Winners Focus on Winning: Former Greater Topeka Partnership CEO | Matt Pivarnik

Topeka was the first actual city community that measured its net promoter score. We measure hope, health, happiness and prosperity. All those things have improved. I still think Topeka's best days are ahead. Right, there are a lot of people who are freaked out that I'm leaving. It's not me right At what point did you commit to the bow tie? 20 plus years year.

Matt Kvarnick, former CEO of the Greater Topeka Partnership.

Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here. Seems surreal.

It does. I have to say it, it does. I'm just going to go out and say it. Is it true? You hate Topeka.

That's absolutely not true. I absolutely love Topeka. I've actually made a commitment that I'm going to pray for Topeka every day for the rest of my life, oh, come on Every day, the rest of your life, every day, the rest of my life.

Oh, come on, let's go.

So I have my daily affirmations right and I use my daily affirmations and it also informs my prayer time. Wow, and the very last thing on my affirmations is pray for Topeka.

It gives me goosebumps, man. If only we could get some people in Topeka to pray for Topeka, that'd be awesome.

You know, what's interesting is that we put out a management report every month, and just put out recent management report, and the last thing I say is I'm going to pray for Topeka for the rest of my life.

Will you join me? Wow, that's strong man.

More people need to be praying for the community.

I know I'm kidding, I know man.

I mean that just hits me. It's like, yeah, why am I not praying for my community? That's so cool.

Thank you for bringing that up, because I really believe this. We pray about everything. We pray about our family, we pray about our church, we pray about our friends, right. We pray for ourselves Like we never miss praying for ourselves, right. That does matter. In fact, most people, I think, start with that right. Nobody ever thinks to pray for their community.

It's just like it's one of those things that just doesn't it's not, doesn't resonate, and so I think that's really important and I think to just starting to ask more people to pray for our community.

That's incredible. Yeah, to pray for our community, that's incredible. Yeah, I mean, a lot of this podcast is about how do we increase ownership in the city. Yeah, and you know, getting people to buy in and think, okay, instead of just complaining, oh, topeka is the worst, there's nothing to do, blah, blah, blah. Getting them to buy in like, hey, you can invest yourself in the outcome of this city, you can contribute, Right, man can contribute. Man. What a great way. Just to start by praying for your city.

It really is an incredible, incredible way Joe always talks about it. Fbc Is it, joe, or I think it is, and it hits me. There's a lot of people that are maybe complain about there's nothing to do in Topeka, or Topeka is this, topeka is that and I can't do anything about it. There's nothing I can do and I can't do anything about it. There's nothing I can do and you can pray. That's the number one strategy that you can have is prayer. It's free.

It's free, everybody can do it. You know what? The other thing, too, that's free is to build your community up. Here's the thing about cities Cities and communities are nothing but a group of people. That's all they are. They're not roads. They're not roads, they're not buildings, right? I mean, every community has that. But what actually a city is, it's actually the makeup of a bunch of souls, a bunch of people, right? Yeah, so when people say negative things about their community which is a habit across the United States, right? What they don't realize is they're actually self-loathing, they're actually speaking negativity over themselves, and so you know, I really call people out.

You're actually, when you say something negative about your community, you're really just saying something negative about yourself, because it's just made of a bunch of people you know, and I'll even like lean into it a little harder, like really direct. I'm a big believer and I love watching Michael Phelps swim right, because when Michael Phelps swims, all he's focused on is winning, right. But if you look at the rest of the swimmers, what do you think they're looking at? Michael Phelps right? So I'm a big believer that winners focus on winning and losers focus on winners. Wow, yeah. And so what I found is that as Topeka wins and wins and wins and as we get better, it actually kind of calls out losers, because losers are so frustrated and a lot of people that are bagging on Topeka are not even from here.

They're from somewhere else, I think they actually are not from here and they wish they were here because they either left or they're not here and they have no FOMO.

Yeah, it blows my mind the negative connotation that Topeka will get. And you know, with my line of work I'll work with people relocating here. A lot aren't familiar at all with Topeka.

And then, after you know, a year or so, you know I see him, I'm talking to him and I'll just ask you know, do you like Topeka? And almost everybody is's like yeah, this is great, yeah, like, and it's always you know, I heard this, this and this. Didn't think I was gonna like it and he goes and everyone's always like I don't know what the big deal is. You know, this is a great city, right?

yeah yeah, yeah yeah, that's, that's what I found I've lived here now for five years and the people generally speaking there's a few exceptions, but generally speaking it's the people that love it the most, the people that moved here like as adults, a hundred percent.

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent yeah.

