I've been busy working in other jobs this week, so pond project progress has been slow, but I managed a couple of evenings out there where I played Minecraft IRL where I had the kids mine for gemstones under the trunk. My daughter found quite a lot of quartz which she's excited to have found. It's nice to have cleared up all the logs, branches and pond stuff which has now found a new home int he woods which I might get round to chopping for the path one day, or if not it will make a home for lots of lovely animals. I have mainly filled in lots of cracks around the pond water feature so that when it's running we don't lose water down the cracks. I used putty resin for this which will stay flexible and not crack. And it's quite safe for the fish, frogs and newts now it's cured. I've seen quite a few baby frogs hopping around now. The last picture is of Norman. He scares the life out of me often.

I went to a business speaker panel last week and something stuck with me. All 4 entrepreneurs on stage said sometimes it takes 9 "no's" to get a "yes". For all of you out there in the "no" phase, there's hope for a "yes" keep going. ❤️

A community is not a community if there's just one person broadcasting in it. It's a lecture. A community becomes a community when people are having conversations, sharing stories and differing points of view. It's very difficult to do this alone, so I recommend buddying up with one or two other skool Community owners and be as active and add as much value in their Community as you do your own. If they do the same then all of you have a much more interesting community that people will want to be part of and participate in, then if the same amount of content was provided by just one of you. It's quite obviously something we encourage in here and I would love to hear stories where this has or even hasn't worked for you.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend. We've just had a great walk, some exercise moving the branches and logs, and had a lovely Chinese takeaway meal for tea. Our family discussion over dinner was about imagining if you woke up one morning and ever person in the world was gone. This came about because my eldest son was asking why we (his parents) are so sociable, and he is not. It's an interesting thought that would be my personal worst nightmare. A world without people for me would not be a world I would want to live in. Then we moved onto a subject that what if everything man made was gone? Only nature exists... No tech, no houses, no money... It's a really thought provoking one that changes a lot of power dynamics. So which one would you choose? Tell me why below. You wake up tomorrow and...

I've just had to pay £115 plus plus 2 months road tax because I forgot it SORN my van (statutory off road notification) when I decided not to use it for a few months because we don't need it again until August. I hate all these taxes in the form of penalties that I get all the time for being bad at paperwork. I always get penalties for forgetting to pay tax, fines for not submitting company returns on time and fines for not renewing my NHS prescription certificate... The list goes on, i'm not including speeding fines. Every time I open these letters it makes me feel like a failure in life. It really gets me down and makes me feel sad. I don't know how normal people keep track of it all. (In fact, I've just remembered we should have paid tax in June that I'd forgotten about! 😫) So, my idea is what if someone would take car if all your vehicle admin. tax, insurance and MOTs, ensuring that all your vehicles were kept legal, maintained and roadworthy.. Do I need a PA or VA? Better systems or is there some amazing hack or software that I'm missing in my life? I'd love to know how you do it without the stress of getting penalised as this is probably one of my biggest pain points right now ..!