From Insurance to Karaoke: Chuck Burge’s Journey to Fundraising Success

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Joshua Kornitsky: Hey, welcome back to another episode of Cherokee Business Radio. I’m Joshua Kornitsky, professional EOS implementer and your host today. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by the Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc.. Please go check them out at diesel. Com. Well, in the studio with me today is is really an incredible guy. I’d like to introduce Chuck Burge, the creator of Airaoke. Hey, Chuck, how are you?

Chuck Burge: I’m very well. Josh, how are you doing?

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, it’s, uh. It’s been an exciting day today. If not a little bit too warm.

Chuck Burge: It’s a long day already. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: But, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself before we talk about karaoke.

Chuck Burge: Well, uh, native of Marietta, uh, went to McEachern High School back when schools were the same first through 12th grade. So I went 11 years to the same school, but grew up, never lived further than five miles from the Marietta Square. Uh, very endeared to the city of Marietta. I love it very much. Um, went to Kennesaw Junior College, which was a two year school then.

Joshua Kornitsky: Now for Kennesaw.

Chuck Burge: State before Kennesaw State now it’s the second largest school in the state and got my associate degree, uh, business degree there, and then went to Georgia Southern and got my marketing degree at Georgia Southern. Uh, got married, got divorced, got two fabulous sons, uh, 36 and 28. Chip and Kevin and Boston and Nashville. And love them like they’re here every day. But they’re not. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure, sure. Well, thank you for giving us a little bit about your background. And before we get into air hockey, I feel like it gives a lot of perspective. Do you explain what you spent your career doing before area hockey, so that we can then talk more about that?

Chuck Burge: Well, my career was really kind of odd. Um, my first job out of college was working at Life Insurance Company of Georgia as a claims examiner and got promoted to internal audit, which I just still can’t believe I did that job. But it was great company, great benefits. We got off at noon on Friday and, uh, floated down the river every Friday afternoon during the summer. So it was a great job for a single guy. And then I got married and, uh, and in 89, when my oldest son was born, I said, well, I need to do something different to make some money because I know I got a kid to raise. And, uh, so I went to work for Mass Mutual Insurance Company and was rookie of the year agent in 1990, sold more Fisher policies than any agent ever had nationwide for MassMutual. Wow. And, uh, they put me into management, going out, recruiting and hiring and training new agents. Um, and then from that, I was having dinner one night at the Marriott Marquis Downtown Champion Sports bar with a guy named David Ponzio. And I’ll never forget that name, because that night literally changed my life. And, uh, we were sitting there having dinner with this guy Chuck Lorre. And what’s the guy’s name? Comes around and throws this book on the table and said, what is that? He said, it’s karaoke. I said, what is a karaoke? Because it was brand new to the States. Nobody knew what it was. He said, it’s this music system where we play the background music.

Chuck Burge: You get to provide the lead vocals. I said, no kidding. I start flipping through the book. I said, well, I got to do this. He said, we’ll pick out a song. I said, no, I gotta do what you’re doing. I said, how much fun would that be, right? And he said, well, as a matter of fact, we’re looking for someone. If you’d like to meet the owner, I’ll introduce you to him. So the next day I went met Greg Smith, and, uh, Greg said, yeah, as long as you don’t try to sell insurance, everybody comes up and sings, we’ll give you a shot. So he did. And 3 or 4 years later, Greg calls me and says, hey, Chuck, there’s this new karaoke company coming to town Thursday for a group interview, and I’m going to be in Vegas at the electronic show. Would you be willing to go for me and see what it’s all about? I said, yeah, I’d be glad to, uh, might meet somebody I can hire as an agent. This is what I basically said. Sure, absolutely. So I got out there, and what it was was Rent-A-Center, the Rent to own company, had started an entertainment division called Race Entertainment and had signed a $3 million contract with Diet Pepsi to put. You got the right one, baby. Uh huh. On karaoke and go all over the country and have people come up and sing it and get a cassette promotional gift of them singing you got the right one, baby, huh? And they hadn’t hired a soul.