And it's wild how, I don't know. I think there is something about it's hard to see the value where you grew up, maybe, but I think a lot of times it's hard to see what has changed. You know, like I remember I've probably told this story too many times, but I lived in College Hill in the neighborhood right across from Boswell Park, and my neighbor grew up in the house right across from Boswell Park since he was a kid, and we just moved in and we loved it. We had little kids. The park's right across the street this is amazing. And we were there at the park every day with our kids this is amazing. And he's like yeah, topeka is the worst. And I was like what are you talking about? This is great. And he's like well, when I was six years old, I got beat up at that park and I was like that was 20 years ago, like that was so long ago, like it's not like that anymore. You know.

There's an interesting phenomenon that happens, and that is you can go to the happiest, most sunshiny city in America, or even the world, right Like you can go somewhere in Hawaii, but the high schoolers, and like the middle schoolers, all they want to do is go somewhere else.

Right.

Yeah, right, and what you find is, and that's just the way of youth, right, they've been under the thumb of their parents and their grandparents and their family, and their school and things like that Need to differentiate themselves and they want to just experience something new, and what you find is a lot of times when people don't do that, they never go away and become that boomerang where they leave and come back.

It's just natural to kind of bag on your own community and I'm with you. If you find somebody that's moved here in the last year two, three, five, six, seven they're probably our biggest our biggest.

They're our biggest cheerleaders and our biggest fans. It's interesting what you were saying about self-loathing and like kind of the need to differentiate. Like it is true, like when you're young you have to kind of flee the nest a little bit, test your wings. Can you fly? Do you have what it takes, and a lot of that. Often-loathing is like I never left, I never really tested the waters, yep, kind of. You know what I'm saying. Like it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, and then the other thing too is I think that I think when people do like people that maybe left a decade ago, right, we're frustrated, and now they're seeing that things have gotten better, so they're probably, they probably truly are having a little bit of that FOMO.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's always the.

You know the grass is always greener on the other side and you know it doesn't matter how old you are. You know whether you're a kid teen, you know an adult. If you haven't left Topeka, it's always better somewhere else.

Well, except for Texas, right? I mean, this is the thing, one of the things I just. I spent some time, I lived in Texas and the thing about Texas is you could be in the sorriest town in Texas, but, man, if you say anything negative about their town, they will fight you. They will defend themselves and I like really love that about Texas, that they have so much community pride Right that they don't allow anybody to say anything negative. I mean it's great Like they give tattoos of their state flag.

I have a friend with a tattoo of Texas and I mean they just they care so much about their community, and they're so bested in it that they will defend it almost to like the bloody death. It's like the America of America.

It's like the way the rest of the world sees, america that's how we see Texas Right yeah so you mentioned you spent some time in Texas. Walk us through maybe a little bit about your history where you've been. I guess how'd you get to Topeka?

Yeah, Well, I mean really fast. I was born in California, ended up spending, spent some time there and I years about 26 years ago I got into this community development chamber of commerce economic development business and I really didn't understand exactly what it was, but my first job was in Tulsa and I did that for 17 years really community development, and I had this opportunity to come to Topeka and I landed here in January of 2016. Actually, brent Bowles was one of the people that helped me relocate here and convinced me to come here. I wasn't really interested. I wanted to help Topeka, I wanted to be part of Topeka's renaissance, but I didn't necessarily have an interest in moving to Topeka and ended up coming here in January 2016. And it has just been one fast, furious, a bowl full of blessings last nine and a half years?

How so, how so? What have been some of the unexpected blessings of being here?

You know, coming here and realizing that this is a community that just actually kind of had a a little issue with its own morale, and just being able to be part of a big giant team, that helped change that, and then seeing, so you know, you change your psyche, right. If you change your psyche, then the metrics, your personal metrics, are going to change right. So if a community changes its psyche, the metrics are going to change and the metrics have definitely changed, like our net promoter score, like our citizens, their willingness to be able to promote Topeka as a place to move, to live, to work, to play, to worship, has gone up dramatically. Our income has gone up, you know. Our household income has gone up dramatically.

Really Wow Our poverty I mean literally in the state of Kansas. We're the second lowest poverty in the state of Kansas, only to Johnson County. No, way, I didn't know that Only to Johnson County, and so our poverty has gone down, our prosperity has gone up. All the metrics have moved. You know, basically you take the, we measure hope. Health, happiness and prosperity, all those things have improved. How do you measure hope? Well, it's hard to measure hope. I think you measure hope through that net promoter. Score Right, okay.

Do people see a good here, right, right and so I think that's where you're kind of measuring hope.

So is that a survey that's done like annually or every couple of years or something so net?

promoter score is really an interesting survey. So Coca-Cola does it, starbucks does it, cox Communications does it. Topeka was the first actual city community that measured its net promoter score.

