The hardest lesson Zoë Foster Blake has learned about business.

Zoë Foster Blake is what you’d call a textbook overachiever. The former journalist (and blogger), the author of six books (one of which was made into a TV series – The Wrong Girl, anyone?) and is now killing it with her skin care brand, Go-To.

To us mere mortals, going from writing about beauty products to making them seems like a pretty huge step. A giant leap, even.

But as the 36-year-old explains in an interview with herself (yep) in the December Christmas issue of ELLE magazine, the two things aren’t all that different.

“At its heart I think ‘business’ is creative,” she writes.

“Seeing gaps, making useful products, earning permission to sell to your customers in a way that is fun and resonates.”

While Foster Blake is the first to admit she's not a classic businessperson (a statement with which she says her "accountant would ardently agree"), it's that passion for innovation that fuels her entrepreneurial spirit.

"It's the creation bit I love," she writes in ELLE. "The spark of a good idea, then acting on it. I want anything I produce to be good for people kind enough to try it, but it's the momentum and process I enjoy most. I wish I could do 50 projects a year." (Post continues after gallery.)

Zoe Foster-Blake on Instagram.

Of course, being a self-taught, self-starter means there are plenty of lessons to be learned. For Foster Blake there was one particularly potent one:

"'Faking it till you make it' is not as hip and cool as Instagram quotes would have you believe: it's a bit terrifying," she argues.