Transcript of 692: Scott Harrison - Make a Bigger Ask, Design Everything with Excellence, Raising a Billion Dollars, Nobody Wants to Be Mid, and Why the Best Leaders Are Great Sales Professionals

My next book, The Price of Becoming, will be out in a couple of months. In the meantime, I have sent it to a few authors who I deeply admire and look up to. One of them is Jack Carr, the incredible Navy SEAL who's also written a number of New York Times bestsellers. And this is what Jack said about The Price of Becoming. Quote, The Price of Becoming is a clear-eyed look at transformation and the cost that comes with it. No hype, no shortcuts, just the truth about change and the discipline required to sustain it. This is a must-read if you are serious about doing work that matters. Buy it, read it, then go forth and crush Again, that's from Jack Carr, United States Navy SEAL and number one New York Times bestselling author. I would love it if you would preorder The Price of Becoming right now. You can do it at learningleader.com or go straight to Amazon and order The Price of Becoming. Thank you so much. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes.

Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of Charity:water, a nonprofit that has raised over $1 billion and brought clean water to over 21 million people across 29 countries. He's also the New York Times bestselling author of Thirst and was the recipient of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award in 2024. A few of the topics we discuss: Scott shares the few must-have values that he looks for when hiring for a leadership role. Really practical and helpful. Then we talk a lot about excellence and obsession and our mutual love for those attributes in people. Then he tells a story of meeting with a Goldman Sachs partner and how that person has made him think much, much bigger ever since. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Scott Harrison.

Scott, man, it's been way too long. 8 years since we talked. Uh, it is awesome to have you back on the Learning Leader Show.

Welcome. You know, I saw some clip floating around the internet and I definitely had less gray hair. You look great. You haven't aged. You look amazing.

I'm curious though, you started with $15,000 from a birthday card.

$20. Yeah. It started with a $20 bill and then 15 grand.

Yeah. Yeah. And now a billion, over a billion. I mean, dude, what, how does that feel to even just say that out loud?

I mean, listen, first of all, I love the founding story. Charity:water over a billion dollars ago was Founded in a moment when 700 people came and they put $20 in a box and at the end of the night, there was $15,000 and that built the very first water project in Uganda that gave people life-giving clean water. You know, the first time they've ever had it. 20 years later, you know, even though the numbers have grown, you know, 2 million people around the world. Have done something, they've said yes, and they've contributed over a billion dollars. So it's really about their generosity. You know, we're kind of the guide in the story. They're the heroes. It feels like a whole lot less than I believed we would have done, or maybe said another way, a whole lot less than we should have done. Really? Two decades. Oh, Ryan, don't start. I mean, do you know how much opportunity is out there? I mean, this is the most Basic need.

Well, I love, I mean, this is why you've done what you've done, but we are starting fast.

Clean water for humans. And as we sit here and we've got what, two IPOs that are trillion-dollar-plus IPOs that are coming in the next couple weeks, we've raised a billion dollars in 20 years to go help 21 million people get water, and 700 million people right now are still drinking dirty water. 10% of the world is drinking dirty water while we look for water on Mars, 92 million miles away. And while we launch trillion-dollar IPOs. So yeah, I, I think we've done a little, wow, very little. Hopefully we're in the second inning.

When you were getting started and you got those donations, $20 at a time, did you set goals? Did you set a, hey, I want to hit this, or was that even too early to even think that way?

The goal was always about 10x what we were doing in any moment. So if we raised a million in a year, we wanted to raise 10. I would say that's true today. You know, if we raise $100 million this year, it should be a billion this year because the opportunity is just such an order of magnitude larger than we are realizing at any moment in our time. I mean, You know, it probably should be 100x right now in American donor-advised funds. This is parked philanthropic capital where you've already taken the tax benefit and you've kind of put money away for philanthropic giving. About 25% of the money sitting in these donor-advised funds would give every human clean water. There's just so much opportunity out there. And we've captured so little. So yes, there are specific goals and there are revenue growth goals and you pick the KPI and someone is looking at that. But as an idea, it's just an order of magnitude more than we're doing. Because what we're doing is trying to get people to care about what we think is one of the most important issues. In the world, water, right? It's the most basic block of human life.

You are dead without water in a few days. Dirty water is what's killing thousands and thousands of kids every single day around the world. So for us, it is growing the movement, getting people to care about this, and then raising the capital to deliver the cure. And that's the thing about the issue. Like, we know how to bring clean water to 700 million people. Full stop. We could literally bring every single human being alive on planet Earth clean water. We are not scratching our head looking for the solution. There are plenty of problems we do not yet have a cure for. I have a, a family member with Parkinson's. They don't know how to, to solve Parkinson's. My mom died of pancreatic cancer. It was a couple months from diagnosis to death. Doctors had no idea how to help her. We found the cure for water hundreds of years ago. We just haven't implemented it. So I think that is the animating idea of a whole lot more should be done at any given moment than we are currently doing. And asking the question, how can we do 10 or 100 times more?

One, I love that you came here ready. You're ready. I love that.

Okay.

Like you're no messing around.

I feel like the times before we kind of wandered our way into it. We got some good stuff at this time. You're like, we don't have any time for that.

