The two halves of my working life don’t look like they belong together.
The first was spent in the back of a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter over the North Atlantic, hunting submarines. It is a strange job. Long hours of nothing, watching and listening, waiting for a faint trace on the edge of the noise that almost everyone would be happy to call nothing at all. The whole discipline comes down to one thing: refusing to dismiss the signal too early, and having the patience to stay on it.
The second half I spent in Cornwall, running a harbourside restaurant in Falmouth and two other fish and chip shops. Different world entirely. No sonar, no ocean, just customers, costs, staff, and the daily work of keeping something good alive. And yet the skill that mattered most turned out to be exactly the same one. The standard that slips a fraction with nobody flagging it. The regular who stops coming in. The problem the numbers whisper long before they shout. Business sends out faint contacts too, and most owners learn to wave them away right up until they can’t.
Somewhere along the way I realised the thing I had been trained to do in an aircraft was the thing I was doing every day behind a counter. That is what I speak about now, and it is what both my books are built on. Mojo M.I.A. is a business parable for anyone still showing up but no longer feeling it. The Faint Contact, following soon, is the fuller story of how a submarine hunter’s discipline turned into a way of running a business, and a life.
I am based in Helston, still close to the water, and these days I spend my time helping business owners and leaders spot what matters early and act on it before it costs them. If that sounds like your room or your business, I would love to hear from you.
