#Clockedin with Jordan Edwards

#216 - From Music to Tech: Key Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs Unveiled

• Jordan Edwards • Season 5 • Episode 216

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Discover the transformative journey of Will Henshall, the visionary CEO of Metal, whose career spans the dynamic worlds of music, technology, and community building. Will opens up about his evolution from a recording studio engineer in the 80s to founding and playing lead guitar for the band London Beat. Unpack his insights into the music production process and his pioneering role in the early days of electronic dance music. Will's story is a masterclass in resilience and curiosity, emphasizing the importance of embracing every role within an industry and not letting fear hold you back.

The conversation takes an intriguing turn as we delve into the subtle nuances of team dynamics and the diverse motivations that drive individuals in business. Through the lens of Will's experiences, we examine the significance of self-awareness in finding fulfilling roles and how community building serves as a universal thread across various fields. Our discussion shines a spotlight on METAL, a men's group devoted to Media, Entertainment, Technology, Artists, and Leadership, where collaboration and shared interests forge successful communities.

As we explore the keys to success, the episode unfolds as a blueprint for both personal and professional growth. From the vital role of financial literacy and setting up automated investment strategies to the revolutionary impact of AI on society, we cover it all. We ponder the future of work and digital currencies while celebrating the resilience of the human spirit. Furthermore, listeners are invited to explore Metal Men, a community fostering connections through shared interests and experiences, offering a welcoming space for camaraderie and growth.

To Reach Jordan:

Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/



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Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call

Speaker 1:

Hey, what's going on, guys? We've got a special guest today. Here we have Will Henschel. He's the CEO of Metal and he's a creative entrepreneur with a remarkable 30-year journey in music, technology and community building. Will, we're so excited to have you here on the Hashtag LockedIn podcast. You've done so many incredible things in all different regions and areas of the world. How do you think about transitioning? Because I feel like there's so many people, things in all different regions and areas of the world. How do you think about transitioning? Because I feel like there's so many people that really struggle with that the idea of changing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really good question. So, as you just said, yes, I've had three main kind of areas of careers that I've done. You bring the same energy and interest and sort of joie de vivre as a human to anything you do, right? Yes, that's what you do. That's how it works. So music I started my career back in the 80s a long time ago now working in recording studios. Now people know me because I was the founder and main guitarist in the band London Beat In the 90s. We had five big hits, including I've Been Thinking About you, which is today one of the most played golden oldies from that era on the radio everywhere in the world. You know, if you're listening to this, you'll know I've Been Thinking About you. You've heard this many times.

Speaker 2:

That was not how I started in music in that period of my life. I started off as a recording studio engineer recording other people's music. So I learned how to mic a drum kit. I learned how to make a guitar sound good. I learned about working with producers. Of course, in the recording studio you have the artist, you have the engineer, who's the scientist, the sound scientist, then you have the producer right, You've got these three things and I was like the hands-on technician. You can see if you're watching this on a video, you can see behind me there's a recording studio and there's a desk over here oh, pointing the wrong way over here, and the sound engineer is the guy that's like mixing all the bits. That gave me a really solid understanding of the mechanics of how sound is recorded multi-track audio so and I'm always been interested in technology so I was like what does this microphone sound like? How do you make that bass drum do that? Why is this vocal sound better than that?

Speaker 2:

Then, because I'm a musician and producing is very much a musician's ability, you've got to be able to understand music as a record producer. George Martin, famously, was the producer of the Beatles and he was a classically trained musician. Then I got into production, so this now became into the sort of early mid-80s and giving my age away a little bit here, and I got really interested in dance music. At the time dance music was like you'd have a record which was a seven-inch vinyl and then the record company would hire someone to turn that into a 12-inch dance mix. So they were 12-inch remixes, so-called club mixes, and I got lucky, I kind of had a good handle on this, and then I moved to New York in 1983, a long time ago and found myself in demand because I understood the very, very early parts of EDM, what became electronic dance music?

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

And so back then it was two synthesizers and a drum machine.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You've probably heard of a Roland 808 or a Roland 909. These are the classic sounds of contemporary EDM. But then it was a machine, and then there was a synthesizer, a Jupiter-8, and then there was a. You know these other things and I was really interested in integrating that into drum machines and what became dance music that we know today. So that led me as a producer into working with some really great singers and artists in the time and eventually going you know what I can do that? Yeah, I can write some songs, you know. You've just got to have this faith in you can do stuff.

Speaker 1:

It's really this understanding of understanding each of the different parts of it, yes, and then wanting to yes, and I love that because, you're pushing yourself to be uncomfortable more and being like I kind of like this. This is awesome.

