The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Awakening the Advocate: Memoir of a Modern Slavery Activist by Matthew Friedman

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Awakening the Advocate: Memoir of a Modern Slavery Activist by Matthew Friedman Amazon.com Themekongclub.org If you're looking for a way to make a positive impact on the world, Matthew S. Friedman's inspiring book is the perfect guide. Through his incredible experiences and tireless activism over 35 years, he shows us that one person truly can create a ripple effect that leads to global change. As you read his powerful stories, you'll be reminded of the immense suffering in the world, but you'll also be uplifted by the sheer strength and determination of those who fight against it. Friedman's message is clear: we each have the power to make a difference in our own unique way. This captivating sequel to his previous memoir, ‘Where Were You: A Profile of Modern Slavery,’ is bound to leave a lasting impact on you. It will ignite your passion, challenge you, and encourage you to take action toward bringing about meaningful change. In this book, you'll learn how a once-shy boy from a New England town dedicated his life to battling the scourge of human trafficking in over 40 countries. Join us on an unforgettable journey with a man whose compassion and relentless dedication to justice have made him a global force in the fight against modern slavery. Together, we can create a brighter future for all. About the author Matthew Friedman is a leading, internationally renowned global expert on modern slavery and human trafficking. An award-winning public speaker, author, filmmaker, and philanthropist, Matthew regularly advises heads of governments and intelligence agencies. As the founder and CEO of The Mekong Club, Matthew is considered the leading catalyst for the anti-slavery movement in Asia’s business sector by captains of industry. In 2017, Matthew received the prestigious “Asia Communicator of the Year Gold Award” for giving more than 800 presentations to 80,000 people including government leaders and the Vatican on the topic of modern slavery within a five-year period in different countries. Matthew has a unique and powerful speaking style that inspires people and helps them reach their fullest potential. Each year he is cited at least 40 times in the news media (CNN, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, the Financial Times, the Economist, etc.) and invited to speak at major international conferences around the world. He has managed and directed tens of millions of dollars to major humanitarian portfolios impacting millions of people for the World Bank, the U.S. State Department, and the United Nations. His work over the last 30 years of pioneering and managing international anti-human trafficking projects from Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Hong Kong has given him access to many influential networks in different countries throughout the world. Matthew is the author of 13 books ranging from action novels, non-fiction accounts of his human rights work, to a book that outlines his unique philosophy of “time.” A long-time supporter of film and the media arts, Matthew was an executive producer and advisor on four award-winning films, one of which was nominated for an Emmy and another executive produced by Emma Thompson.

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by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing young man on the show today. We're going to be talking to his insights and experience, and he's got an amazing story to tell and a way to awaken you and alert you to some of the people that might be in trouble out there that we can help, but we can help get out of some jams. He is the author of the newest book that just came out, February 21st, 2025.

Matthew Freeman joins us on the show. His book is entitled Awakening the Advocate, Memoir of a Modern Slavery Activist. And we'll get into some of the other deets, as the kids like to say, of his details so that we can find out more about him. Matthew is a leading internationally renowned global expert on modern slavery and human trafficking. An award winning public speaker, author, filmmaker and philanthropist, Matthew regularly advises heads of governments, intelligence agencies.

As the founder and CEO of the Mekong club, Mekong club, Matthew is considered the leading catalyst for anti-slavery movement in Asia, business sector by captains of industry. Welcome to the show. How are you, Matthew? Very good. Super glad to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. We need you to come back to America because we have a huge slavery problem here. A lot of married dudes. Oh! No, I'm just kidding.

Actually, I come to the United States on a regular basis and I do presentation tours across the US and a lot of people need to know about this topic. It's a topic that's super important, but not very publicized in that part of the world. Not to downplay what we're about to talk about, but we do squeeze the jokes in there. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Basically LinkedIn for me. In fact, in Hong Kong, there's two million LinkedIn users, I'm number 16.

Wow. In terms of... And you're number 16. Lovely. Actually, my wife is number one. She's a lot smarter and more articulate than I am. Yeah. She's also an author and she talks about human trafficking as well.

