Who says pursuing your creative dreams has to come at the cost of a stable financial future? Well, with the right mindset on money and wise investments, it doesn’t have to be! My buddy Zach Schnall aka DJ Bander took some time out to drop in on TLD and drop a word. An award-winning composer/producer and skilled investor, Zach let us know how he pursued his dreams to get into the music industry without falling into the trope of the ‘struggling artist’ along the way. It’s all about having a plan and making the right financial choices! Join us for a deep dive on the smart way to invest your money, plus some tips on networking and marketing yourself in the digital space.

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Zach Schnall aka DJ Bander On Making Smart Financial Choices And Pursuing Creative Dreams

What’s up, Dropouts? I’m coming to you with another episode. We have got a special guest. His name is Zach Schnall. He is a DJ and he goes by DJ Bander. He is an expert in many things. I almost want to ask and I do ask him what doesn’t he do. He’s an expert in finance, marketing, social media, branding, stock market, stocks and bonds and investing. He has his hand in almost anything you can think of. He almost became an attorney. He’s got so much going for him, a wealth of knowledge.

He lives in Los Angeles, was born in Brooklyn, New York and we go over how to start a financial profile for yourself, how to prepare yourself to obtain generational and lifelong wealth for yourself. How to invest, how to educate yourself about stocks and bonds and what exactly to invest in. That’s exciting stuff. I personally never knew anything about this.

Also, we talk about branding and marketing yourself, how to get started in doing that. We talk about how to get connected in your industries and how to go online and make those connections but still be safe. Also, we talk about our love lives and how you date when you’re trying to be an entrepreneur and you’re trying to hustle every day. You have beautiful women or men that are working with you every single day. How do you maintain a solid relationship during all this commotion?

DJ Bander or Zach has a charting single on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s called Fast and he started as a writer and producer and then was encouraged to go ahead and start being a DJ so that’s how he came to be a DJ in the first place. It’s mind-blowing. I hope you’re ready for this. Please enjoy this episode of the show with DJ Bander.

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How are you, Zach? Thanks for joining us.

I’m great, Stephanie. Thank you for having me on.

Your alter ego is DJ Bander. You are a musician, a DJ and a pianist. You’ve studied classical music. You grew up in Brooklyn, New York. You’ve got such a vast and colorful history. You amaze me. Every time we talk, I learn something new about you. Having you on the show, I’ve learned even more. I’m excited to get to ask you all the things and pick your brain. First, I want to ask you a little bit about growing up and how you chose this career path for yourself. Going to school for music, you know early on that that is what you’re passionate about. How did you funnel that into the career that you have now?

A lot of people see my brand and my imaging and they probably don’t know that my background is in Finance and Political Science. I have a double degree in Finance and Poli Sci. I studied at the University of Redlands and then I also did pursue music all throughout my life. It was a passion. Coming from two educated and successful parents, they were clear to me that it had to be a balance of doing music but then also having a business accruement and understanding how to monetize it.

Believe it or not, there was a period of time where I stopped believing in my music completely. I was doing music a lot in high school but I got a little discouraged for some time because I didn’t have a lot of industry connections. I had a couple of friends that were doing music and they seem to have all these family connections that I didn’t have. I felt frustrated so I went all-in with my business for a while. All of a sudden, I was like, “That was starting to go well but I miss music. I like doing business and all that stuff and it’s important to me, but this is who I am. I am a musician.”

What I did was I ended up moving back to New York. I came back to Los Angeles to get my degree from Musicians Institute, which set me on the course that I’m on, having this established brand as a music producer because it led me to get my first digital distribution deal with Sony. It reconnected a relationship that I had with an old mentor, who I then started interning for, who was a composer at the time on some major films like Hollywood movies. I started working as an assistant to him on that. From that, it ran me back into the path that I’m now in, where I’m doing full-time production and eventually led to starting my digital marketing firm as well.

We knew each other through Clubhouse but your digital marketing firm is how you and I worked together. You did grow up in school for music and then your parents were like, “You got to have this backup plan.” That’s how you got into the finance side. Is that what I’m understanding?

Yeah. I have some people in my family who have that background, both in real estate and investing so it was always something that I was around. It’s something that’s in my family culture so I was always interested in it. Being an entrepreneur, capital has always been important to me and it’s always been a driving factor. I wouldn’t say it’s the most important thing to me but it’s definitely up there. It was important to me that I figured out a way to monetize my music. I have nothing against it but I wasn’t interested in being a struggling artist. The only reason I even continued pursuing music was because I had a strategy and a plan for turning it into a business.

I was going to go back into law and I was going to do law practices managing real estate firms, capital management, REITs and stuff but that wasn’t what I wanted to do either. I was blessed that I was able to come up with a strategy and a plan to build up a company that had services. Long before I ever got into digital marketing, long before there was even an Instagram, I did a lot of engineering and I did a lot of early on production for some big labels and some big hip hop artists. That got me the original capital that allowed me to do everything else that I’m doing now.

The question is, what haven’t you done? That’s a better question. Let’s start with finance. What are some tips that you can give to our younger audience? There are all these young entrepreneurs out there. There are TikTok stars and people that are big on Instagram. They’re 20 or 21 and they don’t know and they haven’t been counseled to do so. What do you advise them financially?

The biggest thing that creates wealth is a mental shift from the feeling of wanting to show off the ability to have goods on you, for example, clothing or a nice car or these different things and be excited by the growth of your portfolios and your accounts and having capital. That is as cool to have your money in the bank as it is to have the money on a nice shirt or in a nice car. When you get people to make that mental shift, what I find is then they get addicted to saving money. They get addicted to adding to their security as opposed to this bizarre addiction we have in this country of showing what we can buy.

What I try to tell people is, “The confidence that you project when you have a lot of money saved is just, if not much cooler, than pulling up in a nice car.” That’s what people need to understand. That’s what I tell young people a lot. It’s shifting into that mind frame of saving and spending less than they’re earning. If you can do that over the long-term, you have no choice but to end up being financially secure. In a sense, it’s like with anything else. If you’re earning more than you’re spending, you’re going to have money so that’s a big part of it.

That’s what The Luxury Dropout is all about. It’s my journey from advertising that I’m “rich” on the outside and broke on the inside.

I love the name, by the way. It’s great.

Financial Choice: The biggest thing that creates wealth is a mental shift from the feeling of wanting to show off to being excited by the growth of your portfolios, of your accounts, of actually having capital.

Thank you. I was so hyper-focused on wearing Gucci head to toe and having a Louis Vuitton phone case. I’m like, “Why do I need a $1,300 phone case? Do I really need that?” Also, not having $1,300 in my bank account. That’s the point. If I had $50,000 in my bank account, maybe that would be a different story. I had to put on a credit card and I had to make payments on it. It doesn’t make sense.

When I started enriching myself from the inside, that is what makes the biggest difference. That’s why you are going to be such an asset to people reading because they don’t have the tools sometimes. For example, nobody explained to me the importance of your credit. No one told me about that. I just happened to get a credit card when I was 21 and I opened a bank account. They were like, “Here’s your credit card. You have a $500 limit.” I would pay the minimum. No one ever told me, “Pay it off.”

Now I have excellent credit but I had to learn that by myself over time. Another thing I would advise young people to do is open a credit card, make those payments on time, pay it in full and build up your credit score because that’s how you’re going to do everything else in life. Get a home, get a car and all these kinds of things.

I went to this little conference that was about Forex trading and stuff that I was excited to see. There’s a lot of young people there from as young as 19 to 25 and they were all intent on learning about the industry of finance. There is definitely some of that happening out there in society but we know statistically that as a culture, the United States is far behind where a lot of these other countries are. Even though we have a lot of money in this country, the individual wealth is not as high as you think. It’s like 40%-something of Americans have no emergency fund and 58% of Americans are check to check. That is definitely a problem long-term. It’s not just so people have their own independent future but the strength of the entire country is at stake if we can’t get people to be more financially sound. We’re going to always be dependent on government support and things like that.

The takeaway is to stop spending your money and save it.

It’s great to have nice things. I enjoy my nice place and I have a nice car but what I tell people is, “The most important thing is I never spend any of my principal to have those things. All of the nice things in my life that I owned come from cash flow, from investments that I’ve made so that the principal is secured both in my portfolios as well as in my different companies and my different assets. Whatever I don’t feel I need to save, I then can enjoy and use for my place and for different stuff.” That’s the difference. That’s where it’s important to understand.

I haven’t increased my spending per percentage of my income ever. That’s how I build wealth. When I make a new deal, I’m not like, “Now I can increase my spending.” I don’t increase my spending at all. That goes back to what I said first, which is a mentality shift. I don’t need to buy a new Hermes belt for everybody to know I’m doing my thing. I don’t care. I don’t need you to know. I can rest peacefully at night knowing that I’m saving my money. People need to get into that mind frame. Don’t worry about impressing other people. They’re not going to be there for you when you run out of money.

You’re going to be more alone than ever. They were there for the wrong reasons in the first place. I’ve learned that in relationships too. Men that I dated and I’ve supported financially, unfortunately, in the past because my love language is gift-giving. I would love a person by saying, “I got it. I’ll take care of it. You can come live with me. Don’t worry about rent. Do you need help with your child support? No big deal. I got it.”

I feel like a lot of women show their love in that way.

It’s a screwed-up way to learn but it’s how I learned. To be honest, that doesn’t make them not cheat, stay or not break up with you. In the end, you are left feeling super used and you’re like, “I gave you all of this stuff.” They don’t care. It’s a good lesson to learn. I’m exposing myself but it’s for a good cause.

At Clubhouse, you talk a lot about stocks and you’re getting a lot of great information about investing your money. I personally don’t know anything about that part of finance at all. What is the research that needs to be done when you want to invest in a stock? How do you stay in front of the trends? How do you look at the market? What can you give as some advice for that?

