Empowering Entrepreneurs With Omni Circle In Topeka | Michael Odupitan

After the loss of my mom, I was living in a little bit of depression. I didn't know what it was, but I kept saying like I got to get out of here. It's one thing to march in the street, but how do you actually improve communities? Sure, collaboratively, if we put our heads together, we get more done. Even though great things are happening in our community, people don't see it yet right.

Michael Odubatan. Absolutely, thanks for coming on, man, no problem, yeah, it's good to see you. Good to see you as well. Yeah, okay, so you are the owner, founder. You run OmniCircle Absolutely here in Topeka. A little bit of both. Yeah, man, that's awesome. So for people that may not be familiar, man, just give us a background, like who are?

you? How'd you get into business? What are you doing these days? Yeah, whole journey, no journey. So I'm originally from west palm beach, florida. Okay, I transitioned to topeka in 2002. Um, didn't know how I ended up here. I was supposed to go to marshall university on a football scholarship. Where's that in virginia?

you ever heard of marshall university? Right Made a whole movie about it.

Wait, oh, from the movie. Yeah, yeah, think about what really marks me. I know that I know the movie, but I'm not, you know, in real life. Right, it's familiar, yeah.

So I was supposed to go there. I was one of those young men that came't mean that you focus on your academics, and so really good at football and basketball coming out of high school, but I didn't have the grades, and so, going to Marshall, I couldn't get the scholarship that I deserved because I didn't have the proper SAT scores to go along with my GPA at the time. So I missed out on the opportunity to go to D1 college. After that I landed on another school, southern Illinois, and then when I got to Southern Illinois it was way too cold for a sophomore kid and I was like Coach, get me out of here.

Yeah, yeah, I can't deal with the weather. So he ended up sending me back home. I sat there for a while. Summer came and then I was like Coach, is there anywhere that you can send me? Just anywhere, I'll go anywhere. And then he ended up telling me that Coach Shurick, who was currently at Pitt State, was coming to Washburn. No way, and so Pitt was out of their scholarships. But Coach Shurick was coming to Washburn for his first year here and there are scholarships, but Coach Shurick was coming to Washburn for his first year here.

And then they offered me a scholarship and the rest is history from there. So your coach knew Shurick and was able to connect to you guys.

Yeah, they actually coached together in Pitt State and then when he took the head coaching job at Southern Illinois, Coach Shurick was still at Pitt State but then Coach got the job here at Washburn and so they still had a connection there and that's how I ended up here in Topeka Wild. So that was 2002? So that was 2002. Came here on a football scholarship, Played four years of school here football here, Graduated with a degree in social work and criminal justice and then I kind of went into the field after sports and graduating and I spent about a good 10, 15 years here in Topeka.

I would say Working in social services, doing everything from juvenile detention to working with foster kids. I became a foster parent for eight years, taking only teenage intensive boys. Wow, just the easy ones. Just the easy ones, right intensive boys.

Wow, just the easy ones. Just the easy ones, right no, far from these.

Yeah, um. And then I um, got into more of the mental health field. Um, working in that space, did everything working at kni, working at valeo, okay, yeah, and so that opened my world up to a lot of different things. It helped me also in that journey of like discovering what I wanted to do with my life. I was, I got to a point in my life where I felt like God was working and telling me something. I didn't know what it was, but I kept saying like I got to get out of here. But as I was doing all these things, it was showing me that something was preparing me, and I didn't know what it was, but 2015, man, I felt like something was calling me to leave and I did, and so I went to Kansas city. Six months after getting to Kansas city, I ended up losing my mom to cancer. Yeah, man, and that was the turning point in my life, a little bit for me, where I was still discovering who I wanted to be as an adult Right, and a lot of things was happening.

You know, we were dealing with the police shootings of the Eric Gardner's and Sandra Bland's Right that kind of sparked Black Lives Matter, and we saw a lot of rioting in the streets and all these different things. So my question was what are we going to do to rectify this issue? It's one thing to march in the street, but how do you actually improve communities? Sure, how do you actually help people? How do you actually help people, man? And so during that time I tried to start an organization called Community Connections.

At the time, and I was still in Kansas City, I was in Kansas City, still, I was working at a PRTF, a residential treatment facility for kids, and from that point I just said, I can kind of do something myself and I want to figure out how to better build in communities. And then I was also after the loss of my mom. I was living in a little bit of depression. And so after that I did a bunch of reading man, trying to discover who I wanted to be self-help books, psychology books, history and in that journey I discovered Black Wall Street. Are you guys familiar with Black Wall Street? Sure, yeah.

I am not.

Okay, so Black Wall Street was one of the most prominent African-American communities in the country back in 1918. But around 1921, they had what they called the Tulsa Race Massacre. Where the story goes, there was a young man that made a pass african-american man that made a pass at a white woman and she informed her husband, and her husband informed law enforcement and they created a riot. They wanted to arrest the guy, but the community of the black tulsa and black wall street refused to give him up and then it created a whole right and they burned down the whole community and they lost all of their wealth and a lot of people died. So that was pretty traumatic to understand what happened to a community, but also understanding how did they build such a prominent community where they had everything from doctors, lawyers, grocery stores, movie theaters they had everything you can name some of the most wealthiest people in the country at the time and so I went down there.

