00:00
I feel really grateful for my past. And I feel really grateful that happened because it was literally a one in a million slip on a banana peel. And one of my very first auditions, just turning 18 and I booked it. But these are the scars of an entrepreneur. I don't believe in failure. I like the concept that FAIL, F-A-I-L, stands for a Faithful Attempt in Learning. He was the biggest.

00:26
promoter of get on YouTube now because YouTube's gonna be the next big thing. And I honestly, I slept on it.

00:36
listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We're talking music today, talking acting. We're getting high with High Level. We got Ashley Parker-Angel and Bobby Klebanoff. What's up guys? What's up? Great to be on. Hey, co-founders of High Level.

01:06
We're going to talk all that backstory. It's good to have you guys. I w I'm, uh, I'm excited. We're going to broaden the horizons here from just O town. You know, I, my, uh, one of my co-producers is like, Hey, you need to talk to actually Parker angel. And I knew the name, like you've got, you've got probably one of the greatest names ever for like show business and music and acting and everything else. And I'm like, Oh, I remember O town.

01:35
Oh yeah. I was like, I think I was a freshman in college. I don't even remember what, you know, every party playing some, some boy band music, you never know what was going to happen. So excited to talk to you. So what's happening guys? We're out in Vegas. Yes. Yeah.

01:52
Yeah, out in Vegas now. And yeah, thank you for the compliment. That, that name growing up was brutal in school, by the way. But what I made up for it later in entertainment and yeah, I would tell it was such a great start. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better launch pad right out of high school. I mean, you know, it was literally the summer I graduated and, uh, you know, we're just talking a little bit before the show started. It's interesting because O-Town was also this, this reality television.

02:21
uh, production at the time that, you know, the major networks hadn't caught up to that yet. So you had survivor and then you had making the band at the same time. And it was the whole thing, honestly, was an experiment. I mean, we didn't even know if we were going to have a record deal at the end of it. That's how experimental it was. No, you guys broke a lot of ground, you know, like this is before, this is a pre idol American idol, like all that stuff, you know, you guys, figured it all out. But before even we, you know,

02:51
pre-show talking before social media, before anything. The only thing that we're kind of in with was the boy band stuff, which was, what a crazy. Interestingly, Simon Howell was actually in all of those original meetings with Clive Davis. Clive Davis left Arista Records and he launches J Records. And the very first act he signed was O-Town. And Simon Howell was in all those meetings and he really took that concept and made Pop Idol and then American Idol. Now you have The Voice.

03:21
But it was an interesting time because now they know exactly what your single is going to be. They know exactly who your record label is going to be. And we had an entire season come out on the ABC network. Millions of people watching hit TV show. We still did not have a record deal. It wasn't until the end of that first season that Clyde Davis came in, signed the band, and we had All or Nothing, which was the number one hit for us. And it was, it really proved the model would work. And, um,

03:50
And I think it also separated us a little bit of course from, you know, Backstreet Boys and then sync, obviously. Yep. Uh, you know, I know your story's out there, uh, Ashley and you know, I, I want to focus more about the kind of the journey and the pivot points that we talked about, uh, but I do want to pause and kind of, you know, reflect on that, that O-Town day, those O-Town days. Like, you know, yeah, I'm sure now I mean,

04:18
we're close to the same age, you know, like reflecting back. I mean, it's pretty damn cool. I mean, you know, like just the experience, like, I don't know, like I'm sure in the moment, and I know there's been some drama and things like that, we don't have to get into that shit. It's more like, but just, I don't know, having that experience, being, you know, a heartthrob and, you know, like having a band and like traveling, I don't know. Give me some reflection on all that.

04:45
Yeah, no, it was a crazy time, perhaps the craziest ever. And, you know, I don't thank you for the compliments and the kind words. I don't think of myself that way. I was just this hometown kid. I come from a real small salt of the earth town right in California. And boom, all of a sudden you're on TV and people are like, well, you're him, you're that guy. And it's like, it's interesting from a marketing point of view too, because you feel yourself being turned into a product.

05:15
And there's this split that happens. There's you and then there's this version of you that's up on a shelf. And it's really an interesting thing to experience. It's kind of hard to put into words, but it was the show was syndicated. So it's not even just, you know, an American thing. All of a sudden we're in Germany and we're in Europe and we're in Asia. And it was a wild roller coaster of a ride and it lasted about four years.

05:43
And then that journey continued because MTV wanted to follow my journey going solo. And I signed a solo record deal with Universal and I did the whole thing over again on my own. And it was just, it's the power of television really. And both, you know, both iterations of my music career have also been connected to these television vehicles. And that's the medium that we'll talk a little bit more about the emergence of social media. But.

06:11
It's just such a powerful medium to be on television and to also have hit singles at the same time. And that's how I ended up meeting Bobby Klebanoff, who's my business partner. Now we actually started an entertainment. He was my manager for a very long time, all the way through the Broadway years and everything. But it's just, yeah, I feel really grateful for my past. And I feel really grateful that happened because it was literally, you know, it's a one in a million slip on a banana peel.

