Scott Harrison 0:00 

I'm really interested in technology. David, so for years, instead of reading the Chronicle of Philanthropy or trade magazines in the charity world, I would read wired I would read Fast Company. I would read ink. We have some really interesting sensor technology that was inspired by nest. When the smart home came out many years ago, I thought, Well, if there's a smart home, why can't we have smart wells. If

David Novak 0:29 

you want to ignite your creativity and develop great ideas, there's one skill that you can't afford to miss, but most leaders have never heard of it. Welcome to How leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is Scott Harrison, the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity water. Their mission is to bring clean, safe drinking water to the 703 million people in the world who still don't have access to it, and to do it, Scott has taken an out of the box approach to running a nonprofit, and it has truly changed the game. You see, Scott is a great example of what I call a pattern thinker, someone who can pair two seemingly different things that aren't obviously related, and then create something new and exciting. It's been a key part of what's made Charity Water so effective, and it's a leadership superpower you've got to develop if you want to be more innovative. So let's dive in and see how it's done. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Scott Harrison, you

I understand this is a big day for Charity Water. What happened today?

Scott Harrison 1:48 

It is well. We were, we were at $999 million raised yesterday and this morning, a wonderful family from Dallas, Texas put us over the billion dollars raised since, since we started the movement. So I can't believe it took 18 years. But, you know, I tell my team, I think we're in the top of the second inning. We have a really long view here, and hopefully this is just a mile marker on the much, much bigger impact we hope to have in the future,

David Novak 2:20 

18 years, but you build a billion dollar donation base, which is incredible, impacted, you know, 1000s of people's lives. You know, how's that make you feel

Scott Harrison 2:33 

like we haven't done enough? David, if I'm honest, I mean, isn't Isn't this what? Uh, what? How most entrepreneurs are, they have a hard time celebrating successes, and you know, it's never, it's always a fraction of what you imagined was possible. So I thought we would have done an order of magnitude more with all the blood, sweat and tears of the last 18 years, but I remember seeing the 27 year stock chart of Amazon once, and it was, it was a tweet back when it was Twitter, and the tweet said, things take time. And the guy said, had Jeff Bezos quit in year 20, he only had realized 7% of the company's value, so in the first two decades, 7% of market cap, right? I updated that number might even be smaller now. So that was really encouraging to me. You know, heading into into year 18, and you learn a lot, you're building up trust with with millions of supporters around the world. And I think if you, if you play the long game, you know, our goal is to get every single human being on Earth clean water. So today, we're at 19 point 2 million people out of 700 million people who need help. So 137 is not enough. I didn't sign up for 2.5%

David Novak 3:53 

the goal. You're a go getter for sure, and I'm betting on you. You know, you know, I can't wait to talk about how you're leading it at Charity Water, but, but first, I want to take you back a little bit, and I want to start at the beginning, you know, tell us about your childhood and how that shaped you and the leader that you are today. Yeah,

Scott Harrison 4:13 

well, I had an unusual childhood. David, when I was four, we moved into a very ugly, gray house in South Jersey at the end of a cul de sac, and the house that we had just purchased came with a carbon monoxide gas leak. And this is before they had invented the detectors that you know then now I can see on end caps at Home Depot. And we move into this house in winter, and we all start getting these strange symptoms, migraines, hypertension, and then on New Year's Day, 1980 my mom collapses unconscious on her bedroom floor, and she's she's the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. And this leads to massive amounts of carbon monoxide found in her bloodstream. It leads to the. Recovery of the leak in the basement, which was a faulty heat exchanger, and my dad rips this thing out with an HVAC friend and replaces it. But the damage was irreparable to my mom, and she became an invalid from that day on and never recovered. And what happened to her was her immune system just irreparably shut down and was unable to process anything chemical. So as long as she lived effectively in a bubble and she was exposed to no chemicals or toxins, she was okay. But as we all know, the world is a toxic place, and car fumes would make her sick. Fabric softener would make her sick, perfume or soap would make her sick. She was so sensitive that the ink from a book would make her very sick, that smell of print. So she wound up living a huge part of her life, really, in isolation, in special rooms that had been covered in tin foil, and in sleeping on cots that had been washed 20 times in baking soda to remove any sort of smell or impurity. So my mom wore a mask for 40 plus years. I never really saw her face again after this illness. So childhood was really growing up as a caregiver, as an only child, and really wanting to be a doctor when I grew up. I mean, if you'd come to me as a kid, I said, I'm going to be a doctor and I'm going to cure my mom, and I'm going to cure all these sick people that I've met like her. So I was responsible for doing the cooking and the cleaning in the house, and later when I could drive taking her to doctor's appointments. But really didn't have, maybe the fun that my friends were having, and just was saddled with a lot of responsibility.

