Scott Harrison | The Power of Clean Water: How One Organization is Making a Global Impact

Srini Rao:

Scott welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Scott Harrison:

Well, this should be fun. I'm excited to be here.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So as I was saying before we hit record, it's kind of amazing that you have not been a guest before seeing as the fact that probably thousands of people that I've interviewed are connected to you in one way or another. And chances are most people listening have heard of you unless they've been on the moon for the last 20 years. But having read your book, I got the sense that your parents have had a significant impact on your life. And I wanted to start by asking you, what did they do for a living?

And what is one of the most important things that you learned from one or both of them that have influenced and shaped what you've ended up doing with your life?

Scott Harrison:

I had a really interesting childhood. My dad was a middle-class businessman, worked at an electrical engineering firm that sold transformers, like those big power supplies that you see on telephone poles. My mom was a writer. They had met at the University of Pennsylvania at Wharton. And when I was four years old, we moved.

from Philadelphia to the suburbs of New Jersey. My dad wanted to get closer to his work and reduce his commute so that he could spend more time with me and hope to have a big family. And unknown to us, we moved into this pretty drab gray house at the end of a cul-de-sac in the dead of winter. And the house that we had just purchased came with a carbon monoxide gas leak. And this was many years before the carbon monoxide detectors that we have now, you know, were

were invented. So we move in and we all start getting these symptoms and on New Year's Day 1980 my mom walks across the bedroom and she collapses unconscious to the floor. So she's the canary in the coal mine which leads to the discovery of carbon monoxide in her bloodstream, massive amounts and then the discovery of the actual gas leak down in the basement.

So I never really knew my mom in her former self. She became an invalid from this point on, and I was four, and her life really kind of ended as her health was taken away from her. What happened to her was her immune system irreparably shut down and was unable to process.

anything chemical, anything synthetic from this point on. So she wore masks for the next 50 years. She was connected to oxygen at various times. She lived avoiding exposure to anything chemical. I mean, the ink from a book.

Scott Harrison:

the print from a book would make her sick. A whiff of car fumes, you know, streets over, or the whiff of fabric softener as somebody was doing laundry would just set her into spiraling symptoms. So she lived in isolation in special containment rooms covered in bathrooms washed down with special soap and on army cots that had been washed in baking soda.

So that was kind of mom. Dad, and I'll get to what I learned, dad stuck by her. So he was unbelievably loyal. My parents had a really authentic Christian faith and they decided not to sue the gas company. They didn't want to become bitter and they just believed that, you know, God would provide for our family. So he was this guy who didn't sleep in the same room as his wife for a decade.

Uh, and we both moved into caregiver roles. So we were doing the cooking for her and we were doing the cleaning and the laundry and really just helping to, to care for, for my mother. So what I learned from her was this unbelievable.

resilience and throughout the adversity of the rest of her life. She had a joy and an optimism and she tried to use her time writing letters to encourage other people because she couldn't see them in real life. And I learned, you know, a deep sense of integrity and loyalty from my father, who just stayed by her side until she eventually died in her 70s.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. I wonder how your understanding of that experience evolves with age, because if you're four, when that starts to happen, I'd imagine you're in a lot of ways, that's kind of traumatizing, like not having a consistent maternal figure. And I wonder how that sort of understanding of the reality of the situation has kind of evolved with age.

Scott Harrison:

I think the first time I really had to take stock of my childhood was when I was working on the book. And I was working with this amazing woman who was helping me with interviews and her name was Lisa. And she interviewed my mom and interviewed some friends and interviewed my dad. And I remember after that she...

She just said, I feel so sorry for you. You lost your childhood, you know, and she had this sense of deep trauma. My narrative was, I had a great childhood.

And this is just all I knew. Mom was sick and we all did the best that we could and we were optimistic and this taught me resilience and independence and yeah, later, you know, I could maybe credit some of the entrepreneurship back to those things that I was doing at a young age. So I, my look back on childhood was very different than her perception from the outside of it. And you know, maybe the truth is somewhere in between.

Scott Harrison:

You know, I certainly didn't grow up feeling sorry for myself. Uh, I grew up just, that was all I knew and I didn't see mom's face and, and I helped to take care of my mom.

Srini Rao:

I think that what is so fascinating is that somebody who didn't have the experience interpreted as incredibly traumatic and you seem to have this overwhelmingly optimistic interpretation of it. What do you think it is that differentiates the person who creates a narrative that you did versus the one that somebody who didn't even experience this did?

Scott Harrison:

Um, I think we were all optimistic. I mean, we made the best of, of what was a very bad situation for, for many, many years and my, my family were, were fighters. Uh, they didn't want to give up. I mean, we kept looking for.

potential cures to this and, you know, ways to repair her immune system. And, you know, gosh, if I thought of all the different treatments and doctors and clinics we saw over the years, you know, to not find any good answer or result. But there was just a sense of this is what we keep doing. We don't give up and we, we continue to, to fight for a better future or for the hope of a better future.

