Follow through on your good idea.

I always like to be a bit ahead of the curve, so I was really pleased that I had already written about Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank before Professor Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. But I was no where near as ahead of the game as Southern Good Faith Fund. In the early 80s, Professor Yunus visited Arkansas to help start the peer lending component of Southern Good Faith Fund. Yunus returned to Arkansas earlier this week to work on another iteration of Grameen and I got to meet him!

Professor Yunus spoke, took questions, and left us all inspired. I always enjoy hearing about how people follow through on their good ideas. Muhammad Yunus could have easily continued teaching economics especially after the banks in Bangladesh told him that no one would lend money to women who are poor. He could have given up, gotten angry, or just theorized about why his idea would work. Instead, he followed through on his idea and made it work.

How many times have you had a great idea and sat on it, only to see someone else implement it? It has happened to me more times than I can count. But when I hear folks like Muhammad Yunus speak, I’m encouraged not to let it happen again. I challenge us all to act on our good ideas. Who knows what the result could be? You could win a Nobel Prize, or maybe, even create a world without poverty.



”It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin