Rapid Response: Iggy Azalea on crypto’s biggest myths and mistakes
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What is your brand? You have to lean into that in an aggressive way. There's nothing memorable in pop culture that doesn't swing the pendulum. The middle is forgettable. There is a big risk in that regard, but I think you want to be essentially polarizing, trying to be too likable, trying to say, well, I want all the audience. I want to be as big as I can. It cannot be that way, and it doesn't need to be that way. You need to have a message so that those people want to go out and...

die for you. So you can't be afraid that some people are not going to like that. And you'll get a lot more customers that way, actually, by way of being unafraid, I think is very important. That's rap star and celebrity Iggy Azalea. I was intrigued to talk to Iggy because after a successful career in music, she's actually turned her attention to cryptocurrency, which has been on fire since Donald Trump's re-election. But our conversation goes beyond tokens and memes. That's

the topics every business can learn from with insights about how to build a fan base, the pressures of entrepreneurship, and more. It's a sparky, in-your-face session. Iggy even throws some shade at Ryan Reynolds. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. ♪

I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Iggy Azalea, the chart-topping rapper and musician and now creator of the cryptocurrency Mother. She's also a co-founder of the new digital gifting platform DreamVault and creative director of the relaunched telecom company Unreal Mobile. So Iggy, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited actually to get to talk about so many of the projects I've been doing. You retired from music last year. Why is that? What does it mean to retire versus like, "I'm just going to take a break"? I'm glad that you asked that because a lot of people

confused. I did take a break from music actually for about two years when I had my son and wanted to see if I felt like I wanted to come back to music and I did and I did a really amazing co-headline tour with Pitbull then we sold out every show two years in a row and it was awesome but I think that doing that as much as I loved it made me also realize that I just I

I feel it had become monotonous for me. I think it was a bit creatively limiting to me. I'd already started angel investing and taking some smaller creative roles in developing companies. And I just felt so much more fulfillment and excitement in that role.

I didn't renew my record contract. I don't have an active record contract. I don't have an active publishing contract. I have sold all of my masters. I don't even own them. I'm free of any responsibility. And I just feel excited to get up in the day and to go and do these ideas. For some people, it may seem like,

well, that's boring. Why do you want to do creative for a telecommunication company? For me, it's just all the challenge of the puzzle of figuring out how to connect brand with audience and what the identity is of that brand. And I love the puzzle of that. Music is a puzzle in that way too, to me. And so I feel much happier doing this.

I mean, I don't think a lot of people would have predicted that one of your ventures would be cryptocurrency. Like, how did you first become interested? How did you get interested in it? Like, are you now a crypto expert? I wouldn't dare to say I'm an expert, Bob, because everyone will come from my head. But I think I'm quite knowledgeable. But I got into it by my brother, actually. My brother is younger than me, and he came to live with me over the summer. So I

I had my brushes with crypto. I'd say we all have, especially during 2021 where NFTs really exploded. I'd been approached by a lot of people in the NFT kind of era wanting me to endorse things, but didn't. I didn't really understand crypto.

what the cultural side of crypto was for or what it had to offer. And I actually likened it a lot to Beanie Babies and kind of felt like, well, there's a bubble and it all burst and it's not real. It's just a fad. It's just a fad that's going to go. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not very interested in partaking in that. I don't see me in that space.

And then when my brother came to stay with me, he started to show me more about meme coins, the communities that he's lurking in and how it all works. And I really started to learn about that. And I felt very interested in that. You've said that mother is more of a traditional meme coin than a celebrity coin. Can you explain what you mean by that? I think celebrity like we'd call it meta, right? And celebrity meta is,

I don't think has in its traditional sense much value. I don't think the roadmap to what we in crypto know as celebrity meta really works. I think of myself as a hybrid. It's like a meme coin or maybe an alt token. It has real use, real world utility that I think is important to integrate. But when you start to say the word utility in crypto, everyone's like, ew.

It's a dirty, boring word. I want the fun of a meme token and try to have that and the community of that and the chaos of that combined with some real world usage and utility. And I think for like a celebrity token, that's the balance that's needed. Traditional celebrity token is just...

I'm John Doe. I'm super famous. I launched a coin. It's based on John Doe. That is the concept, me. And what do you get out of this? Nothing, me. Do you believe in me? Do you like me? Buy me. And I don't think that that's very valuable. What is valuable that celebrities have

have or could utilize if they were interested in crypto is that they are good at developing communities and fostering that sort of thing. It needs to be something that I think is bigger than yourself. Yes, a celebrity can front run it the same way that they can an album concept that people buy into. I think Charli XCX is someone who did a really great job of that this summer with Brat

Now brat is in the dictionary as the Oxford word of the year, right? So she had a great theme behind her album. And I think of this as the same thing for me thematically. I chose mother. I think it's a very memeable theme. It speaks to me as well. And the person that I am being a mother, I think

mothers can have a broad spanning interpretation of how deranged or traditional that can be. That's why I liken what I'm doing more to a traditional meme coin in that regard of community and then I think

It's semantics at the end of the day. Do you think about Mother as like an investment? Like it reached a high level in June, then it goes down. Is it stressful to be part of a volatile market? Is it fun? Or do you not really think about it in like investment terms? Of course I think about it in that regard because market cap matters and it's a measure of success. I'm at six months now of being in crypto, having launched this token, right?

I think it's more about not letting the immediate day-to-day value of what the market cap as an investment is or getting too hell-bent on that. I did used to look at DexScreener to look at my market cap on like a 10-minute chart and was really quite addicted, I will say, to that in the beginning. But

Now I really zoom out when I look at it and how I'm planning kind of in quarters more traditionally the way that I would web to business Of course, there's pressure in regard to like investment But I don't feel that pressure for it to always be green green green green or I need to get back to this all-time high right now I don't feel that pressure, but I do feel pressure to make sure that I'm always thinking ahead I'm always thinking a quarter ahead a lot of meme coins are just

peaked, dumped, and then that dev will have started a new project within four to six months. And that coin is abandoned. And that's really not my approach. I want something that's long lasting here. We talk about crypto in super cycles or four year cycle. I would really love my token to be able to survive something like that. And not only to survive it as the minimum, but really to thrive in it.

Since Donald Trump won the election, sort of crypto prices have climbed. Do you think about the potential of Mother differently? Who was going to win the election is a big talking point in crypto. It has been all year, right? Because people felt a certain way about the Biden administration or they associate Kamala with that administration and everything.

the way the SEC has interacted with crypto or the lack of transparency about what the rules really are. It created a lot of hesitancy in the market.

I knew what the potential was or is, you know, if it was going to be a Trump administration for crypto because people were going to be very bullish on that. And if it was going to be a Kamala administration, then people were probably going to be very bearish about that, right? So I knew that. I knew that. And, you know, I mean, I'm happy to see the market pumping. I don't like to get into politics. I can't vote. I'm not an American. I'm an Australian and I care about Australian politics. But

I've geared up my fourth quarter and my first quarter of next year under the assumption that it was going to be a Republican president and that we would see this bull run that's now started about a week ago. And I'm happy that I did it that way because that's how it's ended up. For your community of fans and the folks that are part of the mother community, is

It's like for music, you could be a fan and sort of drop it and come back to it and sort of go up and down in the same way that, you know, the value of a crypto coin can go up and down. But in some ways, you have a different kind of responsibility because your fans could lose money on this, right?

Well, it's interesting because honestly, I have some music fans that are in the mother community, but I was shocked to see actually that a lot of like day traders and traditional like Wall Street traders are in mother. When you're in, say, a musical fan, there are some, you can say that you drop it and then you come back. But I would argue that that's really a casual listener. And then in what would be called like a stand community that we all know and love, like super fans, you don't drop it in music. Exactly.

it's quite the opposite. You spend and you spend and you spend. You're going to spend money on having an emotional experience at a concert that might be between you paying your light bill in your college, you know, that year because these are young people or you're going to this experience

experience. To be a hardcore member of any fan base, it does come with like some sort of monetary commitment for the most part, right? It's up to me in both those scenarios to foster something that beyond the investment of your money going up or down, because I would hope that you wouldn't over leverage yourself in either of those scenarios, right? Whether it's that you can buy a concert ticket for $100 or you want to

put $100 on your favorite meme coin, right? Yes, I want to see the market cap rise. I'd love for you to have a monetary thing that you can showcase. But secondary to that, it's important for me in either of those scenarios that you have enjoyment regardless so that you feel there's something else intangible of value that you get out of this. Celebrity coins, there's not true engagement with the community, right? I did my paid post. I told you come and buy this token, but buy this token, why?

