Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Former CIA Agent Exposes the Truth About Trafficking

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Michael Rosenbaum. Hey guys, Tom Welling. Look, we've both played heroes. And we both played villains. But in the real life, there are no reshoots, no stuntmen, or sequels. We all have made mistakes. We're all human. Making one bad decision can not only land you in jail, but could also put yourself and other people around you in serious risk.

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Starting point is 00:00:28 Paid for by NHTSA. What is up? Welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you with Nick McKinley. Nick is a Harvard graduate, former military special operations, worked for a kinetic team at the CIA, and is now an entrepreneur with a spin. Nick is also the founder of DeliverFund.org, which is a private, nonprofit, focused on stopping human trafficking, reducing human trafficking in the United States in the world by 80%.

Starting point is 00:01:03 And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I'm a huge believer in the protection of our children and the development of our children and the fact that the United States is the number one market for human and sex trafficking in the world is deplorable in the purest sense of that name. And specifically, Nick talks about how he was able to achieve the success of graduating from a university like harford special operations kinetic team at the cia and why he is applying all those skills all that knowledge that he developed to fighting human and sex trafficking guys i'm going to have a link below to deliver fun dot org if this is something

Starting point is 00:01:47 that you believe in if you believe that it is our responsibility as americans as adults to protect our children then i highly recommend you scroll down donate to deliver fun Liverfund.org. You can give every dollar counts. You can give 10 bucks. It doesn't really matter. It takes two minutes to do. And we can start to fight,

Starting point is 00:02:07 to fight back against this absolutely horrific activity that is happening in our country. This is an incredible episode. Nick is just filled with knowledge and his achievement. And the way he describes what we can start doing to manifest the things in our life that we want to happen.

Starting point is 00:02:24 This is one of those episodes. It's like, this is why I do this show. This is why I put the time in. This is why I create these episodes is for these types of conversations, these types of missions. And I hope that you will take just the two minutes to scroll down or just type it in, deliverfund. Dot org, donate today. And let's keep fighting human trafficking in this country. Guys, I give you Nick McKinley.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Art of Man, well, dude, Nick, it is awesome to have you on the show, dude. and I will tell you, like, have had, dude, I've had close to 350 guests on this show over the last, you know, whatever, however many years. And you were one of the toughest to prepare for because of the breadth and depth of shit that you have done in your life. Now, before we went live, you referred to yourself as a nonlinear thinker, which speaks to my heart because it, you know, for any, for the audience, they know, I love bringing in all different people, right? and you said something, and this is where I want to start, like your non-linear thinking style, you know, allows you to examine questions such as, how do you go so impossibly big, right,

Starting point is 00:03:59 that no one thinks it's possible? So I want to start there. Like, how do people grab this mindset? Because we know a large percentage of the population of people that are listening to this show right now have incredible talent, all the ability it means to make things happen, but they're stuck and it's often because they're thinking too small.

Starting point is 00:04:17 So let's start at the biggest question. How do we make these incredibly big things happen? Purpose. It's that simple. When people are thinking too small, I would say it's usually because they're thinking about themselves. Their goal is like, oh, I want to build the mastermind class

Starting point is 00:04:35 that's going to get me the freedom that I want so that I can have the boat that I want so that I can drop ship stuff from Alibaba on a beach somewhere while I drink my time. Right. It's I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. God did not create us to serve ourselves, right? He created us to serve a greater purpose. And so it's what I call the dragon that you are made to slay.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Like, what is the problem in the world? What is the problem in society? What is the thing that just haunts you and bothers you? And that is your purpose. That's what you were designed to do. So I do a lot of coaching of entrepreneurs and companies that I'm invested in and work with venture capital firms for the leaders that they're investing in, right? Because one of the best ways for them to protect that investment is to make sure that the leader doesn't collapse.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Yes, under the weight of that investment. And so one of the questions that I like to ask all of these people is, what is the one thing that you would do if you were independently wealthy? And that usually starts an exercise if they go through well, like, oh, man, I would retire my parents and I would do this for this person and I would, I've always wanted to travel. And okay, so they get, they get all the like me stuff out of the way. Like, great. You 48 months of playing around, you still have more money than any number of generations could ever spend.

Starting point is 00:06:15 What are you going to do with the rest of your life now? Because you can't just travel. You can't just sit on the beach your whole life. I mean, I guess some people can, but like, if you're one of those people, you should probably stop listening to this podcast right now. Also, dude, those are the people who fall apart. Those are the ones that you read the stories about that become alcoholics or get drug addicted. or do all this crazy stuff because they're lost and it's like a ship and sea with no direction,

Starting point is 00:06:40 right? I mean, that's what happens if you don't find this purpose, right? Right. They're so internally focused. So what is the problem? What is the dragon that you're going to go slay? So for me, it's commercial sex trafficking primarily of children. Like that is what I've focused on with my nonprofit companies.

Starting point is 00:07:03 It's what I'm focused on on my for-profit companies. It's a revenue generator there. It's a, an industry, a weapon for industry to actually wield against that dragon. Like that's where I'm focused, right? And I think that's it. You've got to find the purpose. And you can't take steps. You can't create a framework.

Starting point is 00:07:27 You can't do all of these things that people talk about that are downstream of purpose, right? Purpose is the glacier that is that melts into the strong. of your life. So what is that purpose? And that purpose better be bigger than yourself. And I think there are there's so many good examples of this that people look to. And I'm not, I'm not saying that any of these people are obviously perfect and they all have their own problems. But when you look to the Bezos and you look to the musks and the Steve Jobs and the people who've been hyper successful in business, I would even say Zuckerberg, right, as a great example. And the Google founders, when you look at them, what are they doing today?

Starting point is 00:08:11 There's some of the richest people on the planet, wealthiest people on the planet. They have achieved the level of wealth that no measure of generations could ever spend. And what are they doing? They're getting up every day and they're going to work. A couple of billionaires I know are some of the hardest people, some of the hardest working people I know. They have all of the wealth that they could possibly ever need. and yet they're still working 10 plus hours a day.

