144: Mental Illness is An Asset: Create Predictable Income Using Checklists, Life Mission Statements, and Tribal Connections with Mike Veny

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Mike Veeny. Now, have you known someone who lives with mental health challenges or do you want to learn to better manage your own mental health challenges or even better, how do you really transform the stigma surrounding mental health? Well, our very important, special, VIP guest is going to take care of all that and more. How are things today Mike?

Mike Veny: I'm doing wonderful. How are you Robert?

Robert Plank: Better than ever. Just getting kicked back on this Monday morning. Ready to do some of the entrepreneurial life style stuff.

Mike Veny: Cool, and hello to your listeners out there.

Robert Plank: I'm super glad that they're listening and that you're here. Could you tell us about yourself, Mike, and what makes you different and special?

Mike Veny: What makes me different and special ...

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

Mike Veny: I'm Mike! That's what makes me different and special. No, I am a mental health speaker and I'm also a drummer and I have a very unique business that really helps people who are struggling with mental health issues, a big topic in this country right now. At the same time, I work with corporate America with drumming to teach adults how to work better together in the workplace like me.

Robert Plank: Interesting. Cool, so I mean out of all the stuff you've listed, the drumming sounds like super crazy and out there, which is something I love, so can you tell us about that drumming stuff?

Mike Veny: Well, I started playing drums in the fifth grade and the reason I started drumming was because I heard it on Sesame Street and I always just liked the sounds of the drums and for some reason I was struggling with mental health issues and behavioral health issues. In fact, I was hospitalized three times in a psychiatric hospital and expelled from three schools for behavior problems and actually tried to take my own life at age ten. Drumming was the only thing that calmed me down and made me feel good. It worked better than the other medication they were giving me. I decided to become a professional drummer, not just because it is cool. I mean, it is pretty cool if you're a drummer, but also because it was my medication. I'm thirty-seven years old and it's still my medication that I use and what I love about it is, I'm able to share it with others.

I do a very advanced form of what we call drum circles, and a drum circle is typically when you have people in a circle drumming and jamming along to grooves, but I have created a lot of activities and games for adults to use with drumming to not only play great music, but to learn some lessons about working with each other.

Robert Plank: That's awesome. Did I hear that right that you don't medicate or anything like that? It's all just these drumming exercises?

Mike Veny: Yeah and when it comes to mental health, and for any of you listening out there, seek the guidance of a doctor whenever you have any kind of issue. I worked with my therapist and just basically came to the conclusion that I was going to try what we call alternative medication, which is exercise, meditation, good friends and music.

Robert Plank: Cool, so instead of maybe like the short cut way, which seems easy, but seems to have these other side effects, you kind of found your own way to make this thing work.

Mike Veny: Yeah, can I say something about that? That we, as a society, are short cut people sometimes. If we're single and we want to be in a relationship, we can just quickly download a certain app and just start swiping away at different profiles and I'm learning more and more that in order to move forward in your life, sometimes things involve real difficult work and you have to see certain things as a process, not a destination. Such as building your business or building your career.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about that because you took us up to about eight to ten or so and you discovered this drum circle thing and I mean obviously it's been a couple decades since that. How did you get from point A to point B I guess?

Mike Veny: Well, in my mind, I think ... my vision when I was sixteen was that I just wanted to play drums in a jazz club with drunk people in the audience. That's what I wanted to do. I told my parents that and I think they really were very concerned, but they still supported me. They understood and supported me. When I started drumming and playing professionally, I also started teaching privately and there was an organization that asked me to come in one day and work with a group of kids. Said, "Can you teach drums to a group of kids," and I said, "Okay, I'll see if I can figure it out," and I did that and it worked so well that they started asking me to work with adults. I thought, "This is weird."

