EntreLeadership - #289: Turning Apathy Into Action with Scott Harrison

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

When charity: water founder and CEO Scott Harrison set out to solve the global water crisis, he knew he couldn’t do it alone. To that end, he it made it his number one priority to connect with the consumer in an authentic way—and it paid off, big time. Twelve years later, charity: water has brought clean water to over eight million people in 26 countries, thanks to the charitable contribution of a growing tribe of supporters. But Scott is just getting started. Tune in to hear the valuable lessons he’s learned along the way, as well as how he’s driving growth by continuing to pivot his fundraising efforts. entreleadership.com/podcast Previous Episode #114: Scott Harrison—Building a Culture of Innovation Buy the book: Thirst Learn more about our full-day leadership event you can watch anywhere: EntreLeadership 1-Day Harness Your Inner Genius from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why don't I stop whining about it and try and solve the problem? And what we realized was a pivot was needed. The thing that got us to the first quarter of a billion dollars raised would not be the thing that would get us to a billion. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders.

Thanks so much for joining the conversation. Here's what we got coming up for you. Scott Harrison, the founder and CEO of Charity Water, and author of a new book, Thirst, a story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world is our feature conversation. Now, for you diehard fans,

this is his second appearance on the program, but a different conversation, a deeper conversation. I point that out because if you've never heard from Scott before when you're new to the program, go back to episode 114. Listen to that as you listen to this and you'll get the whole picture because what we do in this conversation is we kind of jump into his history and the changes and the failures and things of that nature and growing this thing from a guy with a camera to 80 team members and millions upon millions of lives changed.

So it's going to be a little bit different conversation. If you like the backstory, you're going to want to go listen to episode 114. And we're going to be a little bit different conversation. got some free stuff for you. So with all that setup, we're excited to have Scott Harrison with us at our Entree leadership. One day event, I'll tell you about that after the conversation. But here is Scott Harrison. One of the things I've always been impressed with with your story is that you had a big vision, but you didn't allow the enormity of that vision to paralyze you. So I want to start there. And it's really from your experience, because I'm guessing, Scott, there were a moment where the idea of bringing clean water to millions and hundreds of millions of people was a bit

paralyzing, yet you just started and there were some baby steps. What does the mindset of somebody need to be who has a big vision? It's so interesting you use the word paralyzing. I talk about that a lot. I mean, these big issues, right, the global water crisis or world hunger or extreme poverty, they can feel paralyzing to people. And I think one of the things that the very beginning is I saw through to the end and I saw what it might look like to help create or or to live in a world where everybody had this basic need met where every single person had clean drinking water. So, you know, just kind of thinking through like, oh, this would be amazing, right? Nobody would be walking eight hours for dirty water. No child would be dying of diarrhea.

So that was, at the time, there were a billion people between, you know, the delta, between the vision, right, of zero and the current was a billion. It was a sixth of the planet, one at every six people alive. And moment number one was to go build that first well. Right. To build that first project. And it was a party in a nightclub. We were testing out our 100% model then. We were testing out this idea of proof and connecting donors. I could see it. People coming together to a party tossing $20 in a big plexy bin, taking 100% of the money in that bin, putting into the ground, and then sending the photos and GPS coordinates and the video of clean water flowing back to those 700 people. So that's what we did.

And the next thing you know, you have six projects. And you have a group of 700 people who said, I might be willing to try that again. And then there was the next activity and the next activity. And then you look back and you have your 100th water project. and then there was the 500th and then the 1,000th. And it was just really a new idea, let's try to execute on that idea. Some of them worked better than others. Some of them didn't work at all.

And you would see a little bit of heat. And what actually wound up being a lot of heat was just the idea of birthdays. And the final form that wound up raising, you know, over $60 million, looked nothing like the beginning form. Day one of Charity Water was my 31st birthday in a night. club that only raised 15,000 bucks. But a year later, I did my 32nd birthday virtually, did it online, invited other people to donate their seventh or their 62nd or their 54th. And we raised $1.5 million. Wow. And this idea just kind of began to evolve. And you said, oh, wow, we don't

need to have parties in clubs. I mean, that doesn't scale. But the real idea, was that people didn't need more stuff, really, that we could use our birthdays, so we could turn them into these redemptive, life-giving, generous moments that helped others. And the next thing you know, birthdays and fundraising campaigns had raised $60 million.

