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[00:00:00] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santhia Stubbon and I will be your host for today. And we're here with Nick McKinley. He's the founder and CEO of deliver fund. And we're going to talk about scaling in a, in a little bit different of a perspective than, than we might most, than we might talk about it on most conversations.

[00:00:21] Hector: I'm excited about that. So Nick, thanks for hanging out with us today.

[00:00:24] Nic: Hey, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:00:26] Hector: So, you know, you've done the, the scaling, you've done it in a variety of places in a variety of ways. You know, you've kind of had your, your run of experiences. I would love for you to share whatever experience you think is relevant or important and you can kind of go back as far.

[00:00:45] Hector: As, uh, as you think is important and then kind of catch us up on on what deliver fund is doing and how you guys serve people.

[00:00:53] Nic: Sure. Well, well, thanks again for having me. And, uh, I think a way to think about scaling is in relation to the problem that you have, uh, or the problem that you're trying to solve. I think too many people want to just build a big business. For the sake of building a big business, when maybe the problem that they're trying to solve it, it doesn't require them to build a really big business, or maybe they've got technologies that they can leverage in order to solve that problem in a way that does not, uh, require just throwing more and more people and more and more resources at it.

[00:01:30] Nic: So I tend to think about it, uh, a little more. From a first principles framework where we're actually getting to like what is causing the problem that that it is that we're trying to solve or or what is what is. May driven a business leader to establish a company in the first place. And if for some people, it's just they want to be rich. That's why they want to be an entrepreneur. And that's why they want to start a company. And so great more power to them. In that case, they need a really big company on. They need to. They need to scale as much as possible. But if you're just trying to solve a problem, then you need to try to. Make sure that the scale of the business is proportionate to the scale of the problem, and that is what leads to the most efficient solutions and outcomes for for problem solving.

[00:02:29] Hector: So I think that's a great perspective. And I love that you bring that up because I think most entrepreneurs, they come in and they want to be the next Jeff Bezos and they want to be, you know, Elon Musk. And I think that there's something in those ambitions or there's something about, you know, you hear the round numbers, right?

[00:02:48] Hector: They want to Thank you. Create a million dollar company, a 10 million company, you know, what, whatever it is. And I think that there, those are rooted in, in something positive, but I think you're speaking to something a little bit more, uh, perhaps important, but to that person who already is in the middle of it.

[00:03:07] Hector: And they've, they want to build, you know, seven and eight figure business. You know, they want to have the big exit, whatever it is. How do you, what do you do if they're already in in the throes of that? Right? And you know, how is there a way to to fix that solution once it's already started? Or do they have to scrap it and go back to the beginning?

[00:03:27] Hector: You know, how would you kind of coach someone through there if they're realizing, well, maybe, maybe my needs? What I thought the problem isn't actually as big as, as I thought it was, or when you put it through that frame that the problem is not, you know, it's not going to scale to the point that I want.

[00:03:47] Hector: How do you help them adjust from that point?

[00:03:50] Nic: If the problem isn't going to scale to the level of, say, size. Of a business that they want, then they picked the wrong problem. I don't think there's any, I don't think you solve that problem, right? Unless you start tackling more problems, right? So let's take a great example is uber. Uber started in black car service, which is a relatively small tam. But Uber started in black car service, which is a relatively small tam. But now you can get Things delivered to your home or food delivered via uber. So they just started taking on more problems where the existing solution set that they'd created could be applied to more problems. I think that one of the problems that the entrepreneur community runs into is always, you know, everybody wants to be the next steve jobs or bezos or or musk.

[00:04:43] Nic: As you said, vaynerchuk is one as well. None of those people set out to make a bunch of money. They all set out to solve problems. They knew a second order effect of solving those problems or third order would be that they would make money. But they had, I mean, I don't think Elon Musk ever knew he would be one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

[00:05:03] Nic: Neither did, neither did Bezos. Neither did Jobs. They just. Kept putting one foot in front of the other solving problems and, and that is the pathway to wealth just chasing money for the cheat for the sake of chasing money. Go be a V. C. Go, go join a P. E. But building a business purpose of trying to be https: otter.

[00:05:29] Nic: ai You know, multi billionaire, um, is probably the fastest way to crash the business because that means you won't have the drive to sustain you through the decades of time that it takes in order to, in order to get to the point where the business is starting to run under its own momentum.

[00:05:51] Hector: Yeah. I like the point about Uber when you talk about kind of finding more problems to solve, if you will. And I think, you know, going back to the Bezos example, you know, Amazon did that. They started with books and kind of expanded. And so they were looking for, for more, more problems to solve. Are there any other examples or any other things that, you know,

[00:06:17] Hector: I guess examples of that that you look back on. I think that this is a perhaps a different kind of perspective than perhaps is traditional where someone they are focused on their product or they're very solution oriented. And it's it's just how do we how do we fit more? People into this box. How do we sell more widgets, right?

