Speaker 1: If you're considering having children or going on birth control.
Speaker 1: I think a wonderful idea is go to a public pool.
Speaker 1: Go to a public pool and spend the day there,
Speaker 1: just sit there and observe what goes on. Or go
Speaker 1: Christmas break. Spring break I think is even bigger. I
Speaker 1: think President's Weekend might be one of the biggest weekends
Speaker 1: of the year. Pick a mock five kids holiday weekend.
Speaker 1: Go to an all inclusive resort, like a place where
Speaker 1: everything is included in, Free drinks are included in, parents
Speaker 1: are just and just sit by the pool, and then
Speaker 1: you decide if parenting is correct for yourself. Because birth
Speaker 1: control pills are always just like tampon commercials are kind
Speaker 1: of just about like women and women's choices and what
Speaker 1: they you know, they're always just like they look like
Speaker 1: tampon commercials. And I just don't think the birth control
Speaker 1: pills should look like tampon commercials. Birth control pills should
Speaker 1: look like a beach side Marriott on the busiest holiday weekend,
Speaker 1: or like the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day Monday, you know,
Speaker 1: like or Saturday night. Um, like a six o'clock sort
Speaker 1: of dinner buffet, like a good a good pool side,
Speaker 1: big barbecue all you can eat kids event with Like
Speaker 1: there's a barbecue and then there's a pool, like any
Speaker 1: real serious kids event. That's what a birth control commercial
Speaker 1: should be. Like, I mean just saying, if this isn't
Speaker 1: for you, then you should consider birth control. I just
Speaker 1: think that that would be a better you know, oh,
Speaker 1: a cruise. Go on, get on a cruise. So if
Speaker 1: you could do a day pass, call up management. I'm
Speaker 1: considering parenting. And I heard this is like a Disney cruise.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of kids on here, all excited,
Speaker 1: and I just want to come on, go to Universal
Speaker 1: for the day. Universal, go to Disney. Just go on
Speaker 1: like a Saturday, fourth of July weekend. Just show up there.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm thinking of having kids. This is how
Speaker 1: I'm going to decide by the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Please report back. I just want to hear what you decide,
Speaker 1: and if you maybe decided about the number of kids
Speaker 1: may be changing, because I know that one kid is
Speaker 1: one kid and that's you know, got its challenges. It's
Speaker 1: fairly easy like running gun to Now you've gotta like,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta ask more than one person what
Speaker 1: they want to do, because we do are we are
Speaker 1: our kids assistants and we do work for them. I
Speaker 1: serve at the pleasure of my daughter, um. And then
Speaker 1: you have three and and two kids is two kids,
Speaker 1: and three becomes nine. So you just it's your body
Speaker 1: and your choice. And children are wonderful. But I just
Speaker 1: think you should enter into that lifelong commitment with both
Speaker 1: eyes open. And I think you should go to a
Speaker 1: massive pool that definitely has a water slide. Uh, definitely
Speaker 1: is a frozen drink machine behind the behind the bar
Speaker 1: typically a bar that is located inside a pool, so
Speaker 1: you could pee while drinking alcohol. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: places that I think you should decide what you're parenting
Speaker 1: journey is going to entail. Today's guest is Scott Harrison,
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of a nonprofit called Charity Water, which
Speaker 1: aims to bring clean drinking water to every person on
Speaker 1: the planet. Scott got a start in the nightclub and
Speaker 1: party scene, working as a promoter in Manhattan. Uninspired by
Speaker 1: the luxury of nightclub culture, shocking, he completely changed the
Speaker 1: trajectory of his career. Scott traveled to the coast of
Speaker 1: Liberia a volunteer as a photo journalist and got inspired
Speaker 1: to change the realities of areas without access to clean
Speaker 1: drinking water. With the help of over one million donors,
Speaker 1: the organization has brought in more than six D forty
Speaker 1: million dollars. This has helped fund over nine water projects
Speaker 1: in twenty nine countries. The charity continues to go today,
Speaker 1: expanding access to clean water worldwide. Scott's journey from nightclub
Speaker 1: connoisseur to businessman and humanitarian is an inspiring tale that
Speaker 1: I'm sure you will love. I hope you enjoyed day's show.
Speaker 1: You moved from l A because a lot of people
Speaker 1: did that, right, Yeah, I mean, you know, we lived
Speaker 1: in Tribeca, soho for you know, quarter of a century
Speaker 1: and uh just moved out during the pandemic and are
Speaker 1: kind of liking life outside the city for a while. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: well this will be uh interesting, this will be different.
Speaker 1: Some things I read about you are similar to my
Speaker 1: partner Michael, who's on the ground right now in Poland,
Speaker 1: and he had to use your word or what I
Speaker 1: think you described as hedonistic nightclub background. He used to
Speaker 1: be like, you know, friends with Madonna and ingrac Saris
Speaker 1: and did all the Miami nightclubs. And you know, then
Speaker 1: built like thirty to fifty million dollar houses for rich
Speaker 1: people in Miami. UM and then he fell on hard times,
Speaker 1: which I would let him tell the story on his own,
Speaker 1: but it was like basically homeless. But he's dedicated his
Speaker 1: life to UM disaster relief. So and and it's funny
Speaker 1: because in the two of us have a big production background,
Speaker 1: him doing clubs and me I used to do like
Speaker 1: events on Alcatraz, big events for Disney, like million dollar,
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar events, and the logistics really do tie into
Speaker 1: philanthropy and UM as does business. So when people ask
Speaker 1: me about it, I always think about an interesting, weird
Speaker 1: background that sort of could make you good at philanthropy.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to kind of at some talk
Speaker 1: about that with you, and we're you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: still promoting. I've been promoting something different for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: right than than the velvet rope. You are a nightclub
Speaker 1: promoter like him, so you're just promoting something different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta be a hype man too to get people
Speaker 1: to to believe in you because there are so many
Speaker 1: other efforts to so UM All right, so where did
Speaker 1: you grow up great? I was born in Philadelphia and
Speaker 1: middle class family. My dad was a business guy, my
Speaker 1: mom was a writer, and when I was four, there
Speaker 1: was a carbon monoxide gas leak in our house and
Speaker 1: we all almost died. Bethany, So my mom on New
Speaker 1: Year's Day walks across the bedroom collapses like the canary
Speaker 1: in the coal mine. You really don't smell it. Nothing,
Speaker 1: No carbon monoxide is nothing. And we know people who
Speaker 1: have you know who have died with this. So it
Speaker 1: was a crack in the heat exchanger. Thank god Mom
Speaker 1: passed out. This led to the series of blood tests.
Speaker 1: It led to discovery, the discovery of carbonoxide in her bloodstream,
Speaker 1: and then my dad found the leak and ripped it
Speaker 1: out after the gas company had come a couple of
Speaker 1: times and said, oh, no, everything's fine here, we can't
Speaker 1: We don't think there's any problems. So you know, life
Speaker 1: changed for me at four. Mom became an invalid for
Speaker 1: the rest of permanently disabled really from the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. This experience, from this experience, what happened was
Speaker 1: her immune system just irreparably shut down, and everything in
Speaker 1: the world made her sick from this point on, So
Speaker 1: car fumes would make her sick. Soap would make her sick.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you brought cologne or perfume anywhere near here,
Speaker 1: you know, she would she would break out, she would
Speaker 1: get migraines. So we kind of moved her into a bubble.