Speaker 2:

And don't worry about failing, you just got to figure it out. So then I got my band London Beat together, moved back from New York to the UK, met some singers who were actually American. Three R&B fantastic African-American guys who lived in London formed the band London Beat. And because I'd had the background as a sound engineer, because I'd had the background as a record producer, I was the only musician in the band and there was three singers, so three amazing vocalists and me doing everything else. I couldn't have done that if I hadn't had, you know, five years experience working with other artists, learning how studios work, right, Seeing how the business works, and so you know, if you think about this, for anyone listening, let's say that you want to be a chef, right.

Speaker 2:

Or you want to be involved in the catering, the restaurant business, you've really got to start. You don't want to start as a chef, You've got to start, start at the bottom. You know dishwashing, being, you know waiting tables, being the front of the house right, Learning to manage a restaurant. And then there's a certain moment where you'd be like, oh yeah, I want to be a celebrity chef. Yeah, that just doesn't happen. Like, oh yeah, I'm going to be a celebrity chef.

Speaker 1:

It's all a journey and it's the fact of embracing the journey and not fighting it. Being like I hate this time, but it's enjoying those moments and learning from them.

Speaker 2:

You just put your finger on something. A lot of younger entrepreneurs that I meet don't understand that. It's the journey. It's not. I hate doing this thing. This really sucks. I'm like you're learning about doing this thing so that when you're doing the next thing, you understand that thing right.

Speaker 2:

You know you've got to. If you're an entrepreneur, you have to learn about funnels. That's how it all works. Sales funnels that's how the whole thing works. If you don't understand that and you don't have a foundational experience of how does a sales funnel work, how do you get someone you don't know to buy your service or product? What's the mechanics of that? If you haven't figured that out, you're really not going to be a successful CEO later on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's so many different areas, from accounting to all of these different facets of entrepreneurship in general and it's just important for us to realize that, no matter what we do, we just have to stack our experiences and continue to learn and grow from what we started with Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, on, what we started with Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

You know, what's interesting when I look back in my life, is that often a lesson I learned in one area that at the time I was like, oh man, why am I doing this? Actually became really critical later on, when I was doing something else. Yes, right, absolutely. Here's a good example when I was in the band. Those days I was the band leader. Drummers are well known for being like drummers. They're different than other musicians. They're usually drinkers. They're a lot of fun. They just bang stuff constantly. You've got to be in time, show up. You have to manage a drama differently than you have to manage a guitarist trusting yourself. Um, when I then went into the next thing I did which is now you're talking about technology I got interested in recording studio technology and started a company called rocket network. That is a. There was the. There was the first, there was the first networking recording studio tool where you could have remote people. You could have an orchestra in LA and then you could have a guitarist in New York. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

What was fascinating was I realized that brilliant developers are like drummers. They're kind of on the spectrum a little bit.

Speaker 1:

They're a little bit on the tism spectrum.

Speaker 2:

They're like kind of differently wired. They're like a little odd.

Speaker 1:

I I got a lot of friends who are drummers and as a result, I was like you guys are just like my drummer friends yeah, no absolutely absolutely and only based on your experiences can you coincide them and start to understand how to deal with them, and start to understand people, and absolutely yeah what drives them and what motivates them? Because it's not. Because if you can't find, if it's not a winning scenario for the drummer or the developer or whatever it is on your team, then you're not going to win. And, like these people, it takes time to get them to win.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you have to understand that it took me a long time to learn this, that my experience, my personal biases, my personal sort of way I look at the life is mine and it is different for good or for bad than a lot of other people. So if you are running, let's say you're an entrepreneur, you've got a team, you've got a developer who is critical to the business, who is managing the back end, the sales funnel, these things you really have to look at life from their perspective. You have to understand why they're doing this. They may not be motivated by a pay rise because for them it's about the beauty of code. Yes, they may not be motivated by hard deadlines. They may be more motivated by making sure that they've got a feature. Is that they've got to look at and they're looking at? Yeah, they're looking at the feature and how long will it take to do this feature? If that doesn't fit into the framework that you are looking into their work at, it's really not going to work.

Speaker 1:

You'll be in and there's. There's so many times where we might be those people in those situations. Or you might be the boss with an employee who's not incentivized and it's it's not always a money situation. It can be a lot of different dynamics where it causes us to realize what do people actually want and how do you create that purpose with them and how do you create an exciting environment with them where they want to work with you, because it's not always or you want to work for them, like how do you find the right placement? Because I feel like there's so many people that I mean people listening to this and just people in general who are just a cog in the wrong machine, like cause we're all cogs in the machine and sometimes the cog doesn't fit Right and we've all been there.

