Join The Fight Against Modern Slavery w/ Tim Ballard EP 1368

Tim Ballard has worked every type of case imaginable in the fight to dismantle child trafficking rings. He spent over a decade working as a Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security to infiltrate child trafficking organizations. He successfully dismantled dozens of these organizations and rescued children from slavery and exploitation. Tim and a team of former government operatives left the security of their careers to go about the work of rescuing children as a private foundation - Operation Underground Railroad. In this episode you will learn,About how the U. S. plays a major role in the global human trafficking crisis. Ways to get involved with O. U. R.’s mission and how you can help. The truth behind what it takes to fight modern slavery. To unlock the underestimated power of service. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1368Check out Tim’s prior episode here!https://link.chtbl.com/986-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ballard?

  We've counted somewhere between 300 and 400 kids were likely sexually abused over the two years those guys were there. You know, what's scary and where Americans need to wake up. We call this a hidden war because...

• 0:13Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:37Lewis Howes?

  So for people that have no context about you or this issue in the world and in the US, what is OUR? The mission that you guys have? And how bad is the problem in the world right now?

• 0:50Tim Ballard?

  So Operation Underground Railroad is our foundation. We're nonprofit and we strive to empower law enforcement and aftercare services in the extraction and healing of child sex victims. And often it's adult sex victims as well. And so we are in, we have five regions. We have offices in five different regions. So the sun never sets anymore on our operations, which is very exciting for us. And we're just constantly working with law enforcement. And they ask us to do different things, you know? There's so many ways to attack it because it's enormous, right? There's millions of people. There's more people enslaved today than ever before in the history of the world, which is shocking to people because they think their textbooks tell them that it ended with

• 1:34Tim Ballard?

  Abraham Lincoln and the end of the transatlantic slave trade. It's like, no, it's weird as ugly head again. And there's more people now than ever. Slave labor, sex, and organ harvesting, which is becoming a bigger thing, believe it or not. And so we just, we seek to empower law enforcement. Sometimes it means trainings that we do or equipment. Oftentimes, they ask us to go undercover because our guys and girls are all, most are former law enforcement, our operators, or military. And they can infiltrate very rapidly.

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:05Tim Ballard?

  Especially if they look like they're Westerners.

• 2:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 2:08Tim Ballard?

  And that's a bad thing, by the way, for us who live in this country. Because what it says is, we are the demand. And we are. We're the largest consuming country, the United States.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  Of what?

• 2:18Tim Ballard?

  Of child sex videos.

• 2:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow. But that also includes sex... Engagements with kids are more consuming, you know, child pornography?

• 2:28Tim Ballard?

  Correct, it's the consumption of the child exploitation material, child rape videos. And we are in the top three for destination countries because if the demand is here, the traffickers would love to get the kids here. So we see that happening, a lot of that's happening right now with the failed border enforcement. People can just come right in, kids are coming, I know they're coming in. We're seeing this happening. And so we can easily play the role of what the preferred client looks like. So traffickers all over the world see us. We put ourselves in the right place, we know where to go. And they welcome us in and boom, we can infiltrate rapidly, get the evidence back to law enforcement and they can pursue.

• 3:12Lewis Howes?

  And how many, I guess, what do you call them, extractions? Where you've gone in and rescued or even arrested people that are pedophiles or dealing with the local kind of sex slavery in these different regions? How many people have you arrested or captured? And how many kids have you supported in this process in the last eight years?

• 3:30Tim Ballard?

  So we are just under 5,000 arrests that we've supported.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  All around the world?

• 3:37Tim Ballard?

  All around the world, we've done thousands, a couple thousand operations, supported directly or indirectly. And then the number of actual people that we've been able to extract and help get into recovery is over 6,000.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible, man. 6,000?

• 3:52Tim Ballard?

  Women and children, yeah.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  That's unbelievable. How does it make you feel when you think of those 6,000 faces that have better lives now?

• 3:59Tim Ballard?

  It's, you know, it's interesting. I love to see those people or know their names because I don't ever like to get into statistics, you know? Because if you go statistics, 6,000 versus literally millions? You know, people say, "That's a drop in the bucket." And I just get, because I'm like, you know what? I've done operations before. Like there was a target in Mexico that we worked on for over a year, this trafficking organization, we could not get in. We'd get this close and they'd get torn away. Close again, and like the money's building up and I'm getting pressure from the financial division of our, like, "Tim, you gotta stop." "I can't stop, I know we're this close." And we finally broke through about six months ago. And it was one of the operations I participated on personally and it was one kid.

• 4:43Tim Ballard?

  But this is one little boy who, he had been, it'd been years. We think he was like nine or 10 when it started. He still looked nine or ten to me. It had been a couple of years into this and

• 4:57Tim Ballard?

  and I remember that we we found him and I saw him on the beach for the first time and they're trying to sell him to me at all the videos undercover. And and I remember we call it Operation Football, futbol, soccer ball really if you know how to translate it. And because as we walked away, as we walked away, the little boy said, señor, mister, he's like, it's the first time he spoke and he said, he knew we were coming back, right? To do horrible things to him. He says, can you, could you bring me a soccer ball?

• 5:25Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 5:26Tim Ballard?

  And I was just like biting my, I was like, oh, my gosh. That night, it was a crazy case because that night, they were supposed to bring the the kid to our house. We like to control the settings. We had a sting house. And then they called us and said, hey, another cartel, you're just outside our cartel, our cartel zone. We can't risk this kid. They said, this kid's a golden goose. We make so much money. We cannot take him out of, like, they will kill us, like the cartel bosses. And so they said, you, you gotta come to this hotel. And it was our intel, people look it up, it's owned by cartel. And it's like fatal funnels everywhere. It's one of these hotels. It's just, it's just a garage. It's only a garage door open because it's all, it's for, it's for sex, you know, so you, you go and they close the door. And you go upstairs, there's just one single room, nothing's connected.

• 6:10Tim Ballard?

  And and I remember our guys were like, Tim, you can't go. I'm like, screw, are you kidding me? And I do a little trick. This is why it's about the individual for me. Because it was super dangerous. We didn't have time to be forward deployed. They had the kid out, the golden goose was out for just one day. And they were gonna take him back. If you don't come now, you're not gonna get him. And I had to go because I was the face they knew, right? There's and and I, I remember we were in the sting house that that never was, right? And I, I take two steps to the side. I remember just, I just, this kid, I, I find the kid of mine who's closest in age. I do this every time.

• 6:44Lewis Howes?

  Of your child?

• 6:44Tim Ballard?

  Of my, I have nine, as you know. So it's easy for me to find whatever kid we're looking for. I'll find one of mine. And, you know, I used to avoid doing this because it hurt too much. And then there came a day in my career where I was like, no, let it happen. Let that kid be your kid. Otherwise, I might not, I might not go. I might not go. And I remember walking away and and this is what happens usually. And I see my, in this case, it was my son Luke, who's closest in age to him. I think eleven or twelve or, I can't remember the exact age, but. And then I asked myself a simple question. If that was Luke, what would you do? It's a no brainer. If it was Luke, I'd go there.

• 7:26Tim Ballard?

  And now, who am I to say, well, it's not my kid? Then, then forget about it. Well, as it turns out, as I could have imagined, there was no parents. We still have it from the parents. He doesn't know. He was taken from another part of Mexico. He doesn't even know where he's from, right? All he knows is he's getting raped every day. And, and the only adults in his life are responsible. So then it's easy. It's like, that's my son. That's it. And, and we went in. And we brought three football, three soccer balls. And some Legos and, and took care of him. We did, we did, we went undercover and got the information we needed. The cops stormed the place, got the kid out. And I'll tell you what, I get reports all the time. He's doing awesome. He, he, we have him at one of our partner foundations that do the aftercare.

• 8:11Tim Ballard?

  He has a soccer, there's a soccer field there. And he's, he, he just is happy as kid. He's free. He's free, you know? And then I, I went back to my team after that operation and I said, I'm gonna show you the bill. This has been over a year. This is how much it cost?

• 8:24Lewis Howes?

  For one kid?

• 8:24Tim Ballard?

  For one kid. I said, did you guys think we would save more than this? Of course, we, we thought it'd be 20 plus. And I said, was it worth it? Or would you go back and say, we wouldn't do this again? Are you kidding? It's worth it. And then I asked him again, um, another question. And I, I try to always do this when I'm there.

• 8:39Lewis Howes?

  So wait, so let me, so break it down, what happened? So you went to the hotel?

• 8:43Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Lewis Howes?

  And it's super shady and sketchy. And you're like, okay, I'm gonna go in this, you know, trap door essentially.

• 8:50Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Lewis Howes?

  And, and what? You go up into the room with the soccer balls?

• 8:54Tim Ballard?

  So, yeah, so I'll explain. So this, you, you, we had a house.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  And you're dressed like a?

• 8:59Tim Ballard?

  Oh, yeah, I got, I got a wig and a fake scar and fake eyes, you know?

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  And you're acting like a pedophile?

• 9:04Tim Ballard?

  Absolutely.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  That you're looking to, to, to pay for sex with a child?

• 9:07Tim Ballard?

  With this kid? So, we have a house with seven cameras for the evidence, right? And you, you, there's only so much you can do, there's only so much you can do after that. So when they call and say, just kidding?

• 9:19Lewis Howes?

  Come here.

• 9:20Tim Ballard?

  Come here, it's like, we have nothing. So you, you know, my, my, you were talking about one of our, our partner organization operators, Jeremy Locke, right? So he was with me and that guy's got balls of steel, like he'll do anything. So, so he, he's like, I'll, I'll forward deploy best I can. But he, so he goes in first with a girl pretending he's going to like, it's a sex place, right? And he, he calls like, bro, there's very little I can do for you. Like, I got a room? But it's like, these rooms don't even connect. Like, the only way in is to go through a garage. They're all individual garages, so you can get in and out without being seen, right? You can bring prostitutes, or that's what it's designed for. And in the rooms, you go upstairs, and it's, there's like a little, like, turntable. You can buy, like, sex toys, and, and you buy it, and they bring it to you. You turn the little thing, and you pull out the... It's nuts, right?