First of all, I invest in stuff I understand. If it’s a product I don’t understand, no matter how many people tell me that the stock is so hot, I won’t buy it. For example, many years ago, people recommended to me I should buy Lululemon and a couple of these makeup companies. I’m a guy. I’m not big aficionado of makeup. I have no passion behind it and therefore, I wouldn’t invest in it. Even though I probably missed out on a good investment, if I don’t understand it and I don’t have a passion for exactly the use of it and the mechanics of it, I won’t invest in it. If the stock starts going down, I won’t be able to tell you why it’s going down versus something that I understand and I’ll understand why something is not working. Therefore, I have a better ability to know if there’s a bottom coming.

What I do is I look for a couple of things. I always tell people in Clubhouse, “I invest in things that do well in good times and even better in bad times.” For example, I have a huge position in Campbell Soup. It seems random but CPB is one of my hugest holdings. Why? When the economy is good, people are buying kitchen goods and they buy soup. When times are bad, all those people that now can’t afford restaurants who are online, go right away and buy Campbell Soup. Security blanket, knowing that when the economy goes down, that product is going to be staying and is going to be needed.

Other investments that I’m in like that would be AT&T even though I’m in a little bit less because they’re having some issues with their dividend. For example, I know in bad times, people are not going to cancel their phone bills. People are going to still need their phone bill and they’re going to need their phone line. You have to ask yourself, let’s say you had to take a 40% cut in your income, what is something you absolutely would not cut spending on? Housing, your phone and low-price food goods. That’s what I have the bulk of my money in. I have the bulk of my money in affordable housing. I invest in HUD housing. Both in the stock market and in real life, I buy and sell HUD properties.

REITs, which are Real Estate Investment Trusts, are like stocks that represent real estate. I look for properties that are in markets that are strong in both economic times. I’m a big believer in senior housing. I own a lot of SNH, which is because when in bad economic times, young people usually lose their housing because they lose their jobs but older people don’t because they’re on social security. I like investments that are more government-based and government funding.

That’s how my brain works in terms of looking for investments but what it’s down to is doing your own research, learning about the mechanics of stocks, what a stock is and what a bond is. I love bonds. I have more bonds than I do stocks. I believe in researching and studying what these things are. Not what’s the best stock to pick but what is a stock? What is dividend income? I make income from my stock investments without having to sell any stocks and people don’t realize that most of these companies pay you to hold on to their stock and you can turn that into a major income stream.

It’s important for people to research and understand that. That’s what a dividend is. That’s why you could make money in the stock market whether it goes up or down. Unless the company becomes insolvent, many of these companies will always pay a dividend. AT&T is an example. I never sell my AT&T unless I feel I’m over-invested in it. I always keep some of it and when there’s a big market crash, that’s when I buy more. The real key is to buy into downturns, not freaking out and selling into downturns. You wait for the crashes to invest more and then whether a stock is up or down, if it has a dividend you’ll continue to make money with it.

Financial Choice: The confidence that you project when you have a lot of money saved is just as much, if not much cooler than pulling up in a nice car.

That’s how you can buy the shares for less because they’ve crashed.

I’m big into these corporate bonds. In 2008 when we had the big crash, the bonds lost 42% of their value but they maintained their dividend. For example, whatever my money you had in it, every month, you still got your income check. If you were smart, you didn’t even look at it and you said, “That numbers down but I’m not going to stress on it.” You collect your check and you just let it ride all the way back up. All of those funds have returned to where they were before the 2008 crisis.

If you’re smart, you bought into them during that time and you would have more than doubled your money by investing in the downturn. It’s about reading. I recommend a lot of good books like Rich Dad Poor Dad. I tell people, “If you’re interested in stocks, start watching CNBC, download the app on your phone, watch these news channels and learn what they’re talking about. If there’s a term you don’t understand, google it.” That’s it.

That’s so helpful. There are certain things that I never was taught about and I know that there are a lot of people like me.

You’re not alone. I just happen to come from a family and a background where people are into stocks. It was something that was talked about at the dinner table. They don’t teach it in school. We’re mediocre when it comes to economic education in this country. It leads people to be credit-dependent and job-dependent, which is on purpose.

The funny thing is my parents are educated financially. They have these capital investors that they use and they have a certain amount of money that they pull out every year to use in the budget from that. My sister and I were laughing because we were like, “If they, God forbid, were to pass away, we would probably walk into that probate office and not know what the hell was going on,” because they keep us in the dark in a way. It’s weird. They don’t want us to have to worry. My sister and I want to know. We want to be knowledgeable about these subjects but in a way, they’re trying to protect us. I wish they would involve me more.

The more interest you show in learning about it, maybe you can talk to them about it. Tell them that I’m helping you understand it. It’s a weird thing in this culture. My family is similar. My father did and didn’t talk to me much about it. When I started making my own money and started my own business, all of a sudden, he couldn’t wait to tell me about the deals he was working on. He almost wants to show me that he’s still wheeling and dealing out there. Before I was doing all these things in my business, he was quiet about it.

Sometimes it’s weird. Parents don’t know how to approach it. If you have parents who are successful financially, they may feel like, “I don’t want them to know how much money we have.” There’s a lot of wealthy people that don’t have any idea how their money is managed. They’re just good at saving and not overspending but outside that, they have no clue what they’re doing. That’s also an issue and that’s partly how some of these big funds make so much money. People just hand them their money and they collect their monthly checks.

They go to a meeting with them once a month. They’re on top of it for sure.

That bodes well. I manage all my accounts myself, almost to the point of being OCD. I’ll notice any of these moves in anything. It’s almost a little neurotic. That has definitely helped me. I recommend people to be like that when it comes to their finances. Don’t just check out. You got to stay on top of it. Don’t trust anybody. There’s no one you can trust with your money but yourself. It’s one of those things with money where it’s not like, “Can you show up next week and walk my dog? Can you remember to pick this up from the post office for me?” Some people treat their money like that, like, “Can you let me know how much I have in this account? I don’t want to deal with it. I’m not good with money. You just tell me.” That’s how unfortunate people get scammed. Sometimes you get scammed by institutions so it’s important to stay involved.

It’s true because some people are not of the generation that balances their checkbook so they go by what is on their Chase app or whatever. Sometimes they don’t notice that $100 is gone here or $100 got charged here. They don’t notice. I definitely keep on top of that. My sister is younger than I and she physically balances her checkbook, which is cute.

Going away from the financial stuff, I want to talk about marketing and branding and how you branded yourself personally. When you were first starting up and you first decided, “I’m going to go into marketing. I’m going to go into branding myself,” and all of those things, what were your first steps? What were your struggles? What was your game plan? I know you had a vision for it.

The first thing was learning how to create a brand name that was unique and I was able to get SEO control over it. Bander was something that I used as an acronym since I was young when I was a hip-hop producer and stuff. I realized soon that there are oil firms in Saudi Arabia that use Bander for a completely unrelated thing and because they’re wealthy, it was difficult to compete with them in SEO.

Around that time, I happened to start DJing because I was originally only a producer and composer. I had all these friends who were like, “You should learn how to DJ, too so you can perform your songs out at festivals.” That’s when I was like, “I’m going to go with DJ Bander and Bander Productions.” I went all-in with those. There is no other DJ Bander and there’s no other Bander Productions so I flooded the internet with content, press, music and partnerships that I created, which over time, gave me all of the Google locked-in SEO that I needed to establish the brand online.

Now, you can finance that SEO. I did it before you could do it that way. I did it from the mud, as they say. I did it from just having to put out content on my own. I had to brand myself so much, put so many things out there myself and stay so active on social media, like hashtagging DJ Bander. For years, I had to do it. Eventually, it got me a Google Panel then it led to Facebook verification and then into Instagram verification and all that stuff.

What I try to do now is tell clients to take what took me close to 8 to 9 years to do manually to 1 year or 2 to 3. That was the original thing. Honestly, the digital marketing stuff came later in my career. The reason I got into it is that I was realizing, “There are so many scamming hustlers out here saying that they can do verification, they can do Spotify and they can get you fans.” There was so much BS and it was so expensive. I was like, “This can’t be.”

I already was established financially so I was like, “Let me try to figure out how they do all this stuff and charge half what all these people are trying to charge.” I don’t need to rob all these people. I was already wealthy before I started a digital marketing company. I was like, “Let me create a company that has a great value add that competes with all these gigantic PR firms, that’s priced at a boutique price.”

That’s how I found my success and I got my clients because I’m like, “I could spend this much with Bander and I’m getting the same thing I spent three times the amount doing with somebody else.” That’s what got me into it. I have no interest in fake marketing. It does no good to get people fake followers or to get people fake dreams online because, at the end of the day, it will not lead to anything. I learned about it because of the goal of wanting my music to be heard.

Financial Choice: The strength of the entire country is at stake if we can’t get people to be more financially sound.

I’ve been doing social media for years. The problem with me is that I rebranded myself so many times during that process that when it finally got to Stephanie Joplin and The Luxury Dropout, I had to rework everything. I’m mostly male audience because I was a sports journalist and I was covering MMA. I was posting a more sexy type of content. I wasn’t being vulnerable in saying, “I feel crappy today,” and having that resonate with other women or whatever I would talk about. Anxiety, weight loss, depression and all of that stuff that I talk about now, I would never talk about before because I didn’t think that was sexy.

“I couldn’t be vulnerable. I didn’t want anyone to think they could break me. I can’t be like that.” That was my mentality at the time. That’s where I found the success. It’s so slow. With your help, it’s been better but it’s still a slow process to turning it around and having a more female-based audience. The engagement from the females is great but it’s still at 80/20 when it should be 70/30 or whatever it is.

I tell you what I told my clients and everybody I work with. There’s no magic bullet to creating a fan base. Even me, I still continue to work on it. The key is content that people love and then also projecting a lifestyle that people want to connect to and enjoy. They want to connect to what content you’re going to provide whether it’s a song, a podcast or a video and then they also want to be inspired by something that keeps them entertained and keeps them connected.

We live in a dissociated, lonely time. What people need to think about when they’re building their brands online is creating something that gives people a sense of comfort and identity that they can connect with. More from Instagram and social media and less from TV. In a way, you have to see your brand as your own TV station. That’s how you have to look at it.

