Scott Harrison - Founder of Charity Water | From Nightclub Promoter to Billion Dollar Charity

I was the guy at 28 years old standing behind the one-way glass, really thinking I was fabulous because I had a Rolex watch and I drove a BMW and I had a grand piano in my New York City apartment. That was what life looked like on the outside, on the inside. I was just so deeply unhappy. What drives someone to walk away from a glamorous life to pursue a mission of compassion? For Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of Charity Water, it was a moment of reckoning. I was in South America, in Punta de Lesta, on this amazing opulent vacation. I just hated all that and I wanted a massive change. I get this idea that I'm going to start life over at 28. I'm going to sell everything I own and I'm going to go volunteer on a humanitarian mission in the poorest country in the world. I'm going all the way in. I went all the way in. After a decade promoting Manhattan's biggest parties, Scott's life took an unexpected turn. My mother walked across her bedroom and collapsed unconscious in the floor. That is really when I discovered why so many people were sick. Half of the people were drinking dirty water. 100% of the people listening right now have never experienced dirty water. Scott's mission has now provided millions and developing countries with access to safe drinking water. In this episode, Scott opens up about the moment that changed everything. How he transformed his skills and nightlife into a global movement for clean water. I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve in life. That would be to try to bring clean water to every human being on planet Earth before I die. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I'm also a big user of HubSpot products. I've supported the show for over three years now and for all entrepreneurs out there. I need you to go back to a time and place when building businesses as tough as it is can be sometimes a little bit fun. When you're marketing, it should be fun. But marketing is not so fun anymore because it's very time consuming, it's very difficult and it feels like there's just a lot of friction. Content was simpler to make, leads were easier to capture and we weren't all spread so thin. As marketers, as entrepreneurs, the bottom line is that marketing used to be fun. It's not so fun anymore. But with HubSpots newly launched to marketing and content hubs, I've been using it myself. It brings a little bit of fun and creativity back into marketing for your business. They're going to generate better content, they're going to generate more leads and next level results which really make marketing fun again. So with tools like Content Remix, you can turn existing assets into all new pieces with just one click lead scoring helps you shine a light on the leads that are most likely to purchase and analytic suites they built out will help you with reports, KPIs and just a gold mine of AI powered insights. It's quick to get your results, it's easy to use, it connects all your teams in your data so put the fun back into your marketing funnel with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free. Scott, I'm very excited to do this. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate you. So I want to ask a question about your origin story and I know that some people have heard it, some people may have not and I think it's important because it really shapes who you are as a person and you've gone through so many different seasons of your life. But think back, what would be out of all the different inflection points or very notable moments in your life that sort of set you on the path to where you're at today and we just spoke before we pressed record over a billion dollars which is congratulations for charity water that's fabulous but going way back obviously you didn't really understand where this was going to go in the beginning. So what was that inflection point sort of pushed you down the path that you're on today? I like to use the word seasons. I think there were three main seasons of my life and the first one really began when I was four years old and it was New Year's Day 1980 and my mother walked across her bedroom and collapsed unconscious on the floor and this led to a series of blood tests, was she okay? Why did she pass out? It led to the discovery of massive amounts of carbon monoxide in her blood stream and it led to the discovery of a gas leak in the basement of our home that we had just purchased and she was kind of the canary in the coal mine so to speak which saved us all from dying and my dad and I wound up bouncing back after the heater was ripped out and replaced but she never did so from that moment on she became permanently disabled she became an invad and my I guess what would have been a pretty idyllic childhood or was on the path to that you know was really interrupted where I became a caregiver at a very young age and mom what happened to her was her immune system irreparably shut down and was unable to process anything chemical at that point so you name it and it made her sick whether it was car fumes or soap or perfume or fabrics often or the ink from a book the print would make her sick so she very quickly moved into an isolated life living in special rooms that had been covered with aluminum foil connected to oxygen tanks wearing masks and my mom just kind of disappeared and I became really in charge of helping her survive helping her with the cooking helping with the cleaning helping to run the house later as I got older helping to accompany her to doctors visits and then eventually you take her to some of them so the big family that my parents hoped to have never materialized my mom miscarried what would have been my sister and I was an only child and I grew up in a really conservative Christian home with two parents who loved each other but a very very sick mom and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up so I was going to cure my mom and I was going to cure other sick people that I'd met with with her similar condition which just you know confounded the medical science the day I didn't spoke I didn't drink I didn't cuss I didn't sleep around I played by the rules of the church and was it was a really really good kid that was season one then there was an inflection point the began season two where instead of becoming a doctor I decided actually I was going to move to New York City and do all of those things that I said I was not doing before I did want to smoke and I did want to drink and I did want to sleep around and I did want to swear and I did want to kind of experience life outside the rules outside of the somber tone that was really you know a part of our house and I remember going to a club in New York City called it was it was it was actually not tunnel um little gosh club USA it was called and I remember going down the slide from the balcony and kind of emerging on the dance floor surrounded by a thousand people at 18 years old and I just said this is what I want this is what I want I want to be surrounded by a thousand people who are partying and drinking and have execs and doing drugs this is my childhood I'm going to experience my childhood and that led to a 10 year season where I actually became a nightclub promoter so I liked the club so much I wanted to actually run the going all the way in I went all the way in and I learned man if you want to rebel in style I mean there's probably no better job in New York City than to fill up night clubs full of beautiful rich famous people and charge them $30 a cocktail or a thousand dollars a bottle of shame paying to sit in the right chair at the right table so over the next 10 years really to the horror of my parents their uh virginal pure you know want to be doctor kid you know it's climbing up New York City's nightlife ladder spring champagne out of DJ booths and you know doing coke and ecstasy and MDMA and smoking two packs of marble or reds a day and gambling and going to strip clubs and you know addicted to porn and you know all the things that kind of go with what you're doing out I don't leave anything out I left heroin out that's it all good good and you know I became pretty good at it so I climbed up to the top of that food chain and I was the guy at 28 years old standing behind the one way glass deciding who got into the club and who got to sit where and booking DJs from Paris or Milan and really thinking I was fabulous because I had a Rolex watch and I drove a BMW and I had a grand piano in my New York City apartment and my girlfriend was on the cover of fashion magazines and I had arrived and that was what life looked like on the outside on the inside I was one of the most unhappy the soulless, sick of fantic damaged people that I knew and I was just so deeply unhappy with the shape of my life and it took me 10 years unfortunately to reach that point but I realized hey I'd become you slowly and then suddenly the worst person that I knew and if I died at 28 years old the only thing I could imagine someone would write on my tombstone is you know here lies a club brat they got a million people wasted