The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 290: Scott Harrison - Redemption, Compassion, & The Transformative Power Within Us All

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk #290: Scott Harrison - Redemption, Compassion, & The Transformative Power Within Us All Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of charity: water, a non-profit that has mobilized over one million donors around the world to fund over 28,000 water projects in 26 countries that will serve more than 8.2 million people. Harrison has been recognized on Fortune's 40 under 40 list, Forbes' Impact 30 list, and was ranked #10 in Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business. He is currently a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Scott's first book, Thirst, was released in October (2018) and immediately hit the New York Times best-seller list.

We've just built a culture of storytelling at the organization where we're constantly surfacing these stories. We're constantly identifying stories and just telling them. And for me, there's always been an intentionality. When I tell a story, I'm always trying to connect that to a value. How does this story say something greater in the world? Like, what is the point of the story? This episode is brought to you by another one of my favorite companies. It's OGO. I am a big fan of the leadership team at OGO. Their new Alpha Convoy Collection of Travel Bags and Backpacks are fully loaded and equipped

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Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44222. We're also adding some exclusive Q&As and giveaways for those who text learners to 44222. Now on a nice featured leader, he's been.

Back, it's Scott Harrison for round two. The founder and CEO of Charity Water, a nonprofit that has mobilized over one million donors around the world to fund nearly 30,000 water projects in 26 countries that will serve more than 8.5 million people. Scott has been recognized on Fortune's 40 under 40 list, Forbes Impact 30 list, and was ranked number 10 in fast companies 100 most creative people in business. Wow. Few of the topics we got into. His story of going from a drug addict to one of the most successful philanthropic leaders in the world. Then the power and mechanics of storytelling. How all of us can improve and develop this skill as a leader.

And then authenticity and radical transparency, the importance of being brutally honest, especially when you're leading a business. Ladies and gentlemen, so good with Scott Harrison. Scott Harrison, man. So good to have you back. Welcome once again to the Learning Leader Show. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, your first one, it's been more than a year now, actually. It's funny how fast time flies, but has received a lot of great feedback. So I've been really looking forward to catching up with you and dive an even deeper than what we talked about last time, man. Cool. Hopefully we have some new things to talk about, I hope. I think so. I think so.

But I'm curious, man, you get us going. And we talked a little bit about this last time. But I know we evolve and grow. I'm curious from your perspective, Scott, now that you spend so much time around the highest performers in the world, people who make it happen. And I'm curious, when you take a step back and analyze some of those commonalities among the people who sustain excellence, what have you found to be in common among those people? among those people? I think now starting year 13, so we just celebrated our 12th anniversary, I have so much respect for people that stay the course, yeah, this kind of long obedience in the same direction

because it's so easy to quit. It's so easy to change jobs. It's so easy to walk away from one thing. And, yeah, sometimes just out of boredom to say, I'm just, I'm bored with doing the same thing. And, you know, if I think about the leaders that I really respect, they have been building for a very, very long time. And often their overnight success came in year 16, you know, year 11, right? It was never obviously an overnight success. So I think it's just this tenacity and this willingness to just show up and run the marathon.

I think, though, in order to do that, and I'm guessing you could, speak towards this more with with what you do at charity water you've got to really love it though you know what i mean for let's say you're that 16 year overnight sensation i i find it you got to have a deep passion and belief and what you're waking up to do every single day in order to to be that consistent to be tenacious towards towards what you're working for yeah i think so but i also also think you have to be able to fight through discouragements and and times that are are are lean or times that are tough and not throw the towel and not quit and find new ways to encourage yourself or find new ways to get inspired.

Now that it is going on year 13, how have you managed to fight through some of that? I have to imagine there's been some big challenges a long way, some adversity you've faced probably at times in your career and your life you thought, I don't want to do this anymore. How have you managed to fight through that? Well, gosh, for me, you know, so much of our work or so much of the inspiration I'm able to draw comes from both our community. So the million charity water supporters from 100 countries who have given the best of themselves to this cause over the last, you know, now a little more than decade. And then also from the people were actually getting clean drinking water

to across 26 countries. So I've been able to travel now to 69 countries. I've been to Ethiopia 30 separate times. Let me tell you, it's not a short flight in coach. But being in these villages without water, being with women walking alongside them for five or six hours to a disgusting waterhole, being there at that moment

when the drilling rig hits water and shoots out of the ground and hundreds of people are cheering and dancing, that keeps you going. And, you know, now, gosh, we've raised, I know, $320 million and helped eight and a half million people get clean water. But I have these moments on these trips to the field where it would all be worth it for one person or one village, you know, where you go from the macro to the micro. And I've just tried to make sure that I'm back and forth to the field enough to stay inspired to remind myself how important clean water really is. The absolute radical transformation that we are bringing to humanity around the world through this basic need that most of us just take for granted.