Srini Rao:

Talk to me about the role that faith has played in your life because I get the sense that there are moments when it didn't matter, we'll get to that, and there are moments when it was significant. It seems like early on it played a huge role, but then it kind of didn't, and then it eventually did again.

Scott Harrison:

You know, early on, I think it was very much the faith of my parents. I was raised in the church and my parents were non-denominational. So we would go to different flavors of churches, uh, as, as we moved around a little bit, you know, eventually just trying to move to the country to get clean air for mom, uh, as a baseline. Um, I remember liking it.

playing piano on Sunday for the church service and being involved in the youth group. And I didn't have any negative kind of connotations of church, you know, growing up.

I think it was really when I turned 18 that, you know, I had my, unfortunately, cliche prodigal son moment where I said, okay, now, now I want to have some real fun, fun outside the rules of the church. And I do want to smoke and I do want to drink and I do want to swear and I do want to sleep around and I do want to chase money and cars and watches and status and celebrity. Uh, and, and that was that kind of.

was it collided with me also moving to New York City, which I thought was the greatest city in the entire world, where you could do all of these things and pursue all these things in style. So, you know, I think act one was, you know, a faithful kid. Act two was...

Srini Rao:

Hmm.

Scott Harrison:

I want to have fun and in some ways maybe, you know, I began to act like a child at 18 years old and maybe, you know, explore the childhood that I never had in New York City and just chasing fun endlessly.

this came through stumbling into this job as a nightclub promoter where I wound up working at 40 different nightclubs over the next 10 years throwing parties. I mean, so my actual job, my profession over a decade was partying for a living and throwing parties. In some ways, maybe the party I never had as a kid.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because my parents and I will have these conversations about religion and they become, you know, more religious as they've gotten older, like all their friends are from, you know, the community, like our temple. And my big problem, especially with religion, when as it relates to Hinduism, if you've been to an Indian wedding, you know, this is too damn time consuming. Like it takes too long. Yeah. And this is like the argument that my dad and I are like, why does everything here take so long?

Scott Harrison:

Well, I mean, Christianity, you can get in and out in 60 minutes in a good church service.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, exactly. Good luck doing that at an Indian wedding. Although apparently now, you can hire the same priest who does your Hindu ceremony. He'll actually charge you more to do the condensed version.

Scott Harrison:

Oh my gosh, that's funny. That is very funny.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, it was just all our friends who were like, you know, like American, born in the US, but married to other Indians. They're like, our friends are not going to sit through three hours of this. And I remember even at my sister's wedding, like people were all sitting down expecting like the ceremony to start. Then, you know, they brought out a coffee cart and they finally realized like none of the Indian people here are sitting down. It's like that's because we all know this is going to take forever.

Scott Harrison:

Exactly, exactly. Well, and maybe it's fair, I did come, Act Three of my life, I did wind up coming back to faith, I think in a slightly different way as an adult, being able to opt in, but that's really after I had made an absolute giant mess of my life, pursuing girls and cars and watches and gambling and travel and just not finding.

Srini Rao:

But, you know, I wonder...

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Scott Harrison:

what I was looking for. And I kind of found myself 10 years later in the proverbial pig sty, and missing home, missing the, I wouldn't say the comfort, but missing the foundation of morality and spirituality and virtue, wholesomeness in a way, as I was living such a destructive lifestyle.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, that was, I think the thing that struck me most is to go from, you know, sort of this religious upbringing to what effectively sounds like hedonism, because you say in the book, somewhere along the way, the sameness of nightlife, booze, drugs, girls, repeat made me restless. I wanted to change and the more things stayed the same, the more booze, drugs, and girls I needed to force my mind and body to show up for work with a smile. So, yeah, dad's not. Well, so,

Scott Harrison:

Yes.

Scott Harrison:

I wrote that? That's not bad.

Scott Harrison:

I couldn't say that succinctly now, I'll tell you that.

Srini Rao:

Well, I'll tell you something, 20 year old me would have been like, this sounds awesome. Like, this sounds amazing. This is like the dream life that any 20 something would wanna have. It's like booze, drugs, girls every night. So talk to me about the reality of the situation versus the perception. Because I think from the outside looking in, it's like, wow, this is glamorous.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah, I get that a lot, you know

Scott Harrison:

Mm-hmm.

Scott Harrison:

I think that's fair and I think that's a really nice insight because young people do want to go hang out with Denzel Washington and supermodels, right? Like what sounds better than that? I think, well part of it is, no I'm gonna say it's the whole environment. You know what your job is actually like as a nightclub promoter,

Srini Rao:

I kinda wanna do that now and I'm about to be 46 in two days.

Scott Harrison:

is it becomes very monotonous. And you're having in some ways, okay, so dinner at 10, PM at night, and you have gotten some modeling agency booker to bring six to eight models for a free dinner. And then you have filled that dinner with guys from finance who are gonna pay for everything, who wanna be around the models.

Okay, so that looks really good and you're at the nicest restaurant and it's a $5,000 tab that you know, you as the nightclub promoter or the host, you know, are just, you know, you're never paying for anything. But it's not a terribly interesting group of people. So as good as it looks, as you walk into that restaurant and say, oh my gosh, here are these unbelievably beautiful young girls and these guys in suits. It's not very interesting conversation.

