through literally, scrap piles of heaps of garbage. He's like, all right, this is Mix, you know, this is our alloyed material. So I'm understanding that the truck is mixed with different alloys and grades. Industrial comp is different than, you know, 6 ,000 series and et cetera. And so we were able to sort of, from the bottoms up, create literally like the soup recipe of how do you make this alloy? It's got a little silicon, it's a little molly, a little copper, et cetera, and we pull the price feeds for each of these different elements and assigned weights. That's how we created battery indexes. And you go and you show that to an OEM and you show them, this is what we did. And we pulled all these numbers in. No argument, no disagreement, no challenging that. They're like, yep, that looks like the price that I'm paying, you know, is usually what we get. Sometimes Sometimes we get, well, yours a little higher, mine's a little lower, vice versa, whatever, but that process creates trust in the relationship, that transparency. And I said, well, why should we do it just because everybody else does the survey or the web -based? Now, they are reporting that number, but not all of those are exchange -traded, so they're numbers that are in the market that people transact by, but are they good numbers? I don't know. - Well, it's kind of like what your house is listed for and what it's sold for. - That's it. - Right? - That's it. - And you can list it for whatever you want. And that's similar to us, which is, you know, how do you become a reliable and disputable index? - Right. - By having real strike prices. - Yeah. - Like these aren't-- - This is what people really paid. - This literally just occurred. - Yes. - And so there, and these are buyers and sellers that do this for a living, so there's, it cannot be disputed. - Correct. - Or because there are great reasons why they would not want to overpay, and the great reasons why they wouldn't want to sell it for too cheap. - Right. - So it really becomes just the source of truth. - Exactly. - And that's powerful in an opaque world and-- - And you can do something with that at some point, right? You'll be able to monetize that data in a different way. - Yeah, and for right now, it's really about demonstrating to buyers and sellers that this is not only can it be done, it is being done. And that they can be comfortable with that. And so that's probably, we interface with buyers and sellers and these participants in a different way, mental minor versus prizes, but ultimately we're all circling around the same concept, which is this digital trust and the study of behavior and what gets people to move or lean into what you believe is what is best for not just them, but what's really good for a chain in general. Exactly. And just trying to work our way. And it's all got to be done together where we've all seen instances where having an immense amount of resources is no guarantee of getting the market to follow. Exactly. No way. Right. Exactly. It's all about getting that customer trust and creating that credibility in their eyes. And we probably do that differently, both of us and our individual companies. But I think if you don't have trust, you have nothing. And so for us, we've kind of tout our track record. We're like, look at it, look at our, we'll show you our models, we'll show you our air rates, we'll show you the back test. We show this to companies. And we don't expect them to transact off of that. But they start using it, and as it performs, they start building that trust over time. And even though it was back -tested, they may still need that trust. And then there's other magic in the market that happens from that. So how do you look at price and figure out, do I have a supply assurance problem? Am I gonna be in trouble for something critical to my operation because I'm gonna have an availability issue. - Yeah. - Which is, we see that a lot right now, you know. - And that's a tough thing to say. - Yeah, yeah. - Especially when we're getting down into, as we, you know, I can only speak to us, which is trans actually speaking, what is gonna be the distribution and abundance of these metals that are ready to be moved? I mean, it's nearly like an ecology thing, which is like distribution abundance through space and time. That's what we're trying to understand. So interesting. You know, so it's an ecological thing. Yeah, interesting. Of these different species, if you will, of metals. I love that. I love the analogy, and maybe I need to pick up on that, you know, because I think like the critical minerals, for example, are just, they're an animal to themselves. And there's, you know, it's like a little island. It's almost like a rare sighting. If I could use your analogy, it's a rare sighting of a very rare bird that doesn't appear very often. - Yeah. - How do you create the conditions so that the bird comes more? - We'll pay a lot to have it in their possession, just like metals. - Yes. - So back to critical thinking. Is critical