How to Change the World without Losing Your Mind with Alex Counts, Founder of The Grameen Foundation

In a season where you are exhausted, burnt out, or just can't seem to find the joy in life anymore?  

Is your social impact journey causing you to feel drained?

Only having leftovers for yourself, family and friends? 

Today we are joined by Alex Counts, Co-Founder of The Grameen Foundation, an organization created to raise funds for the Grameen Bank, an institution founded by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner for the social innovation of Microfinance.  

Alex shares with us his years of wisdom from leading in the nonprofit, social impact space, while learning exactly what he needed to do to keep his mind, body and spirit healthy and able to serve in the long run.  

Join us as Alex shares How to Change the World without Losing Your Mind!  You won't want to miss his incredible story and inspiring wisdom!

Transcript

Season 3 
Episode 3
Alex Counts

Intro/Outro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Practice Good. The podcast that empowers change makers to give good and live good. Here is your host, Shiloh Karshima, social entrepreneur, corporate trainer, and former pastor. Join us as we explore the intersection of social impact and soul care!

Shiloh: We have Alex Counts joining us. He is a longtime nonprofit leader. He is also the founder of the Grameen Foundation and he spends his time now consulting and teaching and writing, and we are just so thrilled to have you.

Welcome. 

Alex: Thank you. It's great to be here. Great to be with you. 

Shiloh: So why don't you tell us all a little bit more about your story. I know for me, like I'm in love with your book, Changing the World Without Losing your Mind. This was like, I discovered your book and began to read like crazy and was so blessed that you would be so generous as to connect with me and allow me to hear your story and more of what you do and who you are.

So why don't you share with everyone else a little bit about how you've gotten to where you are and what your story is. 

Alex: Sure, I grew up in a. Comfortable household in New York. My father was a doctor. My stepmother was a social worker. Caring for others was part of our family, but I wasn't pressured to go in any type of [00:01:00] profession.

I went off to, college and there were some students very passionate about social causes, some very passionate about, ending apartheid in South Africa. Your social conscience gets tickled and then you have to decide, are you gonna just put your head in the sand or you gonna get overwhelmed by the problems, but then you don't know what the solutions are, or do you just get involved?

What do you do? And so I felt, I felt drawn to this issue of global poverty. People that were they're just basic human rights of being able to be sheltered, eat, educate their children. They were just such deep poverty. They couldn't think beyond the day. But one of my professors said, you know, if you focus on a problem, every major problem in the world has been solved somewhere.

Shiloh: Wow. 

Alex: And so find that small solution that works, and then that can give you a sense of optimism, energy, and then you wanna build on that. And so I found the work of Mohammed Yunus and his organization in Bangladesh, wrote him a letter and told him I want to put myself at his disposal once I got my degree.

And that led to a 10 year,[00:02:00] , very long apprenticeship, with him. Then finally, I launched my own organization to advance his ideals when I turned 30. And that led to really the heart of my career. But ultimately rather me overwhelmed by problems as looked for solutions and look how to build on them.

And maybe you'll invent your own, or maybe there's just someone else who has a solution out there that you can put your energy in intellect. Behind and help it, solve more of the problem because it's done in a wider scale or in a better way. 

Shiloh: Wow. So you were, young, just in college, super excited.

You found someone. You wrote him a letter . Did he just respond and say, yeah, come hang out with us? Or what was that process like? 

Alex: This was pre-internet, pre-email. I put a letter in and I, I still walked by the mailbox I put it in.

It was a very pivotal moment for me and I wrote him full of idealism and and maybe even a bit of hubris that I assumed at 19 years old I could be a major force to help him expand on his work. I didn't really have any skills to speak of just [00:03:00] idealism and energy. But that's a start. And yeah, he wrote, it took a while.

It took a couple of weeks air mail, but he got back to me. He was very kind. And we recently looked at that letter together. I'd founded my files and there was a little wariness because, was I like, was I working for the cia or I had some agenda. Was I gonna try to convert them all to a another religion or,

Shiloh: Right.