And then just staying out there with the community being inspired by six-year-old kids who are doing lemonade stands or 89-year-olds who are donating their people. attention to charity water. That's, that's just kept me going. It's, it's, it's taking in those stories and, and then often spreading those stories. What I noticed from reading your book, is that just come out thirst, the story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world. Obviously, you've done a fantastic job. Not surprised after last time we talked. I know this was in the works. And now that it's out, it's incredible. But the fact that it, it started many years ago. In fact, I'd love for you to reshare this story, New Year's Day of 1980, especially with someone who's so important to you in your life. What happened on that day that changed your life forever?

Yeah, sure. So New Year's Day, 1980, my mom walks across the bedroom in our house, and she collapses unconscious on the floor. It took us a while and a lot of blood tests. to determine the cause of that collapse. And we found out that there was a carbon monoxide gas leak in our home. When this is before they had invented the carbon monoxide detector that we can now buy in blister packs at the Home Depot. And thankfully, my mom didn't die from this prolonged exposure to a leaky gas furnace in our basement. But her immune system died. And she was irreparably damaged from this point on.

She just couldn't function normally in the world. And it began a saga of special charcoal masks and oxygen containers and special containment rooms in houses covered in aluminum foil and special clothes, special food. And a really weird childhood, to be quite honest, in a caregiver role, helping to take care of a mom who was very, very sick. And, you know, I grew up in a very Christian family. I was playing piano every Sunday in church. And really was that good kid who played by all the rules. And then at 18, acted out this classic rebellion cliche, where I moved to New York City and I started smoking and drinking and drugging

and sleeping around and gambling and just assuming all of the vices and tried to make a name for myself as a nightclub promoter. I wanted to be the king of New York nightlife. and over the next 10 years, you know, betraying the morality and the spirituality that I've been brought up with, I got pretty good at it. I worked at 40 different nightclubs and was flying around the world to fashion weeks in Paris and Milan and driving a BMW and wearing the Rolex. And I had the grand piano in my New York City apartment and the girlfriend on the cover of fashion magazines and all these things that I thought would bring me joy and fulfillment. And I realized after 10 years of chasing them and getting most of them that they didn't.

And that, you know, slowly but seemingly suddenly, I'd become the worst person I knew. I was emotionally bankrupt. I was spiritually bankrupt. I was leaving perhaps the most meaningless legacy a person could leave. You know, I was just getting people drunk wasted every night. And I realized that I was. I was, I'd come so far from what I'd believed as a kid, what I'd, the virtue that I'd been, you know, raised in. And I wanted to find my way back home to that.

I felt polluted. I felt dirty. I felt like a degenerate, like a hedonist. You know, and it took me a little while to find my way back. But I had this moment where I sold almost everything I owned in the world. And I quit all of those vices, quit smoking, quit drugging, quit gambling. quit porn, quit at all. And went to go serve on a humanitarian mission.

I wanted to try and make my life look exactly opposite. I wanted to find 180-degree turn from selfishness to unselfishness to a life that might actually contribute to help others. And that led me on a crazy journey as a photojournalist to Liberia, war-torn country in West Africa after Charles Taylor, I had just been thrown out and found myself with humanitarian doctors and surgeons and just a broken place with no electricity, no running water. And it spent a couple years just giving up my time to try and improve people's lives there and came face to face with the water crisis, came face to face with people drinking dirty water for the first time of my life. And there was something about seeing that, something about seeing children, risking their lives drinking water.

I wouldn't let an animal drink. It just wasn't okay on my watch. And I came back to term to try and do something about it. And that was the start of Charity Water, at 30 years old or what now, 12 years ago. It's an amazing story. I know you probably told it thousands of times by now. And you tell it, though, with passion and love that I can appreciate. So thank you.

And I think that brings up a point that I think, can really, if anyone who, let's say you're in a leadership position within a company, what you could learn from something like, like you, there's a number of things, but we'll start here, Scott, is the power and the necessity to become a great communicator, but more specifically, a great storyteller. And you've really figured this out over the years. And I'm curious, just to get your overall kind of, we can get meta, I guess, for a second, but your overall thought process around the importance of stories and then actually how to become better at it if perhaps somebody's listening is not there yet. I think you identified really if I had to pick one thing

that has led to Charity Water's success, you know, our ability to raise a third of a billion dollars or you know or build a movement on social media and involve people. I would say that you pick the one thing. It's not the 100% model. It's not the birthday idea. it's not putting our photos and GPS coordinates of projects up. It's not the brand or creative or design. I really believe the most important thing is storytelling. And I think we're lucky that we've just built a culture of storytelling at the organization where we're constantly surfacing these stories.

We're constantly identifying stories and just telling them. And for me, there's always been an intentionality. When I tell a story, I'm always trying to connect that to a value. How does this story say something greater in the world? Like, what is the point of the story? And, you know, I think just at a very basic level, you know, think about our problem, okay? Almost everyone listening, and perhaps everybody listening right now, has actually never had to drink dirty water in their life. Okay?

