Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with Relationship Matters TV. I want you to stay tuned; I don’t want you to go anywhere because we have a guest on today that’s going to blow your mind with all kinds of valuable information. His name is Joseph Olalusi, and don’t go anywhere because if you go anywhere, even for one minute, you’re going to miss out. So come right back. [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Hello there! Welcome to the Relationship Matters show, Mr. Joseph Olalusi.

Joseph Olalusi
Thank you so much, Janice. This is amazing! I love the intro, and everything is absolutely wonderful. I appreciate being on. Thank you!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I appreciate it. It’s an honor to have you on; it’s a real honor. We have so much to talk about. Normally, I get on a soapbox before I come on my show, but I’m going to relinquish my soapbox tonight, and we’re going to go right into our conversation with you. So tell the audience who you are.

Joseph Olalusi
Wow, that’s amazing! Well, I just want to say thank you again, Dr. Fortman, for putting me on this podcast today. It’s so professional, and it means a lot to me to be on here to talk about things on your platform. I’ve been knowing you for a while now, and it means a lot. I’ve seen your podcast, and I think there’s a lot going on with it, so I just appreciate you having me on today. My name is Joseph Olalusi, and I’m from Chicago. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in Roseland, and I went to Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men for high school at the Englewood campus. If anybody’s on here from the Englewood campus, I went to the Englewood campus as well. I really just grew up a Black man on the South Side of Chicago. My dad is Nigerian, my mom is from Oklahoma, and she’s African-American. I lived with my mom for most of my life, except for sixth grade. So I lived a lot of my time on the South Side of Chicago, raised by a mom from Oklahoma living in Chicago. It’s been amazing. I’m a South Sider. I went to Cornell University when I graduated from high school to study applied economics and management, and now I work in accounting. I really started learning accounting because I love the tax system, but eventually, I became an accountant. I really just have a passion for the community, though. The reason why I studied accounting is because I grew up in Roseland; I went to school in Englewood.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I don’t mean to interrupt you, but my audience is from everywhere, including outside of the United States. So when you say Roseland, tell us about the demographics of Roseland, especially when you grew up, and how important those demographics are to what you’re doing today and Englewood.

Joseph Olalusi
Well, exactly. Roseland is a South Side neighborhood in Chicago. It is all Black; that’s probably the second thing, maybe the first thing I tell you about Roseland is that it’s all Black. It is a marginalized community, but it has a lot of potential for growth and development. It’s really a diamond in the rough in terms of investment that can happen in the future. So, yeah, Roseland, I grew up in a Black neighborhood. I went to grammar school and had grammar school for eight years in Roseland, and it was all Black. That’s how I would sum up Roseland in itself. But I live in Englewood now, and Englewood is exactly like Roseland. It’s just on 63rd and Rogue; Roseland is on 100th Street. So it is just a little bit further south. But Englewood is another story of disinvestment that follows Black people in the United States, and I grew up in that space as well as I went to high school. I have a particular interest in developing both Roseland and Englewood and neighborhoods all over the world that have faced neglect and faced marginalization based on the people that live there. A lot of marginalization follows Black people, and that’s why I have such a large interest in Roseland and Englewood.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Do you know the history of Roseland?

Joseph Olalusi
No, actually, I will tell you I don’t know the history. What’s the history of Roseland?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, because I grew up in Old Guild Gardens, which is a housing project, and it is south of Roseland. As a matter of fact, when you leave Old Guild Gardens, you’re going into Indiana. I remember Roseland; Roseland community was a Polish community. When you were saying about disinvestment, I think in the probably in the 80s is when it started changing, and when Black people started moving into Roseland, and the Polish community moved out of Roseland and moved either into the southern suburbs or they moved into the northern part of Chicago. Also, in the Roseland community is what, within it is the Pullman community, and that’s where the Pullman porters, you know, they were on the trains, the Black porters on the trains; that’s where they came from, the Pullman neighborhood, which was within the Roseland neighborhood.