• 10:05Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 10:06Tim Ballard?

  So, I go in with my small team, and, and there's just nothing we can do. It's just like, I don't care. I remember the team leader, uh, he's like, "Tim, you can't go. You can't go. You're the founder of this organization." Like, I'm the only one that has the face. They know, they're not, no, who's gonna go? I'm not gonna let this kid go. He's my son. He's, it's Luke. I'm calling him Luke.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:25Tim Ballard?

  Alright, I'm like, "I'll do anything for Luke," you know? And, uh, ugh. And, um, and so we, we, we go in, and...

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  So you're going in alone then, at this point?

• 10:35Tim Ballard?

  No, I'm not alone. I have two other people with me.

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 10:38Tim Ballard?

  And...

• 10:38Lewis Howes?

  And they know it's fine, that there's a couple people, or it's...

• 10:41Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, because we're all gonna have sex with this kid.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

• 10:44Tim Ballard?

  It's hor- yeah, and we're gonna film it, and it's gonna be just like...

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 10:48Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, there's one person to film, and the two people are gonna have sex.

• 10:51Lewis Howes?

  And they knew that?

• 10:51Tim Ballard?

  Oh yeah, they helped design it. Yeah, they were like, "You can do this."

• 10:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 10:54Tim Ballard?

  And, and in the...

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  And how much would that cost, for someone?

• 10:57Tim Ballard?

  Oh, for, for a kid, that young, to have him for the night was around $3,000.

• 11:03Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 11:04Tim Ballard?

  So it's like, three or four times what you would pay for, like, an adult sex worker, say.

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  And how often is that, that child being used?

• 11:11Tim Ballard?

  Oh, every day.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh my god.

• 11:13Tim Ballard?

  Every day. Maybe, maybe more than once a day. Cause he, he was booked for the next day. So that's why it was like, "If you don't come now, guys, you can't, he's gone." That's why we had to make a choice, right? So now we gotta film this. Now, this is where it gets crazy, right? So we have some contingencies. I had a hat with a camera watch. And Murphy's Law, I remember, as we're driving over, both are functioning.

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  Break.

• 11:33Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, it's like, "I got a cellphone." So, so we go in, we can't take more than three, or it's gonna be too suspicious. So us three go in, and we get to the, the traveler's meeting, and it's like, "Okay, the kid's in that room." And so we go up to see him, and we got soccer balls, and we give it to him. And so we're like, "Okay, come on in." He's like, "Well, no, um, uh, we're doing the deal in the other room." I'm like, "Crap." Okay, I'm not leaving that kid alone. I'm definitely not with one person. Because once I see the kid, I'm never leaving him alone again.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:07Tim Ballard?

  So I instruct the two to stay with the kid. Because I don't want that kid to be alone. And I can't have-

• 12:11Lewis Howes?

  Because you haven't paid yet.

• 12:12Tim Ballard?

  Haven't paid yet.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 12:13Tim Ballard?

  And they don't, they want to do the exchange in a different room.

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 12:16Tim Ballard?

  So I, I, I give the instruction to the two, stay. I don't want that kid alone and I'm not gonna have, you never leave a victim with just one person. You have to, so there's a witness of anything that might happen, right? So I'm alone now. My team was pissed I was going and now I'm alone going into the other room, through the garage. And all I have is my cellphone. I'll show you, it's hilarious, I'll show you the footage, it's crazy. So I'm just like holding my phone, you know, putting it, you know, just like wherever I can hold it. And, you know, I've got good footage and we did the exchange.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  You're speaking in Spanish.

• 12:51Tim Ballard?

  I speak Spanish, yeah, so I, I can, I'm, I'm, I'm dealing with these guys and, you know, they're freaking out. I remember at one point, one of the guys walked, he's gonna open the window and looking to see if there's cops. And I know they're out there, there's thirty of them out there. The, the, the Mexican team.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:06Tim Ballard?

  And I'm freaking out, they'll see them. So I'm freaking out, so I, I say, you know, this guy, what are you looking at, your sniper? Is that your sniper over there? You're saying, no, I'm out of here. If you don't close this window, you know, so. Okay, okay, okay, we'll close the window. You know, to block him from, from seeing.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  Seeing us.

• 13:22Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so I wasn't there for maybe, you know, he sold me cocaine, which is like, well, you're already screwed. I guess, why not throw a couple more years on your sentence?

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:30Tim Ballard?

  So I bought the cocaine, you know, the, you know, the cops authorized that, and actually told me to do that. And the cop, there, there's one detective was really close on the scene. And I eventually said, hey, I got a buddy coming up and you might hear his footsteps coming up, you know. And so I got him distracted, got him to say everything, every detail the kid is gonna do, how much money.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 13:50Tim Ballard?

  We exchanged, and you gotta have that conversation. Yeah, you gotta have it on conversation, recorded so they don't come back later.

• 13:56Lewis Howes?

  And he didn't ask to like put your phone down or anything, or you're just kinda hiding it?

• 13:59Tim Ballard?

  No, I did a really good job hiding it, yeah. And-

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  And then you get the whole exchange.

• 14:04Tim Ballard?

  Whole exchange. I remember when he gave me the cocaine, I was like, okay, and I kinda put the phone up, like, the cocaine's like this big in the camera.

• 14:11Tim Ballard?

  It's like a little bag, but you know. Um, and then, and then, uh.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  So you buy the cocaine first and then you pay the three thousand or whatever for the act that night.

• 14:19Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and then I, and then I get him saying, hey, I want to make sure that when we go in there, we can do everything.

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 14:24Tim Ballard?

  So they, so otherwise you wall them off, right? Cause later they'll say, we thought it was just a party. They're gonna play soccer. Like, you know, you know, you gotta make sure it's on camera. Like, what am I gonna do? And the grosser, the better for the case. It was just horrifying, cause you're listening to this and saying, well, well, what if? And we know the right questions to ask that that kind of induced them to speak their mind and their heart, which, what the kid will or will not do.

• 14:46Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 14:46Tim Ballard?

  And so we got him every, like, yeah.

• 14:48Lewis Howes?

  To say everything.

• 14:48Tim Ballard?

  You can do everything to it.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 14:50Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and they're very clear about that.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  How do you stay in, I guess, character where you're thinking thirty minutes before this, I'm gonna go, I'll do whatever I can for my son Luke. This is my son that I'm going to rescue essentially emotionally in your heart. But then when you enter this place, how do you not transfer back over emotionally to where you wanna rip this guy's head off? And you have to be like a pedophile, acting like, yes, I can't wait to do this and this and this.

• 15:18Tim Ballard?

  So it's the weirdest thing. I've been doing this for eighteen years and I've gotten better at it.

• 15:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:22Tim Ballard?

  So I've learned over the years how to answer that question. In the beginning, it's really hard, you know? Um, like in the beginning, I, I'd actually go to therapist and I would actually train my mind.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 15:31Tim Ballard?

  To, to like not see my kid.

• 15:33Lewis Howes?

  Block it, yeah.

• 15:34Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, to block this or block that. And then I eventually got to the point where I started using, letting my kid, I was ready to let my kid's face be superimposed. And, and I actually let it happen. Wanted it to happen, cause I realized I'm better, I'm more effective if it's my kid, right? And it's personal, you know? So that's, I started doing that. But the, the weird thing about undercover work, I mean, everyone's different, how they apply different, you know, mental games. But the only way I've learned, so I don't just go, ah, just, you know, in the middle of the thing.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  Cause you know you have the end result, you need to finish it.

• 16:06Tim Ballard?

  Right, if you, you, you, you will fail that kid.

• 16:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Tim Ballard?

  You'll fail that kid. And the, the other thing I do is I try to find the good in that person, cause there is actually good in everybody. It's hard to say this, but you find like, they'll have a family, a lot of them have kids. And so you kind of focus on like.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  How can they do that when they have kids?

• 16:24Tim Ballard?

  I cannot understand it. Like, I, I was on a case once where the guy was selling me all these kids, and then he pulls up a picture of this other little girl. And he's like, I'm like, isn't she beautiful? I'm like, yeah, he's like. That's my daughter. I'm like, you're gonna sell me your daughter? No, he was just showing me, isn't she beautiful? I'm like, dude, how did you just do that? Like, you were just selling me kids her age, and now you're just, now you're like, proud daddy. Like,

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  But you wouldn't sell her, but you'd sell these other kids.

• 16:50Tim Ballard?

  If it's someone else's kid, you'll sell. But, you know, yours is just daddy. And so I focus on like, whatever humanity is left in them.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:58Tim Ballard?

  I focus on that so that I can find a connection. Otherwise, and I try to like that side of them. It's really hard.

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  You try to buddy buddy with them.

• 17:05Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, but, because you gotta make it real, like, especially a long-term case. You've gotta make a chemical connection, because spirits connect, right? Like,

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  How's your family? How's your wife? How's your kids? How's business?

• 17:17Tim Ballard?

  I want them to feel a genuine friendship, and it's really hard. Because you start slipping back to like, I wanna, I wanna, you know.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  Destroy this person.

• 17:24Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And, and, but you just go long enough and play that game, and then it, it's just this big relief when you see

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 17:31Tim Ballard?

  You handcuff, you're just like, and I usually, I usually start crying. Like, I try to get away before that happens. It might happen, it might happen an hour later, it might happen a week later, but I, it always happens.

• 17:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's a release.

• 17:41Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, you have to, because you're, you're holding a lot of stuff.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, man.

• 17:45Tim Ballard?