I'd contributed absolutely nothing positive to society and you know I had this kind of I guess you know an another cathartic moment which started season three of my life where I was in South America and pointed to Leicester on this amazing opulent vacation and I just hated all of it and I wanted a massive change and I realized that a pivot was not in order it was a 180 degree change that was needed you know go basically try and think of the opposite say the opposite do the 180 degree opposite of everything I've been doing for 10 years and see where that would take me and in some ways you know I wanted to come back home you know I missed the foundation of morality and spirituality and and purity in a way that my parents would try to instill in me so I I get this idea that I'm going to start life over at 28 I'm going to sell everything I own and I'm going to go volunteer on a humanitarian mission in the poorest country in the world and see where that might take my life and that really started chapter three which we are now still in and hopefully hopefully we'll hopefully I will end in in this chapter over this season why do you think such you went through such a dramatic one eighties in in your life I'm assuming your your mom's condition had something to do with it because I think that the if I think and I try and place myself as a kid in that situation turning into the role of a caregiver it's almost like too much responsibility you just it was good for a moment you felt duty to your family you raised up a good kid you know the religious ideals and and what what good is you know I think no drinking no drugs no party no nothing and then added responsibility it's almost like you were like in this pressure cooker situation then you just went the opposite direction I think that's a great way of describing it I mean it was just rebellion you know I I want to reject the rules I want to reject not fun you know a life of service felt not fun it felt like it was about others and it's it's me time I want I want to have a childhood I want to go have fun my friends were out playing with with their parents and I was doing unfun stuff I thought I mean I was I was some of the some of the stuff that you had to do for your mom there's stories of you having to so correct me if I'm wrong but you had to bake the books to remove the smell or I guess the the the scent of the egg the chemical and then you had to wrap them in plastic and then cheat or or there's a hole there was a there were rituals yeah for mom yeah holy bunch of rituals the ink would have to outgas and we would do that in the oven or we would lay it out in the backyard in the sun and then I would bring the book up to her tin foil covered bathroom that had been the walls had been washed with baking soda her cot had been washed 20 times with baking soda she would open up the door with a mask on I would hand her the book she would have gloves on and she would put the book inside a cellophane bag and that was her reading ritual so it was there's a weird stuff I mean it was really bizarre but you keep seeking purpose like throughout your life you keep seeking purpose it even in that second season so I've heard you speak about how you were always trying things that would be considered addictive so like drugs alcohol gambling women you would always like you try these things for a period of time but then you'd get bored and you shut off and you go into the next thing and it was always about seeking purpose and I'm curious how after seeking purpose in all these you know traditional vices how none of it paid off and none of it really gave you what you needed what prompted you to do that 180 where you realized okay outside if somebody's from the outside looking in life looks great life looks like I'm fun I'm kingshit I have a hot girl I mean I have influence whatever but what was that what was that point that you realize that all these vices that you're trying to find purpose and we're not really doing it yeah well in in many ways it was a spiritual awakening so I hit that kind of moment in South America where I just remember it was almost like the game of musical chairs and for the first time the music stopped and I had nowhere to sit down it was a jarring existential moment where I think if I put it in a sentence I realized there will never be enough someone will always have more and I was actually surrounded with people who had more who had planes who had you know yachts and they seemed unhappy too so this endless pursuit of more would never bring the happiness and so what is the opposite of that you know the self-serving so I look to God and I remember reading the Bible again and and you know rediscovering that faith as a 28 year old without it being shoved down my throat without being told what I must believe I remember just thinking like well Jesus is kind of badass he's he's not religious in fact he was raging against so much of the religious establishment of the day and you know he was really all about service you know pouring your life out for others so that others can flourish so that others can benefit I remember coming across this this book in this this verse in the book of James where it said you know if you care about true religion true religion is this look after widows and orphans and just keep yourself from being polluted I'm like I'm frigging over too I mean I have done nothing to look after anyone in the widow and orphan category and not only am I polluted I actually pollute others for a living and the more people I pollute in my clubs the more money I make so it was a lot of these things happening you know kind of reaching the end of rope reeling this wouldn't it realizing this would not make me happy coming back to this lost faith in spirituality morality and then just needing an idea which was actually you know when back to this concept of the tithe when my parents were growing up they would always give 10% of whatever they made to the church I was like well what if I tithe time I just blew 10 years what if I gave one of the 10 years in service and just saw where that would take me and you know interestingly it was almost impossible to volunteer so I remember applying to the first 10 humanitarian organizations from the Red Cross to World Vision to save the children and you know nobody wanted a nightclub promoter these are serious you know doctors without borders it turns out once doctors to join their mission you know not club rats so it became incredibly frustrating because I now had the desire to try something different to serve and nobody would take me and then I was very fortunate that you know I I call it the 11th organization you know wrote me back and said hey if you're willing to pay us $500 a month and if you're willing to go live in the poorest country in the world you can join our mission and I just remember thinking I mean that is really the opposite of my life you know going from clubs in crystal champagne to a post-war country in West Africa and actually having to pay money to be of service what was the organization and is that how like outside of all the ones you apply to is that how they operate they actually get you to pay they do they do your stuff that I'm great exactly it's a brilliant model they're called mercy ships they sell a well now a couple of hospital ships up and down the coast of Africa very simple ideas let's recruit the best doctors and surgeons from around the world let's invite them you know on effectively a cruise liner that had been converted into the state of the art floating hospital and then let's sail up and down the coast of Africa pull into port and offer free life-changing surgeries to people who can never afford them and who don't even have the medical facilities in their country so what I joined as was the volunteer photojournalist for the was going to say what what what was a I like the most for motor going to do on these boats and it's kind of funny because I was not technically a photojournalist but I was a pretty good writer and I was a pretty good photographer so I put up a blog with some of the stuff I'd written and I put up some of my hobby photographs you know in fashion and you know beautiful buildings in Prague in Paris and and I don't even think I realized it at the time but I was in so many ways uniquely qualified for this job because I brought with me a guest list of 15,000 people who I had emails of because I got them drunk over the last 10 years so here I land as kind of the storyteller through pictures and and words in West Africa for this medical ship and I get to work you know bombarding the 15,000 people that a few weeks earlier I had been inviting to come get drunk and I start sharing photos of cleft lip surgeries and cleft palettes and tumors being removed and cataracts being removed and people getting their sight for the first time and I was so in awe of the work of these compassionate doctors who like me had flown into West Africa to pay which which all that money like you said helped the organization run and I'm just blitzing my list and you know of course there were some unsubscribes at first you know people didn't sign up for you know facial tumors