986 Fighting Child Sex Slavery w/Tim Ballard

“If everybody would focus focus focus on child crimes, we could end it. It’s not going to be governments alone. It’s going to be people getting loud.”With July 30 being the UN's World Day Against Human Trafficking, Lewis sits down with Tim Ballard, the CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, to discuss his efforts to fight child sex slavery and rescue kids around the world. Although this was not an easy conversation, and some of you might find this interview disturbing, the subject is so important. It also touches closer to home than you may realize. For more: lewishowes.com/986 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.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 986 with Tim Ballard.

• 0:07Lewis 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.

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  Nelson Mandela once said, "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." An author, Albert Hubbard, wrote, "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told." This will be a very powerful episode for so many people that are listening right now. July 30th is UN's World Day Against Human Trafficking, an issue that is far more widespread than you may realize. My guest today has made it his mission to end child sex slavery. Tim Ballard is a former undercover operative with the CIA and Department of Homeland Security, who's currently the CEO of Operation Underground

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  Railroad, an organization that fights to dismantle child trafficking rings and rescue kids all over the world. Tim's efforts are now being depicted in a feature film called Sound of Freedom. This was not an easy conversation, and some of you might find this information disturbing, but it's so important. And to those of you who think this issue may not hit close to home, it does in more ways than you know. And in this episode, we discuss the shocking statistics around human trafficking, even in our own country, how parents can protect their kids from predators. This is huge because most parents have no clue what their kids are doing on their phones all day long, and predators on every social media

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  networking platform. We're going to talk about this and so much more. Share this because we all need to hear it. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, please subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts right now and give us a rating and review so we can spread this message to more people on the platform. In just a minute, stay tuned for Tim Ballard.

• 2:20Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to School of Greatness. Super pumped today for my guest Tim Ballard in the house. My man, good to see you brother.

• 2:25Tim Ballard?

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  So grateful you're here. I first learned about you, I think about a year ago. Someone was telling me about you, but then I really learned about you when Tony Robbins 60th birthday party, where I watched the videos, got to hear you speak and got to see the work you do with Operation Underground Railroad. And it's amazing what you have done. It's amazing what your organization have done.

• 2:47Tim Ballard?

  Thank you.

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  And really helping end childhood sex trafficking.

• 2:51Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  And I'm curious if you can help educate my audience who maybe has no clue about this. Like, I didn't have a clue about this.

• 2:57Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:59Lewis Howes?

  What is, what is sex trafficking in terms of US? Is it actually happening? And what is it in terms of international? What is the problem at hand right now?

• 3:08Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so this is not a peripheral issue. Most people want to believe it is. This is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:16Tim Ballard?

  It's

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  More than drugs, more than?

• 3:18Tim Ballard?

  It's the fastest growing, really. It's, it's rivaling drugs right now. Cause you can sell

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  It's the fastest growing, gotcha.

• 3:23Tim Ballard?

  Fastest growing. But in terms of numbers, it's actually getting up to drug trafficking. And the reason is you can sell a bag of cocaine one time, but you can sell a child.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 3:33Tim Ballard?

  You know, 10, 20 times in a 24 hour period. So it's very lucrative. And it's, it's enormous. It's a huge business. Now there's

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  So it's a renewable product.

• 3:42Tim Ballard?

  Exactly.

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  You can recycle the product.

• 3:44Tim Ballard?

  That's right.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  I don't want to say it like that term, but

• 3:45Tim Ballard?

  But that's how they see it. So yeah.

• 3:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:49Tim Ballard?

  So you really start with the bigger issue there is, is modern day slavery. That's what this is. People not controlling their persons, right? Their own body, their own, their own lives. And there's about 30 million estimated slaves in the world today and about 10 million of those are children. And then they're sold for different things. About 2 million children are forced into commercial sex trade. The rest are slave labor or even

• 4:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:10Tim Ballard?

  Oregon harvesting.

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:11Tim Ballard?

  And so we work, that's, and so

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  So how many in the category of sex slavery?

• 4:16Tim Ballard?

  They, they estimate there's, that there's 2 million, this is State Department, UN, 2 million children. But my experience tells me, because we were in 26 countries, we're undercover, we've been everywhere. And if you're, if you're in slave labor, It's just a matter of time before they use you for sex as well.

• 4:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 4:32Tim Ballard?

  It's interchangeable. I mean slavery is.

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  See, how can we make money from a person?

• 4:36Tim Ballard?

  Right, yeah, once you own someone, you think you own them like a product, object, you'll do whatever you want with them, right?

• 4:42Lewis Howes?

  How is this even, I mean, are people, are there slaves in the US right now, or is it mostly international?

• 4:48Tim Ballard?

  So, great question. So, when people ask me about the US, because I'd rather, because most people in the US would rather just say, "It's happening far, far away, and I'm not gonna listen to this." And the truth is, we are the number one demand. I'll start with that.

• 5:00Lewis Howes?

  In terms of, we buy the products the most.

• 5:03Tim Ballard?

  Yes, we are the number one consumers of child exploitation material.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  We're just not doing it in the US.

• 5:08Tim Ballard?

  Well, we are, we are. So, I'll get there, yeah. So, we are the number one consumer, which means we are the market. So, yeah, we are, we are the sex tourists that we're, that my group and law enforcement are targeting and catching overseas hurting kids. But recently.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  What would you say, 80% is US consumption?

• 5:24Tim Ballard?

  Like, it depends, like, in the markets, like, south of the border, in Latin America, yeah.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow. But in Asia?

• 5:30Tim Ballard?

  In Asia, it's maybe it's like half and half us, and then like.

• 5:33Lewis Howes?

  The locals.

• 5:34Tim Ballard?

  And a lot of locals, they generally make up the most, they generally make up the most of the market, of the consuming side. But we just, the United States just became, last year, ranked in the top three for destination countries for trafficking, which means.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  For other people to come here.

• 5:51Tim Ballard?

  Right, the traffickers say, "Look, that's the market I want in. If I can get into the country, then we're really gonna make a lot of money." And so, they're trying to get their slaves into our country.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  Because, so then we won't, so then US people won't have to travel.

• 6:07Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy, man.

• 6:09Tim Ballard?

  It is crazy.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  So, they'll just import people here.

• 6:12Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  Kids.

• 6:13Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 6:14Lewis Howes?

  Teenagers.

• 6:14Tim Ballard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  And then they're slaves to whatever they want.

• 6:17Tim Ballard?

  For either labor or sex. And it's not as.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Where is this at? Is this in LA? Is this in?

• 6:21Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, that's a good question, because I can go to like a developing country where the infrastructure isn't as great, and law enforcement struggles, and you can see children being sold on the street corners of this beach, you just gotta know where to go. You're not gonna see that here. Here it's mostly online. It's in the dark net. So like our warriors out there fighting it and finding the kids are like the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Courses, local law enforcement, these guys who have the tools to go in and basically infiltrate criminal organizations that are using those platforms to find kids. But I, for 17 years, I've worked as an undercover operator in some capacity. And I have bought and sold a child on every single social media platform.

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  On social media?

• 7:01Tim Ballard?

  Oh yeah, it starts there often. It will start there and then leads to private phone calls and all of a sudden you're negotiating the deal for a child.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  In person?

• 7:08Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  No way. How many, you've been doing this for 17 years now? How did you originally get into this? I've heard this story, but I want my audience to hear how you even knew this was a thing and decided to go all in on this.

• 7:21Tim Ballard?

  So I started in the CIA and I was, I had prepared my entire life to fight terrorism, even before 9/11. I was, I was studying, that's what I was studying. In fact, I graduated from grad school with a degree, a very unique degree in terrorism.

• 7:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 7:36Tim Ballard?

  In 2001. So the floodgates opened for us to go work wherever we want. I chose the CIA and I was working at the terrorism desk there.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  And you were going into terrorism before 9/11?

• 7:46Tim Ballard?

  Yes, already.

• 7:47Lewis Howes?

  You didn't know it was gonna be such a big thing.

• 7:48Tim Ballard?

  It was like, oh my gosh, here we go. And then one of the terrorists, people will remember this name Mohammed Al Ta, who came across the border. He was staging in Mexico and he crossed the border and went up and launched those attacks on the Twin Towers. And that just, I was at CIA during 9/11. And I was like, I want to be on that border. I speak Spanish. I want to be on that border to fight terrorism and protect the country from there, from that position. So I, in the wake of 9/11, the creation of Homeland Security. So I was one of the first to jump ship and I jumped over into Homeland Security. I became a special agent, undercover operator, thinking I was gonna be doing terrorism.

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  Where were you stationed then?

• 8:27Tim Ballard?

  I was at the Clexico California Port of Entry.

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  So near Tijuana or near?

• 8:32Tim Ballard?

  It's near, it's about 100 miles east of Tijuana. Yeah, it's from San Diego, right on that border.

• 8:39Lewis Howes?

  A lot of people come in because it's probably less of a big city.

• 8:41Tim Ballard?

  Yes, exactly. There's three ports of entries there. It's very busy. And lots of criminal activity crossing that border.

• 8:48Lewis Howes?

  Drugs, people.

• 8:50Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so we were finding tunnels and it was, I mean, my office was right on the border at the Port of Entry. I was loving life, but for six months I'm doing this, then they called me in and they said, hey. We feel it's time to start a child trafficking unit. Child, I said, what is that? I mean, like the rest of the world, like child trafficking. You could Google trafficking, child trafficking in 2001. And nothing would come up, like no one was talking about it. So even I was like, I don't even know what that is. I'm, I don't think I want to do that.

• 9:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:18Tim Ballard?

  Like that is, I went home and told my wife, she's like, no way. We, we had, we were just starting a family, had a couple of kids. She's like, you can't bring that darkness into her. I don't want to know what people are doing to kids, you know?

• 9:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How old were you at this time?

• 9:29Tim Ballard?

