How DJ Bander Transitioned to Real Estate Investing

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Zach Schnall, also known as DJ Bander, shares insights into his multifaceted career that spans real estate, music production, and marketing. He discusses the growth of the industrial real estate market, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how he transitioned into the marketing space to help artists and nonprofits. Zach emphasizes the importance of strategic marketing and effective communication in raising capital and building a brand.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Dj Bander Website
    • Bander Productions Website
    • Dj Bander Instagram

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (00:00)
  One thing that I really love about industrial spaces versus say multifamily, though I love multifamily and multifamily, especially senior housing is a really strong bread and butter family, a bread and butter industry in real estate that my family got started in. But one thing that’s really special about industrial warehouse spacing is the fact is the lease lengths. So you get a lot more longer, more stable lease structures. And usually if a company is strong, you have to remember they’re investing

  sometimes tens and tens of thousands of dollars into the space. So they have a really strong incentive to stay. it gives as an owner, it gives you an ability to have some stability. And if as long as you’re raising rents in a moderate way, then you’re very unlikely to push tenants away because obviously for them, it’s a huge expense to move and set up somewhere else. So a lot of times in conversations with tenants, you’d like, hey,

  let’s work this out, I want you to stay, you’re happy here, things are going well. And I’ve found that it’s really, really easy to do that much more. As far as the multifamily, people lose their jobs, people get work in other cities, their kids wanna switch schools. So you’re constantly dealing with that with a rotation in multifamily in a way that you usually don’t have to deal with industrial. We have tenants in some of our spaces have been there for like 20 years with their business.

  Dylan Silver (02:48)
  Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Zach Schnall, aka DJ Bander, based out of beautiful Los Angeles. As an entrepreneur and charting music producer, he’s also built a diversified portfolio across real estate, marketing, and music. Zach, welcome to the show.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (03:06)
  Thank you Dylan, it’s pleasure to be here.

  Dylan Silver (03:08)
  It’s great to meet you here, Zach. You’re involved in so much. I mentioned some of the segments that you’re involved in, but I want to back up to the beginning. How did you get started and what was the start of your career like?

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (03:18)
  Sure.

  Sure, well, as we spoke about earlier, I’m known as DJ Bander in the creative world. I’ve built a multifaceted career at this point that bridges both real estate investment as well as creative entrepreneurship. And on the real estate side, I’ve been actively involved in managing a family office portfolio and

  having my own commercial real estate investment company for a long time since really since 2007 and 2008 during the last financial crisis was when I used, as we spoke earlier about my blending of two trade crafts, music production, as well as real estate to take the capital that I had built for my production company and put it into industrial export property spaces. That space grew for me for many years as I developed.

  I’m using 1031 exchanges as well as refinancing to be able to continue to grow my portfolio and then eventually expand into my current company that I’m most focused on right now, which is my marketing agency. So my roots are a blend of both finance as well as music composition and production. I’ve been doing both my whole life.

  Dylan Silver (04:34)
  Now, the industrial segment in real estate space is particularly interesting. I just spoke actually with a commercial broker specializing in industrial real estate based out of Washington. And we were talking about the growth of this space in large part driven by e-commerce. And it’s not just, you know, manufacturing plants that constitute industrial right now. You’re seeing so much

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (04:37)
  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah.

  Dylan Silver (05:00)
  driven by the e-commerce segment and whether it’s domestic businesses or even international businesses that are needing warehouses to store goods here in the United States.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (05:59)
  Absolutely. It’s a growing space and it’s also one where actual available space, especially in major metropolitan hubs is limited. Right? So one thing that it always does is keep a sort of even during market corrections, you still have a pretty strong base rent level that you’re able to rent these spaces for. There’s only so much space. There’s only so much viable space. And if you have a property that has certain things done really well for the tenants, such as ample loading space.

  you know, safe, clean environment for them to work for their equipment, then you’ll really always, for the most part, have interests and be able to make sure that you get a good cap rate for your investment. you know, I broke into it, you know, because I just sort of came from that background. I knew a lot about where the space was. And because I found it really interesting because you meet and get to work with all types of different businesses, as you mentioned, manufacturing, retail, export.

  all types of stuff. I believe what’s really cool about industrial warehouses is that it’s very, in many ways, not, you can never say always, but I feel it’s gonna be very strong in this new AI revolution. Because even if you go into a robotics direction, they’re gonna still need warehouse manufacturing space. Like the actual need for that space is always gonna be there. It just may change forms and change industries.