in Africa being removed but after that first wave the list actually began to grow as people would forward these stories to their friends and then they began to send money and I I started to realize maybe the same skills that I had developed you know filling up 40 different nightclubs over 10 years you know growing the party these skills could be used in a compassionate redemptive way to actually save people's lives and I wound up raising a lot of money for mercy ships that first year raising a lot of awareness and then when that year ended I just didn't know what was next so I just went back to Liberia for a second year and that is really when I discovered why so many people were sick and just to give you an example you know our third day on this mission I remember waking up in five in the morning putting them on hospital scrubs and jumping in this convoy of land robbers with doctors and surgeons and nurses and I had two Nikon D1X cameras around my neck and I learned that we're going to the patient screening and this is where we receive all of the people who have heard about the coming of our doctors and it's kind of like a cattle call it's like a big casting it's an audition for surgery and I knew we had 1500 available surgery slots to fill we could hand out 1500 surgery cards and I remember just thinking you know is it possible that there's 1500 people who need facial surgery or cleft lips or eye surgery and it turns out the government had given us the soccer stadium the football stadium in the center of the city to triage these patients and as we approached the stadium I'll never forget there were more than 5,000 people standing in the parking lot waiting for our doctors to arrive open the doors and begin screening and that hit me really hard you know realizing oh my gosh we're gonna send 3500 sick people home 3500 people with deformities because we just don't have enough doctors we don't have enough time here in this country and you know it was a really really hard thing I learned later that many of these people had walked from more than a month some of them had come from neighboring countries with their children walking for a month just in the hope of getting their child to see a surgeon and we didn't have enough of them so the first year was a lot of both sadness of around the people we couldn't help but then also learning the skill of focusing on the hope and focusing on the people who we could help and telling their stories and hoping that by telling their stories more people would want to contribute more people would want to send money for surgeries we could expand the capacity of the work and hopefully one day reach all 5,000 people the second year was going into the villages and seeing how people were living in one of the poorest countries in the world and I learned something very very simple half of the people were drinking dirty water half of the people in the country were drinking from open swamps and ponds and muddy rivers and I learned that half of the disease in the country according to the World Health Organization was waterborne and in the second year you know so now I'm 29 years old I'm back in Liberia I just kind of feel like I have found the thing that I want to work on you know why not jump to the root cause of so much of this sickness and for me that was dirty water I finished that tour and I came back to New York City at 30 years old completely broke I found myself actually 30,000 dollars in debt because my club partner had not dissolved the business like he said he was going to do nority paid taxes so at a big tax bill but I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve in life and that would be to try to bring clean water to every human being one plated earth before I died a big shout out to HubSpot and the HubSpot podcast network for sponsoring success story if you enjoy success story you're going to enjoy a ton of podcasts brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network including hustle and flowchart hosted by Joey Fear the hustle and flowchart podcast with Joey is all about how to build a business so it gives you the freedom and fuel for your life you're going to join Joey as you discuss his systems mindset tweaks reframes and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun this isn't for entrepreneurs looking to build a billion dollar business it's for somebody who wants to build a lifestyle somebody who is looking to build systems that work listen to hustle and flowchart wherever you get your podcasts when you go through this I guess metamorphosis as a person I believe a couple things I just listening to your story these are things that I believe to be true I believe that firstly even if people do not believe in God and this is not a religious podcast my name because people do not believe in God they find God in other things and other vices so I think that that's a big issue with society but then the on the on the and I'm glad that you sort of went through that process and and you tried all these different versions of quote unquote God and then you found sort of what I do believe that most people aspire to be at some point which is serving other people I think that I'm very fortunate kind of like in your position I have conversations with a lot of people that are very wealthy and successful and and I'm like like like like nine figures hundred million dollar plus exits five hundred million dollar I've spoken to billionaires and there's really no money makes life easier but it doesn't help you find fulfillment and I think it doesn't provide meaning or purpose for sure no it doesn't and you're very fortunate because you didn't have to spend your whole life going through this rat race of trying to make more money it's almost like you like drank from the fire hose of vices and then you realize that none of it means anything and then that's what allowed you to see what actual film in this which is I think serving humanity and serving people yeah I mean not to you know go back to the the biblical parable but I you know I remember that story growing up of like oh the prodigal son who had everything and his dad loved him and he's like ah screw you dad you know I hope you're dead give me my money now and then he freaking just lives large he parties at its girls and it's you know that whatever the version back then of was fast cars and and like at the end of that story he winds up somehow completely broke and in a pig pen he's like this sucks I want to go home like home was way better but you know he had to go through that process I think to appreciate his father his home and and I think you know in that you know what's great about that story is there's grace and like guess kind of walk back in the door as if nothing ever happened and I think you know if that life would play out really really well having seen the proverbial pig pen and I think I got there I know what the darkness looks like I know I've met lots and lots of really unhappy rich people I've seen a lot of broken marriages and you know it might look you know when you're 65 and you sell your company and then you start dating somebody younger than your daughter that might be fun for a few minutes to have a 21 year old girl but I've seen that that does not bring you know human flourishing it doesn't it doesn't typically I agree with you it doesn't typically and I've seen I've seen a lot of unhappy people with a lot of money that have divorced had broken homes again day day people that are younger than their daughter and then they're trying to find purpose and they're trying to find fulfillment and trying to find meaning and listen we've also seen we you know just to stay on this topic because we've seen so many times someone works so hard and build a company and build real value and build some of this world class and then have that exit and then go play right and then now everything is possible and I can't tell you how many people two or three years later I talked to in their board they want to start something else they you can't just play you know you can't find purpose in spending money and traveling and buying boats and cars and taking you know the vacations you could never have afforded to take and you dreamed about you you're sitting there and saying Bart's in a two thousand euro suite saying if I forget do it with like what am I contributing what am I building what value am I adding so you know I've tried to invite a lot of people to just experience generosity and giving and you know there is a lot of meaning to be found through through giving and asking yourself the question you know is it my time is it my talent and mentorship is it my money is it all three and a lot of people just never exercise that muscle before what did you discover about yourself during those two years well I loved it I mean I can't tell you I mean I think the best year of my life was that first year on the mercy ship I will say I quit I mean I quit everything I said I'm never gonna smoke again I'm never gonna touch drugs again I'm never gonna gamble again never setting foot in the strip club I'm never gonna look at a pornographic image again as long as I live I quit drinking