So, like Coke would measure, are you going to promote Coke? Yep, but we were the first city to promote or to measure our wow.

Yeah, and the way they do it. It's kind of a fun mathematical equation, but basically there's it's a one to 10 scale, right, nines and tens are promoters, Okay, ones through sixes are detractors. Sevens and eights um, sevens and eights are thrown out and they take the promoters minus the detractors and that's your net promoter score.

So you, can look at that Wow.

You can look up net promoter score for any product in America.

Wow.

Sevens and eights are thrown out. That's wild.

I guess that would kind of make sense your sevens and eights are neutral.

They're not going to promote nor deter Right, but your negatives, your one through six they're going to speak louder like really big promoters, right, and maybe ones, twos and threes. But since all of these products and all these services are all measured the same way, it's pretty cool stuff Like a brand that's really high net promoter score is Quick Trip.

Yeah, oh, totally, totally. And they're like the Texas of convenience stores. Yeah, people swear by QT Right.

Right, they swear it's almost. It's a little bit cult-like, it is it?

was just funny. It's like it's a gas station, Like who cares you?

know Right, but it really is.

I mean when you.

So it's zero.

So it can be minus 100 or it can be plus 100. So on that scale, topeka actually is like a plus one. When we started measuring it was minus 47. What Minus 47. Again, we were the first city in America that had the courage to actually measure its net per meter. Because, think about it, when people complain, what are they going to complain about?

They're going to complain about the weather, it's either too hot, too cold, too rainy, too sunny, or they're going to complain about the roads, their city or partisan politics. There's a handful of things that, when people complain, these things are going to be on the list when you live. Your city is going to normally be one of those right and so and now there's several. There are several communities that are measuring their net promoter score.

That's really interesting. So when was the first time we did it? 2000, I think 17. What was it like getting back the first results?

Not surprising, like if you look back, even if you look back at our first community wide survey that we did in 2017, the headline and it quotes me is it's it's not all rosy, right, but there are opportunities here, and so I think I think we got what we expected. I mean minus 47,. Was that pain? Did that hurt? Yeah, that hurt. Did it surprise me? No, if it would have been a plus one, at that point in time I would have said do that survey again, yeah.

Right, right, yeah, yeah, okay. So, kind of one of the reasons I thought it'd be fun to talk to you is you're moving this week yeah, this week To the coast with, basically, I think, similar job, but in another city. Is that right, okay? So you've been here for about 10 years. I thought this would be kind of a fun like hey, let's talk about what's it been like the last 10 years, kind of an exit interview, if you will. Yeah, what's it been like? What has changed for the good? That you're like man we won huge in these areas, and then what are some things that are still on the horizon? That you're like man, I really hope we can keep the ball rolling in these places, right, so yeah, I would say the change.

I mean the change. We talk about the metrics, we talk about the community morale. I think that anybody looks at right now anybody from the outside or inside.

I think most people are like pinch me a little bit, did we just do that? Nobody thought we could. Right, and I mean just even seeing, like Cody Foster and Jim Klossman, just the people that are making investments into this community and just changing it Right, and we've had great elected officials. I still think Topeka's best days are ahead, right, there are a lot of people who are freaked out that I'm leaving a little bit of a secret here.

It's not me, right? I'm part of this big giant team. I was just blessed to be able to be kind of that lead goose, the one at the front of the V. You know, it's like for me it's just like the V is there, the family of geese is there, we're all a big team, it it's just I'm going to come from that front of the V and I'm going to just kind of back up and be part of the draft and and uh, so those are, those are the things on the horizon, like. I think there's a lot of like monumental things on the horizon that are close, like really close. Let me. Let's take one that everybody knows about Westridge mall.

Like that's one of those that I used to lose sleep over. It's just like what are we going to do? Malls across America are struggling big time, right, yeah.

And for Dave and Cody and Advisors Excel to be able to buy that, turn it into a corporate campus but, at the same time, shrink the retail footprint. And guess what all those people are going to do at lunch? They're going to go out and shop print. And guess what all those people are going to do at lunch? They're going to go out and shop, right, and it's just, it's going to stimulate the, it's going to stimulate everything. So that's going to be really cool. I think there's massive things on it's on their way for Menninger Hill. You know, now that we have new ownership of Menninger Hill and develop, you know, some development concepts and plans. I can't really talk about them, but I think it's going to blow everybody's minds. The Topeka Hotel Another thing Citizens just love to complain. Why did Topeka buy a hotel? Newsflash. There are tons of hotels that are owned by cities and counties across the country. As a matter of fact, overland Park, the hotel that's tied to their convention center, the city of Overland Park.