  Dylan Silver (07:20)
  Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s huge. I was talking to someone the other day who buys industrial warehouses for the purpose of of mining Bitcoin. And so I mean, we’re talking like, the the whole landscape of industrial is changing as right now. And then also to the interest in it is not just from folks who need, you know, manufacturing, but it’s also from folks who may be migrating from the single family space and seeing

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (07:25)
  Mm-hmm.

  Exactly.

  Dylan Silver (07:47)
  industrial as more of an investment opportunity. Because you know, if you go back 50 100 years ago, the primary owners of industrial were folks who were manufacturers and who owned the underlying land and the property, then they were not tenants. And nowadays, you’ve got like Amazon, right being a huge tenant in the industrial space.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (08:07)
  Absolutely.

  One thing that I also really love about industrial spaces versus say multifamily, though I love multifamily and multifamily, especially senior housing is a really strong bread and butter family, a bread and butter industry in real estate that my family got started in. But one thing that’s really special about industrial warehouse spacing is the fact is the lease lengths. So you get a lot more longer, more stable lease structures. And usually if a company is strong, you have to remember they’re investing

  sometimes tens and tens of thousands of dollars into the space. So they have a really strong incentive to stay. it gives as an owner, it gives you an ability to have some stability. And if as long as you’re raising rents in a moderate way, then you’re very unlikely to push tenants away because obviously for them, it’s a huge expense to move and set up somewhere else. So a lot of times in conversations with tenants, you’d like, hey,

  let’s work this out, I want you to stay, you’re happy here, things are going well. And I’ve found that it’s really, really easy to do that much more. As far as the multifamily, people lose their jobs, people get work in other cities, their kids wanna switch schools. So you’re constantly dealing with that with a rotation in multifamily in a way that you usually don’t have to deal with industrial. We have tenants in some of our spaces have been there for like 20 years with their business.

  So, yeah.

  Dylan Silver (09:28)
  Yeah, that’s a great point.

  How was the impact during COVID? was this impact? I could almost see it being impacted in a maybe even a positive way because the demand for, you know, at home increased. So therefore people were buying more at home. So you needed more industrial space.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (10:20)
  Yeah, so it was really interesting. My partners and I, were obviously deeply concerned at first when COVID first struck. And like everyone else, we were like, what’s going to happen here? But as it turned out, actually, in both the senior housing space and industrial space, many businesses and individuals stayed put. They felt safer where they already were. They, for the most part, were able to maintain and continue to do business. There definitely was a

  couple months where we had negotiations with tenants over being able to make payments. But another thing that actually ended up happening was many of the tenants did really, really well getting their, you know, PEP and all the sort of like bridge loans from the government at that time to be able to cover rent. So both the owners and the tenants had resources. You know, of course, we could argue now how well that was for the economy with like the debt and everything else. But at the time, it did save the industry.

  Dylan Silver (11:14)
  Yeah.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (11:18)
  and it really actually kept things afloat. And to the point where actually we were getting bailouts for tenants where, you know, was justified because they were slowing down, but later on in the year, they ended up doing better anyway. So it was kind of like a win-win. But it was definitely rocky for a bit. I have to say that I’m not sure that everyone fared as well. You know, definitely one of the key points to our partnerships is that we usually have

  much less indebtedness, were not highly leveraged. So I think that, you know, the people who were really, really leveraged during the time may have had more issues. So it comes down to a risk, risk reward sort of balance.

  Dylan Silver (11:58)
  Now, when we talk about these two spaces, and I’m talking about music and I’m talking about real estate, you know, two totally different segments, but then you also are involved in marketing now as well. where did the marketing come into play? And I’m also thinking, you know, both of these spaces require real estate and music require a marketing component to it. I’m thinking you saw, hey, I could be vertically integrated here and handle all of this.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (12:06)
  Of course.

