Scott Harrison (Founder of charity: water)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey everybody. Welcome to the called Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Today's guest has been a long time coming. I'm very excited to introduce you to my friend Scott Harrison. He's the founder and CEO of Charity Water, a nonprofit that works to bring clean water to people in developing nations through its use of public donations. Scott is one of my absolute favorite, favorite entrepreneurs. Charity Water, one of my favorite nonprofits that I happily support personally every single month. And listen, Scott's name should be pretty familiar to you if you've read any of my books, as he is one of only a handful of people who appear in two of my books called To Create and Master of One. Scott and I sat down recently to talk about his remarkable story of how he went from running away from God, very much a prodigal son story as a nightclub promoter, to now spending the last 17 years or so of his life working to end the world's water crisis. We talked about the very simple thing you can do today to help you stay focused on the work you believe God's called you to master. And Scott and I also got up on our shared soapbox to talk about why our work matters for eternity, even when we're not sharing the gospel. Of course, we're all called to do that throughout life and we should look for opportunities to do it. But I want you to hear really clearly in my conversation with Scott that your work matters even when you're not evangelizing. You guys are going to love this episode. One of my favorites we've had in a while with my friend Scott Harrison. Scott Harrison, welcome to the Call Mastery.

Thanks for having me. This will be fun.

Yeah. So before we get into it, I gotta tell you a story that brags on your team a little bit at Charity Water, and I may have texted you or emailed you about this when it happened a year ago. I Can't remember, but I don't think I did. So here we go. So my family and I are massive fans of water. We've been giving to the spring for a while, which. Real quick, what's the spring for? Those who don't know.

Yeah, that's our community of now about 70,000 people from 147 countries who just give something every month. It's funny, I was at brunch on Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee. And you know, it was brunch, it was football. So I was at the bar getting beer and the bartender's like, hey, are you the charity water guy? She's like, I give you money every month. And I'm like, well, you don't give money to me every month. Right. People are everywhere that are spring members.

I'm a huge fan of the spring. So in everything water does, you guys do an exceptionally high level. And what I love about the spring are these documentary films that you guys create. You go to the countries where you're building these clean water wells and you send back these very like, short episodes, like, I think each journey. Yeah, the journey. There it is. What a. Five episodes, a couple of minutes each, hosted by your creative director, this guy named Tyler Ruer. And so we watch these videos with my kids, my 7 and 5 year old, over breakfast in the morning sometimes. And so about a year ago, we're watching one and Kate, my five year old's like, oh man, I can't wait to meet Mr. Tyler one day. Tyler, those videos, y. And so I was like, all right. So I went on Instagram, I found Tyler. I sent him a direct message video. I was like, hey, dude, it would make my kids day. My kids weak if you sent them a little video message, like from you talking to them.

And.

And he was so thoughtful. He's like, oh my gosh, I'm so honored. Give me a week because I really want to do it. Right, right. And I loved it. He sent back this incredibly thoughtful video, like talking to Kate and Ellison, and it was awesome. It blew their freaking minds.

So that's kudos to you guys. All right. That makes me happy. I feel like a proud dad.

All right, we talked about the spring. Let's go higher level. For those who don't know what's.

So we are on a mission to bring clean and safe drinking water to every human being alive on planet Earth. We've been at this for 15 years and unfortunately, as we record this today, about a tenth of the world lives without clean water. That's a staggering number 771 water million people. Two United States of America's full of people living around the world without access to the most basic needs. So we work across 22 countries. We work with about 2,000 locals now, and we construct a whole wide range of water projects, solutions that start at $100 and go up to $1.8 million for huge gravity fed solar systems. And in 15 years, we just turned 15, you know, we've raised about $650 million and we've helped 15 million people get access to clean water. So about 1 50th of the work, 2% of the work that needs to.

Be done first, 2%'s the hardest. Right.

Very, very small dent. But, you know, we believe the best is yet to come and that we've really been encouraged by the spring, you know, this movement that has been growing. And last year was the first year that we ever raised $100 million in single year. And that's really based on individuals, a lot of people coming together, giving small gifts.

Well, like I said, I'm a member for life and would encourage anyone listening to be a member. I'm sure you're going to convince a lot more people by the end of this. So before we get to the founding story of Charity Water, I feel like we got to give the backstory on you personally, a story you've told a hundred million times. Tell us your personal story prior to Founding Water, Scott.

