When you ask successful businesspeople how they got started, they may tell you about the little businesses they started in primary school — the ingenious corner lemonade stand, the school chocolate-bar sales or the lawn-mowing service employing other 12 year olds. The types of businesses that led these overachievers to climb that first rung on the ladder to success. Sales charts, forecasts and ROI calculations lined these kids' walls like Andy Gibb lined mine. The entrepreneurial spirit seems to be part of their DNA.

My story is drastically different. You could say that my entrepreneurial spirit was … umm — dormant. Okay, it was non-existent. To be honest, if you'd asked me what an entrepreneur was in primary school, I may have thought it had something to do with food and would have had no idea how to spell it (actually, I still struggle with spelling that word). It was 20 years after primary school that foreign entrepreneurial DNA somehow began to morph my behaviour.

During the 20-year, pre-DNA takeover, I travelled around the United States, Europe, parts of Asia and Australia. I had 30 jobs, got fired from some, moved on to others, made money, lost more, met the wrong man, had a beautiful baby and met my soulmate. What I didn't realise at the time was all the lessons and tools I was picking up with each triumph and pitfall. Each piece of my journey was enabling me to have the strength to take a tiny idea and turn it into a passion.

Of course, I don't really think having the skills to become a successful entrepreneur literally needs to be part of your DNA. I also don't believe there is a cookie-cutter process for success, or that success has to be hard or come easy. What I have attempted to do in the following chapters is to share with you my journey; it has many ups and equally as many downs. If someone had done the same for me, perhaps the learning curve would have been less bumpy. This is a short, honest glimpse into my archives so that you can see I'm human, just like you. I too trip over the kids' toys, go to work with my children's fears and problems running through my head, laugh, cry, make mistakes, learn from them and try to grow.

I hope that you take something from the following and follow your dreams.