[00:06:41] Hector: You know, it's, it's kind of, I don't want to say it's, it's backwards, but it's, it's counterintuitive to what most people are doing. And so is there any other examples or are there any other, um, things that you can help to, to shed a little more light on this kind of differing perspective?

[00:06:57] Nic: Uh, you know, it's, it's cliche to, to mention Musk as the best example of it, but I still, I, I think that he is probably the best example of it. He really had two goals at the end of the day, right? With the entire ecosystem of companies he's created, there was two goals. He wanted to affect climate change, right?

[00:07:19] Nic: And regardless of whether or not somebody believes there is or is not climate change and all this. Yeah. Stuff. It doesn't matter, right? So he had something that he wanted to a problem that he wanted to solve, and he thought that the best way to solve that would be electric cars. So it had nothing to do with the, uh, with with the cars. It had to do with the problem he was trying to solve. And by thinking through it from a first principles aspect, he said, well, the Biggest co2 producer in the world is cars, the automotive industry, the daily driver. So I'm going to go solve problem, right? I'm going to solve that micro problem on the other hand, saying I want to go to Mars. Okay, cool. He wants to go to Mars. Well, there's a. Big logistics chain and a lot of things that have to happen in order to get to Mars. So creating the, the pathway to get to Mars, right? Everything from the, the, the small nuclear power companies that have spun out to the AI companies that spun out of Tesla to reusable rockets.

[00:08:30] Nic: All of these were, are, are really just small solutions on the path to solving a very big problem. So if you're solving a big enough problem, climate change on one hand. Or going to Mars. On the other hand, you're going to by default of execution of solutions create a lot of value for a lot of people. Starlink, as an example, has nothing to do with providing broadband to everybody in the world. Google was trying to do that and they failed. Starlink is about providing communications between Mars and Earth and internet on Mars. It just so happens to be that in the process of doing that and putting the infrastructure in place that's needed, you create a lot of value for Ukrainians that are at war with Russia. Right. Or for people who live in rural America or for people who are traveling around the United States in their RVs, I think by focusing on a big enough problem, you and executing on solutions to that problem, you end up creating value. And that value drives your company forward,

[00:09:53] Hector: Yeah, this is, this is really good. I'm, I'm curious, cool. You know, once you identify your problem, you know, the, the traditional business of order of operations is, you know, identify your target market and then, you know, market research and, and, and, and there are kind of these steps that have been laid out and, and probably the, the challenge is that the problem you're getting in at like step four or five or so, if all of a sudden, if the problem is step one in your head, what is, what are the, what are the next, how does, what does the rest of that path look like?

[00:10:30] Nic: I think if your problem is big enough, then your target market is human beings. At at a foundational level, that's, that's your target, right? So for me, what I saw when I was at the C I A was these illicit commodity markets that were just running rampant across the globe without really any coordinated effort to solve that problem. And one of those illicit commodity markets, just one of the many, was the sell of human beings. Well, that is something that affects. Every single human being on the planet and then a sub sector of the sale of human beings of human trafficking was child commercial sex trafficking, which is the most kind of egregious of those subsets of the broader problem, which is illicit commodity markets. So that provided a really good starting point. That's not the only problem I'm trying to solve. I'm trying to solve illicit commodity market issues, uh, and, and trying to shed light on that issue and make it so that everybody, not just law enforcement, not just industry, but everybody from law enforcement to industry to the soccer mom can all participate in fighting this thing.

[00:11:47] Nic: Elicit commodity markets, but we have to start somewhere. You can't you can't go in all directions at once. You have to pick a path and go. And so the path that I picked was the one that I thought would, uh, for a number of different reasons, um, would be the easiest. To solve it would be the one that was a political and it would be the one that you could garner the most support for because at the end of the day, I mean, human trafficking is a, especially, you know, child sex trafficking is a with us or against us issue.

[00:12:20] Nic: And if you're, if you don't agree with what we do and fighting it, well, then, um, you know, please, uh, please DM me on instagram and I'll be happy to make you a hobby of one of my analysts because that means you're probably a human trafficker. So by picking one very specific path within a broader problem, it allowed us to create the technologies and create the methodologies we needed in order to solve the broader problem, right?

[00:12:50] Nic: So the black box, if you will, of solution is that the output is going to be determined by the input. So if you just pick something that is Within the broader problem that you're trying to solve, well, you're going to, by default, create solutions to other issues. So let's, let's take that back to what Musk did with Tesla. He decided that CO2 was a problem, that climate change was a problem, that the cause was CO2 and that cars were the Biggest portion of that problem that he could tackle. So he set out to solve that and by default created all types of AI technologies within computer vision to make the car self driving to make it so that eventually we'll essentially be able to share automated cars.