Then, more companies started asking me and I realized that I had a problem on my hands that I could either surrender to or run away from and a lot of times ... What I've learned Robert, is that when we have opportunities in life, sometimes we can surrender to them or run away from them, but if you let your ego get caught up in, "This is how I want to look to the world," and don't allow yourself to surrender to opportunities, sometimes that can be a lost career changing thing in your life. I surrendered to it and next thing I know, I was booked doing interactive drumming events around New York state and now I'm doing it around the country. In fact, I'm going to be in Haiti in October doing it with a company, so I'm loving it.

Robert Plank: That's awesome and I know that we kind of have two sides of the coin to talk about today. There's the part of the business that you've built and then there's this message you have and these techniques you have for solving this problem. The thing I like about that and I guess the common thread I keep hearing from entrepreneur after entrepreneur is that they kind of have some kind of an idea of what they want to do and they kind of like do it and they put all their energy into it and then it leads to this next logical step, it leads to this next logical step, but it's one of those things where it's like you wouldn't of ... like you said, you wouldn't of come across the becoming a public speaker or teaching this drum circle stuff to adults if you hadn't first just tried it with kids. Even that wouldn't of happened if you hadn't first had this dream of being a drummer and stuff like that. Is that right?

Mike Veny: Yeah, absolutely and I love that you just said that because it's like literally you take you and me right now. We're doing this podcast interview. Next time in California, I might ask you to meet up for coffee, we go to a really cool coffee shop and discover that you and I both want to go into the coffee business and building a coffee business that's even bigger than Starbucks. That's just kind of how life works, but you and I would both have to surrender to that at some level if it were to happen. The other thing I want to bring up is the importance of mission statement in life. Mission statement is a thing that sometimes, when people are building businesses, they see that little spot in the business plan and struggle to find powerful words that can go in there.

A mission statement is so important to life and it's something that you discover with time. It's nothing you can go out and get tomorrow. I discovered that my mission life was to empower people to connect authentically. That's, if you hang out with me as a friend, that's when I work on the mental health stuff. I'm empowering people to connect with themselves and when I do the drumming, I'm empowering people to connect. It's actually really just one theme that I basically express in several different ways.

Robert Plank: Is there a reason why the drum circle stuff works? Or do you have a theory on that? Is it a matter of like people having a way to express themselves? Is it some kind of a outlet? Is it the group aspect, is it a focus, is it in the zone aspect? What do you think makes this drumming thing work?

Mike Veny: Well, it's everything you just said actually. My initial thought was, "It's 'cause drumming is just cool!" That's why it works, but no, it works for several reasons. One of the things that I'm learning is that people are tribal. We all are tribal people and even if you're listening to this right now and you are an introvert, we still have a need, at some deep level, to be part of a group. When I do a drumming event, every single person involved is part of that group and we all get to bond. The other thing that happens is when you have people in a circle, it really allows people to take off their mask, their social shell and just be themselves. If you think about kindergartners, how they sit in a circle and do things. They get to just kind of be themselves.

Even twelve step programs like alcoholics anonymous are very successful because people are sitting in a circle. It makes everyone an equal and it immediately allows everyone to feel good. The other thing is the pent up aggression that we all carry. I mean all of us have stress, different issues that we're walking around with and to be in a safe environment where you can just hit stuff and make noise and act like a fool is something that people just never get to do at all. That's some of the short answer as to why I believe the drum circles are successful.

Robert Plank: Even when you describe that, it almost sounds like kind of with the drumming, it's almost like going back to that kindergarten kind of age when things were simpler or you were happier and all the weight of being an adult didn't kind of weigh you down. You know what that reminds me of? You know what I always wanted to try was that thing where you pay five bucks and you get to have a bat and you get to beat the crap out of a car. It's almost like that kind of thing-

Mike Veny: Yep.

Robert Plank: ... But safer I guess, because you're using drums.

Mike Veny: Yes, no absolutely and that's the thing. Think about the world we live in. With all the news around violence. How many people are living with pent up aggression that they need to let out in a healthy way? That's why I think it's just important for all of us, whether it's drumming or something else to find healthy ways to let out your aggression, especially if you're an entrepreneur building a business. Because you know what? It's a lovely thing to be an entrepreneur, but really difficult to get your project off the ground. Really difficult.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about that. What are your thoughts about that? What have you found that ... out of all your years of entrepreneurship, what do you think people need to be doing differently? Not just as far as like their actions, but also as far as their inner game and their inner voice and all that stuff. What should people be doing differently as entrepreneurs as opposed to just employees?