Oh yeah, the huge one, yeah, yeah, wait. So what's the Topeka Hotel?

I don't know about that. It's the Capital Plaza Hotel that our city purchased. Oh, like they're going to renovate it, it's going to be cool. Yeah, it's going to be amazing and then what I can't wait is when the announcement's actually made and people see what that's actually going to be. All the citizens who are just frustrated like man, I can't believe that our city bought a hotel. They're going to be like oh man, our city was so smart to buy a hotel.

It's going to be cool. Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on the winner.

That's right. Yeah, that is such an amazing quote.

There's two housing projects in the works right now for downtown. Yep, I've heard about we've been working really hard in downtown and I think we've like I think we've really, from a programming standpoint, it's been great.

The one thing that's missing. We don't have enough people living in downtown, so we have two housing projects coming in.

You know, one is what I would call affordable workforce type housing. I think it's going to be like attainable. And then the other is going to be take like wheatfield village and just put it like right in downtown.

So that's going to be so cool.

So all of a sudden you have five 600 units in downtown with 1.5, 1.75 people living there eating at the restaurants and things like that.

That's going to just be amazing, and I was talking to someone the other day that what I'm most excited about for the housing downtown is it'll encourage people to not just dine and dash from downtown. Right, because I think that's what a lot of people do Right.

I know it's what I do.

Right, we go to the Pennant, we go to Iron Rail, we go to the T-Box Yep. And we're gone Right and we don't hang out Right and I think having housing there where people there they're doing the common consumption now Right, if you have the certain cup or something.

I don't know if they're still doing it. I saw something for it.

And I thought that was a great way to get people to stick around.

Yeah, just walk around.

Instead of you know, have your drink at Iron Rail, leave it and go. It's like, hey, just take it with you, walk around, go, walk around the plaza.

Really good for downtown and the cool thing about all these people living down there is that it's a demographic that does like, when it's convenient, to go out to eat, right. So they're going to be going out to eat Tuesday, wednesday. Thursday on the days where we are probably not going to be there. We're going to wait until Friday or Sunday, do you think?

that that will create some incentive for more like retail space to open and stay open later.

I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

That's great, I know it is. It's frustrating. I think, as invested citizens we've gone to like, all right, we're just going to go walk downtown, and then you get it's not like that late and it's like everything's closed. Why is everything closed?

Like the restaurants are open.

Yeah, there's nowhere to like walk in and cruise.

There Saturday night for Nashville Nights. You know what I noticed Saturday night Nashville Nights is there was a big pre-concert crowd. Then there was the concert itself and the windy night. We were packing right, so we ended up having to go home, but we heard the next day. The post-concert crowd was really great. Let's go. So I think you're going to see more turns on tables and more turns on.

Was that the band outside of Celtic Fox? No more turns on tables and more turns on. Was that the, the band outside of Celtic?

Fox. No, that was see, that was something after Nashville nights, that was so. There was live music at Cyrus. There was live music at Celtic yeah, While TPAC had a singer songwriter event. Wow, that was really cool and it was. It was three songwriters that literally performed all of their number one hits.

You know what Wow. I went to that last year and it was incredible. I did not know that was happening again this year.

It happened Saturday night.

Yes, that was really good last year.

Yeah, that's really cool River. You know, eventually river development.

Yeah, something on a river.

That's cool, we're one of the last communities in America that has not developed its rivers.

So we have this opportunity, wow. So, being from a little bit everywhere, you've kind of seen a ton of different cities. You've experienced, lived, what is something that you think Topeka has, something that is like this is unique to Topeka that maybe you don't see in some other cities?

So so one is I think that we have there's. There's just some some cool selling points, right. One is we're right, smack dab in the middle of the country. That helps with economic development. I think it also helps with just kind of feeling a sense of safety, right, just being in the middle of the country and just a sense of safety. Um, I think we have, like we have some of the cleanest air in America, right. Actually, we have the clean. Uh, we're number eight in cleanest air in North America, wow.

So, I think people take that for granted. Like, when we look at the skies here, we see more blue.

It's bluer than anybody else is seeing, because the air is so clean here Like it's unbelievable. So when you're thinking about the environment and things like that, I mean we're right here, we have a ton of sunny days, right? Most people don't realize. I mean, the sun shines a lot here. I'm moving to Myrtle Beach, right, myrtle Beach, topeka, has about the same number of sunny days. Now I will say there may be some colder sunny days here in Kansas in January, February, but it's still cool that it's sunny, right.

The other thing too is like don't ever sleep on this Kansas nice thing, right, and I know it sounds very cliche, because no matter where you go, people are genuinely nice. I think human beings are just nice, but Kansas nice like the the level of niceness here and just how conscientious and how people are in this community.