Speaker 1: They actually made a movie about this with Julianne Moore
Speaker 1: many years ago, called Safe and She Was. My mom
Speaker 1: was allergic to the world. So as a child, I remember,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's kind of like the like bubble boy, right,
Speaker 1: So I remember she lived in a in a bathroom
Speaker 1: upstairs covered in aluminum foil. She slept on an army
Speaker 1: cup that had been washed twenty times in baking soda
Speaker 1: to get all the smells out. And she wore three
Speaker 1: m masks. So I I never really saw my mom's
Speaker 1: face growing up. I mean, I'm from Gosh. For the
Speaker 1: last forty years or so, my mom would wear you know,
Speaker 1: and masks and charcoal masks because you know, to woid explosion.
Speaker 1: She was so sick. Bethany, I remember that the ink,
Speaker 1: the print from books, new books would make her sick.
Speaker 1: So my dad and I would bake her books in
Speaker 1: the oven that she wanted to read, try to outgask
Speaker 1: get that smell. Out, and then I would walk upstairs.
Speaker 1: I would knock on her bathroom door. She would open it.
Speaker 1: It would kind of make the sound of tinfoil, you know, flapping.
Speaker 1: She would greet me with a mask on and a
Speaker 1: cellophane bag and cotton gloves, and she would take the
Speaker 1: book for me and she would put it inside this
Speaker 1: cellophane bag and then she would be able to read.
Speaker 1: So that was childhood. That sounds traumatic for you, I
Speaker 1: mean beyond her. I mean it sounds traumatic for her,
Speaker 1: But that sounds like a traumatic childhood. You must be
Speaker 1: that's your tremendous caretaker, because you had just walked on
Speaker 1: eggshell as your whole life. It was all I knew.
Speaker 1: You know. I wrote a book a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and um, the writer that I was working with, you know,
Speaker 1: she said the same thing. She's like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Like I was crying, like, you know, just imagining you
Speaker 1: as a little boy, and I'm like, I had such
Speaker 1: a normal childhood. What are you talking about? Everything was fine.
Speaker 1: You know. I was a caregiver and I did the
Speaker 1: cooking and the cleaning for mom, and I was needed
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew
Speaker 1: up to help you know, sick people like my mom.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so I wasn't kind of aware. I don't
Speaker 1: think at the time. This was just the only life
Speaker 1: that I'd ever known, which was you know, dealing with hardship.
Speaker 1: Uh and and you know, a life of grit and determination. Well, um,
Speaker 1: it took a long road to get you into philanthropy.
Speaker 1: So what did you want to be when you grow up?
Speaker 1: And what what did you do for a living for
Speaker 1: most of your life? Yeah? Well I always had, you know,
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurial genes growing up. So I would sell holiday
Speaker 1: cards door to the door. I would you know, borrow
Speaker 1: money for a leaf blower, and then I would go
Speaker 1: and you know, blow the leaves off neighbors lawns. And
Speaker 1: but I the answer would have been doctor. I was
Speaker 1: going to be a doctor. I was gonna help cure
Speaker 1: my mom and others. And my my parents were They
Speaker 1: were Christians, kind of nondenominational, and so I grew up
Speaker 1: in a family of faith. I went to church every Sunday.
Speaker 1: I played piano, and I was that good kid that
Speaker 1: didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't swear, didn't have sex. You know,
Speaker 1: I was just I was. I was a good kid.
Speaker 1: So then all that changed, act to eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I moved to New York City with the band and
Speaker 1: I joined a rock band, and I was gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: get our band a record deal. We were going to
Speaker 1: become rich and famous. We were going to be you know,
Speaker 1: opening up for you two at Madison Square Garden. In
Speaker 1: like a period of months. We were pretty good. I
Speaker 1: mean we played at CBGB's and you know some of
Speaker 1: the legendary clubs. We were discovered by, you know, the
Speaker 1: Scorpions and some big managers. The band we weren't the worst.
Speaker 1: We we we we could have been a thing, but
Speaker 1: the band all hated each other and everybody was doing drugs.
Speaker 1: So that lasted about six months. Okay, what was it
Speaker 1: called Sunday River after after a ski resort in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire that none of us had ever been to. Okay,
Speaker 1: it sounds authentic. So I moved to the city. Uh,
Speaker 1: for a time, I thought I wanted to be an actor.
Speaker 1: So I was, you know, auditioning for commercials. I put
Speaker 1: on a David Mammitt playoff Broadway. Then I was working
Speaker 1: in a music store, and then at nineteen I stumbled
Speaker 1: into the nightclub business, and I realized there was this
Speaker 1: extraordinary job in New York City where if you could
Speaker 1: get the right rich and beautiful people into the right clubs,
Speaker 1: you could make a ton of money selling the alcohol.
Speaker 1: Can I ask how old you are? Nineteen? So two
Speaker 1: years before I'm legally allowed now six, we're gonna because
Speaker 1: I know this language, because I lime like going to
Speaker 1: the Palladium. Yeah, I know Palladium. Well. So my first
Speaker 1: job was for Peter Gation, working at Limelight and working
Speaker 1: at the Tunnel, and worked at Lotus for many years
Speaker 1: and Pejia, and you know, a bunch of the next
Speaker 1: ten years kind of went by very quickly. I worked
Speaker 1: at forty clubs across Manhattan, and you know, you you
Speaker 1: know this scene. I mean jay Z at table one,
Speaker 1: Puffy at table three, and you know, the club promoters
Speaker 1: with the model sitting at table two thinking we're fantastic
Speaker 1: and fabulous, and Spray Champagne from the DJ booth, and
Speaker 1: Mark and Eugene and Noah and Jason and yep, yep, yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know them all very well. So you know, I
Speaker 1: picked up all the vices that you would imagine would
Speaker 1: come with that territory, lots of smoking, drinking, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sleeping around, chasing models to Milan in Paris and you
Speaker 1: know London fashion shows. Then the drugs, then the you know,
Speaker 1: the gambling and the pornography and the strip clubs, and
Speaker 1: just this kind of dark descent which looked like the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of doctor. You know, medical school never really happened.
Speaker 1: I like that. See that would have been That would
Speaker 1: have been a great cut title for a book. Hi.
Speaker 1: So at eight, I was, you know, at a nice
Speaker 1: loft in Midtown. I had a grand piano in my apartment.
Speaker 1: I drove a bm W, I had the stupid Rolex watch,
Speaker 1: and I started having some health issues. Yeah, we'd go
Speaker 1: to the Hampton's, we go to Point to do Lesta
Speaker 1: and busios and we'd follow g from circue to slay around.
