i'm emotionally bankrupt i'm morally

bankrupt and this is not how i'd want it

to end

the founder and ceo of charity water

making a difference all over the world a

new york times bestseller he's a

certifiable badass and his name is scott

harrison the lifestyle of a promoter is

one where you get lots of attention the

fun i had for 10 years in nightlife was

a lot of cocaine mdma 40 to 60

cigarettes a day fun i realized what if

i did die

what would i have to show for life so

that started a process

10

of the world is drinking dirty water

and i realized so many of my friends

didn't trust charities where does the

money really go so i had a very simple

idea promised the public that a hundred

percent of anything they would ever give

to charity water would go directly to

help people get clean water you know

nobody thought this business model was a

good idea and i was hitting a point

where i realized maybe they're right we

about to go out and build a hundred

wells and we're about to miss payroll

there's no miracle that can save us

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

dire river ceo usa edition i hope

nobody's listening but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

[Music]

scott

four years

old do you still remember

the day your mother collapsed

i don't

you don't i don't

when i read through your story that was

a pretty significant um sort of

catalystic 1980 right new year's day 19

1980

tell me about that day that week

we had just moved into a new house

my dad wanted to get closer to his job

we moved into this house in the dead of

winter and

we all started experiencing some health

symptoms

headaches and

you know fatigue

and you know nobody really knew what was

going on i think my dad you know had a

couple people come and just check to

make sure that the house was fine he

probably checked the radon or

you know maybe asbestos i'm not sure

and then on 19 uh new year's day 1980 my

mom

according to her and my father walked

across the master bedroom and then

collapsed unconscious both of them uh

she did

and so she was the canary in the coal

mine you know that then led to

uh eventually

a discovery of a carbon monoxide gas

leak in the house there was a faulty

heat exchanger that had been leaking

carbon monoxide

she had been 24 7 in the house unpacking

boxes from the move you know putting

pictures up on the wall my dad had been

working i'd been at school

so we were you know we were spending the

evenings in the house but not 24 7.

