740 – Think Like a Bird: Tom talks Bird Attack Risk Management

Episode 740 – Bird Attack Risk Management
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 742 of Screw the Commute podcast. Guess what? I got attacked by a bird. And there's a business lesson here, so stay tuned. Hope you didn't miss episode 739. That's about hope. You too, miss. Episode 739. That's where I ask you if you would buy an empty pizza box for $100 or if you're in the market for a used bra. Well, there's some business lessons in this episode, too. Any time you want to get to a back episode, go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. That was 739. Follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire and grab a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and you will thank me for it because it's going to save you hundreds of hours into the future.

[00:01:23] All right. Let's get to the main event. So how did I get attacked by a bird? Well, actually, I was attacked by proxy when a bird decided to attack my drone when I was inspecting. I don't know if it was his or her nest. So I'm calmly hovering about 20 feet from the Bird's nest and I hear a smash. And then my drone crashes to the ground and a giant heron bird flies over to the nest and starts looking at me. I swear he was saying something like, Yeah, you a bad ass on the ground, but this is my crib and you stay the heck out.

[00:02:07] Now, was this my own fault? Yes, it was. I immediately went online and found hundreds of bird attacks on drones and videos of them and a bunch of people telling you how to avoid bird attacks. And the first thing they tell you is never go near a bird's nest. Whoops. So why am I telling you this? Well, what the heck does it have to do with entrepreneurship? Well, the topic I want to teach you about today is risk management. Every company from a solo entrepreneur to a multi-billion dollar company has to address risk management. And they do it all the time, whether they know it or not. So risk management is defined in business as the forecasting and evaluation of financial risks, together with the identification of procedures to avoid or minimize their impact. All right. Well, the darn thing is, is that most definitions concentrate only on financial risk, and that's not realistic. And of course, that's what I'm going to address for your business. But I'm just going to take a little sidebar here. You have to assess physical, emotional and reputational risk all the time in addition to financial risk. So those could be financially related, but not directly. So maybe you break your leg and lose work, or maybe you have to get therapy and spend money on that, or maybe you risk something that ends up harming your reputation that makes it hard for you to get work in the future.

[00:03:45] So yeah, so yeah, they're kind of interrelated to finances, but some aren't. Now here's an example. Maybe you bungee jump to impress a girl even though you're deathly afraid to do it. All right? And you're participating in risk management, you could reduce the risk of physical injury to zero by just refusing to jump. But you've increased the risk of the girl thinking you're a sissy, right? So for risk management, you've got a assess the company running the bungee operation. Now you find out they've only had two deaths out of the last hundred customers. That's not too bad. Well, that's risk management. That's not really financially related. All right. Back to risk. Standard risk management for business. Well, every time you buy a piece of equipment, you're taking a risk. Is it going to work? Is it going to save you money or make you money? Or maybe it won't do either, and you still have to pay for it. So you have to risk, manage. You have to think if this machine doesn't work, can I get my money back? If it doesn't save me time or make me money or save me money, can I sell it and recoup part of my investment? Or maybe it's something that increases in value. So even if it doesn't save or make you money, you can sell it for more than you paid for it.

[00:05:10] And I wouldn't rely on that all the time. Right. But real estate is a great example. People think that all the time. Well, it's going to appreciate. Well, ask those people in New York City that's got 30% occupancy and a giant skyscraper. And so so. So it's not always true, but you have to assess the risk. Now, if you're a giant company, you can afford to take more risks. Remember the new Coke that flopped and probably lost billions of dollars? Well, now Coke is still doing fine, I think you'd admit. Now look at the current controversy with Bud Light. Anheuser-busch is going to survive, even though they lost $6 billion in market cap in the first day in 5% of their stock price. Now, can you survive those kind of blunders? Well, probably not. On the other hand, I remember in college when I bought my first apartment building, my brother was telling me, I'm crazy, you're crazy, It's too risky. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't even have a couch to repossess. I had nothing. So what risk am I taking by buying the apartment building? Now, if you have some assets built up that you don't want to lose, you do have to pay more attention to risk management. You you may have a family depending on your income and other obligations that factor into your business decisions. Now, before I give you some simple steps to working on risk management, you know, like, Hey Tom, what's the deal with the what's this got to do with your drone and the bird? Okay, well, so I've been studying for my drone license, and some of you know, I was a freelance charter pilot years ago, and I thought it would be cool for me to add a drone rating to all my other ratings.

