The Money Mondays

How Rance 1500 Turned Music, Culture & Relationships Into Wealth 🎤 E168

41 min
Jun 15, 2026about 1 month ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Rance 1500, a four-time Grammy-winning music producer, discusses how to build wealth through music production, touring, and strategic investments. He covers revenue streams in the music industry, the importance of studying and mastering fundamentals, building authentic relationships across industries, and investing profits into real estate, stocks, and tech ventures.

Insights
  • Music producers earn through 52 different revenue streams including advances, publishing, mechanicals, radio royalties, and film/TV composition—not just album sales
  • Touring generates more consistent daily cash flow than album releases and can include merchandise revenue that sometimes exceeds ticket sales
  • Overhead and entourage costs are the primary wealth killers for artists; cutting unnecessary personnel can save $100K+ annually
  • Building a personal brand and demonstrating proof of work (past collaborations, placements) creates negotiating leverage and allows artists to command higher rates
  • Diversification across low-risk (5-9% returns), medium-risk (10-30%), and high-risk (7-12X potential) investments protects wealth while enabling growth
Trends
Shift from trading time-for-money to building scalable operating systems and platforms that generate passive incomeCross-industry collaboration between tech/VC, entertainment, and sports creating new wealth-building opportunitiesEmphasis on financial literacy and contract understanding as critical skills for creative professionals to protect earningsRise of education-based charity models (academies, schools) as both social impact and brand-building vehiclesShorter song formats and faster hooks required due to TikTok/social media attention spans changing music production standardsDirect-to-fan artist funnels and independent distribution reducing reliance on traditional record label structuresBoard participation and venture capital involvement becoming standard wealth-building strategy for entertainment figures
Companies
Fanbasis
Mentioned as a multi-billion dollar company powering the host's backend operations and business infrastructure
Go High Level
Multi-billion dollar company identified as a key partner powering the host's business operations and backend
Netflix
Rance produces the number one Netflix show 'Nemesis' and composes for their platform content
Live Nation
Major concert touring company that artists partner with for tour deals and distribution
Boat
Fintech company valued at $14B pre-COVID, founded by Ryan Breslow; Rance serves on the board
Soono
Number one AI company where Rance serves on the board of directors
Y Combinator
Venture capital accelerator referenced in context of VC terminology and startup ecosystem
We Play Studios
Rance's creative studio in Inglewood specializing in motion capture, VR, AR, and live streaming for events
1500 Sound Academy
Rance's educational academy teaching music production, tech, fashion, film, and how to create hit songs
Culture Silicon
New academy bringing tech education to underserved communities, launching full force within two months
Def Jam
Record label mentioned in context of Rance's early career showcase opportunity
Amazon
Referenced as example of company to invest in if you regularly use their services
Apple
Referenced as investment opportunity for regular iPhone, laptop, and AirPods users
Tesla
Referenced as investment opportunity for Tesla vehicle owners
Walmart
Referenced as investment opportunity for regular shoppers
Meta
Parent company of Facebook and Instagram, referenced as publicly traded investment opportunity
People
Rance Dobson
Guest discussing music production, wealth building, and cross-industry collaboration strategies
Snoop Dogg
Rance toured with Snoop for 15 years; mentioned for charitable work and mentorship relationships
Jay-Z
Referenced for upcoming Yankee Stadium show and for publicly endorsing Rance 1500 from stage
Justin Timberlake
Rance produced multiple albums for Justin Timberlake including country crossover work
Chris Stapleton
Rance produced country music for Chris Stapleton, winning Grammy awards for the collaboration
Maluma
Rance has produced music for Latin artist Maluma across multiple projects
Ryan Breslow
Young fintech entrepreneur who recruited Rance to board of Boat, valued at $14B pre-COVID
Mike Tyson
Referenced as example of athlete who lost $300M to overhead but has since rebuilt wealth
Allen Iverson
Referenced as athlete who lost significant wealth to overhead but has recovered financially
Evander Holyfield
Referenced as example of athlete impacted by overhead costs but who has since recovered
Bobby Valentino
Early career connection who hired Rance's band for showcase, leading to 1500 Nothing band name
Kanye West
Performed concert at We Play Studios; referenced for innovation and rule-breaking approach
Dr. Dre
Performed at We Play Studios; referenced as example of successful music industry figure
Kevin Hart
Performed comedy show at We Play Studios in Inglewood
Max
Co-founder of We Play Studios in Inglewood specializing in tech, VR, AR, and live events
Yura
Co-founder of We Play Studios; Ukrainian specialist in motion capture and VR/AR technology
Vince
Team member at We Play Studios in Inglewood
Quotes
"You stand out by putting in work. The work shows, you stand out when you do the work and music spreads. And you got to differentiate yourself from everyone else. If everybody's going left, you better go all the way right."
