Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #024_ Fear Nothing. Become Unstoppable.

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#024_ Fear Nothing. Become Unstoppable. · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen, I know, so many of
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: your recent guests. Who did you just have one?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: There's a lot.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: There's so many that I see your feeting like, oh
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: no them, know them? Well, that's great?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: You know have I had?
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I mean I had Lewis recently, right, Louis a while ago,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Rob Belle, Rob Love, Rob. I just did his podcast.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Oh you did, Yeah, he's a he's a well member.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: I didn't know that he was at the gala and
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: I missed him there and it wasn't until we got
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: back and I was like, wait, you were there.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: This year we're ringing Scotfornia, which thank you know, right,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: we gotta shave my screen so because you have to
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: keep jumping the shark with this thing. And this might
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: be my last, my last year of knowing what to do.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: But that is the screen. Whoa, it's in the realm.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: The whole thing is gonna be a big circle.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: This is for San Francisco, right.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Find people, and then all the content is shot specifically
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: in three sixty just for the gallop. So I'm doing
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: a three hour screening tonight of all the content. WHOA,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: but it should be really so, what's the venue. It's
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the armory. It's a forty thousand square.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Huge I got the invite. I'm going to make it out.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Come with your top again.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're gonna do it.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: That'd be fun, so cool, top up and fundy. This
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: was actually the This wasn't ours, was it? We sent
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: an hour glass out as the invite. You do well members?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Cool?
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  Speaker 3: Was it?
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: The whole gallic concept is called the Gift of time,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: where we're.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Always like next level with like the marketing stuff.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Man, well, we're going to track the So we're gonna
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I'll let you in just a little bit in the insight. Well,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: we're going to fund crowdfund a drilling rig for seven
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars. In the room. We're gonna put everybody's
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: names on it that donates anything, call it one hundred bucks.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And then I'm going to put up a calendar of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the next four years and say, great, we have a rig.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Now let's run it into the future. So every year
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: is a million bucks. So we're going to sell units
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of time. So I'm going to sell a drilling day,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a drilling hour, a drilling day, three drilling days, which
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: is a well, a drilling week, a drilling month, and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: as you buy time, we're just going to see this calendar,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you know, start filling out. And what we're also going
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to do is we're going to we're actually quantifying the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: amount of time that you'll be saving. Women says you buy.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's turning into multiple because we've got the data now
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: we've been interviewing in these villages.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: It's a completely different way of thinking about the impact.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, not just dirty water is becoming clean, but
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the time that women are saving. What would you do
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: with millions of hours? Right?
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: The whole uh, gender aspect of the work that you do,
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  Speaker 3: I think is something that that that people don't realize
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  Speaker 3: until they become educated, the impact that the water has
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: on education and female empowerment.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's real. It's real. Women and girls, really
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: women and girls only when it comes to water.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Right, Because break that down a little bit. I mean, basically, traditionally,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: the women are responsible for collecting the water, and this
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  Speaker 3: involves hours and hours and hours of walking each way.
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  Speaker 2: To a well.
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  Speaker 1: That's well, it's not even a well that's a problem.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a swamp, it's a pond, it's a river,
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  Speaker 1: it's often brown, viscous, dirty water, and you know, the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: their their risk of animal attacks. You know, we hear
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: stories of women getting attacked by hyenus. They're at risk
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: of rape, you know, as they're far away from home.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: If you're a woman and you're giving birth, you've got
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to give birth away from home at the water hole,
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  Speaker 1: so you're effectively camping out because you need the water.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, so not only you know, when we're
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  Speaker 1: able to bring clean drinking water into a village, not
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  Speaker 1: only are we eliminating that walk, therefore reclaiming you know,
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  Speaker 1: all these these hours that we didn't imagine getting five
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  Speaker 1: hours back in your day every day, seven days a week.
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  Speaker 2: So it's impact of.
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  Speaker 3: That can't even be measured because it translates into education
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  Speaker 3: and you know, working and being productive in other ways.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible. There was a UN report that was
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: released that they track the economic impact of water. So yeah, look,
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  Speaker 1: we've said we know water makes people healthier. Fifty two
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  Speaker 1: percent of the disease throughout the developing world, or what
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: some people would call the third world, is actually because
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of bad water and a lack of sanitation. But the
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  Speaker 1: UN wanted to see you know what about the economics
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: behind this? So they found every dollar that you invested
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  Speaker 1: in clean water and sanitation yielded a four to eight
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: dollars return. Wow, So what are made people wealthier? And
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  Speaker 1: it was it was money not spent on medicine. So
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: if you're not sick, you're not headed to the clinic.
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  Speaker 1: I remember one of the things that used to surprise
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  Speaker 1: me was learning that the impediment for so many of
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  Speaker 1: these people is actually getting to the clinic. When they
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: get there, the drugs are often affordable and subsidize, but
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  Speaker 1: the taxi to the clinic could be a month's wages,
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  Speaker 1: So you don't have it. So your kid dies in
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the village of diarrhea, something completely preventable. So I just
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I love the idea that by bringing clean drinking water
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  Speaker 1: and sanitation into villagers, you're actually making you're improving the
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  Speaker 1: local economy, You're you're measurably lifting people out of extreme poverty.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it solves a battery of problems at the source.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Speaking of the source.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Uh, the last time I guess we got together it
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: was probably year and holf ago, and that was right
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: on the eve of you launching the spring YEP and
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: in that this.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Past year and a half.
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  Speaker 3: Your community was so helpful that has gone on to
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: become super successful. And during that period of time, you
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: wrote this book that just came out there. So congratulations
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  Speaker 3: on that. I thinks very super exciting. Thanks for having
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: me back.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I'm about I'm.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: About I don't know, fifty or sixty pages into it,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: I'm right at the part where you hook up with
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: that DJ that you used to employ at various night
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: clubs across Patton, who had found faith in a certain respect,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: and that guy kind of becomes your He becomes like
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: this not mentor, but kind of like he ushers you
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  Speaker 3: into a new way of thinking about who you are
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  Speaker 3: and what you do.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: He's like a pivotal character.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a couple of really important guides or mentors.
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  Speaker 1: I would have said at that time he was a
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: He was a mentor, even though it was a brief,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: brief time of counseling that really moved me in the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: right direction. It's funny doctor Gary, who you'll meet later
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: in the book. It becomes really my first guide when
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I go to Liberia in Africa, and you know, his
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: story was so amazing. He was a surgeon, from California,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: from this area actually, and he had heard that there
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: was his hospital ship that surgeons could join and they
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: could operate for free on people without access to medical care.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: And he signs up for three months. I can leave
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  Speaker 1: my practice behind for three months. And when I volunteered
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and set foot on the ship, he'd been there twenty
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: one years. Wow, they never left. He's still there. Wow,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: he's on year thirty four or thirty five. So there's
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of these characters, you know, throughout the book
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: that just confirm to me that I'm on the right path,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that this is a life worth living, you know, a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: life of service. Imagine giving three and a half decades,
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  Speaker 1: he just never went back to his practice, back to
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: making money and you know, buying the cars and.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Doing all the things that they've been told since youth
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: are the markets the recipe of not only success, but
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: being happy and living a fulfilled life, which we know intellectually.
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  Speaker 2: Is not the case.