Joseph Olalusi
That’s actually ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that I’m learning this now, especially after eight years of living in Roseland. I grew up in Roseland around the time, you know, my brother was about to go to Finger Academy because it was around 2007-2008 when a Black woman, a Black boy got killed getting hit by a two-by-four at Finger Academy, and it set the stage for how people decided the South Side of Chicago was going and how Roseland was going, how high schools were going in that neighborhood.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
For me, it was a big deal to be able—I saw Roseland as some place I needed to get out, and it’s sad that it actually has a large amount of history that’s related to white people.

Joseph Olalusi
Yeah, look it up. It’s a fascinating history. As a matter of fact, right now, parts of it, I think it’s going to be designated as landmarks, especially the part where the Pullman area is, and that’s along Cottage Grove, 111th, and all around in there. So just kind of look it up; it’s very interesting.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So let’s talk about Englewood. I know people from all over the world, especially all over the United States, have heard and still hear of all kinds of negative things in Englewood in Chicago, Illinois, even today. There was something on the news where a policewoman was shot at a traffic stop or something in Englewood. So what’s happening in Englewood? Give us some positive things that are going on in Englewood in that community and your role.

Joseph Olalusi
Well, there’s a lot of investment happening in Englewood, and there are a lot of community partners within Englewood that try to develop the community and change the narrative that has been set in that community. We have RAGE; RAGE is a not-for-profit in the Englewood neighborhood that I’m a part of that does a lot of programs and reinvests in the Englewood neighborhood. We just had a conversation about the fact that the Whole Foods in Englewood was recently closed, coming up to closing, and just talking about how do we plan out a plan to continue grocery or different types of business development in that neighborhood. So there’s a lot of community partners that are going up in Englewood. There’s also Urban Prep Charter Academy that I went to, which does a lot for Black men and tells them that there is a different narrative in that neighborhood. That played a huge role in my life, just realizing there’s a different narrative that can be said regardless of the media that is portrayed around where I’m growing up and what my community is.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So there’s a lot of investment happening in Englewood. However, it has a large story of disinvestment, much like Roseland. I think there’s something funny about Englewood is that there are Englewoods around the world. There are Englewoods in California, there are Englewoods in Chicago, and there are probably Englewoods in different neighborhoods. However, as they become more Black, they continue to develop a narrative that they should be disinvested in. They continue to perform another narrative that they are more violent. I think that those same neighborhoods are gold mines because they’ve been disinvested in; they are positioned for new business opportunities and new development opportunities. I think that is a big opportunity for Black people too, especially coming from the background and the historical marginalization, to be able to find themselves grounded in these communities. Regardless of the disinvestment, they’ll be able to make historical change. That’s something that I’m looking forward to in neighborhoods like Englewood and Roseland: the fact that people have been neglecting these communities and the fact that people have decided to call them violent because, in the end of the day, they have so much space, they have so much opportunity, and they have people living there that want to spend money. The Black dollar travels fast; it travels large. I’m excited to see when the development starts to happen in these communities, and we start to bring our dollars back to ourselves.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So what do you do as an individual? [Laughter] I really want to know what you do as an individual. You talk about the issues and what’s going on, but I know that you are a community activist. So what is your role? What do you do?

Joseph Olalusi
So I’m actually an accountant. I work for RSM. I’ve been working in accounting for the last three years; two years I’ve been working at RSM. But in terms of what I do in the community, I run a not-for-profit. It’s called Gambit.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s called Gambit. Gambit is what it’s called. It’s called Gambit because the word gambit comes from chess, and it means to take a position to gain the advantage. It’s usually a risky position that you take to gain the advantage. We decided to call it Gambit because we love to sew. I’ve been a sewer for about seven years, and we originally wanted to start a sewing company that makes tailored clothes. But the reason why we call it Gambit is that we had to break down our clothes and take clothes that we bought from commercial entities—right, commercial companies that sell you commercially available. This is a medium, there’s a large, there’s a small. We decided to take those and put them on a sewing machine, and they could come out bad; they could come out good. But ultimately, when they come out good, they come out beyond what’s commercially available, and that gave us an advantage beyond what was available in stores. I think that’s a big deal for Black people, especially Black men coming from marginalized backgrounds because they seek to show ways to show that they have developed. They want to show that they’ve progressed because they’ve been positioned outside of the door. A lot of the time, they do that through clothes; they do that through shoes. To be able to sew and design your own clothes and shoes to gain the advantage is a big deal for people, and you have to take a risk to do that. You have to break down something that people decide to live their lives comfortably with. So that’s a big risk, so we call it Gambit.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So what did you want to teach? Men how to sew? Is that what it is?