Rance 1500~12:00
"You get what you give. So someone's out there, they want to be a music producer or a rapper, a country artist, etc. They're first getting into music. It's hard in the beginning. But you get what you give."
Rance 1500~10:00
"I make money seven different ways. And I looked on my terminal told me, you make money 52 different ways."
Rance 1500~18:00
"The less fingers I use with the right sound makes more money and impacts more. So it's less is more sometimes."
Rance 1500~32:00
"I'm going to give my family half and the world half. I got to pay my tithes because I don't play about that."
Rance 1500~38:00
Full Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast. We cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. As you guys know, these podcast episodes are under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure. Why? Because the average workout takes 45 minutes, the average community work takes 45 minutes. This episode will be between 35 and 39 minutes to make it nice and easy for you to listen to. As you guys know, we don't do a bunch of fancy sponsors here. We're running this podcast for almost four years now, sponsor free. There are two partners on this podcast. We don't do any affiliate codes or things like that, but fanbasis.com and Go High Level are who power my actual life for many, many years. And so if you like those multi-billion dollar type companies to help you with your back end, check out fanbasis.com and Go High Level. Now, without further ado, when we listen to these podcasts, keep in mind, it's not just for you. It might be your friends, family, and followers that might need to listen to this episode. It might be for people from your past, present, or future that need to listen to this episode. Our guest has worked with some of the biggest artists in human history that you've listened to billions and billions and billions of hours of music has come through his fingertips and from his mind, working with household names, which I'm going to let him get into. And as you guys know, these episodes are designed to open up your mind because too often we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. It is not rude. The whole reason for this podcast, why we have a 93% listen through rate is people want to talk about money. Money is not the root of all evil. It is a tool for your food, your beverage, your medical bills, your light bill, your cars, your gas. Is there a little bit of evil? Some tiny little percent? Sure. There's a little bit of evil in everything. Please film medicine. There's plenty of tiny little piece of evil in any category. But the other 99.999% of money is a useful tool for everything in your life for your kids, your parents, your travel, your medical and everything in between. So as we get into this, Rance 1500. My God. Give us the quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Two minute bio. Born and raised from LA. Four time Grammy award winning producer. I got like two. Four times. Yeah. Four times worked with artists such as I did like The Box, Roddy Ridge, Buddha, Bella May, last couple of Justin Timberlake albums. I did Chris Stapleton, Justin Timberlake. They got a country one for that. I work with everyone from Maluma to Eladio to the Latin side. I got the number one Netflix show out right now that I compose called Nemesis. What's your impression? We just put out something for the basketball commercials called The Drop. It's been out for snowfall. So I'm also composing that. We're about to do the Jay-Z show at the Yankee Stadium. I can keep going. Please, you're good. We'll go more than two minutes. Go ahead. Keep it going. I don't want to go too ham, but God is good. I'm just a blessed man. All right. These artists that you're mentioning from Maluma to Jay-Z and everyone in between. I mean, I'm a Latin artist, Latin, hip hop, and all of it. They have a lot of options. There are tens of thousands of music producers out there, people that can help them with their albums or their songs. Why you? Why Rance 1500? Why do they keep coming back to you? I'm someone that took the stairs and I learned all the rules to break the rules, to make new rules. So when you see someone in a group of people making new rules, you create your own hub and culture. And that gets recognized because we're in a quiet place. I'm somebody that came from church, born and raised in church. And being from LA and understanding gang culture and then traveling with Snoop Dogg after high school doing four world tours now. Four world tourances. And everybody that paid them, that's my friend now. So it's just me understanding the importance of people and real estate of people and being a service to people could make you a lot of money later. Later. It's hard in the beginning, right? It's hard in the beginning. But you get what you give. So someone's out there, they want to be a music producer or a rapper, a country artist, etc. They're first getting into music. What would you say to them to give them a chance to beat out the other millions of people that want that spot also? It's about the foundation. You have to study. Study study study. The great study from, I mean, I'll study hits and people from 1960s and up that understands human behavior. Because when you understand it from all these different years, it becomes the same thing. You'll figure out a pattern. You'll figure out a pattern with space. You figure out a pattern with their songs where it's a question in the beginning or in the question in the hook. And then you're like, oh, okay, that works. People like that. Or you're telling them what to do in Bruno's song. They're giving you direction. You understand all the rules and then you can just make it yours when it's in your brain. So they decided, they studied, they listened to Rance. They've been studying, studying, studying everything from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson. They've been learning all the different styles. And they get started. How do they start to stand out so that people want to book them to work on their label or their album or their