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  Speaker 3: And yet it's so difficult for us to wrap our
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: heads around a different way of living. And I think,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: of all the people that I've met, you are not
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: just a shining example of the power of service to
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: transform life. I mean you might be the best example
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  Speaker 3: of anyone I've ever met of somebody who weathered a
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: dark knight of the soul and then was able to
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  Speaker 3: channel that experience into not only changing your own life,
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  Speaker 3: but having this monumental impact on millions of people across
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  Speaker 3: the world. Like I was thinking, like, do I know
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  Speaker 3: anyone else who's had a more profound impact on the
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  Speaker 3: planet than you and the work that you do. And
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  Speaker 3: I don't think that I I don't think that I have.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think I do. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it's really remarkable.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: And when you were last year, we tracked your whole story,
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: and I don't want to spend too much time on
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: that because people can go and listen to that episode.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: We do it when it was like two hours it was,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: but the show has grown quite a bit and not
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: everyone's going to go back and listen to that, So
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I think it is worth kind of recapping, you know,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: some of the highlights there to contextualize what we're talking about.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Sure, you know, I think my interesting. You get a
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: little different perspective too, when you write a book, when
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: you spend two years, you know, and write one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand words, which became you start.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: To understand your story in a different way. Oh wait,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: I forgot that thing was really.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Important, and you find the threads that connect everything. So
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I think you know, my story was three acts. There
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: was Act one, which was growing up in a very
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: conservative Christian home. My mom became an invalid when I
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: was four after carbonoxide gas leak in our home, and
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: this was a shock to our family. She almost dies.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: A faulty heat exchanger had caused the problem, and I'm
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: instantly thrust into a caregiver role as a four year old.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I take care of mom. I'm doing the cooking, I'm
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: doing the cleaning. I play piano every Sunday in church.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I don't cuss, I don't drink, I don't sleep around,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I don't smoke. So that's Act one. Act two eighteen
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: happens I discover New York City. It's actually probably most
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: most close to the parable of the Prodigal Sun, where
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I just flip everybody the bird, flip my parents the bird,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I flip the church the bird, and say now it's
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: my turn. Okay, I played by the rules. Now I'm
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: gonna explore the other side. And I moved to New
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: York City. I felt like, well, if you want to
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: rebell in style, I heard that there was this job
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: called a nightclub promoter where you can get paid to
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: drink alcohol professionally. Thought of being a professional drinker was appealing.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, at eighteen years old, three eight, three
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: years before I'm even allowed to be inside nightclubs, I
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: just start climbing up the social ladder of New York.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: I want to be the king of New York. I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: want to be the guy spraying the champagne over the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: crowd from the top of the messanie and of the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: DJ booth and work at forty different nightclubs over the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: next ten years. So eighteen to twenty eight is kind
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of a blur. Start with smoking, then drinking, then the drugs,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: than the gambling, then the pornography, than the strip clubs.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Then this just kind of descent into hedonism and debauchery
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and degeneracy.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm going to interject from time to time
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: apologies for that. But what I realized, like I knew
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: it was I knew you were a baller nightclub owner,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: and I knew you were partying pretty hard. But what
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: I got it from from the book was was you know,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: as somebody you know who's explored that terrain myself, it
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: was it was darker than I suspected. And you were
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: you were deeper in that hole than I thought. Like
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: you tend to kind of you tell your story a lot,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: and and you know you you don't shy away from
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: some of these details. But in the book, you really
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: drilled down onto like what exactly you were doing, and
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: it was it was heavy usage.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really heavy. It's funny. We have these
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: conservative donors in Chicago who are a little older and
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: they just read the book and they reported back to
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: our team and they said, he was so much worse
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: than we ever thought. Yeah. I mean, I don't know
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: if they had given boy it was he wasn't He
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't over selling the darkness. Yeah, I think. And that's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons I really wanted to write the book,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: was was to show people that there it's never too late, right,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: your past doesn't need to define you. And I think
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: as you get in, you know, get through kind of
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: section one or whatever, you're like, wow, that guy's way
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: worse to me. I mean you he could be sitting
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: on ritual talking about you know, clean drinking water for
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the world. I mean, my chances are good at turning
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the page. So you know, I have this this section
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: two of my life, this kind of dark period and
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: just hold on a yeah, all right, so you can
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: go there.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know there's the there's the part
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: where you know your partner ods on heroin and then
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: you've got this bouncer who is threatening your life and
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: shaping gun house.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: With a gun. You know, like this is it was,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: you know, it's very cinematic.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And I had health issues, so I don't
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: you know again, when you are able to write a book,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: this is a long form, you know, it's kind of
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: like a ten hour podcast, right, So I really remembered
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: that part of one of the big things going on
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: was just half my body went numb. So after ten
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: years of partying, I just I started to break down.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: And what's what's so interesting and very literary about that
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: is how it symbolizes the numbness of the soul, right,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: like your body starts to go numb, but it's really
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: this spiritual malaise that to come upon you.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and in some ways it was a betrayal the
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: true me. I think was the caregiver, was a kid
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: who wanted to be a doctor growing up to help
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: sick people like my mom. It was the kid who
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: had a faith and who had a deep sense of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: virtue and morality. So this was really the you know,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and what I love in that prodigal sense story, Like
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the prodigal sin goes halfway across the world gambling prostitutes,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and then he winds up, he runs out of money,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and he winds up at the end of himself and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: he says, I want to come home. The servants in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: my parents' house are treated better than the condition that
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I'm living in now, And you just get this sense
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: there's like a longing to return to like he was wrong,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you know, he the the exploration had led him to
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a really dark place, and that's.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: But there's but but there the darkness is this incredible
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: teachable moment, right It's almost like, I mean, do you
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: think that you could have created what you've created without.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Exploring the dark side?
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Like you have to test the boundaries of your faith
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: to really understand who you are, you know. And so
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: when I see people who are venturing into that, like.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: We're like, oh, we got to pull him out of that.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: We got to like help him.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: You know, he's going wayward, and it's like, well, maybe
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: not so fast. Maybe that person is on their journey
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: and they need to explore what that's like in order
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: to fully understand, you know.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Who they are.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Like it's these are divine moments, I think, and we're
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: quick to judge them, but they can ultimately be I mean,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: you're an incredible example of how they can catalyze.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: A life well lived.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Yep, I agree, you know, And I was lucky to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: get out, So not everybody gets out, you know. There
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: were there were people that you know, had gone wayward
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and then over east and then died.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: And then to were a lot of funerals.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, I don't. I don't. I don't
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: know that we should be you know, encouraging like I needed.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: I think I needed more of those positive voices. You know.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. So I for those that don't know my story,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I wind up quitting everything at twenty eight years old
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: and walking away from that lifestyle and asking myself the question,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: what would the opposite of my life look like? Not
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a pivot, not a twenty or fifty degree shift, Because
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I actually tried that for a few months, this kind
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: of one foot in, one foot out, What would it
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: What would the clean break look like? And yeah, the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: guy with a gun chasing right, perfect moment, and it
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: was exactly and the clean break looked like go to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: the poorest country in the world post war Liberia, become
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: a photo journalist on a humanitarian medical mission, and then
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: quit all the vices in one go in, one fell swoop.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, I it's funny, somebody asked me recently.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: They said, so so many people are struggling with addiction
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and struggling with trying to change their life. What I realized,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: actually just this week was one of the one of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the really important things was I changed my environment so radically.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: My environment had been clubs, excess, drinking, debauchery, sex, drugs,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: and my environment changed to a group of humanitarian doctors
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and nurses and surgeons who were giving the best of
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: themselves in service to the poor. So I went into
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: this completely healthy environment where the new norm was selflessness.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: The new norm was virtue and courage and tenacity and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: hard work in the direction of others, in the direction
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of serving others. And it just looks so good. I mean,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to do any of that stuff. I mean,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to go down off the ship and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: have a cigarette, you know, next to the you know,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: with the engineers in the engine room. I wanted to
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: really embrace this, this new lifestyle. It looked so much better.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So I think that really helped me never go back,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: because it was There was one night where I smoked
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: three packs of cigarettes, I drank a ton, and I
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: just I walked away from it. You know, I haven't
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: had a drag in fifteen years. I haven't touched coke
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: or any of that stuff. I haven't gambled in fifteen years.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I haven't looked at a pornographic image in fifteen years.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Like I really made a clean break, and for me,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I felt like I could turn the page and start over.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I mean it really felt like a do over at
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: twenty eight, if I had if I could actually get
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: rid of the crap, if I could kind of leave
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the detritus. And there was something so beautifully symbolic about
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: this ship, this five hundred and twenty two foot hospital ship,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: crammed full of amazing, selfless people, and I would leave
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: all of the you know, the nasty crap on land,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I would walk up the gangway and I would sail
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: away to a new continent into a new life.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Uh huh.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: There was just something so beautiful about that idea.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: The cinematic aspect of this continues to unfold these moments.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I'm super interested in them and how they work.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think on some level where all you know,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: all of us, everybody is visited.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: With moments like these moments of self.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Reflection that if we're aware enough and we have enough willingness,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: can be transformative. But I think it's a fun. You know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: it's like you were able to do it. For others,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: those moments may come and pass and they don't have.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: The wherewithal or the.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: Degree of presence of mind or whatever it is to
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: actually activate on them.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Like what do you think?
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: I mean?
