771 – Prepare BEFORE disaster strikes: Tom talks Business Emergency Preparedness

Episode 771 – Business Emergency Preparedness
[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 771 to Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about business emergency preparedness. Of course, it would work for a lot of your personal life, too, because, I mean, you've got hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, high winds, electricity out, you got sickness, you got accidents. And and if you don't think this could ever happen to you, one of my students just talked to me this week and out of the blue, there was no warning. There was no nothing. She opens her front door and there's a giant tree from her yard laying in front of her front door. A tornado had struck her front yard and she was probably 30 feet from death. So you can't say, oh, it's never going to happen to me. All right. So that's what we're going to talk about today. All right. Hope you didn't miss episode 769 and 768 all last week was automobile stuff. 768 was how to rent cars and save a fortune. 769 was getting paid to drive. And we're not talking about Uber and Lyft and 770 was leasing versus buying. What are the pros and cons? So anytime you want to get to a back episode, go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. All right, follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok and make sure you download a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:02:01] All right. Let's get to the main event. So you think nothing's ever going to happen, right? So it's a waste of time to create a business preparedness plan, right? Well, yeah, I've been in business a long time and there's been plenty of plenty of crazy things happen. Listen, one time when I was in the nightclub business, we had a major statewide event. We were expecting 400 people. And one of the employees came running to me yelling, The road is on fire. The road's on fire. And I've always been very calm in the face of disaster. And I figured, oh, maybe the dumpster was smoldering or something. So I walked calmly from the back of the club to the front door and out into the parking lot. And guess what? Yep. The whole road was on fire. Some power line fell down, caught all the brush on fire in front of my nightclub for several hundred yards. Traffic was backed up for a couple of miles, and luckily I had done a lot of fundraisers for the local volunteer fire department. And they put out the fire and the power company fixed the line. And and I got to say, we had a little bit of a late start on that promotion, but we got it done. Now, here's the thing. My pizza guys were out there directing traffic. I had walkie talkies ready to communicate with them. The waitresses and bartenders were briefing the patrons and giving them a free drink. And I didn't have to tell them to do this. It was all part of an emergency plan so that patrons could be taken care of if I was handling something else.

[00:03:45] I guess you could say I was putting out fires. All right. So luckily, we didn't lose power. I don't know how that was possible, but I had a backup generator and battery powered emergency lights that would come on automatically if the electricity went out. Exit lights to. These are all commercial things that you have to have. So let's talk about equipment and we'll start with generators. I have three of them here at the retreat center. One is built in and runs the main house. If the power goes out and the other two are portable gasoline powered backups and I have enough gasoline to run them for several days. Now you can pick up used generators for a couple hundred dollars and don't expect them to run everything in your house to get one that big for even a modest sized house would be 5 to $10,000. I mean, to run just the main building here at the retreat center would be upwards of 25,000. The one I have runs selected rooms and things around the house to keep the computers running and the guests with at least light and a few plugs to run their computers and charge their phones and tablets. Now the air conditioning and heat, they just take too much electricity. So we have to rough it. Now, I don't think the power is ever gone out in the winter here, but it's mostly in the summer with thunderstorms. So we just have to have a generous number of fans to keep help, keep cool.

[00:05:16] Now, if it's a gasoline generator, you must keep the gas fresh with additives in both the generator and any backup gas cans you have. If you also use the gas for mowing, then you are already rotating the getting fresh gas. So it's not as big a deal to use additives. All right. Now let's think about battery backup and surge protectors. More equipment, Battery backup should be big enough to run your important computers long enough for you to shut them down properly, turn them off and unplug them. And although I had surge protectors on all my devices, including my TV, one time I took a direct lightning hit and it blew right through the protectors, the surge protectors, and knocked out $6,000 worth of equipment. And you should know your insurance company for those type of events so you can get back up in a hurry and you might want to have an electrician fit your house with a lightning rod if you're in a heavy thunderstorm area. I suggest you have backup handheld devices. I know we all depend on our phones heavily, but what if cell connection gets knocked out? I have a portable hotspot I can connect to. I keep it charged in my laptop case at all times. And you'll want to have a backup computer that you can use if you have a failure of your main computer. I used to keep disks of all the programs, but now everything is in the cloud. Which makes it even more important that I can get to the cloud somehow if the internet is out.

[00:06:52] How about flashlights and charging blocks? Some Sometimes they're the same thing. You know, a nice heavy battery that has a flashlight on it that you can charge things with. And they're critical to keep them charged and ready in case of an electricity going out. You really want to keep your phone well charged in case you have to evacuate in something other than your car. And speaking of your car, do you have emergency supplies in your car? Do you have several charging methods for your devices? Are all your tire changing things, working and in place? And I know I messed this up once in my pickup truck because the spare tire was hard to get to and never you never really look at it that much. And when I needed it, it was flat. So I would take care of those things immediately because that takes care of your personal and your business stuff. See, the idea is to focus on prevention. Certainly some things are out of your control, but what you do before the emergency can make a big difference in how you make it through the emergency. If you buy and maintain a generator, you won't lose all your food and your refrigerator and freezer. You'll have light and you'll have working computers to keep your business going. If you ignore this and you're going to suffer those losses if the electricity goes out. Now, one thing from my self-defense classes that I should warn you about, if you do have a generator, if there's some really shit, hit the fan situation and there's looting and trouble.

[00:08:26] Well, if you're the only place around that has lights going on, you might be a target. So make sure you black out your windows. And don't be bragging about your generator. And if you can keep it quiet, there's things you can put around your generator to knock the noise down. Just pieces of plywood to keep the noise contained. So those are just some other things in really bad situations. Now, I got to bring this up here again, you know, with safety. But are you prepared to protect yourself against looters or people that want to take what you have? Now, I'm not going to go into it much other than that generator stuff I just told you about. But I highly suggest you take my brutal self-defense class at brutalselfdefense.com.

[00:09:12] All right. Let's get into some other things. Do you have an evacuation plan? Maybe wildfires are approaching your house or maybe you have asthma. And the ash from Canadian wildfires is ruining the air quality at your house hundreds or even thousands of miles away. All right. Who would have seen that coming? Do you have a printed list of emergency contact numbers? Sure. All your numbers are in your phone. But do you even know your spouse's or your children's numbers by heart? Most people don't. What if it's a first aid emergency? Do you have a kid in your car and in your house? And do you know what to do with it? With a bad medical emergency? Where no ambulance can get to you, what will you do? I've been studying trauma medicine for a good while.

[00:09:59] I can deploy a tourniquet on myself with one hand in about 30s. Can you? All right. More business stuff. Like what about your vital business records? Are they backed up to the cloud or maybe even two or more clouds? So, folks, this is just a primer to get it in your head that you need to prepare things. And I know it's the last thing, just like backing up your computer that people think about, but then they cry big froggy tears when something happens and they're not ready. So like I said, this is just a primer. I'm sure I've missed some stuff you need writing utensils and knives and way to make fire and all kinds of things. Very simple stuff. If you just think about it. And there are places online that will give you emergency preparedness preparedness templates. So you can just check off all the things you need to do to be ready for an emergency in both your business and personal life. So anyway, go out there and be safe. And hey, if you want training on, I got a lot of experience and a lot of things, especially online marketing in the past 29 years. So I'd love to help you in your business. Check it out at greatInternetMarketingtraining.com and go out there and start being prepared. How about that? All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.