How I Raised $700 Million: Charity: Water Founder

Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of Charity: Water, one of the most innovative non-profit organisations in the world. Bringing the Netflix model to the charity sector, Scott has built a positive community around trying to bring drinking water to the 700 million people who don’t have access to it. For this episode, we’ve partnered with Charity: Water to ensure that all of the proceeds we receive from it will go towards providing drinking water to the people who need it the most. The story of how Scott came to lead a global movement in water provision is unlike any other. A former nightclub promoter and owner, he was a user of every type of drug under the sun before he cleaned up his act and started again. Because when he asked himself what was most important, it wasn’t his own pleasure, but helping other people. To help Scott in his mission, we are donating 100% of the advertising revenue from this episode to help people access clean water. If you’d like to donate also, click here: charitywater.org/thediaryofaceo Follow Scott: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/scottharrison Twitter - https://twitter.com/scottharrison Scott’s book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirst-Story-Redemption-Compassion-Mission/dp/1524762865/ Charity: Water - https://www.charitywater.org/uk Mentioned books - The Pursuit of God - Tozer, A. W https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pursuit-God-W-Tozer/dp/1940177103 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm emotionally bankrupt, I'm morally bankrupt, and this is not how I'd want it to end. The founder and CEO of Charity Water, making a difference all over the world.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  A New York Times bestseller.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  He's a certifiable badass and his name is Scott Harrison.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  The lifestyle of a promoter is one where you get lots of attention.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  The fun I had for 10 years in nightlife was a lot of cocaine, MDMA, 40 to 60 cigarettes a day fun. I realized, what if I did die? What would I have to show for life? So that started a process. 10% of the world is drinking dirty water. And I realized so many of my friends didn't trust charities. Where does the money really go? So I had a very simple idea, promised the public that 100% of anything they would ever give to Charity Water would go directly to help people get clean water. You know, nobody thought this business model was a good idea. And I was hitting a point where I realized, maybe they're right. We're about to go out and build 100 wells, and we're about to miss payroll. There's no miracle that can save us.

• 1:04Steven Bartlett?

  So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO USA edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  Scott, four years old.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  Do you still remember the day your mother collapsed?

• 1:30Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 1:31Steven Bartlett?

  You don't?

• 1:32Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 1:35Steven Bartlett?

  When I read through your story, that was a pretty significant sort of catalytic moment.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  1980, right? New Year's Day.

• 1:41Steven Bartlett?

  1980?

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me about that day, that week.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  We had just moved into a new house. My dad wanted to get closer to his job. We moved into this house in the dead of winter, and... We all started experiencing some health symptoms, headaches and fatigue. And nobody really knew what was going on. I think my dad had a couple of people come and just check to make sure that the house was fine. He probably checked the radon or maybe asbestos, I'm not sure. And then on New Year's Day, 1980, my mom, according to her, and my father walked across the master bedroom and then collapsed unconscious.

• 2:25Steven Bartlett?

  Both of them?

• 2:26Speaker 00

  She did. And so she was the canary in the coal mine that then led to eventually a discovery of a carbon monoxide gas leak in the house. There was a faulty heat exchanger that had been leaking carbon monoxide. She had been 24/7 in the house, unpacking boxes from the move, putting pictures up on the wall. My dad had been working, I'd been at school. So we were spending the evenings in the house, but not 24/7. And blood tests revealed these massive amounts of carbon monoxide in her bloodstream. And that was really the day that everything changed for our family. Mom never recovered from that.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  My dad and I both did, but her life was irreparably damaged from that point on. Her immune system just kind of fully shut down in its ability to process any chemicals, so anything that was unnatural. To give you an example, perfume would make her violently ill. If she smelled perfume. Soap would make her sick. Car fumes, like kryptonite, would make her sick. So over the next period of years, we would come up with hacks for all this stuff. The hack for her living space eventually was a bedroom upstairs in the house. Sorry, it was a bathroom

• 3:53Speaker 00

  upstairs in the house, near the bedroom. And the bathroom was washed down with a special soap. That didn't smell. It was completely hypoallergenic. The door, the wooden door that had a stain on it was then covered in sheets of aluminum foil to keep that stain smelling. She would sleep on an army cot that my dad had found somewhere that was washed in baking soda more than 10 times so there'd be no odor. And then my mom wore a mask her whole life. So I, you know, rarely saw my mother's face because she was wearing an N95 or similar version. Now, I see your face. There were some people that are like, I think this woman's just crazy.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Right? I mean, there was an element growing up of wondering, of some level of doubt. You know, is this real? You know, the massive amounts of carbon dioxide were certainly real and discovered by the doctors in her body, but were all of these symptoms, hypertension, headaches, you know, a lot of the stuff, you couldn't really see. There were things where she would break out in terrible rashes and that was very real. But I do remember growing up with that, you know, that, that edge of a little bit of doubt sometimes.

• 5:13Steven Bartlett?

  Where did that come from, that doubt?

• 5:15Speaker 00

  From others, I think. I mean, nobody knew how to process someone who's allergic to the world. And so among the things that made mom sick, also radio waves, telephones, and TV. So as a young teenager, you know, I'm thinking, mom is just trying to rain on my parade. I mean, we can't have a TV, but I just didn't believe that invisible electromagnetic waves were going to make her that sick. So I remember one night when she had, you know, gone to bed, I snuck up to the hallway and I took a boombox and I turned the radio on with the sound all the way down and I aimed it through the door, which it didn't flow

• 5:59Speaker 00

  on the inside, right? And, you know, effectively trying an experiment to say, well, if she doesn't know the radio's on, well, she's going to be fine. And she woke up the next morning very sick.

• 6:14Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 6:15Speaker 00

  So I remember as a kid, for me, that was a big defining moment of, you know, mom's telling the truth. And unfortunately, radio waves affect her and give her symptoms.

• 6:30Steven Bartlett?

  How can you develop a relationship with your mother when she's trapped in a room alone, behind tinfoil and wearing gloves? How do you have affection and?

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, there wasn't a lot of touch.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Cause I wasn't, you know, I wasn't really allowed to touch her. I would always be smelling of something from the outside world. It was a weird childhood. I was an only child because the family planning stopped after the accident. And I just remember a lot of caregiving, helping my mom, doing cooking, doing cleaning, helping my dad out with her and trying to be a cheerful companion. I would try to cheer her up. I would play piano outside her, you know, like I play a keyboard outside her, her door.

• 7:15Steven Bartlett?

  I had a gentleman sit here the other day that used to coach Kobe Bryant. And he talked about this concept of having a dark side. And he, his dark side is quite graphic, but he refers to the dark side as a concept where things that happen in our early years end up being both destructive and constructive. So, and they, when I sit here with people that are anomalies, you tend to find these stories because, so they had some kind of anomalous upbringing, which led to them being an anomaly in their early years, for better or for worse. When you reflect on your, shall I call it dark side?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think it's anger.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  And I've been able to make that anger useful by, you know, for the last, what, 17 years, you know, fighting against people suffering in needless poverty or, you know, specifically people without access to clean water. But that's probably the darkest side that I have is, you know, I can lose my temper. You know, I can, I can get angry quick. I've, I've gotten really good over the years at trying to harness that in a really constructive way. The, the, you know, the angst maybe, you know, maybe it's not even as much anger as just the discontent with.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  The way things are and the willingness to fight to make them the way they should be.