So I'm going to say, I'm going to go out of a limb and say, no, one listening to this podcast has ever had to walk eight hours carrying 40 pounds of filthy water. No one has had to watch their child die of diarrhea or dehydration because they gave their child brown viscous water from a river. But yet, 663 million people, that's their daily experience. So one out of every 10 humans alive today has actually never had what so many of us take for granted. So I could rattle off statistics like that. 663 million people without water. 52% of all disease throughout the developing world is caused by bad water and sanitation,

lack of hygiene, and 40 billion hours are wasted by women around the world. And, you know, I can just, I can watch people right now kind of numbing out. We can't imagine 663 million units of anything, let alone people experiencing something. experienced, you know, across an ocean. So the way, but our job to end this crisis, to usher in a day on earth where every human has clean water to drink, our job is to move people from the embrace of apathy when it comes to a paralyzingly big issue like this into action, into giving their time and their talent and their money to solve this completely solvable problem. So we've done that by telling stories of people trapped in the water crisis. And I tried

to do that in the book. It's just rather than hit people with a bunch of statistics, here's some people that I've met. Here's what it's like to lose eight different children and to know their names and to stand next to the waterhole that claimed so many lives. But you have no alternative to continue drinking that water, continue giving that water to the couple of children that did survive. You know, the story I tell in the book of a 13-year-old girl who hung herself after she spilled her water. She'd been walking for eight, eight hours. And at the end of her journey right before she reached her home, she slipped and fell and her clay pot, this heavy pot breaks and it shatters and all the water spills out. And she just takes a rope, climbs a tree, ties it around her neck,

and jumps. And the elders find a 13-year-old girl's body swinging with the noose around her neck. these it's a different way uh it's a different way of getting people to care i think and and the stories have to be true you know that story specifically um i wanted to make that story visual because i'd heard it and i wanted to see the tree myself i wanted to actually have a photo of the tree where a 13 year old girl's body hung years ago because of bad water and i you know i wound up trekking to this village. It was flying to Ethiopia, flying up to the north, driving five hours, hiking nine hours to get in there. But I wound up walking to the footsteps in the footsteps of this 13-year-girl and meeting her parents and her family and going to her grave and seeing

where she got her water. And then standing next to this tree, almost internalizing the story, you know, the injustice of this. I mean, how is it possible that we live in a world of such affluence and a world where people have internet and not clean water in some of these places. So we have just used stories to try and move people deeper into the problem, but then also into the solution. You know, one of my favorite stories is of a woman who got clean water from a charity water project for the first time in her life. And we asked her how our life was different.

And she said, well, let me tell you, you know, I used to always walk carrying these two heavy yellow cans and it was it was about 10 gallons of water and she said it was never enough water to do what I needed to do with my family I had a husband I had kids and she said I would always put my family first because that's what Ugandan women do we put our families first and so she said I would always make these decisions do I cook do I clean do I let my husband wash his clothes do I let my kids clean their bodies do I clean their school uniforms do I garden right all these things that she had to do with the limited amount of water. And basically, she just didn't use it for herself. And she said, now that I actually have enough water, now that there's water in my village, she said, for the first time in

my life, I'm beautiful. And we're like, what do you mean, Helen? Of course you're beautiful, right? We didn't even get it. She said, well, I don't think you understand. I have enough water to wash my face and my body and my clothes. And I feel beautiful for the first time. You know, a story like that. And then, of, a, of, a Of course, we have this picture of Helen, this beautiful, radiant, clean Ugandan woman in a green dress that is immaculate. It speaks to the issue in a way that no statistics about the impact of clean water and sanitation and hygiene ever could. And I think we've just told hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories like that over the year. I'm just going to give you one more example. It's a story that I love to tell about.

So what Charity Water does is in 26 countries, we partner with locals and anything from rainwater harvesting systems to big gravity-fed systems to drilling wells to digging wells, about 13 different technologies across the portfolio. And it's often a celebration. So when you drill a well, imagine this huge drilling rig surrounded by 500 people. And everybody from the village comes out and there's dancing and there's clapping and there's this great anticipation. and the kids are trying to get wet, you know, if they hit water, and the parents are trying to pull the kids away from the drilling rig

because they think they're going to get hurt. And this is what it's normally like. It's a joyful, exuberant celebration. This is the moment where everything in the village changes, the moment where you go from before the water to after the water. It's literally a defining moment. It becomes written in the oral history of so many of these villages. And in one of these, our partners in Ethiopia,

were telling us the story of an older woman who was off to the side weeping during one of these celebrations. And they go up to her and they're like, hey, like, did you miss the memo? Like, there's like a thousand people that are clapping and dancing. Like, we found clean water, okay? Like, you're going to have clean water. And this woman just was, was weeping and she was in anguish. And they went up to her and said, you know, why? Like, what's up?