and

blood tests revealed these massive

amounts of carbon monoxide in her

bloodstream

and that was really the day that

everything changed for for our family

uh mom never recovered from that you

know my dad and i both did but her life

was irreparably damaged from that point

on

her immune system

just kind of fully shut down

in its ability to process any chemicals

so anything that was unnatural

to give you an example

perfume would make her violently ill if

she smelled perfume

soap

would make her sick car fumes like

kryptonite

would make her sick

so over the next you know

period of years we would

come up with hacks for all this stuff

um the hack for her living space

eventually was a bedroom upstairs in the

house sorry it was a bathroom upstairs

in the house near the bed the bedroom

and the bathroom was washed down with a

special soap that didn't smell it was

completely hypoallergenic

the uh door

the wooden door that had a stain on it

was then covered in sheets of aluminum

foil to keep that stain smelling she

would sleep on an army cot that my dad

had found somewhere that was washed in

baking soda more than 10 times

so there'd be no odor

and then my mom wore a mask her whole

life

so

i

you know rarely saw my mother's face

because she was wearing a an n95 or or

similar version

now

i see your face there are some people

that are like i think this one was just

crazy

right i mean there was an element

growing up of

wondering

of some level of doubt

you know

is this real

um

you know the massive amounts of carbon

monoxide were certainly real and

discovered by the doctors in her body

but

where all of these symptoms hypertension

um

headaches you know a lot of the stuff

you couldn't really see there were

things where she would break out in

terrible rashes and that was very real

but i do remember growing up with that

you know that that edge of

a little bit of doubt sometimes come

from that town from others i think i

mean nobody knew how to process someone

who's allergic to the world

and so among the things that made mom

sick also radio waves telephones

and

tv

so as a young teenager you know i'm

thinking mom is just trying to rain on

my parade we can't have a tv

but i just didn't believe that invisible

electromagnetic waves

were gonna make her that sick

so i remember one night when she had you

know gone to bed i snuck up to the

hallway and i took a boom box and i

turned the radio on with the sound all

the way down and i aimed it through the

door

which it did follow on the inside right

and

you know effectively trying an

experiment to say well if she doesn't

know the radio is on

well she's going to be fine

and she woke up the next morning very

sick

really

so i remember as a kid

for me that was

a big defining moment of you know mom's

telling the truth

and

unfortunately radio waves

affect her and give her symptoms

how can you develop a relationship with

your mother when she's trapped in a room

alone behind tinfoil and

wearing gloves how do you have affection

and

yeah well there wasn't a lot of touch

um

because i wasn't you know i wasn't

really allowed to touch her i would

always be

smelling of something from the outside

world it was a weird childhood i was an

only child because family planning

stopped after the accident

and i just remember

a lot of caregiving helping my mom doing

cooking doing cleaning

uh helping my dad out

with her and trying to be a cheerful

companion i would try to cheer her up i

would play piano outside her

you know like play a keyboard outside

her her door

i had a gentleman sit here the other day

that used to coach kobe bryant and he

talked about this concept of having a

dark side

and he his dark side is quite graphic

but he refers to the dark side as a

concept where things that happen in our

early years end up being both

destructive and constructive

so and they when i sit here with people

that are anomalies you tend to find

these stories because so they had some

kind of anomalous upbringing which led

to them being an anomaly in their early

years for better or for worse when you

reflect on your shall i call it dark

side yeah

i think it's anger

and i've been able to make that anger

useful

by you know for the last

what 17 years you know fighting against

people suffering in needless poverty or

you know specifically people without

access to clean water but

that's probably the darkest side that i

have is

you know i can lose my temper

you know i can

i can get angry

quick

i've i've gotten really

good over the years at

trying to harness that in in a really

constructive way

the the you know the angst maybe you

know maybe it's not even as much anger

um as just the the discontent

with

the way things are

and the the willingness to fight to make

them the way they should be

is that it just con content with the

external world and the and your internal

world so like your life and the what the

situation you find the world in i am not

naturally reflective uh it was it was a

really difficult journey for me to go

back into childhood to write the book

and kind of go back into you know some

really dark years

um of of addiction and

and uh you know well just kind of

decadent advice

it wasn't really fun growing up

and

you know i think now i'm a parent of of

two kids and i'm 46 years old and as i

think about

the childhood i want to give my kids i

actually think i'm over compensating for

fun my wife and i were just talking

about this the other day

you know it is all experience you know

it's let's go

do roller coasters 50 times you know

it's let's jump on a plane and you know

go to niagara falls why let's have all

of these experiences because i think i'm

making up for my lost childhood

you know i i want to

i think i i also want to have fun i want

to do the things kind of vicariously

through

my kids

at that age at these young ages that i

never got to do

one of my fears when i come to have kids

is

my dark side will manifest in both ways

it will mean that for example in your

case that because i was deprived of that

childhood i will make sure we did go to

the the theme park all the time but

there's got to be other ways where that

dark side in us dark side is a bit of a

loaded term but that side of us that

formed our greatness or forms our desire

to overcompensate as a parents also has

a adverse impact which might be

overworking or it could be well it could

be too much fun it could be

you know i could wind up with kids who

don't know the value of work

see i learned the value of work growing

up

i was doing yard work i was washing

windows i was cleaning a four bedroom

house i was

you know washing mom's sheets in special

you know baking soda concoctions so one

of the one of the best things i got from

