Faith, Leadership, and Social Impact: Transforming Business and Fighting Human Trafficking

All right, we're getting ready to start.

All right.

Somebody pointed out we are actually ahead of schedule. I probably shouldn't say that out loud, but it's going really well. All right. I am so thrilled to introduce our next speaker.

This gentleman was also introduced to me by my brother Chris. I guess I don't know how you became so well connected. You were a troublemaker.

And now he's just an amazing man. I'm so proud of him. All right, our next speaker, he comes to us from Sovereigns Capital Affirm that has been leading the charge in Faith Driven Investing since its founding in 2012. He's played a pivotal role in launching Sovereign's public equity investment division, focusing on public companies led by faith driven CEOs who are building exceptional cultures for their employees, creating not only financial success, but also profound impact. Sovereigns Capital is also the driving force behind the Faith Driven Investor and Faith Driven Entrepreneur ecosystems, furthering its mission of faith based impact in business and mission investing. When he isn't making waves in the investment world, he's enjoying life in Denver, Colorado. Envious. I'm very envious of that. With his wife and three daughters spending weekends hiking, camping, and skiing in the beautiful mountains. Now I can see why you and my brother are friends, because that's exactly what he loves to do. I am excited for him to share the unique ways that CEOs of public companies are empowering their employees and the incredible impact that has on financial performance. So please help me welcome to the stage, Mr. Matt Watson.

Thank you, Sandy. What a nice intro. Wow. Maybe we just stop there. So what I'd like to do today is to start by taking a look at this peak. Who here knows what we're looking at? This is the most iconic peak in the world. This is 29,000ft. This is the highest place in the world. When people go to hike Everest, it takes years of training. It takes a guide. It takes gear. It takes permits. It costs $100,000. For all the time that it takes, the years of practice, prep, and then the days of hiking. When you get to the top, do you know how long you get to stay? Anyone? Five minutes. Five minutes. Welcome to the Summit. You get five minutes at the top. The summit is not just the Eagle Summit. The summit is not just your 50s or your 60s. Pick your decade. The Summit's your whole Life. Look at 20, 23. It came and it went. We're in the middle of 24. It'll be 25 before we know what. The years fly by. That's Not a novel statement. We see it, we feel it, we know it. And so what are we going to do with our five minutes at the summit? So I've got a couple ideas for you. I'm going to unpack everything that we've learned in 12 years at Sovereign's Capital and try to do it in just a few quick minutes. What we're going to do is we're going to detail the way that you can lead your team, lead your company to both enable your employees to flourish and to drive better performance. Who wouldn't want both? Arol's going to talk about investing briefly too.

So let's talk about a paradigm that all of us are familiar with. In fact, you're maybe so familiar with it, you're not even familiar with it consciously, because it's in the back of your mind. It underpins everything that goes on in life. Look at these two homes. One is from beautiful Florida and the other is not. And if you were to be offered either home for free, I would just bet that everyone in the room would take the one on the left. It looks beautiful. However, they're not free.

There's a trade off involved. The trade off is price. This same trade off is involved in almost everything that we touch. It's homes, it's cars, it's everything. If you're going to get something of value, it usually costs you something. Wes was just talking about being able to make an investment that solves a huge problem. Now inside you're thinking, that's going to cost me something, it's going to cost me my return. It doesn't. That's a market rate of return investment. And so we need to make ourselves aware of that paradigm that we believe exists so that we can break it, so that we can push through it. So let's talk about the next one. We all know these two logos, Chick Fil A and McDonald's. Let's talk about the balance sheets. This is the nerdy part, right? I'm an investor, so the balance sheets look the same. They both have brick and mortar, they both have kitchen equipment, they both have employees, they both sell food. That is, let's not debate it, somewhat similar, right? Then why does one company have 2 1/2 x the sales per store in only 6 days a week than the other? I would contend that it's all about team and culture are the two key inputs that drive the main output of financial performance. If I find team culture on the balance sheet, the income statement or the cash flow statement. And so all the Traditional financial metrics that we use as investors.

Don'T capture the most important thing.

Let's look beyond that. Maybe you say to yourself, that's just one example. Everyone knows about Chick Fil A. Let's look at the Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for. And let's look at them. Over 30 years, these companies have outperformed the stock market by about 3 percentage points per year for 30 years. Three is a small number, but remember, the stock market typically grows by around 7.

Right?