06:38
One of my very first auditions just turning 18 and I booked it. I respect people that appreciate their past. You know, I've, I've had some people in the show and we've talked to others about coming on the show and we've kind of avoided it. I'm like, damn, I mean, like you said, it's one in a probably a million, probably one in a billion, you know, like how small people get the opportunity. No matter what the stigma.

07:07
is or isn't in the moment or after the fact or whatever, but to get that attention, you know, because we talk about now modern day social media, all these things, attention is currency. And to have the opportunity to get your name out there, to get your name and likeness known, you know, it's such a rare occurrence. I love it when people just embrace what it was because, you know, nothing's set in stone. You know, that was a trend. That was a thing there. You leveraged

07:36
But it's how you leverage it and move with it and pivot going forward. So I always, I always respect people that kind of embrace, you know, whatever that was that got them to a certain point. And then it's like, but what do you turn that into? Totally agree. And I think it's important to celebrate it because look, without that fan base, I mean, the truth is they, they grow and evolve too. So you're right. That was a place and a time and pop music of the early 2000s and the

08:06
the spiked hair and the frosted tips and the, you know, all of that, but your audience grows with you and you hope to evolve with your audience, with your fan base. They really, I've always really looked up to people who have mastered that pivot, so to speak. And I think of people like, I think one of the greatest stories is Arnold Schwarzenegger going from professional bodybuilding at the height to the top of Hollywood to then the top of politics. I mean, I just think it's,

08:35
If you have that kind of view, then I think you know, going into it. And I think that's where I was always at was trying to stay ahead of the curve. Like, okay, well, this is awesome right now, but this is a place in a time and it will, there'll be another chapter and what's that going to be. And I think that's where the pivot comes in. Yep. I look at like, you know, like JT, I mean, just your timber, like, you know, he's saying thing it was kind of like just that persona being in the boy band or whatever, and you know,

09:04
whether it was cool or not cool, who gives a shit like, but everybody thinks JT is cool now. I mean, you know, like, because he's levers, I mean, obviously he's talented motherfucker. Like, let's be honest. Like it's like, he's, he's made his own, you know, because he's super talented. He's got a, uh, just a nose for popularity, knowing the music, the stuff, but now, you know, he's, you know, one of those as well, just kind of pivots into it, but

09:30
All right, now before we talk to me, talk to me, uh, before we transition, we move out of our old town, uh, discussion. What's like, give me like something like you hadn't talked about in a long time, like memorable, most memorable moment, maybe like meeting someone or like realizing how famous you are. I don't know. Like, give me, give me like, give me that moment that was just like unbelievable.

09:56
Oh man, there's a lot of them. I mean, I remember just to speak to that idea of like you becoming this product and this other version of yourself. Just literally the week that making the band dropped, I was sitting in an airport and this girl looks over, she had headphones on, she rips the headphones off and she goes, you're him. And I was like, she's like, you're him. And I was like, who's him? And she was like,

10:23
you're the Ashley Angel. And I was like, whoa, this is so weird. But I actually remember one time, like later on through O-Town years, Susan Sarandon actually reached out and invited me to be her guest to go see Michael Jackson perform when he did that 30 year reunion at Madison Square Garden, perform with Jackson Five. And I'm sitting there with Susan Sarandon, who I grew up, you know, just amazing talent.

10:51
and I'm watching Michael Jackson, I'm sitting next to Macaulay Culkin, and I'm just like, where am I right now? This is just insane. And it was just a lot of experiences like that. But then you meet celebrities and you realize, look, these are just people. These are just people who are obviously very talented people, but that veil sort of comes down a little bit. And you realize, look, these are just human beings like the rest of us. And they're...

11:18
There are quite a few stories I can think of, but becoming a famous person is a trip. It's a bit of a, it can throw you for a loop, which is why I think a lot of child stars, of course, end up grappling with that later in life. And it's being famous is a, it's a bit of a traumatic experience in some ways. I don't want to say like, I mean, I'm grateful for all of it, but it is a bit of a, it's a shift. It's a complete shift into a whole new world.

11:46
You really got to have your head on straight to be able to handle it. Susan Sarandon. I think that was like my first like girl, like woman movie crush or something. Like, yeah, like you're both a bad-ass actress, but attractive, super attractive. Like I was like, Oh yes, that rang a bell that that that's a moment there getting to go see Michael Jackson for sure. Um, let's transition. Um, you know, Bobby talk with Bobby and, and, uh, Ashley, you know, like

12:15
What's been the journey from there? I know we're gonna build towards, you know, where we're at today, but let's talk about some of that journey after the band, after the solo artists, you know, where things went. Yeah, I think as soon as we started working together, started really to Ashley's point, like thinking what's next after this. Cause the truth is entertainment's fleeting. You know, even, you know.