I have no time for that. I love it.

Honestly, I do. I really, really do. The other thing that's evident, and you have shown this, I think, for a while, and you already have gotten into it today, storytelling is critical to your success because you're talking about things that don't impact a ton of Americans where we live. You and I live in America. It doesn't impact us on a day-to-day basis. We don't feel it, right? We don't feel it living our lives.

Yeah. Ryan, said another way, I tell my team, zero people woke up in the world today, walked over to their refrigerator, pressed that lever and got their cold filtered water out. Maybe glanced at their pool in the backyard, went to work, right? They took their shower, brushed their teeth and said, my gosh, I'm so grateful for this clean water that I was born into and have experienced my entire human life. Let me go find a water charity so that I can provide that for others. Like, zero people come to us. Zero, right? We have to go find them with the story, like you said. Now, when I put it like that, right? And when I talk about all the problems that would come if you didn't have clean water, or ask you to consider your life, or what it would be like as a mom who's going from breastfeeding to killing your child, poisoning your child. With the available water in your village, which is a swamp or a brown viscous river, right? If I talk to you about your teenage girl who just got her period for the first time and now has to stay home from school 4 to 5 days every month because there's no water at the school, there's no toilet at the school.

Oh, and by the way, you know, now she's of the age to start walking for water and it's 6 hours away round trip. We can bring people into this issue and get them to care. But no one finds us. No one's coming to us. No one's like, I need this product. I need the product, which is me being generous and providing clean water for 700 million people over there.

You use storytelling very effectively. You use technology very effectively to get this message spread. What are some of the ways you do that? I mean, also the visuals even on your website are they're heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time, I guess I would say. Let's talk about using technology to make people aware of this, because as you just said, they don't feel this. Most of the people that are donating do not feel it personally, so they have to feel it in another way. And I feel like you and your team are good at helping people actually feel it through your use of storytelling and technology.

Well, I'm a visual learner. So you could tell me something and you can show me something and I'm just gonna understand it better if you show me. I also was a photographer, so my experience, you know, coming into this was volunteering as a photojournalist, uh, on a humanitarian medical mission in Africa for a couple years before I started Charity:water. So that's actually when I saw the problem for the first time. So I kind of think in pictures or in moving images, and that's just been the language that is our DNA. If I give a 45-minute keynote, I will show over 210 photos, which sounds just overwhelming, but it's not a PowerPoint. I'm not putting up facts or bullet points. You know, it's a single picture and I'm saying something about that picture, or it's a series of 9 pictures over a 9-day span, you know, where a little girl goes from dirty water to clean water at the very end. So I think that has always been, you know, the language of Charity:water. When I started 20 years ago, there was no Apple of charities. There was no Nike of charities. There was no Virgin.

You know, charity websites were bad. They were animated blinking GIFs. You know, they expected people to download 200-page PDFs and look at clinical study. Yeah, it was just, it wasn't the language that was inspiring people. It wasn't imaginative. It wasn't creative. It wasn't using great design. There was almost a poverty mentality when it came to design. You know, our website can't look too nice. Donors might think that, I don't know, we have good taste. We've recruited the best designers in the world to go work for a purpose. So that's what we tried to do is demonstrate good taste, elegant design, and then recruit the best designers in the world to come work on a cause that really mattered. Technology. We love being early adopters of technology and always asking the question, how can this new technology help further our mission? A lot of that has helped us further the storytelling mission. So I dunno if you call this a technology, but when social media first came, wow, a way to talk to a lot of people for free. And we were the first charity to use Instagram, Ryan, and I think we were probably putting those cheesy filters.

Know, on our photos like everybody was and, you know, experimenting with those filters. I should go back and look at our first Instagram posts. I'm sure they're terrible, right? We were the first charity to get a million Twitter followers because we just realized this is an amazing new platform where we can spread our message without having to put a stamp on an envelope and send a piece of paper or turn up in front of an audience. I'll never forget virtual reality when it first came on the scene many years ago. Do you remember Google Cardboard? And, uh, it was the Samsung Gear VR, which was basically like a magnifying glass that you would slot in a phone. Yeah. Well, I saw Marriott make an early film and I was at some like trade show and I put on the headset and the next thing I know I'm in Dubai and I'm in the Marriott penthouse and I'm like, Well, if Marriott can take me to Dubai, I could take my donors into the heart of Ethiopia, into the heart of our problem and our solution. And, uh, at the time there were no proper VR cameras, so we got 8 GoPros donated and we got a guy called Chris Milk to build us a 360 rig.

And then we went to Ethiopia and we shot this sincere, beautiful film of a 13-year-old girl named Salam who had just lost Her mother, and you put on the headset and you are in the swamp. You are watching her get fecally contaminated water next to the animals. And then a couple days on in this film, you see this drilling rig come into her village and you watch her father pick her up and start dancing as they have tears in their eyes. And you watch them strike water and you watch the water gush into the sky. As hundreds of people are celebrating and clapping. And then on the final day, you watch her walk down to this well and start pumping and drink clean water for the first time in her life. So we were just so early that we got thousands and thousands of people to see the film 'cause they just wanted to see VR. Yeah. They were interested in the technology and the first film they ever saw was an 8-minute film of a 13-year-old girl in Ethiopia. We actually did the largest kind of one-time synchronized viewing at the Met Museum at one of our galas.