  I was probably like 25, 26, yeah. And, um, and so I had to go tell my boss, no, I'm not going to do it. And I was really scared to do it because this guy was intimidating to me. Uh, big, he was six foot four, big white hook mustache, wore boots to work, you know, one of those guys. His whole life on the border and I was not, I didn't, I didn't want to tell him, no. And, but I'm practicing my speech literally in the mirror, right? Like, okay, how am I going to say this? And my wife walks in to the bathroom and she's crying and she does not get very emotional usually. I said, what's wrong? She's like, I didn't sleep at all last night. She said, for the same reason I thought we had to say no to this because we have children. That is the reason we need to say yes. Because we understand what a childhood is supposed to be.

• 10:14Tim Ballard?

  And if it's true, and we weren't even convinced yet, but if it's true that millions are being trafficked this way. How can we?

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  Allow it to happen.

• 10:22Tim Ballard?

  And do nothing, right? So, so then I said, yes. And I entered it and it was about.

• 10:26Lewis Howes?

  So you're already practicing your speech.

• 10:28Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Lewis Howes?

  And then you decided, okay, I'm going to commit to this.

• 10:30Tim Ballard?

  And the speech became one word.

• 10:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 10:32Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  I'm in, yeah.

• 10:33Tim Ballard?

  I'll do it. Um, and he's put me, he's put me, he put me to work, work right away and dude, it was like a thousand times worse than I could have imagined. Like right away, it was just like.

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  When was the moment where you saw something that just said, this is my, I'm taking this on as a life mission, not just as a part of my job, but.

• 10:53Tim Ballard?

  It was the, it was the first time I saw a child. That was from the videos. When I was like, this is it. It's I had to make a decision at that point. So what had happened was we got intel. A an American man had kid was kidnapping children in Mexico. Smuggling them into the United States and in San Bernardino, you can look at this this case up. His name is Earl Buchanan. You can look it up. You can Google, learn all about the case. He had a compound up in San Bernardino where he was taking the kids and he was filming his sex acts with these kids.

• 11:24Lewis Howes?

  He was having sex with them.

• 11:26Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  And filming.

• 11:27Tim Ballard?

  And filming it.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  And then what, selling it online or?

• 11:29Tim Ballard?

  Keeping it for himself, sharing with people. And so this guy's coming across the border and and we're on the scene and we get the kid out, this five year old boy. And I it was the moment that he ran.

• 11:41Lewis Howes?

  Five year old boy.

• 11:41Tim Ballard?

  Five year old boy. And I recognized him from the video.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 11:45Tim Ballard?

  And I was like, oh, my gosh, I've never seen one of the kids from the video. And I'm like, I didn't know it's my my I had a physiological reaction. Like, I didn't know if I could handle this. And then the kid kind of inherently knew we were the good guys, right? So he runs to us and jumps in our in my arms. And he's like holding. He's holding me and he's shaking. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. Does he speak English? Does he speak Spanish? Maybe both? I don't know. And he spoke perfect English, which was haunting to me because the only reason he did was because he had been with this guy, as it turned out, since he was a he was taken as an infant.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 12:14Tim Ballard?

  And he said to me. Like, no five year old should ever have to say to anybody, anyone. He said. I don't belong here. And the pain was so severe for me because I could immediately multiply that statement by millions of kids. And that was it. And then that that led to raiding the the compound and we found 11 other kids.

• 12:38Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 12:39Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Lewis Howes?

  How old range?

• 12:40Tim Ballard?

  About from six to 12.

• 12:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:43Tim Ballard?

  So that was my point of like. I had to make a decision. I went home after that operation.

• 12:49Lewis Howes?

  So the first operation.

• 12:50Tim Ballard?

  There's the first time I done a lot of cases where we did. We did the receiving. And so we did like the search warrants and arrests of pedophiles. Who were receiving child rape videos.

• 12:59Lewis Howes?

  But they didn't have kids there.

• 13:01Tim Ballard?

  Right. This was the first time I saw one of the kids from the video. And it like changed my life, but the change was either gonna be I'm quitting forever or I'm all in. Because like there was, you can't, it's too much to go one or the other. You can't go middle ground on this, right? And I went home that night after two or three days, actually, I went home to my wife. She didn't really know what was going on. I walked in the house. And then I see my kids, right? And they're playing and having fun. And this kid was, we literally 12 miles away. I was, I lived 12 miles from the border. This kid, this was happening to this child. And the whole dichotomy of the whole, how can we be in the same community and hell here and, you know, almost paradise here for these children who have every, and I just, I lost my mind. Like I just,

• 13:44Tim Ballard?

  I couldn't handle it. I saw my children being hurt. I went to like a mental, and I literally fell down. Like my knees collapsed. I fell down. And my wife thought I was having a heart attack or something. She runs over to me. She's like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm like, I'm out. I'm out or I'm in. Like I can't, this is so bad. And it was my wife again who said, you know, she got me calm and she said, look, it's hard. I know the pain. You're clearly suffering something, but how does that compare to what that child suffered? And I was like, no, you're right. That's it.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  You're not experiencing it.

• 14:16Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I'm like, how, I felt guilty. Like how stupid. I'm up on my knee. I jumped up and I'm like, I'm in. I'm in a hundred percent. But the thing that happened and called this luck, providence, whatever, to me was special. Is the little boy had a necklace. That little boy, the five-year-old. And he, his sister had given him the necklace when they were separated by Buchanan. Okay? And it was a little dog tag. And he gave it to me. You know, he knew I had to go find his sister now.

• 14:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, no.

• 14:45Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and we did. We got her. We got her out. But he gave me the necklace. And, and I tried to give it back. He said, no, it's yours. It's yours. This is when he was hugging me. And I'm like, okay, I put it in my pocket, didn't think much of it. But later, one of my children found it and said, would you get this? I'm like, uh, how do I, how do I tell this story to my kid? And I tell my kid what I can. And he says, isn't it cool that, that little kid put your name in the necklace, Dad? I said, what are you talking about? My name's not on the necklace. Like, yeah, yeah, your name's right here. And sure enough, I flip it around. And that little necklace had a scripture from the Bible on it, from the book of First Timothy.

• 15:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 15:19Tim Ballard?

  So that was like, to me, I was already feeling like, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna quit? Am I gonna go full in? That necklace, it was like, I was like, it was like, that little boy, whether he knew it or not, just gave me a commission. And, and that necklace, I wore that for every operation I did from that point on. And it was kind of like my symbol, like, I'm in now, so.

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And, and so you started here locally in the US?

• 15:42Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  And then you started going to different countries?

• 15:46Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  And you started going to South America originally, right?

• 15:50Tim Ballard?

  Right, because what happened, in 2006, the US passed a law called the Adam Walsh Child Protect Act. And what it did was it changed my life. People didn't realize, for us agents, how it did that. But it's, it changed the statutory requirements for sex. We had these sex traveler statutes that said you can't travel to have sex with a child. But you had to prove that the perpetrator had the intent in his heart and in his mind while standing on US soil before he left, which meant before 2006, we had zero prosecutions. So the Adam Walsh Protect Act said, no more, you don't have to prove he was thinking about it on US soil. All you have to prove now is that he left and he committed the act.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:27Tim Ballard?

  And now we will hold him accountable as if he committed it on our soil.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:31Tim Ballard?

  So it was a revolutionary law.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  So now if you go to another country and have, and pay to have sex with a child, or don't pay and you have sex with a child, you can still go to jail here?

• 16:41Tim Ballard?

  And there's no double jeopardy, by the way. You can serve 10 years in Mexico and, and then 20 more years in the US.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:46Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  What is the law, I guess, around sex, having sex with a minor or, or paying for sex? Are they, are they different laws or how does that work?

• 16:56Tim Ballard?

  Every state, there's like, there's different state laws. And then there's a federal, there's federal laws, so it depends what jurisdiction and.

• 17:02Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 17:02Tim Ballard?

  It's, it's all over the board, really. And then internationally, same thing, it's kind of all over, which is great to have the safety net in case like the guy only gets two years and, and some, in some foreign country, we're like, well, we got you when you get back.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:14Tim Ballard?

  And we're gonna, we'll, we'll treat you differently, so.

• 17:16Lewis Howes?

  So how much is this happening now in the US?

• 17:18Tim Ballard?

  Oh, it's constant.

• 17:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:21Tim Ballard?

  It's constant, yeah. We can't keep up with the demand. It's... Half our operations are domestically. People don't realize that. They think we're only foreign, but we support operations here. We provide K-9 units to sniff out digital media. You saw some of that at Tony's party, maybe the video?

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  How do they sniff out digital media?

• 17:40Tim Ballard?

  They're trained, just like a drug dog, but they're trained to sniff out like little thumb drives. Because what happens is perpetrators, pedophiles...

• 17:46Lewis Howes?

  They hide it as small.

• 17:46Tim Ballard?

  They hide it. And this is the evidence. I mean, we'll find a child in here that can lead us to where that child actually is. But these guys are hiding it because they know the cops could come any day. So they hide it in the carpets, they hide it in the floorboards or whatever. And the human being will never find it. Well, we have dogs that run to it because they're just trained to sniff out the metallic...

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  This is nuts.

• 18:06Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and we nail these guys. So we've deployed a couple dozen of these dogs, right? And I love it because there's these beautiful animals. And we chart their rescues. Like, Cinnamon Bark is one of our dogs. And DoTerra, as a special oil company, actually paid for it.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:22Tim Ballard?

  And they say, "You can name it." We're gonna name it Cinnamon Bark, that's one of their products, you know?

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 18:27Tim Ballard?

  So Cinnamon Bark's one. We have Spike. And they literally have, like, Spike has saved 10 kids. Cinnamon Bark has saved...

• 18:33Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy, man.

• 18:33Tim Ballard?

  It's the coolest... And you look at these dogs, you're like, "I just love you." It's just amazing, you know?

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So when did you... How much longer were you with as a special agent before you left to go start your own foundation?

• 18:44Tim Ballard?