Yeah, so, you know, I guess we were talking earlier, my story in thirds. The first third was an only child growing up in a caregiver role, taking care of a mom who was an invalid. My mom was permanently disabled. When I was four years old, there was a terrible carbon monoxide gas leak in our home. She was kind of the canary in the coal mine, breathing in the gas and passed out unconscious on New Year's Day 1980, and was never the same again. So her immune system irreparably was damaged. It shut down and she became. Best way to describe it, she just became allergic to the world. So anything chemical from this point on would send her into a health spiral, whether it was car fumes or perfume, a whiff of perfume or soap used on somebody's hands. So she had to create this world of isolation for herself. Washing her clothes many times in baking soda, living in a bathroom covered in aluminum foil, sleeping, you know, on an army cot again that had been washed with very special soap and had no scent or fragrance, eating very special foods. So it was a weird childhood. And growing up, I was Raised in a family of faith, my parents were non denominational Christians. They wound up not suing the gas company for negligence because they didn't want to become bitter and they believed that God would make sense of this tragedy over time. And I was the good Christian kid. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't have sex, I didn't swear. I played piano in Sunday school and up in the worship band on Sundays.

So that was kind of back to entrepreneurs and music. P.S.

Yeah, now I was a little bit of an entrepreneur. I remember my first leaf blower that I borrowed some money to buy and then I would blow the neighbor's leaves and paid off the leaf blower and go door to door selling Christmas cards for $2.80 just to try to make a little bit of money. But if you'd asked me what I was going to do with my life, I would have been a doctor. I was going to go to Johns Hopkins and I was going to cure my mom and then other people like her. So that was kind of act one. Act two was very different. I, instead of becoming a doctor, grew my hair down to my shoulders, joined a band. The band broke up after I moved to New York City, but I became a nightclub promoter for Act 2 and did all the smoking and drinking and drugs and sex and swearing and gambling and became addicted to pornography and basically took a very dark turn working at 40 different high end nightclubs over the next 10 years in New York City. And, you know, I thought I was the man, Jordan. I was flying private on other people's planes. You know, I'm sitting in the fashion shows in Milan and in Paris and I'm dating girls on the COVID of magazines. You know, what a way to rebel in style against this, you know, repressive, conservative Christian upbringing.

Sure.

Which is what I would have told you, you know, during that second kind of act. And that led to a moment in time at 28 where inexplicably half my body went numb one day. And I remember my business partner's like, dude, no wonder, you know, you smoke 60 cigarettes a day, bro.

Like, nobody's surprised but you, Scott.

Like, you like, take Ambien at noon to come down off of the partying from the night before and go to bed. And then you wake up at 8pm and do it all over again. Like, no wonder you're having some health issues. But I think it was a really, it was a moment for me where I'd been living like I was immortal and I was faced with the fact that, like, well, what about a brain tumor? What if there was something really wrong with me? What if I had a heart attack, you know, one night after, you know, a few too many lines of cocaine and like, what would happen with my soul? I mean, I almost went back into the existential questions of like, is there still a heaven and a hell? Do I believe that? Like, if I do, I'm pretty sure where I'm going the way that I've been, you know, once saved, always saved. Didn't feel like it worked, right after 10 years of debauchery. So I wound up getting a whole series of brain scans and tests and the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me. And that really led this journey of self discovery and spiritual awakening to find Act 3, which was this moment where I sold everything that I owned and I committed to do one year of humanitarian service as a volunteer. So the idea was kind of a tithe of the 10 years I'd selfishly wasted. What if I gave one back to God and to others? Could I be useful? That was kind of the question. Could I find a new purpose? Could I start life over at 20 years old? Could I redeem the past? And I remember applying to kind of 10 famous charities. I remember reading the World Vision Story and Samaritan's Purse and Save the Children and the Red Cross and the Peace Corps and Doctors Without Borders. And I'm applying to be a volunteer for all these orgs. And of course none of them will have me because a nightclub promoter is not the resume.

People are the best lead in for that gig.

Yeah, these are serious humanitarian people doing, you know, doing good work around the world. They don't need some, you know, club rat degenerate. So every door was shut. And I was very fortunate that one organization said effectively, if I was willing to pay them $500 a month and go live in post war Liberia, West Africa, where a 14 year civil war had just ended, then I could volunteer. But they wanted to meet me first to make sure I wasn't actually crazier, that I was reformed and was headed in the right direction. So I remember interviewing them for the opportunity to pay $500 a month and go live in Liberia and convincing them that I was not going to throw any wild parties on their humanitarian mission and I was not going to lead anyone astray. Then my life kind of changed radically and I set foot in West Africa for the first time at 28, in a country with no running water, no sewage system, no electricity, and one doctor for every 50,000 people who lived in the country, we've got about a doctor for every 300 of us here. So, you know, one in 300, one in 50,000. And I was there. There's this group called Mercy Ships that some people might be familiar with. They brought volunteer doctors and surgeons and nurses from all around the world to a hospital ship, a huge 522 foot converted ocean liner that they had equipped as a hospital. And they'd sail this up and down the African coast. So I was going to be a volunteer on this ship, a volunteer photojournalist. I was going to be taking pictures that they would use for awareness and fundraising purposes. And then I would be writing stories of the transformative work these doctors were accomplishing there. So everything changed. I mean, I quit drinking and quit smoking and, you know, pledged to be celibate and, you know, at least until I got married and really kind of reformed my ways before I walked up the gangway and surrendered my passport, which then really started act three, which I've now been with for what, 17 and a half years. And that's, you know, been engaged in humanitarian service, you know, first through Mercy Ships for two years and then learning that water was really the greatest need I saw. And it was the reason why so many of these people we were treating were actually sick because half the country was drinking disgusting, diseased, contaminated, filthy water. And we were seeing the, you know, the negative outcome of that. So, you know, 15 years ago, I kind of said, okay, here's the thing I'm going to uniquely work on. I'm going to try to make sure everybody has health. And in some ways, as I was writing the book, you know, somebody pointed out, it's like, well, you kind of came back to doctor in Act 3 because, you know, up to 50% of the disease in these countries is caused by bad water. So you're actually practicing medicine at the most basic level by providing the essential health need for every human, which is clean and safe. Drinking water.