• 8:44Steven Bartlett?

  Is that a discontent with the external world and the and your internal world? So like your life and the situation you find the world in?

• 8:53Speaker 00

  I am not naturally reflective. It was it was a really difficult journey for me to go back into childhood to write the book and kind of go back into, you know, some really dark years of addiction and, you know, well, just kind of decadent vice.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  It wasn't really fun growing up. And, you know, I think now I'm a parent of two kids and I'm forty six years old. And as I think about the childhood I want to give my kids, I actually think I'm overcompensating for fun. My wife and I were just talking about this the other day. You know, it is all experience. You know, it's let's go do roller coasters fifty times. You know, it's let's jump on a plane and, you know, go to Niagara Falls.

• 9:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Let's have all of these experiences because I think I'm making up for my lost childhood. You know, I want to, I think I also want to have fun. I want to do the things kind of vicariously through my kids at that age, at these young ages, that I never got to do.

• 9:59Steven Bartlett?

  One of my fears when I come to have kids is my dark side will manifest in both ways. It will mean that, for example, in your case, that because I was deprived of that childhood, I will make sure we did go to the theme park all the time. But there's got to be other ways where that dark side in us, a dark side is a bit of a loaded term, but that side of us that formed our greatness or forms our desire to overcompensate as a parents also has a adverse impact, which might be overworking or it could be.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Well, it can be too much fun. It could be, you know, I could wind up with kids who don't know the value of work. See, I learned the value of work growing up. I was doing yard work. I was washing windows. I was cleaning a four bedroom house. I was, you know, washing mom's sheets in special, you know, baking soda concoctions. So one of the, one of the best things I got from my childhood was I was needed. I was, I was performing a role that was essential to the family.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And that's, you know, that gave me a lot of confidence.

• 10:59Steven Bartlett?

  The lifestyle of a promoter, which you went on to become, is one where you get lots of attention from lots of people. You get it from women. You also have a ton of power. You also have a ton of control. My brother, my oldest brother, actually, his early story sounds, has shades of the experience you had in terms of school. And he went on to be a promoter. He actually was a bouncer and a promoter, even though he is maybe the smartest academic person I've ever met in my life. He was a bouncer and a promoter in a nightclub and works in nightclubs. And when I reflected on that, I think, I think much of the reason is because he was seeking attention. And the way he felt psychologically in those scenarios was filling some kind of void he had in his childhood. And this is an assumption I'm making, but I don't know how far off I am.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  I mean, if you asked me at nineteen, what I wanted to do, it was open up for U2. Our band was gonna be instantly rich and famous. And I was the band's manager and I was booking us out. And so I'm sure if I played that out, it would be, look at me onstage, look at this band, a way of feeling validated.

• 12:05Steven Bartlett?

  When did the band dream end?

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Very quick, very, very soon after. The, the piece, the, the connective tissue there, which eventually led to a ten year career in nightclubs, in nightlife, was that when our bands would play gigs, it was the promoters that were making the money. We would bring a lot of people. Our people, our friends would pay the cover to see us. And then the promoter would throw us a hundred bucks at the end of the night and say, split this five ways, right? Wouldn't even pay for gas, let alone a guitar cable, you know, that broke, or, you know, an amp that broke. So I befriended one of the promoters that

• 12:51Speaker 00

  had booked the band in the immediate aftermath of us breaking up and said, take me under your wing and teach me the ropes. Teach me how to be on the other side of the velvet rope. You know, the other side of booking bands. And I jumped into that business at nineteen years old. Now, the funny thing is, I wasn't even allowed to be in clubs.

• 13:11Steven Bartlett?

  And you were, by all accounts, really successful in that.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, there were, there were probably eight or ten of us that were at the highest echelon in New York City.

• 13:19Steven Bartlett?

  What was it about your character? And about you that made you successful at that? Because that is a very specific set of skills.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was I was curating fun. I was creating and curating fun. My first experience in New York City was with with somebody who was courting our band. And he took me to a club called Club USA. I had never been inside a nightclub in my life. And here I am with, you know, 3,000 people. And this club had a slide. And I remember he took me up to the balcony and he's like, go in the slide. And I remember just, you know, you go in this long kind of like tunnel slide and it dropped you on the dance floor. And I loved it. I mean, there was just something so electric, something so illegal about it.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Coming from my Christian kind of rule based worldview and childhood. I mean, if my parents had seen me at that club, my gosh.

• 14:21Steven Bartlett?

  It's a really interesting through line between you saying, I said, why are you really good at? Why were you really good at the nightlife scene? And you said, because I'm good at curating fun. And then like five minutes before we were talking about the fact that you create fun for your kids. You're over indexed there. You're super successful.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Well, and Charity Water is, you know, we've been called externally. I mean, it's a really fun brand. And, you know, this is a little bit of a joke, but what are the first three letters in fundraising?

• 14:49Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  A lot of charities would say shame raising.

• 14:53Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, you're right.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Guilt raising. Let's make people feel terrible that they have too much. You know, let's show pictures of kids with flies in Africa, you know, on their face in slow motion, locking sad eyes with the camera. So we've very intentionally taken the opposite view of building the Charity Water brand over 15 years. And fun is a word in our culture.

• 15:16Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think fun has such a big importance for you and your work because it was something you were deprived of?

• 15:21Speaker 00

  I think so, and I also think now the kind of fun really matters. So the fun I had for 10 years in nightlife was a lot of cocaine fun, a lot of ecstasy, MDMA fun, you know, 40 to 60 cigarettes a day fun, gambling fun, pornography fun, strip club fun. Well, I'm using fun loosely, so it was a really unhealthy search for fun in those places which were highly destructive for me.

• 15:54Steven Bartlett?

  Give me the symptoms of highly destructive, psychologically, physically.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  It all started with smoking. You know, it was like the first cigarette. I did everything to such an extreme, like everything kind of with reckless abandon. You know, there was really this all in. I mean, if I'm not going to be an occasional smoker, I'm going to smoke two to three packs a day. You know, I'm not going to be occasionally sleeping around. I'm going to go and try and sleep with, you know, every beautiful girl in New York City. So I was brought up to save myself for marriage.

• 16:32Steven Bartlett?

  That's a form of like medication, isn't it? In a strange way.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Well, or playing things out to their end would be another way of, you know, you can't have this thing. Okay, so I was brought up, you can't have sex, you can't have smoking, you can't have drinking, you can't have drugs. I think a part of me really wanted to make sure that there wasn't happiness at the end of it. And to really play it through to the end. So I actually never felt like an addict to any of these things, maybe smoking aside. But I would do cocaine for two or three years and then kind of get bored with it. And I would do marijuana, like I'm just going to smoke and get stoned every single day. And then, no, I didn't find what I was looking for there.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Okay, let me try and gamble. Let me go to Vegas, let me go to Atlantic City, let me, you know, learn craps and blackjack and poker and, okay, I didn't find it there. I just got a lot of broker. So I think it was this exploration of...