I ended up moving to Tulsa in 2018 because I wanted to learn more about how to establish community like that, and so I was committed to the thing right, wow. And so I was committed to the thing Right, yeah, and. And so I moved to Tulsa, kind of learned about what they were doing in Tulsa, not just in Black Wall Street, but Tulsa as a community at home and Tulsa is probably one of the most fastest growing communities in the country right now, with some of the things that they're building innovatively Is that where Matt Pivarnick was.

Yeah, he was in Tulsa before he came to Topeka.

So did you know him? I did not. I think when I moved to Topeka, Matt was already in. When I moved to Tulsa, Matt was already in Topeka. Oh, okay. So I think Matt came here around 2015. Right.

So I got there in 18.

So he was already gone, but Tulsa had already started their momentum.

Right. So you're seeing some of the results, maybe some of the things he was doing.

Probably if he was already a part of that right. Wow, yeah. And so when I got there, they had already started the gathering place. It was already open. They did a lot of construction.

Oh, someone else was just telling me about that. I've heard amazing things about it. Oh, that's the awesome part.

If you've never been there, I highly recommend it. Yeah so, yeah. So just learning and those type of things. And I discovered more of my path and decided that I was going to commit myself to a journey, and so I did, and then I had a calling that Topeka was the place that I needed to do it. I was actually on my way back to West Palm Beach.

And.

I was walking out of my church. At the time. I was attending a church called All Souls and my pastor had mentioned to me as I was walking out. He said sometimes God places you in places you don't know why you're there, but you're there to do God's work. And I had to sit on that a little bit. Right, right, what does that mean? But the entire time that I was here I was asking God why? Why am I in Topeka, out of all places in the country there's a lot of people asking that question sometimes here in Topeka.

But I didn't discover why and honestly, I tell people whether they believe it or not. Topeka kind of saved my life a little bit, because growing up in the community that I was in, there was a lot going on. There was killings left and right. There was a little bit of a turf battle going on at the time that I came here. So I saw a lot of my friends, you know, passing away, going to jail, all those different things. So it kept me here because I knew if I went back home, it was going to be a tough situation, and so when I was preparing to go back home, I came back here to visit one more time and had a couple of friends that I played football with.

It was like, hey, why don't you come back to Topeka and do that instead of going back to Florida? Wow. And so I was like, all right, well, if I come back, would you guys help me? And they said, yes, I moved back in 2019. And then, kind of, the rest was history. We started OmniCircle August 25th 2019. Wow, and we've been building ever since. That's wild. Yeah, that's kind of where the journey.

Come on, what a story, man yeah seriously Omni Circle.

It's what you're doing now Full time owner operator, ceo. Break us down what's Omni Circle?

So Omni Circle is an organization really started with the grassroots focus. Our mission is to unite and strengthen communities by creating equitable opportunities for individuals to grow socially and economically. We do it in three pillars, so we have three phases of our organization where we say we connect, collaborate to create and it's a pathway to success. We typically say we focus on building people from survival to creation and so in that space my background being in social service, working with people, utilizing some of those philosophies and Maslow's hierarchy Sure Meeting the basic needs of people, providing them with education and then helping them achieve their purpose.

And so in that connection phase, that's what we do. We volunteer in the community by offering the basic needs. We have a free mowing program, we do food distribution, we volunteer, and then we have a youth med social program. All of those services are free.

So who's volunteering? You're recruiting volunteers from the community to join you, or do you have employees that are volunteering their time outside of work? Yeah, we have members of the community. So that first phase is what we serve in the community, and that's where we started, and then as we that was the first thing that Omni Circle was doing was just volunteering, just volunteering in the community.

We think about 2019, you had COVID and we wasn't really expecting COVID, but COVID came shortly after we started. And then the second phase of that you had George Floyd Right, and so when those two things happened, there was a lot of need in the community. So we were just trying to meet those basic needs of people. And then, when we were meeting those needs and we were finding people who wanted to help, we said, OK, what can we do for you to help? We said, okay, what can we do for you? And a lot of people say, well, I'm looking for further education, whether that be trying to improve my credit or trying to find a better job or how do I get my kids into college and prepare for financial aid and all these different things. So that was the education piece. So at Maslow's, after you meet the basic needs, you give people a sense of belonging and then you also educate them to become more confident right and so we said, okay, well, what can we do to meet the needs of these individuals?

so we started a membership part of our organization. So that's that second phase, our collaboration phase, where we help people become more whole, and so we call it our whole person leadership. So in our whole person leadership, so in our whole person leadership. We provide community, we provide educational opportunities for growth and development, and then we also are trying to build a pipeline for leadership.

And so we take those individuals as they become more leaders. We take those leaders and incorporate them back into the community for volunteers. And so now not only are they benefiting, but they're also have an opportunity to serve. And so when they get to a place where they are ready to become a leader and they say, man, I've discovered a thing that I want in my life, what I want to create, that's when we move into the third phase of our creation phase, which is our Topeka startup community, and we give them the opportunity to start a business if they want to and have a phase from early stage to mid stage to hopefully getting people access to capital right, okay, so you know you walked in here.