I always make a joke. I tell my friends that when I post something, I imagine an HBO presents, the little thing coming right before The Sopranos will start. II wanted to feel HBO presents right before my post. To do that, you have to create a combination of, you’re hustling but you’re relaxed so you don’t over-post but you don’t also check out and disappear.

I struggle with that. All these things that I’ve been taught like, “You’ve got to post once a day or once every other day. If you go too long without posting then the algorithm is going to kick you out.” All these things about the algorithm that changes every day and you can’t even keep up with it anyway. It’s definitely been insightful with us chatting about strategy. One time, I was like, “Which picture should I post?” You said, “Don’t post the way you think it needs to be posted from your heart. Post what you want to post. Post what you feel good about.” I’m like, “That makes sense.”

People are so worried about what other people think is cool. You have to trust in your own vision for what you think is dope. Otherwise, it’s not going to be original. It’s not going to be you. I’m getting into these debates with a lot of people about, “You got to post a bunch.” You should be regularly active on Instagram. There’s something important that you’re talking about when you post.

On Instagram, I posted this random thing at a sushi restaurant. It doesn’t even have a logical explanation for why I did it. It’s a lifestyle thing but the caption is about something specific. I got 50 streams on my new song that dropped and it’s still going up from there. That was the reason I was posting but I didn’t want to post a screenshot of it. People can go ahead and look so they’ll see the numbers themselves.

What I tell people to do is have reasoning behind what they do. If you want to post five times in a row within one week, it should be about a reason. For example, let’s say I went to a convention. I met three big celebrities and I closed two deals at the convention. There you go. That’s a reason to post five different times about the same convention. Post with this celebrity then post with this one. I’m not a fan of posting for the sake of having new content up there. People get fatigued.

I don’t want to open my Instagram and see the same person dropping something every day. If you’re going to do that then the content needs to be fresh. I do follow a couple of influencers who I like. I’ll give a shout-out to Mr. Organic. He’s cool. He’s a clothing designer and he raps. He posts a lot more than I would post. Some of the posts don’t even numerically always do that well but what I respect about him is that every post is an original cool piece of video content. He has a full-time YouTube video crew with him and he’s constantly shooting videos with his cars, his house and all this stuff. Even though he posts more than I think is necessary to post, it’s not redundant or boring because each post has different content.

You had said to me, “You need to take more pictures.” That’s something that you and I had discussed when we first started working together. I know but the only thing is I always take them myself with a Bluetooth clicker. I have reached out to photographers and then we’ll do photo sessions. The beach one that I did is a little difficult to post too many in a row of those because they’re redundant. I could post a couple and then, maybe down the line, post more. I have another shoot so that’ll be in the mix.

It’s a lot for a woman to go through sometimes. When you want to do a nice-looking photoshoot, you’ve got to get the makeup done, get your hair done and choose an outfit. It’s this whole production. I know it doesn’t always have to be that way because I’ve lived off my own content forever. It’s nice to have proper headshots to send in for press stuff. Even the stuff that you and I’ve been working on for press, the photoshoot that I did, I’m like, “Now I can use those headshots for this article.” That’s been helpful. It’s good to have in your pocket.

What my company does is focuses on increasing real engagement with what you already have up there. I would rather have one post a week that does well and use it to drive traffic to your brand than constantly having to have new pictures. I’ll leave one photo and I’ll keep running a promo on it. I like when people go to my page. Every post has to have thousands of likes and hundreds of comments because then it’s showing others real engagement. “When he puts something out there, people respond.”

There’s also an element of wanting people to know that I’m busy. I’m running three companies and I have a lot going on. I don’t have time. I’m not just sitting around and worrying about what content I’m posting. There might even be a couple of days where I don’t even have time to post anything on Instagram at all. There’s nothing wrong with that either. It’s okay to be busier than being able to post about what you’re doing.

You are a busy guy. For me, with my audience, if I don’t post on my Instagram stories and they miss it, they reach out to my friends. “Is Stephanie okay? What’s going on?” It’s not that I feel obligated. It’s that I feel needed and I’m like, “This is a great opportunity for me to reach people and advise them to the best of my abilities.”

I have that, too. I had a family friend pass away and I decided out of respect to go silent on Instagram for 3 or 4 days or 5 days. People were shook. People were DM-ing like, “What’s going on? Where’s the content? Where’s Bander?” I have people that I’m like, “Really? You people are melting because I’m not posting. That’s so cute.” Sometimes it could just be a meme for the day. It could be one little thing like a picture of a sunset. You don’t always have to be like, “I don’t have any content right now, what am I going to do?” If you don’t have any content, it’s okay. Let’s focus on blowing up what you do have out there.

If you’re trying to build your brand and you’re in the building stage. You don’t have an established brand. You’re not verified yet and that type of thing. Where do you stand on posting polarizing content? For example, you’re pro or anti-vax or you’re pro or anti-abortion or something that’s extremely polarizing like that.

Personally, this is a difficult decision that I’ve made because I have strong opinions politically and culturally in all this stuff. What I realize is that you have to be careful with posting about all that stuff because you might have somebody who’s a big supporter of you, who’s powerful and can do a lot for your career. You could post something like, “I like Biden,” or, “I like Trump,” and that guy likes Biden or that guy likes Trump. Now he doesn’t like you. You burned a relationship with somebody that you could have completely avoided by not bringing that up. I have this conversation a lot with my parents because my parents were politically active in the ‘60s. They think I should be more active in talking out there with how many followers I have.

Financial Choice: There’s no magic bullet to creating a fan base. Focus on a balance of content that people love and also projecting a lifestyle that people want to connect to and enjoy.

I don’t get into it. I’m careful not to make any of my political affiliations public. During the elections, I only encourage people to vote and things like that. I will speak out on stuff but not specific. When you’re building your brand but even when you have an established brand, you will pay a price for taking a strong stance on either side of any big issue. People will ask if that’s worth it to them.

You have to be somebody who believes that being strongly worded about your beliefs is the most important thing to you. You don’t care about any other thing that it could cost you, including financial hardship. That’s what I tell people, “Be prepared for the rainstorm.” If you want to bring it like that, more power to you. You got famous comedians like Michael Rapaport. He puts his views but he pays a price for that.

I like him that he does.

I like him, too. If you look through the comments, I wouldn’t want to wake up to that every day.

I wouldn’t even look at my comments.

That’s what I’m like. You’re also inviting the crazier people when you start doing like that. I like that little bit of mystery. If I thought that my opinion on something, one way or another, could make this consequential difference in world affairs by speaking on it then I would think differently. I have an established brand and I have a few hundred thousand followers, which is not insignificant but do I think that I could sway an election or sway a social issue with the Supreme Court? No. Why give myself that vulnerability when I don’t have a lot of leverage anyway to make a big difference? That’s how I look at it.

I had someone ask me on my Ask Me Anything, “I don’t know whether or not to get vaccinated.” I’m like, “I am not answering that question with how I think. I’m going to tell you how you should think and that is you should talk to your loved ones and the family that you’re around and make a decision based on that.” That’s it. I’m not going to say whether I’m pro or against because I cannot tell you what’s best for you. How would I ever know that? I know what’s best for me. That’s all I know.

Tell me about networking and stuff like that. For a lot of people, it’s difficult to put themselves out there. In a place like LA, it might be a little bit easier. You can go out and network a lot easier than you can in Cleveland or something. If you’re in a smaller town and you can use the internet or use Meetups or go out to clubs, what do you recommend for people who are looking for connects? Would you recommend engaging with them online? How did you make your connects?

I would recommend utilizing all that but be careful with people that you meet online. As someone who’s dealt with people not being who they say they are online, you have to be careful because there’s a lot of scammer type of people out there. They can oftentimes take advantage of people through the internet and finding people that are way outside of social. You have to use some caution with that.

People find me through social media. I utilize Clubhouse. It’s how we met. I utilize those rooms because they’re a nice way to do that. As COVID gets better, people need to be out there. Investing in and establishing your brand will help you get more traction with the people you meet when you’re in social situations.

You hand somebody your card and you say, “Follow me on Insta.” The bigger of a footprint you have, the more likely that person is going to DM you and be like, “Yeah, let’s definitely connect and let’s work.” You have to do all things. You have to be out there networking, you have to be networking online and then continuing to create content which people will then see, which gets engagement. It’s like working multiple cylinders at the same time. It’s what it comes down to.

I’m going to ask you an interesting question because as an attractive woman, when you want to network with a man and you’re sliding into their DMS as an attractive woman who they do not know, what is the best approach to make sure that that man knows that you’re there for strictly business? What do you do if he starts to hit on you? What’s your advice?

That’s always an issue. There’s always this unknown connotation when people of the opposite sex are talking and doing business. It’s like, “Is there another there and there?” For the most part, it is best to not overthink it. The problem is that, when you’re attractive, there’s always going to be that element there. You have to assume that there’s a possibility that any guy that you’re talking about may have those thoughts or may possibly try to have those interests and you have to simply stay focused on what is your goal in the networking situation. Is there a specific reason you’re reaching out to that person?

Keep the conversation about that without having to necessarily be cold because this is a complicated, interesting thing. I’ve dealt with this in the past in my relationships, for example, where there are some people who only want to do business with you. In the back of their mind, they’re like, “They might also like me.” It’s a thin red line because if you’re too warm, you can wash away the whole original reason why the person is reaching out to you and then it becomes that. If you’re too cold then the person feels a certain type of way and then they don’t want to work with you.

It’s not easy. It’s definitely a difficult thing. You’ve struggled with it over the years. You don’t know for sure. I’ve struggled with how I’ve built my brand and how I have to engage and stuff like that. Now that I’m verified, I have to be even more careful because everything is scrutinized. Once you’re a verified public figure, celebrity or whatever you want to call it, you have to be careful about how you speak to people online because you lose your check. People can come at you a certain type of way. It’s a great question. It’s not an easy answer, to be honest. A lot of men are bad with social cues. I don’t know why.