Speaker 1: It was a whole scene, and I was miserable. Bethany
Speaker 1: was completely miserable. I was drunk and you know, drugged down,
Speaker 1: and we'd we'd go to the we go to dinner
Speaker 1: at ten pm, we'd go to the club at twelve,
Speaker 1: we go to after hours at five, and I'd be
Speaker 1: taking an ambient at noon, trying to go to sleep
Speaker 1: looking out my window at other people, you know, having
Speaker 1: salads on their lunch breaks, have worked like productive jobs
Speaker 1: all day. So I one day half my body goes numb,
Speaker 1: and I remember my club partners like, dude, no wonder,
Speaker 1: like it's amazing you're even alive, you know, like how
Speaker 1: you can't feel your body? Like I had no idea, Bethany.
Speaker 1: I thought I had a neurological disease, and I it's
Speaker 1: gonna die, you know. So I got the brain scans,
Speaker 1: I got the CT scans, I got uh you know,
Speaker 1: nodes hooked up and electric you know, pulses. Nobody could
Speaker 1: find anything wrong with me. And for me, it was
Speaker 1: a real wake up call that yeah, I was mortal,
Speaker 1: and I've been living like I was gonna live forever.
Speaker 1: And I just asked myself the question, like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Like what if I die in the next couple of months,
Speaker 1: what has my life been about? Your legacy is nothing?
Speaker 1: Literally nothing, My tombstone would read, here lies a club
Speaker 1: promoter who got a million people wasted. But the only
Speaker 1: thing you would have been able to say not that
Speaker 1: I volunteered for a charity or gave or like did
Speaker 1: anything constructive except get people into a club and get
Speaker 1: him messed up. Right, Oh my god, you've got to
Speaker 1: talk to Michael my part. You can't even believe your
Speaker 1: lives are like you don't understand. He's that he's recovered
Speaker 1: on his own. He did it, uh and never done
Speaker 1: anything since, Like it's crazy, but he's dedicated his life
Speaker 1: to philanthropy. You have to talk to him. Almost gonna
Speaker 1: suggest today that we do it another day and that
Speaker 1: I have you both on to talk. But you guys
Speaker 1: talk to each other like I've never said that before.
Speaker 1: You got to meet him. But anyway, Okay, so you
Speaker 1: have a worthless life and a useless empty tombstone. And
Speaker 1: then and then I'm a pretty radical guy. So I
Speaker 1: wind up asking myself the question, you know, what would
Speaker 1: the opposite of my life look like? And I think
Speaker 1: the realization was a pivot is not needed here. This
Speaker 1: is not a small course correction, like go find the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of everything I say, think and do. But
Speaker 1: were you tied into anyone where like you owed and
Speaker 1: you were like shackle because sometimes I feel like it's
Speaker 1: hard to get off the treadmill when you're shackled to
Speaker 1: something and then one thing keeps you tied back in
Speaker 1: and then you do another thing, or like or would
Speaker 1: you just you were just a want like you would
Speaker 1: just do a party, make money? Do a party, make
Speaker 1: money so you could totally get out. No, no actual club,
Speaker 1: no kind of ownership. You know, we were we were
Speaker 1: like mercenaries. The minute nobody wanted to go to the club,
Speaker 1: we found the next one they wanted to go to
Speaker 1: and tried to try to make money there. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I asked this question, what's the opposite of my life
Speaker 1: looked like? And the only thing I could think of
Speaker 1: was what if I took one year And this was
Speaker 1: kind of a childhood biblical idea of a tithe what
Speaker 1: if I gave ten percent of the decade that I
Speaker 1: had wasted in service to others? And I got this idea,
Speaker 1: like what if I volunteered somewhere and and money do
Speaker 1: you have money saved? How much money do you have? Not? Really?
Speaker 1: I mean you know, we were we were making great money,
Speaker 1: and whatever we made, we spent a little more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you were broke at that point too. I was.
Speaker 1: I was pretty broke. Yeah, I mean my the clubs
Speaker 1: were still going, the parties were still going. There was
Speaker 1: some money coming in, not much, but yeah, no I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything saved, nothing saved. Put it this
Speaker 1: way the apartment, and you can't you can't sustain. You
Speaker 1: have to can't sustain in that life right then, unless
Speaker 1: I literally liquidated my entire life. I sold, you know, watches,
Speaker 1: I sold my video camera, I sold my speaker system.
Speaker 1: I just got rid of everything, and I started applying
Speaker 1: to some of the famous humanitarian aid agencies or charities
Speaker 1: that I've heard of over the years, like Doctors Without
Speaker 1: Borders and the Red Cross, and UNI staff and World Vision.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe to the surprise of no one listening,
Speaker 1: I'm denied by every organization I applied to. You know,
Speaker 1: they are not looking for you know, drunk drug drug
Speaker 1: adult nightclub promoters. Well what a minute. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: You wanted a paid position at it. No, I wanted
Speaker 1: a volunteer. You're telling me that not of these places
Speaker 1: would let you volunteer. You didn't know about be strong then,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. By the way, we could go
Speaker 1: into the big orgs for days and the money that's
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy and all that. It's my entire life, but
Speaker 1: very interesting. So so one organization wrote me back and
Speaker 1: they said if I was willing to pay them five
Speaker 1: a month for the pleasure of volunteering, and I was
Speaker 1: willing to go live on a hospital ship in Liberia,
Speaker 1: West Africa, a country it was actually Bethany, the poorest
Speaker 1: country in the world at that time. It was it
Speaker 1: had fallen off the United Nations development chart because there
Speaker 1: was no data for a fourteen year civil war that
Speaker 1: had just ended. And my role, my volunteer role that
Speaker 1: I was paying five a month, was going to be
Speaker 1: to be a photojournalist on the ship. And I was
Speaker 1: not a photojournalist, but I had been a pretty good writer.
Speaker 1: I had man managed to get a degree at n
Speaker 1: y U, just going part time in communications and while
Speaker 1: I was club promoting. So you always had a little
Speaker 1: angle of you that wanted to be or do something.
Speaker 1: You have some meaning, but you didn't get pulled into
Speaker 1: the dark side. And I was an only child and
Speaker 1: my dad had saved up, and it felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: I had to honor him at least by mailing him
Speaker 1: a diploma that I that I actually never saw. It
Speaker 1: just went straight to him. I was like, Dad, here
Speaker 1: I did this for you. Um, I was like a
Speaker 1: C minus student. But anyway, the degree helped me get
Speaker 1: this job as a photojournalist, which then, you know, changed
Speaker 1: the entire course of my life. So a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks later, I was in West Africa walking up the
Speaker 1: gangway of a five ft hospital ship full of three
Speaker 1: volunteers who had come from forty one countries, And they
Speaker 1: were doctors and surgeons and nurses who had come to
Speaker 1: offer free medical care in a country that had no electricity,
Speaker 1: no running water, no sewage system, and one doctor for
Speaker 1: every fifty thousand of its citizens. Here in America we
Speaker 1: have a doctor for every like two of us. So
Speaker 1: there was no health care system. Everything had been broken
Speaker 1: with a decade and a half of war, of terrible
Speaker 1: civil war led by kids, and this this terrible guy,
Speaker 1: Charles Taylor. So uh my life changed. Uh my third
Speaker 1: day there, I woke up at five in the morning
Speaker 1: and I was told that the whole mission started with
Speaker 1: a patient screening. And this was where we'd advertise that
Speaker 1: the ship was coming full of doctors, and people would
Speaker 1: turn up with their different you know, illnesses and sicknesses,
Speaker 1: and we would schedule them for treatment. We were scheduling
Speaker 1: for surgery on on the ship. Surgery what what? Why?