my childhood was

i was needed i was i was performing a

role that was essential to the family

and that's you know that gave me a lot

of confidence

the lifestyle of a promoter which you

went on to become is one where you get

lots of attention from lots of people

you get it from women you also have a

ton of power you also have a ton of

control my brother my oldest brother

actually

his early story sounds has shades

of of the experience you had in terms of

school

and he went on to be a promoter he

actually was a bouncer and a promoter

even though he is maybe this month the

smartest academic person i've ever met

in my life he was a bouncer and a

promoter in a nightclub and works in

nightclubs and i when i fit reflected on

that i think i think much of the reason

is because he was seeking attention and

the way he felt psychologically in those

scenarios was filling some kind of void

he had in his childhood and this is an

assumption i'm making but i i don't know

how far off i am

i mean if you asked me at 19 what i

wanted to do it was open up for you too

i mean our band was gonna be

instantly rich and famous uh and i was

the band's manager and i was booking us

out and so i'm sure if i played that out

it would be look at me

on stage look at this band

a way of feeling validated when did the

band dream

end

very quick very very soon after uh

the

the piece the the connective tissue

there

which eventually led to a ten-year

career in nightclubs in nightlife

was that

when our band would play gigs

it was the promoters that were making

the money

we would bring a lot of people

our

people our friends would pay the cover

to see us

and then the promoter would throw us a

hundred bucks at the end of the night

and say split this five ways right i

wouldn't even pay for gas

let alone a guitar cable you know that

broke or you know an amp that broke

so

i befriended one of the promoters

that had booked the band in the

immediate aftermath of us breaking up

and said take me under your wing and

teach me the ropes

teach me how to be on the other side of

the velvet rope

you know the other side of booking bands

and i jumped into that business at 19

years old now the funny thing is i

wasn't even allowed to be in clubs

and you were by all accounts really

successfully yeah yeah there were there

were probably eight or ten of us that

were at the highest echelon in new york

city what was it about your character

and about you that made you successful

at that

because that is a very specific i was i

was curating fun

i was creating and curating fun my first

experience in new york city was

with with somebody who was courting our

band and he took me to a club called

club usa i had never been inside a

nightclub in my life and here i am with

you know 3 000 people

and this club had a slide and i remember

he took me up to the balcony and

he's like go in the slide

and i remember just you know you go in

this long kind of like tunnel slide and

it dropped you in the dance floor

and i loved it i mean there was just

something so electric something so

illegal

about it coming from my

christian kind of rule-based

worldview and childhood i mean if my

parents had seen me at that club my gosh

it's really interesting through line

between you saying i said why are you

really good at why were you really good

at the nightlife scene and you said

because i'm good at curating fun and

then like five minutes before we were

talking about the fact that you create

fun for your kids are you over indexed

there

you're a superstar and charity water is

you know

we've been called externally i mean it's

a really fun brand

um and you know this is a little bit of

a joke but what are the first three

letters in fundraising

oh yeah okay a lot of charities would

say shame raising oh yeah guilt-raising

let's me make people feel terrible that

they have too much you know let's show

pictures of kids with flies

in africa you know on their face in slow

motion locking sad eyes with the camera

so we we've

very intentionally taken the opposite

view of building the charity water brand

over 15 years and fun is a word in our

culture

do you think fun has such a big

importance for you and your work because

it was something you were deprived of

i think so and i also think now

the kind of fun really matters so the

fun i had for 10 years in nightlife was

a lot of cocaine fun a lot of ecstasy

mdma fun

you know 40 to 60 cigarettes a day fun

uh gambling fun pornography fun strip

club fun

well i'm i'm using fun loosely so it was

a really unhealthy

search

for

fun in those places

which were highly destructive for me

give me the symptoms of highly

destructive

psychologically physically

it all started with smoking

you know it was like the first cigarette

i did everything to such an extreme

like everything kind of with reckless

abandon you know there's really this all

in i mean if i'm not gonna be an

occasional smoker

i'm gonna smoke two to three packs a day

you know i'm not going to be

occasionally sleeping around i'm going

to go and try and sleep with you know

every beautiful girl in new york city so

i was brought up to save myself for

marriage that's like medication isn't it

in a strange way well or playing things

out to their end would be another way

of you know you can't have this thing

okay so i was brought up you can't have

sex

you can't have smoking you can't have

drinking you can't have drugs

i think a part of me really wanted to

make sure that there wasn't happiness at

the end of it

and to really play it through to the end

so

i actually never felt like an addict to

any of these things maybe smoking aside

but i would do cocaine for two or three

years

and then kind of get bored with it and i

would do marijuana like i'm just gonna

smoke and get stoned every single day

and then

no i didn't find what i was looking for

there

okay let me try and gamble let me go to

vegas let me go to atlantic city let me

you know learn craps and blackjack and

poker and

okay i didn't find it there i just got a

lot broker

so i think it was this exploration of

you know i didn't know what i was

looking for

i was trying to fill a hole

and

i needed to make sure that i left no

stone unturned down that path

are there days when you look back and go

that was one of my lowest days then i

know there's probably a sequence of them

i think about my own life there's a

sequence of days i think that was a but

what was the first day where you think

this something's got to change

yeah this is towards the end so maybe

i'm 26 couple years before i got out of

the business and

a typical night would look like a fancy

dinner at 10 o'clock we would then go to

the club that we were promoting at

around 11 45.

