The Wobble That Changed Everything

Last place in 2024. Second place after round one in 2025.

Impossible? That's what everyone thought.

When my team scored 30 points in that opening round at the British Indoor Skydiving Championships in Lille, my team slipped to third. Still respectable, but 38 points behind the anticipated winners, people stopped to watch. With limited wind tunnel training time and a fraction of the budget other teams had, nobody expected us to be competitive.

Reality caught up by round ten. We slipped to third, 38 points behind the winners. Still respectable. But here's what matters: the principle that got us from last to competitive taught me something that transforms how I run my business every single day.

Tunnel time isn't cheap. Fifteen minutes of tunnel time equals roughly fifteen skydives. When finances determine how often you can train, you learn something crucial: maximise every second or get left behind.

The Perfectionist's Problem

We made a decision that went against everything in my engineering brain.

We sacrificed perfect formations for speed.

Instead of obsessing over technically flawless shapes and grip techniques, we focused on one thing: transition speed between formations. How quickly could we move from one position to the next with minimal body movement?

The formations weren't perfect. But we were faster than we had ever been.

And that's when it hit me.

I'm a perfectionist. I like things just right. This strategy violated my core instincts.

The same tension shows up constantly at Vital Facilities Solutions. When I inspect a playground or landscape installation or cleaning visit, I see every small detail others miss. Things that have been overlooked. I have to stop and ask myself: what does the customer actually expect? What does their contract specify?

Sometimes good is good enough rather than my relentless drive for exceptional in all areas.

What this means for you: Perfectionism feels noble, but it destroys momentum.

Research backs this up. The pursuit of perfection can destroy deadlines, derail projects, and completely destroy capacity. Good high-quality work delivered consistently beats perfection attempted once.

The Wobble

In the tunnel, there's a physical sensation that tells you something's off before your brain catches up.

We have a saying: slow is fast.

It's tempting to go full speed to get the point or close the sale. But rushing makes you unstable. You make mistakes when you haven't got the correct balance or foundations.

The wobble is that sudden movement you didn't ask for and weren't expecting. Sometimes it's physical. Sometimes it's just a feeling, a sixth sense that something isn't quite right.

When that happens, we perform a quick reset. Get stable. Breathe. Try to relax. Then go again.

Reset, breathe, assess, adjust and go again.

I felt that wobble peak in my business early this year.

I'd lost my way. Years of challenges had made me relive the same year over and over without truly moving the dial forward.

The challenges had made me insular. Dismissive. A little bitter. Untrusting.

Defensive Walls

Following a difficult divorce many years ago that resulted in financial hardship, I used to think everyone was out to rip me off.

Money became the enemy. Resentment slowly infested areas of my life.

I built defensive walls. Slipped into my comfort zone.

Then I realised those walls would lead me back to my darkest days after divorce, when I lost contact with my children.

The realisation came gradually: I was unhappy and things needed to change.

I couldn't move forward alone. Nobody can really.

You need the right team, whether that's colleagues, coaches, or mentors. The right team makes all the difference.

I'm still on the journey to bring balance and maybe I always will be, but I've enlisted help through coaching and mentors. I'm making better decisions to bring in colleagues who are far better than me at what they do.

What this means for you: Your defensive walls feel like protection. They're actually prison bars.

The Creative Who Needs Discipline

I'm not naturally methodical. I'd class myself as creative, visionary. Great with ideas, thriving on change and developing new things, whether it's ways of working, business ideas, or solving problems.

I'm a natural firefighter who likes chasing the next shiny thing.

I'm not a natural finisher.

Skydiving forces discipline. Outside the tunnel or after a jump, it's about taking notes during debriefs from my coaches, watching videos back, lying on a creeper in front of a mirror to see how the new position feels when it looks right.

Then rinse and repeat. Repetition with tweaks to build muscle memory.

When my creative, visionary side takes over in business and I stop doing the boring, consistent work. We don't get things done. If I don't keep myself in check, I over promise and under deliver.

Results Are Rented

I'm resilient. Life has taught me to be resilient.

But resilience itself requires maintenance.

I'm easily distracted with multiple to-do lists, perhaps I have undiagnosed ADHD. One thing I have come to realise is success in business and sport is built on resilience. However, success is never owned. It's rented. And to achieve it, we need to pay the rent each and every day.

I need to keep paying rent on me, using tools and techniques to stay focused and on track to achieve my goals.

The research is clear: reaching your goal is huge, but maintaining it is the real test. The amount of effort required for maintenance is less than what's ideal for progression toward the goal, but it still requires consistent effort.

This applies to everything:

• Athletic performance

• Business success

• Personal resilience

Excellence isn't a permanent state. It's a continuous process requiring daily investment.

Keep paying the rent.

What I Tell My Team

At the championships, competitors helped each other despite being in direct competition.

Why? Safety matters most in our sport. There are no second chances.

Yes, the tunnel is more forgiving than the sky, but serious injury can occur when you are moving around in 120mph wind speeds. Sharing advice and helping others stay safe is what matters most to the community.

The sport taught me a hard lesson about safety earlier this year. A hard landing resulted in a fractured spine. The weather was off but I had become a little complacent and didn't pay attention to the wobble. The weather was more unpredictable than usual.

I ignored the sensation that something was off.

In business, many years ago, a staff member wanted to learn a particular machine. A colleague decided to train them, supervising their first go.

The 'trainer' was very experienced in operating the kit but couldn't properly articulate the safety protocols, the what-if scenarios, or fully explain why we do this and not that.

The person had a minor accident that could have been much worse.

The lesson: We need to listen to those who share their expertise and knowledge. Those who have been there and made the mistakes so that we can build on that. Not everyone can coach. We don't always have the foresight to anticipate when things may not go as planned. It's not simply good enough to just give things a go. There needs to be deeper understanding of why we do something and what might happen if it goes wrong.

Whether I'm coaching in skydiving or encouraging my business colleagues on our journey towards our goals, knowing what I've been through personally, I often share what I wish someone had told me five years ago.

It's not just about the end result.

It's about the journey. The learning process. The small steps in the right direction after making steps in the wrong direction. Learn to feel and acknowledge when something is off, then use reasoning, data and information to either verify or reassure. Make the necessary tweaks and move forward a notch.

Yes, you need to keep an eye on the goal and keep reminding yourself of it. Many people lose sight of their goal or purpose. I know I did.

But there's a difference between keeping the goal in plain sight and making small steps towards it versus becoming so fixated on the goal that you resent every knock, fall, and failure to the point where negativity creeps in and the goal becomes blurred.

How This Shows Up at Vital

When managing a school grounds contract or care home cleaning service, the challenge is having the team recognise why we sweat the small stuff. The finishing touches. The seemingly insignificant details.

It doesn't have to be perfection, but it has to be good enough and deliver real value within the confines of budgets and contract specifications.

We don't always get it right. But if we fall short, we listen, feel the wobble, assess, adapt and go again until we get it right, one step at a time.

We try to understand what matters to our people, their goals and aspirations, and then find the overlaps with our business goals. We strive to link the small steps we take each day to the business goal. We identify how the business goals relate back to personal goals.

If we bring our people on the right path of personal and business progress, then we can collectively focus on what matters most to our customers.

The wobble in the wind tunnel taught me to recognise when something's off before it becomes a crisis.

Reset, breathe, assess, adjust and keep moving forward.

That same principle applies when inspecting a landscape installation, managing a cleaning schedule, or navigating a difficult conversation.

You can't control the wind. But you can control your position and journey through it.