Joseph Olalusi
Right, and so that’s the reason we call it Gambit. But what Gambit does is it provides sewing and instructional programs to teach people how to sew, especially targeting people from marginalized backgrounds where they don’t have the financial backing to buy the Gucci and so on. But to teach them how to sew, they can position themselves to be unique regardless. That’s what we try to teach. We’ve been teaching a summer sewing program in partnership with After School Matters and Urban Prep Englewood campus for the last two years. The first year we did it virtually, and the second year we did it in person. It’s been a great opportunity for people on the South Side.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, that’s something I didn’t know! Oh, it’s not for profit, so I’m sure you’re always looking for sponsors for donations, correct?

Joseph Olalusi
Correct! We’re always looking for sponsors and donations. We are looking to continue to give people more opportunities to break the barrier of commercialization, to break past economic instability, and to be able to just do beyond what people have thought you’re not capable of just by vertically integrating in certain industries.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So that is what Gambit does right now. We do sewing programs, but I would love to right now. We’re trying to make Gambit an official not-for-profit so that we can do taxes. I would like to teach taxes in certain communities and get Black people interested in learning how to prepare taxes in their own community neighborhoods.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, really? That’s great! That’s interesting. But before we go into that, because I want to do that, talk about taxes and your ideas about that just a little later, but something that I also learned about you: didn’t you used to be in TV?

Joseph Olalusi
Oh yes, yes! I didn’t used to be on TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah! TV was fun. I actually worked in the accounting industry at the Chicago Center Space Film Studios. It’s called Spanish Center Space Chicago Film Studio, and it is actually the largest studio, I believe it’s larger than Hollywood now. It might be, or it’s second, or it’s competing. So right here in Chicago, I think it’s a big deal because Black people are very involved with the entertainment space, very involved in film, but they don’t really know the opportunity right in Chicago. People in neighborhoods that are directed towards film right in the neighborhood do a program where they solicit two marginalized people, Black people, and minorities, Latinx, and a lot of different people that come from marginalized backgrounds. That is called the Cinecares Foundation, and they provide a Cinecares internship where you partner with a TV show to do an intern program. If you’re ever interested in that, I could probably position you to do that. So, you know, reach out to me, hit me up on LinkedIn if you’re interested in going to the film industry in Chicago. But that is what they do. I worked for Chicago PD, the TV show. I was there with Leroy Hawkins, Mr. Atwater, the detective Atwater, and different people doing it from the accounting perspective. It was a really big opportunity for me; that was my first job back in Chicago after graduating from college.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So were you ever in front of the camera?

Joseph Olalusi
You know what? They actually did do a small—I was in front of the camera, and I was in a truck in the background. So I wasn’t—I was actually—they had me drive a truck, and you know, they recorded me driving this truck, and they took a picture of me while I was driving a truck, and it was used as a picture of investigative evidence by one of the detectives in the scene. So if you haven’t found that episode, you know, your code, send me that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That is a particular thing that I was involved in.

Joseph Olalusi
So did you watch it and say, “Wait, here I am right there”?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, I wish I did, but I definitely still watched it because when you’re working for a film or TV show, you feel like you need to know about the show. You feel like you need to be a professional. So as soon as I started watching the show—I mean, I’ve always been a fan of Law and Order; my mom loves Law and Order—but as soon as I started working for the show, I was like, “Okay, I need to know everything about the show. I need to be updated with the episodes.” So I started to really get involved, and I stayed. It’s a good show; I love Chicago PD, but they have a lot of other shows also at Center Space, and it’s a really good opportunity for Black people. I know a lot of Black people are interested in entertainment or just even creating a network of people that are in a certain industry because you have an entrepreneurship spirit related to the industry, and so you want to get in that field in terms of entertainment. Getting involved with Center Space is a great opportunity, so I definitely approach the photos.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so before you go, I want your contact information. I can run it across the bottom of the screen, and that way, if anybody wants to get into television and they’re in Chicago, they can hit you up, and you can tell them all about how to be on TV. As a matter of fact, I probably would hit you up to see how to be on TV.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
A question here that came in, and it said, “You have mentioned being marginalized several times, but could you give us a clearer definition of what that means?”

