Building a Legacy

By INDIA YARBOROUGH | Photos by JOHN BURNS

If Michael Odupitan, founder and CEO of Omni Circle Group, hadn’t walked into Create Campaign headquarters one random day in 2022, Omni’s Emerge Community Business Academy — which graduated its inaugural cohort in late November — might not be a reality.

I just happened to be in Wichita and was like, ‘I’m going to stop by this organization and see what they do,’” Michael Odupitan said of Create Campaign, which runs the Spark Community Business Academy in Kansas’ largest city.

So he did. He met with Create Campaign staff, including founder and CEO Christina Long. They talked about connection, the power of collaboration and the idea of standing up a new program for diverse business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in the capital city.

“And here we are,” Odupitan said. “Through our collaboration, they gave us the opportunity to expand their work into Topeka with Rising Tide [Capital], to offer this information to entrepreneurs.”

Hence, Omni Circle’s Emerge Community Business Academy was born. In November 2023, after 12 education-packed weeks, the Emerge Academy graduated its first cohort, a group of budding entrepreneurs who represent nine new and growing Topeka businesses.

Cohort participant Jaime Davis said that without Emerge, “I would definitely not be as far as I am now. This really pushed me to take steps every single week to progress my business and make decisions.”

Davis is the owner of Topeka Treat Company, a boutique dog bakery she’s in the process of standing up. She said that the difference between the person she was upon entering the Emerge program, and the entrepreneur she is now, is like night and day.

“I’ve gained so much confidence in my business idea,” Davis said. “I feel like Topeka’s ready for it.”

THE EMERGE MODEL

The Emerge Community Business Academy follows a curriculum model created by New Jersey-based Rising Tide Capital, a national nonprofit with a mission to help struggling individuals and communities build strong businesses that “transform lives, strengthen families and build sustainable communities.”

Both Create Campaign’s Spark Academy and Omni’s new Emerge Academy are made possible by Rising Tide, which licenses its innovative 12-week business development course to proven partners across the country who are eager to facilitate it.

The course provides hands-on training that helps newer entrepreneurs refine a business plan, learn business management and get familiar with business basics like marketing and budgeting.

Odupitan said he had his sights set on Rising Tide for a while. In fact, he had hoped to secure a Rising Tide facilitator license more than a year and a half ago, around the time a young Omni Circle launched a Topeka-based nonprofit with a mission to equitably unite and strengthen communities through various personal and professional means.

Omni wasn’t chosen as a facilitator then, but Create Campaign was.

“These classes are being taught in prominent cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Charlotte, North Carolina,” said Alejo Cabral, Spark program director for Create Campaign.

“To be able to have this nationally distributed curriculum in the state of Kansas was always the goal."

According to Cabral, Wichita-based Create Campaign started in 2015 as a half-day forum designed to connect Black entrepreneurs with service providers in the area.

“Every year since then, we’ve hosted the half-day forum,” he said. “The first year, we expected 30 entrepreneurs to attend, and we got 77.”

In 2017, Create Campaign officially became a nonprofit, with a mission of “activating urban entrepreneurs in the Midwest to launch, innovate and grow.” They fulfill that mission in two distinct ways: by providing access to learning and improving access to capital.

The learning component is achieved through workshops, business consultations, the half-day forum, different programming opportunities and, of course, Spark Community Business Academy.

On the access-to-capital side, Create Campaign manages a private micro-loans program that has become a model for other similar programs across the state.

“I like to say our superpower is that we have one focus, and that is helping entrepreneurs,” Cabral said.

Create Campaign caters to entrepreneurs who don’t qualify for traditional funding. It tries not to duplicate efforts but rather works with various community partners committed to improving outcomes for diverse entrepreneurs. It has a track record of developing business owners who might not fit the typical mold.

“We fill gaps when gaps need to be filled,” he said.

COLLAB MADE IN HEAVEN

When Odupitan first wandered into Create Campaign headquarters, a gap in Topeka’s entrepreneurial ecosystem was clear. In that moment, Create Campaign and Omni Circle Group chose collaboration. Competition was never in the cards.

“We brought that [curriculum] to Wichita with the intent of distributing it across the state of Kansas,” said Cabral.

“I don’t know if it was serendipitous or if it was a godsend but when Michael walked into our office last spring, we were launching the first cohort in Wichita.”

The stars seemed to align, and in the months that followed, the pair worked to figure out how they would bring Rising Tide’s business academy to Topeka. With Wichita’s program in full swing, they even had a test case to learn from. No matter the timeline, they were determined to refine the model in both cities.

Asking Omni to facilitate the second business academy of this kind in Kansas made sense. The program fit well with the organization’s three primary pillars: connect, collaborate, create.

Odupitan and Bonnie Maize, chief financial officer and human resources director for Omni, co-facilitated the Emerge Business Academy in Topeka, and ensured the program stayed on track. Odupitan said their partnership, “is a big reason why this worked.”

Odupitan added that Rising Tide’s equity-forward approach to its curriculum, as well as its emphasis on building business legacies and generational wealth, reflected many of Omni’s goals and values.

“The whole pipeline for Omni Circle is to help people become better versions of themselves and get to the point where they can get out of a survival [mode],” Odupitan said.

“That was the biggest part of why we wanted this program. It targets reducing poverty by giving people an opportunity. Rising Tide believes the quickest way to change the landscape of wealth in communities is through entrepreneurship. That resonated with me.”

Meanwhile, Rising Tide had data to prove Omni Circle and Create Campaign’s collaboration would be worth it.

“What they’ve been able to show is that entrepreneurs who graduate from the community business academy, and participated in this curriculum, have made it past five and a half years in operation; 80% of their businesses did,” Cabral said.

“Compare that rate to the United States as a whole, where more than 77% of small businesses are going to close within three years,” he added. That arguably dismal success rate just wouldn’t do, especially for an organization like Create Campaign that is set on turning the tables.

“The entrepreneurs that we work with all talk about building a legacy,” Cabral said. “They want to build a business that helps them, their family and the generations that will follow.”

That higher rate of success, which Rising Tide’s curriculum spurred, is something both Cabral and Odupitan want for their communities.

“We want to see more individuals from the city of Topeka building in their community,” said Odupitan. He notes that it’s an essential step toward creating a thriving and sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem where connection, collaboration, and sharing of knowledge are the norm.

“Success for us is to see these businesses start, and not just start but to build that ecosystem,” he said. “The value of our community goes up when you have individuals investing back in their community and creating jobs for the community. It builds wealth for the communities they come from. For me, that is what long-term success looks like for us.”

With nine Topeka businesses now graduated from the Emerge Academy, the new program is well on its way to building the type of supportive, community-minded ecosystem by entrepreneurs that Odupitan has envisioned.

“Becoming an entrepreneur isn’t a thing that you can do by yourself. You need a community,” said Odupitan.

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