For most people in Bryan County, Donald R. Payseur is the face and driving force behind Coastal Broadband, Inc.,  but beyond his work in telecommunications, Payseur carries another calling: storytelling.

“Everyone has a story to tell,” Payseur says. “It took me 40 years to finally tell mine.”

Unlike many business and leadership books that draw a straight line between effort and success, "Flying High: How Everything I Learned About Faith, Life, and Business, I Learned from the Cockpit" takes the opposite approach. Payseur’s newly published memoir is not a celebration of uninterrupted achievement, but an honest examination of failure and the hard work required to stand back up after everything has been lost.

Payseur’s journey began in aviation, where discipline is non-negotiable, and mistakes are unforgiving. Over time, he became a skilled pilot, logging thousands of flight hours and earning his Commercial, Multi-Engine, and Instrument ratings. Aviation taught him precision, humility, and respect for checklists, lessons learned through both instruction and experience, including a near-fatal aviation incident over a sheer granite mountain face in his hometown of Gastonia, North Carolina.

Those hard-earned aviation disciplines, however, were not always applied on the ground.

In 2009, Payseur ignored many of the same rules that governed safe flight while running a trucking company. The result was catastrophic. The business failed, leaving him penniless and forced to start over from scratch.

“That crash wasn’t in an airplane,” Payseur explained. “It was in business, and it was entirely avoidable.”

Flying High explores that contrast, showing how principles that save lives in the air are often forgotten in business and life, and how rebuilding after failure requires honesty, faith, and discipline rather than bravado.

Blending aviation, entrepreneurship, and personal reflection, the book offers readers a candid look at resilience, not as a buzzword, but as a process shaped by mistakes, accountability, and second chances.

Now available through Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions, as well as through Barnes and Noble, Flying High invites readers to rethink success, not as a straight line upward, but as the courage to begin again after falling hard.

This is Payseur’s first book. His second book, The Dad Who Adopted Me, is currently in publishing and is expected to be available in mid-February.