Mike Veny: Wow, that's a great, great question and I'm going to try to answer this as quickly as I can out of respect for everyone's time. There's two things. Number one, talking to the people who are listening, who are just thinking about starting a business or in that beginning phase. One thing I always suggest to people starting out is to not spend much time talking about your idea, but executing your idea. Because a lot of times in today's entrepreneurship world, people really just get caught up in the idea of just going to business plan competitions and just talking about their idea to their friends, but very little time on action. Action is uncomfortable, action is difficult. Action makes you feel vulnerable, you actually have to go out and sell whatever it is that you are trying to make. I think it's really important to do that.

For those that are in business like myself, one thing I suggest that has really helped me increase my income, is the importance of writing down all of the processes in your business into an operations manual. This way, you can run a business from a checklist. My business is very easy for me to run because I just go to the checklist. My assistant goes to the checklist. Everyone on my team has a checklist. This way if I'm not around, there's a predictable way for this machine to run and so a lot of people never get to that point because they say it feels too corporate or it feels like they're in the regular job that they were trying to leave, but that actually is one of the reasons that a business like UPS is so successful, because all of the drivers have a checklist for different things that they have to do. That's why they are, I'm going to say, predictable for the most part with delivering what they deliver. It's very important for entrepreneurs to hear.

Robert Plank: Do you have a specific checklist you can kind of walk us through that you use in your business?

Mike Veny: Absolutely. One of my favorite checklists to use is my budgeting checklist. Each month I have to deliver a budget for the upcoming month. I have to do this on the twenty-fifth and if it's not done by the twenty-fifth, believe it or not, my assistant has a checklist item to email me and remind me, because we have to upload that into Quick books because there needs to be a budget before the first of the month for the following month. Part of that checklist and making a budget includes listing all the income that I project coming in, but doing that on the conservative side. Because a lot of times when we project income, we get all excited and like to put what we hope the income will be and one thing I've learned, as a business owner, is it's really important to yes, have goals, but also be realistic.

At the same time, with expenses, be very aggressive looking at worse case scenarios and this has allowed me to make the finances of the business actually very predictable for the most part, which is a very important goal that I achieved.

Robert Plank: Instead of flying by the seat of your pants, you actually are treating it like a real business, a real machine, not just something where you're playing around as a hobby.

Mike Veny: Absolutely, absolutely. You have to treat it like a real machine. You know what? If you don't, you're not going to make money from it. One of the things that I've learned the hard way, and maybe you've experienced this too with people that are just starting out. A lot of people start businesses because they want to get out of the corporate world. They don't like feeling controlled or held down or like they have to be under someone else.

When they get into business, they get really excited, but they eventually discover that the only way to grow their business is to actually become more corporate like in the sense that you have to run things with predictable systems and processes and policies. That's just very painful, so for a lot of you listening, what I'm saying might be very, very painful, but I promise you, for those of you that really make an attempt to develop these processes, you are going to see an immediate change in your income.

Robert Plank: I think that that was a pretty tough lesson to learn. For me, it took many, many years to have that realization and I think that a lot of us, or a lot of people who are employees, they want to just quit and have the freedom and they just want to wake up and stay in their pajamas all day, click the button and the money comes out of the computer and it's like, if only it worked that way right? If only there was a way to do that. We both kind of laugh about it, but I think at some point or another, we have kind of all secretly hoped that was true right?

Mike Veny: Absolutely, and one of the reasons for that, I believe, is television and what we see in the media about business. There's so many shows out on television about business and Shark Tank. A lot of times, we are creatures of what we see in society. We develop skewed perspectives about what business is. One thing I always tell people, if you want to see one of the most successful businesses in the country, go down to your local laundromat. It's one of the most successful businesses in the country, is a laundromat, but most people don't even think of that because it's like, "Oh, that's boring." A lot of times we get caught up more in the sexiness behind the idea and our idea versus just running a solid machine.