So I think there was just this, if I think back to the early moments, it was just action and action and action. Just we were working 80-hour weeks, and I know that's certainly not our culture now, but at the beginning it was just a flurry of activity, 10 or 15 presentations every day out there telling the story, pushing through the 90% of people that said no, or not now, or I'm not ready, or I don't believe, and latching on to the 10

percent, the one out of 10, and taking that yes and trying to find the next yes and the next yes and just stringing these together. Yeah. Now, that's what I want to focus on is the last 30 seconds of what you just said, because this is a little bit of a litmus test, Scott, for our audience. You're thinking, okay, I got a big idea. And I read something that Angela Duckworth said about grit. She says, passion fuels grit. There is no grit if you don't have the passion to stay with it and to keep going. So I'm thinking of those early days you just described 80 hours. It wasn't something that you just felt like, well, I really want to do this.

This was conviction, yes or no? Yeah, and I had lived with this issue. So I think, you know, so many social entrepreneurs today are people with an idea of starting a charity. They might have gone on a mission trip, Ken. You might have painted the orphanage. I don't know, the sixth color that the orphanage got painted that year on a five-day trip or a 10-day trip. You know, I had more than a year in Liberia with mercy ships at that time. So I came back so passionate about solving the problem that I'd seen that I'd been living with.

And to me, there was a responsibility to do something about it. I was also armed with 50,000 photos. And there's something really powerful about eyewitness accounts. Like, nobody could take my story away from me. When I showed a photo in the early days to a DJ and a nightclub trying to get him to build a well or give some money, I took that photo. I knew the girl's name in the photo. I knew what it smelled like standing next to that swamp. I knew what it was like in the house.

So I was really telling my story. There was an authority in having lived it, not just like went to Africa for a week and now I want to start a big charity. You know, actually lived in these villages. And I had done the research to understand enough of the problem to be a little bit of an authority on it. You know, of course, now 12 years later, I realized that how little we actually knew back then. Sure. But I'd lived it. And that's what I tell people today, just go deep.

There's so many people that are, they just have such a surface knowledge on whatever issue that they're talking about. You've got to really put the time in. And you speak to something there. I want to stay here because I want there to be a correlation for the audience here between a nonprofit, and then a for-profit. So whether it be a charity-type organization like yours, or you're in the business, whatever the business is, and you're passionate about the product or the service, you have to be able to connect the problem. When you're sitting there with that DJ or you're sideling up beside that DJ, you took me to a place that I'm sitting there

and I'm trying to picture what you did. And when you showed the picture or pictures to these DJs who know you from a whole different experience, and you show them the problem, isn't that what we really have to learn how to do? You're talking about depth to be able to connect the problem to the consumer. Is that right? Yes, and storytelling is the way that you do that. And visual storytelling when possible. I mean, when you think about how hard what we're doing really is,

we are trying to convince people who have never experienced the problem that we're talking about. That's right. I mean, I bet, you know, whoever's listening or watching, I just bet that you've never had to walk eight hours for dirty, water with 40 pounds on your back. You've never held a child in your arms that's dying from dehydration or diarrhea because you've given them brown, viscous river water. And you know that you killed your child. This is just not something people experience. And if I start talking about statistics, you're just going to numb out. 663 million people don't have water. 40 billion hours

are wasted by women fetching water in Africa. 52% of disease is caused by battered water. You don't know what 663 million anything looks like, units of anything, let alone people drinking bad water. So the way that we've tried to move people from this paralyzing embrace of apathy, which is much easier into compassion and empathy and action, is through telling stories. You tell the story of one of those 663 million people of a little girl that's 13 and you talk about her life and her struggles and the fact that she lost her mom. and she's trying to take care of her, you know, her younger siblings and keep her family together, but she's got to walk eight hours for dirty water, and she's missing school, and she's got this tension between dropping out of school and taking care of her family. And then one day, you know, at the end of an eight-hour walk, she slips and she falls, and she

spills her water. And she's just wasted eight hours, and she's broken the clay pot, and now she's watching the water spill out on the ground. And she makes a decision not to go back and to hang herself from me. a tree. And the village elders find a 13-year-old girl's body swinging from a tree with a noose around her neck. You know, you tell a story, and immediately there's a sense of being put into the problem. There's a sense of disruption that connects with people in a different way than just 660 million people or, you know, talking about 40 billion collective hours. And I think

Charity Water, you know, we've told hundreds and hundreds of stories. We've tried to build a culture where it's story above everything else. I mean, if I think of the antithesis of that, I remember reading a New York Times article about a big charity, which will leave nameless. And if the old way, and I think this goes for any business, if the old way was to communicate with data and white papers, well, they looked at this charity's website and they found that 70% of the PDFs, you know, the white papers, had never received one download. Wow. Not one. They'd wasted their time. And, you know, I, you know, I've seen our stories travel around the world and touch millions and tens of millions of people's lives.

