617 – Organize and enhance your day: Tom talks Checklists

Episode 617 - Checklists
[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 617. Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about checklists. I almost died in a ball of fire one time because I didn't bother using my checklist. And I am not kidding. I'll tell you that story in a minute. I hope you didn't miss Episode 616. That was about morning routines and the value of morning routines. And I know some morning routines are dictated by little kids and animals or whatever, but the closer you can stick to one, the better off you are. I even saw a quote that said, If you win in the morning, you win the day. And that's what that episode was about. Now, any time you want to get to a back episode, go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number. That was 616. This is 617. Also, make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. It's helped thousands and thousands of people save time, save effort, save money and make money because they can spend more time with customers and developing products rather than fighting with their computer. So pick that up at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:01:57] All right. Let's talk about checklist now. I'm not going to make you wait until the end of this podcast to hear about how I almost killed myself when I was. I laugh about it now, but it wasn't funny then when I was a freelance charter pilot in the late seventies, so I was flying a twin engine aircraft full of cargo from Corning, New York to Latrobe Airport, which is outside of Pittsburgh. And then I was going to take a short hop to my home base, Rosh Traver Airport, outside of Pittsburgh. So I landed at Latrobe and I dropped off my cargo. And since I was there and I was hungry, I decided to have lunch at the famous Blue Angels restaurant. So I had my lunch and then I went out and jumped into the plane for the short ten minute flight to Rush Draper Airport, my home base. So I taxied out. I lined up on the center line. I checked all the engine gauges. I accelerated to the blue line, which was the takeoff speed. And I started flying. Yeah. For about 10 seconds. I'm flying. I was I was very close to the ground, and it was too late to just land straight ahead because something was desperately wrong. The plane was violently swinging its nose to the right.

[00:03:21] One of the engines had quit. Now, when an engine on a twin engine airplane quits. It's like putting a big piece of plywood vertically on your up into the wind, stopping the airflow on one side of the plane and on the other side of the plane. The propeller is trying to pull you forward as fast as it can so it's like violently twisting you. Well, the planes don't fly sideways, let me tell you that. So thank God I had good training other than skipping my checklist that day. So here's the sequence. I immediately went into. Flaps up. Gear up. Idle foot. Idle engine. Confirm. Right engine is out. Power off. Mixture off. Feather the right prop. Maintain the blue line. Tom, you better fly this aircraft or you're dead. And I would have crashed and burned on the football field where the Pittsburgh Steelers used to practice, which was right near Latrobe Airport. So I got the plane flying, just limping along and I declared an emergency. I mean, the old joke is with pilots is if you lose in an engine on a twin engine aircraft, well, the other engine just flies you to the scene of the crash. Okay. So so they just don't want to fly very well at all on one engine. And thank God I had already dumped my cargo off. So the plane was a little bit lighter.

[00:04:56] But anyway, so I got it flying. I declared an emergency. I limped the airplane back to come in for a landing, and then I got the plane on the ground and taxied to the ramp with the fire trucks following me. And it was pretty darn embarrassing, but I guess. I guess it was better than being dead. A big charcoal tom. So when I got out to check what had gone wrong. The right fuel tank was empty. It was an old plane and the fuel gauge was stuck. See, my pre-flight checklist would have had me actually look into each tank, the right and the left tanks to verify the gas was in there. I didn't do it and it nearly cost me my life. Now, even though I was a seasoned pilot, I thought, oh, it's no big deal for this short flight to my home base. And boy, was I wrong, and I never made that mistake again. Okay. That's enough drama, I guess. All right. So in most cases, you aren't facing life and death situations in your business, but using checklists has enormous advantages, which I'll cover now. So checklists help you stay organized and help to make sure you don't skip any important steps in whatever you're doing. Now. When I first started doing webinars and other live events, there was a lot to learn and to prepare.

[00:06:33] So in the middle of the live event, I wasn't stuck because I hadn't prepared, I don't know, let's say a visual or hadn't put the visual in the software in advance. And I'm scrambling and or else I just can't show it because it's a live event. Even such mundane things as turning my cell phone off, having a bottle of water within reach, having the cell phone number of the guest I was interviewing in case of trouble, all those kinds of things were on a checklist. Now, checklist can be motivating for many people. See, checking off things and achieving small tasks is a lot easier than looking at an entire project as a whole and then getting overwhelmed. They save you time. I mean, you might be in the middle of some complex sequence and you forget what the next step is. For instance, in Adobe Premiere, that's a video high end video editing program. I have checklists for the various video editing operations that I might need to do. See, I don't video edit every day. I'm not a professional video editor and Adobe Premiere is complicated. So I learned, I don't know, let's say how to put text on a video. Well, a week later I can't remember how to do it right. So I pull up my Adobe Premiere checklist, go to the section on adding text, and then I do it with no problem.

[00:08:00] Had I not had the checklist, I would have had to search out some YouTube videos to remind me how to do it and start and stop those videos for each step and so forth. So. So my Adobe Premiere checklist saves me a bunch of time. Now making checklists is a great way to force you to think through all the steps required to do and complete a project. Now, this really Upshaw efficiency and productivity of getting the project done without forgetting anything, which I mean if you forget some. Important part of a project. It could set you back for listening to this hours, days, weeks, or even months. Had you forgotten that particular item? Now you can also give checklists to your employees as part of whatever systems you have. That way, you don't forget anything the employee is supposed to know, and it's easy for you to forget when you are already know how to do the thing. All right. To do whatever task maybe. But they may be brand new at it, have no idea what to do. So the checklist makes sure nothing gets forgotten as you train them. And also you won't have to hold their hand 100 times to get the job done because they'll have their checklist. Now the use of checklists also dramatically reduces errors and omissions like you learned in in my flying example.

[00:09:31] It also improves safety. And some of you may be in businesses that forgetting something could be dangerous, working on machines and things like that. And not only for you, but just think if I had crashed into a building and or a school or something and killed a bunch of people, I mean. Jeez. I regret that to this day. Now good checklists are easy to use and efficient. And and each item should just give you enough detail so you can remember what the item was. I mean, a checklist is not going to fully teach you every step to complete the task. You should have learned that separately and then made the checklist to remind you just to do it. So you don't forget any of the important steps. And simple. To create checklists. But here are two tools that give you templates and and this other one. One of them Monday.com lets you share and collaborate them with the team. So one of them is checkli.com and then the other one is just monday.com. That's the day of the week Monday.com. So use checklist and try not to crash and burn. Okay. And I'm glad I'm here to be able to tell you that. And that's kind of what I do. And my mentor program is I keep people from crashing and burning because they don't know what they're doing.

[00:11:06] And they or they may have listened to somebody that doesn't know what they're doing. It's a poser. And so I keep them from crashing and burning similar to but I do have them create checklists. But that way because and I have checklists for myself when I do. Yeah, I just thought of this when I do an orientation with a new mentee, I have a checklist because I don't do it every day, or sometimes I do it two or three times in a day, depending on how many people are joining. But sometimes I go a week and nobody's joined. So so I pull my checklist out to do their orientation. And that way everybody is on the same page. They all have the right expectations. It's efficient. They know how to contact me and they know how to contact all the people that work here. They know all these things. I just run through on a checklist and then everybody's happy. All right, so that's my story. Now I'm sticking to it. Go out and make some checklists and I think it's going to help you out. All right. Check out greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. If you'd like to have me keep you from crashing and burning. Catch you on the next episode. See you later.