12:40
probably more so now than it was even back then. You know, people are hot for six months, then they're not. And so it's like, it's finding that next thing while you're in it. When you're at the height of it, what are you gonna now start laying the groundwork for? And these things take time. And so think to your point about even Justin Timberlake, and you see with Beyonce, and it's like, all these entertainers that you see that have really created just unbelievable success, they all have that same, they're the ones driving.

13:07
You know, a lot of entertainment is you're sitting around waiting for your manager, your agent, your booking person, the label, this and that to tell you where to go. And I think the, what separates the people that really have long lasting careers is you can tell they're driving the ship. And so I think Ashley and I have always worked so well together because we both have that same entrepreneurial spirit. You know, just to explain, like we met through my manager, Larry Rudolph and Larry Rudolph managed Britney Spears real quick. They tapped Bobby right out of high school.

13:36
because he was the internet whiz kid that understood this new emerging world of social media. And I wanted to do my space for free, which was really the only reason it's free. We'll hire you. I was like, yeah, but then you cold call Larry Rudolph for like 16. So he's a go getter. He's a hustler. He cold calls Larry Rudolph's office at 16 and says, I'll do all your websites and all your social media for free. All right. And they're like, what social media we've never hired.

14:04
Hired and then so now and then that's where that's where I intersect with Bobby and just and then he was such a visionary from such a young age and had such a great understanding of marketing and the world of social media. He was like, you gotta start a YouTube. You gotta get on MySpace. This is where everything is going. And even for our generation, like I was a little slow to adopt it. I mean, remember you were saying earlier, like even people at Capital Records were like.

14:31
Tell them like the internet's a fad, we're not participating in it. Nobody's going to ever want to listen to music on their computer. And it's just, you see like to what we just said, it's like, you need to start laying the groundwork ahead of time. These things move fast. And so if you're not prepared, and so I think, you know, for us, we've gone through so many business ideas together, like in the last 10 years, at one point we were going to open a cereal restaurant that we went through that entire process. Then we pivoted to

14:58
you know, t-shirts and a clothing company and that didn't really work out. And it's, it's these trials and errors, but as long as you keep going. And I think we've now gotten to this, this business that we've, we've been in for a long time now, we've really have been pursuing that we're, we're really excited about it and obviously, you know, talking with you, you're such, you know, the work that you guys do and the work that you've done, it's, it's just inspiring to talk to other people that understand like, Hey, these things don't happen by accident.

15:26
They get the groundwork gets laid and there's a reason why people rise to the top and why people You know you kind of come in and out and fade away and so having the entertainment background I think it's been really exciting for us to understand Creating an experience with a business that is entertaining for people Yeah, and so, you know, we'll get more into it, but that's that's kind of where we he and I come together We realized we want to do things outside of entertainment and we start laying that groundwork very quickly and that's kind of where our story starts

15:55
So I always like to keep it human on the Radcast. You know, everybody's, you know, not everybody gets to be in O town. Not everybody gets to be a Britney Spears and all this stuff. I heard some failures potentially in there. Uh, what, uh, talk about, uh, what maybe like you can laugh about it now or smile about it, but like, was there, uh, any good stories in there for, uh, things that just didn't go the way you thought they would.

16:23
the

16:51
you could go, we called it cereal spoon, and we spent a big chunk of money getting that company incorporated, and we were dropping, this is when I was doing hairspray on Broadway, but it was that entrepreneurial spirit that he was talking about, like what's next? How can we leverage all of this attention into something in business, knowing that entertainment is a roller coaster ride, and you're gonna be up and down no matter who you are. And that was very expensive, and then realizing that

17:21
pitfalls of that was that trying to open a spot in New York and what it would cost and all those things, trying to do it on our own dime. I mean, we spent a lot of money and lost a lot of money, but you learned that lesson as an entrepreneur. And then I was also 17 at the time. We went to get a business call and they were like, we're not giving you a loan. And I was like, why? And he was like, well, you're 17. You have no history or experience. And I was like, all right, well, that one's not going to work. So yeah.

17:49
That would crash and burn. And I kind of like the serial concept as a guy that likes some cereal. Who doesn't like cereal? You know, yes, well, I will say we were a bit ahead of the curve on and I think it was even a shark tank concept. Serial Killers is actually a successful company. That's the same concept. So there's a little plug for serial killers. They have that exact concept. They proved that it would work and it's been a successful. They have many locations. And but I was just trying to as an entrepreneur, you think about like, what do I love?

18:19
What am I passionate about grew up just eating cold cereal like, like just that was all I ate and I still think it's an awesome idea. Then we had a t-shirt company that we, that we attempted to launch that didn't do well, but these are the scars of an entrepreneur and I think you have to have, I don't believe in, in, in failure. I like the concept that fail. F-A-I-L stands for a faithful attempt in learning. There's

18:47
no such thing as a mistake, I call it being on the mistake learner's high. You have to have, like if you think of a great film, you think of all those mistakes that an actor had to go through to get that one take, but all those mistakes leading up to that beautiful Oscar winning take of the film, you wouldn't get there if you didn't have all those mistakes that led up to it. So I think it's important to reframe how you view mistakes on the entrepreneur's journey.