You're on the phone doing some fundraising, that's for that.

Oh so, yeah, so we, we work with entrepreneurs, um and so, oh, so, yeah, so we work with entrepreneurs and so we try to get access to resources. Wow, and so, depending on where you are in your business, as we work with the entrepreneurs, we try to get them the access that we don't do everything, but there are resources that people don't know about in our community that exist, right.

So, if you don't know about these resources, then they could be the thing that blocks you or it could be the thing that helps you sustain and grow, sure, so what we try to do is find the resources and then get them access to the resources or the opportunities to expand what they're doing, or their vision or their dreams.

So so you're not necessarily like doing just like fundraising for like, if a guy comes through, your organization grows as a leader, like man, I have this, you know, business idea or a need I want to meet through this business or whatever are. Are you like helping fundraise for that? Or you're like like uncovering hey, I've discovered there's a network of opportunities for you to go. You know you can apply for this. You can apply for this, or is?

it a mixture of all, or is it a mixture of all of that? It's a little bit of both. So we don't. We don't do the funding ourselves.

I mean okay, so you're not like calling guys like hey, man, I need you to donate 10 grand to this guy starting a business. You're like. You're like, hey, if this guy applied here, is there an opportunity there, or something like that.

So, as we were learning and developing, like you know, a lot of individuals that we were meeting with, they said, hey, I want to start a business, but I can't find any money to start a business, Right? So we said what is the problem? Why aren't people being able to start a business? So we started with the banks. So we started asking certain banks and saying, hey, are you not funding individuals who need to start a business? And they were like well, we would love to fund, but if they don't have the proper business plan or if they don't have the financials, to run their business plan.

So then you come and help these guys like, hey, let's get the basics of business plan, whatever else we help you develop yourself in helping you learn how to put your business plan together, write your financials, understand how business works, and so we have an early stage cohort that we call Fast Track through the Kauffman Foundation, and then we have a mid-stage. So, once you take yourself from ideal to concept, we go from concept to launch, and so when you're ready to launch, then we provide you with the resources that are beyond what we do that can get you access to capital. So, okay, working with the entity like shiny County startups, or connecting you with the bank, or connecting you with some type of other resource that you write. Yeah, I was out there.

right, I will pass you along so let me ask you this on that same line to get a, is it a small business loan? Is SBA loan, is that what?

so there's the SBA loans, there's a, there's a number of different opportunities.

So to get a loan from a bank to start a business, what sort of business plan do you have to have? Like, what does that brief overview? What does that look like?

Yeah, so a business plan is basically your vision, right? And so how can you articulate your business vision to be able to say is it going to be sustainable, is it going to be impactful and will the banks get a return? Right?

Will it be profitable?

Right, yeah, you know so if I'm able to give you $50,000, are you going to make $100,000 for me to get my money back and for you to be able to make a profit Right? And so I think the banks evaluate that in your business plan, and then you also need financials to show that you're going to see some growth in your business.

Yeah.

And so a lot of entrepreneurs don't typically know how to do that, unless you go to college or you take some type of business course. But if you're just saying, hey, I got a great deal and I want to, you know, right now food trucks are booming. I've been, I'm a great chef, I know how to cook. I want to start know, right now food trucks are booming. I've been, I'm a great chef, I know how to cook. I want to start a truck, but I don't know how to sustain that. On the business side, I can do the cooking, but I don't know how to run a business.

Yeah sure so what we?

try to do is help them not just work in the business, but work on the business. That's so cool.

I've always thought there's so many people out there that have unique skills and could contribute to society, to the city, in so many different ways. They just they just don't know how to run a business exactly it's just it's hard exactly you know what's the how many, what's the percentage of businesses that fails like 80?

90 percent of them.

Yeah, but that's the reason that a lot of businesses fail because they don't have the the business business understanding right, it's less to do about your product sucks and it's more of you know.

It's just hard to keep a business going doing all the back end stuff makes sense.

I mean, it's the, the thing that makes you a really good. You know, chef, for instance, does not make you a good business person, Right, it makes you man. You have a great product, but if you don't know how to run, that's cool man, I like that so it's been.

2019 is when you first was kind of tip of the spear for you guys. So we're four to five years in what's been maybe the most exciting part and then maybe the most challenging part of kind of what you've been up to in the last five years.

Yeah, I think the exciting part is to see when you have a couple of success journeys, right People who like some people who are killing it, who has been through the journey, who are doing the thing, that have changed their mindsets and now are out there doing great things in the community, doing their thing, that have changed their mindsets and then now are out there doing great things in the community, and so the more and more people that we can develop and we can push out into the community and they're out doing their thing and sustaining that's a success for us. What's challenging is Topeka is a community that's a little slower to move and I think we're trying to change that collectively as a community. But the things that you may see happening in a bigger city right, sometimes, if it's happening in a bigger city and you bring a speaker, it's unfamiliar to our community because we're not accustomed to that lifestyle, and so, yes, it may be great, it may be a great idea, but if we're not caught up yet, then people don't. It doesn't resonate the same.