We are in a wealth management firm. Someone here has the exact right answer. But round numbers, 50% greater performance. When you have an incredible culture, why it works like this. An incredible culture attracts and retains the right people. And if you have all the right people and you have the best talent in your metropolitan area, you are geared to be able to produce superior results. And so we see it at Chick Fil A. We see it in the Fortune 100 Companies to Work for. What we do is we invest in companies that are led by faith driven CEOs, CEOs who are going above and beyond to create exceptional cultures to love and care for their people. What that is supposed to do is attract and retain all the right people and great results occur. So for instance, the first fund that we launched two and a half years ago is outperformed the stock market at a period of time that seven stocks drove 42% of the return in the stock market. We don't own any of the seven. Our fund should have landed at 60% of the return of the market, but instead it's outperformed the market. There's no way to explain it other than faith driven CEOs. Incredible cultures attract and retain the right people and drive results. So what I'm trying to do is set up for you the paradigm up front around homes, cars and almost everything in life. And then recognize that. But when it comes to business, we can both love and care for our people. We can generate a much better environment for the employees themselves. And when we do that, we don't have to sacrifice returns. It doesn't cost us something on the other side. In fact, it benefits returns for our shareholders. These are the things that we look for. When you hear faith driven investing and faith driven CEOs, there are tangible markers that we're looking for. It's not words that we're looking for someone to say. We're looking for action. We're guiding the tree by its fruit. And we're looking for companies that have significantly higher than market HR benefits because it's a way to tangibly love and care for every single employee in that company. We're looking for companies that are running chaplaincy in their companies. Do you know what chaplains do? They walk the floors and they say, hey, Tina, I'd love to meet with you for coffee. What's going on this week? Tina might say, I'm too busy. Until one day Tina's maybe struggling with something and she's got someone to talk to now. Chaplains help people unwind addictions. They help them restore marriages. They help them at the moment that they grab the gun, put it down, and it averts a suicide. Chaplains are critical for companies. They cost $10 per employee, per month. It's pennies even for the lowest salary you can think of. But the financial outcomes on the other side, it lifts employee retention rates. We have a company that keeps our employees 12 years. Their industry is two years. They attribute 80% of that to their chaplaincy program. You can only imagine that their chaplaincy program pays for itself multiple times over every year. We look for companies that have a servant leadership orientation to the way that they lead their people and they incentivize their people and their comp structure based on servant leadership. Most companies focus on customer service. I would say customer service is down here. When you focus on servant leadership, it's a much higher principle because it governs the way that employees treat one another and how they treat the customer. We look for companies with Bible studies and prayer groups. Why? It's because employees ultimately want to be known and want to know who they work with. What better way to do that than through Bible studies and prayer groups? We look for companies that have products or services that serve employees. You would have expected me to say customers. But if you manufacture a product or service in such a way that it serves the employees incredibly well, they show up and they're happy, they do great work and the customer is well taken care of. This is what we look for. These are the type of markers that we see. And this is what I would encourage you to be thinking through this page, because I'm going to ask you in a minute, what's the one thing you can do? Sandy said, this isn't about thinking and looking and talking. Tina said, it's about acting. This is all about acting. This is about picking something off the page. I'll just give you two quick examples. I have words on this page not because I intend for you to read them. It's to show you that they exist and how much depth there is behind this there's pages and pages. There's a company out of Elkhart, Indiana that manufactures RV parts. His name is Jason Lippert, the CEO of this company. In 2011, when they had 8,000 employees, his employee turnover rate was 130%. Can you imagine having 8,000 employees and 130% of them leave every year? He knew he had a problem. He got on his knees, he prayed about it, and he went on a listening tour to talk with his employees. And you know what they said? They said the bathrooms are out of toilet paper by noon. This is a bad place to work. That's easy to fix. I'm just going to have the janitors come through three times a day instead of once. But then he went on offense and he hired pastors and sports coaches to sit down with his employees and to ask them what their dreams were. You know what people said? I want to lose £20. I want to quit tobacco. I want to get back into that relationship with the person I screwed it up with. Just through having an accountability partner, they achieved their dreams. Fast forward a couple years now. Instead of 130% of their employees quitting every year, it's 25%. Can you imagine what happens to financial performance at a company after that happens? They've grown their EBITDA to 12.5% KEGR over the last 10 years. Their revenue was 100 million back in 1995. It's almost 4 billion today. This is a company that sells RV parts. It's not exactly Google. But when you look at their financial performance versus the market, it's been superior. This is what it looks like to love your people and then you end up getting financial performance for free. We have another company up here. Coca Cola Consolidated. This is really fun because 25 years ago they installed in their purpose statement to honor God in all we do. These are both public companies. Coca Cola Consolidated. 10 billion dollar market cap, 17,000 employees listed on the Nasdaq. They are running chaplaincy in 104 plants. This is the company I told you that they would ascribe 80% of their premium culture to their chaplaincy program. They are running Bible studies and prayer groups. This company bottles Coca Cola. Again, not exactly a Google. Their revenue has grown over the last 10 years from 1.5 billion to 6.5 billion. If you look at their stock price performance over the last 30 years, it's up 49x. Who wouldn't want their account to be up 49x in the next 30 years? If you compare that to the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is up 20x. That's also an incredible outcome. But let's just say that through bottling Coke, you can 2.5x the performance of each S&P 500 over 30 years. Who would have expected that? That's really neat. And so what I'm showing you here with the financial performance linked to it, is that you're not giving up performance to be running chaplaincy in 104 plants. In fact, you're fueling it. And so I'm going to pause so that you can hear it directly from the CEOs themselves. This is a video we cut filming three of our public company CEOs. It's just three quick minutes and then we'll come back and finish up. Just help more.