Yeah, you mentioned the book. You're referring to your phenomenal autobiography. I'm a huge fan of corporate biographies, and in a way, this is that it's your personal autobiography, but also the story of water. It's a book called Thirst. For those of you guys listening, you probably heard me talk about before. I've referenced it in some of my own books. And I remember there was some part of the story in which A.W. tozer's the Pursuit of God played a part in this story. Was that the book that God Used to really transform your heart. Like, was it a series of books?

Was it is. It is. So my parents, over the 10 years of rebellion, had prayed for me, and they had little old ladies, you know, in prayer communities all around the country, locked up in prayer closets, praying for their prodigal to come home. And my dad would send me books, you know, from time to time that I would just. I wouldn't throw in the garbage, but I certainly wouldn't read them. And for some reason at this moment, he had included Pursuit of God did it to me around Christmas time. And I headed to Punta del Este in Uruguay for New Year's, where we were all going to party. And I took the book with me. And what's so interesting, Jordan, is I've tried to read this book, you know, since, and I don't find it, like.

Not really into it.

I'm not really into it. I mean, it's dense. That's really funny. Maybe Instagram and Twitter has ruined my mind since then. I think I was reading the opposite intention of my life and learning a little more about the book. I think he wrote it on a train ride over 20 hours or something, and it was kind of a stream of consciousness. And you get a sense of this man pursuing holiness, pursuing righteousness, wanting to be close to God, wanting to know God. And I'd been doing the exact opposite for 10 years. I mean, I'd been flipping the finger to anything having to do with God or faith or spirituality or obedience or righteousness. And I think there was just something compelling of I'm an enneagram8. So the extremes are interesting to me. And even the idea of going to live in the poorest country in the world, to go from, you know, the back of, you know, limousines or other people's private planes to then, you know, this extreme environment of suffering was more interesting to me than maybe a pivot or a small course correction.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that book was instrumental. But I. I remember when I was writing the book, I read it again, I was like, boy, this is dense theology. This is not going to say this is.

It's not a page.

This is not like, you know, this is not Eugene Peterson.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you mentioned in Act 1 of your story, your mom, the challenges there, and just your parents praying that God would make sense of that trial. In retrospect, did he? Has he?

So mom never fully recovered. She got a little better towards the end of her life. You know, she was involved in a little bit of the water story. She got to volunteer at some of our early events and see come to some of the galas as we built them, you know, still had to very much protect herself and, you know, was far from normal, I think. I mean, I think it made my parents deeply resilient. They went deeper and deeper into their faith. So they certainly, you know, would credit a much more authentic relationship with God because of that trial. But she never got well, you know, and they prayed for healing for many years and she wound up dying of pancreatic cancer in a. In a very short time. Only a couple months from diagnosis to death. She died a few years ago. But you know, my dad, yeah, I think they would say this taught them maybe how to suffer well. And they really were people of the highest integrity. You know, my mom was a prayer warrior. She really, you know, walked with God.

You got to rely real heavily on Romans 8, 28 and 29 in this situation. Somehow, even this horrible situation, God's going to work it for the good of those who love him. Maybe not on the side of eternity. Right. A lot of times that doesn't happen on this side of eternity, but he promises that he will. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Easier said than done. All right, so you have this come to Jesus moment. I'm curious how you're thinking about your work and your career started to shift pre post conversion.

I mean, I think, Jordan, I had the advantage of just not knowing any better when it came to I didn't know anything about a charity. I didn't know anything about starting a charity.

Yeah, it's a gift.