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Was it just desperation? Like what was it a.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: About you in that frame of mind that allowed you
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: to really grab that rope.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: And make that change.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I think I just caught a vision for a new
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: life what it would look like you I met. I
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: mentioned doctor Gary earlier, just just even hearing about someone
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: who had changed his life, right, I mean going on
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the plastic surgeon track to then twenty some years on
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a ship. That level of commitment, that level of dedication,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I just found it so inspiring. So I had this
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: role model. I had a new role model. So if
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the previous role model was maybe the richest club owner
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: right with all the girls and all the drugs, the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: new role model was a great humanitarian, right like I
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: met Albert Schweitzer or mother Teresa, And so I think
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: I got a picture of I also got a picture
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: of how my skills might be useful in a very
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: different context. So what I was good at was promoting,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: promoting things, promoting parties. Really, I mean, to be successful
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: in night life, you have to get people to turn
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: up at your club versus other people's, and you have
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to write this story the right people, right, and that's
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: often really beautiful girls and really rich rich people. Your
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: rich guys really who want to hang out with the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: beautiful girls. And that was the whole scene. We called
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: it models and bottles. Models and bottles were the two elements.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And if you did those two things, you could sell
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars of alcohol in a couple hours and
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: they would be I remember, people would come in and
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: drop ten thousand on their AMX. They wouldn't even open
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the champagne. Sometimes they would just buy it. So to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: be successful with that, I was telling the story that
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: if you got past the velvet rope, if you made
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: your way into the right table, and you sat with
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the right people, and you spent all this money, you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: showing off your wealth, then your life had meaning. And
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: that was the wrong story. But I think I realized
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: in that moment, I'd be able to tell a redemptive story,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a story about people like doctor Gary Parker, a story
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: about the people that he was operating on, that he
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: was saving the lives of. And I could tell the
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: story to the same people. You know, I had this
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: club list of fifteen thousand emails. Yeah, and back then
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: you know the open rates.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: But the rich guys like, well what about the models?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: So so I think I was surprised. Sure I got
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I got some of that, because the list went from
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: getting invited to an MTV party or the opening of
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the Prada megastore and soho to pictures of horrific facial tumors,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: cleft lips, cleft powet's, flesh eating disease, leprosy, and then
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the answers to these maladies, and sure some people said, hey,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: take me off the list. That's gross. I didn't sign
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: up for, you know, Liberia one oh one, but I
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: was surprised at how few people said that I was.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I think I was really struck by how people said,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: this is amazing. I want to help. How do I
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: give money, How do I sponsor the next surgery? How
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: do I become you. I remember this woman from Chanel
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: wrote me once and she said, tears are just streaming
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: down my face. It's lunch hower. People think that I've
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: lost a family member, and I just can't stop uncontrollably
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: sobbing because I feel so moved by the suffering and
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: these amazing doctors that are meeting that suffering. So I
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: think I learned that those same promoting skills could be
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: redeemed in an instant and I can tell stories that mattered.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: So, when you were a club promoter, you develop this
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: email list, and then when you segue into the work
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: that you now do, it was an interesting time where
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: email marketing was just beginning, right, and so you were
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: able to convert this list from one interest to another
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: and take advantage of the fact that at the time
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: you could.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Get essentially one hundred percent open rates.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, your content was being ready. I mean unless they unsubscribed,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: they were getting it. And it was such visual content too.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I think I understood early on that. I just heard
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: something yesterday which I think is one of the best
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: quotes I've heard in a while, and it's from Carl Young,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and it says, transformation is only possible in the presence
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of images. Transformation is only possible in the presence of images.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know this at the time, but my
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: instinct was to show and not tell. So the emails
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: were super visual. I took fifty thousand photographs that first
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: year on the mission. I was just running around with
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: my camera saying, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what i'm seeing.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Here's a little boy with a big tumor. Here's the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: doctor in surgery operating on his face. Here's the little
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: boy without the tumor being welcomed back into his village,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: surrounded by a hundred friends and family who are celebrating
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: his return to life and to health. And the images,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the stories that were going out were driven by these photos.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: The words were almost second and I think this it
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: just it really worked, you know, so many charities I
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: think convey the problem through statistics. You know, if I
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: tell you or anybody rich, six hundred and sixty three
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: million people today are living without clean drinking water, you
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: look at me with that face. You just it's like
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I can't get see.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: It's the difference between six hundred and sixty three and
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: a billion or two hundred million or twenty thousand.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: It's hard.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: It's hard for the human brain to really comprehensive.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So that's why these stories and these images. If I
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: opened up my laptop and I said, hey, here's a
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: child that I just met a few weeks ago in Malawi,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and this is the water that she's drinking. And this
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: is what her mom looks like. And this is her house,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and this is her school, and this is how far
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: her school is from the house. And actually she can't
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: go to school because she has to go get dirty water.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And she's been six six times this year. Right then
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: you're immediately drawn into it. But you know, I found
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: that it was one thing to talk about dirty water
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and it was another to show it, and it just
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: moved people in a visceral way. So you know, a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: lot of things were just happening. I was just exploring
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: could my email list be used for good? And so
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: maybe those ten years of debauched relationships weren't wasted after all.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe they could be redeemed. Maybe the skills of promoting
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I could promote something completely different. I could promote something meaningful.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I could promote radical generosity and compassion and empathy. I
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: could promote clean drinking water for the world. So I
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: was just making all of these discoveries without that much
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: perspective at the time. It's just doing stuff. It was
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: just a flurry of activity.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Right, I mean, you have this light bulb moment that
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: water is what's behind. You're with all these doctors, they're
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: treating all these horrible conditions, and you begin to understand
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: that these conditions are all downstream of one fundamental problem,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: which is that these people don't have access to clean water.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: If we can focus on the water our problem, then
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: we don't need stadiums full of people with tumors growing
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: on their faces.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: And it begins really with like what I love about
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: it is it just begins with one well, right, like
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: you take you come back to New York, you throw
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: a party, everybody had twenty bucks in the loose sight
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: box and you build one. Well, it's almost like a
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you had a grand vision at
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: the time as to what this could become, but just
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: executing on like one task as proof of concept.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you do your next, and then you
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: do your next, and then you do next, and now
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: there's twenty nine thousand.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, did you have an idea at that time
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: that this could be?
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: What?
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Do you have perspective on what you've built when.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: You when you think about Scott, you know, fifteen years
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: ago or twelve years ago.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: You may not like this answer, But at the beginning
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and and this almost I don't want to over spiritualize this,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: but I felt like I had a vision and I
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: could see the end. And the end was the day
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: on our when everyone has clean water. So I could
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: see the problem. Answer well because most people. So most
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: people are saying, Hey, One of the questions I get
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a lot is we're twelve years in, we've raised three
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty million dollars and we've helped eight million
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: people get clean water. And the question I most often
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: get is, wow, charity Water has been so successful. Did
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you ever think you do all this? Did you ever
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: think you'd be so successful? And the real answer to
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that is this, I thought we'd be infinitely more successful.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: This is a fraction of what I imagined at the beginning.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: We have done so much less than I think we
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: should have by now. I really thought it'd be billions.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: So I did have the vision at the beginning, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: it did start with one one. I didn't know that
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: it was going to work, but the intention was I
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: am going to give the rest of my life to
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: try and end what I see on Earth as the
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: biggest problem facing people, which is the lack of access
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: to clean water. And then I'm gonna start with one well,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and then there's two wells, and there's five wells. But
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I did kind of you know, I'm moving towards this
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: day when we all celebrate victory. It's a party. Actually
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: it's a party at the end. It's the party when
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the entire world has turn water.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: So when you started, it was one point one billion, yep.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: And now it's at six hundred and.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Sixty three, right, so it's about halved.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: You and other people other organizations have essentially had.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: This even as population growth has grown a decade plus, right,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot more awareness.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: But you feel like you should be further along.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, are good you kidding? Yeah, it's clean drinking water.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: I mean charity Water gives away one hundred percent of
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: all donations you know to So I'm just I'm sometimes
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: baffled at how we have been unable to move the
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: trillions of dollars that are just sitting in bank accounts
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and donor advise funds that are that are helping no one,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: and we have not yet been able to tell compelling
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: enough stories to move that money to helping people get
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: clean drinking water.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: In your mind, is the biggest roadblock storytelling is what
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: is the impediment.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: It's moving people from paralyzing apathy that is so easy
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: to embrace when it comes with these huge global issues
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: into action into hey, I could do something, and I
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: think we have been pretty good at that by telling
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the stories of a nine year old who's donating their
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: birthday to raise a couple hundred dollars and a few
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: people get clean water. We're an eighty nine year old
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: at the end of her life, you know, who's giving
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: from her pension because she wants other people to live
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: to be eighty nine and have that same chance.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would say that you have been masterful
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: in that. I mean, if you can just continue to
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: scale what you're doing, the problem is inevitably going to
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: be solved. And I think fundamentally what Charity Water has
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: done with your stewardship is not only completely revolutionized and
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: change the face of what giving is and looks like
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: and how it engages the donor.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: But it almost functions more like.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: A studio, like a Hollywood studio, than like UNISEF, because
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: what you trade in is storytelling. Like you're working on
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: the emotional impact that you can have on the public
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: by doing this amazing job of telling the stories of
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: the people that are impacted and engaging the donors on
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: a level where they really feel like not only are
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: they making each individual is making a tangible difference, but
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: they're engaged. They're engaged in the process and they're engaged
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: in the result.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think storytelling. You know, if we had to
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: keep one thing and go back and do it all
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: over again, I would take storytelling over the one hundred
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: percent model. I would take storytelling over you know, the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: photos and GPS and all the cool tracking stuff charity
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Water does. I think that's what moves people, you know,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: is the that is kind of them. And that's what