Starting point is 00:08:38 And when you ask them why, it's because they have a goal and a singular purpose that they're focused on solving. So a billionaire that I know is investing in cancer treatments because his mother died of cancer. And he's like, it shouldn't be that way. And so he's just all in on biotech. Another one that I know is really doesn't like the way that society is unfolding. And in the divisions among the people are unfolding. things that media are doing. So he just was like, you know what, forget it. I'm worth $200 million.

Starting point is 00:09:09 I'm going to go create a new media company and on and on. And so that is, that really is what it comes down to. It's just you've got to find a dragon to slay and then start taking the steps required to go slay that dragon. Why do you think societally, at least a loud faction that looks at Bezos, Jobs, Musk, you know, and vilifies them for their continued pursuit at that mission. Is it is it misunderstanding? Is it jealousy? Is it this kind of is it just insecurity? Is it a lack of education?

Starting point is 00:09:46 Like to me, I look at someone like, this is something that has bothered me a lot recently. Because I look at Elon Musk and maybe it's because I can detach some of his personality or life things that make him who he is from all the good that this human being is creating in terms of, you know, you don't have to like all his products, but the dude is creating things that seemingly are society. He's executing.

Starting point is 00:10:12 Yeah. Okay. So, like, I look at that. And then you have people over here shouting about how he's a demon and he's Hitler and he's, but, and I can't, and I'm usually pretty good at, at getting to the root of the psychology of where something comes from. And I have really struggled with this

Starting point is 00:10:31 because I thought I had it figured out. And then every once in a while, I'll get messages from people because, you know, maybe I'll reshare something that I think he said that was good or whatever. And they'll be like, and I'm like, I don't understand how you can see it that way. Like, what is going on with that mentality?

Starting point is 00:10:48 Why are we, why do we vilify? Why is there such a vocal portion of our population that vilifies people who just push hard with purpose? Like, why is that so offensive to some people? Because those people are the straight stick. And what I mean by that is the best way to point out that a stick is crooked is not to tell somebody that the stick is crooked. It's to lay a straight stick next to it. And oftentimes those people are the straight stick who those folks then are confronted by the fact that they're not doing very much.

Starting point is 00:11:23 and and I get terrible hate mail and I've had some of the biggest players in the pornography industry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to go after me personally which I consider that a badge of honor that means that I'm getting the dragon's attention and the dragon doesn't like it and that means I'm being effective because if you aren't getting attacked if people aren't saying bad things about you guess what you're probably not not really being that effective. And there are so many people in our society who have just gotten so comfortable. And like that is their life's goal, right?

Starting point is 00:12:05 They want to pursue their own comfort. And that means that the people who are actively working to better society. Now, they may not necessarily agree with the way that they're actively working to better society, but all the same, people who are executing on that purpose, they're executing on the plan, they're very clearly putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak, that makes everybody else essentially look at themselves in the mirror and be confronted with the fact that they're not doing as much or they're not executing on things. And it is so much easier to destroy than it is to build. Think about how fast, how long

Starting point is 00:12:48 it took to build the house that you're sitting in right now or the office that you're sitting in, right? To build this studio and the office building that I'm sitting in right now. I mean, it was probably years in the making. Yet with some of the skills that I learned at the Central Intelligence Agency and in military special ops, I could level this building in a matter of minutes. And so it's so much easier to destroy. And so to destroy is the lazy man's path. To destroy is this.

Starting point is 00:13:18 the oh, well, this person is executing and building and doing all these things. And so instead of just saying, I don't agree with the way you do, you're doing these things. So I'm going to go build better. Instead, they say, I don't, you're a terrible human. When you can't attack the argument, you attack the person. And I think another part of this is that drive and intellect are not equally distributed. And I have no idea who said it. It definitely wasn't wisdom coming from me.

Starting point is 00:13:52 I stole this from somebody at some point, but paraphrasing, somebody famous once said, something to the tune of stupid people talk about people and intelligent people talk about ideas. Yeah. And so if you can't attack the idea because you can't intellectually hang, like you intellectually can't attack. the idea, then what are you going to do? You're going to attack the person. I think you're right. I think that, you know, when you dig into who puts these messages out about, you know, any of these individuals that are that are creating and building and trying, you know, like you said, you don't have to agree with their, how they're going about it, but they are, they are purposely efforting to try to make society better. When you see the people who are coming at them,

Starting point is 00:14:41 none of them produce anything. Right. They just talk. It's just. You are never going to get hate from somebody who's done more than you. Yeah. It always comes from the people who have done less than than you. I mean, I, I have mentors that I surround myself with who, who will call balls and strikes. I'd say, Nick, we don't think you should have done that. You're really screwed up here. Have you thought about doing this differently? And, and I listened to them. And every single one of them is economies of scale more successful than I am. They've forgotten more about their levels of expertise than I will ever know, for the most part, probably better people than I could ever be. And yet I learned from them and I listen to them.

Starting point is 00:15:25 And never, never do I get hate from those people. It's always from people who've done less. And I've had people attack me to say, oh, well, Nick was in special ops, but he didn't really do that much. I was like, okay, well, I guess my 14 combat deployments didn't really count. Oh, well, Nick was at the CIA, but, you know, it's not like he was really doing operations. Okay, well, I guess my 16 combat deployments there don't really count, right? Well, Nick may have went to Harvard, but it was extension, so it doesn't really count. I'm like, oh, really? I had to pass the same test as everybody else to get in, right?