Speaker 1: Certainly surgery. So people had cleft We specialize in cleft
Speaker 1: lips and facial tumors and cataracts and uh, flesh sheeting disease.
Speaker 1: You know, tumors were were a really big thing, just
Speaker 1: growing on people's faces without access to a healthcare system.
Speaker 1: So I knew that we had fifteen hundred kind of
Speaker 1: passes to hand out, surgery passes to hand out, we'd
Speaker 1: be able to help fifteen people. And then I learned
Speaker 1: the government had given us a football stadium like the
Speaker 1: soccer stadium in the center of the city to triage
Speaker 1: the people that would come. And at five thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning, I jumped in a Landrover. I was in
Speaker 1: hospital scrubs. I had two Nikon D one X cameras
Speaker 1: and we kind of snaked through the city and we
Speaker 1: come up on the stadium and there's more than five
Speaker 1: thousand people standing in the parking lot waiting for us
Speaker 1: to open the doors. And yeah, and I will never
Speaker 1: forget that that moment where we sent eventually over three
Speaker 1: thousand six people home without the chance to see a doctor,
Speaker 1: with no hope. We later learned many of them had
Speaker 1: walked for more than a month from neighboring countries with
Speaker 1: their children. They'd walked from Sierra Leone or Cotauvoir, Guinea
Speaker 1: or Togo just hoping to see a doctor, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have enough doctors. That turned into a year of
Speaker 1: meeting extraordinary doctors and surgeons from all over the world.
Speaker 1: I had to document all fifteen hundred people pre op
Speaker 1: and postop. So I'm getting to know these you know,
Speaker 1: kids that are that are blind with cataracts, or sixty
Speaker 1: five year old women who live their entire life with
Speaker 1: a cleft lip because they didn't have a hundred eighty
Speaker 1: dollars to fix it, and even if they did, what
Speaker 1: surgeon would they have gone to? So it was an
Speaker 1: amazing experience. The cool thing is I had about fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand people on my email list, and this was back
Speaker 1: when open rates for so people went from getting invited
Speaker 1: to Lotus or the product megastore in Soho, you know,
Speaker 1: to a fashion party, two pictures of leprosy and tumors
Speaker 1: and you know, cleft lips being repaired, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course my list got a little smaller. There are
Speaker 1: bunch people who unsubscribed and said, you know, did not
Speaker 1: sign up for this. This is not fashion, this is
Speaker 1: not fun. But so many people were really moved and
Speaker 1: you know, began to give money. Like you said, I
Speaker 1: changed my life. I dedicated my life to this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I've been doing cocaine with these people, like,
Speaker 1: you know, four weeks previous, you know, at a club.
Speaker 1: So I think they were just they're fascinated just to
Speaker 1: see you know, it felt bizarre, like where's this guy,
Speaker 1: where's this country? Like a hospital ship, like leprosy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just so foreign. And over the next year,
Speaker 1: I kind of just let them see what I was
Speaker 1: seeing through the eyes of of you know, a lay person,
Speaker 1: through the eyes of the doctors, and through some of
Speaker 1: the you know, the extraordinary nurses. And I want up
Speaker 1: raising a lot of money for that organization and a
Speaker 1: bunch of awareness and getting published in the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal and you know, papers in London of of my
Speaker 1: photos and stories. So I came back to New York
Speaker 1: after a year. I didn't know what was next, so
Speaker 1: I just signed up for another year. And it was
Speaker 1: really that second year when I saw people same people
Speaker 1: went back to Liberia, and it's there that I saw
Speaker 1: people drinking dirty water for the first time in the
Speaker 1: rural villages, and I was really determined to get off
Speaker 1: the ship, you know, out of the city and understand
Speaker 1: how people were living throughout the country. And I remember
Speaker 1: seeing a thirteen year old girl drink from a green swamp.
Speaker 1: And you know, Bethany, I've been selling vost water for
Speaker 1: ten dollars. People would order ten ten bottles of water
Speaker 1: for hunder bucks and not even drink the water. The
Speaker 1: would drink champagne or Vodkins day table. So I just couldn't.
Speaker 1: I had never seen children, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: had known clean water. I'd taken it for granted my
Speaker 1: entire life. And I learned two things. I learned half
Speaker 1: the country didn't have clean water to drink, and half
Speaker 1: the disease in the country was because people were drinking
Speaker 1: disgusting water and didn't have access to hygiene or sanitation. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of stumbled into the root cause
Speaker 1: of so much of the sickness that we were seeing,
Speaker 1: so many of these conditions that we didn't even have
Speaker 1: enough resources to treat. And there were you know, like
Speaker 1: a couple million people that didn't have the most basic
Speaker 1: need for health met. So maybe this this full circle
Speaker 1: back to the wanting to be a doctor. The chief
Speaker 1: medical officer, the chief surgeon who had been there for
Speaker 1: twenty five years, and I said something to the effect
Speaker 1: of Scott, you care about medicine, you care about global health.
Speaker 1: You know you want to be a doctor. Just go
Speaker 1: get everybody in the world clean water. You would be
Speaker 1: the greatest doctor that the world has ever seen. Because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking more about this now with myself and with
Speaker 1: what you know, how much money I've been able to
Speaker 1: raise and what we've been able to resolve in different
Speaker 1: uh relief efforts, and the circuitous route to get there,
Speaker 1: meaning you're better served doing what you've done than actually
Speaker 1: being just operating on one person. You know, not that
Speaker 1: that's not a very noble, but if you're operating on
Speaker 1: one person at a time, you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: be this voice. That's really your skill set to be
Speaker 1: a connector and a hustler and go get people to
Speaker 1: donate and make this thing known. So it's interesting how
Speaker 1: people end up finding their true uh they're true not
Speaker 1: they're true passion, the true calling. Yeah, that's wild. So
Speaker 1: I did, and then I came back after that second year,
Speaker 1: I was thirty. I was very broke by then because
Speaker 1: I've given all my money to the organization and many
Speaker 1: of the people that I've met there. And I was
Speaker 1: crashing on a closet floor on Spring and Mercer on
Speaker 1: a second floor loft department in in Soho, New York City,
Speaker 1: for free, and just said, Hey, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: bring clean and safe drinking water to everybody in the
Speaker 1: world before I die. And the only idea I had
Speaker 1: was charity Water, a charity that helps people get water.