[00:07:02] And turns out it might be more hassle than what it's worth. But anyway, I was considering lots of things with regard to risk. Everybody says on your first drone, it's not if you crash it, it's when you crash. Right. In other words, you're going to crash your drone when you're learning. So I minimize the risk by purchasing a used easy to fly drone to learn on. I think I paid 75 bucks for it. The now the drone and accessories. I really want cost more than 1000 hundred dollars now. Yeah. Could I afford it? Yeah. Would it have been poor risk management? Yes, for sure. Say so. I'm being really conservative with learning the controls and flying 10 to 15 minutes a day or as long as the battery lasts. And on the third day I was still taking things slow, but I felt I had decent control over where the drone was going at slow speeds. I was avoiding the trees and feeling pretty good about my progress, even though I still had the drone in the super slow, dumb beginner mode.

[00:08:15] Now on my property, about 60ft in the air are a bunch of bird's nest. And day before yesterday, I got bold enough to raise the drone and hover it where the camera could see one of the nests, and I stayed about a minute or so. Then slowly came back to the ground. So the next day, which was yesterday, I went to the other side of the yard, which gave me even a more clear shot at the nest, and I went up and pointed the camera at the nest and was just hovering nicely. And then I heard a crash in the air and my drone plummeted to crash a on the ground and the culprit flew up at the nest and mocked me. So by keeping my drone costs low, even though in my inexperience something came up I should have known about. But I didn't. I still came out with just a $4 propeller and the drone survived, which means I got lucky because it fell from 60ft after being smashed into by a pissed off heron. So by doing my best to reduce the risk financially by buying an inexpensive used drone, I saved myself possibly a $1,300 loss. So this is why I push so hard for my students to create digital products. I want them to succeed and make a lot of money, but I want to teach them to reduce their risk.

[00:09:44] See if you know what you're doing. Creating and selling digital information has a tiny risk and massive potential return. See, this is the thing people don't talk about as much with risk management. Positive things are always part of risk management. You are taking the risk in an effort to avoid the potential downsides, or at least minimize them and maximize the positives, which is what you're shooting for in the first place. To me, it's worth the the risk of time and tiny bits of money to get my drone license. Now I'm just doing it as an intellectual endeavor. But but keep in mind, drone operators can get 200 to $300 an hour if they get their license. Right. So. All right. So enough about drones, but that's for the birds. All right. Dumb joke. I get it. But anyway, here's four simple steps to risk management. Now, this is oversimplified, but it's a well accepted risk management method, and I've included a link in the show notes for you to read more about this topic that will help you reduce the bad things in your business and increase the good things. That's the whole thing about it. So it's a four steps. Pretty simple. One. Identify the risks. That means you brainstorm on all of the possible bad and good things that could happen if you do something in your business.

[00:11:15] Number two, you assess the risk. All right. What are the potential amounts of money that I could lose and I could gain? So you're you know, you're you're making like almost like a pros and cons list here with this risk management. Number three is called treat the risk. What can you do to reduce the chance of the bad stuff happening and increase the chance of the good stuff happening? So if you think all this thing, I mean, a lot of people just get an idea and jump. All right. Well, I'm guilty of that because I've done such a good job at reducing the risk. I'm happy to just try a bunch of things to see what works the best, because I know I'm not going to lose much on anything. I try. All right. So that's treat the risk. Four is monitor and report on the risks. So this is take good notes and see what actually happens. See everything in in identify, assess and treat. Is everything that might happen. All right. Part four here is this Will is what actually happened. And this will make things easier when the same type of situation presents itself in the future, you'll be able to have some experience to make better identification of the risk and assess the risk and treat the risk because you've been through things before, so it gets easier as you go along.

[00:12:42] So anyway, I put the link in the show notes for you if you want to go deeper into this risk management and but stay away from those birds. I'm going to tell you, you know, because as I was looking at it, everybody's telling you, no, don't go near a bird's nest, you crazy? You're going to lose your drone. You know, And I didn't do it because I jumped. But luckily I had the the low end and only lost $4 of a propeller. Right. But I got a good lesson and I lucked out. All right. If you want these kind of lessons and like the other million things you got to know to have an online successful business, check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of Internet and digital marketing. A lot of you know, I've been selling on the commercial Internet since it started in 1994 as one of the first. So I've been through a lot of stuff and I can help your risk management. That's part of my value is to tell, you know, that ain't going to work in a million years and and this is what generally does work. So I can help you with all those things. All right. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. We will catch you on the next episode. See you later.