Our goal as a firm is to raise people's awareness because a lot of people just don't know. Investors, business leaders don't know that they can do this.

I wanted to hear about purpose. I know I'm here for a purpose.

I don't know what it is. I'm running this business and it just seems like our purpose has grow. It just wasn't part of of our culture at all. I believe as a CEO, the number one thing that you can bring to an organization is the right culture. Started off bringing in the right kind of senior leaders, really great people who care about people. And I think it starts with that and then got involved with other leaders.

And found out, oh, you mean we can get chaplains?

Oh, we can do our own foundation, our own benevolence fund.

Wow.

There's things we can do. And it just grew. There's a view that things like chaplaincy are just not available for public companies. And turns out you can be a publicly run company that has a chaplaincy program. We do that. I know others that do that. There's all sorts of crisis that people are in every single day. In a company our size, our chaplains really are walking alongside a lot of.

People that are hurting.

Those people come back and they say, I'm never leaving this place. Another one of the things I hear the most is learning about leadership here and learning about our core values and leaders. Qualities has made me a better dad.

Or a better mom or a better.

Husband or wife, and that's pretty incredible. I've tried to develop a culture at Icy that allowed people to flourish in. I believe it's really made Icy a special place. And I'm really excited about that. I think lives are going to be changed. Got 15,000 human beings, 40 hours a week. That's a lot of impact you can have on people's lives. About a decade ago, Start over was close to 130%.

Started on this culture journey and realized.

That as we treated people the way they wanted to be treated, and we had good values. Year after year, there were 15% reductions.

In turnover to the point where last.

Year we ended up at 25%. Efficiency and innovation all rose, and those happen to be some of the key metrics and drivers of a great business. Our most profitable plants, year in, year out, are the ones with the best retention. And guess what? The ones with the best retention are.

Where the managers are integrally involved with their people.

They were going to church with them.

They were doing life with them. And the data proved it out. Great retention, outstanding, consistent profitability.

We have lower than industry standard turnover. We have higher than industry standard growth. We have better than industry standard partner relationships and everything else. So it shows up in business all day, every day because of the training, the safety involved, and everything else. It's about $120,000 for every new hire. So we save millions per year. I want to see us win quarterly. I want to see us win annually, want to see us win long term. But to do that, you have to have the right culture.

Even after 10 years, it feels like.

I'm just getting started.

More and more people are living their.

Lives with purpose, and they just didn't.

Know they could do it at the.

Place they work at.

So what we are doing with our five minutes at the summit is we're putting these people in the same room with one another, because what they do is they share their best practices for how they got from 130% employee turnover to 25%. And everyone else in the room takes notes. There's not been one time that we've hosted a CEO roundtable with public company CEOs that we haven't had someone walk away and adopt chaplaincy or one of 35 other different programs that we're promoting. We don't teach. I've talked more in this session than I do in those. We sit together for six hours. We do lunch and dinner and talk the whole time. I give a few remarks up front and then I sit, set them free to tell their stories and watch everyone else in the room adopt those best practices. That's what we're doing with our five minutes of the summit. What these companies do as a result of that impacts tens of thousands of employees. So the question for you is, what are the Key takeaways for today. Number one, I want to encourage you to lead, whether you have a team of zero, a team of one, or a team of 100 to lead like these people lead. Because everything you do for your employees.

Also benefits your shareholders. You don't have to sacrifice anything. The paradigm up front of the two homes does not hold in this case. We've seen that it's true with Chick Fil A. We see that it's true with the Fortune 100 best companies to work for over 30 years. We see that it's true with Faith Driven Investing.

What I want to do is tell you not to be afraid. Because right now everyone in the room is thinking, I'm afraid. I'm afraid to do it. Someone's going to push back. Let me encourage you that Coca Cola consolidated that company I profiled for you. They've been doing it for 25 years. They have 17,000 employees and not one employee in 25 years has ever complained about the Bible studies, the prayer groups, the chaplaincy that God is in the purpose statement of the company. Not one. If no one there has ever complained about it, I would encourage you to give it a shot. Let's also talk about investing today. I would bet that everyone in the room has some of their capital invested in an ETF from one of the three largest ETF issuers in the United States, which are BlackRock, State street and Vanguard, who also have the sub brands iShares and spiders. All investing is impact investing. That's the saying we love to use. What does that mean? It means that your capital is being held by those ETF issuers and they are using it to further their political and social agenda, which may not be in line with your political and social. Social agenda. They do not make you aware that they are doing it because they would rather do more of it. And they do not want you to leave. Let's just be aware of what's happening. Let's align our capital with fund managers that actually share our values instead of coming into direct conflict with your values that are furthering the world in a direction that you don't want to see it go. Let's make you aware of that. And then another thing that I think is really interesting, that every time I hear Wes talk, it just comes out because you can wait until you've built as much capital as you're going to build and grown it as long as you can, and you're at the end of your life and you can give it all away. And I think the world wants you to think that that's the only time you can have impact with your capital is when you give it and it's no longer yours. I think that's one of the greatest lies that any one of us can ever hear. Because your capital can have so much influence and so much impact the whole time you're building it. And you don't have to sacrifice returns to do it. You can do it at a market rate of return. You can do it with the Eagle Freedom Fund or dozens and dozens of other incredible impact oriented funds that are generating an at market rate of return, some below a market rate of return.