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I teach other social entrepreneurs. You have to be able
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: to go and tell true stories that matter. I think
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of people want to help. I mean we
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: talked about the last time we were together. So many
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: people look at the suffering around the world and they say,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I wish I could do something. But then there's this
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: lack of trust. There's this I don't trust the system.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much of my money would actually
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: get to those people. You know, I don't know that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to make an impact, And they're all these barriers.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: So we have been through the Charity Water business model
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: trying to break down those barriers and say to the cynic,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: say to the skeptic, take another look, because I actually
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: believe people are depriving themselves of the blessing and the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: joy that comes with giving by all those excuses. So
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: we just haven't done enough of it. I mean, yes,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: we've gotten over a million people and they've given generously
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: from one hundred countries. I really believe the best is
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: yet to come. So I think in year where we
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: just finished twelve years of charity water. I actually do
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: think the best is yet to come. I mean, today
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: we're going to get four thousand new people clean drinking
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: water for the first time in their lives. And we
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: do it again tomorrow, and again the next day and
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: again the next day. Now I want that number to
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: be forty thousand, but it's it's now significant. You know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the eight and a half million people we've helped, it's
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: more than the population of New York City and all
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the boroughs. You know, we're starting to add up, you know,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: seven states worth the people in impact, and it's one
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: seventy eighth of the global problem. So you put eight
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and a half million into the current six hundred and
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: sixty three and one seventy eight Like that sounds better
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: than one one thousandth right, Like, let's do seventy eight
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: times more. Let's invite seventy eight times more people to participate.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Let's you know, let's invite more people to the party.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: So, backtracking to how you kind of conceptualize this at
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: the outset, I think what you said is is very
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: true that there are so many it's now changed in
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: the last decade, But when you at the outset of
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: charity water, there's this tremendous distrust about charitable organization.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: It hasn't changed that much, by the way, data hasn't changed.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, outside many.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Better charities, like a lot of the young charities that
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: have started have adopted these values.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they've basically, you know, mocked your value system
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: and your your model. Maybe not the one hundred percent model,
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: but the idea of creating transparency between donor and results
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: has certainly been implemented across the board with great success,
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: and I think that's changed the face of how people
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: give and how.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: They think about giving.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: But your idea at the beginning was like, Okay, let's
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: not bombard people with statistics and guilt. Let's create an
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: inspiring brand that gets people excited and want to participate,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: and let's inject them with that feeling that you have,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: which is what it feels like when you're of service
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: and you give.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: We're all walking around, you know, trying to keep.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: Up with the Joneses and you know, get that salary
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: bump so we can get the new car, and we're
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: chasing the dragon on this illusion of the American dream.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: When the truth of what we're actually seeking, which is
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: fulfillment and purpose and happiness and joy is available to
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: us if we can just make that leap of faith
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: into what it feels like to give right. And it's
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: almost like you rescued that away from a broken system
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: that is almost predatory and how it makes us feel
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: badly about ourselves to one that inspires people and shares
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: this sense of what it actually feels like when your
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: life is in devotion to the better men of others.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Well said, that's so articulated. I mean that that is
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the vision. You know, the mission of Charity Water is
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: to bring clean water to people on Earth, and that's
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: a very clear mission. Mission is accomplished when no human
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: being on Earth is drinking dirty water. But the vision
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: is actually much softer. It's some of the things that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you just said. It's to bring people back to the
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: true meaning of charity. Charity means love. It means to
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: look after your neighbor in need and get nothing in return.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: And I was so upset that that word that it's
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: become tainted for so many people in charity is a
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: bad thing, not a good thing, Like we need more
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: love in this world. I mean look around, right. We
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: need more people agreeing to agree on serving others, on
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: ending needless suffering, of using our time and our talent
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and our money to help people to improve the world.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: And I just thought that the way most people, most
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: charities approach this was wrong. Like you said, it was shame,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: it was guilt. It was you. You have too much,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: you know you should even even the language giving back.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I loathe this language giving back. You hear it everywhere.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: It's in the lexicon. Now right, oh, I'm giving back.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Our company is giving back. That makes it sound like
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: we have pillaged and plundered to such extent that we
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: should finally throw a few scraps down to the board.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Let's give a little bit back. So if I snatch something,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you know, if I take your phone out of your hand,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: you're gonna say, give it back, right right, Why don't
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: we drop the back? We should just we should frame
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: giving in the positive. We are just giving. Let's build
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a culture of giving in our family, in our company,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: maybe in our faith community. Let's give because we can,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: because we want to, because it's it's a blessing, not
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: out of opportunity or sorry, not out of you know, guilt,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: or shame or debt or obligation, but because it is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: an amazing opportunity to share our blessing with others. And
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I actually would love to get people addicted to giving.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. My ambition right now around money,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm forty three, I've got, you know, a beautiful
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: wife and two kids. But my ambition around money is
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: to give more away. Is to personally give more away
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: someone And I write about this. Someone many years ago
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: wrote a million dollar check that changed the game for
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Charity Water. It was an inflection point and it took
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: us from the brink of insolvency because we hadn't even
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: worked out a time. Yeah, we hadn't worked it out.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: But I want to do that for somebody else, Like
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I just have this dream of one day. I don't
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: know how I'm going to do it on a charity salary,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: but one day I would love to walk into someone
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: else's office, a young social entrepreneur and not just give
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: them advice, Okay, because I can give a lot of
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: people advice, but I would like to actually, So that's
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: the ambition. Not the house in the Hampton's, not the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Mercedes or the Tesla. You know, not the vacation, you know,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the four seasons, and that's really true, you know, And
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: in some ways it's free because I don't feel trapped
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: by not having, you know, the next like the minute
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I would get the Tesla, I'm sure i'd want a
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: better car, you know, or the minute I went on
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: that vacation, well somebody went on an even nicer vacation
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: or stayed at the nicer hotel on the island. Right.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: So there's it's been so freeing twelve years ago to
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: just step off of that rat race and think about
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: think about how I can be useful, how I can
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: be a vessel. I think.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: People would think of you, or who don't really understand
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: you or what you do, or somebody similar to you
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: as like martyrs.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Like oh, you know, they're like like you're flogging yourself
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: and your hair shirt.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Every day like that that you know that because you know.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: You can't stand the suffering of others.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: But you're one of the happiest people that I know, right,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: Like you're you're a living example of how great you
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: can feel and how good your life experience can be
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: when you're when you're in that mode.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Right. The fact that you're trying. Admission is to give
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: is to give more.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: Like, uh, you're in a place right now, you've how
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: much of you You've got three yeah, okay, three hundred
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: and thirty million. I don't know what your salary is,
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: but it's a charity salary. I would imagine that if
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: the board of charity Water came to you and said, listen, Scott, like,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: let's just double your salary.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: You're doing a great job.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: That the donor base would celebrate that. They're like, Scott
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: should be, you.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Know, getting paid more, but knowing you a little bit, I.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Would imagine you would just like give that away, right,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: like you keep it?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Well, we give you know, we give twenty percent of
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: income away right.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Right, So you're even of the salary that they give you,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: when everything.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: That you do is for the charity, you're still giving it.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Does it does that go back into charity water or
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: do you get the other visions?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: It's funny we I had them pull the numbers recently,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: just I was like, well, I'm I might get some
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: really hard questions about it. Do you give your own organization?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And since we started, we've given My wife and I've
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: given one hundred and eighty five thousand of our salary
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: back to charity Water.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Huh.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: And you know, so it's eighteen wells, which is like
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: a total joy to be able to do. So we
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: give to our local church, we give to charity Water,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: we give to other charities. There's probably twenty other organizations
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: we support. But we're fine. It's not a martyr. I
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: live in a you know, in a twelve hundred square
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: foot two bedroom, you know, really nice apartment in New
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: York City, seven minutes from my office in Battery Park
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: City in Tribeca. I drive a Kia Sorrento. That's the least.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I love my Kia, right, it's got the two car
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: seats installed in the back. Like we we have food
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: on the table. We have you know, I fly coach.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: That sucks. I'm you know, forty three and I'm six
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: foot one. Fourteen hours on air Ethiopian is not a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: fun experience. But you know there that's like that's the
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: worst of it. Like that is the worst of it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: So we have these amazing I mean, it's just an
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: amazing life. Like I get to to sixteen countries. I've
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Meanto Ethiopia thirty times. I get to I get to
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I get to preach a message of generosity, of trying
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: to invite people into something really beautiful for them, you know,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: invite them into transformation through selflessness. You know. One of
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the things I talk about, you know, the end of
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: the book is this idea of work that has no end.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: And if you can, for me, it was it was
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: selfishness with no end. It was accumulation with no end.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: You know, it was more girls, more drugs, more you know, cars, things, watches,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: better clothes. And for the last twelve years, it's been
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: more for others, uh more, uh more resources, more time,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and more energy spent to try to make the world
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: a better place, to try to help people who have nothing,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: you know, who are truly suffering. And that isn't never
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: ending work. But I've just come to embrace that. Yeah,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: and I think that, you know, I love the one
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: well idea that you brought up, because it did start
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: with one, and then there were five, and then there
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: were ten, and it's it's like that Nietzsche quote of
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the long obedience in the same direction. One day,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: if you just keep showing up, you turn around and
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh this twenty nine thousand wells and you know,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: check in like maybe I come back on three years
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: and like who knows what that is, or maybe some
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: other amazing things have happened because you just keep showing up,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: and you know that. I think we're at the beginning,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I think like this is this is the
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: beginning of the journey. I hope that I would be
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: able to put in thirty years like doctor Gary Parker,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: and look back. I mean, think of how many surgeries
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: he's done now, and you probably signed up for a
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: few surgeries. So I'm gonna go I'm gonna fix a
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: couple cleft lips and cleft balots, and I'm gonna go
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: back to my practice in California that I'm gonna make
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. And you know, has it been
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people he's operated on now who
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: never would have gotten an operation, right had he not
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: said yes, had he not answered the call?
