Each person has their own focus method that works best for their brain type. Focus@Will provides scientifically designed music to improve your concentration. Its creator, Will Henshall, was a founding member of the British pop band Londonbeat, which saw billboard success in the late 80s and early 90s. In this episode, Kim Sutton goes deep into Will’s journey from being a musician to founding his own business. Tune in and discover why easily distracted people need a lot of stimulation to help them focus. If you need tips and strategies to increase your concentration and productivity, this episode is for you!
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What Focus Method Works Best For You? Music For The Easily Distracted With Will Henshall
I’m glad that you are back with me. You probably already know that I have a struggle with too many ideas and a lot of the time, focus. I get squirreled a lot. I try to do too many things in one day. Over the past several years, I have learned how to cut my to-do list back from 35 items to 5 items a day, but I can only get those five items done if I’m focusing on them. Back in 2015 or 2016, one of my dear friends and clients introduced me to this awesome app called Focus@Will. I am thrilled and honored that we have the Founder of Focus@Will, Will Henshall, here with us. Will, I’m happy to have you. Welcome to the show.
Kim, have you been inside my brain? Because I am all about positive productivity, being happy and fulfilled when you’re working.
Would I be scared if I were in there or would I be okay?
That is the leading question. I need to talk to my lawyer first. Your show is aimed at people like me. I run a small business and I’m a seven-time entrepreneur. I have difficulty focusing, which is part of why I’m able to do what I can do. You and I were briefly talking and I asked you, “Who is this show aimed at?” What you said described me completely and then you, secondarily so.
I designed a planner back in 2016 because I couldn’t find a planner that would work for me. There would be spaces to write down the list for the day, so I made a planner that only gave me five spots. What I started doing was putting extra bullets in each of those five spots. Out of those 5, I got 15 and I still only got 1 or 2 items done because I am squirreled. Do you know the movie, Up, where it’s like, “Squirrel, squirrel?” I would be chasing many things around. Thanks to programs like Focus@Will where it’s like, “You have 25 minutes. Focus on this and get it the hell done so you don’t have to think about it anymore and the client can stop asking about it.”
Focus@Will is a music service that has a specific genre and type of music, which is individually set up for each person’s brain type. It is scientifically proven to help reduce distractions when you’re working. Here’s why this is incredibly relevant for people like you and me. The most productive people, most capable and most talented entrepreneurs in general are the most easily distracted. I don’t know if this happens to you. I’m working and I need to find a photograph or something and now that I’m in my photos, half an hour later I’m sorting pictures out of my mom and dad when they were kids and I’m like, “What am I doing?” I’m off on a distraction tangent.
The reason that I got into this is that in one of my previous companies, I and another couple of guys invented a system that does an audio collaboration tool called Pro Tools, which is the pro audio mixing, recording studio tool that all the big studios use. The company that I created was called Rocket Network and we developed some technology that became the Pro Tools collaboration system. I sold it to Avid in the early 2000s and I ended up having a desk job.
That must have been torture.
It was hard. I discovered that when I’m sitting in a cubicle trying to work, I couldn’t be productive. They are amazing engineering teams. I was part of the networking engineering team and I noticed that the most talented engineers were the most easily distracted. They had a culture of not distracting the most talented engineers. You weren’t allowed to knock on someone’s door after midday. They used to have Jolt Cola back in the day that was like a Coca-Cola drink with ten times the amount of caffeine. This guy has all of that going on. He has a game on, talk radio on and he’s listening to music. When people are talented, they figure out their own thing. The most talented and most productive are the most easily distracted. That’s what led me to try to figure out, “Is there music that can help?” The answer is there is.
I was in a Clubhouse room one time and I was talking about how I’m squirrel-brained. My husband and I share an office. My husband leaves the office because he has a tendency to burp, which is quite funny on podcast recordings.
You don’t have a swear delay on your show. You have a burp delay.
I seriously need one. My husband has a squirrel brain too and he got offended. I didn’t know he was offended until when I suggested that he write a to-do list of 2 to 3 things that he wanted to get done that day because he’s newly an entrepreneur. He let me know that that squirrel brain comment hurt his feelings. I was like, “Let’s look at your computer.” He’s a game designer, artist and streamer. I was like, “You have a video game launched on one monitor.”