  So what happened was after that law passed, they put together a group and they basically said, "Okay, guys, let's enforce this. Go out and find Americans."

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  Who are doing this.

• 18:53Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, and they put me on the team. And sent me to undercover school. And said, "Now go pretend to be a pedophile or trafficker."

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  What's cover school?

• 19:01Tim Ballard?

  Undercover school.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  What is that like?

• 19:03Tim Ballard?

  Dude, it was insane. Because they sent me to undercover school to teach me how to be a pedophile.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 19:08Tim Ballard?

  How to think like one, how to... You know, that's what I...

• 19:10Lewis Howes?

  How to talk like it, how to...

• 19:11Tim Ballard?

  Right, how to get in. And I get there and they bring me into a room. It's like a studio, kind of like this, right? There's a two-way mirror. And they're gonna assess me. Because in the end, it's interesting, they said to us, "We can't train any of you guys to be undercover operators. You're just here to... So we can determine if you are one." It's very unique, it's like an acting and you gotta be able to, you know, it's tough, you know? So it's an assessment, right? And they have this undercover operator, who's like the instructor, but he's like one of the top guys in the US government. He's playing the role of a general smuggler. And so people are coming in, you know, candidates like me are coming in one by one to be tested. And they give everybody a different legend, like, okay, you're a drug smuggler, you're a terrorist, and you've gotta get this guy to commit to-

• 19:56Lewis Howes?

  To believe in you.

• 19:57Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And so I get my turn, he doesn't know what's coming, right? And I sit down with him like this and I start, I mean, I'm just tripping all over myself. There's cameras everywhere, I'm like, I suck at this, like, it's horrible. And I've gotta bring up kids now, like-

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 20:11Tim Ballard?

  So I eventually bring it up and the guy's just like, and he says the words "out of roll", which means "cut", and he looks at the guys in the two-way and he's like, "What are you doing, are you punking me?" Like, I have a daughter who's a year old. I'm not gonna play, and he left. I'm like, "What's going on?", so the inspector comes, and he's like, "Tim, bottom line, like, look, we're in new waters right now, man, like, we gotta chart this course." So I felt very much alone. So actually what I did was, because there was no real hit, there was no curriculum yet-

• 20:42Lewis Howes?

  You were creating it.

• 20:43Tim Ballard?

  We were creating it, and I actually started reading every book on the last time that I could read, that we knew that slavery existed. So I'm reading about, that's how Harriet Tubman became my hero. I mean, I'm reading her book, her story, Frederick Douglass, Harry Beach, all the abolitionists.

• 20:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:58Tim Ballard?

  And it wasn't a casual decision to call our foundation eventually when I got there, Operation Underground Railroad, because we used the tactics that they used, they were undercover operators, they were, how they used the media, how they used politicians. It was like, these were masterminds. They figured it out, and it's like, they're now our inspiration. So, that's, you know, we built the curriculum off of, largely off of that, off those stories, yeah.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  So at first they were like, "No, you're really bad", but then they're like, "Okay, you gotta figure it out because we don't have a curriculum."

• 21:28Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, eventually we figured it out, and then they sent me overseas, and-

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  Where did you go?

• 21:33Tim Ballard?

  I was mostly, I speak Spanish, so they sent me mostly into Latin America. I worked in Guatemala, and Mexico, and Costa Rica, and the Caribbean, Colombia.

• 21:44Tim Ballard?

  And the problem, there was an unintended consequence to all this. Because if I couldn't find the American in the time allowed by the budget that was given, like, I had to come home.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  So there would be intel, they would say, we needed to go to Costa Rica, we've got intel that there's these three guys that live there, that are coming there right now. They're selling girls, boys, they're buying them, whatever it may be. So you had the intel, you had to go there, find them, figure out where they lived.

• 22:13Tim Ballard?

  Exactly.

• 22:13Lewis Howes?

  What city they're in.

• 22:14Tim Ballard?

  Exactly.

• 22:15Lewis Howes?

  And then build rapport with them.

• 22:17Tim Ballard?

  That's right.

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  So it wasn't like, we're gonna go break down the house and come in, we're only gonna try to become friends with them.

• 22:22Tim Ballard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:22Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 22:23Tim Ballard?

  It's, it's, it's, it's stomach churning. Oh, stomach churning.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Meeting this, this...

• 22:30Tim Ballard?

  I'm sitting toe to toe with these guys, right, and they're pulling a cellphone. And they'll be like, here's who we got.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  No, of kids.

• 22:36Tim Ballard?

  We got 10-year-olds, we got... And I'm looking at the pictures, I'm like, and I've gotta pretend...

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  You have to act like you want them.

• 22:40Tim Ballard?

  Like, dude, she is, it's horrible. Like, I, the whole, I'm doing it, like, up here, I'm smiling, and my stomach is just, like, churning. I wanna reach across the desk and just destroy this guy. But if I do that, we'll never find the kids. So it's a mental game that, like, will crush you if you're not, like, constantly preparing and constantly...

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How do you, how do you manage energy and body language when you know that in your gut, you're against this, but you have to, in your mind, like, trick this person? How do they not get fooled? How do you master persuading them when you're against it?

• 23:14Tim Ballard?

  It's just, it's just practice and practice. First, they send you as a secondary operator, you kinda watch. And you're kinda just playing the role of someone who's kinda watching, and then eventually you get to primary, which I got to eventually, and then it's, you know, so it's just practice and... And like, it's interesting, I can't really answer that because even the instructors, like I said, they would say, "We can't teach you how to do this, either you, we're just here to tell you if you have it or not."

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:36Tim Ballard?

  And, and, and so that's, that's what happened.

• 23:39Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever feel like, because you have to get in that mindset of a pedophile, and, you know, someone who's selling or buying kids, that, that it might ever trick your minds into actually becoming that? Has that ever crossed your mind, where like, like, how do you keep your mind powerful and strong against the odds?

• 23:57Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, the answer, no, because... Because once you see it, a decent, I couldn't even, I wouldn't even burden you with what it is.

• 24:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Tim Ballard?

  Because you see what this is, the kind of exploitation and the videos that are made of children. You would never be able in your mind, and so it's a punch to your stomach and it gets worse every time.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 24:17Tim Ballard?

  It gets worse every time. I mean, i- i- if anything, it makes you less.

• 24:21Lewis Howes?

  Interested.

• 24:22Tim Ballard?

  Interested in any kind of sex.

• 24:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:24Tim Ballard?

  Like, I mean, I'm kind of opening up here, but like, in the middle of a case, like, I come home, I'm like, I, I.

• 24:29Lewis Howes?

  You need to be alone for.

• 24:30Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I can't even like, my poor wife, you know, it's like, don't you know, you don't love me, or I'm like, no, hon, I'm just, I can't even, you know.

• 24:38Lewis Howes?

  You're emotionally like, broken.

• 24:39Tim Ballard?

  Yes, you're just broken. I mean, it breaks you, you have to like detox, I mean, it's horrifying, you know?

• 24:44Lewis Howes?

  So what was this like in Costa Rica with this first time then, for you? I think you said it was Costa Rica, or, or, maybe I was making that up, but what was that first time for you?

• 24:52Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so, so one of, one of the, the, probably the most interesting case that I worked, were a kind of, this was the unintended consequence the US government didn't expect, or I didn't expect, is, so I make myself the bait, right? And I'm, I'm in deep with these guys. I'm their friend, they trust me, we could be weeks, or maybe a month or so away from getting the kids and getting to that point. But if I don't find the nexus, the legal nexus, the connection back to the US government, it's come home. But it's like, but if I come home, this whole thing goes belly up. And so that was the thing I would fight, until it pushed me too far, to the point I was like, then I quit. And it was, it was, it was a case in Colombia and a case in Haiti, both, I was doing it at the same time.

• 25:34Tim Ballard?

  And I went too far, I went further than I was supposed to go anyway, but I got really deep. And they said, we're the Americans, Tim, like, we can't sustain this, Washington's gonna shut this down, anyway, like, we, it was no one's fault, it's just, there's no jurisdiction.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  Unless there's Americans doing it.

• 25:47Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 25:47Lewis Howes?

  You can't go to someone in Colombia, if they're doing it, you can't do anything.

• 25:51Tim Ballard?

  Right, right.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  Cause it's only US.

• 25:53Tim Ballard?

  The only jurisdiction I have is a US court, so I've gotta find a US person.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Who's buying kids.

• 25:58Tim Ballard?

  A child or, or a perpetrator.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  Either one.

• 26:00Tim Ballard?

  Who's the United States.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 26:01Tim Ballard?

  And so on that Colombia case, I, we had hit, like, a goldmine of trap, like, I can't call that, but it's, we, we had hit, like, the motherload, okay, of, of, of bad guys.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  How many kids did they have?

• 26:13Tim Ballard?

  It was over a hundred kids.

• 26:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:14Tim Ballard?

  It was gonna be over a hundred kids. And I don't blame my boss at all. He did what he had to do. He's like, you gotta come home.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  Cause there were no Americans involved.

• 26:23Tim Ballard?

  You can't do, there's nothing I can do for, he did everything he could to keep it and push it, make it happen. But there came a point where you just couldn't, you couldn't do it. And, and that's when I had to make a decision. And, and I called my wife and I said, what do, what do I do? And she's like, my wife, she's like just very stable and very like, very inspired, I'll say. And she just said, well, it's obvious what you do. Do you think you can save kids? I said, I'm very confident we'll save over a hundred kids. She's like, then you quit your job. That's it. We'll worry about, you do the right thing first and you wait, you know, always do the right. How can, how can you live with yourself? And then she said, how can I live with myself? I mean, there came a point in my wife where, where I was like struggling to, to stay and do, and do this job. And she said, she ended the debate with these words.

• 27:08Tim Ballard?

  Um, and these are verbatim because I'll never forget it. Cause it like, it like penetrated my soul. Pierced me and yeah. She said, I will not let you jeopardize my salvation by not doing this.

• 27:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:20Tim Ballard?