And she basically says, do you mean to tell me the, My entire life, I was walking five hours away to dirty water, and it was underneath my feet this whole time. She watched some machine come in and a bunch of guys jump out, and 24 hours later, water shoot up from the ground from under her feet. This was a horror to her. This was a terrible irony. You know, you have a picture of this woman standing that I think just conveys the power

of water, or we're not having it, the power of that suffering of a lifetime of unnecessary suffering. So we think and communicate in stories and in pictures. And they all speak to values that we care about. I'm curious, does that, how does one foster the ability to do that well? I mean, is it just, are you able to, because you tell the stories so well to where I just, for a second there, I forgot I was even recording a podcast. I'm just sitting back listening.

And like on the edge of my seat. And I'm curious, have you developed that? Or is it a repetitions game? Or is there an outline, a structure? I'm curious, how have you developed that skill of storytelling? Well, I find that the stories for me are personal. You know, I've lived in those villages. I took the picture of the tree.

I stood next to it. So it's not, you know, you're not telling stories that you read about. Those aren't the most powerful stories. the ones that you've experienced, the eyewitness account is very powerful. You know, it's so hard to take your, you know, when you tell me a story about your family or your business and it means something to you, right? And you go to that place of emotion. I can't ever take that away from you. It's just, it's inarguable that that happened to Ryan.

And that was profound for you, that that moved you, you know, in some way. So I think, you know, I'm always trying to put myself in situations where they are story-rich situations. And I think we're just, you know, this idea of the values that I care about. So I really care about dignity and I care about, you know, this woman feeling beautiful because she had clean water. I'll just, I'll give you one more example since we're talking about story that might be helpful. Charity Water tells stories often that are counterintuitive. So we would tell a story that another organization would never tell. because they actually think that it might damage their brand.

So I write about this a lot in the book, but there was a moment where we had set up this live drill via satellite with the Biaca pygmies in the middle of the Central African Republic rainforests on the Congo border. And we'd crowdfunded money for this well. And this village had been waiting for decades for clean water. And we were going to just deliver victory. and they were going to live stream it.

So everybody could see their money in action. And we go out there and we drill a well and it collapses. And then we drill another well and it's dry. And we just realized that we are not going to get a result with our partners. And we wound up broadcasting the failure. But without even thinking about it. For me, it was so clear that, and I actually knew that when we pressed send on this broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people around the world,

many of them who had actually paid for a well, that turned out not to be a well. We literally lit their money on fire. I mean, nothing happened. They gave money and nothing happened. There was no result. I knew that that would speak to the value that I really wanted to convey,

which is how hard this work really is, and how hard our partners were working at the ends of the earth for a forgotten tribe of people, you know, who were valuable, you know, in a commercial sense to no one. And, hey, you know what? It doesn't always work. Nine out of every 10 wells, you know,

they're able to find water and one out of 10. And I just thought that the reality of failure, but failure in the direction, you know, where we would keep trying would just resonate with people. And, you know, there were people in my team. They were shocked. They're like, let's just say we had technical difficulties. You know, we can't tell people that we did nothing with their money.

And I'm like, yeah, we can. because that's what happened. And people want the truth and people want to feel like they can trust. And we promised to come back. And eventually about a year later, we did go back and find a solution. And that story did have a happy ending. But even if it didn't, that turned out to be one of the most powerful videos that we ever shared. And I recently heard that we had crashed a drilling rig in Ethiopia.

Our local partners had crashed one of our brand new drilling rigs that we'd crowdfunded. actually had been going for a couple years. But 10,000 people through a crowdfunding charity water campaign, gave about $100 each, put their names on this rig. We put a GPS tracker on the rig. And it just went out there and started doing about 85 wells every year. Well, I hear through the grapevine that our rig has crashed. And, you know, we get this picture of our rig on its back, right? The wheels up in the air, like a bug kind of, you know, flailing in its dying throws.

And our partners are just going to fix the rig and put it back in action. It's kind of like when you crash your parents' car, you're going to fix it first and then tell your parents, crash the car, but I fixed it. I did the right thing. And now everything's okay. So that was what was going to happen. And it was about a month, I think, that was going to take them to fix it and put it back in action. So I hear this. And I immediately try and get a camera crew out to capture photos and video of our crashed crowdfunded rig with donors' names on it.

And I'm going to send the picture and the video back to all the people that funded the rig with the subject line, we crashed your rig in Ethiopia. Because the value that I would want to convey through that is, hey, look, when you give us money, our local partners are not drilling wells by the highway. They're not taking the easy way out and the paved roads. They are going to some of the most forgotten high-risk areas. And you know what? They probably shouldn't have been on that road, but they cared so much about service. that community at the end of the road that they took a risk. And you know what? It didn't work out. And the rig slid off the road and into a ditch.

But we're going to get it fixed and we're going to go back and we're actually going to get to that community at the end of the road. Now, by the time, they actually fixed it before we could even get out there. But most people wouldn't think of that as a story. I actually think that would have resonated deeply with the 10,000 people that funded the rig. And they would have been re-inspired that they are funding a long, they are funding people who care so deeply, who are tenacious, who have grit and endurance.

It, I think two of the qualities that I think of through these stories you've told that I know are inherently part of you and your mission and the people that you work with is that you really value true authenticity as well as this radical transparency. and what you do.