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Do not fear work that has no end. It's ridinical.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: It comes from an obscure rabbinic text that somebody took
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a picture of that quote outside of Badega ten years
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: ago in New York City, and I just I love that.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: It's like the call to you know, infinite giving, right.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: I think along the way there's been these amazing kind
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: of examples of almost divine providence. And I think that
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: the most sort of crystallized examples of that are kind
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: of how you went from office space the office space
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: where at the last minute somebody would come in and
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: like these problems would get these seemingly impossible problems would
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: get solved through the generosity of people inspired by the
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: work that you guys are doing.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: And there's stuff I couldn't even write about in the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: book because it would feel too creepy. I mean, you know,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: my editor is like, because I would. I mean, I look,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: we talked about this lesson. The organization is not a
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: religious organization. It never has been. I you know, pray.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I have a just a I guess a non denominational
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: kind of Christian faith, and I have seen so many direct,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: clear answers to prayer. I mean, we had to take
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: it out of the book because it just felt some
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: of this stuff just felt like too over the top.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: But there was a moment when we didn't have an
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: office space. We were working out of the Soho loft.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: My old club partner was just raging all the time,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, he would bring people back that would
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: do drugs. And I was sleeping on a closet floor
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: when Charity Water started and I go up on the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: roof and you know, I'm just praying. I'm like, God,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: we need to get out of here, like we need
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: to get out of here. We didn't have money, we
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: could barely afford an office. And I finished praying, and
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: at that moment, I check my BlackBerry and someone has
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: just sent an email about an office space that they'd
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: heard we were looking and no, Lie Rich, I can
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: see it from the roof. I can see our new
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: office building. It's five blocks away. So they're all these
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: just crazy stories where you know, we have had when
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: we're on the brink of bankruptcy in year too and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: the organization is going to become insolvent and I'm shutting
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: down Charity Water and there is no more Charity Water.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I'm praying for some sort of miracle. And you know,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: an atheists, as it would happen, walks into my office,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: sits with me and writes a million dollar check. Complete stranger.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: It's insane, you know, and like so it's just it's
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: it's been really cool to see and these little confirmations
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I think have just said you're on the right path.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: You're on the right path. Keep showing up like this
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: is what you're supposed to be doing. You know, you
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: found your purpose or you're calling or just don't don't
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: give up, don't quit. Yeah, and don't compromise. You know
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: your values. And that's one of the lessons you know
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: in that story in the book. You know, before that
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: million dollar miracle gift, we could have done the wrong thing.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: We could have borrowed a huge amount of money that
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: was in the account for the water projects that we'd
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: promised the public.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: We would never touch, right, like the fidelity to the
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: value system and the integrity. And I would imagine as
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: you as you grow larger, there's perhaps temptations to divert
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: from your core values because of this that or the
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: other sort of compromise that you could make and and
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: and even perhaps justifiable in that you know that and
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: would justify the means. But how do you, you know,
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: maintain that, like focus on the principles that launched it
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: from the get go.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: We've made it cultural. I mean this, it's it's so
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: black and white. So there you're You're absolutely right, there
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: will be a decision. It's like, hey, well, so we
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: had we had so part of the money, you know,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: coming in from the spring is also able to be
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: used to repair projects and bring them back online, right,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Like a rehabilitation of a well is the same as
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: a new well for us in our mind. But you know,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: somebody said ones, well, hey, we're we need to go
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and build some sensors which are going to help us
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: track the sustainability these projects. And we said, now, we
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: can't use that money. Got to go raise it separately,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: because the ten year old girl who's doing five lemonade
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: stands once to give new people clean water, not work
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: on a technology that's a little more abstract. Now, you
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: could argue that censor is going to let us know
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: when the well breaks, we're gonna send a mechanic like
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: it is all in the service of clean drinking water flowing.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Boe just said, right, let's just.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Letter that little girl saying, and it actually might be okay.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: The little girl might be like, hey, great, you know
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: I paid for a sustainability program, but we just we
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: keep coming back to, you know, let's let's try and
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: make the hard decisions. I mean credit card fees, Like,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: it's insane that we pay back credit card fees. I mean,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: this does not make sense. If you give one hundred
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: dollars a month on your AMEX and I get ninety
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: seven a month, which is what we get. We pay
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: back the three dollars every single month, and we send
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: your intended hundred. Now, you wouldn't expect us to send
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: more money than we actually got from your donation. Boe said, well,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: we don't feel like we can say one hundred percent
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: if it's ninety seven percent.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Just running a perpetual little deficit.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Then yeah, So those the one hundred and thirty families
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: that pay for the overhead payback those credit card transaction fees.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: It's hundreds of thousands of dollars now just to make
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: up the difference. But we wanted to be able to
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: just stand up there and say one hundred percent means
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: Faith is a huge part of who you are and
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: it informs the work that you do. And it's an
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: interesting arc coming from you know, a relatively evangelical upbringing
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: to you know, losing your way and finding your way back,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: and you're relatively open about that aspect. Of your life,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: although you're you're you're always careful to kind of not preach, Yeah,
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: like not not preach and just make sure that you
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: know your message is non denominational in every regard. But
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: I appreciated the fact that in the book you you
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: go into a little bit more depth about that and
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: how important it is to you. So I'm interested in
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: how you think of like how you think about faith
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: than that aspect of you know, how you came to
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: become this person and how it does you know, inform
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: your work and continue to kind of propel you for Yeah.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I think at twenty eight I rediscovered, you know,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: the teachings of Jesus or the personhood of Jesus in
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: a very different way. And he was a lot more
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: exciting with fresh eyes. He was a radical, he was
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: a rebel. He was more like me in that he was,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: you know, rejecting the oppressive religious establishment of the day
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: and saying, hey, let's serve the poor, Hey let's be pure.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he was calling the religious leaders,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: you know, whitewashed tombs, snakes, you know, all these horror
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, he was just constantly offending them, And I
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: think that's what I had taken the most umbrage to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: growing up was the kind of the religiosity. You know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: it felt oppressive, it felt rule spased. It just felt
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: like all the things I wasn't allowed to do, Like
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: you guys are just you're putting me into this box.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: So I think, having then done all those things, found
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: certainly nothing but but heartache or brokenness in those coming back.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: I was so taken by the purity of Jesus. I mean,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: he was above reproach, he not. He just refused to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: play into the system of the world, and he had
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: no earthly possessions. He was living from place to place.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: And speaking truth to power in this kind of ough
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: you know, like as Rob Bell talks about it, like
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: it's very punk rock.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: It's very like rage against the machine.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, have you been to Have you seen his his
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Christmas show that he that he.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Does the new One. No, he was. We were just
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: together recently and he was talking about it.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: But it's all about kind of the things that you
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: were just mentioning.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then but Jesus spends so much time talking
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: about the poor, and he spends so much time with
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you know, the the outcast, the people that know that
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that would walk by his parables, you know, these the
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: parable of like the good Samaritan just spoke to me.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: The you know, I was the guy walking by. I
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: was the guy that never had time. And you know,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Jesus is celebrating the person who stops and who picks
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: up you know, the person lying in the street and
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: checks them into the hotel and puts down the MX
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and says, I'll just cover all the expenses, you know,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: until they get well. So I just found the opposite
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: of my life, the opposite intention of my life, so compelling.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And you know, I have a I guess I have
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: such a pattern now of praying, expecting an answer and
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: then getting an answer that, like my prayer life is
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: just I don't know. I mean, I believe somebody's listen.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I believe I'm talking to somebody and and they are hearing.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was a story we couldn't write about
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: in the book. I just I remember we were in
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the middle of northern Ethiopia, and I don't think I've
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: ever told this story before. I was with Vic, we
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: weren't married at the time, and we were in this
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: really kind of bad hotel at the top of the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: hill and we were all it was New Year's even Ethiopia,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: and they're on the Julian calendar, which is fascinating, so
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: it doesn't line up with December thirty first, And we
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: go offer pizza the night before at a restaurant, get
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: up in the morning and we're about to fly back
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: and Vic can't find her passport and actually she can't
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: find her bag, and it turns out her bag was stolen.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: So I send the rest of the group there were
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: ten other people back home. I cancel my flight and
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: we are looking for her passport. Now our local partner
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: is kind of he's the man in Michela, Idiopia, so
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: he gets all the cops to turn up. They start
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: knocking on the doors of the known criminals in this town,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you know, hustling them, searching, you know, because this is
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a huge offense when a foreigner comes in and has
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: their possession stolen. It was her wall at her camera
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: and her passport, and so I just start praying and
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, God, show me where the passport would be.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: I kid you not. I feel like I can just
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: see where it is, and I feel like God says
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: it's under the bushes. Behind the hotel. Come on. So
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'll be right back, and I take one
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: of the guys with me, and I crawl kind of
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: over this fenced in area and there's a big bush
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and I walk behind it and her bag has been
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: hidden under the tree.
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: Oh my God.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: And we got on the next plane. And what had
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: happened was they think one of the workers had stolen
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: it had then gotten scared right to be caught with
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: the contraband as the cops flood this hotel, so they
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: ditch it to their bush. So I don't know, I
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know, like direct channel with God, no.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Believe me, And so many prayers have have gone unanswered.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I just I just lost my mom to bank created
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: cancer four months ago, and I was I was praying
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: until the end. I was praying for a miracle. I
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: had pastors, uh you know, people in my faith community
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: around the world praying, and God took her, you know,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: I mean it was she she died and in hospice
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: in four months from diagnosis to death. So believe me.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: As great as that is like to find a you know,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: to find a wallet under a bush or and I mean,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: there are just so many examples over the years that again,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to put him the book because I
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: don't want to freak people out and think that, you know,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: I'm completely nuts.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I do believe or make it like a
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: religious text, that that becomes inaccessible for somebody and.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: They lose they lose the they lose sight of what
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: it is that you're actually trying to say here.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: But I think there is something really compelling about this
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: idea of looking to the example of Jesus, who is
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: this amazing badass who was able to like embody these
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: ideals that we all aspire to but fall so short of,
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: and to say, well, what would it be like if
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: I actually tried to model my life after his behavior,
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: Like forget about all the trappings of religion, of religion,
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: and just like, well, this guy did this, this, this,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: and this, and this is how he behaved and this
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: is how he interacted with people.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: Like what would it actually be like if I tried
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: to do that?
