Confidence · Direction · Resilience

Failing at something does not make you a failure.

Practical talks and workshops about identity, rejection, reinvention and what to do when the original plan disappears.

Built from more than 30 years of lived experience across broadcasting, entrepreneurship, leadership, success, failure, family and rebuilding.

Start a conversation Cut away the labels
Alastair Hawken in a bright professional interior
Speaker · Founder · Broadcaster Useful, practical sessions for people navigating setbacks, change and the labels that can hold them back.
30+ yearsprofessional experience
BBC · ITV · Channel 5broadcasting experience
6,500 storesglobal retail distribution built from nothing
£300kventure capital raised for Panini
2025pioneering UK food-grade ginger crop
Cut away the labels

Some labels were never yours to carry.

A label can describe a moment. It should never be allowed to define a life.

As a child, Alastair did not pass the 11+ grammar school entrance exam. The word “failure” entered his story early and he carried it for around 30 years before learning that a label imposed by somebody else does not have to become an identity.

In 2020, during the breakdown of a 20-year marriage, the word “failure” appeared repeatedly in the divorce petition. By then Alastair had learned something he had not understood as a child: other people are allowed to have an opinion about you. They are not entitled to define your value.

Disinherit negative labels.

Labels can come from parents, partners, schools, employers, relationships, failures and our own inner voice. Some were once useful. Some were never true. Some have simply expired.

The work is about recognising which labels are no longer fit for purpose, cutting them away and refusing to devalue yourself because somebody else failed to see your value.

Stop letting other people bring you down. Believe in yourself. Build your future from evidence, not from somebody else’s verdict.

Failure
Not academic
Not leadership material
Too old
Rejected
Starting again
Professional portrait of Alastair Hawken
My story

I did not learn resilience from a textbook.

My career began in broadcasting. I went on to work across national and international television, including BBC News, ITV and the launch of Channel 5. Live television taught me how to make decisions under pressure, recover quickly when something goes wrong and keep moving when there is no time for perfect certainty.

I then moved into entrepreneurship. I founded businesses, raised investment, built teams, opened locations and learned what responsibility feels like when other people's livelihoods depend on the decisions you make.

In 2005 a company I had built collapsed. I lost the business, lost my home and reached the lowest point of my life. I attempted to take my own life. I survived, rebuilt and later bought the business back.

Those experiences are not a list of wounds. They are the raw material from which perspective, judgement and resilience are built.

Peaks and troughs

Life is a waveform, not a straight line.

The troughs are not empty space. They are where some of the most important learning happens.

Alastair is a great believer in life behaving like a waveform: peaks, troughs, recovery, momentum and change. We celebrate the peaks because they feel good, but the troughs often do more of the shaping.

His view is that the difficult chapters can become tools of life. The value does not come from suffering for its own sake. It comes from processing what happened, learning what it revealed and deciding what you will carry forward.

Embrace the battle scars. Learn from the wake they leave behind. Then use that lived experience to build what comes next.

The aim is not to become the person you were before the setback. It is to become a more experienced, more self-aware and more intentional version of yourself.

When life strips things away

Your circumstances can collapse without your value collapsing with them.

When Alastair’s business collapsed in 2005 he lost the company, lost his home and, for a period, ended up sleeping in the back of his car. The external signs of success disappeared very quickly.

Years later, the breakdown of a long marriage brought another kind of loss. In the years that followed he experienced painful family estrangement and a serious incident of violence within that family conflict that was witnessed by one of his sons.

Those experiences reinforced a principle at the heart of his speaking: you cannot always control the behaviour of other people, the circumstances around you or the labels they try to attach to you. You can decide what meaning you give those experiences and what you build from them.

Be the best living expression of yourself.

Do not reduce your worth because another person cannot see it. Do not confuse what happened to you with who you are. Do not allow a bad chapter to become the title of the whole book.

Confidence is not pretending the scars are not there. It is being able to look at them, understand what they taught you and move forward without shame.

The future is not built by erasing the past. It is built by using it well.

Embrace the battle scars

Experience leaves marks. Use them.

The aim is not to pretend difficult things never happened. The aim is to build the future on what they taught you.

Do not let other people define your value.Someone else's inability to see your worth does not reduce it.
Believe in the version of you that has survived.Confidence is not arrogance. It is evidence gathered from experience.
Stop shrinking to fit old labels.A description that once felt permanent can become irrelevant when you change.
Use the scars as information.Setbacks can become judgement, empathy, courage and better decision making.
Value is bigger than money

Having money does not necessarily make you rich.

Lived experience makes you rich too. The currency is simply different.

In 2021 Alastair donated stem cells to a complete stranger whose life depended on a transplant. He has donated blood and platelets for around 30 years.

That experience reinforced a belief that runs through his speaking: human value is not measured only in money, titles, grades, status or whether somebody else approves of you.

A richer definition of success

What have you survived?

Who have you helped?

What have you learned?

What can you now do that you once thought impossible?

Who are you becoming?

Nothing is automatically off limits

Sometimes the box is the thing constricting us.

Alastair built Hawkens Gingerbread from nothing into a business stocked in around 6,500 stores across the globe. The brand featured on three prime-time BBC One programmes, on ITV1 and on national radio, with Alastair speaking publicly about business and entrepreneurship.

In 2025 he established a pioneering UK crop of food-grade ginger. The point was not simply the crop. It was the mindset behind attempting something that conventional thinking said was unlikely.

