Finding Your Rhythm: Maintaining Your Mental Health During A Job Transition with Mike Veny

Luis Malbas  
Well hello, everybody, welcome to the training, learning and development communities transitioning to Learning and Development Conference. Thanks for joining us today. I know we have about, Gosh, last I checked, I think there were about 500. I was 505 people registered, I think early this morning. So I know that number will jump up as the day goes on. But I'm really excited about having so many folks register for this event. And I think it's going to be a great week for all of us. So many, so many activities to enjoy. And right. But before I get started, I just wanted to say a couple things. I just want to thank one all of you for registering and thank all of the speakers this week, including the speakers for the virtual tables that are participating in the event. And then also we have a few sponsors Karen north and the learning camel. And and of course ID Lance, thank you so much Parker and Andrea for sponsoring again. And Sarah from teaching a path to learning. It's a community for teachers that are transitioning into l&d. Sarah is, is a fantastic addition to this event, she is going to be speaking, so and she's one of the sponsors. So thanks for doing that. And then also one of the things that's really interesting about this one is we've got, you know, those virtual tables going on, I pinned to the top of the messages in in the main room, the schedule, you know, you kind of have to keep an eye on that to jump into the virtual tables when it's time. And the way that I'm doing these is kind of new this year, so or this event. So forgive me if you know the rooms get too crowded, different things like that, I do have a message out to all the virtual table hosts that if I need to move everyone into a bigger room, we can do that, too. So just keep an eye on that. All right, so that's enough with the housekeeping stuff. I want to introduce you to our next guest, Mike Vini, who I'm very excited to have this event. And we've spoken before, I think it was last year. And I think that that his topic is just right on for all of us here in l&d. I have like a nice, nice intro that I'm going to read to to you all, Mike Vini was determined to overcome a lifetime of serious mental health challenges to become a professional drummer, and a change maker in the wellness industry. He's the author of several books, including the best selling book transforming stigma, how to become a mental wellness superhero. I pinned that one in chat. So if you want to check that out over on Amazon, give that one a look. His expertise and life experience have been featured on ABC, NBC and CBS News as a 2017 pm 360 elite award winner. Our next guest was recognized as one of the 100 most influential people in the health care industry. He was also awarded corporate Livewire as 2022 Innovation and Excellence Award as a corporate wellness specialist. As co host of the better mental podcast. Mike shares insightful experience as a business owner living with mental health challenges. His captivating presentations are popular with companies including Microsoft CVS, health, T Mobile, Heineken, Salesforce, and the Wounded Warrior Project. With a busy schedule that includes writing, speaking and teaching continuing education courses, you can feel confident knowing that you will have an enjoyable experience enjoyable experience in this presentation. In his spare time, he enjoys weight trading, meditating for 20 minutes twice a day, and eating a good bone in ribeye steak cooked medium rare. He lives in New York City and is addicted to buying luggage along with watching YouTube videos on how to pack a suitcase. This packing checklist for business trips is one of his most prized possessions. And I can't think of anybody better to open up this exciting event this week. So, Mike Vini, I'm gonna go ahead and let you take it away.

Mike Veny  
Thank you and hello to all of you here. Start sharing my screen here. Hey, so we're gonna be talking about finding your rhythm, maintaining your mental health during a job transition. And first thing I'd like to let you know that I am a drummer, actually a professional drummer. And I want to give you a quick drum lesson. It's not going to be that loud because I'm in my New York City apartment and I'll get in trouble. But when you're a drummer, you learn to do something called Keeping a groove like this