Speaker 2:

You can, you can expand on that a little bit. That that's a really good way of putting it. You're a cog in the wrong machine. You can be a cog in the right machine but in the wrong place, right? You love, let's say, you get a job. You love what the company does, you love the team, you love the product the whole ethos is great, and yet you're doing the wrong thing or you just don't have the skillset to do the thing they've asked you to do. And that is a challenge. Unless you're aware, unless you're really like wait a minute, I you know I should be involved in sales, or I should be involved. I hate sales. Why am I doing sales? Right, I should be involved in research, or I should be involved.

Speaker 1:

You know there's a lot of different aspects of having a job and when you have a, when you have a job that really that you really enjoy it, changes your life in such a great way yeah, I know, but I think that's why it's so important for, like you were just saying, well, to take inventory on what you do like and what you don't like, to get to know yourself better, because as you know yourself better, you're gonna allow yourself to be more successful. So, yeah, for you. You do the music, you do the technology, you have the startups. How does the community building even get involved in that? Because it doesn't seem like it coincides, but it's different, it's different right.

Speaker 2:

It can happen, yeah, so if you think about being in a band, it's a community situation. There's four or five of you and you're on stage together as a team, talking and playing live to a community, your audience. It is literally all about people, the technology that, uh, we created. So after I quit the band, I got really interested in wide area networking of media assets.

Speaker 2:

That just just means that, as I was saying earlier, you can have different people working on the same piece of professional audio. It could be a soundtrack to a movie. It could be doing foreign language dubbing, so that if the movie is shot in English you've got to have a German overdub.

Speaker 1:

These are all parts with the leadership to land right.

Speaker 2:

This is a very collaborative, community based kind of system again, so I've always been really interested in how humans work with humans.

Speaker 1:

So real quick, I think that's absolutely incredible the way you explained it, because it's very interesting to me, because I sit there and go how does community building have to do with a band? And then, as soon as Bill explained it, I'm like silly, because you realize that everything you're doing is one thing it's not the singing, it's not the drumming, it's all cohesive, it all flows together, which I think is. I appreciate you bringing that to light.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, people, people are great, you know. The other thing I discovered in the years I've been on the planet is, despite what the media may be telling you, we are all, all humans. If we are a human, you could be an Australian fella in the outback. You could be like me, here in LA. There could be you. I don't know where you're sitting. Where are you?

Speaker 1:

Tampa Florida.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so you could be a dude with a beard in Florida. We all have exactly the same needs. We need food, air, water, love, friends, interest, time off. We're all wired the same. We really are, and when we forget that, that's when you know, that's when things go south. But we are all literally. We are all literally the same. It's, it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and it's that understanding that, no matter what you do, we're all still have the same responsibility, like we all have to take care of ourselves. We all have to do these things. And you might see some people sometimes you're like, how does that happen? How does that happen? And it's like we're all trying our best here and we're all doing what we can.

Speaker 2:

So let me jump into this METL. You probably see, it says METL with a dot after it. So METL is community. So METL is a men's group and it is an acronym Media, entertainment, technology, artists and Leadership. That's how this started. This is an organization that's been around for 22 years, started by my partner in crime, ken Rakowski, who is the host of the organization, and it is like an edgier version of TED for successful guys. That's what it's like, and why are we a men's group? I'll tell you why. Because men are better men. We men are better men when we're in the company of other kind and heart-centered men from many different backgrounds.

Speaker 2:

Now, metal is an independent group. We're not affiliated with any media publishing group, um, religious group, uh, you know, organization of any. We are an independent organization, yes, and we have actually, we have one golden rule within the organization, that is, we never talk politics. It's just not done. And, yeah, especially here in the US in the last couple of years, it's just been a constant barrage of like, outrage, and we're like no, I want to find out, jordan, how you doing, what do you care about? Right, I want to find out about you know, what do you do at school. What was your main subject? How's it going in your life? You've got any kids yet, right? These are the human things that we so the guys, many, many hundreds of guys in the group. We get to know each other as guys and the value. You heard me say you know guys from many different backgrounds and that is the key. Yeah, because right, yeah 100%.

Speaker 1:

So I have the Edwards Consulting and I do a Monday night men's group and it's definitely in the earlier stages than metal. But it's that idea of you're around people that are inspiring you and it causes you to have different perspectives, even if they're in different jobs or different, uh, businesses or different anything. It's not always like I was born in thailand and now we're different perspectives. That is different perspectives. But even being like I work in real estate or I work in music or I do this and like literally the podcast is one of the ways I get my different perspectives in, because it's so informative from different people, but to get a holistic perspective, which is what we're all looking for.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's super valuable and you're expediting it with joint, with being part of these different men's groups, because they really do give you so many different directions and it's not just your company that you're used to, but it's a bunch of different leaders, which I think is really awesome your podcast was interesting to us because you are focused on how do you get better at life, right, I mean? Yes, yeah, no, absolutely. How can I be more?