Yeah. And you probably want to plug the... I'm not sure I pronounced this right, the Mekongclub.org? Yeah, that's an organization that works with the private sector and helps them to understand the issue of human trafficking and modern slavery globally. Guys, there'll be a link for that on the Chris Voss show. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your book. You know, I've been working on the issue of addressing human trafficking for about 35

years, and what I wanted to do with this particular book is to get vignettes. I have about 110 short stories. The first part of the book are testimonials from people who are trafficking victims, sex trafficking victims, forced labor victims, the perpetrators themselves, you know, certain nuances and situations that I faced as an activist. And then the second part of the book, I wanted to ask the question, how did a shy, introverted New England boy find his way into working on this issue globally in 42 countries, having written 15 other books, you know, having traveled to 70 countries and so forth. So I did a kind of an introspective look

where I took milestones of my various experiences over life and then I just pulled them together. So each of these vignettes is about a page long. It doesn't go into a lot of detail, but when you add them all together, it gives a composite picture of how does a person become an advocate? What are the things that

happened? You know, the bullying experiences, how did that affect my desire to address justice? You know, even being turned down by girls when I was a kid and how it felt and all of these things basically added up to a lifetime of activism here in Asia and other parts of the world. Pete Slauson Excuse me. Wow. So, how did you get started into this? Dr. Michael Bauer About 35 years ago, I was living and working in Nepal. I was working for USAID. I was a public health officer and my job was to translate resources into healthier people. At that time, we were finding girls 12, 13 years old who

were HIV positive. Couldn't understand what was going on. This is a very conservative culture. So I went to interview them in shelters and I heard pretty much the same story over and over again. And it went something like this. A human trafficker would go into a remote village in Nepal, flag a bunch of money around to show that he was rich. And then he'd go around saying, I'm looking for a wife.

I don't want an urban wife or want a village wife. He'd find a 12 year old girl, befriended her, go to the family and say, I'd like to marry your daughter. And he's thinking, wow, he's rich, he's handsome, gonna take care of our daughter, gonna take care of us. And that part of the world, you know, marrying at that age is pretty common. A couple of days later, they have a wedding ceremony. The entire community is there. After he goes to the family and says, I'm gonna take your daughter to the capital, Kathmandu, but don't worry, I'll be back in three months. But that's not what's going to happen. Instead, he takes her by India to the red light

district where the brothels are. When he gets there, he puts his wife into a room and says, honey, stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes. As she was coming in, she saw all these people milling around with funny clothes. She said, no, no, no, no, I'm scared. Don't leave me. He says, it's okay. He then goes to the madam who runs the brothel and In order to get the 500 US dollars the he has the gold from the wedding and he hands the wedding pictures over to her He then leaves to go back to Nepal to do this again and again The matter goes into the room where the girl is and says guess what your Husband just sold you to me and you're gonna be with 20 guys a day every day because I say so you can imagine this girl Shocked no, no, no, my husband loves me. No, that's what happened. When they internalize this,

many of the girls say, I'll kill myself before I do those shameful things. I'm a good Hindu girl. The madam then takes the photograph of the wedding and says, this is your mom, your dad, your brother, if you hurt yourself, we'll hurt them. So, she's trapped in this situation. In order to make her into a prostitute, they just bring in a couple of professional rapists and over a two-day period They just use her over and over again until she just lays back and accepts whatever happens to her After that she's put on the line, which means that she'll be with 20 guys a day every day until After a couple of years, she's so depleted physically emotionally and spiritually that they just throw her out into the street So I was seeing the ones that came back, many of them never came back. So I heard about

this over and over again, but I didn't understand the evil in how they actually went to those brothels. I was invited by the Indian government to do public health checks. I had a police officer with me, walked into one of those brothels. There was an 11-year-old trafficking victim. She saw this Caucasian guy literally ran up, wrapped herself around me and said, save me, save me, they're doing terrible things to me. I looked down at this child who was hysterically crying. I turned to the police officer and said, we need to get this girl out of here. He said, we can't do that. So what are you talking about? You're a cop. He says, if we try to leave with her, we'll both be killed. To make

a long story short, we left, we came back with a lot more police, but of course she was gone. Now I tell that story because I wasn't one of those 15 year olds that said when I grow up, I want to become an activist. But every once in a while in life, we have a test. That was my big test. I failed miserably.