We were together at Catalyst many years ago, telling the story of a nine-year-old girl who had donated her birthday because she wanted kids to have clean water that she'd never met, and she tragically died in a car crash after her birthday. But her story sparked 30,000 strangers from around the world to give $9 in her honor. Five years later, what's amazing about that, we haven't even caught up about this, but so many of them went on to follow her lead. They donated their birthday. They raised another $2 million. So her impact, she's now helped over 100,000 people get clean water.

And her story has touched so many people, both young and old. Charity Water has 100% model. We have proof. We have design and branding and creativity and a focus on local partners. And we have this great issue. But if you stripped it all away, the one thing I would want to keep was storytelling, was the ability to tell stories. that move people in an authentic way to care and then to act.

I'm glad you brought up Rachel Beckwith. I remember the day that you shared that I was a complete mess. I can talk about it now many years later. And you showed the video. It just is such a beautiful moment. But this is a key point for the listeners here. At some point, this nine-year-old girl, she might have been even younger than nine

when she first hears about Cherry Water. She gets the idea. She goes, hey, this makes sense. I can grasp this. Kids my age should have clean water. So there's something to the simplicity that I want people to catch. Every time I ever heard you talk about it,

it's never about all the complexities of the well. It was just, this is the need. And I think sometimes that one of the challenges is we don't realize the connection to the consumer, in this case, the Rachel Beckwiths of the world and many, many more beyond her. Scott, speak to the importance of helping people understand the simplicity

of their contribution to fix the problem. They can look at it and go, oh, I can help fix this problem very simply. My tie with Mercy Chips well prepared me for the simplicity of that, because I was with a bunch of doctors and surgeons. And there was before and there was after. The person who our surgeons saw blind with cataracts that then received a surgery and got their sight. That was before, blind, after they could see. The facial tumors that were suffocating 14-year-old boys to death that had been growing for years. there was the tumor filling the mouth before and then there was post-intervention, there was

after, there was this kid smiling restored back to health, their life restored. So I had captured this with my camera for almost two years and I wanted to do the same thing with water. And the beauty is, and not everybody has this, but I would still argue that you can find that tangible before, after, problem as it is now. And then the world does you see it? You know, what does it look like? So So for us, it was then before the clean water and after the clean water. Before is a horrible picture of death and disease. And it's a swamp. It's a picture of a woman breaking her back in the hot sun or a young girl that should

be in school that is then walking to their death, walking to a swamp that they're playing Russian roulette every day with this water. And then the solution that we're inviting people now looks different. There's 13 different ways that we've gotten people. clean water. But, you know, let's just use a drilling rig. The solution is a million dollar piece of machinery and eight guys that jump out that are local to the region and they start looking for water underneath the ground. And two days later, there's this geyser that erupts a hundred feet up into the air and people are clapping and dancing and celebrating after the

water. And then you have the well and you have the child that was walking to the swamp, you know, getting unthinkable brown, viscous water that is now drinking clean water for the first time in life and you have a picture of that. And you're just saying, do you want to be a part of this? Do you want to make this possible? With your birthday, with your $10, with your million dollars, with your business, the beauty of water is it's an inarguable good. And I could say there's so many issues that would just be inarguable goods. We can agree to agree that people shouldn't go to bed hungry. They should have shelter. They should have a roof over their head. They should have clean water to drink. And you're right. It's complex. There's sanitation involved in hygiene.

And there's all this stuff that we do that we don't talk about. But at the end of the day, a child can just say, like, a child will ask their parents, why is this not happening? That's right. Why have we allowed? Why is it that people would have Internet in some of these villages? You know, internet balloons flying over, but yet they don't have clean water. And how do I fix this?

And that's the beauty of children. We just had a six-year-old girl see one of our videos online. And she goes upstairs and that night decides, should she give her money or she, Should she not? And there's this internal debate. And we interviewed her, and she's so cute. She says, should I give or should I not give? Should I give her? Should I give her?

Should I not give? And she comes down the next morning, and she drops $8.15 on the kitchen counter and tells her mom, I want to give my allowance. And she draws a picture of her standing next to what she thinks a well looks like with clean water. And she says, Dear Charity Water, here's my $8.15. And I don't want kids to die a bad water anymore. And she sends it into us.

And I think what I'm so proud of here is that we have a culture of storytelling. And in the hundreds and hundreds of checks and letters that come in the mail, someone opens up and says, story. And a week later, there's a camera crew interviewing this amazing little girl, Nora, Nora Shauna Jackson, in Virginia. And we launch a campaign telling Nora's story, sharing her heart. And in her words, it's just so simple. I want people to stop dying in bad water.

