Will Henshall: Transform Distraction into Peak Focus with Functional Music

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Created: 6/5/2025 2:19:27 PM
Duration: 3463.314
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Hey, folks. This is Abel James and thanks so much for joining us on the show. Do you find yourself more distracted than ever? You're not alone. In today's rapid fire, hyper connected, dopamine driven modern world, harnessing true focus is a rare superpower.
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But understanding the subtle mechanics of human attention
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might just be the most valuable skill set in our increasingly distracted world. Today, we're exploring the extraordinary work of Will Henschel, a guy who doesn't just create music but deconstructs how sound interacts with our neurological
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operating system. Will is a musician, inventor, and entrepreneur
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who went from writing global number one hit songs to reverse engineering human focus like it's a complex guitar solo. So what happens when a rock star decides that brain science is more interesting than guitar riffs? How does a musician become the inventor who helps millions of people concentrate?
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And what secret sauce turns creative chaos into entrepreneurial magic?
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Like many of us, Will describes himself as unemployable.
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But to Will, that can actually be an advantage.
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Being unemployable means seeing opportunities where others see obstacles,
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whether in music, technology, or business.
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Successful entrepreneurs don't get everything right, but they're relentless.
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They keep adapting and moving forward.
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It's not about talent. It's about seeing the world from a unique and different perspective
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and having the guts to build something when everyone else says that it can't be done. Before we get to the interview, please take a quick moment to make sure that you're subscribed to this show wherever you listen to your podcast. And for bonus points, please leave a review for the Abel James Show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. To stay up to date and get behind the scenes goodies, make sure to sign up for my newsletter at AbelJames.com.
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That's abelJames.com.
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And I'm publishing a lot of exclusive ad free content on my new Substack channel. Make sure to check that out at AbelJames.Substack.com.
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See you there. Alright. In this conversation with Will, you're about to discover
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why different brain types require unique sonic approaches to maintain concentration,
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especially if you have ADHD,
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how to choose music to aid focus, flow, and productivity
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based on your brain type, why AI and generative art can't replace the emotional power of live human creativity and performance, and much more. Let's go hang out with Will.
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Welcome back, folks. Will Henshall is a start up entrepreneur,
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inventor, songwriter, composer, and CEO of metal dot men. Will founded The UK band at London Beat in the early nineties and wrote the global number one hit song, I've Been Thinking About You. In 2010,
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he started up Focus at Will, music streaming for work, which now has 2,000,000 users. Thanks so much for joining us today, Will.
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It's a pleasure.
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Thank you so much. I didn't write, Think About You on my own. I cowrote it. I was the main writer, but I cowrote it with the three amazing vocalists
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that were in the band with me. And,
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London Beat was an interesting project. It was me in the studio playing the instruments, you know, tracking everything up, and then these three super renowned soul vocalists who became, obviously, members of the band Working with them, I learned a lot about life, love,
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and a lot of things. But they were nearly twenty years older than me at the time. So Incredible.
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So for you, Will, was entrepreneurship
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first, or was it music that really drove you into that world?
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That is a really perfect question. I'll tell you why. To be a successful artist and, yeah, London Beat, we had a, you know, half a dozen really big hits. I've Been Thinking About You is the one that everybody knows. It was, yeah, it's still one of the most played songs from the nineties on the radio globally. Amazing. I was the BNI PRS writer of the year in '92. You know, it it was a fantastic time. To be a successful artist, you have to be an entrepreneur.
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You know that. If you're a photographer, you you gotta be an entrepreneur. If you're a fine artist, you gotta be an entrepreneur.
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And
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another
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sort of section of my life professionally
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has been inventing
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stuff, as you said earlier.
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And so as an inventor,
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I come from a long line of British inventors on my dad's side, also my mom's side,
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inventing, you know,
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industrial things and, you know, things that help people with handicaps of a ton of different things. Guess what? You gotta be an entrepreneur.
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So to be a successful
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inventor and to be a successful
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artist, you gotta figure out how to sell the damn widgets. Yeah. Right? So it was kinda built into me as you said. I'm originally I've lived in The US now for over forty years, but I was born in The UK. Never managed to lose the accent. You know?
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So
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come from,
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you know, a tradition of never go out and get a job, but always go and make a job.
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Right?
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You know? I think that's really what entrepreneurs
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mean. It means that
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you find it difficult to fit your square peg in a round hole. You find it difficult to work for someone else because you're like, really? Is this the best way of doing this?
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Yeah.
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I've heard you say that you're unemployable, which is kind of how that makes sense. I'm largely unemployable
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like a lot of the metal guys are, you know, in the traditional sense. What all that means is that
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we are entrepreneurial,
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and if we have a position I'm now talking about the metal men. We'll talk about this more in a minute. I know. But if if a typical metal guy works in an organization
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or for a fortune,
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you know, 500 company,
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his
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outlook is gonna be extremely entrepreneurial.
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Mhmm. He's thinking about, is this the right product? Is this the right market fit? Is this
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is this the best way of doing this? You know, our p and l could be improved by doing these things. And so we're always thinking from that perspective as opposed to clocking in and clocking out.
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Right.
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And I wonder too about the relationship between learning
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something like music, especially when you're younger, and just putting
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so many hours and so much effort, so much, you know, just time in a chair and with with your your passion,
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how that translates to later in life being able to focus that energy toward building something that's bigger than yourself in the form of a company.
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That does translate if you let it. It doesn't happen for all musicians, of course,
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but, those who kinda get after it, I I've seen some incredible transformations in people's career. And you also find that, you know, there are a lot of spinning plates. There's, it looks like career hopping or vertical hopping or something sometime. But what is for you especially, building Rocket Network and being involved in technology,
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music, entrepreneurship, all this time, what is the guiding principle, if there is one, or what is the thread that goes between these different things? There is one, and I bet it's exactly the same in your life, and that is purpose.
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Yeah.
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As a man,
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I'm making a huge but really
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accurate generalization
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that you will not be happy unless you are following your purpose, really happy.
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And your purpose can change
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as you go through life.
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And as you said earlier, yeah, I was, I was in a band, blessedly. We were assigned to a major label, did very well in the nineties. That was great. That was my purpose, to
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communicate with lots of people and to hear my music on the radio. That was that was my purpose.
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And then I got interested in technology, and my purpose changed. But the same
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core driver, you just put your finger on it, is
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that, yeah, now I'm doing this thing, and I'm gonna do this as great as I can. I'm never gonna give up. Yeah. You know, you're like a pit bull. You just don't let go. Yeah. And,
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the whole,
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ethos of being an entrepreneur is is not giving up and then eventually learning
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your lesson and going, okay, this one didn't work. I'll do another one, in terms of projects that we're starting on. What about you in in your life? Do you define what you do as purpose driven? And
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Absolutely. And as soon as it's not, I can't help but go in a different direction. So I'm zigzagging all over the place. Or at least from the outside looking at it, it appears that way. But there's not. There's a story and a and an arc in your life, right, as as you look back on it and you think about, you know,
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yeah, that sounded at the time, that was a really random thing to be doing, but actually,
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now I look back on it, benefit of hindsight, you go, oh, that was,
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yeah, that was a really good idea. Here's the for instance, I got really involved
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and interested in digital audio in the mid nineties in the just towards the tail of the London beat,
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era, which is I quit the band in '95.
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And digital audio
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was just
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really starting. Yeah.
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EMagic
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created
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Logic Audio, which Apple then bought, which is now Logic Pro,
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the one of the bigger DAWs that musicians use.
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And
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it was a digital version of a MIDI app, and it was very it used to break and but it was really interesting.
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And I got technically, my brother is a, a developer, an early,
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Internet,
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TCPIP developer, and he got me interested in FTP and other sort of low level protocols.