• 17:36Speaker 00

  You know, I didn't know what I was looking for. I was trying to fill a hole.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  And I needed to make sure that I left no stone unturned down that path.

• 17:49Steven Bartlett?

  Are there days when you look back and go, that was one of my lowest days? Then I know there's probably a sequence of them. I think about my own life, there's a sequence of days, I think that was it. But what was the first day where you think this, something's got to change?

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is towards the end. So maybe I'm 26, couple of years before I got out of the business. And a typical night would look like a fancy dinner at 10 o'clock. We would then go to the club that we were promoting at around 11:45. We'd stay at the club until three. We'd leave with a group of 20 people, maybe, and we'd go to an after hours. And that might last till 11 a.m. After hours is gross. I mean, it's only drugs at after hours. And I just remember this one day coming back from after hours. And I remember looking out the window on Houston Street. And people were on their lunch break.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  You know, people had gotten up in the morning, done yoga, gone to the gym, had a full like morning at work. And now they're on their lunch breaks. And here I am taking Ambien to come down. I remember needing to block out the light and taking a comforter that I would duct tape on the window. So that I could simulate darkness. And then I would sleep till seven o'clock or eight o'clock and then wake up and do it all over again. You know, it's not like I'm a doctor who works the ER shift, right? I worked the night shift. I stitched up a bunch of patients. I was really useful. And, you know, I'm going to bed at noon because I've, I've been a contributing member to society. Like I had just gotten, I don't know, a thousand people wasted the night before. And then gotten wasted with my 20 friends.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  And it was a real, it was a real darkness in that.

• 19:32Steven Bartlett?

  And the thoughts start to creep in, right? At some point that, I mean, the, the feeling probably comes first in that case, where you start feeling something psychologically or emotionally.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Yes. Sadness, I think it's a sadness. I think it's a, an emptiness.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  And then you mentioned the health problems. So about a year later, half my body goes numb. And I just remember I couldn't feel my hand. I was running it under hot water and I couldn't feel the hot water. And I'm like, kind of tapping. It was this kind of weird paresthesia, numbness and tingling. So I'm now seeing doctors and I'm getting MRIs and CT scans. I'm convinced I have a fatal disease. I have a brain tumor. You know, there's just something, when you, the loss of feeling was really scary. I'm connected to EKGs. None of the tests reveal anything.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  And that was such a, that was a really clear moment for me, where I realized, what if I did die in the next month? And what if I did have an inoperable brain tumor?

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Would I be happy with the life that I lived?

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Hadn't done anything for others, hadn't mentored others, hadn't given charitably, hadn't been a good friend particularly, hadn't been a particularly good boyfriend. And I just realized, wow, I've, I've really gotten to the end. I'm emotionally bankrupt, I'm spiritually bankrupt, I'm certainly morally bankrupt. And this is not how I'd want it to end.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  So that started a process.

• 21:17Steven Bartlett?

  When you, when people face, face, you know, that feeling in their life, and sometimes it's just, it's exactly that. It's a feeling that their job or the path they're on is not fulfilling them deeply. And they almost arrive at this crossroads where they realize they've got to make a decision. They don't know what's down there. But they do know that if they go down there, they're going to have to shed a lot of things. One of them is their identity, one, and everything that comes with their identity. Did you feel a fear of having to shed pretty much everything you'd built for a decade? Friends and all of that.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  I don't know, I didn't even know how to do that. I mean, at this point, I just know things need to change. I start reading the Bible again. I start reading this book that my father had given me, which is interesting. I've tried to read it, you know, years since, and I, it doesn't hit me the same way that it did then.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  The book was about finding God and living a pure life.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  And returning to the innocence of a child. Here is a man's pursuit of righteousness, honor, integrity, peacemaking, innocence, virtue. And I am none of these things. In fact, I am leading people to the opposite of those things. So I think just what was happening here was these extremes, like worlds were colliding. And I realized I didn't need a pivot in my life. A small course correction was not going to be the answer.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  I was somehow gonna have to find the 180 degree opposite of everything I said, thought, and did. And that's what I didn't know how to do.

• 23:03Steven Bartlett?

  What was the first step in doing that?

• 23:06Speaker 00

  I came back and I tried to sleep with my girlfriend less, uh, smoke less, figure out how to, you know, figure out how to get out of that relationship because she didn't love me and I didn't love her. Smoke less, drink less, and knock it off with the drugs. And then I was miserable with my failure in all those things. I'd quit smoking for a week and then I was back at it. You know, I wouldn't do coke for a couple of weeks and then I was out at the party and like some celebrity was there and offered it to me. It's like, well, you know, I mean, I'm doing coke with so and so, like, you know, can't pass up this opportunity. So for me, it was a little bit of a process. The process took about seven or eight months from the beginning of the health issues to eventually the change.

• 23:47Steven Bartlett?

  And that, the first significant step that didn't feel like a pivot then, was that when you applied, started applying to humanitarian causes and charities and organizations?

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, there was an event at a nightclub where I had fired somebody. You know, interestingly, I was actually offered a business interest in a new restaurant. So there was this kind of path that might be a little bit of a pivot out of nightlife into a more reputable restaurant owner world where we'd be promoting a restaurant, which also had a little club upstairs. But anyway, what happens, I'm in a club that was, that was not one that we worked at, but I knew the owner very well. And I was with the new business partner of the restaurant. And I actually still remember this, this is so many years ago, but I came out of the bathroom, I remember I was high that night, and...

• 24:40Speaker 00

  I sit down back in a banquet with him and he says, hey, this bouncer just tried to shake me down for money. He's like, you know, the owner here, right? You know, that's not cool, bro. You brought me to this club and this guy's trying to hustle me for money and like, you know, pay, pay me to stay in here. I'm going to throw you out or he didn't, I was in the bathroom. So apparently didn't know he was with me. So I remember, you know, going outside and getting in this bouncer's face and saying like, you know, you picked on the wrong guy. This is my new partner. So there's like, there's an element of loyalty and honor, you know, here for me. And I remember stepping on the street. It was on 27th Street, between 10th and 11th. And I called the owner to, who wasn't there that night. And I left

• 25:21Speaker 00

  a message about what happened and left the club. And then the next morning she woke up, got the message, and then she fired this guy, the bouncer. The next night I'm at the club that I was working at, and I remember leaving about 15 minutes early. And then on my way home, I get a text from our doorman saying, hey, bro, there's like a bouncer that just turned up. And he said, you know, you cost him his job. And he says, he's going to kill you. Now, you have to understand in nightlife, like, we get threatened all the time. And this would be like death threat number 17. You don't let people in your party. They're embarrassed. You know, there, there's a, there's a lot of animosity towards

• 26:01Speaker 00

  people working at the high end of nightlife. But this felt not trivial, you know, to be quite honest. And I remember just saying, well, I'm just gonna, I remember going to my girlfriend's house that night, not going home and woke up the next day and said, I'm just gonna get out of town for a couple of weeks and called my partner and said, I need a break anyway. You know, you handle the clubs for a couple of weeks. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna get out of town for a little bit. I wound up renting a cobalt blue Ford Mustang. And I think I did a month long rental because it felt cheap and

