Today I happen to be in Denver. Over twitter I get a invite to coffee with one of my all time heroes, Scott Harrison. I mean, like what are the chances of that even happening? But here is the cool thing. Once again Scott pushed me to be better.

I’ve written about charity: water before. And many of you have heard me speak about charity: water when I am presenting. I just love everything they do. Scott is beyond brilliant.

I first heard Scott speak at The Idea Camp.  He talked about integrity and design. Can you imagine me coming out of Christian broadcasting hearing the words “integrity” and “good design” and seeing a real-life working example! I was blown away. Invisiblepeople.tv had just started. At the time of that first Idea Camp I was a mess. I didn’t have anything to eat for weeks besides $.89 ‘cardboard’ frozen pizzas. I had no income and no savings. Nothing! Scott talked about starting charity: water while living on someones couch. That, along with seeing that an org could have integrity and design, I was pushed in a new direction.

On the very first road trip to Sacramento, which was a huge risk for me, behind the scenes Scott encouraged me and offered support. Back then, without such validation, I might have called it quits.  Even today much of this does not make sense so back then it was really insane! Then Scott invited me to watch him speak in Culver City. It was right before the first national road trip. He said “awareness is not enough”. That slammed me hard. I wanted to do more, but I didn’t have resources. I stopped and thought about what I could do and it hit me. I could build a library of resources by live streaming all the great people who are helping to fight homelessness, and thus InvisiblePeople.tv Live was born.

Last year when I was in NYC I stopped by charity: water’s new offices,  and once again Scott pushed me to do more. Some of which I have implemented, but still have a long long way to go. And of course, today was no different. My head is spinning after our short time together.  I am not sure Scott is even aware how “spot on” his encouragement is. I’m at the ground floor of starting a nonprofit, he was there not too long ago, he knows what I need to do and puts it in my face. I am so grateful there are no words.

Who pushes you to be better?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 10:43 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.