I’m looking over at his screen because even though he’s not here, I’m like, “What is he doing?” There’s a YouTube video going while the video game is on. He’s probably got his Twitch software going somewhere. While he’s playing the game and watching the YouTube video, he’s also designing the graphics for his Twitch stream. I’m like, “How many other apps do you have open? I’m not trying to offend you. How about focus on one thing for two seconds and see if you can get it done?”
Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder
My question to you, is he overall productive or not?
Creating the grocery list for online grocery orders takes six hours for him. If we turned on something and we can focus, the grocery list could be done in 25 minutes and then we would be able to pick up the groceries the same day that the order was started. Get it done.
What you’re describing is classic Attention Deficit Disorder. One of my science advisors in Focus@Will is a guy called Dr. Ned Hallowell. He is a psychiatrist and he is based out of Boston. He is the nation’s leading expert on attention deficit. He says that calling it a disorder is doing a disservice to all of the people who are like that. About 5% of the population has a significant attention deficit. These are kids who are ADD. You might hear it known as ADHD, which is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It’s the same thing.
Ned Hallowell has been on our science team for more than nine years now. We became close and I love him. Like most psychiatrists, he’s a strange guy. He’s hyper and he’s ADD himself. I’d heard about him when I started this company years ago and I was like, “He’s the guy that wrote the book, Driven to Distraction.” It’s a bestselling Amazon book. I heard he was writing another book called Driven to Distraction at Work. It’s all strategies and background about how and why this happens for 5% to 10% of the population.
One day, I got a phone call out of the blue and this voice goes, “I’m Ned Hallowell. Are you Will from Focus@Will?” I was like, “Yeah, that is me.” He goes, “I want to tell you I finished my new book, Driven to Distraction at Work, and I’ve been using your music to do it. I’ve given you thanks in the book.” I was like, “Ned, would you be interested in joining our science team?” He did. Having him in my life has been extraordinary. He said to me, “You, Will Henshall, and I are ADD. That’s why you’ve been successful.” He said, “It’s not a disorder. It’s an advantage and a difference.” All it means is that if you are easily distracted, you need to have multiple things happening. You need to have a lot of distractions and stimulation in your local environment to be able to focus on something. He said to me, “Will, are you good in a crisis?” I was like, “Yeah, I am.” I don’t even need to ask you, Kim, but I’m going to ask you anyway. Are you good in the crisis yourself?
I have 5 kids and 4 animals. That’s life.
They’re all still alive.
I used to dream about the day when life was “normal.” By normal, I meant calm. One day, I had an awakening where I realized, “That’s not going to happen. This is my normal. Chaotic is normal.”
Some people are wired in a certain way that they need a lot of things run to be calm. If you’ve got friends who are first responders of any kind like police, fire or medics, these are folk who are incredibly calm at work. I’ve got friends who are in the police department and they show up at a scene completely calm. A normal person would be like, “Oh my God.” They’re like, “What seems to be the problem?” What happens is their brain type means that they are able to line up and be calm when there are a lot of things going on. Some other jobs like that which is critical are air traffic control. Think about the stress you’re under. What about being a second-grade teacher? Even worse, what about being an eighth-grade teacher?
I want to share I was watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the beginning, they have a scene with the air traffic controllers. I was like, “How are they staying so calm?” It’s just knowing what the area is. I also need to share that my husband can’t do blood. I can’t do vomit or boogers. Sometimes you have to find that person whether in your significant other or partners in your business that can handle the chaos.
There are different kinds of chaos. Why is it a thing that kids in particular with ADD are given strong stimulants and that calms them down? Have you talked about that on the show before to anybody?
You blew my mind by asking that question because I have never been able to figure it out. I am an undiagnosed ADD and have never been able to figure out why Mountain Dew puts me to sleep.