[00:13:44] Nic: We're not going to need as many. Well, that meant that. We needed to create better battery technologies, better electrical technologies. And so all of those things created value for other industries of which we're producing CO2. And so all of those technologies also. Helped with the advancement towards Mars. So the battery technologies that they create a tesla SpaceX, the AI technologies they create at tesla help SpaceX. So that's what I mean by solving really big problems. You start creating these little, these micro solutions to micro problems that are advancing you along the path of solving the very, very big Problem. And that I think is how you, you, you tackle something that's big enough that it becomes your life's work.

[00:14:47] Hector: Yeah, this is Britain stuff. When we get back from break. I want to I'm curious about the, the, you know, actually running the business of that, right? Because I think that that is, I don't want to say idealistic, but I've, I've, I know a lot of businesses and companies that set out goals. Yeah. With this great problem, but then their execution of it or their actual, you know, the practical stuff gets lost or they get too distracted, you know?

[00:15:17] Hector: And so I want, I'm curious how you guys have have stayed the course while also kind of having a big picture. Um, so we're gonna get into that right after this quick break.

[00:15:29] Hector: Um, Great stuff. Nick appreciated this. How are you feeling? Cool. We'll do a quick, quick ad read. And then, um, you know, the last segment you can kind of riff as long as you feel, feel comfortable.

[00:15:41] Nic: Okay. Yeah, we're gonna talk about people.

[00:15:45] Hector: Um, Hey, y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by amplify media and we are a content and podcast production company. And so if you have a mission, a message, a passion, a purpose, something that you want to get out to the world, but don't necessarily have the time, the team or the tech skills to be able to do it, we can help.

[00:16:03] Hector: Go to amplify media dot com. That's a m p l a f y media dot com for all the info. You can also check the show notes. And with that, let's get back to today's episode. So Nick, before break, we talked about, you know, I like to, to structure these episodes in the sense of the first half, we like to give some context and, and I'm a big fan of the Simon Sinek structure of why, what, how, right.

[00:16:28] Hector: And so, you know, we've, we've talked about the why, and I think people kind of understand, you know, generally what we're talking about, but. And we can't cover it all today in a short episode, but they're probably asking themselves, Okay, but how do I actually do this? How do I, how do I practically, you know, make this happen, especially while scaling, while having different teams and divisions and different products and divisions?

[00:16:53] Hector: And, you know, to make the question even harder, Nick, what if I've already got a business that I'm in the middle of that already has product lines and service offerings, and we're already down the road a little bit? You know, how do we, how do we How do we handle all that? How do we navigate it? Or from your experience, what are some things that have worked for you?

[00:17:12] Nic: I think it comes down obviously to execution. Uh, business mentor of mine once told me that is to make ideas are worthless and have no value. It's execution is the only thing that matters. And that is That is so true. So there's so many people with great ideas, who cares, how are you executing on that? And there's, it all comes down to people and the, and the, the team you build, which sounds really cliche, but there's a lot of lessons that I've learned and continue to learn.

[00:17:39] Nic: Cause it seems like no matter how often I learned the lesson, I have to go back and learn it again. But the person who helped get you from zero to one is not necessarily the right person. To help you get from one to two or from two to 10, right? It's a, uh, the business has to constantly evolve. And if you've got a big enough problem and you are creating solutions at the scale of that problem, then it's, you're not really creating a business.

[00:18:11] Nic: You're creating a, a, a. A platform that executes on a mission, and I think that's what's so important because then people will join the platform because of the mission, not because of what it is that you do on a daily basis. I mean, the way that I'm 45 years old. So the way that I was raised was a general, you know, my parents generation was you work for one program.

[00:18:38] Nic: Maybe two companies, but usually just one company, you go to work every day, you pull the lever, you push the button, you get the gold watch. That was the goal. And now we have these entrepreneurial minds or this entrepreneurial mindset or an intrapreneurial mindset where we have people who are shifting jobs every two to four years. Well, part of the problem with that is that they're They're not singularly focused on a mission, but that's also a good thing because it means that their breadth of experience is is is that much bigger and that much better. So, um, executing at scale is all about. Putting the, to use the Jim Collins analogy, right?

[00:19:27] Nic: Put the right butt in the right seat on the right bus. And if the people are on that bus because of the bus that you've created and other people that are on the bus, then when the bus has to change direction. People won't get off as soon as, as soon as you see people start to think that they should be the driver of the bus, that they're the most important person on the bus. Well, that singular ego is toxic to everybody else. And so those people have to go, people will say that they, you know, they check their ego at the door. Well, I'll tell you, do people in my companies have a lot of ego. But it's a collective ego. They honestly believe that what they are doing collectively is the best solution and that the only reason why they are successful is because of the other people around them. Uh, I get fortunate enough to be the point man. Uh, for deliver fund is the founder and the CEO, but it really, at this point has nothing to do with me. It has to do with this amazing team of people that are executing on this mission every single day while I'm out evangelizing and collecting resources. So if, if, if you. If a business leader does not have the right set of people and they don't trust those people, then they have to constantly micromanage them to make sure they're doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. And I figured this out when I was at the CIA was the, um, uh, I was a country team leader for a nuclear armed country of, uh, shall we say presidential importance?

