Show notes
Interview with Aston Merrygold, former member of JLS, one of the biggest ever boy bands with 10,000,000 records sold. Aston’s since been a judge on a dance talent show and appeared on Strictly Come Dancing. He’s appeared in adverts for Coca-Cola, Samsung and Tesco.
Rob’s met with Aston at his dance studio in Vauxhall to discuss success, wealth, leveraging social media, reinventing your career and dealing with the business side of celebrity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
You’re now pursuing a career as a solo artist, that must be different to working with your bandmates. I bet there’s upsides and downsides, do you want to talk about that Aston? Yeah, I guess the only real difference is the social. you'd be in a room with your friends, business partners, having a heated business discussion, everyone's got their own ideas and nothing ever arrives to arguments or blows, but from an outside perspective it can be quite awkward. It looks like we're going at each other, but that's just the passion. Now on my own, it's my way or the highway. I prefer it that way, 100%! I'm so thankful to the rest of the guys and my team, but now being on my own I can finally be myself and express myself fully, not contribute 25% to a four-piece.
How do you want to be known and remembered, Aston? Well, I want to be remembered as one of the greats, and I think if you don't want that, then you're in the wrong industry. If I could have an eighth, a third or a slice of something someone like Michael Jackson had or Justin Timberlake, more recently. If I could get a slice of their success, I'd be more than happy!
Music or dance specifically, or the fusion of both, Aston? Do you know what? I think it's just entertainment. People ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them entertainment. It's everything, music, from a writing perspective, from a performance perspective, dance-wise, acting, everything. I love everything to do with this industry.
Working with business partners, sometimes that passion can overflow, sometimes you can fall out, how did you and your band learn to deal with and overcome that? To be honest, I don't know why, we just did! There was no learning process. As individuals we just wanted to fight the good fight. We would put it to each other like, "If we do this we could be here, if we do that we could be there..." It was all about where we needed to be. What was best for us as a collective. I was the youngest of the four so I tended not to take things as seriously, when it came to the business aspect I was more than happy to give my opinion and not back down, but ultimately I thought that was why we outsourced, hiring business managers, administrators and consultants, to make those decisions on our behalf.
How much of it was agents and labels telling you what to do and how much of it was you saying, "Wait a minute, we want to do this." Well, I'd say about 50\50. We were trusted with our opinions which was great. There were times when we trusted the label, sometimes great, sometimes not so great. Just the way of the industry. Sometimes our hits which we didn't think would succeed were massive and other times the releases we thought would be huge just didn't hit the mark. Luck of the draw, half the time. We would have to trust our lives to these people and we had a great run, I think I can speak on behalf of myself and the boys when I say it was the best thing we'd ever done. So, from your position, why do you guys feel like you moved on? I think it was the perfect turn, I'm still in JLS, I'm always going to be in JLS, but we were young when we entered the industry, then we got our break. We're all now in our mid 20's, we've already had a fantastic career, we have time to pursue other dreams! Five albums take a lot of time, there's been a lot of tours and it was the thought of signing the deal for another five albums and being contracted all over again. Now we're all starting families, it seemed to us that we were at the top of our game, didn't want to overstay our welcome and then if we're welcome back then we're welcome back! We're more than happy with where JLS left.Was it scary, leaving the industry to try other things? Hell yeah! It was so scary, because I'd been cocooned. For the last 7/8 years I'd lived by the diary, having cars pick me up at certain times to take me to meetings and events at certain times. From life being handled by every aspect to getting the reigns back to my own life was definitely scary, but I was free. I got to start again with all the knowledge and wisdom of the industry which I didn't have before, it was a rush!
You seem totally laid back about transitioning career and going from being massive to starting from scratch, Aston. What would you say to people who aren't as laid back as you and they're scared? Well, you can look at fear one or two ways; it can over could you and make you introverted, or you can take it upon yourself and admit it's scary. There's a difference jumping out of a plane with a parachute and without one. Regardless of whether you have one or not, it's scary. Jumping without one, it'll only ever end one way, with one you still have a safety net which may not work but at least you confront it and take it head on.
Nowadays on Social Media you can be absolutely killed. One wrong remark or faux-pas and that could be your career done within a matter of hours, regardless of what's happened. It's as cut-throat as that. Once you realise and know that, life won't be so stressful! You might as well just be like, "Alright, well I'll try again."