  I said, okay. And so if, if anyone needs to end a debate with your loved one, that, that line works. It's, it's, it's a powerful line.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:28Tim Ballard?

  So, you know, so that was it. And I was like, okay, that's how you feel. Then I'm in. And we quit and started.

• 27:33Lewis Howes?

  Cause you're not making millions of dollars. You're making a government salary job. You're.

• 27:37Tim Ballard?

  Oh yeah. I have no savings. I have six kids at the time. Okay?

• 27:40Lewis Howes?

  How old are you?

• 27:41Tim Ballard?

  I'm probably now late thirties.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Tim Ballard?

  And I have no savings.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're spending thousands of dollars on food for kids.

• 27:48Tim Ballard?

  I'm like, I'm like Catherine, I'm just gonna tell you, like, this was like, uh, fall, like June, I said by, or December. I said, by June, we're out of food. Like, I don't know how we're gonna feed the kids. She's like, that doesn't matter. She's like, how can you live with yourself? There's a hundred. I said, okay. No, you're right. You're right. You're just way braver than me. Okay?

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  You're like, I gotta protect you, I gotta protect the family, I gotta be safe.

• 28:11Tim Ballard?

  Oh, it was, it was.

• 28:12Lewis Howes?

  You gotta provide.

• 28:12Tim Ballard?

  It was a hard several, it was a hard month, it was December of 2013.

• 28:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 28:17Tim Ballard?

  And I was just a mess. I was a mess.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  This is seven years ago.

• 28:21Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  So what happens next? Do you go, was that the first thing, you quit the job and then you go back to Colombia?

• 28:29Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  You assemble like the Marvel cast of Crusaders to come with you and like.

• 28:35Tim Ballard?

  I have, I have just enough money to do those two up in the.

• 28:37Lewis Howes?

  So you're funding it yourself.

• 28:39Tim Ballard?

  Yes, yeah. So I'm like calling a lawyer like.

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  You gotta buy guns, you gotta buy whatever materials, you gotta.

• 28:44Tim Ballard?

  Or we gotta buy everything we need to get, yeah. And I'm, I'm calling a lawyer, I'm like, how do I make a nonprofit? Like, I, I guess that's the best way to do this. I had no idea what I was doing, right? Like, well, we'll set you up. And I got some people to donate and we, we just went in. We had the two cases, the, the one in Haiti, which is the other powerful story and Colombia, they're both kind of the reasons I left. And so I didn't have enough money to go home. So I would just, I would bounce back between Haiti and Colombia until we had success and we did in both. It was, both of them were crazy cases and we ended up rescuing over 120.

• 29:18Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 29:18Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  So what happens after you, you guys go in, you get the bad guys, you know, you break up the operation and then there's 100 kids. What happens to those 100 kids next for the next 10 years?

• 29:32Tim Ballard?

  Right. So that's the most important part. That's the most important question. And then that's the question we've asked first before we'll engage with law enforcement partners. First of all, we always work with law enforcement. We're not real.

• 29:40Lewis Howes?

  Local government.

• 29:41Tim Ballard?

  The local government law enforcement would say, here's our services. In this case, it was easy because as an agent, I was already working with them. I had to leave and then I said, I'm back.

• 29:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Tim Ballard?

  I lost my badge and my life maybe, but I'm back.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Tim Ballard?

  But I brought the resources and, and a coalition of the willing, you know, former law enforcement folks who were willing to just jump on in this operation. And, um, and then we, but we said, we can't do anything until we know what, what happens to the kids. And so what we do is we have an aftercare department, which is our most important department, which partners with the local, uh, non-government organizations that are aftercare centers. And they exist in every country. And so we partner with them and we say, "Look, we could rescue up to this many kids. How many could you take?" And, and "take" means raise. Because you, you don't know-

• 30:28Lewis Howes?

  Fund, house-

• 30:29Tim Ballard?

  For, until they, until they go to university, you know, because uh, so many times, more than half the time, I'd say, there's not a family waiting for them with open arms. They, there is no family, which is how they got taken in the first place. Or the family's part of the problem.

• 30:43Lewis Howes?

  Cause they're-

• 30:43Tim Ballard?

  They're selling.

• 30:44Lewis Howes?

  They're getting paid.

• 30:44Tim Ballard?

  They're getting the money, yeah. And so, we set up with those partnerships, so that when the kids are rescued, we know exactly- in fact, the aftercare partners are with us when the raid happens and they write to the kids, "You're safe, you're, you're not bad, guys." Cause the kids think-

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  They don't know.

• 30:59Tim Ballard?

  "Am I getting arrested or what's going on?" You know? So we set it up to where the, the aftercare team is immediately on the ground and the healing process begins.

• 31:06Lewis Howes?

  And they'll either get potentially adopted by another family, or there'll be another facility, a home or some type of facility-

• 31:13Tim Ballard?

  Exactly right.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Now, what about, you mentioned that it sounds like half the time the parents are involved in selling their kids. Especially, I've heard about this in Asia, like a lot of their, it's like a form of love to like say, "How much money can you bring back to me?" type of thing. I don't know if I'm off there, but-

• 31:28Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  How do parents? What's the psychology behind that for parents, where they feel like it's not a bad thing? I've heard of this sometime, some cases. It's like part of the culture, I guess. Now, how do you, as a parent, how could you do that? Like, how do you get to that point?

• 31:42Tim Ballard?

  So you're exactly right, how you're describing it, that is how it is. And it's something I cannot comprehend. It's, it's almost like they're so desperate for, for means, for money, they're so poor. And they're just like, "Well, I think they just have to compartmentalize." And just kind of normalize sexual activity, even if it was your 12-year-old daughter. You just gotta, this is what we have to do, you know? Oftentimes it's cyclical, it's generational. So it's like, that's what I had to do. So that's what you have to do. And we've got to break it. And that's been part of the problem, because when it's culturally accepted, sometimes the laws reflect that as well. And so there's a lot of countries, we've gone in and helped them establish their laws, where they didn't exist before.

• 32:24Tim Ballard?

  And oftentimes, I'd say the majority of the first cases we do, the first investigations we do in a given country, is their first investigation into this as well. So we provide the tools. We build digital forensic laboratories, for example. We built one in Southeast Asia that services four or five countries there. And give them the tools they've never had before. To go into the dark net, to go and find where, you know, track IPs, where child pornography is being distributed. Yeah, it's a nutty thing.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  So is US the biggest consumers of sex trafficking then?

• 32:57Tim Ballard?

  We're the biggest consumers of child exploitation material.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  So pornography?

• 33:01Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  Child pornography?

• 33:03Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  We're the biggest consumers in the world.

• 33:06Tim Ballard?

  And one of the biggest producers as well of it.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:09Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, so we are the demand.

• 33:10Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 33:11Tim Ballard?

  This is why we have success overseas.

• 33:12Lewis Howes?

  Why are we so messed up?

• 33:14Tim Ballard?

  I think it has to do with, first of all, it's the internet. It's access to the internet. It's the technology that's readily accessible here, that we can use, the peer-to-peer networks, dark net kind of stuff, where we can learn how to use that quick. It's software, and then all of a sudden you're in. And so it takes a degree of technology. And then we have a large population with lots of technology. I don't think per capita it's like a whole lot worse here. It's just that we have the numbers and the technology, and that together creates.

• 33:40Lewis Howes?

  It's easier access.

• 33:41Tim Ballard?

  It's easier access, yeah. So people become sex addicts easier in this country en masse than in other countries.

• 33:47Lewis Howes?

  There's sex addicts all over the world. We just have easier access to exploiting that thing.

• 33:52Tim Ballard?

  And we have 300 million people that all have that access. So that creates a lot of demand in this country.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  How easy is it to watch? I've never seen child pornography. I don't even know how easy that would be. How easy, if I wanted to go on the internet right now?

• 34:05Tim Ballard?

  Way too easy.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  How long would it take for me? Is it 30 minutes? Is it five minutes?

• 34:09Tim Ballard?

  If you have some skill, like...

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  Can you just type in child pornography?

• 34:13Tim Ballard?

  No, you're not gonna Google it, no. And no one tried that, by the way.

• 34:16Lewis Howes?

  They'll track you.

• 34:18Tim Ballard?

  No, it's not, it's not that easy. Like, it's just like a Google search. But there's ways, if you understand the dark net and how, and how different networks work.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  I don't even know what the dark net is, but I mean, that's crazy. So if you can get into that, then you could find it quick.

• 34:29Tim Ballard?

  Oh, it's, it's, if you have.

• 34:31Lewis Howes?

  Are they updating new stuff all the time?

• 34:33Tim Ballard?

  Oh, yeah. There, in the last three or four years, there's been a 5,000% increase in new child.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  Content.

• 34:41Tim Ballard?

  Content. It's growing like mad.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  I mean, are they doing it because they're making money? Are people having to pay for it? Is it free? Like, how do they?

• 34:49Tim Ballard?

  Oh, they, they make, they make money. It's.

• 34:51Lewis Howes?

  By selling it?

• 34:52Tim Ballard?

  They sell it, yeah. You purchase access to certain places.

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  Like a membership?

• 34:56Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And then you end up traveling, you know, you can, then you get into that world, you get into the networks and you're, and now you're traveling to engage in. Become a contact offender, if we call it contact offender, where you're now.

• 35:07Lewis Howes?

  Having sex.

• 35:08Tim Ballard?

  Having sex, yeah.

• 35:09Lewis Howes?

  A contact offender.

• 35:11Tim Ballard?

  Contact offender.

• 35:12Lewis Howes?

  Contact offender.

• 35:12Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  So, man, this is a whole other world.

• 35:17Tim Ballard?

  I'm sorry, I know, I bring in darkness to this beautiful show.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  No, it's okay. I think, I think it's important to educate people on how to live a better life and how to, how to, you know, constantly be educating ourselves on all these different challenges.

• 35:29Tim Ballard?

