The Hidden Heroes Fighting to End Human Trafficking

[0:00]  so when you're traveling to these different locations and you're seeing a lot of the common things did you kind of have a moment of there's a lot more of this going on than I think the normal person would think about what was that like oh absolutely I I was like why are we not hearing about this you know why why are we so you know numb to this happening in our world when there's now there's estimated 50 million people that are entrapped in human trafficking and yet there was not very much talked about there's definitely not very many organizations doing anything about it you know 12 15 years ago and so I I was just appalled really and was like I I I can quit my job other people can do it but there's not enough people combating human trafficking everyone knows now that human trafficking is happening but

[0:48]  they don't know on the boots on the ground what's happening what can we do what is really going on with these individuals lives and we can tell them all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast today is an incredibly important episode because we're sitting across from Susan Peters now she is the founder and chief advisor for Unbound now now today in today's conversation we're going to talk about how we can do better jobs at listening to the people who need our support in our communities some of the challenges that we're facing on a

[1:35]  macro societal issue when it comes to human trafficking but before we kind of get into that stuff I want to really learn about the origin story of this amazing human that sits across this digital table with me Susan welcome to the show thank you excited about it so Susan you know one of the things that I recognize in our previous conversation together was there was a time in 2012 when you said that you were praying in your living room to be able to support people in your community from an element of human trafficking but before we got to that you said that you were inspired by some of the experiences that you've had across your lifetime so why don't we take it back to the very beginning even if we were in high school some of the things that you saw that challenge you to say will I have the courage to step up and make a difference for people in

[2:23]  my community let's talk about that a little bit Yeah I think what we were talking about was um I can remember as a child and probably many of your listeners have hopefully were the same way I remember learning about the transatlantic slave days and hearing about Wilbur Force and some of the heroes that stood up against that but it was totally against the grain right and I just thought wow would I be courageous enough I mean who doesn't like Harriet Tubman right um but yet that was scary what she did and so I always kind of pondered would I be that courageous and then of course the Holocaust was so horrible we studied that in school and again again there were families like the tin boom families and others um Bon Hofer that you know entered into that fight to rescue people and there's many many Heroes and not that I sought to be

[3:12]  a hero that's for sure not it and I'm not the hero of the story now but I wanted to know that I was living with courage I was living with caring for my fellow man and I was living out what God created me to be so that kind of was the backdrop of of what motivated me ultimately and then we had some experiences where you were traveling across the world and you were meeting young boys as an example that had been you know victims of human trafficking so let's kind of talk about those early aha moments and experiencing some of the things that we kind of came across in our travels yeah so prior to 12 and a half years ago um before I started Unbound now I did travel a lot and um for my job and went to Uganda and I met child soldiers these were just young men now but they were children playing in

[3:59]  the village that were literally kidnapped by the lra or the Lord's resistant Army and forced to be child soldiers which is a form of human trafficking and I remember being so intimidated at first to go meet with them and then I'm like these are just normal people this was not what they wanted for themselves and they were forced into this by their environment and then I went to Thailand I went to Haiti went to the Dominican Republic went to Cambodia I mean just different countries everywhere I went just just came face to face with stories of human trafficking of young boys young girls that were being forced into brothel and losing their life their health their education their families um into human trafficking and so that's where the burden just came where I was like I have to do something about this when you're

[4:47]  traveling in a place like Uganda as an example and you come across a young boy a child who is a part of the lra what is your first intuition do you question what is this young child doing with a weapon why is he hanging around these people what was kind of like that initial Discovery process like where that light bulb came on and saids something seems interesting or wrong about this situation yeah I think the the initial response is why would he choose this how did he get in this situation um he wants to do this and he's a bad person you know even you know you see people in the red light district in different countries and the initial response is why did they choose this why did they get here do they want out but then when you start learning the stories