Is that faith? Is that belief in yourself? Is that confidence? Is that accepting of your industry and career and how it can be or is it all of those, Aston? It's all of them, it has to be. Sometimes I can see the bad sides of all those things within the industry and think you can be too confident. You might as well be naked on stage and say, "There you go, judge away."
Has the industry changed you? Yeah, definitely. I used to go out with my mates from uni, early twenties, same as everyone else. The only difference was that I was I had money so we could really enjoy ourselves and the media perceived me to be showing off. What else would you be doing on a weekend with your friends from uni at that age, going out every night obviously! Do I have work tomorrow? Yeah of course, but I'm fine!
So you've talked about these glass ceilings to smash through, what's your glass ceiling and how're you going to smash through it? The next glass ceiling is just getting music out there. Letting people know that I'm a solo artist now. Not many people know it. Music's based mainly online now, it's ever-changing and you can so quickly and easily get lost. It's me having the courage to step back and take a harder look at it and evaluating how I want to approach it. At first I was like, "Yeah I want to chuck anything out and do whatever." Whereas now I'm like, "Now I have to chuck it out in the right way."
Do you think some of the purists struggle with how fast music and content are changing? Yes! I had a meeting the other day with a great friend of mine who works for a label and he got pissed off with me for talking on my phone. He said, "Stop talking, I've heard your stuff, let people hear it and decide!"
Get your content out there. Whether 10 people here it or 10,000,000 people hear it, you'll effect change. People think they should wait for the perfect time but there is not perfect time. It's ever-changing, so fast paced!
People are now starting to put their own truth out to the world. Podcasts, YouTube, Social Media, etc. People want honesty, but you're damned if you do and damned if you don't if when for example your niche is writing sad songs and you decide to write a happy one, some of your followers may disapprove but at least you're being authentic. Too often we aim to please everybody and don't want to be judged too harshly.
A lot of people are really intrigued about the business side of your career, did you show an interest in that or did you just want to go and do entertainment? At first, I was definitely happy-go-lucky, thinking business was cool but then I'd get invited to an accounting meeting and I'd think, "Perfect..." Then the taxes came and I wanted to know who was taking my money!
As it went on I wondered why hadn't they taught me about this at school? All these avenues and options, I don't know why it took me to reach a certain age for it to click. In the early stages money was coming in thick and fast, unreal! First I was partying, then I wanted to buy a house, then the business aspect start to get more real. Then I started to analyse why the volume of gigs in the first part of the year was more than the third part of the year, etc. I started to realise there was a business cycle behind it all. A preparation period, a release period, etc. A template every artist follows.
People are launching from yesterday. "I'm gonna be in the studio tomorrow, everyone out there, check out this song that I posted last night." The rule book's been thrown out the window!
Slade wrote a Christmas number one 40 years ago and they're still milking £500,000 per year from it! Cristiano Ronaldo gets €300,000 per tweet if he does a brand endorsement.
There's some downsides to Social Media but if you want to set up a business or be an artist or creative, surely it's gotta be the best time in history?! You get a small tripod for £5, set your camera up, start singing or dancing or whatever and start selling products!
Have you embraced all the Social Media, are you quite active? Instagram and visual things I love, things like Twitter, not so much. For me, Twitter's maybe 90% negative and 10% positive. You get a lot of opinions when people post music but aren't ready to perform in front of large crowds of people.
You want to be true to your art and your work and you could spend 30 years crafting your work, never be perfect, get still always be judged by purist critics.
Social Media today, you can dictate the terms. If you like the comments, get involved. If you hate it, turn it off, if you're an introvert you can do a podcast because nobody can see your face! There's ways around it now, there's lanes, avenues, ways people can really express themselves.
Building multiple streams of income and making hay while the sun shines. I've seen a lot a lot of people who've become very successful and then relaxed. You never know when there could be another recession. In your world Aston, you can be the best and then you can be gone. Do you think about building income streams, having multiple business interest endorsements? What are your thoughts on streams of income and making hay while the sun shines? I'm 110% up for building these streams of income. As an artist I choose when I get paid. If I don't want to get paid, I don't go out and work. It doesn't work for me. You're never too successful! There's always bills to pay and people to provide for. We're sitting in one of my avenues now. There's always a bigger picture. I'd like ten of these, dotted around the country, dotted around the world.