So you're talking about like types of businesses that someone might start. Maybe Topeka isn't ready for something, yeah.

For example, is we opened our collaborative workspace.

If you go to bigger cities and you have a shared workspace, those workspaces are typically filled with people working together, collaborating, building their businesses, sharing ideas, supporting each other, taking advantage of the resources which is what it's for.

But we've been a little slower in our workspace because a lot of people don't know how to utilize it, and a little slower because we're trying to get investment in it and then not everybody understands how it's going to be beneficial for our community. But if they understood how that worked, then we would have more opportunity to educate the community, provide these resources and get people to where they want to be and then getting them to collaborate. So you may come in and you might say, hey, I have a business idea and I think I want to start a cleaning company Right. Then you come to me and say, hey, I have a great idea for this new carpet cleaning machine I've developed. And then we might say, in bigger cities, I want you to come together and build a business together. Right, and now you are a multi-million dollar company because you utilize the resources together.

Right, let's go.

But if you try to work individually then it's a little harder to do Sure, Because you're trying to do everything by yourself.

You're trying to do everything by yourself.

So collaboratively, if we put our heads together, we get more done. Wow, so is omni circle. Then is it a non-profit absolutely, we are a non-profit.

That I didn't know. Yeah, which?

yeah, I thought. I thought omni circle was just the co-working space no, like you drive by, you see the building I was like, oh, it's co-working space, that makes sense. So when you know coming like, yay, I'm trying to get funding for this, and I was like, wait, what do you do? Like that doesn't compute with the co-working space.

So that's, that was more. The co-working space is more of a side gig than to the heart of what you Wow. Okay, so once you start a business and you're needing a place to incubate that business, or a place that you can't afford a brick and mortar but you are somebody that needs office space, then now you can use that shared space to work together with other entrepreneurs.

Yeah, so would you say. Omnicircle is a good because we have a wide variety of people who listen to this show, whether they're from Topeka or they just like.

Yeah, we have tens of listeners, tens that might see this, tens, and we're looking at one, two, three and four of them right here.

That's right, someone who's thinking about starting a business and you know it's conceptual at the moment. Is this something that OmniCircle hey, we should reach out and get involved on? You know, we don't really know where to go or how to start. That would be a good organization.

Yeah, we currently right now probably um, and you think about businesses in Topeka that offer business education. There's a number of different platforms. You can use um mentoring in school or you can um connect with the SBDC, what through Washburn, and they'll help you, like write a business plan and they'll help you put together your financials. But if you want to learn and go through a cohort of learning, which is like without going back to college and you know spending a ton of money, um, which it could be three, four hundred dollars, or credit hour, which that works for you, yeah, but our business cohorts start at three hundred dollars OK, you know so. Or even two fifty, so you can come and take an eight week to a 12 week course for less than five hundred dollars Wow, you see, what does that look like?

Is it? It's so. It's a cohort, so it's with other people.

Could you give us the eight week breakdown here in the next five minutes?

Yeah, so I mean basically the eight weeks or the 12 weeks. We have a series of trainings that we offer in particular topics from you know, personal budget and credit, to marketing, to legal, to P&Ls that you will take a 12-week course and every week, once a week for 12 weeks, we'll cover a particular topic, we'll bring in a speaker and then you get to work on your business and you get to work on your business ideal. So, if you have a business ideal, we will literally walk you through the process of all those things of what it takes to run a business, and then, when you're ready, like you said, we have early stage ideal to concept and then concept to launch, and so you can get a total of 20 weeks with us for less than 800 wow wow, so what you meant.

You used the phrase earlier of like, uh, you know it's like, uh, you know potential leaders coming up through it having to, like change their mindsets. Have you found? Um, you know, obviously, it's how it's important that you learn. Like educational, you're learning concepts. You know how businesses work, how to put a business plan together. What about, like the deeper elements of just like how someone sees the world? Obviously, like it seems like you're wanting to help shape people's not just education, but like their mind, the way they see, so they can see opportunities and seize upon them. And even when there's challenges you're pushing through, and I mean that's such a deeper level of seeing the world than just, you know, kind of taking a class. Like so, how, what has that been like?

you know, yeah, so we've been developing. So in that time, um, when I lost my mom, I went into this deep dive of reading and I was reading like 400 page books in a day you know, I was just kind of like immersing myself in books so I've read a ton, so um. In that, a lot of those books were like self-help, personal, personal development, psychology, what was like, what were some of the best ones.

Like you, look back and man, that was helpful.

It's a couple of them, man, I have a catalog, but I think one of the books that I really I always recommend to people is Breaking the Habit of being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. Okay, then the Motivational Manifesto by Brittany Bouchard, and then I'm a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell and all of his series of books. Sure, sure and so these are things that kind of shape and shift who you are. So from that and then the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy is another great book.

Okay, yeah, I was just talking about that book with somebody else.