So that's 10 o'clock till, let's say 1230. Then you go to the club at 1230. And the DJ that you've hired is playing the same songs over and over again, every single night, just like a radio disc jockey would. And I mean, how tired they must be of any top 40 song that they have to play over and over and over again, because that's what the people want. The volume in the cloud is incredibly loud. And your level of

intellectual conversation, if there was any at the dinner, you know, drops remarkably, because now you're shouting, and kind of spitting at people. And you know, that goes till, I don't know, call it three o'clock. And then everybody wants to go to after hours and do cocaine. And, you know, on a, on a night that started at 10, you might get home around 1030 11, the next day. And I just remember this one day, you know, it's noon, and

I'm still high and I'm taking Ambien to try to come down and it's bright in this apartment so I'm trying to stuff a comforter in the window to block out the light. And as I look out this window on Houston Street in New York City, you see a bunch of people just on lunch break, going about their healthy, probably eating vegan.

Scott Harrison:

This is how your night ends at noon. And then you know you have to get up at eight o'clock at night, make a bunch of calls, put the whole group together and do it again. So it really did get boring. I mean, maybe fun for the first few years, but boy, year five, year seven, it really felt like a job. And so many of the relationships are so shallow because as nightclub promoters, you almost have to date a model because that's just part of the job.

I mean, I was never really in love with the girls I was dating and they weren't in love with me, you know, and it was cool for models to date nightclub promoters because then they could go out and eat and drink for free and be seen with, you know, other beautiful people. So the whole thing is kind of really vapid and shallow and ages more poorly over time. And then you start

you know, overusing, you know, you start drinking even more and doing even more drugs to kind of numb out the, you know, as some sort of bomb for the boredom, I guess. So I don't know if that's helpful in determining it. It was a blast in the beginning, bro. The first couple of years are amazing. You're like, this girl was in the cover of a magazine and this is my girlfriend, you know, like other people are, you know, you walk down the street and turning heads and then,

Srini Rao:

So, yeah, no, it is. It's fascinating.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Scott Harrison:

you know, a couple of years into that, or, you know, four or five of, of those later, you know, it's, you're not having really interesting conversations and they don't really like you and you don't really like them. And, uh, you just realize you're, you've signed up for the wrong value system. And, and in fact, you know, if I think about the customers, right, who's spending the money, the guys buying the thousand dollar bottles of champagne, you know, many of these are middle-aged men who have.

divorced their wives to run off with 20 year old girls who are often younger than their daughters, who won't speak to them because they hate the fact that dad divorced mom for some 23 year old model. And you know, so, you know, and some guys got four buttons down and he's gonna drop $7,000 on his American Express black card in champagne. But you know, is that living? Is that, you know, is he creating a legacy?

Srini Rao:

Yeah, I guess what I'm getting here is that the glitz and glamour of all is really just a mirage. Like, when we see it from the outside, that's kind of the sense I'm getting. Because yeah, if I'm a 20-something, like, you know, as I was reading this, I was like, man, I wish my 20s were this interesting. But I also get that, you know, as I've gotten older, I'm like, okay, yeah, like, this sounds hellish.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

So, you know, the other thing you say is, you know, every night I'd snort another line of cocaine and pass the world a bill to another pretty girl and think to myself, this is not who I am. This is not who I want to be. This is not how I thought my life would turn out. Like, like you said, it was a lot of fun. And so what is it that pushes somebody to the breaking point? And also, the other thing I wonder about is I'd imagine, and you mentioned that conversations were not that interesting or vapid, but I'd also imagine this is like a laboratory for studying human behavior.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah, but again, not the most interesting forms of human behavior. Exactly. And slurring their words and, you know, sloppily making out, or dancing. I mean, it's only, you know, 52 weeks a year, three parties a night, you know, 150 parties a year. I mean, it's not that interesting to watch people dance anymore.

Srini Rao:

Just people getting shitfaced and high.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, well, my thought was, oh, this sounds like Groundhog Day with booze, drugs, and women.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Srini Rao:

So what is it that pushes anybody and then finally pushed you to the breaking point where you're like, okay, this is, I'm done. I can't do this anymore.

Scott Harrison:

Well, you know, I wrote about this in the book. There were some health issues and, and it made me no surprise to anybody listening after describing a typical night. Uh, but you know, half my body went numb one day and I just remember walking over, turning on the tap, you know, watching the steam come from the hot water, sticking my arm under and I couldn't feel it and just thinking, Oh wow, something is very wrong.

Maybe I have a brain tumor, maybe I have some sort of incurable disease. And I think that was such an important moment because I really had been living like I was immortal. You know, I had been living like nothing could stop me and recklessly and I was never going to overdose and almost running so fast, nothing would ever catch up. And then one day...

What if something is wrong with me? What if I do have a brain tumor? What if I was given four weeks to live? What if my life ended here? What would I be known for? What would they write on my tombstone? How would I be remembered? I'd be remembered as some degenerate, scumbag, cokehead, nightclub promoter who got a million people drunk. Nobody would remember that. Nobody would care about that. It was a negative contribution to society.