  We have to, because the problem is, considering the fact that we are the number one demand and, and we are number three for destination countries, that means that the pedophiles are here and our kids are here. They're, they're mixed and mingled amongst these groups, so parents need to wake up and understand the apps that their kids are using. We had a guy just 30 minutes from my home, just a few weeks ago, who was gaming

• 35:53Tim Ballard?

  with two six-year-old girls from Indiana. Six years old. This guy's 42 years old.

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  Like on Twitch or something, or like on some platform?

• 36:00Tim Ballard?

  Well, it started on Facebook. These kids were on Facebook and then it went, most games today have the, the ability to, you know, you can play with other people.

• 36:07Lewis Howes?

  On other social media.

• 36:08Tim Ballard?

  From across the earth. And it's fun, it's cool. But parents who didn't grow up with this mentality and this technology, they think their kids are playing the computer, because when I was a kid, it was Atari.

• 36:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Tim Ballard?

  And you're, you're playing the computer.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're not playing other people.

• 36:21Tim Ballard?

  Right. So, parents don't even think like, oh, she's playing that cute little game, she's fine. She's been playing for six months with a pedophile.

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 36:28Tim Ballard?

  From Salt Lake City. And the guy got the kids, the six-year-old girls, two of them, to undress and take

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 36:33Tim Ballard?

  Naked pictures.

• 36:34Lewis Howes?

  How?

• 36:34Tim Ballard?

  I'm not kidding. He just said, just desensitize them. They can read, or you can talk to them, you know, and just like, "Take your clothes off. Put the camera down."

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 36:42Tim Ballard?

  Yes. And the AG's office picked the guy up and arrested him.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 36:45Tim Ballard?

  But this is happening in mass, especially right now. We've never seen it like we have it right now because the kids are out of school.

• 36:51Lewis Howes?

  Kids are out of school and people are in their homes all day.

• 36:53Tim Ballard?

  Pedophiles are out of work. And, and we can chart, we can track their chatter on the dark net and the communicating, and they keep saying, "It's harvest time. These kids are sitting ducks."

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  No, they're not. They're not sitting.

• 37:02Tim Ballard?

  They are.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  How many?

• 37:04Tim Ballard?

  Six million, up, up to six million additional reports from the National Center for Mission Exploited Children in the same time last year. And we won't even know the ramifications. It'll take years before these, some of these victims come up because these guys are, the lines are out in the water right now.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 37:21Tim Ballard?

  We take for granted the infrastructure of schools and after-school programs and sports programs. We take for granted how safe that makes our kids from these online predators because that's where they are. They're online.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  So it's easier to fish now, is what you're saying?

• 37:33Tim Ballard?

  Oh yeah, because the mom and dad are worried about their jobs. They're scavenging for food. The kids, hey, they're, they're told, "Take the smartphone, take the laptop, stay here, play games, do your schoolwork. We gotta go figure out..."

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  It's almost less safe to be on a tablet than it is to be at an after-school program.

• 37:45Tim Ballard?

  Hundred percent less safe to be home.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  You know, you hear, you hear stories about, is it Larry Nassar, I think the, uh?

• 37:52Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. The gymnastics US, yeah.

• 37:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's like, okay, you felt like your kids were safe at a

• 37:57Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Lewis Howes?

  A US sanctioned

• 37:58Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 37:59Lewis Howes?

  Training program, but this happened to hundreds of girls, but it's less safe.

• 38:04Tim Ballard?

  Right. You can, it's a great point. Some people say, "Well, I, I get worried about after-school programs."

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  And this is a credible doctor who's like, cutting educational videos.

• 38:11Tim Ballard?

  And that happens as well, but this, in terms of the sheer numbers, is way more threatening. Because there's millions of pedophiles.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  It's easier to do it.

• 38:18Tim Ballard?

  There's millions of kids. They know the parents aren't paying attention because they're worried about

• 38:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:23Tim Ballard?

  Their, their, their livelihood.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Tim Ballard?

  And they just access the kids and they start gaming with them. They start, they, they friend them on, you know, on Facebook or whatever, and all of a sudden, it's, it's on and it's horrible.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  What are two or three things that parents can do now that they have this information to protect their kids against any type of sex offenders?

• 38:42Tim Ballard?

  So the most important thing is understand the apps your kids are on. Understand the social media platforms your kids are on. Know if people can access them pretty readily, pretty quickly. And that's the problem is parents just, if you're my age or older, we missed it. We missed the internet. So we didn't, we didn't grow up understanding with raging hormones and undeveloped brains. We didn't have to deal with internet too. Our kids do. And so parents just don't know there's education.

• 39:10Lewis Howes?

  What are the most challenging apps they should be aware of, or is it all social media?

• 39:13Tim Ballard?

  It's all social media, anywhere where you can connect with bad guys.

• 39:16Lewis Howes?

  Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, it doesn't matter.

• 39:19Tim Ballard?

  The parents of those six year old girls I told you about, they said, we had no idea. We thought the kids were just playing the computer. No, no, they were playing a pedophile and the little kid game, whatever it was. And so parents, that's the number one thing, know what your kids are doing. Understand the applications. If you need help, you can go to your internet service provider and say, hey, can you send me a record of every, you own that phone that you give your kid, right?

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 39:42Tim Ballard?

  They can give you a record of every site that's hit, every game that's played.

• 39:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:46Tim Ballard?

  Right, every conversation.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  What's the conversation that a parent should have with their kids, whether they're five or 15, to at least educate them a little bit without scaring them? You know, but what can a parent say, whether they know something's happening or not, to prepare them for this?

• 40:00Tim Ballard?

  So it's a great question, and for me, having nine kids, you have to really meditate and pray and focus on each individual kid and customize that answer. Cause if you come in too early, you could hurt them. It's a tough subject, you know, but if you miss, if you come in too late, you could also hurt them. So when they start asking questions and when you kind of feel your intuition, luckily I have my wife, who I can say, when is it time for this one? It's now, okay, let's have the talk. And then what you say also is customized, you know, to what you think they're ready for. But you have to be in front of it, whatever that answer is, that's the key is being, have a close relationship with your kid, be their friend and their parent and connect with their soul, so that you can get that inspiration, okay, now's the time and here's what I'm gonna tell you.

• 40:45Tim Ballard?

  Too often we say nothing because we don't want to talk about sex and, you know, it opens that whole door, birds and the bees, and parents just ignore it. That's the worst thing you can do. Cause then someone else is gonna teach them and they're gonna get hurt. So it's just, it's just tuning into that kid.

• 40:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's the responsibility you have as a, as a parent, to be a leader and to have hard conversations. And I'm not a parent yet, so I. I don't look forward to it, but I also know that I'm gonna rise to the occasion.

• 41:09Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  And be able to have the courage to be able to have those hard conversations. How do you categorize a pedophile and how many of them are there in the USA?

• 41:18Tim Ballard?

  Well.

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  Like, what's the definition?

• 41:19Tim Ballard?

  Someone who actively seeks sexual interaction with a child.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  In-person contact, not...

• 41:27Tim Ballard?

  No, they're still a pedophile. You could not have become a contact offender quite yet. But they all want to become. It's like someone who looks at porn, right? An adult who's looking at porn. I don't think anyone looks at porn with that being the end.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:40Tim Ballard?

  They wanna take action eventually, and that's how child pornographers are as well. They're eventually looking to take action and take, become a contact offender.

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. So how many are there?

• 41:49Tim Ballard?

  So there's, we know, I couldn't give you the exact number, but we do know this. There's, the fact that there's 2 million children in sex slavery. Consider what kind of number justifies that demand.

• 42:00Lewis Howes?

  It's 50x, right?

• 42:01Tim Ballard?

  Exactly. It's like any other market.

• 42:03Lewis Howes?

  The percentage is gonna take action.

• 42:05Tim Ballard?

  If they need 2 million kids, that means you're gonna have a market of 50x.

• 42:08Lewis Howes?

  2 million US or 2 million global?

• 42:09Tim Ballard?

  That's worldwide. Yeah. But the US number keeps rising. There's a couple hundred thousand, we estimate, children. But that number, there's about 18,000 women and children a year who are snuggled in to the United States for the purposes of being exploited as slaves.

• 42:25Lewis Howes?

  And is this a financial transaction, 300,000 kids? Or is this sexual abuse?

• 42:33Tim Ballard?

  Um.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  Against, from adults to a kid?

• 42:35Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, there's a mix. There's a mix of both of those.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  I mean, for me, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I didn't know.

• 42:42Tim Ballard?

  You're kidding me. I didn't know this.

• 42:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and the babysitter's son, he was probably 16 or 17, I was five. It's one of my probably first three or four memories I've ever had.

• 42:49Tim Ballard?

  My gosh.

• 42:50Lewis Howes?

  For 25 years, I didn't tell anyone, and it deeply shaped my life. It only happened once. I can't even imagine something happening over and over again and not feeling comfortable or safe. And it deeply impacted the way I think, the way I took action, how I was defensive and... Like, I felt like everyone was out to get me. It was like, everyone's trying to abuse me, everyone's trying to take advantage of me.

• 43:14Tim Ballard?

  Yes.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  It showed up in every area of my life, from sports to teachers, to relationships, to business partners, until six and a half, seven years ago, I finally opened up and started to heal and started talking about it for the first time. For 25 years, no one knew about this.

• 43:31Tim Ballard?

  Wow.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  And it was one of the hardest things I ever did was talking about it. And then I knew that this had power over me because I was so afraid of what would happen if people knew this about me. The more I talked about it with family, then friends, then I finally opened up publicly about it on my show. And the moment when it was no longer like scary to talk about it, when it's when I realized like, okay, now my healing is starting.

• 43:58Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Lewis Howes?

  And it's been an amazing six and a half year journey of healing the past, letting go, forgiving. Obviously not forgetting, it's always going to be with me, the memory. But the ability to have peace in my heart and move on and see what can I do moving forward to make sure that other people aren't sexually abused.

• 44:16Tim Ballard?

