Charlamagne Tha God Live at POSSIBLE:  “Influencer means impact.”

WEBVTT - Charlamagne Tha God Live at POSSIBLE: “Influencer means impact.” You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. They're going to hear what we truly, honestly think, and if we do make a mistake, our listeners will check us, social media will check us, and you know, we'll correct it. And I think all of that builds trust.

So this is a special episode of my podcast, Math and Magic. We talk about attention, we talk about engagement, we talk about authenticity. Today's guest to Charlemagne the God. He's one of the greatest at all that, so give him a big round of applause if you will.

Charlemagne's an author, he's been a TV host, producer, founder of the Lack Effect podcast network. He's huge on social major influencer, and he's built all that on the foundation of his famous broadcast radio morning show, The Breakfast Club. And just to tell you how powerful that show is. I don't know if you guys followed that.

Netflix has licensed some video podcast to aris basically TV shows on Netflix, and I think one. They've done over one hundred of them or so on the air. One podcast video podcast has gotten forty percent of the views forty four sorry forty guess which one that is? The breakfast club in Charlemagne, and people ask when you tell him that, they go, well, how could that happen?

And you go, because he talks about it every day on the radio. He uses his social he demonstrates how powerful an influencer he is, and the audience goes with him. So we're going to get into that today and we're gonna get into how that happens. But first I want to do you in sixty seconds, just to give you a little context here.

So you ready to go, let's do it. Cats are dogs, dogs, early rise, er, night out. Early rise. I do more to radio big city or small town.

I'm from Monst Corner, South Carolina, so I'm always go small town. I'm from a little small town too, but I'm big cities. Now. They converted me East coast to West coast.

East coast protein or carbs protein, sweeter, savory, ooh sweet. Introvert or extrovert. Introvert for real, extrovert for performance. Let me get you in trouble jay Z or Kendrick Lamar, jay Z.

Comedy or drama. I can't say drama y dramedy. We'll tell okay, it's. About to get harder.

Favorite all time ever music artist. Oh, Jesus chrazy. That's a broad question. Jay Z probably Jessee.

Favorite book are you their goddess? Mean Margaret by Juli Blue. Favorite place to visit? Angula, So I like call it Angula secret talent.

I don't really have many talents. Secret talent. I don't know. I don't think you have any secrets left, do you?

That's even better? All right, let's jump in. Let's get to some of the topics of interest to the marketers here. Influence.

Everybody's got a view of what they are, how to use some in your mind? You do it? What are they? And how should marketers think about influencers?

Well, an influencer is somebody who can speak about something, could be doing something more importantly, I think actually using something and make you want to use it as well. You know, I think that, you know, marketers think influencers are the people who have millions of followers, or the big celebrity are the big comedian. In reality, man, it might be somebody on social media with ten thousand followers, five thousand followers, but they may just be showing me something cool or showing me something that I've never seen before, and therefore I'm like, you know what, I wouldn't mind, you know, picking up that product, are using that product.

So influencer doesn't necessarily mean numbers. It just means impact. And I think nowadays, you know, anybody can be an influencer. I think that we've looked at numbers and we're kind of like skewed by numbers a little bit, because, man, we think one hundred people isn't a lot of people.

If one hundred people are at your front door, you call a police. What the hell are all of these people at my front door? Force? If you have one hundred people that you can influence to try something or do something, then to me, you are an influencer.

Talk about authenticity and attention, which tend to be things that I think marketers are focused on. I want you to pay attention, I want you to hear it, and I want it to be authentic, mean something. How do you think about it? To me, when I think about authenticity now, I think about people who are not being performative, because I think for the last several years we've seen a lot of performative authenticity.

And to me, authenticity is the person who you kind of just capture doing what they do every day in their regular life. Like you know, we get on the radio every morning and we just do radio, and then we take that radio program and it's consumed on various platforms. But what we're actually doing every day is just mourning radio. Like we're not going there trying to sell you anything.

We're not trying to be performative in any way, shape or form. And I think that's why we become a habit for people, because folks know that, hey, they're being authentic. They can call it and tell us to shut up. I had a woman call in and tell me to shut up this morning.

She literally said to me, shut up. You talk every day five days a week. Now is my turn. And I was like, you know what, You're right, And that, to me is the authentic connection that you have with your listeners when you're just showing up to do whatever it is your job is as opposed to turning on the phone and saying.

Hey, look at me. You know, this is what I want to show you today, this is what I'm trying to push down. Your throat today. Just nah, just show up and be who you are.

