Resilience lessons from ex-Royal Marine and performance coach William Charters

Few people understand pressure the way private equity and SaaS leaders do. You are dropped into complex situations, asked to deliver results quickly, and expected to stay composed while the ground shifts under your feet.

That reality is deeply familiar to William Charters.

William earned his place as a Royal Marine in his teens and later served on some of the most demanding soldiering and selection courses in the military. Today, he works as a performance coach and serves as wellness advisor to The Lancer Group, helping executives build the physical and mental foundations required to perform under sustained pressure.

What is striking is how little he glamorizes his military past.

“Starting a business and leading in the modern world is the hardest thing I have ever done. The military helped prepare me, but business can be every bit as brutal, just in a different way.”

That is a line many PE-backed CEOs and SaaS executives nod along to immediately.

Performing at your best when you feel your worst

William draws a sharp distinction between the mindset of an athlete and that of a soldier.

An elite athlete prepares for one specific moment. Everything is optimized so that when they step onto the field, the conditions are as favorable as possible.

Soldiers train for the opposite.

“Soldiering is about being able to perform at the highest level when you are at your absolute lowest.”

That lens maps closely to leadership in PE-backed environments. There is rarely a perfect moment. You are asked to make decisions while exhausted, behind plan, under board scrutiny, with incomplete information, and with people depending on you anyway.

In the military, even the toughest selection courses still have a defined structure. You know the start date. You know there is an end date. You know what success roughly requires.

Leadership does not come with a track. You have to build the track while you are moving.

For first-time CEOs, operators stepping into turnarounds, or executives inheriting aggressive value-creation plans, that lack of structure is often the most destabilizing part.

Resilience starts long before the crisis

When William talks about resilience, he does not reach for buzzwords or motivational language. He talks about his father.

His dad was a deeply disciplined man. He never sat him down for speeches about mindset. He showed it through his actions. When young William came home tired from training and complained that his legs hurt, his father would look at him and say:

“All right. Just get on with it.”

There was no drama in it. No sympathy either. Just quiet expectation.

That tone followed William into his early teens. As a Royal Marines cadet from nine to fifteen, he learned the power of small, repeated standards. Polishing boots. Ironing uniforms. Keeping equipment clean. Showing up prepared.

Later, in Commando training, recruits spent weeks doing nothing but personal administration. They learned to make beds with “hospital corners” so precise the angles were checked with a protractor. From the outside, it looked obsessive. From the inside, it built something far more important.

It taught:

• Attention to detail under strain
• Calm under discomfort

Those habits show up decades later in boardrooms and operating meetings when tension is high and mistakes are expensive.

One of the simplest habits William still keeps is writing out the next day by hand each night. Nothing fancy. Just time blocks and commitments.

“People can spend more hours talking about ideas than actually doing them. For me it is basic. Be organized. Prepare yourself for tomorrow.”

It is not glamorous. It is reliable.

Doing the smallest things to the highest standard

On one of the hardest courses of his career, William and his team were struggling. An instructor who was normally ferocious called them together and, unexpectedly, spoke quietly.

“If you want to be one of us, it is really simple. You just do the smallest things to the highest standard, consistently.”

That sentence changed everything. When they returned to training, the tasks were the same, but the way they executed shifted. What had felt chaotic began to flow. The difference was not intensity. It was precision.

That principle now anchors how William works with leaders.

• Prepare properly.
• Eat well.
• Sleep enough.
• Train with intention.
• Stay present.
• Do the simple things well.

Small disciplines compound into stability. Stability compounds into performance.

For PE-backed executives, the parallel is clear. Most value is not created through dramatic moves. It is created by consistently executing the basics at a high standard.

Persistence, the pickaxe, and knowing when to change direction

William often references a familiar image. Two men are underground with pickaxes. One is digging steadily toward a seam of gold. Just one strike before reaching it, he puts down his pickaxe and walks away. It is a reminder not to quit just before the breakthrough.

But he is quick to balance it.

“You cannot keep swinging at the wrong wall forever.”

After leaving the military, William studied mathematics. Today, he thinks about business in terms of functions. If a certain input does not reliably produce the expected output, the function must change.

For PE and SaaS leaders, this tension is constant:

• You need the persistence to stay the course when early numbers are noisy.
• You need the honesty to pivot when the data says you are mining the wrong wall.

Resilience is not blind endurance. It is endurance paired with evaluation.

No Plan B and the discipline of the reorg

One theme that runs through William’s early life is the absence of a soft landing. When he joined the Marines, there was no Plan B. Home was not a viable option. Failure meant returning to something far worse than the hardship of training.

That knowledge carried him forward.

Years later, when he reached a point in life that no longer worked for him, he recreated that same sense of urgency through structure. Set wake-up time. Bed made. Equipment ready. Clear actions for the day. Not because anyone was inspecting him, but because he knew the structure produced results.

At the same time, William is clear that relentless pushing without pause eventually breaks people.

Here he draws from another military principle: the “reorg.”

After an operation, elite units regroup quickly. They treat injuries, refuel, check equipment, and prepare for what comes next. It is fast. It is disciplined. It is essential.

Executives, he believes, need the same rhythm.

There are moments when you cannot stop. A covenant test is approaching. A major deal is closing. A critical renewal is at risk.

But sustained performance depends on deliberate reset windows.

A short offsite after a restructuring. A recalibrated cadence after a system change. A personal reset after a brutal quarter.

This is not indulgence.

It is how leaders preserve the capacity to go again.

Questions for leaders to sit with

William’s experience leaves leaders with uncomfortable, practical questions:

• Where are you expecting ideal conditions in a world that requires performance under strain?
• If someone judged your leadership by your smallest habits, what would they assume about your ability in a crisis?
• Are you applying persistence or stubbornness? How do you know the difference?
• Do you secretly hold a comfortable Plan B that will tempt you when pressure peaks?
• When was the last time you ran a true reorg for yourself or your team?

For William, resilience is not dramatic. It is not loud. It is not cinematic.

It is quiet, repeatable behavior that makes you dependable when uncertainty is high.

Or, as his father taught him early on: When it gets hard, get on with it. Then regroup, so you can go again.