The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 184: Scott Harrison - CEO of Charity Water "The Power of Storytelling"

Starting point is 00:00:00 We design everything. Just as physical appearance matters when you go on a date, the physical appearance of your work matters too. You could have the most interesting message, but if it comes in an ugly package, you're already at a disadvantage. Nothing says boring more than a keynote or PowerPoint that looks like it was made by a stuffy executive. We believe anyone can have a basic eye for design. We don't ask you to become designers, but rather to make an effort in the appearance of the documents you create, knowing they represent the organization. If this is new for you, our design team is always ready and willing to help. So just ask whether it's a fax cover sheet or a PowerPoint for three people, it has to look great. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed. With the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities for the self-employed. To meet this end, FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly.

Starting point is 00:01:28 The all-new Fresh Books is not a new. only easy to use. It's also packed full of powerful features. Like, create and send professional looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to freshbooks.com slash learning and enter Learning Leader in the How Did You Hear About Us section? Hey, and welcome to The Learning Leader Show.

Starting point is 00:02:10 I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. What an incredible featured leader tonight. It's Scott Harrison, the founder and CEO of Charity Water. Charity Water has raised over $240 million and brought clean water to 6.4 million people worldwide. Phenomenal. It's unbelievable. A few of the topics Scott and I got into, why radical transparency is the key to

Starting point is 00:02:35 success. Then the power of storytelling. And Scott goes into a few stories that will knock you on your back. Let me speak to us a couple times. And then his favorite interview question to ask candidates who want to work for their company. I loved this part. And I think you will thoroughly enjoy this conversation with Scott Harrison. Scott, I really have been looking forward to this conversation. It's been, I've been admiring the work that you do, all the great things that you put out. the world. So one, thank you for being here on the Learning Leader Show. Thanks for having me. I have a question around sustaining excellence. You've been able to do this over an extended period of time and others that you've surrounded yourself with have as well. Curious, what are

Starting point is 00:03:26 some of the common themes you've experienced in those who sustain excellence? I think first valuing excellence is, you know, may sound so simple, but I think it's not a core value or priority for so many organizations. Some of the organizations are kind of okay to, you know, to do good work, not excellent work. So it is actually one of the stated written down core values at Charity Water and has been for many years ever since we did that exercise. So we have the values here are integrity, generosity, respect, excellence, passion, and innovation. And then we have a set of isms, which is kind of like, you know, you're at Charity Water if these things happen.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And there are some isms around excellence as well. One of them is we design everything. So we, you know, even internal documents, internal presentations get designed because we care about the details. You know, even if it's just seen by five or six people, we have an internal ism around typos. You know, typos are unacceptable in internal communications. and then if they're unacceptable in internal communications, then that almost always follows to external communications. So it's just something that we've always really cared about

Starting point is 00:04:52 and you'll hear around the organization, was that excellent? Did we do that with excellence? And we actually just produced two back-to-back events last week. One was our gala, which I would have given us very high marks. And then the other was a dinner for some of our major donor, which I would have given us pretty low marks. And as we got together to kind of talk about that, you know, we said, look, we didn't bring our A game. We lacked excellence in the following, you know, six or

Starting point is 00:05:24 seven different aspects. So it's just, it's something we care about and it's something we really, you know, continue to, to measure. Wow. I love specifically the ism around the designing of everything and the no typos part because I, for, I don't know, for a rather reason, I think there's a lot of place you go where this seems to be accepted. And so your point on you have to actually value excellence. No one's ever said that before, but it makes so much sense in regards to that's got to be one of your core values is to actually have a value of things being excellent. And that's both internal and external because you've probably heard other organizations

Starting point is 00:06:00 where they're like, hey, it's no big deal to slap it together because it's an internal only thing. And I love the fact that you have said, no, no, no, no. that will then seep out into external. And so everything must be designed. It must be excellent. Yeah, I just found the actual copy. And this is kind of the internal staff and intern handbook. It says, we design everything.