David Novak 6:44 

And I want to talk to you about that because you know, you start out, you're serving your mom, you want to be a doctor, and you know you're you're you've been so dedicated. But then as as I've learned about you, Scott, you go from serving your mom into your 20s and start working in nightclubs, strip clubs, doing drugs, you know? I mean, you had a you had a tough road. How in the hell did you go from having this idea of being a doctor and helping people like your mom to that industry? Yeah,

Scott Harrison 7:18 

it sounds so cliche, doesn't it? It's kind of like the prodigal son story from, from the Bible where, well,

David Novak 7:24 

I don't know if it's cliche or not, but it is very unique. The

Scott Harrison 7:28 

kid, you know, who has a great upbringing decides to, you know, go spend all the money, gamble it away, and winds up in a proverbial pig sigh, wanting to get home. Well, that was, that was kind of what happened to me, you know, I think, look, I woke up one day and I said, I'm 18, and I was raised in the church, very conservative upbringing, you know, we didn't smoke, we didn't swear, we didn't drink. You know, we would never think of, you know, touching drugs or gambling or looking at a pornographic image. And then, you know, at 18, I'm like, I want to do all those things that sounds amazing. And I was living an hour and a half from New York City, so I moved to New York City and said, I'm gonna find my childhood. I didn't have fun growing up. I'm gonna go have some fun now. And, you know, one thing led to another, so I didn't go all in on all the vices from day one, but you know, it started with just a couple cigarettes and a couple drinks, and I'll try coke once, and I'll try a little ecstasy, a little MDMA, you know, try and visit a strip club once. And, you know, let's go to Vegas and gamble, you know. And over 10 years, which is how long that unfortunately, that season, that really selfish, debauched season of my life lasted. It was a slow decay, a slow descent into an unbelievable darkness that came with the assumption of all of those vices. And it was, it was interesting, because my life looked great on the outside, you know, I'm jumping into the back of limousines or, you know, Mercedes s5 hundreds with girls on the cover of magazines, and there are movie stars coming to our club, and I'm spraying crystal champagne from the DJ booth out over the throng of partiers. And then, you know, looked a lot less glamorous at noon, when you're trying to take Ambien to come down after 12 hours of partying. You're looking out your window at people on their lunch break, you know, with salads in their hand. Well, the good just felt so unhealthy. The

David Novak 9:30 

good news, Scott is, is that you did have a major turnaround, personally, and we're gonna get to that. But you know, while we're on the subject of, you know, working in nightclubs, as I understand, that you are one of the top night nightclub promoters in New York City. I got pretty good at it. You were really good at this job. You were knocking it out of the park. What'd you learn in that job that you could share with people? That was actually a positive that you you've taken with you as you've moved into the nonprofit world?

Scott Harrison 9:58 

Well, to be good. That you've got to be good at relationships because so a nightclub promoter is an asset light job. You don't own the club, you don't have to build the club, you don't have to pay the mortgage on The Club. You just get a percentage of the gross take on wherever you and your crowd of spenders and beautiful people go. So, you know, I mentioned I worked at 40 different nightclubs over a 10 year period, and we would bring the rich and beautiful, famous people to a club, and we'd keep them there for about a year, and then we would move on to the next club, and we would do that different nights a week. So we would have a Tuesday crew and a Thursday crew and a weekend crew. And you've got to keep it interesting, David, because it kind of it's pretty boring. I mean, when you really think about it, it's this, it could be the same DJ playing the exact same songs, the same conversations that you're yelling and, you know, spitting over the blasting music. And I think what we did, my partner and I at the time, and there were kind of eight or 10 of us, kind of running New York nightlife. There were these, these groups, really, a lot of duos, and we would have different followings, and we'd go to different clubs, and sometimes we would overlap. We were all pretty friendly with each other, but we were always looking for ways to make our party stand down, to make them feel more exciting than the rest, to create a reason for people to queue up outside that velvet rope and and want to be inside. And I think if I distill that, it was storytelling, we were telling a story that if you got past the velvet rope, if the guy on the inside of the One Way glass picked you and you entered. And then, if you spent tons of money and you sat with the right people, your life had meaning. Your life had extraordinary meaning. You had arrived, you made it. And I remember doing pool parties where we would go buy 100 beach balls, and we'd hire life guards to sit in giant lifeguard stands inside. You know, we would have dress up parties. We would have pajama parties. Always just trying to come up with a new and interesting idea to bring people out and to keep it from being unbelievably boring. So

David Novak 12:14 

you were really good at it. And, you know, really successful. Went after relationships and, breakthrough marketing and storytelling. You know, what was it, you know, Scott, that helped you get your life back on track?

Scott Harrison 12:28 

Well, I woke up one day at 28 years old, and I was in Punta del esta, which is a town in Uruguay, and I was on vacation with the jet set, and I drove a BMW at that time, I wore a Rolex watch, I had a grand piano in my New York City loft, and my girlfriend was on the cover of fashion magazines. And I really by the external markers of success that I had been chasing or collecting I had made it, and I realized just how deeply unhappy I was sitting there in Uruguay because we were just partying all the time. I remember we were in this beautiful compound, you know, looking at the ocean. People are following us, picking up our towels, and here we are doing drugs and partying until noon the next day. And I kind of remember there was almost like the veil was lifted. You know, when you realize you're unhappy. I looked around. I'm like, I don't think these people are that happy either. We're all just stuck on this hamster wheel because this is what we do. And I realized how far I had come from the little kid who wanted to be a doctor from the foundation of morality and spirituality that my parents had tried to instill in me, and honestly, I just wanted to come home. I wanted to try to find my way back to that.

