Have you ever had the opportunity for a “do over” when an important project, relationship, meeting, speech, or some other endeavor unfolded reasonably well but didn’t go great? Perhaps a teacher let you re-take a test to demonstrate that you had improved your understanding, or your nonprofit board or donor allowed you to resubmit a report after getting some valuable feedback, or a let was called during a tennis point when you were on the ropes. It can be a powerful and even life-changing experience.
I suppose the idea of a “do over” is a special case of the phenomenon of getting second chances, something I have learned a lot about as it relates to the criminal justice system through my client Marq Mitchell, the founder and leader of the terrific nonprofit Chainless Change. (He avoids the term “criminal justice” and instead uses “criminal legal” system to make it clear that he does not see a lot of justice in how it operates.)
His main point is that when people make mistakes in life (or are wrongly convicted of doing so), we need to avoid stacking the deck against them in a punitive way—especially since it helps ensure that they make more mistakes in the future, or otherwise suffer the consequences.
In my case, the do over I am talking about is the opportunity to come out with a new edition of my book Small Loans, Big Dreams. This is effectively the third edition of a book about microfinance that was originally published in 1996 based on field research conducted mainly during 1993-1994.
Basically, I spent countless hours following around a group of Grameen Bank borrowers in Bangladesh, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was trailing the bank’s founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus or a group of African-American women in Chicago who were borrowing from a program modelled on Grameen. After 2 years of intensive field research, I wrote up their stories to help readers understand the methods, power, context, and limitations of microfinance. The original stories still resonate, as the basic microfinance value proposition to clients has not changed fundamentally over the years.
I have always been very proud of that first edition in many ways. While it may be immodest for me to say so, I think the writing in that version was at times terrific, especially for someone who was not yet 30 years old at the time it was written. The field research was done painstakingly; few corners were cut. I did it all on a budget of less than $20,000—my advance less my agent’s very reasonable 15% commission—stretched across 2 years.
However, the book had some real limitations. Most of them were due to my lack of maturity at the time—as a writer, as a professional, and as a human being. The 2008 edition, which came out in the aftermath of Yunus and Grameen sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, addressed some of those limitations. But that version was a rush job. I was running a complex organization at the time that did not afford me much time to obsess over every detail that is required to make a book as close to perfect as possible. For every immature element in the first edition that I was able to correct, it seemed that a careless error of some kind snuck in. (To take a silly and embarrassing example, in 2 places the word “hut”—intended to describe a modest rural dwelling in Bangladesh—appeared mistakenly instead as “hug.”) Bottom line: I did that edition in a hurry, and it showed.
With my 2 latest books about nonprofit leadership and management (most importantly this one) being widely available now, I began to yearn for having Small Loans not only in print again, but in an improved and updated form. It pained me to see people searching for it from time to time and being forced to purchase used copies, since it was out of print.
To address this, during the pandemic I got the legal rights to come out with a third edition back from the publisher and was able to convince Karl Weber at Rivertowns Books to work with me to do a 2022 edition. It is nearly ready to be released, and I feel great about all the improvements and all the strengths that have been retained or further embellished. Perhaps it is needless to say that the 2008 edition included lots of updates about what happened to the organizations and people mentioned in the book from 1996 to 2008, and that the new version includes extensive updates about the rather dramatic developments within Grameen and the wider microfinance movement during the last 14 years.
The cover (reproduced above) looks great, and we received a powerful endorsement quote from Andrea Jung, the president and CEO of Grameen America—an organization that is featured in this book to some extent. (It did not yet exist when the earlier editions were published.) She wrote, “This latest edition of Small Loans, Big Dreams offers fresh, new insights on the young history of microfinance in the United States. A must-read for anyone interested in the field and its evolving worldwide impact.”
There were also positive reviews of the first edition in the Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco Chronicle, and Minneapolis Star Tribune (back when regional papers still did reviews of non-blockbuster titles.) The Chronicle review was one of my favorites and it included this: “Best of all, [Counts’] binational book demonstrates that microcredit isn’t an exotic quick fix, but the kind of slow, often frustrating step-by-step process that is usually the hallmark of real change.” So true!
You can buy pre-publication copies by going to the Rivertowns Books website now, or you can wait until it is up on Amazon in a few weeks. I am going to use it in a course I am co-teaching on microfinance this fall.
In life, at work, in writing, in sports, and in other pursuits, second chances don’t always come. But when they do, don’t take them for granted. Instead, embrace them and make the most of them. It took a lot of time to make this edition all it was meant to be, but I don’t regret even a single hour I spent on the project.
With the 2022 edition of Small Loans, Big Dreams: Grameen Bank and the Microfinance Revolution in Bangladesh, America, and Beyond, I have been able to put the idea of taking advantage of do-overs and second chances into practice. I hope that you consider purchasing, reading, enjoying, and reviewing the book in the weeks and months ahead. And think about what “do overs” may be available to you.