Chuck Burge: I said, well, that’s pretty cool. I think you think about it. Yeah. So I went home that night and they called me back and said, hey, Chuck, we’ve got this narrowed down to ten people. Could you come back tomorrow? And I said, yeah, why not? So I went back and then the next night’s phone call was, hey, Chuck, are you working in here this weekend where you can watch you perform? I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, write it down at Marriott. Um, northwest at Interstate North Parkway. So a guy came from Manchester, England, Indianapolis and Wichita, Kansas, and introduced themselves. They said, hey, you know, we’re looking forward to seeing you. I said, great. And I had got a regular crowd by then, and I had friends coming in and saying, and I knew it was going to be a good show. So about halfway through the show, one of them walks up and says, hey, Chuck, he’s I said, what do you want to sing? And he said, no, flip it over. And yeah, it sounds like they said, we want you. That’s great. And that changed my whole life. Double my salary for when I was at the insurance company. And for the next two and a half years, I was number two karaoke office in the country. And, uh, was singing you got the right one, maybe Uh-Uh with the Uh-Uh girls for two and a half years.

Joshua Kornitsky: Listen, there’s got to be something special about a myriad of boy that can make a living off of Pepsi.

Chuck Burge: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it was a very, very fun contract. And when the contract ended, I had take. I took all my, uh, marketing material or my, uh, karaoke equipment and sold it to a guy that owned a company called Monte Carlo Productions is a private casino company. And he said, I’ve always wanted my own DJ. He said, I’ve always subcontracted out. Would you be interested in coming in and running my DJ business? I said, sure, yeah. So I went in there and sold parties and I mean, I had such a great time. I, um, I did Evander Holyfield, 4th of July party three years in a row. Wow. Saying Under the boardwalk with Lenny Wilkins at the opening of Philips Arena. Uh, did Braves opening night parties in the parking lot at O. Atlanta-fulton County Stadium. I mean, I had a really pretty good name in the in the DJ industry for six years as a corporate disc jockey. Not on the air? Sure. And then, um, in 2000, January of 2000, the guy calls me from Boston who was the number one karaoke company in the country when we were doing the, uh. You got the right one, baby on promotion. He said, hey, Chuck, I’ve taken this Pepsi business and turned it into a national mobile marketing company and I need somebody to run Atlanta. Coincidentally enough for the All-Star game that summer and to 2000. And I said, you know, Mike, I really want to come home and spend more time with my kids. If you’ll promise me X and tell me this is the last job I’ll ever have. I’m all yours. So I did that, and I ran the All-Star game for Pepsi down in the Turner Field, then for 2000, and then got into creating grassroots marketing campaigns for large companies general Motors, Cingular Wireless, um, ran the Mall of America for five days for Diet Mountain Dew, hung out with Dick Vitale and John Wooden for five days. Wow. Wasn’t a bad day. Wasn’t a bad.

Joshua Kornitsky: Week. No no no no.

Chuck Burge: So and in 2008, when the economy kind of started tanking, I just started doing everything locally that I was doing nationally and, um, kind of once a fun time, I became my own boss and I wasn’t I was on the plane every week for 6 or 7 years and, uh, meeting somebody.

Joshua Kornitsky: I think you’d be hard pressed to find somebody who has more experience in a field that you wouldn’t think experience matters. Karaoke where it clearly does matter.

Chuck Burge: I learned a lot.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, and the marketing aspect that served you well coming from, uh, from the the time in college ended up becoming your whole life. So. So what how did we get to ROI from all of that? Thank you for giving us the background, because that helps us understand why and who you are.

Chuck Burge: Well, karaoke came about, uh, I had not DJ or MC or anything other than like, friends, birthday parties or their wedding receptions or stuff since 2000. And then, um, in 20. Well, when in 2001. When, um, when the towers fell on nine over 11. Um, my best friend was supposed to be in the towers, but he missed his flight out of Atlanta the night before he would have been killed, thank goodness. So, uh, God thing know that he knows that. And, uh, and then when 2020, when Covid hit and they couldn’t do the stair climb anymore to raise money for the firefighters.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, from okay from the Fallen Hero project.

Chuck Burge: Yeah, from the non Heroes project. Uh, I, I went to, uh, the chief of Cop County fire. Who was Mr. Kreider, who I’d known since he was 4 or 5 years old and said, hey, I want to do something to help raise money. And that’s where I came up with the area. Okay. I was out at the aviation museum in Marietta, and I looked at the big C-130 out there and said, how cool would it be to wrap a stage around the nose of that plane? Sure. And do aerial in front of an airplane.

Joshua Kornitsky: And that’s where it was born.

Chuck Burge: That’s where the idea was born. Okay. We couldn’t do it there because right across the street from the Aviation museum is a railroad track that has 72 tracks, 72 trains a day coming by.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah. So let’s see how that gets in the way.