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Wound up just driving north. You know, I was also like, kind of just excited to get out of the city and the idea of being alone away from this relationship that wasn't really healthy as well. And I wound up calling this guy on the phone the next day and saying, hey, man, I'm really sorry. Like, you know, I was a little out of it. What you did wasn't cool, but I'll try and get you another job. You know, here's a couple of places that are hiring and feel free to use me as a reference. And, you know, he seemed like he accepted the apology on the phone. So maybe that, maybe there was never any danger, you know, I'm not sure. But I was heading north and I was gonna, you know, get out of town for a while.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  And I remember bringing a Bible and a bottle of Dewar's and a carton of Marlboro Reds. So I start like reading the Bible while I'm drinking and smoking. And I, I wind up going through Connecticut and through Vermont and I wind up in Maine. And, you know, an inner transformation is really happening the farther I get away from New York City.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Like the farther north I go, the farther into kind of, you know, deserted beauty, the less I wanted to go back to New York. And it just kind of hits me. I don't ever need to go back. What if I never went back? What would I do? And, you know, called this a God given idea or, or whatever. I got this idea to, that I, so when I, when I grew up in the church, this, there was this idea of a biblical tithe, where like 10% of your money goes to the church or to the poor and then you get to keep 90%. Well, I got this idea to tithe my time. What if I gave one year of the 10 years that I've selfishly wasted,

• 28:34Speaker 00

  back in service to God and, and the poor or people who, who needed help? Could I be useful? That was really the question. And putting action to that, I remember being in a dial up internet cafe with a bunch of old Dell computers in Greenville, Maine, on Moosehead Lake. I'm staying in a little motel and I started to fill out the applications for the famous humanitarian aid organizations I'd heard of. Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, World Vision.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  And I commit in my mind that I'm not going to go back to New York. And I'm going to actually change my life and I'm going to give a year back.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  I don't go back to New York while I'm wait, go ahead.

• 29:23Steven Bartlett?

  I was gonna say, it's just so I find it really interesting that the further away you got from New York, the more, because people can relate to that in their lives in so many ways. If you've ever taken a month off from a job.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:33Steven Bartlett?

  And you can finally feel it once you've stepped away from the thing.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  And said another way, the further I got away from this destructive environment for me, you know, the, the more clarity I think I got.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  So I wound up going bypassing New York. I went to the south of France. A buddy had a house in the mountains, in the remote Pyrenee Mountains. And I go there, there was no internet, so I had to come down. There was no phone and no internet. So I had to come down into the town on a bike just to, you know, check messages. But I go there and it's, it's time alone, it's solace, it's time for prayer, it's time for reading. You know, it's this kind of this cleansing reset, you know, there's no drugs. I was probably smoking a little bit, but you know, no, no gambling, no porn, like just it's kind of a reset moment. And what happens is one by one, the denials from all these organizations come in.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  So 10 organizations reject my volunteer application, which makes sense because they're not looking for nightclub promoters. In the same way that, you know, maybe a, this is not, you know, Doctors Without Borders, looking for a reformed, high-end nightclub promoter to go to Sudan.

• 30:51Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe they should have been in hindsight.

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Well, so one day I remember I'm driving my bike. It's probably, you know, five miles, you know, down from this house through the little town. And there's a small patch of cellphone reception where I would stop and check messages. And as I'm actually on the bike, riding through this area, the phone rings. And it's a group that hadn't rejected me and they said, hey, we're, we're called Mercy Ships. We saw your application. Our ship right now, our hospital ship is in Bremerhaven, Germany. We haven't agreed to accept you, but we will meet you. So can you be in Germany and meet us? And I'm like, well, I'm in France. I'll get right there.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  And I got there maybe 18 hours later and convinced these people, these doctors, that I was not going to throw any wild parties on their hospital ship. I was not going to corrupt any of the young nurses, that I really was reformed and wanted to change my life. And the position I had applied for was photojournalist on the ship. Now, I hadn't mentioned this, but I'd gone to New York University part-time when I was working at the clubs, just to get a degree from my dad. Terrible student, C minus, didn't even see the degree for 10 years. They just mailed it directly to him, because he'd saved up for his only child to go to college, and I felt like I owed that to him.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  But I had gotten a communications degree there, because it was the easiest thing. You know, I was a pretty good writer, and I was a hobby photographer. So I dusted off this degree that I've never used with nightlife, and I say, actually, I have a comms degree from a decent university, and I can do this job. I also said to them, I have 15,000 people on my club email list, so I have a built-in audience to be able to share the stories of the amazing redemptive humanitarian work I'm sure you're doing. So maybe to say it another way, let me promote something different. Let me promote you and the unbelievable medical work that you're going to be doing. And I have a bunch of people that I could already promote to.

• 33:04Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me about the emotional journey you went on from there. So you get on this ship, it goes off to Liberia?

• 33:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it goes to Benin, West Africa, and then Liberia. Well, this happens very quickly, so I go back to France, I pack up, and three weeks later, I'm on this hospital ship. And the night before I joined the ship, I had this moment of clarity. So this is a 522-foot ocean liner, so a huge cruise liner, that had been gutted and turned into a state-of-the-art hospital. And this organization, for 25 years, had sailed up and down the coast of Africa, bringing volunteer doctors, surgeons, and nurses on their vacation time. To provide free medical services. So the the ship would pull into a port and then, you know, work there for a year and then sail off to the next place.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  So I have this moment of clarity that I really am going to need to quit all the vices before I join this group of Christian doctors and humanitarian on a ship. And there was something, you know, symbolic about the gangway. Right? Like, I'm gonna walk up the gangway of this ship. They're gonna lift the gangway. I'm kind of trapped on it with 350 other volunteers. And then I'm gonna sail away to a new continent and a new life. I better not bring any of that stuff with me. So very intentionally, the night before I got on the ship, I remember smoking 60 cigarettes. Smoked three packs, my last three packs of cigarettes. I remember getting hammered, drinking eight or nine beers.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  And just knowing that I would have to go, you know, cold turkey or all in to allow this new life to develop. And, you know, that was a clarifying moment. I I drink a little bit now, years later, but I've never had another cigarette. I've never had a drag or, you know, 17 years now. Never touched coke or any of those things. Haven't looked at a pornographic image in 17 years. Never gambled again. And actually, didn't sleep with anyone for the next five years until my wedding night with my wife. So I really went like full circle, you know, back home

• 35:23Speaker 00

  in the most extreme way to allow this new life to unfold.

• 35:28Steven Bartlett?

  I was reading through the book about what you saw when you arrived.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, my gosh.

• 35:34Steven Bartlett?