Srini Rao:

Mm-hmm.

Scott Harrison:

So that really began a taking stock period, a discovery of, you know, in, and even heaven and hell, you know, did I, did I still believe in that kind of afterlife and well, if, if I did, uh, if, if that was possible, I didn't think I was going to heaven, bro. I mean, you don't let this, you don't let guys like me into heaven, uh, guys like me typically don't want to get into heaven, uh, they want to hang out, you know.

Srini Rao:

No.

Scott Harrison:

So that began a process that took about six months. And there was an incident I write about in Nightlife where I fired somebody and they threatened my life. And I'd had my life threatened so many times in clubs because you don't let someone in and they're embarrassed and they say they're gonna come and shoot you. But there was a really good kind of catalyzing event for me at the end of this.

thinking and discovery process and trying to find my way back to faith, trying to kind of rediscover what a moral life would look like. And you know, this makes even more sense to me now at 48 years old. I mean, I'm just a radical guy. So it's much easier for me to do what I did, which was sell everything I owned and go volunteer for a medical mission in the poorest country in the world.

You know, that was easier than to make small changes in my life. So that's what I did in the six months kind of after those health issues just subsided. They couldn't find a brain tumor. They couldn't find Parkinson's or ALS or, you know, anything after all the tests. And, you know, I guess maybe that was partying too much, you know, living such a destructive lifestyle. Um, but that led me then to this radical life change. And I guess act three of my life, which was, uh, going cold Turkey.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Scott Harrison:

and saying, I am going to quit smoking and I'm going to quit drugs and I'm going to quit gambling and I'm never going to look at a pornographic image for the rest of my life. I'm going to try to just shed all of these kind of dirty vices that I've picked up and see if I can be of service, you know, see if I can be of service to God and, uh, refine a life of virtue and integrity and honor.

And could I be in service to people who are suffering? And I kind of found the perfect opportunity, where all these things collided in Liberia, West Africa at 28 years old aboard this hospital ship.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. Well, one more question about Act One. You say for years, I've been pursuing the wrong things from the BMW I bought as a teenager to the designer clothes I wore to the drugs I took and hip cities I bragged about visiting. And this is something I always wonder about. Like if I were talking to you and I was 20, I would be like Scott Harrison, you're full of shit. All that sounds amazing. Like, I wonder if you have to go through this experience to come to this realization.

Scott Harrison:

You might, but now, right in your 40s, you totally get that because we have seen so many people sell their company or hit their number where the things that they always wanted to buy, now everything is instantly available. And we have seen the sadness that brings. The plane didn't bring joy, the island home didn't bring joy.

The Lamborghini didn't bring joy or the McLaren, you know, the five Hublot watches for 100 Gs didn't bring joy. The relationship, you know, the girl that they never, girl or boy that they never could have had didn't bring joy. So maybe in the 20s, but I also, I don't know, I've met some wise kids before who are futuristic and can look out and can just say, you know,

Srini Rao:

Mm-hmm.

Scott Harrison:

And the problem with materialism is that there really is never enough. I mean, someone always has more. And the more you want to accumulate, the more you want to accumulate. So I think it's really, you know, and conversely, the more you give, the more you want to give. You know, it's kind of these things become almost engines to themselves.

And if you really get stuck in the accumulation game or the status game, I mean, it's pretty lonely.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, it's funny because we had two people here. It kind of brought back memories of two conversations. Recently I had Ken Honda and he was telling me about the people that he's worked with, some of who are extremely wealthy. And he said, you know, one guy had a private jet and he was like, do you feel rich? And he was like, no, he's like, why? He's like, because my friend who has a private jet had Versace basically do the interior of his plane and I can't afford to do that. And then I think it was Kamal Rabikant who told me, he was like, yeah, he's like in San Francisco, it's like you sell a startup for a hundred million dollars, you move into a new apartment and you feel poor

Scott Harrison:

Uh huh, yeah. Great, great example.

Srini Rao:

sold three startups for $100 million. It's like you're rich, but you feel poor.

Scott Harrison:

Uh huh. Yep.

Yep, yep, there's always someone to chase. Or if you're at the top of the game, you know, you're chasing the first trillionaire status. Right?

Srini Rao:

Yeah. Ooh. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, well, I've interviewed Justine Musk before and she, what she said to me, you know, it was when she wrote that article about, you know, extreme success that ended up going viral. And I remember asking her and she said, you know, what people don't see are a couple of things. One is the amount of work that actually goes into this. And she said, and the other part is they don't see the fact that this literally comes at the cost of everything else in your life. It has to define your life if you want this.

Like she's like, it's an extreme way to live. And I mean, I think you can go look at Elon's personal life and that's a pretty good example of the cost that you pay to have what he has.

Scott Harrison:

Absolutely, and I appreciate that the work that goes into it because my favorite, and I'm being highly facetious of your question, that I get sometimes at the end of a stage talk or an interview or something on TV is someone will say, Bach, your duet sounds really great. Is this your full-time job? I'm like, is it my full-time job?