we'd stay at the club until three

we'd leave with a group of 20 people

maybe and we'd go to an after hours

and that might last till 11 a.m

after hours is gross

i mean it's only drugs at after hours

and i just remember this one day coming

back from after hours

and i remember looking out the window on

houston street

and people were on their lunch break

you know the people gotten up in the

morning done yoga gone to the gym had a

full like morning at work and now

they're on their lunch breaks and here i

am taking ambien

to come down i remember needing to block

out the light

and taking a comforter that i would duct

tape on the window

so that i could simulate darkness and

then i would sleep till seven o'clock or

eight o'clock and then wake up and do it

all over again

you know it's not like i'm a doctor

who works the er shift right i worked

the night shift i stitched up a bunch of

patients i was really useful

and you know i'm going to bed at noon

because i've i've been a contributing

member to society like i had just gotten

i don't know a thousand people wasted

the night before

and then gotten wasted with my 20

friends

it was a real it was a real darkness in

that

and the thoughts start to creep in right

at some point that i mean the feeling

probably comes first in that case where

you start feeling something

psychologically or emotionally yes

sadness i think it's a sadness i think

it's a an emptiness

and then you mentioned the health

problems so about a year later

half my body goes numb

and i just remember i couldn't feel

my hand i was running it under hot water

and i couldn't feel the hot water

and i'm like kind of tapping it was this

kind of weird paresthesia and numbness

and tingling

so i'm now seeing doctors

and i'm getting mris and ct scans i'm

convinced i have a

fatal disease i have a brain tumor

you know there's just something when you

the loss of feeling was really scary

i'm connected to ekgs none of the tests

reveal anything

and

that was such a that was a really clear

moment for me

where i realized

what if i did die

in the next month

and what if i did have an inoperable

brain tumor

would i be happy

with the life that i lived

hadn't done anything for others hadn't

mentored others hadn't given charitably

um hadn't been a good friend

particularly hadn't been a particularly

good boyfriend

and

i just realized wow uh i've i've really

gotten to the end i'm

emotionally bankrupt i'm spiritually

bankrupt i'm certainly morally bankrupt

and this is not

how i'd want it to end

so that started a process

when you when people face face you know

that feeling in their life and sometimes

it's just it's exactly that it's a

feeling that their job or the path

they're on is not fulfilling them deeply

and they almost arrive at this a

crossroads where they realize they've

got to make a decision they don't know

what's down there but they do know that

if they go down there they're going to

have to shed a lot of things one of them

is their identity one and everything

that comes with their identity did you

feel a fear of having to shed

pretty much everything you'd built for a

decade friends and

all of that i don't know i didn't even

know how to do that i mean at this point

i just know things need to change

i start reading the bible again i start

reading this book that my father had

given me which it's interesting i've

tried to read it you know years since

and i it doesn't hit me the same way

that it did

then

um

the book was about finding god and

living a pure life

and returning to the innocence of a

child

here is

a man's pursuit of

righteousness honor integrity

peacemaking

innocence

uh virtue

and

i am none of these things

in fact

i am leading people to the opposite of

those things

so i think just what was happening here

was these extremes

like worlds were colliding and i

realized

i didn't need a pivot in my life

a small course correction was not going

to be the answer i was somehow going to

have to

find the 180 degree opposite of

everything i said

thought and did and that's what i didn't

know how to do

what was the first step in doing that i

came back and i tried to sleep with my

girlfriend less

uh

smoke less figure out how to you know

forget how to get out of that

relationship because she didn't love me

and i didn't love her

smoke less drink less

and knock it off with the drugs and then

i was miserable with my failure in all

those things i'd quit smoking for a week

and then i was back at it you know i

wouldn't do coke for a couple weeks and

then i was out at the party and like

some celebrity was there and offered it

to me it's like well you know i mean i'm

doing coke with so and so like you know

can't pass up this opportunity so for me

it was a little bit of a process the

process took um about

seven or eight months

from the beginning of the health issues

to eventually

the change

and that the first significant step that

didn't feel like a pivot then was that

when you

applied started applying to humanitarian

causes and charities and organizations

yeah well there was an event at a

nightclub uh where i had fired somebody

you know interestingly i was actually

offered a business interest in a new

restaurant

so there was this kind of path that

might be a little bit of a pivot out of

nightlife into a more reputable

restaurant owner world where we'd be

promoting a restaurant which also had a

little club upstairs but anyway what

happens i'm i'm at a club

that was there was not one that we

worked at but i knew the owner very well

and i was with the new business partner

of the restaurant

and

i actually still remember this this is

so many years ago but i came out of the

bathroom i remember i was high that

night

and

i sit down back in a banquette with him

and he says hey this bouncer just tried

to shake me down

for money he's like you know the owner

here

right you know that's not cool bro you

brought me to this club and this guy's

trying to hustle me for money and like

you know pay pay me to stay in here i'm

gonna throw you out or he didn't i was

in the bathroom so apparently didn't

know he was with me

so i remember you know going outside and

getting in this bouncer's face

and saying like you know you picked on

the wrong guy this is my new partner so

there's like a there's an element of

loyalty and honor you know here for me

and uh i remember stepping on the street

it was on 27th street between 10th and

11th and i called the owner to who

wasn't there that night i left a message

um about what happened

and left the club and then the next

morning she woke up got the message then

she fired this guy the bouncer

the next night i met the club

that i was working at and i remember

leaving about 15 minutes early and then

on my way home i get a text from our

doorman saying hey bro there's like a

bouncer that just turned up

and he said you know you cost him his

job and he says he's going to kill you

now you have to understand in nightlife

like we get threatened all the time

and this would be like death threat

number 17.