tour? You stand out by putting in a work. The work shows, you stand out when you do the work and music spreads, you know what I mean? And you got to differentiate yourself from everyone else. If everybody's going left, you better go all the way right. Understanding the Blue Ocean strategy. If you see, you know, 20 red pigs going this way and one pig blue going this way. I'm like, I go there. Yeah. So, so like that. The money part of it, the make money part of this podcast, where is the money for a producer? Like what, how do they make money? Is it, are they getting paid in advance? Are they getting paid royalties? They're getting paid percentage? Are they crossing their fingers to get paid? Most producers get paid in advance, you know, when you're working with a label, that's, that's the structure. That's, labels got a certain template, you know what I mean? So with the labels, you get paid in advance and you get publishing mechanicals, radio, you know, I, I thought it would, you only make money seven different ways. And I looked on my terminal told me, you make money 52 different ways. Really? So I'm going to continue to do my research on that. But it's, it's, it's a lot of money you can make and it could be for film and TV and, you know, the money we're making for composing these TV shows is, is a totally different thing than, you know, working with artists and music people, which is also totally working with independent artists. Sure. I can work with independent artists and you give me, you know, 200,000 and we'll do the album in a week, have all the coldest people writers come in, give them some money, then we're done, you know, so you can make money in a lot of different ways. Or you could own half the masters with them. You know, I think the best way is just sharing. It's a long, you last longer when you share and when it's fair. How does someone figure out what the heck to charge when they're first getting started or should they do it for free at first just to get in the game? I mean, bro, my first, my, the first time I got paid, I got like $5,000 for a long time when I first started. That's, that's the lowest you should get if you have at least one placement. And then you are who you negotiate, you know, how you negotiate. So I also sing deals for hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on if it's songs or if it's just one song or depending on if it's the prince's daughter or if it's what I mean. So it all depends. But you should always, whatever it is, you should always cut them a deal or make them feel like they're getting cut a deal. Does a personal brand matter? Does social media matter for a producer? It does when you start the engine. You got to have some music. You got to have something to make people care about you. You got to, you got to have one word that aligns with who you are, where we can connect that to who you are. Oh, he did that, Peter. Oh, she did that. Yeah. And then that's when you can turn your social media up. So I used that trick many years ago in each category, but especially in my energy, energy drink days, I got into 55,000 retail stores with this drink. And I did every single meeting, every single presentation the same way. I'd walk in, let's say you're the buyer from Costco and it's one o'clock. I'm like, yeah, this morning at 11 AM, I met with 7-Eleven and at four o'clock I'm going to go meet with Budweiser. They do my distribution out here. So I just really want to figure out how many drinks do you want to order? 25 seconds, what did I do? I flexed on them, then I have retailers. That's their competitor. I told them I have the distribution from a big boy that's in their space. And I didn't ask if they're going to buy. I asked how many they're going to buy. There's no if. How's there an if? I'm already with 7-Eleven and with Budweiser. There's no if. And I did that with this intense, I don't want to say cockiness, but like confidence that I acted as if it's not even an option not to buy from me. Right. And by doing that in the music game, if you say, look, I did this record for this person or I did this song or I did this commercial or I was on this TV show or this jingle, you now can act with confidence that they have to get from you. If they don't, they'd be crazy. Yeah. But it's also a preference. You could you could tell me you did all this and I can hate every movie you fucking did. So it's also about being a service and just being a good person and always just, you know, being like yourself, bro. You know what the fuck I'm talking about. So how does someone learn? How do they get better? Is it just studying all the grades or are there actual schools or academies? Like you worked with an academy as well. Like, yeah, yeah. So we had an academy called 1500 Sound Academy, which was the X-Men School for the Best Creators in the world where all the teachers are famous. We didn't add we taught everything from tech fashion, film, music, sports, but mainly music and how to teach how to make hits, human behavior hits to where you can write a song and without a human even realizing it, they're moving their head, they're dancing and you're really taking control of the subconscious mind. And that's when you can do that and make people feel good. That's when, you know, life gets better. So let's do the same thing for a rapper or a country artist or someone that's actually singing, performing or rapping. What would you say to them to stand out when they're first getting started? I mean, you got social media, you got YouTube, TikTok, you got so many ways to be creative. You can do one song and do a Spanish version, a Latin version. You can do, you can take every, whatever your concept of the song is and align it with products and then put the, and try to sell that as a product. You know, there's so many things you could do, but it's just being inconsistent, being consistent and good. Some people are consistent and bad. You got to be consistent and good. That's what I say about poker players. You're practicing wrong, right? Or basketball players that you don't practice free throws and you