  No, yeah, what you're doing is so important because this is the problem is people, to heal, they've got to come, they've got to start talking about it.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  You have to talk about it. It's the only way you can really heal is to start sharing with someone, whether it's a spiritual pastor, a therapist, a parent that you trust, a friend you trust. But when you hold on to this secret and you don't tell anyone, you're going to suffer.

• 44:36Tim Ballard?

  Right. Now imagine this, this happened once, right?

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, one time. Imagine happening every day, every week.

• 44:41Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, imagine. So I was with a neurologist once because I had to understand what's going on with these kids. And he says, Tim, let me show you something. He showed me two brains, scans of brains, two children's brains. And he says, do you see what I'm, do you see the scarring in the, yeah, what's going on? He said, one of these brains was a traumatic car accident. This other one was a child who for five years was sexually abused. And I was like, wait, what?

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  Very similar.

• 45:05Tim Ballard?

  So that's what, I mean, it creates actual physiological scarring in your brain.

• 45:11Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 45:12Tim Ballard?

  And this is the problem. So the rehab part.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  The chronic stress, the chronic fear, all these different.

• 45:17Tim Ballard?

  Yes, it actually creates physical brain damage that requires physical healing of that brain.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  Emotional healing, physical, spiritual healing.

• 45:25Tim Ballard?

  And when I saw that, I can't tell you how motivated I was to get back out and just start nailing these guys. Because this is, I mean, there's, there's nothing worse in my mind, in earth or hell than this. Most of these kids would rather that they were killed than go through this, you know? Our sentencing so far, I don't think really reflects the real damage that's being done. And it's because people don't want to talk about it, right? We gotta, the more we talk about it, the better our justice system will be, the more, the better our aftercare services will be. But this is a very real, very, very real threat to all our kids.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  And how's the process work for you, if you can break it down for me? How do you decide who you're gonna go after? Is it, okay, we're assessing the dark web information first? We have researchers on your team that are finding this person's got 50 kids, this has got 20. You know, how do you guys assess like where you're gonna go make the hit?

• 46:14Tim Ballard?

  So, when I first left the government, I had, I had basically pending cases, right? That I couldn't work because they were outside my jurisdiction. So those first ones, like the one in Colombia and Haiti, those were easy. But then after that...

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  It was like, now where do we find the next?

• 46:28Tim Ballard?

  So it's funny, it's funny, great question. Because I started, I'm like knocking on doors like, can I work? Can I help you guys? Because those two hits were successful, so we got more donation dollars. So I'm like, and I had, I had to actually convince people like, you have a problem, we can help. We were turned down, seven years later.

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  Turned down by what, governments, countries?

• 46:44Tim Ballard?

  Governments, by law enforcement, like, we don't need your help, we're, we're fine here. We don't think there's a problem, you know? Today, seven years later, we are saying no. We can't keep, we can't keep up. Everybody's asking us, hey, so and so told us you did X, Y, and Z in their country. Can you help us with this piece? Can you help us with that? And so now what we have to do is, is we have to find the law enforcement units around the world. We're in 26 countries, the ones that are, that can sustain our tools. So if we give them something and give them training, that it's a scalable solution to have, you know? So it's not just us doing the work and then leaving. So that's how we kind of judge it right now. We wish we could be everywhere, but we have to go to where they're most prepared to make the biggest difference, the biggest impact.

• 47:25Lewis Howes?

  Of course. And what are the, what are the top three countries right now that have the most cases and the biggest problem?

• 47:32Tim Ballard?

  I think, I think Southeast Asia.

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 47:35Tim Ballard?

  Is, oh, that whole region is just, just so sad and so, so terrible. But the, but the law enforcement is doing amazing work, working closely with it. That's, that's where we put our first digital forensic lab. And so now they're going in and routing out the

• 47:47Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy, man. And it's 50% locals and it's 50% kind of US-based who's coming in and committing the crimes?

• 47:54Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, lots of sex tourists. The locals are

• 47:58Lewis Howes?

  How big of an industry is the sex tourist industry? How much money?

• 48:01Tim Ballard?

  Okay, well, so human trafficking altogether is $150 billion a year.

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 48:08Tim Ballard?

  $150 billion. And so to put that in perspective

• 48:10Lewis Howes?

  And how much is the sex tourism in human trafficking?

• 48:13Tim Ballard?

  That's about $35 billion, I believe.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 48:17Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. Just the sex alone is $35 billion.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  The contact, the sex, the physical sex, not the digital consumption of media, right?

• 48:27Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, $35 billion in the selling of people for sex.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 48:31Tim Ballard?

  $35 billion, can you imagine that number? I mean, and then you bring in the slave labor and that's what gets it up to $150 billion.

• 48:37Lewis Howes?

  Human trafficking in general, yes.

• 48:38Tim Ballard?

  Human trafficking in general. And to give some perspective, because that number is so big, with the amount of money made buying and selling people every year, you could buy every Starbucks franchise in the world, you could buy every NBA team, and still have enough money left over to send every US child to college for four years. That's how much money is spent in modern-day slavery every year.

• 49:01Tim Ballard?

  That's why I say this isn't a peripheral thing.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:04Tim Ballard?

  Even though we act like it is because we don't want to address it, we don't want to engage it, it hurts.

• 49:07Lewis Howes?

  Why do we not want to address it?

• 49:09Tim Ballard?

  It hurts, you know, it's just, I know why because I didn't want to address it. I ran, I tried to quit many times.

• 49:15Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 49:16Tim Ballard?

  And my wife always turned me around and said, "You can't, sweetie."

• 49:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 49:19Tim Ballard?

  You know, because here's what happens, and this is what happened to me, is you see children being hurt and you can't help it. You superimpose your own children's faces on those children and then you just can't bear it, right? You just can't handle it. I mean, I had to go to psychotherapy to not do that. Mandatory, they sent us every year to get checked out.

• 49:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Tim Ballard?

  And I kept, I'd go every year and think, okay, this is my year that I'm gonna they're gonna boot me out because I know I'm crazy. And like, "Oh, you passed, Mr. Ballack." And I'm like, "What?"

• 49:48Lewis Howes?

  Save me.

• 49:49Tim Ballard?

  Because I thought I was crazy. "No, you're fine. Okay." But one of the things, that was the hardest thing for me to kick, is learn how to not see my own child's face so I could deal with it. Later on, about 10, about 15 years later into this, I changed my tune and I allowed myself to see my kids' faces. And that made all the difference because all of a sudden now I'm I'm pushing the envelope.

• 50:11Lewis Howes?

  It's more, you're more connected to it.

• 50:12Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, what happened was, I came across a situation a few years back where we were going into a child trafficking center and there was 28 little children that were being sold.

• 50:21Lewis Howes?

  Little meaning under 12?

• 50:23Tim Ballard?

  Oh, from 1 to 12.

• 50:24Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, for sex?

• 50:26Tim Ballard?

  For sex. And so I'm walking in, they think I'm a customer, and I'm walking in and I see all these kids.

• 50:31Lewis Howes?

  Like a storefront?

• 50:32Tim Ballard?

  It was, it was, it was an orphanage front. They were claiming to be an orphanage.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 50:38Tim Ballard?

  This was in Haiti. They were claiming to be an orphanage, but all the kids were mostly kids they collected after the hurricanes or earthquakes. The parents die and they say, "Oh, come to our orphanage." Well, it's not an orphanage. So we were actually tracking a missing child that we knew had been there. And so that's what got us in there. And when I saw the kids outside the gate, I was about to go in. The same, it was almost like a PTSD reaction where I'm like, "Oh, I see, I'm seeing my kids, okay. Do the training they taught you." But instead, I said, "You know what? What if I don't do that this time? What if I let it happen? What if I just allow these kids to be my kids?" So I went in there and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I never should have done that technique. I should have always done this." And this is what I encouraged everyone to do.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  Before, you were wearing like a mask.

• 51:19Tim Ballard?

  Right.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  So you wouldn't feel it as deeply, but now you're feeling it so deeply.

• 51:23Tim Ballard?

  So deeply. And what wouldn't you do for your own child?

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 51:26Tim Ballard?

  So now I'm willing to go the distance, right? And that case got nuts. And it's funny, I know this experiment led to this. We, after we rescued, we rescued 28 kids, we did the whole sting by. And I ended up adopting two of the kids that we rescued, who are now my kids.

• 51:41Lewis Howes?

  In Haiti?

• 51:42Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. It was a preventative strike. Turns out none of it had actually been sold yet. They were all being sold. And so, yeah, so two of my kids now, they came from that operation. So they literally, like literally made it.

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  They became your kids?

• 51:54Tim Ballard?

  They became my kids, yeah.

• 51:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How many kids do you have now?

• 51:57Tim Ballard?

  I have nine now.

• 51:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow, seven from birth of your-

• 52:01Tim Ballard?

  Seven, yeah, biological.

• 52:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and then two adopted from Haiti.

• 52:05Tim Ballard?

  Yep.

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  How many more, I mean, how many do you want to have?

• 52:08Tim Ballard?

  Oh, man, we were, the prenup said six, okay, when we got married.

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 52:12Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, we were done at six, and we were both done, like, we got the six, I came from six, my wife came from six.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Tim Ballard?

  And then this case happened after that, and we saw these kids, and it was just like, here's my wife again, I called her, I said, you won't believe this, what I just saw, these two little kids, it was the two kids I actually bought in the sting operation, I just grew attached to them. And it was my wife who just had this experience, and she just said, I want to be their mom.

• 52:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:34Tim Ballard?

  I said, no, you don't. You can't do this. Like, we can't do this, you know? I want to be their mom. So that's how, that's how it started, and we ended up bringing them home. And then the seventh one came, defying all science somehow.

• 52:46Lewis Howes?

  It happened, yeah.

• 52:47Tim Ballard?

  So.

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

  How, how much does it cost to buy a ki-, I mean, to buy a kid? Is it to buy them to own them? Is it to buy them to have sex? What's the difference between?