Alex: So he kind of hedge his bets a little bit. But basically he welcomed me. He said, get graduate, come here. We can't pay you. But maybe you can find some meaningful work and be helpful to us. So let's give it a try. And that was all I needed. I looked at the positive part of that, not the wary part. 

Shiloh: Yes.

Alex: And I started learning the language they spoke there felt kind of teaching myself and get preparing for what would be the adventure of a lifetime, which ended up being him. Most of my twenties were spent living in Bangladesh learning his social innovation so I could try to figure out how it could be applied.

In other contexts than in Bangladesh where he developed it. 

Shiloh: That's awesome. So for those who don't know [00:04:00] why don't we talk a little bit about what Mohammed Eunice did and like microfinance and how you guys were involved in Bangladesh in terms of developing the economy there? 

Alex: Yeah. And his work there predated my first, step on Bangladeshi soil by a decade.

 He was born there. But basically his insight and he's written some great books about it. We'll maybe talk about my books in a later. But he's written some really good books, including one called Banker to the Poor. 

Shiloh: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: His memoir that I helped him with a little bit. And basically he tells a story of teaching economics, he'd got a PhD in the us, went back.

And he was, he felt it was meaningless. He's teaching these elegant theories and there are people literally dying of starvation outside of his classroom in the seventies. And so he went out and he tr tried to, what's at the base of this poverty? Why can't people feed themselves? And he found that people, because they lacked that.

That the, that initial capital to invest in some sort of income generating business, or to have the money to get, pay the [00:05:00] school fees for their child. So they do that, that they were just so cash strapped that their economic options were limited very limited. And a lot of times they would be exploited by loan sharks and traders who would.

Get them working, but keep the lion's share of their productivity and their value they created for society. So he just said, "What if I were to give you a loan?" Again he was thinking loan, not gift, not charity. Cause how can this be sustainable? 

Shiloh: Right. 

Alex: He tried it in one village and people paid him back and their lives improved and tried it in a second village. He and he kept telling the banks, this is new business for you.

You should do this. And they're like, you're crazy. So ultimately he created his own bank and today it serves 8 million women across Bangladesh. It's a profitable bank. But the real profit is that the women who borrow from it the vast majority of them according to research are their living conditions improved and the whole country's living conditions improved because one of the big reasons is because him and imitators of his work have really helped uplift a whole rural [00:06:00] Bangladesh, especially the women, and gotten them an economic foothold in their economy and their society.

Shiloh: That is so cool. Are. How do, and I've read some of his work, so I'm most interested, cuz I think everybody listening would be interested, but like, how do you have any kind of collateral for somebody who doesn't have, like here in America, they take collateral in your house or things like that. How do you give the poor a loan and if it doesn't get paid back what happens then?

Alex: I'm trying to simplify what is somewhat a somewhat complex process, but uh, but at its core it works like this. That and by the way, the loans we're talking about in the Bangladesh context, a 50 or a hundred dollars loan is often enough to turn someone into almost an in from an indenture servant into a.

A thriving entrepreneur and or if not a thriving entrepreneur, one who's at least able to put food on the table for their family. And so what happens is instead of financial collateral, so [00:07:00] yes, I, you loan me money, but if I default, you get to have my house or some asset.

That's how finance often works. 

Shiloh: Mm-hmm. 

Alex: And he said these people are so destitute, they have nothing to offer up. So a traditional way that it worked, it's worked in some African countries. W ell, there's a village chief den who will offer as a guarantor for the person who can't do it, but that's, but then they're indebted to that person socially, and it's so awkward.

So he said, listen, let's form people into what we call kind of solidarity groups. And what we say is you're, each of you in the the five women in the group, you have a responsibility to make sure each of you succeeds in your business and pays off the loan. In good faith, no one runs away with it.