That’s the sugar rush. I’m going to quote Ned. He explained to me simply how this works. He said, “Everybody’s brains are all the same. It doesn’t matter what gender you are or where you come from. All humans were wired the same. There’s a clock at the back of our head that keeps us on point and the clock is around four times a second or something like that. You don’t know it. It’s a thing that happens in your brain.” My clock is going, “Talk to Kim.” We can have a nice conversation. I got a cup of coffee here, so I’m focused on talking to you now.
For someone with extreme ADD, their clock is running slowly. The reason why is there are two parts of your brain. There’s my nonconscious mind, which is this clock I’m talking about, then there’s my conscious mind, which is me talking to you. If my clock is running slowly, what happens is it goes, “Talk to Kim.” I’m now looking out of the window going, “That’s a squirrel.” Now my clock goes talk to Kim and I’m like, “Sorry, Kim. What were you saying?” Now my mind is wandering. I’m looking over there and I go, “I’ve got to fix that light bulb. What did you say? Sorry, Kim.” Weirdly and counterintuitively, if your clock is running slowly, it means that you are easily distracted.
You’ve heard of Adderall and Ritalin, these are methamphetamine. These are dangerous drugs in a lot of ways. What happens is it’s speeding the clock up. When I take a stimulant like that, what it’s doing is it’s going, “Talk to Kim.” I am focused on the thing I’m doing. Folks who are not ADD-diagnosed properly often self-diagnose by drinking a whole bunch of coffee. I need to ask you another question. This is another question from Ned. If you drink a couple of espressos, can you always sleep or does it make you sleepy sometimes?
I don’t know about espressos but if I have Mountain Dew that’s later in the evening, I fall asleep quickly, which is strange.
It’s the same thing. It is eating up your internal clock. Think about when you’re sleeping. What we do as humans is relax and concentrate on going to sleep. If your internal clock is running fast, it’s going, “It’s okay, Kim. Go to sleep,” so you can go to sleep. If your clock is running slowly and you’re trying to sleep, it’s going, “You can go to sleep, Kim,” and now your brain is like, “I have another idea for you.” That is why people with ADHD are easily distracted unless they’ve got a lot of things going on. A lot of entrepreneurs have a board behind them. If my wife comes in and clears up my desk, I am like, “Now what?”
Are you in trouble? Can you find anything after somebody else cleans stuff up?
I’ve got a big pile of stuff here that I know is in there and one day I’ll get to it.
I put into our wedding vows, “I promise I will decrease my piles.” I’m not joking. It was in my wedding vows to him.
That’s a relative term.
Now I have one big pile and a small one.
I didn’t say I got rid of all of my piles. I’ll just get rid of that big pile.
I decreased the number. I didn’t decrease what was in it.
I’ve been through seven startups. How do we as entrepreneurs who are highly capable have an idea to build it out to raise money if you’re doing that? To be able to do any of these things, you have to be able to sit down and make stuff happen. Focus@Will is this music service that I created years ago. I have a fantastic team here in LA. We have many different types of music that are proven to help you work. The more easily distracted you are, the more energy you need in your music stream. Imagine you’ve got a friend who’s distracted all the time. What you might want to do is think about playing them some music to calm them down. That will not work at all.
That wouldn’t work for me.
Music And Focus : If you are easily distracted you need to have a lot of stimulation in your local environment to be able to focus on something.
I know that’s the case. We’ve got a couple of million users and 40% of our users listen to the channel called Uptempo. It’s dancy trancy music and it keeps you on track. People who find that a little intense listen to the channel called Alpha Chill. It’s a little slower and less intense. Our most popular channel on the system is unique to the system called Naturebeat. It is a combination of the two channels similar to Uptempo and Alpha Chill, plus themselves in nature. That’s a new channel that I have created as a songwriter and as a musician. On the system, it’s the most popular channel. To quickly move into people who are ADD, there is a channel on the system for people who are on meds and who are diagnosed with ADD. If you are ADD, this is relaxing. If you’re not ADD, you’ll find it as horrific noise.
That’s what my husband listens to all day long.
It’s speeding up the clock in the back of your brain. I’ve got thousands of letters from people who’ve said, “I don’t have ADD but I play that channel. It helps me focus.”