Chuck Burge: So it didn’t make sense. So we moved up to Cobb International Airport. Uh, and Jim Cook with Atlanta Air Charter was nice enough to give us the hangar for a couple of years. And all we did was have an airplane face the hangar, wrap the stage around the nose of the plane, and people would come up and sing Airy Okie. It was really cool. Had the planes taken taking off in the background and all that. Very, very neat venue. But unfortunately, we outgrew the hangar in a couple of years. Uh, I mean, 250 was a max that would hold, and we were we were getting ready to bust out. Yeah. So we took it to the Strand Theater, and we’ll be having it there for the third year and our fifth year overall on August 30th of this year.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, fantastic. All right. So if people want to want to see the event, do they go to the strand website. Do they go to your website.

Chuck Burge: They go to Eric. That’s I a okay. Dot org. You can buy tickets. You can buy. You can sign up saying we still have six singer spots left, which is very unusual at this time because usually we have a lot more. So the word’s getting out about this event and we’ve been running it well, and now we’re getting where people have been signed up since February to sing. And now we’ve got, we’ve got six slots left and it’s 25 people saying, uh, and somebody wants $1,500 in cash.

Joshua Kornitsky: Does it all happen that night?

Chuck Burge: Everything happens that night.

Joshua Kornitsky: That sounds like a lot of fun, too.

Chuck Burge: It is a.

Joshua Kornitsky: Lot of fun. So if somebody can’t attend. Is there a way they can still show support?

Chuck Burge: Uh, you can always support by sponsoring. Also, if you’ll go to archive.org and hit sponsorships up at the top, it’ll give you a list. It’s basically $250 an up. And, you know, the most important thing. I mean, it’s a really, really fun event, but it is for a nonprofit called the nine over 11 Fallen Aero Project. A guy named Mike Kirsch and Susan Kirsch and their kids, Wesley and Lauren, uh, are the ones that run this event. I run it for them. Sure. And I raised all the funds. But Mike was actually a, um, uh, captain detective, New York City captain and detective. And, uh, he was not on site when it happened, but he spent nine months there after it happened, recovering the bodies of his friends and identifying them and all. And now Mike is riddled with cancer. And from all the asbestos and stuff he got. So it’s a lot of me and Susan putting this together. But all the funds go to metro Atlanta. It’s not tunnels to towers. It’s a nine over 11 fallen hero project. So all the all the proceeds go to metro Atlanta.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s I’m glad you shared that because that makes it much more personal, much closer to home. Yeah. And it’s not that there aren’t people that need help everywhere. With regards to nine over 11, but it’s nice that we’re able to help the folks that are here. Yeah. That’s fantastic. So now how many years have you been doing here?

Chuck Burge: Here. This will be the fifth year.

Joshua Kornitsky: This will be the fifth.

Chuck Burge: Year, and next year will be the 25th anniversary of nine over 11. So hopefully we’re going to do something grander. Uh, it’s just hard to believe that it’s been 25 years. And we every year we have artifacts from ground zero at the event where people can come have their pictures made with it, which is really, really cool. And obviously.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s cool and it’s somber too, but it’s.

Chuck Burge: Cool and somber. That’s a good way to put it. Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so over the the preceding years, have you had any really exciting or interesting events happen, you know, with the singers, with the crowd?

Chuck Burge: Oh yeah, Some of both. Uh, uh, the singers have been really good, and the whole premise is, like I said, we we look for singers, we look for sponsors, and we look for items that are donated to raise money. Because if you sign up to sing, there are five live judges there. And I want to thank Sarah for getting them from the Atlanta Orchestra this year. So our judges are going to be coming from Atlanta Orchestra. But the whole premise is bring all your friends to vote for you. It’s half audience vote and half judge vote, because we have about $25,000 worth of raffle items that we’ll raffle off. So the girl that won last year, Little Girl and Elise Lightner from Kennesaw State, sang Jolene, but she brought her family, she brought her track team, she brought everybody from KSU. And she was like, I think second in the judging, but she was first in the audience. So the whole.

Joshua Kornitsky: Premise, folks with her.

Chuck Burge: Whole premise, whole premise is come sing, bring your friends to vote for you and to buy raffle tickets to support the firefighters.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s amazing. And what does the ticket cost?