And that's what it feels like to me what it means when you want to show people the real hard truth, including the failures along the way, is that this value. Because authenticity now, I think, even since last time we've talked, it's become a huge buzzword in the world of business and leadership in general. There's even the phrase failure porn that is out there now from people that are almost overusing it. But I know this has been part of your mission all along. And so talk to me about the importance and really how you overcame, I would think some potential fear to be genuinely authentic as well as this form of radical transparency that you share with the people that you work

with. Gosh, I don't think we, you know, I don't think we ever wanted to use it as a device, as a manipulative device or hey, you know, this is the thing that we're going to, it's just, it's just intuitive, right? And so much of this stuff is just, hey, let's just be straight with people. And we're not broadcasting every failure. I mean, I certainly talk about a lot of them in the book that I hope would help other people. You know, for many people, Charity Water on the outside looks like, you know, things have been easy and, wow, you guys just grow.

And, you know, you've raised all this money. And I don't know. I want to kind of let people in behind the hood and say, Actually, it's really hard. And hear all the boneheaded mistakes. But I'm not doing that in a way that is trying to burnish the brand. It's just kind of who we are. In the same way that if you screw up, you might tell your spouse that you're sorry.

And you're going to try harder. And here's what you learned from it. How do you think for somebody that may be listening who works in the corporate space, which is obviously a little different from what you do and what you've done in the past, but maybe someone who's that newer manner. that is now all of a sudden leading a team when when prior to that they were an individual contributor and now they've made this leap and they they they see that there is a lot of value in being authentic fully authentic but they're scared uh they're they're worried like well can i do that or

can i admit that or maybe there's a bit of imposter syndrome syndrome that's there with some people like like there was with me when i made this initial jump and so how would that do you think how could this translate to somebody who may be in a position like that i mean look i think you you don't want to just be sitting down with your employees and telling them, you know, all of your deepest, darkest secrets and vulnerabilities. And I think, you know, look, I think it's a conversation that says, here are the things that I know I need to work on. You know, here are the ways that I feel like I need to improve and involving them in that

feedback loop. Hey, help me be better. You know, I'm, you know, one of the things for me is I'm impatient. I have a hard time, you know, sitting in a long meeting and just not getting, you know, incredibly bored. And, you know, and twitching or, you know, biting my nails. So I've kind of just identified that and I'm working on it. And I've encouraged people to tell me when I'm screwing up. So I think just that candor coming up with the cadence of candor and asking, allowing other people to give you.

feedback is probably still more rare than we think. You know, a lot of people are trying to play the boss. You know, I'm in that role. Like, I'm the big boss now and I'm in position of power and I can't show any weakness or vulnerability. They'll smell the fear. And then that just, it just feels inauthentic. Yeah.

And by the way, there's a lot of things I'm good at as well. So it's not, and I'm sure when you're a new manager, like, here are my strengths, here are my weaknesses. And I'm working on these. And a lot of times it's just, it's not personal. You know, if I seem dismissive, like, please, I didn't mean that, you know, personally at all. I just, I'm kind of like moving on in my head. And it's hard for me sometimes to, it's much easier for me to spend time thinking about the future than the present.

Yeah, I think it's just about setting up that environment, that there's psychological safety. They're, you're willing and actually requesting feedback and you want to create a culture, that it's okay. And in fact, wise to be open and honest, candid to try to help one another. And I think I get a sense that that's the type of place that you've been able to to build at Cherrywater. And so now that you've been in this for, like we said, more than a decade, why did you feel like now was the right time to put this story out in the world in the form of a great book? Well, for years early on, I mean, people would suggest, oh, you've got this crazy story like nightclub, you know, degenerate to photojournalists in Africa to, you know, charity guy. And you should write a book. And, you know, for many years, I'm like, man, I don't even know if this organization would exist by the time the book came out. I mean, we're fighting for our lives here. We're just, I don't know that this thing is around six months or 12 months from now. So for so many years, it just felt like, man,

We are living the story. We're building it. This is not a time to be reflective or to share knowledge or insights. This is a time to build the thing and just see if we could even survive. I think there was a new permission that I felt around turning 40, the organization turning 10, making the first decade and being on really solid financial footing and just brand footing and all of it. So thinking about our next decade. and then having kids.

And I just felt like, okay, this is a moment to pause and hope that what I would share, you know, in this. And it's 99,000 words. I mean, it's not a short book. I'm hoping that the insights and the lessons learn would now actually help other people, both personally. You know, I think there's a message in the book that I really believe no one's beyond redemption. And so many people feel like they're stuck or their past might define them. and the bad, the questionable things that they've done will really hamper their ability to lead in the future. And, you know, I guarantee you when you read this book, you are not as bad as me.