You know, it's interesting there are a stat that backs that up the average consumer watches about forty TV networks in a month. They listen to too radio stations. They don't wake up in the morning and say, who am I gona listen to this morning. If they've been listening to you for years, they're gonna be listening to you for another bunch of years, sixteen years now on the radio for the breakfast club, and you're their choice.

They get up in the morning and there you are. And by the way, it may start on Alexa and wind up in the car radio, but they move through all the devices, but they're staying with you all morning. And I think people don't even understand that concept, right, Like how to become a habit. Most of these podcasts that people love now have been around for well over a decade, so they've become habits to people's want.

Of our biggest is stuff you should know well in the earliest podcasts. Let's jump to podcasting. You know, there are some people that think if Netflix in general terms is really TV on demand, then podcasting is really radio and demand. I mean, it's interesting that we're the number one podcast company and we've always thought about it as an adjacent business very similar to radio.

We go deep instead of broad. But we take one topic and go deep with the podcast. MPR is very big also a radio company and podcasting as well. And by the way, I will tell you fifteen years ago when we were looking at podcasting, I go ask nothing, and they kept watching and watching, it kept growing and growing and growing.

I finally go, we got to get into this to make it hours. You were very early, I mean you were like podcast brain. How do you think about podcasting and how does it relate to radio and to your social which, by the way, I'll mentioned if you a huge social following as well. I think podcasting, I think the screaming platforms, they're all fruit off the tree of radio.

And you know, I started off as a radio personality. But I've always said to myself, you have to meet people where they are. Like, you know, back in the day, they say if you build it, they will come. Yeah, that used to be true maybe twenty years ago, but now you have to build it and you have to meet people.

Where they are. So I was born in nineteen hundred and seventy eight, right, so I predate even the Internet. So I remember when the Internet first came around and we had this content that we were creating on radio, so we started distributing it via the Internet. And then YouTube came around, so we started taking that content and putting it out on YouTube.

And then there became all of the social media platforms, and you would take your radio content and put it on the social media platforms. Same thing applies now. Podcasting is just fruit off the tree of radio. If you're in the radio business or if you're in the television business, but you have to take that content you're doing on those traditional platforms and put them out via podcast because, like you know, Bob said, it's like radio on demand, the same way you can go home and turn on Netflix and watch whatever show it is you want to watch.

It's the same thing with your favorite radio program. You might not catch us in the morning, but you might leave here and say, yo, let me see what the breakfast club is talking about, and do us on it one o'clock in the afternoon. So radio is the grandfather of it all. Even if you look at all of the platforms that exist now, they're all like offshoots of radio in some way, shape or form.

Well, it's interesting. It surprises people. I think maybe in this room too, they're more broadcast radio listeners today than there were twenty years ago. This is not a business that's been a run out of business by technology.

It's a business action that's expanded Now. We can not only get it on badcasts. Ready to get you on podcasting, We can get you on the radio app. We can get you on Alexa, et cetera, et cetera.

Number one use by the way Lexus broadcast radio and even. Across the country. What's the statistics. Ninety percent of the country still listens to the radio.

Absolutely, they're there day in and day out. It's interesting. Audio is about a third of the media day, and radio is about two thirds of audio. Podcasting is about twenty percent.

Podcasting is now bigger than the streaming music services. Wow. And you know, even with advertisers, right, like radio gives you so much bang for your buck because, like I said, we can be consumed in so many different forms. You got radio, then we come out of the podcast, then we're on social media with the clips, then we're on YouTube, breakfast club, now we're on Netflix.

That's just like one pie slice five different weeks. We've talked about a little bit, but you've built this big radio podcasting, influencer, social and clearly at the heart of it is engagement and trust. How do you build that. Through time and getting it right, but also when you get it wrong, admitting that you got it wrong, not acting like you're above your listeners.

Because I never feel like we are, like we're in business because of the people that listen to us every morning. Like I literally when I get on the air every day, I said, thank you God for besting me with another day of life, and thank you for another day to serve our beautiful listeners. I really feel like that. I really feel like every time I get on that microphone, I am a public servant and I'm near to serve the needs of my listeners.

And I think I've been doing radio for twenty eight years, Breakfast Club for fifteen sixteen now, so we have become a habit for people, and people know whether we get it right, whether we get it wrong, they know that they're going to hear what we truly, honestly think. And if we do make a mistake, like I said, our listeners will check us, social media will check us, and you know we'll correct it. And I think all of that builds trust. Like I hate people who approach the microphone like they're perfect and they're experts at everything.

I'm not an expert at nothing. I got some experiences and I'm here to share my experiences, and I think that is life, right, Like we're all on this journey called life, and we're all here sharing a different human experience every day. And that's the key, right, being a human and sharing your human experience every day. That's how you build trust.

