Our founder & CEO, Dr. Joel Myers, recently spoke with Mitchell0585 for TheGrahamCo’s Risk Playbook Podcast to discuss the role our forecasts play in mitigating risk for people, properties & businesses. Listen here: RiskPlaybookPodcast RiskPlaybook
Hello everyone, and welcome to Risk Playbook. I'm Mike Mitchell, Vice Chairman of Graham Company, and today I'm joined by the founder and CEO of AccuWeather, Dr. Joel Myers.
When I was 11, my father showed me an article about a meteorologist in Boston, who was providing forecasts to fuel oil dealers, and since I was entrepreneurial, I already had—I got a paper route when I was 11. I was supposed to be 12—I fibbed about my age—and other little businesses on the side. I'm making a dollar here, a couple dollars there.
Well, it's a fascinating story, and it's almost hard to comprehend. So I'll say you are a pioneer, because you started the business in 1962—other businesses that were independent didn't exist. The weather forecast was free. I mean, what made you think that you could take and make that into a business and how did you get started?
Well, it's obvious by your stories and your voice, you had a passion for it, and obviously a tremendous amount of determination to stick to it. That's the story of many successful entrepreneurs who are willing to take the risk and go ahead. And of course, save companies tens of billions of dollars, and that's what they pay us for. These companies pay us significant money—only a fraction of the value, we bring to them—only a tiny fraction of the value. And it keeps their people safe. And we have so many examples of where we've saved lives and help companies make the right decision. And it's very gratifying.
Clearly of a cold wave that hit Dallas and Texas was extraordinary, but not unprecedented. Some records fell but some records did not fall. But the weather certainly is volatile and runs in patterns of volatility, and that's what our business is based on—whether keeping companies—we told our clients in Dallas eight days in advance of what was going to happen. It was almost to the point. They were prepared; people that didn't use us were not, and a lot of people suffered, unfortunately.
So the result is that better decisions are made, and we have so many examples of where there was no warning, we issued a warning, people sheltered, the facility was destroyed, nobody injured. Really that is what the gratification is for me, and many other people at AccuWeather, when we can make that kind of a difference. And people are actually alive because of what we did. You can't ask for a higher calling.
We do provide them with forecasts so they can make decisions whether it's bringing—knowing they're going to have to move people around to serve customers in a certain area, to be prepared for a hurricane or a disaster. In some cases, they will make the decision—we don't do that, we provide the data—but they may say “Hey, a hurricane may threaten this coastline. We're going to halt writing any policies because of the threat for the next week or ten days.
You touched on it—back in the day satellites didn't exist. Or if they did, they weren't around where they worked. Innovation and technology. Obviously significant advances over almost sixty years. What have you seen, and is the accuracy today, because of that, greater? Somebody else may get the forecast right, but people didn't know it, didn't hear it. With Hurricane Katrina, we were on every network, because we had an amazing forecast that was far more dramatic than anybody else. We said—this was three days in advance of Katrina hitting, we said, “50 to 80% of the city of New Orleans will be underwater for days or weeks.
So talk about your people because other companies—although you're the biggest and the best, and you've been around the longest—there's other competition that have access to the same satellites and weather maps. Yet, you continue to be superior in terms of your accuracy. What's the secret sauce? Is it the people? What is it?
I know you hired a lot of your students from Penn State. The best students you had, you hired, right? If it's 20 we win, if it's 25, we win and so on. So there's all types of strategies involved in that as well. Before COVID hit, the year before that, I gave three retirement dinners to three people who I hired out of Penn State—Elliott Abrams, 52 years at AccuWeather; Jim Candor, 39; Ken Clark, nearly 45 years. These were people that spent their entire career just working for AccuWeather, working for me. I'm proud of that. And as I said, we have dozens more coming along that have been with us for 25, 30, 35, 40 and more years.
The key to success is improvement, and I preach this—whether it's in your personal life, in your workout, in your diet, in your relationships, in your business—try and improve. Coach Joe Paterno said it well: You’re either moving forward or moving backward. It's hard to balance that exact line, and never change—it's almost impossible. And of course, if you know calculus, itI make this point: Compounding, as Einstein said, is the eighth wonder of the world.
Let's end on a more light note here. I know you're a huge Penn State football fan. I think you told me at one time that you didn't miss a home game for like fifty years until COVID hit—is that right?
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