After that, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about what I could have done. And I did what a lot of activists eventually do, is surrender to the fact that now that they've been exposed to this, this is what I'm going done. And I did what a lot of activists eventually do is surrender to the fact that now that they've been exposed to this, this is what I'm going to do with my life. And 35 years later, here I am talking to you. Wow. What an experience.

And then when you go back, she's gone. What a horror show. Just to, just to hear about this stuff going on and do we know how many, are there numbers on how many people are being trafficked? Is there some sort of number on that right now? David Morgan So globally it's estimated there's about 50 million people in modern slavery, which is also human trafficking.

In the United States they call it human trafficking, the rest of the world calls it modern slavery. Out of that about 23 million would be forced marriages where a person is married into a household to work within the family. But 27 million would be forced labor, which includes 6.3 million sex trafficking victims. These are the women and the girls that I was referring to. About 25,000 people enter per day. The profits generated from modern slavery, $236 billion. The amount of money that's available to fight

it is 400 million, which is 0.13%. And lastly, and this is the statistic that always gets me, out of 50 million people last year with all the governments and NGOs and the United Nations combined, we only helped 133,000, which is a 0.2% of the victims. So not even a half percent. Yeah, that's a lot of people, but still, I mean, that's just extraordinary, man. That's heartbreaking. In the United States, it's estimated there's a million victims. Yeah. I got to tell you, I'm never going to get professional rapers, that term out of my

head. I mean, that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. That's just, sorry. I just had the rest of my life. That's just, sorry, I just had to interrupt on that note. That's just, wow. Did they use that to condition somebody? That's just, that's just... David Erickson Yeah, they have this group of people that breaks in women in brothels. You know, they

get drugged up and they drink and then they go in and they'll just use a person over and over again. And the idea is to break the person's will so that they just accept whatever happens to them. Pete Slauson Jesus. Pete Hr 2.00 It's a common part of the process in that part of the world when it comes to breaking in women and prostitution. Pete Slauson It's gonna haunt me for a while, but maybe it should.

It's one of these things that we need to take care of. So sorry, I got thrown off track by that. I had to get that out of my system. And I think it's important for the audience to think about that as well and highlight that. So, where were we? Help, help, help. Well, maybe, Chris, I could tell you a couple of other types of stories. It's not just women and girls and prostitution. That'll give you a moment to think about this. But so, for example, a 15-year-old kid from Cambodia is told by his family,

you got to go to Thailand and get a job. We're poor. You need to send money back. He goes to Thailand. He's looking for work, not finding it. Human traffickers see this. They go up to him and say, Hey brother, I'm from Cambodia. You're from Cambodia. Looks like you need some help. Let me lend you some money. Okay. Now that you have my money, have stay with me, but guess what? I got this great job. I'm gonna take you down to the ocean. I'll put you on a boat. The boat will go out for a couple of months. You'll catch some fish.

You're a guy, guys love fishing, right? After that, they'll come back. They'll give you money in your pocket. You'll be here or to your family. So he goes down to the boat, gets on the boat. The boat goes out, but it doesn't come back after three months. Stays out for four years.

This poor kid will end up working 17, 18 hours a day every day. If he doesn't, he gets beaten, he gets tortured. The only food he'll eat the entire time he's there is something like rice and fish, nothing nutritious. They often give drugs to stimulate him to work those long hours. If he gets injured or if he gets sick, they throw him off the side of the boat. At the end of the four years, boat comes in, captain says, go away. Guy says, I'm going to tell the police what you did. Captain says, go ahead. We own the police. Another example of human trafficking. No, they don't. This is a dumb question, I think, to ask at this point, but they don't pay him for

that either, right? No, no, he didn't get paid anything. He gets nothing. Wow. And if he gets hurt, they just throw it overboard. No bother. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they don't, because they can get people who are brought in by the feeder boats that take the fish away with even more of these people who are basically slaves that end up on these boats. It's a common thing in fishing all over the world, actually. Geez.