Are you getting proximity to the person that you like in a chat room and that's what the value is? Are you getting an in-real-life experience? Is there merchandising? Is there utility where you can get something at a discount like I have with Unreal Mobile and Mother or like what I'm doing with DreamVault? You can buy anything on the internet on DreamVault and you can get it at a 10% discount if you choose to buy in the crypto token Mother. That's something that's

value beyond the chart, but also I think with celebrities in music or things like that, you could integrate that into. Now I do have a tour and this meet and greet experience is only for people that hold my crypto token or this piece of merchandise is only for people that are part of this token.

When you talk about your fan community and the most engaged subset of stans, right? For a lot of entrepreneurs, they're trying to build that kind of stan community around their business. Do you have advice for them about how to do that? You've talked about, you know, a sticky unit of culture, but like for those who are looking for something sticky, how do they find it? How do they figure out what that is?

Everybody won't have one. I have to say, everybody won't have one. It's like that with memes too, where it's like, you can plan it all you want, but at the end of the day, you don't know what culture is going to grab onto or not, right? Like who would have thought that the hippo was going to go nuts? You can't predict these things. That's the fun of pop culture in general, not just crypto culture or brands. But I think what it is, is just that

You want to lean into whatever your organic identity is and you want to be essentially polarizing in that and very unapologetic about what that is that you're honing in on. And I don't think it's something that you necessarily just make up or say, well, pop culture likes hippos right now. So I'll go with hippos, like,

No, it doesn't work that way. What is your brand? What are you if you're the face of it? You have to lean into that in an aggressive way. There's nothing memorable in pop culture that doesn't swing the pendulum. The middle is forgettable and we can't aim for that. There is a big risk in that regard, but I think that you just have to and know that people will connect with that. People will aggressively see themselves in that or not. And if they don't, it's still just as good because they will talk about it.

A lot of businesses try to be everything for everyone. And you cannot. That is the biggest mistake I feel like in marketing yourself or your business, trying to be too likable, trying to say, well, I want all the audience. I want to be as big as I can. So my idea is that I want the whole audience

audience. I want every fruit on this tree to be mine. It cannot be that way and it doesn't need to be that way. You need to have a message that is in somewhat unafraid to be polarizing so that those people want to go out and f***

and die for you because they believe in that. They believe in the brand. They see themselves in it. They see themselves in you like a magnifying glass on their own belief. You just want to magnify that emotion, that energy, that belief and make them say, yeah, I want to go in and I want to do this too. I was sitting here thinking the same thing, but yeah, you stood up and said it.

And so I want to go and I want to ride for that too. Yeah, what she said. That's what you want for your brand. So you can't be afraid that some people are not going to like that. But those people are of value to you as well. Those people are going to talk about how much they dislike it. And it was always a key part to my success in music. Talk about how much you dislike it. I want you to because that's going to spark other people's curiosity to say, what's so bad about this thing?

What's causing this reaction? People love to watch a car crash. Maybe they think that that sounds like something they'd hate too. But guess what? They're going to go and look at it. And some may decide that they like it.

And you'll get a lot more customers that way, actually, by way of being unafraid, I think is very important. Because that's the way you get the spotlight to come your way because there's so much noise out there. You have to have an aggressive viewpoint. And we all do. That's something that we all have.

Will the way that you market it connect or not? I don't know. It depends on you and the way culture is and if that's a message that's connecting in culture at that moment and that changes all the time. But what I can say is nobody wants to be friends with the person that everybody's friends with.

It's not organic. It's not real. And we all have our extreme opinion about something secretly. And you just have to lean into whatever that belief is that you have so strongly. Probably other people share that same like strong emotion about that thing. So you've got to be unafraid about what you're doing.