No one invests in something that they can't really manage. And so it's a kind of a social collateral. It's a collateral where you're, they're gonna supervise and help me. I'm gonna supervise and help them. And there's, and if any of us defaults we're gonna try to pull them out of that.

And so while there's no asset to come after, the reality is that self helps, self [00:08:00] supervision has led except for some brief periods after major natural disasters, Gramean had a 97, 98, 90 9% repayment rate throughout its history. 

Shiloh: Wow. 

Alex: And based on, not that there's a, an asset to be collected, but we're just we incentivize people to help and supervise each other and bring the best out of each other.

Wow. 

Shiloh: That is awesome. So you were there for several years and then you started a foundation to ultimately help support and raise money for these projects. How did you start that? And I was reading in your book, I love that you, one of the things you were talking about was how that first letter to Mohammed Eunice really spurred your kind of confidence.

To be able to ask other leaders for great and big, crazy things that would sound outlandish. So like how did you utilize, those years of building your confidence in that area to create a foundation and fundraise for these types of projects? 

Alex: Yeah I think a lot of people until they, the people [00:09:00] who succeed in the mission driven world, they ultimately have to become, Fearless.

And ask people for a lot. If you are bashful, if you are gonna ask people only for a little bit you were very fearless in asking me to join this effort and other things and sign these documents and so forth and so forth. But it's born out of your passion, not because you wanna manipulate me, but because you wanna do good, but to do good, you need to have people partner with you. In a big way. And so anyway, so I, when he was, when he welcomed me in, I felt like I was responsible to try to take his innovation. And I, there were very few ways in which I helped him.

Apply his insights and techniques in Bangladesh. My job was to help the next generation of Mohamed Eunice's apply his ideas in places like the Philippines and India and Nigeria and Wow. And so when I saw that opportunity to build on a proven solution, but to take it into new contexts and to back social entrepreneurs who said, I want to be the [00:10:00] Muhammad Yunus of Southern India, or of Indonesia or Vietnam, Or Kenya, and I could be their strategic partner.

But I needed to have something, some resources to help them with. And that had, and that, that's with a great mentor and coach and trainer in fundraising I became a very skilled and fearless and aggressive fundraiser. And it wasn't, again, about manipulating people but it was about joining this movement.

So excited me and I thought would excite people. Other people, and some of them became even more excited than me and wrote big checks or committed years of their life to it. 

Shiloh: Wow. 

Alex: And and because I shared the vision and I welcomed them in just Mohammed Yunus welcomed me in when I was, you know, still a teenager.

Shiloh: Tell us a little bit about the books that you've written and kind of where those came from, what they were written out of. 

Alex: Yeah. Well, first of all I'm. I have as you know from reading my book I have a lot of flaws and I'm pretty open about them.

But one of the things that I'm pretty good at is writing. And so I think in social change, to play to your [00:11:00] strengths, and as someone else who's not as confident a writer, but has other skills might be a musician write music about the things that that wouldn't be something I would ever do.

So, so it was, it was always a part, the documenting, the using the written word to shine the light on people who were doing great things and then what those great things kind of could mean if they were supported appropriately. So the first book I wrote First major book is something called small Loans, big Dreams.

And basically I was just writing about what Grameen did in Bangladesh and how some people tried to apply it in an inner city context in the U.S. And I, I'm totally absent from that book. I'm just the kind of the ammunition like writer author telling the story, but I never say I did this or I thought that.

 I'm just following around people, to give the reader who'd maybe never been to Bangladesh or even the south side of Chicago, what's going on here and why it's important. But then another decade or passed in my career, or two decades , and then I started, realized that I had learned some things [00:12:00] in trying to advance social change often through my mistakes and failures that I wanted to pass on to a new generation of of changemakers people that were, had that same energy and idealism that I had when I wrote Muhammad Yunus. They're maybe 19 or 20 or 25. And I want them to see the things I learned so they can choose from among those lessons and maybe save themselves some grief.