for a long time now I drink a little bit but you know I I really wanted to walk away from that life of vice and there was something so symbolic of walking up the gangway of a 522 foot hospital ship and sailing away to a new continent and a new life like this really this idea of leave the vice on land and put an ocean between that and you know I've been really fortunate to to have not gone back I think the other thing that that helped immediately was my community instantly changed I don't think I could have quit smoking and hung out in the clubs I don't think I could have quit drugs and all that other stuff and still been in my old environment but now I'm with a bunch of doctors like it's not really cool to smoke in a hospital you know not not not banging ecstasy you know on a hospital ship you know when everybody goes to bed at nine o'clock and wakes up at five you know to start prepping the OR so I loved it man I loved this new environment I loved the the wholesomeness of it the intention of people to serve you know how can we help how can we be useful how can we take what we have been given and share it with others it was magical I mean it it was in such stark contrast to my life and the environment that I was creating the environment I was living in you know just weeks before when you sort of went on this two-year journey you mentioned one point which is incredibly sad about those 5,000 people waiting for 1500 surgery slots and I was just watching some of your content ahead of time and if I mean if you look outside the US or outside of western countries it's some ridiculous stat I think you listed it in your book in your book thirst about one in 50,000 people have access to doctors or medical treatment but compared to I don't know what the number is one in 280 or something yeah so it's just it's insane when you look outside how silly the things that you think are important are really not important at all when you look at the rest of the world and something as simple as providing clean water it seems like there are so many organizations that are already tried to achieve these goals but when you know you're telling me this story about what you're seeing boots on the ground it seems like in certain parts of the world nothing's improving at all even though we feel like there's a lot of charity organizations and whatnot and a lot of people trying to solve these problems so there's this massive disconnect between our reality in the US and I'm Canadian but the same difference and the rest of the world and I'm just more curious about why is there this massive disconnect because everybody if you ask anybody who's made money I think a lot of people give to nonprofits I think a lot of people donate I think a lot of people want to support organizations but I don't think that many people realize that one in 50,000 people don't have access or have access to a doctor overseas in some more impoverished parts of the world or there was no drinking water I mean what what you're doing it seems to be a little bit bleeding edge and novel and disruptive in the nonprofit world so there seems to be a massive disconnect why do you think that is there's a lot there um let me let me maybe just start with we are making progress you know let me just talk about water when I started charity water 18 years ago 1.1 billion people were drinking dirty water every day on a six billion population so it was one and six people alive drinking toxic poisonous water globally now we're down to 703 million so a lot of progress on a you know seven billion plus close to eight billion population so we've gone from one and six to one and ten that's significant progress with 400 million people or so now most of that progress was made in cities and towns and now 82% of the people left on earth without clean water live in remote rural areas so now it gets a little harder right it's kind of last mile stuff I think well let me say two things I think first of all oh my gosh I mean I can and maybe we will I mean I can tell so many stories about water and what I've learned in 18 years I've been to Africa 55 times now I've been to 72 countries around the world the thing is that you know I'm gonna I'm gonna round up to 100% of the people listening right now have never experienced dirty water you know let's you let's you let's use your doctor let's round up to 100% of the people here listening have never lived in a place where there's no doctor you know water comes out of our taps you know it comes out of our refrigerators we and we give it to our pets we put it in golf course I mean we just we were born into a world of water and every once in a while you know we have to turn your sprinklers off because there's a drought right but we have never experienced what it's like for that 10% of the world for the 700 million people and you know if you happen to be living there if you happen to be born there you're walking seven hours a day for dirty water and you're hauling 40 pounds on your back you're losing your child to diarrhea your child is is dying of dehydration in your arms because you have poisoned them from a swamp which is the only source of water you've ever known because it's in the center of your village and you know it requires some storytelling to bring people into these issues and then connect with them and then cause them in some way to reject the apathy that is so easy to accept with any paralyzing global issue and get them to raise their hand and say huh I could actually do something about that you mean to tell me that for 40 dollars I can get one person clean water or for 10,000 dollars I can pay to drill a well in a village of 250 people so it requires it's a little bit of a leap now if I'm talking I remember doing a big stage talk once ink magazines ink 5,000 there were 5,000 people in the room and I had to follow the sea of live strong at the time and I remember sitting there and you know Doug comes out and he says all right raise your hand if you've had cancer yeah a bunch of hands go up okay raise your hand if you've had a family member with cancer you know we're probably at 65% of the audience okay what about a friend or a coworker he's got 100% of the audience with the hands up and then he starts his talk you know I get out there and say okay raise your hand if you have if you're a woman and you were raped on the way to a waterhole okay raise your hand if your child died of Shisto Somiasis or parasites from the water right I'm gonna get nobody so I think that's that that you know American philanthropy right people think Americans are generous and and there's a lot of money that's given only 4% of all the money helps people outside the country 96% of all American giving stays here in continental US and that's because we experience issues like cancer and cancer research and homelessness and you know give to our alma mater because we got a great education and that made a lot of things possible now kind of moving on to the other there is a skepticism and as cynicism as well when it comes to giving to charities and I think that's why we've been so successful is because when I started charity water I had just come off the ship after two years I'm in New York City I don't freaking know anything about how to start a charity or an institutional you know agency humanitarian aid agency I'm talking to friends that go to clubs and they work at Sephora and Chase Bank and MTV VH1 and my everyday friends are like man I don't freaking give to charities I don't know where that money's going none of that money I give is actually going to go reach people yeah it's going to go into overhead it's going to go into a black hole so I remember going to I guess his barn's a noble or borders or whatever the time and and buying the yellow nonprofit for dummies book you know and learning like how do I actually do this I want to give everybody in the world clean water but but how do I do this and I just had the advantage of not knowing any better talking to friends realizing 42% of Americans pulled by USA today said they don't trust charities 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money their donations and I just thought well what if I like try to build the perfect charity that speaks to the objector what would that perfect charity look like it would be hyper transparent okay I'm going to build the most transparent charity in the history of the world it would follow the money okay great I'm going to build technology that tracks donations down to the final source um 100% of people's money would go straight to the projects okay I'm not sure exactly what that's going to look like but I'm going to open up two separate bank accounts and I'll raise all that nasty overhead in a separately audited bank account so that 100% of the public's money can go directly to help people get clean water and build projects so that people can't use that excuse here how does how much of my money goes the answer would always be 100% so you know this this very kind of unique structure began to form with a very clear mission so I'd be able to tell anybody in an elevator hey what are you doing I'm trying to bring clean water to every human being alive