  Yeah.

  Exactly. I got into the whole marketing thing because I, as a musician, using my capital to build my brand dealt with different agencies and realized that honestly, there was a lot of fluff and overcharging of young entrepreneurs and artists in the sector. And I was like, wait a second, this can’t cost this much. And I invested actually a large amount of money to organically build my brand during press and Instagram.

  promotions and all this stuff. And I started realizing like, wait, let me start really finding out and digging deeper into what the source costing is and what this really requires. And I realized that I could build a business that was way more fair to artists and charge much more closer to source pricing because I already had money from my other ventures, from my real estate, from my recording business. So was like, I don’t need to gouge people.

  I could actually charge a fair amount so that my team can get paid, that I can make a little bit of money, but that we can charge way less than what’s going on in the industry. So that was what originally started it. And it was really started as a tool simply to continue to promote my own brand and my own music. And then I realized like, wait, I can also help other people. I can give them opportunities to build their craft and build their brand out at a rate that’s much more affordable. Young people who want it need to, not just want.

  need to invest in their marketing to push their brand. But most young people right now, they don’t have three, four, five, six thousand dollars a month to spend on that. So we offer packages that start as low as fifteen hundred and two grand a month where they’re getting a whole bunch of services as well as consultations. And we have been successful at that because really no one else is really able to do that. Or if they are, they’re not willing to cut the margins as tight as we do for ourselves because we look at it as retention.

  Retention to me is the long-term play of value versus gouging an individual for one month. And so that’s how I built the structure and the philosophy and value set of my marketing agency.

  Dylan Silver (14:26)
  Now, are you in any one specific niche? know you’ve got the music background. Are you specific to music or are you almost agnostic where these connections are coming

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (14:31)
  Mm-hmm.

  No, we’re

  Gnostic. fact, we’re really proud of the diversity of our clientele. work with music, of course. That was our roots have started. But we now work with nonprofits. actually, know, something that we could talk about, we’re really six foot marketing podcasts. We work with entrepreneurs in small businesses. My partner is an expert in Google ad development. So we are actually very diversified outside. We consider ourselves a full 360 firm. And of course,

  Our passion being that we are entertainment industry musicians, we love helping music artists, but our tool sets have been found to be incredibly successful for people outside of the music industry as well.

  Dylan Silver (15:56)
  I want to dive into, you mentioned nonprofits, right? So I wasn’t aware that nonprofits were, and of course it makes sense that they are, but that they would be focused on marketing. I don’t know if you can name any names, you don’t have to, but what are some of the ways where a nonprofit might come to you and what types of tools are they needing that they might not be either using or using improperly to gain exposure?

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (16:00)
  Mm-hmm.

  Yeah,

  absolutely. Well, we do have we do have NDAs with most of our clients. So I have to be careful about what I say, on the show. However, I can definitely give a lot of specific examples of how we help nonprofits. One way that we help nonprofits is by simply getting a comprehensive brand strategy around what their voice is and what they’re trying to get out there. We found that many nonprofits have a great cause, you know, things for workers or for illnesses, research.

  But unfortunately, a lot of them, especially medical ones, they come from kind of physicians and doctors. And sometimes while brilliant and have an incredible expertise as to how to help people, they lack sort of the angle of how do we make this kind of cool and relevant and something that gains social media traction? So we first start out with what’s the message of our client? What’s the message of this NPO? And then we are really, really good at doing a lot of direct.

  peer-to-peer reach systems. we help with people, like a lot of nonprofits have online surveys. We’ve been really successful at getting their online surveys completed, increasing their by thousands of percent of return on click-throughs, as well as just increasing reach. A lot of nonprofits struggle with reaching outside of their own, what I call breaking the echo chamber. And this is something that I feel not only nonprofits struggle with,

  Brands as well as organizations struggle with in general and one thing that we do is we try to get it’s not just the results It’s also the mindset of being like you can’t be too excited about like your own You know your own network clapping for what you’re doing and we found that many clients are stuck in this loop where they’re just Look, we got more of these people from LinkedIn or something else that are interested. Yeah, but okay. Those are your peers Those are other doctors. Those are other people.

  how do we break out of those networks and that’s what we specialize in. we’re really good and that’s something that’s really important to nonprofits because some of them struggle with raising money and part of the reason they struggle with raising money is because they haven’t really been able to mainstream themselves and figure out what is it that they actually can become as far as a thought leader for that particular cause.

