Kind: captions
Language: en
i have learned that you just have to ask
and then you have to push through the
nose
and enough people have said yes now
you know to
to now impact eight and a half million
lives but boy if i could count the no's
i mean there's tens of thousands of
notes that we've all heard over the last
decade
hey everybody welcome to impact theory
our goal with this show and company is
to introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on
your dreams alright today's guest is the
founder and ceo of charity water one of
the most innovative and impactful
charities of the 21st century but his
role helping people is about as far as
you could get from his beginnings as a
nightclub promoter in his 20s from the
outside it looked like he had it all he
was living a lavish lifestyle making
upwards of five grand a night jet
setting with the mega wealthy and
driving around in fancy cars getting
paid to get drunk and spending many a
night high on cocaine but after a decade
of debauchery chasing money and status
he realized that even too much was never
quite enough feeling emotionally and
spiritually bankrupt he decided to build
a life that was 180 degrees in the
opposite direction
he sold everything and joined a mercy
ship on its way to liberia as he boarded
the ship he promised to give up all of
his vices a promise that he kept and
that trip ultimately changed the entire
course of his life and the lives of
millions of others seeing so many people
in need he became absolutely obsessed
with the notion of ending the world's
water crisis now nearly 15 years later
he's well on his way and since launching
charity water in 2006 he has helped his
community raise over 300 million dollars
and build wells in roughly 30 000
villages that serve over 8.4 million
people
in 2017 alone his organization raised 50
million dollars bringing clean water to
an average of 3
561 people a day an average of one
person every 24 seconds his staggering
philanthropic accomplishments have seen
him named to fortune magazine's 40 under
40 list and forbes impact 30 list
so please help me in welcoming the man
who placed 10th on fast company's most
creative people and business list the
author of thirst scott harrison
buddy
me too thank you for having me dude
thank you for being here
your story is
absolutely insane
and what i want to start with is
something that came up over and over and
over which i was really captivated by
it's this notion of redemption
which
isn't something that people really push
you on a lot but i want to hear about
that what what is the notion of
redemption to you and why is it so
important
gosh i mean for me my
decade of debauchery really started as
an act of rebellion i was this christian
kid you know brought up in a really
conservative family playing by all the
rules
and then i just had this moment where
you know i said now it's my turn you
know now it's time to go and explore the
other side
and you know it started with smoking and
then drinking and then drugs and then
gambling and then pornography and you
know one by one
you know i just took on the vices of
nightlife
and
40 clubs and 10 years later you know i
found that
i i hated who i was i mean i was rotting
inside and this selfish pursuit had left
me
um
the most deeply unhappy person that i
knew so for me that you know redemption
was trying to come home it was
it was a almost a nostalgia for the the
virtue and the morality and the
spirituality that i've been brought up
with that i had rejected it really felt
like it was a clean slate
that allowed for me to be able to redeem
the the past and you know you mentioned
this but i went on a hospital ship to
west africa
and the cool thing was that from day one
uh
i was able to communicate a very
different story to the 15 000 people on
my list i mean i'd amassed an email list
of 15 000 of some of the most
influential people in new york who were
going out spending 25 dollars on a
cocktail 500 on a bottle of champagne so
they went from getting invited to you
know the prada party at the opening of a
new mega store to this really
life-changing redemptive humanitarian
work
so it wasn't lost those years weren't
lost i was able to kind of use them from
day one
do you think anybody can start over i
really do and that was that was really
one of the reasons why i wanted to write
the book and and why it's so personal i
mean my wife was like i can't believe
you tell people some of this stuff you
know no one no one goes
uh i think she was just expected
surprised at how honest and it was about
how really bad i was and i think so many
people believe that their past defines
them
and you know i can never start over um
you know the things that i've done
uh are are you know are impossible to
overcome and i would hope that my story
i mean at 28 years old if you had run
into me
what 15 years ago
there was this moment at 28 when i had
gone out to
dinner at 10 the club at 12 after hours
at five i'd stumbled home coked out of
my mind at noon
right i'm taking ambien to come down and
i remember grabbing a comforter trying
to block out the windows
right so that i could sleep and i look
out the window on houston street in new
york city and i see people on their
lunch break in suits
like normal people going to lunch or to
you know to the gym
and
you know you would
my life is so unrecognizable now from