Robert Plank: That's pretty powerful because if you think about it, it's like which would you rather ... The whole point of having your own business is to make money, so which would you rather have? A really sexy idea that makes zero dollars or a boring idea that makes a good amount of money.

Mike Veny: Yeah, I'm going to take the boring idea.

Robert Plank: Yeah and there's so many stories like that of people who they had a really good idea in the back of their head and they went ahead and created the money making business first and then they were able to go ahead and do the dream. You look at your Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or something. They all kind of did the ... I don't necessarily want to say practical, but they did the, like you said, the unsexy path first and once they were able to get that running, then they could go and play around and have fun.

Mike Veny: Yes, no absolutely. Can I just actually circle back to the mental health thing for a moment?

Robert Plank: Let's do it.

Mike Veny: I still live with mental health issues. I struggle with depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. I actually struggle with it so painfully that my entire body is affected by it. Yesterday, I couldn't move practically because of the depression. I really wanted to move, but I just couldn't. I'm not being lazy, I exercise and all that stuff, but having the checklist in place made it so much easier to get certain things done when I was depressed. The beautiful thing about process is, is that if you're a person like me who struggles with mental health issues it actually makes it a lot easier to get your work done. Even if you're not in business for yourself and you're just working a regular job, creating processes for yourself is going to make your life easier.

Robert Plank: I love that and the whole thing about those checklists that I found is that as I'm creating them or if I do that, I feel like it's almost kind of a waste of time until those days when there's just so many things to do. Like my focus is so split or there's such a deadline where I have to get a bunch of stuff done. For those times when I'm in a rush, there's all those things that I intuitively think I could've handled, but I always end up missing steps or doing something in the wrong order. Or like you said, I think that's pretty cool that even if you can't show up or you don't show up on a certain day to get a certain thing finished, then someone else can just kind of pick up that checklist and do it for you.

Mike Veny: Exactly, exactly, and I agree with you so much too. Setting them up is a pain. I get stressed out setting up these checklists. It's like why am I wasting my time thinking through this? But when you have days where there's a lot of things going on, you will feel very grateful for this simple, ancient form of entrepreneurial technology. The checklist.

Robert Plank: Whoever invented it, I mean, they are centuries, thousands of years dead, but what a genius, whoever that person was.

Mike Veny: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Cool, so kind of along those lines of your business and checklists and stuff like that. Could you tell us about everything that you do from the ... I know that you do, you have like a podcast, you do speaking, you have some websites. Can you tell us about all that cool stuff you do?

Mike Veny: Sure, I have a podcast. It's called the Mike Veeny Show and it only has three episodes, but it's people like yourself that are inspiring me to get a little more disciplined in that. Actually, I need to revisit my process for that. Producing the podcast to make it a little smoother to fit my life. In addition, I write for a website called Health Central. I write a lot of mental health articles that are there to help people. I write for Corporate Wellness magazine and I also have two websites. One is called UnleashYourGroove.com. That is my interactive drumming website and the other for mental health is called TransformingStigma.com. I invite anyone to just reach out to me if they ever have any questions about any of this stuff.

Robert Plank: Awesome, they should definitely do that and I want to thank you Mike for coming by and telling us, in our little compressed window of time, first of all, how you were able to overcome this common and kind of scary and sometimes even life threatening problem. That was cool and also to tell us about just like your philosophy and this whole checklist thing and how you have the mission statement and operations manual. It was all very helpful so thanks for coming by and sharing all that stuff. One more time, just to make sure that everyone for sure 100% has it, where can they go, what website, to find out more about you? One more time.

Mike Veny: I'm going to just send everyone to TransformingStigma.com. That's the mental health one because I think that's the more important one actually. Check out TransformingStigma.com.