Starting point is 00:15:58 I mean, it's so, well, yeah, Nick was an entrepreneur, and yeah, he's had this nonprofit that's been around for 10 years and one technology company, and now he's got another one and their venture capital backed, but that's just because insert excuse on why I can't do the same thing. What they don't know is that I'm 47 years old. I've never had a vacation in my entire adult life because I have just always been executing on the mission. I have a few hobbies because it's kind of what you need for health. But that's the reason that I do them. That or it's, you know, things that I'm going to do with my kids and my family because that has to be mission number one. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:36 But beyond that, it's like, no, like, what do I want to do? Well, I've got half a day where I've got nothing. to do? Awesome. I've got I've got work to do because my goal is so impossibly big that there's no possible way that I will reach it if I don't continually work on it. Let's say someone is sitting here listening to this and has the self-awareness to say, you know, maybe I have been, I've been a little critical, I've been a little snipey, I've been a little, you know, insert critical from and coming from a place of of insecurity or etc. And they want to start, but they would like to change this about themselves.

Starting point is 00:17:17 How would you recommend someone who is like, you know, I don't like this about myself? I hear what Nick's saying. I believe him. I don't want to be this person. I've kind of found myself in this place. How would you recommend someone start to work through maybe moving from a destruction mentality to a building mentality? Stop being who you are and start being who got.

Starting point is 00:17:40 designed you to be. We, we have this, our two selves. And these two selves, if anybody is ever honest with themselves, they both exist, right? You have the good side of you and the bad side of you. And which side gets stronger, the side that you feed. So, so it's constantly trying to become what Aristopalvian, used the word praus, which basically means that it was used to describe a warhorse, right? This extremely powerful horse that was trained and designed to run into battle and run people over.

Starting point is 00:18:25 And right, it was a destruction machine. Yet that powerful horse was under the control of the writer. And so the question is, what are you under control over of, right? What has control of you? I have zero social media apps on my phone. Those are on another phone. And the reason why is because I'm not going to sit there and just scroll the, you know, Doom Scroll X or Instagram or any of these different platforms because I don't want to feed that side of me. And the algorithms are going to like, like I know I can't defeat the algorithms.

Starting point is 00:19:02 So the only way I can defeat those algorithms is to put it on something else so that the phone that I have with me all. the time doesn't have any of that stuff on it. So taking deliberate steps to not be that person anymore, if that makes sense, right? I mean, with the training I have from obviously special ops in the military, you know, a kinetic unit at the CIA, what are the most selective units at the CIA? I know how to destroy some things. And I'm pretty good at it. But that was that was the then me.

Starting point is 00:19:37 The now me is building things, right? I'm building AI platforms. I'm building data sets for industry. I'm building a nonprofit that is facilitating counter human trafficking operations for law enforcement at an extreme scale. Right? I'm building things. I'm trying to make the world a significantly better place. And what I used to do was primarily destruction related, but it was the end goal was to make the world.

Starting point is 00:20:06 was to make the world a safer place, whether or not we made the world better, history will tell. But it was definitely to make the world a safer place in the short and medium term, at least. Do you think you were a naturally disciplined person which made special ops and CIA work fit for you? Or did those organizations in your time

Starting point is 00:20:29 inside of them help mold that discipline? It's a really interesting question. The Special Operations community has been spending billions of dollars over its lifetime trying to figure out that very question. How can you have somebody who has an absolutely terrible childhood and somebody who has a normal childhood and somebody who has an extraordinary childhood all end up graduating? and yet the same versions of those people also didn't graduate. They've been trying to figure out that for years and nobody really knows. I know for me, it has, you know, there's the guys like Jocko who like to talk about discipline and yeah, that's a downstream effect of a decision.

Starting point is 00:21:20 So when I went into Pararescue, I knew that I had a 92% chance of not making it, right? eight out of 100 people graduate statistically, at least at the time. I have no idea what it is now. But I decided I was going to be one of those eight. It's that simple. There was no motivation, there was no discipline. I just decided I was going to be one of those eight. Getting into the CIA. I just decided that I was going to go work at the CIA, getting into Harvard. I just decided I was going to get into Harvard. And I think when you make the decision that something is going to happen, and you're not, you know, like you're not jumping off a cliff deciding that you can suddenly fly, right? It's when you're when you're doing things that are logical and makes sense, they may not make sense to the entire world, but they make sense to you. I think this is every entrepreneur's journey.

Starting point is 00:22:16 Everybody thinks you're crazy until until you're successful and then they don't. So if you are just, if you just decide that you're going to go do something, then you will continually move your feet in that direction, and you'll stumble and you'll fall and you'll learn from those failures and you'll get up and you'll do it again. I think too many times when people quit, the people who quit in my special up selection class or the guys who didn't make it in my CIA selection class,

Starting point is 00:22:46 they all were people who hadn't really decided what it was that they were going to do. They didn't decide for sure that they, that they wanted to be in the Air Force special ops community. They hadn't decided for sure that they wanted to be at the Central Intelligence Agency. They were just kind of kicking the tires. And that, I think, is the primary reason why they failed. And I think it's the same thing for entrepreneurs. Yeah, I completely agree with this mindset.

Starting point is 00:23:16 Kobe's got a great, he's said it a couple different times, so I'm paraphrasing now. But it's essentially, once he had this philosophy, if he didn't negotiate with himself, right? So once he made a decision, I'm going to insert whatever his goal was, whatever the things were he needed to do to hit that goal, he just simply didn't go. He's like, he just turned off in his brain the,

Starting point is 00:23:38 well, you know, I worked out yesterday, and I went a little hard yesterday. So today I'm going to do, I'm going to, you know, dial it back a little. It's like, no, I committed to two hours or whatever, you know, whatever was of this amount of work at this effort level every day or, you know, whatever the cadence was. and he simply didn't negotiate with himself. And I think what I love about that is the simplicity of what you're saying

Starting point is 00:24:00 and this idea of like, just make a decision and then don't negotiate because the path to being successful as an entrepreneur is fairly simple. It's incredibly difficult. But what you need to do when you met like, like take, you know, take making the eight out of the 100 when you're getting in special ops, right? I'm assuming the path is simple. Getting there is very difficult. But just in your brain,

Starting point is 00:24:28 I need to have this amount of aerobic fitness, this amount of strength. I need to know these skills. I need to perform these five things, you know, whatever they are, right? Like, it's not like it's a secret what you need to do, but you just need to be able to do these things. So it's like instead of constantly negotiating

Starting point is 00:24:44 and trying to find a hack and a shortcut and a this and well, I'm good at this one. I don't necessarily have to be as good at this one. It's like, no, no. Here's the five things you need to do to be, to hit your goal. Do them. The pain, the difficulty is not in the things you need to do. It's consistently showing up to do the things.