  Dylan Silver (18:36)
  When I talk about raising capital with with real estate investors specifically, I’ve seen like two different avatars of someone who’s successful at doing this. The first has like a Wall Street background. They, you know, come from that type of ilk. And so it’s kind of a natural transition for them to do the same thing in real estate. But then the second is someone who has no background raising capital. And I’ve asked, you know, some folks who

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (18:38)
  Mm-hmm.

  Right.

  Dylan Silver (19:00)
  I spoke with a farmer who did like farm to table meals and that was before like Blue Apron and the likes and he raised capital and for his business. And then I’ve also spoken with some folks who are first responders who raised capital as well. And I was like, well, what’s the secret? And kind of what the general thought was, well, you’ve got just got to talk to everybody and tell everybody what you do. And that in and of itself is challenging, right? Like, how do you do that?

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (19:05)
  Mm.

  Sure.

  Dylan Silver (19:27)
  you know, in an everyday conversation, how does that work online? How does that work? How do you not inundate your own sphere to where they’re like, I’m tired of this. So it’s as much, you know, a skill as it is, you know, something that requires some level of experience in it as well.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (19:44)
  Definitely one of the biggest things, especially with my music artist clients, as well as like whether it be actors or social media influencers, individuals, the biggest thing I have to teach them is getting out of their own way and also letting go of their teaching people that having a social media brand, you have to put aside your like compulsive behavior to like just share whatever is on your mind, like kind of like.

  like I’m doing this today. Let me just randomly post something. So a lot of it is getting people to think more methodically and that less is more. So what I always teach people, one of the tool sets that we use is we have a very, very powerful engagement outreach system for our clients with our marketing agency. And I’ve had to actually teach clients you don’t need to post as much. You don’t need to be posting three times a day and all this stuff. In fact, now it’s actually the opposite. You want people

  to actually be thirsty for your next piece of content. You can do some story stuff, but actually each feed post should be a major release and it should have a real purpose behind it. And people sometimes struggle and that’s part of what we help them with is getting them to understand that like Instagram has changed. Like if you want to post every day a bunch of random stuff, like that’s what TikTok is for. But if you want to actually get traction and engagement, deep engagement on what you’re doing, you want each post or each piece of content

  to really sort of squeeze out all the water from it. kind of, know, like squeeze the towels. One of the things that I teach my clients is like, let’s really, like, really just get to the bottom of this post and get every piece of engagement we can before moving on to the next thing and be much more linear and focused on everything that we draw.

  Dylan Silver (21:27)
  Yeah, I I definitely see that trend. Then you talk about the differences between some of the platforms. Yeah, there’s, you know, right content for one is not going to be the perfect on the other. And so you do have to have that that focus when when you are putting content out there and not just like you said, just be putting whatever you think onto the platform just because you know, you’re thinking about hey, this is fun right now. Well, is this that the target audience for that platform but

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (21:33)
  Yeah.

  Mm-hmm.

  Dylan Silver (21:54)
  We

  are coming up on time here though, Zach. Where can folks go? Where can our audience go if they’re interested in reaching out to you or your team? Maybe they have some marketing needs. How can folks get in contact?

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (21:57)
  Sure.

  Yeah, absolutely. I really, encourage everyone to reach out to me directly on Instagram. Follow me, shoot me a DM. I respond to everybody who reaches out to me. You can also go to banderproductions.com if you want to see more information about our tools and services. But I always recommend people go to DJ Bander, the Instagram page, check in with me. Tell me what your needs are, how I can help you so that I can follow your page and engage with your content and see in what ways we can help each other.

  Dylan Silver (22:34)
  Zach, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

  Zachary Schnall (DJ Bander) (22:37)
  Thank you, Dylan. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been great to be here.