Joseph Olalusi
Hmm, what does it mean to be marginalized? What does it mean for me? Well, I’m a Black man, and when we think about the history of America, I don’t know if I paused or not.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
No, you were on full screen.

Joseph Olalusi
Okay, great! Oh, okay, mine just keep talking. You okay?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, sounds good. So, I mean, being a Black man, being Black people, it is—you know what it means to be marginalized. America brought Black people to—well, what it means to be marginalized for Black people, I’m coming from the perspective of a Black person. You can be marginalized in a lot of different areas. You can be marginalized because you are a different sex, or you’re older in a group of young people, and they start to position themselves like they have authority or some type of advantage over you because they should not connect with you as people coming from the necessity of being social. They don’t want to connect with you because you’re different from the others. Black people coming to America, we were positioned to not be able to learn how to read; it was illegal to read. We were positioned to work for free in America, and a lot of these different things have created effects on my mom and me and my grandfather and the way the communities that I live in and the opportunities of those communities. Being not able to read, I tell a lot of people sometimes because I’m an accountant, right? I do—I read and learn and try to connect things for a living. However, coming from a background where reading scores are low, I got a 16 on the ACT, and there were a lot of opportunities to help me to really position myself to be prepared for standardized testing because we’ve been—I mean, for example, HBCUs, the reason HBCUs existed, HBCUs were created in the 1880s, and they were created in the 1880s during Jim Crow when it was illegal for Black and white people to be in the same spaces. It was a segregated society. Sometimes some HBCUs were created so that they weren’t around white people, and they had Black people coming out of a position of being of reading being illegal to then learn and teach themselves while not ever learning how to read. A lot of these different people had Black people in general, if they didn’t go to HBCUs, they had to struggle with not knowing how to read. I do accounting, but I faced a lot of the pitfalls of not having family members that could retain certain education benefits, certain education opportunities. They couldn’t retain certain employment opportunities to position themselves to even then teach me to be more effective in certain literacy environments. So that’s the topic of marginalization that happens to a lot of Black people. We have a book called “Bad Boys.” I suggest you probably look that one up, but “Bad Boys” is a book that talks about how a lot of people from marginalized Black backgrounds, especially Black boys, they are called bad boys in schools and not good boys, right? Not school boys; they’re bad boys to start to pipeline them to the prison system. So it’s a lot of different things. It’s a lot of different things about being marginalized. Of course, you can talk all day about it, but it’s really about people being from backgrounds where they have been outcasted or put in a position to be exploited against in a certain capacity in a space where we’re sharing space, and people continue to share space. We are social beings; we need to share space. So once we exploit people, those people have effects, but they continue to have to share that space. So it’s interesting, but that’s what I would call marginalization.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, thank you so much. I have a comment here from Sarah Crawley. She says she has an investor, and if you have 25 acres in Englewood or Roseland, call me to discuss their interests.

Joseph Olalusi
Interesting! Very interesting! How much feed is an acre? I wish I knew. That sounds like a lot of acres—25 acres! Wow, I know that’s a lot. I don’t know what, but I’m going to try to do that. I’m going to try to figure it out, though.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, that’s a good goal I can set for myself.

Joseph Olalusi
Okay, so what we’re going to do, Joseph, I love your last name, Olalusi. I’m going to go on just a quick break, and when we come back, I want to talk with you about something that I know is extremely close to your heart, and that’s taxes and why you think taxes are so important. Just give us where you’re coming from as far as the taxation system is concerned.

Joseph Olalusi
Okay, I love it! I’m looking forward to that question.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so we will be right back with Joseph Olalusi. [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, we are back with Joseph Olalusi. Now, if you like the promos and the ads that you just saw, we do them in-house with Feet on the Ground Entertainment, and you can reach us at low ski 2 lowpan gmail.com. I will put it on the lower third just a little later, just so that if you’re interested in getting some promos for your business, for whatever it is that you’re doing, you can contact us. So let’s get back to Mr. Joseph Olalusi.

