About the Authors
Kimberley and Stephen Taylor
Co-authors. Co-teachers. Husband and wife. A partnership behind the class — and behind the book.
Kimberley and Stephen Taylor were a husband-and-wife team in every sense of the word — business partners, co-teachers, and co-authors who built their professional life together from the ground up.
They met by chance at a Saturday morning class. She noticed a bumper sticker on his car — I'd rather be sailing — and asked about it. A year and a half later they were married. A bootstrapped company built from scratch and eventually sold. Patents. Travel. And somewhere in the middle of all that, a class called How to Be Classy, In Spite of Yourself that became a fixture wherever they taught it.
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Kimberley Taylor
Co-Author · Co-Teacher
Kimberley brought warmth, precision, and a genuine belief in every person she taught. She held a business degree in Marketing, built a career across corporate training and adult education, and ran her own coaching practice. She was a member of the National Speakers Association.
She opened and closed every class with the same line: It's never too late to become the best you can be. She meant it as an invitation, and no one who heard her say it doubted that she did.
Kimberley passed away in May 2025.
Stephen Taylor
Co-Author · Co-Teacher
Stephen's career has moved between corporate international business, entrepreneurship, writing, and invention. He holds a Master's in International Management, has co-founded and sold a company, and holds two issued U.S. patents. He is the author of The Circuitous Path memoir series and the founder of University Extension Press.
He lives by a principle that has served him for a lifetime: life is for living, not watching.
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Why This Book
After Kimberley passed, her voice, her worksheets, and the material from hundreds of sessions were waiting. I had always meant to turn the class into a book. What was left was to do it — to set both of our voices on the page honestly, her invitation and my frameworks, and make it not a book of advice, but of self-exploration. A class again, the way we taught it.
— Stephen