David Novak 13:46 

Well, so what? What was it that then took you into this, this giving world that you're now in and caring world?

Scott Harrison 13:53 

Well, maybe as as you know, you've come to realize I'm sort of an extreme actor, I guess, or extreme being so I realized that a pivot was not what was needed in my life. You know, this was not a small course correction, and I was really interested in exploring the radical, exact opposite of what Scott Harrison's life looked like at 28 as a selfish, hedonistic, sycophantic nightclub promoter. So I really started to explore the 180 and I remember starting to rediscover a very lost Christian faith, but in a different way as an adult, without the trappings of religion that were kind of force fed to me as a kid, and wanting to just be more moral integrity was such a foreign concept to me. Over 10 years, generosity was foreign to me. I hadn't done anything to serve. Had given no time, had given no money to others. I was just serving myself. So I kind of explore these different ideas. And I said, I have I know what I'm going to do. I am going to sell everything I own. One, and I am going to go take one year and try to serve in the poorest country in the world. So that was my idea, that would be opposite, say, so kind of a 10% you know, tithe of time, of of, you know, to give back for night clubs. And so I resolve that I'm going to do this. And then I start applying to the famous humanitarian organizations I've tangentially heard of over the years. So I apply to save the children in Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders and World Vision. And, you know, no one will take me, David, I'm denied by every single organization because they have no idea what to do with a nightclub promoter. You know, turns out Doctors Without doctors, is looking for medical professionals to serve their humanitarian org, not Surprise, surprise. So I was willing to do just about anything, and I was very fortunate that, you know, somewhere around the 11th organization wrote me back and said, If I was willing to pay them $500 a month, and if I was willing to go live in post war Liberia, which had just come onto the United Nations Development chart at the bottom, after a 14 year civil war had just ended, and there was finally data on the state of the country, if I was willing to join their Mission, I could come along and I could be a photo journalist. Now this is kind of funny, because I'm not technically a photo journalist, but I had put up a blog with a bunch of hobby photos I'd taken. I used to work for the newspaper when I was in high school, so I put up some stuff that I'd written, and I dusted off a degree I'd gotten in New York University. Barely gotten a degree, I mean, c minus student, and I got a degree in communications because my dad had saved up, and I went part time, and that seemed like the easiest degree I could get. So I kind of cobbled these things together, and I convinced this organization to take me. And it happened very, very quickly, David, I leave New York, and a couple weeks later, I am in West Africa, setting foot on the continent, and I'm living on a 522 foot hospital ship with a crew of 400 volunteer surgeons, volunteer doctors, volunteer nurses, who had come from all over the world, 40 some countries, to operate for free. These doctors had given up their vacation time to serve people who had no access to medical care. And my job, I guess that I was going to be paying $500 to do every month was going to be to document all of the work that happened on this medical ship, all of the patients before their operations and then documenting them afterwards, and that all these images and stories would be used for the medical library, but also for the organization to raise awareness and money for their work.

David Novak 17:58 

Wow. And so you're you're on this ship, you see all these people that are just struggling was, did you have somebody that really kind of took you under their wing and gave you the inspiration to take it even further?

Scott Harrison 18:15 

I had learned about a man, a man named Dr Gary Parker, and he was kind of a legend, you know, so in leading up to my joining this mission, oh, you got to hear about Dr Gary? Well, Dr Gary was a California surgeon. I think he was a plastic surgeon, and he, like me, had heard of this hospital ship that would sail up and down the coast of Africa and help people. And he signed up for three months, and when I walked up the gangway to serve my very first day, he had been there 21 years. Wow, he never went back to his plastic surgery practice and had spent two decades serving. So I remember wanting to know everything I could about what drove him, what an impact of two decades plus of service could look like on the world, and because he was the lead surgeon, I realized very quickly he would also be a captive audience for these eight hour surgeries. So instead of just photographing all the patients before their operations, and afterwards, I would scrub up, and I would spend eight, nine hours with him in the operating theater, asking questions, watching him, you know, heal people's faces and arms and bodies and remove cataracts, and got to really know him over that first year.

Koula Callahan 19:38 

Hey, everyone, it's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app in the app, every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll. Give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app, and start your day every day with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead. So

David Novak 20:25 

how'd you get the idea to for Charity Water? Where'd that come from?