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And I was like, you know,
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if
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people's bandwidth increases
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and the computers get faster as they are doing, you're gonna be able to
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transmit
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files securely
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over this new thing, this new final thing called the Internet.
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And so my sort of side interest in
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being online, I've been online since the middle eighties. It was,
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the the well.com,
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CompuServe,
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AOL, all of those things back in the eighties. And that's what got me so at the time, you'd been like, you're a musician. You're in a well known band. What are you messing around with all of this nonsense in the computers for? Well, guess what?
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Yeah. Then we developed Rocket Network, which became
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one of the leading
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ways to to work securely on a track based collaboration system. We sold the company, that company, to, Avid in 02/2003.
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Wow. So, yeah,
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a zigzag that zigged back.
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Yeah.
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It's also been really interesting hearing you speak about your experience at bands in London Beat, and you're not saying,
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yes. I came out with this incredible hit that I wrote, and I played all the instruments, and it's all me. Look at how great I am. It's like, you know, I was a part of something that was really meaningful and helped put these guys together. And
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and maybe you can talk about that, how it's it's a kind of alchemical process almost, right, that
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that was much larger than yourself that came. Not only that.
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London Beat was
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five people
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effectively.
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There was me. I played the instruments and was the kind of
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the driving force of the music. The three vocalists, the lead vocalist, Jimmy Helms, and two other backing vocalists.
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And then there was our manager,
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Sandra Turnbull.
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Sandra was effectively a fifth member of the band in so many ways. And due to the band splits, she was effectively the fifth member of the band. She, at the time, managed the eurythmics
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with her then husband.
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Yeah. So she was connected.
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I mean, when I got the early ideas of the band, I was like, who do I need to I I really like the Euridics and Dave and I know Dave and and that's what kind of introduced me to her. And so
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the alchemy of the success
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was
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the four of us doing
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the musical side of it and writing the songs. It's all about a song. It's all about the material. Right? Getting stuff on radio. I've been a music producer before that, so I'd learned a lot about how to
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engineer sound so they sound good on FM radio. You know?
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But Sandra had a huge, huge amount
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to do with the success
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of the project.
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For instance,
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I was living in New York, moved back to The UK to to form the band, working as an engineer.
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We did some demos,
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got some terrific,
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deals underway, signed to RCA Records globally,
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but didn't sign to RCA Records for The USA.
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Why?
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Sandra Turnbull had been with RCA Records with the Eurythmics for The USA.
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At the time, RCA Records was a useless label in The USA. It was not a strong label at all. And so Sandra said,
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The US is about half of the global market,
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but we're not gonna sign to anyone. So we were, like, without a US deal for our first album. Sandra goes, trust me. We're, like, but that means that you're on half the advances,
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half the publishing, but everything is, like and even less than that because if you're not so we kept it we kept it free like this. And, like, Sandra was like, trust me. I'm like, okay. You got it.
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We released the second album, which had I've Been Thinking About You on it. Yeah. That one.
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That song hit number one in twelve, fifteen countries
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really fast without a US release.
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Oh my gosh. Now all of a sudden, we were getting phone calls from the heads of all The US labels.
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And
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Al Teller was the head of MCA Records. This was all driven by Sandra.
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Called us up, and he said,
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fellas, I wanna meet you. I think you got a number one record right here in The US. And he said, oh, here's the first class ticket. So he
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flew us to New York from wherever we were. We were on tour promoting somewhere, and we went into his office.
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And I'll tell you a funny story.
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He had the toupee,
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and we've been told, do not look at his hairline.
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Because every time he moved his head, his toupee would move. Of course, the one thing you're doing is, like, trying not to look at his hairline. I was like, man.
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Anyway, we sat and we played him the song, and he goes,
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I'm gonna make your dreams come true, fellas. And they wrote us a really nice check. And then in due course, indeed, yes, it hit number one in The US and and a lot of other fantastic dreams came true. However, that story was entirely
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managed and created by Sandra Turnbull.
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I mean,
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huge, huge respect to her for, like, seeing that. It was amazing. Also, it was really great being managed by a woman.
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Right?
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Because she's she is tough. I mean, she'd been managing Annie Lennox. Right?
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So she was used to, like, doing deals. Right. But without her, the alchemy of the band would never have happened, and I'm still really close to her. Today, we're still really great friends. That is so amazing. And
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what is it about some tracks that that hit
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while others don't?
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I really wish I could tell you.
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I won an award. As I was saying earlier on, one of the awards that I got at the time was,
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BMI PRS writer of the year in nineties '92 maybe, and they sat me next to Paul McCartney
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at the table. I'd I'd kind of met him briefly, but not sitting next to him at dinner, you know, at least McCartney.
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And
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I said to him, listen, Paul.
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He said to me, first of all, he goes, I like your song, lad.
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I was like, I like all of your songs too, mate.
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He was great. And I said, Paul, how'd you write a song? He goes, I don't ever know. I'll just look up there and wait for it to happen.
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You don't know. I said, I got one more question for you. Can you read music? Because when I was a kid, piano lessons, they're always trying to make me read music, and I found it very difficult to do. I can't really sight read.
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And he says, no, lad. The notes get in the way the dots get in the way of the notes.
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The dots get in the way of the notes. I was like, oh, if I'd have known that when I was six years old struggling to play the piano off the sight reading, I would have been like, well, Paul McCartney can't read music.
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Yeah. Well, it's a fundamentally different skill, isn't it?
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Yeah. Yeah. Songwriting is
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absolutely, for me,
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to just to cycle back to your question,
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there's the zeitgeist,
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which is
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the collective consciousness consciousness that we humans live in. Like, right now, at this moment, you and I are alive at the same time, and everyone else on the planet is alive at the moment. There's sort of a zeitgeist of a wave of consciousness, like we're all experiencing
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time now together. And if you're a writer, you're able to plug into that,
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plug into the kind of the feel of the generation, you're able to kinda actively somehow,
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subconsciously
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integrate that into what you're doing,
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then it'll happen.
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And that is you just gotta be in the right time at the right place. You gotta be aware of being in the right time at the right place to have the right management. This is a music business back in the nineties. It's still the same today. You gotta have the right
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influencers on board. You've got to have the right mix. You've got to have the right melody. You've got to have something. So there's a lot of pieces to find out, but ultimately,
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it's about the zeitgeist.
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It's about plugging into that intangible.
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And trust me, I have tried to recreate I've Been Thinking About You many times.
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Never managed to do it. Yeah. The other hits that we had in London beat Better Love, Can We Do,
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etcetera,
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were quite different
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feels and and and to to the big hit. You know? Yeah.
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Do you still incorporate writing into your daily or weekly or sometimes practice? What does that look like? Yeah. Absolutely, I do.
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When I am
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trying
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to solve
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a business strategic or a business logical
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problem,
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I do one of two things. I either go and sit with my dogs,
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and they just kind of dogs are all about right now. You know, they don't care about anything they like, what about now? You know? Or I go and sit at the piano and pick up a, guitar.
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Mhmm. And that somehow
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disengages your brain
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and allows
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the problems to happen in the background.
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Now you're a musician. Yeah. What about you? Does it work like that for you or not? Yeah. Very similarly.
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As long as I'm not focusing on the words. Right? So if I'm just
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kind of cruising along and letting my fingers do the playing on the piano or guitar,
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then my mind is free. Yeah. And I often do that in between,
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like, if I have a stack today, like, today in between interviews, I found that if I can instead of going out and scrolling on Twitter or doing whatever else I probably would just naturally do, if I let myself do it, I'll intentionally say, no, no, no. I'm gonna go sit over there. I see my guitar in the corner, you know, and then I sit down at the couch and kinda just come back to baseline, let my mind wander a little bit. And I think that that's that's really the magical place
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where stuff comes in and hot you know, those ideas just come straight into your ear or whatever Paul was talking about. You know,
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you're channeling something larger than yourself, hopefully. But that can also manifest as a cool business idea. It doesn't have to be a banging song. Right.