Not everything is possible. But far more is possible than we often assume. Within reason, the first question should not be “Why can't I?” but “What would have to be true for this to work?”

Alastair Hawken speaking at a conference lectern
Ways to work with Alastair

Three formats. Three different depths of change.

Choose the format that matches the audience, the time available and how deeply you want people to work with the ideas.

Paid lectures and workshops

Learn it. Apply it.

Typically 60 to 120 minutes · In person or online

For universities, colleges, employability programmes, leadership teams and organisations that want more than inspiration. These sessions combine Alastair's story with guided reflection and practical exercises.

Participants will:
  • identify labels they have inherited, accepted or imposed on themselves
  • separate a difficult outcome from their sense of personal worth
  • recognise the value hidden inside their lived experience
  • build confidence from evidence rather than wishful thinking
  • leave with a concrete next action rather than a temporary emotional lift
Discuss a lecture
Keynote conference speaking

Create the shift.

Typically 30 to 60 minutes · Conferences and large events

A high impact keynote built around failure, labels, self value, reinvention and the waveform of life. Designed to give a large audience a memorable emotional and practical framework they can carry away.

Audiences will:
  • rethink what failure means and what it does not mean
  • hear a credible story of peaks, troughs, rebuilding and possibility
  • understand why other people's opinions do not determine their value
  • leave with shared language around labels, battle scars and resilience
  • feel challenged to become the best living expression of themselves
Discuss a keynote
One to one online coaching

Cut Away the Labels

A 10 week online coaching programme

A structured individual programme for someone who knows that an old identity, setback, relationship, career chapter or other people's labels are still constricting what comes next.

By the end of the programme, the aim is to help you:
  • understand which labels are shaping your decisions
  • rebuild a more accurate view of your own value
  • turn difficult lived experience into usable personal capital
  • define the person you want to be now, rather than who you were told you were
  • create a clear 90 day direction and action plan
Ask about coaching
The 10 week one to one programme

Cut Away the Labels: from inherited identity to chosen direction.

This is coaching, not therapy. It is designed for people who are ready to examine the stories they have accepted about themselves, extract value from what they have lived through and make deliberate choices about what comes next.

Week 1 · Where are you now?Map the present situation, the pressure points and what you want to be different.
Week 2 · The labels auditIdentify the words, judgements and identities that have followed you and decide which are no longer fit for purpose.
Week 3 · Event versus identitySeparate what happened to you, or what you did, from who you are.
Week 4 · Your lived experience inventoryRecover the skills, judgement, courage and knowledge hidden inside difficult chapters.
Week 5 · Battle scars into assetsLearn to use setbacks as information and evidence rather than shame.
Week 6 · Confidence from evidenceBuild self belief from what you have already done, survived and learned.
Week 7 · Your values and your best selfDefine what being the best living expression of yourself actually looks like in practice.
Week 8 · Step outside the boxChallenge unnecessary assumptions about what is and is not available to you.
Week 9 · Direction and decisionsTurn reflection into choices, priorities and a practical route forward.
Week 10 · The next 90 daysLeave with a personal operating plan, clear commitments and a framework for handling the next trough when it comes.
The objective is not to manufacture a new personality. It is to help you remove what no longer belongs, recognise the value that is already there and make decisions from a more accurate understanding of yourself.
Who this is for

For people and organisations dealing with change, pressure, rejection or reinvention.

Students and graduates

When rejection starts to feel personal

For people facing rejected applications, poor interview results, uncertainty about career direction or a fear that one result says something permanent about who they are.

Universities and colleges

Employability that goes beyond CV technique

For careers, employability and student development teams that want students to leave with more confidence, stronger self-belief and a practical way to respond when the plan changes.

Early careers and graduate programmes

Building people who recover well

For employers developing young talent who need to handle feedback, rejection, pressure and uncertainty without allowing temporary setbacks to become permanent self-beliefs.

Leadership and management teams

Confidence under pressure

For leaders who need perspective, resilience, accountability and the ability to keep making useful decisions when certainty disappears.

Founders and entrepreneurs

When the business and the person become too closely linked

For people building something of their own who need to separate commercial outcomes from personal identity and use failure as information rather than a verdict.

People in transition

When an old identity no longer fits

For people navigating redundancy, career change, relationship breakdown, business failure or a major life shift and asking, “Who am I now?”

Conference audiences

A keynote with a real story behind it

For events looking for a speaker who can combine emotional honesty, business credibility and practical takeaways without relying on empty motivation.

Wellbeing and resilience programmes

Moving beyond slogans

For organisations that want resilience conversations rooted in lived experience, self-worth, identity and practical action rather than simply telling people to “think positive”.

What people take away from Alastair's work

Not just a good feeling. A different way of seeing themselves and what comes next.

Alastair Hawken with his three sons
The role that matters most

Dad to three amazing boys.

Broadcasting, business, speaking and entrepreneurship all matter to Alastair. But the role he values above all of them is being a father.

It is another reminder that our worth is never contained in one job title, one result, one relationship or one chapter of our lives.

Start a conversation

Choose the level of change you want to create.

For paid lectures and workshops, conference keynotes or the 10 week one to one coaching programme, get in touch and we can match the format to the outcome you want.

Email Alastair Discuss a session
Alastair Hawken · Confidence, Direction & Resilience · alastairhawken@gmail.com