I mean, it would be hard press, unless you've killed people. I mean, it's going to be hard pressed to find someone who was really more degenerate and hedonist than I was. But yet, you know, I was able to, like, that didn't define my life. And, you know, we wouldn't be having this conversation had I not changed. But, you know, I walked away from that. I haven't had a cigarette in 15 years. I haven't gambled in 15 years. I haven't touched coke or any of that crap.

I haven't looked at a pornographic image in a decade. I really was able to shed the vices that would have defined me during that decade and really start over. I mean, turn a page and walk so far in the other direction, which allowed a new story and really a new blessing maybe to unfold. And I'm happily married and I have two amazing things. kids and I get to deliver clean drinking water to almost 4,000 people a day now, new people every single day for a living. And I get to talk about generosity and compassion and empathy and

radical giving and all these amazing values of virtue and not vice. So I would hope that that people might say, okay, wow, like if a degenerate scumbag nightclub promoter can actually change could start a charity or make any sort of difference in the world. Like, I probably have a pretty good shot at it, too. And then I would hope just the, go ahead, sorry. I'm just, do you think you have an addictive type personality? I have a full on personality. I mean, I'm pretty extreme.

What do you mean? What do you mean? Like, there's nothing in moderation or? It's just easier for me to go all in. You know, it's much easier for me to, to never do something again that I think is bad for me than do it in moderation. Gotcha. Gotcha. So that's why I was going to say,

Do you, I, I, uh, holy command. Yeah, but I'm curious because you, you were so hard into the, the bad stuff that you just needed an outlet to push all of that energy. And this, this ended up being the outlet. Then it's obviously for, for, for greatness and for, for great things that you've accomplished and helped millions of people. But it feels like, it feels like, you need it, though, in a way. Because if you, like, let's say this went away or something happened and you left or they fired you. you even know you're the boss you know what I mean like I'm just curious how that would impact you given the fact that you've gone all in on some bad stuff and you've gone all in on a lot of good

stuff how would it would potentially impact you if all of a sudden you were you were not in it because you'd have to channel that energy somewhere yeah I mean I think there's such a difference between the light and the dark that you know there's never any thought of going back I mean you know in some ways I was to taste all of it, you know, to taste, you know, almost every single vice, right? Every vice short of heroin, I would have, I would have done plenty of. And it left me wanting. You know, I realized there would never be enough. This, this, this, this left me rotting inside. The hedonist, selfish life was a, was a trapped life. It was a life with no purpose and no meaning. And, and, you know,

it left me bankrupt spiritually and emotionally. So, you know, now having, what, 14 years really in the opposite direction, I would never want to go back to that. So if it wasn't charity water, I might fight for hunger, you know, or to end hunger or make sure people have a roof over the bed or make sure that no kids are enslaved anywhere in the world or, or, you know, try and be a great dad and take a year off and just sew into my kids. So I, yeah, I don't think, you know, that never feels like a dangerous risk. Yeah. I mean, my wife and I went to a club not too long ago and, you know, we were out for dinner and

like, oh, let's go to a club. A friend of ours says working at some new hot spot. And, you know, we go in at like 11 o'clock. There's no one there. You know, I can barely stay up till 11 now. I've got two young kids, you know, I felt like such a loser. Like people don't even come out until midnight. So, you know, that's not, there's no allure in any of that. anymore. Yeah, you've moved on. I'm curious though, what is next for Charity Water? You've got this book that I think is obviously going to bring a lot of positive light and share your story with even more people in a book form. And I know you guys have been growing still, even though you have to fight through Rocky Times like any organization. So what do you think is next for you? Well, there was a big

moment at year 10 where we really pivoted Charity Water from an organization that was often known for getting people to donate their birthdays and run these fundraising campaigns from an organization that mainly solicited one-time donations. And we realized that we were just too big to start at zero. I mean, imagine going out there and making 150 speeches and doing a bunch of podcasts and The year before my kids were my first son was born, I did 98 flights. I was on a plane every three and a half days. And then, you know, you work really hard. We got a million people clean water in one year.

We raised $45 million. And then January 1, the ticker starts at zero. It's like the boulder rolls all the way down to the hill. And you're like, I have to not only figure out how to go re-raise $45 million, but we have to grow. And it was just this daunting idea. And we realized that the birthdays were great for charity water. But people were only doing one. So we need to keep finding new people every single year, rather than building roots or going

deeper with a community of people who would, you know, who we could develop a longstanding lasting relationship with. So there was this moment in year 10 where we pivoted the whole business model from fundraising campaigns to a subscription model and said, what if we could just get a lot of people to show up month in and month out for us, like they show up for Netflix, like they show up for HBO or Spotify or Apple Music. And what if we could create a subscription program for pure good where 100% of all the donations are passed on to others in need of clean water and where we do our best to build community and share stories of impact? And we just started inviting people

to that and just said, look, to do more, to realize our vision of a world where everyone has clean water. We need just not the drive-by, not the, hey, I heard the podcast and donated a hundred bucks. We need you to show up as long as you can and be a part of seeing this, realizing this day on earth when no one is drinking dirty water because we rejected the apathy that would have been so easy to embrace with a paralyzing issue like this. And we said, we can do something. So the spring was born in year 10 and I'm spending so much of my time and energy, you know, obviously talking about thirst the book and getting that out there. But that actually ends with an invitation to join this community. We know people in 100 countries and the average monthly gift is $30 every