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I did, the music a few years ago, some of the music for a TV show called Genius about Albert Einstein.
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I think it was on Discovery.
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And I discovered that
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Einstein
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used to play the violin, and he used to play very specific
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Mozart, in particular, pieces on his violin
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when he needed to think.
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And so he would go and pick up his violin, and he was a quite a competent player, and he would play these pieces.
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And I found out what some of them were, and I did some electronic versions of those pieces that were
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used as part of the promotion for the for the TV show.
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And it was really interesting
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kind of dialing into
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what
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aspects
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of that sort of Baroque music, you know, early Mozart, later Bach,
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was able to kind of throw you into a, a space where
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you disengaged your conscious brain. You're still kind of it's like looking at something through soft eyes. Right? You're like, you got the problem. You're gonna put it back there, but now you're gonna listen to
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this thing.
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The album's not that particular album's on, Spotify. If you just look at Focus at Will
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maybe it's called Genius. I forget. Anyway, Focus at Will on Spotify, you can find it.
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And,
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it's, so what we're doing here is time
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on it. It's been happening a long time. It's good enough for good enough for Einstein. It's certainly good enough for you and me, brother.
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Well, let's talk about, music in the brain and and focus it will because,
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I think,
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a lot of people agree
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that music is in their life, but they don't necessarily know why.
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Or maybe more importantly, how they can use it or or adapt it a little bit,
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to help them produce better outcomes, whether that's focus, sleep.
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You could really modulate
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your own, physiology
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through sound in incredible ways, and you don't even have to be a a player or a musician to do so. So maybe you can just riff on that a little bit a little bit, like, how you got into
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functional music as well as where it's all going.
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Right. Well, you just put your finger on it. Functional music is different than music for entertainment.
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Right? So functional music traditionally would be music for a funeral
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or music for a wedding ceremony
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or music for a,
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at a place of worship. These are functional pieces of music. They're not for entertainment. It's a part of who we are as humans.
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Have you ever been to a wedding, talking about weddings, where the DJ has completely misread the crowd, perhaps on a fairly regular basis?
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All the time. Yeah. Apart from the course.
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Well, here's another one from Adam, and
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You
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know? Everyone's like, this is the worst DJ ever.
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The best one I ever saw was a wedding where the DJ
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played How Deep is Your Love,
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for the father daughter dance.
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I was like, oh, he wants to really listen to the lyrics.
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Sometimes you gotta listen.
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But being serious about it, if you are an event like that
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and the DJ plays the wrong song in the set, it completely blows the vibe of the evening. Yeah. You know, we've seen it happen again. Now we're gonna play a little bit of ACDC. You're like, no. No. No. No. Don't do that.
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So
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the power of the playlist is a thing. And in 02/2010,
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I
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got really interested
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in
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how some people
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listen to some types of music
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to help them
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work or study.
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And
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I'd assumed
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that
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it's easy. It's just like one type of music and listen to it, and it works. Right? I had a friend who was a physician,
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and he listened to Chariots of Fire, that song from
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the do do
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do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Remember that? By Vangelis.
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That he just listened to that track on repeat while he was studying. Just that. Over and over and over and over and over. It was his study music.
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And I thought, well, that's interesting, so maybe that's got something to do with it. And I meet other people who then would listen to
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talk radio in one ear, a game of some kind, you know, football on the other
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ear. They've got, you know,
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some kind of chat app going here and, and then they're studying in the center. I'm like, that's a lot of stuff going on
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for that. And then other people who always have to have novelty, new types of tunes all the time.
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And so it became clear to me that we're all kind of different.
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Mhmm. And that led me on a path to focus at will, which is, an app. People are listening. You can find it on the store for, Android,
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and iPhone and also on the web.
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And,
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we discovered that
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I raised a bit of money for the company. We discovered that different people
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have very different responses
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to different types of music. Mhmm. And it's to do with your brain type, and it's to do with ADHD,
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believe it or not. So what is Focus at Will? It's a
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music streaming service that has unique music you can't find anywhere else that
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is designed specifically
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for people who
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are easily distracted,
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which is about
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fifteen percent of the population.
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I guarantee it's you and me, both. It's guys it's pubans like us. All the fun people. Right.
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We're just people who need to have a lot of stimulation to be able to focus on one thing.
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Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire as far as that goes, like with ADHD. Right? Can you talk about that? Because it's it's not immediately obvious what's going on.
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Yeah.
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So
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I started the company in 02/2009,
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got investors
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from Singularity University
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and a and a few other places,
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and did a lot of
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actual
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repeatable
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science. This is all, you know, scientific method. This is all double blind
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to to figure this out. It turns out that
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the more ADD you are, the more easily distracted you are. Actually,
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your brain
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is underclocking.
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So this is the way it was explained to me
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by my science team in Fockemull. They said, you've got two parts of your brain. They've got your consciousness here, right, the front of your brain, and then you've got a clock at the back which is saying,
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talk to Abel.
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Talk to Abel.
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Talk to Abel. So I can concentrate because this is like
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in a rowing team, you've got the the cocks at the back going, Paul. Paul. Right? So
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this part of your brain which allows you to keep on focusing is just like a clock that says talk to Abel. Talk to Abel. Now if that clock is running slowly,
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what happens? It goes talk to Abel. And now I'm like,
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that's a nice looking squirrel. I'm I think I left the but talk to Abel. Oh, sorry, bro. What were you saying? Right. And now, it goes to talk to Abel. Now I'm like, oh, man. I gotta get some stuff for tonight, and, I gotta put some gas in the car. He goes talk to Abel. I'm saying, oh, sorry, bro. I was gone. So,
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weirdly,
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your brain is underclocking.
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Now when you take stimulants,
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obviously, we all know about the amphetamines that, you know, kids take, anybody with ADHD can get. It what it does is it speeds this clock up. So it goes talk to Abel, talk to Abel, talk to Abel. I'm like, I gotcha.
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It's going talk to Abel, dah dah dah dah dah
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dah. We found that that same
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response
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can be clocked by music of a specific type and then a specific energy.
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And so it is effectively going
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focus,
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focus, focus.
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The key is it's different for everybody, and the Vocational system has a quiz when you when you log on to it that that based on a number of questions like, how much coffee do you drink? How old are you? Are you a man or a woman? It's different. Men and women are different in terms of the way they focus and the
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and, the way their the way their attention works.
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And
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so people with significant ADD
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need
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crazy,
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crazy sounds.
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Again, if you look on folks at Will website, you can hear some of this. Sounds like the stuff that works well for
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many people sounds like a car door slamming furiously and repeatedly.
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At 200 beats per minute.
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Well, this is what I always wondered. You know, going to one of those fancy schools as an undergrad, a lot of my, people who I lived next to, roommates, whatever, would have their own music, and I always liked to listen to kinda like soulful funk, New Orleans style,
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not just straight ahead beats, but I kinda had my own thing. And then
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a guy who became one of my best friends, lived right next door, and his thing was death metal. And, like, two of her beats, you know,
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the whole time, like, this is his study music. This is his relaxing music. This is, like, I'm falling to sleep to this music. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't understand. I couldn't even walk in the room a lot of the time. So you explaining how we're all just wired a little bit differently now. Speeding his clock up, which when I which enabled him to relax.
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Yeah.
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The other thing about,
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the focus at Will's system, this is true of any means that you're trying to listen to while you're working, is we are hardwired to listen to the human voice, humans.