[00:21:08] Nic: Uh, it was, it was a, it was no fail environment. And I was one of the youngest people on my team. I was the youngest person of authority in the embassy, and the consequences of me making the wrong decisions would have been lethal to other people. So I came up with really a framework of four litmus tests for decisions, right?

[00:21:38] Nic: And it's, it's, it's my principles first decision making or, or my first principles for decision. Making and the first and foremost was that I had to establish and cultivate and maintain a culture of trust and keep in mind. That's that's that's with yourself and with the people that you're leading. And if you do that, then and everybody trusts each other, then you can go to actually you. Establishing and maintaining standards of discipline and mission focus, I think too often. What derails companies from scaling is they don't have a standard. They never established a standard. It's just a couple of bros who got together and said, Hey, let's go solve this problem. And it was kind of a cool thing to do that became a company. And now they're now they're a big boy company, and they don't have a Standard that they've established, or if they have established a standard, they didn't have discipline to it. Think back to early days. Google. Uh, and I think Facebook was kind of the same way they had a standard where you had to have all the right stamps on your resume in order to even be considered for hiring.

[00:22:50] Nic: And then Google created this hiring process that was darn near impossible to get through. Well, that Creates it, and they took that a little too far, but that is actually a really good example of having a standard and then maintaining discipline to that standard. So if you have trust, you maintain standards, discipline, and then mission focused. You put a bunch of brilliant people in a room. I mean, imagine what the space, what the company, all the employees of SpaceX or Tesla could accomplish if they decided to put their brains to it. I mean, they could cure cancer, they could do anything, but Elon keeps them very focused on, hey, you guys are doing electric cars and self driving cars, you guys are going to Mars, and keeps them focused on that mission, and too often I think the, the rabbit trails and the, the Distractions that really smart people can have will sink a company or keep it from scaling. And then after that, it's just about talent and managing talent and egos, right? You've got to put the right people on the right, but, uh, or the right butts in the right seat on the right bus. And the person who is a good engineer for are. One of my previous software companies wouldn't necessarily be a good engineer for what it is that we do at deliver fund.

[00:24:12] Nic: So, so really managing those talent egos is very important. And then if you, if you have accomplished all those things as a business leader, because the only way that a business scales is if the leader gets it right. So if you've accomplished all those things as a business leader, then if you really want to Pour gasoline on your company, and you really want to scale quick.

[00:24:32] Nic: You serve your team. You get out of their way and get them the resources they need to do their job and don't tell them what to do. I believe it was Steve Jobs who said that you don't hire smart people so that you can tell them what to do. You smart. You hire smart people so they can tell you what to do. And that then means that everybody's running in the same direction. But everybody is running under their own momentum. So you don't have a lot of bureaucracy that keeps the company from scaling. Uh, that's what I found, uh, has, has worked for me. And, uh, I think that that's a model that quite frankly, I stole from all the brilliant minds who, who came before me.

[00:25:19] Hector: Yeah, it really is. I, I started off the conversation by saying it's counterintuitive or opposite or whatever, but it just, it actually makes the most sense. It's something that, that makes the most sense and, and seems the most, most sustainable. And so I appreciate that. If, if people want to get more connected with you, Nick, or what you guys do at deliver fund, where, where should they go?

[00:25:41] Nic: Uh, I'm on all the social platforms, um, at the. Underscore Nick. That's N. I. C. Underscore McKinley. Um, on on instagram on twitter. It's just the nick mckinley and you can connect with us at deliver fund at deliver fund on all the platforms and that's deliver as in deliver the mail fund as in as in money. So, uh, yeah, please, please follow us on social media and check out what it is that we do and contribute where you can. Thank you.

[00:26:16] Hector: Nick, I know we only your, your, your life is, uh, is an ocean and we merely, uh, scooped a tablespoon out of that experience set. So, um, uh, perhaps we'll need a second round or, or, or whatever it is, but I appreciate your insights and your wisdom here. I want to encourage you listeners. If you guys got some value out of today, we would love and appreciate a rating review wherever you get your podcast.

[00:26:43] Hector: If you know someone who you. Is in the midst of scaling a business or thinking about starting one, send them this episode and, and Nick is on his, I mean, I can't think of a more important mission, so go get connected with Nick and, you know, find out what deliver fund is about and see how that might fit into your world.

[00:27:00] Hector: But, uh, as always, we thank you all for being a part of the tribe. I will see on the next one later. Y'all.