month, which is what it costs us to get one person clean water. And I'm just really excited about the possibility. Imagine if we could get a million givers every month. We'd be getting a million people clean water every single month. What about 2 million or 3 million? So I'm really excited about the spring just as the future of Charity Water and the idea that we're building on a base, we're building on a loyal group of generous people who are showing up, not in just that one minute, but actually showing up maybe for three years or five years or ten years. And they're going to tell their kids and their grandkids one day that we were a part of this thing, this movement where we said, not on our watch are people drinking dirty water,

not if we can do something about it. One of the parts that we briefly touched on is this radical transparency. Basically, the Americans are truly, for the most part, really giving people or we want to donate. We want to help. We want to, if we're fortunate to have a little bit extra, we want to help people and give it away. But we're also, people don't have confidence in charities in some cases because they don't know where the money goes. And I'm curious for you to describe that because one of my questions that I think a lot of people think, but maybe are afraid to ask is, like how much money do you make, Scott, or how do you get paid or how does this work?

If you run a nonprofit or you're raising millions and millions and millions of dollars, does that mean you're a millionaire or no? Or how does this work out? Because I think, and there's also separate things because you obviously speak and do other things outside of just charity water. But I think it's a natural question for people to when we're thinking about being candid and authentic that people want to know because I think there are people listening who say this could be a great cause for me to give to.

But there's specific questions they have and they want to feel like, okay, my money's going in the right place. Yeah. Well, let's start by saying I drive a Kia Sorrento. I saw someone tweet the other day. Like, I heard the founder of Charity Water has a nice car. And I'm like, I think my Kia Sorrento is amazing. I've got two car seats buckled in and lots of smashed raisins and way too many gram crackers right now. But, you know, it's funny because I joke about that.

I think that perception is real. I could drive a $60,000. Toyota and not a $20,000 BMW. Yeah. I could drive a $60,000 Volvo and not a $22,000 Mercedes. But isn't that kind of a bummer though that, like you have to, you have to be very cognizant of that. I would bet even the type of clothes you wear and the car you drive and the house you live in,

you probably, the fact that you, because most people don't have to think about that. They can just say, well, I've made some more money. Celebrate. Celebrate. We celebrate, you know, the energy CEOs making. 50 million dollars, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's just something we embrace.

You know, people like their charity workers, poor. And I think in some ways that's unhealthy because it promotes a culture of, often a poverty mentality through nonprofits. I'll tell you how we've done it. So the cynicism is real. 42% of Americans

pulled when I started Charity Water. I think it was USA Today. 42% of people said we distrust charities. 70% of people pulled by NYU Stern said they believed charities either wasted money or badly wasted money. 70%. So 30% of the people thought charities actually did the right thing with money. So that's the baseline.

And that surprises people because as you said, who is more philanthropic than Americans? We have this rich cultural heritage of giving. and of charity, but people don't trust the system. They don't trust the leaders. And everybody who, you know, will have some horror story they can readily pull out of their back pocket of a CEO. They paid himself millions of dollars and hired his cousins and nieces and nephews for the charity. And, you know, the, I remember when I started, Anderson Cooper used to chase bad charity CEOs on the, you know, the doorstep of their Mick Mansion, right? And they would slam the door in his face and he's out there on the porch. And America throws up their hands and say,

That's why I don't give that crook. And we said, look, the biggest problem I heard when I started was that people just had a problem with where their money would go. How much is actually going to reach these people? Okay, Scott, you say people need clean water. Well, how much is going to get to them and how much is going to get skimmed off the top and go to overhead? And we said, look, if this is really the reason why people are not giving, what if we could completely separate the overhead? and the salaries and the office costs and the toner for the Epson copier, what if we could separate that out?

And what if we could promise the public that 100% of every donation, whether they were to give $1 or a million, 100% of the money would go straight to provide clean water for people in need. And then we would actually prove every one of those projects using satellite images and GPS coordinates and photos, and we would make all that transparent on. Google Maps and Google Earth. So that was really the founding premise. And we opened up two bank accounts, which we still have to this day. They are audited separately. KPMG comes in and audits

the public bank account with more than a million donations now. And then the overhead account. And the way that we pay for our overhead is through 131 families. So 131 entrepreneurs and business leaders pay for our 80 staff, for my salary, for our flights, for our office, so that 100% of every donation can go straight to the public. And the cool thing is that those 131 people, it's the founders of Twitter and Facebook and Spotify and LinkedIn. It's key executives at Apple Computer or Tesla or Lyft or Uber. It's a bunch of business leaders who are like, we actually want to pay for your salaries. We want to pay for your software engineers and your accountants and your hydrologists.