We served them dinner and then instead of dessert, we've served 400 VR headsets and everybody put on a headset and we press play. 8 minutes later, people are, are weeping. They're moved. They just said, all right, now give money. Let's make this happen for another 100 villages. So whatever the technology was, whether it comes to our sensors, when Nest came out, I remember the early internet of things, seeing a donor control the temperature of their vacation home from their phone. I'm like, well, if a donor can control the air conditioning in Montana from New York, why can't we know that a well in Malawi or in Bangladesh is pumping water 5 or 7 or 10 years afterwards? So that led us down this whole path of creating remote sensors and cloud connecting many of our water projects. So that we would know the ongoing functionality. So that's how we see technology is how can we use it? How can we harness it for good? And then experiment. I'll give you just one more example, 'cause this goes to a core value of transparency in the organization. We were trying to build not only a well-designed charity, but speak to the objector and the cynic.

42% of Americans don't trust charities, and 70% of Americans believe charities waste their donations. That was the data when we started. So I thought, what would make people trust? And the biggest problem was really simple, Ryan. It was that they just didn't know where their money went. Mm-hmm. Like, if I give money to a charity, how much will actually reach the intended mission? And we just had this idea of splitting the bank accounts, creating one bank account where 100% of the public's money would only go to deliver these life-saving water projects. And in the other bank account, we'd raise the nasty overhead separately from entrepreneurs and business leaders and people who didn't mind paying for staff salaries and office rent and those important operational costs. So we had a church and state, and then we kind of realized, all right, money's not fungible now. So why don't we build technology to track every single donation and show people where their money went? So if a 6-year-old girl sent in $8.15 of her lemonade money, we could show her the village where $8.15 went and how much that water project costs. Let's say $11,219. And who else she shared that project with.

So we were the first charity, for example, to use Google Earth and geolocate every single completed charity:water project on Google Earth, and then later Google Maps. This looked like going to Best Buy and buying yellow Garmin handheld GPS devices, sending them to all of our partners and saying, when you build a water project, press power, take a picture of the water project, take a picture of the GPS reading on this handheld device and send it to us. And we will manually upload this to Google Earth and then send it to the donor. So I would have so many examples of, of how I, I hope we've, we've used technology to further the mission of transparency and to build donor trust.

I would have to believe that charities and nonprofits all around the world listen to you, do what you do, and are begging you to help them. How do you manage probably all of the requests from those people? I mean, that's what I would do if I was—

you'd be surprised. My wife actually has an organization called Mission Critical. Where she was our creative director for the first 10 years and she coaches nonprofits. I don't really hang out with nonprofits. I help her once a year and kind of do a summit with her, but I don't really have many nonprofit peers. I'm trying to get inspired by people who are entrepreneurs who are scaling companies. Most of my relationships or mentors or friendships are in the for-profit world. Yeah. Your timing on this is so funny. I spoke at a big nonprofit gathering in Atlanta last Tuesday, and there were 500 nonprofit leaders there. And I said to the organizers, I'm like, I think this is the second time I've done this in 20 years. And he kept thinking I was kidding. And then he wrote me and he goes, after you said that the third time, I realized you weren't kidding. And I'm like, well, I just don't get invited to speak at these things because I don't hang out in those circles.

That makes no sense to me.

It's the first person.

You were literally the first person I would call. I don't have a nonprofit or a charity, but I don't think there's that many gatherings either.

I don't know. Does that mean I just mean like emails?

Hey Scott, can I pick your brain type things that can be annoying, but you're a good dude.

You're trying to help.

No, I, I think what I'm trying to say is it is to me, I feel like you're obsessed and I think obsession is beautiful. I love people who are obsessed with what they're doing. They're into it, not in an unhealthy way, but this healthy obsession with the mission. And I was just talking to Jesse Cole of Savannah Bananas about this. I've talked to other senior leaders, founders, CEOs about obsession. And this seems to be a commonality among the ones who are sustaining excellence is this level of obsession. How do you feel when I say that?

Uh, it doesn't bother me. I think that's an accurate characterization. You know, I think obsession is normally framed in the negative to an unhealthy degree or extent. I am obsessed with getting everybody access to clean water. And when I started, the goal was not to help a million people or 20 million people or 100 million people. It was to solve a problem for the planet. It was to, right or wrong, it's crazy that we live in a world of abundance and resources and wealth and technology. And yet 10% of people, because they were born in the wrong place, don't have their most basic need for human life met. And that's the mission. The obsession will end when the, the mission is complete, when everybody has access to clean water. So relentless pursuit. I don't know. I probably, I don't think I've ever called myself obsessed, but it feels to me like you are.

And I mean, that is as big of a compliment as I can give.