We're raising $100 million a year, running an organization across 29 countries with thousands of local team members out there. It's like, no, it's a side gig. If they only knew, I mean, we worked 100 hours a week. And that sounds like an exaggeration. And then you actually go and add up those hours and you get to 100 hours a week because you're just constantly working. You go home and you sleep for six or seven hours and then you work. It's the only thing you do. You don't go to the movies.

You're just constantly working in those early days to make sure that your startup or your startup, you know, nonprofit doesn't die because, you know, insolvency is kind of the existential threat for quite some time. And the only way out of that is just to work. I was very fortunate, I mean, I know we're jumping forward in the timeline, but I was very fortunate to start Charity Water when I was 28 and didn't have any children.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, I mean, I...

Yeah, you know, it's funny. Sorry. Yeah.

Scott Harrison:

And, you know, I mean, what did I sacrifice? I sacrificed Netflix and chill. And I didn't sacrifice coaching my son's little league, which I get to do now, or taking my daughter to gymnastics. And I know so many entrepreneurs who started their journey, had kids and just really didn't have a relationship with their kids because it's really hard to do both in those early days.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I just finished reading Lauren Graham's memoir, for people who don't know, she's on like Parenthood and a bunch of other TV shows like Gilmore Girls. And one of the questions she said that people often ask famous actors is like, when did you feel like you've made it? And she said, never. Like, you know, literally it's like, no matter how rich or famous you are, like, and I realized, like, I finally came to the realization that this is a mirage that

Scott Harrison:

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao:

Like I will never experience it, you know, cause I do this birthday post every year and this year's like 46 reflections on a life half over. And I'm like, Oh my God, it doesn't matter. Like I've written two books with a publisher raised funding. And I'm like, it's never going to happen. I'm chasing something that doesn't exist.

Scott Harrison:

Well, try to take on a mission of trying to give the entire world clean water and see how that feels when there's 700 million people that you've yet to help.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, I can imagine.

Srini Rao:

Well, speaking of which, I think that, here's the thing, like a lot of our listeners being in the United States, I don't think many of them have seen the reality of like what poverty in a third world country looks like. I mean, having been born in India and having visited while growing up, like I got a firsthand glimpse of this, but probably nowhere as near as intense as the one you've got. And I think that first, give us a reality of this because I know you've worked on the Mercy ships. Like what it, because I don't think we really understand.

the degree to which these people suffer because all we see are the stories and the pictures on TV. Like most people have never seen it upfront.

Scott Harrison:

I mean, I can talk about our issue. So 700 million people around the world are drinking disgusting, dirty, contaminated, diseased water right now, about 1 in 10 people alive on the planet, twice the population of the United States of America. So a huge, huge amount of people. And I'm betting, let's call it, let's round up to 100% of the people listening to this, did not wake up this morning.

and really think about water. I mean, we just take it for granted. We were born into a system, a country, an environment where clean water comes out of taps and it comes out of multiple taps. So I had a guy who works with me was in Africa and he came back from Africa and he lives in a very modest three bedroom home with his family.

And he said, you know, I'm gonna count how many taps I have in my three bedroom home. And he counted 17 places where clean water came out of taps in his home. You know, and you think about it, there's the refrigerator, there's the washer, there's the toilets and the showers and the sinks, and there's the hoses, the garden hoses. Right, so that's kind of our reality. And then 10% of the world has never experienced one tap. You know, one.

a cup of clean and safe drinking water because of what they were born into. So with that problem comes massive health implications in some of these developing nations throughout Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Central and South America. Up to 50% of the disease in these countries can just be tracked back to unsafe water and a lack of sanitation. So there's...

just obvious health problems. If you were to go out and drink from the brown swamp or your neighbor's pond, you're gonna get sick. And if your child under the age of five, they're gonna potentially die of dysentery, of cholera, of potentially go blind, of trachoma. So health problems, mass education, ramification. So when I started Charity Water,

Scott Harrison:

A third of the world's schools didn't have clean water for their students. So imagine that one in three schools on planet earth didn't have clean water or toilets or sanitation facilities. So it turns out maybe no surprise. This is one of the top reasons why, uh, teenage girls will drop out around the world as their school has no water, no toilets. So there's education implications. Um, there's really deep implications on women.

and girls because it's always culturally the role of the women and girls to go get the water. And sometimes that water is seven hours away round trip and it's a seven day a week affair. So very common for a woman in rural India or Africa to walk 49 hours every single week for dirty water. For water that's not even clean or useful to her family.

And the men at best are working in the fields or working with livestock or maybe working at a factory trying to provide income. So if you don't have water, your life is so radically different and so radically compromised. And what's kind of infuriating, but I guess also animating, is that it's a completely solvable problem. So there's not a single human being alive today

who we don't definitively know how to help. We don't know what to do with pancreatic cancer, stage four pancreatic cancer. We don't know what to do with Parkinson's or ALS. We're spending billions of dollars trying to look for cures of incurable diseases. Water has a cure and a lot of different technologies work in a lot of different environments, but you can always get clean water.

to a human if you want to. And the problem is nobody's wanted to. And we are content because this problem doesn't affect us to not solve this problem. I mean, I joke, I think it's slightly ironic. I mean, Elon Musk, richest guy in the world, is looking for water on a planet 142 million miles away.