Starting point is 00:06:20 Just as physical appearance matters when you go on a date, the physical appearance of your work matters too. You could have the most interesting message, but if it comes in an ugly package, you're already at a disadvantage. Nothing says boring more than a keynote or PowerPoint that looks like it was made by a stuffy executive. We believe anyone can have a basic eye,

Starting point is 00:06:37 for design. We don't ask you to become designers, but rather to make an effort in the appearance of the documents you create, knowing they represent the organization. If this is new for you, our design team is always ready and willing to help. So just ask, whether it's a fax cover sheet or a PowerPoint for three people, it has to look great. Wow. So cool. I love it, man. Absolutely love it. What a great way to start. So, Scott, for those people who don't know when a stranger, you meet at a dinner party who has no idea who you are, says, oh, hey, Scott, nice to meet you. What do you do? How do you respond? I normally say I work at an organization called Charity Water, who is an organization

Starting point is 00:07:20 focused on trying to see an end to the global water crisis that 660 million people around the world are drinking dirty water that puts their lives and the lives of their children at risk every day, that it's a completely safe. solvable problem and we are trying to see a day on earth when every man, woman, child has their most basic need in clean water met. If we have more time at the dinner conversation, I might say what we're really doing is also trying to reinvent charity, reinvent the way people think of and experience charitable giving, bringing new levels of transparency of excellence, of design, of branding, of storytelling

Starting point is 00:08:04 into a sector that has really lost the trust of so many people. For example, 42% of Americans distrust charities and 70% of Americans think charities are either bad at handling money or very bad at handling money. So we are really trying to kind of reframe that experience, to reframe the way people think, because we believe in generosity, we believe in compassion and empathy, we believe in serving others with our time and our talent and our money and realize that a lot of people aren't doing that because they don't trust the system. You use a term called radical transparency.

Starting point is 00:08:44 And if you go to your website at charitywater.org, you can click right in and see the annual reports, audits, salary, survey, all these things you can drill out into them. Can you explain radical transparency and your belief behind that? Because obviously it stems from the lack of trust and you work. working to build up that trust. So I'd love to hear more about that. Yeah. I mean, when we started, you know, this was as simple as just telling people what we did with their money. And, you know, as I was, so I had the advantage of starting the organization not coming out of the nonprofit sector. In fact, I was a nightclub promoter for 10 years here in New York City before leaving that life behind, going to post-war Liberia on a

Starting point is 00:09:33 humanitarian mission coming face to face with the water crisis and then trying to start the organization to do something about it. But I had the advantage of not really, maybe not having the trappings of how traditional charities ran. And I was trying to create an organization that I would believe in and that my friends would believe in. My friends, many of them who would never give a dollar to the United Way or the Red Cross or the March of Dimes or, you know, the American Cancer Society, let's just say, these organizations that to them, you know, represented opacity and kind of even bureaucracy in some cases. So I thought that you had to address the most important problem people have with charities, which is all around money. And the most common question you hear is, well, how much of my money

Starting point is 00:10:24 is actually going to reach whatever the need is, you know, whatever people were trying to help. And, you know, charities put up pie graphs and, you know, the honest answer is that number changes every year. It's a dynamic number for the basic charitable model. So I wondered if we could take the most common objection people have completely off the table and answer that question 100% and answer that question 100% of the time. So how much of my money will reach people in need? Every single penny you will ever give this organization as long. as this organization is, the doors are open. So to do that, it was a really risky venture, but I opened up two separate bank accounts with $100 each, made this public promise that we would

Starting point is 00:11:14 never touch the public's money for overhead or flights or office or salaries or, you know, toner for the copier. And every penny we would raise would go directly to funding clean water projects to bring people access to clean water around the world. And then separately, we would somehow figure out how to go get a very small group of people excited about paying for overhead the stuff nobody else wanted to pay for and that would be in the second bank account. You know, more on that later, but that was the very simple premise. We would be so fanatical about the 100% model. We would pay back credit card fees. So if someone was listening to this and was inspired and donated $100 in their American Express on Charitywater.org, we only get 97 or 98.

Starting point is 00:12:01 we would make up the difference, put the money back that we didn't even get from the credit card company and send all $100 to the field. So that was idea number one. Idea number two was because money would not be fungible ever at this organization, then we could actually track it to its destination and tell people more about what the money actually did in the service of others. So we would be funding a variety of water project infrastructure from well. wells to rainwater harvesting systems to massive gravity systems to bio sand filters to pond sand filters to carbon UV, UF filters, a lot of different solutions across 24 countries. But we would have this capital infrastructure that we could photograph and even get the GPS coordinates of where these projects were and then make all of that data public on Google Earth and Google Maps from day one. So we were partly fortunate with timing because Charity Water and Google Earth started the same time. So Google had given us this free place to tell the public what we had done with their money and the results of that.