Yeah, I think I'm also really interested in untapping generosity. So I've been learning more about artesian wells recently. So normally when we if we are drilling a well, and we have 13 technologies now, so that's one of 13 technologies, but you know, often when we drill, you know, you gotta pump the water out. So you, you reach an aquifer, but then you've gotta either put in a hand pump or a solar-powered pump. You gotta get the water out of the ground and move it. But there's this kind of class of wells, artesian wells, like you pop a hole in and it just gushes out. It literally is under so much pressure. And I think One of the things I've been interested in even more recently is just the idea of encouraging people to be generous and tapping into kind of that, that well of goodness, the well of sharing, the well of compassion. A lot of people are cynical, right? You know, I hear people say, ah, people are just selfish. They just want to buy the next watch, the next car. They want to keep up with their neighbor and have a slightly bigger house and a little better vacation.

Generosity, I think to some people feels like it's just been disappearing from the world. And, um, you know, there's fear and anxiety and consumerism and distraction and scarcity and like loneliness, like all this stuff coming at us. But I really believe that trapped deep inside all of us, like we want to be generous. We want to use our resources, our time and our talent and our money to repair the world, to end needless suffering.. And, you know, sometimes it's just so much, uh, you gotta drill really deep to do that. So I think that's almost become a secondary mission. And, and actually the two missions are related because when you can tap into that, then I get more people access to clean water. And I've had these, you know, extraordinary moments. I remember asking, uh, a donor once for, for just a huge gift, Ryan, like a, a massive gift. And they said, why'd you ask for so little? And then they gave 4 times the massive gift that I asked for. And, you know, I've really been reflecting on that as we turn 20 years. I think I have done a version of asking for too little for 2 decades.

You know, that might be my new obsession over the next 10 years is just figuring out how to unlock that. And what that unlock is. And I think it's different for different people, but so many people, it's not flowing, you know, it is trapped like this, this latent potential to be unselfish, to care about others. For those of you that know anything about my story, like I was that guy. I was like the nightclub promoter running around 40 clubs doing drugs, chasing girls, chasing watches and cars and Fashion Week and like You know, I gave nothing to anyone for 10 years, right? I built so many layers of rock and I was miserable. I was the most selfish, morally bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt person that I knew because there is never enough. Somebody always had a little more, you know, there was never going to be a finish line where I had achieved enough markers of success because someone always had a few more of those. So I was very lucky to have that moment where something got through and, you know, was able to change direction. And the last 20 years of my life have been very different than, you know, the first 10 years of my career.

Thinking of how good it feels to give, whether it's to charity, to somebody else, give your time, treasure, talent, right? What's it like in the room when you have these galas and they're, everybody's in there, maybe they're, they're the virtual reality glasses back in the day or whatever you do that version of that today. And people are giving. To me, I haven't been there, but it feels like it would be just joyous and fun and a party.

I don't know.

And you as the guy running the show with all that, I mean, what is the vibe of that room?

The vibe is the moment when the drill finds water and they flush the well into the sky and 300 people look up and see it rain. I know that everything will be different. I actually did a gala like that where we hired people from LucasArts, and at the moment that the rig did hit water, we blasted a water cannon and it felt like rain over 350 people in black tie to create that. And that was, that was one of the most special kind of jump the shark, uh, charity water gala moments, uh, ever. But yeah, I think, you know, when, when generosity breaks through, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't just change the recipient, the person or the community or the 100 communities we're trying to get clean water to. It really changes the giver. And it's really fun to see that. I remember, uh, a guy saw me speak once and he was about to go buy a car and he wound up giving like $50 grand to Cherry Water. And he said, I went out and bought a Toyota Camry instead of the car that I was going to buy. I thought 5 communities with clean water.

Would be better. Like, what a cool story. I don't know how he felt a year later, but every time he's driving that Toyota, I hope he realized that 5 communities, over 1,000 people are now drinking clean water because he didn't buy that fancy sports car and he just bought a functional car. Uh, so I've seen so many of those stories that move me, that move our community. And just enrich donors' lives, almost set them on a, on a different path.

We talked about this before, but I want to get an updated— your updated thoughts. The importance of valuing excellence, the importance of having really high standards. I love being around, having conversations with, being friends with people who really value excellence.

Yeah.

It's one of your core values. I know. What does excellence mean to you and the importance of actually valuing excellence in your pursuit of it?

Yeah, it's funny. I, um, excellence is actually one of the core values of the organization. Uh, if we go all the way back to when we started, I think it was obviously integrity, which was really important. We're trying to rebuild trust. It was respect, respect of our donors, respect of our beneficiaries. It was innovation. Generosity was one passion, and then excellence was the last one. And just so much work is done without care. It's done sloppily. Maybe it was just the problem I was trying to solve. It felt like there was almost a poverty mentality often when it came to doing work that was adjacent to people in need. And, you know, I thought we would need the most excellent brand to achieve this noble mission of getting everybody the clean water. We would need to use technology in the most exceptional, excellent way. So it was all about achieving the mission. And, you know, as my 11-year-old says, like, nobody wants to be mid, you know, and there's a lot of mid out there. So I didn't wanna be mid, you know, I wanted us to be extraordinary.

Also, I like people who are detail-oriented. I think exceptional leaders they value details, including something like, I think you even said everything must be designed. If it's the fax cover sheet, it's got to be designed. If it's the internal PowerPoint, it's designed. External, of course, it's designed.