Chuck Burge: 25 bucks.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, So it’s pretty reasonable really, particularly these days. Yeah. And for that much entertainment, it seems like it’s something that’ll keep you alive.

Chuck Burge: It’s a lot of fun. And I’ll give a little credit to Joe Turner, who is our emcee. And Joe is an international magician. And he fell in love with the event. I think you said, you know Joe, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: I’ve met Joe a number of times, and he’s also a great speaker.

Chuck Burge: Oh, very, very good speaker. So, Joe, I connected with him last week. I said, hey, I know you’re in, but I, I just need confirmation that you’re still in. And he said, I’m looking forward to coming back. So he he’s recently moved to Tennessee, but I appreciate him making the trip down to come to the show.

Joshua Kornitsky: Joe’s a good man. I’m glad he is coming down, too. He’s awesome. He’ll he’ll absolutely make.

Chuck Burge: The good singer too. I don’t know if you ever heard.

Joshua Kornitsky: Him sing, not know that. And I’m a terrible singer, so I’m going to do my best.

Chuck Burge: He can’t. He can’t compete. But he is. He is good. But the people that have won. And you asked earlier. Uh, Josh, uh, the guy that won the first year was invited to sing with the Trans-Siberian orchestra. Uh, the girl that won the second year is now singing opera in New York. Uh, the girl that won the third year is just some rock n roll singer around town here. Like I said, the girl that won last year just sang Jolene, and I said she was telling her about it at Kennesaw State, a show that I do a podcast. And she said, oh, I’d love to sing. I said, well, come on and sing. And so you just never know who’s going to win. Uh, we I don’t think we’ve ever had a really bad act. I’ve been doing this five years, from the time that I’ve been doing karaoke since 1992. I’ve seen a lot of bad acts.

Joshua Kornitsky: I, I, I have to pray for your ears. I can’t imagine what you’ve heard.

Chuck Burge: Most of the people that come to this really can’t sing or really think they can sing well.

Joshua Kornitsky: And the strand holds a.

Chuck Burge: 530.

Joshua Kornitsky: People. Yeah. So that’s a lot of people say if if you’re going to get up there and try to be funny, that’s a lot of people that try to be in front of you, in front of when you’re if you’re a terrible singer. So, yeah. Uh, I can’t thank you enough, Chuck. This is really great stuff that you’re doing. Such a wonderful, wonderful tribute to the nine over 11. Follow here Fallen Heroes Project. And to make it local and to make it resonate, that’s really incredible stuff.

Chuck Burge: Yeah, I’ve been given so much by this community and this is just what I can give back. It’s not much, but it’s what I can give. So as long as we do our all. Everybody does our own part. Everybody’s got their own charities. I mean, I also work for Mushroom Ministries. I volunteer at There Gobble Jog every year. I drove the Pink Pig at the at the, uh, Festival of Trees last year to help bring awareness for, uh, the sex trafficking in Atlanta. I want to give back as much as I can, but this is my heart. This is. This is where my passion is.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, I can’t thank you enough for sharing it with us, Chuck. Remind us again when? Where they buy the tickets. What is the date and the time?

Chuck Burge: The man is 6:00 on August 30th. Doors open at six. Singing starts at seven. But come and enjoy all the raffle items. And like I said, the artifacts from Ground Zero have your picture made. But it is Saturday, August the 30th. Um, and we just can’t wait to see who’s going to show up. An area key Karaoke. Karaoke? If, like I said, if you want tickets, if you want to sponsor or if you want to sing, or you can call me directly at (770) 428-9930. I’ll take phone calls. I’ll take text. Anybody want to reach out to me? Feel free to do so.

Joshua Kornitsky: Perfect. Well, uh, you know, Chuck Birch, honestly, the creator of karaoke. What an exciting event this is going to be. Uh, I will do my very best to be there. And I will absolutely not be singing. So that should 100% make more people come. As long as I’m not.

Chuck Burge: Well, if you fill up a seat, that’s all I can ask. There you go. There you.

Joshua Kornitsky: Go. Well, thank you again. And please make sure next year you come back when we’re talking about the 25th, we’ll we’ll do everything we can to help promote that.

Chuck Burge: Well, I appreciate you, Josh. All right, well, thanks for the invitation.

Joshua Kornitsky: Thanks, everybody, for joining. Thank you again, Chuck, for coming. This is Joshua Kornitsky, professional iOS implementer and host of Cherokee Business Radio.