on earth and we have a really interesting structure and a way to do that you know do you have a dollar to give great 100% we'll go help somebody get clean water do you have a hundred million dollars to give great that's going to help a whole lot of people we know what to do with a hundred million dollars and all of that can go to the field so you know I put those kind of concepts to get us I'll say maybe one more thing is I looked at the charitable sector I thought the brands sucked and you know in nightclubs like the club needed a great brand to attract people you know you want to go sell a thirty dollar you know vodka red bull that costs you 30 cents you know you need a brand to be able to mark that up and as I looked at charities I saw a lot of bad websites I shot a lot of saw a lot of shame and guilt marketing you know you're probably old enough to remember the Sally Strothers commercials and you know the and the the slow motion kids in Africa flies landing on their face the 800 number and I was just looking around saying where's the apple of charities where's the Nike you know where's the creative imaginative inspiring organization which is it is is you know inviting people to become the most compassionate generous versions themselves who's building a movement of health and dignity and hope and human flourishing and I didn't see it so I said I'm going to try and build that. Nick Kristoff had written in the New York Times there's a great line he says you know toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than all the world's life-saving causes so why is it that co-gate is better at marketing than save the children or you know any noble cause that is trying to end extreme poverty so put all that together and then day one of charity water was a party in a nightclub because I just didn't have any better ideas and I didn't even realize the redemptive turn back then or just like I think I can get a club donated I know I can get open bar donated and I'm an email everyone I know and I'm turning 31 and everybody likes going to club promoters birthdays because everybody comes and that night 700 people came and they put $20 in this big box that I had put at the front door I said to get in the club you got to give a $20 donation and at the end of the night we collected $15,000 we took a hundred percent of it to a refugee camp in northern Uganda and we built our very first well and then we sent a team and they took pictures and they took video and they took satellite coordinates and then we sent the Google Earth satellite images and the photos in the video back to the 700 people who gave $20 and we said you came you gave you were generous here's exactly where your money went and here are the people you helped now let's keep doing this and we really tried to put those principles the 100 percent model proof building a beautiful imaginative brand into the DNA of the organization and that one well has now turned into 171,000 and that you have $15,000 has turned into a billion dollars now as millions of everyday people around the world encounter the story feel like it's not paralyzing and that they can do something they can use their resources to impact people's lives in the most tangible way in the most you know a political a religious way I mean Republicans and Democrats can actually agree on clean water for humans an atheist and a Jew and a Mormon and a Muslim and a Christian can all come together and say you know in all of our religions in in our non-religion people need water they need water to live a good life and I think you know because of the simplicity of that storytelling of that in arguable common good we have been able to build a very very big tent of consensus of millions of people around the world I've got kids out there that'll do six dollar and fourteen cent lemonade stands and send in their change and we've had families commit $50 million to help a million people get clean water so all across the spectrum and at the end of the day you know it's it's water it's water for people one of the things that I love about your story is you didn't come from nonprofit and you didn't say that this is the way that we have to do things I think that's probably that's probably what made you so unique and set you set you apart but all I mean almost all entrepreneurs you know see some sort of problem or some sort of gap and say I think I can help solve that problem ours just happened to be in the giving space and wanting to reach out to people you know in a way that 70% that doesn't trust charities or the 42% they're missing out I mean people are missing out by not engaging with great causes by you know you you you're missing out by not living vicariously through your money as it goes out and and impacts human lives so we wanted to just build a vehicle where people could experience the joy of giving Simon Sinek has been a long time friend of mine in the orgs and you know he said once in an elevator is like the more people give the more they give you know it's almost like you want to get people addicted to generosity I was addicted to selfishness you know I was hit the more I get the more I want to get and that just led to a really dark place when you look at what you've done right with charity water what do you think I mean there's a lot of components in the how you've built this into a very successful organization but compare what you've done outside of the 100% and compare what you've done with the brand with the the people you engage with the way that you market compare that to traditional nonprofit and if I think of nonprofit even growing up those images of children with like flies around them or whatnot seem to be the go-to marketing strategy for a nonprofit but now if I'm thinking about I don't remember the last time I don't remember the last time I've seen an advertisement or a commercial or marketing efforts on behalf of a nonprofit it seems like all the nonprofit marketing efforts are like fancy dinners or lunches or charity balls or galas but it still hasn't like I would say I'm not I'm not somebody who I'm not somebody who doesn't trust all nonprofits but I also believe that some nonprofits have big corporate issues and red tape and don't allocate proceeds properly I've always I've always felt that to a degree but it's not because it's not because they're a nonprofit it's because I feel like they're not attracting the talent to build it into an organization that is operationally efficient and it's not an organization that if I was an investor I'd want to put money into because I feel like it's just this bloated grotesque thing that that doesn't seem to want to modernize so what have you done outside of the 100% donation which is that's incredible what else have you done that is from like a transparency or marketing standpoint that that more nonprofit should look to the charity water as a role model for yeah I want to be a little careful here our 100% model was right for us I'm actually not a believer in tiny overheads you know that there's a a guy out there called Dan Palata who's given a very famous TED talk about yeah I think it's called the way we see charities dead wrong it's it's worth checking out for sure you you actually can have and you alluded to this a little bit in the question but you can have a nonprofit that hires such they have no money to pay their staff they hire really poor people they might look efficient and then all their programs suck so if they're spending five cents on the dollar you know on their team and 95 cents on the programs because the team is so anemically funded or just poor you know they are really wasting the 95 cents so I'm actually not a huge I don't I don't think people need to adopt the 100% model it was right for us you know 17 years ago or 18 years ago it continues to be right for us what I do think charities need to do is be more transparent and I think people just want to know where their money's going I mean this sounds so simple but it's really hard to know where your money is going when you give to so many nonprofits and you know if I told listeners right now the biggest needed charity water was an Epson copy machine for some reason and we needed a $650 copy machine and ours broke and somehow we're gonna use those copies to help save like people would give $650 they would meet a need you would know where your money's going okay I'm going to buy a copy machine that somehow is going to move the mission forward our unique double bank account model because I have to fund all of the overhead and the staff salaries separately has has helped us because I went to entrepreneurs and business leaders for that money and I said to them look you know an organization is only as good as the world class talent it's able to recruit and then retain we need to pay people well we're gonna need great benefits I want to be able to compete with you know Google I can't compete with Google on comp but I want to get a little closer than the average nonprofit and and then the brand as well you know and the purpose I've ever done pink gave a famous talk many years ago about drive and he said you know everybody wants three things they want autonomy