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: And then you really have done that and your life
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: has changed dramatically and impacted people all over the world,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: and you're not like walking around barefoot, you know, you know,
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: in a beggar's robe, like you're living. You're a modern
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: guy living in the modern world in New York City.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: But I think there's a lot of inspiration that we
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: can take from that example of what it's like to
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: just be like I keep going back to this, but
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: like to be in this mode of giving and service
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: and exuding love and approaching situations from a perspective of
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: how can I contribute to make this better as opposed
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: to what can I extract out of this to accumulate
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: for my own you know, to account for my own
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: inadequacies or insecurities.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Well, the last thing I'd say about faith, it was just,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Jesus always talked about the Kingdom, like the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of God. There's just this
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: language all through like bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: And the nice thing about the last twelve years of
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: my work with Charity Water is that, even though it's
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: a completely secular and non religious organization, I feel like
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: I get to bring what I imagine the Kingdom would look
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: like to Earth through clean water because I know that
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: and heaven right, everybody might have a different opinion of
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: what that might look like, but I know pretty much
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: everybody would agree in heaven, no one's drinking dirty water.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Dirty is illegal in everyone's version of heaven, a girl
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: walking eight hours with forty pounds of disgusting river water
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: on her back getting raped during that walk illegal, It's
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: not happening. So in the most basic theology, I get
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: through my work, through my you know, non evangelical work
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: really that involves Muslims and Jews and atheists and Hindus
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: and Buddhists and Mormons, like I get to you know,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: people of all faced, people of no face, Republicans, Democrats, independence,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I get to create this huge tent. But my theology
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of helping people get clean drinking water is in line
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: with the work, which is a really freeing thing. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I think because you don't have to do what I
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: do on a Sunday or pray to the god I
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: pray to, to work at the organization, or give to
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: the organization, and in fact most people don't, that's almost
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: given me a freedom to say, well, this is what
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: I believe, and this is my story. And it's been
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: funny just reading the reviews on Amazon of the book.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: So many people are like, I would never read a
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: religious book, and I'm Jewish or I'm an atheist, but
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: it was okay, it was okay. He didn't try and
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: convert me, he didn't train. He's not a religious book.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: It isn't at all. It isn't at all. But you know,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: for anybody like I mean, I talk about prayer and
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: some of these, you know, some of these moments have
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: answer to prayer or how I tried to re experience faith,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and you know, some people like anything having to do
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: with faith is just completely tipical. But it was just
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: interesting seeing people like it was okay, give him a
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: pass because he didn't preach normally and normally no, I'm
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: telling you, if you're eadther of you is it's funny.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: It's like, normally I would never read anything with any
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: religious overtone. But you know, there's a big butt well.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: I think that speaks to in the same way that
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: we you know, we have this crisis around giving and charity,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: the same can be said for our religious institutions. You know,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: if you were to say, you know, oh you need
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: to give back, or you know, UNICEF is knocking on
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: the door, you're like, you know, really similarly, for a
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: lot of people, just saying the word religion or Christianity
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: or good or any of these things provokes yeah, you know,
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: provokes an emotional reaction that's ed to some childhood experience
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: or something like that. And and in many ways, you know,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: the best of what faith based organizations have to offer,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: you know, could use a little Scott Harrison rebranding in
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: certain respects.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: You know, well, certainly the transparency would be foreign for
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: Them, right right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So where are we
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: at right now? We're We're at six hundred and sixty three,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: still in need.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Still in need. The Spring has grown to your community
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: to spend.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: A year and a half. Since since that started.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: There now thirty twenty nine thousand people from one hundred
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: and four countries, including countries in Africa, which makes me
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: so happy. So there are people that are given monthly
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: to the Spring from Africa that have heard about it.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: It's interesting to just say Spring is your monthly subscription.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Where Netflix for clean water or Spotify for clean water,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent of what people give monthly goes straight
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: out the door provides clean water. We're then able to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: share stories of impact and that has been that that's
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the future for us because the drive by one time
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: gift or the one time birthday doesn't help you solve
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: the water crisis, right someone listening and says, oh, I'm
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: going to give a hundred bucks once I got to
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: go find the next person the next year. So getting
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: someone who says, well, I think I could maybe sign
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: up for this idea for a while, Like I could
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: sign up for the idea of a world where everyone
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: has clean drinking water and I can trust this organization.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: And that's again why I would hope. You know, so
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: many of our values are in that book, so you
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: will get a sense at the end of it of
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: who we are, what animates us, what values we really
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: care about. And we're hoping to just build, keep growing
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: a community of people who you know, who keep showing
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: up like every month in, month out, in the same
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: way that we show up for our content, you know,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: in the same way we show up for Dropbox and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: we want to you know, access our photos. Can we
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: get people to show up for others for clean water.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: So that's now grown twenty nine thousand people in one
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: hundred countries. The fascinating thing is the average across the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: community is exactly thirty dollars a month, which is what
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: it costs us to give one person clean water. Then
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: we have kids giving it ten, we have people giving
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: it one hundred. But it's just amazing to see that
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: organic average is twenty nine thousand people. Every month, they're
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: getting twenty nine thousand new people clean drinking water. And
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: that's the number I want to add to zero too.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: It's a great model for a lot of reasons, but
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: also because it solves a dilemma that I know that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: you have historically faced every year, which is that no
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: matter how much money you raise in a year, you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: got to start over from zero.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: And January one was a dark day.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Intership doing this.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: At some point, you know, working eighty hour weeks, like
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: it's going to catch up to you and you're going
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: to burn out, right Like, so I know you've kind
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of butted up against the edges of what that feels like.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I wrote about that too. I for
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: years people were saying that I would burn out, and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, I'm still here, did ninety eight flights
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: last year, one hundred and fifty speeches, Look at me,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: not burned out yet. And it took about nine years,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: and there was a really dark moment where I did
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: want to quit, and I managed to come out of it,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: and I actually hope that writing about that experience. In fact,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: other social entrepreneurs have told me, other entrepreneurs in general
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: have said, hey, I felt there, I've been there. The
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: way that I came out of it was realizing that
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I had put so much of my personal identity in
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: the success of the organization. So when Charity Water was
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: doing well, I was doing well, and Charity Water had
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: done well for eight consecutive years, and then the ninth
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: year when we didn't do so well, when our donations
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: dipped for the first time, Scott didn't do well, and
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: I became depressed and it's all my faults and I'm
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: letting people down. Actually felt like I'd let hundreds of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: thousands of people down because we hadn't repeated the success
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: of the previous year. We hadn't grown, and there was
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: a there was a really important time and lesson that
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I learned, which was, Okay, I am more than my organization.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm a father of two, I'm a husband,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: And actually, in that year, outside of the money that
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: we raised, it was our best year. We didn't compromise
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: our values or our integrity. We pushed sustainability forward. Our
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: team had a great year. We hired some extraordinary people
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that we onboarded. It's just we didn't raise as much money,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: so that that kind of led to me saying, all right,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to quit. I'm going to come back
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to try and launch the Spring and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: actually solve this problem, which is we are too big
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: to start at zero every January one and just and
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: invite people to show up with us on a longer
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: term basis. And your community again was so helpful. I think,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: I don't I forget how much, but I think they were.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: They joined it like over one hundred thousand dollars a month.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Just a renewed action to the community out there. And
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: then if you still have a link up, I think
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: I do, But I'm going to end this with a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: with another call to action, but for now, I will
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: say that if you're new to the show and you're
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: listening to this and you're not a member of the Spring,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: that you should sign up immediately. I think I do
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: have a link I'll put links up at the show
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: notes to all of that, and you know, you guys
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: can dig deeper in the I'll put a bunch of
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: other links about Scott and the work that he does,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: and certainly pick up his book where you can learn
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: more about the amazing work that this organization is doing.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: But I can tell you it's been a delight and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: a pleasure to be a Spring member and to see
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: the engagement of the listenership of this show to engage
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: in the work that you do.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: So I want to amazing that man.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: So how many times are you going to Are you
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: traveling now overseas to oversee the work that's going on.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Three times next year? It's not really overseeing the work anymore.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: So we have an amazing team that does that. They're
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: nineteen people at Charity Water whose full time jobs are
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: flying around. You to think of them out there with clipboards,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: making sure the work is being done with high quality,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: working with our partners, and then auditing making sure the
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: money is being spent well. So I'm typically out telling
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: stories or trying to recruit more overhead donors because that's
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: a challenge. Yeah, we have a million people that have
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: given on the Water side, but I need to make
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: sure that I can continue to pay for our staff
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and our office costs in our flights.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: So what's the annual budget just for managing overhead.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: About fourteen and a half million this year and we'll
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: raise a total of seventy So we're very efficient. You know,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: we might spend eighty five percent of our money on
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: programs in fifteen percent to run it. But still that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: the money has to come separately, So that's that's not
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: a trivial undertaker.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: So that's like sixty percent of your time is focused
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: on raising money for that.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's an amazing community, you know those one
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty one famies and entrepreneurs that are supporting
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the overhead. It's the founders of Facebook and Twitter and
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Spotify and WordPress and Pandora, and it's you know, Apple executives.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: It's people like Rob Bell our friend, and people like
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Depeche Mode. So it's a really kind of in football quarterbacks.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a motley crew of one hundred and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: thirty one families that said we got your back. We
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: don't need our name on a well. We want to
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: help you hire the next hydrologist, the next accountant, the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: next person to greet people at charity water HQ. We'll
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: pay for the toner for the EPSOM copy machine. So
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: I'm spending a lot of time growing that community from
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty one to one hundred and thirty
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: five to one hundred and forty. And one of the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: ways I do this by taking them over there. So
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: I'll do three trips next year. I'm trying to get
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: you there. You know, I keep inviting you.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: I know, well you have trip.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Well this is actually let me air this out with you.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: Because I had an opportunity to go on one of these