thinking, I think we agree, maybe it's under threat? - I think It's under threat. I know it's under threat. I don't have to think, I know. And I think there's two areas where it's-- - Okay, you should tell me about that. - And I'm curious if you agree or what you see. So I think two areas, one, our educational system is we're indoctrinating kids. I'm not gonna get any more political than that, but I question, if we're not teaching kids, if they're not using Socratic method and discussing and debating in a circle with one another and talking different concepts through, I worry that we're just indoctrinating and not giving an opportunity for someone to say, "I disagree with you." Or, "Here's what I think you're wrong." Or, "I think your facts aren't correct." You don't have that today as much. I don't see in school. And I've sent three kids through school and I think that's a big challenge. That's one piece. The second, So we're graduating people that I'm not sure are good critical thinkers. The second thing, of course, is AI. And there's a lot, I mean, I hear the college is rumbling about it. I have a friend who's a sociology professor and she's rumbling about kids are, she basically lays down the law when they come into school and she said, if you think you're gonna submit a paper to me that you've generated through AI, I'm telling you, I test these papers six ways from Sunday, you're gonna fail this class. So really, same thing, trying to get people to use the AI as part of the answers to what you're critically asking. So it's almost like the why, explain this. Well, why is it like that? What are the risks of that? But why is it, I'm peeling the onion, the onion, the onion. And using the AI to, again, try to get a more 360 view of what it is that you're looking at. And that's that critical thing. That's the right way to use AI. - Yeah, use it like you're in psychopedia to the library. It's just a resource for you to formulate your own thinking. - And click the links to see if they're legit. - Yeah, that's a hard next step. - That's a hard next step, but there's a lot of hallucinations. There's a lot of garbage information out there. You literally have to click the links and see what the links say to validate your learning and understanding. Yeah. I mean, it's basically a summarized internet to a degree, and you think about all the people out there that are pushing that information into the internet, and it's like, well, maybe we shouldn't assume this is right. Have you ever had an argument within AI where you decided you were just going to screw around with it a little bit? Yeah, of Yeah, it's it's fun to see but I love how when they say I hadn't considered that Or I may have you know not looked into that more deeply and I'm like well. Yeah You know getting a little uppity with right? Well, you think about it people think about words differently than vision than images But anyone who's created an image on AI Okay, you described it and that's what they give back to you. That's just a visual visual representation of what they're giving you in words Yes, right. They're giving you some - Oh, you have to be-- - How to live in harmony with this thing. - Yes, you have to tame it. - You do, 'cause if you've got your head in the sand, there would be a time at which a point, you'll wish you had not. 'Cause I think it's coming down, it's not coming down the track, I mean-- - Oh, it's here. And so, I mean, look, we're already seeing like white collar work is, I think, some of it is under threat. A lot of it is to help people perform better. It's an enhancer, it's a production efficiency kind of thing, a tool that allows people to do more. But I think it definitely is gonna automate anything that's like a mundane task. So again, this comes back to critical thinking. There's demand in the workplace for critical thinkers. If you're a critical thinker, you can be in our team because you're gonna question something. So my latest one that I, you know, it was just like the, the nip on steel, US steel merger and that whole, you know, is it going to happen, not happen? And you know, a lot of people said no, and that's true in the sense that the political parties wanted that, you know, the, it was politics, but if you actually looked at the underlying rationale and the state of US steel and the health of nip on steel, and where they're good, and where they're strong, and where US Steel needs help, and so on and so forth. And the future of steel in America, if you critically thought through the whole thing, you could see why and how the deal made sense. It's just a matter of, we're rational minds going to be looking at this and that. Well, yeah, I think there's US Steel-- I think still Resonates is a really good brand with a lot of people, and it is in, but there's systems there that just simply need to be updated. Yeah. You know, it's that simple and bringing in fresh, just really some good energy infusion, right? Otherwise, to really drive it into the future, I think new technology