that um i think it took a commitment to
walk away completely
you know from those vices and really to
give it all up
but
i believe anyone can change it's never
too late to change and you can actually
use the things in your past use the
darkness
to
you can redeem it now it's really really
an extraordinary story now the people
that are listening right now that
want to have a similar kind of
redemptive experience walk them through
that moment where because i know you had
been trying to give up drugs and alcohol
and the other advices to sort of mixed
results but then when the mercy ship
comes up you're staring at the gangway
you're about to walk out you really have
this moment
what was that moment and how could you
help other people get themselves in a
place where they could have something
similar yeah
well the the first cathartic moment was
really at the decade point and it was on
a opulent vacation in south america
so it was
it was this moment where i had collected
the the markers of success the things
that i thought would make me happy right
so my girlfriend at the time was on the
cover of fashion magazines i drove the
bmw i had the fancy watch i had the
grand piano in my new york apartment i
had the labrador retriever and i was
vacationing on a compound in south
america with servants waiting on us and
horses in the background and magnus dom
perignon everywhere and a thousand
dollars of fireworks that we just blew
up the night before so it was just this
picture of okay
did it
and you know did enough of it and i
realized on this trip that there would
never be enough it was almost like the
veil was lifted um i looked around and
saw it for what it was there would never
be enough girls there'd never be enough
money uh somebody would always have a
better car a better watch you know
private planes there was it was this
never
ending insatiable pursuit of more it was
a pursuit of
of me really a pure and utter
selfishness that would have no end
and
you know i realized that the just
thinking about legacy um you know coming
up on 30 years old at the time
my tombstone was might actually read
here lies a man who got 10 million
people wasted over the course of his
life you know i mean who wants their
tombstone to read like here's the guy
that got people drunk for a living
and there on that
on that vacation i asked myself this
question
what would the exact opposite of my life
look like what would the 180 degree
turn look like and the
it was a life uh virtue you know so if
mine was a life of debauchery it would
be virtue and instead of vice
and it would be a life of service to
others and not myself
so then there was there were months of
floundering and trying to smoke less and
trying to quit drugs and just this kind
of really uneven uh six or seven months
that then culminated with an incident in
new york which which gave me an excuse
to get out the mercy ship accepting me
and then this final hurrah where i just
i looked at this 522 foot hospital ship
full of 350 doctors and surgeons and
volunteer crew who were all there for
the right reasons
and there was something you know
symbolic or almost prophetic about
walking up a gangway you know the
gangway being pulled up and then sailing
away into my new life
sailing onto a new continent
and you know i went out with a bang i
think i drank eight beers that night i
smoked three packs of marble reds i
remember getting on the ship with the
nicotine patch and the gum
you know just just realizing that i
to to create a new story for my life i
really had to go all in you know i had
to go cold turkey and you know and i
haven't looked at a pornographic image
in 15 years and i haven't had a
cigarette i haven't touched coke or i
haven't gambled um i really walked away
from that it's interesting how did you
let go of all the traditional trappings
of success you know you've talked about
you give away like some absurd amount of
your money but even compared to what you
were making it's a lot less
now than it was back then yeah um
what is it neurochemically is sort of
how i view the world but what was it in
in that the way that it makes you feel
or whatever that's allowed you to commit
so deeply
i think it was when i realized that
money would not make me happy there was
a freedom of just saying okay i'm going
to stop pursuing that
and
then when i realized that giving money
away or raising money to give it away
really did make me happy that became the
new mattress of success my greatest
ambition
personally around money is i want to
write a million dollar check to a
charity
um at a certain stage because someone
did that for me and they completely
changed the game you know a stranger
walked in at a moment when we absolutely
needed the confidence and we absolutely
needed the capital and they wrote they
were extraordinarily generous i love
that how do you so to me you're a very
effective entrepreneur as well as having
run just an extraordinary charity but
tell us a little bit about
how you started as a nightclub promoter
not to glorify but the the things that
you did to get into that business i
think are applicable across the board um
the thing i'm most interested in was
when you called the guy up and said you
want somebody to work for you for free
yeah
well i got i got my start in nightlife
it was a club called nels in new york