you don't let people in your party

they're embarrassed you know they're

there's a there's a lot of animosity

towards people working at the high end

of nightlife

um but this felt

not trivial

you know to be quite honest and

i remember just saying well um

i'm just gonna i remember going to my

girlfriend's house that night not going

home and

woke up the next day and said i'm just

gonna get out of town for a couple weeks

and called my partner and said i need a

break anyway you know you handled the

clubs for a couple weeks i'm gonna i'm

just gonna get out of town for a little

bit

i wound up renting a cobalt blue ford

mustang

and i think i did a month-long rental

because it felt cheap and

wound up just

driving north you know i was also like

kind of just excited to get out of the

city and the idea of being alone

away from this relationship that wasn't

really healthy as well and i wound up

calling this guy on the phone the next

day and saying hey man i'm really sorry

like you know i was a little out of it

what you did wasn't cool

but i'll try and get you another job you

know here's a couple places that are

hiring and feel free to use me as a

reference

and

you know he seemed like he accepted the

apology on the phone so maybe that maybe

there was never any danger you know um

i'm not sure

but i was heading north and i was gonna

you know get out of town for a while and

i remember bringing a bible and a bottle

of doers and a carton of marble reds

so i start like reading the bible while

i'm drinking and smoking

and i i wind up going through

connecticut and through vermont

and i wind up in maine

and

you know an inner transformation is

really happening the farther i get away

from new york city

like the farther north i go the farther

into kind of you know deserted beauty

the less i wanted to go back

to new york

and

it just kind of hits me

i don't ever need to go back

what if i never went back what would i

do

and

you know

call this a god-given idea or or

whatever i got this idea to

that i said when i when i grew up in the

church this there was this idea of a

biblical tithe where like 10 of your

money goes to the church or to the poor

and then you get to keep 90

well i got this idea to tithe my time

what if i gave one year of the 10 years

that i've selfishly wasted

back in service to god and and

the poor uh or people who who needed

help

could i be useful that was really the

question

and

putting action to that i remember being

in a dial-up internet cafe with a bunch

of old dell computers in greenville

maine on moosehead lake i'm staying in a

little

motel

and i started to fill out the

applications

for the famous humanitarian aid

organizations i'd heard of

save the children

doctors without borders red cross

world vision

and i commit in my mind that i'm not

going to go back to new york

and i'm going to actually change my life

and i'm going to give a year back

i don't go back to new york

while i'm wait go ahead i was going to

say it's just so i find it really

interesting that the further away you

got from new york the more

because people can relate to that in

their lives in so many ways if you've

ever taken a month off from a job yes

and you can finally feel it once you've

stepped away from the thing and said

another way the further i got away from

this destructive environment

for me

you know the

the more clarity i think i got

um so i wound up going

bypassing new york i went to the south

of france a buddy had a house in the

mountains in the remote

pyrenees mountains

and i go there there was no internet so

i had to come down there was no phone

and no internet so i had to come down

into the town on a bike

just to you know check messages

but i go there and it's it's time alone

it's solace it's time for prayer it's

time for reading

you know it's this kind of this

cleansing reset you know there's no

drugs

um i was probably smoking a little bit

but

you know

no no gambling no point like just it's

kind of a reset moment

and

what happens is one by one the denials

from all these organizations come in so

ten organizations reject

my volunteer application

which makes sense because they're not

looking for nightclub promoters

in the same way that uh you know maybe

uh

this is not uh hey we're you know

doctors without borders looking for a

reformed

high-end nightclub promoter to go to

sudan maybe they should have been

in hindsight well so one day i remember

i'm driving my bike

it's probably you know five miles you

know down from this house through the

little town

and there's a small patch of cell phone

reception where i would stop and check

messages

and as i'm actually on the bike riding

through this area the phone rings

and it's a group that hadn't rejected me

and they said hey

we're called mercy ships we saw your

application

our ship right now our hospital ship is

in bremerhaven germany

we haven't agreed to accept you but we

will meet you

so can you be in germany and meet us and

i'm like while i'm in france

i'll get right there

and

i got there maybe 18 hours later

and convinced these people these doctors

that i was not going to throw any wild

parties on their hospital ship i was not

going to corrupt any of the young nurses

that i really was

reformed

uh and wanted to change my life and

the the position i had applied for was

photojournalist

on the ship now i hadn't mentioned this

but i'd gone to new york university

part-time when i was working at the

clubs just to get a degree from my dad

right terrible student c-minus

didn't even see the degree for 10 years

they just mailed it directly to him

because he'd saved up for his only child

to go to college and i felt like i owed

that to him but i had gotten a

communications degree there because it

was the easiest thing you know i was a

pretty good writer and i was a hobby

photographer

so i dust off this degree that i've

never used with nightlife and i say i

actually have a comms degree

from a decent university

and i can do this job i also said to

them i have 15 000 people on my club

email list so i have a built-in audience

to be able to share the stories

of the amazing redemptive humanitarian

work i'm sure you're doing

so maybe maybe to set it another way let

me promote something different

let me promote you

and the unbelievable medical work that

you're going to be doing

and i have a bunch of people that i

could already promote to

tell me about the emotional journey you

went on from there so you get on this

ship it goes off to liberia yeah goes to

benin west africa and then liberia well

this happens very quickly so i go back

to france i pack up and three weeks

later i'm on this hospital ship

and the night before i joined the ship

i had this this moment of clear so this

is a 522 foot ocean liner

so a huge cruise liner that had been

gutted and turned into a

state-of-the-art hospital and this

organization for 25 years had sailed up

and down the coast of africa

bringing volunteer doctors surgeons and

nurses on their vacation time

to provide free medical services

so the the ship would pull into a port

and then you know

work there for a year and then sail off

to the next place

so i have this moment of clarity that

i really am going to need to quit all

the vices before i join this group of

christian doctors and humanitarian on a

ship

and there was something you know

symbolic about the gangway

right like i'm gonna walk up the gangway

of this ship

they're gonna lift the gangway

i'm kind of trapped on it with 350 other

volunteers and then i'm gonna sail away

to a new continent and a new life

i better not bring any of that stuff

with me

so very intentionally the night before i

got on the ship i remember smoking 60

cigarettes smoke three packs my last

three packs of cigarettes

i remember getting hammered

drinking eight or nine beers

and

just

knowing that i would have to go you know

cold turkey or all in

to allow this new life

to

develop

and

you know that was a clarifying moment i

i drink a little bit now years later but

i've never had another cigarette i've

never had a drag or you know 17 years

now um

never touch coke or any of those things

haven't looked at a pornographic image

in 17 years

never gambled again

and actually

didn't sleep with anyone for the next

five years until

uh my wedding night with my wife

so i really went like full circle you

know back home

in the most extreme way

to allow this new

life to unfold