Iggy is certainly unafraid to be herself. It's a bit bracing to lean into our most aggressive, strongest emotions. That may not always be the best parts of ourselves, but practically speaking, you have to say that she's right and admire her for calling it out so plainly. So how does this practically fit into a business strategy? Iggy shares her experiences from telecom to GoFundMe to OnlyFans after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, we heard musician Iggy Azalea talk about why she's embraced cryptocurrency. Now she compares her new telecom venture to Ryan Reynolds' Mint Mobile, plus her take on GoFundMe, OnlyFans, and how she deals with pressure. Let's jump back in. I have to ask you about Unreal Mobile, because telecom is not traditionally like the sexiest business. That's why I'm here to make it sexy. Oh.

Like, were you inspired by Ryan Reynolds' success at Mint Mobile? Like, why Telecom? Of course. I think we all should be a little inspired by what he's done because he's kind of done the impossible with it, honestly. I mean, he's quite good, I will say. What happened, actually, is that I have this company, DreamVault. Somebody came in and they wanted to be part of my round, but it had closed. Joshua is the original founder who bought the company. He called me up and he said, listen,

Do you have any other projects that I could invest in? Do you have any other ideas? And I said, well, what have you got going on over there? Do you have something that you own that's not working? And he had bought this company on RealMobile and showed it to me and said, I have these ideas, wanting it to be for younger people. I don't know how to connect with them. My team doesn't understand it. Would you be interested in telecommunication? And I thought, actually, I would because I

It's a utility that every young person needs, but it's hard to make it cool. It's hard to make utility cool. How do you make something that everybody is a product everybody needs cool? Ryan Reynolds, I think, has done a great job at making it make sense financially, but I don't think Mint Mobile is cool. And maybe that's not the way it's not necessarily trying to be. I don't know.

I don't think it is. I don't think that's its pitch point or what it's trying to be. But for me, I'm like, I want to try to make something that younger people can identify with, that can get young people off having to be on their family plan with their mom when they're f***ing 24 years old because they can't afford it. I think there's a lot of independence in that. And

I want to make it fun. My first campaign that I did with them was mobile for unreal creatures and it's got mermaids and vampires and it's ridiculous and stupid and it fared quite well on social media and now customer acquisition costs went way down for us. I was very proud of that. It feels like building your career in music. Every campaign is a little album and

For me, I just felt like what else could connect with youth more than this? What you're saying, if I'm hearing you right, is that the product itself is the messaging, is the community, because any phone service can get you to make that call, right? Here's why I think it should be cool. Here's why I think it's important to be cool.

As a young person, you're not fully, you don't fully always own your identity. You do care about perception. You do care about perception amongst peers and it can navigate what you buy and what you don't buy, right? Look at Stanley cups. It's a cup and you could have the same cup with a different brand on it that does the same function, but that one's not cool, right?

You don't want to buy it. You don't want to interact with it. And I think it is actually the same with phone plans and always has been. The amount of times when I was younger that someone looks at your phone and sees a little thing in the corner and says, oh, you're with them? Ew. Being budget friendly actually to young people can be a bad thing. They don't want that.

So why does it matter to be cool? It matters to be cool because young people care about that and you want something that is budget friendly but that can crack the knot of still being cool. It's trying to get rid of the...

I guess you could call it shame. That may be extreme, but it is a little bit of, "I have a contractless phone plan. I'm not on one of the big guys." Why? Why is that the culture it always has been? It should change. It's stupid. You mentioned Dream Vault earlier. Can you explain what Dream Vault is? Because it sounds like kind of a cross between Venmo and Kickstarter and social media and, you know, with Mother as a currency.