city and i i was i played piano growing
up and i loved music and i kind of
stumbled into
eventually producing what was the
biggest r b open mic night in new york
city at the time and and i just had a
knack for
putting together the band
i was working with a great partner at
the time and and finding creating this
environment in this culture where
artists wanted to come
and try out their material and just
a safe space so stevie wonder would come
and brian mcknight and whitney houston
and prince
would come and perform
and and and i grew that
for a while and then someone said
well
that's great you're doing this thing but
i bet you can't do the same thing in
fashion you know this is a completely
different world and this new club uh
opened up
uh and the the owners were on the cover
of new york magazine the four owners and
it was a dare it really started out as a
dare
between someone
that i that i wanted to
i wanted them to respect me
and i said well they say i can't do it
let me see if i can let me see if these
skills
will port over from music into fashion
yeah i just called i left 30 voicemail
messages i've always been pretty
tenacious um if i if i really want
something you know i go after it and i
can i can push through a lot of no's
i i probably left 30 voicemails until
finally the club owner called me back
and he said okay i'll give you a shot on
our deadest night it's a monday night
i'll pay 150
and
you know i took that start and then
wound up you know working at 30 fashion
type clubs over over the last year i
want to go back to something you just
touched on about tenacity you said when
you really want something that you can
be quite tenacious and 30 phone calls
in the book you talk about something
that i thought was really
bizarre and wonderful
which was that you convinced the doctor
when you were a kid to let you watch an
autopsy yeah
tell that story and then the punch line
which i loved i grew up wanting to be a
doctor as a kid who would help sick kids
like or help sick people like my mom get
well and you know i remember that the
the science class when you dissect the
frog i just thought that was fascinating
and
you know i probably told my friends you
know i think i'm going to go dissect a
human so i figured out
you know who was
the local pathologist um and this is you
know maybe three blocks from our big
four thousand person high school
and call him write him you know figure
out
uh hey sir i really want to be a
pathologist right you know i give him a
whole kind of story of you know your
profession is the most interesting to me
and you know next thing i know i'm
cutting i got a scalpel in my hand and a
saw and i'm cutting through a human you
know down in the basement of the medical
ward as his assistant i thought i
thought it was just absolutely
fascinating but it was just simple i
just asked
you know there's so many
there are so many things that
that over the last
years i've been surprised that people
have just said yes
the things that you might you might not
even have the courage to ask for
um it was interesting we a couple years
ago we did a gala
we had shot it's actually three years
ago so virtual reality first hit the
scene and i saw one of the earliest vr
films and said
this is something charity water has to
embrace as a technology and
the the idea of being able to
intravenously deliver empathy you know
empathetic content
into someone and get their full
attention for a few minutes while their
phone is off and they're in your world
so interesting to me so we wound up
shooting our first film
with eight gopros you know on a stick i
mean this is before the cameras that you
have now and um we shot a really moving
eight-minute piece of a 13-year-old girl
who gets clean water for the first time
in her life
so we have this film
and i have this
vision of serving the film up at our
gala
in synchronous viewing to 400 people at
the same time and our gallow was in the
metropolitan museum of art in the temple
of danger right like the amazing
egyptian
wing of the met
with the pool and the glass looking out
on central park and 400 people would be
coming in black tie and i just had the
vision i could see it so clearly they
walk in they have their dinner and then
after dinner
hundreds of volunteers walk out strap
headsets on everyone and then at the
same time press play and take them all
to ethiopia bring them back i hope
genuinely moved right i imagine this in
my mind tears screaming you know
streaming down people's faces mascara
running and then i would ask them to
give what was in their hearts to clean
water so you know i tell my team the
idea like cool idea right but we
couldn't get the vr devices
no one would give them to us
so i just wouldn't take no for an answer
i was trying to figure out could we go
buy it was about 800 for the package it
was a it was an expensive phone and then
this is this is pre-oculus and all the
stuff that we had now it was gear vr
and i just it was no after no after no
it was too expensive to buy i was
looking into could we buy 400 and list
them on ebay the next day and take the
hit and and everyone's just saying no no
no we can't do it it's too expensive i
just i wouldn't let go
i
found my way to the verizon cmo
eventually convinced him to loan us 400
of the new
phones
and then leverage that to then work my
way all the way up the samsung chain and