And then we just encourage people to. give $8.15 and I think we raise $80,000 or $90,000 in a day as people join her. So yeah, simplicity, the visual storytelling, I think the invitational approach, so much of the old way was guilt and shame-based. We remember those TV commercials from the 80s with the flies landing on kids' faces and everything was in slow motion and they lock eyes with the camera and the 800 number stripes across the screen and, you know, there's just this like, ugh, right? People were giving. But you would never tell anyone about that TV commercial. You would never wear the t-shirt of that charity,

of a charity that made you feel guilt and shame and like a giving out of a debt or obligation. And we've tried to just make it a joy and a blessing and invite people to a party. Do you want to be a part of the party where water is erupting out of the ground for the first time and a thousand people are celebrating? Do you want to add your voice and your time and your talent

and your money to make that possible? And I think just that approach has allowed, you know, the thing to really grow and feel like it's not our story, but it's the story of a million people now from 100 countries. And the eight and a half million people that now have clean water because of those everyday people that engaged. Yeah, that answer in what you said earlier about the storytelling part of what you were doing, it really is two good examples of how Charity Water disrupted the traditional model. And I want to talk about that because I think you've probably learned so much. What else, if there is anything else that you disrupted, I'd love to hear you share that. And then on top of that, take it away, just keep going. What were the emotions?

Were there hurdles, emotional hurdles? Was there fear, concern about disrupting? Or was it, hey, you know what? It's just as simple as, that made me feel this way. And let's just do it this way. I'm just curious what your history and your experience was with disruption. The very beginning. So if we rewind 12 years, on paper,

I was uniquely unqualified to ever start a charity, to ever make any sort of impact. I had no experience. I'd never worked at a charity before. I had no institutional knowledge. Twelve years later, looking back, in some ways, I was uniquely qualified for those very same reasons. And what I was doing is I was just doing focus groups. I was out talking to, I was 30, broke.

You know, I'd come back from Africa and I was living on a friend's closet floor. And he had taken me in his Soho loft in New York City. I was just out there trying to see this vision of a world where every human had clean water, where everybody had the most basic need for health and for life met. But just talking to everyday people about giving, I realized there was this cynicism. There was this skepticism. People didn't trust charities. And I just started asking them, well, what would make you trust?

If we had a blank sheet of paper, what would the perfect charity look like? What would you want? What would the values be? What would that giving experience look? and what would it feel like. And from those focus groups, the pillars all came together, the 100% model. People wanted to know where 100% of their money went. And some of them were even okay for 100% of it going to overhead.

But they just wanted to know exactly where their money would go. And the second, the proof pillar, what did my money do? Did it affect any change in the world? Did something actually happen? You know, this idea of a charity speaking to people and building an epic and imaginative and inspiring brand that was not. not shame-based or guilt-based, but it was an invitation to a party, you know, to this amazing thing. So the Charity Water brand developed.

And then this idea, pretty basically, let's just work with local partners. Let's not send anyone that looks like me around the world to dig wells in Africa, or India, or Southeast Asia. And, you know, look, people were definitely objecting in the beginning. I mean, this won't work. This is stupid. How are you going to pay for your overhead? You guys are going to go bankrupt.

There were definitely a lot of naysayers. that we just didn't know any better. We were trying to create the thing that would get us excited. And I think whatever your company is or whatever product you're building, you can just start with you and your friends. You know, what's broken about what is the problem in your industry or with the other products that are out there that you're going to fix? And how is that company going to behave differently?

What would their values be? How would they speak to their customers? Would they have a personality? What would the brand feel like? So we just kind of ignored everybody. We ignored all the naysayers in the beginning. And packaging these things together, they worked. I mean, I remember people early on saying this is the first charitable gift they had ever given them in their life.

Imagine how good that feels. When you're not robbing donors from other charities, you're getting someone to be generous and to trust for the very first time in their life. And we would just feed on these stories. And that so encouraged us. And so, you know, things went really well. We had eight years of consecutive growth. $2,9,000, $9,000, $1,000, $23, $25, $45,000.

It was just up and to the right. And then we had our first bad year. We had our first down year, and it felt awful. Not only did we not grow, we shrank. And we had a couple big donations that didn't come back due to market conditions. And I had an existential leadership crisis, and I tried to quit and hire a professional CEO. and say, look, I've tapped out. And eventually wound up taking some time off and actually saying,

the people I really have respect for, they don't run away from their problems. You know, it's this long obedience in the same direction. And they do have grit. And, you know, we were going into our 10th year after our down year in the 9th. I'm like, well, I can't quit before at least finishing out the decade. That's right. And I just started thinking about, well, why don't I stop whining about it and try and solve the problem? And what we realized was a pivot was needed.

The thing that got us to the first quarter of a billion dollars raised, the first $250 million would not be the thing that would get us to a billion. And it was really as simple as we built a one-time donation engine. The birthdays were great, but people only did one birthday. You know, a kid would only donate one birthday. So we'd keep getting new people time and time again. So at 10 years, we pivoted to a subscription model, the Netflix or the HBO or the Spotify model, and that then drove 40% growth the next year and 40% growth this year.