That channel is a little bit much for me. I love the Naturebeat combo one. I want you to share a little bit about your life as a musician too. As a musician, did your music help you to focus? Before you answer, we can tell my youngest to go get socks. Fifteen minutes later, he has not gotten his socks but he’s done eighteen other things. If you get him into music in some way and you play a little clip of a song, he’s focused on that. You can lose him in music all day.
We have two parts of our brain. There’s my conscious attention, which is me talking to you now, and there’s my nonconscious attention, which is the part of my brain keeping me safe to do with fight or flight. I’m sure you’ve heard of that. Let’s say we go back to the cave times. Thousands of generations ago, you and I are sitting by the fire. We’re eating a Flintstone big, huge bone thing. What’s happening is we’re talking to each other but our nonconscious attention, which is our ears mostly, is listening for predators. Specifically, it’s listening for the sound of a stick because that would mean that something’s behind us.
If the sound of the forest around us changes and goes quiet, “Whoa.” If that happens, you’ve got a house of kids, if there is quiet in the playroom, what do we do? We run in there as fast as we can because we know that something is going on. You know it. These responses are hardwired into our brains. We are also hardwired to listen to the sound of a human voice. If you and I are talking and either of us hears a human voice, whether we know it or not or it’s in another language, that part of our brain is going to pay attention to it. Your nonconscious attention is going, “Is that food? Is that danger? Is that sex?” It’s wired into our brains.
Our nonconscious attention is always paying attention to those things, “Is it a sandwich? Is it someone going to hit me? Is it someone I’d like to get to know?” That manifests itself particularly with music. If you listen to music that has words in it, if you have listened to music that has sounds in it that sound like the human voice or you listen to music that has a lot of dynamic range. A lot of classical music gets quiet and then it gets loud. Beethoven’s Fifth is loud and then it gets quiet. Your nonconscious attention is listening to changes in the sound volume and for the sounds of voices.
Something we found early on in Focus@Will is that the music has to be instrumental. We found that the type of music that works for each person is different. If you go to FocusAtWill.com, on the homepage is a quiz that will predict which music will work best for your brain type, and it has about an 80% accuracy. They go from the ADD, which is extreme to uptempo to slightly more downtempo to acoustic to ambient music to sounds of water. This is a range of audio types that map to different people’s brains. Eighty-five percent of the people on the Focus@Will system find their exact channel or genre. Each channel has a level that is low, medium and high like a gear lever in a car. They never change. Once you’ve found it, you’re dialed in and you’re good to go.
I don’t want to take up our time here but I’m curious to go take the quiz.
You asked me about my music career. Before I did this, I was in a band that was successful in the ‘90s called Londonbeat. I was the guitarist, the founder of the band and the main writer. I was the white guy. There were three R&B African-American singers and me. It was a fun time. We had five big hits around the world. I’ve Been Thinking About You was the best-known. It was number one here in the States. It was one of the most played songs in the ‘90s on the radio. I was the BMI-PRS writer of the year for writing the song.
I know that song. How did the transition happen? Did you already have businesses happening while you were touring and everything?
I came from a long line of British inventors and entrepreneurs. Starting a band is like being in a startup. It’s an entrepreneurial project from the beginning. I started the band in the late ‘80s and the four of us got together. We wrote some songs, got a record deal based on those songs and were good in lives so we went out and promoted those songs. We tested the songs live with the audiences. We went out and toured with some well-known bands at the time. We worked with Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger, the Eurythmics, and a bunch of bands back in the day. We would then play our songs that no one had heard yet to a live audience. We’re A/B testing the songs with a live audience. Do you see where I’m going with this?
We went to a record company and we go, “Here are the three songs that we’ve been testing live that we know that people like,” and then the label was like, “Let’s record those and get a producer.” We released them and then one of them is a minor hit. We’re promoting our minor hit and now we got these two new songs including this song called I’ve Been Thinking About You. Some people were like, “We liked that song.” We then wrote and recorded that next song and all of a sudden we got a hit in our hands.