I didn't know anything about institutional philanthropy. I wasn't a giver, I wasn't a volunteer. So I had this clean slate as a 30 year old nightclub promoter who had then spent two years as a photojournalist telling stories. And, you know, I had this problem I wanted to solve. And at the time, you know, it's worth pointing out, there were a billion people on the planet without access to clean water. So we've actually made a lot of progress as a sector, as a world. Over the last 15 years, even as population has increased, you know, we've severely reduced the amount of people without water. It was 1 in 6 at the time. Fifteen years ago, globally didn't have clean water. Now it's 1 in 10. So I had this clean slate and I just started talking with everyday people who worked at Chase bank or Sephora or the Gap or at a fashion magazine and realized that there was this huge cynicism and skepticism when it came to charities, people felt like there were black holes. Where does my money actually go? Does any of my money or my donations reach people in need? Does it all get swallowed up in overhead? And there was just a. I remember coming across a USA Today poll that found 42% of Americans said they don't trust charities. And a few years ago, NYU did a study, found 70% of people. 70% of people they polled believe charities wasted their money. 7 out of 10 people believe, like, the one thing charities are supposed to do, which is use money. Well, they don't do. So I think I realized that to solve a problem as big as the water crisis or make any sort of meaningful dent or contribution, I would need a new business model. I would need to kind of not follow the status quo. And there was something interesting about reaching out to these disenchanted, disenfranchised people, this demographic of people who weren't really giving, who said they weren't giving. And, you know, so maybe just solving a problem, like an entrepreneur saying, well, this is a need in the market. I think I can meet it with a new product or a new model, and let's go. So, you know, I was living on a closet floor at the time. I was completely broke because, number one, nightclub promoters don't save money. Well, we spend it very well, but we don't really save. And then, number two, I'd given everything I had to mercy ships and the people I'd met in West Africa. So I came back to New York City at 30, absolutely broke, you know, ramen noodles and bagels, living on a closet floor of a friend's place in Soho. Like a walk in closet floor, you know, amidst the suit jackets and shirts, you know, that would dangle over my head. And I just said, okay, I'm going to start this thing. I wasn't very creative when it came to naming it. I'm going to start a charity that helps people get water. Let's call it Charity Water.

Branding genius.

Yeah. And then, you know, I got this idea to what if we could offer 100% of all donations directly to fund these water projects that would help people get clean water. And in a. In a separate bank account, a different bank account with different set of numbers and a different auditing process, we would raise all of the staff salaries and overhead separately from a small group of donors. So that was kind of the big idea was could I take the biggest problem that I heard from people of why they weren't giving and just eradicate it, you know, make it Moot. How much of my money will go 100%. Yeah. And I was so extreme.

Small shift, like technically. Right, But a massive shift in what you guys have been able to do in terms of messaging, Right? It's a radical shift in the perspective of the customer, the donor, right?

Yeah, I think so. You know, and look, even day one, I was so extreme about it, I said, well, let's even pay back credit card fees. You know, let's have such high integrity around this 100% that if someone goes on our website and makes a hundred dollar donation with their American Express card, even though we only get 97 of that donation, we're going to pay back the $3 that Amex took and then we're going to send and track that $100. And then that was kind of. That led to, you know, the second big idea, which was could we use technology to prove to people where their donations wound up? And I remember meeting the founder of Google Earth. So this dates Charity Water. Google Earth and Google Maps were started at the same time as Charity Water. And I met the founder at a conference I'd gotten sponsored by Marissa Meyer to go to ted. And I met Google founder.

Wait, wait, stop, stop here. Marissa Meyer sponsored you to go to ted? How did that happen?

She somehow heard about our work and came into the office and she sponsored a couple water projects in the Central African Republic and then said, you know, you should go to TED and meet some people.

Fascinating.

Which actually led to another crazy story. I was, it's funny, a couple of weeks ago, I was in Monterey where they hosted the original ted. And I was walking by this bar where they would do the opening party. And I remember that at that ted, someone had said, hey, there's this guy called Chris Sacca and he's at this party and you should get him to care about Charity Water because if he likes you, he could really help you. So I remember walking up to Chris in this crowded bar, you know, it was really loud and I tap him on the back and I had this ipod touch on me with the white wired Apple headphones. And I said, hey, I just made a public service announcement, will you watch it? And like, poor Chris, you know, in this crowded bar at ted, like it's an underground bar, you know, he puts on these headphones and he watches our 62nd PSA. And the next thing I know, he's trying to get it played at Ted. He lands it on the homepage of YouTube. He was at Google at the time. It gets, I don't know Millions of views. And then kind of a friendship was born.

That's wild. And for those listening who don't know, Chris Ogg is a very big deal in the tech world. As a former entrepreneur and investor, that's a terrific story, by the way. Sorry, listeners, for going down this rabbit trouble. This is fascinating to me. You want to talk about great corporate autobiographies, Thirst is up there. You know what's another one of my favorites is the Google Earth and Google Maps, this book called Never Lost Again. Did you read this?

I haven't. I haven't. Never Lost Again. I love it.

Nobody's read it. Nobody read this book. It's off the charts great. Like, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's really great. All right, so I want to go back to something in your story because I was thinking about this as I was reading your book, Thirst. One of the things I love about your story is the gifts that God gave you that made you a really talented nightclub promoter. We're not lost. They're the exact same entrepreneurial gifts and hustle that have made you great at water. Right. I'm assuming you've made this connection before.

