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

 

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.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

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.

—

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.”

It’s just 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. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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.

Invest in stuff you understand. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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.

Invest in things that do well in good times and even better in bad times. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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.

There’s no one you can trust with your money but yourself. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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.

You have to trust in your own vision of what you think is dope. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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.

Getting older is an interesting process in which we become the person we always were supposed to be. Click To Tweet

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.

 

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