Its that time of year again, but this year it starts off very different for me, I’m going on a train. So me and my eldest daughter start there.

Met with my friend and her husband and gloriously cute daughter. Absolutely my highlight of the day.

As we sat down to listen to Kypros I saw some confetti come up, looked up and spotted these guys in the rafters.

As usual Kypros and Theo really add to the buzz of coming here. Unlike others here, I’m merely a hobbyist, but even I get caught up in dreaming big. And in the accomplishment of getting to be chosen.

We had some panelists on sharing their Resilience Rocks, their pivotal moments in their businesses. It was nice to see disability shown so positively (as a disabled person it felt important)

I saw that tiktok shop was going to be discussed and this was incredible to listen too, and get some tips. Not for myself but definitely for others.

After the tiktok presentation we then had 3 businesses to pitch to live judging panel, to share a 10k prize. It was actually really good to see, and we all discussed who we thought should win between ourselves, and we got the winner right. All were winners but one business the money would help the most and they got it!!

We break for dinner for 1hr 45mins which would be a great time to network, but my knee was so painful we just popped to Starbucks for coffee.

After lunch we hear the results and find out we had picked the winner correctly Evenly won!!

At 3pm the fireside chat starts which is always my favourite part, this year following on from having Stacey Solomon, we had another iconic empowering lady on Katie Piper OBE. And honestly I could listen to her talk forever, she is so down to earth, humble and yet confident, self assured and most inspiring to listen too. My own health journey has led me down dark paths and overwhelmed me over 15yrs to crawl out of that pit took everything, to relearn to walk over 10 times in 15yrs takes its toll. But to hear Katie’s story is nothing short of pure wonder and magic.

We had to dash for our Train so we missed the last few minutes of Katie. If you are new to winning you get to queue up for your photo with Theo Paphitis. And of course if you aren’t dashing for a train you can grab a coffee and biscuits and network.

We grabbed our goodie bag on the way out to dash for the train home.

For my 10 ish minutes walk from train station to event gave me a 15hr recovery period, just to show how something so little to others can take so much out of a disabled person. And of course I have to make that walk back to train station. Thankfully at our stop my husband greets me with a much needed hot water bottle and lift home.