Yeah, I mean, promotion, storytelling.

Sure, exactly. And I was thinking about, I was reading the other day is John the Baptist is baptizing the tax collectors and the Roman soldiers, two of the most hated professions in the first century. And they come out of the water and they say, okay, John, what are we to do? And he doesn't say, go abandon your work as a tax collector or Roman soldier. Right. He says, hey, don't take more than what you're called to take. Don't oppress or basically stay in your lane. Use the gifts God's giving you, but radically change your relationship to your work. And I think you're a great case study to that end. So, Scott, obviously you're open about your faith personally, but the water brand makes little to no mention of the founder's faith, which makes total sense to me. I'm curious what positive benefits you've seen from this about you being transparent about your faith, but the brand very much being for anybody from every walk of life and faith background.

Yeah, well, I, you know, I joke that even if I wanted to start a Christian charity, I couldn't have because I didn't know any Christians 15 years ago. Go. You know, I came back to New York City and our first employees and donors and, you know, these were people I just kind of knew from partying or from, you know, I wasn't involved in a Church, I didn't have that language or that community. So I don't know, I mean, it was just, it was very simple to me. I would start a completely non religious organization or a secular organization and I would be okay just being animated by my personal faith to live that out by running an organization with integrity and excellence and transparency and effectiveness. People shouldn't need to do what I do on a Sunday to give at the organization or work at the organization or volunteer. You know, I guess it was enough for me to know that in the kingdom of God that I believe in, no one is walking for dirty water. No woman is holding a child dying in her arms because she poisoned that child with dirty water. So everybody should be invited to fulfill the mission of human flourishing, of clean and safe drinking water, of the most basic need for humans. Met Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons. I mean, we've now had support from one of my best friends and biggest donors who's given over $20 million now is a devout atheist. And we've had Muslim school kids during Ramadan send in $65,000 from the emirates. Yeah, this is synagogues. There was a synagogue early on and one of my favorite stories that sent in a check for a water project and said this is the first non Jewish organization in the history of our synagogue we have ever given to. But we found the mission compelling and we found the organization compelling. So I think that's just been kind of easy for me, you know, and, and totally my atheist friend, like doesn't care that I go to church or you know, thinks I pray to a God that doesn't exist and. Yeah, and you know, that I'm just wasting my time. But he's traveled with me now to 14 different countries and is very passionate about the work of charity, water, doing good in the world. If I ever kind of mixed an agenda of proselytizing or conversion with that, he'd be out. He'd be out in a heartbeat, as would a huge amount of our donor basis. Now, by the same token, Jordan, you know, I've been to Christian conferences and I've had a bunch of people say, well, we're not going to give to you because you're not a Christian organization.

Yeah.

So I'm completely fine with that. Well, it is. And I'm going to soapbox just for a second. But I did go to one conference once and someone said, you know, something to the effect of, you know, well, they're, they're all just going to like, you know, if they don't know Jesus. They're going to burn in hell anyway. You know, a version of that, you know? And I remember having a conversation with this guy who was really wonderful, and he's like, well, you know, you really should be a Christian charity. You need to be giving the gospel along with clean water. And I remember saying. And he's like, so I'm not going to give to you because I only give to Christian charities. I said, okay. I said, well, how did you make your money? And he was a home builder. And I said, well, did you only build homes for Christians? Like, surely you never sold a home to someone who wasn't a Christian, right? He's like, well, that's not true. I said, well, then you only employed Christian carpenters and plumbers and electricians and general contractors, right? He's like, no. I'm like, well, then why should I? You know, it's totally okay for your philanthropy to come, you know, from. I said, did you try to live out your Christian values as you built homes? Did you try to make these homes of high quality? Right? Did you try to treat your employees well, with dignity and with respect and pay them fairly and, you know, look after their families? Did you bring your Christian values into your work? Yes. So, yeah, that's what I'm trying to do as well. I don't need. Right. I don't feel like I need to have an additional agenda now. There's other people that are called to be missionaries, and that's just not what I was called to do. And I have no problem with that either, by the way. You never change these people's minds, and they wind up giving.