just shoot them when you in the game. Exactly. You're never going to beat Kobe. You're never going to be Jordan. They practice for hours before and after. So when it, when it comes to someone, they make their songs, they get booked, they're performing at these nightclubs, they're getting performances, they're getting to be like the third performer at a big concert for a big name. When is time to move up? Is it connections? Is it relationships? That's when it's collaboration. That's when you got to have one good song and people want to collaborate with you. And then those collaborations, that's when you can start borrowing fans. And if you're that good, you can end up having new fans. So collaborations and just being more consistent. You can think you're doing good, being consistent, YouTube and every day, but the higher the steps go, you're going to have to do more, more radio stuff, more content. You got to really treat your life as a real business. I mean, two of the most famous stories about people getting discovered was before social media was really that big. Justin Bieber on YouTube with Usher and Scooter and that whole squad. And Tyrese. Right. Singing on a freaking bus. Yeah. Cause real phenomena is you can't like, you can't, if phenomena is when it's just amazing and you can't, you know, so like, I figure out Michael Jackson. Do you know sometimes when you make a song like, oh, this beat is going to be it? Yeah, you could say that, but I've, I've been wrong a couple of times because it's about the engine. It's if you can't just have a good song and a label that don't support you. And then a tree falls in the forest. No one's around here. That don't believe you. Like you can have a lot of things could go wrong with a hit song. You know what I mean? So it's really about everybody being aligned together, you know, the label itself. These guys, you know, have to sign 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 artists hoping for one, two, three, four successes. Tell me about the label side of making money. Is it, are they like venture capitalists? They're just effectively gambling investing. They just give you money. And, uh, dangles the money you're facing. I mean, but I can't even, it's about you really understanding how to get an attorney and getting in the terminal and getting in, you know, it's a lot of things to where you can't make that mistake to where we made 20 years ago, having been not able to pay certain attorneys and stuff like that. So it can get tricky because with labels, man, it's tricky talking about labels. I still work with a lot of labels. You know, name names, but like we've heard the stories of what happened with 112. A lot of them weren't really making money when they had a multi platinum singles and albums. We've heard about obviously the in sync back to board stories with that guy. Lou Perlman, like we've heard the different scenarios over the years of record labels owning, even when someone hits it and they become very successful are still not really making money. And that all comes from what you're saying is the, the devil's in the details, right? Yeah. In the contract. It's in the words. They're made up. They make up a bunch of words that you don't understand and put some money in front of your face to where you'll just sign off. Just sign, just sign here. Most people make that mistake, but not realizing that you're signing your future off. Like when I was young, I made that mistake. I signed a terrible publishing deal, not knowing it was a publishing deal. And for seven years, that's why I went on tour and, and I didn't even want a major hit. I was getting the best album cuts, but as soon as that deal was over, number one, that's the number one. It was a blessing, but I had to learn the hard way that made me read contracts. That made me understand what perpetuity is and worldwide territory and all these words that could just own you, just ruin your life. You know. So when it comes to the music industry, there's a lot of ways to make money. The tour that you mentioned or a concert or someone performing a lot of times is actually their better cash flow for them than the album itself. Right. You hear about sometimes someone like Mariah Carey will sell millions, millions of albums, but actually make more money from her tour doing a million a night doing 80 cities. Right. Walk us through the concert tour side of things when you mentioned you went on tour. I mean, it depends. Some artists do a deal with like Live Nation. Or they'll do, they'll have to do their own tours. When you're doing your own tours, that means you got a piece of the door. You got to put enough the money or you got investor. You got to pay back. But I mean, it's tours. It's a every day. So you're making money every single day. When you're doing music, you get paid maybe every three months, every six months, but you're making money every day on touring and it's not just touring. Depending if you got a 360 deal or not, you could be getting merch. Some tours make more money and merch than they do on tours, because they got to pay people. And they have sponsors for the tour. Yeah. And then depending on how like amazing the artists is and how big they dream, a lot of the artists can lose money on tour because they want an LED screen or they want a 12 piece orchestra just because they care about the stakes. And they want to bring 24 friends with them and get a whole extra bus for them. Yeah, it really just depends on what artist you're a level artist that you're a. All right. So they've been making money. They became the top couple percent in the industry. And now they got this extra money. What would you say to them? How often are going broke or bankrupt because they're getting they're making a million dollars, two million dollars, but like athletes, like influencers, like celebrities and some musicians, they then spend it all. What I've learned, what I would do is you get that million dollars you brought against yourself. You take that million dollars. Now you got two million dollars. You pay that off, use some businesses