but eventually you get to the point where you learn something called a drum fill which is a transition you go into a different part of the Music transitions are extremely difficult in music, dance theater and and for those of you that have been in the performing arts, as you're preparing for performance, one of the things that everyone is asking about is how are you doing with the transitions, transitions are not easy. And today we're going to talk about managing your mental health during a job transition. My name is Mike veiny. I am a certified corporate wellness specialist and my company is accredited by I set the international creditors for continuing education and training. And some things you should know about this presentation. Before we start, it's informed by psychological research. And it's gonna give you some resources and strategies that you can use to reduce your stress and improve your wellness. But disclaimer, I am not a mental health professional. No, I'm just Mike with his mental health challenges talking to you today. If you need help, please consult a doctor if you are in an emergency, please call 911. That being said, there are going to be certain topics that I talk about that are a little bit triggering, and I'm going to do my best to give you a trigger warning if something is coming up. But sometimes even with my best efforts, there's something that triggers someone and I don't know. So I encourage you to just keep that in mind. And I promise you, I'm gonna do my best you're in good hands. As we talk about such a sensitive topic. Also, I should let you know that this presentation is pretty much a 60 minute presentation that I'm about to do in 30 minutes. So if I seem like I'm flying, I promise you is there's going to be a handout that we're going to get to you afterward with all the notes for everything. So here's what we're gonna learn how to do today, we're going to learn how to identify what you can and can't control. We're going to talk about a ways to improve wellness to build resilience. Learn to use rejection, to your advantage through asking questions, and finally, how to actually practice gratitude and positive self talk in a practical way, but before we go into that, I want to tell you a little bit about me why I'm doing this work. I have struggled with mental health challenges for most of my life. It's all that I know sometimes. And to give you a description about what I go through, I struggle with a few things if you picture an oven, like an industrial strength Viking restaurant, and on the top burner on the top right is my obsessive compulsive disorder. As I'm giving you this presentation right now I'm obsessing about 10 different things on the lower right burner is my anxiety. And even though I feel safe, because I know some of you here, I still have a little bit of anxiety in my chest right now as I'm giving this presentation on the top left burner as my depression and on the bottom left burners a stockpile. So I can take the ingredients from each frying pan, my OCD, anxiety, my depression, put it into the stock pot, close the lid and turn up the heat. That's a party waiting to happen in my kitchen. And when we talk about mental health in general, we're talking about three things, thoughts, feelings, and behavior. If any one of those has a challenge, you've got what we call a mental health challenge. What's so interesting about the topic, though, is like you can't see someone's thoughts. No, we like to think we can perceive each other's feelings, especially with emojis. But you can absolutely observe behavior. And that's where my journey began with behavior. I grew up in Long Island, New York, and I had wonderful parents. They loved me dearly. They did the best that they could for my brother and I, that's my mom right there. She was my biggest fan and she passed away about six years ago. I think about her every single day. This is my dad, we took this picture two weeks ago, he says hello, I gave him the link to the presentation. He might actually be there on the chat, I don't know. And also things started to change with my behavior. Once my brother Jason was born, I started to have temper tantrums, I started to get angry, I started to constantly struggle to deal with my emotions, and I would act out and I always thought I was a bad child. Always thought I was bad. And eventually, by the end of first grade, my parents had had enough of me getting in trouble. So they decided to put me out of public school and pull me out of public school and put me into this place called Catholic school where the nuns would straighten me out. That's what my mom said. Long story short. Second grade was okay, third grade was okay. But in fourth grade, I ended up having the one teacher in school that no one wants to get as a teacher I think you can all remember this right in school there was that one teacher no one wanted to get as a teacher. Her name was sister Pat mean an evil nun? And she yelled at me one day told me to wipe the smile off my face. I said, No. Everybody goes through. The next thing you know, she's up in my face and she's tries to grab me by my arm and pull me out of my desk. I tried to punch my teacher. She then threw holy water. I mean, call me the devil and I threw it back at her and said put this on your wrinkles. I was expelled from school that day.

