I knew nothing about martial arts. The coach told me I was talented with learning martial arts and put me in a school. Three years later I got my first championship in China.

In many ways it was much much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people publicists and so forth implicitly.

Women have to harness their power - its absolutely true. It's just learning not to take the first no. And if you can't go straight ahead you go around the corner.

It helps immerse yourself in what you potentially want to do. Being involved learning firsthand and observing the craft and absorbing all you can makes it easier to define what you want. It will also ultimately make you a better Chef. Culinary school or even a single class is a great bet too.

I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child as an eight- or nine-year-old asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels and I would say 'What does that mean?'

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping The Sports Authority which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.

He's a novice but he's had these - he's experienced in leadership in tight circumstances. He started - he dropped the first bomb led the first air strike into North Vietnam.

Not everybody is created equal and it's important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company.

The biggest novelty of 2013 will be new leadership in China. Very little is known about the views of the new leaders - who will rule the country for ten years. But we do know they're the first generation of Chinese leaders who have spent the majority of their lives in a China 'opening up' to the rest of the world.