19:16
100%. So, uh, I couldn't have said it any better. And look, you already had a win like no one else has ever had, you know? So like, you know, rising together. So you can't be greedy, Angel. I feel like your dad there, you know, can't be greedy. You've had more wins than anybody's ever had, you know, 99.9% of the people. So, uh, speaking of wins, we got the wicked poster behind you. You mentioned some Broadway stuff. I know that's.

19:47
been part of the journey. What got you into Broadway? You know, I always looked up to people that, like Mark Wahlberg started off as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch and then he got into acting and he really started to stretch and of course a lot of people have done that since going back to Elvis, you know, breaking into to film and acting and Broadway was like the perfect thing for me because I was already singing and dancing and you have to be able to have that.

20:16
And then it was very meta because the first show I got was Link Larkin, the lead of Hairspray, who plays a teenage star on a show that's patterned after Dick Clark's American Bandstand. So in Hairspray, it's the Corny Collins show, but it was a very meta role. I was in it with Lance. Lance Bastrom in sync was playing Corny Collins. It was like a rock concert. We had George Wendt from Cheers playing

20:46
the Edna character, which is of course the character in drag that plays the mom. So it was just an amazing time in my life and it was two years. Started off as a sort of what seemed like a stunt cast and there was a 12 week contract and they resigned me four times and I ended up doing it for two years. And then that led to Wicked, which was really my dream role. And did that on both the tour and then on Broadway.

21:14
So thousands of performances on Broadway and also just getting into a slightly different audience there because a lot of the Broadway audience is also international. Some of them may or may not have known about O-Town but I felt like I had something to prove which was that I'm a talent outside of just being a boy band and that's what Broadway represented for me was an opportunity to show, hey, I'm not just this guy who you might think of as the spiky haired blonde kid from O-Town.

21:44
I've actually got some shops and that's what that that was an opportunity for me to try to prove myself in that world because as much as it was a win, the truth is when you're in a boy band, you get pegged. It's just like if you're in a sitcom, it's sometimes you see a sitcom star. It's like the biggest sitcom, but they can never break out from that role. And it's it's it's challenging to try to get people to see you as something else. And that's been my journey after that was.

22:12
It was an amazing success and O-Town will be, I have nothing but like appreciation for it and gratitude at the same time. It's been challenging to try to pivot out of it and be taken as more than just the quote boy band guy, if that makes sense. Oh, it makes total sense. I mean, George Costanza, I mean, you know, like Seinfeld, like, you know, like half that cast has never done anything but that. I mean, even, I mean, Jerry's Seinfeld struggled a bit, you know, obviously he's

22:42
Very few things to worry about. You know, his standup has been amazing and was he probably like still top 10 most wealthiest, uh, uh, uh, people, uh, on in, in Broadway art, excuse me, uh, Hollywood. But, uh, yeah, he's done. Okay. I don't feel too bad for it, but I'm not sure George has ever landed anything else. But, uh, yeah, you're right. I mean, it's like getting it. I'm sure it's not like they're taking seriously. It's just, they can't.

23:11
get out of that frame of reference. It's just like, you know, you're this 18 year old kid still like, or whatever. And now you're, you've got other abilities, but obviously you proven them. Um, being on tour, we talked to you pre episode. You even came through the whole town here of Greenville, South Carolina with the wicked tour. I remember the buses and everything else being around clogging up all the traffic. Yes.

23:40
So any future plans on the Broadway thing? I mean, is that kind of, I know we're about to pivot here a bit, but any future in Broadway or are you still interested? I think I will make my return to Broadway at a certain point. And I think the last show I did, you know, we were starting to, Bobby and I were already kind of...

24:07
creating the journey and the storyline of where I was going, which was into fitness and health and wellness. And interestingly, it starts on social media as a 90 day fitness challenge. And this is something I did all throughout the Broadway years. So a lot of people are like, he's on Broadway. But if you went to my social media, you saw I was just doing these 90 day fitness challenges and building an audience of people that were discovering me outside of that Broadway world, of that pop music world.

24:36
and just starting to follow me for fitness advice. And I've always been into like, you know, really been, fitness, music and acting were my three passions growing up. I thought as a teenager that I would go into fitness and try to use that success to pivot into Hollywood. And then it just happened in reverse. I fell backwards into a Hollywood music career. And then years later started exploring fitness again. And I think...