We want to build the business. And what they want from us is transparency and stewardship. So, you know, for instance, we've raised a third of a billion dollars and we have never bought a business class ticket in the history of the organization. So I am flying coach. You know, at 43 years old, I'm 6'1. I am flying 14 hours to Ethiopia in coach because we take stewardship seriously. I don't think the donors should ever be paying for me or any of my execs to fly around in business class.

We're an amazing office in downtown Manhattan, but it's been, you know, 50% of the office rent has been donated. There were less than half market value because a landlord wanted to help us. And as you walk in our office, you'll see $50,000 of huge flat screen TVs. Well, they were donated by Samsung who said, well, we can kid out your brand new office with the best TVs we have so that you can show your images and your dashboards and your KPIs. So I think, you know, for us separating the overhead, we have 131 investors. We have to, we treat them like our backers. But yet, perception is still reality, right? I still can't drive a Mercedes.

And, you know, my wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment. It's about 1,200 square feet. And we don't have any ambitions to, you know, for the house in the Hamptons. I don't actually want to drive a Mercedes. I love my IKEA. I think one of the best cars I've ever had. It was better than the BMW I had when I was in nightclubs. And, you know, really our personal family dreams around money are we're also supporting

my wife's grandparents and we actually have a whole other family kind of in tow that are at the end of their lives. And, you know, our dreams around money are just to make sure that our kids have their needs met and the grandparents have their needs met. But we want to give money away. You know, if I make money, I'm way more excited someday about. writing substantial checks to other charities to other social entrepreneurs that I might be mentoring, right? The advice is great, but I'd love to send them out of my office with a $100,000

check and pay for a couple months of their new venture. So, you know, all that to say, the 100% model has really spoken to that cynicism and we've been able to bring people who are cynical, who are skeptical, back to the table, say, look where your money is going, look where all of it is going. And we've heard time and time again that this is the first charitable gift. Some people have made in their lives. It's a crazy idea. But people have said my gift to charity water was the first, like people in their 40s. This is the first time I've ever given to a charity in my life. But I know where the money is going. And I trust it's going to get there. That's pretty cool, man. Thank you again for coming back. I know you're in the midst of a crazy

book promotion tour. You got a lot going on running the organization. And I appreciate your time investment here and the fact that you've invested to listen to the show too, man. It means a lot to me, especially someone like you who's a thriving, growing leader who obviously sustains excellence and has for quite some time. So I really appreciate you coming back, man. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Let's continue the dialogue as always.

And where would you send my listeners to learn more about you, charity water, the book? Sure. Go for it. Yeah, just thirstbook.com. And again, I turned over the book advance and the proceeds to Charity Water. So I won't make any money off of the book. And really hope it helps people and also helps the organization. So Thirst, it's called Thirstbook.com.

And then, you know, people would like to learn more about the spring, this amazing community. Please, if you're listening, you are invited to join us, you know, whether you've got 10 bucks a month to give or 30 a month to give or 100 a month to give or whatever. Maybe your business could even get involved. we would love to partner with you and invite you into this community. So that's just charity water.org slash spring. Nice. And you said it quickly,

but giving away the advance and all the money that comes with the book, which I would imagine was sizable to your charity, and it sounds like you did it without really even considering it or thinking about it is awesome, man. That's really cool that you have chosen to do that. So good on you, man. Well done. Scott.

And thanks again for being here, man. Hey, thanks for having me back. All righty. See, man. I'm so grateful for Scott to come back on the show and share more of this incredible stories a few times during that conversation. I almost forgot. I was recording a podcast.

I was just listening on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what he would say next. I hope you enjoyed it as well. If so, I'd love if you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show, iTunes Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. That's write a review, subscribe, and rate the show, hopefully five stars in iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

It really helps spread the message worldwide and continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. I will forever be grateful to you for that. Thank you so much. See you next week. Can't wait. This episode is brought to you by another one of my favorite companies. It's Ogio.

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I'm here. Oh, man. Thank you so much. You were happy with that? Thank you so much. I really appreciate. Sorry, I mean to get into the water stories. No, no, no, your passion for the storytelling is awesome.

I know you probably are doing a billion and you're making it seem like this is the only one you ever done. I mean, just with how much passion you bring to tell them the stories. And I really appreciate that. I think that's pretty awesome. Well, thanks. My wife doesn't know how I can do it. But I'm like, it's just for other people, you know. Well, yeah, it's going to move people.

And it definitely to me, I sat there thinking, and for one of the very few and rare, times I literally forgot. I thought, wait, I got to be like really thinking about what's what I'm going to say next here because I was just listening so intently that I wasn't even thinking about asking a question. I just wanted you to keep going. So it was cool, though. Thank you.

Awesome. Hey, you're the best. All right, man. I appreciate it. I'll be in touch, obviously. If you're ever in New York City, come stop by. I would love to show you around headquarters. Thank you.

I appreciate it. I'm going to hit you up on that. I'll follow up one next time on there. Cool, man. Awesome. Hey, see you. All right. Thanks, God.

Bye.