they want mastery and they want purpose so as we think of you know building the organization we've tried to build a world class effective transparent organization innovation I know everybody talks about innovation but you know I could probably you know talk for 30 minutes about things we have tried to do that that other people have said are really innovative and some of that is just associating outside the nonprofit norms well giving example we made the first virtual reality film in our space and that was inspired by me going to some demo of Marriott and Marriott put on a headset on my face and this is eight years ago or so and they took me to a penthouse in Dubai and I'm like well wait a minute if Marriott can put me high up in this sky and Dubai I can take you to Ethiopia to the drilling of a well and you know we very quickly kind of associated got a GoPro's donated built a VR rig sent on a team to Ethiopia made this beautiful eight minute film where a 13 year old girl named Salam gets clean water for the first time in her life and people would put on the headset and you see the disgusting water she's drinking and then you watch these drilling rigs come in and you watch these locals jump out and start putting pipes into the ground and you see clean water shooting out in the ground in the middle of a village and people are dancing and you know clapping and her father picks her up and he's spinning her around and tears are streaming and then on the last day kind of eight minutes in you see her drink clean water for the first time in her life and because we were so early in that space you know we showed that film to tens of thousands of people and it was the first experience they ever even had in VR it wasn't a gaming experience it wasn't a Marriott experience it was a charity water experience now I remember one guy I had given $40,000 and he walked into my office and I was just thanking him for helping four communities get clean water and on his way out I said oh we just made this VR film just checking out real quick you know it's eight minutes long and he sits down and I put the headset on him and eight minutes later he's got tears streaming down his face and he pulls out his checkbook and he says I haven't done enough and he writes a $400,000 check on this spot for 40 more communities to get clean water so you know time over time time after time we have stories where we will see something out there outside the nonprofit world and say how could we use that technology for good whether that's you know sensor technology you know we've been working on creating smart wells that are connected to the cloud that basically self-report how much clean water is flowing so that when they break a mechanic can be dispatched to keep clean water well that was inspired by Nest I saw a donor change the temperature of their vacation home from a smartphone I remember just thinking this is early internet of things you know 10 years ago well if you can have a smart house why can't you have a smart well or smart water pump and you know that led us on many years of R&D and so I think you know innovation and maybe association how can we do things better how can we do things more efficiently in the work you know we now have 7,000 locals indirectly employed by charity water across 21 countries in 59 partner organizations that we bombarded and vetted and audit we're always looking for efficiency in the way that we actually deliver clean water through 10 technologies in many different solutions many different environments and they were always looking for ways to innovate in the storytelling how do I get a list of who you know woke up today who's never thought about water yeah we have a fun idea we're playing with right now called count your taps which we might turn into a campaign guy that works for me was an Africa came back lives in a very modest three bedroom home 1200 square feet and after he came back he counted the taps in his three bedroom 1200 square foot home where clean water comes out and he counted 16 and you know you just a different way of thinking about it right you've got your shower your dishwasher your garden hose you've got the washing machine every bathroom is a sink is it you know the toilet the shower the bathtub you're right you've got forward every bathroom you know so I don't know that we will turn that into a campaign but we're always just trying to uh creative wheat we've done water walks in time square we'll build a giant fashion catwalk and we'll get sponsors who are willing to pay a little bit of money if someone is willing to pick up 40 or 80 pounds of dirty water and just experience that walk for a moment you know to walk in someone else's shoes just for a moment so that's kind of taking the fashion catwalk idea recreating it but saying that what if you were one of the women who had to walk in Malawi or in Bangladesh or in Cambodia and what if that walk was seven hours a day and we'll give somebody a little card that's a great um you just walked one four thousand eight hundred and twenty one you know that's I don't know how to say that fraction but you know you get you want one one for four thousand of the journey that so many women and girls are making every single day would you help would you help to reduce the walk um and a campaign like that we will actually quantify hours saved through dollar donations I feel like a lot of the the ways to really make this real is just through like pattern disruption pattern interruption so that people understand it's it's not a it's not an over there problem it's when they experience it even a fraction of it whether or not it's through VR or or walking a couple steps carrying dirty water and just experiencing what that is it it really makes it real and I think that's probably the most powerful marketing that you can ever have I'm about we just shot up PSA public service announcement over the weekend and I'm very excited about this one I'm going to see the first cut in a couple hours and uh basically it's a diver it's an Olympic diver on a platform the high dive and it's early morning and she's getting ready to uh to make her dive and you know she walks out there kind of adjusts her uh bathing suit straps and begins this beautiful dive uh and then the camera pans and you realize that there's no water in the pool and right before she breaks her neck we cut and we say water changes everything 4,000 kids die every day of bad water you know will you help so that's kind of you know a different way of maybe I like that you use disrupting right um we also shot a really fun commercial with a bunch of kids in a slip and slide in a backyard and the slip and slide had no water and the kids just go tumbling and saying alch and uf and you know so I think we we shot an ad uh that just had tomato sauce over pasta you know brittle pasta you know how would your pasta taste without water how would your cool aid taste if it was just powder in a cup um what would it be like if you were brushing your teeth without water what if you were an artist and you had an easel and you had water colors but no water to mix your paint with so a lot of this is just exercises and creativity to find that way to bring people into this very human issue affecting 10% of the planet and then saying you're in the 90% would you consider helping would you consider joining us on this noble mission to make sure every human has clean water to drink now this this journey it's it's not just been all up into the right you've had difficulties too I mean at one point you almost went bankrupt um talk me through because again when you innovate you're going to have to solve things that people have never solved before or this particular business model is not the way it's always been done which ended up working but I'm going to be tons of growing pains in the process so talk me through some of the some of the difficulties the hurdles the the shit hitting the fan moments you had to go through when you're building a charity water I mean I think the biggest one is uh one of the early ones was uh grinding to a halt because we couldn't raise the overhead money as fast as we were raising the water money you know it turned out the 100% model is very compelling if I give a donor two choices hey do you want a 100% of your money to go straight to the field and build a water project that you can see getting a satellite image in photos of or would you like to pay for a staff salary in accounting right I mean you know where we know where the money was headed so it it took a lot of really creative storytelling to and and finding the right people the builders the entrepreneurs the business leaders who saw the value in you know John's job in accounting and and how important that would be to the to building a world-class organization that would eventually impact you know hundreds of millions of lives on the planet so yeah we we almost went bankrupt and you know we almost ran out of cash and uh there's a story in in the book where you know that I wrote about where this this stranger walks in at that existential moment of insolvency and write some million dollar check and says I love your idea you just