quick one we bring in eight people a

month to watch these conversations live

here in the studio when we're here in

the uk and when we're in la if you want

to be one of those people all you've got

to do is hit subscribe

i was reading through the book about

what you saw when you arrived yeah oh my

gosh the horrific things there's

actually a photo in here i believe

so let me set the scene so

the ship is pulling into the port

a small advanced team

for the previous three months had posted

flyers

throughout the country advertising the

coming of the hospital ship and we have

1500

available surgery slots to hand out so

we're gonna make 1500 sick people

healthy

those are the surgery slots we have so

i'm so excited right this is like my new

life i've got two nikon d1x cameras

uh and

i learned that

the name for what the first event is

the patient screening it's the big

triage moment

and

the veterans on the ship called it the

screaming oh we're headed to the patient

screaming you know which should have

sounded ominous

so i remember thinking you know looking

at these flyers which are advertising

facial tumors

cleft lips cleft palates cleft faces

flesh eating disease like people with

parts of their face completely missing

with holes that you can look through to

the back of their throats

burns

many people had been burned during the

war by rebel soldiers who would pour oil

on their bodies

to disfigure them

i remember thinking like are there 1500

people that are going to turn up with

these conditions like

really

so get in a land rover a convoy of land

rovers at 5 30 in the morning this is my

third day in africa so like the ship

comes in everybody gets ready let's go

i learned the government has given us

the football stadium in the center of

the city to

do the the screening inside the football

arena put on my hospital scrubs jump in

a convoy of land rovers we snake through

the city we get to the stadium

and there's more than 5 000 sick people

standing in the parking lot

waiting for us to open the doors

i'll never forget that moment

uh realizing

wow

we're going to send 3 000 sick people

home

with no

help

with no hope

and i later learned many of those people

had walked for more than a month from

neighboring countries

the word had spread to sierra leone to

guinea to cote d'ivoire many of them had

brought their children

on a month-long journey

just in the hopes of their child seeing

a doctor

but we didn't have enough doctors

we didn't have enough available slots

so then the door is open

and you know everybody tries to

there's a whole crew that's trying to

put everybody into this line that just

kind of snakes back and forth and back

and forth

and the first child that

so my job is going to be to photograph

all 1500

people

up close for the medical library

and the first child i see is this 14

year old boy

and he's suffocating to death with a

volleyball sized tumor

this pink red tumor

that is occupying his entire mouth and

he's having a hard time breathing

he's terrified

you know i just remember the fear in his

eyes

i'm terrified

you know i remember just weeping i'd

never seen

suffering like this before

and

i remember kind of just shutting down

and going in the corner of the stadium

and one of the doctors came over and

said you know hey you're the

photojournalist guy right like

he said

you gotta get back in there like

basically do your job

you're gonna see way worse than this

so

kind of toughen up kid

and then he said focus on the hope

you know focus on the 1500 people like

this child that we're gonna be able to

help

and that

was two days of really grueling

every single person you see is sick

leprosy clap you know some of the

conditions that i that i mentioned sick

and scared

and couple days later i got to scrub up

again and

document this eight and a half hour

surgery when alfred

the first child that i'd met had his

tumor removed by this remarkable man

named dr gary parker

and a couple weeks later i got to see

alfred

go back to his village i asked whether i

could drive him home in my mind i knew

there was going to be a party

i knew that when the village had

sent this

they'd written this boy off they had

sent him to the witch doctor who

you know

cast spells and spread chicken blood on

his tumor i mean none of this worked so

he had literally been written off for

dead

and i wanted to see what it was like

like when

he came back to the village without his

tumor healthy

so i remember driving him uh

it was a few hours and just the whole

community kind of coming out

and looking at him and touching his face

and

and seeing you know celebrating you know

a child that they thought was lost who

who was found who was healed

and then over the next

year i was able to witness 1500 of those

transformations wow

now i'm blasting my club list

all right the whole time

so that was fun because

in a very short turn

people were getting emails from me

inviting them to the opening of the

prada mega store

or cosmopolitan

you know fashion week party

and now they're getting pictures of 14

year olds with facial tumors

and pictures of

the operating

procedure and then pictures of of

post-op and what are you asking them for

i'm just sharing my experience oh really

okay and i'm promoting the work of the

doctors like guys this is amazing these

doctors are here we're changing people's

lives

so when you drive that kid home and you

see the reaction or even when you see

the before and after how did that can

feel in comparison to the best club

night you ever threw

so much better

so much better

and and and healthy and redemptive and

positive and life-giving

uh it was

joy

what i didn't realize until later was my

invite for me to kind of step into this

new life or into this new calling or to

find the 180

my environment also needed to

drastically change i was never going to

be able

to change my life working at the clubs

four nights a week

surrounded by

sex and drugs and alcohol

but my environment changed and here i am

with a bunch of like you know christian

humanitarian doctors

who are the most sacrificial people that

i've ever met in my lives you know

smoking is not cool on a hospital ship

right

drinking is not cool there's no casino

nobody's playing you know blackjack i

mean this is this is so missional and so

purposeful

and i

i loved the new environment

i couldn't get enough of it i never

wanted to leave

it was home it felt like coming back

home

this leads you ultimately to discovering

that there's a real issue out in africa

with water yeah

and i but that quote

you've got to be kidding me they drink

this feels like quite um a powerful

quote in hindsight when i look at the

work you've done from then on

tell me about that moment where you said

those words

maybe first just the doctor through line

um when i was a kid

i wanted to be a doctor

right to cure mom and sick people like

hers i didn't do anything doctor-like

for

10 years in clubs

doctors don't come to nightclubs and buy

bottles of crystal so i didn't know many

doctors

but now i'm with a bunch of doctors and

there was one doctor this guy dr gary

parker who had been there 21 years and i

made him a mentor

i wanted to spend as much time as

possible

he was one of the reasons why i went

back for the second year

because he had dedicated 21 years of his

life to this work and i'm like well i

have at least another year right let me

let me just not end with this year-long

tithe when the year was finished let me

go back for a second tour

in the second tour

i felt like i really understood the

medical world and i still had to take

all the pictures of the surgeries and

the before and afters but i wanted to

get off of the ship

and understand more of the context of

how people were living in liberia this

was a post-war country

14 years of brutal civil war led by

charles taylor had torn torn apart the

country

there was no electricity no running

water

no sewage system and no mail system so

just imagine like

shambles

like everything broke down in a decade

and a half of war

i mean look how much destruction is

happening just in a short time you know

the what we're seeing now in

um in the ukraine

15 years of war tour the partner so that

was the backdrop of which our doctors

came in

at the time there was one physician

for every 50 000 liberians

okay our ratio here in america is one

for 300.

so every 300 americans is a doctor

one for 50 000.