Scott Harrison:

Right? Realizing water is going to be vital to civilization. And, you know, as, as we look down upon earth, 10% of this planet is drinking disgusting water. So, you know, I think that's, that's really the mission that I've been on for the last 17 years with charity water is trying to create a movement, a global will to unlock the resources to direct at this problem. So that we can.

created day on earth when everybody has clean water to drink. And therefore bring health to children and to families. Therefore to bring better education and allow girls to go back to school because their school now has water and they don't have to walk. To free up 49 hours for some women where they can use that extra time to lead their families, to lead their communities, to start small businesses. And...

become entrepreneurs as they can earn income for their families. And yet we've done so little. We've raised what, almost a billion dollars, just shy of a billion dollars now to help close to 20 million people. Well, that's 20 million people out of 703 million people who are still waiting. It's what, 1.38 or so of the problem.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. It's funny because I don't think people really viscerally experience this. Like you said, day to day, we just turn on a faucet and take it for granted. Like I can tell you this, growing up in India, like when we would go to visit India as kids, we had to boil our water because it was, you know, you couldn't drink the water that came from the tap. You go to a restaurant, you had to make sure that there was no damn ice in the water and no hot showers. Like you imagine, you know,

constantly bitching about all of this, not realizing how, you know, like these are jokingly first world problems. You're right, we completely take this for granted.

Scott Harrison:

Yep.

Scott Harrison:

But the crazy thing is you would actually not, what you just described to me, you would be counted as someone with clean water. So you're not in that 703 million living in a rural area. And so certainly you're in a water stressed area, but it gets even worse than that.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Yeah, though I can imagine. Well, I think to your point, there are two things I wonder about. When you see something like that happen in a place like Flint, Michigan, here in the United States, that must be infuriating to see that we would let that happen here. So one, what do you make of that? And two, getting people to actually give a shit, I think is probably the great challenge, right?

Scott Harrison:

Mm-hmm.

Scott Harrison:

Yeah, I mean, I think Flint, what was needed in Flint was over a billion dollars of infrastructure repair. So I think that was really unfortunate how slow the response was. But I mean, it was, again, it was pretty simple. They needed to dig up a billion dollars of pipe and fix it and put proper non-lead pipe in and redo all the infrastructure.

So I think what was most, and eventually, I think the money came from FEMA, or the money was actually, it was a government problem, not an individual donor problem that just took far too long for the government to solve. And in many of these countries, I mean, that's an objection I get every once in a while. What is the government of Rwanda doing about water? How come you're asking me to go help poor people in Rwanda get clean water to drink?

I mean, I think what a lot of people don't understand is just how small many of these GDPs and total economies are and how little money they have to meet all of the needs across a country where 95% of the people are subsistence farmers. So there's no tax revenue for people who are growing food on their small plots of land.

just to pick on Rwanda, which I think is one of the most progressive, in a good way, African governments. The entire budget for the country of Rwanda is less than New York City's public school district budget, like one city in America, to run the schools. And Rwanda's got to take that, and they've got to do water, and health clinics, and roads, and education, and keep a government running.

So I think that's why we really do believe philanthropic capital is needed to accelerate the progress that is happening, but just happening at such a slow pace.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. There's something else you say in the book that really struck me. You say, on the ship, I used to hear the term culture shock all the time. Volunteers would spend eight months in a country like Liberia and then come home and start judging everyone around them. How could you spend so much on a pair of shoes, a dinner, a watch or a car? We'd talk about reentry like we were returning through the Earth's atmosphere from Mars. Talk to me about that, because I think that is...

Scott Harrison:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Honestly, that again is in my mind one of those things you'll never really understand until you experience it yourself.

Scott Harrison:

You know, that feels a little, you know, I think I was early on in the journey there. I don't know that culture shock served me well back then. I think I'm a lot less culture shocked the more I travel. I mean, I've been to, gosh, I've been to Africa over 50 times now and I've been to 72 countries and you know, this work takes me all over the world.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Scott Harrison:

Um, so I, I wouldn't say that I'm jaded, but you know, this is just the reality. I mean, rich people live in $50 million homes and I'll watch a child drinking from a muddy river vomiting every time she takes a drink. Um, and, and this is just the disparity of the world that we live in. And I think in the early days, you know, I would have much more of a tendency to go judge the donor living in a $50 million house. Now it's really.

It's my job to winsomely invite them to use their time and their talent and their money to meet some of these needs and really try to infect them with enthusiasm of what is possible. Alongside their beautiful $50 million home, they could also invest $50 million and bring 1 million people access to clean water.