Starting point is 00:25:03 And that's why there's 10 bazillion $27 courses that exist out there for all these random things is because everyone's searching for this magical how to when you don't need the how to. You're going to figure it out if you just show. show up every day and do the things that you know you need to do. It's simple, just not easy, I guess. Does that make sense? My framing that properly?

Starting point is 00:25:26 It makes absolutely sense. In fact, I would say it's so simple that people are skeptical of how simple it is. You know what the number one thing you need to do to make it into a special ops program is the number one thing that you need to do? No. Don't quit. Hmm. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:49 What's the number one thing that an entrepreneur needs to do? Don't quit. You hear these entrepreneur stories and oh, look at how this person was successful overnight. They don't realize what people don't realize is they tried three companies before that that all failed. And the fourth was an overnight success that took 11 years. So, so none of it, like I've never seen anybody who was an overnight success. You look at the work that Kobe put in. You look at the work that Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or, you know, any of these people put in, right?

Starting point is 00:26:27 That Musk is putting in, that Bezos put in, that jobs put in. I mean, any of these folks, if you look at the work that they put in, then they just eventually started tripping over success. And but it's it's they didn't quit and they just continually advance the ball. And I think part of the problem that we run into in the business and entrepreneurship community is that we get addicted to fighting battles. So I just put out a substack on this very issue. I put it on LinkedIn as well. And I know this personally because in my old world, as an operator, we were, we got kind of addicted to the fight. We weren't really thinking about the strategic wins and what was going on.

Starting point is 00:27:12 all we knew was, hey, go to this country and go save good guys, kill bad guys, and do that on repeat. And so it was pretty binary because, okay, well, there's a certain set of skills that we need to be able to do that. I do not need to understand computer science and AI to rescue good guys and kill bad guys. Super simple. But then at the CIA, things kind of changed and it got a lot more strategic because now very, very very, very small teams operating with virtually no supervision. And we were kind of able to do really whatever we wanted and kind of came up with our own mission. So suddenly the strategic objectives became extremely important because instead of having missions handed down from a higher headquarters,

Starting point is 00:28:02 we were developing our own missions and doing our own work and deciding what it was we were going to do. and the agency gave us all the rope in the world we wanted. However, they made it very clear that if we hung ourselves, they weren't going to come cut us down. We had to start thinking more strategically. And while in my old world as an operator, right, the hard skills are a lot of fun, right? The combatives and the CQB and the gunwork, right? It's all really fun. It's fun stuff.

Starting point is 00:28:31 But that's not what moves the needle strategically. It moves the needle tactically, and that's the foundation. But suddenly I started saying, saying, okay, I see where the future is going. I see where I'm paying attention to the wars that are that are rolling out around me. When I'm not on deployment, I'm going to sign up for that computer science course. I'm going to sign up to go learn that new data analysis tool. I'm going to go hang out with the nerds. I'm going to go check out, you know, 12 years ago this like really cool technology called AI that they were rolling out, right? I'm going to go learn all this stuff.

Starting point is 00:29:04 Well, here we are 12 years later after making those kinds of decisions. And the decisions that I made 12 years ago are what are informing what I do today. So people will say, well, oh, yeah, Nick's this like, you know, keyboard guy. But then the people who know me from the past are like, oh, no, like Nick's a shooter. But then people who know me from undergrad are like, oh, no, Nick was the like super nerd. well, I'm actually all of those things. Each one of those groups of people only got a slight window into who I was. And what that turned into was now I can build whatever it is that I want to build

Starting point is 00:29:47 because I put in all the work 12 years ago, 22 years ago, maybe even 32 years ago, to lead to the holidays are here and that means it's the most. most wonderful time of the year to save with racketon. Use racketon to stack cash back from your favorite stores on top of holiday sales. That's savings on savings. With rackettin, you can get cash back on gifts for everyone on your list, from toys for the kids to kitchen gear for the person who loves to cook, to electronics for everyone. You can even save on something for yourself. Just shop the stores you love and cashback is automatically added to your account. And you can get paid with gift cards, PayPal, or check, or eligible American Express card members can even

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Starting point is 00:31:24 including possible loss of principle, Alps Distributors, Inc. distributor. To the point that I'm at today And I think the big problem that entrepreneurs run into or that their detractors run into is they don't want to put in that work. And that's okay. We don't need everybody in the world to be launching rockets to Mars or trying to solve the commercial sex trafficking issue. We don't need everybody to be doing that. But don't demonize the people who are just because they're not living like you are. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:52 And I'll be honest with you. That's why I do this show is I've always wanted it to be a home for unreasonable. people to learn from other unreasonable people, right? Like that's that's the idea. And it came from, you know, my own journey as an entrepreneur and growing in my career and the various things that I've done. I've been referred to as unreasonable so many times. It was actually out of honor, isn't it?

Starting point is 00:32:14 It was actually on one of the letters when I was fired from a job was, you know, the despite your performance, the unreasonable nature that you take with your team, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, so, so hitting the goals. happy team, those didn't matter. It was that I didn't cow toe to the leadership with an unreasonable. Now, some of that is me learning and being immature, right? I probably could handle myself better at certain point.