and just operationally, right. So again, critical thinking, it's like, so somebody says something, the ability to question it, and to have the confidence to question it, to say, "I don't know, I don't think that makes sense. Explain to me why that makes sense. Walk me through that." It's really hard, I think, because if it takes a lot of practice because you've got to keep emotion out of it, you must. And it's no But then if you're sitting there trying to write a song, for instance, and you're judging what you're writing before you complete it, you'll never finish it. Correct. You'll be like, "This sucks. No one will ever want to hear this." And you will never write it. But if you're like, "No, get this thing out of your brain." Barf it out. Just get it out of your brain and then work the problem. Yes. And so that's the idea is critical thinking is if you cannot have a really structured way of thinking, or let me say it differently, it's very hard to have structured thinking with rampant emotion, meaning it's going to just toward that thing immediately because you're like, "No, I've got the right ideas and all this, but if you don't, so you got to be used to just being, you know what I mean? Challenge, you're just working a problem. - Right, right. So I think this critical thinking piece, I have a friend that's writing a book on yin and yang and apparently I think it's a yang skill to question, to push against authority a little bit. And I mean, that's part of what critical thinking is. And I think-- - No, no, I hate to push against authority, 'cause that's just what the non -creative type people say. While you put this way, we do it. I'm like, we're not pushing against authority. - Okay. - Okay, we're just saying, it's always been this way. You think it'll be 100 years, we should just check in and make sure it's still the right way to do it. - Yes, yes, right, right, exactly, exactly. - That's why we're not undermining you. - Right, right, and it's like question for clarity. And I think part of it for me is journalism training. teaches you to do that. You just ask question, question, question. By the way, neurodiverse learners also can learn like that. That's how they learn. They don't learn by reading and writing or listening. They learn by a series of questions. I know 'cause I have a neurodiverse kid, but that's how he learns. Just ask question, question, question. And then you suddenly realize that he's asked so many questions. He's like an authority on it. - He's just banking - Banking data. - Right, I mean, just so, you know, and I always call myself the LCD in the company, the lowest common denominator. - Right. - Like, if somebody puts a concept in front of me that's too difficult to understand, then I'm like, okay guys, you have to explain this to the dummy. - You have to take it down the wrong. - Yeah, down, like, I don't understand, you know, and just dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. And then you're, you know, you understand something. and then you're able to contribute as a critical thinker because you have the deep understanding versus when somebody just throws a concept and you're too afraid to say, "I don't understand that," or that's the other thing. And being able to be a critical thinker also put pride aside and it's okay if you don't know something and just ask. - Yeah, intellectual humility. - Yeah, who cares if you don't know? I mean, there are things I'm not gonna know. I'm really bad at like a pop knowledge slang, you know? I mean-- - It's not your thing. - It's not my thing. So, you know, those emojis, or not emojis, but those little, you know, be right back, like BRB, or whatever, you know? - Yeah, the lingo? - No. - Yeah, I'm not so good at that either, by the way. And like, computationally good, but I can't really hold numbers in my head. You know, I I can sit and do, I know it needs to be done, but I can't hold, like some people can just, I'm not even talking about like savant type stuff, I'm talking more just normal, like you can hold five, 10 numbers in your head, and mine just hit the four. - Same, same, I don't have like memory as you have already heard, I don't have good memory for a lot of things. And I think it's like overload, brain overload, but. - Yeah, I think there's a lot competing for what. worried that it's under threat because I don't see, I don't see our educational system broadly speaking, talking about a lot of public schools really harvesting and, and I mean, they attempt, they use words like collaboration and project work. Yes, I see that in schools, they're using the new technology, but are they discussing and debating? Are there two points of view in a class on any topic anymore? Or is there just one point of view? And I think when you don't have multiple points of view inside of any organization, there's not a lot of critical thinking that's happening. So you need people to push back on you and push back hard and it's not personal, right? You don't take it personally, like push back hard. I don't