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: trips and it looked like I could do it, and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: then I was like, I just I had so much
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: going on and I just I couldn't. I couldn't justify
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: breaking away to go on this trip. But I'm committed
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: to doing this, like I really do want to do this,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: And I'm at my own kind of moment right now
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: where I wouldn't say I'm I'm caetering on burning out,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: but I'm the bottleneck in so many things that I
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: that I'm doing that I'm finally embracing this idea that
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: the things that I've done that have got me to
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: where I am right now are not the things that
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: are going to take me to the next level. And
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: I need to make some fundamental changes and how I'm
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: running this. You know, it's a it's a very micro
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: version of what you're doing, but it has.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: Its own challenges, and I.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: Need to let go of certain things and bring more
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: people on to allow me to better scale what I'm
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: doing and also allow me to focus on the things
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: that are most important, not just professionally but personally.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: So I can, you know, have.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: The experience of going on one of these trips with
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: you next March.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I'm going to hit I'm going to hit you hard.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: We got enough time a way that I can plan it,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: and I am committing to that now.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be great. I think I know you and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you would get so much life from the trip, not
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: just from you know, a community of like minded givers
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: you know who who will also join them. They'll be
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: twenty five people, but just meeting the you know, for me,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I just put you guys into it and then I
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: get out of the way. It's so great, Like I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: just done that. That job does itself. And you're talking
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: with the local drillers, you know, when you meet the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: team running an Ethiopian drilling rig of eight guys and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: you say, hey, you know, what's what's your what's your
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: work week? Like, like what's our work month? Like we
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: work twenty nine out of thirty days. Take one day
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: off a month, okay, because there's an eight month dry
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: season in Ethiopia and they want to maximize it because
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: when it rains for four months, they can't drill, so
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: they leave their family. So then you know, you're asking questions,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: so you're interviewing him. And every once in a while
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: someone will come into the village and say, well, why
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: don't the people just move closer to the water. Why
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: don't you ask the women? So I just set back
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: and you know, through translators saying, hey, how come you
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: don't move closer to the water, And then women say,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: where do you who owns that land? We don't own
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: that land. This is our farm, this is where we
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: grew up. So I just love being a part of these,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: you know, these trips, as people explore, as they they're inspired.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's definitely some tears, you know,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: if you're if you're there at the moment when a
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: thousand people are getting clean water for the first time
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: in their life and you watch clean water shoot out
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: of the ground, under pressure as they flush the well
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and you see the dancing and tears streaming down people's faces. It's, uh,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: it's really emotional. It's like it's like a picture of heaven,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: whatever heaven looks like to you, but it's it's an
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: extraordinary thing to be a part of.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: What's one of your favorite stories from these experiences that
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: you could share.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: You know, there's there's one, you know, I think I
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: told a couple of sad ones the last time. There's
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: one story that I didn't get to write about in
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the book, and it's not super happy, but I think
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: it puts a point on the urgency of the work.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: So I was just talking about the celebrations when you
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: drill it well and you get water. It's just awesome.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: It's just awesome. And communities will talk about their community
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: often as before the water and after the water. Another
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: theme that I tease out on the book is this
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: before and after. That's what I was doing with Mercy Ship.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: It was this black and white. So my life was
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: before and after, you know, before the cocaine, you know, smoking,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: you know, crackhead basically running around and now after like
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: a husband, a father, you know, a guy who's able
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: to lead an organization. The doctor Gary was doing before
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: and after I stuff getting to death with a facial tumor,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: and now you're fine, you know, blind with a cataract.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Now you can see. And it's the same thing with water.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: You're able to take it before the water, all the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: problems that we discussed after the water. It was one
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of these celebrations, and it was in Ethiopia, and normally
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: everybody is happy. There's music, there's lolling, which is the
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: women just shouting at the top of their lungs. And
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: there was one woman off to the side who was
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: weeping during this, and our partners go over to this.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: She's an older woman, and they say, you know, why
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: are you crying? Like this is a this is a
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: joyful moment, like look around you. And she's just like
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: almost like consumed with rage. And she says, do you
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: mean to tell me that the water was underneath our
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: feet the whole time? Ah? And that I spent my
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: life walking hours for dirty water to a far away
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: source and then it was right there all along. And
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: that struck me, just that picture of a thousand people
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: celebrating a woman, you know, on a ridge off to
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: the side, grieving decades of suffering, and then one day
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: a truck pulls in, a bunch of guys jump out,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: starts sticking out, you know, a drilling bit into the ground,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: and forty eight hours later they find clean water and
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: everything's everything's fine. So that picture, you know, we don't
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: want her to suffer for twenty or thirty years. We
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: don't want her kids to suffer.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: And I think when you hear something like that, now
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: I can better understand why you feel like.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: You should be further along.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if it really is that simple, why can't we
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: why can't we accelerate this and avoid those kinds of
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: situations of that woman when the problem is so incredibly
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: solvable and we're going to.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: Try and do that. We were just talking before about
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: our gallon and trying to fund more drilling rigs. Every
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: drilling rig, specifically an Ethiopic, can drill about eighty five
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: wells a year, so we're actually limited right now by capacity.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: We have eight drilling rigs. They're going full time, so
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: eight times eight, you got about six hundred and forty villages.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: But you add a new rig, you get a new
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: eighty five villages. How much does a brig cost about
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty grand?
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, So how do you how do you make a decision.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I'm getting fired up now you're thinking about it.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: How do you decide like, Okay, here's the next well.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: We're gonna have you identified every place that needs them,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: and then how do you prioritize.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: The pecking order?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: So now being at at scale, in the beginning, it
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: was just hey, we got money for ten wells, drill
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: them wherever you want. Now you know, when you're more
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: at scale, there are plans. There are often three to
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: five year plans for different districts in all these countries
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: work and I think we're active in seventeen or eighteen
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: countries this year, so there would be there's a plan
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: for the Chihuahua district in Malawi. There's a plan for
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: the Lindo district in Rwanda, there's the plan for t Gray.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: We know what one hundred percent coverage looks like. Sometimes
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: it's sixty million to go, sometimes it's two hundred million
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: to go, sometimes it's fourteen million to go. And we're
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: working towards that one hundred percent coverage. So it's not
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: a random haphazard let's just drill a few wells. It's
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: clustered approach. So you bring a new well in a
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: new rigan, you get a new cluster in action.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: So it's really it's really exciting. I mean, I'm really optimistic.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: And what are the what are the sort of political
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: hurdles that you have to jump over? I mean, are
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: you dealing with like, uh, you know, village politics and
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: lots of personalities and have you had pushback and issues
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: where you have to really figure out how to grace
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: people in a certain way to make it happen.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. People, that's that surprised me, and I think it
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: surprised a lot of people that when it comes to water,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: we're not we're not encountering resistance. Now, we we have
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: said we're not working in conflict zone, So we're not
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: working in Yemen, we're not working in Darf Sudan. We're
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: not working in these places where there's there active war
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: going on. We're not working in despotic countries where the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: government actually doesn't want any NGOs to come in. That
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: leaves us, right, but it leaves us like fifty countries
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: that we can work in where the government is saying
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: we're doing our we're doing our part. Will you come
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: and help. So that's the amazing thing about water. I mean,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: we're making them look good like you know, do you
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: think when we come in and take one district in
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Rwanda alongside the Rwandan government is so interesting they actually
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: match our money ninety cents on the dollar.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to ask, I can't these governments
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: give you some part of their tax base for you.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: They have then they are still on.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: You know they are, but the money that they're spending
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: is a fraction of what's needed. That tax base is
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: being first of all, it's a small amount. It's being
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: split among roads, among healthcare, among energy, you know, power line,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: cell towers, water, They're all these different things they have
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: to do. So we are seeing government spend money, but
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: in certain cases they are matching our dollars. So we've
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: done about twelve million, twelve million in Rwanda, twelve million
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: dollars in Rwanda in the Rolindo district it's a tongue
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: tie and the government has put eleven million alongside ours.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: So it's really a twenty two million dollar program over
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: seven years, and we started it I think around twenty
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: percent water coverage we're at ninety nine percent rich. We're like,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: we're almost there. This district has nobody, you know, in
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of months we'll have nobody drinking dirty water.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: Now we're moving on to the districts to the side
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: and we're going to start over again. So it's it's
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: really hopeful seeing that we're not seeing resistance. You know,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: every once in a while, you know, a mayor will
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: come and take credit. Right, oh my good people. You
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: know I have brought in the water.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: But you're like, we don't want to get it do it?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: We actually don't want the credit. That the whole beauty
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: of the business model is that Charity Water is getting
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: everyday people to care, to act, to engage, to join
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: this community. But the actual work is always done by
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: the locals. You know, for the work to be sustainable,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: for it to be culturally sensitive and appropriate, it has
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: to be led by the locals. So they get the credit.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: So it's amazing rolling into Ethiopia and people don't know
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: who Charity Water is, but they know and celebrate our
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: local partner who's running those ain't drilling rigs.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I thought was was most
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: touching at the Gallon, New York.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: Class Winner was was that you had a.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: Bunch of those people, a bunch of the locals there
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: and you and you made such a point of you know,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: celebrating these individuals who are actually doing the work, you know,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: boots on the ground.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and allowing there to hear us.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: And that's happen who these people are, and like the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: sacrifice that they're making to be away from their family
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: for such extended periods of time.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: And you'll be when you come in March, you'll be
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: so inspired by them. I mean you'll really see. We'll
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: get out of the way. We'll just say, hey, go
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: go go ask them tekwani, tell, tell everybody why you
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: do what you do.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: So many people.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: Are living their lives feeling incredibly disenfranchised. They're disconnected from
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: the fruits of their labor, from anything that that that
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: provides them with passion. You know, there's trying to get
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: through the day and pay the bills, and there's this malaise,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: this sense that one person really can't make a difference,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Like yeah, I.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: Can put a quarter in the little box from.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: Whoever when I'm walking into Walmart, but like is that
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: really doing anything?
