I was born in Canada and left school in grade ten. Not out of rebellion — out of necessity. I started working at ten years old, and somewhere in all that work I found something I hadn’t expected: I didn’t just want to work hard, I wanted to build things.

So I built them. Businesses, mostly, alongside my husband — The Classic Group grew out of that, and later WEJO Investments, where we back other people’s ideas as well as our own. There were setbacks. There was a divorce. Every single time, I found a way back.

Somewhere along the way I worked out what I was actually doing, and it wasn’t business. It was gathering. Tables, dinner parties, a house full of noise. And lemons — the trees in my back garden in Phoenix, which have taught me more about patience than any of the companies did. A lemon tree, like a life, gets richer and more interesting with age.

A life well zested is my shorthand for it: squeeze everything out of every experience, including — especially — the difficult ones. That is what these two books are.

If you’re waiting to start something, hear this from a woman who published her first book at sixty-four: the timing will never be perfect. Start anyway.