Joseph Olalusi
Dr. Fortman, thank you so much again! I love the ad intermission; it was amazing! I just love how professional this is.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
What did you think? So wait a minute, for you who don’t know, Joseph, I met Joseph through Toastmasters International. Joseph is a member of my Toastmasters International club; it’s called MJM Speaker Circle. If you would love to learn how to speak, be in a leadership role, improve your communication skills, and just help you along your personal and professional life and with your relationships, join MJM Speaker Circle, and I’ll put that in the lower third a little later too.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Why are taxes important to you? Tell me all about it.

Joseph Olalusi
Taxes! I don’t know why everybody doesn’t get excited about taxes, but I do! I love taxes! One thing I like to tell people when I start talking about taxes is that taxes are so old that David fought Goliath in the Bible. He fought a lot; one of the reasons was so he didn’t have to pay taxes anymore. He could be exempt from taxes. But when you think about it, that’s how old taxes are. What I like to say is that taxes is the first idea of social investment or community investment between people that share a shared space, and they want to buy and invest in things that they couldn’t—they would take too long to grab on their own. That is what taxes allows us to do, and it’s been different forms of tax systems throughout the age of humanity. It’s always been taxes; it’s always been different rationales on how can we position ourselves together to create this for ourselves or create this new boundary in a shared space that we have together. I think that taxes means a lot to me coming from Roseland, coming from Englewood because we have communities that have been disinvested in. We have communities where we didn’t have a library; we didn’t have a close bookshelf to just see. We didn’t have different resources; we didn’t have calculus. Why didn’t we have calculus? We only went out to pre-calculus, right? So it was a lot of different areas coming from Roseland and Englewood, coming from backgrounds that are marginalized where you position yourself like, “Why wasn’t my community invested in?” Once you start talking about community investment and the funding that goes around that, you’re talking about taxes. I learned about that going to college. I originally went to college studying applied economics and management because I wanted to—because people talk about economics is how money works, and maybe if I could study resources and money, then I could figure out why my community didn’t have books. I went to college around that, but once I eventually went there, I learned about taxes, and I was like, “Oh, that’s what brings the books to my high school and the doctors or the special people that I need, the health care physicians, the mental health workers to the different spaces and communities that I grew up in.” Taxes are a big deal. I grew up in a background also where I do my mom’s taxes; I do my auntie’s taxes, right? I do a lot of my family’s taxes being in accounting now. I worked in accounting for two or three years, but that’s what shows how important taxes are to people.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I think it’s interesting that we learn calculus in school, but we don’t learn how to do taxes in school because that’s one thing that we have to do. We have to do taxes every year; you might not have to do a derivative, but you have to do taxes every year.

Joseph Olalusi
So, okay, now do you see that poor people or middle-class people pay more in taxes than, let’s say, the Fortune 500 big corporations? So who is, in your opinion, the burden of taxes? Who has that, in your opinion?

Joseph Olalusi
I mean, I understand the middle-class struggle. There are a lot more middle-class people, but the tax system is, after a certain tax bracket, it phases out, and it stays the same. The way the tax system works is based on the amount of income you make; you are taxed at a certain level. If you make $20,000, you’re taxed at 5%. If you make $50,000, you’re taxed at 7%. If you make $75,000, you’re taxed at 10%, and so on. But at $20,000 and up, or $250,000, $300,000 and up, then everybody’s just paying 15% tax, right? And exceptionally—well, I didn’t know that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So in other words, okay, so 15% is like the cap. So if you’re making a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you’re paying 15% of that, and if you’re making a couple of million, you’re paying 15% of that. Is that correct?

Joseph Olalusi
And so because of that, people who are millionaires, people at 5%, they still have to just pay as much taxes as a lot of the people that make $300,000, $200,000. It may seem like, “Okay, you know, that’s not wrong,” until a large amount of people, a large amount of people have been marginalized and worked hard to get into the middle class, right? But come in that standard, and then the millionaires still have to pay at the same rate. So if you’re paying 15% of a million, and when you talk about purchasing power or spending, and a person who is paying 15% and $100,000, right, it hits different. Over the course of that year, it burdens that person at a different level, that person that is a millionaire versus that person that is $1,200,000 in. So yeah, I understand how people are disgruntled about how one percenters are positioned because there is no—it doesn’t continue to exponentially increase or just increase in a way, and the bracket, the tax bracket system, so that people who are millionaires are taxed at a higher level.