[5:36]  of how their family members maybe sold them into it there was debt bondage that they owed back all kinds of different vulnerabilities that put people in this position that don't want to be there and don't find a way out don't have a way out that totally changes your perspective and the thing that I that I want to kind of dive into a little bit deeper in here is you've seen these instances happen all across the the world and so it seems like there's an undercurrent of commonality here with you know individuals who find themselves in human trafficking where they've come across incredibly tough situations but it doesn't matter if in Uganda or if you're in Thailand or all the different types of places that you've kind of come across so when you're traveling to these different locations and you're seeing a lot of the common things did you kind of have a moment of there's a lot more of this going on than I think the normal

[6:25]  person would think about what was that like oh absolutely I I was like why are we not hearing about this you know why why are we so you know numb to this happening in our world when there's now there's estimated 50 million people that are entrapped in human trafficking and yet there was not very much talked about there's definitely not very many organizations doing anything about it you know 12 15 years ago and so I I was just appalled really and was like I I I can quit my job other people can do it but there's not enough people combating human trafficking and when we talk about human trafficking I want to do Justice by the audience here by helping us explain what are the types of human trafficking that we see because often I think a lot of people when they think about you know

[7:13]  human trafficking they think about like movies with Liam niss where you know his daughter gets taken I'm gonna find you I'm G to track you down but there are so many different types of human trafficking and I want to have you as an expert kind of lay the framework for the problems that we're seeing in our society so we can be more aware of the different types of trafficking that might be going on well the bottom line is human trafficking is when someone exploits another human being for their profit and so there's a trafficker involved who is coercing forcing um someone into servitude and M there's labor trafficking so that could be even even in the US we have it where they're in agricultural fields they can be in Hospitality they can be in

[8:02]  restaurants and so we don't recognize them in our communities because it looks like a normal labor it looks like a maid in a hotel they look normal but then if you get involved in their lives and you realize they haven't been paid they're forced to live in an apartment with 12 other people someone comes and Picks Them Up and threatens them don't go outside don't make friends don't talk to anyone or you'll get deported you know there's all of these things going on that has coerced them into servitude so they're making a fraction of what they said and agreed upon um at the very beginning and then usually that person takes their documents and so that's labor trafficking happens a lot and of course it happens around the world whether it's the fishing industry in some parts of Asia it can be Rick uh

[8:50]  brick kils in India there's all kinds of Labor trafficking that goes on um what we primarily deal with is sex trafficking and and you know that's when someone is coerced or forced into um having to sell their body for someone else's profit and that could happen in brothel it can happen in someone's home it can happen in their neighborhood it can happen you know where they transport them to other places but the kids that we deal with in the US they are living in their home in their neighborhood and being sold and so people don't really realize how much domestic minor sex trafficking is happening and that's really what we major on and then there's Oregon trafficking and I you know I've seen this especially in war torn areas during the Syrian refugee crisis we saw it um

[9:40]  that that kind of opens up when there's very exploitive um refugee camps things like that and there's other ways that there's organ trafficking that's a horrible horrible situation we don't deal with that but it's there's there's several different forms of trafficking but mainly labor trafficking and sex trafficking one of the biggest challenges that I feel like in having this conversation because we're both here in the United States right now is often the American lens thinks that these things are happening in different places they're not happening here in our communities so how can I even help and I know that you had an experience where you came across the 14-year-old who is in your local community let's kind of tell the story about that because I feel like that really hits home when this stuff is happening in places that we think we know but maybe we don't know the whole story yeah there was a group

[10:29]  of of girls that were um recovered out of an apartment complex um by law enforcement and I got to talk to one of the girls and she was 14 and she told me how she had befriended this older man he was kind of feeling this Father Figure and lured her away and then put her in this apartment where several girls are and they were out of school and being sold day in and night they hardly sleep they hardly eat I mean it's a horrific horrific brutal life and she was there almost a year and the law enforcement did make that recovery and I'll never forget when she you know told me her story then she looked at me and she said we didn't think anyone cared this was happening to us and I just remember my heart just wanting to break and just say yes we care we just didn't know and