No, no, no, no. You need to change the mind of the church on this issue, because this is foundational. And I'm so glad you got up on this soapbox because it's one of my favorite soapboxes. It's such a limited view of the gospel, and I think it's rooted in this idea that Jesus came to save the souls of individual sinners. And, yes, that's true, but it's woefully incomplete. Jesus came to redeem every single part of fallen creation, right? The material world. And that includes having clean water. Look at the first miracle. It was all about water and turning water into wine. I think about William Wilberforce, right? When people make this argument, well, our work only matters if it leads people to faith in Christ. So you're telling me that the work William Wilberforce did in abolishing the slave trade only mattered to God? If those slaves came to faith in Christ. You got to be kidding me. Slavery has no place in the eternal kingdom of God. And thus working to abolish slave trade is good in and of itself, even if they don't come to faith in Christ. Working in the water crisis is good in and of itself, even if you never share the gospel with one of these people. Now, hopefully you have an opportunity to do that, but if you don't, blessed be the name of the Lord. Right, so, all right, you've gone here. I want to go a little deeper. You mentioned the kingdom. I always think it's interesting when people are working on really massive problems like this. You mentioned at the top of the conversation you've made a dent in this thing. 2%, right. But as a believer, you know that 100% of people with access to clean water is guaranteed not necessarily on the side of eternity, but one day on the new Earth, every single person's going to have access to clean water. You could take that to the bank. So I'm curious how you think you lead differently in light of that certain hope that a non believer running the same organization wouldn't have.

I don't know that there's a huge difference. I mean, I see unnecessary human suffering, and then I see resources that can meet those needs. And as long as I am alive, I am trying to take those resources and meet those needs.

Yeah, it's that simple.

Human suffering. I think it's that simple. People are suffering unnecessarily right now. We know how to solve it. There's not a single person alive right now out of the 771 million people who we cannot serve with clean water. We are not scratching our heads, Jordan, saying, oh, we just couldn't help them, couldn't help that village. Now it's expensive. Sometimes a lot of different solutions work. When my mom got pancreatic cancer, the doctors had no solution. No solution. There was just, you know, stage four too far gone. It was basically palliate and water's just not like that. So I just see this as a great opportunity to keep moving forward, build an organization that is transparent and efficient and effective and scalable and operates with excellence. And get to as many people as I can.

Yeah. And be at peace, knowing that the works can continue after gone. God doesn't need Scott Harrison specifically to do this work. Right. When you die, he's going to carry it on.

And look, I mean, the 2% is pretty depressing, but when I'm on the alternative side, I was at Madison Square Garden with my wife at a concert. And the Garden was packed and I did the math and it was, you know, we've helped over 750 sold out Madison Square Gardens full of people, the 750 Staples center, you know, that's two years of sold out shows just to contain the people that have clean water. Because of the water community all around the world, because of spring members like yourselves. So, you know, that's encouraging as well. I mean, this year we're getting over 5,800 people every single day, clean water for the first time. So today almost 6,000 new people get clean water. And then tomorrow and then the next day, and then that includes Saturdays and Sundays. So, you know, even as I rest on a Sunday, another 6,000 people get access to clean water. Because again, not of me or my individual contributions at this point, because of the community of generous, compassionate givers around the world that are showing up to meet these needs.

Yeah, we talked about excellence a few times. I believe wholeheartedly that if we believe our work matters for eternity, Christians ought to have the highest standards of excellence in our work. Clearly you've proven yourself to be, in my opinion, world class founder. What do world class founders and entrepreneurs do differently than average ones, good ones? What's the delta between good and great?

I think we have really high standards and good taste. You know, I mean, looking at that, often it's good design taste or often it is. I think there's so many different factors there. You know, if I think through the entrepreneurs that I admire, you know, they're ambitious, they're boundlessly ambitious. You know, if you look at Bezos, you know, he wasn't just going to sell books. He was never going to sell books. At the very beginning, he wanted to sell everything to everyone in the world. Yeah, he started with books, right. You know, you look at, you know, even just the ambition of musk, right. You know, and also the taste, you know, I mean, I don't know, the minute you set foot in a Tesla, you realize that this is just completely other, you know, it is an other sense of aesthetic, of design, you know, minimalism, of taste. And I just remember growing up, Jordan, I was exposed to, you know, Christian art or Christian films or Christian music. And I just thought it was so bad. There was a delta, there was a wide delta between, you know, what the so called secular people were producing. And that always frustrated me. You know, why did, you know, why were Christian movies lame? You know, why did they have the sappiest soundtracks? Why did, you know, so that always bothered me, and I think just excellence, you know, even when I was running the clubs, I mean, that just. That was something that I valued back then and then just tried to bring that into, you know, designing a charity. You know, the way that we would present ourselves. I mean, I would pixel push at 1 in the morning. I would rewrite copy for an email, you know, in those first years, because I cared about every single word, about every detail as we began to build and establish this brand, you know, now we have people who are far better than me at all these things.

Sure.

You know, in these roles. Well, thank God.

I think a big part of this, too. You and I have exchanged some emails about this before is just focus. Right. Like, you know, you talk about Bezos. It's great to have a vision for the everything store, but he knew really early on that he had to focus on a vertical and crush it. And for him, that was books, actually. Tell your story. In my book, Master of One, to illustrate this point, the story of you trying to decide which of these problems, the world's. Many, many problems of the developing world are you going to solve. And I remember as you talked about in Thirst, you had a bunch of different ideas. Malaria nets, health clinics, water, whatever. What's the story there? How did you come to realize you needed to pick a lane and focus on one of these things at a time?