It’s weird. Women will always be like, “You’re so good. You always get what’s going on.” Maybe it was because I was raised by a single mother for the most part. She raised me as a strong woman who told me and put me on a game when I was young. A lot of guys didn’t have that kind of upbringing or something. I had a tough older sister who’s kept it super real with me my whole life. There are guys that didn’t have that upbringing so they’re clueless out here. I don’t have a perfect answer for it other than you’re going to have to find out what works. Don’t be afraid if a conversation starts getting weird. Keep it real with them. Sometimes, you have to have that conversation offline, on a call or something because it can get misconstrued in texts as well.

There’s still a lot of quid pro quo going on. I’m like, “Really? It’s 2021. We’re still doing this?” I remember when I used to do interviews with athletes and they were like, “What do I get?” I’m like, “You get nothing. What are you talking about?” This is crazy.

That definitely comes with it. You’re always going to do that if you put yourself in a position where you’re going to be a public figure in an industry that’s dominated by the opposite sex. If you’re a woman in sports, you’re going to be dealing with that a lot. It’s weird things. Over the years, I’ve had issues with it, too. I produce a lot of singers and some of them are attractive. It’s been an issue in my relationships in the past. A lot of girls don’t like that. It can make you uncomfortable like, “Do I even want this girl to come through to my studio? I know that she’s so attractive that if she posts me, people are going to feel a type of way about it.” It’s not easy. It’s something that people deal with. It’s why in my industry, relationships have struggles and have issues.

Financial Choice: What people need to think about when they’re building their brands online is creating something that gives people a sense of comfort and identity that they can connect with.

Where does your love life fit in with all this? I want to tell you this quick story before we get into that. I wanted to have this guy I found on TikTok on my show. He had some interesting content. We hopped on a phone call to discuss and we talked about it for twenty minutes and then he paused. I talk about this in the show all the time because this is every man’s way to hit on me. They’re like, “What ethnicity are you?” I’m like, “Here we go again. This is going the wrong way.” Ever since, he’s been calling me every day. I’m like, “Screw it. I can’t have you on my show.” When I commented on his content, I did not say, “You’re hot.” I said, “I would love to have you on my show. What about that did you not comprehend?”

That right away paints this non-sophisticated thing. It’s how I look at it. Somebody is that thirsty that they can’t even be a vibrant guest without this uncomfortable dynamic around stuff. It’s easier as a guy in the industry because women are raised to not put themselves out there. Even if a girl got a crazy crush on you, rarely is she going to cross any boundary or do something to make you uncomfortable. It is easier in that sense as a guy. When you’re an attractive woman, it sucks for you. Guys are supposed to do the first move and hit on the girl. That’s the way it goes.

How do you even have a love life? First of all, from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep, how do you have time to invest in your love life? Is that something that is not at the forefront of your mind?

I put the time into my love life. It’s been something that has been an issue over the years. It can present challenges. I’ve been able to make it work. The person I’m seeing, she’s somebody who understands what’s going on. It hasn’t been without struggles around it. I’m not in the profession that is exactly what she saw for herself.

The biggest issue that I’ve had in relationships over the years is that they’re like, “I’m not trying to date a music producer, DJ-type. I like you so much that I’ll put up with it because you bring all this other stuff to the table.” Unfortunately, it’s the case that I do feel that more often than not that. Women tolerate the public figure side of me.

I’ve rarely met a girl that thinks that’s genuinely great. Few women are thrilled about the fact that I have lots of attractive women that follow me and comment on my Instagram. That’s natural. There’s an element where I get that, too. I’ve always dated girls that are more low-key, to be honest. I prefer to be the only public figure in the relationship. There’s only room for one of us and normally, it’s me.

I prefer it when a guy has no social media. I’m fine with that.

Everybody naturally does. At least for me, I can tell my girl, “Girls don’t aggressively pursue men online. It would be different.” My girl said to me, “What if I had 100,000 followers?” “No, it wouldn’t be the same.” It’s not a quid pro quo. It wouldn’t be the same because I guarantee your DMs would not look like my DMs. That’s a straight fact. I’ll look into my story feed, for example and I’ll see some amazing and beautiful models looking at my story but they’re not DMing me like, “What’s up, babe?” If that was the other way around, their DMs would be flooded with messages.

To be honest, it’s one of those things where it’s not the same. That’s the only time that I have conflict. In my opinion, I can get pushback from people around this. It’s not the same dynamic, a popular male figure versus a popular female figure. You’re dealing with a completely different thing. If it was the same, how come most big Instagram model females have their DMs and their message requests completely blocked and they don’t even read them? When I DM a big male figure personality person, normally, he’ll see the DM and tap it right away. That’s because women have to put those settings in privacy mode way more than guys. That’s the point.

The long-short answer is it’s challenging. I seem to find a way to make it work. I’m also independent. I do like relationships but I’m also somebody as an artist. I’m not a big cohabiter. I like living alone. It’s important for me to have my own independent life and my own space where I can do my music and everything. I don’t work well being around somebody 24/7 that cohabit. That’s where it’s a challenge.

I work from home for the most part. For certain relationships, when people have their own lives during the day and they’re separate and they’re at their offices all day, they say, “It’s nice to come home after a long day to somebody.” When you’re living an entrepreneurial life and you’re independent, it’s difficult to have a lifestyle like that. You’re going to feel smothered all the time by anybody, no matter who it is.

I have the same thing going for me. I’ll get asked out. Sometimes, I don’t even want to leave the little comfort of my home. I don’t even want to deal with it unless it’s someone I already know. If it’s a guy I already know, that’s different. I don’t have to go out and be interviewed. If it’s a new date that I have to go out and make an effort and talk about myself to where they don’t know anything about what I do, I have to explain. I want to be like, “I’m an accountant,” at that point. I don’t want to explain social media.

My last boyfriend told his family that I sell things online and not sex. That’s word-for-word, he told them. I’m like, “I can’t explain these things to you anymore. I’m done.” I’ve got one more question for you. It’s a question that I ask all the guests on my show. If you were to walk down the street and see twenty-year-old Zach walking up towards you and you got to go give that buddy a big hug and give him one piece of advice at your age now, what would you tell twenty-year-old Zach?

I would tell him to never take a break from music and work harder and put out more stuff. I have put out a lot of successful music. I could have put out even more. I spent a lot of years perfecting my sound and worrying that things weren’t good enough when I should have flooded the internet. I eventually ended up doing that but I would have done it even sooner. The biggest thing I would say is, “You’re ready. Go and put stuff out.”

I love this quote, “Getting older is an interesting process in which we become the person we always were supposed to be.” What’s true about it is when you’re twenty, it’s your time to have the mentality that you have when you’re in your 30s. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work backward. That’s why I love talking to my older family members who are in the 60s and 70s because their mind is refined.

We don’t pay enough respect to the elderly. To them, we’re like, “They’re older now.” They’re in the most sophisticated state of where they are. The twenty-year-old is this insecure blob who doesn’t believe in himself. Some do. Some are blessed to have that young confidence. The main thing I would say to myself is to go in at that age. That was an age where I was much like, “What am I doing? Should I keep doing this business? Should I do music?” I could have continued to do both at an accelerated pace. “The hindsight is always 20/20,” it’s how my father used to tell me.

How can the audience support you and your music? We know about your single that’s charting. What do you have that’s coming up?

It would be great for everybody to give me a follow and shoot me a DM on Instagram so I know who you are and I can support what you’re doing. Stay tuned for my upcoming single. I got an EDM single dropping. I’m working on the cover art and all that stuff. That’s on the way. I’m going to be also focusing on some downtempo releases as well with my other artists. Both ZeZe and Sonny have new music coming out and then possibly an EP later in the fall or an album. I’m working on that towards the winter. I got a lot of stuff in the works. In the meantime, I’m still excited about Fast. It’s been going well. I’m doing new Spotify campaigns. I’ll be sharing that as well. Support the playlist. That will all be dropping.

Fast is the single. That’s amazing. Congratulations. I’m proud of you. I’m glad to be your friend and a part of your life.

Financial Choice: Investing in establishing your brand will help you get more traction with the people you meet when you’re in social situations.

Thank you, Stephanie.

I enjoyed our conversation. I hope you did, too.

I loved it. Congrats on the show. I’m excited for it to drop. This is great.

Thank you. I’ll be touching base with you shortly.

Let’s run it up. You already know. Thank you so much.

—

That was quite the episode. I honestly never learned more in a session. Zach is truly someone that I go to for a lot of advice personally with my marketing and branding myself. He’s taught me a lot about the reasons why I think things and why they’re wrong in the nicest way. Definitely give him a follow and he will respond to your DMs. He does help with marketing and branding. If you’re looking to brand yourself, he does all of that type of consulting work. If you are a young artist who’s looking for a mentor, reach out to him. Also, make sure to stream his music and support him. He is one of those people who wants to help others like I am. Until next time, stay well. Sending you lots of love and see you on the next one.

Important Links:

• Zach Schnall
• Clubhouse – @DJBander
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Instagram – @DJBander
• Spotify – DJ Bander

About Zach Schnall aka DJ Bander

DJ Bander is a Composer, Producer, DJ and digital marketing expert originally from Brooklyn, NY. His background in both music composition, piano and finance; propelled him to his current levels of success in the industry.

Currently signed to Sony BMG via The Orchard, his label Bander Productions recently secured a top 50 iTunes dance charting placement along side Daft Punk and Calvin Harris. With over a million cumulative streams and climbing, his brand is now well established and versatile.

He is currently working on new singles with his artists and a potential album for the fall.

Follow him on IG @DJBander

DJBander.com

Zachary Kern-Schnall
Sony Top 100 Charting Producer
CRE Investor
@DJBander
Featured in LA Weekly
www.DJBander.com
www.instagram.com/DJBander
Ambassador to Yamaha Music & OM Media

—

Watch the podcast here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Women in Broadcast Journalism: Against the Grain with Megan Olivi

Stephanie Sits Down With UFC On ESPN And NFL On FOX Sideline Reporter, Megan Olivi

What’s up fellow drop-outs? I have an amazing woman standing by me. She is one of my mentors in life. She is a person that I look to for grace, poise, how to react to drama, overcome obstacles, and work together in a relationship when you’re in a high-profile relationship where people are in your business a lot. I want to introduce you to Megan Olivi.