  You know, and, and especially if it's a case, again, dealing with children. That's, if it's a drug case, I'd probably, it's very, very different. But these guys are hurting children. You see the kid. The kid thinks I'm gonna hurt him, like, that feels horrible. And they usually don't ever get to know that you were actually there, you were the one that helped them, you know?

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 18:03Tim Ballard?

  Because you can't risk, you know, sometimes, very rarely, it happens where the undercover for some reason, gets to like, hey,

• 18:11Lewis Howes?

  Later, yeah.

• 18:11Tim Ballard?

  I was actually, I was the, I was the guy.

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  But if they're so young, and they may not understand the full in their brains, and they've been so

• 18:18Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, we, we rescued a kid in 2014, in Operation Triple Take, in, in October 2014. And, um, he stayed with our organization. He went through aftercare, and then he became an ambassador, and he started getting to know our aftercare team really well. And then he learned the story. He's an adult now, right? He's like 19 years old. Um, it'd been like, eight years. And he said, I wanna meet.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  You.

• 18:40Tim Ballard?

  Me.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:41Tim Ballard?

  But he remembers me. He knows who I am, but he also remembers that was the main guy.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  The bad guy.

• 18:46Tim Ballard?

  The bad guy. And he said, I wanna meet him. So I went down to Cartagena.

• 18:53Lewis Howes?

  When was this?

• 18:54Tim Ballard?

  This was maybe like a couple of years ago. I went down to Cartagena and to meet him. And, you know, he was excited. Right when he walks into the house, I'm like, what's up, bro? And I said his name and he just goes, ah! I like reacted, I'm like, oh! Like, he couldn't, it's like, I just walked away. Like, okay, he's like, I'm sorry, no, I know you're a good guy. You know? And then he's a hairdresser, we helped him go through school and stuff. So then we just, he cut my hair. And then we, now we're buds, you know?

• 19:27Lewis Howes?

  But that trauma, you gotta let go of that trauma.

• 19:30Tim Ballard?

  And I only went, by the way, because he wanted, and the aftercare, his aftercare folks said he wants to, it's time. And it was time.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  It's a healing time too, probably.

• 19:37Tim Ballard?

  It was very healing for him.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  Let me revisit it, which is always hard to do, it's scary, it's traumatic to revisit the trauma.

• 19:43Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  There's gonna be a period of like, this is emotionally overwhelming, but the only way to allow yourself to heal is to really start facing it in some way.

• 19:51Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  And that's what worked for him, it sounds like. So what happened at the end of this, in Mexico with this one boy? So you got the footage, you buy the cocaine, then you pay for the exchange?

• 20:03Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  And then what, you go back into the other room?

• 20:05Tim Ballard?

  No, so, once the exchange happens, that's for the prosecution in Mexico, in this jurisdiction, that's all they needed.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  So you didn't go back and see the kid?

• 20:13Tim Ballard?

  No, no.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  You just do what? You call someone?

• 20:16Tim Ballard?

  So I just text the cop, say, done, deal done. And then I told him, I say, hey, I have a friend coming, he's gonna be part of the party. He's gonna film something, okay, no problem. So I keep him distracted enough. And so, I go up in the garage, okay, he's coming, no problem. And then I keep him super distracted, and then I hear the footsteps coming up. And I'm like, oh, there they are. It's the cops, right? And then all of a sudden, boom, police!

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  So you're in the room with the guy still, just kind of buddying, buddying with him, hanging out. You know in sixty seconds, there's people coming up. How does that feel for you when you know there's gonna be police coming in? Is it fearful? Is it exciting? Are you just waiting? Does it seem like it's hours?

• 20:56Tim Ballard?

  Oh, always seems like hours.

• 20:58Lewis Howes?

  Sixty seconds later, they're there.

• 20:59Tim Ballard?

  It always seems like hours.

• 21:00Lewis Howes?

  And what if they have guns? What if the bad guy has guns?

• 21:03Tim Ballard?

  You don't know always. You do your best, but in this case, I had no.

• 21:06Lewis Howes?

  Cause you didn't have a weapon, did you?

• 21:08Tim Ballard?

  No.

• 21:08Lewis Howes?

  Cause they'll probably check you usually.

• 21:09Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, even when I was in law enforcement, my personal preference, I've seen others choose differently, but I don't, I think it's more dangerous to have a gun. I've, I've seen cases where because they see you have a gun.

• 21:21Lewis Howes?

  It's more dangerous.

• 21:22Tim Ballard?

  Right, and I just rather.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  They're on guard now. They're like getting their weapons out.

• 21:26Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I'd rather just act, I, I'm confident in my ability to act the part and just disarm them that way. And I've never had issues. I've never had.

• 21:33Lewis Howes?

  And you have communication skills to keep them connected, you have emotional skills. You can disarm them psychologically, emotionally, communicating with them, you know. Humor.

• 21:43Tim Ballard?

  Make them laugh. If you keep keeping someone laughing.

• 21:47Lewis Howes?

  It's relaxing.

• 21:48Tim Ballard?

  And that's easy for me. I just act like a drunk version of myself always. And just, I can make jokes and I'm like, I'll do crazy things. I'll start tickling guys like.

• 21:55Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:56Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, like I'm drunk, like, what's up, man? And they just can't help it because it's funny. I'm also patting them down, okay?

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 22:03Tim Ballard?

  And just, and but they, you, you keep them funny, like if they're laughing and.

• 22:07Lewis Howes?

  They're like, okay, I'm gonna get paid. This is all fun.

• 22:08Tim Ballard?

  Or you're talking about like, hey, what are you gonna do with the money, bro? Like, cause I'm gonna bring other friends, like you get them thinking about that, that, get that dopamine going for them.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'm gonna buy this and this.

• 22:17Tim Ballard?

  Right, just keep them distracted.

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  And you also have a lot of combat skills, like hand to hand.

• 22:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Lewis Howes?

  You could disarm if you needed to in a close.

• 22:24Tim Ballard?

  I have things I can do on that front as well, but.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  So you feel confident in that?

• 22:28Tim Ballard?

  I'm confident enough, yeah.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, if they don't have a weapon, you could defend yourself enough, yeah. So they came in, they come after the guy, they what, put him in handcuffs?

• 22:38Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so they come in and because, again, we had no choice, right? Because we went from a house with seven cameras, both my undercover cameras fell.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  Where you're just filming with your?

• 22:47Tim Ballard?

  No, this is funny, because I wanted to film as much as I could of the arrest. At this point, it doesn't really matter. But, you know, a normal person who's getting arrested knows they have to go face down. So I go, I go back down. And I'm sure the traveler like-

• 23:00Lewis Howes?

  Just like this?

• 23:01Tim Ballard?

  This guy doesn't want to get arrested. So I go back like this, I put my phone on my chest, I'm like, what? I lay down and I got the shot.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  No way. So did the guy, so the guy knew that you were in on it then, at that point?

• 23:12Tim Ballard?

  No, no, because he wasn't, they really weren't looking. I didn't make it obvious, I just was like, whoa, I sat down in the corner.

• 23:18Lewis Howes?

  So you thought they were coming to get you too?

• 23:19Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I, because that's my safety. So I go out with them in handcuffs.

• 23:23Lewis Howes?

  Because otherwise, they might say, look out for this guy or whatever.

• 23:25Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 23:26Lewis Howes?

  So you go out in handcuffs?

• 23:27Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 23:28Lewis Howes?

  You get arrested too, part of the, part of the thing?

• 23:30Tim Ballard?

  And that's part of the, the strategy to go next level too, right? Because they don't want, like, who, who dug this out? Who's, who's, you know, what's going on? They can, you, you can, you can make it less suspicious, make them next, because you're trying to get next level. How did they find us? The, the lead might have really come from the law enforcement up here. They don't want them to make that connection? We might have informants into that organization. So if they say, we've been following this gringo for, for six months. He's been through Bali and Thailand and then he came here. Oh, so this guy, you've been chasing him. That's how you found us. So then you, you keep safe other informants that are, that are hitting the organization. That make sense? So they can use that tactic.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Very sophisticated.

• 24:12Tim Ballard?

  And it keeps me safe, because I can get out of the country and them thinking, where'd he go? We sent him to Mexico City because he's American, he's going to get a special punishment, whatever. And then I, and then we disappear.

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  So do you actually go to like the police officer? Or once you're in the car and drive away, they kind of let you go?

• 24:28Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, they'll drive us, usually it's like the station. Close the door, even bringing us in sometimes, and then release us. And we wait a little bit and put different clothes on, take the wigs off, whatever, and then just go out.

• 24:39Lewis Howes?

  That's it? Just back door, see you later?

• 24:40Tim Ballard?

  Go to the airport, we get out right away.

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 24:42Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, you don't want to hang out, because people talk and-

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  So you go to the airport, you leave?

• 24:46Tim Ballard?

  Immediately, yeah. Anyone who's, who's on the, on the, on the, what we call the primary team? Undercover team, you gotta, you gotta get out of the country. Because people talk quick. And you know, even people in the police station, you know, we always deal with that. The corruption.

• 25:01Lewis Howes?

  So where is it, where is this boy now? And when was this, six months ago?

• 25:05Tim Ballard?

  This was within, within the last year, yeah.

• 25:07Lewis Howes?

  So where, what happens to someone, once you rescue them and you get them out of this situation? What's the next year look like of their life? Whether it's one boy or a hundred people at one time?

• 25:19Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so the aftercare portion is the most important part. Because if you don't have that piece, you didn't even do anything.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Tim Ballard?

  I've seen, I've seen people go in and like, they'll, they'll do like a rescue, whatever. And then they just leave. And, and frankly, that's how, in the government we started. If I did international ops, I was told, just leave. And we, because we just, the host government's in charge of that. We never do that anymore. Because what happens oftentimes.

• 25:45Lewis Howes?

  Fall right back into it.