Like being an entrepreneur, you test something and all of a sudden you go, “That’s fantastic. Silver sparkly dog collars with a big Fido on the front,” or whatever it is. All of a sudden you go, “That’s what I do.” Being in a band was you’re signed to a major label but your independent contractors are under contract to the major labels so you are running your own little business. The band was four of us plus our business manager, a woman called Sandra Turnbull. She and I were close. She had a lot to do with the say of the direction of the band artistically and I had a lot to do with the say of the band in the business sense.
I wasn’t just a simple guy in the band who didn’t care about business. I was always interested in, “Where’s the test market?” Here’s the thing in the music business. Back in the ‘90s, and I presume this is still true, if you were not from Holland, the Netherlands or New Zealand and you’d had a minor hit in another territory, what the labels would do is release your song in those two territories, Holland and New Zealand. If your song was a hit in those two, they would push the promotional button worldwide because they were the test markets.
What made them the test markets?
I presume it was a typical demographic and a reflective system of the way that radio and the record-buying public at the time could then be mirrored in big markets like the US, Canada, Germany and the UK. I came from a long tradition of inventors and entrepreneurs and then that led me to Rocket Network, which was this audio technology that collaborates over the internet. I raised $43 million in the ‘90s. Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, and a bunch of other big investors like Cisco and so on at the time.
I was living in New York in the ‘80s and went back to London to do Londonbeat. I moved back to California to start on the Rocket Network project. I ended up having a desk job when I sold Rocket Network to Avid, the video and audio editing software company. I had to learn how to focus on demand and that then led me to a long journey, which is now talking to you about being happy. One of the things I love about you and your show is the positivity and happiness aspects of what you’re talking about.
Thank you. I launched this show at the end of 2016. Even though I had been recording episodes for six months before it launched, in the middle of recording those episodes, I admittedly had a breakdown. I had been seeing all these mentors and gurus on social media sharing what they wanted other people to see but they didn’t share the bad and the ugly of entrepreneurship behind the scenes. Even though I had already come up with the name in the midst of this breakdown, it gave me a real awareness that I needed the show to share not just the good but the bad and the ugly. Getting through that period and the struggles that we’ve experienced in the business and my family since then and sharing that, I would like to think it inspired hope to keep on going.
I’ve learned with bouts of anxiety and depression that I can’t go into bed and cover my head with my blankets. I have to keep on going. Does that mean I can’t take time off when I need to? Absolutely not. I need to take time off but I can’t be stagnant. I need to keep taking action and be focused. Back when I launched the show, I had sixteen different projects. I don’t mean tasks that I needed to do. I mean big projects. I realized that I needed to cut that down. One of those projects, Will, is a book that I’m finally working on called Chronic Idea Disorder. I couldn’t work on the book because I had many ideas that I was actively trying to work on. Now I can finally work on it. I can see where it’s going for the first time. I have a flow and everything.
Congratulations.
Thank you. It never even occurred to me that what I dubbed, nicknamed, named or whatever Chronic Idea Disorder was a joke post on social media. I didn’t realize that there were all these entrepreneurs with ADHD who go through much the same as me.
Welcome to my life. It’s nice to meet us. Steve Jobs was famous for doing all the things he’s done. What not a lot of people know, my initial investor in this company was on Steve Jobs’ personal exec team for many years. He told me that Steve’s super skill was being needle, brutally focused and being willing to nuke great ideas knowing that his team, his staff, the time and the opportunity were limited. He would always have 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ideas. These are all fantastic ideas and he would kill a couple of them. He’d be like, “Done.”
David Austin is the guy I’m talking about. David’s job was to be his hatchet man. David’s job was to go to these teams. Sometimes, it’s a big team. There might be 150 engineers building this project and Steve has decided no because he’s going to put all of his energy into the iPod and not the Newton. This was back in the day. That always stuck with me like, “We’re entrepreneurs. We’re ideas people. We have loads of ideas.” The secret is knowing which of the top three and of the top three, which is the top one? If that’s not working, be willing to go, “We took that as far as we could. What’s number two?”