Starting point is 00:13:13 So that's true today. 10 years later, you can go on our website and you can see satellite pictures. And in many cases, you can see communities lined up outside these water points drinking clean water as the satellite image. imagery has progressed over the last decade. So really, it was a simple model. Give away 100% of the public's money and tell them what you did with the money. And then over the years, just look for new and interesting and innovative ways to further that transparency. So a few years ago, we began to crowdsource million-dollar drilling rigs for our partners in Ethiopia

Starting point is 00:13:50 as we wanted to increase our capacity to be able to drill more wells. So 10,000 people funded a million-dollar drilling rigs. rig and we gave them an accounting, even if you'd given $7, we showed you know, the drilling rig that your $7 went to. And then we mounted a GPS tracker on the drilling rig and we gave it a Twitter account. So people could actually follow the rig many years later that they'd only given $7 or $50 or $100 to and see where it was on any given day in Ethiopia. So, you know, that's, those are just a couple examples of how we've tried to be.

Starting point is 00:14:28 transparent, really in the spirit of connecting donors, believing that if people could see the result of their hard-earned money, many who are giving, making sacrifices that they would continue to give, they would continue to help others. I've got to believe, how have you found a way, I guess, better way to ask this question, to build a culture or a company slash nonprofit that is set up for these incredible, incredibly creative ideas. I mean, you've got to build a framework, I think, at times to promote this idea creation. I mean, just everything you just said in that last response when it comes to tracking your $7 to putting a GoPro to the Twitter. I mean, all these things that come from ideas,

Starting point is 00:15:12 somebody either from you or people within your company. How, you know, how have you fostered an environment like that? Well, we hire creative people and we value creativity and, and, and, and We're always looking for new ways to tell our story and new ways to connect donors to their impact. And, you know, we love technology. So a lot of the people that work at Charity Water would have come from Twitter, Google, Adobe, Zinga. You know, it's a pretty heavy tech community here at Charity Water. So when something new like virtual reality comes out, you know, the whole team here at Charity Water jumps on it. I mean, we made our first virtual reality film last May with eight modified gopros.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And, you know, we're out in the market, you know, before many of these huge movie studios and gaming companies. So we're always, we're early adopters. We do a lot of stuff that doesn't work as well, but we're really excited to try new things. Maybe another way of saying that is we would get really bored if we were just doing the same thing. if we were telling the same story. And I think culturally, people would leave if we weren't pushing the envelope, innovating, trying new things. What's a big idea slash experiment that you try that just flat out didn't work?

Starting point is 00:16:40 Well, how about I give you one that almost didn't work? Okay. Last Monday. So last Monday, we, well, I'll take you back to our gala two years ago. Actually, I'll take you back to the beginning of the gala. We threw an annual fundraising event in New York City for about 10 years. years. And it used to be this huge egalitarian affair where it was only 200 bucks to come. And the party eventually grew to over 2,000 people coming to the gala. And we would find creative ways to raise

Starting point is 00:17:09 money the night of, water walks, people pumping wells and unlocking donation, you know, giving during a live auction, although getting no actual item or good in return. But we scale this event to a couple thousand people and then we just said one year, you know, there are 2,000 people that are here for the party and about 500 people that really care about the organization. So why don't we try just throwing an event for the 500 people who deeply care about the organization? So we said, look, we've been railing against the boring sit-down gala dinner concept for 10 years. Why don't we try one?

Starting point is 00:17:46 And what would it look like if charity did a dinner gala? How would we make that interesting? How would we innovate? So we had just filmed this virtual reality piece that I was telling you about, which follows a 13-year-old girl in Ethiopia over the six days where she gets clean water for her entire life. So it's a beautifully moving film. People weep often as they see this short eight-minute film. I said, well, wouldn't it be amazing if after dinner we could strap 400 virtual reality headsets on all of the attendees in black tie, press play at the exact same time? and then eight minutes later when the film was done and they took the headsets down,

Starting point is 00:18:24 hopefully emotional and inspired. We asked them all for money in that moment. So we did that and we raised $2.4 million. That felt innovative. It was incredibly hard to get the tech. It was incredibly hard to manage this with 150 volunteers. There was a lot of preloading the devices. A lot of things that could have gone wrong,

Starting point is 00:18:43 but we generally pulled that off and about 98% of the people had a great experience in synchronicity. and 98% of the devices worked flawlessly. So a year later, we say, how on earth would we ever top that? I mean, 400 people at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Temple of Dender surrounded by 15 BC Egyptian temples in Black Tie watching VR and giving $2.4 million to help 80,000 people.

Starting point is 00:19:09 I mean, what are we going to do to top that? So we do a brainstorm and we brought in a couple members of our community and we got this concept. what if we could match up all 400 people coming in Black Tie with 400 people living in a village without clean water? And we said, okay, well, this is possible. This is just a huge creative team project. We'd have to live in this village for weeks.