finally got a vp who because verizon did
the phone said okay i'll send over
pallets of the things and we got him and
we wound up getting it all for free
i think we raised 2.7 million dollars
after people came back
to give 270 villages clean water so
there's i think a lot of these things
start with me me seeing it
um at the end you know it's almost like
seeing the press release i mean i i can
see the day on earth when everybody has
clean water you know i can see that drop
the mic moment
where no human being simply because of
where they're born
is going to die of bad water is walking
five hours to a swamp or a you know a
pond or a dirty river
and you know there may be a long way
between now and that moment but we're
you know we're working a little closer
to it this year i think it's almost 4
000 people getting clean water every day
and hopefully next year it's 5 000
people a day or 7 000 people a day
so i typically see these things and then
because i could see it almost like it
happened the nose just feel like you
need you know there are these roadblocks
that you need to push through you need
to find a way
do you talk to your staff about that
i find that's really hard to inspire on
other people to get them to push past
all the no's to
maybe not even create the vision because
it sounds like you can do that really
effectively and give that to them but to
get them to really believe that it's
possible
i teach them how to ask and that they
need to ask you know every once in a
while someone will email me back and
they're like oh my gosh i just pitched
some software company for 10 000 of
licenses and they just said yes and they
were fans of charity water so this we do
have a culture of asking and again it's
not for us and having a business model
where a hundred percent of the money is
going directly to provide clean water it
makes it easier to ask when i'm asking
verizon or samsung for you know half a
million dollars of vr gear i'm like it's
not for me i'm going to use that gift
and i'm going to give you know a hundred
thousand people clean water don't you
want to be a part of that so i think
it's excitement it's asking it's
invitation so i have learned that you
just have to ask and then you have to
push through the nose
and enough people have said yes now
you know to
to now impact eight and a half million
lives but boy if i could count the no's
i mean there's tens of thousands of
notes that we've all heard over the last
decade
and is there anything specific that you
teach your staff about how to ask
um you don't want to be entitled ever so
it's it's a really grateful ask you're
telling the story of what you're asking
for why you're asking for it um if
you're asking for a gift in kind which
we do a lot i mean you know uh for the
free web services or free software or
you know samsung gave us fifty thousand
dollars of tvs for our new office
um this is a funny story we we built out
our our headquarters in new york and
amazing i mean we have these amazing
stories of people encountering charity
water and being
radically generous and we had a landlord
who had given us
headquarters in new york for eight
dollars a square foot in soho you know
market was like 60 a foot or something
and this landlord then moved us into a
new office uh in tribeca as we grew it
was 23 25 000 square feet or so and we
didn't really have the money to build it
out so he says tell you what i'll bring
the contractors and the plumbers in and
you know you just give them the speech
see if you can inspire them so you know
he brings them in and i you know i've
got some some maybe
mob looking guys you know with hands
that feel like they're three times
bigger than mine crying in the
conference room as they are moved by our
work and the need and
um the impact that we're making and you
know this this office this what 1.8
million office build out um
i think we got 1.3 million donated
because everybody wanted to be a part of
it so samsung said we can give you fifty
thousand dollars of tvs for kpis and
dashboards all around the office and the
architect wound up donating all of their
fees back and wework said well we'll
give you furniture that we have in
warehouses because we'd rather your
staff be sitting in it to change the
world than sitting in a wework warehouse
somewhere that's the culture that we're
trying to instill and you get enough
yeses and then you grab onto that yes
and it it powers you through a lot of
no's it powers you through the
discouragement you've got people working
for a lot less than they could be making
somewhere else so obviously that's on
the side but how do you take somebody
that is really pouring their heart and
soul into this and still hold them to an
exceedingly high standard
yeah i'll use my wife as an example so
she was the second employee
of the organization we worked together
for nine years she was the creative
director
and really built the charity water brand
and i remember that
people would write her looking for a job
and the the incoming would be something
like this i love charity water so much
i'll do anything you know i'll clean the
toilets we've seen this we had i think
we had 1500 people apply to be the
receptionist um last year at charity
water you know
1500 applicants to answer the phones and
greet people as they walk into charity
water so this this is common and vic
