Every Story Has a Moment That Changes Everything

They say every person has a story to tell. For Donald Payseur, his story took more than 35 years to tell.

Donald R. Payseur is a local business owner, serial entrepreneur, and lifelong pilot. In Bryan County, he is best known as the founder of Coastal Broadband, Inc., a company built on reliability, resilience, and service to the community. What many people do not know is that long before fiber networks, tower climbs, and business leadership, Payseur came within seconds of losing his life in a small airplane and spent decades learning what that moment was truly trying to teach him.

In 1983, as a student pilot flying solo near his hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina, Payseur unexpectedly entered a bank of clouds without the training required to fly by instruments. Disoriented and panicked, he stalled the aircraft and began an uncontrolled descent from nearly three thousand feet toward the face of a mountain. When he finally broke through the cloud layer, the granite face of that mountain filled his windshield, and only seconds separated survival from tragedy.

He survived that near-death incident, but the experience left scars that were not visible.  What followed was not an immediate return to aviation or a dramatic redemption story. Instead, Payseur quietly walked away from flying for a short time. He eventually went on to earn his other flying credentials, instrument rating, multiengine license, and commercial pilot's license.  He built a career, raised a family, and entered the trucking industry, where the demanding discipline aviation requires: preparation, precision, procedures, and accountability would later shape his professional success.

 

Discipline Applied and Then Ignored

In the trucking industry, Payseur became a highly successful National Accounts Executive, working closely with Fortune 500 customers, building a national accounts territory, and earning broad respect within the industry. The habits that aviation instills, checklists, contingency planning, disciplined decision-making, and respect for risk, served him exceptionally well.

Yet Flying High is honest about a difficult truth.

When Payseur later founded his own trucking company, the discipline that had once guided his professional success quickly eroded. Confidence replaced caution. Experience replaced procedure. Emotion overtook humility. He poured his life savings into the venture, gambled on growth, and ignored the same principles aviation had demanded of him years earlier.

The outcome was devastating. The business failed, and everything he had built financially was lost.  Payseur recounts this chapter without excuses or bitterness. He does not blame the market, the economy, or others. Instead, he acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the failure was not caused by a lack of effort or intelligence; it was caused by abandoning discipline. As he writes in the book, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your training.” The same discipline that made him successful as an executive was the discipline he failed to apply as a business owner.

In Flying High, Payseur describes the process that followed as “the NTSB of the soul.” Just as the National Transportation Safety Board dissects aviation accidents to prevent them from happening again, he walked back through the wreckage of his business with deliberate introspection, determined to understand the decisions that led to failure and to ensure he would never repeat them.

Why the Book Was Written

Payseur did not write Flying High: How Everything I Learned About Faith, Life, and Business, I Learned from the Cockpit to relive a frightening flight or a painful business collapse. He wrote it to redeem both.  “For years, I thought those were separate failures,” Payseur explains. “Eventually, I realized they were the same lesson; one in the air and one on the ground.”

At the heart of the book is a simple but uncompromising truth: “Hope is not part of the flight plan.”  In aviation, hope has no operational value. Pilots rely on training, discipline, procedures, and practice. Hope without those elements is dangerous. Payseur argues that life and business operate by the same rules.  “Hope without training, discipline, procedures, and practice is nothing more than a really great idea,” he writes.

The book challenges the idea that passion alone is not enough. Passion must be paired with preparation and a solid flight plan.  Experience must be governed by accountability. Success, when not anchored in discipline, often plants the seeds of future failure.

 

The Three P’s: Purpose, Procedures, and Practice.

From both aviation and entrepreneurship, Payseur developed what he calls the Three P’s: Purpose, Procedures, and Practice.  Purpose defines why decisions are made. Procedures remove emotion and guesswork. Practice ensures readiness when pressure arrives.  In aviation, these principles are non-negotiable. In business and life, they are often treated as optional until something goes wrong.

Payseur believes the collapse of his trucking business could have been avoided had he adhered to the same disciplined framework that once guided his professional success. The Three P’s are not about rigidity; they are about resilience.  “Discipline doesn’t limit you,” he says. “It protects you.”

Faith, Failure, and the Decision to Get Back Up

Faith plays a steady, grounding role throughout Flying High. It is not presented as a guarantee against hardship, but as an anchor when plans fail.  One of the book’s most resonant lines speaks directly to resilience: “It is not the failure that ends your story; it’s the refusal to get back up that ends your story.”

Failure, Payseur argues, is unavoidable. What matters is whether we allow it to define us or instruct us. The book reflects candidly on shame, pride, and avoidance, and how growth often begins when we are willing to revisit the moments we would rather forget.  Writing the book required Payseur to confront both near-death and financial ruin, not as isolated events, but as connected lessons shaped by discipline applied and discipline ignored.

Why His  Story Matters Now

In a culture that celebrates speed, visible success, and the idea of a straight line to achievement, the realities behind entrepreneurship and personal growth are often whitewashed. Failure is minimized, struggle is edited out, and success is frequently presented without context. Flying High was written with a different purpose: to examine failure first and to explore the lessons required to reach meaningful and sustainable success.  Today, bold risk-taking is often praised, while mentorship, disciplined preparation, and accountability are overlooked. The consequences of that imbalance continue to surface in failed businesses, broken trust, and personal burnout.

As Payseur writes in the book, “When it comes to mentorship, asking for help is not weakness, it is wisdom.”

By sharing his story, Payseur hopes readers, especially business owners, leaders, and young professionals, will recognize the value of guidance, process, and humility before a crisis forces the lesson.  This is not a book about aviation alone. It is about decision-making under pressure, the cost of abandoning discipline, and the power of learning - sometimes late, but never too late.

Flying High: How Everything I Learned About Faith, Life, and Business, I Learned from the Cockpit is available nationally through major booksellers. The book is available on Amazon in eBook, paperback, and hardcover formats, as well as through Barnes & Noble in paperback and hardcover editions.  Also, directly on his website, www.flyinghighthebook.com.  Payseur is also available for speaking engagements and can be reached at [email protected]