For those of you who don’t know, you have to know who she is. Her face is so recognizable and she’s Italian so ten points for Gryffindor. She’s a host and a reporter for UFC on ESPN. She’s a sideline reporter for NFL with Fox, and she’s been doing this for more than a decade. I watched one of your first interviews with Joseph for WEC. You’re like, “I’m here with Joseph ‘The Beefcake’ Benavidez.” I’m dying because you’re a baby. You know you’re assertive but you’re still like baby Megan and it’s cute.

You don’t work a day in your life if you follow your passion.

We hadn’t even been dating for a while at that point. The people who needed to know knew, but not the masses. I remember being so awkward. I don’t know why we thought it was important to hide it. It was weird and we met well before I was doing that for a living but I remember being like, “Okay.” We couldn’t hide it. Our smiles were so flirty. Yes, baby Megan.

She was so flirty. I was like, “He loves you.” I want to go back to the beginning. You grew up on the East Coast and then you went to college at Seton Hall, you went for your Master’s at Fordham, and you did that in two semesters.

I’m insane because basically, I lived in New York City, which is not cheap. I had a 300 square foot apartment, which is literally smaller than this hotel room. I lived on the fourth floor, with no elevator, no air conditioning. It was insane. I could barely afford it. It was so much money. I just knew that my education was going to be important to me in terms of what I wanted to do. I decided to go into broadcasting very late in my college career. I wanted to manage political campaigns, so I went for political science. I was gung-ho about that and I was always talking to whoever was around me about sports. They were like, “You should do that for a living.” “No, I’m not that vain.”

That’s for someone else.

I had this bad misconception that you must be unintelligent and it must be just based on your looks, or special friends and that kind of stuff. I felt like that wasn’t for me. As I learned about it, that preconceived notion was 100% on me. Once I learned about it, I was like, “This is that whole, you don’t work a day in your life and follow your passion.” While it was still very challenging, I was like, “There are a million people who want to do what I want to do and now they have a leg up because they have a degree and that they have years of training and that specific field they want to go into.” It was the end of my junior year. I was like, “I’m going to need to get my Master’s.” I was fortunate to get into all the schools I wanted to but Fordham was a Catholic University.

It’s a very prestigious university.

Women In Sports Broadcasting: One of the most exciting things to happen in an interview is when the person you’re talking to forgets where they are. They just spout something they are not supposed to say.

Thank you. I wanted to continue since I’ve gone to a Catholic school since I was in Nursery School, all the way through, so I was like, “We got to finish this out with the Jesuits.” I did it and they actually let me. I worked full time and they let me count my job, because it was in broadcasting, as a class. I never slept. It was crazy. I would sleep three hours a night and that’s how I was able to finish but I graduated with honors, I’m like, “What?”

“Excuse me, hair flip.” When you graduated, I know that you were offered a job and moved to Vegas, but what job was that?

It was with Heavy MMA. Essentially, my brother was a very accomplished wrestler, my grandfather was a boxer, and I was dating Joe.

Always be true to yourself and don’t take a shortcut.

Are you already dating Joe on the East Coast?

Yes, so we were kind of like long-distance dating. I wouldn’t say seriously dating on his end.

I’m sure he has your email address. It dates us a little bit.

We would skype all the time. We talk on the phone all the time. It’s challenging to live in New York when you don’t make a lot of money. The job offer in Las Vegas was for a little bit more money but for way less of a cost of living. It was closer to this guy I liked and I thought, “Give myself one year. If I don’t succeed in a year or I hate it, I can move back and go exactly back to the same position I’m in but let me try,” and I never moved back. I went to Vegas. It was with Heavy and I cut my teeth there.

Before the TV deal with the UFC, they did the official pre and post-show for pay per views got it. I was essentially hired to help co-host those pre and post-shows with a guy named Dave Farah, who I still love and adore and appreciate to this moment. That’s how I learned on the job. I was doing stuff in grad school and in internships, but it’s not the same when you’re interviewing Brock Lesnar while he’s going down a row of interviews and you’re just like, “Oh, fuck.” That’s where I cut my teeth and learned on the job. Some great moments and not great moments.

How did you meet Joe? Was it through MMA?

My two best friends and I went to Las Vegas when we graduated college and we ran into this group of guys in the lobby of Mandalay Bay. They were like, “Do you want to go to,” I want to say it was tryst or something. “Do you want to go?” We were 22 years old with no money. “Sure.” We went there because they were like, “We don’t have to pay to get in,” and whatever. We went and Joe is sober, he doesn’t drink and so we were chatting the whole night and then he was making me laugh quoting Will Ferrell. We ate hamburgers after. He’s like, “Do you want to go get food?” I’m like, “Yeah. Are you going to feed me? I’m in.” At the end of the night, he’s like, “Can I have your email?” “Sure.”

“Can I have your Aim?”

He had just gotten a computer and he said I seemed very professional.

He obviously had already been practicing MMA at that point in time. You came from a wrestling and boxing background with your family. Were you already into reporting MMA at the time?

No. He was already in the WEC. I remember him being stopped for autographs and I was like, “What?”

“Who that guy?”

He was with a few of his teammates, and one of those teammates was Urijah.

The Team Alpha Male was under at its inception, probably.

Exactly. We were like, “Maybe they’re surfers.”

It looks like it.

They were very tan. It was a weird thing. We’re like, “I don’t know what’s happening but it’s fine.” I remember him being stopped for autographs and I was like, “What are you doing?” To this moment, he’s very bashful about what he does. He’ll lie to people and be like, “I’m like a Spanish soap opera star,” or he’ll make stuff up. I was just like, “Wait, what?” It’s funny because I started going to WECs with Joe. That’s how people started to get to know me because I was doing work in broadcasting television and the internet mostly.

You only see the glimmer that people let you see on social media. Real conversations are so special andwhat really matters.

I was doing work in sports there and so people would be like, “You have experience on camera, you’re understanding this, and you’re associated with Joe. You must know what’s going on.” I got my foot in the door because I was going to these events with him. He’d be like, “There’s a WEC in Denver. Do you want to come?” He would fly me, then we would meet there and hang out and get to have great meals and, honestly, great laughs.

I remember watching Stepbrothers on a laptop because we wanted to watch it together. Just really wholesome stuff. That’s how I got introduced to the guys at Heavy and that’s how they brought me on. It was like, “We’ve seen her around. She’s young and willing to do the work. Let’s bring her in and see how it goes.”

That worked out really well for you. Talk about fate. I’ve heard how you met Joe but I didn’t know how you got to Vegas and that whole story.

Everyone just assumes we met in an interview. I’m like, “No, I already loved him when I interviewed him.”

I love it so much. I watch Megan all the time and even though we’re friends, when I see her reporting, I’m just like, “She’s my friend and she’s so good.” “That’s my friend.”

The goal is to make people proud. For me, at least in the way I was raised, it’s about wanting to make people proud and showing, like, “We did this the right way.” I’m not posting some crazy things on my Instagram or getting to stuff in a way that my dad would be like, “What are you doing?”

This is what I wanted to talk about. I’m glad you segued to that because I want to talk about this stigma of women in sports in quid pro quo. I suffered from that so much, and I have to tell you, you probably don’t know this about me, but I quit because I got bullied so relentlessly by the community here in Houston MMA. They were like, “She’s had sex with this guy, and this guy.”

Literally, Derrick Lewis walked me to my car when in downtown Houston, which is a little sketch, just walked me to my car after a weigh-in or something like that. He wasn’t fighting on the card, and the next morning, my editor called me for Legacy at the time for Legacy FC and he’s like, “Are you having sex with Derrick?” I’m like, “Excuse me?” Just out like that. He’s like, “I just want to know because I’m trying to protect you because people are talking.” I’m like, “Absolutely not. He walked me to my car because we’re in Downtown Houston,” but according to everyone else, we are sleeping together.

It’s definitely a difficult thing. I feel like I’m lucky at this point because everyone knows, especially all the fighters love and respect Joseph so much that they know that’s never the case with me. However, you still get those comments. Basically, what happens every time I interview someone, especially with a bigger fight, is that I either hate them or I must be sleeping with them. Every time I interview Conor, it’s like, “She was so much nicer to Dustin. They must have this thing going on.” It’s challenging for me and it used to be a lot more bothersome, now I’m just like, “Those are people who really don’t know.”

There’s a lot of things that could be improved upon in the MMA community. Especially behavior online. For the voices that matter, everybody’s like, “What?” It’s a challenging space and I would be lying if I didn’t say that there were days where you can let those voices with the random icon as their profile get to you, or say things where you’re like, “Why would you even think of that?” I don’t use Twitter anymore. It’s been years since I wrote a comment on a video because there’s nothing to come from that. It’s a challenging space and it’s a small community. It’s still a relatively new and young community. Unfortunately, that lends itself to not always a healthy community.

There’s a lot of fight fans but there are not very many educated fight fans. They just want to see the blood and the brawl and they don’t really know like the actual chess match that is MMA, because it is chess. Picking your moves and it’s hard because you’re not only moving your body, but you’re thinking so hard in your head. I can barely breathe and walk at the same time. How do these guys do this?

That’s why I’m proud to be a part of this broadcast because we have Jon Anik and Daniel Cormier and of course, Joe Rogan, but they have brought a new layer to what you’re watching if you’re at home and explain stuff. Especially when you have a guy who’s a two-time Olympian, a two-division world champion for the UFC in Daniel Cormier, where he can break things down in a fun way that people understand, they start to get a little bit more of that sport.

For me, storytelling end is like, “I’m not going to give the Xs and Os. It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that’s not my role.” To be able to tell the human side because oftentimes, we do this in all sports, we forget athletes are human beings. There’s a meme going around because of the Olympics and it’s a guy laying on the couch covered and chips. That was so bad. They must be so embarrassed. We do that with sports. I’m even guilty of it. I’ll be watching baseball and be like, “How the hell do you strike out like that?” It’s like, “Who am I?”