[11:18]  these are the the kids that we see in Unbound now these are American Kids most of our victims 92% of them are American kids that are in our schools in our Communities going in and out of our emergency rooms or clinics you know that we're missing in our right under our noses this is heartbreaking to think about you know one of the biggest challenges that I hear even in kind of trying to tackle this problem is often it seems like we are so distracted that we don't notice the things that are happening right around us and when we don't notice those things often the victims of these crimes think hey how could you not know what's going on because it's happening so so close to your home but like you said we care we just were not aware and I want to use that as an opportunity to talk about how

[12:06]  this organization of Unbound now has kind of evolved and we started out with a mission to raise awareness and eventually that turned into a shift to Survivor advocacy let's kind of talk about that Evolution process and what you guys have been doing to raise awareness and then the progression of the organization as well yeah when we started we definitely wanted to identify those victims domestic minor sex trafficking Vic and young young adults um and walk alongside them to help them recover their life but we we would look up the ads that were in our own community on our own I mean this was when back page was there Craigslist just normal websites these people are being advertised in our communities and we would print off those pages and take them to law enforcement back you know 12 and a half years ago but they would just

[12:52]  say this isn't happening here because the awareness just wasn't there so we thought wow we're going to have to start with ED ation because our community really doesn't believe this is happening and so we're not able to engage with those victims and make those recoveries and help them yet and so that's where we started we really started training anywhere now it is you know we've kind of evolved where we call it youth prevention and we go anywhere kids are that we can educate them on safety media on safety media um because social media is so prevalent but they're not safe on it and they get lured away on on that um the addiction of pornography and how it's linked to human trafficking and sexting and they get sextortion which is like a blackmailing that kind of thing and so we go into juvenile detention

[13:41]  centers schools group homes really anywhere kids are and kids were making outcries and they were saying I I didn't know that was happening to me because victims do not identify as victims they think I got mixed up with a bad boyfriend you know this is what my stepdad makes me do my mom's made me do this to pay our rent and for her drug habit it's just our life I don't know how to get away from this or I'm afraid to report this because they they said they would get my siblings if I report this and so until we go in and give them language then they're like oh my goodness I think this is happening to me then they would make the outcries and so we were also simultaneously we built out training materials for professionals so for law enforcement for attorneys for medical providers and all is on our

[14:29]  website Unbound now.org and we have continuing education certificates and things because it's so important but when they were educated on it then they weren't missing them before there was a study and something like 88% of trafficking victims were going through the ERS and medical facilities and we were missing them because they're not going to say hey I'm a victim they're going to come in and you're going to go why do this 12-year-old have three s STDs but then they just give her the medicine and let her go no one was saying what's going on with this kid you know why why is this 13-year-old pregnant and who's the father why is this girl coming in and she's been on the streets but she's pregnant she hasn't had any care and she can't tell me where she lives I mean there were signs but we didn't know what to do with it and now we know what to ask because we talked to enough survivors that they're telling us those stories and

[15:17]  where they were missed so we're able to educate people in the community that are coming face to face with them Hotel people they're like yeah the guy came in rented a room the girl's down there and there's men in and out I don't know what's going on it's like yes we know what's going on call the police so the education we always say you know awareness saves lives because it does those early days when you're taking things off of back pages and Craigslist and everything else like that and you're reporting these type of ads that are freely available for everybody to see did it become frustrating to you to go to you know law enforcement and other people and say hey this is what's going on right here and they're like you know what I just don't think that that's true do you feel like you had to be like a belief breaker in a world Shaker in order to get people to wake up to what's happening right in front of their face yes we did but you know by by Nature

[16:05]  attorneys love Justice law enforcement loved to rescue and stand in the gap for them so it wasn't like opposing a person because they didn't want to do anything it was just you know before they would had Vice they they they arrested prostitutes they you know they just it's it's not that they were bad people they just had to shift the mindset so when I would introduce them let me introduce to a 15-year-old that's been traffic since she was 13 let her tell you about her trafficker and how brutal it is then it's like oh heck yeah how can we go get this guy you know so it wasn't a resistance once they knew and wanted to do it because it's in their nature for who they are it was a it had to be a mind shift because old school days it was like didn't they choose to do that