• 52:56Tim Ballard?

  You, they do both. Okay, so generally, if you're gonna take a kid, if you're gonna, if you're gonna use a kid for, for the weekend or something, you can probably double or triple the price of what the, the, the, the, the adult sex market would be. So if you, whatever prostitute, you know, sex worker, whatever you want to call it.

• 53:15Lewis Howes?

  You can double or triple it for a kid.

• 53:16Tim Ballard?

  Double or triple for, for a child.

• 53:17Lewis Howes?

  For a night or for a weekend.

• 53:19Tim Ballard?

  For purchasing, it depends what the country, but those, those kids they sold me, that became mine-

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Tim Ballard?

  Were fifteen thousand each. Um, but the work we did-

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Fifteen thousand for a person's life.

• 53:29Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, unbelievable.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  Just say here it's yours.

• 53:32Tim Ballard?

  In the Middle East, where we were dealing with ISIS, and we're working, and this is where we're getting to organ harvesting. And a pediatric heart is up to a quarter million dollars.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  A kid's heart?

• 53:42Tim Ballard?

  A kid's heart. That's how much, that's how much it sells in the black market.

• 53:45Lewis Howes?

  How often is this happening with organ harvesting?

• 53:47Tim Ballard?

  In the, in the Middle East, quite a bit. So ISIS rolls in in 2015. And they make sex slaves out of the Yazidi people, these, these beautiful people that are just peaceful, that are living in northern Iraq, and a little bit in Syria as well. And ISIS came in and just said, you are less than human, and they just took them and made sex slave markets out of them. Also, a lot of the Christian communities were, were devastated in a similar way. Uh, eventually ISIS gets pushed off its sovereign territory, and it was making its money by taking over, taking over cities.

• 54:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:17Tim Ballard?

  And like taxing people. So they lost their oil revenues when they got pushed off the land, but they kept the kids. And so like, well, I gotta make money. So they start selling these kids to sex slavery or to organ harvesting.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 54:28Tim Ballard?

  We've taken down two organ harvesting rings in already so far. So we, this is.

• 54:33Lewis Howes?

  Do they keep the kids alive after they take out some of their organs or is it, you're dead? Obviously with the heart.

• 54:39Tim Ballard?

  Oh, see, depends. Yeah. And not if it's, if it's a kidney or something.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  They just take it out and then, okay, see you later?

• 54:44Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. You can, there's, people are finally reporting on it. I think CBS or ABC News recently did a story on it. But we're in the middle of it. This is the Nazarene Fund. I'm the CEO of also the Nazarene Fund, which is a sister organization with O U R. Mercury One Glenn Beck started that.

• 54:58Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 54:59Tim Ballard?

  And then I took it over three years ago.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, really?

• 55:01Tim Ballard?

  Glenn Beck's still the founder.

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, no, he, he was the godfather of O U R as well. He, he gave us all our first money.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Glenn did.

• 55:08Tim Ballard?

  The money I needed to rescue those kids in Colombia and Haiti, that was Glenn.

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:12Tim Ballard?

  He was the only one, he was the only one that took the chance. He's like, oh, I'll front it. Go for it. I'm like, are you serious? He's like, yeah. He got, he got me the money. It was pretty intense.

• 55:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 55:20Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, risked his whole, his whole media company.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:23Tim Ballard?

  Really. His lawyers said, don't do it. If they fail or somebody gets hurt, you're screwed. He's like, he's like, I don't care. It's like, I'm not gonna go to my maker and tell him I said no. It was amazing story. Um, so yeah, so he, he, he asked me to run the Nazarene Fund three years ago. So that's our work in the Middle East, which is just the stuff with. And we're extracting these kids. I mean, we're going in and taking the kids out.

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  So have you found kids who've had, uh, you know, I guess, organs taken out or?

• 55:47Tim Ballard?

  Oh, yeah. No, there's, and they're, the ones that are surviving.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Kinesia stuff?

• 55:50Tim Ballard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:51Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Lewis Howes?

  So you find them and they got, they're sewn up or whatever?

• 55:53Tim Ballard?

  Yeah. And, and there's, that's, there's, there's been, like I said, there's some mainstream media have gotten into it, thank goodness, in, in the last several months. And you can see, people can go on Google and you can see it. They're stitched up, they're. But, but if you're a, if you're a small child, they're gonna make their most money off a pediatric heart.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  Really? Quarter million dollars off a heart?

• 56:11Tim Ballard?

  They're very high in demand. Yeah.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  Man, this is crazy, man.

• 56:15Tim Ballard?

  Servicing markets generally outside the United States, right? Like, these are markets in countries that there's no regulations and there's just black market stuff.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  The work you're doing is really amazing. And you've got a movie coming out, which I got to see a trailer of it a couple of months ago. And when's the date it's coming out? Do we know?

• 56:31Tim Ballard?

  We don't know. Yeah, COVID shifted everything, so we don't really know. But the film is locked, it's done. Starts Jim Caviezel, Mira Servino, Bill Camp.

• 56:40Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be amazing.

• 56:41Tim Ballard?

  It's, it's, these guys, these guys are artists, they're geniuses. They did a very good job.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  And what's the movie called? And what's it, what's it telling the story of?

• 56:49Tim Ballard?

  It's called The Sound of Freedom. And it, it basically tells the story, I just, a lot of that I just told you.

• 56:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Tim Ballard?

  Um, like, for example, the little boy in the van, they actually filmed that scene exactly where it happened with the necklace and all that.

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  My goodness.

• 57:00Tim Ballard?

  And it, and it gets into Colombia, the, the Colombia raid where we rescued the 120, our first big operation. That rescued 121, yeah.

• 57:07Lewis Howes?

  And what's your, what's your mission moving forward with, uh, the movie with just everything you're up to? Is it to end, uh, sex slavery? Is it to rescue certain amount of kids a year?

• 57:17Tim Ballard?

  It is to end it.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Tim Ballard?

  So we, we did an experiment. We, and, and it was very telling in 2014. We, we put almost all of our resources into the northern, northern region of Colombia.

• 57:29Lewis Howes?

  One region?

• 57:29Tim Ballard?

  One region. And we just said, just pounded.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  How do we get rid of it?

• 57:32Tim Ballard?

  Pound, pounded. Like, every month, two or three operations and empowered law enforcement. And then to the point where they stopped. And the would-be traffickers said, yeah, I had to give it up. I'm, I'm into drugs, I'm doing something, this is crazy. And so we, we did it, we knew what happened, it's logical. Like, now there's a consequence, there wasn't before. But we did it to show, like, if everybody would, would, would focus, focus, focus on child crimes. If we all did it together, we could, we could end it. But it's not gonna be governments alone, it's gonna be people getting loud. Which is, we have an opportunity right now, because people are getting loud about it for the first time in a long time. Or maybe ever, on July 30th, which is,

• 58:11Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 58:12Tim Ballard?

  There's anti-human trafficking, um, you know, world anti-awareness.

• 58:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. So how can, how can my listeners get involved, whether a small way or they wanna get involved in a bigger way? What can they do? Can they go to your website? Can they email you?

• 58:26Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, people can go to our website, ohyourrescue.org.

• 58:30Lewis Howes?

  OUR Rescue.

• 58:31Tim Ballard?

  OURrescue.org is the website. Look at our videos and there's something on that says, "Join the Fight." We have all sorts of ideas people can do to get involved. So I told you about that dog tag, right? The dog tag that becomes my commission, right? It's with my name on it and changed my life. And a lot of people have said, "I want one of those. I want my commission." So Love Grenade is a company that has made replicas of that very necklace.

• 58:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 58:56Tim Ballard?

  And people can get it and that can become their commission and they can wear it and remember the kids. And so there's a link here, I believe, on your show.

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 59:04Tim Ballard?

  And the money goes towards rescuing kids. People can also text HELP THEM to 51555 and we're giving specific instructions on how you can get involved in your city on July 30th. 60 cities have already committed to get loud in some way. They'll go to a park, you know, obey the laws and the social distancing. But essentially go to a park and local leaders will show up and commit that we're going to do more for kids and make sure the kids in your community are protected.

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man. It's exciting. And if you want to be a part of helping spread the message, make sure to share this video out or share this audio out. And make sure to follow Tim. What are you on social media?

• 59:42Tim Ballard?

  TimBallard89.

• 59:44Lewis Howes?

  TimBallard89. Make sure to follow Tim. Make sure to tag him when you're sharing this out so he can follow up with you as well and stay connected. I know you do a lot of other stuff behind the scenes that I want to get into hopefully soon in Utah and be a part of learning about how you guys actually do this.

• 59:56Tim Ballard?

  We're bringing you up, man. We're going to put you into one of our training programs.

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  Lock me in.

• 1:00:02Lewis Howes?

  So the movie, Beware. So if you go to the website, if you sign up, if you follow you, you'll be able to watch the movie when it comes out.

• 1:00:06Tim Ballard?

  Absolutely. We'll keep you up to date on everything, yeah.

• 1:00:09Lewis Howes?

  You've got a bunch of books to talk about this as well. If you want to dive in down the rabbit hole, you can read your books.

• 1:00:13Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, I've got lots of content for you if you want to learn more.

• 1:00:15Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, exactly. But this is an amazing mission that you're on. For me, who's been, you know, I wasn't sold, but I dealt with sexual abuse and I know the trauma that it has and the years of unwiring that it takes to feel normal, to feel like the world isn't out to get you, to feel like your stress levels go down, to feel like I couldn't go to sleep at night. It'd take me hours to go to sleep every night until I was about 30. And then when I started to heal, I could finally sleep.

• 1:00:40Tim Ballard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Lewis Howes?

  So I know what it does to the wiring of a human being with sexual abuse.

• 1:00:44Tim Ballard?

  That's right.

• 1:00:44Lewis Howes?

