David Flanagan AO - From small-town Australia to building and leading an ASX 100 business

So David Flanagan is one of the most influential figures in Australian mining industry of the past three decades. David began his career as a geologist, building deep expertise in mining and resource development. In 2004, David founded Atlas Iron and grew it into a major Pilbara iron ore producer valued in the billions.

So for me, because I wasn't doing super well academically and I needed to pay the bills, I needed money, I did any job I could. And the thing that I wanted to market as my capability was that I could just walk in.

Yeah.

I'd worked underground on the 1100, on the Grizzly, and I just sat there hitting rocks with a hammer, swinging rocks. That was my job. Or I was working as a timberman or as a trucker or as a driller's off-sider or as a barman at the Boulder Block. And I would do what it took. If you want your country to maintain independence and not be dominated by another country, you need to at least have equivalent technology.

Yeah.

We look at what's happening with Ukraine at the moment. So they were the home of the Russian space agency was based in Ukraine.

Really? I didn't know that.

So one of the reasons why they're so difficult for the Russians to sort of walk through is because of the technology that they had left behind in their people. Yeah. So if we have technology and capacity to deploy that into industry, and it's not about arms, I mean, just to be competitive so that our balance sheet's strong. Yeah. we'll have a good lifestyle for our people for the foreseeable future. But if we don't, you know, it's going to head the other way. One night I happened to be at a bar in Philadelphia with a few people and I walked up to the bar to get a round of drinks and a guy appears next to me in a trench coat, a grey trench coat and a hat. And he says, you're David Flanagan. I said, yeah, I am. He says, so...

Welcome to the One True Measure podcast. I'm your host, Blake O'Connell. Each week on the podcast, we talk through success and not just success, but this individual, this focus on individual success and what we call the One True Measure. Each week we also get the opportunity to talk to really amazing guests and this gentleman here I'm really excited to have a conversation with. He's had a super interesting life, very varied. Today we'll talk about how we build an ethical business, his thoughts on leadership and also being a dad. Welcome, David Flanagan. Thanks for having me here, Blake. Perfect, mate. Well, as we said before, this is the part where I'm going to give but a fraction of your life experience here, and it's the awkward piece where you're going to sit and listen to all the experiences. But it's really important for us to share this at the start because I think it gives good context on who the person is and their experiences and what they're going to talk about as well. So, David Flanagan, this is your life. You can laugh at that one. That's our generation. I'm your generation on that one. No one else will get that one. So David Flanagan is one of the most influential figures in Australian mining industry of the past three decades. David began his career as a geologist, building deep expertise in mining and resource