Parents had a serious talk with me that night about respect and I told them nobody has a right to talk down to me. Fast forward to a month later they put me in public school where my uncle was the principal. And after three weeks, I was expelled from that school too. So we have me being expelled twice in the fourth grade. But rest of fourth grade best school year ever, I got to stay home every day. That's back in a time when we wanted to stay home all the time. And it was really tough for me, I just couldn't keep it together in fourth grade. You know, I struggled. But things got worse that summer. That summer, I got angry at a level that I never had before it went into what we call a rage, we all get angry and snap sometimes, but a rage is when you're intensely angry for a long period of time. And the next thing I know is put in a mental hospital. And that's a scary place to be, especially when you're a kid. And it didn't help the right across the street from the mental hospital was the county jail. So when I looked out the window at night, what was I supposed to feel about myself. And eventually I got out in fifth grade, I was put in special education, I probably had the one teacher in school I never messed with, I did find a way to annoy her, I would actually take my pencils and tap on my desk. And I loved the feeling of playing drums. So eventually they let me go into the drum class. And I'll never forget that feeling of holding drumsticks and hitting a drum like even when I played for you before it just, it felt so good, just to do that. But when I was not playing drums, I was experiencing an intense sadness that I would later learn is called depression. Now, mental health challenges are hard enough to explain when you're an adult, but especially when you're a kid. And oftentimes when we struggle, we simply want a solution to the problem. And trigger warning. I'm about to talk about something very sensitive on September 29 1989, I had had enough so I came home from school and decided to fix the problem. And I went into the medicine cabinet and found my mental health medication and I think you can imagine the rest of the story. And I almost died by suicide at age 10. My parents were really worried and try to get me more help things started to spiral down rabbit holes more after that and seventh grade started to become violent at home, exploding, imploding. Nothing is helping. And the next thing I know I'll put back in the mental hospital this time for six months. But eventually I got weekend passes. They let me go home on the weekends. And my family they wanted to do family activities. But I don't want to do any of that. So I would just like come home, lock myself in the bedroom and play drums to LL Cool J and Red Hot Chili Peppers. That was seventh grade. I'm proud to say that between seventh and 10th grade I was on a first name basis with the local police in the local emergency room. I was constantly in crisis. It's all that I knew. I was exploding. I was imploding. And I didn't know why. At the end of 10th grade I had been expelled from three schools hospitalized in the mental hospital three times several suicide attempts, lots of self harm, violent at home and on about five different medications ladies and gentlemen, I was a poster child for an at risk youth. But the summer between 10th and 11th grade changed my life forever. That summer, my mom asked me the question she asked me, What would make you happy? This question kind of threw me because no one had ever asked me that before. I mean, they told me I needed to learn to behave and all that stuff. And no one ever asked me what would make me happy. So I thought about it and thought about it. And told me the only thing that would make me happy is playing the drums. I just want to play drums all day. Well, my mom worked very hard behind my back and actually found one school that would accept me despite my track record for behavior. And that was a performing arts high school called the Long Island High School for the Arts. And I'm proud to say that I got accepted into that school. And my behavior changed. My mental health journey changed. And for the first time in my life, people wanted to be my friend, by the way, that's me in the performing arts high school right there in that photo, and look at that hair right there for a moment, let's just take a moment for that hair. I miss it. I think about it every single day, I really do. And things started to change for me. They started to change for me. And fast forward to 12th grade. You know, there was a point where a teacher basically asked me, you know, can I hire you to play drums in my band, you sound really good. And that was a big change for me. And you know, I'll never forget going into college end of freshman year. Usually all the freshmen go out and celebrate and party. I couldn't do any of that. Because I finished my exams at the end of freshman year and in college or enterprise first semester, I had to be on a plane being paid 1000s of dollars to play drums around the country. So I became a professional drummer for a good 10 years in New York City and loved it. It was really, really good for me. I got to use the medication that helped me to help others. And what was interesting is the drumming. It didn't take away my mental health problems, but it made them more manageable. Fast forward to today. One of the things that I do in my companies I do drumming in the workplace, with adults. I get to bring drums into a room and adults sit in a circle and they play with me and they get sweaty and pay me like that's my job. I love it. I love it, I get to share what I've learned with others. But I want to give you some things that can really help you in during the other parts of my job where I'm not trying, I actually do mental health presentations. And I've gotten to give presentations to companies like T Mobile, Microsoft, and many, many others. And I want to share with use of things that I've learned that you can start using today, as you navigate this job, transition transitions are not easy. One of the things that comes up with transitions is stress, and anxiety. And we really have trouble with that. In fact, out of all the different emotions that you might feel when you're in a transition, I'm going to say that anxiety is probably the dominant one, and I want to just share some thoughts on anxiety with you. Anxiety helps you become aware of danger and let your body know that like something that's not right. It's a call to action, in a sense, and it's basically saying if it had a voice, pay attention to me back in the day when we were hunter gatherers, if you were walking out in the woods hunting and a lion appeared, chances are anxiety would come up for you Danger, danger, something needs to be done, and you got a choice at that point to take action you can you can run from the lion, you can try to fight the lion or run up