That's how you become a habit. You mentioned you're from a small rural community. I don't even think I call it a town, your cornfields or whatever around there, going on a dirt road. Did that give you unique insights?

Oh? Absolutely. My mother was an English teacher, so she always growing up, would encourage me to read a lot, right, and she would always tell me to read things that don't pertain to me. And then you know, we also had the booket program, so you had to read full books to get a free pizza.

That's how I even got into Judy Bloom and Beverly Clearly and all of that stuff like that, right, Because you know, I'm a young black man growing up on a dirt road and Mon's going to South Carolina I go in the library and I see this book with all these little white girls on the cover, little white boys on the cover. I'm like, well, they're nothing like me. Read it and see. What's going on.

And so I don't know. It just taught me to dream in a different way between music and literature. It just really taught me I could transcend my circumstances no matter where I'm at. And you know, when you grow up in a small town, you have more.

I'm not saying you don't have morals when you grow up in a big town, but you have a different set of morals and values and integrity. And you see people and you say hi, and you speak and your grandma will give you that wisdom like man as will take you where money won't. And that's what I've just carried with me everywhere I go. And I just think it's something about growing up in those small towns that translates everywhere.

You know, do you think the small town parented you? The community parented you? But still to this day, like literally to this day, I can go home because you know, I do a lot of community work back home, and it's just like those people don't look at me as you know, Charlotte Mane like there go, that's Lenard, and they'll put their arm around me and tell me that they're proud of me. They'll tell me what they don't like.

That's my community, that's my village that continues to raise me to this day. How often do you go back? Oh a lot, I said. I do a lot of charity work down there.

I'm on like the board of the International African American Museum in Charleston. My parents are there, my in laws are their all, my cousin's family, everybody like I'm in South Carolina quite often. Plus my wife is an alumni of the University of South Carolina game Cock so we go down there for football, basketball games, everything for some game Cocks in the houses. Okay, I like the applause.

This is a nice touch. Heare. You've got all these multiple platforms. How do you navigate them?

How do they all work together? And how do you think about the messages you want to send through them? Oh? That's great.

You have to be intentional, you know, Like I said, I'm not an expert at anything. I just have some experiences and I know the things that I want to share with people, and I also believe that audiences nowadays, they're not as complex as people think they are. Like I said, we're all just human sharing a human experience. So if I get on the radio and I'm having a conversation about, you know, going the therapy on Fridays, or I'm talking to people about anxiety, I may deal with our bouser depression.

I don't care what race you are, what your sexuality is, what your gender is. You can connect with that in some way, shape or form. If I'm telling you about a restaurant that I ate at, you know you'll be able to connect with that in some way, shape or form. So you ask, how are you able to navigate all of that?

I'm really just being me and you got to have a great team that can distribute all of that content, you know, to where it needs to go. I really don't overthink it in that way. Like I don't wake up and be like, oh my god, we're on Netflix, Oh my god, we're gonna be on YouTube, Oh my god, I got to put out the podcast. I just wake up on me and I let the digital team handle the rest.

You're talking about the authenticity and the reality. One of the things we do with the radio, which these folks may not know, is that unlike in my days and TV your days. In TV, it's not scripted, it's not a narrative. It's about keeping people company.

We are a companion. Imagine you're writing the work with somebody as they're a car pol buddy. What would you talk about? How do you talk about it?

And I think one of the hardest things for somebody coming up in the radio business and something you've mastered is being yourself. People actually don't want to share their well, I don't really want to say that to everybody. If you're really going to build a relationship, you have to. At what point did you sort of realize I've got to sort of expose myself if I'm going to be able and honest to god relationship with these people as opposed to, as you say, a performative relationship.

I think when I first started radio way back when in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the things I said that benefited me was I didn't have any formal experience in radio, Like I didn't. Go to college and do college radio. I literally was fresh off the diror road onto the microphone. So nobody had taught me how to do radio yet, so I was just getting on there having a conversation, and that's kind of what has stayed with me, you know, throughout.

And so I've always been pretty transparent. I think that I didn't start actually getting vulnerable till probably ten years ago, because I started going to therapy in like two thousand and sixteen. And so I think it's a. Difference between being transparent but actually being vulnerable with your audience, you know, letting your audience know, like I said, the anxiety you might be dealing with it about the depression.

And it's funny you talk about when you show up and you want to be your true, authentic self. I think you can get caught up in being a character. Sure, if you've been doing it long enough. If you've been doing it long enough and you start seeing headlines.

I remember there was always the Charlamagne is the hip hop Howard Stern, and I'm like, oh, so what does that mean? So that's what y'all want? Y'all want something like that, y'all want more of that. I didn't even stop to think, well, what part of Howard Stern do they like?