Speaker 2:

productive, optimize my life. How can I do that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, it's optimizing your life because you start to realize how many people just I don't know. It was really interesting to me because I started to realize, like when COVID was going on, everyone's like shutdowns, this bad, this blah, blah, blah. And then you start to realize you're like wait a second, but there's people who are winning and there's people who are winning and there's people who are enjoying their life, no matter whether it's shutdowns, no matter whether they live in america, no matter if they live in canada, australia, wherever, there's always people that are winning. And that's what I realized and I'm like sometimes it takes that little bit because you got to expand your horizons to get around those people. So I realized that, like, talking to people like you Will, I'm going to learn something. So I know one of the really big things that you guys did you got is it like a research project or a book or yeah, yeah, yeah, it was this Masculine intelligence.

Speaker 2:

Here we go. This is the book. This is available on our website, which is metalmen. This is all about. This is still fairly early days in in the launch of of this, and this is, uh, we call it masculine intelligence, and it's about eight core and common principles that successful men have, and I'm going to talk about them, if it's all right with you, in a second.

Speaker 1:

yeah yeah, absolutely, because I think I think it's super beneficial for people to. I mean, thinking grow rich was based off the same principle. Like you know what I mean all of these ideas of absolutely taking inventory of who did well. Why did they do well, what are their principles and how do we apply them to our own life allows people to live a better experience, and that's exactly what this is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I wanted to find out what do successful people men, because I'm a men's group, but this is entirely valid for any kind of human what do we have in common? But I wanted to know general principles, not so much as, like I did this. If you do this, you'll be successful. Think of where Rich is very like. Here's the thing Do this, do this, do this, do this. I wanted to go other general principles that we all have, and there are eight. And we got to these eight by doing a research project with 450 of our guys, really detailed. There were open ended questions, conversations, focus groups, one on ones, and we wanted to figure out are there eight core principles? And the answer to the question is yes, there are.

Speaker 2:

And I'm going to ask you because you're a successful fellow yourself. I know we've got some years between us, but I can see, I can recognize a lot of things in the way you look at things. Is the way that we look at things here. The first one is curiosity. You've got to be curious to be successful, and a good example is when you get on a plane, jordan, and there's an in-flight magazine in the seat in front of you, you're probably going to. You're curious, just want to have a look. Yeah right, absolutely right, and you'll be like kitchens in south carolina. I had no idea there that that's so interesting, right I don't know whatever it is.

Speaker 2:

So we're curious um, and a lifelong curiosity in, the things around us.

Speaker 1:

Next thing is creativity yeah, and just real quick, before you jump on curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the biggest ones for myself, just because when you really sit there and think about it like that's the whole reason I'm doing the podcast, because I'm curious, I want to learn.

Speaker 1:

Like people want to do. I want to ask questions Because, like when I was a kid, I would ask questions and they were like hey, too many questions, like we're done with the questions here. So with the podcast I have to go to different people and ask different questions, so no one ever gets tired of the too many questions. But the curiosity is something in that lifelong learning, because there's so many people who grew up, literally went to college, and then they're like I'm not learning anything and it's like bad move. You do, you, but like not learning anything and it's like bad move. You do, you, but like you gotta be curious and continue learning, continuing seeing what, what success leads to?

Speaker 2:

absolutely? I mean, we were the, the y kids, you, you, probably the same. Uh, where, why, why is the sky blue? Okay, my dad would be like, well, why is space black?

Speaker 2:

I'll come up with why space black? And why is the sky blue? You're like, well, that's due to the refractive interest. Well, why is it refractive? You can just keep going. Yeah, so then, creativity. You know, if you are curious about life, you'll find something. And you're like, oh, you know, I've just found a stick in the yard and it's shaped like this, and I'm creative. I could you know what I could do?

Speaker 2:

I could turn that into a catapult as a terrible eight year old you know, I got a stick and it's shaped like this and if I get a rubber band, I can then put it through. Now I can annoy the people next door. You know that's what we were like as kids.

Speaker 1:

uh, creativity, um yeah, then the next thing creativity allows you to really just open up your mindset and open up what is possible, and it allows you to see the things that aren't there yet. You know what I mean so the creativity is the idea, like what you just said, where I found a stick and now I have a catapult. So I think it's just it's an important one, because most people just completely miss the ball on it because a lot of jobs don't allow you to be creative.