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If you're
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right now, if you hear someone talking outside your door, your attention will be, is that
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fight or flight? Is that someone bringing me a sandwich, or is that someone coming in to hurt me with something? Right? So we evolutionarily
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have
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developed a, a sort of a knack of listening for human voices. So if you hear music that's got a human voice in it, you're gonna pay more attention to it with your fore minds, with your conscious mind.
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So
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you really have gotta find music that has no vocals in it. And if it's EDM that has no vocals or any sounds
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that sound like vocals, breaths and
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these kinds of things, you're gonna pay attention to it.
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Also,
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we pay attention to dopamine hits. And so
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EDM has
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the drop
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that comes after a breakdown. Right? We're all familiar with that. We're all standing on the dance floor. There's a breakdown. We We got our hands up like this. We're waiting. The DJ goes.
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And the beat's dropped. Right? When that happens, you get a dopamine hit. So if you're listening to EDM
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while you're studying,
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there's a dopamine hit, it's gonna knock you out of your concentration, and it's gonna cause you a slight attention
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deficit situation.
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So
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on the folks that will,
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EDM channels, there's quite a lot of them. They don't have breakdowns or drops, most of them. They just power through because then you're just like, on the train, it's going talk to label, talk to label. You got it, man. I gotta turn this off because my head's stop it.
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Well, because music for entertainment kinda brings you through this experience of emotions, right, with kind of like this
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downplaying and going back up and climaxing and back. But
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if if you're being functional about it, you you don't want any of that. You just wanna keep the train chugging ahead, right, which allows you to focus for longer than you otherwise would. So then how do you know when you're out of gas or when you should take a break
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when you're kind of enhancing the experience with music like this? Yeah. We have a a researcher that we'll we'll work with a lot who's an expert in brain models and psychology,
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doctor Julia Mossbridge.
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And she said to me when I first met, I said, I wanna try and find the music which
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is most helpful and is
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keeping
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people
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focused, but yet is not sort of noticeable, that isn't you know, it's not grabbing you in the same way. She said, well, the first thing you gotta do is the opposite. We wanna find out which songs are the most distracting.
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I was like, what what what do you mean? She goes, you can test it. Here's some standard tests.
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You stick people up. You give them headphones. You play them these five songs, and then you can watch what they're trying to do in the standard. You can measure how distracted someone is. Mhmm. So I was like, okay.
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So we looked, did a did a search for the five most popular songs in the world,
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whatever they were.
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And we found the number one most distracting song that almost no one can concentrate to if you play it in the background is Snoop.
410
00:40:58.529 --> 00:40:59.589
Drop your dog. It's
411
00:40:59.889 --> 00:41:00.709
hot. Snoop.
412
00:41:01.889 --> 00:41:03.889
If that comes on, your brain just goes,
413
00:41:04.289 --> 00:41:05.749
where was I again? Wow.
414
00:41:06.289 --> 00:41:14.524
Second one was The Beatles She Loves You. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was that comes on, love them or hate them. If that comes on, your attention
415
00:41:15.144 --> 00:41:16.364
gone. It's amazing.
416
00:41:16.904 --> 00:41:18.364
The third thing was
417
00:41:18.744 --> 00:41:21.084
I'm dreaming of a wine in Christmas.
418
00:41:21.944 --> 00:41:24.924
Really? I think or happy birthday, one of those two. Yeah.
419
00:41:26.024 --> 00:41:26.764
And then
420
00:41:27.139 --> 00:41:29.399
there's a couple of u two tunes in there. I think
421
00:41:29.699 --> 00:41:35.479
Beautiful Day was one that was really distracting. It's a beautiful day. Remember that? Yeah.
422
00:41:36.899 --> 00:41:38.439
That was a really intriguing,
423
00:41:39.394 --> 00:41:47.974
especially with Snoop. I mean, it's an amazing record. It's one of the best records of all time in my opinion. It is so well recorded. Yeah.
424
00:41:48.434 --> 00:41:50.054
And to watch the data,
425
00:41:51.714 --> 00:41:52.854
it'll go snoop.
426
00:41:53.234 --> 00:41:55.759
I'm like, that's where everybody lost their concentration
427
00:41:56.379 --> 00:41:57.359
in the tests.
428
00:41:57.979 --> 00:41:59.839
So that then meant we reverse
429
00:42:00.219 --> 00:42:01.279
engineered that
430
00:42:02.379 --> 00:42:05.359
into, like, what is the The opposite of snoop.
431
00:42:05.819 --> 00:42:06.319
Right?
432
00:42:07.179 --> 00:42:12.244
To to answer your question about how do you manage the time, there's an attention zone
433
00:42:12.704 --> 00:42:13.444
of about
434
00:42:14.304 --> 00:42:19.444
twenty five minutes, and almost no one can concentrate through twenty five minutes.
435
00:42:19.904 --> 00:42:20.804
And so
436
00:42:21.504 --> 00:42:27.189
the system has a built in way of just kind of changing the energy or
437
00:42:27.569 --> 00:42:29.029
better yet is to actually
438
00:42:29.569 --> 00:42:34.069
work in, you know, you probably heard of the Pomodoro technique, which is twenty minute
439
00:42:34.449 --> 00:42:35.349
slots. Right?
440
00:42:35.649 --> 00:42:39.429
So best thing to do is to run-in multiples of 20.
441
00:42:40.334 --> 00:42:46.914
Sweet or twenty five minutes is a good one because if you do if you're really dialed in and you've got the music working and
442
00:42:47.854 --> 00:42:50.194
you're really in a in a flow state,
443
00:42:50.654 --> 00:42:55.429
seventy five minutes is the absolute maximum you can do. You you'll just be like
444
00:42:56.309 --> 00:43:01.209
and you've used up the your brain chemicals, you know, internally. You just need to recharge.
445
00:43:01.989 --> 00:43:05.609
The last thing I will say about folks at will is that it doesn't work for everybody.
446
00:43:06.389 --> 00:43:07.769
One person in three
447
00:43:08.184 --> 00:43:10.444
can't listen to music or anything when they're working.
448
00:43:11.304 --> 00:43:16.364
Gotta be a quiet library or noise canceling headphones. Right? Another one person in three,
449
00:43:16.824 --> 00:43:18.204
yeah, music works
450
00:43:18.744 --> 00:43:21.964
some of the time. It's kinda cool. But one person in three,
451
00:43:23.189 --> 00:43:26.649
music works really well when they dial in the right music.
452
00:43:27.429 --> 00:43:30.409
Yeah. On top of that, there's another thing. If you're a musician,
453
00:43:30.789 --> 00:43:32.329
people mentioning no names,
454
00:43:32.709 --> 00:43:35.929
what happens is you're always listening to the
455
00:43:36.774 --> 00:43:46.794
arrangement. You're always listening to the key. That snare's a bit loud. Yeah. I like that guitar part. What key is this in? Right? And it's very difficult to turn that off. So we found,
456
00:43:47.254 --> 00:43:47.754
generally,
457
00:43:48.374 --> 00:43:49.354
if you're a musician
458
00:43:49.929 --> 00:43:56.509
and you're trying to listen to music while you're working, you'll find it difficult to find music that is not distracting because
459
00:43:57.529 --> 00:43:58.509
you're a musician.
460
00:43:58.809 --> 00:43:59.309
Yeah.
461
00:44:00.409 --> 00:44:04.269
I I definitely echo that. And, actually, when I was an undergrad, we did a few studies,
462
00:44:05.004 --> 00:44:06.944
looking into this, how distractible
463
00:44:07.404 --> 00:44:07.904
music
464
00:44:08.524 --> 00:44:15.984
can become for people and also how different types of music have these different effects. And I wonder whether your results matched ours.