Yeah. So, you know, 15 years ago, just to unpack that a little more. So the brand is Charity Colon Water. And the Colon was this, you know, leading idea that, you know, we'd quickly solve the water crisis and then move on to health care and, you know, shelter.

Yeah.

Food justice. Right there was. This was gonna. I was gonna kind of pull Richard Branson.

Right.

I was gonna be like, the virgin of charities. And, you know, we'd have airlines and soda and hotels and. Well, I think I first I realized, wow, raising money is extraordinarily difficult. Getting people to part with their money for, you know, a problem that they've never experienced. You know, again, 99.99% of our donors have never had to drink dirty water in their entire life. Getting people to do that is extraordinarily difficult. So that was, number one. Just getting to our first million people with clean water, you know, took a while. It was difficult. And then I think, number two, I was very fortunate that the more I learned about the actual water issue, the more I realized it touched almost every other thing that I cared about. A third of the world's schools don't have clean water. So rather than, you know, start charity education and go build a bunch of schools, I could take the thing that we are focused on and bring it to schools. Same thing with health. You know, up to 50% of the disease in many of these countries, up to half the hospital beds throughout the developing world are filled with people suffering because they didn't have access to water or sanitation or hygiene. So I could bring this into. Bring clean water into hospitals. You know, I learned about local economies and how every dollar invested in water and sanitation makes communities four to eight times richer. Every dollar turns into four to eight dollars of economic benefit so I could work on livelihoods, you know, through this. So I think that was just the, you know, that got me even more excited about focusing on one thing. And it's difficult because I've been to 70 countries now. I've been to Ethiopia 31 times. You see so many needs. You see so many needs that money could meet, that the resources could meet. You know, the school needs a roof, the school needs a library. The hospital needs new beds or some sort of machinery. And I think that's been difficult at times to say no to some of those things in order to say yes to deeper focus, expertise, and scale on the one thing which is clean water for everybody.

So this is so hard for people to do, especially entrepreneurial people who are blessed with vision and see opportunities like, hey, we can build a school here in Ethiopia. What have you learned about the keys to keeping yourself focused on the core and going deeper into what you guys are already doing?

Well, I think you have to tell a lot of people that you're focused. Yeah, every once in a while my wife will remind me or somebody else will remind me, hey, didn't we say that we're going to focus on this? Yeah, this is because we can get distracted. I had a business coach once, and he said, you know, I like to chase squirrels. I mean, there are just all these other ideas and entrepreneurs can get bored. We can get bored doing the same thing over and over again. So I think early on I said, let's make innovation a core value at water, and we'll keep the mission the same, and then we'll look for new ways to achieve the mission. So, you know, just for example, we were one of the first charities to make a virtual reality film like five years ago. And because we were so early to the VR space, you know, we raised millions and millions of dollars through this. We had a huge amount of awareness because, you know, we adopted this new technology that people were interested in and we used it to further our cause. We started taking in Bitcoin in 2014. So we've been involved in cryptocurrency now for seven years, taking in now 650 Bitcoin to further the mission. So I think we're always looking for innovative ways. How can. We're working on sensor technology now where our wells are connected to the cloud and they're self reporting their ongoing and sustainable functionality. And that came because we saw Nest, we saw up and the blossoming Internet of things and said, well, how could we take the Internet of things and adopt that to our mission? Well, we want to make sure when a well breaks, we know it and we can send a mechanic or a technician out. So that led to $10 million of R& D in sensor technology funded by Google and by others. So I think we're focused, but we're still able to remain open to opportunities and we're able to experiment and hopefully keep innovating.

Yeah, it's really good. And I love the very simple, very practical advice of, yeah, the way to focus is to tell other people what you're focused on because it breeds accountability. Right?

You don't want to be the guy.

That says, hey, I'm focused on this in my career, and then three months later, change your mind. I'm a huge Lin Manuel Miranda fan and I was watching this great interview he gave a Charlie Rose once. Lynn was talking about how talented all these kids were that he went to school. He went to, like, some like, magnet, artistic school, whatever. He's like, these kids are, like, way more talented than I was, like, objectively. And Charlie was like, well, then why am I sitting here talking to you and not those kids? And he's like, because they were dabbling in everything. They were doing musical theater, they were doing composition, they were doing whatever is like. At some point I just realized musical theater was the thing that was my lane. And I said this and went full steam ahead. That's the secret.

That's right.

Like, it's the hard thing, but it's why it's so rare and so, so unbelievably valuable. All right, Scott, three questions we wrap up every conversation with here on the podcast. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others? Obviously not the Pursuit of God by.

Tozer, not that one. I've got a couple. I give out Comer's ruthless elimination of her a lot. John Mark Comer, great author friend as well. I give out Sacred Fire by Ronald Rolheiser a lot kind of talks about first half of life, second half of life, and then anything by Dallas Willard. You know, that's probably the heady stuff that I, I try to tackle these days. I love Spirit of the Disciplines or Renovation of the Heart. I think he's just so unbelievably wise when it comes to spiritual formation and practices.