It's so true. Yeah, that's probably the thing I hear about the most. People like you know international students or you know people from around the nation like, oh my gosh, everyone is so nice and welcoming Almost awkwardly nice.

When you first moved here, like yeah, you know, I was in Texas and Oklahoma. People are nice there, right, right. Then I got here. I'm like wait, is this genuine?

But it actually truly is genuine. That's so funny. I had some out-of-state clients I was working with and you know they're nice enough people, but they would make some comments to me that and I was like huh, I think you, I kind of took that, I'm kind of offended by that. Yeah, but I don't think that's like that was kind of rude but I don't think that's how you meant that, and I think it's because you're from New York.

So like I'm just gonna, just gonna let that one go Right Well it's funny how here, like it's pretty standard, there's no rule, but it's pretty standard, like if you walk past someone you make eye contact and smile at them. It's like kind of just the way it is. Yeah, yeah, if you go to Chicago or New York, no one does that. Or DC, yeah, no, yeah, no one does that. And it struck me it was funny because I was like man it does. It feels if you're from the Midwest, it feels like people are mean. You know like, oh, people in New York they're mean, yeah, and I in the sidewalk every day.

I don't think I'd have the energy to do that either.

The other thing too is, I think, that a big upsell of this community and a lot of communities in Kansas. You can actually go into a community like Topeka and if somebody wants to get into Topeka and actually make a difference, you can, and it doesn't even take that much sweat equity. You can, just, like we said earlier, pray but get involved and make positive change. You can, just like we said earlier, pray but get involved and make positive change. You can do that. You're going to Philadelphia or you're going to Washington DC or New York. Even if you want to make a difference, actually finding a seat at a table to make a difference is really difficult to do here. You want to make a difference. You can be in the mainstream making that difference.

Gosh, I'm cracking up. I was telling John. I was like I'm going to ask him if he hates Topeka. That's going to be the first question.

I'm going to ask him.

And then you turned at such and such a great moment of no like obviously. But you know, I'm going to pray for Topeka every day. I'm gone Like that's so cool.

Yeah, it really is.

So what are? Brag about yourself, but you can brag on your team, yeah, your team. Cause none of none of our wins are my wins. Like there's no, none that are my wins, I would say. Maybe the one that I would maybe take a little bit of credit for, that I'm probably the most proud of, is, if you look at the team at the greater Topeka. Partnership is a mind-blowingly unbelievable professional team and I will take a little credit for that, because I got to hire those folks, I got to help develop those folks and it also just gives me like this big sense of comfort knowing that as I'm leaving to go, you know, do something different that the community's kind of in their hands, right, and you start thinking about the Bob Rosses and the Julia.

Abdels and the Sean Dixons and the Molly Howies and the Michelle Quavistable Fields, and I mean they're just such an incredible team so I'm super, super proud of that and. But I mean just the whole program of work, like if you think about it like Momentum 2022, momentum 2027, the creation of the Greater program of work, like, if you think about it like Momentum 2022, momentum 2027, the creation of the Greater Topeka Partnership. I mean it didn't exist before 2018. So that entity was created in January 2018. It's more like just the win after win after win, it's more streamlined and focused.

Could you walk us through, like what was your strategy when you got here? So like there were all these kind of not competing but disjointed little organizations and you kind of banded them together and then Momentum, like can you walk us through?

That was my next question. What was the whole approach? Walk us through all the sub-entities or what that? Even what the organization as a whole looks like?

So when I came here I mean I actually came here and I was employed by the greater Topeka chamber and and then they had a contract with go to peak of the economic development organization and the contract was just like part of me, right. So it was those are the two entities I was involved in. But I came here and literally what I did is I just said I just I don't care about organizations, I don't care about bureaucracies, all I really care about is how we're going to move the needle and how we're going to take this community to the next level and then the next, and then the next. And I think that some of that has to be top down, like we have to get our leaders to care so much that they're going to just lock arms. But I think it's also bottom up too, like I cared what the citizens thought I mean.

And one of the things that was just remarkable for me is, coming here from Tulsa. I really Tulsa is a big million person community and we were doing great things there, but it was very top down and it also seemed like everything we were doing was focused on making wealthy you know, the wealthy more wealthy. What I found here is that something came out of my mouth one day and it was literally I'm talking and someone says how will you know when Topeka is, you know, ultimately there and successful? I'm like when our most hurting street is starting to feel like they have opportunities for happiness and prosperity. Then I thought to myself wait, what did I just say for?

happiness and prosperity.