That’s important to do across all avenues of sports. Not that the viewer is not smart enough to remember that but sometimes you get so involved and wrapped up in a competition, just remind the viewer that these are human beings with real stories and they still have to go home regardless of the outcome and try to put it together for the next day. We’re trying to make those strides within our sport of MMA to make sure that fans have at least that and they maybe think twice before they have a negative thought, comment, post, or whatever it may be. It’s not going to stop it but it will lend itself to a little more detail of the story.

With the Conor and Dustin fight, it was evident that Conor had injured himself really early and people are so mad and people are like, “You did this on purpose to get the pay per view money.” Nobody’s injuring themselves on purpose. That is not a thing.

For us, it’s the worst thing you can possibly see. No matter what, that’s what you don’t want to see. Even though you know it’s a fight, you just don’t. It’s weird to know that an injury of that magnitude or of a Chris Weidman magnitude or something happens. I couldn’t even watch the replay. They kept playing it and I was like, “No, guys.” There’s a clip of me backstage that’s screaming because I couldn’t watch it.

I audibly screamed too. I forgot what card it was but I was at the Weidman-Silva 1.

I want to say it’s 148 but that might be Weidman-Silva 2.

It was when Weidman dethroned him and then the very next time I saw it, I was like, “Life’s not supposed to go that way.”

That yell will haunt my dreams.

We still have people like, Erin Andrews, Rachel Nichols, Jenn brown, and stuff like that, that are doing well in their industries, and taking the lead for women in sports journalism. Why don’t we see more of that still? Is it because women are hesitant or is it because there’s some sexism still going on? What do you think?

That’s a good question. First of all, I don’t know Rachel at all, but Erin and Jenn are absolutely wonderful. They’re as talented as they are kind and generous with their time which I absolutely love. It’s getting better but it’s about how many spots there are and how many opportunities there are. How can you separate yourself? Because that is a big one. What makes you different on the sidelines of X than all these other letters of the alphabet? They’ve all done a great job of separating themselves and being the leaders of the pack in terms of talent and innovation in their fields. That’s what it is.

Women In Sports Broadcasting: Sports reporting must remind viewers that athletes are human beings with real stories. They still have to go home regardless of the outcome.

There’s an incredible generation of women in sports. I get so many messages all the time from women who are in high school and college saying, “I want to do this.” They already have YouTube channels. They have a whole Instagram devoted to it. Who was doing that when we were in high school and college? None of us. There definitely is a positive trend. It’s relatively new and not that we don’t have supportive male colleagues, because we do. I have to say, I work with some of the best in the industries between MMA and NFL, and it’s great to hear. It’s just sometimes roles are limited.

We have women calling football now on Amazon. That’s relatively new because they didn’t have the opportunity. Not that they can do it, but it’s like, “Where’s that home for them?” As the world of broadcasting and communications grows, there are a lot more roles for women and I always like to say, “I have my job not because I’m a woman but because I’m the best one for it.” I don’t normally have that braggadocious thought about myself in any other regard.

I know that’s hard for you to say.

Exactly, but it’s been brought up to me a few times in these big scrims we do before pay per views. It’s like, “I wasn’t given this job and I certainly wasn’t allowed to stay just because of my gender.” It’s because like, “She’s really the best one for the job.” Like, “She’s earned this and this is how we go forward.” I like to that’s how the UFC operates. Every person who’s in their role is the best one for it. We hope that we see that direction and every other sport.

The young ladies who slide into your DMs and they’re asking you for advice, what kind of advice do you give them?

Number one, always be true to yourself and don’t take a shortcut. That is my absolute biggest thing. I’m not saying you have to get your Master’s. That works for me and I’m a big believer in education but it may be not for everybody. You will see people get ahead quicker than you because they take a route that maybe you won’t lay down at night feeling good about. For me, it’s been a long road. It’s still a long road like when I do football, I’m the lowest man on the totem pole but I’m working for it. There will never be a time where I ever feel upset or ashamed of how I behaved or how I got somewhere. It’s easy when you’re young to be like, “I need money. I don’t want to get coffee or do this like lame internet thing,” or whatever.

Because of social media, you see this glamorous world and you think it’s right at your fingertips. You see the tip of that iceberg and not all the work that goes on under it. When you see somebody making choices that have them skip the line a bit, it can be tempting to do that as well. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve never even felt that temptation but I’ve also never made a choice that I didn’t feel good about. For young people in the industry, it can be something that’s kind of like, “Ugh.” Especially with the world of Instagram, you want to be able to get followers and likes. “I want to be able to go to that event,” or whatever it is, but it’s never worth it because I’ve seen lots of people come and go. You tell on yourself at the end of the day when you do that.

That’s very true. In terms of being shot sate and being shy in front of the camera, coming up with stuff to say on the fly, I always have lived by the fake it till you make it.

100% that’s my life motto.

I’m like, “Me too.”

If you’re super comfortable in front of the camera, to begin with, then it’s not about the person you’re interviewing. It’s about you, and that’s not the goal of somebody whose dream it is to interview an athlete or celebrity or whatever. It’s not supposed to be about me. I’m just the vessel to get the message out, I just fake it. Half the time, I am terrified. There are times when I’m doing a live hit, and maybe it’s my seventh memorized reported of the night and I forget, “I know I have to get to this destination. I want to mention this, but I forget the path I was going to take.” You just keep calm and go with it. It took a long time to perfect that art of, “Don’t panic at the moment,” but that’s what it is. Just fake it till you make it.

There have definitely been times where I blank out. My brain completely went away. I don’t know where that went.

It happens to the best of us. It’s also when you humanize it, people at home don’t think twice. “I do that all the time.” If you stutter, and you say, “Excuse me. I mean this.” Normally, it doesn’t even, it’s when you have that meltdown because you want to be perfect, that’s when people notice because there’s just no time you’re ever going to be perfect on live TV.

Practice makes perfect. I would get in front of the mirror, or if you have a camera at home.

Interview friends and families, reps, and practice intros. That was a big thing for me. I couldn’t practice a lot of interview stuff, but I could practice making sure I was introducing the person as best that I could. That’s a big thing, reps are king. If that means you do a little local YouTube show for a little while, who cares? Get the reps and get practice. Nobody is going to be like, “You can have this job ten years later because you were on YouTube to start.” I never did YouTube or whatever before I started doing MMA interviews. I just got literally thrown into it at a legacy fight one time. They’re like, “Here, interview this guy.” I’m like, “I don’t even know his name, but okay.”

You got that Italian-speaking charm. We can shake up a conversation with anybody, which is half the battle.

This is right at the beginning when I was like, “Who’s cute in the ring?” I was in my mid-20s. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Of course, you then start paying attention. You start getting into the fights, which I want to talk to you about getting into the end of the fights. I know that when Joseph fights that you go away and you say your prayers, when they interrupt you and you have to hide behind a truck. Not when Joseph’s fighting, but when your friends are fighting, when people you love are fighting, do you just stay silent and silently pray inside? You have to look at the fight, obviously. How do you handle that?

At this point, between Joseph and myself, there’s always someone I care about on the card. Whether you know them or not, for the amount of research we do, you know everyone’s story. Traditionally, to be an MMA fighter, you don’t have a perfect life. You didn’t come from this gorgeous, silver spoon situation. While there may be some who are the outlier to that rule, it’s a challenging thing. For me, I just pray all the time that nobody gets seriously injured and that whoever wins and whoever does not win, they’re still able to hold value in themselves, find confidence, and continue moving forward.

Unfortunately, it happens, obviously in team sports and in individual sports, but even more so in a fight. A lot of our athletes’ self-worth is determined by the outcome of what’s in the Octagon. For me, that’s so hard to see. They’re such wonderful human beings and you don’t want them to not feel the love, compassion, confidence, and self-worth that they should because of the outcome of a fight where 99.9% of the population will never be brave enough to do that, including myself. For me, I’m literally always praying that they’ll be okay and that whatever the outcomes, it’s God’s path that they never lose that feeling of they are loved and worthy. It’s hard when you see the way the world can treat people sometimes. It’s tough. That’s always my constant prayer.

As media, you’re not supposed to cheer. That was something that I had to I remember holding back from, if a friend of mine was fighting and he’s got a solid hook or whatever, I’d be like, “Yeah.” Do you sometimes catch yourself?

No, I’m so trained by it now. Even when I did watch Joe because I used to watch him for a long time, I’d be good about not showing emotion. I just hold my breath. Everybody knows somebody on the card and maybe feels closer towards one person than the other, but genuinely, we’re all pretty good about just wanting the best outcome for everybody. I don’t care who wins any fight except when Joe fights.

Speaking of prayer, what part do prayer and your relationship with God play not only in your work but in your personal life?

It’s everything. I am a devout Catholic. I grew up Catholic. I choose to be Catholic as an adult because I believe in the teachings of Jesus but also in the angels and the saints. I’m always praying to saints. I have prayer cards all over. I have statues all over my house. It’s Italian of me, but my relationship with God is everything.

There are days I’m mad at Him and there are days I’m thanking God for my life and everything in between that you can think of. I always feel comfort if I know we’re not in this alone. Joe and I pray together a lot. We pray together before and after he fights, and even when it doesn’t go his way, still we have something to be thankful for. I feel so blessed to have the life I do have. Even when things are good, you’re praying, grateful and like, “I know things are good. I recognize this,” and when things are bad, you’re like, “I know this isn’t forever but just help me get through it.”

I pray all day every day. I have this amazing app on my phone that I love called Hallow. This is not a plug for them. I have nothing to do with them, no sponsorship or anything but I love them. There are crazy novenas on there. You can listen to the gospel every day. It’s amazing. It’s so great, I do the rosary with them. There’s a daily prayer thing. In this modern world, it helps you ground yourself. I’ll walk my dog and listen to it. It’s important to me. I try not to ever shove it down anyone’s throat.

You never do but we’ve talked about it. You’ve sent me accounts to follow that have been helpful for me.

Leslie, she is amazing, too. That’s a great account.

I’m glad that you and I have that in common. It’s a huge factor to have in common with a friend.