and try to grow that money. And then you always have that extra million dollars that you never spend and you invest, you real estate, there's stocks, there's so many ways people are making money. Now it's unfair, especially having this podcast. So the whole concept is we talk about the making money. So let's talk about the investing side. You have so many options. You just listed real estate, stock market, crypto, cash flowing businesses. Your friend has restaurants. Your friend has barber shops. You're they open a nightclub. There's so many things you can invest into this plant or this pillow company. There's unlimited options. Since you have access to so many people are hitting you up all the time. How do you decide what you want to invest your money into? I decide if you start the engine first. You got to start the engine. Don't come talking about, you know, I got an idea because I got an idea. But it's really about starting the engine and you could tell somebody is really serious. It's you got to look at it if either they're going to do it with you without you. And those type of people you want to stay stay close to and people that really understand the language of it because tech, fashion, film, music and sports. If I if I know if I say I do music, I better know what a scale is or a flat. And, you know, all that type of stuff. Same thing with venture capitalists. You got to know RSU stock options, 409 A's, Bestings, Corum's, all that type of stuff. So you understand the language changes the game for me because then I can learn stuff for me to where you learn in the venture capital side. You just rattled off some very intricate things in the venture capital. Well, me also doing music. I've been blessed to be on a few boards. One of my best friends is Ryan Breslow. Actually, I met Ryan Breslow through somebody telling me I should meet you. And so he has a company called Boat Fintech Company. It's the one click checkout. Yes, I was evaluated, you know, at like 14 billion before COVID. He's young. He's super young, super. But he was someone that was like, yo, man, I see what you're doing. I want you to be a part of this part of this board. And because I brought something that they go left, I go right. You know, so when when you understand innovation, it's it's old and new. It's it's left and right. So I was just he told me to look, learn all these words and understand it. And if you don't know him, figure it out because you got to be able to, you know, hold your answer to the questions and do my fiduciary duties and, you know, know what I'm talking about. And I did that and it changed my life. So then I was like, dang. And we understand VCs and now I'm on the board of Soono. Soono is number one AI company, you know, out that's out right now. So I had to learn more words for that. So now what I've built is a company called Academy called Culture Silicon, where we're bringing tech to the hood. We're teaching everything that they're not teaching in schools from babies to teenagers to adults from everything from UCC codes to tax breaks. I study every billionaire in the world to where I've really studied them. And I've created a curriculum understanding how they even build their trust, how they, I mean, it's it's pretty sick. And then they explains the culture version of like how me, Nipsey and 50 Cent talks. And then the Silicon version of how my combinator talks, you know, so it's pretty cool. Is there someone people are going to be able to find that later? Is it around now? Oh, it's just it's out. We're doing slow launches, but within like the next two months after this J show, we're going full force for Culture Silicon. So on the investing side, I have this theory I call 40, 40, 20, 40 percent low risk. I want to make between five and nine percent for the year. 40 percent medium risk. I want to make 10 to 30 percent for the year and 20 percent high risk. I want something crazy to happen. A shot at glory, like seven X, 12 X. But if it doesn't work or it takes a long time, I want the medium risk and the low risk to cover the high risk. And I preach about this. I talk about this all the time. So I'm trying to make it simple. If you buy from Amazon all the time, maybe you should buy some Amazon stock. If you have an iPhone that you pay 1500 bucks a year and you upgrade every year and you've got a laptop and you got AirPods, you probably have some Apple stock. So true. If you're driving a Tesla and you're listening to this podcast and Tesla right now, how dare you not have Tesla stock? I wish more people knew that. That's what you got to teach in the first grade class of Godzilla God. We need to know that as children. So important. If you shop at Walmart all the time, you should consider Walmart stock. If you use Facebook and Instagram every day, well, Meta stock is publicly traded. It's being used every single day. And I try to keep it that simple because these are household name corporations that are part of what's called the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is the top 500 companies in the world. They're on the stock market. Over the last 93 years, that's average 11% return on the S&P 500. Keep in mind, recessions, depressions, war, so many things have happened during that time and still average 11% a year. And the last 20 years, there's only been three losing years. So as an investor or as a gambler, 17 good years, three bad years, sign me up. And so I say that because you guys can be looking at things like the S&P 500. Can it lose this month? Sure. Can it lose in seven months? Of course. But over the course of time, we've got 20 years and 93 years of data that shows that it works because you're betting on the top companies in the world. And so researching things that we're talking about here today, real estate, stock market, cash flow businesses and find the things that are interesting to you because you want to start to deploy capital. Okay. You're around celebrities, entertainers, athletes, business people. And what's fascinating is the venture capital world and the athletes, they want to be around the rappers