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: And so I love how.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: A big part of the ethos of Charity Water is
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: helping people to really reframe that and to really understand
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: that one person can make a difference, a very tangible,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: impactful difference, and with that comes this sense of purpose
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: that can overcome one And in doing that, you tell
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: amazing stories about you know, everyone from the girl with
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: a lemonade stand to whoever. So I thought it would
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: be nice if you could tell one of those stories
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: for somebody who's listening to this, who feels like, yeah,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: I'm hearing everything Scott's saying, but like you know, I
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: don't know how I could have that kind of feeling
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: in my own life.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: First, just get yeah, I know you haven't gotten there yet,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: but you basically just delivered the end of the book.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna read the last thing, the last line.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: You didn't even know where I was gonna end, But
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: that's it. So it says, you know, add last count,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Charity Water spunder more than twenty eight thousand water projects.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: It'll help eight and a half million people get clean water,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: people who will never have to experience what it was
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: like before the water. Ever, again, we still have so
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: much work to do yet, every day I wake up
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: hopeful that we will solve this problem in my lifetime.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: I believe that together we can bring life's most basic
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: necessity to the six hundred and sixty three million people
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: who still don't have it. I'm just one guy who
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: built one charity, but it's made a little dent in
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the water crisis. Next year, we'll make a bigger dent.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: And this is how the problems of the world get solved,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: one by one by me and you and us. I
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: really believe that beautiful like as we you know, as
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: we all join our voice together. So I'll end on
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: a story. Let's say it's a new story. It's not
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: in the book. We were about to launch our big
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: World Water Day campaign March twenty second at the organization.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: We had a whole campaign lined up, and then somebody
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: opening up the mail at HQ gets a note, a
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: little picture and eight dollars and fifteen cents, and we
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: learn it's from a six year old named Nora, and
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: the note says, dear Charity Water, I saw your video
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm sending an eight dollars and fifteen cents because
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I want kids to stop thatt dying of bad water.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: I want kids to stop dying of bad water. And
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: she draws a picture of herself next to a well
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: in Africa. What she thinks of well looks like with
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: queen water coming out, So charity water. You know, we're storytellers, like,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: stop the presses, cancel the campaign. Let's see if Nora
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: will let us put her on camera and tell her story.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: So we have a camera crew down in Virginia a
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: week later and Nora opens up her house, this six
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: year old girl, and on camera, she's this precocious girl
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: that says, well, I saw the video and I went
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: up to my room that night and I asked myself
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: the question, should I give my money or should I
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: keep my money? Should I give my money? Should I
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: keep my money? And she's back and forard then it's
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: so cute to hear, and she says, so I came
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: down in the morning, I said I would give my money.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: So she drops eight dollars and fifteen cents from her
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: allowance and she mails it in and oh, there's so
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: much there, right, the purity of heart. And by the way,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: we're all asking ourselves a sex the same question, right,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: should I not should I trust? Should I not? So
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: she comes out on the right side for her, and
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: we launched a campaign around this three minute video and
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: she's just she's beautiful. She has this heart to serve others,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: and when you see her on camera, you just melt.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: You're like, I want to be that pure. I want
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: to like the simplicity, you know, back to the Bible,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: you know, Jesus haid let the little children come to me. Right,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: we will be led by children, the simplicity of children
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: to teach adults these these values of generosity, compassion, and purity.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: So we just told her story and we asked everyone
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: just to give eight dollars and fifteen cents.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: And how much was right?
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: We raise eighty grand in a day, So that's the
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: ate wells. Yeah, and she so her seed, her vision
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: of eight dollars and fifteen cents turned into a thousand
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: times more.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: Uh huh. And what does she think of all this?
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: She loved it. And hopefully we'll get to take her there.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully she can.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Go and see some of that impact one day. You know,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: we we do think about that, like how do we
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: close the loop? But I would hope that even Nora
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: might live her life a little differently, that that the
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: feedback loop that seeing people respond, you know, might even
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: encourage her to give ears.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: And imagining that age and then suddenly you're the seed
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: that that that germinates, this amazing flower that has to
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: impact her and make her think. I mean, it had
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: to be an amazing feeling for her. It was amazing
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: to us understand it. Yeah, that is incredible, And I
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: think it does speak perfectly to this idea that one
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: person really can make a change.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: And I love this idea of.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: You know, unlike back to this literary thing, like this
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: symbology of like purity. Is there anything more pure than water?
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: Like taking it back to its biblical roots and the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: way that we all cleanse ourselves, our bodies, and our
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: souls through clean water. Right, And that's essentially what this
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: is all about, the clarity of purpose and the simplicity
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: of what water represents and how powerful it is. It's
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: really amazing, So great, let's close this down. If you
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: could just leave us with a thought about what it
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: means to live a life of service and how you
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: think about that, and you know, without repeating what we've
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: already talked about, what you think it would mean for
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: another person to extend themselves in service and and the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: kind of downstream impact of.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: That freedom is the first word that comes to mind.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: I mean for me, you know, I can only speak
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: for me. I just found such a freedom in redirecting
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: the intention of my life away from accumulation and selfishness
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: and status and you know, all the things that we
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: see on TV and on social media that were supposed
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: to want, that were supposed to climb higher for, and
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: it was just freeing to say, I'm not going to
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: play that game, and I'm going to look at the
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: resources that I've been blessed with, both you know, the
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: resources and the talents maybe around promoting or storytelling, the
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: money that I have, and how can I use those
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: to be a blessing to others? And I think it
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: can start small. It can start with eight dollars and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: fifteen cents. They could start with a birthday party where
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: the first well was built. And you know, for me,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: I just wanted more and more and more, and the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: more I gave, the more I wanted to give. You know,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: I love that the more you give, the more you give.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: And I would encourage people just to step out and
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: you know, set the cynicism aside to give your time,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: and you even want to give more time. You know,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: maybe it's local charity, maybe it's a something in your neighborhood,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: but dig in, you know, give your money and give
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: it to an organization where you actually feel like you're
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: going to see the impact and it's not just going
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: to go into a you know, a black hole. But
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I would hope that that would feel good and you'd
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: want to do more of it and more of it
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: and more of it. And the next thing, you know,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: you look back and you say, wow, I just was
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: preparing a donor report recently for a family who had
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: been with us for eight years, and the you know,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: we said, here's your total eight years of giving, here's
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: your impact all around the world. And they wrote back
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: and they said, we had no idea it was that much.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: We had no idea we had given over half a
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: million dollars. I think they felt like it was less
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: than half of that. And that's the experience, right when
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: they were just showing up every year giving as they could,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: the giving some profits to their business. And then you know,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: we're like, hey, here's your summary. You're like, oh my gosh,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like screen time just popped up, yeah,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, my gosh, I spent that
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: much phone on my I spend that much time on
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: my iPhone last week. How's that possible? So I would hope,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: you know, in the positive, as you give your time,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: as you give your talent, as you give your money
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: in the service of others, you do get to look
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: back and say, Wow, that's a significant impact. I really
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: have transformed people's lives and transformed my own life in
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: the process.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: Well, you have transformed my life, and it's been a
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: blessing and an honor to be able to contribute to
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: your incredible organization. Man, and you inspire me in more
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: ways than you know. So I thank you for your service.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: Thanks for doing this here today. And I wanted to
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: kind of end this by saying that this podcast I
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: believe is going up on.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: October twenty one. Birthday is October twentieth, soppy birthday because
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: I am the.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: Bottleneck and everything that I do, and I've been spread
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: so thin. I didn't have my act together in time
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: to launch a birthday campaign well in advance of my birthday.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: So can I still launch a birthday campaign on my
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: birthday and leave it open until perhaps the end of
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: the year or something like that. All right, So when
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: this goes up, this will serve as the official announcement
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: that I am dedicating my fifty second birthday to Charity Water.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: So I'll put up links and all the information on
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: how you can contribute to that, because I don't want
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: anything for my birthday other than for all of you
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: to experience what I've experienced and what Scott is speaking about,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: that feeling that you get when you contribute to the
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: betterment of others.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: And I'll be your first donor. Yeah, I get one
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two bus for me right now.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: And Popley, thank you, sir, back in your organization, and
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: of course the Spring. If people want to learn more
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: about the Spring, I mean, you can go to Charitywater
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: dot org slash rich roll there there you go. Yeah,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: I think that link is still live. Yeah, so charitywater
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: dot org slash ritual. I'll make sure it's live before
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: this goes up, and everybody pick up Thirst.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: Available everywhere you buy books. It's a fantastic read.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: It's a huge accomplishment, super exciting for you, and uh
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: more will be revealed come back and talk to me again.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Cool, I will. Maybe we'll do one from Ethiopia in March.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: That would be cool.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Let's do like a thirty minute pod from a well opening.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, only thirty minutes.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: Well, like from a well opening, Well, we can interview
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: some local people that's translated. Come on, let's do that.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: Actually be amazing. I would love to do that.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: And we'll see we might be able to get to
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: one of your birthday well, okay, well I'm gonna I'm
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: gonna work on it all right.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks Scott, Peace, clean water