there were two surgeons apparently in

the country but nowhere for them to

operate

no hospitals they were working

as i got into the rural areas

i saw the water that people were

drinking and

there were swamps

or ponds

you know or sometimes like a muddy river

you know running near these villages or

in the center of these villages

and

i remember seeing kids come

and filling up their buckets and

drinking

unthinkable water

and i was like wait

people drink this

to contrast that

and i think why this resonated so deeply

i used to sell voss water

for ten dollars a bottle in the clubs to

people who would just order a hundred

dollars of water to let it sit there

just in case anybody needed to hydrate

but really they were drinking champagne

or vodka instead

you know as i started to explore this

the water

issue in the country i learned two

things half the country

was drinking dirty contaminated water

every day

and half the disease in the country

was because people were drinking dirty

contaminated water and didn't have

access to sanitation or hygiene so i go

back to dr gary and i'm showing him my

photos like on the back of my camera

like you should see what people are

drinking

and he says i know

and

you know i make this quick link i'm like

well i wonder how many of the 5 000

people

needed to stand in the parking lot of a

stadium to see doctors

if they just had the most basic health

need

you know learned there were 28 different

diseases you could directly

track back to dirty water

so it was really dr gary who took that

information you know he sees this young

kid like

on fire with this aha eureka realization

and he says why don't you go do that

why don't you go make sure everybody in

the world has clean water before you die

and he gave me the challenge

and i remember you know he said

something to the effect of you'd be the

greatest doctor the world had ever seen

if you just gave people the most basic

need for health

if you gave them clean water

you would touch more people than i have

ever operated on by an order of

magnitude

and there was something so simple about

that i'm like well okay my second year

ended i was 30 years old i went back to

new york city and i tried to put action

to that very simple you know commission

very simple commission well it was

simple i mean i mean simple missions

bring clean water to everybody on the

planet it's a few words but it's a big i

mean it's an impossible challenge right

it's a tremendous tremendous challenge

and

you know you said it simple but

i'm sure there's lots of people who have

been given similar kind of flippant

mandates from people in their lives go

and fix that why don't you go and fix

that and 99.9 of them will never attempt

to to fix that which makes me answer ask

the question why did you believe that

you could do that

so i saw the small impact that i had

made promoting the work of mercy ships

in between the two missions there was a

little gap in between year one and year

two and i came back to new york city

with my photos i got a gallery donated

in chelsea i printed 108 of my photos

and i invited all my nightclub friends

to come in

and see

the work that these doctors were doing

and i raised about a hundred thousand

dollars for their work through that show

i remember people callous people

that you know would come to the

nightclub you know who were just kind of

it didn't seem like they would care

about anything standing in front of some

of my images weeping

as they read the caption as they learned

you know hey this is someone just my age

born in a different environment

you know with with a terrible affliction

with no doctor to go to

so i had a little bit of like wow that

you know success and and you know while

my email list shrunk a little bit with

some unsubscribes

at the beginning it actually began to

grow as people would forward it to their

friends and like oh my gosh there's like

this guy that he's like i used to do

coke with this guy and he's like on this

hospital ship in liberia i've never even

heard of liberia and like look at these

photos i mean look at these doctors like

blind people are are seeing and

you know

faces are being fixed and yeah we would

find a 65 year old woman in a village

with a cleft lip food and water had

spilled out of her

mouth her entire life

and we provided a 280 surgery

and she could speak

and she could eat

and had her dignity in her life back so

you know this stuff was like

it was it was um

it was inspiring people the work of the

doctors and i was the promoter so

instead of promoting the dj and the

thousand dollar bottles of cristal and

the you know celebrities that were going

to be in the club that night the special

guests i was promoting something very

different and i saw that that was

working and that that skill

that i had you know potentially learned

over 10 years or misused for 10 years

promoting something

you know certainly

less redemptive yeah or purposeful could

actually be translated and used

to promote

the work of mercy ships the next step

was

i thought it'd be possible to promote

clean water for humans

so and and in effect in an even more

simple way i mean it's it's

what do you do

we bring clean water to people around

the world everybody should have clean

water to drink i thought it was a really

promotable cause and what is what was

your business model though in terms of

the model so how are you gonna bring

water to all of these people well at

this moment i'm broke uh i

am back from africa i have no savings

i've given everything that i had to

mercy ships and the people i'd met

so i crashed with my old club partner

who lets me sleep on his closet floor

for free rent

and i had the idea bring clean water to

everybody on the planet and i had the

benefit of not having any institutional

charitable knowledge outside of my

experience with mercy ships

and i just was talking to people that

worked at mtv or at fashion magazines or

at sephora

and or or the local bank

and i realized so many of my friends

didn't trust charities they did not

trust the system

almost all of their problems had to do

with money

where does the money really go

how much of the money actually gets to

the people who need it you know how much

of the money actually goes to the cause

and

you know the term social entrepreneur

wasn't even around back then but

you know i just took a very

entrepreneurial approach to this and

said well i wonder if through a new

business model

i could

speak

to those objections i could reach out to

these cynical skeptical disenchanted

people

and get them excited about giving

in a new way so i had a very simple idea

separate the overhead

from the money that people would give to

the organization so open up two bank

accounts

promise the public that a hundred

percent of anything they would ever give

to charity water

would go directly to help people get

clean water

and then in the other bank account

go and find a small group of business

leaders and entrepreneurs

to pay for those unsexy overhead costs

the staff salaries the office rent the

flights the insurance the you know epson

toner for the copy machine

so church and state two differently

audited bank accounts

and i wasn't sure how i would fund the

overhead but boy was it clean and i

thought it was a really compelling story

that

beyond just promoting clean water an

inarguable common good for the world

that i thought everybody could get

behind we would now have this hyper

transparent business model that would

speak to the most common objection

people have

to giving to charity which is where does

the money go

so i tried this out my only idea on day

one was to get a club donated

it was september 7th it was my birthday

i was turning 31 and i got a club in the

meatpacking district donated during

fashion week i got open bar donated for

an hour and then i invited everybody to

come

to celebrate my 31st birthday but to get

inside the club

they had to put 20 in this big plexi box

and we were going to take 100 of

whatever was in that box at the end of

the night

and we're going to go

help our first person get access to

clean water and i printed up my photos

so in the club you know it's kind of

juxtaposed with people drinking dirty

water and and wells being drilled and

people drinking clean water i'd also

seen that when i was in africa i'd seen

the solution to the problem of wells

being drilled and communities going from

dirty to clean

so i put those photos up and 700 people

came that night and i'll never forget a

drug dealer came that night he was a

pretty high-end weed dealer

and he put 500 in the box

and he looked at me and he said this is

the first charitable gift i've ever made

in my life really wow but i know where

this money is going and i trust you

we raised fifteen thousand dollars i

remember we counted it and double

counted and like we're taking pictures

of the money and the stacks like you

know because this is your first this is

day one of the organization

and we took that money immediately to a

refugee camp in northern uganda we built

our first water well and then we fixed a

couple other broken wells

and then the most important thing was we

sent the photo proof

video of clean water flowing and then

the satellite images

of where every single water project was

and i emailed the 700 people that came

and said you did this here's where 100

of your 20 went and because you came and

gave

people are drinking clean water and

here's the proof

thank you for vodafone for sponsoring

this podcast one of the greatest tips i

can give any small business owner

listening right now is to take risks in

fact the biggest risk to your business

will be taking two fewer risks

complacency and comfort seeking will

harm your success but taking risks can

be incredibly daunting that's why i've

partnered with vodafone business and

their vhub which offers free one-to-one

sessions with vhub digital advisors and

you can call up and speak to one

completely free of charge sharing your

ideas and getting input from someone

who's knowledgeable on the topic and

able to help you towards your next

business step to find out more search

v-hub by vodafone as you might know my

energy are a sponsor of this podcast and