Yeah, and so I was diving into all of these different books and I started to develop my own kind of curriculum, and so now I have this curriculum that we train and develop people on, called um brain of a body, and so what that basically does is it teaches individuals how to be the leader of themselves through the mind, versus being managed through the emotions of the body. It's so good.

Say that again, say that again. That's good.

That's good, so it teaches people how to be the leader of themselves through the development of the mind versus being managed through the emotions of the body. It's great, so, everything that we go through in life, if we understand that we are spiritual beings living a human experience through the physical and the consciousness of this world, and so everything, if you're not intentional, then this world can shape who you become through the outside versus leading yourself from the inside out, right? And so a lot of times, culture, society, all of those things are what we are absorbing in this experience versus living in the true nature of who we are, through our spiritual being versus through our physical and feeling emotions, right.

That's so good. Physical and feeling emotions right, that's so good. We have this phrase, uh, we like to use. Uh, uh, emotions are great indicators, but terrible dictators, like they're great at indicating hey, something's a little off. You should think about this, reflect on this. You know, see what's up, you know you're sad or you're happy, whatever, and it's good, because emotions aren't like bad, right, but they're really bad at telling you what to do, right? You know, hey, I'm sad, go to mcdonald's. You know, like that's not a good move. You know, uh, you know, whatever, I love that man because it's interesting.

You know, to me, just the whole philosophy of what you're doing is it's it's obviously, it's obviously bigger than just a business. It's bigger than just like even a product of some kind. It's really, it's obviously bigger than just a business. It's bigger than just like even a product of some kind. It's really about building people, absolutely. And man, that's probably the thing I'm most passionate about as well. So it's just cool that, like you know, it really is all about people. It's all about building leaders, like the most successful people are successful because they're successful, building people, and so it seems like that's really what you're doing. I'm curious, you know, uh, I'm sure you're, you have a, I'm sure your schedule is very full, like overseeing all of these things. I'm curious if there are like a few of the people coming up through this that you're like personally more invested in personal, like you're spending time with, like man I want to personally give some time, or no, it's not really.

No, we don't give anybody a particular personal time with. I think, um, what we focus on because we are like you said, we are people focused, um, right, people center. And so what we try to do is we focus on the four dimensions of a person, so where people focused, and that starts with the spirit, and then we focus on the three dimensions outside of that mental, physical and emotional. And so everything starts with the inside of you, right? So we say things start with you. You, you stance for your own understanding. The more you understand you, the better you maneuver emotionally, physically and mentally in this society or in this world.

So life is about choices, and so what we do is we say if people desire our support and our help, then we will help. We can't make anybody do anything that they don't want to do. Help, then we will help. We can't make anybody do anything that they do they don't want to do. And so when people come to come to us, we have some successes of individuals who have grown through the organization, but it's really up to them to do the work once we provide them with the framework right. And so, um, because again, we can't make them do the work. Like you know, if you play sports, no one can make you right, go take the extra hundred shots, right, right, yeah, if you have to want to get better, you gotta put in time and effort, and so, um, if they desire again that additional coaching or support, then we, we set time aside for them right, yeah, so yeah, I guess that was.

My question is more like like mentoring, like how does mentoring fit in, you know, are there, is that something that is a part of that or, yeah, the mentoring part?

is not so much one-on-one, unless somebody desires it, but within our program we offer the workshops and the training. So we have a men's group, we have a women's group. We're constantly trying to provide some form of education because we feel like in order for you to grow individually, there has to be continuous development and so, as you are growing and trying to get to that leadership, you have to constantly be investing in some form of reading, some form of education that is changing the way that you see the world, right. And so I often tell people um about the um plato's allegory of the cave. If you guys are familiar with play Plato's Allegory of the Cave, if you guys are familiar with Plato's, yeah, bring it. So Plato's.

Allegory talks about Come on man.

Hey, oh, I completely already know this, he's like I need you to just talk about it.

Yeah, this one's for the listeners, this one's not for.

Justin, yeah, right. So Plato's Allegory talks about people being in a cave and not knowing the light of the day, and so all they know is the cave. And then they have this fire in the cave and they just see these shadows projected on the wall from the fire, and when that's all that you know, then you're living by this somewhat false illusion of reality, and so a lot of people, whether they know it or not, sometimes, could be living by the false illusion of what people typically give to them. So I would say for myself, the false illusion for me was all my life. People told me, if you want to be successful, you got to play football or basketball, right, but what's the percentage of someone actually making it to the league? It's like zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, like whatever and so. But there's other careers that you could be pursuing, and if no one ever gives you the reality to those other careers, you have no perception of that Right. And so imagine one of these people that were in a cave actually get out and they see the light for the first time. You typically go to what they would typically call a culture shock.

Me coming to Topeka, kansas was my culture shock, and so I got here and you know it didn't look like what West Palm Beach looked like, especially at Washburn, when you talk about it only being 5% minority, right, right and so, or if not more now.

And so when I got here, that was our struggle.