think that's happening in K through 12 education at all? - Oh yeah, maybe beyond 12. - For sure, college. For sure, yeah, no, I agree, I agree. And so I think it's under threat. I'll tell you, even in our own company, you know, I think of, I go back to like a resume. What do you put on your resume? I go, don't tell me what you've done. Tell me what you've accomplished. Like I don't care what you've, I don't care the tasks of your jobs. I don't really care. But what, Show me what you've accomplished and how you think about what's important because what your accomplishments are telling me what you've valued and what you've put effort into in order to be successful at and that kind of thing. So I think as we are screening candidates, I'm looking for people that can show a track record of accomplishment that embrace the technology and don't run from it, aren't worried that they're going to get fired or laid off, but instead are saying, "How can I use AI to 10x me?" Right. And be-- Use it as a steroid. Yes. Use it as a steroid. What a great way to say it. Use the AI as a steroid and not be so hung up on you're worried you're you're gonna lose your job over it. Unless you're like-- - I'm not saying you won't, but-- - Right. But if you're doing a really repetitive job, those are the things that AI is gonna take away. So, my son always says, "Think about things you can do with your hands." Jobs that you can do with your hands are not, the humanoid's not there yet. It'll be a while before they're totally perfected and being able to do that. So, obviously I'm talking about the trades, things that you do with your hands, but also field work, field testing, testing equipment, testing things where you're, you know, it does require your hands, but you're not behind a desk or you're not. - It is the opposite of when we were growing up. - Yes. - It used to be like, hey, if you could use a computer, you know, you're gonna be around the world. - Right, you could be a knowledge worker. - Yeah, and now it was swinging the other way, which is like, if you can go out and hammer something or be out in the field and do something, you're gonna have a job. - Right, right, exactly. - Working to be where AI is not. - That's exactly right. So I mean, it's a big challenge, but it's also a challenge in people that you talked to, even just conversationally, it's just getting people to engage, I think, forces. I'm like, okay, I always say it to my friends and if we're not of the same political persuasion, I'm like, I'm stepping on the third rail here, but, and then I'll say something, you know, do we think it was good that Trump bombed Iran, you know, or whatever, just to get somebody like talking. And then again, same thing, like 360, everyone, you know, 360, give me, there's lots of ways to skin this cat. - Yeah, and you're like, well, yeah, I read, you're like, I read that same headline too, but what do you think? - Right. - You know, like, what do you think? - Yes. - And getting someone to, and that's, then you get the silence and you're like, okay, now you're starting to think because you're not saying anything. - Right, right, and I want you to think, right? And I actually wrote about that in our newsletter, just I pulled a bunch of headlines, actually that exact topic. I pulled a bunch of headlines that I said, if you didn't critically think, you would think this is all true. Inflation's gonna skyrocket, gas prices are gonna skyrocket, tariffs are gonna be terrible, we're gonna be in it. Like all those things you might believe if you, again, aren't critically thinking. And I just think it's going out of fashion. And I don't know how we get it back, but we need it. - Well, I guess it's gonna have to come back. - I hope we don't get replaced by the machines that are doing the critical thinking. That's the scary part. That's going to be something that's going to be hard to unring. And it's going to, I don't know. It's hard to say what's going to happen, but it's happening quickly. I know that much. And I think that it's going to go too far and there's going to be a bullwhip effect of how it's managed right now. it feels like it's just sort of running and right right right without the it's kind of wild and how the internet was wild west all this stuff kind of comes in and then you're like okay that was a step too far and how do we how do we manage that right and I don't know when or what that looks like but I think there is at least a historical pattern of we let it run and then we pull it back. - I think that's, you know, and now the game's changed, right? We're competing against China. We have to think about what's their, again, the counterfactual, what's their operating model? How are they doing it? How are we gonna do it? And now if we put a bunch of regulatory handcuffs on how we're gonna do it, but China is run and loose. - Now or fall behind the pack. - We're gonna fall behind the pack. So, you know, what training data are they using in their models versus what training data we have in