My biggest focus is rebuilding my team so that I can be the ideator and the mentor and handoff as much as I can’t because I’m tired of being the bottleneck. I’m tired of being the big wad of toilet paper that the kid shoved in the toilet and is now backing everything up. I don’t want to be that anymore. What I can see in my genius zone, which is coming up with ideas, getting on the line with clients and brainstorming. That’s where I love to live. Getting down doing the nitty-gritty, no thanks.
The secret of success is balancing those two things. I had an interview with someone and she said, “You’re an idea-ist.” I was like, “That’s an interesting thing. I’m an idea-ist.” You can’t just be an idea-ist. You’ve also got to be an execution-ist. You’ve got to be able to make those ideas happen or have a team with you who can make your ideas happen. Being an entrepreneur, I’m quite sure that you’re in the same boat as I am. The problem is people assume stuff. It’s obvious, “Put that over there and do this here.” They’d be like, “Put what where?” I’m like, “It’s obvious,” and they go, “It’s not obvious.” It is obvious and extraordinary to us and impossible to other people. I’ve had to learn that the hard way like, “William, you’ve got to sit down and draw all this out. You got to get out one of these assumptions are in your head. You’re going to get it all on paper.” Stop, slow down.
Music And Focus : We have loads of ideas. The secret is knowing which the top three are and of the top three, which is the top one.
Slowing down is hard. If there was a beta program where you could have a USB, USB-C, Lightning Bolt port or whatever they’re called installed behind your ear so you could download all your thoughts to that, put it in your computer and disperse to people that needed it. Would you sign up for it? Would you volunteer to be a beta participant?
We have a group within the Focus@Will membership. We have a supergroup of engaged and active users that has about 25,000 people. We do surveys to this group often. We did one a couple of years ago. It was one of those Ryan Levesque, the ASK Method. We followed Ryan’s method and we were like, “Tell us your biggest challenge at work.” It’s a bunch of text. Number two was, “What do you do about your biggest challenge?” Text. The third thing, “Tell us something more.” I was expecting the answer to be like, “I don’t like my boss or I want to make more money, or I’m a woman in an executive situation and there’s a glass ceiling,” and all of the obvious things.
The answer that came back by a large majority is, “I’m not happy when I’m working. My biggest challenge is being happy when I’m working.” I was like, “What do you do about being happy when I’m working?” They said, “I like to listen to music when I’m working because that makes me more productive.” The follow-up question to these people was, “Is it true that you are happy when you’re being productive at work and a music system is a tool you use for that?” The answer is yes. There is a distinct and proven link between people’s happiness and how productive or how fulfilled you are on a daily basis. That is no news to you, I can see.
You are happy and productive and being fulfilled. Generally, you’re doing a job that you’re being paid for. If you’re happy and productive when you’re working, it means that you’re likely to get the promotion or to be able to find new opportunities if you’re an entrepreneur. If you’re working at a company and there’s a downturn because, in our Western world, there are these peaks and troughs. You will become a valued member of a team and you are least likely to be let go.
More companies need to focus on that but I’m unemployable.
That’s funny, you and I are similar. I tell people, “If this all went to hell in a handbasket, would I go and get a job?” I’m like, “No. I’m unemployable. Don’t hire me. I’m a disaster-to-be.” If you’ve got a company, you have an idea for an intrapreneur, you’re going to give me an investment and I will give you a P&L on a product. If I’m entirely standalone and I have some compensation, I’ll do it for nothing if I can get my compensation based on my idea.
2020 wasn’t a bad year for me and the business. In 2021, I needed to make a few adjustments. Rather than go get a job sitting in a cubicle, I started door dashing. I don’t want somebody telling me when I can take lunch, when I can use the bathroom and timing how long I’m in the ladies’ room. No, thank you. I want to go back to how you got Focus@Will started. What did it look like when you got that initial inspiration? What was the app creation journey like for you?