I had to go through the process of getting into the light of seeing things that I never was exposed to, and so, now that I had a broader vision of the world, I start to see things for what they really could possibly be, and making shape of that, then you know how to attack things differently, right. So now, having a broader perspective, now that I understand, now it's our responsibility to give it back, to help someone else see that light, and so so that's what our journey right now is like. How do we expose more people, through this mentor, into this education, to be able to say, oh, now I see what my potential could potentially be, and then now I can go out to things that are more real, right, and I can achieve more because I have a realistic plan for how to go out to those things. So that's what we try to do. We try to provide that education, that awareness, those understanding of what resources and opportunities exist, that it's not just living by the illusion, but it's actually things that are tangible.

Yeah, wow. So yeah, it's interesting, just kind of piecing some of your story together, like you and I I'm I'm sure I'll get some of the timeline wrong, but basically you had experience in like the social services world with foster kids, had foster kids. I mean that's just a up close and personal experience with brokenness and thinking that doesn't lead to success and you know all kinds of things. And then, and then covid and the blm riots and you're seeing, okay, there's a need where people are not seeing opportunities that are available to them to succeed in life, and you're trying to piece all these things together. And basically, where you land is I want to help build people who can become leaders, and the solution to a lot of these problems is is really helping people not just embrace opportunities but become like leaders who can take advantage, who can take a hold of opportunities, who can create opportunities, who can, you know, build something that solves problems in the city and all kinds of things. It's amazing, I mean, it's just cool. It's a really cool story.

Yeah, it is. It's really cool so now it's 2024.

You're looking at the city of Topeka. You've been back for five years or something and what? What are some of the things that you're most excited about in the city of Topeka? Like, what? What do you think is like? Where is Topeka like winning as a city and where are the opportunities that really Topeka hasn't quite laid a hold of yet? Like what are the challenges?

Yeah, I think what the city has done so far with the Momentum 2027, I think you know it's kind of like. I feel like it's like a pot on the stove. You know you can turn up the heat and it takes a while for the water to start to bubble.

And I think that for a while, topeka couldn't see the value of itself and it's. Even though great things are happening in our community, people don't see it yet Right, there's so many people working behind the scenes to try to make this community a better place and some of this stuff is starting to bubble Right and the water is getting warmer and warmer and warmer in the bubble right and the water is getting warmer and warmer and warmer. But I think that our community can't see it because they don't always, it's not always articulated on what's to come. So I think what's exciting is that, uh, where this community may be in the next 10 years will be a very different topeka and um, you know, you look at all the things from what Advisors Excel has been able to do with remodeling certain areas like the Gage Center area You're talking about the mall.

You're talking about downtown. You got businesses downtown, you got the energy classes. This stuff was not happening when I left, right, and so if people don't appreciate that you got the Viaduct coming, you got Noto. These things did not exist. Now we have things to do in this community, so that's exciting to know that we are on the right track. It doesn't always feel like it. It's not moving as fast as people want, but it is moving. Challenges that I think that we can address is one of the things I would love for Topeka to kind of think about is embracing and supporting the things that are happening in your community by the people from your community. Right, so like, if we get like.

When Chipotle came to town, it went crazy for months and whoever owned the Chipotle did really well. Chick-fil-a came to town it went crazy for months, and whoever owned the Chipotle did really well. Chick-fil-a came to town, went crazy, still going crazy. Every lunch period it's full of cars. You get a local business open, a restaurant no one goes. You know what I mean.

And these are the people that we need to be supporting as they are building in the community and investing in the community, not saying that the person who brought that Chick-fil-A or that Chipotle to this community may not be maybe from here, and we need to support them too. But what about the local businesses? If you become a small community that is driven by the local and small, then that looks very different, because now you have people succeeding out of your own community in an age away, not the people who had the money to do it, but the people who didn't have the money. So if you, like you said, if you guys want to start a business and you grew up and built millions of dollars because this community supported you, that looks way different. Right, but we're, we're, we're driven by. Right now it feels like the chain restaurants, the especially over on Wanamaker.

Yeah, you know.

So it's like why can't we support the tea boxes or the food banks or, you know, some of the local nanny soul foods or you know those people who are breaking their backs to try to create something in this community, but it's hard for them to do it, so they're in business for a few years and then they go out of business because they don't have the support we got to do a better job what are some examples of businesses that have kind of gone through omni circle that maybe are now rocking and rolling on their own or, you know, maybe they're still part of the organization.

But what are some businesses that have kind of come through your organization that we would maybe know?

yeah, I think that's some of this chick-fil-a. I wish we would be in a very different place starbucks, I know, man.

Um. No, we got some. We got some local people doing some things, um, and I think they're really just starting to get off the ground. Some of these individuals already had their ideas moving and shaking but, I think, having that additional support to be able to really take it to the next level. And so our first business cohort we had, I say, danielle J Martin. I don't know if you guys familiar with her, but she used to be the reporter on wivw okay um, but we can anchor.

But now she's uh, kind of went through our program, developed herself in this community and then she just did a pretty significant um event called the rise and thrive event. Um, I think gabe did some of the recording Nice.

Come on Gabe. Come on Gabe.

And so. But she had over, she did a two-day conference. She's been growing that in the last couple of years and this last one she did. I mean she had over 200 women show up to both. Wow, that's cool this event, so that's pretty significant.