Then I thought to myself wait, what did I just say? Like, did I just talk about the fact that I'm not gonna be satisfied until our most hurting street has an opportunity to succeed and be prosperous? And so I think coming from the top down and the bottom up in this community has really helped us develop strategies where everybody has those opportunities for hope, health, happiness and prosperity. And then all the other initiatives you know, I mean like I'm super proud of Forge, I'm super proud of you guys. Like the energy that you guys have for this community, right, that kind of stuff makes me like super stoked, really, really proud.

And so I think it's the overall program of work Like I can name little, you know, downtown development, westridge Mall, you know some of these things. I just think it's just overall, just that feeling of a new spirit and literally like a new kind of energy. And I know it's happening because when I travel right, when I'm in Wichita or I'm in Kansas city or when I'm at Omaha, lincoln, places like that, they're just like man, a lot of cool stuff's happening at Topeka.

I used to not, I used to come on. You know I used to not really have a very high opinion of Topeka. But now I'm reading about you guys in the Wall Street Journal and you guys are like the number one hottest housing market in the United. States. Your supply of houses is low. Why? Because the demand of people wanting to move here is high. Guys, we need more houses, we need a ton more houses. Wow, yeah.

And that's a good problem to have. That's amazing, yeah, so, and that's a good problem to have, that's amazing. Yeah, do you have a? I mean, it kind of feels like we're in like a you know, like I mean, you're obviously you're passing the baton, but this, this feels almost and we were. Before we started, we were talking about funerals when I'm gone, here's what you need to do. What is the speech you would give people Like, hey, when I'm gone, here's what I want for you most.

Yeah don't let up. So momentum I think the momentum is like huge right now. So just do not let up. Probably more than anything, though, as I say, that the team oriented atmosphere is really important, If this community starts fighting with one another as opposed to competing with the rest of the world, it'll destroy itself from the inside out. That will not happen. I just do not believe that that will happen. Protect one another right, Call each other out privately. I mean one of the things. Being 56 years old, I see all the great things and the benefits to social media, but I also see just the cowardly acts of people sitting there in their underwear eating.

Cheetos Keyboard warriors.

Yeah, and it's just like it's so negative and shut those people out right. Just unfriend them, delete them snooze them for 30 days. If you end up having to snooze somebody for 30 days more than once, then you should probably not be friends with them. If you end up having to snooze somebody for 30 days more than once, then you should probably not be friends with them. But it's just like just demand more positivity and demand more positive thinking and so that's you know.

It's just like keep on, keeping on. The momentum is unbelievably strong right now and the structure is here just to keep going and just believe this. It's good. People think like Topeka's best days are right now. They're not, they're in the future, they're definitely in the future. Wow.

Wow, wow, that's amazing. So maybe shifting gears just a tiny bit. When, at what point Did you commit to the bow tie?

Man, I've been wearing it 20 plus years. Really.

I read an article Wow.

Yeah, I read an article one time early that tall guys are not supposed to wear bow ties, really, and you know what I'm just like.

That's not Forget that I don't like that. That's when I started wearing bow ties. Challenge accepted.

Yeah, there was an attorney in Tulsa that was like six, eight and he wore bow ties. I thought he looked cool.

Cause you're what? Six, four, six, five, six, five, six, six. Okay, yeah, yeah, wow, jealous.

I don't wear them not to put you in a box, but you have a very like. You're very gregarious, you're very outgoing.

You're very joyful and positive, but you also like I feel like your look kind of matches your personality. You like you pop, you kind of pop. Now I've never worked with you in a business sense, so I don't know like what you are as like a boss, you know, and all of that, but you kind of just the way you you dress and put yourself together kind of carries that A little secret though there's a personal brand equity, right, I think what you drive, what you wear, how you look and things like that I think are really important to your brand.

But I will tell you, I'm an extroverted introvert, right, so I can be as extroverted as you want me to be and I can do it all day long, but when I go home, I literally just like all day long. But when I go home, I literally just like, right, you know, and I just like love, that quiet time, like my favorite time of the day is the, the, my morning time. I'm up at 4 45 AM and I have a pretty devout morning routine and that's just my best time, because it's my time.

Right.

Yeah.

So, as you transition to Myrtle beach and leaving the team behind here, do you have a? Uh? Is there someone who's going to be taking over the reins? Do you have an interview process? Are you a part of that at all?

I'm not part of that. So really that's. I mean, I'm really proud to say that Dr Julianne Mazacheck has agreed to lead the search committee. Oh great I think that's really cool, right Because?

I mean, she's been part of that process.