Can you explain it? Am I understanding it the right way? What it is essentially is a gifting platform in a marketplace and a crowdfund all kind of like mashed together. I spent time on OnlyFans. I was approached by them for many years to get on OnlyFans and they really were interested in getting a celebrity platform.

that has sex appeal, but that you can be on OnlyFans and not necessarily be doing X-rated content. I would chat to actually a lot more traditional fans than people may realize on that platform. And a lot of them would want to buy me gifts, and I was like, well, I don't really want a gift, but thank you. But I just kind of got in this world when I was in OnlyFans that I felt like I see a gap in the market where there are a lot of creators

that don't necessarily want to be on a site like that, but maybe do want the help of their community, essentially. Maybe they want a gift or maybe they want equipment or maybe they want funding to make an album. Do you want to be on GoFundMe? No. Why? Because...

GoFundMe is something that happens when you want charity. And that is, again, not cool. It's not something that a creator wants to do. So there were kind of all these little elements of things that I sort of saw and felt like,

I see something here that we could do. I think we could have a gifting platform that has a social media element where you can go and chat to your community with each other. You can have proximity to the person that you like and talk to them. When I had a dream, which was to be a musician, there are a lot of things that I needed help with to make that happen. I needed accommodation. I needed a

I needed a microphone. I needed tickets to get places. And I did it. I was successful. But my community helped me to be able to become successful. And I want a place where people can go and utilize their community, whether you're an influencer or maybe it's just that you're having a baby shower and you don't want to have Amazon be the limit of your gift list or Target. Can everybody that I know in my wedding party just come here and donate to this one thing so I can have something?

my big shebang dream. You can do things like that with this platform. And then afterwards, because there's a social media element, you can post your videos and keep people updated. I'm a big supporter of GoFundMe. I'll donate to stuff that I see and believe in. And I don't really get updates about what became of that. And sometimes you wonder, and I think it's cool to have a space where that's possible too.

It's an interesting mashup because some of the things you talk about, like, oh, well, I might do that on Kickstarter, but GoFundMe, I might do over here. They're like in different places. You're pulling it all together.

And then also just bringing an experience where whether it's fan or community or whatever you want to call it, you have more proximity and more access to say, hey, you know what? I see Sarah is my biggest supporter. Man, thank you. Let me get a relationship. Sarah likes that. That's the most valuable thing that Sarah could be getting out of this. And then you have something valuable too, because you have a real fan that you have a direct access and engagement to. A lot of

I would say successful celebrities at engaging communities, me being one of them. I know they are all in group chats with their core fandom.

On Instagram, on Twitter, showing them stuff before it comes out. What do you like? Do you like this? Do you like this one or this one? What color? This is all getting asked already. This engagement already happens under the radar for people that are good at what they're doing. Why not put it somewhere that's more rewarding and accessible to everyone? So I just like it as a concept. I think it's where things should head and it makes sense the way that we have digital communities. Clearly, I'm interested in digital communities in all regards.

You alluded to this earlier, crypto, like some of the music genres you've been in, have typically been male-dominated. That hasn't deterred you. I wonder if you have any lessons for women who sort of feel like they're struggling to get ahead in male-dominated industries or workplaces. Here's one thing I will say. Even though you're probably the only woman in a sea full of men, just try not to mention it.

It's messed up, but it's true. What you want to do is you want to find points of commonality, right? The truth is whatever your industry you're in, when you're a woman, once you're at the top of it, it's probably male-dominated. That's a fact.

it's not a value to you in any capacity to make necessarily a focal point of the thing that makes you different to your political peers that you need to gain favor from in order to operate, right? You want to find things when you're doing business with people that you have in common and make friendships. And so to...

come in the door, which I think a lot of women kind of make the mistake of doing this in business and say like, well, a woman, only woman here, here I am, other women come to me. It kind of doesn't seem to work that way. I think it's something that maybe you want to make a focal point of once you're in a position of power that can't really be taken away. It's unfair.

But it's true because you have to establish what you have in common with people first. And you have to make those friendships first and make those connections first by focusing on what you do have in the space that you can relate to with these guys. Allow them to create some attachment. Allow them to want to go hard for you. And then when you're where you need to be, then...

remind everybody of how hard it was and what you overcame because you have to be smart. I'm not saying that it's fair. It's not fair. It's always unfair to be a woman that's successful. But if you want to immediately play the game with the landscape as it is, then that's what I think works the best. I do. So what's at stake for you as an entrepreneur right now? Oh, so much.