  There were terrific things. There's actually a photo in here, I believe.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  So let me set the scene. So the ship is pulling into the port.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  A small advance team for the previous three months had posted flyers throughout the country advertising the coming of the hospital ship. And we have 1,500 available surgery slots to hand out. So we're going to make 1,500 sick people healthy. Those are the surgery slots we have. So I'm so excited, right? This is like my new life. I've got two Nikon D1X cameras. And I learned that the name for what the first event is the patient screening. It's the big triage moment. And the veterans on the ship called it the screaming. Oh, we're headed to the patient screaming.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  You know, which should have sounded ominous. So I remember thinking, you know, looking at these flyers, which are advertising facial tumors, cleft lips, cleft palates, cleft faces, flesh eating disease, like people with parts of their face completely missing, holes, they can look through to the back of their throats, burns. Many people had been burned during the war by rebel soldiers who would pour oil on their bodies to disfigure them. I remember thinking like, are there 1,500 people that are going to turn up with these conditions? Like, really? So get in a Land Rover, a convoy of Land Rovers at 5:30 in the morning. This is my third day in Africa. So like, the ship comes in, everybody gets ready, let's go.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  I learned the government has given us the football stadium in the center of the city to do the screening inside the football arena. Put on my hospital scrubs, jump in a convoy of Land Rovers, we snake through the city, we get to the stadium, and there's more than 5,000 sick people standing in the parking lot, waiting for us to open the doors.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  I'll never forget that moment realizing wow, we're gonna send 3,000 sick people home with no help, with no hope. And I later learned many of those people had walked for more than a month from neighboring countries. The word had spread Sierra Leone, to Guinea, to Cote d'ivoire. Many of them had brought their children on a month-long journey, just in the hopes of their child seeing a doctor. But we didn't have enough doctors. We didn't have enough available slots. So then the doors opened and you know, everybody tries to, there's a whole crew that's trying to put everybody into this line that just kind

• 38:21Speaker 00

  of snakes back and forth and back and forth. And the first child that, so my job is going to be to photograph all 1,500 people up close for the medical library. And the first child I see is this 14-year-old boy, and he's suffocating to death with a volleyball-sized tumor. This pink-red tumor that is occupying his entire mouth. And he's having a hard time breathing. He's terrified. You know, I just remember the fear in his eyes. I'm terrified. You know, I remember just weeping. I'd never seen suffering like this before.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  And I remember kind of just shutting down and going in the corner of the stadium and one of the doctors came over and said, you know, hey, you're the photojournalist guy, right? Like, he said, you're gonna get back in there. Like, basically, do your job. You're gonna see way worse than this. So, kind of toughen up, kid. And then he said, focus on the hope. You know, focus on the 1,500 people like this child that we're gonna be able to help. And that was two days of really grueling, every single person you see is sick. Leprosy, you know, some of the conditions that I, that I mentioned. Sick and scared.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  And a couple of days later, I got to scrub up again and document this eight and a half hour surgery when Alfred, the first child that I'd met, had his tumor removed by this remarkable man named Dr. Gary Parker. And a couple of weeks later, I got to see Alfred go back to his village. I asked whether I could drive him home. In my mind, I knew there was going to be a party. I knew that when the village had sent this, they'd written this boy off. They had sent him to the witch doctor who, you know, cast spells and spread chicken blood on his tumor. I mean, none of this worked. So he had literally been written

• 40:30Speaker 00

  off for dead. And I wanted to see what it was like, like when he came back to the village without his tumor, healthy. So I remember driving him, it was a few hours, and just the whole community kind of coming out and looking at him and touching his face and, and seeing, you know, celebrating, you know, a child that they thought was lost, who, who was found, who was healed. And then over the next year, I was able to witness 1,500 of those transformations.

• 41:03Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Now, I'm blasting my club list.

• 41:09Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, right.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  The whole time. So that was fun, because i- in a very short term, people were getting emails from me inviting them to the opening of the Prada mega store, or Cosmopolitan's, you know, fashion week party. And now they're getting pictures of 14 year olds with facial tumors, and pictures of the operating procedure, and then pictures of, of post-op.

• 41:35Steven Bartlett?

  And what are you asking them for?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  I'm just sharing my experience.

• 41:38Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  And I'm promoting the work of the doctors. Like, guys, this is amazing. These doctors are here. We're changing people's lives.

• 41:45Steven Bartlett?

  So when you drive that kid home and you see the reaction, or even when you see the before and after, how did that feel in comparison to the best club night you ever threw?

• 41:53Speaker 00

  So much better. So much better. And, and, and healthy, and redemptive, and positive, and life-giving. It was joy.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  What I didn't realize until later was my envi- for me to kind of step into this new life or into this new calling or to find the 180, my environment also needed to drastically change. I was never going to be able to change my life working at the clubs four nights a week, surrounded by sex and drugs and alcohol.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  But my environment changed and here I am with a bunch of like, you know, Christian humanitarian doctors who are the most sacrificial people that I've ever met in my lives. You know, smoking is not cool on a hospital ship, right? Drinking is not cool. There's no casino. Nobody's playing, you know, blackjack. I mean, this is, this is so missional and so purposeful. And I, I loved the new environment. I couldn't get enough of it. I never wanted to leave. It was home. It felt like coming back home.

• 43:01Steven Bartlett?

  This leads you ultimately to discovering that there's a real issue out in Africa with water.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  And I, that quote, "You've got to be kidding me, they drink this," feels like quite a powerful quote in hindsight when I look at the work you've done from then on. Tell me about that moment where you said those words.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Maybe first just the doctor through line. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor. To cure mom and sick people like hers. And I didn't do anything doctor-like for 10 years in clubs. Doctors don't come to nightclubs and buy bottles of Cristal. So I didn't know many doctors. But now I'm with a bunch of doctors. And there was one doctor, this guy, Dr. Gary Parker, who had been there 21 years and I made him a mentor. I wanted to spend as much time as possible.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  He was one of the reasons why I went back for the second year because he had dedicated 21 years of his life to this work. And I'm like, well, I have at least another year, right? Let me, let me just not end with this year-long tithe when the year was finished. Let me go back for a second tour. In the second tour, I felt like I really understood the medical world and I still had to take all the pictures of the surgeries and the before and afters, but I wanted to get off of the ship and understand more of the context of how people were living in Liberia. Now, this was a post-war country. 14 years of brutal civil war led by Charles Taylor had torn apart the country. There was no electricity, no running water. No sewage system and no mail system. So just imagine like shambles.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Like everything broke down in a decade and a half of war. I mean, look how much destruction is happening just in a short time. You know, the, what we're seeing now in, in the Ukraine. Fifteen years of war. Tour the partner. So that was the backdrop of which our doctors came in. At the time, there was one physician for every 50,000 Liberians. Okay. Our ratio here in America is one for 300. So every 300 Americans is a doctor. One for 50,000. There were two surgeons apparently in the country, but nowhere for them to operate. No hospitals that were working.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  As I got into the rural areas, I saw the water that people were drinking and there were swamps or ponds, you know, or sometimes like a muddy river, you know, running near these villages or in the center of these villages. And I remember seeing kids come and filling up their buckets and drinking unthinkable water. And I was like, wait, people drink this? To contrast that, and I think why this resonated so deeply. I used to sell Voss water for $10 a bottle in the clubs to people who would just order a hundred dollars of water to let it sit there, just in case anybody needed to hydrate.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  But really they were drinking champagne or vodka instead. You know, as I started to explore this, the water issue in the country, I learned two things. Half the country was drinking dirty, contaminated water every day. And half the disease in the country was because people were drinking dirty, contaminated water and didn't have access to sanitation or hygiene. So I go back to Dr. Gary and I'm showing him my photos like on the back of my camera. Like, you should see what people are drinking. And he says, I know.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  And, you know, I make this quick link. I'm like, well, I wonder how many of the 5,000 people needed to stand in the parking lot of a stadium to see doctors if they just had the most basic health need?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  You know, learn there were 28 different diseases. You could directly track back to dirty water. So it was really Dr. Gary who took that information. You know, he sees this young kid like on fire with this aha eureka realization. And he says, why don't you go do that? Why don't you go make sure everybody in the world has clean water before you die? And he gave me the challenge. And I remember, you know, he said something to the effect of you'd be the greatest doctor the world had ever seen. If you just gave people the most basic need for health, if you gave them clean water, you would touch more people than I have ever operated on by an order of magnitude.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  And there was something so simple about that. I'm like, well, okay. My second year ended. I was 30 years old. I went back to New York City and I tried to put action to that very simple, you know, commission.