[16:51]  I'm like you don't choose to be a prostitute at 12 no you know so it was it was an education more then um now I will say yes there was some frustrating one time uh I took a friend of mine he he was on my board for a long time he ended up becoming the mayor of our community but we took ads in and we were meeting with the Texas Rangers and some people from the uh District Attorney's offices way back you know when we were starting and we're going here's some ads that we printed off and they're like I don't think that can happen here I don't think this is it like where did you get this what's going on you know and just really pushed it off and then um the Rangers were like starting to like hey we want to see this they were like ready to fight you know those are tough guys but the District

[17:38]  Attorney's office at the time many years ago couple of Das ago um was like you know we don't want to you guys getting in trouble and we have to go rescue you and so they just shut it down and a couple of days later the FBI did a big operation and they rescued a bunch of trafficking victims and the head of the Rangers called me and said you are inviting us into this fight and we missed it yesterday or a couple days ago and so it just took education but now people are really on board and we're collaborating together we work really tightly with all from HSI FBI local law enforcement it takes us all but the beginning days there there were some tough days there were some disappointing days of course but it it was worth it I mean of course it's worth it the amount of lives that you guys are

[18:25]  impacting every single year is phenomenal and based on and you can correct me if I've get these stats wrong but over a thousand victims you guys are supporting annually now so think about the impact that you guys are having not only on those individuals but the families that they come from and everything else how does it feel to know that you're having such a huge impact now it's it's amazing I mean I just looked at the numbers before we got on and just in 2024 we're at 1287 wow you know and every one of those they're not a number that's someone's sister that's someone's little girl that's someone's little boy you know these are individuals and they're phenomenally resilient when we can come around and we we can get into what we do but when we can support these individuals they're going off to college they're getting back in school they're

[19:12]  playing sports again I mean they can really recover their lives with support and so it's it's absolutely exciting I mean let's let's use that as a perfect segue to talk about you know the process of advocacy not only comes from helping identify individuals when they're in a situation where they need help creating interventions to go take them out of that situation but how do we create sustainability in I would say the reintroduction to society and overcoming all the trauma that comes along with that negative experience right well what we do at Unbound now is we have um Advocates so we call it our advocacy program and they're highly trained because they're engaging in complex trauma of young people so there's an extensive training that they go through but they're phenomenal at connecting with that young person at the point of outcry or recovery if we can make that

[20:00]  connection within 72 hours then the trajectory of them getting their life back and breaking away from the trafficker is huge so we really try to engage them and our law enforcement Partners will call us to go on with them on a recovery sometimes we'll do some operations in in the hotel rooms or um Super Bowl things like that because they realize those young people are trained to not tell police anything so if we can come alongside and say I'm not a police officer I'm not Child Protective Services I'm here just for you then we can bridge that Gap and then partner with our law enforcement Partners but we are there to support that individual on that emergency response we just kind of get them grounded is what we call it where they need food they need clothing they may need to go to the hospital to do a sexual assault um exam but we'll go

[20:49]  with them so we can explain what's happening and support them they may need safe housing so we'll make those phone calls so it's that emergency response but then we do ongoing case management and so we are there and we have a a crisis line that can call us 24/7 and someone on staff will answer but then they are assigned an advocate that will continue to walk with them as long as they want to receive services that do that long-term care get them reconnected to their educational goals um whatever those things get them in counseling that kind of thing and so it's it's really pretty amazing it's tough for me to be able to express the amount of gratitude that I have for people like you guys in Unbound now just the things that you guys are tackling are gigantic problems and these problems are consistently happening around us in our community but a lot of

[21:36]  people don't even know because of the things that are happening in their everyday life and so when we have people I mean even talking about the impact in 2024 alone with three months to go left in the year you guys are already at 1,200 people who you guys are advocating for and saving their life which is incredible um but I know that just doesn't happen in the state of Texas you've created some amazing collaborations and organizations that you've been able to work with so let's talk about kind of the footprint that you guys have been able to establish now yeah we're super super blessed We're All Over Texas um and then um we have about 13 locations and then the state of Louisiana passed legislature last year where they gave um funding to their child protective services and said we have to deal with the child sex trafficking here and they called us and