That is extraordinary. We really get spoiled in America because we think that life's perfect and there aren't these abuses going on. The police tend to, if you call the police, they tend to help you. I can't ever imagine being in a situation where I'm standing there with a police officer of a child crying that I'm holding and he tells me he can't leave or else we'd die. I'm like, I can't imagine a situation like that. And maybe that's kind of the problem of awareness and stuff.

Oh yeah. Crazy. Tell us more about what you guys do there at themakong.org. The Makong Club was set up 12 years ago, and basically what it does is it works with the corporate sector, the banks, the manufacturers, the retailers, and the hospitality sector to help them to understand the fact that this particular issue has touch points in their businesses. For example, the profits generated from modern slavery are $236 billion.

If any of that money gets into a legitimate bank, it's money laundering and the banks get fined. There was a bank in Australia that was fined $1.3 billion because they allowed for online transactions of online sexual trans visuals of children being used in sexual situations. The manufacturers and the retailers have to be concerned about this because they have supply chains and within their supply chains there could be sweatshops.

And so if an investigative journalist finds this, they can embarrass the company and that will have an impact on their business. The hospitality sector has victims of sex trafficking that could be used within their hotels. So what we do is we identify what is a company is doing to address these issues. And if there are gaps, we provide training, consultation,

whatever is required to get them to a point where they can ensure that they don't have these issues. And if they find them, they address them. And we address them in a way that ensures that these victims are taken care of. So it's an association. We have about 50 members of the largest companies in the victims are taken care of. So it's an association. We have about 50 members, the largest companies in the world are associated with this. And part of the

reason why we work with the private sector is the private sector is incentivized to address these things if they find it, because if they don't, bad things can happen to them. So there's a certain urgency. Pete Slauson Isn't that a shame that the only way to get police work done is to guilt and shame? That just seems so, I don't know. In our case, we do the opposite. We work with companies to avoid them feeling like they're going to be named in shame. So there are some NGOs that will point out what companies are doing, they'll name in

shame, but if they don't have anyone to go to, they don't know how to fix these things and we're the go-to organization for that. Well, I'm glad you are. And I imagine you educate people on what to look for. I mean, a lot of these companies are multinational companies, right? So that's kind of one of the elements of importance in letting them know what to do and how to do it, what to watch out for in business activities they have or maybe, I don't want to say sweatshops they run, but potential sweatshops they might be running or involved with or maybe if they're doing business with say someone in Vietnam

and they don't know, they might be end up hiring some sort of, I guess, a vendor that uses slavery in a way that they don't know about. So I guess it's really good for them to, you know, be able to identify that, et cetera, et cetera. Wild stuff, man. It's a crazy world out there. And I'm glad you found a way to, you know, get policing done with it. I imagine, what are some countries that you find are the worst at this type of policing this or, you know, tricking it or laws against it, et cetera, et cetera, because I don't want to visit any of those countries. David Morgan There's, in terms of the numbers, the larger countries like the United States and actually

India and China have large numbers. I think it's something like 16 million in India, 4 million in China, the United States, a million. So these would be people who are, you know, sex trafficking victims who are domestic people. And then you have people who cross into the United States that because they are paying to be smuggled over are vulnerable to be indebted and then trafficked and so forth. But then there's other states like North Korea and Iran and those kind of countries that it's very much a part

of the business model to exploit people within the country. And they don't have systems and procedures to address this. But again, if we have 50 million people in the world help 0.2%, no country is doing well. Yeah. You know, and in fact, in terms of the convictions, it's estimated there's about a half a million criminals out there. Last year, the world convicted 6,000, which is 0.8%. And part of it is that, you know, there's just not enough people who are focusing on this law enforcement, doesn't see this as a priority.