And it was just this willingness to scrap something that had been working. I mean, imagine just killing the product that you raised $60 million and the people knew you for and saying, okay, we're going to try something completely different. We're going to take a risk. And it's, you know, that's what I'm so proud of is just the people that work here, the spirit and the culture of innovation, being willing to scrap the old. and try the new. And it doesn't always work. You know, we've definitely done some things that that haven't worked, that haven't resonated. Well, that's what I want to talk about because, you know,

many times we focus on the extraordinary journeys and stories like Charity Water over 12 years, but I'm glad you shared with us. And I'd love for you to share what you're comfortable sharing. Take us back to what you just said. You said you had an existential leadership crisis. So this is going into year nine or somewhere in that range. And to the point where you, the founder, the heart in the head in the early days. And then a great team, great success, tons of accolades and all that good stuff. And yet you get to a point where you go, I need to hire a professional CEO. I can't lead, I can't captain the ship anymore. I think it's very real for a lot of people. What happened? Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book because I actually

thought some of those experiences. A lot of times people look at Charity Water from the outsider. It just feels like we just did everything right. And we just did everything right. really didn't. And, you know, I would hope that some of those lessons or vulnerabilities would actually just encourage other people that they're not alone. For me, you know, what happened? So if people had been saying, Ken, for years that I was just going to burn out, and I would just laugh at them. I mean, you know, before I started having kids, I was doing 100 airplanes a year. I mean, I was on a flight every three days. I was making 150 speeches. It was just energy and passion and up on stages, running around, just telling the story, inviting people in, and just

driving all this growth. And it gave me life and it gave me energy. And, you know, I would say to someone, yeah, you told me I was going to burn out seven years ago. Guess what? I just did Flight 76. Like, take that. Exactly. What I didn't know was the burnout came not because of an expensive energy, really. It became because, well, things had always gone right, really. And at least when it came to growth. And for us, growth meant human lives are being saved. So I think for a lot of companies, right, you could have a down year and say, all right, I'm rich enough, you know, so I'm not going to go buy the, you know, big vacation house or, you know, we're not going to, I don't know, fly private on our vacation this year. It's a leaner year. For us, it's live saved. So we went in

year eight from getting a million human beings, clean water for the first time in their life, to 820,000 a year later. We'd let down. almost 200,000 people, or at least I felt like I'd personally let down 200,000 people because we weren't able to repeat the success of the previous year. Raising more money doesn't mean I live in a nicer apartment or, you know, drive a nicer car. It just means people stop dying. So the stakes felt a lot higher. And what I realized was that so much of my identity was in the numbers, was in the success of Charity Water. And as long as Charity Water was succeeding, I was succeeding. But when we didn't, I wasn't. And I took it so personally. And, you know, I wound up

taking a month off and going out to visit some friends in Reading, California, and somebody had given us this beautiful house on top of a mountain overlooking Shasta Lake. And I took out my wife and my son. And it was supposed to be just this time of rest. And basically, it rained the entire month. It rained more in California in that month than it had in 30 years. The house was so high, we were in our own weather system. So for us, it was actually hail. So I couldn't see the lake. The house starts leaking, so we're running around with pots and pants.

I mean, it was like a metaphor for, you know, the period of my life surrounded in clouds and darkness and hail and dampness. But I used that time to kind of pick myself up. And I remember having a conversation with my dad. And he's like, Scott, if no one has ever told you, like, not everything goes up into the right, like your whole life. Like, I was in business for 30 years. you don't grow 30 years in a row. It's just you have good years, you have bad years. You know, there are, I mean, even if you just Google business S-curds, right? There's times when you need to keep reinventing yourself to get that next growth curve. Or you die. There are plenty of companies that just go extinct because they never do that. So, you know, I realized, okay, hey, this is unhealthy that so much of my identity is just in Charity Waters numbers. And, you know, I'm a husband. I'm a father. I have a lot of other things besides just Charity Water. And then I came back and I think I just said, look, I've got to go.

Let me try and solve this problem and see if I can get us growing again. And then also let me configure my role in the organization. I had an amazing COO that I promoted who'd been with us for five years at the point and started trying to do less of the things that robbed me of life, less of the things that, frankly, I was bad at and more of the things that gave me life, more of the invention and the innovation and the storytelling. And it took off from there. And a couple years later, we're going to be double where we were at that year.