She's been on the receiving end and the delivering end of search committee, so she's leading the search committee. I have a personal bias. You guys know how proud I am of the team, so I would be really disappointed, maybe even frustrated, might even be a little angry, if they bring somebody in from the outside. But you know, so that's what I'm really hoping. This team is so good. I'm really hoping for that. But I also understand why the community leaders would want to cast a wide net and just like with Dr Mazacheck, when Washburn University hired Dr Mazacheck they did a national search. Right, they could have just hired Dr Mazacheck because everybody knew her level of intellect, intelligence and how great she was. But they wanted to compare her to the rest of the world and they picked the best candidate yeah.

That's cool. That's amazing. That is really cool. I'm helping them more with administrative stuff and things like that, but I will not be part. They'll make that decision after I'm long gone.

Yeah.

Wow.

What are you most looking forward to about Myrtle Beach?

New challenge right, just recreating myself again, just being able to go and just like, like, turn that energy, dial up what I've, you know, taken what I've learned here, what I've learned in Tulsa, and applying it to another community. So I'm a big believer that we're. You know I'm in a business of building cathedrals, right and so a cathedral, sometimes you're the stonemason and you're laying that rock, right, and you may not ever actually get to see the finished product. Generational, yes, generational. So seeing if I can go, I actually believe the work that we've all been doing together here is going to pay huge dividends 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, and so going to do that in another community Cool.

That leads me into a thought. I had this entire conversation. Your job is so so much delayed gratification and I think that'd be so incredibly hard to you. Know all the work you're putting in years of work that you know you see some fruit hopefully, but you know you know you're laying the foundation so you don't always get to see. You know what's going to come from this Right and I feel like that for a lot of people would be like super unsatisfying. Yeah, there's some.

There's some more immediate gratification, Right. I mean like so like like the Walmart distribution center and all those cool jobs yeah, that center and all those cool jobs that got created. That wasn't immediate, that was a four or five year type of project, right. But there's some that's more immediate, that you just get to do really fast and see the fruits of your labor. Probably 80 to 90% of it is going to. The dividends are going to come, like for your children and their children, and their children.

So you were a part of helping bring the Walmart. Yeah, I got to be part of that project.

Wow, yeah, wild those are the things that we work on, like right now our pipeline. I think we're in the high thirties of organizations, companies that we're working to try to actually bring to Topeka Cause.

That's massive. Yeah, that's a massive project.

Yeah.

That's funny. I heard I was listening to a podcast with Joe Rogan and Mark Zuckerberg and talking about delayed gratification and instant gratification and, uh, if you didn't know, mark Zuckerberg's a really big jujitsu guy and he said the reason cause Joe Rogan's a big fighter and he asked him like why? Why do you, Mark Zuckerberg, like jujitsu, Right? And he said the reason he liked jujitsu so much was his day job running Facebook was filled with delayed gratification.

You know the marketing tactics, he has the product innovation, all of these things. He never, always gets to see the gratification right away. Jujitsu, you know he goes in for a move or whatever he does. You know immediately.

You know you messed up, you didn't do it right.

And I thought that was the same thing with my line of work in golf and how I love golf because it's competition with myself and I immediately know whether or not I did it right or wrong Versus. You know, in real estate it can take some time. You know you're working with a client, maybe see a paycheck in a year, maybe don't, but I thought that was interesting. You may have to come see me in Myrtle Beach, oh, absolutely.

We can make that happen. Yeah, there's a lot of it.

Don't tempt me to have a good time. Yeah, there's a lot of it Wow.

You're leaving Topeka in a couple days, a couple weeks.

Where are you?

taking your wife out before you go, that's exactly what I was about to williams. I knew it. Did you see this? No, I didn't see that.

Yeah, car ran through the front of it and, uh yeah, completely destroyed the inside. I don't know how long it's going to take for renovations, but we'll pull up some of the clips. It's, it's crazy. When was that friday? Yeah, okay, wow, yeah, and they bought. It's funny, they made, they made it into a great little marketing play. They boarded up the front door and it was like see you next week.

People can't stay out. We're so good, yeah, wow.

That's so, wheelbarrow Okay.

Yeah, love it. I will say one thing too. You know, I think that we at the partnership, as staff, get a lot of credit and a lot of our volunteer leaders, like we talk about Brent Bowles and Cody Foster and Joe Hishman, our board members the other thing, too, that I think that people lose sight of is that being an elected official is not fun. Right, it's not fun. It's a thankless job. Very little benefit to it, especially financially. There's very little benefit to it, and so I just put a challenge to people out there if you really wanna make a difference, instead of taking to social media right, run for office, become an elected leader.

It's a hard job, but I mean they really have our future, and I will just say that I've been very blessed to serve with some amazing elected officials, and I know that they take a lot of public bashing right, because that's what we do in America we bash our elected officials. These people care so much. They care so much I mean they literally lose care. So much. They care so much I mean they literally lose sleep at night. They care so much. These people that run these city council, county commissioners, our state reps, our state senators, even our federal delegation. They all just care so much, but especially this local politics, even school boards like that's an important job.