So what we do is we do faith driven investing. That is not the only solution. It's not the only solution for you. It's not the only solution for the marketplace. The way that we do it is through our Flourish Fund ETF sticker sovf. It trades in the New York Stock Exchange. Anyone can access it from a free brokerage account. And that's how we do it. Key takeaways for today. Do one thing, one thing off your heart that you can do to serve your people better. Number two, think about where your capital is invested. It's too daunting to move 100% of it. Think about moving 1% next week. My contact info is up there on the right. But what I would say in closing is that you're already at the summit. This is your five minutes. You don't get to plan ahead. You're already there. Use it wisely. It's not time to think. It's time to act. Thank you.

Wow, you guys. So just three speakers and the impact that we see that these people are already having across the globe, it just aligns so perfectly with what our mission is here at the Eagles Summit. Our next speaker will not disappoint either. Michael Chandler is a seasoned corporate executive, management consultant, entrepreneur and cause driven leader with over 25 years of experience across industries like retail, agriculture, health care, financial services and biotech. Michael has had the opportunity to found and sell private companies while working alongside some of the world's most recognized brands like Harley Davidson and Red Bull. Beyond his professional work, he's deeply committed to supporting over 40 nonprofits focusing on causes ranging from veteran support to humanitarian aid and environmental conservation. Married since 2000 to his beautiful wife Kelly, Michael's devoted. A devoted husband and a proud father to three sons, ages 22, 18 and 13. Michael, you don't look a day over 30. I don't know how you have a 22 year old son but never mind that. His approach to business grounded in strong family values and a strong passion for creating real social impact makes him a truly inspiring leader in today's rapidly evolving world. Please join me in welcoming a new friend of mine, Michael Chandler, to the stage.

Thank you. Yes, I will take the clicker please. Good morning everybody.

Yes, I am only 27 and I have a 22 year old son. Go figure. We pull this up. I'm here to talk to you about a recently founded company that we created called Survival and the Trenches. Pretty interesting name. It is essentially a cause based social impact company. There are four major causes that we'll talk about through this presentation and my only goal is to bring awareness to some of these causes, amplify what Wes just talked about and the actual gravity of things like human trafficking. I've grown up focusing on profit. The boardroom, the outcome, selling companies.

Capital.

Capital, capital, profit, profit, profit. I've always been focused on though some form of give back. Whether that's when we've had professional service and management consulting firms. We gave back to all kinds of cause based outcomes. We focused heavily for five or six years with an apparel company that everything went back to humanitarian outcomes, animals, environmental kind of activities. But it was always a hobby. It's the things we did as a company or the companies I've worked for that are $50 billion Fortune 50 companies. And it's 10% of your time. You get two days a year to go and work for Habitat for Humanity or volunteer your time. I am not discrediting anybody's volunteer time because it is important whether you do it for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year or 20 hours a day.

Not discrediting that for me personally, this company and a few partners in the room that I'll introduce quickly here in a minute. We're all about social cause impacts.

First.

Profit for us. If it happens, it happens.

I've made profitable companies happen. I know how to do that in products and services service world. But our number one focus is to have an impact on as many people as possible. Because I have taken for far too long for granted what it is about giving back and having an impact on people. So I can just build up my bank account when I die. I don't want a bank account worth X. I want a legacy that says we had an impact on people that truly pushed the needle.

So Survival in the Trenches. We essentially are a company that is cause based. We focus on improving major social problems by amplifying stories of the hushed and unheard we combine that with management consulting capabilities and entrepreneurship and technology and other areas to actually break down the problems that are occurring.

I have a lot of respect for those people in the room who actually help the victims of human trafficking. But we combine that with management consulting capabilities and entrepreneurship and technology and other areas to actually break down the problems that are occurring.

I have a lot of respect for those people in the room who actually help the victims of human trafficking. But how do we break that down sooner so it doesn't even happen? Wes's speech was a perfect drive right into this conversation before I move in. So, jj, the guy that's running around with the cameras, as I told you, we tell stories because it's important to bring empathy and awareness to these issues and escalate them with large NGOs. We are actually partnered with a company called Our Rescue. It's called Operation Underground Railroad. They actually are a massive global company that works with breaking down the networks of human trafficking. Has anybody seen the movie Sound of Freedom?