[22:23]  said we don't want to reinvent the wheel you do great work will you come here and so we are in um New Orleans and Baton Rouge I think we serve around 10 parishes and already in 2024 they have served 170 kids and they only serve 17y olds and below so they are Full Tilt working and they I mean it's some pretty brutal stories I mean we have one trafficker that um had we've got five of their girls um in our care from one trafficker and I mean a in insane amount of just horrific stories that are coming out of there but again they had a couple of them go off to college that they supported throughout the spring and they're in college and so they can get

[23:10]  their life back and the support means a lot so I'm so thankful that we're there and we're also in Mongolia and that's a really important work because so many of their Mongolian especially women were being um trafficked into China and Russia and so we work at the border um doing recoveries we've worked in the um B International Airport where we literally they allow us to go through the line and look through their paperwork making sure that they're safe and if they're not will separate them from who we assume as their trafficker and take them into a private room and so it's really great work there we are in Poland because we responded to the Ukraine Russian war and that was I mean if you can imagine how many hundreds of thousands of women and children were coming across the border so that made you know Europe already has a a horrible issue with human trafficking that those

[23:58]  traffickers saw that as a huge Pipeline and so we were there to intervene on those women and we have opened an office in Poland and then we are in Indonesia um so it's it's amazing work I love what we get to do so proud of our teams from praying in your living room in 2012 to having a global footprint and impact like you've been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing yeah one of the things that we often talk about here on the podcast is the the role of the leader and the founder is to be able to cast a vision so large that other highly talented people can find themselves being successful in Your Vision how have you been able to articulate the vision for Unbound now to get such talented amazing leaders to be a part of this big fight you know I

[24:47]  think number one it's authentic I believe in it I mean I'm like what better thing can you give your life to this matters and we're making a tremendous impact we're able to go to legislation and testify we're able to talk with our um to tomorrow I'm meeting with a State Rep and a congressman you know I mean we're able to impact at such a high level and then down to these individuals seeing them get their life back I had a uh leadership meeting this last Friday and I looked around the room and my leadership team and I didn't mean to do this it's just like the Lord just bringing smart people that I had I think four out of five of our attorneys that are on staff there my CEO that we just hired in January he is a Naval Academy grad Kellogg business school MBA he is

[25:35]  so smart leading so well and um most of the other teams have masters in social work or other Masters I mean it's just amazing and I have lived experience K people on my teams too and I mean I I wouldn't I'd put them against any of those law people you know so we have a a good group of people but I think you know the vision is Big it's daunting it's ending human trafficking it's intervening on tens of thousands of lives is you know is our goal we we have an underground dropin Center for trafficed Youth we serve 500 kids a year in one location I want to open more we have a safe house that kids are getting their life back we need more and so we need the resources we need the people in this fight and so it's it's just being

[26:24]  able to tell people invite them in and um they come and I think they get to use their best skills they get stretched I'm like first of all if you're getting in IND Direct Services how do you feel about being cussed out by teen you know because when you're in trauma and you're doing a recovery they don't they don't know who they can trust they've absolutely been beaten up by who they could trust right and then as far as the leadership I'm like it you I have a new leader in Louisiana and she week into the job she's like I'm going to LSU to talk to the whole law school and I'm like yep and she called me a couple of weeks later and she's like I am going to speak at all the judges and that have come in for this meeting and I'm like that's where we get invited into because everyone knows now that human trafficking is happening but they don't

[27:12]  know on the boots on the ground what's happening what can we do what is really going on with these individuals lives and we can tell them one of the biggest challenges that I perceive from the outside looking in to your organiz and trying to combat this macro issue is how do we identify the impact that we're making just beyond the lives that we impact every day so this year 1,200 plus lives impacted which is an amazing statistic but when you think about the macro problem that we're dealing with on a global Society Factor it seems like it could be a little overwhelming and daunting to consistently show up and fight this fight so how do you keep the team morale High how do you continue to lean into the impact that you guys are making because small things do add up