Starting point is 00:32:39 But the other side of it was I also was keenly aware coming from where I came from, you know, I grew up in a household where I was blessed with two loving parents, but we were, we did not have any. I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a tiny town of 900 people. You know, I mean, like we would get one new shirt and one new pair of pants for the whole school year. and you would just wear the shit from the last year with holes in it and stains and your one new stuff. Like that was how I grew up, right? So like, I learned very early that looking around where every role model was either an alcoholic or a pothead or worse and, you know, looking and going, the only way out of here is to become a different version of all these people is to become this person who does different things, who does seemingly what they would consider unreasonable things, like not getting hammered every night.

Starting point is 00:33:28 not, you know, being a freaking clown and not becoming a drug dealer. You know what I mean? Like those, it was unreasonable for me to like beyond, you know, being an athlete and focusing on getting good grades and, you know, those were like unreasonable things at that time, which may sound crazy to some of you, but from where I came from, very, very unreasonable. And because you were the straight stick to that community. Yes. You were a reminder of what they could be, but they were choosing not to be.

Starting point is 00:33:52 And for that reason, I literally talked to two people from high school for that exact reason, right? Now, I'm fine with that. That's not something I even concern myself with, but it's, but it is an interesting thing. And what I hear you saying is like, look, like, these are all choices that we, we get in life to make. And I think what I would hope people take from this if you aren't willing to put in that extra effort is be okay with where you are and the choices that you make. Like you said, it's okay to say, you know what I want to do? At 4.30 every day, I want work to be done. I don't want to think about it again.

Starting point is 00:34:26 I'm going to hang out with my family, watch TV, Netflix with the spouse, you know, whatever. And that's what I want my life to be. And it's like, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, God bless you for that. If that's what you want, great. But what I think where I do judge those people is in then turning around and vilifying those who say, I'm going to, I'm going to see my kids less in exchange for this thing that I want to get done. That's the decision. That's the math they made. You don't have to agree with their math,

Starting point is 00:35:00 but that's the decision they made. And I just, what bothers me is that, uh, and is this idea that like, you get to choose exactly who you want to be, the life you want to live, right? Your priorities exactly. You're creating your building. That's great. But there's no reason for someone who chooses a different path that then tear you down because your path is different. And I think that's where from a communication standpoint, you know, our political class has completely lost their mind. So we can't even look to them anymore. You know, it's funny. I was talking to my kids the other day.

Starting point is 00:35:29 I was at my kids play baseball and I was talking to one of the other dads and we were just kind of standing around before practice and, you know, everyone's just kind of getting their stuff together. And I don't know how this came up, but I was like, remember when being the president? Like that's, that was like the highest goal. Like when I was a kid and everyone's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Right? It was like, like the really ambitious kids were like, I want to be the president.

Starting point is 00:35:49 I was like, ooh, that's awesome. You want to be the president? They don't even think that way today. Like our politicians have so. So lost that respect and that that political kind of talking head class because of the nature of their communication. And frankly, except for a few, none of them create or have created anything. Literally, it's just been these narratives that literally the only thing they create is narratives to try to get elected. And it's it's sad that we've lost that.

Starting point is 00:36:19 But I want to I want to turn a little bit to the, um, um, um, um, to your fund and to the work in sex trafficking. Where did this come from? Why did that become such a huge part of your mission? Like, where did this come from? The short story is, and I've told this, you know, a lot of times on, you know, podcasts like Patrick Bet David and stuff in much longer form, is I'm at the CIA,

Starting point is 00:36:47 was working counterterrorism issues with a J-Soc counterpart. We came across what I like to call smoking gun intel. on a child trafficker that was moving children across the Afghanistan, Pakistan border, and basically selling them for whatever reason. And we figured like, okay, we now know this intel. Trafficking isn't our mission. It's somebody else's mission. We're going to write this intel up.

Starting point is 00:37:14 It's going to go through the process and end up in the right person's hands. But it turned out there was no right person's hands for the intel to land. And that made me really curious. Human trafficking wasn't at the time a mandatory presidential reporting requirement. I don't think it is still to this day. And that got me really curious. And when you have access to systems at the Central Intelligence Agency, which like when you're at the CIA and you have the highest clearance that you can possibly get in the government,

Starting point is 00:37:49 there's nothing that you can't reach down into. Now, if you start reaching down into classified programs that you have no business reaching down into, like some people are going to come knock on your door and ask you some questions. But beyond that, you can kind of get to anything that you need to get to. So I started hunting for who's got the ball on the human trafficking issue and is running it towards the end zone and figured out that there was really nobody. And that then led me kind of deeper into learning about human trafficking. And I learned that dollar for dollar, the largest human trafficking market in the world is the United States of America. And that just blew my mind because I was just still thinking that a human

Starting point is 00:38:29 trafficking was an over there issue, not an over here issue. What does that mean we're the biggest human trafficker because I was at a conversation? No, we're the biggest human trafficking market, as in we have the most customers and we spend as a country the most money on purchasing primarily children and young girls for sex. That is something that we, the United States, States of America are the number one in the world on. Trump mentioned that as one of the reasons why he wanted to shut down the border. And I had a friend of mine who's a Democrat reach out and say, you know, this is another one of the ways that he deflects from, you know, his Nazi, whatever.

Starting point is 00:39:09 It was kind of crazy. But completely disregarding this idea of human trafficking. I think for a lot of, for a lot of like everyday Americans in particular, we see yourselves as a good guys, right? And I had this conversation actually with my sister, who is slowly. converting from a liberal to more conservative mindset. It's only taken me 36 years, but I'm getting her there. And I don't mean to be, I actually don't necessarily align with the political parties because

Starting point is 00:39:36 I think she has kids and she pays taxes, meaning with taxes now. She has a house and she's paying taxes now. She's still working on the kid. Funny how that happens. Yeah, but all of a sudden she buys a home and has to pay taxes and is slowly converting. But I brought this issue up to her and I, you know, because she's a very thought, like, she's one of those people who moved to the Democrat Party because she's just got this enormous, like she's so caring, right?