Starting point is 00:19:32 We'd have to document the stories of all 400 people living there from the children to the 90-year-olds. And then, you know, how would we deliver this content to the 400 people coming in the Gala? So we weren't sure of any of that. But we went out, we got the content, the most inspiring stories of 400 beautiful souls living in a village called Adietot in northwestern Ethiopia. And then we said, well, what if we delivered them all on iPads?

Starting point is 00:19:57 What if we got 400 iPads? And every single person coming to the gala was matched up with their counterpart living in this village. Pregnant women coming to the gala would be matched up with pregnant women living in this village. Couples that had been married for many years at the gala would be matched up with couples in this village who had been married. for many years. So that's just a huge amount of work, you know, putting 400 individual stories together, then loading them onto 400 iPads and then matching them up with the demographic of the 400 people coming. So we do all that. We said, what would be even cooler is after all 400 people got to know the person they've been matched up with, what if we asked them just to donate $30?

Starting point is 00:20:41 Now, many of these are wealthy people. Many of them would have come to give more money. But what if we just asked them to give $30 to give the person they just met clean water. So in this village in Aieto, it would cost $12,000 to drill a well for all 400 people. So we give everybody the iPads. I give them an unlock code. They spend five to seven minutes meeting their person. And then I stand on stage and say, guys, I just want you, I'm going to give you a giving device. I just want you to donate $30 right now and give your person clean water. Now at this point, it's 10 o'clock at night, which means it's 6 a.m. in Ethiopia in this village, Adieto, and in advance of knowing that all 400 people were going to give $30 and give their person clean water, I had dispatched our drilling

Starting point is 00:21:25 rig a little early. And the idea was, at that moment when the $12,000 had been raised, $30 at a time, I would open up a live satellite link to this village in Ethiopia, where the community would be standing around the drilling rig. And the 400 people in the Metropolitan Museum who have just given $3,000, would watch the clean water they had just made possible 4,000 miles and eight time zones away with the community for the very first time. That all sounds great, except in the 10 tests that we did with the satellite equipment, five of them failed, and we got no signal. So we went forward with it anyway, and at 10 o'clock at night last Monday,

Starting point is 00:22:06 I tried to open up a live satellite link for the 11th time with 5, 50% of the 10% failure rate and thank God it worked. And at six in the morning, you know, these two communities of foreigner people are linked by a satellite on a, you know, two-story screen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And the people in the museum are weeping and shouting and clapping. And the people in Ethiopia are shouting and dancing and clapping. And it was a really, really beautiful moment that there was no backup plan for. We wound up raising three. $3.1 million to help an additional 310 communities get clean water because people are so inspired by seeing the real-time tangible action of just $30 that some of them gave $30,000 and $50,000 and one family gave $100,000. Wow. This is just blowing my mind, man. I take notes, Scott, for all these episodes and conversations. And I don't think I've ever written down the word wow more than once, except for now. So this is just, it's really cool to, you talk about storytelling and the power of that.

Starting point is 00:23:21 And you're modeling that behavior right now as we speak. You have pretty much this whole conversation. And I've read, you know, done quite a bit of pre-work prior to this conversation after following you pretty much as a fan. Can you share, talk about the power of storytelling and how that has helped fuel some of your success? I just believe that human beings are creatures of story and we respond, we feel things when we hear stories and we don't respond well to mind numbing statistics. So we have this huge challenge of Charity Water in that our entire existence from a mission standpoint, from helping people get clean water, is trying to get them to understand and respond to a problem that does. not face them. So I'm going to make 100 in speeches, you know, by the end of this year. And, you know, without exception, really, 99.99% of all the people in every audience that I talk to

Starting point is 00:24:30 has never had to drink dirty water in their entire life. They have never walked eight hours hauling 40 pounds of dirty water on their back. And they have never held a child watching their children die of diarrhea of dysentitary. So it is so foreign when I get up and say, hey, folks, 663 million people worldwide are drinking dirty water. People, you go numb. First of all, we can't process 663 million of anything, let alone people suffering in a condition that we just have no paradigm for.

Starting point is 00:25:08 We've had clean water our entire lives. America has 100% water coverage. you know, France, Germany, Italy, 100% water coverage. So the only way that we can get people to care is by telling them stories of what it might look like if you were one of the 663 million people trapped in the water crisis. Or if you were one of the people that got clean water for the first time in your life and what it meant, probably the most powerful story in the last 10 years for me personally is a story that I experienced firsthand, again, from Ethiopia.

