The United States Parachute Association warns that skydiving is a potentially dangerous activity, but that the sport can be safe when a jumper exercises proper precautions.
Some entrepreneurs say that starting and running a business is like strapping on a parachute and jumping out of a plane. To do either, you’ve got to have guts — and a contingency plan.
Barb Casey agrees business ownership and skydiving are much the same. Five years ago, she invested $20,000 to establish Faircrest Door in Canton, a garage door sales and service company. She says it was her life savings, a big risk, and she could have lost it all.
“The scariest thing about running a business is that it might fail. But you’ve got two chances of surviving when you’re skydiving. If your main parachute doesn’t open, you can pull your reserve,” she says.
Casey speaks as one who knows. As an avid skydiver, she spends her weekends at Canton Air Sports, a popular northeast Ohio drop zone. And each October, she travels to New River Gorge in Fayetteville, W.Va., to participate in “Bridge Day” — where, in a “legal base jump,” more than 350 skydivers parachute off an 800-foot-high bridge, cheered on by a crowd of about 150,000 spectators.
Greg Pigott, owner of Professional Carpets Inc. in Canton says that plunging into business ventures and free falling from high altitudes are similar. The giddiness one gets from catapulting a new business equates to the euphoria of human flight. But there’s tranquillity in free falling that’s seldom found in piloting a business, he says.
“First, there the rush of free fall,” says Pigott, whose signature jump is every Friday at sunset. “Then, when you open your parachute, there’s just total peace and serenity under a 120-square-foot canopy.”
More notable is the fact that business failures far exceed skydiving fatalities.
According to the Small Business Administration, of the more than 500,000 new businesses launched each year in the U.S., eight out of 10 crash, most due to a lack of expertise and planning.
Conversely, the USPA says that of the 3,250,000 skydives made in the U.S. last year alone, 47 resulted in a fatality. Most accidents occur during landing and could be prevented if jumpers used proper caution, says the USPA.
Contingency plan
While their skill and chutes safeguard them in the air, like most company presidents, Pigott and Casey have contingency plans for their businesses.
If her business gets into trouble, Casey jokes, “I can always go for a loan.”
Primarily, she says she relies on her partner’s expertise. As vice president of Faircrest Door, Bill Bird oversees overall operations. Ironically, he was also Casey’s jump instructor when she decided to take a skydiving course seven years ago at Canton Air Sports. Since then, Casey and Bird have shared an entrepreneurial spirit at the office and an adventurous spirit in the air.
Today, Casey says she wouldn’t trade her parachute for anything. But she wasn’t always so courageous in her business pursuits and recreational activities. In contrast, Bird says the risk taker spirit runs in his family.
“I’m an army brat. My dad was a chief warrant officer and my uncle was a paratrooper. So I was around a lot of it. One day I just went out and made a jump. Actually, I made four jumps that first day,” he says.
Until last year, Bird held a 19-year record for being the first-time jumper with the most jumps the first time out. Last year, his 16-year-old son took the title from him, beating the record with five jumps on his first day of training.
Bird, who’s logged 3,285 skydives, says he doesn’t really think of parachuting as a dangerous sport.
“My job is more dangerous than skydiving,” he says, explaining that when he’s not juggling daily operations, he’s making repair calls with his crew. “Installing rolling steel garage, fire and overhead doors isn’t the safest profession. A garage door spring is under hundreds of pounds of pressure. That can do you a lot of damage.
“We work from ladders, and we work in a lot of hazardous environments. We also have to drive from call to call, and that’s a risk right there. Just having a business in the ’90s is a big risk. Hiring employees is a risk. You never know what you’re going to get,” he laughs.
Leap of faith
It’s a glorious Saturday afternoon and a big day at Canton Air Sports, located in the heart of the Berlin Lakes Recreational Area near Alliance. Greg Pigott and Lloyd Smith are checking their gear, preparing to board the Twin Bonanza that will take them to a drop height of 14,000 feet, where they will make their 1,000th jump together.
As owner of Airgasmic Photography, based out of Canton Air Sports, Smith specializes in photographing and videographing static line, tandem and relative work jumps. (A static line jump is the standard skydiving training method in which, after the jump, the parachute is deployed from a static line attached to the aircraft. In a tandem jump, two people jump together, wearing linked harnesses and sharing one parachute. Relative work jumps are made by experienced jumpers who freefall in varied formations.)
It wasn’t long after Smith’s first jump in 1992 that he decided to take up aerial photography as an entrepreneurial profession.
“I would see people with cameras on their helmets and I thought, ‘That doesn’t look hard — I can do that.’ I went out, bought a system and the very first roll of film I shot, I sold,” he says.
Since then, he’s photographed hundreds of skydivers in the act — from CEOs to secretaries. And he has his own theory about why they do it.
“Corporate people are generally power types who look at skydiving as their equal,” he says. “A lot of them see it as a way to overcome their fears. They realize there’s danger there, but their skill level enables them to be safe.”
Smith’s rationale isn’t just from an observational point of view. Before he took on a position as a training officer for the State of Ohio Adult Parole Authority, he was a SWAT team officer for a maximum security prison. And he reveals that he started skydiving to overcome his fear of heights.
“I knew I had to beat that fear because I wanted to be in control,” he says.
Watch that first step
Pigott says that after a grueling 60-80 hour week on the ground, there’s no greater exhilaration than plunging from high altitudes at an initial drop speed of about 120 miles per hour. But accidents do happen, he says.
Pigott once had a scare when his main parachute was rendered useless, due to his own negligence. His reserve saved his life. And Bird once broke his leg during a landing. But he didn’t stay grounded for long — he was back in the air six months later.
Both have since become USPA licensed instructors and jumpmasters. They say that, compared to other sports, there’s less risk involved in skydiving.
“As far as the most dangerous activities in the world, skydiving is like No. 9 on the list,” says Pigott .
“I scuba dive, too, and parachuting is far safer than diving. It’s just a different element,” Bird says. “Once you learn how to survive in that element, it’s just a calculated risk. It’s like, ‘Well, this sport might break every bone in my body, but that one, I might get eaten by a shark.’ I have control over breaking every bone in my body when I parachute. But I don’t have any control over that shark.”
That calculated risk, say these business owners, is the correlation between stepping into business ownership and plunging from a plane.
How to reach: Canton Air Sports 1-800-772-4174 or w
ww.canton-airsports.com; Airgasmic Photography (419) 525-DIVE; United States Parachute Association www.uspa.org
Daredevil beware
“Like in any extreme sport, there’s some risk. But you minimize it by playing it smart, paying attention and not being a daredevil,” says Pigott. “If you disrespect the sport, it can kill you.”
Skydiving has advanced dramatically during the past few decades and the equipment has become more reliable, simpler and more durable, says the USPA.
“Parachutes never fail,” says Pigott. “It’s people that fail to use them properly.”
Reserve parachutes are inspected and repacked every 120 days by an FAA-certified rigger, whether they’ve been used or not. Student main parachutes are packed by a rigger or are packed under direct supervision of a certified rigger.
“The mentality is, ‘I hope my main parachute works, but I know my reserve will,’” says Phil Mihai, a certified FAA senior rigger and owner of S.O.L. (Sky’s Our Limit) Rigging Loft in Canton. “You learn to trust your gear and know that it’s going to work.”
Mihai says that of the hundreds of reserve chutes he’s packed for jumpers, 23 people have had to rely on those reserves when their main chutes failed.
