Meeting Alison
On a crisp September morning walking towards Wray Castle, with the waters of Windermere glittering beside us and the autumn leaves just beginning their slow turn to copper, I walked and talked with Alison Magee-Barker, hospitality consultant, coach, trainer, entrepreneur, skydiver, half-marathon runner, and, as she’d freely admit, someone who has never done anything by halves.
What unfolded over the next hour was wonderfully honest, funny, and moving!
About the Walk
We recorded this episode walking towards Wray Castle along the water’s edge toward the Windermere Ferry and back, it’s a really peaceful and beautifully accessible stretches of the Lake District. Alison chose this route deliberately. As a self-described water baby who has always gravitated toward rivers, lakes, and coastlines, there’s something quietly profound about having her tell her story here, with the lake as witness.
The ferry was on a brief hiatus when we arrived (which, had it continued, would have been our fourth rethink of recording this podcast!), the sky was cool but kind, and a red kite circled overhead. As walks go, it was simply gorgeous.
The Girl Who Wouldn’t Take “You’ll Never Make It” for an Answer
Alison’s story begins in Hindley, near Wigan, a Lancashire girl born and bred, with a grandmother who was an extraordinary cook, a mother who kept the secret of hospitality magic, and a catering teacher at school who told a teenage Alison she would never make it in the industry.
“When someone tells me I can’t do something, I go hell-bent to prove them wrong.”
She went to college. She excelled. By the age of 21, she was a hotel General Manager, a responsibility that would take most people a decade to reach. The same instincts that her teacher tried to extinguish became the engine of a career spanning 40 years, every major department, and some extraordinary moments along the way (King Hussein of Jordan requesting her presence among them).
Running Hotels Like She Owned Them
Alison’s approach towards her career isn’t just about the sheer scope it, it’s the emotional ownership she brought to every property she managed. She never ran someone else’s hotel. She ran her hotel. That meant staying until 2 or 3am on Christmas Eve, scattering fake reindeer footprints and glitter across the grounds so that every family woke to something magical. It meant phoning a guest on their drive home to say sorry for the rain and offering a free return stay, and turning a furious reviewer into one of her most loyal ambassadors.
“I’ve always got 5 seconds to turn somebody around. That’s not a lot of time. But that’s enough.”
That instinct, to listen, to find the root cause, to act with empathy rather than defensiveness, is at the heart of everything she now teaches.
The Exit, the Imposter, and the Moment in a Car Park
In 2017, after 34 years in hospitality, Alison made herself redundant. Deliberately. She’d spent years quietly building her team’s capability until everyone around her was strong enough to run the place without her. Then she walked. She calls it her “perfect exit strategy”, a phrase she now coaches others in, and it’s both deeply strategic and beautifully human.
But the transition wasn’t seamless. She turned up at a networking event shortly after launching AJ Lakes Consultancy, business cards in hand, surrounded by industry peers she’d worked alongside for decades, and felt completely, utterly lost.
“I got in the car that night and cried all the way home. And I said to myself: I never want to feel like that again. And I never want anyone else to feel like that.”
That night became a turning point. A personal development journey followed — one that led, through an extraordinary sequence of events, to becoming a founding member of Tony Robbins’ inner circle, to swimming in the freezing waters of Windermere, and eventually to life mastery.
The Mission: Helping a Million
Today, Alison runs AJ Lakes Consultancy and AJ Lakes Training Academy, where she offers results-focused strategic coaching and mentoring to business owners and managers in hospitality, and beyond. Her goal is audacious and completely her: to help at least a million busy business owners, managers and teams live their best lives by becoming emotionally, mentally, physically and financially free.
She talks about mindset not as a buzzword but as a practical lever, the gap between how you see a situation, how others see it, and how it actually is. “95% of people never see things the way they really are,” she says. “And that’s what I help them to do.”
And then there’s ImmersiV XP, a virtual reality training programme Alison has developed to revolutionise hospitality training through immersive, realistic scenarios. It was born, from watching her daughter play Roblox and seeing, in the pizza restaurant simulation, a yield management opportunity.
The Bigger Vision: Homeless into Hospitality
Alison’s AJ Lakes Foundation carries an ambition that goes beyond business: eradicating homelessness through hospitality. The Homeless into Hospitality programme is her next chapter, but she’s clear that to give it properly, she first needs to put on her own oxygen mask. A lesson she learned, painfully, when she gave her consultancy services for free throughout the pandemic and financially crippled herself in the process.
The pandemic burned bright and terrible, but it also gave her the clearest possible articulation of what she was here to do.
Final thoughts
Walking along the shore at Windermere with Alison is a bit like being gently handed the manual for a better version of yourself. She’s warm, funny, blunt in the best possible way, and she radiates the hard-earned confidence that can only come from having actually done the thing you’re talking about.
Her story is a study in what happens when you back yourself, even when (especially when) you’re scared. From a Lancashire kitchen to a Lake District lakeshore, from skydiving in America to freezing dips in Windermere, from managing hotels at 21 to coaching a million, Alison Magee-Barker is, as she summarises her own journey in three words, challenging, powerful, and outstanding.
And if someone tells her she can’t do something? Well. You already know what happens next.
Resources & Connect
Alison’s story is one of relentless determination. Starting out in hospitality at 13, she built a career spanning 40 years — rising to Hotel General Manager before she was 21, running every room like it was her own. When redundancy handed her a new beginning, she took it. Now the founder of AJ Lakes Consultancy and AJ Lakes Training Academy, Alison is on a mission to help a million business owners, managers and teams live their best lives — emotionally, mentally, physically and financially free.
Links:
- Website: www.ajlakes.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alison-magee-barker-fih
- Facebook: facebook.com/AJLakesConsultancy
- Instagram: @ajlakes1
- YouTube: @AJ_Lakes
- Twitter/X: @aj_lakes
Book a call with Alison: ajlakes.com/services/book-a-consultancy-call-or-meeting
S3’s music partner is: A Band Called Persimmon. You can check them out here:
https://www.youtube.com/@bandcalledPersimmon
Claife Heights sits above the western shore of Windermere, reached by crossing the lake as a foot passenger on the Windermere Ferry. It is a quiet and beautiful stretch of ancient woodland, where the trees press close to the path and the lake flickers through the branches. Alison and Sukanya walked the accessible path towards Wray castle, turning back just short of reaching the castle to catch the ferry back.
Great podcast. From the heart. Great revelations and live the mission about getting the homeless into hotels.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I agree, Alison was so generous with her story and her mission is incredible!