We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zach Paradis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Zach thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

There’s no way around it, full-time artistry is a hard journey. On a fairly regular basis, I’ll let my mind wander into the possibilities of what my life would look like had I taken a more traditional career path. Things seem like they would be more straightforward. Boundaries would be clearer. Vision for my future may even be easier to come by. However, happiness is rarely circumstantial but often about perspective. Because the grass really always does look greener on the other side.

When I take stock of my life and the work I’m doing day-to-day, there’s truly no other route I would rather take. I get to wake up to a blank page everyday. My dreams and goals for the future are my priority and what I work toward, which is wild. I get to create music and get paid for it. But the craziest thing to me is that being a self-employed “creative” means I can dream a crazy idea, say it out loud and, after a few months of hard work, that idea is tangible and exists in reality. That is a privilege and it blows my mind. And so yes, that makes me very happy but sometimes I just have to remind myself.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For anyone who doesn’t know me, hi! My name’s Zach and I, in a nutshell, make music and help other people make music. You can check out my songs on any streaming platform to get a real-life taste of what I do.

I currently live in Los Angeles but I started my career at a small, independent record label in Atlanta called Reach Records. I was on-staff from 2015-2018 as an audio engineer, recording the label’s artists and any songwriters, producers, and musicians in countless studio sessions. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, I learned recording arts from a local community college as a way to get my songs into the world. I was in a band at the time and I knew that if we wanted to release any music, we needed to learn how to make the songs on a technical level. Getting into the nitty gritty of making songs was incredibly energizing to me. It’s fascinating to see how a song can start from an idea on a Voice Memo, be taken into a studio and sculpted, massaged, tweaked, and breathed into a living song, all contained in an mp3. The process is exciting and sometimes mysterious. So when I was hired at Reach Records, my desire to record and help create songs continued to grow as I delved into production, beat-making, and songwriting on my own time.

I began my solo artist career in Atlanta, releasing singles and collaborating with friends on albums and EPs, enjoying the thrill of creating and eventually performing. I was also growing in my freelance production and songwriting during this time. I left Reach at the end of 2018 to pursue freelance work and my own music full-time. I chased my artist career with much more focus and strategy and have been slowly growing since then. But what has grown even more has been my work with others. I’m lucky to have worked with many artists across the states and a few international clients as well. I love the creation process, whether for myself or for others, and I love bringing an artist’s vision to life.

Fans of my music should expect to be moved. I focus primarily on pop music that is heavily influenced by hip hop and RnB production and singer-songwriter lyrical styles. I emphasize honesty in my writing and try to take time to craft a meaningful narrative in each song. Even in the uptempo bops, there’s still a story to latch onto. In a world that is saturated with thousands of new songs everyday, I believe only real music will last. And so, I endeavor to provide quality production and intentional storytelling that resonates first with myself and then also to the rest of the world. I’m proud to listen back to old songs and know they still stand strong.

As a freelance producer and writer, what I feel particularly strong in offering is an artist-focused approach to my production. Many artists have an idea of what they want to sound like but don’t have the vernacular, skills, or fully-developed vision required to bring it to life. What I try to do for clients is firstly listen. Listen to peoples ideas for their music and then try to create that, not just create what I think they should sound like. My vision for the artist is not as important as their vision for themselves, so I focus on trying to excavate their vision and put it into a tangible form. I’m most satisfied when a client tells me the song has become exactly what they imagined it would be or even better than they hoped.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In January of 2019, I finally left my job as an audio engineer to be a full-time freelance music producer/songwriter/artist. And I genuinely liked my old job. However, as an artist and entrepreneur, good is the enemy of great. Though my co-workers and bosses were incredible, I felt God had more for me in my creative ventures and so I pivoted out and took the leap. I’m lucky in that everyone around me was supportive. I was able to maintain and build upon existing business relationships and started building my business from the ground up. The transition was difficult and I felt like I was in limbo for many months, working daily but waiting for everything to make sense. But the transition only gets harder the longer you wait to make it and I’m grateful I made the move when I did.

And just this year I moved to Los Angeles, which was another major pivot. Despite being uncomfortable, this change is opening me up to more and more opportunities. Growth is always difficult but always worth it. I’m planning for this new season to lead to more growth as a producer and artist.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

There is a book called the Four Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, and Sean Covey that really changed how I go about setting and achieving goals. It teaches the value of having large, wildly important goals and establishing measurable practices and efforts that can be done daily, weekly, and monthly will naturally lead to the execution of that goal, rather than simply creating smaller goals. So instead of, for example, setting a goal to write and record an album this year, the plan would instead be to write music for one hour everyday. You can hold yourself accountable to that action, measure your commitment to it and the results from it to see what went well or not as you go. The practices you set in place naturally lead to the fulfillment of your goal.

It may be simple and obvious to some people but it massively changed my perspective when I read it. It led me to focus on what small tasks I can do daily to chip away at my goals and has greatly increased my productivity. I would recommend any business owner, creative, or entrepreneur to read it.

Contact Info:

• Website: zachparadis.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/zach.paradis/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zachparadismusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/zach_paradis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmijRpSofGCVfFFKPw6wWZQ
• Other: TikTok: @zach.paradis

Image Credits
Artimio Blackburn, Jaylon Jenkins, Jody Jackson