• 47:48Steven Bartlett?

  Very simple commission.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Well, it was simple. I mean, simple mission, bring clean water to everybody on the planet.

• 47:54Steven Bartlett?

  It's few words, but it's a big, I mean, it's an impossible challenge, right? It's tremendous, tremendous challenge. And, you know, you said it's simple, but I'm sure there's lots of people who have been given similar kind of flippant mandates from people in their lives. Go and fix that. Why don't you go and fix that? And 99.9% of them will never attempt to fix that, which makes me ask the question, why did you believe that you could do that?

• 48:16Speaker 00

  So I saw the small impact that I had made promoting the work of Mercy Ships.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  In between the two missions, there was a little gap in between year one and year two. And I came back to New York City with my photos. I got a gallery donated in Chelsea. I printed 108 of my photos and I invited all my nightclub friends to come in and see the work that these doctors were doing. And I raised about $100,000 for their work through that show.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  I remember people, callous people, that would come to the nightclub, who were just kind of, didn't seem like they would care about anything, standing in front of some of my images weeping as they read the caption, as they learned, hey, this is someone just my age, born in a different environment, with a terrible affliction, with no doctor to go to. So I had a little bit of like, wow, that, you know, success. And while my email list shrunk a little bit with some unsubscribes, at the beginning, it actually began to grow as people would forward it to their friends. And like, oh, my gosh, there's like this guy. He's like, I used to do coke with this guy. And he's like on this hospital ship in Liberia. I've never even heard of Liberia. Like, look at these photos. I mean, look at these doctors. Like, blind people are seeing.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  And faces are being fixed. And we would find a 65-year-old woman in a village with a cleft lip. Food and water had spilled out of her mouth. Her entire life. And we provided a $280 surgery, and she could speak, and she could eat, and had her dignity and her life back. So this stuff was like, it was inspiring people, the work of the doctors. And I was the promoter. So instead of promoting the DJ and the $1,000 bottles of Cristal and the celebrities that were going to be in the club that night, the special guests, I was promoting something very different. And I saw that that was working and that that skill

• 50:15Speaker 00

  that I had potentially learned over 10 years, or misused for 10 years, promoting something certainly less redemptive or purposeful, could actually be translated and used to promote the work of Mercyships. The next step was, I thought it would be possible to promote clean water for humans.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  So, and in fact, in an even more simple way, I mean, it's, it's, what do you do? We bring clean water to people around the world. Everybody should have clean water to drink. I thought it was a really promotable cause.

• 50:53Steven Bartlett?

  And what is, what was your business model, though, in terms of the model? So how are you gonna bring water to all of these people?

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Well, at this moment, I'm broke. I am back from Africa. I have no savings. I've given everything that I had to Mercy Ships and the people I'd met. So I crashed with my old club partner who lets me sleep on his closet floor for free rent. And I had the idea, bring clean water to everybody on the planet. And I had the benefit of not having any institutional charitable knowledge outside of my experience with Mercy Ships. And I just was talking to people that worked at MTV or at fashion magazines or at Sephora and, or at the local bank. And I realized so many of my friends didn't trust charities. They did not trust the system. Almost all of their problems had to do with money.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Where does the money really go? How much of the money actually gets to the people who need it? You know, how much of the money actually goes to the cause? And, you know, the term social entrepreneur wasn't even around back then, but, you know, I just took a very entrepreneurial approach to this and said, well, I wonder if through a new business model, I could speak to those objections. I could reach out to these cynical, skeptical, disenchanted people and get them excited about giving in a new way. So I had a very simple idea.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  Separate the overhead from the money that people would give to the organization. So open up two bank accounts. Promise the public that a hundred percent of anything they would ever give to charity water would go directly to help people get clean water. And then in the other bank account, go and find a small group of business leaders and entrepreneurs to pay for those unsexy overhead costs. The staff salaries, the office rent, the flights, the insurance, the, you know, Epsom toner for the copy machine. So church and state, two differently audited bank accounts. And I wasn't sure how I would fund the overhead, but boy, was it clean. And I thought it was a really compelling story that beyond just promoting clean water,

• 52:57Speaker 00

  an inarguable common good for the world that I thought everybody could get behind, we would now have this hyper-transparent business model that would speak to the most common objection people have. To giving to charity, which is where does the money go? So I tried this out. My only idea on day one was to get a club donated. It was September 7th. It was my birthday. I was turning 31 and I got a club in the Meatpacking District donated during Fashion Week. I got open bar, donated for an hour, and then I invited everybody to come to celebrate my 31st birthday. But to get inside the club, they had to put $20 in this big Plexi box. And we were going to take 100% of whatever was in that box at the end of the night and

• 53:42Speaker 00

  we're going to go help our first person get access to clean water. And I printed up my photos. So in the club, you know, it's kind of juxtaposed with people drinking dirty water and wells being drilled and people drinking clean water. I'd also seen that when I was in Africa. I'd seen the solution to the problem of wells being drilled and communities going from dirty to clean. So I put those photos up and 700 people came that night. And I'll never forget, a drug dealer came that night. He was a pretty high-end weed dealer. And he put $500 in the box. And he looked at me and he said, "This is the first charitable gift I've ever made in my life." Really? "But I know where this money's going and I trust you." We raised $15,000.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  I remember we counted it and double counted and like, we're taking pictures of the money in the stacks, like, you know, because this is your first, this is day one of the organization. And we took that money immediately to a refugee camp in northern Uganda. We built our first water well and then we fixed a couple other broken wells. And then the most important thing was, we sent the photo proof, video of clean water flowing, and then the satellite images of where every single water project was. And I emailed the 700 people that came and said, "You did this. Here's where 100% of your $20 went. And because you came and gave, people are drinking clean water. And here's the proof."

• 55:08Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a time in the early startup phase where you genuinely considered that you might fail?

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Every day.

• 55:14Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Absolutely every day, especially with this business model. If I couldn't raise the overhead, it didn't matter how successful we were with the public funding.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  So every day.

• 55:28Steven Bartlett?

  And in terms of difficulties with business, with people, with everything else, what was the most painful time of that early years? The most painful day, event that you went through?