25:04
looking at the people who are in my category, pop stars like Jessica Simpson, who has launched an incredible international brand of shoes. And you look at Jessica Alba with the Honest Company. You look at, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow with Goop. And it was like, well, where can I take, where can I take this next? And starting from a place that feels authentic is I think really important. You can't fake it. And so for me,

25:32
living that lifestyle of being healthy was also what being a Broadway performer, which by the way is the most grueling, hardest job I've ever had, way harder than even being a pop star or rock star. Like you do eight performances a week and you are beating your body up and you have to take care of yourself like a peak performer. And so I was hiring all these peak performance coaches and all these different categories. I started sharing these tips and tricks.

25:59
how to get yourself to that higher peak performance level and really started building an audience in fitness and health and wellness very organically was how it all started. And so it dovetails with being a performer because you can't do Broadway unless you're taking care of yourself at a higher level, really like an athlete. You have to treat yourself like a high level athlete to be able to sing, to be able to dance, to be able to actually get on stage and knock out eight.

26:29
Broadway level performances a week, because people go see a Broadway show, those tickets are $180. They expect a certain level of performance, a certain level of energy. You have to take care of yourself like an athlete. And it was something I started just talking about organically on social media. And then Bobby and I were like, let's launch a product. Let's launch a supplement. And the very first concept was, I love caffeine, but I'm also caffeine sensitive. So,

26:59
When I perform, if I have coffee, it makes me too jittery because I'm already feeling nerves from performing. And so we created a product called Next Level Focus. We literally out of our closet, we launched it on Amazon. It became a best seller. And the concept was it's an energy product that has caffeine, but it's for people that are caffeine sensitive. So it's got a couple of ingredients in there that actually counteract.

27:27
the adrenalizing effects of caffeine. And this just came from being a coffee lover and reading message boards. On the internet, if you take L-theanine, which is a supplement people use for anti-anxiety, it's the number one popular supplement for anti-anxiety, you put that in your coffee, you'll have such a smoother caffeine experience. And I thought, well, if people are putting this in their coffee, let's just make it a supplement. And it hit, and that was how high level supplements

27:56
was born literally from an apartment closet and launched as an Amazon company, of course, in this new age of fulfilled by Amazon, which has been great. Ironically, I gained 40 pounds like he was on Broadway because I would just come to New York and go to like get cheesecake and bagels. And so I've always been on the business side. I don't have a lick of musical talent. I got kicked out of trumpet class growing up.

28:22
So it's our talent stacks have aligned well in terms of, you know, but we'll, you know, we'll backtrack a little bit in terms of the business, but, and we don't want to talk too much, but you know, I started working with a woman, Nicole Winneman, who was widely regarded as like the brand endorsement agent in Hollywood for music. She did Ellen's American Express, the with candies, Justin Bieber with Willy Wonka. And what happened was the, the

28:51
kind of market started shift where endorsements weren't really doing as well anymore. These big hundred million dollar, you know, Brittany and Pepsi deals because people started to get a little wiser to, hey, that doesn't mean they use the product. Didn't Brittany get caught drinking coke? No, he got caught saying that his favorite candy was a Cadbury product instead of a Willy Watt. It was right. But long story short, so it started to pivot to celebrity owned businesses instead. And that's when you started to see Jessica Simpson come up with the shoe line and

29:19
Sarah Jessica Parker with shoes and Jessica Alba with honest company. And, um, you know, and, and my background has just been working with other serial entrepreneurs, mentors, uh, bird, Bedrosian is one of both of ours mentors who invented life alert. I fall on and I can't get up and, uh, you know, it was an early investor in the UFC and tap out. And so when he started doing Broadway, like he said, we were like, we have this great audience that we can capitalize on, we have a social media presence.

29:46
Let's start laying the groundwork for on this visual medium of Instagram. You know, he looks good. We can kind of, uh, you know, use it as an excuse to basically show off more physique shots and those kinds of things, knowing that eventually we're going to build this audience and then we're going to monetize it. And that kind of was where we started. Yeah. I love that. I'm glad you pivoted into the social aspect. I wanted to talk about that and how, what, what, you know, what leverage that's brought and you know,

30:15
building off of Ashley's audience, obviously, both from the O-Town days to the Broadway, everything like that, what has been kind of the social media approach both for high level and Ashley's popularity? Well, I think it's important to also focus on pain points, like you said, and the journey, the ups and downs. Like he was the biggest...

30:42
promoter of get on YouTube now because YouTube's going to be the next big thing. And I honestly, I slept on it. I was like, I'm not sure. I just don't know if this is really going to take off or not. So I missed the boat on YouTube hard, like so hard. Yeah. Wap, wap, wap, wap. Years. If we, we have sound effects on our Friday episodes, if I had those, I'd be playing the read my lips, no, you got it wrong, Ashley. Yeah, I did. I got it.