Scott Harrison 20:29 

Well, the first year ended, and I really didn't know what was next, so I just signed up for a second year. I said, basically, can I can I do a redo and I'll go back to Liberia and I'll keep taking pictures now I will say that maybe in a fun kind of turn, or redemptive turn of events, I went to Liberia with a really big email list all the people that I had met over 10 years of partying. I had been pretty good at capturing their emails, so they went from getting invited to fashion parties and in the period of a couple weeks getting pictures of surgeries in Africa. And you know, there were certainly some unsubscribes at first. So people were like, please do not send me a picture of a tumor or flesh eating disease or cataracts. But others were so moved by the compassionate work of these doctors that they started forwarding my stories and my videos and my photos to friends, and people started sponsoring surgeries. So I was able and back then, email open rates were like 100% now you would send an email and people would read it, so I was able to raise, just in that first year, a lot of awareness and a lot of money for Mercy Ships, just through storytelling. And I wanted to just do more of that. So in the second year, I wanted to beyond just taking pictures, you know, the medical stuff happening, I wanted to get out into the villages and really see how people were living. And that is when I made this huge discovery, which is now, you know, powered the last 18 years of my life, I saw people drinking dirty water, and I would go into the villages, and I would see little girls walk out of their, you know, huts or their small homes, and they would drink swamp water. They would put brown, viscous, you know, poisonous, muddy, toxic water into their bodies, because it was all that they had available. And I remember just like I couldn't believe it. I mean, you're almost in shock, you know, clean water came out of taps. My entire life, I used to sell Voss water in nightclubs for $10 a bottle to people who would buy the water. They wouldn't even open it. They'd come into the club order 20 bottles, let it sit there and drink champagne or vodka instead. And I learned two really important things. Half of the country was drinking dirty, contaminated, toxic water, and half of the disease in the country was because people were drinking dirty water and didn't have access to sanitation. So I remember going back to Dr Gary in the operating theater with the photos that I was taking in these rural villages, saying, Dr Gary like No wonder there's 1000s more sick people than we could ever treat. The most basic need for human health isn't being met. People are dying of bad water. And I remember he just said to me, very simply, great, why don't you make this your problem? Why don't you go back to New York and try to bring clean water to everybody in the world. So

David Novak 23:28 

you mentioned this kind of at the top. You gave us a couple statistics, but you know, how big a problem is this, Scott, and not only what happens when people drink the dirty water, but but also the scale of the Yeah.

Scott Harrison 23:41 

I mean, it's unbelievable. David, you know, wherever you know, we're sitting here in our offices recording, you know, a podcast, very comfortably. I've got water that just came out of my refrigerator. Me too. 703 million people are drinking dirty water today. It's about one in 10 people alive on the planet. It's twice the population of the United States of America. And we have not solved this problem. We've made progress with a lot of other problems on planet Earth, you know. But we've got, you know, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, right, is looking for water on Mars, 142 million miles away, to sustain life, and 10% of our planet does not have the most basic need met and and if you don't have water, I cannot overstate how radically different your everyday human experience is. There are dramatic health implications. I mentioned half the disease in many of these countries is waterborne. There are 28 nasty diseases that we can track back to water. So if you don't have water, you don't have health now, when you have clean water, all those things change in an instant. When we provide clean water to a community, we'll often see. Yeah, we'll go to the health clinic. A year later, we'll see 82% reduction in disease, 82% reduction in visits at some of these health clinics, just because everybody has clean water at home, you

David Novak 25:10 

know? So you get really compelled for all these reasons to start Charity Water. And you know, when people are asked to give to charity, their guard comes up so many times. Yes, you know, you have barriers. You have to attack, you know, where's the money go? You know, etc, etc, you know. How'd you solve just the problem of getting people to give? So

Scott Harrison 25:36 

I just wondered, was there a different way, you know, could I start with a clean pace of piece of paper. What would the perfect charity look like? How would it behave? How would it how would it work with its supporters? And I thought, what if I could promise that 100% of any donation we would ever take in from anywhere in the world would go directly to build water projects that gave people clean water. And, you know, people said, well, that's a really dumb idea. How would you pay for staff? How are you gonna have an office one day? I didn't have any of those answers, but I knew that all that would have to happen in a separately audited bank account. So I went down to, I think it was commerce at the time, on Broadway and bond, and I opened up two distinctly numbered bank account with a couple $100 in each, and said 100% of the public's money is going to go into this bank account and to so there's just the utmost integrity in the 100% model. We're even going to pay back credit card fees. So if you know, David Novak gave 100 bucks, and AmEx took three and we eventually got 97 we would pay back that 3% transaction fee, and we would send David's $100 to Africa or India or Asia, and then somehow in the other bank account, I was going to have to convince entrepreneurs and business leaders to pay for those unsexy staff and overhead costs, the Epson toner for the copy machine, the phone bills, the staff salaries and the insurance. So that was kind of a really big deal, and that would also distinguish us from 99.99% of charities in the world, if we could make that model work. The second kind of simple idea was really a fall into that. Well, if money's not fungible, why don't we build technology to prove to people where their donation goes? And I remember meeting the founder of Google Earth, and he's telling me what he's building, and I said, Can I put up every single water project I build on Google Earth so people could see the satellite images of of where their money went. And he said, Yes, you could do that all for free. So we were the first charity in the world, just to prove out every project. And then later on Google Maps when that was developed. And then the third like, if