I learned quite a bit about app development in the audio technology business in the ‘90s that I sold. The technology now is called Avid Cloud Collaboration. Anybody that works in media will know that. The a-ha moment came about when in conjunction with not only Dr. Ned Hallowell but Dr. Vivian Gordon, Dr. Julia Mossbridge and other psychologists and attention experts in my sphere who I came across. I realized that, “The secret here is that everybody’s different. The type of audio and music that works with one person does not work with another. We needed to build an app that had an onboarding system that would predict which music will work best for your brain type and then we needed to build out an extensive library of music. The system has about 36 buckets or types of energy and the system directs you into one of the buckets.”
The exciting thing years ago was that the speed of the net was getting fast and reliable enough to be able to stream audio. The cost of streaming audio in a cell phone plan was negligible because there were a lot of videos starting to be run. We’re not in competition with Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube Music at all. None of the music you can hear on Focus@Will you can hear anywhere else. I talk to you about the Naturebeat project, which is the most successful channel on the system. You can’t get it anywhere else. Those other services are music for entertainment. This is music for a job. This is music to get you on task when you’re working. I’ll sum up by saying I’m in the happiness business. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’m in the happiness at work business. That’s what I love to do. Get in, get it done, do it to the best of your ability and then hang out with your kids. I live at the beach here in California and I go out on the beach with my dog.
It reminds me of somebody and a few other podcasters that I’ll introduce you to. I have one last question before we wrap the show. Is there another project that you’re working on that you are excited about? As an entrepreneur with ADHD, I have no doubt that this is not your only thing.
Have you been looking in my brain, Kim? I do. I am the CEO also of a men’s group in California called METAL.international. It is a men’s group who work in Media, Entertainment, Technology, Arts and Leaders. It’s been going for many years. I am the CEO and co-owner of the business. It’s a men’s group because men are much better men in our families, friends and work environments when we are in regular contact with heart-centered entrepreneurial men. That’s why we meet every Saturday.
There’s a huge Zoom. There are many hundreds of members from all over the world. The guys range from household names, famous actors, musicians and inventors. Nolan Bushnell who invented the video game is a regular member. That’s what I do. That’s my other world. If there are any men reading this, you’re entrepreneurial and you’re heart-centered, come and look at METAL International. We have mixed-gender events four times a year as well. We run these on conferences. That’s my other thing.
The top introduction that I wanted to give you will eat that up. He’s got a podcast and he would eat that up. Will, where do you want people to go to take the quiz for Focus@Will and to learn more about METAL International if they’re interested in joining?
Focus@Will is FocusAtWill.com. I’m Will@FocusAtWill.com. I’d love to hear from people. I’m always interested in productivity happiness at work. We, humans, are designed to be happy animals. Even when there’s a pandemic, we’re all in this together. METAL International is a weird website. It’s www.Metal.International.
Separate from your businesses, where’s the best place for people to connect with you on social?
On Facebook at Facebook.com/Henshall.
I am constantly dancing gracefully with another Kim Sutton who’s a leader in the mathematics teaching arena. We are constantly going back and forth for top spots everywhere, so I love that you got Henshall. She claimed most Kim Sutton across the web. Someday, maybe I’ll get it back. Will, thank you. This has been amazing. Will, do you have a parting piece of info or golden nugget that you can share before we wrap this episode?
Not everybody likes to listen to music when they’re working. About 1 person in 3 has to work in a quiet place in a library. Most entrepreneurs are not like that. Most entrepreneurs who get stuff done are people that need a lot of stimuli and it’s okay. The squirrel thing is not a disadvantage. It’s an advantage. That’s it.
Important Links:
- TheKimSutton.com/pp718
- Focus@Will
- Pro Tools
- Driven to Distraction
- Driven to Distraction at Work
- ASK Method
- METAL.International
- Will@FocusAtWill.com
- Facebook.com/Henshall
About Will Henshall
Will has achieved notable global success both as a musical/visual artist and as a technical inventor. In 1987, he founded the British pop soul band Londonbeat and had two Billboard #1 hit records, “I’ve Been Thinking About You” (91) and “Come Back” (95). He founded Rocket Network, a Paul Allen/Cisco-funded San Francisco company, in 1995 and created the professional audio media transfer system, DigiDelivery. He sold the company to Avid/Digidesign in 2003.
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