a tree, I don't know. But you would have to take action on it. When you experience anxiety. Here are some questions you can ask yourself, what am I really afraid of? What story in my mind is stuck in time and what action must be taken? I know that when it comes to job transition, one of the things that people are afraid of is not getting a job, right? Or not getting paid well enough. And when you ask yourself what you're really afraid of, it's your own survival, you might lose your home, you might lose your lifestyle. You might have to file bankruptcy, there's all these other things that are under that. And it's important to just notice them. And then the question what story in mind is stuck in time? Well, there might have been something that happened when you were younger with one of your parents and a job transition. That stuck in your mind. Maybe you have a friend that went through something and that stuck in your mind and what action must be taken. That's where you get to turn anxiety into an action. You transform anxiety when you do things to ground yourself in the present. ground yourself in the present moment. progressive muscle relaxation is something that really helps when you're feeling anxious. You can find all this stuff online on YouTube videos and different apps. Moving your body is important and taking action. But if you're feeling anxious as you're navigating this and you are maybe about to go into a meeting or you have something you need to do, and you're just feeling the anxiety coming up, one of the greatest things that you can do is go in your bathroom, turn on your music and have a dance party with yourself. Yep, it's one of the greatest things. But when it comes to anxiety, there are things that you can control and things that you can't control. In 12 Step programs throughout the world, most of them start their meetings with a prayer called the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Lieber. And it goes something like this grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I'd like you to take a moment if you're not doing it already. I'm not really looking at the chat. But Caitlin holds who is actually your next presenter and who works with my company is on the chat. And I'd like you to share some things that you might be worried about right now that are on your mind. And some things that you can control in those worries. There's certain things we can certain things that we can't, the moment you start to focus on what you can control, you start to take your power back. This morning was a difficult morning for me because yesterday I was feeling horrible, feeling horrible. And I found out yesterday morning that I contracted the COVID-19 Coronavirus. I couldn't breathe. I was coughing. I couldn't get up from the bed. But guess what? I had a presentation to do for all of you today. So instead of myself, what can I control? Well, I made it a point to focus on, drink my fluids, get some rest. Vitamin C, make sure I run through my presentation as best I can with what little energy that I have. And when I get on the camera on the computer gets given my best and go to sleep after the presentation. That's what I control. And fortunately I made it here today. So I'd like you to think about what action you can take right now towards something you're worried about. And can you put in the chat? One specific action that you commit to taking towards something that you're worried about. This is how you can take your power back, when things seem out of control, focus on what you can control. The next thing that you can do is improve your well being to build resilience, resilience, I can't even say it. And these are words that are thrown around all the time well being resilience. And I want to bring up something though, first, because a lot of times we hear this word wellness, and well being, and sometimes they're used interchangeably. And I hope to change that I'm actually working on a book on this to get people clear on this. When we talk about wellness, we're generally talking about our physical health, okay. But when we talk about well being, we're talking about all the different aspects of our lives, everything from our mental health, to our relationships with others, to our work environment, to our personal relationships, all the things money, that's well being right there. And in my course, what's it called, I'm forgetting, and they my own course here, two of them. One is fill your cup, the exhausted educators guide to emotional wellness. And the other is connectivity in conversations, workplace mental health course, I think in both we talk about the eight dimensions of wellness. And the eight dimensions of wellness are different areas of life that you can focus on. And this was actually created by SAMSA, the substance and Mental Health Services Administration, as eight areas of life that if we focus on will be mentally well. One is the physical area that includes your health and foods, exercise, that includes anything in your physical environment, I guess, the emotional area, well, that's your emotions, your feelings, how you're managing stress, social, friends, family, financial, everyone knows about financial stress, environmental, this is an interesting one. Because when we think environment we think you know, outdoors, but not necessarily could be your work environment at home, or where you're going to spiritual can mean different things to different people, everything from making sure you go to church to meditate. If you're an atheist, it's just finding purpose in life, vocational. That's what you're doing now working on job stuff, intellectual, that's stuff with your mind reading and learning. So it's important to look at all those eight dimensions, and think about what you can start doing in each of them to make sure you're taking care of you. So I want to challenge you right now, looking at these eight dimensions of wellness, which one do you need to start focusing on? And what can you commit to start doing in the next 24 hours to build resilience? Resilience is an interesting word, because we hear it a lot. And the best way I can talk about it with you is by talking about Starbucks, because it seems like it's time for Starbucks right now. Actually, that would totally make me feel better. And if we become friends, I just want to let you know my favorite drink at Starbucks is a venti blonde roast coffee, and like we will be cool for life if you get me that drink. And usually I go to Starbucks three times a week, maybe. And there's something pretty awesome about the ritual of going to Starbucks, where it's like, it starts my day, I go there and I order my coffee and they put the little green stopper in the top of the cup and, and I get my coffee and get to start my day. Well, one day I was going to Starbucks to get my coffee. And if I remember correctly, I was actually wearing white pants that day.