I think, here's what I always say. Your name is your name and you only get one, right? You can change your project and start something new, but it's attached to your one good name that you have. And so for me, I feel like I have so much at stake because I only have one name. And in that regard, I think of myself as only having one shot and I just cannot fail. I have to deliver what I've promised myself. I have to deliver...

what I've promised the people that are directly investing in me. And I have to deliver to the people that are in my community that believe in me and that invest in me, whether it's emotional, time, or financial. It's my life on the line, really. That's how I think of it. That's how much pressure I have and

And I like that. I like to put the pressure on myself because it makes me get up in the morning and say, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, what am I doing to see these businesses move forward? What have I got checked off my list? What's next for it? And

For me, that's the drive. That's what makes me happy in life. So I really feel like I have absolutely everything bedded on what I'm doing as an entrepreneur right now. The risk that you talk about to your name, to your brand in going into business, it's

It almost makes it feel like, well, why bother? Because I'm a psycho. I need the risk. I'll be honest with you. It's like, mate, I think I might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I am. I am. I moved to America when I was 16 to decide to be a rapper. You couldn't have a bigger risk. I stayed awake all night the night before I caught that plane and thought, am I getting myself set up to get kidnapped and fucking murdered?

I don't know where I'm going or how I'm going to make this happen, but there's something about that that makes me feel alive and that I can't put down. That's the thing that I'm addicted to. It's not making music or that wasn't what kept me going for so long. And a lot of adversity sometimes in that arena or face a lot of criticism. It's the, I don't know, there's something about that.

pressure that is a driver for me and that reward when you overcome it that is unlike anything. And I will be honest, maybe I would need a lot of therapy to be able to live

Without that, I may have quit music, but I haven't quit that. I can't quit that. That is what internally drives me as a person. It's probably why I have no love life or purse. Like it's just this all the time because this is my thing. This is my reward. And so why bet so much on it? Maybe because I'm addicted to it.

That's the honest truth. Well, I thank you for being so candid and sharing all this with us. I really appreciate it. No, I appreciate it so much. Hopefully we can talk again in six months and be talking about everything that went right. That's my hope.

Listening to Iggy, what I'm struck by most is how unfiltered she is about what drives brand success, about how she deals with unfairness as a woman in business, about the interplay between pressure and ambition. Iggy's ventures and her crypto coin may take off or may not, but she's unlikely to slow down. Her encouragement for brands to embrace alienating people, her

I'm both drawn to the idea and repelled by it. For the biggest businesses, the idea of cutting yourself off from prospective customers can seem foolish, but maybe that risk is exactly what's required to stand out these days. At the same time, wouldn't it be nice if some part of our culture bound people together instead of driving them apart?

When Iggy talks about community, it's that connection that she's really focused on. And I'm hopeful that the community of business can be a positive influence, even if each business itself is determinedly unique. Does that make sense? I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening. We take great, great pride in the culture that we've built. We just saw a sizzle video from our recent team offsite, and it almost brought us to tears.

That's Shannon Jones, Capital One Business customer and co-founder of VIRB, a rapidly growing brand experience agency that creates memorable events for companies like Airbnb, Hulu, and Amazon. We've scaled exponentially. I mean, the company has more than doubled in size. Being super mindful of how to maintain the culture in the face of rapid growth has been very top of mind for us.

For VIRB, company culture is just as important because the staff brings that energy to client relations, the key to their success. Here's VIRB's other co-founder, Yadira Harrison, highlighting a specific way that VIRB takes care of its employees. Our holiday party, it's a one-day celebration where we all come together. We're talking about 50 to 85 people. And so it's special, but it's also expensive.

Yadira and Shannon spare no expense when it comes to team milestone celebrations, employee benefits, and holiday parties. Perks made possible with the help of their partnership with Capital One Business. The Capital One Spark Card definitely helps to offset that in a massive way. Based off of the cash back benefits, that's the benchmark of how we want to use that cash back. It's important for us to be able to do that and to make people feel appreciated. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards.

Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Troh. Our producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli. Theme music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Malad. For more, visit rapidresponcesshow.com.