Starting point is 00:25:43 So this is, I've mentioned Ethiopia a bunch. We've worked in 24 countries, but it's kind of my baby. I love the country. I've been there 28 separate times since starting the organization, and we've helped about 2 million people now in Ethiopia get clean water. So it's just a country I know well. The need is great, and the solutions are there. So this is probably, I want to say, my 22nd trip to Ethiopia.

Starting point is 00:26:07 I was staying in a crappy five or six dollar a night hotel room up in the north. I was with a few donors. And I was in the kitchen and the hotel owner comes out of the little restaurant at the hotel and recognized me because we've done a lot of work in this region, sits down at our table and starts telling me this story of water. He says, you know, I come from a really rural area. It's far from here. It's called Meda.

Starting point is 00:26:33 And when I was growing up, there was this woman named Letakiro. who lived in my village and all the women would have to walk eight hours a day with heavy clay pots to dirty water sources. And he said one day this woman led Akiros on her way home after her eight hour walk before she reaches home slips and falls and breaks her clay pot and spills the water that she spent the entire day fetching. And he said she didn't go back for more water. He said she took a rope and she hung it around her neck and she hung herself from a tree in my village. And we found her body swinging from a tree. So, you know, he lets that sit for effect with our group and then, you know, looks at me and says,

Starting point is 00:27:18 the work you're doing here is important. And he walks back into the kitchen. So I remember putting that in the category of hyperbole, of things that aren't true, things you might tell an international donor to make them feel great about the work. But I just couldn't shake the fact, the image, you know, of a woman. swinging from a tree because she slipped and fell and spilled her water. So I sent our local partners to this guy's village called MEDA, and they, you know, wrote me and said, hey, we've confirmed this, the suicide was true.

Starting point is 00:27:50 And then I asked my wife, I said, hey, can I, can I go live in this village for a week and realizing it was completely off the grid, no cell phone coverage, really remote area in the region. I said, I want to walk in her footsteps. I want to see where she got her water. I want to carry a clay pot. And I want to see the tree where they found her body. Really is a way to reconnect with the humanity of our mission.

Starting point is 00:28:17 So I spent about a week there and, you know, it wasn't easy to get to. I had to rent a donkey and a camel and put my solar backpack and, you know, a bunch of water at a hole in the village, hiked nine hours over the mountains to get there. And I just learned the remarkable story of this Oblet, Kiros. And the shocking thing, you know, after meeting her mom and meeting her friend who walked with her that day and going to the water source and seeing her grave and seeing the church where her funeral was given and finally seeing this tree where they found her body was that she was 13 when she died. So I thought she was this old woman going into it. But she was a 13-year-old

Starting point is 00:28:59 girl. And I learned after living in the village that the reason everybody thought she killed herself was because she would have been overcome with shame, letting her mom down who needed that water to cook dinner. And in addition, destroying a valuable asset of the family, this $3 or $4 clay pot. So, you know, boy, I came back, fired up to help more people to go faster. You know, no 13-year-old girl should be, you know, hanging herself from a tree because she slipped and fell

Starting point is 00:29:31 after walking eight hours for dirty water. It just, it wasn't okay. So I think, you know, these stories, not only are they true, but they get us to, they challenge us. They get us to think differently about, you know, about something as well as water that most of our listeners probably took for granted to it.

Starting point is 00:29:51 And to be quite honest, I did this morning as well when I took a shower and brushed my teeth and, you know, got my kids ready. Wow. Yeah, I can see how that story could impact anybody and the way you tell it. I have happier stories too. Well, so after you made that trek, I mean, what was next? I mean, I'm kind of, I love to learn about the beginnings of something great that has been built because now that some time has passed.

Starting point is 00:30:22 What, what, you know, how did you stay motivated on a daily basis to build something like this, a nonprofit? So what was it like those first, you know, at the very initial stages of trying to get this off the ground? And what were some of the keys to you not only doing that, but growing it rather quickly? Well, I think at the very beginning, you know, those startup days, I was living on a closet floor in Soho, New York, a walk-in closet floor that my buddy had said, you know, here, you can stay here. And the couch in the adjoining room was the Charity Water office early days. but I just remember walking around with a laptop making six to ten presentations, I guess, a day of things I had seen of people in need of clean water of solutions. So I had a bit of an eyewitness account having spent almost two years in West Africa, living in Liberia, meeting people without clean water, and also seeing clean water solutions put in. So the whole thing was really built on just telling a very simple story.