  I can't even imagine. What it would do to someone who's being sold by their parent, not by their parent, over and over and over again for years. I couldn't even imagine how you would start to heal. So what you're doing is an amazing gift and a service to humanity. And I really acknowledge you for that, Tim, for being an incredible leader in this space, being a hero in this space.

• 1:01:08Tim Ballard?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  And using your wisdom, your skills, your tools, your resources, your relationships to make the biggest impact in this space. And I want to be a support for as long as I can on this.

• 1:01:19Tim Ballard?

  Thank you so much, Louis.

• 1:01:21Lewis Howes?

  This is a big part of me that I want to help out as well. I want to ask you a final, a final few questions. This is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth.

• 1:01:31Tim Ballard?

  Okay.

• 1:01:32Lewis Howes?

  And you go somewhere else after your body dies, right?

• 1:01:36Tim Ballard?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:01:37Lewis Howes?

  But you've accomplished every dream you could think of in your whole life. For your personal life, for your family, your kids, for your businesses, for your foundation, anything you can imagine, it's come true. But for whatever reason, all of your work has to go with you. Your videos, movies, content, it's got to go with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three lessons you know to be true. You get to write it down on a piece of paper, and this is all we would have to remember you by, of these three lessons, or what I like to call three truths. What would you share with the world that are your three truths?

• 1:02:11Tim Ballard?

  I think the first truth, the most important truth, and this comes from years of trying to find light in my darkness. Because to work in this world is so dark, and it will destroy you, it will destroy you. I needed to find light. And so my, my advice to people would be, or you know, what I would share is, because we all have darkness, I don't care who you are, you don't even be fighting trafficking, right? Darkness is everywhere. So I would, my, mine would be based on how to get light in your darkness. And the number one thing is serving other people. Service turns the lights on. Tony Robbins taught me this. I mean, I, I knew it just functionally, but until he put the words to it in the research. And when you, when you serve people, something happens to your brain.

• 1:02:56Tim Ballard?

  Like, there's a physiological, in my mind, it's God, I'm a faith guy. And, and when you, when you serve people...

• 1:03:06Tim Ballard?

  Your, your brain literally releases serotonin and endorphins and, and oxytocin.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Tim Ballard?

  And, and what it does is people that have in excess of those beautiful.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  You feel better.

• 1:03:18Tim Ballard?

  You feel better.

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  You're healthier, you're happier.

• 1:03:20Tim Ballard?

  You have more courage, you have more optimism, you have, this is science, right? Now, in my mind, what that is, is it's also, I, I believe it's God preparing your body to commune. And, and with God, your creator, whatever it is, I don't care. But a higher source that will then give you, that you need.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Tim Ballard?

  To, to be a better version of yourself.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Tim Ballard?

  And so service has all these benefits, apart from just doing the good of helping somebody. It's this amazing thing that turns the lights on in so many ways.

• 1:03:48Lewis Howes?

  So service, number one, to other people.

• 1:03:49Tim Ballard?

  Number two is kind of related to it, but it's, it's that communion part, it's, it's prayer, meditation, whatever you want to call it. Um, but connecting to that, that greater being, whatever that is, and, and, and getting that, that positive energy.

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:04Tim Ballard?

  Uh, because it just makes, if you're a better version of yourself, you are a blessing to other people, right? So it's, it's not a selfish thing, it's, it's actually a selfless thing.

• 1:04:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Tim Ballard?

  Get yourself good.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Tim Ballard?

  Cause then you're good for others, you know? And so number two, I'd say that, is that, that meditation, that communion.

• 1:04:19Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:20Tim Ballard?

  And then the number three is find at least one person that you really love and that really loves you back. There's a lot of relationships, you know, where you don't, you don't have time or there's the ability to connect that way. But for me, it's my wife. But find that person, because I mean, I've told you many stories and you have, no, the, the coolest story that I told you was actually me running away and my wife turning me back around.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:44Tim Ballard?

  Thank good, I mean, this, none of this would happen. I wouldn't be sitting here with you if she hadn't turned me around when I ran for cover. Throughout my life, throughout my career, and, and I credit that relationship with, with.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing you love about Catherine the most, your wife?

• 1:04:59Tim Ballard?

  She does the right thing no matter what. And it doesn't matter the consequences. I mean, she literally said to me, if we end up on a beach in a tent and that's where we're living because we did this, I don't care. We have to do the right thing by these children and by God, and the right thing is to quit and leave everything. I mean, I calculated, it was millions of dollars in pension and I had a whole charted out, my life was charted out. I'm like, Catherine, we're watching. She's like, doesn't matter. These are real children and there's consequences for.

• 1:05:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and if you say one, it's worth it in her mind.

• 1:05:33Tim Ballard?

  Right, how is it not worth it? And just how quick she gets to that. Like, this is wrong, this is right, we're gonna do the right thing. Okay. Like, she has that kind of, it's intuition, it's inspiration, a conscience, I don't know what you call it, but she has it and I know I can go to her and say, I don't know what to do, what do I do? And she's gonna be right, you know? And if she doesn't know, she'll tell me, I don't know, let's figure this out. So I think that's the thing I love most about her.

• 1:06:00Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. Okay, we can find you online, TimBauer89, we'll connect you and link up everything in the show notes. I've got, is there anything that you want to share that you haven't shared before my final question? Anything you wish people asked you about this or you feel like people need to know about?

• 1:06:17Tim Ballard?

  You know, one thing I'll say is, I'm worried about the world right now, I'm worried about kids right now, a lot. Because I feel like we pursue good things and they make sense, but too often we don't consider the children who are being hurt. And it's unintended, it's no one's intent to do this. But we talked about, for example, we're in the middle of a debate right now, and I'm not, this is not partisan for me, it's not political, even though everything seems to go that way these days, right? But the idea of opening schools and what that does, all I'm saying, I'm not gonna give the answer to the question, I'm not smart enough to give an answer to that question. But I will say this, that we're not even, I don't see the kids as part of the debate.

• 1:06:59Tim Ballard?

  For example, the spike, 6 million additional reports of children being abused originating online, this is from the National Center for Missing and Displaced Children. And that's a lot of pain.

• 1:07:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Tim Ballard?

  And it happened because we, as a society, we decided to shut everything down because of COVID. Okay, do we know the trade offs? That's all I'm asking. Do we, are we considering the trade offs? And the concern I have is, you know, the CDC and others have come out. I'm not a scientist, but I can read data. And if you're 60 years or younger, you have a 99.9% chance of surviving. If you're older, it's very, very, very dangerous. And you should definitely take mass precautions and we should do everything we can to support that. But teachers who create the infrastructure that keep kids from being sexually assaulted, they, like 89% are under 60 years old. And so the real question that we should be asking is what's, what's, what's scarier to you?

• 1:07:53Tim Ballard?

  A virus, once we've taken care of the, the most vulnerable, what's scarier, a virus with a 99.9% survivability? Or the trade offs, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of children being sexually assaulted? We're not even having the discussion. That's my concern. I'm not smart enough to come up with the actual solution.

• 1:08:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Tim Ballard?

  But at least have the discussion. And it boils down to this, kids can't get loud. They can't organize, they can't protest, they can't march. And so we don't hear from them. It's on us adults to stand up and be their voices. And say, we will sit at the table for you. We will make sure you are represented. So that's, that's my.

• 1:08:30Lewis Howes?

  Something to think about, for sure.

• 1:08:31Tim Ballard?

  Yeah, something to think about.

• 1:08:31Lewis Howes?

  We need to figure out a solution.

• 1:08:33Tim Ballard?

  Right. It's hard, these are complex things. I don't, I don't have the answers, but I know kids are being hurt. And I know more can be done to make sure they're not.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  For sure, absolutely. Well, there's always more we can do, that's for sure. You're doing amazing things, man. I appreciate you. I got one final question. That's what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:08:48Tim Ballard?

  I think for me greatness is, is how much positive impact you can be on others. In fact, I, I try to make this a rule, I'm not great at this. I just, I'm a believer in it, okay? I'm not a master of it. But when we're, when, when, when given a fork in the road, right? A crossroads, you gotta make a decision. And we do it every day. Do I do this or do that? I don't know what to do.

• 1:09:12Tim Ballard?

  Which one will help more people?

• 1:09:16Tim Ballard?

  And if you always take that road, I think that's the definition of greatness.

• 1:09:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's a thought of mine, man. Thanks, bro.

• 1:09:21Tim Ballard?

  Thanks, bro.

• 1:09:21Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate you, man. Thank you, man.

• 1:09:27Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode. For me, this hits close to home. As someone who dealt with being sexually abused as a kid, I just know the psychological challenges that come with any type of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and it's very hard to undo that wiring and it takes years of healing. But for those who are dealing with this right now, these kids all around the world, it's a horrible thing and it can truly impact people's lives by spreading this message. To let people know and be more aware of how they can be a part of the solution as opposed to a part of the problem. So please share this with one, two, or three friends. Just text them the link, lewishouse.com/986. Or you can go right to the link on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify,

• 1:10:10Lewis Howes?

  or anywhere that you're listening to this on any platform right now. Just copy and paste that link and share this with a few friends. Post it on your social media channels and make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes, and Tim Ballard as well over on social media so he can stay in touch with you and see who is listening and sharing this also. And if this is your first time here, or you listen regularly, but you haven't yet subscribed on Apple Podcasts, please click the subscribe button on your phone right now. It will really help us improve reaching more people and spreading the message of greatness. You have the power to change people's lives by sharing this message, by subscribing, and please leave us a five-star review and rating over on Apple Podcasts because the more people that subscribe and review, the more people get to see this and it shares it out on that platform. And if you want inspirational messages from me every single week

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  to keep you updated, inspired, motivated, and on track to your purpose in life, then text me right now the word "podcast" to 614-350-3960. Again, text the word "podcast" right now to 614-350-3960. And I want to end with a quote from sociologist Deshaun Stokes, who said, "If your actions don't live up to your words, you have nothing to say." If you haven't been reminded today, you matter, you are loved, and you are worth it. So grateful for you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.