our models? Well, they're using the outside internet or some of it. You know, and so we have to think more, you know, it comes back to critical thinking. I actually think this historically has always been what differentiates Americans, especially a lot of entrepreneurs and startups. We are more, I don't, maybe it's not critical thinking, but we're seeing the gaps and we've taken advantage of the gaps. And you know, here in America, you can fail and try again, fail again and try again. You know, and I think most businesses are a version of that. Fail, redo, fail, redo, fail, redo. - Don't we call 'em pivots? - Pivots, yes, pivots. - They're like the nice word for that sort of thing? - Yes, exactly. We are going to pivot over here. - There's gonna be a pivot. some information's come to our attention and we are now going to pivot. - We are now going to pivot. Exactly, and I think we have to be open. And again, that's being a critical thinker yourself to say, okay, I'm not stupid. If you like, what's the definition of insanity? Keep doing the same thing over and over and thinking you're gonna get a different result. So if you don't mix it up, you're not gonna move your business along. So you have to kind of look at that. - Well, I think a pivot is an ultimate of do -setting inside a motion. Like you're reading what's happening in front of you and you're reading like, okay, everything here is saying, don't do what we're doing. - Right. - And you're like, but we've worked so hard and you have to just toss all that and be like, if we're gonna do this, we gotta go this way. - Right, exactly. - You know, that's-- - And think of the alternative also. Like what's an alternative way to do it? And does that make sense? And It helps you kind of crystallize that I think you talked about just like staying in the middle and You know having the alternatives and stuff. So and I think it's also a drive towards simplicity, which is Okay, we've got the right idea. But how do we make it? How do we just whittle this thing down right to something that is so simple? That yeah, it's it's it just can't be misunderstood for anything that what then than what we're trying for it to be. - I think that, and that's that other acronym, keep it simple, stupid, right? Kiss. - Yeah. - Which I think you have a great focus at being able to do that, which I think is really great. And I kind of convert that statement to LCD. Like, let's make it, like, if I can understand it, like, you know, the life commercial, like, then Mikey tried it, let him hell eat it, hell eat anything. Like, if I can understand it, anyone can understand it, you You know, that's right. It needs to be the goal is to have, you know, something that requires zero demo. Right. The second they see it, the fifth have been using it their whole life. Yes. And I also use the idea of a water slide, which is when you get up the top and you go there, you're going, you're going to go to the bottom of that. Yeah. Well, some of them are really strong. Well, let me kind of pull us other here, which is back to Metal Miner, which is how do people find you if they want to check, learn more about what you guys are doing? That's great. I appreciate that question. First of all, we're starting to make sure that we're answering questions so that people find us in the AI, in the different AIs and chat GPT and perplexity, which are kind of the two biggies. I think Gemini is the third one. So we've actually, so you can find us on our website, agmedalminer .com. You know, all our contact information is there. But we're also, we have a pretty decent LinkedIn presence. Can't say that I'm doing much on Twitter, Facebook or the others, but I would say LinkedIn. We're on LinkedIn. We do a lot of speaking events, but we're also, I think it's been fun this little, I won't use the of it, but you know, this, hey, how do we stay relevant? Let's make sure we're answering the questions that people want answers to when it comes to metal prices. And that, you know, when somebody says, where steel price is headed for 2026, that metal miner shows up as a link with some thoughts on that, right? So that's, you know, that's really, and quite frankly, I prefer to be found based on questions than SEO terms. Because SEO terms always imply that somebody who's bigger can outspend us for those keywords or whatever, or even organically. But when people are looking, Google has its own existential issue. But when you come into AI and you want to know, should I buy now? Should I buy later? We're going to be able to help companies answer those questions. I have an aluminum buy coming up. Should I wait? Should I buy now? How much should I buy? When should I buy? You can query our data and get a large language answer to that that's trained on our data. - Okay, so you guys are in many places. - Many places, many places. - Well, that's great. Well, I want to say thank you for coming on today. It's been really fun talking to you. Same here. - Yeah. - Super fun. - All right, thank you. (upbeat music)