About
Andy Laker
Between memoir and post-incident analysis
Andy Laker is a UK author best known for Careering Off Course, the first book in the How to Get Things Badly Wrong series.
His debut book, Careering Off Course, the first in the How to Get Things Badly Wrong series, explores a working life spent mistaking movement for progress. It traces a pattern familiar to many: starting with conviction, chasing security over clarity, and confusing activity with advancement.
The wider framework behind the project — and the future volumes it will include — is explained in more detail on the About The Series page.
Across his writing, Andy examines the habits that keep intelligent people stuck — procrastination disguised as preparation, financial impatience dressed up as opportunity, and the repeated urge to begin something new rather than commit to finishing what’s already started.
The stories are drawn from corporate roles, property ventures, half-formed business ventures, small wins that felt like breakthroughs, and bigger lessons that arrived later than they should have. What emerges isn’t a tale of spectacular collapse, but something more recognisable: the slow accumulation of avoidable decisions.
His books sit somewhere between memoir and post-incident analysis. The humour carries the narrative, but the interest lies in the pattern beneath it — how optimism can override evidence, how comfort can replace growth, and how fear of failure often disguises itself as practicality.
At its core, his work is an examination of modern work culture and the quiet ways people drift from intention to inertia.
His work sits within the tradition of reflective memoir and behavioural non-fiction, blending humour with pattern recognition and hindsight.
Rather than offering formulas or motivational blueprints, Andy focuses on recognition.
The psychology behind the mistake.
The rationalisation that made it feel sensible at the time.
The moment when clarity arrived — usually just after the consequences.
Underlying the comedy is deliberate effort. These books are written by someone actively attempting to improve — professionally, financially and personally — while accepting that progress is rarely linear and almost never elegant.
Some of the entrepreneurial missteps documented in Careering Off Course have also shaped a commitment to supporting new founders and early-stage businesses — details can be found on the Giving Back page.
Writing Careering Off Course was not a quick decision. The process — from early planning to final print — took two years of drafting, restructuring and uncomfortable revision.
Read how the book was built →
Away from writing, Andy lives in the UK with his family. He is a long-standing Everton supporter — an early and ongoing lesson in managing expectation — and maintains an optimistic attempt to learn Spanish in Barcelona, in a city that would generally prefer he learn Catalan.
The experiment is ongoing.