We design everything.

Yeah.

The importance.

Talk to me about this. The importance, because I think I love this personally because it shows that you care. And I love people who care. And I think great leaders care? What about this importance of design?

I mean, listen, I think, let's say you're going out on a date. Does your physical appearance matter?

Yes.

Do you want to be showered and not have food in your beard and like have a pressed shirt to make a good first impression? I mean, that's, we're always dating. We're out there, you know, saying, hey, would you consider investing in our charity? Would you consider investing in our mission? Uh, would you consider partnering with us and giving your hard-earned money to our organization? So I think physical appearance matters in the package, the website, the app, you know, everything that we do. You could have a really interesting message, but if it comes in an ugly package, you're just at a disadvantage. So I think it's just kind of so basic. And we're also inspired by good design. We're inspired by creativity. I was recently in Denmark for work and I had my two older kids with me. I'm lucky enough to have met Bjarke Ingels, my favorite architect, at a bunch of conferences. And I just like texted, I said, can I get my kids a tour of the studio? And you know, they walk in and they're 9 and 8 and 10 at this point, and they're just like in awe of this amazing architectural studio and like doors that you walk up to that magically slide and reveal, you know, like mystery.

I was just, secret rooms and bookshelves. And so I think we're just inspired. We want to, you know, we wanna spend time with those people. We want to be connected to those organizations. We want to use those products that are designed with excellence and are well designed and are thoughtfully designed. And I think part of that, it just has to do with like who I am. I'm inspired by design. Yeah. A lot of nonprofits, uh, are run by academics and there's nothing wrong with that. But I would say they need to partner with someone who values design, has great taste, knows how to get that great design into the world. But I think sometimes the value of great design is lost in the nonprofit sector.

Well, you have to move people. You have to work, understand the importance of emotion. And I think so much of what you do could apply to leadership regardless, nonprofit, charity, running a business. I don't have a ton of nonprofit or charity organizers on the show, but one, I love the juice and the passion and joy that you have for yours, as well as I think there's so much application regardless of what you're doing. Is it almost doesn't matter. It's show up with care and love and valuing excellence. Those are portable lessons regardless of what you're doing. It's not about vanity or caring too much about how you look. It's understanding the mission and how that element serves the ultimate mission of we're trying to raise money to give clean drinking water. And I think, again, that could be applicable regardless of what you're trying to do as a leader.

Well, that's right. And, and, you know, my wife, again, she has more experience coaching nonprofits now, but so many of these nonprofit leaders, they care so much about the beneficiary and the donor is a means to the end. And, you know, she'll say to them, if you gave half as much care and thought into the experience, the products that you are delivering to a donor as you did for the beneficiary you're trying to serve, you'd double your organization. You'd triple your organization, right? So sometimes it's just that paradigm shift that a lot of people in the nonprofit sector, the customer is the woman in the homeless shelter, the person without water, the person who's going hungry. And really creating an unbelievably thoughtful, careful experience for their donor can allow you to serve 10 times as many people, you know, 20 times as many people, you know, unreasonable hospitality. Will Goodera is a good friend. We just did an event together a couple weeks ago. I'm inspired by the 3-star Michelin experience of a restaurant. Brian Chesky talks about kind of the, what, the 10-star Airbnb, like this kind of hyperbole in If a Michelin star restaurant is thinking so carefully about people having a meal, why shouldn't I think so carefully about a donor who can save a million lives or a hundred lives?

It falls on us to do it even more, but often I think that's lacking. So I think we've gotten that in our DNA early on is trying to design thoughtful, careful, high integrity. Soulful experiences for our donors to allow them to maybe even surprise themselves with how generous they were. I'll tell you a conversation I had years ago. I was, I was going to make the biggest ask of my career. It was an 8-figure ask. First time I'd ever asked anyone for 8 figures. And, uh, I was, I was flying out to, uh, Hawaii and I stopped in San Francisco and I'm sitting with this partner at Goldman Sachs. I'd never met him before. And we're having a coffee at the Battery in San Francisco. And I said, hey, so I'm sure you have been asked for a lot of money, you know, across your career. You're probably getting hit up all the time by guys like me. I'm gonna ask somebody for a lot of money. I said, when people come and they ask you for a lot more, maybe a lot more than you thought they were gonna ask you for, how does it make you feel?

And he said one word that changed my paradigm. And had I heard this word earlier, I probably would've raised another billion dollars. Now I think the word is a version of irritated, offended, annoyed, some version of put off, right? And he said, I feel flattered that they think I would be that generous. Hmm. And he said, sometimes I go home and I talk to my wife and I say, why aren't we that generous? We could be that generous. When you try to bake that idea of, wow, I get to flatter people by inviting them into something that is a little greater than maybe their par for the course, that, that is, that is exponentially greater, that, right? So I really think about that side of the experience and how we are really serving our donors and our volunteers. And our team members, as well as the 700 million people I'm trying to get clean water to.