It's a really complicated crime to go after. And so as a result of that, we just don't have much push on this. The other thing is the general public doesn't know about this. And if you don't know about an issue, you don't care. If you don't care, you're not gonna do anything. And so part of the reason for doing these podcasts

is just to get in front of people and say, here's a problem, it's kind of not in your face, but it's out there. It's relevant. You heard that story about that girl. That's one girl times 6.3 million women and girls in the same situation. Imagine if you heard of a rape case in your community, everybody gets up in arms, but you have 6.3 million women and girls out there being used over and over again every day, and we don't have a global response to that. That keeps me up at night, and I don't know what it is that we have to do in order for that to change. Pete Slauson You know, you think we've fixed all the problems in the world, forced marriage,

forced labor in private economies, sexual exploitation, indentured labor of child, state imposed forced labor. I think some states still do that. I think Alabama or Arkansas still do forced labor or I don't know, they still have you labor if you're in prison and I don't know, I think I've heard stuff, I don't know. Anyway, yeah. What about, I mean, what do you think about, sometimes modern slavery and exploitation is geared towards escorts and prostitutes, et cetera, et cetera. OnlyFans has become like a really crazy thing that a lot of people are using to exploit themselves, but I think they mostly do it

themselves. There could be hidden hands behind the thing. Do you guys count those sort of numbers, you know, legitimate license escorts? And do you see them as, you know, as a part of your exploited thing? Or some of them are self-exploiting themselves on OnlyFans. So I've always been kind of curious, is their delineation line in this. David Kuhn Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's, if you stop and look at prostitute in general, there's literally millions of people in prostitution. Now, there's basically three ways people get into

it. Number one is you have a certain percentage who choose to get involved and be a part of it. Despite the fact that they will say over and over again, I want to do this and there's a choice, many of them have backstories. Most 15 year old girls don't wake up and say, when I grow up, I want to be in prostitution. But you know, they make a choice and they have a certain amount of control. The second category would be people who are just desperate.

They have no other ways of making money. And so in order to survive in different locations, they sell themselves. They don't want to be doing it but they recognize if they don't do that they're not going to be able to you know impede their kids or feed themselves. And then the last category would be the people who are tricked and deceived into situations where they're controlled by others. They don't get any money at all. They don't have any control. If the

brothel or the institution says don't wear a condom, they don't wear a condom, many of them get sexually transmitted diseases. You can imagine the psychological damage that goes along with these types of things. And so the percentage that falls into those categories is not understood. I think the 6.3 million figures in an underestimate, I think it's much higher than that. But we just take the statistics that we get from Walk Free and from the United Nations and that's what we use. But you know, I've interviewed literally hundreds of these victims. In fact, in Nepal, I interviewed over 350 of them for a book project.

They were all under the age of 15 and every one of them died of AIDS. So to add insult to injury, you're tricked and deceived and taken away, forced to have sex with multiple partners over and over again, and then you die a painful death and that's your life. And so when you interview these girls, they're like, you know, when I look back, you know, I didn't get married, I couldn't have kids, I couldn't, you know, be a part of all the seasons and the festivals and grow old and, you, and live a life that was stolen away from me. Their freedom was taken away from them, and it's a fundamental human right. All of

the other freedom that we have, our human rights, are somehow attached to having freedom of choice, and that's taken away, and that's part of the reason why this is so horrific. Pete Slauson Oh, yeah. What about the, you mentioned the UN and other, are there any other national programs or UN programs that try to, I don't know, mitigate against this stuff? Maybe is the right word? John I ran one of the larger counter-trafficking programs in the world with the United Nations, UNDP. I was based in Thailand. I had offices in China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar. We worked with the highest level of governments. We funded the non-government organizations.