David Novak 27:55 

I gave $20 you would, you would get back to me and say,

Scott Harrison 27:59 

here's where, when, here's the picture of the well in Malawi that cost $11,629 and here all the other donors who made that project possible. Here's the name of the community, the GPS coordinates and the satellite image of it. Yeah, was that kind of transparency. And then the third thing you mentioned, marketing, you know, was really to build an epic, imaginative, inspiring brand, a brand. As I looked at charities, I said, Where's the apple? Where's the Nike, where's the Virgin where, you know, Nick Kristof had written in The New York Times that toothpaste was peddled with far more sophistication than all of the world's life saving causes. You know, why is Colgate better at marketing than Save the Children? Who is saving children? And I just remember thinking, you know, I see so much shame and guilt with charities marketing. You know, some some people might remember those Sally Struthers commercials back in the 80s. And, you know, the children in Africa flies, landing on their face in slow motion. And then the 800 number comes, and you feel terrible and you give. But that's not how you build a brand. You don't want to tell your friends about that experience. So I put these three things together, give away 100% forever, prove where the money goes. Build an inspiring, creative brand. And then day one, the only idea I had David to start this thing was to throw a party in a nightclub. So Charity Water started in a nightclub on my 31st birthday. I invited everybody I knew. I gave him open bar for one hour, all donated. And said, on your way in, you have to put $20 in this giant Plexi box at the door. That's your entry, and 100% of the money is gonna help get clean water. And at the end of the end of the night, we'd collected $15,000 we took it all, every penny of it, to Northern Uganda. We built our very first well, we fixed a couple adjacent ones, and then we sent the proof back to those 700 people and said, You came. You gave $20 here's exactly where your $20 went. And. Here are people drinking clean water because of you. And we realized, if we could build that feedback loop into the DNA of the organization, we would be able to build a movement of people who would raise their hands for clean water.

David Novak 30:15 

But you have, and then you have, on the other side, you got this operational issue of like, how do you pay the people that you're going to get behind this? How do you, how do you do, you know, you mentioned some of the things that the cost, the operating costs, you know, how did you, how did you deal with that? I mean,

Scott Harrison 30:31 

we went to people like you. We went to CEOs, we went to entrepreneurs. We went to people who had built businesses or run businesses, and said to them, you know, an organization is only as great as the talent they're able to recruit and retain. Will you help us do that? We promise to treat you like investors. We promise to be transparent, but you get to be the really the fuel that's that ignites a global movement of people, and there are 131 families. So there are 131 people who raise their hand. They give, starting at about $100,000 a year. Some give more, and they all give on three year terms. So we know if we bring on a new team member, we have their salary covered for the next three years. And it's the founders of, you know, companies like LinkedIn or Pinterest or Twitter or Shopify. It's you know, senior executives at American Express or at Apple, or it's people you know in finance. It's private equity, it's CEOs of Fortune 100 companies who said, We will help you with that, as long as you run a transparent, efficient organization, we would love to pay for, you know, Sally in engineering, because we know she could be working at Google and making a whole lot more, and we know the impact of that work on This movement.

David Novak 31:59 

How do you get people to feel the impact of dirty water, unclean water, when, like you said, you picked up your bottle of that you're drinking. I've got mine right here. You know, this is not a problem that's easy to easy to feel. How do you how do you get people to feel this problem? Well,

Scott Harrison 32:18 

we've made over 1000 videos. So video is one when you see it, it's one thing for me to describe brown viscous water. When you see a child hold a bottle that looks like chocolate milk up to her lips that came from a source, and you see a bunch of kids lined up behind her, ready to do the same thing, it hits home in a different, visceral way. And a lot of people will say, Not on my watch, not if I can do something. Interestingly, kids bring so many of their parents to Charity Water kids get this is such an intuitive level. I have a 10 year old, an eight year old and a one year old. My kids got to go to Africa for the first time last year and and just kind of are in disbelief that we live in a world, and everything that they've experienced, and there are human beings living in this condition, what can they do about it? Well, they can go and sell lemonade. They can donate their birthdays. So I think, you know, it's visual storytelling is one we've made Virtual Reality films where people can put on a headset and you're in the water, you're you're in that that community without clean water. And then you see a drilling rig roll in, and you see eight amazing Rwandan drillers jump out, and you see them find water and clean water shoot out into the ground. You see 500 people surrounding this drilling rig dancing and crying and yelling and clapping, and then you watch that community drink clean water for the very first time. We we've had people watch our VR film, and they're just weeping at the end of it. They're so moved. We've had people write unbelievably enormous checks after watching an eight minute film, because they can, they can feel it. They want to be a part of that transformation, of that joy, of of that, you know, of improving the human condition in such an inarguably common good way. You know, I mean, I say all the time, like Republicans think this is a good idea, and Democrats think this is a good idea, and independents and libertarians and faith communities and agnostics and atheists like everybody, can come together and say, Yeah, people should have clean water.