And I got my coffee, and the barista put the little green stopper in. I'm just ready to start my day and I'm walking out of the store. And

someone storms in the door at the exact same time. bumps into me and my coffee spills all over the place. I was angry. I was angry. Fortunately, the barista gave me a fresh new cup of coffee. So we were we were cool. But still, I was just angry, you know, and I'm driving in the car and I got the stain out of my pants and all this but why did the coffee spill? And I thought about it. I thought about it about a lesson that I learned from my coach many years ago that the coffee spilled because there was coffee in the cup. Had there been orange juice in the cup. Orange juice would spill Had there been milk in the cup. Milk was spilled. Basically, whatever is in your cup, is what gets spilled when you get hit. So it's really important to understand that life is hitting us from all different directions in different ways. So it's important to put good stuff in your cup for when you get hit. That's what resilience is all about. Next, it's important to ask questions Learn from rejection. Now part of trying to get a job involves rejection. And let's face it, rejection just sucks. And I know this well, I'm a professional speaker. And I get several messages from people every week interested in hiring me and guess what they might reach out, we start the process of talking and then it doesn't go through, I get rejected, I get rejected all the time. And there are a lot of things that I've learned about rejection, especially as it relates to mental wellness, because they can really destroy you. And I want to explain why Jess PEDOT is her name and she did a presentation on how to avoid getting your business cancelled. Great topic for a presentation, right. And she shared something in this presentation that I just really stuck with me, there are two horses that we all ride. We're on either one at any given time. One is the ego horse, the others the humility horse, the eagle horse is the horse you need to be on when you're looking for a job. Present yourself at your best. Highlight your resume, answer the right questions, all that stuff. And the humility horses when you need to just stop and learn some things. And when rejection hits us, well, we get off that ego horse really quick and are humbled. And it can really destroy us if you don't have tools. Well, I want to share a secret with you to dealing with rejection that changed my life forever. And if you embrace this, it's going to change how you go about job hunting. But I want to warn you, it's not going to be easy to hear I remember I shared this many years ago at a conference for college students who were looking to go into arts careers, and they were college seniors all excited about their career. And I shared this secret with them. And I'll never forget the look of confusion, bewilderment and anger on their faces when I shared it, but I'll share it with you stop chasing victories and start chasing rejection. Yes, start chasing rejects and stop running from it. Chase, it seems counterintuitive, right? When you do, you start to approach job searching much differently. You start to lose your insecurities and just focus on giving your best. And it's really important to do. When you do get rejected. It's one of the greatest opportunities that you have to grow. If you choose to use it as a teachable moment. Ask yourself, What can I learn from this? When you get rejected after you get off that ego horse and deal with your emotions and frustration? Ask yourself what can I learn from this? But if you're brave, and I believe that you are, there are certain questions that you can ask the company or the person that rejected you to learn more about why you got rejected, you can ask for feedback like this. What was missing? That would have made me a better choice for this position and be willing to listen to the answer. What's one thing that I can improve to make me a better candidate? But the third question, this is a great question. Because oftentimes when someone gets rejected for a job, there are multiple candidates that are really good. And they've had to pick out of maybe three or four candidates that are really good. And, you know, maybe they pick just someone else. But if they really liked you asking Where else do you think I should apply? You might get an answer about a job opportunity you didn't even know about. When you start to ask questions like this and embrace rejection, you end up with secret intelligence that other people don't have. And it's important to write this stuff down, because it's going to show you how to course correct and show up better. So by the time you do get that job, you're going to be performing at your best start chasing, rejection. And finally, practice gratitude, appreciation, and positive self talk. Easier said than done right? Focus on not being the perfect candidate, but becoming the best version of you. You know, years ago as a drummer, I was in New York City and I was waiting for my drum teacher who lives in Germany to come in for our lesson. He was there for about a year hadn't heard me play in about a year. And I remember I was in the room practicing just warming up. There was no window on the door. The door was closed. At the same time. I don't know I was thinking about some other things that were going on with a relationship relationship issues. And so here I'm drumming, you know, in one sense, but I'm also thinking about these relationship issues. So my drum teacher comes in the room. And he had a really frustrated look on his face. And I said hi and he said, hi. He said, Mike, I heard you warming up and I'm thinking oh, maybe it sounded really bad. I said, Did it sound bad? He said, No, you, you sound really good. I said, so why do you have that look on your face? What's going on? He said, Well, you sound good. But I could tell that your mind was someplace else just from listening to you, Mike, what you could tell that. So he sat me down and proceeded to lecture me on how it's important to have a good attitude and be focused and calm, and bring that into every musical situation. I was rolling my eyes thinking, can we just get on with a drum lesson, but you know what, I decided to listen to him and say, You know what, let me let me just try this. And for the next two weeks, made it a point, every musical situation I went into, as a working drummer,

