LET’ S DO BUSINESS
“ We’ re all going to fail at things and get down, but you’ ve got resilience and you get yourself back up”
THERE’ S ALWAYS ANOTHER GEAR
From a council estate in Stoke-on-Trent to the SAS, battlefields, missions behind enemy lines and television fame, Melvyn Downes has spent a lifetime discovering what people are capable of when the pressure is on. Ahead of his keynote appearance at Staffordshire Chambers’ Let’ s Do Business Expo, he tells Feature Focus why resilience, discipline, integrity and the determination to keep moving forward can be just as powerful in business as they are on the battlefield …
MELVYN DOWNES WAS EXHAUSTED.
It was deep into SAS selection, his days were beginning at 4.45am before he was driven into the Brecon Beacons, dropped at an unknown location and sent alone across the mountains with little more than a map and a compass.
By then, he was carrying around 55lbs on his back, and that’ s before adding his weapon or any water. There was no encouragement and no indication of how well he was doing- or not. Reach one checkpoint and he was simply handed another grid reference and sent on his way deeper into the unknown.
The conditions were brutal. Ice covered the mountain and wind and rain drove horizontally across it. Parts of the climb were so steep that he was reduced to scrambling on his hands and knees.
Physically and mentally exhausted, he finally hauled himself over the top. He was shattered. He dropped his pack, put down his weapon and reached for some water. Then, so exhausted he could barely coordinate his movements, he caught the rifle with his foot.
It slid away from him down the ice covered peak.
“ I put it down on a lump of ice and, as I went to pick it up, I was that tired I kicked it with my foot by mistake,” he recalls.
Downes watched it disappear around 45 metres down the mountain before coming to rest on a ledge.
He had no choice but to go after it.
Summoning what little energy he had left, he climbed back down, reached the rifle, bent to pick it up- and stumbled into it, sending it careering down the mountainside again. This time it went even further.
“ I thought,‘ God, why am I doing this?’”
He was freezing, soaked and spent. He had just fought his way to the summit deep into training for the toughest special forces unit in the world, climbed back down and now faced doing it all over again. Somewhere beyond the top was another checkpoint. After that, probably another. He had no idea how much further he had to go.
Nobody was coming to help. There was no instructor screaming at him to continue, no teammate to drag him onwards. If he wanted to stop, he could stop.
Instead, he climbed down again, picked up the rifle, turned around and started back up the mountain.
“ That’ s what it’ s all about,” he says.“ Everybody can push themselves a lot further than they think, physically and mentally. You don’ t know unless you’ ve really been pushed to those limits.
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