[28:00]  but often it can be totally understandable that this is a daunting fight and it's going to take a lot of work to get done right yeah you're exactly right I mean it's it's huge um and it can be I think you can get paralyzed when you look at how big it is and what we're doing but nothing big happened starting big you know it it has to start small and keep at it keep at it I always tell the teams work the next problem let's work the next problem you know and we we know that it is a multiplicity effect and it's going to happen it's it's changing law we went to Poland and did a training with their um prosecution and um I mean just amazing judges and different people and within a few weeks they passed their first law identifying and protecting sex

[28:49]  trafficked victims wow so I mean the impact's huge we we took I took prosecutors and judges to Indonesia and Nepal we we trained 20 7 judges in Nepal like those are Nation changing but we couldn't have done that if we aren't in the trenches knowing where are those victims how did they get trafficked what are their stories how do they get their life back what does it look like in the judicial system what kind of law enforcement do you need you've got to be there and then we have a platform to go broader and bigger but you can't start without doing the really hard work dayto day I think a lot of times people don't want to do that long I mean we've been at this almost 13 years now so it's not going to happen in a day it's not glorious it's not you know I I knew one person that I mean she she went to a brothel with an organization two

[29:40]  times and she wrote a book like she was a professional and I'm like are you kidding me you know that's not going to work you know you that's not really going to work it's it's complex it takes a lot of different agencies and you have to understand understand it and you only learn that by getting in there and doing the work do you feel like you ever hit like a a clipping point a point of like chrescendo where once a law organization like the Texas Rangers as an example stood behind this and realized the fight that they were truly fighting it was easy for you to get other type of law enforcement and institutions and organizations on board absolutely and it it's it's important everywhere it never stops I mean when when I was in um mlon County a judge called This is early days uh gosh how many years ago now

[30:30]  2015 and he called and said I hear you're doing great work come talk to me and and I had been wanting to start a coalition or a task force but I'm like there's so many great agencies that have been serving kids and families a lot longer than us would people come if I ask him to come I was I was mulling this over personally and I went and saw him and he goes you need to start a coalition and I said well I know we do but there's so many other he goes no you you are the professional you're the one doing anti-trafficking you need to do it and I said well you put your name on it with me and he said absolutely and by that afternoon he had sent a letter to the district attorney the other judges the superintendent and said you're going to get an invitation from Susan Peters with Unbound now I'm right there with her would you come I mean it was amazing and so um we did that and he he stayed with me we started that task force it's

[31:19]  still going strong we just turned over leadership this last year to my director there in a a Ada and they're just crushing it working with Homeland Security and the you know all the different Lo local law agencies and other service providers and they're just doing amazing work and so but it took him lending his credibility to open that door and the same thing happens when we go into a new community you know I need to meet with the leaders that's why I'm we're new in East Texas and so I am meeting with um a congressman there in a State Rep there a meeting with the da next week you know because if they get behind us it's the door open for us to do the work and that's so so important because to these individuals need a lot of resources and we need the protection

[32:07]  and the prosecution to really get Justice for them so it takes all of us you know one of the um one of the biggest things that I talk about in just building a business that is going to be sustainable is we have to change our framework and thinking we want to be successful in this decade do we want to be successful for as long as we Poss possibly can and extending out that time Horizon if you will and trying to think about the long-term impact of your organization makes you make helps you make different types of decisions so when you're trying to think about the next 15 years of Unbound now how are you kind of thinking about the road map in your mind as the founder of this amazing organization what type of challenges do we have to overcome what type of opportunities are you hoping to take advantage of I think the bigger you get