And so that's where the book that you have Changing the World without Losing your Mind, it's this story of my life, but it's not about, Alex accomplished this. Alex is great. Alex is this? No, it's like Alex learned something. I used to think that the way you cause social change is you do this. And then I realized one day is there's a much more, much better way that it comes at you're gonna achieve more at less personal costs.

And I said that's an insight. And so I would tell the stories. Often of failures and frustrations because they led me to an insight that I think could benefit others. And so that be, that was my kind of midlife memoir focused on lessons. And then I came out another book this year and it's, this is a [00:13:00]different telling of that story, which is, I just came a book called When In Doubt Ask for More.

And it's just 214 lessons, all of which summarized in three to four sentences. It's extracted out of those storytelling. It's just that what's the bottom line? I don't have time for your stories alex Counts. I wanna just tell me what you do and not do. And so it's a streamlined version of that.

But again, just trying to say, At some point in my career at 37 up to 37, I thought that the way you managed people effectively in a nonprofit was this way. And then at 37, I'm like, oh my God, that's such a bad idea. Here's a much better way. And maybe I had a people resign in, in protest from my terrible management and then I'm like, no, let's do something else.

And that works good. So that's, so I felt it was just time of my life where, unlike my first book, Where I'm invisible, I'm trying to shine the light on others. This book where I finally felt like I had some lessons learned about causing social change to, to share, and then I, again, I shared them in these two different formats.[00:14:00]

Shiloh: That's so cool. So what are some just off the top of your head, what are a few of those things that were just like really powerful lessons that you've learned, that you've included inside that book that maybe some young changemakers might want to know or need to know, or you really think are essential in that journey of social impact?

Alex: Sure. Some of them are fairly obvious. It doesn't mean that many people apply them, but we all know we should eat right. Do all of us eat right? No. But it's, there's no secrets about it. It's just the discipline. But one of the things I learned was that and this is about fundraising is that a lot of people have a lot of fears about fundraising.

I mean, people have fears about public speaking, but fundraising it's even more. And so many people come into non-profits, they say, I'll do anything but not fundraising.

Shiloh: But fundraising. 

Alex: And so, one of the things I've tried to do is one of my lessons is around fundraise.

Think of fundraising as a win-win rather than a win-lose transaction. And and then if you change that mentality that, if I'm des designing a transaction or interaction between you and I where [00:15:00] I'm gonna come out ahead, but so are you then that translates into a second lesson of mine around fundraising with it, which is, you should never ask people for money or frankly, anything important, hesitantly or apologetically.

Like I, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, I, I want you to do this, but it's, it's like it's gonna be distasteful for you, but I really want it. So would you please do it? I'm sorry. Sorry. That's no Fundraising at its best is about entering into a partnership that can be as valuable to the donor as it is to the person receiving the donation and sometimes even more so, very meaningful.

And so get out of that win-lose mindset that apology for I'm manipulating you. So there's a whole series of lessons around that. And then as it relates to managing people I came up with a little, a mantra, which is that in nonprofits where we're dealing with some of the hardest problems the business and churches and governments either created or just at least couldn't solve and they landed in the nonprofits to try to deal with them. These are really [00:16:00] difficult is, everyone knows that you should reward success in the workplace, but I think it's almost important in a nonprofit context to reward failure. People say, what, what do you mean by that? And what it's so good is that if you are, if you're given a really hard, challenging task to change society for the better within a nonprofit, and you just put a plan together, you implement it and you think that this is gonna solve the problem and you fail miserably, If you're the kind of person that are most of the ones I've worked with, over time, you're gonna go back and, figure out where your theory of change went wrong.

What assumption was built into your plan that was wrong? You're gonna get to the, it may take you six months, but you're gonna get to the bottom of it. When you get to the bottom of it, it'll probably be an insight about how you think and analyze that. Will you'll actually become smarter in a lot of different dimensions, not just in that specific case.