they offer countless ways to make your

life a little bit more sustainable and

make that transition from where you are

now to a sustainable life 10 times

easier their products are all about

energy independence allowing you to

create a greener home through their

cost-effective and super user-friendly

products and one of my favorite products

right now is the zappy it's a smart ev

charger which simply allows you to

charge your electric vehicle from solar

all wind power so if you would like to

find out more about my energy then head

to myenergy.com and if you've tried the

zappy let me know how you got on with it

in the comments section below

was there a time in that early startup

phase where you genuinely considered

that you might fail

every day really absolutely every day

especially with this business model if i

couldn't raise the overhead

it didn't matter how successful we were

with the the public funding

so every day

and in terms of difficulties with

business with people with you know

everything else what was what was the

most painful

time of that early years the most

painful day

event that you went through

yeah

well the charity started off very

quickly and people loved the 100 model

um it just began to build a lot of

momentum we raised two million dollars

in the first year

through a flurry of activities gallery

shows and events and people doing

concerts for us and people giving online

and we were selling a 20 bottle of water

you know just as a symbolic gesture

where all 20 would go and people would

buy cases of the water so it was just it

was a year of a lot of success and then

in the second year

we were on track to raise six million

dollars

but always a struggle for the overhead

always a struggle to you know find a

donor to pay for employee number two or

to pay for next month's office rent i

mean we were in a really crappy office

like covered in grease floors it was an

old printing press

so i was doing all that work trying to

convince people to help me

build the actual organization because

the 100 model was so resonant

we got to a point uh about a year and a

half in where we had almost a million

dollars

in the

water bank account about to go out and

build a hundred wells

and we were about to miss payroll

and we had nine people at the time

and i remember just thinking and and by

the way people had been warning me that

this model would fail

you know nobody thought this business

model was a good idea i mean effectively

you can't use any of the money you

raised from the public to actually run

the company to run the organization but

i just had such faith in it

and

i had tapped out all the people that i

knew for the overheads

and i was hitting a point where i

realized maybe they're right

you know maybe this is a really dumb

business model so i start calling

lawyers about shutting down the charity

it's a year and a half in even though

we've raised you know millions of

dollars

i remember praying you know with very

little faith and you know and i didn't

start a religious charity so i was still

kind of animated by my personal faith

and

um

you know a belief in in prayer but i

remember like praying for a miracle but

i'm like

there's no miracle that can save us

at this moment

and

the advice i was getting

was to borrow

from the million dollars in the water

account to make payroll so that was the

kind of conventional wisdom hey write

yourself an iou

you know you're not bankrupt if you have

a million dollars

but for me

if we borrowed one penny

one dollar one pound

from that bank account and we used it

on anything overhead related

our integrity would be forever

compromised

you know in such an extreme way i'm like

there's a crack at the foundation i

would never even want to build on top of

that i'd much rather shut it down and

have my integrity

and at that moment

uh

i'd written a cold email to

a british internet entrepreneur um

actually about something completely

different not even about funding

about uh trying to get exposure on his

social media network

it was called bebo at the time and uh

everyone knows bibo that listens to this

so he writes me back and says man i love

this idea like what a what a cool idea

getting everybody clean water checked

out your website you know really good

design and branding but it's a bad time

for me to help

so i don't think anything of it i was

just happy that you know somebody

responded to a cold email

well around this time of near insolvency

or bankruptcy at least on the overhead

account

um

he writes me he says hey i'm going to be

in town

um i'd love to meet you and learn a

little more about what you're doing

he comes in

i remember i pull out my laptop i take

him through a hundred photos and my

whole story he's working in this we're

in this crappy office there's nine other

people there's a couple volunteers

around

and

i remember just thinking boy this is the

worst pitch i've done he is not

into it he's not really laughing at the

jokes he's just

doesn't seem very compelled by this

he leaves

and

you know says well you know give me your

bank account details and you know i'll

see how i can help

and uh

two days later it's around midnight

again i'm i'm

almost at this point just relinquished

the fact that i'm over

i'm gonna shut down the charity maybe

i'll try with a different business model

or maybe i'll just try with the

traditional business model

and i get an email from him and he says

hey it was great meeting you

um i just wired a million dollars into

your overhead account

and we went from bankrupt to 13 months

of funding

he said i believe in your idea you just

need more time

and that was 700 million dollars ago

and this year we'll raise over 130

million dollars

and that entrepreneur was michael birch

that was michael burch he's a mutual

friend of us he was a mutual friend and

and an amazing guy um and really you

know saved the organization

um and i think even more you know

michael and i have been

become really good friends over the

years and

even more than the money

was that somebody believed in me

he believed that i could do it with the

right amount of time we never look back

uh today there are 131 unbelievably

um accomplished entrepreneurs and

business leaders who pay all the

overhead 20 of them in the uk

um

you know it's the founders of

spotify and shopify and wordpress and

linkedin and

you know an

unbelievable group of

of

really a lot of tech entrepreneurs who

love

paying for the software engineers and

the ui ux designers and the actual core

organization of charity water so that

now millions and millions of people

around the world are donating and have

the purest way to give knowing that 100

of the money goes but that was really a

key moment

of

it was almost all over

but

you know if i were to go back and the

money was not going to come in i still

would shut down the charity i wouldn't

have borrowed

really it was that important for you to

is that important to keep good on that

promise

it's funny because that defining promise

is definitely really one of the

fundamental things that has made charity

water so successful in a landscape of

charities where trust as you you

identified very early on is a central

issue with people giving their money

and

hindsight's a wonderful thing but it's

definitely proven you right to hold your

integrity there

yeah

how many people have you now reached i

read it was like 15 million people yeah

we just crossed 15 million people

uh in the last few weeks of the year

in december

in our 15th year so we closed our 15th

year we got to the 15 million

person milestone

um

you know

it's 1 50th of the 771 million people

who need our help

so as we record this

ten percent of the world is drinking

dirty water

it's crazy ten percent of the world

one out of ten people

771 million humans

and we've helped 15 million of them

so we're at the very beginning of this

journey so we're in year 16

and

you know it really to quote my my friend

daniel at spotify who uses this a lot

like it really feels like we are in the

second inning

of impact the second inning of the

movement the second inning of raising

the capital we need to go faster and

accelerate last year we helped two

million people get water so it's over

5000 people every day

so we're at kind of peak velocity over

the 15-year journey

and

in a time where i think we can really

exponentially scale

as an entrepreneur

would you describe yourself as obsessed

because you you said earlier but you

have no you

now driven

committed

not obsessed what's your work-life

balance like if that's even a thing you

you sort of espouse you sign up to yeah

yeah i don't love the balance idea i

think there are seasons when there's an

emphasis um the year before cobit i did

90 flights and 100 speeches

um

then i dropped to you know very little

and you know what the zooms with the

rest of the world and i spent an

extraordinarily

more time with my kids

you know during covet so i think there

there are different seasons of life when

something different is required of me to

move the mission forward

i mean in some ways i feel really lucky

to have

put in the hundred hour weeks because

there really were 100 hour weeks at the

beginning and everybody knows that

you are just when you're trying to birth

something

you know whether it's a company or a

non-profit or a you know a for good

company there's an extraordinary amount

of work that is required in those early

days and years

because you really could kind of die at

any moment like you know the thing could

die

um you could go bankrupt like you're

only as good as your last sale or your

last donor you know that believes in you

so i'm lucky that i got

that

really hard work in early and built the

organization to you know now there's

there's 2 000 people around the world

that are working on charity water

projects every day you know there's a

hundred people uh here in the states and

in london

you know who are working on you know the

fundraising and the campaigns and

um and and managing all these these

water projects

so i work

differently but less you know i'm really

present with my kids i take my kids to

school every morning when i'm home and i