Speaker 1:

So people lose that spark. And if you're not working it, if you, it's that if you don't use it, you're gonna lose it, and people don't. You gotta work these muscles, all all eight of these, these all have to be worked.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, you know the creativity is just a constant muscle that you always have to think about. You know, if you're working in a situation where there's a lot of structure and process, you know just be aware that you can probably, with a fresh view on the structure and process, suggest improvements that will help things in some way. Not always, not always, but if you're not able to do that, think about changing your work situation. The next one is resilience. I mean, are you resilient?

Speaker 1:

You've got to be, you have to be, you have to be, I mean, with the world. I mean, uh, there's just so much that you could. You could negatively stack, you could positively stack, and like there's just so many things that happen that are outside of our control, that I think resilience is. It's something where we just sometimes, you know, you know like there's some days where you're like, man, that was tough like, but you keep pushing a lot of life is a numbers game.

Speaker 2:

It depends what you're doing. Let's talk about dating for a second right yeah, bars are usually terrible places to meet someone of interest in the opposite. Uh, you know that you're looking for that you want to go out with. But if you are single and you're looking for a mate, just be constantly aware that bars are a really bad place to meet because whatever. But there are lots of other interesting places where you can meet interesting people.

Speaker 2:

The supermarket if you go to church. At church, if you go on hikes right, if you are not a creepy dude and you are really kind of easygoing and you can smile, you can approach, you know someone, especially if you know it's not in a situation where it's expected. You can be like hey, what's up? You know, just start a conversation. That's a numbers game because you know nine times out of 10, 18 times out of 20, you're just going to say hello to someone, but if you get a vibe and you stay talking a little bit longer, you can say hey, are you single? Do you want to get a coffee? Right, it's a numbers game and resilience is the nine times out of 10. Nothing happened, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely. Because David Meltzer, he came on and he literally talked.

Speaker 2:

Oh, we love David. Yeah, he's talked to us many times.

Speaker 1:

He talked about that concept where he was saying every no is one step closer to the yes.

Speaker 2:

Yes and yes and yes.

Speaker 1:

So if you view it that way, then we'll be closer and closer and closer, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and in business, resilience is understanding that most of the ideas that we test in terms of products, product launches, business as we start are just experiments.

Speaker 1:

Yes, right, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

It's not a failed business. It's an experiment that didn't work. We'll try something else.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely experiment that didn't work, we'll try something else. Yeah, absolutely the the next, uh, the next, uh. So. So so far we've had curiosity, creativity and, uh, resilience. The next one is integrity. This, this, is worth a little conversation. Integrity is keeping your word really a personal integrity is keeping your word. Business integrity is making sure that the product that you sell does what it says it does. Or, if you have a 30-day guarantee, make sure that you honor that. Business integrity could be to do with other aspects of the industry. You're in right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You may choose not to worry about those things if you're in, let's say, you've built a product and it's very successful, but it actually pollutes the environment, or the packaging that you're delivering it in is cheap, but it actually goes straight into the landfill. Is that an integrity? Good question right, good question. So integrity, especially talking from a man's perspective here, as you get into your 30s and your 40s, you find out the hard way a lot of guys find out the hard way that your integrity is really critical.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

People do repeat business with you if you have integrity in what you do yeah, you do a lot of business one time right, yeah, absolutely have you found in the guests that you've had on your uh on that melts is a really interesting example. Have you found that there's been conversations around integrity in the past?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean there's been a couple different groups that I've been a part of and they coincide with the integrity, because you start to realize that if you're not, the way I learned about it was basically that no matter what you do, you're always testing people. Like, if you're testing person and what that means is like okay, I give you. You say you're going to do something, and it's like did they do it, did they not do it? And it's like it's not, like I'm never going to talk to him again, but it's like, hey, we there's a doing the right thing and there's not doing the right thing sometimes, and I think that's really important yeah yeah, that's true, especially when there are times there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah there are times, too, when you got to cut someone some slack yeah, you know, complete understanding, yes, so I mean, that's the other thing where I've talked to guests about it and it's super interesting.

Speaker 1:

Like I had one guest come on and he's like hey, man, like I'm glad we were able to schedule this, like blah blah, and he goes. Uh yeah, the guy before like I had one on another podcast and I had to reschedule him two or three times and the guy lost it on me and he's like I didn't go on a podcast he's like I didn't want to deal with because he was too attached to the outcome and so like that's one of the things for me where it's like I expect things to get moved eight times, like I, if I have that expectation, then I sit there and I'm like okay, it went perfectly fantastic.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that yeah, I hear you, I hear you. The next thing, uh, for us as a men's group is brotherhood. Yes, successful men usually have guys around them that are not relatives and they're not, like you know, the fathers of their kids. Friends you know, random, you know, or just sort of random guys you meet. These are guys who are successful, like you are, but usually from other fields, right, a lot of doctors, a lot of physicians know a lot of physicians, and so a lot of physicians end up with just other physicians, and that's a weird thing. And so here at Metal, this is where the brotherhood of meeting other successful guys becomes really important. Of course, steel sharpens steel.