There'll be some light will go off and that person, and by the way, when you've learned that lesson, um, let's say the lesson is like simple, like, you know, listen to people or listen to people better, it's [00:17:00] usually more granular than that. If you, if that, if for lack of that lesson, you had a humiliating failure.

When you learn that lesson, it's ingrained in you more than it's just of used. If I, if you were to say to me, Alex, listen better, all right, sounds good. But if it that for lack of that lesson, you had a humiliating failure and didn't change society in a way that you wanted to, you never forget that that's earned into your consciousness and you're a better professional.

And so I'm saying if someone. Fails, but they learn the right lessons and integrate them into who they are as a professional. I'm going to give them the raise or promotion or whatever, almost as much as if they had succeeded. Because they're better equipped.

In fact, if you succeeded, sometimes you get a little bit complacent and arrogant. And and you need to deal with that. So reward failure became one of my not counterintuitive management mantras that I've applied over the years and with very few regrets. 

Shiloh: Oh my goodness.

That's so good. It's funny, I'm, I am a director of operations at a nonprofit, and my thing is just finding ways to [00:18:00] reward my staff in general, because it tends to be, a thankless career with very little incentives. And I feel like the turnover can be very high because people come in with these great passion and vision to change the world, and you slowly start to realize that you're making incremental amounts of change.

But large sustainable change in the long run takes. Years sometimes. And so there's a lot of discouragement and there's a lot of days where you go home wondering, how you've been effective or not. And so trying to creatively think of ways to incentivize people without doing money or rewards for.

Quote, unquote, sales, right? But how do we as nonprofits really cherish our employees in a way that sustains them in the long run and also validates the hard work they are doing, so I love that, that, that piece of information I'm gonna take away for me today. That's so good. Let's talk about.

Some of the lessons that you've learned in terms of self-care as a leader of social impact, because I know you've shared some really powerful stories in your book just about how you [00:19:00] realized self-care was necessary, and then you've learned a lot of lessons in terms of that. What would you say to people who are dreaming of a better world and trying to create a better world and a place that we can all live in that.

Is, is equitable and sustainable for all of us. What types of things do we need to know about taking care of ourselves so that we are, we remain in the long run with our successful change. 

Alex: I think there are the kind of three main things I'd say is one, is you start to care so passionately about the change and you, and you see if, especially if you do something that's starting to work, you just want to put everything behind it.

And yet I've seen social change leaders some very close to me and some were from a distance just run themselves into the ground. Yeah. Up to the point of taking their lives or adopting a lot of really bad health habits. And and I almost fell into that trap in my early thirties.

So the thing that I, be committed myself to at a very pivotal moment in my early in my [00:20:00]career when I was 33, Was that I said yes, I'm gonna work really hard at this. I remember one job I had people didn't think I did a good job, but they said, we, but you put in the effort, you, there's no effort, but lack of effort.

But I said, I'll never push myself beyond the point where every year I wanna make sure I emerge from the year. Healthier physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally than I entered the year. Doesn't have to be by a lot, but I have to be going in that positive direction. And if I'm not it's a.

It's like an emergency. I gotta change something. Whereas, you know, a lot of people in social change, some of my role models early in my career, it's like they would brag about, well, I haven't taken a vacation in two years. 

Shiloh: Oh yeah, 

Alex: I haven't, I haven't seen my wife in three weeks. It's like, that's a badge of honor that proves that I really care.

And I'm like, nope. That's not, if it works for you, fine. I don't think it does. But for me no. I'm in this for the long term and I need to be, at least a little healthier in all those dimensions. So how did I do that? I mean, I wish I could tell you it's [00:21:00] one little thing, do this or don't do that.

I had, dozens, maybe hundreds of experiments where I said, if I did this, would I be, would it really make me more in those, you know, those ways I was talking about mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. And two that I, I'll just mention and there are many more in these books that I, and they might not work for you.

Cause one of the things I think is you need to define self-care for yourself. Not based on what I defined, but one of the things I learned early in my career is that I would get anxious and my anxiety would cause me to make poor decisions in managing people and managing money and fundraising across the board.