Excellent leaders, the ones who put a positive dent in the world like you're doing. One of the things they have in common, and this is, comes from Dan Pink's work, which you and I have talked about before, is that they are excellent sales professionals. And when I say that, sometimes people cringe or they don't like that. They don't like being called that. They think it's a bad word. And I, 100% disagree. I think being an excellent salesperson is what moves the world, our economy. The whole world would come to a screeching halt if sales professionals did not exist. You are an excellent sales professional. Again, it's an incredibly noble profession and very needed, especially when done right and when done well. You just kind of described that. How do you feel? How do you think about this idea of becoming even better as a sales professional, because that's what you need to do in order to serve the mission.

Yeah, I love the idea of becoming better as a salesperson, as the ambassador for the mission, as the unlock, the unlocker of deep wells of generosity. I wanted to affirm what you say. I believe people give to people. Not causes. Mm-hmm. If I think about my wife's and my giving, there are so many charities we have given to, not because we are passionate about that cause, not because we even once thought about that cause, but because somebody, a dynamic leader, a dynamic fundraiser, a dynamic junior volunteer was able to transfer their enthusiasm to us and we're like, we just want to help them. We just want to help them. I have never experienced, you know, some disease I can't even pronounce that afflicts 0.0000001% of the population, but they're passionate about it. Yeah. Let's give them some money to help them achieve their mission. So I absolutely think, and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot that goes into being a, I think, a high integrity salesperson. You have to be authentic. Mm-hmm. You have to be really interested. If I'm meeting with a donor for the first time, I'm probably talking 10% of the time, but I'm genuinely interested.

I'm a genuinely curious person. I want to know their life story. I want to know their ups and their downs. I wanna know about their marriage if they have one, and their kids and their parents and what their childhood was like and what they wanted to be when they grew up and what their biggest gift was and You know, how that happened and how they think about giving and how do they think about legacy and involvement. Like, I'm, I'm just so interested. I'm genuinely interested. I've had people, and I'm sure you have too, they ask questions, they don't wanna know the answers. They just are ready to talk. They just cannot wait to get to the point where they are talking. And we feel that. And that's not someone who's gonna make the sale with a, you know, with a savvy person, right? You know, when I'm training, uh, fundraisers or, or when we're thinking of hiring fundraisers, you know, I'm like, can I imagine having them in my home with my wife and my kids for 2 hours at dinner, and then do I imagine wanting to keep them for another hour? And we've all met people that it's like midnight and you're talking by the fire pit and you're, you're just so interested.

We also met people where you're like looking at the watch, like, okay, all right, when can we end this? And it's, it's the people who genuinely are interested in you, who care about you, who are curious, I think that are the best salespeople or the best fundraisers.

Speaking of hiring, another portable lesson. You've hired people from some of the, the greatest companies in the world to make far less money to come work for you. And that's obviously very impressive. I'm curious because I think this could be helpful for any leader who's hiring. What's the process like for you? What are some of the must-haves? You just mentioned curiosity, being interested in order to be an interesting person, right? It starts with being interested. What's it like like when you're hiring a leader? What are you looking for? What are some of the questions you ask? How does somebody make the cut to become part of your team as a leader?

I think we hired 36 people last year and we had 16,000 applicants. So there, let me just start by saying there are a lot of people who do want to work. Wow. With a purpose, who want their work to be transcendent and really matter. In the world and really benefit others. So sometimes that's almost a problem. You know, there's almost too many. Yeah. How do you, how do you go find, uh, the most qualified? So I think what I look for, I really, I value high integrity. So I'm really trying to figure out, is this someone that tells the truth all the time, even at their own detriment? That's really important because again, the mission of Charity: Water is, is not just to get people clean water. It is to rebuild trust. It is to deepen meaningful relationships with people and move them towards more giving and more generosity. Not, ugh, see, that's why I don't give because, right? I look for humility. People who are humble, they know what they know, they know what they don't know. I look for curiosity and I look for energy. Energy really matters. Enthusiasm, you know, somebody who can get me fired up about pickleball.

About a trip to Patagonia, about, I don't know, a new, you know, a new running shoe, you know, that is better than all the others. You know, it's just kind of, there are people that we are just drawn to because they are excited and positive about any number of things and any number of new things, you know, that we have not yet discussed. And those are the kind of people that you want to be around on an executive team. Those are the people that are inspiring those underneath them, care, respect. There are a lot of qualities I think that are important.

Do you have any favorite questions you like to ask?

I typically like to know their story. I like to hear a life story from kind of the beginning until the present. So if I have time, I'm trying to go as deep as possible and just understand who they are, what they've been through, what they've learned. You know, listen, you're, I mean, how many people have you interviewed? You know, this is, this is, you know, this, you get a real sense of a person. By kind of starting at the beginning, and they start to make sense when you take the whole life as a picture, you know, their experience to this moment. I don't know that it's one question, it's probably 20 questions.

Part of that too is I would imagine you want somebody who knows themself, and if you ask somebody to tell you their story and they can't really get there or doesn't make sense, or they haven't thought about that before. To me, that's a little bit of a red flag that they don't know themselves well enough, and that could then lead to them not being that humble or not being that curious. Or I don't know about integrity, who knows? But I think being thoughtful and reflective so that they could show up intentional and have a passion for something, I think that would come by hearing that story told well. I don't expect them to be professionals or be perfect when it comes to storytelling, but I do think if somebody has really thought that through, that they could probably share effectively in a way that's gonna lead to, yeah, 100 more follow-up questions based on what they say.