Yeah.

Okay. Matt Osborne, Tim, some of those people. All part of the build up of that. JJ is our production leader. He basically handles all of our media production. The drive of it, the direction, the storytelling, the capabilities behind what we do. My wife, Kelly Chandler, who's actually in the room. You can stand up. She runs business operations.

And then we have a couple of special guests in the room, if you guys can stand up. Destiny. Yes. I will introduce both of you in just a minute, and I bring you up on stage.

But, Kelly, can you go ahead and pass out the little cards? Everybody's got a card. Do not throw that away. We shamelessly put our logo on there. A QR code to go to our website. Sandy would be proud of us because we put our marketing material on there. But those cards are actually going to be part of an exercise that we'll go through.

I went the wrong way. Down is down is forward.

Down is up.

The areas that we focus on this may look broad. In about 15 minutes, I will ask you what's the general kind of correlation to all these? Because they actually do hinge on one major issue that's going on. But we have begun the company focusing heavily on personal tragedies, hardships and losses, loss suicide, issues that occur from drunk driving, issues that occur from just loss that wasn't expected. It's one thing to die when you're 95 years old. It's another thing to die when you're 22 years old. Not saying anyone is less tragic, but there's a lot of Hardship to go kind of correlation to all these because they actually do hinge on one major issue that's going on. But we have begun the company focusing heavily on personal tragedies, hardships and losses, loss suicide issues that occur from drunk driving issues into that Corporate misconduct, harassment. Does that occur from just loss that wasn't expected. It's one thing to die when you're 95 years old. It's another thing to die when you're 22 years old. Not saying anyone is less tragic, but there's a lot of hardship that goes into that. Corporate misconduct, harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

From what I can share with you without getting into the details is I actually as an executive unfortunately was a victim to this.

One of the mock discrimination, retaliation.

From.

What I can share with you without getting into the details is I actually as an executive unfortunately was a victim to this.

One of the mantras as to why we're building this company is in this category. What I can tell you basically is I protected women that had no voice and the 1% of our company in the boardroom and another executive was allowed to walk walk freely. I was exited from the company.

After I did what I thought was morally because as to why we're building this company is in this category. What I can tell you basically is I protected women that had no voice and the 1% of our company in the boardroom and another executive was allowed to walk freely. I was exited from the company.

After I did what I thought was morally correct, ethically right went through all the right channels. I was asked to leave though that moment in my life turned me to essentially this opportunity to say I'm here for cause based outcomes for the greater impact of people that are hushed or unrecked. Ethically right went through all the right channels. I was asked to leave.

That moment in my life turned me to essentially this opportunity to say I'm here for cause based outcomes for the greater impact of people that are hushed or unheard and don't have an opportunity to thrive.

Military veterans, we do focus. We are partnered with the PTSD foundation of America or.

And don't have an opportunity to thrive.

Military veterans, we do focus we are partnered with the PTSD foundation of America. They focus heavily on combat veterans who have come back they focus heavily on combat veterans who have come back with unbelievable stories of things that Wes could probably speak to that none of us even real with unbelievable stories of things that Wes could probably speak to that none of us even realize the gravity.

Super compelling organization. PTSD is a Serious issue that lies the gravity.

Super compelling organization. PTSD is a serious issue that many people in these categories fall into. Many people in these categories fall into.

So human trafficking, let's dive in just one niche deeper. So human trafficking, let's dive in just one niche deeper. Let's take a look at this. Wes did a great job of giving you guys some details. I'm going to storytell around some stories deeper. Take a look at this. Wes did a great job of giving you guys some details. I'm going to storytell around some stories right in the backyard here.

Right in the backyard here. And globally we'll start. Up to 50 million people a year are pulled into this heinous, illegal, illicit, I hate to call it industry, but industry, roughly speaking, depending on where you get your numbers from, 12 million of them at any given time are children under the age of 18. It's one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

Worth nearly $350 billion in profits, with about 25% coming from a category of what's known as forced and debt labor.

And about 75% of those profits coming from sexual trafficking, sexual exploitation.

Pornography, prostitution, things of that nature. It's set to outpace the global market and drug trade if we don't do something about it.

Unfortunately, as Wes said, a lot of this has to do with how do you attack root cause and problem of it. Well, if we continue to fund it and allow these bank accounts to pass money around, so to speak, for lack of better terms, and we don't get ahead of it, it's just like the global trade or the global drug trade market or the arms market. If you don't attack the root causes of these problems, you're always going to have to deal with victims. To demystify a couple of key things around human trafficking, I can almost guarantee you that everybody in the room in the past week, today or the next week, has brushed up against a human trafficked individual. Call me a liar. Not at all. Human trafficked individuals in the categories of debt, labor force, labor exploitation, prostitution and pornography walk freely amongst us. They have access to phones, technology, Internet, transportation.

And it is every color, every race, every socioeconomic status that can be affected. Now, true, it does happen more in repressed areas, third world countries.