465
00:44:16.364 --> 00:44:20.409
They did. They did. Aside from it was a level of degrees where
466
00:44:20.949 --> 00:44:22.009
instead of avoiding
467
00:44:22.549 --> 00:44:26.729
all vocals entirely, which worked the best for for most people
468
00:44:27.029 --> 00:44:36.614
compared to the control. So no music and then just purely instrumental music and then the same exact music with vocals or the same exact music with vocals in another language.
469
00:44:37.554 --> 00:44:39.014
If you understand the language,
470
00:44:39.554 --> 00:44:41.894
it's the worst. It's most distractible.
471
00:44:42.434 --> 00:44:43.334
You got it.
472
00:44:43.669 --> 00:44:45.609
If you Pop it like it's hot. Yeah.
473
00:44:46.149 --> 00:44:49.689
If you didn't understand the language, but you kind of heard that it was a music,
474
00:44:50.149 --> 00:45:00.854
or you heard that it was a human voice, it sounded like a human voice, that was better than understanding the lyrics. But there was, like, kind of this gradient involved. And I imagine that everyone also
475
00:45:01.314 --> 00:45:02.054
being different
476
00:45:02.594 --> 00:45:33.894
complicates this immensely because that would translate, you know, across you you would have to compare Westerners to Easterners and women to men and all sorts of different things are going on. But I do know for a fact that there are certain people, and and a lot of them come from my family or also musicians where it's like, if you hear a bad song come on and you're just, you know, out of the bar or you're just shopping or something like that, you cannot, like, I have to run out of there after a certain I've got a tolerance, and once I'm past that tolerance, I gotta get out of out of there. And most people are just like, I didn't even realize there was music on. But for me, it's absolutely
477
00:45:34.514 --> 00:45:35.014
intolerable.
478
00:45:35.314 --> 00:45:36.774
Is it like that for you, Will?
479
00:45:37.759 --> 00:45:42.179
Yeah. I've learned to kind of ignore it Yeah. A little bit more than I used to.
480
00:45:43.119 --> 00:45:44.019
You know, you hear.
481
00:45:47.919 --> 00:45:52.019
I'm like, oh, man. I'm just oh, can you just turn? Oh, woah.
482
00:45:52.614 --> 00:45:58.314
My local supermarket here in LA, it it has a two playlist, one of which is fantastic.
483
00:45:58.774 --> 00:46:03.994
All your favorite songs from the eighties, and one which is dreadful, all your worst songs from the eighties.
484
00:46:05.254 --> 00:46:06.394
Yeah. I'm just saying.
485
00:46:07.079 --> 00:46:18.939
You said that you have a, like an assessment that people can go through to see which type they are. Correct? There's a quiz there's a quiz at the, front end of the system. There's a free trial, and there's a quiz. It's got about a 60% accuracy of predicting
486
00:46:19.319 --> 00:46:29.094
which kind of music will work best for you. And you asked me about, do I still write? The answer is yes. I have a channel of my own on the system, the folks at war system, called Nature Beat.
487
00:46:30.514 --> 00:46:30.994
And it's,
488
00:46:32.194 --> 00:46:34.339
kind of three different flavors.
489
00:46:34.639 --> 00:46:40.499
The the system has three different energy levels for any of the channels. There's sort of a slower, medium, and a faster level.
490
00:46:40.799 --> 00:46:42.259
Nature Beat's the most successful,
491
00:46:42.879 --> 00:47:08.529
most popular channel on the system, actually. So, yeah, that's what I've been doing recently. Not London Beat, but Nature Beat. It's got the sounds of nature on it as well as a bunch of music stuff. That's wonderful. Yeah. Because the that's another thing. Some people really do well with the sounds of nature, but most most people do. But some people also do even better, especially the ones who came from New York, with sounds of a city out behind them, with the sirens and the the honking horns and the noises.
492
00:47:09.069 --> 00:47:13.329
It's fascinating how we're all wired differently in that sense. Well, if you look
493
00:47:13.964 --> 00:47:19.984
at the brain in terms of brain function and you look in an MRI, there's been a few tests.
494
00:47:20.284 --> 00:47:32.599
There's been a few research projects about this, not ours, but well known ones. And you look at which areas of the brain are impacted by our sensors. Right? So your skin, of course, you can feel that,
495
00:47:32.899 --> 00:47:40.519
your eyes, so your visuals, a percentage of your brain lights up when you see stuff. But what is intriguing is that you're hearing,
496
00:47:41.699 --> 00:47:45.244
the parts of your brain that are affected by your hearing,
497
00:47:45.564 --> 00:47:51.184
is greater than any other, sense. And so we actually live in an audio
498
00:47:51.484 --> 00:47:58.064
based world. For instance, you can close your eyes and you can't see anything, but you don't have ear lids.
499
00:47:59.709 --> 00:48:05.889
Right? Yeah. And people, you go around someone's house with a kid, and you're like, shh, don't wake the baby. Right? Well,
500
00:48:06.909 --> 00:48:11.169
the kid's always listening. So from the minute you're born till the minute you're not here,
501
00:48:11.544 --> 00:48:13.804
you're hearing stuff whether you're awake or asleep.
502
00:48:14.504 --> 00:48:15.404
And so
503
00:48:17.704 --> 00:48:18.504
we are all
504
00:48:19.304 --> 00:48:25.244
you know, we're very, very sensitive to the sound of footsteps, to the sound of twigs breaking,
505
00:48:26.179 --> 00:48:29.879
and the sound of someone breathing behind your neck. You know? You're like, oh, dear.
506
00:48:31.859 --> 00:48:33.699
So everything that you've learned about,
507
00:48:34.099 --> 00:48:35.159
functional music
508
00:48:35.459 --> 00:48:36.339
combined with,
509
00:48:36.819 --> 00:48:38.039
your career in music,
510
00:48:38.594 --> 00:48:52.934
What where does that leave you in terms of your own daily practice and and how you might use music, whether it's in the background? And you talked about, you know, just kind of brainstorming while you're playing, but how else has it showed up in your life or how else have you changed your approach based upon what you've learned?
511
00:48:58.939 --> 00:49:00.479
I've got much more interested
512
00:49:02.379 --> 00:49:03.599
in the intangible,
513
00:49:04.779 --> 00:49:07.359
as the years have gone on, which is
514
00:49:08.699 --> 00:49:09.519
why do
515
00:49:10.254 --> 00:49:10.754
certain
516
00:49:11.614 --> 00:49:17.474
vocalists I'm a big, big fan of vocal music. Why do some vocalists have the ability
517
00:49:18.254 --> 00:49:18.754
to
518
00:49:19.934 --> 00:49:21.234
hypnotize an audience?
519
00:49:22.749 --> 00:49:27.009
You know, Aretha Franklin, if you were ever lucky enough to see her live,
520
00:49:27.469 --> 00:49:28.289
it was like,
521
00:49:29.549 --> 00:49:34.929
it was like being in the presence. Like, you two hours have gone by, and you have no idea what happened. You know?
522
00:49:35.234 --> 00:49:35.974
Annie Lennox,
523
00:49:36.274 --> 00:49:50.089
you know, with London Beat did a few shows with Eurythmics back in the day. And Annie used to do the same thing. She would stand on stage at the time. She was the most successful artist in the world, female diva for a for a few years in the eighties. And the entire you know, 25,000
524
00:49:50.089 --> 00:49:51.389
people would just be, like,
525
00:49:51.849 --> 00:49:52.349
transfixed.
526
00:49:53.849 --> 00:49:55.309
Why? How does that happen?