Starting point is 00:31:29 Look, this is a huge human need. There are solutions. And we can show you how your donation would actually impact people's lives. And it just grew. And I remember a bunch of people would say no and a bunch of people would say yes. And I might speak to 10 people and then get to speak to 50 people. And then, oh my gosh, someday someone invited me to speak to 100 people about this. I think we, you know, we've made over 500 videos since the organization started, and those

Starting point is 00:32:01 videos are stories, stories of impact, stories of need, stories of our amazing local partners, the guys that are actually, guys and girls that are actually out there every day bringing clean water to their communities. You know, we employ over 1,500 locals, hydrologists and technicians and drivers and accountants across the portfolio who are leading their communities forward, who are improving the state of their country through clean and safe water. So we see stories everywhere. And it's not just me that tells them here.

Starting point is 00:32:35 You know, it's everybody at the organization, I think, or many people would have that skill. I'll give you just one more example. You know, we also see stories in unlikely places and maybe just as a tie back to transparency where we started. You know, I'd mentioned that drilling rig that 10,000 people, crowdsource that we mounted a GPS unit on. Well, I found out maybe a year later, through the grapevine from our partner, that the rig had crashed and that the rig was belly up. It was on

Starting point is 00:33:05 its side, you know, wheels up in the air. And this is a massive piece of machinery that's able to drill, you know, hundreds and hundreds of feet into the ground. And our partners, you know, were in a state of repairing it. And it was going to take about a month. And it was going to take about a and they were kind of sheepish. You know, they weren't really shouting it from the mountaintop. Hey, we crashed the rig, but we're going to have it back up. They were just going to get it back up and, you know, would carry on. Well, I learned that this rig has crashed on a remote road trying to reach a village in the middle of nowhere.

Starting point is 00:33:41 Okay. So the thing that our partners are ashamed of is the thing I want to try to send photographers out and tell a story of. So, you know, the minute I learned this, I said, see if you can get me a picture of our rig crashed, wheels up in the air, and I want to send that picture to the 10,000 people that paid for this rig to tell them it doesn't always work.

Starting point is 00:34:06 We crashed your rig. And we crashed your rig because our partners were trying to go way off the beaten track, way off the paved roads, into a remote village, and you know what, the road couldn't handle the rig. And I think, you know, this story would speak to the values of our partner. Our partners are not drilling wells in the easy places.

Starting point is 00:34:30 They are trying to reach the most desperate remote communities. And you know what? It doesn't always go right. Anyone that's been in a car crash or a fender bender knows that. And I think, as it turned out, by the time I managed to try to, you know, by the time the story got to me and I tried to get the photographers out, the rig was already back drilling. But I think that's just how we think. To me, that was a huge missed opportunity to give 10,000 people bad news.

Starting point is 00:34:57 But bad news that spoke to a value of transparency in the organization. The reality that this work we do is really difficult and things don't always go right. And the values of our partners who just aren't taking the easy path. Talking about the values of your people, I'm working. to relate your story to the average listener. Maybe someone who's building something right now, whether it's a nonprofit or a business or they're in a hiring position. And, you know, you answered earlier in our conversation when I asked you, you know,

Starting point is 00:35:33 how are you able to do this and build this and have such creative ideas on a regular basis? And you said, we hire creative people. I would love to learn about your hiring practice. What are some of the questions you ask? Who are the people you sort? Where do you get them? How do you ensure you're not being fooled? What is that whole process like? I'd love to hear how you do it because obviously you do it extremely well. Well, we're fortunate, you know, with many of these positions to have a huge amount of inbound inquiries. I mean, I think 500 people applied for the job of receptionist the last time we posted it here at Charity Water. And we found someone really amazing.

Starting point is 00:36:18 I bet, yeah, who is incredibly friendly and smiles as everybody comes in. So, you know, that said, we'll also use recruiters from time to time for, you know, senior exec positions. So, you know, there's kind of looking through incoming and then there's also trying to go out for some of these, you know, maybe a head of product or our CTO going out into the tech community with the help of recruiters. When it comes to hiring people, there was a lot. a guy, I think his name was Derek Sivers. Oh, yeah. Wrote a book.

Starting point is 00:36:52 Anything you want? Yeah. And I remember my wife and I just really bought into that hell yeah concept. It's either a hell yeah or a no. You know, it's a hell yeah or no. And I mean, if you start there and a candidate meets six people, you know, if you're not getting, you know, at least five hell yeah's, you keep looking. And, you know, I think what we've learned.