Wow. See, that's an important point for other leaders to hear, hey, it's okay for you to admit, I shouldn't be doing this. And I'm just curious, what was the shift like in the office when you came back? You know, they all know what's going on, at least your key leaders do, the team that you're surrounded by, when you came back and promoted that COO and said, all right, I'm going to focus on the things I do well and get out of the other things. What was the collective team response to that? Well, I think they didn't think I was actually going to leave. I mean, I went out.

I'm like, no, really, I mean it. So I remember coming back and they're like, yeah, we thought you'd probably want to stick out year 10, right? It was, I had a really encouraging team. I mean, it was actually my exec team that told me instead of quitting, why don't you take a month off and see how you feel after a month off, like take some time to think about it. So they were really encouraging. And it was a game changer for me to elevate other people and just say, look, I was in the internal meetings. You know, 50 or 60% of my time was in internal meetings as the organization

gotten so big. And I just, I didn't have that much value to them, frankly. A one-on-one with me is not a great experience. I'm just like, how are you doing? Like, you know, see you need a good movie's late. You know, it's not really where my skill set is. So, you know, hiring and putting people in positions that love doing that, that loved professional development and caring for our team was then freed me up

to do more of the invention and figure out on how to get our growth back and what new things we should be investing in. I mean, that led to a big investment in virtual reality. You know, we made our first VR film three, four years ago now. And we shot it on eight gopros before they were even the VR cameras. And we used that early film, an eight-minute VR film

of a 13-0 girl getting clean water for the first time in her life to raise millions and millions and millions of dollars. So those were the projects that I then had the space to focus on. Yeah. Well, I want to ask you this, when you took on the new role, and so you said, okay, this is what I'm going to focus on.

This is what I'm going to do. I'm just curious as you begin to get a little bit of freedom and you saw the numbers go back up, did you deal with some temptations to do some things that may have been outside the original vision? I think this is something we rarely talk about. And I mean temptations in the organization, meaning, okay, I've got more free time.

I'm re-energized. Were there things that came along where you had to go, ooh, that could be really great. Oh, that's going to rob the original vision. Just curious about that. Yeah. Well, I had a great mentor that I write about in the book for years, and he taught me the concept of squirrels.

So I like to chase squirrels. And, you know, oh, squirrel! And when you're the CEO, you know, a bunch of people go and chase that squirrel with you. And sometimes you don't catch the squirrel. And even if you do, you know, it's not a very good meal. That's true. It wasn't worth chasing.

He had me once in a coaching session with my leadership team. He had me conduct a meeting standing on top of the conference room table looking down at six execs, which is a, I'm six one. So it's a really uncomfortable feeling. And he was trying to teach me, this is the CEO's megaphone effect. Whether you like it or not, this is just the byproduct of being the leader, of being the CEO. So you go say, hey, I'm interested in this thing over here, like 19 people. go running after that thing. You didn't even think it was a good idea. You spent no more than 30 seconds thinking about that. And he really taught me that a discipline is required. And I would try and sleep on it

for a day or 24 or 48 hours. And then often I'd say, hey, I really believe this is not a squirrel. I mean, VR was like that. You can imagine, like, I see a VR film. And I remember seeing, like, the Marriott show off a penthouse over Dubai. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can take people to Ethiopia. I can intravenously deliver redemptive content. And what was most interesting to me about VR was not actually 360 or the headsets or any of that. It was attention. It was undivided attention. People were going to put their phone away. And you could not be checking the phone. You can't be distracted when I have a headset and headphones on and I've taken you to another world and I can you know, intravenously deliver redemptive content into you and make you feel something

and then ask you to act perhaps the minute the headphone comes off. So I really convinced my team. I didn't think this was a squirrel. I thought we should be early. One of the first charity VR films at all and not wait to see if this whole space even developed. And then I got buy-in and we wound up investing, I don't know, 50 or 70 grand, which would have felt like a lot at the time. But then turning that into millions and millions and millions of dollars. Wow. So yeah, I think the biggest temptation, maybe over 12 years, people ask a lot about the colon. It's charity, colon, water. And the initial idea was so much bigger than water.

The mission, or mission number one, was to bring clean drinking water to everybody on the planet. But my vision was to reinvent and reimagine charity and launch a myriad organizations, charity shelter, charity hunger, charity malaria, charity health. I mean, I wanted to solve every single problem known to hear. humanity and I've become the Richard Branson of charity. Yeah. And one of the things that I think I'm most proud of is that we really did focus. I mean, Ken, it's taken us 10 years to get really good at delivering high quality,

sustainable water solutions around the world. It was taken 10 years. And, you know, how dare I go and dilute that at the moment, you know, because I'm bored, you know, because I want to go build schools? Why don't we actually go to the one out of three schools on the planet that don't have clean water toilets and take the thing that we now have 12 years of expertise and go build water projects at schools? That's right. You know, rather than go build health clinics, you know, so many health clinics out there are giving out ARVs. They're giving out drugs with dirty river water.