527
00:49:56.169 --> 00:49:56.669
And
528
00:49:57.849 --> 00:49:59.229
it starts getting antithesis
529
00:49:59.609 --> 00:50:04.354
as to, well, they're great singers, and they can just but I think it's more than that. I think
530
00:50:05.854 --> 00:50:08.114
when someone like that
531
00:50:08.414 --> 00:50:08.914
sings,
532
00:50:09.294 --> 00:50:12.594
what they're doing is they're connecting people who are listening to
533
00:50:12.999 --> 00:50:16.619
universal energy, to source, to God, if you like. That and
534
00:50:17.159 --> 00:50:30.454
you we've all been in that experience where someone is particularly vocalist, but it's true of guitarists as well. Eric Clapton did his own guitar. Even if you don't like Clapton, if you're in the audience and he's playing, you're gonna get the hit because it just, like, connects you to the
535
00:50:30.754 --> 00:50:31.254
greater
536
00:50:31.634 --> 00:50:34.454
the greater connection of us all. And so
537
00:50:36.514 --> 00:50:37.414
I've been
538
00:50:38.514 --> 00:50:48.919
very supportive of of singers that I've met who can do that. And it it needn't be someone at a world class level. This could be someone in your local church, or it could be someone that you know who's a friend, and somehow,
539
00:50:50.819 --> 00:50:55.159
they open their mouth, they sing a few words, and all of a sudden, you're just transported. It's magical.
540
00:50:56.259 --> 00:50:57.479
And that's a
541
00:50:58.394 --> 00:51:01.214
critical part, especially in these troubled times, of
542
00:51:01.674 --> 00:51:02.174
being
543
00:51:02.634 --> 00:51:07.614
able to connect with everybody through what is it's almost an active experience
544
00:51:08.474 --> 00:51:11.694
listening, being in the presence of someone singing like that. Mhmm.
545
00:51:12.399 --> 00:51:13.139
You know?
546
00:51:15.039 --> 00:51:18.099
Yeah. So there's a new generation of fantastic
547
00:51:18.799 --> 00:51:20.179
musicians coming through,
548
00:51:20.719 --> 00:51:23.699
kids today who are, like, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.
549
00:51:24.079 --> 00:51:24.479
And,
550
00:51:25.039 --> 00:51:26.659
I think there's gonna be a
551
00:51:27.039 --> 00:51:27.539
counter
552
00:51:28.854 --> 00:51:36.234
revolution or a renaissance of live players because the AI music and gen art of all kinds, which is generative
553
00:51:36.854 --> 00:51:41.354
art, visuals, music, da, da, da. And I think that we humans will
554
00:51:41.759 --> 00:51:42.259
inevitably
555
00:51:42.799 --> 00:51:43.199
have,
556
00:51:44.159 --> 00:51:52.739
an interest in it probably won't be everybody. It's not like, a new big movement that the whole world looks at, but I think there's gonna be a significant movement
557
00:51:53.039 --> 00:51:55.859
of younger players coming through who are amazing,
558
00:51:57.334 --> 00:52:00.314
talents. There's a a group called Tone six.
559
00:52:01.014 --> 00:52:02.874
They're a group of young New Zealanders.
560
00:52:03.494 --> 00:52:05.834
Tone six, if you look them up, you'll find them.
561
00:52:06.134 --> 00:52:07.274
Amazing vocalists.
562
00:52:07.654 --> 00:52:09.274
They're like 17, 16.
563
00:52:10.569 --> 00:52:20.189
I love that. Do you worry about, you know, arts being taken out of the schools at the same time that AI is gobbling up a lot of the the jobs? And it it I like,
564
00:52:20.649 --> 00:52:31.944
humans obviously need to have a future that that involves art and music and playing, that sort of thing, in one way or another. But it's hard to envision what that looks like, especially for the the generations coming up.
565
00:52:32.644 --> 00:52:35.624
It's hard to envision what it looks like. You said it yourself.
566
00:52:36.484 --> 00:52:36.984
Again,
567
00:52:39.489 --> 00:52:41.029
I never say never because
568
00:52:41.409 --> 00:52:43.669
it's impossible to know, but I cannot
569
00:52:44.049 --> 00:52:45.429
see how an AI
570
00:52:45.809 --> 00:52:47.269
voice, however well
571
00:52:48.369 --> 00:52:56.024
and effective and how much of an illusion the AI voice is, can stand on a stage and transfix 25,000
572
00:52:56.024 --> 00:52:57.004
people by connecting
573
00:52:57.784 --> 00:53:01.484
through that singer to the greater consciousness of human beings.
574
00:53:02.344 --> 00:53:04.364
And I've not yet
575
00:53:05.784 --> 00:53:08.124
still early, early in the gen
576
00:53:08.559 --> 00:53:11.539
music world and the gen. I've but I've not yet
577
00:53:11.839 --> 00:53:13.699
heard anything. It always sounds incredibly
578
00:53:15.119 --> 00:53:15.619
impressive.
579
00:53:16.399 --> 00:53:18.579
And then you hear it again, and you're like, yeah.
580
00:53:19.039 --> 00:53:26.394
Have you ever eaten food that's got too much MSG in it? Right. Yeah. Like, it kinda overclocks your brain a bit. Yeah. And an hour later, you're hungry again.
581
00:53:26.934 --> 00:53:28.234
It's just weird. It's tempting.
582
00:53:28.534 --> 00:53:29.754
So I think there's something
583
00:53:30.694 --> 00:53:31.674
something around
584
00:53:32.294 --> 00:53:33.754
that, as I was saying,
585
00:53:34.774 --> 00:53:35.834
this new generation,
586
00:53:36.529 --> 00:53:37.029
people
587
00:53:38.289 --> 00:53:42.149
are moved by human singing in particular. Yeah. Right? Always.
588
00:53:43.249 --> 00:53:44.309
And so
589
00:53:45.249 --> 00:53:53.244
when someone is standing there, it's a physical thing. There's a human body. There's a mouth. There's a consciousness. There's a it's a it's a thing. Whereas a recorded
590
00:53:53.864 --> 00:53:56.444
AI generated track or a recorded
591
00:53:57.304 --> 00:53:58.044
AI generated
592
00:53:58.344 --> 00:54:00.124
movie, it's very impressive.
593
00:54:02.024 --> 00:54:03.864
But over time, I suspect
594
00:54:04.184 --> 00:54:05.484
you know what it's good for?
595
00:54:06.079 --> 00:54:06.579
Ads.
596
00:54:07.039 --> 00:54:18.979
Yeah. Right. Totally. Because we don't care. Who cares about an ad? The answer is none of us. Yeah. We don't. It's it's just a freaking pain in the butt that we gotta live through to watch the next show in after commercial breaks. So,
597
00:54:19.519 --> 00:54:20.019
yeah,
598
00:54:21.304 --> 00:54:24.844
ads are already being made increasingly well by,
599
00:54:25.544 --> 00:54:26.044
AI,
600
00:54:26.664 --> 00:54:36.649
by AI performers and AI music and yeah. I think that's a really perfect use for it. Yeah. They can have it. And there is going to be a lot of, you know,
601
00:54:37.109 --> 00:54:41.609
there will be examples of perfect use cases for it, and I think that is one. But when it comes
602
00:54:42.629 --> 00:54:53.064
to AI generated music, songs, that whole thing, the replacement of actual humans, I have a hard time believing that we'll care for too long. We'll, like, put up with it because it's fine in certain places.