and musicians, musicians, rappers want to meet the athletes, right? You see that all the time. How do you deal with the relationship building side? Because that's an important piece of your world to juggle all the different people in your ecosystem. Cause I go to your events, it's every culture, every age group. There's 16 year old girl, there's a 88 year old grandpa sitting next to me. Like talk me through that. It's just about good people, man. And I just like to just put it, it's such a disconnect between tech, fashion, film, music, sports, VCs, family offices to where they don't even hang out. Damn. And drink, eat the same food. This is a total disconnect. But one, but we got the same purpose. You know, we want to be great. We want to do things we want to give, we want to help people want to build major businesses, but I'm, because I'm like in the middle of everything. I'm with the VCs and they're like, you know, man, we should be, man, we have some celebrities to build our products and all this. And I'm like, oh, look at this call. That little group right now. Like, but they don't, but I had to, but they don't realize I had to be on tour with Snoop for 15 years every day, you know, doing stuff that. To give them the answer that phone. To give them the answer that call. So it's, it's valuable. And I just don't think every from the creatives, founders, operators don't understand each other's value. And when everyone understands each other's value, then we could change and break the rules, you know what I mean? But everybody got to be givers. And I haven't seen all the givers. You're like, just imagine we had every attorney full of givers that really understood all the secret words that can really make life better and help creatives to wear the creatives can really 20, 30 extra money. If you really give them their fair share, they don't really really understand that, but you really get what you give. So, you know, bigger is a big reward. So some of the music that you work on, some of the production and events you do is that place called We Play Studios. Yeah. Shout out to We Play Studios Max, Eura, Vince. We got, we got a real cold squad there, man, where it's literally the only place where you got tech, the only, this is the place where tech fashion, film, music, sports, VCs, family offices live. It's just like the coolest solo house for the coolest people in the world. But these people I'm dealing with, they're Ukrainians and they specialize in motion captioned VR, AR, live streaming, live broadcasting. And we got alcohol license every day so we can do so many events. We've had Kanye concerts, Snoop and Dre and performed for 1500. They gave us our holiday shout out to the city of Los Angeles and Inglewood. So we've done Roblox competition, Roblox competitions, NFL Tuesdays, Kevin Hart comedy shows. So it's literally a place where where creators can live and just with no limits. So putting all those people together, I love mixing people together that don't know each other, where I understand their superpowers and what they want to give back and just put them together. So what about investing into yourself? As people make money, they find real estate, stock market, cryptocurrency, the S&P 500, all the things we've been mentioning. What about investing to yourself? Why is it important to be out of events? Why is it important to be traveling to conventions? Why is it important to be spending time in the studio? Like why is it important to get better and better equipment? Talk about investing to yourself and your craft. I mean, I've learned is people don't even invest into the products. They invest into the person. So if they're going to invest to the person, you got to invest into yourself first and start the engine and make sure you're ready to scale. You know, but it's super important. So things change in society. Some songs now would have had no chance 10 to 20 years ago. And some songs from 20, 30 years ago, we still listen to every day now. Right. Right. When there are certain songs that will force us to run out of this room, right? Those run off the podcast right now to go dance over there. Yeah. Because it's like you hear back that ass up or you hear 50 cent, you know, birthday song, like you're like, oh, my God. Right. As society changes now, we're in the ADD society. We're in a tick tock swiping society and people have a short attention span. Walk us through what people's thought processes are now, you think, you know, before songs was like four minutes long. Now you got to get to the hook in the first 10 seconds. Wow. Interesting. So the best advice for songwriters is to write three hooks. Make every verse feel like a hook. Sometimes when people write verses, they think you're supposed to say more words. You can. But, you know, the person who says the least words that that means the most makes more money and impacts more. Same thing when I say I could play out, use all my fingers and I'm playing the piano. But the less fingers I use with the right sound makes more money and impacts more. So it's less is more sometimes. So for a music artist, there's a lot, a lot of platform. There's a lot of platforms, right? They got to post on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube. They got to do everything with the radio side. They got to figure out the touring side. They got to create so much content. They got to actually make good music. They got to deal with their friends from school that are still leaching off them and traveling around with them. There's so much on artist's mind. How do they get good people around them to actually like help them persevere in a society where it's so easy to get a hold of them and try to like latch onto them? Let everybody know, create a world. When you create a world, that's a culture. That culture is how you dress, how you think, what you believe in. And then when you have that set and you we believe you, people will fall into your culture. You know? So a lot of times we've seen overhead being the biggest killer of Mike Tyson, Alan Iverson, Evander Holyfield, some of the