Yeah, I like that. And I think also vulnerability. We all appreciate people who are willing to be vulnerable or, or actually tell their story. Yeah. And there's some people that I think are, are locked boxes. Yeah, you know, they don't make the best dinner guests. The best dinner guests are people who, who really are a little more open-handed about their ups, their downs, their failures. Whenever we've had an interaction with someone who tells us maybe about a big life event they've had or how they've failed, we're immediately endeared to them. We're literally like, wow, how can I help you? You're at a dark time. You're starting over. Your life at this moment? You went through a divorce, you went through a loss, you lost a job, you blew up your company because you got too far. Like, how can we help you? We normally lean in to transparency, to vulnerability, as long as it's authentic. If it's manipulative, we sniff that out. Yeah.

I don't know if you realize this. So one of my favorite guests and most polarizing guests, also most listened to guests that I've had 3 or 4 times is Scott Galloway. Yeah. And I listen to a lot of his podcasts too. He's great. And I feel like he brings you up as much when he's talking about being a great man, cuz he talks about being a great man a lot. He says Scott Harrison as much as any guy I've heard him say over the last few years of this is what it means to be a great man. And I, that's really cool. You know, that's just, it's unprompted. It's just right in the top of his head. I don't know if you've heard him do that. He's probably told you that personally, but How does that make you feel?

That's cool. Scott and I, I, I think Scott saw the whole arc. Scott saw me at the very beginning. We shared a little office, 1,500 square feet. I was trying to build Charity:water. He was sitting like at this crappy office next to me. He was working on a different project and he knew me from the nightclub days. So there's a lot more there, Ryan. He knew me as the guy spraying champagne, selling him bottles of vodka in my clubs. I didn't know that part at all. And then he kind of saw me go away and come back changed. And then he saw me building Charity:water. I think he worked next to me for 6 or 8 weeks and he saw this kid trying to build something. So, you know, he's gotten kind of a 30-year view of me and glimpses along the way. So that makes me feel great because, you know, it's a, it's a 30-year picture. And if he comes out believing that, then long obedience in the same direction, I guess.

Thinking about what's next, your team was telling me about this experience lab in Nashville.

Yeah, I'm actually in it right now.

Are you really?

Out 'cause we have tours going on.

So what is this?

Tell me about it. So I built a retail store. Oh, it's so cool. Okay. In the vein of Color Factory or Meow Wolf or the Ice Cream Experience, I wanted to build an Apple Store for Charity:water where people would give us 60 minutes of their time and we would take them through a rollercoaster ride of emotions. We would immerse them in the problem. And we would hit them so hard with the reality of what 10% of the world faces every day. I would create a 100-degree heated room covered in LED screens with a custom treadmill, and I would ask them to pick up a 40-pound vessel of water and walk behind a 12-year-old as she walks. I would create a lab where, uh, people would look at dirty water under microscopes and they would see, they would learn about the 28 diseases that are caused by drinking dirty water. They would see parasites and microorganisms. Uh, I wanted to, uh, create kind of a tactical solutions area where people could learn about wells and springs and biosand filters and rainwater harvesting. Uh, and then I wanted to kind of redo the VR film that would culminate, uh, the end of the experience and put them in the middle of the moment.

Where the girl they just saw drinking dirty water, the girl they just walked behind, and her sister, 12 and 14-year-old girls, get clean water for the first time. And then I would exit them through the give shop, not the gift shop, and we would ask 'em to respond and to give. And if they did, they could pump this well. They would flood a digital cube as children sang as they got clean water, uh, the first time. So we built it, we built it in the Nashville area. We've been open for 1 year. We've had 10,000 visitors and the visitors have contributed $3.9 million so far to the work of Charity Water. What's amazing is that 53% of the people who come through the experience donate. So, you know, I don't know if my conversion is online, but it's probably like 0.000 something, you know, if I send out an email. Wow. So that's been really cool. So it's kind of a high touch. Bespoke, thoughtful experience. There are groups of 12 that go through every hour. You have a tour guide with you at every station. You can ask questions. And then at the end, you know, he or she just says, if you'd like to contribute here, the different ways that you can contribute.

We had a guy this weekend was in this place. It's called The Factory. So it's sort of like a Chelsea Market type place just outside of Nashville for the New Yorkers, Chelsea Market. And he looked up at the cube and he saw our advertisement, you know, come up free exhibition. And he walks through and at the end, he just gives $20,000 to help two villages get clean water. So 500 lives changed through a 60-minute tour, uh, with a man and his 13-year-old son. They had never heard of us before, never really considered this issue, but came through, were moved, and could swipe their card. Wow.

Wow. How did you come up with that idea?