603
00:54:53.444 --> 00:54:55.624
It'll always be fine. But
604
00:54:56.164 --> 00:54:57.384
the thing that really,
605
00:54:58.484 --> 00:55:11.059
really changes human behavior on the other end is that shared experience. Like you said, it's not even listening to a song from afar that can kind of do it or watching a video of someone playing or a concert. It's like, oh, that's cool. That's fun. Good music or whatever. But when you're there, like you said,
606
00:55:11.839 --> 00:55:18.574
someone like Aretha Franklin or someone who just has this incredible mastery of their craft and also the generosity of spirit
607
00:55:18.954 --> 00:55:48.604
to be there with you in the same room at the same time. I think that's where the power is. Right? Not just the people who are singing either on on stage, but also the generosity of spirit of the people who are in the crowd dancing around, shouting, cheering, all sharing the same thing. I think that we'll we'll pretty soon see the power in this again because, right, it it has kind of fallen by the wayside, especially during the pandemic, and we're still trying to figure out what this looks like after that. But, I hope for the generations coming up that they can feel the joy there and the connection because, man, there's something
608
00:55:48.904 --> 00:55:49.724
so powerful
609
00:55:50.424 --> 00:56:04.999
about seeing, especially like you said, people singing on stage. Actually, playing instruments is great, whatever. DJ's cool too, and the dance beat stuff, there's certainly a place for it. But when you have humans sharing their voice with you, that is really, really powerful.
610
00:56:06.019 --> 00:56:07.239
Especially those
611
00:56:07.779 --> 00:56:08.819
amazing vocalists
612
00:56:09.219 --> 00:56:12.279
Mhmm. Like the Eagles back in the day. There's a documentary
613
00:56:12.774 --> 00:56:15.914
about the Eagles. I think it's called the Eagles. It's a two part documentary.
614
00:56:16.294 --> 00:56:29.329
If you're listening to this and you don't even like or even know of the Eagles, just watch it in terms of what humans are competent at doing. Yeah. There's a couple of places in that documentary where the five of them stand around in in dressing room and start singing, and you're like, oh,
615
00:56:29.869 --> 00:56:35.889
that's why the Eagles are so good. Yeah. That's what they do. There's just stick a mic up and record that. Yes.
616
00:56:36.349 --> 00:56:38.849
There's no trickery at all. That's what that's
617
00:56:39.629 --> 00:56:40.529
amazing songs,
618
00:56:40.944 --> 00:56:43.604
and that kind of level of technique and harmonizing
619
00:56:43.904 --> 00:56:46.644
and and and oneness of delivery,
620
00:56:47.264 --> 00:56:48.084
quite amazing.
621
00:56:48.464 --> 00:56:57.459
It's so inspiring, and it's it's rare. I hope it's not always so rare, though. Will, maybe we've just got a couple of minutes left. You can talk about community some more because
622
00:56:58.159 --> 00:57:04.419
that's another piece of all this, especially related to metal and and having groups of people aligned toward a higher purpose.
623
00:57:04.879 --> 00:57:26.539
I think that also will help get us through the next few years when we go through this unprecedented change in a lot of people's jobs getting gobbled up or people around them that's that are experiencing the same thing. And that loss of meaning or purpose is something that we're all going to have to reckon with as humans in the years ahead. So I think joining up with other like minded folks is probably the best thing we can do earlier than later.
624
00:57:28.199 --> 00:57:31.419
Yeah. Someone asked me in an interview the other day, and they said,
625
00:57:31.799 --> 00:57:34.139
you know, when you look back on your different careers
626
00:57:34.954 --> 00:57:38.894
that I've had as, you know, as a musician, as a tech inventor, and,
627
00:57:39.434 --> 00:57:43.054
you know, folks that will I've always been interested in communication.
628
00:57:44.314 --> 00:57:48.334
That's the single thing. Because as a musician, you're communicating with audience. You know?
629
00:57:48.949 --> 00:57:49.389
And,
630
00:57:49.829 --> 00:57:50.789
folks that will,
631
00:57:51.349 --> 00:57:56.569
Rocket Network, which is another thing I did, which is the track based collaboration system, was collaboration and communication.
632
00:57:58.549 --> 00:58:03.154
Communication is is is a key part, and community is a piece of that.
633
00:58:03.634 --> 00:58:05.494
And so in recent years,
634
00:58:06.514 --> 00:58:07.814
I've joined forces
635
00:58:08.114 --> 00:58:09.414
with Ken Rakalski,
636
00:58:09.794 --> 00:58:10.754
who is the,
637
00:58:11.154 --> 00:58:16.294
founder of the METTL MEN group. METTL is an acronym: Media, Entertainment, Technology,
638
00:58:16.594 --> 00:58:17.974
Artists, and Leadership.
639
00:58:19.029 --> 00:58:21.209
And you and I met through this group.
640
00:58:22.229 --> 00:58:23.449
Just in full disclosure,
641
00:58:23.829 --> 00:58:25.609
we are a group of guys
642
00:58:26.229 --> 00:58:27.369
from very
643
00:58:27.989 --> 00:58:31.289
different backgrounds from all over the world who are accomplished
644
00:58:31.909 --> 00:58:32.409
in
645
00:58:33.244 --> 00:58:35.344
at something or some things.
646
00:58:36.044 --> 00:58:36.544
And
647
00:58:36.924 --> 00:58:40.784
the age range is from sort of early thirties up to
648
00:58:41.324 --> 00:58:41.824
eighties.
649
00:58:42.364 --> 00:58:44.304
Most guys are in their
650
00:58:44.764 --> 00:58:46.064
sort of early forties,
651
00:58:46.604 --> 00:58:47.104
fifties,
652
00:58:47.789 --> 00:58:49.649
late fifties, sixties maybe.
653
00:58:50.429 --> 00:58:54.769
And I wish I'd had access to a group of highly competent,
654
00:58:55.949 --> 00:59:03.724
accomplished men like this to give me brotherhood and guidance when I was in my twenties. I would have definitely made a few different decisions.
655
00:59:04.424 --> 00:59:07.404
Yeah. Saved a bit of time. And,
656
00:59:09.384 --> 00:59:09.884
metal,
657
00:59:11.224 --> 00:59:14.364
we're a men's group, and men are
658
00:59:15.019 --> 00:59:18.799
better men, generally. We are better men when we're in the company of other
659
00:59:19.179 --> 00:59:19.679
really
660
00:59:20.939 --> 00:59:23.279
competent, kind, heart centered men,
661
00:59:23.659 --> 00:59:31.524
when we're in the cave with other men. We're better men in the rest of the world. We're better husbands to our wives. We're better partners. We're better business guys.
662
00:59:32.144 --> 00:59:32.644
And,
663
00:59:33.104 --> 00:59:35.284
you know, a rising tide floats all boats.
664
00:59:36.384 --> 00:59:36.704
And,
665
00:59:37.984 --> 00:59:38.864
metal is
666
00:59:40.059 --> 00:59:45.599
I've been in it sixteen years, so I was a member for many years before I came, became Ken's partner.
667
00:59:46.779 --> 00:59:47.279
And
668
00:59:47.979 --> 00:59:49.199
we help you
669
00:59:50.539 --> 00:59:54.319
with your problems. We help you help yourself with your problems.
670
00:59:54.714 --> 00:59:57.614
We don't fix your problems, but we'll help you figure out
671
00:59:58.154 --> 01:00:00.974
answers your problems. And we'll help you build your dreams.
672
01:00:01.394 --> 01:00:01.894
I
673
01:00:02.314 --> 01:00:02.814
mean,
674
01:00:03.434 --> 01:00:05.854
you're a metal guy yourself. Does that kind
675
01:00:06.314 --> 01:00:09.594
of make sense to you? I love that description. Yeah. It's,
676
01:00:11.209 --> 01:00:18.429
it's a shared reality when you have a group of people who are all kind of aligned and also, as you say, have done at least something
677
01:00:18.809 --> 01:00:24.909
of various things of various degrees of success too, I think, is important. I kinda Yeah. Absolutely. Run that stuff.
678
01:00:26.094 --> 01:00:27.554
It's, for me,
679
01:03:25.827 --> 01:06:25.660
I had found that I had got a lot
680
01:06:25.961 --> 01:06:33.420
of male friends from the tech business. I was living in San Francisco. I was in Silicon Valley for for quite a few years.