It’s somewhat taboo sometimes, and you never want to make someone feel uncomfortable who maybe isn’t religious or thinks of your particular religion in a negative connotation. It is a part of who I am. I got into Columbia, which is Ivy League, but I wanted to go to Catholic. It’s a choice that I make to try and be the best version of myself.

Low key flex on Columbia. I know that you memorize a lot of what you say, which is incredible. I know you get asked a lot about acting. That’s a skill. For me, to memorize something, I remember in tenth grade when I had to memorize the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Old English. The way I remembered it, the way I could recite it was I had to lay on the floor covering my eyes, and then I could recite it because I could see the line. I would never be able to do that. I would have to be on the fly. Of course, you’ve had a lot of practice to do this, but when you do the big sit-downs with Conor and Dustin, the ones you did that’s probably most prevalent in people’s minds. Do you memorize all of your questions? Do you go in with more of a story, a flowy format for those? What do you do?

Interviews are totally different than how I do my report because everything I do is memorize. In the world of UFC, no teleprompters exist. For sit-down interviews, I do a tremendous amount of research. I would rather be like, “I didn’t use any of the eight hours of prep I did,” than be like, “I had no idea what he was talking about in reference to this.”

What I do is, as I’m doing research, I take notes on the things that I think are important or things I want to follow up on or whatever. I then make an outline of, in a perfect world, we sit down and I can ask him everything I want, this is the order of questioning I want to go in. There’s an art to it. It’s like making a road. You have to know that sometimes you might go left or right, and you’re no longer going straight, and how do you get back to those questions you have to ask?

I wouldn’t even say it’s memorizing because it’s the fact that you’ve learned all of this about the person or you want to make sure you’re giving them a platform to tell that story. I do come in with notes sometimes to make sure, especially should there be other factors in play. “Sponsorship needs this question. We need this question for countdown,” whatever. That’s a different animal. It’s about your study on the subject because if you have done the work and the research, sure, there might be a thing or two you’re not going to remember, but when they’re sitting across from you, you can just listen.

You don’t have to be worried about, “What is this referencing?” You can make sure that you know what’s going on. It’s a lot of prep work. It could be hours of prep for a ten-minute interview like it was for Dustin Poirier. I know Dustin well, but there’s still something to be learned. They’re still living their lives every day. It’s probably a whole entire day when you add up all the hours over the weeks that I did, and then we did a ten-minute interview, but it’s worth it. I didn’t feel like a second of that was wasted. It’s more about the work than memorization, but I do like to bring a notecard, especially if there are certain things I have to hit. I like to just have them so that I can go, “We forgot this,” or whatever, just to make sure we cover all of our bases.

Women In Sports Broadcasting: Being up for eight hours of a live broadcast is more draining than running miles because your body and brain don’t get a break.

I was interviewing @Compass.Couple on Instagram. It was funny because I wanted to ask them about travel tips because they literally have lived around the world. We didn’t even get there. We spoke for two hours and we didn’t even get there. After I hung up with them, I was like, “I didn’t ask them about travel tips.” We had so much else to talk about. I even had it bullet-pointed, and then for some reason, we just gabbed. When it got to the two-hour mark, they live in Bali. They’re fourteen hours ahead, but it was already 10:00 here, “We’re going to have to wrap it up.” They were so cool. You should check them out.

Look at you interviewing people in Bali. International stuff.

They are so sweet. They went to the same high school in Colorado. Same class. Same High School, never met, and then met up randomly in Amsterdam.

That’s fate. That’s like God being, “You guys missed each other.”

When they go back home, their family is two minutes away from one another. I know this because after I recorded the podcast, I was up. You get up because you have the energy. You have adrenaline going. After a night of fights, especially an exhilarating card, you’re just up. When you drive home, how do you unwind to close your eyes?

First, I get food. That’s number one.

What’s your go-to?

Usually, Roberto’s tacos. A hard shell. Joe’s either with me or I call him because he always watches the fights, but a lot of times, he’s with me. We dissect our nights because I’m all over the place. It probably only takes me an hour, I take off all my makeup and shower. Our days are so long. For instance, UFC 264, I got in the building at 10:00 AM, and I left the building at almost midnight. There are long days, and physically, they’re exhausting. You’re in heels, you’re running around an entire arena so I just get in bed and just chill. We usually watch a Netflix show or some episode of whatever we’re watching at that time, and then I’m out.

Because you get so overstimulated sometimes.

It is. It’s so much and the mental aspect for someone like me who also has to make sure I’m memorizing stuff when I’m going back and forth to interviews and other hits that we have, it’s a lot. The mental exhaustion is what’s tiring. Being up for eight hours of a live broadcast is more draining than running miles and miles because your body and brain don’t get a break.

I agree. It’s the smartest thing you ever did to get a double earpiece. You don’t hear anything.

One of our shows, it was in Australia, versus Robert Whittaker. I only had one and I missed cues because the arena was so loud. It was so crazy loud that I couldn’t hear the count. Finally, I was like, “Do you guys have a way to help this?” If you watch it back, I was late for several seconds, and not because I wasn’t paying attention. It’s because I genuinely couldn’t hear. Having doubles helps in an arena setting.

NFL games, it’s so helpful because they’re tremendously loud between the action on the field and the crowd. It does make people think I’m a bitch because they think I’m walking by without saying hi. They’re clear, so you can’t see them, but it’s the greatest thing of my life. I don’t know what I would do, I just got my wires replaced. People also don’t understand with live TV, your producers are constantly like, “We’re changing this. We’re doing this. Can you do this? What about this? Can you do that?” There’s a huge miscommunication if you can’t hear them or communicate with your talkback, that’s why I always have a mic on me. I always have my ears in because that’s like your telephone. That’s your cell phone, but it’s immediate.

Have you ever had an embarrassing moment on camera where you had something your teeth or dress was caught in your underwear?

Every time I watch, I’m like, “That’s embarrassing.” No, I can remember one time we filmed something. This was a few years ago. We filmed something by the Octagon because it was one of those weekends where we had multiple fights in a weekend. We had a weigh-in, and then a fight was starting immediately after. I filmed something from the way in that they were going to put at the beginning of the show. I don’t usually pre-tape stuff, but that was pre-taped because I needed a buffer zone to get to the fight. We filmed something and people texted me, they’re like, “For your next hit, you have lipstick on your chin.” I was like, “That was taped. Not one person told me about it.” I had bright red lipstick.

That’s one of my faults that I find that I do when I’m in front of the camera. I do this.

I’m constantly touching my hair.

I’m like, “Stop.” When I watch it, I’m like, “Stop it. Stop it.”

We all have them and I work hard to not do mine. I do touch my hair off. Before I go live, I’ll touch my head fifteen times. Is it straight?

It’s always the perfect haircut for you. You have such great fashion sense too. I watched the Mystic Hour. He did a great job interviewing you.

He’s good.

When I watched that, he was talking about your fashion and he showed some pictures of your Matador outfit. There was the Spice Girls. That was a cool segment that he did. I like that. Do you plan your outfit ahead?

Yeah, because the internet cares.

They care.

It is the most stressful part of my job, picking my outfits.

Do remember that green suit that I loved and you’re like, “Everyone hated it.”

On Arizona. They were like, “She’s sexy Gumby.” At least you’re sexy. We’ll take that take. It’s challenging. There’s also a lot of rules when you are on camera because of the way the camera picks certain things up, certain colors and patterns. There’s a lot of things that will look amazing in real life but will not translate on camera and vice versa. There are some things that look great on camera, and you’re like, “Why would you wear that in real life?”

It’s hard. It’s fun. My husband and I love fashion. He is so good. He’s the best. We’ll get a bunch of options, and then we’ll have a fashion show. That’s what I call it, like, “Time to the fashion show.” I try to always dress in a way people can buy the stuff because it’s a big thing for me. I see people on TV, and I want their outfit. When I’m like, “It’s $900 for that blazer.” No, thank you. I wore this purple suit. That’s from ASOS. It was $35 for the whole suit.

I loved it. Jared Leto then stole your look.

I saw them at the fight. I was going to show him the picture of the side by side of us, I was like, “No, he probably won’t be into that.”

He has longer hair than you. The other thing, I told you this. I don’t know how the heck you walk in those shoes all day. I have no idea. I would die.

It’s just become second nature. Everyone is taller than me. I’m only five feet tall. It becomes a thing. We are held to a standard. If people see us in the crowd, they don’t want us to be schlubs. I don’t want to misrepresent our brand in any way of like, “She’s walking around like a schlub.” I am always trying to make sure. I’m like, “What’s the most professional way I can carry myself throughout the evening?” That’s to keep my shoes on but even though I don’t want shoes sometimes.

I know you don’t like social media but you are an influencer. You are and so the things that you wear, people are going to want to know where you got it and how to get it. That’s awesome that you’re wearing things that are attainable.

The jacket I’m wearing would normally be expensive, but I got on clearance. That’s a big thing for me. I’m like, “No, I’m not paying full price for anything,” the real real. I get so much stuff there because also, the way we use fashion to be able to be good to the environment with it and stuff is great. Also, I’m not paying full price for something I’m probably going to wear one time because when I wear it again, I get called out. I’ve repeated a shirt before that I wore to interview Conor, and then I heard about it. That was literally four years ago, but okay.

Meanwhile, we’re wearing the same thing four days in a row out here in the real world. Okay.

I get weird about when I get off planes. I have to shower media at issue.

I do too. I heard you wore masks before it was cool. I didn’t say anything.

Because people are gross.

Women In Sports Broadcasting: You have to get those big interviews. You have to do them well and get something out of them that other people cannot.

People are disgusting. People will look at me crazy. Even when I worked in corporate hospitality, I remember when I was sick, I would wear a mask to work as a courtesy, and people would avoid me like the plague. That’s fine. That’s cool. Now, if you wear a mask, people want to sit next to us. You’re like, “Damn.”

I was talking to some of my colleagues. I was telling them how it used to be my Southwest trick. The reason I started wearing masks is we went and we had a show in Singapore. I landed and was deathly ill because we were on an airline that wasn’t super hygienic and germ-friendly. We saw the doctor there and she was like, “You need to wear a mask. That’s why we do this. It’s to help protect you, but it’s also to protect others should you be sick.”