I'd been to some of these immersive experiences. And if you could do it for color, if you could do it for ice cream, you know, why not do it for water? And why not do it with a purpose? And most nonprofit exhibitions, they set up a version of an, of a refugee camp. So it's, I don't wanna say poverty porn, but it's a little bit of like, look how the poor are living. And wouldn't it suck if this was your home? Wouldn't it suck if this was your stove, you know, and you had soot on the roof? All true, but kind of a downer. Yeah. You know, and hey, would you sponsor a child at the end? And it works. But again, I wanted to build an Apple Store, you know, where you walk by and say, what is that? So at our entrance, we have holographic boxes with 35 living portraits from this village in Uganda. And most people have never seen giant holographic boxes before. So they're drawn in not because they were looking to go do anything with a charity or a charity store or exhibition, but wow, that technology looks really cool.

I haven't seen that before. So we'll drop it in the show notes. People can see the trailer and, uh, and, and see some of the images, but I want to come see it next time I'm in Nashville. Yeah, it looks very, very different than what you would expect a charity would ever do. So it's, it's context shifting. The technology gets 'em in, but then we deliver a deeply soulful, emotional, visual story. Visual, sound, heat. Your whole body is engaged. Wow.

I can't wait to see it next time I'm down in Nashville. I was just there. I wish I would've known. I will let you know. I definitely go. One more question. This is called from Jason Gaynor, the champagne question. You don't have to have champagne, but a year from now, exactly one year from now, you are with the people you love the most and you're celebrating like crazy. Some would be popping bottles, right? What are you celebrating?

Someone has stepped up and made a billion-dollar commitment.

Billion.

To clean water. Charity:water, the water sector at large doesn't have a single billionaire, a single major patron. No one has said, this is my problem to solve. No one with real money. Has said, I'm going to try to come alongside Charity: Water and the 30 other great organizations that we're all working together. We have people who've picked climate, we have people who've picked malaria, a lot of other issues out there, but nobody's picked water. So that would be the celebration that one person has said, my gosh, like, how is it possible? No one is, no major philanthropist has picked water before. I mean, Republicans and Democrats would think water is a good idea. People of faith and atheists. I mean, water for humans. Everybody's going to think I'm like a genius because by providing clean water, I'm providing health, I'm improving education, I'm giving women and girls time back in their day so that they can lead their communities and start small businesses and on and on and on. So that would be, that would be the big win.

You got any in the pipeline that you've been talking to?

I mean, Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I promise you I'm gonna check back in a year. Okay. Okay. I promise I, I'm going to, I'm keeping track.

Even more exciting though, Ryan, is, is really the movement. I mean, that is a big goal. Yeah. That's kind of the, you know, the big audacious goal because the money is there. Right? Yep. So I think it's like, it's to that earlier conversation of just not asking for enough.

Yeah.

Because for somebody, you know, they could give a million. Or they could give $10 million, or they could also give $1 billion. Mm-hmm. You know, over a period of time and just make a, an exponentially bigger dent. What I really love though is, is the everyday givers, the $20 a month, the family, the 11-year-old kid who came through on a tour here and he took one of our yellow piggy banks and he came back 3 months later with $10,000 in the piggy bank. He told his parents he was gonna do a whole village. They didn't believe him. They're like, why don't you set a realistic goal? And he went knocking on doors and he said, I think people should have clean water. My name is so-and-so. I'm 11 years old. I'd like you to help. And he came back with $10,000. That actually fires me up. Yeah. That is, that is worth celebrating because it's a life changed. He will go on to do great things to inspire others. He will unlock so much inspiration and generosity in others and make the world a better place. So I kind of like, it's almost like the barbell.

I'm really excited about the widow's mite and it'd be really cool to get, you know, a transformational person involved who could just move the needle on the whole sector.

Man, if anyone's going to do it, it's going to be you. Uh, where would you send people to learn more about all of this so they can, uh, the website's so beautiful. Where would you send people so they can, they can be a part of this?

People can go to charitywater.org, but go to thespring.com and we've got a 19-minute video there that's gotten over 150 million views. That's my 200 slides and images, and it's a lot of the— you can see it. So thespring.com, if you scroll down a little bit, there's a video. And it's a great way to engage with us. It's a great way just to share Charity: Water with your friends.

Love it, man. Thanks so much, dude. I appreciate this.

Thanks for having me back. This is so fun.

Two things. Definitely want to come down and see it in Nashville, as well as make sure we shrink the gap between next time we record again together. So thanks so much, man.

I always, always enjoy this, man. Thanks for having me.

It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, ryan@learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Scott Harrison. A few takeaways from my notes: design is a leadership statement. The quality of your materials, internal and/or external. They signal what you believe about excellence. Think about what you wear on a first date. Appearance matters. It shows that you care. Scott holds Charity:water to this standard on everything from fax cover sheets to fundraising decks. Design matters. And then ask bigger. How about that Goldman Sachs partner that told Scott that major donors feel flattered by large requests, not annoyed by them. Too many of us are thinking too small, and because of that, we are leaving both money and impact on the table. We need to think bigger. Then the experience you create matters as much as the mission. Charity:Water's Nashville Experience Lab converts 53% of visitors into donors. Now that number exists because Scott obsesses over how people feel, not just what they learn. Design the experience more so than just the message. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Scott Harrison.

I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you can And you do that and you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rate it, hopefully 5 stars, write a thoughtful review. Because you do all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon.

Can't wait.