[32:55]  you know you've got your better well you've got to have better systems right I mean we hit $10 million and we're above that now and it's like okay overhaul everything that's expensive you know phone Systems computer systems software systems reporting systems I mean it's an overhaul at different levels so that's very painful the the change management of that is very painful for people that have been with you and that kind of thing so taking care of your staff explaining things communicating we did some things well we did things that you know I want to do better the next time and then the lead leadership part is critical because the bigger you get you need higher level leadership that can carry the weight you know I mean my coo and myself were carrying the weight um with a couple of other people but really too much weight and I'm like I've got to have help and

[33:43]  that's where I sought out Brian who I'd you know known for many years he had been an advisor and he' worked with us and I was like you got to come on board and so just I think being willing to go what do we need at this next level what has to change some people are going to like it some people aren't going to like it and then you know letting people lead once they get in there you know Brian is incredibly smart he's not doing everything the way I've done it but he's doing awesome and so am I my director when I put her in in um mclinton County in Bell County now she's over Travis County she's a phenomenal leader and I loved hearing her say this and I didn't mean to do this but she says Susan gave me credibility because she communicated such belief in me like her first week there I made her do three live news

[34:33]  reports I knew she could do it plus they interview you for you know you're only on there this much I knew she could do it but I put I believed in her and so she knows if you believe in me that much then the other people believe in me and I can do my work and I just think as Leaders we need to check ego at the door be more about developing our people and letting them live their best lives leading to me makes me the happiest when I see my women going into these spaces and making decisions and leading their teams and speaking for us or Brian doing that I mean that makes my heart come alive and it's absolutely if it was about me and me leading it we would be very small there's an amazing author um named Kevin Kelly and in his most recent book he said you lead by letting others know

[35:22]  what you expect of them which may exceed what they expect of themselves provide them a reputation which they can live up to what do you think about that that's exactly right I mean when I introduced Brian I'm like this guy was a Special Forces Navy grad bomb Tech you know with sealed teams went to got get his NBA like this guy can figure it out he can lead us to this next season I mean don't you think my team believe that my donors believe that and he and he does he is doing it you know and the same for the other people so I love that he articulated that really well um I want to talk about the idea of trust so one thing that I recognize and I talked to so many amazing leaders on the podcast

[36:10]  is often when we are the founder of an organization we think that this Mission if you will is going to be fulfilled by us and can't be fulfilled by anybody else as good as we can with our lived experience of things that we've experienced along the way how did you come to the settled position of realization that I need to bring in a leader like Brian who can be the CEO of this organization and I have to play the roles that give me the opportunity to be high leverage as the founder and chief adviser here what was that kind of process like that's you know people are ask me that a lot if that was hard but honestly it was hard for about a week I had to wrestle through it for about a week and then I was like what's my goal my goal is to reach as many people as we can to change the trajectory of people's lives and the whole the whole industry of human trafficking I can't do that on

[36:59]  my own I have been gifted with a certain gift set but so have these other people and I'm better at this I'm better at Vision I'm better at communicating you know to our donors and people in our staff I'm better at keeping the DNA and who we want to be as an organization and getting in there with the people I really don't want to figure out which software we need to get you know or what the staffing needs are going to be in five years I mean that is Brian he is like a nerd and can figure that out and loves it I'm like my mind's dizzy in an accounting you know built you know whatever meeting after a while because I don't think that way naturally and other people do so I think it's just recognizing what am I really good at and being secure that what you bring no one

[37:47]  else can bring but let them use their skills and their leadership and the industry's changed right now I don't care what industry your business you're in it Chang changes changes changes and if we to me if I stayed the leader we wouldn't be growing in those changes meeting the next need and continue to have that impact we need the younger people coming in with their ideas and the way they do things and the way they think to take us to the next level and we've got to make room for them and they're not going to stay if they're not shaping and building you're you're good leaders unless they're doing that and so I think you have to trust them to do that I couldn't agree more you know there's a 's a book that I often like to bring up into these episodes and um this is going to be an exercise between you and I Susan and kind of the the practice

