Don't be nervous @Crabby33. It's all good here - we're just super nice people! I do not know much at all about LCK, however I am a firm believer that people should mostly invest within their circle of competence, which is just another way of saying invest in companies you understand well, and a good starting point is looking at companies in the same sector/industry that you yourself work in, or have worked in, which is exactly what you are doing, and I think that's very sensible.
I have worked in many different industries/sectors, starting off with computer programming in the early 1980s when personal computers was a "new thing", and hardly anyone had one, then went back to school for a year, then drove trucks, then spent the next 10 years working for earthmoving & construction contractors, mining services companies and minesite/refinery operators, then the next 7 years in the pharmaceutical, neutraceutical and skincare industries, then spent a couple of years doing short stints at various places (including Korvest [KOV] operating a robotic welder manufacturing cable trays for 3 to 4 months), then a year working for Salmat (was ASX-listed, under SLM, but the company was wound up last year after selling off its last two business divisions), then 12 years working for Coca-Cola, then I had a year off (living off a generous redundany payout from Coke) during which I did a lot of investment research, and now, for the past couple of years, I have been working in the food industry, making Hommus, Tzatziki and other dips and spreads. I have been a part-time investor for most of those 35 years. Before working for Salmat, I briefly did some day trading, but it wasn't for me and I got out without losing any money, but really didn't make too much either, certainly not enough to justify the hours I was spending on it. I decided that the get rich slowly approach suited me better than the get rich quick approach, certainly when it came to being able to sleep well.
I believe my circle of competence extends to mining services companies (particularly contract miners, but also a variety of other mining services, earthmoving and construction companies), gold producers (a learned skill in my case as I have not worked in the gold industry), and Australian manufacturing, specifically food, beverages, neutriceuticals (vitamins and minerals supplements), hair care and skin care products, and pharmaceuticals.
The company I work for now is a private company, but I never bought shares in Salmat when I worked for them, and the only Coke shares I owned were purchased through their employee share scheme at a 50% discount to market price (they gave me one for each one I bought) and I sold them all when I left the company. I worked for F.H. Faulding and Co, who were bought out my Mayne Pharma (MYX), and I have never owned MYX shares. I did work at a site that was owned by BHP and then spun out into South 32 (S32) (Worsley Alumina in WA) and I have owned BHP shares, and I still own S32 shares today in two of my RL portfolios (and they're in my Strawman.com virtual portfolio). What I have learned is that while you want your investee companies to be profitable and have good industry tailwinds, you also want them to be either the best player in their industry or one of the best (or on their way to becoming one of the best), and you ABSOLUTELY need to be able to trust the management. Management of a company is way more important than most people think, IMHO, and not just the Board, the CEO has to be an inspirational leader, and also be a smart and capable manager with an excellent track record. Well, he/she doesn't HAVE to be, but it certainly helps. I also like to see the CEO and other senior managers owning decent amounts of shares in the company they work for, and if the company has a founder who is still alive, I'd prefer that they're still involved and still have a decent financial stake in the company also.
With criteria like this, there isn't much that looks appealing to me in the Australian manufacturing industry most of the time, with a few exceptions, like ARB Corporation (ARB) and Codan (CDA) - I hold those two. I find most of the best opportunities appear to be in larger companies when bought on a good pullback - like CSL, TNE (Technology One), ARB, ALU (Altium), etc., or SaaS companies, or services companies. I'm often willing to back managers who have excellent prior track records, like Michael Simmons and Vaughan Bowen at Uniti Group (UWL) and lately I've also been looking at the team at Swoop (SWP), although I have not bought any SWP shares yet. They only IPO'd two months ago. Those guys have great pedigrees and I reckon it's another roll-up model, which can work really well in the early years (although usually best to exit when they start to overpay - or the takeover pipeline dries up and they have to revert to organic growth - which is often much slower). I'm no expert on modern IT or the Telco industry, so it's NOT within my circle of competence, however I'm still willing to cherrypick companies within such industries/sectors if I feel I've done sufficient work on them and built a good investment thesis, which includes spending a fair bit of time looking at the risks to their business model. But when a company is not strictly within my circle of competence, I especially need to have some bonus factors such as quality management with excellent prior track records to help get the company over the line as a viable investment for me. They need more than that clearly, but that does really help.
However, if a company is well within my circle of competence, I'm more inclined to widen my net a little, to look at turnaround plays, slow burners, and play the odds in terms of likely tender pipeline wins. An example of that is Macmahon (MAH) a contract miner that works almost exclusively in the gold mining industry. MAH have got a really strong current order book (a.k.a. "Work In Hand" or WIH), but they also have billions of dollars worth of work in what they call their tender pipeline, and have had for years. However, while that figure has mostly ranged between 5 and 7 billion for the past few years, many of those contracts have been won and added to their current order book, and other work has replaced that work in the tender pipeline, so what I am saying is that a fair percentage of that tender pipeline work does actually get won by MAH and ends up in their WIH (order book) while other new contracts continue to be added to the tender pipeline (being the pipeline of opportunities which the company has or will put tenders in for), and those win rates don't seem to change when their share price is sold down or when they are bid up. The work doesn't care about investor sentiment - not a jot. So you can load up on them when they're down below 20 cps (cents per share) - which they have been regularly over the past three years, and trim them when they get up above 25 cps. Monadelphous (MND) and NRW Holdings (NWH) are two others I have made plenty of money on by buying low and selling high over the years. You don't need to sell out completely, I tend to keep a core position and just add to it at low levels and trim it at higher levels. They are businesses I believe I know well, and they are NOT going broke. Anyway, sorry I can't help with Leigh Creek Energy Crabby, but I think you're on the right track.