need more time and gave us more rope more runway and we're able to steward that extra year of opx capital and actually build out what's now a program where 130 and growing families and entrepreneurs pay all the overheads so the millions of people can give it a pure way and we call that program the well and it's multi-year and multi-tier and it's international and we do events and we treat them like shareholders or LPs so it's it's become sophisticated but it almost didn't work um you know we we built a really cool platform that allowed people to donate their birthdays to charity water and we wound up raising over a hundred million dollars as people effectively crowdfunded for us and then we realized nobody would do it again so it was all kind of a one-time donation business that we built and people would only do one birthday they'd have a great experience but they'd never come back and you know we wound up having a down year and uh kind of having to to kill the engine the drove growth for the first eight years and completely reinvent a new engine which was a subscription engine um you know much more of the Spotify or Netflix or you know Disney Plus model that's the spring that's called the spring and we had a couple years of kind of down years while we were building that that then wound up tripling the size of the organization um but it it felt bad for a couple years when you're killing the thing that got you there you got to completely reinvent and reimagine something new you're not sure it's gonna work um in our case it it didn't we were fortunate but oh my gosh challenges i mean i hired a president six months ago and you know she basically said your CRM's a mess i said well yeah we never really have the time to invest million the dollars in you know great data management and great CRM you know we were always putting that money in the field or hiring the next you know marketing person so you know there's there are myriad challenges that come with um you know it's you're always fighting for resources and it's really hard i mean you're you know my my wife you know kind of knows i joke that there's not a day in my life in the last 18 years where i'm not asking someone for money and some ways you're not in control of your own destiny you know we are we are the guide in the heroes journey you're the hero right you're the hero we're just the guide saying you want to be generous you want to make your money uh work in the world um we have this vehicle that we've created that can help you do that but if there's no heroes there's there's no money you know we're just sitting on our hands you know waiting for somebody who wants to to take that step um and and i think you know sometimes i'm jealous of my friends who feel a little more like masters of their own destiny because they're selling a physical product or they're selling software they're building something that people are buying and they need to sell more widgets where they need to sell more software you know i'm selling an idea of generosity i'm selling an idea of clean water and you know it's you hear no a lot it sucks it sucks to hear no but i mean you still i you you're selling an idea but i think that a lot of people listen at the end of the day everyone's selling an idea but the way that you've built a process that accomplishes an objective yes you're selling an idea but i do believe that people are inherently altruistic and they really do want to give back i think what you've done very very well is you just bridge that trust gap that i i know you hear no a lot but i think that bridging that trust gap is probably the most useful lesson that somebody can take away who's trying to build a nonprofit or even just build a company i think that if you applied the framework and the trust gap that you that you've deployed in charity water i think that would help most companies yeah i think that's that's true trust is a really big and and you know you you get opportunities all the time to compromise and to compromise your integrity or or play in the gray and you know that that has been i think one of the things i'm most proud of is just i see the world in so black and white and maybe you know maybe not as a surprise with the extreme changes in my life but you know at that moment of insolvency it was interesting um we had eight hundred eighty thousand dollars in the water bank account it was more than eight months of operating capital we could have borrowed from that we could have written in i.o. you we could have said our money's fungible i was going to shut down the organization rather than borrow one penny of the public's money because we'd promised that all of it would go straight to project so i was calling lawyers at that moment is the second year of charity water say how do you unwind a 501 c3 because i don't i don't have enough money to run the overhead side but i i intuitively knew that if we borrowed if we dipped even one penny into that public bank account they would be a crack at the core of the foundation yeah there would be a crack in our integrity and i didn't want to work at a place like that i would rather you know shut the organization down and try again or try with the the traditional business model and you know we were very fortunate at that moment to to have somebody walk it and kind of save the day for us but i i i would have been willing to you know take take i guess the high high ground make good on our promise and walk away with integrity intact and maybe no organization you know you keep you keep mentioning that resources are constrained and win it in the charity or nonprofit and you're always thinking about how do i get how do i get the most out of the the operational expense and the the most out of the money that i do have you've built a massive brand over a billion dollars raised there has to be a lesson in there for the people that you attract into the organization because i think that companies with budgets two x and three x what you have have a tough time attracting people that are sort of on for the ride and on for the mission so when you look at the president you hire all the way down to you know Joe and accounting or the the latest marketer you just brought on what's the secret to getting people that are really willing to go above and beyond for the company and the mission brand is really important uh and ambition i think he's really important you know we hired 36 people last year we had 16,500 full applicants for those 36 jobs and it's 10 times harder to get into charity water than you know Stanford or MIT or or Harvard and and that i think is because uh people also want to work with purpose so i think we're also just tapping into a little bit of a zeitgeist where people say i want my work to matter you know um maybe more people are realizing what i i came to realize without the 10 years going down that path i mean we have people applying to charity water as their very first job exiting college exiting you know a master's program and saying i want to dedicate my life and great if i can make an income that helps me to support my family um i'm happy to do it over here and make and and trade that financial success and trade you know the the vacation house or the you know the boat to the plains or those aspirations for work that matters for work that that benefits other humans as you scale i mean again over a billion billion dollars raised obviously your impact is huge now what are some of like the biggest biggest hurdles that you find yourself encountering now that you're still struggling with maybe you don't have an answer for in terms of global access to clean water global access to resources that you're trying to figure out that you just wish more people would be aware of you know it's interesting ability is is a fraction of what i thought we would have raised by now that is interesting when we hit that mark it was it's funny i called my wife was with me that day was actually our 15th anniversary and i called one of my business coaches i felt nothing i felt no sense of satisfaction really i can't believe it took 18 years i mean it's water it's water for humans there are resources out there you know uh a hundred million people give a dollar you know it's a hundred million all right there's when you really think about it um we we have not cracked the code at all so this is a fraction of what i'd imagined i can't believe it took us so long to reach this milestone so for us the billion correlates roughly with 20 million people who now have clean water because of charity water you put 20 million into 700 million people it's like 136th i didn't set out to solve 136th of the current global problem two and a half percent so you know to me it really feels like we better be in the second inning of the game i mean this better be the top of the second where you know we scored a run and and it's it's one nothing and i'm hoping we have a 10 run game you know a 50 run game you know at the end because we're really batting for for 700 million people out there to to get access to clean water so it's really a resource so the issues are not even in the in the countries the issues are at home i could i could do you