We collected research. We did a lot of things that added value to addressing the issue. And part of what we tried to do is to empower the governments to understand that they have a role to address this because we're talking about illegal activities. So we would train their people, we would train the law enforcement people and so forth. There was a certain amount of momentum in that, probably not as much as we had hoped, but it was money actually well spent because each of these governments was reviewed at the end of the year. And because of faith in this part of the world, no country wanting to be perceived as doing less than others,

they would excel. They would have their government officials do whatever they could to move forward. And so there are programs like that around the world. The organizations that do the lion's share of addressing this are the NGOs, the non-government organizations. In the United States, in every major city, you'll have counter-trafficking organizations. If you Google your city's name or your state's name, you'll see that there are organizations that are out there doing prevention work or prosecution work or setting up shelters or trying to get these ex victims survivors. Jobs and to get them back on their feet and so forth.

It's a big part of, you part of the systems and procedures to protect and help people. A lot of people don't know that they're there, but at present, many of them have lost funding. And as a result of that, this is a good time to kind of reach out and you have a donation that you want to give, consider giving it to them. Google them, contact them, ask them how they're going to use the money. And if you think it's worthwhile, go ahead and give that donation. It would be much appreciated at this time. Pete Slauson Now, do you guys take donations? How do you get, how can people support you?

Dr. Michael O'Neill Yeah, we, on our website, we take donations. You know, I'm an activist, you know, I am somebody who's been doing this for a long time. I run the Makon Club, but in addition to that, I continue to work with governments. I work with other NGOs, with the United Nations and so forth. My organization on the website, there's a donation link for that. You know, this is a particular time in history where there are many distractions going on. And as a result of that, the funding for this type of work has gone down. COVID had a

devastating impact on the NGO world here in Asia. About 25% of the organizations didn't survive. There are situations that are taking place where there's development funding cuts around the world that we're all seeing take place. If people feel like they want to be a part of the solution, there are things that they can do. And part of that is just donating and helping. Pete Yeah. Chris You know, there are other things too, Chris. Pete Tell us what they are. Chris I mean, I'll tell a story and then this will put it into perspective. So, once again,

years ago when I was in Nepal, I desperately wanted to do something to address human trafficking. So, I decided I was going to write a book and I went to the shelters and I interviewed the women and the girls, went to one of the shelters and there was a girl named Gita. And every time I approach you said, no, no, no, no, I don't want to give my story. But as I interviewed everyone else, she was sitting there listening to everything that was being said. When I finished and I was leaving, Gita comes running up and said, I changed my mind. You can have my story. So she sat on one side of the table. The rest of us sat on the other side of the table.

And over a three hour period, she told the worst story of rape and torture and disease and murder and betrayal. Honestly, I interviewed many, many people. This was the worst one I ever heard. I didn't know what to say. Finally, I turned to Geeta and I said, wow, Geeta, you must be so angry at the traffickers for the horrible things they did to you. She paused and paused, and then she said, No, I'm angry at you, and you,

you. She pointed at us. She said, Where were you? She said that every single day she woke up praying for somebody to come and help. Nobody came. Said that she went to school until she was 12. She knew that everything out there in front of her was right out in the open. Nobody was doing anything. She said she wasn't angry at the traffickers. She said they're just bad people doing what bad people do, bad things. She said she was angry at the good people as society for allowing a 15-year-old girl to be commercially raped 7,000 times only to eventually get AIDS. Now I tell this story because she pretty much called us all out. She recognized that the 30, 40,000 do-gooder types like me around the world weren't able to get beyond 1% and she recognized that everyone needs to know about this and care. So the things that you can do,

one thing is just to learn about this issue and you're learning about it right now. But once you've heard this, go out and you know read books. I have another book called Where Were You? I have the book that just came out. There are other books out there. Watch videos. Once you have that information, talk to your friends, your coworkers, your family members. Raising awareness is a big part of it. Be a responsible consumer before you buy branded items. Go online to see if that company has a policy on this.