Starting point is 00:40:00 Animals, children, she helps the disabled. She's a wonderful human being, like, wonderful. And so, like, she struggles because she's always seen like this idea of, and I really don't want to make this political, but like the left is being the good guys, right? And, you know, and I come back to it. I'm like, there aren't good guys, like, you're thinking about it wrong. Like, there's no good guys and bad guys. Like, that's not necessarily how the world works.

Starting point is 00:40:26 Like, there are bad people who do evil things for sure, but we can't put them in these buckets. But I brought up the human trafficking, the sex trafficking, as an issue. And she was like, no, that's not real. That's all misinformation. Like, where can, where, like, obviously, I know you got have resources at Deliver Fund, but like, I, how do we make this tangible for people to understand what is actually fucking, I mean, this is one of the most horrific things that happens in our world, right? Maybe, you know, it's certainly, it's there at the top level of horrific things that can possibly happen being fucking trafficked into this country and having to have sex as a minor or worse.

Starting point is 00:41:04 It's not even just being trafficked into the country. So when I learned that human trafficking in the United States, right, dollar for dollar, largest human trafficking market in the world, my mind was blown because I'm like, wait a minute. Here I am in Afghanistan. We can kill people with flying robots from 6,000 miles away, but we can't do anything about this, like, child trafficking issue. And I'm still thinking it's like, oh, it's coming across the border and things like that. And that does happen, right? I mean, Trump is not wrong. It does happen.

Starting point is 00:41:36 And there are traffickers who come in here and they bring children with them and they recycle children across the border and all that. But according to the DOJ, 86% of the victims in their cases are U.S. citizens. over 70% of the human traffickers are U.S. citizens. So whether it's traffickers coming across the border or it's traffickers who are already in our country, they're praying upon our children. And the reason why is because of the Internet. I mean, in my day, you know, the creep, right, pre-internet, the creepy guy on the wrong side of town, everybody knew, keep your kids away from him. And the only got Pete kids that he could abuse were really the kids that he could abuse were really the kids that he. could get access to, which were usually lower socioeconomic demographic, undersupervised,

Starting point is 00:42:21 mom's working three jobs, no dad, right? I mean, the typical story. Now, because of the internet and, you know, poverty being relative to what you compare it to, the girl with a thousand dollars shoes in the private school is impoverished compared to the girls with the $2,000 shoes. And so she gets on her phone because her parents are checked out, right? Mom's on Xanax and wine and dad is just working too much to be, you know, to be relative, you know, or to be a good influence in her life and understand what's going on. And so she gets on her phone and she makes a couple of bad decisions, trying to get some extra money. And next thing you know, you have a girl who's being trafficked out of an $80,000 private school. That is a real

Starting point is 00:43:06 story that we were involved in. And she was going to school every day and being trafficked in the evening and everybody just knew that her grades were suffering and she was she was getting you know her mental health was was getting worse but nobody knew what was going on so so the internet gave all the predators access to every child in the country and really around the world who has who has a smartphone or a gaming console we've got plenty of cases where that happened and so that was my kind of epiphany as a CIA officer to say wait a minute again most powerful military, economic, and intelligence might the world has ever seen. And yet our own children are being trafficked.

Starting point is 00:43:50 We got to do something about this. And then that's where I took my skills, training, and created a fund, right, called Deliver Fund, to be able to fund the equipping, training, and advising of law enforcement officers to help them be able to close human trafficking cases and find human traffickers and put them in bars. behind bars better, faster and cheaper. That was the overall goal, which obviously then also I have for-profit companies that build technology and provide that technology to deliver fund for free and then deliver fund as its own engineers, that it's building technology. And so we have this consortium, right, this ecosystem for good that's all centered around this one problem of, of. Hear that?

Starting point is 00:44:40 That's me in Tokyo. learning to make sushi from a master. How did I get here? I invested wisely. Now the only thing I worry about is using too much wasabi. Get where you're going with Spy, the world's most traded ETF. Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the funds investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit State Street.com slash IM for prospectus containing this and other information.

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Starting point is 00:45:38 fighting child sex trafficking in the United States of America, which then translates to other Western countries. And so that was kind of the origin story. And that I think is the thing that people need to understand is trafficking is not predominantly a border issue. It is connected to the border. I'm not saying it's not. But predominantly it's the trafficker from L.A. who's moving through Oklahoma on his way to Chicago, who, who, who, has been targeting a couple of 14-year-old girls in rural America and grabs them,

Starting point is 00:46:15 drugs them, takes them to Chicago and starts selling them. That's human trafficking in America. I don't think people know that. I mean, honestly, what you just said, I mean, this is something that I've even looked into. I had no idea that this was predominantly inside the States issue. Why is this not like, why is this not the most unified topic? Like, like, when the movie, and I cannot believe that I'm forgetting the name of the movie that came out about the guy that went down to Mexico.

Starting point is 00:46:42 It's a fiction. Yeah. It's all come out in the media that that movie was a fiction. But it at least helped to shine a little bit of a spotlight on. But it wasn't a unifying topic. Even if it's a whole fiction just to bring awareness to the topic, right? Like even, you know, that being true, how it, that movie got immense hate. And I'm like, I just can't wrap my head around.

Starting point is 00:47:06 I mean, this seems like the most unifying topic that should exist. We do not want our children to be sex trafficked. Full stop. Yeah, full stop. Who, like, you would think everyone would be kumbaya, arms locked. Like, let's find these people. Let's go frigging get them. Like, like, I can't understand.

Starting point is 00:47:23 Like, what is the counter argument? Why, why are there not, you know, and maybe I'm sure you ought to have politicians that are behind what you're doing and helping you at some level. but like, how is our political class not just like this has to end, period, let's go get them. Like, we can have a war on on drugs and marijuana, you know. Exactly. We can't have a war on kids getting trafficked. Like, I don't understand the mentality. Like, what is the counter argument to what you're saying?