• 25:45Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, it's horri, it's even worse. It's a net negative.

• 25:48Lewis Howes?

  Retraumatized, yeah.

• 25:49Tim Ballard?

  Because now you, they get kicked out, they process them, sign some paperwork. Okay, see ya. And the kid goes out in the parking lot and the traffickers there to beat the snot out of him. How did you get caught? Now the police are the bad guys. Look what happens to you. No, they avoid it all. So you can actually do net negative. You can do damage by going out and being stupid like some people do. I know some people like.

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  So what's the next year look like then, for them?

• 26:12Tim Ballard?

  So then, we don't begin an operation. Like, if I'm sitting down in the very beginning with the law enforcement, because we won't work unless we get permission. And we're signed up as informants or different, make it very legitimate. We have our aftercare team in that first meeting. And we tell them, if, if you don't agree that any of the kids we help you rescue, they have to go to where this director, our director tells you they're going.

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  A certified place that we trust.

• 26:39Tim Ballard?

  That we vetted.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Tim Ballard?

  And it just happened in that, in that region, we had a really good partner. And that's why the more countries we're in, you know, some people take the model of like. Few countries and do lots, we, our models, as many countries and plant those seeds because we have faith in our ability to empower them. And then it's really good because you can, you can talk to each other. So like if we rescue, this happens, we rescue Venezuelan or Colombian girl in Dominican Republic. And then we get them home and then we have a team waiting for them already on aftercare. So, so we always have that place, whether it's in the country or it's a home country.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  So they go to an aftercare facility, some type of home where there's adult supervision, trusted vetted individuals that then do what? They give them a place to live?

• 27:24Tim Ballard?

  Live, schooling, you know, recreation. It's, it's, it's like a

• 27:29Lewis Howes?

  Safe environment.

• 27:30Tim Ballard?

  It's, it's, it's a very safe environment and we look for their parents, we look for family and hopefully we can find

• 27:35Lewis Howes?

  What if the parents are the ones that were the, the ones selling it?

• 27:38Tim Ballard?

  And oftentimes that's the case, unbelievably, but, but oftentimes the fam, there's a family is involved and, and so we just keep them in our home.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  How do moms sell their children?

• 27:49Tim Ballard?

  I don't know, man. It's one of these mysteries I'll never, never, never understand.

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  Have you talked to some of them afterwards and, and tried to ask them like what psychologically is off? Is it a fight or flight? Is it a survival mechanism?

• 28:00Tim Ballard?

  Survival.

• 28:01Lewis Howes?

  But once you have the money, once you've sold your children a few times and you've made a couple of thousand dollars in a very poor environment, don't you have at least some money for like the next month? Like to stop at some point or like why do they keep doing it? Is it greed?

• 28:17Tim Ballard?

  It's greed. It's just greed and then just get used to it. Oftentimes I've found that the parents who are doing it like, well, my mom did it to me.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Oh, it's a cycle. They don't know any better.

• 28:27Tim Ballard?

  They don't know, that's what they know. Yeah.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 28:32Lewis Howes?

  So what is, what's the good side of this? What can, what can people see after, you know, six months or a year? Do you start to see cases of kids that are starting to be, I don't know if you call rehabilitated or healed?

• 28:47Tim Ballard?

  Healed, reintegrated.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  Integrated from this horrible emotional traumatic process that could have been years of their life?

• 28:55Tim Ballard?

  So how, how we kind of guide our partners in aftercare and we stay with, we stay, we don't just drop them off and see you. Like our aftercare team keeps growing and growing because we take care of them, including the ones we didn't rescue, right? There's oftentimes it's just an aftercare mission. And the one thing that we really invest in, every kid's so unique. There's not a one size fit all for healing. Some might need this form, that form. There's so many different modalities, right? But one thing that is almost consistent everywhere is to provide opportunity. Because eventually you get them to a place where like, what do you want to be? See, when you, sometimes when you get these kids out, they don't believe they can even have a favorite color. You ask them, "What's your favorite color?" "What?"

• 29:39Tim Ballard?

  "I didn't know that was a thing for me."

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  It's not an option.

• 29:42Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I'm a commodity. I'm not a person that has thoughts or...

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  Feelings.

• 29:45Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, they, it's the craziest thing you see. It's like, wow, like, and then it's like, well, you do, and you can be whatever you want to be, you know? And that's the most fun part for me when we get to say, "Here, what do you want, this one, like that kid I was telling you about? You want to be a hairdresser? Great, we're gonna cover you. We're gonna get a scholarship." You're gonna, and this guy's killing it, right? We even flew him up last year to the United States to go to like a real high-end hairdressing school, you know?

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 30:11Tim Ballard?

  And I follow him, I follow him on Instagram on, you know, not my account.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:15Tim Ballard?

  But I just, I'm like, "Dude, you're killing it, bro." Like, he's at those big weddings and, you know, another child. Because we're just, you know, we're eight years old. So the kids we rescued in 2014...

• 30:26Lewis Howes?

  Now becoming adults.

• 30:27Tim Ballard?

  So we're getting to watch, like, can it happen? Can you reintegrate? I just, recently, one of my aftercare folks sent me a picture of this other girl that I was on the operations, a little girl when she was, when we rescued her. She's got two kids, an amazing husband, and she was briefing the first lady of the country she was in about human trafficking. And she was showing the pictures that we gave her from her own operations.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 30:51Tim Ballard?

  That's me right there, and let me tell you. Yeah, it was like, oh my gosh, I was crying a lot. And, you know, she had this awesome husband, two little kids. And I was like, "Look at this, like, they can come out, they can reintegrate." And it's just...

• 31:02Lewis Howes?

  And really help make change.

• 31:03Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  They can help impact people around them.

• 31:06Tim Ballard?

  A lot of them, well, let me, so one of the kids, one of the kids that grew up... And a lot of them want to come work in anti-trafficking and for us, a lot of them for us. So this one kid became an adult and had recently been married. And he goes out and finds victims, which we don't tell him to do that because like, "Bro, you gotta..." He's like, "No, I know." You know, he just goes out to like, public squares. And he can identify, like, "I know you don't want to be here, you don't want to be here." He approached, this is a true story, this is crazy, this is so amazing. He went to this girl who looks, he knew she didn't want to be there, very, very young, and she was pregnant. Like, barely, he could tell. Because this guy knows the world so well, he knows what...

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  He was in it.

• 31:47Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and so he walks up and he says, "Are you okay?" You know, "I was once, you know, being in this situation as well." And she's like, "Why are you talking to me?" He's like, "I just want to help you." And she starts crying, and she's like, "God must have sent you because I decided to, right, just before you walked in to me, I was gonna kill myself."

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 32:04Tim Ballard?

  And the baby would die too, with me. And she's like, "I don't think I can have this baby, I don't know what I'm gonna do." And he said to her, "Don't, don't, don't do it, like, I promise you, we'll take care of you. I'm recently married and we will adopt your baby."

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 32:19Tim Ballard?

  We'll adopt your baby and...

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 32:21Tim Ballard?

  And, you know, some like, nine, 10 months later, we were, we were in his country and one of our aftercare people was at the baptism of this baby.

• 32:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 32:33Tim Ballard?

  And it's like...

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 32:35Tim Ballard?

  And actually, the story is told in an upcoming documentary called Triple Take, which comes out next year. And, and it's just like, what a, what a amazing cycle, right? Like, the, the, the traffic kid becomes the rescuer and then takes a baby who was born out of being tra... And raises of this, it's the coolest, it's like, this is so cool, like, it's working, you know? It's working, you know?

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  It's unbelievable, man. And so what's been hap... You were telling me before about what's been happening in Ukraine.

• 33:04Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Lewis Howes?

  And there's this crazy, you know, story that happens. Can you share some of this about what happened with the, you know, a lot of the young kids and women in Ukraine? And how many you've been able to impact and rescue from that situation? And what you guys are doing now with... With what's happening there.

• 33:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so, you know, people often are just perplexed at the number, like $32 billion. You can't even, that's how much money is exchanged, right?

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  In the sex trafficking.

• 33:33Tim Ballard?

  In the sex trafficking, just sex trafficking.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  Industry.

• 33:35Tim Ballard?

  If you're, human trafficking everywhere is much higher, but just, just the sex trafficking.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  32 billion.

• 33:40Tim Ballard?

  32 billion. And people wonder like, well, that's a big market. How do you get people? How do you get kids? And it's, it's harvest time when there's, and when it's vulnerable time. So it's, it's usually developing countries.

• 33:52Lewis Howes?

  Wars, natural disasters, things like that.

• 33:54Tim Ballard?

  The traffickers just, it's like a magnet. Cause they're everywhere, right? So when the Russians invade on February 24th, it's my wife, who, we had 12 kids in Ukraine that we were adopting out. Ukraine's a high trafficking country, so we have a program called Children Need Families. That if you're, if you're an orphan in certain countries, the chances of you being sexually exploited are like, almost for sure.

• 34:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:16Tim Ballard?

  So, yeah, so it's just like.

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  Even if you're in an orphanage?

• 34:19Tim Ballard?

  Yes, the orphanages are some of the worst centers of abuse.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 34:23Tim Ballard?

  And orphanages have often in the past been like the centers of trafficking.

• 34:27Lewis Howes?

  How do you know what to trust if you're supporting an orphanage? How do you know to trust them?

• 34:31Tim Ballard?

  Well, finally, you know, the international community got together and they have orphanages, I think it's called the Hague Convention.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 34:37Tim Ballard?

  Which eliminates, or almost completely eliminates the possibility.

• 34:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:42Tim Ballard?

  So you're certified under the Hague and you.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  So find those orphanages and support the guys.

• 34:47Tim Ballard?