Speaker 1:

Iron sharpens iron, right, yes, I, I completely agree with this and I think a lot of the time he it's funny. Like you'll be like oh, like you'll hear some people who are like had more life experience, and they're like, oh, I met my best friend in my apartment complex and I'm like, right, your best friend like yeah, and most of it is just out of convenience, but then as you start going older and older and older.

Speaker 1:

You start being able to be really intentional with the friends you choose or the people you like to be around, or whatever it may be, or you close yourself off and you don't want to do that. But I do think there is a value in having those deep conversations with people who have zero stake besides wanting you to be happy and successful like that.

Speaker 2:

That's super valuable yeah, yeah, people, guys that get to know you and care about you, yes, see you on the journey and this is true for women's groups is it's exactly the same?

Speaker 1:

yeah you know women. Women are actually, women are actually much better at maintaining relationships than men.

Speaker 2:

I was just about to say that. So the next thing is financial literacy, and successful guys have understood how to get money, keep money and grow money. And it doesn't mean you've got to be a whiz on the stock with stocks or a crypto bro, but you've just got to understand how it works. Tax is inevitable. That's correct. There are ways to avoid tax, but if you get into evading tax, it can go south very quickly. So there are in business. There are strategic ways you can think about wealth creation. You can think about you know family trusts, generational wealth. There are ways you can. You know if your business isn't profitable. You know you find you're running a business, you're busy, but you're not making enough money. You're just working too hard. There are ways they're looking at that. With financial literacy it could be. You know you look at expenses. Okay, that's an obvious one Right.

Speaker 2:

It could be a combination of cutting back expenses um and then pricing yes right, it could be a combo of. You know, your margin is like six percent. That's like a gas station dude. That's not a good idea, right. So what are you going to do, you? You know you may be selling the wrong product a hundred percent right.

Speaker 1:

financial literacy was one of the things where I realized I actually got an accounting degree out of college. And financial literacy was one of the things I realized because I'm like if you, if you just make a few decisions differently than other people, you could live very, very different lives. And it's like whoa, it's so profound, the financial literacy component component like if you just automatically have the money taken out of your account and it goes through an investment thing, like the step up, like great step like I coach people and like I'll help them with some of this stuff, and it's just they're like.

Speaker 1:

I'm good for like, because if you just said it forever, it's done forever like you don't think about it and you're like good for you, because if you just set it forever, it's done forever.

Speaker 2:

You don't have to think about it and you're like good for you, and it's this thing. I recently remembered that I had this service called Acorn I have nothing to do with them, by the way. I have Acorn as well. You have Acorn too, right, and I was one of their very, very, very early customers back when they started, a long time ago now, and I set it up so that I think I round up the pennies. Yes, is that how you do it? Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I mean Acorn, what they do is they round up. Some of them do the roundup and then some of them do. It was the one place where I found I could do a weekly automatic deposit. Yeah, that's what I do.

Speaker 2:

It was the one place where I found I could do a weekly automatic deposit.

Speaker 1:

So I would take out, like it was funny because I was doing like $25 a week, $30 a week, and then I look back and I'm like there's a few grand in there. And then you start to realize you're like okay, like I'm going to use this as my travel fund, so I would go on trips and then I would just take the money out of there and I'm like free trip.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I put in five bucks. I've totally forgot I got this. I literally had five bucks a month going into this with the roundup, whatever it was, Never looked at it, forgot about everything, changed email address, right. So I wasn't even told that it was happening. And then somehow I remembered like oh, wait a minute. Oh, my God, I've been putting whatever this is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the money in every single month. God, there's got to be something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was funny. So anyway, financial literacy yes, it's profound, you've got to understand it.

Speaker 1:

The point is there for everyone listening. What Will did is it becomes profound, like the very minor pennies and the minor dollars and this whole thing, and then you look at it and you're like, oh, the best moves, so literally never touch it again.

Speaker 2:

Like literally, if you buy something.

Speaker 1:

If you buy a good thing and you never touch it again probably the best move you can make.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I um here's. Here's what I did with with the early Bitcoin. I was bright enough to get some Bitcoin back in, back in, you know, when it was like nobody had any idea what this is, and then I was like I'm never going to look at that again. Well, I will do it one day. And so I still never look at it. I have no idea. I have no idea what's in it and I'm not interested, because otherwise you get emotionally charged.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, it's gone up.