And areas like that, but it happens also to people right next to you.

57% of every trafficked individual in one of these categories actually gets trafficked in their own backyard 10 miles from their house. They get exploited.

And areas like that. But it happens also to people right next to you.

57% of every trafficked individual in one of these categories actually gets trafficked in their own backyard 10 miles from their house. They get exploited through social media.

47%. 44% Excuse me. Of these people are trafficked by someone they love. Moms, dads, friends. Through social media.

Cousins, aunts, uncles, long term friends, stats, numbers. Super interesting, but let's bring it down.

47% to context. Let's look at two areas. 44% excuse me, of these people are in the US.

Let'S take Western Michigan traffic by someone they love.

Moms, dads, friends. To begin, Western Michigan includes places like Howland, Grand Rapids.

This is not Detroit and I'm not placing any target on Detroit.

These are western communities and I'd like for you to watch this video. It's about two minutes.

Cousins, aunts, uncles.

It.

I expected something certainly a lot smaller bar graphs and numbers and.

That this is. These are actual people.

I don't know in like my world, in my bubble or whatever.

We don't talk about this if you.

Just not something to think about.

What we see is only on the surface looking at this sex traction doesn't have any discrimination, that's for sure.

Ages, genders, can affect anybody.

It hits you right in your heart, your gut, your stomach.

Wow. Now it's like I feel like I.

Have this weight of responsibility to see.

How I can help changes through greater awareness and making people realize that this does happen here and will continue to happen until we decide to make a stop.

Pretty impactful. If you didn't get to see what it said on there. That was a representation of children being trafficked in the western Michigan geographies that I mentioned alone.

I've seen that video, been part of that video, to use that video at least 100 times. And every time I'm like wow. That starts to put things in context when you think about $350 billion industry.

And what impact that has just in western Michigan alone.

Let's take a look at eastern Missouri. This is Carter. Would you like to come up and join me? I will introduce even just a minute. I can't pull this distance for me. So why am I bringing people up on stage? This is getting really weird now. Eastern Missouri. So we'll get to that in just a second. But right here where we sit. Chesterfield, Missouri. You can see it up on there the St. Louis County, St. Charles County. Let's talk about some stories.

At a real level.

Sextortion, anybody heard of it? Show of hands.

Sexual exploitation kind of ties into it predators use social channels and other ways of media to gain attention of children, of people, of individuals, ask them for illicit pictures, sexual pornography. They start exchanging things and all of a sudden the next thing you know, they're being extorted for dollars and money. It is a form of human trafficking. When you talk about child sexual exploitation. I have a story about a young man 10 miles from here that I cannot expose because it's currently under investigation, who is no longer with us. He committed suicide. He found the love of his life on a social channel that I will not name and began interacting with this young teenage girl that was three states away and they built a relationship over the course of two months.

You already know the punchline. This was not a young girl.

Of his age three states away.

This was a 46 year old male from a different country. So what happened? They built a relationship. This person took two months to build a relationship with this kid. Why? Because this kid was connected to an executive in the United States that works for a 20 billion dollar company. They knew they could get money out of this kid. This kid was socially inept, but he was strong. He played sports, he had a life, he had a family life. He had two brothers and a sister, a mom and a dad. A loving family.

10 miles from here. And over the course of that relationship, he started to fall in love. Digitally, right? Pictures going back and forth, things got sexually oriented, illicit pictures started going back and forth. And within a week of that, he started getting extorted for money. He drained his bank account, his friends bank accounts. And it got to a point over the course of a month where he was extorted to the point that if he didn't get a hold of this money, they were going to expose his father, their entire livelihood.

Over the course of the next month to this mental anguish. Again, this young person who had a full life ahead of them committed suicide.

The interesting thing about sex trafficking and sextortion, about human trafficking is again, these people have the ability to go say something, to walk away from it. In most cases they are mentally abused for months to make sure that they don't go say something or they're coerced into believing that what they're doing is right. Most of these people suffer from PTSD and other major mental health issues because of these types of things.

Another story right here in the backyard, 10 miles up the highway this way in St. Charles County. These gentlemen up in the corner here with Nikhil.

Brought one of those individuals, brother in laws over age 20 and promised him an education At S and T Rollo, one of the best colleges associated with technical institutes and engineering and things of that nature. This 20 year old never went to Rolla and was forced into debt labor, meaning that he was coerced into working for them.

To pay off school. Ultimately, the story broke probably back in.

November.

But it was his brother in law that did this and forced him into debt labor. These examples are the real life stories of human trafficking. And again, it's not just about prostitution, pornography.

Another story right here in the backyard, 10 miles up the highway this way in St. Charles County. It's about forced labor, debt labor, it's about sexual exploitation. These stories from wherever you are.