  Right, but there's so many in countries that don't apply and, and so we had 12 kids we were trying to get out. And Catherine, my wife, kind of founded, she founded this project and she runs it. And so she was devastated about these 12 kids, you know, she knows who they are, she knows where they are. She knows the parents that are about to adopt them and she's devastated, right? Having adopted two babies on her own, she understands the emotional connection, even before you get them, they're yours, you know? And it breaks your heart every night that you think, are they okay? You know? And so now there's a war and she's like, she, she comes to me, she's like, you need to go to Ukraine. And we have a European office and I'm like.

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  I'll send those guys.

• 35:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and she's like, no, you have to go, you have to go because something's gonna happen if you go. And, and my wife's very deliberate, very smart, like she's not irrational. So when she's saying it, she's feeling it from a higher source. And, and, and we, we don't, we don't mess with that, right?

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:37Tim Ballard?

  So like through tears and biting her lip, not wanting to say what she knows she has to, which is sending her husband to a war zone, right? It's like. Alright, I guess we'll go. But I was still like, Kath, I don't know how I'm gonna get in there. And I was telling you a few hours later, I get a call from Mel Gibson, okay?

• 35:54Lewis Howes?

  He's like, "I need you to go there, rescue these kids."

• 35:57Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, cuz he's filming a movie in Budapest at the time. And he calls me, he's like, "Hey, there's other kids in Ukraine, they're getting hurt." And I'm like, "Oh, so the list gets bigger." And so we end up going out there with aerial recovery, Jeremy Lockey, you know? And we start these extraction operations. And by that time, the Ukrainians give us a list of 10,000 orphans.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  10,000?

• 36:16Tim Ballard?

  10,000 orphans, they don't know where they are.

• 36:18Lewis Howes?

  So you went to go get 30 or 40? And then they're like, "We need you to get these 10,000 kids."

• 36:23Tim Ballard?

  Get them out, yeah. And aerial recovery led that effort. We supported it, I was out there. And we start extracting these, you know, these kids. The number is now 6,000. 6,000 women and children who we've been able to get out to safety.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  That you've rescued. You and your efforts and the organizations you've worked with.

• 36:39Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and I thought that was gonna be it, and that was gonna be enough.

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  6,000 is a lot of people.

• 36:42Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and that's a pretty cool.

• 36:44Lewis Howes?

  So what happens? How do you get them out? What is the process of identifying them? Knowing that the people that need to get out? And then actually getting them out? Is this helicoptering them out? Is it, you know, what is this?

• 36:54Tim Ballard?

  Okay, so the government gives us a list. And they have intel folks that ride with us. We basically have a convoy, okay? They give us the pass codes to get to blow through the checkpoints. Cuz there are checkpoints everywhere. And, you know, it's scary. I mean, there's bombs dropping, you hear them. And so we just go in. And there's usually a point of contact, some care worker, you know, who's in that city. And it's usually the cities that just got bombed or in the process of being bombed. Cuz that's where the need is in that moment. These kids are, their parents are dying, they don't know where to go. And it's just, we get intel lists. There's usually a coordinate, like I said, in the target location that are gathering, a couple gathering points.

• 37:33Lewis Howes?

  So somewhere, you gotta go find them and get them out.

• 37:35Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and we'll get the points, and we'll just go in. And we have a bus. Big bus.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  You just put them on the bus.

• 37:40Tim Ballard?

  Get on the bus and get out of town.

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  And how do they know to trust you? That you guys are good guys and that you're.

• 37:45Tim Ballard?

  Because the person on the ground, the caretaker that we have the point of contact.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  This is safe.

• 37:49Tim Ballard?

  Knows us. And we have, we have identification.

• 37:51Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 37:52Tim Ballard?

  They basically designate us all as Ukrainian like agents. Like we actually are like certified, like designated to be there to, to, to be able to take the kids out. We're working under their social services department.

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 38:03Tim Ballard?

  So they're, they're tracking it all. And then we bring the kids back and the social services department then has housing for them.

• 38:09Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 38:09Tim Ballard?

  Some in Ukraine, some outside of Ukraine, depending on, the Ukrainians make those decisions. But so we, we are running two, three a week. You know, things get bombed and we just, we just keep, keep moving in.

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  And you were saying that when you were there, you were also seeing these, I guess, pedophiles coming in. What you call harvesting, I guess, they're trying to find these kids and steal them.

• 38:29Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  For the sex trafficking, right?

• 38:31Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, it's because it's so easy, right?

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  Because these kids might be running around like they don't know where to go, their home is gone.

• 38:37Tim Ballard?

  Or they're crying over their dead bodies of their parents.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 38:40Tim Ballard?

  And they're, and they're, they're so vulnerable. And these, we see these vans, we couldn't, we couldn't have called them, you can't really call anyone. But we'd see it happening. It's like, oh crap. And we'd be talking, who are you? I'm like, I'm a Dutch, I'm from Holland. I'm just getting, helping. I'm like, well, there's nothing.

• 38:56Lewis Howes?

  Are you really helping? Are you doing something?

• 38:57Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 38:57Lewis Howes?

  Maybe some are, maybe some aren't.

• 38:59Tim Ballard?

  Are you registered? Well, not everyone who's registered, you know.

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  So they would just say, oh, come in my van. I've got food. If you want to come into a safe home, I've got a home for you to stay.

• 39:07Tim Ballard?

  And the kids get on. And then they, you know, at that point, any, anyone with a Ukrainian passport could go anywhere because it's like the refugees, right?

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:15Tim Ballard?

  Which they take advantage of, the traffickers take advantage. It's like, hey, where do you want to go? Let's get an airport. We'll go to somewhere warm. Want to go to, want to go to, you know, the Caribbean or want to go. And, and all of a sudden we're seeing this uptick of demand and ads on, on the sex boards, you know, for Ukrainians.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  Ads.

• 39:32Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, you know, oh yeah.

• 39:33Lewis Howes?

  Online sex boards.

• 39:34Tim Ballard?

  Uh huh, absolutely.

• 39:36Lewis Howes?

  So people advertise what they're looking for?

• 39:37Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And what and what's available.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 39:41Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, it's a huge, huge, huge market.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  How do these, how do these people on these, I guess, online sex, is it like chat rooms? Is it just like?

• 39:48Tim Ballard?

  It's every, everything you can think.

• 39:49Lewis Howes?

  Anywhere.

• 39:49Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  It could be on social media.

• 39:51Tim Ballard?

  Every social media and they'll, they'll, they can hide it in a way that's like, they know what to put. There's certain symbols, signs.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  So they're not actually saying what they're.

• 39:59Tim Ballard?

  Not if it's underage.

• 40:00Lewis Howes?

  Hey, I need a Colombian sixteen year old, not saying that it's like symbols and emojis or something, right?

• 40:05Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, but there, there's a whole underworld of how to.

• 40:08Lewis Howes?

  This crazy.

• 40:09Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  So when you see that and you see them, you know, putting out these kind of symbols where you know, oh, something's fishy here. And you're able to, are you able to track those IP addresses right away or how does that work?

• 40:22Tim Ballard?

  Oh, yeah. So we, we have a, a, a pretty impressive online intel group, you know? Well, they do everything, right? But the digital forensic, they'll help, they'll support the forensics. And we go help when countries raid a house, they get their computers out. But they, they do open source intel work where they can do all sorts of stuff to track and find and, and dive in. And it's, it's pretty impressive.

• 40:46Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 40:46Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  And so what is this thing you were telling me about the hidden war? What is happening with this?

• 40:51Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. So the hidden war was while, while we're in Ukraine, they gave us another list of, they think over 200,000 women and children have been trafficked, right? Out of the country.

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  Is, is that sex trafficking or that could be organ trafficking?

• 41:05Tim Ballard?

  It could be anything.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  Anything, any type of trafficking.

• 41:07Tim Ballard?

  Sex or organs or mostly sex.

• 41:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:10Tim Ballard?

  So we decide that we're going to do something about this. So we, we put together a team of Ukrainian speakers, I gotta get Ukrainian speakers. So we go to Budapest, do a training.

• 41:20Tim Ballard?

  And find, basically recruit and see who can pass our assessments if they can speak Ukrainian. And we find a couple of awesome operators, one of which is a thirty five year old actress who just killed it in all the training and the scenarios and, and uh, thank goodness, because we can put, put, put a makeup artist on her and turn her into a thirteen year old.

• 41:41Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 41:42Tim Ballard?

  Now, while, this is a miracle from God and it goes back to my wife, like. She didn't even know why she was sending me here. We know why now. Because we get a phone call from a Dutch police asset that tells. He doesn't know what we're doing, right? He says, "Hey, bro, I got a lead for you. This pedophile, who we've been hunting for two years because he's a political activist trying to change the laws in Holland to make legal sex with children, right? There's interviews, we're talking about three and four-year-olds.

• 42:08Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 42:08Tim Ballard?

  Should be able to consent.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 42:10Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, yeah. And he's just like, "If they can consent to ice cream or a walk in the park, they can consent to sex too. It feels good for them too."

• 42:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 42:18Tim Ballard?

  It's always deliberate to child. It's always for the child's benefit, you know? But this guy's been on the run because he was arrested in Holland for crimes against children. He's like, "I just found the guy. He's in Mexico City hiding." And he told me on this undercover, he's undercover like, you know, chatroom or whatever. He says he's looking for Ukrainian kids he can insert into the Mexican market, sex market. And I'm like, "Bro, you have no idea." I'm sitting here right now with Ukrainians, one of which looks like a kid. So he introduces me to this guy. He says, "Hey, I got your guy. He's an American, he's in the market, he's got kids. He's in Ukraine right now." And this guy is calling me. He's like, "Come to Mexico and show me what you got."

• 42:57Lewis Howes?

  You're talking to the pedophile?

• 42:58Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, he calls me on my undercover phone.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:00Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so he invites me to Mexico City to come, to come. He wants to see my product and he's gonna show me his stuff, right?