That was ten years ago or so, and I always wore masks, but when I wore it on Southwest, where it’s open seating. If there was going to be an open middle seat, it was next to me because nobody wanted to sit next to the girl with a mask on. There must be something terribly wrong with her. Now, do I reverse it? Do I not wear a mask so no one will sit next to me? It used to be my little trick.

I want to ask you two MMA-related questions. One is, a lot of times people ask me, who are your favorite MMA fighters? It’s a typical question. I’m like, “That answers two folds,” because, for me, the two people that impacted MMA the most and my two favorite fighters are two different things. I always bring up Ronda and Conor. You and your interview in The Residency Podcast.

Those guys are great.

That was a great podcast, by the way.

You should check them out. They’re in Vegas. They’re the greatest.

They seem super cool.

They all have cool side gigs. One of the guys is unlocked. He’s a food account on Instagram for Vegas.

We love food. I remember you saying that your career changed with the Ronda revolution and with Conor. I specifically remember all of a sudden, my little underground MMA career and my love of MMA, all of my friends were talking about Conor McGregor like they were experts. Ronda, they hated her. They couldn’t believe she was such a bitch and all this stuff. I was like, “Do you know that she is playing her part so well that she has you thinking all these things?” It’s the same thing with Conor. I’m like, “That’s why Conor gets paid because he talks shit and he hypes up the fight.” That’s why they bring in the big bucks. I was glad to hear you say that they revolutionized MMA. Do you have any comments about those two?

My life changed when Ronda and I did an interview. I work for UFC. Sometimes there are things that I get the opportunity to do because I work for the organization. We had done a couple of interviews. I had interviewed her when she was at Tough Enough. We knew each other. I did some interviews and she enjoyed them and she told her team, “I’d like working with her.” Her agent ended up reaching out. He’s my agent. We’re a part of my team. We did all these interviews and I got to go to Saturday Night Live with her. I got to do all these things because she trusted me. There’s a lot to be said about conducting yourself in that way.

There’s a place for journalism that gets to the bottom of things and it has all that but that’s not the way I like to story tell. I like to make sure it’s in the athlete’s hands. She was good about knowing she had these massive fights in these high-profile spots and being like, “You all do the interview with Megan.” That matters. It matters especially to a young woman in the industry who, yes, was doing all the other interviews. When the superstar is willing to grant you that access, it was on me to not screw it up. I was lucky.

I saw Ronda and I had tears in my eyes. She’s cute and pregnant. I was like, “I love you.” We have this absolute admiration for one another that will never go away. The same with Conor, he did not need to always allow me access after he’s done hours and hours of work. The amount that stars like that go through every day, especially on a fight week is crazy. The amount of responsibilities and obligations is insane. He made a point to be like, “Yes, I’ll still do Megan’s interview.” It’s huge. Without those opportunities, I don’t know what my voice would look like in terms of how big or small it is.

You have to get those big interviews. You have to be able to then do them well and get something out of them that other people can’t. For Ronda and Conor to allow me to have that place in their lives is huge. It changed my life. People who don’t want to support my NFL colleagues, they don’t watch but they watch Conor, everybody said something to me. When I saw them, they were like, “We saw your interview before. We saw you during his fight.” It’s like, “I work every Saturday.” For them, they’re noticing and they’re Hall of Fame football players and they’re like, “That was cool.” It matters. I try to treat everybody equally, every person on our roster. It matters to people. It gave me opportunities and opened doors for me that maybe I wouldn’t have or wouldn’t have as soon and I owe them a lot.

I was at Ronda’s first UFC debut when she fought Liz. I made a point to be there because I love her since Strikeforce. I was like, “Dana said no women in UFC and here we are.” I had to be there because I was like, “This is a momentous occasion.” By the way, it was also Incidentally the last time I wore heels to a fight. That arena had no handrails.

I know exactly what you’re talking about.

It’s The Honda Center. It was Ronda at The Honda.

There are a ton of arenas like that. I’m always like, “I’m going to die. This is the time where I fall down the steps on air.”

Honestly, now I’m the girl who wears athleisure to a fight. I used to dress up and then I’m like, “Who’s going to see me?”

Social media allows you to see this glamorous world, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg and not all thework that goes on under it.

There are several different groupings of what people wear. One is like, “Fighters are going to see me in the crowd and would marry me.” There’s like, “I’m having a good time and I like to look cute.” There’s like, “I want to be comfortable.” There are three different layers of that.

Do you have any super memorable or vivid memories of certain fights that stand out to you? There’s a couple of fights that, to me, I’ll never forget. Do you have any moments like that?

Yes. Speaking about Conor McGregor, Conor versus José. Not even twenty seconds that it lasted. I did the world tour with them. I was a part of the lead-up. I remember we were standing in the arena and Conor knocked out José. I remember standing with some of my colleagues who worked in the PR department and then we looked at each other and they’re like, “Run.” We ran backstage because beers started flying. Everybody was stunned for 5 or 10 seconds and then there was a, “Go.” We went backstage. There are been some epic battles. I remember Shogun and Dan Henderson. That was in San Jose. I remember being like, “Holy crap.” I remember Anthony Pettis. I was cage side for the WEC Showtime Kick. I remember being like, “What did I see?”

To this day, it still is the most played highlight of all time.

Ronda’s arm-breaking. All of those things are burned into my brain. I always feel I should sit down and think about it and make a list but then I forget.

There are many times that I’ve been like, “What?” I ran around the living room by myself freaking out. There are some pretty showstopping moments. Honestly, there have been some moments where I’ve been disappointed that the fight didn’t go even to one round. I know that they don’t do it on purpose. I was in Vegas, where Derrick was fighting Roy Nelson on that card.

I remember I had a friend on the card named Mitch Clarke. Within the first fifteen seconds, something happened where his knee gave out. I don’t remember what happened. I ended up leaving the fight going with him to some crappy Vegas hospital. There was a bunch of other fighters there getting their injuries. It was such a letdown because I know he went to Jackson’s for his camp and spent so much time. After that. he was like, “I’m done.” I was like, “Don’t say that now. Wait a couple of weeks.”

It’s tough.

It’s hard.

It’s the highest highs and the lowest of the lows. Sometimes it’s out of the athlete’s control. Sometimes it’s this freak thing. You can have a bad day. We all have bad days but if you have a bad day in the Octagon, it’s there for everyone to see.

I have one more question for you. I ask everybody on this podcast this one question. If you were to be walking down the street and you see twenty-year-old Megan Olivi walking towards you and you’re like, “I’m going to go give her a big hug.” You embrace her and you look at her. What is the piece of advice or the one thing that you say to twenty-year-old Megan?

It will all work out. That’s the thing. Life is unpredictable. Work is unpredictable. Things are unpredictable. Marrying Joe and having that next to me means it will never be bad. When I was twenty, I was on and off with a high school sweetheart and things were crazy. I was feeling like a bad person for wanting to pursue this particular path. I remember thinking, “What if I’m making the wrong choice? Should I be doing this for myself? I should worry about other people.” That’s what I would tell myself, “It’s all going to be okay.”

Not that I’ve ever been cocky but I’ve always believed in myself. My parents always were like, “You can do whatever you want to do. You have to work super hard at it.” That was always there. I always felt like I owed other people instead of myself. That guilt would eat at me for a long time. It’s hard to be away from my parents and that’s a good thing I carry around a lot. In terms of when I was twenty, it was like, “It’s going to be okay. You have to do this for yourself.” A lot of times, I would make decisions based on other people’s happiness instead of my own and that wasn’t the move.

You have given us so much juicy information. I have loved having you on the podcast.

This is the best. Thanks for coming here. She came all the way to me. I’m here in some dingy hotel room.

It’s UFC 265 and it’s here in Houston. We got the opportunity to be together.

This is amazing.

It’s nice.

She came all the way down here. You’re doing what people dream of doing. You’re taking the risk and it’s scary. I know that everybody thinks they can do it or wants to do it but to do it and put it into practice is a different thing. I hope you’re proud of yourself and you know how much people can take from this because it’s not an easy thing to do and to put yourself in a vulnerable position and lay it all out there and say, “I’m going to try.” The hardest part is to make the decision to try and you’re killing it.

Thank you.

I can’t get over your podcast voice. Do you do voice-over work? You should.

Thank you so much.

I feel like you should sign up as a voice-over actor.

I might do that. Maybe I’ll do a 1-800 operator thing. I want to do something that’s going to help women our age from the 20s to 40s. I feel like there’s nobody to slip on the banana pill for you. I want to do that for other women. They don’t have to do that. They don’t have to go through those steps and they can get the information they need right from me and the source. They don’t have to go out and google and find things out for themselves.

To speak to people from all different walks of life helps because you don’t always get to interact with them. You only see the glimmer that people let you see on social media and that’s not in real life. To be able to have a real conversation and get that input is special and important.

What’s real life is we have no real light in this room. That’s why it’s a little grainy.

I haven’t washed my hair or put on makeup.

We’re going to make it work.

I’ll look glamorous you won’t know me because we have a makeup artist.

Even makeup artists, I wish I had one.

You don’t need one.

I put on makeup for Megan.

Thanks.

Thank you for reading. Megan, thank you again for being with me. I love you guys and I love you.

I love you.

We’ll see you at the next one.

Important Links:

• Megan Olivi – Instagram
• ESPN
• Heavy MMA
• Hallow
• @Compass.Couple – Instagram
• The Residency Podcast – YouTube
• http://Twitter.com/meganolivi

About Megan Olivi

Megan Olivi serves as a host and reporter for the UFC on ESPN. During the fight broadcasts, Megan can be seen reporting through the night, conducting interviews, and hosting from the desk. She also serves as a sidelines and feature reporter during football season for NFL on Fox. Olivi earned her Bachelors from Seton Hall University and her Masters from Fordham University. Raised on the east coast she now calls Las Vegas home with her husband Joseph and their dog Benny.