You've got a business partner in this venture. How important is having that business partner, what benefit have you got? It's nice to always have the other perspective, coming from a band it's nice to bounce ideas. At the same time, when I'm touring, I need someone to hold down the fort. If something comes up within the business which I can't handle straight away, he can handle that. It's nice having a business partner that's totally on your wavelength. Gold dust!
People say you shouldn't go into business with friends. I say life's too short to go into business with people purely for commercial benefit and not enjoy your time together, especially if you succeed. Surely, you'd want to succeed with your friends and people you care about?! If they're true friends, you'll never run into any worries. They'll all eventually show their true colours.
The best advice you've ever received, if you can remember it? From Seal, actually. One of the greats. He told me, "Enjoy it." Regardless of whether you're performing in front of 50 people at a local concert or 50,000 in an arena, enjoy it. We're all rushing everything we ever do, so slow down, soak it up.
Worst advice? Honestly, I've never had bad advice. If I've ever had advice which didn't go according to plan, I'd learn from it, which would be invaluable anyway. Going against my gut always bites me.
A myth about the industry or a celebrity or someone in the media which most people don't know about? When you get £1,000,000 you don't actually get £1,000,000! Why didn't they teach you in school that if you're an employee, when you get paid, you lose 40% to tax?! Management, agents, staff, whomever it may be, they all get a slice too. So once all of the overheads are cleared you're left with around £200,000/£300,000... Don't ever believe the newspapers! If I did six or seven of those gigs, then I'd be looking at earning that kind of money.
Anything you strongly believe in the world that you'd like to change and put your stamp on? The Social Media is such a curse and such a blessing at the same time. People use it for so much good but at the same time you have to filter through so much rubbish and negativity to find any scrap of it. I'd like to put more filters and choice for people.
The theme that's emerged in this interview is that there's two sides to this reality. Social media is a bit negative, but we can put our products and content out to the world in five minutes. Celebrity's all good or celebrity's all bad... There's a choice. You can always choose how you look at things and approach them.
What does the word disruptive mean to you? Now? A four-and-a-half-month old baby screaming at 2am! Personally, for me being disruptive is probably more of a good thing. Music is always disrupting the airways and people's vision and hears. Music that disrupts popular, conventional music creates its own undefined genre. I enjoy proving that there aren't any rules!
BEST MOMENTS
The best thing about building a dance studio underneath a railway bridge is that there’s no sound restrictions, so if clients want to have their music playing at top volume, they can. It's good that clients hear music going on when they arrive, if it was silent then it'd feel like something was wrong. The smell adds to it too!
I never felt the need to push buttons. If someone was feeling a bit tender over a business decision or something similar, I'd tend to back off and give them some time and space.
There's no ceiling. Every ceiling you see is made of glass and if you don't smash through it then you're going to get stuck.
I'm going to invest in myself instead of waiting for years for the knock on the door from the big label. Everybody's putting their stuff out through their own means.
That one bad review out of the 1,000 decent ones really doesn't matter! Don't fixate on it.
If I sit out home all day, doing nothing, it's not long before the phone stops ringing. I have to go out, make myself known, do shows, take appointments, etc. because if I don't do it now then my family will be in trouble.
Focus yourself on what you've got, not what you've not got.
I realised Social Media was a daily thing. Instagram, Twitter, people wanted to see all of you, not just the music. Sometimes I would grow my hair for campaigns, sometimes you'd see a yearly cycle within a day!
As you said, happiness is a choice. Now it feels like, well that's just common sense, why would I not want to be happy? It's quite alluring and tempting, the gossip, the bad news, it's an attractive thing for some people.
When my little boy came along, I thought he needs everything I didn't have when I was growing up, regardless of whether I can buy it right now or not.
[Business, mindset, entrepreneur, disruptors]
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ABOUT THE HOST
Rob Moore is an author of 9 business books, 5 UK bestsellers, holds 3 world records for public speaking, entrepreneur, property investor, and property educator. Author of the global bestseller “Life Leverage” Host of UK’s No.1 business podcast “Disruptors”
“If you don't risk anything, you risk everything”
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