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, the charity started off very quickly and people loved the 100% model. It just began to build a lot of momentum. We raised $2 million in the first year through a flurry of activities, gallery shows and events and people doing concerts for us and people giving online. And we were selling a $20 bottle of water, you know, just as a symbolic gesture where all $20 would go and people would buy cases of the water. So it was just, it was a year of a lot of success. And then in the second year, we were on track to raise $6 million. But always a struggle for the overhead, always a struggle to, you know, find a donor to pay for employee number two or to pay for the next month's office rent.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  I mean, we were in a really crappy office, like covered in grease floors. It was an old printing press. So I was doing all that work, trying to convince people to help me build the actual organization because the 100% model was so resonant.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  We got to a point about a year and a half in where we had almost a million dollars in the water bank account, about to go out and build 100 wells. And we were about to miss payroll and we had nine people at the time. And I remember just thinking, and by the way, people had been warning me that this model would fail. You know, nobody thought this business model was a good idea. Effectively, you can't use any of the money you raised from the public to actually run the company, to run the organization. But I just had such faith in it. And I had tapped out all the people that I knew for the overhead. And I was hitting a point where I realized, maybe they're right.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  You know, maybe this is a really dumb business model. So I start calling lawyers about shutting down the charity. It's a year and a half in, even though we've raised millions of dollars.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  I remember praying, you know, with very little faith and, you know, and I didn't start a religious charity. So I was still kind of animated by my personal faith and, um, you know, a belief in, in prayer. But I remember like praying for a miracle, but I'm like, there's no miracle that can save us at this moment. And the advice I was getting was to borrow from the million dollars in the water account to make payroll. So that was the kind of conventional wisdom. Hey, write yourself an IOU. You know, you're not bankrupt if you have a million dollars. But for me, if we borrowed one penny, one dollar, one pound from that bank account and we used it on anything overhead related, our integrity

• 58:19Speaker 00

  would be forever compromised. You know, in such an extreme way, I'm like, there's a crack at the foundation. I would never even want to build on top of that. I'd much rather shut it down and have my integrity. And at that moment, uh, I had written a cold email to a British internet entrepreneur, um, actually about something completely different, not even about funding, about trying to get exposure on his social media network. It was called Bebo at the time. And

• 58:49Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone knows Bebo that listens to this.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  So he writes me back and says, man, I love this idea. Like what a, what a cool idea. Getting everybody clean water. Checked out your website, you know, really good design and branding, but it's a bad time for me to help. So I don't think anything of it. I was just happy that, you know, somebody responded to a cold email. Well, around this time of near insolvency or bankruptcy, at least on the overhead account, um, he writes me, he says, hey, I'm going to be in town. Um, I'd love to meet you and learn a little more about what you're doing. He comes in. I remember I pull out my laptop. I take him through a hundred photos and my whole story. He's working in this, you know, we're in this crappy office. There's nine other people. There's a couple of volunteers around. And

• 59:34Speaker 00

  I remember just thinking, boy, this is the worst pitch I've done. He is not into it. He's not really laughing at the jokes. He's just, doesn't seem very compelled by this. He leaves and, you know, says, well, you know, give me your bank account details and, you know, I'll see how I can help. And, uh, two days later, it's around midnight.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  Again, I'm almost at this point just relinquished the fact that I'm over. I'm gonna shut down the charity. Maybe I'll try with a different business model, or maybe I'll just try with the traditional business model. And I get an email from him and he says, "Hey, it was great meeting you. I just wired a million dollars into our overhead account."

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  And we went from bankrupt to 13 months of funding.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  He said, "I believe in your idea. You just need more time."

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  And that was 700 million dollars ago.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  And this year we'll raise over 130 million dollars.

• 1:00:40Steven Bartlett?

  And that entrepreneur was Michael Birch?

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  That was Michael Birch.

• 1:00:43Steven Bartlett?

  He's a mutual friend of ours.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  He was a mutual friend and an amazing guy. And really, you know, saved the organization. And I think even more, you know, Michael and I have been, become really good friends over the years. And even more than the money was that somebody believed in me.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  He believed that I could do it with the right amount of time. We never look back. Today, there are 131 unbelievably accomplished entrepreneurs and business leaders who pay all the overhead. 20 of them in the UK.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  You know, it's the founders of Spotify and Shopify and WordPress and LinkedIn. And, you know, unbelievable group of, of really a lot of tech entrepreneurs who love paying for the software engineers and the UI UX designers and the actual core organization of Charity Water. So that now millions and millions of people around the world are donating and have the purest way to give, knowing that 100% of the money goes. But that was really a key moment of, it was almost all over.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  But, you know, if I were to go back and the money was not going to come in, I still would shut down the charity. I wouldn't have borrowed.

• 1:02:00Steven Bartlett?

  Really? It was that important for you to...

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  It was that important to keep good on that promise.

• 1:02:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny because that defining promise is definitely really one of the fundamental things that has made Charity Water so successful in a landscape of charities where trust, as you identified very early on, is a central issue with people giving their money. And hindsight's a wonderful thing, but it's definitely proven you're right to hold your integrity there.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:28Steven Bartlett?

  How many people have you now reached? I read it was like 15 million people.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just crossed 15 million people in the last few weeks of the year in December in our 15th year. So we closed our 15th year. We got to the 15 million person milestone.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  You know, it's 1/50th of the 771 million people who need our help. So as we record this, 10% of the world is drinking dirty water. It's crazy. 10% of the world, 10 people, 771 million humans, and we've helped 15 million of them.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  So we're at the very beginning of this journey. So we're in year 16 and, you know, it really, to quote my friend Daniel at Spotify, who uses this a lot, like, it really feels like we're in the second inning of impact, the second inning of the movement, the second inning of raising the capital. We need to go faster and accelerate. Last year, we helped 2 million people get water. So it's over 5,000 people every day. So we're at kind of peak velocity over the 15-year journey and in a time where I think we can really exponentially scale.

• 1:03:42Steven Bartlett?

  As an entrepreneur, would you describe yourself as obsessed?

• 1:03:48Steven Bartlett?

  Because you said earlier about your.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  No, no. Driven, committed, not obsessed.

• 1:03:56Steven Bartlett?

  What's your work-life balance like, if that's even a thing you sort of espouse, you sign up to?

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I don't love the balance idea. I think there are seasons when there's an emphasis. The year before COVID, I did 90 flights and 100 speeches.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  Then I dropped to, you know, very little and, you know, the zooms with the rest of the world. And I spent an extraordinarily more time with my kids, you know, during COVID. So I think there, there are different seasons of life when something different is required of me to move the mission forward. I mean, in, in some ways I feel really lucky to have put in the hundred hour weeks. Cause there really were a hundred hour weeks at the beginning and everybody knows that. You are just, when you're trying to birth something, you know, whether it's a company or a nonprofit or a, you know, a for good company. There's an extraordinary amount of work that is required in those early days and years.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Because you really could kind of die at any moment, like, you know, the, the thing could die. You could go bankrupt, like you're, you're only as good as your last sale or your last donor, you know, that believes in you. So I'm lucky that I got that really hard work in early and built the organization to, you know, now there's, there's 2000 people around the world that are working on charity water projects every day. You know, there's a hundred people here in the States and in London, you know, who are working on, you know, the fundraising and the campaigns and, and managing all these, these water projects. So I work differently, but less, you know, I'm really present with my kids. I take my kids to school every morning when I'm home and I pick them up from school.