And it's like a conference for women in the community.

Cool. So she's been doing that and rocking that. So that's pretty good to see. You know, this is our third cohort and having somebody from our first one out in the community doing some stuff we had a couple of other entrepreneurs that are now building, already had a platform, but building upon what they had with some of our education, so that's going well. I also like to highlight like we have a young man who Jarvis Doe man, who came to us man and has elevated his career, going from making a certain amount of money to almost doubling that, you know, in the course of our organization, by finding a job, that now he's leading in a space that can be impactful to our community. So it's just getting people from a point of where they thought they were hitting a glass ceiling to breaking through that ceiling and then living up to their potential is what we really see.

So would you describe OmniCircle like at the heart of it is not just like a business engine, it's like just helping people level up.

Yeah, it's a journey.

It's a journey from, like we say, survival to creation, right, so maybe someone doesn't start a business, but there's still a success case because they leveled up and are now have different opportunities they weren't aware of before. How do you define success? Well, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what I'm asking. It's a tough. Success is driven by the individual Right, right, and so which is what?

I'm saying yeah, because it'd be like, hey, this guy didn't start a business, but he got a better job. He didn't even know that maybe it was possible or something, right.

So success looks different for every individual. So, as we talk about, success could be hey, I came to this organization and I wanted to buy a house. That's my success, and we provide you with the resources to do that. So we also have credit building, we have financial advising properly save to do this way and we say, well, let's, let us provide you with some training to help you do that, and then that's your success because you bought the house, you know. So we provide all of those different resources that will help people achieve results that they want.

It's not more so just about the business success. It's about the results that you desire.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, that's cool. Yeah, okay. So I feel like maybe one last question and then rapid fire yeah, let's do it. Okay. So where would you like to see OmniCircle go Like? 10 years from now, 20 years from now? What's?

the dream. Our 10 year plan is that we definitely want to see the organization be one that helps economic and social impact throughout, not just Topeka, but throughout cities throughout this country. And so I would love to see, 10 years from now, to see Omni in three different states. I want to see Omni maybe implanted throughout a couple of different communities throughout the state and I want to make sure that we serve a large capacity of individuals to be able to get to where they want to be. And so, 10 years from now, that's kind of what we're working on. We want to be that entity that really drives social and economic impact throughout multiple facets of communities, and we'll see how far it goes.

Love it, man. Wow, and how would someone plug in with you guys?

As a as an individual or as a investor, because those look very different.

I was thinking more as an individual.

Right, yeah, individual than investor.

Yeah To all of the billionaires watching this. How would they plug in?

No, as an individual, really man just reaching out to us and through our social media platforms or through our website, we say and I'll just be transparent on this Omni Circle is an organization that serves pretty much everybody, but our focus is on serving the most underserved and underrepresented, and, as a black man, I will never go away from trying to create opportunities for other Black individuals who have been marginalized for a very long time, and so it doesn't mean that we are stopping anybody from taking advantage of our services, but we definitely want to make sure that we put a focus on getting this information to those who typically haven't had access to this information, to those who typically haven't had access to this information, and so anybody who is trying to grow, trying to develop, want to be in a diverse group of individuals.

That's who we are.

So Omni Circle in itself, if you think about being present, being Omni present is that we want to be in multiple places, serving people in multiple facets and being a community through what this circle is collaboration, unity and all of those different things.

So we say we want to be the most diverse organization through Topeka right now, serving multiple people, bringing people together in ways that they normally haven't come together, and then, taking advantage of these resources that we have as an investor, they can always reach out as well. Money is always good. We're a nonprofit organization, so we don't make a lot of money on the services that we provide, but also, if somebody wants to be a partner in the space, or they may have a resource that can benefit somebody, we also look for those partnerships as well, because then that way we are furthering the access to these resources that a lot of communities marginalized communities haven't had the access to for a very long time. So then, when we talk about growth in communities, you need those resources, and so if we can get those resources, in the hands of people who need it.

Then we can see ourselves become a better community overall.

Awesome, cool. All right, some rapid fire questions that we have. How many potholes did you hit on your way over here?

You know, I don't even count anymore.

Yeah don't even count anymore.

I'm not doing it. I got a Jeep Rega, so we just bump around as we drive, that's because we'll drive all the time now, right Having the runaway favorite answer, I feel like All right.

Have you ever been able to get to and from somewhere in Topeka without hitting some sort of construction?

Yeah, I often do. Yeah, I'm a backstreet driver, so I typically there you go. Yeah, I avoid the main streets most of the time I feel like did you come from Omni Circle today?

Yeah, I feel like you had to have hit construction then on the way here.

I don't think so I came, so I came. So, like I said, I'm a backstreet driver, I came. So I, like I said I'm a backstreet driver, I came up 13th street, okay. Wow, I didn't hit a main road or 15. Right, and I come up 15. Then I I hit um Washburn. What's this? The McVicar?

I came down McVicar, there we go.

There you go, see it is possible. But yeah, it's this, it's the Topeka 29th street.