Speaker 1: So not very creative, but that was you know, that
Speaker 1: was fifteen years ago. And and and you've dedicated your
Speaker 1: life to this, uh fifteen years. Yeah, we've raised now
Speaker 1: over you know, seven hundred million dollars and and helped
Speaker 1: fifteen million people get water across twenty nine countries. Are
Speaker 1: you and how is that? What's the vessel of the water? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We we found now fourteen different technologies, from you know,
Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollar well to a sixty five dollar
Speaker 1: you know, personal bios sand filter for a family, to
Speaker 1: rainwater harvesting systems to these huge you know, multimillion dollars
Speaker 1: solar gravity fed systems all across you know countries. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: So uh, now do you travel constantly? Yeah? I mean, gosh,
Speaker 1: I've been to seventy countries now I've been to Ethiopia
Speaker 1: thirty one times, so over the last fifteen years. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: miles back and forth, um to to the places where
Speaker 1: we work. But you know you might find this interesting,
Speaker 1: just like kind of going back to day one of
Speaker 1: charity water. The first thing I did, because I didn't
Speaker 1: have any other ideas, was just to throw a party
Speaker 1: in a nightclub. So our first fundraiser was in the
Speaker 1: meatpacking district a place called ten June before the club
Speaker 1: had ever opened. Yeah, it hadn't opened yet. And and
Speaker 1: you know, Eugene and Mark gave it to me for free.
Speaker 1: And uh we got a bunch of great people to
Speaker 1: host the event, and I just charged everyone twenty dollars
Speaker 1: to get in as a as a donation. And that
Speaker 1: night we raised fifteen thousand dollar. It was my thirty
Speaker 1: first birthday. Uh, and we immediately took of the fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to Uganda. We did our first well we
Speaker 1: fixed a couple of others, and then we sent the
Speaker 1: photo proof, video proof and the GPS satellite images back
Speaker 1: to the seven hundred people that attended and we said,
Speaker 1: you came, you gave twenty dollars, and here's exactly where
Speaker 1: your money went and what it did. And that was
Speaker 1: that was not happening at scale and a lot of
Speaker 1: the big charities. And you know, my my kind of
Speaker 1: big idea. When I started charity Water, I had come
Speaker 1: across the statistic that of Americans don't trust charities. And
Speaker 1: more recently, uh N Yu Wagner did a study found
Speaker 1: seventy people believe charities waste their money. It's like you
Speaker 1: had one job, right, Like you know, seven out of
Speaker 1: ten donors think that a charity is going to waste
Speaker 1: their money in some parts. So you know, from from
Speaker 1: day one, fifteen years ago, we separate rated the overhead
Speaker 1: from the water project costs. So we have run with
Speaker 1: two separately audited bank accounts for fifteen years. And not
Speaker 1: only do we give a percent of all donation now
Speaker 1: for fifteen years to the field, we pay back credit
Speaker 1: card fees, which sounded to look a good idea when
Speaker 1: we're small and now costs, you know, three quarters of
Speaker 1: a million dollars. Number one. The transparency is the key
Speaker 1: the whole time. Like someone sends money to some celebrity
Speaker 1: who posts some link because there's a koala that's been
Speaker 1: burned in a fire, and then they never have any
Speaker 1: idea where I went. Like and if you constantly communicate
Speaker 1: and say okay, and your needs change. Sometimes you say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is what we need. We need money because we're
Speaker 1: doing a hundred thousand crisis kits for this and this
Speaker 1: is what they're gonna include. Then you get there and
Speaker 1: people don't need a blanket and they don't need this
Speaker 1: entire and then you say, okay, guess what we're finding
Speaker 1: that refugee relocation. That's what people and that or or
Speaker 1: if you donate, you're gonna be donating and this is
Speaker 1: going to the habbad, this is going to churches, this
Speaker 1: is going to children's schools, like you kind of you know,
Speaker 1: let people know that they're part of it, and you
Speaker 1: give them updates and that I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1: And the same thing A hundred percent goes um to
Speaker 1: the effort because I'm an initiative, and so everything that
Speaker 1: comes into be strong goes, I pay my own way,
Speaker 1: my own travel anything, um. And then my partner has
Speaker 1: like a two and a half percent UH overhead, which
Speaker 1: is insane. It's like so low because he's super lean
Speaker 1: and we partner with volunteers, et cetera. But that's that
Speaker 1: goes in the overhead fund. Like if you donate to
Speaker 1: be strong, that's it. So I we think very similarly,
Speaker 1: and it's it solves a problem because people, you know,
Speaker 1: I've had the big organs come to me and say,
Speaker 1: send celebrities to me and say we can't do anything
Speaker 1: with them. They want to spend thirty dollars on a
Speaker 1: plane to go help in Puerto Rico, and we don't
Speaker 1: do that. And they say, we don't do this a
Speaker 1: lot because they're big ocean liners and they take a
Speaker 1: long time to get their ship together and it's always
Speaker 1: like one lane that they're in that they do this
Speaker 1: one thing. They can't like pivot and be nimble and
Speaker 1: figure out customized to what's going on right there. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen every country has some different thing that
Speaker 1: you didn't think about and some different struggle to overcome.
Speaker 1: That's not it's like a new business. Every time. Sure, sure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: well that that has been absolute kind of key to
Speaker 1: our success is trying to restore trust. You know, there's
Speaker 1: so many people skeptical and disenchanted. It sounds like you're
Speaker 1: doing this really well also, and then just closing loop
Speaker 1: proving to people what the money has done. So we
Speaker 1: love you just said closing in the loop exactly. They
Speaker 1: feel like they're part of a crusade. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know we've got um now oh gosh, over fifty thousand
Speaker 1: water projects up on Google Earth on our website. Every
Speaker 1: single water project comes with a GPS cort at the
Speaker 1: satellite image, the information of the village. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: so this we just believe like transparency is kind of
Speaker 1: the way to win, and and that has helped us, now,
Speaker 1: you know, help over a fifteen million people get access
Speaker 1: to water. I think without that model, we would have
Speaker 1: done far, far less, and the movement would be would
Speaker 1: be so much smaller. And you are the visionary of it.
Speaker 1: You are the strategist. It's your mission. You decide where
Speaker 1: you're going to do this, how it's gonna work. You
Speaker 1: we have a whole team now, Bethany. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: you know, much much smarter people than than me. Water
Speaker 1: experts with you know, decades of experience who are out
Speaker 1: there managing you know, sixteen hundred UM. You know, local
Speaker 1: staff working for forty nine partner organizations. So there's a
Speaker 1: whole kind of machine. Now how many people work not
Speaker 1: at not within those like just about a hundred at
Speaker 1: h Q at charity Water HQ. It's been in New
Speaker 1: York City, but now now people have distributed. UM. So
Speaker 1: we're our our team is across twenty seven states. We
Speaker 1: actually just got everybody together last week for for an
Speaker 1: organization meeting, which was great. So so so do you
Speaker 1: have like a board and they pay all the overhead
Speaker 1: so it's separate. Did you do like raise money just
Speaker 1: for overhead? It's on the board, it's not the board.
Speaker 1: We have a community called a well uh and there
Speaker 1: are a hundred and twenty nine families from all over
Speaker 1: the world and they give they started a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year towards the overhead side. And we have
Speaker 1: some families giving in a million a year. So that
Speaker 1: pays for every single toner you know, package for the
Speaker 1: EPSOM copier, every flight, every credit card fee, every salary. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, every insurance costs or phone bill and they've
Speaker 1: been doing that for fifteen years. Yeah, it's something I
Speaker 1: should think about. I mean it's not been a problem
Speaker 1: at all because my partner always gets donations which go
Speaker 1: to the overhead UM in the warehouse and everything. But
Speaker 1: it's something to think about because they have so many billionaires.