And I realized one of the things that would help me deal with my anxiety was aerobic exercise but it would like, you know, cut it in half and so it would be significant. And so I just realized at some point this works. Why am I only doing this one day a week? It is not an exaggeration to say that over the last 15 years, there are only a, [00:22:00] probably a handful of weeks where I've not done an hour of aerobic exercise six days a week.

Shiloh: Wow. 

Alex: And even traveling, even if I'm, you know, hopscotching around Asia and Africa, I'd find a way to do it because it was that, it's, for some people, if I know people belong to Alcoholics Anonymous, it's like going to your AA meeting, that's the basis and you build your day around it.

Exercise became that for me. And so what I say to people is, should you exercise? Yes, but find the thing that that best addresses your fatal flaw. And then apply it with all the discipline you can. 

Shiloh: Wow. 

Alex: And you'll end up and it might not, it might be very different from my problem, my fatal flaw and my solution, but find out what it is for you.

The other thing that I found is that a technique. I wrote a short chapter about this called Beginner's Mind in the book that you've read. And I said, one of the things is you get more experienced in whatever field you're in. You become a little bit complacent.

You're, you have a certain degree of expertise. You lack curiosity. You think you know it all, you act [00:23:00] like you know it all. Maybe you don't think those thoughts. And that's the danger of growth. And it is just kind of inevitable. As you grow older, you gravitate towards things that you're good at or that may, or you're comfortable with.

And so one of the things I learned as a technique kind of accidentally is the power of always doing something in your life, usually a hobby for me, that you're a novice or a beginner at. And it just it sends me to this place of playfulness of not being embarrassed by making silly mistakes. Cause that's what being a novice is if you're trying to grow out of being a novice.

And so I realized that just how much happier I was and not only that, but by being a novice and getting into that kind of beginner's mind I would bring that more of a curiosity and humility to things that I actually knew a lot about, but I realized I could learn a lot more about and that the self importance and all just melts away when you're doing at least one thing seriously, that you're seriously invested in, that you're a novice at.

And so I've always tried to have at least one thing in my life that was. That had that quality that [00:24:00] I wanted to get good at, but I was really bad at. And it just, again it does something to my soul to how I relate to others and my work and myself. That's that's really quite powerful and healthy.

Shiloh: That is so good. I try to paint for that very reason, but I just frustrate myself because I'm not good at it. So I think I need to take your words into next time I paint. So I remember this is good for me. I need to keep going. I don't have to be an expert or know what I'm doing. But that's so good.

I love that. And I love the idea of taking something that de-stresses you and really being diligent about that one thing every single day. Like an AA meeting or whatever that may be. Meditation. Meditation. Exercise, aerobic exercise. Love it. That's so good. Do you have any resources obviously your books, do you have any resources or favorite authors or anything that you could share that you think that if somebody's starting out or midway through their journey of social impact, these types of resources really helped you [00:25:00] and sustained you during those times?

Alex: Yeah. I like biographies and autobiographies. Some of the great ones, some of them might just go back and reread portions of it. I'm a big fan of this book cuz you know, sometimes you get mired in the details of social change and the next board meeting and the next fundraising appeal and the next whatever.

And it's like, why am I, you here and there's a great book by two friends of mine. Susan Davis and David Bornstein, and it's called Social Entrepreneurship, What Everyone Needs to Know. And it's just a, it's 130 pages. It's a quick read, but it basically just goes into the, just the core.

It's what how does society change and how are and how do, how can we think about these different approaches, whether it's activism, whether it's, going through a business model or going through a social entrepreneurship model, it's just every page jumps off at things.

I'm like, yeah, that's, that reminds me why I'm here, why I'm doing this, and it, and then it prompts me to do it even better or think [00:26:00] more deeply. And so that's a great book. And again, histories some of the books I think are also meant to just take us to a different place.