Are somewhat across the news. They typically get pulled up into these broader topics of sex rings and prostitution. But you never hear a lot of these stories of sextortion and suicide, child pornography. I bet you when this story comes out about the individual who passed away, killed himself, that there was some form of exploitation going on behind the scenes with what was going on with that imagery being sold into the dark market, into the black market. For those who have a weird obsession with child pornography.

As Wes said, this is a lucrative business. Of the $350 billion, only about 25% of individuals in the human trafficking world are tied to the sexual side of it. But as you saw, it drives some of the highest profit in that $350 billion. So I'm going to turn it over for a second to an individual that I will let her introduce herself, let her tell her story of what she does for a company here, company in the Midwest, I should say an ngo, a non government organization that focuses on human trafficking and abolishing it. And it is the Gateway alliance against Human Trafficking for short. We call it gatmo. But I would like for Ms. Carter to basically introduce herself and tell you a little bit about what they do here, what they do for outcomes, how they focus on education and training and make an impact on human trafficking.

Absolutely. So my name is Erin. I'm the training coordinator with Gateway Alliance Against Human Trafficking. Our goal is to go into spaces and basically just educate on what human trafficking actually looks like. I know you mentioned the sound of freedom and for some people that is white trafficking trafficking looks like. However, when we think about what's happening in our community, what's happening here, that's not realistically what's happening. So what we want to do is we want to come in and be able to give folks tools to identify what trafficking looks like, to be able to report, how to report When a trafficking situation happens and say somebody discloses to you that they're in a situation and you're concerned about it, how do I support that person? What are the best practices? And so that's what we come in and do and we talk about that and hopefully educate so that way people can protect themselves and those they care about. That's what we do. If you're interested in scheduling a session, everything we do is completely free because we just want to get the information out there. You can visit our website. I'm going to leave some of our brochures. If you're interested in getting involved, you could always donate. We have our annual dinner coming up in November, which I also have some flyers for. But the biggest, our biggest mission is just education, because education is power.

Yes. And the Gatmo organization, or Gateway alliance, as Aaron liked for me to call it, actually was part of this infiltration of these three individuals back in November. And they were part of disrupting that small network and tied to taking these three individuals down. So it takes a village to do this, folks. It's law enforcement, it's FBI agents, it's its education and awareness organizations, and hopefully, as Wes pointed out earlier, some really exciting opportunities in artificial intelligence and technology that can further move the ball up so that the 20 year old that got pulled over from India, forced into debt labor, never happened. Right. Let's deal with prevention versus the survivors versus the victims. And I think that's a lot of the focus that Gatmo has too, in just terms of education and their focus on the community. I'll have Aaron come back up at the end of the presentation if you have questions for her, if you want to talk about something specific, but we'll allow a little bit of time for doing that. Thanks, Aaron.

All right, Just to give you a little bit deeper glimpse and how survival in the trenches works. I told you that we're cause first, profit second or third.

And that's hard for me still to grasp sometimes. But it's because of the focus we want on impact and outcomes for the people of these heinous crimes or these issues and problems that they don't control sometimes in their life. Did I expect to lose my job as an executive in a $50 billion company?

Hell no.

I expected the person that was doing it to, to do lose. Instead, they protected the 1%.

And.

Our goal is not to do this on our own. This takes a village. And as I said, we're partnering with a number of NGOs, non government organizations like our Rescue Gatmo and the human trafficking space in the space of PTSD and combat veterans, in particular the PTSD foundation of America. And with our focus on what we call Arrow, we believe that awareness and empathy is told through storytelling, through stats, through some of the stuff I just showed you to help all of us understand that human trafficking, as I thought it was maybe even two years ago, is just a thing around prostitution. I didn't realize people like Nikhil actually existed or Wes had some really good insight on. You don't realize that you're dealing with a company like Lipton who might have quite a bit of people in their ecosystem and their supply chain that are basically empowering, unbeknownst to us.

Human trafficking, right. We do amplify the voices of the unheard, the hushed. We do that through storytelling. We produce a lot of our own content, but we also partner with those that have already told the story. We bring that together and we focus with these NGOs and these communities and institutions to essentially help tear down the systems that allow these types of social issues to occur.

As a management consultant, a problem's a problem. I've worked across the business, biggest brands in the world and everybody's. How did you learn retail and how did you learn financial services? It's the same damn problem, just a different of our own content. But we also partner with those that have already told the story. We bring that together and we focus with these NGOs and these communities and institutions to essentially help tear down the systems that allow these types of, of sole way of looking at it in terms of how you solve it. Entrepreneurs, process engineers. We're starting to bring those types of people together to go focus on income or outcomes and impact versus profit. We're early on in kind of that side of our business. We're spending much more time on building these relationships, these networks with NGOs to tell the story, amplify the story.

But our goal ultimately, at the end of the day, is the disruptional issues to occur.

As a management consultant, a problem to systems that allow these types of things to happen, it was a problem. I've worked across the biggest brands in the world and everybody. So who can tell me, in our four focus areas that we're embarking upon, what's the common root.