Speaker 1: Every time something goes on, they want to donate and
Speaker 1: they get involved because they know me and I'm a
Speaker 1: business person. UM. But to make it more UM, you know,
Speaker 1: just something that is consistent, like you have certain people
Speaker 1: that are sort of almost like subscribers and they're just
Speaker 1: paying all year long, so you're always know you're good
Speaker 1: to go. UM. So how much money does it take
Speaker 1: for the overhead a year? Like how much you have
Speaker 1: to bring in every year? This year's budget budget UM
Speaker 1: is a hundred and twenty eight million dollars in total,
Speaker 1: and the overhead will be twenty two maybe, so we
Speaker 1: run it about every year. So eight percent of the
Speaker 1: money goes to the programs, even though we have two
Speaker 1: completely separate accounts. So HUD twenty nine families paying for
Speaker 1: the twenty cents on the dollar and then a million
Speaker 1: donors getting this pure way to give where all of
Speaker 1: it goes to the field. So are you're married. I
Speaker 1: am married. Yes, I married my second employee. That's a
Speaker 1: whole another story. Oh so you have this life of
Speaker 1: philanthropy together. Yep. We worked together for a decade and
Speaker 1: then started having kids and she took a break from
Speaker 1: charity water and she now coaches nonprofits on how to
Speaker 1: market and fundraise and UH and try to scale and
Speaker 1: and get noticed based on a decade of experience. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: And we've got a five and a half year old
Speaker 1: in a seven year seven and a half year old.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, and you're they're all happy in Nashville. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we moved to a farm during COVID in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours outside of New York City. And
Speaker 1: we've been down in the South now for for six months.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm I'm assistant coaching baseball and it's
Speaker 1: been it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I'm
Speaker 1: in New York City tomorrow. I mean, I'm I'm still
Speaker 1: incredibly connected to know our community in Manhattan, and you
Speaker 1: kept I'm there all the time. Now, we didn't, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We were just renting. No gosh, we couldn't even a
Speaker 1: dream of affording to to do that, nor could we
Speaker 1: ever afford to buy you know, in New York City.
Speaker 1: Um So, what's next? Like, what where is the big
Speaker 1: problem right now? Where are you know? I'm aware of
Speaker 1: this issue because only when it comes up when I'm
Speaker 1: doing relief work in Puerto Rico and we see that
Speaker 1: they have no clean water, and then people are sending
Speaker 1: water purifications systems in I've seen it in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: but I only see it during like a disaster. Um
Speaker 1: So do you do that too, or you're really just
Speaker 1: about permanent infrastructure in places that never had clean water.
Speaker 1: We've done a little bit of disaster response, but only
Speaker 1: in the countries where we have a long history or
Speaker 1: a footprint. So you know, when Flint happened, when Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico happened, we sent our donors to other organizations who
Speaker 1: actually had been there. You know. Nobody needed a New
Speaker 1: York City based like you know, or with no experience
Speaker 1: trying to parachute into Michigan and grab donor dours. So
Speaker 1: typically when there's a disaster, we're we're you know, blogging
Speaker 1: about it or offering kind of a recommended list of
Speaker 1: partners that we have relationships with, and then you know,
Speaker 1: when the Nepal earthquake happened, We've been there for more
Speaker 1: than a decade, so we really leaned into relief efforts there. Uh,
Speaker 1: the same thing in Ethiopia with a crisis fund and
Speaker 1: the Haiti earthquake. Um, so we've we've done some stuff,
Speaker 1: but we need to be in a country and really
Speaker 1: have those relationships. You know, I think what's what's next? Like, so, okay,
Speaker 1: there's seven seventy one million people without water, that's one
Speaker 1: out of ten people alive. We've helped fifteen million. That's
Speaker 1: one of the work that needs to be done. Does
Speaker 1: that make you feel like positive or defeated? Because I
Speaker 1: know that Sometimes it feels like the situation in Ukraine
Speaker 1: feels like oh like hissing in the ocean. It feels
Speaker 1: like what's the point. It's like sad. It makes me
Speaker 1: feel like we're in the second inning, like the best
Speaker 1: better yet be ahead? Right now? When I get really depressed,
Speaker 1: I Philip Madison Square Garden with fifteen million people and
Speaker 1: it's seven fifty sold out Madison Square Gardens, So you know,
Speaker 1: imagine seeing Billy Joel seven nights in a row, right,
Speaker 1: like at the garden. So it's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You know, it's more than you know, all the people
Speaker 1: that live in New York and all the boroughs it
Speaker 1: states full of people. It's small countries full of people. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's a fraction of what is needed and the
Speaker 1: urgency of the seven million people who did not choose
Speaker 1: to be born in the tem per cent of the
Speaker 1: world anymore that I chose to be born in Philly
Speaker 1: in a middle class family where I always have water.
Speaker 1: You know, there is a we have now built the
Speaker 1: capability over fifteen years. We have a responsibility to go faster,
Speaker 1: to grow the movement, to raise more money, to invite
Speaker 1: more people to join us, and you know, fight for
Speaker 1: a world where everybody has clean water to drink. It's
Speaker 1: like such a basic it's literally a basic neatu. Everyone
Speaker 1: thinks this is a good idea, Like whether you're a
Speaker 1: Republican or a Democratic or independent, if you're a person
Speaker 1: of faith, if you're not, you know, regardless of where
Speaker 1: you stand on you know, contentious social issues, like everybody
Speaker 1: can stand for water. Yeah, I agree, it's the most
Speaker 1: Like it's an inarguable common good. So that's allowed us
Speaker 1: to build, you know, a base of now a million
Speaker 1: supporters from a hundred fifty countries. But it's a fraction
Speaker 1: of what's needed. So the thing I'm probably most excited
Speaker 1: about is I was with um Uh, the founder of
Speaker 1: of a huge subscription business in Ethiopia, you know, a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and you know, he basically said, you know,
Speaker 1: why do you start over every January one? You know,
Speaker 1: we were only getting one time donations. He said, why
Speaker 1: don't you build a community of people who give every
Speaker 1: single month? Right, We've got Spotify, we've got Netflix, we've
Speaker 1: got Dropbox, we've got Disney Plus, we've got Khulu. So
Speaker 1: a few years ago Charity Water launched a monthly giving
Speaker 1: community called the Spring, and it helped triple the impact
Speaker 1: of the organization. People just giving thirty or forty bucks
Speaker 1: a months, Yeah, they don't even remember. Why isn't the
Speaker 1: gut Why aren't these individual governments that governments has no money?