31:10
Dead wrong, and so when Instagram started to come up, really started blowing up around like, obviously, I think it was 2012, 2013, 2014, somewhere around there. We were like, I was like, I'm not missing the boat on Instagram. I'm not missing the boat. So the very first 90-day fitness challenge, I started telling that story was back in 2014. And that segue with all of the Broadway touring and then going, and then Wicked, and then I did the tour,

31:39
the Broadway show, so it was like two and a half, three years of my life, and I'm telling these stories, and it's working, and I'm gaining this audience that's also outside of pop music. And now, of course, we see the emergence of TikTok, and I think, you know, but then you have the clubhouses of the world, where, you know, it seems like it's gonna be the next big thing, but then it fizzles, and so, I would like to hear- If you'd watched the Radcast three years ago, you'd have known Clubhouse was not gonna be the next big thing.

32:09
I got more audio that that anyone told everybody. No, no, it's it's it's hard. Everyone's looking at you like you're and you're like, just trust me. No, I know this a long time thing. It made no sense because everyone was in podcast was growing and you listen to podcasts when you have time. So live audio is when you may not have time. So it never made sense to me that you had to listen to audio only when it was live. I was like, no.

32:36
I listen to my podcast when I'm at the gym or on my time. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to participate always in them. And so, yeah, and that's the same frustration. I mean, you probably see it just in your business, Ryan, like when you're trying to convince a client, like, hey, you need to do this and they're pushing. And that's kind of, you know, in terms of that pain point, I was like, hey, this is something we need to focus on. And now TikTok, yes. Yes. TikTok, yeah. TikTok, YouTube, 10 years ago, yes. But you know, the other thing is like social media's work.

33:06
You know, it's like, you know, and I think as as marketing people, like we, you know, sometimes everybody thinks they can do it, you know, and that's the other thing. And you're like, yeah, technically, everybody thinks they can do it. But in terms of creating a real strategy around it, you know, even when it doesn't make sense at first, you know, and I think that's what we started doing in terms of high level and Ashley's personal brand is when he's in wicked, everybody else in wicked would be promoting wicked, you know, because they're in a Broadway show. And

33:35
You know, but our mentality was always, well, Wicked's a $3 billion show at this point. You know, they made their own by Universal. They're successful. It's not our job to promote Wicked. Wicked spends a ton of money on marketing. They spend a ton of money on media. And what we need to do is really be thinking nine months from now, this contract is going to be over. And if we spent these entire months, nine months promoting just Wicked, well, we haven't really built anything. So we start laying the groundwork for this fitness brand.

34:05
Again, kind of in the similar way to what Ashley was describing for our call about O-Town, we had no product, and O-Town had no record labels. So we're creating this awareness and we're starting to, my goal was to always, I want people to start recognizing you for what we're doing on social media, and they could come to it having no knowledge of your past whatsoever. And I think that's really where the power of social media starts to come. It's like anybody can grow on social media if they have huge...

34:33
outside drivers, whether it's on TV, whether it's a brand, whether it's this, but I'm really interested in the people that have come up on social media purely from the content they're creating on there. And so that's where I think we started to see that term where we would be out in public or you would even be in New York and people are like, oh my God, I love your fitness tips. I lost 50 pounds because of what you're telling me on social media. We started to see those store lines pop up so much that we're like, okay, now it's time to monetize.

35:02
Now it's time to take this from awareness to an actual product and start monetizing. And I think that's what, just to add real quick, that's what sold it for me is you start seeing the age of the social media influencer has bigger engagement and bigger numbers than movie stars. And you're like, Whoa, like, okay, so this vehicle is, has changed the game. It is a game changer. And I think that's why our talent stack really, we compliment each other because he's always really understood that world.

35:32
And coming just also too from a place of authenticity, like being a certified coach, like actually having the knowledge of teaching people these things is a pivot for myself, but I'm in complete control of that. I can create that brand. And I like the control that social media gives you to tell that story yourself, not through the medium of a record label, not through the medium of a television producer, et cetera. So it really puts the power in your own hands. It's an incredible tool.

36:01
That's a great point there at the end, I mean there's a lot to unpack with what you guys just talked about, but that at the end. Social media has democratized business. I mean, from music to acting, you can self produce, and I mean I'm not saying it's, you still gotta have money and some distribution and all that, I get all that, but social media has democratized so many things from business to production, anything like that because,

36:30
You can, if you're talented and you're driven enough, you can create, you can build your own audience and that just wasn't, you know, Oh town, you know, was built through TV and built through the music that you produced and all of that. But there's through the old, the radio channels and the television channels and traditional media. And now businesses are built through almost start from the ground up from social media. It's incredible. The, the old gatekeepers, so to speak.

36:59
have are they're trying to catch up. They're now pursuing, you know, these YouTube kids who are out earning, you know, Marvel. All of us. Yeah, all of us. Yeah, let's just call it pay to pay. They're driving Bentley's and Rolls Royce's and you're like, what do you do for a living? And they're like, oh, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like, what do you do for a living? And they're like, oh, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like, what do you do for a living? And they're like, oh, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like, I'm a TikTok star. And I'm like,

37:21
Um, all right. Well, but no, but to your point, Ryan, I think that's my type of threat. You know, it was such a threat to like the big content, you know, gatekeepers to Ashley's point, like record labels, they were so hesitant to get involved because it went from all of a sudden to get to have a record go, um, you know, really become successful. You needed, you needed money on, lots of money on radio. You needed touring, you needed it. And it was the labels that could pay for that. Same with movies. I had a meeting.