legends, like those are household names. Luckily, they've all come back now and they're rich again. And I got Iverson jersey right over there. Let's go. I've seen it. We do our tour drive with him. Wow. Now, which has been amazing. Mike Tyson obviously has got back to being rich again from the industry. After losing a hundred million, three hundred million, these are not. That's a lot of money. Ten million bucks is a lot of money. A hundred million, three hundred million. What would you say to the people? Because you've seen the entourage. You see your I can I'm sure you've done it hundreds of times. Artists comes in, they pay you the two hundred thousand dollars and they show up with 19 people or 17 people while you are working. And they're just there smoking weed and hanging on the background and asking for food and asking for pizza and times. A lot of times people don't think about it. That simple thing of just buying pizza every day, right? For 17 people and that's an extra 200 bucks, 300 bucks here. Well, that's nine grand a month. That's a hundred thousand dollars a year. That's the pizza part. Then you got to get three extra cars to drive everyone around. The gas is 150 bucks every time. It's three cars. That's four fifty. That's fourteen thousand a month. Times twelve. There's another hundred sixty thousand dollars. It's so easy to add up when we have these entrees. But sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's hard to cut off your friend from school or your friend from whatever. What are your thoughts about that concept? They got to bring a value. There you go. Their value got to bring some type of money. And that's that's that's it. Like I've I've seen so many artists deal with entourage of people. And the more money they made, it would be the least people. And now it's like one or two people with everybody. The their assistant, their management, right? The one person they trust. Trouble and entourage. Right. Absolutely not. Management, his security and his wife, you know, of anything. But that's how we should move because that that level is you got people where intentions are different, so it's harder to trust. So you just find my advice, just find your circle now, man. Find them now and keep them small now to where I can just grow together. Jay, he got like Todd Todd, Jay Brown, the same people we grew up with. He is balling with right now. And you know, so let that be the blueprint for real. All right, let's talk about the charity side. A lot of the guys you've mentioned have really good charities like Snoop Dogg. And he's very passionate about it. He shows up. He's got the football kids situation. He's got the homeless situation. And he helps out with Watts with those sticks over there. Like there's a lot of. But there's also artists that don't do it at all. Why do you think it's important for a music artist or producer or just anyone in the limelight to have some type of charity component to their ecosystem? Because if you understand the branding law, shout out to Bob, big, big Bob taught me this. You understand favorable publicity. Favorable publicity is like how to tell other people you're tight, right? You don't, you're not supposed to do that. You got to let other people do it like. But I mean, I don't need to brag. Yeah, you got to let other people do it. And the thing with charities is I was able when we was able to build our school, I knew that that was a problem. So we built the school and a studio and a workspace to where I can get both of them to do it. So I know I can get you to work with me or I'll work with you. But I'll get you discount if you walk the next door and talk to my students. I love it. So every person that's that's my friend. That's a celebrity nine times out of ten has taught at our school or came to 1500 day or performed or did something to give back. Because a lot of artists don't really have the time to set up a school and do all this type of stuff. If that's not their passion, but this is my passion. So it makes them feel good coming for this day and giving back. And it's a blessing to all of us. So it's a fair exchange to me. How did that become the passion? There's so many different charity options, some of the things you could do with leukemia and Alzheimer's or help the homeless or how did it become like I want to teach kids and I want to teach music industry to these people. Because I mean, I was in a business and I learned the hard way, bro. I'm somebody that has to deal with everything that could possibly go wrong in the music business, in the touring business, in the tech business, in the VC business. So I'm like a walking proof of God's work. And if I could help other people by my mistakes and show that those mistakes didn't phase me because I'm still lit. It's just it's just steps, you know what I mean? And I just want to be an example. OK. You have children? No, not yet. There's one question I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer. Would you like to have children? Yes, that's not the question. But OK, it helps with give context. So you've done hundreds and hundreds of songs and records. You're going to do hundreds and hundreds of more songs and records and you're going to help so many other artists do that. You've got all these different companies and tech companies and companies like Bolt that could be worth billions of dollars over the course of time. At some point when Rans 1500 finally and sadly passes away, what percentage of your net worth would you leave to those children? I'm going to give my family half and the world half. I love it. Family half and the world half. And I got to pay my tithes because I don't play about that. So as people are out there listening, they're hearing us talk about the industry, the people. The one thing I saw that was kind of like the through line through all of it was studying and learning. The whole point of this podcast is that. So I'm glad you said that. The reason I speak so often, the reason I make my social media content, the reason I do this podcast is the information. Right. Because