Shiloh: Yeah. 

Alex: And not away from our work. And then you'll sometimes you'll come across things that are surprisingly relevant to what you're doing, but it's mainly you're just taking a journey away. And that's where. And that's the other role that hobbies were for me and hobbies were for most of my hobbies.

I try to find some mentor or some if I really do want to be, grow out of being a novice. And that's the, and that's the scary but also exciting part. And maybe that might help in your painting practice, if that's what your goal is to. Is to find people that are really good and so they can help mentor you, but also you have to just overcome that that shame that we feel sometimes about just doing things badly.

It's like trying to learn French around a native French speaker, 

Shiloh: Right! 

Alex: You're stumbling and it's oh my God, I did that. That sentence wrong again. But, but you get over that and that, that humbling of yourself is also, I think very healthy very cleansing.

Shiloh: Do you [00:27:00] have a favorite quote or mantra or something that you have loved that has really helped you through your journey of social impact? 

Alex: Yeah, I've there's one quote by the founder of Visa D Hawk I think is his name. And he and I've returned to a lot.

This is, we're recording this in December of 2020. Not an easy year in a lot of ways. And he said something paraphrase is pretty much he said things are too bad and it is too late for pessimism. 

Shiloh: Oh, I love that. 

Alex: So If things are really if situation is really terrible and you don't have a lot of time to turn around, like pessimism is a is something like, is a luxury you can't afford.

You need that optimism. You need to, this has gotta change. It can change, it will change. That's how people get energy. So when things are at their worst wow, throughout pessimism, it's just gonna weigh you down. That's the time to, to tap into optimism. So I always I always like that the o the other I'll, you'll ask for [00:28:00] one, but I'll give you another, which is mine, or at least if it's not mine.

I never, I forgot who I heard it from first, and I just adopted mine, but I said, when I'm facilitating people, nonprofits and people, nonprofits tend to also, everyone wants to have their say. And and it's maybe one of the things, except since we're not paid what people are in the private sector, at least we get to, we get to air our opinions and have our input and all those things.

You probably know what I mean from your own experience. But I said I urge people if I, if you and I were sitting at our table with people trying to solve a problem, and I would say, I want to encourage everyone in this room. To boldly speak your truth. Even if everyone else disagrees.

Like not, and not boldly your truth. Like my truth around this is that this would be the worst budget we ever adopted, boldly. Speak your truth about what we're talking about, but don't confuse it with the truth. Because then the next person who's gonna say, no, I think this budget is great.

That's their truth. And it might have actually more grounding in reality than my truth. So again, I'm, it's I'm [00:29:00] gonna speak my opinion. I'm gonna, speak my mind and vote my conscience, but realizing that I could be wrong. And the guy Adam Grant from Wharton said, he said, people, the best people in a meeting are ones that argue like they're right and listen, like they're wrong.

Shiloh: I love that. That is so good. Thank you so much, Alex, for joining us today. How can people purchase your books if they want to hear more from you? 

Alex: I encourage them to go to my website www.alexcounts.com counts with a c. You can get it on Amazon. But I've also got a lot of free content on my website.

Also linked to my YouTube channel, which I have a bunch of little instructional videos that I've been doing this year. But go to alex counts.com buy my book on Amazon, and I make no secret of my email address. I love hearing from people. Just like you reached out to me a few months ago. Alex counts zero nine gmail.com and I'll always respond just like Muhammad Eunice responded to me when I was 19 year old and all I had was energy and [00:30:00] idealism.

There are a lot of people out there that's where they are now. And I always wanna be helpful to them. 

Shiloh: Alex, you've been such a joy to me and so generous with your time and your expertise and just your friendship, and I appreciate that. So thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for tuning in.

We hope this episode has given you some valuable insights and inspiration for your social impact journey. If you enjoyed the show, let us know, follow and leave a review, [00:27:00] and don't forget to share the fun with your friends and followers. Now go out there and create some positive change!