• 1:05:39Steven Bartlett?

  Having tasted a lot of ingredients of life, what do you think is the, the recipe for, in your view, for yourself, because I guess that's the only perspective you can talk from, but for yourself, for a fulfilled life, having been in the clubs and this, the planes, the private jets.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:05:56Steven Bartlett?

  What would you now say is the recipe for a fulfilled life?

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Service.

• 1:06:00Steven Bartlett?

  You think that's central to a fulfilled life?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Service, generosity. Yeah, it's the only game in town. I mean, there's so many people that I've seen, you know, I've, I've gotten to spend, I've been to 70 countries now. I've been to the continent of Africa more than 55 times. I have seen some of the most marginalized

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  suffering, people living in, in, in conditions that, that are shocking. I've been with moms that have lost seven kids to diarrhea and waterborne diseases. I've, I've seen.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Horrible, horrible things around the world. And then I've been with dozens and dozens of billionaires. And I've seen the top echelon of private planes and 40 cars and 70 million dollar houses. And I'll tell you that the houses and the cars and the watches and the planes and the outmarket capping, your competitors is not where purpose lies. It's really in service. And asking how, for me, how can I use my time and my talents and my resources, my money, in the service of others? How can I look around and see who is needlessly suffering in my local community and the global

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  community? And how can I contribute to stop that suffering? And it's kind of a never ending work. There's no finish line to that. There is no, while I'm trying to get to the unicorn billion dollar valuation and then this is a life of service or a life trained or kind of pointed at being useful. And loving others doesn't, there's no endpoint, there's no finish line. There's always going to be someone who could use your help. And I've found the more you give, and let's just say, some people don't have money to give, they could have time to give, or they could have mentorship to give. The more you give, the more you give. It's like this muscle, you need to use it.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  Like if you exercise the generosity muscle, instead of saying no to all the incoming requests, the most generous people I know, they love giving to 50 or 60 different causes a year. They're not saying, oh, I just get hit up all the time. They love being useful. And it's a privilege for them to be asked for money for a noble cause. Because they get to contribute.

• 1:08:30Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting framing, but a very significant one.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  So I hate the, I hate the word giving back that we use a lot here in the States.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  You know, oh, my company gives back, right? You hear about these giving back programs. What almost implies that we have, you know, pillaged and plundered to such extent. Let's throw some scraps to the poor.

• 1:08:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Let's throw a few scraps back, right? So we feel better about ourselves. So I encourage companies, just drop the back language, just giving. Let's build a culture of giving in our families. Let's build a, a culture of giving in our companies. Giving not because we've taken, giving because we can give, because it's a joy to give. It's a blessing to be able to give.

• 1:09:12Steven Bartlett?

  People listening to this now, how can they, if they're driving up and down the country, washing the dishes, whatever. How can they support what is a very, very worthy cause like Charity Water?

• 1:09:24Speaker 00

  We have an amazing community of, of people who show up every month, giving a little bit, whatever they can for clean water. It's called The Spring. UK is our big, is our second biggest market to the US, but we now have people in 150 countries. We have people in Africa that give a little bit every single month for, for clean water. It costs about 30 pounds or $40 to get one person clean water. So there's a lot of people that just do that every month. And they don't get music or movies or, you know, hour, next hour shipping from Amazon, you know, for more stuff. But a hundred percent of whatever they, they give every month goes directly to help people get clean water. And we're really good at proving where that money goes and sharing stories of, of impact.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  So people can learn more at charitywater.org or just thespring.com.

• 1:10:14Steven Bartlett?

  And you're, I guess you're always looking forward for individuals that are also willing to join.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, the well members, of course. I mean, if there, there may be some entrepreneurs who love building, you know, businesses or organizations. So those 131 families are the lifeblood of the organization. And we're always looking to, to grow that really incredible group that then allows millions of people to give in a, in a transparent and effective way.

• 1:10:40Steven Bartlett?

  Scott, the work you do is, I mean, I don't really know the words to describe, but I sometimes think of like nice adjectives and stuff, but it's like a really deeply, profoundly inspiring journey, story, book, cause and future that you're creating. And it's really made me question a lot of things about myself. I'm in that phase of my life now where I'm also asking myself serious questions about that part of me, the purposeful service part of me. And so, meeting you today feels like it was meant to be in many respects. Reading the book felt like it was meant to be, but I'm sure the conversation we'll have will continue off.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  You'll have to come with me. Come with me on a trip.

• 1:11:18Steven Bartlett?

  I'd love to.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  We work in 29 countries now, so.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  I'd love to. I'd love to.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  I think you'd love seeing the work for yourself and water's just so basic. You know, it's when you, when you hear what it means to people, you know, in their own words, it's, you know, we just step back and it's, it's very powerful.

• 1:11:36Steven Bartlett?

  Well, if you'll have me, I definitely will.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Steven Bartlett?

  I see that's being a very kind gesture to allow me to. We do have a closing tradition on this podcast, which is the last guest writes a question for the next guest. The question was, when was the last time you got badly rejected?

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  I won't use the donor's name, but it was, it was definitely, you know, someone who just kind of pretended to be really interested and, you know, felt like was really stringing me along and then just, I don't know, inexplicably never gave, never engaged and felt like a huge waste of time.

• 1:12:15Steven Bartlett?

  And you committed a lot of time and energy.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  I did a lot of time and energy and was really, you know, maybe expectancy. And it was just, it was a big disappointment. It normally doesn't happen. I mean, I'm, I'm, we're really blessed by, you know, being surrounded with, with an amazing group of people and an amazing community. I just had, I just had, maybe to end on a more positive note, I had a situation with a very, very accomplished internet entrepreneur recently. And I asked him for a very, very large sum of money. And we caught up afterwards, after he had time to consider with his wife. And he said, why'd you ask for so little? And then he gave four times more.

• 1:13:04Steven Bartlett?

  Swings them roundabouts.

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  Why did you ask for so little? So I was like, wow, my mind like absolutely expanded. And am I asking for too little? Am I think 15 years in, 700 million dollars raised? You know, like a global movement. Am I thinking too small? There's more? There's more generosity? There's more goodwill out there? So I focus on that, not the rejections. It's very easy for me to kind of, you know, brush that off and, and, and just not carry that around. And to find the generosity, really let that fuel me. So that's been fueling me now for weeks. It's like, okay, maybe I really need to go for it.

• 1:13:48Steven Bartlett?

  Scott, thank you. Just an amazing conversation and one that's going to stay with me for some time. I can feel that certainly. So, and your book, if nobody's, I mean, there's two things. There was a couple of catalysts that really brought me to you. I said to you earlier, my manager had seen you speak and insisted that we had this conversation. And I read your book. Then I saw that famous video, which anyone can watch, which kind of summarizes your story in about 20 odd minutes, which has done some 25 million views on YouTube. That, that had me completely. Scott, thank you.

• 1:14:16Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.