Most big companies do, and if they do, congratulate them. They appreciate that. If they don't, you say, I like your products, but I'd feel better if you had a policy that positive reinforcement makes a difference. You can volunteer, we have volunteers from all over the world, students and people in, you know, corporate sectors, academic sectors. In fact, my youngest volunteer was nine years old. She saw me in a

documentary, she approached me said, Mr. Friedman, human trafficking is terrible, I want to help. I said, you're nine years old. She said, so what? I said, you're nine years old. She said, nine-year-olds are the new 16-year-olds. Give me an opportunity to, you know, prove myself. So I said, what can you do? She said, I can find anything on the internet. So I had a couple of interns, second year law students from Ivy League schools, I gave them an assignment, they couldn't find it, gave it to her two days later, I had everything I needed. Wow. Why? Because you know, as human beings, we all have that secret thing that we're super good at.

For some, it's public speaking, it could be writing, it could be networking, in her case, it was finding things on the internet or selling t-shirts. If you apply that to volunteerism, then it's a win-win. You benefit, that organization benefits. And again, the donations and the fundraising really makes a difference at this particular time. Pete Oh, yeah. You know, all the great help you can do and like you said in that story, we want to be more of the good people and save these people, but jeez, it's such a huge thing. And your organization helps do that. Is there, there's tools and resources on your website people can utilize? I suppose if they own companies, they can try and get involved as well? Yeah, I mean, there are two things. Like on our website, about 60% of the tools are available

to any companies. We do a lot of talks for companies. We do a lot of the panels and the conferences and the major events in order to raise awareness about this. I'm also actively on LinkedIn. During COVID, I decided I was gonna do a LinkedIn article a day for a year, which is about 520 words. It was okay for the first four months, but it got challenging after that.

So there's a lot of content on there related to testimonials and what you can do and how this affects companies' ESG and sustainability and some of the stories that I told were on there. And we do this again to raise awareness, to help people to understand that this is a topic and to also give them a sense of hope that you as a person can be step up and be part of the solution as well. Definitely. Sounds like a good project to have that can change the world and help improve it. Anything more we need to discuss as we tune out the map?

Yeah, there's one other thing that I focus on and that is we have a campaign called Be the Hero, Be the Change. For years, I would get in front of an audience and let's say there's 100 people and after I do a talk, 10 people would come up and say, oh my gosh, what can I do to help? Because that cause resonated with them. So, you know, I often say we as human beings don't pick our causes, causes pick us. For me, it's human trafficking. As many times as I tried to turn away, I keep coming back to that. My sister, she cares about animals. You know, she runs an animal orphanage for abused animals, and that's her thing.

My brother cares about a climate. Be as human beings, just have to figure out what our cause is and take some responsibility for addressing this. So this goes beyond human trafficking to say, figure out what your cause is, decide you're going to do something, and then get involved and do something. And it's as easy as again raising awareness, donating, being a responsible consumer. But if a million people did that, that's a million times these kind compassionate gestures and that adds up.

And that's what's going to be the thing that heals our world. Because in the absence of that, there's not enough government, NGO, United Nations support to even have an impact in any of these issues. So, we have to have a mindset change. And that mindset change includes us all being a part of the solution. Pete Slauson Definitely. Definitely. It's something that needs a lot of education on people. It's stuff that needs a lot of, you know, you see, I see when I go places, you know, they always have these safe zones here in America. I'm not sure how, you know, running into McDonald's is going to save you, but maybe, maybe I don't understand how the whole thing works. But, you know, it's good that they're there and they let people know. I know that people

have sometimes been in abusive situations and they can usually give signals to people to, you know, let them know that they're in trouble. Oh, yeah, definitely something we learned today a lot about this stuff. It's crazy. So, Matt, as we go out, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Get to know you better. Matthew Friedman Mekongclub.org is my organization. LinkedIn, you just search Matthew Friedman. I'm in Hong Kong now, that's where I'm based. Those are my two platforms. Pete Thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it and a wonderful education for us and to support a wonderful cause.

Chris Thank you very much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it, Chris. Pete Thank you and thanks, Sauron, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge has Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Forge has Chris Voss. Order the book where refined books are sold out February 21st, 2025. It's called Awakening the Advocate, Memoir of a Modern Slavery Activist by Matthew Friedman. Thanks for being here, folks. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Wow. That was a...