- Charlamagne Tha God is a nationally syndicated radio host,
and one of the people behind the show The Breakfast Club.
I checked out his book "Black Privilege",
and here are a few of my favorite quotes.
Charlamagne talks in the book about how he started
from nothing and how originally he wanted to be a rapper.
So when he first started making it in the business,
he got a rap contract working with a dude
who had produced some other major rappers.
And one of the things that this guy, his mentor,
told him is he's never gonna be a great rapper.
So he should focus on doing something else.
And he pointed him in the direction of radio.
I think this is an amazing lesson,
a lot of people are trying and failing to be things
that they just aren't going to be.
It's tough in life, because, I know for me personally,
it's very hard to see when I'm actually bad at something.
For instance, I'm making these funny Instagram videos
that I think are f - I call them funny Instagram videos
cause funny is the goal of these videos.
But they're getting really negative feedback.
And every week that I make new ones,
I go and watch the videos from the last week.
And most of the time I take them off of my Instagram
because I'm so offended by the fact
that I would post these up.
They're bad.
And a lot of times it's hard for people to tell
that they're bad until they level up in a skill.
So for Charlamagne to hear this from his mentor,
that he would take that and run with it,
and become this radio DJ is phenomenal.
And the takeaway for me is:
That doesn't mean listen to your parents if they want you
to become a doctor and you want to be an entrepreneur,
or anything like that.
But, I know if I'm sending something out to somebody,
like recently we were sending film scripts out,
and we're getting notes back.
And it's the same note over and over again,
or they're notes that resonate with me,
then I know that I'm doing something wrong.
And we talked about this in a previous video,
but if they're giving no notes that's even worse.
Cause that means there's nothing good.
Like basically you're so far off they can't even give
like one piece of good advice.
That brings us to the first quote
that I like from this book,
which was:
It's a great piece of advice.
I think it's true,
I try to do a lot of that here.
Doing cold email teardowns, putting videos out,
and trying to put a lot of good in the world.
Because the way that I look at it is,
I can release every secret that we do in business,
you guys can clone my company as much as you want.
And if I can reframe that and become happy with that,
maybe one of you guys will clone experiment 27,
do it five thousand times better,
and maybe one of you will give me a job,
or introduce me to someone, or acquire the company.
to take in life.
And according to Charlamagne, and it feels right to me,
as long as you're helping people,
and genuinely giving with yourself
and not holding things back, can't hurt you.
So the quote from Charlamagne's book was:
That quote came about in the part of the book where
Charlemagne's caught in one of his first big scandals.
He's speaking his mind and he gets called out and fired
because of his association with somebody from
the radio station that he was helping out.
He was doing this guy a favor, and he was stepping in,
he was working for free at the time,
for a long time, and he got fired.
But looking back he gives this quote,
because in the long run,
those people, even though they were forced to fire him
from his first radio gig,
did know that he was helping him out, remembered him,
and eventually they did let him back on the radio.
The next quote is:
At least at first.
I believe the first rule of the game should be:
by any means necessary.
I talked a little bit about this during
the Brian Koppelman video as well.
And, I've made my whole career working for free.
Charlemagne talked about how his first major radio gig
in New York City paid him almost nothing.
He was working at a radio station outside of New York
first and making a decent salary,
and then that dried up.
He got fired.
And then he was waiting for another job,
and he was saying no to all these low paying jobs,
and even some high paying jobs in his local market.
Because he was waiting for New York City.
And he said the big change happened
when he moved to New York City.
The jobs weren't gonna come for him,
he had to go to the jobs.
And that's when he booked a meeting with a person
that worked for free and ended up trading all the way up.
It's:
Instead of linear.
So somebody like Charlemagne and a lot of people
in the entertainment industry,
their salaries will plateau for a very long period of time.
So let's say they're making like 60 thousand a year.
And year one they might make 60,000 or
even zero as an intern.
Then it's like 60 grand, 60, 60, 60,
and then they hit it big
and then they make 6 million in a year.
So you can draw a line that looks more
like a traditional career path going backwards.
But, especially in a business like radio,
or what I'm finding with movies,
it really is,
since you're rolling the dice every single time,
one big win makes up for years and years of losses.
It's actually the same with social media followers.
I was talking to someone who has
a lot of followers on social.
And he was just kind of grinding out videos
for a really long time,
like he had maybe 10,000 followers,
then he had like 11 thousand, 12 thou -
like very slow growth.
And eventually he was just putting in the work
over and over again.
Somebody big shouted him out,
and then he shot up in followers.
And then it just traded up on itself.
So Charlemagne knows as long
as you're producing good content,
as long as you're helping people,
you can work for free and eventually
you will end up were you wanna be.
Charlemagne has a phrase for this in the book,
he calls it:
And he's referring to drug dealers on the streets.
Whereas somebody will be selling the weed,
and another person will be putting the weed in the bag.
Those guys are just training so one day,
they can sell the weed themselves.
And Charlemagne says that weed could be anything.
Weed could be marketing services for instance.
It's just a metaphor if you guys don't know.
And while I might not have the most experience putting
weed in the bag on the streets,
I've put the metaphorical weed in the bag,
using cold email sequences.
Email.
My whole life is email.
Everything I do is email.
The next quote was:
This is:
People that are super-hungry,
that wanna make money really quick,
a lot of times they'll try to complement
the people that they're trying to get something from.
And it comes off super slimy.
But, the most successful people,
at least I've seen this in LA as well,
are the ones that,
when a project's shitty,
they'll say it's terrible.
Or when a marketing project isn't going well,
they'll say that it's bad.
Charlemagne says the same thing in his book.
He said he was fired three or four times,
because he was speaking the truth.
He said he would insult guests on the show
if the audience wanted them insulted.
He would do whatever he felt
was necessary and was true to him,
and that's what caused the audience
to resonate with what he's saying.
There's so much bullshit out there,
there's so many people that aren't telling the truth
or being real about their lives.
And if you can be the one person
that's an actual human being,
in the long run you win.
Maybe in the short run you get attacked and you get fired,
but in the long run you become
like our man Charlemagne Tha God.
Check out "Black Privilege"
I'll put a link in the description down below.
If you want the exact questions we ask
on discovery calls to win clients for our agency,
that's down in the description below as well.
And if you know somebody that might get value
from this video,
I would love it if you would share it with them.
We're trying to hit 100 thousand subs,
so every share counts.
Thanks for watching, I'm Alex Burmen.