Starting point is 00:37:16 So one of the questions I love to ask people is, you know, what are the most of the most important values that you both work by and live by. And you can learn a lot about a person. I've had many candidates can't even answer that question. You know, they really don't think about their personal values. They don't really think about their work values. So, you know, I care about who people are, why they want this job. And often this job comes in an expense. I mean, people will take often 50% of their pay leaving a tech giant. They'll give up stock options. Some of them will give up equity in these companies that has invested yet to take far less money for a company that has no options. And there's no get rich scheme at charity water.

Starting point is 00:38:00 We will never IPO, will never be acquired. We get to make other people rich every day through the work that we do. But, you know, I'm really curious why people want to come here. Do they want to serve? you know, my wife Vic, who was a creative director for nine years here, used to care very much about someone's passion for their craft. So as a creative director, she would get a bunch of designers, you know, who would say, look, I love charity water so much. I'll do anything. I mean, I'll clean the toilets. I mean, we would really get people inbound that just said, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:37 the job doesn't matter. She would, you know, ditch those resumes and those cover letters as, as fast as she could. What she wanted was people that said, I am passionate about my craft. I want to be the very best graphic designer or animator or video editor. And hey, really cool that I could use my skills in the service of others. You know, a lot of people seem even surprised when they find Charity Water that their graphic design or product or UI or UX skills could be used for good.

Starting point is 00:39:13 They don't typically think of nonprofits as looking for data analysts or looking for UI designers or email marketing managers, et cetera. So I think it's looking for someone who is passionate about their craft. I'm a big fan of Dan Pink's work and autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Well, we have purpose built into the mission. I mean, the purpose of this organization is to start a movement of generosity and compassion and inspire people to give more in the service of others. and by the way, our mission is giving people clean and safe drinking water a basic need around the world. So we've got purpose. But do people come here wanting to master their craft, whatever that is,

Starting point is 00:39:56 whether it's in accounting or in data analytics or at the front desk or in water programs as a water program's hydrologist or engineer? We really care about that. And are they fun? Are they fun to work with? I mean, we want people to smile. Yeah. We want people with a sense of humor.

Starting point is 00:40:15 We want people, you know, with a spring in their step when they come into the office. You know, we look for optimists. I used to, I still do this every once in a while. I would go read 500 or 1,000 tweets of a potential candidate. Yeah. And you can get a fantastic sense of what someone is like if you look at the last 500 tweets that they posted. Are they an optimist? Are they cynical?

Starting point is 00:40:39 You know, are they pointing to good and positive? things in the world or are they angry, snarky, and just, you know, oh, look at this. Look at this corruption. Look at this failure. Look at this scandal. You don't want those people on your team. It blows me away. I'm glad you brought that up.

Starting point is 00:40:56 There are some really smart people I know who if you go and search back through their social media postings, I just turned my head and say, why. I mean, I realize that there's people going to read every single tweet that I put out. And as my dad has always told me, as the leader, it's your duty to show up in a good mood. People are going to follow you. And that goes for everything that you do. And there's no separation between, you know, your home life and your business life, especially when it comes to social media. I mean, people are going to read through that.

Starting point is 00:41:27 And I'd rather be a guy who's inspiring them than be somebody who's just cynical about everything. It's okay to have, it's great to have values, but just to be killing people or killing ideas on social media, never made sense to me. I love that you've added it at the end. Yeah. So let's talk about what people, you know, how others can help you now. And I know you guys are starting something new. You had a great team who, who I think it was Anna, who shared some great information about how people could potentially help you as you guys progress in a new way that you're doing. I think it's called the spring. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a little background on that. So, you know, 10 years in, we've been very fortunate to have about a million, more than one million generous donors

Starting point is 00:42:14 support the organization from all around the world. And we've used those donations by the end of the year to fund projects for over 7 million people, about 24,000 villages in the world have clean water because of the, not because of us, because of the charity water community, because everyday people have decided to, you know, to support this. And people have done that. And people have done that. primarily through one-time donations. And as the organization grew and as our impact grew, and as we had our first year where we served a million people with clean water in a single year,

Starting point is 00:42:49 we realized we were getting too big to start at zero every year. So January 1 would be the darkest day of the year, and I'd look at my wife and say, oh my gosh, honey, how did we raise all that money last year? How would we possibly do that again? And how would we possibly grow? I can't work any harder. You know, I can't make more than 150 speeches or the year before my son was born, I was on 96 flights.

Starting point is 00:43:11 And we fly coach. So, you know, it was a grueling kind of, you know, it was it was grueling. So as we turned 10, we said, what if we tried to build a community of people who wouldn't just hear a podcast, watch a talk, watch a video, and give a hundred bucks once, but might give 20 or 30 bucks every single. single month, stick with us, engage deeper in this issue, become educated, really add more value to a community. And we wouldn't start at zero. We would start with these people who would commit month in and month out. So it's brand new for us.