Starting point is 00:47:51 How could anyone push back against this? Well, think about this. We have a drug enforcement agency, yet 90% of drugs are actually legal. 90% of the drugs that they enforce are actually legal. And so we have an entire multi-billion dollar agency that's focused around the illicit sale of legal commodities by and large. Fentanyl is legal, right? I've got some kidney disease because of some, you know, stuff that happened to me in as a military and the CIA. And so I have to go in for these like surgeries and stuff.

Starting point is 00:48:21 They get me fentanyl. Right? It's hyper useful. When you look at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Alcohol. tobacco and firearms are all legal. One of those firearms is actually a constitutionally protected commodity, yet we have this entire bureaucracy that spends billions of dollars fighting what is the illicit sale of those legal commodities. 100% of human slavery, which is what we're talking about when we talk about, you know, sex trafficking is we're talking about people who are being enslaved

Starting point is 00:48:50 and then forced to do these things. 100% of human slavery is illegal for the 13th Amendment. and yet we don't have a singularly focused agency on human trafficking. And that's not to take away from those agencies. Department of Homeland Security, the DOJ, the FBI, they are doing the absolute best that they can, right? But the major majority of the heavy lifting and law enforcement goes to state and local law enforcement officers. When was the last time you were pulled over by an FBI agent for speeding? Right. And so it's a state and local law enforcement officers that are doing the heavy lifting and they have no resources, no anything.

Starting point is 00:49:22 And I think there's a large part of the reason for this is that there's a massive overlap. And I do mean massive overlap. And a lot of your male listeners are about to get real uncomfortable, which means I'm doing my job. A massive overlap between human trafficking and strip clubs and pornography. So if you have an only fans, if you're one of these guys who participates in like only fans and porn hub and things like that, there is a and you do it regularly there is virtually a it's not a non-zero chance but it's a very very small chance that you have actually fed money into the human trafficking market um do you you have these uh you know and and so the guy who likes to go to the strip clubs doesn't want to hear that

Starting point is 00:50:16 and so of course just puts it out of his mind never mind the fact that we have data we have photos We have indisputable proof that this is happening. There's this incredible book about Pornhub and the absolute evil that happens on that platform called Takedown. Lila McAway, absolute hero for the work that she did in helping to take a lot of the child pornography off of Pornhub and a lot of the rape videos and things like that and a lot of the trafficking videos.

Starting point is 00:50:48 when you have these parts of our society that are the over-sexualization of our society that are treating women and girls as commodities, and then you have predominantly men, and again, I said we are the largest human trafficking market in the world, which means that statistically 30% of the men who are listening to this right now are engaged in those activities, and they like those activities. And so they don't want somebody coming along and telling you. the truth about those activities. That's why we get so much pushback. And as soon as I see, it's really funny when I go to talk to groups of, you know, donors or investors or whoever about the human trafficking issue, inevitably I'll have one or two men come up to me and be like, but human trafficking, isn't that like, isn't that the oldest trade in the world? I go, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:51:44 I was talking about human trafficking and you brought a prostitution. you just told me everything I need to know about you and what you're into and the types of things that you like and why men like me are extremely confronting and this gets back to the slaying the dragons so to speak right it's why I personally absolutely hate the existence of of the things that people like like Andrew and Tristan Tate say right they're like oh women are property I mean that there's that that's unden liable. Like, like, they have, they've said that in text messages. Like, we have that in court documents. And yet they, like, they, the way that that they are training other men is absolutely reprehensible. And what I find is that the men that they're training are living in their mom's basement. They don't have the courage to go volunteer for the military, much less special ops. They're not going to go try to get into a good university. They're not going to try to go to the CIA. They're not going to actually try to go slay a dragon.

Starting point is 00:52:46 and they're basically perpetual victims. So I think the men listening have a choice to make. So are you a perpetual victim? And you're like, well, I can't get a girlfriend. And so I'm going to go do this porn thing or this strip club thing. Or I'm going to go visit this woman who's a prostitute, which by the way, about 80% of what you think is prostitution is actually human trafficking by the best data that we can find. Or are you just going to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make a decision that you're

Starting point is 00:53:13 going to go be a better man? And the reason I really focus on men here is because that human trafficking market, it's supply and demand generated, and the demand is generated by men. If men didn't want the product, there would be no market and they would try to sell the product someplace else. I mean, that's how it works. I mean, it is. So if men like us don't stand up to the men who are creating the demand, then what are, I mean, what are we really standing for? Dude, this is why I was so excited to have you on the show.

Starting point is 00:53:44 because like these are the kind of things that just drive me absolutely crazy. You know, I'm a firm, I'm a huge fan of Jordan Peterson and his mindset and the way he approaches things. And he has this mentality act as if, right? And it started out of his belief in God. When he first started, I found Jordan Peterson before 12 Rules for Life, which was a book that changed my life. But I found him because he did a 17 episode series on Genesis, right?

Starting point is 00:54:12 So where he breaks down an hour and a half chunk. I'll go check that out. I really recommend. You got to go way back in his archive, but you'll find it. It's 17 episodes. It's long. But he approaches it from a very pragmatic standpoint. And what he says is, because at the time, he didn't, he wasn't, he believed in the lessons,

Starting point is 00:54:31 but hadn't necessarily, hadn't necessarily figured out his true relationship to God. So people would ask him all the time at that time. This is like 2015, 2016, 2016. he got asked a bunch, you know, do you believe in God? He would get that question constantly. And he said, what I believe is the Bible is the best set of rules for living a purpose-driven, fulfilled life. That's what I believe in the day. He goes, and my relation, in how I approach God is I don't, he goes, I don't know if he exists or not.

Starting point is 00:55:07 But I act as if he does. And he says, what that does is it is. What I know that's going to do mentally is push me in the direction to believing. I will believe at some point as I act through the lessons that Jesus taught us, right? So I think it's a wonderful mindset. So what I try to coach people and I talk about on the show too is like, okay, you're not that thing today. You're not the guy that can go to a community event and introduce yourself to a girl and have her be interested. You're not that guy today.