Speaker 1: Why aren't governments giving you something? They are the governments
Speaker 1: have a fraction of the money at their disposal. I mean,
Speaker 1: Charity Water can put in a single year what the
Speaker 1: entire water government budget of a small country in Africa
Speaker 1: is you know, it's uh. I mean there's you know,
Speaker 1: in many of these countries where we work, the people
Speaker 1: are shareholder farmers. They're not being intact right, so the
Speaker 1: government is taking a limited budget and trying to develop
Speaker 1: roads and health care systems and schools and electricity and
Speaker 1: and water. Right, so you know, we're we're seeing you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we're always advocating for an over investment in water.
Speaker 1: You know, we think sometimes other stuff gets done instead
Speaker 1: of what I'm listening to you. I'd rather have clean
Speaker 1: water than than know anything. If I had to choose
Speaker 1: to be to go to school or to have clean water,
Speaker 1: I'd rather have clean water. Yeah, so we we are,
Speaker 1: I mean outside of the despotic governments or regimes, and
Speaker 1: there are a few of those around the world, you know,
Speaker 1: we see governments really want everybody to have clean water.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's embarrassing to you know, to go
Speaker 1: to the U n and and have half your country drinking.
Speaker 1: So so we don't find that our our work is
Speaker 1: met with resistance. It's it's really met with partnership. Let's
Speaker 1: help get more drilling rinks in the country. Let's use
Speaker 1: the government funding to match cherry water money. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a long long standing partnership with Rwanda where
Speaker 1: every dollar we put into water in Rwanda, the district
Speaker 1: and federal government come up with cents each, so we
Speaker 1: get basically a ninety cents on the dollar match. So
Speaker 1: we're able to do almost double the work. As the
Speaker 1: government says, we don't have a huge budget, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to go farther and we wanted to intract outside
Speaker 1: humanitarian investment in a sustainable way. How much money would
Speaker 1: it take to get the seven seven seven, seven hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy one million people clean water. We think it's
Speaker 1: about a hundred thirty five billion, so you know, percent
Speaker 1: of of one of the trillion dollar stimulus is right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you've talked to all these big billionaires that have
Speaker 1: all their own charities and they've donated. They haven't you know, Bethany,
Speaker 1: I'm always open for ideas. So we we have started.
Speaker 1: You know, look, I mean, we've got very very generous
Speaker 1: people who have given, you know, seven eight figure gifts.
Speaker 1: But what I'm really most excited about is I was saying,
Speaker 1: is is the spring? Is this community of people that
Speaker 1: are showing up thirty forty fifty dollars a month, ten
Speaker 1: dollars a month now across a d countries. That is
Speaker 1: adding up to more than the billionaire's investments, right, a
Speaker 1: whole ground swell of people. So that's what I'm focused
Speaker 1: on a lot um and you can keep increasing that
Speaker 1: because people will see more return on their resus. You know,
Speaker 1: the average person listening probably has somewhere between ten and
Speaker 1: fifteen subscriptions. And you know, we wanted to create a
Speaker 1: dynamic uh community where instead of getting music or movies
Speaker 1: or magazines, you know, or content of what people give
Speaker 1: every month goes directly to provide water and the most
Speaker 1: basic need for humans. And then we are reporting back
Speaker 1: with stories of impact and and trying to make people
Speaker 1: feel really connected to you know, almost win every dollar
Speaker 1: every month. You know, we have a sense of stewardship.
Speaker 1: So if the old charity water model, the old charity
Speaker 1: model was like set it and forget it, right, getting
Speaker 1: donors signed up into your monthly community and then just
Speaker 1: hope they get about it, we're actually doing the opposite.
Speaker 1: We're trying to engage them. We're trying to prove where
Speaker 1: the money is going and and and create a dynamic
Speaker 1: community Yeah, what if you could get one of these
Speaker 1: subscription uh streamers to add a dollar to somebody's monthly
Speaker 1: um for this cause or I mean, you know, or
Speaker 1: airlines at a dollar around every airfare just is added
Speaker 1: for clean water in the countries that they fly to
Speaker 1: or things like that. If anyone's listening and uh and
Speaker 1: and is in the airline business or a streamer, we
Speaker 1: we we we'd love to work with people. We have
Speaker 1: a great brand partnership's team and um, you know there's
Speaker 1: there's a great video Bethany that's gotten like seven year
Speaker 1: eighty million views now it's actually called the Spring and
Speaker 1: people could just go to the Spring dot com. That's
Speaker 1: even a way to help is just watch the video,
Speaker 1: learn a little more about the issue, and then share it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so last question is uh, your rows of your career
Speaker 1: and your thorn. I think the rose of the career
Speaker 1: is just reaching the fifteen million person milestone in our
Speaker 1: fifteenth year. Uh. Um that you know, it felt like
Speaker 1: a moment in time, you know where Okay, we've done something,
Speaker 1: we built an organization. You know, I can imagine getting
Speaker 1: to a hundred million people with water now with fifteen
Speaker 1: million behind us, I think the thorn I started too late.
Speaker 1: You know, I started this at thirty. I wasted a
Speaker 1: decade and and you know, I also believe nothing is wasted. UM.
Speaker 1: And I was able to, you know, take some of
Speaker 1: the things that I learned. I guess running around promoting
Speaker 1: night a skill set. But you know it also, yes, UM,
Speaker 1: it also feels like I just wasted ten years selfishly
Speaker 1: and I had nothing to show for that decade. And
Speaker 1: I wish I had gotten started earlier and there'd be
Speaker 1: more people with water well. And also I guess there's
Speaker 1: a message for people listening that. Um. I think people
Speaker 1: think they can't get involved because it really seems intangible.
Speaker 1: It's not that just like business, it's not that easy
Speaker 1: to get into philanthropy and a mean full way. You
Speaker 1: could donate money, you could put a link I say
Speaker 1: to people, the communication and and and literally without people
Speaker 1: on social media, my followers, I wouldn't have done the
Speaker 1: Probably now it's going to be over four hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars of relief that we've done in the last several years. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's because of them. But I do think that
Speaker 1: it's helpful for people to listen to your story because
Speaker 1: people do want an entry point, they want to do something.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because you know a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends say to me, we have we're boxing up clothes
Speaker 1: and can we drop them off? And I'm thinking we're
Speaker 1: sending you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds from major
Speaker 1: companies like levies that call Angoya and Bumblebee. So they
Speaker 1: can't enter because I can't take a box of clothes.
Speaker 1: It's not evenna be helpful to me, It'll be it
Speaker 1: would just be more work for my team and someone else.
Speaker 1: Can my kids come over and help you box up?