Those are good answers. Who would you most like to hear on this podcast? Doing work in the world that's not necessarily overtly evangelical, but doing God's work and thinking about how to do it really well.

Not an easy one to get, but Angela Ahrentz is pretty phenomenal.

That's a really good answer.

She was the CEO at Burberry for many years, was at Apple LED retail, and is a person of high integrity and also, you know, animated by her faith.

We're going to work to get Angela. That's a great answer. I've never heard that answer. I can't believe that. All right, Scott, so just a reminder who you're talking to, you're talking to an audience of believers across a wide array of vocations. What they share is, number one, a belief that their work matters for eternity, and number two, because of that, a commitment to do it masterfully. Well, what's one thing from our conversation today you want to highlight for that audience before we sign off?

I mean, I'm a big fan of excellence, you know, and trying to just whatever you do, do it at the very highest quality to care so much about your craft. Maybe just one example. I remember my wife was the creative director of WATER for nine years. And in the early days, people would apply to the organization and say, you know, I'll do anything to work at water. I mean, I will clean the toilets in the office. People would actually say this.

Yeah.

And I remember Vic would say, that's not what I want. I want to hear that you want to be the best graphic designer in the world. Yes. And that you are just happy that you might be able to apply the mastery of your graphic design skills here at water.

Right.

That you could use that for good. So, you know, I just remember that early on, you know, not really generalists or kind of dilettante saying, hey, I just love the mission, I'll do anything. But we're really passionate about people who say, this is what I uniquely can offer in the world to your Lynn Miranda point. And I'm going to pursue that and make sure that I do that, you know, in such a world class way with excellence that it inspires others.

My listeners know that before doing the work I do Today, I spent 10 years as a tech entrepreneur. Most recently ran a company, about 120 people. And when I was running that company, I got an email from this guy who was applying for a pretty senior level position in the company. And he said in the email, I commend this guy for being so honest. I think he's saying honestly what a lot of people won't say. He said, I won't be the best at any role, but I'll be good at a bunch of different roles within the company. I was like, yeah, hard pass. Like, I want the best director of sales possible. I want the best creative director possible because I believe God's put us on mission to do this work in the world, and thus we should care about doing it with excellence. Yeah.

To be fair, you know, when you start a charity or when you start a company, generalists, everybody's doing everything. I was doing QuickBooks early on. I had no business doing QuickBooks.

You have to for a while.

You have to for a while. I think, to your point, you know, I think there might be a point in people's careers where you don't have to find the one thing. You know, we're a little older now and a little more experienced. I think it's okay for people to explore a bunch of different professions or crafts early on, try to do them all the best that you can. And then I think true fulfillment really comes when you do find that thing and you say, this is what I can uniquely contribute to the world. And then you do start to focus in and you do less to do one or fewer things with blinding excellence.

Yeah. And I think that explore. We talk about this on the podcast a lot. That exploration period is critical. In fact, I think we ask people to commit to their quote, unquote, one thing way too early in life. You can't make a good choice at what you can be excellent at until you've tried a bunch of different things. Right. And found what's working, what's not working. That's a really good word to end on, Scott. So, hey, Scott, I just want to commend you and the team at Charity Water for the exceptional, I believe, redemptive work you do every day. Thank you for obeying Jesus, command to serve the poor, and making this world look more like the kingdom, and for reminding us that we're called to mastery. We're called to excellence, the pursuit of excellence in all things, for the glory of God and the good. Of others. Guys, if you want to learn more about Scott's story, again, can't recommend his book highly enough. How long has the book been out, Scott? Two, three years now?

A couple years, yeah. And there's been some recent talk about turning into a movie, so.

All right, let's do it. Take another few years, but it's called Thirst. And of course you can give to Charity Water right now@charity water.org Scott, thanks again for joining us.

Of course. And all the book proceeds go to the organization. I can never make a penny from it, so it's another way to just support Charity Water.

It's beautiful. Thanks. I hope you guys loved that episode. Seriously, go read Thirst. I think it's the only book I've ever cried in sitting in the San Francisco International Airport super late at night that that might be the source of the tears. I recall it very vividly reading an advanced copy crying there right in front of my airplane gate. It's a remarkable book as is Never Lost Again, the Story of Google Earth, Google Maps. If you're looking for a really fun read outside of your vocational lane, that's a great one. Hey guys, if you're enjoying the call to Mastery, make sure you check out my new podcast called the Word Before Work. It's a weekly five minute devotional podcast expounding upon scripture and what God's word has to say about the work that we all do in the world. You can find it really easily. Take out your favorite podcast app, search Jordan Rayner or the Word Before Work and you'll find it there. Guys, thank you for tuning in to to this week's episode of called Mastery. I'll see you next week.