David Novak 34:26 

Scott Harrison, per President, we're gonna get you out there. You know,

Scott Harrison 34:29 

I don't I have no interest. My gosh,

David Novak 34:33 

we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Scott Harrison in just a moment. I'm so sad to say that earlier this month, my good friend and Home Depot co founder, Bernie Marcus, passed away at the age of 95 his episode of how leaders lead will always be one of my favorites. It's full of funny stories and great insights, like this one on the dangers of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy

Bernie Marcus 34:57 

kills a company in. You know, Arthur and I had a bathroom between the two offices, and we would meet in that little corridor, and we will make a monumental, multi million dollar decision in 20 minutes. We didn't go to committees. We didn't have any of those things, and we learned from the people like see as robot, that that's what killed them. Go

David Novak 35:20 

back and listen to my entire conversation with Bernie. And whatever you do, don't miss the bathtub story. It's episode 119 here on how leaders lead. Say more about this birthday party program. Yeah,

Scott Harrison 35:35 

so we kind of stumbled onto this. So my birthday raised $15,000 in a club, and a year later, I said, Man, I said, Man, I don't want to do another party in the night club doesn't scale. Nobody needs to go to another party. And I thought, well, what if, is it? I don't need gifts anyway, right? I don't need a wallet. I don't need a party. I don't need to celebrate me. What if I donated my birthday and and then I thought the sticky marketing message would be, what if I asked for my age in dollars, and pretty much everybody I knew David had $32 that they could donate to charity water, knowing that 100% of that money would go straight to the product. So I wound up online, just emailing everybody I'd ever met donate $32 for my 32nd birthday, and I promised to fly to Africa and drill a well live on my birthday via satellite, so they could see where their money was going. So I wound up raising $60,000 enough for multiple projects. And then there was this seven year old kid in Austin, Texas, and he hears about this idea, and he says, Well, I could give up my seventh birthday. And he starts knocking on doors. I'm not gonna lie, it was a very nice neighborhood, but Max gives up his birthday, and he raises $22,000 and this just starts to spread. I mean, Jack Dorsey gives up three birthdays. Daniel eckett, Spotify gives up a birthday. Tony Hawk Will Smith, all these people just start donating their birthdays. Angela Ahrendts, who was at Burberry at the time, just extraordinary leaders start giving up their birthdays, and seven year olds and nine year olds and 89 year olds start donating their birthdays. I'll never forget. Nona ween, 89 years old, writes on our website, I'm turning 89 and I want more people to live to 89 and she knew that clean water was essential. It did. She was double the life expectancy in so many of these countries where people didn't have water. And if her birthday could help people have more birthdays, that's what she so we wound up raising over $100 million as people donated their birthdays as they, you know, ran marathons and climbed mountains and walked across America holding yellow jerry cans full of water. Really, it was the stuff of movements, and that was, that was really kind of the fuel that led the early years of charity. Water was people would donate their birthdays, and 100% of the money would go straight there. You're such

David Novak 38:00 

an innovator, and you bring such breakthrough thinking to to this particular industry. And you were also the first in the charity world to join Instagram, the first to get 1 million ex followers, or used to be Twitter followers. What is it about your leadership, Scott, that allows you or or keeps you out front, because you don't wait for things to happen. I mean, you're

Scott Harrison 38:25 

trying, I get easily bored, and I am deeply dissatisfied with how little we've done. So there's really a growth mindset, and it's, it's scale, because humans benefit. You know, my salary has been the same for seven years. I if we raise, you know, 100 million this year, or 500 million, it just means I got more people clean water. So in some ways, when the the personal incentive is taken off of the table, it can make you even hungrier, and I'm hungrier to help more humans get clean water. It's really that simple. I'm really interested in technology. David, so, for years, instead of reading the Chronicle of Philanthropy or, you know, trade magazines in the charity world, I would read wired. I would read Fast Company. I would read ink. I would, you know, we have some really interesting sensor technology that was inspired by nest when the smart home came out, many years ago, I thought, Well, if there's a smart home, why can't we have smart wells? Why can't we connect our rural water projects around the world to the cloud to monitor ongoing sustainability and inform better implementation? And can't we spin up geek squads or Apple Care type programs?

David Novak 39:39 

That's a great example of what I call pattern thinking, where you look at two seemingly different things and apply it to your articulate just Association.