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  So is that, so would you say, "Okay, I'll see you next week"? Is this, what happens after that? And you bring kids or what happens? You bring her?

• 43:16Tim Ballard?

  Her, I bring her. But I first call. There's a couple of countries that if you're a pedophile and running away from us, you don't want to go to.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  Mexico's one of them.

• 43:25Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Because you're tapped in.

• 43:27Tim Ballard?

  Very tapped in, very good friends. And one phone call and they take, "Hey, come on down this date." So I call the guy, "Yeah, I'll be down, bro," you know? So we have, we, at that point, we're agents of the Mexican government. They sign us up, we're helping them, and...

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  So this is what, a couple of weeks later down the road now? Is this like, pretty?

• 43:46Tim Ballard?

  A couple of weeks.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 43:47Tim Ballard?

  Like, as soon as we're gonna make it happen, right? And they're getting all this in, so the Dutch are sending us the, what they have, we're sending it all to them. And they're kicking butt before we even get there. Right. I mean, they've got this guy on possession of child exploitation material. They've already got intel and information on him. Possession of weapons. All they really needed was, can you lure this guy out? Because we can't find him. Oh. Mexico City is like a country. Massive. Yeah. So we end up doing that by showing him the girl. Hey, bro, you can come meet the, so we lure him out and he, because he wants to see the girl. And then that allows the Mexicans to identify him and his house.

• 44:28Tim Ballard?

  They run a search warrant on his house that night and he's famous, he was famous in Holland for hiding his, his material. His child exploitation material. He'll hide it on like micro SD cards or thumb drives, you know? You can hide it under tables, cars, places where, and he always, he bragged to me when we were talking, saying, "The Dutch didn't get the best stuff I had." You mean like the content that he was filming? Yeah, or getting from other sources, like children being raped. Oh my gosh. Because they love this stuff. Like they just, they get, they just like their collection. Oh my gosh. So another miracle was that, so one of the programs, I think you may be aware of, we have these dogs, with these canines and they're sniffers, right? And just like a drug dog or a bomb dog. But these guys, these dogs can sniff out digital media. That's incredible. There's a little glue component in every microchip.

• 45:14Tim Ballard?

  And they can smell it? And we train them to smell it. It's unbelievable. Yeah, they're heroes, these dogs. And there's, we have about, I think 80 plus percent of the dogs employed in this are from us. We're kind of, we're kind of the pioneers in this and we, we get these dogs and we give them to law enforcement. So they take them on the warrants where they're looking for pedophiles and it's like, find, find the stuff. So these dogs are killing it. They're amazing. They're finding all this data everywhere. Yeah, they're amazing. And sometimes the only evidence that exists that a child might be getting hurt is on some micro SD card, under a carpet. That dog's gonna find it.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  That's unbelievable.

• 45:47Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, they're beautiful. They're beautiful animals. And they just signal us. Sometimes they tap, they sit down on all fours. I showed you a video before we got in here. You see the dog that's running the house? That was the dog in Mexico. So when the Mexicans ran his house, as it turned out, another miracle, okay, six months ago, before this happened, and this was in June, this was on June 5th of this year, we're in Mexico City. And there's press all about this. You can Google this and people can find, look at the whole story. But it just so happened that six months prior to that, one of our officers decided to, the next dog we're gonna train, we're gonna keep, so that we can deploy rapidly. There'd been no dogs international yet that we knew of.

• 46:29Tim Ballard?

  And so, this dog, Hidu, this little two-year-old black lab, right, had just graduated from our program like a week before this operation.

• 46:37Lewis Howes?

  Training school, yeah.

• 46:38Tim Ballard?

  Done. He's right there. He's in Thailand kicking butt right now.

• 46:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 46:43Tim Ballard?

  He flies down to Mexico with his handler, who's one of my operators.

• 46:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 46:46Tim Ballard?

  And they hit the house, dude finds four little, four hidden devices.

• 46:49Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 46:50Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. He goes out on all fours when he finds something.

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible.

• 46:53Tim Ballard?

  And then they pull it out, they find it, here it is. So this guy's done. Like, he's done.

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  So you were there with this guy and the girl, the Ukrainian girl, right? And you were there, you lure him out of his house, or what happened?

• 47:05Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, he was gonna come to a party. I set up a party for him.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  She said, I got a girl, the girl was gonna be there.

• 47:09Tim Ballard?

  Come see the girl.

• 47:10Lewis Howes?

  And so he came.

• 47:12Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and the Mexicans are everywhere. Like, they're set up. Now, here's the important part of this story, because this is not even the biggest hit yet. So, we wanna find his lieutenants. Like, who are the, because you fled with your other political activists. Where are they? So, we actually set the scene up to bring him to the hotel room, this suite. And we knew he wouldn't talk to us. So we're just like, I...

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  Why wouldn't he talk to you?

• 47:35Tim Ballard?

  Oh, because he's scared to death.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  But he would come to the party, but he wouldn't say hi?

• 47:38Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Lewis Howes?

  So he would just like...

• 47:39Tim Ballard?

  He would say a little bit. This guy's the most wanted pedophile in the world, and he knows it, right? He's running. He's hiding in Mexico City. So, we got him to come out, only because I showed him pictures. I did FaceTime. I showed the girl on FaceTime while we're in, "Look, we're in Mexico. Come tomorrow." So we got him, like, this has to be real. This has to be real. I mean, I got this long hair, you know, I got this, again, I mean, I look so real. I got tattoos all over my body, you know, there were Hannah tattoos, you know? And so, he shows up, but...

• 48:12Tim Ballard?

  The one question I need to ask him is, where's Martine and Leslie? Cause he knows I-

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Partners.

• 48:18Tim Ballard?

  Cause he's public, he's a public figure, so it wouldn't surprise him that, hey, if I'm gonna go into business with you, you know I've Googled you, bro, you know I've looked into you. But I can only ask that question one time.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  You can't keep asking.

• 48:27Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, because-

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  He's getting suspicious.

• 48:29Tim Ballard?

  This guy wouldn't, yeah. So I wait, and we set this whole thing up. I got a hotel near a big park in Mexico City. Because I waited and we like hung out, had lunch, I said, hey, let's go down and see the girl, she's down in the park. She FaceTimed us from the park, and there's a monument over there, so he could tell it was the same. He, she was downstairs. So once we get downstairs, he does exactly what I hope. Cause right when we get downstairs, he looks at me and he's like, I now know you're not a cop.

• 48:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 48:59Tim Ballard?

  Cause he's like, you would have arrested me up there. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, that's exactly what I wanted. And then he goes the next step and he says to me-

• 49:06Lewis Howes?

  He said he would arrest me up there?

• 49:07Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, cause I would have. He knows, he's smart. If I was a cop, why would I, why would I bring him to the park?

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  Why would he put-

• 49:12Tim Ballard?

  Where he could run.

• 49:12Lewis Howes?

  Right. Why would he put himself in a position where if he thinks you're a cop, why would he even show up?

• 49:17Tim Ballard?

  Because he wanted that girl, he wanted, it was worth the risk.

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:21Tim Ballard?

  It was worth the risk.

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  For you to sell her the girl essentially, so that he could sell her over and over again.

• 49:26Tim Ballard?

  Exactly. And maybe, and have sex with him, rape her also, right? So he, he takes the risk, but once we're in the park, he also says to me, and I don't, I also now know you're not an assassin from Holland. And I said, you thought that was even a possibility? He's like, well, yeah, they want me, man. But I know you would have killed me up there, well, you can't kill me down here, there's too many people around. But this is exactly where I wanted him, I set it up this way.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  Are you filming this too, or audio or something?

• 49:51Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, this, yeah, this is, there's-

• 49:53Lewis Howes?

  You got cameras?

• 49:53Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And also, there's cops everywhere in the park.

• 49:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 49:57Tim Ballard?

  Because they knew that I was gonna ask this question, and they just said, take as long as you want. If he runs, we'll catch him, he won't run.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 50:03Tim Ballard?

  And, and then I asked the question. I said, so where are those boys, Martine and Leslie? They seem like cool dudes. He's like, oh yeah, you read about them? I'm like, yeah. He's like, you know, they're actually running a sex hotel.

• 50:15Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, he says this?

• 50:16Tim Ballard?

  Yes! But this is why, he's, cause he just got this emotional release.

• 50:20Lewis Howes?

  Now he feels he can be honest, he can be honest now.

• 50:22Tim Ballard?

  I'm real, I'm real, right? He's like, they're in a sex hotel running. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. And I'm just going, oh my- It's like this is a bigger hit than they're bigger than you all of a sudden, right? So I said, you know, can I go with you? He's like, no, I don't know you well enough. I said, have you even been there? He's like, yeah, I spent a couple of months there. See, he's, he doesn't really, but I know. That night, we're going into your house. I'll get your passport. I won't know what country you were in. So I said, well, how long were you there? Like, two months, I was with a bartender at the hotel. I'm like, okay, well, the country's locked up because you have a passport. And he wouldn't tell me much more than that. And at that point, I knew we had enough.

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're not gonna ask more too.

• 51:00Tim Ballard?

  Right, so I peeled off at that point, like, hey, gotta take a phone call, which was the sign. And then, and we have the footage, right? We're like.

• 51:06Lewis Howes?

  And he's with the girl at this point or no?

• 51:07Tim Ballard?

  No, we never let him get to her.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  Oh wow.

• 51:09Tim Ballard?

  Right? And then the cops just start coming out of the trees.

• 51:11Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 51:12Tim Ballard?

  When I go off like this, that was like, now is the time. And he just like, before, he doesn't even know what hit him. He just, it's over. And what's up, we have, it's all filmed. You know, he's the guy with the red hair, you'll see him in the video.

• 51:23Lewis Howes?

  Cops are just surrounding him, just arrest him.