So it's not my job to make them feel guilty for what they have, it's my job to inspire them of what's possible with money in terms of human lives.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. I know from having read the book, this hasn't all been smooth sailing either. And I think that the quote that really kind of sums this up is you say, we don't always get breaks and believe me not all my prayers have been met with miraculous solutions, yet over time, I've come to embrace the mystery of faith. I think it's my job to work as hard as I possibly can, but also pray and when breakthroughs do come, I try to hold onto them as proof of something much bigger that might just be at work.

And I think that no matter what it is that we're doing, whether it's me hosting this podcast, people trying to get careers off the ground, we all have these moments where we begin to question that faith. And I wonder how you maintain that when you're in the moment when it feels like everything could be over at any moment.

Scott Harrison:

Again, this is a while ago. So you're taking me back to early days of existential bankruptcy and insolvency because we were a fundraising organization and we also have a very unique model where we raise all of the overhead for Charity Water separately from about 130 entrepreneurs and families so that.

100% of all public donations from 150 countries around the world go directly to help people get water. So we even had kind of more existential challenges because we would raise millions and millions of dollars for clean water projects that we could never use to actually pay staff salaries or the bill for the office unless we raise that money separately. But I think the element of faith.

You know, a friend of mine, I really tend, so I'm a very kind of devout person. I do go to church, I'm active in our church and our local community, but I also try not to over-spiritualize things. And, you know, oh, and it's not that I don't wanna give God credit, I just, I love the mystery of faith, and I think it's our job to work hard.

and certainly to pray and to invite God into that space. But also to work really hard and to use what I've been given to move the mission forward. And there have been all these moments where I was working really hard and then something just so exponentially extraordinary happened, something that was undeserved.

You know a monster donation would come in from the most unlikely source that I think was just encouraging You know, I'm supposed to be doing this. I'm on the right path Keep moving forward, you know one step after the next I mean I remember Yeah, I probably make Depending on the year somewhere between 50 and 100 Speeches a year on stages and just out there telling the story and I could be talking to first graders sitting on the floor

Scott Harrison:

Uh, at a public school or 10,000 people in a stadium, you know, at a tech conference. Um, but, but I really just have always believed, you know, every time I'm out there telling the story, I'm just sowing seeds and you never know who's listening. And you never know whether that seed is going to fall on good ground or, you know, a bunch of people just say, yeah, that's not for me or who cares about water or how long it might actually take. For that seed to, you know, to turn into something. And, you know, I have so many stories.

of just unlikely seed growth, I guess you could say. I mean, there was an event I spoke at once, the Inc Magazine 5000 conference, and it was in Phoenix. And I spoke and there was somebody there, I think that responded through the office and gave $30,000, which was enough to sponsor three water projects for three communities. And I never met the person and didn't even hear about the gift. And seven years later,

Somebody on my team at the end of 2020 was reaching out and I think asked this person whether they would consider sponsoring one project. I mean, hey, it was 2020, right? Would they give $10,000? And this individual came back and said, I can give $10,000, but I can also give $10 million. Would you like $10 million? Bless her, she said, well, we actually have a $10 million program at Charity Water.

Here's the details in the program and the impact there. And he made a $10 million gift. And he said, you know, the origin for me was sitting in the audience and hearing that story. And, you know, I told my wife, Hey, if we ever have money, we're going to give it to this mission. And this is an entrepreneur. Uh, and in 2020, he had sold his company for a hundred million dollars and gave 10 million.

to the work of Charity Waters. So I have so many of those stories. Now, I didn't do anything different in that versus the 99 other speeches that year, but I did show up and I did get on the plane. And just on Sunday, I spoke three times, almost an hour each time. And you're exhausted at the end of this, but you just never know who's listening and you just never know the benefit of time.

Scott Harrison:

You know, and kind of, I think it might've been Nietzsche actually that said like a long obedience in the same direction. So that's what I try to focus on what I can control, which is starting year 18 and saying, I've got another year to give this mission and let me work as hard and as smart as I can to try to actually move us closer to a day when every human has clean water to drink.

Srini Rao:

Yeah. So when you guys finish one of these projects, what is the impact on the community? What happens to them?

Scott Harrison:

I mean, immediate health benefits in some communities, an 80% reduction in disease over the next 12 months. If it's at a school or if there's a school nearby, immediate education benefits girls primarily. I was in Uganda last year and I was at a school that had a charity water well at it. And I think they said 155 or 165 girls came back to that school.

because there was water and toilets at the school and clean water in the home. So they didn't have to walk and they could go to school. So, you know, many of those benefits, you know, women freed up time, time to start small businesses, you know, this woman Postina, who we love in Northern Uganda, bakes these delicious donuts because she has time back and she has clean water and she uses the money from selling her donuts to pay for school uniforms, to put her kids through school.

Um, so, and then I think just the, the human dignity benefit, and we didn't even talk about that, but it's, it's really, it's really undignified to drink brown, viscous water, uh, to pull out leeches or, or bugs, um, or, or cow feces. You know, cause you're often sharing these rural communities are often sharing the same sources with, with animals, with donkeys, with cows, uh, with goats.