Joseph Olalusi
But it’s—it should. One time, Governor J.B. Pritzker tried to install that in Illinois. I think it was called the fair tax, and it was turned down. What you would learn about that is that a lot of Republicans, they marketed to not have—they positioned that tax policy not to pass. They positioned it so that people could feel like, “Oh, this is not for me,” from a low-income or marginalized background when, in fact, it was. So it was interesting. If you want to research that, but the fair tax is an interesting thing that relates to that concern, that discourse.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So how would understanding taxes help marginalized people? How would understanding taxes help marginalized communities?

Joseph Olalusi
Man, oh man! Whoa! What a question! What a question! I think that’s a great question. The biggest way I can answer that without going on a soapbox is just learning taxes. Well, taxes—it’s the financial language. Well, accounting is the financial language of society, and taxes is a part of accounting that tells you the language of community investment. Just as it’s important to learn how to vote, and it’s important to know that you have freedom of speech, it is also important that you know how to community invest. You need to know how to file your taxes, and learning taxes is the neglected 25% of what it means to be a citizen in America. When Black people were not citizens, when they were three-fifths of a perfect person, they didn’t—they might have paid some sales tax, but they didn’t—they still want to tax you, but it was something that wasn’t a consideration for somebody that’s—well, if you’re not a citizen or if you’re not, you still have to file your taxes. But it was something where it was positioned for me, Black people, to not gain advantage. People don’t want you to have to be literate to file your taxes. People didn’t want us to be community investors, and the quicker we learn what’s happening with our community investment, what’s happening with the tax system that we’re all investing in as a community to bring things back to ourselves, the quicker we learn what that system is and how we are benefiting from that system, the faster we decide, “Okay, we don’t like that for the politician,” or, “Hey, we don’t like this person.”

Joseph Olalusi
One way to think about the tax system is like a human body. A lot of people, a lot of times, you go to the doctor, and you get a checkup, and they say, “Okay, in your heart, you get this and that,” and you get it. You go to the doctor; you get a checkup. Well, the tax system works in the same way. There’s a body, and they give you credits, and they give you deductions. In the same way, you pay your taxes, and you get certain credits and deductions. So check up on what—how you are bringing into the community that you’re all sharing, right? And what are the benefits that you’re gaining from that? An analyzation of the tax system gives you a positionality to understand even the tax system like a human body and check it up like a doctor, right? What are we gaining from this? What’s good? What’s bad in terms of my rationale? So once Black people get involved with that system, they are going to be that much more active as a citizen. They’re going to be that much more active in the protests because they know how to position themselves on the conversation of community investment.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, well, a comment came in here, and it said, “No matter what the tax bracket is for the one percent, they still have loopholes to avoid paying their fair share.”

Joseph Olalusi
So now, okay, so that was a comment. You know, I see your eyeballs. Comment on it, but now that’s one thing that I think, well, as middle-class people especially, that we should know all of these loopholes. You know what I mean? Because when you look up and you see this major corporation or this person who is a one-percenter not paying any taxes because they know these loopholes, so to speak. Now, when you talk about educating people, middle-class people or people of lower income who have to still, like you say, everybody’s got to pay taxes, just think if you knew the loopholes, you know what I’m saying?

Joseph Olalusi
That’s—that’s—you know, I agree.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And go ahead, I’m sorry. Did you have a question?

Joseph Olalusi
Yeah, do you look for—do you know loopholes? Do you look for loopholes?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Um, I do. Do I know loopholes? I’m more certain than somebody who hasn’t studied the tax system about positions because the thing is you have to know the language. Once you know the language, you can be more confident in how you position yourself in the tax system. The way I would say, I don’t necessarily know loopholes, but I know certain parts of the tax system where I can feel more confident than others to position themselves. That is how people even learn loopholes, what they call loopholes. Even, you know, it’s just ways that you can position yourself confidently where you know you can decide, “Okay, this is for me,” and that part of the tax system is actually for me. A lot of people just are uncertain of their tax position.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right. So I know you’re not—now, you told me about your nonprofit, and I want to put it here so people can see it, and it’s called Gambit, correct?