would be so she would actually get angry
about that she's like i don't want
someone who just wants to work here
because they like the mission i want
someone who wants to be at best at their
craft
so she said do you want to be the very
best graphic designer or the best ui ux
designer or the best animator those are
the people that i want we want the
people that are leaving you know zynga
or google or adobe or apple or tesla
saying oh my gosh this thing that i do
that i've gotten really good at i didn't
know that it was applicable
to
end suffering of others i didn't know
that it could be used in a charitable
context so we always focus on craft and
excellence first
in the hiring process and not mission
um not kind of the you know the the
heartful
people now it's our job then to get them
really excited about the mission once
they come in um we do that you know one
of the unique things in our culture is
every year we take our whole staff to
the field this cost us like a hundred
thousand dollars to take them to
ethiopia or cambodia or nepal and say
even if you are not in any way directly
related to the water programs
if you're opening up checks if you're um
you know if you're working on email
marketing if you are the receptionist we
want you to meet the people
that you're indirectly serving and you
know that's that's a really important
thing in our culture
where
you know and the feedback is
unbelievable people come back and they
meet our local partners and they see
wells or rainwater harvesting systems or
big you know solar gravity fed systems
built and and they realize that that's
what their work adds up to it really
adds up to
humans on the end of you know human
lives that are extraordinarily
benefiting because of the thing that
they do
tell me more about innovation so i know
that you have a donor who said i'll give
you a million dollars a year as long as
you keep innovating and you said long
ago it stopped really being about the
the money but you've continued to push
yourself to innovate every year um
what does that process look like how how
do you innovate
a lot of it's had to do with technology
so it how can the advance of technology
be used for good be used in our context
so you know vr when it first came out
everybody was talking about porn gaming
right there was almost the malevolent
uses of vr and people are going to be
locked away in these other worlds and
not talking to each other we immediately
just went to the to optimism how could
we take someone across the world
deliver a meaningful experience to them
deliver a higher sense of connection to
the work to the impact that they could
make
when gps came out and we just realized
that you know gps was now something
you'd pretty much mount on anything and
it could talk to satellites we said well
let's put our drilling rigs
up
for the world to see so we mounted gps
units to our drilling rigs and we built
web platforms where people could track
them driving around ethiopia in real
time and then we gave our drilling rigs
twitter accounts so they tweet their
actual location so it's it's you know if
there's a new platform how can we use
this platform to tell stories if it's a
new technology how do we use this
technology to further our values of
hyper transparency or our values of
connection
so any given time there's just a culture
where someone can bring a new idea in
and then a small group will go and work
on it we do hackathons we shut down the
office for two days every single year
we've been doing that for five years and
things get built in the hackathons
that you could see online
they're real products that come out of
those those days when we stop and just
think outside the box
i love how much you think outside the
box and how much you've been able to
accomplish and hearing you talk and
sitting next to you optimism just like
pours out of you
what is the importance in what you're
doing or anybody for that matter of
optimism
oh man
it's i mean it's essential i think if
you are
in in any sort of business of
of
trying to change the world trying to
involve people trying to build a
movement
um
i actually heard a pastor say once that
those with the greatest hope have the
greatest influence
and
i love that like there are two kinds of
people in the world there are people in
the world that think the world is
getting better and there are people that
are i think the world is getting worse
who do you want to hang out with and i
think bill gates has done such a great
job in this with his notes at the end of
the year he's like
poverty is on like this is the best time
to ever live in the world on all of
these metrics right from malaria from
child mortality even water when i
started 12 years ago there were a
billion people without water it's 663
million
400 people got access to clean water
over the last 10 years now there's so
much work to be done it's still 1 in 10
people alive drinking bad water but we
are making progress and
uh you know i talk about like even those
metrics right 3 500 people a day getting
clean water that's the positive metric
not the 4 000 kids dying today of bad
water
so i think people are drawn to optimism
i think they're drawn to people with
hope
and
you need it for fuel you know if i
really thought that we were
trying to achieve an impossible task
it'd be hard to get up in the morning if