Issue behind a lot of these things potentially is how did you learn retail and how did you learn financial services? It's the same damn problem, just a different, or maybe the. The most systemic issue tied to these four categories. Silence. Silence is one vulnerability or being Feeling outcast, alone. Vulnerability.

Way of looking at it in terms of how you solve it. Entrepreneurs, process engineers. We're starting to bring those types of people together. Trauma.

Every single one of these categories. Remove the specific focus together to go focus on income or outcomes and impact for sun mouth military veterans.

This profit. We're early on in kind of that side of our the re acclimation to coming in to civilian life. The PTSD that comes from maybe taking out 20 or 30 people, that was the wrong target. That's pretty damn devastating. But remove that look at corporate misconduct. Those that have been hushed and told to shut up and go away. Your issue of retaliation or business spending much more time on building these relationships, these networks with NGOs to tell the story, amplify the story. Harassment and discrimination isn't important.

Personal.

But our goal ultimately at the end of the day is to disrupt the systems that allow these types of things to happen. Hardships where you lose somebody to suicide.

A disease that was unexpected, a car accident that occurred, and human trafficking. It all comes back to trauma. Mental health.

Fundamentally, these four categories weren't picked randomly. They were picked for the focus on mental health. They were focused in each of these areas for a reason, but maybe to illustrate the statistical relevance for each of you in the room. So who can tell me and our four focus areas that we're embarking upon, what's the common root.

Issue behind a lot of these things potentially, or maybe the. The most systemic issue is take a look at that card that you got, that's got the little green mission arrow on there.

And if you don't have an X on the back of your cards, please stand.

If you do not have an X on the back of your card, please stand. If you have a little sticker, you can stay seated.

Everybody just look around the room to tie to these four categories.

Silence is one.

Outcast alone.

Vulnerability.

Trauma.

If this was our world population, all of you that were standing would be impacted directly by one of these four categories in your lifetime. That's the midpoint of the statistical relevance. Let's say we go to the high point. Everybody stand.

Statistically speaking, based on these four categories and the prevalence of each of them all tying back to mental health, something being associated with human trafficking, something associated with personal hardships and tragedies dealing with every single one of these categories removed. The specific focus on mountain military veterans.

The re acclimation to coming in to civilian life, the PTSD that comes from maybe taking out 20 or 30 people, that was the wrong target. Corporate Misconduct, but again, military.

That'S pretty damn devastating. But remissions to the side and PTSD issues, Our entire population is affected by this. And it's because systemically, we as a company or we as a nation don't approve that. Look at corporate misconduct. Those that have been hushed and told to shut up and go away. Your issue of retaliation or your harassment and discrimination isn't important.

First, the hard problems. We continue to let things go because of the elite 1%, because of the funding models and the profits that are made by certain people, certain organizations and certain companies that want the money, they want the profit versus the outcome. No hardships where you lose somebody to suicide. Okay, you can all sit down. Raise your hand if you have a little sticker on the back of your card. Come on.

A disease that was unexpected, a car accident that occurred. And here's gotta be a couple people. One, this isn't a bad statistical thing.

Sticker or the X.

Human trafficking. It all comes back to trauma, mental health.

Fundamentally, these four categories weren't picked randomly. They were the sticker.

Pink sticker.

Yeah.

One, two.

Anybody else?

All right, there should be three. So if after break, during break, were picked for the focus on mental health, they were focused in each of these areas for a reason. But maybe to illustrate. Please take the pink sticker to Kelly. We actually have a coveted survival in the trenches hat for those three individuals. Has nothing to do with the stats or anything.

The statistical relevance for each of you in the room. Selfish kind of marketing ploy. All right, we will wrap up. Is take a look at that card that you got that's got the little green mission. Talk about personal hardships. Ms. Klemischowski, can you come up here, please? In this category of hardships and personal loss.

Two out of three people will be impacted by this arrow on there.

And if you don't have an X on the back of your card, please stand.

It's up 31% since 2019. Maybe that's because of a population boom, but every 78 seconds someone is either injured or killed due to this issue.

Anybody have an idea of what I'm talking about?

Drinking and driving. A conscious. Sometimes an unconscious or altered conscious decision to do. But certainly a judgment call. It isn't worth what happens. Watch this video driving down the road. If you do not have an X on the back of your car, please stand. If you have a little sticker, you can stay seated.

Everybody just look around the room.

And we were struck nearly head on.

If this was our world by a.

Drunk driver who was a repeat offender. She hit us at nearly 87 miles per hour. She was nearly three times over the.

Legal limit, and she never once hit her brakes. My husband was severely pressed against the steering wheel.

I was in the passenger seat and.

My face was imprinted into the dash.

As I was screaming in this. I have a baby in the backseat.

Help my baby. I have a baby.

My baby had instantly lost his population.

All of you that were standing would be impacted directly by one of these four categories in your lifetime. That's the midpoint of the statistical relevance. Let's say we go to the high point. Everybody stand.

Statistics.