Joseph Olalusi
Correct.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Now, how do they—if people want to donate, how do they do that? Can they do that yet? Is it an official nonprofit yet, or can people donate, or what?

Joseph Olalusi
Right. It is—you know what? We haven’t—we have a board of directors and everything, but we haven’t gotten the designation by the IRS.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Joseph Olalusi
So that’s something that is still in development. We do have a Facebook page; I mean an Instagram page.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So what’s your—okay, go ahead.

Joseph Olalusi
The Instagram is called Gambit Chicago, and you can definitely reach out to Gambit Chicago if you’re just interested in the story or you want to—and we’re also looking for people who know how to file the not-for-profit designation. We’re looking for lawyers. We are positioning ourselves to try to get that file. So also, if you have some advice, you have anything that you can help with, a story that you see is inspiring, I would love to hear from you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you! Thank you for just being interested.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So did I put that down there right? Can you see it?

Joseph Olalusi
I can’t see it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, it says @gambitchicago.

Joseph Olalusi
This is—that works! That works!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes! Okay, Chicago. Okay, so but still, even though you’re not an official nonprofit yet, people can still donate; they just can’t write it off, right?

Joseph Olalusi
Right, yeah, yeah. And I think we do also have a website, and that website can even be found on our Instagram page. So if you see it there, you might be able to see it. If you don’t see it there now, I think we have an Etsy now, but if you don’t see it there now, we will also have—we actually have an official website we can share as well.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, so if I knew how to do that, I would.

Joseph Olalusi
Okay, no problem. In the meantime, I see that you did put it in the private chat, but since I’m not really techy-techy, but they just go on Instagram, and if they look for Gambit Chicago, they should find it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Correct! So now, and if they want to get in contact with you on LinkedIn, so tell me how—just tell me how to put it in there, and I put it also along the lower third.

Joseph Olalusi
I want to just tell people, you know, this is your life; this is your story. This is your story, and you’re making it every day, and you just gotta show up to the moment of your life and your story. Sometimes LinkedIn allows you to just be more interested in the people that you meet in your story. So feel free to meet me and connect with me as somebody that you position yourself to know in your story that you’re taking for the rest of your life. This is the rest of your life; these are the pages. So feel free to add me.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, I put on here, look for Joseph Olalusi on LinkedIn. [Laughter]

Joseph Olalusi
Okay, yeah, I know you probably can’t see it, but they can see it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, they can see this, and oh yeah, I see it. They say look for Joseph Olalusi on LinkedIn.

Joseph Olalusi
Yes, big letters!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And then @gambitchicago on Instagram.

Joseph Olalusi
Oh, that’s heavy! Okay, so the professionalism right there, that’s great!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
We are new; we try! Well, Joseph, this has been a pleasure. And let me tell you, audience, I’ve been trying to get Joseph Olalusi on this show for so long, and he finally took time out of his busy schedule to honor us with his presence. Joseph, I want to thank you so much for being here, and you gave us so much great information. I mean, you really have educated me. You really, really have, and I know you’ve educated my audience.

Joseph Olalusi
Thank you!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And here is Miscellane Monique; she sends you two hearts. Thank you! Brandi Johnson says she’s going to ruin this, and Sandy Barney and his family say it’s good information. So Joseph, it has been a plum, as they used to say, a plum-pleasing pleasure. So take care, and you have a beautiful, blessed rest of your day.

Joseph Olalusi
Thank you so much, Dr. Fortman!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, bye-bye!

Joseph Olalusi
Bye-bye!

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That has been so informative and such valuable information. You know, you just learn so much from different people and just from all the relationships you have. So I want you to think about the relationships that you have and how much information, how much you can learn from your relationships, personal and professional, and what they can learn from you. So I’m going to see you again next week, where I will have another guest who is going to just fill us with so much value. Until then, this is Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman saying have a beautiful, blessed rest of your morning, afternoon, or evening. Now for my shameless plug. [Music]