37:50
really high up at Paramount about three years ago when we were working on some streaming stuff with another company. And the head of the studio was like, you don't understand, we would never let people watch our films for free. And I was like, you don't understand. It's not that you're gonna let people, it's like you will have no choice. You will have to find a different way to monetize your content because this idea that you will never let people watch things for free, it's like it's so backwards at this point. I think COVID.

38:18
accelerated, right? Our push to this kind of new world of content consumption, content development, content distribution. But that's what we saw with fitness thing too, where it was like, all of a sudden, we go from, you know, people are in gyms and then COVID and people are like, how do I work out? And that's where we saw like, wow, we need to pivot very quickly to create a product and sell it because

38:42
people need this and it was really developed as a need and people just coming to us and being like, hey, your products are working for us, but I wanna know how do I take this to the next level? And so that's where we were like, let's create a coaching business that we can sell knowledge and we can really help people beyond having them buy, you know, a bottle of protein powder or whatever it was. Like now people need help to actually how to use it. And I think the democratization of that, it's also presented an issue where there's almost too much.

39:12
And so now it's like you get on and you really don't know what to do. And so even like trying to find knowledge, it's like, I think I could find 700 different ways to fix X problem. Now when you go on the internet, so you really need like somebody of authority to come in that you trust. And that's where we think Ashley's background has benefited so much. It's like people trust him, right? So if you grew up with him and you were into pop music and now you're in your thirties, had a couple of kids, you're trying to get back into shape.

39:40
You're going to feel a lot more comfortable hiring Ashley Parker Angel from O-Town because you grew up loving him than you might a complete stranger. And so that's where we feel like we've been building this business for 20 years and we're just now seeing the fruits of like that trust and that, that audience that we've, we've curated for. Yeah. You know, and let's have fun doing it because if you think about the pop culture element, we bring a lot of fun to what we do. We've built a community very similar to what Peloton has built where we have this incredible

40:10
international community. You might have been, maybe you were someone that loved pop music. We've got a lot of people that weren't necessarily the biggest fans of O-Town, but even if you were just a fan of boy bands in general, pop music in general, we also saw there was a hole in this space where there's not really anyone from my, from my category, so to speak, that's, that's gone this direction. It also worked out perfectly that naturally, authentically, this is something I've always been passionate about. So I think it was like,

40:37
combination of filling a real need in the marketplace and then providing a home solution during COVID when like that's nobody, I mean the gym shut down, nobody could exercise from an actual location. Everybody wanted to move to a home solution anyways. So it was a, it was sort of a perfect storm to be honest. Where we had a gentleman with high level where where's all this, uh, what's the future hold? Love that question. I mean, I think

41:04
You know, being fitness entrepreneurs, at this point we've realized there's so many different, there's so many different ways to be a fitness entrepreneur. We also want to focus on our core category of online fitness community. So we have high level performance academy, which is a virtual coaching academy where you get to work with me and we provide all the things that people need. We have custom nutritionists, giving you custom meal plans. We do...

41:31
live workouts, but we really do live coaching and it's a support community. And I think that the biggest pitfall, the number one reason people fail to get in shape is they say we don't have the motivation or accountability. And so we provide that for people online on a daily basis. It's a support community. We know support communities work for all different categories, but it's different than it's again, it's this new technology spin of

41:58
emerging technology that allows us to connect internationally and have be able to coach someone in Germany and Iceland and the Philippines and being able to connect with people through the internet this way has just been incredible because now you can work with people that you grew up admiring if they're offering a service like this. It's just been unlike anything I think people have experienced in a category like this. You know, you can, you can go watch the Backstreet Boys.

42:28
And how much is it for a VIP meet and greet for the Backstreet Boys? A lot. It's like $1,200 to meet the Backstreet Boys. About 500 plus the ticket. Right. For about a minute. Yeah. I think the goal to answer your question is to scale it, you know, right? It's like, how do we, how do we package what Ashley, you know, his energy, his ability to inspire people, to move people, you know, we've had people that have lost over a hundred pounds. We've had people whose entire.

42:56
in their entire lives have radically transformed from being part of this community. And I think we're constantly trying to find out like, how can we be more impactful with lower, you know, touch, right? And so we launched an app recently. And that's kind of our first entry into this kind of more of a mass market thing where, you know, there's only one Ashley. So it's like if we're leveraging him so much and you see, Tony Robbins has obviously done a great job with this where

43:23
You know, there's a way to kind of bottle up that energy and now put it into courses, now put it into even like additional coaches who can help. And so I think that's where we're that's our next hurdle is like, okay, we know this works. We know in its current iteration, we're changing lives. We're doing, you know, all these impactful things. But now instead of reaching hundreds of people, thousands of people, we need to take that next level to reach hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people. And so obviously, technology is going to

43:52
play a part in that, but it's, um, it's just talking to even, even just talking to other marketing people, talking to other, you know, the trends are changing so much and the technology is changing so much that it's just, it's just about staying ahead of that curve. Like what's the next, um, delivery system for, I think what we're offering is the challenge. Scale, baby scale. Holograms.