And so I just help you run for office. That really, that really can. You can make a huge difference.

Yeah, thankless job. That's a great way to put that when you make a decision that you you know. When an elected official makes a decision that you agree with, it's like great. That's what they're supposed to do.

Right, right, yeah, but when it's all of a sudden they don't make one that you care for.

It's like that person sucks, yeah.

Yeah, you know they're the devil and it's like, yeah, it's tough, brutal, cool dang man. Well, dude, thank you so much, gosh this has been a joy man.

Yeah, do we want to hit him with some rapid fires?

well, I don't know how many he's gonna be able to answer. Uh, they are mostly to do with what your favorite place in different areas are, so we we'll we'll see what we can do.

We can see. We'll see what we can do. Go for it. We're going to go date night with your wife. You mentioned the wheelbarrow. Are you going somewhere before, going somewhere afterwards for a sweet treat? What are you doing in Topeka? So we're, we're big Hazel Hill folks.

Okay, yeah, so we're more. It's a big treat to go into Hazel Hill and grab some stuff to take home so that we can sit out on the back porch, go out on the boat or something like that. Oh yeah, yeah, we have different. We have different like styles. Like she's date night, she's like a white linen, you know type of person.

Yeah, I'm more of a North Star Steakhouse type of person, you know. Oh, they're bacon wrapped fillets.

Yeah Well, I type of place. They're bacon wrapped fillets. Well, I mean french fries with gravy you can't beat it.

What's better than that? Would you get in trouble if we found you at a Chili's?

you know, I think I've eaten at Chili's once since I've been here. Yeah, there's so much local, oh there is. Yeah, absolutely it's so true, I'm a big Jeremiah Bullfrogs fan. Yeah, I go there a lot.

Yep, we go there a lot too. They got some good stuff. Yeah, wow, you're doing a home project, you're fixing something up.

Menards, lowe's, home Depot, all of them have it in stock and I hit them all. Boom, yeah, yeah. So I hit them all. So I might lean a little bit to Home Depot, because they let's go, but that one counts, that counts.

But let me tell you why, Let me tell you why.

If it's apples and apples and it's between the two, I love them all right. But Home Depot has a distribution center in Topeka and they employ a bunch of people.

Yes, they do, if I can show Target and Home Depot and. Walmart Some local support.

They're employing so many other people.

At least he had a reason. At least he had a good reason. My reason is just that it's better. That's not a good reason.

I'm a Menards guy Through and through.

I could get lost in menards for hours.

Uh, what else we got well, gabe and I had an idea that, uh, after each episode we need a live tally board that we keep on on set. That we, yeah, so we need a tally board of of lowes, home depot, menards and anytime the guest votes for home depot. After the episode. We have to film you going to home depot and buying something from the store episode. We have to film you going to Home Depot and buying something from the store, or you should have to film yourself walking through the store and getting it and then we attach it to the end of the episode and then anytime someone mentions Menards so it'll be like once a year I'll have to go to Menards and buy something. We just put it on the bookshelf.

So, I think you should have to go to Home Depot after this and buy.

I probably should. I spend more time in those places parking lots because I tend to not go into places, just because I don't. You remember I said I'm that extroverted, introvert. Yeah, I know that if I go in it's going to turn into a work opportunity for me.

I'm going to run into somebody.

So I'll just you know drop Wendy off Go in head down.

I'll say I sit in the car because once you go in there's no internet or service whatsoever. So if you're trying to Google where something is in the store, you have to do it in the parking lot. That's funny. Why is this the best podcast experience you've ever had?

It doesn't even feel like a podcast. It feels like we're hanging out.

I know man, You're in our living room right now. Good answer.

We didn't have to pay for that either. That's the.

Well, thank you for joining us. Where can people find you at If they want to follow you as you go to Myrtle Beach? Are you on socials or what are you?

doing yeah. So I'm actually going to work for an organization called the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and visit Myrtle Beach. Okay, A little secret it's 65 miles of contiguous beaches. Right, it's called the Grand Strand. And I'll be working for the organization that actually represents about 500,000 people in the entire MSA. So, you can find me at that organization. That is so wow, so it'll, it won't be hard to find me, yeah.

We'll find you on the golf course out there Exactly.

I'm not going to, I'm going to play golf, I'm going to work really hard.

I love work, work hard, work hard, play hard, that's right Cool.

Matt, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate it. Appreciate what you've done in the city. You guys keep doing what you're doing for Topeka.

Appreciate it.