i really didn't think that we were going
to make any headway or it was a losing
battle
it would be hard to stay motivated
yeah
i could literally talk to you all day
before i ask my last question tell these
guys where they can find you online yeah
um charitywater.org
the book we have a pretty cool story
around the book um i gave away the whole
advance and all the proceeds so thirst
goes straight to help more people get
clean water so the book is actually just
turned into now
this hopefully this thing where
you know maybe it'll help millions of
people
get clean water and maybe it'll even
help some people
just encourage them that
no matter what their past
is like chances are they weren't as bad
as i was i believe no one's beyond um
redemption so that's just thirstbook.com
my last question what's the impact that
you want to have on the world
i'd like to
directly impact at least a hundred
million people's lives
so i would love
a hundred million people
to move from dirty water to clean water
and we're at 8.4 so 8.4 of the way
there and then i would just hope that
um
that other charities might be birthed
through our story um that other
you know i i would love to do so many
things i mean i lose sleep over the fact
that people are going to bed hungry that
people are going to bed without shelter
you know people are going
to bed without access to health care all
of these things i would hope that the
people would take the charity water
playbook they would take some
inspiration in
you know what a drugged out nightclub
promoter was able to
you know to do for one issue
and maybe even go and start that on a
bunch of other verticals and that you
know i know it's happened a couple times
a couple people have said you came and
spoke it my middle school i mean gosh i
feel really old now um but there there
are people that have said you came and
spoke in my middle school my life
changed and now i've started a charity
and i'm doing it full-time so i would
hope that you know i just look at it as
sowing seeds you know you're constantly
out there telling stories
i'm probably making 150 speeches a year
and i'm just putting the stories out
there
and you never know
what ground it kind of falls on you know
i mean some some is no ground right and
some is later grounds you know some
takes a really really really long time
to germinate and some is
wow that impacted me and i am making a
change now um one of one of my favorite
stories from a speech
i was speaking in uh in a in miami um
a pastor friend and said hey will you
come and speak in my church there's four
services right and i'm like sure that's
easy speaking four times in a row for an
hour it was exhausted i got to the end
of this and said
you know i'm wiped out it was it was not
in a wealthy community so nobody gave
money so i just felt like i poured my
guts out
for no good reason on a sunday except a
favor you know for someone i'd met once
and nothing happened nothing happened a
year later nothing happened a year later
nothing happening a year later a few
years later i think it was four years
later hundred thousand dollar check
arrives in the office
and it turns out that someone heard me
speak that night went home and changed
his will
he died of cancer four years later
and he had written us that night into
his well for a hundred thousand dollars
ten communities
gets even better the family turns up and
like we don't really know anything about
this organization so they come up to new
york they get so involved they've now
given hundreds of thousands of dollars
so that one of those four speeches that
had no impact at the time
four years later you know is going to
impact
tens of thousands of lives maybe
hundreds of thousands of lives this
family now wants to host us and bring us
into their community so you have these
moments that you just really you hold on
to and say i don't need to measure the
impact from a speech in the moment or
even in a half decade anymore because
you never know how long it might take
for that seed to grow um
so i would hope sorry that's a really
long answer so it was probably a short
question not at all that was amazing
thank you so much for coming on the show
that was really incredible
all right guys i love his answer about
optimism and that is something that i
hope all of you will take away from this
interview is that would you rather be
with people that think that the world is
going to hell in a hand basket or would
you rather be around people that really
believe that something is going right
and that knows how to execute that knows
how to do something with that that knows
how to think big and then go through all
of the no's to finally get to the yes
that's the kind of person you want to
spend your time with and that is exactly
this man he has been out there doing
those 150 speeches a year for years and
years and years planting all of those
seeds so that something really
extraordinary could blossom out of that
it doesn't matter what your thing is but
find your thing find your purpose and go
and plant as many seeds as this man has
and have the kind of impact that he's
having that is something that i wish for
all of you guys alright if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe and until
next time my friends be legendary take
care
[Applause]
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