They just they blocked that off, and then they blocked another one off they're just always improving, john, we're always improving around here.

All right, favorite local restaurant that topeka has? Um honestly, um, I like, because I come from west palm beach. I like the uniqueness of food and authentic food. So, uh, one of my favorites right now is um monsoon grill. Yeah, okay, yeah, I like it a little tuck away, I like some indian food there you go. Uh, favorite local coffee shop um local coffee shop um circle. I'm not a coffee drinker so I don't really um frequent coffee shops, but I do like the work that circle coffee is doing in the community yep, we had david on earlier in the year.

Yeah, uh we should get the monsoon grill guys on. Yeah, sure that'd be good one, yeah are you a golfer?

no, I'm not a golfer.

Okay, favorite golf course but I do swing some clubs at t-box.

There you go, yeah you're talking about supporting the t-box. Oh, I support the t-box, that is for sure especially november to february we are out there.

it's actually driving a wedge between him and his wife, can it's driving a wedge?

Can you please stop? You're at the tee box all the time. Not even my wife loves to golf, so it's marriage bonding actually.

Local gym Koloff right now.

I was excited when you told me you were an athlete because I was like bro I got to figure out what gym you're working out in.

This is remnants of the football days You're just holding on. I'm trying to get it back. Man From 2002.

For real, You're doing a good job bro.

A lot of people.

It takes way shorter time to let go and you've held on man.

No, it's been a struggle, I'm telling you, in the gym in the last two months. So I haven't been in the gym in a while. So when you're building a business, it's hard to maintain all the things Right.

And so this is the last two months.

Man, you are seeing a reflection of what I've been in the gym, but I think it's the muscle memory.

That's what I tell myself when you're building the business you just got to let some things go and the gym just happens to Thank you for giving me permission.

I would like to know how I can achieve these results in two months you know, as you seem to have. I'll tell you, it's muscle memory man.

It'll take a long time for it to bounce back.

Yeah, that's right, there you go. All right, You're doing a project around the house. Lowe's Home Depot Menards. What's your go-to Lowe's?

Lowe's for sure. Mind, just you know, it's just a feel. Um, I think it's the gut. Well, I just you know it's something. Maybe I'm an aesthetic person and so you know you get different feels when you work, walking to different places. Oh yeah, lowes feels aesthetically my style I like it.

That's a good answer. It does, it seems like more the most like clean cut of all three. I think that's probably the case.

That's probably I'm a menards guy through and through. I walk in there, I just feel like I can do anything. You know, I just look in there. I can do anything from building something I have no business building. I could go grocery shopping. Yeah, you almost forget about the grocery, yeah you buy some socks.

Yeah, I hate menards because I, like, I want to get in and out and you're there. You can't go in and out without spending three hours.

Yeah, you can't do that in menard. That takes forever.

Menards is a journey you go in there to different experience and then home depot is kind of like that too, like if you were in the tools and things like that. You want to shop around, I feel like loads. I just go in there and get what I needed and I'm out right yeah cool, yeah shunga trail or burnett's mound um, so I just rode my bike for 13 miles. Okay, let's go the trail, yeah, and so I would say sugar trail. I appreciate, I appreciate it with some of the things that I saw.

Let's go nothing okay, are you into like biking, cycling?

no, so I bought this uh, bird bike, which is like a electric bike oh, oh.

Like bird scooter, they make bikes. Now bikes okay cool.

So I bought a bike and, um, I just kind of rode the bike through and, um, not big on it because again I try to run and then I can't run as much because my knee I had a mcl surgery and so uh. But on the 13 miles it was easier on the bird because I can get my knee and break and, yeah, use the motor.

So that's nice. I can't run 13 miles just because I don't want to.

I wouldn't even try to run 13 miles, but yeah, on the bike it got me far, there you go, man.

Last one Go-to date night spot in Topeka.

In Topeka probably White Linen. Yeah, if you want to go somewhere, nice, I mean you can always go to the Cyrus Cyrus is cool. I mean you can always go to the Cyrus, cyrus is cool. And then I haven't.

I'm interested about rural society right now. Yeah, what is that? I've seen it pop up recently.

Yeah, I think it's like a and I don't want to misquote what it is, but I think they have bourbon or a whiskey bar, oh, and I think they may have some food in there. But Okay, yeah, I think I haven have some food in there, but yeah, I think I haven't. I haven't fully went in there, but we stepped in just to kind of check it out. Is it open? It's open, okay, awesome.

Yeah, we just walked by. I was like what is it? I want to know what that place is, yeah.

Cool. Well, thank you for your time today, Michael.

Appreciate it, thank you guys, where uh?

just lastly, where can people find you online? Are you on social media?

Yeah, I'm on Facebook mostly um LinkedIn, um main places you can find me.

You're not doing TikTok dances or anything I don't.

I guess at my age, maybe showing a little bit. You know, I don't do the TikTok or the what's the other Snapchat, or right, or the what's the other Snapchat, or I'm not a Twitter or X, right, I don't do all those things.

Yeah, all right, man Appreciate you, absolutely Appreciate you guys. Bye.