Scott Harrison 39:47 

Somebody showed me nest and they changed the temperature of their vacation home, you know, maybe at Yellowstone club. And I thought, well, they can do that from New York to, you know, my. Tanna. What about New York? To Ethiopia. Why can't we control a well through that same technology, and that was hard. Google gave us $5 million we wound up blowing through $5 million of R and D. Wound up getting another 500 from them, and actually coming up with a pilot that we was viable. And we installed 3500 sensors, and now we've got R and D going on four different sensors that work all across the portfolio. So I'm not saying it was an easy journey. Making hardware in China, it turns out, is very hard. They call it hardware for a reason, but, but I think, you know, that is just the discipline. I saw VR for the first time in a Marriott demo, and Marriott took me to a penthouse in Dubai, and I've got these goggles on, and I'm standing looking at the city of Dubai in a glass penthouse. And I thought, well, if Marriott can take me to Dubai, why can't I take David Novak to Ethiopia to drill a well, and then, instead of asking him to rent the penthouse in Dubai, ask him to go build a well and help 300 people have the same experience that he just went through. Just went through. So I think time and time again, we've done that. We're actually opening up a retail store in Nashville, Tennessee, in a couple months. And this is patterned on the immersive experience that I've been chasing around the world, from the color factory the ice cream museum or meow wolf in Las Vegas, or the Van Gogh experience, a little bit of that, plus the Apple Store. When Angela Aarons went over there, she was really modeling these stores to educate people. So we're gonna we're building a place which is sort of inspired by the Apple Store. It's a lot of glass, beautiful LED screens, education spaces for children, and then immersive experiences, where we hope to make people feel something intense, and then they will Exit Through The Gift Shop, little nod to bank. See there

David Novak 41:50 

you're building the brand that now that takes a lot a lot of courage to make that kind of investment. You got all these people that need water, and yet you're building this incredible retail establishment. You got to have half the people going to you, you know, what do you? What do you? More than

Scott Harrison 42:05 

half. David, more than half. More than half. And by the way, like you could, I don't know that it's going to work. I think it's going to work because it's, it's taking different elements of things that have worked over 18 years. We put it in a in a very high foot trafficked, kind of almost like a mall. So it's basically in a Chelsea Market type space, where 55,000 people come through every single month. So for me, it's got all of the elements of success. But yes, people think we're crazy. Like, why wouldn't you just go put all of that money directly and go build a couple 100 wells? And I'm like, well, because we're gonna build 1000s of wells, you've

David Novak 42:42 

raised a billion, and you're on, you're at that tippy point where it could really take off now, as you go. But

Scott Harrison 42:47 

this is a small, you know, I think this is a, this is a fraction of what is needed. You know, this year we're gonna help a little less than 2 million new people get clean water. Now, you know, on my bad days, I'm, I'm dividing that it's about 5000 people a day. So I'm like, that's great, you know, I look at my wife and kids and like, today was a really hard day. You know, a bunch of people said, No, things went wrong, but 5000 new people got clean water today because of what we built. That's the KPI. I want to add a zero to that, you know, I want the organization and the movement to grow where it's 50,000 people a day, it's 500,000 people a day, and then we can finally see the day when you don't have me on this podcast talking about freaking 700 million people without water, or I don't come to your kids school, and, you know, show a bunch of photos of school kids their exact same Age in Malawi or India or Bangladesh or Nepal drinking poisonous water.

David Novak 43:44 

Yeah. Well, that's a, it's a really, I mean, it's incredibly serious topic, and you're really taking it seriously and and bringing some major league brand building innovation, just hard work execution to the whole thing. So I admire you so much, and I want to thank you for everything that you're doing. And but now I want to shift gears a little bit, even though this is a serious topic, and I want to have a little fun. Okay,

Scott Harrison 44:14 

the first three letters in fundraising fun. There

David Novak 44:18 

you go. Okay? And I want to have a lightning round of questions with you. Sorry. Are you ready for this? Okay, the three words that best describe you

Scott Harrison 44:25 

generous, high integrity and fun,

David Novak 44:30 

that's four. But I'll let you get away with it. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Oh,

Scott Harrison 44:37 

this is easy Attenborough. What's

David Novak 44:39 

your biggest pet peeve?

Bernie Marcus 44:43 

People being late.

David Novak 44:44 

Who would play you in a movie?

Scott Harrison 44:48 

I forget his name, one of the spider man, not Leonardo.

David Novak 44:52 

Leonardo DiCaprio, spitting image New York City or Nashville.

Unknown Speaker 44:59 

But. Both.

David Novak 45:00 

What's something about water? Most people would be surprised to know

Scott Harrison 45:07 

The average American uses 150 gallons a day.

David Novak 45:10 

You get two tickets to anything you want. Where would you go and what would you see?

Scott Harrison 45:16 

I think I would go to the opera in Vienna.

David Novak 45:21 

What's your go to? Way to unwind after a long day,

Scott Harrison 45:26 

I love going to the movies by myself.

David Novak 45:28 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear jazz? What's something about you? Few people would know

Scott Harrison 45:38 

I was once in a subway ad where I had to kiss an ex girlfriend, and then we wound up getting back together.

David Novak 45:46 

You must be a good kisser. I also hang

Scott Harrison 45:49 

on to this. The second one is good. I also did actually work at McDonald's, and I dressed up as the Hamburglar once because they paid me time and a half. And I remember that I would have to tilt this giant bun, kind of vertically to get through doorways.

