How I Raised $700 Million: Charity: Water Founder: Scott Harrison | E153

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. Oof. 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, promise the public that 100% 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're about to go out and build 100 wells, and we're about to miss payroll. There's no miracle that can save us.

So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO: USA Edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. 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, sorta catalystic moment to-

1980, right? New Year's Day.

19- 1980?

Mm-hmm.

Tell me about that day, that week.

We had just moved into a new house, uh, 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, um, 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, m- according to her and, and my father walked across the master bedroom, and they 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. Uh, 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. Uh, to give you an example, uh, perfume would make her violently ill, if she smelled perfume. Soap would make her sick. Car fumes, like kryptonite, would make her sick. Um, 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 be- the bedroom, and the bathroom was washed down with a special soap that didn't smell, it was completely hypoallergenic. The, uh, door, th- 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.