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm like, we have a warehouse in Miami
Speaker 1: if you want to fly them down to Miami and
Speaker 1: they can put things in boxes. But for people to
Speaker 1: have a real impact and do something meaningful, it's not
Speaker 1: as easy. That's why you had to call all these
Speaker 1: different places to just get a job for free, being
Speaker 1: a volunteer. So if you have any advice for people
Speaker 1: listening to have some sort of an impact and to
Speaker 1: find their way in um, I wonder what that would be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it starts with just the break
Speaker 1: from apathy and getting involved in stuff and and you know,
Speaker 1: figuring out what you're passionate about. Uh, maybe it's you know,
Speaker 1: women and girls around the world. Maybe it's a justice issue.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hunger, maybe it is water, um, maybe it
Speaker 1: is you know, reaching people who have been affected by
Speaker 1: disasters in a really timely way. I think, then try
Speaker 1: to go a little deeper maybe to understand that issue,
Speaker 1: you know, move beyond a donor to you know, get
Speaker 1: some domain expertise in that so you can become you
Speaker 1: can become an ambassador, you can become an advocate, you
Speaker 1: can actually know what you're talking about, and then bring
Speaker 1: others into that cause you know, I mean there's so
Speaker 1: much needless suffering in the world, Bethany. I mean, we
Speaker 1: look around and there's so much capital, there's so much
Speaker 1: inert capital, and and you know, I think it's our
Speaker 1: job as social entrepreneurs or those leading movements or causes
Speaker 1: to really make compelling cases for people to be generous,
Speaker 1: to use their time, to use their talent, to use
Speaker 1: their money in the service of others. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's only two two games in town, love and service.
Speaker 1: Selfishness does not end well. You know, someone will always
Speaker 1: have more money, they will always have a better car,
Speaker 1: Someone's gonna have a better house, you know, a more
Speaker 1: famous partner. And you know, I think that it's really
Speaker 1: that the shift, the paradigm shift in perspective to say,
Speaker 1: you know, how can I be useful? How can I
Speaker 1: give what I've been blessed with to others? And the
Speaker 1: more you do that, you know, the more you give,
Speaker 1: the more you give. Right, It's like the more you
Speaker 1: get engaged in things, the more you want to be
Speaker 1: engaged things. It's like the more you consume, the more
Speaker 1: you consume, and that just leads to a very different place.
Speaker 1: You know, we we've all been with people that have
Speaker 1: thirty cars, Like you know what, you know, it started
Speaker 1: with one, right, and then I need another one, and
Speaker 1: then I need a third, and like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not driving thirty cars. But we also know people you know,
Speaker 1: who are are you know, giving and giving and giving
Speaker 1: and dynamically giving of their time and the town and
Speaker 1: their money. And and I think I would just encourage
Speaker 1: people to find the joy and the freedom that comes
Speaker 1: with service and you know, loving your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, charity is actually a beautiful word. It just
Speaker 1: means love. It just means love. It means to help
Speaker 1: others in need getting nothing in return. But a lot
Speaker 1: of business people listen and um, I do think it
Speaker 1: feels for people to you said, learn something, be educated
Speaker 1: on something, and know about it. I do think that
Speaker 1: every time you do something different to help people, it's
Speaker 1: like business because you have to you don't know what
Speaker 1: the language you're talking about, you don't know, you don't
Speaker 1: know what ppe masks are, and then you become totally
Speaker 1: fluent in that language is. You have to learn, you
Speaker 1: dig an education in it. So for people who are
Speaker 1: business minded, I don't think most people make that connection
Speaker 1: between business and philanthropy, but if you have that sort
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurial uh spark, it can be used for something
Speaker 1: so positive. I just do think that there is a
Speaker 1: total you kind of just like wait, I don't know
Speaker 1: about that. How do I get my way in? How
Speaker 1: do I figure out? How do I foot in the door?
Speaker 1: Just go show up there, figure it out, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Just get on the road. You gotta
Speaker 1: get on the road. You can't be stuck in the
Speaker 1: business plan. That's how I feel. And listen everybody's you know,
Speaker 1: I know you've raised so much, you have such a compassionate, engaged,
Speaker 1: you know a group of people. So I just wanna
Speaker 1: you know, uh, thank you and thank your community for
Speaker 1: all the good that that that they've been supporting around
Speaker 1: the world. Well, they can support you to what's your
Speaker 1: how do they donate the Spring dot com or charity
Speaker 1: water dot work? The Spring dot com or charity water
Speaker 1: do we'd we'd love for people to learn more about
Speaker 1: our work. Let me know, all right, guys, let's donate.
Speaker 1: Let me know when this airs if you saw that
Speaker 1: anybody donated, I'll be very proud of my audience because
Speaker 1: I am amazing, engaged and awesome people. Amazing. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, have a wonderful day. I was great talking
Speaker 1: to you. I appreciate thanks for having me on. So
Speaker 1: that was Scott Harrison. Had not heard of him, although
Speaker 1: we've crossed paths in New York. I'm sure very interesting
Speaker 1: to dedicate your life to philanthropy after a life of debauchery.
Speaker 1: I like that. Um, just it's inspiring for other people
Speaker 1: who are feeling hopeless, useless, depressed, meaning what's the point?
Speaker 1: You know the way sometimes we all think like what
Speaker 1: is the point of all this? And and you know,
Speaker 1: seven hundred seventy one million people not having clean water
Speaker 1: is extremely sad and frustrating. And think about such a
Speaker 1: basic native water like drinking swampy, green, disgusting, sludgy water.
Speaker 1: That makes me, that literally makes me want to cry.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just makes me sad because I've faced
Speaker 1: that with people in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. But
Speaker 1: this is just another level that people have never had
Speaker 1: clean water, and they've maybe they've even had schools and
Speaker 1: other things. But is there anything more important than clean water?
Speaker 1: So I think that that's really an interesting cause. I
Speaker 1: like it, UM. I would love to help UM. But
Speaker 1: I know what that feels like, feeling UM, like you're
Speaker 1: not even scratching the surface. Because with what's going on
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, and if I think about the numbers of
Speaker 1: people that we can take out that are refugees UM
Speaker 1: and that we can help and relocate, it's a small
Speaker 1: percentage of the whole, it's not even that small, but
Speaker 1: it's probably like maybe ten of the problem. But you know,
Speaker 1: do your part, but really do your part, like, really
Speaker 1: get involved, figure it out, learn what you care about,
Speaker 1: and and take the next step. Everybody wants to check
Speaker 1: the box so they could say they check the box.
Speaker 1: What about actually doing something really help somebody else and
Speaker 1: feeling good about it. So I think that's a really
Speaker 1: um that's a good message for that one. And you
Speaker 1: know that. Sometimes I have people on that you've heard
Speaker 1: of that are famous, and sometimes I have people on
Speaker 1: who have been pitched to me that just seems like
Speaker 1: they have an interesting story. And certainly someone whose goal
Speaker 1: in life is that everybody in the world will have
Speaker 1: clean water, that seems like a pretty good guest to
Speaker 1: make UM and that it is. You know, it does
Speaker 1: seem like it's treating it like business. You've got to
Speaker 1: get things on. You have to be a person that
Speaker 1: isn't gonna get defeated, and we'll just tackle the problem. Uh.
Speaker 1: So many times it will feel like you're not making
Speaker 1: a difference. But you've got to get on the road
Speaker 1: and get involved in a real way or just keep
Speaker 1: spreading the message. But I do think getting actually involved
Speaker 1: is better. Just B is hosted by me Bethany Frankel
Speaker 1: Just be as a production of Be Real Productions, I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Blue Duck Media. Are EPs are Morgen Levois,
Speaker 1: Antonio Enriquez, and Kara Hit To catch more moments from
Speaker 1: the show. Follow us on Instagram and just be with
Speaker 1: Bethany