Starting point is 00:43:51 We launched a new giving community called the Spring in September with a goal of 10,000 members. We're at 6,000 members. So we still have a little ways to go. And really, people. give as they can. So we have people giving $5 a month. We have people giving $30 a month, which gives one person clean water every month. And we have some people giving $90 a month, helping three people get clean water every month. So it's brand new for us. We launched a pretty cool anniversary video, which got 2 million views and really tells the whole story of Charity Water

Starting point is 00:44:26 from my cracked out Nightlife Pass to some of the amazing supporters and stories and partners that have joined us over the last 10 years. And it kind of talks about this concept called the Spring. So it's an easy way where people can engage with us. You know, it's two Netflix's or a couple of Spotify's or half a Spotify if people are giving. And it's a subscription program where you get no benefit. So you're not getting music or movies or content, but 100% of the benefit is passed on to others. And then it's our job to continually inspire you and tell you,

Starting point is 00:45:02 where 100% of that money is going and the impact it's making. So if people are interested in that, for the next couple of weeks, our homepage is taken over with kind of end-year stuff. But you can always go to charitywater.org slash the spring. Perfect. And what about, Scott, one last thing for the person listening who, you know, you briefly touched on your, you spent 10 years as a New York City nightclub promoter before making this, this dramatic change. what do you share with people you probably talk about this? I'm guessing when you give

Starting point is 00:45:34 key notes. What about for the people who say, you know what, I'm, you know, I feel like I could do something like Scott and I'm more motivated by hearing the passion in which he tells his stories of what he's doing with Charity Water. What advice do you give to those people? Look, I think that all of us have an amazing opportunity to give time and talent and money in the service of others, whether that's a local cause, whether it's a local cause, whether it's international cause, whether it's both local and international and many others in between, you know, I'm so sick of this giving back language, which is really permeated culture today, you know, as if we have taken so very much, you know, for ourselves greedily that it's finally

Starting point is 00:46:17 time to throw some scraps back, you know, to the poorer or to others. So, you know, I think, I think we should frame this as giving. We should look to build cultures of giving and generosity in our companies, in our start. in our families and consider that an opportunity and a joy and not an obligation, not out of guilt or shame, but really an intense joy that we have an ability to share with others and improve people's lives around the world. So yeah, I mean, look, you don't need to go and start your own nonprofit, but make sure there's stuff you're engaging with.

Starting point is 00:46:58 for 10 years I lived a very selfish sycophantic life. I kept all the money I made. I was consumed with, you know, more for myself, a nicer car, a nicer apartment, a prettier girlfriend. And that leads to a very dark, selfish soul-sucking place. And, you know, I've been fortunate to be out of that lifestyle for, you know, for well over a decade now. But, you know, there's a real freedom that comes with service.

Starting point is 00:47:27 And we've seen people almost get addicted to giving. You know, the more you give, the more you want to give. And I've also seen people addicted to selfishness. The more you keep sometimes, you know, the more you want to keep or feel you need to keep. Yep, exactly. Well, Scott, thank you so much for sharing your incredible stories. They're moving. They really are.

Starting point is 00:47:48 I appreciate you investing your time with me. I'd encourage everyone to go to charitywater.org. 100% of your money brings clean water to people in need. It's a really well-done website, not surprisingly, but people please check it out. Scott, is there anything I missed that you'd want to share before we get going or and head out on this podcast? I think that's it, man. Thanks so much for the opportunity to share with you.

Starting point is 00:48:11 Awesome. Thanks again, Scott. I really appreciate it. Of course. See you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite

Starting point is 00:48:26 entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show. Pump for our new sponsor this year, it's Fresh Books. The working world has changed. With the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities for this self-employed. To meet this end, Fresh Books is excited to announce the launch of an all-new version of their cloud accounting software. It's been. and redesigned from the ground up and custom built for exactly the way you work. Get ready for the simplest way to be more productive, organized, and most importantly, get paid quickly. The all-new fresh books is not only easy to use, it's also packed full of powerful features. Like, create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds. Set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster

Starting point is 00:49:30 and see when your client has seen your invoice and put it in, to the guessing games. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to freshbooks.com slash learning and enter Learning Leader in the How Did You Hear About Us section?

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 184: Scott Harrison - CEO of Charity Water "The Power of Storytelling"

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.