That's right. So if I really cared about health, why don't we apply the thing that we now have demonstrated knowledge and proficiency in and go bring that to that space? So probably the biggest temptation would be to actually go back to the original vision and become more of a dilettante. And we've really resisted that. And people ask me, I mean, there's no next, there's no charity colon next right now. I've been lucky enough to mentor some social entrepreneurs who are taking the 100% model and taking some of our ideas of branding and storytelling and starting their own organizations tackling those other problems. So I'm happy that I can give them time and a little bit of money. but I think we'll stay focused.

I mean, we've gotten 8.5 million people clean water out of 663 million. So that is 178th of the work. That's right. I really feel like we're at the very beginning of this journey. I mean, God willing, I have the energy. I mean, the best should be yet to come. And people ask all the time, they're like, did you guys ever think, okay, you've now raised a third of a billion dollars and, you know, from grassroots individuals all around the world?

Did you ever think you'd be so successful? And the real answer to that question is I thought we would be infinitely more successful by now. This is a fraction of what I imagined. I thought it would be billions and billions raised by now. I thought we would have helped 50 to or 100 million people, not 8 million people. So, you know, I mean, it's clean water, right? Everybody could agree on that. There's not a single person listing that thinks kids should be dying from swamp water

or women should be walking eight hours, right? It's 100% of the money, whether it's a dollar or $100 or a million dollars, all that money is going straight to help people. So I'm mainly just baffled sometimes or maybe a little discouraged that we've done so little that we just haven't moved more people from the embrace of apathy towards action. And I think, you know, hopefully the best is yet to come. It is. I'm glad you said that because I think you know this, but I'll say it as an old friend.

I mean, you've taken on one of the world's biggest problems. So that's why you got so much left to solve. You know, I mean, you didn't take on a little hill. This is the mountain. I mean, you've shared stats before that are mind-boggling about all the disease and all the problems that come from dirty water. So you're getting to the source of it and you're doing great stuff. Before I let you go, I want to talk culture for a minute because you're an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. And here you go, 12 years folks, give you a snapshot. Now you got 70 people, Maybe 70 plus. You know, who knows what you're at right this second.

We're at 80 now. 80. Okay, so you're at 80 people. I'm curious when you have an organization, could be a business or, again, a charity like this, where story is so vitally important. How do you keep the culture focused on those early days? So you get young people coming in, maybe older people, professionals that have come from maybe the business world. They come in and work for you, and they're one of the 80 now. How do you make sure that they don't.

don't lose sight of the early days, the days that shaped the organization. It's a great question. I mean, I'm still telling the origin story. The book starts at the origin story. That's right. The 10-year anniversary video called The Spring that we made. You know, there was another one that everybody was betting against that. You know, when we told people we were going to invest time and money and make a 20-minute

internet film for Facebook, people were like, haven't you heard people have the attention span of bumblebees or mosquitoes these days. Like a 30 second film is too long. And we're like, well, we can't tell our story. We're move people in 30 seconds. So we're going to do a 20-minute film. And, you know, it was one of the other bets that just paid off because it was the origin story.

There are photos from the early office. There are photos from the first employees talking about how hard it was, talking about how we were trying to build it. And that video now has 11 million views. And it's now raised, you know, over $5 million. from a $50,000 budget. So I think, you know, when we bring new people on, we are starting at the beginning. These are the values of the organization.

We have something called isms here. I think there are 13 or 15 of them where these are the cultural things that are unique to charity water. So when you work here, we need you to behave like this. We need you to practice these things. And there's a pretty intense onboarding experience, which starts at the beginning, talks about how the organization was formed, some of the early challenges. And now having a 99,000-word book, I think will only help the story. Because now there's a lot of the stuff that we never talked about before.

There are lawsuits in the book. There are some real failure stories that I think weren't necessarily part of the onboarding, but you can really unpack in a longer form in the context of a greater success. Well, I'm glad you mentioned it. And again, folks, if you're new to us, I mentioned before, Before the interview started, we do have, coming out of the interview here, we'll have the information for you to go download or listen to the very first time we had Scott on this program to hear the origin story, but the book itself thirst, a story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world. It really does have a lot of failures. We didn't get to all of the failures.

We got to some today, and it was so refreshing. But Scott, before I let you go, I'm going to start the pitch. You come in and edit and add to, okay? But I want folks who may be touched by this opportunity to make a difference, whether be with your coffee money or going showing your kids the videos. Charitywater.org. It is a phenomenal organization. Maybe your company. Maybe your small business wants to make a difference somewhere in the world.