• 51:24Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. So then we, the dog goes in, you know, finds the four devices. The next day, the attorney general talks about Hidu, the dog. He's the most famous dog in Mexico to this day.

• 51:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:34Tim Ballard?

  He was on the front page of every news outlet.

• 51:36Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 51:37Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, this little dog that like to save the day, you know, so he had an OUR jacket on, you know.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Amazing, man.

• 51:43Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, super cool. They're called ESD dogs, electronic, electronic, storage device dogs.

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  Storage device.

• 51:50Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, electronic storage device canines.

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  And so the hidden war then is, is, how does that connect to the hidden war?

• 51:58Tim Ballard?

  Well, do you want me, can I tell you when we go to Ecuador?

• 52:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Tim Ballard?

  Because this is where, I'll get to the hidden war. Because it hits the United States eventually. That's the scary part about this and the important part. Because this is, this is a pedophile network that's kind of all over.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  They're all connected.

• 52:13Tim Ballard?

  They're all connected, they're all talking.

• 52:14Lewis Howes?

  From all over the world.

• 52:15Tim Ballard?

  From all over the world and from inside the United States as well. So our intel unit goes in and looks like, okay, we got the passport. Two months he was in Ecuador, so the hotel's somewhere in Ecuador. Where? Well, our intel guys are open source OSINT guys, you know, they go, they go and and they find they messed up one time. There was an ad in a little village in Canoa, Ecuador. There was a big earthquake in 2016, very vulnerable population. Single, single parent homes and that's exactly where a pedophile would go hang out. There was one ad for like this boutique hotel in Canoa. And it's put on by, it just says Leslie. Like, one time it says Leslie. He screwed up, put a name, but that's all it says. Fifty-fifty chance, whatever. We call it Ecuadorian police.

• 53:00Tim Ballard?

  Super tight connections with those guys. Homeland Security, our US Embassy supports it. They rush out to the village and on the beach and they set up on the hotel that's in the ad. Within one hour, both those guys rear their heads around looking, just casually come out and there's little boys in the house.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 53:16Tim Ballard?

  And then this other dude comes out of the house. Okay, we're like, oh my gosh, that's, that's the fourth guy we would have looked for. He was visiting as a tourist with another dude.

• 53:27Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 53:28Tim Ballard?

  And, and, and, um, this is so important because it was in a kind of a part of, it was being remodeled. I just got word literally this morning from the prosecutor down in Ecuador. He's like, bro, we just, I don't even know what we found out. These guys were launching a huge, they were gonna finish that up and it was gonna be like, pedophiles everywhere. You wanna have your little boys come on down here. It's very obscure, there's not much, yeah. So this guy who comes out of the house, okay. Cause we're going to the judge, like, Judge, you gotta get us a warrant, we gotta get in. He's like, I don't have enough, get me more, get me more. And, and it was that same day this guy leaves. What are the chances? He leaves the first day we get eyes on the place. He gets on a plane, we've tracked him to Miami. He's coming probably to set something up here.

• 54:11Tim Ballard?

  Cause they're gonna set up a bunch of hotels. He comes to Miami, we call Homeland Security, that's who I used to work for. They pick him up, do a full forensic on his computer. And they find all this evidence, right, of child sex. So, he gets sent back to Holland, there's a warrant for him waiting in Holland, right? So he's gone, we got him caught. And then that gave us the evidence we needed. Cause the machines came out of the house into Miami, so the judge is like, done, warrant. Boom, you saw the footage, right, knocked down the doors. And then the guys get arrested. And then all these kids and their families start emerging onto the streets. And that was, it was, we had, we had child forensic interviewers ready in case this happened. We've counted somewhere between three and 400 kids were likely sexually abused.

• 54:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 54:54Tim Ballard?

  Over the two years those guys were there. And, and all their kids, the kids are coming sobbing, telling their parents. The parents were like, what is going on? The Dutch uncles, they had Xbox, they had games, they had candy. And they bring kids in every day.

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, man.

• 55:07Tim Ballard?

  Um, I've never seen anything like this. We actually built an aftercare home in the village.

• 55:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 55:12Tim Ballard?

  Just to take care of hundreds of kids. We feed them, because you gotta take care of those basic needs first, right? It's the vulnerability always that begins with the problem. And then they're going through their therapy and all this. We end up going to the president of Ecuador's home. It's this big deal, right? They're like, now we're friends with them and we're, we're helping. We're, my wife and I are working directly with the first lady to help on adoptions and... So it's this, it's this amazing thing that's happening. Um, uh, but you know, what's, what's scary and where Americans need to wake up. We call this the hidden war because the overt war is what I just told you. The hidden war is who in the hell are these guys? I mean, they're, they're, they're going online and saying kill O U R if you ever want to have sex with kids. Like, this used to be very closet.

• 55:56Tim Ballard?

  It's not, it's not, they're coming out now and talking. And what's scary right now is happening is we studied the, kind of the... These guys are a political party, so they have, they have like literature.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 56:07Tim Ballard?

  Their policy platforms. And the things they want. They want kids to have access to lots of sex material. They want kids to have, uh, you know, they, they, they talk about like separating parents from kids. Like to, don't let the parents get in the way and how to do that.

• 56:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 56:22Tim Ballard?

  Um, all sorts of things.

• 56:24Lewis Howes?

  For someone that is hearing this and they didn't know the, the weight of just the sex trafficking world and how big it was and how big it is and where it could be going if we don't do anything to stop it. And it feels daunting to them. What can they do to get involved in some way in supporting ending sex trafficking? What's the first step? What can they, how can they learn more? Where can they go on your site to get more information about what governments are doing?

• 56:52Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so it's a super dark world, which is why so many just want to turn a blind eye. And that's why I'm so grateful for you, Louis, because you're a very prominent person in the media, public figure that's not afraid. Most are afraid to talk about it because they, I've seen, they say, "Tim, my place is a place of light." Like, "I don't want to bring darkness to my people." And it's like, "No, no, no, no, you're gonna bring light to the darkness, right?" But you, I mean, you've been a supporter and you've donated so much money. You've brought so many people, so thank you for being brave enough to even talk about this. And it's so important. And the good news about, you know, what we can show people is we actually have a solution.

• 57:34Tim Ballard?

  We're not just gonna wave some dark flag of, you know, of horror and terror. We will tell you what it is, but we're gonna tell you, we will go anywhere and we know how to go there. We have partners all over. I mean, this case I just told you, in four months, we pull all that off. And we can do it again. And it's, we're training law enforcement, empowering law enforcement, moving rapidly and getting kids out. And so if you come, visit us at OURrescue.org and learn, there's videos, there's content. We have materials that help you to identify human trafficking or exploitation that might be happening in your own community and your own home. So we have trainings. And then you can participate in the rescue and rehabilitation by supporting our teams around the world.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so OURrescue.org?

• 58:18Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 58:18Lewis Howes?

  And I think there's also another thing about the Hidden War.

• 58:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, the Hidden War was this crazy case that's ongoing. It's been through all these countries. So if you want to learn more about that specifically, and if you want to contribute directly to this important mission of this particular war that's infiltrating the United States and everywhere else, it's OURrescue and then slash Hidden War.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:38Tim Ballard?

  And we have a brand new trailer that's coming out explaining this. And we're actually gonna, we're gonna like launch it when your show launches, so.

• 58:47Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing, man. You're a hero, Tim. I appreciate you, man. I acknowledge you for how you are so committed to this. And I know, you know...

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  I've seen you off camera and I've seen you on camera and I and I know how challenging it is to take on the weight of it. You know, the responsibility of the weight to psychologically shift yourself and be in on these rescues and act like, you know, you're you're in as a pedophile and then be with your family. There's there's got to be a lot of pressure and weight because the mission is so big and it's so dark.

• 59:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  So I really acknowledge you for your incredible big heart on how you just keep showing up for so many kids because there's so many kids that don't have hope. And for you to be able to be out there and your team's out there, it really inspires me that there could be a stop to this one day, that there can't, that there is a solution and you guys are doing everything in your power. I almost feel like you're doing too much and you need to take a break sometimes and take a rest and take care of yourself because I can see sometimes how it can feel so overwhelming for you. But I just acknowledge you for the the call to service that you continue to show up and and use yourself, your skills, your talents, your voice to be of service to help so many kids that don't have the ability to help themselves.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  These are our most vulnerable people in the world and I really acknowledge you, man. You're a real hero, so I appreciate it.

• 1:00:12Tim Ballard?

  You're so kind and and thank you. You know, I always tell, this is the truth about fighting slavery of any kind, it's, you know, we can get thousands out, right? But, you know, when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time, he was a great abolitionist along with Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and they got really loud, right? And he said to her, he didn't take the credit for the end of slavery and he doesn't deserve all the credit, frankly. He doesn't deserve most of the credit and I love him. But he even said to her, you're the lady that wrote the book that started this war.

• 1:00:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:00:45Tim Ballard?

  It needs, there has to be that loud voice and I always say the storytellers like you, you're the actual heroes. We can only rescue a certain amount. It's the storytellers that move the entire community, that move the needle, that that bring the masses and stand up and that's the light that this, the darkness of human trafficking cannot. With Stan, so I thank you for being a light and being a constant friend to this cause, man.

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man, I'm excited, man. I wanna continue to support you. We've supported you. We wanna keep supporting you. Ever since I heard your talk at Tony Robbins event, I think it was two years ago, almost three years ago now. Cause I think it was January, February 2020.

• 1:01:20Tim Ballard?

  That's right, that's correct, yeah.

• 1:01:21Lewis Howes?