You know that they think I present to them and so that's whack. For a moment, I was being a second rate version of somebody else instead of being a first rate version of myself. And I think that's kind. Of one of the things that actually led me to start going to therape because I felt like I was losing myself a little bit and I had to, you know, like really remember why I got into this and to get radio, I had to remember who I was as a human being and as a person.

And I think that kind of like really really brought me back to center and allowed me to. Be more vulnerable with my audience. And I think that helps you to grow and evolve as a personality more than anything AI. The research says, we just did a big study called the Human Consumer, trying to get an understanding of sort of a white paper on the consumer and technology.

Seventy percent of people said they use AI, over ninety percent wile they're media from humans. I think it was twenty seventeen, about seventy five percent of people said human connections were the most important thing to them today. That numbers over ninety percent. We have at iHeart, you're part of it.

We have got a promise that we're guaranteed human both on podcasting and radio. We're never going to present AI pretending to be a human. We're not going to play artists that are really AI. No room for him on our air.

We're not gonna have a AI version of Charlott Ninge the God. You promise, I promise. So what's going on with AI and what's its role and how do we use it? It's scary that we even have to have the guaranteed human thing, right.

I think that we're about to experience what I'm gonna call the Great Disconnect, because I feel like there's gonna be so many people who start disconnecting from social media, who start disconnecting from YouTube because I don't know about y'all. I can't live the rest of my life looking at my phone asking is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

You send something to somebody and they're like, is this real? I don't want to live my life like that. I want to be able to look somebody in the eye, shake their hand and know that this is a you know, actual human that I'm talking to. And if we live in a world where everybody's already so easily manipulated, right, you can easily brainwash people.

You can already program them to think what you want to think from humans. Imagine if you take the artificial intelligence and now you got them pushing that type of rhetoric on people and pushing that type of misinformation on people like that is very scary to me. I'm sure that there's gonna be a lot of ways that AI is going to be beneficial to our society, but I don't know. Okay, let's go to brands.

A lot of people in this room or marketers and have their brands. They're worried about how do they ensure they are trusted and authentic in the age of AI. Well, brands just got to worry about having great product because great product always sells itself. Brands want to connect with different personalities, different shows.

I think brands have to start trusting the audience. We have all of these conversations about brand safety. I'm one of those people that feels like brand safety is subjective because if you have a product and you want to get it in front of this audience, but you're saying to yourself, oh, this. Show is two edgy, or this show is too.

Controversial, you're literally telling the millions of people who watch that show en to that show that they don't know what they're talking about. So if those millions of people aren't concerned about the edginess or the controversialness of the show, then I don't think you should be either, because all you should care about is your product getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And once again, like I said, you know, what's safe is subjective. I keep referencing Judy Blooms, She's on my mind this morning, but it's like there was a time with Judy Bloom.

No, right now, Judy's Blooms books are considered controversial. Judy Bloom how was forever controversial? Guys how is blubber controversial? But there's some people who feel like that.

So it's just like, to me, brand safety is just subjective, and you should just want to get your product in front of as many people as possible. Trust the audience that they know what they're talking about. You have some of the biggest names in music on your show again and again and again. A lot of people here use music, and I think they're finding that they've love sports because it's live, there's a community.

They like radio because it's live and a community, and music is the heart of a lot of that. How should they think about using the music artists? What advice would you give them? I still feel like, you know, musicians are some of the biggest influences.

Every day we're putting on a song. I don't think that there's a day that goes by that I don't listen to at least one record, Like I'm choosing to go on one of these music screaming platforms and listen to a record. Don't think about the record sales being down, to the screams being down, or you know, the live shows not selling like they once did. Those artists still connect with people.

There's certain people that can walk out on this stage right now and everybody will pull out their phones like, oh my god, like you know, right now to this day. So you still have to look at to me musicians as being some of the biggest, if not the biggest influencers out there. We had thirty seconds. Work life balance or work life integration?

How do you handle it? I don't think there's such thing as work life balance, Like there's going to be something that suffer, you know, if I choose family, which I am going to do nine times out of ten, work's going to suffer. If I choose work, then I'm probably gonna end up missing something. I got four daughters from seventeen, ten, seven, and four, so they're all their ages vary, so they all got different things that they're doing.

So I don't think there is such thing as work life balance. Something is going to have to be sacrificed. Sadly, Charlayne, thank you. You are a unicorn.

Great talent, but equally great entrepreneur. Thank you, thank you. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

The show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. The Math and Magic team is Ali Perry, Jessica Crincicic, and Dylan Hoyer. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenblum for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.