David Novak 46:06 

And last question, what's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss, prayer and gratitude. That's a great lighting around theirs. I really appreciate that one. Now you and your wife, Victoria, have three kids. How do you raise kids who are externally focused?

Scott Harrison 46:25 

Well, I have the advantage of bringing my kids with me to see how it all works. They get to go both to really, really nice places in the world and visit the islands of some of our donors. They also get to go to go to some of the poorest places in the world and fly coach seven flights in seven days to Madagascar or to Uganda. So I think it's just really the practice of gratitude and exposing them to just how different people live and how they get to use what they've been blessed with to improve the lives of others. You

David Novak 47:02 

know, you've had so much exposure, Scott to to, you know, large corporations and great entrepreneurs. You've mentioned a number of fantastic leaders and great companies. What do you see the in the best companies that that, what do they do to build into their culture, to really make it a giving culture? How do they do it? I think

Scott Harrison 47:21 

humility is really important in the leader, not thinking you're the smartest person in the room and and being open for other people to submit ideas. You know, learning, being curious is really important. I think knowing what you're good at and knowing what you're not. So I hired a President recently after a very long search. And it was really prompted by a conversation I had with Angela Ahrendts once, who for people that don't know, she led Burberry with great success, and then she took over Apple Retail had 65,000 employees or something at one point. And I remember asking Angela in the back of a Land Rover in Rwanda about leadership, and she said, I just wake up every single day and I just want to make my team better. How do I unblock them? How do I just get the most out of them? And I remember kind of laughing and saying, Angela, that's the most unnatural thought to me. It's probably time to go find an Angela for my team. You know, I'm thinking about the future. I'm thinking about innovation. I'm thinking about storytelling and ideas. So I think, you know, over the years, I've always made sure I had that COO or that head of HR, you know that, that now a president, you know, to really fill in the gaps for the weaknesses and blind spots which I have, which are myriad.

David Novak 48:38 

You know, I've heard you use this quote, which is, Do not be afraid of work that has no end. Say more. Yeah,

Scott Harrison 48:45 

I love this. A friend sent me this. This picture from a New York City deli over 15 years ago. He was passing, and that was what the quote said, Do not be afraid of work with no ends. And it came from an ancient rabbinic text. And, you know, I remember just thinking, Oh, I really love that, because I immediately put it into our context. And sometimes the problem feels so big and so insurmountable, and it feels like we're doing far too little, but it's really about the positioning. It's about the intention of your life. And if you're asking yourself the question of how you can serve, how do you use your time, your talent, your money, in the service of others. It is endless work. It is an endless pursuit with no finish line. There is no drop the mic moment. I have given enough, I have served enough, and, you know, I've also seen and lived that endless pursuit of more, with stuff with status, with things that I could buy, and that led me to a really dark and empty place. And I think it's just really helped me. I've kind of embraced the idea of endless work, if that work is work in this. Service of others in the service of humanity. Last

David Novak 50:02 

question here, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Scott Harrison 50:11 

Be curious and really listen.

David Novak 50:15 

You know, that's two pieces of advice. Oh

Scott Harrison 50:17 

my goodness, breaking your rules. I'm so sorry, dude,

David Novak 50:23 

but I love catching you in a couple of these things. You know, when you're as articulate as you are, you know, I got to kind of give you that little gig every now and then, but I have to tell you, Scott, you're an incredible leader, incredible leader. And in the preparation of this podcast, you know, I watched a YouTube video that you put together and, and I watched it on a Sunday morning and, and I have to tell you, I literally started crying like a baby. And I encourage everybody to go on YouTube and look at the video that you did for Charity Water. And I want to thank you for making the world a better place and for doing everything you can as a human being to be as giving as you are.

Scott Harrison 51:07 

Thank you for having me and let me share the story.

David Novak 51:16 

Believe it or not, I owe the idea of Cool Ranch Doritos to my habit of pattern thinking. It's a skill I've developed and relied on a lot, and it's in Scott's DNA too. He always has his antenna up, and he's constantly looking outside his industry at what's working and then finding ways to bring those ideas into the nonprofit space. When you tap into the power of pattern thinking, you can turn one plus one into three or more, two seemingly unrelated things become something new, something bigger, something that can change the world, just like Scott and his team are doing at Charity Water. This week, I want you to give pattern thinking a try. I recently wrote about six ways you can use pattern thinking to level up your leadership. We'll put a link to that article in the show notes, or you can find it in our weekly email newsletter. Read that article, pick an idea and put pattern thinking to work for you. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders tap into the power of pattern thinking. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Jenny Britton, founder of Jenny's ice creams.

Speaker 1 52:27 

Get to know your feeling, your instinct. Our brains work really well, but actually our brains are interpreting what's happening in our body and our feeling, our sense of feeling, and you almost always know the way. If you listen, listen to your gut, listen to your instinct.

David Novak 52:43 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be. You.