know an order of magnitude more work and deliver more clean water to people than we have the money for the infrastructure has been built out ahead of you know any current levels of funding so yeah that's why i'm out there you know 90 flights a year i'm talking to students i'm talking to corporations i'm talking to billionaires i'm talking to you know first graders and handing out lemonade kits and piggy banks right it's really trying to build a movement of people to engage with this issue educate them on the issue and then have them raise their hand and say not on my watch like not on my i don't want to live in a world where we might actually find water on mars 142 million miles away before we find water for humans on earth and and before we have the human will to to get that done uh and you know we hear in america we printed a trillion dollars a couple times you know you can give everybody clean water for about 15 cents of the dollar of one of those stimulus bills so it's it's it's really about moving and unlocking the resources you know it is the last thing i would say about it we know definitively how to bring every human being on earth clean water we have the cure we don't need to do research in a lab we're not trying to find the cure for ALS or Parkinson's or late-stage pancreatic we have the cure for water but we have not implemented it we haven't built the global will we haven't built the movement so i can't tell you how frustrating that is sometimes to know that there are people that that i i visit with communities i visit they don't need to be drinking dirty water no one needs to drink dirty water and yet i haven't convinced enough people yet to share their resources to to engage in this so i'm i'm very i think i'm driven by that idea of you know we have done a fraction of what's needed and a fraction of what i'd imagined our impact would be so a billion might sound like a lot to a small nonprofit it it's so much less than i imagined 20 million people with water yeah great it fills up medicine square garden like 1300 times great we've sold out the garden there that's so much less than i thought we would have accomplished in almost two decades i would ask why you think that is but i think it's it's probably just a little bit of selfishness and and lack of awareness i mean i can't think i'd get people to care about an issue that doesn't affect them so it's it's really hard to get people to care about an issue that they've never experienced and that's why the storytelling and the immersive storytelling and the creativity is so important if you gave everyone on earth access to clean drinking water just to paint a picture of people that are listening what would the downline effects of that be oh my gosh education improves you know so many girls drop out of school because the school has no water and they've got to go walk so you're educating generations of young girls women would get remember when i started the stat was 40 billion hours back just in africa you just take one continent and this is a problem in african indian southeastern central south america but women get you know imagine being a woman who's walking seven hours a day for dirty water seven days a week and then one day you walk zero you walk out your front door and you walk a minute imagine what you would do with 49 reclaimed hours in an instant and we know what women do they start small businesses they sell things at the market they start bakery businesses they earn income they use that money to pay for school fees into buy school uniforms for their kids they improve their houses they put roofs on their houses they they they build their families so water impacts health you know in some of these countries 50 percent of the disease starts with water 50 percent of this you can walk into a country and provide everybody with clean water and cut the hospital in half just empty half of the hospital beds and say go you're here because you drank dirty water so there's health education time back dignity for women and girls local economy there's a 90 page paper that came out of the u.m. the track the economic benefit of water every dollar invested makes these communities four to eight times richer so all of the i love downline yes all of these downline benefits and you know to to somebody listening just just contemplate for a second like how radically different your life would be without clean water it would be unrecognizable from the life you have today i don't think many people could handle walking seven hours a day for clean water it's it's a necessity to figure it out but how radically altered their life would be i just don't even think they can compute it doesn't it's almost so it's so different from what everybody experiences right now it's hard to really understand what that life is like and that's our job that's that's the job of charity waters to is to try to bring that to life and create compassion and empathy and then get people to open up their hearts what can people do what can like i mean you you've built this incredible organization people want to get involved how can they help how can they support yeah i mentioned the spring earlier that's that's one really easy way so they could go to the spring.com there's also a video there that's gotten over a hundred million views cross-platforms it's a great way to share our story with some of the visuals you know it talks about the hundred percent model and and what water means for these communities and that's kind of you know most people have i think the average american has 12 subscriptions these days so you know we're saying this is a subscription where we give you no music we give you no movies no tv no magazine articles to read but a hundred percent of whatever you can give every month goes directly to help people get water so the the spring i really think is the future i mean imagine if we had a million people giving forty dollars every single month that's a million people that would get clean water every single month so i'm really you know i love that there there might be some people listening that say i've had a good year i could give ten grand and knock out an entire community charity water is an awesome process for that you could pick the country you can sponsor that project we report back to you on the progress and construction and show you when it's built so you know maybe people listening could could do that and maybe somebody rang the bell and wants to help us with the overhead so yeah i'm easy i'm easy to find in that case that's that's kind of the you know the biggest challenge but really the a necessary one to continue to find people who believe in really kind of the the most sacrificial way of giving you know you don't get your name on a well but you do get to build an organization in the impact so you know charity water dot org a lot of stuff is on our website but you know of course if anybody is compelled to learn more about this issue or to get involved or you know he we started something called the tributary a couple years ago where people started including us in their wills and you know have seen some estate gifts now come in that have really transformed people's lives so so you know there's there's all these different ways to help it's really just getting people to say man i think i could stand for clean water it shouldn't be hard to get people to say that we'll put all we'll put all these they'll put all these links in the show notes before you before we wrap up is there something that i should have asked you some lesson or some piece of wisdom that we didn't go into that you'd like to leave the audience with it sometimes i like a lesson you tell your younger self after going through all these seasons but it doesn't have to i wouldn't have listened i might have my doubt yourself anything i wouldn't i wouldn't listen you know look i think what i've found is you know through service there is a real freedom you know if you wake up and you ask yourself how can i how can i help how can i use what i've been blessed with to to bless others to improve the lives of others here in my local community in the global community it's really worth doing i remember coming across a saying once it said you do not be afraid of work that has no end and it's kind of idea of endless twil and i really think about that you know if if you're positioning your life towards service and generosity you've never done enough there's no drop the mic moment but the more you do the more you do and then one day you get to look back and say well i've actually made an extraordinary impact you know it's funny i get to show donors off in their reports like five years in in charity water and almost everyone looks at the report and said i gave that much right because it and it feels good like i was that generous because they just got in the act of doing it you know again somebody signs up for forty dollars a month and eight years later you like here's how much you've given i gave that much i didn't even notice that forty dollars coming out of my bank account next to HBO max or you know so i think that's you know i love that idea of kind of endless work in the pursuit of others