44:16
Ashley Parker-Angel. Yeah, I love that. Hologram in your living room. Work out with me and my hologram. Hey, it's coming back. Holograms are coming back. I'm telling you, Star Wars, it'll be here. It's... I agree. The Whitney Houston one in Vegas was a little weird, but I think they're gonna perfect it. I know. All right, I got one last question before we tell everybody where to find everything.

44:45
Oh, oh town coming. I saw the, you know, we're not breaking any news here, but, uh, we ever getting back together? We get in the band. Are we getting the band back together? Actually? I get that question a lot. I know they do too. I mean, the, the honest answer is there's no plans as of right now for that. Um, and you know, we we've had some brief discussions, but there's been no solid plans and it's

45:13
This new direction I'm going in is, is, I mean, it's so full time to be honest, like to have the time again, step back into being a band. It would cost me a lot in terms of the business that I now run. And so it's, you get to a point where I think when you are pivoting, you, you start realizing you have to make a decision and you have to start, if you are going to rebrand yourself, you can't be all over the place. And I think being a peak performance coach, like working with people.

45:41
one-on-one, like he said, helping people change their lives has been so rewarding for me on a spiritual level. For me, it has been, I love performing and it's awesome to see someone in the audience enjoying your performance. But now I'm working with people one-on-one to help them level up in their personal lives. And the feedback I get from people daily, like Jeff, who I helped lose 100 pounds, it's like, it is just...

46:08
an unbelievable experience when you help someone change their life. I feel like I went from jobs to career to now finding my purpose. And that, that is a very powerful thing to find them in my forties now. And I think this is the direction I want to stay ahead of them. I'm going to summarize for never say never. But it was a good reach out the producer of making the band.

46:35
recently did reach out and said, hey, how would you feel about doing a Making the Band TV reunion? I think I would be a bit more open to something like that than say, for instance, like, I'm never gonna be, O-Town got together and they tour as the four guys. They've been together longer now as this iteration than previous, so. Yeah.

46:57
So they've reunited and I mean, I would love to, you know, I would love to make, maybe there is an opportunity for a TV reunion or something like that in the future, but I celebrate my past and at the same time, I've also evolved to this new journey that I'm on now. And it's probably, it's for me, maybe that ship has sailed, but I do appreciate it and I love it. And I, like I said, there's nothing but gratitude and love for that time in my life because it's amazing.

47:27
but you build on it. So, uh, where can we keep up with you gentlemen? I know Ashley Parker, angel people, why we Google you, who knew it? How many Google searches you still get? I don't know, but, uh, we're going to keep up with all things business and, uh, personal. Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, people can follow me, of course, on, on my socials like Instagram, Tik TOK, Facebook, it's just Ashley Parker, angel, uh, people that want an affordable solution.

47:55
To get in shape, you can go to ashleyparkerangel.app. ashleyparkerangel.app. And you can sign up for the app I just launched, which is a really cool concept. It's actually, we didn't even fully get into this, but it's like the Netflix of fitness. And so I've partnered with a company called Playbook that offers a solution very similar to Netflix. It's $14.99 a month, and you actually have access to over 200 different coaches. So it's not just my strategies.

48:24
but you got 200 different coaches from all over, the best of the best offering their solutions and methods as well. So it's a lot like Netflix, you get on and there's so much content from health and wellness teachers of all kinds, meditation, yoga, nutrition, fitness, all of it. And it's only $14.99 a month. So we just recently launched that. Livehighlevel.com, highlevelperformanceacademy.com, amazon.com, forward slash, live high level, forward slash high level, so.

48:53
We're just search high level supplements, high level nutrition. We come up everywhere. We're on Amazon, we're on the web, we're on all the social media, but you'll find us we're there. We'll have to come back for round two and talk, uh, you know, the ins and outs of e-commerce and, uh, the, uh, the pluses and minuses of Amazon. Yeah. Unnecessary evil, uh, dancing with the devil, not the angel.

49:22
Uh, Amazon knows it's a necessary one. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you. It was awesome. Yes. Well, this has been so great to be on the Radcast. Thank you so much, Ryan. Yeah. Hey guys, you know where to find us? Theradcast.com. Search for Angel. You'll find all the content from today, all the highlight clips, everything you need to know about High Level. Bobby, Angel, everything. You know where I'm at.

49:49
Ryan Alford on all the platforms. Go follow me on TikTok, I'm blowing up. We'll see you next time on Radcast.