Starting point is 00:55:41 Okay. The only option you have is to act as if you were. Right. Just go act as if you were that guy. You don't have to be that guy. Pretend. Go pretend to be that guy. And what's going to happen is the more you pretend to be a fit guy, to be a guy that doesn't, you know, waste time on porno or what waste time on social media, right? The more you act as the person that you would like yourself to be, surprisingly and shockingly, you eventually become that person. It means start as an act. And this goes the same for entrepreneurs, right? You might not know what the fuck you're doing. But if you act as an entrepreneur act, solving problems, working through things,

Starting point is 00:56:23 all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like, holy shit. I'm like an entrepreneur that like builds stuff and runs companies. And, you know, all of a sudden you wake up and you're that thing. And but sorry for that diatri, but like it's the whole fake it till you make it thing. Like when I hear people say fake it till you make it, I'm like, no, that that's, that's, that's that's completely wrong. You shouldn't fake it till you make it. What you should do is you should do exactly what it is that you're saying.

Starting point is 00:56:50 Ryan, right? You should act as if you are that person, right? And that's what I'm talking about is like, so to decide, I am an entrepreneur, right? We go all the way back to the beginning. We say like, what's the secret, right? It's you find purpose and then you decide that you're going to act on that purpose. It's that simple. And so once you decide, I am an entrepreneur.

Starting point is 00:57:08 Well, that doesn't make you an entrepreneur. right but you're going to now if you start taking the steps to become an entrepreneur then you will eventually morph into that person and if you decide I'm going to have a strong marriage does that mean and let's just say your marriage is falling apart right and everything's going bad I decide I'm going to have a strong marriage does that mean that you'll be successful no it's the same thing as deciding that you're going to be an entrepreneur or deciding that I'm going to reduce commercial sex trafficking by 80% when I tell people that they're like you are grandiose and crazy and i say thank you right um in fact if you go

Starting point is 00:57:48 to my website which is just nick nIC mckinley dot com forward slash 10 points i actually lay out in explicit detail to include markov chain models right so so math models on exactly why i believe that that i can accomplish this right and it's not me right that that we collectively can accomplish this. And I put it out there publicly, which is probably, I mean, getting shot at actually isn't all that scary when you've done enough times. But for most people, that would probably be really scary. It's putting out something that public is actually scarier because it's like, all right, I am putting out a manifesto that I'm going to stand on. I'm telling the world what my purpose is and I'm driving towards this purpose. Doesn't mean I'll reach that goal? No. But what if I manage to,

Starting point is 00:58:38 and we managed to collectively reduce commercial sex trafficking by 80 or by 60%. We don't make the 80%. That's a huge win. Let's do that. All the way back to the first point, if you, and there's a book behind me that was written that kind of shares us to 10x is easier than 2x. If you shoot for the massive goal, the massive, ridiculous, unbelievable, unacceptable, unacceptable, unreasonable goal and you miss, you still have an enormous win.

Starting point is 00:59:06 but if you shoot for what you think is possible and you miss, you're still unsatisfied, you're still unfulfilled, you feel like a loser. And the decisions become clear, right? With that goal that you set, there's like one path to getting that done, right? Like, I have to do this and I have to raise this and we need this technology and I need these three groups on board and blah, blah,

Starting point is 00:59:28 but you're like, there is one path to hit that goal. And now you know exactly what you need to do versus, you know, the people who wake up every day and earlier, in my life. I'm just as guilty of this as anybody where you have like seven things and your goals aren't that big. So you're not really sure what to do every day. So you start spending your time on, you know, tasks that don't add value. And, dude, I could talk to you all frigging day, Nick. I absolutely love this. We're going to have links to deliver fund. We're going to have links to your website in the description, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening. Just scroll down. You'll find

Starting point is 01:00:00 that stuff. And my man, I want this show to be a supporter of deliver fund. So I'll I'm going to work after we get done offline and figure out ways that we can kind of build helping push people because this is something that's near and dear to my heart. I coach all my kids sports teams. I'm heavily involved. That's kind of kids, our kids are so incredibly important to the security and sanctity of this country. And it's our God-given responsibility to protect them.

Starting point is 01:00:31 And I think the work you're doing is absolutely incredible. I couldn't be more honored to be on the show, man. So any other places, any other final place that you'd like to send people if they just want to get involved in your world? If you just go to my website and go to the mission tab, you'll see all the different things I'm involved in. My data and AI company, so if you're a for-profit company, we can actually help you make sure that human traffickers are not using your platforms because they use all the platforms we use for business, right? if you are a, you know, if you're in law enforcement or a prosecutor or part of that chain, we are more than happy deliver fund will provide you, equip train and invite you with everything you need to include case data and intelligence. That's all free for you. If you're a donor and

Starting point is 01:01:18 this resonates with you, you can go right to that mission tab and you can find information about deliver fund and you can make a donation there. We are solely funded right now by by the generosity of donors so all of this like doge cutting and stuff like that doesn't affect us one bit we are we are moving forward with a mission as strong as we ever have and then you just want to learn more about me or or you can find me on all the social platforms at the nick mckinley and again my website is nick and i see mckinley dot com appreciate you man thank you so much thank you very in the basement of his home you hear that That's me in Tokyo learning to make sushi from a master.

Starting point is 01:02:27 How did I get here? I invested wisely. Now the only thing I worry about is using too much wasabi. Get where you're going with Spy, the world's most traded ETF. Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the funds, investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Statestreet.com slash IM for prospectus containing this and other information. Read it carefully. Spy is subject to risks similar to those of stocks.

Starting point is 01:02:48 All ETS are subject to risk including possible loss of principle. Alps Distributors, Inc. distributor. This message comes from Alterix. Data is scattered. Tech stacks are disjointed. Teams are out of sync. Altruix 1 brings it all together on a single platform where data, analytics, and automation move as one. So your organization can too. Meet the intelligent enterprise at altruix.com.

Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Former CIA Agent Exposes the Truth About Trafficking

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