Charitywater.org. It's so simple to give. One of the things we didn't talk about is Scott and his organization's amazing transparency. This is an organization that does it right. you can be sure that your return on investment is guaranteed. Scott, I teed it up because I know you're humble and I just started it. What would you add to that to our audience if they want to connect? You did great, Ken.

Come on. I put you on the road. There you go. You can make the ask instead of me. That's right. I mean, the thing I'm most excited about is actually the spring community. So it is now our monthly community where we're trying to really innovate. And there are 30,000 people from 100 countries that are showing up not just once,

not with one birthday or one $10 donation, but showing up monthly as they're able. And that is driving the growth. That is driving sustainable growth. And the beauty of January 1 rolling around and not starting over, not having to go get those next 10,000 people to donate their birthdays. But having this loyal, committed group of generous people, we're like, we'll stick with you.

You guys continue to deliver. You continue to live out your values and be transparent. And we'll keep giving 30 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month or whatever we can. And our commitment is to just deliver stories of impact, tell people where 100% of their money is going. So I'm so passionate about that community and innovating in that space.

I mean, the average person now subscribes to 11 things. Right? We've got Netflix. We've got HBO or we've got Spotify or Apple Music or our magazines or our drop boxes of the world. And we said, we get value from all those things. What if we could create a totally pure, subscription program where 100% of the value every single month gets passed on to people through

this basic need. So that's just charitywater.org slash spring. And that's my pitch, but that's the one probably most important thing I'd love to invite people to check out or to tell their friends about or to become a part of. Let's do it. We've got a lot of business leaders, owners listening in folks. Listen, you're looking for write-offs every year. What a great write-off this is, comes right off the books, and can be something really special

for your organization. charity water.org. Again, go get the book. It is fantastic because it's going to encourage your heart as a business leader, as a business professional. We know a lot of you listen to this program just for personal growth. And if you've got a dream and it's on your heart and yet you're terrified about how it can happen, this story is going to connect with you. Again, the book is Thirst, a story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world. And Ken, I'll just say, I'm not making it. any money from the book. So I turned over the advance and all the proceeds. So I wanted that to

be pure. And I wanted people to actually be supporting the organization when they get that. That's right. I'm glad you stipulated that. That's who you are. That's fantastic. And hey, you've long been somebody that I have admired and been inspired by. I know you're not without fear, but you do have tremendous courage. And we appreciate you. I know you got a lot going on. Best wishes for the book. I want as many people that are listening today that can go buy it. Give Charitywater.org a visit. I think you'll be blown away by the stories and it will draw you in. But Scott, thank you for being with us. We always appreciate having you. Thanks, kid. See you. All right. Hope you enjoyed Scott. Again, you need to go back. If you'd love the

backstory of how this vision started, episode 114 is a great listen and it'll give you the whole picture. Now, I told you before the interview that Scott was going to be joining us at our Entree Leadership One Day event. It's in Phoenix, Arizona on November 9th. Those of you who did not hear the announcement need to know, we have a special podcast listener rate. Why? Because I love you. Because I'm a man of the people and I go in there. I storm the castle and I demand discounts for you. And they have to say yes, because they know that you people will throw a riot if I don't give you a discount. So we've got one for if you want to get the podcast listener discount for this because it's a live stream event. So, you can watch it anywhere.

So that's why you want to take part of this special day. Use the code podcast at checkout. We've got the link for this event in the show notes. So go to the show notes, click on it, buy it, thank me as you're using the podcast code. That's it. Podcast. Just type that in. You're going to get the discount.

All right. of great stuff. Our friends at InfusionSoft are giving you a great ebook and it's absolutely free. It's entitled, Harness Your Inner Genius. If you've reached the point of get it done yesterday, then this tool is for you. In this ebook, they include some worksheets that are going to help you learn where your genius lies, how to manage around your constraints, and how to create a personalized plan to take your leadership to the next level. This thing is very, very popular. offered it before if you've never taken us up on this. Our friends in the Fugustra have given you some great stuff here. You can get it by going to the link in the show notes

episode 289. It's entitled Harness Your Inner Genius. It's an e-book. It's easy to read and easy to apply. So go get it. All right, folks, that is going to do it on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so very much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey folks, I want to make sure that you're aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Chris Hogan Show. I am so excited to be able to talk to you all week in and week out. We're going to talk about your money, your life, your dreams, and your goals. You know why?

Because I'm your coach. Whether we're talking about building wealth, paying off your home early, investing, paying for college, and guess what? How to become an everyday millionaire. We're going to focus on taking your calls because you want to be a little bit of your calls. because you matter to me. Together, we can do this. This is the Chris Hogan Show. If you'd like to hear full episodes,

just search the Chris Hogan Show in Apple Podcasts or go to chrishogan360.com.