[38:34]  of gratitude so there's an amazing author out there his name is Dan Sullivan he has a book called The Gap in the gain and he said you know one of the biggest challenges for people that have high achieving mindsets which I would consider you is often we find ourselves between where we are right now and where we're trying to get to the big mission the Finish Line If you will and when we get that wrong that Finish Line often turns into to a horizon when we take one step towards it it moves one step further away now that's a dangerous place to be in with the big challenges that we're trying to face in our community so I want to talk about the opposite of the gap which is the gain do you often get an opportunity to slow down thanks to the fireworks and actually think about the gain that you've had since sitting in your living room in 2012 to 2024 and helping over

[39:22]  1,200 people this year alone do you ever get time to practice gratitude and think about all the things that you guys have accomplished to get to where you're at here today I I actually really do I try to lead really most of our bigger meetings with this is where we came from this is where you know I mean I talk about the days where my assistant chief called me about a 15-year-old and I'm writing her name on a napkin which is totally illegal now by the way you know just I mean we didn't have the systems in place but it worked I got there I got her to talk to me she was a missing and exploited kid on the um uh Nick Mick list you know we were able to get her safely home so you know the I I don't want to lose the grit that we had in those early days you know having so many

[40:09]  systems and new people coming in and they plug and play but they don't have that grit they don't have that passion they don't have that you just lay it all out in the field and when you go home at night you feel great about what you did whether it was a win that day for that kid you were serving or not you know I think it's important to do that but I think the gratitude is to recount where you've come from and then the individual stories this is why we do it you know so I I love going and visiting the team I try to make it there when um it's a day of uh them going over their cases we call it a case review and I like to listen I'm listening to the clients they serving and I'm like that's why we do it that just makes me want to run through a wall you know you know I just want to say for everybody who's tuning in and watching today this has been an absolute blessing being able to spend time with

[40:56]  you Susan in the mission of things that you've been able to accomplish with Unbound now is just absolutely incredible you know one of the things that we do here on the podcast is we have our previous guest asked our current guest a question now the thise previous guest was a CEO of a large nonprofit organization and he wanted to know as a Founder as a leader in the organization what does courage mean to you I think courage is when you're facing what looks impossible to us sometimes that's that's our finances you know it takes a lot of money to operate at this level the professionalism having the best software having the best systems for our people um it's it's a lot of money and that can be daunting so what to us lately that's that was a

[41:44]  really big struggle and so it looks impossible and sometimes you can just you just personally can get emotionally worn down but I'm like I got to go for a walk I got to recount how the Lord has provided for for us up to this point and I like to say to myself new level new Devil come on let's do it you know and so sometimes it's Conjuring up the courage to say let's let's do it let's work hard and and God always provides you know right now we're it's from here to your end so I'm making tons of phone calls and that's like grunt work that's like what you did 12 years ago and guess what I'm doing it now you know and so to me it's the courage to do the little things that you know is going to make the same Major Impact it's courage not

[42:32]  to let your emotions get the best of you because some days are hard you know they really are I mean we've lost victims they've been killed by their perpetrators you know those are hard days but I one day I had one summer I had three 14-year-olds that we were serving that were in the wind retracked and my team came to me and they go why do we do this does it matter and I said yeah it matters they know we're out there they know how to get a hold of us will get them again you know but it takes courage to stay in the fight when it's hard when things seem impossible but I like to say again you know work the next problem we'll overcome well Susan I just want to say thank you for everything that you're doing you know is the small actions today that create a huge impact tomorrow and I know that you are consistently putting in the work to make the small actions count for everybody who can't raise their hand in

[43:20]  a moment of need and I just want to say thank you for everybody who's tuning into the podcast here today Unbound now how can we find more information about you guys where can we find how can we help yeah go to our website Unbound now.org and um there's lots of ways to jump in and help us and support us and um love to hear from any of your viewers well guys thank you once again and a huge round of applause for student Peters the one who has took that conversation by praying in her living room in 2012 to helping over 1,00 people this year alone with plenty of time to go you know the impact that you're making is truly magnificent that's been a ra guys thanks for tuning in really appreciate it