681
01:06:33.961 --> 01:06:35.501
And I knew a lot of
682
01:06:37.076 --> 01:06:38.696
contacts from the music business,
683
01:06:39.236 --> 01:06:42.216
and they're kind of an interesting, very different group.
684
01:06:42.596 --> 01:06:43.896
But I didn't have
685
01:06:44.436 --> 01:06:47.176
really close friends, men friends from
686
01:06:47.556 --> 01:06:50.776
who were physicians, who were lawyers, who were astronauts,
687
01:06:51.091 --> 01:06:55.351
who were inventors of other things. You know? I didn't have this kind of richness,
688
01:06:55.651 --> 01:06:58.071
and I didn't know guys who lived in
689
01:06:58.371 --> 01:06:58.871
Thailand,
690
01:06:59.411 --> 01:06:59.911
Lithuania,
691
01:07:00.691 --> 01:07:01.191
Germany.
692
01:07:01.731 --> 01:07:09.406
You know? I I didn't have guys I got to know that through a community like that. And the the value of having
693
01:07:10.026 --> 01:07:11.166
long term friendships
694
01:07:11.466 --> 01:07:16.045
with men who care about you but who do not have any direct
695
01:07:16.746 --> 01:07:17.246
impact
696
01:07:17.786 --> 01:07:19.006
on your career.
697
01:07:19.701 --> 01:07:21.881
So there's no angle here whatsoever,
698
01:07:22.581 --> 01:07:32.361
with most of these guys. They're just friends. One of my closest friends is doctor Robert Heller. I met him through the METAL group. He's 89, still practicing as a physician today at 89.
699
01:07:32.746 --> 01:07:33.246
Amazing.
700
01:07:33.706 --> 01:07:36.846
And, you know, I I'll be talking to him about some
701
01:07:37.306 --> 01:07:40.526
harebrained scheme I'm thinking of, and he goes, do you really wanna do that?
702
01:07:41.146 --> 01:07:45.326
I'm like, thank you. Thank you. You just saved me six months of
703
01:07:47.431 --> 01:07:49.011
you're too sure about that?
704
01:07:49.551 --> 01:08:01.476
Sometimes that's all it takes, doesn't it? Just like a poignant question from someone who knows better is yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Metalman is a virtual and in person hybrid group. We've
705
01:08:01.776 --> 01:08:02.256
got,
706
01:08:02.576 --> 01:08:04.196
many, many hundreds of guys.
707
01:08:04.576 --> 01:08:08.816
These are free. Any guys listening to this, just go to metal.men.
708
01:08:08.816 --> 01:08:10.916
Yes. We're a men's group, metal.men,
709
01:08:11.056 --> 01:08:11.536
and,
710
01:08:12.016 --> 01:08:15.476
get a guest pass for free for three weeks. Come and kick our tires
711
01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:16.701
and meet us.
712
01:08:17.481 --> 01:08:21.101
There's a very interesting group. As you mentioned when we started,
713
01:08:21.481 --> 01:08:26.140
we are all largely unemployable in a traditional sense. There's a lot of entrepreneurial
714
01:08:27.001 --> 01:08:28.301
thinking in the group.
715
01:08:31.016 --> 01:08:42.236
You know? Well, there can be power in numbers in that sense. Right? When you see someone else take an outrageous risk and then watch them a few months later and see that, woah, that actually worked. You know?
716
01:08:42.936 --> 01:08:59.021
That's that's something that can change your trajectory too. Right. We've got guys in the community. You'll get Nolan Bushnell, one of my favorite, members. He's in his early eighties. He's a regular member in all the metal meetings. He literally invented the video game. That's literally what he did. He was the founder of Atari.
717
01:08:59.326 --> 01:09:16.041
And then later on, he was like, how can we sell more video games? We need to get kids playing video games. Chuck E. Cheese. And then he created Chuck E. Cheese, which was a genius level marketing plan at the time to get kids playing console games and, you know, Chuck E. Cheese still alive that you know, still around today. And
718
01:09:16.821 --> 01:09:18.680
just being around Nolan and
719
01:09:18.981 --> 01:09:22.281
finding out how he thinks about things, how does he think about
720
01:09:22.901 --> 01:09:32.586
how does he think about starting a business? How does he see? Because he's the conversation about being unemployable, by the way, started originally with a conversation with Nolan a few years ago. Oh, no way.
721
01:09:33.045 --> 01:09:37.785
I said, would you ever consider getting a job? No. And he goes, oh, no. No. No. She said, I'm I'm unemployable.
722
01:09:39.285 --> 01:09:45.706
I was like, oh, thank you. No. I I'm gonna steal that because I I'm kind of the same way. You know?
723
01:09:46.791 --> 01:09:48.731
If the if the shit goes sideways,
724
01:09:49.190 --> 01:09:49.930
guess what?
725
01:09:50.231 --> 01:09:52.571
I'm never gonna go and try and get a job anywhere.
726
01:09:54.871 --> 01:10:04.886
But what I will do is I'll try and look for another opportunity. I'll see if there's a market niche available as a widget that could fit in here. There's a service that's not being properly you know? Yeah.
727
01:10:05.666 --> 01:10:12.966
Yeah. That's how you've gotta think about it. Will, thank you so much for being here. What is the best place for people to find your work as well as metal?
728
01:10:13.551 --> 01:10:14.851
Well, thank you so much.
729
01:10:16.271 --> 01:10:26.851
There's a bit of a list here. London Beat was not banned. I was the first guitarist and founder of the band from '87 to '94, so the hits. You'll you'll see me on those if you look on YouTube.
730
01:10:28.065 --> 01:10:28.565
The
731
01:10:28.866 --> 01:10:30.946
Rocket network delivery stuff,
732
01:10:31.426 --> 01:10:32.245
is now,
733
01:10:32.785 --> 01:10:39.606
part of the Avid Pro Tools cloud collaboration system. So that's if you use Pro Tools, you you will have seen that.
734
01:10:41.281 --> 01:10:44.180
The Folks at Will music service for helping
735
01:10:44.481 --> 01:10:49.621
you, folks that concentrate is Focus at Will. Yep. I'm the Will. Folks at Will.
736
01:10:50.321 --> 01:10:50.801
And,
737
01:10:51.680 --> 01:10:58.216
you can find me. The best way to reach me these days is through the metal.men website. I am will@metal.men,
738
01:10:58.216 --> 01:11:04.716
which is a killer email address that I have for me. Nearly as good as Ken's, which is ken@metal.men.
739
01:11:05.416 --> 01:11:09.676
Go figure. He's got the rhyme. Yeah. He's got the rhyme. Yeah. He's got the rhyme. Yeah. That's the metal.
740
01:11:10.171 --> 01:11:13.471
Will, thank you so much for being here today. We really enjoyed this conversation.
741
01:11:14.011 --> 01:11:18.191
Back at you. It's a pleasure to talk to you, Abel, and a big fan of your podcast.
742
01:11:18.571 --> 01:11:22.351
Well done. You know, the secret of podcasting is to be consistent
743
01:11:22.651 --> 01:11:23.836
and to keep doing it.
744
01:11:27.916 --> 01:11:43.421
Hey. Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts.
745
01:11:43.801 --> 01:11:53.546
You can also subscribe to my new Substack channel for an ad free version of this show in video and audio. That's at ablejames.substack.com.
746
01:11:53.546 --> 01:12:11.331
You can also find me on Twitter or x, YouTube, as well as fountain f m, where you can leave a little crypto in the tip jar. And if you can think of someone you care about who might learn from or enjoy this show, please take a quick moment to share it with them. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.