And and it's really dignified to drink clean and safe water So I think that the human Flourish I mean humans cannot flourish without clean water you simply cannot live a good life a healthy life a dignified life if you do not have the most basic need for Human life met and that's clean water

Srini Rao:

So I have just a few more final questions for you. I know you mentioned that you have two kids, and I read about them in the book. I wonder, how has this influenced you as a parent and the values that you're passing on to your kids?

Scott Harrison:

Well, I want my kids to be generous and I want my kids to care for others. But the values that I probably care most about have very little to do with charity water, you know, outside of maybe the generosity and compassion value. I mean, it's really about integrity and honesty and kindness. I care about the kinds of people that they become, much less about what they do for a profession or what they do with their lives.

Now both of my kids are young enough, I mean, they said, oh, it'd be fun to work with dad at some point. You know, great, that'd be fun. I've been able to take them to the field to see it before, but really care about their character, you know, far more than anything else.

Maybe as I was a person who demonstrated very bad character for 10 years. So I would hope that they would not choose that path.

Srini Rao:

So.

Srini Rao:

Yeah.

Srini Rao:

Well, I have two last questions for you. So you've kind of seen a combination of like levels of wealth. On the one hand, you start your life as a club promoter, getting to party with models, you know, making all this money. Then you've seen this sort of extreme poverty and you've also been exposed to these donors who have 10 million dollars to spend to give to a charity like charity water. So I wonder, you know, with perspective and time and age, how your own views on money

wealth have evolved.

Scott Harrison:

I think the concept of enough, of kind of, you know, contentment and knowing what is enough and not trying to reach for better cars and better houses and just a sense of gratitude. We, you know, we're very fortunate and I drive a Kia Telluride and I love my Kia Telluride, but I don't envy the Porsche Cayenne or my friends with $100,000, you know, Range Rovers.

I have a great car, I have three kids and it gets everybody around. And, you know, I'm deeply grateful. I also, we have a used Dodge Ram truck that's banged up because I dented it in New York city. And, uh, you know, I'm very content that I can go to Home Depot for my wife's DIY projects and throw a bunch of lumber in the back of, of a truck. So I, but I don't, I don't need a Rivian, you know, and if I had the extra money, I

I don't think I would buy a Rivian. And I think, you know, I try to think about that in that principle of just being content with what we have and maybe a little more utility over status. I don't wear a watch, but if I did, you know, it would be a Casio, because it would help me keep time. It wouldn't be a, you know, a Rolex or a Breitling.

And nothing wrong with people who have really nice watches, but that I think has just helped keep me focused on the mission. And you do make a sacrifice when you sign up for nonprofit vocation. I mean, I remember turning down a job at one of the biggest tech companies, and it was pre-IPO, it was a C-level job. Would have made me hundreds of millions of dollars had I taken it. And I've never regretted not taking any of those

you know, huge opportunities where I could, you know, a hundred X my income potentially, because, you know, I'm on this mission and the mission is unfinished.

Srini Rao:

Wow. Well, this has been incredible as I kind of imagined it would be. So I have one last question, which is how we finish all of our interviews. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Scott Harrison:

Hmm, that's a great question. You see, you can tell I didn't know you were gonna ask that. Ha ha ha, we talked about this earlier, right? Never sending interview questions. I think it's about the totality of...

The little things, I mean, I immediately go to character. The people that I respect the most, they're not the richest, they're not the most successful, they're not running the biggest companies or brands. They have deep, deep character and integrity. They are intentional fathers or intentional mothers. They...

They are givers they are so I think it's really about virtue and character and All of the little things. I mean they do The right thing when nobody is looking And I think that adds up to an unmistakable life

Srini Rao:

Beautiful. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious where people can find out about you, but in case they wanna know more, we're gonna find out about your work, your books, and everything else.

Scott Harrison:

Sure, yeah. I wrote a book called Thirst. All the money goes straight to Charity Water, so I can never make a penny off it, but it became a New York Times bestseller. And if people are interested in more of the story, there's a lot besides water and some of the Liberia stuff was super interesting. So you can get that on Amazon. And then we're just at CharityWater.org. I will say we have a community I'm really passionate about called The Spring.

which is kind of like Netflix or Spotify, except we don't give you any music or movies. We just take your money every month and we use 100% of it to give people clean water. And that's been a real growth engine. A lot of people just give $40 a month. And that means one person every single month gets clean water around the world. And we've got some really cool tech where we report back on donations and stories of impact and all that. So that community, the spring at Charity Water,

has now expanded to 149 countries. And we have people giving in North Korea and we have 95 year olds on their pension giving $10 a month. And I'm really passionate about kind of the grassroots community. And that's how I think these big problems eventually get solved. That enough people raise their hand and say, not on my watch. I'm gonna resist the apathy.

that is so easy to accept with any of these paralyzing global issues and say, I could do something. I could build a well for 10 grand or, um, or I could, you know, give 10 bucks a month and every four months, you know, I know I've made a difference for one person. So all that's at charitywater.org. I'm a, I'm a bad follow on social media. I post very infrequently and typically as pictures of my kids.

Srini Rao:

And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.