we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. We grew up thinking we can't have these discussions and ask about like, oh, how much is your lease on your car? Wait, did you buy it? Did you rent it? What did you do? Is it 1200 bucks a month or 1600 bucks a month? Wait, is that because your down payment was five grand or 10 grand? A lot of people listening to what I just said think that's rude. They ask you if you put five K down or 10 K down. Why is that rude? Because if you tell me, oh, by the way, I actually put 10 K down, but my payment saves me 400 bucks a month. And over the course of a three year lease, I saved 15,000. Here's why I did it. You might just save me money. Right. Gang, man, it's knowledge. Oh, you paid this. How much do you pay a sound engineer? Oh, I pay them $70,000 a year. Oh, shoot, I was going to pay 90,000 and I was going to have three of them. You just saved me $60,000 because three times 20 grand, 60,000 a year for the next five years. You just saved me $300,000. Just by talking for 12 words. Because I got to ask you a question that wasn't rude to talk about the situation. And so that's why this podcast is so blunt and direct. And I ask you like actual numbers on things. So I want to be able to talk about it. I want people that are out there wondering like, should I do music or I'm only going to make five grand? Or maybe I could make 200 grand. If I could get 10 grand, like, yeah. Because otherwise they just don't have any idea or they just hear people cap and talk about nonsense numbers on social media and they're just making up stuff. Right. And so then they're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to make $20 million from every record. Oh, you're not. Not even possible. So. I guess we'll lean towards the conclusion part of it. As you're out there, you now have this TV show that's absolutely crushing. I mean, I said the stats on it are insane. What's going on with Netflix? Are there certain categories that are like, I want to do more TV shows. I want to do more concert tours. I want to do more. Or is there like, I want to just spread my rollouts. I want to be across the board on everything. Yeah. I think I've done my fair share of trading time for money. And I'm not into that too much anymore because, you know, you learn all the rules, you break the rules and learn the words. And now, now I'm just building operating systems for people to where they can build their own operating system. So these artists got to have their own, if they had their own funnel to go to with their artists to where they can go directly to them, they'll make more money. And, but they just don't have the information. So I'm just trying to spread the information with my friends as much as we can to where you can learn how not to trade time for money and act like these billionaires do. Right. So where do people find you? Where do they find the Academy? Where do they find we play? Just walk through each thing one by one. All right. So you can find me. My name is LaRance Dobson. Instagram R A N C E one five zero zero. You can find me on Facebook, all the social medias. I'm gonna send my tiktok game up and be on that a little bit more. We play studios in Inglewood, shout out to Max and Yura and the squad. That's that's literally like the Disneyland in Inglewood. We're culture silicon. That's that's our new Academy where we're bringing tech to the hood and teaching everything that actually makes you money becomes a better person. My body and spirit and finances all in one unified in one. And you know, we're going to do music all the time. So stay watching TV, stay at them concerts and we're going to keep doing our best. Last question. I've seen clips where household name legends like Jay-Z say 1500 nothing from stage. I couldn't if I offered him four million dollars, he wouldn't do that for me. Like, hey, shout out Hubble student. No, it wouldn't even wouldn't even pick up the phone. Right. What is the story behind 1500 nothing? So we start off as a church band where some kids from the hood and we was playing for this artist named Bobby Valentino. When he had that song slow down, we had a church gig. He wants to be his band. We was doing a bunch of free rehearsals and he was like him and his manager pulling was like, yo, I need y'all do the showcase for Dev Jam. The time it was broke. I'm like, yo, you got to give us 1500 and nothing. And I, you know, you got a five piece band, 300 piece, you know, he was like, OK, what's the name of your band? It's like 1500 and nothing. You got pants or what? So from there, we started a musical gang. And the cool thing about our gang, which is not a real gang, it's a musical gang, but we all played different instruments so I could switch instruments on every artist and sing. Everybody has their own superpower. So but they're cold on their own. But when we come together on a stage or come together in the studio, it's dangerous for anybody. All right, guys, as I mentioned before, this podcast is not just for you. Friends, family, followers, people from your past, present, future. Some of them might bring up that they want to be an artist or a producer or go on tour or be just anything in the music industry. And you can be like, oh, you should listen to this episode with 1500 and nothing with Rance. Oh, yeah. It's important. The butterfly effect of you passing along this episode to your friend that's diving into the music industry. Maybe they're already in it. It's super, super important because the butterfly effect happens. They might hear things or pick up things that they learn. From Rance talking about it and then go follow him on social. And all of a sudden you change the course of their career because of a group chat or because you sent a link to a podcast. Right. Every single day. Think about for yourself, how can I educate my friends? How can I put them on? How can I give them connections and relationships? And the butterfly effect is hopefully it'll come back to you and everyone around you for your life. I appreciate it, guys. Check us out here next Monday on the money Mondays dot com.