Speaker 2:

I made another two bucks in the last 30 seconds and so at some point when I really need it, when I'm in retiring, I'll be like, oh, I wonder where that is these days.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Career development, professional development. To be a successful guy, you've always got to be learning about your industry, things that are happening. Mentoring you need to have a mentor. You need to have a coach. A mentor is someone you see occasionally right, who's doing this because they do it out of love. There's no money usually transmitted. You're paid as a mentor, but as a coach, yeah, you need to hire a coach. It really helps to have someone who knows your industry, who can call you on your bad behavior. You know self-defeating, but by bad behavior I'm talking about you know going the easy route. You just where someone's, someone who can say to you hey, have you noticed that you self-sabotage often in these circumstances, x, y and z yeah, yeah, and it's also a coach.

Speaker 1:

Holds you accountable to what you said you were going to do, helps you have more self-confidence and integrity in what you want to do. So when you invest in yourself, you're ready to level up in these different regards of whatever aspect of life you're looking at doing 100%.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So to be successful, you have to be conscious of that and have that as part of your life. Then the last one is work-life balance. And what does that mean? Well, health and wellness, right? Yes, for starters in, we live in really unique times in a certain way. And what screen time there's an accelerating rate of change.

Speaker 2:

It's accelerating, um. You know, the tools that we use for business are changing all the time. You know we may know microsoft, excel. Anybody in business has to know that today. In 10 years, do you think that is going to be what we're using? I doubt it. So any Excel spreadsheet skills you have today are going to be irrelevant because it's going to be some AI. I've already started doing this with ChatGPT. Make me a spreadsheet that projects the da-da-da and the da-da-da. I'm just talking to it and it's doing this stuff. It's not very good yet today. I can do it way better in Excel, but I'm like, oh, that oh, this is this is how this is going to go.

Speaker 2:

Right, talking to a spreadsheet? What? Yeah, give me the margin on a XYZ product when this happens, and then there's going to be a disaster in this part of the world, and right.

Speaker 2:

And it's going to put all that together for you. So you know, the accelerating rate of change means that you have to put a lot of attention when you're at work, on screen time. Here's the thing in your personal life your, you know your real time, your real lifetime. That's when we need to slow down. Be present, right. Take a walk on the beach. Leave your phones at home. Hang out with your kid your kid's only going to be six once this year Hang out when you have people around for dinner. Make a rule no phones at the dining table, no talking about politics, just whatever. You know, you know what I'm saying. Just be really present. And with older people, you know, when you're with your grandparents, sit and tune in to where they're at. Tune in, listen, you know, know. And so work-life balance is this especially as successful men, we are constantly managing the balance between the insanely difficult to keep up accelerating rate of change in all things startup and then having a family, and so just being conscious of that is a real skill.

Speaker 2:

I've messed up on that many times.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I think Ogmandino he was. He wrote the Greatest Salesman in the World and he talked about that where he said you have to be married to work and married to your family, but you can't be married at the same time. Basically, what he was getting at is you go to work, you don't worry about your family, you go to your family, you don't worry about work. And it's these ideas. And how do you create that?

Speaker 1:

And, like, one of the ways I actually was able to create that with, uh, my new uh we just got married but my new wife, madison, right, we uh we traveled europe for seven weeks, so we would work us hours and then we would travel, so we had this extra time together. So, instead of watching netflix on a thursday night, we were now exploring, uh, barcelona or Nice, france, or in London. Very cool, yeah, because it allows you to coincide both those times, but you get better moments together. So, will, for you, you mentioned a few things that were super interesting to me. It was stuff about the future and what do you see for the future? What do you think people, the audience, should know to prepare for the future? Because I just you mentioned a few things where you're like I'm early in bitcoin, like the ai is coming, all this stuff. I'm like this guy seems to know some stuff that's going on, so is there anything that you think would be important for people to know for the future?

Speaker 2:

There are. If you kind of think about the history of Western society, there are a few things that have happened that have really changed things the invention of the car, right when we went from a horse-based transportation system to the railway system. Obviously you know the history of how that opened up the, the west and the midwest with the, with the train system back in the 1800s, the um, uh. Next thing was the car. That changed everything. And then the next thing was flying. You know, planes. That changed everything. And then we had the web in the 90s.

Speaker 2:

That changed e-commerce. That changed everything. The jury's out on whether crypto as we see it today, will change everything. It clearly will in some way. I don't think anybody has a real handle on how it's going to change. Will we go to a full digital currency? Will the dollar be digital? I have no idea. It's a very interesting world, but the thing that is about to change everything and we're has had so far including, you know, space travel and all these other fantastic, you know game changing thing that's happened and nobody knows exactly how it's going to pan out, and we're still in the super early stages.