  So almost three years ago is when I first heard about you and heard your speech and I was just like, it spoke to me. You know, it was, it wasn't something that happened to me, but through sexual abuse, it's kind of related to me in a sense that I know what it feels like to be vulnerable and be taken advantage of sexually as a little boy. And I can only imagine the pain and trauma and suffering of being sold by a stranger or being sold by your own parents, not once, but over and over and over again. And so the pain that I felt was just, you know, I could only think times a thousand what these children are going through, the suffering. And so the fact that this is your mission and your wife is fully on board, where you're probably gone half the year,

• 1:02:05Lewis Howes?

  you know, out serving and in dangerous scenarios is just, I really honor and acknowledge both of you. And I got to meet her at the last O U R event, so.

• 1:02:13Tim Ballard?

  Can I say something about her?

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Tim Ballard?

  Real quick, I wouldn't have done this without her. I was a total wimp. And when I had to either do the case, or I had to quit my job to do these operations, right? And that's what started O U R. It's like, I got shut down because of jurisdiction, but I was this close. And it was like, and it was her that said to me, when I said, "I'll do it, I'll do it." And then the money started coming in, I was like, "Wait, I'm not gonna actually do it."

• 1:02:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:38Tim Ballard?

  And I remember she grabbed me and she's like, "I will not let you jeopardize my salvation by not doing this."

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:02:45Tim Ballard?

  And so when you say like, you know, she sends me out, I've gone half the year, it's true, probably more than half the year. But she's the one who says, "If you don't do this, I don't know what blessings I won't get" to help raise my kids. So that's her mentality. Like, she's like, "You gotta keep going." And it was her, if you remember, when I started that, she's the one who said, "You gotta go to Ukraine." And she didn't even know why. But after the four months and the crazy, all these countries and 400 kids in Ecuador and kids in Mexico and in the US being affected. I remember I was back decompressing, sitting on the couch, and she's doing all the stuff for the kids. And I just started sobbing, cause I looked over at her and I was just like, "Oh my gosh." That's why you sent me to Ukraine.

• 1:03:26Tim Ballard?

  God sees these kids in Canoa that no one's looking for and all he knows he has to touch this daughter of his. And even if she can't understand why, but she knows she has to send her husband, which is, I mean, that's a way more difficult sacrifice than going in the action is easy compared to like, can you imagine? I'm responsible if my, if the father of my children is killed with, by a Russian missile? Like, I don't know how you do, I couldn't do it. And, and, but in the end, I got to go back to, even this morning, I woke up this morning in Utah, before I came down here, right? And I said to her this morning, cause I just got that news from the prosecutor, I said, Catherine, look, he, they discovered that these guys were about to launch a whole

• 1:04:06Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:04:07Tim Ballard?

  sex tourist hotel, like, felt, and the prosecutor said, thousands of children will not be raped because you guys took that place down. I said, Catherine, look, all because you, because God talked and you did it, you sent me to Ukraine. Who knew it ended in Ecuador, but that's what you were, cause she said, I didn't know why I was sending you. It didn't make any sense, those 12 kids, I knew you weren't gonna get them, but you had, she said, I knew something would happen. And so, she really is, she is the unsung hero in this, cause none of it would have happened. And now thousands, you know, thousands of kids have been rescued. Or, you know, when you look at the amount of arrests, the studies that show up to 100 kids will be hurt by one of these guys.

• 1:04:50Tim Ballard?

  So preventative, kids that were rescued that never knew they were rescued.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:04:54Tim Ballard?

  And I, and I'm telling Catherine, this is just because of you, because, because you were willing to do the, the, the, the thing that was impossible.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Courageous.

• 1:05:02Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. Like forced me to leave my secure job. We didn't have money, I had no savings and, are you kidding me? Like, I'm the provider here and, and she's like, I don't care. She's, I don't care if we end up in a tent, you know, on a beach somewhere, like, you have to do this, you know? And then the same courage to send us to Ukraine and, and I just, I just, she doesn't care about being recognized, she, in fact, she, it makes her uncomfortable, but I, I just have to say that she is the one that makes this happen.

• 1:05:32Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful, man. Well, I want people to go to O U R rescue.org. Make sure you guys go there. We'll have it all linked up and all the, we'll put some of these videos that you'll send me in the video and link them up to your website everywhere. If you guys want to learn more, that's the best place. You're all over social media, updating people about what's happening as well, so they can follow you on social media. You do have this book as well that shares more about it, Slaves, Steelers.

• 1:05:55Tim Ballard?

  This tells the whole story of how we started.

• 1:05:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, True Accounts of Slave Rescues Then and Now. So if you guys want to learn more about how it got started, this is an amazing place to get started on this book. So check it out, we'll link this up as well. Tim, I'm grateful for you, man. I want to ask you one final question. And I think I asked you this before, but I'm curious your, your response now about a year and a half later. It's called the three truths questions, hypothetical scenario. So imagine you live as long as you want to live. You can live 100, 200, as old as you want to be on this earth. And you accomplish everything you want to accomplish in your life. You live the life you want to from here, moving forward, you see it all happen. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your written work, this interview, any videos that you have,

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  any content that you've created out there in the world, it's got to go with you to the next place. So we don't have your information anymore of your written word, your audio, your voice, or any videos of you. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons that you would share with the world. And this is all we would have to remember your wisdom are these three things. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:07:04Tim Ballard?

  For me, I think number one would have to be that faith is, faith is clarity.

• 1:07:13Tim Ballard?

  And I don't, everyone has their own idea of what that means, a higher power, right? Faith in that is clarity. The, the world is so crazy and chaotic and confusing and it's like. How do you even know it's true? I can't trust any source anymore. And I happened to learn this because I'm trying to find children. I have this desire and it's like, I gotta cut through the crap and find the truth. That truth leads me to a kid. Then I've learned that if I don't turn to that higher source, I'm totally lost.

• 1:07:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Tim Ballard?

  And I won't be able to make it because I'll be crushed spiritually, emotionally. So to me, I say faith is clarity, faith is the answer. Like, trust that. I don't care if someone calls it their gut, everyone can call it whatever they want. But that intuition has been right almost all the time.

• 1:08:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Tim Ballard?

  Or marry someone that has it. I have a good friend that has that piece. Two, I think we underestimate the power of service. I think service turns the lights on. Again, we all have darkness, everyone's dealing with it in some form. But there's a special thing that happens when you serve somebody. It's just, it makes you feel, I mean, just think about it. When you're on the street and someone says, hey, where's, where's, you know, Jones Avenue? And you just take two minutes and tell them, you feel good. And you're almost like, why, that felt good. I hope they, I hope they get there. If their psycho fall, like you want, that's, that's what it is. It's, that's a light that turns on.

• 1:08:45Tim Ballard?

  And it's actually, actually, Tony Robbins taught me this, but when you serve and pray and meditate, any of those things, your brain literally releases a beautiful chemical cocktail that actually like makes you feel good. And then the studies go on to say that people who have that chemical reaction tend to be people that display things like extra courage and extra creativity and extra love. And, and it's interesting because it's not that the chemicals do that. Because they've tried to counterfeit those drugs and it doesn't do that.

• 1:09:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:09:17Tim Ballard?

  But what happens, it prepares your heart, it prepares your, your body and your soul to open up. And then the higher power stuff, because how else can you get love really and creativity? That's, that's an outer worldly kind of thing that comes to you. Creativity, courage, love. And but you can get it through serving. It's like God has set something up in your body that connects to, to, to the higher source, right? And so service is the key to me. If I, if I'm feeling down, if I'm, I remember I went through something horrible in 2020. Like just horrible, just. This injustice completely that was happening to me and my family. And what I didn't know, what do I do, what do I do?

• 1:09:58Tim Ballard?

  I'm gonna go into Mexico and just go undercover and find kids. And it was the only way I was gonna survive this. And today, we have one of our best offices in that region. And we've done many, many, including the little boy I just told you about earlier. He's in that region where I went. I took a team and now we have an office. And it was the only thing that even got me out of the, just from drowning.

• 1:10:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:23Tim Ballard?

  But it did. Serving people is magical.

• 1:10:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:10:26Tim Ballard?

  And it heal, it's healing, you know, it's, it does so much. And if we all, if we were all doing it, we would eliminate all the problems. Like, we wouldn't be going to war and we would just be loving each other, you know?

• 1:10:37Lewis Howes?

  That's it, yeah. The service.

• 1:10:39Tim Ballard?

  So service.

• 1:10:40Lewis Howes?

  And the third thing?

• 1:10:40Tim Ballard?

  The third thing, um, the third thing I would say is the power of forgiveness.

• 1:10:51Tim Ballard?

  I've had to deal with that on many fronts, like I see people that hurt kids all the time.

• 1:10:56Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 1:10:57Tim Ballard?

  And, and if you let yourself, if you let yourself.

• 1:11:01Lewis Howes?

  It's a poison.

• 1:11:02Tim Ballard?

  It's a poison. It will kill you. And, and just forgiving someone else, and it's hard sometimes, right? I've had, you know, it's, it's the craziest thing, you know? Human trafficking became politicized somehow a couple of years ago. And so it just became this weird like time and, and just you were open season if you were. I came under a crazy attack as part of that thing in 2020, it was like, just lies. Like, because, just because I guess anyone who gets, and you're just exposed to it. And it's like, it's hard enough that I'm almost widowing my wife and orphaning my kids. And then I get to come home to lies and, and, you know, former employees were just lying. You know, and, and because they got fired for, for cause and, and it's just a lot of crap.

• 1:11:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:45Tim Ballard?

  And if you don't forgive, you're gonna be just. Along with the service, just forgive people, like love them. You can love anyone if you, you know, just, just try to love them, you know, pray to love, pray for the feeling, but forgiveness is liberating.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:01Tim Ballard?

  And, and I, you're just not going to work, you're not going to be able to serve or do anything. So I guess those are the three most important things.

• 1:12:07Lewis Howes?

  Oh, Tim, you're amazing, man. I appreciate you. Thanks again for coming on and sharing, brother. Appreciate it, man. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend, leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want

• 1:12:48Lewis Howes?

  more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.