have a good attitude, become bring good energy. Those two weeks, I'll never forget the amount of work that I got hired for the amount of compliments that I got on my playing all because I changed my attitude. It's a lesson that I'll never forget, I just focused on being the best version of me and bringing in a good attitude. Also, when you cultivate a good attitude, especially one of appreciation and gratitude, you can't have negative thoughts exist at the same time. I don't know if you ever knew that. So if you think about something that you're grateful for, in fact, could you just share in the chat like one thing that you're grateful for, and one thing that you appreciate, when you do that, you automatically start to feel better. One thing that I do in my gratitude journal that I was gonna encourage you to think about doing is have this formula for writing a sentence where it's, I say, I'm grateful for blank. And I appreciate blank, because blank. So for example, I'm grateful for the opportunity to give this press presentation today. And I appreciate that all of you are on here, listening to what I have to say, because this is a really important topic. And I really enjoy helping others with this topic. So that made me feel good to say that to all of you. And finally, practicing positive self talk, that can mean simple affirmations. That can mean praying, but the key is to practice it. It's not about being perfect with it, but it will make everything better. The other question that you can ask yourself, that will really help you stay focused during this time of transition. And in fact, this is the most important, why are you doing the work that you're doing? Now, some of you might be thinking, well, I need a job. And I have some experience in education. And this just seemed like the most natural thing. Others might be like, you know, I'm really interested in in this because blank, it doesn't matter what your Y is. But it's important to keep that in mind. Because that is what's going to push you through the toughest of mental times. Now, you might be thinking, Well, how do I find my Y? I don't know. There's a secret question you can ask to figure out here. Why when you don't know your why. And the question is, why is it important that you're doing the work that you're doing. So if you feel like sharing your why please do so in the chat. I would love to read that later. So in summary, we've got how to maintain your mental health during a job transition. Number one, you have to focus on what you can control and somehow ignore what you can't it takes practice, improve your well being to build resilience in all areas of life. Ask questions and learn from rejection. Rejection is your friend. And finally, practice gratitude, appreciation and positive self talk. I am the co host of the better mental podcast is a podcast that is all about being a business owner and having mental health challenges. I encourage all of you to check it out, especially if you're self employed and planning on working for yourself. And you've never have we're available on all your favorite podcast listening apps. And I'll be able to send that in as part of the handout at the end, too. But since this is a learning experience, I want to ask you all this, I threw a lot at you today. What's your next step? What's your next step? What are you going going to take from this presentation and start applying, I would like you to do a little assignment for me, I need you to go on LinkedIn. Find me and send me a message. And let me know what you commit to start doing in the next 24 hours to improve your mental health during this job transition. That's what I like. I want to say thank you for being here. We got a few minutes. We're going to take some questions in a moment. And I invite you to keep in touch this is my contact information. But in closing, I want to share something with you 2020 I was mainly working as a mental health speaker. And as you know, the apocalypse happened in March of 2020. Everything got shut down. All my speaking engagements cancelled. And this is my revenue. You know, this is my, my livelihood. And I didn't know what to do. And I was scared.