Speaker 2:

I had an experience here myself in los angeles with a waymo. These are the self-drive cabs. They oh, I heard right. They have the little radar thing on the top and they're now. I was a beta user of this service and the first time you get in one you're like it's like an uber service, right. You call, you put the address in and da-da-da-da-da, and then you just wait. Then a car with no one driving shows up, parks in a really tricky spot, perfectly, and there's a little thing on the top that has my initials WH. You go over to it, you press a button on the thing on the app and it says open door, unlock car and you get in. He goes, hello will. How are you? I'm like what you? It says are you ready? Put your seat belts on? I'm like. And then it says you. You press the button in the car and now it drives you to the new place with no one in it and the first time I did it, I was like, oh, my god, is this going to be all right?

Speaker 2:

30 seconds later I was like, oh, this is safe because it sees all the traffic. It's really driving well. It's not like driving like your granny. It's not like.

Speaker 1:

No, but it's got more cameras. It sees all the visual. It's not playing on its phone.

Speaker 2:

And that changed for me. I said to myself oh yeah, the new generation of kids. I don't know what the cutoff is. If you're 10 years old today, you may learn to drive like you ride a horse in our society, but most people would right, some people still ride horses, right, of course? Yeah, right, but I'm driving for a new generation. Why would you drive? It's a pain in the butt. Most of the time.

Speaker 1:

It takes up a lot of time. Yeah, yeah, if you could have your commute and be able to sit in the car for an hour. Why would you not?

Speaker 2:

I have literally done this where I've gone out, shot a bunch of video for the business and then in the car in the way home on the way back an hour it's LA, a lot of traffic I'm able to actually edit the video up, get it completely ready and when I'm at home ready to upload yeah, wow, I just got an hour. So that's a good example of how AI is changing driving and human things. So I just think that of being aware of how AI will change legal. If you need to hire a paralegal, there are now AI tools that are better than humans, right?

Speaker 1:

Yes, and they're on demand. So it's yeah, no, it's challenging. So you've got to figure out what your niche is and how you can connect and where you can provide value Absolutely, but there's always new opportunities.

Speaker 2:

Yes, right, always, always. It's the way it works. 25 years ago, there was no such thing as SEO, search engine optimization. There was no such thing as a real search engine maybe 30, whenever it was 30 years ago, right, and so there was. When the web came out and then Google came out, there was this new search engine optimization. I'm not coming up.

Speaker 2:

I'm a chiropractor, I'm here in, you know, long Beach, california, and so now you have to change your website so that you're visible, so that if someone's looking for back pain, long reach, you come up, right. So that was a job that got developed completely as sort of on the back of the technology of the commercial web coming along, and it is clear to me that there are going to be many, many new roles and new jobs that we can't even imagine today. Absolutely, that will be well paid and you can do remotely, and so I think humans have amazing resilience and I think we have amazing sort of entrepreneurial spirit. It's built into who we are, and so I think we'll be more than okay.

Speaker 2:

I think Many of the jobs we do today Jordan well, not you and me talking now, hopefully but many of the jobs we do as humans are just like really stupid, crazy way to be. I mean, what about being an Uber driver? You are driving a car around for people. I mean, I know it's a job, but that job is going to disappear inevitably in time.

Speaker 1:

No, I mean, it's a job, but that job is going to disappear inevitably in time.

Speaker 2:

No, I mean, it's a terrible way of making terrible way to live your life you shouldn't be doing that, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1:

But coming back to the values, that doesn't allow you. I mean curiosity. You could be curious what's going on, but you don't really have that creative principle. It doesn't really build the resilient like. There's a lot of stuff to it that doesn't allow you to really be your full, authentic self. And I think, finding that true, authentic self is really what we're all looking for. So Will. It's been awesome for you to share about the mass intelligence, the eight core principles where can people?

Speaker 1:

learn more about you, learn more about metal, learn about what's going on.

Speaker 2:

Metalmen. That's the website, metalmen, and love to see you. Any women listening to this about 20% of our new members come in from the wife of a current guy recommending metal to her girlfriend's husband.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

And so we are better men when we're in the company of other good men. And so Metal Men is where you find out all about us. If you're a guy and you're interested in finding out, you can get a free guest pass on the site and check out. We do two things. We are a virtual community. We get together on a Saturday, we have a show, a Zoom-based show on Asaba Bay Asaba Bay, Morning Pacific and then we get together in person three times a year. So hope to see you at one of the events. Jordan, you meet some interesting dudes. I'm just one of you know, one of 800.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Awesome. Well, I appreciate it, thank you.

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Jordan Edwards

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