I was angry. I was feeling a lot of emotions. But I realized there was something in the back of my mind that said, you know, I was talking for many years about starting to do online courses. But I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know anything about it. So I proceeded to build a continuing education company without knowing how to do it. And I ended up pursuing accreditation by the International accreditors for continuing education and training is it knew nothing about it, had to hire an instructional designer, what the heck is that? Had to learn about that. But I'm proud to say that in August of 2022, which is, you know, little more than two years later, I've got a continuing education company now. And I'm proud to say that your next presenter calian, Holt is the learning experience director on my team, and she is awesome. I'm gonna give you a great presentations. And if you're interested in learning more about my courses, you can find them on open sesame.com. So in closing, I want to say thank you for your time. Thank you for hanging out with me. And if you have any questions, we can go to those now. Okay, are you all there? Who has a question?

Luis Malbas  
Keep an eye out here. See if anything comes up. See, Melissa just asked Do you do any of your own instructional designing or continuing to outsource? I think you answered that already. Because you've got calian as your primary ID.

Mike Veny  
Yes. So the thing is, do I do my own instructional design? No, what I learned is I have this library of knowledge in this brain right here, that sometimes I don't know what to do if I stay up late at night, and just, you know, put ideas out there. But working with an instructional designer, has helped me put it into digestible formats that can help other people. And what's really nice is we're getting some incredible feedback on the courses that it's, you know, really helping people. So that's the value I've learned as an instructional designer. Thank you for that question. And thank

Luis Malbas  
you Kayleen. And so, Mike, this actually this presentation, was it something that you created specifically for, for this event?

Mike Veny  
Absolutely, yes, I created actually, let's be honest, Kayleen, and I had a meeting about it. And Kayleen actually took what I had to say, and helped me put it into an outline with the learning objectives. And what I did from that is, you know, worked with it, put my own spin on some things to make it flow and thought about the things that were going to be really important to all of you. And that's why I created it for today for

Luis Malbas  
you. Well, I think, you know, starting this event was something that is introspective like this, I think is really unique, you know, because it could have been something where all of a sudden, you just get a ton of content just thrown at you on how to upskill and, you know, become an instructional designer just, you know, tips and tricks. But the chat, while you were speaking was incredibly powerful. I was hearing just or seeing just personal stories from so many people about what they're going through right now and the anxiety that you're feeling. So I do think that what you're speaking about is so relevant for this audience. And I just really appreciate it. Thank you.

Mike Veny  
And Joel had a question here. Do you find that people are usually open to your post rejection questions? Well, let me tell you how I apply those as a speaker, it's a lot different than what you do. But sometimes I will ask someone who says, we went with another speaker, not you. You know, what, what, what could I have done differently? What were you looking for? What What made you factor? What made you decide on that person over me. And some people are going to be very open to that and will actually, you know, tell you, they might sit with you for 15 minutes talking to you about some things you can improve. And it's important. When you do that to really again, get off that ego horse and go on that humility horse and just take notes. Don't get into defensive mode. Because you know, you might be thinking, well, all the stuff. They're saying I showed him that. Just listen, just listen and say thank you. Thank you so much for renewing it and some people are just not going to be open to it and just ignore you. But the key is just to start getting in the process of doing that asking for feedback is so important. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica, for your kind words there.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, not seeing any of the questions. I saw that a book was purchased and by Cindy Nagel, so you go,

Mike Veny  
Oh, thank you for purchasing my book.

Luis Malbas  
All right, Kaylee, and I'm not seeing any other questions. So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up. Mike, thank you so much for doing this wonderful to have you at TL DC. Fantastic. And of course, thank you, Kayleen, for introducing us to Mike. And I do want to, I do want to mention before we, before we leave the chat, leave the session, the schedule is a little different, right? It's like, I don't know, if any of you that go to regularly to virtual events, a lot of times, especially for to DC, we always do everything in one or two days. But I've spread it out throughout the week. I'm just trying to change things up. Because honestly, it helps me be able to get some work done between sessions. So maybe that's something that you could do, too. I'm just innovating a little bit but a ton of content this week. Keep an eye on the agenda on the schedule. So you know when those virtual tables are open, and and hopefully you'll enjoy the rest of the week. Mike, thank you so much. Best of luck to you with everything. I'm gonna definitely subscribe to your podcast. I want to listen to some of those. It looks really, really interesting. And I really appreciate you being here.

Mike Veny  
Thank you. All right, thanks,

Luis Malbas  
everybody. I'm going to close it out and 10 o'clock. I think we have our first virtual table that's opening up in the lounge area. So keep an eye out for that. And then Caitlin's gonna be back at 11 today for another excellent session. Thanks, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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